_Berlin, Sunday, June 7th, 1914_.

On Sunday mornings, darling mother, directly I wake I remember it is my
day for being with you. I can hardly be patient with breakfast, and
the time it takes to get done with those thick cups of coffee that are
so thick that, however deftly I drink, drops always trickle down what
would be my beard if I had one. And I choke over the rolls, and I
spill things in my hurry to run away and talk to you. I got another
letter from you yesterday, and Hilda Seeberg, a girl boarding here and
studying painting, said when she met me in the passage after I had been
reading it in my room, "You have had a letter from your _Frau Mutter,
nicht_?" So you see your letters shine in my face.

Don't be afraid I won't take enough exercise. I go for an immense walk
directly after dinner every day, a real quick hot one through the
Thiergarten. The weather is fine, and Berlin I suppose is at its best,
but I don't think it looks very nice after London. There's no mystery
about it, no atmosphere; it just blares away at you. It has everything
in it that a city ought to have,--public buildings, statues, fountains,
parks, broad streets; and it is about as comforting and lovable as the
latest thing in workhouses. It looks disinfected; it has just that
kind of rather awful cleanness.

At dinner they talk of its beauty and its perfections till I nearly go
to sleep. You know how oddly sleepy one gets when one isn't
interested. They've left off being silent now, and have gone to the
other extreme, and from not talking to me at all have jumped to talking
to me all together. They tell me over and over again that I'm in the
most beautiful city in the world. You never knew such eagerness and