To which I reply that so he does and so he did;
but I add then the counter-argument that he came to us by way of
Paris, at the conclusion of a round trip that started in the old
Fourth Ward of the Borough of Manhattan, city of Greater New York;
for he was born and bred on the East Side - and, moreover, was born
bearing the name of a race of kings famous in the south of Ireland
and along the Bowery. And he learned his art - not only the rudiments
of it but the final finished polish of it - in the dancehalls of
Third Avenue, where the best slow-time dancers on earth come from.
It was after he had acquired a French accent and had Gallicized
his name, thereby causing a general turning-over of old settlers
in the graveyards of the County Clare, that he returned to us, a
conspicuous figure in the world of art and fashion, and was able
to get twenty-five dollars an hour for teaching the sons and
daughters of our richest families to trip the light tanfastic go.
At the same time, be it understood, I am not here to muckrake the
past of one so prominent and affluent in the most honored and
lucrative of modern professions; but facts are facts, and these
particular facts are quoted here to bind and buttress my claim
that the best dancers are the American dancers.
After this digression let us hurry right back to that loyal Berliner
whom we left seated in the Palais du Danse on the Behrenstrasse,
waiting for the hour of two in the morning to come. The hour of
two in the morning does come; the lights die down; the dancers
pick up their heavy feet - it takes an effort to pick up those
Continental feet - and quit the waxen floor; the Oberkellner comes
round with his gold chain of office dangling on his breast and
collects for the wine, and our German friend, politely inhaling
his yawns, gets up and goes elsewhere to finish his good time.
And, goldarn it, how he does dread it! Yet he goes, faithful soul
that he is.
He goes, let us say, to the Pavilion Mascotte - no dancing, but
plenty of drinking and music and food - which opens at two and stays
open until four, when it shuts up shop in order that another place
in the nature of a cabaret may open. And so, between five and six
o'clock in the morning of the new day, when the lady garbagemen
and the gentlemen chambermaids of the German capital are abroad
on their several duties, he journeys homeward, and so, as Mr. Pepys
says, to bed, with nothing disagreeable to look forward to except
repeating the same dose all over again the coming night. This
sort of thing would kill anybody except a Prussian - for, mark you,
between intervals of drinking he has been eating all night; but
then a Prussian has no digestion. He merely has gross tonnage in
the place where his digestive apparatus ought to be.
The time to see a German enjoying himself is when he is following
his own bent and not obeying the imperial edict of his gracious
sovereign. I had a most excellent opportunity of observing him
while engaged in his own private pursuits of pleasure when by
chance one evening, in the course of a solitary prowl, I bumped
into a sort of Berlinesque version of Coney Island, with the island
part missing. It was not out in the suburbs where one would
naturally expect to find such a resort. It was in the very middle
of the city, just round the corner from the cafe district, not
more than half a mile, as the Blutwurst flies, from Unter den
Linden. Even at this distance and after a considerable lapse of
time I can still appreciate that place, though I cannot pronounce
it; for it had a name consisting of one of those long German
compound words that run all the way round a fellow's face and lap
over at the back, like a clergyman's collar, and it had also a
subname that no living person could hope to utter unless he had a
thorough German education and throat trouble. You meet such nouns
frequently in Germany. They are not meant to be spoken; you gargle
them. To speak the full name of this park would require two
able-bodied persons - one to start it off and carry it along until
his larynx gave out, and the other to take it up at that point and
finish it.
But for all the nine-jointed impressiveness of its title this park
was a live, brisk little park full of sideshow tents sheltering
mildly amusing, faked-up attractions, with painted banners flapping
in the air and barkers spieling before the entrances and all the
ballyhoos going at full blast - altogether a creditable imitation
of a street fair as witnessed in any American town that has a good
live Elks' Lodge in it.
Plainly the place was popular. Germans of all conditions and all
ages and all sizes - but mainly the broader lasts - were winding
about in thick streams in the narrow, crooked alleys formed by the
various tents. They packed themselves in front of each booth where
a free exhibition was going on, and when the free part was over
and the regular performance began they struggled good-naturedly
to pay the admission fee and enter in at the door.
And, for a price, there were freaks to be seen who properly belonged
on our side of the water, it seemed to me.
