use I was
impressed by its disreputable name. It was some sort of small pancake
soaked in a wine sauce, and it was called _versoffene Jungfern_. Most
of these inns kept no servants, and except in the Kurhaus there was
not a black-coated waiter in the place. Our inn-keeper tilled his own
fields, grew his own hops, and brewed his own beer; and his wife,
wearing her peasant's costume, did all the cooking and cleaning,
assisted by a daughter or a cousin. When you met her out of doors she
would be carrying one of the immense loads peasant women do carry up
hill and down dale in Germany. She was hale and hearty in her middle
age, and always cheerful and obliging. At that inn, too, we never had
a meal indoors from May till October. Everything was brought out to a
summer-house, from which we looked straight down the village, its
irregular Noah's Ark-like houses, and its background of mountains and
forest.

When you first get back to England from Germany, you have to pull
yourself together and remember that in your own country, even on a hot
still summer evening, you cannot sit in a garden where a band is
playing and have your dinner in the open air, unless you happen to be
within reach of Earl's Court. In German towns there are always numbers
of restaurants in which, according to the weather, meals can be served
indoors or out. You see what use people make of them if, for instance,
you happen to be in Hamburg on a hot summer night. All round the basin
of the Alster there are houses, hotels, and gardens, and every public
garden is so crowded that you wonder the waiters can pass to and fro.
Bands are playing, lights are flashing, the little sailing boats are
flitting about. The whole city after its day's work has turned out for
air and music and to talk with friends. And as you watch the scene you
know that in every city, even in every village of the empire, there is
some such gala going on: in gardens going down to the Rhine from the
old Rhenish towns; in the gardens of ancient castles set high above
the stifling air of valleys; in the forest that comes to the very edge
of so many little German towns; even in the streets of towns where a
table set on the pavement will be pleasanter than in a room on such a
night as this. You can sit at one of these restaurants and order
nothing but a cup of coffee or a glass of beer; or you can dine, for
the most part, well and cheaply. If you order a _halbe Portion_ of
any dish, as Germans do,