The £1,000,000 bank-note, and other new storiesTwain, Mark
General
The £1,000,000 bank-note, and other new stories
Twain, Mark
American essays -- 19th century; American fiction -- 19th century; Humorous stories, American
And yet the saunterer can easily find out what is going on at the
theatres. All over the city, at short distances apart, there are neat
round pillars eighteen feet high and about as thick as a hogshead, and
on these the little black-and-white theatre bills and other notices are
posted. One generally finds a group around each pillar reading these
things. There are plenty of things in Berlin worth importing to America.
It is these that I have particularly wished to make a note of. When
Buffalo Bill was here his biggest poster was probably not larger than
the top of an ordinary trunk.
There is a multiplicity of clean and comfortable horse-cars, but
whenever you think you know where a car is going to, you would better
stop ashore, because that car is not going to that place at all. The
car-routes are marvellously intricate, and often the drivers get lost
and are not heard of for years. The signs on the cars furnish no details
as to the course of the journey; they name the end of it, and then
experiment around to see how much territory they can cover before they
get there. The conductor will collect your fare over again, every few
miles, and give you a ticket which he hasn’t apparently kept any record
of, and you keep it till an inspector comes aboard by-and-by and tears a
corner off it (which he does not keep), then you throw the ticket away
and get ready to buy another. Brains are of no value when you are trying
to navigate Berlin in a horse-car. When the ablest of Brooklyn’s editors
was here on a visit he took a horse-car in the early morning and wore it
out trying to go to a point in the centre of the city. He was on board
all day and spent many dollars in fares, and then did not arrive at the
place which he had started to go to. This is the most thorough way to
see Berlin, but it is also the most expensive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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