It is a misfortune to want to go from Cassel to Munich in one day. It can be done; but it takes fourteen hours of very hard work,—three changes,—an hour's waiting at one place, and half an hour at another, and the road for the last half of the day so rough that it could honestly be compared to nothing except horseback riding over bowlders at a rapid rate. This is from Gemunden to Munich: if there is any other way of getting there, I think nobody would go by this; so I infer that there is not. You must set off, also, at the unearthly hour of 5 A.M.,—an hour at which all virtues ooze out of one; even honesty out of cabmen, as I found at Cassel, when a man to whom I had paid four marks—more than twice the regular fare—for bringing us a five minutes' distance to the railway station, absolutely had the face to ask three marks more. Never did I so long for a command of the German tongue. I only hope that the docile Brita translated for me literally what I said, as I handed him twelve cents more, with, "I gave one dollar because you had to get up so early in the morning. You know very well that even half that sum is more than the price at ordinary times. I will give you this fifty pfennigs for yourself, and not another pfennig do you get!" I wish that the man that invented the word pfennig had to "do a pour of it for one tousand year," as dear old Dr. Pröhl said of the teapot that would not pour without spilling. I think it is the test-word of the German language. The nearest direction I could give for pronouncing it would be: fill your mouth with hasty-pudding, then say purr-f-f-f-f-f, and then gulp the pudding and choke when you come to the g,—that's a pfennig; and the idea of such a name as that for a contemptible thing of which it takes one hundred to make a quarter of a dollar! They do them up in big nickel pieces too,—heavy, and so large that in the dark you always mistake them for something else. Ten hundredths of a quarter!—you could starve with your purse loaded down with them.
In the station, trudging about as cheerily as if they were at home, was a poor family,—father, mother, and five little children,—evidently about to emigrate. Each carried a big bundle; even the smallest toddler had her parcel tied up in black cloth with a big cord. The mother carried the biggest bundle of all,—a baby done up in a bedquilt, thick as a comforter; the child's head was pinned in tight as its feet,—not one breath of air could reach it.
"Going to America, ma'am," said Brita, "I think they must be. Oh, ma'am, there was five hundred sailed in one ship for America, last summer,—all to be Mormons; and the big fellow that took them, with his gold spectacles, I could have killed him. They'll be wretched enough when they come to find what they've done. Brigham Young's dead, but there must be somebody in his place that's carrying it on the same. They'd not be allowed to stay in Denmark, ma'am,—oh, no, they've got to go out of the country."
All day again we journeyed through the hay harvest,—the same picturesque farm-houses, with their high roofs thatched or dark-tiled, their low walls white or red or pink, marked off into odd-shaped intervals by lattice-work of wood; no fences, no walls; only the coloring to mark divisions of crops. Town after town snugged round its church; the churches looked like hens with their broods gathered close around them, just ready to go under the wings. We had been told that we need not change cars all the way to Munich; so, of course, we had to change three times,—bundled out at short notice, at the last minute, to gather ourselves up as we might. In one of these hurried changes I dropped my stylographic pen. Angry as I get with the thing when I am writing with it, my very heart was wrung with sorrow at its loss. Without much hope of ever seeing it again, I telegraphed for it. The station-master who did the telegraphing was profoundly impressed by Brita's description of the "wonderful instrument" I had lost. "A self-writing pen,"—she called it. I only wish it were! "You shall hear at the next station if it has been found," he said. Sure enough, at the very next station the guard came to the door. "Found and will be sent," he said; and from that on he regarded me with a sort of awe-stricken look whenever he entered the car. I believe he considered me a kind of female necromancer from America! and no wonder, with two self-writing pens in my possession, for luckily I had my No. 2 in my travelling-bag to show as sample of what I had lost.
At Elm we came into a fine hilly region,—hills that had to be tunnelled or climbed over by zigzags; between them were beautiful glimpses of valleys and streams. Brita was nearly beside herself, poor soul! Her "Oh's" became something tragic. "Oh, ma'am, it needs no judge to see that God has been here!" she cried. "We must think on the Building-Master when we see such scenery as this."
As we came out on the broader plains, the coloring of the villages grew colder; unlatticed white walls, and a colder gray to the roofs, the groups of houses no longer looked like crowds of furry creatures nestled close for protection. Some rollicking school girls, with long hair flying, got into our carriage, and chattered, and ate cake, and giggled; the cars rocked us to and fro on our seats as if we were in a saddle on a run-away horse in a Colorado cañon. All the rough roads I have ever been on have been smooth gliding in comparison with this. At nine o'clock, Munich, and a note from the dear old "Fraulein" to say that her house was full, but she had rooms engaged for me near by. The next day I went to see her, and found her the same old inimitable dear as ever,—the eyes and the smile not a day older, and the drollery and the mimicry all there; but, alas! old age has come creeping too close not to hurt in some ways, and an ugly rheumatism prevents her from walking and gives her much pain. I had hoped she could go to Oberammergau with me; but it is out of the question. At night she sent over to me the loveliest basket of roses and forget-me-nots and mignonette, with a card, "Good-night, my dear lady,—I kiss you;" and I am not too proud to confess that I read it with tears in my eyes. The dear, faithful, loving soul!
THE VILLAGE OF OBERAMMERGAU.
Mountains and valleys and rivers are in league with the sun and summer—and, for that matter, with winter too—to do their best in the Bavarian Highlands. Lofty ranges, ever green at base, ever white at top, are there tied with luminous bands of meadow into knots and loops, and knots and loops again, tightening and loosening, opening and shutting in labyrinths, of which only rivers know the secret and no man can speak the charm. Villages which find place in lands like these take rank and relation at once with the divine organic architecture already builded; seem to become a part of Nature; appear to have existed as long as the hills or the streams, and to have the same surety of continuance. How much this natural correlation may have had to do with the long, unchanging simplicities of peoples born and bred in these mountain haunts, it would be worth while to analyze. Certain it is that in all peasantry of the hill countries in Europe, there are to be seen traits of countenance and demeanor,—peculiarities of body, habits, customs, and beliefs which are indigenous and lasting, like plants and rocks. Mere lapse of time hardly touches them; they have defied many centuries; only now in the mad restlessness of progress of this the nineteenth do they begin to falter. But they have excuse when Alps have come to be tunnelled and glaciers are melted and measured.
Best known of all the villages that have had the good fortune to be born in the Bavarian Highlands is Oberammergau, the town of the famous Passion Play. But for the Passion Play the great world had never found Oberammergau out, perhaps; yet it might well be sought for itself. It lies 2,600 feet above the sea, at the head of a long stretch of meadow lands, which the River Ammer keeps green for half the year,—at the head of these, and in the gateway of one of the most beautiful walled valleys of the Alps. The Ammer is at once its friend and foe; in summer a friend, but malicious in spring, rising suddenly after great rains or thaws, and filling the valley with a swift sea, by which everything is in danger of being swept away. In 1769 it tore through the village with a flood like a tidal wave, and left only twelve houses standing.
High up on one of the mountain-sides, northeast of the village, is a tiny spot of greensward, near the course of one of the mountain torrents which swell the Ammer. This green spot is the Oberammergauers' safety-gauge. So long as that is green and clear the valley will not be flooded; as soon as the water is seen shining over that spot it is certain that floods will be on in less than an hour, and the whole village is astir to forestall the danger. The high peaks, also, which stand on either side the town, are friend and foe alternately. White with snow till July, they keep stores of a grateful coolness for summer heats; but in winter the sun cannot climb above them till nine o'clock, and is lost in their fastnesses again at one. Terrible hail-storms sometimes whirl down from their summits. On the 10th of May, 1774, there were three of these hail-storms in one day, which killed every green blade and leaf in the fields. One month later, just as vegetation had fairly started again, came another avalanche of hail, and killed everything a second time. On the 13th of June, 1771, snow lay so deep that men drove in sledges through the valley. This was a year never to be forgotten. In 1744 there was a storm of rain, thunder, and lightning, in which the electric fire shot down like javelins into the town, set a score of houses on fire, and destroyed the church. One had need of goodly devotion to keep a composed mind and contented spirit in a dwelling-place surrounded by such dangers. The very elements, however, it seems, are becoming tamed by the inroads of civilization; for it is more than fifty years since Oberammergau has seen such hail or such lightning.