ruddy circumvallations? Mediæval Germans must have loved beauty, for they created so much of it; and the Red City, rising from stream and valley, turn after turn, tower after tower, belfry and spire and red-huddled roofs rising behind the walls and between the towers, must have pleased the eye of the roughest warrior. From below the curious old double bridge Tilly and Piccolomini and Turenne have looked up at this city on a hill, this "German Jerusalem " as it used to be called, and laid their plans for its conquest. Every arched gateway has its story and its tragedy, and the inscription on the Spital Gate, "To those that enter, welcome; peace to those that depart," was often a mockery to the hapless ones dragged in or out to their doom. The Spital Thor, with its deep moat and mighty fortifications, was called the "Nightcap Tassel" by all Rothenburg when the Emperor Albrecht the First gave reluctant permission to build it. Your town looks already like a nightcap," he said, angrily, to the persistent burghers, alluding to its rambling shape; "well, put the tassel on ;" and the name clung to the huge tower, with its quadruple pepper-box turrets, ever after.

One thing, however, the Spectator was forced to miss in the Red City-its Festival Play, given twice a year in the Rathhaus to commemorate the "Meister-Trunk" or "Master-Drink," by which Nusch, the ex-burgomaster, saved his town in the day of Tilly's triumph in 1631. Rothenburg had resisted the great captain, too well to please him. When the town surrendered at last, Tilly and his staff, followed by a horde of mercenaries, made their entry into the Rathhaus, called before them Senate and Burgomaster, and condemned them all incontinently to death. The executioner was sent for, and meanwhile the victors refreshed themselves with Rothenburg wine-pure, clear, and famous to this day for its excellence.

The cellarer's daughter, trembling, brought in the mighty Pokal, or stirrupcup, of glass, holding three quarts. The whole staff drank from it in turn, and did not exhaust it. Tilly, struck with its size, and enjoying the generous wine, cried out in ferocious pleasantry, "I will show mercy to all, on condition that one of you empties this full cup at one draught !" No one answered at first. Then Nusch stepped forward, and lifted the brimming Pokal. All watched incredulously, for all believed it impossible to drink the glass dry. Higher and higher the valorous burgher tilted the mighty cup, and hope began to dawn in the Rothenburgers. The last drop of the draught was watched breathlessly by friends and foes alike. "Thy promise?" gasped Nusch, as he actually accomplished the impossible. "It shall be honorably kept !" cried Tilly. On the words, Nusch sank insensible to the floor. For three days he lay between life and death, and his first remark as he recovered was, "I could never save another town!" However, he received a patent of nobility and a pension, and lived to the average pensioner's age-eighty. At Whit

PARSONAGE OF THE TOWN CHURCH

The Spectator had missed the Festival Play by two good weeks. That was not to be helped. But he got some idea of it, nevertheless. One day, coming out One day, coming out of St. Jakob's the quaintest of old churches, with its picturesque sexton's house, its archaic statues of saints, its pews for men on the one side and women on the other, with a silver name

barred from entering the country, and if we did manage to elude authority and enter it we would very likely be arrested and held for days in some verminous jail. But in far-off Samara there were people that would see to our safety and guidance.

After two days and nights of windmad, snow-buried steppes, we left the crawling train at Buzuluk, a little town sitting close beside the Asiatic border. Here all was done for us that had been promised; and the next morning, at the first duskiness, we made our start. Our sleigh was a rough-axed affair, with body of woven reeds, and was drawn by three shaggy little post-horses, their brown fur fluffy with frost, their tails and manes great frost plumes. We ourselves were so deeply wrapped in fur on fur that the searching wind could not find us. And so we glided swiftly away-the inner horse trotting, the two outer galloping, the bell in the yoke jangling musicallyaway through the lifting night, across vast reaches of treeless, unfenced plain, into the region of the Great Hunger.

Not till the sun was burning on the white horizon did the horses stop. We had gained a typical village of the steppes. Along the wide streets straggled thatched huts, built of sun-baked, strawknit brick, their outside plastered with clay. Beside each hut was a little farmyard, inclosed by a rectangle of outbuild

ings, their roofs all of straw, their walls either of clay or a wickerwork of twigs. In all the village there were but three wooden houses; timber was to be secured only by laborious dragging from far-placed forests.

At the largest of these wooden houses we had stopped, for before it huddled a crowd of men, women, and children, shrinking deeply into their sheepskin coats, on their faces a gray, hopeless patience. Within was a relief station,. conducted jointly by the local Zemstvo and the Red Cross Society, and the crowd were awaiting the daily distribution of food. That took place at twelve; it was now but half-past eight.

We passed through the gate into the farmyard, empty of all life, and thence, halving our height, through a low door into the house. Its wooden walls, its floor of wood instead of clay, its two rooms instead of one, all repeated what had been told us-that it was the house of the richest man of the village. The owner, gray, shaggy, red-bloused, led us through the first room, which a great soup-caldron packed with a blinding steam, into the second room, and seated us on a rough bench in a corner beneath a cheap brass ikon. And as many of the crowd as could enter pressed about us.. 'We asked our host the blackest of

questions: How had the harvest been? From the two little square windows we could see the white land over which we had galloped; and out toward this the old man swept a gnarled hand. "Out there lie our fields. We have little land, and much of our small crops goes for taxes. Even when God blesses with harvests, we barely live from one year to the next.

"Two summers ago our fields gave us almost nothing. We thought last winter would end us-that we should never see the spring. The winter took all that we had saved-all! When spring came, we put in our seed, though the earth was dry. We thought, 'Surely this year God will give us a rich harvest!' But no rain fell. fell. In some places the grain came up, thin, yellow. In most places it came not up at all.

"We saw ahead another black year. We prayed for rain to save the little that had sprouted, for that little would help keep us alive. Week after week we prayed, but no rain came. All that fell from Easter till the end of harvest, one man could have drunken it! We saw. our few sprouts wither. Only here and there did a stalk come into head-and that head was empty. We turned our starving cattle into these best fields to get from them what they could. For the