The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-04-26

From a Letter by Henry Watterson in
 the Louisville Courier-Journal.
 IF the idiosyncrasy of Munich be beer, as it is, the idiosyncrasy of Nurem- \ berg-in the vernacular "Nurnberg' must be Spirits, for according to US own official exhibits, 10 centuries or just men made perfeck." and a few others look down upon it, and walk its streets by night, whisper into its pliant ear at the noontide hour, observing to the stranger within the gate. Here is his tory"
 In the matter of picturesque and li$er- ary canned goods, Nuremberg has Bruges mind you call it "Brooge,' in one syl- lable,. and Ghent, pronounced and spelled "Gand," beat to 8 frazzle. as our ht- tie friend of Oyster Bay would remark and as for Avignon, in France, and Ve- roma. in Italy, they are not in it at all. The old Spanishtowns, like Seville and Grenada, are not Medieval, but Moorish. They lack the baronial and religious. The church churchly is overlaid by the fam tastical and pagan. Prague, in Bohemia comes nearer the idea of the sacerdotai and warlike with their emblems or su- prostitution and cruelty; the devils ban ners on the outer walls of hell. Theology, Satans invention for setting men at naught, had a hard time coercine' the human mind in Germany, and Nuremberg was right in the thick of it.
 The process of desiccation was known before the art of printing. There was a not wholly unsuccessful attempt 10 put Romeo and Juliet in cold storage, hot blooded as they were-poetry's own orig inal "warm babies'-whilst the preserva- ton of the tomb of Adam is proof that even the early Arabs understood the value of antiques and advertising. What would Europe be withoat it's monuments, not to mention its rock heaps? The heroes went to the boneyard of oblivion long ago, but their effigies in bronze and mar ble remain to herald and adorn the town and perpetuate the continuous perform ance.
 All statues look alike to me. Measur- ably all churches and picture galleries. But, innumerable as they are, in every part of Europe. they exercise spell over many minds, and in Bavaria-land of legend and of hero worship-their name, though not writ in water. is nev- ertheless submerged by multiplicity. Max" and "Luitpold," we meet on every hand, and by thousands, and Ludwig" and "Otho" by hundreds, wherever there is a plat" going back to Tannhauser and L,ohengrin. for good measure. Their l.~t. berg, however, takes the cake for con- yerting walls into assets and making a market of forgotten worthies and, in point of fact, turning history into a manufac- tured product and & trade mark.
 9 I pause to interpolate a remark. Of all the hags of history, the hussies of TO- nance, the Iron Virgin of Nuremberg has since began to read and remember most caught my never very impressionable sensibilities. I have long wanted to visit her, not to worship, but to swear at her shrine Neither a tourist nor sightseer, my lines of travel never brought me here. Standing for the first time before her today, she seemed the embodiment or the inner ent cruelty there is in women and cards; memorable, remorseless; with lips that never chewed gum, and eyes hav- ing neither love light nor pity; fat even flabby, yet combining in one fell embrace all the torments that woman is capable of infiicting on man.
 Once in Naples, whilst my shoes were
 being polished by professional artist
 in one of the arcades with which that
 luminous city is embellished. I drove a
 beegar away with perhaps needless rude ness. He drew apart with dignity and tin injured expression, posted himself upon an adjacent abutment and gently began to deliver his candid opinion of me. I could not understand word that he uttered. but I knew he was 'cussing"- n6he of your ordinary Kentucky brands
 of crude profanity, but Italiano, siciliano mot loud, but deep-including my for
 bears and my progeny, all of me and mine that ever were, or ever might be. He swore them into every disease in the world and then dropped them into the
 deepest abysses of the bottomless pit of | the world to come. He did 1t so well and with such heartiness and volubility that