One of our distinguished politicians and scholars, who served in Germany as United States minister, brought back with him a German _diener_, or butler. Karl did well for a season; maintained his respectful bearing toward the _herrschaften_ and their guests until finally he announced he was “discontented,” and the reason for his desire to change places was that the _herrschaften_ did not entertain as grandly in this country as they did in Germany, and that the guests were not such fine ladies and gentlemen—they did not give _trink-gelt_ (civility money). But the most heartfelt reason was, he was lonely. He missed music, he missed beer, he missed _gemüthlichkeit_, and fine and high titles by which to call the ladies and gentlemen. And then the _festtage_—no days in America for the poor working classes to be relieved from care and have a good time. This did not please Karl. On these _festtage_ in Germany a servant man or woman has as good a chance to go to a picture gallery, or a pottery, or a museum, or a concert, as gentlefolks; and does not the knowledge and pleasure gained at such places make the servant more cheerful, and intelligent, and competent to look at work not as drudgery, but as something in which the whole human family is engaged in one way or another? Said an observing servant to me after an afternoon in a picture gallery: “How can those poor artists sit all day long with their feet on the stone floor and copy pictures? They look so tired I was glad I was not one of them!” After a visit to the _Königliche Porzellan Manufactur_, in Charlottenburg, I remember once having asked a servant if she knew how much labor it required to manufacture a cup and saucer; and I proceeded to tell her how the feldspar found in the vicinity of Berlin was ground to powder, cleaned through various tanks of water, each time running through a sieve, then how they pass it between heavy weights so that it came out in great sheets of pliable putty, which are laid over moulds, just as a piece of dough is laid over a pie-pan. When these forms are taken off, they are carefully finished in every indentation by skilful workmen, who have delicate tools for the purpose. Afterward they take these forms, cups, saucers, plates, vegetable dishes, as they may be, and bake them in ovens for sixteen hours the first time, and after they are taken out they are glazed and baked again, and then if the ware is to be painted it must be baked again; and if gilded, still again. I ended this elaborate description all out of breath, for it required as much command of the German language as I at that time thought I had. The attentive girl, however, relieved my excitement by saying: “Yes; I have been out there, _gnädige frau_, and seen it all, and this is why I try to be so careful with china.” In the five years this good girl had lived with me she had rarely broken a piece. I could but think how unlike the answer “Biddy” would have given, that “the kitchen floor