he
clack going on around you, and the asphyxiating air, bring on a
demoralising somnolence that you despise and cannot easily throw off.
You sit about as lazily as anyone else half through the golden
afternoon, drink a cup of coffee at four o'clock, look at mountains of
cake, and then start for the restaurant, which is said to be _eine
gute Stunde_ from the hotel. You find, as you expected, that you
saunter gently uphill on a broad winding road through the forest, and
that you have a charming walk, but not what anyone in this country
would call exercise till they were about seventy. In case you should
be weary you pass seats every hundred yards or so, and when you have
made your ascent you are received by a bustling waiter or a waitress
in costume, who expects to serve you with beer or coffee before you
venture down the hill again. By the time you get back to the hotel
everyone is streaming in to supper, which is not as long as dinner,
but quite as noisy. After supper everyone sits about the verandah or
the garden. The men play cards, and smoke and drink coffee and Kirsch,
the married women talk and do embroidery, the maidens stroll about in
twos and threes or sit down to Halma. There are never many young men
in these summer hotels, and the few there are herd with the older men
or with each other more than young men do in this country. What we
understand by flirtation is not encouraged, unless it is almost sure
to lead to marriage; and what the Germans understand by flirtation is
justly considered scandalous and reprehensible. For the Germans have
taken the word into use, but taken away the levity and innocence of
its meaning. They make it a term of serious reproach, and those who
dislike us condemn the shocking prevalence of Flirt (they make a noun
of the verb) in our decadent society.

The _Pension_ price at a German summer hotel varies from four to
fifteen marks, according to the general style of the establishment and
the position of the rooms engaged. In one frequented by Germans the
sitting-rooms are bare and formal, and as English visitors are not
expected no English papers are taken. The season begins in June and
lasts till the end of September, and you must be a successful
hotel-keeper yourself to understand how so much can be provided for so
little, miles away from any market. Many of these summer hotels have
been built high up in the forest, and with no others near them. Some
are run as a speculation by docto