del of the Luebeck Schiffergesellschaft, and others after
other famous German rooms, is one of the sights of Berlin. It retains an
army of cooks and its wine-list is a wonderful one.

If you wish to see the rowdy student life of Berlin, the Bohemian
festivity which corresponds to the life of Paris in the _cabarets_ of
Montmartre, and if you speak German, go to the Bauernschaenke, which has
obtained a celebrity for the violence and rudeness of its proprietor,
who, as Lisbonne and Bruant used to, and Alexander does in the
_cabarets_ of the City of Light, insults his customers to the uttermost
and turns out any one who objects. Die Raeuberhohle is an inferior
imitation of Die Bauernschaenke.

A noted night restaurant is Der Zum Weissen Roessl, in which each room is
decorated to represent some typical street in Berlin. This is a hostel
much frequented by artists.

CHAPTER VIII

SWITZERLAND

Lucerne--Basle--Bern--Geneva--Davos Platz.

Switzerland is a country of hotels and not of restaurants. In most of
the big towns the hotels have restaurants attached to them, and in some
of these a dinner ordered _a la carte_ is just as well cooked as in a
good French restaurant, and served as well; in other restaurants
attached to good hotels the _table-d'hote_ dinner is served at separate
tables at any time between certain hours, and this is the custom of most
of the restaurants in most of the better class of hotels. There is in
every little mountain-hotel a restaurant; but this is generally used
only by invalids, or very proud persons, or mountaineers coming back
late from a climb. There is no country in which the gourmet has to adapt
himself so much to circumstances and in which he does it, thanks to
exercise and mountain air, with such a Chesterfieldian grace. I have
seen the man who, at the restaurants of the Schweitzerhof or National at
Lucerne, ate a perfectly cooked little meal which he had ordered _a la
carte_ on the day of his arrival in Switzerland, and who was hoping to
find something to grumble at, sitting in peace two days later eating the
_table-d'hote_ meal at a little table in the restaurant of one of the
hotels at Lauzanne or Vevey, Montreux or Territet, after a walk along
the lake side or up the mountain to Caux, and four days after one at a
long table at Zermatt or the Riffel Alp, talking quite happily to
perfect strangers on either side of him and eating the menu through from
end to end, more cons