him.

Then, too, they would expect that he would not want to remain. Had
they not voluntarily, deliberately, hurled at him their defiant
scorn of his people? Self-respect would demand his immediate
departure.

As for himself, Gard passed a sleepless night thinking hotly about
the episode. Toward morning he cooled off. These were boors. Why
should he take to heart their boorishness? Richness was here indeed.
Just the place to keep finding out the real German. Having let the
bars down with such a bang and hullabaloo, the family would from now
on readily and fully reveal themselves. It is a poor investigator
and observer who is easily shied away from his purpose by taunts and
ill-breeding.

But the miracle was that the Buchers went on exactly as before. They
obviously saw no reasons for altering their friendly daily
intercourse, nor did they have any idea that he should harbor a
grievance. Beginning with the next morning, their usual amicable
bearing and attentions continued uninterrupted. The family was not
conscious of having tried to give mortal offense or to cause
resentment from him.

For, to a German, blows in all senses are a normal part of living.
His social habits indulge themselves in knocks, coarse attacks,
unseemly abuse, as rather matters of course. He wields a bludgeon
where more refined men would cut down with sarcasm or wither one
with disdain. Blows are his natural method of instructing others and
of getting himself instructed. "Good German blows" are what the
Kaiser talked of loudly. To strike as well as to kick is a
wholesome, healthful, righteous procedure, not to be grieved over,
not to be kept rankling in the bosom. It is truth and fact in
action, and action should always be forceful and decisive to be
effective. The whipping of a school boy for any just cause should
not be remembered by him throughout life as something to be allowed
to fester or as calling for angry vengeance.

So Gard's hosts pursued the tenor of their ways as if that
detonating night had witnessed nothing. Their insensitiveness about
it included insensitiveness about him. In other words, he discovered
that as you cannot insult a German, therefore he cannot insult you.
He does not know about such things in the Anglo-Saxon meaning. His
conception of social and moral values is so obtusely or radically
different from those of the truly occidental civilizations that
there is little common ground here. Consequently, in such relat