But if you know your way about, you follow him in. There are seats
within, and you have a newspaper in your pocket: the time will pass
more pleasantly. Inside he looks round, bewildered. The German
post-office, generally speaking, is about the size of the Bank of
England. Some twenty different windows confront your troubled
friend, each one bearing its own particular legend. Starting with
number one, he sets to work to spell them out. It appears to him
that the posting of letters is not a thing that the German post-
office desires to encourage. Would he not like a dog licence
instead? is what one window suggests to him. "Oh, never mind that
letter of yours; come and talk about bicycles," pleads another. At
last he thinks he has found the right hole: the word "Registration"
he distinctly recognizes. He taps at the glass.

Nobody takes any notice of him. The foreign official is a man whose
life is saddened by a public always wanting something. You read it
in his face wherever you go. The man who sells you tickets for the
theatre! He is eating sandwiches when you knock at his window. He
turns to his companion:

"Good Lord!" you can see him say, "here's another of 'em. If there
has been one man worrying me this morning there have been a hundred.
Always the same story: all of 'em want to come and see the play.
You listen now; bet you anything he's going to bother me for tickets.
Really, it gets on my nerves sometimes."

At the railway station it is just the same.

"Another man who wants to go to Antwerp! Don't seem to care for
rest, these people: flying here, flying there, what's the sense of