Not only the doorstep of each individual house and the strip of pavement in front of the door, but the street itself is cleaned up thoroughly on Saturday night. There are rinsings and scrubbings and washings and sweepings. The midden is tidied and made as neat and trim as a haystack. The woodstack is similarly squared, the blocks piled with mathematical exactness one on the top of the other. From the street itself every vestige of dirt and dust is removed. You are almost afraid to breathe lest anything should be disturbed. As for a motor car, its intrusion on the scene is little short of a sacrilege. Until dusk and after, the Saturday cleaning lasts. Then on Sunday the village in its best clothes sits about at ease on doorsteps and contemplates the fruits of its labours. Sunday in this Catholic land is a true feast day. It is impossible not to admire the simple, wholesome way in which the people, town and country alike, take their pleasures. Churches are crowded in the morning, and it is clear that the Catholic hierarchy keeps in very close touch with its flock. But religious festivals, which are frequent, have a pleasant social aspect and the population from oldest to youngest clearly enjoy them. Sometimes in the valleys of the Bergische Land you may meet a long procession going on pilgrimage to a neighbouring shrine. The sound of chanting and music is borne on the wind as the company wind up the hillside. It is like a scene in a play as you watch the distant view of banners and crucifixes and white-robed acolytes. Especially attractive are the children’s processions held on White Sunday--the Sunday following Easter--when the ceremony of first communion takes place. No steps are omitted to make the occasion impressive. Every little child in Cologne down to the poorest wears a white frock and a wreath of white roses. They come with their parents in large numbers during the morning to say a prayer in the cathedral--tiny children, so they seem, to be struggling with the great mysteries of faith. We passed a small hillside church in the Bergische Land on the afternoon of White Sunday at the moment when a procession of children was coming out. It was a pretty sight: the fair heads crowned with flowers and every child carrying a gold-and-white lily in its hand; fond and anxious parents shepherding their lambs, and provided with cloaks and umbrellas in the event of rain.