THE GREAT FREDERICK

“I declare, Hans, I should think you would get tired of playing war,” said Bertha.  She was sitting under the trees rocking her doll.  She was playing it was a baby.

Hans had just come home after an afternoon of sport with his boy friends.  But all they had done, Bertha declared, was to play war and soldiers.  She had watched them from her own yard.

“Tired of it!  What a silly idea, Bertha.  It won’t be many years before I shall be a real soldier.  Just picture me then!  I shall have a uniform, and march to music.  I don’t know where I may go, either.  Who knows to what part of the world the emperor will send his soldiers at that time?”

“I know where you would like to go in our own country,” said Bertha.

“To Berlin, of course.  What a grand city it must be!  Father has been there.  Our schoolmaster was there while he served his time as a soldier.  At this very moment, it almost seems as though I could hear the jingling of the officers’ swords as they move along the streets.  The regiments are drilled every day, and I don’t know how often the soldiers have sham battles.”

Hans jumped up from his seat under the tree and began to march up and down as though he were a soldier already.

“Attention, battalion!  Forward, march!” Bertha called after him.  But she was laughing as she spoke.  She could not help it, Hans looked so serious.  At the same time she couldn’t help envying her brother a little, and wishing she were a boy, too.  It must be so grand to be a soldier and be ready to fight for the emperor who ruled over her country.

“The schoolmaster told us boys yesterday about the grand palace at Berlin.  The emperor lives in it when he is in the city,” said Hans, wheeling around suddenly and stopping in front of Bertha.

“I think you must have caught my thoughts,” said the little girl, “for the emperor was in my mind when you began to speak.”

“Well, never mind that.  Do you wish to hear about the palace?”

“Of course I do, Hans.”

“The schoolmaster says it has six hundred rooms.  Just think of it!  And one of them, called the White Room, is furnished so grandly that 2,400,000 marks were spent on it.  You can’t imagine it, Bertha, of course.  I can’t, either.”

A German mark is worth about twenty-four cents of American money, so the furnishing of the room Hans spoke of must have cost about $600,000.  It was a large sum, and it is no wonder the boy said he could hardly imagine so much money.

“There are hundreds of halls in the palace,” Hans went on.  “Some of their walls are painted and others are hung with elegant silk draperies.  The floors are polished so they shine like mirrors.  Then the pictures and the armour, Bertha!  It almost seemed as though I were there while the schoolmaster was describing them.”

“I never expect to see such lovely things,” said his sober little sister.  “But perhaps I shall go to Berlin some day, Hans.  Then I can see the statue of Frederick the Great, at any rate.”