THE GERMAN'S SUNDAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1155, 17 January 1874, Page 10

THE GERMAN'S SUNDAY.

The German's idea of Sunday is anything but Puritanic. It is the very opposite. It is for them a day of amusement. It is no unusual thing to be asked by a German on Monday morning, "Well, how did you amuse yourself yesterday ?" Ther j are those among the Germans, of course, who respect and keep the Sabbath; but tlien there are always enough of them who do not ; and to judge by the numbers in which, they frequent their places of amusement on Sunday — the parks, beer-gardens, and public-halls — a stranger might possibly be tempted to inquire whether the Germans had any idea of a Sabbath. Men, women, and children, old men with their wives, and younger ones with their sweethearts, throng these places every Sunday, and enjoy themselves, careless of what impression they make on their fellow-citizens of American origin, to whom the sound of brass instruments on the Sabbath air is anything but welcome or edifying. In the cold days of winter, when the parks and beer-gardens are dreary and shorn of their beauty, the German seeks amusement in some hall instead. Here he treats himself to a compound of rather heterogenebus elements — to music, beer, and smoke ; and to all of them at once. Any Sunday afternoon in the cold of winter, you may find him, with his wife or child, or both, in some large hall, one or a hundred or five hundred, smoking his meerschaum or his cigar, sipping his beer, wine, or coffee, and listening to a selection from Meyerbeer or Beethoven. Were it summer, he would add the odour of roses to the fumes of his tobacco and the smell or his beer ; for he is as fond of flo Avers as he is of any of these, and is never happier than when the air, trembling to the notes of the orchestra, is redolent with tobacco- smoke, tho perfume of the rose, heliotrope, and hop, and he is himself in the midst of them all. — Atlantic Monthly.