I once made a German exceedingly angry by saying that the standard of comfort was higher in England than in Germany. She said it was lower. When you have lived in both countries and with both peoples you arrive in the end at having your opinions, and knowing that each one you hold will be disputed on one side or the other. "Find out what means _Gemütlichkeit_, and do it without fail," says Hans Breitmann, but _Gemütlichkeit_ and comfort are not quite interchangeable words. Our word is more material. When we talk of English comfort we are thinking of our open fires, our solid food, our thick carpets, and our well-drilled smart-looking servants. The German is thinking of the spiritual atmosphere in his own house, the absence, as he says, of ceremony and the freedom of ideas. He talks of a man being _gemütlich_ in his disposition, kindly, that is, and easy going. We talk of a house being comfortable, and when we do use the word for a person usually mean that she is rather stout. When both you and the German have decided that "comfort" for the moment shall mean material comfort, you will disagree about what is necessary to yours. You must have your bathroom, your bacon for breakfast, your table laid precisely, your meals served to the moment, your young women in black or your staid men to give them to you, and your glowing fires in as many rooms as possible. The German cares for none of these things. He would rather have his half-pound of odds and ends from the provision shop than your boiled cod, roast mutton, and apple-tart; he wants his stove, his double windows, his good coffee, his _kräftige Kost_, and freedom to smoke in every corner of his house. He is never tired of telling you that, though you have more political freedom in England, you are groaning under a degree of social tyranny that he could not endure for a day. The Idealist, quoted in a former chapter, is for ever talking of the "hypocrisy" of English life, and her burning anxiety is to save the children of certain Russian and German exiles from contact with it. Another German tells you that our system of collegiate life for women would not suit her countryfolk, because they are more "individual." Each one likes to choose her own rooms, and live as she pleases. The next German has suffered torments in London because he had to sit down to certain meals at certain hours instead of eating anything he fancied at any time he felt hungry, and I suppose it is only your British _Heuchelei_ that leads you to smile politely instead of adding, "As the beasts of the field do." But I am always mazed, as the Cornish say, when Germans talk of their freedom from convention. In Hamburg I was once seriously rebuked by an old friend for carrying a book through the streets that was not wrapped up in paper. In Hamburg that is one of the things people don't do. In Mainz and in many other German towns there are certain streets where one side, for reasons no one can explain, is taboo at certain hours of