for pieces of different denominations. Into a
pocket by itself he put the change so taken,
made up, as it was, of pieces of five francs,
francs, half-francs, quarter-francs, two sous,
sous, and centimes. On his road he studied
these; and when he got to the frontier of
Prussia, at Verviers, and whilst the custom-
house and eating-house formalities were in
progress, he found time to change the Belgian
money for Prussian coins. Now he found his
special pocket laden with thalers and silber
groschen. A day's steam took them to
Biberich, and when there, a third series of
coins were in request. The money of Frederick
William was converted into that of the Grand
Duke of Nassau, and this again, next day, was
changed into the gulden of Frankfort. At
Heidelberg (Bavaria) another set of moneys
were obtained for the often re-converted
produce of the sovereign; and only one day later,
the contents of the special pocket were from
the mint of the Duke of Baden. The very
cheap and excellent railway of that potentate
took them towards Basle, whence Schauffhausen
was within easy reach. Here, at the
Falls of the Rhine, the young numismatic
investigator changed his money into the
popular currency of Switzerland—batzen and
rappen. At each stage of this progress—at
each step in this practical illustration of
changing a pound upon the Rhine—the whole
contents of our friend's special pouch had been
turned out, and had been replaced by
innkeepers or other traders with the moneys of
the place where the transaction was
completed.

At Schauffhausen there were, as usual,
many Englishmen who, also as usual, had a
growl about the moneys and the hotels.
"I have been making myself practically
acquainted with the currency in a way of my
own," said Smith, junior.

"How so?" inquired one of the group of
travellers who were gossipping on the subject.

"I changed a sovereign," explained our
hero, "at Ostend; and then changed what I
got for it in Prussia; then changed that in
the Duchy of Nassau; and that again in the
free city of Frankfort; and so on repeated
the process in Baden and Bavaria—in fact, in
each separate jurisdiction through which we
passed."

"Practical man," said one.

"Capital notion," said another.

"Knowing dog," cried a third.

"Rather costly experiment, I fear,"
suggested a German, who spoke good English,
and had been one of the listeners. "Pray,
what shape has your pound assumed at last?"

"There it is," said Smith, as he suited the
action to the word, by emptying the contents
of his experimental pocket upon the table.

The exhibition looked very unpromising,
certainly. The glittering twenty-shilling
piece left at Ostend was now represented by
as ugly a collection of dirty, worn, counterfeit-
looking a jumble of silver and copper as ever
an Israelite counted out in the Jews' Lane, at
Frankfort.

"Count it up," said Smith the younger.

"Very good," said the German, and he
began.

"Five francs—ten—" said Smith.

"Stop," said the German, "Swiss francs
and French francs are different things—
different values. I will tell you the worth of
this heap." He went to work to tell them
over, and stated the result in batzen and
rappen.

"And how much is that worth in English
sterling coin?" asked a bystander.

"Just fourteen shillings and a penny
farthing," replied the German.

"What?" shrieked Smith.

"Fourteen shillings and a penny farthing
English," repeated the German.

And so it was, sure enough. Exactly five
shillings and tenpence three farthings was
the price of changing a sovereign between
Ostend and Schauffhausen. That was the
trifling toll taken by one section of the modern
robbers of the Rhine!

Expressions of surprise and indignation
were numerous upon this discovery, and
straightway each of the party began to
detail his own special grievance, with such
warmth that all were speaking and scarcely
one listened. The enormous charges for
luggage on the railways had raised the ire of one
traveller; a second groaned over the
payment of so much a package for insurance of
his portmanteau on board the steamer from
Cologne to Bonn, from Bonn to Coblentz, and so
on at every stage, till the costs for baggage were
almost greater than the fare of its owner.
A third vented his wrath upon the system of
charging every innocent English tourist salon
fare at the office of the Rhine steamer, the
said salon being a mere means of getting an
extortionate price which no German paid,
because everybody who paid second-class had
precisely the same cabin, the identical
accommodation and attendance, bestowed on the
victim of salon prices. Another growled out
that the dearest wines came from the same
bin with those of moderate price; another,
that an Englishman was charged one-third
more for everything than a Frenchman, and
twice as much as a German; but the grievance
of grievances came from a middle-aged country
squire, who was travelling with his wife and
a party of relations. They were six, and
the ladies, being unwilling to endure great
exertion, had made short stages, and thus
consumed three weeks on the way from
Ostend to Schauffhausen. "Three beds appear
in every bill, of course," growled the elderly
gentleman; "and in every bill one bed, I
find, involves two wax lights. I have reckoned
up, Sir," continued the matter-of-fact squire
most emphatically; "I have made an exact
calculation, Sir; and I find that on the Rhine,
between Cologne and Schauffhausen, in
eighteen days, it has taken just one hundred