PEUSSIAN CLEANLINESS.

29

dishclout round about her. To remove the dust from underthe beds would be assurcdly considercd a Stretch of labouramounting to over-nicety, and we have repeatedly seen alayer of fluff and dirt under German bedsteads in wliich acrop of house-leek might have flourished.

Of regulär " dusters," such as we use in England, the Prus-sian housewives are utterly ignorant, so that our servant (who,it should be stated, in order that we may seem to draw nohighly-coloured picture of the people, had lived in a Prin-cess's family, and at a Herr GeneraVs, before Coming to us,)positively stared with wonder at being furnished with a fewyards of " check," for removing the dust from the furniture,saying that she had been generally accustomed to use thestove-broom for the purpose.

Glass-cloths, again, are novelties in Rhineland,—bits of oldrice or coffee bags being preferred by the " Mädchens" and tliison the plea that the sacking soaks up the water better than thelincn fabric common with us. Knife-boards, too, rank as foreignluxuries,—the approved method of brightening the " Messers"(though clean knives are extraordinary luxuries in the land)being by rubbing the blades with ashes sprinkled on a pieceof old sacking. Your linen is washed by the laundress withblack soap, so that the shirts on your back smell of pauperismas strongly as a low lodging-house. The water-bottles, even atthe best Rhenish hoteis, our maid assured us, are cleaned withwhat an English chambermaid empties into the slop-pail; theiron cooking-pans are rendered fit for use, when new, by boilinghorse-manure in them; and even slop-pails themselves arecomparatively unknown in the houses, the Utensils being,openly and unblushingly, carried by the women down thepublic stairs

-:."K

To an English fishwife such a State of shamelessness among