Part of the street roar and clamor is due to the unusual amount of small traffic in the streets, to the thousands and thousands of cabs, "commercial" tricycles and pushbarrows, all of which claim the right to play their part in the city's roar and bustle. But a much more conspicuous cause, if not the main one, is the fact that Berlin has grown up to Welt-Stadt prominence, overnight, as it were, and the good Berliners have not yet untangled their feet sufficiently to keep an orderly pace under the new order of things. Two-thirds of them are still living under the old horse-car régime, and when they come to congested corners, where the trolley's clang and the automobile's "toff-toff" prevail, they very willingly lend a hand in increasing the general confusion. At least this is the way the town impressed me a year or two ago, as compared with the easy-going city I first entered as a coal-passer, with honorable discharge papers in my pocket, and very little else. But far be it from me to dwell on this subject, for if there is any city in the world to which I ought to be grateful, it is Berlin. If it pleases the Berliners to shout their World City distinction from the housetops, as if fearful that it might otherwise escape notice, well and good; the noise sounds funny, that is all--particularly after London and New York. I began my career in the town in a very "Dutch" ready-made suit of clothes, high-heeled shoes that could be pulled on at one tug like the "Romeo" slipper, a ready-made fly-necktie, and a hat the style of which may be seen at its best in this country in the neighborhood of Ellis Island; it was local color hatified indeed. While I lay asleep on the sofa in my mother's library, making up for the loss of sleep at sea, my mother went out and kindly made these purchases. Washed, dressed and fed, I may have looked "Dutch," but I was clean at least, and there was no dusky fireman about to order me to hurry "further mit de coals." The family physician, a gentleman who has since come on to great things and is one of Berlin's most famous medical men, for some reason best known to himself examined me carefully to see how I had stood the journey. All that he could find out of the way was a considerably quickened heart action, which did not give him great concern, however. At that time the good man was just beginning to pick up English, and at our first meeting made me listen to his rendering of "Early to bed, early to rise," etc. A few weeks later, when making a professional visit on an American young lady, a new neighbor of ours, he was emboldened to give some advice in English--to compose an original sentence. He wanted the young lady to take more exercise, and this is how he told her to get it. "Traw a teep inspiration, take t'ree pig shteeps across te floor, and ten expire." She pulled through her ailment splendidly.