Four-and-twenty German words of essential service to a traveller in Germany constituted our knowledge of the language, and these were on paper transcribed by Miss Goodwin’s own hand.  In the gloom of the diligence, packed between Germans of a size that not even Tacitus had prepared me for, smoked over from all sides, it was a fascinating study.  Temple and I exchanged the paper half-hourly while the light lasted.  When that had fled, nothing was left us to combat the sensation that we were in the depths of a manure-bed, for the windows were closed, the tobacco-smoke thickened, the hides of animals wrapping our immense companions reeked; fire occasionally glowed in their pipe-bowls; they were silent, and gave out smoke and heat incessantly, like inanimate forces of nature.  I had most fantastic ideas,—­that I had taken root and ripened, and must expect my head to drop off at any instant:  that I was deep down, wedged in the solid mass of the earth.  But I need not repeat them:  they were accurately translated in imagination from my physical miseries.  The dim revival of light, when I had well-nigh ceased to hope for it, showed us all like malefactors imperfectly hanged, or drowned wretches in a cabin under water.  I had one Colossus bulging over my shoulder!  Temple was blotted out.  His face, emerging from beneath a block of curly bearskin, was like that of one frozen in wonderment.  Outside there was a melting snow on the higher hills; the clouds over them grew steel-blue.  We were going through a valley in a fir-forest.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Attacked my conscience on the cowardly side
Days when you lay on your back and the sky rained apples
Dogmatic arrogance of a just but ignorant man
He put no question to anybody
I can pay clever gentlemen for doing Greek for me
Irony instead of eloquence
Simplicity is the keenest weapon
The most dangerous word of all—­ja
There’s ne’er a worse off but there’s a better off
Vessel was conspiring to ruin our self-respect