l I would cook for him when we got home. And then his
liniment grew peaceful and happy, and he sez gratefully:

"You're so calmin' to the nerves, Samantha, when you set out to be,
you're a perfect iodine."

I d'no really what he did mean, I guess it wuz anodyne, I keep a
bottle to home for nerves. But 'tennyrate in a few minutes he wuz
talkin' quite glib about home and the children and I felt richly
repaid for all my trouble. And with such little agreeable talk and
eppisodin' did I try to diversify the weariness of travel.

Josiah is a great case for Hamburg steaks, and he confided to me the
hope that we would git some here that would go even beyond any that I
had ever cooked and that would ensure him a future of this delicious
food. But we didn't see a sign on 'em in the city. He wuz bitterly
disappinted.

Hamburg is a free state, small, but I spoze feelin' quite big and
independent. It is ruled by a Senate of eighteen members, and a house
of Burgesses of one hundred and ninety-two members, and they make
their own laws and keep 'em, I spoze, the most on 'em, and get along
quite well and prosperous.

There is a beautiful little lake in the heart of the city on which
small gaily painted boats dart to and fro carrying passengers like
omnibuses in city streets. Beautiful bridges cross the Alster, a
tributary of the Danube, and tall handsome houses line the streets.

They are great cases for flowers there in Hamburg. You meet flower
shops and flower sellers on every side. But they are not the beautiful
flower girls we read of in stories. They are mostly old wimmen, too
old for hard work. They wear short skirts, comin' just below their
knees, black bodices, long black stockings with gay colored garters,
wooden shoes, broad-brimmed hats, saucer shaped, trimmed with stiff
black cambric bows.

We wuz only there for one day, but long enough to drive through the
principal streets and see some of the principal sights and git rested
some, and then we sailed away for Home Sweet Home, via London,
England.

We didn't stay very long in London, but long enough so we could look
about us some. Robert Strong had considerable bizness to attend to
there, which, of course, devoured his time, and Dorothy had a number
of young girl friends who lived there, and she wanted to go and see
them, and she entertained 'em at our tarven: sweet, fresh-complected
young girls; they wuz almost as pretty as Dorothy herself, but not
quite.

Arvil