sun to the other gate, at which a man stood
to collect the entrance money. I have seen German youngsters stand
longingly by the margin of a lonely sheet of ice. They could have skated
on that ice for hours, and nobody have been the wiser. The crowd and the
police were at the other end, more than half a mile away, and round the
corner. Nothing stopped their going on but the knowledge that they ought
not. Things such as these make one pause to seriously wonder whether the
Teuton be a member of the sinful human family or not. Is it not possible
that these placid, gentle folk may in reality be angels, come down to
earth for the sake of a glass of beer, which, as they must know, can only
in Germany be obtained worth the drinking?

In Germany the country roads are lined with fruit trees. There is no
voice to stay man or boy from picking and eating the fruit, except
conscience. In England such a state of things would cause public
indignation. Children would die of cholera by the hundred. The medical
profession would be worked off its legs trying to cope with the natural
results of over-indulgence in sour apples and unripe walnuts. Public
opinion would demand that these fruit trees should be fenced about, and
thus rendered harmless. Fruit growers, to save themselves the expense of
walls and palings, would not be allowed in this manner to spread sickness
and death throughout the community.

But in Germany a boy will walk for miles down a lonely road, hedged with
fruit trees, to buy a pennyworth of pears in the village at the other
end. To pass these unprotected fruit trees, drooping under their burden
of ripe fruit, strikes the Anglo-Saxon mind as a wicked waste of
opportunity, a flouting of the blessed gifts of Providence.

I do not know if it be so, but from what I have observed of the German
character I should not be surprised to hear that when a man in Germany is
condemned to death he is given a piece of rope, and told to go and hang
himself. It would save the State much trouble and expense, and I can see
that German criminal taking that piece of rope home with him, reading up
carefully the police instructions, and proceeding to carry them out in
his own back kitchen.

The Germans are a good people. On the whole, the best people perhaps in
the world; an amiable, unselfish, kindly people. I am positive that the
vast majority of them go to Heaven. Indeed, comparing them with the
other Christian nations of t