Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/200

190 indeed regard this as the consummation of the ridiculous; but to this bachelor professor it was the most natural thing in the world. He might change his lodgings half a dozen times in a year, and so might not be readily found; but the Court Brewery would remain from generation to generation, and while he lived he expected regularly to appear there, and there, of course, was the only place where he could make appointments for years to come.

This incident will intimate what an external view of this dark brown mass of humanity would never have hinted,—that it contains men of learning and parts. Could one go round and listen to each party by itself, instead of hearing the low rumble which falls upon the ears of the general observer, the profoundest problems of philosophy, statesmanship, philology, geography, ethnography, and history would be found undergoing the most searching examination. Fame says of our politicians who rise to positions which ought to be occupied only by statesmen, that they frequent low places and mingle with the boisterous crowd. This is probably not a slander. But these men frequent such places only for a purpose. Their tastes do not lead them thither. They go no oftener than serves their purpose. Not so with the learned German beer-drinker. He is in his own proper society. Chinese or Sanscrit, Arabic or Coptic, the last discoveries in the interior of Africa or about the North Pole, or the more recondite regions of chemistry or mineralogy, may be the theme of a familiar discourse, which each of the party may fully appreciate.

To these places, of course, only the men resort. Indeed, in this part of Germany there is little of family-life. The members of the family take their coffee separately, as each rises and is ready. The men quite generally dine and sup away from home, and that, too, when their business and their residence are in the same house, and the hotel or eating-house is at a distance. An English gentleman told me of a German friend of his who appeared in his seat in the beer-house on the evening of his wedding-day; and to the suggestion that this was not quite right to the newly married wife, he replied that it did indeed seem so, but he thought it better not to encourage hopes destined to disappointment. This may, too, have been one of those numerous instances in which the parties had already spent many evenings together in such a way as to have diminished the interest of both in each other's society on the first evening of married life. A genuine Munich man would never be embarrassed like the Parisian, of whom the well-known story is told, that, having been accustomed to spend all his evenings in the drawing-room of a certain lady, he was advised, on the death of her husband, to marry her, and promptly replied with the question, "Where, then, should I spend my evenings?" A true South-Bavarian's plan of spending his evenings is not affected by the trifling event of his marriage.

Indeed, there is an aspect of this virtual dissolution of family-life which has great interest as connected with German erudition. The English or American scholar, whose social hours are mainly spent with his family, or in the mixed society of the sexes, would never think of introducing the subjects of his study into such circles, and hence is without the best means of familiarizing his mind with the very topics to which all his hours of close application are devoted; for no subject is fully understood and reduced to material for ready use until it has been in some form the theme of frequent familiar discourse. It is thus turned over,—looked at on every side,—the views of men of different tastes, studies, and orders of mind, who have not disqualified themselves for this by being curled into the same nutshell, are called forth,—and the sparks thus elicited catch on other tinder, which had not been touched by those struck out in solitary study. It is thus that the thoughts of the learned are familiarized, and their area extended. It is thus that subjects which sit upon us as holiday-clothes are, in a society of German