List Of Contents | Contents of Saunterings, by Charles Dudley Warner
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profitably.  This little journal was started something like twenty
years ago.  It probably spends little for news, has only one or, at
most, two editors, is crowded with advertisements, which are inserted
cheap, and costs, delivered, a little over six francs a year.  It
circulates in the city some thirty-five thousand.  There is another
little paper here of the same size, but not so many leaves, called
"The Daily Advertiser," with nothing but advertisements, principally
of theaters, concerts, and the daily sights, and one page devoted to
some prodigious yarn, generally concerning America, of which country
its readers must get the most extraordinary and frightful impression.
The "Nachrichten" made the fortune of its first owner, who built
himself a fine house out of it, and retired to enjoy his wealth.  It
was recently sold for one hundred thousand guldens; and I can see
that it is piling up another fortune for its present owner.  The
Germans, who herein show their good sense and the high state of
civilization to which they have reached, are very free advertisers,
going to the newspapers with all their wants, and finding in them
that aid which all interests and all sorts of people, from kaiser to
kerl, are compelled, in these days, to seek in the daily journal.
Every German town of any size has three or four of these little
journals of flying leaves, which are excellent papers in every
respect, except that they look like badly printed handbills, and have
very little news and no editorials worth speaking of.  An exception
to these in Bavaria is the "Allgerneine Zeitung" of Augsburg, which
is old and immensely respectable, and is perhaps, for extent of
correspondence and splendidly written editorials on a great variety
of topics, excelled by no journal in Europe except the London
"Times."  It gives out two editions daily, the evening one about the
size of the New York "Nation;" and it has all the telegraphic news.
It is absurdly old-grannyish, and is malevolent in its pretended
conservatism and impartiality.  Yet it circulates over forty thousand
copies, and goes all over Germany.

But were we not saying something about moving?  The truth is, that
the best German families did not respond to our appeal with that
alacrity which we had no right to expect, and did not exhibit that
anxiety for our society which would have been such a pleasant
evidence of their appreciation of the honor done to the royal city of
Munich by the selection of it as a residence during the most
disagreeable months of the year by the advertising undersigned.  Even
the young king, whose approaching marriage to the Russian princess,
one would think, might soften his heart, did nothing to win our
regard, or to show that he appreciated our residence "near" his
court, and, so far as I know, never read with any sort of attention
our advertisement, which was composed with as much care as Goethe's
"Faust," and probably with the use of more dictionaries.  And this,
when he has an extraordinary large Residenz, to say nothing about
other outlying palaces and comfortable places to live in, in which I
know there are scores of elegantly furnished apartments, which stand
idle almost the year round, and might as well be let to appreciative
strangers, who would accustom the rather washy and fierce frescoes on
the walls to be stared at.  I might have selected rooms, say on the
court which looks on the exquisite bronze fountain, Perseus with the
head of Medusa, a copy of the one in Florence by Benvenuto Cellini,
where we could have a southern exposure.  Or we might, so it would
seem, have had rooms by the winter garden, where tropical plants
rejoice in perennial summer, and blossom and bear fruit, while a
northern winter rages without.  Yet the king did not see it "by those
lamps;" and I looked in vain on the gates of the Residenz for the
notice so frequently seen on other houses, of apartments to let.  And
yet we had responses.  The day after the announcement appeared, our
bell ran perpetually; and we had as many letters as if we had
advertised for wives innumerable.  The German notes poured in upon us
in a flood; each one of them containing an offer tempting enough to
beguile an angel out of paradise, at least, according to our
translation: they proffered us chambers that were positively
overheated by the flaming sun (which, I can take my oath, only
ventures a few feet above the horizon at this season), which were
friendly in appearance, splendidly furnished and near to every
desirable thing, and in which, usually, some American family had long
resided, and experienced a content and happiness not to be felt out
of Germany.

I spent some days in calling upon the worthy frauen who made these
alluring offers.  The visits were full of profit to the student of
human nature, but profitless otherwise.  I was ushered into low, dark
chambers, small and dreary, looking towards the sunless north, which
I was assured were delightful and even elegant.  I was taken up to
the top of tall houses, through a smell of cabbage that was
appalling, to find empty and dreary rooms, from which I fled in
fright.  We were visited by so many people who had chambers to rent,
that we were impressed with the idea that all Munich was to let; and
yet, when we visited the places offered, we found they were only to
be let alone.  One of the frauen who did us the honor to call, also
wrote a note, and inclosed a letter that she had just received from
an American gentleman (I make no secret of it that he came from
Hartford), in which were many kindly expressions for her welfare, and
thanks for the aid he had received in his study of German; and yet I
think her chambers are the most uninviting in the entire city.  There
were people who were willing to teach us German, without rooms or
board; or to lodge us without giving us German or food; or to feed
us, and let us starve intellectually, and lodge where we could.

But all things have an end, and so did our hunt for lodgings.  I
chanced one day in my walk to find, with no help from the
advertisement, very nearly what we desired,--cheerful rooms in a
pleasant neighborhood, where the sun comes when it comes out at all,
and opposite the Glass Palace, through which the sun streams in the
afternoon with a certain splendor, and almost next door to the
residence and laboratory of the famous chemist, Professor Liebig; so
that we can have our feelings analyzed whenever it is desirable.
When we had set up our household gods, and a fire was kindled in the
tall white porcelain family monument, which is called here a stove,--
and which, by the way, is much more agreeable than your hideous black
and air-scorching cast-iron stoves,--and seen that the feather-beds
under which we were expected to lie were thick enough to roast the
half of the body, and short enough to let the other half freeze, we
determined to try for a season the regular German cookery, our table
heretofore having been served with food cooked in the English style
with only a slight German flavor.  A week of the experiment was quite
enough.  I do not mean to say that the viands served us were not
good, only that we could not make up our minds to eat them.  The
Germans eat a great deal of meat; and we were obliged to take meat
when we preferred vegetables.  Now, when a deep dish is set before
you wherein are chunks of pork reposing on stewed potatoes, and
another wherein a fathomless depth of sauerkraut supports coils of
boiled sausage, which, considering that you are a mortal and
responsible being, and have a stomach, will you choose?  Herein
Munich, nearly all the bread is filled with anise or caraway seed; it
is possible to get, however, the best wheat bread we have eaten in
Europe, and we usually have it; but one must maintain a constant
vigilance against the inroads of the fragrant seeds.  Imagine, then,
our despair, when one day the potato, the one vegetable we had always
eaten with perfect confidence, appeared stewed with caraway seeds.
This was too much for American human nature, constituted as it is.
Yet the dish that finally sent us back to our ordinary and excellent
way of living is one for which I have no name.  It may have been
compounded at different times, have been the result of many tastes or
distastes: but there was, after all, a unity in it that marked it as
the composition of one master artist; there was an unspeakable
harmony in all its flavors and apparently ununitable substances.  It
looked like a terrapin soup, but it was not.  Every dive of the spoon
into its dark liquid brought up a different object,--a junk of
unmistakable pork, meat of the color of roast hare, what seemed to be
the neck of a goose, something in strings that resembled the rags of
a silk dress, shreds of cabbage, and what I am quite willing to take
my oath was a bit of Astrachan fur.  If Professor Liebig wishes to
add to his reputation, he could do so by analyzing this dish, and
publishing the result to the world.

And, while we are speaking of eating, it may be inferred that the
Germans are good eaters; and although they do not begin early, seldom
taking much more than a cup of coffee before noon, they make it up by
very substantial dinners and suppers.  To say nothing of the
extraordinary dishes of meats which the restaurants serve at night,
the black bread and odorous cheese and beer which the men take on
board in the course of an evening would soon wear out a cast-iron
stomach in America; and yet I ought to remember the deadly pie and
the corroding whisky of my native land.  The restaurant life of the
people is, of course, different from their home life, and perhaps an
evening entertainment here is no more formidable than one in America,
but it is different.  Let me give you the outlines of a supper to
which we were invited the other night: it certainly cannot hurt you
to read about it.  We sat down at eight.  There were first courses of
three sorts of cold meat, accompanied with two sorts of salad; the
one, a composite, with a potato basis, of all imaginable things that
are eaten.  Beer and bread were unlimited.  There was then roast

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