curls up like a vine to
avoid it. The base is supported by the kneeling figures of Adam Kraft
and two fellow-workmen, who labored on it for four years. Above is
the Last Supper, Christ blessing little children, and other beautiful
tableaux in stone. The Gothic spire grows up and around these, now and
then throwing out graceful tendrils, like a vine, and seeming to
be rather a living plant than inanimate stone. The faithful artist
evidently had this feeling for it; for, as it grew under his hands, he
found that it would strike the roof, or he must sacrifice something of
its graceful proportion. So his loving and daring genius suggested the
happy design of letting it grow to its curving, graceful completeness.

He who travels by a German railway needs patience and a full haversack.
Time is of no value. The rate of speed of the trains is so slow, that
one sometimes has a desire to get out and walk, and the stoppages at
the stations seem eternal; but then we must remember that it is a long
distance to the bottom of a great mug of beer. We left Lindau on one of
the usual trains at half-past five in the morning, and reached Augsburg
at one o'clock in the afternoon: the distance cannot be more than a
hundred miles. That is quicker than by diligence, and one has leisure
to see the country as he jogs along. There is nothing more sedate than
a German train in motion; nothing can stand so dead still as a German
train at a station. But there are express trains.

We were on one from Augsburg to Nuremberg, and I think must have run
twenty miles an hour. The fare on the express trains is one fifth higher
than on the others. The cars are all comfortable; and the officials,
who wear a good deal of uniform, are much more civil and obliging than
officials in a country where they do not wear uniforms. So, not swiftly,
but safely and in good-humor, we rode to the capital of Bavaria.

OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNICH

I saw yesterday, on the 31st of August, in the English Garden, dead
leaves whirling down to the ground, a too evident sign that the summer
weather is going. Indeed, it has been sour, chilly weather for a week
now, raining a little every day, and with a very autumn feeling in
the air. The nightly concerts in the beer-gardens must have shivering
listeners, if the bands do not, as many of them do, play within doors.
The line of droschke drivers, in front of the post-office colonnade,
hide the red facings of their coats under lo