for visits to museums and other places of interest, so that
the chief sightseeing of the day must be put into the hours between
nine and two o'clock, often far from residence or restaurants; so the
work of the day must be done on insufficient food, and the prevailing
physical sensation was that of being an animated empty cask. We thus
reached a settled conviction that however well the continental
breakfast may serve the needs of Germans, with their slow ways of
working, and their heavy suppers of sausage, black bread, and beer,
late at night, an American home for Americans temporarily in Berlin is
a consummation much to be wished.

It is almost with a feeling of despair that many a woman first unpacks
her trunk in the Berlin apartment which, according to general custom,
is to serve her for sleeping-room, breakfast-room, study, and
reception-room. In a lengthened sojourn, in hotels, _pensions_, and
private residences, I never saw a closet opening from such an
apartment. Indeed, there were, in the houses I visited, no closets of
any kind; unless an unlighted, unventilated cubic space in the middle
of the house or near the kitchen--the upper half often devoted to
sleeping room for domestics, and the lower to a general rendezvous of
odds and ends--might be dignified with that name. A statement which I
once ventured in conversation, as to the closets opening from nearly
every room of an American house, was received with a look of
incredulity and wonder. Neither did I see a real bureau in Berlin. A
poor substitute was a portable piece of furniture, often quite
ornamental, which opened by doors, exposing all the shelves whenever
an article on any one of them was wanted. Here must be kept bonnets,
hats, gloves, ribbons, laces, underwear, and all the thousand
accumulations of the toilet; while a cramped "wardrobe" was the
receptacle of shoes, cloaks, and dresses, hung perhaps three or four
or five deep on the half-dozen wooden pegs within. Bathrooms were the
rare exceptions. As a rule, bathing must be done with a sponge and
cold water, in one's private apartment, where are no faucets, drains,
or set bowls, but the ordinary wash-bowl, pitcher, and jar. Evidently
German civilization does not rate the bath very high among the
comforts of life.

An essential part of the furniture in the kind of apartment I am
describing, is a screen to stand before each bed and wash-stand. The
beds are invariably single, two or more being placed