s that for Munich, at least, the Odeon is just a bit
tolerant, just a bit philosophical, just a bit Bohemian. One even
imagines taking an American show girl there without being warned (by a
curt note in one's serviette) that the head waiter's family lives in the
house.

Again, pursuing these haunts of the baroque and arabesque, there is the
restaurant of the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, a masterpiece of the Munich
glass cutters and upholsterers. It is in the very heart of things, with
the royal riding school directly opposite, the palace a block away and
the green of the Englischer Garten glimmering down the street. Here, of
a fine afternoon, the society is the best between Vienna and Paris. One
may share the vinegar cruet with a countess, and see a general of
cavalry eat peas with a knife (hollow ground, like a razor; a Bavarian
trick!) and stand aghast while a great tone artist dusts his shoes with
a napkin, and observe a Russian grand duke at the herculean labour of
drinking himself to death.

The Vier Jahreszeiten is no place for the common people; such trade is
not encouraged. The dominant note of the establishment is that of proud
retirement, of elegant sanctuary. One enters, not from the garish
Maximilianstrasse, with its motor cars and its sinners, but from the
Marstallstrasse, a sedate and aristocratic side street. The Vier
Jahreszeiten, in its time, has given food, alcohol and lodgings for the
night to twenty crowned heads and a whole shipload of lesser
magnificoes, and despite the rise of other hotels it retains its ancient
supremacy. It is the peer of Shepheard's at Cairo, of the Cecil in
London, of the old Inglaterra at Havana, of the St. Charles at New
Orleans. It is one of the distinguished hotels of the world.

I could give you a long list of other Munich restaurants of a kingly
order--the great breakfast room of the Bayrischer Hof, with its polyglot
waiters and its amazing repertoire of English jams; the tea and liquor
atelier of the same hostelry, with its high dome and its sheltering
palms; the pretty little open air restaurant of the Kuenstlerhaus in the
Lenbachplatz; the huge catacomb of the Rathaus, with its mediaeval arches
and its vintage wines; the lovely _al fresco_ cafe on Isar Island, with
the green cascades of the Isar winging on lazy afternoons; the cafe in
the Hofgarten, gay with birds and lovers; that in the Tiergarten, from
the terrace of which one watches lions and tigers gamboling in the