Bimbi

Bimbi

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bimbi, by Louise de la Ramee (#4 in
our series by Louise de la Ramee)
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Title: Bimbi
Author: Louise de la Ramee
Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5834] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 10,
2002]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, BIMBI ***

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Proofreading Team.

Bimbi
Stories for Children
By Louise De La Ramee

CONTENTS
THE NURNBERG STOVE THE AMBITIOUS ROSE TREE
LAMPBLACK THE CHILD OF URBINO FINDELKIND

THE NURNBERG STOVE

August lived in a little town called Hall. Hall is a favorite name for
several towns in Austria and in Germany; but this one especial little
Hall, in the Upper Innthal, is one of the most charming Old-World
places that I know, and August, for his part, did not know any other. It
has the green meadows and the great mountains all about it, and the
gray-green glacier-fed water rushes by it. It has paved streets and
enchanting little shops that have all latticed panes and iron gratings to
them; it has a very grand old Gothic church, that has the noblest
blendings of light and shadow, and marble tombs of dead knights, and a
look of infinite strength and repose as a church should have. Then there
is the Muntze Tower, black and white, rising out of greenery, and
looking down on a long wooden bridge and the broad rapid river; and
there is an old schloss which has been made into a guardhouse, with
battlements and frescos and heraldic devices in gold and colors, and a
man-at-arms carved in stone standing life-size in his niche and bearing
his date 1530. A little farther on, but close at hand, is a cloister with

beautiful marble columns and tombs, and a colossal wood-carved
Calvary, and beside that a small and very rich chapel; indeed, so full is
the little town of the undisturbed past, that to walk in it is like opening
a missal of the Middle Ages, all emblazoned and illuminated with
saints and warriors, and it is so clean, and so still, and so noble, by
reason of its monuments and its historic color, that I marvel much no
one has ever cared to sing its praises. The old pious, heroic life of an
age at once more restful and more brave than ours still leaves its spirit
there, and then there is the girdle of the mountains all around, and that
alone means strength, peace, majesty.
In this little town a few years ago August Strehla lived with his people
in the stone-paved, irregular square where the grand church stands.
He was a small boy of nine years at that time,--a chubby-faced little
man with rosy cheeks, big hazel eyes, and clusters of curls the brown of
ripe nuts. His mother was dead, his father was poor, and there were
many mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and
very cold; the whole land lies wrapped in snow for many months; and
this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red
hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut
their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully
behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed
were beautiful, all snow-white under the stars that are so big in frost.
Hardly any one was astir; a few good souls wending home from
vespers, a tired post-boy, who blew a shrill blast from his tasseled horn
as he pulled up his sledge before a hostelry, and little August hugging
his jug of beer to his ragged sheepskin coat, were all who were abroad,
for the snow fell heavily and the good folks of Hall go early