chief architect library ice cream dipping cabinet

It is the volume on Southern Germany, and he is reading the list of Munich hotels. His elbows rest upon it, his legs are crossed in the fashion of a figure four, and his face is buried in the red book of Herr Baedeker. Along the front of the terrace, protecting sightseers from the sheer drop of a thousand feet, is a stout wooden rail.Ī man in an American sack suit, with a bowler hat on his head, lounges against this rail. To the rear, clinging to the mountain, is an Alpine gasthaus-a bit overdone, perhaps, with its red-framed windows and elaborate fretwork, but still genuinely of the Alps. Here where we are is a shelf on the mountainside, and the hand of man has converted it into a terrace. A great bird, an eagle or a falcon, sweeps across the crystal spaces. The tinkle of an angelus bell (or maybe it is only a sheep bell) is heard from afar. Now and then comes a faint clank of metal from the funicular railway, but the tracks themselves are hidden among the trees of the lower slopes. They are not the harsh precipices of Switzerland, nor the too charming stage mountains of Northern Italy, but rolling billows of clouds and snow, the high-flung waves of some titanic but stricken ocean. The Alps here come down a bit and so increase their spell. It is a superbly beautiful scene, perhaps the most beautiful in all Europe. Somewhere to the left, beyond the broad flank of the Hungerberg, the night train for Venice labours toward the town.

A battalion of Austrian soldiers, drilling in the Exerzierplatz, appears as an army of grey ants, now barely visible. Far below, hugging the winding river, lies little Innsbruck, with its checkerboard parks and Christmas garden villas. Along the peaks of the great snowy mountains which shut it in, as if from the folly and misery of the world, there are touches of piercing primary colours-red, yellow, violet-the palette of a synchromist. It is the half-hour before sunset, and the whole lovely valley of the Inn- still wie die Nacht, tief wie das Meer-begins to glow with mauves and apple greens, apricots and silvery blues. THE scene is the brow of the Hungerberg at Innsbruck. 'Nothing broadens and mellows the mind so much as foreign travel.'- Dr.

Chief architect library ice cream dipping cabinet