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.  I had always supposed them to be exclusively domestic articles until I encountered them here.  There was a regular Bosco—­a genuine Herr He Alive Them Eats—­sitting in his canvas den entirely surrounded by a choice and tasty selection of eating snakes.  The orthodox tattooed man was there, too, first standing up to display the text and accompanying illustrations on his front cover, and then turning round so the crowd might read what he said on the other side.  And there was many another familiar freak introduced to our fathers by Old Dan Rice and to us, their children, through the good offices of Daniel’s long and noble line of successors.