r day. The last
crack of a triphammer, peckering at a giant pile of iron down the
block, dies out on the dead air. A taxicab, rrrrr-ing in the street
below, grunts its horn. A newsboy, in neuralgic yowl, bawls out a
sporting extra. Another "L" train and the panes rattle again. A
momentary quiet ... and from somewhere in a nearby street I hear a
grind-organ. What is the tune it is playing? I've heard it, I
know--somewhere; but--no, I can't remember. I try--I try to follow the
air--but no use. And then, presently, one of the notes whispers into
my puckering lips a single word--"_Mariechen_." Then other notes
whisper others--"_du suesses Viehchen_"; and then others still
others--"_du bist mein alles, bist mein Traum_." And the battered bags
and the down-at-the-heel walking sticks and the still-damp steamer
rugs and the trunks creaking down the hallway and the rattle of the
"L" trains fade out of my eyes and ears and again dear little Hulda is
with me under the Linden trees--poor dear little Hulda who ever in the
years to come shall bring back to me the starlit romance of youth--and
again I feel her so soft hand in mine and again I hear her whisper the
_auf wiederseh'n_ that was to be our last good-bye--and I am three
thousand miles over the seas. For it's night for me again in
Berlin--_kronprinzessin_ of the cities of the world.

I am again on the hitherward shore of the Hundekehlensee, flashing back
its diamond smiles at the setting sun. I am sitting again near the
water's edge in the moist shade of the Grunewald, and the trees sing for
me the poetry that they once sang to the palette of Leistikow. My nose
cools itself in the recesses of a translucent _schoppen_ of
Johannisberger, proud beverage in whose every topaz drop lies imprisoned
the kiss of a peasant girl of Prussia. From the southward side of the
Grunewaldsee the horn of a distant hunting lodge seems to call a welcome
to the timid stars; and then I seem to hear another--or is it just an
echo?--from somewhere out the spur of the Havelberge beyond. Or is just
the Johannesberger, soul of the most imaginative grape in Christendom?
Or--woe is me--am I really back again across the seas in New York, and
is what I hear only the horn of the taxicab, rrrrr-ing in the street
below?

But I open my too-dreaming eyes--and yes; I am in the Grunewald. And
the summer sun is saffron in the waters of the lake. And about me, at a
thousand tables under the Grunewald trees, are a th