Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/387

 idea of putting his hand in his pocket and taking out a few gold pieces, which he showed to the landlord on his open palm. The landlord smiled still more, made a little bow, and took himself away.

After a while the waiter whom we had first seen set the table in fine style. Now we sat down at the hospitable board. Thereupon the waiter lifted the silver cover from the soup tureen he had brought in, with a mighty swing, pointed a forefinger of his other hand into the open dish, and said slowly and emphatically, seeming to give a dab to the contents of the tureen with each syllable, “ox—tail—soup.” Then he looked at us triumphantly and stepped behind Kinkel's chair. This was my first lesson in English. Judging from the similarity with German words, we could well imagine what the words “ox” and “soup” signified, but the meaning of the word “tail” became clear to us only when we saw the contents of the tureen on our plates. We found the soup delicious, and thus our English vocabulary had been enriched by a valuable substantive. The landlord had been sensible enough not to confine himself to beefsteak and sherry in the execution of the desire we expressed, but to give us a complete dinner, to which, after our long sea voyage and the Sunday walk in the Scottish capital, we did full justice.

By all sorts of ingenious gestures we made our landlord understand that we wanted paper and ink and pens, and that we would then wish to go to bed. All our requests were understood and complied with. We now added postscripts to the letters, which we had written to our families during the last days of our voyage on the “Little Anna,” giving further news of our happy arrival on British soil. Kinkel invited his wife to meet him in Paris, and then wrote a long letter to my parents, in which he said to them many kind things about me.