ut for which he would be
Heaven knows how many thousand miles off, in some wonderful place, where
the wages would enable him to retire in less than a twelvemonth; and
even Boots, while depositing your Wellingtons before the fire, has
unburdened his sorrows and his hopes, and asks your advice, 'if he
shouldn't become a soldier?' When this hour arrives, the house is your
own. Let what will happen, _your_ fire burns brightly in your bedroom;
let who will come, _your_ dinner is cared for to a miracle. The
newspaper, coveted by a dozen and eagerly asked for, is laid by for your
reading; you are, then, in the poets words--

'Liber, honoratus, pulcher--Rex denique Regum';

and let me tell you, there are worse sovereignties.

Apply this to the 'Koenig von Preussen,' and wonder not if I found myself
its inhabitant for three weeks afterwards.

CHAPTER XXX. THE PARK

In somewhat less than a fortnight's time I had made a bowing
acquaintance with some half-dozen good subjects of Hesse, and formed
a chatting intimacy with some three or four frequenters of the table
d'hote, with whom I occasionally strolled out of an afternoon into the
Park, to drink coffee, and listen to the military band that played
there every evening. The quiet uniformity of the life pleased and never
wearied me; for happily--or unhappily, as some would deem it--mine
is one of those tame and commonplace natures which need not costly
amusements nor expensive tastes to occupy it. I enjoyed the society of
agreeable people with a gusto few possess; I can also put up with the
association with those of a different stamp, feeling sensibly how much
more I am on a level with them, and how little pretension I have to find
myself among the others. Fortunately, too, I have no sympathy with
the pleasures which wealth alone commands--it was a taste denied me.
I neither affect to undervalue their importance, nor sneer at their
object; I simply confess that the faculty which renders them desirable
was by some accident omitted from my nature, and I never yet felt the
smallness of my fortune a source of regret.

There is no such happiness, to my notion, as that which enables a man to
be above the dependence on others for his pleasures and amusements, to
have the sources of enjoyment in his own mind, and to feel that his
own thoughts and his own reflections are his best wealth. There is no
selfishness in this; far from it. The stores thus laid by make a man a
bette