Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/87

Rh dressed and disencumbered of its now brittle encasement. This is effected by pasing it repeatedly under a wooden chopper, hinged at one end, and fixed in a frame. This bruises and breaks the fibre. I have watched the process and have thought that a good many of us mortals go through this final process in the course of life, to render us flexible and to break our stubborn wills.

After a stay of nearly a month at Vienna, waiting to receive money from England, we visited Prague, and drove to Dresden, which we reached on October 4, 1842, and there spent the winter of 1842-3. My father wrote: "Those who intend to reside in Dresden or, in fact, any seat of royalty, should pay a visit first to S. James's before leaving England;  for, without a previous



presentation at Court, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get introduced at Foreign Courts. This unfortunately creates a division in the English colony, where those who have been presented at home, and who are accordingly hoffähig in Germany and Austria, look down on such as have not. However absurd this may be, it is true, as we experienced at Dresden. Neither my wife nor I had cared to be presented in England, consequently we were subjected to the mortification of being regarded as unworthy to be called on by such of the colony as had. Thus Sir T——, Bart., whose father had been a coach-builder, strutted past us without notice. So also was it with Sir N——, who had toiled for thirty years over a ledger in the Treasury, and was rewarded with a title. The only things really cheap in Dresden