idea would develop into something that would be more in the nature
of a history of Europe than a chapter in a tourist's diary, and I
determined not to waste my time upon it, until there arose a greater
public demand for a new History of Europe than there appears to
exist at present.

"Besides," I argued to myself, "such a work would be just the very
thing with which to beguile the tedium of a long imprisonment. At
some future time I may be glad of a labour of this magnitude to
occupy a period of involuntary inaction."

"This is the sort of thing," I said to myself, "to save up for
Holloway or Pentonville."

It would have been a very enjoyable ride altogether, that evening's
spin along the banks of the Rhine, if I had not been haunted at the
time by the idea that I should have to write an account of it next
day in my diary. As it was, I enjoyed it as a man enjoys a dinner
when he has got to make a speech after it, or as a critic enjoys a
play.

We passed such odd little villages every here and there. Little
places so crowded up between the railway and the river that there
was no room in them for any streets. All the houses were jumbled up
together just anyhow, and how any man who lived in the middle could
get home without climbing over half the other houses in the place I
could not make out. They were the sort of villages where a man's
mother-in-law, coming to pay him a visit, might wander around all
day, hearing him, and even now and then seeing him, yet never being
able to get at him in consequence of not knowing the way in.