in the little square-kin round the corner. The children, all
seemingly within a month, and certainly none above five, that
always go halting and stumbling up and down the roadway, are
ordinarily very quiet, and sit sedately puddling in the gutter,
trying, I suppose, poor little devils! to understand their
MUTTERSPRACHE; but they, too, make themselves heard from time to
time in little incomprehensible antiphonies, about the drift that
comes down to them by their rivers from the strange lands higher up
the Gasse. Above all, there is here such a twittering of canaries
(I can see twelve out of our window), and such continual visitation
of grey doves and big-nosed sparrows, as make our little bye-street
into a perfect aviary.

I look across the Gasse at our opposite neighbour, as he dandles
his baby about, and occasionally takes a spoonful or two of some
pale slimy nastiness that looks like DEAD PORRIDGE, if you can take
the conception. These two are his only occupations. All day long
you can hear him singing over the brat when he is not eating; or
see him eating when he is not keeping baby. Besides which, there
comes into his house a continual round of visitors that puts me in
mind of the luncheon hour at home. As he has thus no ostensible
avocation, we have named him 'the W.S.' to give a flavour of
respectability to the street.

Enough of the Gasse. The weather is here much colder. It rained a
good deal yesterday; and though it is fair and sunshiny again to-
day, and we can still sit, of course, with our windows open, yet
there is no more excuse for the siesta; and the bathe in the river,
except for cleanliness, is no longer a necessity of life. The Main
is very swift. In one part of the baths it is next door to