Munich
it is an important public and private family event, concerning each
house as well as the entire city.

The opening of the Salvator brewery in the suburbs of Munich, for its
brief season of a month in the spring, assumes for the inhabitants the
importance of a long anticipated holiday. Thither an eager crowd of
townspeople make pilgrimage. I was present on one of these auspicious
occasions, and found a joyous multitude of more than two thousand
persons, filling to overflowing the capacious building gayly trimmed
with evergreens interspersed with the national colors. A band discoursed
excellent music, that necessary element, without which no German scene
is complete. The waiters, more than usually adroit in supplying the
wants of the crowd, carried in their hands fourteen glasses at a time
with professional dexterity. The peculiar delicacy of the occasion,
aside from the beer, seemed to be cheese, plentifully sprinkled with
black pepper.

Late in the evening the people became more excited and sympathetic, and
then it was proposed to sing "Herr Fisher," a popular German song of the
people. A verse was sung by a few voices as a solo; then followed a
mighty chorus from all the persons present. Each one raised the cover of
his beer mug at the commencement, and let it fall with a clang at the
close of the chorus, with startling effect.

In Munich one-half of the inhabitants appear to be engaged in the
fabrication of beer and the entire population in drinking it. It
impresses one as being the only industry there. The enormous brewery
wagons, drawn by five Norman horses, are ever to be seen. On the trains
going from the city there is ordinarily a beer car painted in festive
white. It bears an inscription, that none may mistake its contents, and
perhaps that the peasants may bless it as it passes. It is looked upon
with as much reverence as if it bore the ark of the covenant.

All over Germany, among the most ordinary of birthday or holiday
presents are the elegantly painted porcelain tops for beer glasses. The
works of great masters may be found copied in exquisite style for this
purpose, as well as illustrations suited to uncultivated tastes. To
these pictures there are appropriate mottoes, and often a verse adapted
to the comprehension of the most uneducated peasant. A favorite among
the Bavarians, judging from the frequency with which it is met with in
all parts of Bavaria, represents a peasant in a balcony waving