ternated a contemplation of the loves
and fears, the tremors and triumphs of some obese stage princess with a
lusty entr'-acte excursion into Culmbacher and the cheese sandwich,
served, as is the appealing custom, in the theatre promenade. And thus
fortified against the night, I pass again into the thoroughfares still
a-rattle with the musketry of wheels. I perceive that many amateur
American Al-Raschids are abroad in the land, pockets echoing the
tintinnabulation of manifold marks and eyes abulge at the prospect of
midnight diableries. See that fellow yonder! At home, probably a family
man, a wearer of mesh underwear, an assiduous devourer of the wisdom of
George Harvey, a patron of the dramas of Charles Rann Kennedy, a spanker
of children, an entertainer at his board of the visiting clergyman, a
pantophagous subscriber, a silk hat wearer--in brief, a leading citizen.
See him oleaginate his grin at the sight of a passing painted paver. (To
his mind, probably a barmaid out for an innocent lark.) See him make for
the Palais de Danse where (so he has read in the _Saturday Evening
Post_) one may purchase the Berliner spirit at so much per pound. We
track him, and presently we behold him seated at a table in this
splendiferous hall of Terpsichore and Thais "opening wine" and
purchasing _blumen_ for a battle-scarred veteran who is telling him
confidentially that she just got in that afternoon from her poor home in
a little Bavarian village and that she feels so alone in this big, great
city, with its lures and temptations, its snares and its pitfalls. Soon
the bubbles of the grape are percolating through his arteries and soon
the "Grosse Rosinen" waltzes have mellowed his conscience and soon....

* * *

"Berlin spirit, huh!" he is telling his wife a month later--"Berlin
spirit? All artificial. Just to make money out of the visitors. And
_very_ sordid!"

* * *

At the Moulin Rouge and at the Admirals-Casino, at the Alhambra and the
Tabarin, at the Amor-saele and the Rosen-saele, we track down others such,
"seeing the night life of Berlin." We see them, too, champagne before
them, coquetting with Fraeulein Ilona, who numbers Militaer-Regiment 42 as
her gentleman friend, and with innocent-looking little Hedwig, who in
her day has tramped the streets of Brussels and Paris, of London and
Vienna; we see them intriguing elaborately with these sisters of sorrow,
who, intriguing in turn again