On turning out, and then turning over, a mass of old papers which had lain packed up in a heavy mail-trunk for a period of more than forty years, I came the other day upon a little bundle of documents in legal German manuscript, the sight of which set me, old as I am, a laughing involuntarily, and brought back in full force to my memory the circumstances which I am about briefly to relate. A strange thing is this memory, by the way, and strangely moved by trifles to the exercise of its marvellous power. For more than thirty years--for the average period that suffices to change the generation of man upon earth--had this preposterous adventure, and everything connected with it, lain dormant in some sealed-up cavity of my brain, when the bare sight of the little bundle of small-sized German foolscap, with its ragged edges and blotted official pages, has set the whole paltry drama, with all its dignified performers, in motion before the retina of my mind's eye with all the reality of the actual occurrence. It was in the spring or early summer of the year 1806, that, in the capacity of companion and interpreter to a young nobleman who was making the tour of Germany, I was travelling on the high-road from Magdeburg to Berlin. We rolled along in a stout English carriage drawn by German post-horses, and having left Magdeburg after an early breakfast, stopped at a small neat town, some eighteen or twenty miles on our route--my patron intending to remain there for an hour or two, in the hope of being rejoined by a friend who had promised to overtake us. He ordered refreshment, and sat down and partook of it, while I, not choosing to participate, seated myself in the recess of an old-fashioned window, and kept my eyes fixed upon our travelling-carriage, from which the wearied horses had been removed, and which stood but a few paces from where I sat. At the end of an hour, my patron having satisfied his appetite, declined to wait any longer, and proposed that we should proceed on our journey. It was my office to discharge all accounts, and of course to check any attempt at peculation which might be made. I summoned the innkeeper, whose just demand was soon paid, and ordered the horses to be put to. This was done in a few minutes, and the stable-man, as we walked out to the carriage, came forward and presented his little bill. As I ran it hastily over before paying it, I saw that the rascal had charged for services which he had not rendered. With the design of making the most of a chance-customer, he had put down in his account a charge for greasing the wheels of the carriage. Now, as I had never taken my eyes from the carriage during the whole period of our stay, I could not be deceived in the conviction that this was a fraud. True, it was the merest trifle in the world; but the fellow who wanted to exact it was the model of an ugly, impudent, and barefaced rogue, and therefore I resolved not to pay him. Throwing him the money, minus the attempted