BOULOGNE TO COLOGNE
Otto, Max Carl
Boulogne to Cologne : : By MAX CARL OTTO This is the second sketch of travel impressions that Professor Otto, of the University of Wisconsin, has written for I<a toilette's. The first, "Crossing...
...Soon two little oyes moved toward us out of the rain, a red one and a green one...
...Human figures were climbing about on the numerous barges 'in the river, women were sweeping the streets, boys were delivering the rolls we will long for when the trip is over...
...Even after we had arrived at Cologne and the first sight of the great cathedral had dwarfed everything we had so far seer% we carried about with us a vague sense of the beauty and simplicity of the country through which we had come...
...But this is not to turn into a set of observations on France...
...THE FRENCH can cook, there can be no doubt about that...
...They come out of the life of the culinary artist, and their chief ingredient, according to the head waiter, is love...
...At midnight, back in our quaint room, graced with furniture, which, fortunately, antique hunters had not succeeded in dragging off, we congratulated ourselves again and again upon landing where and as we did...
...A picture of life—tears intruding on laughter, laughter looking in on tears...
...Paul's famous thirteenth chapter of the first Letter to the Corinthians...
...Groups of masked figures wandered through the streets, chattering in disguised voices, singing, laughing, dancing, blowing horns...
...The mourners followed the hearse...
...C. I...
...We laughed until it hurt...
...One would naturally like to take home a recipe or two, but the dishes are not prepared from books, we are told...
...The antics of the tsasqueraders w-cra irresistible...
...It chanced to be the last night before Lent and the city was making merry in anticipation of the lean weeks ahead...
...T HERE cannot be many experiences more thrilling than the first sight But how long it takes the ship to in<i 3 h*rbor: 11 was morning wnen an early riser saw land ly-ing like a mother-of-pearl cloud on the.northern horizon...
...And of course fish direct from the sea tastes different than fish stored for months in ice...
...SNATCHES of revelry and song floated up to us, off and on, all night and when the early riser looked out on the city, soon after dawn, little bands of lired but happy youths were wending their way homeward...
...Our readers will be glad to know that others will follow.—B...
...Then came a man leading a horse drawing a basket-like hearse with a canopy over it, looking for all the world like an exalted baby carriage, In this the pale corpse lay exposed, a single frond of solemn, yellow-green palm across his breast...
...with a gentle breeze blowing over us from the sea, we drifted off to sleep, dreaming that we were children again...
...It may be that in such as these and such as these only, the great Nature in which they are all but invisible, achieves purposive endeavor...
...appeared in April Magazine...
...A Hawaiian baby in Honolulu has been christened with a name whieh, translated, means "The flower wreath and leaves are cherished by the water's of the God Lono...
...The pilot boat disappeared mysteriously as it had come, to be eplaced by the "Lighter" sent to take us off...
...Perhaps we were not justified in concluding that all who laugh heartily are lovable, nevertheless, we acted on this assumption, and so fell in love with the French people...
...Presently there arose out of the dark green, very slowly, an enormous necklace of glowing pearls, and we turned to one another and whispered, "Boulogne...
...It would be futile, as well as unfair, to attempt such a thing in passing through the country to reach Germany...
...Then lights began to flash—like the blinking of any eye, some of them...
...A funeral procession moved slowly toward us...
...They looked so very tiny against the great expanse of land and sky, yet tiny as they were, they seemed so intent upon their work...
...Laughter is a universal speech...
...and we shall certainly carry with us for life pleasant images of the Belgian landscape with its vast level stretches, its orderly fields, its rows of stubby willows, its windmills, its substantial looking villages of the colorful roofs...
...The first, "Crossing Uie Ocean...
...Following him walked what may have been the undertaker...
...And he was not aware of adding an important postscript to St...
...All day long we watched patches of pale blue and green, said to be England, come into view and vanish, but at niglvtfall we had left the unforgettable Beech Head, veiled in mystical purple, behind us, seemingly as far from port as ever, and in for a rainy night...
...Perhaps in America," he ventured, "you try to cook without love...
...we shall be refreshed by the memory of Bruges, "The Venice of the North," which, though not Venice, is a charming little town with its many little stone bridges over its canals, the notes of its Carillon trickling down over everything and everybody, and its rare collection of paintings by Memling...
...WK SHALL oftenest recall the magnificent Grand Place and the oxquisite laces in Brussels (personally I should include the endless variety of cheeses...
...As the procession reached the square two belated mas-queraders, dressed as clowns, stopped to watch it pass...
...One can readily believe, with a recent visitor to the United States, that a French peasant is served better tasting food than an American millionaire...
...n another hour we had waved good-byes, scrambled for our baggage, passed the customs officials, tipped the porters, and were rumbling along the wet cobble-stones of Boulogne to the hotel...
...They walked in twos, the elderly women hobbling along with the help of canes...
...It will be hard to forget how eager these people seem to be for the dollars, which they claim we idolize above everything else, but after all, happy memories will outlast unhappy ones...
...We found a neat little cafe and were soon the center of good-natured tenter...
...It was led by a priest holding aloft a crucifix...
...A dozen men in sober black like the women, apparently some organization, marched after the mourners, and a few stragglers, acting as if not really belonging yet wanting to be there, brought up the rear...
...Whenever he wishes to make a telephone call he must so to a booth in an adjoining room...
...We still keep fresh in mind now after having received unnumbered impressions, the picture of solitary figures at work in the Flemish fields...
...laughing together, we understood each other...
...But that is quite impossible...
...The searchlight showed them to belong to the pilot boat, and we crowded to the rail to watch the pilot climb up the rope ladder, accompanied by his ridiculously large shadow...
...Then lost in the feather beds (what luxury after the steamer bunks...
...loiter on, perhaps, something of the sort may compose itself in Paris...
...Boulogne was waking up...
...others like great bands of lurid yellow appeared, each signalling its own message...
...President Coolidge has no telephone on his desk...
Vol. 19 • May 1927 • No. 5
