Thus far I had not mentioned my nationality at the inn, being in doubt whether the result would be to increase our conversational speed or bring it to a grating and sudden halt. When I did, it was ludicrously like the shifting of gears. The talk slowed down for a minute or more, while the information I had vouchsafed passed from table to table in half-audible whispers, then sped ahead more noisily, if less swiftly, than before. On the whole, curiosity was chiefly in evidence. There was perhaps a bit of wonder and certainly some incredulity in the simple, gaping faces, but quite as surely no signs of enmity or resentment. Before long the table at which I sat was doubly crowded and questions as to America and her ways were pouring down upon me in a flood which it was quite beyond the power of a single voice to stem. Friendly questions they certainly were, without even a suggestion of the sarcasm one sometimes caught a hint of in more haughty German circles. Yet in the gathering were at least a score of men who had been more or less injured for life in a struggle which they themselves admitted the nation I represented had turned against them. I have been so long absent from my native land that I cannot quite picture to myself what would happen to the man who thus walked in upon a gathering of American farmers, boldly announcing himself a German just out of the army, but something tells me he would not have passed so perfectly agreeable an evening as I did in the village inn of Hohenkammer. With my third mug of beer the landlord himself sat down beside me. Not, of course—prohibition forbid!—that I had ordered a third pint of beer in addition to the two that the plump matron had served me with a very satisfying supper. In fact, I had not once mentioned the subject of beverages. Merely to take one’s seat at any inn table in Bavaria is equivalent to shouting, “_Glas Bier!_” No questions were asked, but mine host—so far more often mine hostess—is as certain to set a foaming mug before the new arrival as he—or she—is to abhor the habit of drinking water; and woe betide the man who drains what he hopes is his last mug without rising instantly to his feet, for some sharp-eyed member of the innkeeper’s family circle is sure to thrust another dripping beaker under his chin before he can catch his breath to protest. On the other hand, no one is forced to gage his thirst by that of his neighbors, as in many a less placid land. The treating habit is slightly developed in rural Bavaria. On very special occasions some one may “set ’em up” for the friend beside him, or even for three or four of his cronies, but it is the almost invariable rule that each client call for his own reckoning at the end of the evening.