while the sometimes ridiculous mimicry of French habits
forces itself upon your attention. There would be nothing so very
remarkable in this, if the opinion generally expressed of the French
people were consonant with it; but while the Berliner apes the Parisian
in language and manners, he never fails to express his derision, and even
contempt, for the whole French nation on every convenient opportunity. I
suspect, however, that these remarks might not inaptly apply to the
inhabitants of the British capital, as well as those of Berlin.

CHAPTER XII.

KREUTZBERG.--A PRUSSIAN SUPPER AND CAROUSE.

Herr Kupferkram the elder, I have done thee wrong. I have set thee down
as a mere vender of sausages, and lo! thou holdest tavern and
eating-house; dispensing prandial portions of savoury delicacies in flesh
and vegetable, at the charge of six silver groschens the meal. I beg a
thousand pardons; and as a sincere mark of contrition, will consent to
swallow thy dinners for a while.

"Will the Herrn Tourniquet and Tuci," said the Frau Kupferkram one
morning, with a duck and a smirk, "do us the honour of supping with us
this evening? There will be a few friends, for this is the 'nahmenstag'
of our dear Gottlob, now in England."

"Liebe Frau Kupferkram, we shall be delighted!"

I ought, perhaps, to observe, that in Prussia, although a Protestant
country, the Catholic custom of commemorating the "saint" rather than the
"birth-day," is almost universal. The former is called the "nahmenstag,"
or name-day.

But the day is yet "so young," that nothing short of the most inveterate
gluttony could bend the mind at present upon the evening's festivity; and
moreover, the Berlin races have called us from the workshop and the cares
of labour, and our very souls are in the stirrups, eagerly panting for
the sport. My dear reader, how can I describe what I never saw? Did we
not expend two silver groschens in a programme of the races, and gloat
over the spirited engraving of a "flying" something, which was its
appropriate heading, and which you would swear was executed somewhere in
the neighbourhood of Holywell Street, Strand? Did we not grow hotter
than even the hot sun could make us, in ploughing through the sand, and
commit some careless uncivilities in struggling among the crowd that
hemmed the course as with a wall? See? Of course not! Nobody at the
Berlin races ever does see anything but the mounted police and the dus