Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/202

192 and then the fact that at all the large hotels wine is mainly drunk at dinner, furnish my data for this conclusion. In the wine-growing districts of Bavaria beer-drinking is reduced to about one-fourth of the Munich standard, and so we may suppose that the removal of all wine from the capital might add one-fourth to the beer-drinking as given above,—at least, it takes the place of one-fourth of that which would be the aggregate of the beer-drinking.

The government has a commission for the examination of the quality of the beer; and, indeed, aside from this, the popular taste is not a bad test in this respect. There is an error in the lines of Prior,—

The most common manifestation of Bavarian beer-drinking is a perpetual tasting, and not a pouring-down of the liquid a glass at a time. These people seem to have the art of doing this thing so gradually and quietly that the soothing liquor passes gently into the circulation, and produces an effect very different from that which would result from swallowing it a glass at a draught, enabling them to drink without visible effect a much larger quantity in the aggregate. They practise upon the proverb, "The still sow drinks the swill,"—a proverb which would serve admirably the purpose of those who desire to join in the general sarcasm expended upon Bavarian beer-drinking, since almost every word in it seems to express so exactly some characteristic which North Germans and others are disposed to attribute to Bavarians.

Reference was made above to the government's regulating the price of beer. The margin allowed between the wholesale and retail price is half a kreutzer on the mass,—that is, one-fourth of a kreutzer or one-sixth of a cent on the glass. What a blessing, if the retail liquor-trade in our country were reduced to such a scale of profit! This would bring less than two dollars on one thousand glasses. The work would have to be turned over to benevolence for its prosecution, and would doubtless be done much more to the advantage of the community. The profit, however, on this trade in Bavaria is somewhat increased by the manner in which servants are paid. Especially if good-looking girls are employed, the employer may pay them nothing, but leave them to get their pay from the customer. They bring him his change in kreutzers and fractions of a kreutzer, and he shoves back to them often these fractional parts; and if no such are there, a truly liberal soul may give the girl a whole kreutzer, and then in return he will receive an expression of thanks somewhat stronger than our lordly porters would allow themselves to make for half a dollar on which they had no claim. Small as this profit is, it brings to the retailers of Munich about five hundred thousand florins, somewhat more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold per annum. Then, if the servants receive from the customers gratuities of half that amount, that is, an average of one-twelfth of a cent on the glass, this amounts to two hundred and fifty thousand florins per annum. In view of all these facts, it can be conceived that nothing would be so certain to be followed by a revolutionary outbreak as the addition of a kreutzer to the price of a mass of beer.

The wit which sparkles and flashes in a Bavarian beer-house may be as much less boisterous, or rather as much more quiet, than that which explodes over the distilled spirits of our bar-rooms, as the stimulant itself is less exciting, but is for this very reason the more genuine. Like the myriads of fire-flies on a warm summer evening amid the rising fog of a marshy ground, so gleams this wit in its smoky atmosphere; still it is there, notwithstanding the popular notion of Bavarian stupidity. The North German, and