Once inside we surveyed a brilliant spectacle—far more ornate than the Café l’Abbaye or the Café Maxim, though by no means so enticing. Paris is Paris and Berlin is Berlin and the Germans cannot do as do the French. They haven’t the air—the temperament. Everywhere in Germany you feel that—that strange solidity of soul which cannot be gay as the French are gay. Nevertheless the scene inside was brilliant. Brilliant was the word. I would not have believed, until I saw it, that the German temperament or the German sense of thrift would have permitted it and yet after seeing the marvelous German officer, why not?
The main chamber—very large—consisted of a small, central, highly polished dancing floor, canopied far above by a circular dome of colored glass, glittering white or peach-pink by turns, and surrounded on all sides by an elevated platform or floor, two or three feet above it, crowded with tables ranged in circles on ascending steps, so that all might see. Beyond the tables again was a wide, level, semi-circular promenade, flanked by ornate walls and divans and set with palms, marbles and intricate gilt curio cases. The general effect was one of intense light, pale, diaphanous silks of creams and lemon hues, white-and-gold walls, white tables,—a perfect glitter of glass mirrors, and picturesque paneling. Beyond the dancing-floor was a giant, gold-tinted, rococo organ, and within a recess in this, under the tinted pipes, a stringed orchestra. The place was crowded with women of the half-world, for the most part Germans—unusually slender, in the majority of cases delicately featured, as the best of these women are, and beautifully dressed. I say beautifully. Qualify it any way you want to. Put it dazzlingly, ravishingly, showily, outrageously—any way you choose. No respectable woman might come so garbed. Many of these women were unbelievably attractive, carried themselves with a grand air, pea-fowl wise, and lent an atmosphere of color and life of a very showy kind. The place was also crowded, I need not add, with young men in evening clothes. Only champagne was served to drink—champagne at twenty marks the bottle. Champagne at twenty marks the bottle in Berlin is high. You can get a fine suit of clothes for seventy or eighty marks.
The principal diversions here were dining, dancing, drinking. As at Monte Carlo and in Paris, you saw here that peculiarly suggestive dancing of the habitués and the more skilled performances of those especially hired for the occasion. The Spanish and Russian dancers, as in Paris, the Turkish and Tyrolese specimens, gathered from Heaven knows where, were here. There were a number of handsome young officers present who occasionally danced with the women they were escorting. When the dancing began the lights in the dome turned pink. When it ceased, the lights in the dome were a glittering white. The place is, I fancy, a rather quick development for Berlin. We drank champagne, waved away charmers, and finally left, at two or three o’clock, when the law apparently compelled the closing of this great central chamber; though after that hour all the patrons who desired might adjourn to an inner sanctum, quite as large, not so showy, but full of brilliant, strolling, dining, drinking life where, I was informed, one could stay till eight in the morning if one chose. There was some drunkenness here, but not much, and an air of heavy gaiety. I left thinking to myself, “Once is enough for a place like this.”
I went one day to Potsdam and saw the Imperial Palace and grounds and the Royal Parade. The Emperor had just left for Venice. As a seat of royalty it did not interest me at all. It was a mere imitation of the grounds and palace at Versailles, but as a river valley it was excellent. Very dull, indeed, were the state apartments. I tried to be interested in the glass ballrooms, picture galleries, royal auditoriums and the like. But alas! The servitors, by the way, were just as anxious for tips as any American waiters. Potsdam did not impress me. From there I went to Grunewald and strolled in the wonderful forest for an enchanted three hours. That was worth while.
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The rivers of every city have their individuality and to me the Spree and its canals seem eminently suited to Berlin. The water effects—and they are always artistically important and charming—are plentiful.
The most pleasing portions of Berlin to me were those which related to the branches of the Spree—its canals and the lakes about it. Always there were wild ducks flying over the housetops, over offices and factories; ducks passing from one bit of water to another, their long necks protruding before them, their metallic colors gleaming in the sun.
You see quaint things in Berlin, such as you will not see elsewhere—the Spreewald nurses, for instance, in the Thiergarten with their short, scarlet, balloon skirt emphasized by a white apron, their triangular white linen head-dress, very conspicuous. It was actually suggested to me one day as something interesting to do, to go to the Zoological Gardens and see the animals fed! I chanced to come there when they were feeding the owls, giving each one a mouse,—live or dead, I could not quite make out. That was enough for me. I despise flesh-eating birds anyhow. They are quite the most horrible of all evoluted specimens. This particular collection—eagles, hawks, condors, owls of every known type and variety, and buzzards—all sat in their cages gorging themselves on raw meat or mice. The owls, to my disgust, fixed me with their relentless eyes, the while they tore at the entrails of their victims. As a realist, of course, I ought to accept all these delicate manifestations of the iron constitution of the universe as interesting, but I can’t. Now and then, very frequently, in fact, life becomes too much for my hardy stomach. I withdraw, chilled and stupefied by the way strength survives and weakness goes under. And to think that as yet we have no method of discovering why the horrible appears and no reason for saying that it should not. Yet one can actually become surfeited with beauty and art and take refuge in the inartistic and the unlovely!
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One of the Berliners’ most wearying characteristics is their contentious attitude. To the few, barring the women, to whom I was introduced, I could scarcely talk. As a matter of fact, I was not expected to. They would talk to me. Argument was, in its way, obviously an insult. Anything that I might have to say or suggest was of small importance; anything they had to say was of the utmost importance commercially, socially, educationally, spiritually,—any way you chose,—and they emphasized so many of their remarks with a deep voice, a hard, guttural force, a frown, or a rap on the table with their fists that I was constantly overawed.