I enjoyed greatly my visit to St. Petersburg, and my return home through Stockholm and Copenhagen. Travelling one day in Sweden, the post-house where I was set down was an inn, although without a sign-board. The landlady was a bright, cheery, jolly woman. She could not speak a word of English, nor I a word of Dannemora Swedish. I was very thirsty and hungry, and wanted something to eat. How was I to communicate my wishes to the landlady? I resorted, as I often did, to the universal language of the pencil. I took out my sketch-book, and in a few minutes I made a drawing of a table with a dish of smoking meat upon it, a bottle and a glass, a knife and fork, a loaf, a salt-cellar, and a corkscrew. She looked at the drawing and gave a hearty laugh. She nodded pleasantly, showing that she clearly understood what I wanted. She asked me for the sketch, and went into the back garden to show it to her husband, who inspected it with great delight. I went out and looked about the place, which was very picturesque. After a short time the landlady came to the door and beckoned me in, and I found spread out on the table everything that I desired,--a broiled chicken, smoking hot from the gridiron, a bottle of capital home-brewed ale, and all the _et ceteras_ of an excellent repast. I made use of my pencil in many other ways. I always found that a sketch was as useful as a sentence. Besides, it generally created a sympathy between me and my entertainers. As the Bridgewater Foundry had been so fortunate as to earn for itself a considerable reputation for mechanical contrivances, the workshops were always busy. They were crowded with machine tools in full action, and exhibited to all comers their effectiveness in the most satisfactory manner. Every facility was afforded to those who desired to see them at work; and every machine and machine tool that was turned out became in the hands of its employers the progenitor of a numerous family. Indeed, on many occasions I had the gratification of seeing my mechanical notions adopted by rival or competitive machine constructors, often without acknowledgment; though, notwithstanding this point of honor, there was room enough for all. Though the parent features were easily recognizable, I esteemed such plagiarisms as a sort of left-handed compliment to their author. I also regarded them as a proof that I had hit the mark in so arranging my mechanical combinations as to cause their general adoption; and many of them remain unaltered to this day.