l do their business and put
it out."

I did not see a fire in Berlin, so I had no opportunity of witnessing
the remarkable coolness of the Berliner in circumstances the ordinary
man finds trying; but I saw a fire in my Bavarian village, and there
were not many cool people there. The summons came in the middle of the
night with the hoarse insistent clanging of the church bell, the
sudden start into life of the sleeping village, the sounds in the
house and in the street of people astir and terrified. Then there came
the brilliant reflection of the flames in the opposite windows, and
the roar and crackle of fire no one at first knew where. It was only a
barn after all, a barn luckily detached from other buildings. Yet when
we got into the street we found most of the population removing its
treasures, as if danger was imminent. All the beds and chairs and pots
and pans of the place seemed to be on the cobble-stones, and the women
wailed and the children wept. "But the village is not on fire," we
said. "It may be at any moment," they assured us, and were scandalised
by our cold-bloodedness. For we had not carted our trunks into the
street, but hastened towards the burning barn to see if we could help
the men and boys carrying water. The weather was still and the barn
isolated, so we knew there was no danger of the fire spreading. But
the villagers were too excitable and too panic-stricken to be
convinced of this. All their lives they had dreaded fire, and when the
flames broke out so near them they thought that their houses were
doomed.

Next to fire the German peasant hates beggars and gipsies. We were six
months in the Black Forest and only met one beggar the whole time, and
he was a decent-looking old man who seemed to ask alms unwillingly.
But in some parts of Germany there are a great many most
unpleasant-looking tramps. The village council puts up a notice that
forbids begging, and has a general fund from which it sends tramps on
their way. But it does not seem able to deal with the caravans of
gipsies that come from Hungary and Bohemia. In a Thuringian village we
came down one morning to find our inn locked and barricaded as if a
riot was expected, and an attack. Even the shutters were drawn and
bolted. "_Was ist denn los?_" we asked in amazement, and were told
that the gipsies were coming.

"But will they do you any harm?" we asked.

"They will steal all they can lay hands on," our landlady assured us.
She was