I might have readily forgotten the new comer--indeed, I had almost done so ere I closed the window--had not his memory been preserved for me by a process peculiar to small and unfrequented inns,--a species of absorption by which the traveller of higher pretensions invariably draws in all the stray articles of comfort scattered through the establishment. First my table took flight, and in its place a small and ricketty thing of white deal had arrived; next followed a dressing-glass; then waddled forth a fat, unwieldy, old arm-chair, that seemed by its difficulty of removal to have strong objections to locomotion; and lastly, a chest of drawers set out on its travels, but so stoutly did it resist, that it was not captured without the loss of two legs, while every drawer was thrown out upon the floor, to the manifest detriment of the waiter’s shins and ankles. These “distraints” I bore well and equably, and it was only a summary demand to surrender a little sofa on which I lay that at length roused me from my apathy, and I positively demurred, asking, I suppose, querulously enough, who it was that required the whole accommodation of the inn, and could spare nothing for another traveller? An “English Prince” was the answer; at which I could not help laughing, well knowing that the title is tolerably indiscriminate in its application. Indeed, I once heard Colonel Sibthorp called such. It is all very well to affect indifference and apathy, to pretend that you care nothing who or what your neighbour in an inn may be. This is very practicable where his identity takes no more corporeal shape than No. 42 or 53 in some great overgrown hôtel. But imagine yourself in some small secluded spot, some little nook, of which you had half fancied you were the first discoverer--conceiving yourself a kind of new Pérouse; fancy, then, when in the very ecstasy of your adventure, the arrival of a travelling carriage and four, with a belted Courier and a bearded Valet; not only are your visions routed, but your own identity begins to dissolve away with them. You are neither a hero to yourself nor to “mine host.” His best smiles, his deepest reverence, are now for the last comer, for whose accommodation a general tribute is levied. Do what you will, say what you will, there is no remaining deaf to the incessant turmoil that bespeaks the great man’s wants. There is a perpetual hurry-scurry to seek this and fetch that; soda-water--tea--champagne--a fire--hot water--are continually echoing along the corridor, and “the Prince” seems like some vast “Maelstrom” that all the larder and the cellar contain can never satiate. Such, certainly, the least exacting of men appear when under the auspices of a Courier and the host of a small inn. The poverty of the establishment makes the commonest requirements seem the demand of a Sybarite indulgence, and every-day wants are luxuries where cleanliness is the highest of virtues.