A Physician's Vacation Author:Walter Channing Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: more surprised at this want there, because I saw often, often, in the streets, wagons with Wenham Lake Ice upon them, in golden letters on a blue ground, and nev... more »er at home have I seen finer specimens of the article itself. The account of the German hotel table is not from that of this large hotel in Stettin. This was altogether the worst place of the kind in which it was my misfortune to find a temporary home. The Baltic. — June 18, Saturday, left Stettin for St. Petersburg, five minutes to 1, P. M., in the Preussiche Adler — or Prussian Eagle, the Eagle being the crest of the arms of Prussia. We left her on Tuesday morning following, at about eight, A. M. This voyage has been an event in my nautical life. I suffered everything, as they say, in the Atlantic steamer. Sick was I for days; and when well for a day or two, would be driven, by extremity of sickness, from the whist, or other table, spreading consternation, and " other things," in all directions. But in this swift Eagle, with the ordinarily rough and rude, but now perfectly calm and gentle Baltic around me, on I went, in perfect health, among the merriest of the crew, not omitting a single meal. The weather was cool, but bright, and glorious. We walked, we talked, we eat. Twelve and thirteen miles an hour. The steamer a cradle for smoothness of motion, and a perfect nightingale in her sea song. I have had a noble time. I met with, to me, a most welcome companion. A lover of Shakespeare ; and at twenty more deeply steeped in him, and in his spirit, than many older ever are. He has studied Schlegel's translations of the plays, and has seen them played, and surprised me with the effects of language, as they are rendered in German. He said that the most idiomatic passages of Shakespeare seemed to him to gain, certainly not...« less