The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-11-03

IF any one of my readers will pause at s the intersection of First avenue and Twentieth street some morning when the day is radiant with sunshine. or in the evening when the sky is flooded with the white light of the moon and gaze up at that chaste shimmerlng SUI perb structure which has recently been erected by the American Trust and Savings bank he or she will be amply repaid for the trouble, and though the love of the beautiful may lie ever so dormant in the breast of the gazer, l guarantee that that tiny spark will glow and glimmer as a coal under the breath of the farrier's bellows.
 Architecturally perfect, artistically tmpeccable and aesthetically immacu- late, It's transcendent beauty challenges criticism, defies emulation and as the institution is the heightened shadow Of the man, it will stand as a monu- nent to the genius of him who fash tened 1t so long as it endures.
 But 1t Is not the marvellous outline nor fault1ess contour of this chef q 'ouvre of Birmingham that enlists my rapture; 1t is those cunning little troll balconies which grace the eighteenth story of the structure and garnish the facade as some gem of unblemished water offsets and adorns the tout en- S%iiOiC Ol q iO3d al COIDHtt. | fIle they bear semblance to the hanging berce of an immortal valkyre, the poppy studded play ground of a dancing fay or the trysting place of a tiny troll and whether my vision is obtained under sun-shimmer or lunar ray fancy in their contemplation is afforded an unmolested sway.
 liked them better under their first nf cd ratn l,a in, baf ( shade, but that is a matter of mere taste and black or red, they arc cute, they are fascinating, they are adora ble
 There is a world of men and there is world of wraiths. Laugh at and ridicule 1t IS we may, the human fancy delights in, and accords quasl-cre- dence in the existence and legends of these fairy creatures. What man of sentiment does not feel a thrill at the mention of the name Danube? And what other stream could have so in- srired the creative faculties of Strauss ac to cause him to give the world one of his most beautiful musical produc- tions? And yet legend has 1t that the Two springs. Brigach and Brege, the source of this mighty stream way up in tho gloomy depths of the Black Forest were delved by troll hands No other liver's cradle has been so beautifully and so significantly adorned by artist hands, for where the outflow of these two springs commingles at Donaneschin- zen the princes of Fuerstenburg have erected an exquisite monument of a young woman carved in sandstone, gag sng toward the rising of the sun, while TWO pretty children, emblematlc of the t-oll-delved springs, gambol at her feet and pour a libation from delicately wrought urns. The Greeks knew the Danube as the Istros and sought most diligently for It's source. but even in tho time of Herodotus its birth place was still a mystery
 An, the Danube; the grandeur of its fcenery is not surpassed by that of the Rhine. The one Is beautiful and the other Is imposing. The Istros has its legends, Its vine-clad hills, its ruin crowned heights. Its castled crags, its minstrel lays of ancient days, and It's ancestral places of burial that vie with those of it's rival of the west. Its noble stretch of spacious horizon and its va riety in shape of figures outlined