ecessary rest, and we were off again, the blue star before us
growing gradually paler, and expanding and still growing whiter, till
with an uncontrollable dash, and a concussion, we are thrown within a few
feet of the broad incomparable daylight. With how much contempt of
candles did I look up at the noonday sun! The two lads, streaming with
perspiration, who had dragged us down the long incline, were made happy
by the payment we all gladly offered for their services. Then, as we
passed out of the mouth of the shaft, by a rude chamber cut out of the
rock, we were induced to pause and purchase from a family of miners who
reside there a little box of salt crystals, as a memento of our visit.
Truly we must have been among the gnomes, for when I had reached the inn
I spread the brilliant crystals I had brought home with me on my bedroom
window sill, and there they sparkled in the sun and twinkled rainbows,
changing and shifting their bright colours as though there were a living
imp at work within. But when I got up next morning and looked for my
crystals, in the place where each had stood, I found only a little slop
of brine. That fact may, I have no doubt, be accounted for by the
philosophers; but I prefer to think that it was something wondrous
strange, and that I fared marvellously like people of whom I had read in
German tales, how they received gifts from the good people who live in
the bowels of the earth, and what became of them. I have had my
experiences, and I do not choose to be sure whether those tales are
altogether founded upon fancy.

CHAPTER XXII.

CAUSE AND EFFECT.

One September evening we rode into Carlsruhe. We made our entry in a
crazy hackney cab behind a lazy horse that had been dragging us for a
long time with cheerless industry between a double file of trees, along a
road without a bend in it; a long, lanky, Quaker road, heavily
drab-coated with dust; a tight-rope of a road that comes from Manheim,
and is hooked on to the capital of Baden. Out of that _allee_ we were
dragged into the square-cut capital itself, which had evidently been
planned by the genius of a ruler--not a prince, but the wooden measure.
The horse stopped at the City of Pfortzheim, and as his decision on the
subject of our halting-place appeared to be irrevocable, we got out.

At the capital of a grand dukedom, except Weimar, it is better to sleep
(it is the only thing to be done there) and pass on; but it so happ