I have visited half a dozen hospitals, and on one or two occasions been present at an operation by a famous surgeon. It is evident from the bearing of patients, nurses, and students that they are dealing with a less highly strung population than ours. Indeed, the surgeons who know both countries tell me that here in Germany they have more endurance of this phlegmatic kind. They suffer more like animals. Their patience reaches down to the very roots of their being. On that delightful big fountain, in that paradise of fountains, Nuremberg, the statues of the electors and citizens picture men who were untroubled and cheerful, slow-moving, contented, patient; while the little figures on the guns are positively jolly. The only mournful figure on the whole fountain is a man with a book on his knees teaching a child. He is pallid, even in bronze, and his face is lined as he muses over the problem that has stumped the wisest of us: how to make a man by stuffing a child with books! It cannot be done, but we follow this will-o'-the wisp through the swamps of experience with the pitiable enthusiasm of despair. Only liberty can make a man, and she is such a costly mistress that with our increasing hordes of candidates for independence we cannot afford her; so we go on fooling the people with mechanical education. But even this figure is patient! The Germans are patient even with their food. What would become of them without the goose, the pig, the calf, and the duck, that meagre alimentary quartette? The country is white with home-raised geese, and yet they imported 8,337,708 in 1910, and 7,236,581 in 1911. One of their most charming bits of classic art is the famous miniature statue of the Gooseman; and the real name of the great Gutenberg, who, by his invention of printing, did more than any other mortal to make it easy for the human race to acquire the anserine mental habits, and the anserine moral characteristics, was Gaensfleisch! The goose is really the national bird of the German people. You eat tons of goose, and then you sleep beneath the feathers. The goose first nourishes you and then protects your digestion. The extraordinary make-up of the German bed must be laid to the door of the guilty goose. The pillows are so soft that your head is ever sinking, never at rest. Instead of easily applied blankets, that you can adapt to the temperature, you are given a great cloud of feathers, sewn in a balloon-like bag, which floats upon you according to your degree of restlessness, and leaves you for the floor, when in stupid sleepiness you endeavor to protect your whole person at once with its flimsy and wanton formlessness. As a rule the bed is built up at the head so that you are continually sliding down, down under the goose feathers, your nose and mouth are soon covered, and who can breathe with his toes!