It is not easy to tell your German hosts that you like and wish to be by yourself sometimes; and if you say that you are used to it in England you won't impress them. The English are so inhospitable and unfriendly, they will say, for that is one of the many popular myths that are believed about us. I have been told of a German lady who has lived here most of her life, and complains to her German friends that she has never spent a night under an English roof; but then, she chooses to associate exclusively with Germans, whose roofs she refuses to regard as English ones, even when they are in Kensington; and she cherishes such an invincible prejudice against the born English that she lives amongst them year after year without making a friend. It would be quite simple to perform the same feat in Paris, or even in Berlin, although there you would not have such a large foreign colony to stand between you and the detestable natives. The real difficulty in writing about German hospitality is to find and express the ways in which it differs from our own; and certainly these lie little in qualities of kindness and generosity. Amongst both nations, if you have a friendly disposition you will find friends easily, and receive kindness on all sides. Perhaps, as one concrete instance is worth many assertions, I may describe a visit I paid many years ago to a family who invited me because a marriage had recently connected us. I had seen some of the family at the wedding, and had been surprised to receive a warm invitation, not for a week-end and a cake of visitors' soap, but for the rest of the winter; six weeks or two months at least. The family living at home consisted of the parents, a grown-up son and two grown-up daughters. Some of them met me at the station, for the German does not breathe who would let a guest arrive or depart alone. Your friends often give you flowers when you arrive, and invariably when you go away. I cannot remember about the flowers on this occasion, but I remember vividly that the day after my arrival the two married daughters living in the same town both called on me and brought me flowers. Week after week, too, they made it their pleasure to entertain me just as kindly as my immediate hosts, taking me to concerts or the opera, asking me to dinner or supper, including me on every occasion in the family festivities, which were numerous and lively. In some ways my hosts found me a disappointing guest, and said so. The trouble was that I liked plain rolls and butter for breakfast, while the daughters for days before I came had baked every size and variety of rich cake for me to eat first thing in the morning with my coffee. I never could eat enough to please anyone either. You never can in Germany, try as you may. Yet it was hungry weather, for the Rhine was frozen hard all the time I was there, and we used to skate every day in the harbour when the daughters of the house had finished their morning's work. Two maids