The road
is not so smooth, the cars not so smooth-running or so swift. On the
other hand they are comfortably cushioned, and they are never
overcrowded. The line is at times above, at times below the houses, and
at times on a level with them, alike in city and in suburbs. The train
whirled out of thickly built districts, past the backs of the old houses,
into outskirts thinly populated, with new houses springing up without
order or continuity among the meadows and vegetable-gardens, and along
the ready-made, elm-planted avenues, where wooden fences divided the
vacant lots. Everywhere the city was growing out over the country, in
blocks and detached edifices of limestone, sandstone, red and yellow
brick, larger or smaller, of no more uniformity than our suburban
dwellings, but never of their ugliness or lawless offensiveness.
In an effort for the intimate life of the country March went two
successive mornings for his breakfast to the Cafe Bauer, which has some
admirable wall-printings, and is the chief cafe on Unter den Linden; but
on both days there were more people in the paintings than out of them.
The second morning the waiter who took his order recognized him and
asked, "Wie gestern?" and from this he argued an affectionate constancy
in the Berliners, and a hospitable observance of the tastes of strangers.
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