From out the myrtle bushes, by Rauschenwasser, I saw two hopeful youths appear ... singing charmingly the Rossinian lay of “Drink beer, pretty, pretty ’Liza!” These sounds I continued to hear when far in the distance, and after I had long lost sight of the amiable vocalists, as their horses, which appeared to be gifted with characters of extreme German deliberation, were spurred and lashed in a most excruciating style.  In no place is the skinning alive of horses carried to such an extent as in Goettingen; and often, when I beheld some lame and sweating hack, which, to earn the scraps of fodder which maintained his wretched life, was obliged to endure the torment of some roaring blade, or draw a whole wagon-load of students, I reflected:  “Unfortunate beast!  Most certainly thy first ancestors, in some horse-paradise, did eat of forbidden oats.”

* * * * *

Beyond Noerten the sun flashed high in heaven.  His intentions toward me were evidently good, and he warmed my brain until all the unripe thoughts which it contained came to full growth.  The pleasant Sun Tavern in Noerten is not to be despised, either; I stopped there and found dinner ready.  All the dishes were excellent and suited me far better than the wearisome, academical courses of saltless, leathery dried fish and cabbage rechauffe, which were served to me in Goettingen.  After I had somewhat appeased my appetite, I remarked in the same room of the tavern a gentle man and two ladies, who were about to depart.  The cavalier was clad entirely in green; he even had on a pair of green spectacles which cast a verdigris tinge upon his copper-red nose.  The gentleman’s general appearance was like what we may presume King Nebuchadnezzar’s to have been in his later years, when, according to tradition, he ate nothing but salad, like a beast of the forest.  The Green One requested me to recommend him to a hotel in Goettingen, and I advised him, when there, to inquire of the first convenient student for the Hotel de Bruebach.  One lady was evidently his wife—­an altogether extensively constructed dame, gifted with a rubicund square mile of countenance, with dimples in her cheeks which looked like spittoons for cupids.  A copious double chin appeared below, like an imperfect continuation of the face, while her high-piled bosom, which was defended by stiff points of lace and a many-cornered collar, as if by turrets and bastions, reminded one of a fortress.  Still, it is by no means certain that this fortress would have resisted an ass laden with gold, any more than did that of which Philip of Macedon spoke.  The other lady, her sister, seemed her extreme antitype.  If the one were descended from Pharaoh’s fat kine, the other was as certainly derived from the lean.  Her face was but a mouth between two ears; her breast was as inconsolably comfortless and dreary as the Lueneburger heath; while her absolutely dried-up figure reminded one of a charity table for