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Under these circumstances I asserted my claim to the trade geschenk, and, having fulfilled all the conditions of a tramp unable to find work, received from the Guild twenty silver groschens, or two shillings. Leipsic was my natural destination, and thither I proceeded by railway, paying two dollars eight groschens for the transit in an open carriage.
I remember standing on a hillock crying as he was leaving for Berlin, and he took me in his arms and said I should also go to Berlin some day. So when I appeared he had to make the best of it." "Then you had nothing from your parents?" "Only a beautiful handwriting from my father which got me copying jobs for a few groschens and is now the joy of the printers.
I have set thee down as a mere vender of sausages, and lo! thou holdest tavern and eating-house; dispensing prandial portions of savoury delicacies in flesh and vegetable, at the charge of six silver groschens the meal. I beg a thousand pardons; and as a sincere mark of contrition, will consent to swallow thy dinners for a while.
Of this sum I may particularise the cost of the straw-litter and early cup of coffee at the outset of the journey, twopence; at Lübeck, where I lodged respectably for one night, the bill was two shillings; at Schönefeld, twopence halfpenny; a lodging, and board for two nights and a day at Schwerin in a “grand hotel,” but faring with the servants, cost one shilling and ninepence; at Ludwigslust, a comfortable bed after a grand supper with the carpenters at their house of call, was charged one shilling and sevenpence; and at Perleberg, where I lodged superbly, the cost was sixteen silver groschens, or a fraction over one shilling and sixpence.
Our ragged guide conducts us across a wooden bridge, up a road, hollowed out by nature, through the rocks, till suddenly we reach what resembles the mouth of a mine, across which a door is drawn. The sum of four groschens, or sixpence a head, applies a key to the lock of that door, and we are immediately introduced into the giant's dwelling.
I found no difficulty in tracing out a “restauration,” the proprietor of which readily undertook to furnish one principal meal per diem for seventeen silver groschens, that is, one shilling and eightpence halfpenny per week, paid in advance. Each dinner cost, therefore, a fraction less than threepence.
"Here are ten groschens;" mamma Betty took them out of her scanty purse with something of a sigh; "buy as much cake and whatever you like. Liseke tell Marie to make a pitcher of chocolate instantly. My little Hannah, you may set the table." "Oh, mamma, may I put on the pretty china cups and saucers?" Hannah pleaded, as Max and Liseke bounded out of the room. "Yes, but be careful, my dear."
But by seven, the clouds dispersed, and our linen being restored and packed in our knapsacks, we begged to have the bill. It amounted to no more, in spite of all the beer and schnaps of the previous evening, than one dollar and four groschens. Here, then, we were relieved altogether from the apprehensions under which, up to that moment, we had laboured.
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