from sleeping in my bed, another
played to me at dinner, and both expected payment for their services,
until the passport came, and brought me so much degradation as enabled me
to step, uncared for, into the common diligence, and travel on.

It has occurred to many other people to be mistaken in some such way, and
more than once it has occurred to people to make, on their own account, a
certain blunder, which Goldsmith has immortalized. This blunder, I, when I
ought to have known better, was incautious enough one day to commit....

In the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight, I was engaged in a
tour through the by-ways of Germany, on horseback. During this tour I
found myself, one summer morning, drawing near to the small town of
Maikommen, in the Palatinate. Though the dawn had been cloudless, the noon
threatened a storm, and already the big drops struck on the ground.
Respect for my baggage, which consisted of two shirts, three books, and a
pair of stockings, made me look for shelter.

The heavy drops fell faster as I cantered on at a brisk pace, and just at
the entrance of the little town rode through a pair of broad gates into
what I took for the inn-yard. Having stabled my horse in a remarkably
clean stall, I ran into the house, and got under cover, just as the first
peal of thunder rattled among the distant hills, and the rain had begun
plashing down in earnest. A pretty child sucked its thumbs in the passage.
"Quick, little puss," said I, shaking the raindrops from my hat, "tell
somebody to come to me!" "Mamma," the child cried, running in, "here is a
strange gentleman."

A pleasant-looking woman, with a homely German face, came out of an
adjoining room with the child clinging to her dress, and asked me what I
wanted?

"Some dinner," I answered "and a bottle of your best wine."

"Go and tell father to come," said the woman, looking at me curiously. A
tall, good-humored man, of about fifty, made his appearance, and I
repeated my desire in a tone somewhat more authoritative. He laughed, and
the wife laughed, and the child shrieked with laughter. But I had met with
many curiosities among the German innkeepers in remote country places,
and, being willing to let these people, see that, though an Englishman, I
was also good-humored, I joined their laugh, and then asked, with a grave
face, when the table-d'hote would be served?

"We keep no table-d'hote," replied the husband.

"Well," I said, "but not