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Show IMPRESSIONS OLD AND NEW- : From Munich to Berlin Railways in Ger- I many Officials Wages and Order ' j Country Berlin Population and Public . j ; Buildings Brandenburg Gate Unter J. den Linden Palace of Frederic the ' j Great White Room Picture Galleries I Museum Churches Catholics and : j Jews. ' j ' ; ' j I The distance from Munich to its sister and j greater city, Berlin, is something over three hun- I dred miles. To us in America three hundred miles k I sound nothing. These big engines with their throb I and flashing headlights and dare to go ahead en- 1 gineers at tho throttle, well, three hundred mile- ' looks like making a journey on a street car from ; Brigham's statue to First South. . I do not now if I am correct in my geography, . j and to be more sure, I will say from Brigham's j statue to Schramm's comer. I will never master j the geography of Salt Lake, though 1 am ever told ' ; . I look to the temple and then count. I have often , j looked to the temple and to the angel blowing his . s trumpet to the east, and then set out to find some , : number, Eleventh South and Eighth West. I never i found it. I just described a vicious circle; yes, very j vicious with the angel a-i center, and found myself ' ' ; again at Schramm's corner. Don't blame me; I am not stupid; at least I think so myself. As a bny I 1 thought geometrical and harmonical progressiotif I a bit hard, but the geometrical and the harmoni- : cal progression through the easts and souths and ; the wests and tho norths of Salt Lake is harder still. ? I digress from my subject, but as these are im- pressiona, I have a right to wander a bit now and j again. When traveling from Munich to Berlin, if f you don't want to curse, take the sehnell zug or ex- press train. The personnen zugs or the slow train just crawl along. They are for the use of the mar- I ket people, and the fare on them is less by 20 per ' cent than the express trains. : j Speaking about railroads, it may be well to men- j' J tion here that all the railways in Germany are gov- ernment property, with very few exceptions, and there are not in the world better or safer railroads. : Engineers of the, highest rank superintend the con- . struction of the roadbeds, the bridges and stations . along the line. I never saw a wooden bridge span- I ning a railway in Germany, and the graded era- : : bankments, the culverts and the tunnels are just as , perfect as a military fortification. The officials . :t ' S from the highest to the lowest have nearly all of I them served in the army, and with a military order j and precision they perform their duties. You are ; . seated in your train and you hear a bell ring, a . j conductor comes along and examines your ticket. : The second ring tells all passengers to be seated j ' I and the doors are closed, the third ring signifies f "all ready," "go." The wages of railway servants in Germany are r miserably small when compared to America or Eng- ' j land. I was told the highest wage for an engineer . x ( is $340 a year, and the switchmen and those who look ! after the road get from $140 to $180 a year. I wai ! told, too, that the engineer gets a certain percent- j age on the number of miles he runs during the year. j The highest wage for a conductor is $450 and the - brakeman gets about $275. ! f. The country between Munich and Berlin, as re- f I gards scenery, i not very remarkable, but it pos- i f sesses the tiseful scenery of never-ending vistas of 1 " fields of grain, vegetable crops and rich pasture : lands dotted with herds of cattle and flocks of i sheep. Little villages cluster along the railways , -: with well kept houses of stone and mortar, and the eternal red roof. The roads are good and so ; i straight, sheltered on each side with rows of tall I poplars. As far as I could see there was no fence ' of any kind marking the divisions of the various . : farms. .1 Berlin is the largest city in Europe after Lon- i f I don and Paris, its population being close on a mil- .: ' f lion and a half. It is indeed a wonderful city with its palaces, cathedrals, government offices, trium- phant arches, opera houses and public gardens. f The most beautiful street in Berlin is the Unter den Linden. It is about 70 yards wide, and in the ? center you have a magnificent promenade. It is a mile in length, and the south extremity you have ; the Brandenburg gate with the bronze car of vie- j tory perched on the top. This gate during the war of Napoleon was carried by the latter to Paris, but , after his downfall at Waterloo it was restored to - . its original position. The gate spans five distinct carriage drives, and I wa3 told the center drive 13 ; : reserved sepcially for the nobility. ' At the north end of the Unter den Linden you have an open square, and around this square the ' most magnificent buildings of the city are clustered. the principal being the old palace of Frederick the Great. Close beside the palace you see a famou . bronze statue of the latter ,and this statue is the ; ; finest and most expensive one in the world. It . stands on a pedestal 25 feet high, and the statue itself is IS feet high, and is the largest equestrian statue in Europe, if we except that of Washington, Washing-ton, which was cast by a firm at Munich for the state of Yirginia. On each corner of the pedestal . you have four other bronze statues of old Fritz's : - famous geenrals, the men who led his troops to vie- ' tory over many a bloody field during the Seven Years' War. The palace of Frederick the Great is indeed a wonder, and the decorations, paintings, marbles, tapestries and precious metals beggar description. In the palace there are 700 rooms, and many of ; them are so large that they could comfortably accommodate ac-commodate 1,000 people. The most exquisita room 1 in the palace is called the white room, and the decorations deco-rations of this room alone cost $600,000. Close to the white room is the chapel, with its wealth of rare-marbles, rare-marbles, various in color, and rising behind the altar al-tar is a cross about three feet in length, and this cross is said to have cost as much as half a million dollars. In the picture gallery you have the classical classi-cal works of the old and modern masters. The picture pic-ture that most attracts the eye of the visitor, is the ,: Continued on Pasre Five IMPRESSIONS OLD AND NEW. (Continued from Page One.) original painting by David of Napoleon crossing the Alps. As I gazed upon it another scene came before my mind. I well remember a penny show in a certain country coun-try town in dear old Ireland. Loud and strong the proprietor of this penny show shouted, "Now's your chance; come and see the great Bony (Bonaparte) (Bona-parte) crossing the Alps on his white charger, Marengo." Ma-rengo." That shout fetched me and with my penny held fast in my hand, I waited for a full hour for my turn, while the falling rain of comment fell on my ears. " 'Tis Bony and his cocked hat, sure -enough." "I'd like to see him land in Ireland." "Please, Mister Showman, lift me up until I get a good sight of him." Ah, well, those dear old times. When I got my look there was not a happier boy in the village than I was, and all because I had seen Bony in a peep show. This painting was brought from Paris after the battle of Waterloo by that stern old warrior, Bluch-er. Bluch-er. As a painting it is a master work ; as an his- torical fact, it is extremely doubtful whether Napoleon Na-poleon crossed the Alps on a horse. Those well informed in-formed say he made the journey on a mule. A very remarkable building is the old museum. It was designed by Schinkel, and stands on a spot once covered by the waters of the Spree. Like the : buildings of Amsterdam, it was built upon many 1 thousands of piles. In the front of this building are fine statues of Rauch, Schinkel, Winchelmann and Schadow. On the right of the magnificent staircase as you enter is a bronze group representing the fight of an Amazon with a tiger, and on the left that of a horseman horse-man with a lion. The sculpture gallery is on the first floor, containing many beautiful and priceless price-less works, the chief scene being a "Boy Praying and the great Canova's "Helie." The picture gallery is on the upper floor, and contains as many as thirty-seven compartments with a wealth of glorious glori-ous paintings from the brush of such masters as Correggio Titan, Murillo and Pouissin. At the back of the old museum is another wonderful museum mu-seum designed by Stuler, containing the relics ot almost all civilized and barbarous nations. Those who wish to gain a knowledge of what old Egypt was, are afforded an excellent opportunity of doing so here, for the Egyptological collection cannot be surpassed. Berlin is especially rich in beautiful churches, the finest being the Roman Catholic lied- ' wigskirche and the Roman Catholic Michaeliskir-che. Michaeliskir-che. The latter, built in 1856 after a design by the f a-mous a-mous Soller, is undoubtedly the finest in Berlin. Catholicity within the last quarter of a century, has advanced by leaps and bounds throughout Germany, Ger-many, especially in the large cities. In I860 the Catholics of Berlin numbered about 43,000. At the present time the Catholics number close to 70,000. The Jews hold a prominent place in Berlin, and stand very high in the field of politics, finance, literature and commerce. They possess two magnificent mag-nificent synagogues, one in the Johannesstrasse and another in the Oranienburger strasse, and they number close on 40,000. In our next article we shall treat of the other prominent features of Berlin and its famous suburb, Potsdam. NAPPER SANDY. |