So passed the day, with no incident except the challenge of a gend’arme, who could read no part of my passport but the name “America,” in honor of which he made a stiff military salute and wished a pleasant journey. In the old, decaying village of Osterode, sunk deep among gypsum quarries in the valley of the Oder, I made a dinner of milk and black bread, and as it was late in the afternoon, pushed on to reach Herzberg, at the entrance of the Hartz. As the black and gusty sky deepened into night, I was joined by a traveling handwerker, who made the way shorter by his cheery conversation, half talk and half singing. We stopped at a little one-story inn, called, even in that unknown corner of the world, the “London House.” The peasants employed by the landlord, who was rich in possessing several acres of barren meadow land, had just collected for supper, and we sat down with them at the table. An immense wooden bowl, filled with steaming potatoes, was placed in the middle, and a choppin of beer set before each one. They used neither knife, fork nor plate, but took the potatoes in their fingers, and salted them from another dish with the same convenient appliances. I was civilized enough to ask for a plate and to call for tea instead of beer, at which these stout men and maidens were greatly amused. There was considerable doubt at first whether the last article could be had, but the _frau_, after some search, produced a package of the kind called Russian tea, which is brought overland to Russia through Tartary, and retains the delicate aroma of the shrub in a much greater degree than that which reaches us by a long sea-voyage from Canton. At least, it seemed to me, in my exhausted state, nothing short of nectar, and after some talk with the good people of the inn, who, enjoying only the merest necessities of life gave me a new lesson in the requisites of happiness, I went to bed in the loft and slept till my companion, the handwerker, awoke me at breakfast-time.