e weather, was not always so bad; one day it was dry cold
instead of wet cold, with rough, rusty clouds breaking a blue sky;
another day, up to eleven in the forenoon, it was like Indian summer;
then it changed to a harsh November air; and then it relented and ended
so mildly, that they hired chairs in the place before the imperial palace
for five pfennigs each, and sat watching the life before them. Motherly
women-folk were there knitting; two American girls in chairs near them
chatted together; some fine equipages, the only ones they saw in Berlin,
went by; a dog and a man (the wife who ought to have been in harness was
probably sick, and the poor fellow was forced to take her place) passed
dragging a cart; some schoolboys who had hung their satchels upon the low
railing were playing about the base of the statue of King William III. in
the joyous freedom of German childhood.

They seemed the gayer for the brief moments of sunshine, but to the
Americans, who were Southern by virtue of their sky, the brightness had a
sense of lurking winter in it, such as they remembered feeling on a sunny
day in Quebec. The blue heaven looked sad; but they agreed that it fitly
roofed the bit of old feudal Berlin which forms the most ancient wing of
the Schloss. This was time-blackened and rude, but at least it did not
try to be French, and it overhung the Spree which winds through the city
and gives it the greatest charm it has. In fact Berlin, which is
otherwise so grandiose without grandeur and so severe without
impressiveness, is sympathetic wherever the Spree opens it to the sky.
The stream is spanned by many bridges, and bridges cannot well be
unpicturesque, especially if they have statues to help them out. The
Spree abounds in bridges, and it has a charming habit of slow hay-laden
barges; at the landings of the little passenger-steamers which ply upon
it there are cafes and summer-gardens, and these even in the inclement
air of September suggested a friendly gayety.

The Marches saw it best in the tour of the elevated road in Berlin which
they made in an impassioned memory of the elevated road in New York. The
brick viaducts which carry this arch the Spree again and again in their
course through and around the city, but with never quite such spectacular
effects as our spidery tressels, achieve. The stations are pleasant,
sometimes with lunch-counters and news-stands, but have not the
comic-opera-chalet prettiness of ours, and are