ig business in the Praguer Strasse. I've always been told that German
husbands are the worst going, treating their wives like slaves, or, at
the best, as mere upper servants. But my experience is that human nature
don't alter so much according to distance from London as we fancy it
does, and that husbands have their troubles same as wives all the world
over. Anyhow, I've come across a German husband or two as didn't carry
about with him any sign of the slave driver such as you might notice, at
all events not in his own house; and I know for a fact that Meister
Anton, which was the name of the chap I'm telling you about, couldn't
have been much worse off, not even if he'd been an Englishman born and
bred. There were no children to occupy her mind, so she just devoted
herself to him and the work-girls, and made things hum, as they say in
America, for all of them. As for the girls, they got away at six in the
evening, and not many of them stopped more than the first month. But the
old man, not being able to give notice, had to put up with an average of
eighteen hours a day of it. And even when, as was sometimes the case, he
managed to get away for an hour or two in the evening for a quiet talk
with a few of us over a glass of beer, he could never be quite happy,
thinking of what was accumulating for him at home. Of course everybody
as knew him knew of his troubles--for a scolding wife ain't the sort of
thing as can be hid under a bushel,--and was sorry for him, he being as
amiable and good-tempered a fellow as ever lived, and most of us spent
our time with him advising him for his good. Some of the more ardent
would give him recipes for managing her, but they, being generally
speaking bachelors, their suggestions lacked practicability, as you might
say. One man bored his life out persuading him to try a bucket of cold
water. He was one of those cold-water enthusiasts, this fellow; took it
himself for everything, and always went to a hydropathic establishment
for his holidays. Rumour had it that Meister Anton really did try this
experiment on one unfortunate occasion--worried into it, I suppose, by
the other chap's persistency. Anyhow, we didn't see him again for a
week, he being confined to his bed with a chill on the liver. And the
next suggestion made to him he rejected quite huffily, explaining that he
had no intention of putting any fresh ideas into his wife's head.

"She wasn't a bad woman, mind you--merel