We Dine.—A Curious Dish.—“A Feeling of Sadness Comes O’er Me.”—The German Cigar.—The Handsomest Match in Europe.—“How Easy ’tis for Friends to Drift Apart,” especially in a place like Munich Railway Station.—The Victim of Fate.—A Faithful Bradshaw.—Among the Mountains.—Prince and Pauper¹.—A Modern Romance.—Arrival at Oberau.—Wise and Foolish Pilgrims.—An Interesting Drive.—Ettal and its Monastery².—We Reach the Goal of our Pilgrimage.  
At one o’clock we turned into a restaurant for dinner.  The Germans themselves always dine in the middle of the day, and a very substantial meal they make of it.  At the hotels frequented by tourists table d’hôte is, during the season, fixed³ for about six or seven, but this is only done to meet the views of foreign customers.
 
I mention that we had dinner, not because I think that the information will prove exciting to the reader, but because I wish to warn my countrymen, travelling in Germany, against undue⁴ indulgence in Liptauer cheese.
 
I am fond of cheese, and of trying new varieties of cheese; so that when I looked down the cheese department of the bill of fare, and came across “liptauer garnit,” an article of diet I had never before heard of, I determined⁵ to sample it.
 
It was not a tempting⁶-looking cheese.  It was an unhealthy, sad-looking cheese.  It looked like a cheese that had seen trouble.  In appearance it resembled putty more than anything else.  It even tasted like putty—at least, like I should imagine putty would taste.  To this hour I am not positive that it was not putty.  The garnishing⁷ was even more remarkable⁸ than the cheese.  All the way round the plate were piled articles that I had never before seen at a dinner, and that I do not ever want to see there again.  There was a little heap of split-peas, three or four remarkably⁹ small potatoes—at least, I suppose they were potatoes; if not, they were pea-nuts boiled soft,—some caraway-seeds, a very young-looking fish, apparently¹⁰ of the stickleback breed, and some red paint.  It was quite a little dinner all to itself.
 
What the red paint was for, I could not understand.  B. thought that it was put there for suicidal purposes.  His idea was that the customer, after eating all the other things in the plate, would wish he were dead, and that the restaurant people, knowing this, had thoughtfully provided him with red paint for one, so that he could poison himself off and get out of his misery¹¹.
 
I thought, after swallowing the first mouthful, that I would not eat any more of this cheese.  Then it occurred to me that it was a pity to waste it after having ordered it, and, besides, I might get to like it before I had finished.  The taste for most of the good things of this world has to be acquired.  I can remember the time when I did not like beer.
 
So I mixed up everything on the plate all together—made a sort of salad of it, in fact—and ate it with a spoon.  A more disagreeable dish I have never tasted since the days when I used to do Willie Evans’s “dags,” by walking twice through a sewer¹², and was subsequently, on returning home, promptly¹³ put to bed, and made to eat brimstone and treacle¹⁴.
 
I felt very sad after dinner.  All the things I have done in my life that I should not have done recurred¹⁵ to me with painful vividness.  (There seemed to be a goodish number of them, too.)  I thought of all the disappointments and reverses I had experienced during my career; of all the injustice¹⁶ that I had suffered, and of all the unkind things that had been said and done to me.  I thought of all the people I had known who were now dead, and whom I should never see again, of all the girls that I had loved, who were now married to other fellows, while I did not even know their present addresses.  I pondered upon our earthly existence, upon how hollow, false, and transient it is, and how full of sorrow.  I mused¹⁷ upon the wickedness of the world and of everybody in it, and the general cussedness of all things.
 
I thought how foolish it was for B. and myself to be wasting our time, gadding¹⁸ about Europe in this silly way.  What earthly enjoyment¹⁹ was there in travelling—being jolted²⁰ about in stuffy²¹ trains, and overcharged at uncomfortable hotels?
 
B. was cheerful and frivolously²² inclined at the beginning of our walk (we were strolling down the Maximilian Strasse, after dinner); but as I talked to him, I was glad to notice that he gradually grew more serious and subdued²³.  He is not really bad, you know, only thoughtless.
 
B. bought some cigars and offered me one.  I did not want to smoke.  Smoking seemed to me, just then, a foolish waste of time and money.  As I said to B.:
 
“In a few more years, perhaps before this very month is gone, we shall be lying in the silent tomb, with the worms feeding on us.  Of what advantage will it be to us then that we smoked these cigars to-day?”
 
B. said:
 
“Well, the advantage it will be to me now is, that if you have a cigar in your mouth I shan’t get quite so much of your chatty conversation.  Take one, for my sake.”
 
To humour him, I lit up.
 
I do not admire the German cigar.  B. says that when you consider they only cost a penny, you cannot grumble²⁴.  But what I say is, that when you consider they are dear at six a half-penny, you can grumble.  Well boiled, they might serve for greens; but as smoking material they are not worth the match with which you light them, especially not if the match be a German one.  The German match is quite a high art work.  It has a yellow head and a magenta²⁵ or green stem, and can certainly lay claim to being the handsomest match in Europe.
 
We smoked a good many penny cigars during our stay in Germany, and that we were none the worse for doing so I consider as proof of our splendid physique and constitution.  I think the German cigar test might, with reason, be adopted by life insurance offices.—Question: “Are you at present, and have you always been, of robust²⁶ health?”  Answer: “I have smoked a German cigar, and still live.”  Life accepted.
 
Towards three o’clock we worked our way round to the station, and began looking for our train.  We hunted all over the place, but could not find it anywhere.  The central station at Munich is an enormous building, and a perfect maze²⁷ of passages and halls and corridors.  It is much easier to lose oneself in it, than to find anything in it one may happen to want.  Together and separately B. and I lost ourselves and each other some twenty-four times.  For about half an hour we seemed to be doing nothing else but rushing up and down the station looking for each other, suddenly finding each other, and saying, “Why, where the dickens have you been?  I have been hunting for you everywhere.  Don’t go away like that,” and then immediately losing each other again.
 
And what was so extraordinary about the matter was that every time, after losing each other, we invariably met again—when we did meet—outside the door of the third-class refreshment²⁸ room.
 
We came at length to regard the door of the third-class refreshment room as “home,” and to feel a thrill of joy when, in the course of our weary wanderings through far-off waiting-rooms and lost-luggage bureaus and lamp depots²⁹, we saw its old familiar handle shining in the distance, and knew that there, beside it, we should find our loved and lost one.
 
When any very long time elapsed without our coming across it, we would go up to one of the officials, and ask to be directed to it.
 
“Please can you tell me,” we would say, “the nearest way to the door of the third-class refreshment room?”
 
When three o’clock came, and still we had not found the 3.10 train, we became quite anxious about the poor thing, and made inquiries³⁰ concerning it.
 
“The 3.10 train to Ober-Ammergau,” they said.  “Oh, we’ve not thought about that yet.”
 
“Haven’t thought about it!” we exclaimed indignantly.  “Well, do for heaven’s sake wake up a bit.  It is 3.5 now!”
 
“Yes,” they answered, “3.5 in the afternoon; the 3.10 is a night train.  Don’t you see it’s printed in thick type?  All the trains between six in the evening and six in the morning are printed in fat figures, and the day trains in thin.  You have got plenty of time.  Look around after supper.”
 
I do believe I am the most unfortunate man at a time-table that ever was born.  I do not think it can be stupidity; for if it were mere³¹ stupidity, I should occasionally, now and then when I was feeling well, not make a mistake.  It must be fate.
 
If there is one train out of forty that goes on “Saturdays only” to some place I want to get to, that is the train I select to travel by on a Friday.  On Saturday morning I get up at six, swallow a hasty breakfast, and rush off to catch a return train that goes on every day in the week “except Saturdays.”
 
I go to London, Brighton and South Coast Railway-stations and clamour for South-Eastern trains.  On Bank Holidays I forget it is Bank Holiday, and go and sit on draughty platforms for hours, waiting for trains that do not run on Bank Holidays.
 
To add to my misfortunes, I am the miserable³² possessor of a demon³³ time-table that I cannot get rid of, a Bradshaw for August, 1887.  Regularly, on the first of each month, I buy and bring home with me a new Bradshaw and a new A.B.C.  What becomes of them after the second of the month, I do not know.  After the second of the month, I never see either of them again.  What their fate is, I can only guess.  In their place is left, to mislead me, this wretched old 1887 corpse³⁴.
 
For three years I have been trying to escape from it, but it will not leave me.
 
I have thrown it out of the window, and it has fallen on people’s heads, and those people have picked it up and smoothed it out, and brought it back to the house, and members of my family—“friends” they call themselves—people of my own flesh and blood—have thanked them and taken it in again!
 
I have kicked it into a dozen pieces, and kicked the pieces all the way downstairs and out into the garden, and persons—persons, mind you, who will not sew a button on the back of my shirt to save me from madness—have collected the pieces and stitched them carefully together, and made the book look as good as new, and put it back in my study!
 
It has acquired the secret of perpetual youth, has this time-table.  Other time-tables that I buy become dissipated-looking wrecks³⁵ in about a week.  This book looks as fresh and new and clean as it did on the day when it first lured³⁶ me into purchasing it.  There is nothing about its appearance to suggest to the casual observer that it is not this month’s Bradshaw.  Its evident aim and object in life is to deceive people into the idea that it is this month’s Bradshaw.
 
It is undermining my moral character, this book is.  It is responsible for at least ten per cent. of the bad language that I use every year.  It leads me into drink and gambling³⁷.  I am continually finding myself with some three or four hours to wait at dismal³⁸ provincial³⁹ railway stations.  I read all the advertisements on both platforms, and then I get wild and reckless, and plunge⁴⁰ into the railway hotel and play billiards⁴¹ with the landlord for threes of Scotch⁴².
 
I intend to have that Bradshaw put into my coffin⁴³ with me when I am buried, so that I can show it to the recording⁴⁴ angel and explain matters.  I expect to obtain a discount of at least five-and-twenty per cent. off my bill of crimes for that Bradshaw.
 
The 3.10 train in the morning was, of course, too late for us.  It would not get us to Ober-Ammergau until about 9 a.m.  There was a train leaving at 7.30 (I let B. find out this) by which we might reach the village some time during the night, if only we could get a conveyance⁴⁵ from Oberau, the nearest railway-station.  Accordingly, we telegraphed to Cook’s agent, who was at Ober-Ammergau (we all of us sneer⁴⁶ at Mr. Cook and Mr. Gaze, and such-like gentlemen, who kindly⁴⁷ conduct travellers that cannot conduct themselves properly, when we are at home; but I notice most of us appeal, on the quiet, to one or the other of them the moment we want to move abroad), to try and send a carriage to meet us by that train; and then went to an hotel, and turned into bed until it was time to start.
 
We had another grand railway-ride from Munich to Oberau.  We passed by the beautiful lake of Starnberg just as the sun was setting and gilding⁴⁸ with gold the little villages and pleasant villas⁴⁹ that lie around its shores.  It was in the lake of Starnberg, near the lordly pleasure-house that he had built for himself in that fair vale, that poor mad Ludwig, the late King of Bavaria, drowned himself.  Poor King!  Fate gave him everything calculated to make a man happy, excepting one thing, and that was the power of being happy.  F............