dl-The Old Cook-More Praise of England-The Dinner-A Journey-Companion-Famous Files-A Mechaniker's Earnings-Krusch

e morning dew yet glistening on thatch, and flowers, and branches. Cherry-trees form a continuous avenue up the hill beyond, and here and there huts of fir branches were built against a stem, to shelter the guard set to watch the ripened fr

he came plunging down the bank, gave me a cheerful "Gut' Morgen," seized my hand, and said, "I have been waiting long to see you. I talk gladly with such as you, and could not l

nance fell; he pressed my hand tighter, and cried, with a tone of disappointment, "Is it true?

ape. The burden of his discourse was "a good time coming," mingled, however, with a dread that when it came i

a. Why should a man grumble who has a house, and food, and land to cultivate? Only carry your enjoyments ho

in the o

r the brow of the hill, I saw him still in the same spot, gazing

d; never ate meat or drank beer; lived mostly on potatoes, and was, nevertheless, strong and healthy, and by no means inclined to quarrel with hi

orld knows that peasants think everybody better off than themselves"-and down came his hammer with crashing force on a lump of gr

f the women in Caernarvonshire; and yet it is nothing more than friendly conversation. To a stranger the language sounds as unmusical as it is difficult; and to learn it-you may as well hope to m

meinde. Mi

zow

hnitz. Okr

aaz. Kr

B?hm. Kr

e natives and their ways. For my own part, my Czechish vocabulary being foolishly short, I could not ask the villagers why they pr

rightly gilt, and mounted on a stone pedestal. Nearly all have been set up by private individuals to commemorate some family event: By the married Pair, you may read o

ose, for the stove was hot and the day sultry. She sliced cucumbers with an instrument resembling a plane, sprinkled the slices with salt, then squeezed them well between her hands, and exposed them to the sun in a shallow basket, one of f

honour that an Englishman had once slept a night in her house, "although he had to look into a book for all he w

in of potato-dumplings, and cucumber salad, and ate her portion apart with undoubting appetite. An old beggar crept in and stood hat in hand imploring charity for God's sake! Sh

ntervals a pale mass of sandstone on a distant hill-slope puts on the appearance of an enormous antediluvian fossil. I was pacing briskly along, enjoying a fresh bree

d started topics enough to last all the rest of the day. The stranger notified himself as a Mechaniker from Neudeck, going to Prague on business for his master. He, too, had much to say in praise of England. He had once worked with

e Mechaniker, "is not more pleasure than to file with an English file. How it bites, and lasts so long! Even an old one that has been thrown away for months is better than

lled workman in machinery-one held in high consideration by his master. Ordinary workmen get one-third less; he was, therefore, well con

exhibit the Czechish style, which shuns height and dispenses with an upper story. Then we went on at an after-dinner pace to Rentsch, where, striking into the old road to Prague, now but little frequented, we shortened the distance by four or five miles. All Czechis

d a slouching gait, and the women, wearing coarse, baggy cotton stockings, and flimsy cotton gowns, and shabby kerchiefs on their heads, were unmistakable d

here and there with ragged grass, bestrewn with rough logs of timber, ornamented at one side by a row of saplings, unhappy looking, as if pining for the rank of trees; on the other by a statue of St. John Nepomuk. Very lifeless! No merry noise of childre

will say, of the fitness of things. Look at the wagon-a basket on wheels-the wheelbarrow, the rakes, huddled away anyhow, as if they were just as well in one place as another. Perhaps they are. Quaint old Fuller says of the Devonshire cotters of his day, "Vain it is for any to search their houses, being a work beneath the pains of a sheriff, and above the power of any constable." You will, perhaps, say

y. I was content with my day's walk, about twenty-five miles; but the Mechaniker, impatient to arrive at Prague, resolved to travel two hours farther; so, after he had fini