you will be served with more than you can eat
of it. The variety offered by some of the restaurants in the big
cities, the excellence of the cooking, the civilisation of the
appointments, and the service, all show that the German must be the
most industrious creature in the world, and the thriftiest and one of
the cleverest. In London we have luxurious restaurants for people who
can spend a great deal of money, but in Berlin they have them for
people who cannot spend much. That is the difference between the two
cities. How Berlin does it is a mystery. In the restaurants I have
seen there is neither noise nor bustle nor garish colours nor rough
service nor any other of the miseries we find in our own cheap
eating-houses. In one of them the walls were done in some kind of
plain fumed wood with a frieze and ceiling of soft dull gold. In
another each room had a different scheme of colour.

"So according to your _Stimmung_ you will choose your room," said the
friends who took me. "To-night we are rather cheerful. We will go to
the big room on the first floor. That is all pale green and ivory."

"You have nothing like this in England," said the artist as we went up
the lift. "It is terrible in England. When I asked for my lunch at
three or four o'clock I was told that lunch was over. _Das hat keinen
Zweck_,--I want my lunch when I am hungry."

"But you are terribly behindhand in some ways in Berlin," I said, for
I knew the artist liked an argument. "In London you can shop all
through the night by telephone. It is most convenient."

"Have you ever done it?"

"I'm not on the telephone, and I am generally asleep at night. But
other people...."

"_Verrueckt_," said the artist. "Who in his senses wants to do shopping
at night? Now look at this room, and admit that you have nothing at
all like it."

The first swift impression of the place was that Liberty had brought
his stuffs, his furniture, and his glass from London and set up as a
restaurateur in Berlin. The whole thing was certainly well done. It
was not as florid and fussy as our expensive restaurants. The colours
were quiet, and the necessary draperies plain. The glass was thin and
elegant; so were the coffee cups; and the table linen was white and
fine. Nothing about it, however, would be worth describing if it had
been expensive. But the menu, which covered four closely printed
pages, showed that the most expensive dish offered there cost one and
threepence, whil