sse, gay with its after-the-opera crowds, and
then to the left into the Residenzstrasse, past the Hoftheatre and its
cafe (ah, Sophie, thou angel!), and so to the Maximilianstrasse, to the
Neuthurmstrasse, and at last, with a sharp turn, into the Platzl.

The Hofbraeuhaus! One hears it from afar; a loud buzzing, the rattle of
_mass_ lids, the sputter of the released _dunkle_, the sharp cries of
pretzel and radish sellers, the scratching of matches, the shuffling of
feet, the eternal gurgling of the plain people. No palace this, for all
its towering battlements and the frescos by Ferdinand Wagner in the
great hall upstairs, but drinking butts for them that labour and are
heavy laden: station porter, teamsters, servant girls, soldiers,
bricklayers, blacksmiths, tinners, sweeps.

There sits the fair lady who gathers cigar stumps from the platz in
front of the Bayerischer Hof, still in her green hat of labour, but now
with an earthen cylinder of Hofbraeu in her hands. The gentleman beside
her, obviously wooing her, is third fireman at the same hotel. At the
next table, a squad of yokels just in from the oberland, in their short
jackets and their hobnailed boots. Beyond, a noisy meeting of
Socialists, a rehearsal of some _liedertafel_, a family reunion of four
generations, a beer party of gay young bloods from the gas works, a
conference of the executive committee of the horse butchers' union.
Every second drinker has brought his lunch wrapped in newspaper; half a
_blutwurst_, two radishes, an onion, a heel of rye bread. The debris of
such lunches covers the floor. One wades through escaped beer, among
floating islands of radish top and newspaper. Children go overboard and
are succoured with shouts. Leviathans of this underground lake,
_Lusitanias_ of beer, Pantagruels of the Hofbraeuhaus, collide, draw off,
collide again and are wrecked in the narrow channels.... A great puffing
and blowing. Stranded craft on every bench.... Noses like cigar bands.

No waitresses here. Each drinker for himself! You go to the long shelf,
select your _mass_, wash it at the spouting faucet and fall into line.
Behind the rail the _zahlmeister_ takes your twenty-eight pfennigs and
pushes your _mass_ along the counter. Then the perspiring _bierbischof_
fills it from the naked keg, and you carry it to the table of your
choice, or drink it standing up and at one suffocating gulp, or take it
out into the yard, to wrestle with it beneath the open sk