tes afterward, without further ceremony or delay, the truly
epicurean auditor has his feet under the mahogany at the Hoftheatre Cafe
across the platz, with a seidel of that incomparable brew tilted
elegantly toward his face and his glad eyes smiling at Fraeulein Sophie
through the glass bottom.

How many women could stand that test? How many could bear the ribald
distortions of that lens-like seidel bottom and yet keep their charm?
How many thus caricatured and vivisected, could command this free
reading notice from a casual American, dictating against time and space
to a red-haired stenographer, three thousand and five hundred miles
away? And yet Sophie does it, and not only Sophie, but also Frida, Elsa,
Lili, Kunigunde, Maertchen, Therese and Lottchen, her confreres and
aides, and even little Rosa, who is half Bavarian and half Japanese, and
one of the prettiest girls in Munich, in or out of uniform. It is a
pleasure to say a kind word for little Rosa, with her coal black hair
and her slanting eyes, for she is too fragile a fraeulein to be toting
around those gigantic German schnitzels and bifsteks, those mighty
double portions of sauerbraten and rostbif, those staggering drinking
urns, overballasted and awash.

Let us not, however, be unjust to the estimable Herr Wirt of the
Hoftheatre Cafe, with his pneumatic tread, his chaste side whiskers and
his long-tailed coat, for his drinking urns, when all is said and done,
are quite the smallest in Munich. And not only the smallest, but also
the shapeliest. In the Hofbraeuhaus and in the open air _bierkneipen_
(for instance, the Mathaeser joint, of which more anon) one drinks out of
earthen cylinders which resemble nothing so much as the gaunt towers of
Munich cathedral; and elsewhere the orthodox goblet is a glass edifice
following the lines of an old-fashioned silver water pitcher--you know
the sort the innocently criminal used to give as wedding presents!--but
at the Hoftheatre there is a vessel of special design, hexagonal in
cross section and unusually graceful in general aspect. On top, a pewter
lid, ground to an optical fit and highly polished--by Sophie, Rosa _et
al._, poor girls! To starboard, a stout handle, apparently of reinforced
onyx. Above the handle, and attached to the lid, a metal flange or
thumbpiece. Grasp the handle, press your thumb on the thumbpiece--and
presto, the lid heaves up. And then, to the tune of a Strauss waltz,
played passionately by tone