my Berlin street! I did love it so. And I felt so free and glorious,
coming off on my own for my hard-earned Sunday outing, just like any
other young man.

The train going down was full of officers, and they all looked very
smart and efficient and satisfied with themselves and life. In my
compartment they were talking together eagerly all the way, talking
shop with unaffected appetite, as though shop were so interesting that
even on Sundays they couldn't let it be, and poring together over maps.
No trace of stolidity. But where is this stolidity one has heard
about? Compared to the Germans I've seen, it is we who are stolid;
stolid, and slow, and bored. The last thing these people are is bored.
On the contrary, the officers had that same excitement about them, that
same strung-upness, that the men boarders at Frau Berg's have.

Potsdam is charming, and swarms with palaces and parks. If it hadn't
been woods I was after I would have explored it with great interest.
Do you remember when you read Carlyle's Frederick to me that winter you
were trying to persuade me to learn to sew? And, bribing me to sew,
you read aloud? I didn't learn to sew, but I did learn a great deal
about Potsdam and Hohenzollerns, and some Sunday when it isn't quite so
fine I shall go down and visit Sans Souci, and creep back into the past
again. But today I didn't want walls and roofs, I wanted just to walk
and walk. It was very crowded in the train coming back, full of people
who had been out for the day, and weary little children were crying,
and we all sat heaped up anyhow. I know I clutched two babies on my
lap, and that they showed every sign of having no self-control. They
were very sweet, though, and I wouldn't have minded it a bit if I had
had lots of skirts; but when you only have two!