The family, in its emphatic substantiality, was most friendly and eager to please. They urged food and fluid upon him in a way that would have dismayed his Yankee doctor. He found himself eating and drinking to an extent he had never imagined. This sort of thing, he concluded half-despairingly, would either be the making of him or kill him. At home the general fear was about too much. Here satiety, over-satiety, seemed to be the rule as at all German firesides. While he dreaded to think what his abstemious digestive apparatus would do, his new friends took not amiss the bountiful spilling of edibles and liquids upon their napkins spread conspicuously over their breasts. Laundering must be cheap in Germany. That was one good thing. Gard did not forget that this was represented to be a highly instructed and cultivated circle. The members had graduated from the best schools or held degrees from standard universities. He kept asking himself in what guises the much advertised German excellence was yet to appear in this domestic group whose culture and virtues had been so extolled. If these manners and habits were part of its perfect ripened fruit, then American education and life were indeed obviously blighted. He could not help noticing that all hands had not been necessarily washed before meal-time, and that finger nails were unblushingly uncleaned and unkempt. An accidental glimpse under the immense flowing white beard of his host revealed the absence of a shirt collar, and the neck evidently relied on its untrimmed hairiness as an excuse for not being customarily washed. It became apparent to Kirtley after a month that personal cleanness and neatness in Germany were not particularly considered as next to godliness. The gold braid, spick and span uniforms and other showy gear, were apt to cover dirty bodies and soiled underwear. Alas, the Germans could not wash in beer. He wondered why his old enthusiastic mentor had never given him a hint of these things. Likely he did not know. Distance often increases eloquence in proportion as it breeds ignorance.