ousand people and
more, the people of the Kaiserland, their day's work over, clinking a
thousand _wohlseins_ in a great twilight peace and awaiting, in all
unconscious opulence, the sunrise of yet such another day. And a great
band, swung into the measures by a firm-bellied _kapellmeister_ as
gorgeous in his pounds of gold braid as a peafowl, sets sail into
"Parsifal" against a spray of salivary brass. And the air about me is
full of "_Kellner!_" and "_Zwei Seidel, bitte!_" and "_Wiener
Roastbraten und Stangenspargel mit geschlagener Butter!_" and "_Zwei
Seidel, bitte!_" and "_Junge Kohlrabi mit gebratenen Sardellenklopsen!_"
and "_Zwei Seidel, bitte!_" and "_Sahnenfilets mit Schwenkkartoffeln!_"
and "_Zwei Seidel, bitte!_" and a thousand _schmeckt's guts_ and a
thousand _prosits_ and "_Zwei Seidel, bitte!_" And no outrage upon the
ear is in all this guttural B minor, no rape of exotic tympani, but a
sense rather of superb languor and wholesome tranquillity, of harmonious
stomachic socialism, an orchestration of honest ovens and a diapason of
honest _braeus_ and _brunners_, with their balmy wealth of nostril
arpeggios and roulades.

And thus the evening breeze, come hither through the reeds and
cypress from over the purpling Havel hills beyond, takes on an added
perfume, an added bouquet, as it transports itself to the sniffer over
to the hurrying _krebs-suppen_ and thick brown-gravied platters and dewy
seidels. My nose, in its day, has engaged with many a seductive aroma.
It has met, at Cassis on the Mediterranean, the fumes breathed by
_becasse sur canapes_ and Chateau Lafitte '69--and it has ffd and ffd
again and again in an ecstasy of inhalation. It has encountered in
Moscow, the regal vapours of _nevop astowka Dernidoff_ sweeping across a
slender goblet of golden sherry--and it has been abashed at the delirium
of scent. On the Grand Boulevards, it has skirmished with punch _a la
Toscane_ flavoured with Maraschino and with bitter almonds--and has
inhaled as if in a dream. The juicy, dripping cuts of Simpson's in
London, the paradisian pudding _sueldoiro_ on the little screened
veranda in the shadow of the six-minareted Mosque of El-Azhar in Cairo,
the salmon dipped in Chambertin and the artichokes, sauce Barigoule, at
Schoenbrunn on the road to Vienna, the _escaloppes de foie gras a la
russe_ (favourite dish of the late Beau McAllister) at Delmonico's at
home--all these and more have wooed my nostril with their rare