The base is supported by the
kneeling figures of Adam Kraft and two fellow-workmen, who labored on
it for four years. Above is the Last Supper, Christ blessing little
children, and other beautiful tableaux in stone. The Gothic spire
grows up and around these, now and then throwing out graceful
tendrils, like a vine, and seeming to be rather a living plant than
inanimate stone. The faithful artist evidently had this feeling for
it; for, as it grew under his hands, he found that it would strike
the roof, or he must sacrifice something of its graceful proportion.
So his loving and daring genius suggested the happy design of letting
it grow to its curving, graceful completeness.
He who travels by a German railway needs patience and a full
haversack. Time is of no value. The rate of speed of the trains is
so slow, that one sometimes has a desire to get out and walk, and the
stoppages at the stations seem eternal; but then we must remember
that it is a long distance to the bottom of a great mug of beer. We
left Lindau on one of the usual trains at half-past five in the
morning, and reached Augsburg at one o'clock in the afternoon: the
distance cannot be more than a hundred miles. That is quicker than
by diligence, and one has leisure to see the country as he jogs
along. There is nothing more sedate than a German train in motion;
nothing can stand so dead still as a German train at a station.
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