The taste for most of the good
things of this world has to be acquired. I can remember the time
when I did not like beer.
So I mixed up everything on the plate all together - made a sort of
salad of it, in fact - and ate it with a spoon. A more disagreeable
dish I have never tasted since the days when I used to do Willie
Evans's "dags," by walking twice through a sewer, and was
subsequently, on returning home, promptly put to bed, and made to
eat brimstone and treacle.
I felt very sad after dinner. All the things I have done in my life
that I should not have done recurred to me with painful vividness.
(There seemed to be a goodish number of them, too.) I thought of
all the disappointments and reverses I had experienced during my
career; of all the injustice that I had suffered, and of all the
unkind things that had been said and done to me. I thought of all
the people I had known who were now dead, and whom I should never
see again, of all the girls that I had loved, who were now married
to other fellows, while I did not even know their present addresses.
I pondered upon our earthly existence, upon how hollow, false, and
transient it is, and how full of sorrow. I mused upon the
wickedness of the world and of everybody in it, and the general
cussedness of all things.
I thought how foolish it was for B. and myself to be wasting our
time, gadding about Europe in this silly way. What earthly
enjoyment was there in travelling - being jolted about in stuffy
trains, and overcharged at uncomfortable hotels?
B. was cheerful and frivolously inclined at the beginning of our
walk (we were strolling down the Maximilian Strasse, after dinner);
but as I talked to him, I was glad to notice that he gradually grew
more serious and subdued. He is not really bad, you know, only
thoughtless.
B. bought some cigars and offered me one. I did not want to smoke.
Smoking seemed to me, just then, a foolish waste of time and money.
As I said to B.:
"In a few more years, perhaps before this very month is gone, we
shall be lying in the silent tomb, with the worms feeding on us. Of
what advantage will it be to us then that we smoked these cigars to-
day?"
B. said:
"Well, the advantage it will be to me now is, that if you have a
cigar in your mouth I shan't get quite so much of your chatty
conversation. Take one, for my sake."
To humour him, I lit up.
I do not admire the German cigar. B. says that when you consider
they only cost a penny, you cannot grumble. But what I say is, that
when you consider they are dear at six a half-penny, you can
grumble. Well boiled, they might serve for greens; but as smoking
material they are not worth the match with which you light them,
especially not if the match be a German one. The German match is
quite a high art work. It has a yellow head and a magenta or green
stem, and can certainly lay claim to being the handsomest match in
Europe.
We smoked a good many penny cigars during our stay in Germany, and
that we were none the worse for doing so I consider as proof of our
splendid physique and constitution. I think the German cigar test
might, with reason, be adopted by life insurance offices. - Question:
"Are you at present, and have you always been, of robust health?"
Answer: "I have smoked a German cigar, and still live." Life
accepted.
Towards three o'clock we worked our way round to the station, and
began looking for our train. We hunted all over the place, but
could not find it anywhere. The central station at Munich is an
enormous building, and a perfect maze of passages and halls and
corridors. It is much easier to lose oneself in it, than to find
anything in it one may happen to want. Together and separately B.
and I lost ourselves and each other some twenty-four times. For
about half an hour we seemed to be doing nothing else but rushing up
and down the station looking for each other, suddenly finding each
other, and saying, "Why, where the dickens have you been? I have
been hunting for you everywhere. Don't go away like that," and then
immediately losing each other again.
And what was so extraordinary about the matter was that every time,
after losing each other, we invariably met again - when we did meet -
outside the door of the third-class refreshment room.
We came at length to regard the door of the third-class refreshment
room as "home," and to feel a thrill of joy when, in the course of
our weary wanderings through far-off waiting-rooms and lost-luggage
bureaus and lamp depots, we saw its old familiar handle shining in
the distance, and knew that there, beside it, we should find our
loved and lost one.
When any very long time elapsed without our coming across it, we
would go up to one of the officials, and ask to be directed to it.
"Please can you tell me," we would say, "the nearest way to the door
of the third-class refreshment room?"
When three o'clock came, and still we had not found the 3.10 train,
we became quite anxious about the poor thing, and made inquiries
concerning it.
"The 3.10 train to Ober-Ammergau," they said. "Oh, we've not
thought about that yet."
"Haven't thought about it!" we exclaimed indignantly.
