Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-08-11

picturesque medieval past The banners
fiy, and the trumpets sound, and the horses
with their armored riders clatter across tne
drawbridge.
The castle gardens are excellently trans
formed into beautiful pleasure grounos,
where band plays, and the drlnklng %
beer goes on, and young men ana naluems
stroll about the shady walks. After an,
life in its essentials has not changed mueh
since the Middle Ages.
1t rains this morning at HeldeI1erg.
Away up in the highest story OF the scnloss
Hotel we are in the midst of the loW-nang-
ing clouds. When the wind blows, ana the
clouds move before it, the streams OF ram
follow as if some giant up alott were water
ing the castle with some gigantic garoen
pot. Beyond are the green hills. below is
the winding Neckar.
The next stop is Nuremberg. A night
here and the next there, is the order OF our
journey, Fastening on to the Passion flay
at Oberammergau.
EURoPE's QUEER OLD TOWN.
Nuremberg is the queerest old town in
Europe. The streets are narrow. with side
walks so scanty that most people walk In
the street, with great high houses, terminal
ing IN steep gables, cut like meeting pairs
of stairs, ascending to the regions OF the
moon, with picturesque oriel windows out
in front, ornamented with carvings, rooted
with red tiles.
1t is in the st. Lorenz church in Nurem-
berg that that curious carved marble clbor-
ium stands, place for the consecrated COM
munion bread, resting on the floor, and reach
ing up, story after story, each more graceful
and rich and slender than the other, till it
not only reaches the top of the choir ceiling,
but curls over along the bend of the arch.
1t is in the St. Sebaldus Church that the
wonderful bronze shrine stands, keeping
men mindful of that saint, whose name and
holiness is about all we know about him, to
whom the good Nurembergers long ago set
up this church-the shrine adorned with a
hundred figures, apostles above, and saints
and fairies, queer and most significant
medley, below.
Here, too, is tombstone fit to match with
Diana Warburton's at Chester. The figure
of a dreadful skeleton is pictured between
the two tablets which contain the names OF
the Tucker family, a skeleton, part feshed
with crawling worms resting in its stomach:
and having written over it in German: Il
was once what you are; BY and by you Will
be what am"
But the most notable thing IN Nuremberg
is the castle. This castle is not in ruins like
the Schloss at Heidelberg. 1t is used still
as an occasional residence by the royal FAM
lily of Bavaria. So that it has some modern
interest Its great stoves OF earthenware,
variouslv shaped and colored, enameled,
painted, are worth seeing-not a bit of iron
visible, stoves which glow and shine like
decorated china, and are actually orna-
mental-which with US is an unheard-of
quality in stoves.
A WONDERFUL WELL.
In the courtyard is great live tree, about
which, tradition says, justice was admins
tered nearly thousand years ago. In a
corner of the courtyard, under ROOF, beside
the square tower, descends the old we'll. so
deep that all other wells seem but shadows
beside it. You pour glass of water into
the darkness and you may leisurely
count six before you hear the sound
of the splash beneath. Or you
may pour it In six FLASHES, and presently
below you hear the answer, one. two, three,
four, five, six. All but 80 feet of this deep
we'll is cut in solid rock. That was the task
with which for 80 years the lord OF this castle
gave his prisoners exercise. Away down
below near the surface of the water is black
hole which marks tbe entrance to sub
terranean passage, the other end Of which
emerges in clear daylight half mile away.
If worse came TO worse in some time of pro-
tracted siege, here was a way out
But most interesting of all were the in
struments of torture! Here you get back
into times which were darker than the deep
we'll. You can see instruments of torture,
of course, In a good many places. You
can go to Madam Tussaud's Chamber of
Horrors in London and view them in the
cheerful gaslight. But here in the Nurem-
berg Castle all the surroundings deepen the
icb
made to be used, and to be used here; and
here, where we stand, they actually were
used, till the walls which echo to our voice
rang loud with the cries of the tortured.
You may put your own thumbs, if you WILL
into those thumb screws where men 8
hands have bled and give them a gentle
squeeze bv way of finding how it felt. Here
are finger smashers that 60 with the thumb
screws. And flesh pinchers working like
sugar tongs, and sharp
LIKE GREAT IRON HANDS
with sharp points in place of fingers. Here
YOU see how the operation OF breaking on
the Wheel was done. Upon this bed, out
of which at every loot rise sharp iron pro-
| iections, wide as the bed and six inches
| high, they laid the man. And they took
this heavy wheel, bound with thick iron,
and graspng the spokes with both hands
brought it down upon the body in the spaces
between the projections. A man would be
broken into twenty pieces when that dia-
bolical wheel had gone over him.
The climax of this barbarism is in heavy
iron figure, hollow, three inches thick, with
a double door in front, made in human
shape, and named the Iron Maiden. %
Upon the doors which are meant to close liz
upon the man imprisoned in this narrow
cell, are long spikes, on one door for the
breast, on tine other for the throat, with one
for each eye! These grim doors have shut
upon their victims more than once. And
after all was over, trap door has been
opened from below, and mangled body has
dropped quietly through this castles floor
into the water OF the moat.
And we turn away from the torture cham
ber in the Nuremberg Castle, and set our
faces toward that Bavarian village, where
men are commemorating in living pictures
that revelation of Gods love which He
made who died upon the cross, that He
might drive nnbrotherliness, and cruelty,
and all other deadly sin out of the world.
Our journey lies toward Oberammergau.
n n