There is probably no structure of the kind in the world the building of which has cost so many lives.  Indeed the very mortar used in its construction may be said to have been mixed with blood.  The people of Berlin, who from time immemorial have been noted for their democracy and their spirit of independence, have opposed from the very outset the erection of this building in their midst as calculated to endanger their liberty, and many were the attempts that they made to arrest the undertaking, and to destroy the work already accomplished.  Bloody fights took place between the mob and the troops appointed to protect the workmen, and on two occasions the populace even went so far as to cut the dams, and destroy the flood gates, deluging the foundations with the waters of the River Spree, and drowning each time many hundreds of workmen.

Even at the present moment Emperor William is engaged in an angry fight with, the people of Berlin in connection with this palace.  He wishes to surround it with a terrace and a garden, which will naturally add to its beauty.  At present the windows look onto the public streets, a fact which, in these days of bombs and dynamite outrages, renders it difficult to protect with any degree of efficiency.  The municipality and people of Berlin, however, absolutely decline to consent to the expropriations necessary in order to enable the destruction and removal of the existing houses and buildings which interfere with the execution of his majesty’s project.

Like his uncle, the Prince of Wales, the kaiser is very superstitious on the subject of the number thirteen in the case of any entertainment, and more than once has a mere subaltern who happened to be on duty at the palace as an officer of the guard, been commanded at a moment’s notice to join the imperial party in order to avoid there being thirteen at the table.

This superstition is perhaps partly due to the fact that the emperor is aware of the old Scandinavian custom, from which it originates, and which still subsists among the peasantry of the west coast of France.  In the Pagan days of Scandinavia, the hardy Norsemen were accustomed at all their banquets to invite the spirit of the last of their male relatives or friends to participate in the feast, and the food that he would have eaten and the mead that he would have drunk was cast into the fire, the supposed resting-place of the soul.  When the Norsemen embraced Christianity, on ceremonious occasions they sat down to the banquet in parties of twelve, doing this in honor of the twelve Apostles; but unable entirely to disassociate themselves from their old heathen custom of inviting the spirit of a dead relative or friend, they constituted him,—­the spectre,—­the thirteenth guest at table, and his health was always drunk in solemn silence.  In course of time people came to forget the traditional custom of considering a spectre to be the thirteenth guest.  He was, however, associated in their minds with the notion of death, and thus the belief has grown that though a thirteenth person at table is no longer a corpse, one of the party is destined, at any rate, to speedily become one.