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Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis), 1880-1956

"A Book of Prefaces"

...
Perhaps the post-bellum transvaluation of all values will bring Huneker
to his feet again, and with something of the old glow and gusto in him.
And if the new men do not stir up, then assuredly the wrecks of the
ancient cities will: the Paris of his youth; Munich, Dresden, Vienna,
Brussels, London; above all, Prague. Go to "New Cosmopolis" and you will
find where his heart lies, or, if not his heart, then at all events his
oesophagus and pylorus.... Here, indeed, the thread of his meditations
is a thread of nutriment. However diverted by the fragrance of the Dutch
woods, the church bells of Belgium, the music of Stuttgart, the bad
pictures of Dublin, the plays of Paris, the musty romance of old Wien,
he always comes back anon to such ease as a man may find in his inn.
"The stomach of Vienna," he says, "first interested me, not its soul."
And so, after a dutiful genuflexion to St. Stephen's ("Old Steffel," as
the Viennese call it), he proceeds to investigate the paprika-chicken,
the _Gulyas_, the _Risi-bisi_, the _Apfelstrudel_, the _Kaiserschmarrn_
and the native and authentic _Wienerschnitzel_.


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