ok's kitchen. It belongs to
the people who maintain it, and they enter it when they please. It is
always so spick and span that you sigh as you see it, because you
think of your own kitchen at home with its black pans and unpleasant
looking sink. _There are no black pans in a German kitchen_; you never
see any grease, and you never by any chance see a teacloth or a duster
with a hole in it. An English kitchen in a small household is
furnished with more regard to the comfort of the servants than a
German one, and with less concern for the work to be done there. We
supply comfortable chairs, a coloured table-cloth, oil-cloth, books,
hearth-rug, pictures, cushions, inkstand, and a roaring fire. The
German kitchen lacks all these things. It does not look as if the
women who live in it ever expected to pursue their own business, or
rest for an hour in an easy chair. But the shining brightness of it
rejoices you,--every vessel is of wood, earthenware, enamel, or highly
polished metal, and every one of them is scrupulously clean. The
groceries and pudding stuffs are kept in fascinating jars and barrels,
like those that come to children at Christmas in toy kitchens made in
Germany. The stove is a clean, low hot table at which you can stand
all day without getting black and greasy. In this sensible spotless
workshop a German servant expects to be busy from morning till night.
Neither for herself nor for her fellow-servants will she ever set a
table for a tidy kitchen meal. She eats anywhere and anywhen, as the
fancy takes her and the exigencies of the day permit. Her morning meal
will consist of coffee and rye bread without butter. In the middle of
the morning she will have a second breakfast, rye bread again with
cheese or sausage. In a liberal household she will dine as the family
dines; in a stingy one she will fare worse than they. In an
old-fashioned household her portion will be carved for her in the
dining-room, because the joint will not return to the kitchen when the
family has done with it, but be placed straightway in the
_Speiseschrank_ under lock and key. In the afternoon she will have
bread and coffee again, and for supper as a rule what the family has,
sausage or ham or some dish made with eggs. One friend who goes out so
much with her husband that they are rarely at home to supper, told me
that she made her servant a monthly allowance to buy what she liked
for supper. German servants are allowed coffee and either