f candidates for independence we cannot
afford her; so we go on fooling the people with mechanical education.
But even this figure is patient!

The Germans are patient even with their food. What would become of
them without the goose, the pig, the calf, and the duck, that meagre
alimentary quartette? The country is white with home-raised geese, and
yet they imported 8,337,708 in 1910, and 7,236,581 in 1911.

One of their most charming bits of classic art is the famous miniature
statue of the Gooseman; and the real name of the great Gutenberg, who,
by his invention of printing, did more than any other mortal to make
it easy for the human race to acquire the anserine mental habits, and
the anserine moral characteristics, was Gaensfleisch!

The goose is really the national bird of the German people. You eat
tons of goose, and then you sleep beneath the feathers. The goose
first nourishes you and then protects your digestion. The
extraordinary make-up of the German bed must be laid to the door of
the guilty goose. The pillows are so soft that your head is ever
sinking, never at rest. Instead of easily applied blankets, that you
can adapt to the temperature, you are given a great cloud of feathers,
sewn in a balloon-like bag, which floats upon you according to your
degree of restlessness, and leaves you for the floor, when in stupid
sleepiness you endeavor to protect your whole person at once with its
flimsy and wanton formlessness. As a rule the bed is built up at the
head so that you are continually sliding down, down under the goose
feathers, your nose and mouth are soon covered, and who can breathe
with his toes!

They accumulate comfort very slowly. The wages are small and the
satisfactions are small. On the street-cars the conductor is grateful
for a tip of five pfennigs, and his daily customers are handed from
the car-steps and respectfully saluted in return for this tiny
douceur. When you dine or lunch at a friend's house you are expected
to leave something in the expectant palm of his servant who sees you
out.

Women carry small parcels of food to the theatre, to the tea and beer
gardens, and thus save the small additional expense. Many a time have
I seen these thrifty housewives pocket the sugar and the zwiebacks and
Broedchen left over. In the hotels, soap, paper, and common
conveniences of the kind are taken, so I am told, not, I maintain, as
a theft, but as an economy. We are in the habit of carrying our s