ompatriotic accent caught their ear in a
voice saying to the waiter, "We are in a hurry." They looked round and
saw that it proceeded from the pretty nose of a young American girl, who
sat with a party of young American girls at a neighboring table. Then
they perceived that all the people in that restaurant were Americans,
mostly young girls, who all looked as if they were in a hurry. But
neither their beauty nor their impatience had the least effect with the
waiter, who prolonged the dinner at his pleasure, and alarmed the Marches
with the misgiving that they should not have time for the final palace on
their list.

This was the palace where the father of Frederick, the mad old Frederick
William, brought up his children with that severity which Solomon urged
but probably did not practise. It is a vast place, but they had time for
it all, though the custodian made the most of them as the latest comers
of the day, and led them through it with a prolixity as great as their
waiter's. He was a most friendly custodian, and when he found that they
had some little notion of what they wanted to see, he mixed zeal with his
patronage, and in a manner made them his honored guests. They saw
everything but the doorway where the faithful royal father used to lie in
wait for his children and beat them, princes and princesses alike, with
his knobby cane as they came through. They might have seen this doorway
without knowing it; but from the window overlooking the parade-ground
where his family watched the manoeuvres of his gigantic grenadiers, they
made sure of just such puddles as Frederick William forced his family to
sit with their feet in, while they dined alfresco on pork and cabbage;
and they visited the room of the Smoking Parliament where he ruled his
convives with a rod of iron, and made them the victims of his bad jokes.
The measuring-board against which he took the stature of his tall
grenadiers is there, and one room is devoted to those masterpieces which
he used to paint in the agonies of gout. His chef d'oeuvre contains a
figure with two left feet, and there seemed no reason why it might not.
have had three. In another room is a small statue of Carlyle, who did so
much to rehabilitate the house which the daughter of it, Wilhelmina, did
so much to demolish in the regard of men.

The palace is now mostly kept for guests, and there is a chamber where
Napoleon slept, which is not likely to be occupied soon by any other
self-