often taken, for artificial. To accept a portion of an untouched
dish was considered a sign that you came from "a good house" where no
one grudged or wished to save the food put on the table; and formerly
you could not refuse sugar in your tea without being commended for
your economy. You are still invited to eat tarts and puddings in
Germany with what we consider the insufficient assistance of a
tea-spoon, but I have never been in a private house where salt-spoons
were not provided. You never used to find them in inns of a plain
kind, and unless you were known to be English and peculiar you were
not provided with more than one knife and fork for all the courses of
a _table d'hote_. You would see your German neighbours putting theirs
aside as a matter of course when their plates were removed.

On the whole, then, the celebrated picture of the _Backfisch_, though
it is overloaded, bears some relation to the facts of life in Germany:
not only in the episodes that make the early chapters entertaining,
but all through the story in atmosphere, in the little touches that
give a story nationality. When the excellent Gretchen has been
civilised she spends a great deal of time in the kitchen, and soon
knows all the duties of the complete housekeeper; while, when the
frivolous Eugenie becomes _Braut_ she cannot cook at all. But
frivolous as she is, she recognises that marriage is unthinkable
without cooking, and straightway sets to work to learn. Then, too,
the _Backfisch_ is the ideal German maiden, cheerful, docile, and
facetious; and constantly on the jump (_springen_ is the word she
uses) to serve her elders. Middle-aged Germans used to have a most
tiresome way of expecting girls to be like lambs in spring, always in
the mood to frisk and caper: so that a quiet or a delicate girl had a
bad time with some of them. _Ein junges Maedchen muss immer heiter
sein_, they would say reproachfully. But it does not follow that you
are always _heiter_ just because you are not twenty yet; especially in
Germany, where girls are often anaemic and have headaches. However,
perhaps the modern German maiden does not allow her elders to be so
silly.

There are some other ways, too, in which my _Backfisch_ of thirty
years ago is typical of German womanhood both then and now. She is as
good as gold, she is devoted to duty not to pleasure, and she is as
guileless as a child. You know that when she marries she will be
faithful unto death; you know