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Only orders and servility. No specimens to be found. There is no milk of human kindness in Germany. There is no absence of arrogance in Germany. And so forth. What did Kirtley think of it? The journalist jestingly identified the dignitaries, the men about town, the titled ladies about whose bulbous red shoulders often hung scandal, and retailed other gossip from his newspaper files.
It would be nice for all to form a party, and Frau Bucher would be so pleased if Herr Kirtley would have them joined in. But transportation to and fro must be provided because of the sister. He had so kindly, at first, spoken of a motor. As Friedrich had admittedly no money, Gard saw that this was a project likely on the part of both to saddle him with the whole expense.
It is always throwing up." To change the somewhat painful theme, Kirtley soon began: "I don't see any sports such as we know them in Germany. How do they get along without them?" Like all Yankee college men he was alert on these lines. "No sports in Deutschland. Go out on the Dresden golf links of a morning and you'll find hardly a German soul playing. It's the same in Vienna the same in Berlin.
Consequently, in such relations, the Teuton does not feel anything to be sorry for. There is nothing for him to worry about in any shame the next day. Kirtley learned gradually, through his dealings with tradesmen and in hearing business men talk in the cafés, that this underbred attitude extended into the German secular world.
These law-abiding, stay-at-home people had deliberately grown in Villa Elsa this robust plant of contempt, so full-blossomed now and ready to exhale its noisome fumes which at moments almost stifled Kirtley with their poison. What would Rebner say to this with his golden, soul-felt opinions of the excelling race!
Dog days were coming and brains were no doubt effervescing. The forty-eight hours in the rich old capital on the Main were full and Kirtley had almost forgotten his peculiar fellow traveler from Eisenach.
But in Fräulein the extraordinary combination of volatile comeliness and unimpeachable earnestness daily worked growing wonders in Kirtley. It is a luckless young traveler who does not find himself or herself engaged in some romance, permanent or transient, which ever after sweetens or gilds the memories of the tour.
In a delicious half-dreaminess he thought the stranger turned the journal and that a reddish, be-whiskered visage, with a flat, wide-lobed nose, popped into view for a second. The motionless reading, nevertheless, continued for the remainder of the trip. To the sweet July zephyr and the snug landscapes flitting by, the soldier paid no heed. How German this was! Kirtley mused.
The spot could not be more gemütlich that familiar expressive word which Kirtley soon learned to rely on amid the scant artillery of his defensive weapons of conversational German. Through a swinging gate in the wall, and usually to the clanging of a bell that announced you, you entered the house on a level with the ground. On this floor were the kitchen and dining room.
Prominent also were steel engravings of Saxon and Prussian kings of whom Kirtley had never heard. But there they were, conspicuous household gods, with fierce, epic miens and lordly bodies, surrounded by wreaths of glory and Latin texts, and supported by cannon pointed at the observer with menaces of angry welcome.
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