ally turns the
screw upon Nussler, till he too raises for himself a firm good house in
the Friedrichs Stadt,--Friedrichs Strasse, or STREET, as they now call
it, which the Tourist of these days knows. Substantial clear ashlar
Street, miles or half-miles long; straight as a line:--Friedrich Wilhelm
found it scrag and quagmire; and left it what the Tourist sees, by these
hard methods. Thus Herr Privy-Councillor Klinggraf too, Nussler's next
neighbor: he did not want to build; far from it; but was obliged, on
worse terms than Nussler. You have such work, founding your house;--for
the Nussler-Klinggraf spot was a fish-pool, and "carps were dug up" in
founding;--such piles, bound platform of solid beams; "4,000 thalers
gone before the first stone is laid:" and, in fact, the house must be
built honestly, or it will be worse for the house and you. "Cost me
12,000 thalers (1,800 pounds) in all, and is worth perhaps 2,000!"
sorrowfully ejaculates Nussler, when the job is over. Still worse with
Privy-Councillor Klinggraf: his house, the next to Nussler's, is worth
mere nothing to him when built; a soap-boiler offers him 800 thalers
(120 pounds) for it; and Nussler, to avoid suffocation, purchases
it himself of Klinggraf for that sum. Derschau, with his slow
screw-machinery, is very formidable;--and Busching knows it for a
fact, "that respectable Berlin persons used to run out of the way
of Burgermeister Koch and him, when either of them turned up on the
streets!"

These things were heavy to bear. Truly, yes; where is the liberty of
private capital or liberty of almost any kind, on those terms? Liberty
to ANNIHILATE rubbish and chaos, under known conditions, you may have;
but not the least liberty to keep them about you, though never so fond
of doing it! What shall we say? Nussler and the Soap-boiler do both live
in houses more human than they once had. Berlin itself, and some other
things, did not spring from Free-trade. Berlin City would, to this day,
have been a Place of SCRUBS ("the BERLIN," a mere appellative noun to
that effect), had Free-trade always been the rule there. I am sorry his
Majesty transgresses the limits;--and we, my friends, if we can make
our Chaos into Cosmos by firing Parliamentary eloquence into it, and
bombarding it with Blue-Books, we will much triumph over his Majesty,
one day!--

Thus are the building operations exceedingly pushed forward, the Ear
of Jenkins torn off, and Victor Amadeus locked in war