nest of
purple bullrushes, or complain because the bureau does not harmonize
with the wall paper. Neither do you criticize the blue and saffron roses
that form the rug pattern. 'Deedy not! Instead you warily punch the
mattress to see if it is rock-stuffed, and you snoop into the clothes
closet; you inquire the distance to the nearest bath room, and whether
the payments are weekly or monthly, and if there is a baby in the room
next door. Oh, there's nothing like living in a boarding-house for
cultivating the materialistic side.

But I was to find that here at Knapf's things were quite different. Not
only was Ernst von Gerhard right in saying that it was "very German,
and very, very clean;" he recognized good copy when he saw it. Types! I
never dreamed that such faces existed outside of the old German woodcuts
that one sees illustrating time-yellowed books.

I had thought myself hardened to strange boarding-house dining rooms,
with their batteries of cold, critical women's eyes. I had learned
to walk unruffled in the face of the most carping, suspicious and the
fishiest of these batteries. Therefore on my first day at Knapf's I
went down to dinner in the evening, quite composed and secure in the
knowledge that my collar was clean and that there was no flaw to find in
the fit of my skirt in the back.

As I opened the door of my room I heard sounds as of a violent
altercation in progress downstairs. I leaned over the balusters and
listened. The sounds rose and fell and swelled and boomed. They were
German sounds that started in the throat, gutturally, and spluttered
their way up. They were sounds such as I had not heard since the night
I was sent to cover a Socialist meeting in New York. I tip-toed down the
stairs, although I might have fallen down and landed with a thud without
having been heard. The din came from the direction of the dining room.
Well, come what might, I would not falter. After all, it could not
be worse than that awful time when I had helped cover the teamsters'
strike. I peered into the dining room.

The thunder of conversation went on as before. But there was no
bloodshed. Nothing but men and women sitting at small tables, eating
and talking. When I say eating and talking I do not mean that those acts
were carried on separately. Not at all. The eating and the talking went
on simultaneously, neither interrupting the other. A fork full of food
and a mouthful of ten-syllabled German words met, wrestle