Ah! if one has ever groaned in spirit to see the tawny daughters of the Penobscot Indians, those dusky maidens who might, in reason, be expected to bring into a prosaic town some wildwood grace, some suggestion of the “curling smoke of wigwams,” of “the dew and damp of meadows,” selling their baskets from door to door in gowns actually cut after a recent Godey fashion-plate, much looped as to overskirt, much ruffled and puffed and shirred,—then indeed must one rejoice in the dress of the Hamburg maids, and in these sturdy country-women trudging along in their picturesque but substantial costume, to sell their fruit and vegetables in the city markets.
In the olden time the good wives of Hamburg no doubt wore such gowns. One sees now in the street called Grosse Bleichen great buildings, banks and shops, and all the evidences of busy modern life; but one shuts the eyes and sees instead groups of women in blue and red, coming out from the city walls to lay on the green grass the linen they have spun, that it may whiten in the sunshine. They spun, and wove, and bleached. They lived and died. The growing city built new walls, and took within its limits those green banks once beyond its gates. The women knew not what was to be, when their spinning was all done. Nor did the maids, whose busy feet trod the path by the river-side, dream that the Jungfernstieg, or Maiden’s Path, would be the name, hundreds of years after, of the most-frequented promenade of the gay world of a great city.
Those women with the spinning-wheels, silent now so long, the young maids with their waterjars, chatting together in the early morning by the river, still speak to us, if we but listen. Though the voices of the city are so loud, we can hear quite well what they tell us; but indeed, indeed, dear friends, it is not written in the guide-book.
Stories everywhere, did I not say? Why, I even found one imbedded in—candy!
Listen, children, while I tell you about marzipan. The grown people need not hear, if they do not wish.
Marzipan (or St. Mark’s bread—_marzi panis_) is the name of a dainty which is made into bonbons of every shape and size and color imaginable; all, however, having the same flavor, tasting of sugar and vanilla and rose-water and almonds, and I know not what beside. There are tiny potatoes, dark and gray, with marvellous “eyes,” that would delight your souls; there are grapes, and nuts, and large, red apples, all made from the delectable marzipan. And most particularly there are little round loaves, an inch long, perhaps, which are the original celebrated marzipan, pure and simple, the other form being modern innovations. And why Mark’s bread? Because, my dears, there was once a famine in Lübeck, and tradition saith that the loaf which each poor woman took from the baker to her starving bairns grew each day smaller and smaller, until finally it was such a poor wee thing it was no more than an inch long; and on St. Mark’s Day was the famine commemorated, while the shape and size of the pitiful loaves are preserved in this sweetmeat, peculiar, I believe, to North Germany. Hamburg children—bless them!—will tell you the tale of famine, and swallow the tiny loaves as merrily as though there was never a hungry child in the world.