erman. If I fail to understand, he
tries Latin and intersperses his remarks with Greek and Hebrew. So my
great difficulty is first of all to find out what language he thinks he
is speaking in.

'Yesterday we were sitting, smoking and drinking, in the village
"Wirthshaus" among the natives of the place, the Pfarrer addressing me
in Latin, the villagers staring at his learning in adoration and
astonishment, and laughing at my attempts at German. The landlord came
up to me when I arrived and sent in a bottle of wine for me, refusing
to be paid for it, for he said that the natives of Interlaken fleeced
the English; but when Habkern was for once honoured by the {16}
presence of one, the people were not going to treat him in the same way.

'It is curious how the Pfarrer goes and sits and drinks and gossips in
the "Wirthshaus," even on Sunday, I think. Last Sunday they had a
country dance, and very curious and pretty was the scene--the
old-fashioned wooden room--the odd national dress of the women--the
curiously cut brown clothes of the men--the thick boots--the fiddlers
raised above the rest--the quaint urn with its inscriptions above--the
gaping crowd of villagers. Then the church is strange--very rude and
simple, all whitewashed. The women sit on one side, the men on the
other. They stand to pray and hear the text, and sit to sing and hear
the sermon. The organ and font are placed at one end. The elders
stand below the organ, the Pfarrer is lost in the far distance, right
up in a big pulpit. The "Predigt" or sermon is everything. They have
one written prayer before and one after the "Predigt." The people
never say "Amen" or anything--only sing. They sing so slowly that,
although I had only been with the Pfarrer three days, I could almost
sing and look out the words in the dictionary at the same time! I talk
German with every one who will talk with me. So well did I spin yarns
when I had been in the country three or four days, that with a mixture
of Latin and German I managed to make a German use strong language at
some of my tales, which he was pleased to think were not exactly true.
Reflecting on the situation afterwards, I remembered that I had told
him, among other things, that I had walked nearly fifty "stunden" {17}
in a day. His language was awful. I found afterwards that "stunde"
was not, as I had supposed, an English "mile," but an English "hour."
But I keep on talking. I have come to the conclusi