Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned by Christopher Morley
page 103 of 211 (48%)
page 103 of 211 (48%)
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supposed to be part of Germany, and they pronounced it Mon-yowey.
But the Reich must have felt that this was not permanent, for they had not Germanized either the name of the town or of the hostelry. And let us add, in this affectionate summary, _The Lion_--(_Hotel zum Löwen_)--at Sigmaringen, that delicious little haunt on the upper Danube, where the castle sits on a stony jut overlooking the river. Algernon Blackwood, in one of his superb tales of fantasy (in the volume called "The Listener") has told a fascinating gruesome story of the Danube, describing a sedgy, sandy, desolate region below the Hungarian border where malevolent inhuman forces were apparent and resented mortal intrusion. But we cannot testify to anything sinister in the bright water of the Danube in the flow of its lovely youth, above Sigmaringen. And if there were any evil influences, surely at Sigmaringen (the ancient home and origin of the Hohenzollerns, we believe) they would have shown themselves. In those exhilarating miles of valley, bicycled in company with a blithe vagabond who is now a professor at Cornell, we learned why the waltz was called "The Blue Danube." So heavenly a tint of transparent blue-green we have never seen elsewhere, the hurrying current sliding under steep crags of gray and yellow stone, whitened upon sudden shallows into long terraces of broken water. There was a wayside chapel with painted frescoes and Latin inscriptions (why didn't we make a note of them, we wonder?) and before it a cold gush sluicing from a lion's mouth into a stone basin. A blue crockery mug stood on the rim, and the bowl was spotted with floating petals from pink and white rose-bushes. We can still see our companion, tilting a thirsty bearded face as he drank, outlined on such a backdrop of pure romantic beauty as only enriches irresponsible youth in its commerce with the world. The river bends sharply to the left under a |
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