This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
140
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF

town. Oh, ye divinities! how for the first four weeks did I wish myself back among the smoked-meating houses, the butchers' flesh-world, and the deviltries and the mock turtle-doves of Hammonia![1] I yearned heart and stomach. If the landlady of the Red Cow had not at last fallen in love with me, I should have died of longing.

Hail to thee, landlady of that Red Cow!

She was a little woman, very plump, with a very little round head. Red little cheeks, little blue eyes, roses and violets. Many an hour we sat side by side in the garden, and drank tea out of real Chinese porcelain cups, it was a beautiful garden, with three and four cornered beds symmetrically strewed with gold sand, cinnabar, and little shining shells. The trunks of the trees were prettily painted red and blue. Copper cages full of canary birds. The most expensive bulbous flowers in variegated and glazed pots. Yew trees charmingly cut into various obelisks, pyramids, vases, and animal forms. Yes, there was a green ox cut from yew, who looked at me jealously when I embraced the lovely landlady of the Red Cow!

Hail to thee, landlady of the Red Cow!

When my frow had covered the upper part of her head with Frisian gold-plates, defended her person with an armour of many-coloured stiff,

  1. Nach den Rauchfleischlichkeiten und nach den Mockturteltauben Hammonias.