The baker assured me that none were needed, except in harvest time. He had never seen a kodak in action. He would not at first believe that it could catch a picture in an instant. Surely it would need a half-hour or so to get down all the details! Queer people Americans must be, to send men out through the world just to get pictures of simple country people. Still he wouldn’t mind having a trade like that himself—if it were not for his wife and his three children. Kulmbach, noted the world over for its beer, is surrounded with immense breweries as with a medieval city wall. But the majority of them stood idle. The beverages to be had in its _Gasthäuser_, too, bore little resemblance to the rich Kulmbacher of pre-war days. Thanks perhaps to its industrial character, the city of breweries seemed to be even shorter of food than Bayreuth; or it may be that its customary supply had disappeared during the celebration of Assumption Day. The meat-tickets I had carried all the way from Munich were required here for the first time. Some very appetizing little rolls were displayed in several shop-windows, but when I attempted to stock up on them I found they were to be had in exchange for special _Marken_, issued to Kulmbachers only. There was a more sinister, a more surly air about Kulmbach, with its garrison of Prussian-mannered soldiers housed in a great fortress on a hill towering high above the town, than I had thus far found in Bavaria. As I sat down to an alleged dinner in a self-styled hotel, my attention was drawn to a noisy group at a neighboring table. I stared in amazement, not so much because the five men opposite were Italian soldiers in the uniform with which I had grown so familiar during my service on the Padovan plains the summer before, but because of the astonishing contrast between them and the pale, thin Germans about me. The traveler grows quickly accustomed to any abnormality of type of the people among whom he is living. He soon forgets that they look different from other people—until suddenly the appearance of some really normal being in their midst brings his judgment back with a jerk to his customary standards. I had grown to think of the Germans, particularly the Bavarians, as looking quite fit, a trifle under weight perhaps, but healthy and strong. Now all at once, in comparison with these ruddy, plump, animated Italians, they seemed a nation of invalids. The energetic chatter of the visitors brought out in striking relief the listless taciturnity of the natives; they talked more in an hour than I had ever heard all Germany do in a day. Meanwhile they made way with an immense bowlful of—well, what would you expect Italians to be eating? Macaroni, of course, and with it heaping plates of meat, vegetables, and white hard-bread that made the scant fare before me look like a phantom meal. I called the landlady aside and asked if I might not be served macaroni also. She gave me a disgusted look and informed me that she