over
little alcohol flames, and there were delicious Berlin rolls and the
best of unsalted butter. Dinner was at two, and was good in its plain
way. We had some North German dishes which one had to learn to enjoy,
like olives. Hot chocolate soup I grew quite fond of, but beer soup,
sorrel soup, and cabbage soup with cherries in it were never exactly
intimates of mine. One dish of baked ham with dumplings and hot plum jam
sounds strange, but improves on acquaintance; _Pumpernickel_, and
_Schmierkaese_ are better than their names, and _Kartoffelpuffen mit
Preisselbeeren_ (potato cakes with cranberries) are delicious. We had
good plain puddings and black coffee for dessert every day, and quite
wonderful roast Pomeranian goose and _Eistorte_ with whipped cream on
Sundays. Supper was at eight, and the menu was certainly a model for the
simple life. Bread and butter with slices of sausage and cold ham,
sometimes big dishes of roast chestnuts instead of cold meat, or
potatoes in their jackets, or some of the endless variety of
North-German cheeses--to drink, tea or beer, and that was all.

My fellow pensionnaires were nearly all teachers, or students preparing
to be teachers. They all spoke German and nothing but German, and, at
first, I used to think my mind would drown in the overwhelming floods of
it that assailed my ears. Gradually it came to sound like individual
words and phrases, and soon I dared occasionally to launch a small
conversational barque upon it, avoiding the disastrous rocks of gender
as skilfully as possible, though often at first, by the time that my
genders and cases were all arranged for a sentence, the subject had
changed, and I could not use it. We had a Fraeulein Lanz, Fraeulein Franz,
and Fraeulein Kranz, four or five other Fraeuleins and no males at all.

Another American student of singing came to live there, and in the
evening we used to go to the opera or to concerts together. Everything
begins early in Berlin, and those who had tickets for some entertainment
missed the eight o'clock supper. So plates of _belegte Broedchen_ (rolls
with cold meat) would be set out for them on the dining-table, and all
the others would be sitting there with their needle-work, and would
demand "_Nun, wie war es?_" when we came in. On Saturdays the evening
paper announced the program at the opera for the week, and we could
hardly wait to look at it. The cheaper seats are in great demand.
Students wait for hours, so