“Raum ist in der kleinsten Hütte Für ein glücklich liebend Paar,”[6] of which one gets such a surfeit in Germany, are here conspicuous by their absence. This will not surprise any one acquainted with the domestic life of these people. Any such sentiment would most likely have lost its signification long before the wind and the rain had effaced it, for it would not at all suit the Saxon peasant to change his house motto as often as he does his wife. FOOTNOTES: [6] “There is space in the smallest hut To contain a happy, loving couple.” CHAPTER VIII. SAXON INTERIORS—CHARACTER. The old-china mania, which I hear is beginning to die out in England, has only lately become epidemic in Austria; and as I, like many others, have been slightly touched by this malady, the quaintly decorated pottery wine-jugs still to be found in many Saxon peasant houses offered a new and interesting field of research. These jugs are by no means so plentiful nor so cheap as they were a few years ago, for cunning _bric-à-brac_ Jews have found out this hitherto unknown store of antiquities, and pilger hither from the capital to buy up wholesale whatever they find. Yet by a little patience and perseverance any one living in the country may yet find enough old curiosities to satisfy a reasonable mania; and while seeking for these relics I have come across many another remnant of antiquity quite as interesting but of less tangible nature. [Illustration: SAXON PEASANT AT HOME.] Inside a Saxon peasant’s house everything is of exemplary neatness and speaks of welfare. The boards are clean scoured, the window-panes shine like crystal. There is no point on which a Saxon _hausfrau_ (housewife) is so sensitive as that of order and neatness, and she is visibly put out if surprised by a visit on washing or baking day, when things are not looking quite so trim as usual. If we happen to come on a week-day we generally find the best room, or _prunkzimmer_, locked up, with darkened shutters; and only on our request to be shown the embroidered pillow-covers and the best jugs reserved for grand occasions will the hostess half ungraciously proceed to unlock the door and throw open the shutter.