EUROPE AFTER 8:15

BY

H. L. MENCKEN

GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

WILLARD HUNTINGTON WRIGHT

WITH DECORATIONS

By THOMAS H. BENTON

NEW YORK—JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO—BELL & COCKBURN—MCMXIV

Copyright, 1914
By JOHN LANE COMPANY

CONTENTS

7

PREFACE IN THE SOCRATIC MANNER

"Nothing broadens and mellows the mind so much as foreigntravel."—Dr. Orison Swett Marden.

The scene is the brow of the Hungerberg at Innsbruck. It is thehalf-hour before sunset, and the whole lovely valley of the Inn—stillwie die Nacht, tief wie das Meer—begins to glow with mauves and applegreens, apricots and silvery blues. Along the peaks of the great snowymountains which shut it in, as if from the folly and misery of theworld, there are touches of piercing primary colours—red, yellow,violet—the palette of a synchromist. Far below, hugging the windingriver, lies little Innsbruck, with its checkerboard parks and Christmasgarden villas.8 A battalion of Austrian soldiers, drilling in theExerzierplatz, appears as an army of grey ants, now barely visible.Somewhere to the left, beyond the broad flank of the Hungerberg, thenight train for Venice labours toward the town.

It is a superbly beautiful scene, perhaps the most beautiful in allEurope. It has colour, dignity, repose. The Alps here come down a bitand so increase their spell. They are not the harsh precipices ofSwitzerland, nor the too charming stage mountains of Northern Italy, butrolling billows of clouds and snow, the high-flung waves of some titanicbut stricken ocean. Now and then comes a faint clank of metal from thefunicular railway, but the tracks themselves are hidden among the treesof the lower slopes. The tinkle of an angelus bell (or maybe it is onlya sheep bell) is heard from afar. A great bird, an eagle or a falcon,sweeps across the crystal spaces.

Here where we are is a shelf on the mountainside,...