We loafed on through the perfect early-summer morning, a soloist striking up on voice and instrument now and then, the whole club joining frequently in some old German song proposed by the blind leader, halting here and there to sit in the shade of a grassy slope, pouring pellmell every mile or two into a _Gasthaus_, where even the shy little girls emptied their half-liter mugs of beer without an effort. One of the ex-soldiers enlivened the stroll by giving me his unexpurgated opinion of the Prussians. They “hogged” everything they could lay their hands on, he grumbled. Prussian wounded sent to Bavaria had been fed like princes; Bavarians who were so unfortunate as to be assigned to hospitals in Prussia—he had suffered that misfortune himself—had been treated like cattle and robbed even of the food sent them from home. He “had no use for” _die verdammten Preussen_, from any viewpoint; it was their “big men” who had started the war in the first place, but.... No, indeed, Bavaria could not afford to separate from Prussia. She had no coal of her own and she had no seaport. Business interests were too closely linked together through all the Empire to make separation possible. It would be cutting their own throats. Toward noon we reached the village of Neudrossenfeld, where the _Verein_ had engaged for the day a rambling old country inn, with a spacious dance-hall above an outdoor _Kegelbahn_ for those who bowled, and a shady arbor overlooking a vast stretch of rolling summer landscape for those who did not, in the garden at the rear. Other glee clubs, from Kulmbach and another neighboring city, had occupied the other two _Gasthäuser_ and every even semi-public establishment. The town resounded from one end to the other with singing and playing, with laughter and dancing, with the clatter of ninepins and the rattle of table utensils. A lone stranger without glee-club standing would have been forced to plod on, hungry and thirsty. I spent half the afternoon in the shady arbor. Several of the girls were well worth looking at; the music, not being over-ambitious, added just the needed touch to the languid, sun-flooded day. One could not but be struck by the innocence of these typically Bavarian pleasures. Not a suggestion of rowdyism, none of the questionable antics of similar gatherings in some other lands, marred the amusements of these childlike holiday-makers. They were as gentle-mannered as the tones of the guitars, zithers, and mandolins they thrummed so diligently, with never a rude word or act even toward hangers-on like myself. Yet there was a bit less gaiety than one would have expected. Even the youthful drifted now and then into moods of sadness—or was it mere apathy due to their long lack of abundant wholesome food?