High-pitched voices, asking silly questions; of
quiet talks in the lamp-lit parlour after the children are in bed,
upon important questions of house management and home politics,
while long stockings are being darned.
They are not the sort of women to turn a man's head, but they are
the sort of women to lay hold of a man's heart - very gently at
first, so that he hardly knows that they have touched it, and then,
with soft, clinging tendrils that wrap themselves tighter and
tighter year by year around it, and draw him closer and closer -
till, as, one by one, the false visions and hot passions of his
youth fade away, the plain homely figure fills more and more his
days - till it grows to mean for him all the better, more lasting,
true part of life - till he feels that the strong, gentle mother-
nature that has stood so long beside him has been welded firmly into
his own, and that they twain are now at last one finished whole.
We had our dinner at a beer-garden the day before yesterday. We
thought it would be pleasant to eat and drink to the accompaniment
of music, but we found that in practice this was not so. To dine
successfully to music needs a very strong digestion - especially in
Bavaria.
The band that performs at a Munich beer-garden is not the sort of
band that can be ignored. The members of a Munich military band are
big, broad-chested fellows, and they are not afraid of work. They
do not talk much, and they never whistle. They keep all their
breath to do their duty with. They do not blow their very hardest,
for fear of bursting their instruments; but whatever pressure to the
square inch the trumpet, cornet, or trombone, as the case may be, is
calculated to be capable of sustaining without permanent injury (and
they are tolerably sound and well-seasoned utensils), that pressure
the conscientious German bandsman puts upon each square inch of the
trumpet, cornet, or trombone, as the case may be.
If you are within a mile of a Munich military band, and are not
stone deaf, you listen to it, and do not think of much else. It
compels your attention by its mere noise; it dominates your whole
being by its sheer strength. Your mind has to follow it as the feet
of the little children followed the playing of the Pied Piper.
Whatever you do, you have to do in unison with the band. All
through our meal we had to keep time with the music.
We ate our soup to slow waltz time, with the result that every
spoonful was cold before we got it up to our mouth.
