"Hardly so soon," said Werner, incredulously; "but time will show; from all that I have seen to-day, however, I think that I may fairly be sanguine."
At the public dinner table, they met several other Germans, among the rest a M. Von Buchenberg, who was seated next to Werner. He had been some weeks in Philadelphia, and purposed to visit the West, in order to survey several districts of land in the interest of some company or other, which already had a high-sounding name.
Von Buchenberg was not calculated, however, to give much encouragement to young Werner, for he abused the town soundly:
"The devil take this pious Philadelphia!" he exclaimed, indignantly; "they keep Sundays here so strictly, that one daren't so much as peel an apple, and yet all the while there they sit in their rocking-chairs, and calculate and plan, how they shall cheat each other next day. Heaven alone knows all the sects that crawl about here; there are Quakers and methodists, baptists, presbyterians, Millerites, Schulzerites, and Meierites, and Heaven knows what other names the fellows have! A shudder comes over me when I see the gang of thieves, cutting about in snuff-coloured suits."
"But the quakers are very plainly dressed," said Werner, taking up their cause; "indeed, 'tis a part of their religion to attire themselves in as quiet a manner as possible."
"Certainly," exclaimed Buchenberg; "but is it not strange that they should dress themselves up in a costume which everybody else has long since ceased to wear? The women, too, don't they just coquette in an alarming manner from under their black sun-bonnets of such a very pious cut! Well, then, the town itself!" continued the little man, who had just got into train, "this regularity at last becomes quite unbearable, and one dare not go abroad without a compass. If you inquire of any one in the streets which way you are to get to so-and-so, they don't answer you as reasonable people in other reasonable places would answer: 'You go down yonder, then take the first turning on the right or left as the case may be, go through that street, and then through such another street to the place you wish for;' oh lord, no!—if you ask a Philadelphian your way to ever so near a place, he says directly: 'Oh, you can't miss it; you go from here three streets south, then you turn westward till you come to the fourth, then again two streets south, and it's to the east the third house on the north side.' Now I'll appeal to anybody, isn't it enough to drive one wild?"
"Why, the points of the compass are easily remembered," said Helldorf, with a smile.
"It happened just the same with me," Werner declared.
"Easily remembered!—how so?" said Von Buchenberg, who now got rather warm on the subject. "Suppose that it's cloudy; and besides, since when, I should like to know, have all men learned astronomy? I know that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, but therewith, Basta, the rest does not concern me. If I want to know about it, I look into the almanack. But that isn't all: the other day I was sitting at this very table, and yonder, where that gentleman now sits, there sat a Quaker; in the middle of dinner he stretches out his arm, and points down the table, saying to me, 'Friend, may I trouble thee to reach me that north-west dish.' I sat, regularly nonplussed, and stared at him, whereupon he added, by way of explanation, that one to the south of the soup.' Why, it beats all; what, am I to go outside the door, and look after the quarters of the heavens, or else have a pocket compass always ready beside my plate?"
Helldorf and Werner laughed heartily, and the worthy Von Buchenberg was quite right, for the regular plan of the town in which all the streets run at right angles from north to south, and from east to west, has familiarized the inhabitants with this mode of expression. And it must be allowed that when the ear has once got accustomed to it, the most distant places may be thus admirably and accurately designated; but to the emigrant, unless indeed he happen to be a seaman, the thing sounds oddly.