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The Upper Rhine : Mayence to the Lake of Constance
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284

DOMESTIC MANNERS OF TUE PRUSSTANS.

grove-like walks are not skirted, as in France, by a row ofprivate chapels, like miniature park-lodges, and fitted withglazed doors, so tliat the public may see the afflicted prayingat tbe altar within. To do the people justice, too, tbere isless melodramatic ostentation about tlieir burial-grounds: noris the gate beset by a disgusting crowd of obtrusive hawkersof " immortelles" who, as you pass, urge your attention to a"süperbe" chaplet "ä mon ange ;" or maybe to one embroi-dered with the flowery fib, " je pleuke toujoues."

The death-omens which are populär only among nervousold women, and country folk, and serving-girls, with us, pre-vail in Prussia among the so-called educated classes; for wehave known many a Herr Lehrer (Mr. Teacher) to have bisbrain choke-full of the most childish and impious superstitions.Indeed, we have sat and smiled inwardlv, the evening throueh,at the scholastic jolter-heads, whilst they enlightened us as tohow the howling of a restless dog in the night had foretoldthe death of Herr Somebody, and how a vagrant "Nacht-eule n(night-owl) had played the prophet, and announced the ap-proaching decease of some well-known invalid—better thanthe first physician in the land could have done. We have beeninformed, too, whilst the Professor grew warm with bis subject(and our Kirschwasser), how necessary it is, on a death oc-curring in a house, to move the tub of "Sauer-kraut" —if oidyan inch—away from its former place in the cellar, in orderto prevent its becoming too rotten even for a Deutscher'sstomach to relish; and, likewise, to tap with the knuckles atevery cask of wine that may be in the Keller, to stop its turninginto downright, unmitigated vinegar. We have heard, more-over, how in the country it is customary, even at the villageparsonage, for some one to go into the garden immediatelyafter a decease, and teil each swarm of bees (if hives be kept)