(_From the Journal of a Travelling Economist_)
["On the other hand, however, we must avow some apprehension that
too minute attention to the possibility of cheap travel may render a
Continental tour a continual vexation and trouble. Plain living and
high thinking are, as Mr. Capper says, crying wants of these days;
but the latter condition is hardly to be attained by the self-imposed
necessity of striking a bargain with a landlord at the end of each
day's journey."--_Times._]
3 A.M.--Roused for the seventeenth time since midnight. Vow I will
never go to a fourth-class hotel again. Try to get a little sleep on
four chairs and a sliding bureau. Can't. Begin a letter to the _Times_
in my head.
4 A.M.--Get up and look for ink. Wake the others. Order five
breakfasts for seven of us, and explain to the landlord that we have
to catch the 4.57 cheap "omnibus" train for Farthingheim.
5 A.M.--Row with landlord about _bougies_. Will charge for them,
though we all went to bed in the dark. Explain this. He snaps his
fingers in my face, calls me "_Ein schwindlinder Beleidiger!_" refuses
to split the breakfasts, and seizes my portmanteau.
6 A.M.--Row still proceeding. Cheap train hopelessly missed. Look out
"_Beleidiger_" in a dictionary, and go upstairs and collect all the
_bougies_ in a carpet-bag. Pay bill in full, threaten to write to
_Bradshaw_, and go off, carrying all our own luggage to station,
followed by a jeering crowd.
7 A.M.--Sit down on it, and, with the assistance of a Phrase-book,
tell the crowd in German that "this isn't the sort of treatment a
parcel of foreigners would experience, under similar circumstances, in
the Tottenham Court Road."
Pelted. Make up our minds to catch the 7.43 (fast), if we can.
8 A.M.--Miss it. Nothing till the 12.3 express. Station-master refuses
to take our luggage before 11.58. Start with it to the town. Crowd
increasing.
9 A.M.--Visit the Dom. Descend into Shrine of St. Berthold. Very
interesting. Guide well-informed and intelligent. Give him nothing on
principle. Follows us to the Alten Schloss, shouting at the top of his
voice, and shaking his fists.
10 A.M.--Go all over the Schloss. Capital state of preservation.
Are shown the "reserved apartments." Refuse to give anything to the
_concierge_. He comes out after us with a horse-whip. The guide still
there shouting. We ask the way to tomb of Gustavus the Ninth. Crowd
follows us with brickbats.
11 A.M.--Get in by the assistance of a very civil commissionaire.
Striking. Are shown the boots of Charlemagne, and the spot where
Rudolph the Eighteenth was assassinated. Sign our names in visitors'
book. Give nobody anything. Commissionaire walks by our side, calling
us "Brigands!" Crowd enormous. Symptoms of riot commencing. Reach
station exhausted.
12 NOON.--Prepared to pay anything to escape. Take seven first-class
tickets (express), and are charged nineteen thalers for excess of
luggage. Get off in a storm of execration, after having to give up all
the _bougies_ to a gendarme. Start, threatening feebly to write to the
_Times_, have hysterics, and go to sleep.