nly. Evidences of
sharp discipline one moment; the next, awkward short-cuts. The
Germans have never been able to harmonize these extremes into a
medium of easy formality or sightly smoothness. At the Bucher table
each one reached across for the food with scarce an apology--a plan
jerkily interrupted at times by Tekla, who stuck things at Gard as
if she were going to hit him. The strong provender heaped up in
abundance, rank in smell and usually unappetizing in color,
interfered at first with his hunger. And the drinking was, of
course, of a copiousness he had little dreamed of.

The whole effect created a distinctly unsympathetic impression. It
ran full tilt against Gard's anticipations. Rebner had led him to
expect always the best among the Germans. Were they not the most
advanced of humans? Were they not the patterns whom he should model
himself after in the laudatory desire for self-improvement? He was
naturally curious to see the young lady of the household, all the
more as he wondered how she would blend into this blunt picture. She
did not appear and he heard no reference to her. But there was a
vacant place.

Much struggling occurred over the mutual endeavors to carry on
conversation. With the English which the sons had learned and with
Gard's German which he found a strange article on its native ground,
headway was made after a fashion. His bloodless American college
variety of the language was very weak to buffet about in these
billows of idioms and colloquialisms.

The family, in its emphatic substantiality, was most friendly and
eager to please. They urged food and fluid upon him in a way that
would have dismayed his Yankee doctor. He found himself eating and
drinking to an extent he had never imagined. This sort of thing, he
concluded half-despairingly, would either be the making of him or
kill him. At home the general fear was about too much. Here satiety,
over-satiety, seemed to be the rule as at all German firesides.
While he dreaded to think what his abstemious digestive apparatus
would do, his new friends took not amiss the bountiful spilling of
edibles and liquids upon their napkins spread conspicuously over
their breasts. Laundering must be cheap in Germany. That was one
good thing.

Gard did not forget that this was represented to be a highly
instructed and cultivated circle. The members had graduated from the
best schools or held degrees from standard universities. He kept
asking himself in w