ve to their duties, and convinced that
if not the eye, at any rate the ear of the emperor is on the _qui
vive!_ Nor are the government offices safe from being rung up by his
majesty over the wires even at night time. For the past two or three
years he has insisted that at the ministry of foreign affairs, at the
ministry of the interior, and at the war and naval departments, at
least one of the divisional chiefs and half a dozen clerks should be
kept on duty all night long, in order to attend to any business or
to communicate to him without delay anything that they may regard as
needing his immediate attention.

Berlin is the only capital where the principal government offices
are thus kept open for official business all night long, and
the circumstance serves to furnish another illustration of the
extraordinary activity, energy, and impatience of delay that
distinguish the emperor, who wants everything done right away, without
a moment's waiting!

Emperor William gives the telephone companies at Berlin and at Potsdam
far more trouble than any other of their subscribers, for when he
telephones to any of the government departments, or to dignitaries or
officials of high rank, the operators at the central office are under
the strictest orders to abstain from listening to the conversation,
and are forced to rise from their seats and remove to a distance from
the wires. Anyone caught disobeying in this particular is subject not
only to dismissal, but to serious unpleasantness on the part of the
police.

When the emperor rings up anybody, he does not announce his identity,
taking it for granted that the tones of his voice are sufficiently
well known to reveal it. It has been noted, moreover, that he
commences all his conversations over the wire with the pronoun "I,"
while the verb "command," either in the past or in the present tense,
almost invariably follows. This is quite sufficient to show who is
talking.

William is the first sovereign of his line to accept the hospitality
of his subjects. Prior to his advent to the throne, such a thing as
the monarch attending any private entertainment or dinner given by one
of his lieges was altogether unknown. Neither King Frederick-William
III., King Frederick-William IV., nor old Emperor William, whose
reigns extended over nearly ninety years of the nineteenth century,
ever once honored any member of the nobility, no matter how high in
rank, with their presence for a single ev