p to this standard, I become extremely
silent. Oh, if we could meet some one we knew--even if it were some one
that we rather disliked than otherwise: some one that would laugh and
have as few wits as I, and be _young_.

But it is too early in the year for many people to be yet abroad, and,
so far, we have fallen upon no acquaintances. Once, indeed, at Antwerp,
I see in the distance a man whose figure bears a striking resemblance to
that of "Toothless Jack," and my heart leaps--detestable as I have
always thought Barbara's aspirant; but on coming nearer the likeness
disappears, and I relapse into depression.

Long ago, I had told my husband--on the first day I had made his
acquaintance indeed--that I had no conversation, and now he is proving
experimentally the truth of my confession. At home, our talk has always
been made up of allusions, half-words, petrified witticisms, that have
become part of our language. Each sentence would require a dictionary of
explanation to any strange hearer. _Now_, if I wish to be understood, I
must say my meaning in plain English, and very laborious I find it.

To-day, we are on our way from Cologne to Dresden; sixteen hours and a
half at a stretch. This of itself is enough to throw the equablest mind
off its balance.

We have a _coupe_ to ourselves. This is quite opposed to my wishes, nor
is it Sir Roger's doing, but Schmidt, the courier, knowing what is
seemly on those occasions--what he has always done for all former
freshly-wed couples whom he has escorted--secured it before we could
prevent him. As for me, it would have amused me to see the people come
in and out, to air my timid German in little remarks about the weather;
albeit I have thus early discovered that the German, which we have been
exhorted to talk among ourselves in the school-room, to perfect us in
that tongue, bears no very pronounced likeness to the language as talked
by the indigenous inhabitants. They _will_ talk so fast, and they never
say any thing in the least like Ollendorff.

_Sixteen hours and a half_ of a _tete-a-tete_ more complete and unbroken
than any we have yet enjoyed. All day I watch the endless, treeless,
hedgeless German flats fly past; the straight-lopped poplars, the spread
of tall green wheat, the blaze of rape-fields--the villages and towns,
with two-towered German churches, over and over, and over again. Oh, for
a hill, were it no bigger than a molehill! Oh, for a broad-armed English
oak!