Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/176

Rh barrows and building pyramids of gravel, and the while devouring black bread, I longed to transport them to those unopened storehouses of abundance which the Father of all has reserved in our untrodden "West" for the starved labourers of Europe.

But they were a merry little company, and, if no other, they have here a harvest of contentment and smiles.

letters came to-day! The delay was owing to the change in our plans. While we were every day going to the poste for them they were lying quietly at Wildbad. This interruption of communication with those who are bound up in the bundle of life with us, is one of the severest trials of a traveller. It was past eleven when we had finished reading them, and then I went to bed with mine under my pillow. I could as easily have gone to sleep if the hearts of those who wrote them had been throbbing there! "Blessings on him who invented sleep!" says Sancho. "Blessings on him," say I, "who invented that art that makes sleep sweet and awaking happy!"

good landlord, Leisring, is, in all exigencies, our "point d'appuibackbone [sic]." He has the broad, truth-telling German face, and a bonhomie quite his own. He is, in an humbler position, a Sir Roger de Coverly; and his family and numerous dependants seem