ways, the ores can be easily and cheaply transported to mill. Few districts in the world can boast of such abundant facilities for mining and milling. Time and work must determine the value of the district as a grand mining propo- | sition. A prophecy would be out of place here. Homer was discovered on the twenty-third of August, 1879. Systematic operations were not begun until late in the fall, when the Homer Mining Company started their tunnel. The district was buried in snow during four months of last winter. Hardy miners ventured out now and then and walked to Bodie on snowshoes; but these trips were necessarily rare. | They came to be regarded as perilous after the travelers had returned once or twice with frozen ears and hands. The few people who wintered in Homer assuredly had a rough experience. They lived principally on a certain sort of faith and hope. Subsistence on such a diet requires a heroism which we seldom see outside of a mining camp. My last view of Homer was in the gloaming. The mountains loomed up grand and gloomy, then slowly faded away. Memory treasures the Homeric scenery. Where is the artist who will transfer to canvas this marvelous illustration of the heroic and picturesque in mining? W. M. BUNKER. pany called itself the Montag Gesellschaft (Monday Society), though why was not apparent, as it came together only at odd intervals. It was chaperoned by a few middle-aged ladies. There were usually present sixty or seventy persons, young and matronly ladies, army officers, and civilians of the better classes. Each one paid four marks (one dollar) for the invitation ticket. The assembly was held at some well known hotel. As soon as the company was present, usually about eight o'clock, it sat down to dinner. Each gentleman was expected to order a bottle of wine, which was extra. An hour and a half was consumed at table. Germans are loud talkers, and before the end there would be a tremendous uproar in the room. When it was time to adjourn the elderly gentleman presiding arose, and proposed the health of the Emperor, which would be drank standing, accompanied by a chorus of enthusiastic The Germans are considered to be a more sociable people than the English or Americans, but I think this is a mistake. They are gregarious, but in one sense not as sociable; that is, they are fonder of being in crowds than our people, but it seemed to me that intimate home visiting is not so common. The average German is very fond of going with his family to the popular concert-room, or garden, and there, seated about a table, the women will knit and the men smoke; very likely supper will be eaten, and certainly all will imbibe indefinite quantities of beer; friends will speak to each other, the women will indulge in klatsch (gossip), and there will be a great quantity of bad tobacco smoke floating in the air. On warm Sunday afternoons the families will go in crowds into the Thiergarten, or to Charlottenberg, or Potsdam, or some other of the suburban resorts, and enjoy the fresh air, sunshine, and also the inevitable beer; but home intimacies and visit-hoch, hoch's. The ladies and gentlemen then ing are much less common than with us. A person may have a wide circle of acquaintance, and yet never go into their houses, nor see them in his own. Of course, in a large community there is not complete uniformity in this regard. 'I give merely the very distinct impression which I received of this extreme gregariousness, and yet lack of home sociability. This gregariousness manifests itself, also, in the numerous Vereins everywhere to be found. Every trade and pursuit, and one may say, idea, has its "union." Through the kindness of a German lady I was enabled to take part in some characteristic Berlin social gatherings. This particular com passed into an ante-room, and drank their coffee while the tables were being cleared away. After which dancing commenced. The favorite dance is the waltz. The same piece of music was played for a half hour at a time; the dancers whirled around the room two or three times, and then sat down to catch their breath; in a little while the same dancers, however, each with a different partner, would be off again in the dizzy whirl at a very rapid pace, and so on to the end. The theory seems to be, to get as much exercise in a given time as one can with as many partners as possible. The young officers are the model dancers, and naturally the favorites with the girls. These dash Those who know the Berlin women in the best circles say they are bright, intelligent, and intellectual; and it may be said of all their countrywomen that they have a strong tendency to sentimentalism. They do not "come out" as early as our girls, and are not as self-dependent or self-adapting. Beauty of face is not the specialty of the Berlin women, though one often sees very good figures. I remember making this reflection at the annual subscription ball at the Royal Opera House. This was an occasion when one could see together an excellent representation of Berlin society, called out by the fact that the Emperor, Empress, and the Imperial Court were present, and came down on the floor. Of course, in so large an assemblage there were beautiful faces, but they flashed upon one in the throng as rare surprises; plain, good-natured features, and ample, well fed figures, were the normal types. ing young bloods and elegant partners relieved | English, both in speaking and writing, and also the fatigues of the vigorous dancing with oc- at the breadth of their reading in English literacasional glasses of beer. At these particular ture. Gesellschafts there were usually present four or five attachés of the Chinese Embassy in full national costume, and it would have harrowed the soul of a Kearneyite to see the amount of attention they received from the women. I could see that the envious young gentlemen secretly thought also that the Chinese "must go." A stranger in Berlin, and, in fact, in every town, immediately remarks the vast number of beer and wine shops and restaurants. In Berlin they are in every quarter of the town. They are of all shades of excellence and badness, from Poffenberg's, on the Unter den Linden, down to the “Frühstück Lokal," in the remote strasse, where droskymen and laborers regale themselves. My first conclusion was, that the entire population ate and drank in these places, but a longer acquaintance with the habits of the people disabused me of this hasty impression. The explanation of the support which these resorts must necessarily receive in order to make a tolerable profit finally dawned upon me when I learned more of the habits of German men. Every German, no matter what his calling, has his wine or bier kneipe. This is a public house to which he resorts every evening, and passes two, three, or more hours, as the case may be, in the circle of his chosen friends, drinking, smoking, and chatting. As the customary dinner is early, he will frequently take his supper there, and he will probably, evening after evening, year in and year out, frequent the same kneipe, meeting there always the same companions. The merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, the literary man, the mechanic, the laborer, each has his kneipe, where he meets congenial society. I have been told that there are Berliners who have no kneipe, but they must be classed among the eccentrics. The wives, therefore, never expect their husbands to pass the evenings at home, or, at least, the entire evening. As to whether German women are better educated than our own women, with corresponding opportunities, I must confess I am in doubt, principally because, from American ladies long resident in Berlin, I have heard quite conflicting opinions. Averaging their opinions, and supplementing them with my own observation, I am inclined to think that the German women are better linguists and musicians, but not as well up in other branches. You will hardly meet a lady of any pretensions to good training who cannot speak more or less English and French; and, in several instances, I have been very much surprised at the accuracy of their Like most men, when the intricacies of a woman's toilet come in question, I can only give impressions, and these were that the dressing was rich, but by no means elegant; in truth, rather unartistic, but diamonds, pearls, emeralds, amethysts, and all sorts of precious stones sparkled upon the persons and dresses of the greater part of the ladies in dazzling profusion. The men of the Court are generally good looking, manly fellows; but the women! Perhaps the less said the better. There was one, however, fresh and charming-the young daughter of the Crown Prince, the Princess Saxe- Meinegen. And so at the opera or at the theater, one may search long through the crowded audiences for really pretty faces; the æsthetic soul hungering for beauty or brilliancy must content itself with the homely, good-natured, bread-and-butter style of visage. The penetralia of German households are not as cleanly or orderly as might be. In truth, the godliness which goes along with cleanliness is too often lacking, where the critical eye of the passer-by cannot penetrate. In houses of the more recent construction are bath-rooms, but I am disposed to believe they are more generally used as waste or servants' rooms than for their intended purpose. In houses more than ten years old, I doubt whether such a necessary appendage can be found. A significant fact is that the linen goes to the laundry only at intervals, very often, of six months, quite commonly of two and three. On these occasions, the laundry-woman appears and carries away the loads of material, frequently to some suburban establishment. Possibly the system may have its advantages, but certainly one's impressions would be that it is more labor and patience saving than nice. It was some time before I I could make my washer-woman understand that I wished her to come once a week. She evidently could not comprehend its fitness, and I am sure at last put it down as the absurd, though profitable, habit of a foreigner, who could not be expected to know better. The only serious meal in a German family is the dinner, which ordinarily comes between half past one and three o'clock. The banks are closed between those hours, and active business is largely suspended. Deliberation and time are given, not so much to the actual consumption of the dinner as to quietude afterward. If the food is bolted rapidly, the German insists upon plenty of time to digest it. He therefore sits long at the table, and sips his wine or beer, and afterward, over his coffee, smokes his weed. In all this he extracts more real, solid, reasonable satisfaction out of one dinner than an American will out of a dozen. Judged by our standards, his table habits are rather gross. Men and women shovel their food into their mouths very commonly with their knives, edge inward, and generally there is a slobberiness which is not agreeable. At a table d'hôte, or dinner party, the din of voices becomes extraordinary; for the people talk loud and all at once. If it is trying to the lungs, no doubt it is good for the digestion. At a table d'hôte there are three things which a German gentleman almost invariably does. First, when he enters the room he takes out a small pocket-brush and carefully brushes his hair; secondly, he produces a large, bright-colored silk handkerchief, and blows a bugle-blast; and lastly, at the end of the repast, he calls for a candle and lights his cigar, without consulting the preferences of the other guests. This, however, is not to be taken as an exhibition of selfish, bad manners. On the contrary, he is performing merely a social function, which presumptively is pleasurable to everybody; for the smoking habit is so common that the non-smoker is rather in the attitude of one who should apologize for his lack of culture, and therefore should pay the penalty of his defective development by quietly withdrawing or suffering in silence. The other meals cut only a secondary figure, and are often eaten in a scrambling fashion, here and there as it may happen. I doubt whether the mysteries of German cooking are comprehensible to the Anglo-Saxon mind, or permanently endurable by the Anglo-Saxon stomach. In order to obtain that peace of mind which is absolutely necessary to aid the digestion of the compounds which daily come upon the table, one must not seek to comprehend. Is there not a close relationship between the methods of cooking of a people and their intellectual and moral development? Cannot the positive, practical directness of the Anglo-Saxon mind be connected with their plain, succulent, unmistakable roasts and chops?-or the grace and æsthetic sense of the French referred to their delicate ragoûts and sauces?—and the cloudy, self-evolving philosophies of the Germans to their incomprehensible mixtures of fish, flesh, fruit, and vegetables? Or would a closer analysis show that the reverse process works out food preparation from innate characteristics? The fundamental principle of German cookery is to mix together as many incongruous things as possible. My countrymen have a special talent, recognized the world over, for inventing mixed drinks, but his combinations pale before those of the Germans in mixed cooking. That compound which is so toothsome to a German, a herring salad, is concocted from sixteen different articles. A German beefsteak is made of hashed meats, rolled into a ball and fried. What they call roast beef is a chunk of meat boiled a while and then baked; it usually looks like a lump of india-rubber. With the meats is always served a compote, made of stewed or preserved fruit. The vegetables are deemed at their best when they are floating in grease. Sausage, however, is the great national delicacy. It is produced in great varieties of size and quality; and the sausage shops of Berlin are the most elegant in the city. The German family table, with its mysteries and abominations, is the severest trial which the American has to undergo who submits himself to the domestic life of the country. My estimable landlady modified her culinary practices somewhat to suit my fancies; yet six months of effort failed to reconcile me to the strange diet. I have met with a few Americans in Germany, a long time there, who first endured, then pitied, then finally embraced the execrable cookery; but, as one might suspect, they have in a degree become denationalized. In Berlin, however, one is not obliged to suffer this daily martyrdom; there are a few good restaurants, like that of Poffenberg, or the Kaiserhof, or the Hôtel de Rome, where one can fare sumptuously and in a civilized way, and, for those so inclined, there are a few very good pensions which adapt themselves to our ways of living. However, the clothes a people wear, the houses they live in, the food they eat, and the special social customs they exhibit, may, per haps, be put down simply as surface characteristics, which, among European peoples, are not widely different. We may also go further, and say that, in a general way, their several civilizations are all developing upon the same lines; but these are generalizations too broad to be satisfying. Inside of these lines we see that each is developing a special nationality-a life of its own, which gives it national individuality. We see a special national mind, which makes the German one, the Frenchman quite another, and the Russian yet a distinct third. The German type, though an old and well defined one, has met obstructions to its unification, which are only now, in this generation, being overcome. The oft quoted lines of Arndt, "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?" and the enthusiastic response of this song, that it is "So weit die deutsche Zunge klingt," which expressed merely an aspiration when written sixty odd years ago, is now rapidly taking form. The unification of North Germany is the most remarkable event in Europe since the disappearance of the first Napoleon from the scene. This unification is working in all social directions. Berlin, therefore, as the chief city of the new empire, has become the political center of the continent, and the new influences at work are drawing to it not only the political, but also the social, intellectual, and artistic forces of the empire. Heretofore the small States-the "Residenz" towns, dispersed in twenty or thirty little States-divided these forces. Weimar, as we know, became a literary, and Dresden and Munich artistic centers, and the universities, also, scattered at many distant points, formed scientific and philosophic centers. These little capitals were also, each in its degree, centers of special aristocratic and social influences, but since the political unification the best social, intellectual, and artistic life of Germany is slowly, but surely, being drawn to Berlin. Weimar, Dresden, Stuttgard, and even Munich, are losing their earlier glories. The change is not a rapid one, and it will probably be a long time before Berlin becomes to North Germany what Paris is to France. Already political opinion takes its direction from the capital, and, naturally, its newspapers are assuming greater prominence than ever before. One of the features of the former decentralization was that the ablest journals were to be found in the smaller cities, and at points remote from each other, and this is the case in a degree still. The Cologne Gazette and Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung are yet leaders; nevertheless, it is plain that the metropolitan is growing at the expense of the interior press. Mark Twain, in his recent book, A Tramp Abroad, referring to the newspapers of Hamburg, Frankfort, Baden, and Munich, as correct types of the German press, says they are deficient in everything that makes a newspaper attractive. If that is the case as to those particular journals (and as to that I cannot say), certainly those of Berlin cannot be dismissed in such a depreciatory way. There are a great many of them, of all shades of opinion and ability, and representing all sections of society. In the matter of the primal requisite of a daily journal, news, they are far superior to the French, and almost equal to the best English and American papers. Apparently they do not expend as much money and energy in collect. ing news, nor are they so anxious for the earliest and first information, no doubt because the German readers are not as eager or exacting in this regard as ours are. The most influential are the Nord-deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (said to be Bismarck's organ), the Vossiche Zeitung, the National, the Preussische or Kreuz-Zeitung, the Tageblatt, and the Fremdenblatt. A small newspaper, called Das Kleine Fournal, founded the winter I was in Berlin by Dr. Strousberg, who is somewhat notorious for his connection with railroad schemes in Russia, and his bankruptcy and subsequent trial, became immediately a great success. It sells for five pfennings, or one and a quarter cents, and contains not only a full summary of the current news, but also has very good editorials. I have seen in it original correspondence from San Francisco, and editorials about California affairs. Perhaps the Tageblatt may be taken as a fair specimen of a Berlin daily. It is said to have the largest circulation. I have before me the number for May 21, 1880. It consists of sixteen pages, each page about three-quarters the size of one of the San Francisco Evening | Bulletin. I should say that, taking into consideration differences in size of page and type, the Tageblatt contains matter equal to at least ten pages of the Bulletin. Of the sixteen pages, five and a half are given up exclusively to advertisements. The upper parts of the first and second pages are devoted to political editorials and political news, the lower to a chapter of a feuilleton, and theatrical and musical news; the third page contains a letter from Hamburg, news from various points of the empire, with long lists of changes in civil and army offices; the fourth page has local news; the fifth con tains local news, and has also reports of judicial proceedings and of a sitting of one of the municipal councils; the sixth contains a very full and detailed statement of the prices ruling at the money exchanges of Breslau, Hamburg, Frankfort, Vienna, Amsterdam, London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Bremen, Cologne, Antwerp, Glasgow, and Liverpool, followed by half a page of advertisements; the seventh has telegraphic news from various parts of Europe; the eighth is composed of advertisements; the ninth has political editorials and some paragraphs of theatrical news; the tenth and eleventh contain telegraphic correspondence from St. Petersburg and London, a letter from Bromberg, telegrams from Munich, Brussels, and Vienna, local news, and a report of the proceedings of the Prussian Landtag. One column of this and the following page are taken up with very full and detailed reports of the markets for various kinds of goods in all the commercial centers of Europe, and also in New York and Rio Janeiro, followed by a report of prices ruling in the Berlin exchange the previous day of over seven hundred different stocks or shares, and winding up with a barometrical and thermometrical report from all parts of Europe. The last four pages are filled with advertisements. The news of all kinds is full and detailed. This paper has morning and evening editions, and is sold to subscribers at forty-three cents a month; single numbers sell on the street for two and a half cents. It is equal to any paper of its class in the United States, and very much superior to the average of our daily press both in tone, style, and matter. In the Vossische, Nord-deutsche Allgemeine, and National are articles admirable for their range of thought, knowledge, and moderation of tone. As to style, they cannot ordinarily be praised; it is strangely involved and slovenly. The student of German at home, who thinks himself well up in the language because he can read Goethe, Schiller, or Heine readily, will find himself, to his surprise, very much at fault when he goes to Germany and takes up the daily paper. It is like going from the open, sunny fields into a dense forest, with tangled undergrowth. Every calling or pursuit in Germany which finds expression in words seems to have a style, or want of style, of its own; it is only the purely literary person who cares to cultivate the art of expression for its own sake. There is, consequently, a philosophical, an official, a scientist, a newspaper, and a literary style, and that of the newspaper is certainly one of the most obscure; the aim of its writers seeming to be to give in one sentence the main thought, with all its possible shades, exceptions, and qualifica | tions, with the nominative at the beginning and the verb as far off toward the end as possible. I have been surprised how well the better Berlin papers are up in American affairs. They keep their readers informed about all occurrences of importance going on in our midst. Even the various phases of the Kearney agitation, of our local political movements, and of the Chinese question were well understood and discussed by them. With reference to American news they are better informed, and give fuller information than the English journals. Those, therefore, who characterize the German press as behind the times are themselves lagging in the rear of the facts. It is very easy for the traveler hurrying through a country, who is, perhaps, either only partially or not at all acquainted with the language, and who has casually glanced at one or two newspapers, to generalize and summarily condemn the whole press of the country as deficient; and then it gratifies our national pride to think we are in advance of those decaying old communities. The Berlin press lacks, it is true, somewhat of the push of our best papers in the gathering of news; its leaders certainly lack the literary finish of our best; but, on the other hand, the news is carefully collated and arranged, the thought of the articles is elevated, and the "interviewer" and sensational reporter are carefully excluded. It is said that the Berlin press is controlled by Jews, and that they are corrupting public opinion. During the winter I was in Berlin there arose a violent controversy over the Jew question, as it was styled, which called out newspaper articles, pamphlets, and speeches from many prominent men all over Germany, and was heard of in other parts of Europe, and also on our side of the Atlantic. The substance of the charge against these people, when stripped of the profuse verbiage in which it was couched, was that they used the daily press to decry old German ideas and traditions, and especially to sneer at and secretly undermine evangelical religion. There was a grain of truth here in a bushel of chaff. It is largely true that the Jew element is active in the press, and this because it is a large and rich element in the community. It is said there are over forty-five thousand Jews in Berlin alone, and that one in every ten of the educated men of Prussia is of that extraction. The skeptical tone of the press is merely a reflex of that of its readers. The pride of the Berliner is that his city is the home of free thought; that all shades of belief and unbelief receive respectful hearing, and can freely seek out its circle |