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LOOKING FOR WARM WEATHER

FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES

At all events, saith the best authority, "pray that your flight be not
in winter;" and it might have added, don't go south if you desire warm
weather. In January, 1869, I had a little experience of hunting after
genial skies; and I will give you the benefit of it in some free running
notes on my journey from Munich to Naples.

It was the middle of January, at eleven o'clock at night, that we left
Munich, on a mixed railway train, choosing that time, and the slowest of
slow trains, that we might make the famous Brenner Pass by daylight. It
was no easy matter, at last, to pull up from the dear old city in which
we had become so firmly planted, and to leave the German friends who
made the place like home to us. One gets to love Germany and the
Germans as he does no other country and people in Europe. There has been
something so simple, honest, genuine, in our Munich life, that we look
back to it with longing eyes from this land of fancy, of hand-organ
music, and squalid splendor. I presume the streets are yet half the day
hid in a mountain fog; but I know the superb military bands are still
playing at noon in the old Marian Platz and in the Loggie by the
Residenz; that at half-past six in the evening our friends are quietly
stepping in to hear the opera at the Hof Theater, where everybody goes
to hear the music, and nobody for display, and that they will be at home
before half-past nine, and have dispatched the servant for the mugs
of foaming beer; I know that they still hear every week the choice
conservatoire orchestral concerts in the Odeon; and, alas that
experience should force me to think of it! I have no doubt that they
sip, every morning, coffee which is as much superior to that of Paris
as that of Paris is to that of London; and that they eat the delicious
rolls, in comparison with which those of Paris are tasteless. I wonder,
in this land of wine,--and yet it must be so,--if the beer-gardens are
still filled nightly; and if it could be that I should sit at a little
table there, a comely lass would, before I could ask for what everybody
is presumed to want, place before me a tall glass full of amber liquid,
crowned with creamy foam. Are the handsome officers still sipping their
coffee in the Cafe Maximilian; and, on sunny days, is the crowd of
fashion still streaming down to the Isar, and the high, sightly walks
and gardens beyond?

As I sa