id her hair; not because the author tells me just these
things, but because her type is as true to life to-day as it was
thirty years ago. As a contrast to her, a fine young lady from the
city presently joins the household, and the aunt does not have to
provide her with a tooth-brush. The new arrival wears blue satin
slippers, drinks her chocolate in bed, and cannot dress without the
help of a maid. In this way the author shows you that girls brought up
in cities are superfine rather than savage, and that you are not to
suppose the ordinary German _Backfisch_ is like her little heroine
from the provinces.

The truth of the matter is, that no one nowadays has such manners as
the _Backfisch_ had when she first came from the wilds; at least, no
one of her class, even if they have grown up in Hinter-Pommern. But if
you travel in Germany next week and stay in small towns and country
places, you will still meet plenty of people who take their poultry
bones in their fingers and put their knives in their mouths. If they
are men you will see them use their fork as a dagger to hold the meat
while they cut it up; you will see them stick their napkins into their
shirt collars and placidly comb their hair with a pocket comb in
public; if they are women and at a restaurant, they will pocket the
lumps of sugar they have not used in their coffee. But if you are in
private houses amongst people of Gretchen's type you will see none of
these things. A German host still pulls the joint close to him
sometimes or stands up to carve, and a German hostess still presses
you to eat, still in the kindness of her heart piles up your plate.
But this embarrassing form of hospitality is dying out. As Gretchen's
aunt said, people in good society recognise that a guest refuses food
because he does not want it. Some years ago, when you had satisfied
your hunger and declined more, your German friends used to look
offended or distressed, and say _Sie geniren sich gewiss_. This is a
difficult phrase to translate, because the idea is one that has never
taken root in the English mind, _Sich geniren_, however, is a
reflective verb, a corruption of the French verb _se gener_, and what
they meant was that you really wanted a third potato dumpling but did
not like to say so. Whether your reluctance was supposed to proceed
from your distrust of your host's hospitality or shame at your own
appetite, is not clear; in either case it was taken, is even to-day
still