Home Life in Germany

Then on the opposite page the future bridegroom speaks for himself—

Directly these forms have been circulated, all the friends who have received one and live near enough pay a visit of congratulation to the bride's parents, and soon after the betrothed couple return these visits with some ceremony. It is quite impossible, by the way, to talk of Germans who are officially engaged without calling them the bride and bridegroom. They plight their troth with the plain gold rings that will be their wedding rings, and this stage of their union is celebrated with as much ceremony and merrymaking as the actual wedding. The Germans are giving up so many of their quaint poetical customs that the girl of to-day probably wears a fine diamond engagement ring instead of the old-fashioned gold one. But the ring with which her mother and grandmother plighted their troth was the ring with which they were wedded, and when Chamisso wrote Du Ring an meinem Finger he was not writing of diamonds. All the tenderness and poetry of Germany go out to lovers, and the thought of a German bride and bridegroom flashes through the mind with thoughts of flowers and moonlight and nightingales. At least, it does if you can associate them with the poems of Heine and Chamisso, with the songs of Schumann, and with the caressing intimate talk of the German tongue unloosed by love. But your experience is just as likely to play you the unkindest trick, and remind you of German lovers whose uncouth public endearments made everyone not to the manner born uncomfortable.

When the bride and bridegroom live in the same town, and know a large number of people, they are overdone with festivities from the moment of betrothal to the day of marriage. The round of entertainments begins with a gala dinner given by the bride's father, and this is followed by invitations from all the relatives and friends on either side. When you receive a German Brautpaar they should be the guests of honour, and if you can hang garlands near them so much the better. You must certainly present the Braut with a bouquet at some stage of the proceedings, and you will give pleasure if you can manufacture one or two mottoes in green stuff and put them in conspicuous places. For instance, I knew of a girl who got engaged away from home. Do you suppose that she was allowed to return to a bare and speechless front door as her English cousin would? Nothing of the kind. The whole family had set to work to twine laurel wreaths and garlands in her honour, and she was received with Wilkommen du glückseliges Kind done in ivy leaves by her grandmother. It was considered very rührend and innig. At some time during the engagement the betrothed couple are sure to get photographed together, and anyone who possesses a German family album will bear me out that the lady is nearly always standing, while her bearded lover is sitting down. When they are both standing they are arm in arm or hand in hand. I remember a collection possessing two photographs of a married daughter with her husband. One had been taken just before the wedding in the orthodox pose; he in an easy chair and she standing meekly by his side: the other represented them a year after marriage, when Heaven had sent them twins. They were both standing then, and they each had a baby in a Steckkissen in their arms.

If the bridegroom is not living in the same town with his bride her life is supposed to run rather quietly in his absence. She is not expected to dance with other men, for instance; but rather to spend her time in embroidering his monogram on every conceivable object he might use: on tobacco pouches, or slippers, on letter cases, on braces, on photograph frames, on luggage straps, on fine pocket handkerchiefs. If she is expert and possesses the true sentiment she will embroider things for him with her hair. In these degenerate days she does not make her own outfit. Formerly, when a German girl left school she began to make stores of body and house linen for future years. But in modern cities the Braut gets everything at one of the big "white" shops, from her own laces and muslins to the saucepan holders for the kitchen, and the bread bags her cook will hang outside the flat for the baker's boy. In Germany it is the bride, or rather her parents, who furnish the house and provide the household linen; and the linen is all embroidered with her initials. This custom extends to all classes, so that you constantly hear of a servant who is saving up for her Aussteuer, that is, the furniture and linen of a house as well as her own clothes. If you ask whether she is engaged you are told that the outfit is the thing. When the money for that is there it is easy to provide the bridegroom. In higher spheres much more is spent on a bride's trousseau than in England, taking class for class. Some years ago I had occasion to help in the choice of a trousseau bought in Hamburg, and to be often in and out of a great "white ware" business there. I cannot remember how many outfits were on view during those weeks, but they were all much alike. What some people call "undies" had been ordered in immense quantities, sometimes heavily trimmed with Madeira work, sometimes with a plain scollop of double linen warranted to wash and wear for ever. The material was also invariably of a kind to wear, a fine linen or a closely woven English longcloth. How any one woman could want some six dozen "nighties" (the silly slang sounds especially silly when I think of those solid highly respectable German garments) was a question no one seemed to ask. The bride's father could afford six dozen; it was the custom to have six dozen if you could pay for them, and there they were. The thin cambric garments French women were beginning to wear then were shown to you and tossed contemptuously aside as only fit for actresses. But this has all been changed. If you ask for "undies" in Berlin to-day, a supercilious shoplady brings you the last folly in gossamer, decolletée, and with elbow sleeves; and you wonder as you stare at it what a sane portly German housewife makes of such a garment. In this, as in other things, instead of abiding by his own sensible fashions, the German is imitating the French and the Americans; for it is the French and the Americans who have taught the women of other nations to buy clothes so fragile and so costly that they are only fit for the purse of a Chicago packer.

When the outfit is ready and the wedding day near, the bride returns all the entertainments given in her honour by inviting her girl friends to a Bride-chocolate or a Bean-coffee. This festivity is like a Kaffee-Klatsch, or what we should call an afternoon tea. In Germany, until quite lately, chocolate and coffee were preferred to tea, and the guests sat round a dining-table well spread with cakes. At a Bean-coffee the cake of honour had a bean in it, and the girl who got the bean in her slice would be Braut before the year was out. Another entertainment that takes place immediately before the marriage is given by the bride's best friend, who invites several other girls to help her weave the bridal wreath of myrtle. The bride does not help with it. She appears with the bridegroom later in the afternoon when the wreath is ready. It is presented to her with great ceremony on a cushion, and as they bring it the girls sing the well-known song from the Freischütz—

The bridegroom receives a buttonhole, but no one sings him a song. In the opera he is not on the stage during the bridesmaids' chorus. I have not been able to find out whether the quaint pretty verses are by Friedrich Kind, who founded the libretto of the opera on a story by August Apel, or whether he borrowed them from an older source. German brides wore myrtle and their friends wove a wedding wreath for them long before 1820, when Der Freischütz appeared.

CHAPTER XToC

MARRIAGES

"He was a pompous, stiff-jointed man," said my friends, "an official in a small town, who would go to the stake rather than break the letter of the law. But when he came to Berlin to attend a niece's marriage he thought he would have some fun. He arrived late on Polterabend, and he brought with him an enormous earthenware crock. Instead of ringing he hurled the crock against the outside door of the flat, so that it smashed to atoms with a noise like thunder. The inhabitants of that flat came forth like a swarm of bees, but they were not laughing at the fun, because it was not their Polterabend." He had broken crockery on the wrong floor.

In cities this ancient German custom of breaking crockery at the bride's door on Polterabend (the night before the wedding) has died out, but it has not long been dead. I have talked with people who remembered it in full force when they were young. I believe that the idea was to appease the Poltergeist, who would otherwise vex and disturb the young couple. My dictionary, the one that has 2412 pages, says that a Poltergeist is a "racketing spectre," probably what we who are not dictionary makers would call a hobgoblin. In Brands' Antiquities I find reference to this old custom at the marriage of a Duke of York in Germany, when great quantities of glass and china were smashed at the palace doors the night before the wedding.

Polterabend is still celebrated by Germans, although they no longer consider it polite to smash crockery. There is always a large entertainment, sometimes at the bride's house, sometimes at the house of a near relative; there are theatricals with personal allusions, or recitations of home-made topical poetry, some good music, and the inevitable evergreens woven into sentiments of encouragement and congratulation. The bride's presents are set out much as they are in England, and perhaps class for class more valuable presents are given in Germany than in England. Electro-plate, for instance, was considered impossible a few years ago. A wedding present, if it was silver at all, must be real silver. But it is not so much the custom as with us to give presents of money.

The civil marriage takes place either the day before or early on the same day as the religious ceremony. The bride used to wear black silk, and still wears a dark plain costume for this official function. Her parents go with her and the necessary witnesses. The religious ceremony often used to take place in the house, but that is no longer customary. The anonymous author of German Home Life, a book published and a good deal read in 1879, says that marriage is a troublesome and expensive ceremony in Germany, and that this accounts for the large number of illegitimate children. Mr. O. Eltzbacher, the author of Modern Germany published in 1905, confirms what was said in 1877 as to the number of illegitimate children born in Germany and Austria, for he says that in Germany itself they are 9 per cent., while in those districts of Austria where the Germans form about nine-tenths of the population, from 20 per cent, to 40 per cent, of the children are born out of wedlock. In France statistics give 9 per cent., in Scotland 7.4 per cent., and in England and Wales 4.2 per cent. Nevertheless in modern Germany children are not illegitimate because their parents are too poor to pay their marriage fees. The civil marriage is obligatory everywhere, and costs nothing. The religious ceremony need cost nothing at all. In the porch of every church in Prussia there is a notice stating on which days Freie Trauungen are conducted. Several couples are married at the same time, but they have the full liturgy and the marriage sermon. A small charge is made for the organist and for the decoration of the church. A friend whose husband has a large poor parish in Berlin tells me that the Social Democrats object to the religious ceremony, and will stand guard outside the house on the day of the civil marriage, to make sure that the newly made husband and wife do not leave together to go to church. Sometimes an artisan will wait a fortnight after the civil ceremony before he ventures to have the religious one. Every artisan in Berlin has to belong to the Sozialdemokratischer Verband, because if he did not his fellow-workmen would destroy his tools and ruin his chances of work. Apparently they interfere with his private affairs as well.

The marriage service is not to be found in the prayer-book Germans take to church, but I have both read it and listened to it. The vows made are much the same as here; but in Germany great importance is attached to the homily or marriage sermon. This is often long and heavy. I have heard the pastor preach to the young couple for nearly half an hour about their duties, and especially about the wife's duty of submission and obedience. His victims were kept standing before him the whole time, and the poor little bride was shaking from head to foot with nervousness and excitement. In some cities the carriage used by a well-to-do bride and bridegroom is as big as a royal coach, and upholstered with white satin, and on the wedding day decorated inside and out with garlands of flowers. The bridegroom fetches his bride in this coach, and enters the church with her. When a pretty popular girl gets married all her admirers send flowers to the church to decorate it. The bride and bridegroom exchange rings, for in Germany men as well as women wear a plain gold wedding ring, and it is always worn on the right hand. The bridegroom and all the male guests wear evening dress and silk hats. The women wear evening clothes too, and no hats. The bride wears the conventional white silk or satin and a white veil, but her wreath must be partly of myrtle, for in Germany myrtle is the bride's emblem.

After the wedding dinner the bride slips away unnoticed and changes her gown, and is presently joined by the bridegroom, but not by any of the guests. No rice and no old slippers are thrown in Germany, and no crowd of friends assembles to see the young pair start. The bride bids her parents farewell, and slips away with her husband unseen and unattended. After the wedding dinner there is often dancing and music.

A hundred years ago wedding festivities lasted for many days after the wedding, and the bride and bridegroom did not go till they were over. When the celebrated and much married Caroline Schlegel married her first husband, George Böhmer, in 1784, the ceremony took place at her own home in Göttingen, where her father was a well-known professor. "It would be unnatural if a young wife did not begin with an account of her wedding day," she says in one of her letters. "Mine was delightful enough. Böhmer breakfasted with me, and the morning hours passed gaily, and yet with quietness. There was no trepidation—only an intercourse of souls. My brother came. We were together till four, and when he left us he gave us his blessing with tears.... Lotte and Friederike wove the bridal wreath.... Then I had a talk with my father and dressed myself.... Meanwhile those dear Meiners sent me a note, with which were some garters they had embroidered themselves. Several of my friends wrote to me, and last of all I got a silhouette, painted on glass, of Lotte and Friederike weaving my bridal wreath. When I was dressed I was a pretty bride. The room was charmingly decorated by my mother. Soon after four o'clock Böhmer arrived, and the guests, thirty-eight in number. Thank Heaven, there were no old uncles and aunts, so the company was of a more bearable type than is usual on such occasions. I stood there surrounded by my girl friends, and my most vivid thought was of what my condition would be if I did not love the man before me. My father, who was still far from well, led me to the clergyman, and I saw myself for life at Böhmer's side and yet did not tremble. During the ceremony I did not cry. But after it was over and Böhmer took me in his arms with every expression of the deepest love, while parents, brothers, sisters, and friends greeted me with kind wishes as never a bride was greeted before, my brother being quite overwhelmed—then my heart melted and overflowed out of sheer happiness."

A week later Caroline and her husband are still at Göttingen, and still celebrating their marriage. At one house, under pretence of the heat, the bride was led into the garden, and beheld there an illuminated motto: "Happy the man who has a virtuous wife: his life will be doubly long." Another friend arrayed her son as Hymen, and taught him to strew flowers in Caroline's path, leading her thus to an arbour where there was a throne of moss and flowers, with high steps ascending to it, a canopy and a triumphal arch. Concealed behind a bush were musicians, who sang an appropriate song, while the bride and bridegroom mounted the throne and sank in each other's arms before a crowd of sympathising and tearful spectators.

This took place more than a hundred and twenty years ago, but I have in my possession what I can only describe as the "literature" of a marriage celebrated three years ago between a North and a South German, both belonging to commercial families of old standing; and it supplies me, if I needed it, with documentary evidence that Germans enjoy now what they enjoyed then. The marriage took place in winter and from a flat, so that the bride's friends could not build grottoes or hide musicians behind a bush; but for weeks before both sides of the family must have been busy composing the poems sung at the wedding feast, the music that accompanied them, and the elaborate humorous verses containing allusions to the past history of the bride and bridegroom. To begin with, there is a dainty book of picture postcards, the first one giving portraits of a very handsome and dignified bridegroom with his dainty bride. Then there is a view of Dresden where the bridegroom was born, another of the Rhenish town in which he found his bride, and one of Berlin where she used to stay with a married sister and deal "baskets" right and left to would-be admirers. In Germany, when a girl refuses a man she is said to give him a "basket," and a favourite old figure in the cotillon used to put one in a girl's hands and then present two men to her. She danced with the one she liked best, and the rejected man had to dance round after them with the basket.

Besides the book of postcards, each guest at this wedding was presented with printed copies of the Tafel-Lieder composed by members of the family. One of these has eight verses and each verse has eight lines. It relates little events in the life of the bridegroom from babyhood onwards. You learn that he was a clever child, that he lived at home with his mother instead of going abroad to learn his work, that when he was young he ardently desired to go on the stage, that he is a fine gymnast and musician, but that he needs a wife because he is a dreamy person capable of putting on odd boots. Another Tafel-Lied describes the courtship step by step, and even the assistance given by the poet's wife to bring the romance to its present happy conclusion.

The songs are not all sentiment. They are jocular, and contain puns and play upon names. Three out of the five end with an invitation to everyone to raise their glasses with a Hoch to the married pair. This is done over and over again at German weddings, and as all the guests want to clink glasses with the bride and bridegroom, there is a good deal of movement as well as noise. Besides the Tafel-Lieder, each of which made a separate booklet with its own dedication and illustration, every guest received an elaborate book of samples: samples of the various straws used that summer for ladies' hats. The bridegroom's family had manufactured hats for many generations; they were wealthy, highly considered people, and extremely proud of their position in their own industry. I am sure that when an Englishman in the same trade and of the same standing gets married, the last thing that would be mentioned at his wedding would be hats. It would be considered in the highest degree indecorous. But the German is still guileless enough to be satisfied with his station in life when it is sufficiently honourable and prosperous, and for this wedding two little nieces had prepared this card of samples and composed a rhyme for each different colour—

went with "myrtle green."

went with the "champagne" straw at the end; and one accompanying the "silver" straw contained an allusion to the "silver" wedding twenty-five years hence, when the bride's golden hair would be silver-grey.

Here is the menu, mostly in French, to which all the Tafel-Lieder were sung, and all the toasts drunk and congratulatory speeches made. You will observe that it is none of your light cup, cake, and ice entertainments that you have substituted for the solid old wedding breakfast in this country.

And that no guest should depart hungry—

Germans celebrate both silver and golden weddings with as much ceremony and rejoicing as the first wedding. The husband and wife receive presents from all their friends, and entertain them according to the best of their circumstances. Children will travel across the world and bring grandchildren with them to one of these anniversaries, and they are of course a great occasion for the topical poetry, theatricals, and tableaux that Germans enjoy. If the grandmother by good luck has saved a gown she wore as a girl, and the grandchild can put it on and act some little episode from the old lady's youth, everyone will applaud and enjoy and be stirred to smiles and tears. There is as much feasting as at a youthful wedding, and perhaps more elaborate performances. Silver-grey is considered the proper thing for the silver bride to wear.

It seems like a want of sentiment to speak of divorce in the same breath with weddings; but as a matter of fact, divorce is commoner in Germany than in England, and more easily obtained. Imprisonment for felony is sufficient reason, and unfaithfulness without cruelty, insanity that has lasted three years, desertion, ill treatment or any attempt on the other's life. You hear divorce spoken of lightly by people whose counterparts in England would be shocked by it; people, I mean, of blameless sequestered lives and rigid moral views. Some saintly ladies, who I am sure have never harboured a light thought or spent a frivolous hour, told me of a cousin who played whist every evening with her present husband and his predecessor. My friends seemed to think the situation amusing, but not in any way to be condemned. At the same time, I have heard Germans quote the saying—"Geschiedene Leute scheiden fort und fort," and object strongly to associate with anyone, however innocent, who had been connected with a matrimonial scandal.

A woman remains in possession of her own money after marriage even without marriage settlements; but the husband has certain rights of use and investment. Her clothes, jewels, and tools are her own, and the wages she earns by her own work. A man's creditors cannot seize either these or her fortune to pay his debts. Both in Germany and England the wife must live in the house and place chosen by the husband, but in Germany she need not follow him to unwirtlichen countries against her will. He can insist on her doing the housework and helping him in his business when he has no means to pay substitutes; but she can insist on being maintained in a style proper to their station in life. He is responsible for her business debts if he has consented to her undertakings; but he can forbid her to carry on a business if he prefers that she should be supported by him and give her time and strength to the administration of their home. When they are legally separated he must make her an allowance, but it need only be enough for the bare necessaries of life if the separation is due to her misconduct. The father and mother have joint control of the children, but during the father's lifetime his rule is paramount. When he is dead or incapacitated parental authority remains in the mother's hands. It is her right and duty to care for the child's person, to decide where it shall live, and to superintend its education. She can claim it legally from people who desire to keep it from her. A child born in wedlock is legitimate unless the husband can prove otherwise, and he must establish proof within a year of the birth coming to his knowledge. But a woman is not allowed to prove that a child born in wedlock is illegitimate.

If a man dies intestate and leaves children or grandchildren, his widow inherits a fourth of his property; if he only has more distant relatives, half; if he has none, the whole. A man cannot cut his wife off with a shilling. He must leave her at least half of what would come to her if he died intestate. All the laws relating to husband and wife are to be found in the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, which can be bought for a mark. As far as the non-legal intelligence can grasp them, they seem according to our times to be just to women, except when they give the use of her income to the husband. This is a big exception, however. I remember hearing a German say that his sister's quarterly allowance, which happened to be a large one, was always sent to her husband, as it was right and proper that important sums of money should be in the man's hands and under his control. This undoubtedly is the general German view. After the moonshine, the nightingales, the feasting, the toasts, and the family poetry come the realities of life: and the realities in German make the man the predominant partner.

CHAPTER XIToC

THE HOUSEHOLDER

Rents are high in Germany. At least, the Germans say so, and so do the people whose books about Germany are crammed with soul-satisfying statistics and elaborate calculations. Over-crowding, too, is said to be worse in Germany than in English cities. But I have always seen the rent and the crowding judged by the number of rooms and not by their size. This is really misleading, because you could put the whole of a small London flat into many a German middle-class dining-room or Wohnzimmer. You could bring up a family in a single room I once had for a whole summer in Thüringen for 5s. a week. It was as big as a church, and most light and airy. One camped in bits of it. I think rent for rent rooms in Germany are quite twice as large as in London. In Berlin, where rent is considered wickedly high, you can get a flat in a good quarter for £80, and for that sum you will have four large rooms, three smaller ones, a good kitchen, an attic that serves as a lumber-room, and a share in a laundry at the top of the house. There will even be a bathroom with a trickle of cold water, but it is only in the very newest and most expensive German flats that you find hot and cold water laid on. Your drawing and dining-rooms will be spacious, and one of them is almost sure to have a balcony looking on the street and the pleasant avenue of trees with which it is planted. For this rent you must either make yourself happy on the third or fourth floor in a house without a lift, or you must find one of the delightful "garden" dwellings behind the Hof; but you will have a better home for your money than you could get in a decent part of London. In fact, it comes to this, in spite of all the statistics in favour of London. If you can only spend £80 on your rent you can live in a good quarter of Berlin, near enough to the Tiergarten, close to the Zoological Gardens, and within a tram-ride of the delightful woods at Halensee. In London you can get a small house for £80, but it will either be in an unattractive quarter or in a suburb. A flat, wherever it is, must always seem a dwelling place rather than a home, but the Germans have elected to live in flats and accept their disadvantages. In and around all the great cities there are villas, but their number hardly counts in comparison with the masses of tall white houses, six storeys high for the most part, and holding within their walls all degrees of wealth and poverty. The German villa is florid, and likes blue glass balls and artificial fountains in its garden. It is often a villa in appearance and several flats in reality. Its most pleasant feature is the garden-room or big verandah, where in summer all meals are served. Outside Hamburg, on the banks of the Elbe, the merchant princes of the city have built themselves palaces surrounded by splendid park-like gardens. But Hamburg, though it does not love the English, is always accused by the rest of Germany of being English. It certainly has beautiful gardens. So have other German cities in some instances, but well kept gardens are not the matter of course in Germany that they are here. You see more bare and artificial ones and more neglected overgrown ones in an afternoon's walk than you do all the year round in England. But I wish we could follow the German fashion of planting all our streets with double avenues of healthy trees. Berlin in spring seems to be set in a wood; it is so fresh and green. The flowering shrubs, on the other hand, are not to be compared with ours. Everyone rushes to see a few lilac bushes, and Gueldres roses trimmed to a stiff snowball of flowers, and everyone says Wie Herrlich! but you miss the profusion of lilac, hawthorn, and laburnum that runs riot all about London in every residential road and every garden. Above all, you miss the English lawns. In Berlin wherever grass is grown it looks either thin or coarse. The majority of Germans do not dream of wanting a garden. They are content with a few palms in their sitting-room or window boxes on their balcony. They are proud of their window-gardening in Berlin, but I think London windows in June are gayer and more flowery. The palms kept in German rooms attain to a great size and number, and a palm is a favourite present. Nursery gardeners undertake the troublesome business of repotting them every spring, so the owners have nothing to do but water them and keep them from draughts. There are usually so many windows in a German sitting-room that those near the plants need never be opened in winter; and even when the temperature sinks several degrees below zero outside, the air of the flat is kept artificially warm, so warm that English folk gasp and flag in it. At the first sign of winter the outside windows, removed for the summer, are brought back again. Our windows are unknown on the continent, and disliked by continentals who see them here. They call them guillotine windows, and consider them dangerous. Theirs all open like doors, so that you have four doors to each window, and until you get used to them you find they make a pretty clatter whenever you set them wide. But in winter they are only opened for a few minutes every morning when the room is "aired." It is considered extravagant to open them at other times, because the heat would escape and more fuel would be required. I suppose everyone in England understands that our open fireplaces are almost unknown in Germany. They have enclosed stoves of iron or porcelain that make little work or dirt and give no pleasure. There is no gathering round the hearth. You sit about the room as you would in summer, for it is evenly heated. All the beauty and poetry of fire are wanting; you have nothing but an atmosphere that will be comfortable or asphyxiating, according to the taste of your hosts. Years ago in South Germany you burnt nothing but logs of wood in the old-fashioned iron stoves, and there was some faint pleasure in listening to their crackle. You could just see the flames too, if you stooped low enough and opened the little stove door. But the wood burnt so quickly that it was most difficult to keep a big room warm. Nowadays you always find the porcelain stove that Mark Twain says looks like the family monument. In some of these coal is burnt, or a mixture of coal and peat. Some burn anthracite, and are considered economical. A Füllofen of this kind is kept burning night and day during the worst of the winter. It requires attention two or three times in twenty-four hours; it is easily regulated, and if the communicating doors are left open it warms two or three rooms. A friend who has a large flat in Berlin told me that there was one of these stoves in her husband's study, and that her drawing-room which opens out of it, and which they constantly use, had only had a fire in it five times last winter. I find on looking at this friend's budget that she spends £16 a year on turf and other fuel, and this seems high for a flat where so few fires were lighted. But fuel is dear in German towns. Briquettes are largely used in cities, small slabs of condensed coal that cost one pfennig each. It takes about twenty-four slabs to keep a stove in during the day. The great advantage of the Füllofen over the ordinary stove is that it keeps in all night. There are dangerous variations of temperature in a German flat that is kept as hot as an oven all day, and allowed to sink below zero during the night. But you hear complaints on all sides in Germany, both of inconsiderate English people who waste fuel by opening windows in cold weather; and of the sufferings endured by Germans who have been in England in winter. They do not like our open fireplaces at all, because they say they wish to be warm all over and not in bits. "In England," they tell you solemnly, "you can be warm either in front or at the back; but you cannot be warm on both sides as we are here. Besides, your fireplaces make dirt and work and are extravagant. They would not suit us." In fact, they imply that for the French and the English they are well enough, but not for the salt of the earth. The German kitchen stoves are certainly more practical and economical than ours, and I never can understand why we do not fetch a few over and try them. They are entirely enclosed, and much lower than ours. The Berlin kitchener has one fire that is lighted for a short time to roast a joint, and another using less fuel that heats water and does light cooking. The sweep, who is bound by the etiquette of his trade to wear a tall hat in Germany, does not come into your flat at all. You hear him shout through the courtyard that he will visit the house next day, and he works from the garrets and cellars. The police regulate his visits as they regulate everything else in Germany. Chimneys must be swept every six weeks in summer, and every four weeks in winter in Berlin. Dustbins are emptied every day, and in some towns the police make most troublesome regulations with regard to them. The householder has to set his outside to be emptied, and the police insist on this being done at a certain hour, neither earlier nor later, so that if your servant happens to be careless or unpunctual you will be repeatedly fined.

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 £500 a year pays altogether £60 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 £15 on an income of £500. 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-Coupé, but changes are a nuisance on a journey. Besides, you know that a Damen-Coupé 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."