GOSSIPS, HUNDSHEIM
when she hesitatingly yielded to our importunities for a sitting, and appeared, after a brief absence, in black silk frock, booted and gloved, and with parasol in hand, our pencils were too loyal to her peasant charms to attempt the caricature. No visitors of our nationalities had left any impressions on the minds of the simple folk here, but the mention of England and America was, as it always is in Hungary, our best introduction. The active sympathies of these two countries with the people struggling for freedom in ’48 are still gratefully remembered by the whole nation, and the traditions of that sympathy are handed down loyally to the rising generation. At the post-office, where we went to buy our first Hungarian stamps, the gossiping old postmaster and his wife—characters not unfamiliar in the rural offices in other countries—were so overwhelmed by the extent of our requirements and the number of our letters that the wheels of official machinery refused to work at all. After they had carefully read all the addresses, and had marvelled long at the range of our correspondence, we succeeded in communicating to their dazed senses the fact that we wanted to buy a stock of stamps of various denominations.
THE WATCH-TOWER, THEBEN
“What! so much money for stamps? Impossible!” protested the old man and his echoing wife. “You are already sending away florins’ and florins’ worth on these letters!”
“But we want a stock of stamps to keep for our convenient use,” we urged. “Yes, yes, you want to use them; but why don’t you buy them as you need them?” was the reply, as he shut the drawer under his elbow, apparently loath to part with any of its precious contents.
Arguments were useless, and we gave up the notion of securing a variety, and tempered our demand to a humble request for a few ten-kreutzer stamps for foreign postage.
“Ah, no!” he said. “I can’t let you have any ten-kreutzer stamps, for the sheets haven’t been broken into yet, and it is near the end of the month, when I make up my books, and I can’t have my accounts confused by selling ten-kreutzer stamps to any one.”