Like the birds from its tranquil shore;
They return at springtime, kind and true:
May, like them, you return once more!
Dear Mrs. Jakson, I remain your humble and thankful servant,
Harriet.
Poor thing! when she bade me good-by she began to shed tears, and I had to be almost stern with her to stop their flow. "Tell your husband," she said, "that there's a little creature in Denmark that you've made very happy, that'll never forget you," and she was gone. In about ten minutes a tap at the door; there was Harriet again, with a big paper of grapes and a deprecating face. "Excuse me, ma'am, but they were only one mark and a half a pound, and they 're much better than you'd get them in the hotel. Oh, I'll not lose my train, ma'am; I've plenty of time." And with another kiss on my hand she ran out of the room. Faithful creature! I shall never see her again in this world, but I shall remember her with gratitude as long as I live. Surely nowhere except in Norway and Denmark could it have happened to a person to find in the sudden exigency of the moment two such devoted servants as Katrina and Harriet; and that they should have both been rhymers was a doubling up of coincidences truly droll.
Paris is as detestable as ever,—literally a howling and waste place! Of all the yells and shrieks that ever made air discordant, surely the cries of Paris are the loudest and worst. My room looks on the street; and I should say that at least three different Indian tribes in distress and one in drunken hilarity were wailing and shouting under my windows all the time! As for the fiacre-men,—how like fiasco, fiacre looks written!—they drive as if their souls' salvation depended on just grazing the wheel of every vehicle they pass. When two of them yell out at once, as they go by each other, it is enough to deafen one.
III.
Dear People,—I couldn't give you a better illustration of what happens to you in foreign countries when you pin your faith on people who are said to "speak English here," than by giving you the tale of how I went from Copenhagen to Lubeck. To begin with, I explained to the porter of the König von Denmark Hotel, who is one of the English-speaking attachés of that very good hotel, that I wished, in going to Lubeck, to avoid water as much as possible. I endeavored to convey to him that my horror of it was in fact hydrophobic, and that I could go miles out of my way to escape it. He understood me perfectly, he said; and he explained to me a fine route by which I was to cross island after island by rail, have only short intervals of water between, and come comfortably to Lubeck by eight in the evening, provided I would leave Copenhagen at 6.45 in the morning, which I was only too happy to do for the sake of escaping a long steamboat journey. So I arranged everything to that end; explained to the one waiter who spoke English that I must have breakfast on the table at 5.40, as I was to leave the house at 6.15. He understood perfectly, he said. (I also commissioned him to buy a pound of grapes for my lunch-basket; the relevancy of this will appear later.) I then carefully explained to the worthy old lady who had promised for a small consideration to take me to Munich, that she must be on the spot at six, with her luggage; and that she was on no account to bring anything to lift in her hands, because my own hand-luggage would be all she could well handle. Then I asked for my bill, that it might be settled the night beforehand, to have nothing on hand in the morning but to get off. This was doubly important, as the landlord had promised to change my Danish money into German money for me,—the Danish bankers having no German money. They so hate Germany that they consider it a disgrace, I believe, even to handle marks and pfennigs. The clerk, who also "speaks English," said he understood me perfectly; so I went upstairs cheerful and at ease in my mind. In half an hour my bill arrived; and I sent down by the waiter, who spoke "a leetle" English, five hundred Danish crowns to pay my bill, and have four hundred crowns returned to me in marks. Waited one hour, no money; rang, same waiter appeared.
"Where is my money?"