hedge-hog environment of unbelievable traits,
of warring contrasts.

CHAPTER VIII

GERMAN COURTSHIP

Once during the winter he tried on her a course of flirtation which
he had learned very well in his Sophomore year. But German girls do
not flirt. His arrows sank in feebly, impotently, as if her
attention had the despairing resistance of a sandbag. Unperturbed
she made nothing of it. He felt that she thought he was silly or had
the rickets. So he speedily gave this up.

Thus he became aware how vastly different are courtship and other
relations between young men and young women in America and in
Germany. He asked himself.

"Are the German ways more civilized?" Certainly, to the Teuton, they
represent a more creditable and becoming evolution. He always
stoutly favors his own customs, and finds little here to discuss.
Even if a rotten morality in his young gods is to be assumed, this
would be proper as in the young gods of the mythologies.

The Teuton marriage refers plainly to property. The language has
prominent terms indicating how espousal means goods with a woman
attached to them. There is scarcely an equivalent in English.
Courtship in the form of natural little raptures that disport in and
beautify enamored companionship in youth, the pure, unfettered,
mystic attraction between the sexes in blossoming time, are
practically unknown to the German social life. The full gloss of
fancy, the velveting of manners, the felicitous fabrication of
innocent emotions into a blessed garment of many colors, find their
development outside the domain of Thor. Such associations have there
no charming playtime, but forthwith make for permanent good or
permanent evil.

Accordingly, for Gard, in his fond inclinations, there was no
experience with Cupids about the Bucher flower garden. Only, as it
were, a sort of rough sledding on broken, jolting ice! And he noted
the comparative absence of such delicate sentiment in German
literature. Aside from Heine, who became French, German letters have
relatively little to offer on this score. The very language
discourages love-making. Since Heine's exile a century ago, the
increasing might of the armored Hohenzollerns had finally almost
killed all this.

Gard was thrown out of gear in another way. Fraeulein's lack not only
of amatory complaisance but of social polish or even facility kept
him dubious and disconcerted. She brusquely alternated between a
sisterly tenderness of