help the cook in this work, and once a week a _schauer frau_ (scouring woman, or woman inspector), comes to help. It is a distracting day in the _wirthschaft_, and serves as a weekly reminder of what is to come before Christmas and Easter. This _schauer frau_ comes early in the morning, tears down all the kitchen utensils, takes off the brass oven doors, sets all the copper kettles and tin ware in a row, and goes to work scouring them as bright as we would think necessary for a spring cleaning. Then she washes the windows, scrubs the floors, and returns with her fifteen silver groschen in the evening as contented as a woman in America would be with a dollar. Christmas and Easter are the seasons above all other times of the year for thorough cleaning. Then the floors are so highly polished, and the brass knobs and doors of the porcelain ovens made so brilliant that the servants go around in felt slippers and old gloves, for fear of dimming the luster before the dawn of the sacred days. Christmas is an expensive season for the _herrschaften_—so many presents expected: the cook, the _diener_, the porter and the _portier frau_, the lamp lighter, the gas man, the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker, and above all, the letter carrier. Eight and five dollars are small amounts for the cook and _diener_. But we must remember the cook’s small wages during the year (from five to twelve dollars is the usual monthly wages), before pronouncing the Christmas gift too much. _Feiertage_, or holidays for servants in Germany, are a great annoyance to the order of domestic life. They are so importunant in their demands, and so obstinately disagreeable if not gratified, that it is better for the family to go to the restaurant for dinner and “eat bitter herbs where there is peace,” than to remain at home for “a stalled ox,” with angry servants to serve it. While they demand so much for themselves, they are equally disappointed if the _herrschaften_ do not celebrate every birthday of their own. The extra work is no consideration, and by touching little ways they show their pleasure when extra company is expected. Bouquets are placed on the coffee table by the plate of the member of the family whose birthday has arrived; a cake, with the number of candles to indicate the age of the person is found burning, and Frederika and August have broad smiles on their faces as they come in and rattle off some poetry which they have committed to memory for the occasion, wishing the person whose birthday they are celebrating _glück_ and _heil_.