Page:1880. A Tramp Abroad.djvu/612

 German cream in. He said that the average German cow yielded from one to two and a half teaspoonfuls of milk, when she was



not worked in the plow or the hay wagon more than eighteen or nineteen hours a day. This milk was very sweet and good, and of a beautiful transparent bluish tint; but in order to get cream from it in the most economical way, a peculiar process was necessary. Now he believed that the habit of the ancients was to collect several milkings in a teacup, pour it into the Great Tun, fill up with water, and then skim off the cream from time to time as the needs of the German Empire demanded.

This began to look reasonable. It certainly began to account for the German cream which I had encountered and marveled over in so many hotels and restaurants. But a thought struck me,—

"Why did not each ancient dairyman take his own teacup of milk and his own cask of water, and mix them, without making a government matter of it?"