stakes: "Where is
the German _Backfisch_ of yesteryear?"

"Did you ever read _Backfischchen's Leiden und Freuden_?" you say to
her; for the book is in its 55th edition, and you have seen German
girls devouring it only last week; German girls of a different type,
that is, from your present glittering companion.

"That old-fashioned inferior thing," she says contemptuously. "I
believe my mother had it. That is not literature."

You leave her to suppose you could not have made that discovery for
yourself, and you spend an amusing hour over the story again, for
there are occasions when a book that is not "literature" will serve
your purpose better than a masterpiece. The little book has
entertained generations of German girls, and is presumably accepted by
them, just as _Little Women_ is accepted in America or _The Daisy
Chain_ in England. The picture was always a little exaggerated, and
some of its touches are now out of date; yet as a picture of manners
it still has a value. It narrates the joys and sorrows of a young girl
of good family who leaves her country home in order to live with an
aunt in Berlin, a facetious but highly civilised aunt who uses a large
quantity of water at her morning toilet. All the stages of this toilet
are minutely described, and all the mistakes the poor countrified
_Backfisch_ makes the first morning. She actually gets out of bed
before she puts on her clothes, and has to be driven behind the bed
curtains by her aunt's irony. This is an incident that is either out
of date or due to the genius and imagination of the author, for I have
never seen bed curtains in Germany. However, Gretchen is taught to
perform the early stages of her toilet behind them, and then to wash
for the first time in her life in a basin full of water. She is
sixteen. Her aunt presents her with a sponge, and observes that the
civilisation of a nation is judged by the amount of soap it uses. "In
much embarrassment I applied myself to this unaccustomed task,"
continues the ingenuous _Backfisch_, "and I managed it so cleverly
that everything around me was soon swimming. To make matters worse, I
upset the water-jug, and now the flood spread to the washstand, the
floor, the bed curtains, even to my clothes lying on the chair. If
only this business of dressing was over," she sighs as she is about to
brush her teeth, with brushes supplied by her aunt. But it is by no
means over. She is just going to slip into a dressing-gown,