en, bulky men, compressed old women with
baked faces, and comical squat dogs, kept the villages partly alive. We
observed one young urchin sitting on a stone opposite a dog, and he and
the dog took alternate bites off a platter-shaped cake, big enough to
require both his hands to hold it. Whether the dog ever snapped more
than his share was matter of speculation to us. It was an education for
him in good manners, and when we were sitting at dinner we wished our
companions had enjoyed it. They fed with their heads in their plates,
splashed and clattered jaws, without paying us any hospitable attention
whatever, so that we had the dish of Lazarus. They were perfectly kind,
notwithstanding, and allowed a portion of my great map of Germany to
lie spread over their knees in the diligence, whilst Temple and I pored
along the lines of the rivers. One would thrust his square-nailed finger
to the name of a city and pronounce it; one gave us lessons in the
expression of the vowels, with the softening of three of them, which
seemed like a regulation drill movement for taking an egg into the
mouth, and showing repentance of the act. 'Sarkeld,' we exclaimed
mutually, and they made a galloping motion of their hands, pointing
beyond the hills. Sarkeld was to the right, Sarkeld to the left, as the
road wound on. Sarkeld was straight in front of us when the conductor,
according to directions he had received, requested us to alight and push
through this endless fir-forest up a hilly branch road, and away his
hand galloped beyond it, coming to a deep place, and then to grapes,
then to a tip-toe station, and under it lay Sarkeld. The pantomime was
not bad. We waved our hand to the diligence, and set out cheerfully,
with our bags at our backs, entering a gorge in the fir-covered hills
before sunset, after starting the proposition--Does the sun himself look
foreign in a foreign country?

'Yes, he does,' said Temple; and so I thought, but denied it, for by
the sun's favour I hoped to see my father that night, and hail Apollo
joyfully in the morning; a hope that grew with exercise of my limbs.
Beautiful cascades of dark bright water leaped down the gorge; we chased
an invisible animal. Suddenly one of us exclaimed, 'We 're in a German
forest'; and we remembered grim tales of these forests, their awful
castles, barons, knights, ladies, long-bearded dwarfs, gnomes and thin
people. I commenced a legend off-hand.

'No, no,' said Temple, as if cur