_mass_ and _kellnerin_, we arrive finally at the
Loewenbraeukeller and the Hofbraeuhaus, which is quite a feat of arriving,
it must be granted, for the one is in the Nymphenburgerstrasse, in
Northwest Munich, and the other is in the Platzl, not two blocks from
the royal palace, and the distance from the one to the other is a good
mile and a half.

The Loewenbraeu first--a rococo castle sprawling over a whole city block,
and with accommodations in its "halls, galleries, loges, verandas,
terraces, outlying garden promenades and beer rooms" (I quote the
official guide) for eight thousand drinkers. A lordly and impressive
establishment is this Loewenbraeu, an edifice of countless towers,
buttresses, minarets and dungeons. It was designed by the learned Prof.
Albert Schmidt, one of the creators of modern Munich, and when it was
opened, on June 14, 1883, all the military bands in Munich played at
once in the great hall, and the royal family of Bavaria turned out in
state coaches, and 100,000 eager Muencheners tried to fight their way in.

How large that great hall may be I don't know, but I venture to guess
that it seats four thousand people--not huddled together, as a theatre
seats them, but comfortably, loosely, spaciously, with plenty of room
between the tables for the 250 _kellnerinen_ to navigate safely with
their cargoes of Loewenbraeu. Four nights a week a military band plays in
this hall or a _maennerchor_ rowels the air with song, and there is an
admission fee of thirty pfennigs (7-1/5 cents). One night I heard the
band of the second Bavarian (Crown Prince's) Regiment, playing as an
orchestra, go through a programme that would have done credit to the New
York philharmonic. A young violinist in corporal's stripes lifted the
crowd to its feet with the slow movement of the Tschaikowsky concerto;
the band itself began with Wagner's "Siegfried Idyl" and ended with
Strauss's "Rosen aus dem Sueden," a superb waltz, magnificently
performed. Three hours of first-rate music for 7-1/5 cents! And a _mass_
of Loewenbraeu, twice the size of the seidel sold in this country at
twenty cents, for forty pfennigs (9-1/2 cents)! An inviting and
appetizing spot, believe me. A place to stretch your legs. A temple of
Lethe. There, when my days of moneylust are over, I go to chew my
memories and dream my dreams and listen to my arteries hardening.

By taxicab down the wide Briennerstrasse, past the Luitpold and the
Odeon, to the Ludwigstra