of the
population lived in such incorporated places.

As late as the thirteenth century the Christian chivalry of the time
was spending itself in the task of converting the heathen of what is
now Prussia; and it was well on into the nineteenth century before
serfdom was entirely abolished in this region. It is the newness and
rawness of the population, in the streets of the great German and
Prussian capital which surprise and puzzle the American, almost more
than the cleanliness and orderliness of the streets themselves. It is
as though a powerful monarch had built a fine palace and then, for
lack of company, had invited the people from the fields and farm-yards
to be his companions therein.

"Jamais un lourdaud, quoi qu'il fasse
Ne saurait passer pour galaud."

One should read Hazlitt's "Essay on the Cockney" to find phrases for
these Berliners. It is a gazing, gaping crowd that straggles along
over the broad sidewalks. Half a dozen to a dozen will stop and stare
at people entering or leaving vehicles, at a shop, or hotel door. I
have seen a knot of men stop and stare at the ladies entering a motor-car,
and on one occasion one of them wiped off the glass with his hand
that he might see the better. It is not impertinence, it is merely
bucolic naivete. The city in the evening is like a country fair, with
its awkward gallantries, its brute curiosity, its unabashed
expressions of affection by hands and lips, its ogling, coughing, and
other peasant forms of flirtation. It should be remembered that this
people as a race show somewhat less of reticence in matters amatory
than we are accustomed to. In the foyer of the theatre you may see a
young officer walking round and round, his arm under that of his
fiancee or bride, and her hand fondly clasped in his. It is a
commentary, not a criticism, on international manners that the German
royal princess, a particularly sweet and simple maiden, just engaged
to marry the heir of the house of Cumberland, is photographed walking
in the streets of Berlin, her hand clasped in that of her betrothed,
and both he, and her brother who accompanies them, smoking! Gentlemen
do not smoke when walking or driving with ladies, with us, though I am
not claiming that it is a moral disaster to do so. It is a difference
in the gradations of respect worth noting, but nothing more. I have
even seen kissing, as a couple walked up the stairs from one part of
the theatre to another. In the spring and su