y carpenters still lingered in the supper
room, smoking or singing choruses, or making partners of each other for
mad waltzes round the table to the music of their tongues.

Longing for bed, I was obliged to wait until the landlord was at leisure
to attend to me. After I rose next morning, I waited for three hours
impatiently enough until the sleepy host had risen; for until I had
received my ticket back from him I was unable to get my passport and go
on. At length, however, I got out of the brick walls of Ludwigslust, and
marched forward under a clear sky on the way to Perleberg, my next stage,
distant about fifteen English miles.

Having passed through two dirty, ill-paved towns, and being in some
uncertainty about the road, I asked my way of a short, red-faced man who,
being himself bound for the frontier station, favoured me so far with his
company. He was a post-boy whose vocation was destroyed, but who was
nevertheless blessed with philosophy enough to recognise the merits of
the railway system, and to point out the posts marking the line between
Berlin and Hamburg, with the comment that "the world must move." It
seemed to be enough for him that he lived in the recollection of the
people on his old road-side, and that he could stop with me outside a
toll-gate, the first I had seen in Germany, sure of the production of a
bottle for a social dram, in which I cordially joined. Then presently we
came to a small newly-built village, the Prussian military station. A
sentinel standing silent and alone by his sentry box striped with the
Prussian colours, black and white, marked where the road crossed the
Prussian frontier. We passed unchallenged, and found dinner upon the
territory of the Black Eagle, in a very modest house of entertainment.

Travelling alone onward to Perleberg, I stopped once more for refreshment
at a melancholy, dirty place, having one common room, of which the chairs
and tables contained as much heavy timber as would build a house. I
wanted an hour's rest, for my knapsack had become a burden to me, and the
handles of the few tools I was obliged to carry dug themselves
relentlessly into my back. "White or brown beer?" asked the attendant.
Dolt that I was to answer Brown! They brought me a vile treacley
compound that I could not drink; whereas the Berlin white beer is a
famous effervescing liquor; so good, says a Berliner, that you cannot
distinguish it from champagne if you drink it rapidly