e dwellings of Carlsruhe--a handy article, an
entertaining distraction, a discreet but immoral spy, which places at
your mercy all the mysteries of the public street. This contrivance,
which enables you to see the world without being seen, certainly gives
you a tempting advantage over the untimely caller or the impertinent
creditor; but it encourages, in my opinion, a habit of vision better
adapted to a sultan's seraglio than to the discreet eyes of Western
folk.

[Illustration: THE TALE OF BRICKS.]

This reflection, by which I satisfied my perhaps exalted moral sense,
was no sooner made than I found myself peeping to right and to left in
my double mirror, not without a lively sense of curiosity. At first I
saw--what Flemming, indeed, was wont to see when he consulted the
Fountain of Oblivion--only streets and moss-grown walls and trembling
spires, like those of the great City of the Past, and children playing
in the gardens like reverberations from one's lost youth. Soon a nearer
image approached. From a troop of blond girls, who dragged after them
little chariots resembling baby-wagons, one damsel drew apart, allowing
the others to pass on. She neared my window. Who is the maiden with the
anachronic baby-cart? She is the milkmaid of the country. Here in
Germany Perrette does not poise her milk upon her head or weigh it in a
balance, in order to afford by its overthrow a fable to La Fontaine. She
can dream at her ease as she draws it behind her. My fair-haired
neighbor paused. A tall lad thereupon emerged from the neighboring
trees, and, replacing Perrette at her wagon, he fitted himself
dexterously into her maiden dream and into the shafts of her equipage.
As the avenue was deserted for the instant, his arm enlaced her figure,
with the obvious and commendable purpose of sustaining her in her walk,
and with his lips close to her smiling, rosy ones he contributed a
gentle note to the hymeneal chorus that was twittered from the trees.

[Illustration: THE FLY-BRUSH.]

Who could remain long shut up from such an out-of-doors? Directly I was
in the open air, scenting the fresh breath from the parks. I inspected
the streets, the factories, the people, the houses. A prolonged and
deliberate examination of Carlsruhe enables me to assert that it is the
most easy-going, slow-paced, loitering, temporizing, procrastinating
capital outside of Dreamland.

A young workingman was assisting some bricklayers in an extension
adjacen