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Saunterings by Charles Dudley Warner
page 86 of 272 (31%)
Fuggerei, a little city by itself, surrounded by its own wall, the
gates of which are shut at night, with narrow streets and neat little
houses. It was built by Hans Jacob Fugger the Rich, as long ago as
1519, and is still inhabited by indigent Roman-Catholic families,
according to the intention of its founder. In the windows were
lovely flowers. I saw in the street several of those mysterious,
short, old women,--so old and yet so little, all body and hardly any
legs, who appear to have grown down into the ground with advancing
years.

It happened to be a rainy day, and cold, on the 30th of July, when we
left Augsburg; and the flat fields through which we passed were
uninviting under the gray light. Large flocks of geese were feeding
on the windy plains, tended by boys and women, who are the living
fences of this country. I no longer wonder at the number of
feather-beds at the inns, under which we are apparently expected to
sleep even in the warmest nights. Shepherds with the regulation
crooks also were watching herds of sheep. Here and there a cluster
of red-roofed houses were huddled together into a village, and in all
directions rose tapering spires. Especially we marked the steeple of
Blenheim, where Jack Churchill won the name for his magnificent
country-seat, early in the eighteenth century. All this plain where
the silly geese feed has been marched over and fought over by armies
time and again. We effect the passage of, the Danube without
difficulty, and on to Harburg, a little town of little red houses,
inhabited principally by Jews, huddled under a rocky ridge, upon the
summit of which is a picturesque medieval castle, with many towers
and turrets, in as perfect preservation as when feudal flags floated
over it. And so on, slowly, with long stops at many stations, to
give opportunity, I suppose, for the honest passengers to take in
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