BITS OF MUNICH LIFE.

67

prettily. His fat little hands call forth such sweet low
music from that little instrument—music, like fairy voices,
sounding in solitary green spots among the mountains.
There is a peculiar spirit in the zitter, and it is wonderfully
adapted for Alpine melodies; for those tender, simple,
peasant airs, through which ever runs such a plaintive
sentiment.
These August nights are so hot and close, that after our
tea, spite of its being twilight, we sometimes feel bound to
take a walk. The other evening, for example, we betook
ourselves along one of the old streets of Munich, a street
very long and very ill-paved, the house-fronts handsome
with old carving and stucco-work; a street where in the
evening all the inhabitants gossip at their open windows
and doors; a street much infested with bakers’ shops ; and
where, through quaint old window-panes, you catch glimpses
of queer old witch-like women, or young girls, like Faust’s
Margaret, sitting spinning; a street so full of detail that it
would be quite a luxury to describe it graphically.
Just about the middle of this quaint old street we met a
crowd, heard a hum of voices, saw banners waving, and
crucifixes borne aloft. It was the return of a pilgrimage.
Hot, weary, dusty, foot-sore, on they came. First walked
priests with their dusty banners and crucifixes ; white-robed
children followed, carrying faded wreaths and garlands, their
poor little heads drooping with fatigue; now a band of
men, a Bruderschaft, dressed in their pilgrim-garb, large
blue cloaks with heavy capes, on which the cockle-shell
showed conspicuously; then a group of young girls, many
carrying bulrushes in their hands, instead of palm-branches,
and relics from the holy spot to which they had pilgrimed;
next trooped on men—men—men, their shoes covered with
white dust, their heads bare, their hands folded—old men,