Personal Experiences. 
7 
which the collection is set up, a regular Wizard's Den. The comprehen- 
sive collection of Orchids and Palms belonging to these gentlemen like- 
wise deserves the most praiseworthy mention. 
28. Another friend I must not omit to mention : the mother »f Cap- 
tain Marryat. the novelist — also a general favourite in Germany— by 
whom my brother and I were several times invited to her pleasant and 
pretty country-place at Wimbledon and with whose family we spent 
the happiest of hours. 
29. As the preparations for the Niger Expedition, so unfortunate 
in its results, were being carried out at the same time as those of my 
brother’s, we, the Germans of both undertakings, used to chum together, 
and it is with the most painful emotion that I now recall the hours 
spent with Dr. Vogel and Rötscher of Freiburg, the mineralogist, when 
we gazed into the future full of hope and most flattering expectations, 
and had already met again in spirit for a mutual exchange of past ex- 
periences. Rötscher returned home, like both of us brothers, but poor 
Vogel lies covered beneath the damp swampy soil of the deadly Niger. 
bO. Ought I, finally, to amuse the indulgent reader perhaps with the 
many extremely ridiculous breaches of English etiquette over which I so 
often put my brother in a fix? Thus, when with innate German courtesy 
and chivalry after the most approved style, 1 greeted a lady next to whom 
I had sat at table the evening before and whom I met the following 
morning — she turned her head aside with an expression of contempt: 
according to English custom, the gentleman must never be the first to 
acknowledge a lady in the street. On another occasion a worthy and dis- 
tinguished individual called to me at table, “Mr. Richard, may I have 
the honour of drinking a glass with you?,’’ to which I, having already 
drunk sufficient and remembering the old nc quid nimis, replied “No, 
I thank you” whereby I unconsciously offered him so gross an affront 
that lie at once jumped up and measured me from top to toe, his eyes 
aglow with anger, when my brother managed to explain that I, of course, 
had not had the slightest intention whatsoever of insulting him, but had 
only answered him as any German would. Very often in the streets my 
badly pronounced broken English would cause the greatest embarrass- 
ment and draw the most ridiculous misunderstandings in its wake — but 
I let all this pass and am only quite sure that 1 had to pay honestly for 
l n y a ppren tieeshi p. 
