The philosophical old landlord brought us a word of wisdom with each double-handful of overflowing beer-mugs. “If ever the world gets reasonable again,” he mused, “the good old times will come back—and we shall be able to serve real beer at the proper price. But what ideas people get into their _Schädels_ nowadays! They can never let well enough alone. The moment man gets contented, the moment he has everything as it should be, he must go and start something and tumble it all into a heap again.” A rumor broke out that cookies were being sold across the street. I joined the foraging-party that quickly fled from the arbor. When we reached the house of the enterprising old lady who had mothered this brilliant idea it was packed with clamoring humanity like the scene of the latest crime of violence. At intervals a glee-clubber catapulted out of the mob, grinning gleefully and tenaciously clutching in one hand a paper sack containing three of the precious _Kuchen_, but even with so low a ration the producer could not begin to make headway against the feverish demands. I decided that I could not justly add my extraneous competition in a contest that meant so much more to others and, taking my leave of the _Sängerverein_, struck off again to the north. A middle-aged baker from Kulmbach, who had been “hamstering” all day, with slight success, fell in with me. He had that pathetic, uncomplaining manner of so many of his class, seeming to lay his misfortunes at the door of some power too high to be reached by mere human protest. The war had left him one eye and a weakened physique. Two _Ersatz_ teeth gleamed at me dully whenever his wan smile disclosed them. He worked nights, and earned forty-eight marks a week. That was eighteen more than he had been paid before the war, to be sure, and the hours were a bit shorter. But how was a man to feed a wife and three children on forty-eight marks, with present prices; would I tell him that? He walked his legs off during the hours he wished to be sleeping, and often came home without so much as a potato. There were a dozen or so in his rucksack now, and he had tramped more than thirty kilometers. I suggested that the apples would be large enough on the trees that bordered our route to be worth picking in a couple of months. He gave me a startled glance, as if I had proposed that we rob a bank together. The apples along public highways, he explained patiently, were property of the state. No one but those the government sent to pick them could touch them. True, hunger was driving people to strange doings these days. Guards patrolled the roads now when the apples began to get ripe. Peasants had to protect their potato-fields in the same manner. He, however, would remain an honest man, no matter what happened to him or to his wife and his three children. The apparently complete absence of country police was one of the things I had often wondered at during my tramp.