ifs_, but the corresponding gallant exaltation
of the gentler sex was not included. The polished courts of
self-denying love, the Troubadours, the salons, the refining
influences that gradually raised woman to her modern sovereignty of
a graceful liberty and charm, never characterized Deutschland.

Besides, women becoming idols through his own sexual restraint
compelled a self-sacrificing procedure that did not appeal to Fritz.
To him those many feminizing influences had naught to do with
strength in battle or in toil. They were dangerous, softening, and
coddled the elements of defeat. He wanted work and fighting and
children, always children, but with the lustful appetites of the
undisputed male.

His Berthas and Gretchens, who had been exceptional figures in the
warring camps of the ancient Teutons, were therefore only
transferred into a similar yet menial relation in the housed home.
And there they have typically remained--in its cook room and
nursery. The fact that the Buchers, though coming, as they boasted,
from one original, unmixed, stationary stock there in that middle
spot of old Europe, had displayed themselves as social and political
parvenus, led to Kirtley's reflecting:

"The German thinks of a wife as in the kitchen, while a wife appears
to the Frenchman as in the salon, to the Briton, as in an English
garden."

So this gradual elevating of the sex toward an ethereal height in
all respects, toward pure associations which, through the epochs of
chaste saints, chivalry, gallantry, social freedom, were to uplift
men by the graces of lofty feminine enchantment, took place westward
of the Rhine. And Germany, if the sporadic Heine is excepted, had no
Shelleys, no Chopins, and scarcely any of that rare, delightful
perfume of human existence which western and southern mankind quite
typically adores as the ultimate extract of beauty because it is
associated with the spiritual elegance of womanhood....

* * * * *

On Kirtley's leaving that day, Von Tielitz and Messer showed
themselves generously ready to share their amorous acquaintanceship.
They insisted on his going with them sometime to the smallest,
quaintest inn in Dresden where they were at present cultivating
friendly relations with "Fritzi." In short petticoats she served the
best hot sausages in Saxony. To an American student of life and
language in Germany she was pictured as absolutely necessary. For,
although orig