"I don't like the not seeing the sun, but maybe we won't miss it so very much so long as it doesn't rain much. There is one thing that is very funny to me, Aunt Helen, and that is to see how the women work. It looks ridiculous to see a woman in an absurd Tyrolese hat with a feather sticking up straight behind, turning the tram switches, and to see them carrying heavy loads of wood on their backs or pushing a big cart through the streets is something I cannot get used to. Look at our little Anna here at the pension, she goes down into the bowels of the earth somewhere and brings up coal, great buckets of it, over two long flights. Imagine expecting a servant to do that at home."
"The German point of view is quite different from ours in more than one direction, you will find."
"I have noticed that. The other day when we all went out to the Isarthal with Fräulein Bauer and her brother, although he was as polite as a dancing-master in most ways, he never offered to help her or any one up those hundreds of steps one must climb to get to the station at Höllriegelsgreuth-Grünwald."
Miss Helen laughed. "How did you ever remember that long name, Nan?"
"Oh, I made a point of it because it was so nice and long. As I was saying Herr Bauer seemed quite a pig by the side of Dr. Paul who is always so lovely and courteous to every one. Fräulein Bauer was quite overcome when he rushed back to help her. I don't believe a man ever did such a thing before for her."
"As we were just saying their standards are very different from ours, although you will not find so great differences in the upper classes. Generally speaking, a woman must be a good hausfrau and make the men comfortable to reach the proper ideal; failing this she is a worthless creature in the estimation of most of the men."
"Give me my own, my native land," sang Nan, "and above all, give me the blessed men from our own part of the country. There are none like them in the whole wide world."