ilosophy!

The man I had hired at Copenhagen advised me to go round about twenty
miles to avoid passing the Little Belt excepting by a ferry, as the wind
was contrary. But the gentlemen overruled his arguments, which we were
all very sorry for afterwards, when we found ourselves becalmed on the
Little Belt ten hours, tacking about without ceasing, to gain the shore.

An oversight likewise made the passage appear much more tedious, nay,
almost insupportable. When I went on board at the Great Belt, I had
provided refreshments in case of detention, which remaining untouched I
thought not then any such precaution necessary for the second passage,
misled by the epithet of "little," though I have since been informed that
it is frequently the longest. This mistake occasioned much vexation; for
the child, at last, began to cry so bitterly for bread, that fancy
conjured up before me the wretched Ugolino, with his famished children;
and I, literally speaking, enveloped myself in sympathetic horrors,
augmented by every fear my babe shed, from which I could not escape till
we landed, and a luncheon of bread and basin of milk routed the spectres
of fancy.

I then supped with my companions, with whom I was soon after to part for
ever--always a most melancholy death-like idea--a sort of separation of
soul; for all the regret which follows those from whom fate separates us
seems to be something torn from ourselves. These were strangers I
remember; yet when there is any originality in a countenance, it takes
its place in our memory, and we are sorry to lose an acquaintance the
moment he begins to interest us, through picked up on the highway. There
was, in fact, a degree of intelligence, and still more sensibility, in
the features and conversation of one of the gentlemen, that made me
regret the loss of his society during the rest of the journey; for he was
compelled to travel post, by his desire to reach his estate before the
arrival of the French.

This was a comfortable inn, as were several others I stopped at; but the
heavy sandy roads were very fatiguing, after the fine ones we had lately
skimmed over both in Sweden and Denmark. The country resembled the most
open part of England--laid out for corn rather than grazing. It was
pleasant, yet there was little in the prospects to awaken curiosity, by
displaying the peculiar characteristics of a new country, which had so
frequently stole me from myself in Norway. We often pas