Many pretty young girls dressed in this manner come to
Hamburgh to sell flowers, and take up their position in front of the
Exchange.
The 26th of April, the day appointed for my departure, arrived only
too speedily. To part is the unavoidable fate of the traveller; but
sometimes we part gladly, sometimes with regret. I need not write
many pages to describe my feelings at the parting in Hamburgh. I
was leaving behind me my last relations, my last friends. Now I was
going into the wide world, and among strangers.
At eight o'clock in the morning I left Altona, and proceeded by
railway to Kiel.
I noticed with pleasure that on this railway even the third-class
carriages were securely covered in, and furnished with glass
windows. In fact, they only differed from those of the first and
second class in being painted a different colour, and having the
seats uncushioned.
The whole distance of seventy miles was passed in three hours; a
rapid journey, but agreeable merely by its rapidity, for the whole
neighbourhood presents only widely-extended plains, turf-bogs and
moorlands, sandy places and heaths, interspersed with a little
meadow or arable land.
