ject, according to the German notion of prettiness. There is not a bit
of paint on it anywhere, not a plaster image all round, not even a flag.
The nest finished, the bird proceeds to live outside it. He drops things
on the grass; twigs, ends of worms, all sorts of things. He is
indelicate. He makes love, quarrels with his wife, and feeds the
children quite in public. The German householder is shocked. He says to
the bird:

"'For many things I like you. I like to look at you. I like to hear you
sing. But I don't like your ways. Take this little box, and put your
rubbish inside where I can't see it. Come out when you want to sing; but
let your domestic arrangements be confined to the interior. Keep to the
box, and don't make the garden untidy.'"

In Germany one breathes in love of order with the air, in Germany the
babies beat time with their rattles, and the German bird has come to
prefer the box, and to regard with contempt the few uncivilised outcasts
who continue to build their nests in trees and hedges. In course of time
every German bird, one is confident, will have his proper place in a full
chorus. This promiscuous and desultory warbling of his must, one feels,
be irritating to the precise German mind; there is no method in it. The
music-loving German will organise him. Some stout bird with a specially
well-developed crop will be trained to conduct him, and, instead of
wasting himself in a wood at four o'clock in the morning, he will, at the
advertised time, sing in a beer garden, accompanied by a piano. Things
are drifting that way.

Your German likes nature, but his idea of nature is a glorified Welsh
Harp. He takes great interest in his garden. He plants seven rose trees
on the north side and seven on the south, and if they do not grow up all
the same size and shape it worries him so that he cannot sleep of nights.
Every flower he ties to a stick. This interferes with his view of the
flower, but he has the satisfaction of knowing it is there, and that it
is behaving itself. The lake is lined with zinc, and once a week he
takes it up, carries it into the kitchen, and scours it. In the
geometrical centre of the grass plot, which is sometimes as large as a
tablecloth and is generally railed round, he places a china dog. The
Germans are very fond of dogs, but as a rule they prefer them of china.
The china dog never digs holes in the lawn to bury bones, and never
scatters a flower-bed to th