We shall make the acquaintance of German servants presently, but first some reference to the German ovens will be necessary, for it is with these that the servant’s time is first engaged in the morning and last at night. Next to the Dutch stove, the German oven is probably the most economical, and as far as mere temperature is concerned, the most effective of all warming arrangements. They are built of brick covered with porcelain and are part of the house, being built in with the walls. The cost is about seventy-five dollars for those finished with plain white tiles; but frequently the tiles are colored like majolica, and are highly decorated. In the Gewerbe Museum, of Berlin, there is a collection of tiles used in Nürnberg on the old ovens—some are most curious and beautiful. Since the spirit of decorative art is reviving in Germany, as elsewhere, the artists of highest rank do not consider it beneath their dignity to paint tiles or panels, or anything that can ornament the “house beautiful.” These ovens are generally built in the corner of a room, and are oftentimes eleven feet high. The fire is burned in a furnace near the bottom, and the heated smoke is made repeatedly to traverse the structure from side to side along the winding passage before it reaches the top, where a pipe conveys it, when comparatively cold, into a flue in the wall. The heated mass of brick continues to warm the room long after the fuel is burned. The same quantity of fuel which heats a German oven for a day is consumed in an open grate in three hours. In Northern Germany the poorer classes burn turf and charcoal, the better classes use the turf to mix with the stone-coal. Wagons of turf are brought to the front of the house early in the morning, the horses unhitched and taken away. The fuel is then carried basket by basket full, on the backs of old women, to the attic or fifth story of the house, which is divided into store rooms for the different _herrschaften_. On this floor is stored the wood, the coal, the turf. Early in the morning the back stairs are crowded with the various servants, from the different apartments, going up and down with their baskets of fuel. The fire must be lighted one hour before the rooms become comfortable. While the fires are beginning to burn the waxed floors are being polished, which is the time in our American or English economy for cooking the breakfast. If our German friends however prefer polished floors to gladden their sight on rising, to heavy beefsteaks to warm their stomachs, what reason have we to criticise? Frederika is lighting not the kitchen fire, but a little spirit lamp underneath the “coffee machine,” or boiler, and carrying in the fresh (but cold) rolls which she has just received from the baker’s wife at the back door, and in ten minutes she will formally announce to the _gnädigen herrn_ and the _gnädiger frau_ (gracious lord and gracious lady) that “_frühstück ist fertig_” (breakfast is ready).