and therefore I have shown my description of this incident to Harris,
lest anything beyond bald narrative may have crept into it. Harris
maintains it is exaggerated, but admits that one or two people may have
been "sprinkled." I have offered to turn a street hose on him at a
distance of five-and-twenty yards, and take his opinion afterwards, as to
whether "sprinkled" is the adequate term, but he has declined the test.
Again, he insists there could not have been more than half a dozen
people, at the outside, involved in the catastrophe, that forty is a
ridiculous misstatement. I have offered to return with him to Hanover
and make strict inquiry into the matter, and this offer he has likewise
declined. Under these circumstances, I maintain that mine is a true and
restrained narrative of an event that is, by a certain number of
Hanoverians, remembered with bitterness unto this very day.

We left Hanover that same evening, and arrived at Berlin in time for
supper and an evening stroll. Berlin is a disappointing town; its centre
over-crowded, its outlying parts lifeless; its one famous street, Unter
den Linden, an attempt to combine Oxford Street with the Champs Elysee,
singularly unimposing, being much too wide for its size; its theatres
dainty and charming, where acting is considered of more importance than
scenery or dress, where long runs are unknown, successful pieces being
played again and again, but never consecutively, so that for a week
running you may go to the same Berlin theatre, and see a fresh play every
night; its opera house unworthy of it; its two music halls, with an
unnecessary suggestion of vulgarity and commonness about them,
ill-arranged and much too large for comfort. In the Berlin cafes and
restaurants, the busy time is from midnight on till three. Yet most of
the people who frequent them are up again at seven. Either the Berliner
has solved the great problem of modern life, how to do without sleep, or,
with Carlyle, he must be looking forward to eternity.