es us
westward along the Neuhauserstrasse a distance of eighty feet and six
inches, and behold, we are at the Augustinerbraeu. Good beer--a trifle
pale, perhaps, and without much grip to it, but still good beer. After
all, however, there is something lacking here. Or, to be more accurate,
something jars. The orchestra plays Grieg and Moszkowski; a smell of
chocolate is in the air; that tall, pink lieutenant over there, with his
cropped head and his outstanding ears, his _backfisch_ waist and his
mudscow feet--that military gargoyle, half lout and half fop, offends
the roving eye. No doubt a handsome man, by German standards--even,
perhaps a celebrated seducer, a soldier with a future--but the mere
sight of him suffices to paralyse an American esophagus. Besides, there
is the smell of chocolate, sweet, sickly, effeminate, and at two in the
afternoon! Again, there is the music of Grieg, clammy, clinging, creepy.
Away to the Mathaeserbraeu, two long blocks by taxi! From the Munich of
Berlinish decadence and Prussian epaulettes to the Munich of honest
Bavarians! From chocolate and macaroons to pretzels and white radishes!
From Grieg to "Lachende Liebe!" From a boudoir to an inn yard! From pale
beer in fragile glasses to red beer in earthen pots!

The Mathaeserbraeu is up a narrow alley, and that alley is always full
of Muencheners going in. Follow the crowd, and one comes presently to a
row of booths set up by radish sellers--ancient dames of incredible
diameter, gnarled old peasants in tapestry waistcoats and country boots;
veterans, one half ventures, of the Napoleonic wars, even of the wars of
Frederick the Great. A ten-pfennig piece buys a noble white radish, and
the seller slices it free of charge, slices it with a silver revolving
blade into two score thin schnitzels, and puts salt between each
adjacent pair. A radish so sliced and salted is the perfect complement
of this dark Mathaeser beer. One nibbles and drinks, drinks and nibbles,
and so slides the lazy afternoon. The scene is an incredible, playhouse
courtyard, with shrubs in tubs and tables painted scarlet; a fit setting
for the first act of "Manon." But instead of choristers in short skirts,
tripping, the whoop-la and boosting the landlord's wine, one feasts the
eye upon Muenchenese of a rhinocerous fatness, dropsical and gargantuan
creatures, bisons in skirts, who pass laboriously among the bibuli,
offering bunches of little pretzels strung upon red strings. S