Before I came to Berlin I heard so much about Unter den Linden, that magnificent street of the city, that I could scarcely wait to get to it. I pictured it lined on both sides with magnificent linden-trees, gigantic, imposing, impressive. I had had no intimate acquaintance with linden-trees--and I wouldn"t know one now if I should see it--but I had an idea from the name--linden, linden--that it was grand and waving; not so grand as an oak nor so waving as a willow, but a cross between the two. I knew that I should see these great monarchs making a giant arch over this broad avenue and mingling their tossing branches overhead.
What I found when I arrived was a broad, handsome street. But those lindens! They are consumptive, stunted little saplings without sufficient energy to grow into real trees. They are set so far apart that you have time to forget one before you come to another, and as to their appearance--we have some just like them in Chicago where there is a leak in the gas-pipes near their roots.
On the day before Christmas we felt very low in our minds. We had the doleful prospect ahead of us of eating Christmas dinner alone in a strange country, and in a hotel at that, so we started out shopping.
Not that we needed a thing, but it is our rule, "When you have the blues, go shopping." It always cures you to spend money.
Berlin shop-windows are much more fascinating even than those of Paris, because in Berlin there are so many more things that you can afford to buy that Paris seems expensive in comparison. We became so much interested in the Christmas display that we did not notice the flight of time. When we had bought several heavy things to weigh our trunks down a little more and to pay extra luggage on, I happened to glance at the sun, and it was just above the horizon. It looked to be about four o"clock in the afternoon, and we had had nothing to eat since nine o"clock, and even then only a cup of coffee. I felt myself suddenly grow faint and weak. "Heavens!" I said, "see what time it is!
We have shopped all day and we have forgotten to get our luncheon."
My companion glanced at her watch.
"It"s only half past eleven o"clock by my watch. I couldn"t have wound it last night. No, it is going."
"Perhaps the hands stick. They do on mine. Whenever I wind it, I have to hit it with the hair-brush to start it; and even then it loses time every day."
"Let"s take them both to a jeweller," she said. "We can"t travel with watches which act this way."
So we left them to be repaired, and as we came out, I said, "It will take us half an hour to get back to the hotel. Don"t you think we ought to go in somewhere and get just a little something to sustain us?"
"Of course we ought," she said, in a weak voice. So we went in and got a light luncheon. Then we went back to the hotel, intending to lie down and rest after such an arduous day.
"We must not do this again," I said, firmly. "Mamma told me particularly not to overdo."
My companion did not answer. She was looking at the clock. It was just noon.
"Why, _that_ clock has stopped too," she said.
But as we looked into the reading-room _that_ clock struck twelve.
Then it dawned on me, and I dropped into a chair and nearly had hysterics.
"It"s because we are so far _north_!" I cried. "Our watches were all right and the sun"s all right. That is as high as it can get!"
She was too much astonished to laugh.
"And you had to go in and get luncheon because you felt so faint," she said, in a tone of gentle sarcasm.
"Well, you confessed to a fearful sense of goneness yourself."
"Don"t tell anybody," she said.
"I should think not!" I retorted, with dignity. "I hope I have _some_ pride."
"Have you presented your letter to the amba.s.sador?" she asked.
"Yes, but it"s so near Christmas that I suppose he won"t bother about two waifs like us until after it"s over."
"My! but you _are_ blue," she said. "I never heard you refer to yourself as a waif before."
"I am a worm of the dust. I wish there wasn"t such a thing as Christmas! I wonder what Billy will say when he sees his tree."
"You might cable and find out," she said. "It only costs about three marks a word. "What did Billy say when he saw his tree?"--nine words--it would cost you about eight dollars, without counting the address."
Dead silence. I didn"t think she was at all funny.
"Don"t you think we ought to have champagne to-morrow?" she asked.
"What for? I hate the stuff. It makes me ill. Do _you_ want it?"
"No, only I thought that, being Christmas, and very expensive, perhaps it would do you good to spend--"
A knock on the door made us both jump.
"His Excellency the Amba.s.sador of the United States to see the American ladies!"
It was, indeed, Mr. White and Mrs. White, and Lieutenant Allen, the Military Attache!
"Oh, those blessed angels!" I cried, buckling my belt and dashing for the wash-stand, thereby knocking the comb and hand-gla.s.s from the grasp of my companion.
They had come within an hour of the presentation of my letter, and they brought with them an invitation from Mrs. Allen for us to join them at Christmas dinner the next day, as Mrs. White said they could not bear to think of our dining alone.
I had many beautiful things done for me during my thirty thousand miles travel in Europe, but nothing stands out in my mind with more distinctness than the affectionate welcome I received into the homes of our representatives in Berlin. And, in pa.s.sing, let me say this, I am distinctly proud of them, one and all. I say this because one hears many humiliating anecdotes of the mistakes made by the men and women sent to foreign Courts, appointed because they had earned some recognition for political services. Those of us who have strong national pride and a sense of the eternal fitness of things, are obliged to hear such things in shamed silence, and offer no retort, for there can be no possible excuse for mortifying lapses of etiquette. And these things will continue until our government establishes a school of diplomacy and makes a diplomatic career possible to a man.
As long as it is possible for an ex-coroner or sheriff to be appointed to a secretaryship of a foreign legation--a man who does not speak the language and whose wife understands better how to cope with croup and measles than with wives of foreign diplomats who have been properly trained for this vocation, just so long shall we be obliged to bear the ridicule heaped upon us over here, which our government never hears, and wouldn"t care if it did!
Imagine the relief with which I met our Berlin representatives! At the end of four years there will be no sly anecdotes whispered behind fans at _their_ expense, for they have all held the same office before and are well equipped by training, education, and native tact to bear themselves with a proud front at one of the most difficult Courts of Europe. I look back upon that little group of Americans with feelings of unmixed pride.
Mr. White invited us to go with him that afternoon to see the tombs of the kings at Charlottenburg; and when his gorgeous-liveried footman came to announce his presence, the hotel proprietor and about forty of his menials nearly crawled on their hands and knees before us, so great is their deference to pomp and power.
I wish to a.s.sociate Berlin with this beautiful mausoleum. It is circular in shape, and the light falls from above through lovely colored-gla.s.s windows upon those rec.u.mbent marble statues. The dignity, the still, solemn beauty of those pale figures lying there in their eternal repose, fill the soul with a sense of the great majesty of death.
When we got back to the hotel we found that the same good fortune which had attended us so far had ordained that the American mail should arrive that day, and behold! there were all our Christmas letters timed as accurately as if they had only gone from Chicago to New York.
Christmas letters! How they go to the heart when one is five thousand miles away! How we tore up to our rooms, and oh! how long it seemed to get the doors unlocked and the electric light turned up, and to plant ourselves in the middle of the bed to read and laugh and cry and interrupt each other, and to read out paragraphs of Billy"s funny baby-talk!
While we were still discussing them, the proprietor came up to announce to us that there was to be a Christmas Eve entertainment in the main dining-room that evening, and would the American ladies do him the honor to come down? The American ladies would.
When we went down we found that the enormous dining-room was packed with people, all standing around a table which ran around two sides of the room. A row of Christmas trees, covered with cotton to represent snow, occupied the middle of the room, and at one end was a s.p.a.ce reserved for the lady guests, and in each chair was a handsome bouquet of violets and lilies-of-the-valley.
This entertainment was for the servants of the hotel, of whom there were three hundred and fifty.
First they sang a Lutheran hymn, very slowly, as if it were a dirge.
Then there was a short sermon. Then another hymn. Then the manager made a little speech and called, for three cheers for the proprietor, and they gave them with a fervor that nearly split the ears of the groundlings.
Then a signal was given, and in less than one minute three hundred and fifty paper bags were produced, and three hundred and fifty plates full of oranges, apples, buns, and sweetened breads were emptied into them. The table looked as if a plague of gra.s.shoppers had swept over it.
Then each servant presented a number and received a present from the tree, and that ended the festivity. But so typical of the fatherland, so paternal, so like one great family!
Partic.i.p.ating in this simple festival brought a little of the Christmas feeling home to us and made us almost happy. We knew that our American parcels would not be delivered until the next day, so we had but just time to reread our precious letters when the clock struck twelve, and with much solemnity my companion and I presented each other with our modest Christmas present--which each had announced that she wanted and had helped to select! But, then, who would not rather select one"s own Christmas presents, and so be sure of getting things that one wants?