The houses of Oberammergau are for the most part small, old-fashioned and peculiarly shaped, and very few have flowers or trees in front. They stand mostly in the street, as it were, and are neither homelike nor inviting in their outward appearance. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, and we noticed several places where it would be a delight to stay. But these had probably been engaged for weeks, and when we drove to one of them which had a pretty yard in front, we were received with a shake of the head. At last, however, we found rooms in a sort of _dependence_ to a restaurant near Gaze’s hotel, and though the stables were here, and more smells than poor, abused Cologne ever boasted, and though directly under our window there was a beer garden, where I knew the peasantry would probably spend most of the night, we concluded we were fortunate to get even such quarters, and tried to feel contented and cheerful, until in walking about the town we came upon a tiny little cottage standing in a patch of turnips, with the muck heap behind the house instead of in front of it. There were some boxes of flowers in the window, and the face of the old lady who sat on a bench by the door was so pleasant and attractive that we accosted her, and were told that “we could have the upper floor if we liked,—would we step in and look?” There were but four rooms in the whole house, two below, the kitchen and the living room,—and two above, but these were scrupulously clean, and so odd-looking and delightful every way, that we decided at once to take them. Now, men are supposed to be more courageous than women, but the head of our party proved the contrary in this instance, and did not hesitate to say that alone and unprotected he dared not face the woman with the tumbled hair and dirty hands, who had smiled so blandly when we took the rooms we were about to give up. He must have help, he said, for though the Oberammergauers have the reputation of being very heavenly in their dispositions, he suspected our late hostess might be an exception to the general rule, and with her voluble French and German and English, all utterly incomprehensible, prove more than a match for him. So we went in a body, and I, as the one most interested in the change, undertook to explain to her very meekly that though her rooms were excellent in their way, and she herself everything to be desired in a landlady, I was afraid the beer garden under my window might disturb me, and we had found rooms in a quieter part of the town, where I should be more likely to sleep. I might have spared myself the sweetness and apologies, for they were lost upon her. With fierce gestures and flashing eyes she poured out a torrent of words, which, as nearly as I could judge, meant, that of all the mean people it had been her fortune to meet, we were the meanest and the worst; that her beer garden was as still as the grave, and if I could not sleep over it, the sooner I got