Gazing out from behind her cake, one young woman remarks, sententiously,—
“It's gingerbread with things in it.”
Another stops in her investigations with,—
“It is as hard as a brownstone front.”
“It's delightful not to know in the least what's coming next,” says another. “I've just reached a stratum of jelly and am going deeper. Farewell.”
“Echt Nürnberger, echt Nürnberger!” croaked the old dame, still nodding, still blessing; and so, meditatively eating her cakes, we gazed at her and wondered if any one could possibly be as old as she looked, and if she too were a product of “Nuremberg the ancient,” to which “quaint old town of toil and traffic” we wandered off through the medium of Longfellow's poem, as every conscientious American in Europe is in duty bound to do. It is always a comfort to go where he has led the way. We are sure of experiencing the proper emotions. They are gently and quietly instilled into us, and we never know they do not come of themselves, until we happen to realize that some verse of his, familiar to our childhood, has been haunting us all the time. What a pity he never has written a poetical guide-book!
These unusual objects penetrating our quiet study hours told us Christmas was coming, and the aspect of the Stuttgart streets also proclaimed the glad tidings. They were a charming, merry sight. The Christmas fair extended its huge length of booths and tables through the narrow, quaint streets by the old Stiftskirche, reaching even up to the Königstrasse, where great piles of furniture rose by the pavements, threatening destruction to the passer-by. Thronging about the tables, where everything in the world was for sale and all the world was buying, could be seen many a dainty little lady in a costume fresh from Paris; many a ruddy peasant-girl with braids and bodice, short gown and bright stockings; many types of feature, and much confusion of tongues; and you are crowded and jostled: but you like it all, for every face wears the happy Christmas look that says so much.
These fairs are curious places, and have a benumbing effect upon the brain. People come home with the most unheard-of purchases, which they never seriously intended to buy. Perhaps a similar impulse to that which makes one grasp a common inkstand in a burning house, and run and deposit it far away in a place of safety, leads ladies to come from the “Messe” with a wooden comb and a string of yellow-glass beads. In both cases the intellect is temporarily absent, it would seem. Buy you must, of course. What you buy, whether it be a white wooden chair, or a child's toy, or a broom, or a lace barbe, or a blue-glass breastpin, seems to be pure chance. The country people, who come into the city especially to buy, know what they want, and no doubt make judicious purchases. But we, who go to gaze, to wonder, and to be amused, never know why we buy anything, and, when we come home and recover our senses, look at one another in amazement over our motley collections.
At this last fair a kind fate led us to a photograph table, where old French beauties smiled at us, and all of Henry the VIII.'s hapless wives gazed at us from their ruffs, and the old Greek philosophers looked as if they could tell us a thing or two if they only would. The discovery of this haven in the sea of incongruous things around us was a fortunate accident. The photograph-man was henceforth our magnet. To him our little family, individually and collectively, drifted, and day by day the stock of Louise de la Vallieres, and Maintenons, and Heloises, and Anne Boleyns, and Pompadours, and Sapphos, and Socrates, and Diogenes, etc.,—(perfect likenesses of all of them, I am sure!)—increased in our pension, where we compared purchases between the courses at dinner, and made Archimedes and the duchess of Lamballe stand amicably side by side against the soup-tureen. Halcyon, but, alas! fleeting days, when we could buy these desirable works of art for ten pfennig, which, I mention with satisfaction, is two and one half cents!
But, of all the Christmas sights, the Christmas-trees and the dolls were the most striking. The trees marched about like Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane. There were solid family men going off with solid, respectable trees, and servants in livery condescending to stalk away with trees of the most lofty and aristocratic stature; and many a poor woman dragging along a sickly, stunted child with one hand and a sickly, stunted tree with the other.