Staircases vary greatly according to the date and rent of the house. The most modern houses in Berlin have broad front staircases with thick carpets, and in some cases seats of "Nouveau Art" design on the landings. In such houses you are always met on the threshold by printed requests to wipe your feet and shut the door gently. They don't tell you to do as you're bid. That is taken for granted, or the police will know the reason why. There is always an uncarpeted back staircase for servants and tradespeople, and for the tenants who inhabit the poorer parts of the building. In houses where all the tenants belong to the poorer classes, you find notices that forbid children to play in the Hof, and command people not to loiter or to make any noise on the stairs. Carpet-beating and shaking, which is constantly and vigorously carried on, is only allowed on certain days of the week and at certain hours. When there is a house porter he is not as important and conspicuous as the French concierge. In my experience he has usually gone out and thoughtfully left the front door ajar. He is not a universal institution even in Berlin.

Taxes vary in different parts of Germany. In Saxony a man spending L500 a year pays altogether L60 for Income tax, Municipal rates, Water, School, and Church rates. In Berlin the Income tax is not an Imperial (Reichs) tax, but a Landes tax, and amounts to L15 on an income of L500. Smaller incomes pay less and larger ones more, in proportion varying from about 2 to 4 per cent. Besides this Staats tax there is a municipal tax of exactly the same amount in Berlin and Charlottenberg. But there are towns in Prussia where it is less; others, mostly in the Western Provinces, where it is more, considerably more in some cases. The water rate is paid by the house owners, and the tenant pays it in his rent. There are no school taxes. The church tax is compulsory on members of the Landeskirche. When a man has no capital his income tax is levied on his yearly expenses; but the man whose income is derived from capital pays a higher tax than the man who has none. The German, too, pays a great deal to the State indirectly; for nearly everything he requires is taxed. But the three things he loves best, tobacco, beer, and music, he gets cheap—cheaper than he can in a Free Trade country; so he pays for everything else as best he can, and tries to look pleasant. "But the burden is almost more than we can bear," said one thoughtful German to me when I told him how greatly English people admired their municipal enterprise, and the admirable provision made in Berlin for the very poor.

Last time I went to Germany I actually made the acquaintance of one German who did not smoke, and on various occasions I was in the society of others who did not smoke for some hours. In the Berlin tramcars smoking is strictly forbidden, but I did not observe that this rule was strictly enforced. In fact, my attention was drawn to it one day by finding my neighbour's cigar unpleasantly strong. One cigar in a tramcar, however, is nothing at all, and should not be mentioned. It is when a railway carriage beautifully upholstered with crimson velvet holds you, six Germans, and one Englishman, for eight hours on a blazing summer day, that you begin to wonder whether, after all, you do mind smoke. To be sure, you might have travelled in a Nichtraucher or a Damen-Coupe, but changes are a nuisance on a journey. Besides, you know that a Damen-Coupe is always crowded, and that the moment you open a window someone will hold a handkerchief tearfully to her neck and say, "Aber ich bitte meine Dame: es zieht!" and all the other women in the carriage will say in chorus, "Ja! ja! es zieht!" and if you don't shut the window instantly the conductor will be summoned, and he will give the case against you. So you travel all day long with seven cigars, most of them cheap strong ones, that their owners smoke very slowly and replace directly they are finished. And after a time the conversation turns on smoking, and your neighbour admits that he always lights his first cigar when he gets up in the morning and smokes it while he is dressing. His wife dresses in the same room and does not like it, but.... It is unnecessary to say more. Five cigars out of six are in sympathy with him, while you amuse yourself by wondering what revenge a wife could take in such circumstances. A bottle of the most offensive scent in the market suggests itself, but you look at your neighbour's profile, and see that he is the kind of man to pitch scent he did not like out of the window. You have heard of one German husband who did this when his wife brought home perfumes that did not please him. And then your memory travels back and back along the years, arriving at last at the picture of an English nursery, in the household where a German guest had arrived the night before. The nurses and the children are sitting peacefully at breakfast, when there enters to them a housemaid, scornful, scandalised, out of breath with her hurry to impart what she had seen.

"He's a-smoking in bed," she says, "that there Mr. Hoggenheimer! He's a-smoking in bed!"

"Some of them do," says nurse, who is a travelled person, and refuses to be taken by surprise.

"Well, of all the nasty...."

"Sh!" says nurse, pointing to the children, all eyes and ears.

So that is all you can remember about the housemaid and Mr. Hoggenheimer. But you remember him—a little dark man who sent you books you could not read at Christmas, and brought you enchanting gingerbreads covered with hundreds and thousands. You thought him rather funny, but you liked him, and if he wanted to smoke in bed why not? You liked toys in bed yourself, and you would have taken the dog there if only it had been allowed. Then you come back again to the present hour, nearly all the years of your life later, and you are in a railway carriage with six German householders who, like Mr. Hoggenheimer, want cigars in and out of season.

"To-morrow," you say to your Englishman; "to-morrow I shall travel in a Nichtraucher."

"But then I can't smoke," he says quite truly.

"We shall not travel together."

"But that is so unsociable."

"I would rather be unsociable than suffocated," you explain. "I have suffered tortures to-day."

"Have you? But you always say you don't mind smoke."

"In reason. Seven cigars and one woman are not reasonable. Never again will I travel with seven cigars."

"I thought we had a pleasant journey," says the Englishman regretfully. "That little man next to you——"

"Mr. Hoggenheimer——?"

"Was that his name?—I couldn't understand all he said, but he had an amusing face."

"A face can be misleading," you say; "that man bullies his wife."

"How do you know?"

"He told us so. He smokes before breakfast ... while he is dressing, ... and he has no dressing room...."

The Englishman looks calm.

"They do take one into their confidence," he remarks. "My neighbour told me that he never could eat mayonnaise of salmon directly after roast pork, because it gave him peculiar pains. I was afraid you'd hear him describe his symptoms; but I believe you were asleep."

"No, I wasn't," you confess; "I heard it all, and I shut my eyes, because I knew if I opened them he'd address himself to me. I shut them when he began talking to you about your Magen and what you ought to do to give it tone. You seemed interested."

"It's quite an interesting subject," says the Englishman, who makes friends with every German he meets. "He is not in the least like an Englishman," they say to you cordially,—"he is so friendly and amiable."



CHAPTER XII

HOUSEWIVES

"Frenchwomen are the best housewives in Europe," said a German lady who knew most European countries well; "the next best are the English; Germans come third." The lady speaking was one whose opinions were always uttered with much charm, but ex-cathedra; so that you found it impossible to disagree with her ... until you got home. But to hear the supreme excellence of the Hausfrau contested takes the breath away; to see her deposed from the first place by one of her own countrywomen dazzles the eyes. It was a new idea to me that any women in the world except the Germans kept house at all. If you live amongst Germans when you are young you adopt this view quite insensibly and without argument.

"My son is in England," you hear a German mother say. "I am uneasy about him. I fear he may marry an Englishwoman."

"They sometimes do," says her gossip, shaking her head.

"It would break my heart. The women of that nation know nothing of housekeeping. They sit in their drawing-rooms all day, while their husband's hard-earned money is wasted in the kitchen. Besides ... mein armer Karl—he loves Nudelsuppe and Kueken mit Spargel. What does an Englishwoman know of such things? She would give him cold mutton to eat, and he would die of an indigestion. I was once in England in my youth, and when I got back we had a Frikassee von Haehnchen mit Krebsen for dinner, and I wept with pleasure."

"Perhaps," says the gossip consolingly, "your Karl will remember these things and fetch himself a German wife."

"Poor girl!" says Karl's not-to-be-consoled mother, "she would have to live in England and keep house there. It happened to my niece Greta Loehring. She had a new cook every fortnight, and each one was worse than the one before. In England when a cook spoils a pudding she puts it in the fire and makes another. Imagine the eggs that are used under such circumstances."

I remember this little dialogue, because I was young and ignorant enough at the time to ask what a German did when she spoilt a pudding, and was promptly informed that in Germany such things could not happen. A cook was not allowed to make puddings unless her mistress stood by and saw that she made them properly; "unless she is a perfekte Koechin," added Karl's mother, "and then she does not spoil things."

A German friend, not the travelled one, but a real home-baked domestic German, took me one hot afternoon this summer to pay a call, and at once fell to talking to the mistress of the house about the washing of lace curtains. There were eight windows in front of the flat, and each window had a pair of stiff spotless lace curtains, and each curtain had been washed by the lady's own hands. My friend had just washed hers, and they both approached the subject as keenly as two gardeners will approach a question of bulbs or Alpines. There are different ways of washing a white curtain, you know, and different methods of rinsing and drying it, and various soaps. Starch is used too at some stage of the process; at least, I think so. But the afternoon was hot and the argument involved. The starch I will not swear to, but I will swear to ten waters—ten successive cleansings in fresh water before the soul of the housewife was at rest.

"And how do you wash yours?" said one of them, turning to me.

"Oh—I!" I stammered, taken aback, for I had been nearly asleep; "I send a post-card to Whiteley's, and they fetch them one week and bring them back the next. They cost 1s. a pair."

The two German ladies looked at each other and smiled. Then they politely changed the subject.

This trivial story is not told for its intrinsic merits, but because it illustrates the difference of method between English and German women. The German with much wear and tear of body and spirit washes her own lace curtains. She saves a little money, and spends a great deal of time over them. The Englishwoman, when she possibly can, likes to spend her time in a different way. In both countries there are admirable housekeepers, and middling housekeepers, and extremely bad ones. The German who goes the wrong way about it sends her husband to the Kneipe by her eternal fussing and fidgeting. She is not his companion mentally, but the cook's, for her mind has sunk to the cook's level, while her temper through constant fault-finding is on a lower one. The Englishwoman sends her husband to the club or the public house, according to his social station, because she is incapable of giving him eatable food. But the English belief that German housewives are invariably dull and stodgy is not a whit more ignorant and untrue than the German belief that all Englishwomen are neglectful, extravagant housekeepers. The Englishwoman keeps house in her own way, and it is different from the German way, but it is often admirable. The comfort, the organisation, and the unbroken peace of a well-managed English household are not surpassed, in some details not equalled, anywhere in the world.

The German ideal (for women) is one of service and self-sacrifice. Let her learn betimes to serve, says Goethe, for by service only shall she attain to command and to the authority in the house that is her due.

"Dienen lerne bei Zeiten das Weib nach ihrer Bestimmung, Denn durch Dienen allein gelangt sie endlich zum Herrschen Zu der verdienten Gewalt, die doch ihr im Hause gehoeret, Dienet die Schwester dem Bruder doch frueh, sie dienet den Eltern; Und ihr Leben ist immer ein ewiges Gehen und Kommen, Oder ein Heben und Tragen, Bereiten und Schaffen fuer Andre; Wohl ihr, wenn sie daran sich gewoehnt, dass kein Weg ihr zu sauer Wird, und die Stunden der Nacht ihr sind wie die Stunden des Tages: Dass ihr niemals die Arbeit zu klein und die Nadel zu fein duenkt, Dass sie sich ganz vergisst, und leben mag nur in Andern!"

She is to serve her brothers and parents. Her whole life is to be a going and coming, a lifting and carrying, a preparing and acting for others. Well for her if she treads her way unweariedly, if night is as day to her, if no task seems too small and no needle too fine. She is to forget herself altogether and live in others.

It is a beautiful passage, and an unabashed magnificent masculine egotism speaks in every line of it. Whenever I read it I think of the little girl in Punch whose little brother called to her, "Come here, Effie. I wants you." And Effie answered, "Thank you, Archie, but I wants myself!" Herr Riehl quotes the passage at the end of his own exhortations to his countrywomen, which are all in the same spirit, and were not needed by them. German women have always been devoted to their homes and their families, and they are as subservient to their menfolk as the Japanese. They do not actually fall on their knees before their lords, but the tone of voice in which a woman of the old school speaks of die Herren is enough to make a French, American, or Englishwoman think there is something to be said for the modern revolt against men. For any woman with a spice of feminine perversity in her nature will be driven to the other camp when she meets extremes; so that in Germany she feels ready to rise against overbearing males; whilst in America she misses some of the regard for masculine judgment and authority that German women show in excess. At least, it seems an excess of duty to us when we hear of a German bride who will not go down to dinner with the man appointed by her hostess till she has asked her husband's permission; and when we hear of another writing from Germany that, although in England she had ardently believed in total abstention, she had now changed her opinion because her husband drank beer and desired her to approve of it. But it was an Englishwoman who, when asked about some question of politics, said quite simply and honestly, "I think what Jack thinks."

The truth is, that the women of the two great Germanic races are kin. There are differences, chiefly those of history, manners, and environment. The likeness is profound.

"Par une rencontre singuliere," says M. Taine, "les femmes sont plus femmes et les hommes plus hommes ici qu'ailleurs. Les deux natures vont chacune a son extreme; chez les uns vers l'audace, l'esprit d'entreprise et de resistance, le caractere guerrier, imperieux et rude; chez les autres vers la douceur, l'abnegation, la patience, l'affection inepuisable; chose inconnue dans les pays lointains, surtout en France, la femme ici se donne sans se reprendre et met sa gloire et son devoir a obeir, a pardonner, a adorer, sans souhaiter ni pretendre autre chose que se fondre et s'absorber chaque jour davantage en celui qu'elle a volontairement et pour toujours choisi. C'est cet instinct, un antique instinct Germanique, que ces grands peintres de l'instinct mettent tous ici en lumiere!... L'ame dans cette race, est a la fois primitive et serieuse. La candeur chez les femmes y subsiste plus longtemps qu'ailleurs. Elles perdent moins vite le respect, elles pesent moins vite les valeurs et les caracteres: elles sont moins promptes a deviner le mal et a mesurer leurs maris.... Elles n'ont pas la nettete, la hardiesse d'idees, l'assurance de conduite, la precocite qui chez nous en six mois font d'une jeune fille une femme d'intrigue et une reine de salon. La vie enfermee et l'obeissance leur sont plus faciles. Plus pliantes et plus sedentaires elles sont en meme temps plus concentrees, plus interieures, plus disposees a suivre des yeux le noble reve qu'on nomme le devoir...."

I cannot imagine what M. Taine means by saying that Englishwomen lead a more sedentary and sequestered life than Frenchwomen, but the rest of his description presents a well-known type in England and Germany. "Voir la peinture de ce caractere dans toute la litterature anglaise et allemande," he says in a footnote. "Le plus grand des observateurs, Stendhal tout impregne des moeurs et des idees Italiennes et francaises, est stupefait a cette vue. Il ne comprend rien a cette espece de devouement, 'a cette servitude, que les maris Anglais, sous le nom de devoir, out eu l'esprit d'imposer a leurs femmes.' Ce sont 'des moeurs de serail.'"

Here the "greatest of all observers" seems to talk nonsense, for marriage in the seraglio does not hinge on the submission of one wife to one husband, but on a plurality of wives that English and German women have only endured in certain historic cases. In both western countries marriage has its roots in the fidelity of one man and one woman to each other. A well-known English novelist once said quite truly that an Englishman very rarely distrusts his wife, and never by any chance distrusts the girl who is to become his wife; and just the same may be said of the German of the better classes. In both countries you will find sections of society above and below where morals are lax and manners corrupt. German professors write sketches of London in which our busy grimy city is held up to a virtuous Germania as the modern Sodom and Gomorrah; and the Continental Anglophobe likes nothing better than to entertain you with pictures of our decadent society, pictures that really do credit to the vividness and detail of his imagination. Meanwhile our press assures the respectable Briton that Berlin is the most profligate city in Europe, and that scurrilous German novels about the German army will show him what the rotten state of things really is in that much over-rated organisation. But these national amenities are misleading. The bulk of the nation in both countries is sound, and family life still flourishes both here and there. The men of the race, in spite of Herr Riehl's prognostications, still have the whip hand, as much as is good for them in England, a little more than is good for them in Germany. If you go to Germany you must not expect a man to open a door for you, or to wait on you at afternoon tea, or to carry a parcel for you in the street. He will kiss your hand when he greets you, he will address you as gracious lady or gracious miss, he will put his heels together and make you beautiful bows, he will pay you compliments that are manifestly, almost admittedly, artificial. That at least is one type of man. He may leave out the kisses and the bows and the compliments and be quite undisguisedly bearish; or he may be something betwixt and between, kindly, concerned for your pleasure and welfare. But whatever he is he will never forget for a moment that you are "only a woman." If you marry him he will expect to rule everywhere except in the kitchen, and as you value a quiet life you had better take care that the kitchen produces what pleases him. On occasion he will assert his authority with some violence and naivete. No one can be long amongst Germans, or even read many German novels, without coming across instances of what I mean. For example, there was once a quarrel between lovers that all turned upon a second glass of champagne. The girl did not want it, and the man insisted that she should drink it whether she wanted it or not. What happened in the end is forgotten and does not matter. It is the comment of the historian that remains in the memory.

"Her family had spoilt her," said he. "When they are married and my friend gets her to himself she will not behave so."

"But why should she drink a second glass of champagne if she did not want it?" I asked.

"Because he commanded her to," said this Petruchio, beginning to bristle at once; and he straightway told me another story about a man who threw his lady-love's dog into a pond, not because the dog needed a bath, but in assertion of his authority. The lady had wished to keep her dog out of the water.

"Did she ever forgive the man?" said I.

"Forgive!—What was there to forgive? The man wished to put the dog in the pond. A man must know how to enforce his will ... or he is no man."

I nearly said "Lor!" like Mr. Tweddle in The Tinted Venus, but in Germany it's a serious matter, a sort of lese majeste, to laugh at the rightful rule of man. You must expect to see them waited on hand and foot, and to take this service as a matter of course. I have known Englishmen embarrassed by this state of affairs.

"They will get me chairs," complained one, "and at table the daughters jump up and wait on me. It's horrid."

"Not at all," said I. "It's your due. You must behave as if you were used to it."

"I can't. The other day I got the daughters of the house to sit still while I handed about cups of tea, and if some of the old boys didn't jump down their throats and tell them they'd no business to let me forget my dignity. Bless my dignity ... if it's such a tender plant as that...."

"Sh!" I said. "They must have been old-fashioned people. In some houses young men hand cups."

"They look jolly self-conscious while they're doing it, ... as if they didn't half like it. You bet, they take it out of their womenfolk when they get home. Look at that chap Mueller!"

"Where is he?"

"In Dresden, where I lived last winter. He stormed the house down because his wife took up his glass of beer and drank before he did. Nearly had a fit. Said his dignity as a husband was damaged. Then he turned to me and asked whether even in England a wife would be so bold and bad?"

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything. I looked sick."

"That's no use. You should say a great deal, and wave your arms about and hammer on the table. You don't know how to show emotion."

"I should hope not," says the Englishman. "But German women are always telling me they envy the women in our country."

"That's their politeness," I assure him. "They don't mean it. They're as happy as the day is long. Besides, Germans don't get drunk and beat their wives with pokers. You know perfectly well that most Englishmen——"

But, of course, whatever you say about German women of the present day can be contradicted by anybody who chooses to describe one at either end of the scale, for the contrasts there are violent. You will find in the same street a woman who exercises a profession, lives more or less at her club, and is as independent as her brother; and women who are household drudges, with neither leisure nor spirit for any occupation that would enrich their minds.



CHAPTER XIII

HOUSEWIVES (Continued)

In Germany the home is furnished by the bride's parents, and the household linen forms part of her trousseau and is marked by her monogram. In describing the furniture of a German flat, you must first decide whether you are going to choose one furnished to-day by a fashionable young woman in Berlin or Hamburg; or one furnished by her parents twenty to twenty-five years ago. Modern German furniture is quite easily suggested to the English imagination, because some of it looks as if the artist had visited our Arts and Crafts Exhibitions and then made his own designs in a nightmare; while some has accepted English inspiration and adapted itself wisely and cleverly to German needs. To-day a German bride will have in her bedroom a wardrobe with a big mirror, a toilet table or chest, a marble-topped washstand and two narrow bedsteads, all of fumed wood. If she has money and understanding the things have probably come from England, not from an emporium, but from one of our artists in furniture whom the Germans know better and value more highly than we do ourselves. But if she has money only she can buy florid pretentious stuff that outdoes in ugliness the worst productions of our "suite" sellers. Her mother, however, probably did without any kind of toilet table or glass in her wardrobe. Twenty years ago you occasionally saw such things in the houses of rich people, but they were quite unusual. A small hanging glass behind the washstand was considered enough for any ordentliche Frau. Nowadays in rare cases the ordentliche Frau actually has silver brushes and powder pots and trinket boxes. But as a rule she still does without such things; she brushes her beautiful hair with an ivory or a wooden brush, and leaves paint and powder to ladies who are presumably not ordentlich. At one time narrow brass or iron bedsteads were introduced from England, and were used a great deal in Germany. I remember seeing one all forlorn in a vast magnificent palace bedroom where a fourposter hung with brocade or tapestry would have looked more at home. But the real old-fashioned bedstead, still much liked and formerly seen everywhere was always of wood, single and with deep sides to hold the heavy box mattress. In Mariana Starcke's Travels in Europe, published in 1833, she says of an inn in Villach, "tall people cannot sleep comfortably here or in any part of Germany; the beds, which are very narrow, being placed in wooden frames or boxes, so short that any person who happened to be above five feet high must absolutely sit up all night supported by pillows; and this, in fact, is the way in which the Germans sleep."

I think this is a statement that will be as surprising to any German who reads it as the statements made by Germans about England have often been to me. It is true, however, that tall people do find the old-fashioned German bedsteads short; and it is true that the big square downy pillows are supported by a wedge-shaped bolster called a Keilkissen. But the Plumeau is what the German loves, and the Briton hates above all things: the mountain of down or feathers that tumbles off on cold nights and stays on on hot ones. You hate it all the year round, because in winter it is too short and in summer it is an oppression. Sometimes the sheet is buttoned to it, and then though you are a traveller you are less than ever content. At the best you never succumb to its attractions. Every spring the good German housewife takes her maid and her Plumeaux to a cleaner and sits there while the feathers are purified by machinery and returned to their bags. In this way she makes sure of getting back her own feathers both in quality and quantity. Except for the Plumeaux and the want of a dressing-table and proper mirror, an ordinary German bedroom is very comfortable and always very clean. However plain it is you can use it partly as a sitting-room, because a sofa and a good sized table in front of it are considered an indispensable part of its furniture. When Germans come to England and have to live in lodgings or poorly furnished inns, the bedrooms seem to them most comfortless and ill provided. The poor Idealist who lived as an exile in London in the early Victorian age describes her forlorn room with nothing in it but a "colossal" bed, a washstand, and a chest of drawers, and though she does not describe them, you who know London from that side can see the half-dirty honey-combed counterpane, the untempting cotton sheets, the worn uncleanly carpet, the grained or painted furniture with doors and drawers that will not shut; and if you know Germany too you must in honesty compare with it the pleasant rooms you have inhabited there for less rent than she paid her Mrs. Quickly,—rooms with cool clean painted floors, solid old dark elm cupboards, and bedsteads that when you had pitched the Plumeau on the floor or the sofa were inviting because they were made with spotless home-spun linen.

What we call the drawing-room used to be extremely chill and formal in Germany, but it has never been as hideously overloaded as English drawing-rooms belonging to people who do not know better. The "suite" of furniture covered with rep or brocade was everywhere, and the rep was frequently grass-green or magenta. There was invariably a sofa and a table in front of the sofa, and a rug or a small carpet under the table. Even in these days this arrangement prevails and must continue to do so while the sofa is considered the place of honour to which the hostess invites her leading guest. If you go to Germany in ignorance of the social importance attached to the sofa, you may blunder quite absurdly and sit down uninvited or when your age or your sex does not entitle you to a seat there. I was once present when an English girl innocently chose a corner of the sofa instead of a chair, though there were older women in the room. The hostess promptly and audibly told her to get up, for she knew it was not an affair to pass off as a joke. In England the question of precedence comes up chiefly at the dinner-table. The host and hostess must send the right people together and place them correctly too. In Germany you have to know as hostess who is to sit on the sofa; and your decision may be complicated by the absurd titles of your guests. For instance, one Frau Direktor may be the wife of a post office official who had a university education, and in Germany a university education counts; while another Frau Direktor, though she can afford better clothes, is merely the wife of the man who manages the factory in the next village. I have heard a story of a Frau Kreisrichter and a Frau Actuar that ended in a life-long feud, and it all turned on a Kaffee Klatsch and the wrong woman on the sofa. It is not easy to know what to do about these ridiculous titles in Germany, because some people insist on them and some laugh at them as much as we do. I once asked a lady who had the best right to know, about using military titles instead of names: Herr Lieutenant, Herr Major, and so on. She was quite explicit. "Mir ist es ein Greuel," she said, and went on to tell me that it was only done as one might expect by people who did not know better, and of course by servants. All the same, it is well to be careful and study the individual case. I know of an American who addressed his professor as Professor Lachs.

"Where are your manners, mein Herr?" said the professor in a fury, "I am Herr Professor Dr. Lachs to every student in this laboratory."

But when it comes to Mrs. Tax-Collector and Mrs. Organist and Mrs. Head Master, and it does come to this quite seriously, it is difficult for the foreigner to appraise values. The length of the titles, too, is a stumbling-block. You may marry a harmless Herr Braun, and in course of time become Frau Wirklichergeheimerober regierungsrath. In this case I don't think your friends would use the whole of your title every time they addressed you; but you would undoubtedly have a seat on the sofa before all the small fry.

On the table in front of the sofa there used always to be a heavy coloured cloth, and then put diamond-wise a light embroidered or lace one. A vase of artificial or real flowers, according to taste, stood exactly in the middle, and a few books in ornamental bindings on either side. There would be very few ornaments, but these few would be good of their kind, though probably hideous. Luckily the family did not assemble here on State occasions. For every-day use there was a Wohnzimmer soberly furnished with solid well made chairs and cupboards. Here the mistress of the house kept her palms, her work-table, and her pet birds. Here her husband smoked his after-dinner cigar and drank his coffee before going to his work again. Here the elder children did their lessons for next day's school, and here at night the family sat round one lamp,—the father smoking, the mother probably mending, the children playing games. For German fathers do not live at the Kneipe. They are occasionally to be found with their families. When the flat was not large enough to furnish a third sitting-room, the dining-room was used in this way. A modern German family still lives in any room rather than the drawing-room, but it has learned how to make a drawing-room attractive. The odious "suite" has been abolished or dispersed, and a lighter, less formal scheme of decoration is making its way. You see charming rooms in Germany nowadays, but they are never quite like English ones, even when your friends point to a wicker chair or an Eastern carpet and tell you that they love everything English and have furnished in the English fashion. In the first place, you do not see piles of magazines and papers or of library books in a German drawing-room. They would be considered scandalously untidy, and put away in a cupboard at once. If there are cut flowers they are not arranged as they are here. On ceremonial occasions and anniversaries great quantities of flowers are presented, but they are mostly wired and probably arranged in a fanciful shape. The favourite shape changes with the season and the fashion of the moment. One year those who wish to honour you and have plenty of money, will send you lyres and harps made of violets, pansies, pinks, cornflowers, any flower that will lend itself meekly to popular design. The favourite design in Berlin one spring was a large flat sofa cushion of Guelder roses with tall sprays of roses or carnations dancing from it. On ordinary occasions market bunches are put into water as an English cottager puts in his flowers, level and tightly packed. But on a festive occasion in a rich man's house you hear of a long dinner table strewn with branches of pink hawthorn and peonies. In fact, a riot of flowers is now considered correct by wealthy people, but you do not find them here and there and everywhere, whether people are wealthy or not, as you do in England. That is partly because there are so few private gardens.

The extreme tidiness of German rooms is a constant source of surprise. They are as guiltless of "litter" as the showrooms of a furniture emporium. You would think that the people who live in them were never employed if you did not know that Germans were never idle. Every bit of embroidery has its use and its own corner. The article now being embroidered is neatly folded inside the work-basket or work-table when it is not in the lady's hands. The one book she is reading will be near. Any other books she possesses will be on shelves, and probably behind glass doors. Each chair has its place, each cushion, each ornament. Even where there are children German rooms never look disarranged. I can truly say I have only once seen a German room untidy and dusty, and that was in a house with no one but a "Mamsell" in charge; and she apologised and explained that it was to be spring cleaned next day. There is, by the way, a curious litter of things kept on a German sideboard in many houses,—coffee machines, silver, useful and ornamental glass, great blue beer jugs, and suchlike; but they are kept there with intention and not by neglectful accident. Then the narrow corridor of a German flat is often uncomfortably choked with articles of household use: lamps, for instance, and a refrigerator, and the safe in which the mistress locks her food; spare cupboards too, and neat piles of papers and magazines. It will be inelegant, but it will be orderly and clean.

It is the way in this country to laugh at the German Hausfrau, and pity her for a drudge; and it is the way with many Germans to talk as if all Englishwomen were pleasure loving and incompetent. The less people know of a foreign nation the greater nonsense they talk in general, and the more cocksure they are about their own opinions. A year ago, when I was in Germany, I asked a friend I could trust if there really was much Anglophobia abroad except in the newspapers. She reflected a little before she answered, for she was honest and intelligent.

"There is none amongst people like ourselves," she said,—"people who know the world a little. But you come across it?" She turned to her husband.

"There are others like G.," she said. "He turns green if anyone speaks of England, and he says Shakespeare is dumm. You see, he has never been out of Germany, and has never met any English people."

So I told her about my English cook, who snorted with scorn when I assured her Germans considered rabbits vermin and would not eat them.

"H ... ph!" she said, "I shouldn't have thought foreigners were so particular."

The average German housewife has to keep the house going on exceedingly small means and with inefficient help. It is her pride and pleasure to make a little go a long way, and she can only achieve this by working with her hands. Probably her servant cannot cook, but she can, and it would never occur to her to let her husband and children eat ill-prepared food because servants do not like ladies in the kitchen. A German lady, like a princess of ancient Greece, considers that it becomes her to do anything she chooses in her own house, and that the most convenient household workshop is the kitchen. The Idealist from whom I have quoted before was the daughter of a well-known German diplomatist, and she had been used since childhood to the atmosphere of Courts. She was an accomplished well-born woman of the world, but she had not been a week in her sordid London lodgings with the woman she calls Mrs. Quickly, before she blundered in her innocent German way—into the lodging-house kitchen. Figure to yourself the stupefaction and the indignation of Mrs. Quickly, probably engaged, though the Idealist does not say so, in dining off the foreign woman's beef. "I went down to the kitchen," says Fraeulein von Meysenbug, "with a muslin gown on my arm to ask for an iron so that I could iron my gown there. The kitchen was Mrs. Quickly's true kingdom; here she alone reigned at the hearth, for the servant was not allowed to approach the saucepans. Mrs. Quickly looked at me with unconcealed astonishment as I came in, but when I proffered my request her astonishment turned to wrath. 'What!' she shrieked, 'a lady ironing in the kitchen? That is impossible.' And with the mien of offended majesty she snatched the gown from me, and ordered the little maid servant to put an iron in the fire and to iron the gown; then she turned to me and said with tragic emphasis, 'You are a foreigner. You don't understand our English ways: we consider it extremely unladylike for a lady to enter the kitchen, and worse still if she wants to iron her own gown. No, ma'am, please to ring the bell when you require anything; otherwise you will ruin my servants.' Much ashamed of my ignorance on this higher plane of English custom," continues the Idealist, "I crept back to my parlour and laughed heartily as I looked round the dirty, wretchedly furnished room, and reflected on the abyss set by prejudice between the ground-floor and the basement."

"How do you like your new German governess?" I once asked an English friend who lived in the country and had just engaged a German lady for her only daughter.

"Oh! I like her," said my friend without enthusiasm. "She is a brilliant musician and a fine linguist and all that. But she has such odd ideas about what a girl ought to know. The other day I actually caught her teaching Patricia to dust."

"If you don't watch her," I said, "she'll probably teach Patricia to cook."

My friend looked anxious first, and then relieved.

"I don't see how she could do that," she said. "The cook would never have them in the kitchen for five minutes. But now you mention it, I believe she can cook. When things go wrong she seems to know what has been done or not done."

"That might be useful," I suggested.

"I don't see it. I expect my cook to know her work, and to do it and not to rely on me. I've other fish to fry."

But the German housewife expects to have her fingers literally in every pie even when by rights they should be employed elsewhere. You hear, for instance, of a great Court functionary whose wife is so devoted to cooking that though she has a large staff of servants she cannot be persuaded to spend the day anywhere but in her kitchen. Mistresses of this kind breed incapable servants, and you find, in fact, that German maids cannot compare with our English ones in qualities of self-reliance, method, and initiative. They mostly expect to be told from hour to hour what to do, and very often to lend a hand to the ladies of the household rather than to do the thing themselves. Indeed, though the servants are on duty from morning till night more than English servants are, in some ways they have an easier time of it than ours, because they are used so much to run errands and go to market. Everyone who has been in German towns can remember the hordes of servants with baskets and big umbrellas strolling in twos and threes along the streets in the early morning. They are never in any hurry to get home to work again, and a good many doubtless know that what they leave undone will be done by their mistress. The German kitchen with its beautiful cleanliness and brightly polished copper pans I have described, but I have not said anything yet about the fidgety housewife who carries her Tuechtigkeit to such a pitch that she ties every wooden spoon and twirler with a coloured ribbon to hang by against the wall. In England you hear of ladies who tie every bottle of scent on the toilet table with a different ribbon, and that really has more sense in it, because it must be trying to a cook's nerves to use spoons tied with delicate ribbons that must not be spoiled. Every housewife has dainty little holders for the handles of saucepans when they are hot. You see them, all different shapes and sizes, on view with the piles of kitchen cloths and the various aprons that form part of every lady's trousseau, and if you have German friends they probably present you with a few from time to time. I have never noticed any pictures in a German kitchen, but there are nearly always Sprueche both in the kitchen, and the dining-room and sometimes in the hall: rhyming maxims that are done in poker work or painted on wood and hung in conspicuous positions—

"Wie die Kueche so das Haus, Reinlich drinnen, reinlich draus"

is a nice one; and so is

"Trautes Heim Glueck allein."

There was one in the Lette-Haus or some other big institution about an hour in the morning being worth several hours later in the day, which would prick our English consciences more sharply than it can most German ones, for they are a nation of early risers. Schools and offices all open so early that a household must of necessity be up betimes to feed its menfolk and children with bread and coffee before their day's work. In most German towns the tradespeople do not call for orders, but they do in Hamburg; and a friend born there told me in a whisper, so that her husband should not hear the awful confession, that she would never be a good "provider" in consequence. She went to market regularly, for many housewives will not delegate this most important business to a cook, but she had not the same eye for a tough goose or a poor fish, perhaps not the same backbone for a bargain, as a housewife used from childhood to these sorties. In some towns the butcher calls over night for orders. The baker's boy brings rolls before anyone is up, and hangs them outside the flat in one of two bags every household possesses. After the early breakfast either the mistress or the cook fetches what is required for the day.

When the good German housewife is not in her kitchen, English tradition believes her to be at her linen cupboard.

"I am going to write a humble little gossiping book about German Home Life," I said to a learned but kindly professor last spring.

"German Home Life," he said, rather aghast at my daring, for we had only just made each other's acquaintance, and I believe he thought that this was my first visit to Germany and that I had been there a week. "It is a wide field," he went on. "However ... if you want to understand our Home Life ... just look at that...."

We were having tea together in the dining-room in his wife's absence, and he suddenly got up from table and threw back both doors of an immense cupboard occupying the longest wall in the room. I gazed at the sight before me, and my thoughts were too deep for words. It was a small household, I knew. It comprised, in fact, the professor, his beautiful young wife, and one small maid-servant; and for their happiness they possessed all this linen: shelf upon shelf, pile upon pile of linen, exactly ordered, tied with lemon coloured ribbons, embroidered beyond doubt with the initials of the lady who brought it here as a bride. The lady, it may as well be said, is a celebrated musician who passes a great part of each winter fulfilling engagements away from home. "But what happens to the linen cupboard when you are away?" I asked her, later, for it was grievous to think of any servant, even a "pearl," making hay of those ordered shelves. "I come home for a few days in between and set things to rights again," she explained; and then, seeing that I was interested, she admitted that she had put up and made every blind and curtain, and had even carpentered and upholstered an empire sofa in her drawing-room. She showed me each cupboard and corner of the flat, and I saw everywhere the exquisite order and spotlessness the notable German housewife knows how to maintain. We even peeped into the professor's dressing-room.

"He must be a very tidy man," I said, sighing and reflecting that he could not be as other men are. "Do you never have to set things to rights here?"

"Every half hour," she said.

These enormous quantities of linen that are still the housewife's pride used to be necessary when house and table linen were only washed twice a year. A German friend who entertained a large party of children and grandchildren every week, pointed out to me that she used eighteen or twenty dinner napkins each time they came, and that when washing day arrived at the end of six months even her supply was nearly exhausted. The soiled linen was stored meanwhile in an attic at the top of the house. The wash itself and the drying and ironing all took place up there with the help of a hired laundress. In most German cities this custom of washing at home still prevails, but in these days it is usually done once a month. The large attics that serve as laundries are engaged for certain days by the families living in the house, and one servant assisted for one day by a laundry woman washes and irons all the house and body linen used by her employers and herself in four weeks. It sounds impossible, but in Germany nothing involving hard work is impossible. All the differences of life between England and Germany, in as far as expenses are concerned, seem to come to this in the end: that over there both men and women will work harder for less money. On the monthly washing day the ladies of the household do the cooking and housework, and on the following day they help to fold the clothes and iron them.

"I am very tired," confessed a little maid-servant who had been sent out at night to show me where to find a tram. "We got up at four o'clock this morning, and have been ironing all day. My mistress gets up as early, and works as hard as I do. She is very tuechtig, and where there are four children and only one servant there is a good deal to do."

Yet her mistress had asked me to supper, I reflected, and everything had been to time and well cooked and served. The rooms had looked as neat and orderly as usual. The Hausfrau had entertained me as pleasantly as if she had no reason to feel tired. We had talked of English novels, and of the invasion of England by Germany; for her husband was a soldier, and another guest present was a soldier too. The men had talked seriously, for they were as angry with certain English newspapers as we are over here with certain German ones. But the Hausfrau and I had laughed.

"When they come, I'm coming with them," she said.

"We will receive you with open arms," said I.



CHAPTER XIV

SERVANTS

The first thing that English people notice about German servants is, that they are allowed to dress anyhow, and that the results are most unpleasing. In Hamburg, the city that gives you ox-tail soup for dinner and has sirloins of beef much like English sirloins, the maids used to wear clean crackling, light print gowns with elbow sleeves. This was their full dress in which they waited at table, and fresh looking country girls from Holstein and thereabouts looked very well in it. This costume is being superseded in Hamburg to-day by the English livery of a black frock with a white cap and apron. But in other German cities, in the ordinary middle-class household, the servants wear what they choose on all occasions. In most places they are as fond of plaids as their betters, and in a house where everything else is methodical and well arranged, you will find the dishes plumped on the table by a young woman wearing a tartan blouse decidedly decolletee, and ornamented with a large cheap lace collar. I have dined with people whose silver, glass, and food were all luxurious; while the girl who waited on us wore a red and white checked blouse, a plaid neck-tie with floating ends, and an enormous brooch of sham diamonds. In South Germany the servants wear a great deal of indigo blue: stuff skirts of plain blue woollen, with blouses and aprons of blue cotton that has a small white pattern on it. Some ladies keep smart white aprons to lend their servants on state occasions, but the laciest apron will not do much for a girl in a sloppy coloured blouse with a plaid neck-tie. But these same girls who look such slovens usually have stores of tidy well-made body linen and knitted stockings. In England a servant of the better class will not be seen out of doors in her working-dress. "In London," says the Idealist in her Memoirs, "no woman of the people, no servant-girl will stir a step from the house without a hat on her head, and this is one of the ugliest of English prejudices. While the clean white cap worn by a French maid looks pretty and suitable, the Englishwoman's hat which makes her "respectable" is odious, for it is usually dirty, out of shape, and trimmed with faded flowers and ribbons." It gives me pleasure to quote this criticism made by an observant German on our English servants, partly because it is true, and it is good for us to hear it, and partly because it encourages me to continue my criticism of German as compared with English servants. For it ought to be possible to criticise without giving offence. The Idealist has a very poor opinion of English lodging-house bedrooms and lodging-house keepers, and she states her opinion quite plainly, but I cannot imagine that anyone in this country would be hurt by what she says. On the contrary, it is amusing to find the ills from which most of us have suffered at times recognised by the stranger within our gates. None of us admire the battered tawdry finery we see in our streets every day, and I cannot believe that German ladies admire the shocking garments in which their servants will come to the door and wait at table. But though these clothes are sloppy looking and unsuitable, they are never ragged; and the girl who puts on an impossible tie and blouse will also wear an impeccable long white apron with an embroidered monogram you can see across the room. In most towns servants go shopping or to market with a large basket and an umbrella. They do not consider a hat or a stuff gown necessary, for they are not in the least ashamed of being servants. Some years ago they made no attempt to dress like ladies when they went out for themselves, and even now what they do in this way is a trifle compared to the extravagant get-up of an English cook or parlour-maid on a Sunday afternoon. A German girl in service is always saving with might and main to buy her Aussteuer, and as she gets very low wages it takes her a long time. She needs about L30, so husbands are not expensive in Germany in that class. German servants get less wages than ours, and work longer hours. Speaking out of my own experience, I should say that they were indefatigable, amiable, and inefficient. They will do anything in the world for you, but they will not do their own work in a methodical way. A lady whose uncle at one time occupied an important diplomatic post in London, told me that her aunt was immensely surprised to find that every one of her English servants knew his or her work and did it without supervision, but that none of them would do anything else. The German lady, not knowing English ways, used to make the mistake at first of asking a servant to do what she wanted done instead of what the servant had engaged to do; but she soon found that the first housemaid would rather leave than fill a matchbox it was the second housemaid's "place" to fill; and what surprised her most was to find that her English friends sympathised with the housemaids and not with her. "We believe in everyone minding his own business," they said.

"We believe that it is the servant's business to do what his employer wants," says the German.

"You must tell him what you want when you engage him," you say. "Then he can take your place or leave it."

"But that is impossible ... Unsinn ... Quatsch...." says the German indignantly. "How can I tell what I shall want my servant to do three months hence on a Monday morning. Das hat keinen Zweck."

"I know exactly what each one of my servants will do three months hence on a Monday morning," you say. "It is quite easy. You plan it all out...."

But you will never agree. The German has his or rather her own methods, and you will always think her unmethodical but thrifty and knowledgeable, and she will always think you extravagant and ignorant, but "chic," and on these terms you may be quite good friends. In most German households there is no such thing as the strict division of labour insisted on here. Your cook will be delighted to make a blouse for you, and your nurse will turn out the dining-room, and your chambermaid will take the child for an airing. They are more human in their relation to their employers. The English servant fixes a gulf between herself and the most democratic mistress. The German servant brings her intimate joys and sorrows to a good Herrschaft, and expects their sympathy. When a girl has bad luck and engages with a bad Herrschaft she is worse off than in England, partly because when German housekeeping is mean it sounds depths of meanness not unknown, but extremely rare here; and also because a German servant is more in the power of her employers and of the police than an English one. Anyone who has read Klara Viebig's remarkable novel, Das Taegliche Brot (a story of servant life in Berlin) will remember the mistress who kept every bit of dainty food under lock and key, and fed the kitchen on soup-meat all the year round. The chambermaid gives way in a moment of hunger and temptation, manages to get the key, and is discovered by the worthless son of the house stealing cakes. He threatens her with exposure if she will not listen to his love-making. Even if there was no son and no love-making, a girl who once steals cakes in Germany may go from place to place branded as a thief. Because every servant has to have a Dienstbuch, which is under the control of the police, and has to be shown to them whenever she leaves her situation. There is no give and take of personal character in Germany. Ladies do not see the last lady with whom a girl has lived. They advertise or they go to a registry office where servants are waiting to be engaged. In Berlin every third house seems to be a registry office, and you hear as many complaints of the people who keep them as you hear here. So the government has set up a large Public Registry in Charlottenberg, where both sides can get what they want without paying fees. But servants are not as scarce in Germany yet as they are here and in America. German ladies tell you they are scarce, but it is only true in comparison with a former state of things. In comparison with London, servants are still plentiful in Germany. When a lady finds a likely looking girl at an office, she either engages her at once on the strength of the good character in her Dienstbuch, or, if she is very particular, she takes her home and discusses things with her there. The engagement is not completed until the lady has filled in several forms for police inspection; while the servant has to take her Dienstbuch to the police station both when she leaves and when she enters a situation. It is hardly necessary to say that when a girl does anything seriously bad, and her employers record it in the book, the book gets "lost." Then the police interfere and make things extremely disagreeable for the girl. A friend told me that in the confusion of a removal her own highly valued servant lost her Dienstbuch, or rather my friend lost it, for employers usually keep it while a girl is in their service; and though she took the blame on herself, and explained that the book was lost, the police were most offensive about it. In the end the book was found, so I am not in a position to say what penalties my friend and her maid would have incurred if they had never been able to produce it. But Germans have often told me that servants as a class have real good reason to complain of police insolence and brutality. Here is an entry from a German servant's Dienstbuch, with nothing altered but the names. On the first page you found the following particulars:—

GESINDE-DIENSTBUCH

Fuer Anna Schmidt. Aus Rheinbeck. Alt Geb. 20 Juni 1885. Statur Schlank. Augen Grau. Nase } Gewoehnlich. Mund } Haare Dunkelblond. Besondere Merkmale

Official stamp. (Official signature of Amtsvorsteher.)

Then came the record of her previous situations:—

Key: A: NR. B: NAME, STAND, UND WOHNUNG DER DIENERSCHAFT C: INHABER IST ANGENOMMEN ALS D: TAG DES DIENSTANTRITTS E: TAG DES DIENSTAUSTRITTS F: GRUND DES DIENSTAUSTRITTS UND DIENSTABSCHIEDS—ZEUGNISS G: BEGLAUBIGUNG UND BEMERKUNG DER POLIZEI-BEHOeRDE

+ + + -+ -+ + + - A B C D E F G + + + -+ -+ + + - 1 Wittwe Dienstmagd Den 20ten Den 2ten Veraenderung Gesehen Auguste Oktober Januar halber. Knoblauch 1901 1902 Betragen (Place and gut date, with official stamp and signature) 2 Boretzky, Dienstmaedchen Den 2ten Den 2ten Wird entlassen Gesehen Restaurant Februar Oktober weil ihr zur Post, 1902 1904 Benehmen mir (Place and Baerenstrasse nicht mehr date, with 2 passt. Sonst official fleissig und stamp and ehrlich signature) + + + -+ -+ + + -

It will be seen that the characters given tell nothing about a servant's qualities and knowledge; while the vague complaint that Anna Schmidt's behaviour no longer suited her mistress might mean anything or nothing. In this case it meant that a son of the house had annoyed the girl with his attentions, and she had in consequence treated him with some brusquerie. But ten minutes' talk with a lady who knows the best and the worst of a servant is worth any Dienstbuch in Germany. And when English servants write to the Times and ask to have the same system here, I always wonder how they would like their failings sent with them from place to place in black and white; every fresh start made difficult, and every bad trait recorded against them as long as they earn their daily bread.

Wages are much lower in Germany than here. Some years ago you could get a good cook for from L7 to L12, but those days are past. Now you hear of a general servant getting from L10 to L12, and a good plain cook from L15 upwards. These are servants who would get from L22 to L30 in England, and more in America. But the wages of German servants are supplemented at Christmas by a system of tips and presents that has in course of time become extortionate. Germans groan under it, but every nation knows how hard it is to depart from one of these traditional indefinite customs. The system is hateful, because it is neither one of free gift nor of business-like payment, but hovers somewhere between and gives rise to much friction and discontent. In a household account book that a friend allowed me to see I found the following entry. "Christmas present for the servant. 30 marks in money. Bed linen, 9.50. Pincushion, 1.5. Five small presents. In all 42 marks. Was not contented." This was a general servant in a family of two occupying a good social position, but living as so many Germans do on a small income. But then the servant's wages for doing the work of a large well-furnished, well-kept flat was L14, and these same friends told me that servants now expect to get a quarter of their wages in money and presents at Christmas. A German servant gets a great deal more help from her mistress, and is more directly under her superintendence, than she would be in a household of the same social standing in this country. I have heard an English lady say that when she had asked people to dinner she made it a rule to go out all day, because if she did not her servants worried her with questions about extra silver and other tiresome details. All the notable housewives in England will say that this lady was a "freak," and must not be held up to the world as an English type. But I think there is something of her spirit in many Englishwomen. They engage their servants to do certain work, and hold them responsible. The German holds herself responsible for every event and every corner in her husband's house, and she never for a moment closes her eyes and lets go the reins. The servants are used to working hand in hand with the ladies of the household, and do not regard the kitchen as a department belonging exclusively to themselves after an early hour in the morning.

"Why did you leave your last place?" you say to an English cook applying for yours.

"Because the lady was always in the kitchen," she replies quite soberly and civilly. "I don't like to see ladies in my kitchen at all hours of the day. It is impossible to get on with the work."

But in Germany the kitchen is not the cook's kitchen. It belongs to the people who maintain it, and they enter it when they please. It is always so spick and span that you sigh as you see it, because you think of your own kitchen at home with its black pans and unpleasant looking sink. There are no black pans in a German kitchen; you never see any grease, and you never by any chance see a teacloth or a duster with a hole in it. An English kitchen in a small household is furnished with more regard to the comfort of the servants than a German one, and with less concern for the work to be done there. We supply comfortable chairs, a coloured table-cloth, oil-cloth, books, hearth-rug, pictures, cushions, inkstand, and a roaring fire. The German kitchen lacks all these things. It does not look as if the women who live in it ever expected to pursue their own business, or rest for an hour in an easy chair. But the shining brightness of it rejoices you,—every vessel is of wood, earthenware, enamel, or highly polished metal, and every one of them is scrupulously clean. The groceries and pudding stuffs are kept in fascinating jars and barrels, like those that come to children at Christmas in toy kitchens made in Germany. The stove is a clean, low hot table at which you can stand all day without getting black and greasy. In this sensible spotless workshop a German servant expects to be busy from morning till night. Neither for herself nor for her fellow-servants will she ever set a table for a tidy kitchen meal. She eats anywhere and anywhen, as the fancy takes her and the exigencies of the day permit. Her morning meal will consist of coffee and rye bread without butter. In the middle of the morning she will have a second breakfast, rye bread again with cheese or sausage. In a liberal household she will dine as the family dines; in a stingy one she will fare worse than they. In an old-fashioned household her portion will be carved for her in the dining-room, because the joint will not return to the kitchen when the family has done with it, but be placed straightway in the Speiseschrank under lock and key. In the afternoon she will have bread and coffee again, and for supper as a rule what the family has, sausage or ham or some dish made with eggs. One friend who goes out so much with her husband that they are rarely at home to supper, told me that she made her servant a monthly allowance to buy what she liked for supper. German servants are allowed coffee and either beer or wine, but they are never given tea. Except for the scarcity of butter in middle-class households, they live very well.

They go out on errands and to market a great deal, but they do not go out as much for themselves as our servants do. A few hours every other Sunday still contents them in most places. Their favourite amusement is the cheap public ball, and the careful German householder is actually in the habit of trusting the key of the flat to his maid-of-all-work, and allowing her to return at any hour of the night she pleases. This at any rate is the custom in Berlin and some other large German towns, and the evil results of such a system are manifold. Over and over again burglaries have been traced to it. One beguiling man engages your maid to dance and sup with him, while his confederate gets hold of her key and comfortably rifles your rooms. On the girls themselves these entertainments are said to have the worst possible influence, and most sensible Germans would put a stop to them if they could.

You must not expect in Germany to have hot water brought to you at regular intervals as you do in every orderly English household. The Germans have a curious notion that English life is quite uniform, and all English people exactly alike. One man, a notably wise man too, said to me that if he knew one English family he knew ten thousand. Another German told me that this account of German life would be impossible to write, because one part of Germany differed from the other part; but that a German could easily write the same kind of book about England, because from Land's End to John o' Groats we were so many peas in a pod. To us who live in England and know the differences between the Cornish and the Yorkshire people, for instance, or the Welsh and the East Anglians, this seems sheer nonsense. I have tried to understand how Germans arrive at it, and I believe it is by way of our cans of hot water brought at regular intervals every day in the year in every British household. I remember that their machine-like precision impressed M. Taine when he was in England, and certainly miss them sadly while we are abroad. Gretchen brings you no hot water unless you ask for it; but she will brush your clothes as a matter of course, though she does all the work of the household. She will, however, be hurt and surprised if you do not press a small coin into her hand at the end of each week, and one or two big ones at parting. One friend told me that when she stayed with her family at a German hotel her German relatives told her she should give the chambermaid a tip that was equal to 20 pf. for each pair of boots cleaned during their stay. It seems an odd way of reckoning, because the chambermaid does not clean boots. However, the tip came to L3, which seems a good deal and helps to explain the ease with which German servants save enough for their marriage outfit on small wages. It is usual also to tip the servant where you have supped or dined. Your opportunity probably comes when she precedes you down the unlighted stairs with a lantern or a candle to the house door. But you need not be at all delicate about your opportunity. You see the other guests make little offerings, and you can only feel that the money has been well earned when you have eaten the elaborate meal she has helped to cook, and has afterwards served to you.

Domestic servants come under the law in Germany that obliges all persons below a certain income to provide for their old age. The Post Office issues cards and 20 pf. stamps, and one of these stamps must be dated and affixed to the card every Monday. Sometimes the employers buy the cards and stamps, and show them at the Post Office once a month; sometimes they expect the servant to pay half the money required. Women who go out by the day to different families get their stamps at the house they work in on Mondays. If a girl marries she may cease to insure, and may have a sum of money towards her outfit. In that case she will receive no Old Age Pension. But if she goes on with her insurance she will have from 15 to 20 marks a month from the State after the age of 70. In cases of illness, employers are legally bound to provide for their domestic servants during the term of notice agreed on. At least this is so in Prussia, and the term varies from a fortnight to three months. In some parts of Germany servants are still engaged by the quarter, but in Berlin it has become unusual of late years. The obligation to provide for illness is often a heavy tax on employers, especially in cases when the illness has not been caused by the work or the circumstances of the situation, but by the servant's own carelessness and folly. Most householders in Berlin subscribe 7.50 a year to an insurance company, a private undertaking that provides medical help, and when necessary sends the invalided servant to a hospital and maintains her there. It even pays for any special food or wine ordered by its own doctor.

One cause of ill health amongst German servants must often be the abominable sleeping accommodation provided for them in old-fashioned houses. It is said that rooms without windows opening to the air are no longer allowed in Germany, and there may be a police regulation against them. Even this cannot have been issued everywhere, for not long ago I had a large well furnished room of this kind offered me in a crowded hotel. It had windows, but they opened on to a narrow corridor. The proprietor was quite surprised when I said I would rather have a room at the top of the house with a window facing the street. I know a young lady acting as Stuetze der Hausfrau who slept in a cupboard for years, the only light and air reaching her coming from a slit of glass over the door. I remember the consumptive looking daughter of a prosperous tradesman showing us some rooms her father wished to let, and suggesting that a cupboard off a sitting-room would make a pleasant study. She said she slept in one just like it on a higher floor. Of course she called it a Kammer and not a cupboard, but that did not make it more inviting. Over and over again I have known servants stowed away in holes that seemed fit for brooms and brushes, but not for creatures with lungs and easily poisoned blood. This is one of the facts of German life that makes comparison between England and Germany so difficult and bewildering. Everyone knowing both countries is struck by the amount of State and police surveillance and interference the Germans enjoy compared with us. I do not say "endure," because Germans would not like it. Most of them approve of the rule they are used to, and they tell us we live in a horrid go-as-you-please fashion with the worst results. I suppose we do. But I have never known an English servant put to sleep in a cupboard, though I have heard complaints of damp fireless rooms, especially in old historical palaces and houses. And I have never been offered a room in a good English inn that had no windows to the open air. These windowless rooms may be forbidden as bedrooms by the German police, but it would take a bigger earthquake than the empire is likely to sustain to do away with those still in use.



CHAPTER XV

FOOD

Although the Germans as a nation are large eaters, they begin their day with the usual light continental breakfast of coffee and rolls. In households where economy is practised it is still customary to do without butter, or at any rate to provide it only for the master of the house and for visitors. In addition to rolls and butter, you may, if you are a man or a guest, have two small boiled eggs; but eggs in a German town are apt to remind you of the Viennese waiter who assured a complaining customer that their eggs were all stamped with the day, month, and year. Home-made plum jam made with very little sugar is often eaten instead of butter by the women of the family; and the servants, where white rolls are regarded as a luxury, have rye bread. No one need pity them on this account, however, as German rye bread is as good as bread can be. Ordinary London household bread is poor stuff in comparison with it. The white rolls and butter are always excellent too, and I would even say a good word for the coffee. To be sure, Mark Twain makes fun of German coffee in the Tramp Abroad: says something about one chicory berry being used to a barrel of water; but the poorest German coffee is better than the tepid muddy mixture you get at all English railway stations, and at most English hotels and private houses. Milk is nearly always poor in Germany, but whipped cream is often added to either coffee or chocolate.

The precision that is so striking in the arrangement of German rooms is generally lacking altogether in the serving of meals. The family does not assemble in the morning at a table laid as in England with the same care for breakfast as it will be at night for dinner. It dribbles in as it pleases, arrayed as it pleases, drinks a cup of coffee, eats a roll and departs about its business. Formerly the women of the family always spent the morning in a loose gown, and wore a cap over their undressed hair. This fashion, Germans inform you, is falling into desuetude; but it falls slowly. Take an elderly German lady by surprise in the morning, and you will still find her in what fashion journals call a neglige, and what plain folk call a wrapper. When it is of shepherd's plaid or snuff-coloured wool it is not an attractive garment, and it is always what the last generation but one, with their blunt tongues, called "slummocking." Most German women are busy in the house all the morning, and when they are not going to market they like to get through their work in this form of dress and make themselves trim for the day later. The advantage claimed for the plan is one of economy. The tidy costume worn later in the day is saved considerable wear and tear. The obvious disadvantage is the encouragement it offers to the sloven. In England whatever you are by nature you must in an ordinary household be down to breakfast at a fixed hour, presentably dressed; at any rate, with your hair done for the day, and, it is to be supposed, with your bath accomplished. Directly you depart from this you open the door to anything in the dressing-gown and slipper way, to lying abed like a sluggard, and to a waste of your own and the servants' time that undermines the whole welfare of a home. At least, this is how the question presents itself to English eyes. Meanwhile the continent continues to drink its coffee attired in dressing-gowns, and to survive quite comfortably. In every trousseau you still see some of these confections, and on the stage the young wife who has to cajole her husband in the coming scene usually appears in a coquettish one. But then it will not be made of shepherd's plaid or snuff-coloured wool.

The dinner hour varies so much in Germany that it is impossible to fix an hour for it. In country places you will find everyone sitting down at midday, in towns one o'clock is usual, in Hamburg five is the popular hour, in Berlin you may be invited anywhen. But unless people dine at twelve they have some kind of second breakfast, and this meal may correspond with the French dejeuner, or it may be even more informal than the morning coffee. It consists in many places of a roll or slice of bread with or without a shaving of meat or sausage. Servants have it, children take it to school, charitable institutions supply the bread without the meat to their inmates. In South Germany all the men and many women drink beer or wine with this light meal, but in Prussia most people are content with a belegtes Butterbrot, a roll cut in two, buttered, and spread with meat or sausage or smoked fish. This carries people on till one or two o'clock, when the chief meal of the day is served.

All over Germany dinner begins with soup, and in most parts the soup is followed by the Ochsenfleisch that made it. At least Ochsenfleisch should make it by rights.

"I know what this is," said an old German friend, prodding at a tough slice from a dish we all found uneatable. "This is not Ochsenfleisch at all. This is cow."

Good gravy or horseradish sauce is served with it, whether it is ox or cow, and for a time you take a slice day after day without complaining. It is the persistence of the thing that wears you out in the end. You must be born to Ochsenfleisch to eat it year in and year out as if it was bread or potatoes. It does not appear as regularly in North as in South Germany; and in Hamburg you may once in a way have dinner without soup. People who know Germany find this almost beyond belief, but Hamburg has many little ways of its own, and is a city with a strong individual character. It is extremely proud of its cooking and its food, and it has every right to be. I once travelled with two Germans who in a heated way discussed the comparative merits of various German cities. They could not agree, and they could not let the matter drop. At last one man got the best of it. "I tell you that Hamburg is the finest city in Germany," he said. "In a Hamburg hotel I once ate the best steak I ever ate in my life." The other man had nothing to say to that. Hamburg has a splendid fish supply, and Holstein brings her quantities of fruit and of farm produce. Your second breakfast there is like a French dejeuner, a meal served and prepared according to your means, but a regular meal and not a mere snack. You drink coffee after it, and so sustain life till five o'clock, when you dine. Then you drink coffee again, and as your dinner has probably been an uncommonly good one you only need a light supper at nine o'clock, when a tray will arrive with little sandwiches and slender bottles of beer. In North Germany, where wine is scarce and dear, it is hardly ever seen in many households, so that a young Englishman wanting to describe his German friends, divided them for convenience into wine people and beer people. The wine people were plutocrats, and had red or white Rhine wine every day for dinner. I probably need not tell my well-informed country people that Germans never speak of hock.

In households where the chief meal of the day is at one or two o'clock there is afternoon tea or coffee. It used invariably to be coffee, good hot coffee and fresh rusks and dainty little Hoernchen and Radankuchen, an excellent light cake baked in a twisty tin. German cakes want a whole chapter to themselves to do them justice, and they should have it if it were not for a dialogue that frequently takes place in a family well known to me. The wife is of German origin, but as she has an English husband and English servants she keeps house in the English way. Therefore mutton cold or hashed is her frequent portion.

"How I hate hashed mutton," she sometimes says.

"Why do you have it, then?" says the husband, who has a genius for asking apparently innocent but really provoking questions.

"What else can I have?" says the wife.

"Eel in jelly," says the husband. He once tasted it in Berlin, and it must have given him a mental shock; for whenever his wife approaches him with a domestic difficulty, asks him, for instance, what he would like for breakfast, he suggests this inaccessible and uninviting dish.

"There is never anything to eat in England except mutton and apple-tart," says the wife. "Your plain cooks can't cook anything else. They can't cook those really. Think of a German apple-tart—"

"Why should I? I don't want one."

"That's the hopeless part of it. You are all content with what Daudet called your abominable cuisine. I thank him for the phrase. It is descriptive."

"Oh, well," says the husband, "we're not a greedy nation."

So if this is the English point of view the less said about cakes the better. And anyhow, it is in this country that afternoon tea is an engaging meal. Berlin offers you tea nowadays, but it is never good, and instead of freshly cut bread and butter they have horrid little chokey biscuits flavoured with vanilla. Old-fashioned Germans used to put a bit of vanilla in the tea-pot when they had guests they delighted to honour, but they all know better than that nowadays. The milk is often boiled milk, but even that scarcely explains why tea is so seldom fit to drink in Germany. Supper is a light meal in most houses. The English mutton bone is never seen, for when cold meat is eaten it is cut in neat slices and put on a long narrow dish. But there is nearly always something from the nearest Delikatessen shop with it,—slices of ham or tongue, or slices of one or two of the various sausages of Germany: Blutwurst, Mettwurst, Schinkenwurst, Leberwurst, all different and all good. When a hot dish is served it is usually a light one, often an omelette or some other preparation of eggs; and in spring eggs and bits of asparagus are a great deal cooked together in various ways: not asparagus heads so often as short lengths of the stalk sold separately in the market, and quite tender when cooked. There is nearly always a salad with the cold meat or a dish of the salted cucumbers that make such a good pickle. The big loaves of light brown rye bread appear at this meal instead of the little white rolls eaten at breakfast. Beer or wine is drunk, and very often of late years tea as well. Sweets are not usually served at supper, unless guests are present. They are eaten at the midday dinner, and each part of Germany has its own favourite dishes.

Soups are nearly always good in Germany, and some of the best are not known in England. The dried green corn so much used for soup in South Germany can, however, be bought in London from the German provision merchants, so at the end of this greedy chapter I will give a recipe for making it. Nudelsuppe of strong chicken stock and home-made Nudeln used to be what the Berliner called his roast goose—"eine jute Jabe Jottes," but the degenerate Germans of to-day buy tasteless manufactured Nudeln instead of rolling out their own. Nudeln are the German form of macaroni, but when properly made they are better than any macaroni can be. If you have been brought up in an old-fashioned German menage, and, as a child likes to do, peeped into the kitchen sometimes, you will remember seeing large sheets of something as thin and yellow as chamois leather hung on a clothes horse to dry. Then you knew that there would be Nudeln for your dinner, either narrow ones in soup, or wider ones boiled in water and sprinkled with others cut as fine as vermicelli and fried brown in butter. The paste is troublesome to make. It begins with a deceptive simplicity. Take four whole eggs and four tablespoonsful of milk if you want enough for ten people, says the cookery book, and make a light dough of it with a knife in a basin. Anyone can do that, you find. But then you must put your dough on the pastry board, and work in more flour as you knead it with your hands. "The longer you knead and the stiffer the dough is the better your Nudeln will be," continues the cookery book. But the next operation is to cut the dough into four, and roll out each portion as thin as paper, and no one who has not seen German Nudeln before they are cooked can believe that this is actually done. It is no use to give the rest of the recipe for drying them, rolling each piece loosely and cutting it into strips and boiling them with salt in water. If you told your English cook to make you Nudeln she would despise it for a foreign mess, and bring you something as thick as a pancake. If you want them you had better get them in a box from a provision merchant, as the Hausfrau herself does nowadays.

English people often say that there is no good meat to be had in Germany. I would say that there is no good mutton, and a great deal of poor coarse beef. But the Filetbraten that you can get from the best butchers is excellent. It is a long roll of undercut of beef, so long that it seems to be sold by the yard. If you cook it in the English way, says my German cookery book, you rub it well with salt and pepper and baste it with butter; while the gravy is made with flour, mushrooms, cream, and extract of beef. I should like to see the expression of the English plain cook if she was told to baste her beef with butter and make her gravy for it with mushrooms. I once came back from Germany with a new idea for gravy, and tried it on a cook who seemed to think that gravy was made by upsetting a kettle over a joint and then adding lumps of flour.

"My sister's cook always puts an onion in the tin with a joint," I said tentatively, for I was not very hopeful. I know that there is always some insuperable objection to anything not consecrated by tradition.

"It gives the gravy a flavour," I went on,—"not a strong flavour"—

I stopped. I waited for the objection.

"We couldn't do that HERE," said the cook.

"Why not?—We have tins and we have onions."

"It would spoil the dripping. What could I do with dripping as tasted of onion?"

I had never thought of that, and so I had never asked my sister what was done in her household with dripping as tasted with onion.

"I should think," I said slowly, "that it could be used to baste the next joint."

"Then that would taste of onion," said the cook, "and I should have no dripping when I wanted it."

I have always thought dripping a dull subject, and I know that it is an explosive one, so I said nothing more. I went on instead to describe a piece of beef stewed in its own juices on a bed of chopped vegetables. We actually tried that, and when it was cold it tasted agreeably of the vegetables, and was as tender to carve as butter.

"How did you like the German beef?" I said to an Englishwoman who had been with me a great many years.

"I didn't like it at all, M'm."

"But it was so tender."

"Yes, M'm, it made me creep," she said.

So this chapter is really of no use from one point of view. You may hear what queer things benighted people like the Germans eat and drink, but you will never persuade your British household to condescend to them.

Except in the coast towns, sea fish is scarce and dear all over Germany. Salt fish and fresh-water fish are what you get, and except the trout it is not interesting. A great deal of carp is eaten, cooked with vinegar to turn it blue, and served with horseradish or wine sauce. At a dinner party I have seen tench given, and they were extremely pretty, like fish in old Italian pictures, but they were not worth eating. At least a pound of fresh butter was put on each dish of them, handed round, and you took some of it as well as a sort of mustard sauce. Perch, pike, and eel are all eaten where nothing better is to be had; but the standing fish-course of inland Germany is trout. Most hotels have a tank where they keep it alive till it is wanted, and in the Black Forest the peasants catch it and peddle it, walking miles to make good sales. We went into the garden of our hotel in the Wiesenthal one day, and found the basin of the fountain there crammed with live trout. It was so full that you could take one in your hand for a moment and look at its speckles, as lovely as the speckles on a thrush's breast. The man who was carrying them on his back in a wooden water-tight satchel was having a drink, and he had put out his fish for a drink while he rested. I have never been within reach of fresh herrings in Germany, and have never seen them there, but smoked ones are eaten everywhere, often with salad, or together with smoked ham and potatoes in their jackets. Neither the ham nor the herrings are ever cooked when they have been smoked, and the ham is very tough in consequence. The breast of a goose, too, is eaten smoked but not cooked, and is considered a great delicacy. Poultry varies in quality a good deal. Everyone knows the little chickens that come round at hotel dinners, all legs and bones. A German family will sit down contentedly to an old hen that the most economical of us would only use for soup, and they will serve it roasted though it is as tough as leather. I think it must be said that you get better fowls both in France and England than in Germany. The German national bird is the goose. In England, if you buy a goose your cook roasts it and sends it up, and that is all you ever know of it. In Germany a goose is a carnival, rather as a newly killed pig is in an English farmhouse. You begin with a stew of the giblets, you perhaps continue with the bird itself roasted and stuffed with chestnuts, you may have a dozen different dishes made of its remains, while the fat that has basted it you hoard and use sparingly for weeks. For instance, you cook a cabbage with a little of it instead of with water. In South Germany, goose livers are prepared with it, and are just as much liked as pate de foie gras.

Hares are eaten and most carefully prepared in Germany. They are skinned in a way that an English poulterer has been known to learn from his German customers and pronounce very troublesome, and the back is usually served separately, larded and basted with sour cream. Vegetables are cooked less simply than in England, and you will find the two countries disagree heatedly about them. The Englishman does not want his peas messed up with grease and vinegar, and though he will be too polite to say so, he will silently agree with his plain cook who says that peas served in the pod is a dish only fit for pigs and what she has never been accustomed to; while the German will get quite dejected over the everlasting plain boiled cabbage and potatoes he is offered week after week in his English boarding-house. At home, he says, he is used to mountains of fat asparagus all the spring, and he thinks slightly of your skinny green ones or of the wooden stuff you import and pay less for because it is "foreign." He likes potatoes cooked in twenty various ways, and when mashed he is of opinion that they should not be black or lumpy. He wants a dozen different vegetables dished up round one joint of beef, and in summer salads of various kinds on various occasions, and not your savage mixed salad with a horrible sauce poured out of a bottle; furniture polish he believes it to be from its colour. In the autumn he expects chestnuts cooked with gravy and vegetables, or made into light puddings; and apple sauce, he assures you, should be a creamy white, and as smooth as a well made puree. If he is of the South he would like a Mehlspeise after his meat, Spetzerle if he comes from Wuertemberg; one of a hundred different dishes if he is a Bavarian. He will not allow that your national milk puddings take their place. If he is a North German his Leibgericht may be Rote Gruetze. This is eaten enormously all over Denmark and North Germany in summer, and is nothing in the world but a ground rice or sago mould made with fruit juice instead of milk. The old-fashioned way was to squeeze raspberries and currants through a cloth till you had a quart of pure juice, which you then boiled with 4 oz. ground rice and sugar to taste, stirring carefully lest it should burn, and stirring patiently so that the rice should be well cooked. But where fruit is dear you can make excellent Rote Gruetze by stewing the fruit first with a little water and straining off the juice. A quart of currants and a pound of raspberries should give you a good quart mould. The Danes make it of rhubarb and plum juice in the same way; and my German cookery book gives a recipe for Gruene Gruetze made with green gooseberries, but I tried that once and found it quite inferior to our own gooseberry fool.

Food is so much a matter of taste and custom, that it seems absurd to make dogmatic remarks about the superiority of one kitchen to another. If you like cold mutton, boiled potatoes and rice pudding, most days in the week, you like them and there is an end of it. The one thing you can say for certain is that to cook for you requires neither skill nor pains, while to cook for a German family, even if it lives plainly and poorly, takes time and trouble. In trying to compare the methods of two nations, one must naturally be careful to compare households on the same social plane; and an English household that lives on cold mutton and rice pudding is certainly a plain and probably a poor one. In well-to-do English households you get the best food in the world as far as raw material goes, but it must be said that you often get poor cooking. It passes quite unnoticed too. No one seems to mind thick soups that are too thick and gravies that are tasteless, and melted butter like Stickphast paste, and savouries quite acrid with over much vinegar and anchovy. I once saw a whole company of English people contentedly eat a dish of hot scones that had gone wrong. They tasted of strong yellow soap. But I once saw a company of Germans eat bad fish and apparently like it. They were sea soles handed round in a Swiss hotel, and they should by rights have been buried the day before. I thought of Ottilie von Schlippenschlopp and the oysters. But the soles were carefully cooked, and served with an elaborate sauce.

* * * * *

GREEN CORN SOUP.—For six people take 7 oz. of green corn: wash it well in hot water, and cook it until it is quite soft in stock or salt water. Put it through a sieve, add boiling stock, and serve with fried slice of bread or with small semolina dumplings.

GREEN CORN SOUP.—Another way. For six people take 5-1/2 oz. of green corn, wash it well in hot water, and let it simmer for a few minutes with a little stock and 1-1/2 oz. butter. Then add strong stock, and let it simmer slowly with the lid on till the corn is soft. Then stir a tablespoonful of fine flour with half a cupful of milk, and add it to the soup, stirring all the time. This must then cook an hour longer. When ready to serve, mix the yolks of two eggs with a little sour cream, and add the soup carefully so that it is not curdled. The soup is not strained through a sieve when it is served without dumplings.

The little dumplings are first cooked as a panada of semolina, butter, milk and egg, and then dropped into the soup and cooked in it for ten minutes.



CHAPTER XVI

SHOPS AND MARKETS

Berlin people compare their Wertheim with the Bon Marche at Paris, or with Whiteley's in London; only always adding that Wertheim is superior to any emporium in France or England. So it really is in one way. A great artist designed it, and the outside of the building is plain and stately, a most refreshing contrast to most Berlin architecture. On the ground floor there is a high spacious hall that is splendid when it is lighted up at night, and a staircase leads up and down from here to the various departments, all decorated soberly and pleasantly, mostly with wood. You can buy almost anything you want at Wertheim's, from the furniture of your house to a threepenny pair of cotton mittens with a thumb and no fingers. You can see tons of the most hideous rubbish there, and you can find a corner reserved for original work, done by two or three artists whose names are well known in Germany. For instance, Wertheim exhibits the very clever curious "applications" done by Frau Katy Muenchhausen, groups of monkeys, storks, cocks and hens, and other animals, drawn with immense spirit and life on cloth, cut out and then machined on a background of another colour. The machining has a bad sound, I admit, but for all that the "applications" are enchanting. Wertheim, too, shows some good furniture; he sells theatre tickets, books, fruit, groceries, Liberty cushions, embroideries, soaps, perfumes, toys, ironmongery, china, glass, as well as everything that can be called drapery. He has a tea-room as well as a large general refreshment-room, where you can get ices, iced coffee, beer, all kinds of sandwiches, and the various Torten Germans make so very much better than other people. In this room no money is wasted on waiters or waitresses, and no one expects to be tipped. You fetch what you want from a long bar running along two sides of the room, and divided into short stretches, each selling its own stuff; you pay at the counter, and you carry your ice or your cake to any little marble-topped table you choose. The advantage of the plan is that you do not have to wait till you catch the eye of a waitress determined not to look your way: the disadvantage is that you have to perform the difficult feat of carrying a full cup or a full glass through a crowd. Whatever you buy at the counter is sure to be good, but if all you could get was a Mugby Junction bun you would have to eat it after the exhausting process of buying a yard of ribbon or a few picture postcards at Wertheim's.