he
village--of the true Jena--cannot greatly have changed since the days
when Luther stopped here on his way to Wittenberg; surely not since
1662, when the mighty young Leibnitz, the Aristotle of Germany, came to
Jena to study under Weigel, the most famous of German mathematicians
of that century. Here and there an old house has been demolished, to be
sure; even now you may see the work of destruction going on, as a
new street is being cut through a time-honored block close to the old
church. But in the main the old thoroughfares run hither and thither,
seemingly at random, as of old, disclosing everywhere at their limits
a sky-line of picturesque gables, and shut in by walls that often are
almost canon-like in narrowness; while the heavy, buttressed doors and
the small, high-placed windows speak of a time when every house partook
of the nature of the fortress.

The footway of the thoroughfares has no doubt vastly changed, for it is
for the most part paved now--badly enough, to be sure, yet, after
all, paved as no city was in the good old days when garbage filled
the streets and cleanliness was an unknown virtue. The Jena streets of
to-day are very modern in their cleanliness; yet a touch of medievalism
is retained in that the main work of cleaning is done by women. But, for
that matter, it seems to the casual observer as if the bulk of all the
work here were performed by the supposedly weaker sex. Certainly woman
is here the chief beast of burden. In every direction she may be seen,
in rustic garb, struggling cheerily along under the burden of a gigantic
basket strapped at her back. You may see the like anywhere else in
Germany, to be sure, but not often elsewhere in such preponderant
numbers. And scarcely elsewhere does the sight jar so little on one's
New-World sensibilities as in the midst of this mediaeval setting. One
is even able to watch the old women sawing and splitting wood in the
streets here, with no thought of anything but the picturesque-ness of
the incident.

If one follows a band of basket-laden women, he will find that their
goal is that focal-point of every old-time city, the market-place. There
arrived, he will witness a scene common enough in Europe but hardly to
be duplicated anywhere in America. Hundreds of venders of meat, fish,
vegetables, cloths, and household utensils have their open-air booths
scattered all across the wide space, and other hundreds of purchasers
are there as well. Quaint ga