A ball supper or a Christmas supper in Germany consists of three or four courses served separately, and all hot except the sweet, which is usually _Gefrorenes_. Salmon, roast beef or veal, venison or chicken, and then ice would be an ordinary menu, and every course would be divided into portions and handed round on long narrow dishes. In most German towns you are often asked to supper, and very seldom to dinner. You never know beforehand what sort of meal to expect unless you have been to the house before. In some houses it will be hot, in others cold. In Berlin, supper usually offers you a dish made with eggs and mushrooms, eggs and asparagus, or some combination of the kind, and after this the usual variety of ham and sausages fetched from the provision shop. Tea and beer are drunk at this meal in most houses. Sometimes Rhine wine is on the table too. The sweets are often small fruit tartlets served with whipped cream. One menu I remember distinctly, because it was so quaint and full of surprises. We began with huge quantities of asparagus and poached eggs eaten together. Then we had _Pumpernickel_, Gruyère cheese and radishes, and for a third course vanilla ice. That was the end of the supper, but later in the evening, just before we left, in came an enormous dish covered with gooseberry tartlets, and we had to eat them, for somehow in Germany it seems ungrateful and unfriendly not to eat and drink what is provided. After dinner or supper everyone wishes everyone else _Mahlzeit_ which is to say, "I wish you a good digestion." Sometimes people only bow as they say it, but more often they shake hands. I know an Englishman who was much puzzled by this ceremony at his first German dinner-party. He saw everyone shaking hands as if they were about to disperse the instant the feast was over, and when his host came to him with a smiling face, took his hand and murmured _Mahlzeit_, he summoned what German he had at his command and answered _Gute Nacht_. CHAPTER XIX GERMAN SUNDAYS