“I don’t know that,” cried Professor M, from the top of the table, as he looked up from the large china bowl in which he was busily engaged in brewing “May drink”; now emptying bottle after bottle of “Forster Traminer” into the vessel, then throwing in handsful of sugar, and lastly sprig after sprig of dried “woodruff,” with a tiny green orange or two to give it an extra flavour. “I don’t know that,” he repeated. “The English people are not so ceremonious as ours, but when I went over to the Manchester Exhibition of Art, I found them quite as civil to me. Besides, look at their public gardens; there the people are requested not to pluck the flowers, and here we say it is forbidden by fine to do so. Which is the politer of the two?”
“Ah! but you artists, Herr Professor,” urged one of the scientific teachers at the principal Eisenach school, “always delight in foreign works, but I have a theory that owing to the great prevalence of fogs in England—and I have seen a statement by Professor Faraday in our papers, that there are no less than 250 odd fogs in London every year,”—and the learned gentleman looked round to mark the astonishment produced upon those present: “I have a theory, I repeat, that such a climate, where a bit of blue sky is almost as great a rarity as a water-spout here, the people cannot possibly be as vivacious and affable as ours. You see the sulphurous acid present in the London atmosphere prevents the oxygen or vital gas,”—and the Professor crossed the tips of his two fore-fingers as he was about to enter into the chemico-physiological details of the subject, when fortunately for the company, the courteous Baron von H interposed by saying,
“But, Herr Professor, we are forgetting the ladies, and they didn’t come here to listen to one of your extremely clever scientific lectures, but to have a simple answer to a simple question—at least, so it strikes me, though I may be mistaken, Herr Professor,” and the Baron bowed his white head to the learned gentleman across the table.
“But who travel in the first-class carriages?” enquired Madame Steindorf, after a slight pause.
“We have a saying here,” said the good-tempered maker of the best microscopes in Europe, “that our first-class is kept only for Englishmen and madmen,” and he laughed as he said the words, but immediately added, “though you know, Madame, we all look upon you here as a German lady.
“Badinage apart, however, Herr Professor, do you really mean to say that you never saw any but English in them?” asked the elder lady.
“Well, I travel more than most people,” returned the gentleman, and I generally find them filled with gentlemen with whiskers as long as a fox brush, and each with the invariable red book in their hands. Once to be sure I did see a German, but he had the gout, and he had gone there to prevent the possibility of any person entering the carriage and treading on his toes.”
“And I,” said the Lieutenant von T, “once knew a real German who always travelled by rail that way.”
“It cannot be!” cried the others, laughing. “Was he a hermit or a hyphocondriac?” asked one of the party in a bantering tone.
“Neither,” answered the officer, “but I found out at last that he was one of the principal tragic actors at the Dresden Theatre, and always chose that class when travelling, so as to be able to rehearse his part in private on the way.”
“Very good,” cried the others, “if he had gone into the woods he couldn’t have had greater solitude.”
The information was enough for Madame Steindorf, so thanking the gentlemen for what she had learnt from them, the ladies rose from table, whereupon all the gentlemen present stood up and bowed to them as they curtseyed before leaving the room; while the young lieutenant flew to the door, and throwing it open, held it back as he said,
“A pleasant journey to you, Fraulein. Adieu, ladies, I bow to you.”
As soon as the couple had reached the gate-way of the hotel, Madame Steindorf said to her cousin,
“I have made up my mind, Helen, you shall travel first-class, and then no harm can befall you.”
TIMBROMANIE.
“Have you a blue Sardinian?” “I’ll give you a black Prussian for a Russian.” “I want a yellow Saxon.” Such is the incomprehensible jargon that frequently puzzles grave fathers of families at their own breakfast-tables, or startles the propriety of decorous matrons and maiden aunts in their after-dinner retirement with a circle of precocious youngsters. What, in the name of this present year of grace, does it all mean?
A magazine[1] on our writing-table endeavours to inform us. The numbers date from the commencement of the current year; they are very neatly printed, and ornamented by a frontispiece representing animated groups of all nations reading and writing letters and despatching tales, and otherwise encouraging good-fellowship and constant inter-communication. These journals are issued monthly, and the price is four shillings per annum. Each number of the periodical presents its subscribers with “an unobliterated foreign or colonial postage-stamp.”
So—the murder is out. The key to the whole is contained in this single announcement. These magazines are merely the representatives of a widely-spread mania for stamp-collecting; which, running through all classes of the community, even as did the lottery-fever or frank-mania of old times, has succeeded in elevating itself to the rank of a remunerative and respectable business; capable of being conducted alike by tradesmen in their shops and warehouses, or by private parties, who, wishing to increase their little means, can bargain with their customers through the medium of advertisements or letters.
The traffic in used and unused postage stamps of various colours and countries, for the purpose of forming collections and stocking albums, first commenced in Belgium, among the girls and boys at the numerous schools or pensions in that country. Their elders, amused at the outset by their earnestness and enthusiasm in so apparently- ↑ The “Stamp-Collector’s Magazine.”
