The Argosy — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

72 At a German Silver bv eduiny. to tall glasses of sweet, black beer, three-quarters deep in froth, which 1s the chief drink of all classes in Northern Germany. And then the cakes! I excused myself from eating ham and sausage on the score of having dined so lately at the Schloss (at the fashionable hour of two o’clock: most Sebaldsbriick dinners were at half past eleven !), but the cakes I was not to be let off; and to this day I hardly like to think of the platefuls of butter-cake, cherry- cake, Redan-cake, which my curiosity and politeness together dis- posed of. Frau Bartles kept piling up my plate, and being terribly disappointed that I would not try her home-smoked ham, eaten raw, in thick brown slices, this was the only way that I could satisfy her hospitality. Luckily, German confectionery is very light. Of con- versation there was but little, for most of the guests had walked long distances, and were more inclined to eat than to talk just yet. - Besides, as my neighbour at table told me (a married sister of Frau Bartles, who hoped to hold her own silver wedding next year, and was consequently taking notice of everything), they would continue sitting round the table till nearly nine o’clock, when the fiddlers were ordered, and the ‘‘ Grandfather” would open the ball. “The grandfather?” I repeated, looking round to identify the old gentleman, but my neighbour laughed. ‘““< The Grandfather’ is the German marriage-dance ; have you not such a one in England? Oh, then, you must certainly see us dance it, presently ; there will be forty couples or so, and it will be very imposing!” ‘“ Tn that case,” I answered, ‘if I am to see the ‘ Grandfather’ in the evening, I must be gone now!” For a recollection of the old Countess, my hostess at the Schloss, awake after her nap and eager for an account of the gay doings in the village, reminded me that I must not linger longer. ‘‘Make my compliments to the Herr and Frau Baker,” I whispered, ‘‘and say, with their kind permission, I will return to see the dancing,” and I slipped up from the table quietly, unwilling to dis- turb the party. But I was not to escape thus. My hostess was after me in a moment, seizing a plate of cake from the table as she came; she was overwhelmed with concern at my leaving so early, and it was only when I spoke of the old Countess’s feeble health and expectation of my return, that she would suffer me to go at all. She thrust the cakes upon me to eat on the way, “lest I should be hungry” (the distance from the village to the Schloss during which this dreaded fit of hunger might attack me being at most three-quarters of a mile), and called after me that she had ventured to send a Redan Kuchen | to the gracious lady at the Schloss, which had preceded me by the hands of Jacob the Drottel (idiot), the only messenger to be found that day in Sebaldsbriick. So at last I tore myself away, with promises to return again later CORNICMOOOKS Conn