Saunterings eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 306 pages of information about Saunterings.

Saunterings eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 306 pages of information about Saunterings.
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.

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Saunterings from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.