e Sunday play or opera is always one of the most
important of the week; the play everyone wishes to see or the opera
that is most attractive. A Wagner opera is often played on a Sunday
evening in the theatre that undertakes Wagner. The smaller stages will
give some old favourite, _Der Freischuetz_, _Don Juan_, _Oberon_, or
_Die Zauberfloete_. In fact, all through the winter the upper and
middle classes make the play and the opera their favourite Sunday
pastime. The lower classes depend a good deal on the public dancing
saloons, which seem to do as much harm as our public-houses, and to be
disliked and discouraged by all sensible Germans.

So far this account of a German Sunday suggests that Germans always go
from home for their weekly holiday, and it is true that when Sunday
comes the German likes to amuse himself. But he is not invariably at
the play or in inn gardens. It is the day when scattered members of a
family will meet most easily, and when the branch of the family that
can best do so will entertain the others. Some years ago in a North
German city I was often with friends who had a dining-room and narrow
dinner table long enough for a hotel. The host and hostess, when they
were by themselves, dined in a smaller room, sitting next to each
other on the sofa; but on Sundays their children and grandchildren,
some spinster cousins, some _Stammgaeste_ (old friends who came every
week) all met in the drawing-room at five o'clock, and sat down soon
after to a dinner of four or five courses in a long dining-room. It
was a company of all ages and some variety of station, and the
patriarchal arrangement placed the venerable and beloved host and
hostess side by side at the top of the room, with their friends in
order of importance to right and left of them, until you came, below
the salt as it were, to the Mamsells and the little children at the
foot of the table. But the Mamsells did not leave the room when the
sweets arrived. Everyone ate everything, including the preserved
fruits that came round with the roast meat, and the pudding that
arrived after the cheese. In those days it was not considered proper
in Germany for ladies to eat cheese, and no young lady would dream of
taking one of the little glasses of Madeira offered on a tray. They
were exclusively for _die Herren_, and always gave a fillip to the
conversation, which was also more or less a masculine monopoly. Just
before the end of the dinner it was the busine