s, and Mrs. Jimmie and Bee over the crown jewels in the Treasury
of the Alte Residenz. To be sure they _are_ fine. For example, there is
the famous "Pearl of the Palatinate," which is half black, and a
glorious blue diamond about twice as fine as the one owned by Lord
Francis Hope, which his family went to law to prevent his selling not
long ago, and a superb group of St. George and the dragon, the knight
being in chased gold, the dragon made entirely of jasper, and the whole
thing studded thickly with precious stones of every description. But,
except that these things are historic and kept in royal vaults, they are
no more wonderful than jewellers' exhibits at the expositions.

But if you want to be thoroughly mixed up on the Nibelungenlied, after
you think you have got those depraved old parties with their iniquitous
marriages and loose morals pretty well adjusted by a faithful attendance
at Walter Damrosch's lectures and Wagner operas, just go through the
Koenigsbau, and let one of those automatic conductors in uniform take you
through the Schnorr Nibelungen Frescoes, and from personal experience I
will guarantee that, when you have completed the rounds, you won't even
know who Siegfried is.

There is one thing particularly worth mentioning about Munich, and that
is that also in Alte Residenz, in the Festsaalbau, which faces on the
Hofgarten, and is 256 yards, not feet, long, are two small card rooms,
with what they call a "gallery of beauties."

Now everybody knows how disappointing professional beauties are. Think
over the names of actresses heralded as "beauties;" of belles, who have
been said to turn men's heads by the score; of Venuses, and Psyches, and
Madonnas of the galleries of Europe, and tell me your honest opinion.
Aren't most of them really--well, _trying,_ to say the least?

Titian's beauties all need an obesity remedy, and Jimmie criticises most
"beauties" so severely that we have got to searching them out, when we
are tired and cross, just to vent our spleen upon.

Jimmie's favourite story is the old, old one of the old woman who saw a
hippopotamus for the first time. She looked at him a moment in silence
and then said: "My! ain't he plain!"

It is pre-historic, that story, but it has saved our lives many a time
in Europe. It fits so many cases, and I mention it here just to prove my
point. Go, then, to the "Gallery of Beauties" in the Palace, and you
will find thirty-six portraits by Steiler, of