"
No one can help admiring the simplicity, kindliness, and honesty of
the Germans. The universal courtesy and friendliness of manner have
a very different seeming from the politeness of the French. At the
hotels in the country, the landlord and his wife and the servant join
in hoping you will sleep well when you go to bed. The little maid at
Heidelberg who served our meals always went to the extent of wishing
us a good appetite when she had brought in the dinner. Here in
Munich the people we have occasion to address in the street are
uniformly courteous. The shop-keepers are obliging, and rarely
servile, like the English. You are thanked, and punctiliously wished
the good-day, whether you purchase anything or not. In shops tended
by women, gentlemen invariably remove their hats. If you buy only a
kreuzer's worth of fruit of an old woman, she says words that would
be, literally translated, "I thank you beautifully." With all this,
one looks kindly on the childish love the Germans have for titles.
It is, I believe, difficult for the German mind to comprehend that we
can be in good standing at home, unless we have some title prefixed
to our names, or some descriptive phrase added. Our good landlord,
who waits at the table and answers our bell, one of whose tenants is
a living baron, having no title to put on his doorplate under that of
the baron, must needs dub himself "privatier;" and he insists upon
prefixing the name of this unambitious writer with the ennobling von;
and at the least he insists, in common with the tradespeople, that I
am a "Herr Doctor.
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