Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1887 — Queer German Customs. [ARTICLE]

Queer German Customs.

There are phenomena to be seen in Berlin; for instance, a restaurant where waiters refuse fees, and horsecars which have room “for one more” according to American ideas, but which will not carry one passenger, great or small, more than the number prescribed by law. It was very gratifying to meet such a regulation; it must prt- j vent many abuses; at least it com- j pelled me to walk a weary distance one rainy evening, and taught me Ihe dis- . ference between the application of a 1 rule in general and in particular. It also introduced me to another interesting German custom, for reaching my lodgings at a late hour I found the street door locked. Doorbells are unknown here and I had no key. A kick at the door echoed up and down the quiet street so ominously that a descent of the vigilant police seemed inevitable; I but it aroused no response from within and a repetition was out of the question. I thought tremendously, then sought a neighboring' restaurant, confided in, a' waiter, and learned that after a certain hour in the night the citizens resign themselves to the guardianship of the “watcher,” who locks all the street doors in| his district and pockets the keys. B e who arrives later without a key and would enjoy the shelter of his own roof goes up and down the street several times in search of this functionary, finds him probably at last drinking beer within a stone’s throw of the starting place, and in consideration of a small fee induces him to give his key the double turn which the mechanism of German locks requires and admit him to his own dwelling—Berlin letter. A woman dying from myxedema is reported to have had a temperature ranging from f>6 to 76 degrees F., the normal being 98.5. This is probably the lowest recorded human temperature.