ed with an open market held in
one of the many ancient market places of Germany. Photographs of
Freiburg give a bird's-eye view of the town with the minster rising
from the midst of its red roofs; but there is just a peep at the
market which is being held at the foot of the minster. On the side
hidden by the towering cathedral there are some of the oldest houses
in Freiburg. It is a large crowded market on certain days of the week,
and full of colour and movement. The peasants who come to it from the
neighbouring valleys wear bright-coloured skirts and headgear, and in
that part of Germany fruit is plentiful, so that all through the
summer and autumn the market carts and barrows are heaped with
cherries, wild strawberries, plums, apricots, peaches, and grapes in
their season. The market place itself, and even the steps of the
minster and of the surrounding houses, are crowded with the peasants
and their produce, and with the leisurely servants and housewives
bargaining for the day's supplies. From a view of the market place at
Cottbus in Brandenburg you may get a better idea of the people at a
German market; the servants with their umbrellas, their big baskets,
their baggy blouses and no hats, the middle class housewife with a hat
or a bonnet, and a huge basket on her arm, a nursemaid in peasant
costume stooping over her perambulator, other peasants in costume at
the stalls, and two of the farm carts that are in some districts yoked
oftener with oxen than with horses. There is naturally great variety
in the size and character of markets, according to the needs they
supply. In Hamburg the old names show you that there were separate
markets for separate trades, so that you went to the Schweinemarkt
when you wanted pigs, and to some other part of the city when you
wanted flowers and fruit. In Berlin there are twelve covered markets
besides the open ones, and they are all as admirably clean, tidy, and
unpoetical as everything else is in that spick and span, swept and
garnished Philistine city. The green gooseberries there are marked
"unripe fruit" by order of the police, so that no one should think
they were ripe and eat them uncooked; and you can buy rhubarb
nowadays, a vegetable the modern Berliner eats without shuddering. But
in a Berlin market you buy what you need as quickly as you can and
come away. There is nothing to tempt you, nothing picturesque, nothing
German, if German brings to your mind a queer mixture of poet