He carefully selected the best portion of the carcass, cut it through the center to get the choicest morsel, and slashed off an appetizing tenderloin that represented the two hundred grams of the weekly meat ration of Tschirn so exactly that the scales teetered for several seconds. Then he added another slice that brought the weight up to a generous half-pound and threw in a nubbin of suet for good measure. “Making just two marks,” he announced, wrapping it up in a sheet of the local newspaper. “That will put kick in your legs for a day or two—if you watch the cook that prepares it for you.” There was nothing to indicate where Bavaria ended and Saxe-Weimar began, except the sudden appearance of blue post-boxes instead of yellow, and the change in beer. This jumped all at once from sixteen pfennigs a mug to twenty-five, thirty, and, before the day was done, to forty, at the same time deteriorating in size and quality so rapidly that I took to patronizing hillside springs instead of wayside taverns. At the first town over the border I found the municipal ration official at leisure and laid in a new supply of food-tickets. My week’s allowance of butter, sugar, and lard I bought on the spot, since those particular _Marken_ were good only in specified local shops. The purchases did not add materially to the weight of my knapsack. I confess to having cheated the authorities a bit, too, for I had suddenly discovered a loophole in the iron-clad German rationing system. The jolly butcher-mayor of Tschirn had neglected to note on my “travel-sheet” the tenderloin he had issued me. Meat-tickets were therefore furnished with the rest—and I accepted them without protest. Had all officials been as obliging as he I might have played the same passive trick in every town I passed. But the clerks of the Saxe-Weimar municipality decorated my precious document in a thoroughly German manner with the information that I had been supplied all the tickets to which I was entitled for the ensuing week. That Saturday, however, was a Gargantuan period, and a vivid contrast to the hungry day before; for barely had I received this new collection of _Marken_ when an innkeeper served me a generous meat dinner without demanding any of them.