`A sorrow's crown
of sorrow,' it murmured, `is remembering happier things.' I declared
the sentiment to be as untrue as was the quotation trite, and told my
soul that I looked keenly forward to the pleasure of writing, in
collaboration with it, that book of travel for which I had been so
sedulously amassing notes and photographs by the way.
This colloquy was held at a table in the Buffet. I was sorry, for my
soul's sake, to be sitting there. Britannia owns nothing more crudely
and inalienably Britannic than her Buffets. The barmaids are but
incarnations of her own self, thinly disguised. The stale buns and the
stale sponge-cakes must have been baked, one fancies, by her own heavy
hand. Of her everything is redolent. She it is that has cut the thick
stale sandwiches, bottled the bitter beer, brewed the unpalatable
coffee. Cold and hungry though I was, one sip of this coffee was one
sip too much for me. I would not mortify my body by drinking more of
it, although I had to mortify my soul by lingering over it till one of
the harassed waiters would pause to be paid for it. I was somewhat
comforted by the aspect of my fellow-travellers at the surrounding
tables. Dank, dishevelled, dismal, they seemed to be resenting as much
as I the return to the dear home-land.
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