“Wherever we go, we must buy a dialogue book,” suggests my little bride elect, “and I will learn some phrases before we start.”
“As for that, the Anglo-Saxon tongue takes one pretty well round the world,” reply I, with a feeling of complacent British swagger, putting my hands in my breeches pockets.
“Do you fancy the Rhine?” says Elizabeth, with a rather timid suggestion; “I know it is the fashion to run it down nowadays, and call it a cocktail river; but—but—after all it cannot be so very contemptible, or Byron could not have said such noble things about it.”
“The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,”
say I, spouting. “After all, that proves nothing, for Byron could have made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
“The Rhine will not do then?” says she, resignedly, suppressing a sigh.
“On the contrary, it will do admirably: it is a cocktail river, and I do not care who says it is not,” reply I, with illiberal positiveness; “but everybody should be able to say so from their own experience, and not from hearsay: the Rhine let it be, by all means.”