up the hinged seat before you can enter. The other, a few miles farther on the way, was of a surly Wirth, dwelling under the sign of the Weisses Lamm (White Lamb), whom I begged to draw me a glass of beer cool from the cellar. Instead of complying, he filled the measure from a can which had been standing two or three hours on the dresser in all the suffocating heat of the stove, and placed it before me with a grunt. I ventured to remind him, with good-humoured words, that lukewarm beer was not acceptable to a thirsty wayfarer on a hot day; whereupon he retorted, snarling more like a wolf than a lamb, "Either drink that, or go and get other where the pepper grows"—wo der Pfeffer wächst.
The old sinner availed himself of a form of speech much used among the Germans to denote a place of intensely high temperature, and sulphureous withal, in which pepper, being so very pungent a product, may be supposed to grow.
"Suppose you go first," I answered, "and see if there be any left." And turning away, I shut the door upon the snarl which he snarled after me, and went on to Eybenstock, where cool beer in plenty was forthcoming as soon as asked for.
I told the hostess of my adventure with old Surly. "Just like him," she replied, laughing merrily; "nobody ever goes to the White Lamb that can help it. You didn't see any one besides him in the room, I'll engage." True enough, I did not.
A long, steep acclivity rises between Schneeberg and Eybenstock, from which you look down into deep, dark gulfs of fir forest, and away to hills swelling higher and higher in the distance—all alike sombre. So that when you come to a green vale, with its little hay-fields watered by a noisy brook, streaked in places with foam, it appears lovely by contrast. The road makes long curves and zigzags to avoid the heights, but the old track through the trees still remains, and shortens the distance at the expense of a little exertion in climbing.
The wildness increases beyond Eybenstock. The forest descends upon the road, and you walk for an hour at a stretch under the shade of firs, with beech and birch sparsely intermingled, and here and there a stately pine springing from a mighty base to a height far above the rest, the topmost branches edged with gold by the declining sunbeams.
Emerging from the grateful shade, we come to Wildenthal, a little green hollow at the foot of the Auersberg, enclosing a saw-mill, a school, a few cottages, fields and gardens, and an inn, Gasthaus zum Ross. Great slopes of firs rising on every side shut it out, as it were, from the rest of the world. The aged hostess at the Gasthaus bustled about with surprising alacrity to answer the calls of her rustic guests for beer. "Einfach," cried one; another, "Weisses;" "Lager," broke in a voice from among the party of card-players, accompanied by a rapping of the pewter tankard-lid; "Bayerisches," shouted others from the ninepin-alley outside; and she, with her ready "Gleich"—directly—appeasing their impatience.
Of these four kinds of beer, the first—literally Simple—is equivalent to our small-beer, and is much in request by a certain class of topers from its low price, and because they can drink it the whole day without fear of becoming stupid before the evening. The second—White—is very foamy, and has somewhat the lively flavour of ginger-beer: after standing some time in the glass a shake round revives its briskness. The third—Store-beer—is of sufficient strength to bear a year's keeping; and the fourth—Bavarian—is of a similar quality. The last two were the most to my liking.
There was greater choice of beer than of viands; and the half-bent old dame thought fit to apologise because she could give me nothing for supper but omelettes and Klese; the latter a sort of dumpling made of potatoes and a sprinkling of wheaten flour. "If she had only known," and so forth. However, I found them palatable, and ate heartily, and therein she took comfort. Many times did I eat of such dumplings afterwards, for the relish for them is not confined to Saxony. Under the name of Knädeln, or Kipfeln, they are a standing dish among the Bohemians. To hundreds of families in the Erzgebirge they are the only variety—but without the wheaten flour—in a perpetual potato diet: rarely can they get even the sour black bread of the country, and in the years of the potato disease famine and misery desolated many a hearth.
The guests went away early, and then, as twilight fell, nothing disturbed the stillness of the vale save the murmur of running water and the whisper of the breeze among the slopes of firs, inviting to a contemplative stroll.
I rose on the morrow soon after the sun, and scrambled up the Auersberg. It was really a scramble, for I pushed at a venture into the forest, aiming direct for the summit. How the grass and the diminutive black-eared rye glistened with dewdrops! Early as it was, the saw-mill had begun its busy clatter, and here and there on the hills the woodcutters' strokes sounded in the calm morning air. Once under the trees all signs of a track disappeared; and there were slopes slippery with decayed vegetation; little swamps richly carpeted with exquisite mosses; dense patches of bilberry, teeming with berries as purple ripe as when Kunz plucked in another part of the forest but a few miles distant. And after all, owing to the tower on the top having fallen down, and the trees having grown up, the view is limited to a narrow opening on either side, where an avenue, now rarely used, affords an easy though tedious ascent. A square block of stone stands near the remains of the tower, dedicated to an upper forest-master, who had fulfilled fifty years of service, by his friends and subordinates. However, there is such a charm in the wild, lonely forest, that one need not regret half an hour's exertion in scrambling up a steep hill under its shadow.
I amused myself during breakfast with the Erzgebirgischer Anzeiger, a small quarto newspaper, published at Schneeberg thrice a week; the price twelve neugroschen (about fifteen pence) per quarter. Beer and amusements occupied a large space among the advertisements; for every village and every Wirthshaus in the forest, of any notoriety, promised music or dancing on Sundays, sometimes both; and fortunate was the one that could announce the military band. Double Lager beer, a penny the pot, was offered in abundance sufficient to satisfy the thirstiest. "Stewed meat and fresh sausages next Friday," is the inducement held out by one ambitious little alehouse: and an enterprising refectioner declares, "In my garden it gives fine weather." And, as the Dresdner Anzeiger shows, they do similar things in the metropolis. A coffee-house keeper, "up four steps," says: "My most honoured sir, I permit myself the freedom to invite you to a cup of coffee next Sunday afternoon at three o'clock." Certain young men publish their sentiments concerning their hostess, beginning with
"Angels until now have led thee,"
and so on. A fortunate husband and father thanks Madame Krändel for the "happy Entbindung" of his wife, and publishes his wife's maiden name. Parents announce the death of a child, and invite their friends to "quiet sympathy." A stray Berlin paper makes it clear that a like practice prevails in the capital of Prussia. But most amusing of all was the advertisement, in French and English, of the landlord of the Golden Star, at Bonn. Here it is:
"De cet hôtel la renommée
Promet sans exagération
Que vous y trouverez
Le comble de la perfection.
Le luxe de la salle à manger
Surpassera même votre idée."
"By all visitors of the Rhine
Known as one of the most fine
And best conducted models
Of all Continental hotels.
The dining-room allowed to be
A grand pattern of luxury."
Which does not say much for the bard of Bonn. Besides these there was the Illustrated Village Barber, a paper published at Leipzig, full of humorous cuts, over which the rustics chuckled not a little.1
Wildenthal has no church; the people, therefore, are dependent on Eybenstock, three miles distant, for sermons, baptisms, marriages, and burials; but, in common with
In Saxony there are published 220 newspapers; in Austria, 271; in Bavaria, 178.
