to be behaved to kindly, with the patient politeness of the London
policemen, or indeed of anybody one asks one's way of in England or
Italy or France. The Berlin man as he passes mutters the word
_Englanderin_ as though it were a curse, or says into one's ear--they
seem fond of saying or rather hissing this, and seem to think it both
crushing and funny,--"_Ros bif_," and the women stare at one all over
and also say to each other _Englanderin_.

You never told me Germans were rude; or is it only in Berlin that they
are, I wonder. After my first expedition exploring through the
Thiergarten and down Unter den Linden to the museums last Friday
between my practisings, I preferred getting lost to asking anybody my
way. And as for the policemen, to whom I naturally turned when I
wanted help, having been used to turning to policemen ever since I can
remember for comfort and guidance, they simply never answered me at
all. They just stood and stared with a sort of mocking. And of course
they understood, for I got my question all ready beforehand. I longed
to hit them,--I who don't ever want to hit anybody, I whom you've so
often reprimanded for being too friendly. But the meekest lamb, a lamb
dripping with milk and honey, would turn into a lion if its polite
approaches were met with such wanton rudeness. I was so indignantly
certain that these people, any of them, policemen or policed, would
have answered the same question with the most extravagant politeness if
I had been an officer, or with an officer. They grovel if an officer
comes along; and a woman with an officer might walk on them if she
wanted to. They were rude simply because I was alone and a woman. And
that being so, though I spoke with the tongue of angels, as St. Paul
saith, and as I as a matter of fact did, if what that means is immense
mellifluousness, it would avail me nothing.