The other factor is the rigid caste system of their social habits. There is no association between the officers, the nobility, the officials, the cultured classes, and the middle and lower classes. The public schools and universities are learning shops; they do not train youths in character, manners, or in the ways of the world. They do not play together, or work together, or amuse themselves together. The creeds and codes, habits and manners of the better classes are, therefore, not allowed to percolate and permeate those less experienced. There is no word for gentleman in German. The words gebildeter and anstaendiger are used, and it is significant to notice that the stress is thus laid on mental development or upon obedience to formal rules. A man may be a very great gentleman and a true gentleman and not be a scholar. The late Duke of Devonshire cared more for horses than for books and pictures, and Abraham Lincoln was one of the greatest gentlemen of all time. In Homburg one day I saw a tall, fine-looking, elderly man step aside and off the sidewalk to let two ladies pass. It was for Germany a noticeable act. He turned out to be a famous general then in waiting upon the Emperor. There are not a few such courtly gentlemen in Germany, not a few whose knightliness compares with that of any gentleman in the world. Alas for the great bulk of the Germans, they never come into contact with them, their example is lost, their leaven of high breeding and courtesy does not lighten the bourgeois loaf! In America and in England we are all threading our way in and out among all classes. We are much more democratic. Men of every class are in contact with men of every other, we play together and work together, and consequently the level of manners and habits is higher. This state of things is less marked in south Germany than in Prussia, but is more or less true everywhere. But how can this be possible, I hear it replied, in that land where every officer clacks his heels together with a report like an exploding torpedo, ducks his head from his rigid vertebrae, and then bends to kiss the lady's hand; and where every civilian of any standing does the same? I am not writing of the nobility and of the corps of officers in this connection. No doubt there are black sheep among them, though I have not met them. Of the many scores of them whom I have met, whom I have ridden with, dined with, romped with, drunk with, travelled with, I have only to say that they are as courteous, as unwilling to offend or to take advantage, as are brave men in other countries I know. I am writing of the average man and woman, of those who make up the bulk of every population, of those upon whom it depends whether a national life is healthy or otherwise.