had been placed upon the desk of the chief
magistrate, the most diligent man in his office,
who seeing no description of my person in
the passport, set to work with the zest of an
artist upon the depiction of my features.
Examining each feature minutely with a
candle, he put down the results of his
researches, and then finally read off his
work to me with this note at the bottom
—"The little finger of his left hand is
crooked."

The hostess of the London Tavern, when
I got back to my quarters, must have heard
about my wealth. That pleasant little maiden
lady told me all about her house, and how it
had been named afresh after the King of
Prussia slept there on his way to London,
where he was to act as sponsor to the Prince
of Wales. I, who had been turned away from
the doors of the humblest inns, was flattered
and courted by a landlady who had
entertained His Majesty of Prussia. The neatest
of chambermaids conducted me to an elegant
bedchamber—"her own room," the little
old maid had said as I left her—and
there I slept upon the couch sacred to her
maiden meditations, among hangings white
as snow.

The next morning I went out into Perleberg,
a ricketty old place, full of rats and
legends. There is a colossal figure in the
market-place of an armed knight, eighteen or
twenty feet high, gazing eternally into the
fruit baskets below. He has his head
uncovered, and his hand upon his sword, and he
is made of stone, but who he is nobody seemed
to know; I was only told that the statue
would turn any one to stone who fixed his
eyes upon it in intense gaze for a sufficiently
long time. I visited the chief jeweller, a
wonderful man, who was said to have visited
nearly all parts of the known world except
London and Paris. I found him with one
workman, very busy, but not doing much;
and he was very civil, although manifestly
labouring under the fear that I had come to
ask for a "viaticum." I did not. I went
back to eat a hearty breakfast at the London
Tavern, where I found the mistress gracious,
and the handmaid very chatty and coquettish.
From her talk I half concluded that I was
believed to be an Englishman who travelled
like a journeyman for the humour of the
thing: the English are so odd, but at the
London Tavern they had not been without
experience of English ways. My display of
the gold pieces must have been communicated
to them overnight, by one of the townspeople
who heard me tell the magistrate at what Inn
I was staying

From Perleberg to Keritz was eighteen
miles. Upon the road I came up with a poor
fellow limping pitiably. He had a flat wooden
box upon his back, being a tramping glazier,
and he made snail's progress, having his left
thigh swollen by much walking. I loitered
with him as long as my time allowed, and
then dashed on to recover the lost ground.
Passing at a great pace a neat road-side inn,
singing the while, a jolly red face blazed out
upon me from the lattice window. "Ei da!
You are merry. Whither so fast?"—"To
Berlin."—"Wait an instant and I'm with
you." Two odd figures tumbled almost at
the end of the instant out of the house door.
One a burly man with a red face and a large
moustache, the other a chalky young man
with a pair of Wellington boots slung round
his neck. They were both native Prussians
on the way from Hamburgh to Berlin, having
come through Magdeburg, travelling, they
declared, at the rate of about six-and-twenty
English miles a day. These Prussians will
talk; but at whatever rate my friends might
have travelled, they were nearly dead beat.
They had sent on their knapsacks by the
waggon, finding them unmercifully heavy.
The stout traveller had a white sack over his
shoulders, his trousers tucked up to his knees,
and his Wellington boots cut down into
ancle-jacks to ease his chafed shins,
that were already dotted with hectic red spots from
over-exertion. His young friend carried his
best Wellingtons about his neck, and wore a
pair of cracked boots, through which I could
see the colour, in some places of his dark blue
socks, in other places of his dark red flesh.
Both were lamed by the same cause, inflammation
of the front of the leg, in which part
I also had begun to feel some smartings.

We got on merrily, in spite of our legs,
and overtook two very young travellers,
whom I recognised as the flutterers before
the presence of the magistrate at Perleberg.
One proved to be a bookbinder, the other a
wood-turner. They were fresh upon their
travels, and their clean white blouses, and the
arrangements of their knapsacks, and the
little neatnesses and comforts here and there
about them, showed that they had not yet
travelled many days' march from a mother's
care. Then we toiled on, until our elder
friend grew worse and worse about his feet,
laughing and joking himself out of pain as he
was able. Finally, he could go no farther, and
we waited until we could send him forward
in a passing cart.

He being dispatched, we travelled on, I
and my friend with the boot-necklace, till we
met a little crowd of men in blouses, little
queer caps, knapsacks, and ragged beards, all
carrying sticks. They were travelling boys
like ourselves, bound from Berlin to
Hamburgh. "Halloo!" they cried. "Halloo!"
we answered, shouting in unison as we
approached each other. When we met, a
little friendly skirmish with our sticks
was the first act of greeting. A storm of
questions and replies then followed. We
all knew each other in a few minutes,
carpenters, turners, glovers, not a jeweller
among them but myself. We parted soon, for
time was precious. "Love to Berlin," cried
one of them back to us. "My compliments