Near noon I arrive at the antiquated town of Dachau, and upon repairing to the gasthaus, an individual in a last week’s paper collar, and with general appearance in keeping, comes forward and addresses me in quite excellent English, and during the dinner hour answers several questions concerning the country and the natives so intelligently that, upon departing, I ungrudgingly offer him the small tip customary on such occasions in Germany.  “No, Whitsuntide in Bavaria.  I thank you, very muchly,” he replies, smiling, and shaking his head.  “I am not an employe of the hotel, as you doubtless think; I am a student of modern languages at the Munich University, visiting Dauhau for the day.”  Several soldiers playing billiards in the room grin broadly in recognition of the ludicrousness situation; and I must confess that for the moment I feel like asking one of them to draw his sword and charitably prod me out of the room.  The unhappy memory of having, in my ignorance, tendered a small tip to a student of the Munich University will cling around me forever.  Nevertheless, I feel that after all there are extenuating circumstances — he ought to change his paper collar occasionally.

An hour after noon I am industriously dodging loose flints on the level road leading across the Isar River Valley toward Munich; the Tyrolese Alps loom up, shadowy and indistinct, in the distance to the southward, their snowy peaks recalling memories of the Rockies through which I was wheeling exactly a year ago.  While wending my way along the streets toward the central portion of the Bavarian capital the familiar sign, “American Cigar Store,” looking like a ray of light penetrating through the gloom and mystery of the multitudinous unreadable signs that surround it, greets my vision, and I immediately wend my footsteps thitherward.  I discover in the proprietor, Mr. Walsch, a native of Munich, who, after residing in America for several years, has returned to dream away declining years amid the smoke of good cigars and the quaffing of the delicious amber beer that the brewers of Munich alone know how to brew.  Then who should happen in but Mr. Charles Buscher, a thorough-going American; from Chicago, who is studying art here at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and who straightway volunteers to show me Munich.

Nine o’clock next morning finds me under the pilotage of Mr. Buscher, wandering through the splendid art galleries.  We next visit the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, a magnificent building, being erected at a cost of 7,000,000 marks.

We repair at eleven o’clock to the royal residence, making a note by the way of a trifling mark of King Ludwig’s well-known eccentricity.  Opposite the palace is an old church, with two of its four clocks facing the King’s apartments.  The hands of these clocks are, according to my informant, made of gold.  Some time since the King announced that the sight of these golden hands hurt his eyesight, and ordered them painted black.  It was done, and they are black to-day.  Among the most interesting objects in the palace are the room and bed in which Napoleon I. slept in 1809, which has since been occupied by no other person; the “rich bed,” a gorgeous affair of pink and scarlet satin-work, on which forty women wove, with gold thread, daily, for ten years, until 1,600,000 marks were expended.