"But how about the trunks that were not under their right letters?" I ask.
"Who in his senses wants to find trunks under letters?" says he. "The proper place for trunks is the end of the platform. Then you can tear out of the train and find yours first and get off quickly. When you are all dragooned and drilled an ass comes off as well as anyone else. You place a premium on stupidity."
"But that is an advantage to the ass," I say; "and in a civilised State why should the ass not have as good a chance as anyone else?"
The argument that ensues is familiar, exhausting, and interminable. "An ass is an ass wherever he lives," says someone at last; and everyone is delighted to have a proposition put forward to which he can honestly agree.
CHAPTER XXIV[ToC]
PEASANT LIFE
The peasant proprietors of Southern Germany are a comfortable, prosperous class. "A rich peasant" begins your comic story as often as "a rich Jew." The peasants own their farms and a bit of forest, as well as a vineyard or a hop garden. They never pretend to be anything but peasants; but when they can afford it they like to have a son who is a doctor, a schoolmaster, or a pastor. Unless you have special opportunities you can only watch peasant life from outside in Germany, for you could not stay in a Bauernhaus as you would in a farmhouse in England. At least, you could not live with the family. In some of the summer resorts the peasants make money by furnishing bedrooms and letting them to Herrschaften, but the Herrschaften have to get their meals at the nearest inn. The inner life of the peasant family is rougher than the inner life of the farmer's family in England, though their level of prosperity is as high, possibly higher. You cannot imagine the English farmer and his wife putting on costly and picturesque mediæval costumes every Sunday and solemnly marching to church in them; but the German Bauer still does this quite simply and proudly. In some parts of the Black Forest every valley has its own costume, so that you know where a man lives by the clothes he wears. There is one valley where all the girls are pretty, and on festive occasions or for church they wear charming transparent black caps with wings to them. There is another valley where the men are big-boned and blackavised, with square shaven chins and spare bodies, rather like our English legal type; and they go to church in scarlet breeches, long black velvet coats, and black three-cornered hats. Their women-folk wear gay-coloured skirts and mushroom hats loaded with heavy poms-poms. In Cassel there are most curious costumes to be seen still on high days and holidays; from Berlin, people go to the Spreewald to see the Wendish peasants, and in Bavaria there is still some colour and variety of costume. But everywhere you hear that these costumes are dying out. The new generation does not care to label itself, for it finds städtische Kleider cheaper and more convenient. The Wendish girls seem to abide by the ways of their forefathers, for they go to service in Berlin on purpose to save money for clothes. They buy or are presented with two or three costumes each year, and when they marry they have a stock that will last a lifetime and will provide them with the variety their pride demands. For they like to have a special rig-out for every occasion, and a great many changes for church on Sundays. In Catholic Germany a procession on a saint's day seems to have stepped down from a stained-glass window, the women's gowns are so vivid and their bodies so stiff and angular. But to see the German peasantry in full dress you must go to a Kirchweih, a dance, or a wedding.