apa is coming: I'll ask him."

I presume she did. At least the Herr Consul at Sammtstadt informs me of
a marriage-certificate issued to one Clinch of Chicago, and Kolnische of
Koln; and there is an amusing story extant in the Verein at Sammtstadt,
of an American connoisseur of Rhine wines, who mistook a flask of Cognac
and rock-candy, used for "craftily qualifying" lower grades of wine to
the American standard, for the rarest Rudesheimerberg.

VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION

Outside of my window, two narrow perpendicular mirrors, parallel
with the casement, project into the street, yet with a certain
unobtrusiveness of angle that enables them to reflect the people who
pass, without any reciprocal disclosure of their own. The men and women
hurrying by not only do not know they are observed, but, what is worse,
do not even see their own reflection in this hypocritical plane, and
are consequently unable, through its aid, to correct any carelessness
of garb, gait, or demeanor. At first this seems to be taking an unfair
advantage of the human animal, who invariably assumes an attitude
when he is conscious of being under human focus. But I observe that my
neighbors' windows, right and left, have a similar apparatus, that this
custom is evidently a local one, and the locality is German. Being
an American stranger, I am quite willing to leave the morality of the
transaction with the locality, and adapt myself to the custom: indeed,
I had thought of offering it, figuratively, as an excuse for any
unfairness of observation I might make in these pages. But my German
mirrors reflect without prejudice, selection, or comment; and the
American eye, I fear, is but mortal, and like all mortal eyes,
figuratively as well as in that literal fact noted by an eminent
scientific authority, infinitely inferior to the work of the best German
opticians.

And this leads me to my first observation, namely, that a majority of
those who pass my mirror have weak eyes, and have already invoked the
aid of the optician. Why are these people, physically in all else so
much stronger than my countrymen, deficient in eyesight? Or, to omit the
passing testimony of my Spion, and take my own personal experience, why
does my young friend Max, brightest of all schoolboys, who already
wears the cap that denotes the highest class,--why does he shock me by
suddenly drawing forth a pair of spectacles, that upon his fresh, rosy
face would be an obvious mocking