HERE we are. It is midwinter—

“In Maine or New Hampshire or Canada, I guess.”

Guess again, you mistaken Pansy.

“Norway, then.”

Nor Norway, but just simply in Germany.

“Such snow-storms in Germany?”

Yes, and that miss with umbrella and fat face trudging on is—

“FrÄulein, I dare say. Isn’t that, or something like it, the name of all the German girls?”

Wouldn’t that mix things in a family of six girls? Think of a mother calling each one FrÄulein!

But that girl is no other than Bessie—

“Bessie a German girl? Never heard one called that in all my life.”

Who said she was a German girl? Can’t one be in Germany and not be a German? Do you expect to turn into one as soon as you get to—“Sweet Bingen on the Rhine,” or Frankfort? Frankfort, once the home of the great poet, Goethe, some of whose sayings it may make your dear head ache to understand. Frankfort, once a free city, as free from any king or great ruler as—the United States is of Mexico; a queer, bright old city—

“Bessie! Bessie! what about Bessie? Won’t she be lost in Frankfort? Who is she, any how?”

A Pansy, quite likely from Boston, by that name, on a visit to Germany. She will spend a few months in Frankfort, studying German and seeing the German sights, among them Luther’s house.

“But you do not explain what Bessie is doing out in a Frankfort snow-storm.”

Maybe she is after red cheeks; she left Boston looking pale enough. Her mamma thought a sea voyage and a few months in France and as many more in Germany would color her face again with rose tints as formerly. You see how she has improved. Now the Christmas festival of Frankfort begins, lasting three days. There will be trees and trees, and so much more that paper can hardly hold it or ink write it.

Bessie is on her way to the festival to see the German of it with Yankee eyes.

L.