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down the results of his researches, and then finally read off his work to me with this note at the bottom--"The little finger of his left hand is crooked." The hostess of the London Tavern, when I got back to my quarters, must have heard about my wealth. That pleasant little maiden lady told me all about her house, and how it had been named afresh after the King of Prussia slept there on his way to London, where he was to act as sponsor to the Prince of Wales. I, who had been turned away from the doors of the humblest inns, was flattered and courted by a landlady who had entertained His Majesty of Prussia. The neatest of chambermaids conducted me to an elegant bedchamber--"her own room," the little old maid had said as I left her--and there I slept upon the couch sacred to her maiden meditations, among hangings white as snow. The next morning I went out into Perleberg,--a ricketty old place, full of rats and legends. There is a colossal figure in the market-place of an armed knight, eighteen or twenty feet high, gazing eternally into the fruit baskets below. He has his head uncovered, his hand upon his sword, and is made of stone; but who he is nobody seemed to know; I was only told that the statue would turn any one to stone who fixed his eyes upon it in intense gaze for a sufficiently long time. I visited the chief jeweller, a wonderful man, who was said to have visited nearly all parts of the known world except London and Paris. I found him with one workman, very busy, but not doing much; and he was very civil, although manifestly labouring under the fear that I had come to ask for a "_viaticum_." I did not. I went back to eat a hearty breakfast at the London Tavern, where I found the mistress gracious, and the handmaid very chatty and coquettish. From her talk I half concluded that I was believed to be an Englishman who travelled like a journeyman for the humour of the thing: the English are so odd, and at the London Tavern they had not been without experience of English ways. My display of the gold pieces must have been communicated to them overnight, by one of the townspeople who heard me tell the magistrate at what inn I was staying. From Perleberg to Keritz was eighteen miles. Upon the road I came up with a poor fellow limping pitiably. He had a flat wooden box upon his back, being a tramping glazier; and he made snail's progress, having his left thigh swollen by much walking. I loitered with h
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