ving it here before
making their appearance at the wedding. We were hungry and thirsty
ourselves, so we sat down under the shade of trees and ate _belegtes
Butterbrot_ and drank Pilsener as our neighbours did. We arrived at R.
just in time to remove the dust of the road, and then walk, as we
found our hosts expected us to do, in the wedding procession. First
came the bride and bridegroom, and then a long crocodile of
bridesmaids, all wearing the curious high bead wreaths possessed by
every village girl of standing in this part of Germany. We witnessed
the civil ceremony, but though I have been present at several German
civil weddings I remember as little about them as about a visit to the
English District Council Office where I have sometimes been to pay
taxes. In both cases there is a bare room, an indifferent official,
some production of official papers, and the thing is done. When the
bride and bridegroom had been made legally man and wife they headed
the waiting procession again, and proceeded to the church for the
real, the religious ceremony. It was packed with people, and the
service, which was Catholic, lasted a long time. When it was over
everyone streamed back to the hotel, and as soon as possible the
_Hochzeitsmahl_ began; but though we were politely bidden to it we
politely excused ourselves, for we knew that the feast would last for
hours and would be more than we could bear. Till evening, they said,
it would last, and there would be many speeches, and it was a broiling
summer day. The guests we perceived to be a mixed company of peasants
in costume, of inn-keepers and their families in ordinary clothes, and
of university students in black coats who were removed from the
peasantry by their education, but not by birth and affection. The
invited guests sat down to dinner in the _Speisesaal_, but the hotel
garden was crowded with country people who paid for what they
consumed. The dinner served to us and to others out here was an
unusually good one, so we discovered that people who attend a wedding
unasked get a spectacle, a dance, and extra fine food for their money.
Towards the end of the afternoon before we left R. we looked in at the
ballroom, where dancing had begun already.

At another peasant's wedding in the Black Forest we saw some quaint
customs observed that were omitted at R. In this case the bride and
bridegroom were themselves peasants, and wore the costume of their
valley. The bride was said to