ntatiously" well
groomed and dainty. The truth is, that if you have lived much with
both English and Germans, and desire to be fair and friendly to both
races, you find that your generalisations will not often weigh on one
side. The English child learns to eat with a fork rather than with a
spoon, and never by any chance to put a knife in its mouth, or to
touch a bone with its fingers. The German child learns that it must
never wear a soiled or an unmended garment or have untidy hair. I have
known a German scandalised by the slovenly wardrobe of her well-to-do
English pupil, and I have heard English people say that to hear
Germans eat soup destroyed their appetite for dinner. English girls
are not all slovens, and nowadays decently bred Germans behave like
other people at table. But untidiness is commoner in England than in
Germany, and you may still stumble across a German any day who,
abiding by old customs, puts his knife in his mouth and takes his
bones in his hands. He will not only do these things, but defend them
vociferously. In that case you are strongly advised not to eat a dish
of asparagus in his company.

Your modern German _Backfisch_ may be a person of finish and wide
culture. You may find that she insists on her cold tub every morning,
and is scandalised by your offer of hot water in it. She has seen
Salome as a play and heard Salome as an opera. She has seen plays by
G.B.S. both in Berlin and London. She does not care to see Shakespeare
in London, because, as she tells you, the English know nothing about
him. Besides, he could not sound as well in English as in German. She
has read Carlyle, and is now reading Ruskin. She adores Byron, but
does not know Keats, Shelley, or Rossetti. Tennyson she waves
contemptuously away from her, not because she has read him, but
because she has been taught that his poetry is "bourgeois." Her
favourite novels are _Dorian Gray_ and _Misunderstood_. She dresses
with effect and in the height of fashion, she speaks French and
English fluently, she has travelled in Italy and Switzerland, she
plays tennis well, she can ride and swim and skate, and she would
cycle if it was not out of fashion. In fact, she can do anything, and
she knows everything, and she has been everywhere. Your French and
English girls are ignorant misses in comparison with her, and you say
to yourself as you watch her and humbly listen to her opinions,
delivered without hesitation and expressed without mi