on an average every year.  We were fully twenty-four hours (from the evening of the 10th to the 11th of August) amid these sandbanks, fighting a westerly gale, which hindered our progress so seriously that we only reached the mouth of the Thames on the evening of the 12th of August.  My wife had, up to that point, been so nervously affected by the innumerable danger signals, consisting chiefly of small guardships painted bright red and provided with bells on account of the fog, that she could not close her eyes, day or night, for the excitement of watching for them and pointing them out to the sailors.  I, on the contrary, found these heralds of human proximity and deliverance so consoling that, despite Minna’s reproaches, I indulged in a long refreshing sleep.  Now that we were anchored in the mouth of the Thames, waiting for daybreak, I found myself in the best of spirits; I dressed, washed, and even shaved myself up on deck near the mast, while Minna and the whole exhausted crew were wrapped in deep slumber.  And with deepening interest I watched the growing signs of life in this famous estuary.  Our desire for a complete release from our detested confinement led us, after we had sailed a little way up, to hasten our arrival in London by going on board a passing steamer at Gravesend.  As we neared the capital, our astonishment steadily increased at the number of ships of all sorts that filled the river, the houses, the streets, the famous docks, and other maritime constructions which lined the banks.  When at last we reached London Bridge, this incredibly crowded centre of the greatest city in the world, and set foot on land after our terrible three weeks’ voyage, a pleasurable sensation of giddiness overcame us as our legs carried us staggering through the deafening uproar.  Robber seemed to be similarly affected, for he whisked round the corners like a mad thing, and threatened to get lost every other minute.  But we soon sought safety in a cab, which took us, on our captain’s recommendation, to the Horseshoe Tavern, near the Tower, and here we had to make our plans for the conquest of this giant metropolis.

The neighbourhood in which we found ourselves was such that we decided to leave it with all possible haste.  A very friendly little hunchbacked Jew from Hamburg suggested better quarters in the West End, and I remember vividly our drive there, in one of the tiny narrow cabs then in use, the journey lasting fully an hour.  They were built to carry two people, who had to sit facing each other, and we therefore had to lay our big dog crosswise from window to window.  The sights we saw from our whimsical nook surpassed anything we had imagined, and we arrived at our boarding-house in Old Compton Street agreeably stimulated by the life and the overwhelming size of the great city.  Although at the age of twelve I had made what I supposed to be a translation of a monologue from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, I found my knowledge of English