mall
change loose in a trousers pocket, but the German almost without
exception carries even his ten and five pfennig pieces carefully in a
purse. Outside many of the big shops is placed a row of niches where
you may leave your unfinished cigar till you return. The economy thus
illustrated shows a certain disregard, of a not altogether agreeable
chance of interchangeability, that might even be dangerous to health.
On the other hand, it is a wise precaution that marks beer-glasses and
beer-jugs with a line, to show just how much beer you are entitled to.
This puts the foam-stealing vendor at your mercy.

The entertainments, dinners, luncheons, teas, except among the small
cosmopolitan companies who do not count as examples of German manners
and customs, are very prolonged affairs. There is much standing about.
At ten o'clock, having dined at half-past seven, beer, tea, coffee,
sandwiches are brought in, and you begin the gastronomics over again
on a smaller scale. There is no occasion when eating and drinking are
not part of the programme. If you go to the play or the opera you may
eat and drink there; if you go for a walk the goal is not a bath and a
rub-down, but beer or chocolate and cakes.

I am not sure that there is
not something in the theory that their soil has less iron in it, being
so intensively cultivated, and that our food is consequently stronger
than theirs; at all events, they eat more frequently and more
copiously than we do. It seems to me that both the men and the women
show it in their faces and figures. They are a heavy, puffy, tumbling
lot after forty; and with my prepossessions on the subject I am
inclined to put it down to irregular eating, to too much eating of
soft and sweet food, too much drinking of fattening beverages, and
much, much too little regular exercise, and to the fact that they are
still infants in the matter of personal hygiene. Dressing-gowns,
slippers, proper care of the teeth and hair, regular ablutions,
changing of clothes, all these dozens of helps to health are patiently
neglected. It is just as troublesome to take care of yourself, to
groom your person, to be regular in your habits, and restrained and
careful in your diet as to take proper care of a horse or a dog. It
shows a rather high grade of persistent prowess in a man just to keep
himself fit, to keep himself in working or playing health. Without the
drilling they receive in the army in these matters, one wonders whe