I used the Wildbad springs in all seventeen times. For two summers,
aided by a servant, I descended from a wheel-chair into the warm water;
in the third I could dispense with assistance; and from the fourth for
several lustra I moved unchecked with a steady step. After a long
interval, owing to a severe relapse of the apparently conquered disease,
I returned to them.

The Wurtemberg Wildbad is one of the oldest cures in Germany. The legend
of the Count Mirtemberg, who discovered its healing powers by seeing a
wild boar go down to the warm spring to wash its wound, has been rendered
familiar by Uhland to every German. Ulrich von Hutten also used it.
It rises in a Black Forest valley inclosed by stately mountains,
a little stream, the Enz, crystal clear, and abounding in trout.

The small town on both banks of the river expands, ere the Enz loses
itself in the leafage, into the Kurplatz, where one stately building of
lightred sandstone adjoins another. The little white church stands at
the left. But the foil, the background for everything, is the beautiful
foliage, which is as beneficial to the eyes as are the springs to the
suffering body. This fountain of health has special qualities. The
Swabian says, "just right, like Wildbad." It gushes just the right
degree of heat for the bath from the gravelly sand. After bathing early
in the morning I rested an hour, and when I rose obeyed any other
directions of the physician in charge of the watering-place.

The remainder of the day, if the weather was pleasant, I spent out of
doors, usually in the grounds under the leafy trees and groups of shrubs
on the shore of the Enz. On the bank of the clear little stream stood
a wooden arbour, where the murmur of the waves rippling over the mossy