"But it wouldn't be natural in England," said the Englishwoman. "It would be odd. Besides, if you only have one servant, she can't dress for lunch." "Why should she dress for lunch?" asked the German. "My Auguste is a pearl, but she only dresses when we have _Gesellschaft_. Then she wears a plaid blouse and a garnet brooch that I gave her last Christmas, and she looks very well in them. But every day ... and for lunch, when half the work of the day is still to be done.... What, then, does your second girl do in the afternoons?" "She brings tea and answers the door." "Always the door. But your husband is not a doctor or a dentist. Why do so many people come to your door that you need a whole girl to attend to them?" "Oh! They don't," said the Englishwoman, getting rather worn. "There are very few, really. It's the custom." "Ah!" said the German, with a long deep breath of satisfaction. "So are you English ... such slaves to custom. _Gott sei Dank_ that I do not live in a country where I should have to keep a girl in idleness for the sake of the door. With us a door is a door. Anyone who happens to be near opens it." "I know they do," said the Englishwoman, "and when a servant comes she expects you to say _Guten Tag_ before you ask whether her mistress is at home?" "Certainly. It is a politeness. We are a polite nation." "And once, when I had just come back from Germany, I said Good-morning to an English butler before I asked if his mistress was at home, and he thought I was mad. We each have our own conventions. That's the truth of the matter." "Not at all," said the German. "The truth of the matter is, that the English are extremely conventional, and follow each other as sheep do; but the German does what pleases him, without asking first whether his neighbour does likewise." This is what the German really believes, and you agree or disagree with him according to the phase of life you look at when he is speaking. You find that when he comes to England he honestly feels checked at every turn by our unwritten laws, while when you go to Germany you wonder how he can submit so patiently to the pettiness and multiplicity of his written ones. He vaguely feels the pressure and criticism of your indefinite code of manners; you think his elaborate system of titles, introductions, and celebrations rather childish and extremely troublesome. If you have what the English call manners you will take the greatest care not to let him find this out, and in course of time, however much you like him on the whole, you will lose your patience a little with the individual you are bound to meet, the individual who has England on his nerves, and exhausts his energy and eloquence in informing you of your country's shortcomings. They are legion, and indeed leave no room for the smallest virtue, so that in the end you can only wonder solemnly why such a nation ever came to be a nation at all.