y classes; but those who
come from a distance can have board and residence for L1 a week or
less. Once a week strangers are allowed to see the _Lette-Haus_ at
work, and when I went there we were taken first to the kitchens, where
the future housewives of Germany were learning to cook. The stoves
were the sensible low closed-in ones used on the continent, and the
vessels were either earthenware or metal, kept brightly polished both
inside and out. The students were preparing and cooking various
dishes, but the one that interested me was the _Leipziger Allerlei_,
because I compared it with the "herbage" an English plain cook throws
into water and sends up half drained, half cold, and often enough half
clean. I could not stop to count the vegetables required for
_Leipziger Allerlei_, but there seemed to be at least six varieties,
all cooked separately, and afterwards combined with a properly made
sauce. The Englishman may say that he prefers his half-cooked cabbage,
and the English woman, if she is a plain cook, will certainly say that
the cabbage gives her as much trouble as she means to take; but the
German woman knows that when she marries her husband will want
_Leipziger Allerlei_, so she goes to the _Lette-Haus_ and learns how
to make it. Even the young doctors of Berlin learn cooking at the
_Lette-Haus_. Special classes for invalid cookery are held on their
behalf, and are said to be popular and extremely useful. Certainly
doctors whose work is amongst the poor or in country places must often
wish they understood something about the preparation of food. The
girls who go to the _Lette-Haus_ are taught the whole art of
housekeeping, from the proper way to scour a pan or scrub a floor to
fine laundry work and darning, and even how to set and serve a table.
An intelligent girl who had been right through the courses at the
_Lette-Haus_ could train an inexperienced servant, because she would
understand exactly how things ought to be done, how much time they
should take, and what amount of fatigue they involve. If her servants
failed her she would be independent of them. Some students at the
_Lette-Haus_ do, as a matter of fact, form a household that is carried
on without a single servant, and is on this account the most
interesting branch of the organisation. The girls are from fourteen to
sixteen years of age, and they pay L25 a year for instruction, board,
and lodging. Some of them are the daughters of landed proprietors,