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 go overboard and are succoured with shouts. Leviathans of this underground lake, Lusitanias of beer, Pantagruels of the Hofbräuhaus, collide, draw off, collide again and are wrecked in the narrow channels.... A great puffing and blowing. Stranded craft on every bench.... Noses like cigar bands.

No waitresses here. Each drinker for himself! You go to the long shelf, select your mass, wash it at the spouting faucet and fall into line. Behind the rail the zahlmeister takes your twenty-eight pfennigs and pushes your mass along the counter. Then the perspiring bierbischof fills it from the naked keg, and you carry it to the table of your choice, or drink it standing up and at one suffocating gulp, or take it out into the yard, to wrestle with it beneath the open sky. Roughnecks enter eternally with fresh kegs; the thud of the mallet never ceases; the rude clamour of the bung-starter is as the rattle of departing