It is dull uphill work to write about sport and outdoor games in Germany, because you may have been in many places and met a fair variety of people without seeing any enthusiasm for either one or the other. The bulk of the nation is, as a matter of fact, not interested in sport or in any outdoor games except indifferent tennis, swimming, skating, and in some places boating. When a German wants to amuse himself, he sits in a garden and listens to a good band; if he is young and energetic, he walks on a well-made road to a restaurant on the top of a hill. In winter he plays skat, goes to the theatre or to a concert, or has his music at home. Also he reads a great deal, and he reads in several tongues. This, at any rate, is the way of Germans in cities and summer places, and it is a very small proportion of the educated classes who lead what we call a country life. "Elizabeth" knows German country life, and describes it in her charming books; perhaps she will some day choose to tell us how the men in her part of the world amuse themselves, and whether they are good sportsmen. I must confess that I have only once seen a German in full sporting costume. It was most impressive, though, a sort of pinkish grey bound everywhere with green, and set off by a soft felt hat and feathers. As we were having a walk with him, and it was early summer, we ventured to ask him what he had come to kill. "Bees," said he, and killed one the next moment with a pop-gun. CHAPTER XXI INNS AND RESTAURANTS English people who have travelled in Germany know some of the big well-kept hotels in the large towns, and know that they are much like big hotels in other continental cities. It is not in these establishments that you can watch national life or discover much about the Germans, except that they are good hotel-keepers; and this you probably discovered long ago abroad or at home. If you are a woman, you may be impressed by the fineness, the whiteness, the profusion, and the embroidered monograms of the linen, whether you are in a huge caravanserai or a wayside inn. Otherwise a hotel at Cologne or Heidelberg has little to distinguish it from a hotel at Brussels or Bâle. The dull correct suites of furniture, the two narrow bedsteads, even the table with two tablecloths on it, a thick and a thin, the parqueted floor, and the small carpet are here, there, and everywhere directly you cross the Channel.