an got hold of Aladdin's lamp, and he summoned
the Djinn attendant on the lamp. "Build me a city of broad airy
streets," he bade him, "and where several streets meet see that there
is an open place set with trees and statues and fountains." All the
houses, even those that the poor inhabit, are to be big and white and
shining, like palaces; but the real palaces where princes shall live
may be plain and grey. There are to be pleasure grounds in the midst
of the city, but they are to be woods rather than parks, because even
you and the lamp cannot make grass grow in this soil and climate. In
the pleasure grounds, and especially on either side of one broad
avenue, there are to be sculptured figures of kings and heroes, larger
than life and as white as snow. The Djinn said it would be easy to
build the city in a night as the German desired, but that the
sculpture could not be hurried in this way, because artists would have
to make it, and artists were people who would not work to order or to
time. The German, however, said he was master of the lamp, and that
the city must be ready when he wanted it early next morning. So the
Djinn set to work and got the city ready in a night, sculpture and
all. But when he had finished he had not used half the figures and
garlands and other stone ornaments he had made. If he had been in
England he might have reduced them in size, and given them to an
Italian hawker to carry about on his head on a tray. But he knew that
hawkers would not be allowed in the city he had built. So, as he was
rather tired and anxious to be done, he quickly made one more long,
broad street stretching all the way from the pleasure ground in the
centre of the city to the forest that begins where the city ends; and
on every house in the street he put figures and garlands and gilded
balconies and ornamental turrets, as many as he could. The effect when
he had finished pleased him vastly, and he said it was the finest
street in the city, and should be called the _Kurfuerstendamm_. His
master and all the Germans who came to live in it agreed with him.
They gave large rents for a flat in one of the houses, and when they
went to London and saw the smoky dwarfish houses there they came away
as quickly as possible and rubbed their hands and were happy, and said
to each other, "How beautiful is our _Kurfuerstendamm_. We have as many
turrets as we have chimneys, and we have garlands on our balconies of
green or gilded iron, an