look round. Still, it is pleasant to think one has been
there."

"I suppose you did not have much time?" his friend would suggest.

"We did not get there till the evening," the tourist would explain. "We
were busy till dark buying postcards, and then in the morning there was
the writing and addressing to be done, and when that was over, and we had
had our breakfast, it was time to leave again."

He would take up another card showing the panorama from a mountain top.

"Sublime! colossal!" he would cry enraptured. "If I had known it was
anything like that, I'd have stopped another day and had a look at it."

It was always worth seeing, the arrival of a party of German tourists in
a Schwartzwald village. Leaping from the coach they would surge round
the solitary gendarme.

"Where is the postcard shop?" "Tell us--we have only two hours--where do
we get postcards?"

The gendarme, scenting _Trinkgeld_, would head them at the double-quick:
stout old gentlemen unaccustomed to the double-quick, stouter Frauen
gathering up their skirts with utter disregard to all propriety, slim
_Fraulein_ clinging to their beloved would run after him. Nervous
pedestrians would fly for safety into doorways, careless loiterers would
be swept into the gutter.

In the narrow doorway of the postcard shop trouble would begin. The
cries of suffocated women and trampled children, the curses of strong
men, would rend the air. The German is a peaceful, law-abiding citizen,
but in the hunt for postcards he was a beast. A woman would pounce on a
tray of cards, commence selecting, suddenly the tray would be snatched
from her. She would burst into tears, and hit the person nearest to her
with her umbrella. The cunning and the strong would secure the best
cards. The weak and courteous be left with pictures of post offices and
railway stations. Torn and dishevelled, the crowd would rush back to the
hotel, sweep crockery from the table, and--sucking stumpy pencils--write
feverishly. A hurried meal would follow. Then the horses would be put
to again, the German tourists would climb back to their places and be
driven away, asking of the coachman what the name of the place they had
just left might happen to be.

The Postcard as a Family Curse.

One presumes that even to the patient German the thing grew tiresome. In
the _Fliegende Blatter_ two young clerks were represented discussing the
question of summer holidays.

"Where are yo