Of course, there are some quiet streets in Berlin, and there are charming homes in the "garden-houses." Some of the quadrangles are built round a garden instead of a paved yard, and then you can get a quiet pleasant flat with a balcony that looks on a garden instead of a street. The traditional plan of a Berlin flat is most inconvenient and unpractical. In old-fashioned houses, and even in houses built sixteen years ago or less, you find that one of the chief rooms is the only thoroughfare between the bedrooms near the kitchen premises and the rooms near the front door. Anyone occupying one of these back rooms, which are often good ones, can only get to the front door by way of this thoroughfare, where he will usually find the family gathered together; the maid, too, must pass through every time the door bell rings, and when she goes about her business in the front regions her brooms and pails must pass through with her. The window of this room, which is known as a _Berliner Zimmer_, is always in one corner and lights it insufficiently. The Berliners themselves recognise its disadvantages, but I like to describe it, because I observe amongst the Germans of to-day a fierce determination to destroy and deny everything a foreigner might call a little absurd, even if it is characteristic; so I feel sure that if I go to Berlin a few years hence there will not be a _Berliner Zimmer_ left in the city, and no Berliner will ever have seen or heard of one; nor will the flat doors have the quaint little peepholes through which the maid's eye may be seen appraising you before she lets you in. The newest houses, those in the _Kurfürstendamm_, for instance, have every "improvement"--central heating, lifts, gas cooking stoves, sinks for washing up, and bathrooms that are a reality and not a mere appearance. These bathrooms, I am assured, can be used without several hours' notice and the anxious superintendence of the only person, the head of the family as a rule, who understands the heating apparatus. Berlin, like Mr. Barrie's Admirable Crichton, has found out how to lay on hot and cold. It has found out about electric light too, and it might teach London how to use the telephone. Berlin talks to its friends by telephone as a matter of course, asks them how they are, if they enjoyed the _Fest_ last night, whether if you call on Tuesday they will be at home. Perhaps when Mr. Wells goes to Berlin he will forsee a reaction, a revolt against the incessant insistent bell that respects no occupation and allows no undisturbed rest. It is a hurried generation that uses the telephone so much, for the letter boxes are emptied eighteen times in twenty-four hours, and if the post is not quick enough or a telegram too expensive for all you want to say you can send a card by the tube post.