y light
beaming in his eye:

"Why, my dear sir, a person would know you are new to Berlin just by
your innocent questions. Our aristocracy, our old, real, genuine
aristocracy, are full of the quaintest eccentricities,
eccentricities inherited for centuries, eccentricities which they
are prouder of than they are of their titles, and that sign-board
there is one of them. They all hang them out. And it's regulated
by an unwritten law. A baron is entitled to hang out two, a count
five, a duke fifteen----"

"Then they are all dukes over on that side, I sup----"

"Every one of them. Now the old Duke of Backofenhofenschwartz not
the present Duke, but the last but one, he----"

"Does he live over the sausage-shop in the cellar?"

"No, the one farther along, where the eighteenth yellow cat is
chewing the door-mat----"

"But all the yellow cats are chewing the door-mats."

"Yes, but I mean the eighteenth one. Count. No, never mind;
there's a lot more come. I'll get you another mark. Let me see---"

They could not remain permanently in Komerstrasse, but they stuck it
out till the end of December--about two months. Then they made such
settlement with the agent as they could--that is to say, they paid the
rest of their year's rent--and established themselves in a handsome
apartment at the Hotel Royal, Unter den Linden. There was no need to be
ashamed of this address, for it was one of the best in Berlin.

As for Komerstrasse, it is cleaner now. It is still not aristocratic,
but it is eminently respectable. There is a new post-office that takes
in Number 7, where one may post mail and send telegrams and use the
Fernsprecher--which is to say the telephone--and be politely treated
by uniformed officials, who have all heard of Mark Twain, but have no
knowledge of his former occupation of their premises.

CLXXVIII. A WINTER IN BERLIN

Clemens, meantime, had been trying to establish himself in his work, but
his rheumatism racked him occasionally and was always a menace. Closing
a letter to Hall, he said:

"I must stop-my arm is howling."

He put in a good deal of time devising publishing schemes, principal
among them being a plan for various cheap editions of his books,
pamphlets, and such like, to sell for a few cents. These projects appear
never to have been really undertaken, Hall very likely fearing that a
flood of cheap issues would inte