id="Page_44" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[44]"/>which rolled homewards, the others followed without observing precedence, and a small and quiet home reception closed the day.

In a family where we found a home we were once asked, with other temporary residents, to attend a small evening gathering. At the usual hour of half-past eight we were led out to supper by the hostess. The table was very handsome with its fine linen and an elaborately embroidered lunch cloth extending through the whole length of a board at which fourteen were seated. I counted ten tall wine bottles, and at every plate except two, wine-glasses were standing. Several of the European ladies drank off three or four glasses as they might have done so much water. "You are temperance?" said a young lady from Stockholm at my left, in her broken English. I said, Yes; and on inquiry found she knew something of the great temperance movement in her own country, of which she told me over her wine. She said she thought a glass would do me good. I said, "No, it would flush my face and do me harm;" to which, without any intention of discourtesy, she replied simply, "I do not believe it." Five plates of various sizes were piled before each individual. The smallest was of glass, for preserved fruit and sweet pickles, four kinds of which were passed, all to be deposited, if one partook of all, on the same plate. The other plates and the whole service were of beautiful old Berlin china, white, with a line of dark blue and another of gilt around the edge of each piece, and the monogram of the grandmother to whom it originally belonged in the centre of each piece in blue letters. The first course was excellent chicken broth, served to each guest in a china cup, with a roll. The second course was cold roast beef and hot potatoes, served in three different ways, with rolls and plenty of wine. The third course was offered to me first by a handsome serving-maid lately from the country, with a clear face, bright dark eyes, dark hair, and rosy cheeks. Admiring her, I cast only a brief and doubtful glance on the large plate she bore, at one side of which were two lifelike sheep three or four inches high, with little red ribbons around their necks and standing in the midst of greenery. "This is confectionery," I thought, "and these are sugar sheep for ornament." Disposed on other parts of the plate were sundry rounds and triangles which looked peculiar; but my custom was, at German tables, "to prove all things" and "hold fast that which is good." So I decided on a creamy-looking segment, covered with silver-paper, and showing at the sides a half-inch thickness of what I hoped was custard-cake. The plate was next passed to a lady at my right, who cut a little piece off a white substance; and I thought, "She has ice-cream." Before I had touched my portion, a suspicious odor diverted my attention from the conversation. I found that the course was cheese and radishes, that my neighbor had "Dutch cheese," that the sheep were the butter and I had none for my roll, and that I had possessed myself of perhaps the whole of one variety of European cheese in tin-foil, the peculiar aroma of which was anything but agreeable to my cheese-hating sense. I begged a German Fräulein who sat near and who was intensely enjoying the situation to relieve me, when she kindly took about one third of my delicacy, leaving the rest in solitary state until the end of that course. Fortunately, the non-winedrinkers were offered a cup of tea just here, and I ate my roll with it in thankfulness. My American friend laughingly made a remark to her German neighbor,—a tall and dignified lady, but very vivacious. She turned her head, saying in hesitating English, "Speak on this side; I am dumb in that ear." Meanwhile the conversation, not as at American tables a low hum, but rather the rattle of artillery, fires away, across the table, along its whole length, anywhere and everywhere, much sounding, little meaning, amid infinite ado of demonstration and gesticulation. The next course was the nearest approach to pie I saw at any German table,—apfeltochter,—a browned and frosted crust, nearly eighteen inches in diameter, between the parts of which was cooked and sweetened apple.

I noted the different nationalities at the table,—the mother and her daughters, Germans of the Germans; a buxom young girl from the country, a fine singer; the tall German, and the young Swedish lady of whom I have spoken; another Swedish lady from Gothenburg, tall, very dignified, with gray eyes and dark hair, an exquisite singer. Then there was Herr G——, also from Sweden, and Fräulein von K——, a young Polish lady, with striking black eyes and hair and a laughing face. Other guests were two Norwegian gentlemen. One of them, tall, dark, and with the dress and bearing of a gentleman, said to my American friend, "Yes, I speak English very well" which we found to be the case. As I had mentally completed this summary, my friend said to me in a low "aside," "The young lady at your left is a free-thinker, the Polish lady is a Roman Catholic, Herr G——is a Jew; the rest Lutherans, except you and me." And one of us at home was of "Andover," and the other "straight Orthodox"!

Later, we adjourned to the drawing-room, spacious and handsome after the German fashion. I asked one of the daughters of the house, who I knew had spent some years in Russia, if the portrait of a middle-aged gentleman hanging near me, much decorated and with a gilded crown at the top of the frame, were not that of the late Czar (Alexander II.), when she replied, "It is our Emperor!" And I had seen his Majesty at least half a dozen times! But he was a much older man now. One of the Norwegian gentlemen sat down at the piano and played portions of a recent opera, and a game of questions and answers followed. Oranges and little cakes were served before the company broke up at the early hour of half-past eleven.

Concerts and even the opera and theatre begin early in Germany. Doors are open usually about half-past five, and the performance seldom begins later than six or seven. This interferes with the time of the usual evening meal, so that refreshments at these places are always in order. One of the most characteristic evenings maybe spent at the Philharmonie, where the best music is given at popular prices several times each week. Tickets seldom cost more than fifteen or eighteen cents, and may be bought by the package for much less. This is a favorite place with the music-loving Germans, and for many Americans as well. Nearly all the German ladies take their knitting or fancy-work. The large and fine hall is filled on these occasions with chairs clustered around small tables accommodating from two to six. Here families and friends gather, chat in the intervals, and listen to the music, quietly sipping their beer or chocolate, and supper is served in the intermission to those who order it. Smoking is forbidden, but seldom is the hour after supper free from fumes of smokers who quietly venture to light their cigars unrebuked unless the room gets too blue. Many entire families seem to make nightly rendezvous at these concerts, enjoying the music as only Germans do, and setting many a pretty picture in the minds of strangers. The concerts are over by nine or ten o'clock, but the performances at theatre and opera are frequently not concluded before half-past ten or eleven, and an after-supper at a café or at home is a consequent necessity. In one aspect of behavior at concerts, American audiences may well imitate our German friends. The beginning of every piece of music is the signal for instantaneous cessation from conversation. I do not remember ever having been annoyed