t Nuremberg. Tell me if you can why we went into such ecstasies
over Nuremberg and stayed there two weeks, when we could barely persuade
ourselves to remain one day in Stuttgart. But the picturesqueness of
Nuremberg is particularly enticing. The streets run "every which way,"
as the children say, and the architecture is so queer and ancient that
the houses look as if they had stepped out of old prints.

It was so hot when we arrived that we were on terms of the most distant
civility with each other. Indeed, it was dangerous to make the simplest
observation, for the other three guns were trained upon the inoffensive
speaker with such promptness and such an evident desire to fight that
for the most part we maintained a dignified but safe silence.

Mrs. Jimmie bearded Jimmie in his den long enough to ask him to see
about our opera tickets at once. Everybody said we could not get any,
but trust Jimmie! The agent of whom he bought them had embroidered a
generous romance of how he had got them of a lady who ordered them the
January before, but whose husband having just died, her feelings would
not permit her to use them, and so as a great accommodation, etc., etc.

Everybody knows these stories. Suffice it to say that Jimmie really had,
at the last moment, secured admirable seats near the middle of the
house, and everybody said it was a miracle. In looking back over the
experiences of that one opera of "Parsifal," I cannot deny that there
was something of a miracle about it. However, "Parsifal" was three days
distant, and Nuremberg was at hand.

I love to think of Nuremberg. The recollection of it comes back to me
again and again through a gentle haze of happy memories. The narrow
streets were lined with houses which leaned toward each other after the
gossipy manner of old friends whose confidence in each other is
established. The windows jutted queerly, and odd balconies looped
themselves on corners where no one expected them. They call these pretty
old houses the best examples of domestic architecture, but warn you that
the quaint peaked roofs are Gothic and the surprises are Renaissance--a
mixture of which purists do not approve. But I am a pagan. I like
mixtures. They give you little flutters of delight in your heart, and
one of the most satisfactory of experiences is not to be able to analyse
your emotions or to tell why you are pleased, but to feel at liberty to
answer art questions with "Just because!"

So Nurember