It was fortunate, indeed, that at this period the American Secretary of State was Mr. John Hay and the German minister of foreign affairs Count von Bulow. Both at Washington and Berlin the light of plain common sense was gradually let into this jungle of half truths and whole falsehoods; the appointment of an excellent special commission, who supplanted all the officials in the islands by new men, solved various preliminary problems, so that finally a treaty was made between the three nations concerned which swept away the old vicious system, partitioned the islands between the United States and Germany, giving Great Britain indemnity elsewhere, and settled all the questions involved, as we may hope, forever. Among my duties and pleasures during this period was attendance upon important debates in the Imperial Parliament. That body presents many features suggestive of thought. The arrangement under which the Senate, representing the various states of the empire, and the House, representing the people as a whole, sit face to face in joint deliberation, strikes an American as especially curious; but it seems to work well, and has one advantage in bringing the most eminent servants of the various states into direct personal relations with the rank and file from the country at large. The German Parliament has various good points. Some one has asserted that the United States Senate is as much better than the British House of Lords as the British House of Commons is better than the American House of Representatives. There is much to be said for this contention, and there are some points in which the German Parliament also struck me as an improvement upon our Lower House: they do less than we in committee, and more in the main assemblage; German members are more attentive to the work in hand, and spread-eagleism and speeches to the galleries which are tolerated at Washington are not tolerated at Berlin. On the other hand, the members at Berlin, not being paid for their services, absent themselves in such numbers that the lack of a sufficient deliberating body has been found, at times, a serious evil.