nd glasses. The work would have to be
turned over to benevolence for its prosecution, and would doubtless be
done much more to the advantage of the community. The profit, however,
on this trade in Bavaria is somewhat increased by the manner in which
servants are paid. Especially if good-looking girls are employed, the
employer may pay them nothing, but leave them to get their pay from the
customer. They bring him his change in kreutzers and fractions of a
kreutzer, and he shoves back to them often these fractional parts; and
if no such are there, a truly liberal soul may give the girl a whole
kreutzer, and then in return he will receive an expression of thanks
somewhat stronger than our lordly porters would allow themselves to make
for half a dollar on which they had no claim. Small as this profit is,
it brings to the retailers of Munich about five hundred thousand
florins, somewhat more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
gold per annum. Then, if the servants receive from the customers
gratuities of half that amount, that is, an average of one-twelfth of a
cent on the glass, this amounts to two hundred and fifty thousand
florins per annum. In view of all these facts, it can be conceived that
nothing would be so certain to be followed by a revolutionary outbreak
as the addition of a kreutzer to the price of a mass of beer.

The wit which sparkles and flashes in a Bavarian beer-house may be as
much less boisterous, or rather as much more quiet, than that which
explodes over the distilled spirits of our bar-rooms, as the stimulant
itself is less exciting, but is for this very reason the more genuine.
Like the myriads of fire-flies on a warm summer evening amid the rising
fog of a marshy ground, so gleams this wit in its smoky atmosphere;
still it is there, notwithstanding the popular notion of Bavarian
stupidity. The North German, and even English and American satirists of
these people, fare generally much as did Ulysses's men on drinking of
Circe's magic cup; and once turned into swine, they are seldom turned
back again, at least until they leave the charmed spot. When once drawn
into the vortex of students' convivial gatherings, they feel that there
is no escape without flying from the place.

A drinking frolic, involving Americans, once called in my aid to settle
a great international difficulty--that is, one about as threatening as
most of those diplomatic cases flaunted so often in our
newspapers--between