. At
still another, another family man with his. At another, the Salome from
the Koenigliches Opernhaus--at another a noted _advokat_--at another, two
little girls (they can't he more than sixteen years old) enjoying their
meal and their bottle of Rhenish wine undisturbed, unogled, unafraid.

But why need to pursue the catalogue? This, too, is Berlin. Not the
Berlin of Herr Adlon's inn, gilded with the leaf of Broadway and the
Strand to flabbergast and ensnare the American snooper--not the Berlin
of the Bristol, with its imitation cocktails--not the Berlin of the
Esplanade, gaudy dump of the Bellevuestrasse, with its sugar tongs,
finger bowls and kindred criteria of degeneracy--not this Berlin; but
the real Berlin of the German people, warm-hearted, mindful only of its
own affairs, all-understanding, all-sympathetic, all-human--its larynx
eternally beseeching liquid succour, its stomach eternally demanding
chow. And, too--and note this well--not the Berlin of the rouged menu
and silk-stockinged _kellner_, not the trumped-up Berlin of the
vaselined vassal, of the bowing _oberkellner_, not the Berlin of the
affected canteloupe (3,50 m.) and the affected biscuit tortoni (2,40
m.)--but the Berlin of _beinfleisch im kessel mit Meerrettich_ (90 pf.),
the Berlin of _kraeftbruhe mit nudeln_ (40 pf.)--the Berlin of Mamsch and
Traube.

And now I am again in the streets of the city, rattling with the racing
flotilla of things awheel. (Or is the rattle that I hear only the rattle
of the "L" trains a block away, and am I really back in New York?) But
no; for still I see in the brilliant Berlin moonlight the bronze
Quadriga of Victory atop the distant Gate of Brandenburg and still I
hear a group of students singing in the Cafe Mozart, and still--but what
is moonlight beside the fairy light in your eyes, fair Hulda? What is
song beside the soft melody of your smile? Normandy is in the night air
... "_man lacht, man lebt, man liebt und man kuesst wo's Kuesse giebt_"
... and we and all the world are young. Ah, Hulda, mine own, mine all,
and who is that pretty girl tripping adown the street, that one there
with the corals at her throat and the devil at the curtain of her glance
... and _that_ girl who has just passed, that little minx with eyes like
sleeping sapphires and a smile as melodious as mandolins by the summer
sea? As melodious as your own, fair Hulda.

* * * * *

The play is over and I have al