Taking your faithful donkey which has brought you up the hill, and your Wartburg album collection of photographs, you find yourself soon wandering through the lovely and fantastic Annenthal, and finally resting near the depot at Eisenach. There the untiring finger of your old guide points to Fritz Reuter’s house, and at last to his own little bill, which he has carefully prepared and which he expects you as carefully to pay. Never goes money from your pocket more liberally!
The Harz Mountains, their legends and songs, have been so often written of there is danger of stupid repetition if one goes over the ground.
A novel experience for an American is to have an attack of rheumatism in the house of an old Polish major in midsummer, in Wernigerode, and be attended by the physician of Count Von Stolberg. To inform those who may be so unfortunate as to meet with a similar fate what will become of them, I would simply remark that the subterfuge of every German doctor, when he finds a case getting beyond his control, is to recommend a water-cure. The one at Magdeburg being the nearest to Wernigerode, is the one which Count Von Stolburg’s physician would be best acquainted with, so off to the old city and farewell to the Harz! What rheumatic patient cares for a view of a fine old cathedral from a window, or to be informed that the city has existed since the eighth century? Do these facts lessen the pain or quiet the nerves? After the bath has restored the patient, and he or she can walk out and examine the cathedral, and read of the sufferings of the people in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, and again how the Austrian army was resisted by Wallenstein for seven months, and how the French besieged and took it in 1806, and again in 1813—thus there is diversion in finding oneself on such historic grounds and picturesque surroundings.
[To be continued.]
[IN FLOWERY FIELDS.]
By MARY HARRISON.
Ye flowers in your wonderful silence,