whenever the little frau beat her loutish husband about the head, and set him to tend the baby, who continued to wail, notwithstanding the man knocked its head against the doorpost.  There were the great beer-restaurants, with temporary benches and tables’ planted about with evergreens, always thronged with a noisy, jolly crowd.  There were the fires, over which fresh fish were broiling on sticks; and, if you lingered, you saw the fish taken alive from tubs of water standing by, dressed and spitted and broiling before the wiggle was out of their tails.  There were the old women, who mixed the flour and fried the brown cakes before your eyes, or cooked the fragrant sausage, and offered it piping hot.

And every restaurant and show had its band, brass or string,—­a full array of red-faced fellows tooting through horns, or a sorry quartette, the fat woman with the harp, the lean man blowing himself out through the clarinet, the long-haired fellow with the flute, and the robust and thick-necked fiddler.  Everywhere there was music; the air was full of the odor of cheese and cooking sausage; so that there was nothing wanting to the most complete enjoyment.  The crowd surged round, jammed together, in the best possible humor.  Those who could not sit at tables sat on the ground, with a link of an eatable I have already named in one hand, and a mug of beer beside them.  Toward evening, the ground was strewn with these gray quart mugs, which gave as perfect evidence of the battle of the day as the cannon-balls on the sand before Fort Fisher did of the contest there.  Besides this, for the amusement of the crowd, there is, every day, a wheelbarrow race, a sack race, a blindfold contest, or something of the sort, which turns out to be a very flat performance.  But all the time the eating and the drinking go on, and the clatter and clink of it fill the air; so that the great object of the fair is not lost sight of.

Meantime, where is the agricultural fair and cattle-show?  You must know that we do these things differently in Bavaria.  On the fair-ground, there is very little to be seen of the fair.  There is an inclosure where steam-engines are smoking and puffing, and threshing-machines are making a clamor; where some big church-bells hang, and where there are a few stalls for horses and cattle.  But the competing horses and cattle are led before the judges elsewhere; the horses, for instance, by the royal stables in the city.  I saw no such general exhibition of do mestic animals as you have at your fairs.  The horses that took the prizes were of native stock, a very serviceable breed, excellent for carriage-horses, and admirable in the cavalry service.  The bulls and cows seemed also native and to the manor born, and were worthy of little remark.  The mechanical, vegetable, and fruit exhibition was in the great glass palace, in the city, and was very creditable in the fruit department, in the show of grapes and pears especially.  The products of the