erative verse about them. He would
hurry away, and at once report them to the police. Then their foaming
and their shrieking would be of short duration.

"Now then, now then, what's all this about?" the voice of German
authority would say severely to the waters. "We can't have this sort of
thing, you know. Come down quietly, can't you? Where do you think you
are?"

And the local German council would provide those waters with zinc pipes
and wooden troughs, and a corkscrew staircase, and show them how to come
down sensibly, in the German manner.

It is a tidy land is Germany.

We reached Dresden on the Wednesday evening, and stayed there over the
Sunday.

Taking one consideration with another, Dresden, perhaps, is the most
attractive town in Germany; but it is a place to be lived in for a while
rather than visited. Its museums and galleries, its palaces and gardens,
its beautiful and historically rich environment, provide pleasure for a
winter, but bewilder for a week. It has not the gaiety of Paris or
Vienna, which quickly palls; its charms are more solidly German, and more
lasting. It is the Mecca of the musician. For five shillings, in
Dresden, you can purchase a stall at the opera house, together,
unfortunately, with a strong disinclination ever again to take the
trouble of sitting out a performance in any English, French, or, American
opera house.

The chief scandal of Dresden still centres round August the Strong, "the
Man of Sin," as Carlyle always called him, who is popularly reputed to
have cursed Europe with over a thousand children. Castles where he
imprisoned this discarded mistress or that--one of them, who persisted in
her claim to a better title, for forty years, it is said, poor lady! The
narrow rooms where she ate her heart out and died are still shown.
Chateaux, shameful for this deed of infamy or that, lie scattered round
the neighbourhood like bones about a battlefield; and most of your
guide's stories are such as the "young person" educated in Germany had
best not hear. His life-sized portrait hangs in the fine Zwinger, which
he built as an arena for his wild beast fights when the people grew tired
of them in the market-place; a beetle-browed, frankly animal man, but
with the culture and taste that so often wait upon animalism. Modern
Dresden undoubtedly owes much to him.

But what the stranger in Dresden stares at most is, perhaps, its electric
trams. These huge vehicles flash