f meal to expect unless you have
been to the house before. In some houses it will be hot, in others
cold. In Berlin, supper usually offers you a dish made with eggs and
mushrooms, eggs and asparagus, or some combination of the kind, and
after this the usual variety of ham and sausages fetched from the
provision shop. Tea and beer are drunk at this meal in most houses.
Sometimes Rhine wine is on the table too. The sweets are often small
fruit tartlets served with whipped cream. One menu I remember
distinctly, because it was so quaint and full of surprises. We began
with huge quantities of asparagus and poached eggs eaten together.
Then we had _Pumpernickel_, Gruyere cheese and radishes, and for a
third course vanilla ice. That was the end of the supper, but later in
the evening, just before we left, in came an enormous dish covered
with gooseberry tartlets, and we had to eat them, for somehow in
Germany it seems ungrateful and unfriendly not to eat and drink what
is provided.

After dinner or supper everyone wishes everyone else _Mahlzeit_ which
is to say, "I wish you a good digestion." Sometimes people only bow as
they say it, but more often they shake hands. I know an Englishman who
was much puzzled by this ceremony at his first German dinner-party. He
saw everyone shaking hands as if they were about to disperse the
instant the feast was over, and when his host came to him with a
smiling face, took his hand and murmured _Mahlzeit_, he summoned what
German he had at his command and answered _Gute Nacht_.

CHAPTER XIX

GERMAN SUNDAYS

There was to be singing in the forest on Sunday afternoon, we were
told, when we arrived at our little Black Forest town; and we were on
no account to miss it. We did not want to miss anything, for whenever
we looked out of our windows or strolled through the streets we were
entertained and enchanted. From the hotel we could see women and girls
pass to and fro all day with the great wooden buckets they carried on
their backs and filled at the well close by. As dusk fell the oldest
woman in the community hobbled out, let down the iron chains slung
across the street, and lighted the oil lamps swinging from them. All
the gossips of the place gathered at the well of evenings, and
throughout the day barefooted children played there. Behind the main
street there were gabled houses with ancient wooden balconies and
gardens crammed with pinks. The population mostly sat out of doors
af