St. Laurence, Nuremberg by Esther Singleton

LINDA VILLARI

Once in the train bound for Nuremberg, every sight on the road seems to bring one nearer to Medieval Germany, and is a fitting prelude to its charms. The storied prettiness of the Rhine district left behind, ripening vines give way to festoons of hops and plots of tobacco; you pass through forests of fir and larch, and come to fields of gold brocade where the lupines are in bloom. Woodlands merge into pleasant meadows watered by swiftly-running streams; every village is crowned by a ruined castle; and there are storks' nests on clustered roofs about the red church spires. Flaxen-haired children are driving flocks of fat geese; here and there is a battlemented monastery; then come tracts of moorland flushed pink and purple with heather; you dive into hill-sides; you sight dark masses of pine-trees beyond a winding river crossed by an occasional ferry; you halt at medieval towns capped by crumbling yellow walls of palace and prison, and before long at the spick and span station of manufacturing Fürth (where most of the toys and wood-carvings are now made). And then you see a confusion of dusky, jagged roofs pierced by lofty spires and high walls; massive towers loom above the greenery of a steep hill-side, and you know that your goal is reached. This is Nuremberg, the "jewel-casket of the German Empire."