here. It even pays for any special food or
wine ordered by its own doctor.

One cause of ill health amongst German servants must often be the
abominable sleeping accommodation provided for them in old-fashioned
houses. It is said that rooms without windows opening to the air are
no longer allowed in Germany, and there may be a police regulation
against them. Even this cannot have been issued everywhere, for not
long ago I had a large well furnished room of this kind offered me in
a crowded hotel. It had windows, but they opened on to a narrow
corridor. The proprietor was quite surprised when I said I would
rather have a room at the top of the house with a window facing the
street. I know a young lady acting as _Stuetze der Hausfrau_ who slept
in a cupboard for years, the only light and air reaching her coming
from a slit of glass over the door. I remember the consumptive looking
daughter of a prosperous tradesman showing us some rooms her father
wished to let, and suggesting that a cupboard off a sitting-room would
make a pleasant study. She said she slept in one just like it on a
higher floor. Of course she called it a _Kammer_ and not a cupboard,
but that did not make it more inviting. Over and over again I have
known servants stowed away in holes that seemed fit for brooms and
brushes, but not for creatures with lungs and easily poisoned blood.
This is one of the facts of German life that makes comparison between
England and Germany so difficult and bewildering. Everyone knowing
both countries is struck by the amount of State and police
surveillance and interference the Germans enjoy compared with us. I do
not say "endure," because Germans would not like it. Most of them
approve of the rule they are used to, and they tell us we live in a
horrid go-as-you-please fashion with the worst results. I suppose we
do. But I have never known an English servant put to sleep in a
cupboard, though I have heard complaints of damp fireless rooms,
especially in old historical palaces and houses. And I have never been
offered a room in a good English inn that had no windows to the open
air. These windowless rooms may be forbidden as bedrooms by the German
police, but it would take a bigger earthquake than the empire is
likely to sustain to do away with those still in use.

CHAPTER XV

FOOD

Although the Germans as a nation are large eaters, they begin their
day with the usual light continental breakfast of coffee and rol