"Explain How All The Houses Are Numbered According To The Date They
Were Built, So That Number Sixteen Comes Next To Number Forty-Seven,
And There Is No Number One Because It Has Been Pulled Down.
Tell
how unsophisticated visitors, informed that their lodgings are at
number fifty-three, go wandering for days and days
Round fifty-two,
under the not unreasonable impression that their house must be next
door, though, as a matter of fact, it is half a mile off at the
other end of the village, and are discovered one sunny morning,
sitting on the doorstep of number eighteen, singing pathetic
snatches of nursery rhymes, and trying to plat their toes into door-
mats, and are taken up and carried away screaming, to end their
lives in the madhouse at Munich.
"Talk about the weather. People who have stayed here for any length
of time tell me that it rains at Ober-Ammergau three days out of
every four, the reason that it does not rain on the fourth day being
that every fourth day is set apart for a deluge. They tell me,
also, that while it will be pouring with rain just in the village
the sun will be shining brightly all round about, and that the
villagers, when the water begins to come in through their roofs,
snatch up their children and hurry off to the nearest field, where
they sit and wait until the storm is over."
"Do you believe them - the persons that you say tell you these
tales?" I ask.
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