a dark tight-fitting bodice, laced down
the front. (I think this garment is called a stomacher, but I am not
sure, as I have never liked to ask.) Her square shoulders are covered
with the whitest of white linen. Her sleeves are also white; and being
very full, and of some soft lawnlike material, suggest the idea of folded
wings. Upon her flaxen hair is perched a saucy round green hat. The
buckles of her dainty shoes, the big eyes in her pretty face, are all
four very bright. One feels one would like much to change places for the
day with Hans.

Arm-in-arm, looking like some china, but exceedingly substantial china,
shepherd and shepherdess, they descend upon the town. One rubs one's
eyes and stares after them as they pass. They seem to have stepped from
the pictured pages of one of those old story-books that we learnt to
love, sitting beside the high brass guard that kept ourselves and the
nursery-fire from doing each other any serious injury, in the days when
the world was much bigger than it is now, and much more real and
interesting.

Munich and the country round about it make a great exchange of peoples
every Sunday. In the morning, trainload after trainload of villagers and
mountaineers pour into the town, and trainload after trainload of good
and other citizens steam out to spend the day in wood and valley, and
upon lake and mountain-side.

We went into one or two of the beer-halls--not into the swell cafes,
crowded with tourists and Munich masherdom, but into the low-ceilinged,
smoke-grimed cellars where the life of the people is to be seen.

The ungenteel people in a country are so much more interesting than the
gentlefolks. One lady or gentleman is painfully like every other lady or
gentleman. There is so little individuality, so little character, among
the upper circles of the world. They talk like each other, they think
and act like each other, they dress like each other, and look very much
like each other. We gentlefolks only play at living. We have our rules
and regulations for the game, which must not be infringed. Our unwritten
guide-books direct us what to do and what to say at each turn of the
meaningless sport.

To those at the bottom of the social pyramid, however, who stand with
their feet upon the earth, Nature is not a curious phenomenon to be
looked down at and studied, but a living force to be obeyed. They front
grim, naked Life, face to face, and wrestle with it through the