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, decolletee, 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 _Freischuetz_--

"Wir winden dir den Jungfernkranz
Mit veilchenblauer Seide;
Wir fuehren dich zu Spiel und Tanz
Zu Glueck und