STORIES OF STRASSBURG.
STORIES OF STRASSBURG.
Strassburg, Germany, July 18, 1905.
To use the American vernacular, Strassburg is a good town. It has the best-looking stores, the most energetic acting people and the most thriving appearance of any city since we left Paris. The reason for this is probably the mingling of the German and the French and the location of the city as the metropolis of a very rich territory lying in both countries. Strassburg is a German city in which the people are at heart French. Thirty years ago the treaty which ended the Franco-German war gave Strassburg and two of the rich provinces of eastern France, Alsace and Lorraine, to the German empire. But it did not give the German emperor a warranty deed to the hearts of the people, and they long for their old associations. Probably the new generation is not so much disposed to France, and the influence of education and environment will gradually change the desire of the Alsatians to be sometime reunited with their old countrymen, but time and again to-day in talking with the Strassburgers they have given me to understand that they were not Germans but French.
Strassburg has a history as a city on its own account. Away back in 1300 the people revolted from the rule of the bishop who was their sovereign, and gained their independence. For 400 years Strassburgwas what is known as a “free city,” owing some allegiance to the German empire but governing itself and doing about as it pleased. The language, the customs and the sympathy of the people were German. In 1681 Louis XIV. of France in a time of peace seized Strassburg, and a few years later in a general treaty France was confirmed in the title, and from that time until 1871 it was a French city. During the war of 1870 Strassburg did not surrender to the overwhelming German army until its defenses were battered down and the city bombarded. And as I wrote from Paris, in the galaxy of statues representing the cities of France in the Parisian Place de la Concorde, the statue of Strassburg is hung with emblems of mourning, and some day France will fight to get the city back. Germany knows this, and the city has been strongly fortified and a garrison of 15,000 German soldiers is kept there. So many soldiers in a city of 150,000 people give a showy look to the streets, the promenades and the public places, and doubtless is a good thing financially for the merchants.
Since leaving Italy I have sworn off on cathedrals, but I had to go to the one here because it is a good one and because of the Strassburg clock. The spire of the Strassburg cathedral is one of the highest in Europe, 465 feet, beating by a few feet St. Peter’s at Rome and St. Paul’s in London. The rest of the building is just the ordinary cathedral except for the clock. The first big clock was constructed here in1352 and it lasted two centuries, when another took its place, to be succeeded sixty years ago by the present one. This clock is about the size of the front of an ordinary church. It not only tells the hour and minute of the day, but the day of the week, the month of the year, the feast days of the church, and is regulated to run for centuries, automatically making the right figures for leap years and adapting itself to the revolution of feast and fast days for an almost unlimited number of years. Every fifteen minutes an angel figure strikes the bell for the quarter-hour, and figures representing boyhood, youth, manhood and old age come out for the appropriate quarters. A skeleton strikes the hour and another reverses an hour-glass. At noon there is a parade of the twelve apostles before the Saviour, and a big rooster at one side crows loudly twice before Peter gets to the front and the third time as he passes. I am getting a great sympathy for Peter because he has that story thrown up to him in so many cathedrals, churches and pictures in Europe. It seems to me that Peter did enough after that to entitle him to a rest on the cock-crow story.
Next to the cathedral clock the most interesting sight to my mind was the washerwomen’s boats in the river. About 500 women were in these canal-shaped boats washing clothes, rinsing them in the river and having a good gossiping time of it.The emperor of Germany has a palace in Strassburg where he spends at least three days every year in the month of May. I did not know this, so when I saw the imperial palace on the city map I told the driver to take us there. I had never met Emperor William and he had never met me. I entered the palace door as directed by the cab-driver and was pleasantly received by a fine, portly gentleman. Of course I knew he wasn’t the emperor, so I spoke in a dignified way as becomes an American citizen toying with the effete monarchies of Europe, and asked the gentleman in my best German if the emperor was at home, at the same time assuring him that if the emperor was busy not to bother him, as I could come again after supper when he would be through his work. The fat gentleman bowed and told me the emperor was here only in May, and asked me if we would like to go over the palace. I spoke up abruptly, as if I were used to running around palaces; that as I had nothing else to do just then, having laid out to put in a short time with Emperor Bill, I wouldn’t mind if I did. He was a very nice man, a court chamberlain, he said, and he took Mrs. Morgan and me all through the palace and the big dining-room and ball-room and the king’s den, and all that sort of thing. Before we went onto the polished floors of the big rooms we had to put felt slippers on over our shoes—a good thing to keep the floors from getting scratched, and I suppose it is a kind of ground rule that Mrs. Emperor has made to protect the varnish from thehobnailed boots of William’s friends. I hope the custom won’t spread to America.
The German emperor has a mighty good house in Strassburg, and it has been furnished regardless of expense. There was a notice up, “Visitors not allowed to sit on the chairs,” but I wasn’t very tired anyway. I looked for a sign not to spit on the floor to go with some of the other wall decoration, but it must have been overlooked. The house looked stiff, and I don’t believe Bill has much fun at home and probably his wife makes him go out on the porch to smoke. I was sorry not to meet the emperor, as we will not get to Berlin, and I had some things to tell him. However, I feel that I have done the proper thing by calling on him and not waiting for him to hunt me up.
There is not so much American-made stuff in Europe as I expected. There is a good deal, but in fact these Germans and French are up to about everything that we are, and sometimes they have us bested. The Singer sewing-machine is everywhere, even in Italy. American shoes are the leaders in their lines in every city. American typewriters are sold ahead of European. Wernicke bookcases and office furniture are advertised and sold almost as at home. But the list of American goods is not very long, or else they are sold under other names and brands. To-day we bought a good picture of a typical German girl to take home with us as our art collection from Europe. Before we had gone a block Mrs. Morgan foundthe tag which proclaimed, “Made in Springfield, Massachusetts, U. S. A.” We were chagrined that our European purchase had turned out to be an American importation, sold to us at a higher price than it would have been at home, but we were proud that here in Germany they knew the country to send to in order to get good pictures of fetching Dutch maidens. At Zurich I started to buy a little office fixture which I thought I had never seen before and which I intended to take home to surprise the Kansans, when I found out just in time that it was made by the Globe-Wernicke company of Cincinnati, and I knew we had the same thing for sale at The News office in Hutchinson. Hereafter in buying souvenirs of Europe we will look close for the brand.
This is the place where the “pâté de fois gras” originated. I do not know how many people in Kansas know what pâté de fois gras is and whether it is a flower or a dog. I had once seen the words on a bill of fare in a very swell restaurant, but the figures which followed the name were so much larger than those after ham and eggs that I stuck to “ham and.” But when in Rome you must see the Forum, in Venice you must see St. Mark’s, and in Strassburg you must have some pâté de fois gras. The food combination which the four French words stand for is based on goose-liver, and corresponds to about what we would call “goose-liver smothered in roses.” It is very good, and you never forget the delicious taste or the price. Strassburg chefs make the stuff, can it andship it all over the world to people who like delicate things to eat and who have sufficient credit to get a good stand-off. Pâté de fois gras is sweeter than chocolate, more luscious than peaches and more delicious than lemon pop at a Fourth of July picnic. It is a proof that Strassburgers have French stomachs as well as French hearts.
Speaking of eatables, we had the first loaf of bread in Switzerland that we had seen since we left home. After nearly two months on hard, stale rolls the sight of a reasonably good loaf of bread at Geneva made as strong an impression on my mind as Mont Blanc. Anybody who has traveled in Europe or in Arkansas will appreciate the feelings of a Kansan when he puts a slice of fairly soft bread between his teeth. It is better than pâté de fois gras, and it is almost exclusively an American institution.