on
suffered considerably. As to the wine, it passed away like water
spilled upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But there
was another enemy pressing us sore, over and above hunger. We had
walked upwards of thirty English miles, and my companion especially
could scarcely keep his eyes open,--a circumstance which was not slow
in attracting the attention of our now obliging hostess, and for which
she hastened to provide. Some trusses of good clean straw were brought
into the room and spread upon the floor. Over these was laid a sort of
mattress, and the youngster, dressed as he was, cast his knapsack down
for a pillow, and threw himself on the couch thus prepared for him. In
five minutes he was just as happy as if he had rested on his own bed at
Schandau.

Meanwhile sundry persons, all of them young men, entered the tap-room,
and visions of wagoners snoring on the floor beside me began again to
haunt my imagination; when, to my great relief, I ascertained that
these were "the miller's men," who, having eaten their supper with the
female members of the family, would withdraw to their nests in the
cock-loft. And truly this affair of the domestics' supper was curious
enough. Heaven knows what the mess might be, which, being brought
piping hot from the oven, was planted down in a brown stew-pan, right
in the centre of one of the tables; but the appetites of the twelve
persons who forthwith gathered round it, spoon in hand, appeared
excellent. It was quite edifying to behold the order, and silence, and
regularity with which, one after another, they shovelled their
respective portions into their mouths; and how patiently they endured
the intense heat, which, judging from the hissing of the stew, must
have accompanied each ladleful. Finally, the dish being emptied, they
rose with one accord, and departed, the young men to their mattresses,
or, it may be, to their occupations about the mill,--the young women to
fulfil what remained of their daily tasks.

While this was going on, the landlord and I were keeping up an animated
conversation, of which I remember nothing more than that it turned
chiefly upon the state of his own family and affairs, and tended to
impress me with becoming notions of his dignity. Indeed, I may state,
once for all, that the landlord of a German inn, whether it be an hotel
in a capital, or like this at Marchovides, a beer-shop in a remote
village, is in his own eyes a person of very consid