trunk and all my things from the ship, which arrived only yesterday.
Not wishing to have it taken to the Custom House, which occasions a
great deal of trouble, I was obliged to give a douceur to the
officers, and those who came on board the ship to search it. Having
pacified, as I thought, one of them with a couple of shillings,
another came forward and protested against the delivery of the trunk
upon trust till I had given him as much. To him succeeded a third,
so that it cost me six shillings, which I willingly paid, because it
would have cost me still more at the Custom House.

By the side of the Thames were several porters, one of whom took my
huge heavy trunk on his shoulders with astonishing ease, and carried
it till I met a hackney coach. This I hired for two shillings,
immediately put the trunk into it, accompanying it myself without
paying anything extra for my own seat. This is a great advantage in
the English hackney coaches, that you are allowed to take with you
whatever you please, for you thus save at least one half of what you
must pay to a porter, and besides go with it yourself, and are
better accommodated. The observations and the expressions of the
common people here have often struck me as peculiar. They are
generally laconic, but always much in earnest and significant. When
I came home, my landlady kindly recommended it to the coachman not
to ask more than was just, as I was a foreigner; to which he
answered, "Nay, if he were not a foreigner I should not overcharge
him."

My letters of recommendation to a merchant here, which I could not
bring with me on account of my hasty departure from Hamburgh, are
also arrived. These have saved me a great deal of trouble in the
changing of my money. I can now take my German money back to