THE NÜRNBERG STOVE

THE NÜRNBERG STOVE




I


August lived in a little town called Hall. Hall is a favorite
name for several towns in Austria and in Germany; but this one
especial little Hall, in the Upper Innthal, is one of the most
charming Old-World places that I know, and August for his part
did not know any other. It has the green meadows and the great
mountains all about it, and the gray-green glacier-fed water
rushes by it. It has paved streets and enchanting little shops
that have all latticed panes and iron gratings to them; it has a
very grand old Gothic church, that has the noblest blendings of
light and shadow, and marble tombs of dead knights, and a look of
infinite strength and repose as a church should have. Then there
is the Muntze Tower, black and white, rising out of greenery and
looking down on a long wooden bridge and the broad rapid river;
and there is an old schloss which has been made into a guard-house,
with battlements and frescos and heraldic devices in gold and
colors, and a man-at-arms carved in stone standing life-size in
his niche and bearing his date 1530. A little farther on, but
close at hand, is a cloister with beautiful marble columns and
tombs, and a colossal wood-carved Calvary, and beside that a
small and very rich chapel: indeed, so full is the little town of
the undisturbed past, that to walk in it is like opening a missal
of the Middle Ages, all emblazoned and illuminated with saints
and warriors, and it is so clean, and so still, and so noble, by
reason of its monuments and its historic color, that I marvel
much no one has ever cared to sing its praises. The old pious
heroic life of an age at once more restful and more brave than
ours still leaves its spirit there, and then there is the girdle
of the mountains all around, and that alone means strength,
peace, majesty.

In this little town a few years ago August Strehla lived with his
people in the stone-paved irregular square where the grand church
stands.