Directly we got to Dover every feature of our arrival helped us to feel at home. There was a batch of large good-natured looking policemen, whose function I cannot explain, but it was agreeable to see them again. There was no order or organisation of any kind to protect and annoy you. The authorities had thoughtfully painted the letters of the alphabet on the platform where the luggage was deposited, and you were supposed to find your own trunks in front of your own letter. I, full of German ideas still, waited a weary time near my letter. "You'll never get them that way," said an English friend. "You'd much better go to the end of the platform and pick them out as you can." So I went, and found a huge pile of luggage pitched anyhow, anywhere, and picked out my own, seized a porter, made him shoulder things, and followed him at risk to life and limb. All the luggage leaving Dover was being tumbled about at our feet, and when we tried to escape it we fell over what had arrived. Porters were rushing to and fro with trunks, just as disturbed ants do with eggs, but in this case it was the German passengers who felt disturbed. They were not used to such ways. When they had to duck under a rope to reach the waiting train they grew quite angry, and said they did not think much of the British Empire. But there was worse to come for us all. Breakfast on board had been early and a fog had delayed our arrival. We were all hungry and streamed into the refreshment room. We filled it. "What is there to eat?" said one. The young woman with the hauteur and detachment of her calling did not speak, but just glanced at a glass dish under a glass cover. There were two stale looking ham sandwiches. "Well," says my Englishman, when I tell him this true story--"we are not a greedy nation." "But how about the trunks that were not under their right letters?" I ask. "Who in his senses wants to find trunks under letters?" says he. "The proper place for trunks is the end of the platform. Then you can tear out of the train and find yours first and get off quickly. When you are all dragooned and drilled an ass comes off as well as anyone else. You place a premium on stupidity." "But that is an advantage to the ass," I say; "and in a civilised State why should the ass not have as good a chance as anyone else?" The argument that ensues is familiar, exhausting, and interminable. "An ass is an ass wherever he lives," says someone at last; and everyone is delighted to have a proposition put forward to which he can honestly agree. CHAPTER XXIV PEASANT LIFE