Hennery.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Bad Boy and His Dad at Berlin—They Call on Emperor
William and his Family and the Bad Boy Plays a Joke on Them
All.
Berlin, Germany.—My Dear Old Pummer-nickel: Now we have got pretty near home, and you would enjoy it to be with us, because you couldn't tell the town from Milwaukee, except for the military precision with which everything is conducted, where you never take a glass of beer without cracking your heels together like a soldier, and giving a military salute to the bartender, who is the commander-in-chief of all who happen to patronize his bar. Everybody here acts like he was at a picnic in the woods, with a large barrel of beer, with perspiration oozing down the outside, and a spigot of the largest size, which fills a schooner at one turn of the wrist, and every man either smiles or laughs out loud, and you feel as though there was happiness everywhere, and that heaven was right here in this greatest German city.
There is laughter everywhere, except when the Emperor drives by, escorted by his bodyguard, on the finest horses in the world; then every citizen on the street stops smiling and laughing; all stand at attention, and every face takes on a solemn, patriotic, almost a fighting look, as though each man would consider it his happiest duty and pleasure to walk right up to the mouth of cannon and die in his tracks for his pale-faced, haggard and loved Emperor. And the Emperor never smiles on his subjects as he passes, but looks into every eye on both sides of the beautiful street, with an expression of agony on his face, but a proud light in his eye, as though he would say, “Ach, Gott, but they are daisies, and they would fight for the Fatherland with the last breath in their bodies.”