om the city.
If anybody chose to remain longer it was inconvenient for the
landlords, in which connection the following scene occurred. A man, a
Berliner of course, on returning to his hotel, after accompanying some
departing friends to their steamer, sat down leisurely by his host and
hostess, rubbed his hands together, and said: "Well, Hoppensack, at
last the Berliners are all gone, or at least nearly all of them; now
we shall have a good time, now it will be cozy." He expected, of
course, that the host and hostess would agree with him most heartily.
But instead of that he found himself looking into long faces. Finally
he screwed up his courage and asked why they were so indifferent.
"Why, good heavens, Mr. Schuenemann," said Hoppensack, "a recorder and
his wife came to us the last of May and now it is almost the middle of
September. We want to be alone again, you see." As Mrs. Hoppensack
nodded approvingly, there was nothing left for Schuenemann to do but to
depart himself the next day.

Not long after the last summer guests had gone the equinoctial storms
set in, and, if it was a bad year, they lasted on into November. First
the chestnuts fell, then the tiles rattled down from the roof, and
from the eaves-troughs, always placed with their outlets close by
bedroom windows, the rain splashed noisily down into the yard. In the
course of time, scattered clouds sailed across the clearing sky and
the air turned cold. Everybody felt the chilliness, and all day long
there was an old woodchopper at work in the shed. My father would
often go down to see him, take the ax and split wood for him a
half-hour at a time.

Social activities were at a standstill during these late autumn days.
People were recovering from the strain of the summer season and
storing up strength for winter entertainments. Before these began
there was an interregnum of several weeks, the slaughtering and baking
times, the latter coinciding with the Christmas period. First came
the slaughtering of geese. A regular household without a goose-killing
time could hardly have been thought of. Many things had to be taken
into account. First of all, perhaps, were the feathers to make new
beds, which were always needed for guest chambers; but the chief
concern were the smoked goose-breasts, almost as important articles as
the hams and sides of bacon hanging in the chimney. Shortly before St.
Martin's day, if enough geese had been collected to supply the needs,
t