t
ale and rawest whisky would go away with a poor impression of the
liquors of _our_ country. Drink the wine of the district where they make
good wine, but do not grudge the extra shilling which makes all the
difference in quality. The dinners and lunches on the big express Rhine
steamers are a scramble for food; but on some of the smaller and slower
boats, where the caterer has fewer passengers to feed, the meals are
often very good. I have a kindly memory of an old head steward, a
fatherly old gentleman in a silk cap shaped somewhat like an accordion,
who provided the meals on a leisurely steamer which pottered up the
Rhine, stopping at every village. He gave us local delicacies, took an
interest in our appetites, and his cookery, though distinctively German,
was also very good. In a land where all the big hotels fill once a day
and empty once a day, and where the meals are in heavy-handed imitation
of bourgeois French cookery, that old man with his stews and roasts, and
pickles, veal, and pork, sausages big and sausages small, strange
cheeses, and Delikatessen of all kinds was a good man to meet.

German "Cure" Places

First of course amongst the places in Germany where men and women mend
their constitutions and enjoy themselves at the same time comes

Homburg

The "Homburg Dinner" has become a household word, meaning that a certain
number of men and women agree to dine together at one of the hotels,
each one paying his or her own share in the expenses. During the past
two years, owing to the desire to spend money shown by some
millionaires, British and American, who are not happy unless they are
giving expensive dinners every night with a score of guests, this pretty
old custom seems likely now to die out. In no German town are there
better hotels than at Homburg, and one dines on a warm day in very
pleasant surroundings, for Ritter's has its world-famous terrace, and
some of the other hotels have very delightful open-air restaurants in
their gardens. Simplicity, good plain food well cooked, is insisted on
by the doctors at Homburg, and therefore a typical Homburg dinner is a
very small affair compared to German feasts over which the doctors do
not have control. This is a dinner of the day at Ritter's, taken
haphazard from a little pile of menus, and it may be accepted as a
typical Homburg dinner:--

Potage Crecy au Riz.
Truite de Lac. Sce. Genevoise. Pommes Natures.
Longe