and hotels which had neither the grace of Paris nor the
grandiosity of New York. March quoted in bitter derision:

"Bees, bees, was it your hydromel,
Under the Lindens?"

and his wife said that if Commonwealth Avenue in Boston could be
imagined with its trees and without their beauty, flanked by the
architecture of Sixth Avenue, with dashes of the west side of Union
Square, that would be the famous Unter den Linden, where she had so
resolutely decided that they would stay while in Berlin.

They had agreed upon the hotel, and neither could blame the other
because it proved second-rate in everything but its charges. They ate a
poorish table d'hote dinner in such low spirits that March had no heart
to get a rise from his wife by calling her notice to the mouse which
fed upon the crumbs about their feet while they dined. Their
English-speaking waiter said that it was a very warm evening, and they
never knew whether this was because he was a humorist, or because he was
lonely and wished to talk, or because it really was a warm evening,
for Berlin. When they had finished, they went out and drove about the
greater part of the evening looking for another hotel, whose first
requisite should be that it was not on Unter den Linden. What mainly
determined Mrs. March in favor of the large, handsome, impersonal place
they fixed upon was the fact that it was equipped for steam-heating;
what determined March was the fact that it had a passenger-office where
when he wished to leave, he could buy his railroad tickets and have
his baggage checked without the maddening anxiety, of doing it at the
station. But it was precisely in these points that the hotel which
admirably fulfilled its other functions fell short. The weather made a
succession of efforts throughout their stay to clear up cold; it merely
grew colder without clearing up, but this seemed to offer no suggestion
of steam for heating their bleak apartment and the chilly corridors to
the management. With the help of a large lamp which they kept burning
night and day they got the temperature of their rooms up to sixty; there
was neither stove nor fireplace, the cold electric bulbs diffused a
frosty glare; and in the vast, stately dining-room with its vaulted
roof, there was nothing to warm them but their plates, and the handles
of their knives and forks, which, by a mysterious inspiration, were
always hot. When they were ready to go, March experienced from the
apathy o