There is much leisure, much conversation, and much “toasting,” at a German dinner. Instead of the ladies retiring when the cigars and coffee are served, as they do in England, the gentlemen and ladies leave the table at the same time, and upon entering the _salon_ each guest goes to the host and hostess and offers his or her hand, saying in the most gracious manner, “_gesegnete malzeit_.” The guests all shake hands with each other and repeat the same, and then the gentlemen go into the library to smoke, and coffee is taken to them, as it is also brought to the ladies in the _salon_. The German hostess does not dress for her dinner parties as much as the English women. She is never _décolleté_—generally appears in light or black silk, square neck and half sleeves, with long white gloves. When the hour for departure comes, the _diener_ goes down to the street corner, orders a _droschke_ (cab) for those who have not private carriages, for one mark (twenty-five cents), the old _kutcher_ will drive away the happy or weary guest, and the _diener_ returns with a bright countenance and full pocket, having received from each guest in the corridor below enough “five silver _groschens_” to take Frederika to twenty concerts, and buy as many glasses of beer as they want. And so goes life in the “Vaterland!” THE VALUE OF GOOD FOOD. The food which you give to your body keeps it for long years unwasted and unworn, besides giving it the power by which it works and moves. The food, to you, is maintenance as well as strength. You do not destroy yourself by the labor you get through. The bread and meat which you eat, first get changed into the substance of your body; actually become flesh and blood; then as flesh and blood they perform a certain amount of useful labor. Like the iron of the steam engine, they are worn away by the work; but that is not of any real consequence, because fresh food will make fresh flesh and blood, capable of doing fresh work. You therefore are fed, not only that you may be able to work, but also that you may be kept in repair while you are working, at least during some three-score years and ten. The food first renews the worn body, and then it is the renewed body which is worn again by work, yet again to be renewed. Here, indeed, is a wonderful difference between the divinely-planned mechanism and the mechanism made by human hands. Coal does something for the steam engine besides setting it to work—it makes it warm. Soon after the fire has been lit in the furnace, the iron gets furiously hot, and the water in the boiler turns into scalding steam; all this heat really comes out of the coal. It was hidden away in the black mass, and only required that to be placed in the furnace, to be set light to, and to be blown upon by a draught of air, in order that it might be brought out and made serviceable. One pound of coal has heat enough hidden away in it to boil sixty pints of water.