ir dowdiness. This is the more remarkable for the
reason that the citizens of Berlin, wherever you see them, not only in
the West-end, but in the tenement districts, in the public markets,
going to or coming from the suburban trains, in the trains and
underground railway, in the cheaper restaurants and pleasure resorts,
taking their Sunday outing, or in the fourth-class carriages of the
railway trains, or their children in the schools, show a high level of
comfort in their clothing. There is poverty and wretchedness in
Berlin, of which later, but in no great city even in America, does the
mass of the people give such an air of being comfortably clothed and
fed.

We have been deluged of late years with figures in regard to the cost
of living in this country and in that, and never are statistics such
"damned lies" as in this connection. There is better and cheaper food
in Berlin, and in the other cities of Germany, than anywhere else in
our white man's world. Having for the moment no free-trade, or
protectionist, or tariff-reform axe to grind, and having tested the
pudding not by my prejudices but my palate, and having eaten a
fifteen-pfennig luncheon in the street, and climbed step by step the
gastronomical stairway in Germany all the way up to a supper at the
court, where eight hundred odd people were served with a care and
celerity, and with hot viands and irreproachable potables, that made
one think of the "Arabian Nights," I offer my experience and my
opinion with some confidence. You can get enough to stave off hunger
for a few pfennigs, you can get a meal for something under twenty-five
cents, and the whole twenty-five cents will include a glass of the
best beer in the world outside of Munich. If you care to spend fifty
cents there are countless restaurants where you can have a square meal
and a glass of beer for that price; and for a dollar I will give you
as good a luncheon with wine as any man with undamaged taste and
unspoiled digestion ought to have.

There is one restaurant in Berlin which feeds as many as five thousand
people on a Sunday, where you can dine or sup, and listen to good
music, and enjoy your beer and tobacco for an hour afterward, and all
for something under fifty cents if you are careful in your ordering.
During my walks in the country around Berlin, I have often had an
omelette followed by meat and vegetables, and cheese, and compote, and
Rhine wine, with all the bread I wanted, and paid a