say?" Whereupon they fell to discussing my hair and
teeth and eyes and complexion in German as crammed with
adjectives as was the rye bread over which I was choking
with caraway. The entire table watched me with
wide-eyed, unabashed interest while I ate, and I advanced
by quick stages from red-faced confusion to purple mirth.
It appeared that my presence was the ground for a heavy
German joke in connection with the youngest of the
aborigines. He was a very plump and greasy looking
aborigine with a doll-like rosiness of cheek and a scared
and bristling pompadour and very small pig-eyes. The
other aborigines clapped him on the back and roared:

"Ai Fritz! Jetzt brauchst du nicht zu weinen! Deine
Lena war aber nicht so huebsch, eh? "

Later I learned that Fritz was the newest arrival and
that since coming to this country he had been rather low
in spirits in consequence of a certain flaxen-haired Lena
whom he had left behind in the fatherland.

An examination of the dining room and its other
occupants served to keep my mind off the hateful long
table. The dining room was a double one, the floor
carpetless and clean. There was a little platform at one
end with hardy-looking plants in pots near the windows.
The wall was ornamented with very German pictures of very
plump, bare-armed German girls being chucked under the
chin by very dashing, mustachioed German lieutenants. It
was all very bare, and strange and foreign to my eyes,