The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, January 1883 A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture. Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle

EDUCATION FOR AND AGAINST CASTE. “The role of the road is a paradox quite, For if you go right you go wrong, and if you go left you go right.” Down hill he should progress carefully, especially when on two wheels, for then the extra weight of the cart hangs on the pad or saddle on the horse’s back. A stumble and fall will probably break the shafts, certainly cut the horse’s knees, and may pitch the occupant over the splash-board. Let him hold well in, sit well back, play firmly and lightly with his hand, ready to hold up sharply in event of a stumble. Even a sure-footed horse may make a false step from the pain of a loose, sharp-pointed bit of stone cutting his frog. A judicious and timely support from the rein may save the horse and preserve his balance, by thus suddenly shifting part of the weight of his head and neck on to the carriage itself. Next to a powerful seat, the mouth of the horse and the lightness of the hand upon it are the requisites. “Half the value of a horse is in his mouth” is an old maxim. Few owners are aware how much “manners” depend upon the bitting and handling of a horse. Shifting the rein from one bar to another makes all the difference in the going of the horse. The mouth is the link of communication between him and his driver; the bit must control him without fretting him, and the touch of the hand, unless light, deadens its own injunctions. As the whip progresses in his craft, he will note many other minor details, apart from mere safety, which conduce to the welfare of his horse and carriage also. Though he is bound by rules of road at rencontre, he may choose his own path when all is clear; he need not take his share of rolling into shape newly-laid stones, if a smoother passage presents itself. Even if he can not altogether avoid stones, he may yet ease the draught if he can manœuvre only one wheel on to a smooth surface.—Cassell’s Sports and Pastimes . EDUCATION FOR AND AGAINST CASTE. By W. T. HARRIS. We often hear in our time the fear expressed that there is a danger in too much education, and especially in a too great extension of free education at the expense of tax-payers. “Where shall society obtain its hewers of wood and its drawers of water?” is asked in an anxious tone. “Education renders people unwilling to earn their living by hand labor alone, and they resort to crime rather than work at an honest trade.” Investigation, however, does not confirm these fears. We find, upon studying social science, that those states of the world that enforce universal education are by far the greatest wealth producers and accumulators of wealth. The statistics of the seventeen states in our nation (the seventeen that kept statistics of illiteracy in jails and prisons in 1870), show that out of a total of 110,538 prisoners, 27,581, or 25 per cent. could not write, while only 3½ per cent. of the adults of those seventeen states were illiterate—that 3½ per cent. of the population, if illiterate, furnish as many criminals as 32 per cent. of the people, if able to read and write—or that the one who can not read and write is nine times as liable to get to prison as the one who can read and write. Of course we must remember that the education of the school is powerfully reinforced by the education of the family, the community, the State, and the Church, and that the school is not the only educational influence, nor the most potent one. We must not place a too high estimate on the phase of civilization that merely keeps men out of prison. Chinese education does that, although it does not produce scientific thinkers, a literature of freedom, or a people that worship the true God, or any god that allows man to participate in his being. We shall learn this lesson again in studying the caste education of India. The duties of each person to members of his own caste and then to the members of the other castes form the chief staple of Hindoo education. There the hewers of wood and the drawers of water are effectually provided for, first by birth and then by education. If we desire to behold the effects of caste-education made supreme over all others, we must look carefully into East Indian life, and interpret it by its laws, religion, and philosophy. The division of labor is necessary in order that men may gain the requisite skill to conquer nature. Food, clothing, and shelter are rendered necessary by nature—that is to say, by our bodies—and can be supplied only by nature—the mineral, vegetable, and animal realms. Besides food, clothing, and shelter, there is the fourth want, that of culture or spiritual direction, and the fifth want, or that of protection,—the realm of religious and scientific education, and the realm of the political government. In India one caste is devoted to spiritual direction—the Brahmin, which reads and interprets the Vedas and gives counsel to the rulers of the state. Next is the Kshatrya, or warrior caste, that manage the secular or political government, with the counsel and advice of the Brahmins. Then the food, clothing, and shelter providers, who devote themselves to agriculture and the arts and trades of commerce, form a third caste, the Vaisyas; and lastly is the Sudra caste, which consists of day-laborers, or servants. The caste is determined by birth, not by the free choice of the individual, but by an accident of nature. For the East Indian the division of labor is the great divine fact of life. Brahma, the highest god, created the caste of Brahmins from his head, the warriors from his arms, the trades peoples from his loins, and the servants from his feet. Manu says that the first part of the name of a Brahmin ought to express sanctity; of a warrior power; of a merchant wealth; of a laborer contempt. The second part of the Brahmin’s name should express blessing; of a warrior protection; of a merchant means of subsistence; of a Sudra menial servitude. Caste being of divine origin and imposed upon man, how shall it be preserved and transmitted? The answer is a perpetual education in the duties of one’s caste and in the abnegation of all that looks toward the recognition of identity of human nature and the equality of all in the substance of manhood. The greatest possible care is taken not to educate children beyond the position into which they are born and which has been occupied by their ancestors (if they belong to one of the regular castes). By marriage other castes are produced. The Hindoo must have for his first wife one of his own caste, and then he may take one more from each caste below him. Thus the Brahmin may have four wives, three being from the lower castes; the warrior may have three wives and the merchant two, while the Sudra can have only one. The children of the wives from the lower castes are classified according to a scheme invented by one of the kings, and there are more than thirty castes in all. The chandalas have for their vocation the removal of corpses, the execution of criminals, and such impure offices. General duties, common to all castes, are very few. What is a virtue in one caste may be a sin in another. The duties are prescribed with such minuteness that a very complex system arises for each person, which must be obeyed in its smallest particular, under penalty of excommunication from one’s caste. The observances and formalities are more numerous with the higher castes. Hence even for the Brahmin, who is as a god to the other castes there is such a weight of formalities and observances that life is not worth living for him. He must perform tedious ceremonies of purification to remove the effect of the most casual accidents. Should he walk abroad and meet one of a lower caste, he must turn back and purify himself. If he should step over a rope to which a calf is tied, he must purify himself. If he should happen to look up and see the sun when setting, or at any time see it reflected in the water, he must purify himself. If he should chance to go out and get caught in a shower, he must purify himself; and so, too, if he happens to step on the wrong foot when he rises from bed. He must not look at his wife when she sneezes or gapes or eats. He must not step on a cotton seed, on a piece of broken crockery, or on ashes. When out in the sun he must look northward; when under the stars, southward; only when under a tree or a roof he may look in any direction. If he should fail to purify himself he will be excommunicated from his caste, and can be restored only by a painful ceremony. The first, second, and third castes are of the twice-born, and they may hear the Vedas, but the Sudras must not read, nor hear read, those holy books. Burning hot oil poured into his ears was the penalty for breaking this law. If the Sudra were to speak evil of a Brahmin or warrior or merchant, the code of Manu decrees that a red-hot iron bar shall be thrust into his mouth. There is more respect shown toward cows than toward the lowest caste of human beings. In fact, the Hindoo will not tread upon ants nor kill brute animals, but founds hospitals for sick or aged cows and monkeys, while he is entirely indifferent to the sufferings of a man from a lower caste. The women, even of the highest caste, are treated like lower castes in spiritual things,—no woman is allowed to read the Vedas or to become learned. The children of whatever caste, too, may be sacrificed to the deities by their parents. A mother may throw her child, especially if it be a girl, into the Ganges, or any sacred river. The women are excluded from education, and are given in marriage in their seventh or eighth year. A woman who is discovered to possess a knowledge of reading and writing draws down upon her head the most severe condemnation. There is one exception to this in the dancing girls, and the bayaderes, who are purchased from poor parents for service at the temples. These are taught by the priests reading and writing, music, dancing, and singing, as well as the female arts of coquetry. They are dedicated to the gods, and do not learn housework. Although the warrior caste and merchant caste may read the Vedas, they must do it under the supervision of the Brahmins. Elementary instruction to the regenerated, or twice born, includes reading, writing, and arithmetic. The children learn to form letters on the sand first, and afterward on palm leaves with an iron pencil; at last with ink on plantain leaves. The monitorial system is practiced—one child hearing the other recite his lesson and assisting him to learn it. The Brahmin’s children are in all cases treated with partiality. The chief branch of study in school is, of course, the Vedas, or holy books. This exercise must be approached with due ceremony—of girding with bands, purification, consecrated fires, and solemn ceremonies performed morning, noon, and night. The pupil must seize his teacher’s feet before he begins, and then read with clasped hands, and at the close of his reading again seize his master’s feet. This ceremony of greeting his teacher he performs by crossing his hands and taking his master’s right foot in his right hand and the left foot in his left hand. Pupils generally reside with their teachers—in a sort of boarding-school—each teacher having the care of ten or twelve pupils. A very strict surveillance is kept up. “Without his teacher the pupil must not enter a house nor look to the right or left, but bend his look to the ground as he follows behind his teacher.” “When reading the holy scriptures one must not cough nor take any food or drink. In blowing the nose one must not make too much noise—nor spit in a clean place—nor offer tea with his hand—he must hold his arm-sleeve before his mouth when he gapes—he must not smack his lips when he eats nor scratch his head.” Such directions are found in the educational code. We often find sublime moral duties intermingled with trivial details of ceremonial. If the pupil does not say “ Om ” on beginning and ending his reading of the Vedas, the exercise will do him no good. The moral maxims are taught in the form of fables. The book used is what we know as the Fables of Bidpai (“Friend of Science”) from an Indian work, which was rewritten as the Hitopadesa (“Friendly Advice”) some centuries ago. It contains profound ethical wisdom, mixed with some things whimsical and absurd. Proverbs are quoted at every turn, being strung on the thread of the fable, like glittering stones on a necklace. The instruction of the Brahmin’s son extended to the philosophic doctrines of Hindoo pantheism. To understand the nature of this pantheism is most important. There is Brahm—above all the individual gods. Brahm expresses pure abstraction from all distinctions—merely to think it is to become unconscious of all things. Brahma is the personification of that substance (Brahm) as the creator, Vishnu as the preserver, and Siva as the destroyer. Below these high gods there are terrestrial ones presided over by Indra, the Hindoo Jupiter, ruler of the sky. Creation is not an act of the will of deity, but a sort of emanation “like the growth of plants from seed or the hair from the head.” The world proceeds from nothingness, growing out of Brahma, and returns into nothingness—it is all an illusion, a sort of dream, which the Hindoo calls “Maya.” Brahm is the substance of all the gods, and of the beings of the world, and hence all their differences vanish to the Brahmin, who meditates long enough to reach the idea of Brahm. Hence the highest aim of education is to reach this annihilation of all distinction—passing beyond all the gods, even to Brahm. The Sankhya philosophy expresses this doctrine of annihilation of all particular things and beings through reflection: “So through the study of principles the conclusive, incontrovertible, one only knowledge, is attained, that neither I am nor is aught mine, nor do I exist.” One must not suppose that the Hindoo education is so complete that the lower castes remain without aspiration. They learn by degrees in what rests the power of the Brahmin to ascend above the gods by the exercise of meditation and abstraction. This is taught in the Bhagavad Gita—even a Sudra can by meditation come to Brahm. [H] The lower castes may become partakers of the divine life through regeneration—“immense self-denial, torture and penance” are requisite. They become “yogis,” and undertake some painful exercise, such as standing for twelve years without once lying down, then clasping the hands over the head for another twelve years; then a third grade by standing between four fires and the tropical sun, afterward swinging backward and forward over a fire for nearly four hours; lastly, if life is not extinct, being buried alive for the same length of time. If he lives still, the devotee has now become a Brahmin. From the bondage of caste there is therefore one possible escape—through self-torture and penance,—but the remedy is as bad as the disease. It was Buddha who taught a doctrine that furnished a real relief from all this in the utter abolition of the caste system. Driven out of India, this doctrine spread throughout Ceylon, Farther India, China, Thibet, and among the Tartars of Siberia, and to this day numbers more human beings in its faith than any other form of religion. It gives all families a chance to ascend to the highest state of religious culture. Buddhistic emancipation is from the rigid bonds of family as well as from caste. Any family having four sons must devote one to a monastic life. This demands the renunciation of all personal wishes and longings—all desires, all pride, and anger, and stubbornness; then the devotee reaches Nirvana and all will and consciousness have sunk into the rest and quiet of non-existence, and are purified of all finitude and special existence. In Nirvana ceases all change—no more beginning and ending—no more birth and death—perfect rest. In the catechism of Chinese Buddhism there are ten duties prescribed: (1) Slay no living being; (2) steal not; (3) be chaste; (4) speak nothing wrong; (5) drink nothing intoxicating—these are also found in primitive Buddhism—another five duties are added relating to external rules of the order: (6) Do not perfume the hair on the top of the head, nor paint the body; (7) do not listen to songs nor attend the theater; (8) do not sit or lie on a large cushion or pillow; (9) do not eat except at meal-time; (10) do not own gold or silver, or anything of value as private property. The ideal is that of mendicancy—pious beggary. Its ideal of the divine is no higher than that of India. God is conceived, not as a personal being having consciousness and will and love (our Christian conception), but rather as a being above personality and consciousness (the Hindoo conception). Hence the Buddhist still strives for the annihilation or extinction of his conscious individuality, just as the Indian devotee, but without those frightful penances, and without cruel laws of caste. We can not commend the views of those who find in Buddhism, as portrayed in the “Light of Asia,” a doctrine almost or quite equal to Christianity. To us it seems to be infinitely below Christianity. Its conception of God and of God’s creation is just the opposite of the Christian conception, for in Christianity we believe God to be a personal being, who reveals himself in nature and man, and even becomes human in his Son, and dies on a cross out of love for the human race. Man can grow forever into the image of God, realizing that image in his will, his love, his intellect, because God is all there in an infinite degree, while to the Buddhist God is none of these but a being who is the negative of nature and of man too. Hence the education of Brahminism and Buddhism is based on an idea radically opposed to our own. CONTENT. By A. E. A. Before the Wedding. We stood upon the mountain top at eve— Only we two; no other soul was nigh, And watched the purple hills afar receive Their last soft tinting from the evening sky. The fading splendor shed a parting glow On the faint mountains vanishing from sight, And lit with one last gleam the lake below, Ere it was shrouded in the gloom of night. Through the hushed woods the silent darkness stole, No living thing the sleeping echoes woke, Save one late bird, unseen, whose wakeful soul With ringing song the silence sweetly broke. In that still hour so close our spirits drew; We seemed alone in all the wide, dim earth; I felt your strong arm clasp me, and I knew The tender thought wherein the act had birth. ’Twas then I felt there was in that wide scene Nothing so beautiful or so divine, Nothing so sweet, the earth and heaven between, As was the love that stirred my heart and thine. The ancients were acquainted with the loadstone, but they only knew that it possessed the power of attracting iron, whether it was that they attached little value to a mere object of curiosity which led to nothing, or whether they had never examined this stone with sufficient care. A single experiment more would have taught them that it turns of itself toward the poles of the earth, and would have put into their hands the invaluable treasure of the mariner’s compass. They were on the very verge of this important discovery, but it escaped their notice; and if they had given a little more time to what appeared a useless curiosity, its hidden application would have been found out.— Fontenelle. ROUMANIAN PEASANTS AND THEIR SONGS. By C. F. KEARY. A special interest, as it seems to me, belongs to every attempt to restore to a place in literature the genuine peasant speech of the Roumanians, with all its Slavisms undiluted, and showing by those Slavisms that it is not a sham peasant literature with the thoughts of educated men put into the language of a lower class. The task of contributing to this restoration has been undertaken by M. Ricard Torceanu. He has spent much time and labor in going from village to village to collect the songs, the customs, and lore of the peasants. Everything which he amassed was orally communicated to him. What he gained was often fragmentary and uncouth, but it had the advantage of being a genuine product. It would almost seem as if the villagers were beginning to forget their village songs. In a few years’ time, perhaps, these songs will be no longer to be heard, having been driven away by the new education code and by the new language which has been to a great extent substituted for the old tongue. Then these poems will remain like the last echoes of bygone days. M. Torceanu has invented nothing, he has extenuated nothing. He has set down what he heard, and no more; he needs, therefore, to make no apology, although the poetry is often meagre and is always absolutely simple. In actual form these songs have some points of likeness to Mr. Barnes’s Dorset lays. In both the beat of four is much the most usual measure of the line; only that, owing to the difference in the accent, while in English the four-beat is often reached in only seven syllables, in the Roumanian eight are nearly always employed. A great variety of accentuation prevents the monotony which would naturally arise from the frequency of this form. And as this variety of accent can not be rendered in the English translation, more freedom has been used in the number of syllables contained in a line than is used in the original. At the same time the four-beat, when found in the original, has been generally preserved. Alternate rhyme is the exception, the most usual thing being the couplet. Very frequently, however, four of five lines rhyme or sound together. These poets are not very particular about accurate rhyme. Untrained ears are never very exacting on this head. Our ballad literature could show countless instances of such assonance as wind , begin , him , them , am , man , etc. The Roumanians are much more liberal still—at least as appears to our ears. Some of their rhymes recall the loose assonance of old French poetry, such as the Chansons de Geste . Little distinction seems to be made between the liquids l and r , so that are and ale would pass for a proper rhyme. In singing each line is repeated twice, with a variety of accent. The songs have one peculiarity: almost all begin with the words frunză verde , that is, green leaf. To this follows sometimes “of the so and so.” This reminds us of the beginnings of the snatches of rhyme in Mr. Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi”: Flower o’ the clove, All the Latin I construe is amo , I love. Occasionally the frunză verde is followed on by the name of a flower unconnected with it by any conjunction. Thus the following song begins with a line which, literally translated, is simply “green leaf, three violets;” but to make it intelligible we will borrow the form from Mr. Browning’s songs. The same phrase frunză verde is frequently introduced into the middle of the poem. One might be tempted to suppose that when it is found there, it has been the result of the welding together of two different songs. But there are some instances where this certainly has not been the case. Now take for a specimen the following song, characteristic enough of the greater number of these village lays: Green leaf, green leaf of the violet, As of old, across the wold And round my house the wind sobs yet, Whispering longing and regret, For the loved ones who have fled. Breathes the wind among the grasses: I faint with wishing as it passes. Storm-gusts rise and fall again, And passion wrings my heart with pain. Breathes the wind, and small leaves move, I die with longing for my love. Over the mountain the mountain wind blows, My longing for my kindred grows. Blows the breeze the trees among, My brothers’ names shall fill my song. When it creeps the flowers through, My sisters sweet I think of you. Leaf o’ the maple branching fair, What cloud comes here, the wanderer— Hast thou told to her forsaken How her love’s for a conscript taken? Oh, little cloud, thou dost not carry Rain or snow, but the tears of Marie. Curious little conceits such as these, drawn from the common imagery of nature, are very characteristic of the poems. In that respect some of the songs resemble not a little some of the popular songs which one may hear in Italy, and resemble much less the popular songs of northern lands, wherein these conceits are more rare. Here is a still more simple fragment: Green leaf of holly, all are gone, The girls of the village, and I am alone.— Not all; for one remains for me; Only one my hope to be. My hope but she;— Frail as ice my trust will find her, To the trysting who can bind her? And here one which is far from ungraceful: “Undo, my dear, the charm which you have made, And let me now go free.” “To make you go my charm was never laid, But to make you marry me.” The following might seem like an imitation of Shakspere; but it is a quite true rendering from the mouth of peasants to whom Shakspere was not even a name: Green leaf of the poplar grove, Tell me, prythee, whence comes love? From the eyes or from the brows, Or from the crimson lips? Can a peasant taste thereof As one honey sips? This is the lament put into the mouth of a girl who has disgraced herself so far as to marry a tzigan (gipsy). Swallows, swallows, little sisters— Sisters, seek my mother dear; Tell her from her daughter here, That she send her kirtle red, For a raven she has wed, And a large thick veil for shroud When the watch-dogs bark aloud. Her brave dresses, that she take them, Into one rude bundle make them, Throw them in the street and burn them, Utterly to ashes turn them. Or here again a woman’s complaint:— When the world despises me, Only God has any pity. Thou too, doubting, comest not near me, Willst not know and willst not hear me. Only one, my little dove, Knew my sorrow, brought me love: My sweet turtle dove, I know, If her other half should go, Would not mate with any other, Or fly from one tree to another. This is a more passionate vein, with some adumbrations of a story in it:— “Hide, O God, the moon in a mist, Let me revel as I list; Wrap like a shroud his face in a cloud, Till my lover has kissed and kissed.”— “Green leaf of the vine’s long train, I go, but in autumn shall come again.”— “If you go for a month away, Mad you’ll find me on your home-coming day; If you go away for a year, Not mad you’ll find me but laid on my bier. Then to my grave I bid you come, Scatter dust upon my tomb, Take a look within At the death of sin; As I lie at your feet And at Death’s deceit.” Most of the poems collected are short ones, of a kind not dissimilar from the specimens given above. There are, however, some pieces which approach more nearly to the ballad form, which are considerably longer, and contain some sort of story. Our specimens would not be representative unless we included one poem of this kind. Let this ballad stand upon its own merits, merely as a representative one, without attempting to explain or apologize for its obscurities and want of harmony. The inequality of the metre here will represent the, to our ears, irregularity of the original:— Over the mountain, bathed in the dew, Is standing a little cottage new, With windows that face the rising sun, And door that leads toward the valley down. In it was held a meeting gay Of all the girls of the village one day. And they sang and they spun, And they laughed—all but one, The hostess’ young daughter: From her came no laughter As from every other. Then thus spake her mother: “Little daughter, what fails thee? What is it that ails thee? Art thou sick, little daughter, Or is it heart-pain?” Said her daughter, “Refrain, Little mother, seek not to know why I am sad; lest I curse in reply. For love’s pain I have proved; I had once one beloved. He was tall, little mother, Fairer than any other. His eyebrows black as a raven’s wing, In an arch long drawn as is a ring, Skin soft as silk, white as the froth of milk, His eyes were like the dark wild-plum, His hair was like ripe corn in the sun. Securely my beloved slept, Safe was my beloved kept From the sun’s strong rays, From the wind of wintry days. And I sent my love To the fair of Brachov To buy for me linen, Fine thread for my spinning, And rich clothes to wear, Gold beads for my hair.— Thence he sent with a message, my mother, With a message the moon in the night, That I was to be his stepmother: Then I sent to him in reply The sun, for I said that he should Go wed whomsoever he would. With the leaf of the hazel-nut tree He sent his answer to me, That I should his stepmother be; Little mother, but dear little mother, Can I marry him to another, Or shall I curse him, shall I curse him, my mother?“ “Be not mad, little daughter, go be His stepmother, as he tells thee: And you, Gypsy, Gypsy, Bring my carriage to me, For I am the grand stepmother.” “But mother, oh mother, say how Shall I speak, and what name call him now?” “My beloved, my stepson, My heart’s love, my cherished one.” “And her, O my mother, what word Shall I give her, what name?” “My stepdaughter, abhorred, The whole world’s shame.” “Then, my mother, what shall I take him? What gift shall I make him?” “A handkerchief fine, little daughter, Bread of white wheat, for thy loved one to eat, And a glass of wine, my daughter.” “And what take her , little mother, What gift shall I make her? ” “A kerchief of thorns, little daughter; A loaf of black bread for her whom he wed, And a cup of poison, my daughter!” *      *      *      *      *      * Whether this is anything more than a fragment one may reasonably doubt, but no more than this was known to the reciter. This is of course the disadvantage of orally imparted poems, that a great portion is very often left out of the beginning, the end, or the middle. Sometimes, again, two different songs are combined into one. We can understand without much difficulty what was meant by sending the moon with a letter or message, and sending back the sun; it is not so obvious what the letter written upon the hazel-nut leaf implies. The explanation which seems the most probable is: This Roumanian peasant lover could not write. He had no means of sending a message unless the sun would be the messenger, nor of receiving a reply unless the moon would bring it. The peasants sometimes make calls by whistling against a leaf, as our peasant boys do with a piece of grass. This apparently is what is meant by the answer sent by a hazel-nut leaf. Possibly the rest of the poem, if there had been a remaining part, would have made the difficult points of this ballad more clear. We might have had a tragedy of the Ugo and Parisina sort. But all that is now covered up in night. With one poem of a simple kind we will end this short selection: List ye who love: Three evils ye will prove. The first is that you love, The next because he seldom comes Your love to prove. This bitterness your heart will know. The third when altogether he shall go, And say adieu. He will not come back again; But your heart will scorch with pain. Leaf of the barley, he will say, I know not what has found me, Nor what sorcery around me Takes me from you away— But adieu forever and a day. — The Nineteenth Century. HOME LIFE IN GERMANY. Housekeeping in Germany is reduced to a science; an accurate knowledge of principles, gained by experiment, experience and reflection. Personal and domestic expenditures are regulated in strict accordance with the best theories in consumption of capital and consumption of labor. This is especially true in the large cities where the houses are built to accommodate eight or ten families in addition, various people below in the basements, such as shoemakers, seamstresses, and washerwomen, who are ready to give service to the herrschaften above. These houses are generally built of brick, stuccoed, and oftentimes in the early years of their existence present a very handsome front, deceiving a stranger’s eye with the impression that they are stone. The massive front door opening to the corridor which leads to the porte-cochère , is in modern houses, most ornamental. Wrought iron, in arabesque patterns, with the monogram of the owner, serves to protect the plate-glass behind. The panels of wood below are elaborately carved. This door opens to the touch of a bell attached to a rubber tube and bell which remains in the basement where the portier lives. Invariably on the inside of the door one sees in large German letters, “ Bitte die Thür leise zu zumachen .” Every person entering or going out reads this request, and, while occupied with reading, naturally lets the door slam the louder. Only sly young men returning from the kneipe in the darkness feel obliged to bear it in mind. The slamming of the great corridor door, however, makes no impression upon the numerous families above, and if it chanced to be a friend of Frau Schültze who just entered the house, there is yet time for the gracious lady ( gnädige frau ), who probably lives up the second flight of stairs, to take off her morning cap (which a German woman is apt to wear until she hears some one coming) before her friend has time to ring the bell to her own apartment. On each floor in the largest houses are two apartments, usually of seven or eight rooms—large enough, the Germans think, to accommodate a family of eight or nine. And if you are a foreigner, examining these houses with a view to renting, the portier frau will accompany you around, exclaiming how comfortable it all is! There is a salon in the front, a large, finely-proportioned drawing-room, with bay-window and frescoed ceiling, and inlaid floor. Then the smaller room to the right, or left, as it may chance to be, looking also on the street with two windows, and generally a balcony, is intended for the library or sitting-room. Then throwing the folding-doors wide open, between the salon and dining-room, she explains how handsome the two rooms look during a dinner party. The dining-room has an alcove with a large window looking down into the court. Then you follow her through a narrow hall, passing perhaps the bath-room, with the servants’ room above—only five feet high—coming next to the kitchen. “But the bed-rooms, where are they?” you ask, not being able longer to suppress your anxiety on this point. “ Ach, hier sind die! ” exclaims the astonished frau , and opens the door to two small rooms, about 10x12. You look at your companion, the significant glance is returned and you start for the next house, or up a second flight of the same, to see if the division of rooms be there as ridiculous. After visiting about twenty-five houses, however, and finding them all alike, you conclude a bed-room with a German is a secondary consideration, and as to “guest chambers,” they have never dreamed of them! Goethe was a true German in this respect, and no wiser than the rest of his countrymen. Lewis, in his biography of Goethe, never fails to express astonishment at the small, dark room, in which the great man slept and finally died. In the handsome old house at Weimar the spacious reception rooms and commodious dining-room contrast strangely with the dark little closet which is called the bed-room. I heard a German gentleman, who came to America at the time Mr. Schurz did, but who was not so successful, and who returned to Germany, and was consequently embittered with everything, say, “The Berlin houses remind me, with their swell fronts and elegant drawing-rooms, of the fashion of wearing embroidered chemisettes when the rest of the toilet is mean and contemptible.” “The Germans,” said he, “put all the elegance on the front of their houses, while the sleeping-rooms are miserably ventilated little holes.” This does not apply to the houses built recently. There is no longer such discrepancy between bed-room and salon —economy, convenience and rich designing characterize many German houses now, which would have astonished the German mind a half-century ago. The system by which these houses are rented or occupied is worth our attention, since it has come to be a matter of great expense for one family to rent or own a single house in our large cities. Let us suppose the man who owns an apartment house in a large German city to have a capital of $60,000 invested. He lives himself with his family in the parterre wohnung , or what we would call the first floor. The bel étage , or second floor, is the choice apartment, and rents, if the house be in a desirable part of the city, for 3,000 marks (a mark equals 25 or 24 cents). If the house be a double one, and this is generally the case, the first étage would bring 6,000 marks, the second étage 4,800 marks, and the third étage 3,600. He has also his own apartment, and below, the shoemaker, furnishes shoes for the family; the seamstress does the sewing and the washerwoman is the family laundress. From his capital he realizes a large percentage. The taxes are heavy, but the outlays are not great, being in most cases incidental, for the water, gas, and garbage, etc., are met by the different tenants. As to the housekeeping in one of these apartments or wohnungs —the windows are casement style, with double glass, easy for washing but difficult for drapery. The floors are inlaid with different colored woods, and waxed. The walls are papered with rich and dark colors, and the ceilings finished in stucco. A characteristic German house will be furnished about as follows: Grand piano in the drawing-room or upright if preferred; in front of the sofa, a good imitation of Smyrna rug, (made in Silesia generally). A table stands on the rug removed from the sofa only far enough to allow a stout matron to squeeze in for a seat in one corner, which is her prerogative. Around the sofa are arranged a half dozen chairs, all belonging in color and form to the sofa. It would be unjust here not to say that the modern craze for bric-a-brac, for elegant hangings and unique furniture has penetrated the German mind as it has the English and American, and the revival of house decoration is appreciated in Germany by those who have the means to investigate the subject, but the house we describe is “pre-æsthetical” and stands for characteristic German taste, and it will be found compares most favorably with an American house before the “highly æsthetical” fever developed. The dress circle of Smyrna rug, sofa, table and chairs, is the center of attraction, but the opposite walls and the corners of the room are not neglected. The piano occupies a conspicuous position, and one or two pedestals, with choice copies from the antique, are hid in the corners. A lady’s writing desk, with delicate note paper ready for her use, a beautiful chair for her service, and a rich robe for her feet, completes a German lady’s drawing room. If she can not afford good pictures, she will have none. Steel engravings from the old masters are frequently found, but seldom oil paintings unless the parties be very wealthy or where artistic home talent prevails. How shocking many houses in America are made, by horrid crude pictures—in color, houses which maintain some beauty in wood work, carpets, walls, and furniture. The portfolio of etchings which are now sent to the farthest west and all over the United States for inspection, are creating a higher taste, and it is a laudable scheme, although accompanied with exorbitant prices. The arrangement of our Teutonic lady’s drawing-room is so national that the palace and the poor man’s house has the same link of resemblance; for if a man owns but one table and one sofa, the table will stand in front of the sofa, and the chairs around it. This impresses a foreigner as being stupid and dull, and the American or French or English woman living in Germany conscientiously avoids all proximity of sofas and tables. There is some excuse for this stupid regularity in the circles which still have the kaffee klatsch; an old and artless entertainment which traveled women eschew, and women of high rank long ago ignored, but which remains a blessing to women of moderate means and unpretentious life. The hour for the kaffee klatsch is always 4 o’clock, and each guest is requested to bring her knitting or fancy work, to take her seat at a table spread with a white cloth, upon which the kaffee stands, covered up with a quilted hood to keep it warm, and flanked on either side by large baskets of cakes. Here these innocent women sit for hours sipping coffee and knitting and gossiping to their hearts’ content. It is the hour sans-souci for the genuine “ hausfrau .” In such society one can recognize the simplicity and ingenuousness of the German woman, and contrast the startling differences of education and habit with her American sisters. Returning to the furniture of the house, we find the library, or sitting-room ( wohnstube ), for private libraries are rare, and only found in the house of the gelehrte . It is true that every house has Goethe, Schiller, Wyland, Heine, Schlegel’s translation of Shakspere, Humbolt’s travels, and, it may chance to be, Kant, Hegel, and Strauss, if the paternal mind cares no longer for Martin Luther. In the neighborhood of the old wartburg the memory of Luther is too sacred to allow David Strauss to lie on the same shelf with the Reformer. If the family taste runs to æsthetics more than ethics, a cabinet of rare porcelain will take the place of a book-case in the sitting-room. But in either case the inevitable sewing table stands by the window with an easy chair by its side. If the gentleman of the house has writing at home, or any business engagements, then the sewing table finds its way to the big window in the alcove of the dining-room. This room is more comfortable than an American dining-room, inasmuch as it has, in addition to the set of dining-room chairs, a sofa and some easy seats, two closed cabinets for the damask, on either side of the buffet, which glistens with glass and china. Sofa pillows and footstools are abundant, which one can not say are easily discovered in the American home. But first of all a German house is comfortable, then ornamental. “Wine, wife and song,” is the motto, as it was in the days of Martin Luther, and gemüthlich , which may mean friendly, well-disposed, good-natured, kind-hearted; snug, comfortable, lack-a-daisical, is the word which expresses the tone of home life. The bed-rooms are unattractive, as we have said. Two mahogany bedsteads, side by side, “too short than that a man can stretch himself on them, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.” These German beds are fearfully and wonderfully made, feathers below and above, pillows hid during the day under the covers, and finally, a white spread thrown over the entire mountain, in such a manner that it is impossible to distinguish head from foot. Of late the sense of the beautiful has brought to light in the shop windows blue silk quilted spreads and lace coverings for these monstrosities, and corresponding materials for the toilet table. But the genuine hausfrau considers them a “snare and delusion.” A German lady who had just returned from a visit to America, said to me, “How do the American women make up their beds? I must come and learn. But,” added she, in the same breath, “I should think you would die under such thin covers!” The floors of the bed rooms are painted with yellow ochre and varnished. Small rugs lie in front of each bed, and before each piece of furniture. A candle, matches, and water carafe stand on the table by the bed. During the Philadelphia Exposition, a German, writing from an American hotel, observed: “How exasperating it is to go to bed in a room with no candle, only gas in the centre of the room, and innumerable chairs between one and the gas at midnight; and how dreadful to awaken and find white walls staring at one and reflecting the morning sun into one’s eyes.” Just criticism! The Germans are too highly cultivated in art to tolerate white walls, and the Americans are rapidly becoming so. The kitchen is the German woman’s pride, and no wonder, with its shining rows of brass and copper kettles and cooking utensils, hanging so orderly against the gray wall, and the white porcelain oven, brass-doored and brass-knobbed. Does it surprise you that she likes to take a seat there every morning and talk over the menu for the day with Frederika, then unlock the pantry door and survey the clean shelves, all dressed up in perforated paper, or red leather and brass tacks, and loaded with groceries and confectioneries. What woman’s heart would not swell at the sight of such a pantry and kitchen, and such a capable, white-capped, white-aproned girl as Frederika? It is an ideal picture, but one often and often seen in Germany. We shall make the acquaintance of German servants presently, but first some reference to the German ovens will be necessary, for it is with these that the servant’s time is first engaged in the morning and last at night. Next to the Dutch stove, the German oven is probably the most economical, and as far as mere temperature is concerned, the most effective of all warming arrangements. They are built of brick covered with porcelain and are part of the house, being built in with the walls. The cost is about seventy-five dollars for those finished with plain white tiles; but frequently the tiles are colored like majolica, and are highly decorated. In the Gewerbe Museum, of Berlin, there is a collection of tiles used in Nürnberg on the old ovens—some are most curious and beautiful. Since the spirit of decorative art is reviving in Germany, as elsewhere, the artists of highest rank do not consider it beneath their dignity to paint tiles or panels, or anything that can ornament the “house beautiful.” These ovens are generally built in the corner of a room, and are oftentimes eleven feet high. The fire is burned in a furnace near the bottom, and the heated smoke is made repeatedly to traverse the structure from side to side along the winding passage before it reaches the top, where a pipe conveys it, when comparatively cold, into a flue in the wall. The heated mass of brick continues to warm the room long after the fuel is burned. The same quantity of fuel which heats a German oven for a day is consumed in an open grate in three hours. In Northern Germany the poorer classes burn turf and charcoal, the better classes use the turf to mix with the stone-coal. Wagons of turf are brought to the front of the house early in the morning, the horses unhitched and taken away. The fuel is then carried basket by basket full, on the backs of old women, to the attic or fifth story of the house, which is divided into store rooms for the different herrschaften . On this floor is stored the wood, the coal, the turf. Early in the morning the back stairs are crowded with the various servants, from the different apartments, going up and down with their baskets of fuel. The fire must be lighted one hour before the rooms become comfortable. While the fires are beginning to burn the waxed floors are being polished, which is the time in our American or English economy for cooking the breakfast. If our German friends however prefer polished floors to gladden their sight on rising, to heavy beefsteaks to warm their stomachs, what reason have we to criticise? Frederika is lighting not the kitchen fire, but a little spirit lamp underneath the “coffee machine,” or boiler, and carrying in the fresh (but cold) rolls which she has just received from the baker’s wife at the back door, and in ten minutes she will formally announce to the gnädigen herrn and the gnädiger frau (gracious lord and gracious lady) that “ frühstück ist fertig ” (breakfast is ready). The gnädiger herr will appear wrapped up in a heavy morning wrapper (made of gray cloth, trimmed in mazarine blue) with newspaper in hand, and the gnädige frau will take her seat at the table where the coffee is sending up its smoke. She looks, in her morning cap and white apron, surely as healthy as her English sisters, and much more so than the beautiful but frail American woman, who sits eating her mutton chops and warm muffins. Who shall settle the question if doctors disagree? Continental Europe has existed on coffee and cold bread and eggs and never had dyspepsia, while England and America have grown fat or nervous on the beefsteak and muffins. The German washing is so well-known, and has afforded so much amusement, that I would not overthrow the traditions; yet after a long residence in Germany, and an experience of years in keeping house in a German apartment, I learned to regard the “ grosse wäsche ” as a necessary development of the apartment system of keeping house. For instance, there is one common wash-room, and one drying-room; the family in the parterre wohnung engage it the first two days in the week, then it belongs to the family on the opposite side of the house, and successively to the other inmates of the house, so that weekly occupancy is out of the question. But a foreigner can escape this egregious imposition by sending the washing out of the house every week and waiting patiently for it to return in ten days. I was asked repeatedly by my German lady friends, “Where is your wedding chest of linen?” meaning a carved cedar chest containing a wedding dowry of linen, enough to last through four generations, which is quite the thing to be inspected by one’s intimate friends, more than the trousseau . How should an American woman answer such a question, or place herself in the favorable estimation of her good German friends again after shocking their education and hereditary taste by confessing that her house linen was only sufficient for present use. There is a sense of pride in the monthly washing in Germany little dreamed of by the general observer. A cook, a house-girl, or kindermädchen , and a man-servant ( diener ) are the usual number of domestics employed by a well-to-do German family where there are children. If there are no children, a cook and diener are sufficient help, even in a large city. In the country one girl is enough. She is “Jack-of-all-trades,” and gets poor pay and less praise for her proficiency. Her brawny arms and rosy cheeks are only found admirable by some wandering artist, who makes a hasty sketch of her carrying water from the village fountain. Among people who keep up any social style a diener in livery is indispensable. He opens the door, serves at table, sets the table, polishes the floors, does the errands, carries the invitation, walks behind the ladies when they go out, or sits on the box with the coachman when they are driving. Above all, he keeps Frederika in a good humor by polishing the doors of her oven, and sipping coffee with her while the herrschaften are sipping theirs. She learns to call him her “ lieber Schatz ,” and by and by, Frederika’s head becomes turned, and the cooking is not so perfect. The wages of this diener are not large according to American ideas; he receives, according to his ability, per month, twenty thalers, ten thalers, five, or even two and a half, if he is young, and has never served outside a restaurant. In addition to his wages, he gets good food, or the equivalent in money, which he generally prefers, for he can then go to the bier garten and get his meals, or eat with the family of the porter below. A servant must understand his or her work distinctly before entering into an engagement. Each must have a book in which the employer can read the date of birth, place of birth, the occupation of parents, the character of the employe, the recommendation or condemnation of the last employer. This book is kept by the lady of the house as long as the servant remains in her service, and when leaving, if the person has been faithful, she is expected to write a good recommendation in the book. There are two classes of cooks in Germany—the finished cook ( die fertige köchin ), and the cook who is willing to do any kind of work. Die fertige köchin is an educated queen in her department, and like every autocrat, her power renders her unaccountable for her actions. She prefers to do the marketing, and is in league with all the grocers and butchers. This coalition of butchers, bakers, grocers, and cooks in Germany is a confederacy which threatens the hausfrau , the baroness and royal household alike. Socialism is a ubiquitous monster, and who feels it more than the helpless woman with her account books before her, knowing there is no remedy if the cook says “Meat has risen, and the butcher would not take less.” An unending task in a European kitchen is dish washing, for six dozen plates in serving the dinner there go no farther than one dozen in the ordinary American way. The diener is expected to help the cook in this work, and once a week a schauer frau (scouring woman, or woman inspector), comes to help. It is a distracting day in the wirthschaft , and serves as a weekly reminder of what is to come before Christmas and Easter. This schauer frau comes early in the morning, tears down all the kitchen utensils, takes off the brass oven doors, sets all the copper kettles and tin ware in a row, and goes to work scouring them as bright as we would think necessary for a spring cleaning. Then she washes the windows, scrubs the floors, and returns with her fifteen silver groschen in the evening as contented as a woman in America would be with a dollar. Christmas and Easter are the seasons above all other times of the year for thorough cleaning. Then the floors are so highly polished, and the brass knobs and doors of the porcelain ovens made so brilliant that the servants go around in felt slippers and old gloves, for fear of dimming the luster before the dawn of the sacred days. Christmas is an expensive season for the herrschaften —so many presents expected: the cook, the diener , the porter and the portier frau , the lamp lighter, the gas man, the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker, and above all, the letter carrier. Eight and five dollars are small amounts for the cook and diener . But we must remember the cook’s small wages during the year (from five to twelve dollars is the usual monthly wages), before pronouncing the Christmas gift too much. Feiertage , or holidays for servants in Germany, are a great annoyance to the order of domestic life. They are so importunant in their demands, and so obstinately disagreeable if not gratified, that it is better for the family to go to the restaurant for dinner and “eat bitter herbs where there is peace,” than to remain at home for “a stalled ox,” with angry servants to serve it. While they demand so much for themselves, they are equally disappointed if the herrschaften do not celebrate every birthday of their own. The extra work is no consideration, and by touching little ways they show their pleasure when extra company is expected. Bouquets are placed on the coffee table by the plate of the member of the family whose birthday has arrived; a cake, with the number of candles to indicate the age of the person is found burning, and Frederika and August have broad smiles on their faces as they come in and rattle off some poetry which they have committed to memory for the occasion, wishing the person whose birthday they are celebrating glück and heil . Dinner parties are the most frequent and most formal entertainments in Germany. They are stereotyped, but the type belongs purely to Germany. When the ladies enter the room, after the introductions they are invited to be seated on the sofa and chairs of the “dress-circle” which we have described. The gentlemen stand around the fair ones, bending or breaking their backs in the effort to talk, or the more unconcerned stand off in groups, learning from the hostess at the earliest moment which ladies they are to escort to the table. The seat on the sofa is the seat of honor, and if a lady of inferior rank has arrived first and occupied that place, she rises immediately and resigns it on seeing her superior enter the room; so that a captain’s wife will offer the seat to a major’s wife, and a major’s wife to a general’s wife, and so on. The white-gloved diener throws open the doors of the dining-room ten minutes after the arrival of the guests, and the guests have the privilege of speaking to each other at the table if an introduction has failed in any case in the salon . The dinner is served entirely from the buffet; the snowy damask, flowers and glass are only presented upon the table for the guests to feast their eyes upon. The meats are all carved in the kitchen, and handed around by the servants. A good menu resembles the French taste and order somewhat, although a discerning eye will detect the German element in the following:

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