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e and look out into what Whitman calls the huge and thoughtful night was a comely and sufficient occupation for the best part of me; and as for the rest, the inferior or domestic part, the fingers that might have been busy, the tongue that might have wagged, the superficial bit of brain in daily use for the planning of trivialities, how good it is that all that should often be idle. With an impatience that surprised him I refused the waiter's lamp. THE SECOND DAY LAUTERBACH AND VILM A ripe experience of German pillows in country places leads me to urge the intending traveller to be sure to take his own. The native pillows are mere bags, in which feathers may have been once. There is no substance in them at all. They are of a horrid flabbiness. And they have, of course, the common drawback of all public pillows, they are haunted by the nightmares of other people. A pillow, it is true, takes up a great deal of room in one's luggage, but in Ruegen however simply you dress you are better dressed than the others, so that you need take hardly any clothes. My hold-all, not a specially big one, really did hold all I wanted. The pillow filled one side of it, and my bathing things a great part of the other, and I was away eleven days; yet I am sure I was admirably clean the whole time, and I defy any one to say my garments were not both appropriate and irreproachable. Towards the end, it is true, Gertrud had to mend and brush a good deal, but those are two of the things she is there for; and it is infinitely better to be comfortable at night than, by leaving the pillow at home and bringing dresses in its place, be more impressive by day. And let no one visit Ruegen who is not of that meek and lowly character that would always prefer a good pillow to a diversity of raiment, and has no prejudices about its food. Having eased my conscience by these hints, which he will find invaluable, to the traveller, I can now go on to say that except for the pillow I would have had if I had not brought my own, for the coloured quilt, for the water to wash with brought in a very small coffee-pot, and for the breakfast which was as cold and repellent as in some moods some persons find the world, my experiences of the hotel were pleasing. It is true that I spent most of the day, as I shall presently relate, away from it, and it is also true that in the searching light of morning I saw much that had been hidden: scraps of paper lyi
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