er 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