Housekeeping in Germany is reduced to a science; an accurate knowledge of principles, gained by experiment, experience and reflection. Personal and domestic expenditures are regulated in strict accordance with the best theories in consumption of capital and consumption of labor. This is especially true in the large cities where the houses are built to accommodate eight or ten families in addition, various people below in the basements, such as shoemakers, seamstresses, and washerwomen, who are ready to give service to the _herrschaften_ above. These houses are generally built of brick, stuccoed, and oftentimes in the early years of their existence present a very handsome front, deceiving a stranger’s eye with the impression that they are stone. The massive front door opening to the corridor which leads to the _porte-cochère_, is in modern houses, most ornamental. Wrought iron, in arabesque patterns, with the monogram of the owner, serves to protect the plate-glass behind. The panels of wood below are elaborately carved. This door opens to the touch of a bell attached to a rubber tube and bell which remains in the basement where the _portier_ lives. Invariably on the inside of the door one sees in large German letters, “_Bitte die Thür leise zu zumachen_.” Every person entering or going out reads this request, and, while occupied with reading, naturally lets the door slam the louder. Only sly young men returning from the _kneipe_ in the darkness feel obliged to bear it in mind. The slamming of the great corridor door, however, makes no impression upon the numerous families above, and if it chanced to be a friend of Frau Schültze who just entered the house, there is yet time for the gracious lady (_gnädige frau_), who probably lives up the second flight of stairs, to take off her morning cap (which a German woman is apt to wear until she hears some one coming) before her friend has time to ring the bell to her own apartment.