Pilgrims were we recently, making a day's journey, not to gaze upon bones, rusty relics, and mouldy garments, but to see something fresh, fair, and altogether adorable,—the cherry-trees of the Lenninger Thal in full blossom. From Stuttgart we went by rail to Kirchheim unter Teck, a railway terminus, where we were shown the palace occupied by Franciska von Hohenheim after the death of Herzog Carl, and a Denkmal erected to Conrad Widerhold, that brave and very obstinate German hero who held the famous Hohentwiel fortress against the enemy, when even his own duke, Eberhard III., had ordered him to surrender it. Widerhold and his wife stand side by side, and you must look twice before you can tell which is the warrior. Kirchheim lies prettily in the Lauter Thal among the mountains. From there in an open carriage we drove on into the charming Lenninger Valley, one of the most beautiful in the Alb, with the whole landscape smiling benignly beneath a wonderful sky, and air deliciously pure and soft; past little brooks where the young, tender willows were beginning to leave out, through the little village of Dettingen, on and on over the broad chaussÉe, until we were fairly among the cherry-orchards. Bordering the road, running far back on the hill-slopes, shadowy, feathery, exquisite, the snowy blossoms lay before our eyes, with the range of the Suabian Alb beyond, and many a peak and ruin old in story. This was the fresh morning of a perfect spring day, where the peace and loveliness of the scene—the fields of pure whiteness reaching out on both sides of us, with now and then a dash of pink from the rosy apple-blossoms—made us feel that a special blessing had fallen upon us as devotees at the shrine of Ceres. At evening, returning by another route, with the varying lights and golden bars and heavy, piled-up purple cloud-masses in the western sky, it was lovely with yet another loveliness. The same mountains showed us other outlines and assumed new expressions, and bold, proud Teck rose from the foam of blossoms at its feet, like a stern rock towering above surging waters.

One of our experiences that day was becoming acquainted with Owen. Owen is not a man, as you may imagine, but only a very little village with crooked streets and queer old women, and that curious aspect to all its belongings which never grows less curious to some of us, though we ought to have become unmindful of it long ago. Owen is picturesque and dirty. “Ours at home aren't half so dirty or half so nice,” we endeavor to explain to our German friends.

At the inn where we drew up we were received by an admiring group of children,—three yellow heads rising above three great armfuls of wood, of the weight of which the little things seemed utterly unconscious in the excitement of seeing us. They stood, one above the other, on the dilapidated, crazy stone steps, while a bushy dog, whose hair looked as yellow and sun-faded as the children's, also made “great eyes” at us from the lowest stone. Out came mine host, and cleared away children and dog and woodpiles in a twinkling. This flattering reception occurred at the Krone. A large gilt crown adorned with what small boys at home call “chiney alleys” makes a fine appearance above these same tumble-down steps; and directly beside them is a great barn-door, so near that you might easily mistake one entrance for the other and wander in among the beasties; and benign Mistress Cow was serenely chewing her cud in her boudoir under the front stairs, we observed as we entered the house.

Let no one faint when I say we ate our dinner here. Indeed, we have eaten in much worse places, and the dinner was far better than we thought could be evolved from a house with so many idiosyncrasies, so very prominent barn-door qualities, such mooings and lowings in undreamed-of corners and at unexpected moments. However, we experienced an immense lightening of the spirits when trout were served, for it seemed as if we knew what this dish at least was made of. They were pretty silvery things with red spots, and had just been gleaming in the brook near by, beneath elms and birches and baby willows, and now they were butchered to make our holiday.

The little restored Gothic church at Owen is more than a thousand years old, and its walled Kirchhof recalls the times when the villagers with their wives and children sought refuge here from the descent of robber knights. The dukes of Teck are buried within the church, and their arms and those of other old families, with quaint inscriptions about noble and virtuous dames, are interesting to decipher. The prettiest thing in the church was a spray of ivy which had crept through a hole in the high small-paned window, completely ivy-covered without, and came seeking something within the still stone walls, reaching out with all its tendrils, and seemed like the little, adventurous bird that flutters in through a church window on a hot summer afternoon, and makes a sleepy congregation open its heavy eyes.

The altar-pictures are edifying works of art. Behind the little group in the “Descent from the Cross” rise a range of hills that look astonishingly like the Suabian Alb, with a genuine old German fortress perching on a prominent peak. Saint Lucia is also an agreeable object of contemplation, with a sword piercing her throat up to the hilt, the blade coming through finely on the other side, while her mildly folded hands, smirking of superior virtue and perfect complacency, make her as winning as a saint of her kind can be.

Beyond Owen is the Wielandstein, or a Wielandstein I should perhaps say, for Wielandsteins are as common in Germany as lovers' leaps in America; and the story is always how the cruel king murdered the wife and children of Wieland the smith and took him captive, granting him his life merely because of his skill in fashioning wonderful things from metals, but imprisoning him and maiming his feet that he might never escape. Wieland lived some time at court, and grew in favor with the king on account of his deft hands and clever designs. At length the king's young sons were missing and could not be found, though they were searched for many days, and the king was anxious and sorrowful. Then Wieland presented him with two beautiful golden cups, at the sight of which the king was so pleased that he gave a feast; and as he was drinking from the golden bowls and feasting with his nobles, Wieland flew away by means of two great golden wings he had for a long time been secretly fashioning, and, poising himself in mid-air, cried to the horrified king that he was drinking from the skulls of his sons, whom he, Wieland, had murdered out of revenge. The people shot many arrows after him, but he soared away unharmed, his golden wings gleaming in the sunlight until he disappeared behind the hills.

The ruin of the old Teck castle is in this neighborhood, and the Sybillen Loch, a grotto where a celebrated witch used to dwell, who differed from her species in general, inasmuch as she was a good witch. The old chronicles say she was an exemplary person, always delighting in good deeds. Her sons, however, were bad, quarrelled, stole from the world and one another, and even, upon one occasion, from her, and then ran away. Sybilla in her fiery chariot went in pursuit, and to this day a fair, bright stripe over orchard, field, and vineyard, always fresher and greener than the surrounding country, marks her course. How a fiery chariot could produce this beautifying effect is not to be questioned by an humble individual whose home is in a land where ruined castles and legend upon legend do not rise from every hill-top. Another story is that the fertile stripe was made by Sybilla's chariot-wheels, as she left forever the family to which she had always belonged. The last duke of Teck lay after a battle resting under a tree, and saw her passing with averted face, his arms lying at her feet, while she extended a stranger's in her hands, which signified ruin to his house; and the prophecy was fulfilled, for the duke outlived his twelve sons, and his arms and title were adopted by the counts of WÜrtemberg, who then became dukes of WÜrtemberg and Teck. All these interesting things are visible to the naked eye. The fresh green stripe is unmistakable; and the point in the air where Wieland hovered on his golden wings above the cliff can easily be discerned with a very little imagination.

A visit to a typical Suabian pastor, in another little village on this road, was a pleasant episode. A hale, handsome old gentleman of seventy, with a small black cap on his silvery locks and an inveterate habit of quoting Greek, looking at us with a simple, childlike air, as if we too were learned. His house has stone floors, low square rooms, severely simple in their appointments. The arms of a bishop of some remote century are on the inner wall by the front entrance, and a little farther on is an aperture, through which the cow of the olden time was wont to placidly gaze out upon hurrying retainers. The cow of that period seems to have had comfortable apartments in the middle of the house. The Suabian cow of the present time earns her hay by the sweat of her brow, toiling in the fields.

The good old pastor has a love amounting to adoration for his garden, every inch of which he has worked over and beautified, till it seems to be the expression of all the poetry and romance which the outward conditions of his frugal, rigid life repress. Full of nooks and arbors, comfortable low chairs and benches, where the blue forget-me-nots look as if they bloom indeed for happy lovers; trees whose great drooping branches close around retreats which can only be designed for tender tÊte-À-tÊtes; irregular little paths, wandering up and down and about, always ending in something delightful, always beckoning, inviting, smiling, amid flowers and foliage so fresh and luxuriant, you feel that every petal and leaf is known and loved by the white-haired old man. His favorite seat is at the end of a narrow, winding way at the foot of a magnificent elm. There he sits and looks, over the brook that sings to his sweet roses and pansies, upon broad meadow-lands and fields of grain extending to the Suabian hills, with their wealth of beauty and meaning and tradition. He sleeps and rests and thinks there after dinner, he tells us, and perhaps that is all; but I believe, when the old man is gone, a volume of manuscript poems will be discovered hidden away among his sermons and Greek tomes,—a volume of love poems, sonnets, dreamings of all that his life crowds out into his garden, and that only in his garden he has been able to express,—all the unspoken sweetness, all the unsung songs.

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