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tes afterward, without further ceremony or delay, the truly epicurean auditor has his feet under the mahogany at the Hoftheatre Cafe across the platz, with a seidel of that incomparable brew tilted elegantly toward his face and his glad eyes smiling at Fraeulein Sophie through the glass bottom. How many women could stand that test? How many could bear the ribald distortions of that lens-like seidel bottom and yet keep their charm? How many thus caricatured and vivisected, could command this free reading notice from a casual American, dictating against time and space to a red-haired stenographer, three thousand and five hundred miles away? And yet Sophie does it, and not only Sophie, but also Frida, Elsa, Lili, Kunigunde, Maertchen, Therese and Lottchen, her confreres and aides, and even little Rosa, who is half Bavarian and half Japanese, and one of the prettiest girls in Munich, in or out of uniform. It is a pleasure to say a kind word for little Rosa, with her coal black hair and her slanting eyes, for she is too fragile a fraeulein to be toting around those gigantic German schnitzels and bifsteks, those mighty double portions of sauerbraten and rostbif, those staggering drinking urns, overballasted and awash. Let us not, however, be unjust to the estimable Herr Wirt of the Hoftheatre Cafe, with his pneumatic tread, his chaste side whiskers and his long-tailed coat, for his drinking urns, when all is said and done, are quite the smallest in Munich. And not only the smallest, but also the shapeliest. In the Hofbraeuhaus and in the open air _bierkneipen_ (for instance, the Mathaeser joint, of which more anon) one drinks out of earthen cylinders which resemble nothing so much as the gaunt towers of Munich cathedral; and elsewhere the orthodox goblet is a glass edifice following the lines of an old-fashioned silver water pitcher--you know the sort the innocently criminal used to give as wedding presents!--but at the Hoftheatre there is a vessel of special design, hexagonal in cross section and unusually graceful in general aspect. On top, a pewter lid, ground to an optical fit and highly polished--by Sophie, Rosa _et al._, poor girls! To starboard, a stout handle, apparently of reinforced onyx. Above the handle, and attached to the lid, a metal flange or thumbpiece. Grasp the handle, press your thumb on the thumbpiece--and presto, the lid heaves up. And then, to the tune of a Strauss waltz, played passionately by tone
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