I carry away with me delightful pictures of German households, big, little, and medium; and though it does not fit in nicely with my main argument, households whose mistresses were patterns of what a châtelaine should be. But I must leave that loop-hole for the critics, for I am trying only to tell the truth and to be fair, and not to be scientific or to bolster up a thesis.
I can see the big castle, centuries old, with its rambling buildings winging away from it on every side, and in the court-yard its regal-looking mistress positively garlanded with her dozen children. There is no sign of the decadence of the aristocracy here. We sit down twenty or more every day at the family luncheon. Tutors and governesses are at every turn. A French abbé, as silken in manner and speech as his own soutane, bowls over all my prejudices of creed and custom, as I watch him rule with the lightest of hands and the softest of voices a brood of termagant small boys; to turn from this to a game of billiards, and from that to the Merry Widow waltz on the piano, that we may dance. An aide-de-camp trained in India and a French abbé, I am convinced that these are the apotheosis of luxury in a large household. My Protestant brethren would, I am sure, throw their prejudices to the winds could they spend an evening with my friend, Monsieur l'Abbé! Nor Erasmus, nor Luther, nor Calvin would have had the heart to burn him. He is just as good a fellow as we are, knows far more, can turn his hand to anything from photography to the driving of a stubborn pony, knows his world as few know it, and yet is inviolably not of it. I have chatted with Jesuit priests teaching our Western Indians; I have travelled with a preaching friar in Italy on his round of sermonizing; I have seen them in South America, in India, China, and Japan, and I recognize and acclaim their self-denying prowess, but no one of them was a more dangerous missionary than my last-named friend among them, Monsieur l'Abbe!
"For ever through life the Curé goes With a smile on his kind old face-- With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair, And his green umbrella-case."
There was a profusion at this castle, a heartiness of welcome, a patriarchal attitude toward the countless servants and satellites, an acreage of roaming space in the buildings, that smacked of the feudalism back to which both the castle and the family dated. How many Englishmen or Americans who sniff at German civilization ever see anything of the inside of German homes? Very few, I should judge, from the lame talk and writing on the subject. Let us go from this mediaeval setting for modern comfort to a smaller establishment. Here a miniature Germania, with blue eyes and golden hair, presides, looking like a shaft of sunlight in front of you as she leads the way about the paths of her gloomy forest. In these, and in not a few other houses, there is little luxury, no waste, a certain Spartan air of training, but abundance of what is necessary and a cheery and frank welcome.