a widow, and her brewer, the only man in her employ, was, we
supposed, standing guard over his own house. We thought the panic
seemed extreme, but we had never encountered Hungarian gipsies on the
warpath, and we did not know how many were coming. So, after assuring
our excited little Frau that we would stand by her as well as we
could, we went to an upper window to watch for the enemy. Presently
the procession began, a straggling procession of the dirtiest,
meanest-looking ruffians ever seen. There was waggon after waggon,
swarming with ragamuffins of both sexes and all ages. The men were
mostly on foot, casting furtive glances to right and left, evident
snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, truculent, ragged, wearing
evil-looking knives by their sides. During their transit the village
had shut itself up, as Coventry did for Godiva's ride. When we all
ventured forth again the talk was of missing poultry and rifled fruit
trees. The geese had luckily started for their day on the high
pastures before the bad folk came; for in a German village there is
always a gooseherd. Sometimes it is a little boy or girl, sometimes an
old woman, and early in the morning whoever has the post collects the
whole flock, drives it to a chosen feeding ground, spends the day
there, and brings it back at night. It must be a contemplative life,
and in dry weather pleasant. I think it would suit a philosopher if he
could choose his days. In our Franconian village the gooseherd was a
little boy, vastly proud of his job. Every morning, long before we
were up, he would stride past our windows piping the same tune, and at
the sound of it every goose in the village would waddle out from her
night quarters and join the cackling fussy crowd at his heels. Every
evening as dusk fell he came back again, still piping the same tune,
and then the geese would detach themselves in little groups from the
main body and find their own homes as surely as cows do.

Every rural district of Germany has its own novelist. Fritz Reuter,
Frenssen, Rosegger, Sudermann all write of country life in the places
they know best. In Hauptmann's beautiful plays you see the peasant
through a veil of poetry and mysticism. Auerbach, I am told, is out of
fashion. His stories end well mostly, his construction one must admit
is childish, and his characters change their natures with the
suddenness of a thunderbolt to suit his plot. Yet when I have
_Sehnsucht_ for Germany, and cannot go t