The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-11-23

Every Berlin theater has a character Metropol, where a kind of local skit is always to be seen, presents, says Web CT, always and eternally the sameoId piece. To make this the recipe is as follows: Taae twenty-one old jokes loosely strung together, make thescene the gay world of the masher and the demimOndaine. The chief character should be a provincial seeking adven- lures and pleasure in the metropolis. Add a few humorless songs for male voices and a chorus or two for the en- semble, hire three dozen pairs of female legs Cor should it be female pairs of legs?), insert a can-can danced to some stolen melody, and call the piece Don Juan's Night" or "A Mad Year," or How Berlin Laughs It must be set out without taste or talent and form a hodge-podge of clownery and indeli- cacy.s
 The Herrenfeld theater is comic Jew theater, where the two Jew proprietors are the chief actors and amuse by cari- caturing their coreligionists. The audi ence, Weber notes, is chiefly composed of Jews, and I may remark here that in Berlin, if not elsewhere, no man more enjoys 8 joke against his race or his races failings and peculfarities than the Jew himself.
 The Thalia Theater is dubbed a monkey circus" of the worst kind, where art is shamefully prostituted for the amusement of the lower classes. These examples are sufficient to show how Weber satirizes a certain class of Berlin theater, but only a certain class, for he says nothing, and probably has nothing to say, against theaters like the Opera, the Leasing, the Schiller, the Deutsches or similar high class places of entertainment.
 The cafe life if Berlin is only second to that of Vienna in respect of the con- siderable part it plays in the daily and nightly habits of the people. Web er's verses explain how each cafe has distinct character and a distinct clientele. The Kaiser Cafe, in the chief business street, the Friedrichstrasse, is the haunt of the lower order of stock brokers and money lendeers. I may add it is much more, for it nearly all ways offers an, animated international scene and can never be reproached with admitting to it's finely decorated prem ises the disorderly or the drunk. h. deed it would be hard to be guilty ir this last respect, for a drunken person in any street, of Berlin is a rare sight
 The Cafe Bauer, Weber describes as the resort of the strangers who troor along Unter den Linden; the Cafe Josty in the Potsdamer Platz among it's respectable frequenters oc- casional specimens of those who have to keep or wish to arrange a rendez- vous, though not necessarily an i'm proper one. The Cafe National is pa tronized by richly dressed and brilliant. ly painted ladies, but whatever the character of it's following may be the cafe is often visited by foreigners as one of the night sights of Berlin These cafes are open all night as we'll as al day, there are in the same district, so to speak, and the result is that what with the theatergoers and supper eat CTS and the "Bummelet" or round oi visits to the cafes and restaurants one after another the center of Berlin by night and right up to breakfast time presents a glowing picture and an in cessant movement which are not tt be found, and most probably would not be tolerated, in any other city of the world. Yet curious thing is that from one end of the year to the other hardly any drunkenness and comparatively little indecency is to be found
 There is hardly any type of Berlir snob which Weber does not touch of in a few lively and pregnant verses
 but I will limit myself to very few more. The snob schoolmaster car speak Latin when there is no one pres. ent to hear him, swears by German anC at foreign learning, usually wears z flannel shirt, has never been young ot enjoyed youth and is a terrible bore who knows absolutely nothing of life
 He stays at home, Is often vegeta' rian, has six children (more girls than boys) and when he goes to heaven vii
 try to schoolmaster the angels.
 The half-pay Lieutenant is outwardly fine gentleman and officer, but has { lime and mortar business which ht never speaks of, The business, how ever, compeis him not to disdain tbt society of mere pIebeians. At last ht marries the widow of a wealthy master builder and is able to retire from th' lime and mortar trade. He can nov
 go about as half-pay officer in reality desptsing his old friends and putting on all the airs he pleases.
 Weber is speciality vituperative whel he deals with the Dowry Hunter usual 1 ly a broken down aristocrat, who sell 1 his title for twenty or twenty-five ! thousand dollars to an old and ugl! woman.
 Many other types are subjected tt l Weber's satire and they are all perfect I ly familiar and constantly recurring characters of Berlin life and society
 The satirist does not spare any clas from the aristocracy downward, but h,
 makes no open allusion to the Kaiser | And very wisely, because if he did h.
 would be certain to suffer the penalties
 of lese majeste. At the same time n, Berlin reader of his books will fail t detect and appreciate the many exam 1 pies of satiric fun leveled at te char acteristics and foibles of the monarch and at the various meddLaments ant muddlements Gas his sharper critic 1 call them) which the Emperor is charg ed with making in art, the theater
 architecture and literature.
 One should be careful, however, as have already said in other words, no
 to accept Weber's snobs as stereotyp