al rooms where
models of the most approved kinds of telegraphic apparatus are shown.
In a corridor are all varieties of submarine cables, with the ore and
the Bessemer steel of which they are spun. In one of the rooms a small
crowd is collected about an operator who speaks through a telephone,
records the sound of his own voice on strips of foil, which he tears
into fragments and distributes to those who eagerly reach for them. In
the centre of this room there is a tiny circular railway, with a
coach, but no locomotive, standing on the track. By turning the wheel
of an electro-magnet the official produces an electric light at the
extremity of a model burner; then, applying the same power to the
little railway, propels the coach at a rapid rate by means of the
invisible agent. One goes forth into the street, past wax figures of
armed and mounted mail-messengers in the Middle Ages, past the model
street mail-boxes and carriages which help to make so wonderful the
Berlin postal arrangements, in a maze at what may here be seen in a
single half-hour of the history of mail-carrying in all lands and
ages. The originator of this "Post Museum" is Dr. Stephan, the
inventor of the postal card and the chief promoter of the
International Postal Union. His is the "power behind the throne" which
has made the German postal system a marvel of efficiency, unsurpassed,
if not unrivalled, in the world.

Less known to travellers than many others far inferior in interest, is
the Hohenzollern Museum, occupying the Monbijou Palace in the heart of
Berlin. This palace, of so much interest to the readers of Carlyle's
"Frederick the Great," has been transformed into a repository for the
personal belongings and memorials of the kings and queens of Prussia.
One or more rooms devoted to each sovereign in historical succession
make up a fascinating picture of the royal customs of the kingdom for
two hundred years. Our attention was called to this museum by an
English resident, but its interest far exceeded our expectations. Here
are the laces, jewels, and often the entire wardrobes of the
Hohenzollern queens, with their writing desks and tablets,
jewel-cases, embroidery, work-baskets, mirrors, beds, and other
furniture; and the kings have each their own apartment likewise,
tenanted by their "counterfeit presentments" in wax, sitting or
standing in the very clothes they wore, and surrounded by visible
mementos of the life they used to live. The glitte