metimes from earliest dawn, outside the box
office on Sunday mornings when the sale for the week begins. We had an
arrangement with the keeper of a little fruit and vegetable shop, to
save ourselves the wait. We would decide what we wished to see and go
over to his shop on Saturday evening to order the seats from him. He
then went down early enough to secure the front row in the top gallery
for us at two marks fifty, and we paid him twelve cents for his trouble.
Sixty-two cents is quite a high price in comparison to those of the rest
of the Opera House, for the orchestra chairs cost only eight marks. The
top gallery is vast, and the back rows are much cheaper, but the
authorities show their sense in keeping up the price of the front rows
and I don't think there is ever an empty seat there. To concerts we were
often admitted free, on saying that we were students, unless the artist
was a great favourite, and in that case we could buy standing room, or
seats in the gallery for one mark. We always went and came home in the
street cars, paying the two cent fare with a one cent tip to the
conductor, and dressing in our ordinary street clothes, with scarves
over our hair. I used to go alone sometimes, and was never spoken to or
molested in any way. No one looked at you twice, unless you looked at
him three times.

On Sundays I would take a day off, and, in true German fashion, make an
expedition; in bad weather to some museum or picture gallery, in Autumn
or Spring to some out-of-door restaurant. Sometimes I was too tired to
go further than the _Tiergarten_. Then I would stroll gently across it
and have coffee and cakes at the _Zelt_, or big open-air refreshment
gardens where the band plays. They are the resort of _hoi polloi_ of
Berlin in countless family groups: the father rather fat with hirsute
adornments, the mother also rather massive, and their plump children,
all drinking beer out of tall glasses and mugs, or coffee in inch-thick
white cups, and eating wedges of highly decorated _Torte_, with or
without the addition of heaped-up whipped cream.

If I felt more strenuous, I would take a car out to the Grunewald, a
villa-colony suburb, with roads winding through pine woods. I would sit
under the trees and invite my soul. As I sat there, some girl or boy's
school would come trooping by, singing a _Volkslied_ of interminable
verses, in four parts, having tramped all day for the pure joy of motion
in the open air. Then I wo