liable to a fine of one hundred marks; but for the remainder of the day you can devote yourself to revel. The Germans revelled on the Rhine. The wine-gardens were thronged. There were groups of holiday-folk at every hotel window. The Kaiser flag adorned cottage and mansion. The Prussian Eagle perched, as it were, all along the river bank, and soared to the turret of the loftiest fortress. The boats were crowded, and there was much bustle of egress and ingress at every landing-stage. But there was little music-only the stray blowing of trumpets; all the German bands, luckily, were in England.

Eating and drinking were the two recreations, varied by the waving of handkerchiefs-possibly as an aid to digestion. The Germans, since they acquired Metz, have been rather apt at braggadocio; but it must be admitted that they can outlast any other nation in stomachic capacity and digestive power. For three marks you were able to get on the Rhine boat, at table d'hôte, a dainty banquet almost equal in quality to any supplied in first-class London restaurants, and with a modest half-bottle of claret or Burgundy, were satisfied; but not so your German voyager. He may stick to his occupation and deny himself luxury during the week, but on Sunday he has the appetite of an ostrich, and the thirst of the unfortunate creature who sought a drink in vain from Lazarus. He appears to have only one meal; but it invariably lasts all day, and his consumption of wine and beer is prodigious. The English excursionist, out for a day at Blackpool or Margate, has a comprehensive appetite; but he must give pas to his German brother as a gourmand. There is, however, one satisfactory phase of the Teutonic gastronomic effort. It does him no harm. He laughs, talks, smokes, and frolics while he is making it; and the liquid he takes is innocuous-it is not strong enough to overbalance him.

When you had sighted the twinkling lights of Mayence, worked your way through the busy station at Frankfort, and passed a few days at your favourite Pumpernickel, the impression forced itself upon you that after all English life is the best. It was a novelty to take the peculiar waters, a delight to join in the fashionable festivity, a pleasure to saunter in the pine woods, and an adroit experience to endeavour to sustain life on the Continental breakfast served on terrace and beneath gaily draped verandah ; but existence without earnest purpose soon becomes monotonous, and one member of London society, toying with his spoon at afternoon tea in the Kurgarden, caused quite a flutter when he told his friends

that he had, like Confucius, discovered a new enjoyment. "It is a fascinating pastime," he said, with quiet humour. "When I am weary of tennis, and music, and fireworks, I go to the shop of Herr Loewnherz and ask him to change me a £5 note into German money. I get a pocketful of marks and pfennigs, take them to the hotel, spend an hour or two in counting them; then stroll into Rothschild's, where they are only too ready to convert the mass of coins into English gold again. I call it the currency game. It costs you a mark; but it is a splendid exercise in arithmetic, and as exciting as betting."

You had not been in Pumpernickel very long before you realised that the secret charm of the place was its inexhaustible stream of gossip. You were told that the prince went to the springs in a light blue suit and a red tie, and that he walked out with a Pomeranian dog; that Jones of the Guards had a melancholy prospect-that he had run through his money, was obliged to marry old Lady Blanche, and must be content with fishing and shooting all his life. Smart people daily arrived with new scandal, and graphic accounts of the floods in the Black Forest; and vivacious old travellers, who had done India, Egypt, and Southern Europe, wagged their tongues with reminiscence and story. One had been pitched out of diligence, another had had the contents of his portmanteau overturned upon dusty road by irate Customs officer, and another had narrowly escaped capture by bandits. There is a wondrous variety of incident in travel; and it also gives the rein to romance.

You soon ascertained that if you would know anything of the social and industrial life of the natives of Pumpernickel you must rise at dawn. It was at daybreak that the dogs drew in the little milk-carts from the adjacent farms, that the bullocks swayed townward with their waggon loads of produce, that the women, deftly balancing huge baskets of clothes upon their heads, strode, with arms akimbo, from the rural laundries to the great hotels. The workingpeople, handicraftsmen, husbandmen, and female foilers were, you noticed, a patient, enduring race. But they lacked the robust independence of the artisan and labouring population of England. Notwithstanding their tendency to smoke cheap cigars before breakfast, they gave you the idea that they were not altogether strangers to poverty. In fact, to tell the blunt truth, every resident class in this gay Pumpernickel would fare ill were it not for the generous inflow of English gold. The hotel proprietors, shrewd as the Dutch merchant who loved the English because "their terms were net cash," were ready enough to acknowledge this. When you had paid

your bill and tipped the waiters, the host at the house at which you had been “a paying guest" was all suavity and politeness, and, presenting you with a lovely bouquet of roses, wished you a pleasant journey home and speedy return to the German spa in which his lot

was cast.

The act was graceful-it reconciled you to some holiday freaks ; but it was not so gratifying as the glimpse, three days later, of the white cliffs of Dover, or the consciousness that you were once more in touch with your native land. No man, unless his heart be ossified, is free from regret at the end of his holiday; but you have the consolation, in returning to an eccentric climate and to duty, that you do not envy the German in his empire. His existence is a travesty in comparison to the free, vigorous, earnest life of the Englishman; and you no longer wonder how it is that the thoughtful, cultured, and enterprising Teuton is so eager to desert his beloved Fatherland for the possibilities of comfort and wealth that lie beneath the smoke canopy of the greatest city in the world.

JOHN PENDLETON.

TABLE TALK.

I

THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS.

AM always glad to give what publicity I may to the proceedings of the Society for the Protection of Birds, with whose efforts, as I need scarcely tell readers of the Gentleman's, I am in full, active, and sympathetic accord. My own recent observations in Table Talk have elicited from Mrs. E. Phillips, a vice-president of the Society, a letter of recognition for recent contributions to the cause of humanity, accompanied by a batch of the society's latest leaflets. These last may be obtained from Mrs. Phillips at Vaughan House, 11 Morland Road, Croydon. If I mention again this address, and refer afresh to the publications of the society, it is because I know it is only by constant iteration, if even then, that an impression is made upon human thoughtlessness, ignorance, and vanity. "In time the savage bull will bear the yoke," says or quotes Shakespeare, and in time the labours of those who preach the lesson of mercy may bear fruit. I say may, not being sanguine enough to write will. At any rate I further so far as I may the interests of the society, and in the phrase of Abraham Lincoln-I think it is his-"keep pegging on." Of one thing I am sure, that the effect of a single paragraph in any magazine or journal is slight. Beauty, to whom I most directly appeal, if it notes it at all, reads it "with a careless dropping lip, and an erected brow, humming it hastily over." Bring it again and again before her, she becomes annoyed, and when annoyance has had its day and you still persist, she may begin to think.

I'

THE BIRD OF PARADISE.

N the hope that this process, slow as it is, may be brought about, and since better may not be, I return to the charge, fortified and armed by Mrs. Phillips. From her I learn that the deplorable fashion of wearing the plumage of beautiful birds, necessarily slaughtered for the purpose, reached its climax in the month of May,

1895. Few hats or bonnets were then to be seen without "the adornment of a graceful spray of soft fine plumes, with drooping or curly tips." Mixed in these, I am told, and forming "a contrast to those soft plumes, might be seen the delicate osprey tips, which, to the shame of womanhood, and, in despite of the indisputable cruelty involved in obtaining them, are still largely used." Of the numerous houses engaged in the supply of these decorations, one house alone disposed during the season of 720,000 of these mixed sprays, involving thus, I suppose-for I am not up in the mysteries of this bloodthirsty trade-the destruction of about a million and a half of the loveliest creatures God has ever made. The bird of paradise it is which supplies these plumes, so much in request. Young birds, moreover, are pursued and destroyed before the plumage has time to attain its full brilliancy, several years being requisite in the case of the male bird to deck in due time into his robes of state. Meantime Germany, it is humiliating to hear, is taking the lead of us in the campaign against the destruction of beauty. Since January 1, 1892, strict regulations for the preservation of the bird of paradise have been in force in German New Guinea, and an appeal has been made to the English and Dutch Governments to follow this example. We are in England slow to move in matters in which our personal interests are not directly and obviously concerned, and I am not very hopeful of any good for yet awhile attending the efforts to bring about legislation as regards English possessions. Meantime the fact that the area in which the bird of paradise can be captured or slain is narrowed, renders speedier and more certain its extinction in the countries under our rule.

EFFORTS FOR THE PROTECTION OF OUR HOME Birds.

OMETHING, it is known, has been done with a view to the

protection of our native birds, and the Wild Birds' Protection Act, were its provisions carried out, would do much to mitigate a great evil. Two difficulties, both sufficiently obvious, attend the carrying out of this Act. The first is the difficulty of detecting the birdcatcher in the pursuit of his occupation; the next, that of getting the magistrate to exact a penalty that shall be prohibitive. I have myself seen, during my country walks in the immediate neighbourhood of London, men whose object is unmistakable. however, give up an entire day to the pursuit of malefactors, and should I ever detect them at work, I can only demand name and address and accept such as they choose to give me, or raise probably