places the inn
gardens are used as dining-rooms from morning till night, and you may
if you choose have everything you eat and drink brought to you out of
doors. Most inns have a skittle alley, for skittles are still played
in Germany by all classes. The peasants play it on Sunday afternoons,
and the dignified merchant has his skittle club and spends an evening
there once a week. The favourite card game of Germany is still _Skat_,
but bridge has been heard of and will probably supersede it in time.
_Skat_ is a good game for three players, with a system of scoring
that seems intricate till you have played two or three times and got
used to it. In Germany it is always _die Herren_ who play these
serious games, while the women sit together with their bits of
embroidery. At the Ladies' Clubs in Berlin there is some card playing,
but these two or three highly modern and emancipated establishments do
not call the tune for all Germany. Directly you get away from Berlin
you find that men and women herd separately, far more than in England,
take their pleasures separately, and have fewer interests in common.
It is still the custom for the man of the family to go to a beer-house
every day, much as an Englishman goes to his club. Here he meets his
friends, sees the papers, talks, smokes, and drinks his _Schoppen_.
Each social grade will have its own haunts in this way, or its own
reserved table in a big public room. At the Hof Braeuhaus in Munich one
room is set apart for the Ministers of State, and I was told some
years ago that the appointments of it were just as plain and rough as
those in the immense public hall where anyone who looked respectable
could have the best beer in the world and a supper of sorts.

It is dull uphill work to write about sport and outdoor games in
Germany, because you may have been in many places and met a fair
variety of people without seeing any enthusiasm for either one or the
other. The bulk of the nation is, as a matter of fact, not interested
in sport or in any outdoor games except indifferent tennis, swimming,
skating, and in some places boating. When a German wants to amuse
himself, he sits in a garden and listens to a good band; if he is
young and energetic, he walks on a well-made road to a restaurant on
the top of a hill. In winter he plays skat, goes to the theatre or to
a concert, or has his music at home. Also he reads a great deal, and
he reads in several tongues. This, at any rate, is t