There is a fascination about the bright little city.
There is about it something quaint and foreign, as though
a cross-section of the old world had been dumped bodily
into the lap of Wisconsin. It does not seem at all
strange to hear German spoken everywhere--in the streets,
in the shops, in the theaters, in the street cars. One
day I chanced upon a sign hung above the doorway of a
little German bakery over on the north side. There were
Hornchen and Kaffeekuchen in the windows, and a brood of
flaxen-haired and sticky children in the back of the
shop. I stopped, open-mouthed, to stare at the worn sign
tacked over the door.
"Hier wird Englisch gesprochen," it announced.
I blinked. Then I read it again. I shut my eyes,
and opened them again suddenly. The fat German letters
spoke their message as before--"English spoken here."
On reaching the office I told Norberg, the city
editor, about my find. He was not impressed. Norberg
never is impressed. He is the most soul-satisfying and
theatrical city editor that I have ever met. He is fat,
and unbelievably nimble, and keen-eyed, and untiring. He
says, "Hell!" when things go wrong; he smokes innumerable
cigarettes, inhaling the fumes and sending out the thin
wraith of smoke with little explosive sounds between
tongue and lips; he wears blue shirts, and no collar to
speak of, and his trousers are kept in place only by a
miracle and an inefficient looking leather belt.
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