It occurs to me that, sprightly as I may think it to call Belgium Lilliput, the mystification might possibly become tiresome and inconvenient if persisted in throughout this narrative, beside becoming absolutely unnecessary. As for the village in question, I have a reason or two for not calling it by its right name.
About half-a-dozen years ago, my brother (Captain John Freshe, R.N.), his wife, and I had been wearily jogging all a summer's day in search of country lodgings for a few weeks in the immediate neighborhood of Brussels. Now nothing can be more difficult to find in that locality, except under certain conditions.
You can live at a village hotel, and pay a maximum price for minimum comfort.
You can, possibly, lodge in a public-house, where it will cost you dear, however little you pay.
Or you can, in some villages, hire empty rooms in an entirely empty house, and hire furniture from Brussels, and servants, if you have none, by the month.
This last alternative has the advantage of ennobling your position into a quasi-martyrdom, by, in a measure, compelling you to stay where you are, whether you like it or not.
Toward the end of that longest of the long days, we began to regard life and circumstance with the apathy of despair, and to cease to hope for anything further from them except dinner.
The capital of the kingdom of Lilliput appeared to be partially surrounded by a vast and melancholy campagna of turnips. These wilds, immeasurably spread, seemed lengthening as we went. Village after [{107}] village had we reached, and explored in vain. Judging by our feelings, I should say we had ransacked at least half-a-hundred of those rural colonies. Almost all these villages possessed at least six public-houses and two ponds. Some few had no ponds, but all had six public-houses. Rural, dusty, cracked public-houses; with frowzy gardens, with rotten, sloppy tables and benches; with beery gorillas playing at quoits and ninepins.
The names of none of these settlements seemed to us pronounceable by human beings, with the exception of two, which sounded like Diggum and Hittumontheback. But our city driver appeared to be acquainted with the Simian tongue, and was directed from village to village by the good-natured apes whom he interrogated.
About sunset we came to a larger and quite civilized place, with a French name, signifying "The Tadpoles"—the place I have described at the commencement of this narrative. Our dusty fly and dejected horse turned into the carriage entrance of the first little hotel we saw. It stood sideways to a picturesque little lake, with green shores. The carriage entrance went through the house. Beyond, we had caught sight of a paved yard or court, and of a vista of green leafiness that looked cool and inviting. We heard the noisy jangling of a barrel-organ playing a polka, and we found a performance going on in the court that absorbed the attention of the whole household. No one seemed to hear, or at least to heed, the sound of our wheels, but, when our vehicle fairly stopped in the paved yard, a fishy-eyed waiter came toward us, jauntily flipping time with his napkin. We begged him to get us dinner instantly.