Returning to the furniture of the house, we find the library, or sitting-room (_wohnstube_), for private libraries are rare, and only found in the house of the _gelehrte_. It is true that every house has Goethe, Schiller, Wyland, Heine, Schlegel’s translation of Shakspere, Humbolt’s travels, and, it may chance to be, Kant, Hegel, and Strauss, if the paternal mind cares no longer for Martin Luther. In the neighborhood of the old _wartburg_ the memory of Luther is too sacred to allow David Strauss to lie on the same shelf with the Reformer. If the family taste runs to æsthetics more than ethics, a cabinet of rare porcelain will take the place of a book-case in the sitting-room. But in either case the inevitable sewing table stands by the window with an easy chair by its side. If the gentleman of the house has writing at home, or any business engagements, then the sewing table finds its way to the big window in the alcove of the dining-room. This room is more comfortable than an American dining-room, inasmuch as it has, in addition to the set of dining-room chairs, a sofa and some easy seats, two closed cabinets for the damask, on either side of the buffet, which glistens with glass and china. Sofa pillows and footstools are abundant, which one can not say are easily discovered in the American home. But first of all a German house is comfortable, then ornamental. “Wine, wife and song,” is the motto, as it was in the days of Martin Luther, and _gemüthlich_, which may mean friendly, well-disposed, good-natured, kind-hearted; snug, comfortable, lack-a-daisical, is the word which expresses the tone of home life. The bed-rooms are unattractive, as we have said. Two mahogany bedsteads, side by side, “too short than that a man can stretch himself on them, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.” These German beds are fearfully and wonderfully made, feathers below and above, pillows hid during the day under the covers, and finally, a white spread thrown over the entire mountain, in such a manner that it is impossible to distinguish head from foot.