ion, is hardly known in Germany, and I believe
that they have not begun yet to supply their guests with small cakes
of soap labelled "Visitors," and meant to last for a week-end but not
longer. In towns no one dreams of having a constant succession of
staying guests, and either in town or country when a German family
expects a guest at all it is more often than not for the whole summer
or winter. You do not find a German girl arranging, as her English
cousin will, for a round of visits, fitting in dates, writing here and
there to know if people can take her in, and by the same post
answering those who are planning a pilgrimage for themselves and wish
to be taken. A visit in Germany is not the flighty affair it is with
us.

"This winter," says your friend, "my niece from Posen will be with
us," and presently the niece arrives and stays about three months.
There is rarely more than one spare room on a flat, and that is often
a room not easily spared. In country houses there are rows of rooms,
but they are not filled by an everlasting procession of guests in the
English way. When you stay in a country house at home you wonder how
your hosts ever get anything done, and whether they don't sometimes
wish they had a few days to themselves. To be sure, English hosts go
about their business and leave you to yours, more than Germans think
polite. I once spent six weeks, quite an ordinary visit as to length,
with some friends who had several grown-up children. It was a most
cheerful friendly household, but one day I got into a corner near the
stove, rather glad for a change to be myself for a while with a novel
for company. When I had been there a little time the second daughter
looked in and at once apologised.

"Mamma sent me to see," she explained,--"she feared you were by
yourself."

It is not easy to tell your German hosts that you like and wish to be
by yourself sometimes; and if you say that you are used to it in
England you won't impress them. The English are so inhospitable and
unfriendly, they will say, for that is one of the many popular myths
that are believed about us. I have been told of a German lady who has
lived here most of her life, and complains to her German friends that
she has never spent a night under an English roof; but then, she
chooses to associate exclusively with Germans, whose roofs she refuses
to regard as English ones, even when they are in Kensington; and she
cherishes such an invincible preju