ices, and thank God! we hear no bell-ringing! Everything
cheering we read in the "Corriere della Sera" is denied in the
"Frankfurter Zeitung" or given as a production of the "Luegen Fabrik"
(manufactory of lies).

_September 12th._--The Germans seem depressed, no flags, no bands, and
although there is a notice posted up in the town to say that the Crown
Prince has achieved another victory, there is evidently something
unsatisfactory in the background to counterbalance this. I draw
deductions from the "Frankfurter Zeitung," which has a bitter article
entitled "Torheiten" (Folly), and which speaks of the "Kindische
Freudengeheul" (childish howls of joy) of the English and French
Press, because "ein parr Kalonnen deutscher Soldaten ein Stuck weges
zurueckgezogen haben" (two columns of German soldiers had withdrawn a
bit of the way back). Then the writer contrasts the boastful words
("prahlender woerte") of England with the self-restraint and pious calm
and virtuous behaviour of Germany. One has only to look at the
postcards in the Park Strasse to see which of the combatants is
boastful. England is drawn as ignominiously lying on the ground (when
she isn't running away) and Germany invariably is kicking or thrashing
her.

People are less friendly than at first, though the bath attendants,
people in the Inhalatorium, and doctors are most kind. I had tea at
Mueller's with Miss H---- the other day. There were at least thirty
empty chairs in the tea-room, but a German woman marched up to the
chair on which I had laid my daily newspaper, and ordered me to take
it off, as she must have my chair! She was stout and ugly, and had a
way of doing her hair which, as a writer says, "alone would have
proved impeccable virtue in the face of incriminating circumstantial
evidence." For all their "Kultur" Germans are gross, and to the last
degree inartistic. Their "_nouveau art_" is repulsive; their dressing
outrageously ugly, and their cooking atrocious. I have watched them
here year after year tramping up and down the shady walks stolidly
drinking, wearing garments of ingeniously devised ugliness and blind
to "_l'inutile beaute_." There is no variety of type nor individuality
of person in either men or women. These worthy _Hausfrauen_ have no
grace of dainty frills, diaphanous lace or rustling petticoats. They
are obviously and incontestably of the class described by a witty
writer to whom "a lace petticoat is as much a badge of infamy a