saw our own Northern cousins, whose
names we knew, but whom we never had the opportunity of meeting, riding
with great skill and daring. These races were much encouraged by the
Kaiser, and sometimes giant Eitel-Fritz would come and look on, or the
dandy Prince Schaumberg-Lippe would make his horse mince round the ring.
He was a great beau and ladies' favourite and the horrible accident that
has deprived him of his beauty in the battlefield, seems an impossible
thing to have happened to just him.

Our friend F---- was known in his regiment as "Revolver mouth." This
title he earned through his witty tongue and his habit of hitting the
bull's-eye in his table conversation. His great friend, a smart young
_nouveau riche_, in the most exclusive cavalry regiment, who had much
more money than brains, was the butt of much goodnatured chaff from
F----. One evening F---- recounted to a group of brother officers how
S----, who was notorious for his absent-mindedness and poor memory, was
seen miles away from home, galloping down a dusty road. F---- hailed him
and said, "But where's your horse?" "That's true," said S---- looking
down in utter astonishment, "I must have forgotten to get on him."

S---- was famous for his sharpness in choosing and trading horseflesh,
and F---- used to call him on the 'phone, saying "Is this Herr S----?
_Guten tag!_ I am Graf Pumpernickel." Then he would elaborately arrange
a rendezvous in some very public spot in Metz, at which S---- was to
appear with the horse he wished to trade. Of course when poor S---- kept
the appointment, only a group of jeering young rascals greeted him, and
S---- never discovered who Graf Pumpernickel was, though the joke was
often repeated.

The money question of the poorer officers, often proves very serious.
They are forbidden to earn money in any way except by writing. They
cannot marry the girl they choose unless between them they have a
certain sum, a minimum; this keeps many fine young officers and charming
girls from matrimony; and frequently results on the man's side in
far-reaching evils of entangling affairs, and illegitimate children. An
officer said to me once, he _thought_ he had no children, but a pretty
woman who kept a shop in the Kathedral Plate once sent him a baby's
pillow and he never was quite sure just what that meant. The Berlin
demi-mondaines are certainly fascinating creatures, dressed in the most
exquisite Paris clothes, and it is easy to underst