sweetened
breads and small cakes and buns, all made by the baker in the castle,
who all day long does nothing but bake bread and pastry. They do not
serve hot milk with coffee, for which I blessed them from the bottom
of my soul, but they have little brown porcelain jugs which they fill
with cream so thick that you have to take it out with a spoon--it
won't pour,--and these they heat in ovens, and so serve you hot cream
for your coffee.

I call the gods from Olympus to testify to the quality of the nectar
this combination produces. Some of those little porcelain jugs are
going on their travels soon.

Meeting the various members of the Princess's charming family and
remembering their titles was not an ordeal at all--at least it was not
after it was over. They were quite like other people, except that
their manners were unusually good. There was to be a hunt that
morning--an amusing, luxurious sort of hunt quite in my line; one
where I could go in a carriage and see the animals caught, but where I
need not see them killed.

They were to hunt a mischievous little burrowing animal something like
our badger, which is as great a pest to Poland as the rabbits are to
Australia. They destroy the crops by eating their roots, so every
little while a hunt is organized to destroy them in large numbers. The
foresters had been sent out the night before to discover a favorite
haunt of theirs, and to fill up all the entrances to their burrows; so
all that we had to do was to drive to the scene of action.

It sounds simple enough, but I most solemnly assure you that it was
anything but a simple drive to one fresh from the asphalt of Paris,
for, like Jehu, they drove furiously.

Their horses are all wild, runaway beasts, and they drive them at an
uneven gallop resembling the gait of our fire-engine horses at home,
except that ours go more slowly. Sometimes the horses fall down when
they drive across country, as they stop only for stone walls or moats.
The carriages must be built of iron, for the front wheels drop a few
feet into a burrow every now and then, and at such times an unwary
American is liable to be pitched over the coachman's head. "Hold on
with both hands, shut your eyes, and keep your tongue from between
your teeth," would be my instructions to one about to "take a drive"
in Poland.

When we came to the place we found the foresters watching the
_dachshunde_. These I discovered to be long, flat, shallow dogs with
stu