ss 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 rabb