They brought the bottle over, and poured out a wineglassful, and
handed it to him, making signs that he should drink it off quickly.
"Ah!" said my friend to himself, as he took the glass and raised it
to the light, and winked at it wickedly, "this is some rare old
spirit peculiar to the district - some old heirloom kept specially
for the favoured guest."
And he held the glass aloft and made a speech, in which he wished
long life and many grand-children to the old couple, and a handsome
husband to the daughter, and prosperity to the whole village. They
could not understand him, he knew; but he thought there might be
that in his tones and gestures from which they would gather the
sense of what he was saying, and understand how kindly he felt
towards them all. When he had finished, he put his hand upon his
heart and smiled some more, and then tossed the liquor off at a
gulp.
Three seconds later he discovered that it was a stringent and
trustworthy emetic that he had swallowed. His audience had mistaken
his signs of gratitude for efforts on his part to explain to them
that he was poisoned, or, at all events, was suffering from acute
and agonising indigestion, and had done what they could to comfort
him.
The drug that they had given him was not one of those common, cheap
medicines that lose their effect before they have been in the system
half-an-hour. He felt that it would be useless to begin another
supper then, even if he could get one, and so he went to bed a good
deal hungrier and a good deal less refreshed than when he arrived at
the inn.
Gratitude is undoubtedly a thing that should not be attempted by the
amateur pantomimist.
"Savoury" is another. B. and I very nearly did ourselves a serious
internal injury, trying to express it. We slaved like cab-horses at
it - for about five minutes, and succeeded in conveying to the mind
of the waiter that we wanted to have a game at dominoes.
Then, like a beam of sunlight to a man lost in some dark, winding
cave, came to me the reflection that I had in my pocket a German
conversation book.
How stupid of me not to have thought of it before. Here had we been
racking our brains and our bodies, trying to explain our wants to an
uneducated German, while, all the time, there lay to our hands a
book specially written and prepared to assist people out of the very
difficulty into which we had fallen - a book carefully compiled with
the express object of enabling English travellers who, like
ourselves, only spoke German in a dilettante fashion, to make their
modest requirements known throughout the Fatherland, and to get out
of the country alive and uninjured.
I hastily snatched the book from my pocket, and commenced to search
for dialogues dealing with the great food question. There were
none!
There were lengthy and passionate "Conversations with a laundress"
about articles that I blush to remember. Some twenty pages of the
volume were devoted to silly dialogues between an extraordinarily
patient shoemaker and one of the most irritating and
constitutionally dissatisfied customers that an unfortunate shop-
keeper could possibly be cursed with; a customer who, after
twaddling for about forty minutes, and trying on, apparently, every
pair of boots in the place, calmly walks out with:
"Ah! well, I shall not purchase anything to-day. Good-morning!"
The shopkeeper's reply, by-the-by, is not given. It probably took
the form of a boot-jack, accompanied by phrases deemed useless for
the purposes of the Christian tourist.
There was really something remarkable about the exhaustiveness of
this "conversation at the shoemaker's." I should think the book
must have been written by someone who suffered from corns. I could
have gone to a German shoemaker with this book and have talked the
man's head off.
Then there were two pages of watery chatter "on meeting a friend in
the street" - "Good-morning, sir (or madam)." "I wish you a merry
Christmas." "How is your mother?" As if a man who hardly knew
enough German to keep body and soul together, would want to go about
asking after the health of a foreign person's mother.
There were also "conversations in the railway carriage,"
conversations between travelling lunatics, apparently, and dialogues
"during the passage." "How do you feel now?" "Pretty well as yet;
but I cannot say how long it will last." "Oh, what waves! I now
feel very unwell and shall go below. Ask for a basin for me."
Imagine a person who felt like that wanting to know the German for
it.
At the end of the book were German proverbs and "Idiomatic Phrases,"
by which latter would appear to be meant in all languages, "phrases
for the use of idiots": - "A sparrow in the hand is better than a
pigeon on the roof." - "Time brings roses." - "The eagle does not
catch flies." - "One should not buy a cat in a sack," - as if there
were a large class of consumers who habitually did purchase their
cats in that way, thus enabling unscrupulous dealers to palm off
upon them an inferior cat, and whom it was accordingly necessary to
advise against the custom.
I skimmed through all this nonsense, but not a word could I discover
anywhere about a savoury omelette. Under the head of "Eating and
Drinking," I found a short vocabulary; but it was mainly concerned
with "raspberries" and "figs" and "medlars" (whatever they may be; I
never heard of them myself), and "chestnuts," and such like things
that a man hardly ever wants, even when he is in his own country.
There was plenty of oil and vinegar, and pepper and salt and mustard
in the list, but nothing to put them on.
