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 fade and go off too. Both always appear to me like infants who die at the mother’s breast. The air of the earth is too heavy for them; they aspire to a more ethereal atmosphere.—But I must show you our gold-mines; for if you could naturalize the Alpine clover, and the milk-vetch, and the Alpine plantain, and the Phillandrium mutellina, and the Apargia aurea, and the Pimpinella alba, you would not want our cheeses; for you might make the same sorts yourselves. What is your country, sir?”

“The same as your friend Wildenow’s?”

“What! and this, then, I suppose,” pointing to my breast, “is the iron” She could not finish for surprise. “O, welcome—doubly welcome, Knight of the Iron Cross! No, indeed! Now you must come along to my father! He would never forgive me if I left you to sleep up here. Do me the favour to accompany me home: all that our house affords shall be at your service. My father is a warm admirer of your king and your nation, and tells me about them every Sunday, when he returns from church, where the sexton reads the newspaper to them all under the great walnut-tree.”

Who could refuse such a girl any thing? I cheerfully complied with her wish, and away we went. We walked arm in arm. She no longer regarded me as a stranger; I seemed to her to be an old acquaintance of her father’s. She