l kinds of sandwiches, and the various
_Torten_ Germans make so very much better than other people. In this
room no money is wasted on waiters or waitresses, and no one expects
to be tipped. You fetch what you want from a long bar running along
two sides of the room, and divided into short stretches, each selling
its own stuff; you pay at the counter, and you carry your ice or your
cake to any little marble-topped table you choose. The advantage of
the plan is that you do not have to wait till you catch the eye of a
waitress determined not to look your way: the disadvantage is that you
have to perform the difficult feat of carrying a full cup or a full
glass through a crowd. Whatever you buy at the counter is sure to be
good, but if all you could get was a Mugby Junction bun you would have
to eat it after the exhausting process of buying a yard of ribbon or a
few picture postcards at Wertheim's.

To begin with, there are no chairs. You cannot sit down. On a hot
summer morning, when you have perhaps been to the market already, you
go to the Leipziger Strasse for theatre tickets, a pair of gloves, and
two or three small odds and ends. On the ground floor you see gloves,
innumerable boxes of them besieged by a pushing, determined crowd of
women. The shop ladies in any coloured blouses look hot and weary, but
try to serve six customers at once. When you have chosen what you
want, and know exactly how sharp the elbows to left and right of you
are, you see your lady walk off with your most pushful neighbour and
the pair of three-penny gloves she has after much argument agreed to
buy; for at Wertheim's you cannot depart with so much as a halfpenny
postcard till it has passed through three pairs of hands besides your
own. First the shop lady must deposit it with a bill at the cashier's
desk. Then, when the cashier can attend to you, you pay for it. Then
you may wait any time until the third person concerned will do it up
in paper and string. This last proceeding is often so interminably
delayed that if you were not in Germany you would snatch at what you
have paid for and make off. But the _Polizei_ alone knows what would
happen if you ran your head against the established pedantry of things
in the city of the Spree. You would probably find yourself in prison
for _Beamtenbeleidigung_ or _lese majeste_. "The Emperor is a fool,"
said some disloyal subject in a public place. "To prison with him,"
screamed every horror-struck offic