86 STRAY -AW AYS 



negation is more assertive than most mountain scenery. 

 England does not know how to be thoroughly flat. 

 Sooner or later it undulates irresolutely but fatally, 

 and misses, in its efforts to be picturesque, the per- 

 fected distinction of Holland, with its enormous skies, 

 and horizons below which the arms of the windmills 

 sink at last like the sails of a ship at sea. All day long 

 we strove to the north, through the immeasurable 

 dulness of Germany, and it was past, ten o'clock when 

 the train raced into Hamburg, seeming to travel 

 along dark causeways with, on either side, uncertain 

 spaces of water, where the reflections of many lights 

 writhed slow and malign. This black, light-spangled 

 city, that we were hurrying to through the long 

 thunder of the bridge, was the capital of the kingdom 

 of cholera, and eyeing with disfavour the Elbe's oily 

 waves, we decided not to eat bread or drink coffee 

 till we were north of Altona. 



Of the two women who ground at the mill, which 

 had the better fate, she who was taken or she who was 

 left? I hold the latter, my cousin the former; and 

 though she was the one who was left, I now think 

 sometimes that she was right. This is an allegory, 

 but the facts follow. 



The official mind of Liverpool Street does not en- 

 courage half measures in the matter of the registration 

 of luggage. It says, unfalteringly as Oliver Cromwell, 

 " Hell or Connaught," Hamburg or Copenhagen. Our 

 plan of travel forced upon us the first of these alterna- 

 tives, and our baggage was booked to Hamburg. 

 Now we had been strictly charged by many authorities 

 that we should not leave our train — ^the through train 

 for Denmark — -at Hamburg, but it was certain that 

 the baggage must be claimed there. I was conscious 

 of great inward proficiency in the declension of German 

 adjectives, but could not feel this to be a moment for 



