Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/149

 The language of hieroglyphics succeeded where all other means had failed, and we returned to St. Petersburg with the humiliating knowledge that our standard of civilisation was now reduced to the level of ancient Nineveh.

At Warsaw they made a short stay, putting up at the Hotel d'Angleterre:—

Our passage is inhabited by a tall and very friendly greyhound, who walks in whenever the door is opened for a second or two, and who for some time threatened to make the labour of the servant, who was bringing water for a bath, of no effect, by drinking up the water as fast as it was brought.

From Warsaw they went on to Leipzig, and thence to Giessen, where they arrived on September 4th.

We moved on to Giessen, and put up at the "Rappe Hotel" for the night, and ordered an early breakfast of an obliging waiter who talked English. "Coffee!" he exclaimed delightedly, catching at the word as if it were a really original idea. "Ah, coffee—very nice—and eggs? Ham with your eggs? Very nice—" "If we can have it broiled," I said. "Boiled?" the waiter repeated, with an incredulous smile. "No, not boiled," I explained—"broiled." The waiter put aside this distinction as trivial, "Yes, yes, ham," he repeated, reverting to his favourite idea. "Yes, ham," I said, "but how cooked?" "Yes, yes, how cooked," the waiter replied, with the careless air of one who assents to a proposition more from good nature than from a real conviction of its truth.

Sept 5th.—At midday we reached Ems, after a journey eventless, but through a very interesting country—valleys