The German Sunday. 67 



tan Sabbath and the English Sunday. Thousands of them 

 not only are not infidels, but are contending for the Lord's 

 day against infidel associations whose avowed object it is to 

 desecrate and destroy it. And it is not more honest to con- 

 found friends with foes, than it is politic to make them all foes 

 by indiscriminate attack. The custom is hallowed to them by 

 education, by associations of their childhood, of their friends 

 living and dead, their home and the fatherland. It is no more 

 than plain common sense to look at it with their eyes, to ad- 

 mit what ever good there is in it, and to enlist their aid with 

 some other argument than that our Sunday is of the Lord, 

 while theirs is of the devil. And that is actually what they 

 constantly have to hear upon the subject. 



The love of out-door life I have referred to as a natural trait of 

 the German race, and it is one which we Americans may well 

 envy and imitate. I have seen a little bit of yard in a crowded 

 city, containing a small grass-plat and a shrub or two made 

 the chief scene of family recreation, despite the large and well- 

 furnished parlor. And let it also be borne in mind that it is 

 always family recreation which they seek ; that in their sim- 

 ple amusements and pleasures, men, women and children par- 

 ticipate. It is not their way to leave home and all its affec- 

 tions and influences and go to places and entertainments to 

 which they cannot take their wives and sisters. All who have 

 seen them in their own country will testify to the quiet and 

 well behaved crowds which assemble in the gardens and parks, 

 evidently not for entertainments — for in many of the most fre- 

 quented none are allowed, still less for hard drinking or other 

 vice, but for the enjoyment of their friends and of out-door 

 life. I am not prepared to pronounce a Sunday afternoon so 

 spent intrinsically less innocent than that of nine-tenths of our 

 native population in which a special dinner, a lazy sleep, after 

 the children have been sent to the convenient Sunday school, 

 and the Sunday papers, are the chief employments, even 

 when conscience, personal and traditional, forbids riding and 



