The _gnädiger herr_ will appear wrapped up in a heavy morning wrapper (made of gray cloth, trimmed in mazarine blue) with newspaper in hand, and the _gnädige frau_ will take her seat at the table where the coffee is sending up its smoke. She looks, in her morning cap and white apron, surely as healthy as her English sisters, and much more so than the beautiful but frail American woman, who sits eating her mutton chops and warm muffins. Who shall settle the question if doctors disagree? Continental Europe has existed on coffee and cold bread and eggs and never had dyspepsia, while England and America have grown fat or nervous on the beefsteak and muffins. The German washing is so well-known, and has afforded so much amusement, that I would not overthrow the traditions; yet after a long residence in Germany, and an experience of years in keeping house in a German apartment, I learned to regard the “_grosse wäsche_” as a necessary development of the apartment system of keeping house. For instance, there is one common wash-room, and one drying-room; the family in the _parterre wohnung_ engage it the first two days in the week, then it belongs to the family on the opposite side of the house, and successively to the other inmates of the house, so that weekly occupancy is out of the question. But a foreigner can escape this egregious imposition by sending the washing out of the house every week and waiting patiently for it to return in ten days. I was asked repeatedly by my German lady friends, “Where is your wedding chest of linen?” meaning a carved cedar chest containing a wedding dowry of linen, enough to last through four generations, which is quite the thing to be inspected by one’s intimate friends, more than the _trousseau_. How should an American woman answer such a question, or place herself in the favorable estimation of her good German friends again after shocking their education and hereditary taste by confessing that her house linen was only sufficient for present use. There is a sense of pride in the monthly washing in Germany little dreamed of by the general observer.