wearing broad blue ribbons and embroidered scarves, and all marching with banners bearing various devices. The favourite device was _Heil Gambrinus_, and when I saw that I knew that the blue ribbons had nothing to do with total abstention. The next banner explained things. It was the _Verein_ of the _Schenkwirte_ of Berlin,--the publicans, in fact, of Berlin having their little holiday. All through the summer the German nation amuses itself out of doors, and leads an outdoor life to an extent unknown and impossible in our damp climate. A house that has a garden nearly always has a garden room where all meals are served. Sometimes it is a detached summer house, but more often it opens from the house and is really a big verandah with a roof and sides of glass. In country places the inn gardens are used as dining-rooms from morning till night, and you may if you choose have everything you eat and drink brought to you out of doors. Most inns have a skittle alley, for skittles are still played in Germany by all classes. The peasants play it on Sunday afternoons, and the dignified merchant has his skittle club and spends an evening there once a week. The favourite card game of Germany is still _Skat_, but bridge has been heard of and will probably supersede it in time. _Skat_ is a good game for three players, with a system of scoring that seems intricate till you have played two or three times and got used to it. In Germany it is always _die Herren_ who play these serious games, while the women sit together with their bits of embroidery. At the Ladies' Clubs in Berlin there is some card playing, but these two or three highly modern and emancipated establishments do not call the tune for all Germany. Directly you get away from Berlin you find that men and women herd separately, far more than in England, take their pleasures separately, and have fewer interests in common. It is still the custom for the man of the family to go to a beer-house every day, much as an Englishman goes to his club. Here he meets his friends, sees the papers, talks, smokes, and drinks his _Schoppen_. Each social grade will have its own haunts in this way, or its own reserved table in a big public room. At the Hof Bräuhaus in Munich one room is set apart for the Ministers of State, and I was told some years ago that the appointments of it were just as plain and rough as those in the immense public hall where anyone who looked respectable could have the best beer in the world and a supper of sorts.