The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of EuropePrime, Samuel Irenæus
History
The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe
Prime, Samuel Irenæus
Europe -- Description and travel
Here in Kreusnach we meet with men and women from the most distant parts
of the Continent, attracted by the fame of this salt water. A Russian
gentleman and wife, with an infant child, on whose account they came,
had travelled six weeks in a sledge to St. Petersburg. Their children
had died of scrofula, and they brought this live one over that vast
tract of country, through northern cold, that its system in infancy
might be renovated by this modern Bethesda. The Princess of Mecklenberg
is here now, and last Sunday she proposed to attend the English Church
service. The good rector heard of her intention, and thought it his duty
to call and pay his respects. Unhappily he could not speak a word of
German, and when he attempted to introduce himself at the door of the
Princess’ lodgings, the servant understood him to be the postman, and
brought him the letters ready to go to the post-office. His call was
only deference to rank, and there was no need of it, except as every
sinner needs a pastor’s care, and the Princess took no notice of it.
At a cell in the hill-side near the spring, _whey_ is dispensed to those
who daily drink it for the whey-cure. It has a great repute. So has the
grape-cure in August and September. Either of them is just as good as
the salt-water-cure, and that is good beyond a doubt. I have great faith
in any kind of doctoring that includes rest from business, with moderate
eating and drinking, and plenty of exercise in the open air. Give the
waters the credit of it, or the whey, or the grapes, or the doctors, it
makes no difference what or who has the credit, if you have the cure.
But stop this everlasting rushing after the world that is perishing, and
wait a little while at Kreusnach, or Kissingen, or one of a dozen places
I could name. Here take your ease. Eat, drink, and be happy. Bathe your
weary limbs in these youth-renewing waters. Walk out among these
surrounding forests and hills. There stands the ruined Castle of
Rheingraffenstein, on a crag that overhangs the Nahe; wind your way up
one side, and when you have rested on the height, pick your way down the
other side to a garden on the banks of the river; there refresh again;
then in one of the little boats be rowed down to Ebernburg, the site of
an ancient castle, which has now been remodelled into a hotel; but the
relics of Luther and other Reformers who once were sheltered here are
still preserved, as well as the balls with which the French blew the old
towers off the hill into the waters below. Rusty swords, spears, chains,
and old keys are laid in heaps, as some slight index of the good time
coming, when spears and swords shall be turned into ploughs and
pruning-knives.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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