Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/217

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214
KRONTHAL


Kronthäl.—Our decision is made, and, instead of being on our way to Italy, here we are, close under the Taunus Hills, trying the virtue of a gas-bath recently discovered. E. says you cannot turn up a stone with your foot in Germany without finding mineral water under it The bathing-places are innumerable. The water here is very like, in its taste, to the Hamilton spring at Saratoga. The gas is conveyed in India-rubber pipes into a bathing-tub, in which you sit down dressed, and are shut in except your head. The perceptible effect is a genial warmth and a alight moisture. We hear marvellous stories of its cures. It makes the deaf bear and the dumb speak; and, in short, does what all other baths do if you believe their believing champions. One rare advantage that we have here is a physician of excellent sense, and of a most kind and winning disposition; another is, that we see the manners of the people of the country without the slightest approach to foreign fashions or intermixture of foreign society. It is a two hours' drive to Frankfort over, a pertly level plain. The Frankfort gentry come out every day with their children and servants, and seem to find quite pleasure enough in sitting down at a table before the door and working worsted, knitting, smoking, drinking wine and Seltser-waler, sipping coffee and eating Mademoiselle Zimmermann's cakes, which are none of the most delicious. Her very frugal table must be rather a contrast to those of then: luxurious homes, but I never see a wry