100 STRAY -AW AYS 



persons would have expected to find crucifixes and 

 candlesticks and vases of flowers in a Lutheran 

 Church, but we did not. We should have thought 

 they Avould have made Luther turn in his grave, not 

 having comprehended the strange compound of ritual 

 and dissent which bears his name. The cathedral 

 was a large, light, lofty place, with faded frescoes 

 and memorial paintings, and bas-reliefs of departed 

 citizens and their wives and families framed in a 

 genial decorative design of skulls. High up in a side 

 aisle hung a ship, floating full-sailed among the 

 columns in the serene quiet — the commemoration of 

 some signal deliverance from the sea. 



From a chapel or space behind the altar came a 

 faint murmur of voices, steady and business-like; 

 we crept nearer to listen, and suddenly a chorus of 

 boys' voices, accompanied by one bass, began to sing 

 Luther's hymn — 



" Ein fester Burg ist unser Gott.^^ 



It was shrilly and drawlingly sung, but the stalwart 

 tune shaped itself forth to completion in unavoidable 

 nobility, and left the arches ringing. A class of boys, 

 dressed in decorous black, straggled out into the side 

 aisle, and went scrambling and tumbling through a 

 low doorway into the outer sunshine. They seemed 

 to have instilled their youth into the torpid theology 

 of the sixteenth century; it sat easily on them, as 

 easily as Luther's hymn had been carried on their 

 voices. 



The eyes of the female verger followed us with 

 misanthropic suspicion; she must be worn out by 

 misanthropically suspecting visitors, and never de- 

 tecting a crime. Why not gratify the expectation 

 of her life and damage a bas-relief with an umbrella, 

 and fly ? The impulse evaporated with reluctance, 



