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The Black Eagle (Zuasse was a prosperous tavern of the second rate The house o hundred years old and had been in the Bauer family all that time

Had Fräu Bauer, or Fräu-Wirtin, as she was fahtly dubbed Bauer VII She was a , and therefore uncrowned She had been afor er had not yet worn off She was thirty-eight, plump, pretty in a free-hand lish bar where she kept the cash-drawer; it was useless to whisper sweet nothings into her ear; it waswith you, Herr; I wouldn't e Why should I e is the natural state!"

"Herr, I crossed the frontier long ago, but having recrossed it, never again shall I go back One crown-forty, if you please Thank you"

This retort had become almost a habit with the Fräu-Wirtin; and when a day went by without a proposal, she went to bed with the sense that the day had not been wholly successful

To-night the main room of the tavern swam in a blue haze of s with etables Dishes clattered, there was a buzzing of voices, a scraping of feet and chairs, a banging of tankards, altogether noisy and cheerful The Fräu-Wirtin preferred waitresses, and this preference was shared by her patrons They were quicker, cleaner; they remembered an order better; they were not always surreptitiously es of tankards on the way to the bar, as lish institution, and the Fräu-Wirtin greatly adirls fully able to defend the a sive and take If a enerally had his face slapped for his pains, and the Fräu-Wirtin was always on the side of her girls

The smoke was so thick one could scarcely see two tables away, and if any foreigner chanced to open athere was a hubbub; ere ht, not air There were soldiers, non-coht --farmers and their fale a kind of socialist club Socialis hold in those days, and theit, as it wasn't strong enough to be popular with governht