I am sorry to say that for over forty years I have quite lost sight of Vieweg.  My connection with quinine, too, has been usually quite involuntary.  I have had two very serious bouts of malarial fever, one in South America, the other in the West Indies, and on both occasions I owed my life to quinine.  Whilst taking this bitter, if beneficent drug, I sometimes wondered whether it had been prepared under the auspices of the friend of my youth.  So ignorant am I of the quinine world, that I do not know whether the firm of Buchler & Vieweg still exists.  One thing I do know:  Vieweg must be now sixty-three years old, should he be still alive, and I am convinced that he remains an upright and honourable gentleman.  I would also venture a surmise that business competitors find it very hard to overreach him, and that he has escaped the garrulous tendencies of old age.

One of the curses of German towns is the prevalence of malicious and venomous gossip.  This is almost entirely due to that pestilent institution the “Coffee Circle,” or Kaffee Klatsch, that standing feature of German provincial life.  Amongst the bourgeoisie, the ladies form associations, and meet once a week in turn at each others’ houses.  They bring their work with them, and sit for two hours, eating sweet cakes, drinking coffee, and tearing every reputation in the towns to tatters.  All males are jealously excluded from these gatherings.  Mrs. Spiegelberg was a pretty, fluffy little English woman, without one ounce of malice in her composition.  She had lived long enough in Germany, though, to know that she would not be welcomed at her “Coffee Circle” unless she brought her budget of pungent gossip with her, so she collected it in the usual way.  The instant the cook returned from market, Mrs. Spiegelberg would rush into the kitchen with a breathless, “Na, Minna, was gibt’s neues?” or “Now, Minna, what is the news?” Minna, the cook, knowing what was expected of her, proceeded to unfold her items of carefully gathered gossip:  Lieutenant von Trinksekt had lost three hundred marks at cards, and had been unable to pay; it was rumored that Fraulein Unsittlich’s six weeks’ retirement from the world was not due to an attack of scarlet fever, as was alleged, but to a more interesting cause, and so on, and so on.  The same thing was happening, simultaneously, in every kitchen in Brunswick, and at the next “Coffee Circle” all these rumours would be put into circulation and magnified, and the worst possible interpretation would be given them.  All German women love spying, as is testified by those little external mirrors fixed outside almost every German window, by which the mistress of the house can herself remain unseen, whilst noting every one who passes down the street, or goes into the houses on either side.  I speak with some bitterness of the poisonous tongues of these women, for I cannot forget how a harmless episode, when I happened to meet a charming friend of mine, and volunteered to carry her parcels home, was distorted and perverted.