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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12460 ***
+
+_POMONA'S TRAVELS_
+
+_A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her former
+Handmaiden_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+POMONA'S TRAVELS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BY
+
+FRANK R. STOCKTON
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+BY
+A.B. FROST
+
+1894
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+_In Uniform Binding_
+
+_RUDDER GRANGE_
+_Illustrated by A.B. Frost._
+
+_POMONA'S TRAVELS_
+_Illustrated by A.B. Frost._
+
+
+[Illustration: CONTENTS]
+
+LETTER ONE.
+_Wanted,--a Vicarage_
+
+LETTER TWO.
+_On the Four-in-hand_
+
+LETTER THREE.
+_Jone overshadows the Waiter_
+
+LETTER FOUR.
+_The Cottage at Chedcombe_
+
+LETTER FIVE.
+_Pomona takes a Lodger_
+
+LETTER SIX.
+_Pomona expounds Americanisms_
+
+LETTER SEVEN.
+_The Hayfield_
+
+LETTER EIGHT.
+_Jone teaches Young Ladies how to Rake_
+
+LETTER NINE.
+_A Runaway Tricycle_
+
+LETTER TEN.
+_Pomona slides Backward down the Slope of the Centuries_
+
+LETTER ELEVEN.
+_On the Moors_
+
+LETTER TWELVE.
+_Stag-hunting on a Tricycle_
+
+LETTER THIRTEEN.
+_The Green Placard_
+
+LETTER FOURTEEN.
+_Pomona and her David Llewellyn_
+
+LETTER FIFTEEN.
+_Hogs and the Fine Arts_
+
+LETTER SIXTEEN.
+_With Dickens in London_
+
+LETTER SEVENTEEN.
+_Buxton and the Bath Chairs_
+
+LETTER EIGHTEEN.
+_Mr. Poplington as Guide_
+
+LETTER NINETEEN.
+_Angelica and Pomeroy_
+
+LETTER TWENTY.
+_The Countess of Mussleby_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-ONE.
+_Edinboro' Town_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-TWO.
+_Pomona and her Gilly_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-THREE.
+_They follow the Lady of the Lake_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-FOUR.
+_Comparisons become Odious to Pomona_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-FIVE.
+_The Family-Tree-Man_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-SIX.
+_Searching for Dorkminsters_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-SEVEN.
+_Their Country and their Custom House_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+[Illustration: List of Illustrations]
+
+_Title Page_
+
+_Vignette Heading to Table of Contents_
+
+_Tail piece to Table of Contents_
+
+_Vignette Heading to List of Illustrations_
+
+_Tail-piece to List of Illustrations_
+
+_Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"Boy, go order me a four-in-hand"_
+
+_The Landlady with an "underdone visage"_
+
+_"I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"_
+
+_"Down came a shower of rain"_
+
+_"Ask the waiter what the French words mean"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_Jone giving an order_
+
+_The Carver_
+
+_"You Americans are the speediest people"_
+
+_"That was our house"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"The young lady who keeps the bar"_
+
+_"I see signs of weakening in the social boom"_
+
+_At the Abbey_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"There, with the bar lady and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, was
+Jone"_
+
+_"At last I did get on my feet"_
+
+_"Rise, Sir Jane Puddle"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and initial Letter_
+
+_"In an instant I was free"_
+
+_"If you was a man I'd break your head"_
+
+_"I'm a Home Ruler"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"And with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam engine"_
+
+_"In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over"_
+
+_"Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"_
+
+_Mr. Poplington looking for luggage_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_Pomona encourages Jonas_
+
+_"Stop, lady, and I'll get out"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"Your brother is over there"_
+
+_To the Cat and Fiddle_
+
+_"And did you like Chedcombe?"_
+
+_"Jone looked at him and said that was the Highland costume"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
+wild twirl over my head"_
+
+_Pomona drinking it in_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"A person who was a family-tree-man"_
+
+_"This might be a Dorkminster"_
+
+_Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had only a little one_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POMONA'S TRAVELS
+
+
+This series of letters, written by Pomona of "Rudder Grange" to her
+former mistress, Euphemia, may require a few words of introduction.
+Those who have not read the adventures and experiences of Pomona in
+"Rudder Grange" should be told that she first appeared in that story as
+a very young and illiterate girl, fond of sensational romances, and
+with some out-of-the-way ideas in regard to domestic economy and the
+conventions of society. This romantic orphan took service in the
+"Rudder Grange" family, and as the story progressed she grew up into a
+very estimable young woman, and finally married Jonas, the son of a
+well-to-do farmer. Even after she came into possession of a husband and
+a daughter Pomona did not lose her affection for her former employers.
+
+About a year before the beginning of the travels described in these
+letters Jonas's father died and left a comfortable little property,
+which placed Pomona and her husband in independent circumstances. The
+ideas and ambitions of this eccentric but sensible young woman
+enlarged with her fortune. As her daughter was now going to school,
+Pomona was seized with the spirit of emulation, and determined as far
+as was possible to make the child's education an advantage to herself.
+Some of the books used by the little girl at school were carefully and
+earnestly studied by her mother, and as Jonas joined with hearty
+good-will in the labors and pleasures of this system of domestic study,
+the family standard of education was considerably raised. In the
+quick-witted and observant Pomona the improvement showed itself
+principally in her methods of expression, and although she could not be
+called at the time of these travels an educated woman, she was by no
+means an ignorant one.
+
+When the daughter was old enough she was allowed to accept an
+invitation from her grandmother to spend the summer in the country, and
+Pomona determined that it was the duty of herself and husband to avail
+themselves of this opportunity for foreign travel.
+
+Accordingly, one fine spring morning, Pomona, still a young woman, and
+Jonas, not many years older, but imbued with a semi-pathetic
+complaisance beyond his years, embarked for England and Scotland, to
+which countries it was determined to limit their travels. The letters
+which follow were written in consequence of the earnest desire of
+Euphemia to have a full account of the travels and foreign impressions
+of her former handmaiden. Pruned of dates, addresses, signatures, and
+of many personal and friendly allusions, these letters are here
+presented as Pomona wrote them to Euphemia.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number One_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+
+The first thing Jone said to me when I told him I was going to write
+about what I saw and heard was that I must be careful of two things. In
+the first place, I must not write a lot of stuff that everybody ought
+to be expected to know, especially people who have travelled
+themselves; and in the second place, I must not send you my green
+opinions, but must wait until they were seasoned, so that I can see
+what they are good for before I send them.
+
+"But if I do that," said I, "I will get tired of them long before they
+are seasoned, and they will be like a bundle of old sticks that I
+wouldn't offer to anybody." Jone laughed at that, and said I might as
+well send them along green, for, after all, I wasn't the kind of a
+person to keep things until they were seasoned, to see if I liked them.
+"That's true," said I, "there's a great many things, such as husbands
+and apples, that I like a good deal better fresh than dry. Is that all
+the advice you've got to give?"
+
+"For the present," said he; "but I dare say I shall have a good deal
+more as we go along."
+
+"All right," said I, "but be careful you don't give me any of it green.
+Advice is like gooseberries, that's got to be soft and ripe, or else
+well cooked and sugared, before they're fit to take into anybody's
+stomach."
+
+Jone was standing at the window of our sitting-room when I said this,
+looking out into the street. As soon as we got to London we took
+lodgings in a little street running out of the Strand, for we both want
+to be in the middle of things as long as we are in this conglomerate
+town, as Jone calls it. He says, and I think he is about right, that it
+is made up of half a dozen large cities, ten or twelve towns, at least
+fifty villages, more than a hundred little settlements, or hamlets, as
+they call them here, and about a thousand country houses scattered
+along around the edges; and over and above all these are the
+inhabitants of a large province, which, there being no province to put
+them into, are crammed into all the cracks and crevices so as to fill
+up the town and pack it solid.
+
+When we was in London before, with you and your husband, madam, and we
+lost my baby in Kensington Gardens, we lived, you know, in a peaceful,
+quiet street by a square or crescent, where about half the inhabitants
+were pervaded with the solemnities of the past and the other half bowed
+down by the dolefulness of the present, and no way of getting anywhere
+except by descending into a movable tomb, which is what I always think
+of when we go anywhere in the underground railway. But here we can walk
+to lots of things we want to see, and if there was nothing else to keep
+us lively the fear of being run over would do it, you may be sure.
+
+But, after all, Jone and me didn't come here to London just to see the
+town. We have ideas far ahead of that. When we was in London before I
+saw pretty nearly all the sights, for when I've got work like that to
+do I don't let the grass grow under my feet, and what we want to do on
+this trip is to see the country part of England and Scotland. And in
+order to see English country life just as it is, we both agreed that
+the best thing to do was to take a little house in the country and live
+there a while; and I'll say here that this is the only plan of the
+whole journey that Jone gets real enthusiastic about, for he is a
+domestic man, as you well know, and if anything swells his veins with
+fervent rapture it is the idea of living in some one place continuous,
+even if it is only for a month.
+
+As we wanted a house in the country we came to London to get it, for
+London is the place to get everything. Our landlady advised us, when we
+told her what we wanted, to try and get a vicarage in some little
+village, because, she said, there are always lots of vicars who want to
+go away for a month in the summer, and they can't do it unless they
+rent their houses while they are gone. And in fact, some of them, she
+said, got so little salary for the whole year, and so much rent for
+their vicarages while they are gone, that they often can't afford to
+stay in places unless they go away.
+
+So we answered some advertisements, and there was no lack of them in
+the papers, and three agents came to see us, but we did not seem to
+have any luck. Each of them had a house to let which ought to have
+suited us, according to their descriptions, and although we found the
+prices a good deal higher than we expected, Jone said he wasn't going
+to be stopped by that, because it was only for a little while and for
+the sake of experience--and experience, as all the poets, and a good
+many of the prose writers besides, tell us, is always dear. But after
+the agents went away, saying they would communicate with us in the
+morning, we never heard anything more from them, and we had to begin
+all over again. There was something the matter, Jone and I both agreed
+on that, but we didn't know what it was. But I waked up in the night
+and thought about this thing for a whole hour, and in the morning I had
+an idea.
+
+"Jone," said I, when we was eating breakfast, "it's as plain as A B C
+that those agents don't want us for tenants, and it isn't because they
+think we are not to be trusted, for we'd have to pay in advance, and so
+their money's safe; it is something else, and I think I know what it
+is. These London men are very sharp, and used to sizing and sorting all
+kinds of people as if they was potatoes being got ready for market, and
+they have seen that we are not what they call over here gentlefolks."
+
+"No lordly airs, eh?" said Jone.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that," I answered him back; "lordly airs don't go
+into parsonages, and I don't mean either that they see from our looks
+or manners that you used to drive horses and milk cows and work in the
+garden, and that I used to cook and scrub and was maid-of-all-work on a
+canal-boat; but they do see that we are not the kind of people who are
+in the habit, in this country, at least, of spending their evenings in
+the best parlors of vicarages."
+
+"Do you suppose," said Jone, "that they think a vicar's kitchen would
+suit us better?"
+
+"No," said I, "they wouldn't put us in a vicarage at all; there
+wouldn't be no place there that would not be either too high or too low
+for us. It's my opinion that what they think we belong in is a lordly
+house, where you'd shine most as head butler or a steward, while I'd be
+the housekeeper or a leading lady's maid."
+
+"By George!" said Jone, getting up from the table, "if any of those
+fellows would favor me with an opinion like that I'd break his head."
+
+"You'd have a lot of heads to break," said I, "if you went through this
+country asking for opinions on the subject. It's all very well for us
+to remember that we've got a house of our own as good as most rectors
+have over here, and money enough to hire a minor canon, if we needed
+one in the house; but the people over here don't know that, and it
+wouldn't make much difference if they did, for it wouldn't matter how
+nice we lived or what we had so long as they knew we was retired
+servants."
+
+At this Jone just blazed up and rammed his hands into his pockets and
+spread his feet wide upon the floor. "Pomona," said he, "I don't mind
+it in you, but if anybody else was to call me a retired servant I'd--"
+
+"Hold up, Jone," said I, "don't waste good, wholesome anger." Now, I
+tell you, madam, it really did me good to see Jone blaze up and get red
+in the face, and I am sure that if he'd get his blood boiling oftener
+it would be a good thing for his dyspeptic tendencies and what little
+malaria may be left in his system. "It won't do any good to flare up
+here," I went on to say to him; "fact's fact, and we was servants, and
+good ones, too, though I say it myself, and the trouble is we haven't
+got into the way of altogether forgetting it, or, at least, acting as
+if we had forgotten it."
+
+Jone sat down on a chair. "It might help matters a little," he said,
+"if I knew what you was driving at."
+
+"I mean just this," said I, "as long as we are as anxious not to give
+trouble, or as careful of people's feelings, as good-mannered to
+servants, and as polite and good-natured to everybody we have anything
+to do with, as we both have been since we came here, and as it is our
+nature to be, I am proud to say, we're bound to be set down, at least
+by the general run of people over here, as belonging to the pick of the
+nobility and gentry, or as well-bred servants. It's only those two
+classes that act as we do, and anybody can see we are not special
+nobles and gents. Now, if we want to be reckoned anywhere in between
+these two we've got to change our manners."
+
+"Will you kindly mention just how?" said Jone.
+
+"Yes," said I, "I will. In the first place, we've got to act as if we
+had always been waited on and had never been satisfied with the way it
+was done; we've got to let people think that we think we are a good
+deal better than they are, and what they think about it doesn't make
+the least difference; and then again we've got to live in better
+quarters than these, and whatever they may be we must make people
+think that we don't think they are quite good enough for us. If we do
+all that, agents may be willing to let us vicarages."
+
+"It strikes me," said Jone, "that these quarters are good enough for
+us. I'm comfortable." And then he went on to say, madam, that when you
+and your husband was in London you was well satisfied with just such
+lodgings.
+
+"That's all very well," I said, "for they never moved in the lower
+paths of society, and so they didn't have to make any change, but just
+went along as they had been used to go. But if we want to make people
+believe we belong to that class I should choose, if I had my pick out
+of English social varieties, we've got to bounce about as much above it
+as we were born below it, so that we can strike somewhere near the
+proper average."
+
+"And what variety would you pick out, I'd like to know?" said Jone,
+just a little red in the face, and looking as if I had told him he
+didn't know timothy hay from oat straw.
+
+"Well," said I, "it is not easy to put it to you exactly, but it's a
+sort of a cross between a prosperous farmer without children and a poor
+country gentleman with two sons at college and one in the British army,
+and no money to pay their debts with."
+
+"That last is not to my liking," said Jone.
+
+"But the farmer part of the cross would make it all right," I said to
+him, "and it strikes me that a mixture like that would just suit us
+while we are staying over here. Now, if you will try to think of
+yourself as part rich farmer and part poor gentleman, I'll consider
+myself the wife of the combination, and I am sure we will get along
+better. We didn't come over here to be looked upon as if we was the
+bottom of a pie dish and charged as if we was the upper crust. I'm in
+favor of paying a little more money and getting a lot more
+respectfulness, and the way to begin is to give up these lodgings and
+go to a hotel such as the upper middlers stop at. From what I've heard,
+the Babylon Hotel is the one for us while we are in London. Nobody will
+suspect that any of the people at that hotel are retired servants."
+
+[Illustration: "Boy, go order me a four-in-hand"]
+
+This hit Jone hard, as I knew it would, and he jumped up, made three
+steps across the room, and rang the bell so that the people across the
+street must have heard it, and up came the boy in green jacket and
+buttons, with about every other button missing, and I never knew him to
+come up so quick before.
+
+"Boy," said Jone to him, as if he was hollering to a stubborn ox, "go
+order me a four-in-hand."
+
+But this letter is so long I must stop for the present.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Two_
+
+
+LONDON
+
+When Jone gave the remarkable order mentioned in my last letter I did
+not correct him, for I wouldn't do that before servants without giving
+him a chance to do it himself; but before either of us could say
+another word the boy was gone.
+
+"Mercy on us," I said, "what a stupid blunder! You meant four-wheeler."
+
+[Illustration: The Landlady with an "underdone visage"]
+
+"Of course I did," he said; "I was a little mad and got things mixed,
+but I expect the fellow understood what I meant."
+
+"You ought to have called a hansom any way," I said, "for they are a
+lot more stylish to go to a hotel in than in a four-wheeler."
+
+"If there was six-wheelers I would have ordered one," said he. "I don't
+want anybody to have more wheels than we have."
+
+At this moment the landlady came into the room with a sarcastic glimmer
+on her underdone visage, and, says she, "I suppose you don't
+understand about the vehicles we have in London. The four-in-hand is
+what the quality and coach people use when--" As I looked at Jone I saw
+his legs tremble, and I know what that means. If I was a wanderin' dog
+and saw Jone's legs tremble, the only thoughts that would fill my soul
+would be such as cluster around "Home, Sweet Home." Jone was too much
+riled by the woman's manner to be willing to let her think he had made
+a mistake, and he stopped her short. "Look here," he said to her, "I
+don't ask you to come here to tell me anything about vehicles. When I
+order any sort of a trap I want it." When I heard Jone say trap my soul
+lifted itself and I knew there was hope for us. The stiffness melted
+right out of the landlady, and she began to look soft and gummy.
+
+"If you want to take a drive in a four-in-hand coach, sir," she said,
+"there's two or three of them starts every morning from Trafalgar
+Square, and it's not too late now, sir, if you go over there
+immediate."
+
+"Go?" said Jone, throwing himself into a chair, "I said, order one to
+come. Where I live that sort of vehicle comes to the door for its
+passengers."
+
+The woman looked at Jone with a venerative uplifting of her eyebrows.
+"I can't say, sir, that a coach will come, but I'll send the boy. They
+go to Dorking, and Seven Oaks, and Virginia Water--"
+
+"I want to go to Virginia Water," said Jone, as quick as lightning.
+
+"Now, then," said I, when the woman had gone, "what are you going to do
+if the coach comes?"
+
+"Go to Virginia Water in it," said Jone, "and when we come back we can
+go to the hotel. I made a mistake, but I've got to stand by it or be
+called a greenhorn."
+
+I was in hopes the four-in-hand wouldn't come, but in less than ten
+minutes there drove up to our door a four-horse coach which, not having
+half enough passengers, was glad to come such a little ways to get some
+more. There was a man in a high hat and red coat, who was blowing a
+horn as the thing came around the corner, and just as I was looking
+into the coach and thinking we'd have it all to ourselves, for there
+was nobody in it, he put a ladder up against the top, and says he,
+touching his hat, "There's a seat for you, madam, right next the
+coachman, and one just behind for the gentleman. 'Tain't often that, on
+a fine morning like this, such seats as them is left vacant on account
+of a sudden case of croup in a baronet's family."
+
+I looked at the ladder and I looked at that top front seat, and I tell
+you, madam, I trembled in every pore, but I remembered then that all
+the respectable seats was on top, and the farther front the nobbier,
+and as there was a young woman sitting already on the box-seat, I made
+up my mind that if she could sit there I could, and that I wasn't
+going to let Jone or anybody else see that I was frightened by style
+and fashion, though confronted by it so sudden and unexpected. So up
+that ladder I went quick enough, having had practice in hay-mows, and
+sat myself down between the young woman and the coachman, and when Jone
+had tucked himself in behind me the horner blew his horn and away we
+went.
+
+[Illustration: "I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"]
+
+I tell you, madam, that box-seat was a queer box for me. I felt as
+though I was sitting on the eaves of a roof with a herd of horses
+cavoorting under my feet. I never had a bird's-eye view of horses
+before. Looking down on their squirming bodies, with the coachman
+almost standing on his tiptoes driving them, was so different from
+Jone's buggy and our tall gray horse, which in general we look up to,
+that for a good while I paid no attention to anything but the danger of
+falling out on top of them. But having made sure that Jone was holding
+on to my dress from behind, I began to take an interest in the things
+around me.
+
+Knowing as much as I thought I did about the bigness of London, I found
+that morning that I never had any idea of what an everlasting town it
+is. It is like a skein of tangled yarn--there doesn't seem to be any
+end to it. Going in this way from Nelson's Monument out into the
+country, it was amazing to see how long it took to get there. We would
+go out of the busy streets into a quiet rural neighborhood, or what
+looked like it, and the next thing we knew we'd be in another whirl of
+omnibuses and cabs, with people and shops everywhere; and we'd go on
+and through this and then come to another handsome village with country
+houses, and the street would end in another busy town; and so on until
+I began to think there was no real country, at least, in the direction
+we was going. It is my opinion that if London was put on a pivot and
+spun round in the State of Texas until it all flew apart, it would
+spread all over the State and settle up the whole country.
+
+At last we did get away from the houses and began to roll along on the
+best made road I ever saw, with a hedge on each side and the greenest
+grass in the fields, and the most beautiful trees, with the very trunks
+covered with green leaves, and with white sheep and handsome cattle and
+pretty thatched cottages, and everything in perfect order, looking as
+if it had just been sprinkled and swept. We had seen English country
+before, but that was from the windows of a train, and it was very
+different from this sort of thing, where we went meandering along
+lanes, for that is what the roads look like, being so narrow.
+
+Just as I was getting my whole soul full of this lovely ruralness, down
+came a shower of rain without giving the least notice. I gave a jump in
+my seat as I felt it on me, and began to get ready to get down as soon
+as the coachman should stop for us all to get inside; but he didn't
+stop, but just drove along as if the sun was shining and the balmy
+breezes blowing, and then I looked around and not a soul of the eight
+people on the top of that coach showed the least sign of expecting to
+get down and go inside. They all sat there just as if nothing was
+happening, and not one of them even mentioned the rain. But I noticed
+that each of them had on a mackintosh or some kind of cape, whereas
+Jone and I never thought of taking anything in the way of waterproof or
+umbrellas, as it was perfectly clear when we started.
+
+[Illustration: "DOWN CAME A SHOWER OF RAIN"]
+
+I looked around at Jone, but he sat there with his face as placid as a
+piece of cheese, looking as if he had no more knowledge it was raining
+than the two Englishmen on the seat next him. Seeing he wasn't going to
+let those men think he minded the rain any more than they did, I
+determined that I wouldn't let the young woman who was sitting by me
+have any notion that I minded it, and so I sat still, with as cheerful
+a look as I could screw up, gazing at the trees with as gladsome a
+countenance as anybody could have with water trickling down her nose,
+her cheeks dripping, and dewdrops on her very eyelashes, while the
+dampness of her back was getting more and more perceptible as each
+second dragged itself along. Jone turned up the hood of my coat, and so
+let down into the back of my neck what water had collected in it; but I
+didn't say anything, but set my teeth hard together and fixed my mind
+on Columbia, happy land, and determined never to say anything about
+rain until some English person first mentioned it.
+
+But when one of the flowers on my hat leaned over the brim and exuded
+bloody drops on the front of my coat I began to weaken, and to think
+that if there was nothing better to do I might get under one of the
+seats; but just then the rain stopped and the sun shone. It was so
+sudden that it startled me; but not one of those English people
+mentioned that the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, and so
+neither did Jone or I. We was feeling mighty moist and unhappy, but we
+tried to smile as if we was plants in a greenhouse, accustomed to being
+watered and feeling all the better for it.
+
+I can't write you all about the coach drive, which was very delightful,
+nor of that beautiful lake they call Virginia Water, and which I know
+you have a picture of in your house. They tell me it is artificial, but
+as it was made more than a hundred years ago, it might now be
+considered natural. We dined at an inn, and when we got back to town,
+with two more showers on the way, I said to Jone that I thought we'd
+better go straight to the Babylon Hotel, which we intended to start out
+for, although it was a long way round to go by Virginia Water, and see
+about engaging a room; and as Jone agreed I asked the coachman if he
+would put us down there, knowing that he'd pass near it. He agreed to
+this, would be an advertisement for his coach.
+
+When we got on the street where the Babylon Hotel was he whipped up his
+horses so that they went almost on a run, and the horner blew his horn
+until his eyes seemed bursting, and with a grand sweep and a clank and
+a jingle we pulled up at the front of the big hotel. Out marched the
+head porter in a blue uniform, and out ran two under-porters with red
+coats, and down jumped the horner and put up his ladder, and Jone and I
+got down, after giving the coachman half-a-crown, and receiving from
+the passengers a combined gaze of differentialism which had been wholly
+wanting before. The men in the red coats looked disappointed when they
+saw we had no baggage, but the great doors was flung open and we went
+straight up to the clerk's desk.
+
+When we was taken to look at rooms I remembered that there was always
+danger of Jone's tendency to thankful contentment getting the better of
+him, and I took the matter in hand myself. Two rooms good enough for
+anybody was shown us, but I was not going to take the first thing that
+was offered, no matter what it was. We settled the matter by getting a
+first-class room, with sofas and writing-desks and everything
+convenient, for only a little more than we was charged for the other
+rooms, and the next morning we went there.
+
+When we went back to our lodgings to pack up, and I looked in the glass
+and saw what a smeary, bedraggled state my hat and head was in, from
+being rained on, I said to Jone, "I don't see how those people ever
+let such a person as me have a room at their hotel."
+
+"It doesn't surprise me a bit," said Jone; "nobody but a very high and
+mighty person would have dared to go lording it about that hotel with
+her hat feathers and flowers all plastered down over her head. Most
+people can be uppish in good clothes, but to look like a scare-crow and
+be uppish can't be expected except from the truly lofty."
+
+"I hope you are right," I said, and I think he was.
+
+We hadn't been at the Babylon Hotel, where we are now, for more than
+two days when I said to Jone that this sort of thing wasn't going to
+do. He looked at me amazed. "What on earth is the matter now?" he said.
+"Here is a room fit for a royal duke, in a house with marble corridors
+and palace stairs, and gorgeous smoking-rooms, and a post-office, and a
+dining-room pretty nigh big enough for a hall of Congress, with waiters
+enough to make two military companies, and the bills of fare all in
+French. If there is anything more you want, Pomona--"
+
+"Stop there" said I; "the last thing you mention is the rub. It's the
+dining-room; it's in that resplendent hall that we've got to give
+ourselves a social boom or be content to fold our hands and fade away
+forever."
+
+"Which I don't want to do yet," said Jone, "so speak out your trouble."
+
+[Illustration: "Ask the waiter what the French words mean"]
+
+"The trouble this time is you," said I, "and your awful meekness. I
+never did see anybody anywhere as meek as you are in that dining-room.
+A half-drowned fly put into the sun to dry would be overbearing and
+supercilious compared to you. When you sit down at one of those tables
+you look as if you was afraid of hurting the chair, and when the waiter
+gives you the bill of fare you ask him what the French words mean, and
+then he looks down on you as if he was a superior Jove contemplating a
+hop-toad, and he tells you that this one means beef and the other
+means potatoes, and brings you the things that are easiest to get. And
+you look as if you was thankful from the bottom of your heart that he
+is good enough to give you anything at all. All the airs I put on are
+no good while you are so extra humble. I tell him I don't want this
+French thing--when I don't know what it is--and he must bring me some
+of the other--which I never heard of--and when it comes I eat it, no
+matter what it turns out to be, and try to look as if I was used to it,
+but generally had it better cooked. But, as I said before, it is of no
+use--your humbleness is too much for me. In a few days they will be
+bringing us cold victuals, and recommending that we go outside
+somewhere and eat them, as all the seats in the dining-room are wanted
+for other people."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "I must say I do feel a little overshadowed when I
+go into that dining-room and see those proud and haughty waiters, some
+of them with silver chains and keys around their necks, showing that
+they are lords of the wine-cellar, and all of them with an air of lofty
+scorn for the poor beings who have to sit still and be waited on; but
+I'll try what I can do. As far as I am able, I'll hold up my end of the
+social boom."
+
+You may think I break off my letters sudden, madam, like the
+instalments in a sensation weekly, which stops short in the most
+harrowing parts, so as to make certain the reader will buy the next
+number; but when I've written as much as I think two foreign stamps
+will carry--for more than fivepence seems extravagant for a letter--I
+generally stop.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Three_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+
+At dinner-time the day when I had the conversation with Jone mentioned
+in my last letter, we was sitting in the dining-room at a little table
+in a far corner, where we'd never been before. Not being considered of
+any importance they put us sometimes in one place and sometimes in
+another, instead of giving us regular seats, as I noticed most of the
+other people had, and I was looking around to see if anybody was ever
+coming to wait on us, when suddenly I heard an awful noise.
+
+I have read about the rumblings of earthquakes, and although I never
+heard any of them, I have felt a shock, and I can imagine the awfulness
+of the rumbling, and I had a feeling as if the building was about to
+sway and swing as they do in earthquakes. It wasn't all my imagining,
+for I saw the people at the other tables near us jump, and two waiters
+who was hurrying past stopped short as if they had been jerked up by a
+curb bit. I turned to look at Jone, but he was sitting up straight in
+his chair, as solemn and as steadfast as a gate-post, and I thought to
+myself that if he hadn't heard anything he must have been struck deaf,
+and I was just on the point of jumping up and shouting to him, "Fly,
+before the walls and roof come down upon us!" when that awful noise
+occurred again. My blood stood frigid in my veins, and as I started
+back I saw before me a waiter, his face ashy pale, and his knees
+bending beneath him. Some people near us were half getting up from
+their chairs, and I pushed back and looked at Jone again, who had not
+moved except that his mouth was open. Then I knew what it was that I
+thought was an earthquake--it was Jone giving an order to the waiter.
+
+[Illustration: Jone giving an order]
+
+I bit my lips and sat silent; the people around kept on looking at us,
+and the poor man who was receiving the shock stood trembling like a
+leaf. When the volcanic disturbance, so to speak, was over, the waiter
+bowed himself, as if he had been a heathen in a temple, and gasping,
+"Yes, sir, immediate," glided unevenly away. He hadn't waited on us
+before, and little thought, when he was going to stride proudly pass
+our table, what a double-loaded Vesuvius was sitting in Jone's chair. I
+leaned over the table and said to Jone that if he would stick to that
+we could rent a bishopric if we wanted to, and I was so proud I could
+have patted him on the back. Well, after that we had no more trouble
+about being waited on, for that waiter of ours went about as if he had
+his neck bared for the fatal stroke and Jone was holding the cimeter.
+
+The head waiter came to us before we was done dinner and asked if we
+had everything we wanted and if that table suited us, because if it did
+we could always have it. To which Jone distantly thundered that if he
+would see that it always had a clean tablecloth it would do well
+enough.
+
+[Illustration: The Carver]
+
+Even the man who stood at the big table in the middle of the room and
+carved the cold meats, with his hair parted in the middle, and who
+looked as if he were saying to himself, as with a bland dexterity and
+tastefulness he laid each slice upon its plate, "Now, then, the
+socialistic movement in Paris is arrested for the time being, and here
+again I put an end to the hopes of Russia getting to the sea through
+Afghanistan, and now I carefully spread contentment over the minds of
+all them riotous Welsh miners," even he turned around and bowed to us
+as we passed him, and once sent a waiter to ask if we'd like a little
+bit of potted beef, which was particularly good that day.
+
+Jone kept up his rumblings, though they sounded more distant and more
+deep under ground, and one day at luncheon an elderly woman, who was
+sitting alone at a table near us, turned to me and spoke. She was a
+very plain person, with her face all seamed and rough with exposure to
+the weather, like as if she had been captain to a pilot boat, and with
+a general appearance of being a cook with good recommendations, but at
+present out of a place. I might have wondered at such a person being at
+such a hotel, but remembering what I had been myself I couldn't say
+what mightn't happen to other people.
+
+"I'm glad to see," said she, "that you sent away that mutton, for if
+more persons would object to things that are not properly cooked we'd
+all be better served. I suppose that in your country most people are so
+rich that they can afford to have the best of everything and have it
+always. I fancy the great wealth of American citizens must make their
+housekeeping very different from ours."
+
+Now I must say I began to bristle at being spoken to like that. I'm as
+proud of being an American as anybody can be, but I don't like the home
+of the free thrown into my teeth every time I open my mouth. There's no
+knowing what money Jone and I have lost through giving orders to London
+cabmen in what is called our American accent. The minute we tell the
+driver of a hansom where we want to go, that place doubles its distance
+from the spot we start from. Now I think the great reason Jone's
+rumbling worked so well was that it had in it a sort of Great British
+chest-sound, as if his lungs was rusty. The waiter had heard that
+before and knew what it meant. If he had spoken out in the clear
+American fashion I expect his voice would have gone clear through the
+waiter without his knowing it, like the person in the story, whose neck
+was sliced through and who didn't know it until he sneezed and his head
+fell off.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said I, answering her with as much of a wearied feeling
+as I could put on, "our wealth is all very well in some ways, but it is
+dreadful wearing on us. However, we try to bear up under it and be
+content."
+
+"Well," said she, "contentment is a great blessing in every station,
+though I have never tried it in yours. Do you expect to make a long
+stay in London?"
+
+As she seemed like a civil and well-meaning woman, and was the first
+person who had spoken to us in a social way, I didn't mind talking to
+her, and I told her we was only stopping in London until we could find
+the kind of country house we wanted, and when she asked what kind that
+was, I described what we wanted and how we was still answering
+advertisements and going to see agents, who was always recommending
+exactly the kind of house we did not care for.
+
+"Vicarages are all very well," said she, "but it sometimes happens, and
+has happened to friends of mine, that when a vicar has let his house he
+makes up his mind not to waste his money in travelling, and he takes
+lodgings near by and keeps an eternal eye upon his tenants. I don't
+believe any independent American would fancy that."
+
+"No, indeed," said I; and then she went on to say that if we wanted a
+small country house for a month or two she knew of one which she
+believed would suit us, and it wasn't a vicarage either. When I asked
+her to tell me about it she brought her chair up to our table, together
+with her mug of beer, her bread and cheese, and she went into
+particulars about the house she knew of.
+
+"It is situated," said she, "in the west of England, in the most
+beautiful part of our country. It is near one of the quaintest little
+villages that the past ages have left us, and not far away are the
+beautiful waters of the Bristol Channel, with the mountains of Wales
+rising against the sky on the horizon, and all about are hills and
+valleys, and woods and beautiful moors and babbling streams, with all
+the loveliness of cultivated rurality merging into the wild beauties of
+unadorned nature." If these was not exactly her words, they express the
+ideas she roused in my mind. She said the place was far enough away
+from railways and the stream of travel, and among the simple peasantry,
+and that in the society of the resident gentry we would see English
+country life as it is, uncontaminated by the tourist or the commercial
+traveller.
+
+I can't remember all the things she said about this charming cottage in
+this most supremely beautiful spot, but I sat and listened, and the
+description held me spell-bound, as a snake fascinates a frog; with
+this difference, instead of being swallowed by the description, I
+swallowed it.
+
+When the old woman had given us the address of the person who had the
+letting of the cottage, and Jone and me had gone to our room, I said to
+him, before we had time to sit down:
+
+"What do you think?"
+
+"I think," said he, "that we ought to follow that old woman's advice
+and go and look at this house."
+
+"Go and look at it?" I exclaimed. "Not a bit of it. If we do that, we
+are bound to see something or hear something that will make us hesitate
+and consider, and if we do that, away goes our enthusiasm and our
+rapture. I say, telegraph this minute and say we'll take the house, and
+send a letter by the next mail with a postal order in it, to secure the
+place."
+
+Jone looked at me hard, and said he'd feel easier in his mind if he
+understood what I was talking about.
+
+"Never mind understanding," I said. "Go down and telegraph we'll take
+the house. There isn't a minute to lose!"
+
+"But," said Jone, "if we find out when we get there--"
+
+"Never mind that," said I. "If we find out when we get there it isn't
+all we thought it was, and we're bound to do that, we'll make the best
+of what doesn't suit us because it can't be helped; but if we go and
+look at it it's ten to one we won't take it."
+
+"How long are we to take it for?" said Jone.
+
+"A month anyway, and perhaps longer," I told him, giving him a push
+toward the door.
+
+"All right," said he, and he went and telegraphed. I believe if Jone
+was told he could go anywhere and stay for a month he'd choose that
+place from among all the most enchanting spots on the earth where he
+couldn't stay so long. As for me, the one thing that held me was the
+romanticness of the place. From what the old woman said I knew there
+couldn't be any mistake about that, and if I could find myself the
+mistress of a romantic cottage near an ancient village of the olden
+time I would put up with most everything except dirt, and as dirt and
+me seldom keeps company very long, even that can't frighten me.
+
+When I saw the old woman at luncheon the next day and told her what we
+had done she was fairly dumfounded.
+
+"Really! really!" she said, "you Americans are the speediest people I
+ever did see. Why, an English person would have taken a week to
+consider that place before taking it."
+
+"And lost it, ten to one," said I.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well," said she, "I suppose it's on account of your habits, and you
+can't help it, but it's a poor way of doing business."
+
+[Illustration: "You Americans are the speediest people"]
+
+Now I began to think from this that her conscience was beginning to
+trouble her for having given so fairy-like a picture of the house, and
+as I was afraid that she might think it her duty to bring up some
+disadvantages, I changed the conversation and got away as soon as I
+could. When we once get seated at our humble board in our rural cot I
+won't be afraid of any bugaboos, but I didn't want them brought up
+then. I can generally depend upon Jone, but sometimes he gets a little
+stubborn.
+
+We didn't see this old person any more, and when I asked the waiter
+about her the next day he said he was sure she had left the hotel, by
+which I suppose he must have meant he'd got his half-crown. Her fading
+away in this fashion made it all seem like a myth or a phantasm, but
+when, the next morning, we got a receipt for the money Jone sent, and a
+note saying the house was ready for our reception, I felt myself on
+solid ground again, and to-morrow we start, bag and baggage, for
+Chedcombe, which is the name of the village where the house is that we
+have taken. I'll write to you, madam, as soon as we get there, and I
+hope with all my heart and soul that when we see what's wrong with
+it--and there's bound to be something--that it may not be anything bad
+enough to make us give it up and go floating off in voidness, like a
+spider-web blown before a summer breeze, without knowing what it's
+going to run against and stick to, and, what is more, probably lose the
+money we paid in advance.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Four_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+Last winter Jone and I read all the books we could get about the rural
+parts of England, and we knew that the country must be very beautiful,
+but we had no proper idea of it until we came to Chedcombe. I am not
+going to write much about the scenery in this part of the country,
+because, perhaps, you have been here and seen it, and anyway my writing
+would not be half so good as what you could read in books, which don't
+amount to anything.
+
+All I'll say is that if you was to go over the whole of England, and
+collect a lot of smooth green hills, with sheep and deer wandering
+about on them; brooks, with great trees hanging over them, and vines
+and flowers fairly crowding themselves into the water; lanes and roads
+hedged in with hawthorn, wild roses, and tall purple foxgloves; little
+woods and copses; hills covered with heather; thatched cottages like
+the pictures in drawing-books, with roses against their walls, and thin
+blue smoke curling up from the chimneys; distant views of the sparkling
+sea; villages which are nearly covered up by greenness, except their
+steeples; rocky cliffs all green with vines, and flowers spreading and
+thriving with the fervor and earnestness you might expect to find in
+the tropics, but not here--and then, if you was to put all these points
+of scenery into one place not too big for your eye to sweep over and
+take it all in, you would have a country like that around Chedcombe.
+
+I am sure the old lady was right when she said it was the most
+beautiful part of England. The first day we was here we carried an
+umbrella as we walked through all this verdant loveliness, but
+yesterday morning we went to the village and bought a couple of thin
+mackintoshes, which will save us a lot of trouble opening and shutting
+umbrellas.
+
+When we got out at the Chedcombe station we found a man there with a
+little carriage he called a fly, who said he had been sent to take us
+to our house. There was also a van to carry our baggage. We drove
+entirely through the village, which looked to me as if a bit of the
+Middle Ages had been turned up by the plough, and on the other edge of
+it there was our house, and on the doorstep stood a lady, with a
+smiling eye and an umbrella, and who turned out to be our landlady.
+Back of her was two other females, one of them looking like a
+minister's wife, while the other one I knew to be a servant-maid, by
+her cap.
+
+[Illustration: "THAT WAS OUR HOUSE"]
+
+The lady, whose name was Mrs. Shutterfield, shook hands with us and
+seemed very glad to see us, and the minister's wife took our hand
+bags from us and told the men where to carry our trunks. Mrs.
+Shutterfield took us into a little parlor on one side of the hall, and
+then we three sat down, and I must say I was so busy looking at the
+queer, delightful room, with everything in it--chairs, tables, carpets,
+walls, pictures, and flower-vases--all belonging to a bygone epoch,
+though perfectly fresh, as if just made, that I could scarcely pay
+attention to what the lady said. But I listened enough to know that
+Mrs. Shutterfield told us that she had taken the liberty of engaging
+for us two most excellent servants, who had lived in the house before
+it had been let to lodgers, and who, she was quite sure, would suit us
+very well, though, of course, we were at liberty to do what we pleased
+about engaging them. The one that I took for the minister's wife was a
+combination of cook and housekeeper, by the name of Miss Pondar, and
+the other was a maid in general, named Hannah. When the lady mentioned
+two servants it took me a little aback, for we had not expected to have
+more than one, but when she mentioned the wages, and I found that both
+put together did not cost as much as a very poor cook would expect in
+America, and when I remembered we as now at work socially booming
+ourselves, and that it wouldn't do to let this lady think that we had
+not been accustomed to varieties of servants, I spoke up and said we
+would engage the two estimable women she recommended, and was much
+obliged to her for getting them.
+
+Then we went over that house, down stairs and up, and of all the
+lavender-smelling old-fashionedness anybody ever dreamed of, this
+little house has as much as it can hold. It is fitted up all through
+like one of your mother's bonnets, which she bought before she was
+married and never wore on account of a funeral in the family, but kept
+shut up in a box, which she only opens now and then to show to her
+descendants. In every room and on the stairs there was a general air of
+antiquated freshness, mingled with the odors of English breakfast tea
+and recollections of the story of Cranford, which, if Jone and me had
+been alone, would have made me dance from the garret of that house to
+the cellar. Every sentiment of romance that I had in my soul bubbled to
+the surface, and I felt as if I was one of my ancestors before she
+emigrated to the colonies. I could not say what I thought, but I
+pinched Jone's arm whenever I could get a chance, which relieved me a
+little; and when Miss Pondar had come to me with a little courtesy, and
+asked me what time I would like to have dinner, and told me what she
+had taken the liberty of ordering, so as to have everything ready by
+the time I came, and Mrs. Shutterfield had gone, after begging to know
+what more she could do for us, and we had gone to our own room, I let
+out my feelings in one wild scream of delirious gladness that would
+have been heard all the way to the railroad station if I had not
+covered my head with two pillows and the corner of a blanket.
+
+After we had dinner, which was as English as the British lion, and much
+more to our taste than anything we had had in London, Jone went out to
+smoke a pipe, and I had a talk with Miss Pondar about fish, meat, and
+groceries, and about housekeeping matters in general. Miss Pondar,
+whose general aspect of minister's wife began to wear off when I talked
+to her, mingles respectfulness and respectability in a manner I haven't
+been in the habit of seeing. Generally those two things run against
+each other, but they don't in her.
+
+When she asked what kind of wine we preferred I must say I was struck
+all in a heap, for wines to Jone and me is like a trackless wilderness
+without compass or binnacle light, and we seldom drink them except made
+hot, with nutmeg grated in, for colic; but as I wanted her to
+understand that if there was any luxuries we didn't order it was
+because we didn't approve of them, I told her that we was total
+abstainers, and at that she smiled very pleasant and said that was her
+persuasion also, and that she was glad not to be obliged to handle
+intoxicating drinks, though, of course, she always did it without
+objection when the family used them. When I told Jone this he looked a
+little blank, for foreign water generally doesn't agree with him. I
+mentioned this afterwards to Miss Pondar, and she said it was very
+common in total abstaining families, when water didn't agree with any
+one of them, especially if it happened to be the gentleman, to take a
+little good Scotch whiskey with it; but when I told this to Jone he
+said he would try to bear up under the shackles of abstinence.
+
+This morning, when I was talking with Miss Pondar about fish, and
+trying to show her that I knew something about the names of English
+fishes, I said that we was very fond of whitebait. At this she looked
+astonished for the first time.
+
+"Whitebait?" said she. "We always looked upon that as belonging
+entirely to the nobility and gentry." At this my back began to bristle,
+but I didn't let her know it, and I said, in a tone of emphatic
+mildness, that we would have whitebait twice a week, on Tuesday and
+Friday. At this Miss Pondar gave a little courtesy and thanked me very
+much, and said she would attend to it.
+
+When Jone and me came back after taking a long walk that morning I saw
+a pair of Church of England prayer-books, looking as if they had just
+been neatly dusted, lying on the parlor table, where they hadn't been
+before, for I had carefully looked over every book. I think that when
+it was borne in upon Miss Pondar's soul that we was accustomed to
+having whitebait as a regular thing she made up her mind we was all
+right, and that nothing but the Established Church would do for us.
+Before, she might have thought we was Wesleyans.
+
+Our maid Hannah is very nice to look at, and does her work as well as
+anybody could do it, and, like most other English servants, she's in a
+state of never-ending thankfulness, but as I can never understand a
+word she says except "Thank you very much," I asked Jone if he didn't
+think it would be a good thing for me to try to teach her a little
+English.
+
+"Now then," said he, "that's the opening of a big subject. Wait until I
+fill my pipe and we'll discourse upon it." It was just after luncheon,
+and we was sitting in the summer-house at the end of the garden,
+looking out over the roses and pinks and all sorts of old-timey flowers
+growing as thick as clover heads, with an air as if it wasn't the least
+trouble in the world to them to flourish and blossom. Beyond the
+flowers was a little brook with the ducks swimming in it, and beyond
+that was a field, and on the other side of that field was a park
+belonging to the lord of the manor, and scattered about the side of a
+green hill in the park was a herd of his lordship's deer. Most of them
+was so light-colored that I fancied I could almost see through them, as
+if they was the little transparent bugs that crawl about on leaves.
+That isn't a romantic idea to have about deers, but I can't get rid of
+the notion whenever I see those little creatures walking about on the
+hills.
+
+At that time it was hardly raining at all, just a little mist, with the
+sun coming into the summer-house every now and then, making us feel
+very comfortable and contented.
+
+"Now," said Jone, when he had got his pipe well started, "what I want
+to talk about is the amount of reformation we expect to do while we're
+sojourning in the kingdom of Great Britain."
+
+"Reformation!" said I; "we didn't come here to reform anything."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "if we're going to busy our minds with these
+people's shortcomings and long-goings, and don't try to reform them,
+we're just worrying ourselves and doing them no good, and I don't think
+it will pay. Now, for instance, there's that rosy-cheeked Hannah. She's
+satisfied with her way of speaking English, and Miss Pondar understands
+it and is satisfied with it, and all the people around here are
+satisfied with it. As for us, we know, when she comes and stands in the
+doorway and dimples up her cheeks, and then makes those sounds that are
+more like drops of molasses falling on a gong than anything else I know
+of, we know that she is telling us in her own way that the next meal,
+whatever it is, is ready, and we go to it."
+
+"Yes," said I, "and as I do most of my talking with Miss Pondar, and as
+we shall be here for such a short time anyway, it may be as well--"
+
+"What I say about Hannah," said Jone, interrupting me as soon as I
+began to speak about a short stay, "I have to say about everything else
+in England that doesn't suit us. As long as Hannah doesn't try to make
+us speak in her fashion I say let her alone. Of course, we shall find a
+lot of things over here that we shall not approve of--we knew that
+before we came--and when we find we can't stand their ways and manners
+any longer we can pack up and go home, but so far as I'm concerned I'm
+getting along very comfortable so far."
+
+"Oh, so am I," I said to him, "and as to interfering with other
+people's fashions, I don't want to do it. If I was to meet the most
+paganish of heathens entering his temple with suitable humbleness I
+wouldn't hurt his feelings on the subject of his religion, unless I was
+a missionary and went about it systematic; but if that heathen turned
+on me and jeered at me for attending our church at home, and told me I
+ought to go down on my marrow-bones before his brazen idols, I'd whang
+him over the head with a frying-pan or anything else that came handy.
+That's the sort of thing I can't stand. As long as the people here
+don't snort and sniff at my ways I won't snort and sniff at theirs."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "that is a good rule, but I don't know that it's
+going to work altogether. You see, there are a good many people in this
+country and only two of us, and it will be a lot harder for them to
+keep from sniffing and snorting than for us to do it. So it's my
+opinion that if we expect to get along in a good-humored and friendly
+way, which is the only decent way of living, we've got to hold up our
+end of the business a little higher than we expect other people to hold
+up theirs."
+
+I couldn't agree altogether with Jone about our trying to do better
+than other people, but I said that as the British had been kind enough
+to make their country free to us, we wouldn't look a gift horse in the
+mouth unless it kicked. To which Jone said I sometimes got my figures
+of speech hind part foremost, but he knew what I meant.
+
+We've lived in our cottage two weeks, and every morning when I get up
+and open our windows, which has little panes set in strips of lead, and
+hinges on one side so that it works like a door, and look out over the
+brook and the meadows and the thatched roofs, and see the peasant men
+with their short jackets and woollen caps, and the lower part of their
+trousers tied round with twine, if they don't happen to have leather
+leggings, trudging to their work, my soul is filled with welling
+emotions as I think that if Queen Elizabeth ever travelled along this
+way she must have seen these great old trees and, perhaps, some of
+these very houses; and as to the people, they must have been pretty
+much the same, though differing a little in clothes, I dare say; but,
+judging from Hannah, perhaps not very much in the kind of English they
+spoke.
+
+I declare that when Jone and me walk about through the village, and
+over the fields, for there is a right of way--meaning a little
+path--through most all of them, and when we go into the old church,
+with its yew-trees, and its gravestones, and its marble effigies of two
+of the old manor lords, both stretched flat on their backs, as large as
+life, the gentleman with the end of his nose knocked off and with his
+feet crossed to show he was a crusader, and the lady with her hands
+clasped in front of her, as if she expected the generations who came to
+gaze on her tomb to guess what she had inside of them, I feel like a
+character in a novel.
+
+I have kept a great many of my joyful sentiments to myself, because
+Jone is too well contented as it is, and there is a great deal yet to
+be seen in England. Sometimes we hire a dogcart and a black horse named
+Punch, from the inn in the village, and we take long drives over roads
+that are almost as smooth as bowling alleys. The country is very hilly,
+and every time we get to the top of a hill we can see, spread about us
+for miles and miles, the beautiful hills and vales, and lordly
+residences and cottages, and steeple tops, looking as though they had
+been stuck down here and there, to show where villages had been
+planted.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Five_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+This morning, when Jone was out taking a walk and I was talking to Miss
+Pondar, and getting her to teach me how to make Devonshire clotted
+cream, which we have for every meal, putting it on everything it will
+go on, into everything it will go into, and eating it by itself when
+there is nothing it will go on or into; and trying to find out why it
+is that whitings are always brought on the table with their tails stuck
+through their throats, as if they had committed suicide by cutting
+their jugular veins in this fashion, I saw, coming along the road to
+our cottage, a pretty little dogcart with two ladies in it. The horse
+they drove was a pony, and the prettiest creature I ever saw, being
+formed like a full-sized horse, only very small, and with as much fire
+and spirit and gracefulness as could be got into an animal sixteen
+hands high. I heard afterward that he came from Exmoor, which is about
+twelve miles from here, and produces ponies and deers of similar size
+and swiftness. They stopped at the door, and one of them got out and
+came in. Miss Pondar told me she wished to see me, and that she was
+Mrs. Locky, of the "Bordley Arms" in the village.
+
+"The innkeeper's wife?" said I; to which Miss Pondar said it was, and I
+went into the parlor. Mrs. Locky was a handsome-looking lady, and
+wearing as stylish clothes as if she was a duchess, and extremely
+polite and respectful.
+
+She said she would have asked Mrs. Shutterfield to come with her and
+introduce her, but that lady was away from home, and so she had come by
+herself to ask me a very great favor.
+
+When I begged her to sit down and name it she went on to say there had
+come that morning to the inn a very large party in a coach-and-four,
+that was making a trip through the country, and as they didn't travel
+on Sunday they wanted to stay at the "Bordley Arms" until Monday
+morning.
+
+"Now," said she, "that puts me to a dreadful lot of trouble, because I
+haven't room to accommodate them all, and even if I could get rooms for
+them somewhere else they don't want to be separated. But there is one
+of the best rooms at the inn which is occupied by an elderly gentleman,
+and if I could get that room I could put two double beds in it and so
+accommodate the whole party. Now, knowing that you had a pleasant
+chamber here that you don't use, I thought I would make bold to come
+and ask you if you would lodge Mr. Poplington until Monday?"
+
+"What sort of a person is this Mr. Poplington, and is he willing to
+come here?"
+
+"Oh, I haven't asked him yet," said she, "but he is so extremely
+good-natured that I know he will be glad to come here. He has often
+asked me who lived in this extremely picturesque cottage."
+
+"You must have an answer now?" said I.
+
+"Oh, yes," said she, "for if you cannot do me this favor I must go
+somewhere else, and where to go I don't know."
+
+Now I had begun to think that the one thing we wanted in this little
+home of ours was company, and that it was a great pity to have that
+nice bedroom on the second floor entirely wasted, with nobody ever in
+it. So, as far as I was concerned, I would be very glad to have some
+pleasant person in the house, at least for a day or two, and I didn't
+believe Jone would object. At any rate it would put a stop, at least
+for a little while, to his eternally saying how Corinne, our daughter,
+would enjoy that room, and how nice it would be if we was to take this
+house for the rest of the season and send for her. Now, Corinne's as
+happy as she can be at her grand-mother's farm, and her school will
+begin before we're ready to come home, and, what is more, we didn't
+come here to spend all our time in one place.
+
+[Illustration: "The young lady who keeps the bar"]
+
+While I was thinking of these things I was looking out of the window at
+the lady in the dogcart who was holding the reins. She was as pretty as
+a picture, and wore a great straw hat with lovely flowers in it. As I
+had to give an answer without waiting for Jone to come home, and I
+didn't expect him until luncheon time, I concluded to be neighborly,
+and said we would take the gentleman to oblige her. Even if the
+arrangement didn't suit him or us, it wouldn't matter much for that
+little time. At which Mrs. Locky was very grateful indeed, and said she
+would have Mr. Poplington's luggage sent around that afternoon, and
+that he would come later.
+
+As she got up to go I said to her, "Is that young lady out there one of
+the party who came with the coach and four?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Mrs. Locky, "she lives with me. She is the young lady
+who keeps the bar."
+
+I expect I opened my mouth and eyes pretty wide, for I was never so
+astonished. A young lady like that keeping the bar! But I didn't want
+Mrs. Locky to know how much I was surprised, and so I said nothing
+about it.
+
+When they had gone and I had stood looking after them for about a
+minute, I remembered I hadn't asked whether Mr. Poplington would want
+to take his meals here, or whether he would go to the inn for them. To
+be sure, she only asked me to lodge him, but as the inn is more than
+half a mile from here, he may want to be boarded. But this will have to
+be found out when he comes, and when Jone comes home it will have to be
+found out what he thinks about my taking a lodger while he's out taking
+a walk.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Six_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+When Jone came home and I told him a gentleman was coming to live with
+us, he thought at first I was joking; and when he found out that I
+meant what I said he looked very blue, and stood with his hands in his
+pockets and his eyes on the ground, considering.
+
+"He's not going to take his meals here, is he?"
+
+"I don't think he expects that," I said, "for Mrs. Locky only spoke of
+lodging."
+
+"Oh, well," said Jone, looking as if his clouds was clearing off a
+little, "I don't suppose it will matter to us if that room is occupied
+over Sunday, but I think the next time I go out for a stroll I'll take
+you with me."
+
+I didn't go out that afternoon, and sat on pins and needles until
+half-past five o'clock. Jone wanted me to walk with him, but I wouldn't
+do it, because I didn't want our lodger to come here and be received by
+Miss Pondar. At half-past five there came a cart with the gentleman's
+luggage, as they call it here, and I was glad Jone wasn't at home.
+There was an enormous leather portmanteau which looked as if it had
+been dragged by a boy too short to lift it from the ground, half over
+the world; a hat-box, also of leather, but not so draggy looking; a
+bundle of canes and umbrellas, a leather dressing-case, and a flat,
+round bathing-tub. I had the things taken up to the room as quickly as
+I could, for if Jone had seen them he'd think the gentleman was going
+to bring his family with him.
+
+It was nine o'clock and still broad daylight when Mr. Poplington
+himself came, carrying a fishing-rod put up in parts in a canvas bag, a
+fish-basket, and a small valise. He wore leather leggings and was about
+sixty years old, but a wonderful good walker. I thought, when I saw him
+coming, that he had no rheumatism whatever, but I found out afterward
+that he had a little in one of his arms. He had white hair and white
+side-whiskers and a fine red face, which made me think of a strawberry
+partly covered with Devonshire clotted cream. Jone and I was sitting in
+the summer-house, he smoking his pipe, and we both went to meet the
+gentleman. He had a bluff way of speaking, and said he was much obliged
+to us for taking him in; and after saying that it was a warm evening, a
+thing which I hadn't noticed, he asked to be shown to his room. I sent
+Hannah with him, and then Jone and I went back to the summer-house.
+
+I didn't know exactly why, but I wasn't in as good spirits as I had
+been, and when Jone spoke he didn't make me feel any better.
+
+[Illustration: "I see signs of weakening in the social boom"]
+
+"It seems to me," said he, "that I see signs of weakening in the social
+boom. That man considers us exactly as we considered our lodging-house
+keeper in London. Now, it doesn't strike me that that sample person you
+was talking about, who is a cross between a rich farmer and a poor
+gentleman, would go into the lodging-house business." I couldn't help
+agreeing with Jone, and I didn't like it a bit. The gentleman hadn't
+said anything or done anything that was out of the way, but there was a
+benignant loftiness about him which grated on the inmost fibres of my
+soul.
+
+"I'll tell you what we'll do," said I, turning sharp on Jone, "we won't
+charge him a cent. That'll take him down, and show him what we are.
+We'll give him the room as a favor to Mrs. Locky, considering her in
+the light of a neighbor and one who sent us a cucumber."
+
+"All right," said Jone, "I like that way of arranging the business. Up
+goes the social boom again!"
+
+Just as we was going up to bed Miss Pondar came to me and said that the
+gentleman had called down to her and asked if he could have a new-laid
+egg for his breakfast, and she asked if she should send Hannah early in
+the morning to see if she could get a perfectly fresh egg from one of
+the cottages. "I thought, ma'am, that perhaps you might object to
+buying things on Sunday."
+
+"I do," I said. "Does that Mr. Poplington expect to have his breakfast
+here? I only took him to lodge."
+
+"Oh, ma'am," said Miss Pondar, "they always takes their breakfasts
+where they has their rooms. Dinner and luncheon is different, and he
+may expect to go to the inn for them."
+
+"Indeed!" said I. "I think he may, and if he breakfasts here he can
+take what we've got. If the eggs are not fresh enough for him he can
+try to get along with some bacon. He can't expect that to be fresh."
+
+Knowing that English people take their breakfast late, Jone and I got
+up early, so as to get through before our lodger came down. But, bless
+me, when we went to the front door to see what sort of a day it was we
+saw him coming in from a walk. "Fine morning," said he, and in fact
+there was only a little drizzle of rain, which might stop when the sun
+got higher; and he stood near us and began to talk about the trout in
+the stream, which, to my utter amazement, he called a river.
+
+"Do you take your license by the day or week?" he said to Jone.
+
+"License!" said Jone, "I don't fish."
+
+"Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Oh, I see, you are a cycler."
+
+"No," said Jone, "I'm not that, either, I'm a pervader."
+
+"Really!" said the old gentleman; "what do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean that I pervade the scenery, sometimes on foot and sometimes in
+a trap. That's my style of rural pleasuring."
+
+"But you do fish at home," I said to Jone, not wishing the English
+gentleman to think my husband was a city man, who didn't know anything
+about sport.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Jone, "I used to fish for perch and sunfish."
+
+"Sunfish?" said Mr. Poplington. "I don't know that fish at all. What
+sort of a fly do you use?"
+
+"I don't fish with any flies at all," said Jone; "I bait my hook with
+worms."
+
+Mr. Poplington's face looked as if he had poured liquid shoe-blacking
+on his meat, thinking it was Worcestershire sauce. "Fancy! Worms! I'd
+never take a rod in my hands if I had to use worms. Never used a worm
+in my life. There's no sort of science in worm fishing."
+
+"There's double sport," said Jone, "for first you've got to catch your
+worm. Then again, I hate shams; if you have to catch fish there's no
+use cheating them into the bargain."
+
+"Cheat!" cried Mr. Poplington. "If I had to catch a whale I'd fish for
+him with a fly. But you Americans are strange people. Worms, indeed!"
+
+"We don't all use worms," said Jone; "there's lots of fly fishers in
+America, and they use all sorts of flies. If we are to believe all the
+Californians tell us some of the artificial flies out there must be as
+big as crows."
+
+"Really?" said Mr. Poplington, looking hard at Jone, with a little
+twinkling in his eyes. "And when gentlemen fish who don't like to cheat
+the fishes, what size of worms do they use?"
+
+"Well," said Jone, "in the far West I've heard that the common black
+snake is the favorite bait. He's six or seven feet long, and fishermen
+that use him don't have to have any line. He's bait and line all in
+one."
+
+Mr. Poplington laughed. "I see you are fond of a joke," said he, "and
+so am I, but I'm also fond of my breakfast."
+
+"I'm with you there," said Jone, and we all went in.
+
+Mr. Poplington was very pleasant and chatty, and of course asked a
+great many questions about America. Nearly all English people I've met
+want to talk about our country, and it seems to me that what they do
+know about it isn't any better, considered as useful information, than
+what they don't know. But Mr. Poplington has never been to America, and
+so he knows more about us than those Englishmen who come over to write
+books, and only have time to run around the outside of things, and get
+themselves tripped up on our ragged edges.
+
+He said he had met a good many Americans, and liked them, but he
+couldn't see for the life of him why they do some things English people
+don't do, and don't do things English people do do. For instance, he
+wondered why we don't drink tea for breakfast. Miss Pondar had made it
+for him, knowing he'd want it, and he wonders why Americans drink
+coffee when such good tea as that was comes in their reach.
+
+Now, if I had considered Mr. Poplington as a lodger it might have
+nettled me to have him tell me I didn't know what was good, but
+remembering that we was giving him hospitality, and not board, and
+didn't intend to charge him a cent, but was just taking care of him out
+of neighborly kindness, I was rather glad to have him find a little
+fault, because that would make me feel as if I was soaring still higher
+above him the next morning, when I should tell him there was nothing to
+pay.
+
+So I took it all good-natured, and said to him, "Well, Americans like
+to have the very best things that can be got out of every country.
+We're like bees flying over the whole world, looking into every blossom
+to see what sweetness there is to be got out of it. From the lily of
+France we sip their coffee, from the national flower of India, whatever
+it is, we take their chutney sauce, and as to those big apple tarts,
+baked in a deep dish, with a cup in the middle to hold up the upper
+crust, and so full of apples, and so delicious with Devonshire clotted
+cream on them that if there was any one place in the world they could
+be had I believe my husband would want to go and live there forever,
+_they_ are what we extract from the rose of England."
+
+Mr. Poplington laughed like anything at this, but said there was a
+great many other things that he could show us and tell us about which
+would be very well worth while sipping from the rose of England.
+
+After breakfast he went to church with us, and as we was coming
+home--for he didn't seem to have the least idea of going to the inn for
+his luncheon--he asked if we didn't find the services very different
+from those in America.
+
+"Yes," said I, "they are about as different from Quaker services as a
+squirting fountain is from a corked bottle. The Methodists and
+Unitarians and Reformed Dutch and Campbellites and Hard-shell Baptists
+have different services too, but in the Episcopal churches things are
+all pretty much the same as they did this morning. You forget, sir,
+that in our country there are religions to suit all sizes of minds. We
+haven't any national religion any more than we have a national flower."
+
+"But you ought to have," said he; "you ought to have an established
+church."
+
+"You may be sure we'll have it," said Jone, "as soon as we agree as to
+which one it ought to be."
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Seven_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+Last Sunday afternoon Mr. Poplington asked us if we would not like to
+walk over to a ruined abbey about four miles away, which he said was
+very interesting. It seemed to me that four miles there and four miles
+back was a pretty long walk, but I wanted to see the abbey, and I
+wasn't going to let him think that a young American woman couldn't walk
+as far as an elderly English gentleman; so I agreed and so did Jone.
+The abbey is a wonderful place, and I never thought of being tired
+while wandering in the rooms and in the garden, where the old monks
+used to live and preach, and give food to the poor, and keep house
+without women--which was pious enough, but must have been untidy. But
+the thing that surprised me the most was what Mr. Poplington told us
+about the age of the place. It was not built all at once, and it's part
+ancient and part modern, and you needn't wonder, madam, that I was
+astonished when he said that the part called modern was finished just
+three years before America was discovered. When I heard that I seemed
+to shrivel up as if my country was a new-born babe alongside of a
+bearded patriarch; but I didn't stay shrivelled long, for it can't be
+denied that a new-born babe has a good deal more to look forward to
+than a patriarch has.
+
+[Illustration: AT THE ABBEY]
+
+It is amazing how many things in this part of the country we'd never
+have thought of if it hadn't been for Mr. Poplington. At dinner he told
+us about Exmoor and the Lorna Doone country, and the wild deer hunting
+that can be had nowhere else in England, and lots of other things that
+made me feel we must be up and doing if we wanted to see all we ought
+to see before we left Chedcombe. When I went upstairs I said to Jone
+that Mr. Poplington was a very different man from what I thought he
+was.
+
+"He's just as nice as he can be, and I'm going to charge him for his
+room and his meals and for everything he's had."
+
+Jone laughed, and asked me if that was the way I showed people I liked
+them.
+
+"We intended to humble him by not charging him anything," I said, "and
+make him feel he had been depending on our bounty; but now I wouldn't
+hurt his feelings for the world, and I'll make out his bill in the
+morning myself. Women always do that sort of thing in England."
+
+As you asked me, madam, to tell you everything that happened on our
+travels, I'll go on about Mr. Poplington. After breakfast on Monday
+morning he went over to the inn, and said he would come back and pack
+up his things; but when he did come back he told us that those
+coach-and-four people had determined not to leave Chedcombe that day,
+but was going to stay and look at the sights in the neighborhood, and
+that they would want the room for that night. He said this had made him
+very angry, because they had no right to change their minds that way
+after having made definite arrangements in which other people besides
+themselves was concerned; and he had said so very plainly to the
+gentleman who seemed to be at the head of the party.
+
+"I hope it will be no inconvenience to you, madam," he said, "to keep
+me another night."
+
+"Oh, dear, no," said I; "and my husband was saying this morning that he
+wished you was going to stay with us the rest of our time here."
+
+"Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Then I'll do it. I'll go to the
+inn this minute and have the rest of my luggage brought over here. If
+this is any punishment to Mrs. Locky she deserves it, for she shouldn't
+have told those people they could stay longer without consulting me."
+
+In less than an hour there came a van to our cottage with the rest of
+his luggage. There must have been over a dozen boxes and packages,
+besides things tied up and strapped; and as I saw them being carried up
+one at a time, I said to Miss Pondar that in our country we'd have two
+or three big trunks, which we could take about without any trouble.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said she; but I could see by her face that she didn't
+believe luggage would be luggage unless you could lug it, but was too
+respectful to say so.
+
+When Mr. Poplington got settled down in our spare room he blossomed out
+like a full-blown friend of the family, and accordingly began to give
+us advice. He said we should go as soon as we could and see Exmoor and
+all that region of country, and that if we didn't mind he'd like to go
+with us; to which we answered, of course, we should like that very
+much, and asked him what he thought would be the best way to go. So we
+had ever so much talk about that, and although we all agreed it would
+be nicer not to take a public coach, but travel private, we didn't find
+it easy to decide as to the manner of travel. We all agreed that a
+carriage and horses would be too expensive, and Jone was rather in
+favor of a dogcart for us if Mr. Poplington would like to go on
+horseback; but the old gentleman said it would be too much riding for
+him, and if we took a dogcart he'd have to take another one. But this
+wouldn't be a very sociable way of travelling, and none of us liked it.
+
+"Now," exclaimed Mr. Poplington, striking his hand on the table, "I'll
+tell you exactly how we ought to go through that country--we ought to
+go on cycles."
+
+"Bicycles?" said I.
+
+"Tricycles, if you like," he answered, "but that's the way to do it.
+It'll be cheap, and we can go as we like and stop when we like. We'll
+be as free and independent as the Stars and Stripes, and more so, for
+they can't always flap when they like and stop flapping when they
+choose. Have you ever tried it, madam?"
+
+I replied that I had, a little, because my daughter had a tricycle, and
+I had ridden on it for a short distance and after sundown, but as for
+regular travel in the daytime I couldn't think of it.
+
+At this Jone nearly took my breath away by saying that he thought that
+the bicycle idea was a capital one, and that for his part he'd like it
+better than any other way of travelling through a pretty country. He
+also said he believed I could work a tricycle just as well as not, and
+that if I got used to it I would think it fine.
+
+I stood out against those two men for about a half an hour, and then I
+began to give in a little, and think that it might be nice to roll
+along on my own little wheels over their beautiful smooth roads, and
+stop and smell the hedges and pick flowers whenever I felt like it; and
+so it ended in my agreeing to do the Exmoor country on a tricycle while
+Mr. Poplington and Jone went on bicycles. As to getting the machines,
+Mr. Poplington said he would attend to that. There was people in London
+who hired them to excursionists, and all he had to do was to send an
+order and they would be on hand in a day or two; and so that matter
+was settled and he wrote to London. I thought Mr. Poplington was a
+little old for that sort of exercise, but I found he had been used to
+doing a great deal of cycling in the part of the country where he
+lives; and besides, he isn't as old as I thought he was, being not much
+over fifty. The kind of air that keeps a country always green is
+wonderful in bringing out early red and white in a person.
+
+"Everything happens wonderfully well, madam," said he, coming in after
+he had been to post his letter in a red iron box let into the side of
+the Wesleyan chapel, "doesn't it? Now here we're not able to start on
+our journey for two or three days, and I have just been told that the
+great hay-making in the big meadow to the south of the village is to
+begin to-morrow. They make the hay there only every other year, and
+they have a grand time of it. We must be there, and you shall see some
+of our English country customs."
+
+We said we'd be sure to be in for that sort of thing.
+
+I wish, madam, you could have seen that great hayfield. It belongs to
+the lord of the manor, and must have twenty or thirty acres in it.
+They've been three or four days cutting the grass on it with a machine,
+and now there's been nearly two days with hardly any rain, only now and
+then some drizzling, and a good, strong wind, which they think here is
+better for the hay-making than sunshine, though they don't object to a
+little sun. All the people in the village who had legs good enough to
+carry them to that field went to help make hay. It was a regular
+holiday, and as hay is clean, nearly everybody was dressed in good
+clothes. Early in the morning some twenty regular farm laborers began
+raking the hay at one end of the field, stretching themselves nearly
+the whole way across it, and as the day went on more and more people
+came, men and women, high and low. All the young women and some of the
+older ones had rakes, and the way they worked them was amazing to see,
+but they turned over the hay enough to dry it. As to schoolgirls and
+boys, there was no end of them in the afternoon, for school let out
+early. Some of them worked, but most of them played and cut up
+monkey-shines on the hay. Even the little babies was brought on the
+field, and nice, soft beds made for them under the trees at one side.
+
+When Jone saw the real farm-work going on, with a chance for everybody
+to turn in to help, his farmer blood boiled within him, as if he was a
+war-horse and sniffed the smoke of battle, and he got himself a rake
+and went to work like a good-fellow. I never saw so many men at work in
+a hayfield at home, but when I looked at Jone raking I could see why it
+was it didn't take so many men to get in our hay. As for me, I raked a
+little, but looked about a great deal more.
+
+Near the middle of the field was two women working together, raking as
+steadily as if they had been brought up to it. One of these was young,
+and even handsomer than Miss Dick, which was the name of the bar lady.
+To look at her made me think of what I had read of Queen Marie
+Antoinette and her court ladies playing the part of milkmaids. Her
+straw hat was trimmed with delicate flowers, and her white muslin dress
+and pale blue ribbons made her the prettiest picture I ever saw
+out-of-doors. I could not help asking Mrs. Locky who she was, and she
+told me that she was the chambermaid at the inn, and the other was the
+cook. When I heard this I didn't make any answer, but just walked off a
+little way and began raking and thinking. I have often wondered why it
+is that English servants are so different from those we have, or, to
+put it in a strictly confidential way between you and me, madam, why
+the chambermaid at the "Bordley Arms," as she is, is so different from
+me, as I used to be when I first lived with you. Now that young
+chambermaid with the pretty hat is, as far as appearances go, as good a
+woman as I am, and if Jone was a bachelor and intended to marry her I
+would think it was as good a match as if he married me. But the
+difference between us two is that when I got to be the kind of woman I
+am I wasn't willing to be a servant, and if I had always been the kind
+of young woman that chambermaid is I never would have been a servant.
+
+I've kept a sharp eye on the young women in domestic service over here,
+having a fellow-feeling for them, as you can well understand, madam,
+and since I have been in the country I've watched the poor folks and
+seen how they live, and it's just as plain to me as can be that the
+young women who are maids and waitresses over here are the kind who
+would have tried to be shop-girls and dressmakers and even
+school-teachers in America, and many of the servants we have would be
+working in the fields if they lived over here. The fact is, the English
+people don't go to other countries to get their servants. Their way is
+like a factory consuming its own smoke. The surplus young women, and
+there must always be a lot of them, are used up in domestic service.
+
+Now, if an American poor girl is good enough to be a first-class
+servant, she wants to be something else. Sooner than go out to service
+she will work twice as hard in a shop, or even go into a factory.
+
+I have talked a good deal about this to Jone, and he says I'm getting
+to be a philosopher; but I don't think it takes much philosophizing to
+find out how this case stands. If house service could be looked upon in
+the proper way, it wouldn't take long for American girls who have to
+work for their living to find out that it's a lot better to live with
+nice people, and cook and wait on the table, and do all those things
+which come natural to women the world over, than to stand all day
+behind a counter under the thumb of a floor-walker, or grind their
+lives out like slaves among a lot of steam-engines and machinery. The
+only reason the English have better house servants than we have is that
+here any girl who has to work is willing to be a house servant, and
+very good house servants they are, too.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Eight_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+I will now finish telling you about the great hay-making day. Toward
+the end of the afternoon a lot of boys and girls began playing a game
+which seemed to belong to the hayfield. Each one of the bigger boys
+would twist up a rope of hay and run after a girl, and when he had
+thrown it over her neck he could kiss her. Girls are girls the whole
+world over, and it was funny to see how some of them would run like mad
+to get away from the boys, and how dreadfully troubled they would be
+when they was caught, and yet, after they had been kissed and the boys
+had left them, they would walk innocently back to the players as if
+they never dreamed that anybody would think of disturbing them.
+
+At five o'clock everybody--farm hands, ladies, gentlemen,
+school-children, and all--took tea together. Some were seated at long
+tables made of planks, with benches at the sides, and others scattered
+all over the grass. Miss Pondar and our maid Hannah helped to serve the
+tea and sandwiches, and I was glad to see that Hannah wore her pointed
+white cap and her black dress, for I had on my woollen travelling suit,
+and I didn't want too much cart-before-the-horseness in my domestic
+establishment.
+
+After tea the work and the games began again, and as I think it is
+always better for people to do what they can do best, I turned in and
+helped clear away the tea-things, and after that I sat down by a female
+person in black silk--and I am sure I didn't know whether she was the
+lady of the manor or somebody else until I heard some h-words come out
+in her talk, and then I knew she was the latter--and she told me ever
+so much about the people in the village, and why the rector wasn't
+there, on account of a dispute about the altar-cloths, and she was just
+beginning to tell me about the doctor's wife sending her daughters to a
+school that was much too high-priced for his practice, when I happened
+to look across the field, and there, with the bar lady at the inn, with
+her hat trimmed with pink, and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, with
+her hat trimmed with blue, was Jone, and they was all three raking
+together, as comfortable and confiding as if they had been singing
+hymns out of the same book.
+
+Now, I thought I had been sitting still long enough, and so I snipped
+off the rest of the doctor story and got myself across that field with
+pretty long steps. When I reached the happy three I didn't say
+anything, but went round in front of them and stood there, throwing a
+sarcastic and disdainful glance upon their farming. Jone stopped
+working, and wiped his face with his handkerchief, as if he was hot and
+tired, but hadn't thought of it until just then, and the two girls they
+stopped too.
+
+"He's teaching us to rake, ma'am," said Miss Dick, revolving her
+green-gage eyes in my direction, "and really, ma'am, it's wonderful to
+see how good he does it. You Americans are so awful clever!"
+
+As for the one with the blue trimmings, she said nothing, but stood
+with her hands folded on her rake, and her chiselled features steeped
+in a meek resignedness, though much too high colored, as though it had
+just been borne in upon her that this world is all a fleeting show, for
+man's illusion given, and such felicity as culling fragrant hay by the
+side of that manly form must e'en be foregone by her, that I could
+have taken a handle of a rake and given her such a punch among her blue
+ribbons that her classic features would have frantically twined
+themselves around one resounding howl--but I didn't. I simply remarked
+to Jone, with a statuesque rigidity, that it was six o'clock and I was
+going home; to which he said he was going too, and we went.
+
+[Illustration: "THERE, WITH THE BAR LADY AND THE MARIE ANTOINETTE
+CHAMBERMAID, WAS JONE"]
+
+"I thought," said I, as we proceeded with rapid steps across the field,
+"that you didn't come to England for the purpose of teaching the
+inhabitants."
+
+Jone laughed a little. "That young lady put it rather strong," he said.
+"She and her friend was merely trying to rake as I did. I think they
+got on very well."
+
+"Indeed!" said I--I expect with flashing eye--"but the next time you go
+into the disciple business I recommend that you take boys who really
+need to know something about farming, and not fine-as-fiddle young
+women that you might as well be ballet-dancing with as raking with, for
+all the hankering after knowledge they have."
+
+"Oh!" said Jone, and that was all he did say, which was very wise in
+him, for, considering my state of feelings, his case was like a
+fish-hook in your finger--the more you pull and worry at it the harder
+it is to get out.
+
+That evening, when I was quite cooled down, and we was talking to Mr.
+Poplington about the hay-making and the free-and-easy way in which
+everybody came together, he was a good deal surprised that we should
+think that there was anything uncommon in that, coming from a country
+where everybody was free and equal. Jone was smoking his pipe, and when
+it draws well and he's had a good dinner and I haven't anything
+particular to say, he often likes to talk slow and preach little
+sermons.
+
+"Yes, sir," said he, after considering the matter a little while,
+"according to the Constitution of the United States we are all free and
+equal, but there's a good many things the Constitution doesn't touch
+on, and one of them is the sorting out and sizing up of the population.
+Now, you people over here are like the metal types that the printers
+use. You've all got your letters on one end of you, and you know just
+where you belong, and if you happen to be knocked into 'pi' and mixed
+all up in a pile it is easy enough to pick you out and put you all in
+your proper cases; but it's different with us. According to the
+Constitution we're like a lot of carpet-tacks, one just the same as
+another, though in fact we're not alike, and it would not be easy if we
+got mixed up, say in a hayfield, to get ourselves all sorted out again
+according to the breadth of our heads and the sharpness of our points,
+so we don't like to do too much mixing, don't you see?" To which Mr.
+Poplington said he didn't see, and then I explained to him that what
+Jone meant was that though in our country we was all equally free, it
+didn't do for us to be as freely equal as the people are sometimes over
+here, to which Mr. Poplington said, "Really!" but he didn't seem to be
+standing in the glaring sunlight of convincement. But the shade is
+often pleasant to be in, and he wound up by saying, as he bid us
+good-night, that he thought it would be a great deal better for us, if
+we had classes at all, to have them marked out plain, and stamped so
+that there could be no mistake; to which I said that if we did that the
+most of the mistakes would come in the sorting, which, according to my
+reading of books and newspapers, had happened to most countries that
+keep up aristocracies.
+
+I don't know that he heard all that I said, for he was going up-stairs
+with his candle at the time, but when Jone and me got up-stairs in our
+own room I said to him, and he always hears everything I say, that in
+some ways the girls that we have for servants at home have some
+advantages over those we find here; to which Jone said, "Yes," and
+seemed to be sleepy.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Nine_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+There was still another day of hay-making, but we couldn't wait for
+that, because our cycles had come from London and we was all anxious to
+be off, and you would have laughed, madam, if you could have seen us
+start. Mr. Poplington went off well enough, but Jone's bicycle seemed a
+little gay and hard to manage, and he frisked about a good deal at
+starting; but Jone had bought a bicycle long ago, when the things first
+came out, and on days when the roads was good he used to go to the
+post-office on it, and he said that if a man had ever ridden on top of
+a wheel about six feet high he ought to be able to balance himself on
+the pair of small wheels which they use nowadays. So, after getting his
+long legs into working order, he went very well, though with a snaky
+movement at first, and then I started.
+
+Each one of us had a little hand-bag hung on our machine, and Mr.
+Poplington said we needn't take anything to eat, for there was inns to
+be found everywhere in England. Hannah started me off nicely by pushing
+my tricycle until I got it going, and Miss Pondar waved her
+handkerchief from the cottage door. When Hannah left me I went along
+rather slow at first, but when I got used to the proper motion I began
+to do better, and was very sure it wouldn't take me long to catch up
+with Jone, who was still worm-fencing his way along the road. When I
+got entirely away from the houses, and began to smell the hedges and
+grassy banks so close to my nose, and feel myself gliding along over
+the smooth white road, my spirits began to soar like a bird, and I
+almost felt like singing.
+
+The few people I met didn't seem to think it was anything wonderful for
+a woman to ride on a tricycle, and I soon began to feel as proper as if
+I was walking on a sidewalk. Once I came very near tangling myself up
+with the legs of a horse who was pulling a cart. I forgot that it was
+the proper thing in this country to turn to the left, and not to the
+right, but I gave a quick twist to my helm and just missed the
+cart-wheel, but it was a close scratch. This turning to the right,
+instead of to the left, was a mistake Jone made two or three times when
+he began to drive me in England, but he got over it, and since my
+grazing the cart it's not likely I shall forget it. As I breathed a
+sigh of relief after escaping this danger I took in a breath full of
+the scent of wild roses that nearly covered a bit of hedge, and my
+spirits rose again.
+
+I had asked Jone and Mr. Poplington to go ahead, because I knew I could
+do a great deal better if I worked along by myself for a while, without
+being told what I ought to do and what I oughtn't to do. There is
+nothing that bothers me so much as to have people try to teach me
+things when I am puzzling them out for myself. But now I found that
+although they could not be far ahead, I couldn't see them, on account
+of the twists in the road and the high hedges, and so I put on steam
+and went along at a fine rate, sniffing the breeze like a charger of
+the battlefield. Before very long I came to a place where the road
+forked, but the road to the left seemed like a lane leading to
+somebody's house, so I kept on in what was plainly the main road, which
+made a little turn where it forked. Looking out ahead of me, to see if
+I could catch sight of the two men, I could not see a sign of them, but
+I did see that I was on the top of a long hill that seemed to lead on
+and down and on and down, with no end to it.
+
+I had hardly started down this hill when my tricycle became frisky and
+showed signs of wanting to run, and I got a little nervous, for I
+didn't fancy going fast down a slope like that. I put on the brake, but
+I don't believe I managed it right, for I seemed to go faster and
+faster; and then, as the machine didn't need any working, I took my
+feet off the pedals, with an idea, I think, though I can't now
+remember, that I would get off and walk down the hill. In an instant
+that thing took the bit in its teeth and away it went wildly tearing
+down hill. I never was so much frightened in all my life. I tried to
+get my feet back on the pedals, but I couldn't do it, and all I could
+do was to keep that flying tricycle in the middle of the road. As far
+as I could see ahead there was not anything in the way of a wagon or a
+carriage that I could run into, but there was such a stretch of slope
+that it made me fairly dizzy. Just as I was having a little bit of
+comfort from thinking there was nothing in the way, a black woolly dog
+jumped out into the road some distance ahead of me and stood there
+barking. My heart fell, like a bucket into a well with the rope broken.
+If I steered the least bit to the right or the left I believe I would
+have bounded over the hedge like a glass bottle from a railroad train,
+and come down on the other side in shivers and splinters. If I didn't
+turn I was making a bee-line for the dog; but I had no time to think
+what to do, and in an instant that black woolly dog faded away like a
+reminiscence among the buzzing wheels of my tricycle. I felt a little
+bump, but was ignorant of further particulars.
+
+I was now going at what seemed like a speed of ninety or a hundred
+miles an hour, with the wind rushing in between my teeth like water
+over a mill-dam, and I felt sure that if I kept on going down that hill
+I should soon be whirling through space like a comet. The only way I
+could think of to save myself was to turn into some level place where
+the thing would stop, but not a crossroad did I pass; but presently I
+saw a little house standing back from the road, which seemed to hump
+itself a little at that place so as to be nearly level, and over the
+edge of the hump it dipped so suddenly that I could not see the rest of
+the road at all.
+
+"Now," thought I to myself, "if the gate of that house is open I'll
+turn into it, and no matter what I run into, it would be better than
+going over the edge of that rise beyond and down the awful hill that
+must be on the other side of it." As I swooped down to the little house
+and reached the level ground I felt I was going a little slower, but
+not much. However, I steered my tricycle round at just the right
+instant, and through the front gate I went like a flash.
+
+I was going so fast, and my mind was so wound up on account of the
+necessity of steering straight, that I could not pay much attention to
+things I passed. But the scene that showed itself in front of me as I
+went through that little garden gate I could not help seeing and
+remembering. From the gate to the door of the house was a path paved
+with flagstones; the door was open, and there must have been a low step
+before it; back of the door was a hall which ran through the house, and
+this was paved with flagstones; the back door of the hall was open, and
+outside of it was a sort of arbor with vines, and on one side of this
+arbor was a bench, with a young man and a young woman sitting on it,
+holding each other by the hand, and looking into each other's eyes;
+the arbor opened out on to a piece of green grass, with flowers of
+mixed colors on the edges of it, and at the back of this bit of lawn
+was a lot of clothes hung out on clothes-lines. Of course, I could not
+have seen all those things at once, but they came upon me like a single
+picture, for in one tick of a watch I went over that flagstone path and
+into that front door and through that house and out of that back door,
+and past that young man and that young woman, and head and heels both
+foremost at once, dashed slam-bang into the midst of all that linen
+hanging out on the lines.
+
+[Illustration: "AT LAST I DID GET ON MY FEET"]
+
+I heard the minglement of a groan and a scream, and in an instant I was
+enveloped in a white, wet cloud of sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths,
+and underwear. Some of the things stuck so close to me, and others I
+grabbed with such a wild clutch, that nearly all the week's wash, lines
+and all, came down on me, wrapping me up like an apple in a
+dumpling--but I stopped. There was not anything in this world that
+would have been better for me to run into than those lines full of wet
+clothes.
+
+Where the tricycle went to I didn't know, but I was lying on the grass
+kicking, and trying to get up and to get my head free, so that I could
+see and breathe. At last I did get on my feet, and throwing out my arms
+so as to shake off the sheets and pillowcases that were clinging all
+over me I shook some of the things partly off my face, and with one
+eye I saw that couple on the bench, but only for a second. With a yell
+of horror, and with a face whiter than the linen I was wrapped in, that
+young man bounced from the bench, dashed past the house, made one clean
+jump over the hedge into the road, and disappeared. As for the young
+woman, she just flopped over and went down in a faint on the floor.
+
+As soon as I could do it I got myself free from the clothes-line and
+staggered out on the grass. I was trembling so much I could scarcely
+walk, but when I saw that young woman looking as if she was dead on the
+ground I felt I must do something, and seeing a pail of water standing
+near by, I held it over her face and poured it down on her a little at
+a time, and it wasn't long before she began to squirm, and then she
+opened her eyes and her mouth just at the same time, so that she must
+have swallowed about as much water as she would have taken at a meal.
+This brought her to, and she began to cough and splutter and look
+around wildly, and then I took her by the arm and helped her up on the
+bench.
+
+"Don't you want a little something to drink?" I said. "Tell me where I
+can get you something."
+
+She didn't answer, but began looking from one side to the other. "Is he
+swallowed?" said she in a whisper, with her eyes starting out of her
+head.
+
+"Swallowed?" said I. "Who?"
+
+"Davy," said she.
+
+"Oh, your young man," said I. "He is all right, unless he hurt himself
+jumping over the hedge. I saw him run away just as fast as he could."
+
+"And the spirit?" said she. I looked hard at her.
+
+"What has happened to you?" said I. "How did you come to faint?"
+
+She was getting quieter, but she still looked wildly out of her eyes,
+and kept her back turned toward the bit of grass, as if she was afraid
+to look in that direction.
+
+"What happened to you?" said I again, for I wanted to know what she
+thought about my sudden appearance. It took some little time for her to
+get ready to answer, and then she said:
+
+"Was you frightened, lady? Did you have to come in here? I'm sorry you
+found me swooned. I don't know how long I was swooned. Davy and me was
+sitting here talking about having the banns called, and it was a sorry
+talk, lady, for the vicar, he's told me four times I should not marry
+Davy, because he says he is a Radical; but for all that Davy and me
+wants the banns called all the same, but not knowing how we was to have
+it done, for the vicar, he's so set against Davy, and Davy, he had just
+got done saying to me that he was going to marry me, vicar or no vicar,
+banns or no banns, come what might, when that very minute, with an
+awful hiss, something flashed in front of us, dazzling my eyes so that
+I shut them and screamed, and then when I opened them again, there, in
+the yard back of us, was a great white spirit twice as high as the cow
+stable, with one eye in the middle of its forehead, turning around like
+a firework. I don't remember anything after that, and I don't know how
+long I was lying here when you came and found me, lady, but I know what
+it means. There is a curse on our marriage, and Davy and me will never
+be man and wife." And then she fell to groaning and moaning.
+
+I felt like laughing when I thought how much like a church ghost I must
+have looked, standing there in solid white with my arms stretched out;
+but the poor girl was in such a dreadful state of mind that I sat down
+beside her and began to comfort her by telling her just what had
+happened, and that she ought to be very glad that I had found a place
+to turn into, and had not gone on down the hill and dashed myself into
+little pieces at the bottom. But it wasn't easy to cheer her up.
+
+"Oh, Davy's gone," said she. "He'll never come back for fear of the
+curse. He'll be off with his uncle to sea. I'll never lay eyes on Davy
+again."
+
+Just at that moment I heard somebody calling my name, and looking
+through the house I saw Jone at the front door and two men behind him.
+As I ran through the hall I saw that the two men with Jone was Mr.
+Poplington and a young fellow with a pale face and trembling legs.
+
+"Is this Davy?" said I.
+
+"Yes," said he.
+
+"Then go back to your young woman and comfort her," I said, which he
+did, and when he had gone, not madly rushing into his loved one's arms,
+but shuffling along in a timid way, as if he was afraid the ghost
+hadn't gone yet, I asked Jone how he happened to think I was here, and
+he told me that he and Mr. Poplington had taken the road to the left
+when they reached the fork, because that was the proper one, but they
+had not gone far before he thought I might not know which way to turn,
+so they came back to the fork to wait for me. But I had been closer
+behind them than they thought, and I must have come to the fork before
+they turned back, so, after waiting a while and going back along the
+road without seeing me, they thought that I must have taken the
+right-hand road, and they came that way, going down the hill very
+carefully. After a while Jone found my hat in the road, which up to
+that moment I had not missed, and then he began to be frightened and
+they went on faster.
+
+They passed the little house, and as they was going down the hill they
+saw ahead of them a man running as if something had happened, so they
+let out their bicycles and soon caught up to him. This was Davy; and
+when they stopped him and asked if anything was the matter he told
+them that a dreadful thing had come to pass. He had been working in the
+garden of a house about half a mile back when suddenly there came an
+awful crash, and a white animal sprang out of the house with a bit of a
+cotton mill fastened to its tail, and then, with a great peal of
+thunder, it vanished, and a white ghost rose up out of the ground with
+its arms stretching out longer and longer, reaching to clutch him by
+the hair. He was not afraid of anything living, but he couldn't abide
+spirits, so he laid down his spade and left the garden, thinking he
+would go and see the sexton and have him come and lay the ghost.
+
+Then Jone went on to say that of course he could not make head or tail
+out of such a story as that, but when he heard that an awful row had
+been kicked up in a garden he immediately thought that as like as not I
+was in it, and so he and Mr. Poplington ran back, leaving their
+bicycles against the hedge, and bringing the young man with them.
+
+Then I told my story, and Mr. Poplington said it was a mercy I was not
+killed, and Jone didn't say much, but I could see that his teeth was
+grinding.
+
+We all went into the back yard, and there, on the other side of the
+clothes, which was scattered all over the ground, we found my tricycle,
+jammed into a lot of gooseberry bushes, and when it was dragged out we
+found it was not hurt a bit. Davy and his young woman was standing in
+the arbor looking very sheepish, especially Davy, for she had told him
+what it was that had scared him. As we was going through the house,
+Jone taking my tricycle, I stopped to say good-by to the girl.
+
+"Now that you see there has been no curse and no ghost," said I, "I
+hope that you will soon have your banns called, and that you and your
+young man will be married all right."
+
+"Thank you very much, ma'am," said she, "but I'm awful fearful about
+it. Davy may say what he pleases, but my mother never will let me marry
+him if the vicar's agen it; and Davy wouldn't have been here to-day if
+she hadn't gone to town; and the vicar's a hard man and a strong Tory,
+and he'll always be agen it, I fear."
+
+When I went out into the front yard I found Mr. Poplington and Jone
+sitting on a little stone bench, for they was tired, and I told them
+about that young woman and Davy.
+
+"Humph," said Mr. Poplington, "I know the vicar of the parish. He is
+the Rev. Osmun Green. He's a good Conservative, and is perfectly right
+in trying to keep that poor girl from marrying a wretched Radical."
+
+I looked straight at him and said:
+
+"Do you mean, sir, to put politics before matrimonial happiness?"
+
+"No, I don't," said he, "but a girl can't expect matrimonial happiness
+with a Radical."
+
+I saw that Jone was about to say something here, but I got in ahead of
+him.
+
+"I will tell you what it is, sir," said I, "if you think it is wrong to
+be a Radical the best thing you can do is to write to your friend, that
+vicar, and advise him to get those two young people married as soon as
+possible, for it is easy to see that she is going to rule the roost,
+and if anybody can get his Radicalistics out of him she will be the one
+to do it."
+
+Mr. Poplington laughed, and said that as the man looked as if he was a
+fit subject to be henpecked it might be a good way of getting another
+Tory vote.
+
+"But," said he, "I should think it would go against your conscience,
+being naturally opposed to the Conservatives, to help even by one
+vote."
+
+"Oh, my conscience is all right," said I. "When politics runs against
+the matrimonial altar I stand up for the altar."
+
+"Well," said he, "I'll think of it." And we started off, walking down
+the hill, Jone holding on to my tricycle.
+
+When we got to level ground, with about two miles to go before we would
+stop for luncheon, Jone took a piece of thin rope out of his pocket--he
+always carries some sort of cord in case of accidents--and he tied it
+to the back part of my machine.
+
+"Now," said he, "I'm going to keep hold of the other end of this, and
+perhaps your tricycle won't run away with you."
+
+I didn't much like going along this way, as if I was a cow being taken
+to market, but I could see that Jone had been so troubled and
+frightened about me that I didn't make any objection, and, in fact,
+after I got started it was a comfort to think there was a tie between
+Jone and me that was stronger, when hilly roads came into the question,
+than even the matrimonial tie.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Ten_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+The place we stopped at on the first night of our cycle trip is named
+Porlock, and after the walking and the pushing, and the strain on my
+mind when going down even the smallest hill for fear Jone's rope would
+give way, I was glad to get there.
+
+The road into Porlock goes down a hill, the steepest I have seen yet,
+and we all walked down, holding our machines as if they had been fiery
+coursers. This hill road twists and winds so you can only see part of
+it at a time, and when we was about half-way down we heard a horn
+blowing behind us, and looking around there came the mail-coach at full
+speed, with four horses, with a lot of people on top. As this raging
+coach passed by it nearly took my breath away, and as soon as I could
+speak I said to Jone: "Don't you ever say anything in America about
+having the roads made narrower so that it won't cost so much to keep
+them in order, for in my opinion it's often the narrow road that
+leadeth to destruction."
+
+When we got into the town, and my mind really began to grapple with old
+Porlock, I felt as if I was sliding backward down the slope of the
+centuries, and liked it. As we went along Mr. Poplington told us about
+everything, and said that this queer little town was a fishing village
+and seaport in the days of the Saxons, and that King Harold was once
+obliged to stop there for a while, and that he passed his time making
+war on the neighbors.
+
+Mr. Poplington took us to a tavern called the Ship Inn, and I simply
+went wild over it. It is two hundred years old and two stories high,
+and everything I ever read about the hostelries of the past I saw
+there. The queer little door led into a queer little passage paved with
+stone. A pair of little stairs led out of this into another little
+room, higher up, and on the other side of the passage was a long,
+mysterious hallway. We had our dinner in a tiny parlor, which reminded
+me of a chapter in one of those old books where they use f instead of
+s, and where the first word of the next page is at the bottom of the
+one you are reading.
+
+There was a fireplace in the room with a window one side of it, through
+which you could look into the street. It was not cold, but it had begun
+to rain hard, and so I made the dampness an excuse for a fire.
+
+"This is antique, indeed," I said, when we were at the table.
+
+"You are right there," said Mr. Poplington, who was doing his best to
+carve a duck, and was a little cross about it.
+
+When I sat before the fire that evening, and Jone was asleep on a
+settee of the days of yore, and Mr. Poplington had gone to bed, being
+tired, my soul went back to the olden time, and, looking out through
+the little window in the fireplace, I fancied I could see William the
+Conqueror and the King of the Danes sneaking along the little street
+under the eaves of the thatched roofs, until I was so worked up that I
+was on the point of shouting, "Fly! oh, Saxon!" when the door opened
+and the maid who waited on us at the table put her head in. I took this
+for a sign that the curfew bell was going to ring, and so I woke up
+Jone and we went to bed.
+
+But all night long the heroes of the past flocked about me. I had been
+reading a lot of history, and I knew them all the minute my eyes fell
+upon them. Charlemagne and Canute sat on the end of the bed, while
+Alfred the Great climbed up one of the posts until he was stopped by
+Hannibal's legs, who had them twisted about the post to keep himself
+steady. When I got up in the morning I went down-stairs into the little
+parlor, and there was the maid down on her knees cleaning the hearth.
+
+"What is your name?" I said to her.
+
+"Jane, please," said she.
+
+"Jane what?" said I.
+
+"Jane Puddle, please," said she.
+
+I took a carving-knife from off the table, and standing over her I
+brought it down gently on top of her head. "Rise, Sir Jane Puddle,"
+said I, to which the maid gave a smothered gasp, and--would you believe
+it, madam?--she crept out of the room on her hands and knees. The cook
+waited on us at breakfast, and I truly believe that the landlord and
+his wife breathed a sigh of relief when we left the Ship Inn, for their
+sordid souls had never heard of knighthood, but knew all about
+assassination.
+
+[Illustration: "Rise, Sir Jane Puddle"]
+
+That morning we left Porlock by a hill which compared with the one we
+came into it by, was like the biggest Pyramid of Egypt by the side of a
+haycock. I don't suppose in the whole civilized world there is a worse
+hill with a road on it than the one we went up by. I was glad we had to
+go up it instead of down it, though it was very hard to walk, pushing
+the tricycle, even when helped. I believe it would have taken away my
+breath and turned me dizzy even to take one step face forward down such
+a hill, and gaze into the dreadful depths below me; and yet they drive
+coaches and fours down that hill. At the top of the hill is this
+notice: "To cyclers--this hill is dangerous." If I had thought of it I
+should have looked for the cyclers' graves at the bottom of it.
+
+The reason I thought about this was that I had been reading about one
+of the mountains in Switzerland, which is one of the highest and most
+dangerous, and with the poorest view, where so many Alpine climbers
+have been killed that there is a little graveyard nearly full of their
+graves at the foot of the mountain. How they could walk through that
+graveyard and read the inscriptions on the tombstones and then go and
+climb that mountain is more than I can imagine.
+
+In walking up this hill, and thinking that it might have been in front
+of me when my tricycle ran away, I could not keep my mind away from the
+little graveyard at the foot of the Swiss mountain.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Eleven_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+On the third day of our cycle trip we journeyed along a lofty road,
+with the wild moor on one side and the tossing sea on the other, and at
+night reached Lynton. It is a little town on a jutting crag, and far
+down below it on the edge of the sea was another town named Lynmouth,
+and there is a car with a wire rope to it, like an elevator, which they
+call The Lift, which takes people up and down from one town to another.
+
+Here we stopped at a house very different from the Ship Inn, for it
+looked as if it had been built the day before yesterday. Everything was
+new and shiny, and we had our supper at a long table with about twenty
+other people, just like a boardinghouse. Some of their ways reminded
+me of the backwoods, and I suppose there is nothing more modern than
+backwoodsism, which naturally hasn't the least alloy of the past. When
+the people got through with their cups of coffee or tea, mostly the
+last, two women went around the table, one with a big bowl for us to
+lean back and empty our slops into, and the other with the tea or
+coffee to fill up the cups. A gentleman with a baldish head, who was
+sitting opposite us, began to be sociable as soon as he heard us speak
+to the waiters, and asked questions about America. After he got through
+with about a dozen of them he said:
+
+"Is it true, as I have heard, that what you call native-born Americans
+deteriorate in the third generation?"
+
+I had been answering most of the questions, but now Jone spoke up
+quick. "That depends," says he, "on their original blood. When
+Americans are descended from Englishmen they steadily improve,
+generation after generation." The baldish man smiled at this, and said
+there was nothing like having good blood for a foundation. But Mr.
+Poplington laughed, and said to me that Jone had served him right.
+
+The country about Lynton is wonderfully beautiful, with rocks and
+valleys, and velvet lawns running into the sea, and woods and ancestral
+mansions, and we spent the day seeing all this, and also going down to
+Lynmouth, where the little ships lie high and dry on the sand when the
+tide goes out, and the carts drive up to them and put goods on board,
+and when the tide rises the ships sail away, which is very convenient.
+
+I wanted to keep on along the coast, but the others didn't, and the
+next morning we started back to Chedcombe by a roundabout way, so that
+we might see Exmoor and the country where Lorna Doone and John Ridd cut
+up their didoes. I must say I liked the story a good deal better before
+I saw the country where the things happened. The mind of man is capable
+of soarings which Nature weakens at when she sees what she is called
+upon to do. If you want a real, first-class, tooth-on-edge Doone
+valley, the place to look for it is in the book. We went rolling along
+on the smooth, hard roads, which are just as good here as if they was
+in London, and all around us was stretched out the wild and desolate
+moors, with the wind screaming and whistling over the heather, nearly
+tearing the clothes off our backs, while the rain beat down on us with
+a steady pelting, and the ragged sheep stopped to look at us, as if we
+was three witches and they was Macbeths.
+
+The very thought that I was out in a wild storm on a desolate moor
+filled my soul with a sort of triumph, and I worked my tricycle as if I
+was spurring my steed to battle. The only thing that troubled me was
+the thought that if the water that poured off my mackintosh that day
+could have run into our cistern at home, it would have been a glorious
+good thing. Jone did not like the fierce blast and the inspiriting
+rain, but I knew he'd stand it as long as Mr. Poplington did, and so I
+was content, although, if we had been overtaken by a covered wagon, I
+should have trembled for the result.
+
+That night we stopped in the little village of Simonsbath at Somebody's
+Arms. After dinner Mr. Poplington, who knew some people in the place,
+went out, but Jone and me went to bed as quick as we could, for we was
+tired. The next morning we was wakened by a tremendous pounding at the
+door. I didn't know what to make of it, for it was too early and too
+loud for hot water, but we heard Mr. Poplington calling to us, and Jone
+jumped up to see what he wanted.
+
+"Get up," said he, "if you want to see a sight that you never saw
+before. We'll start off immediately and breakfast at Exford." The hope
+of seeing a sight was enough to make me bounce at any time, and I never
+dressed or packed a bag quicker than I did that morning, and Jone
+wasn't far behind me.
+
+When we got down-stairs we found our cycles waiting ready at the door,
+together with the stable man and the stable boy and the boy's helper
+and the cook and the chambermaid and the waiters and the other
+servants, waiting for their tips. Mr. Poplington seemed in a fine
+humor, and he told us he had heard the night before that there was to
+be a stag hunt that day, the first of the season. In fact, it was not
+one of the regular meets, but what they called a by-meet, and not known
+to everybody.
+
+"We will go on to Exford," said he, straddling his bicycle, "for though
+the meet isn't to be there, there's where they keep the hounds and
+horses, and if we make good speed we shall get there before they start
+out."
+
+The three of us travelled abreast, Mr. Poplington in the middle, and on
+the way he told us a good deal about stag hunts. What I remember best,
+having to go so fast and having to mind my steering, was that after the
+hunting season began they hunted stags until a certain day--I forget
+what it was--and then they let them alone and began to hunt the does;
+and that after that particular day of the month, when the stags heard
+the hounds coming they paid no attention to them, knowing very well it
+was the does' turn to be chased, and that they would not be bothered;
+and so they let the female members of their families take care of
+themselves; which shows that ungentlemanliness extends itself even into
+Nature.
+
+When we got to Exford we left our cycles at the inn and followed Mr.
+Poplington to the hunting stables, which are near by. I had not gone a
+dozen steps from the door before I heard a great barking, and the next
+minute there came around the corner a pack of hounds. They crossed the
+bridge over the little river, and then they stopped. We went up to
+them, and while Mr. Poplington talked to the men the whole of that pack
+of hounds gathered about us as gentle as lambs. They were good big
+dogs, white and brown. The head huntsman who had them in charge told me
+there was thirty couple of them, and I thought that sixty dogs was
+pretty heavy odds against one deer. Then they moved off as orderly as
+if they had been children in a kindergarten, and we went to the stables
+and saw the horses; and then the master of the hounds and a good many
+other gentlemen in red coats, in all sorts of traps, rode up, and their
+hunters were saddled, and the dogs barked and the men cracked their
+whips to keep them together, and there was a bustle and liveliness to a
+degree I can't write about, and Jone and I never thought about going in
+to breakfast until all those horses, some led and some ridden, and the
+men and the hounds, and even the dust from their feet, had disappeared.
+
+I wanted to go see the hunt start off, but Mr. Poplington said it was
+two or three miles distant, and out of our way, and that we'd better
+move on as soon as possible so as to reach Chedcombe that night; but
+he was glad, he said, that we had had a chance to see the hounds and
+the horses.
+
+As for himself, I could see he was a little down in the mouth, for he
+said he was very fond of hunting, and that if he had known of this meet
+he would have been there with a horse and his hunting clothes. I think
+he hoped somebody would lend him a horse, but nobody did, and not being
+able to hunt himself he disliked seeing other people doing what he
+could not. Of course, Jone and me could not go to the hunt by
+ourselves, so after we'd had our tea and toast and bacon we started
+off. I will say here that when I was at the Ship Inn I had tea for my
+breakfast, for I couldn't bring my mind to order coffee--a drink the
+Saxons must never have heard of--in such a place; and since that we
+have been drinking it because Jone said there was no use fighting
+against established drinks, and that anyway he thought good tea was
+better than bad coffee.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twelve_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+As I said in my last letter, we started out for Chedcombe, not abreast,
+as we had been before, but strung along the road, and me and Mr.
+Poplington pretty doleful, being disappointed and not wanting to talk.
+But as for Jone, he seemed livelier than ever, and whistled a lot of
+tunes he didn't know. I think it always makes him lively to get rid of
+seeing sights. The sun was shining brightly, and there was no reason to
+expect rain for two or three hours anyway, and the country we passed
+through was so fine, with hardly any houses, and with great hills and
+woods, and sometimes valleys far below the road, with streams rushing
+and bubbling, that after a while I began to feel better, and I pricked
+up my tricycle, and, of course, being followed by Jone, we left Mr.
+Poplington, whose melancholy seemed to have gotten into his legs, a
+good way behind.
+
+We must have travelled two or three hours when all of a sudden I heard
+a noise afar, and I drew up and listened. The noise was the barking of
+dogs, and it seemed to come from a piece of woods on the other side of
+the field which lay to the right of the road. The next instant
+something shot out from under the trees and began going over the field
+in ten-foot hops. I sat staring without understanding, but when I saw a
+lot of brown and white spots bounce out of the wood, and saw, a long
+way back in the open field, two red-coated men on horseback, the truth
+flashed upon me that this was the hunt. The creature in front was the
+stag, who had chosen to come this way, and the dogs and the horses was
+after him, and I was here to see it all.
+
+Almost before I got this all straight in my mind the deer was nearly
+opposite me on the other side of the field, going the same way that we
+were. In a second I clapped spurs into my tricycle and was off. In
+front of me was a long stretch of down grade, and over this I went as
+fast as I could work my pedals; no brakes or holding back for me. My
+blood was up, for I was actually in a deer hunt, and to my amazement
+and wild delight I found I was keeping up with the deer. I was going
+faster than the men on horseback.
+
+"Hi! Hi!" I shouted, and down I went with one eye on the deer and the
+other on the road, every atom of my body tingling with fiery
+excitement. When I began to go up the little slope ahead I heard Jone
+puffing behind me.
+
+"You will break your neck," he shouted, "if you go down hill that way,"
+and getting close up to me he fastened his cord to my tricycle. But I
+paid no attention to him or his advice.
+
+"The stag! The stag!" I cried. "As long as he keeps near the road we
+can follow him! Hi!" And having got up to the top of the next hill I
+made ready to go down as fast as I had gone before, for we had fallen
+back a little, and the stag was now getting ahead of us; but it made me
+gnash my teeth to find that I could not go fast, for Jone held back
+with all his force (and both feet on the ground, I expect), and I could
+not get on at all.
+
+"Let go of me," I cried, "we shall lose the stag. Stop holding back."
+But it wasn't any use; Jone's heels must have been nearly rubbed off,
+but he held back like a good fellow, and I seemed to be moving along no
+faster than a worm. I could not stand this; my blood boiled and
+bubbled; the deer was getting away from me; and if it had been Porlock
+Hill in front of me I would have dashed on, not caring whether the road
+was steep or level.
+
+A thought flashed across my mind, and I clapped my hand into my pocket
+and jerked out a pair of scissors. In an instant I was free. The world
+and the stag was before me, and I was flying along with a tornado-like
+swiftness that soon brought me abreast of the deer. This perfectly
+splendid, bounding creature was not far away from me on the other side
+of the hedge, and as the field was higher than the road I could see him
+perfectly. His legs worked so regular and springy, except when he came
+to a cross hedge, which he went over with a single clip, and came down
+like India rubber on the other side, that one might have thought he was
+measuring the grass, and keeping an account of his jumps in his head.
+
+[Illustration: "In an instant I was free."]
+
+For one instant I looked around for the hounds, and I saw there was not
+more than half a dozen following him, and I could only see the two
+hunters I had seen before, and these was still a good way back. As for
+Jone, I couldn't hear him at all, and he must have been left far
+behind. There was still the woods on the other side, and the deer
+seemed to run to keep away from that and to cross the road, and he
+came nearer and nearer until I fancied he kept an eye on me as if he
+was wondering if I was of any consequence, and if I could hinder him
+from crossing the road and getting away into the valley below where
+there was a regular wilderness of woods and underbrush.
+
+If he does that, I thought, he will be gone in a minute and I shall
+lose him, and the hunt will be over. And for fear he would make for the
+hedge and jump over it, not minding me, I jerked out my handkerchief
+and shook it at him. You can't imagine how this frightened him. He
+turned sharp to the right, dashed up the hill, cleared a hedge and was
+gone. I gave a gasp and a scream as I saw him disappear. I believe I
+cried, but I didn't stop, and glad I was that I didn't; for in less
+than a minute I had come to a cross lane which led in the very
+direction the deer had taken. I turned into this lane and went on as
+fast as I could, and I soon found that it led through a thick wood.
+Down in the hollow, which I could not see into, I heard a barking and
+shouting, and I kept on just as fast as I could make that tricycle go.
+Where the lane led to, or what I should ever come to, I didn't think
+about. I was hunting a stag, and all I cared for was to feel my
+tricycle bounding beneath me.
+
+I may have gone a half a mile or two miles--I have not an idea how far
+it was--when suddenly I came to a place where there was green grass and
+rocks in an opening in the woods, and what a sight I saw! There was
+that beautiful, grand, red deer half down on his knees and perfectly
+quiet, and there was one of the men in red coats coming toward him with
+a great knife in his hand, and a little farther back was three or four
+dogs with another man, still on horseback, whipping them to keep them
+back, though they seemed willing enough to lie there with their tongues
+out, panting. As the man with the knife came up to the deer, the poor
+creature raised its eyes to him, and didn't seem to mind whether he
+came or not. It was trembling all over and fairly tired to death. When
+the man got near enough he took hold of one of the deer's horns and
+lifted up the hand with the knife in it, but he didn't bring it down on
+that deer's throat, I can tell you, madam, for I was there and had him
+by the arm.
+
+He turned on me as if he had been struck by lightning.
+
+"What do you mean?" he shouted. "Let go my arm."
+
+"Don't you touch that deer," said I--my voice was so husky I could
+hardly speak--"don't you see it's surrendered? Can you have the heart
+to cut that beautiful throat when he is pleading for mercy?" The man's
+eyes looked as if they would burst out of his head. He gave me a pull
+and a push as if he would stick the knife into me, and he actually
+swore at me, but I didn't mind that.
+
+[Illustration: "IF YOU WAS A MAN I'D BREAK YOUR HEAD"]
+
+"You have got that poor creature now," said I, "and that's enough. Keep
+it and tame it and bring it up with your children." I didn't have time
+to say anything more, and he didn't have time to answer, for two of the
+dogs who had got a little of their wind back sprang up and made a jump
+at the stag; and he, having got a little of his wind back, jerked his
+horn out of the hand of the man, and giving a sort of side spring
+backward among the bushes and rocks, away he went, the dogs after him.
+
+The man with the knife rushed out into the lane, and so did I, and so
+did the man on horseback, almost on top of me. On the other side of the
+lane was a little gorge with rocks and trees and water at the bottom of
+it, and I was just in time to see the stag spring over the lane and
+drop out of sight among the rocks and the moss and the vines.
+
+The man stood and swore at me regardless of my sex, so violent was his
+rage.
+
+"If you was a man I'd break your head," he yelled.
+
+"I'm glad I'm not," said I, "for I wouldn't want my head broken. But
+what troubles me is, that I'm afraid that deer has broken his legs or
+hurt himself some way, for I never saw anything drop on rocks in such a
+reckless manner, and the poor thing so tired."
+
+The man swore again, and said something about wishing somebody else's
+legs had been broken; and then he shouted to the man on horseback to
+call off the dogs, which was of no use, for he was doing it already.
+Then he turned on me again.
+
+"You are an American," he shouted. "I might have known that. No English
+woman would ever have done such a beastly thing as that."
+
+"You're mistaken there," I said; "there isn't a true English woman that
+lives who would not have done the same thing. Your mother--"
+
+"Confound my mother!" yelled the man.
+
+"All right," said I; "that's all in your family and none of my
+business." Then he went off raging to where he had left his horse by a
+gatepost.
+
+The other man, who was a good deal younger and more friendly, came up
+to me and said he wouldn't like to be in my boots, for I had spoiled a
+pretty piece of sport; and then he went on and told me that it had been
+a bad hunt, for instead of starting only one stag, three or four of
+them had been started, and they had had a bad time, for the hounds and
+the hunters had been mixed up in a nasty way. And at last, when the
+master of the hounds and most every one else had gone off over Dunkery
+Hill, and he didn't know whether they was after two stags or one, he
+and his mate, who was both whippers-in, had gone to turn part of the
+pack that had broken away, and had found that these dogs was after
+another stag, and so before they knew it they was in a hunt of their
+own, and they would have killed that stag if it had not been for me;
+and he said it was hard on his mate, for he knew he had it in mind that
+he was going to kill the only stag of the day.
+
+He went on to say, that as for himself he wasn't so sorry, for this was
+Sir Skiddery Henchball's land, and when a stag was killed it belonged
+to the man whose land it died on. He told me that the master of the
+hunt gets the head and the antlers, and the huntsman some other part,
+which I forget, but the owner of the land, no matter whether he's in
+the hunt or not, gets the body of the stag. "There's a cottage not a
+mile down this lane," said he, "with its thatch torn off, and my sister
+and her children live there, and Sir Skiddery turned them out on
+account of the rent, and so I'm glad the old skinflint didn't get the
+venison." And then he went off, being called by the other man.
+
+I didn't know what time it was, but it seemed as if it must be getting
+on into the afternoon; and feeling that my deer hunt was over, I
+thought I had better lose no time in hunting up Jone, so I followed on
+after the men and the dogs, who was going to the main road, but keeping
+a little back of them, though, for I didn't know what the older one
+might do if he happened to turn and see me.
+
+I was sure that Jone had passed the little lane without seeing it, so I
+kept on the way we had been going, and got up all the speed I could,
+though I must say I was dreadfully tired, and even trembling a little,
+for while I had been stag hunting I was so excited I didn't know how
+much work I was doing. There was sign-posts enough to tell me the way
+to Chedcombe, and so I kept straight on, up hill and down hill, until
+at last I saw a man ahead on a bicycle, which I soon knew to be Mr.
+Poplington. He was surprised enough at seeing me, and told me my
+husband had gone ahead. I didn't explain anything, and it wasn't until
+we got nearly to Chedcombe that we met Jone. He had been to Chedcombe,
+and was coming back.
+
+Jone is a good fellow, but he's got a will of his own, and he said that
+this would be the end of my tricycle riding, and that the next time we
+went out together on wheels he'd drive. I didn't tell him anything
+about the stag hunt then, for he seemed to be in favor of doing all the
+talking himself; but after dinner, when we was all settled down quiet
+and comfortable, I told him and Mr. Poplington the story of the chase,
+and they both laughed, Mr. Poplington the most.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Thirteen_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+It is now about a week since my stag hunt, and Jone and I have kept
+pretty quiet, taking short walks, and doing a good deal of reading in
+our garden whenever the sun shines into the little arbor there, and Mr.
+Poplington spends most of his time fishing. He works very hard at this,
+partly for the sake of his conscience, I think, for his bicycle trip
+made him lose three or four days he had taken a license for.
+
+It was day before yesterday that rheumatism showed itself certain and
+plain in Jone. I had been thinking that perhaps I might have it first,
+but it wasn't so, and it began in Jone, which, though I don't want you
+to think me hard-hearted, madam, was perhaps better; for if it had not
+been for it, it might have been hard to get him out of this comfortable
+little cottage, where he'd be perfectly content to stay until it was
+time for us to sail for America. The beautiful greenness which spreads
+over the fields and hills, and not only the leaves of trees and vines,
+but down and around trunks and branches, is charming to look at and
+never to be forgotten; but when this moist greenness spreads itself to
+one's bones, especially when it creeps up to the parts that work
+together, then the soul of man longs for less picturesqueness and more
+easy-going joints. Jone says the English take their climate as they do
+their whiskey; and he calls it climate-and-water, with a very little of
+the first and a good deal of the other.
+
+Of course, we must now leave Chedcombe; and when we talked to Mr.
+Poplington about it he said there was two places the English went to
+for their rheumatism. One was Bath, not far from here, and the other
+was Buxton, up in the north. As soon as I heard of Bath I was on pins
+and needles to go there, for in all the novel-reading I've done, which
+has been getting better and better in quality since the days when I
+used to read dime novels on the canal-boat, up to now when I like the
+best there is, I could not help knowing lots about Evelina and Beau
+Brummel, and the Pump Room, and the fine ladies and young bucks, and it
+would have joyed my soul to live and move where all these people had
+been, and where all these things had happened, even if fictitiously.
+
+But Mr. Poplington came down like a shower on my notions, and said that
+Bath was very warm, and was the place where everybody went for their
+rheumatism in winter; but that Buxton was the place for the summer,
+because it was on high land and cool. This cast me down a good deal;
+for if we could have gone where I could have steeped my soul in
+romanticness, and at the same time Jone could have steeped himself in
+warm mineral water, there would not have been any time lost, and both
+of us would have been happier. But Mr. Poplington stuck to it that it
+would ruin anybody's constitution to go to such a hot place in August,
+and so I had to give it up.
+
+So to-morrow we start for Buxton, which, from what I can make out, must
+be a sort of invalid picnic ground. I always did hate diseases and
+ailments, even of the mildest, when they go in caravan. I like to take
+people's sicknesses separate, because then I feel I might do something
+to help; but when they are bunched I feel as if it was sort of mean for
+me to go about cheerful and singing when other people was all grunting.
+
+But we are not going straight to Buxton. As I have often said, Jone is
+a good fellow, and he told me last night if there was any bit of fancy
+scenery I'd like to stop on the way to the unromantic refuge he'd be
+glad to give me the chance, because he didn't suppose it would matter
+much if he put off his hot soaks for a few days. It didn't take me long
+to name a place I'd like to stop at--for most of my reading lately has
+been in the guide books, and I had crammed myself with the descriptions
+of places worth seeing, that would take us at least two years to look
+at--so I said I would like to go to the River Wye, which is said to be
+the most romantic stream in England, and when that is said, enough is
+said for me, so Jone agreed, and we are going to do the Wye on our way
+north.
+
+There is going to be an election here in a few days, and this morning
+Jone and me hobbled into the village--that is, he hobbled in body, and
+I did in mind to think of his going along like a creaky wheelbarrow.
+
+Everybody was agog about the election, and we was looking at some
+placards posted against a wall, when Mr. Locky, the innkeeper, came
+along, and after bidding us good-morning he asked Jone what party he
+belonged to. "I'm a Home Ruler," said Jone, "especially in the matter
+of tricycles." Mr. Locky didn't understand the last part of this
+speech, but I did, and he said, "I am glad you are not a Tory, sir. If
+you will read that, you will see what the Tory party has done for us,"
+and he pointed out some lines at the bottom of a green placard, and
+these was the words: "Remember it was the Tory party that lost us the
+United States of America."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "that seems like going a long way off to get some
+stones to throw at the Tories, but I feel inclined to heave a rock at
+them myself for the injury that party has done to America."
+
+"To America!" said Mr. Locky, "Did the Tories ever harm America?"
+
+"Of course they did," said Jone; "they lost us England, a very valuable
+country, indeed, and a great loss to any nation. If it had not been for
+the Tory party, Mr. Gladstone might now be in Washington as a senator
+from Middlesex."
+
+[Illustration: "I'm a Home Ruler"]
+
+Mr. Locky didn't understand one word of this, and so he asked Jone
+which leg his rheumatism was in; and when Jone told him it was his left
+leg he said it was a very curious thing, but if you would take a
+hundred men in Chedcombe there would be at least sixty with rheumatism
+in the left leg, and perhaps not more than twenty with it in the right,
+which was something the doctors never had explained yet.
+
+It is awfully hard to go away and leave this lovely little cottage with
+its roses and vines, and Miss Pondar, and all its sweet-smelling
+comforts; and not only the cottage, but the village, and Mrs. Locky and
+her husband at the Bordley Arms, who couldn't have been kinder to us
+and more anxious to know what we wanted and what they could do. The
+fact is, that when English people do like Americans they go at it with
+just as much vim and earnestness as if they was helping Britannia to
+rule more waves.
+
+While I was feeling badly at leaving Miss Pondar your letter came, dear
+madam, and I must say it gave heavy hearts to Jone and me, to me
+especially, as you can well understand. I went off into the
+summer-house, and as I sat there thinking and reading the letter over
+again, I do believe some tears came into my eyes; and Miss Pondar, who
+was working in the garden only a little way off--for if there is
+anything she likes to do it is to weed and fuss among the rose-bushes
+and other flowers, which she does whenever her other work gives her a
+chance--she happened to look up, and seeing that I was in trouble, she
+came right to me, like the good woman she is, and asked me if I had
+heard bad news, and if I would like a little gin and water.
+
+I said that I had had bad news, but that I did not want any spirits,
+and she said she hoped nothing had happened to any of my family, and I
+told her not exactly; but in looking back it seemed as if it was almost
+that way. I thought I ought to tell her what had happened, for I could
+see that she was really feeling for me, and so I said: "Poor Lord
+Edward is dead. To be sure, he was very old, and I suppose we had not
+any right to think he'd live even as long as he did; and as he was
+nearly blind and had very poor use of his legs it was, perhaps, better
+that he should go. But when I think of what friends we used to be
+before I was married, I can't help feeling badly to think that he has
+gone; that when I go back to America he will not show he is glad to see
+me home again, which he would be if there wasn't another soul on the
+whole continent who felt that way."
+
+Miss Pondar was now standing up with her hands folded in front of her,
+and her head bowed down as if she was walking behind a hearse with
+eight ostrich plumes on it. "Lord Edward," she said, in a melancholy,
+respectful voice, "and will his remains be brought to England for
+interment?"
+
+"Oh, no," said I, not understanding what she was talking about. "I am
+sure he will be buried somewhere near his home, and when I go back his
+grave will be one of the first places I will visit."
+
+A streak of bewilderment began to show itself in Miss Pondar's
+melancholy respectfulness, and she said: "Of course, when one lives in
+foreign parts one may die there, but I always thought in cases like
+that they were brought home to their family vaults."
+
+It may seem strange for me to think of anything funny at a time like
+this, but when Miss Pondar mentioned family vaults when talking of Lord
+Edward, there came into my mind the jumps he used to make whenever he
+saw any of us coming home; but I saw what she was driving at and the
+mistake she had made. "Oh," I said, "he was not a member of the British
+nobility; he was a dog; Lord Edward was his name. I never loved any
+animal as I loved him."
+
+I suppose, madam, that you must sometimes have noticed one of the top
+candles of a chandelier, when the room gets hot, suddenly bending over
+and drooping and shedding tears of hot paraffine on the candles below,
+and perhaps on the table; and if you can remember what that overcome
+candle looked like, you will have an idea of what Miss Pondar looked
+like when she found out Lord Edward was a dog. I think that for one
+brief moment she hugged to her bosom the fond belief that I was
+intimate with the aristocracy, and that a noble lord, had he not
+departed this life, would have been the first to welcome me home, and
+that she--she herself--was in my service. But the drop was an awful
+one. I could see the throes of mortified disappointment in her back, as
+she leaned over a bed of pinks, pulling out young plants, I am afraid,
+as well as weeds. When I looked at her, I was sorry I let her know it
+was a dog I mourned. She has tried so hard to make everything all right
+while we have been here, that she might just as well have gone on
+thinking that it was a noble earl who died.
+
+To-morrow morning we shall have our last Devonshire clotted cream, for
+they tell me this is to be had only in the west of England, and when I
+think of the beautiful hills and vales of this country I shall not
+forget that.
+
+Of course we would not have time to stay here longer, even if Jone
+hadn't got the rheumatism; but if he had to have it, for which I am as
+sorry as anybody can be, it is a lucky thing that he did have it just
+about the time that we ought to be going away, anyhow. And although I
+did not think, when we came to England, that we should ever go to
+Buxton, we are thankful that there is such a place to go to; although,
+for my part, I can't help feeling disappointed that the season isn't
+such that we could go to Bath, and Evelina and Beau Brummel.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Fourteen_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
+
+We came to this queer old English town, not because it is any better
+than so many other towns, but because Mr. Poplington told us it was a
+good place for our headquarters while we was seeing the River Wye and
+other things in the neighborhood. This hotel is the best in the town
+and very well kept, so that Jone made his usual remark about its being
+a good place to stay in. We are near the point where the four principal
+streets of the town, called Northgate, Eastgate, Southgate, and
+Westgate, meet, and if there was nothing else to see it would be worth
+while to stand there and look at so much Englishism coming and going
+from four different quarters.
+
+There is another hotel here, called the New Inn, that was recommended
+to us, but I thought we would not want to go there, for we came to see
+old England, and I don't want to see its new and shiny things, so we
+came to the Bell, as being more antique. But I have since found out
+that the New Inn was built in 1450 to accommodate the pilgrims who came
+to pay their respects to the tomb of Edward II. in the fine old
+cathedral here. But though I should like to live in a four-hundred-and
+forty-year-old house, we are very well satisfied where we are.
+
+Two very good things come from Gloucester, for it is the well-spring of
+Sunday schools and vaccination. They keep here the horns of the cow
+that Dr. Jenner first vaccinated from, and not far from our hotel is
+the house of Robert Raikes. This is an old-fashioned timber house, and
+looks like a man wearing his skeleton outside of his skin. We are sorry
+Mr. Poplington couldn't come here with us, for he could have shown us a
+great many things; but he stayed at Chedcombe to finish his fishing,
+and he said he might meet us at Buxton, where he goes every year for
+his arm.
+
+To see the River Wye you must go down it, so with just one handbag we
+took the train for the little town of Ross, which is near the beginning
+of the navigable part of the river--I might almost say the wadeable
+part, for I imagine the deepest soundings about Ross are not more than
+half a yard. We stayed all night at a hotel overlooking the valley of
+the little river, and as the best way to see this wonderful stream is
+to go down it in a rowboat, as soon as we reached Ross we engaged a
+boat and a man for the next morning to take us to Monmouth, which would
+be about a day's row, and give us the best part of the river. But I
+must say that when we looked out over the valley the prospect was not
+very encouraging, for it seemed to me that if the sun came out hot it
+would dry up that river, and Jone might not be willing to wait until
+the next heavy rain.
+
+While we was at Chedcombe I read the "Maid of Sker," because its scenes
+are laid in the Bristol Channel, about the coast near where we was, and
+over in Wales. And when the next morning we went down to the boat which
+we was going to take our day's trip in, and I saw the man who was to
+row us, David Llewellyn popped straight into my mind.
+
+This man was elderly, with gray hair, and a beard under his chin, with
+a general air of water and fish. He was good-natured and sociable from
+the very beginning. It seemed a shame that an old man should row two
+people so much younger than he was, but after I had looked at him
+pulling at his oars for a little while, I saw that there was no need
+of pitying him.
+
+It was a good day, with only one or two drizzles in the morning, and we
+had not gone far before I found that the Wye was more of a river than I
+thought it was, though never any bigger than a creek. It was just about
+warm enough for a boat trip, though the old man told us there had been
+a "rime" that morning, which made me think of the "Ancient Mariner."
+The more the boatman talked and made queer jokes, the more I wanted to
+ask him his name; and I hoped he would say David Llewellyn, or at least
+David, and as a sort of feeler I asked him if he had ever seen a
+coracle. "A corkle?" said he. "Oh, yes, ma'am, I've seen many a one and
+rowed in them."
+
+I couldn't wait any longer, and so I asked him his name. He stopped
+rowing and leaned on his oars and let the boat drift. "Now," said he,
+"if you've got a piece of paper and a pencil I wish you would listen
+careful and put down my name, and if you ever know of any other people
+in your country coming to the River Wye, I wish you would tell them my
+name, and say I am a boatman, and can take them down the river better
+than anybody else that's on it. My name is Samivel Jones. Be sure
+you've got that right, please--Samivel Jones. I was born on this river,
+and I rowed on it with my father when I was a boy, and I have rowed on
+it ever since, and now I am sixty-five years old. Do you want to know
+why this river is called the Wye? I will tell you. Wye means crooked,
+so this river is called the Wye because it is crooked. Wye, the crooked
+river."
+
+There was no doubt about the old man's being right about the
+crookedness of the stream. If you have ever noticed an ant running over
+the floor you will have an idea how the Wye runs through this beautiful
+country. If it comes to a hill it doesn't just pass it and let you see
+one side of it, but it goes as far around it as it can, and then goes
+back again, and goes around some other hill or great rocky point, or a
+clump of woods, or anything else that travellers might like to see. At
+one place, called Symond's Yat, it makes a curve so great, that if we
+was to get out of our boat and walk across the land, we would have to
+walk less than half a mile before we came to the river again; but to
+row around the curve as we did, we had to go five miles.
+
+Every now and then we came to rapids. I didn't count them, but I think
+there must have been about one to every mile, where the river-bed was
+full of rocks, and where the water rushed furiously around and over
+them. If we had been rowing ourselves we would have gone on shore and
+camped when we came to the first of these rapids, for we wouldn't have
+supposed our little boat could go through those tumbling, rushing
+waters; but old Samivel knew exactly how the narrow channel, just deep
+enough sometimes for our boat to float without bumping the bottom, runs
+and twists itself among the hidden rocks, and he'd stand up in the bow
+and push the boat this way and that until it slid into the quiet water
+again, and he sat down to his oars. After we had been through four or
+five of these we didn't feel any more afraid than if we had been
+sitting together on our own little back porch.
+
+As for the banks of this river, they got more and more beautiful as we
+went on. There was high hills with some castles, woods and crags and
+grassy slopes, and now and then a lordly mansion or two, and great
+massive, rocky walls, bedecked with vines and moss, rising high up
+above our heads and shutting us out from the world.
+
+Jone and I was filled as full as our minds could hold with the romantic
+loveliness of the river and its banks, and old Samivel was so pleased
+to see how we liked it--for I believe he looked upon that river as his
+private property--that he told us about everything we saw, and pointed
+out a lot of things we wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for him,
+as if he had been a man explaining a panorama, and pointing out with a
+stick the notable spots as the canvas unrolled.
+
+The only thing in his show which didn't satisfy him was two very fine
+houses which had both of them belonged to noble personages in days
+gone by, but which had been sold, one to a man who had made his money
+in tea, and the other to a man who had made money in cotton. "Think of
+that," said he; "cotton and tea, and living in such mansions as them
+are, once owned by lords. They are both good men, and gives a great
+deal to the poor, and does all they can for the country; but only think
+of it, madam, cotton and tea! But all that happened a good while ago,
+and the world is getting too enlightened now for such estates as them
+are to come to cotton and tea."
+
+Sometimes we passed houses and little settlements, but, for the most
+part, the country was as wild as undiscovered lands, which, being that
+to me, I felt happier, I am sure, than Columbus did when he first
+sighted floating weeds. Jone was a good deal wound up too, for he had
+never seen anything so beautiful as all this. We had our luncheon at a
+little inn, where the bread was so good that for a time I forgot the
+scenery, and then we went on, passing through the Forest of Dean,
+lonely and solemn, with great oak and beech trees, and Robin Hood and
+his merry men watching us from behind the bushes for all we knew.
+Whenever the river twists itself around, as if to show us a new view,
+old Samivel would say: "Now isn't that the prettiest thing you've seen
+yet?" and he got prouder and prouder of his river every mile he rowed.
+
+At one place he stopped and rested on his oars. "Now, then," said he,
+twinkling up his face as if he was really David Llewellyn showing us a
+fish with its eyes bulged out with sticks to make it look fresh, "as we
+are out on a kind of a lark, suppose we try a bit of a hecho," and then
+he turned to a rocky valley on his left, and in a voice like the man at
+the station calling out the trains he yelled, "Hello there, sir! What
+are you doing there, sir? Come out of that!" And when the words came
+back as if they had been balls batted against a wall, he turned and
+looked at us as proud and grinny as if the rocks had been his own baby
+saying "papa" and "mamma" for visitors.
+
+Not long after this we came to a place where there was a wide field on
+one side, and a little way off we could see the top of a house among
+the trees. A hedge came across the field to the river, and near the
+bank was a big gate, and on this gate sat two young women, and down on
+the ground on the side of the hedge nearest to us was another young
+woman, and not far from her was three black hogs, two of them pointing
+their noses at her and grunting, and the other was grunting around a
+place where those young women had been making sketches and drawings,
+and punching his nose into the easels and portfolios on the ground. The
+young woman on the grass was striking at the hogs with a stick and
+trying to make them go away, which they wouldn't do; and just as we
+came near she dropped the stick and ran, and climbed up on the gate
+beside the others, after which all the hogs went to rooting among the
+drawing things.
+
+As soon as Samivel saw what was going on he stopped his boat, and
+shouted to the hogs a great deal louder than he had shouted to the
+echo, but they didn't mind any more than they had minded the girl with
+the stick. "Can't we stop the boat," I said, "and get out and drive off
+those hogs? They will eat up all the papers and sketches."
+
+"Just put me ashore," said Jone, "and I'll clear them out in no time;"
+and old Samivel rowed the boat close up to the bank.
+
+But when Jone got suddenly up on his feet there was such a twitch
+across his face that I said to him, "Now just you sit down. If you go
+ashore to drive off those hogs you'll jump about so that you'll bring
+on such a rheumatism you can't sleep."
+
+"I'll get out myself," said Samivel, "if I can find a place to fasten
+the boat to. I can't run her ashore here, and the current is strong."
+
+"Don't you leave the boat," said I, for the thought of Jone and me
+drifting off and coming without him to one of those rapids sent a
+shudder through me; and as the stern of the boat where I sat was close
+to the shore I jumped with Jone's stick in my hand before either of
+them could hinder me. I was so afraid that Jone would do it that I was
+very quick about it.
+
+The minute I left the boat Jone got ready to come after me, for he had
+no notion of letting me be on shore by myself, but the boat had drifted
+off a little, and old Samivel said:
+
+"That is a pretty steep bank to get up with the rheumatism on you. I'll
+take you a little farther down, where I can ground the boat, and you
+can get off more steadier."
+
+But this letter is getting as long as the River Wye itself, and I must
+stop it.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Fifteen_
+
+
+BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
+
+As soon as I jumped on shore, as I told you in my last, and had taken a
+good grip on Jone's heavy stick, I went for those hogs, for I wanted to
+drive them off before Jone came ashore, for I didn't want him to think
+he must come.
+
+I have driven hogs and cows out of lots and yards often enough, as you
+know yourself, madam, so I just stepped up to the biggest of them and
+hit him a whack across the head as he was rubbing his nose in among
+some papers with bits of landscapes on them, as was enough to make him
+give up studying art for the rest of his life; but would you believe
+it, madam, instead of running away he just made a bolt at me, and gave
+me such a push with his head and shoulders he nearly knocked me over? I
+never was so astonished, for they looked like hogs that you might think
+could be chased out of a yard by a boy. But I gave the fellow another
+crack on the back, which he didn't seem to notice, but just turned
+again to give me another push, and at the same minute the two others
+stopped rooting among the paint-boxes and came grunting at me.
+
+For the first time in my life I was frightened by hogs. I struck at
+them as hard as I could, and before I knew what I was about I flung
+down the stick, made a rush for that gate, and was on top of it in no
+time, in company with the three other young women that was sitting
+there already.
+
+"Really," said the one next to me, "I fancied you was going to be gored
+to atoms before our eyes. Whatever made you go to those nasty beasts?"
+
+I looked at her quite severe, getting my feet well up out of reach of
+the hogs if they should come near us.
+
+"I saw you was in trouble, miss, and I came to help you. My husband
+wanted to come, but he has the rheumatism and I wouldn't let him."
+
+The other two young women looked at me as well as they could around the
+one that was near me, and the one that was farthest off said:
+
+"If the creatures could have been driven off by a woman, we could have
+done it ourselves. I don't know why you should think you could do it
+any better than we could."
+
+I must say, madam, that at that minute I was a little humble-minded,
+for I don't mind confessing to you that the idea of one American woman
+plunging into a conflict that had frightened off three English women,
+and coming out victorious, had a good deal to do with my trying to
+drive away those hogs; and now that I had come out of the little end
+of the horn, just as the young women had, I felt pretty small, but I
+wasn't going to let them see that.
+
+"I think that English hogs," said I, "must be savager than American
+ones. Where I live there is not any kind of a hog that would not run
+away if I shook a stick at him." The young woman at the other end of
+the gate now spoke again.
+
+"Everything British is braver than anything American," said she; "and
+all you have done has been to vex those hogs, and they are chewing up
+our drawing things worse than they did before."
+
+Of course I fired up at this, and said, "You are very much mistaken
+about Americans." But before I could say any more she went on to tell
+me that she knew all about Americans; she had been in America, and such
+a place she could never have fancied.
+
+"Over there you let everybody trample over you as much as they please.
+You have no conveniences. One cannot even get a cab. Fancy! Not a cab
+to be had unless one pays enough for a drive in Hyde Park."
+
+I must say that the hogs charging down on me didn't astonish me any
+more than to find myself on top of a gate with a young woman charging
+on my country in this fashion, and it was pretty hard on me to have her
+pitch into the cab question, because Jone and me had had quite a good
+deal to say about cabs ourselves, comparing New York and London,
+without any great fluttering of the stars and stripes; but I wasn't
+going to stand any such talk as that, and so I said:
+
+"I know very well that our cab charges are high, and it is not likely
+that poor people coming from other countries are able to pay them; but
+as soon as our big cities get filled up with wretched, half-starved
+people, with the children crying for bread at home, and the father glad
+enough that he's able to get people to pay him a shilling for a drive,
+and that he's not among the hundreds and thousands of miserable men who
+have not any work at all, and go howling to Hyde Park to hold meetings
+for blood or bread, then we will be likely to have cheap cabs as you
+have."
+
+"How perfectly awful!" said the young woman nearest me; but the one at
+the other end of the gate didn't seem to mind what I said, but shifted
+off on another track.
+
+"And then there's your horses' tails," said she; "anything nastier
+couldn't be fancied. Hundreds of them everywhere with long tails down
+to their heels, as if they belong to heathens who had never been
+civilized."
+
+"Heathens?" said I. "If you call the Arabians heathens, who have the
+finest horses in the world, and wouldn't any more think of cutting off
+their tails than they would think of cutting their legs off; and if
+you call the cruel scoundrels who torture their poor horses by sawing
+their bones apart so as to get a little stuck-up bob on behind, like a
+moth-eaten paint-brush--if you call them Christians, then I suppose
+you're right. There is a law in some parts of our country against the
+wickedness of chopping off the tails of live horses, and if you had
+such a law here you'd be a good deal more Christian-like than you are,
+to say nothing of getting credit for decent taste."
+
+By this time I had forgotten all about what Jone and I had agreed upon
+as to arguing over the differences between countries, and I was just as
+peppery as a wasp. The young woman at the other end of the gate was
+rather waspy too, for she seemed to want to sting me wherever she could
+find a spot uncovered; and now she dropped off her horses' tails, and
+began to laugh until her face got purple.
+
+"You Americans are so awfully odd," she said. "You say you raise your
+corn and your plants instead of growing them. It nearly makes me die
+laughing when I hear one of you Americans say raise when you mean
+grow."
+
+Now Jone and me had some talk about growing and raising, and the
+reasons for and against our way of using the words; but I was ready to
+throw all this to the winds, and was just about to tell the impudent
+young woman that we raised our plants just the same as we raised our
+children, leaving them to do their own growing, when the young woman
+in the middle of the three, who up to this time hadn't said a word,
+screamed out:
+
+[Illustration: "AND WITH A SCREECH I DASHED AT THOSE HOGS LIKE A STEAM
+ENGINE"]
+
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! He's pulled out my drawing of Wilton Bridge. He'll
+eat it up. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Whatever shall I do?"
+
+Instead of speaking I turned quick and looked at the hogs, and there,
+sure enough, one of them had rooted open a portfolio and had hold of
+the corners of a colored picture, which, from where I sat, I could see
+was perfectly beautiful. The sky and the trees and the water was just
+like what we ourselves had seen a little while ago, and in about half a
+minute that hog would chew it up and swallow it.
+
+The young woman next to me had an umbrella in her hand. I made a snatch
+at this and dropped off that gate like a shot. I didn't stop to think
+about anything except that beautiful picture was on the point of being
+swallowed up, and with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam
+engine. When they saw me coming with my screech and the umbrella they
+didn't stop a second, but with three great wiggles and three scared
+grunts they bolted as fast as they could go. I picked up the picture of
+the bridge, together with the portfolio, and took them to the young
+woman who owned them. As the hogs had gone, all three of the women was
+now getting down from the gate.
+
+"Thank you very much," she said, "for saving my drawings. It was
+awfully good of you, especially--"
+
+"Oh, you are welcome," said I, cutting her off short; and, handing the
+other young woman her umbrella, I passed by the impudent one without so
+much as looking at her, and on the other side of the hedge I saw Jone
+coming across the grass. I jerked open the gate, not caring who it
+might swing against, and walked to meet Jone. When I was near enough I
+called out to know what on earth had become of him that he had left me
+there so long by myself, forgetting that I hadn't wanted him to come at
+all; and he told me that he had had a hard time getting on shore,
+because they found the banks very low and muddy, and when he had landed
+he was on the wrong side of a hedge, and had to walk a good way around
+it.
+
+"I was troubled," said he, "because I thought you might come to grief
+with the hogs."
+
+"Hogs!" said I, so sarcastic, that Jone looked hard at me, but I didn't
+tell him anything more till we was in the boat, and then I just said
+right out what had happened. Jone couldn't help laughing.
+
+"If I had known," said he, "that you was on top of a gate discussing
+horses' tails and cabs I wouldn't have felt in such a hurry to get to
+you."
+
+"And you would have made a mistake if you hadn't," I said, "for hogs
+are nothing to such a person as was on that gate."
+
+Old Samivel was rowing slow and looking troubled, and I believe at that
+minute he forgot the River Wye was crooked.
+
+"That was really hard, madam," he said, "really hard on you; but it was
+a woman, and you have to excuse women. Now if they had been three
+Englishmen sitting on that gate they would never have said such things
+to you, knowing that you was a stranger in these parts and had come on
+shore to do them a service. And now, madam, I'm glad to see you are
+beginning to take notice of the landscapes again. Just ahead of us is
+another bend, and when we get around that you'll see the prettiest
+picture you've seen yet. This is a crooked river, madam, and that's how
+it got its name. Wye means crooked."
+
+After a while we came to a little church near the river bank, and here
+Samivel stopped rowing, and putting his hands on his knees he laughed
+gayly.
+
+"It always makes me laugh," he said, "whenever I pass this spot. It
+seems to me like such an awful good joke. Here's that church on this
+side of the river, and away over there on the other side of the river
+is the rector and the congregation."
+
+"And how do they get to church?" said I.
+
+"In the summer time," said he, "they come over with a ferry-boat and a
+rope; but in the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over
+at all. Many's the time I've lain in bed and laughed and laughed when
+I thought of this church on one side of the river, and the whole
+congregation and the rector on the other side, and not able to get
+over."
+
+Toward the end of the day, and when we had rowed nearly twenty miles,
+we saw in the distance the town of Monmouth, where we was going to stop
+for the night.
+
+[Illustration: "In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get
+over"]
+
+Old Samivel asked us what hotel we was going to stop at, and when we
+told him the one we had picked out he said he could tell us a better
+one.
+
+"If I was you," he said, "I'd go to the Eyengel." We didn't know what
+this name meant, but as the old man said he would take us there we
+agreed to go.
+
+"I should think you would have a lonely time rowing back by yourself,"
+I said.
+
+"Rowing back?" said he. "Why, bless your soul, lady, there isn't
+nobody who could row this boat back agen that current and up them
+rapids. We take the boats back with the pony. We put the boat on a
+wagon and the pony pulls it back to Ross; and as for me, I generally go
+back by the train. It isn't so far from Monmouth to Ross by the road,
+for the road is straight and the river winds and bends."
+
+The old man took us to the inn which he recommended, and we found it
+was the Angel. It was a nice, old-fashioned, queer English house. As
+far as I could see, they was all women that managed it, and it couldn't
+have been managed better; and as far as I could see, we was the only
+guests, unless there was "commercial gents," who took themselves away
+without our seeing them.
+
+We was sorry to have old Samivel leave us, and we bid him a most
+friendly good-by, and promised if we ever knew of anybody who wanted to
+go down the River Wye we would recommend them to ask at Ross for
+Samivel Jones to row them.
+
+We found the landlady of the Angel just as good to us as if we had been
+her favorite niece and nephew. She hired us a carriage the next day,
+and we was driven out to Raglan Castle, through miles and miles of
+green and sloping ruralness. When we got there and rambled through
+those grand old ruins, with the drawbridge and the tower and the
+courtyard, my soul went straight back to the days of knights and
+ladies, and prancing steeds, and horns and hawks, and pages and
+tournaments, and wild revels and vaulted halls.
+
+The young man who had charge of the place seemed glad to see how much
+we liked it, as is natural enough, for everybody likes to see us
+pleased with the particular things they have on hand.
+
+"You haven't anything like this in your country," said he. But to this
+I said nothing, for I was tired of always hearing people speak of my
+national denomination as if I was something in tin cans, with a label
+pasted on outside; but Jone said it was true enough that we didn't have
+anything like it, for if we had such a noble edifice we would have
+taken care of it, and not let it go to rack and ruin in this way.
+
+Jone has an idea that it don't show good sense to knock a bit of
+furniture about from garret to cellar until most of its legs are
+broken, and its back cracked, and its varnish all peeled off, and then
+tie ribbons around it, and hang it up in the parlor, and kneel down to
+it as a relic of the past. He says that people who have got old ruins
+ought to be very thankful that there is any of them left, but it's no
+use in them trying to fill up the missing parts with brag.
+
+We took the train and went to Chepstow, which is near the mouth of the
+Wye, and as the railroad ran near the river nearly all the way we had
+lots of beautiful views, though, of course, it wasn't anything like as
+good as rowing along the stream in a boat. The next day we drove to the
+celebrated Tintern Abbey, and on the way the road passed two miles and
+a half of high stone wall, which shut in a gentleman's place. What he
+wanted to keep in or keep out by means of a wall like that, we couldn't
+imagine; but the place made me think of a lunatic asylum.
+
+The road soon became shady and beautiful, running through woods along
+the river bank and under some great crags called the Wyndcliffe, and
+then we came to the Abbey and got out.
+
+Of all the beautiful high-pointed archery of ancient times, this ruined
+Abbey takes the lead. I expect you've seen it, madam, or read about it,
+and I am not going to describe it; but I will just say that Jone, who
+had rather objected to coming out to see any more old ruins, which he
+never did fancy, and only came because he wouldn't have me come by
+myself, was so touched up in his soul by what he saw there, and by
+wandering through this solemn and beautiful romance of bygone days, he
+said he wouldn't have missed it for fifty dollars.
+
+We came back to Gloucester to-day, and to-morrow we are off for Buxton.
+As we are so near Stratford and Warwick and all that, Jone said we'd
+better go there on our way, but I wouldn't agree to it. I am too
+anxious to get him skipping round like a colt, as he used to, to stop
+anywhere now, and when we come back I can look at Shakespeare's tomb
+with a clearer conscience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LONDON.
+
+After all, the weather isn't the only changeable thing in this world,
+and this letter, which I thought I was going to send to you from
+Gloucester, is now being finished in London. We was expecting to start
+for Buxton, but some money that Jone had ordered to be sent from London
+two or three days before didn't come, and he thought it would be wise
+for him to go and look after it. So yesterday, which was Saturday, we
+started off for London, and came straight to the Babylon Hotel, where
+we had been before.
+
+Of course we couldn't do anything until Monday, and this morning when
+we got up we didn't feel in very good spirits, for of all the doleful
+things I know of, a Sunday in London is the dolefullest. The whole town
+looks as if it was the back door of what it was the day before, and if
+you want to get any good out of it, you feel as if you had to sneak in
+by an alley, instead of walking boldly up the front steps.
+
+Jone said we'd better go to Westminster Abbey to church, because he
+believed in getting the best there was when it didn't cost too much,
+but I wouldn't do it.
+
+[Illustration: "Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"]
+
+"No," said I. "When I walk in that religious nave and into the hallowed
+precincts of the talented departed, the stone passages are full of
+cloudy forms of Chaucers, Addisons, Miltons, Dickenses, and all those
+great ones of the past; and I would hate to see the place filled up
+with a crowd of weekday lay people in their Sunday clothes, which would
+be enough to wipe away every feeling of romantic piety which might rise
+within my breast."
+
+As we didn't go to the Abbey, and was so long making up our minds where
+we should go, it got too late to go anywhere, and so we stayed in the
+hotel and looked out into a lonely and deserted street, with the wind
+blowing the little leaves and straws against the tight-shut doors of
+the forsaken houses. As I stood by that window I got homesick, and at
+last I could stand it no longer, and I said to Jone, who was smoking
+and reading a paper:
+
+"Let's put on our hats and go out for a walk, for I can't mope here
+another minute."
+
+So down we went, and coming up the front steps of the front entrance
+who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington! He was stopping at that
+hotel, and was just coming home from church, with his face shining like
+a sunset on account of the comfortableness of his conscience after
+doing his duty.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Sixteen_
+
+
+BUXTON
+
+When I mentioned Mr. Poplington in my last letter in connection with
+the setting sun I was wrong; he was like the rising orb of day, and he
+filled London with effulgent light. No sooner had we had a talk, and we
+had told him all that had happened, and finished up by saying what a
+doleful morning we had had, than he clapped his hand on his knees and
+said, "I'll tell you what we will do. We will spend the afternoon among
+the landmarks." And what we did was to take a four-wheeler and go
+around the old parts of London, where Mr. Poplington showed us a lot of
+soul-awakening spots which no common stranger would be likely to find
+for himself.
+
+If you are ever steeped in the solemnness of a London Sunday, and you
+can get a jolly, red-faced, middle-aged English gentleman, who has made
+himself happy by going to church in the morning, and is ready to make
+anybody else happy in the afternoon, just stir him up in the mixture,
+and then you will know the difference between cod-liver oil and
+champagne, even if you have never tasted either of them. The afternoon
+was piled-up-and-pressed-down joyfulness for me, and I seemed to be
+walking in a dream among the beings and the things that we only see in
+books.
+
+Mr. Poplington first took us to the old Watergate, which was the river
+entrance to York House, where Lord Bacon lived, and close to the gate
+was the small house where Peter the Great and David Copperfield lived,
+though not at the same time; and then we went to Will's old
+coffee-house, where Addison, Steele, and a lot of other people of that
+sort used to go to drink and smoke before they was buried in
+Westminster Abbey, and where Charles and Mary Lamb lived afterward, and
+where Mary used to look out of the window to see the constables take
+the thieves to the Old Bailey near by. Then we went to Tom-all-alone's,
+and saw the very grating at the head of the steps which led to the old
+graveyard where poor Joe used to sweep the steps when Lady Dedlock came
+there, and I held on to the very bars that the poor lady must have
+gripped when she knelt on the steps to die.
+
+Not far away was the Black Jack Tavern, where Jack Sheppard and all the
+great thieves of the day used to meet. And bless me! I have read so
+much about Jack Sheppard that I could fairly see him jumping out of the
+window he always dropped from when the police came. After that we saw
+the house where Mr. Tulkinghorn, Lady Dedlock's lawyer, used to live,
+and also the house where old Krook was burned up by spontaneous
+combustion. Then we went to Bolt Court, where old Samuel Johnson lived,
+walked about, and talked, and then to another court where he lived when
+he wrote the dictionary, and after that to the "Cheshire Cheese" Inn,
+where he and Oliver Goldsmith often used to take their meals together.
+
+Then we saw St. John's Gate, where the Knights Templars met, and the
+yard of the Court of Chancery, where little Miss Flite used to wait for
+the Day of Judgment; and as we was coming home he showed us the church
+of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where every other Friday the bells are
+rung at five o'clock in the afternoon, most people not knowing what it
+is for, but really because the famous Nell Gwynn, who was far from
+being a churchwoman, left a sum of money for having a merry peal of
+bells rung every Friday until the end of the world. I got so wound up
+by all this, that I quite forgot Jone, and hardly thought of Mr.
+Poplington, except that he was telling me all these things, and
+bringing back to my mind so much that I had read about, though
+sometimes very little.
+
+When we got back to the hotel and had gone up to our room, Jone said to
+me:
+
+"That was all very fine and interesting from top to toe, but it does
+seem to me as if things were dreadfully mixed. Dr. Johnson and Jack
+Sheppard, I suppose, was all real and could live in houses; but when
+it comes to David Copperfields and Lady Dedlocks and little Miss
+Flites, that wasn't real and never lived at all, they was all talked
+about in just the same way, and their favorite tramping grounds pointed
+out, and I can't separate the real people from the fancy folk, if we've
+got to have the same bosom heaving for the whole of them."
+
+"Jone," said I, "they are all real, every one of them. If Mr. Dickens
+had written history I expect he'd put Lady Dedlock and Miss Flite and
+David Copperfield into it; and if the history writers had written
+stories they would have been sure to get Dr. Johnson and Lord Bacon and
+Peter the Great into them; and the people in the one kind of writing
+would have been just as real as the people in the other. At any rate,
+that's the way they are to me."
+
+On the Monday after our landmark expedition with Mr. Poplington, which
+I shall never forget, Jone settled up his business matters, and the
+next day we started for Buxton and the rheumatism baths. To our great
+delight Mr. Poplington said he would go with us, not all the way, for
+he wanted to stop at a little place called Rowsley, where he would stay
+for a few days and then go on to Buxton; but we was very glad to have
+him with us during the greater part of the way, and we all left the
+hotel in the same four-wheeler.
+
+When we got to the station Jone got first-class tickets, for we have
+found out that if you want to travel comfortable in England, and have
+porters attend to your baggage and find an empty carriage for you, and
+have the guard come along and smile in the window and say he'll try to
+let you have that carriage all to yourselves if he's able--the ableness
+depending a good deal on what you give him--and for everybody to do
+their best to make your journey pleasant, you must travel first class.
+Mr. Poplington also bought a first-class ticket, for there was no
+seconds on this line. As we was walking along by the platform Jone and
+I gave a sort of a jump, for there was a regular Pullman car, which
+made us think we might be at home. We stopped and looked at it, and
+then the guard, who was standing by, stepped up to us and touched his
+hat, and asked us if we would like to take the Pullman, and when Jone
+asked what the extra charge was, he said nothing at all for first-class
+passengers. We didn't have to stop to think a minute, but said right
+off that we would go in it, but Mr. Poplington would not come with us.
+He said English people wasn't accustomed to that, they wanted to be
+more private; and, although he'd like to be with us, he could not
+travel in a caravan like that, and so he went off by himself, and we
+got into the Pullman.
+
+The guard said we could take any seats we pleased; and when we got in
+we found there was only two or three people in it, and we chose two
+nice armchairs, hung up our wraps, and made ourselves comfortable and
+cosey.
+
+We expected that the people who engaged seats would soon come crowding
+in, but when the train started there was only four people besides
+ourselves in that beautiful car, which was a first-class one, built in
+the United States, with all sorts of comforts and conveniences. There
+was a porter who laid himself out to make us happy, and about one
+o'clock we had a nice lunch on a little table which was set up between
+us, with two waiters to attend to us, and then Jone went and had a
+smoke in a small room at one end of the car.
+
+We thought it was strange that there should be so few people travelling
+on this train, but when we came to a town where we made a long stop
+Jone got out to talk to Mr. Poplington, supposing it likely that he'd
+have a carriage to himself; but he was amazed to see that the train was
+jammed and crowded, and he found Mr. Poplington squeezed up in a
+carriage with seven other people, four of them one side and four the
+other, each row staring into the faces of the other. Some of them was
+eating bread and cheese out of paper parcels, and a big fat man was
+reading a newspaper, which he spread out so as to partly cover the two
+people sitting next to him, and all of them seemed anxious to find
+some way of stretching their legs so as not to strike against the legs
+of somebody else.
+
+Mr. Poplington was sitting by the window, and Jone couldn't help
+laughing when he said:
+
+"Is this what you call being private, sir? I think you would find a
+caravan more pleasant. Don't you want to come to the Pullman with us?
+There are plenty of seats there, nice big armchairs that you can turn
+around and sit any way you like, and look at people or not look at
+them, just as you please, and there's plenty of room to walk about and
+stretch yourself a little if you want to. There's a smoking-room, too,
+that you can go to and leave whenever you like. Come and try it."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Mr. Poplington, "but I really couldn't do
+that. I am not prejudiced at all, and I have a good many democratic
+ideas, but that is too much for me. An Englishman's house is his
+castle, and when he's travelling his railway carriage is his house. He
+likes privacy and dislikes publicity."
+
+"This is a funny kind of privacy you have here," said Jone. "And how
+about your big clubs? Would you like to have them all divided up into
+little compartments with half a dozen men in each one, generally
+strangers to each other?"
+
+"Oh, a club is a very different thing," said Mr. Poplington.
+
+Jone was going to talk more about the comfort of the Pullman cars, but
+they began to shut the carriage doors, and he had to come back to me.
+
+We like English railway carriages very well when we can have one to
+ourselves, but if even one stranger gets in and has to sit looking at
+us for all the rest of the trip you don't feel anything like as private
+as if you was walking along a sidewalk in London.
+
+But Jone and I both agreed we wouldn't find any fault with English
+people for not liking Pullman cars, so long as they put them on their
+trains for Americans who do like them. And one thing is certain, that
+if our railroad conductors and brakes-men and porters was as polite and
+kind as they are in England, tips or no tips, we'd be a great deal
+better off than we are.
+
+Whenever we stopped at a station the people would come and look through
+the windows at us, as if we was some sort of a travelling show. I don't
+believe most of them had ever seen a comfortable room on wheels before.
+The other people in our car was all men, and looked as if they hadn't
+their families with them, and was glad to get a little comfort on the
+sly. When we got to Rowsley we saw Mr. Poplington on the platform,
+running about, collecting all his different bits of luggage, and
+counting them to see that they was all there, and then, as we had a
+window open and was looking out, he came and bid us good-by; and when
+I asked him to, he looked into our car.
+
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he said. "What a public apartment! I could not
+travel like that, you know. Good-by; I will see you at Buxton in a few
+days."
+
+[Illustration: Mr. Poplington looking for the luggage]
+
+We talked a good deal with Mr. Poplington about the hotels of Buxton,
+and we had agreed to go to one called the Old Hall, where we are now.
+There was a good many reasons why we chose this house, one being that
+it was not as expensive as some of the others, though very nice; and
+another, which had a good deal of force with me, was, that Mary Queen
+of Scots came here for her rheumatism, and the room she used to have is
+still kept, with some words she scratched with her diamond ring on the
+window-pane. Sometimes people coming to this hotel can get this room,
+and I was mighty sorry we couldn't do it, but it was taken. If I could
+have actually lived and slept in a room which had belonged to the
+beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, I would have been willing to have just
+as much rheumatism as she had when she was here.
+
+Of course, modern rheumatisms are not as interesting as the rheumatisms
+people of the past ages had; but from what I have seen of this town, I
+think I am going to like it very much.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Seventeen_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BUXTON
+
+When we were comfortably settled here, Jone went to see a doctor, who
+is a nice, kind old gentleman, who looks as if he almost might have
+told Mary Queen of Scots how hot she ought to have the water in her
+baths. He charges four times as much as the others, and has about a
+quarter as many patients, which makes it all the same to him, and a
+good deal better for the rheumatic ones who come to him, for they have
+more time to go into particulars. And if anything does good to a person
+who has something the matter with him, it's being able to go into
+particulars about it. It's often as good as medicine, and always more
+comforting.
+
+We unpacked our trunks and settled ourselves down for a three weeks'
+stay here, for no matter how much rheumatism you have or how little,
+you've got to take Buxton and its baths in three weeks' doses.
+
+Besides taking the baths Jone has to drink the waters, and as I cannot
+do much else to help him, I am encouraging him by drinking them too.
+There are two places where you can get the lukewarm water that people
+come here to drink. One is the public well, where there is a pump free
+to everybody, and the other is in the pump-room just across the street
+from the well, where you pay a penny a glass for the same water, which
+three doleful old women spend all their time pumping for visitors.
+
+[Illustration: Pomona encourages Jonas]
+
+People are ordered to drink this water very carefully. It must be done
+at regular times, beginning with a little, and taking more and more
+each day until you get to a full tumbler, and then if it seems to be
+too strong for you, you must take less. So far as I can find out there
+is nothing particular about it, except that it is lukewarm water,
+neither hot enough nor cold enough to make it a pleasant drink. It
+didn't seem to agree with Jone at first, but after he kept at it three
+or four days it began to suit him better, so that he could take nearly
+a tumbler without feeling badly. Two or three times I felt it might be
+better for my health if I didn't drink it, but I wanted to stand by
+Jone as much as I could, and so I kept on.
+
+We have been here a week now, and this morning I found out that all the
+water we drink at this hotel is brought from the well of St. Ann, where
+the public pump is, and everybody drinks just as much of it as they
+want whenever they want to, and they never think of any such thing as
+feeling badly or better than if it was common water. The only
+difference is, that it isn't quite as lukewarm when we get it here as
+it is at the well. When I was told this I was real mad, after all the
+measuring and fussing we had had when taking the water as a medicine,
+and then drinking it just as we pleased at the table. But the people
+here tell me that it is the gas in it which makes it medicinal, and
+when that floats out it is just like common water. That may be; but if
+there's a penny's worth of gas in every tumbler of water sold in the
+pump-room, there ought to be some sort of a canopy put over the town to
+catch what must escape in the pourings and pumpings, for it's too
+valuable to be allowed to get away. If it's the gas that does it, a
+rheumatic man anchored in a balloon over Buxton, and having the gas
+coming up unmixed to him, ought to be well in about two days.
+
+When Jone told me his first bath was to be heated up to ninety-four
+degrees I said to him that he'd be boiled alive, but he wasn't; and
+when he came home he said he liked it. Everything is very systematic in
+the great bathing-house. The man who tends to Jone hangs up his watch
+on a little stand on the edge of the bathtub, and he stays in just so
+many minutes, and when he's ready to come out he rings a bell, and then
+he's wrapped up in about fourteen hot towels, and sits in an armchair
+until he's dry. Jone likes all this, and says so much about it that it
+makes me want to try it too; though as there isn't any reason for it I
+haven't tried them yet.
+
+This is an awfully queer, old-fashioned town, and must have been a good
+deal like Bath in the days of Evelina. There is a long line of high
+buildings curved like a half moon, which is called the Crescent, and at
+one end of this is a pump-room, and at the other are the natural baths,
+where the water is just as warm as when it comes out of the ground,
+which is eighty-two degrees. This is said to chill people; but from
+what I remember about summer time I don't see how eighty-two degrees
+can be cold.
+
+Opposite the Crescent is a public park called The Slopes, and farther
+on there are great gardens with pavilions, and a band of music every
+day, and a theatre, and a little river, and tennis courts, and all
+sorts of things for people who haven't anything to do with their time,
+which is generally the case with folks at rheumatic watering-places.
+Opposite to our hotel is a bowling court, which they say has been
+there for hundreds of years, and is just as hard and smooth as a boy's
+slate. The men who play bowls here are generally those who have got
+over the rheumatism of their youth, and whose joints have not been very
+much stiffened up yet by old age. The people who are yet too young for
+rheumatism, and have come here with their families, play tennis.
+
+The baths take such a little time, not over six or seven minutes for
+them each day, and every third day skipped, that there is a good deal
+of time left on the hands of the people here; and those who can't play
+tennis or bowl, and don't want to spend the whole time in the pavilion
+listening to the music, go about in bath-chairs, which, so far as I can
+see, are just as important as the baths. I don't know whether you ever
+saw a bath-chair, madam, but it's a comfortable little cab on three
+wheels, pulled by a man. They take people everywhere, and all the
+streets are full of them.
+
+As soon as I saw these nice little traps I said to Jone, "Now this is
+the very thing for you. It hurts you to walk far, and you want to see
+all over this town, and one of these bath-chairs will take you into
+lots of places where you couldn't go in a carriage."
+
+"Take me!" said Jone. "I should say not. You don't catch me being
+hauled about in one of those things as if I was in a sort of
+wheelbarrow ambulance being taken to the hospital, with you walking
+along by my side like a trained nurse. No, indeed! I have not gone so
+far as that yet."
+
+I told him this was all stuff and nonsense, and if he wanted to get the
+good out of Buxton he'd better go about and see it, and he couldn't go
+about if he didn't take a bath-chair; but all he said to that was, that
+he could see it without going about, and he was satisfied. But that
+didn't count anything with me, for the trouble with Jone is, that he's
+too easy satisfied.
+
+It's true that there is a lot to be seen in Buxton without going about.
+The Slopes are just across the street from the hotel, and when it
+doesn't happen to be raining we can go and sit there on a bench and see
+lively times enough. People are being trundled about in their
+bath-chairs in every direction; there is always a crowd at St. Ann's
+well, where the pump is; all sorts of cabs and carts are being driven
+up and down just as fast as they can go, for the streets are as smooth
+as floors, and in the morning and evening there are about half a dozen
+coaches with four horses, and drivers and horn-blowers in red coats,
+the horses prancing and whips cracking as they start out for country
+trips or come back again. And as for the people on foot, they just
+swarm like bees, and rain makes no difference, except that then they
+wear mackintoshes, and when it's fine they don't. Some of these people
+step along as brisk as if they hadn't anything the matter with them,
+but a good many of them help out their legs with canes and crutches. I
+begin to think I can tell how long a man has been at Buxton by the
+number of sticks he uses.
+
+One day we was sitting on a bench in The Slopes, enjoying a bit of
+sunshine that had just come along, when a middle-aged man, with a very
+high collar and a silk hat, came and sat down by Jone. He spoke civilly
+to us, and then went on to say that if ever we happened to take a house
+near Liverpool he'd be glad to supply us with coals, because he was a
+coal merchant. Jone told him that if he ever did take a house near
+Liverpool he certainly would give him his custom. Then the man gave us
+his card. "I come here every year," he said, "for the rheumatism in my
+shoulder, and if I meet anybody that lives near Liverpool, or is likely
+to, I try to get his custom. I like it here. There's a good many 'otels
+in this town. You can see a lot of them from here. There's St. Ann's,
+that's a good house, but they charge you a pound a day; and then
+there's the Old Hall. That's good enough, too, but nobody goes there
+except shopkeepers and clergymen. Of course, I don't mean bishops; they
+go to St. Ann's."
+
+I wondered which the man would think Jone was, if he knew we was
+stopping at the Old Hall; but I didn't ask him, and only said that
+other people besides shopkeepers and clergymen went to the Old Hall,
+for Mary Queen of Scots used to stop at that house when she came to
+take the waters, and her room was still there, just as it used to be.
+
+"Mary Queen of Scots!" said he. "At the Old Hall?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "that's where she used to go; that was her hotel."
+
+"Queen Mary, Queen of the Scots!" he said again. "Well, well, I
+wouldn't have believed it. But them Scotch people always was
+close-fisted. Now if it had been Queen Elizabeth, she wouldn't have
+minded a pound a day;" and then, after asking Jone to excuse him for
+forgetting his manners and not asking where his rheumatism was, and
+having got his answer, he went away, wondering, I expect, how Mary
+Queen of Scots could have been so stingy.
+
+But although we could see so much sitting on benches, I didn't give up
+Jone and the bath-chairs, and day before yesterday I got the better of
+him. "Now," said I, "it is stupid for you to be sitting around in this
+way as if you was a statue of a public benefactor carved by
+subscription and set up in a park. The only sensible thing for you to
+do is to take a bath-chair and go around and see things. And if you are
+afraid people will think you are being taken to a hospital, you can put
+down the top of the thing, and sit up straight and smoke your pipe.
+Patients in ambulances never smoke pipes. And if you don't want me
+walking by your side like a trained nurse, I'll take another chair and
+be pulled along with you."
+
+The idea of a pipe, and me being in another chair, rather struck his
+fancy, and he said he would consider it; and so that afternoon we went
+to the hotel door and looked at the long line of bath-chairs standing
+at the curbstone on the other side of the street, with the men waiting
+for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very
+comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses.
+Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn out, as if they
+had belonged to sporting men and had been driven half to death. And
+then again there was some that looked fat and lazy, like the old horses
+on a farm, that the women drive to town.
+
+Jone picked out a good man, who looked as if he was well broken and not
+afraid of locomotives and able to do good work in single harness. When
+I got Jone in the bath-chair, with the buggy-top down, and his pipe
+lighted, and his hat cocked on one side a little, so as to look as if
+he was doing the whole thing for a lark, I called another chair, not
+caring what sort of one it was, and then we told the men to pull us
+around for a couple of hours, leaving it to them to take us to
+agreeable spots, which they said they would do.
+
+After we got started Jone seemed to like it very well, and we went
+pretty much all over the town, sometimes stopping to look in at the
+shop windows, for the sidewalks are so narrow that it is no trouble to
+see the things from the street. Then the men took us a little way out
+of the town to a place where there was a good view for us, and a bench
+where they could go and sit down and rest. I expect all the chair men
+that work by the hour manage to get to this place with a view as soon
+as they can.
+
+After they had had a good rest we started off to go home by a different
+route. Jone's man was a good strong fellow and always took the lead,
+but my puller was a different kind of a steed, and sometimes I was left
+pretty far behind. I had not paid much attention to the man at first,
+only noticing that he was mighty slow; but going back a good deal of
+the way was uphill, and then all his imperfections came out plain, and
+I couldn't help studying him. If he had been a horse I should have said
+he was spavined and foundered, with split frogs and tonsilitis; but as
+he was a man, it struck me that he must have had several different
+kinds of rheumatism and been sent to Buxton to have them cured, but not
+taking the baths properly, or drinking the water at times when he ought
+not to have done it, his rheumatisms had all run together and had
+become fixed and immovable. How such a creaky person came to be a
+bath-chair man I could not think, but it may be that he wanted to stay
+in Buxton for the sake of the loose gas which could be had for nothing,
+and that bath-chairing was all he could get to do.
+
+I pitied the poor old fellow, who, if he had been a horse, would have
+been no more than fourteen hands high, and as he went puffing along,
+tugging and grunting as if I was a load of coal, I felt as if I
+couldn't stand it another minute, and I called out to him to stop. It
+did seem as if he would drop before he got me back to the hotel, and I
+bounced out in no time, and then I walked in front of him and turned
+around and looked at him. If it is possible for a human hack-horse to
+have spavins in two joints in each leg, that man had them; and he
+looked as if he couldn't remember what it was to have a good feed.
+
+He seemed glad to rest, but didn't say anything, standing and looking
+straight ahead of him like an old horse that has been stopped to let
+him blow. He did look so dreadful feeble that I thought it would be a
+mercy to take him to some member of the Society for the Prevention of
+Cruelty to Animals and have him chloroformed. "Look here," said I, "you
+are not fit to walk. Get into that bath-chair, and I'll pull you back
+to your stand."
+
+"Lady," said he, "I couldn't do that. If you dunno mind walking home,
+and will pay me for the two hours all the same, I will be right
+thankful for that. I'm poorly to-day."
+
+"Get into the chair," said I, "and I'll pull you back. I'd like to do
+it, for I want some exercise."
+
+"Oh, no, no!" said he. "That would be a sin; and besides I was engaged
+to pull you two hours, and I must be paid for that."
+
+"Get into that chair," I said, "and I'll pay you for your two hours and
+give you a shilling besides."
+
+He looked at me for a minute, and then he got into the chair, and I
+shut him up.
+
+"Now, lady," said he, "you can pull me a little way if you want
+exercise, and as soon as you are tired you can stop, and I'll get out,
+but you must pay me the extra shilling all the same."
+
+"All right," said I, and taking hold of the handle I started off. It
+was real fun; the bath-chair rolled along beautifully, and I don't
+believe the old man weighed much more than my Corinne when I used to
+push her about in her baby carriage. We were in a back street, where
+there was hardly anybody; and as for Jone and his bath-chair, I could
+just see them ever so far ahead, so I started to catch up, and as the
+street was pretty level now I soon got going at a fine rate. I hadn't
+had a bit of good exercise for a long time, and this warmed me up and
+made me feel gay.
+
+[Illustration: "STOP, LADY, AND I'LL GET OUT"]
+
+We was not very far behind Jone when the man began to call to me in a
+sort of frightened fashion, as if he thought I was running away.
+"Stop, lady!" he said; "we are getting near the gardens, and the people
+will laugh at me. Stop, lady, and I'll get out." But I didn't feel a
+bit like stopping; the idea had come into my head that it would be
+jolly to beat Jone. If I could pass him and sail on ahead for a little
+while, then I'd stop and let my old man get out and take his bath-chair
+home. I didn't want it any more.
+
+Just as I got close up behind Jone, and was about to make a rush past
+him, his man turned into a side street. Of course I turned too, and
+then I put on steam, and, giving a laugh as I turned around to look at
+Jone, I charged on, intending to stop in a minute and have some fun in
+hearing what Jone had to say about it; but you may believe, ma'am, that
+I was amazed when I saw only a little way in front of me the bath-chair
+stand where we had hired our machines! And all the bath-chair men were
+standing there with their mouths wide open, staring at a woman running
+along the street, pulling an old bath-chair man in a bath-chair! For a
+second I felt like dropping the handle I held and making a rush for the
+front door of the hotel, which was right ahead of me; and then I
+thought, as now I was in for it, it would be a lot better to put a good
+face on the matter, and not look as if I had done anything I was
+ashamed of, and so I just slackened speed and came up in fine style at
+the door of the Old Hall. Four or five of the bath-chair men came
+running across the street to know if anything had happened to the old
+party I was pulling, and he got out looking as ashamed as if he had
+been whipped by his wife.
+
+"It's a lark, mates," said he; "the lady's to pay me two shillings
+extra for letting her pull me."
+
+"Two shillings?" said I. "I only promised you one."
+
+"That would be for pulling me a little way," he said; "but you pulled
+me all the way back, and I couldn't do it for less than two shillings."
+
+Jone now came up and got out quick.
+
+"What's the meaning of all this, Pomona?" said he.
+
+"Meaning?" said I. "Look at that dilapidated old bag of bones. He
+wasn't fit to pull me, and so I thought it would be fun to pull him;
+but, of course, I didn't know when I turned the corner I would be here
+at the stand."
+
+Jone paid the men, including the two extra shillings, and when we went
+up to our room he said, "The next time we go out in two bath-chairs, I
+am going to have a chain fastened to yours, and I'll have hold of the
+other end of it."
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Eighteen_
+
+
+BUXTON
+
+I have begun to take the baths. There really is so little to do in this
+place that I couldn't help it, and so, while Jone was off tending to
+his hot soaks, I thought I might as well try the thing myself. At any
+rate it would fill up the time when I was alone. I find I like this
+sort of bathing very much, and I wish I had begun it before. It reminds
+me of a kind of medicine for colds that you used to make for me, madam,
+when I first came to the canal-boat. It had lemons and sugar in it, and
+it was so good I remember I used to think that I would like to go into
+a lingering consumption, so that I could have it three times a day,
+until I finally passed away like a lily on a snowbank.
+
+Jone's been going about a good deal in a bath-chair, and doesn't mind
+my walking alongside of him. He says it makes him feel easier in his
+mind, on the whole.
+
+Mr. Poplington came two or three days ago, and he is stopping at our
+hotel. We three have hired a carriage together two or three times and
+have taken drives into, the country. Once we went to an inn, the Cat
+and Fiddle, about five miles away, on a high bit of ground called Axe
+Edge. It is said to be the highest tavern in England, and it's lucky
+that it is, for that's the only recommendation it's got. The sign in
+front of the house has on it a cat on its hind-legs playing a fiddle,
+with a look on its face as if it was saying, "It's pretty poor, but
+it's the best I can do for you."
+
+Inside is another painting of a cat playing a fiddle, and truly that
+one might be saying, "Ha! Ha! You thought that that picture on the sign
+was the worst picture you ever saw in your life, but now you see how
+you are mistaken."
+
+Up on that high place you get the rain fresher than you do in Buxton,
+because it hasn't gone so far through the air, and it's mixed with more
+chilly winds than anywhere else in England, I should say. But everybody
+is bound to go to the Cat and Fiddle at least once, and we are glad we
+have been there, and that it is over. I like the places near the town a
+great deal better, and some of them are very pretty. One day we two and
+Mr. Poplington took a ride on top of a stage to see Haddon Hall and
+Chatsworth.
+
+Haddon Hall is to me like a dream of the past come true. Lots of other
+old places have seemed like dreams, but this one was right before my
+eyes, just as it always was. Of course, you must have read all about
+it, madam, and I am not going to tell it over again. But think of it; a
+grand old baronial mansion, part of it built as far back as the eleven
+hundreds, and yet in good condition and fit to live in. That is what I
+thought as I walked through its banqueting hall and courts and noble
+chambers. "Why," said I to Jone, "in that kitchen our meals could be
+cooked; at that table we could eat them; in these rooms we could sleep;
+in these gardens and courts we could roam; we could actually live
+here!" We haven't seen any other romance of the past that we could say
+that about, and to this minute it puzzles me how any duke in this world
+could be content to own a house like this and not live in it. But I
+suppose he thinks more of water-pipes and electric lights than he does
+of the memories of the past and time-hallowed traditions.
+
+As for me, if I had been Dorothy Vernon, there's no man on earth, not
+even Jone, that could make me run away from such a place as Haddon
+Hall. They show the stairs down which she tripped with her lover when
+they eloped; but if it had been me, it would have been up those stairs
+I would have gone. Mr. Poplington didn't agree a bit with me about the
+joy of living in this enchanting old house, and neither did Jone, I am
+sure, although he didn't say so much. But then, they are both men, and
+when it comes to soaring in the regions of romanticism you must not
+expect too much of men.
+
+After leaving Haddon Hall, which I did backward, the coach took us to
+Chatsworth, which is a different sort of a place altogether. It is a
+grand palace, at least it was built for one, but now it is an enormous
+show place, bright and clean and sleek, and when we got there we saw
+hundreds of visitors waiting to go in. They was taken through in squads
+of about fifty, with a man to lead them, which he did very much as if
+they was a drove of cattle.
+
+The man who led our squad made us step along lively, and I must say
+that never having been in a drove before, Jone and I began to get
+restive long before we got through. As for the show, I like the British
+Museum a great deal better. There is ever so much more to see there,
+and you have time to stop and look at things. At Chatsworth they charge
+you more, give you less, and treat you worse. When it came to taking us
+through the grounds, Jone and I struck. We left the gang we was with,
+and being shown where to find a gate out of the place, we made for that
+gate and waited until our coach was ready to take us back to Buxton.
+
+It is a lot of fun going to the theatre here. It doesn't cost much, and
+the plays are good and generally funny, and a rheumatic audience is a
+very jolly one. The people seemed glad to forget their backs, their
+shoulders, and their legs, and they are ready to laugh at things that
+are only half comic, and keep up a lively chattering between the acts.
+It's fun to see them when the play is over. The bath-chairs that have
+come after some of them are brought right into the building, and are
+drawn up just like carriages after the theatre. The first time we went I
+wanted Jone to stop a while and see if we didn't hear somebody call
+out, "Mrs. Barchester's bath-chair stops the way!" but he said I
+expected too much, and would not wait.
+
+We sit about so much in the gardens, which are lively when it is clear,
+and not bad even in a little drizzle, that we've got to know a good
+many of the people; and although Jone's a good deal given to reading, I
+like to sit and watch them and see what they are doing.
+
+When we first came here I noticed a good-looking young woman who was
+hauled about in a bath-chair, generally with an open book in her lap,
+which she never seemed to read much, because she was always gazing
+around as if she was looking for something. Before long I found out
+what she was looking for, for every day, sooner or later, generally
+sooner, there came along a bath-chair with a good-looking young man in
+it. He had a book in his lap too, but he was never reading it when I
+saw him, because he was looking for the young woman; and as soon as
+they saw each other they began to smile, and as they passed they always
+said something, but didn't stop. I wondered why they didn't give their
+pullers a rest and have a good talk if they knew each other, but before
+long I noticed not very far behind the young lady's bath-chair was
+always another bath-chair with an old gentleman in it with a
+bottle-nose. After a while I found out that this was the young lady's
+father, because sometimes he would call to her and have her stop, and
+then she generally seemed to get some sort of a scolding.
+
+Of course, when I see anything of this kind going on, I can't help
+taking one side or the other, and as you may well believe, madam, I
+wouldn't be likely to take that of the old bottle-nosed man's side. I
+had not been noticing these people for more than two or three days when
+one morning, when Jone and me was sitting under an umbrella, for there
+was a little more rain than common, I saw these two young people in
+their bath-chairs, coming along side by side, and talking just as hard
+as they could. At first I was surprised, but I soon saw how things was:
+the old gentleman couldn't come out in the rain. It was plain enough
+from the way these two young people looked at each other that they was
+in love, and although it most likely hurt them just as much to come out
+into the rain as it would the old man, love is all-powerful, even over
+rheumatism.
+
+Pretty soon the clouds cleared away without notice, as they do in this
+country, and it wasn't long before I saw, away off, the old man's
+bath-chair coming along lively. His bottle-nose was sticking up in the
+air, and he was looking from one side to the other as hard as he could.
+The two lovers had turned off to the right and gone over a little
+bridge and I couldn't see them; but by the way that old nose shook as
+it got nearer and nearer to me, I saw they had reason to tremble,
+though they didn't know it.
+
+When the old father reached the narrow path he did not turn down it,
+but kept straight on, and I breathed a sigh of deep relief. But the
+next instant I remembered that the broad path turned not far beyond,
+and that the little one soon ran into it, and so it could not be long
+before the father and the lovers would meet. I like to tell Jone
+everything I am going to do, when I am sure that he'll agree with me
+that it is right; but this time I could not bother with explanations,
+and so I just told him to sit still for a minute, for I wanted to see
+something, and I walked after the young couple as fast as I could. When
+I got to them, for they hadn't gone very far, I passed the young
+woman's bath-chair, and then I looked around and I said to her, "I beg
+your pardon, miss, but there is an old gentleman looking for you; but
+as I think he is coming round this way, you'll meet him if you keep on
+this path." "Oh, my!" said she unintentionally; and then she thanked me
+very much, and I went on and turned a corner and went back to Jone, and
+pretty soon the young man's bath-chair passed us going toward the
+gate, he looking three-quarters happy, and the other quarter
+disappointed, as lovers are if they don't get the whole loaf.
+
+From that day until yesterday, which was a full week, I came into the
+gardens every morning, sometimes even when Jone didn't want to come,
+because I wanted to see as much of this love business as I could. For
+my own use in thinking of them I named the young man Pomeroy and the
+young woman Angelica, and as for the father, I called him Snortfrizzle,
+being the worst name I could think of at the time. But I must wait
+until my next letter to tell you the rest of the story of the lovers,
+and I am sure you will be as much interested in them as I was.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Nineteen_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BUXTON
+
+I have a good many things to tell you, for we leave Buxton to-morrow,
+but I will first finish the story of Angelica and Pomeroy. I think the
+men who pulled the bath-chairs of the lovers knew pretty much how
+things was going, for whenever they got a chance they brought their
+chairs together, and I often noticed them looking out for the old
+father, and if they saw him coming they would move away from each other
+if they happened to be together.
+
+If Snortfrizzle's puller had been one of the regular bath-chair men
+they might have made an agreement with him so that he would have kept
+away from them; but he was a man in livery, with a high hat, who walked
+very regular, like a high-stepping horse, and who, it was plain enough
+to see, never had anything to do with common bath-chair men. Old
+Snortfrizzle seemed to be smelling a rat more and more--that is, if it
+is proper to liken Cupid to such an animal--and his nose seemed to get
+purpler and purpler. I think he would always have kept close to
+Angelica's chair if it hadn't been that he had a way of falling asleep,
+and whenever he did this his man always walked very slow, being
+naturally lazy. Two or three times I have seen Snortfrizzle wake up,
+shout to his man, and make him trot around a clump of trees and into
+some narrow path where he thought his daughter might have gone.
+
+Things began to look pretty bad, for the old man had very strong
+suspicions about Pomeroy, and was so very wide awake when he was awake,
+that I knew it couldn't be long before he caught the two together, and
+then I didn't believe that Angelica would ever come into these gardens
+again.
+
+It was yesterday morning that I saw old Snortfrizzle with his chin down
+on his shirt bosom, snoring so steady that his hat heaved, being very
+slowly pulled along a shady walk, and then I saw his daughter, who was
+not far ahead of him, turn into another walk, which led down by the
+river. I knew very well that she ought not to turn into that walk,
+because it didn't in any way lead to the place where Pomeroy was
+sitting in his bath-chair behind a great clump of bushes and flowers,
+with his face filled with the most lively emotions, but overspread
+ever and anon by a cloudlet of despair on account of the approach of
+the noontide hour, when Angelica and Snortfrizzle generally went home.
+
+[Illustration: "Your brother is over there"]
+
+The time was short, and I believed that love's young dream must be put
+off until the next day if Angelica could not be made aware where
+Pomeroy was sitting, or Pomeroy where Angelica was going; so I got
+right up and made a short cut down a steep little path, and, sure
+enough, I met her when I got to the bottom. "I beg your pardon very
+much, miss," said I, "but your brother is over there in the entrance to
+the cave, and I think he has been looking for you." "My brother?" said
+she, turning as red as her ribbons was blue. "Oh, thank you very much!
+Robertson, you may take me that way."
+
+It wasn't long before I saw those two bath-chairs alongside of each
+other, and covered from general observation by masses of blooming
+shrubbery. As I had been the cause of bringing them together I thought
+I had a right to look at them a little while, as that would be the only
+reward I'd be likely to get, and so I did it. It was as I thought;
+things was coming to a climax; the bath-chair men standing with much
+consideration with their backs to their vehicles, and, united for the
+time being by their clasped hands, the lovers grew tender to a degree
+which I would have fain checked, had I been nearer, for fear of notice
+by passers-by.
+
+But now my blood froze within my veins. I would never have believed
+that a man in a high hat and livery a size too small for him could run,
+but Snortfrizzle's man did, and at a pace which ought to have been
+prohibited by law. I saw him coming from an unsuspected quarter, and
+swoop around that clump of flowers and foliage. Regardless of
+consequences I approached nearer. There was loud voices; there was
+exclamations; there was a rattling of wheels; there was the sundering
+of tender ties!
+
+In a moment Pomeroy, who had backed off but a little way, began to
+speak, but his voice was drowned in the thunder of Snortfrizzle's
+denunciations. Angelica wept, and her head fell upon her lovely bosom,
+and I am sure I heard her implore her man to remove her from the scene.
+Pomeroy remained, his face firm, his eyes undaunted, but Snortfrizzle
+shook his fist in unison with his nose, and, hurling an anathema at
+him, followed his daughter, probably to incarcerate her in her
+apartments.
+
+All was over, and I returned to Jone with a heavy heart and faltering
+step. I could not but feel that I had brought about the sad end of this
+tender chapter in the lives of Pomeroy and Angelica. If I had let them
+alone they would not have met and they would not have been discovered
+together. I didn't tell Jone what had happened, because he does not
+always sympathize with me in my interest in others, and for hours my
+heart was heavy.
+
+It was about a half an hour before dinner that day when I thought that
+a little walk might raise my spirits, and I wandered into the gardens,
+for which we each have a weekly ticket, and there, to my amazement, not
+far from the gate I saw Angelica in tears and her bath-chair. Her man
+was not with her, and she was alone. When she saw me she looked at me
+for a minute, and then she beckoned to me to come to her. I flew. There
+were but few people in the gardens, and we was alone.
+
+"Madam," said she, "I think you must be very kind. I believe you knew
+that gentleman was not my brother. He is not."
+
+"My dear miss," said I--I was almost on the point of calling her
+Angelica--"I knew that. I know that he is something nearer and dearer
+than even a brother."
+
+She blushed. "Yes," said she, "you are right, and we are in great
+trouble."
+
+"Oh, what is it? Tell me quick. What can I do to help you?"
+
+"My father is very angry," said she, "and has forbidden me ever to see
+him again, and he is going to take me home to-morrow. But we have
+agreed to fly together to-day. It is our only chance, but he is not
+here. Oh, dear! I do not know what I shall do."
+
+"Where are you going to fly to?" said I.
+
+"We want to take the Edinburgh train this evening if there is one," she
+said, "and we get off at Carlisle, and from there it is only a little
+way to Gretna Green."
+
+"Gretna Green!" I cried. "Oh, I will help you! I will help you! Why
+isn't the gentleman here, and where has he gone?"
+
+"He has gone to see about the trains," she said, almost crying, "and I
+don't see what keeps him. I could not get away until father went into
+his room to dress for dinner, and as soon as he is ready he will call
+for me. Where can he be? I have sent my man to look for him."
+
+"Oh, I'll go look for him! You wait here," I cried, forgetting that
+she would have to, and away I went.
+
+As I was hurrying out of the gates of the gardens I looked in the
+direction of the railroad station, and there I saw Pomeroy pulled by
+one bath-chair man and the other one talking to him. In twenty bounds I
+reached him. "Go back for your young lady," I cried to Robertson,
+Angelica's man, "and bring her here on the run. She sent me for you."
+Away went Robertson, and then I said to the astonished Pomeroy, "Sir,
+there is no time for explanations. Your lady-love will be with you in a
+minute. My husband and I are going to Edinburgh to-morrow, and I have
+looked up all the trains. There is one which leaves here at twenty
+minutes past six. If she comes soon you will have time to catch it.
+Have you your baggage ready?"
+
+He looked at me as if he wondered who on earth I was, but I am sure he
+saw my soul in my face and trusted me.
+
+"Yes," he said, "she has a little bag in her bath-chair, and mine is
+here."
+
+"Here she comes," said I, "and you must fly to the station."
+
+In a moment Angelica was with us, her face beaming with delight.
+
+"Oh, thank you, thank you!" she cried, but I would not listen to her
+gratitude. "Hurry!" I said, "or you will be too late. Joy go with
+you."
+
+They hastened off, and I walked back to the gardens. I looked at my
+watch, and to my horror I saw it was five minutes past six. Fifteen
+minutes left yet. Fifteen minutes in which they might be overtaken. I
+stopped for a moment irresolutely. What should I do? I thought of
+running after them to the station. I thought in some way I might help
+them--buy their tickets or do something. But while I was thinking I
+heard a rattle, and down the street came the man in livery, and
+Snortfrizzle's bottle-nose like a volcano behind him. The minute they
+reached me, and there was nobody else in the street, the old man
+shouted, "Hi! Have you seen two bath-chairs with a young man and a
+young woman in them?"
+
+I was on the point of saying No, but changed my mind like a flash. "Did
+the young lady wear a hat with blue ribbons?" I asked.
+
+"Yes!" he roared. "Which way did they go?"
+
+"And did the young man with her wear eyeglasses and a brown moustache?"
+
+"With her, was he?" screamed Snortfrizzle. "That's the rascal. Which
+way did they go? Tell me instantly."
+
+When I was a very little girl I knew an old woman who told me that if a
+person was really good at heart, the holy angels would allow that
+person, in the course of her life, twelve fibs without charge, provided
+they was told for the good of somebody and not to do harm. Now at
+such a moment as this I could not remember how many fibs of that kind I
+had left over to my credit, but I knew there must be at least one, and
+so I didn't hesitate a second. "They have gone to the Cat and Fiddle,"
+said I. "I heard them tell their bath-chair men so, as they urged them
+forward at the top of their speed. They stopped for a second here, sir,
+and I heard the gentleman send a cabman for a clergyman, post haste, to
+meet them at the Cat and Fiddle."
+
+[Illustration: TO THE CAT AND FIDDLE]
+
+If the sky had been lighted up by the eruption of Snortfrizzle's nose I
+should not have been surprised.
+
+"The fools! They can't! Cat and Fiddle! But they can't be half way
+there. Martin, to the Cat and Fiddle!"
+
+The man touched his hat. "But I couldn't do that, sir. I couldn't run
+to the Cat and Fiddle. It's long miles, sir. Shall I get a carriage?"
+
+"Carriage!" cried the old man, and then he began to look about him.
+
+Horror struck me. Perhaps they would go to the station for one! Just
+then a boy driving a pony and a grocery cart came up.
+
+"There you are, sir," I cried. "Hire that boy to tow you. Your butler
+can sit in the back of the cart and hold the handle of your bath-chair.
+It may take long to get a carriage, and the cart will go much faster.
+You may overtake them in a mile."
+
+Old Snortfrizzle never so much as thanked me or looked at me. He yelled
+to the boy in the cart, offered him ten shillings and sixpence to give
+him a tow, and in less time than I could take to write it, that flunky
+with a high hat was sitting in the tail of the cart, the pony was going
+at full gallop, and the old man's bath-chair was spinning on behind it
+at a great rate.
+
+I did not leave that spot--standing statue-like and looking along both
+roads--until I heard the rumble of the departing train, and then I
+repaired to the Old Hall, my soul uplifted. I found Jone in an awful
+fluster about my being out so late; but I do stay pretty late sometimes
+when I walk by myself, and so he hadn't anything new to say.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty_
+
+
+EDINBURGH
+
+We have been here five or six days now, but the first thing I must
+write is the rest of the story of the lovers. We left Buxton the next
+day after their flight, and I begged Jone to stop at Carlisle and let
+us make a little trip to Gretna Green. I wanted to see the place that
+has been such a well-spring of matrimonial joys, and besides, I thought
+we might find Pomeroy and Angelica still there.
+
+I had not seen old Snortfrizzle again, but late that night I had heard
+a row in the hotel, and I expect it was him back from the Cat and
+Fiddle. Whether he was inquiring for me or not I don't know, or what he
+was doing, or what he did.
+
+Jone thought I had done a good deal of meddling in other people's
+business, but he agreed to go to Gretna Green, and we got there in the
+afternoon. I left Jone to take a smoke at the station, because I
+thought this was a business it would be better for me to attend to
+myself, and I started off to look up the village blacksmith and ask him
+if he had lately wedded a pair; but, will you believe it, madam, I had
+not gone far on the main road of the village when, a little ahead of
+me, I saw two bath-chairs coming toward me, one of them pulled by
+Robertson, and the other by Pomeroy's man, and in these two chairs was
+the happy lovers, evidently Mr. and Mrs.! Their faces was filled with
+light enough to take a photograph, and I could almost see their hearts
+swelling with transcendent joy. I hastened toward them, and in an
+instant our hands was clasped as if we had been old friends.
+
+They told me their tale. They had reached the station in plenty of
+time, and Robertson had got a carriage for them, and he and the other
+man had gone with them third class, with the bath-chairs in the goods
+carriages. They had reached Gretna Green that morning, and had been
+married two hours. Then I told my tale. The eyes of both of them was
+dimmed with tears, hers the most, and again they clasped my hands.
+"Poor father," said Angelica, "I hope he didn't go all the way to the
+Cat and Fiddle, and that the night air didn't strike into his joints;
+but he cannot separate us now." And she looked confiding at the other
+bath-chair.
+
+"What are you going to do?" said I, and they said they had just been
+making plans. I saw, though, that their minds was in too exalted a
+state to do this properly for themselves, and so I reflected a minute.
+"How long have you been in Buxton?"
+
+"I have been there two weeks and two days," said she, "and my
+husband"--oh, the effulgence that filled her countenance as she said
+this--"has been there one day longer."
+
+"Then," said I, "my advice to you is to go back to Buxton and stay
+there five days, until you both have taken the waters and the baths for
+the full three weeks. It won't be much to bear the old gentleman's
+upbraiding for five days, and then, blessed with health and love, you
+can depart. No matter what you do afterward, I'd stick it out at Buxton
+for five days."
+
+"We'll do it," said they; and then, after more gratitude and
+congratulations, we parted.
+
+And now I must tell you about ourselves. When Jone had been three weeks
+at Buxton, and done all the things he ought to do, and hadn't done
+anything he oughtn't to do, he hadn't any more rheumatism in him than a
+squirrel that jumps from bough to bough. But will you believe it,
+madam, I had such a rheumatism in one side and one arm that it made me
+give little squeaks when I did up my back hair, and it all came from my
+taking the baths when there wasn't anything the matter with me; for I
+found out, but all too late, that while the waters of Buxton will cure
+rheumatism in people that's got it, they will bring it out in people
+who never had it at all. We was told that we ought not to do anything
+in the bathing line without the advice of a doctor; but those little
+tanks in the floors of the bathrooms, all lined with tiles and filled
+with warm, transparent water, that you went down into by marble steps,
+did seem so innocent, that I didn't believe there was no need in asking
+questions about them. Jone wanted me to stay three weeks longer until I
+was cured, but I wouldn't listen to that. I was wild to get to
+Scotland, and as my rheumatism did not hinder me from walking, I didn't
+mind what else it did.
+
+And there is another thing I must tell you. One day when I was sitting
+by myself on The Slopes waiting for Jone, about lunch time, and with a
+reminiscence floating through my mind of the Devonshire clotted cream
+of the past, never perhaps to return, I saw an elderly woman coming
+along, and when she got near she stopped and spoke. I knew her in an
+instant. She was the old body we met at the Babylon Hotel, who told us
+about the cottage at Chedcombe. I asked her to sit down beside me and
+talk, because I wanted to tell her what good times we had had, and how
+we liked the place, but she said she couldn't, as she was obliged to go
+on.
+
+"And did you like Chedcombe?" said she. "I hope you and your husband
+kept well."
+
+I said yes, except Jone's rheumatism, we felt splendid; for my aches
+hadn't come on then, and I was going on to gush about the lovely
+country she had sent us to, but she didn't seem to want to listen.
+
+"Really," said she, "and your husband had the rheumatism. It was a
+wise thing for you to come here. We English people have reason to be
+proud of our country. If we have our banes, we also have our antidotes;
+and it isn't every country that can say that, is it?"
+
+[Illustration: "And did you like Chedcombe?"]
+
+I wanted to speak up for America, and tried to think of some good
+antidote with the proper banes attached; but before I could do it she
+gave her head a little wag, and said, "Good morning; nice weather,
+isn't it?" and wobbled away. It struck me that the old body was a
+little lofty, and just then Mr. Poplington, who I hadn't noticed, came
+up.
+
+"Really," said he, "I didn't know you was acquainted with the
+Countess."
+
+"The which?" said I.
+
+"The Countess of Mussleby," said he, "that you was just talking to."
+
+"Countess!" I cried. "Why, that's the old person who recommended us to
+go to Chedcombe."
+
+"Very natural," said he, "for her to do that, for her estates lie south
+of Chedcombe, and she takes a great interest in the villages around
+about, and knows all the houses to let."
+
+I parted from him and wandered away, a sadness stealing o'er my soul.
+Gone with the recollections of the clotted cream was my visions of
+diamond tiaras, tossing plumes, and long folds of brocades and laces
+sweeping the marble floors of palaces. If ever again I read a novel
+with a countess in it, I shall see the edge of a yellow flannel
+petticoat and a pair of shoes like two horse-hair bags, which was the
+last that I saw of this thunderbolt into the middle of my visions of
+aristocracy.
+
+Jone and me got to like Buxton very much. We met many pleasant people,
+and as most of them had a chord in common, we was friendly enough. Jone
+said it made him feel sad in the smoking-room to see the men he'd got
+acquainted with get well and go home, but that's a kind of sadness that
+all parties can bear up under pretty well.
+
+I haven't said a word yet about Scotland, though we have been here a
+week, but I really must get something about it into this letter. I was
+saying to Jone the other day that if I was to meet a king with a crown
+on his head I am not sure that I should know that king if I saw him
+again, so taken up would I be with looking at his crown, especially if
+it had jewels in it such as I saw in the regalia at the Tower of
+London. Now Edinburgh seems to strike me in very much the same way.
+Prince Street is its crown, and whenever I think of this city it will
+be of this magnificent street and the things that can be seen from it.
+
+It is a great thing for a street to have one side of it taken away and
+sunk out of sight so that there is a clear view far and wide, and
+visitors can stand and look at nearly everything that is worth seeing
+in the whole town, as if they was in the front seats of the balcony in
+a theatre, and looking on the stage. You know I am very fond of the
+theatre, madam, but I never saw anything in the way of what they call
+spectacular representation that came near Edinburgh as seen from Prince
+Street.
+
+But as I said in one of my first letters, I am not going to write about
+things and places that you can get much better description of in books,
+and so I won't take up any time in telling how we stand at the window
+of our room at the Royal Hotel, and look out at the Old Town standing
+like a forest of tall houses on the other side of the valley, with the
+great castle perched up high above them, and all the hills and towers
+and the streets all spread out below us, with Scott's monument right in
+front, with everybody he ever wrote about standing on brackets, which
+stick out everywhere from the bottom up to the very top of the
+monument, which is higher than the tallest house, and looks like a
+steeple without a church to it. It is the most beautiful thing of the
+kind I ever saw, and I have made out, or think I have, nearly every one
+of the figures that's carved on it.
+
+I think I shall like the Scotch people very much, but just now there is
+one thing about them that stands up as high above their other good
+points as the castle does above the rest of the city, and that is the
+feeling they have for anybody who has done anything to make his
+fellow-countrymen proud of him. A famous Scotchman cannot die without
+being pretty promptly born again in stone or bronze, and put in some
+open place with seats convenient for people to sit and look at him. I
+like this; glory ought to begin at home.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-one_
+
+
+EDINBURGH
+
+Jone being just as lively on his legs as he ever was in his life,
+thanks to the waters of Buxton, and I having the rheumatism now only in
+my arm, which I don't need to walk with, we have gone pretty much all
+over Edinburgh, and a great place it is to walk in, so far as variety
+goes. Some of the streets are so steep you have to go up steps if you
+are walking, and about a mile around if you are driving. I never get
+tired wandering about the Old Town with its narrow streets and awfully
+tall houses, with family washes hanging out from every story.
+
+The closes are queer places. They are very like little villages set
+into the town as if they was raisins in a pudding. You get to them by
+alleys or tunnels, and when you are inside you find a little
+neighborhood that hasn't anything more to do with the next close, a
+block away, than one country village has with another.
+
+We went to see John Knox's house, and although Mr. Knox was pretty hard
+on vanities and frivolities, he didn't mind having a good house over
+his head, with woodwork on the walls and ceilings that wasn't any more
+necessary than the back buttons on his coat.
+
+We have been reading hard since we have been in Edinburgh, and whenever
+Mr. Knox and Mary Queen of Scots come together, I take Mary's side
+without asking questions. I have no doubt Mr. Knox was a good man, but
+if meddling in other people's business gave a person the right to have
+a monument, the top of his would be the first thing travellers would
+see when they come near Edinburgh.
+
+When we went to Holyrood Palace it struck me that Mary Queen of Scots
+deserved a better house. Of course, it wasn't built for her, but I
+don't care very much for the other people who lived in it. The rooms
+are good enough for an ordinary household's use, although the little
+room that she had her supper party in when Rizzio was killed, wouldn't
+be considered by Jone and me as anything like big enough for our family
+to eat in. But there is a general air about the place as if it belonged
+to a royal family that was not very well off, and had to abstain from a
+good deal of grandeur.
+
+If Mary Queen of Scots could come to life again, I expect the Scotch
+people would give her the best palace that money could buy, for they
+have grown to think the world of her, and her pictures blossom out all
+over Edinburgh like daisies in a pasture field.
+
+The first morning after we got here I was as much surprised as if I had
+met Mary Queen of Scots walking along Prince Street with a parasol over
+her head. We were sitting in the reading-room of the hotel, and on the
+other side of the room was a long desk at which people was sitting,
+writing letters, all with their backs to us. One of these was a young
+man wearing a nice light-colored sack coat, with a shiny white collar
+sticking above it, and his black derby hat was on the desk beside him.
+When he had finished his letter he put a stamp on it and got up to mail
+it. I happened to be looking at him, and I believe I stopped breathing
+as I sat and stared. Under his coat he had on a little skirt of green
+plaid about big enough for my Corinne when she was about five years
+old, and then he didn't wear anything whatever until you got down to
+his long stockings and low shoes. I was so struck with the feeling that
+he was an absent-minded person that I punched Jone and whispered to him
+to go quick and tell him. Jone looked at him and laughed, and said that
+was the Highland costume.
+
+Now if that man had had his martial plaid wrapped around him, and had
+worn a Scottish cap with a feather in it and a long ribbon hanging down
+his back, with his claymore girded to his side, I wouldn't have been
+surprised; for this is Scotland, and that would have been like the
+pictures I have seen of Highlanders. But to see a man with the upper
+half of him dressed like a clerk in a dry goods store and the lower
+half like a Highland chief, was enough to make a stranger gasp.
+
+[Illustration: "Jone looked at him and said that was the Highland
+costume."]
+
+But since then I have seen a good many young men dressed that way. I
+believe it is considered the tip of the fashion. I haven't seen any of
+the bare-legged dandies yet with a high silk hat and an umbrella, but I
+expect it won't be long before I meet one. We often see the Highland
+soldiers that belong to the garrison at the castle, and they look
+mighty fine with their plaid shawls and their scarfs and their
+feathers; but to see a man who looks as if one half of him belonged to
+London Bridge and the other half to the Highland moors, does look to
+me like a pretty bad mixture.
+
+I am not so sure, either, that the whole Highland dress isn't better
+suited to Egypt, where it doesn't often rain, than to Scotland. Last
+Saturday we was at St. Giles's Church, and the man who took us around
+told us we ought to come early next morning and see the military
+service, which was something very fine; and as Jone gave him a shilling
+he said he would be on hand and watch for us, and give us a good place
+where we could see the soldiers come in. On Sunday morning it rained
+hard, but we was both at the church before eight o'clock, and so was a
+good many other people, but the doors was shut and they wouldn't let us
+in. They told us it was such a bad morning that the soldiers could not
+come out, and so there would be no military service that day. I don't
+know whether those fine fellows thought that the colors would run out
+of their beautiful plaids, or whether they would get rheumatism in
+their knees; but it did seem to me pretty hard that soldiers could not
+come out in the weather that lots of common citizens didn't seem to
+mind at all. I was a good deal put out, for I hate to get up early for
+nothing, but there was no use saying anything, and all we could do was
+to go home, as all the other people with full suits of clothes did.
+
+Jone and I have got so much more to see before we go home, that it is
+very well we are both able to skip around lively. Of course there are
+ever and ever so many places that we want to go to, but can't do it,
+but I am bound to see the Highlands and the country of the "Lady of the
+Lake." We have been reading up Walter Scott, and I think more than I
+ever did that he is perfectly splendid. While we was in Edinburgh we
+felt bound to go and see Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford. I shall not say
+much about these two places, but I will say that to go into Sir Walter
+Scott's library and sit in the old armchair he used to sit in, at the
+desk he used to write on, and see his books and things around me, gave
+me more a feeling of reverentialism than I have had in any cathedral
+yet.
+
+As for Melrose Abbey, I could have walked about under those towering
+walls and lovely arches until the stars peeped out from the lofty
+vaults above; but Jone and the man who drove the carriage were of a
+different way of thinking, and we left all too soon. But one thing I
+did do: I went to the grave of Michael Scott the wizard, where once was
+shut up the book of awful mysteries, with a lamp always burning by it,
+though the flagstone was shut down tight on top of it, and I got a
+piece of moss and a weed. We don't do much in the way of carrying off
+such things, but I want Corinne to read the "Lady of the Lake," and
+then I shall give her that moss and that weed, and tell where I got
+them. I believe that, in the way of romantics, Corinne is going to be
+more like me than like Jone.
+
+To-morrow we go to the Highlands, and we shall leave our two big trunks
+in the care of the man in the red coat, who is commander-in-chief at
+the Royal Hotel, and who said he would take as much care of them as if
+they was two glass jars filled with rubies; and we believed him, for he
+has done nothing but take care of us since we came to Edinburgh, and
+good care, too.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-two_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+KINLOCH RANNOCH.
+
+It happened that the day we went north was a very fine one, and as soon
+as we got into the real Highland country there was nothing to hinder me
+from feeling that my feet was on my native heath, except that I was in
+a railway carriage, and that I had no Scotch blood in me, but the joy
+of my soul was all the same. There was an old gentleman got into our
+carriage at Perth, and when he saw how we was taking in everything our
+eyes could reach, for Jone is a good deal more fired up by travel than
+he used to be--I expect it must have been the Buxton waters that made
+the change--he began to tell us all about the places we were passing
+through. There didn't seem to be a rock or a stream that hadn't a bit
+of history to it for that old gentleman to tell us about.
+
+We got out at a little town called Struan, and then we took a carriage
+and drove across the wild moors and hills for thirteen miles till we
+came to this village at the end of Loch Rannoch. The wind blew strong
+and sharp, but we knew what we had to expect, and had warm clothes on.
+And with the cool breeze, and remembering "Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace
+bled," it made my blood tingle all the way.
+
+We are going to stay here at least a week. We shall not try to do
+everything that can be done on Scottish soil, for we shall not stalk
+stags or shoot grouse; and I have told Jone that he may put on as many
+Scotch bonnets and plaids as he likes, but there is one thing he is not
+going to do, and that is to go bare-kneed, to which he answered, he
+would never do that unless he could dip his knees into weak coffee so
+that they would be the same color as his face.
+
+There is a nice inn here with beautiful scenery all around, and the
+lovely Loch Rannoch stretches away for eleven miles. Everything is just
+as Scotch as it can be. Even the English people who come here put on
+knickerbockers and bonnets. I have never been anywhere else where it is
+considered the correct thing to dress like the natives, and I will say
+here that it is very few of the natives that wear kilts. That sort of
+thing seems to be given up to the fancy Highlanders.
+
+Nearly all the talk at the inn is about, shooting and fishing.
+Stag-hunting here is very different from what it is in England in more
+ways than one. In the first place, stags are not hunted with horses and
+hounds. In the second place, the sport is not free. A gentleman here
+told Jone that if a man wanted to shoot a stag on these moors it would
+cost him one rifle cartridge and six five pound notes; and when Jone
+did not understand what that meant, the man went on and told him about
+how the deer-stalking was carried on here. He said that some of the big
+proprietors up here owned as much as ninety thousand acres of moorland,
+and they let it out mostly to English people for hunting and fishing.
+And if it is stag-hunting the tenant wants, the price he pays is
+regulated by the number of stags he has the privilege of shooting. Each
+stag he is allowed to kill costs him thirty pounds. So if he wants the
+pleasure of shooting thirty stags in the season, his rent will be nine
+hundred pounds. This he pays for the stag-shooting, but some kind of a
+house and about ten thousand acres are thrown in, which he has a
+perfect right to sit down on and rest himself on, but he can't shoot a
+grouse on it unless he pays extra for that. And, what is more, if he
+happens to be a bad shot, or breaks his leg and has to stay in the
+house, and doesn't shoot his thirty stags, he has got to pay for them
+all the same.
+
+When Jone told me all this, I said I thought a hundred and fifty
+dollars a pretty high price to pay for the right to shoot one deer. But
+Jone said I didn't consider all the rest the man got. In the first
+place, he had the right to get up very early in the morning, in the
+gloom and drizzle, and to trudge through the slop and the heather until
+he got far away from the neighborhood of any human being, and then he
+could go up on some high piece of ground and take a spyglass and search
+the whole country round for a stag. When he saw one way off in the
+distance snuffing the morning air, or hunting for his breakfast among
+the heather, he had the privilege of walking two or three miles over
+the moor so as to get that stag between the wind and himself, so that
+it could not scent him or hear him. Then he had the glorious right to
+get his rifle all ready, and steal and creep toward that stag to cut
+short his existence. He has to be as careful and as sneaky as if he was
+a snake in the grass, going behind little hills and down into gullies,
+and sometimes almost crawling on his stomach where he goes over an open
+place, and doing everything he can to keep that stag from knowing his
+end is near. Sometimes he follows his victim all day, and the sun goes
+down before he has the glorious right of standing up and lodging a
+bullet in its unsuspecting heart. "So you see," said Jone, "he gets a
+lot for his hundred and fifty dollars."
+
+"They do get a good deal more for their money than I thought they did,"
+said I; "but I wonder if those rich sportsmen ever think that if they
+would take the money that they pay for shooting thirty or forty stags
+in one season, they might buy a rhinoceros, which they could set up on
+a hill and shoot at every morning if they liked. A game animal like
+that would last them for years, and if they ever felt like it, they
+could ask their friends to help them shoot without costing them
+anything."
+
+Jone is pretty hard on sport with killing in it. He does not mind
+eating meat, but he likes to have the butcher do the killing. But I
+reckon he is a little too tender-hearted. But, as for me, I like sport
+of some kinds, especially when you don't have your pity or your
+sympathies awakened by seeing your prey enjoying life when you are
+seeking to encompass his end. Of course, by that I mean fishing.
+
+There are a good many trout in the lake, and people can hire the
+privilege of fishing for them; and I begged Jone to let me go out in a
+boat and fish. He was rather in favor of staying ashore and fishing in
+the little river, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go out and
+have some regular lake fishing. At last Jone agreed, provided I would
+not expect him to have anything to do with the fishing. "Of course I
+don't expect anything like that," said I; "and it would be a good deal
+better for you to stay on shore. The landlord says a gilly will go
+along to row the boat and attend to the lines and rods and all that,
+and so there won't be any need for you at all, and you can stay on
+shore with your book, and watch if you like."
+
+"And suppose you tumble overboard," said Jone.
+
+"Then you can swim out," I said, "and perhaps wade a good deal of the
+way. I don't suppose we need go far from the bank."
+
+Jone laughed, and said he was going too.
+
+"Very well," said I; "but you have got to stay in the bow, with your
+back to me, and take an interesting book with you, for it is a long
+time since I have done any fishing, and I am not going to do it with
+two men watching me and telling me how I ought to do it and how I
+oughtn't to. One will be enough."
+
+"And that one won't be me," said Jone, "for fishing is not one of the
+branches I teach in my school."
+
+I would have liked it better if Jone and me had gone alone, he doing
+nothing but row; but the landlord wouldn't let his boat that way, and
+said we must take a gilly, which, as far as I can make out, is a sort
+of sporting farmhand. That is the way to do fishing in these parts.
+
+Well, we started, and Jone sat in the front, with his back to me, and
+the long-legged gilly rowed like a good fellow. When we got to a good
+place to fish he stopped, and took a fishing-rod that was in pieces and
+screwed them together, and fixed the line all right so that it would
+run along the rod to a little wheel near the handle, and then he put on
+a couple of hooks with artificial flies on them, which was so small I
+couldn't imagine how the fish could see them. While he was doing all
+this I got a little fidgety, because I had never fished except with a
+straight pole and line with a cork to it, which would bob when the fish
+bit; but this was altogether a different sort of a thing. When it was
+all ready he handed me the pole, and then sat down very polite to look
+at me.
+
+Now, if he had handed me the rod, and then taken another boat and gone
+home, perhaps I might have known what to do with the thing after a
+while, but I must say that at that minute I didn't. I held the rod out
+over the water and let the flies dangle down into it, but do what I
+would, they wouldn't sink; there wasn't weight enough on them.
+
+"You must throw your fly, madam," said the gilly, always very polite.
+"Let me give it a throw for you," and then he took the rod in his hand
+and gave it a whirl and a switch which sent the flies out ever so far
+from the boat; then he drew it along a little, so that the flies
+skipped over the top of the water.
+
+[Illustration: "I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, AND TAKING THE POLE IN BOTH
+HANDS I GAVE IT A WILD TWIRL OVER MY HEAD"]
+
+I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
+wild twirl over my head, and then it flew out as if I was trying to
+whip one of the leaders in a four-horse team. As I did this Jone gave a
+jump that took him pretty near out of the boat, for two flies swished
+just over the bridge of his nose, and so close to his eyes as he was
+reading an interesting dialogue, and not thinking of fish or even of
+me, that he gave a jump sideways, which, if it hadn't been for the
+gilly grabbing him, would have taken him overboard. I was frightened
+myself, and said to him that I had told him he ought not to come in the
+boat, and it would have been a good deal better for him to have stayed
+on shore.
+
+He didn't say anything, but I noticed he turned up his collar and
+pulled down his hat over his eyes and ears. The gilly said that perhaps
+I had too much line out, and so he took the rod and wound up a good
+deal of the line. I liked this better, because it was easier to whip
+out the line and pull it in again. Of course, I would not be likely to
+catch fish so much nearer the boat, but then we can't have everything
+in this world. Once I thought I had a bite, and I gave the rod such a
+jerk that the line flew back against me, and when I was getting ready
+to throw it out again, I found that one of the little hooks had stuck
+fast in my thumb. I tried to take it out with the other hand, but it
+was awfully awkward to do, because the rod wobbled and kept jerking on
+it. The gilly asked me if there was anything the matter with the flies,
+but I didn't want him to know what had happened, and so I said, "Oh,
+no," and turning my back on him I tried my best to get the hook out
+without his helping me, for I didn't want him to think that the first
+thing I caught was myself, after just missing my husband--he might be
+afraid it would be his turn next. You cannot imagine how bothersome it
+is to go fishing with a gilly to wait on you. I would rather wash
+dishes with a sexton to wipe them and look for nicks on the edges.
+
+At last--and I don't know how it happened--I did hook a fish, and the
+minute I felt him I gave a jerk, and up he came. I heard the gilly say
+something about playing, but I was in no mood for play, and if that
+fish had been shot up out of the water by a submarine volcano it
+couldn't have ascended any quicker than when I jerked it up. Then as
+quick as lightning it went whirling through the air, struck the pages
+of Jone's book, turning over two or three of them, and then wiggled
+itself half way down Jone's neck, between his skin and his collar,
+while the loose hook swung around and nipped him in his ear.
+
+"Don't pull, madam," shouted the gilly, and it was well he did, for I
+was just on the point of giving an awful jerk to get the fish loose
+from Jone. Jone gave a grab at the fish, which was trying to get down
+his back, and pulling him out threw him down; but by doing this he
+jerked the other hook into his ear, and then a yell arose such as I
+never before heard from Jone. "I told you you ought not to come in this
+boat," said I; "you don't like fishing, and something is always
+happening to you."
+
+"Like fishing!" cried Jone. "I should say not," and he made up such a
+comical face that even the gilly, who was very polite, had to laugh as
+he went to take the hook out of his ear.
+
+When Jone and the fish had been got off my line, Jone turned to me and
+said, "Are you going to fish any more?"
+
+"Not with you in the boat," I answered; and then he said he was glad to
+hear that, and told the man he could row us ashore.
+
+I can assure you, madam, that fishing in a rather wobbly boat with a
+husband and a gilly in it, is not to my taste, and that was the end of
+our sporting experiences in Scotland, but it did not end the glorious
+times we had by that lake and on the moors.
+
+We hired a little pony trap and drove up to the other end of the lake,
+and not far beyond that is the beginning of Rannoch Moor, which the
+books say is one of the wildest and most desolate places in all Europe.
+So far as we went over the moor we found that this was truly so, and I
+know that I, at least, enjoyed it ever so much more because it was so
+wild and desolate. As far as we could see, the moors stretched away in
+every direction, covered in most places by heather, now out of blossom,
+but with great rocks standing out of the ground in some places, and
+here and there patches of grass. Sometimes we could see four or five
+lochs at once, some of them two or three miles long, and down through
+the middle of the moor came the maddest and most harum-scarum little
+river that could be imagined. It actually seemed to go out of its way
+to find rocks to jump over, just as if it was a young calf, and some of
+the waterfalls were beautiful. All around us was melancholy mountains,
+all of them with "Ben" for their first names, except Schiehallion,
+which was the best shaped of any of them, coming up to a point and
+standing by itself, which was what I used to think mountains always
+did; but now I know they run into each other so that you can hardly
+tell where one ends and the other begins.
+
+For three or four days we went out on these moors, sometimes when the
+sun was shining, and sometimes when there was a heavy rain and the wind
+blew gales, and I think I liked this last kind of weather the best, for
+it gave me an idea of lonely desolation which I never had in any part
+of the world I have ever been in before. There is often not a house to
+be seen, not even a crofter's hut, and we seldom met anybody. Sometimes
+I wandered off by myself behind a hillock or rocks where I could not
+even see Jone, and then I used to try to imagine how Eve would have
+felt if she had early become a widow, and to put myself in her place.
+There was always clouds in the sky, sometimes dark and heavy ones
+coming down to the very peaks of the mountains, and not a tree was to
+be seen, except a few rowan trees or bushes close to the river. But by
+the side of Lock Rannoch, on our way back to the village, we passed
+along the edge of a fine old forest called the "Black Woods of
+Rannoch." There are only three of these ancient forests left in
+Scotland, and some of the trees in this one are said to be eight
+hundred years old.
+
+[Illustration: Pomona drinking it in]
+
+The last time we was out on the Rannoch Moor there was such a savage
+and driving wind, and the rain came down in such torrents, that my
+mackintosh was blown nearly off of me, and I was wet from my head to my
+heels. But I would have stayed out hours longer if Jone had been
+willing, and I never felt so sorry to leave these Grampian Hills, where
+I would have been glad to have had my father feed his flocks, and where
+I might have wandered away my childhood, barefooted over the heather,
+singing Scotch songs and drinking in deep draughts of the pure mountain
+air, instead of--but no matter.
+
+To-morrow we leave the Highlands, but as we go to follow the shallop of
+the "Lady of the Lake," I should not repine.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-three_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+OBAN, SCOTLAND
+
+It would seem to be the easiest thing in the world, when looking on the
+map, to go across the country from Loch Rannoch over to Katrine and all
+those celebrated parts, but we found we could not go that way, and so
+we went back to Edinburgh and made a fresh start. We stopped one night
+at the Royal Hotel, and there we found a letter from Mr. Poplington. We
+had left him at Buxton, and he said he was not going to Scotland this
+season, but would try to see us in London before we sailed.
+
+He is a good man, and he wrote this letter on purpose to tell me that
+he had had a letter from his friend, the clergyman in Somersetshire,
+who had forbidden the young woman whose wash my tricycle had run into
+to marry her lover because he was a Radical. This letter was in answer
+to one Mr. Poplington wrote to him, in which he gave the minister my
+reasons for thinking that the best way to convert the young man from
+Radicalism was to let him marry the young woman, who would be sure to
+bring him around to her way of thinking, whatever that might be.
+
+I didn't care about the Radicalism. All I wanted was to get the two
+married, and then it would not make the least difference to me what
+their politics might be; if they lived properly and was sober and
+industrious and kept on loving each other, I didn't believe it would
+make much difference to them. It was a long letter that the clergyman
+wrote, but the point of it was, that he had concluded to tell the young
+woman that she might marry the fellow if she liked, and that she must
+do her best to make him a good Conservative, which, of course, she
+promised to do. When I read this I clapped my hands, for who could have
+suspected that I should have the good luck to come to this country to
+spend the summer and make two matches before I left it!
+
+When we left Edinburgh to gradually wend our way to this place, which
+is on the west coast of Scotland, the first town we stopped at was
+Stirling, where the Scotch kings used to live. Of course we went to the
+castle, which stands on the rocks high above the town; but before we
+started to go there Jone inquired if the place was a ruin or not, and
+when he was told it was not, and that soldiers lived there, he said it
+was all right, and we went. He now says he must positively decline to
+visit any more houses out of repair. He is tired of them; and since he
+has got over his rheumatism he feels less like visiting ruins than he
+ever did. I tell him the ruins are not any more likely to be damp than
+a good many of the houses that people live in; but this didn't shake
+him, and I suppose if we come to any more vine-covered and shattered
+remnants of antiquity I shall be obliged to go over them by myself.
+
+The castle is a great place, which I wouldn't have missed for the
+world; but the spot that stirred my soul the most was in a little
+garden, as high in the air as the top of a steeple, where we could look
+out over the battlefield of Bannockburn. Besides this, we could see the
+mountains of Ben-Lomond, Ben-Venue, Ben-A'an, Benledi, and ever so much
+Scottish landscape spreading out for miles upon miles. There is a
+little hole in the wall here called the Ladies' Look-Out, where the
+ladies of the court could sit and see what was going on in the country
+below without being seen themselves, but I stood up and took in
+everything over the top of the wall.
+
+I don't know whether I told you that the mountains of Scotland are
+"Bens," and the mouths of rivers are "abers," and islands are
+"inches." Walking about the streets of Stirling, and I didn't have time
+to see half as much as I wanted to, I came to the shop of a "flesher."
+I didn't know what it was until I looked into the window and saw that
+it was a butcher shop.
+
+I like a language just about as foreign as the Scotch is. There are a
+good many words in it that people not Scotch don't understand, but that
+gives a person the feeling that she is travelling abroad, which I want
+to have when I am abroad. Then, on the other hand, there are not enough
+of them to hinder a traveller from making herself understood. So it is
+natural for me to like it ever so much better than French, in which,
+when I am in it, I simply sink to the bottom if no helping hand is held
+out to me.
+
+I had some trouble with Jone that night at the hotel, because he had a
+novel which he had been reading for I don't know how long, and which he
+said he wanted to get through with before he began anything else. But
+now I told him he was going to enter on the wonderful country of the
+"Lady of the Lake," and that he ought to give up everything else and
+read that book, because if he didn't go there with his mind prepared
+the scenery would not sink into his soul as it ought to. He was of the
+opinion that when my romantic feeling got on top of the scenery it
+would be likely to sink into his soul as deep as he cared to have it,
+without any preparation, but that sort of talk wouldn't do for me. I
+didn't want to be gliding o'er the smooth waters of Loch Katrine, and
+have him asking me who the girl was who rowed her shallop to the silver
+strand, and the end of it was that I made him sit up until a quarter of
+two o'clock in the morning while I read the "Lady of the Lake" to him.
+I had read it before and he had not, but I hadn't got a quarter through
+before he was just as willing to listen as I was to read. And when I
+got through I was in such a glow that Jone said he believed that all
+the blood in my veins had turned to hot Scotch.
+
+I didn't pay any attention to this, and after going to the window and
+looking out at the Gaelic moon, which was about half full and rolling
+along among the clouds, I turned to Jone and said, "Jone, let's sing
+'Scots wha ha',' before we go to bed."
+
+"If we do roar out that thing," said Jone, "they will put us out on the
+curbstone to spend the rest of the night."
+
+"Let's whisper it, then," said I; "the spirit of it is all I want. I
+don't care for the loudness."
+
+"I'd be willing to do that," said Jone, "if I knew the tune and a few
+of the words."
+
+"Oh, bother!" said I; and when I got into bed I drew the clothes over
+my head and sang that brave song all to myself. Doing it that way the
+words and tune didn't matter at all, but I felt the spirit of it, and
+that was all I wanted, and then I went to sleep.
+
+The next morning we went to Callander by train, and there we took a
+coach for Trossachs. It is hardly worth while to say we went on top,
+because the coaches here haven't any inside to them, except a hole
+where they put the baggage. We drove along a beautiful road with
+mountains and vales and streams, and the driver told us the name of
+everything that had a name, which he couldn't help very well, being
+asked so constant by me. But I didn't feel altogether satisfied, for we
+hadn't come to anything quotable, and I didn't like to have Jone sit
+too long without something happening to stir up some of the "Lady of
+the Lake" which I had pumped into his mind the day before, and so keep
+it fresh.
+
+Before long, however, the driver pointed out the ford of Coilantogle.
+The instant he said this I half jumped up, and, seizing Jone by the
+arm, I cried, "Don't you remember? This is the place where the Knight
+of Snowdoun, James Fitz-James, fought Roderick Dhu!" And then without
+caring who else heard me, I burst out with:
+
+    "'His back against a rock he bore,
+      And firmly placed his foot before:
+      "Come one, come all! This rock shall fly
+      From its firm base as soon as I."'"
+
+"No, madam," said the driver, politely touching his hat, "that was a
+mile farther on. This place is:
+
+    "'And here his course the chieftain staid,
+      Threw down his target and his plaid.'"
+
+"You are right," said I; and then I began again:
+
+    "'Then each at once his falchion drew,
+      Each on the ground his scabbard threw,
+      Each look'd to sun, and stream, and plain,
+      As what they ne'er might see again;
+      Then foot, and point, and eye opposed,
+      In dubious strife they darkly closed.'"
+
+I didn't repeat any more of the poem, though everybody was listening
+quite respectful without thinking of laughing, and as for Jone, I could
+see by the way he sat and looked about him that his tinder had caught
+my spark; but I knew that the thing for me to do here was not to give
+out but take in, and so, to speak in figures, I drank in the whole of
+Lake Vannachar, as we drove along its lovely marge until we came to the
+other end, and the driver said we would now go over the Brigg of Turk.
+At this up I jumped and said:
+
+    "'And when the Brigg of Turk was won,
+      The headmost horseman rode alone.'"
+
+I had sense enough not to quote the next two lines, because when I had
+read them to Jone he said that it was a shame to use a horse that way.
+
+We now came to Loch Achray, at the other end of which is the
+Trossachs, where we stopped for the night, and when the driver told me
+the mountain we saw before us was Ben-Venue, I repeated the lines:
+
+    "'The hunter marked that mountain high,
+      The lone lake's western boundary,
+      And deem'd the stag must turn to bay,
+      Where that huge rampart barr'd the way.'"
+
+At last we reached the Trossachs Hotel, which stands near the wild
+ravines filled with bristling woods where the stag was lost, with the
+lovely lake in front and Ben-Venue towering up on the other side. I was
+so excited I could scarcely eat, and no wonder, because for the greater
+part of the day I had breathed nothing but the spirit of Scott's
+poetry. I forgot to say that from the time we left Callander until we
+got to the hotel the rain poured down steadily, but that didn't make
+any difference to me. A human being soaked with the "Lady of the Lake"
+is rain-proof.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-four_
+
+
+EDINBURGH
+
+I was sorry to stop my last letter right in the middle of the "Lady of
+the Lake" country, but I couldn't get it all in, and the fact is, I
+can't get all I want to say in any kind of a letter. The things I have
+seen and want to write about are crowded together like the Scottish
+mountains.
+
+On the day after we got to Trossachs Hotel, and I don't know any place
+I would rather spend weeks at than there, Jone and I walked through the
+"darksome glen" where the stag,
+
+    "Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken,
+     In the deep Trossachs' wildest nook
+     His solitary refuge took."
+
+And then we came out on the far-famed Loch Katrine. There was a little
+steamboat there to take passengers to the other end, where a coach was
+waiting, but it wasn't time for that to start, and we wandered on the
+banks of that song-gilded piece of water. It didn't lie before us like
+"one burnished sheet of living gold," as it appeared to James
+Fitz-James but my soul could supply the sunset if I chose. There, too,
+was the island of the fair Ellen, and beneath our very feet was the
+"silver strand" to which she rowed her shallop. I am sorry to say there
+isn't so much of the silver strand as there used to be, because, in
+this world, as I have read, and as I have seen, the spirit of
+realistics is always crowding and trampling on the toes of the
+romantics, and the people of Glasgow have actually laid water-pipes
+from their town to this lovely lake, and now they turn the faucets in
+their back kitchens and out spouts the tide which kissed
+
+    "With whispering sound and slow
+     The beach of pebbles bright as snow."
+
+This wouldn't have been so bad, because the lake has enough and to
+spare of its limpid wave; but in order to make their water-works the
+Glasgow people built a dam, and that has raised the lake a good deal
+higher, so that it overflows ever so much of the silver strand. But I
+can pick out the real from a scene like that as I can pick out and
+throw away the seeds of an orange, and gazing o'er that enchanted scene
+I felt like the Knight of Snowdoun himself, when he first beheld the
+lake and said:
+
+    "How blithely might the bugle horn
+     Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn!"
+
+and then I went on with the lines until I came to
+
+    "Blithe were it then to wander here!
+     But now--beshrew yon nimble deer"--
+
+"You'd better beshrew that steamboat bell," said Jone, and away we went
+and just caught the boat. Realistics come in very well sometimes when
+they take the form of legs.
+
+The steamboat took us over nearly the whole of Lake Katrine, and I must
+say that I was so busy fitting verses to scenery that I don't remember
+whether it rained or the sun shone. When we left the boat we took a
+coach to Inversnaid on Loch Lomond, and, as we rode along, it made my
+heart almost sink to feel that I had to leave my poetry behind me, for
+I didn't know any that suited this region. But when we got in sight of
+Loch Lomond a Scotch girl who was on the seat behind me, and had
+several friends with her, began to sing a song about Lomond, of which I
+only remember, "You take the high road and I'll take the low road, and
+I'll get to Scotland afore you."
+
+I am sure I must have Scotch blood in me, for when I heard that song it
+wound up my feelings to such a pitch that I believe if that girl had
+been near enough I should have given her a hug and a kiss. As for Jone,
+he seemed to be nearly as much touched as I was, though not in the same
+way, of course.
+
+We took a boat on Loch Lomond to Ardlui, another little town, and then
+we drove nine miles to the railroad. This was through a wild and solemn
+valley, and by the side of a rushing river, full of waterfalls and deep
+and diresome pools. When we reached the railroad we found a train
+waiting, and we took it and went to Oban, which we reached about six
+o'clock. Even this railroad trip was delightful, for we went by the
+great Lake Awe, with another rushing river and mountains and black
+precipices. We had a carriage all to ourselves until an old lady got in
+at a station, and she hadn't been sitting in her corner more than ten
+minutes before she turned to me and said:
+
+"You haven't any lakes like this in your country, I suppose."
+
+Now I must say that, in the heated condition I had been in ever since I
+came into Scotland, a speech like that was like a squirt of cold water
+into a thing full of steam. For a couple of seconds my boiling stopped,
+but my fires was just as blazing as ever, and I felt as if I could turn
+them on that old woman and shrivel her up for plastering her
+comparisons on me at such a time.
+
+"Of course, we haven't anything just like this," I said, "but it takes
+all sorts of scenery to make up a world."
+
+"That's very true, isn't it?" said she. "But, really, one couldn't
+expect in America such a lake as that, such mountains, such grandeur!"
+
+Now I made up my mind if she was going to keep up this sort of thing
+Jone and me would change carriages when we stopped at the next station,
+for comparisons are very different from poetry, and if you try to mix
+them with scenery you make a mess that is not fit for a Christian. But
+I thought first I would give her a word back:
+
+"I have seen to-day," I said, "the loveliest scenery I ever met with;
+but we've got grand cañons in America where you could put the whole of
+that scenery without crowding, and where it wouldn't be much noticed by
+spectators, so busy would they be gazing at the surrounding wonders."
+
+"Fancy!" said she.
+
+"I don't want to say anything," said I, "against what I have seen
+to-day, and I don't want to think of anything else while I am looking
+at it; but this I will say, that landscape with Scott is very different
+from landscape without him."
+
+"That is very true, isn't it?" said she; and then she stopped making
+comparisons, and I looked out of the window.
+
+Oban is a very pretty place on the coast, but we never should have gone
+there if it had not been the place to start from for Staffa and Iona.
+When I was only a girl I saw pictures of Fingal's Cave, and I have read
+a good deal about it since, and it is one of the spots in the world
+that I have been longing to see, but I feel like crying when I tell
+you, madam, that the next morning there was such a storm that the boat
+for Staffa didn't even start; and as the people told us that the storm
+would most likely last two or three days, and that the sea for a few
+days more would be so rough that Staffa would be out of the question,
+we had to give it up, and I was obliged to fall back from the reality
+to my imagination. Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that he would
+be willing to bet ten to one that my fancy would soar a mile above the
+real thing, and that perhaps it was very well I didn't see old Fingal's
+Cave and so be disappointed.
+
+"Perhaps it is a good thing," said I, "that you didn't go, and that you
+didn't get so seasick that you would be ready to renounce your
+country's flag and embrace Mormonism if such things would make you feel
+better." But that is the only thing that is good about it, and I have a
+cloud on my recollection which shall never be lifted until Corinne is
+old enough to travel and we come here with her.
+
+But although the storm was so bad, it was not bad enough to keep us
+from making our water trip to Glasgow, for the boat we took did not
+have to go out to sea. It was a wonderfully beautiful passage we made
+among the islands and along the coast, with the great mountains on the
+mainland standing up above everything else. After a while we got to the
+Crinan Canal, which is in reality a short cut across the field. It is
+nine miles long and not much wider than a good-sized ditch, but it
+saves more than a hundred miles of travel around an island. We was on a
+sort of a toy steamboat which went its way through the fields and
+bushes and grass so close we could touch them; and as there was eleven
+locks where the boat had to stop, we got out two or three times and
+walked along the banks to the next lock. That being the kind of a ride
+Jone likes, he blessed Buxton. At the other end of the canal we took a
+bigger steamboat which carried us to Glasgow.
+
+In the morning it hailed, which afterward turned to rain, but in the
+afternoon there was only showers now and then, so that we spent most of
+the time on deck. On this boat we met a very nice Englishman and his
+wife, and when they had heard us speak to each other they asked us if
+we had ever been in this part of the world before, and when we said we
+hadn't they told us about the places we passed. If we had been an
+English couple who had never been there before they wouldn't have said
+a word to us.
+
+As we got near the Clyde the gentleman began to talk about
+ship-building, and pretty soon I saw in his face plain symptoms that he
+was going to have an attack of comparison making. I have seen so much
+of this disorder that I can nearly always tell when it is coming on a
+person. In about a minute the disease broke out on him, and he began to
+talk about the differences between American and English ships. He told
+Jone and me about a steamship that was built out in San Francisco which
+shook three thousand bolts out of herself on her first voyage. It
+seemed to me that that was a good deal like a codfish shaking his
+bones out through swimming too fast. I couldn't help thinking that that
+steamship must have had a lot of bolts so as to have enough left to
+keep her from scattering herself over the bottom of the ocean.
+
+I expected Jone to say something in behalf of his country's ships, but
+he didn't seem to pay much attention to the boat story, so I took up
+the cudgels myself, and I said to the gentleman that all nations, no
+matter how good they might be at ship-building, sometimes made
+mistakes, and then to make a good impression on him I whanged him over
+the head with the "Great Eastern," and asked him if there ever was a
+vessel that was a greater failure than that.
+
+He said, "Yes, yes, the 'Great Eastern' was not a success," and then he
+stopped talking about ships.
+
+When we got fairly into the Clyde and near Glasgow the scene was
+wonderful. It was nearly night, and the great fires of the factories
+lit up the sky, and we saw on the stocks a great ship being built.
+
+We stayed in Glasgow one day, and Jone was delighted with it, because
+he said it was like an American city. Now, on principle, I like
+American cities, but I didn't come to Scotland to see them; and the
+greatest pleasure I had in Glasgow was standing with a tumbler of water
+in my hand, repeating to myself as much of the "Lady of the Lake" as I
+could remember.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-five_
+
+
+LONDON
+
+Here we are in this wonderful town, where, if you can't see everything
+you want to see, you can generally see a sample of it, even if your fad
+happens to be the ancientnesses of Egypt. We are at the Babylon Hotel,
+where we shall stay until it is time to start for Southampton, where we
+shall take the steamer for home. What we are going to do between here
+and Southampton I don't know yet; but I do know that Jone is all on
+fire with joy because he thinks his journeys are nearly over, and I am
+chilled with grief when I think that my journeys are nearly over.
+
+We left Edinburgh on the train called the "Flying Scotsman," and it
+deserved its name. I suppose that in the days of Wallace and Bruce and
+Rob Roy the Scots must often have skipped along in a lively way; but I
+am sure if any of them had ever invaded England at the rate we went
+into it, the British lion would soon have been living on thistles
+instead of roses.
+
+The speed of this train was sometimes a mile a minute, I think; and I
+am sure I was never on any railroad in America where I was given a
+shorter time to get out for something to eat than we had at York. Jone
+and I are generally pretty quick about such things, but we had barely
+time to get back to our carriage before that "Flying Scotsman" went off
+like a streak of lightning.
+
+On the way we saw a part of York Minster, and had a splendid, view of
+Durham Cathedral, standing high in the unreachable--that is, as far as
+I was concerned. Peterborough Cathedral we also saw the outside of, and
+I felt like a boy looking in at a confectioner's window with no money
+to buy anything. It wasn't money that I wanted; it was time, and we had
+very little of that left.
+
+The next day, after we reached London, I set out to attend to a piece
+of business that I didn't want Jone to know anything about. My business
+was to look up my family pedigree. It seemed to me that it would be a
+shame if I went away from the home of my ancestors without knowing
+something about those ancestors and about the links that connected me
+with them. So I determined to see what I could do in the way of making
+up a family tree.
+
+By good luck, Jone had some business to attend to about money and rooms
+on the steamer, and so forth, and so I could start out by myself
+without his even asking me where I was going. Now, of course, it would
+be a natural thing for a person to go and seek out his ancestors in the
+ancient village from which they sprang, and to read their names on
+the tombstones in the venerable little church, but as I didn't know
+where this village was, of course I couldn't go to it. But in London is
+the place where you can find out how to find out such things.
+
+[Illustration: "A PERSON WHO WAS A FAMILY-TREE-MAN"]
+
+As far back as when we was in Chedcombe I had had a good deal of talk
+with Miss Pondar about ancestors and families. I told her that my
+forefathers came from this country, which I was very sure of, judging
+from my feelings; but as I couldn't tell her any particulars, I didn't
+go into the matter very deep. But I did say there was a good many
+points that I would like to set straight, and asked her if she knew
+where I could find out something about English family trees. She said
+she had heard there was a big heraldry office in London, but if I
+didn't want to go there, she knew of a person who was a
+family-tree-man. He had an office in London, and his business was to go
+around and tend to trees of that kind which had been neglected, and to
+get them into shape and good condition. She gave me his address, and I
+had kept the thing quiet in my mind until now.
+
+I found the family-tree-man, whose name was Brandish, in a small room
+not too clean, over a shop not far from St. Paul's Churchyard. He had
+another business, which related to patent poison for flies, and at
+first he thought I had come to see him about that, but when he found
+out I wanted to ask him about my family tree his face brightened up.
+
+When I told Mr. Brandish my business the first thing he asked me was my
+family name. Of course I had expected this, and I had thought a great
+deal about the answer I ought to give. In the first place, I didn't
+want to have anything to do with my father's name. I never had anything
+much to do with him, because he died when I was a little baby, and his
+name had nothing high-toned about it, and it seemed to me to belong to
+that kind of a family that you would be better satisfied with the less
+you looked up its beginnings; but my mother's family was a different
+thing. Nobody could know her without feeling that she had sprung from
+good roots. It might have been from the stump of a tree that had been
+cut down, but the roots must have been of no common kind to send up
+such a shoot as she was. It was from her that I got my longings for the
+romantic.
+
+She used to tell me a good deal about her father, who must have been a
+wonderful man in many ways. What she told me was not like a sketch of
+his life, which I wish it had been, but mostly anecdotes of what he
+said and did. So it was my mother's ancestral tree I determined to
+find, and without saying whether it was on my mother's or father's side
+I was searching for ancestors, I told Mr. Brandish that Dork was the
+family name.
+
+"Dork," said he; "a rather uncommon name, isn't it? Was your father
+the eldest son of a family of that name?"
+
+Now I was hoping he wouldn't say anything about my father.
+
+"No, sir," said I; "it isn't that line that I am looking up. It is my
+mother's. Her name was Dork before she was married."
+
+"Really! Now I see," said he, "you have the paternal line all correct,
+and you want to look up the line on the other side. That is very
+common; it is so seldom that one knows the line of ancestors on one's
+maternal side. Dork, then, was the name of your maternal grandfather."
+
+It struck me that a maternal grandfather must be a grandmother, but I
+didn't say so.
+
+"Can you tell me," said he, "whether it was he who emigrated from this
+country to America, or whether it was his father or his grandfather?"
+
+Now I hadn't said anything about the United States, for I had learned
+there was no use in wasting breath telling English people I had come
+from America, so I wasn't surprised at his question, but I couldn't
+answer it.
+
+"I can't say much about that," I said, "until I have found out
+something about the English branches of the family."
+
+"Very good," said he. "We will look over the records," and he took down
+a big book and turned to the letter D. He ran his finger down two or
+three pages, and then he began to shake his head.
+
+"Dork?" said he. "There doesn't seem to be any Dork, but here is
+Dorkminster. Now if that was your family name we'd have it all here. No
+doubt you know all about that family. It's a grand old family, isn't
+it? Isn't it possible that your grandfather or one of his ancestors may
+have dropped part of the name when he changed his residence to
+America?"
+
+Now I began to think hard; there was some reason in what the
+family-tree-man said. I knew very well that the same family name was
+often different in different countries, changes being made to suit
+climates and people.
+
+"Minster has a religious meaning, hasn't it?" said I.
+
+"Yes, madam," said he; "it relates to cathedrals and that sort of
+thing."
+
+Now, so far as I could remember, none of the things my mother had ever
+told me about her father was in any ways related to religion. They was
+mostly about horses; and although there is really no reason for the
+disconnection between horses and religion, especially when you consider
+the hymns with heavenly chariots in them must have had horses, it
+didn't seem to me that my grandfather could have made it a point of
+being religious, and perhaps he mightn't have cared for the cathedral
+part of his name, and so might have dropped it for convenience in
+signing, probably being generally in a hurry, judging from what my
+mother had told me. I said as much to Mr. Brandish, and he answered
+that he thought it was likely enough, and that that sort of thing was
+often done.
+
+"Now, then," said he, "let us look into the Dorkminster line and trace
+out your connection with that. From what place did your ancestors
+come?"
+
+It seemed to me that he was asking me a good deal more than he was
+telling me, and I said to him: "That is what I want to find out. What
+is the family home of the Dorkminsters?"
+
+"Oh, they were a great Hampshire family," said he. "For five hundred
+years they lived on their estates in Hampshire. The first of the name
+was Sir William Dorkminster, who came over with the Conqueror, and most
+likely was given those estates for his services. Then we go on until we
+come to the Duke of Dorkminster, who built a castle, and whose brother
+Henry was made bishop and founded an abbey, which I am sorry to say
+doesn't now exist, being totally destroyed by Oliver Cromwell."
+
+You cannot imagine how my blood leaped and surged within me as I
+listened to those words. William the Conqueror! An ancestral abbey! A
+duke! "Is the family castle still standing?" said I.
+
+"It fell into ruins," said he, "during the reign of Charles I., and
+even its site is now uncertain, the park having been devoted to
+agricultural purposes. The fourth Duke of Dorkminster was to have
+commanded one of the ships which destroyed the Spanish Armada, but was
+prevented by a mortal fever which cut him off in his prime; he died
+without issue, and the estates passed to the Culverhams of Wilts."
+
+"Did that cut off the line?" said I, very quick.
+
+"Oh, no," said the family-tree man, "the line went on. One of the
+duke's younger sisters must have married a man on condition that he
+took the old family name, which is often done, and her descendants must
+have emigrated somewhere, for the name no longer appears in Hampshire;
+but probably not to America, for that was rather early for English
+emigration."
+
+"Do you suppose," said I, "that they went to Scotland?"
+
+"Very likely," said he, after thinking a minute; "that would be
+probable enough. Have you reason to suppose that there was a Scotch
+branch in your family?"
+
+"Yes," said I, for it would have been positively wrong in me to say
+that the feelings that I had for the Scotch hadn't any meaning at all.
+
+"Now then," said Mr. Brandish, "there you are, madam. There is a line
+all the way down from the Conqueror to the end of the sixteenth
+century, scarcely one man's lifetime before the Pilgrims landed on
+Plymouth Rock."
+
+I now began to calculate in my mind. I was thirty years old; my mother,
+most likely, was about as old when I was born; that made sixty years.
+Then my grandfather might have been forty when my mother was born, and
+there was a century. As for my great-grandfather and his parents, I
+didn't know anything about them. Of course, there must have been such
+persons, but I didn't know where they came from or where they went to.
+
+"I can go back a century," said I, "but that doesn't begin to meet the
+end of the line you have marked out. There's a gap of about two hundred
+years."
+
+"Oh, I don't think I would mind that," said Mr. Brandish. "Gaps of that
+kind are constantly occurring in family trees. In fact, if we was to
+allow gaps of a century or so to interfere with the working out of
+family lines, it would cut off a great many noble ancestries from
+families of high position, especially in the colonies and abroad. I beg
+you not to pay any attention to that, madam."
+
+My nerves was tingling with the thought of the Spanish Armada, and
+perhaps Bannockburn (which then made me wish I had known all this
+before I went to Stirling, but which battle, now as I write, I know
+must have been fought a long time before any of the Dorks went to
+Scotland), and I expect my eyes flashed with family pride, for do what
+I would I couldn't sit calm and listen to what I was hearing. But,
+after all, that two hundred years did weigh upon my mind. "If you make
+a family tree for me," said I, "you will have to cut off the trunk and
+begin again somewhere up in the air."
+
+"Oh, no," said he, "we don't do that. We arrange the branches so that
+they overlap each other, and the dotted lines which indicate the
+missing portions are not noticed. Then, after further investigation and
+more information, the dots can be run together and the tree made
+complete and perfect."
+
+Of course, I had nothing more to say, and he promised to send me the
+tree the next morning, though, of course, requesting me to pay him in
+advance, which was the rule of the office, and you would be amazed,
+madam, if you knew how much that tree cost. I got it the next morning,
+but I haven't shown it to Jone yet. I am proud that I own it, and I
+have thrills through me whenever my mind goes back to its Norman roots;
+but I am bound to say that family trees sometimes throw a good deal of
+shade over their owners, especially when they have gaps in them, which
+seems contrary to nature, but is true to fact.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-six_
+
+
+SOUTHWESTERN HOTEL, SOUTHAMPTON
+
+To-morrow our steamer sails, and this is the last letter I write on
+English soil; and although I haven't done half that I wanted to, there
+are ever so many things I have done that I can't write you about.
+
+I had seen so few cathedrals that on the way down here I was bound to
+see at least one good one, and so we stopped at Winchester. It was
+while walking under the arches of that venerable pile that the thought
+suddenly came to me that we were now in Hampshire, and that, perhaps,
+in this cathedral might be some of the tombs of my ancestors. Without
+saying what I was after I began at one of the doors, and I went clean
+around that enormous church, and read every tablet in the walls and on
+the floor.
+
+Once I had a shock. There was a good many small tombs with roofs over
+them, and statues of people buried within, lying on top of the tombs,
+and some of them had their faces and clothes colored so as to make them
+look almost as natural as life. They was mostly bishops, and had been
+lying there for centuries. While looking at these I came to a tomb
+with an opening low down on the side of it, and behind some iron bars
+there lay a stone figure that made me fairly jump. He was on his back
+with hardly any clothes on, and was actually nothing but skin and
+bones. His mouth was open, as if he was gasping for his last breath. I
+never saw such an awful sight, and as I looked at the thing my blood
+began to run cold, and then it froze. The freezing was because I
+suddenly thought to myself that this might be a Dorkminster, and that
+that horrible object was my ancestor. I was actually afraid to look at
+the inscription on the tombstone for fear that this was so, for if it
+was, I knew that whenever I should think of my family tree this bag of
+bones would be climbing up the trunk, or sitting on one of the
+branches. But I must know the truth, and trembling so that I could
+scarcely read, I stooped down to look at the inscription and find out
+who that dreadful figure had been. It was not a Dorkminster, and my
+spirits rose.
+
+[Illustration: "This might be a Dorkminster"]
+
+We got here three days ago, and we have made a visit to the Isle of
+Wight. We went straight down to the southern coast, and stopped all
+night at the little town of Bonchurch. It was very lovely down there
+with roses and other flowers blooming out-of-doors as if it was summer,
+although it is now getting so cold everywhere else. But what pleased me
+most was to stand at the top of a little hill, and look out over the
+waters of the English Channel, and feel that not far out of eyeshot was
+the beautiful land of France with its lower part actually touching
+Italy.
+
+You know, madam, that when we was here before, we was in France, and a
+happy woman was I to be there, although so much younger than now I
+couldn't properly enjoy it; but even then France was only part of the
+road to Italy, which, alas, we never got to. Some day, however, I shall
+float in a gondola and walk amid the ruins of ancient Rome, and if Jone
+is too sick of travel to go with me, it may be necessary for Corinne to
+see the world, and I shall take her.
+
+Now I must finish this letter and bid good-by to beautiful Britain,
+which has made us happy and treated us well in spite of some
+comparisons in which we was expected to be on the wrong side, but which
+hurt nobody, and which I don't want even to think of at such a moment
+as this.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-seven_
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+I send you this, madam, to let you know that we arrived here safely
+yesterday afternoon, and that we are going to-day to Jone's mother's
+farm where Corinne is.
+
+I liked sailing from Southampton because when I start to go to a place
+I like to go, and when we went home before and had to begin by going
+all the way up to Liverpool by land, and then coming all the way back
+again by water, and after a couple of days of this to stop at
+Queenstown and begin the real voyage from there, I did not like it,
+although it was a good deal of fun seeing the bumboat women come aboard
+at Queenstown and telescope themselves into each other as they hurried
+up the ladder to get on deck and sell us things.
+
+We had a very good voyage, with about enough rolling to make the dining
+saloon look like some of the churches we've seen abroad on weekdays
+where there was services regular, but mighty small congregations.
+
+When we got in sight of my native shore, England, Scotland, and even
+the longed-for Italy, with her palaces and gondolas, faded from my
+mind, and my every fibre tingled with pride and patriotism. We reached
+our dock about six o'clock in the afternoon, and I could scarcely stand
+still, so anxious was I to get ashore. There was a train at eight which
+reached Rockbridge at half-past nine, and there we could take a
+carriage and drive to the farm in less than an hour, and then Corinne
+would be in my arms, so you may imagine my state of mind--Corinne
+before bedtime! But a cloud blacker than the heaviest fog came down
+upon me, for while we was standing on the deck, expecting every minute
+to land, a man came along and shouted at the top of his voice that no
+baggage could be examined by the custom-house officers after six
+o'clock, and the passengers could take nothing ashore with them but
+their hand-bags, and must come back in the morning and have their
+baggage examined. When I heard this my soul simply boiled within me! I
+looked at Jone, and I could see he was boiling just as bad.
+
+"Jone," said I, "don't say a word to me."
+
+"I am not going to say a word," said he, and he didn't. All our
+belongings was in our trunks. Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had
+only a little one which had in it three newspapers, which we bought
+from the pilot, a tooth-brush, a spool of thread and some needles, and
+a pair of scissors with one point broken off. With these things we had
+to go to a hotel and spend the night, and in the morning we had to go
+back to have our trunks examined, which, as there was nothing in them
+to pay duty on, was waste time for all parties, no matter when it was
+done.
+
+[Illustration: "Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had only a little
+one"]
+
+That night, when I was lying awake thinking about this welcome to our
+native land, I don't say that I hauled down the stars and stripes, but
+I did put them at half mast. When we arrived in England we got ashore
+about twelve o'clock at night, but there was the custom-house officers
+as civil and obliging as any people could be, ready to tend to us and
+pass us on. And when I thought of them, and afterward of the lordly
+hirelings who met us here, I couldn't help feeling what a glorious
+thing it would be to travel if you could get home without coming back.
+
+Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that we ought to be very glad we
+don't like this sort of thing. "In many foreign countries," said he,
+"people are a good deal nagged by their governments and they like it;
+we don't like it, so haul up your flag."
+
+I hauled it up, and it's flying now from the tiptop of my tallest mast.
+In an hour our train starts, and I shall see Corinne before the sun
+goes down.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pomona's Travels, by Frank R. Stockton
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12460 ***
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
+    content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
+<meta content="pg2html (binary v0.16)"
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of
+    Pomona's Travels,
+    by Frank R. Stockton
+</title>
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12460 ***</div>
+
+<div style="height: 8em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h3>
+    <i>POMONA'S TRAVELS</i>
+</h3>
+<h4>
+    <i>A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her former
+    Handmaiden</i>
+</h4>
+<hr />
+<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/img001.jpg" width="643" height="151"
+alt="" />
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h1>
+    POMONA'S TRAVELS
+</h1>
+<a name="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/img001a.jpg" width="250" height="167"
+alt="" />
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h3>
+    BY
+</h3>
+<h2>
+    FRANK R. STOCKTON
+</h2>
+<center>
+    1894
+</center>
+<h4>
+    Illustrated
+</h4>
+<h4>
+    by
+</h4>
+<h3>
+    A.B. Frost
+</h3>
+<a name="image-0003"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/img001b.jpg" width="620" height="129"
+alt="" />
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<hr />
+<center>
+    <i>In Uniform Binding</i><br /><br />
+   <i>RUDDER GRANGE<br />
+    Illustrated by A.B. Frost.</i><br /><br />
+    <i>POMONA'S TRAVELS<br />
+    Illustrated by A.B. Frost.</i><br />
+</center>
+<hr />
+<a name="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/toc1.jpg">
+<img src="images/toc1s.jpg" width="200" height="148"
+alt="Contents" /></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0001">
+POMONA'S TRAVELS
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0002">
+LETTER ONE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Wanted,&mdash;a Vicarage</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0003">
+LETTER TWO.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>On the Four-in-hand</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0004">
+    LETTER THREE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Jone overshadows the Waiter</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0005">
+    LETTER FOUR.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>The Cottage at Chedcombe</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0006">
+LETTER FIVE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Pomona takes a Lodger</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0007">
+    LETTER SIX.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Pomona expounds Americanisms</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0008">
+    LETTER SEVEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>The Hayfield</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0009">
+    LETTER EIGHT.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Jone teaches Young Ladies how to Rake</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0010">
+    LETTER NINE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>A Runaway Tricycle</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0011">
+    LETTER TEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Pomona slides Backward down the Slope of the Centuries</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0012">
+    LETTER ELEVEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>On the Moors</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0013">
+    LETTER TWELVE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Stag-hunting on a Tricycle</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0014">
+    LETTER THIRTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>The Green Placard</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0015">
+    LETTER FOURTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Pomona and her David Llewellyn</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0016">
+    LETTER FIFTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Hogs and the Fine Arts</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0017">
+    LETTER SIXTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>With Dickens in London</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0018">
+    LETTER SEVENTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Buxton and the Bath Chairs</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0019">
+    LETTER EIGHTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Mr. Poplington as Guide</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0020">
+    LETTER NINETEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Angelica and Pomeroy</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0021">
+    LETTER TWENTY.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>The Countess of Mussleby</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0022">
+    LETTER TWENTY-ONE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Edinboro' Town</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0023">
+    LETTER TWENTY-TWO.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Pomona and her Gilly</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0024">
+    LETTER TWENTY-THREE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>They follow the Lady of the Lake</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0025">
+    LETTER TWENTY-FOUR.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Comparisons become Odious to Pomona</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0026">
+    LETTER TWENTY-FIVE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>The Family-Tree-Man</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0027">
+    LETTER TWENTY-SIX.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Searching for Dorkminsters</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0028">
+    LETTER TWENTY-SEVEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Their Country and their Custom House</i></p>
+
+<a name="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/toc2.jpg">
+<img src="images/toc2s.jpg" width="150" height="72"
+alt="" /></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<hr />
+
+<a name="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/loi1.jpg">
+<img src="images/loi1s.jpg" width="200" height="133"
+alt="List of Illustrations" /></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0001"><i>Title Page</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0004"><i>Vignette Heading to Table of Contents</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0005"><i>Tail piece to Table of Contents</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0006"><i>Vignette Heading to List of Illustrations</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0007"><i>Tail-piece to List of Illustrations</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0008"><i>Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0009"><i>"Boy, go order me a four-in-hand"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0010">
+ <i>The Landlady with an "underdone visage"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0011">
+<i>"I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0012">
+    <i>"Down came a shower of rain"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0013">
+<i>"Ask the waiter what the French words mean"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0014">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0015">
+<i>Jone giving an order</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0016">
+<i>The Carver</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0017">
+<i>"You Americans are the speediest people"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0018">
+<i>"That was our house"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0019">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0020">
+<i>"The young lady who keeps the bar"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0021">
+<i>"I see signs of weakening in the social boom"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0022">
+<i>At the Abbey</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0023">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0024">
+<i>"There, with the bar lady and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, was
+    Jone"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0025">
+<i>"At last I did get on my feet"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0026">
+<i>"Rise, Sir Jane Puddle"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0027">
+<i>Vignette Heading and initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0028">
+<i>"In an instant I was free"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0029">
+<i>"If you was a man I'd break your head"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0030">
+<i>"I'm a Home Ruler"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0031">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0032">
+<i>"And with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam engine"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0033">
+<i>"In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0034">
+<i>"Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0035">
+<i>Mr. Poplington looking for luggage</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0036">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0037">
+<i>Pomona encourages Jonas</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0038">
+<i>"Stop, lady, and I'll get out"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0039">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0040">
+<i>"Your brother is over there"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0041">
+<i>To the Cat and Fiddle</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0042">
+<i>"And did you like Chedcombe?"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0043">
+<i>"Jone looked at him and said that was the Highland costume"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0044">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0045">
+<i>"I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
+    wild twirl over my head"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0046">
+<i>Pomona drinking it in</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0047">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0048">
+<i>"A person who was a family-tree-man"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0049">
+<i>"This might be a Dorkminster"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0050">
+<i>Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had only a little one</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<a name="image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/loi2.jpg">
+<img src="images/loi2s.jpg" width="120" height="101"
+alt="" /></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+
+<hr />
+
+<a name="2H_4_0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    POMONA'S TRAVELS
+</h2>
+<p>
+    This series of letters, written by Pomona of "Rudder Grange" to her
+    former mistress, Euphemia, may require a few words of introduction.
+    Those who have not read the adventures and experiences of Pomona in
+    "Rudder Grange" should be told that she first appeared in that story as
+    a very young and illiterate girl, fond of sensational romances, and
+    with some out-of-the-way ideas in regard to domestic economy and the
+    conventions of society. This romantic orphan took service in the
+    "Rudder Grange" family, and as the story progressed she grew up into a
+    very estimable young woman, and finally married Jonas, the son of a
+    well-to-do farmer. Even after she came into possession of a husband and
+    a daughter Pomona did not lose her affection for her former employers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    About a year before the beginning of the travels described in these
+    letters Jonas's father died and left a comfortable little property,
+    which placed Pomona and her husband in independent circumstances. The
+    ideas and ambitions of this eccentric but sensible young woman
+    enlarged with her fortune. As her daughter was now going to school,
+    Pomona was seized with the spirit of emulation, and determined as far
+    as was possible to make the child's education an advantage to herself.
+    Some of the books used by the little girl at school were carefully and
+    earnestly studied by her mother, and as Jonas joined with hearty
+    good-will in the labors and pleasures of this system of domestic study,
+    the family standard of education was considerably raised. In the
+    quick-witted and observant Pomona the improvement showed itself
+    principally in her methods of expression, and although she could not be
+    called at the time of these travels an educated woman, she was by no
+    means an ignorant one.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the daughter was old enough she was allowed to accept an
+    invitation from her grandmother to spend the summer in the country, and
+    Pomona determined that it was the duty of herself and husband to avail
+    themselves of this opportunity for foreign travel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Accordingly, one fine spring morning, Pomona, still a young woman, and
+    Jonas, not many years older, but imbued with a semi-pathetic
+    complaisance beyond his years, embarked for England and Scotland, to
+    which countries it was determined to limit their travels. The letters
+    which follow were written in consequence of the earnest desire of
+    Euphemia to have a full account of the travels and foreign impressions
+    of her former handmaiden. Pruned of dates, addresses, signatures, and
+    of many personal and friendly allusions, these letters are here
+    presented as Pomona wrote them to Euphemia.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number One</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img006.jpg" width="613" height="159"
+alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img006l.jpg" width="155" height="130"
+alt="T" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    LONDON
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    he first thing Jone said to me when I told him I was going to write
+    about what I saw and heard was that I must be careful of two things. In
+    the first place, I must not write a lot of stuff that everybody ought
+    to be expected to know, especially people who have travelled
+    themselves; and in the second place, I must not send you my green
+    opinions, but must wait until they were seasoned, so that I can see
+    what they are good for before I send them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But if I do that," said I, "I will get tired of them long before they
+    are seasoned, and they will be like a bundle of old sticks that I
+    wouldn't offer to anybody." Jone laughed at that, and said I might as
+    well send them along green, for, after all, I wasn't the kind of a
+    person to keep things until they were seasoned, to see if I liked them.
+    "That's true," said I, "there's a great many things, such as husbands
+    and apples, that I like a good deal better fresh than dry. Is that all
+    the advice you've got to give?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For the present," said he; "but I dare say I shall have a good deal
+    more as we go along."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right," said I, "but be careful you don't give me any of it green.
+    Advice is like gooseberries, that's got to be soft and ripe, or else
+    well cooked and sugared, before they're fit to take into anybody's
+    stomach."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone was standing at the window of our sitting-room when I said this,
+    looking out into the street. As soon as we got to London we took
+    lodgings in a little street running out of the Strand, for we both want
+    to be in the middle of things as long as we are in this conglomerate
+    town, as Jone calls it. He says, and I think he is about right, that it
+    is made up of half a dozen large cities, ten or twelve towns, at least
+    fifty villages, more than a hundred little settlements, or hamlets, as
+    they call them here, and about a thousand country houses scattered
+    along around the edges; and over and above all these are the
+    inhabitants of a large province, which, there being no province to put
+    them into, are crammed into all the cracks and crevices so as to fill
+    up the town and pack it solid.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we was in London before, with you and your husband, madam, and we
+    lost my baby in Kensington Gardens, we lived, you know, in a peaceful,
+    quiet street by a square or crescent, where about half the inhabitants
+    were pervaded with the solemnities of the past and the other half bowed
+    down by the dolefulness of the present, and no way of getting anywhere
+    except by descending into a movable tomb, which is what I always think
+    of when we go anywhere in the underground railway. But here we can walk
+    to lots of things we want to see, and if there was nothing else to keep
+    us lively the fear of being run over would do it, you may be sure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But, after all, Jone and me didn't come here to London just to see the
+    town. We have ideas far ahead of that. When we was in London before I
+    saw pretty nearly all the sights, for when I've got work like that to
+    do I don't let the grass grow under my feet, and what we want to do on
+    this trip is to see the country part of England and Scotland. And in
+    order to see English country life just as it is, we both agreed that
+    the best thing to do was to take a little house in the country and live
+    there a while; and I'll say here that this is the only plan of the
+    whole journey that Jone gets real enthusiastic about, for he is a
+    domestic man, as you well know, and if anything swells his veins with
+    fervent rapture it is the idea of living in some one place continuous,
+    even if it is only for a month.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As we wanted a house in the country we came to London to get it, for
+    London is the place to get everything. Our landlady advised us, when we
+    told her what we wanted, to try and get a vicarage in some little
+    village, because, she said, there are always lots of vicars who want to
+    go away for a month in the summer, and they can't do it unless they
+    rent their houses while they are gone. And in fact, some of them, she
+    said, got so little salary for the whole year, and so much rent for
+    their vicarages while they are gone, that they often can't afford to
+    stay in places unless they go away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So we answered some advertisements, and there was no lack of them in
+    the papers, and three agents came to see us, but we did not seem to
+    have any luck. Each of them had a house to let which ought to have
+    suited us, according to their descriptions, and although we found the
+    prices a good deal higher than we expected, Jone said he wasn't going
+    to be stopped by that, because it was only for a little while and for
+    the sake of experience&mdash;and experience, as all the poets, and a good
+    many of the prose writers besides, tell us, is always dear. But after
+    the agents went away, saying they would communicate with us in the
+    morning, we never heard anything more from them, and we had to begin
+    all over again. There was something the matter, Jone and I both agreed
+    on that, but we didn't know what it was. But I waked up in the night
+    and thought about this thing for a whole hour, and in the morning I had
+    an idea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jone," said I, when we was eating breakfast, "it's as plain as A B C
+    that those agents don't want us for tenants, and it isn't because they
+    think we are not to be trusted, for we'd have to pay in advance, and so
+    their money's safe; it is something else, and I think I know what it
+    is. These London men are very sharp, and used to sizing and sorting all
+    kinds of people as if they was potatoes being got ready for market, and
+    they have seen that we are not what they call over here gentlefolks."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No lordly airs, eh?" said Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I don't mean that," I answered him back; "lordly airs don't go
+    into parsonages, and I don't mean either that they see from our looks
+    or manners that you used to drive horses and milk cows and work in the
+    garden, and that I used to cook and scrub and was maid-of-all-work on a
+    canal-boat; but they do see that we are not the kind of people who are
+    in the habit, in this country, at least, of spending their evenings in
+    the best parlors of vicarages."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you suppose," said Jone, "that they think a vicar's kitchen would
+    suit us better?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," said I, "they wouldn't put us in a vicarage at all; there
+    wouldn't be no place there that would not be either too high or too low
+    for us. It's my opinion that what they think we belong in is a lordly
+    house, where you'd shine most as head butler or a steward, while I'd be
+    the housekeeper or a leading lady's maid."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By George!" said Jone, getting up from the table, "if any of those
+    fellows would favor me with an opinion like that I'd break his head."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You'd have a lot of heads to break," said I, "if you went through this
+    country asking for opinions on the subject. It's all very well for us
+    to remember that we've got a house of our own as good as most rectors
+    have over here, and money enough to hire a minor canon, if we needed
+    one in the house; but the people over here don't know that, and it
+    wouldn't make much difference if they did, for it wouldn't matter how
+    nice we lived or what we had so long as they knew we was retired
+    servants."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this Jone just blazed up and rammed his hands into his pockets and
+    spread his feet wide upon the floor. "Pomona," said he, "I don't mind
+    it in you, but if anybody else was to call me a retired servant I'd&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hold up, Jone," said I, "don't waste good, wholesome anger." Now, I
+    tell you, madam, it really did me good to see Jone blaze up and get red
+    in the face, and I am sure that if he'd get his blood boiling oftener
+    it would be a good thing for his dyspeptic tendencies and what little
+    malaria may be left in his system. "It won't do any good to flare up
+    here," I went on to say to him; "fact's fact, and we was servants, and
+    good ones, too, though I say it myself, and the trouble is we haven't
+    got into the way of altogether forgetting it, or, at least, acting as
+    if we had forgotten it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone sat down on a chair. "It might help matters a little," he said,
+    "if I knew what you was driving at."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I mean just this," said I, "as long as we are as anxious not to give
+    trouble, or as careful of people's feelings, as good-mannered to
+    servants, and as polite and good-natured to everybody we have anything
+    to do with, as we both have been since we came here, and as it is our
+    nature to be, I am proud to say, we're bound to be set down, at least
+    by the general run of people over here, as belonging to the pick of the
+    nobility and gentry, or as well-bred servants. It's only those two
+    classes that act as we do, and anybody can see we are not special
+    nobles and gents. Now, if we want to be reckoned anywhere in between
+    these two we've got to change our manners."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Will you kindly mention just how?" said Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said I, "I will. In the first place, we've got to act as if we
+    had always been waited on and had never been satisfied with the way it
+    was done; we've got to let people think that we think we are a good
+    deal better than they are, and what they think about it doesn't make
+    the least difference; and then again we've got to live in better
+    quarters than these, and whatever they may be we must make people
+    think that we don't think they are quite good enough for us. If we do
+    all that, agents may be willing to let us vicarages."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It strikes me," said Jone, "that these quarters are good enough for
+    us. I'm comfortable." And then he went on to say, madam, that when you
+    and your husband was in London you was well satisfied with just such
+    lodgings.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's all very well," I said, "for they never moved in the lower
+    paths of society, and so they didn't have to make any change, but just
+    went along as they had been used to go. But if we want to make people
+    believe we belong to that class I should choose, if I had my pick out
+    of English social varieties, we've got to bounce about as much above it
+    as we were born below it, so that we can strike somewhere near the
+    proper average."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And what variety would you pick out, I'd like to know?" said Jone,
+    just a little red in the face, and looking as if I had told him he
+    didn't know timothy hay from oat straw.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said I, "it is not easy to put it to you exactly, but it's a
+    sort of a cross between a prosperous farmer without children and a poor
+    country gentleman with two sons at college and one in the British army,
+    and no money to pay their debts with."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That last is not to my liking," said Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But the farmer part of the cross would make it all right," I said to
+    him, "and it strikes me that a mixture like that would just suit us
+    while we are staying over here. Now, if you will try to think of
+    yourself as part rich farmer and part poor gentleman, I'll consider
+    myself the wife of the combination, and I am sure we will get along
+    better. We didn't come over here to be looked upon as if we was the
+    bottom of a pie dish and charged as if we was the upper crust. I'm in
+    favor of paying a little more money and getting a lot more
+    respectfulness, and the way to begin is to give up these lodgings and
+    go to a hotel such as the upper middlers stop at. From what I've heard,
+    the Babylon Hotel is the one for us while we are in London. Nobody will
+    suspect that any of the people at that hotel are retired servants."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/img009.jpg">
+<img src="images/img009s.jpg" width="225" height="236"
+alt="'BOY, GO ORDER ME A FOUR-IN-HAND'" />
+<br />'BOY, GO ORDER ME A FOUR-IN-HAND'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    This hit Jone hard, as I knew it would, and he jumped up, made three
+    steps across the room, and rang the bell so that the people across the
+    street must have heard it, and up came the boy in green jacket and
+    buttons, with about every other button missing, and I never knew him to
+    come up so quick before.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Boy," said Jone to him, as if he was hollering to a stubborn ox, "go
+    order me a four-in-hand."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But this letter is so long I must stop for the present.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Two</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    LONDON
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone gave the remarkable order mentioned in my last letter I did
+    not correct him, for I wouldn't do that before servants without giving
+    him a chance to do it himself; but before either of us could say
+    another word the boy was gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mercy on us," I said, "what a stupid blunder! You meant four-wheeler."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/img010.jpg">
+<img src="images/img010s.jpg" width="120" height="200"
+alt="THE LANDLADY WITH AN 'UNDERDONE VISAGE'" />
+<br />THE LANDLADY WITH AN 'UNDERDONE VISAGE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "Of course I did," he said; "I was a little mad and got things mixed,
+    but I expect the fellow understood what I meant."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You ought to have called a hansom any way," I said, "for they are a
+    lot more stylish to go to a hotel in than in a four-wheeler."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If there was six-wheelers I would have ordered one," said he. "I don't
+    want anybody to have more wheels than we have."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this moment the landlady came into the room with a sarcastic glimmer
+    on her underdone visage, and, says she, "I suppose you don't
+    understand about the vehicles we have in London. The four-in-hand is
+    what the quality and coach people use when&mdash;" As I looked at Jone I saw
+    his legs tremble, and I know what that means. If I was a wanderin' dog
+    and saw Jone's legs tremble, the only thoughts that would fill my soul
+    would be such as cluster around "Home, Sweet Home." Jone was too much
+    riled by the woman's manner to be willing to let her think he had made
+    a mistake, and he stopped her short. "Look here," he said to her, "I
+    don't ask you to come here to tell me anything about vehicles. When I
+    order any sort of a trap I want it." When I heard Jone say trap my soul
+    lifted itself and I knew there was hope for us. The stiffness melted
+    right out of the landlady, and she began to look soft and gummy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you want to take a drive in a four-in-hand coach, sir," she said,
+    "there's two or three of them starts every morning from Trafalgar
+    Square, and it's not too late now, sir, if you go over there
+    immediate."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Go?" said Jone, throwing himself into a chair, "I said, order one to
+    come. Where I live that sort of vehicle comes to the door for its
+    passengers."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The woman looked at Jone with a venerative uplifting of her eyebrows.
+    "I can't say, sir, that a coach will come, but I'll send the boy. They
+    go to Dorking, and Seven Oaks, and Virginia Water&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I want to go to Virginia Water," said Jone, as quick as lightning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, then," said I, when the woman had gone, "what are you going to do
+    if the coach comes?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Go to Virginia Water in it," said Jone, "and when we come back we can
+    go to the hotel. I made a mistake, but I've got to stand by it or be
+    called a greenhorn."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was in hopes the four-in-hand wouldn't come, but in less than ten
+    minutes there drove up to our door a four-horse coach which, not having
+    half enough passengers, was glad to come such a little ways to get some
+    more. There was a man in a high hat and red coat, who was blowing a
+    horn as the thing came around the corner, and just as I was looking
+    into the coach and thinking we'd have it all to ourselves, for there
+    was nobody in it, he put a ladder up against the top, and says he,
+    touching his hat, "There's a seat for you, madam, right next the
+    coachman, and one just behind for the gentleman. 'Tain't often that, on
+    a fine morning like this, such seats as them is left vacant on account
+    of a sudden case of croup in a baronet's family."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I looked at the ladder and I looked at that top front seat, and I tell
+    you, madam, I trembled in every pore, but I remembered then that all
+    the respectable seats was on top, and the farther front the nobbier,
+    and as there was a young woman sitting already on the box-seat, I made
+    up my mind that if she could sit there I could, and that I wasn't
+    going to let Jone or anybody else see that I was frightened by style
+    and fashion, though confronted by it so sudden and unexpected. So up
+    that ladder I went quick enough, having had practice in hay-mows, and
+    sat myself down between the young woman and the coachman, and when Jone
+    had tucked himself in behind me the horner blew his horn and away we
+    went.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0011"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/img011.jpg">
+<img src="images/img011s.jpg" width="192" height="200"
+alt="'I LOOKED AT THE LADDER AND AT THE TOP FRONT SEAT'" /><br />
+'I LOOKED AT THE LADDER AND AT THE TOP FRONT SEAT'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I tell you, madam, that box-seat was a queer box for me. I felt as
+    though I was sitting on the eaves of a roof with a herd of horses
+    cavoorting under my feet. I never had a bird's-eye view of horses
+    before. Looking down on their squirming bodies, with the coachman
+    almost standing on his tiptoes driving them, was so different from
+    Jone's buggy and our tall gray horse, which in general we look up to,
+    that for a good while I paid no attention to anything but the danger of
+    falling out on top of them. But having made sure that Jone was holding
+    on to my dress from behind, I began to take an interest in the things
+    around me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Knowing as much as I thought I did about the bigness of London, I found
+    that morning that I never had any idea of what an everlasting town it
+    is. It is like a skein of tangled yarn&mdash;there doesn't seem to be any
+    end to it. Going in this way from Nelson's Monument out into the
+    country, it was amazing to see how long it took to get there. We would
+    go out of the busy streets into a quiet rural neighborhood, or what
+    looked like it, and the next thing we knew we'd be in another whirl of
+    omnibuses and cabs, with people and shops everywhere; and we'd go on
+    and through this and then come to another handsome village with country
+    houses, and the street would end in another busy town; and so on until
+    I began to think there was no real country, at least, in the direction
+    we was going. It is my opinion that if London was put on a pivot and
+    spun round in the State of Texas until it all flew apart, it would
+    spread all over the State and settle up the whole country.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last we did get away from the houses and began to roll along on the
+    best made road I ever saw, with a hedge on each side and the greenest
+    grass in the fields, and the most beautiful trees, with the very trunks
+    covered with green leaves, and with white sheep and handsome cattle and
+    pretty thatched cottages, and everything in perfect order, looking as
+    if it had just been sprinkled and swept. We had seen English country
+    before, but that was from the windows of a train, and it was very
+    different from this sort of thing, where we went meandering along
+    lanes, for that is what the roads look like, being so narrow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just as I was getting my whole soul full of this lovely ruralness, down
+    came a shower of rain without giving the least notice. I gave a jump in
+    my seat as I felt it on me, and began to get ready to get down as soon
+    as the coachman should stop for us all to get inside; but he didn't
+    stop, but just drove along as if the sun was shining and the balmy
+    breezes blowing, and then I looked around and not a soul of the eight
+    people on the top of that coach showed the least sign of expecting to
+    get down and go inside. They all sat there just as if nothing was
+    happening, and not one of them even mentioned the rain. But I noticed
+    that each of them had on a mackintosh or some kind of cape, whereas
+    Jone and I never thought of taking anything in the way of waterproof or
+    umbrellas, as it was perfectly clear when we started.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/img012.jpg">
+<img src="images/img012s.jpg" width="305" height="200"
+alt="'DOWN CAME A SHOWER OF RAIN'" />
+<br />'DOWN CAME A SHOWER OF RAIN'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I looked around at Jone, but he sat there with his face as placid as a
+    piece of cheese, looking as if he had no more knowledge it was raining
+    than the two Englishmen on the seat next him. Seeing he wasn't going to
+    let those men think he minded the rain any more than they did, I
+    determined that I wouldn't let the young woman who was sitting by me
+    have any notion that I minded it, and so I sat still, with as cheerful
+    a look as I could screw up, gazing at the trees with as gladsome a
+    countenance as anybody could have with water trickling down her nose,
+    her cheeks dripping, and dewdrops on her very eyelashes, while the
+    dampness of her back was getting more and more perceptible as each
+    second dragged itself along. Jone turned up the hood of my coat, and so
+    let down into the back of my neck what water had collected in it; but I
+    didn't say anything, but set my teeth hard together and fixed my mind
+    on Columbia, happy land, and determined never to say anything about
+    rain until some English person first mentioned it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But when one of the flowers on my hat leaned over the brim and exuded
+    bloody drops on the front of my coat I began to weaken, and to think
+    that if there was nothing better to do I might get under one of the
+    seats; but just then the rain stopped and the sun shone. It was so
+    sudden that it startled me; but not one of those English people
+    mentioned that the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, and so
+    neither did Jone or I. We was feeling mighty moist and unhappy, but we
+    tried to smile as if we was plants in a greenhouse, accustomed to being
+    watered and feeling all the better for it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I can't write you all about the coach drive, which was very delightful,
+    nor of that beautiful lake they call Virginia Water, and which I know
+    you have a picture of in your house. They tell me it is artificial, but
+    as it was made more than a hundred years ago, it might now be
+    considered natural. We dined at an inn, and when we got back to town,
+    with two more showers on the way, I said to Jone that I thought we'd
+    better go straight to the Babylon Hotel, which we intended to start out
+    for, although it was a long way round to go by Virginia Water, and see
+    about engaging a room; and as Jone agreed I asked the coachman if he
+    would put us down there, knowing that he'd pass near it. He agreed to
+    this, would be an advertisement for his coach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got on the street where the Babylon Hotel was he whipped up his
+    horses so that they went almost on a run, and the horner blew his horn
+    until his eyes seemed bursting, and with a grand sweep and a clank and
+    a jingle we pulled up at the front of the big hotel. Out marched the
+    head porter in a blue uniform, and out ran two under-porters with red
+    coats, and down jumped the horner and put up his ladder, and Jone and I
+    got down, after giving the coachman half-a-crown, and receiving from
+    the passengers a combined gaze of differentialism which had been wholly
+    wanting before. The men in the red coats looked disappointed when they
+    saw we had no baggage, but the great doors was flung open and we went
+    straight up to the clerk's desk.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we was taken to look at rooms I remembered that there was always
+    danger of Jone's tendency to thankful contentment getting the better of
+    him, and I took the matter in hand myself. Two rooms good enough for
+    anybody was shown us, but I was not going to take the first thing that
+    was offered, no matter what it was. We settled the matter by getting a
+    first-class room, with sofas and writing-desks and everything
+    convenient, for only a little more than we was charged for the other
+    rooms, and the next morning we went there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we went back to our lodgings to pack up, and I looked in the glass
+    and saw what a smeary, bedraggled state my hat and head was in, from
+    being rained on, I said to Jone, "I don't see how those people ever
+    let such a person as me have a room at their hotel."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It doesn't surprise me a bit," said Jone; "nobody but a very high and
+    mighty person would have dared to go lording it about that hotel with
+    her hat feathers and flowers all plastered down over her head. Most
+    people can be uppish in good clothes, but to look like a scare-crow and
+    be uppish can't be expected except from the truly lofty."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I hope you are right," I said, and I think he was.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We hadn't been at the Babylon Hotel, where we are now, for more than
+    two days when I said to Jone that this sort of thing wasn't going to
+    do. He looked at me amazed. "What on earth is the matter now?" he said.
+    "Here is a room fit for a royal duke, in a house with marble corridors
+    and palace stairs, and gorgeous smoking-rooms, and a post-office, and a
+    dining-room pretty nigh big enough for a hall of Congress, with waiters
+    enough to make two military companies, and the bills of fare all in
+    French. If there is anything more you want, Pomona&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Stop there" said I; "the last thing you mention is the rub. It's the
+    dining-room; it's in that resplendent hall that we've got to give
+    ourselves a social boom or be content to fold our hands and fade away
+    forever."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Which I don't want to do yet," said Jone, "so speak out your trouble."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img013.jpg">
+<img src="images/img013s.jpg" width="243" height="200"
+alt="'ASK THE WAITER WHAT THE FRENCH WORDS MEAN'" />
+<br />'ASK THE WAITER WHAT THE FRENCH WORDS MEAN'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "The trouble this time is you," said I, "and your awful meekness. I
+    never did see anybody anywhere as meek as you are in that dining-room.
+    A half-drowned fly put into the sun to dry would be overbearing and
+    supercilious compared to you. When you sit down at one of those tables
+    you look as if you was afraid of hurting the chair, and when the waiter
+    gives you the bill of fare you ask him what the French words mean, and
+    then he looks down on you as if he was a superior Jove contemplating a
+    hop-toad, and he tells you that this one means beef and the other
+    means potatoes, and brings you the things that are easiest to get. And
+    you look as if you was thankful from the bottom of your heart that he
+    is good enough to give you anything at all. All the airs I put on are
+    no good while you are so extra humble. I tell him I don't want this
+    French thing&mdash;when I don't know what it is&mdash;and he must bring me some
+    of the other&mdash;which I never heard of&mdash;and when it comes I eat it, no
+    matter what it turns out to be, and try to look as if I was used to it,
+    but generally had it better cooked. But, as I said before, it is of no
+    use&mdash;your humbleness is too much for me. In a few days they will be
+    bringing us cold victuals, and recommending that we go outside
+    somewhere and eat them, as all the seats in the dining-room are wanted
+    for other people."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Jone, "I must say I do feel a little overshadowed when I
+    go into that dining-room and see those proud and haughty waiters, some
+    of them with silver chains and keys around their necks, showing that
+    they are lords of the wine-cellar, and all of them with an air of lofty
+    scorn for the poor beings who have to sit still and be waited on; but
+    I'll try what I can do. As far as I am able, I'll hold up my end of the
+    social boom."
+</p>
+<p>
+    You may think I break off my letters sudden, madam, like the
+    instalments in a sensation weekly, which stops short in the most
+    harrowing parts, so as to make certain the reader will buy the next
+    number; but when I've written as much as I think two foreign stamps
+    will carry&mdash;for more than fivepence seems extravagant for a letter&mdash;I
+    generally stop.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Three</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0014"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img014.jpg" width="620" height="237"
+alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img014l.jpg"width="159" height="147"
+alt="A" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    LONDON
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    t dinner-time the day when I had the conversation with Jone mentioned
+    in my last letter, we was sitting in the dining-room at a little table
+    in a far corner, where we'd never been before. Not being considered of
+    any importance they put us sometimes in one place and sometimes in
+    another, instead of giving us regular seats, as I noticed most of the
+    other people had, and I was looking around to see if anybody was ever
+    coming to wait on us, when suddenly I heard an awful noise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have read about the rumblings of earthquakes, and although I never
+    heard any of them, I have felt a shock, and I can imagine the awfulness
+    of the rumbling, and I had a feeling as if the building was about to
+    sway and swing as they do in earthquakes. It wasn't all my imagining,
+    for I saw the people at the other tables near us jump, and two waiters
+    who was hurrying past stopped short as if they had been jerked up by a
+    curb bit. I turned to look at Jone, but he was sitting up straight in
+    his chair, as solemn and as steadfast as a gate-post, and I thought to
+    myself that if he hadn't heard anything he must have been struck deaf,
+    and I was just on the point of jumping up and shouting to him, "Fly,
+    before the walls and roof come down upon us!" when that awful noise
+    occurred again. My blood stood frigid in my veins, and as I started
+    back I saw before me a waiter, his face ashy pale, and his knees
+    bending beneath him. Some people near us were half getting up from
+    their chairs, and I pushed back and looked at Jone again, who had not
+    moved except that his mouth was open. Then I knew what it was that I
+    thought was an earthquake&mdash;it was Jone giving an order to the waiter.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img015.jpg">
+<img src="images/img015s.jpg" width="213" height="200"
+alt="JONE GIVING AN ORDER" />
+<br />JONE GIVING AN ORDER</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I bit my lips and sat silent; the people around kept on looking at us,
+    and the poor man who was receiving the shock stood trembling like a
+    leaf. When the volcanic disturbance, so to speak, was over, the waiter
+    bowed himself, as if he had been a heathen in a temple, and gasping,
+    "Yes, sir, immediate," glided unevenly away. He hadn't waited on us
+    before, and little thought, when he was going to stride proudly pass
+    our table, what a double-loaded Vesuvius was sitting in Jone's chair. I
+    leaned over the table and said to Jone that if he would stick to that
+    we could rent a bishopric if we wanted to, and I was so proud I could
+    have patted him on the back. Well, after that we had no more trouble
+    about being waited on, for that waiter of ours went about as if he had
+    his neck bared for the fatal stroke and Jone was holding the cimeter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The head waiter came to us before we was done dinner and asked if we
+    had everything we wanted and if that table suited us, because if it did
+    we could always have it. To which Jone distantly thundered that if he
+    would see that it always had a clean tablecloth it would do well
+    enough.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img016.jpg">
+<img src="images/img016.jpg" width="185" height="200"
+alt="THE CARVER" />
+<br />THE CARVER</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    Even the man who stood at the big table in the middle of the room and
+    carved the cold meats, with his hair parted in the middle, and who
+    looked as if he were saying to himself, as with a bland dexterity and
+    tastefulness he laid each slice upon its plate, "Now, then, the
+    socialistic movement in Paris is arrested for the time being, and here
+    again I put an end to the hopes of Russia getting to the sea through
+    Afghanistan, and now I carefully spread contentment over the minds of
+    all them riotous Welsh miners," even he turned around and bowed to us
+    as we passed him, and once sent a waiter to ask if we'd like a little
+    bit of potted beef, which was particularly good that day.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone kept up his rumblings, though they sounded more distant and more
+    deep under ground, and one day at luncheon an elderly woman, who was
+    sitting alone at a table near us, turned to me and spoke. She was a
+    very plain person, with her face all seamed and rough with exposure to
+    the weather, like as if she had been captain to a pilot boat, and with
+    a general appearance of being a cook with good recommendations, but at
+    present out of a place. I might have wondered at such a person being at
+    such a hotel, but remembering what I had been myself I couldn't say
+    what mightn't happen to other people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm glad to see," said she, "that you sent away that mutton, for if
+    more persons would object to things that are not properly cooked we'd
+    all be better served. I suppose that in your country most people are so
+    rich that they can afford to have the best of everything and have it
+    always. I fancy the great wealth of American citizens must make their
+    housekeeping very different from ours."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I must say I began to bristle at being spoken to like that. I'm as
+    proud of being an American as anybody can be, but I don't like the home
+    of the free thrown into my teeth every time I open my mouth. There's no
+    knowing what money Jone and I have lost through giving orders to London
+    cabmen in what is called our American accent. The minute we tell the
+    driver of a hansom where we want to go, that place doubles its distance
+    from the spot we start from. Now I think the great reason Jone's
+    rumbling worked so well was that it had in it a sort of Great British
+    chest-sound, as if his lungs was rusty. The waiter had heard that
+    before and knew what it meant. If he had spoken out in the clear
+    American fashion I expect his voice would have gone clear through the
+    waiter without his knowing it, like the person in the story, whose neck
+    was sliced through and who didn't know it until he sneezed and his head
+    fell off.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, ma'am," said I, answering her with as much of a wearied feeling
+    as I could put on, "our wealth is all very well in some ways, but it is
+    dreadful wearing on us. However, we try to bear up under it and be
+    content."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said she, "contentment is a great blessing in every station,
+    though I have never tried it in yours. Do you expect to make a long
+    stay in London?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    As she seemed like a civil and well-meaning woman, and was the first
+    person who had spoken to us in a social way, I didn't mind talking to
+    her, and I told her we was only stopping in London until we could find
+    the kind of country house we wanted, and when she asked what kind that
+    was, I described what we wanted and how we was still answering
+    advertisements and going to see agents, who was always recommending
+    exactly the kind of house we did not care for.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Vicarages are all very well," said she, "but it sometimes happens, and
+    has happened to friends of mine, that when a vicar has let his house he
+    makes up his mind not to waste his money in travelling, and he takes
+    lodgings near by and keeps an eternal eye upon his tenants. I don't
+    believe any independent American would fancy that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, indeed," said I; and then she went on to say that if we wanted a
+    small country house for a month or two she knew of one which she
+    believed would suit us, and it wasn't a vicarage either. When I asked
+    her to tell me about it she brought her chair up to our table, together
+    with her mug of beer, her bread and cheese, and she went into
+    particulars about the house she knew of.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is situated," said she, "in the west of England, in the most
+    beautiful part of our country. It is near one of the quaintest little
+    villages that the past ages have left us, and not far away are the
+    beautiful waters of the Bristol Channel, with the mountains of Wales
+    rising against the sky on the horizon, and all about are hills and
+    valleys, and woods and beautiful moors and babbling streams, with all
+    the loveliness of cultivated rurality merging into the wild beauties of
+    unadorned nature." If these was not exactly her words, they express the
+    ideas she roused in my mind. She said the place was far enough away
+    from railways and the stream of travel, and among the simple peasantry,
+    and that in the society of the resident gentry we would see English
+    country life as it is, uncontaminated by the tourist or the commercial
+    traveller.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I can't remember all the things she said about this charming cottage in
+    this most supremely beautiful spot, but I sat and listened, and the
+    description held me spell-bound, as a snake fascinates a frog; with
+    this difference, instead of being swallowed by the description, I
+    swallowed it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the old woman had given us the address of the person who had the
+    letting of the cottage, and Jone and me had gone to our room, I said to
+    him, before we had time to sit down:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you think?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think," said he, "that we ought to follow that old woman's advice
+    and go and look at this house."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Go and look at it?" I exclaimed. "Not a bit of it. If we do that, we
+    are bound to see something or hear something that will make us hesitate
+    and consider, and if we do that, away goes our enthusiasm and our
+    rapture. I say, telegraph this minute and say we'll take the house, and
+    send a letter by the next mail with a postal order in it, to secure the
+    place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone looked at me hard, and said he'd feel easier in his mind if he
+    understood what I was talking about.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind understanding," I said. "Go down and telegraph we'll take
+    the house. There isn't a minute to lose!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But," said Jone, "if we find out when we get there&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind that," said I. "If we find out when we get there it isn't
+    all we thought it was, and we're bound to do that, we'll make the best
+    of what doesn't suit us because it can't be helped; but if we go and
+    look at it it's ten to one we won't take it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How long are we to take it for?" said Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A month anyway, and perhaps longer," I told him, giving him a push
+    toward the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right," said he, and he went and telegraphed. I believe if Jone
+    was told he could go anywhere and stay for a month he'd choose that
+    place from among all the most enchanting spots on the earth where he
+    couldn't stay so long. As for me, the one thing that held me was the
+    romanticness of the place. From what the old woman said I knew there
+    couldn't be any mistake about that, and if I could find myself the
+    mistress of a romantic cottage near an ancient village of the olden
+    time I would put up with most everything except dirt, and as dirt and
+    me seldom keeps company very long, even that can't frighten me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I saw the old woman at luncheon the next day and told her what we
+    had done she was fairly dumfounded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really! really!" she said, "you Americans are the speediest people I
+    ever did see. Why, an English person would have taken a week to
+    consider that place before taking it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And lost it, ten to one," said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She shook her head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said she, "I suppose it's on account of your habits, and you
+    can't help it, but it's a poor way of doing business."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0017"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img017.jpg">
+<img src="images/img017s.jpg" width="300" height="165"
+alt="'YOU AMERICANS ARE THE SPEEDIEST PEOPLE'" />
+<br />'YOU AMERICANS ARE THE SPEEDIEST PEOPLE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    Now I began to think from this that her conscience was beginning to
+    trouble her for having given so fairy-like a picture of the house, and
+    as I was afraid that she might think it her duty to bring up some
+    disadvantages, I changed the conversation and got away as soon as I
+    could. When we once get seated at our humble board in our rural cot I
+    won't be afraid of any bugaboos, but I didn't want them brought up
+    then. I can generally depend upon Jone, but sometimes he gets a little
+    stubborn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We didn't see this old person any more, and when I asked the waiter
+    about her the next day he said he was sure she had left the hotel, by
+    which I suppose he must have meant he'd got his half-crown. Her fading
+    away in this fashion made it all seem like a myth or a phantasm, but
+    when, the next morning, we got a receipt for the money Jone sent, and a
+    note saying the house was ready for our reception, I felt myself on
+    solid ground again, and to-morrow we start, bag and baggage, for
+    Chedcombe, which is the name of the village where the house is that we
+    have taken. I'll write to you, madam, as soon as we get there, and I
+    hope with all my heart and soul that when we see what's wrong with
+    it&mdash;and there's bound to be something&mdash;that it may not be anything bad
+    enough to make us give it up and go floating off in voidness, like a
+    spider-web blown before a summer breeze, without knowing what it's
+    going to run against and stick to, and, what is more, probably lose the
+    money we paid in advance.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Four</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p>
+    Last winter Jone and I read all the books we could get about the rural
+    parts of England, and we knew that the country must be very beautiful,
+    but we had no proper idea of it until we came to Chedcombe. I am not
+    going to write much about the scenery in this part of the country,
+    because, perhaps, you have been here and seen it, and anyway my writing
+    would not be half so good as what you could read in books, which don't
+    amount to anything.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All I'll say is that if you was to go over the whole of England, and
+    collect a lot of smooth green hills, with sheep and deer wandering
+    about on them; brooks, with great trees hanging over them, and vines
+    and flowers fairly crowding themselves into the water; lanes and roads
+    hedged in with hawthorn, wild roses, and tall purple foxgloves; little
+    woods and copses; hills covered with heather; thatched cottages like
+    the pictures in drawing-books, with roses against their walls, and thin
+    blue smoke curling up from the chimneys; distant views of the sparkling
+    sea; villages which are nearly covered up by greenness, except their
+    steeples; rocky cliffs all green with vines, and flowers spreading and
+    thriving with the fervor and earnestness you might expect to find in
+    the tropics, but not here&mdash;and then, if you was to put all these points
+    of scenery into one place not too big for your eye to sweep over and
+    take it all in, you would have a country like that around Chedcombe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am sure the old lady was right when she said it was the most
+    beautiful part of England. The first day we was here we carried an
+    umbrella as we walked through all this verdant loveliness, but
+    yesterday morning we went to the village and bought a couple of thin
+    mackintoshes, which will save us a lot of trouble opening and shutting
+    umbrellas.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got out at the Chedcombe station we found a man there with a
+    little carriage he called a fly, who said he had been sent to take us
+    to our house. There was also a van to carry our baggage. We drove
+    entirely through the village, which looked to me as if a bit of the
+    Middle Ages had been turned up by the plough, and on the other edge of
+    it there was our house, and on the doorstep stood a lady, with a
+    smiling eye and an umbrella, and who turned out to be our landlady.
+    Back of her was two other females, one of them looking like a
+    minister's wife, while the other one I knew to be a servant-maid, by
+    her cap.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img018.jpg">
+<img src="images/img018s.jpg" width="124" height="200"
+alt="'THAT WAS OUR HOUSE'" /><br />'THAT WAS OUR HOUSE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    The lady, whose name was Mrs. Shutterfield, shook hands with us and
+    seemed very glad to see us, and the minister's wife took our hand
+    bags from us and told the men where to carry our trunks. Mrs.
+    Shutterfield took us into a little parlor on one side of the hall, and
+    then we three sat down, and I must say I was so busy looking at the
+    queer, delightful room, with everything in it&mdash;chairs, tables, carpets,
+    walls, pictures, and flower-vases&mdash;all belonging to a bygone epoch,
+    though perfectly fresh, as if just made, that I could scarcely pay
+    attention to what the lady said. But I listened enough to know that
+    Mrs. Shutterfield told us that she had taken the liberty of engaging
+    for us two most excellent servants, who had lived in the house before
+    it had been let to lodgers, and who, she was quite sure, would suit us
+    very well, though, of course, we were at liberty to do what we pleased
+    about engaging them. The one that I took for the minister's wife was a
+    combination of cook and housekeeper, by the name of Miss Pondar, and
+    the other was a maid in general, named Hannah. When the lady mentioned
+    two servants it took me a little aback, for we had not expected to have
+    more than one, but when she mentioned the wages, and I found that both
+    put together did not cost as much as a very poor cook would expect in
+    America, and when I remembered we as now at work socially booming
+    ourselves, and that it wouldn't do to let this lady think that we had
+    not been accustomed to varieties of servants, I spoke up and said we
+    would engage the two estimable women she recommended, and was much
+    obliged to her for getting them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then we went over that house, down stairs and up, and of all the
+    lavender-smelling old-fashionedness anybody ever dreamed of, this
+    little house has as much as it can hold. It is fitted up all through
+    like one of your mother's bonnets, which she bought before she was
+    married and never wore on account of a funeral in the family, but kept
+    shut up in a box, which she only opens now and then to show to her
+    descendants. In every room and on the stairs there was a general air of
+    antiquated freshness, mingled with the odors of English breakfast tea
+    and recollections of the story of Cranford, which, if Jone and me had
+    been alone, would have made me dance from the garret of that house to
+    the cellar. Every sentiment of romance that I had in my soul bubbled to
+    the surface, and I felt as if I was one of my ancestors before she
+    emigrated to the colonies. I could not say what I thought, but I
+    pinched Jone's arm whenever I could get a chance, which relieved me a
+    little; and when Miss Pondar had come to me with a little courtesy, and
+    asked me what time I would like to have dinner, and told me what she
+    had taken the liberty of ordering, so as to have everything ready by
+    the time I came, and Mrs. Shutterfield had gone, after begging to know
+    what more she could do for us, and we had gone to our own room, I let
+    out my feelings in one wild scream of delirious gladness that would
+    have been heard all the way to the railroad station if I had not
+    covered my head with two pillows and the corner of a blanket.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After we had dinner, which was as English as the British lion, and much
+    more to our taste than anything we had had in London, Jone went out to
+    smoke a pipe, and I had a talk with Miss Pondar about fish, meat, and
+    groceries, and about housekeeping matters in general. Miss Pondar,
+    whose general aspect of minister's wife began to wear off when I talked
+    to her, mingles respectfulness and respectability in a manner I haven't
+    been in the habit of seeing. Generally those two things run against
+    each other, but they don't in her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When she asked what kind of wine we preferred I must say I was struck
+    all in a heap, for wines to Jone and me is like a trackless wilderness
+    without compass or binnacle light, and we seldom drink them except made
+    hot, with nutmeg grated in, for colic; but as I wanted her to
+    understand that if there was any luxuries we didn't order it was
+    because we didn't approve of them, I told her that we was total
+    abstainers, and at that she smiled very pleasant and said that was her
+    persuasion also, and that she was glad not to be obliged to handle
+    intoxicating drinks, though, of course, she always did it without
+    objection when the family used them. When I told Jone this he looked a
+    little blank, for foreign water generally doesn't agree with him. I
+    mentioned this afterwards to Miss Pondar, and she said it was very
+    common in total abstaining families, when water didn't agree with any
+    one of them, especially if it happened to be the gentleman, to take a
+    little good Scotch whiskey with it; but when I told this to Jone he
+    said he would try to bear up under the shackles of abstinence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This morning, when I was talking with Miss Pondar about fish, and
+    trying to show her that I knew something about the names of English
+    fishes, I said that we was very fond of whitebait. At this she looked
+    astonished for the first time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whitebait?" said she. "We always looked upon that as belonging
+    entirely to the nobility and gentry." At this my back began to bristle,
+    but I didn't let her know it, and I said, in a tone of emphatic
+    mildness, that we would have whitebait twice a week, on Tuesday and
+    Friday. At this Miss Pondar gave a little courtesy and thanked me very
+    much, and said she would attend to it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone and me came back after taking a long walk that morning I saw
+    a pair of Church of England prayer-books, looking as if they had just
+    been neatly dusted, lying on the parlor table, where they hadn't been
+    before, for I had carefully looked over every book. I think that when
+    it was borne in upon Miss Pondar's soul that we was accustomed to
+    having whitebait as a regular thing she made up her mind we was all
+    right, and that nothing but the Established Church would do for us.
+    Before, she might have thought we was Wesleyans.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Our maid Hannah is very nice to look at, and does her work as well as
+    anybody could do it, and, like most other English servants, she's in a
+    state of never-ending thankfulness, but as I can never understand a
+    word she says except "Thank you very much," I asked Jone if he didn't
+    think it would be a good thing for me to try to teach her a little
+    English.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now then," said he, "that's the opening of a big subject. Wait until I
+    fill my pipe and we'll discourse upon it." It was just after luncheon,
+    and we was sitting in the summer-house at the end of the garden,
+    looking out over the roses and pinks and all sorts of old-timey flowers
+    growing as thick as clover heads, with an air as if it wasn't the least
+    trouble in the world to them to flourish and blossom. Beyond the
+    flowers was a little brook with the ducks swimming in it, and beyond
+    that was a field, and on the other side of that field was a park
+    belonging to the lord of the manor, and scattered about the side of a
+    green hill in the park was a herd of his lordship's deer. Most of them
+    was so light-colored that I fancied I could almost see through them, as
+    if they was the little transparent bugs that crawl about on leaves.
+    That isn't a romantic idea to have about deers, but I can't get rid of
+    the notion whenever I see those little creatures walking about on the
+    hills.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that time it was hardly raining at all, just a little mist, with the
+    sun coming into the summer-house every now and then, making us feel
+    very comfortable and contented.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," said Jone, when he had got his pipe well started, "what I want
+    to talk about is the amount of reformation we expect to do while we're
+    sojourning in the kingdom of Great Britain."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Reformation!" said I; "we didn't come here to reform anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Jone, "if we're going to busy our minds with these
+    people's shortcomings and long-goings, and don't try to reform them,
+    we're just worrying ourselves and doing them no good, and I don't think
+    it will pay. Now, for instance, there's that rosy-cheeked Hannah. She's
+    satisfied with her way of speaking English, and Miss Pondar understands
+    it and is satisfied with it, and all the people around here are
+    satisfied with it. As for us, we know, when she comes and stands in the
+    doorway and dimples up her cheeks, and then makes those sounds that are
+    more like drops of molasses falling on a gong than anything else I know
+    of, we know that she is telling us in her own way that the next meal,
+    whatever it is, is ready, and we go to it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said I, "and as I do most of my talking with Miss Pondar, and as
+    we shall be here for such a short time anyway, it may be as well&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What I say about Hannah," said Jone, interrupting me as soon as I
+    began to speak about a short stay, "I have to say about everything else
+    in England that doesn't suit us. As long as Hannah doesn't try to make
+    us speak in her fashion I say let her alone. Of course, we shall find a
+    lot of things over here that we shall not approve of&mdash;we knew that
+    before we came&mdash;and when we find we can't stand their ways and manners
+    any longer we can pack up and go home, but so far as I'm concerned I'm
+    getting along very comfortable so far."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, so am I," I said to him, "and as to interfering with other
+    people's fashions, I don't want to do it. If I was to meet the most
+    paganish of heathens entering his temple with suitable humbleness I
+    wouldn't hurt his feelings on the subject of his religion, unless I was
+    a missionary and went about it systematic; but if that heathen turned
+    on me and jeered at me for attending our church at home, and told me I
+    ought to go down on my marrow-bones before his brazen idols, I'd whang
+    him over the head with a frying-pan or anything else that came handy.
+    That's the sort of thing I can't stand. As long as the people here
+    don't snort and sniff at my ways I won't snort and sniff at theirs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Jone, "that is a good rule, but I don't know that it's
+    going to work altogether. You see, there are a good many people in this
+    country and only two of us, and it will be a lot harder for them to
+    keep from sniffing and snorting than for us to do it. So it's my
+    opinion that if we expect to get along in a good-humored and friendly
+    way, which is the only decent way of living, we've got to hold up our
+    end of the business a little higher than we expect other people to hold
+    up theirs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I couldn't agree altogether with Jone about our trying to do better
+    than other people, but I said that as the British had been kind enough
+    to make their country free to us, we wouldn't look a gift horse in the
+    mouth unless it kicked. To which Jone said I sometimes got my figures
+    of speech hind part foremost, but he knew what I meant.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We've lived in our cottage two weeks, and every morning when I get up
+    and open our windows, which has little panes set in strips of lead, and
+    hinges on one side so that it works like a door, and look out over the
+    brook and the meadows and the thatched roofs, and see the peasant men
+    with their short jackets and woollen caps, and the lower part of their
+    trousers tied round with twine, if they don't happen to have leather
+    leggings, trudging to their work, my soul is filled with welling
+    emotions as I think that if Queen Elizabeth ever travelled along this
+    way she must have seen these great old trees and, perhaps, some of
+    these very houses; and as to the people, they must have been pretty
+    much the same, though differing a little in clothes, I dare say; but,
+    judging from Hannah, perhaps not very much in the kind of English they
+    spoke.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I declare that when Jone and me walk about through the village, and
+    over the fields, for there is a right of way&mdash;meaning a little
+    path&mdash;through most all of them, and when we go into the old church,
+    with its yew-trees, and its gravestones, and its marble effigies of two
+    of the old manor lords, both stretched flat on their backs, as large as
+    life, the gentleman with the end of his nose knocked off and with his
+    feet crossed to show he was a crusader, and the lady with her hands
+    clasped in front of her, as if she expected the generations who came to
+    gaze on her tomb to guess what she had inside of them, I feel like a
+    character in a novel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have kept a great many of my joyful sentiments to myself, because
+    Jone is too well contented as it is, and there is a great deal yet to
+    be seen in England. Sometimes we hire a dogcart and a black horse named
+    Punch, from the inn in the village, and we take long drives over roads
+    that are almost as smooth as bowling alleys. The country is very hilly,
+    and every time we get to the top of a hill we can see, spread about us
+    for miles and miles, the beautiful hills and vales, and lordly
+    residences and cottages, and steeple tops, looking as though they had
+    been stuck down here and there, to show where villages had been
+    planted.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Five</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img019.jpg" width="618" height="249"alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img019l.jpg" width="150" height="135" alt="T" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    his morning, when Jone was out taking a walk and I was talking to Miss
+    Pondar, and getting her to teach me how to make Devonshire clotted
+    cream, which we have for every meal, putting it on everything it will
+    go on, into everything it will go into, and eating it by itself when
+    there is nothing it will go on or into; and trying to find out why it
+    is that whitings are always brought on the table with their tails stuck
+    through their throats, as if they had committed suicide by cutting
+    their jugular veins in this fashion, I saw, coming along the road to
+    our cottage, a pretty little dogcart with two ladies in it. The horse
+    they drove was a pony, and the prettiest creature I ever saw, being
+    formed like a full-sized horse, only very small, and with as much fire
+    and spirit and gracefulness as could be got into an animal sixteen
+    hands high. I heard afterward that he came from Exmoor, which is about
+    twelve miles from here, and produces ponies and deers of similar size
+    and swiftness. They stopped at the door, and one of them got out and
+    came in. Miss Pondar told me she wished to see me, and that she was
+    Mrs. Locky, of the "Bordley Arms" in the village.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The innkeeper's wife?" said I; to which Miss Pondar said it was, and I
+    went into the parlor. Mrs. Locky was a handsome-looking lady, and
+    wearing as stylish clothes as if she was a duchess, and extremely
+    polite and respectful.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She said she would have asked Mrs. Shutterfield to come with her and
+    introduce her, but that lady was away from home, and so she had come by
+    herself to ask me a very great favor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I begged her to sit down and name it she went on to say there had
+    come that morning to the inn a very large party in a coach-and-four,
+    that was making a trip through the country, and as they didn't travel
+    on Sunday they wanted to stay at the "Bordley Arms" until Monday
+    morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," said she, "that puts me to a dreadful lot of trouble, because I
+    haven't room to accommodate them all, and even if I could get rooms for
+    them somewhere else they don't want to be separated. But there is one
+    of the best rooms at the inn which is occupied by an elderly gentleman,
+    and if I could get that room I could put two double beds in it and so
+    accommodate the whole party. Now, knowing that you had a pleasant
+    chamber here that you don't use, I thought I would make bold to come
+    and ask you if you would lodge Mr. Poplington until Monday?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What sort of a person is this Mr. Poplington, and is he willing to
+    come here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I haven't asked him yet," said she, "but he is so extremely
+    good-natured that I know he will be glad to come here. He has often
+    asked me who lived in this extremely picturesque cottage."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You must have an answer now?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes," said she, "for if you cannot do me this favor I must go
+    somewhere else, and where to go I don't know."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I had begun to think that the one thing we wanted in this little
+    home of ours was company, and that it was a great pity to have that
+    nice bedroom on the second floor entirely wasted, with nobody ever in
+    it. So, as far as I was concerned, I would be very glad to have some
+    pleasant person in the house, at least for a day or two, and I didn't
+    believe Jone would object. At any rate it would put a stop, at least
+    for a little while, to his eternally saying how Corinne, our daughter,
+    would enjoy that room, and how nice it would be if we was to take this
+    house for the rest of the season and send for her. Now, Corinne's as
+    happy as she can be at her grand-mother's farm, and her school will
+    begin before we're ready to come home, and, what is more, we didn't
+    come here to spend all our time in one place.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img020.jpg">
+<img src="images/img020s.jpg" width="162" height="200"
+alt="'THE YOUNG LADY WHO KEEPS THE BAR'" /><br />
+'THE YOUNG LADY WHO KEEPS THE BAR'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    While I was thinking of these things I was looking out of the window at
+    the lady in the dogcart who was holding the reins. She was as pretty as
+    a picture, and wore a great straw hat with lovely flowers in it. As I
+    had to give an answer without waiting for Jone to come home, and I
+    didn't expect him until luncheon time, I concluded to be neighborly,
+    and said we would take the gentleman to oblige her. Even if the
+    arrangement didn't suit him or us, it wouldn't matter much for that
+    little time. At which Mrs. Locky was very grateful indeed, and said she
+    would have Mr. Poplington's luggage sent around that afternoon, and
+    that he would come later.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As she got up to go I said to her, "Is that young lady out there one of
+    the party who came with the coach and four?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no," said Mrs. Locky, "she lives with me. She is the young lady
+    who keeps the bar."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I expect I opened my mouth and eyes pretty wide, for I was never so
+    astonished. A young lady like that keeping the bar! But I didn't want
+    Mrs. Locky to know how much I was surprised, and so I said nothing
+    about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When they had gone and I had stood looking after them for about a
+    minute, I remembered I hadn't asked whether Mr. Poplington would want
+    to take his meals here, or whether he would go to the inn for them. To
+    be sure, she only asked me to lodge him, but as the inn is more than
+    half a mile from here, he may want to be boarded. But this will have to
+    be found out when he comes, and when Jone comes home it will have to be
+    found out what he thinks about my taking a lodger while he's out taking
+    a walk.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Six</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone came home and I told him a gentleman was coming to live with
+    us, he thought at first I was joking; and when he found out that I
+    meant what I said he looked very blue, and stood with his hands in his
+    pockets and his eyes on the ground, considering.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's not going to take his meals here, is he?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't think he expects that," I said, "for Mrs. Locky only spoke of
+    lodging."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, well," said Jone, looking as if his clouds was clearing off a
+    little, "I don't suppose it will matter to us if that room is occupied
+    over Sunday, but I think the next time I go out for a stroll I'll take
+    you with me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't go out that afternoon, and sat on pins and needles until
+    half-past five o'clock. Jone wanted me to walk with him, but I wouldn't
+    do it, because I didn't want our lodger to come here and be received by
+    Miss Pondar. At half-past five there came a cart with the gentleman's
+    luggage, as they call it here, and I was glad Jone wasn't at home.
+    There was an enormous leather portmanteau which looked as if it had
+    been dragged by a boy too short to lift it from the ground, half over
+    the world; a hat-box, also of leather, but not so draggy looking; a
+    bundle of canes and umbrellas, a leather dressing-case, and a flat,
+    round bathing-tub. I had the things taken up to the room as quickly as
+    I could, for if Jone had seen them he'd think the gentleman was going
+    to bring his family with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was nine o'clock and still broad daylight when Mr. Poplington
+    himself came, carrying a fishing-rod put up in parts in a canvas bag, a
+    fish-basket, and a small valise. He wore leather leggings and was about
+    sixty years old, but a wonderful good walker. I thought, when I saw him
+    coming, that he had no rheumatism whatever, but I found out afterward
+    that he had a little in one of his arms. He had white hair and white
+    side-whiskers and a fine red face, which made me think of a strawberry
+    partly covered with Devonshire clotted cream. Jone and I was sitting in
+    the summer-house, he smoking his pipe, and we both went to meet the
+    gentleman. He had a bluff way of speaking, and said he was much obliged
+    to us for taking him in; and after saying that it was a warm evening, a
+    thing which I hadn't noticed, he asked to be shown to his room. I sent
+    Hannah with him, and then Jone and I went back to the summer-house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't know exactly why, but I wasn't in as good spirits as I had
+    been, and when Jone spoke he didn't make me feel any better.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0021"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img021.jpg">
+<img src="images/img021s.jpg" width="180" height="200"
+alt="'I SEE SIGNS OF WEAKENING IN THE SOCIAL BOOM'" /><br />
+'I SEE SIGNS OF WEAKENING IN THE SOCIAL BOOM'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "It seems to me," said he, "that I see signs of weakening in the social
+    boom. That man considers us exactly as we considered our lodging-house
+    keeper in London. Now, it doesn't strike me that that sample person you
+    was talking about, who is a cross between a rich farmer and a poor
+    gentleman, would go into the lodging-house business." I couldn't help
+    agreeing with Jone, and I didn't like it a bit. The gentleman hadn't
+    said anything or done anything that was out of the way, but there was a
+    benignant loftiness about him which grated on the inmost fibres of my
+    soul.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll tell you what we'll do," said I, turning sharp on Jone, "we won't
+    charge him a cent. That'll take him down, and show him what we are.
+    We'll give him the room as a favor to Mrs. Locky, considering her in
+    the light of a neighbor and one who sent us a cucumber."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right," said Jone, "I like that way of arranging the business. Up
+    goes the social boom again!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just as we was going up to bed Miss Pondar came to me and said that the
+    gentleman had called down to her and asked if he could have a new-laid
+    egg for his breakfast, and she asked if she should send Hannah early in
+    the morning to see if she could get a perfectly fresh egg from one of
+    the cottages. "I thought, ma'am, that perhaps you might object to
+    buying things on Sunday."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I do," I said. "Does that Mr. Poplington expect to have his breakfast
+    here? I only took him to lodge."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, ma'am," said Miss Pondar, "they always takes their breakfasts
+    where they has their rooms. Dinner and luncheon is different, and he
+    may expect to go to the inn for them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Indeed!" said I. "I think he may, and if he breakfasts here he can
+    take what we've got. If the eggs are not fresh enough for him he can
+    try to get along with some bacon. He can't expect that to be fresh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Knowing that English people take their breakfast late, Jone and I got
+    up early, so as to get through before our lodger came down. But, bless
+    me, when we went to the front door to see what sort of a day it was we
+    saw him coming in from a walk. "Fine morning," said he, and in fact
+    there was only a little drizzle of rain, which might stop when the sun
+    got higher; and he stood near us and began to talk about the trout in
+    the stream, which, to my utter amazement, he called a river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you take your license by the day or week?" he said to Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "License!" said Jone, "I don't fish."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Oh, I see, you are a cycler."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," said Jone, "I'm not that, either, I'm a pervader."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really!" said the old gentleman; "what do you mean by that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I mean that I pervade the scenery, sometimes on foot and sometimes in
+    a trap. That's my style of rural pleasuring."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But you do fish at home," I said to Jone, not wishing the English
+    gentleman to think my husband was a city man, who didn't know anything
+    about sport.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes," said Jone, "I used to fish for perch and sunfish."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sunfish?" said Mr. Poplington. "I don't know that fish at all. What
+    sort of a fly do you use?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't fish with any flies at all," said Jone; "I bait my hook with
+    worms."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington's face looked as if he had poured liquid shoe-blacking
+    on his meat, thinking it was Worcestershire sauce. "Fancy! Worms! I'd
+    never take a rod in my hands if I had to use worms. Never used a worm
+    in my life. There's no sort of science in worm fishing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There's double sport," said Jone, "for first you've got to catch your
+    worm. Then again, I hate shams; if you have to catch fish there's no
+    use cheating them into the bargain."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cheat!" cried Mr. Poplington. "If I had to catch a whale I'd fish for
+    him with a fly. But you Americans are strange people. Worms, indeed!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We don't all use worms," said Jone; "there's lots of fly fishers in
+    America, and they use all sorts of flies. If we are to believe all the
+    Californians tell us some of the artificial flies out there must be as
+    big as crows."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really?" said Mr. Poplington, looking hard at Jone, with a little
+    twinkling in his eyes. "And when gentlemen fish who don't like to cheat
+    the fishes, what size of worms do they use?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Jone, "in the far West I've heard that the common black
+    snake is the favorite bait. He's six or seven feet long, and fishermen
+    that use him don't have to have any line. He's bait and line all in
+    one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington laughed. "I see you are fond of a joke," said he, "and
+    so am I, but I'm also fond of my breakfast."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm with you there," said Jone, and we all went in.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington was very pleasant and chatty, and of course asked a
+    great many questions about America. Nearly all English people I've met
+    want to talk about our country, and it seems to me that what they do
+    know about it isn't any better, considered as useful information, than
+    what they don't know. But Mr. Poplington has never been to America, and
+    so he knows more about us than those Englishmen who come over to write
+    books, and only have time to run around the outside of things, and get
+    themselves tripped up on our ragged edges.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He said he had met a good many Americans, and liked them, but he
+    couldn't see for the life of him why they do some things English people
+    don't do, and don't do things English people do do. For instance, he
+    wondered why we don't drink tea for breakfast. Miss Pondar had made it
+    for him, knowing he'd want it, and he wonders why Americans drink
+    coffee when such good tea as that was comes in their reach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, if I had considered Mr. Poplington as a lodger it might have
+    nettled me to have him tell me I didn't know what was good, but
+    remembering that we was giving him hospitality, and not board, and
+    didn't intend to charge him a cent, but was just taking care of him out
+    of neighborly kindness, I was rather glad to have him find a little
+    fault, because that would make me feel as if I was soaring still higher
+    above him the next morning, when I should tell him there was nothing to
+    pay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So I took it all good-natured, and said to him, "Well, Americans like
+    to have the very best things that can be got out of every country.
+    We're like bees flying over the whole world, looking into every blossom
+    to see what sweetness there is to be got out of it. From the lily of
+    France we sip their coffee, from the national flower of India, whatever
+    it is, we take their chutney sauce, and as to those big apple tarts,
+    baked in a deep dish, with a cup in the middle to hold up the upper
+    crust, and so full of apples, and so delicious with Devonshire clotted
+    cream on them that if there was any one place in the world they could
+    be had I believe my husband would want to go and live there forever,
+    <i>they</i> are what we extract from the rose of England."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington laughed like anything at this, but said there was a
+    great many other things that he could show us and tell us about which
+    would be very well worth while sipping from the rose of England.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After breakfast he went to church with us, and as we was coming
+    home&mdash;for he didn't seem to have the least idea of going to the inn for
+    his luncheon&mdash;he asked if we didn't find the services very different
+    from those in America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said I, "they are about as different from Quaker services as a
+    squirting fountain is from a corked bottle. The Methodists and
+    Unitarians and Reformed Dutch and Campbellites and Hard-shell Baptists
+    have different services too, but in the Episcopal churches things are
+    all pretty much the same as they did this morning. You forget, sir,
+    that in our country there are religions to suit all sizes of minds. We
+    haven't any national religion any more than we have a national flower."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But you ought to have," said he; "you ought to have an established
+    church."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You may be sure we'll have it," said Jone, "as soon as we agree as to
+    which one it ought to be."
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Seven</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p>
+    Last Sunday afternoon Mr. Poplington asked us if we would not like to
+    walk over to a ruined abbey about four miles away, which he said was
+    very interesting. It seemed to me that four miles there and four miles
+    back was a pretty long walk, but I wanted to see the abbey, and I
+    wasn't going to let him think that a young American woman couldn't walk
+    as far as an elderly English gentleman; so I agreed and so did Jone.
+    The abbey is a wonderful place, and I never thought of being tired
+    while wandering in the rooms and in the garden, where the old monks
+    used to live and preach, and give food to the poor, and keep house
+    without women&mdash;which was pious enough, but must have been untidy. But
+    the thing that surprised me the most was what Mr. Poplington told us
+    about the age of the place. It was not built all at once, and it's part
+    ancient and part modern, and you needn't wonder, madam, that I was
+    astonished when he said that the part called modern was finished just
+    three years before America was discovered. When I heard that I seemed
+    to shrivel up as if my country was a new-born babe alongside of a
+    bearded patriarch; but I didn't stay shrivelled long, for it can't be
+    denied that a new-born babe has a good deal more to look forward to
+    than a patriarch has.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0022"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img022.jpg">
+<img src="images/img022.jpg" width="124" height="200"
+alt="AT THE ABBEY" /><br />AT THE ABBEY</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    It is amazing how many things in this part of the country we'd never
+    have thought of if it hadn't been for Mr. Poplington. At dinner he told
+    us about Exmoor and the Lorna Doone country, and the wild deer hunting
+    that can be had nowhere else in England, and lots of other things that
+    made me feel we must be up and doing if we wanted to see all we ought
+    to see before we left Chedcombe. When I went upstairs I said to Jone
+    that Mr. Poplington was a very different man from what I thought he
+    was.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's just as nice as he can be, and I'm going to charge him for his
+    room and his meals and for everything he's had."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone laughed, and asked me if that was the way I showed people I liked
+    them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We intended to humble him by not charging him anything," I said, "and
+    make him feel he had been depending on our bounty; but now I wouldn't
+    hurt his feelings for the world, and I'll make out his bill in the
+    morning myself. Women always do that sort of thing in England."
+</p>
+<p>
+    As you asked me, madam, to tell you everything that happened on our
+    travels, I'll go on about Mr. Poplington. After breakfast on Monday
+    morning he went over to the inn, and said he would come back and pack
+    up his things; but when he did come back he told us that those
+    coach-and-four people had determined not to leave Chedcombe that day,
+    but was going to stay and look at the sights in the neighborhood, and
+    that they would want the room for that night. He said this had made him
+    very angry, because they had no right to change their minds that way
+    after having made definite arrangements in which other people besides
+    themselves was concerned; and he had said so very plainly to the
+    gentleman who seemed to be at the head of the party.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I hope it will be no inconvenience to you, madam," he said, "to keep
+    me another night."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, dear, no," said I; "and my husband was saying this morning that he
+    wished you was going to stay with us the rest of our time here."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Then I'll do it. I'll go to the
+    inn this minute and have the rest of my luggage brought over here. If
+    this is any punishment to Mrs. Locky she deserves it, for she shouldn't
+    have told those people they could stay longer without consulting me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In less than an hour there came a van to our cottage with the rest of
+    his luggage. There must have been over a dozen boxes and packages,
+    besides things tied up and strapped; and as I saw them being carried up
+    one at a time, I said to Miss Pondar that in our country we'd have two
+    or three big trunks, which we could take about without any trouble.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, ma'am," said she; but I could see by her face that she didn't
+    believe luggage would be luggage unless you could lug it, but was too
+    respectful to say so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Mr. Poplington got settled down in our spare room he blossomed out
+    like a full-blown friend of the family, and accordingly began to give
+    us advice. He said we should go as soon as we could and see Exmoor and
+    all that region of country, and that if we didn't mind he'd like to go
+    with us; to which we answered, of course, we should like that very
+    much, and asked him what he thought would be the best way to go. So we
+    had ever so much talk about that, and although we all agreed it would
+    be nicer not to take a public coach, but travel private, we didn't find
+    it easy to decide as to the manner of travel. We all agreed that a
+    carriage and horses would be too expensive, and Jone was rather in
+    favor of a dogcart for us if Mr. Poplington would like to go on
+    horseback; but the old gentleman said it would be too much riding for
+    him, and if we took a dogcart he'd have to take another one. But this
+    wouldn't be a very sociable way of travelling, and none of us liked it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," exclaimed Mr. Poplington, striking his hand on the table, "I'll
+    tell you exactly how we ought to go through that country&mdash;we ought to
+    go on cycles."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Bicycles?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tricycles, if you like," he answered, "but that's the way to do it.
+    It'll be cheap, and we can go as we like and stop when we like. We'll
+    be as free and independent as the Stars and Stripes, and more so, for
+    they can't always flap when they like and stop flapping when they
+    choose. Have you ever tried it, madam?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I replied that I had, a little, because my daughter had a tricycle, and
+    I had ridden on it for a short distance and after sundown, but as for
+    regular travel in the daytime I couldn't think of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this Jone nearly took my breath away by saying that he thought that
+    the bicycle idea was a capital one, and that for his part he'd like it
+    better than any other way of travelling through a pretty country. He
+    also said he believed I could work a tricycle just as well as not, and
+    that if I got used to it I would think it fine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I stood out against those two men for about a half an hour, and then I
+    began to give in a little, and think that it might be nice to roll
+    along on my own little wheels over their beautiful smooth roads, and
+    stop and smell the hedges and pick flowers whenever I felt like it; and
+    so it ended in my agreeing to do the Exmoor country on a tricycle while
+    Mr. Poplington and Jone went on bicycles. As to getting the machines,
+    Mr. Poplington said he would attend to that. There was people in London
+    who hired them to excursionists, and all he had to do was to send an
+    order and they would be on hand in a day or two; and so that matter
+    was settled and he wrote to London. I thought Mr. Poplington was a
+    little old for that sort of exercise, but I found he had been used to
+    doing a great deal of cycling in the part of the country where he
+    lives; and besides, he isn't as old as I thought he was, being not much
+    over fifty. The kind of air that keeps a country always green is
+    wonderful in bringing out early red and white in a person.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Everything happens wonderfully well, madam," said he, coming in after
+    he had been to post his letter in a red iron box let into the side of
+    the Wesleyan chapel, "doesn't it? Now here we're not able to start on
+    our journey for two or three days, and I have just been told that the
+    great hay-making in the big meadow to the south of the village is to
+    begin to-morrow. They make the hay there only every other year, and
+    they have a grand time of it. We must be there, and you shall see some
+    of our English country customs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    We said we'd be sure to be in for that sort of thing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wish, madam, you could have seen that great hayfield. It belongs to
+    the lord of the manor, and must have twenty or thirty acres in it.
+    They've been three or four days cutting the grass on it with a machine,
+    and now there's been nearly two days with hardly any rain, only now and
+    then some drizzling, and a good, strong wind, which they think here is
+    better for the hay-making than sunshine, though they don't object to a
+    little sun. All the people in the village who had legs good enough to
+    carry them to that field went to help make hay. It was a regular
+    holiday, and as hay is clean, nearly everybody was dressed in good
+    clothes. Early in the morning some twenty regular farm laborers began
+    raking the hay at one end of the field, stretching themselves nearly
+    the whole way across it, and as the day went on more and more people
+    came, men and women, high and low. All the young women and some of the
+    older ones had rakes, and the way they worked them was amazing to see,
+    but they turned over the hay enough to dry it. As to schoolgirls and
+    boys, there was no end of them in the afternoon, for school let out
+    early. Some of them worked, but most of them played and cut up
+    monkey-shines on the hay. Even the little babies was brought on the
+    field, and nice, soft beds made for them under the trees at one side.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone saw the real farm-work going on, with a chance for everybody
+    to turn in to help, his farmer blood boiled within him, as if he was a
+    war-horse and sniffed the smoke of battle, and he got himself a rake
+    and went to work like a good-fellow. I never saw so many men at work in
+    a hayfield at home, but when I looked at Jone raking I could see why it
+    was it didn't take so many men to get in our hay. As for me, I raked a
+    little, but looked about a great deal more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Near the middle of the field was two women working together, raking as
+    steadily as if they had been brought up to it. One of these was young,
+    and even handsomer than Miss Dick, which was the name of the bar lady.
+    To look at her made me think of what I had read of Queen Marie
+    Antoinette and her court ladies playing the part of milkmaids. Her
+    straw hat was trimmed with delicate flowers, and her white muslin dress
+    and pale blue ribbons made her the prettiest picture I ever saw
+    out-of-doors. I could not help asking Mrs. Locky who she was, and she
+    told me that she was the chambermaid at the inn, and the other was the
+    cook. When I heard this I didn't make any answer, but just walked off a
+    little way and began raking and thinking. I have often wondered why it
+    is that English servants are so different from those we have, or, to
+    put it in a strictly confidential way between you and me, madam, why
+    the chambermaid at the "Bordley Arms," as she is, is so different from
+    me, as I used to be when I first lived with you. Now that young
+    chambermaid with the pretty hat is, as far as appearances go, as good a
+    woman as I am, and if Jone was a bachelor and intended to marry her I
+    would think it was as good a match as if he married me. But the
+    difference between us two is that when I got to be the kind of woman I
+    am I wasn't willing to be a servant, and if I had always been the kind
+    of young woman that chambermaid is I never would have been a servant.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I've kept a sharp eye on the young women in domestic service over here,
+    having a fellow-feeling for them, as you can well understand, madam,
+    and since I have been in the country I've watched the poor folks and
+    seen how they live, and it's just as plain to me as can be that the
+    young women who are maids and waitresses over here are the kind who
+    would have tried to be shop-girls and dressmakers and even
+    school-teachers in America, and many of the servants we have would be
+    working in the fields if they lived over here. The fact is, the English
+    people don't go to other countries to get their servants. Their way is
+    like a factory consuming its own smoke. The surplus young women, and
+    there must always be a lot of them, are used up in domestic service.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, if an American poor girl is good enough to be a first-class
+    servant, she wants to be something else. Sooner than go out to service
+    she will work twice as hard in a shop, or even go into a factory.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have talked a good deal about this to Jone, and he says I'm getting
+    to be a philosopher; but I don't think it takes much philosophizing to
+    find out how this case stands. If house service could be looked upon in
+    the proper way, it wouldn't take long for American girls who have to
+    work for their living to find out that it's a lot better to live with
+    nice people, and cook and wait on the table, and do all those things
+    which come natural to women the world over, than to stand all day
+    behind a counter under the thumb of a floor-walker, or grind their
+    lives out like slaves among a lot of steam-engines and machinery. The
+    only reason the English have better house servants than we have is that
+    here any girl who has to work is willing to be a house servant, and
+    very good house servants they are, too.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Eight</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0023"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img023.jpg" width="620" height="264" alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img023l.jpg" width="157" height="154" alt="I" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    &nbsp;will now finish telling you about the great hay-making day. Toward
+    the end of the afternoon a lot of boys and girls began playing a game
+    which seemed to belong to the hayfield. Each one of the bigger boys
+    would twist up a rope of hay and run after a girl, and when he had
+    thrown it over her neck he could kiss her. Girls are girls the whole
+    world over, and it was funny to see how some of them would run like mad
+    to get away from the boys, and how dreadfully troubled they would be
+    when they was caught, and yet, after they had been kissed and the boys
+    had left them, they would walk innocently back to the players as if
+    they never dreamed that anybody would think of disturbing them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At five o'clock everybody&mdash;farm hands, ladies, gentlemen,
+    school-children, and all&mdash;took tea together. Some were seated at long
+    tables made of planks, with benches at the sides, and others scattered
+    all over the grass. Miss Pondar and our maid Hannah helped to serve the
+    tea and sandwiches, and I was glad to see that Hannah wore her pointed
+    white cap and her black dress, for I had on my woollen travelling suit,
+    and I didn't want too much cart-before-the-horseness in my domestic
+    establishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After tea the work and the games began again, and as I think it is
+    always better for people to do what they can do best, I turned in and
+    helped clear away the tea-things, and after that I sat down by a female
+    person in black silk&mdash;and I am sure I didn't know whether she was the
+    lady of the manor or somebody else until I heard some h-words come out
+    in her talk, and then I knew she was the latter&mdash;and she told me ever
+    so much about the people in the village, and why the rector wasn't
+    there, on account of a dispute about the altar-cloths, and she was just
+    beginning to tell me about the doctor's wife sending her daughters to a
+    school that was much too high-priced for his practice, when I happened
+    to look across the field, and there, with the bar lady at the inn, with
+    her hat trimmed with pink, and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, with
+    her hat trimmed with blue, was Jone, and they was all three raking
+    together, as comfortable and confiding as if they had been singing
+    hymns out of the same book.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, I thought I had been sitting still long enough, and so I snipped
+    off the rest of the doctor story and got myself across that field with
+    pretty long steps. When I reached the happy three I didn't say
+    anything, but went round in front of them and stood there, throwing a
+    sarcastic and disdainful glance upon their farming. Jone stopped
+    working, and wiped his face with his handkerchief, as if he was hot and
+    tired, but hadn't thought of it until just then, and the two girls they
+    stopped too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's teaching us to rake, ma'am," said Miss Dick, revolving her
+    green-gage eyes in my direction, "and really, ma'am, it's wonderful to
+    see how good he does it. You Americans are so awful clever!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for the one with the blue trimmings, she said nothing, but stood
+    with her hands folded on her rake, and her chiselled features steeped
+    in a meek resignedness, though much too high colored, as though it had
+    just been borne in upon her that this world is all a fleeting show, for
+    man's illusion given, and such felicity as culling fragrant hay by the
+    side of that manly form must e'en be foregone by her, that I could
+    have taken a handle of a rake and given her such a punch among her blue
+    ribbons that her classic features would have frantically twined
+    themselves around one resounding howl&mdash;but I didn't. I simply remarked
+    to Jone, with a statuesque rigidity, that it was six o'clock and I was
+    going home; to which he said he was going too, and we went.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0024"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img024.jpg">
+<img src="images/img024s.jpg" width="282" height="180"
+alt="'THERE, WITH THE BAR LADY AND THE MARIE ANTOINETTE
+CHAMBERMAID, WAS JONE'" /><br />
+'THERE, WITH THE BAR LADY AND THE MARIE ANTOINETTE
+CHAMBERMAID, WAS JONE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "I thought," said I, as we proceeded with rapid steps across the field,
+    "that you didn't come to England for the purpose of teaching the
+    inhabitants."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone laughed a little. "That young lady put it rather strong," he said.
+    "She and her friend was merely trying to rake as I did. I think they
+    got on very well."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Indeed!" said I&mdash;I expect with flashing eye&mdash;"but the next time you go
+    into the disciple business I recommend that you take boys who really
+    need to know something about farming, and not fine-as-fiddle young
+    women that you might as well be ballet-dancing with as raking with, for
+    all the hankering after knowledge they have."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh!" said Jone, and that was all he did say, which was very wise in
+    him, for, considering my state of feelings, his case was like a
+    fish-hook in your finger&mdash;the more you pull and worry at it the harder
+    it is to get out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That evening, when I was quite cooled down, and we was talking to Mr.
+    Poplington about the hay-making and the free-and-easy way in which
+    everybody came together, he was a good deal surprised that we should
+    think that there was anything uncommon in that, coming from a country
+    where everybody was free and equal. Jone was smoking his pipe, and when
+    it draws well and he's had a good dinner and I haven't anything
+    particular to say, he often likes to talk slow and preach little
+    sermons.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir," said he, after considering the matter a little while,
+    "according to the Constitution of the United States we are all free and
+    equal, but there's a good many things the Constitution doesn't touch
+    on, and one of them is the sorting out and sizing up of the population.
+    Now, you people over here are like the metal types that the printers
+    use. You've all got your letters on one end of you, and you know just
+    where you belong, and if you happen to be knocked into 'pi' and mixed
+    all up in a pile it is easy enough to pick you out and put you all in
+    your proper cases; but it's different with us. According to the
+    Constitution we're like a lot of carpet-tacks, one just the same as
+    another, though in fact we're not alike, and it would not be easy if we
+    got mixed up, say in a hayfield, to get ourselves all sorted out again
+    according to the breadth of our heads and the sharpness of our points,
+    so we don't like to do too much mixing, don't you see?" To which Mr.
+    Poplington said he didn't see, and then I explained to him that what
+    Jone meant was that though in our country we was all equally free, it
+    didn't do for us to be as freely equal as the people are sometimes over
+    here, to which Mr. Poplington said, "Really!" but he didn't seem to be
+    standing in the glaring sunlight of convincement. But the shade is
+    often pleasant to be in, and he wound up by saying, as he bid us
+    good-night, that he thought it would be a great deal better for us, if
+    we had classes at all, to have them marked out plain, and stamped so
+    that there could be no mistake; to which I said that if we did that the
+    most of the mistakes would come in the sorting, which, according to my
+    reading of books and newspapers, had happened to most countries that
+    keep up aristocracies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I don't know that he heard all that I said, for he was going up-stairs
+    with his candle at the time, but when Jone and me got up-stairs in our
+    own room I said to him, and he always hears everything I say, that in
+    some ways the girls that we have for servants at home have some
+    advantages over those we find here; to which Jone said, "Yes," and
+    seemed to be sleepy.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Nine</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was still another day of hay-making, but we couldn't wait for
+    that, because our cycles had come from London and we was all anxious to
+    be off, and you would have laughed, madam, if you could have seen us
+    start. Mr. Poplington went off well enough, but Jone's bicycle seemed a
+    little gay and hard to manage, and he frisked about a good deal at
+    starting; but Jone had bought a bicycle long ago, when the things first
+    came out, and on days when the roads was good he used to go to the
+    post-office on it, and he said that if a man had ever ridden on top of
+    a wheel about six feet high he ought to be able to balance himself on
+    the pair of small wheels which they use nowadays. So, after getting his
+    long legs into working order, he went very well, though with a snaky
+    movement at first, and then I started.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Each one of us had a little hand-bag hung on our machine, and Mr.
+    Poplington said we needn't take anything to eat, for there was inns to
+    be found everywhere in England. Hannah started me off nicely by pushing
+    my tricycle until I got it going, and Miss Pondar waved her
+    handkerchief from the cottage door. When Hannah left me I went along
+    rather slow at first, but when I got used to the proper motion I began
+    to do better, and was very sure it wouldn't take me long to catch up
+    with Jone, who was still worm-fencing his way along the road. When I
+    got entirely away from the houses, and began to smell the hedges and
+    grassy banks so close to my nose, and feel myself gliding along over
+    the smooth white road, my spirits began to soar like a bird, and I
+    almost felt like singing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The few people I met didn't seem to think it was anything wonderful for
+    a woman to ride on a tricycle, and I soon began to feel as proper as if
+    I was walking on a sidewalk. Once I came very near tangling myself up
+    with the legs of a horse who was pulling a cart. I forgot that it was
+    the proper thing in this country to turn to the left, and not to the
+    right, but I gave a quick twist to my helm and just missed the
+    cart-wheel, but it was a close scratch. This turning to the right,
+    instead of to the left, was a mistake Jone made two or three times when
+    he began to drive me in England, but he got over it, and since my
+    grazing the cart it's not likely I shall forget it. As I breathed a
+    sigh of relief after escaping this danger I took in a breath full of
+    the scent of wild roses that nearly covered a bit of hedge, and my
+    spirits rose again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had asked Jone and Mr. Poplington to go ahead, because I knew I could
+    do a great deal better if I worked along by myself for a while, without
+    being told what I ought to do and what I oughtn't to do. There is
+    nothing that bothers me so much as to have people try to teach me
+    things when I am puzzling them out for myself. But now I found that
+    although they could not be far ahead, I couldn't see them, on account
+    of the twists in the road and the high hedges, and so I put on steam
+    and went along at a fine rate, sniffing the breeze like a charger of
+    the battlefield. Before very long I came to a place where the road
+    forked, but the road to the left seemed like a lane leading to
+    somebody's house, so I kept on in what was plainly the main road, which
+    made a little turn where it forked. Looking out ahead of me, to see if
+    I could catch sight of the two men, I could not see a sign of them, but
+    I did see that I was on the top of a long hill that seemed to lead on
+    and down and on and down, with no end to it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had hardly started down this hill when my tricycle became frisky and
+    showed signs of wanting to run, and I got a little nervous, for I
+    didn't fancy going fast down a slope like that. I put on the brake, but
+    I don't believe I managed it right, for I seemed to go faster and
+    faster; and then, as the machine didn't need any working, I took my
+    feet off the pedals, with an idea, I think, though I can't now
+    remember, that I would get off and walk down the hill. In an instant
+    that thing took the bit in its teeth and away it went wildly tearing
+    down hill. I never was so much frightened in all my life. I tried to
+    get my feet back on the pedals, but I couldn't do it, and all I could
+    do was to keep that flying tricycle in the middle of the road. As far
+    as I could see ahead there was not anything in the way of a wagon or a
+    carriage that I could run into, but there was such a stretch of slope
+    that it made me fairly dizzy. Just as I was having a little bit of
+    comfort from thinking there was nothing in the way, a black woolly dog
+    jumped out into the road some distance ahead of me and stood there
+    barking. My heart fell, like a bucket into a well with the rope broken.
+    If I steered the least bit to the right or the left I believe I would
+    have bounded over the hedge like a glass bottle from a railroad train,
+    and come down on the other side in shivers and splinters. If I didn't
+    turn I was making a bee-line for the dog; but I had no time to think
+    what to do, and in an instant that black woolly dog faded away like a
+    reminiscence among the buzzing wheels of my tricycle. I felt a little
+    bump, but was ignorant of further particulars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was now going at what seemed like a speed of ninety or a hundred
+    miles an hour, with the wind rushing in between my teeth like water
+    over a mill-dam, and I felt sure that if I kept on going down that hill
+    I should soon be whirling through space like a comet. The only way I
+    could think of to save myself was to turn into some level place where
+    the thing would stop, but not a crossroad did I pass; but presently I
+    saw a little house standing back from the road, which seemed to hump
+    itself a little at that place so as to be nearly level, and over the
+    edge of the hump it dipped so suddenly that I could not see the rest of
+    the road at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," thought I to myself, "if the gate of that house is open I'll
+    turn into it, and no matter what I run into, it would be better than
+    going over the edge of that rise beyond and down the awful hill that
+    must be on the other side of it." As I swooped down to the little house
+    and reached the level ground I felt I was going a little slower, but
+    not much. However, I steered my tricycle round at just the right
+    instant, and through the front gate I went like a flash.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was going so fast, and my mind was so wound up on account of the
+    necessity of steering straight, that I could not pay much attention to
+    things I passed. But the scene that showed itself in front of me as I
+    went through that little garden gate I could not help seeing and
+    remembering. From the gate to the door of the house was a path paved
+    with flagstones; the door was open, and there must have been a low step
+    before it; back of the door was a hall which ran through the house, and
+    this was paved with flagstones; the back door of the hall was open, and
+    outside of it was a sort of arbor with vines, and on one side of this
+    arbor was a bench, with a young man and a young woman sitting on it,
+    holding each other by the hand, and looking into each other's eyes;
+    the arbor opened out on to a piece of green grass, with flowers of
+    mixed colors on the edges of it, and at the back of this bit of lawn
+    was a lot of clothes hung out on clothes-lines. Of course, I could not
+    have seen all those things at once, but they came upon me like a single
+    picture, for in one tick of a watch I went over that flagstone path and
+    into that front door and through that house and out of that back door,
+    and past that young man and that young woman, and head and heels both
+    foremost at once, dashed slam-bang into the midst of all that linen
+    hanging out on the lines.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0025"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img025.jpg">
+<img src="images/img025s.jpg" width="241" height="160"
+alt="'AT LAST I DID GET ON MY FEET'" /><br />
+'AT LAST I DID GET ON MY FEET'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I heard the minglement of a groan and a scream, and in an instant I was
+    enveloped in a white, wet cloud of sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths,
+    and underwear. Some of the things stuck so close to me, and others I
+    grabbed with such a wild clutch, that nearly all the week's wash, lines
+    and all, came down on me, wrapping me up like an apple in a
+    dumpling&mdash;but I stopped. There was not anything in this world that
+    would have been better for me to run into than those lines full of wet
+    clothes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Where the tricycle went to I didn't know, but I was lying on the grass
+    kicking, and trying to get up and to get my head free, so that I could
+    see and breathe. At last I did get on my feet, and throwing out my arms
+    so as to shake off the sheets and pillowcases that were clinging all
+    over me I shook some of the things partly off my face, and with one
+    eye I saw that couple on the bench, but only for a second. With a yell
+    of horror, and with a face whiter than the linen I was wrapped in, that
+    young man bounced from the bench, dashed past the house, made one clean
+    jump over the hedge into the road, and disappeared. As for the young
+    woman, she just flopped over and went down in a faint on the floor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As soon as I could do it I got myself free from the clothes-line and
+    staggered out on the grass. I was trembling so much I could scarcely
+    walk, but when I saw that young woman looking as if she was dead on the
+    ground I felt I must do something, and seeing a pail of water standing
+    near by, I held it over her face and poured it down on her a little at
+    a time, and it wasn't long before she began to squirm, and then she
+    opened her eyes and her mouth just at the same time, so that she must
+    have swallowed about as much water as she would have taken at a meal.
+    This brought her to, and she began to cough and splutter and look
+    around wildly, and then I took her by the arm and helped her up on the
+    bench.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't you want a little something to drink?" I said. "Tell me where I
+    can get you something."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She didn't answer, but began looking from one side to the other. "Is he
+    swallowed?" said she in a whisper, with her eyes starting out of her
+    head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Swallowed?" said I. "Who?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Davy," said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, your young man," said I. "He is all right, unless he hurt himself
+    jumping over the hedge. I saw him run away just as fast as he could."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And the spirit?" said she. I looked hard at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What has happened to you?" said I. "How did you come to faint?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    She was getting quieter, but she still looked wildly out of her eyes,
+    and kept her back turned toward the bit of grass, as if she was afraid
+    to look in that direction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What happened to you?" said I again, for I wanted to know what she
+    thought about my sudden appearance. It took some little time for her to
+    get ready to answer, and then she said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Was you frightened, lady? Did you have to come in here? I'm sorry you
+    found me swooned. I don't know how long I was swooned. Davy and me was
+    sitting here talking about having the banns called, and it was a sorry
+    talk, lady, for the vicar, he's told me four times I should not marry
+    Davy, because he says he is a Radical; but for all that Davy and me
+    wants the banns called all the same, but not knowing how we was to have
+    it done, for the vicar, he's so set against Davy, and Davy, he had just
+    got done saying to me that he was going to marry me, vicar or no vicar,
+    banns or no banns, come what might, when that very minute, with an
+    awful hiss, something flashed in front of us, dazzling my eyes so that
+    I shut them and screamed, and then when I opened them again, there, in
+    the yard back of us, was a great white spirit twice as high as the cow
+    stable, with one eye in the middle of its forehead, turning around like
+    a firework. I don't remember anything after that, and I don't know how
+    long I was lying here when you came and found me, lady, but I know what
+    it means. There is a curse on our marriage, and Davy and me will never
+    be man and wife." And then she fell to groaning and moaning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I felt like laughing when I thought how much like a church ghost I must
+    have looked, standing there in solid white with my arms stretched out;
+    but the poor girl was in such a dreadful state of mind that I sat down
+    beside her and began to comfort her by telling her just what had
+    happened, and that she ought to be very glad that I had found a place
+    to turn into, and had not gone on down the hill and dashed myself into
+    little pieces at the bottom. But it wasn't easy to cheer her up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Davy's gone," said she. "He'll never come back for fear of the
+    curse. He'll be off with his uncle to sea. I'll never lay eyes on Davy
+    again."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just at that moment I heard somebody calling my name, and looking
+    through the house I saw Jone at the front door and two men behind him.
+    As I ran through the hall I saw that the two men with Jone was Mr.
+    Poplington and a young fellow with a pale face and trembling legs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is this Davy?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then go back to your young woman and comfort her," I said, which he
+    did, and when he had gone, not madly rushing into his loved one's arms,
+    but shuffling along in a timid way, as if he was afraid the ghost
+    hadn't gone yet, I asked Jone how he happened to think I was here, and
+    he told me that he and Mr. Poplington had taken the road to the left
+    when they reached the fork, because that was the proper one, but they
+    had not gone far before he thought I might not know which way to turn,
+    so they came back to the fork to wait for me. But I had been closer
+    behind them than they thought, and I must have come to the fork before
+    they turned back, so, after waiting a while and going back along the
+    road without seeing me, they thought that I must have taken the
+    right-hand road, and they came that way, going down the hill very
+    carefully. After a while Jone found my hat in the road, which up to
+    that moment I had not missed, and then he began to be frightened and
+    they went on faster.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They passed the little house, and as they was going down the hill they
+    saw ahead of them a man running as if something had happened, so they
+    let out their bicycles and soon caught up to him. This was Davy; and
+    when they stopped him and asked if anything was the matter he told
+    them that a dreadful thing had come to pass. He had been working in the
+    garden of a house about half a mile back when suddenly there came an
+    awful crash, and a white animal sprang out of the house with a bit of a
+    cotton mill fastened to its tail, and then, with a great peal of
+    thunder, it vanished, and a white ghost rose up out of the ground with
+    its arms stretching out longer and longer, reaching to clutch him by
+    the hair. He was not afraid of anything living, but he couldn't abide
+    spirits, so he laid down his spade and left the garden, thinking he
+    would go and see the sexton and have him come and lay the ghost.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then Jone went on to say that of course he could not make head or tail
+    out of such a story as that, but when he heard that an awful row had
+    been kicked up in a garden he immediately thought that as like as not I
+    was in it, and so he and Mr. Poplington ran back, leaving their
+    bicycles against the hedge, and bringing the young man with them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then I told my story, and Mr. Poplington said it was a mercy I was not
+    killed, and Jone didn't say much, but I could see that his teeth was
+    grinding.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We all went into the back yard, and there, on the other side of the
+    clothes, which was scattered all over the ground, we found my tricycle,
+    jammed into a lot of gooseberry bushes, and when it was dragged out we
+    found it was not hurt a bit. Davy and his young woman was standing in
+    the arbor looking very sheepish, especially Davy, for she had told him
+    what it was that had scared him. As we was going through the house,
+    Jone taking my tricycle, I stopped to say good-by to the girl.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now that you see there has been no curse and no ghost," said I, "I
+    hope that you will soon have your banns called, and that you and your
+    young man will be married all right."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you very much, ma'am," said she, "but I'm awful fearful about
+    it. Davy may say what he pleases, but my mother never will let me marry
+    him if the vicar's agen it; and Davy wouldn't have been here to-day if
+    she hadn't gone to town; and the vicar's a hard man and a strong Tory,
+    and he'll always be agen it, I fear."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I went out into the front yard I found Mr. Poplington and Jone
+    sitting on a little stone bench, for they was tired, and I told them
+    about that young woman and Davy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Humph," said Mr. Poplington, "I know the vicar of the parish. He is
+    the Rev. Osmun Green. He's a good Conservative, and is perfectly right
+    in trying to keep that poor girl from marrying a wretched Radical."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I looked straight at him and said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you mean, sir, to put politics before matrimonial happiness?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't," said he, "but a girl can't expect matrimonial happiness
+    with a Radical."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I saw that Jone was about to say something here, but I got in ahead of
+    him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I will tell you what it is, sir," said I, "if you think it is wrong to
+    be a Radical the best thing you can do is to write to your friend, that
+    vicar, and advise him to get those two young people married as soon as
+    possible, for it is easy to see that she is going to rule the roost,
+    and if anybody can get his Radicalistics out of him she will be the one
+    to do it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington laughed, and said that as the man looked as if he was a
+    fit subject to be henpecked it might be a good way of getting another
+    Tory vote.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But," said he, "I should think it would go against your conscience,
+    being naturally opposed to the Conservatives, to help even by one
+    vote."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, my conscience is all right," said I. "When politics runs against
+    the matrimonial altar I stand up for the altar."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said he, "I'll think of it." And we started off, walking down
+    the hill, Jone holding on to my tricycle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got to level ground, with about two miles to go before we would
+    stop for luncheon, Jone took a piece of thin rope out of his pocket&mdash;he
+    always carries some sort of cord in case of accidents&mdash;and he tied it
+    to the back part of my machine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," said he, "I'm going to keep hold of the other end of this, and
+    perhaps your tricycle won't run away with you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't much like going along this way, as if I was a cow being taken
+    to market, but I could see that Jone had been so troubled and
+    frightened about me that I didn't make any objection, and, in fact,
+    after I got started it was a comfort to think there was a tie between
+    Jone and me that was stronger, when hilly roads came into the question,
+    than even the matrimonial tie.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Ten</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p>
+    The place we stopped at on the first night of our cycle trip is named
+    Porlock, and after the walking and the pushing, and the strain on my
+    mind when going down even the smallest hill for fear Jone's rope would
+    give way, I was glad to get there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The road into Porlock goes down a hill, the steepest I have seen yet,
+    and we all walked down, holding our machines as if they had been fiery
+    coursers. This hill road twists and winds so you can only see part of
+    it at a time, and when we was about half-way down we heard a horn
+    blowing behind us, and looking around there came the mail-coach at full
+    speed, with four horses, with a lot of people on top. As this raging
+    coach passed by it nearly took my breath away, and as soon as I could
+    speak I said to Jone: "Don't you ever say anything in America about
+    having the roads made narrower so that it won't cost so much to keep
+    them in order, for in my opinion it's often the narrow road that
+    leadeth to destruction."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got into the town, and my mind really began to grapple with old
+    Porlock, I felt as if I was sliding backward down the slope of the
+    centuries, and liked it. As we went along Mr. Poplington told us about
+    everything, and said that this queer little town was a fishing village
+    and seaport in the days of the Saxons, and that King Harold was once
+    obliged to stop there for a while, and that he passed his time making
+    war on the neighbors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington took us to a tavern called the Ship Inn, and I simply
+    went wild over it. It is two hundred years old and two stories high,
+    and everything I ever read about the hostelries of the past I saw
+    there. The queer little door led into a queer little passage paved with
+    stone. A pair of little stairs led out of this into another little
+    room, higher up, and on the other side of the passage was a long,
+    mysterious hallway. We had our dinner in a tiny parlor, which reminded
+    me of a chapter in one of those old books where they use f instead of
+    s, and where the first word of the next page is at the bottom of the
+    one you are reading.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was a fireplace in the room with a window one side of it, through
+    which you could look into the street. It was not cold, but it had begun
+    to rain hard, and so I made the dampness an excuse for a fire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is antique, indeed," I said, when we were at the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are right there," said Mr. Poplington, who was doing his best to
+    carve a duck, and was a little cross about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I sat before the fire that evening, and Jone was asleep on a
+    settee of the days of yore, and Mr. Poplington had gone to bed, being
+    tired, my soul went back to the olden time, and, looking out through
+    the little window in the fireplace, I fancied I could see William the
+    Conqueror and the King of the Danes sneaking along the little street
+    under the eaves of the thatched roofs, until I was so worked up that I
+    was on the point of shouting, "Fly! oh, Saxon!" when the door opened
+    and the maid who waited on us at the table put her head in. I took this
+    for a sign that the curfew bell was going to ring, and so I woke up
+    Jone and we went to bed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But all night long the heroes of the past flocked about me. I had been
+    reading a lot of history, and I knew them all the minute my eyes fell
+    upon them. Charlemagne and Canute sat on the end of the bed, while
+    Alfred the Great climbed up one of the posts until he was stopped by
+    Hannibal's legs, who had them twisted about the post to keep himself
+    steady. When I got up in the morning I went down-stairs into the little
+    parlor, and there was the maid down on her knees cleaning the hearth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is your name?" I said to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jane, please," said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jane what?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jane Puddle, please," said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I took a carving-knife from off the table, and standing over her I
+    brought it down gently on top of her head. "Rise, Sir Jane Puddle,"
+    said I, to which the maid gave a smothered gasp, and&mdash;would you believe
+    it, madam?&mdash;she crept out of the room on her hands and knees. The cook
+    waited on us at breakfast, and I truly believe that the landlord and
+    his wife breathed a sigh of relief when we left the Ship Inn, for their
+    sordid souls had never heard of knighthood, but knew all about
+    assassination.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0026"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img026.jpg">
+<img src="images/img026s.jpg" width="145" height="200"
+alt="'RISE, SIR JANE PUDDLE'" /><br />
+'RISE, SIR JANE PUDDLE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    That morning we left Porlock by a hill which compared with the one we
+    came into it by, was like the biggest Pyramid of Egypt by the side of a
+    haycock. I don't suppose in the whole civilized world there is a worse
+    hill with a road on it than the one we went up by. I was glad we had to
+    go up it instead of down it, though it was very hard to walk, pushing
+    the tricycle, even when helped. I believe it would have taken away my
+    breath and turned me dizzy even to take one step face forward down such
+    a hill, and gaze into the dreadful depths below me; and yet they drive
+    coaches and fours down that hill. At the top of the hill is this
+    notice: "To cyclers&mdash;this hill is dangerous." If I had thought of it I
+    should have looked for the cyclers' graves at the bottom of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The reason I thought about this was that I had been reading about one
+    of the mountains in Switzerland, which is one of the highest and most
+    dangerous, and with the poorest view, where so many Alpine climbers
+    have been killed that there is a little graveyard nearly full of their
+    graves at the foot of the mountain. How they could walk through that
+    graveyard and read the inscriptions on the tombstones and then go and
+    climb that mountain is more than I can imagine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In walking up this hill, and thinking that it might have been in front
+    of me when my tricycle ran away, I could not keep my mind away from the
+    little graveyard at the foot of the Swiss mountain.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Eleven</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0027"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img027.jpg" width="620" height="268" alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img027l.jpg" width="153" height="156" alt="O" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    n the third day of our cycle trip we journeyed along a lofty road,
+    with the wild moor on one side and the tossing sea on the other, and at
+    night reached Lynton. It is a little town on a jutting crag, and far
+    down below it on the edge of the sea was another town named Lynmouth,
+    and there is a car with a wire rope to it, like an elevator, which they
+    call The Lift, which takes people up and down from one town to another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here we stopped at a house very different from the Ship Inn, for it
+    looked as if it had been built the day before yesterday. Everything was
+    new and shiny, and we had our supper at a long table with about twenty
+    other people, just like a boardinghouse. Some of their ways reminded
+    me of the backwoods, and I suppose there is nothing more modern than
+    backwoodsism, which naturally hasn't the least alloy of the past. When
+    the people got through with their cups of coffee or tea, mostly the
+    last, two women went around the table, one with a big bowl for us to
+    lean back and empty our slops into, and the other with the tea or
+    coffee to fill up the cups. A gentleman with a baldish head, who was
+    sitting opposite us, began to be sociable as soon as he heard us speak
+    to the waiters, and asked questions about America. After he got through
+    with about a dozen of them he said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is it true, as I have heard, that what you call native-born Americans
+    deteriorate in the third generation?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had been answering most of the questions, but now Jone spoke up
+    quick. "That depends," says he, "on their original blood. When
+    Americans are descended from Englishmen they steadily improve,
+    generation after generation." The baldish man smiled at this, and said
+    there was nothing like having good blood for a foundation. But Mr.
+    Poplington laughed, and said to me that Jone had served him right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The country about Lynton is wonderfully beautiful, with rocks and
+    valleys, and velvet lawns running into the sea, and woods and ancestral
+    mansions, and we spent the day seeing all this, and also going down to
+    Lynmouth, where the little ships lie high and dry on the sand when the
+    tide goes out, and the carts drive up to them and put goods on board,
+    and when the tide rises the ships sail away, which is very convenient.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wanted to keep on along the coast, but the others didn't, and the
+    next morning we started back to Chedcombe by a roundabout way, so that
+    we might see Exmoor and the country where Lorna Doone and John Ridd cut
+    up their didoes. I must say I liked the story a good deal better before
+    I saw the country where the things happened. The mind of man is capable
+    of soarings which Nature weakens at when she sees what she is called
+    upon to do. If you want a real, first-class, tooth-on-edge Doone
+    valley, the place to look for it is in the book. We went rolling along
+    on the smooth, hard roads, which are just as good here as if they was
+    in London, and all around us was stretched out the wild and desolate
+    moors, with the wind screaming and whistling over the heather, nearly
+    tearing the clothes off our backs, while the rain beat down on us with
+    a steady pelting, and the ragged sheep stopped to look at us, as if we
+    was three witches and they was Macbeths.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The very thought that I was out in a wild storm on a desolate moor
+    filled my soul with a sort of triumph, and I worked my tricycle as if I
+    was spurring my steed to battle. The only thing that troubled me was
+    the thought that if the water that poured off my mackintosh that day
+    could have run into our cistern at home, it would have been a glorious
+    good thing. Jone did not like the fierce blast and the inspiriting
+    rain, but I knew he'd stand it as long as Mr. Poplington did, and so I
+    was content, although, if we had been overtaken by a covered wagon, I
+    should have trembled for the result.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That night we stopped in the little village of Simonsbath at Somebody's
+    Arms. After dinner Mr. Poplington, who knew some people in the place,
+    went out, but Jone and me went to bed as quick as we could, for we was
+    tired. The next morning we was wakened by a tremendous pounding at the
+    door. I didn't know what to make of it, for it was too early and too
+    loud for hot water, but we heard Mr. Poplington calling to us, and Jone
+    jumped up to see what he wanted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Get up," said he, "if you want to see a sight that you never saw
+    before. We'll start off immediately and breakfast at Exford." The hope
+    of seeing a sight was enough to make me bounce at any time, and I never
+    dressed or packed a bag quicker than I did that morning, and Jone
+    wasn't far behind me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got down-stairs we found our cycles waiting ready at the door,
+    together with the stable man and the stable boy and the boy's helper
+    and the cook and the chambermaid and the waiters and the other
+    servants, waiting for their tips. Mr. Poplington seemed in a fine
+    humor, and he told us he had heard the night before that there was to
+    be a stag hunt that day, the first of the season. In fact, it was not
+    one of the regular meets, but what they called a by-meet, and not known
+    to everybody.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We will go on to Exford," said he, straddling his bicycle, "for though
+    the meet isn't to be there, there's where they keep the hounds and
+    horses, and if we make good speed we shall get there before they start
+    out."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The three of us travelled abreast, Mr. Poplington in the middle, and on
+    the way he told us a good deal about stag hunts. What I remember best,
+    having to go so fast and having to mind my steering, was that after the
+    hunting season began they hunted stags until a certain day&mdash;I forget
+    what it was&mdash;and then they let them alone and began to hunt the does;
+    and that after that particular day of the month, when the stags heard
+    the hounds coming they paid no attention to them, knowing very well it
+    was the does' turn to be chased, and that they would not be bothered;
+    and so they let the female members of their families take care of
+    themselves; which shows that ungentlemanliness extends itself even into
+    Nature.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got to Exford we left our cycles at the inn and followed Mr.
+    Poplington to the hunting stables, which are near by. I had not gone a
+    dozen steps from the door before I heard a great barking, and the next
+    minute there came around the corner a pack of hounds. They crossed the
+    bridge over the little river, and then they stopped. We went up to
+    them, and while Mr. Poplington talked to the men the whole of that pack
+    of hounds gathered about us as gentle as lambs. They were good big
+    dogs, white and brown. The head huntsman who had them in charge told me
+    there was thirty couple of them, and I thought that sixty dogs was
+    pretty heavy odds against one deer. Then they moved off as orderly as
+    if they had been children in a kindergarten, and we went to the stables
+    and saw the horses; and then the master of the hounds and a good many
+    other gentlemen in red coats, in all sorts of traps, rode up, and their
+    hunters were saddled, and the dogs barked and the men cracked their
+    whips to keep them together, and there was a bustle and liveliness to a
+    degree I can't write about, and Jone and I never thought about going in
+    to breakfast until all those horses, some led and some ridden, and the
+    men and the hounds, and even the dust from their feet, had disappeared.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wanted to go see the hunt start off, but Mr. Poplington said it was
+    two or three miles distant, and out of our way, and that we'd better
+    move on as soon as possible so as to reach Chedcombe that night; but
+    he was glad, he said, that we had had a chance to see the hounds and
+    the horses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for himself, I could see he was a little down in the mouth, for he
+    said he was very fond of hunting, and that if he had known of this meet
+    he would have been there with a horse and his hunting clothes. I think
+    he hoped somebody would lend him a horse, but nobody did, and not being
+    able to hunt himself he disliked seeing other people doing what he
+    could not. Of course, Jone and me could not go to the hunt by
+    ourselves, so after we'd had our tea and toast and bacon we started
+    off. I will say here that when I was at the Ship Inn I had tea for my
+    breakfast, for I couldn't bring my mind to order coffee&mdash;a drink the
+    Saxons must never have heard of&mdash;in such a place; and since that we
+    have been drinking it because Jone said there was no use fighting
+    against established drinks, and that anyway he thought good tea was
+    better than bad coffee.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twelve</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE
+</p>
+<p>
+    As I said in my last letter, we started out for Chedcombe, not abreast,
+    as we had been before, but strung along the road, and me and Mr.
+    Poplington pretty doleful, being disappointed and not wanting to talk.
+    But as for Jone, he seemed livelier than ever, and whistled a lot of
+    tunes he didn't know. I think it always makes him lively to get rid of
+    seeing sights. The sun was shining brightly, and there was no reason to
+    expect rain for two or three hours anyway, and the country we passed
+    through was so fine, with hardly any houses, and with great hills and
+    woods, and sometimes valleys far below the road, with streams rushing
+    and bubbling, that after a while I began to feel better, and I pricked
+    up my tricycle, and, of course, being followed by Jone, we left Mr.
+    Poplington, whose melancholy seemed to have gotten into his legs, a
+    good way behind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We must have travelled two or three hours when all of a sudden I heard
+    a noise afar, and I drew up and listened. The noise was the barking of
+    dogs, and it seemed to come from a piece of woods on the other side of
+    the field which lay to the right of the road. The next instant
+    something shot out from under the trees and began going over the field
+    in ten-foot hops. I sat staring without understanding, but when I saw a
+    lot of brown and white spots bounce out of the wood, and saw, a long
+    way back in the open field, two red-coated men on horseback, the truth
+    flashed upon me that this was the hunt. The creature in front was the
+    stag, who had chosen to come this way, and the dogs and the horses was
+    after him, and I was here to see it all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Almost before I got this all straight in my mind the deer was nearly
+    opposite me on the other side of the field, going the same way that we
+    were. In a second I clapped spurs into my tricycle and was off. In
+    front of me was a long stretch of down grade, and over this I went as
+    fast as I could work my pedals; no brakes or holding back for me. My
+    blood was up, for I was actually in a deer hunt, and to my amazement
+    and wild delight I found I was keeping up with the deer. I was going
+    faster than the men on horseback.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hi! Hi!" I shouted, and down I went with one eye on the deer and the
+    other on the road, every atom of my body tingling with fiery
+    excitement. When I began to go up the little slope ahead I heard Jone
+    puffing behind me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You will break your neck," he shouted, "if you go down hill that way,"
+    and getting close up to me he fastened his cord to my tricycle. But I
+    paid no attention to him or his advice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The stag! The stag!" I cried. "As long as he keeps near the road we
+    can follow him! Hi!" And having got up to the top of the next hill I
+    made ready to go down as fast as I had gone before, for we had fallen
+    back a little, and the stag was now getting ahead of us; but it made me
+    gnash my teeth to find that I could not go fast, for Jone held back
+    with all his force (and both feet on the ground, I expect), and I could
+    not get on at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let go of me," I cried, "we shall lose the stag. Stop holding back."
+    But it wasn't any use; Jone's heels must have been nearly rubbed off,
+    but he held back like a good fellow, and I seemed to be moving along no
+    faster than a worm. I could not stand this; my blood boiled and
+    bubbled; the deer was getting away from me; and if it had been Porlock
+    Hill in front of me I would have dashed on, not caring whether the road
+    was steep or level.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A thought flashed across my mind, and I clapped my hand into my pocket
+    and jerked out a pair of scissors. In an instant I was free. The world
+    and the stag was before me, and I was flying along with a tornado-like
+    swiftness that soon brought me abreast of the deer. This perfectly
+    splendid, bounding creature was not far away from me on the other side
+    of the hedge, and as the field was higher than the road I could see him
+    perfectly. His legs worked so regular and springy, except when he came
+    to a cross hedge, which he went over with a single clip, and came down
+    like India rubber on the other side, that one might have thought he was
+    measuring the grass, and keeping an account of his jumps in his head.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0028"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img028.jpg">
+<img src="images/img028s.jpg" width="157" height="160"
+alt="'IN AN INSTANT I WAS FREE.'" /><br />
+'IN AN INSTANT I WAS FREE.'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    For one instant I looked around for the hounds, and I saw there was not
+    more than half a dozen following him, and I could only see the two
+    hunters I had seen before, and these was still a good way back. As for
+    Jone, I couldn't hear him at all, and he must have been left far
+    behind. There was still the woods on the other side, and the deer
+    seemed to run to keep away from that and to cross the road, and he
+    came nearer and nearer until I fancied he kept an eye on me as if he
+    was wondering if I was of any consequence, and if I could hinder him
+    from crossing the road and getting away into the valley below where
+    there was a regular wilderness of woods and underbrush.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If he does that, I thought, he will be gone in a minute and I shall
+    lose him, and the hunt will be over. And for fear he would make for the
+    hedge and jump over it, not minding me, I jerked out my handkerchief
+    and shook it at him. You can't imagine how this frightened him. He
+    turned sharp to the right, dashed up the hill, cleared a hedge and was
+    gone. I gave a gasp and a scream as I saw him disappear. I believe I
+    cried, but I didn't stop, and glad I was that I didn't; for in less
+    than a minute I had come to a cross lane which led in the very
+    direction the deer had taken. I turned into this lane and went on as
+    fast as I could, and I soon found that it led through a thick wood.
+    Down in the hollow, which I could not see into, I heard a barking and
+    shouting, and I kept on just as fast as I could make that tricycle go.
+    Where the lane led to, or what I should ever come to, I didn't think
+    about. I was hunting a stag, and all I cared for was to feel my
+    tricycle bounding beneath me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I may have gone a half a mile or two miles&mdash;I have not an idea how far
+    it was&mdash;when suddenly I came to a place where there was green grass and
+    rocks in an opening in the woods, and what a sight I saw! There was
+    that beautiful, grand, red deer half down on his knees and perfectly
+    quiet, and there was one of the men in red coats coming toward him with
+    a great knife in his hand, and a little farther back was three or four
+    dogs with another man, still on horseback, whipping them to keep them
+    back, though they seemed willing enough to lie there with their tongues
+    out, panting. As the man with the knife came up to the deer, the poor
+    creature raised its eyes to him, and didn't seem to mind whether he
+    came or not. It was trembling all over and fairly tired to death. When
+    the man got near enough he took hold of one of the deer's horns and
+    lifted up the hand with the knife in it, but he didn't bring it down on
+    that deer's throat, I can tell you, madam, for I was there and had him
+    by the arm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He turned on me as if he had been struck by lightning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you mean?" he shouted. "Let go my arm."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't you touch that deer," said I&mdash;my voice was so husky I could
+    hardly speak&mdash;"don't you see it's surrendered? Can you have the heart
+    to cut that beautiful throat when he is pleading for mercy?" The man's
+    eyes looked as if they would burst out of his head. He gave me a pull
+    and a push as if he would stick the knife into me, and he actually
+    swore at me, but I didn't mind that.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0029"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img029.jpg">
+<img src="images/img029s.jpg" width="200" height="129"
+alt="'IF YOU WAS A MAN I'D BREAK YOUR HEAD'" /><br />
+'IF YOU WAS A MAN I'D BREAK YOUR HEAD'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "You have got that poor creature now," said I, "and that's enough. Keep
+    it and tame it and bring it up with your children." I didn't have time
+    to say anything more, and he didn't have time to answer, for two of the
+    dogs who had got a little of their wind back sprang up and made a jump
+    at the stag; and he, having got a little of his wind back, jerked his
+    horn out of the hand of the man, and giving a sort of side spring
+    backward among the bushes and rocks, away he went, the dogs after him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man with the knife rushed out into the lane, and so did I, and so
+    did the man on horseback, almost on top of me. On the other side of the
+    lane was a little gorge with rocks and trees and water at the bottom of
+    it, and I was just in time to see the stag spring over the lane and
+    drop out of sight among the rocks and the moss and the vines.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man stood and swore at me regardless of my sex, so violent was his
+    rage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you was a man I'd break your head," he yelled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm glad I'm not," said I, "for I wouldn't want my head broken. But
+    what troubles me is, that I'm afraid that deer has broken his legs or
+    hurt himself some way, for I never saw anything drop on rocks in such a
+    reckless manner, and the poor thing so tired."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man swore again, and said something about wishing somebody else's
+    legs had been broken; and then he shouted to the man on horseback to
+    call off the dogs, which was of no use, for he was doing it already.
+    Then he turned on me again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are an American," he shouted. "I might have known that. No English
+    woman would ever have done such a beastly thing as that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You're mistaken there," I said; "there isn't a true English woman that
+    lives who would not have done the same thing. Your mother&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Confound my mother!" yelled the man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right," said I; "that's all in your family and none of my
+    business." Then he went off raging to where he had left his horse by a
+    gatepost.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The other man, who was a good deal younger and more friendly, came up
+    to me and said he wouldn't like to be in my boots, for I had spoiled a
+    pretty piece of sport; and then he went on and told me that it had been
+    a bad hunt, for instead of starting only one stag, three or four of
+    them had been started, and they had had a bad time, for the hounds and
+    the hunters had been mixed up in a nasty way. And at last, when the
+    master of the hounds and most every one else had gone off over Dunkery
+    Hill, and he didn't know whether they was after two stags or one, he
+    and his mate, who was both whippers-in, had gone to turn part of the
+    pack that had broken away, and had found that these dogs was after
+    another stag, and so before they knew it they was in a hunt of their
+    own, and they would have killed that stag if it had not been for me;
+    and he said it was hard on his mate, for he knew he had it in mind that
+    he was going to kill the only stag of the day.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He went on to say, that as for himself he wasn't so sorry, for this was
+    Sir Skiddery Henchball's land, and when a stag was killed it belonged
+    to the man whose land it died on. He told me that the master of the
+    hunt gets the head and the antlers, and the huntsman some other part,
+    which I forget, but the owner of the land, no matter whether he's in
+    the hunt or not, gets the body of the stag. "There's a cottage not a
+    mile down this lane," said he, "with its thatch torn off, and my sister
+    and her children live there, and Sir Skiddery turned them out on
+    account of the rent, and so I'm glad the old skinflint didn't get the
+    venison." And then he went off, being called by the other man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't know what time it was, but it seemed as if it must be getting
+    on into the afternoon; and feeling that my deer hunt was over, I
+    thought I had better lose no time in hunting up Jone, so I followed on
+    after the men and the dogs, who was going to the main road, but keeping
+    a little back of them, though, for I didn't know what the older one
+    might do if he happened to turn and see me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was sure that Jone had passed the little lane without seeing it, so I
+    kept on the way we had been going, and got up all the speed I could,
+    though I must say I was dreadfully tired, and even trembling a little,
+    for while I had been stag hunting I was so excited I didn't know how
+    much work I was doing. There was sign-posts enough to tell me the way
+    to Chedcombe, and so I kept straight on, up hill and down hill, until
+    at last I saw a man ahead on a bicycle, which I soon knew to be Mr.
+    Poplington. He was surprised enough at seeing me, and told me my
+    husband had gone ahead. I didn't explain anything, and it wasn't until
+    we got nearly to Chedcombe that we met Jone. He had been to Chedcombe,
+    and was coming back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone is a good fellow, but he's got a will of his own, and he said that
+    this would be the end of my tricycle riding, and that the next time we
+    went out together on wheels he'd drive. I didn't tell him anything
+    about the stag hunt then, for he seemed to be in favor of doing all the
+    talking himself; but after dinner, when we was all settled down quiet
+    and comfortable, I told him and Mr. Poplington the story of the chase,
+    and they both laughed, Mr. Poplington the most.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Thirteen</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is now about a week since my stag hunt, and Jone and I have kept
+    pretty quiet, taking short walks, and doing a good deal of reading in
+    our garden whenever the sun shines into the little arbor there, and Mr.
+    Poplington spends most of his time fishing. He works very hard at this,
+    partly for the sake of his conscience, I think, for his bicycle trip
+    made him lose three or four days he had taken a license for.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was day before yesterday that rheumatism showed itself certain and
+    plain in Jone. I had been thinking that perhaps I might have it first,
+    but it wasn't so, and it began in Jone, which, though I don't want you
+    to think me hard-hearted, madam, was perhaps better; for if it had not
+    been for it, it might have been hard to get him out of this comfortable
+    little cottage, where he'd be perfectly content to stay until it was
+    time for us to sail for America. The beautiful greenness which spreads
+    over the fields and hills, and not only the leaves of trees and vines,
+    but down and around trunks and branches, is charming to look at and
+    never to be forgotten; but when this moist greenness spreads itself to
+    one's bones, especially when it creeps up to the parts that work
+    together, then the soul of man longs for less picturesqueness and more
+    easy-going joints. Jone says the English take their climate as they do
+    their whiskey; and he calls it climate-and-water, with a very little of
+    the first and a good deal of the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, we must now leave Chedcombe; and when we talked to Mr.
+    Poplington about it he said there was two places the English went to
+    for their rheumatism. One was Bath, not far from here, and the other
+    was Buxton, up in the north. As soon as I heard of Bath I was on pins
+    and needles to go there, for in all the novel-reading I've done, which
+    has been getting better and better in quality since the days when I
+    used to read dime novels on the canal-boat, up to now when I like the
+    best there is, I could not help knowing lots about Evelina and Beau
+    Brummel, and the Pump Room, and the fine ladies and young bucks, and it
+    would have joyed my soul to live and move where all these people had
+    been, and where all these things had happened, even if fictitiously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But Mr. Poplington came down like a shower on my notions, and said that
+    Bath was very warm, and was the place where everybody went for their
+    rheumatism in winter; but that Buxton was the place for the summer,
+    because it was on high land and cool. This cast me down a good deal;
+    for if we could have gone where I could have steeped my soul in
+    romanticness, and at the same time Jone could have steeped himself in
+    warm mineral water, there would not have been any time lost, and both
+    of us would have been happier. But Mr. Poplington stuck to it that it
+    would ruin anybody's constitution to go to such a hot place in August,
+    and so I had to give it up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So to-morrow we start for Buxton, which, from what I can make out, must
+    be a sort of invalid picnic ground. I always did hate diseases and
+    ailments, even of the mildest, when they go in caravan. I like to take
+    people's sicknesses separate, because then I feel I might do something
+    to help; but when they are bunched I feel as if it was sort of mean for
+    me to go about cheerful and singing when other people was all grunting.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But we are not going straight to Buxton. As I have often said, Jone is
+    a good fellow, and he told me last night if there was any bit of fancy
+    scenery I'd like to stop on the way to the unromantic refuge he'd be
+    glad to give me the chance, because he didn't suppose it would matter
+    much if he put off his hot soaks for a few days. It didn't take me long
+    to name a place I'd like to stop at&mdash;for most of my reading lately has
+    been in the guide books, and I had crammed myself with the descriptions
+    of places worth seeing, that would take us at least two years to look
+    at&mdash;so I said I would like to go to the River Wye, which is said to be
+    the most romantic stream in England, and when that is said, enough is
+    said for me, so Jone agreed, and we are going to do the Wye on our way
+    north.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is going to be an election here in a few days, and this morning
+    Jone and me hobbled into the village&mdash;that is, he hobbled in body, and
+    I did in mind to think of his going along like a creaky wheelbarrow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Everybody was agog about the election, and we was looking at some
+    placards posted against a wall, when Mr. Locky, the innkeeper, came
+    along, and after bidding us good-morning he asked Jone what party he
+    belonged to. "I'm a Home Ruler," said Jone, "especially in the matter
+    of tricycles." Mr. Locky didn't understand the last part of this
+    speech, but I did, and he said, "I am glad you are not a Tory, sir. If
+    you will read that, you will see what the Tory party has done for us,"
+    and he pointed out some lines at the bottom of a green placard, and
+    these was the words: "Remember it was the Tory party that lost us the
+    United States of America."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Jone, "that seems like going a long way off to get some
+    stones to throw at the Tories, but I feel inclined to heave a rock at
+    them myself for the injury that party has done to America."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To America!" said Mr. Locky, "Did the Tories ever harm America?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course they did," said Jone; "they lost us England, a very valuable
+    country, indeed, and a great loss to any nation. If it had not been for
+    the Tory party, Mr. Gladstone might now be in Washington as a senator
+    from Middlesex."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0030"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img030.jpg">
+<img src="images/img030.jpg" width="157" height="200"
+alt="'I'M A HOME RULER'" /><br />
+'I'M A HOME RULER'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    Mr. Locky didn't understand one word of this, and so he asked Jone
+    which leg his rheumatism was in; and when Jone told him it was his left
+    leg he said it was a very curious thing, but if you would take a
+    hundred men in Chedcombe there would be at least sixty with rheumatism
+    in the left leg, and perhaps not more than twenty with it in the right,
+    which was something the doctors never had explained yet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is awfully hard to go away and leave this lovely little cottage with
+    its roses and vines, and Miss Pondar, and all its sweet-smelling
+    comforts; and not only the cottage, but the village, and Mrs. Locky and
+    her husband at the Bordley Arms, who couldn't have been kinder to us
+    and more anxious to know what we wanted and what they could do. The
+    fact is, that when English people do like Americans they go at it with
+    just as much vim and earnestness as if they was helping Britannia to
+    rule more waves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While I was feeling badly at leaving Miss Pondar your letter came, dear
+    madam, and I must say it gave heavy hearts to Jone and me, to me
+    especially, as you can well understand. I went off into the
+    summer-house, and as I sat there thinking and reading the letter over
+    again, I do believe some tears came into my eyes; and Miss Pondar, who
+    was working in the garden only a little way off&mdash;for if there is
+    anything she likes to do it is to weed and fuss among the rose-bushes
+    and other flowers, which she does whenever her other work gives her a
+    chance&mdash;she happened to look up, and seeing that I was in trouble, she
+    came right to me, like the good woman she is, and asked me if I had
+    heard bad news, and if I would like a little gin and water.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I said that I had had bad news, but that I did not want any spirits,
+    and she said she hoped nothing had happened to any of my family, and I
+    told her not exactly; but in looking back it seemed as if it was almost
+    that way. I thought I ought to tell her what had happened, for I could
+    see that she was really feeling for me, and so I said: "Poor Lord
+    Edward is dead. To be sure, he was very old, and I suppose we had not
+    any right to think he'd live even as long as he did; and as he was
+    nearly blind and had very poor use of his legs it was, perhaps, better
+    that he should go. But when I think of what friends we used to be
+    before I was married, I can't help feeling badly to think that he has
+    gone; that when I go back to America he will not show he is glad to see
+    me home again, which he would be if there wasn't another soul on the
+    whole continent who felt that way."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Miss Pondar was now standing up with her hands folded in front of her,
+    and her head bowed down as if she was walking behind a hearse with
+    eight ostrich plumes on it. "Lord Edward," she said, in a melancholy,
+    respectful voice, "and will his remains be brought to England for
+    interment?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no," said I, not understanding what she was talking about. "I am
+    sure he will be buried somewhere near his home, and when I go back his
+    grave will be one of the first places I will visit."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A streak of bewilderment began to show itself in Miss Pondar's
+    melancholy respectfulness, and she said: "Of course, when one lives in
+    foreign parts one may die there, but I always thought in cases like
+    that they were brought home to their family vaults."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It may seem strange for me to think of anything funny at a time like
+    this, but when Miss Pondar mentioned family vaults when talking of Lord
+    Edward, there came into my mind the jumps he used to make whenever he
+    saw any of us coming home; but I saw what she was driving at and the
+    mistake she had made. "Oh," I said, "he was not a member of the British
+    nobility; he was a dog; Lord Edward was his name. I never loved any
+    animal as I loved him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I suppose, madam, that you must sometimes have noticed one of the top
+    candles of a chandelier, when the room gets hot, suddenly bending over
+    and drooping and shedding tears of hot paraffine on the candles below,
+    and perhaps on the table; and if you can remember what that overcome
+    candle looked like, you will have an idea of what Miss Pondar looked
+    like when she found out Lord Edward was a dog. I think that for one
+    brief moment she hugged to her bosom the fond belief that I was
+    intimate with the aristocracy, and that a noble lord, had he not
+    departed this life, would have been the first to welcome me home, and
+    that she&mdash;she herself&mdash;was in my service. But the drop was an awful
+    one. I could see the throes of mortified disappointment in her back, as
+    she leaned over a bed of pinks, pulling out young plants, I am afraid,
+    as well as weeds. When I looked at her, I was sorry I let her know it
+    was a dog I mourned. She has tried so hard to make everything all right
+    while we have been here, that she might just as well have gone on
+    thinking that it was a noble earl who died.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow morning we shall have our last Devonshire clotted cream, for
+    they tell me this is to be had only in the west of England, and when I
+    think of the beautiful hills and vales of this country I shall not
+    forget that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course we would not have time to stay here longer, even if Jone
+    hadn't got the rheumatism; but if he had to have it, for which I am as
+    sorry as anybody can be, it is a lucky thing that he did have it just
+    about the time that we ought to be going away, anyhow. And although I
+    did not think, when we came to England, that we should ever go to
+    Buxton, we are thankful that there is such a place to go to; although,
+    for my part, I can't help feeling disappointed that the season isn't
+    such that we could go to Bath, and Evelina and Beau Brummel.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0015"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Fourteen</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0031"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img031.jpg" width="618" height="313"
+alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img031l.jpg"width="156" height="153"
+alt="W" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    e came to this queer old English town, not because it is any better
+    than so many other towns, but because Mr. Poplington told us it was a
+    good place for our headquarters while we was seeing the River Wye and
+    other things in the neighborhood. This hotel is the best in the town
+    and very well kept, so that Jone made his usual remark about its being
+    a good place to stay in. We are near the point where the four principal
+    streets of the town, called Northgate, Eastgate, Southgate, and
+    Westgate, meet, and if there was nothing else to see it would be worth
+    while to stand there and look at so much Englishism coming and going
+    from four different quarters.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is another hotel here, called the New Inn, that was recommended
+    to us, but I thought we would not want to go there, for we came to see
+    old England, and I don't want to see its new and shiny things, so we
+    came to the Bell, as being more antique. But I have since found out
+    that the New Inn was built in 1450 to accommodate the pilgrims who came
+    to pay their respects to the tomb of Edward II. in the fine old
+    cathedral here. But though I should like to live in a four-hundred-and
+    forty-year-old house, we are very well satisfied where we are.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Two very good things come from Gloucester, for it is the well-spring of
+    Sunday schools and vaccination. They keep here the horns of the cow
+    that Dr. Jenner first vaccinated from, and not far from our hotel is
+    the house of Robert Raikes. This is an old-fashioned timber house, and
+    looks like a man wearing his skeleton outside of his skin. We are sorry
+    Mr. Poplington couldn't come here with us, for he could have shown us a
+    great many things; but he stayed at Chedcombe to finish his fishing,
+    and he said he might meet us at Buxton, where he goes every year for
+    his arm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To see the River Wye you must go down it, so with just one handbag we
+    took the train for the little town of Ross, which is near the beginning
+    of the navigable part of the river&mdash;I might almost say the wadeable
+    part, for I imagine the deepest soundings about Ross are not more than
+    half a yard. We stayed all night at a hotel overlooking the valley of
+    the little river, and as the best way to see this wonderful stream is
+    to go down it in a rowboat, as soon as we reached Ross we engaged a
+    boat and a man for the next morning to take us to Monmouth, which would
+    be about a day's row, and give us the best part of the river. But I
+    must say that when we looked out over the valley the prospect was not
+    very encouraging, for it seemed to me that if the sun came out hot it
+    would dry up that river, and Jone might not be willing to wait until
+    the next heavy rain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While we was at Chedcombe I read the "Maid of Sker," because its scenes
+    are laid in the Bristol Channel, about the coast near where we was, and
+    over in Wales. And when the next morning we went down to the boat which
+    we was going to take our day's trip in, and I saw the man who was to
+    row us, David Llewellyn popped straight into my mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This man was elderly, with gray hair, and a beard under his chin, with
+    a general air of water and fish. He was good-natured and sociable from
+    the very beginning. It seemed a shame that an old man should row two
+    people so much younger than he was, but after I had looked at him
+    pulling at his oars for a little while, I saw that there was no need
+    of pitying him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a good day, with only one or two drizzles in the morning, and we
+    had not gone far before I found that the Wye was more of a river than I
+    thought it was, though never any bigger than a creek. It was just about
+    warm enough for a boat trip, though the old man told us there had been
+    a "rime" that morning, which made me think of the "Ancient Mariner."
+    The more the boatman talked and made queer jokes, the more I wanted to
+    ask him his name; and I hoped he would say David Llewellyn, or at least
+    David, and as a sort of feeler I asked him if he had ever seen a
+    coracle. "A corkle?" said he. "Oh, yes, ma'am, I've seen many a one and
+    rowed in them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I couldn't wait any longer, and so I asked him his name. He stopped
+    rowing and leaned on his oars and let the boat drift. "Now," said he,
+    "if you've got a piece of paper and a pencil I wish you would listen
+    careful and put down my name, and if you ever know of any other people
+    in your country coming to the River Wye, I wish you would tell them my
+    name, and say I am a boatman, and can take them down the river better
+    than anybody else that's on it. My name is Samivel Jones. Be sure
+    you've got that right, please&mdash;Samivel Jones. I was born on this river,
+    and I rowed on it with my father when I was a boy, and I have rowed on
+    it ever since, and now I am sixty-five years old. Do you want to know
+    why this river is called the Wye? I will tell you. Wye means crooked,
+    so this river is called the Wye because it is crooked. Wye, the crooked
+    river."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was no doubt about the old man's being right about the
+    crookedness of the stream. If you have ever noticed an ant running over
+    the floor you will have an idea how the Wye runs through this beautiful
+    country. If it comes to a hill it doesn't just pass it and let you see
+    one side of it, but it goes as far around it as it can, and then goes
+    back again, and goes around some other hill or great rocky point, or a
+    clump of woods, or anything else that travellers might like to see. At
+    one place, called Symond's Yat, it makes a curve so great, that if we
+    was to get out of our boat and walk across the land, we would have to
+    walk less than half a mile before we came to the river again; but to
+    row around the curve as we did, we had to go five miles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Every now and then we came to rapids. I didn't count them, but I think
+    there must have been about one to every mile, where the river-bed was
+    full of rocks, and where the water rushed furiously around and over
+    them. If we had been rowing ourselves we would have gone on shore and
+    camped when we came to the first of these rapids, for we wouldn't have
+    supposed our little boat could go through those tumbling, rushing
+    waters; but old Samivel knew exactly how the narrow channel, just deep
+    enough sometimes for our boat to float without bumping the bottom, runs
+    and twists itself among the hidden rocks, and he'd stand up in the bow
+    and push the boat this way and that until it slid into the quiet water
+    again, and he sat down to his oars. After we had been through four or
+    five of these we didn't feel any more afraid than if we had been
+    sitting together on our own little back porch.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for the banks of this river, they got more and more beautiful as we
+    went on. There was high hills with some castles, woods and crags and
+    grassy slopes, and now and then a lordly mansion or two, and great
+    massive, rocky walls, bedecked with vines and moss, rising high up
+    above our heads and shutting us out from the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone and I was filled as full as our minds could hold with the romantic
+    loveliness of the river and its banks, and old Samivel was so pleased
+    to see how we liked it&mdash;for I believe he looked upon that river as his
+    private property&mdash;that he told us about everything we saw, and pointed
+    out a lot of things we wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for him,
+    as if he had been a man explaining a panorama, and pointing out with a
+    stick the notable spots as the canvas unrolled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The only thing in his show which didn't satisfy him was two very fine
+    houses which had both of them belonged to noble personages in days
+    gone by, but which had been sold, one to a man who had made his money
+    in tea, and the other to a man who had made money in cotton. "Think of
+    that," said he; "cotton and tea, and living in such mansions as them
+    are, once owned by lords. They are both good men, and gives a great
+    deal to the poor, and does all they can for the country; but only think
+    of it, madam, cotton and tea! But all that happened a good while ago,
+    and the world is getting too enlightened now for such estates as them
+    are to come to cotton and tea."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sometimes we passed houses and little settlements, but, for the most
+    part, the country was as wild as undiscovered lands, which, being that
+    to me, I felt happier, I am sure, than Columbus did when he first
+    sighted floating weeds. Jone was a good deal wound up too, for he had
+    never seen anything so beautiful as all this. We had our luncheon at a
+    little inn, where the bread was so good that for a time I forgot the
+    scenery, and then we went on, passing through the Forest of Dean,
+    lonely and solemn, with great oak and beech trees, and Robin Hood and
+    his merry men watching us from behind the bushes for all we knew.
+    Whenever the river twists itself around, as if to show us a new view,
+    old Samivel would say: "Now isn't that the prettiest thing you've seen
+    yet?" and he got prouder and prouder of his river every mile he rowed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At one place he stopped and rested on his oars. "Now, then," said he,
+    twinkling up his face as if he was really David Llewellyn showing us a
+    fish with its eyes bulged out with sticks to make it look fresh, "as we
+    are out on a kind of a lark, suppose we try a bit of a hecho," and then
+    he turned to a rocky valley on his left, and in a voice like the man at
+    the station calling out the trains he yelled, "Hello there, sir! What
+    are you doing there, sir? Come out of that!" And when the words came
+    back as if they had been balls batted against a wall, he turned and
+    looked at us as proud and grinny as if the rocks had been his own baby
+    saying "papa" and "mamma" for visitors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not long after this we came to a place where there was a wide field on
+    one side, and a little way off we could see the top of a house among
+    the trees. A hedge came across the field to the river, and near the
+    bank was a big gate, and on this gate sat two young women, and down on
+    the ground on the side of the hedge nearest to us was another young
+    woman, and not far from her was three black hogs, two of them pointing
+    their noses at her and grunting, and the other was grunting around a
+    place where those young women had been making sketches and drawings,
+    and punching his nose into the easels and portfolios on the ground. The
+    young woman on the grass was striking at the hogs with a stick and
+    trying to make them go away, which they wouldn't do; and just as we
+    came near she dropped the stick and ran, and climbed up on the gate
+    beside the others, after which all the hogs went to rooting among the
+    drawing things.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As soon as Samivel saw what was going on he stopped his boat, and
+    shouted to the hogs a great deal louder than he had shouted to the
+    echo, but they didn't mind any more than they had minded the girl with
+    the stick. "Can't we stop the boat," I said, "and get out and drive off
+    those hogs? They will eat up all the papers and sketches."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just put me ashore," said Jone, "and I'll clear them out in no time;"
+    and old Samivel rowed the boat close up to the bank.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But when Jone got suddenly up on his feet there was such a twitch
+    across his face that I said to him, "Now just you sit down. If you go
+    ashore to drive off those hogs you'll jump about so that you'll bring
+    on such a rheumatism you can't sleep."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll get out myself," said Samivel, "if I can find a place to fasten
+    the boat to. I can't run her ashore here, and the current is strong."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't you leave the boat," said I, for the thought of Jone and me
+    drifting off and coming without him to one of those rapids sent a
+    shudder through me; and as the stern of the boat where I sat was close
+    to the shore I jumped with Jone's stick in my hand before either of
+    them could hinder me. I was so afraid that Jone would do it that I was
+    very quick about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The minute I left the boat Jone got ready to come after me, for he had
+    no notion of letting me be on shore by myself, but the boat had drifted
+    off a little, and old Samivel said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is a pretty steep bank to get up with the rheumatism on you. I'll
+    take you a little farther down, where I can ground the boat, and you
+    can get off more steadier."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But this letter is getting as long as the River Wye itself, and I must
+    stop it.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0016"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Fifteen</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
+</p>
+<p>
+    As soon as I jumped on shore, as I told you in my last, and had taken a
+    good grip on Jone's heavy stick, I went for those hogs, for I wanted to
+    drive them off before Jone came ashore, for I didn't want him to think
+    he must come.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have driven hogs and cows out of lots and yards often enough, as you
+    know yourself, madam, so I just stepped up to the biggest of them and
+    hit him a whack across the head as he was rubbing his nose in among
+    some papers with bits of landscapes on them, as was enough to make him
+    give up studying art for the rest of his life; but would you believe
+    it, madam, instead of running away he just made a bolt at me, and gave
+    me such a push with his head and shoulders he nearly knocked me over? I
+    never was so astonished, for they looked like hogs that you might think
+    could be chased out of a yard by a boy. But I gave the fellow another
+    crack on the back, which he didn't seem to notice, but just turned
+    again to give me another push, and at the same minute the two others
+    stopped rooting among the paint-boxes and came grunting at me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the first time in my life I was frightened by hogs. I struck at
+    them as hard as I could, and before I knew what I was about I flung
+    down the stick, made a rush for that gate, and was on top of it in no
+    time, in company with the three other young women that was sitting
+    there already.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really," said the one next to me, "I fancied you was going to be gored
+    to atoms before our eyes. Whatever made you go to those nasty beasts?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I looked at her quite severe, getting my feet well up out of reach of
+    the hogs if they should come near us.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I saw you was in trouble, miss, and I came to help you. My husband
+    wanted to come, but he has the rheumatism and I wouldn't let him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The other two young women looked at me as well as they could around the
+    one that was near me, and the one that was farthest off said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If the creatures could have been driven off by a woman, we could have
+    done it ourselves. I don't know why you should think you could do it
+    any better than we could."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must say, madam, that at that minute I was a little humble-minded,
+    for I don't mind confessing to you that the idea of one American woman
+    plunging into a conflict that had frightened off three English women,
+    and coming out victorious, had a good deal to do with my trying to
+    drive away those hogs; and now that I had come out of the little end
+    of the horn, just as the young women had, I felt pretty small, but I
+    wasn't going to let them see that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think that English hogs," said I, "must be savager than American
+    ones. Where I live there is not any kind of a hog that would not run
+    away if I shook a stick at him." The young woman at the other end of
+    the gate now spoke again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Everything British is braver than anything American," said she; "and
+    all you have done has been to vex those hogs, and they are chewing up
+    our drawing things worse than they did before."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course I fired up at this, and said, "You are very much mistaken
+    about Americans." But before I could say any more she went on to tell
+    me that she knew all about Americans; she had been in America, and such
+    a place she could never have fancied.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Over there you let everybody trample over you as much as they please.
+    You have no conveniences. One cannot even get a cab. Fancy! Not a cab
+    to be had unless one pays enough for a drive in Hyde Park."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must say that the hogs charging down on me didn't astonish me any
+    more than to find myself on top of a gate with a young woman charging
+    on my country in this fashion, and it was pretty hard on me to have her
+    pitch into the cab question, because Jone and me had had quite a good
+    deal to say about cabs ourselves, comparing New York and London,
+    without any great fluttering of the stars and stripes; but I wasn't
+    going to stand any such talk as that, and so I said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I know very well that our cab charges are high, and it is not likely
+    that poor people coming from other countries are able to pay them; but
+    as soon as our big cities get filled up with wretched, half-starved
+    people, with the children crying for bread at home, and the father glad
+    enough that he's able to get people to pay him a shilling for a drive,
+    and that he's not among the hundreds and thousands of miserable men who
+    have not any work at all, and go howling to Hyde Park to hold meetings
+    for blood or bread, then we will be likely to have cheap cabs as you
+    have."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How perfectly awful!" said the young woman nearest me; but the one at
+    the other end of the gate didn't seem to mind what I said, but shifted
+    off on another track.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And then there's your horses' tails," said she; "anything nastier
+    couldn't be fancied. Hundreds of them everywhere with long tails down
+    to their heels, as if they belong to heathens who had never been
+    civilized."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Heathens?" said I. "If you call the Arabians heathens, who have the
+    finest horses in the world, and wouldn't any more think of cutting off
+    their tails than they would think of cutting their legs off; and if
+    you call the cruel scoundrels who torture their poor horses by sawing
+    their bones apart so as to get a little stuck-up bob on behind, like a
+    moth-eaten paint-brush&mdash;if you call them Christians, then I suppose
+    you're right. There is a law in some parts of our country against the
+    wickedness of chopping off the tails of live horses, and if you had
+    such a law here you'd be a good deal more Christian-like than you are,
+    to say nothing of getting credit for decent taste."
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this time I had forgotten all about what Jone and I had agreed upon
+    as to arguing over the differences between countries, and I was just as
+    peppery as a wasp. The young woman at the other end of the gate was
+    rather waspy too, for she seemed to want to sting me wherever she could
+    find a spot uncovered; and now she dropped off her horses' tails, and
+    began to laugh until her face got purple.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You Americans are so awfully odd," she said. "You say you raise your
+    corn and your plants instead of growing them. It nearly makes me die
+    laughing when I hear one of you Americans say raise when you mean
+    grow."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now Jone and me had some talk about growing and raising, and the
+    reasons for and against our way of using the words; but I was ready to
+    throw all this to the winds, and was just about to tell the impudent
+    young woman that we raised our plants just the same as we raised our
+    children, leaving them to do their own growing, when the young woman
+    in the middle of the three, who up to this time hadn't said a word,
+    screamed out:
+</p>
+<a name="image-0032"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img032.jpg">
+<img src="images/img032s.jpg" width="240" height="151"
+alt="'AND WITH A SCREECH I DASHED AT THOSE HOGS LIKE A STEAM ENGINE'" /><br />
+'AND WITH A SCREECH I DASHED AT THOSE HOGS LIKE A STEAM ENGINE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "Oh, dear! Oh, dear! He's pulled out my drawing of Wilton Bridge. He'll
+    eat it up. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Whatever shall I do?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Instead of speaking I turned quick and looked at the hogs, and there,
+    sure enough, one of them had rooted open a portfolio and had hold of
+    the corners of a colored picture, which, from where I sat, I could see
+    was perfectly beautiful. The sky and the trees and the water was just
+    like what we ourselves had seen a little while ago, and in about half a
+    minute that hog would chew it up and swallow it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The young woman next to me had an umbrella in her hand. I made a snatch
+    at this and dropped off that gate like a shot. I didn't stop to think
+    about anything except that beautiful picture was on the point of being
+    swallowed up, and with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam
+    engine. When they saw me coming with my screech and the umbrella they
+    didn't stop a second, but with three great wiggles and three scared
+    grunts they bolted as fast as they could go. I picked up the picture of
+    the bridge, together with the portfolio, and took them to the young
+    woman who owned them. As the hogs had gone, all three of the women was
+    now getting down from the gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you very much," she said, "for saving my drawings. It was
+    awfully good of you, especially&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, you are welcome," said I, cutting her off short; and, handing the
+    other young woman her umbrella, I passed by the impudent one without so
+    much as looking at her, and on the other side of the hedge I saw Jone
+    coming across the grass. I jerked open the gate, not caring who it
+    might swing against, and walked to meet Jone. When I was near enough I
+    called out to know what on earth had become of him that he had left me
+    there so long by myself, forgetting that I hadn't wanted him to come at
+    all; and he told me that he had had a hard time getting on shore,
+    because they found the banks very low and muddy, and when he had landed
+    he was on the wrong side of a hedge, and had to walk a good way around
+    it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was troubled," said he, "because I thought you might come to grief
+    with the hogs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hogs!" said I, so sarcastic, that Jone looked hard at me, but I didn't
+    tell him anything more till we was in the boat, and then I just said
+    right out what had happened. Jone couldn't help laughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If I had known," said he, "that you was on top of a gate discussing
+    horses' tails and cabs I wouldn't have felt in such a hurry to get to
+    you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And you would have made a mistake if you hadn't," I said, "for hogs
+    are nothing to such a person as was on that gate."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Samivel was rowing slow and looking troubled, and I believe at that
+    minute he forgot the River Wye was crooked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That was really hard, madam," he said, "really hard on you; but it was
+    a woman, and you have to excuse women. Now if they had been three
+    Englishmen sitting on that gate they would never have said such things
+    to you, knowing that you was a stranger in these parts and had come on
+    shore to do them a service. And now, madam, I'm glad to see you are
+    beginning to take notice of the landscapes again. Just ahead of us is
+    another bend, and when we get around that you'll see the prettiest
+    picture you've seen yet. This is a crooked river, madam, and that's how
+    it got its name. Wye means crooked."
+</p>
+<p>
+    After a while we came to a little church near the river bank, and here
+    Samivel stopped rowing, and putting his hands on his knees he laughed
+    gayly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It always makes me laugh," he said, "whenever I pass this spot. It
+    seems to me like such an awful good joke. Here's that church on this
+    side of the river, and away over there on the other side of the river
+    is the rector and the congregation."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And how do they get to church?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In the summer time," said he, "they come over with a ferry-boat and a
+    rope; but in the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over
+    at all. Many's the time I've lain in bed and laughed and laughed when
+    I thought of this church on one side of the river, and the whole
+    congregation and the rector on the other side, and not able to get
+    over."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Toward the end of the day, and when we had rowed nearly twenty miles,
+    we saw in the distance the town of Monmouth, where we was going to stop
+    for the night.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0033"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img033.jpg">
+<img src="images/img033s.jpg" width="256" height="160"
+alt="'IN THE WINTER, WHEN THE WATER IS FROZEN, THEY CAN'T GET OVER'" /><br />
+'IN THE WINTER, WHEN THE WATER IS FROZEN, THEY CAN'T GET OVER'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    Old Samivel asked us what hotel we was going to stop at, and when we
+    told him the one we had picked out he said he could tell us a better
+    one.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If I was you," he said, "I'd go to the Eyengel." We didn't know what
+    this name meant, but as the old man said he would take us there we
+    agreed to go.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I should think you would have a lonely time rowing back by yourself,"
+    I said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Rowing back?" said he. "Why, bless your soul, lady, there isn't
+    nobody who could row this boat back agen that current and up them
+    rapids. We take the boats back with the pony. We put the boat on a
+    wagon and the pony pulls it back to Ross; and as for me, I generally go
+    back by the train. It isn't so far from Monmouth to Ross by the road,
+    for the road is straight and the river winds and bends."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man took us to the inn which he recommended, and we found it
+    was the Angel. It was a nice, old-fashioned, queer English house. As
+    far as I could see, they was all women that managed it, and it couldn't
+    have been managed better; and as far as I could see, we was the only
+    guests, unless there was "commercial gents," who took themselves away
+    without our seeing them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We was sorry to have old Samivel leave us, and we bid him a most
+    friendly good-by, and promised if we ever knew of anybody who wanted to
+    go down the River Wye we would recommend them to ask at Ross for
+    Samivel Jones to row them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We found the landlady of the Angel just as good to us as if we had been
+    her favorite niece and nephew. She hired us a carriage the next day,
+    and we was driven out to Raglan Castle, through miles and miles of
+    green and sloping ruralness. When we got there and rambled through
+    those grand old ruins, with the drawbridge and the tower and the
+    courtyard, my soul went straight back to the days of knights and
+    ladies, and prancing steeds, and horns and hawks, and pages and
+    tournaments, and wild revels and vaulted halls.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The young man who had charge of the place seemed glad to see how much
+    we liked it, as is natural enough, for everybody likes to see us
+    pleased with the particular things they have on hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You haven't anything like this in your country," said he. But to this
+    I said nothing, for I was tired of always hearing people speak of my
+    national denomination as if I was something in tin cans, with a label
+    pasted on outside; but Jone said it was true enough that we didn't have
+    anything like it, for if we had such a noble edifice we would have
+    taken care of it, and not let it go to rack and ruin in this way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone has an idea that it don't show good sense to knock a bit of
+    furniture about from garret to cellar until most of its legs are
+    broken, and its back cracked, and its varnish all peeled off, and then
+    tie ribbons around it, and hang it up in the parlor, and kneel down to
+    it as a relic of the past. He says that people who have got old ruins
+    ought to be very thankful that there is any of them left, but it's no
+    use in them trying to fill up the missing parts with brag.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We took the train and went to Chepstow, which is near the mouth of the
+    Wye, and as the railroad ran near the river nearly all the way we had
+    lots of beautiful views, though, of course, it wasn't anything like as
+    good as rowing along the stream in a boat. The next day we drove to the
+    celebrated Tintern Abbey, and on the way the road passed two miles and
+    a half of high stone wall, which shut in a gentleman's place. What he
+    wanted to keep in or keep out by means of a wall like that, we couldn't
+    imagine; but the place made me think of a lunatic asylum.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The road soon became shady and beautiful, running through woods along
+    the river bank and under some great crags called the Wyndcliffe, and
+    then we came to the Abbey and got out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of all the beautiful high-pointed archery of ancient times, this ruined
+    Abbey takes the lead. I expect you've seen it, madam, or read about it,
+    and I am not going to describe it; but I will just say that Jone, who
+    had rather objected to coming out to see any more old ruins, which he
+    never did fancy, and only came because he wouldn't have me come by
+    myself, was so touched up in his soul by what he saw there, and by
+    wandering through this solemn and beautiful romance of bygone days, he
+    said he wouldn't have missed it for fifty dollars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We came back to Gloucester to-day, and to-morrow we are off for Buxton.
+    As we are so near Stratford and Warwick and all that, Jone said we'd
+    better go there on our way, but I wouldn't agree to it. I am too
+    anxious to get him skipping round like a colt, as he used to, to stop
+    anywhere now, and when we come back I can look at Shakespeare's tomb
+    with a clearer conscience.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p class="loc">
+    LONDON.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After all, the weather isn't the only changeable thing in this world,
+    and this letter, which I thought I was going to send to you from
+    Gloucester, is now being finished in London. We was expecting to start
+    for Buxton, but some money that Jone had ordered to be sent from London
+    two or three days before didn't come, and he thought it would be wise
+    for him to go and look after it. So yesterday, which was Saturday, we
+    started off for London, and came straight to the Babylon Hotel, where
+    we had been before.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course we couldn't do anything until Monday, and this morning when
+    we got up we didn't feel in very good spirits, for of all the doleful
+    things I know of, a Sunday in London is the dolefullest. The whole town
+    looks as if it was the back door of what it was the day before, and if
+    you want to get any good out of it, you feel as if you had to sneak in
+    by an alley, instead of walking boldly up the front steps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone said we'd better go to Westminster Abbey to church, because he
+    believed in getting the best there was when it didn't cost too much,
+    but I wouldn't do it.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0034"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img034.jpg">
+<img src="images/img034s.jpg" width="149" height="200"
+alt="'WHO DO YOU SUPPOSE WE MET? MR. POPLINGTON!'" /><br />
+'WHO DO YOU SUPPOSE WE MET? MR. POPLINGTON!'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "No," said I. "When I walk in that religious nave and into the hallowed
+    precincts of the talented departed, the stone passages are full of
+    cloudy forms of Chaucers, Addisons, Miltons, Dickenses, and all those
+    great ones of the past; and I would hate to see the place filled up
+    with a crowd of weekday lay people in their Sunday clothes, which would
+    be enough to wipe away every feeling of romantic piety which might rise
+    within my breast."
+</p>
+<p>
+    As we didn't go to the Abbey, and was so long making up our minds where
+    we should go, it got too late to go anywhere, and so we stayed in the
+    hotel and looked out into a lonely and deserted street, with the wind
+    blowing the little leaves and straws against the tight-shut doors of
+    the forsaken houses. As I stood by that window I got homesick, and at
+    last I could stand it no longer, and I said to Jone, who was smoking
+    and reading a paper:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let's put on our hats and go out for a walk, for I can't mope here
+    another minute."
+</p>
+<p>
+    So down we went, and coming up the front steps of the front entrance
+    who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington! He was stopping at that
+    hotel, and was just coming home from church, with his face shining like
+    a sunset on account of the comfortableness of his conscience after
+    doing his duty.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0017"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Sixteen</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    BUXTON
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I mentioned Mr. Poplington in my last letter in connection with
+    the setting sun I was wrong; he was like the rising orb of day, and he
+    filled London with effulgent light. No sooner had we had a talk, and we
+    had told him all that had happened, and finished up by saying what a
+    doleful morning we had had, than he clapped his hand on his knees and
+    said, "I'll tell you what we will do. We will spend the afternoon among
+    the landmarks." And what we did was to take a four-wheeler and go
+    around the old parts of London, where Mr. Poplington showed us a lot of
+    soul-awakening spots which no common stranger would be likely to find
+    for himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you are ever steeped in the solemnness of a London Sunday, and you
+    can get a jolly, red-faced, middle-aged English gentleman, who has made
+    himself happy by going to church in the morning, and is ready to make
+    anybody else happy in the afternoon, just stir him up in the mixture,
+    and then you will know the difference between cod-liver oil and
+    champagne, even if you have never tasted either of them. The afternoon
+    was piled-up-and-pressed-down joyfulness for me, and I seemed to be
+    walking in a dream among the beings and the things that we only see in
+    books.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington first took us to the old Watergate, which was the river
+    entrance to York House, where Lord Bacon lived, and close to the gate
+    was the small house where Peter the Great and David Copperfield lived,
+    though not at the same time; and then we went to Will's old
+    coffee-house, where Addison, Steele, and a lot of other people of that
+    sort used to go to drink and smoke before they was buried in
+    Westminster Abbey, and where Charles and Mary Lamb lived afterward, and
+    where Mary used to look out of the window to see the constables take
+    the thieves to the Old Bailey near by. Then we went to Tom-all-alone's,
+    and saw the very grating at the head of the steps which led to the old
+    graveyard where poor Joe used to sweep the steps when Lady Dedlock came
+    there, and I held on to the very bars that the poor lady must have
+    gripped when she knelt on the steps to die.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not far away was the Black Jack Tavern, where Jack Sheppard and all the
+    great thieves of the day used to meet. And bless me! I have read so
+    much about Jack Sheppard that I could fairly see him jumping out of the
+    window he always dropped from when the police came. After that we saw
+    the house where Mr. Tulkinghorn, Lady Dedlock's lawyer, used to live,
+    and also the house where old Krook was burned up by spontaneous
+    combustion. Then we went to Bolt Court, where old Samuel Johnson lived,
+    walked about, and talked, and then to another court where he lived when
+    he wrote the dictionary, and after that to the "Cheshire Cheese" Inn,
+    where he and Oliver Goldsmith often used to take their meals together.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then we saw St. John's Gate, where the Knights Templars met, and the
+    yard of the Court of Chancery, where little Miss Flite used to wait for
+    the Day of Judgment; and as we was coming home he showed us the church
+    of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where every other Friday the bells are
+    rung at five o'clock in the afternoon, most people not knowing what it
+    is for, but really because the famous Nell Gwynn, who was far from
+    being a churchwoman, left a sum of money for having a merry peal of
+    bells rung every Friday until the end of the world. I got so wound up
+    by all this, that I quite forgot Jone, and hardly thought of Mr.
+    Poplington, except that he was telling me all these things, and
+    bringing back to my mind so much that I had read about, though
+    sometimes very little.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got back to the hotel and had gone up to our room, Jone said to
+    me:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That was all very fine and interesting from top to toe, but it does
+    seem to me as if things were dreadfully mixed. Dr. Johnson and Jack
+    Sheppard, I suppose, was all real and could live in houses; but when
+    it comes to David Copperfields and Lady Dedlocks and little Miss
+    Flites, that wasn't real and never lived at all, they was all talked
+    about in just the same way, and their favorite tramping grounds pointed
+    out, and I can't separate the real people from the fancy folk, if we've
+    got to have the same bosom heaving for the whole of them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jone," said I, "they are all real, every one of them. If Mr. Dickens
+    had written history I expect he'd put Lady Dedlock and Miss Flite and
+    David Copperfield into it; and if the history writers had written
+    stories they would have been sure to get Dr. Johnson and Lord Bacon and
+    Peter the Great into them; and the people in the one kind of writing
+    would have been just as real as the people in the other. At any rate,
+    that's the way they are to me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the Monday after our landmark expedition with Mr. Poplington, which
+    I shall never forget, Jone settled up his business matters, and the
+    next day we started for Buxton and the rheumatism baths. To our great
+    delight Mr. Poplington said he would go with us, not all the way, for
+    he wanted to stop at a little place called Rowsley, where he would stay
+    for a few days and then go on to Buxton; but we was very glad to have
+    him with us during the greater part of the way, and we all left the
+    hotel in the same four-wheeler.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got to the station Jone got first-class tickets, for we have
+    found out that if you want to travel comfortable in England, and have
+    porters attend to your baggage and find an empty carriage for you, and
+    have the guard come along and smile in the window and say he'll try to
+    let you have that carriage all to yourselves if he's able&mdash;the ableness
+    depending a good deal on what you give him&mdash;and for everybody to do
+    their best to make your journey pleasant, you must travel first class.
+    Mr. Poplington also bought a first-class ticket, for there was no
+    seconds on this line. As we was walking along by the platform Jone and
+    I gave a sort of a jump, for there was a regular Pullman car, which
+    made us think we might be at home. We stopped and looked at it, and
+    then the guard, who was standing by, stepped up to us and touched his
+    hat, and asked us if we would like to take the Pullman, and when Jone
+    asked what the extra charge was, he said nothing at all for first-class
+    passengers. We didn't have to stop to think a minute, but said right
+    off that we would go in it, but Mr. Poplington would not come with us.
+    He said English people wasn't accustomed to that, they wanted to be
+    more private; and, although he'd like to be with us, he could not
+    travel in a caravan like that, and so he went off by himself, and we
+    got into the Pullman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The guard said we could take any seats we pleased; and when we got in
+    we found there was only two or three people in it, and we chose two
+    nice armchairs, hung up our wraps, and made ourselves comfortable and
+    cosey.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We expected that the people who engaged seats would soon come crowding
+    in, but when the train started there was only four people besides
+    ourselves in that beautiful car, which was a first-class one, built in
+    the United States, with all sorts of comforts and conveniences. There
+    was a porter who laid himself out to make us happy, and about one
+    o'clock we had a nice lunch on a little table which was set up between
+    us, with two waiters to attend to us, and then Jone went and had a
+    smoke in a small room at one end of the car.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We thought it was strange that there should be so few people travelling
+    on this train, but when we came to a town where we made a long stop
+    Jone got out to talk to Mr. Poplington, supposing it likely that he'd
+    have a carriage to himself; but he was amazed to see that the train was
+    jammed and crowded, and he found Mr. Poplington squeezed up in a
+    carriage with seven other people, four of them one side and four the
+    other, each row staring into the faces of the other. Some of them was
+    eating bread and cheese out of paper parcels, and a big fat man was
+    reading a newspaper, which he spread out so as to partly cover the two
+    people sitting next to him, and all of them seemed anxious to find
+    some way of stretching their legs so as not to strike against the legs
+    of somebody else.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington was sitting by the window, and Jone couldn't help
+    laughing when he said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is this what you call being private, sir? I think you would find a
+    caravan more pleasant. Don't you want to come to the Pullman with us?
+    There are plenty of seats there, nice big armchairs that you can turn
+    around and sit any way you like, and look at people or not look at
+    them, just as you please, and there's plenty of room to walk about and
+    stretch yourself a little if you want to. There's a smoking-room, too,
+    that you can go to and leave whenever you like. Come and try it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you very much," said Mr. Poplington, "but I really couldn't do
+    that. I am not prejudiced at all, and I have a good many democratic
+    ideas, but that is too much for me. An Englishman's house is his
+    castle, and when he's travelling his railway carriage is his house. He
+    likes privacy and dislikes publicity."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is a funny kind of privacy you have here," said Jone. "And how
+    about your big clubs? Would you like to have them all divided up into
+    little compartments with half a dozen men in each one, generally
+    strangers to each other?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, a club is a very different thing," said Mr. Poplington.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone was going to talk more about the comfort of the Pullman cars, but
+    they began to shut the carriage doors, and he had to come back to me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We like English railway carriages very well when we can have one to
+    ourselves, but if even one stranger gets in and has to sit looking at
+    us for all the rest of the trip you don't feel anything like as private
+    as if you was walking along a sidewalk in London.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But Jone and I both agreed we wouldn't find any fault with English
+    people for not liking Pullman cars, so long as they put them on their
+    trains for Americans who do like them. And one thing is certain, that
+    if our railroad conductors and brakes-men and porters was as polite and
+    kind as they are in England, tips or no tips, we'd be a great deal
+    better off than we are.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whenever we stopped at a station the people would come and look through
+    the windows at us, as if we was some sort of a travelling show. I don't
+    believe most of them had ever seen a comfortable room on wheels before.
+    The other people in our car was all men, and looked as if they hadn't
+    their families with them, and was glad to get a little comfort on the
+    sly. When we got to Rowsley we saw Mr. Poplington on the platform,
+    running about, collecting all his different bits of luggage, and
+    counting them to see that they was all there, and then, as we had a
+    window open and was looking out, he came and bid us good-by; and when
+    I asked him to, he looked into our car.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he said. "What a public apartment! I could not
+    travel like that, you know. Good-by; I will see you at Buxton in a few
+    days."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0035"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img035.jpg">
+<img src="images/img035s.jpg" width="220" height="160"
+alt="MR. POPLINGTON LOOKING FOR THE LUGGAGE" /><br />
+MR. POPLINGTON LOOKING FOR THE LUGGAGE</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    We talked a good deal with Mr. Poplington about the hotels of Buxton,
+    and we had agreed to go to one called the Old Hall, where we are now.
+    There was a good many reasons why we chose this house, one being that
+    it was not as expensive as some of the others, though very nice; and
+    another, which had a good deal of force with me, was, that Mary Queen
+    of Scots came here for her rheumatism, and the room she used to have is
+    still kept, with some words she scratched with her diamond ring on the
+    window-pane. Sometimes people coming to this hotel can get this room,
+    and I was mighty sorry we couldn't do it, but it was taken. If I could
+    have actually lived and slept in a room which had belonged to the
+    beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, I would have been willing to have just
+    as much rheumatism as she had when she was here.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, modern rheumatisms are not as interesting as the rheumatisms
+    people of the past ages had; but from what I have seen of this town, I
+    think I am going to like it very much.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0018"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Seventeen</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0036"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img036.jpg" width="619" height="119"alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img036l.jpg"width="150" height="159"
+alt="W" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    BUXTON
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    hen we were comfortably settled here, Jone went to see a doctor, who
+    is a nice, kind old gentleman, who looks as if he almost might have
+    told Mary Queen of Scots how hot she ought to have the water in her
+    baths. He charges four times as much as the others, and has about a
+    quarter as many patients, which makes it all the same to him, and a
+    good deal better for the rheumatic ones who come to him, for they have
+    more time to go into particulars. And if anything does good to a person
+    who has something the matter with him, it's being able to go into
+    particulars about it. It's often as good as medicine, and always more
+    comforting.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We unpacked our trunks and settled ourselves down for a three weeks'
+    stay here, for no matter how much rheumatism you have or how little,
+    you've got to take Buxton and its baths in three weeks' doses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Besides taking the baths Jone has to drink the waters, and as I cannot
+    do much else to help him, I am encouraging him by drinking them too.
+    There are two places where you can get the lukewarm water that people
+    come here to drink. One is the public well, where there is a pump free
+    to everybody, and the other is in the pump-room just across the street
+    from the well, where you pay a penny a glass for the same water, which
+    three doleful old women spend all their time pumping for visitors.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0037"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img037.jpg">
+<img src="images/img037s.jpg" width="170" height="150"
+alt="POMONA ENCOURAGES JONAS" /><br />
+POMONA ENCOURAGES JONAS</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    People are ordered to drink this water very carefully. It must be done
+    at regular times, beginning with a little, and taking more and more
+    each day until you get to a full tumbler, and then if it seems to be
+    too strong for you, you must take less. So far as I can find out there
+    is nothing particular about it, except that it is lukewarm water,
+    neither hot enough nor cold enough to make it a pleasant drink. It
+    didn't seem to agree with Jone at first, but after he kept at it three
+    or four days it began to suit him better, so that he could take nearly
+    a tumbler without feeling badly. Two or three times I felt it might be
+    better for my health if I didn't drink it, but I wanted to stand by
+    Jone as much as I could, and so I kept on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We have been here a week now, and this morning I found out that all the
+    water we drink at this hotel is brought from the well of St. Ann, where
+    the public pump is, and everybody drinks just as much of it as they
+    want whenever they want to, and they never think of any such thing as
+    feeling badly or better than if it was common water. The only
+    difference is, that it isn't quite as lukewarm when we get it here as
+    it is at the well. When I was told this I was real mad, after all the
+    measuring and fussing we had had when taking the water as a medicine,
+    and then drinking it just as we pleased at the table. But the people
+    here tell me that it is the gas in it which makes it medicinal, and
+    when that floats out it is just like common water. That may be; but if
+    there's a penny's worth of gas in every tumbler of water sold in the
+    pump-room, there ought to be some sort of a canopy put over the town to
+    catch what must escape in the pourings and pumpings, for it's too
+    valuable to be allowed to get away. If it's the gas that does it, a
+    rheumatic man anchored in a balloon over Buxton, and having the gas
+    coming up unmixed to him, ought to be well in about two days.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone told me his first bath was to be heated up to ninety-four
+    degrees I said to him that he'd be boiled alive, but he wasn't; and
+    when he came home he said he liked it. Everything is very systematic in
+    the great bathing-house. The man who tends to Jone hangs up his watch
+    on a little stand on the edge of the bathtub, and he stays in just so
+    many minutes, and when he's ready to come out he rings a bell, and then
+    he's wrapped up in about fourteen hot towels, and sits in an armchair
+    until he's dry. Jone likes all this, and says so much about it that it
+    makes me want to try it too; though as there isn't any reason for it I
+    haven't tried them yet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is an awfully queer, old-fashioned town, and must have been a good
+    deal like Bath in the days of Evelina. There is a long line of high
+    buildings curved like a half moon, which is called the Crescent, and at
+    one end of this is a pump-room, and at the other are the natural baths,
+    where the water is just as warm as when it comes out of the ground,
+    which is eighty-two degrees. This is said to chill people; but from
+    what I remember about summer time I don't see how eighty-two degrees
+    can be cold.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Opposite the Crescent is a public park called The Slopes, and farther
+    on there are great gardens with pavilions, and a band of music every
+    day, and a theatre, and a little river, and tennis courts, and all
+    sorts of things for people who haven't anything to do with their time,
+    which is generally the case with folks at rheumatic watering-places.
+    Opposite to our hotel is a bowling court, which they say has been
+    there for hundreds of years, and is just as hard and smooth as a boy's
+    slate. The men who play bowls here are generally those who have got
+    over the rheumatism of their youth, and whose joints have not been very
+    much stiffened up yet by old age. The people who are yet too young for
+    rheumatism, and have come here with their families, play tennis.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The baths take such a little time, not over six or seven minutes for
+    them each day, and every third day skipped, that there is a good deal
+    of time left on the hands of the people here; and those who can't play
+    tennis or bowl, and don't want to spend the whole time in the pavilion
+    listening to the music, go about in bath-chairs, which, so far as I can
+    see, are just as important as the baths. I don't know whether you ever
+    saw a bath-chair, madam, but it's a comfortable little cab on three
+    wheels, pulled by a man. They take people everywhere, and all the
+    streets are full of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As soon as I saw these nice little traps I said to Jone, "Now this is
+    the very thing for you. It hurts you to walk far, and you want to see
+    all over this town, and one of these bath-chairs will take you into
+    lots of places where you couldn't go in a carriage."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take me!" said Jone. "I should say not. You don't catch me being
+    hauled about in one of those things as if I was in a sort of
+    wheelbarrow ambulance being taken to the hospital, with you walking
+    along by my side like a trained nurse. No, indeed! I have not gone so
+    far as that yet."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I told him this was all stuff and nonsense, and if he wanted to get the
+    good out of Buxton he'd better go about and see it, and he couldn't go
+    about if he didn't take a bath-chair; but all he said to that was, that
+    he could see it without going about, and he was satisfied. But that
+    didn't count anything with me, for the trouble with Jone is, that he's
+    too easy satisfied.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It's true that there is a lot to be seen in Buxton without going about.
+    The Slopes are just across the street from the hotel, and when it
+    doesn't happen to be raining we can go and sit there on a bench and see
+    lively times enough. People are being trundled about in their
+    bath-chairs in every direction; there is always a crowd at St. Ann's
+    well, where the pump is; all sorts of cabs and carts are being driven
+    up and down just as fast as they can go, for the streets are as smooth
+    as floors, and in the morning and evening there are about half a dozen
+    coaches with four horses, and drivers and horn-blowers in red coats,
+    the horses prancing and whips cracking as they start out for country
+    trips or come back again. And as for the people on foot, they just
+    swarm like bees, and rain makes no difference, except that then they
+    wear mackintoshes, and when it's fine they don't. Some of these people
+    step along as brisk as if they hadn't anything the matter with them,
+    but a good many of them help out their legs with canes and crutches. I
+    begin to think I can tell how long a man has been at Buxton by the
+    number of sticks he uses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One day we was sitting on a bench in The Slopes, enjoying a bit of
+    sunshine that had just come along, when a middle-aged man, with a very
+    high collar and a silk hat, came and sat down by Jone. He spoke civilly
+    to us, and then went on to say that if ever we happened to take a house
+    near Liverpool he'd be glad to supply us with coals, because he was a
+    coal merchant. Jone told him that if he ever did take a house near
+    Liverpool he certainly would give him his custom. Then the man gave us
+    his card. "I come here every year," he said, "for the rheumatism in my
+    shoulder, and if I meet anybody that lives near Liverpool, or is likely
+    to, I try to get his custom. I like it here. There's a good many 'otels
+    in this town. You can see a lot of them from here. There's St. Ann's,
+    that's a good house, but they charge you a pound a day; and then
+    there's the Old Hall. That's good enough, too, but nobody goes there
+    except shopkeepers and clergymen. Of course, I don't mean bishops; they
+    go to St. Ann's."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wondered which the man would think Jone was, if he knew we was
+    stopping at the Old Hall; but I didn't ask him, and only said that
+    other people besides shopkeepers and clergymen went to the Old Hall,
+    for Mary Queen of Scots used to stop at that house when she came to
+    take the waters, and her room was still there, just as it used to be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mary Queen of Scots!" said he. "At the Old Hall?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said I, "that's where she used to go; that was her hotel."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Queen Mary, Queen of the Scots!" he said again. "Well, well, I
+    wouldn't have believed it. But them Scotch people always was
+    close-fisted. Now if it had been Queen Elizabeth, she wouldn't have
+    minded a pound a day;" and then, after asking Jone to excuse him for
+    forgetting his manners and not asking where his rheumatism was, and
+    having got his answer, he went away, wondering, I expect, how Mary
+    Queen of Scots could have been so stingy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But although we could see so much sitting on benches, I didn't give up
+    Jone and the bath-chairs, and day before yesterday I got the better of
+    him. "Now," said I, "it is stupid for you to be sitting around in this
+    way as if you was a statue of a public benefactor carved by
+    subscription and set up in a park. The only sensible thing for you to
+    do is to take a bath-chair and go around and see things. And if you are
+    afraid people will think you are being taken to a hospital, you can put
+    down the top of the thing, and sit up straight and smoke your pipe.
+    Patients in ambulances never smoke pipes. And if you don't want me
+    walking by your side like a trained nurse, I'll take another chair and
+    be pulled along with you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The idea of a pipe, and me being in another chair, rather struck his
+    fancy, and he said he would consider it; and so that afternoon we went
+    to the hotel door and looked at the long line of bath-chairs standing
+    at the curbstone on the other side of the street, with the men waiting
+    for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very
+    comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses.
+    Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn out, as if they
+    had belonged to sporting men and had been driven half to death. And
+    then again there was some that looked fat and lazy, like the old horses
+    on a farm, that the women drive to town.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone picked out a good man, who looked as if he was well broken and not
+    afraid of locomotives and able to do good work in single harness. When
+    I got Jone in the bath-chair, with the buggy-top down, and his pipe
+    lighted, and his hat cocked on one side a little, so as to look as if
+    he was doing the whole thing for a lark, I called another chair, not
+    caring what sort of one it was, and then we told the men to pull us
+    around for a couple of hours, leaving it to them to take us to
+    agreeable spots, which they said they would do.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After we got started Jone seemed to like it very well, and we went
+    pretty much all over the town, sometimes stopping to look in at the
+    shop windows, for the sidewalks are so narrow that it is no trouble to
+    see the things from the street. Then the men took us a little way out
+    of the town to a place where there was a good view for us, and a bench
+    where they could go and sit down and rest. I expect all the chair men
+    that work by the hour manage to get to this place with a view as soon
+    as they can.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After they had had a good rest we started off to go home by a different
+    route. Jone's man was a good strong fellow and always took the lead,
+    but my puller was a different kind of a steed, and sometimes I was left
+    pretty far behind. I had not paid much attention to the man at first,
+    only noticing that he was mighty slow; but going back a good deal of
+    the way was uphill, and then all his imperfections came out plain, and
+    I couldn't help studying him. If he had been a horse I should have said
+    he was spavined and foundered, with split frogs and tonsilitis; but as
+    he was a man, it struck me that he must have had several different
+    kinds of rheumatism and been sent to Buxton to have them cured, but not
+    taking the baths properly, or drinking the water at times when he ought
+    not to have done it, his rheumatisms had all run together and had
+    become fixed and immovable. How such a creaky person came to be a
+    bath-chair man I could not think, but it may be that he wanted to stay
+    in Buxton for the sake of the loose gas which could be had for nothing,
+    and that bath-chairing was all he could get to do.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I pitied the poor old fellow, who, if he had been a horse, would have
+    been no more than fourteen hands high, and as he went puffing along,
+    tugging and grunting as if I was a load of coal, I felt as if I
+    couldn't stand it another minute, and I called out to him to stop. It
+    did seem as if he would drop before he got me back to the hotel, and I
+    bounced out in no time, and then I walked in front of him and turned
+    around and looked at him. If it is possible for a human hack-horse to
+    have spavins in two joints in each leg, that man had them; and he
+    looked as if he couldn't remember what it was to have a good feed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He seemed glad to rest, but didn't say anything, standing and looking
+    straight ahead of him like an old horse that has been stopped to let
+    him blow. He did look so dreadful feeble that I thought it would be a
+    mercy to take him to some member of the Society for the Prevention of
+    Cruelty to Animals and have him chloroformed. "Look here," said I, "you
+    are not fit to walk. Get into that bath-chair, and I'll pull you back
+    to your stand."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lady," said he, "I couldn't do that. If you dunno mind walking home,
+    and will pay me for the two hours all the same, I will be right
+    thankful for that. I'm poorly to-day."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Get into the chair," said I, "and I'll pull you back. I'd like to do
+    it, for I want some exercise."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no, no!" said he. "That would be a sin; and besides I was engaged
+    to pull you two hours, and I must be paid for that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Get into that chair," I said, "and I'll pay you for your two hours and
+    give you a shilling besides."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He looked at me for a minute, and then he got into the chair, and I
+    shut him up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, lady," said he, "you can pull me a little way if you want
+    exercise, and as soon as you are tired you can stop, and I'll get out,
+    but you must pay me the extra shilling all the same."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right," said I, and taking hold of the handle I started off. It
+    was real fun; the bath-chair rolled along beautifully, and I don't
+    believe the old man weighed much more than my Corinne when I used to
+    push her about in her baby carriage. We were in a back street, where
+    there was hardly anybody; and as for Jone and his bath-chair, I could
+    just see them ever so far ahead, so I started to catch up, and as the
+    street was pretty level now I soon got going at a fine rate. I hadn't
+    had a bit of good exercise for a long time, and this warmed me up and
+    made me feel gay.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0038"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img038.jpg">
+<img src="images/img038s.jpg" width="127" height="200"
+alt="'STOP, LADY, AND I'LL GET OUT'" /><br />
+'STOP, LADY, AND I'LL GET OUT'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    We was not very far behind Jone when the man began to call to me in a
+    sort of frightened fashion, as if he thought I was running away.
+    "Stop, lady!" he said; "we are getting near the gardens, and the people
+    will laugh at me. Stop, lady, and I'll get out." But I didn't feel a
+    bit like stopping; the idea had come into my head that it would be
+    jolly to beat Jone. If I could pass him and sail on ahead for a little
+    while, then I'd stop and let my old man get out and take his bath-chair
+    home. I didn't want it any more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just as I got close up behind Jone, and was about to make a rush past
+    him, his man turned into a side street. Of course I turned too, and
+    then I put on steam, and, giving a laugh as I turned around to look at
+    Jone, I charged on, intending to stop in a minute and have some fun in
+    hearing what Jone had to say about it; but you may believe, ma'am, that
+    I was amazed when I saw only a little way in front of me the bath-chair
+    stand where we had hired our machines! And all the bath-chair men were
+    standing there with their mouths wide open, staring at a woman running
+    along the street, pulling an old bath-chair man in a bath-chair! For a
+    second I felt like dropping the handle I held and making a rush for the
+    front door of the hotel, which was right ahead of me; and then I
+    thought, as now I was in for it, it would be a lot better to put a good
+    face on the matter, and not look as if I had done anything I was
+    ashamed of, and so I just slackened speed and came up in fine style at
+    the door of the Old Hall. Four or five of the bath-chair men came
+    running across the street to know if anything had happened to the old
+    party I was pulling, and he got out looking as ashamed as if he had
+    been whipped by his wife.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's a lark, mates," said he; "the lady's to pay me two shillings
+    extra for letting her pull me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Two shillings?" said I. "I only promised you one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That would be for pulling me a little way," he said; "but you pulled
+    me all the way back, and I couldn't do it for less than two shillings."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone now came up and got out quick.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What's the meaning of all this, Pomona?" said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Meaning?" said I. "Look at that dilapidated old bag of bones. He
+    wasn't fit to pull me, and so I thought it would be fun to pull him;
+    but, of course, I didn't know when I turned the corner I would be here
+    at the stand."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone paid the men, including the two extra shillings, and when we went
+    up to our room he said, "The next time we go out in two bath-chairs, I
+    am going to have a chain fastened to yours, and I'll have hold of the
+    other end of it."
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0019"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Eighteen</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    BUXTON
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have begun to take the baths. There really is so little to do in this
+    place that I couldn't help it, and so, while Jone was off tending to
+    his hot soaks, I thought I might as well try the thing myself. At any
+    rate it would fill up the time when I was alone. I find I like this
+    sort of bathing very much, and I wish I had begun it before. It reminds
+    me of a kind of medicine for colds that you used to make for me, madam,
+    when I first came to the canal-boat. It had lemons and sugar in it, and
+    it was so good I remember I used to think that I would like to go into
+    a lingering consumption, so that I could have it three times a day,
+    until I finally passed away like a lily on a snowbank.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone's been going about a good deal in a bath-chair, and doesn't mind
+    my walking alongside of him. He says it makes him feel easier in his
+    mind, on the whole.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington came two or three days ago, and he is stopping at our
+    hotel. We three have hired a carriage together two or three times and
+    have taken drives into, the country. Once we went to an inn, the Cat
+    and Fiddle, about five miles away, on a high bit of ground called Axe
+    Edge. It is said to be the highest tavern in England, and it's lucky
+    that it is, for that's the only recommendation it's got. The sign in
+    front of the house has on it a cat on its hind-legs playing a fiddle,
+    with a look on its face as if it was saying, "It's pretty poor, but
+    it's the best I can do for you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Inside is another painting of a cat playing a fiddle, and truly that
+    one might be saying, "Ha! Ha! You thought that that picture on the sign
+    was the worst picture you ever saw in your life, but now you see how
+    you are mistaken."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Up on that high place you get the rain fresher than you do in Buxton,
+    because it hasn't gone so far through the air, and it's mixed with more
+    chilly winds than anywhere else in England, I should say. But everybody
+    is bound to go to the Cat and Fiddle at least once, and we are glad we
+    have been there, and that it is over. I like the places near the town a
+    great deal better, and some of them are very pretty. One day we two and
+    Mr. Poplington took a ride on top of a stage to see Haddon Hall and
+    Chatsworth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Haddon Hall is to me like a dream of the past come true. Lots of other
+    old places have seemed like dreams, but this one was right before my
+    eyes, just as it always was. Of course, you must have read all about
+    it, madam, and I am not going to tell it over again. But think of it; a
+    grand old baronial mansion, part of it built as far back as the eleven
+    hundreds, and yet in good condition and fit to live in. That is what I
+    thought as I walked through its banqueting hall and courts and noble
+    chambers. "Why," said I to Jone, "in that kitchen our meals could be
+    cooked; at that table we could eat them; in these rooms we could sleep;
+    in these gardens and courts we could roam; we could actually live
+    here!" We haven't seen any other romance of the past that we could say
+    that about, and to this minute it puzzles me how any duke in this world
+    could be content to own a house like this and not live in it. But I
+    suppose he thinks more of water-pipes and electric lights than he does
+    of the memories of the past and time-hallowed traditions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for me, if I had been Dorothy Vernon, there's no man on earth, not
+    even Jone, that could make me run away from such a place as Haddon
+    Hall. They show the stairs down which she tripped with her lover when
+    they eloped; but if it had been me, it would have been up those stairs
+    I would have gone. Mr. Poplington didn't agree a bit with me about the
+    joy of living in this enchanting old house, and neither did Jone, I am
+    sure, although he didn't say so much. But then, they are both men, and
+    when it comes to soaring in the regions of romanticism you must not
+    expect too much of men.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After leaving Haddon Hall, which I did backward, the coach took us to
+    Chatsworth, which is a different sort of a place altogether. It is a
+    grand palace, at least it was built for one, but now it is an enormous
+    show place, bright and clean and sleek, and when we got there we saw
+    hundreds of visitors waiting to go in. They was taken through in squads
+    of about fifty, with a man to lead them, which he did very much as if
+    they was a drove of cattle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man who led our squad made us step along lively, and I must say
+    that never having been in a drove before, Jone and I began to get
+    restive long before we got through. As for the show, I like the British
+    Museum a great deal better. There is ever so much more to see there,
+    and you have time to stop and look at things. At Chatsworth they charge
+    you more, give you less, and treat you worse. When it came to taking us
+    through the grounds, Jone and I struck. We left the gang we was with,
+    and being shown where to find a gate out of the place, we made for that
+    gate and waited until our coach was ready to take us back to Buxton.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is a lot of fun going to the theatre here. It doesn't cost much, and
+    the plays are good and generally funny, and a rheumatic audience is a
+    very jolly one. The people seemed glad to forget their backs, their
+    shoulders, and their legs, and they are ready to laugh at things that
+    are only half comic, and keep up a lively chattering between the acts.
+    It's fun to see them when the play is over. The bath-chairs that have
+    come after some of them are brought right into the building, and are
+    drawn up just like carriages after the theatre. The first time we went I
+    wanted Jone to stop a while and see if we didn't hear somebody call
+    out, "Mrs. Barchester's bath-chair stops the way!" but he said I
+    expected too much, and would not wait.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We sit about so much in the gardens, which are lively when it is clear,
+    and not bad even in a little drizzle, that we've got to know a good
+    many of the people; and although Jone's a good deal given to reading, I
+    like to sit and watch them and see what they are doing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we first came here I noticed a good-looking young woman who was
+    hauled about in a bath-chair, generally with an open book in her lap,
+    which she never seemed to read much, because she was always gazing
+    around as if she was looking for something. Before long I found out
+    what she was looking for, for every day, sooner or later, generally
+    sooner, there came along a bath-chair with a good-looking young man in
+    it. He had a book in his lap too, but he was never reading it when I
+    saw him, because he was looking for the young woman; and as soon as
+    they saw each other they began to smile, and as they passed they always
+    said something, but didn't stop. I wondered why they didn't give their
+    pullers a rest and have a good talk if they knew each other, but before
+    long I noticed not very far behind the young lady's bath-chair was
+    always another bath-chair with an old gentleman in it with a
+    bottle-nose. After a while I found out that this was the young lady's
+    father, because sometimes he would call to her and have her stop, and
+    then she generally seemed to get some sort of a scolding.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, when I see anything of this kind going on, I can't help
+    taking one side or the other, and as you may well believe, madam, I
+    wouldn't be likely to take that of the old bottle-nosed man's side. I
+    had not been noticing these people for more than two or three days when
+    one morning, when Jone and me was sitting under an umbrella, for there
+    was a little more rain than common, I saw these two young people in
+    their bath-chairs, coming along side by side, and talking just as hard
+    as they could. At first I was surprised, but I soon saw how things was:
+    the old gentleman couldn't come out in the rain. It was plain enough
+    from the way these two young people looked at each other that they was
+    in love, and although it most likely hurt them just as much to come out
+    into the rain as it would the old man, love is all-powerful, even over
+    rheumatism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Pretty soon the clouds cleared away without notice, as they do in this
+    country, and it wasn't long before I saw, away off, the old man's
+    bath-chair coming along lively. His bottle-nose was sticking up in the
+    air, and he was looking from one side to the other as hard as he could.
+    The two lovers had turned off to the right and gone over a little
+    bridge and I couldn't see them; but by the way that old nose shook as
+    it got nearer and nearer to me, I saw they had reason to tremble,
+    though they didn't know it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the old father reached the narrow path he did not turn down it,
+    but kept straight on, and I breathed a sigh of deep relief. But the
+    next instant I remembered that the broad path turned not far beyond,
+    and that the little one soon ran into it, and so it could not be long
+    before the father and the lovers would meet. I like to tell Jone
+    everything I am going to do, when I am sure that he'll agree with me
+    that it is right; but this time I could not bother with explanations,
+    and so I just told him to sit still for a minute, for I wanted to see
+    something, and I walked after the young couple as fast as I could. When
+    I got to them, for they hadn't gone very far, I passed the young
+    woman's bath-chair, and then I looked around and I said to her, "I beg
+    your pardon, miss, but there is an old gentleman looking for you; but
+    as I think he is coming round this way, you'll meet him if you keep on
+    this path." "Oh, my!" said she unintentionally; and then she thanked me
+    very much, and I went on and turned a corner and went back to Jone, and
+    pretty soon the young man's bath-chair passed us going toward the
+    gate, he looking three-quarters happy, and the other quarter
+    disappointed, as lovers are if they don't get the whole loaf.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From that day until yesterday, which was a full week, I came into the
+    gardens every morning, sometimes even when Jone didn't want to come,
+    because I wanted to see as much of this love business as I could. For
+    my own use in thinking of them I named the young man Pomeroy and the
+    young woman Angelica, and as for the father, I called him Snortfrizzle,
+    being the worst name I could think of at the time. But I must wait
+    until my next letter to tell you the rest of the story of the lovers,
+    and I am sure you will be as much interested in them as I was.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0020"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Nineteen</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0039"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img039.jpg" width="619" height="226" alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img039l.jpg" width="155" height="153"
+alt="I" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    BUXTON
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    &nbsp;have a good many things to tell you, for we leave Buxton to-morrow,
+    but I will first finish the story of Angelica and Pomeroy. I think the
+    men who pulled the bath-chairs of the lovers knew pretty much how
+    things was going, for whenever they got a chance they brought their
+    chairs together, and I often noticed them looking out for the old
+    father, and if they saw him coming they would move away from each other
+    if they happened to be together.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If Snortfrizzle's puller had been one of the regular bath-chair men
+    they might have made an agreement with him so that he would have kept
+    away from them; but he was a man in livery, with a high hat, who walked
+    very regular, like a high-stepping horse, and who, it was plain enough
+    to see, never had anything to do with common bath-chair men. Old
+    Snortfrizzle seemed to be smelling a rat more and more&mdash;that is, if it
+    is proper to liken Cupid to such an animal&mdash;and his nose seemed to get
+    purpler and purpler. I think he would always have kept close to
+    Angelica's chair if it hadn't been that he had a way of falling asleep,
+    and whenever he did this his man always walked very slow, being
+    naturally lazy. Two or three times I have seen Snortfrizzle wake up,
+    shout to his man, and make him trot around a clump of trees and into
+    some narrow path where he thought his daughter might have gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Things began to look pretty bad, for the old man had very strong
+    suspicions about Pomeroy, and was so very wide awake when he was awake,
+    that I knew it couldn't be long before he caught the two together, and
+    then I didn't believe that Angelica would ever come into these gardens
+    again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was yesterday morning that I saw old Snortfrizzle with his chin down
+    on his shirt bosom, snoring so steady that his hat heaved, being very
+    slowly pulled along a shady walk, and then I saw his daughter, who was
+    not far ahead of him, turn into another walk, which led down by the
+    river. I knew very well that she ought not to turn into that walk,
+    because it didn't in any way lead to the place where Pomeroy was
+    sitting in his bath-chair behind a great clump of bushes and flowers,
+    with his face filled with the most lively emotions, but overspread
+    ever and anon by a cloudlet of despair on account of the approach of
+    the noontide hour, when Angelica and Snortfrizzle generally went home.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0040"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img040.jpg">
+<img src="images/img040s.jpg" width="204" height="160"
+alt="'YOUR BROTHER IS OVER THERE'" /><br />
+'YOUR BROTHER IS OVER THERE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    The time was short, and I believed that love's young dream must be put
+    off until the next day if Angelica could not be made aware where
+    Pomeroy was sitting, or Pomeroy where Angelica was going; so I got
+    right up and made a short cut down a steep little path, and, sure
+    enough, I met her when I got to the bottom. "I beg your pardon very
+    much, miss," said I, "but your brother is over there in the entrance to
+    the cave, and I think he has been looking for you." "My brother?" said
+    she, turning as red as her ribbons was blue. "Oh, thank you very much!
+    Robertson, you may take me that way."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It wasn't long before I saw those two bath-chairs alongside of each
+    other, and covered from general observation by masses of blooming
+    shrubbery. As I had been the cause of bringing them together I thought
+    I had a right to look at them a little while, as that would be the only
+    reward I'd be likely to get, and so I did it. It was as I thought;
+    things was coming to a climax; the bath-chair men standing with much
+    consideration with their backs to their vehicles, and, united for the
+    time being by their clasped hands, the lovers grew tender to a degree
+    which I would have fain checked, had I been nearer, for fear of notice
+    by passers-by.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But now my blood froze within my veins. I would never have believed
+    that a man in a high hat and livery a size too small for him could run,
+    but Snortfrizzle's man did, and at a pace which ought to have been
+    prohibited by law. I saw him coming from an unsuspected quarter, and
+    swoop around that clump of flowers and foliage. Regardless of
+    consequences I approached nearer. There was loud voices; there was
+    exclamations; there was a rattling of wheels; there was the sundering
+    of tender ties!
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a moment Pomeroy, who had backed off but a little way, began to
+    speak, but his voice was drowned in the thunder of Snortfrizzle's
+    denunciations. Angelica wept, and her head fell upon her lovely bosom,
+    and I am sure I heard her implore her man to remove her from the scene.
+    Pomeroy remained, his face firm, his eyes undaunted, but Snortfrizzle
+    shook his fist in unison with his nose, and, hurling an anathema at
+    him, followed his daughter, probably to incarcerate her in her
+    apartments.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All was over, and I returned to Jone with a heavy heart and faltering
+    step. I could not but feel that I had brought about the sad end of this
+    tender chapter in the lives of Pomeroy and Angelica. If I had let them
+    alone they would not have met and they would not have been discovered
+    together. I didn't tell Jone what had happened, because he does not
+    always sympathize with me in my interest in others, and for hours my
+    heart was heavy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was about a half an hour before dinner that day when I thought that
+    a little walk might raise my spirits, and I wandered into the gardens,
+    for which we each have a weekly ticket, and there, to my amazement, not
+    far from the gate I saw Angelica in tears and her bath-chair. Her man
+    was not with her, and she was alone. When she saw me she looked at me
+    for a minute, and then she beckoned to me to come to her. I flew. There
+    were but few people in the gardens, and we was alone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Madam," said she, "I think you must be very kind. I believe you knew
+    that gentleman was not my brother. He is not."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My dear miss," said I&mdash;I was almost on the point of calling her
+    Angelica&mdash;"I knew that. I know that he is something nearer and dearer
+    than even a brother."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She blushed. "Yes," said she, "you are right, and we are in great
+    trouble."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, what is it? Tell me quick. What can I do to help you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My father is very angry," said she, "and has forbidden me ever to see
+    him again, and he is going to take me home to-morrow. But we have
+    agreed to fly together to-day. It is our only chance, but he is not
+    here. Oh, dear! I do not know what I shall do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where are you going to fly to?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We want to take the Edinburgh train this evening if there is one," she
+    said, "and we get off at Carlisle, and from there it is only a little
+    way to Gretna Green."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Gretna Green!" I cried. "Oh, I will help you! I will help you! Why
+    isn't the gentleman here, and where has he gone?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He has gone to see about the trains," she said, almost crying, "and I
+    don't see what keeps him. I could not get away until father went into
+    his room to dress for dinner, and as soon as he is ready he will call
+    for me. Where can he be? I have sent my man to look for him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I'll go look for him! You wait here," I cried, forgetting that
+    she would have to, and away I went.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As I was hurrying out of the gates of the gardens I looked in the
+    direction of the railroad station, and there I saw Pomeroy pulled by
+    one bath-chair man and the other one talking to him. In twenty bounds I
+    reached him. "Go back for your young lady," I cried to Robertson,
+    Angelica's man, "and bring her here on the run. She sent me for you."
+    Away went Robertson, and then I said to the astonished Pomeroy, "Sir,
+    there is no time for explanations. Your lady-love will be with you in a
+    minute. My husband and I are going to Edinburgh to-morrow, and I have
+    looked up all the trains. There is one which leaves here at twenty
+    minutes past six. If she comes soon you will have time to catch it.
+    Have you your baggage ready?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He looked at me as if he wondered who on earth I was, but I am sure he
+    saw my soul in my face and trusted me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," he said, "she has a little bag in her bath-chair, and mine is
+    here."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here she comes," said I, "and you must fly to the station."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a moment Angelica was with us, her face beaming with delight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, thank you, thank you!" she cried, but I would not listen to her
+    gratitude. "Hurry!" I said, "or you will be too late. Joy go with
+    you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They hastened off, and I walked back to the gardens. I looked at my
+    watch, and to my horror I saw it was five minutes past six. Fifteen
+    minutes left yet. Fifteen minutes in which they might be overtaken. I
+    stopped for a moment irresolutely. What should I do? I thought of
+    running after them to the station. I thought in some way I might help
+    them&mdash;buy their tickets or do something. But while I was thinking I
+    heard a rattle, and down the street came the man in livery, and
+    Snortfrizzle's bottle-nose like a volcano behind him. The minute they
+    reached me, and there was nobody else in the street, the old man
+    shouted, "Hi! Have you seen two bath-chairs with a young man and a
+    young woman in them?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was on the point of saying No, but changed my mind like a flash. "Did
+    the young lady wear a hat with blue ribbons?" I asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes!" he roared. "Which way did they go?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And did the young man with her wear eyeglasses and a brown moustache?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "With her, was he?" screamed Snortfrizzle. "That's the rascal. Which
+    way did they go? Tell me instantly."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I was a very little girl I knew an old woman who told me that if a
+    person was really good at heart, the holy angels would allow that
+    person, in the course of her life, twelve fibs without charge, provided
+    they was told for the good of somebody and not to do harm. Now at
+    such a moment as this I could not remember how many fibs of that kind I
+    had left over to my credit, but I knew there must be at least one, and
+    so I didn't hesitate a second. "They have gone to the Cat and Fiddle,"
+    said I. "I heard them tell their bath-chair men so, as they urged them
+    forward at the top of their speed. They stopped for a second here, sir,
+    and I heard the gentleman send a cabman for a clergyman, post haste, to
+    meet them at the Cat and Fiddle."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0041"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img041.jpg">
+<img src="images/img041s.jpg" width="258" height="160"
+alt="TO THE CAT AND FIDDLE" /><br />
+TO THE CAT AND FIDDLE</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    If the sky had been lighted up by the eruption of Snortfrizzle's nose I
+    should not have been surprised.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The fools! They can't! Cat and Fiddle! But they can't be half way
+    there. Martin, to the Cat and Fiddle!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man touched his hat. "But I couldn't do that, sir. I couldn't run
+    to the Cat and Fiddle. It's long miles, sir. Shall I get a carriage?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Carriage!" cried the old man, and then he began to look about him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Horror struck me. Perhaps they would go to the station for one! Just
+    then a boy driving a pony and a grocery cart came up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There you are, sir," I cried. "Hire that boy to tow you. Your butler
+    can sit in the back of the cart and hold the handle of your bath-chair.
+    It may take long to get a carriage, and the cart will go much faster.
+    You may overtake them in a mile."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Snortfrizzle never so much as thanked me or looked at me. He yelled
+    to the boy in the cart, offered him ten shillings and sixpence to give
+    him a tow, and in less time than I could take to write it, that flunky
+    with a high hat was sitting in the tail of the cart, the pony was going
+    at full gallop, and the old man's bath-chair was spinning on behind it
+    at a great rate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I did not leave that spot&mdash;standing statue-like and looking along both
+    roads&mdash;until I heard the rumble of the departing train, and then I
+    repaired to the Old Hall, my soul uplifted. I found Jone in an awful
+    fluster about my being out so late; but I do stay pretty late sometimes
+    when I walk by myself, and so he hadn't anything new to say.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0021"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    EDINBURGH
+</p>
+<p>
+    We have been here five or six days now, but the first thing I must
+    write is the rest of the story of the lovers. We left Buxton the next
+    day after their flight, and I begged Jone to stop at Carlisle and let
+    us make a little trip to Gretna Green. I wanted to see the place that
+    has been such a well-spring of matrimonial joys, and besides, I thought
+    we might find Pomeroy and Angelica still there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had not seen old Snortfrizzle again, but late that night I had heard
+    a row in the hotel, and I expect it was him back from the Cat and
+    Fiddle. Whether he was inquiring for me or not I don't know, or what he
+    was doing, or what he did.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone thought I had done a good deal of meddling in other people's
+    business, but he agreed to go to Gretna Green, and we got there in the
+    afternoon. I left Jone to take a smoke at the station, because I
+    thought this was a business it would be better for me to attend to
+    myself, and I started off to look up the village blacksmith and ask him
+    if he had lately wedded a pair; but, will you believe it, madam, I had
+    not gone far on the main road of the village when, a little ahead of
+    me, I saw two bath-chairs coming toward me, one of them pulled by
+    Robertson, and the other by Pomeroy's man, and in these two chairs was
+    the happy lovers, evidently Mr. and Mrs.! Their faces was filled with
+    light enough to take a photograph, and I could almost see their hearts
+    swelling with transcendent joy. I hastened toward them, and in an
+    instant our hands was clasped as if we had been old friends.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They told me their tale. They had reached the station in plenty of
+    time, and Robertson had got a carriage for them, and he and the other
+    man had gone with them third class, with the bath-chairs in the goods
+    carriages. They had reached Gretna Green that morning, and had been
+    married two hours. Then I told my tale. The eyes of both of them was
+    dimmed with tears, hers the most, and again they clasped my hands.
+    "Poor father," said Angelica, "I hope he didn't go all the way to the
+    Cat and Fiddle, and that the night air didn't strike into his joints;
+    but he cannot separate us now." And she looked confiding at the other
+    bath-chair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What are you going to do?" said I, and they said they had just been
+    making plans. I saw, though, that their minds was in too exalted a
+    state to do this properly for themselves, and so I reflected a minute.
+    "How long have you been in Buxton?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have been there two weeks and two days," said she, "and my
+    husband"&mdash;oh, the effulgence that filled her countenance as she said
+    this&mdash;"has been there one day longer."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then," said I, "my advice to you is to go back to Buxton and stay
+    there five days, until you both have taken the waters and the baths for
+    the full three weeks. It won't be much to bear the old gentleman's
+    upbraiding for five days, and then, blessed with health and love, you
+    can depart. No matter what you do afterward, I'd stick it out at Buxton
+    for five days."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We'll do it," said they; and then, after more gratitude and
+    congratulations, we parted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now I must tell you about ourselves. When Jone had been three weeks
+    at Buxton, and done all the things he ought to do, and hadn't done
+    anything he oughtn't to do, he hadn't any more rheumatism in him than a
+    squirrel that jumps from bough to bough. But will you believe it,
+    madam, I had such a rheumatism in one side and one arm that it made me
+    give little squeaks when I did up my back hair, and it all came from my
+    taking the baths when there wasn't anything the matter with me; for I
+    found out, but all too late, that while the waters of Buxton will cure
+    rheumatism in people that's got it, they will bring it out in people
+    who never had it at all. We was told that we ought not to do anything
+    in the bathing line without the advice of a doctor; but those little
+    tanks in the floors of the bathrooms, all lined with tiles and filled
+    with warm, transparent water, that you went down into by marble steps,
+    did seem so innocent, that I didn't believe there was no need in asking
+    questions about them. Jone wanted me to stay three weeks longer until I
+    was cured, but I wouldn't listen to that. I was wild to get to
+    Scotland, and as my rheumatism did not hinder me from walking, I didn't
+    mind what else it did.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And there is another thing I must tell you. One day when I was sitting
+    by myself on The Slopes waiting for Jone, about lunch time, and with a
+    reminiscence floating through my mind of the Devonshire clotted cream
+    of the past, never perhaps to return, I saw an elderly woman coming
+    along, and when she got near she stopped and spoke. I knew her in an
+    instant. She was the old body we met at the Babylon Hotel, who told us
+    about the cottage at Chedcombe. I asked her to sit down beside me and
+    talk, because I wanted to tell her what good times we had had, and how
+    we liked the place, but she said she couldn't, as she was obliged to go
+    on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And did you like Chedcombe?" said she. "I hope you and your husband
+    kept well."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I said yes, except Jone's rheumatism, we felt splendid; for my aches
+    hadn't come on then, and I was going on to gush about the lovely
+    country she had sent us to, but she didn't seem to want to listen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really," said she, "and your husband had the rheumatism. It was a
+    wise thing for you to come here. We English people have reason to be
+    proud of our country. If we have our banes, we also have our antidotes;
+    and it isn't every country that can say that, is it?"
+</p>
+<a name="image-0042"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img042.jpg">
+<img src="images/img042s.jpg" width="173" height="160"
+alt="'AND DID YOU LIKE CHEDCOMBE?'" /><br />
+'AND DID YOU LIKE CHEDCOMBE?'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I wanted to speak up for America, and tried to think of some good
+    antidote with the proper banes attached; but before I could do it she
+    gave her head a little wag, and said, "Good morning; nice weather,
+    isn't it?" and wobbled away. It struck me that the old body was a
+    little lofty, and just then Mr. Poplington, who I hadn't noticed, came
+    up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really," said he, "I didn't know you was acquainted with the
+    Countess."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The which?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Countess of Mussleby," said he, "that you was just talking to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Countess!" I cried. "Why, that's the old person who recommended us to
+    go to Chedcombe."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very natural," said he, "for her to do that, for her estates lie south
+    of Chedcombe, and she takes a great interest in the villages around
+    about, and knows all the houses to let."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I parted from him and wandered away, a sadness stealing o'er my soul.
+    Gone with the recollections of the clotted cream was my visions of
+    diamond tiaras, tossing plumes, and long folds of brocades and laces
+    sweeping the marble floors of palaces. If ever again I read a novel
+    with a countess in it, I shall see the edge of a yellow flannel
+    petticoat and a pair of shoes like two horse-hair bags, which was the
+    last that I saw of this thunderbolt into the middle of my visions of
+    aristocracy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone and me got to like Buxton very much. We met many pleasant people,
+    and as most of them had a chord in common, we was friendly enough. Jone
+    said it made him feel sad in the smoking-room to see the men he'd got
+    acquainted with get well and go home, but that's a kind of sadness that
+    all parties can bear up under pretty well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I haven't said a word yet about Scotland, though we have been here a
+    week, but I really must get something about it into this letter. I was
+    saying to Jone the other day that if I was to meet a king with a crown
+    on his head I am not sure that I should know that king if I saw him
+    again, so taken up would I be with looking at his crown, especially if
+    it had jewels in it such as I saw in the regalia at the Tower of
+    London. Now Edinburgh seems to strike me in very much the same way.
+    Prince Street is its crown, and whenever I think of this city it will
+    be of this magnificent street and the things that can be seen from it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is a great thing for a street to have one side of it taken away and
+    sunk out of sight so that there is a clear view far and wide, and
+    visitors can stand and look at nearly everything that is worth seeing
+    in the whole town, as if they was in the front seats of the balcony in
+    a theatre, and looking on the stage. You know I am very fond of the
+    theatre, madam, but I never saw anything in the way of what they call
+    spectacular representation that came near Edinburgh as seen from Prince
+    Street.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But as I said in one of my first letters, I am not going to write about
+    things and places that you can get much better description of in books,
+    and so I won't take up any time in telling how we stand at the window
+    of our room at the Royal Hotel, and look out at the Old Town standing
+    like a forest of tall houses on the other side of the valley, with the
+    great castle perched up high above them, and all the hills and towers
+    and the streets all spread out below us, with Scott's monument right in
+    front, with everybody he ever wrote about standing on brackets, which
+    stick out everywhere from the bottom up to the very top of the
+    monument, which is higher than the tallest house, and looks like a
+    steeple without a church to it. It is the most beautiful thing of the
+    kind I ever saw, and I have made out, or think I have, nearly every one
+    of the figures that's carved on it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I think I shall like the Scotch people very much, but just now there is
+    one thing about them that stands up as high above their other good
+    points as the castle does above the rest of the city, and that is the
+    feeling they have for anybody who has done anything to make his
+    fellow-countrymen proud of him. A famous Scotchman cannot die without
+    being pretty promptly born again in stone or bronze, and put in some
+    open place with seats convenient for people to sit and look at him. I
+    like this; glory ought to begin at home.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0022"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-one</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    EDINBURGH
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone being just as lively on his legs as he ever was in his life,
+    thanks to the waters of Buxton, and I having the rheumatism now only in
+    my arm, which I don't need to walk with, we have gone pretty much all
+    over Edinburgh, and a great place it is to walk in, so far as variety
+    goes. Some of the streets are so steep you have to go up steps if you
+    are walking, and about a mile around if you are driving. I never get
+    tired wandering about the Old Town with its narrow streets and awfully
+    tall houses, with family washes hanging out from every story.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The closes are queer places. They are very like little villages set
+    into the town as if they was raisins in a pudding. You get to them by
+    alleys or tunnels, and when you are inside you find a little
+    neighborhood that hasn't anything more to do with the next close, a
+    block away, than one country village has with another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We went to see John Knox's house, and although Mr. Knox was pretty hard
+    on vanities and frivolities, he didn't mind having a good house over
+    his head, with woodwork on the walls and ceilings that wasn't any more
+    necessary than the back buttons on his coat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We have been reading hard since we have been in Edinburgh, and whenever
+    Mr. Knox and Mary Queen of Scots come together, I take Mary's side
+    without asking questions. I have no doubt Mr. Knox was a good man, but
+    if meddling in other people's business gave a person the right to have
+    a monument, the top of his would be the first thing travellers would
+    see when they come near Edinburgh.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we went to Holyrood Palace it struck me that Mary Queen of Scots
+    deserved a better house. Of course, it wasn't built for her, but I
+    don't care very much for the other people who lived in it. The rooms
+    are good enough for an ordinary household's use, although the little
+    room that she had her supper party in when Rizzio was killed, wouldn't
+    be considered by Jone and me as anything like big enough for our family
+    to eat in. But there is a general air about the place as if it belonged
+    to a royal family that was not very well off, and had to abstain from a
+    good deal of grandeur.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If Mary Queen of Scots could come to life again, I expect the Scotch
+    people would give her the best palace that money could buy, for they
+    have grown to think the world of her, and her pictures blossom out all
+    over Edinburgh like daisies in a pasture field.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The first morning after we got here I was as much surprised as if I had
+    met Mary Queen of Scots walking along Prince Street with a parasol over
+    her head. We were sitting in the reading-room of the hotel, and on the
+    other side of the room was a long desk at which people was sitting,
+    writing letters, all with their backs to us. One of these was a young
+    man wearing a nice light-colored sack coat, with a shiny white collar
+    sticking above it, and his black derby hat was on the desk beside him.
+    When he had finished his letter he put a stamp on it and got up to mail
+    it. I happened to be looking at him, and I believe I stopped breathing
+    as I sat and stared. Under his coat he had on a little skirt of green
+    plaid about big enough for my Corinne when she was about five years
+    old, and then he didn't wear anything whatever until you got down to
+    his long stockings and low shoes. I was so struck with the feeling that
+    he was an absent-minded person that I punched Jone and whispered to him
+    to go quick and tell him. Jone looked at him and laughed, and said that
+    was the Highland costume.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now if that man had had his martial plaid wrapped around him, and had
+    worn a Scottish cap with a feather in it and a long ribbon hanging down
+    his back, with his claymore girded to his side, I wouldn't have been
+    surprised; for this is Scotland, and that would have been like the
+    pictures I have seen of Highlanders. But to see a man with the upper
+    half of him dressed like a clerk in a dry goods store and the lower
+    half like a Highland chief, was enough to make a stranger gasp.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0043"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img043.jpg">
+<img src="images/img043s.jpg" width="140" height="200"
+alt="'JONE LOOKED AT HIM AND SAID THAT WAS THE HIGHLAND COSTUME.'" />
+<br />'JONE LOOKED AT HIM AND SAID THAT WAS THE HIGHLAND COSTUME.'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    But since then I have seen a good many young men dressed that way. I
+    believe it is considered the tip of the fashion. I haven't seen any of
+    the bare-legged dandies yet with a high silk hat and an umbrella, but I
+    expect it won't be long before I meet one. We often see the Highland
+    soldiers that belong to the garrison at the castle, and they look
+    mighty fine with their plaid shawls and their scarfs and their
+    feathers; but to see a man who looks as if one half of him belonged to
+    London Bridge and the other half to the Highland moors, does look to
+    me like a pretty bad mixture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am not so sure, either, that the whole Highland dress isn't better
+    suited to Egypt, where it doesn't often rain, than to Scotland. Last
+    Saturday we was at St. Giles's Church, and the man who took us around
+    told us we ought to come early next morning and see the military
+    service, which was something very fine; and as Jone gave him a shilling
+    he said he would be on hand and watch for us, and give us a good place
+    where we could see the soldiers come in. On Sunday morning it rained
+    hard, but we was both at the church before eight o'clock, and so was a
+    good many other people, but the doors was shut and they wouldn't let us
+    in. They told us it was such a bad morning that the soldiers could not
+    come out, and so there would be no military service that day. I don't
+    know whether those fine fellows thought that the colors would run out
+    of their beautiful plaids, or whether they would get rheumatism in
+    their knees; but it did seem to me pretty hard that soldiers could not
+    come out in the weather that lots of common citizens didn't seem to
+    mind at all. I was a good deal put out, for I hate to get up early for
+    nothing, but there was no use saying anything, and all we could do was
+    to go home, as all the other people with full suits of clothes did.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone and I have got so much more to see before we go home, that it is
+    very well we are both able to skip around lively. Of course there are
+    ever and ever so many places that we want to go to, but can't do it,
+    but I am bound to see the Highlands and the country of the "Lady of the
+    Lake." We have been reading up Walter Scott, and I think more than I
+    ever did that he is perfectly splendid. While we was in Edinburgh we
+    felt bound to go and see Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford. I shall not say
+    much about these two places, but I will say that to go into Sir Walter
+    Scott's library and sit in the old armchair he used to sit in, at the
+    desk he used to write on, and see his books and things around me, gave
+    me more a feeling of reverentialism than I have had in any cathedral
+    yet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for Melrose Abbey, I could have walked about under those towering
+    walls and lovely arches until the stars peeped out from the lofty
+    vaults above; but Jone and the man who drove the carriage were of a
+    different way of thinking, and we left all too soon. But one thing I
+    did do: I went to the grave of Michael Scott the wizard, where once was
+    shut up the book of awful mysteries, with a lamp always burning by it,
+    though the flagstone was shut down tight on top of it, and I got a
+    piece of moss and a weed. We don't do much in the way of carrying off
+    such things, but I want Corinne to read the "Lady of the Lake," and
+    then I shall give her that moss and that weed, and tell where I got
+    them. I believe that, in the way of romantics, Corinne is going to be
+    more like me than like Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow we go to the Highlands, and we shall leave our two big trunks
+    in the care of the man in the red coat, who is commander-in-chief at
+    the Royal Hotel, and who said he would take as much care of them as if
+    they was two glass jars filled with rubies; and we believed him, for he
+    has done nothing but take care of us since we came to Edinburgh, and
+    good care, too.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0023"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-two</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0044"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img044.jpg" width="618" height="253" alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img044l.jpg "width="157" height="155"
+alt="I" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    KINLOCH RANNOCH.
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    t happened that the day we went north was a very fine one, and as soon
+    as we got into the real Highland country there was nothing to hinder me
+    from feeling that my feet was on my native heath, except that I was in
+    a railway carriage, and that I had no Scotch blood in me, but the joy
+    of my soul was all the same. There was an old gentleman got into our
+    carriage at Perth, and when he saw how we was taking in everything our
+    eyes could reach, for Jone is a good deal more fired up by travel than
+    he used to be&mdash;I expect it must have been the Buxton waters that made
+    the change&mdash;he began to tell us all about the places we were passing
+    through. There didn't seem to be a rock or a stream that hadn't a bit
+    of history to it for that old gentleman to tell us about.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We got out at a little town called Struan, and then we took a carriage
+    and drove across the wild moors and hills for thirteen miles till we
+    came to this village at the end of Loch Rannoch. The wind blew strong
+    and sharp, but we knew what we had to expect, and had warm clothes on.
+    And with the cool breeze, and remembering "Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace
+    bled," it made my blood tingle all the way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We are going to stay here at least a week. We shall not try to do
+    everything that can be done on Scottish soil, for we shall not stalk
+    stags or shoot grouse; and I have told Jone that he may put on as many
+    Scotch bonnets and plaids as he likes, but there is one thing he is not
+    going to do, and that is to go bare-kneed, to which he answered, he
+    would never do that unless he could dip his knees into weak coffee so
+    that they would be the same color as his face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is a nice inn here with beautiful scenery all around, and the
+    lovely Loch Rannoch stretches away for eleven miles. Everything is just
+    as Scotch as it can be. Even the English people who come here put on
+    knickerbockers and bonnets. I have never been anywhere else where it is
+    considered the correct thing to dress like the natives, and I will say
+    here that it is very few of the natives that wear kilts. That sort of
+    thing seems to be given up to the fancy Highlanders.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nearly all the talk at the inn is about, shooting and fishing.
+    Stag-hunting here is very different from what it is in England in more
+    ways than one. In the first place, stags are not hunted with horses and
+    hounds. In the second place, the sport is not free. A gentleman here
+    told Jone that if a man wanted to shoot a stag on these moors it would
+    cost him one rifle cartridge and six five pound notes; and when Jone
+    did not understand what that meant, the man went on and told him about
+    how the deer-stalking was carried on here. He said that some of the big
+    proprietors up here owned as much as ninety thousand acres of moorland,
+    and they let it out mostly to English people for hunting and fishing.
+    And if it is stag-hunting the tenant wants, the price he pays is
+    regulated by the number of stags he has the privilege of shooting. Each
+    stag he is allowed to kill costs him thirty pounds. So if he wants the
+    pleasure of shooting thirty stags in the season, his rent will be nine
+    hundred pounds. This he pays for the stag-shooting, but some kind of a
+    house and about ten thousand acres are thrown in, which he has a
+    perfect right to sit down on and rest himself on, but he can't shoot a
+    grouse on it unless he pays extra for that. And, what is more, if he
+    happens to be a bad shot, or breaks his leg and has to stay in the
+    house, and doesn't shoot his thirty stags, he has got to pay for them
+    all the same.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone told me all this, I said I thought a hundred and fifty
+    dollars a pretty high price to pay for the right to shoot one deer. But
+    Jone said I didn't consider all the rest the man got. In the first
+    place, he had the right to get up very early in the morning, in the
+    gloom and drizzle, and to trudge through the slop and the heather until
+    he got far away from the neighborhood of any human being, and then he
+    could go up on some high piece of ground and take a spyglass and search
+    the whole country round for a stag. When he saw one way off in the
+    distance snuffing the morning air, or hunting for his breakfast among
+    the heather, he had the privilege of walking two or three miles over
+    the moor so as to get that stag between the wind and himself, so that
+    it could not scent him or hear him. Then he had the glorious right to
+    get his rifle all ready, and steal and creep toward that stag to cut
+    short his existence. He has to be as careful and as sneaky as if he was
+    a snake in the grass, going behind little hills and down into gullies,
+    and sometimes almost crawling on his stomach where he goes over an open
+    place, and doing everything he can to keep that stag from knowing his
+    end is near. Sometimes he follows his victim all day, and the sun goes
+    down before he has the glorious right of standing up and lodging a
+    bullet in its unsuspecting heart. "So you see," said Jone, "he gets a
+    lot for his hundred and fifty dollars."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They do get a good deal more for their money than I thought they did,"
+    said I; "but I wonder if those rich sportsmen ever think that if they
+    would take the money that they pay for shooting thirty or forty stags
+    in one season, they might buy a rhinoceros, which they could set up on
+    a hill and shoot at every morning if they liked. A game animal like
+    that would last them for years, and if they ever felt like it, they
+    could ask their friends to help them shoot without costing them
+    anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone is pretty hard on sport with killing in it. He does not mind
+    eating meat, but he likes to have the butcher do the killing. But I
+    reckon he is a little too tender-hearted. But, as for me, I like sport
+    of some kinds, especially when you don't have your pity or your
+    sympathies awakened by seeing your prey enjoying life when you are
+    seeking to encompass his end. Of course, by that I mean fishing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There are a good many trout in the lake, and people can hire the
+    privilege of fishing for them; and I begged Jone to let me go out in a
+    boat and fish. He was rather in favor of staying ashore and fishing in
+    the little river, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go out and
+    have some regular lake fishing. At last Jone agreed, provided I would
+    not expect him to have anything to do with the fishing. "Of course I
+    don't expect anything like that," said I; "and it would be a good deal
+    better for you to stay on shore. The landlord says a gilly will go
+    along to row the boat and attend to the lines and rods and all that,
+    and so there won't be any need for you at all, and you can stay on
+    shore with your book, and watch if you like."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And suppose you tumble overboard," said Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then you can swim out," I said, "and perhaps wade a good deal of the
+    way. I don't suppose we need go far from the bank."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone laughed, and said he was going too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very well," said I; "but you have got to stay in the bow, with your
+    back to me, and take an interesting book with you, for it is a long
+    time since I have done any fishing, and I am not going to do it with
+    two men watching me and telling me how I ought to do it and how I
+    oughtn't to. One will be enough."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And that one won't be me," said Jone, "for fishing is not one of the
+    branches I teach in my school."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I would have liked it better if Jone and me had gone alone, he doing
+    nothing but row; but the landlord wouldn't let his boat that way, and
+    said we must take a gilly, which, as far as I can make out, is a sort
+    of sporting farmhand. That is the way to do fishing in these parts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, we started, and Jone sat in the front, with his back to me, and
+    the long-legged gilly rowed like a good fellow. When we got to a good
+    place to fish he stopped, and took a fishing-rod that was in pieces and
+    screwed them together, and fixed the line all right so that it would
+    run along the rod to a little wheel near the handle, and then he put on
+    a couple of hooks with artificial flies on them, which was so small I
+    couldn't imagine how the fish could see them. While he was doing all
+    this I got a little fidgety, because I had never fished except with a
+    straight pole and line with a cork to it, which would bob when the fish
+    bit; but this was altogether a different sort of a thing. When it was
+    all ready he handed me the pole, and then sat down very polite to look
+    at me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, if he had handed me the rod, and then taken another boat and gone
+    home, perhaps I might have known what to do with the thing after a
+    while, but I must say that at that minute I didn't. I held the rod out
+    over the water and let the flies dangle down into it, but do what I
+    would, they wouldn't sink; there wasn't weight enough on them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You must throw your fly, madam," said the gilly, always very polite.
+    "Let me give it a throw for you," and then he took the rod in his hand
+    and gave it a whirl and a switch which sent the flies out ever so far
+    from the boat; then he drew it along a little, so that the flies
+    skipped over the top of the water.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0045"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img045.jpg">
+<img src="images/img045s.jpg" width="248" height="152"
+alt="'I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, AND TAKING THE POLE IN BOTH
+HANDS I GAVE IT A WILD TWIRL OVER MY HEAD'" /><br />
+'I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, AND TAKING THE POLE IN BOTH
+HANDS I GAVE IT A WILD TWIRL OVER MY HEAD'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
+    wild twirl over my head, and then it flew out as if I was trying to
+    whip one of the leaders in a four-horse team. As I did this Jone gave a
+    jump that took him pretty near out of the boat, for two flies swished
+    just over the bridge of his nose, and so close to his eyes as he was
+    reading an interesting dialogue, and not thinking of fish or even of
+    me, that he gave a jump sideways, which, if it hadn't been for the
+    gilly grabbing him, would have taken him overboard. I was frightened
+    myself, and said to him that I had told him he ought not to come in the
+    boat, and it would have been a good deal better for him to have stayed
+    on shore.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He didn't say anything, but I noticed he turned up his collar and
+    pulled down his hat over his eyes and ears. The gilly said that perhaps
+    I had too much line out, and so he took the rod and wound up a good
+    deal of the line. I liked this better, because it was easier to whip
+    out the line and pull it in again. Of course, I would not be likely to
+    catch fish so much nearer the boat, but then we can't have everything
+    in this world. Once I thought I had a bite, and I gave the rod such a
+    jerk that the line flew back against me, and when I was getting ready
+    to throw it out again, I found that one of the little hooks had stuck
+    fast in my thumb. I tried to take it out with the other hand, but it
+    was awfully awkward to do, because the rod wobbled and kept jerking on
+    it. The gilly asked me if there was anything the matter with the flies,
+    but I didn't want him to know what had happened, and so I said, "Oh,
+    no," and turning my back on him I tried my best to get the hook out
+    without his helping me, for I didn't want him to think that the first
+    thing I caught was myself, after just missing my husband&mdash;he might be
+    afraid it would be his turn next. You cannot imagine how bothersome it
+    is to go fishing with a gilly to wait on you. I would rather wash
+    dishes with a sexton to wipe them and look for nicks on the edges.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last&mdash;and I don't know how it happened&mdash;I did hook a fish, and the
+    minute I felt him I gave a jerk, and up he came. I heard the gilly say
+    something about playing, but I was in no mood for play, and if that
+    fish had been shot up out of the water by a submarine volcano it
+    couldn't have ascended any quicker than when I jerked it up. Then as
+    quick as lightning it went whirling through the air, struck the pages
+    of Jone's book, turning over two or three of them, and then wiggled
+    itself half way down Jone's neck, between his skin and his collar,
+    while the loose hook swung around and nipped him in his ear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't pull, madam," shouted the gilly, and it was well he did, for I
+    was just on the point of giving an awful jerk to get the fish loose
+    from Jone. Jone gave a grab at the fish, which was trying to get down
+    his back, and pulling him out threw him down; but by doing this he
+    jerked the other hook into his ear, and then a yell arose such as I
+    never before heard from Jone. "I told you you ought not to come in this
+    boat," said I; "you don't like fishing, and something is always
+    happening to you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Like fishing!" cried Jone. "I should say not," and he made up such a
+    comical face that even the gilly, who was very polite, had to laugh as
+    he went to take the hook out of his ear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone and the fish had been got off my line, Jone turned to me and
+    said, "Are you going to fish any more?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not with you in the boat," I answered; and then he said he was glad to
+    hear that, and told the man he could row us ashore.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I can assure you, madam, that fishing in a rather wobbly boat with a
+    husband and a gilly in it, is not to my taste, and that was the end of
+    our sporting experiences in Scotland, but it did not end the glorious
+    times we had by that lake and on the moors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We hired a little pony trap and drove up to the other end of the lake,
+    and not far beyond that is the beginning of Rannoch Moor, which the
+    books say is one of the wildest and most desolate places in all Europe.
+    So far as we went over the moor we found that this was truly so, and I
+    know that I, at least, enjoyed it ever so much more because it was so
+    wild and desolate. As far as we could see, the moors stretched away in
+    every direction, covered in most places by heather, now out of blossom,
+    but with great rocks standing out of the ground in some places, and
+    here and there patches of grass. Sometimes we could see four or five
+    lochs at once, some of them two or three miles long, and down through
+    the middle of the moor came the maddest and most harum-scarum little
+    river that could be imagined. It actually seemed to go out of its way
+    to find rocks to jump over, just as if it was a young calf, and some of
+    the waterfalls were beautiful. All around us was melancholy mountains,
+    all of them with "Ben" for their first names, except Schiehallion,
+    which was the best shaped of any of them, coming up to a point and
+    standing by itself, which was what I used to think mountains always
+    did; but now I know they run into each other so that you can hardly
+    tell where one ends and the other begins.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For three or four days we went out on these moors, sometimes when the
+    sun was shining, and sometimes when there was a heavy rain and the wind
+    blew gales, and I think I liked this last kind of weather the best, for
+    it gave me an idea of lonely desolation which I never had in any part
+    of the world I have ever been in before. There is often not a house to
+    be seen, not even a crofter's hut, and we seldom met anybody. Sometimes
+    I wandered off by myself behind a hillock or rocks where I could not
+    even see Jone, and then I used to try to imagine how Eve would have
+    felt if she had early become a widow, and to put myself in her place.
+    There was always clouds in the sky, sometimes dark and heavy ones
+    coming down to the very peaks of the mountains, and not a tree was to
+    be seen, except a few rowan trees or bushes close to the river. But by
+    the side of Lock Rannoch, on our way back to the village, we passed
+    along the edge of a fine old forest called the "Black Woods of
+    Rannoch." There are only three of these ancient forests left in
+    Scotland, and some of the trees in this one are said to be eight
+    hundred years old.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0046"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img046.jpg">
+<img src="images/img046s.jpg" width="176" height="180"
+alt="POMONA DRINKING IT IN" /><br />
+POMONA DRINKING IT IN</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    The last time we was out on the Rannoch Moor there was such a savage
+    and driving wind, and the rain came down in such torrents, that my
+    mackintosh was blown nearly off of me, and I was wet from my head to my
+    heels. But I would have stayed out hours longer if Jone had been
+    willing, and I never felt so sorry to leave these Grampian Hills, where
+    I would have been glad to have had my father feed his flocks, and where
+    I might have wandered away my childhood, barefooted over the heather,
+    singing Scotch songs and drinking in deep draughts of the pure mountain
+    air, instead of&mdash;but no matter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow we leave the Highlands, but as we go to follow the shallop of
+    the "Lady of the Lake," I should not repine.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0024"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-three</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0047"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img047.jpg" width="617" height="256" alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img047l.jpg"width="158" height="155"
+alt="I" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    OBAN, SCOTLAND
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    t would seem to be the easiest thing in the world, when looking on the
+    map, to go across the country from Loch Rannoch over to Katrine and all
+    those celebrated parts, but we found we could not go that way, and so
+    we went back to Edinburgh and made a fresh start. We stopped one night
+    at the Royal Hotel, and there we found a letter from Mr. Poplington. We
+    had left him at Buxton, and he said he was not going to Scotland this
+    season, but would try to see us in London before we sailed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He is a good man, and he wrote this letter on purpose to tell me that
+    he had had a letter from his friend, the clergyman in Somersetshire,
+    who had forbidden the young woman whose wash my tricycle had run into
+    to marry her lover because he was a Radical. This letter was in answer
+    to one Mr. Poplington wrote to him, in which he gave the minister my
+    reasons for thinking that the best way to convert the young man from
+    Radicalism was to let him marry the young woman, who would be sure to
+    bring him around to her way of thinking, whatever that might be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't care about the Radicalism. All I wanted was to get the two
+    married, and then it would not make the least difference to me what
+    their politics might be; if they lived properly and was sober and
+    industrious and kept on loving each other, I didn't believe it would
+    make much difference to them. It was a long letter that the clergyman
+    wrote, but the point of it was, that he had concluded to tell the young
+    woman that she might marry the fellow if she liked, and that she must
+    do her best to make him a good Conservative, which, of course, she
+    promised to do. When I read this I clapped my hands, for who could have
+    suspected that I should have the good luck to come to this country to
+    spend the summer and make two matches before I left it!
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we left Edinburgh to gradually wend our way to this place, which
+    is on the west coast of Scotland, the first town we stopped at was
+    Stirling, where the Scotch kings used to live. Of course we went to the
+    castle, which stands on the rocks high above the town; but before we
+    started to go there Jone inquired if the place was a ruin or not, and
+    when he was told it was not, and that soldiers lived there, he said it
+    was all right, and we went. He now says he must positively decline to
+    visit any more houses out of repair. He is tired of them; and since he
+    has got over his rheumatism he feels less like visiting ruins than he
+    ever did. I tell him the ruins are not any more likely to be damp than
+    a good many of the houses that people live in; but this didn't shake
+    him, and I suppose if we come to any more vine-covered and shattered
+    remnants of antiquity I shall be obliged to go over them by myself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The castle is a great place, which I wouldn't have missed for the
+    world; but the spot that stirred my soul the most was in a little
+    garden, as high in the air as the top of a steeple, where we could look
+    out over the battlefield of Bannockburn. Besides this, we could see the
+    mountains of Ben-Lomond, Ben-Venue, Ben-A'an, Benledi, and ever so much
+    Scottish landscape spreading out for miles upon miles. There is a
+    little hole in the wall here called the Ladies' Look-Out, where the
+    ladies of the court could sit and see what was going on in the country
+    below without being seen themselves, but I stood up and took in
+    everything over the top of the wall.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I don't know whether I told you that the mountains of Scotland are
+    "Bens," and the mouths of rivers are "abers," and islands are
+    "inches." Walking about the streets of Stirling, and I didn't have time
+    to see half as much as I wanted to, I came to the shop of a "flesher."
+    I didn't know what it was until I looked into the window and saw that
+    it was a butcher shop.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I like a language just about as foreign as the Scotch is. There are a
+    good many words in it that people not Scotch don't understand, but that
+    gives a person the feeling that she is travelling abroad, which I want
+    to have when I am abroad. Then, on the other hand, there are not enough
+    of them to hinder a traveller from making herself understood. So it is
+    natural for me to like it ever so much better than French, in which,
+    when I am in it, I simply sink to the bottom if no helping hand is held
+    out to me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had some trouble with Jone that night at the hotel, because he had a
+    novel which he had been reading for I don't know how long, and which he
+    said he wanted to get through with before he began anything else. But
+    now I told him he was going to enter on the wonderful country of the
+    "Lady of the Lake," and that he ought to give up everything else and
+    read that book, because if he didn't go there with his mind prepared
+    the scenery would not sink into his soul as it ought to. He was of the
+    opinion that when my romantic feeling got on top of the scenery it
+    would be likely to sink into his soul as deep as he cared to have it,
+    without any preparation, but that sort of talk wouldn't do for me. I
+    didn't want to be gliding o'er the smooth waters of Loch Katrine, and
+    have him asking me who the girl was who rowed her shallop to the silver
+    strand, and the end of it was that I made him sit up until a quarter of
+    two o'clock in the morning while I read the "Lady of the Lake" to him.
+    I had read it before and he had not, but I hadn't got a quarter through
+    before he was just as willing to listen as I was to read. And when I
+    got through I was in such a glow that Jone said he believed that all
+    the blood in my veins had turned to hot Scotch.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't pay any attention to this, and after going to the window and
+    looking out at the Gaelic moon, which was about half full and rolling
+    along among the clouds, I turned to Jone and said, "Jone, let's sing
+    'Scots wha ha',' before we go to bed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If we do roar out that thing," said Jone, "they will put us out on the
+    curbstone to spend the rest of the night."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let's whisper it, then," said I; "the spirit of it is all I want. I
+    don't care for the loudness."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'd be willing to do that," said Jone, "if I knew the tune and a few
+    of the words."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, bother!" said I; and when I got into bed I drew the clothes over
+    my head and sang that brave song all to myself. Doing it that way the
+    words and tune didn't matter at all, but I felt the spirit of it, and
+    that was all I wanted, and then I went to sleep.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next morning we went to Callander by train, and there we took a
+    coach for Trossachs. It is hardly worth while to say we went on top,
+    because the coaches here haven't any inside to them, except a hole
+    where they put the baggage. We drove along a beautiful road with
+    mountains and vales and streams, and the driver told us the name of
+    everything that had a name, which he couldn't help very well, being
+    asked so constant by me. But I didn't feel altogether satisfied, for we
+    hadn't come to anything quotable, and I didn't like to have Jone sit
+    too long without something happening to stir up some of the "Lady of
+    the Lake" which I had pumped into his mind the day before, and so keep
+    it fresh.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before long, however, the driver pointed out the ford of Coilantogle.
+    The instant he said this I half jumped up, and, seizing Jone by the
+    arm, I cried, "Don't you remember? This is the place where the Knight
+    of Snowdoun, James Fitz-James, fought Roderick Dhu!" And then without
+    caring who else heard me, I burst out with:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "'His back against a rock he bore,
+      And firmly placed his foot before:
+      "Come one, come all! This rock shall fly
+      From its firm base as soon as I."'"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    "No, madam," said the driver, politely touching his hat, "that was a
+    mile farther on. This place is:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "'And here his course the chieftain staid,
+      Threw down his target and his plaid.'"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    "You are right," said I; and then I began again:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "'Then each at once his falchion drew,
+      Each on the ground his scabbard threw,
+      Each look'd to sun, and stream, and plain,
+      As what they ne'er might see again;
+      Then foot, and point, and eye opposed,
+      In dubious strife they darkly closed.'"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    I didn't repeat any more of the poem, though everybody was listening
+    quite respectful without thinking of laughing, and as for Jone, I could
+    see by the way he sat and looked about him that his tinder had caught
+    my spark; but I knew that the thing for me to do here was not to give
+    out but take in, and so, to speak in figures, I drank in the whole of
+    Lake Vannachar, as we drove along its lovely marge until we came to the
+    other end, and the driver said we would now go over the Brigg of Turk.
+    At this up I jumped and said:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "'And when the Brigg of Turk was won,
+      The headmost horseman rode alone.'"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    I had sense enough not to quote the next two lines, because when I had
+    read them to Jone he said that it was a shame to use a horse that way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We now came to Loch Achray, at the other end of which is the
+    Trossachs, where we stopped for the night, and when the driver told me
+    the mountain we saw before us was Ben-Venue, I repeated the lines:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "'The hunter marked that mountain high,
+      The lone lake's western boundary,
+      And deem'd the stag must turn to bay,
+      Where that huge rampart barr'd the way.'"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    At last we reached the Trossachs Hotel, which stands near the wild
+    ravines filled with bristling woods where the stag was lost, with the
+    lovely lake in front and Ben-Venue towering up on the other side. I was
+    so excited I could scarcely eat, and no wonder, because for the greater
+    part of the day I had breathed nothing but the spirit of Scott's
+    poetry. I forgot to say that from the time we left Callander until we
+    got to the hotel the rain poured down steadily, but that didn't make
+    any difference to me. A human being soaked with the "Lady of the Lake"
+    is rain-proof.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0025"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-four</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    EDINBURGH
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was sorry to stop my last letter right in the middle of the "Lady of
+    the Lake" country, but I couldn't get it all in, and the fact is, I
+    can't get all I want to say in any kind of a letter. The things I have
+    seen and want to write about are crowded together like the Scottish
+    mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the day after we got to Trossachs Hotel, and I don't know any place
+    I would rather spend weeks at than there, Jone and I walked through the
+    "darksome glen" where the stag,
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken,
+     In the deep Trossachs' wildest nook
+     His solitary refuge took."
+</pre>
+<p>
+    And then we came out on the far-famed Loch Katrine. There was a little
+    steamboat there to take passengers to the other end, where a coach was
+    waiting, but it wasn't time for that to start, and we wandered on the
+    banks of that song-gilded piece of water. It didn't lie before us like
+    "one burnished sheet of living gold," as it appeared to James
+    Fitz-James but my soul could supply the sunset if I chose. There, too,
+    was the island of the fair Ellen, and beneath our very feet was the
+    "silver strand" to which she rowed her shallop. I am sorry to say there
+    isn't so much of the silver strand as there used to be, because, in
+    this world, as I have read, and as I have seen, the spirit of
+    realistics is always crowding and trampling on the toes of the
+    romantics, and the people of Glasgow have actually laid water-pipes
+    from their town to this lovely lake, and now they turn the faucets in
+    their back kitchens and out spouts the tide which kissed
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "With whispering sound and slow
+     The beach of pebbles bright as snow."
+</pre>
+<p>
+    This wouldn't have been so bad, because the lake has enough and to
+    spare of its limpid wave; but in order to make their water-works the
+    Glasgow people built a dam, and that has raised the lake a good deal
+    higher, so that it overflows ever so much of the silver strand. But I
+    can pick out the real from a scene like that as I can pick out and
+    throw away the seeds of an orange, and gazing o'er that enchanted scene
+    I felt like the Knight of Snowdoun himself, when he first beheld the
+    lake and said:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "How blithely might the bugle horn
+     Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn!"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    and then I went on with the lines until I came to
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "Blithe were it then to wander here!
+     But now&mdash;beshrew yon nimble deer"&mdash;
+</pre>
+<p>
+    "You'd better beshrew that steamboat bell," said Jone, and away we went
+    and just caught the boat. Realistics come in very well sometimes when
+    they take the form of legs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The steamboat took us over nearly the whole of Lake Katrine, and I must
+    say that I was so busy fitting verses to scenery that I don't remember
+    whether it rained or the sun shone. When we left the boat we took a
+    coach to Inversnaid on Loch Lomond, and, as we rode along, it made my
+    heart almost sink to feel that I had to leave my poetry behind me, for
+    I didn't know any that suited this region. But when we got in sight of
+    Loch Lomond a Scotch girl who was on the seat behind me, and had
+    several friends with her, began to sing a song about Lomond, of which I
+    only remember, "You take the high road and I'll take the low road, and
+    I'll get to Scotland afore you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am sure I must have Scotch blood in me, for when I heard that song it
+    wound up my feelings to such a pitch that I believe if that girl had
+    been near enough I should have given her a hug and a kiss. As for Jone,
+    he seemed to be nearly as much touched as I was, though not in the same
+    way, of course.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We took a boat on Loch Lomond to Ardlui, another little town, and then
+    we drove nine miles to the railroad. This was through a wild and solemn
+    valley, and by the side of a rushing river, full of waterfalls and deep
+    and diresome pools. When we reached the railroad we found a train
+    waiting, and we took it and went to Oban, which we reached about six
+    o'clock. Even this railroad trip was delightful, for we went by the
+    great Lake Awe, with another rushing river and mountains and black
+    precipices. We had a carriage all to ourselves until an old lady got in
+    at a station, and she hadn't been sitting in her corner more than ten
+    minutes before she turned to me and said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You haven't any lakes like this in your country, I suppose."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I must say that, in the heated condition I had been in ever since I
+    came into Scotland, a speech like that was like a squirt of cold water
+    into a thing full of steam. For a couple of seconds my boiling stopped,
+    but my fires was just as blazing as ever, and I felt as if I could turn
+    them on that old woman and shrivel her up for plastering her
+    comparisons on me at such a time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course, we haven't anything just like this," I said, "but it takes
+    all sorts of scenery to make up a world."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's very true, isn't it?" said she. "But, really, one couldn't
+    expect in America such a lake as that, such mountains, such grandeur!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I made up my mind if she was going to keep up this sort of thing
+    Jone and me would change carriages when we stopped at the next station,
+    for comparisons are very different from poetry, and if you try to mix
+    them with scenery you make a mess that is not fit for a Christian. But
+    I thought first I would give her a word back:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have seen to-day," I said, "the loveliest scenery I ever met with;
+    but we've got grand ca&ntilde;ons in America where you could put the whole of
+    that scenery without crowding, and where it wouldn't be much noticed by
+    spectators, so busy would they be gazing at the surrounding wonders."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Fancy!" said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't want to say anything," said I, "against what I have seen
+    to-day, and I don't want to think of anything else while I am looking
+    at it; but this I will say, that landscape with Scott is very different
+    from landscape without him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is very true, isn't it?" said she; and then she stopped making
+    comparisons, and I looked out of the window.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Oban is a very pretty place on the coast, but we never should have gone
+    there if it had not been the place to start from for Staffa and Iona.
+    When I was only a girl I saw pictures of Fingal's Cave, and I have read
+    a good deal about it since, and it is one of the spots in the world
+    that I have been longing to see, but I feel like crying when I tell
+    you, madam, that the next morning there was such a storm that the boat
+    for Staffa didn't even start; and as the people told us that the storm
+    would most likely last two or three days, and that the sea for a few
+    days more would be so rough that Staffa would be out of the question,
+    we had to give it up, and I was obliged to fall back from the reality
+    to my imagination. Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that he would
+    be willing to bet ten to one that my fancy would soar a mile above the
+    real thing, and that perhaps it was very well I didn't see old Fingal's
+    Cave and so be disappointed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps it is a good thing," said I, "that you didn't go, and that you
+    didn't get so seasick that you would be ready to renounce your
+    country's flag and embrace Mormonism if such things would make you feel
+    better." But that is the only thing that is good about it, and I have a
+    cloud on my recollection which shall never be lifted until Corinne is
+    old enough to travel and we come here with her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But although the storm was so bad, it was not bad enough to keep us
+    from making our water trip to Glasgow, for the boat we took did not
+    have to go out to sea. It was a wonderfully beautiful passage we made
+    among the islands and along the coast, with the great mountains on the
+    mainland standing up above everything else. After a while we got to the
+    Crinan Canal, which is in reality a short cut across the field. It is
+    nine miles long and not much wider than a good-sized ditch, but it
+    saves more than a hundred miles of travel around an island. We was on a
+    sort of a toy steamboat which went its way through the fields and
+    bushes and grass so close we could touch them; and as there was eleven
+    locks where the boat had to stop, we got out two or three times and
+    walked along the banks to the next lock. That being the kind of a ride
+    Jone likes, he blessed Buxton. At the other end of the canal we took a
+    bigger steamboat which carried us to Glasgow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the morning it hailed, which afterward turned to rain, but in the
+    afternoon there was only showers now and then, so that we spent most of
+    the time on deck. On this boat we met a very nice Englishman and his
+    wife, and when they had heard us speak to each other they asked us if
+    we had ever been in this part of the world before, and when we said we
+    hadn't they told us about the places we passed. If we had been an
+    English couple who had never been there before they wouldn't have said
+    a word to us.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As we got near the Clyde the gentleman began to talk about
+    ship-building, and pretty soon I saw in his face plain symptoms that he
+    was going to have an attack of comparison making. I have seen so much
+    of this disorder that I can nearly always tell when it is coming on a
+    person. In about a minute the disease broke out on him, and he began to
+    talk about the differences between American and English ships. He told
+    Jone and me about a steamship that was built out in San Francisco which
+    shook three thousand bolts out of herself on her first voyage. It
+    seemed to me that that was a good deal like a codfish shaking his
+    bones out through swimming too fast. I couldn't help thinking that that
+    steamship must have had a lot of bolts so as to have enough left to
+    keep her from scattering herself over the bottom of the ocean.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I expected Jone to say something in behalf of his country's ships, but
+    he didn't seem to pay much attention to the boat story, so I took up
+    the cudgels myself, and I said to the gentleman that all nations, no
+    matter how good they might be at ship-building, sometimes made
+    mistakes, and then to make a good impression on him I whanged him over
+    the head with the "Great Eastern," and asked him if there ever was a
+    vessel that was a greater failure than that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He said, "Yes, yes, the 'Great Eastern' was not a success," and then he
+    stopped talking about ships.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got fairly into the Clyde and near Glasgow the scene was
+    wonderful. It was nearly night, and the great fires of the factories
+    lit up the sky, and we saw on the stocks a great ship being built.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We stayed in Glasgow one day, and Jone was delighted with it, because
+    he said it was like an American city. Now, on principle, I like
+    American cities, but I didn't come to Scotland to see them; and the
+    greatest pleasure I had in Glasgow was standing with a tumbler of water
+    in my hand, repeating to myself as much of the "Lady of the Lake" as I
+    could remember.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0026"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-five</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    LONDON
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here we are in this wonderful town, where, if you can't see everything
+    you want to see, you can generally see a sample of it, even if your fad
+    happens to be the ancientnesses of Egypt. We are at the Babylon Hotel,
+    where we shall stay until it is time to start for Southampton, where we
+    shall take the steamer for home. What we are going to do between here
+    and Southampton I don't know yet; but I do know that Jone is all on
+    fire with joy because he thinks his journeys are nearly over, and I am
+    chilled with grief when I think that my journeys are nearly over.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We left Edinburgh on the train called the "Flying Scotsman," and it
+    deserved its name. I suppose that in the days of Wallace and Bruce and
+    Rob Roy the Scots must often have skipped along in a lively way; but I
+    am sure if any of them had ever invaded England at the rate we went
+    into it, the British lion would soon have been living on thistles
+    instead of roses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The speed of this train was sometimes a mile a minute, I think; and I
+    am sure I was never on any railroad in America where I was given a
+    shorter time to get out for something to eat than we had at York. Jone
+    and I are generally pretty quick about such things, but we had barely
+    time to get back to our carriage before that "Flying Scotsman" went off
+    like a streak of lightning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the way we saw a part of York Minster, and had a splendid, view of
+    Durham Cathedral, standing high in the unreachable&mdash;that is, as far as
+    I was concerned. Peterborough Cathedral we also saw the outside of, and
+    I felt like a boy looking in at a confectioner's window with no money
+    to buy anything. It wasn't money that I wanted; it was time, and we had
+    very little of that left.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next day, after we reached London, I set out to attend to a piece
+    of business that I didn't want Jone to know anything about. My business
+    was to look up my family pedigree. It seemed to me that it would be a
+    shame if I went away from the home of my ancestors without knowing
+    something about those ancestors and about the links that connected me
+    with them. So I determined to see what I could do in the way of making
+    up a family tree.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By good luck, Jone had some business to attend to about money and rooms
+    on the steamer, and so forth, and so I could start out by myself
+    without his even asking me where I was going. Now, of course, it would
+    be a natural thing for a person to go and seek out his ancestors in the
+    ancient village from which they sprang, and to read their names on
+    the tombstones in the venerable little church, but as I didn't know
+    where this village was, of course I couldn't go to it. But in London is
+    the place where you can find out how to find out such things.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0048"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img048.jpg">
+<img src="images/img048s.jpg" width="130" height="200"
+alt="'A PERSON WHO WAS A FAMILY-TREE-MAN'" /><br />
+'A PERSON WHO WAS A FAMILY-TREE-MAN'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    As far back as when we was in Chedcombe I had had a good deal of talk
+    with Miss Pondar about ancestors and families. I told her that my
+    forefathers came from this country, which I was very sure of, judging
+    from my feelings; but as I couldn't tell her any particulars, I didn't
+    go into the matter very deep. But I did say there was a good many
+    points that I would like to set straight, and asked her if she knew
+    where I could find out something about English family trees. She said
+    she had heard there was a big heraldry office in London, but if I
+    didn't want to go there, she knew of a person who was a
+    family-tree-man. He had an office in London, and his business was to go
+    around and tend to trees of that kind which had been neglected, and to
+    get them into shape and good condition. She gave me his address, and I
+    had kept the thing quiet in my mind until now.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I found the family-tree-man, whose name was Brandish, in a small room
+    not too clean, over a shop not far from St. Paul's Churchyard. He had
+    another business, which related to patent poison for flies, and at
+    first he thought I had come to see him about that, but when he found
+    out I wanted to ask him about my family tree his face brightened up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I told Mr. Brandish my business the first thing he asked me was my
+    family name. Of course I had expected this, and I had thought a great
+    deal about the answer I ought to give. In the first place, I didn't
+    want to have anything to do with my father's name. I never had anything
+    much to do with him, because he died when I was a little baby, and his
+    name had nothing high-toned about it, and it seemed to me to belong to
+    that kind of a family that you would be better satisfied with the less
+    you looked up its beginnings; but my mother's family was a different
+    thing. Nobody could know her without feeling that she had sprung from
+    good roots. It might have been from the stump of a tree that had been
+    cut down, but the roots must have been of no common kind to send up
+    such a shoot as she was. It was from her that I got my longings for the
+    romantic.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She used to tell me a good deal about her father, who must have been a
+    wonderful man in many ways. What she told me was not like a sketch of
+    his life, which I wish it had been, but mostly anecdotes of what he
+    said and did. So it was my mother's ancestral tree I determined to
+    find, and without saying whether it was on my mother's or father's side
+    I was searching for ancestors, I told Mr. Brandish that Dork was the
+    family name.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dork," said he; "a rather uncommon name, isn't it? Was your father
+    the eldest son of a family of that name?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I was hoping he wouldn't say anything about my father.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, sir," said I; "it isn't that line that I am looking up. It is my
+    mother's. Her name was Dork before she was married."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really! Now I see," said he, "you have the paternal line all correct,
+    and you want to look up the line on the other side. That is very
+    common; it is so seldom that one knows the line of ancestors on one's
+    maternal side. Dork, then, was the name of your maternal grandfather."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It struck me that a maternal grandfather must be a grandmother, but I
+    didn't say so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Can you tell me," said he, "whether it was he who emigrated from this
+    country to America, or whether it was his father or his grandfather?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I hadn't said anything about the United States, for I had learned
+    there was no use in wasting breath telling English people I had come
+    from America, so I wasn't surprised at his question, but I couldn't
+    answer it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I can't say much about that," I said, "until I have found out
+    something about the English branches of the family."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good," said he. "We will look over the records," and he took down
+    a big book and turned to the letter D. He ran his finger down two or
+    three pages, and then he began to shake his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dork?" said he. "There doesn't seem to be any Dork, but here is
+    Dorkminster. Now if that was your family name we'd have it all here. No
+    doubt you know all about that family. It's a grand old family, isn't
+    it? Isn't it possible that your grandfather or one of his ancestors may
+    have dropped part of the name when he changed his residence to
+    America?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I began to think hard; there was some reason in what the
+    family-tree-man said. I knew very well that the same family name was
+    often different in different countries, changes being made to suit
+    climates and people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Minster has a religious meaning, hasn't it?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, madam," said he; "it relates to cathedrals and that sort of
+    thing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, so far as I could remember, none of the things my mother had ever
+    told me about her father was in any ways related to religion. They was
+    mostly about horses; and although there is really no reason for the
+    disconnection between horses and religion, especially when you consider
+    the hymns with heavenly chariots in them must have had horses, it
+    didn't seem to me that my grandfather could have made it a point of
+    being religious, and perhaps he mightn't have cared for the cathedral
+    part of his name, and so might have dropped it for convenience in
+    signing, probably being generally in a hurry, judging from what my
+    mother had told me. I said as much to Mr. Brandish, and he answered
+    that he thought it was likely enough, and that that sort of thing was
+    often done.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, then," said he, "let us look into the Dorkminster line and trace
+    out your connection with that. From what place did your ancestors
+    come?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed to me that he was asking me a good deal more than he was
+    telling me, and I said to him: "That is what I want to find out. What
+    is the family home of the Dorkminsters?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, they were a great Hampshire family," said he. "For five hundred
+    years they lived on their estates in Hampshire. The first of the name
+    was Sir William Dorkminster, who came over with the Conqueror, and most
+    likely was given those estates for his services. Then we go on until we
+    come to the Duke of Dorkminster, who built a castle, and whose brother
+    Henry was made bishop and founded an abbey, which I am sorry to say
+    doesn't now exist, being totally destroyed by Oliver Cromwell."
+</p>
+<p>
+    You cannot imagine how my blood leaped and surged within me as I
+    listened to those words. William the Conqueror! An ancestral abbey! A
+    duke! "Is the family castle still standing?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It fell into ruins," said he, "during the reign of Charles I., and
+    even its site is now uncertain, the park having been devoted to
+    agricultural purposes. The fourth Duke of Dorkminster was to have
+    commanded one of the ships which destroyed the Spanish Armada, but was
+    prevented by a mortal fever which cut him off in his prime; he died
+    without issue, and the estates passed to the Culverhams of Wilts."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did that cut off the line?" said I, very quick.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no," said the family-tree man, "the line went on. One of the
+    duke's younger sisters must have married a man on condition that he
+    took the old family name, which is often done, and her descendants must
+    have emigrated somewhere, for the name no longer appears in Hampshire;
+    but probably not to America, for that was rather early for English
+    emigration."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you suppose," said I, "that they went to Scotland?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very likely," said he, after thinking a minute; "that would be
+    probable enough. Have you reason to suppose that there was a Scotch
+    branch in your family?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said I, for it would have been positively wrong in me to say
+    that the feelings that I had for the Scotch hadn't any meaning at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now then," said Mr. Brandish, "there you are, madam. There is a line
+    all the way down from the Conqueror to the end of the sixteenth
+    century, scarcely one man's lifetime before the Pilgrims landed on
+    Plymouth Rock."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I now began to calculate in my mind. I was thirty years old; my mother,
+    most likely, was about as old when I was born; that made sixty years.
+    Then my grandfather might have been forty when my mother was born, and
+    there was a century. As for my great-grandfather and his parents, I
+    didn't know anything about them. Of course, there must have been such
+    persons, but I didn't know where they came from or where they went to.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I can go back a century," said I, "but that doesn't begin to meet the
+    end of the line you have marked out. There's a gap of about two hundred
+    years."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I don't think I would mind that," said Mr. Brandish. "Gaps of that
+    kind are constantly occurring in family trees. In fact, if we was to
+    allow gaps of a century or so to interfere with the working out of
+    family lines, it would cut off a great many noble ancestries from
+    families of high position, especially in the colonies and abroad. I beg
+    you not to pay any attention to that, madam."
+</p>
+<p>
+    My nerves was tingling with the thought of the Spanish Armada, and
+    perhaps Bannockburn (which then made me wish I had known all this
+    before I went to Stirling, but which battle, now as I write, I know
+    must have been fought a long time before any of the Dorks went to
+    Scotland), and I expect my eyes flashed with family pride, for do what
+    I would I couldn't sit calm and listen to what I was hearing. But,
+    after all, that two hundred years did weigh upon my mind. "If you make
+    a family tree for me," said I, "you will have to cut off the trunk and
+    begin again somewhere up in the air."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no," said he, "we don't do that. We arrange the branches so that
+    they overlap each other, and the dotted lines which indicate the
+    missing portions are not noticed. Then, after further investigation and
+    more information, the dots can be run together and the tree made
+    complete and perfect."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, I had nothing more to say, and he promised to send me the
+    tree the next morning, though, of course, requesting me to pay him in
+    advance, which was the rule of the office, and you would be amazed,
+    madam, if you knew how much that tree cost. I got it the next morning,
+    but I haven't shown it to Jone yet. I am proud that I own it, and I
+    have thrills through me whenever my mind goes back to its Norman roots;
+    but I am bound to say that family trees sometimes throw a good deal of
+    shade over their owners, especially when they have gaps in them, which
+    seems contrary to nature, but is true to fact.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0027"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-six</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    SOUTHWESTERN HOTEL, SOUTHAMPTON
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow our steamer sails, and this is the last letter I write on
+    English soil; and although I haven't done half that I wanted to, there
+    are ever so many things I have done that I can't write you about.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had seen so few cathedrals that on the way down here I was bound to
+    see at least one good one, and so we stopped at Winchester. It was
+    while walking under the arches of that venerable pile that the thought
+    suddenly came to me that we were now in Hampshire, and that, perhaps,
+    in this cathedral might be some of the tombs of my ancestors. Without
+    saying what I was after I began at one of the doors, and I went clean
+    around that enormous church, and read every tablet in the walls and on
+    the floor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Once I had a shock. There was a good many small tombs with roofs over
+    them, and statues of people buried within, lying on top of the tombs,
+    and some of them had their faces and clothes colored so as to make them
+    look almost as natural as life. They was mostly bishops, and had been
+    lying there for centuries. While looking at these I came to a tomb
+    with an opening low down on the side of it, and behind some iron bars
+    there lay a stone figure that made me fairly jump. He was on his back
+    with hardly any clothes on, and was actually nothing but skin and
+    bones. His mouth was open, as if he was gasping for his last breath. I
+    never saw such an awful sight, and as I looked at the thing my blood
+    began to run cold, and then it froze. The freezing was because I
+    suddenly thought to myself that this might be a Dorkminster, and that
+    that horrible object was my ancestor. I was actually afraid to look at
+    the inscription on the tombstone for fear that this was so, for if it
+    was, I knew that whenever I should think of my family tree this bag of
+    bones would be climbing up the trunk, or sitting on one of the
+    branches. But I must know the truth, and trembling so that I could
+    scarcely read, I stooped down to look at the inscription and find out
+    who that dreadful figure had been. It was not a Dorkminster, and my
+    spirits rose.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0049"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img049.jpg">
+<img src="images/img049s.jpg" width="162" height="180"
+alt="'THIS MIGHT BE A DORKMINSTER'" /><br />
+ 'This Might Be a Dorkminster'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    We got here three days ago, and we have made a visit to the Isle of
+    Wight. We went straight down to the southern coast, and stopped all
+    night at the little town of Bonchurch. It was very lovely down there
+    with roses and other flowers blooming out-of-doors as if it was summer,
+    although it is now getting so cold everywhere else. But what pleased me
+    most was to stand at the top of a little hill, and look out over the
+    waters of the English Channel, and feel that not far out of eyeshot was
+    the beautiful land of France with its lower part actually touching
+    Italy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You know, madam, that when we was here before, we was in France, and a
+    happy woman was I to be there, although so much younger than now I
+    couldn't properly enjoy it; but even then France was only part of the
+    road to Italy, which, alas, we never got to. Some day, however, I shall
+    float in a gondola and walk amid the ruins of ancient Rome, and if Jone
+    is too sick of travel to go with me, it may be necessary for Corinne to
+    see the world, and I shall take her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I must finish this letter and bid good-by to beautiful Britain,
+    which has made us happy and treated us well in spite of some
+    comparisons in which we was expected to be on the wrong side, but which
+    hurt nobody, and which I don't want even to think of at such a moment
+    as this.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0028"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-seven</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    NEW YORK
+</p>
+<p>
+    I send you this, madam, to let you know that we arrived here safely
+    yesterday afternoon, and that we are going to-day to Jone's mother's
+    farm where Corinne is.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I liked sailing from Southampton because when I start to go to a place
+    I like to go, and when we went home before and had to begin by going
+    all the way up to Liverpool by land, and then coming all the way back
+    again by water, and after a couple of days of this to stop at
+    Queenstown and begin the real voyage from there, I did not like it,
+    although it was a good deal of fun seeing the bumboat women come aboard
+    at Queenstown and telescope themselves into each other as they hurried
+    up the ladder to get on deck and sell us things.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We had a very good voyage, with about enough rolling to make the dining
+    saloon look like some of the churches we've seen abroad on weekdays
+    where there was services regular, but mighty small congregations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got in sight of my native shore, England, Scotland, and even
+    the longed-for Italy, with her palaces and gondolas, faded from my
+    mind, and my every fibre tingled with pride and patriotism. We reached
+    our dock about six o'clock in the afternoon, and I could scarcely stand
+    still, so anxious was I to get ashore. There was a train at eight which
+    reached Rockbridge at half-past nine, and there we could take a
+    carriage and drive to the farm in less than an hour, and then Corinne
+    would be in my arms, so you may imagine my state of mind&mdash;Corinne
+    before bedtime! But a cloud blacker than the heaviest fog came down
+    upon me, for while we was standing on the deck, expecting every minute
+    to land, a man came along and shouted at the top of his voice that no
+    baggage could be examined by the custom-house officers after six
+    o'clock, and the passengers could take nothing ashore with them but
+    their hand-bags, and must come back in the morning and have their
+    baggage examined. When I heard this my soul simply boiled within me! I
+    looked at Jone, and I could see he was boiling just as bad.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jone," said I, "don't say a word to me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am not going to say a word," said he, and he didn't. All our
+    belongings was in our trunks. Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had
+    only a little one which had in it three newspapers, which we bought
+    from the pilot, a tooth-brush, a spool of thread and some needles, and
+    a pair of scissors with one point broken off. With these things we had
+    to go to a hotel and spend the night, and in the morning we had to go
+    back to have our trunks examined, which, as there was nothing in them
+    to pay duty on, was waste time for all parties, no matter when it was
+    done.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0050"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img050.jpg">
+<img src="images/img050s.jpg" width="178" height="180"
+alt="'JONE DIDN'T CARRY ANY HAND-BAG, AND I HAD ONLY A LITTLE ONE'" />
+<br />'JONE DIDN'T CARRY ANY HAND-BAG, AND I HAD ONLY A LITTLE ONE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    That night, when I was lying awake thinking about this welcome to our
+    native land, I don't say that I hauled down the stars and stripes, but
+    I did put them at half mast. When we arrived in England we got ashore
+    about twelve o'clock at night, but there was the custom-house officers
+    as civil and obliging as any people could be, ready to tend to us and
+    pass us on. And when I thought of them, and afterward of the lordly
+    hirelings who met us here, I couldn't help feeling what a glorious
+    thing it would be to travel if you could get home without coming back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that we ought to be very glad we
+    don't like this sort of thing. "In many foreign countries," said he,
+    "people are a good deal nagged by their governments and they like it;
+    we don't like it, so haul up your flag."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I hauled it up, and it's flying now from the tiptop of my tallest mast.
+    In an hour our train starts, and I shall see Corinne before the sun
+    goes down.
+</p>
+
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12460 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12460 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12460)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pomona's Travels, by Frank R. Stockton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pomona's Travels
+       A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former
+       Handmaiden
+       
+
+Author: Frank R. Stockton
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2004 [EBook #12460]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POMONA'S TRAVELS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Asad Razzaki and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+_POMONA'S TRAVELS_
+
+_A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her former
+Handmaiden_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+POMONA'S TRAVELS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BY
+
+FRANK R. STOCKTON
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+BY
+A.B. FROST
+
+1894
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+_In Uniform Binding_
+
+_RUDDER GRANGE_
+_Illustrated by A.B. Frost._
+
+_POMONA'S TRAVELS_
+_Illustrated by A.B. Frost._
+
+
+[Illustration: CONTENTS]
+
+LETTER ONE.
+_Wanted,--a Vicarage_
+
+LETTER TWO.
+_On the Four-in-hand_
+
+LETTER THREE.
+_Jone overshadows the Waiter_
+
+LETTER FOUR.
+_The Cottage at Chedcombe_
+
+LETTER FIVE.
+_Pomona takes a Lodger_
+
+LETTER SIX.
+_Pomona expounds Americanisms_
+
+LETTER SEVEN.
+_The Hayfield_
+
+LETTER EIGHT.
+_Jone teaches Young Ladies how to Rake_
+
+LETTER NINE.
+_A Runaway Tricycle_
+
+LETTER TEN.
+_Pomona slides Backward down the Slope of the Centuries_
+
+LETTER ELEVEN.
+_On the Moors_
+
+LETTER TWELVE.
+_Stag-hunting on a Tricycle_
+
+LETTER THIRTEEN.
+_The Green Placard_
+
+LETTER FOURTEEN.
+_Pomona and her David Llewellyn_
+
+LETTER FIFTEEN.
+_Hogs and the Fine Arts_
+
+LETTER SIXTEEN.
+_With Dickens in London_
+
+LETTER SEVENTEEN.
+_Buxton and the Bath Chairs_
+
+LETTER EIGHTEEN.
+_Mr. Poplington as Guide_
+
+LETTER NINETEEN.
+_Angelica and Pomeroy_
+
+LETTER TWENTY.
+_The Countess of Mussleby_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-ONE.
+_Edinboro' Town_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-TWO.
+_Pomona and her Gilly_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-THREE.
+_They follow the Lady of the Lake_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-FOUR.
+_Comparisons become Odious to Pomona_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-FIVE.
+_The Family-Tree-Man_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-SIX.
+_Searching for Dorkminsters_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-SEVEN.
+_Their Country and their Custom House_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+[Illustration: List of Illustrations]
+
+_Title Page_
+
+_Vignette Heading to Table of Contents_
+
+_Tail piece to Table of Contents_
+
+_Vignette Heading to List of Illustrations_
+
+_Tail-piece to List of Illustrations_
+
+_Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"Boy, go order me a four-in-hand"_
+
+_The Landlady with an "underdone visage"_
+
+_"I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"_
+
+_"Down came a shower of rain"_
+
+_"Ask the waiter what the French words mean"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_Jone giving an order_
+
+_The Carver_
+
+_"You Americans are the speediest people"_
+
+_"That was our house"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"The young lady who keeps the bar"_
+
+_"I see signs of weakening in the social boom"_
+
+_At the Abbey_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"There, with the bar lady and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, was
+Jone"_
+
+_"At last I did get on my feet"_
+
+_"Rise, Sir Jane Puddle"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and initial Letter_
+
+_"In an instant I was free"_
+
+_"If you was a man I'd break your head"_
+
+_"I'm a Home Ruler"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"And with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam engine"_
+
+_"In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over"_
+
+_"Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"_
+
+_Mr. Poplington looking for luggage_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_Pomona encourages Jonas_
+
+_"Stop, lady, and I'll get out"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"Your brother is over there"_
+
+_To the Cat and Fiddle_
+
+_"And did you like Chedcombe?"_
+
+_"Jone looked at him and said that was the Highland costume"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
+wild twirl over my head"_
+
+_Pomona drinking it in_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"A person who was a family-tree-man"_
+
+_"This might be a Dorkminster"_
+
+_Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had only a little one_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POMONA'S TRAVELS
+
+
+This series of letters, written by Pomona of "Rudder Grange" to her
+former mistress, Euphemia, may require a few words of introduction.
+Those who have not read the adventures and experiences of Pomona in
+"Rudder Grange" should be told that she first appeared in that story as
+a very young and illiterate girl, fond of sensational romances, and
+with some out-of-the-way ideas in regard to domestic economy and the
+conventions of society. This romantic orphan took service in the
+"Rudder Grange" family, and as the story progressed she grew up into a
+very estimable young woman, and finally married Jonas, the son of a
+well-to-do farmer. Even after she came into possession of a husband and
+a daughter Pomona did not lose her affection for her former employers.
+
+About a year before the beginning of the travels described in these
+letters Jonas's father died and left a comfortable little property,
+which placed Pomona and her husband in independent circumstances. The
+ideas and ambitions of this eccentric but sensible young woman
+enlarged with her fortune. As her daughter was now going to school,
+Pomona was seized with the spirit of emulation, and determined as far
+as was possible to make the child's education an advantage to herself.
+Some of the books used by the little girl at school were carefully and
+earnestly studied by her mother, and as Jonas joined with hearty
+good-will in the labors and pleasures of this system of domestic study,
+the family standard of education was considerably raised. In the
+quick-witted and observant Pomona the improvement showed itself
+principally in her methods of expression, and although she could not be
+called at the time of these travels an educated woman, she was by no
+means an ignorant one.
+
+When the daughter was old enough she was allowed to accept an
+invitation from her grandmother to spend the summer in the country, and
+Pomona determined that it was the duty of herself and husband to avail
+themselves of this opportunity for foreign travel.
+
+Accordingly, one fine spring morning, Pomona, still a young woman, and
+Jonas, not many years older, but imbued with a semi-pathetic
+complaisance beyond his years, embarked for England and Scotland, to
+which countries it was determined to limit their travels. The letters
+which follow were written in consequence of the earnest desire of
+Euphemia to have a full account of the travels and foreign impressions
+of her former handmaiden. Pruned of dates, addresses, signatures, and
+of many personal and friendly allusions, these letters are here
+presented as Pomona wrote them to Euphemia.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number One_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+
+The first thing Jone said to me when I told him I was going to write
+about what I saw and heard was that I must be careful of two things. In
+the first place, I must not write a lot of stuff that everybody ought
+to be expected to know, especially people who have travelled
+themselves; and in the second place, I must not send you my green
+opinions, but must wait until they were seasoned, so that I can see
+what they are good for before I send them.
+
+"But if I do that," said I, "I will get tired of them long before they
+are seasoned, and they will be like a bundle of old sticks that I
+wouldn't offer to anybody." Jone laughed at that, and said I might as
+well send them along green, for, after all, I wasn't the kind of a
+person to keep things until they were seasoned, to see if I liked them.
+"That's true," said I, "there's a great many things, such as husbands
+and apples, that I like a good deal better fresh than dry. Is that all
+the advice you've got to give?"
+
+"For the present," said he; "but I dare say I shall have a good deal
+more as we go along."
+
+"All right," said I, "but be careful you don't give me any of it green.
+Advice is like gooseberries, that's got to be soft and ripe, or else
+well cooked and sugared, before they're fit to take into anybody's
+stomach."
+
+Jone was standing at the window of our sitting-room when I said this,
+looking out into the street. As soon as we got to London we took
+lodgings in a little street running out of the Strand, for we both want
+to be in the middle of things as long as we are in this conglomerate
+town, as Jone calls it. He says, and I think he is about right, that it
+is made up of half a dozen large cities, ten or twelve towns, at least
+fifty villages, more than a hundred little settlements, or hamlets, as
+they call them here, and about a thousand country houses scattered
+along around the edges; and over and above all these are the
+inhabitants of a large province, which, there being no province to put
+them into, are crammed into all the cracks and crevices so as to fill
+up the town and pack it solid.
+
+When we was in London before, with you and your husband, madam, and we
+lost my baby in Kensington Gardens, we lived, you know, in a peaceful,
+quiet street by a square or crescent, where about half the inhabitants
+were pervaded with the solemnities of the past and the other half bowed
+down by the dolefulness of the present, and no way of getting anywhere
+except by descending into a movable tomb, which is what I always think
+of when we go anywhere in the underground railway. But here we can walk
+to lots of things we want to see, and if there was nothing else to keep
+us lively the fear of being run over would do it, you may be sure.
+
+But, after all, Jone and me didn't come here to London just to see the
+town. We have ideas far ahead of that. When we was in London before I
+saw pretty nearly all the sights, for when I've got work like that to
+do I don't let the grass grow under my feet, and what we want to do on
+this trip is to see the country part of England and Scotland. And in
+order to see English country life just as it is, we both agreed that
+the best thing to do was to take a little house in the country and live
+there a while; and I'll say here that this is the only plan of the
+whole journey that Jone gets real enthusiastic about, for he is a
+domestic man, as you well know, and if anything swells his veins with
+fervent rapture it is the idea of living in some one place continuous,
+even if it is only for a month.
+
+As we wanted a house in the country we came to London to get it, for
+London is the place to get everything. Our landlady advised us, when we
+told her what we wanted, to try and get a vicarage in some little
+village, because, she said, there are always lots of vicars who want to
+go away for a month in the summer, and they can't do it unless they
+rent their houses while they are gone. And in fact, some of them, she
+said, got so little salary for the whole year, and so much rent for
+their vicarages while they are gone, that they often can't afford to
+stay in places unless they go away.
+
+So we answered some advertisements, and there was no lack of them in
+the papers, and three agents came to see us, but we did not seem to
+have any luck. Each of them had a house to let which ought to have
+suited us, according to their descriptions, and although we found the
+prices a good deal higher than we expected, Jone said he wasn't going
+to be stopped by that, because it was only for a little while and for
+the sake of experience--and experience, as all the poets, and a good
+many of the prose writers besides, tell us, is always dear. But after
+the agents went away, saying they would communicate with us in the
+morning, we never heard anything more from them, and we had to begin
+all over again. There was something the matter, Jone and I both agreed
+on that, but we didn't know what it was. But I waked up in the night
+and thought about this thing for a whole hour, and in the morning I had
+an idea.
+
+"Jone," said I, when we was eating breakfast, "it's as plain as A B C
+that those agents don't want us for tenants, and it isn't because they
+think we are not to be trusted, for we'd have to pay in advance, and so
+their money's safe; it is something else, and I think I know what it
+is. These London men are very sharp, and used to sizing and sorting all
+kinds of people as if they was potatoes being got ready for market, and
+they have seen that we are not what they call over here gentlefolks."
+
+"No lordly airs, eh?" said Jone.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that," I answered him back; "lordly airs don't go
+into parsonages, and I don't mean either that they see from our looks
+or manners that you used to drive horses and milk cows and work in the
+garden, and that I used to cook and scrub and was maid-of-all-work on a
+canal-boat; but they do see that we are not the kind of people who are
+in the habit, in this country, at least, of spending their evenings in
+the best parlors of vicarages."
+
+"Do you suppose," said Jone, "that they think a vicar's kitchen would
+suit us better?"
+
+"No," said I, "they wouldn't put us in a vicarage at all; there
+wouldn't be no place there that would not be either too high or too low
+for us. It's my opinion that what they think we belong in is a lordly
+house, where you'd shine most as head butler or a steward, while I'd be
+the housekeeper or a leading lady's maid."
+
+"By George!" said Jone, getting up from the table, "if any of those
+fellows would favor me with an opinion like that I'd break his head."
+
+"You'd have a lot of heads to break," said I, "if you went through this
+country asking for opinions on the subject. It's all very well for us
+to remember that we've got a house of our own as good as most rectors
+have over here, and money enough to hire a minor canon, if we needed
+one in the house; but the people over here don't know that, and it
+wouldn't make much difference if they did, for it wouldn't matter how
+nice we lived or what we had so long as they knew we was retired
+servants."
+
+At this Jone just blazed up and rammed his hands into his pockets and
+spread his feet wide upon the floor. "Pomona," said he, "I don't mind
+it in you, but if anybody else was to call me a retired servant I'd--"
+
+"Hold up, Jone," said I, "don't waste good, wholesome anger." Now, I
+tell you, madam, it really did me good to see Jone blaze up and get red
+in the face, and I am sure that if he'd get his blood boiling oftener
+it would be a good thing for his dyspeptic tendencies and what little
+malaria may be left in his system. "It won't do any good to flare up
+here," I went on to say to him; "fact's fact, and we was servants, and
+good ones, too, though I say it myself, and the trouble is we haven't
+got into the way of altogether forgetting it, or, at least, acting as
+if we had forgotten it."
+
+Jone sat down on a chair. "It might help matters a little," he said,
+"if I knew what you was driving at."
+
+"I mean just this," said I, "as long as we are as anxious not to give
+trouble, or as careful of people's feelings, as good-mannered to
+servants, and as polite and good-natured to everybody we have anything
+to do with, as we both have been since we came here, and as it is our
+nature to be, I am proud to say, we're bound to be set down, at least
+by the general run of people over here, as belonging to the pick of the
+nobility and gentry, or as well-bred servants. It's only those two
+classes that act as we do, and anybody can see we are not special
+nobles and gents. Now, if we want to be reckoned anywhere in between
+these two we've got to change our manners."
+
+"Will you kindly mention just how?" said Jone.
+
+"Yes," said I, "I will. In the first place, we've got to act as if we
+had always been waited on and had never been satisfied with the way it
+was done; we've got to let people think that we think we are a good
+deal better than they are, and what they think about it doesn't make
+the least difference; and then again we've got to live in better
+quarters than these, and whatever they may be we must make people
+think that we don't think they are quite good enough for us. If we do
+all that, agents may be willing to let us vicarages."
+
+"It strikes me," said Jone, "that these quarters are good enough for
+us. I'm comfortable." And then he went on to say, madam, that when you
+and your husband was in London you was well satisfied with just such
+lodgings.
+
+"That's all very well," I said, "for they never moved in the lower
+paths of society, and so they didn't have to make any change, but just
+went along as they had been used to go. But if we want to make people
+believe we belong to that class I should choose, if I had my pick out
+of English social varieties, we've got to bounce about as much above it
+as we were born below it, so that we can strike somewhere near the
+proper average."
+
+"And what variety would you pick out, I'd like to know?" said Jone,
+just a little red in the face, and looking as if I had told him he
+didn't know timothy hay from oat straw.
+
+"Well," said I, "it is not easy to put it to you exactly, but it's a
+sort of a cross between a prosperous farmer without children and a poor
+country gentleman with two sons at college and one in the British army,
+and no money to pay their debts with."
+
+"That last is not to my liking," said Jone.
+
+"But the farmer part of the cross would make it all right," I said to
+him, "and it strikes me that a mixture like that would just suit us
+while we are staying over here. Now, if you will try to think of
+yourself as part rich farmer and part poor gentleman, I'll consider
+myself the wife of the combination, and I am sure we will get along
+better. We didn't come over here to be looked upon as if we was the
+bottom of a pie dish and charged as if we was the upper crust. I'm in
+favor of paying a little more money and getting a lot more
+respectfulness, and the way to begin is to give up these lodgings and
+go to a hotel such as the upper middlers stop at. From what I've heard,
+the Babylon Hotel is the one for us while we are in London. Nobody will
+suspect that any of the people at that hotel are retired servants."
+
+[Illustration: "Boy, go order me a four-in-hand"]
+
+This hit Jone hard, as I knew it would, and he jumped up, made three
+steps across the room, and rang the bell so that the people across the
+street must have heard it, and up came the boy in green jacket and
+buttons, with about every other button missing, and I never knew him to
+come up so quick before.
+
+"Boy," said Jone to him, as if he was hollering to a stubborn ox, "go
+order me a four-in-hand."
+
+But this letter is so long I must stop for the present.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Two_
+
+
+LONDON
+
+When Jone gave the remarkable order mentioned in my last letter I did
+not correct him, for I wouldn't do that before servants without giving
+him a chance to do it himself; but before either of us could say
+another word the boy was gone.
+
+"Mercy on us," I said, "what a stupid blunder! You meant four-wheeler."
+
+[Illustration: The Landlady with an "underdone visage"]
+
+"Of course I did," he said; "I was a little mad and got things mixed,
+but I expect the fellow understood what I meant."
+
+"You ought to have called a hansom any way," I said, "for they are a
+lot more stylish to go to a hotel in than in a four-wheeler."
+
+"If there was six-wheelers I would have ordered one," said he. "I don't
+want anybody to have more wheels than we have."
+
+At this moment the landlady came into the room with a sarcastic glimmer
+on her underdone visage, and, says she, "I suppose you don't
+understand about the vehicles we have in London. The four-in-hand is
+what the quality and coach people use when--" As I looked at Jone I saw
+his legs tremble, and I know what that means. If I was a wanderin' dog
+and saw Jone's legs tremble, the only thoughts that would fill my soul
+would be such as cluster around "Home, Sweet Home." Jone was too much
+riled by the woman's manner to be willing to let her think he had made
+a mistake, and he stopped her short. "Look here," he said to her, "I
+don't ask you to come here to tell me anything about vehicles. When I
+order any sort of a trap I want it." When I heard Jone say trap my soul
+lifted itself and I knew there was hope for us. The stiffness melted
+right out of the landlady, and she began to look soft and gummy.
+
+"If you want to take a drive in a four-in-hand coach, sir," she said,
+"there's two or three of them starts every morning from Trafalgar
+Square, and it's not too late now, sir, if you go over there
+immediate."
+
+"Go?" said Jone, throwing himself into a chair, "I said, order one to
+come. Where I live that sort of vehicle comes to the door for its
+passengers."
+
+The woman looked at Jone with a venerative uplifting of her eyebrows.
+"I can't say, sir, that a coach will come, but I'll send the boy. They
+go to Dorking, and Seven Oaks, and Virginia Water--"
+
+"I want to go to Virginia Water," said Jone, as quick as lightning.
+
+"Now, then," said I, when the woman had gone, "what are you going to do
+if the coach comes?"
+
+"Go to Virginia Water in it," said Jone, "and when we come back we can
+go to the hotel. I made a mistake, but I've got to stand by it or be
+called a greenhorn."
+
+I was in hopes the four-in-hand wouldn't come, but in less than ten
+minutes there drove up to our door a four-horse coach which, not having
+half enough passengers, was glad to come such a little ways to get some
+more. There was a man in a high hat and red coat, who was blowing a
+horn as the thing came around the corner, and just as I was looking
+into the coach and thinking we'd have it all to ourselves, for there
+was nobody in it, he put a ladder up against the top, and says he,
+touching his hat, "There's a seat for you, madam, right next the
+coachman, and one just behind for the gentleman. 'Tain't often that, on
+a fine morning like this, such seats as them is left vacant on account
+of a sudden case of croup in a baronet's family."
+
+I looked at the ladder and I looked at that top front seat, and I tell
+you, madam, I trembled in every pore, but I remembered then that all
+the respectable seats was on top, and the farther front the nobbier,
+and as there was a young woman sitting already on the box-seat, I made
+up my mind that if she could sit there I could, and that I wasn't
+going to let Jone or anybody else see that I was frightened by style
+and fashion, though confronted by it so sudden and unexpected. So up
+that ladder I went quick enough, having had practice in hay-mows, and
+sat myself down between the young woman and the coachman, and when Jone
+had tucked himself in behind me the horner blew his horn and away we
+went.
+
+[Illustration: "I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"]
+
+I tell you, madam, that box-seat was a queer box for me. I felt as
+though I was sitting on the eaves of a roof with a herd of horses
+cavoorting under my feet. I never had a bird's-eye view of horses
+before. Looking down on their squirming bodies, with the coachman
+almost standing on his tiptoes driving them, was so different from
+Jone's buggy and our tall gray horse, which in general we look up to,
+that for a good while I paid no attention to anything but the danger of
+falling out on top of them. But having made sure that Jone was holding
+on to my dress from behind, I began to take an interest in the things
+around me.
+
+Knowing as much as I thought I did about the bigness of London, I found
+that morning that I never had any idea of what an everlasting town it
+is. It is like a skein of tangled yarn--there doesn't seem to be any
+end to it. Going in this way from Nelson's Monument out into the
+country, it was amazing to see how long it took to get there. We would
+go out of the busy streets into a quiet rural neighborhood, or what
+looked like it, and the next thing we knew we'd be in another whirl of
+omnibuses and cabs, with people and shops everywhere; and we'd go on
+and through this and then come to another handsome village with country
+houses, and the street would end in another busy town; and so on until
+I began to think there was no real country, at least, in the direction
+we was going. It is my opinion that if London was put on a pivot and
+spun round in the State of Texas until it all flew apart, it would
+spread all over the State and settle up the whole country.
+
+At last we did get away from the houses and began to roll along on the
+best made road I ever saw, with a hedge on each side and the greenest
+grass in the fields, and the most beautiful trees, with the very trunks
+covered with green leaves, and with white sheep and handsome cattle and
+pretty thatched cottages, and everything in perfect order, looking as
+if it had just been sprinkled and swept. We had seen English country
+before, but that was from the windows of a train, and it was very
+different from this sort of thing, where we went meandering along
+lanes, for that is what the roads look like, being so narrow.
+
+Just as I was getting my whole soul full of this lovely ruralness, down
+came a shower of rain without giving the least notice. I gave a jump in
+my seat as I felt it on me, and began to get ready to get down as soon
+as the coachman should stop for us all to get inside; but he didn't
+stop, but just drove along as if the sun was shining and the balmy
+breezes blowing, and then I looked around and not a soul of the eight
+people on the top of that coach showed the least sign of expecting to
+get down and go inside. They all sat there just as if nothing was
+happening, and not one of them even mentioned the rain. But I noticed
+that each of them had on a mackintosh or some kind of cape, whereas
+Jone and I never thought of taking anything in the way of waterproof or
+umbrellas, as it was perfectly clear when we started.
+
+[Illustration: "DOWN CAME A SHOWER OF RAIN"]
+
+I looked around at Jone, but he sat there with his face as placid as a
+piece of cheese, looking as if he had no more knowledge it was raining
+than the two Englishmen on the seat next him. Seeing he wasn't going to
+let those men think he minded the rain any more than they did, I
+determined that I wouldn't let the young woman who was sitting by me
+have any notion that I minded it, and so I sat still, with as cheerful
+a look as I could screw up, gazing at the trees with as gladsome a
+countenance as anybody could have with water trickling down her nose,
+her cheeks dripping, and dewdrops on her very eyelashes, while the
+dampness of her back was getting more and more perceptible as each
+second dragged itself along. Jone turned up the hood of my coat, and so
+let down into the back of my neck what water had collected in it; but I
+didn't say anything, but set my teeth hard together and fixed my mind
+on Columbia, happy land, and determined never to say anything about
+rain until some English person first mentioned it.
+
+But when one of the flowers on my hat leaned over the brim and exuded
+bloody drops on the front of my coat I began to weaken, and to think
+that if there was nothing better to do I might get under one of the
+seats; but just then the rain stopped and the sun shone. It was so
+sudden that it startled me; but not one of those English people
+mentioned that the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, and so
+neither did Jone or I. We was feeling mighty moist and unhappy, but we
+tried to smile as if we was plants in a greenhouse, accustomed to being
+watered and feeling all the better for it.
+
+I can't write you all about the coach drive, which was very delightful,
+nor of that beautiful lake they call Virginia Water, and which I know
+you have a picture of in your house. They tell me it is artificial, but
+as it was made more than a hundred years ago, it might now be
+considered natural. We dined at an inn, and when we got back to town,
+with two more showers on the way, I said to Jone that I thought we'd
+better go straight to the Babylon Hotel, which we intended to start out
+for, although it was a long way round to go by Virginia Water, and see
+about engaging a room; and as Jone agreed I asked the coachman if he
+would put us down there, knowing that he'd pass near it. He agreed to
+this, would be an advertisement for his coach.
+
+When we got on the street where the Babylon Hotel was he whipped up his
+horses so that they went almost on a run, and the horner blew his horn
+until his eyes seemed bursting, and with a grand sweep and a clank and
+a jingle we pulled up at the front of the big hotel. Out marched the
+head porter in a blue uniform, and out ran two under-porters with red
+coats, and down jumped the horner and put up his ladder, and Jone and I
+got down, after giving the coachman half-a-crown, and receiving from
+the passengers a combined gaze of differentialism which had been wholly
+wanting before. The men in the red coats looked disappointed when they
+saw we had no baggage, but the great doors was flung open and we went
+straight up to the clerk's desk.
+
+When we was taken to look at rooms I remembered that there was always
+danger of Jone's tendency to thankful contentment getting the better of
+him, and I took the matter in hand myself. Two rooms good enough for
+anybody was shown us, but I was not going to take the first thing that
+was offered, no matter what it was. We settled the matter by getting a
+first-class room, with sofas and writing-desks and everything
+convenient, for only a little more than we was charged for the other
+rooms, and the next morning we went there.
+
+When we went back to our lodgings to pack up, and I looked in the glass
+and saw what a smeary, bedraggled state my hat and head was in, from
+being rained on, I said to Jone, "I don't see how those people ever
+let such a person as me have a room at their hotel."
+
+"It doesn't surprise me a bit," said Jone; "nobody but a very high and
+mighty person would have dared to go lording it about that hotel with
+her hat feathers and flowers all plastered down over her head. Most
+people can be uppish in good clothes, but to look like a scare-crow and
+be uppish can't be expected except from the truly lofty."
+
+"I hope you are right," I said, and I think he was.
+
+We hadn't been at the Babylon Hotel, where we are now, for more than
+two days when I said to Jone that this sort of thing wasn't going to
+do. He looked at me amazed. "What on earth is the matter now?" he said.
+"Here is a room fit for a royal duke, in a house with marble corridors
+and palace stairs, and gorgeous smoking-rooms, and a post-office, and a
+dining-room pretty nigh big enough for a hall of Congress, with waiters
+enough to make two military companies, and the bills of fare all in
+French. If there is anything more you want, Pomona--"
+
+"Stop there" said I; "the last thing you mention is the rub. It's the
+dining-room; it's in that resplendent hall that we've got to give
+ourselves a social boom or be content to fold our hands and fade away
+forever."
+
+"Which I don't want to do yet," said Jone, "so speak out your trouble."
+
+[Illustration: "Ask the waiter what the French words mean"]
+
+"The trouble this time is you," said I, "and your awful meekness. I
+never did see anybody anywhere as meek as you are in that dining-room.
+A half-drowned fly put into the sun to dry would be overbearing and
+supercilious compared to you. When you sit down at one of those tables
+you look as if you was afraid of hurting the chair, and when the waiter
+gives you the bill of fare you ask him what the French words mean, and
+then he looks down on you as if he was a superior Jove contemplating a
+hop-toad, and he tells you that this one means beef and the other
+means potatoes, and brings you the things that are easiest to get. And
+you look as if you was thankful from the bottom of your heart that he
+is good enough to give you anything at all. All the airs I put on are
+no good while you are so extra humble. I tell him I don't want this
+French thing--when I don't know what it is--and he must bring me some
+of the other--which I never heard of--and when it comes I eat it, no
+matter what it turns out to be, and try to look as if I was used to it,
+but generally had it better cooked. But, as I said before, it is of no
+use--your humbleness is too much for me. In a few days they will be
+bringing us cold victuals, and recommending that we go outside
+somewhere and eat them, as all the seats in the dining-room are wanted
+for other people."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "I must say I do feel a little overshadowed when I
+go into that dining-room and see those proud and haughty waiters, some
+of them with silver chains and keys around their necks, showing that
+they are lords of the wine-cellar, and all of them with an air of lofty
+scorn for the poor beings who have to sit still and be waited on; but
+I'll try what I can do. As far as I am able, I'll hold up my end of the
+social boom."
+
+You may think I break off my letters sudden, madam, like the
+instalments in a sensation weekly, which stops short in the most
+harrowing parts, so as to make certain the reader will buy the next
+number; but when I've written as much as I think two foreign stamps
+will carry--for more than fivepence seems extravagant for a letter--I
+generally stop.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Three_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+
+At dinner-time the day when I had the conversation with Jone mentioned
+in my last letter, we was sitting in the dining-room at a little table
+in a far corner, where we'd never been before. Not being considered of
+any importance they put us sometimes in one place and sometimes in
+another, instead of giving us regular seats, as I noticed most of the
+other people had, and I was looking around to see if anybody was ever
+coming to wait on us, when suddenly I heard an awful noise.
+
+I have read about the rumblings of earthquakes, and although I never
+heard any of them, I have felt a shock, and I can imagine the awfulness
+of the rumbling, and I had a feeling as if the building was about to
+sway and swing as they do in earthquakes. It wasn't all my imagining,
+for I saw the people at the other tables near us jump, and two waiters
+who was hurrying past stopped short as if they had been jerked up by a
+curb bit. I turned to look at Jone, but he was sitting up straight in
+his chair, as solemn and as steadfast as a gate-post, and I thought to
+myself that if he hadn't heard anything he must have been struck deaf,
+and I was just on the point of jumping up and shouting to him, "Fly,
+before the walls and roof come down upon us!" when that awful noise
+occurred again. My blood stood frigid in my veins, and as I started
+back I saw before me a waiter, his face ashy pale, and his knees
+bending beneath him. Some people near us were half getting up from
+their chairs, and I pushed back and looked at Jone again, who had not
+moved except that his mouth was open. Then I knew what it was that I
+thought was an earthquake--it was Jone giving an order to the waiter.
+
+[Illustration: Jone giving an order]
+
+I bit my lips and sat silent; the people around kept on looking at us,
+and the poor man who was receiving the shock stood trembling like a
+leaf. When the volcanic disturbance, so to speak, was over, the waiter
+bowed himself, as if he had been a heathen in a temple, and gasping,
+"Yes, sir, immediate," glided unevenly away. He hadn't waited on us
+before, and little thought, when he was going to stride proudly pass
+our table, what a double-loaded Vesuvius was sitting in Jone's chair. I
+leaned over the table and said to Jone that if he would stick to that
+we could rent a bishopric if we wanted to, and I was so proud I could
+have patted him on the back. Well, after that we had no more trouble
+about being waited on, for that waiter of ours went about as if he had
+his neck bared for the fatal stroke and Jone was holding the cimeter.
+
+The head waiter came to us before we was done dinner and asked if we
+had everything we wanted and if that table suited us, because if it did
+we could always have it. To which Jone distantly thundered that if he
+would see that it always had a clean tablecloth it would do well
+enough.
+
+[Illustration: The Carver]
+
+Even the man who stood at the big table in the middle of the room and
+carved the cold meats, with his hair parted in the middle, and who
+looked as if he were saying to himself, as with a bland dexterity and
+tastefulness he laid each slice upon its plate, "Now, then, the
+socialistic movement in Paris is arrested for the time being, and here
+again I put an end to the hopes of Russia getting to the sea through
+Afghanistan, and now I carefully spread contentment over the minds of
+all them riotous Welsh miners," even he turned around and bowed to us
+as we passed him, and once sent a waiter to ask if we'd like a little
+bit of potted beef, which was particularly good that day.
+
+Jone kept up his rumblings, though they sounded more distant and more
+deep under ground, and one day at luncheon an elderly woman, who was
+sitting alone at a table near us, turned to me and spoke. She was a
+very plain person, with her face all seamed and rough with exposure to
+the weather, like as if she had been captain to a pilot boat, and with
+a general appearance of being a cook with good recommendations, but at
+present out of a place. I might have wondered at such a person being at
+such a hotel, but remembering what I had been myself I couldn't say
+what mightn't happen to other people.
+
+"I'm glad to see," said she, "that you sent away that mutton, for if
+more persons would object to things that are not properly cooked we'd
+all be better served. I suppose that in your country most people are so
+rich that they can afford to have the best of everything and have it
+always. I fancy the great wealth of American citizens must make their
+housekeeping very different from ours."
+
+Now I must say I began to bristle at being spoken to like that. I'm as
+proud of being an American as anybody can be, but I don't like the home
+of the free thrown into my teeth every time I open my mouth. There's no
+knowing what money Jone and I have lost through giving orders to London
+cabmen in what is called our American accent. The minute we tell the
+driver of a hansom where we want to go, that place doubles its distance
+from the spot we start from. Now I think the great reason Jone's
+rumbling worked so well was that it had in it a sort of Great British
+chest-sound, as if his lungs was rusty. The waiter had heard that
+before and knew what it meant. If he had spoken out in the clear
+American fashion I expect his voice would have gone clear through the
+waiter without his knowing it, like the person in the story, whose neck
+was sliced through and who didn't know it until he sneezed and his head
+fell off.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said I, answering her with as much of a wearied feeling
+as I could put on, "our wealth is all very well in some ways, but it is
+dreadful wearing on us. However, we try to bear up under it and be
+content."
+
+"Well," said she, "contentment is a great blessing in every station,
+though I have never tried it in yours. Do you expect to make a long
+stay in London?"
+
+As she seemed like a civil and well-meaning woman, and was the first
+person who had spoken to us in a social way, I didn't mind talking to
+her, and I told her we was only stopping in London until we could find
+the kind of country house we wanted, and when she asked what kind that
+was, I described what we wanted and how we was still answering
+advertisements and going to see agents, who was always recommending
+exactly the kind of house we did not care for.
+
+"Vicarages are all very well," said she, "but it sometimes happens, and
+has happened to friends of mine, that when a vicar has let his house he
+makes up his mind not to waste his money in travelling, and he takes
+lodgings near by and keeps an eternal eye upon his tenants. I don't
+believe any independent American would fancy that."
+
+"No, indeed," said I; and then she went on to say that if we wanted a
+small country house for a month or two she knew of one which she
+believed would suit us, and it wasn't a vicarage either. When I asked
+her to tell me about it she brought her chair up to our table, together
+with her mug of beer, her bread and cheese, and she went into
+particulars about the house she knew of.
+
+"It is situated," said she, "in the west of England, in the most
+beautiful part of our country. It is near one of the quaintest little
+villages that the past ages have left us, and not far away are the
+beautiful waters of the Bristol Channel, with the mountains of Wales
+rising against the sky on the horizon, and all about are hills and
+valleys, and woods and beautiful moors and babbling streams, with all
+the loveliness of cultivated rurality merging into the wild beauties of
+unadorned nature." If these was not exactly her words, they express the
+ideas she roused in my mind. She said the place was far enough away
+from railways and the stream of travel, and among the simple peasantry,
+and that in the society of the resident gentry we would see English
+country life as it is, uncontaminated by the tourist or the commercial
+traveller.
+
+I can't remember all the things she said about this charming cottage in
+this most supremely beautiful spot, but I sat and listened, and the
+description held me spell-bound, as a snake fascinates a frog; with
+this difference, instead of being swallowed by the description, I
+swallowed it.
+
+When the old woman had given us the address of the person who had the
+letting of the cottage, and Jone and me had gone to our room, I said to
+him, before we had time to sit down:
+
+"What do you think?"
+
+"I think," said he, "that we ought to follow that old woman's advice
+and go and look at this house."
+
+"Go and look at it?" I exclaimed. "Not a bit of it. If we do that, we
+are bound to see something or hear something that will make us hesitate
+and consider, and if we do that, away goes our enthusiasm and our
+rapture. I say, telegraph this minute and say we'll take the house, and
+send a letter by the next mail with a postal order in it, to secure the
+place."
+
+Jone looked at me hard, and said he'd feel easier in his mind if he
+understood what I was talking about.
+
+"Never mind understanding," I said. "Go down and telegraph we'll take
+the house. There isn't a minute to lose!"
+
+"But," said Jone, "if we find out when we get there--"
+
+"Never mind that," said I. "If we find out when we get there it isn't
+all we thought it was, and we're bound to do that, we'll make the best
+of what doesn't suit us because it can't be helped; but if we go and
+look at it it's ten to one we won't take it."
+
+"How long are we to take it for?" said Jone.
+
+"A month anyway, and perhaps longer," I told him, giving him a push
+toward the door.
+
+"All right," said he, and he went and telegraphed. I believe if Jone
+was told he could go anywhere and stay for a month he'd choose that
+place from among all the most enchanting spots on the earth where he
+couldn't stay so long. As for me, the one thing that held me was the
+romanticness of the place. From what the old woman said I knew there
+couldn't be any mistake about that, and if I could find myself the
+mistress of a romantic cottage near an ancient village of the olden
+time I would put up with most everything except dirt, and as dirt and
+me seldom keeps company very long, even that can't frighten me.
+
+When I saw the old woman at luncheon the next day and told her what we
+had done she was fairly dumfounded.
+
+"Really! really!" she said, "you Americans are the speediest people I
+ever did see. Why, an English person would have taken a week to
+consider that place before taking it."
+
+"And lost it, ten to one," said I.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well," said she, "I suppose it's on account of your habits, and you
+can't help it, but it's a poor way of doing business."
+
+[Illustration: "You Americans are the speediest people"]
+
+Now I began to think from this that her conscience was beginning to
+trouble her for having given so fairy-like a picture of the house, and
+as I was afraid that she might think it her duty to bring up some
+disadvantages, I changed the conversation and got away as soon as I
+could. When we once get seated at our humble board in our rural cot I
+won't be afraid of any bugaboos, but I didn't want them brought up
+then. I can generally depend upon Jone, but sometimes he gets a little
+stubborn.
+
+We didn't see this old person any more, and when I asked the waiter
+about her the next day he said he was sure she had left the hotel, by
+which I suppose he must have meant he'd got his half-crown. Her fading
+away in this fashion made it all seem like a myth or a phantasm, but
+when, the next morning, we got a receipt for the money Jone sent, and a
+note saying the house was ready for our reception, I felt myself on
+solid ground again, and to-morrow we start, bag and baggage, for
+Chedcombe, which is the name of the village where the house is that we
+have taken. I'll write to you, madam, as soon as we get there, and I
+hope with all my heart and soul that when we see what's wrong with
+it--and there's bound to be something--that it may not be anything bad
+enough to make us give it up and go floating off in voidness, like a
+spider-web blown before a summer breeze, without knowing what it's
+going to run against and stick to, and, what is more, probably lose the
+money we paid in advance.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Four_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+Last winter Jone and I read all the books we could get about the rural
+parts of England, and we knew that the country must be very beautiful,
+but we had no proper idea of it until we came to Chedcombe. I am not
+going to write much about the scenery in this part of the country,
+because, perhaps, you have been here and seen it, and anyway my writing
+would not be half so good as what you could read in books, which don't
+amount to anything.
+
+All I'll say is that if you was to go over the whole of England, and
+collect a lot of smooth green hills, with sheep and deer wandering
+about on them; brooks, with great trees hanging over them, and vines
+and flowers fairly crowding themselves into the water; lanes and roads
+hedged in with hawthorn, wild roses, and tall purple foxgloves; little
+woods and copses; hills covered with heather; thatched cottages like
+the pictures in drawing-books, with roses against their walls, and thin
+blue smoke curling up from the chimneys; distant views of the sparkling
+sea; villages which are nearly covered up by greenness, except their
+steeples; rocky cliffs all green with vines, and flowers spreading and
+thriving with the fervor and earnestness you might expect to find in
+the tropics, but not here--and then, if you was to put all these points
+of scenery into one place not too big for your eye to sweep over and
+take it all in, you would have a country like that around Chedcombe.
+
+I am sure the old lady was right when she said it was the most
+beautiful part of England. The first day we was here we carried an
+umbrella as we walked through all this verdant loveliness, but
+yesterday morning we went to the village and bought a couple of thin
+mackintoshes, which will save us a lot of trouble opening and shutting
+umbrellas.
+
+When we got out at the Chedcombe station we found a man there with a
+little carriage he called a fly, who said he had been sent to take us
+to our house. There was also a van to carry our baggage. We drove
+entirely through the village, which looked to me as if a bit of the
+Middle Ages had been turned up by the plough, and on the other edge of
+it there was our house, and on the doorstep stood a lady, with a
+smiling eye and an umbrella, and who turned out to be our landlady.
+Back of her was two other females, one of them looking like a
+minister's wife, while the other one I knew to be a servant-maid, by
+her cap.
+
+[Illustration: "THAT WAS OUR HOUSE"]
+
+The lady, whose name was Mrs. Shutterfield, shook hands with us and
+seemed very glad to see us, and the minister's wife took our hand
+bags from us and told the men where to carry our trunks. Mrs.
+Shutterfield took us into a little parlor on one side of the hall, and
+then we three sat down, and I must say I was so busy looking at the
+queer, delightful room, with everything in it--chairs, tables, carpets,
+walls, pictures, and flower-vases--all belonging to a bygone epoch,
+though perfectly fresh, as if just made, that I could scarcely pay
+attention to what the lady said. But I listened enough to know that
+Mrs. Shutterfield told us that she had taken the liberty of engaging
+for us two most excellent servants, who had lived in the house before
+it had been let to lodgers, and who, she was quite sure, would suit us
+very well, though, of course, we were at liberty to do what we pleased
+about engaging them. The one that I took for the minister's wife was a
+combination of cook and housekeeper, by the name of Miss Pondar, and
+the other was a maid in general, named Hannah. When the lady mentioned
+two servants it took me a little aback, for we had not expected to have
+more than one, but when she mentioned the wages, and I found that both
+put together did not cost as much as a very poor cook would expect in
+America, and when I remembered we as now at work socially booming
+ourselves, and that it wouldn't do to let this lady think that we had
+not been accustomed to varieties of servants, I spoke up and said we
+would engage the two estimable women she recommended, and was much
+obliged to her for getting them.
+
+Then we went over that house, down stairs and up, and of all the
+lavender-smelling old-fashionedness anybody ever dreamed of, this
+little house has as much as it can hold. It is fitted up all through
+like one of your mother's bonnets, which she bought before she was
+married and never wore on account of a funeral in the family, but kept
+shut up in a box, which she only opens now and then to show to her
+descendants. In every room and on the stairs there was a general air of
+antiquated freshness, mingled with the odors of English breakfast tea
+and recollections of the story of Cranford, which, if Jone and me had
+been alone, would have made me dance from the garret of that house to
+the cellar. Every sentiment of romance that I had in my soul bubbled to
+the surface, and I felt as if I was one of my ancestors before she
+emigrated to the colonies. I could not say what I thought, but I
+pinched Jone's arm whenever I could get a chance, which relieved me a
+little; and when Miss Pondar had come to me with a little courtesy, and
+asked me what time I would like to have dinner, and told me what she
+had taken the liberty of ordering, so as to have everything ready by
+the time I came, and Mrs. Shutterfield had gone, after begging to know
+what more she could do for us, and we had gone to our own room, I let
+out my feelings in one wild scream of delirious gladness that would
+have been heard all the way to the railroad station if I had not
+covered my head with two pillows and the corner of a blanket.
+
+After we had dinner, which was as English as the British lion, and much
+more to our taste than anything we had had in London, Jone went out to
+smoke a pipe, and I had a talk with Miss Pondar about fish, meat, and
+groceries, and about housekeeping matters in general. Miss Pondar,
+whose general aspect of minister's wife began to wear off when I talked
+to her, mingles respectfulness and respectability in a manner I haven't
+been in the habit of seeing. Generally those two things run against
+each other, but they don't in her.
+
+When she asked what kind of wine we preferred I must say I was struck
+all in a heap, for wines to Jone and me is like a trackless wilderness
+without compass or binnacle light, and we seldom drink them except made
+hot, with nutmeg grated in, for colic; but as I wanted her to
+understand that if there was any luxuries we didn't order it was
+because we didn't approve of them, I told her that we was total
+abstainers, and at that she smiled very pleasant and said that was her
+persuasion also, and that she was glad not to be obliged to handle
+intoxicating drinks, though, of course, she always did it without
+objection when the family used them. When I told Jone this he looked a
+little blank, for foreign water generally doesn't agree with him. I
+mentioned this afterwards to Miss Pondar, and she said it was very
+common in total abstaining families, when water didn't agree with any
+one of them, especially if it happened to be the gentleman, to take a
+little good Scotch whiskey with it; but when I told this to Jone he
+said he would try to bear up under the shackles of abstinence.
+
+This morning, when I was talking with Miss Pondar about fish, and
+trying to show her that I knew something about the names of English
+fishes, I said that we was very fond of whitebait. At this she looked
+astonished for the first time.
+
+"Whitebait?" said she. "We always looked upon that as belonging
+entirely to the nobility and gentry." At this my back began to bristle,
+but I didn't let her know it, and I said, in a tone of emphatic
+mildness, that we would have whitebait twice a week, on Tuesday and
+Friday. At this Miss Pondar gave a little courtesy and thanked me very
+much, and said she would attend to it.
+
+When Jone and me came back after taking a long walk that morning I saw
+a pair of Church of England prayer-books, looking as if they had just
+been neatly dusted, lying on the parlor table, where they hadn't been
+before, for I had carefully looked over every book. I think that when
+it was borne in upon Miss Pondar's soul that we was accustomed to
+having whitebait as a regular thing she made up her mind we was all
+right, and that nothing but the Established Church would do for us.
+Before, she might have thought we was Wesleyans.
+
+Our maid Hannah is very nice to look at, and does her work as well as
+anybody could do it, and, like most other English servants, she's in a
+state of never-ending thankfulness, but as I can never understand a
+word she says except "Thank you very much," I asked Jone if he didn't
+think it would be a good thing for me to try to teach her a little
+English.
+
+"Now then," said he, "that's the opening of a big subject. Wait until I
+fill my pipe and we'll discourse upon it." It was just after luncheon,
+and we was sitting in the summer-house at the end of the garden,
+looking out over the roses and pinks and all sorts of old-timey flowers
+growing as thick as clover heads, with an air as if it wasn't the least
+trouble in the world to them to flourish and blossom. Beyond the
+flowers was a little brook with the ducks swimming in it, and beyond
+that was a field, and on the other side of that field was a park
+belonging to the lord of the manor, and scattered about the side of a
+green hill in the park was a herd of his lordship's deer. Most of them
+was so light-colored that I fancied I could almost see through them, as
+if they was the little transparent bugs that crawl about on leaves.
+That isn't a romantic idea to have about deers, but I can't get rid of
+the notion whenever I see those little creatures walking about on the
+hills.
+
+At that time it was hardly raining at all, just a little mist, with the
+sun coming into the summer-house every now and then, making us feel
+very comfortable and contented.
+
+"Now," said Jone, when he had got his pipe well started, "what I want
+to talk about is the amount of reformation we expect to do while we're
+sojourning in the kingdom of Great Britain."
+
+"Reformation!" said I; "we didn't come here to reform anything."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "if we're going to busy our minds with these
+people's shortcomings and long-goings, and don't try to reform them,
+we're just worrying ourselves and doing them no good, and I don't think
+it will pay. Now, for instance, there's that rosy-cheeked Hannah. She's
+satisfied with her way of speaking English, and Miss Pondar understands
+it and is satisfied with it, and all the people around here are
+satisfied with it. As for us, we know, when she comes and stands in the
+doorway and dimples up her cheeks, and then makes those sounds that are
+more like drops of molasses falling on a gong than anything else I know
+of, we know that she is telling us in her own way that the next meal,
+whatever it is, is ready, and we go to it."
+
+"Yes," said I, "and as I do most of my talking with Miss Pondar, and as
+we shall be here for such a short time anyway, it may be as well--"
+
+"What I say about Hannah," said Jone, interrupting me as soon as I
+began to speak about a short stay, "I have to say about everything else
+in England that doesn't suit us. As long as Hannah doesn't try to make
+us speak in her fashion I say let her alone. Of course, we shall find a
+lot of things over here that we shall not approve of--we knew that
+before we came--and when we find we can't stand their ways and manners
+any longer we can pack up and go home, but so far as I'm concerned I'm
+getting along very comfortable so far."
+
+"Oh, so am I," I said to him, "and as to interfering with other
+people's fashions, I don't want to do it. If I was to meet the most
+paganish of heathens entering his temple with suitable humbleness I
+wouldn't hurt his feelings on the subject of his religion, unless I was
+a missionary and went about it systematic; but if that heathen turned
+on me and jeered at me for attending our church at home, and told me I
+ought to go down on my marrow-bones before his brazen idols, I'd whang
+him over the head with a frying-pan or anything else that came handy.
+That's the sort of thing I can't stand. As long as the people here
+don't snort and sniff at my ways I won't snort and sniff at theirs."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "that is a good rule, but I don't know that it's
+going to work altogether. You see, there are a good many people in this
+country and only two of us, and it will be a lot harder for them to
+keep from sniffing and snorting than for us to do it. So it's my
+opinion that if we expect to get along in a good-humored and friendly
+way, which is the only decent way of living, we've got to hold up our
+end of the business a little higher than we expect other people to hold
+up theirs."
+
+I couldn't agree altogether with Jone about our trying to do better
+than other people, but I said that as the British had been kind enough
+to make their country free to us, we wouldn't look a gift horse in the
+mouth unless it kicked. To which Jone said I sometimes got my figures
+of speech hind part foremost, but he knew what I meant.
+
+We've lived in our cottage two weeks, and every morning when I get up
+and open our windows, which has little panes set in strips of lead, and
+hinges on one side so that it works like a door, and look out over the
+brook and the meadows and the thatched roofs, and see the peasant men
+with their short jackets and woollen caps, and the lower part of their
+trousers tied round with twine, if they don't happen to have leather
+leggings, trudging to their work, my soul is filled with welling
+emotions as I think that if Queen Elizabeth ever travelled along this
+way she must have seen these great old trees and, perhaps, some of
+these very houses; and as to the people, they must have been pretty
+much the same, though differing a little in clothes, I dare say; but,
+judging from Hannah, perhaps not very much in the kind of English they
+spoke.
+
+I declare that when Jone and me walk about through the village, and
+over the fields, for there is a right of way--meaning a little
+path--through most all of them, and when we go into the old church,
+with its yew-trees, and its gravestones, and its marble effigies of two
+of the old manor lords, both stretched flat on their backs, as large as
+life, the gentleman with the end of his nose knocked off and with his
+feet crossed to show he was a crusader, and the lady with her hands
+clasped in front of her, as if she expected the generations who came to
+gaze on her tomb to guess what she had inside of them, I feel like a
+character in a novel.
+
+I have kept a great many of my joyful sentiments to myself, because
+Jone is too well contented as it is, and there is a great deal yet to
+be seen in England. Sometimes we hire a dogcart and a black horse named
+Punch, from the inn in the village, and we take long drives over roads
+that are almost as smooth as bowling alleys. The country is very hilly,
+and every time we get to the top of a hill we can see, spread about us
+for miles and miles, the beautiful hills and vales, and lordly
+residences and cottages, and steeple tops, looking as though they had
+been stuck down here and there, to show where villages had been
+planted.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Five_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+This morning, when Jone was out taking a walk and I was talking to Miss
+Pondar, and getting her to teach me how to make Devonshire clotted
+cream, which we have for every meal, putting it on everything it will
+go on, into everything it will go into, and eating it by itself when
+there is nothing it will go on or into; and trying to find out why it
+is that whitings are always brought on the table with their tails stuck
+through their throats, as if they had committed suicide by cutting
+their jugular veins in this fashion, I saw, coming along the road to
+our cottage, a pretty little dogcart with two ladies in it. The horse
+they drove was a pony, and the prettiest creature I ever saw, being
+formed like a full-sized horse, only very small, and with as much fire
+and spirit and gracefulness as could be got into an animal sixteen
+hands high. I heard afterward that he came from Exmoor, which is about
+twelve miles from here, and produces ponies and deers of similar size
+and swiftness. They stopped at the door, and one of them got out and
+came in. Miss Pondar told me she wished to see me, and that she was
+Mrs. Locky, of the "Bordley Arms" in the village.
+
+"The innkeeper's wife?" said I; to which Miss Pondar said it was, and I
+went into the parlor. Mrs. Locky was a handsome-looking lady, and
+wearing as stylish clothes as if she was a duchess, and extremely
+polite and respectful.
+
+She said she would have asked Mrs. Shutterfield to come with her and
+introduce her, but that lady was away from home, and so she had come by
+herself to ask me a very great favor.
+
+When I begged her to sit down and name it she went on to say there had
+come that morning to the inn a very large party in a coach-and-four,
+that was making a trip through the country, and as they didn't travel
+on Sunday they wanted to stay at the "Bordley Arms" until Monday
+morning.
+
+"Now," said she, "that puts me to a dreadful lot of trouble, because I
+haven't room to accommodate them all, and even if I could get rooms for
+them somewhere else they don't want to be separated. But there is one
+of the best rooms at the inn which is occupied by an elderly gentleman,
+and if I could get that room I could put two double beds in it and so
+accommodate the whole party. Now, knowing that you had a pleasant
+chamber here that you don't use, I thought I would make bold to come
+and ask you if you would lodge Mr. Poplington until Monday?"
+
+"What sort of a person is this Mr. Poplington, and is he willing to
+come here?"
+
+"Oh, I haven't asked him yet," said she, "but he is so extremely
+good-natured that I know he will be glad to come here. He has often
+asked me who lived in this extremely picturesque cottage."
+
+"You must have an answer now?" said I.
+
+"Oh, yes," said she, "for if you cannot do me this favor I must go
+somewhere else, and where to go I don't know."
+
+Now I had begun to think that the one thing we wanted in this little
+home of ours was company, and that it was a great pity to have that
+nice bedroom on the second floor entirely wasted, with nobody ever in
+it. So, as far as I was concerned, I would be very glad to have some
+pleasant person in the house, at least for a day or two, and I didn't
+believe Jone would object. At any rate it would put a stop, at least
+for a little while, to his eternally saying how Corinne, our daughter,
+would enjoy that room, and how nice it would be if we was to take this
+house for the rest of the season and send for her. Now, Corinne's as
+happy as she can be at her grand-mother's farm, and her school will
+begin before we're ready to come home, and, what is more, we didn't
+come here to spend all our time in one place.
+
+[Illustration: "The young lady who keeps the bar"]
+
+While I was thinking of these things I was looking out of the window at
+the lady in the dogcart who was holding the reins. She was as pretty as
+a picture, and wore a great straw hat with lovely flowers in it. As I
+had to give an answer without waiting for Jone to come home, and I
+didn't expect him until luncheon time, I concluded to be neighborly,
+and said we would take the gentleman to oblige her. Even if the
+arrangement didn't suit him or us, it wouldn't matter much for that
+little time. At which Mrs. Locky was very grateful indeed, and said she
+would have Mr. Poplington's luggage sent around that afternoon, and
+that he would come later.
+
+As she got up to go I said to her, "Is that young lady out there one of
+the party who came with the coach and four?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Mrs. Locky, "she lives with me. She is the young lady
+who keeps the bar."
+
+I expect I opened my mouth and eyes pretty wide, for I was never so
+astonished. A young lady like that keeping the bar! But I didn't want
+Mrs. Locky to know how much I was surprised, and so I said nothing
+about it.
+
+When they had gone and I had stood looking after them for about a
+minute, I remembered I hadn't asked whether Mr. Poplington would want
+to take his meals here, or whether he would go to the inn for them. To
+be sure, she only asked me to lodge him, but as the inn is more than
+half a mile from here, he may want to be boarded. But this will have to
+be found out when he comes, and when Jone comes home it will have to be
+found out what he thinks about my taking a lodger while he's out taking
+a walk.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Six_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+When Jone came home and I told him a gentleman was coming to live with
+us, he thought at first I was joking; and when he found out that I
+meant what I said he looked very blue, and stood with his hands in his
+pockets and his eyes on the ground, considering.
+
+"He's not going to take his meals here, is he?"
+
+"I don't think he expects that," I said, "for Mrs. Locky only spoke of
+lodging."
+
+"Oh, well," said Jone, looking as if his clouds was clearing off a
+little, "I don't suppose it will matter to us if that room is occupied
+over Sunday, but I think the next time I go out for a stroll I'll take
+you with me."
+
+I didn't go out that afternoon, and sat on pins and needles until
+half-past five o'clock. Jone wanted me to walk with him, but I wouldn't
+do it, because I didn't want our lodger to come here and be received by
+Miss Pondar. At half-past five there came a cart with the gentleman's
+luggage, as they call it here, and I was glad Jone wasn't at home.
+There was an enormous leather portmanteau which looked as if it had
+been dragged by a boy too short to lift it from the ground, half over
+the world; a hat-box, also of leather, but not so draggy looking; a
+bundle of canes and umbrellas, a leather dressing-case, and a flat,
+round bathing-tub. I had the things taken up to the room as quickly as
+I could, for if Jone had seen them he'd think the gentleman was going
+to bring his family with him.
+
+It was nine o'clock and still broad daylight when Mr. Poplington
+himself came, carrying a fishing-rod put up in parts in a canvas bag, a
+fish-basket, and a small valise. He wore leather leggings and was about
+sixty years old, but a wonderful good walker. I thought, when I saw him
+coming, that he had no rheumatism whatever, but I found out afterward
+that he had a little in one of his arms. He had white hair and white
+side-whiskers and a fine red face, which made me think of a strawberry
+partly covered with Devonshire clotted cream. Jone and I was sitting in
+the summer-house, he smoking his pipe, and we both went to meet the
+gentleman. He had a bluff way of speaking, and said he was much obliged
+to us for taking him in; and after saying that it was a warm evening, a
+thing which I hadn't noticed, he asked to be shown to his room. I sent
+Hannah with him, and then Jone and I went back to the summer-house.
+
+I didn't know exactly why, but I wasn't in as good spirits as I had
+been, and when Jone spoke he didn't make me feel any better.
+
+[Illustration: "I see signs of weakening in the social boom"]
+
+"It seems to me," said he, "that I see signs of weakening in the social
+boom. That man considers us exactly as we considered our lodging-house
+keeper in London. Now, it doesn't strike me that that sample person you
+was talking about, who is a cross between a rich farmer and a poor
+gentleman, would go into the lodging-house business." I couldn't help
+agreeing with Jone, and I didn't like it a bit. The gentleman hadn't
+said anything or done anything that was out of the way, but there was a
+benignant loftiness about him which grated on the inmost fibres of my
+soul.
+
+"I'll tell you what we'll do," said I, turning sharp on Jone, "we won't
+charge him a cent. That'll take him down, and show him what we are.
+We'll give him the room as a favor to Mrs. Locky, considering her in
+the light of a neighbor and one who sent us a cucumber."
+
+"All right," said Jone, "I like that way of arranging the business. Up
+goes the social boom again!"
+
+Just as we was going up to bed Miss Pondar came to me and said that the
+gentleman had called down to her and asked if he could have a new-laid
+egg for his breakfast, and she asked if she should send Hannah early in
+the morning to see if she could get a perfectly fresh egg from one of
+the cottages. "I thought, ma'am, that perhaps you might object to
+buying things on Sunday."
+
+"I do," I said. "Does that Mr. Poplington expect to have his breakfast
+here? I only took him to lodge."
+
+"Oh, ma'am," said Miss Pondar, "they always takes their breakfasts
+where they has their rooms. Dinner and luncheon is different, and he
+may expect to go to the inn for them."
+
+"Indeed!" said I. "I think he may, and if he breakfasts here he can
+take what we've got. If the eggs are not fresh enough for him he can
+try to get along with some bacon. He can't expect that to be fresh."
+
+Knowing that English people take their breakfast late, Jone and I got
+up early, so as to get through before our lodger came down. But, bless
+me, when we went to the front door to see what sort of a day it was we
+saw him coming in from a walk. "Fine morning," said he, and in fact
+there was only a little drizzle of rain, which might stop when the sun
+got higher; and he stood near us and began to talk about the trout in
+the stream, which, to my utter amazement, he called a river.
+
+"Do you take your license by the day or week?" he said to Jone.
+
+"License!" said Jone, "I don't fish."
+
+"Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Oh, I see, you are a cycler."
+
+"No," said Jone, "I'm not that, either, I'm a pervader."
+
+"Really!" said the old gentleman; "what do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean that I pervade the scenery, sometimes on foot and sometimes in
+a trap. That's my style of rural pleasuring."
+
+"But you do fish at home," I said to Jone, not wishing the English
+gentleman to think my husband was a city man, who didn't know anything
+about sport.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Jone, "I used to fish for perch and sunfish."
+
+"Sunfish?" said Mr. Poplington. "I don't know that fish at all. What
+sort of a fly do you use?"
+
+"I don't fish with any flies at all," said Jone; "I bait my hook with
+worms."
+
+Mr. Poplington's face looked as if he had poured liquid shoe-blacking
+on his meat, thinking it was Worcestershire sauce. "Fancy! Worms! I'd
+never take a rod in my hands if I had to use worms. Never used a worm
+in my life. There's no sort of science in worm fishing."
+
+"There's double sport," said Jone, "for first you've got to catch your
+worm. Then again, I hate shams; if you have to catch fish there's no
+use cheating them into the bargain."
+
+"Cheat!" cried Mr. Poplington. "If I had to catch a whale I'd fish for
+him with a fly. But you Americans are strange people. Worms, indeed!"
+
+"We don't all use worms," said Jone; "there's lots of fly fishers in
+America, and they use all sorts of flies. If we are to believe all the
+Californians tell us some of the artificial flies out there must be as
+big as crows."
+
+"Really?" said Mr. Poplington, looking hard at Jone, with a little
+twinkling in his eyes. "And when gentlemen fish who don't like to cheat
+the fishes, what size of worms do they use?"
+
+"Well," said Jone, "in the far West I've heard that the common black
+snake is the favorite bait. He's six or seven feet long, and fishermen
+that use him don't have to have any line. He's bait and line all in
+one."
+
+Mr. Poplington laughed. "I see you are fond of a joke," said he, "and
+so am I, but I'm also fond of my breakfast."
+
+"I'm with you there," said Jone, and we all went in.
+
+Mr. Poplington was very pleasant and chatty, and of course asked a
+great many questions about America. Nearly all English people I've met
+want to talk about our country, and it seems to me that what they do
+know about it isn't any better, considered as useful information, than
+what they don't know. But Mr. Poplington has never been to America, and
+so he knows more about us than those Englishmen who come over to write
+books, and only have time to run around the outside of things, and get
+themselves tripped up on our ragged edges.
+
+He said he had met a good many Americans, and liked them, but he
+couldn't see for the life of him why they do some things English people
+don't do, and don't do things English people do do. For instance, he
+wondered why we don't drink tea for breakfast. Miss Pondar had made it
+for him, knowing he'd want it, and he wonders why Americans drink
+coffee when such good tea as that was comes in their reach.
+
+Now, if I had considered Mr. Poplington as a lodger it might have
+nettled me to have him tell me I didn't know what was good, but
+remembering that we was giving him hospitality, and not board, and
+didn't intend to charge him a cent, but was just taking care of him out
+of neighborly kindness, I was rather glad to have him find a little
+fault, because that would make me feel as if I was soaring still higher
+above him the next morning, when I should tell him there was nothing to
+pay.
+
+So I took it all good-natured, and said to him, "Well, Americans like
+to have the very best things that can be got out of every country.
+We're like bees flying over the whole world, looking into every blossom
+to see what sweetness there is to be got out of it. From the lily of
+France we sip their coffee, from the national flower of India, whatever
+it is, we take their chutney sauce, and as to those big apple tarts,
+baked in a deep dish, with a cup in the middle to hold up the upper
+crust, and so full of apples, and so delicious with Devonshire clotted
+cream on them that if there was any one place in the world they could
+be had I believe my husband would want to go and live there forever,
+_they_ are what we extract from the rose of England."
+
+Mr. Poplington laughed like anything at this, but said there was a
+great many other things that he could show us and tell us about which
+would be very well worth while sipping from the rose of England.
+
+After breakfast he went to church with us, and as we was coming
+home--for he didn't seem to have the least idea of going to the inn for
+his luncheon--he asked if we didn't find the services very different
+from those in America.
+
+"Yes," said I, "they are about as different from Quaker services as a
+squirting fountain is from a corked bottle. The Methodists and
+Unitarians and Reformed Dutch and Campbellites and Hard-shell Baptists
+have different services too, but in the Episcopal churches things are
+all pretty much the same as they did this morning. You forget, sir,
+that in our country there are religions to suit all sizes of minds. We
+haven't any national religion any more than we have a national flower."
+
+"But you ought to have," said he; "you ought to have an established
+church."
+
+"You may be sure we'll have it," said Jone, "as soon as we agree as to
+which one it ought to be."
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Seven_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+Last Sunday afternoon Mr. Poplington asked us if we would not like to
+walk over to a ruined abbey about four miles away, which he said was
+very interesting. It seemed to me that four miles there and four miles
+back was a pretty long walk, but I wanted to see the abbey, and I
+wasn't going to let him think that a young American woman couldn't walk
+as far as an elderly English gentleman; so I agreed and so did Jone.
+The abbey is a wonderful place, and I never thought of being tired
+while wandering in the rooms and in the garden, where the old monks
+used to live and preach, and give food to the poor, and keep house
+without women--which was pious enough, but must have been untidy. But
+the thing that surprised me the most was what Mr. Poplington told us
+about the age of the place. It was not built all at once, and it's part
+ancient and part modern, and you needn't wonder, madam, that I was
+astonished when he said that the part called modern was finished just
+three years before America was discovered. When I heard that I seemed
+to shrivel up as if my country was a new-born babe alongside of a
+bearded patriarch; but I didn't stay shrivelled long, for it can't be
+denied that a new-born babe has a good deal more to look forward to
+than a patriarch has.
+
+[Illustration: AT THE ABBEY]
+
+It is amazing how many things in this part of the country we'd never
+have thought of if it hadn't been for Mr. Poplington. At dinner he told
+us about Exmoor and the Lorna Doone country, and the wild deer hunting
+that can be had nowhere else in England, and lots of other things that
+made me feel we must be up and doing if we wanted to see all we ought
+to see before we left Chedcombe. When I went upstairs I said to Jone
+that Mr. Poplington was a very different man from what I thought he
+was.
+
+"He's just as nice as he can be, and I'm going to charge him for his
+room and his meals and for everything he's had."
+
+Jone laughed, and asked me if that was the way I showed people I liked
+them.
+
+"We intended to humble him by not charging him anything," I said, "and
+make him feel he had been depending on our bounty; but now I wouldn't
+hurt his feelings for the world, and I'll make out his bill in the
+morning myself. Women always do that sort of thing in England."
+
+As you asked me, madam, to tell you everything that happened on our
+travels, I'll go on about Mr. Poplington. After breakfast on Monday
+morning he went over to the inn, and said he would come back and pack
+up his things; but when he did come back he told us that those
+coach-and-four people had determined not to leave Chedcombe that day,
+but was going to stay and look at the sights in the neighborhood, and
+that they would want the room for that night. He said this had made him
+very angry, because they had no right to change their minds that way
+after having made definite arrangements in which other people besides
+themselves was concerned; and he had said so very plainly to the
+gentleman who seemed to be at the head of the party.
+
+"I hope it will be no inconvenience to you, madam," he said, "to keep
+me another night."
+
+"Oh, dear, no," said I; "and my husband was saying this morning that he
+wished you was going to stay with us the rest of our time here."
+
+"Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Then I'll do it. I'll go to the
+inn this minute and have the rest of my luggage brought over here. If
+this is any punishment to Mrs. Locky she deserves it, for she shouldn't
+have told those people they could stay longer without consulting me."
+
+In less than an hour there came a van to our cottage with the rest of
+his luggage. There must have been over a dozen boxes and packages,
+besides things tied up and strapped; and as I saw them being carried up
+one at a time, I said to Miss Pondar that in our country we'd have two
+or three big trunks, which we could take about without any trouble.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said she; but I could see by her face that she didn't
+believe luggage would be luggage unless you could lug it, but was too
+respectful to say so.
+
+When Mr. Poplington got settled down in our spare room he blossomed out
+like a full-blown friend of the family, and accordingly began to give
+us advice. He said we should go as soon as we could and see Exmoor and
+all that region of country, and that if we didn't mind he'd like to go
+with us; to which we answered, of course, we should like that very
+much, and asked him what he thought would be the best way to go. So we
+had ever so much talk about that, and although we all agreed it would
+be nicer not to take a public coach, but travel private, we didn't find
+it easy to decide as to the manner of travel. We all agreed that a
+carriage and horses would be too expensive, and Jone was rather in
+favor of a dogcart for us if Mr. Poplington would like to go on
+horseback; but the old gentleman said it would be too much riding for
+him, and if we took a dogcart he'd have to take another one. But this
+wouldn't be a very sociable way of travelling, and none of us liked it.
+
+"Now," exclaimed Mr. Poplington, striking his hand on the table, "I'll
+tell you exactly how we ought to go through that country--we ought to
+go on cycles."
+
+"Bicycles?" said I.
+
+"Tricycles, if you like," he answered, "but that's the way to do it.
+It'll be cheap, and we can go as we like and stop when we like. We'll
+be as free and independent as the Stars and Stripes, and more so, for
+they can't always flap when they like and stop flapping when they
+choose. Have you ever tried it, madam?"
+
+I replied that I had, a little, because my daughter had a tricycle, and
+I had ridden on it for a short distance and after sundown, but as for
+regular travel in the daytime I couldn't think of it.
+
+At this Jone nearly took my breath away by saying that he thought that
+the bicycle idea was a capital one, and that for his part he'd like it
+better than any other way of travelling through a pretty country. He
+also said he believed I could work a tricycle just as well as not, and
+that if I got used to it I would think it fine.
+
+I stood out against those two men for about a half an hour, and then I
+began to give in a little, and think that it might be nice to roll
+along on my own little wheels over their beautiful smooth roads, and
+stop and smell the hedges and pick flowers whenever I felt like it; and
+so it ended in my agreeing to do the Exmoor country on a tricycle while
+Mr. Poplington and Jone went on bicycles. As to getting the machines,
+Mr. Poplington said he would attend to that. There was people in London
+who hired them to excursionists, and all he had to do was to send an
+order and they would be on hand in a day or two; and so that matter
+was settled and he wrote to London. I thought Mr. Poplington was a
+little old for that sort of exercise, but I found he had been used to
+doing a great deal of cycling in the part of the country where he
+lives; and besides, he isn't as old as I thought he was, being not much
+over fifty. The kind of air that keeps a country always green is
+wonderful in bringing out early red and white in a person.
+
+"Everything happens wonderfully well, madam," said he, coming in after
+he had been to post his letter in a red iron box let into the side of
+the Wesleyan chapel, "doesn't it? Now here we're not able to start on
+our journey for two or three days, and I have just been told that the
+great hay-making in the big meadow to the south of the village is to
+begin to-morrow. They make the hay there only every other year, and
+they have a grand time of it. We must be there, and you shall see some
+of our English country customs."
+
+We said we'd be sure to be in for that sort of thing.
+
+I wish, madam, you could have seen that great hayfield. It belongs to
+the lord of the manor, and must have twenty or thirty acres in it.
+They've been three or four days cutting the grass on it with a machine,
+and now there's been nearly two days with hardly any rain, only now and
+then some drizzling, and a good, strong wind, which they think here is
+better for the hay-making than sunshine, though they don't object to a
+little sun. All the people in the village who had legs good enough to
+carry them to that field went to help make hay. It was a regular
+holiday, and as hay is clean, nearly everybody was dressed in good
+clothes. Early in the morning some twenty regular farm laborers began
+raking the hay at one end of the field, stretching themselves nearly
+the whole way across it, and as the day went on more and more people
+came, men and women, high and low. All the young women and some of the
+older ones had rakes, and the way they worked them was amazing to see,
+but they turned over the hay enough to dry it. As to schoolgirls and
+boys, there was no end of them in the afternoon, for school let out
+early. Some of them worked, but most of them played and cut up
+monkey-shines on the hay. Even the little babies was brought on the
+field, and nice, soft beds made for them under the trees at one side.
+
+When Jone saw the real farm-work going on, with a chance for everybody
+to turn in to help, his farmer blood boiled within him, as if he was a
+war-horse and sniffed the smoke of battle, and he got himself a rake
+and went to work like a good-fellow. I never saw so many men at work in
+a hayfield at home, but when I looked at Jone raking I could see why it
+was it didn't take so many men to get in our hay. As for me, I raked a
+little, but looked about a great deal more.
+
+Near the middle of the field was two women working together, raking as
+steadily as if they had been brought up to it. One of these was young,
+and even handsomer than Miss Dick, which was the name of the bar lady.
+To look at her made me think of what I had read of Queen Marie
+Antoinette and her court ladies playing the part of milkmaids. Her
+straw hat was trimmed with delicate flowers, and her white muslin dress
+and pale blue ribbons made her the prettiest picture I ever saw
+out-of-doors. I could not help asking Mrs. Locky who she was, and she
+told me that she was the chambermaid at the inn, and the other was the
+cook. When I heard this I didn't make any answer, but just walked off a
+little way and began raking and thinking. I have often wondered why it
+is that English servants are so different from those we have, or, to
+put it in a strictly confidential way between you and me, madam, why
+the chambermaid at the "Bordley Arms," as she is, is so different from
+me, as I used to be when I first lived with you. Now that young
+chambermaid with the pretty hat is, as far as appearances go, as good a
+woman as I am, and if Jone was a bachelor and intended to marry her I
+would think it was as good a match as if he married me. But the
+difference between us two is that when I got to be the kind of woman I
+am I wasn't willing to be a servant, and if I had always been the kind
+of young woman that chambermaid is I never would have been a servant.
+
+I've kept a sharp eye on the young women in domestic service over here,
+having a fellow-feeling for them, as you can well understand, madam,
+and since I have been in the country I've watched the poor folks and
+seen how they live, and it's just as plain to me as can be that the
+young women who are maids and waitresses over here are the kind who
+would have tried to be shop-girls and dressmakers and even
+school-teachers in America, and many of the servants we have would be
+working in the fields if they lived over here. The fact is, the English
+people don't go to other countries to get their servants. Their way is
+like a factory consuming its own smoke. The surplus young women, and
+there must always be a lot of them, are used up in domestic service.
+
+Now, if an American poor girl is good enough to be a first-class
+servant, she wants to be something else. Sooner than go out to service
+she will work twice as hard in a shop, or even go into a factory.
+
+I have talked a good deal about this to Jone, and he says I'm getting
+to be a philosopher; but I don't think it takes much philosophizing to
+find out how this case stands. If house service could be looked upon in
+the proper way, it wouldn't take long for American girls who have to
+work for their living to find out that it's a lot better to live with
+nice people, and cook and wait on the table, and do all those things
+which come natural to women the world over, than to stand all day
+behind a counter under the thumb of a floor-walker, or grind their
+lives out like slaves among a lot of steam-engines and machinery. The
+only reason the English have better house servants than we have is that
+here any girl who has to work is willing to be a house servant, and
+very good house servants they are, too.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Eight_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+I will now finish telling you about the great hay-making day. Toward
+the end of the afternoon a lot of boys and girls began playing a game
+which seemed to belong to the hayfield. Each one of the bigger boys
+would twist up a rope of hay and run after a girl, and when he had
+thrown it over her neck he could kiss her. Girls are girls the whole
+world over, and it was funny to see how some of them would run like mad
+to get away from the boys, and how dreadfully troubled they would be
+when they was caught, and yet, after they had been kissed and the boys
+had left them, they would walk innocently back to the players as if
+they never dreamed that anybody would think of disturbing them.
+
+At five o'clock everybody--farm hands, ladies, gentlemen,
+school-children, and all--took tea together. Some were seated at long
+tables made of planks, with benches at the sides, and others scattered
+all over the grass. Miss Pondar and our maid Hannah helped to serve the
+tea and sandwiches, and I was glad to see that Hannah wore her pointed
+white cap and her black dress, for I had on my woollen travelling suit,
+and I didn't want too much cart-before-the-horseness in my domestic
+establishment.
+
+After tea the work and the games began again, and as I think it is
+always better for people to do what they can do best, I turned in and
+helped clear away the tea-things, and after that I sat down by a female
+person in black silk--and I am sure I didn't know whether she was the
+lady of the manor or somebody else until I heard some h-words come out
+in her talk, and then I knew she was the latter--and she told me ever
+so much about the people in the village, and why the rector wasn't
+there, on account of a dispute about the altar-cloths, and she was just
+beginning to tell me about the doctor's wife sending her daughters to a
+school that was much too high-priced for his practice, when I happened
+to look across the field, and there, with the bar lady at the inn, with
+her hat trimmed with pink, and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, with
+her hat trimmed with blue, was Jone, and they was all three raking
+together, as comfortable and confiding as if they had been singing
+hymns out of the same book.
+
+Now, I thought I had been sitting still long enough, and so I snipped
+off the rest of the doctor story and got myself across that field with
+pretty long steps. When I reached the happy three I didn't say
+anything, but went round in front of them and stood there, throwing a
+sarcastic and disdainful glance upon their farming. Jone stopped
+working, and wiped his face with his handkerchief, as if he was hot and
+tired, but hadn't thought of it until just then, and the two girls they
+stopped too.
+
+"He's teaching us to rake, ma'am," said Miss Dick, revolving her
+green-gage eyes in my direction, "and really, ma'am, it's wonderful to
+see how good he does it. You Americans are so awful clever!"
+
+As for the one with the blue trimmings, she said nothing, but stood
+with her hands folded on her rake, and her chiselled features steeped
+in a meek resignedness, though much too high colored, as though it had
+just been borne in upon her that this world is all a fleeting show, for
+man's illusion given, and such felicity as culling fragrant hay by the
+side of that manly form must e'en be foregone by her, that I could
+have taken a handle of a rake and given her such a punch among her blue
+ribbons that her classic features would have frantically twined
+themselves around one resounding howl--but I didn't. I simply remarked
+to Jone, with a statuesque rigidity, that it was six o'clock and I was
+going home; to which he said he was going too, and we went.
+
+[Illustration: "THERE, WITH THE BAR LADY AND THE MARIE ANTOINETTE
+CHAMBERMAID, WAS JONE"]
+
+"I thought," said I, as we proceeded with rapid steps across the field,
+"that you didn't come to England for the purpose of teaching the
+inhabitants."
+
+Jone laughed a little. "That young lady put it rather strong," he said.
+"She and her friend was merely trying to rake as I did. I think they
+got on very well."
+
+"Indeed!" said I--I expect with flashing eye--"but the next time you go
+into the disciple business I recommend that you take boys who really
+need to know something about farming, and not fine-as-fiddle young
+women that you might as well be ballet-dancing with as raking with, for
+all the hankering after knowledge they have."
+
+"Oh!" said Jone, and that was all he did say, which was very wise in
+him, for, considering my state of feelings, his case was like a
+fish-hook in your finger--the more you pull and worry at it the harder
+it is to get out.
+
+That evening, when I was quite cooled down, and we was talking to Mr.
+Poplington about the hay-making and the free-and-easy way in which
+everybody came together, he was a good deal surprised that we should
+think that there was anything uncommon in that, coming from a country
+where everybody was free and equal. Jone was smoking his pipe, and when
+it draws well and he's had a good dinner and I haven't anything
+particular to say, he often likes to talk slow and preach little
+sermons.
+
+"Yes, sir," said he, after considering the matter a little while,
+"according to the Constitution of the United States we are all free and
+equal, but there's a good many things the Constitution doesn't touch
+on, and one of them is the sorting out and sizing up of the population.
+Now, you people over here are like the metal types that the printers
+use. You've all got your letters on one end of you, and you know just
+where you belong, and if you happen to be knocked into 'pi' and mixed
+all up in a pile it is easy enough to pick you out and put you all in
+your proper cases; but it's different with us. According to the
+Constitution we're like a lot of carpet-tacks, one just the same as
+another, though in fact we're not alike, and it would not be easy if we
+got mixed up, say in a hayfield, to get ourselves all sorted out again
+according to the breadth of our heads and the sharpness of our points,
+so we don't like to do too much mixing, don't you see?" To which Mr.
+Poplington said he didn't see, and then I explained to him that what
+Jone meant was that though in our country we was all equally free, it
+didn't do for us to be as freely equal as the people are sometimes over
+here, to which Mr. Poplington said, "Really!" but he didn't seem to be
+standing in the glaring sunlight of convincement. But the shade is
+often pleasant to be in, and he wound up by saying, as he bid us
+good-night, that he thought it would be a great deal better for us, if
+we had classes at all, to have them marked out plain, and stamped so
+that there could be no mistake; to which I said that if we did that the
+most of the mistakes would come in the sorting, which, according to my
+reading of books and newspapers, had happened to most countries that
+keep up aristocracies.
+
+I don't know that he heard all that I said, for he was going up-stairs
+with his candle at the time, but when Jone and me got up-stairs in our
+own room I said to him, and he always hears everything I say, that in
+some ways the girls that we have for servants at home have some
+advantages over those we find here; to which Jone said, "Yes," and
+seemed to be sleepy.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Nine_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+There was still another day of hay-making, but we couldn't wait for
+that, because our cycles had come from London and we was all anxious to
+be off, and you would have laughed, madam, if you could have seen us
+start. Mr. Poplington went off well enough, but Jone's bicycle seemed a
+little gay and hard to manage, and he frisked about a good deal at
+starting; but Jone had bought a bicycle long ago, when the things first
+came out, and on days when the roads was good he used to go to the
+post-office on it, and he said that if a man had ever ridden on top of
+a wheel about six feet high he ought to be able to balance himself on
+the pair of small wheels which they use nowadays. So, after getting his
+long legs into working order, he went very well, though with a snaky
+movement at first, and then I started.
+
+Each one of us had a little hand-bag hung on our machine, and Mr.
+Poplington said we needn't take anything to eat, for there was inns to
+be found everywhere in England. Hannah started me off nicely by pushing
+my tricycle until I got it going, and Miss Pondar waved her
+handkerchief from the cottage door. When Hannah left me I went along
+rather slow at first, but when I got used to the proper motion I began
+to do better, and was very sure it wouldn't take me long to catch up
+with Jone, who was still worm-fencing his way along the road. When I
+got entirely away from the houses, and began to smell the hedges and
+grassy banks so close to my nose, and feel myself gliding along over
+the smooth white road, my spirits began to soar like a bird, and I
+almost felt like singing.
+
+The few people I met didn't seem to think it was anything wonderful for
+a woman to ride on a tricycle, and I soon began to feel as proper as if
+I was walking on a sidewalk. Once I came very near tangling myself up
+with the legs of a horse who was pulling a cart. I forgot that it was
+the proper thing in this country to turn to the left, and not to the
+right, but I gave a quick twist to my helm and just missed the
+cart-wheel, but it was a close scratch. This turning to the right,
+instead of to the left, was a mistake Jone made two or three times when
+he began to drive me in England, but he got over it, and since my
+grazing the cart it's not likely I shall forget it. As I breathed a
+sigh of relief after escaping this danger I took in a breath full of
+the scent of wild roses that nearly covered a bit of hedge, and my
+spirits rose again.
+
+I had asked Jone and Mr. Poplington to go ahead, because I knew I could
+do a great deal better if I worked along by myself for a while, without
+being told what I ought to do and what I oughtn't to do. There is
+nothing that bothers me so much as to have people try to teach me
+things when I am puzzling them out for myself. But now I found that
+although they could not be far ahead, I couldn't see them, on account
+of the twists in the road and the high hedges, and so I put on steam
+and went along at a fine rate, sniffing the breeze like a charger of
+the battlefield. Before very long I came to a place where the road
+forked, but the road to the left seemed like a lane leading to
+somebody's house, so I kept on in what was plainly the main road, which
+made a little turn where it forked. Looking out ahead of me, to see if
+I could catch sight of the two men, I could not see a sign of them, but
+I did see that I was on the top of a long hill that seemed to lead on
+and down and on and down, with no end to it.
+
+I had hardly started down this hill when my tricycle became frisky and
+showed signs of wanting to run, and I got a little nervous, for I
+didn't fancy going fast down a slope like that. I put on the brake, but
+I don't believe I managed it right, for I seemed to go faster and
+faster; and then, as the machine didn't need any working, I took my
+feet off the pedals, with an idea, I think, though I can't now
+remember, that I would get off and walk down the hill. In an instant
+that thing took the bit in its teeth and away it went wildly tearing
+down hill. I never was so much frightened in all my life. I tried to
+get my feet back on the pedals, but I couldn't do it, and all I could
+do was to keep that flying tricycle in the middle of the road. As far
+as I could see ahead there was not anything in the way of a wagon or a
+carriage that I could run into, but there was such a stretch of slope
+that it made me fairly dizzy. Just as I was having a little bit of
+comfort from thinking there was nothing in the way, a black woolly dog
+jumped out into the road some distance ahead of me and stood there
+barking. My heart fell, like a bucket into a well with the rope broken.
+If I steered the least bit to the right or the left I believe I would
+have bounded over the hedge like a glass bottle from a railroad train,
+and come down on the other side in shivers and splinters. If I didn't
+turn I was making a bee-line for the dog; but I had no time to think
+what to do, and in an instant that black woolly dog faded away like a
+reminiscence among the buzzing wheels of my tricycle. I felt a little
+bump, but was ignorant of further particulars.
+
+I was now going at what seemed like a speed of ninety or a hundred
+miles an hour, with the wind rushing in between my teeth like water
+over a mill-dam, and I felt sure that if I kept on going down that hill
+I should soon be whirling through space like a comet. The only way I
+could think of to save myself was to turn into some level place where
+the thing would stop, but not a crossroad did I pass; but presently I
+saw a little house standing back from the road, which seemed to hump
+itself a little at that place so as to be nearly level, and over the
+edge of the hump it dipped so suddenly that I could not see the rest of
+the road at all.
+
+"Now," thought I to myself, "if the gate of that house is open I'll
+turn into it, and no matter what I run into, it would be better than
+going over the edge of that rise beyond and down the awful hill that
+must be on the other side of it." As I swooped down to the little house
+and reached the level ground I felt I was going a little slower, but
+not much. However, I steered my tricycle round at just the right
+instant, and through the front gate I went like a flash.
+
+I was going so fast, and my mind was so wound up on account of the
+necessity of steering straight, that I could not pay much attention to
+things I passed. But the scene that showed itself in front of me as I
+went through that little garden gate I could not help seeing and
+remembering. From the gate to the door of the house was a path paved
+with flagstones; the door was open, and there must have been a low step
+before it; back of the door was a hall which ran through the house, and
+this was paved with flagstones; the back door of the hall was open, and
+outside of it was a sort of arbor with vines, and on one side of this
+arbor was a bench, with a young man and a young woman sitting on it,
+holding each other by the hand, and looking into each other's eyes;
+the arbor opened out on to a piece of green grass, with flowers of
+mixed colors on the edges of it, and at the back of this bit of lawn
+was a lot of clothes hung out on clothes-lines. Of course, I could not
+have seen all those things at once, but they came upon me like a single
+picture, for in one tick of a watch I went over that flagstone path and
+into that front door and through that house and out of that back door,
+and past that young man and that young woman, and head and heels both
+foremost at once, dashed slam-bang into the midst of all that linen
+hanging out on the lines.
+
+[Illustration: "AT LAST I DID GET ON MY FEET"]
+
+I heard the minglement of a groan and a scream, and in an instant I was
+enveloped in a white, wet cloud of sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths,
+and underwear. Some of the things stuck so close to me, and others I
+grabbed with such a wild clutch, that nearly all the week's wash, lines
+and all, came down on me, wrapping me up like an apple in a
+dumpling--but I stopped. There was not anything in this world that
+would have been better for me to run into than those lines full of wet
+clothes.
+
+Where the tricycle went to I didn't know, but I was lying on the grass
+kicking, and trying to get up and to get my head free, so that I could
+see and breathe. At last I did get on my feet, and throwing out my arms
+so as to shake off the sheets and pillowcases that were clinging all
+over me I shook some of the things partly off my face, and with one
+eye I saw that couple on the bench, but only for a second. With a yell
+of horror, and with a face whiter than the linen I was wrapped in, that
+young man bounced from the bench, dashed past the house, made one clean
+jump over the hedge into the road, and disappeared. As for the young
+woman, she just flopped over and went down in a faint on the floor.
+
+As soon as I could do it I got myself free from the clothes-line and
+staggered out on the grass. I was trembling so much I could scarcely
+walk, but when I saw that young woman looking as if she was dead on the
+ground I felt I must do something, and seeing a pail of water standing
+near by, I held it over her face and poured it down on her a little at
+a time, and it wasn't long before she began to squirm, and then she
+opened her eyes and her mouth just at the same time, so that she must
+have swallowed about as much water as she would have taken at a meal.
+This brought her to, and she began to cough and splutter and look
+around wildly, and then I took her by the arm and helped her up on the
+bench.
+
+"Don't you want a little something to drink?" I said. "Tell me where I
+can get you something."
+
+She didn't answer, but began looking from one side to the other. "Is he
+swallowed?" said she in a whisper, with her eyes starting out of her
+head.
+
+"Swallowed?" said I. "Who?"
+
+"Davy," said she.
+
+"Oh, your young man," said I. "He is all right, unless he hurt himself
+jumping over the hedge. I saw him run away just as fast as he could."
+
+"And the spirit?" said she. I looked hard at her.
+
+"What has happened to you?" said I. "How did you come to faint?"
+
+She was getting quieter, but she still looked wildly out of her eyes,
+and kept her back turned toward the bit of grass, as if she was afraid
+to look in that direction.
+
+"What happened to you?" said I again, for I wanted to know what she
+thought about my sudden appearance. It took some little time for her to
+get ready to answer, and then she said:
+
+"Was you frightened, lady? Did you have to come in here? I'm sorry you
+found me swooned. I don't know how long I was swooned. Davy and me was
+sitting here talking about having the banns called, and it was a sorry
+talk, lady, for the vicar, he's told me four times I should not marry
+Davy, because he says he is a Radical; but for all that Davy and me
+wants the banns called all the same, but not knowing how we was to have
+it done, for the vicar, he's so set against Davy, and Davy, he had just
+got done saying to me that he was going to marry me, vicar or no vicar,
+banns or no banns, come what might, when that very minute, with an
+awful hiss, something flashed in front of us, dazzling my eyes so that
+I shut them and screamed, and then when I opened them again, there, in
+the yard back of us, was a great white spirit twice as high as the cow
+stable, with one eye in the middle of its forehead, turning around like
+a firework. I don't remember anything after that, and I don't know how
+long I was lying here when you came and found me, lady, but I know what
+it means. There is a curse on our marriage, and Davy and me will never
+be man and wife." And then she fell to groaning and moaning.
+
+I felt like laughing when I thought how much like a church ghost I must
+have looked, standing there in solid white with my arms stretched out;
+but the poor girl was in such a dreadful state of mind that I sat down
+beside her and began to comfort her by telling her just what had
+happened, and that she ought to be very glad that I had found a place
+to turn into, and had not gone on down the hill and dashed myself into
+little pieces at the bottom. But it wasn't easy to cheer her up.
+
+"Oh, Davy's gone," said she. "He'll never come back for fear of the
+curse. He'll be off with his uncle to sea. I'll never lay eyes on Davy
+again."
+
+Just at that moment I heard somebody calling my name, and looking
+through the house I saw Jone at the front door and two men behind him.
+As I ran through the hall I saw that the two men with Jone was Mr.
+Poplington and a young fellow with a pale face and trembling legs.
+
+"Is this Davy?" said I.
+
+"Yes," said he.
+
+"Then go back to your young woman and comfort her," I said, which he
+did, and when he had gone, not madly rushing into his loved one's arms,
+but shuffling along in a timid way, as if he was afraid the ghost
+hadn't gone yet, I asked Jone how he happened to think I was here, and
+he told me that he and Mr. Poplington had taken the road to the left
+when they reached the fork, because that was the proper one, but they
+had not gone far before he thought I might not know which way to turn,
+so they came back to the fork to wait for me. But I had been closer
+behind them than they thought, and I must have come to the fork before
+they turned back, so, after waiting a while and going back along the
+road without seeing me, they thought that I must have taken the
+right-hand road, and they came that way, going down the hill very
+carefully. After a while Jone found my hat in the road, which up to
+that moment I had not missed, and then he began to be frightened and
+they went on faster.
+
+They passed the little house, and as they was going down the hill they
+saw ahead of them a man running as if something had happened, so they
+let out their bicycles and soon caught up to him. This was Davy; and
+when they stopped him and asked if anything was the matter he told
+them that a dreadful thing had come to pass. He had been working in the
+garden of a house about half a mile back when suddenly there came an
+awful crash, and a white animal sprang out of the house with a bit of a
+cotton mill fastened to its tail, and then, with a great peal of
+thunder, it vanished, and a white ghost rose up out of the ground with
+its arms stretching out longer and longer, reaching to clutch him by
+the hair. He was not afraid of anything living, but he couldn't abide
+spirits, so he laid down his spade and left the garden, thinking he
+would go and see the sexton and have him come and lay the ghost.
+
+Then Jone went on to say that of course he could not make head or tail
+out of such a story as that, but when he heard that an awful row had
+been kicked up in a garden he immediately thought that as like as not I
+was in it, and so he and Mr. Poplington ran back, leaving their
+bicycles against the hedge, and bringing the young man with them.
+
+Then I told my story, and Mr. Poplington said it was a mercy I was not
+killed, and Jone didn't say much, but I could see that his teeth was
+grinding.
+
+We all went into the back yard, and there, on the other side of the
+clothes, which was scattered all over the ground, we found my tricycle,
+jammed into a lot of gooseberry bushes, and when it was dragged out we
+found it was not hurt a bit. Davy and his young woman was standing in
+the arbor looking very sheepish, especially Davy, for she had told him
+what it was that had scared him. As we was going through the house,
+Jone taking my tricycle, I stopped to say good-by to the girl.
+
+"Now that you see there has been no curse and no ghost," said I, "I
+hope that you will soon have your banns called, and that you and your
+young man will be married all right."
+
+"Thank you very much, ma'am," said she, "but I'm awful fearful about
+it. Davy may say what he pleases, but my mother never will let me marry
+him if the vicar's agen it; and Davy wouldn't have been here to-day if
+she hadn't gone to town; and the vicar's a hard man and a strong Tory,
+and he'll always be agen it, I fear."
+
+When I went out into the front yard I found Mr. Poplington and Jone
+sitting on a little stone bench, for they was tired, and I told them
+about that young woman and Davy.
+
+"Humph," said Mr. Poplington, "I know the vicar of the parish. He is
+the Rev. Osmun Green. He's a good Conservative, and is perfectly right
+in trying to keep that poor girl from marrying a wretched Radical."
+
+I looked straight at him and said:
+
+"Do you mean, sir, to put politics before matrimonial happiness?"
+
+"No, I don't," said he, "but a girl can't expect matrimonial happiness
+with a Radical."
+
+I saw that Jone was about to say something here, but I got in ahead of
+him.
+
+"I will tell you what it is, sir," said I, "if you think it is wrong to
+be a Radical the best thing you can do is to write to your friend, that
+vicar, and advise him to get those two young people married as soon as
+possible, for it is easy to see that she is going to rule the roost,
+and if anybody can get his Radicalistics out of him she will be the one
+to do it."
+
+Mr. Poplington laughed, and said that as the man looked as if he was a
+fit subject to be henpecked it might be a good way of getting another
+Tory vote.
+
+"But," said he, "I should think it would go against your conscience,
+being naturally opposed to the Conservatives, to help even by one
+vote."
+
+"Oh, my conscience is all right," said I. "When politics runs against
+the matrimonial altar I stand up for the altar."
+
+"Well," said he, "I'll think of it." And we started off, walking down
+the hill, Jone holding on to my tricycle.
+
+When we got to level ground, with about two miles to go before we would
+stop for luncheon, Jone took a piece of thin rope out of his pocket--he
+always carries some sort of cord in case of accidents--and he tied it
+to the back part of my machine.
+
+"Now," said he, "I'm going to keep hold of the other end of this, and
+perhaps your tricycle won't run away with you."
+
+I didn't much like going along this way, as if I was a cow being taken
+to market, but I could see that Jone had been so troubled and
+frightened about me that I didn't make any objection, and, in fact,
+after I got started it was a comfort to think there was a tie between
+Jone and me that was stronger, when hilly roads came into the question,
+than even the matrimonial tie.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Ten_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+The place we stopped at on the first night of our cycle trip is named
+Porlock, and after the walking and the pushing, and the strain on my
+mind when going down even the smallest hill for fear Jone's rope would
+give way, I was glad to get there.
+
+The road into Porlock goes down a hill, the steepest I have seen yet,
+and we all walked down, holding our machines as if they had been fiery
+coursers. This hill road twists and winds so you can only see part of
+it at a time, and when we was about half-way down we heard a horn
+blowing behind us, and looking around there came the mail-coach at full
+speed, with four horses, with a lot of people on top. As this raging
+coach passed by it nearly took my breath away, and as soon as I could
+speak I said to Jone: "Don't you ever say anything in America about
+having the roads made narrower so that it won't cost so much to keep
+them in order, for in my opinion it's often the narrow road that
+leadeth to destruction."
+
+When we got into the town, and my mind really began to grapple with old
+Porlock, I felt as if I was sliding backward down the slope of the
+centuries, and liked it. As we went along Mr. Poplington told us about
+everything, and said that this queer little town was a fishing village
+and seaport in the days of the Saxons, and that King Harold was once
+obliged to stop there for a while, and that he passed his time making
+war on the neighbors.
+
+Mr. Poplington took us to a tavern called the Ship Inn, and I simply
+went wild over it. It is two hundred years old and two stories high,
+and everything I ever read about the hostelries of the past I saw
+there. The queer little door led into a queer little passage paved with
+stone. A pair of little stairs led out of this into another little
+room, higher up, and on the other side of the passage was a long,
+mysterious hallway. We had our dinner in a tiny parlor, which reminded
+me of a chapter in one of those old books where they use f instead of
+s, and where the first word of the next page is at the bottom of the
+one you are reading.
+
+There was a fireplace in the room with a window one side of it, through
+which you could look into the street. It was not cold, but it had begun
+to rain hard, and so I made the dampness an excuse for a fire.
+
+"This is antique, indeed," I said, when we were at the table.
+
+"You are right there," said Mr. Poplington, who was doing his best to
+carve a duck, and was a little cross about it.
+
+When I sat before the fire that evening, and Jone was asleep on a
+settee of the days of yore, and Mr. Poplington had gone to bed, being
+tired, my soul went back to the olden time, and, looking out through
+the little window in the fireplace, I fancied I could see William the
+Conqueror and the King of the Danes sneaking along the little street
+under the eaves of the thatched roofs, until I was so worked up that I
+was on the point of shouting, "Fly! oh, Saxon!" when the door opened
+and the maid who waited on us at the table put her head in. I took this
+for a sign that the curfew bell was going to ring, and so I woke up
+Jone and we went to bed.
+
+But all night long the heroes of the past flocked about me. I had been
+reading a lot of history, and I knew them all the minute my eyes fell
+upon them. Charlemagne and Canute sat on the end of the bed, while
+Alfred the Great climbed up one of the posts until he was stopped by
+Hannibal's legs, who had them twisted about the post to keep himself
+steady. When I got up in the morning I went down-stairs into the little
+parlor, and there was the maid down on her knees cleaning the hearth.
+
+"What is your name?" I said to her.
+
+"Jane, please," said she.
+
+"Jane what?" said I.
+
+"Jane Puddle, please," said she.
+
+I took a carving-knife from off the table, and standing over her I
+brought it down gently on top of her head. "Rise, Sir Jane Puddle,"
+said I, to which the maid gave a smothered gasp, and--would you believe
+it, madam?--she crept out of the room on her hands and knees. The cook
+waited on us at breakfast, and I truly believe that the landlord and
+his wife breathed a sigh of relief when we left the Ship Inn, for their
+sordid souls had never heard of knighthood, but knew all about
+assassination.
+
+[Illustration: "Rise, Sir Jane Puddle"]
+
+That morning we left Porlock by a hill which compared with the one we
+came into it by, was like the biggest Pyramid of Egypt by the side of a
+haycock. I don't suppose in the whole civilized world there is a worse
+hill with a road on it than the one we went up by. I was glad we had to
+go up it instead of down it, though it was very hard to walk, pushing
+the tricycle, even when helped. I believe it would have taken away my
+breath and turned me dizzy even to take one step face forward down such
+a hill, and gaze into the dreadful depths below me; and yet they drive
+coaches and fours down that hill. At the top of the hill is this
+notice: "To cyclers--this hill is dangerous." If I had thought of it I
+should have looked for the cyclers' graves at the bottom of it.
+
+The reason I thought about this was that I had been reading about one
+of the mountains in Switzerland, which is one of the highest and most
+dangerous, and with the poorest view, where so many Alpine climbers
+have been killed that there is a little graveyard nearly full of their
+graves at the foot of the mountain. How they could walk through that
+graveyard and read the inscriptions on the tombstones and then go and
+climb that mountain is more than I can imagine.
+
+In walking up this hill, and thinking that it might have been in front
+of me when my tricycle ran away, I could not keep my mind away from the
+little graveyard at the foot of the Swiss mountain.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Eleven_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+On the third day of our cycle trip we journeyed along a lofty road,
+with the wild moor on one side and the tossing sea on the other, and at
+night reached Lynton. It is a little town on a jutting crag, and far
+down below it on the edge of the sea was another town named Lynmouth,
+and there is a car with a wire rope to it, like an elevator, which they
+call The Lift, which takes people up and down from one town to another.
+
+Here we stopped at a house very different from the Ship Inn, for it
+looked as if it had been built the day before yesterday. Everything was
+new and shiny, and we had our supper at a long table with about twenty
+other people, just like a boardinghouse. Some of their ways reminded
+me of the backwoods, and I suppose there is nothing more modern than
+backwoodsism, which naturally hasn't the least alloy of the past. When
+the people got through with their cups of coffee or tea, mostly the
+last, two women went around the table, one with a big bowl for us to
+lean back and empty our slops into, and the other with the tea or
+coffee to fill up the cups. A gentleman with a baldish head, who was
+sitting opposite us, began to be sociable as soon as he heard us speak
+to the waiters, and asked questions about America. After he got through
+with about a dozen of them he said:
+
+"Is it true, as I have heard, that what you call native-born Americans
+deteriorate in the third generation?"
+
+I had been answering most of the questions, but now Jone spoke up
+quick. "That depends," says he, "on their original blood. When
+Americans are descended from Englishmen they steadily improve,
+generation after generation." The baldish man smiled at this, and said
+there was nothing like having good blood for a foundation. But Mr.
+Poplington laughed, and said to me that Jone had served him right.
+
+The country about Lynton is wonderfully beautiful, with rocks and
+valleys, and velvet lawns running into the sea, and woods and ancestral
+mansions, and we spent the day seeing all this, and also going down to
+Lynmouth, where the little ships lie high and dry on the sand when the
+tide goes out, and the carts drive up to them and put goods on board,
+and when the tide rises the ships sail away, which is very convenient.
+
+I wanted to keep on along the coast, but the others didn't, and the
+next morning we started back to Chedcombe by a roundabout way, so that
+we might see Exmoor and the country where Lorna Doone and John Ridd cut
+up their didoes. I must say I liked the story a good deal better before
+I saw the country where the things happened. The mind of man is capable
+of soarings which Nature weakens at when she sees what she is called
+upon to do. If you want a real, first-class, tooth-on-edge Doone
+valley, the place to look for it is in the book. We went rolling along
+on the smooth, hard roads, which are just as good here as if they was
+in London, and all around us was stretched out the wild and desolate
+moors, with the wind screaming and whistling over the heather, nearly
+tearing the clothes off our backs, while the rain beat down on us with
+a steady pelting, and the ragged sheep stopped to look at us, as if we
+was three witches and they was Macbeths.
+
+The very thought that I was out in a wild storm on a desolate moor
+filled my soul with a sort of triumph, and I worked my tricycle as if I
+was spurring my steed to battle. The only thing that troubled me was
+the thought that if the water that poured off my mackintosh that day
+could have run into our cistern at home, it would have been a glorious
+good thing. Jone did not like the fierce blast and the inspiriting
+rain, but I knew he'd stand it as long as Mr. Poplington did, and so I
+was content, although, if we had been overtaken by a covered wagon, I
+should have trembled for the result.
+
+That night we stopped in the little village of Simonsbath at Somebody's
+Arms. After dinner Mr. Poplington, who knew some people in the place,
+went out, but Jone and me went to bed as quick as we could, for we was
+tired. The next morning we was wakened by a tremendous pounding at the
+door. I didn't know what to make of it, for it was too early and too
+loud for hot water, but we heard Mr. Poplington calling to us, and Jone
+jumped up to see what he wanted.
+
+"Get up," said he, "if you want to see a sight that you never saw
+before. We'll start off immediately and breakfast at Exford." The hope
+of seeing a sight was enough to make me bounce at any time, and I never
+dressed or packed a bag quicker than I did that morning, and Jone
+wasn't far behind me.
+
+When we got down-stairs we found our cycles waiting ready at the door,
+together with the stable man and the stable boy and the boy's helper
+and the cook and the chambermaid and the waiters and the other
+servants, waiting for their tips. Mr. Poplington seemed in a fine
+humor, and he told us he had heard the night before that there was to
+be a stag hunt that day, the first of the season. In fact, it was not
+one of the regular meets, but what they called a by-meet, and not known
+to everybody.
+
+"We will go on to Exford," said he, straddling his bicycle, "for though
+the meet isn't to be there, there's where they keep the hounds and
+horses, and if we make good speed we shall get there before they start
+out."
+
+The three of us travelled abreast, Mr. Poplington in the middle, and on
+the way he told us a good deal about stag hunts. What I remember best,
+having to go so fast and having to mind my steering, was that after the
+hunting season began they hunted stags until a certain day--I forget
+what it was--and then they let them alone and began to hunt the does;
+and that after that particular day of the month, when the stags heard
+the hounds coming they paid no attention to them, knowing very well it
+was the does' turn to be chased, and that they would not be bothered;
+and so they let the female members of their families take care of
+themselves; which shows that ungentlemanliness extends itself even into
+Nature.
+
+When we got to Exford we left our cycles at the inn and followed Mr.
+Poplington to the hunting stables, which are near by. I had not gone a
+dozen steps from the door before I heard a great barking, and the next
+minute there came around the corner a pack of hounds. They crossed the
+bridge over the little river, and then they stopped. We went up to
+them, and while Mr. Poplington talked to the men the whole of that pack
+of hounds gathered about us as gentle as lambs. They were good big
+dogs, white and brown. The head huntsman who had them in charge told me
+there was thirty couple of them, and I thought that sixty dogs was
+pretty heavy odds against one deer. Then they moved off as orderly as
+if they had been children in a kindergarten, and we went to the stables
+and saw the horses; and then the master of the hounds and a good many
+other gentlemen in red coats, in all sorts of traps, rode up, and their
+hunters were saddled, and the dogs barked and the men cracked their
+whips to keep them together, and there was a bustle and liveliness to a
+degree I can't write about, and Jone and I never thought about going in
+to breakfast until all those horses, some led and some ridden, and the
+men and the hounds, and even the dust from their feet, had disappeared.
+
+I wanted to go see the hunt start off, but Mr. Poplington said it was
+two or three miles distant, and out of our way, and that we'd better
+move on as soon as possible so as to reach Chedcombe that night; but
+he was glad, he said, that we had had a chance to see the hounds and
+the horses.
+
+As for himself, I could see he was a little down in the mouth, for he
+said he was very fond of hunting, and that if he had known of this meet
+he would have been there with a horse and his hunting clothes. I think
+he hoped somebody would lend him a horse, but nobody did, and not being
+able to hunt himself he disliked seeing other people doing what he
+could not. Of course, Jone and me could not go to the hunt by
+ourselves, so after we'd had our tea and toast and bacon we started
+off. I will say here that when I was at the Ship Inn I had tea for my
+breakfast, for I couldn't bring my mind to order coffee--a drink the
+Saxons must never have heard of--in such a place; and since that we
+have been drinking it because Jone said there was no use fighting
+against established drinks, and that anyway he thought good tea was
+better than bad coffee.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twelve_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+As I said in my last letter, we started out for Chedcombe, not abreast,
+as we had been before, but strung along the road, and me and Mr.
+Poplington pretty doleful, being disappointed and not wanting to talk.
+But as for Jone, he seemed livelier than ever, and whistled a lot of
+tunes he didn't know. I think it always makes him lively to get rid of
+seeing sights. The sun was shining brightly, and there was no reason to
+expect rain for two or three hours anyway, and the country we passed
+through was so fine, with hardly any houses, and with great hills and
+woods, and sometimes valleys far below the road, with streams rushing
+and bubbling, that after a while I began to feel better, and I pricked
+up my tricycle, and, of course, being followed by Jone, we left Mr.
+Poplington, whose melancholy seemed to have gotten into his legs, a
+good way behind.
+
+We must have travelled two or three hours when all of a sudden I heard
+a noise afar, and I drew up and listened. The noise was the barking of
+dogs, and it seemed to come from a piece of woods on the other side of
+the field which lay to the right of the road. The next instant
+something shot out from under the trees and began going over the field
+in ten-foot hops. I sat staring without understanding, but when I saw a
+lot of brown and white spots bounce out of the wood, and saw, a long
+way back in the open field, two red-coated men on horseback, the truth
+flashed upon me that this was the hunt. The creature in front was the
+stag, who had chosen to come this way, and the dogs and the horses was
+after him, and I was here to see it all.
+
+Almost before I got this all straight in my mind the deer was nearly
+opposite me on the other side of the field, going the same way that we
+were. In a second I clapped spurs into my tricycle and was off. In
+front of me was a long stretch of down grade, and over this I went as
+fast as I could work my pedals; no brakes or holding back for me. My
+blood was up, for I was actually in a deer hunt, and to my amazement
+and wild delight I found I was keeping up with the deer. I was going
+faster than the men on horseback.
+
+"Hi! Hi!" I shouted, and down I went with one eye on the deer and the
+other on the road, every atom of my body tingling with fiery
+excitement. When I began to go up the little slope ahead I heard Jone
+puffing behind me.
+
+"You will break your neck," he shouted, "if you go down hill that way,"
+and getting close up to me he fastened his cord to my tricycle. But I
+paid no attention to him or his advice.
+
+"The stag! The stag!" I cried. "As long as he keeps near the road we
+can follow him! Hi!" And having got up to the top of the next hill I
+made ready to go down as fast as I had gone before, for we had fallen
+back a little, and the stag was now getting ahead of us; but it made me
+gnash my teeth to find that I could not go fast, for Jone held back
+with all his force (and both feet on the ground, I expect), and I could
+not get on at all.
+
+"Let go of me," I cried, "we shall lose the stag. Stop holding back."
+But it wasn't any use; Jone's heels must have been nearly rubbed off,
+but he held back like a good fellow, and I seemed to be moving along no
+faster than a worm. I could not stand this; my blood boiled and
+bubbled; the deer was getting away from me; and if it had been Porlock
+Hill in front of me I would have dashed on, not caring whether the road
+was steep or level.
+
+A thought flashed across my mind, and I clapped my hand into my pocket
+and jerked out a pair of scissors. In an instant I was free. The world
+and the stag was before me, and I was flying along with a tornado-like
+swiftness that soon brought me abreast of the deer. This perfectly
+splendid, bounding creature was not far away from me on the other side
+of the hedge, and as the field was higher than the road I could see him
+perfectly. His legs worked so regular and springy, except when he came
+to a cross hedge, which he went over with a single clip, and came down
+like India rubber on the other side, that one might have thought he was
+measuring the grass, and keeping an account of his jumps in his head.
+
+[Illustration: "In an instant I was free."]
+
+For one instant I looked around for the hounds, and I saw there was not
+more than half a dozen following him, and I could only see the two
+hunters I had seen before, and these was still a good way back. As for
+Jone, I couldn't hear him at all, and he must have been left far
+behind. There was still the woods on the other side, and the deer
+seemed to run to keep away from that and to cross the road, and he
+came nearer and nearer until I fancied he kept an eye on me as if he
+was wondering if I was of any consequence, and if I could hinder him
+from crossing the road and getting away into the valley below where
+there was a regular wilderness of woods and underbrush.
+
+If he does that, I thought, he will be gone in a minute and I shall
+lose him, and the hunt will be over. And for fear he would make for the
+hedge and jump over it, not minding me, I jerked out my handkerchief
+and shook it at him. You can't imagine how this frightened him. He
+turned sharp to the right, dashed up the hill, cleared a hedge and was
+gone. I gave a gasp and a scream as I saw him disappear. I believe I
+cried, but I didn't stop, and glad I was that I didn't; for in less
+than a minute I had come to a cross lane which led in the very
+direction the deer had taken. I turned into this lane and went on as
+fast as I could, and I soon found that it led through a thick wood.
+Down in the hollow, which I could not see into, I heard a barking and
+shouting, and I kept on just as fast as I could make that tricycle go.
+Where the lane led to, or what I should ever come to, I didn't think
+about. I was hunting a stag, and all I cared for was to feel my
+tricycle bounding beneath me.
+
+I may have gone a half a mile or two miles--I have not an idea how far
+it was--when suddenly I came to a place where there was green grass and
+rocks in an opening in the woods, and what a sight I saw! There was
+that beautiful, grand, red deer half down on his knees and perfectly
+quiet, and there was one of the men in red coats coming toward him with
+a great knife in his hand, and a little farther back was three or four
+dogs with another man, still on horseback, whipping them to keep them
+back, though they seemed willing enough to lie there with their tongues
+out, panting. As the man with the knife came up to the deer, the poor
+creature raised its eyes to him, and didn't seem to mind whether he
+came or not. It was trembling all over and fairly tired to death. When
+the man got near enough he took hold of one of the deer's horns and
+lifted up the hand with the knife in it, but he didn't bring it down on
+that deer's throat, I can tell you, madam, for I was there and had him
+by the arm.
+
+He turned on me as if he had been struck by lightning.
+
+"What do you mean?" he shouted. "Let go my arm."
+
+"Don't you touch that deer," said I--my voice was so husky I could
+hardly speak--"don't you see it's surrendered? Can you have the heart
+to cut that beautiful throat when he is pleading for mercy?" The man's
+eyes looked as if they would burst out of his head. He gave me a pull
+and a push as if he would stick the knife into me, and he actually
+swore at me, but I didn't mind that.
+
+[Illustration: "IF YOU WAS A MAN I'D BREAK YOUR HEAD"]
+
+"You have got that poor creature now," said I, "and that's enough. Keep
+it and tame it and bring it up with your children." I didn't have time
+to say anything more, and he didn't have time to answer, for two of the
+dogs who had got a little of their wind back sprang up and made a jump
+at the stag; and he, having got a little of his wind back, jerked his
+horn out of the hand of the man, and giving a sort of side spring
+backward among the bushes and rocks, away he went, the dogs after him.
+
+The man with the knife rushed out into the lane, and so did I, and so
+did the man on horseback, almost on top of me. On the other side of the
+lane was a little gorge with rocks and trees and water at the bottom of
+it, and I was just in time to see the stag spring over the lane and
+drop out of sight among the rocks and the moss and the vines.
+
+The man stood and swore at me regardless of my sex, so violent was his
+rage.
+
+"If you was a man I'd break your head," he yelled.
+
+"I'm glad I'm not," said I, "for I wouldn't want my head broken. But
+what troubles me is, that I'm afraid that deer has broken his legs or
+hurt himself some way, for I never saw anything drop on rocks in such a
+reckless manner, and the poor thing so tired."
+
+The man swore again, and said something about wishing somebody else's
+legs had been broken; and then he shouted to the man on horseback to
+call off the dogs, which was of no use, for he was doing it already.
+Then he turned on me again.
+
+"You are an American," he shouted. "I might have known that. No English
+woman would ever have done such a beastly thing as that."
+
+"You're mistaken there," I said; "there isn't a true English woman that
+lives who would not have done the same thing. Your mother--"
+
+"Confound my mother!" yelled the man.
+
+"All right," said I; "that's all in your family and none of my
+business." Then he went off raging to where he had left his horse by a
+gatepost.
+
+The other man, who was a good deal younger and more friendly, came up
+to me and said he wouldn't like to be in my boots, for I had spoiled a
+pretty piece of sport; and then he went on and told me that it had been
+a bad hunt, for instead of starting only one stag, three or four of
+them had been started, and they had had a bad time, for the hounds and
+the hunters had been mixed up in a nasty way. And at last, when the
+master of the hounds and most every one else had gone off over Dunkery
+Hill, and he didn't know whether they was after two stags or one, he
+and his mate, who was both whippers-in, had gone to turn part of the
+pack that had broken away, and had found that these dogs was after
+another stag, and so before they knew it they was in a hunt of their
+own, and they would have killed that stag if it had not been for me;
+and he said it was hard on his mate, for he knew he had it in mind that
+he was going to kill the only stag of the day.
+
+He went on to say, that as for himself he wasn't so sorry, for this was
+Sir Skiddery Henchball's land, and when a stag was killed it belonged
+to the man whose land it died on. He told me that the master of the
+hunt gets the head and the antlers, and the huntsman some other part,
+which I forget, but the owner of the land, no matter whether he's in
+the hunt or not, gets the body of the stag. "There's a cottage not a
+mile down this lane," said he, "with its thatch torn off, and my sister
+and her children live there, and Sir Skiddery turned them out on
+account of the rent, and so I'm glad the old skinflint didn't get the
+venison." And then he went off, being called by the other man.
+
+I didn't know what time it was, but it seemed as if it must be getting
+on into the afternoon; and feeling that my deer hunt was over, I
+thought I had better lose no time in hunting up Jone, so I followed on
+after the men and the dogs, who was going to the main road, but keeping
+a little back of them, though, for I didn't know what the older one
+might do if he happened to turn and see me.
+
+I was sure that Jone had passed the little lane without seeing it, so I
+kept on the way we had been going, and got up all the speed I could,
+though I must say I was dreadfully tired, and even trembling a little,
+for while I had been stag hunting I was so excited I didn't know how
+much work I was doing. There was sign-posts enough to tell me the way
+to Chedcombe, and so I kept straight on, up hill and down hill, until
+at last I saw a man ahead on a bicycle, which I soon knew to be Mr.
+Poplington. He was surprised enough at seeing me, and told me my
+husband had gone ahead. I didn't explain anything, and it wasn't until
+we got nearly to Chedcombe that we met Jone. He had been to Chedcombe,
+and was coming back.
+
+Jone is a good fellow, but he's got a will of his own, and he said that
+this would be the end of my tricycle riding, and that the next time we
+went out together on wheels he'd drive. I didn't tell him anything
+about the stag hunt then, for he seemed to be in favor of doing all the
+talking himself; but after dinner, when we was all settled down quiet
+and comfortable, I told him and Mr. Poplington the story of the chase,
+and they both laughed, Mr. Poplington the most.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Thirteen_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+It is now about a week since my stag hunt, and Jone and I have kept
+pretty quiet, taking short walks, and doing a good deal of reading in
+our garden whenever the sun shines into the little arbor there, and Mr.
+Poplington spends most of his time fishing. He works very hard at this,
+partly for the sake of his conscience, I think, for his bicycle trip
+made him lose three or four days he had taken a license for.
+
+It was day before yesterday that rheumatism showed itself certain and
+plain in Jone. I had been thinking that perhaps I might have it first,
+but it wasn't so, and it began in Jone, which, though I don't want you
+to think me hard-hearted, madam, was perhaps better; for if it had not
+been for it, it might have been hard to get him out of this comfortable
+little cottage, where he'd be perfectly content to stay until it was
+time for us to sail for America. The beautiful greenness which spreads
+over the fields and hills, and not only the leaves of trees and vines,
+but down and around trunks and branches, is charming to look at and
+never to be forgotten; but when this moist greenness spreads itself to
+one's bones, especially when it creeps up to the parts that work
+together, then the soul of man longs for less picturesqueness and more
+easy-going joints. Jone says the English take their climate as they do
+their whiskey; and he calls it climate-and-water, with a very little of
+the first and a good deal of the other.
+
+Of course, we must now leave Chedcombe; and when we talked to Mr.
+Poplington about it he said there was two places the English went to
+for their rheumatism. One was Bath, not far from here, and the other
+was Buxton, up in the north. As soon as I heard of Bath I was on pins
+and needles to go there, for in all the novel-reading I've done, which
+has been getting better and better in quality since the days when I
+used to read dime novels on the canal-boat, up to now when I like the
+best there is, I could not help knowing lots about Evelina and Beau
+Brummel, and the Pump Room, and the fine ladies and young bucks, and it
+would have joyed my soul to live and move where all these people had
+been, and where all these things had happened, even if fictitiously.
+
+But Mr. Poplington came down like a shower on my notions, and said that
+Bath was very warm, and was the place where everybody went for their
+rheumatism in winter; but that Buxton was the place for the summer,
+because it was on high land and cool. This cast me down a good deal;
+for if we could have gone where I could have steeped my soul in
+romanticness, and at the same time Jone could have steeped himself in
+warm mineral water, there would not have been any time lost, and both
+of us would have been happier. But Mr. Poplington stuck to it that it
+would ruin anybody's constitution to go to such a hot place in August,
+and so I had to give it up.
+
+So to-morrow we start for Buxton, which, from what I can make out, must
+be a sort of invalid picnic ground. I always did hate diseases and
+ailments, even of the mildest, when they go in caravan. I like to take
+people's sicknesses separate, because then I feel I might do something
+to help; but when they are bunched I feel as if it was sort of mean for
+me to go about cheerful and singing when other people was all grunting.
+
+But we are not going straight to Buxton. As I have often said, Jone is
+a good fellow, and he told me last night if there was any bit of fancy
+scenery I'd like to stop on the way to the unromantic refuge he'd be
+glad to give me the chance, because he didn't suppose it would matter
+much if he put off his hot soaks for a few days. It didn't take me long
+to name a place I'd like to stop at--for most of my reading lately has
+been in the guide books, and I had crammed myself with the descriptions
+of places worth seeing, that would take us at least two years to look
+at--so I said I would like to go to the River Wye, which is said to be
+the most romantic stream in England, and when that is said, enough is
+said for me, so Jone agreed, and we are going to do the Wye on our way
+north.
+
+There is going to be an election here in a few days, and this morning
+Jone and me hobbled into the village--that is, he hobbled in body, and
+I did in mind to think of his going along like a creaky wheelbarrow.
+
+Everybody was agog about the election, and we was looking at some
+placards posted against a wall, when Mr. Locky, the innkeeper, came
+along, and after bidding us good-morning he asked Jone what party he
+belonged to. "I'm a Home Ruler," said Jone, "especially in the matter
+of tricycles." Mr. Locky didn't understand the last part of this
+speech, but I did, and he said, "I am glad you are not a Tory, sir. If
+you will read that, you will see what the Tory party has done for us,"
+and he pointed out some lines at the bottom of a green placard, and
+these was the words: "Remember it was the Tory party that lost us the
+United States of America."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "that seems like going a long way off to get some
+stones to throw at the Tories, but I feel inclined to heave a rock at
+them myself for the injury that party has done to America."
+
+"To America!" said Mr. Locky, "Did the Tories ever harm America?"
+
+"Of course they did," said Jone; "they lost us England, a very valuable
+country, indeed, and a great loss to any nation. If it had not been for
+the Tory party, Mr. Gladstone might now be in Washington as a senator
+from Middlesex."
+
+[Illustration: "I'm a Home Ruler"]
+
+Mr. Locky didn't understand one word of this, and so he asked Jone
+which leg his rheumatism was in; and when Jone told him it was his left
+leg he said it was a very curious thing, but if you would take a
+hundred men in Chedcombe there would be at least sixty with rheumatism
+in the left leg, and perhaps not more than twenty with it in the right,
+which was something the doctors never had explained yet.
+
+It is awfully hard to go away and leave this lovely little cottage with
+its roses and vines, and Miss Pondar, and all its sweet-smelling
+comforts; and not only the cottage, but the village, and Mrs. Locky and
+her husband at the Bordley Arms, who couldn't have been kinder to us
+and more anxious to know what we wanted and what they could do. The
+fact is, that when English people do like Americans they go at it with
+just as much vim and earnestness as if they was helping Britannia to
+rule more waves.
+
+While I was feeling badly at leaving Miss Pondar your letter came, dear
+madam, and I must say it gave heavy hearts to Jone and me, to me
+especially, as you can well understand. I went off into the
+summer-house, and as I sat there thinking and reading the letter over
+again, I do believe some tears came into my eyes; and Miss Pondar, who
+was working in the garden only a little way off--for if there is
+anything she likes to do it is to weed and fuss among the rose-bushes
+and other flowers, which she does whenever her other work gives her a
+chance--she happened to look up, and seeing that I was in trouble, she
+came right to me, like the good woman she is, and asked me if I had
+heard bad news, and if I would like a little gin and water.
+
+I said that I had had bad news, but that I did not want any spirits,
+and she said she hoped nothing had happened to any of my family, and I
+told her not exactly; but in looking back it seemed as if it was almost
+that way. I thought I ought to tell her what had happened, for I could
+see that she was really feeling for me, and so I said: "Poor Lord
+Edward is dead. To be sure, he was very old, and I suppose we had not
+any right to think he'd live even as long as he did; and as he was
+nearly blind and had very poor use of his legs it was, perhaps, better
+that he should go. But when I think of what friends we used to be
+before I was married, I can't help feeling badly to think that he has
+gone; that when I go back to America he will not show he is glad to see
+me home again, which he would be if there wasn't another soul on the
+whole continent who felt that way."
+
+Miss Pondar was now standing up with her hands folded in front of her,
+and her head bowed down as if she was walking behind a hearse with
+eight ostrich plumes on it. "Lord Edward," she said, in a melancholy,
+respectful voice, "and will his remains be brought to England for
+interment?"
+
+"Oh, no," said I, not understanding what she was talking about. "I am
+sure he will be buried somewhere near his home, and when I go back his
+grave will be one of the first places I will visit."
+
+A streak of bewilderment began to show itself in Miss Pondar's
+melancholy respectfulness, and she said: "Of course, when one lives in
+foreign parts one may die there, but I always thought in cases like
+that they were brought home to their family vaults."
+
+It may seem strange for me to think of anything funny at a time like
+this, but when Miss Pondar mentioned family vaults when talking of Lord
+Edward, there came into my mind the jumps he used to make whenever he
+saw any of us coming home; but I saw what she was driving at and the
+mistake she had made. "Oh," I said, "he was not a member of the British
+nobility; he was a dog; Lord Edward was his name. I never loved any
+animal as I loved him."
+
+I suppose, madam, that you must sometimes have noticed one of the top
+candles of a chandelier, when the room gets hot, suddenly bending over
+and drooping and shedding tears of hot paraffine on the candles below,
+and perhaps on the table; and if you can remember what that overcome
+candle looked like, you will have an idea of what Miss Pondar looked
+like when she found out Lord Edward was a dog. I think that for one
+brief moment she hugged to her bosom the fond belief that I was
+intimate with the aristocracy, and that a noble lord, had he not
+departed this life, would have been the first to welcome me home, and
+that she--she herself--was in my service. But the drop was an awful
+one. I could see the throes of mortified disappointment in her back, as
+she leaned over a bed of pinks, pulling out young plants, I am afraid,
+as well as weeds. When I looked at her, I was sorry I let her know it
+was a dog I mourned. She has tried so hard to make everything all right
+while we have been here, that she might just as well have gone on
+thinking that it was a noble earl who died.
+
+To-morrow morning we shall have our last Devonshire clotted cream, for
+they tell me this is to be had only in the west of England, and when I
+think of the beautiful hills and vales of this country I shall not
+forget that.
+
+Of course we would not have time to stay here longer, even if Jone
+hadn't got the rheumatism; but if he had to have it, for which I am as
+sorry as anybody can be, it is a lucky thing that he did have it just
+about the time that we ought to be going away, anyhow. And although I
+did not think, when we came to England, that we should ever go to
+Buxton, we are thankful that there is such a place to go to; although,
+for my part, I can't help feeling disappointed that the season isn't
+such that we could go to Bath, and Evelina and Beau Brummel.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Fourteen_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
+
+We came to this queer old English town, not because it is any better
+than so many other towns, but because Mr. Poplington told us it was a
+good place for our headquarters while we was seeing the River Wye and
+other things in the neighborhood. This hotel is the best in the town
+and very well kept, so that Jone made his usual remark about its being
+a good place to stay in. We are near the point where the four principal
+streets of the town, called Northgate, Eastgate, Southgate, and
+Westgate, meet, and if there was nothing else to see it would be worth
+while to stand there and look at so much Englishism coming and going
+from four different quarters.
+
+There is another hotel here, called the New Inn, that was recommended
+to us, but I thought we would not want to go there, for we came to see
+old England, and I don't want to see its new and shiny things, so we
+came to the Bell, as being more antique. But I have since found out
+that the New Inn was built in 1450 to accommodate the pilgrims who came
+to pay their respects to the tomb of Edward II. in the fine old
+cathedral here. But though I should like to live in a four-hundred-and
+forty-year-old house, we are very well satisfied where we are.
+
+Two very good things come from Gloucester, for it is the well-spring of
+Sunday schools and vaccination. They keep here the horns of the cow
+that Dr. Jenner first vaccinated from, and not far from our hotel is
+the house of Robert Raikes. This is an old-fashioned timber house, and
+looks like a man wearing his skeleton outside of his skin. We are sorry
+Mr. Poplington couldn't come here with us, for he could have shown us a
+great many things; but he stayed at Chedcombe to finish his fishing,
+and he said he might meet us at Buxton, where he goes every year for
+his arm.
+
+To see the River Wye you must go down it, so with just one handbag we
+took the train for the little town of Ross, which is near the beginning
+of the navigable part of the river--I might almost say the wadeable
+part, for I imagine the deepest soundings about Ross are not more than
+half a yard. We stayed all night at a hotel overlooking the valley of
+the little river, and as the best way to see this wonderful stream is
+to go down it in a rowboat, as soon as we reached Ross we engaged a
+boat and a man for the next morning to take us to Monmouth, which would
+be about a day's row, and give us the best part of the river. But I
+must say that when we looked out over the valley the prospect was not
+very encouraging, for it seemed to me that if the sun came out hot it
+would dry up that river, and Jone might not be willing to wait until
+the next heavy rain.
+
+While we was at Chedcombe I read the "Maid of Sker," because its scenes
+are laid in the Bristol Channel, about the coast near where we was, and
+over in Wales. And when the next morning we went down to the boat which
+we was going to take our day's trip in, and I saw the man who was to
+row us, David Llewellyn popped straight into my mind.
+
+This man was elderly, with gray hair, and a beard under his chin, with
+a general air of water and fish. He was good-natured and sociable from
+the very beginning. It seemed a shame that an old man should row two
+people so much younger than he was, but after I had looked at him
+pulling at his oars for a little while, I saw that there was no need
+of pitying him.
+
+It was a good day, with only one or two drizzles in the morning, and we
+had not gone far before I found that the Wye was more of a river than I
+thought it was, though never any bigger than a creek. It was just about
+warm enough for a boat trip, though the old man told us there had been
+a "rime" that morning, which made me think of the "Ancient Mariner."
+The more the boatman talked and made queer jokes, the more I wanted to
+ask him his name; and I hoped he would say David Llewellyn, or at least
+David, and as a sort of feeler I asked him if he had ever seen a
+coracle. "A corkle?" said he. "Oh, yes, ma'am, I've seen many a one and
+rowed in them."
+
+I couldn't wait any longer, and so I asked him his name. He stopped
+rowing and leaned on his oars and let the boat drift. "Now," said he,
+"if you've got a piece of paper and a pencil I wish you would listen
+careful and put down my name, and if you ever know of any other people
+in your country coming to the River Wye, I wish you would tell them my
+name, and say I am a boatman, and can take them down the river better
+than anybody else that's on it. My name is Samivel Jones. Be sure
+you've got that right, please--Samivel Jones. I was born on this river,
+and I rowed on it with my father when I was a boy, and I have rowed on
+it ever since, and now I am sixty-five years old. Do you want to know
+why this river is called the Wye? I will tell you. Wye means crooked,
+so this river is called the Wye because it is crooked. Wye, the crooked
+river."
+
+There was no doubt about the old man's being right about the
+crookedness of the stream. If you have ever noticed an ant running over
+the floor you will have an idea how the Wye runs through this beautiful
+country. If it comes to a hill it doesn't just pass it and let you see
+one side of it, but it goes as far around it as it can, and then goes
+back again, and goes around some other hill or great rocky point, or a
+clump of woods, or anything else that travellers might like to see. At
+one place, called Symond's Yat, it makes a curve so great, that if we
+was to get out of our boat and walk across the land, we would have to
+walk less than half a mile before we came to the river again; but to
+row around the curve as we did, we had to go five miles.
+
+Every now and then we came to rapids. I didn't count them, but I think
+there must have been about one to every mile, where the river-bed was
+full of rocks, and where the water rushed furiously around and over
+them. If we had been rowing ourselves we would have gone on shore and
+camped when we came to the first of these rapids, for we wouldn't have
+supposed our little boat could go through those tumbling, rushing
+waters; but old Samivel knew exactly how the narrow channel, just deep
+enough sometimes for our boat to float without bumping the bottom, runs
+and twists itself among the hidden rocks, and he'd stand up in the bow
+and push the boat this way and that until it slid into the quiet water
+again, and he sat down to his oars. After we had been through four or
+five of these we didn't feel any more afraid than if we had been
+sitting together on our own little back porch.
+
+As for the banks of this river, they got more and more beautiful as we
+went on. There was high hills with some castles, woods and crags and
+grassy slopes, and now and then a lordly mansion or two, and great
+massive, rocky walls, bedecked with vines and moss, rising high up
+above our heads and shutting us out from the world.
+
+Jone and I was filled as full as our minds could hold with the romantic
+loveliness of the river and its banks, and old Samivel was so pleased
+to see how we liked it--for I believe he looked upon that river as his
+private property--that he told us about everything we saw, and pointed
+out a lot of things we wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for him,
+as if he had been a man explaining a panorama, and pointing out with a
+stick the notable spots as the canvas unrolled.
+
+The only thing in his show which didn't satisfy him was two very fine
+houses which had both of them belonged to noble personages in days
+gone by, but which had been sold, one to a man who had made his money
+in tea, and the other to a man who had made money in cotton. "Think of
+that," said he; "cotton and tea, and living in such mansions as them
+are, once owned by lords. They are both good men, and gives a great
+deal to the poor, and does all they can for the country; but only think
+of it, madam, cotton and tea! But all that happened a good while ago,
+and the world is getting too enlightened now for such estates as them
+are to come to cotton and tea."
+
+Sometimes we passed houses and little settlements, but, for the most
+part, the country was as wild as undiscovered lands, which, being that
+to me, I felt happier, I am sure, than Columbus did when he first
+sighted floating weeds. Jone was a good deal wound up too, for he had
+never seen anything so beautiful as all this. We had our luncheon at a
+little inn, where the bread was so good that for a time I forgot the
+scenery, and then we went on, passing through the Forest of Dean,
+lonely and solemn, with great oak and beech trees, and Robin Hood and
+his merry men watching us from behind the bushes for all we knew.
+Whenever the river twists itself around, as if to show us a new view,
+old Samivel would say: "Now isn't that the prettiest thing you've seen
+yet?" and he got prouder and prouder of his river every mile he rowed.
+
+At one place he stopped and rested on his oars. "Now, then," said he,
+twinkling up his face as if he was really David Llewellyn showing us a
+fish with its eyes bulged out with sticks to make it look fresh, "as we
+are out on a kind of a lark, suppose we try a bit of a hecho," and then
+he turned to a rocky valley on his left, and in a voice like the man at
+the station calling out the trains he yelled, "Hello there, sir! What
+are you doing there, sir? Come out of that!" And when the words came
+back as if they had been balls batted against a wall, he turned and
+looked at us as proud and grinny as if the rocks had been his own baby
+saying "papa" and "mamma" for visitors.
+
+Not long after this we came to a place where there was a wide field on
+one side, and a little way off we could see the top of a house among
+the trees. A hedge came across the field to the river, and near the
+bank was a big gate, and on this gate sat two young women, and down on
+the ground on the side of the hedge nearest to us was another young
+woman, and not far from her was three black hogs, two of them pointing
+their noses at her and grunting, and the other was grunting around a
+place where those young women had been making sketches and drawings,
+and punching his nose into the easels and portfolios on the ground. The
+young woman on the grass was striking at the hogs with a stick and
+trying to make them go away, which they wouldn't do; and just as we
+came near she dropped the stick and ran, and climbed up on the gate
+beside the others, after which all the hogs went to rooting among the
+drawing things.
+
+As soon as Samivel saw what was going on he stopped his boat, and
+shouted to the hogs a great deal louder than he had shouted to the
+echo, but they didn't mind any more than they had minded the girl with
+the stick. "Can't we stop the boat," I said, "and get out and drive off
+those hogs? They will eat up all the papers and sketches."
+
+"Just put me ashore," said Jone, "and I'll clear them out in no time;"
+and old Samivel rowed the boat close up to the bank.
+
+But when Jone got suddenly up on his feet there was such a twitch
+across his face that I said to him, "Now just you sit down. If you go
+ashore to drive off those hogs you'll jump about so that you'll bring
+on such a rheumatism you can't sleep."
+
+"I'll get out myself," said Samivel, "if I can find a place to fasten
+the boat to. I can't run her ashore here, and the current is strong."
+
+"Don't you leave the boat," said I, for the thought of Jone and me
+drifting off and coming without him to one of those rapids sent a
+shudder through me; and as the stern of the boat where I sat was close
+to the shore I jumped with Jone's stick in my hand before either of
+them could hinder me. I was so afraid that Jone would do it that I was
+very quick about it.
+
+The minute I left the boat Jone got ready to come after me, for he had
+no notion of letting me be on shore by myself, but the boat had drifted
+off a little, and old Samivel said:
+
+"That is a pretty steep bank to get up with the rheumatism on you. I'll
+take you a little farther down, where I can ground the boat, and you
+can get off more steadier."
+
+But this letter is getting as long as the River Wye itself, and I must
+stop it.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Fifteen_
+
+
+BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
+
+As soon as I jumped on shore, as I told you in my last, and had taken a
+good grip on Jone's heavy stick, I went for those hogs, for I wanted to
+drive them off before Jone came ashore, for I didn't want him to think
+he must come.
+
+I have driven hogs and cows out of lots and yards often enough, as you
+know yourself, madam, so I just stepped up to the biggest of them and
+hit him a whack across the head as he was rubbing his nose in among
+some papers with bits of landscapes on them, as was enough to make him
+give up studying art for the rest of his life; but would you believe
+it, madam, instead of running away he just made a bolt at me, and gave
+me such a push with his head and shoulders he nearly knocked me over? I
+never was so astonished, for they looked like hogs that you might think
+could be chased out of a yard by a boy. But I gave the fellow another
+crack on the back, which he didn't seem to notice, but just turned
+again to give me another push, and at the same minute the two others
+stopped rooting among the paint-boxes and came grunting at me.
+
+For the first time in my life I was frightened by hogs. I struck at
+them as hard as I could, and before I knew what I was about I flung
+down the stick, made a rush for that gate, and was on top of it in no
+time, in company with the three other young women that was sitting
+there already.
+
+"Really," said the one next to me, "I fancied you was going to be gored
+to atoms before our eyes. Whatever made you go to those nasty beasts?"
+
+I looked at her quite severe, getting my feet well up out of reach of
+the hogs if they should come near us.
+
+"I saw you was in trouble, miss, and I came to help you. My husband
+wanted to come, but he has the rheumatism and I wouldn't let him."
+
+The other two young women looked at me as well as they could around the
+one that was near me, and the one that was farthest off said:
+
+"If the creatures could have been driven off by a woman, we could have
+done it ourselves. I don't know why you should think you could do it
+any better than we could."
+
+I must say, madam, that at that minute I was a little humble-minded,
+for I don't mind confessing to you that the idea of one American woman
+plunging into a conflict that had frightened off three English women,
+and coming out victorious, had a good deal to do with my trying to
+drive away those hogs; and now that I had come out of the little end
+of the horn, just as the young women had, I felt pretty small, but I
+wasn't going to let them see that.
+
+"I think that English hogs," said I, "must be savager than American
+ones. Where I live there is not any kind of a hog that would not run
+away if I shook a stick at him." The young woman at the other end of
+the gate now spoke again.
+
+"Everything British is braver than anything American," said she; "and
+all you have done has been to vex those hogs, and they are chewing up
+our drawing things worse than they did before."
+
+Of course I fired up at this, and said, "You are very much mistaken
+about Americans." But before I could say any more she went on to tell
+me that she knew all about Americans; she had been in America, and such
+a place she could never have fancied.
+
+"Over there you let everybody trample over you as much as they please.
+You have no conveniences. One cannot even get a cab. Fancy! Not a cab
+to be had unless one pays enough for a drive in Hyde Park."
+
+I must say that the hogs charging down on me didn't astonish me any
+more than to find myself on top of a gate with a young woman charging
+on my country in this fashion, and it was pretty hard on me to have her
+pitch into the cab question, because Jone and me had had quite a good
+deal to say about cabs ourselves, comparing New York and London,
+without any great fluttering of the stars and stripes; but I wasn't
+going to stand any such talk as that, and so I said:
+
+"I know very well that our cab charges are high, and it is not likely
+that poor people coming from other countries are able to pay them; but
+as soon as our big cities get filled up with wretched, half-starved
+people, with the children crying for bread at home, and the father glad
+enough that he's able to get people to pay him a shilling for a drive,
+and that he's not among the hundreds and thousands of miserable men who
+have not any work at all, and go howling to Hyde Park to hold meetings
+for blood or bread, then we will be likely to have cheap cabs as you
+have."
+
+"How perfectly awful!" said the young woman nearest me; but the one at
+the other end of the gate didn't seem to mind what I said, but shifted
+off on another track.
+
+"And then there's your horses' tails," said she; "anything nastier
+couldn't be fancied. Hundreds of them everywhere with long tails down
+to their heels, as if they belong to heathens who had never been
+civilized."
+
+"Heathens?" said I. "If you call the Arabians heathens, who have the
+finest horses in the world, and wouldn't any more think of cutting off
+their tails than they would think of cutting their legs off; and if
+you call the cruel scoundrels who torture their poor horses by sawing
+their bones apart so as to get a little stuck-up bob on behind, like a
+moth-eaten paint-brush--if you call them Christians, then I suppose
+you're right. There is a law in some parts of our country against the
+wickedness of chopping off the tails of live horses, and if you had
+such a law here you'd be a good deal more Christian-like than you are,
+to say nothing of getting credit for decent taste."
+
+By this time I had forgotten all about what Jone and I had agreed upon
+as to arguing over the differences between countries, and I was just as
+peppery as a wasp. The young woman at the other end of the gate was
+rather waspy too, for she seemed to want to sting me wherever she could
+find a spot uncovered; and now she dropped off her horses' tails, and
+began to laugh until her face got purple.
+
+"You Americans are so awfully odd," she said. "You say you raise your
+corn and your plants instead of growing them. It nearly makes me die
+laughing when I hear one of you Americans say raise when you mean
+grow."
+
+Now Jone and me had some talk about growing and raising, and the
+reasons for and against our way of using the words; but I was ready to
+throw all this to the winds, and was just about to tell the impudent
+young woman that we raised our plants just the same as we raised our
+children, leaving them to do their own growing, when the young woman
+in the middle of the three, who up to this time hadn't said a word,
+screamed out:
+
+[Illustration: "AND WITH A SCREECH I DASHED AT THOSE HOGS LIKE A STEAM
+ENGINE"]
+
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! He's pulled out my drawing of Wilton Bridge. He'll
+eat it up. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Whatever shall I do?"
+
+Instead of speaking I turned quick and looked at the hogs, and there,
+sure enough, one of them had rooted open a portfolio and had hold of
+the corners of a colored picture, which, from where I sat, I could see
+was perfectly beautiful. The sky and the trees and the water was just
+like what we ourselves had seen a little while ago, and in about half a
+minute that hog would chew it up and swallow it.
+
+The young woman next to me had an umbrella in her hand. I made a snatch
+at this and dropped off that gate like a shot. I didn't stop to think
+about anything except that beautiful picture was on the point of being
+swallowed up, and with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam
+engine. When they saw me coming with my screech and the umbrella they
+didn't stop a second, but with three great wiggles and three scared
+grunts they bolted as fast as they could go. I picked up the picture of
+the bridge, together with the portfolio, and took them to the young
+woman who owned them. As the hogs had gone, all three of the women was
+now getting down from the gate.
+
+"Thank you very much," she said, "for saving my drawings. It was
+awfully good of you, especially--"
+
+"Oh, you are welcome," said I, cutting her off short; and, handing the
+other young woman her umbrella, I passed by the impudent one without so
+much as looking at her, and on the other side of the hedge I saw Jone
+coming across the grass. I jerked open the gate, not caring who it
+might swing against, and walked to meet Jone. When I was near enough I
+called out to know what on earth had become of him that he had left me
+there so long by myself, forgetting that I hadn't wanted him to come at
+all; and he told me that he had had a hard time getting on shore,
+because they found the banks very low and muddy, and when he had landed
+he was on the wrong side of a hedge, and had to walk a good way around
+it.
+
+"I was troubled," said he, "because I thought you might come to grief
+with the hogs."
+
+"Hogs!" said I, so sarcastic, that Jone looked hard at me, but I didn't
+tell him anything more till we was in the boat, and then I just said
+right out what had happened. Jone couldn't help laughing.
+
+"If I had known," said he, "that you was on top of a gate discussing
+horses' tails and cabs I wouldn't have felt in such a hurry to get to
+you."
+
+"And you would have made a mistake if you hadn't," I said, "for hogs
+are nothing to such a person as was on that gate."
+
+Old Samivel was rowing slow and looking troubled, and I believe at that
+minute he forgot the River Wye was crooked.
+
+"That was really hard, madam," he said, "really hard on you; but it was
+a woman, and you have to excuse women. Now if they had been three
+Englishmen sitting on that gate they would never have said such things
+to you, knowing that you was a stranger in these parts and had come on
+shore to do them a service. And now, madam, I'm glad to see you are
+beginning to take notice of the landscapes again. Just ahead of us is
+another bend, and when we get around that you'll see the prettiest
+picture you've seen yet. This is a crooked river, madam, and that's how
+it got its name. Wye means crooked."
+
+After a while we came to a little church near the river bank, and here
+Samivel stopped rowing, and putting his hands on his knees he laughed
+gayly.
+
+"It always makes me laugh," he said, "whenever I pass this spot. It
+seems to me like such an awful good joke. Here's that church on this
+side of the river, and away over there on the other side of the river
+is the rector and the congregation."
+
+"And how do they get to church?" said I.
+
+"In the summer time," said he, "they come over with a ferry-boat and a
+rope; but in the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over
+at all. Many's the time I've lain in bed and laughed and laughed when
+I thought of this church on one side of the river, and the whole
+congregation and the rector on the other side, and not able to get
+over."
+
+Toward the end of the day, and when we had rowed nearly twenty miles,
+we saw in the distance the town of Monmouth, where we was going to stop
+for the night.
+
+[Illustration: "In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get
+over"]
+
+Old Samivel asked us what hotel we was going to stop at, and when we
+told him the one we had picked out he said he could tell us a better
+one.
+
+"If I was you," he said, "I'd go to the Eyengel." We didn't know what
+this name meant, but as the old man said he would take us there we
+agreed to go.
+
+"I should think you would have a lonely time rowing back by yourself,"
+I said.
+
+"Rowing back?" said he. "Why, bless your soul, lady, there isn't
+nobody who could row this boat back agen that current and up them
+rapids. We take the boats back with the pony. We put the boat on a
+wagon and the pony pulls it back to Ross; and as for me, I generally go
+back by the train. It isn't so far from Monmouth to Ross by the road,
+for the road is straight and the river winds and bends."
+
+The old man took us to the inn which he recommended, and we found it
+was the Angel. It was a nice, old-fashioned, queer English house. As
+far as I could see, they was all women that managed it, and it couldn't
+have been managed better; and as far as I could see, we was the only
+guests, unless there was "commercial gents," who took themselves away
+without our seeing them.
+
+We was sorry to have old Samivel leave us, and we bid him a most
+friendly good-by, and promised if we ever knew of anybody who wanted to
+go down the River Wye we would recommend them to ask at Ross for
+Samivel Jones to row them.
+
+We found the landlady of the Angel just as good to us as if we had been
+her favorite niece and nephew. She hired us a carriage the next day,
+and we was driven out to Raglan Castle, through miles and miles of
+green and sloping ruralness. When we got there and rambled through
+those grand old ruins, with the drawbridge and the tower and the
+courtyard, my soul went straight back to the days of knights and
+ladies, and prancing steeds, and horns and hawks, and pages and
+tournaments, and wild revels and vaulted halls.
+
+The young man who had charge of the place seemed glad to see how much
+we liked it, as is natural enough, for everybody likes to see us
+pleased with the particular things they have on hand.
+
+"You haven't anything like this in your country," said he. But to this
+I said nothing, for I was tired of always hearing people speak of my
+national denomination as if I was something in tin cans, with a label
+pasted on outside; but Jone said it was true enough that we didn't have
+anything like it, for if we had such a noble edifice we would have
+taken care of it, and not let it go to rack and ruin in this way.
+
+Jone has an idea that it don't show good sense to knock a bit of
+furniture about from garret to cellar until most of its legs are
+broken, and its back cracked, and its varnish all peeled off, and then
+tie ribbons around it, and hang it up in the parlor, and kneel down to
+it as a relic of the past. He says that people who have got old ruins
+ought to be very thankful that there is any of them left, but it's no
+use in them trying to fill up the missing parts with brag.
+
+We took the train and went to Chepstow, which is near the mouth of the
+Wye, and as the railroad ran near the river nearly all the way we had
+lots of beautiful views, though, of course, it wasn't anything like as
+good as rowing along the stream in a boat. The next day we drove to the
+celebrated Tintern Abbey, and on the way the road passed two miles and
+a half of high stone wall, which shut in a gentleman's place. What he
+wanted to keep in or keep out by means of a wall like that, we couldn't
+imagine; but the place made me think of a lunatic asylum.
+
+The road soon became shady and beautiful, running through woods along
+the river bank and under some great crags called the Wyndcliffe, and
+then we came to the Abbey and got out.
+
+Of all the beautiful high-pointed archery of ancient times, this ruined
+Abbey takes the lead. I expect you've seen it, madam, or read about it,
+and I am not going to describe it; but I will just say that Jone, who
+had rather objected to coming out to see any more old ruins, which he
+never did fancy, and only came because he wouldn't have me come by
+myself, was so touched up in his soul by what he saw there, and by
+wandering through this solemn and beautiful romance of bygone days, he
+said he wouldn't have missed it for fifty dollars.
+
+We came back to Gloucester to-day, and to-morrow we are off for Buxton.
+As we are so near Stratford and Warwick and all that, Jone said we'd
+better go there on our way, but I wouldn't agree to it. I am too
+anxious to get him skipping round like a colt, as he used to, to stop
+anywhere now, and when we come back I can look at Shakespeare's tomb
+with a clearer conscience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LONDON.
+
+After all, the weather isn't the only changeable thing in this world,
+and this letter, which I thought I was going to send to you from
+Gloucester, is now being finished in London. We was expecting to start
+for Buxton, but some money that Jone had ordered to be sent from London
+two or three days before didn't come, and he thought it would be wise
+for him to go and look after it. So yesterday, which was Saturday, we
+started off for London, and came straight to the Babylon Hotel, where
+we had been before.
+
+Of course we couldn't do anything until Monday, and this morning when
+we got up we didn't feel in very good spirits, for of all the doleful
+things I know of, a Sunday in London is the dolefullest. The whole town
+looks as if it was the back door of what it was the day before, and if
+you want to get any good out of it, you feel as if you had to sneak in
+by an alley, instead of walking boldly up the front steps.
+
+Jone said we'd better go to Westminster Abbey to church, because he
+believed in getting the best there was when it didn't cost too much,
+but I wouldn't do it.
+
+[Illustration: "Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"]
+
+"No," said I. "When I walk in that religious nave and into the hallowed
+precincts of the talented departed, the stone passages are full of
+cloudy forms of Chaucers, Addisons, Miltons, Dickenses, and all those
+great ones of the past; and I would hate to see the place filled up
+with a crowd of weekday lay people in their Sunday clothes, which would
+be enough to wipe away every feeling of romantic piety which might rise
+within my breast."
+
+As we didn't go to the Abbey, and was so long making up our minds where
+we should go, it got too late to go anywhere, and so we stayed in the
+hotel and looked out into a lonely and deserted street, with the wind
+blowing the little leaves and straws against the tight-shut doors of
+the forsaken houses. As I stood by that window I got homesick, and at
+last I could stand it no longer, and I said to Jone, who was smoking
+and reading a paper:
+
+"Let's put on our hats and go out for a walk, for I can't mope here
+another minute."
+
+So down we went, and coming up the front steps of the front entrance
+who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington! He was stopping at that
+hotel, and was just coming home from church, with his face shining like
+a sunset on account of the comfortableness of his conscience after
+doing his duty.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Sixteen_
+
+
+BUXTON
+
+When I mentioned Mr. Poplington in my last letter in connection with
+the setting sun I was wrong; he was like the rising orb of day, and he
+filled London with effulgent light. No sooner had we had a talk, and we
+had told him all that had happened, and finished up by saying what a
+doleful morning we had had, than he clapped his hand on his knees and
+said, "I'll tell you what we will do. We will spend the afternoon among
+the landmarks." And what we did was to take a four-wheeler and go
+around the old parts of London, where Mr. Poplington showed us a lot of
+soul-awakening spots which no common stranger would be likely to find
+for himself.
+
+If you are ever steeped in the solemnness of a London Sunday, and you
+can get a jolly, red-faced, middle-aged English gentleman, who has made
+himself happy by going to church in the morning, and is ready to make
+anybody else happy in the afternoon, just stir him up in the mixture,
+and then you will know the difference between cod-liver oil and
+champagne, even if you have never tasted either of them. The afternoon
+was piled-up-and-pressed-down joyfulness for me, and I seemed to be
+walking in a dream among the beings and the things that we only see in
+books.
+
+Mr. Poplington first took us to the old Watergate, which was the river
+entrance to York House, where Lord Bacon lived, and close to the gate
+was the small house where Peter the Great and David Copperfield lived,
+though not at the same time; and then we went to Will's old
+coffee-house, where Addison, Steele, and a lot of other people of that
+sort used to go to drink and smoke before they was buried in
+Westminster Abbey, and where Charles and Mary Lamb lived afterward, and
+where Mary used to look out of the window to see the constables take
+the thieves to the Old Bailey near by. Then we went to Tom-all-alone's,
+and saw the very grating at the head of the steps which led to the old
+graveyard where poor Joe used to sweep the steps when Lady Dedlock came
+there, and I held on to the very bars that the poor lady must have
+gripped when she knelt on the steps to die.
+
+Not far away was the Black Jack Tavern, where Jack Sheppard and all the
+great thieves of the day used to meet. And bless me! I have read so
+much about Jack Sheppard that I could fairly see him jumping out of the
+window he always dropped from when the police came. After that we saw
+the house where Mr. Tulkinghorn, Lady Dedlock's lawyer, used to live,
+and also the house where old Krook was burned up by spontaneous
+combustion. Then we went to Bolt Court, where old Samuel Johnson lived,
+walked about, and talked, and then to another court where he lived when
+he wrote the dictionary, and after that to the "Cheshire Cheese" Inn,
+where he and Oliver Goldsmith often used to take their meals together.
+
+Then we saw St. John's Gate, where the Knights Templars met, and the
+yard of the Court of Chancery, where little Miss Flite used to wait for
+the Day of Judgment; and as we was coming home he showed us the church
+of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where every other Friday the bells are
+rung at five o'clock in the afternoon, most people not knowing what it
+is for, but really because the famous Nell Gwynn, who was far from
+being a churchwoman, left a sum of money for having a merry peal of
+bells rung every Friday until the end of the world. I got so wound up
+by all this, that I quite forgot Jone, and hardly thought of Mr.
+Poplington, except that he was telling me all these things, and
+bringing back to my mind so much that I had read about, though
+sometimes very little.
+
+When we got back to the hotel and had gone up to our room, Jone said to
+me:
+
+"That was all very fine and interesting from top to toe, but it does
+seem to me as if things were dreadfully mixed. Dr. Johnson and Jack
+Sheppard, I suppose, was all real and could live in houses; but when
+it comes to David Copperfields and Lady Dedlocks and little Miss
+Flites, that wasn't real and never lived at all, they was all talked
+about in just the same way, and their favorite tramping grounds pointed
+out, and I can't separate the real people from the fancy folk, if we've
+got to have the same bosom heaving for the whole of them."
+
+"Jone," said I, "they are all real, every one of them. If Mr. Dickens
+had written history I expect he'd put Lady Dedlock and Miss Flite and
+David Copperfield into it; and if the history writers had written
+stories they would have been sure to get Dr. Johnson and Lord Bacon and
+Peter the Great into them; and the people in the one kind of writing
+would have been just as real as the people in the other. At any rate,
+that's the way they are to me."
+
+On the Monday after our landmark expedition with Mr. Poplington, which
+I shall never forget, Jone settled up his business matters, and the
+next day we started for Buxton and the rheumatism baths. To our great
+delight Mr. Poplington said he would go with us, not all the way, for
+he wanted to stop at a little place called Rowsley, where he would stay
+for a few days and then go on to Buxton; but we was very glad to have
+him with us during the greater part of the way, and we all left the
+hotel in the same four-wheeler.
+
+When we got to the station Jone got first-class tickets, for we have
+found out that if you want to travel comfortable in England, and have
+porters attend to your baggage and find an empty carriage for you, and
+have the guard come along and smile in the window and say he'll try to
+let you have that carriage all to yourselves if he's able--the ableness
+depending a good deal on what you give him--and for everybody to do
+their best to make your journey pleasant, you must travel first class.
+Mr. Poplington also bought a first-class ticket, for there was no
+seconds on this line. As we was walking along by the platform Jone and
+I gave a sort of a jump, for there was a regular Pullman car, which
+made us think we might be at home. We stopped and looked at it, and
+then the guard, who was standing by, stepped up to us and touched his
+hat, and asked us if we would like to take the Pullman, and when Jone
+asked what the extra charge was, he said nothing at all for first-class
+passengers. We didn't have to stop to think a minute, but said right
+off that we would go in it, but Mr. Poplington would not come with us.
+He said English people wasn't accustomed to that, they wanted to be
+more private; and, although he'd like to be with us, he could not
+travel in a caravan like that, and so he went off by himself, and we
+got into the Pullman.
+
+The guard said we could take any seats we pleased; and when we got in
+we found there was only two or three people in it, and we chose two
+nice armchairs, hung up our wraps, and made ourselves comfortable and
+cosey.
+
+We expected that the people who engaged seats would soon come crowding
+in, but when the train started there was only four people besides
+ourselves in that beautiful car, which was a first-class one, built in
+the United States, with all sorts of comforts and conveniences. There
+was a porter who laid himself out to make us happy, and about one
+o'clock we had a nice lunch on a little table which was set up between
+us, with two waiters to attend to us, and then Jone went and had a
+smoke in a small room at one end of the car.
+
+We thought it was strange that there should be so few people travelling
+on this train, but when we came to a town where we made a long stop
+Jone got out to talk to Mr. Poplington, supposing it likely that he'd
+have a carriage to himself; but he was amazed to see that the train was
+jammed and crowded, and he found Mr. Poplington squeezed up in a
+carriage with seven other people, four of them one side and four the
+other, each row staring into the faces of the other. Some of them was
+eating bread and cheese out of paper parcels, and a big fat man was
+reading a newspaper, which he spread out so as to partly cover the two
+people sitting next to him, and all of them seemed anxious to find
+some way of stretching their legs so as not to strike against the legs
+of somebody else.
+
+Mr. Poplington was sitting by the window, and Jone couldn't help
+laughing when he said:
+
+"Is this what you call being private, sir? I think you would find a
+caravan more pleasant. Don't you want to come to the Pullman with us?
+There are plenty of seats there, nice big armchairs that you can turn
+around and sit any way you like, and look at people or not look at
+them, just as you please, and there's plenty of room to walk about and
+stretch yourself a little if you want to. There's a smoking-room, too,
+that you can go to and leave whenever you like. Come and try it."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Mr. Poplington, "but I really couldn't do
+that. I am not prejudiced at all, and I have a good many democratic
+ideas, but that is too much for me. An Englishman's house is his
+castle, and when he's travelling his railway carriage is his house. He
+likes privacy and dislikes publicity."
+
+"This is a funny kind of privacy you have here," said Jone. "And how
+about your big clubs? Would you like to have them all divided up into
+little compartments with half a dozen men in each one, generally
+strangers to each other?"
+
+"Oh, a club is a very different thing," said Mr. Poplington.
+
+Jone was going to talk more about the comfort of the Pullman cars, but
+they began to shut the carriage doors, and he had to come back to me.
+
+We like English railway carriages very well when we can have one to
+ourselves, but if even one stranger gets in and has to sit looking at
+us for all the rest of the trip you don't feel anything like as private
+as if you was walking along a sidewalk in London.
+
+But Jone and I both agreed we wouldn't find any fault with English
+people for not liking Pullman cars, so long as they put them on their
+trains for Americans who do like them. And one thing is certain, that
+if our railroad conductors and brakes-men and porters was as polite and
+kind as they are in England, tips or no tips, we'd be a great deal
+better off than we are.
+
+Whenever we stopped at a station the people would come and look through
+the windows at us, as if we was some sort of a travelling show. I don't
+believe most of them had ever seen a comfortable room on wheels before.
+The other people in our car was all men, and looked as if they hadn't
+their families with them, and was glad to get a little comfort on the
+sly. When we got to Rowsley we saw Mr. Poplington on the platform,
+running about, collecting all his different bits of luggage, and
+counting them to see that they was all there, and then, as we had a
+window open and was looking out, he came and bid us good-by; and when
+I asked him to, he looked into our car.
+
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he said. "What a public apartment! I could not
+travel like that, you know. Good-by; I will see you at Buxton in a few
+days."
+
+[Illustration: Mr. Poplington looking for the luggage]
+
+We talked a good deal with Mr. Poplington about the hotels of Buxton,
+and we had agreed to go to one called the Old Hall, where we are now.
+There was a good many reasons why we chose this house, one being that
+it was not as expensive as some of the others, though very nice; and
+another, which had a good deal of force with me, was, that Mary Queen
+of Scots came here for her rheumatism, and the room she used to have is
+still kept, with some words she scratched with her diamond ring on the
+window-pane. Sometimes people coming to this hotel can get this room,
+and I was mighty sorry we couldn't do it, but it was taken. If I could
+have actually lived and slept in a room which had belonged to the
+beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, I would have been willing to have just
+as much rheumatism as she had when she was here.
+
+Of course, modern rheumatisms are not as interesting as the rheumatisms
+people of the past ages had; but from what I have seen of this town, I
+think I am going to like it very much.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Seventeen_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BUXTON
+
+When we were comfortably settled here, Jone went to see a doctor, who
+is a nice, kind old gentleman, who looks as if he almost might have
+told Mary Queen of Scots how hot she ought to have the water in her
+baths. He charges four times as much as the others, and has about a
+quarter as many patients, which makes it all the same to him, and a
+good deal better for the rheumatic ones who come to him, for they have
+more time to go into particulars. And if anything does good to a person
+who has something the matter with him, it's being able to go into
+particulars about it. It's often as good as medicine, and always more
+comforting.
+
+We unpacked our trunks and settled ourselves down for a three weeks'
+stay here, for no matter how much rheumatism you have or how little,
+you've got to take Buxton and its baths in three weeks' doses.
+
+Besides taking the baths Jone has to drink the waters, and as I cannot
+do much else to help him, I am encouraging him by drinking them too.
+There are two places where you can get the lukewarm water that people
+come here to drink. One is the public well, where there is a pump free
+to everybody, and the other is in the pump-room just across the street
+from the well, where you pay a penny a glass for the same water, which
+three doleful old women spend all their time pumping for visitors.
+
+[Illustration: Pomona encourages Jonas]
+
+People are ordered to drink this water very carefully. It must be done
+at regular times, beginning with a little, and taking more and more
+each day until you get to a full tumbler, and then if it seems to be
+too strong for you, you must take less. So far as I can find out there
+is nothing particular about it, except that it is lukewarm water,
+neither hot enough nor cold enough to make it a pleasant drink. It
+didn't seem to agree with Jone at first, but after he kept at it three
+or four days it began to suit him better, so that he could take nearly
+a tumbler without feeling badly. Two or three times I felt it might be
+better for my health if I didn't drink it, but I wanted to stand by
+Jone as much as I could, and so I kept on.
+
+We have been here a week now, and this morning I found out that all the
+water we drink at this hotel is brought from the well of St. Ann, where
+the public pump is, and everybody drinks just as much of it as they
+want whenever they want to, and they never think of any such thing as
+feeling badly or better than if it was common water. The only
+difference is, that it isn't quite as lukewarm when we get it here as
+it is at the well. When I was told this I was real mad, after all the
+measuring and fussing we had had when taking the water as a medicine,
+and then drinking it just as we pleased at the table. But the people
+here tell me that it is the gas in it which makes it medicinal, and
+when that floats out it is just like common water. That may be; but if
+there's a penny's worth of gas in every tumbler of water sold in the
+pump-room, there ought to be some sort of a canopy put over the town to
+catch what must escape in the pourings and pumpings, for it's too
+valuable to be allowed to get away. If it's the gas that does it, a
+rheumatic man anchored in a balloon over Buxton, and having the gas
+coming up unmixed to him, ought to be well in about two days.
+
+When Jone told me his first bath was to be heated up to ninety-four
+degrees I said to him that he'd be boiled alive, but he wasn't; and
+when he came home he said he liked it. Everything is very systematic in
+the great bathing-house. The man who tends to Jone hangs up his watch
+on a little stand on the edge of the bathtub, and he stays in just so
+many minutes, and when he's ready to come out he rings a bell, and then
+he's wrapped up in about fourteen hot towels, and sits in an armchair
+until he's dry. Jone likes all this, and says so much about it that it
+makes me want to try it too; though as there isn't any reason for it I
+haven't tried them yet.
+
+This is an awfully queer, old-fashioned town, and must have been a good
+deal like Bath in the days of Evelina. There is a long line of high
+buildings curved like a half moon, which is called the Crescent, and at
+one end of this is a pump-room, and at the other are the natural baths,
+where the water is just as warm as when it comes out of the ground,
+which is eighty-two degrees. This is said to chill people; but from
+what I remember about summer time I don't see how eighty-two degrees
+can be cold.
+
+Opposite the Crescent is a public park called The Slopes, and farther
+on there are great gardens with pavilions, and a band of music every
+day, and a theatre, and a little river, and tennis courts, and all
+sorts of things for people who haven't anything to do with their time,
+which is generally the case with folks at rheumatic watering-places.
+Opposite to our hotel is a bowling court, which they say has been
+there for hundreds of years, and is just as hard and smooth as a boy's
+slate. The men who play bowls here are generally those who have got
+over the rheumatism of their youth, and whose joints have not been very
+much stiffened up yet by old age. The people who are yet too young for
+rheumatism, and have come here with their families, play tennis.
+
+The baths take such a little time, not over six or seven minutes for
+them each day, and every third day skipped, that there is a good deal
+of time left on the hands of the people here; and those who can't play
+tennis or bowl, and don't want to spend the whole time in the pavilion
+listening to the music, go about in bath-chairs, which, so far as I can
+see, are just as important as the baths. I don't know whether you ever
+saw a bath-chair, madam, but it's a comfortable little cab on three
+wheels, pulled by a man. They take people everywhere, and all the
+streets are full of them.
+
+As soon as I saw these nice little traps I said to Jone, "Now this is
+the very thing for you. It hurts you to walk far, and you want to see
+all over this town, and one of these bath-chairs will take you into
+lots of places where you couldn't go in a carriage."
+
+"Take me!" said Jone. "I should say not. You don't catch me being
+hauled about in one of those things as if I was in a sort of
+wheelbarrow ambulance being taken to the hospital, with you walking
+along by my side like a trained nurse. No, indeed! I have not gone so
+far as that yet."
+
+I told him this was all stuff and nonsense, and if he wanted to get the
+good out of Buxton he'd better go about and see it, and he couldn't go
+about if he didn't take a bath-chair; but all he said to that was, that
+he could see it without going about, and he was satisfied. But that
+didn't count anything with me, for the trouble with Jone is, that he's
+too easy satisfied.
+
+It's true that there is a lot to be seen in Buxton without going about.
+The Slopes are just across the street from the hotel, and when it
+doesn't happen to be raining we can go and sit there on a bench and see
+lively times enough. People are being trundled about in their
+bath-chairs in every direction; there is always a crowd at St. Ann's
+well, where the pump is; all sorts of cabs and carts are being driven
+up and down just as fast as they can go, for the streets are as smooth
+as floors, and in the morning and evening there are about half a dozen
+coaches with four horses, and drivers and horn-blowers in red coats,
+the horses prancing and whips cracking as they start out for country
+trips or come back again. And as for the people on foot, they just
+swarm like bees, and rain makes no difference, except that then they
+wear mackintoshes, and when it's fine they don't. Some of these people
+step along as brisk as if they hadn't anything the matter with them,
+but a good many of them help out their legs with canes and crutches. I
+begin to think I can tell how long a man has been at Buxton by the
+number of sticks he uses.
+
+One day we was sitting on a bench in The Slopes, enjoying a bit of
+sunshine that had just come along, when a middle-aged man, with a very
+high collar and a silk hat, came and sat down by Jone. He spoke civilly
+to us, and then went on to say that if ever we happened to take a house
+near Liverpool he'd be glad to supply us with coals, because he was a
+coal merchant. Jone told him that if he ever did take a house near
+Liverpool he certainly would give him his custom. Then the man gave us
+his card. "I come here every year," he said, "for the rheumatism in my
+shoulder, and if I meet anybody that lives near Liverpool, or is likely
+to, I try to get his custom. I like it here. There's a good many 'otels
+in this town. You can see a lot of them from here. There's St. Ann's,
+that's a good house, but they charge you a pound a day; and then
+there's the Old Hall. That's good enough, too, but nobody goes there
+except shopkeepers and clergymen. Of course, I don't mean bishops; they
+go to St. Ann's."
+
+I wondered which the man would think Jone was, if he knew we was
+stopping at the Old Hall; but I didn't ask him, and only said that
+other people besides shopkeepers and clergymen went to the Old Hall,
+for Mary Queen of Scots used to stop at that house when she came to
+take the waters, and her room was still there, just as it used to be.
+
+"Mary Queen of Scots!" said he. "At the Old Hall?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "that's where she used to go; that was her hotel."
+
+"Queen Mary, Queen of the Scots!" he said again. "Well, well, I
+wouldn't have believed it. But them Scotch people always was
+close-fisted. Now if it had been Queen Elizabeth, she wouldn't have
+minded a pound a day;" and then, after asking Jone to excuse him for
+forgetting his manners and not asking where his rheumatism was, and
+having got his answer, he went away, wondering, I expect, how Mary
+Queen of Scots could have been so stingy.
+
+But although we could see so much sitting on benches, I didn't give up
+Jone and the bath-chairs, and day before yesterday I got the better of
+him. "Now," said I, "it is stupid for you to be sitting around in this
+way as if you was a statue of a public benefactor carved by
+subscription and set up in a park. The only sensible thing for you to
+do is to take a bath-chair and go around and see things. And if you are
+afraid people will think you are being taken to a hospital, you can put
+down the top of the thing, and sit up straight and smoke your pipe.
+Patients in ambulances never smoke pipes. And if you don't want me
+walking by your side like a trained nurse, I'll take another chair and
+be pulled along with you."
+
+The idea of a pipe, and me being in another chair, rather struck his
+fancy, and he said he would consider it; and so that afternoon we went
+to the hotel door and looked at the long line of bath-chairs standing
+at the curbstone on the other side of the street, with the men waiting
+for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very
+comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses.
+Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn out, as if they
+had belonged to sporting men and had been driven half to death. And
+then again there was some that looked fat and lazy, like the old horses
+on a farm, that the women drive to town.
+
+Jone picked out a good man, who looked as if he was well broken and not
+afraid of locomotives and able to do good work in single harness. When
+I got Jone in the bath-chair, with the buggy-top down, and his pipe
+lighted, and his hat cocked on one side a little, so as to look as if
+he was doing the whole thing for a lark, I called another chair, not
+caring what sort of one it was, and then we told the men to pull us
+around for a couple of hours, leaving it to them to take us to
+agreeable spots, which they said they would do.
+
+After we got started Jone seemed to like it very well, and we went
+pretty much all over the town, sometimes stopping to look in at the
+shop windows, for the sidewalks are so narrow that it is no trouble to
+see the things from the street. Then the men took us a little way out
+of the town to a place where there was a good view for us, and a bench
+where they could go and sit down and rest. I expect all the chair men
+that work by the hour manage to get to this place with a view as soon
+as they can.
+
+After they had had a good rest we started off to go home by a different
+route. Jone's man was a good strong fellow and always took the lead,
+but my puller was a different kind of a steed, and sometimes I was left
+pretty far behind. I had not paid much attention to the man at first,
+only noticing that he was mighty slow; but going back a good deal of
+the way was uphill, and then all his imperfections came out plain, and
+I couldn't help studying him. If he had been a horse I should have said
+he was spavined and foundered, with split frogs and tonsilitis; but as
+he was a man, it struck me that he must have had several different
+kinds of rheumatism and been sent to Buxton to have them cured, but not
+taking the baths properly, or drinking the water at times when he ought
+not to have done it, his rheumatisms had all run together and had
+become fixed and immovable. How such a creaky person came to be a
+bath-chair man I could not think, but it may be that he wanted to stay
+in Buxton for the sake of the loose gas which could be had for nothing,
+and that bath-chairing was all he could get to do.
+
+I pitied the poor old fellow, who, if he had been a horse, would have
+been no more than fourteen hands high, and as he went puffing along,
+tugging and grunting as if I was a load of coal, I felt as if I
+couldn't stand it another minute, and I called out to him to stop. It
+did seem as if he would drop before he got me back to the hotel, and I
+bounced out in no time, and then I walked in front of him and turned
+around and looked at him. If it is possible for a human hack-horse to
+have spavins in two joints in each leg, that man had them; and he
+looked as if he couldn't remember what it was to have a good feed.
+
+He seemed glad to rest, but didn't say anything, standing and looking
+straight ahead of him like an old horse that has been stopped to let
+him blow. He did look so dreadful feeble that I thought it would be a
+mercy to take him to some member of the Society for the Prevention of
+Cruelty to Animals and have him chloroformed. "Look here," said I, "you
+are not fit to walk. Get into that bath-chair, and I'll pull you back
+to your stand."
+
+"Lady," said he, "I couldn't do that. If you dunno mind walking home,
+and will pay me for the two hours all the same, I will be right
+thankful for that. I'm poorly to-day."
+
+"Get into the chair," said I, "and I'll pull you back. I'd like to do
+it, for I want some exercise."
+
+"Oh, no, no!" said he. "That would be a sin; and besides I was engaged
+to pull you two hours, and I must be paid for that."
+
+"Get into that chair," I said, "and I'll pay you for your two hours and
+give you a shilling besides."
+
+He looked at me for a minute, and then he got into the chair, and I
+shut him up.
+
+"Now, lady," said he, "you can pull me a little way if you want
+exercise, and as soon as you are tired you can stop, and I'll get out,
+but you must pay me the extra shilling all the same."
+
+"All right," said I, and taking hold of the handle I started off. It
+was real fun; the bath-chair rolled along beautifully, and I don't
+believe the old man weighed much more than my Corinne when I used to
+push her about in her baby carriage. We were in a back street, where
+there was hardly anybody; and as for Jone and his bath-chair, I could
+just see them ever so far ahead, so I started to catch up, and as the
+street was pretty level now I soon got going at a fine rate. I hadn't
+had a bit of good exercise for a long time, and this warmed me up and
+made me feel gay.
+
+[Illustration: "STOP, LADY, AND I'LL GET OUT"]
+
+We was not very far behind Jone when the man began to call to me in a
+sort of frightened fashion, as if he thought I was running away.
+"Stop, lady!" he said; "we are getting near the gardens, and the people
+will laugh at me. Stop, lady, and I'll get out." But I didn't feel a
+bit like stopping; the idea had come into my head that it would be
+jolly to beat Jone. If I could pass him and sail on ahead for a little
+while, then I'd stop and let my old man get out and take his bath-chair
+home. I didn't want it any more.
+
+Just as I got close up behind Jone, and was about to make a rush past
+him, his man turned into a side street. Of course I turned too, and
+then I put on steam, and, giving a laugh as I turned around to look at
+Jone, I charged on, intending to stop in a minute and have some fun in
+hearing what Jone had to say about it; but you may believe, ma'am, that
+I was amazed when I saw only a little way in front of me the bath-chair
+stand where we had hired our machines! And all the bath-chair men were
+standing there with their mouths wide open, staring at a woman running
+along the street, pulling an old bath-chair man in a bath-chair! For a
+second I felt like dropping the handle I held and making a rush for the
+front door of the hotel, which was right ahead of me; and then I
+thought, as now I was in for it, it would be a lot better to put a good
+face on the matter, and not look as if I had done anything I was
+ashamed of, and so I just slackened speed and came up in fine style at
+the door of the Old Hall. Four or five of the bath-chair men came
+running across the street to know if anything had happened to the old
+party I was pulling, and he got out looking as ashamed as if he had
+been whipped by his wife.
+
+"It's a lark, mates," said he; "the lady's to pay me two shillings
+extra for letting her pull me."
+
+"Two shillings?" said I. "I only promised you one."
+
+"That would be for pulling me a little way," he said; "but you pulled
+me all the way back, and I couldn't do it for less than two shillings."
+
+Jone now came up and got out quick.
+
+"What's the meaning of all this, Pomona?" said he.
+
+"Meaning?" said I. "Look at that dilapidated old bag of bones. He
+wasn't fit to pull me, and so I thought it would be fun to pull him;
+but, of course, I didn't know when I turned the corner I would be here
+at the stand."
+
+Jone paid the men, including the two extra shillings, and when we went
+up to our room he said, "The next time we go out in two bath-chairs, I
+am going to have a chain fastened to yours, and I'll have hold of the
+other end of it."
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Eighteen_
+
+
+BUXTON
+
+I have begun to take the baths. There really is so little to do in this
+place that I couldn't help it, and so, while Jone was off tending to
+his hot soaks, I thought I might as well try the thing myself. At any
+rate it would fill up the time when I was alone. I find I like this
+sort of bathing very much, and I wish I had begun it before. It reminds
+me of a kind of medicine for colds that you used to make for me, madam,
+when I first came to the canal-boat. It had lemons and sugar in it, and
+it was so good I remember I used to think that I would like to go into
+a lingering consumption, so that I could have it three times a day,
+until I finally passed away like a lily on a snowbank.
+
+Jone's been going about a good deal in a bath-chair, and doesn't mind
+my walking alongside of him. He says it makes him feel easier in his
+mind, on the whole.
+
+Mr. Poplington came two or three days ago, and he is stopping at our
+hotel. We three have hired a carriage together two or three times and
+have taken drives into, the country. Once we went to an inn, the Cat
+and Fiddle, about five miles away, on a high bit of ground called Axe
+Edge. It is said to be the highest tavern in England, and it's lucky
+that it is, for that's the only recommendation it's got. The sign in
+front of the house has on it a cat on its hind-legs playing a fiddle,
+with a look on its face as if it was saying, "It's pretty poor, but
+it's the best I can do for you."
+
+Inside is another painting of a cat playing a fiddle, and truly that
+one might be saying, "Ha! Ha! You thought that that picture on the sign
+was the worst picture you ever saw in your life, but now you see how
+you are mistaken."
+
+Up on that high place you get the rain fresher than you do in Buxton,
+because it hasn't gone so far through the air, and it's mixed with more
+chilly winds than anywhere else in England, I should say. But everybody
+is bound to go to the Cat and Fiddle at least once, and we are glad we
+have been there, and that it is over. I like the places near the town a
+great deal better, and some of them are very pretty. One day we two and
+Mr. Poplington took a ride on top of a stage to see Haddon Hall and
+Chatsworth.
+
+Haddon Hall is to me like a dream of the past come true. Lots of other
+old places have seemed like dreams, but this one was right before my
+eyes, just as it always was. Of course, you must have read all about
+it, madam, and I am not going to tell it over again. But think of it; a
+grand old baronial mansion, part of it built as far back as the eleven
+hundreds, and yet in good condition and fit to live in. That is what I
+thought as I walked through its banqueting hall and courts and noble
+chambers. "Why," said I to Jone, "in that kitchen our meals could be
+cooked; at that table we could eat them; in these rooms we could sleep;
+in these gardens and courts we could roam; we could actually live
+here!" We haven't seen any other romance of the past that we could say
+that about, and to this minute it puzzles me how any duke in this world
+could be content to own a house like this and not live in it. But I
+suppose he thinks more of water-pipes and electric lights than he does
+of the memories of the past and time-hallowed traditions.
+
+As for me, if I had been Dorothy Vernon, there's no man on earth, not
+even Jone, that could make me run away from such a place as Haddon
+Hall. They show the stairs down which she tripped with her lover when
+they eloped; but if it had been me, it would have been up those stairs
+I would have gone. Mr. Poplington didn't agree a bit with me about the
+joy of living in this enchanting old house, and neither did Jone, I am
+sure, although he didn't say so much. But then, they are both men, and
+when it comes to soaring in the regions of romanticism you must not
+expect too much of men.
+
+After leaving Haddon Hall, which I did backward, the coach took us to
+Chatsworth, which is a different sort of a place altogether. It is a
+grand palace, at least it was built for one, but now it is an enormous
+show place, bright and clean and sleek, and when we got there we saw
+hundreds of visitors waiting to go in. They was taken through in squads
+of about fifty, with a man to lead them, which he did very much as if
+they was a drove of cattle.
+
+The man who led our squad made us step along lively, and I must say
+that never having been in a drove before, Jone and I began to get
+restive long before we got through. As for the show, I like the British
+Museum a great deal better. There is ever so much more to see there,
+and you have time to stop and look at things. At Chatsworth they charge
+you more, give you less, and treat you worse. When it came to taking us
+through the grounds, Jone and I struck. We left the gang we was with,
+and being shown where to find a gate out of the place, we made for that
+gate and waited until our coach was ready to take us back to Buxton.
+
+It is a lot of fun going to the theatre here. It doesn't cost much, and
+the plays are good and generally funny, and a rheumatic audience is a
+very jolly one. The people seemed glad to forget their backs, their
+shoulders, and their legs, and they are ready to laugh at things that
+are only half comic, and keep up a lively chattering between the acts.
+It's fun to see them when the play is over. The bath-chairs that have
+come after some of them are brought right into the building, and are
+drawn up just like carriages after the theatre. The first time we went I
+wanted Jone to stop a while and see if we didn't hear somebody call
+out, "Mrs. Barchester's bath-chair stops the way!" but he said I
+expected too much, and would not wait.
+
+We sit about so much in the gardens, which are lively when it is clear,
+and not bad even in a little drizzle, that we've got to know a good
+many of the people; and although Jone's a good deal given to reading, I
+like to sit and watch them and see what they are doing.
+
+When we first came here I noticed a good-looking young woman who was
+hauled about in a bath-chair, generally with an open book in her lap,
+which she never seemed to read much, because she was always gazing
+around as if she was looking for something. Before long I found out
+what she was looking for, for every day, sooner or later, generally
+sooner, there came along a bath-chair with a good-looking young man in
+it. He had a book in his lap too, but he was never reading it when I
+saw him, because he was looking for the young woman; and as soon as
+they saw each other they began to smile, and as they passed they always
+said something, but didn't stop. I wondered why they didn't give their
+pullers a rest and have a good talk if they knew each other, but before
+long I noticed not very far behind the young lady's bath-chair was
+always another bath-chair with an old gentleman in it with a
+bottle-nose. After a while I found out that this was the young lady's
+father, because sometimes he would call to her and have her stop, and
+then she generally seemed to get some sort of a scolding.
+
+Of course, when I see anything of this kind going on, I can't help
+taking one side or the other, and as you may well believe, madam, I
+wouldn't be likely to take that of the old bottle-nosed man's side. I
+had not been noticing these people for more than two or three days when
+one morning, when Jone and me was sitting under an umbrella, for there
+was a little more rain than common, I saw these two young people in
+their bath-chairs, coming along side by side, and talking just as hard
+as they could. At first I was surprised, but I soon saw how things was:
+the old gentleman couldn't come out in the rain. It was plain enough
+from the way these two young people looked at each other that they was
+in love, and although it most likely hurt them just as much to come out
+into the rain as it would the old man, love is all-powerful, even over
+rheumatism.
+
+Pretty soon the clouds cleared away without notice, as they do in this
+country, and it wasn't long before I saw, away off, the old man's
+bath-chair coming along lively. His bottle-nose was sticking up in the
+air, and he was looking from one side to the other as hard as he could.
+The two lovers had turned off to the right and gone over a little
+bridge and I couldn't see them; but by the way that old nose shook as
+it got nearer and nearer to me, I saw they had reason to tremble,
+though they didn't know it.
+
+When the old father reached the narrow path he did not turn down it,
+but kept straight on, and I breathed a sigh of deep relief. But the
+next instant I remembered that the broad path turned not far beyond,
+and that the little one soon ran into it, and so it could not be long
+before the father and the lovers would meet. I like to tell Jone
+everything I am going to do, when I am sure that he'll agree with me
+that it is right; but this time I could not bother with explanations,
+and so I just told him to sit still for a minute, for I wanted to see
+something, and I walked after the young couple as fast as I could. When
+I got to them, for they hadn't gone very far, I passed the young
+woman's bath-chair, and then I looked around and I said to her, "I beg
+your pardon, miss, but there is an old gentleman looking for you; but
+as I think he is coming round this way, you'll meet him if you keep on
+this path." "Oh, my!" said she unintentionally; and then she thanked me
+very much, and I went on and turned a corner and went back to Jone, and
+pretty soon the young man's bath-chair passed us going toward the
+gate, he looking three-quarters happy, and the other quarter
+disappointed, as lovers are if they don't get the whole loaf.
+
+From that day until yesterday, which was a full week, I came into the
+gardens every morning, sometimes even when Jone didn't want to come,
+because I wanted to see as much of this love business as I could. For
+my own use in thinking of them I named the young man Pomeroy and the
+young woman Angelica, and as for the father, I called him Snortfrizzle,
+being the worst name I could think of at the time. But I must wait
+until my next letter to tell you the rest of the story of the lovers,
+and I am sure you will be as much interested in them as I was.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Nineteen_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BUXTON
+
+I have a good many things to tell you, for we leave Buxton to-morrow,
+but I will first finish the story of Angelica and Pomeroy. I think the
+men who pulled the bath-chairs of the lovers knew pretty much how
+things was going, for whenever they got a chance they brought their
+chairs together, and I often noticed them looking out for the old
+father, and if they saw him coming they would move away from each other
+if they happened to be together.
+
+If Snortfrizzle's puller had been one of the regular bath-chair men
+they might have made an agreement with him so that he would have kept
+away from them; but he was a man in livery, with a high hat, who walked
+very regular, like a high-stepping horse, and who, it was plain enough
+to see, never had anything to do with common bath-chair men. Old
+Snortfrizzle seemed to be smelling a rat more and more--that is, if it
+is proper to liken Cupid to such an animal--and his nose seemed to get
+purpler and purpler. I think he would always have kept close to
+Angelica's chair if it hadn't been that he had a way of falling asleep,
+and whenever he did this his man always walked very slow, being
+naturally lazy. Two or three times I have seen Snortfrizzle wake up,
+shout to his man, and make him trot around a clump of trees and into
+some narrow path where he thought his daughter might have gone.
+
+Things began to look pretty bad, for the old man had very strong
+suspicions about Pomeroy, and was so very wide awake when he was awake,
+that I knew it couldn't be long before he caught the two together, and
+then I didn't believe that Angelica would ever come into these gardens
+again.
+
+It was yesterday morning that I saw old Snortfrizzle with his chin down
+on his shirt bosom, snoring so steady that his hat heaved, being very
+slowly pulled along a shady walk, and then I saw his daughter, who was
+not far ahead of him, turn into another walk, which led down by the
+river. I knew very well that she ought not to turn into that walk,
+because it didn't in any way lead to the place where Pomeroy was
+sitting in his bath-chair behind a great clump of bushes and flowers,
+with his face filled with the most lively emotions, but overspread
+ever and anon by a cloudlet of despair on account of the approach of
+the noontide hour, when Angelica and Snortfrizzle generally went home.
+
+[Illustration: "Your brother is over there"]
+
+The time was short, and I believed that love's young dream must be put
+off until the next day if Angelica could not be made aware where
+Pomeroy was sitting, or Pomeroy where Angelica was going; so I got
+right up and made a short cut down a steep little path, and, sure
+enough, I met her when I got to the bottom. "I beg your pardon very
+much, miss," said I, "but your brother is over there in the entrance to
+the cave, and I think he has been looking for you." "My brother?" said
+she, turning as red as her ribbons was blue. "Oh, thank you very much!
+Robertson, you may take me that way."
+
+It wasn't long before I saw those two bath-chairs alongside of each
+other, and covered from general observation by masses of blooming
+shrubbery. As I had been the cause of bringing them together I thought
+I had a right to look at them a little while, as that would be the only
+reward I'd be likely to get, and so I did it. It was as I thought;
+things was coming to a climax; the bath-chair men standing with much
+consideration with their backs to their vehicles, and, united for the
+time being by their clasped hands, the lovers grew tender to a degree
+which I would have fain checked, had I been nearer, for fear of notice
+by passers-by.
+
+But now my blood froze within my veins. I would never have believed
+that a man in a high hat and livery a size too small for him could run,
+but Snortfrizzle's man did, and at a pace which ought to have been
+prohibited by law. I saw him coming from an unsuspected quarter, and
+swoop around that clump of flowers and foliage. Regardless of
+consequences I approached nearer. There was loud voices; there was
+exclamations; there was a rattling of wheels; there was the sundering
+of tender ties!
+
+In a moment Pomeroy, who had backed off but a little way, began to
+speak, but his voice was drowned in the thunder of Snortfrizzle's
+denunciations. Angelica wept, and her head fell upon her lovely bosom,
+and I am sure I heard her implore her man to remove her from the scene.
+Pomeroy remained, his face firm, his eyes undaunted, but Snortfrizzle
+shook his fist in unison with his nose, and, hurling an anathema at
+him, followed his daughter, probably to incarcerate her in her
+apartments.
+
+All was over, and I returned to Jone with a heavy heart and faltering
+step. I could not but feel that I had brought about the sad end of this
+tender chapter in the lives of Pomeroy and Angelica. If I had let them
+alone they would not have met and they would not have been discovered
+together. I didn't tell Jone what had happened, because he does not
+always sympathize with me in my interest in others, and for hours my
+heart was heavy.
+
+It was about a half an hour before dinner that day when I thought that
+a little walk might raise my spirits, and I wandered into the gardens,
+for which we each have a weekly ticket, and there, to my amazement, not
+far from the gate I saw Angelica in tears and her bath-chair. Her man
+was not with her, and she was alone. When she saw me she looked at me
+for a minute, and then she beckoned to me to come to her. I flew. There
+were but few people in the gardens, and we was alone.
+
+"Madam," said she, "I think you must be very kind. I believe you knew
+that gentleman was not my brother. He is not."
+
+"My dear miss," said I--I was almost on the point of calling her
+Angelica--"I knew that. I know that he is something nearer and dearer
+than even a brother."
+
+She blushed. "Yes," said she, "you are right, and we are in great
+trouble."
+
+"Oh, what is it? Tell me quick. What can I do to help you?"
+
+"My father is very angry," said she, "and has forbidden me ever to see
+him again, and he is going to take me home to-morrow. But we have
+agreed to fly together to-day. It is our only chance, but he is not
+here. Oh, dear! I do not know what I shall do."
+
+"Where are you going to fly to?" said I.
+
+"We want to take the Edinburgh train this evening if there is one," she
+said, "and we get off at Carlisle, and from there it is only a little
+way to Gretna Green."
+
+"Gretna Green!" I cried. "Oh, I will help you! I will help you! Why
+isn't the gentleman here, and where has he gone?"
+
+"He has gone to see about the trains," she said, almost crying, "and I
+don't see what keeps him. I could not get away until father went into
+his room to dress for dinner, and as soon as he is ready he will call
+for me. Where can he be? I have sent my man to look for him."
+
+"Oh, I'll go look for him! You wait here," I cried, forgetting that
+she would have to, and away I went.
+
+As I was hurrying out of the gates of the gardens I looked in the
+direction of the railroad station, and there I saw Pomeroy pulled by
+one bath-chair man and the other one talking to him. In twenty bounds I
+reached him. "Go back for your young lady," I cried to Robertson,
+Angelica's man, "and bring her here on the run. She sent me for you."
+Away went Robertson, and then I said to the astonished Pomeroy, "Sir,
+there is no time for explanations. Your lady-love will be with you in a
+minute. My husband and I are going to Edinburgh to-morrow, and I have
+looked up all the trains. There is one which leaves here at twenty
+minutes past six. If she comes soon you will have time to catch it.
+Have you your baggage ready?"
+
+He looked at me as if he wondered who on earth I was, but I am sure he
+saw my soul in my face and trusted me.
+
+"Yes," he said, "she has a little bag in her bath-chair, and mine is
+here."
+
+"Here she comes," said I, "and you must fly to the station."
+
+In a moment Angelica was with us, her face beaming with delight.
+
+"Oh, thank you, thank you!" she cried, but I would not listen to her
+gratitude. "Hurry!" I said, "or you will be too late. Joy go with
+you."
+
+They hastened off, and I walked back to the gardens. I looked at my
+watch, and to my horror I saw it was five minutes past six. Fifteen
+minutes left yet. Fifteen minutes in which they might be overtaken. I
+stopped for a moment irresolutely. What should I do? I thought of
+running after them to the station. I thought in some way I might help
+them--buy their tickets or do something. But while I was thinking I
+heard a rattle, and down the street came the man in livery, and
+Snortfrizzle's bottle-nose like a volcano behind him. The minute they
+reached me, and there was nobody else in the street, the old man
+shouted, "Hi! Have you seen two bath-chairs with a young man and a
+young woman in them?"
+
+I was on the point of saying No, but changed my mind like a flash. "Did
+the young lady wear a hat with blue ribbons?" I asked.
+
+"Yes!" he roared. "Which way did they go?"
+
+"And did the young man with her wear eyeglasses and a brown moustache?"
+
+"With her, was he?" screamed Snortfrizzle. "That's the rascal. Which
+way did they go? Tell me instantly."
+
+When I was a very little girl I knew an old woman who told me that if a
+person was really good at heart, the holy angels would allow that
+person, in the course of her life, twelve fibs without charge, provided
+they was told for the good of somebody and not to do harm. Now at
+such a moment as this I could not remember how many fibs of that kind I
+had left over to my credit, but I knew there must be at least one, and
+so I didn't hesitate a second. "They have gone to the Cat and Fiddle,"
+said I. "I heard them tell their bath-chair men so, as they urged them
+forward at the top of their speed. They stopped for a second here, sir,
+and I heard the gentleman send a cabman for a clergyman, post haste, to
+meet them at the Cat and Fiddle."
+
+[Illustration: TO THE CAT AND FIDDLE]
+
+If the sky had been lighted up by the eruption of Snortfrizzle's nose I
+should not have been surprised.
+
+"The fools! They can't! Cat and Fiddle! But they can't be half way
+there. Martin, to the Cat and Fiddle!"
+
+The man touched his hat. "But I couldn't do that, sir. I couldn't run
+to the Cat and Fiddle. It's long miles, sir. Shall I get a carriage?"
+
+"Carriage!" cried the old man, and then he began to look about him.
+
+Horror struck me. Perhaps they would go to the station for one! Just
+then a boy driving a pony and a grocery cart came up.
+
+"There you are, sir," I cried. "Hire that boy to tow you. Your butler
+can sit in the back of the cart and hold the handle of your bath-chair.
+It may take long to get a carriage, and the cart will go much faster.
+You may overtake them in a mile."
+
+Old Snortfrizzle never so much as thanked me or looked at me. He yelled
+to the boy in the cart, offered him ten shillings and sixpence to give
+him a tow, and in less time than I could take to write it, that flunky
+with a high hat was sitting in the tail of the cart, the pony was going
+at full gallop, and the old man's bath-chair was spinning on behind it
+at a great rate.
+
+I did not leave that spot--standing statue-like and looking along both
+roads--until I heard the rumble of the departing train, and then I
+repaired to the Old Hall, my soul uplifted. I found Jone in an awful
+fluster about my being out so late; but I do stay pretty late sometimes
+when I walk by myself, and so he hadn't anything new to say.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty_
+
+
+EDINBURGH
+
+We have been here five or six days now, but the first thing I must
+write is the rest of the story of the lovers. We left Buxton the next
+day after their flight, and I begged Jone to stop at Carlisle and let
+us make a little trip to Gretna Green. I wanted to see the place that
+has been such a well-spring of matrimonial joys, and besides, I thought
+we might find Pomeroy and Angelica still there.
+
+I had not seen old Snortfrizzle again, but late that night I had heard
+a row in the hotel, and I expect it was him back from the Cat and
+Fiddle. Whether he was inquiring for me or not I don't know, or what he
+was doing, or what he did.
+
+Jone thought I had done a good deal of meddling in other people's
+business, but he agreed to go to Gretna Green, and we got there in the
+afternoon. I left Jone to take a smoke at the station, because I
+thought this was a business it would be better for me to attend to
+myself, and I started off to look up the village blacksmith and ask him
+if he had lately wedded a pair; but, will you believe it, madam, I had
+not gone far on the main road of the village when, a little ahead of
+me, I saw two bath-chairs coming toward me, one of them pulled by
+Robertson, and the other by Pomeroy's man, and in these two chairs was
+the happy lovers, evidently Mr. and Mrs.! Their faces was filled with
+light enough to take a photograph, and I could almost see their hearts
+swelling with transcendent joy. I hastened toward them, and in an
+instant our hands was clasped as if we had been old friends.
+
+They told me their tale. They had reached the station in plenty of
+time, and Robertson had got a carriage for them, and he and the other
+man had gone with them third class, with the bath-chairs in the goods
+carriages. They had reached Gretna Green that morning, and had been
+married two hours. Then I told my tale. The eyes of both of them was
+dimmed with tears, hers the most, and again they clasped my hands.
+"Poor father," said Angelica, "I hope he didn't go all the way to the
+Cat and Fiddle, and that the night air didn't strike into his joints;
+but he cannot separate us now." And she looked confiding at the other
+bath-chair.
+
+"What are you going to do?" said I, and they said they had just been
+making plans. I saw, though, that their minds was in too exalted a
+state to do this properly for themselves, and so I reflected a minute.
+"How long have you been in Buxton?"
+
+"I have been there two weeks and two days," said she, "and my
+husband"--oh, the effulgence that filled her countenance as she said
+this--"has been there one day longer."
+
+"Then," said I, "my advice to you is to go back to Buxton and stay
+there five days, until you both have taken the waters and the baths for
+the full three weeks. It won't be much to bear the old gentleman's
+upbraiding for five days, and then, blessed with health and love, you
+can depart. No matter what you do afterward, I'd stick it out at Buxton
+for five days."
+
+"We'll do it," said they; and then, after more gratitude and
+congratulations, we parted.
+
+And now I must tell you about ourselves. When Jone had been three weeks
+at Buxton, and done all the things he ought to do, and hadn't done
+anything he oughtn't to do, he hadn't any more rheumatism in him than a
+squirrel that jumps from bough to bough. But will you believe it,
+madam, I had such a rheumatism in one side and one arm that it made me
+give little squeaks when I did up my back hair, and it all came from my
+taking the baths when there wasn't anything the matter with me; for I
+found out, but all too late, that while the waters of Buxton will cure
+rheumatism in people that's got it, they will bring it out in people
+who never had it at all. We was told that we ought not to do anything
+in the bathing line without the advice of a doctor; but those little
+tanks in the floors of the bathrooms, all lined with tiles and filled
+with warm, transparent water, that you went down into by marble steps,
+did seem so innocent, that I didn't believe there was no need in asking
+questions about them. Jone wanted me to stay three weeks longer until I
+was cured, but I wouldn't listen to that. I was wild to get to
+Scotland, and as my rheumatism did not hinder me from walking, I didn't
+mind what else it did.
+
+And there is another thing I must tell you. One day when I was sitting
+by myself on The Slopes waiting for Jone, about lunch time, and with a
+reminiscence floating through my mind of the Devonshire clotted cream
+of the past, never perhaps to return, I saw an elderly woman coming
+along, and when she got near she stopped and spoke. I knew her in an
+instant. She was the old body we met at the Babylon Hotel, who told us
+about the cottage at Chedcombe. I asked her to sit down beside me and
+talk, because I wanted to tell her what good times we had had, and how
+we liked the place, but she said she couldn't, as she was obliged to go
+on.
+
+"And did you like Chedcombe?" said she. "I hope you and your husband
+kept well."
+
+I said yes, except Jone's rheumatism, we felt splendid; for my aches
+hadn't come on then, and I was going on to gush about the lovely
+country she had sent us to, but she didn't seem to want to listen.
+
+"Really," said she, "and your husband had the rheumatism. It was a
+wise thing for you to come here. We English people have reason to be
+proud of our country. If we have our banes, we also have our antidotes;
+and it isn't every country that can say that, is it?"
+
+[Illustration: "And did you like Chedcombe?"]
+
+I wanted to speak up for America, and tried to think of some good
+antidote with the proper banes attached; but before I could do it she
+gave her head a little wag, and said, "Good morning; nice weather,
+isn't it?" and wobbled away. It struck me that the old body was a
+little lofty, and just then Mr. Poplington, who I hadn't noticed, came
+up.
+
+"Really," said he, "I didn't know you was acquainted with the
+Countess."
+
+"The which?" said I.
+
+"The Countess of Mussleby," said he, "that you was just talking to."
+
+"Countess!" I cried. "Why, that's the old person who recommended us to
+go to Chedcombe."
+
+"Very natural," said he, "for her to do that, for her estates lie south
+of Chedcombe, and she takes a great interest in the villages around
+about, and knows all the houses to let."
+
+I parted from him and wandered away, a sadness stealing o'er my soul.
+Gone with the recollections of the clotted cream was my visions of
+diamond tiaras, tossing plumes, and long folds of brocades and laces
+sweeping the marble floors of palaces. If ever again I read a novel
+with a countess in it, I shall see the edge of a yellow flannel
+petticoat and a pair of shoes like two horse-hair bags, which was the
+last that I saw of this thunderbolt into the middle of my visions of
+aristocracy.
+
+Jone and me got to like Buxton very much. We met many pleasant people,
+and as most of them had a chord in common, we was friendly enough. Jone
+said it made him feel sad in the smoking-room to see the men he'd got
+acquainted with get well and go home, but that's a kind of sadness that
+all parties can bear up under pretty well.
+
+I haven't said a word yet about Scotland, though we have been here a
+week, but I really must get something about it into this letter. I was
+saying to Jone the other day that if I was to meet a king with a crown
+on his head I am not sure that I should know that king if I saw him
+again, so taken up would I be with looking at his crown, especially if
+it had jewels in it such as I saw in the regalia at the Tower of
+London. Now Edinburgh seems to strike me in very much the same way.
+Prince Street is its crown, and whenever I think of this city it will
+be of this magnificent street and the things that can be seen from it.
+
+It is a great thing for a street to have one side of it taken away and
+sunk out of sight so that there is a clear view far and wide, and
+visitors can stand and look at nearly everything that is worth seeing
+in the whole town, as if they was in the front seats of the balcony in
+a theatre, and looking on the stage. You know I am very fond of the
+theatre, madam, but I never saw anything in the way of what they call
+spectacular representation that came near Edinburgh as seen from Prince
+Street.
+
+But as I said in one of my first letters, I am not going to write about
+things and places that you can get much better description of in books,
+and so I won't take up any time in telling how we stand at the window
+of our room at the Royal Hotel, and look out at the Old Town standing
+like a forest of tall houses on the other side of the valley, with the
+great castle perched up high above them, and all the hills and towers
+and the streets all spread out below us, with Scott's monument right in
+front, with everybody he ever wrote about standing on brackets, which
+stick out everywhere from the bottom up to the very top of the
+monument, which is higher than the tallest house, and looks like a
+steeple without a church to it. It is the most beautiful thing of the
+kind I ever saw, and I have made out, or think I have, nearly every one
+of the figures that's carved on it.
+
+I think I shall like the Scotch people very much, but just now there is
+one thing about them that stands up as high above their other good
+points as the castle does above the rest of the city, and that is the
+feeling they have for anybody who has done anything to make his
+fellow-countrymen proud of him. A famous Scotchman cannot die without
+being pretty promptly born again in stone or bronze, and put in some
+open place with seats convenient for people to sit and look at him. I
+like this; glory ought to begin at home.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-one_
+
+
+EDINBURGH
+
+Jone being just as lively on his legs as he ever was in his life,
+thanks to the waters of Buxton, and I having the rheumatism now only in
+my arm, which I don't need to walk with, we have gone pretty much all
+over Edinburgh, and a great place it is to walk in, so far as variety
+goes. Some of the streets are so steep you have to go up steps if you
+are walking, and about a mile around if you are driving. I never get
+tired wandering about the Old Town with its narrow streets and awfully
+tall houses, with family washes hanging out from every story.
+
+The closes are queer places. They are very like little villages set
+into the town as if they was raisins in a pudding. You get to them by
+alleys or tunnels, and when you are inside you find a little
+neighborhood that hasn't anything more to do with the next close, a
+block away, than one country village has with another.
+
+We went to see John Knox's house, and although Mr. Knox was pretty hard
+on vanities and frivolities, he didn't mind having a good house over
+his head, with woodwork on the walls and ceilings that wasn't any more
+necessary than the back buttons on his coat.
+
+We have been reading hard since we have been in Edinburgh, and whenever
+Mr. Knox and Mary Queen of Scots come together, I take Mary's side
+without asking questions. I have no doubt Mr. Knox was a good man, but
+if meddling in other people's business gave a person the right to have
+a monument, the top of his would be the first thing travellers would
+see when they come near Edinburgh.
+
+When we went to Holyrood Palace it struck me that Mary Queen of Scots
+deserved a better house. Of course, it wasn't built for her, but I
+don't care very much for the other people who lived in it. The rooms
+are good enough for an ordinary household's use, although the little
+room that she had her supper party in when Rizzio was killed, wouldn't
+be considered by Jone and me as anything like big enough for our family
+to eat in. But there is a general air about the place as if it belonged
+to a royal family that was not very well off, and had to abstain from a
+good deal of grandeur.
+
+If Mary Queen of Scots could come to life again, I expect the Scotch
+people would give her the best palace that money could buy, for they
+have grown to think the world of her, and her pictures blossom out all
+over Edinburgh like daisies in a pasture field.
+
+The first morning after we got here I was as much surprised as if I had
+met Mary Queen of Scots walking along Prince Street with a parasol over
+her head. We were sitting in the reading-room of the hotel, and on the
+other side of the room was a long desk at which people was sitting,
+writing letters, all with their backs to us. One of these was a young
+man wearing a nice light-colored sack coat, with a shiny white collar
+sticking above it, and his black derby hat was on the desk beside him.
+When he had finished his letter he put a stamp on it and got up to mail
+it. I happened to be looking at him, and I believe I stopped breathing
+as I sat and stared. Under his coat he had on a little skirt of green
+plaid about big enough for my Corinne when she was about five years
+old, and then he didn't wear anything whatever until you got down to
+his long stockings and low shoes. I was so struck with the feeling that
+he was an absent-minded person that I punched Jone and whispered to him
+to go quick and tell him. Jone looked at him and laughed, and said that
+was the Highland costume.
+
+Now if that man had had his martial plaid wrapped around him, and had
+worn a Scottish cap with a feather in it and a long ribbon hanging down
+his back, with his claymore girded to his side, I wouldn't have been
+surprised; for this is Scotland, and that would have been like the
+pictures I have seen of Highlanders. But to see a man with the upper
+half of him dressed like a clerk in a dry goods store and the lower
+half like a Highland chief, was enough to make a stranger gasp.
+
+[Illustration: "Jone looked at him and said that was the Highland
+costume."]
+
+But since then I have seen a good many young men dressed that way. I
+believe it is considered the tip of the fashion. I haven't seen any of
+the bare-legged dandies yet with a high silk hat and an umbrella, but I
+expect it won't be long before I meet one. We often see the Highland
+soldiers that belong to the garrison at the castle, and they look
+mighty fine with their plaid shawls and their scarfs and their
+feathers; but to see a man who looks as if one half of him belonged to
+London Bridge and the other half to the Highland moors, does look to
+me like a pretty bad mixture.
+
+I am not so sure, either, that the whole Highland dress isn't better
+suited to Egypt, where it doesn't often rain, than to Scotland. Last
+Saturday we was at St. Giles's Church, and the man who took us around
+told us we ought to come early next morning and see the military
+service, which was something very fine; and as Jone gave him a shilling
+he said he would be on hand and watch for us, and give us a good place
+where we could see the soldiers come in. On Sunday morning it rained
+hard, but we was both at the church before eight o'clock, and so was a
+good many other people, but the doors was shut and they wouldn't let us
+in. They told us it was such a bad morning that the soldiers could not
+come out, and so there would be no military service that day. I don't
+know whether those fine fellows thought that the colors would run out
+of their beautiful plaids, or whether they would get rheumatism in
+their knees; but it did seem to me pretty hard that soldiers could not
+come out in the weather that lots of common citizens didn't seem to
+mind at all. I was a good deal put out, for I hate to get up early for
+nothing, but there was no use saying anything, and all we could do was
+to go home, as all the other people with full suits of clothes did.
+
+Jone and I have got so much more to see before we go home, that it is
+very well we are both able to skip around lively. Of course there are
+ever and ever so many places that we want to go to, but can't do it,
+but I am bound to see the Highlands and the country of the "Lady of the
+Lake." We have been reading up Walter Scott, and I think more than I
+ever did that he is perfectly splendid. While we was in Edinburgh we
+felt bound to go and see Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford. I shall not say
+much about these two places, but I will say that to go into Sir Walter
+Scott's library and sit in the old armchair he used to sit in, at the
+desk he used to write on, and see his books and things around me, gave
+me more a feeling of reverentialism than I have had in any cathedral
+yet.
+
+As for Melrose Abbey, I could have walked about under those towering
+walls and lovely arches until the stars peeped out from the lofty
+vaults above; but Jone and the man who drove the carriage were of a
+different way of thinking, and we left all too soon. But one thing I
+did do: I went to the grave of Michael Scott the wizard, where once was
+shut up the book of awful mysteries, with a lamp always burning by it,
+though the flagstone was shut down tight on top of it, and I got a
+piece of moss and a weed. We don't do much in the way of carrying off
+such things, but I want Corinne to read the "Lady of the Lake," and
+then I shall give her that moss and that weed, and tell where I got
+them. I believe that, in the way of romantics, Corinne is going to be
+more like me than like Jone.
+
+To-morrow we go to the Highlands, and we shall leave our two big trunks
+in the care of the man in the red coat, who is commander-in-chief at
+the Royal Hotel, and who said he would take as much care of them as if
+they was two glass jars filled with rubies; and we believed him, for he
+has done nothing but take care of us since we came to Edinburgh, and
+good care, too.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-two_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+KINLOCH RANNOCH.
+
+It happened that the day we went north was a very fine one, and as soon
+as we got into the real Highland country there was nothing to hinder me
+from feeling that my feet was on my native heath, except that I was in
+a railway carriage, and that I had no Scotch blood in me, but the joy
+of my soul was all the same. There was an old gentleman got into our
+carriage at Perth, and when he saw how we was taking in everything our
+eyes could reach, for Jone is a good deal more fired up by travel than
+he used to be--I expect it must have been the Buxton waters that made
+the change--he began to tell us all about the places we were passing
+through. There didn't seem to be a rock or a stream that hadn't a bit
+of history to it for that old gentleman to tell us about.
+
+We got out at a little town called Struan, and then we took a carriage
+and drove across the wild moors and hills for thirteen miles till we
+came to this village at the end of Loch Rannoch. The wind blew strong
+and sharp, but we knew what we had to expect, and had warm clothes on.
+And with the cool breeze, and remembering "Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace
+bled," it made my blood tingle all the way.
+
+We are going to stay here at least a week. We shall not try to do
+everything that can be done on Scottish soil, for we shall not stalk
+stags or shoot grouse; and I have told Jone that he may put on as many
+Scotch bonnets and plaids as he likes, but there is one thing he is not
+going to do, and that is to go bare-kneed, to which he answered, he
+would never do that unless he could dip his knees into weak coffee so
+that they would be the same color as his face.
+
+There is a nice inn here with beautiful scenery all around, and the
+lovely Loch Rannoch stretches away for eleven miles. Everything is just
+as Scotch as it can be. Even the English people who come here put on
+knickerbockers and bonnets. I have never been anywhere else where it is
+considered the correct thing to dress like the natives, and I will say
+here that it is very few of the natives that wear kilts. That sort of
+thing seems to be given up to the fancy Highlanders.
+
+Nearly all the talk at the inn is about, shooting and fishing.
+Stag-hunting here is very different from what it is in England in more
+ways than one. In the first place, stags are not hunted with horses and
+hounds. In the second place, the sport is not free. A gentleman here
+told Jone that if a man wanted to shoot a stag on these moors it would
+cost him one rifle cartridge and six five pound notes; and when Jone
+did not understand what that meant, the man went on and told him about
+how the deer-stalking was carried on here. He said that some of the big
+proprietors up here owned as much as ninety thousand acres of moorland,
+and they let it out mostly to English people for hunting and fishing.
+And if it is stag-hunting the tenant wants, the price he pays is
+regulated by the number of stags he has the privilege of shooting. Each
+stag he is allowed to kill costs him thirty pounds. So if he wants the
+pleasure of shooting thirty stags in the season, his rent will be nine
+hundred pounds. This he pays for the stag-shooting, but some kind of a
+house and about ten thousand acres are thrown in, which he has a
+perfect right to sit down on and rest himself on, but he can't shoot a
+grouse on it unless he pays extra for that. And, what is more, if he
+happens to be a bad shot, or breaks his leg and has to stay in the
+house, and doesn't shoot his thirty stags, he has got to pay for them
+all the same.
+
+When Jone told me all this, I said I thought a hundred and fifty
+dollars a pretty high price to pay for the right to shoot one deer. But
+Jone said I didn't consider all the rest the man got. In the first
+place, he had the right to get up very early in the morning, in the
+gloom and drizzle, and to trudge through the slop and the heather until
+he got far away from the neighborhood of any human being, and then he
+could go up on some high piece of ground and take a spyglass and search
+the whole country round for a stag. When he saw one way off in the
+distance snuffing the morning air, or hunting for his breakfast among
+the heather, he had the privilege of walking two or three miles over
+the moor so as to get that stag between the wind and himself, so that
+it could not scent him or hear him. Then he had the glorious right to
+get his rifle all ready, and steal and creep toward that stag to cut
+short his existence. He has to be as careful and as sneaky as if he was
+a snake in the grass, going behind little hills and down into gullies,
+and sometimes almost crawling on his stomach where he goes over an open
+place, and doing everything he can to keep that stag from knowing his
+end is near. Sometimes he follows his victim all day, and the sun goes
+down before he has the glorious right of standing up and lodging a
+bullet in its unsuspecting heart. "So you see," said Jone, "he gets a
+lot for his hundred and fifty dollars."
+
+"They do get a good deal more for their money than I thought they did,"
+said I; "but I wonder if those rich sportsmen ever think that if they
+would take the money that they pay for shooting thirty or forty stags
+in one season, they might buy a rhinoceros, which they could set up on
+a hill and shoot at every morning if they liked. A game animal like
+that would last them for years, and if they ever felt like it, they
+could ask their friends to help them shoot without costing them
+anything."
+
+Jone is pretty hard on sport with killing in it. He does not mind
+eating meat, but he likes to have the butcher do the killing. But I
+reckon he is a little too tender-hearted. But, as for me, I like sport
+of some kinds, especially when you don't have your pity or your
+sympathies awakened by seeing your prey enjoying life when you are
+seeking to encompass his end. Of course, by that I mean fishing.
+
+There are a good many trout in the lake, and people can hire the
+privilege of fishing for them; and I begged Jone to let me go out in a
+boat and fish. He was rather in favor of staying ashore and fishing in
+the little river, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go out and
+have some regular lake fishing. At last Jone agreed, provided I would
+not expect him to have anything to do with the fishing. "Of course I
+don't expect anything like that," said I; "and it would be a good deal
+better for you to stay on shore. The landlord says a gilly will go
+along to row the boat and attend to the lines and rods and all that,
+and so there won't be any need for you at all, and you can stay on
+shore with your book, and watch if you like."
+
+"And suppose you tumble overboard," said Jone.
+
+"Then you can swim out," I said, "and perhaps wade a good deal of the
+way. I don't suppose we need go far from the bank."
+
+Jone laughed, and said he was going too.
+
+"Very well," said I; "but you have got to stay in the bow, with your
+back to me, and take an interesting book with you, for it is a long
+time since I have done any fishing, and I am not going to do it with
+two men watching me and telling me how I ought to do it and how I
+oughtn't to. One will be enough."
+
+"And that one won't be me," said Jone, "for fishing is not one of the
+branches I teach in my school."
+
+I would have liked it better if Jone and me had gone alone, he doing
+nothing but row; but the landlord wouldn't let his boat that way, and
+said we must take a gilly, which, as far as I can make out, is a sort
+of sporting farmhand. That is the way to do fishing in these parts.
+
+Well, we started, and Jone sat in the front, with his back to me, and
+the long-legged gilly rowed like a good fellow. When we got to a good
+place to fish he stopped, and took a fishing-rod that was in pieces and
+screwed them together, and fixed the line all right so that it would
+run along the rod to a little wheel near the handle, and then he put on
+a couple of hooks with artificial flies on them, which was so small I
+couldn't imagine how the fish could see them. While he was doing all
+this I got a little fidgety, because I had never fished except with a
+straight pole and line with a cork to it, which would bob when the fish
+bit; but this was altogether a different sort of a thing. When it was
+all ready he handed me the pole, and then sat down very polite to look
+at me.
+
+Now, if he had handed me the rod, and then taken another boat and gone
+home, perhaps I might have known what to do with the thing after a
+while, but I must say that at that minute I didn't. I held the rod out
+over the water and let the flies dangle down into it, but do what I
+would, they wouldn't sink; there wasn't weight enough on them.
+
+"You must throw your fly, madam," said the gilly, always very polite.
+"Let me give it a throw for you," and then he took the rod in his hand
+and gave it a whirl and a switch which sent the flies out ever so far
+from the boat; then he drew it along a little, so that the flies
+skipped over the top of the water.
+
+[Illustration: "I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, AND TAKING THE POLE IN BOTH
+HANDS I GAVE IT A WILD TWIRL OVER MY HEAD"]
+
+I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
+wild twirl over my head, and then it flew out as if I was trying to
+whip one of the leaders in a four-horse team. As I did this Jone gave a
+jump that took him pretty near out of the boat, for two flies swished
+just over the bridge of his nose, and so close to his eyes as he was
+reading an interesting dialogue, and not thinking of fish or even of
+me, that he gave a jump sideways, which, if it hadn't been for the
+gilly grabbing him, would have taken him overboard. I was frightened
+myself, and said to him that I had told him he ought not to come in the
+boat, and it would have been a good deal better for him to have stayed
+on shore.
+
+He didn't say anything, but I noticed he turned up his collar and
+pulled down his hat over his eyes and ears. The gilly said that perhaps
+I had too much line out, and so he took the rod and wound up a good
+deal of the line. I liked this better, because it was easier to whip
+out the line and pull it in again. Of course, I would not be likely to
+catch fish so much nearer the boat, but then we can't have everything
+in this world. Once I thought I had a bite, and I gave the rod such a
+jerk that the line flew back against me, and when I was getting ready
+to throw it out again, I found that one of the little hooks had stuck
+fast in my thumb. I tried to take it out with the other hand, but it
+was awfully awkward to do, because the rod wobbled and kept jerking on
+it. The gilly asked me if there was anything the matter with the flies,
+but I didn't want him to know what had happened, and so I said, "Oh,
+no," and turning my back on him I tried my best to get the hook out
+without his helping me, for I didn't want him to think that the first
+thing I caught was myself, after just missing my husband--he might be
+afraid it would be his turn next. You cannot imagine how bothersome it
+is to go fishing with a gilly to wait on you. I would rather wash
+dishes with a sexton to wipe them and look for nicks on the edges.
+
+At last--and I don't know how it happened--I did hook a fish, and the
+minute I felt him I gave a jerk, and up he came. I heard the gilly say
+something about playing, but I was in no mood for play, and if that
+fish had been shot up out of the water by a submarine volcano it
+couldn't have ascended any quicker than when I jerked it up. Then as
+quick as lightning it went whirling through the air, struck the pages
+of Jone's book, turning over two or three of them, and then wiggled
+itself half way down Jone's neck, between his skin and his collar,
+while the loose hook swung around and nipped him in his ear.
+
+"Don't pull, madam," shouted the gilly, and it was well he did, for I
+was just on the point of giving an awful jerk to get the fish loose
+from Jone. Jone gave a grab at the fish, which was trying to get down
+his back, and pulling him out threw him down; but by doing this he
+jerked the other hook into his ear, and then a yell arose such as I
+never before heard from Jone. "I told you you ought not to come in this
+boat," said I; "you don't like fishing, and something is always
+happening to you."
+
+"Like fishing!" cried Jone. "I should say not," and he made up such a
+comical face that even the gilly, who was very polite, had to laugh as
+he went to take the hook out of his ear.
+
+When Jone and the fish had been got off my line, Jone turned to me and
+said, "Are you going to fish any more?"
+
+"Not with you in the boat," I answered; and then he said he was glad to
+hear that, and told the man he could row us ashore.
+
+I can assure you, madam, that fishing in a rather wobbly boat with a
+husband and a gilly in it, is not to my taste, and that was the end of
+our sporting experiences in Scotland, but it did not end the glorious
+times we had by that lake and on the moors.
+
+We hired a little pony trap and drove up to the other end of the lake,
+and not far beyond that is the beginning of Rannoch Moor, which the
+books say is one of the wildest and most desolate places in all Europe.
+So far as we went over the moor we found that this was truly so, and I
+know that I, at least, enjoyed it ever so much more because it was so
+wild and desolate. As far as we could see, the moors stretched away in
+every direction, covered in most places by heather, now out of blossom,
+but with great rocks standing out of the ground in some places, and
+here and there patches of grass. Sometimes we could see four or five
+lochs at once, some of them two or three miles long, and down through
+the middle of the moor came the maddest and most harum-scarum little
+river that could be imagined. It actually seemed to go out of its way
+to find rocks to jump over, just as if it was a young calf, and some of
+the waterfalls were beautiful. All around us was melancholy mountains,
+all of them with "Ben" for their first names, except Schiehallion,
+which was the best shaped of any of them, coming up to a point and
+standing by itself, which was what I used to think mountains always
+did; but now I know they run into each other so that you can hardly
+tell where one ends and the other begins.
+
+For three or four days we went out on these moors, sometimes when the
+sun was shining, and sometimes when there was a heavy rain and the wind
+blew gales, and I think I liked this last kind of weather the best, for
+it gave me an idea of lonely desolation which I never had in any part
+of the world I have ever been in before. There is often not a house to
+be seen, not even a crofter's hut, and we seldom met anybody. Sometimes
+I wandered off by myself behind a hillock or rocks where I could not
+even see Jone, and then I used to try to imagine how Eve would have
+felt if she had early become a widow, and to put myself in her place.
+There was always clouds in the sky, sometimes dark and heavy ones
+coming down to the very peaks of the mountains, and not a tree was to
+be seen, except a few rowan trees or bushes close to the river. But by
+the side of Lock Rannoch, on our way back to the village, we passed
+along the edge of a fine old forest called the "Black Woods of
+Rannoch." There are only three of these ancient forests left in
+Scotland, and some of the trees in this one are said to be eight
+hundred years old.
+
+[Illustration: Pomona drinking it in]
+
+The last time we was out on the Rannoch Moor there was such a savage
+and driving wind, and the rain came down in such torrents, that my
+mackintosh was blown nearly off of me, and I was wet from my head to my
+heels. But I would have stayed out hours longer if Jone had been
+willing, and I never felt so sorry to leave these Grampian Hills, where
+I would have been glad to have had my father feed his flocks, and where
+I might have wandered away my childhood, barefooted over the heather,
+singing Scotch songs and drinking in deep draughts of the pure mountain
+air, instead of--but no matter.
+
+To-morrow we leave the Highlands, but as we go to follow the shallop of
+the "Lady of the Lake," I should not repine.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-three_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+OBAN, SCOTLAND
+
+It would seem to be the easiest thing in the world, when looking on the
+map, to go across the country from Loch Rannoch over to Katrine and all
+those celebrated parts, but we found we could not go that way, and so
+we went back to Edinburgh and made a fresh start. We stopped one night
+at the Royal Hotel, and there we found a letter from Mr. Poplington. We
+had left him at Buxton, and he said he was not going to Scotland this
+season, but would try to see us in London before we sailed.
+
+He is a good man, and he wrote this letter on purpose to tell me that
+he had had a letter from his friend, the clergyman in Somersetshire,
+who had forbidden the young woman whose wash my tricycle had run into
+to marry her lover because he was a Radical. This letter was in answer
+to one Mr. Poplington wrote to him, in which he gave the minister my
+reasons for thinking that the best way to convert the young man from
+Radicalism was to let him marry the young woman, who would be sure to
+bring him around to her way of thinking, whatever that might be.
+
+I didn't care about the Radicalism. All I wanted was to get the two
+married, and then it would not make the least difference to me what
+their politics might be; if they lived properly and was sober and
+industrious and kept on loving each other, I didn't believe it would
+make much difference to them. It was a long letter that the clergyman
+wrote, but the point of it was, that he had concluded to tell the young
+woman that she might marry the fellow if she liked, and that she must
+do her best to make him a good Conservative, which, of course, she
+promised to do. When I read this I clapped my hands, for who could have
+suspected that I should have the good luck to come to this country to
+spend the summer and make two matches before I left it!
+
+When we left Edinburgh to gradually wend our way to this place, which
+is on the west coast of Scotland, the first town we stopped at was
+Stirling, where the Scotch kings used to live. Of course we went to the
+castle, which stands on the rocks high above the town; but before we
+started to go there Jone inquired if the place was a ruin or not, and
+when he was told it was not, and that soldiers lived there, he said it
+was all right, and we went. He now says he must positively decline to
+visit any more houses out of repair. He is tired of them; and since he
+has got over his rheumatism he feels less like visiting ruins than he
+ever did. I tell him the ruins are not any more likely to be damp than
+a good many of the houses that people live in; but this didn't shake
+him, and I suppose if we come to any more vine-covered and shattered
+remnants of antiquity I shall be obliged to go over them by myself.
+
+The castle is a great place, which I wouldn't have missed for the
+world; but the spot that stirred my soul the most was in a little
+garden, as high in the air as the top of a steeple, where we could look
+out over the battlefield of Bannockburn. Besides this, we could see the
+mountains of Ben-Lomond, Ben-Venue, Ben-A'an, Benledi, and ever so much
+Scottish landscape spreading out for miles upon miles. There is a
+little hole in the wall here called the Ladies' Look-Out, where the
+ladies of the court could sit and see what was going on in the country
+below without being seen themselves, but I stood up and took in
+everything over the top of the wall.
+
+I don't know whether I told you that the mountains of Scotland are
+"Bens," and the mouths of rivers are "abers," and islands are
+"inches." Walking about the streets of Stirling, and I didn't have time
+to see half as much as I wanted to, I came to the shop of a "flesher."
+I didn't know what it was until I looked into the window and saw that
+it was a butcher shop.
+
+I like a language just about as foreign as the Scotch is. There are a
+good many words in it that people not Scotch don't understand, but that
+gives a person the feeling that she is travelling abroad, which I want
+to have when I am abroad. Then, on the other hand, there are not enough
+of them to hinder a traveller from making herself understood. So it is
+natural for me to like it ever so much better than French, in which,
+when I am in it, I simply sink to the bottom if no helping hand is held
+out to me.
+
+I had some trouble with Jone that night at the hotel, because he had a
+novel which he had been reading for I don't know how long, and which he
+said he wanted to get through with before he began anything else. But
+now I told him he was going to enter on the wonderful country of the
+"Lady of the Lake," and that he ought to give up everything else and
+read that book, because if he didn't go there with his mind prepared
+the scenery would not sink into his soul as it ought to. He was of the
+opinion that when my romantic feeling got on top of the scenery it
+would be likely to sink into his soul as deep as he cared to have it,
+without any preparation, but that sort of talk wouldn't do for me. I
+didn't want to be gliding o'er the smooth waters of Loch Katrine, and
+have him asking me who the girl was who rowed her shallop to the silver
+strand, and the end of it was that I made him sit up until a quarter of
+two o'clock in the morning while I read the "Lady of the Lake" to him.
+I had read it before and he had not, but I hadn't got a quarter through
+before he was just as willing to listen as I was to read. And when I
+got through I was in such a glow that Jone said he believed that all
+the blood in my veins had turned to hot Scotch.
+
+I didn't pay any attention to this, and after going to the window and
+looking out at the Gaelic moon, which was about half full and rolling
+along among the clouds, I turned to Jone and said, "Jone, let's sing
+'Scots wha ha',' before we go to bed."
+
+"If we do roar out that thing," said Jone, "they will put us out on the
+curbstone to spend the rest of the night."
+
+"Let's whisper it, then," said I; "the spirit of it is all I want. I
+don't care for the loudness."
+
+"I'd be willing to do that," said Jone, "if I knew the tune and a few
+of the words."
+
+"Oh, bother!" said I; and when I got into bed I drew the clothes over
+my head and sang that brave song all to myself. Doing it that way the
+words and tune didn't matter at all, but I felt the spirit of it, and
+that was all I wanted, and then I went to sleep.
+
+The next morning we went to Callander by train, and there we took a
+coach for Trossachs. It is hardly worth while to say we went on top,
+because the coaches here haven't any inside to them, except a hole
+where they put the baggage. We drove along a beautiful road with
+mountains and vales and streams, and the driver told us the name of
+everything that had a name, which he couldn't help very well, being
+asked so constant by me. But I didn't feel altogether satisfied, for we
+hadn't come to anything quotable, and I didn't like to have Jone sit
+too long without something happening to stir up some of the "Lady of
+the Lake" which I had pumped into his mind the day before, and so keep
+it fresh.
+
+Before long, however, the driver pointed out the ford of Coilantogle.
+The instant he said this I half jumped up, and, seizing Jone by the
+arm, I cried, "Don't you remember? This is the place where the Knight
+of Snowdoun, James Fitz-James, fought Roderick Dhu!" And then without
+caring who else heard me, I burst out with:
+
+    "'His back against a rock he bore,
+      And firmly placed his foot before:
+      "Come one, come all! This rock shall fly
+      From its firm base as soon as I."'"
+
+"No, madam," said the driver, politely touching his hat, "that was a
+mile farther on. This place is:
+
+    "'And here his course the chieftain staid,
+      Threw down his target and his plaid.'"
+
+"You are right," said I; and then I began again:
+
+    "'Then each at once his falchion drew,
+      Each on the ground his scabbard threw,
+      Each look'd to sun, and stream, and plain,
+      As what they ne'er might see again;
+      Then foot, and point, and eye opposed,
+      In dubious strife they darkly closed.'"
+
+I didn't repeat any more of the poem, though everybody was listening
+quite respectful without thinking of laughing, and as for Jone, I could
+see by the way he sat and looked about him that his tinder had caught
+my spark; but I knew that the thing for me to do here was not to give
+out but take in, and so, to speak in figures, I drank in the whole of
+Lake Vannachar, as we drove along its lovely marge until we came to the
+other end, and the driver said we would now go over the Brigg of Turk.
+At this up I jumped and said:
+
+    "'And when the Brigg of Turk was won,
+      The headmost horseman rode alone.'"
+
+I had sense enough not to quote the next two lines, because when I had
+read them to Jone he said that it was a shame to use a horse that way.
+
+We now came to Loch Achray, at the other end of which is the
+Trossachs, where we stopped for the night, and when the driver told me
+the mountain we saw before us was Ben-Venue, I repeated the lines:
+
+    "'The hunter marked that mountain high,
+      The lone lake's western boundary,
+      And deem'd the stag must turn to bay,
+      Where that huge rampart barr'd the way.'"
+
+At last we reached the Trossachs Hotel, which stands near the wild
+ravines filled with bristling woods where the stag was lost, with the
+lovely lake in front and Ben-Venue towering up on the other side. I was
+so excited I could scarcely eat, and no wonder, because for the greater
+part of the day I had breathed nothing but the spirit of Scott's
+poetry. I forgot to say that from the time we left Callander until we
+got to the hotel the rain poured down steadily, but that didn't make
+any difference to me. A human being soaked with the "Lady of the Lake"
+is rain-proof.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-four_
+
+
+EDINBURGH
+
+I was sorry to stop my last letter right in the middle of the "Lady of
+the Lake" country, but I couldn't get it all in, and the fact is, I
+can't get all I want to say in any kind of a letter. The things I have
+seen and want to write about are crowded together like the Scottish
+mountains.
+
+On the day after we got to Trossachs Hotel, and I don't know any place
+I would rather spend weeks at than there, Jone and I walked through the
+"darksome glen" where the stag,
+
+    "Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken,
+     In the deep Trossachs' wildest nook
+     His solitary refuge took."
+
+And then we came out on the far-famed Loch Katrine. There was a little
+steamboat there to take passengers to the other end, where a coach was
+waiting, but it wasn't time for that to start, and we wandered on the
+banks of that song-gilded piece of water. It didn't lie before us like
+"one burnished sheet of living gold," as it appeared to James
+Fitz-James but my soul could supply the sunset if I chose. There, too,
+was the island of the fair Ellen, and beneath our very feet was the
+"silver strand" to which she rowed her shallop. I am sorry to say there
+isn't so much of the silver strand as there used to be, because, in
+this world, as I have read, and as I have seen, the spirit of
+realistics is always crowding and trampling on the toes of the
+romantics, and the people of Glasgow have actually laid water-pipes
+from their town to this lovely lake, and now they turn the faucets in
+their back kitchens and out spouts the tide which kissed
+
+    "With whispering sound and slow
+     The beach of pebbles bright as snow."
+
+This wouldn't have been so bad, because the lake has enough and to
+spare of its limpid wave; but in order to make their water-works the
+Glasgow people built a dam, and that has raised the lake a good deal
+higher, so that it overflows ever so much of the silver strand. But I
+can pick out the real from a scene like that as I can pick out and
+throw away the seeds of an orange, and gazing o'er that enchanted scene
+I felt like the Knight of Snowdoun himself, when he first beheld the
+lake and said:
+
+    "How blithely might the bugle horn
+     Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn!"
+
+and then I went on with the lines until I came to
+
+    "Blithe were it then to wander here!
+     But now--beshrew yon nimble deer"--
+
+"You'd better beshrew that steamboat bell," said Jone, and away we went
+and just caught the boat. Realistics come in very well sometimes when
+they take the form of legs.
+
+The steamboat took us over nearly the whole of Lake Katrine, and I must
+say that I was so busy fitting verses to scenery that I don't remember
+whether it rained or the sun shone. When we left the boat we took a
+coach to Inversnaid on Loch Lomond, and, as we rode along, it made my
+heart almost sink to feel that I had to leave my poetry behind me, for
+I didn't know any that suited this region. But when we got in sight of
+Loch Lomond a Scotch girl who was on the seat behind me, and had
+several friends with her, began to sing a song about Lomond, of which I
+only remember, "You take the high road and I'll take the low road, and
+I'll get to Scotland afore you."
+
+I am sure I must have Scotch blood in me, for when I heard that song it
+wound up my feelings to such a pitch that I believe if that girl had
+been near enough I should have given her a hug and a kiss. As for Jone,
+he seemed to be nearly as much touched as I was, though not in the same
+way, of course.
+
+We took a boat on Loch Lomond to Ardlui, another little town, and then
+we drove nine miles to the railroad. This was through a wild and solemn
+valley, and by the side of a rushing river, full of waterfalls and deep
+and diresome pools. When we reached the railroad we found a train
+waiting, and we took it and went to Oban, which we reached about six
+o'clock. Even this railroad trip was delightful, for we went by the
+great Lake Awe, with another rushing river and mountains and black
+precipices. We had a carriage all to ourselves until an old lady got in
+at a station, and she hadn't been sitting in her corner more than ten
+minutes before she turned to me and said:
+
+"You haven't any lakes like this in your country, I suppose."
+
+Now I must say that, in the heated condition I had been in ever since I
+came into Scotland, a speech like that was like a squirt of cold water
+into a thing full of steam. For a couple of seconds my boiling stopped,
+but my fires was just as blazing as ever, and I felt as if I could turn
+them on that old woman and shrivel her up for plastering her
+comparisons on me at such a time.
+
+"Of course, we haven't anything just like this," I said, "but it takes
+all sorts of scenery to make up a world."
+
+"That's very true, isn't it?" said she. "But, really, one couldn't
+expect in America such a lake as that, such mountains, such grandeur!"
+
+Now I made up my mind if she was going to keep up this sort of thing
+Jone and me would change carriages when we stopped at the next station,
+for comparisons are very different from poetry, and if you try to mix
+them with scenery you make a mess that is not fit for a Christian. But
+I thought first I would give her a word back:
+
+"I have seen to-day," I said, "the loveliest scenery I ever met with;
+but we've got grand cañons in America where you could put the whole of
+that scenery without crowding, and where it wouldn't be much noticed by
+spectators, so busy would they be gazing at the surrounding wonders."
+
+"Fancy!" said she.
+
+"I don't want to say anything," said I, "against what I have seen
+to-day, and I don't want to think of anything else while I am looking
+at it; but this I will say, that landscape with Scott is very different
+from landscape without him."
+
+"That is very true, isn't it?" said she; and then she stopped making
+comparisons, and I looked out of the window.
+
+Oban is a very pretty place on the coast, but we never should have gone
+there if it had not been the place to start from for Staffa and Iona.
+When I was only a girl I saw pictures of Fingal's Cave, and I have read
+a good deal about it since, and it is one of the spots in the world
+that I have been longing to see, but I feel like crying when I tell
+you, madam, that the next morning there was such a storm that the boat
+for Staffa didn't even start; and as the people told us that the storm
+would most likely last two or three days, and that the sea for a few
+days more would be so rough that Staffa would be out of the question,
+we had to give it up, and I was obliged to fall back from the reality
+to my imagination. Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that he would
+be willing to bet ten to one that my fancy would soar a mile above the
+real thing, and that perhaps it was very well I didn't see old Fingal's
+Cave and so be disappointed.
+
+"Perhaps it is a good thing," said I, "that you didn't go, and that you
+didn't get so seasick that you would be ready to renounce your
+country's flag and embrace Mormonism if such things would make you feel
+better." But that is the only thing that is good about it, and I have a
+cloud on my recollection which shall never be lifted until Corinne is
+old enough to travel and we come here with her.
+
+But although the storm was so bad, it was not bad enough to keep us
+from making our water trip to Glasgow, for the boat we took did not
+have to go out to sea. It was a wonderfully beautiful passage we made
+among the islands and along the coast, with the great mountains on the
+mainland standing up above everything else. After a while we got to the
+Crinan Canal, which is in reality a short cut across the field. It is
+nine miles long and not much wider than a good-sized ditch, but it
+saves more than a hundred miles of travel around an island. We was on a
+sort of a toy steamboat which went its way through the fields and
+bushes and grass so close we could touch them; and as there was eleven
+locks where the boat had to stop, we got out two or three times and
+walked along the banks to the next lock. That being the kind of a ride
+Jone likes, he blessed Buxton. At the other end of the canal we took a
+bigger steamboat which carried us to Glasgow.
+
+In the morning it hailed, which afterward turned to rain, but in the
+afternoon there was only showers now and then, so that we spent most of
+the time on deck. On this boat we met a very nice Englishman and his
+wife, and when they had heard us speak to each other they asked us if
+we had ever been in this part of the world before, and when we said we
+hadn't they told us about the places we passed. If we had been an
+English couple who had never been there before they wouldn't have said
+a word to us.
+
+As we got near the Clyde the gentleman began to talk about
+ship-building, and pretty soon I saw in his face plain symptoms that he
+was going to have an attack of comparison making. I have seen so much
+of this disorder that I can nearly always tell when it is coming on a
+person. In about a minute the disease broke out on him, and he began to
+talk about the differences between American and English ships. He told
+Jone and me about a steamship that was built out in San Francisco which
+shook three thousand bolts out of herself on her first voyage. It
+seemed to me that that was a good deal like a codfish shaking his
+bones out through swimming too fast. I couldn't help thinking that that
+steamship must have had a lot of bolts so as to have enough left to
+keep her from scattering herself over the bottom of the ocean.
+
+I expected Jone to say something in behalf of his country's ships, but
+he didn't seem to pay much attention to the boat story, so I took up
+the cudgels myself, and I said to the gentleman that all nations, no
+matter how good they might be at ship-building, sometimes made
+mistakes, and then to make a good impression on him I whanged him over
+the head with the "Great Eastern," and asked him if there ever was a
+vessel that was a greater failure than that.
+
+He said, "Yes, yes, the 'Great Eastern' was not a success," and then he
+stopped talking about ships.
+
+When we got fairly into the Clyde and near Glasgow the scene was
+wonderful. It was nearly night, and the great fires of the factories
+lit up the sky, and we saw on the stocks a great ship being built.
+
+We stayed in Glasgow one day, and Jone was delighted with it, because
+he said it was like an American city. Now, on principle, I like
+American cities, but I didn't come to Scotland to see them; and the
+greatest pleasure I had in Glasgow was standing with a tumbler of water
+in my hand, repeating to myself as much of the "Lady of the Lake" as I
+could remember.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-five_
+
+
+LONDON
+
+Here we are in this wonderful town, where, if you can't see everything
+you want to see, you can generally see a sample of it, even if your fad
+happens to be the ancientnesses of Egypt. We are at the Babylon Hotel,
+where we shall stay until it is time to start for Southampton, where we
+shall take the steamer for home. What we are going to do between here
+and Southampton I don't know yet; but I do know that Jone is all on
+fire with joy because he thinks his journeys are nearly over, and I am
+chilled with grief when I think that my journeys are nearly over.
+
+We left Edinburgh on the train called the "Flying Scotsman," and it
+deserved its name. I suppose that in the days of Wallace and Bruce and
+Rob Roy the Scots must often have skipped along in a lively way; but I
+am sure if any of them had ever invaded England at the rate we went
+into it, the British lion would soon have been living on thistles
+instead of roses.
+
+The speed of this train was sometimes a mile a minute, I think; and I
+am sure I was never on any railroad in America where I was given a
+shorter time to get out for something to eat than we had at York. Jone
+and I are generally pretty quick about such things, but we had barely
+time to get back to our carriage before that "Flying Scotsman" went off
+like a streak of lightning.
+
+On the way we saw a part of York Minster, and had a splendid, view of
+Durham Cathedral, standing high in the unreachable--that is, as far as
+I was concerned. Peterborough Cathedral we also saw the outside of, and
+I felt like a boy looking in at a confectioner's window with no money
+to buy anything. It wasn't money that I wanted; it was time, and we had
+very little of that left.
+
+The next day, after we reached London, I set out to attend to a piece
+of business that I didn't want Jone to know anything about. My business
+was to look up my family pedigree. It seemed to me that it would be a
+shame if I went away from the home of my ancestors without knowing
+something about those ancestors and about the links that connected me
+with them. So I determined to see what I could do in the way of making
+up a family tree.
+
+By good luck, Jone had some business to attend to about money and rooms
+on the steamer, and so forth, and so I could start out by myself
+without his even asking me where I was going. Now, of course, it would
+be a natural thing for a person to go and seek out his ancestors in the
+ancient village from which they sprang, and to read their names on
+the tombstones in the venerable little church, but as I didn't know
+where this village was, of course I couldn't go to it. But in London is
+the place where you can find out how to find out such things.
+
+[Illustration: "A PERSON WHO WAS A FAMILY-TREE-MAN"]
+
+As far back as when we was in Chedcombe I had had a good deal of talk
+with Miss Pondar about ancestors and families. I told her that my
+forefathers came from this country, which I was very sure of, judging
+from my feelings; but as I couldn't tell her any particulars, I didn't
+go into the matter very deep. But I did say there was a good many
+points that I would like to set straight, and asked her if she knew
+where I could find out something about English family trees. She said
+she had heard there was a big heraldry office in London, but if I
+didn't want to go there, she knew of a person who was a
+family-tree-man. He had an office in London, and his business was to go
+around and tend to trees of that kind which had been neglected, and to
+get them into shape and good condition. She gave me his address, and I
+had kept the thing quiet in my mind until now.
+
+I found the family-tree-man, whose name was Brandish, in a small room
+not too clean, over a shop not far from St. Paul's Churchyard. He had
+another business, which related to patent poison for flies, and at
+first he thought I had come to see him about that, but when he found
+out I wanted to ask him about my family tree his face brightened up.
+
+When I told Mr. Brandish my business the first thing he asked me was my
+family name. Of course I had expected this, and I had thought a great
+deal about the answer I ought to give. In the first place, I didn't
+want to have anything to do with my father's name. I never had anything
+much to do with him, because he died when I was a little baby, and his
+name had nothing high-toned about it, and it seemed to me to belong to
+that kind of a family that you would be better satisfied with the less
+you looked up its beginnings; but my mother's family was a different
+thing. Nobody could know her without feeling that she had sprung from
+good roots. It might have been from the stump of a tree that had been
+cut down, but the roots must have been of no common kind to send up
+such a shoot as she was. It was from her that I got my longings for the
+romantic.
+
+She used to tell me a good deal about her father, who must have been a
+wonderful man in many ways. What she told me was not like a sketch of
+his life, which I wish it had been, but mostly anecdotes of what he
+said and did. So it was my mother's ancestral tree I determined to
+find, and without saying whether it was on my mother's or father's side
+I was searching for ancestors, I told Mr. Brandish that Dork was the
+family name.
+
+"Dork," said he; "a rather uncommon name, isn't it? Was your father
+the eldest son of a family of that name?"
+
+Now I was hoping he wouldn't say anything about my father.
+
+"No, sir," said I; "it isn't that line that I am looking up. It is my
+mother's. Her name was Dork before she was married."
+
+"Really! Now I see," said he, "you have the paternal line all correct,
+and you want to look up the line on the other side. That is very
+common; it is so seldom that one knows the line of ancestors on one's
+maternal side. Dork, then, was the name of your maternal grandfather."
+
+It struck me that a maternal grandfather must be a grandmother, but I
+didn't say so.
+
+"Can you tell me," said he, "whether it was he who emigrated from this
+country to America, or whether it was his father or his grandfather?"
+
+Now I hadn't said anything about the United States, for I had learned
+there was no use in wasting breath telling English people I had come
+from America, so I wasn't surprised at his question, but I couldn't
+answer it.
+
+"I can't say much about that," I said, "until I have found out
+something about the English branches of the family."
+
+"Very good," said he. "We will look over the records," and he took down
+a big book and turned to the letter D. He ran his finger down two or
+three pages, and then he began to shake his head.
+
+"Dork?" said he. "There doesn't seem to be any Dork, but here is
+Dorkminster. Now if that was your family name we'd have it all here. No
+doubt you know all about that family. It's a grand old family, isn't
+it? Isn't it possible that your grandfather or one of his ancestors may
+have dropped part of the name when he changed his residence to
+America?"
+
+Now I began to think hard; there was some reason in what the
+family-tree-man said. I knew very well that the same family name was
+often different in different countries, changes being made to suit
+climates and people.
+
+"Minster has a religious meaning, hasn't it?" said I.
+
+"Yes, madam," said he; "it relates to cathedrals and that sort of
+thing."
+
+Now, so far as I could remember, none of the things my mother had ever
+told me about her father was in any ways related to religion. They was
+mostly about horses; and although there is really no reason for the
+disconnection between horses and religion, especially when you consider
+the hymns with heavenly chariots in them must have had horses, it
+didn't seem to me that my grandfather could have made it a point of
+being religious, and perhaps he mightn't have cared for the cathedral
+part of his name, and so might have dropped it for convenience in
+signing, probably being generally in a hurry, judging from what my
+mother had told me. I said as much to Mr. Brandish, and he answered
+that he thought it was likely enough, and that that sort of thing was
+often done.
+
+"Now, then," said he, "let us look into the Dorkminster line and trace
+out your connection with that. From what place did your ancestors
+come?"
+
+It seemed to me that he was asking me a good deal more than he was
+telling me, and I said to him: "That is what I want to find out. What
+is the family home of the Dorkminsters?"
+
+"Oh, they were a great Hampshire family," said he. "For five hundred
+years they lived on their estates in Hampshire. The first of the name
+was Sir William Dorkminster, who came over with the Conqueror, and most
+likely was given those estates for his services. Then we go on until we
+come to the Duke of Dorkminster, who built a castle, and whose brother
+Henry was made bishop and founded an abbey, which I am sorry to say
+doesn't now exist, being totally destroyed by Oliver Cromwell."
+
+You cannot imagine how my blood leaped and surged within me as I
+listened to those words. William the Conqueror! An ancestral abbey! A
+duke! "Is the family castle still standing?" said I.
+
+"It fell into ruins," said he, "during the reign of Charles I., and
+even its site is now uncertain, the park having been devoted to
+agricultural purposes. The fourth Duke of Dorkminster was to have
+commanded one of the ships which destroyed the Spanish Armada, but was
+prevented by a mortal fever which cut him off in his prime; he died
+without issue, and the estates passed to the Culverhams of Wilts."
+
+"Did that cut off the line?" said I, very quick.
+
+"Oh, no," said the family-tree man, "the line went on. One of the
+duke's younger sisters must have married a man on condition that he
+took the old family name, which is often done, and her descendants must
+have emigrated somewhere, for the name no longer appears in Hampshire;
+but probably not to America, for that was rather early for English
+emigration."
+
+"Do you suppose," said I, "that they went to Scotland?"
+
+"Very likely," said he, after thinking a minute; "that would be
+probable enough. Have you reason to suppose that there was a Scotch
+branch in your family?"
+
+"Yes," said I, for it would have been positively wrong in me to say
+that the feelings that I had for the Scotch hadn't any meaning at all.
+
+"Now then," said Mr. Brandish, "there you are, madam. There is a line
+all the way down from the Conqueror to the end of the sixteenth
+century, scarcely one man's lifetime before the Pilgrims landed on
+Plymouth Rock."
+
+I now began to calculate in my mind. I was thirty years old; my mother,
+most likely, was about as old when I was born; that made sixty years.
+Then my grandfather might have been forty when my mother was born, and
+there was a century. As for my great-grandfather and his parents, I
+didn't know anything about them. Of course, there must have been such
+persons, but I didn't know where they came from or where they went to.
+
+"I can go back a century," said I, "but that doesn't begin to meet the
+end of the line you have marked out. There's a gap of about two hundred
+years."
+
+"Oh, I don't think I would mind that," said Mr. Brandish. "Gaps of that
+kind are constantly occurring in family trees. In fact, if we was to
+allow gaps of a century or so to interfere with the working out of
+family lines, it would cut off a great many noble ancestries from
+families of high position, especially in the colonies and abroad. I beg
+you not to pay any attention to that, madam."
+
+My nerves was tingling with the thought of the Spanish Armada, and
+perhaps Bannockburn (which then made me wish I had known all this
+before I went to Stirling, but which battle, now as I write, I know
+must have been fought a long time before any of the Dorks went to
+Scotland), and I expect my eyes flashed with family pride, for do what
+I would I couldn't sit calm and listen to what I was hearing. But,
+after all, that two hundred years did weigh upon my mind. "If you make
+a family tree for me," said I, "you will have to cut off the trunk and
+begin again somewhere up in the air."
+
+"Oh, no," said he, "we don't do that. We arrange the branches so that
+they overlap each other, and the dotted lines which indicate the
+missing portions are not noticed. Then, after further investigation and
+more information, the dots can be run together and the tree made
+complete and perfect."
+
+Of course, I had nothing more to say, and he promised to send me the
+tree the next morning, though, of course, requesting me to pay him in
+advance, which was the rule of the office, and you would be amazed,
+madam, if you knew how much that tree cost. I got it the next morning,
+but I haven't shown it to Jone yet. I am proud that I own it, and I
+have thrills through me whenever my mind goes back to its Norman roots;
+but I am bound to say that family trees sometimes throw a good deal of
+shade over their owners, especially when they have gaps in them, which
+seems contrary to nature, but is true to fact.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-six_
+
+
+SOUTHWESTERN HOTEL, SOUTHAMPTON
+
+To-morrow our steamer sails, and this is the last letter I write on
+English soil; and although I haven't done half that I wanted to, there
+are ever so many things I have done that I can't write you about.
+
+I had seen so few cathedrals that on the way down here I was bound to
+see at least one good one, and so we stopped at Winchester. It was
+while walking under the arches of that venerable pile that the thought
+suddenly came to me that we were now in Hampshire, and that, perhaps,
+in this cathedral might be some of the tombs of my ancestors. Without
+saying what I was after I began at one of the doors, and I went clean
+around that enormous church, and read every tablet in the walls and on
+the floor.
+
+Once I had a shock. There was a good many small tombs with roofs over
+them, and statues of people buried within, lying on top of the tombs,
+and some of them had their faces and clothes colored so as to make them
+look almost as natural as life. They was mostly bishops, and had been
+lying there for centuries. While looking at these I came to a tomb
+with an opening low down on the side of it, and behind some iron bars
+there lay a stone figure that made me fairly jump. He was on his back
+with hardly any clothes on, and was actually nothing but skin and
+bones. His mouth was open, as if he was gasping for his last breath. I
+never saw such an awful sight, and as I looked at the thing my blood
+began to run cold, and then it froze. The freezing was because I
+suddenly thought to myself that this might be a Dorkminster, and that
+that horrible object was my ancestor. I was actually afraid to look at
+the inscription on the tombstone for fear that this was so, for if it
+was, I knew that whenever I should think of my family tree this bag of
+bones would be climbing up the trunk, or sitting on one of the
+branches. But I must know the truth, and trembling so that I could
+scarcely read, I stooped down to look at the inscription and find out
+who that dreadful figure had been. It was not a Dorkminster, and my
+spirits rose.
+
+[Illustration: "This might be a Dorkminster"]
+
+We got here three days ago, and we have made a visit to the Isle of
+Wight. We went straight down to the southern coast, and stopped all
+night at the little town of Bonchurch. It was very lovely down there
+with roses and other flowers blooming out-of-doors as if it was summer,
+although it is now getting so cold everywhere else. But what pleased me
+most was to stand at the top of a little hill, and look out over the
+waters of the English Channel, and feel that not far out of eyeshot was
+the beautiful land of France with its lower part actually touching
+Italy.
+
+You know, madam, that when we was here before, we was in France, and a
+happy woman was I to be there, although so much younger than now I
+couldn't properly enjoy it; but even then France was only part of the
+road to Italy, which, alas, we never got to. Some day, however, I shall
+float in a gondola and walk amid the ruins of ancient Rome, and if Jone
+is too sick of travel to go with me, it may be necessary for Corinne to
+see the world, and I shall take her.
+
+Now I must finish this letter and bid good-by to beautiful Britain,
+which has made us happy and treated us well in spite of some
+comparisons in which we was expected to be on the wrong side, but which
+hurt nobody, and which I don't want even to think of at such a moment
+as this.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-seven_
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+I send you this, madam, to let you know that we arrived here safely
+yesterday afternoon, and that we are going to-day to Jone's mother's
+farm where Corinne is.
+
+I liked sailing from Southampton because when I start to go to a place
+I like to go, and when we went home before and had to begin by going
+all the way up to Liverpool by land, and then coming all the way back
+again by water, and after a couple of days of this to stop at
+Queenstown and begin the real voyage from there, I did not like it,
+although it was a good deal of fun seeing the bumboat women come aboard
+at Queenstown and telescope themselves into each other as they hurried
+up the ladder to get on deck and sell us things.
+
+We had a very good voyage, with about enough rolling to make the dining
+saloon look like some of the churches we've seen abroad on weekdays
+where there was services regular, but mighty small congregations.
+
+When we got in sight of my native shore, England, Scotland, and even
+the longed-for Italy, with her palaces and gondolas, faded from my
+mind, and my every fibre tingled with pride and patriotism. We reached
+our dock about six o'clock in the afternoon, and I could scarcely stand
+still, so anxious was I to get ashore. There was a train at eight which
+reached Rockbridge at half-past nine, and there we could take a
+carriage and drive to the farm in less than an hour, and then Corinne
+would be in my arms, so you may imagine my state of mind--Corinne
+before bedtime! But a cloud blacker than the heaviest fog came down
+upon me, for while we was standing on the deck, expecting every minute
+to land, a man came along and shouted at the top of his voice that no
+baggage could be examined by the custom-house officers after six
+o'clock, and the passengers could take nothing ashore with them but
+their hand-bags, and must come back in the morning and have their
+baggage examined. When I heard this my soul simply boiled within me! I
+looked at Jone, and I could see he was boiling just as bad.
+
+"Jone," said I, "don't say a word to me."
+
+"I am not going to say a word," said he, and he didn't. All our
+belongings was in our trunks. Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had
+only a little one which had in it three newspapers, which we bought
+from the pilot, a tooth-brush, a spool of thread and some needles, and
+a pair of scissors with one point broken off. With these things we had
+to go to a hotel and spend the night, and in the morning we had to go
+back to have our trunks examined, which, as there was nothing in them
+to pay duty on, was waste time for all parties, no matter when it was
+done.
+
+[Illustration: "Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had only a little
+one"]
+
+That night, when I was lying awake thinking about this welcome to our
+native land, I don't say that I hauled down the stars and stripes, but
+I did put them at half mast. When we arrived in England we got ashore
+about twelve o'clock at night, but there was the custom-house officers
+as civil and obliging as any people could be, ready to tend to us and
+pass us on. And when I thought of them, and afterward of the lordly
+hirelings who met us here, I couldn't help feeling what a glorious
+thing it would be to travel if you could get home without coming back.
+
+Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that we ought to be very glad we
+don't like this sort of thing. "In many foreign countries," said he,
+"people are a good deal nagged by their governments and they like it;
+we don't like it, so haul up your flag."
+
+I hauled it up, and it's flying now from the tiptop of my tallest mast.
+In an hour our train starts, and I shall see Corinne before the sun
+goes down.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pomona's Travels, by Frank R. Stockton
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
+    content="text/html; charset=us-ascii" />
+<meta content="pg2html (binary v0.16)"
+    name="generator" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of
+    Pomona's Travels,
+    by Frank R. Stockton
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[*/
+    <!--
+ body { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; }
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+        margin-top:    .75em;
+        font-size:     100%;
+        text-align:    justify;
+        margin-bottom: .75em; }
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+    hr  { width: 60%; }
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+            font-size: 85%; }
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+    .poem p.i8  { margin-left: 4em; }
+    .poem p.i10 { margin-left: 5em; }
+    .toc  { margin-left: 15%; font-size: 80%; margin-bottom: 0em;}
+    .toc2  { margin-left: 5%; font-size: 80%; margin-bottom: 0em;}
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pomona's Travels, by Frank R. Stockton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pomona's Travels
+       A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former
+              Handmaiden
+              
+
+Author: Frank R. Stockton
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2004 [EBook #12460]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POMONA'S TRAVELS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Asad Razzaki and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div style="height: 8em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h3>
+    <i>POMONA'S TRAVELS</i>
+</h3>
+<h4>
+    <i>A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her former
+    Handmaiden</i>
+</h4>
+<hr />
+<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/img001.jpg" width="643" height="151"
+alt="" />
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h1>
+    POMONA'S TRAVELS
+</h1>
+<a name="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/img001a.jpg" width="250" height="167"
+alt="" />
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h3>
+    BY
+</h3>
+<h2>
+    FRANK R. STOCKTON
+</h2>
+<center>
+    1894
+</center>
+<h4>
+    Illustrated
+</h4>
+<h4>
+    by
+</h4>
+<h3>
+    A.B. Frost
+</h3>
+<a name="image-0003"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/img001b.jpg" width="620" height="129"
+alt="" />
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<hr />
+<center>
+    <i>In Uniform Binding</i><br /><br />
+   <i>RUDDER GRANGE<br />
+    Illustrated by A.B. Frost.</i><br /><br />
+    <i>POMONA'S TRAVELS<br />
+    Illustrated by A.B. Frost.</i><br />
+</center>
+<hr />
+<a name="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/toc1.jpg">
+<img src="images/toc1s.jpg" width="200" height="148"
+alt="Contents" /></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0001">
+POMONA'S TRAVELS
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0002">
+LETTER ONE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Wanted,&mdash;a Vicarage</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0003">
+LETTER TWO.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>On the Four-in-hand</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0004">
+    LETTER THREE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Jone overshadows the Waiter</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0005">
+    LETTER FOUR.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>The Cottage at Chedcombe</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0006">
+LETTER FIVE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Pomona takes a Lodger</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0007">
+    LETTER SIX.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Pomona expounds Americanisms</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0008">
+    LETTER SEVEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>The Hayfield</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0009">
+    LETTER EIGHT.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Jone teaches Young Ladies how to Rake</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0010">
+    LETTER NINE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>A Runaway Tricycle</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0011">
+    LETTER TEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Pomona slides Backward down the Slope of the Centuries</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0012">
+    LETTER ELEVEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>On the Moors</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0013">
+    LETTER TWELVE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Stag-hunting on a Tricycle</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0014">
+    LETTER THIRTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>The Green Placard</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0015">
+    LETTER FOURTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Pomona and her David Llewellyn</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0016">
+    LETTER FIFTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Hogs and the Fine Arts</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0017">
+    LETTER SIXTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>With Dickens in London</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0018">
+    LETTER SEVENTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Buxton and the Bath Chairs</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0019">
+    LETTER EIGHTEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Mr. Poplington as Guide</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0020">
+    LETTER NINETEEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Angelica and Pomeroy</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0021">
+    LETTER TWENTY.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>The Countess of Mussleby</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0022">
+    LETTER TWENTY-ONE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Edinboro' Town</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0023">
+    LETTER TWENTY-TWO.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Pomona and her Gilly</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0024">
+    LETTER TWENTY-THREE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>They follow the Lady of the Lake</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0025">
+    LETTER TWENTY-FOUR.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Comparisons become Odious to Pomona</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0026">
+    LETTER TWENTY-FIVE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>The Family-Tree-Man</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0027">
+    LETTER TWENTY-SIX.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Searching for Dorkminsters</i></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0028">
+    LETTER TWENTY-SEVEN.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc2"><i>Their Country and their Custom House</i></p>
+
+<a name="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/toc2.jpg">
+<img src="images/toc2s.jpg" width="150" height="72"
+alt="" /></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<hr />
+
+<a name="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/loi1.jpg">
+<img src="images/loi1s.jpg" width="200" height="133"
+alt="List of Illustrations" /></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0001"><i>Title Page</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0004"><i>Vignette Heading to Table of Contents</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0005"><i>Tail piece to Table of Contents</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0006"><i>Vignette Heading to List of Illustrations</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0007"><i>Tail-piece to List of Illustrations</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0008"><i>Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0009"><i>"Boy, go order me a four-in-hand"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0010">
+ <i>The Landlady with an "underdone visage"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0011">
+<i>"I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0012">
+    <i>"Down came a shower of rain"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0013">
+<i>"Ask the waiter what the French words mean"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0014">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0015">
+<i>Jone giving an order</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0016">
+<i>The Carver</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0017">
+<i>"You Americans are the speediest people"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0018">
+<i>"That was our house"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0019">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0020">
+<i>"The young lady who keeps the bar"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0021">
+<i>"I see signs of weakening in the social boom"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0022">
+<i>At the Abbey</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0023">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0024">
+<i>"There, with the bar lady and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, was
+    Jone"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0025">
+<i>"At last I did get on my feet"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0026">
+<i>"Rise, Sir Jane Puddle"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0027">
+<i>Vignette Heading and initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0028">
+<i>"In an instant I was free"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0029">
+<i>"If you was a man I'd break your head"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0030">
+<i>"I'm a Home Ruler"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0031">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0032">
+<i>"And with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam engine"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0033">
+<i>"In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0034">
+<i>"Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0035">
+<i>Mr. Poplington looking for luggage</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0036">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0037">
+<i>Pomona encourages Jonas</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0038">
+<i>"Stop, lady, and I'll get out"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0039">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0040">
+<i>"Your brother is over there"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0041">
+<i>To the Cat and Fiddle</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0042">
+<i>"And did you like Chedcombe?"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0043">
+<i>"Jone looked at him and said that was the Highland costume"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0044">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0045">
+<i>"I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
+    wild twirl over my head"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0046">
+<i>Pomona drinking it in</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0047">
+<i>Vignette Heading and Initial Letter</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0048">
+<i>"A person who was a family-tree-man"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0049">
+<i>"This might be a Dorkminster"</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0050">
+<i>Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had only a little one</i>
+</a></p>
+
+<a name="image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/loi2.jpg">
+<img src="images/loi2s.jpg" width="120" height="101"
+alt="" /></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+
+<hr />
+
+<a name="2H_4_0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    POMONA'S TRAVELS
+</h2>
+<p>
+    This series of letters, written by Pomona of "Rudder Grange" to her
+    former mistress, Euphemia, may require a few words of introduction.
+    Those who have not read the adventures and experiences of Pomona in
+    "Rudder Grange" should be told that she first appeared in that story as
+    a very young and illiterate girl, fond of sensational romances, and
+    with some out-of-the-way ideas in regard to domestic economy and the
+    conventions of society. This romantic orphan took service in the
+    "Rudder Grange" family, and as the story progressed she grew up into a
+    very estimable young woman, and finally married Jonas, the son of a
+    well-to-do farmer. Even after she came into possession of a husband and
+    a daughter Pomona did not lose her affection for her former employers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    About a year before the beginning of the travels described in these
+    letters Jonas's father died and left a comfortable little property,
+    which placed Pomona and her husband in independent circumstances. The
+    ideas and ambitions of this eccentric but sensible young woman
+    enlarged with her fortune. As her daughter was now going to school,
+    Pomona was seized with the spirit of emulation, and determined as far
+    as was possible to make the child's education an advantage to herself.
+    Some of the books used by the little girl at school were carefully and
+    earnestly studied by her mother, and as Jonas joined with hearty
+    good-will in the labors and pleasures of this system of domestic study,
+    the family standard of education was considerably raised. In the
+    quick-witted and observant Pomona the improvement showed itself
+    principally in her methods of expression, and although she could not be
+    called at the time of these travels an educated woman, she was by no
+    means an ignorant one.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the daughter was old enough she was allowed to accept an
+    invitation from her grandmother to spend the summer in the country, and
+    Pomona determined that it was the duty of herself and husband to avail
+    themselves of this opportunity for foreign travel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Accordingly, one fine spring morning, Pomona, still a young woman, and
+    Jonas, not many years older, but imbued with a semi-pathetic
+    complaisance beyond his years, embarked for England and Scotland, to
+    which countries it was determined to limit their travels. The letters
+    which follow were written in consequence of the earnest desire of
+    Euphemia to have a full account of the travels and foreign impressions
+    of her former handmaiden. Pruned of dates, addresses, signatures, and
+    of many personal and friendly allusions, these letters are here
+    presented as Pomona wrote them to Euphemia.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number One</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img006.jpg" width="613" height="159"
+alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img006l.jpg" width="155" height="130"
+alt="T" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    LONDON
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    he first thing Jone said to me when I told him I was going to write
+    about what I saw and heard was that I must be careful of two things. In
+    the first place, I must not write a lot of stuff that everybody ought
+    to be expected to know, especially people who have travelled
+    themselves; and in the second place, I must not send you my green
+    opinions, but must wait until they were seasoned, so that I can see
+    what they are good for before I send them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But if I do that," said I, "I will get tired of them long before they
+    are seasoned, and they will be like a bundle of old sticks that I
+    wouldn't offer to anybody." Jone laughed at that, and said I might as
+    well send them along green, for, after all, I wasn't the kind of a
+    person to keep things until they were seasoned, to see if I liked them.
+    "That's true," said I, "there's a great many things, such as husbands
+    and apples, that I like a good deal better fresh than dry. Is that all
+    the advice you've got to give?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For the present," said he; "but I dare say I shall have a good deal
+    more as we go along."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right," said I, "but be careful you don't give me any of it green.
+    Advice is like gooseberries, that's got to be soft and ripe, or else
+    well cooked and sugared, before they're fit to take into anybody's
+    stomach."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone was standing at the window of our sitting-room when I said this,
+    looking out into the street. As soon as we got to London we took
+    lodgings in a little street running out of the Strand, for we both want
+    to be in the middle of things as long as we are in this conglomerate
+    town, as Jone calls it. He says, and I think he is about right, that it
+    is made up of half a dozen large cities, ten or twelve towns, at least
+    fifty villages, more than a hundred little settlements, or hamlets, as
+    they call them here, and about a thousand country houses scattered
+    along around the edges; and over and above all these are the
+    inhabitants of a large province, which, there being no province to put
+    them into, are crammed into all the cracks and crevices so as to fill
+    up the town and pack it solid.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we was in London before, with you and your husband, madam, and we
+    lost my baby in Kensington Gardens, we lived, you know, in a peaceful,
+    quiet street by a square or crescent, where about half the inhabitants
+    were pervaded with the solemnities of the past and the other half bowed
+    down by the dolefulness of the present, and no way of getting anywhere
+    except by descending into a movable tomb, which is what I always think
+    of when we go anywhere in the underground railway. But here we can walk
+    to lots of things we want to see, and if there was nothing else to keep
+    us lively the fear of being run over would do it, you may be sure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But, after all, Jone and me didn't come here to London just to see the
+    town. We have ideas far ahead of that. When we was in London before I
+    saw pretty nearly all the sights, for when I've got work like that to
+    do I don't let the grass grow under my feet, and what we want to do on
+    this trip is to see the country part of England and Scotland. And in
+    order to see English country life just as it is, we both agreed that
+    the best thing to do was to take a little house in the country and live
+    there a while; and I'll say here that this is the only plan of the
+    whole journey that Jone gets real enthusiastic about, for he is a
+    domestic man, as you well know, and if anything swells his veins with
+    fervent rapture it is the idea of living in some one place continuous,
+    even if it is only for a month.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As we wanted a house in the country we came to London to get it, for
+    London is the place to get everything. Our landlady advised us, when we
+    told her what we wanted, to try and get a vicarage in some little
+    village, because, she said, there are always lots of vicars who want to
+    go away for a month in the summer, and they can't do it unless they
+    rent their houses while they are gone. And in fact, some of them, she
+    said, got so little salary for the whole year, and so much rent for
+    their vicarages while they are gone, that they often can't afford to
+    stay in places unless they go away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So we answered some advertisements, and there was no lack of them in
+    the papers, and three agents came to see us, but we did not seem to
+    have any luck. Each of them had a house to let which ought to have
+    suited us, according to their descriptions, and although we found the
+    prices a good deal higher than we expected, Jone said he wasn't going
+    to be stopped by that, because it was only for a little while and for
+    the sake of experience&mdash;and experience, as all the poets, and a good
+    many of the prose writers besides, tell us, is always dear. But after
+    the agents went away, saying they would communicate with us in the
+    morning, we never heard anything more from them, and we had to begin
+    all over again. There was something the matter, Jone and I both agreed
+    on that, but we didn't know what it was. But I waked up in the night
+    and thought about this thing for a whole hour, and in the morning I had
+    an idea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jone," said I, when we was eating breakfast, "it's as plain as A B C
+    that those agents don't want us for tenants, and it isn't because they
+    think we are not to be trusted, for we'd have to pay in advance, and so
+    their money's safe; it is something else, and I think I know what it
+    is. These London men are very sharp, and used to sizing and sorting all
+    kinds of people as if they was potatoes being got ready for market, and
+    they have seen that we are not what they call over here gentlefolks."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No lordly airs, eh?" said Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I don't mean that," I answered him back; "lordly airs don't go
+    into parsonages, and I don't mean either that they see from our looks
+    or manners that you used to drive horses and milk cows and work in the
+    garden, and that I used to cook and scrub and was maid-of-all-work on a
+    canal-boat; but they do see that we are not the kind of people who are
+    in the habit, in this country, at least, of spending their evenings in
+    the best parlors of vicarages."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you suppose," said Jone, "that they think a vicar's kitchen would
+    suit us better?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," said I, "they wouldn't put us in a vicarage at all; there
+    wouldn't be no place there that would not be either too high or too low
+    for us. It's my opinion that what they think we belong in is a lordly
+    house, where you'd shine most as head butler or a steward, while I'd be
+    the housekeeper or a leading lady's maid."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By George!" said Jone, getting up from the table, "if any of those
+    fellows would favor me with an opinion like that I'd break his head."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You'd have a lot of heads to break," said I, "if you went through this
+    country asking for opinions on the subject. It's all very well for us
+    to remember that we've got a house of our own as good as most rectors
+    have over here, and money enough to hire a minor canon, if we needed
+    one in the house; but the people over here don't know that, and it
+    wouldn't make much difference if they did, for it wouldn't matter how
+    nice we lived or what we had so long as they knew we was retired
+    servants."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this Jone just blazed up and rammed his hands into his pockets and
+    spread his feet wide upon the floor. "Pomona," said he, "I don't mind
+    it in you, but if anybody else was to call me a retired servant I'd&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hold up, Jone," said I, "don't waste good, wholesome anger." Now, I
+    tell you, madam, it really did me good to see Jone blaze up and get red
+    in the face, and I am sure that if he'd get his blood boiling oftener
+    it would be a good thing for his dyspeptic tendencies and what little
+    malaria may be left in his system. "It won't do any good to flare up
+    here," I went on to say to him; "fact's fact, and we was servants, and
+    good ones, too, though I say it myself, and the trouble is we haven't
+    got into the way of altogether forgetting it, or, at least, acting as
+    if we had forgotten it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone sat down on a chair. "It might help matters a little," he said,
+    "if I knew what you was driving at."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I mean just this," said I, "as long as we are as anxious not to give
+    trouble, or as careful of people's feelings, as good-mannered to
+    servants, and as polite and good-natured to everybody we have anything
+    to do with, as we both have been since we came here, and as it is our
+    nature to be, I am proud to say, we're bound to be set down, at least
+    by the general run of people over here, as belonging to the pick of the
+    nobility and gentry, or as well-bred servants. It's only those two
+    classes that act as we do, and anybody can see we are not special
+    nobles and gents. Now, if we want to be reckoned anywhere in between
+    these two we've got to change our manners."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Will you kindly mention just how?" said Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said I, "I will. In the first place, we've got to act as if we
+    had always been waited on and had never been satisfied with the way it
+    was done; we've got to let people think that we think we are a good
+    deal better than they are, and what they think about it doesn't make
+    the least difference; and then again we've got to live in better
+    quarters than these, and whatever they may be we must make people
+    think that we don't think they are quite good enough for us. If we do
+    all that, agents may be willing to let us vicarages."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It strikes me," said Jone, "that these quarters are good enough for
+    us. I'm comfortable." And then he went on to say, madam, that when you
+    and your husband was in London you was well satisfied with just such
+    lodgings.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's all very well," I said, "for they never moved in the lower
+    paths of society, and so they didn't have to make any change, but just
+    went along as they had been used to go. But if we want to make people
+    believe we belong to that class I should choose, if I had my pick out
+    of English social varieties, we've got to bounce about as much above it
+    as we were born below it, so that we can strike somewhere near the
+    proper average."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And what variety would you pick out, I'd like to know?" said Jone,
+    just a little red in the face, and looking as if I had told him he
+    didn't know timothy hay from oat straw.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said I, "it is not easy to put it to you exactly, but it's a
+    sort of a cross between a prosperous farmer without children and a poor
+    country gentleman with two sons at college and one in the British army,
+    and no money to pay their debts with."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That last is not to my liking," said Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But the farmer part of the cross would make it all right," I said to
+    him, "and it strikes me that a mixture like that would just suit us
+    while we are staying over here. Now, if you will try to think of
+    yourself as part rich farmer and part poor gentleman, I'll consider
+    myself the wife of the combination, and I am sure we will get along
+    better. We didn't come over here to be looked upon as if we was the
+    bottom of a pie dish and charged as if we was the upper crust. I'm in
+    favor of paying a little more money and getting a lot more
+    respectfulness, and the way to begin is to give up these lodgings and
+    go to a hotel such as the upper middlers stop at. From what I've heard,
+    the Babylon Hotel is the one for us while we are in London. Nobody will
+    suspect that any of the people at that hotel are retired servants."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/img009.jpg">
+<img src="images/img009s.jpg" width="225" height="236"
+alt="'BOY, GO ORDER ME A FOUR-IN-HAND'" />
+<br />'BOY, GO ORDER ME A FOUR-IN-HAND'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    This hit Jone hard, as I knew it would, and he jumped up, made three
+    steps across the room, and rang the bell so that the people across the
+    street must have heard it, and up came the boy in green jacket and
+    buttons, with about every other button missing, and I never knew him to
+    come up so quick before.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Boy," said Jone to him, as if he was hollering to a stubborn ox, "go
+    order me a four-in-hand."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But this letter is so long I must stop for the present.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Two</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    LONDON
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone gave the remarkable order mentioned in my last letter I did
+    not correct him, for I wouldn't do that before servants without giving
+    him a chance to do it himself; but before either of us could say
+    another word the boy was gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mercy on us," I said, "what a stupid blunder! You meant four-wheeler."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/img010.jpg">
+<img src="images/img010s.jpg" width="120" height="200"
+alt="THE LANDLADY WITH AN 'UNDERDONE VISAGE'" />
+<br />THE LANDLADY WITH AN 'UNDERDONE VISAGE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "Of course I did," he said; "I was a little mad and got things mixed,
+    but I expect the fellow understood what I meant."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You ought to have called a hansom any way," I said, "for they are a
+    lot more stylish to go to a hotel in than in a four-wheeler."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If there was six-wheelers I would have ordered one," said he. "I don't
+    want anybody to have more wheels than we have."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this moment the landlady came into the room with a sarcastic glimmer
+    on her underdone visage, and, says she, "I suppose you don't
+    understand about the vehicles we have in London. The four-in-hand is
+    what the quality and coach people use when&mdash;" As I looked at Jone I saw
+    his legs tremble, and I know what that means. If I was a wanderin' dog
+    and saw Jone's legs tremble, the only thoughts that would fill my soul
+    would be such as cluster around "Home, Sweet Home." Jone was too much
+    riled by the woman's manner to be willing to let her think he had made
+    a mistake, and he stopped her short. "Look here," he said to her, "I
+    don't ask you to come here to tell me anything about vehicles. When I
+    order any sort of a trap I want it." When I heard Jone say trap my soul
+    lifted itself and I knew there was hope for us. The stiffness melted
+    right out of the landlady, and she began to look soft and gummy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you want to take a drive in a four-in-hand coach, sir," she said,
+    "there's two or three of them starts every morning from Trafalgar
+    Square, and it's not too late now, sir, if you go over there
+    immediate."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Go?" said Jone, throwing himself into a chair, "I said, order one to
+    come. Where I live that sort of vehicle comes to the door for its
+    passengers."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The woman looked at Jone with a venerative uplifting of her eyebrows.
+    "I can't say, sir, that a coach will come, but I'll send the boy. They
+    go to Dorking, and Seven Oaks, and Virginia Water&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I want to go to Virginia Water," said Jone, as quick as lightning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, then," said I, when the woman had gone, "what are you going to do
+    if the coach comes?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Go to Virginia Water in it," said Jone, "and when we come back we can
+    go to the hotel. I made a mistake, but I've got to stand by it or be
+    called a greenhorn."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was in hopes the four-in-hand wouldn't come, but in less than ten
+    minutes there drove up to our door a four-horse coach which, not having
+    half enough passengers, was glad to come such a little ways to get some
+    more. There was a man in a high hat and red coat, who was blowing a
+    horn as the thing came around the corner, and just as I was looking
+    into the coach and thinking we'd have it all to ourselves, for there
+    was nobody in it, he put a ladder up against the top, and says he,
+    touching his hat, "There's a seat for you, madam, right next the
+    coachman, and one just behind for the gentleman. 'Tain't often that, on
+    a fine morning like this, such seats as them is left vacant on account
+    of a sudden case of croup in a baronet's family."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I looked at the ladder and I looked at that top front seat, and I tell
+    you, madam, I trembled in every pore, but I remembered then that all
+    the respectable seats was on top, and the farther front the nobbier,
+    and as there was a young woman sitting already on the box-seat, I made
+    up my mind that if she could sit there I could, and that I wasn't
+    going to let Jone or anybody else see that I was frightened by style
+    and fashion, though confronted by it so sudden and unexpected. So up
+    that ladder I went quick enough, having had practice in hay-mows, and
+    sat myself down between the young woman and the coachman, and when Jone
+    had tucked himself in behind me the horner blew his horn and away we
+    went.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0011"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/img011.jpg">
+<img src="images/img011s.jpg" width="192" height="200"
+alt="'I LOOKED AT THE LADDER AND AT THE TOP FRONT SEAT'" /><br />
+'I LOOKED AT THE LADDER AND AT THE TOP FRONT SEAT'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I tell you, madam, that box-seat was a queer box for me. I felt as
+    though I was sitting on the eaves of a roof with a herd of horses
+    cavoorting under my feet. I never had a bird's-eye view of horses
+    before. Looking down on their squirming bodies, with the coachman
+    almost standing on his tiptoes driving them, was so different from
+    Jone's buggy and our tall gray horse, which in general we look up to,
+    that for a good while I paid no attention to anything but the danger of
+    falling out on top of them. But having made sure that Jone was holding
+    on to my dress from behind, I began to take an interest in the things
+    around me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Knowing as much as I thought I did about the bigness of London, I found
+    that morning that I never had any idea of what an everlasting town it
+    is. It is like a skein of tangled yarn&mdash;there doesn't seem to be any
+    end to it. Going in this way from Nelson's Monument out into the
+    country, it was amazing to see how long it took to get there. We would
+    go out of the busy streets into a quiet rural neighborhood, or what
+    looked like it, and the next thing we knew we'd be in another whirl of
+    omnibuses and cabs, with people and shops everywhere; and we'd go on
+    and through this and then come to another handsome village with country
+    houses, and the street would end in another busy town; and so on until
+    I began to think there was no real country, at least, in the direction
+    we was going. It is my opinion that if London was put on a pivot and
+    spun round in the State of Texas until it all flew apart, it would
+    spread all over the State and settle up the whole country.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last we did get away from the houses and began to roll along on the
+    best made road I ever saw, with a hedge on each side and the greenest
+    grass in the fields, and the most beautiful trees, with the very trunks
+    covered with green leaves, and with white sheep and handsome cattle and
+    pretty thatched cottages, and everything in perfect order, looking as
+    if it had just been sprinkled and swept. We had seen English country
+    before, but that was from the windows of a train, and it was very
+    different from this sort of thing, where we went meandering along
+    lanes, for that is what the roads look like, being so narrow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just as I was getting my whole soul full of this lovely ruralness, down
+    came a shower of rain without giving the least notice. I gave a jump in
+    my seat as I felt it on me, and began to get ready to get down as soon
+    as the coachman should stop for us all to get inside; but he didn't
+    stop, but just drove along as if the sun was shining and the balmy
+    breezes blowing, and then I looked around and not a soul of the eight
+    people on the top of that coach showed the least sign of expecting to
+    get down and go inside. They all sat there just as if nothing was
+    happening, and not one of them even mentioned the rain. But I noticed
+    that each of them had on a mackintosh or some kind of cape, whereas
+    Jone and I never thought of taking anything in the way of waterproof or
+    umbrellas, as it was perfectly clear when we started.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/img012.jpg">
+<img src="images/img012s.jpg" width="305" height="200"
+alt="'DOWN CAME A SHOWER OF RAIN'" />
+<br />'DOWN CAME A SHOWER OF RAIN'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I looked around at Jone, but he sat there with his face as placid as a
+    piece of cheese, looking as if he had no more knowledge it was raining
+    than the two Englishmen on the seat next him. Seeing he wasn't going to
+    let those men think he minded the rain any more than they did, I
+    determined that I wouldn't let the young woman who was sitting by me
+    have any notion that I minded it, and so I sat still, with as cheerful
+    a look as I could screw up, gazing at the trees with as gladsome a
+    countenance as anybody could have with water trickling down her nose,
+    her cheeks dripping, and dewdrops on her very eyelashes, while the
+    dampness of her back was getting more and more perceptible as each
+    second dragged itself along. Jone turned up the hood of my coat, and so
+    let down into the back of my neck what water had collected in it; but I
+    didn't say anything, but set my teeth hard together and fixed my mind
+    on Columbia, happy land, and determined never to say anything about
+    rain until some English person first mentioned it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But when one of the flowers on my hat leaned over the brim and exuded
+    bloody drops on the front of my coat I began to weaken, and to think
+    that if there was nothing better to do I might get under one of the
+    seats; but just then the rain stopped and the sun shone. It was so
+    sudden that it startled me; but not one of those English people
+    mentioned that the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, and so
+    neither did Jone or I. We was feeling mighty moist and unhappy, but we
+    tried to smile as if we was plants in a greenhouse, accustomed to being
+    watered and feeling all the better for it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I can't write you all about the coach drive, which was very delightful,
+    nor of that beautiful lake they call Virginia Water, and which I know
+    you have a picture of in your house. They tell me it is artificial, but
+    as it was made more than a hundred years ago, it might now be
+    considered natural. We dined at an inn, and when we got back to town,
+    with two more showers on the way, I said to Jone that I thought we'd
+    better go straight to the Babylon Hotel, which we intended to start out
+    for, although it was a long way round to go by Virginia Water, and see
+    about engaging a room; and as Jone agreed I asked the coachman if he
+    would put us down there, knowing that he'd pass near it. He agreed to
+    this, would be an advertisement for his coach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got on the street where the Babylon Hotel was he whipped up his
+    horses so that they went almost on a run, and the horner blew his horn
+    until his eyes seemed bursting, and with a grand sweep and a clank and
+    a jingle we pulled up at the front of the big hotel. Out marched the
+    head porter in a blue uniform, and out ran two under-porters with red
+    coats, and down jumped the horner and put up his ladder, and Jone and I
+    got down, after giving the coachman half-a-crown, and receiving from
+    the passengers a combined gaze of differentialism which had been wholly
+    wanting before. The men in the red coats looked disappointed when they
+    saw we had no baggage, but the great doors was flung open and we went
+    straight up to the clerk's desk.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we was taken to look at rooms I remembered that there was always
+    danger of Jone's tendency to thankful contentment getting the better of
+    him, and I took the matter in hand myself. Two rooms good enough for
+    anybody was shown us, but I was not going to take the first thing that
+    was offered, no matter what it was. We settled the matter by getting a
+    first-class room, with sofas and writing-desks and everything
+    convenient, for only a little more than we was charged for the other
+    rooms, and the next morning we went there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we went back to our lodgings to pack up, and I looked in the glass
+    and saw what a smeary, bedraggled state my hat and head was in, from
+    being rained on, I said to Jone, "I don't see how those people ever
+    let such a person as me have a room at their hotel."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It doesn't surprise me a bit," said Jone; "nobody but a very high and
+    mighty person would have dared to go lording it about that hotel with
+    her hat feathers and flowers all plastered down over her head. Most
+    people can be uppish in good clothes, but to look like a scare-crow and
+    be uppish can't be expected except from the truly lofty."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I hope you are right," I said, and I think he was.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We hadn't been at the Babylon Hotel, where we are now, for more than
+    two days when I said to Jone that this sort of thing wasn't going to
+    do. He looked at me amazed. "What on earth is the matter now?" he said.
+    "Here is a room fit for a royal duke, in a house with marble corridors
+    and palace stairs, and gorgeous smoking-rooms, and a post-office, and a
+    dining-room pretty nigh big enough for a hall of Congress, with waiters
+    enough to make two military companies, and the bills of fare all in
+    French. If there is anything more you want, Pomona&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Stop there" said I; "the last thing you mention is the rub. It's the
+    dining-room; it's in that resplendent hall that we've got to give
+    ourselves a social boom or be content to fold our hands and fade away
+    forever."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Which I don't want to do yet," said Jone, "so speak out your trouble."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img013.jpg">
+<img src="images/img013s.jpg" width="243" height="200"
+alt="'ASK THE WAITER WHAT THE FRENCH WORDS MEAN'" />
+<br />'ASK THE WAITER WHAT THE FRENCH WORDS MEAN'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "The trouble this time is you," said I, "and your awful meekness. I
+    never did see anybody anywhere as meek as you are in that dining-room.
+    A half-drowned fly put into the sun to dry would be overbearing and
+    supercilious compared to you. When you sit down at one of those tables
+    you look as if you was afraid of hurting the chair, and when the waiter
+    gives you the bill of fare you ask him what the French words mean, and
+    then he looks down on you as if he was a superior Jove contemplating a
+    hop-toad, and he tells you that this one means beef and the other
+    means potatoes, and brings you the things that are easiest to get. And
+    you look as if you was thankful from the bottom of your heart that he
+    is good enough to give you anything at all. All the airs I put on are
+    no good while you are so extra humble. I tell him I don't want this
+    French thing&mdash;when I don't know what it is&mdash;and he must bring me some
+    of the other&mdash;which I never heard of&mdash;and when it comes I eat it, no
+    matter what it turns out to be, and try to look as if I was used to it,
+    but generally had it better cooked. But, as I said before, it is of no
+    use&mdash;your humbleness is too much for me. In a few days they will be
+    bringing us cold victuals, and recommending that we go outside
+    somewhere and eat them, as all the seats in the dining-room are wanted
+    for other people."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Jone, "I must say I do feel a little overshadowed when I
+    go into that dining-room and see those proud and haughty waiters, some
+    of them with silver chains and keys around their necks, showing that
+    they are lords of the wine-cellar, and all of them with an air of lofty
+    scorn for the poor beings who have to sit still and be waited on; but
+    I'll try what I can do. As far as I am able, I'll hold up my end of the
+    social boom."
+</p>
+<p>
+    You may think I break off my letters sudden, madam, like the
+    instalments in a sensation weekly, which stops short in the most
+    harrowing parts, so as to make certain the reader will buy the next
+    number; but when I've written as much as I think two foreign stamps
+    will carry&mdash;for more than fivepence seems extravagant for a letter&mdash;I
+    generally stop.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Three</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0014"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img014.jpg" width="620" height="237"
+alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img014l.jpg"width="159" height="147"
+alt="A" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    LONDON
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    t dinner-time the day when I had the conversation with Jone mentioned
+    in my last letter, we was sitting in the dining-room at a little table
+    in a far corner, where we'd never been before. Not being considered of
+    any importance they put us sometimes in one place and sometimes in
+    another, instead of giving us regular seats, as I noticed most of the
+    other people had, and I was looking around to see if anybody was ever
+    coming to wait on us, when suddenly I heard an awful noise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have read about the rumblings of earthquakes, and although I never
+    heard any of them, I have felt a shock, and I can imagine the awfulness
+    of the rumbling, and I had a feeling as if the building was about to
+    sway and swing as they do in earthquakes. It wasn't all my imagining,
+    for I saw the people at the other tables near us jump, and two waiters
+    who was hurrying past stopped short as if they had been jerked up by a
+    curb bit. I turned to look at Jone, but he was sitting up straight in
+    his chair, as solemn and as steadfast as a gate-post, and I thought to
+    myself that if he hadn't heard anything he must have been struck deaf,
+    and I was just on the point of jumping up and shouting to him, "Fly,
+    before the walls and roof come down upon us!" when that awful noise
+    occurred again. My blood stood frigid in my veins, and as I started
+    back I saw before me a waiter, his face ashy pale, and his knees
+    bending beneath him. Some people near us were half getting up from
+    their chairs, and I pushed back and looked at Jone again, who had not
+    moved except that his mouth was open. Then I knew what it was that I
+    thought was an earthquake&mdash;it was Jone giving an order to the waiter.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img015.jpg">
+<img src="images/img015s.jpg" width="213" height="200"
+alt="JONE GIVING AN ORDER" />
+<br />JONE GIVING AN ORDER</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I bit my lips and sat silent; the people around kept on looking at us,
+    and the poor man who was receiving the shock stood trembling like a
+    leaf. When the volcanic disturbance, so to speak, was over, the waiter
+    bowed himself, as if he had been a heathen in a temple, and gasping,
+    "Yes, sir, immediate," glided unevenly away. He hadn't waited on us
+    before, and little thought, when he was going to stride proudly pass
+    our table, what a double-loaded Vesuvius was sitting in Jone's chair. I
+    leaned over the table and said to Jone that if he would stick to that
+    we could rent a bishopric if we wanted to, and I was so proud I could
+    have patted him on the back. Well, after that we had no more trouble
+    about being waited on, for that waiter of ours went about as if he had
+    his neck bared for the fatal stroke and Jone was holding the cimeter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The head waiter came to us before we was done dinner and asked if we
+    had everything we wanted and if that table suited us, because if it did
+    we could always have it. To which Jone distantly thundered that if he
+    would see that it always had a clean tablecloth it would do well
+    enough.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img016.jpg">
+<img src="images/img016.jpg" width="185" height="200"
+alt="THE CARVER" />
+<br />THE CARVER</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    Even the man who stood at the big table in the middle of the room and
+    carved the cold meats, with his hair parted in the middle, and who
+    looked as if he were saying to himself, as with a bland dexterity and
+    tastefulness he laid each slice upon its plate, "Now, then, the
+    socialistic movement in Paris is arrested for the time being, and here
+    again I put an end to the hopes of Russia getting to the sea through
+    Afghanistan, and now I carefully spread contentment over the minds of
+    all them riotous Welsh miners," even he turned around and bowed to us
+    as we passed him, and once sent a waiter to ask if we'd like a little
+    bit of potted beef, which was particularly good that day.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone kept up his rumblings, though they sounded more distant and more
+    deep under ground, and one day at luncheon an elderly woman, who was
+    sitting alone at a table near us, turned to me and spoke. She was a
+    very plain person, with her face all seamed and rough with exposure to
+    the weather, like as if she had been captain to a pilot boat, and with
+    a general appearance of being a cook with good recommendations, but at
+    present out of a place. I might have wondered at such a person being at
+    such a hotel, but remembering what I had been myself I couldn't say
+    what mightn't happen to other people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm glad to see," said she, "that you sent away that mutton, for if
+    more persons would object to things that are not properly cooked we'd
+    all be better served. I suppose that in your country most people are so
+    rich that they can afford to have the best of everything and have it
+    always. I fancy the great wealth of American citizens must make their
+    housekeeping very different from ours."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I must say I began to bristle at being spoken to like that. I'm as
+    proud of being an American as anybody can be, but I don't like the home
+    of the free thrown into my teeth every time I open my mouth. There's no
+    knowing what money Jone and I have lost through giving orders to London
+    cabmen in what is called our American accent. The minute we tell the
+    driver of a hansom where we want to go, that place doubles its distance
+    from the spot we start from. Now I think the great reason Jone's
+    rumbling worked so well was that it had in it a sort of Great British
+    chest-sound, as if his lungs was rusty. The waiter had heard that
+    before and knew what it meant. If he had spoken out in the clear
+    American fashion I expect his voice would have gone clear through the
+    waiter without his knowing it, like the person in the story, whose neck
+    was sliced through and who didn't know it until he sneezed and his head
+    fell off.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, ma'am," said I, answering her with as much of a wearied feeling
+    as I could put on, "our wealth is all very well in some ways, but it is
+    dreadful wearing on us. However, we try to bear up under it and be
+    content."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said she, "contentment is a great blessing in every station,
+    though I have never tried it in yours. Do you expect to make a long
+    stay in London?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    As she seemed like a civil and well-meaning woman, and was the first
+    person who had spoken to us in a social way, I didn't mind talking to
+    her, and I told her we was only stopping in London until we could find
+    the kind of country house we wanted, and when she asked what kind that
+    was, I described what we wanted and how we was still answering
+    advertisements and going to see agents, who was always recommending
+    exactly the kind of house we did not care for.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Vicarages are all very well," said she, "but it sometimes happens, and
+    has happened to friends of mine, that when a vicar has let his house he
+    makes up his mind not to waste his money in travelling, and he takes
+    lodgings near by and keeps an eternal eye upon his tenants. I don't
+    believe any independent American would fancy that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, indeed," said I; and then she went on to say that if we wanted a
+    small country house for a month or two she knew of one which she
+    believed would suit us, and it wasn't a vicarage either. When I asked
+    her to tell me about it she brought her chair up to our table, together
+    with her mug of beer, her bread and cheese, and she went into
+    particulars about the house she knew of.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is situated," said she, "in the west of England, in the most
+    beautiful part of our country. It is near one of the quaintest little
+    villages that the past ages have left us, and not far away are the
+    beautiful waters of the Bristol Channel, with the mountains of Wales
+    rising against the sky on the horizon, and all about are hills and
+    valleys, and woods and beautiful moors and babbling streams, with all
+    the loveliness of cultivated rurality merging into the wild beauties of
+    unadorned nature." If these was not exactly her words, they express the
+    ideas she roused in my mind. She said the place was far enough away
+    from railways and the stream of travel, and among the simple peasantry,
+    and that in the society of the resident gentry we would see English
+    country life as it is, uncontaminated by the tourist or the commercial
+    traveller.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I can't remember all the things she said about this charming cottage in
+    this most supremely beautiful spot, but I sat and listened, and the
+    description held me spell-bound, as a snake fascinates a frog; with
+    this difference, instead of being swallowed by the description, I
+    swallowed it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the old woman had given us the address of the person who had the
+    letting of the cottage, and Jone and me had gone to our room, I said to
+    him, before we had time to sit down:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you think?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think," said he, "that we ought to follow that old woman's advice
+    and go and look at this house."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Go and look at it?" I exclaimed. "Not a bit of it. If we do that, we
+    are bound to see something or hear something that will make us hesitate
+    and consider, and if we do that, away goes our enthusiasm and our
+    rapture. I say, telegraph this minute and say we'll take the house, and
+    send a letter by the next mail with a postal order in it, to secure the
+    place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone looked at me hard, and said he'd feel easier in his mind if he
+    understood what I was talking about.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind understanding," I said. "Go down and telegraph we'll take
+    the house. There isn't a minute to lose!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But," said Jone, "if we find out when we get there&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind that," said I. "If we find out when we get there it isn't
+    all we thought it was, and we're bound to do that, we'll make the best
+    of what doesn't suit us because it can't be helped; but if we go and
+    look at it it's ten to one we won't take it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How long are we to take it for?" said Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A month anyway, and perhaps longer," I told him, giving him a push
+    toward the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right," said he, and he went and telegraphed. I believe if Jone
+    was told he could go anywhere and stay for a month he'd choose that
+    place from among all the most enchanting spots on the earth where he
+    couldn't stay so long. As for me, the one thing that held me was the
+    romanticness of the place. From what the old woman said I knew there
+    couldn't be any mistake about that, and if I could find myself the
+    mistress of a romantic cottage near an ancient village of the olden
+    time I would put up with most everything except dirt, and as dirt and
+    me seldom keeps company very long, even that can't frighten me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I saw the old woman at luncheon the next day and told her what we
+    had done she was fairly dumfounded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really! really!" she said, "you Americans are the speediest people I
+    ever did see. Why, an English person would have taken a week to
+    consider that place before taking it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And lost it, ten to one," said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She shook her head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said she, "I suppose it's on account of your habits, and you
+    can't help it, but it's a poor way of doing business."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0017"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img017.jpg">
+<img src="images/img017s.jpg" width="300" height="165"
+alt="'YOU AMERICANS ARE THE SPEEDIEST PEOPLE'" />
+<br />'YOU AMERICANS ARE THE SPEEDIEST PEOPLE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    Now I began to think from this that her conscience was beginning to
+    trouble her for having given so fairy-like a picture of the house, and
+    as I was afraid that she might think it her duty to bring up some
+    disadvantages, I changed the conversation and got away as soon as I
+    could. When we once get seated at our humble board in our rural cot I
+    won't be afraid of any bugaboos, but I didn't want them brought up
+    then. I can generally depend upon Jone, but sometimes he gets a little
+    stubborn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We didn't see this old person any more, and when I asked the waiter
+    about her the next day he said he was sure she had left the hotel, by
+    which I suppose he must have meant he'd got his half-crown. Her fading
+    away in this fashion made it all seem like a myth or a phantasm, but
+    when, the next morning, we got a receipt for the money Jone sent, and a
+    note saying the house was ready for our reception, I felt myself on
+    solid ground again, and to-morrow we start, bag and baggage, for
+    Chedcombe, which is the name of the village where the house is that we
+    have taken. I'll write to you, madam, as soon as we get there, and I
+    hope with all my heart and soul that when we see what's wrong with
+    it&mdash;and there's bound to be something&mdash;that it may not be anything bad
+    enough to make us give it up and go floating off in voidness, like a
+    spider-web blown before a summer breeze, without knowing what it's
+    going to run against and stick to, and, what is more, probably lose the
+    money we paid in advance.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Four</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p>
+    Last winter Jone and I read all the books we could get about the rural
+    parts of England, and we knew that the country must be very beautiful,
+    but we had no proper idea of it until we came to Chedcombe. I am not
+    going to write much about the scenery in this part of the country,
+    because, perhaps, you have been here and seen it, and anyway my writing
+    would not be half so good as what you could read in books, which don't
+    amount to anything.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All I'll say is that if you was to go over the whole of England, and
+    collect a lot of smooth green hills, with sheep and deer wandering
+    about on them; brooks, with great trees hanging over them, and vines
+    and flowers fairly crowding themselves into the water; lanes and roads
+    hedged in with hawthorn, wild roses, and tall purple foxgloves; little
+    woods and copses; hills covered with heather; thatched cottages like
+    the pictures in drawing-books, with roses against their walls, and thin
+    blue smoke curling up from the chimneys; distant views of the sparkling
+    sea; villages which are nearly covered up by greenness, except their
+    steeples; rocky cliffs all green with vines, and flowers spreading and
+    thriving with the fervor and earnestness you might expect to find in
+    the tropics, but not here&mdash;and then, if you was to put all these points
+    of scenery into one place not too big for your eye to sweep over and
+    take it all in, you would have a country like that around Chedcombe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am sure the old lady was right when she said it was the most
+    beautiful part of England. The first day we was here we carried an
+    umbrella as we walked through all this verdant loveliness, but
+    yesterday morning we went to the village and bought a couple of thin
+    mackintoshes, which will save us a lot of trouble opening and shutting
+    umbrellas.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got out at the Chedcombe station we found a man there with a
+    little carriage he called a fly, who said he had been sent to take us
+    to our house. There was also a van to carry our baggage. We drove
+    entirely through the village, which looked to me as if a bit of the
+    Middle Ages had been turned up by the plough, and on the other edge of
+    it there was our house, and on the doorstep stood a lady, with a
+    smiling eye and an umbrella, and who turned out to be our landlady.
+    Back of her was two other females, one of them looking like a
+    minister's wife, while the other one I knew to be a servant-maid, by
+    her cap.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img018.jpg">
+<img src="images/img018s.jpg" width="124" height="200"
+alt="'THAT WAS OUR HOUSE'" /><br />'THAT WAS OUR HOUSE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    The lady, whose name was Mrs. Shutterfield, shook hands with us and
+    seemed very glad to see us, and the minister's wife took our hand
+    bags from us and told the men where to carry our trunks. Mrs.
+    Shutterfield took us into a little parlor on one side of the hall, and
+    then we three sat down, and I must say I was so busy looking at the
+    queer, delightful room, with everything in it&mdash;chairs, tables, carpets,
+    walls, pictures, and flower-vases&mdash;all belonging to a bygone epoch,
+    though perfectly fresh, as if just made, that I could scarcely pay
+    attention to what the lady said. But I listened enough to know that
+    Mrs. Shutterfield told us that she had taken the liberty of engaging
+    for us two most excellent servants, who had lived in the house before
+    it had been let to lodgers, and who, she was quite sure, would suit us
+    very well, though, of course, we were at liberty to do what we pleased
+    about engaging them. The one that I took for the minister's wife was a
+    combination of cook and housekeeper, by the name of Miss Pondar, and
+    the other was a maid in general, named Hannah. When the lady mentioned
+    two servants it took me a little aback, for we had not expected to have
+    more than one, but when she mentioned the wages, and I found that both
+    put together did not cost as much as a very poor cook would expect in
+    America, and when I remembered we as now at work socially booming
+    ourselves, and that it wouldn't do to let this lady think that we had
+    not been accustomed to varieties of servants, I spoke up and said we
+    would engage the two estimable women she recommended, and was much
+    obliged to her for getting them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then we went over that house, down stairs and up, and of all the
+    lavender-smelling old-fashionedness anybody ever dreamed of, this
+    little house has as much as it can hold. It is fitted up all through
+    like one of your mother's bonnets, which she bought before she was
+    married and never wore on account of a funeral in the family, but kept
+    shut up in a box, which she only opens now and then to show to her
+    descendants. In every room and on the stairs there was a general air of
+    antiquated freshness, mingled with the odors of English breakfast tea
+    and recollections of the story of Cranford, which, if Jone and me had
+    been alone, would have made me dance from the garret of that house to
+    the cellar. Every sentiment of romance that I had in my soul bubbled to
+    the surface, and I felt as if I was one of my ancestors before she
+    emigrated to the colonies. I could not say what I thought, but I
+    pinched Jone's arm whenever I could get a chance, which relieved me a
+    little; and when Miss Pondar had come to me with a little courtesy, and
+    asked me what time I would like to have dinner, and told me what she
+    had taken the liberty of ordering, so as to have everything ready by
+    the time I came, and Mrs. Shutterfield had gone, after begging to know
+    what more she could do for us, and we had gone to our own room, I let
+    out my feelings in one wild scream of delirious gladness that would
+    have been heard all the way to the railroad station if I had not
+    covered my head with two pillows and the corner of a blanket.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After we had dinner, which was as English as the British lion, and much
+    more to our taste than anything we had had in London, Jone went out to
+    smoke a pipe, and I had a talk with Miss Pondar about fish, meat, and
+    groceries, and about housekeeping matters in general. Miss Pondar,
+    whose general aspect of minister's wife began to wear off when I talked
+    to her, mingles respectfulness and respectability in a manner I haven't
+    been in the habit of seeing. Generally those two things run against
+    each other, but they don't in her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When she asked what kind of wine we preferred I must say I was struck
+    all in a heap, for wines to Jone and me is like a trackless wilderness
+    without compass or binnacle light, and we seldom drink them except made
+    hot, with nutmeg grated in, for colic; but as I wanted her to
+    understand that if there was any luxuries we didn't order it was
+    because we didn't approve of them, I told her that we was total
+    abstainers, and at that she smiled very pleasant and said that was her
+    persuasion also, and that she was glad not to be obliged to handle
+    intoxicating drinks, though, of course, she always did it without
+    objection when the family used them. When I told Jone this he looked a
+    little blank, for foreign water generally doesn't agree with him. I
+    mentioned this afterwards to Miss Pondar, and she said it was very
+    common in total abstaining families, when water didn't agree with any
+    one of them, especially if it happened to be the gentleman, to take a
+    little good Scotch whiskey with it; but when I told this to Jone he
+    said he would try to bear up under the shackles of abstinence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This morning, when I was talking with Miss Pondar about fish, and
+    trying to show her that I knew something about the names of English
+    fishes, I said that we was very fond of whitebait. At this she looked
+    astonished for the first time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whitebait?" said she. "We always looked upon that as belonging
+    entirely to the nobility and gentry." At this my back began to bristle,
+    but I didn't let her know it, and I said, in a tone of emphatic
+    mildness, that we would have whitebait twice a week, on Tuesday and
+    Friday. At this Miss Pondar gave a little courtesy and thanked me very
+    much, and said she would attend to it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone and me came back after taking a long walk that morning I saw
+    a pair of Church of England prayer-books, looking as if they had just
+    been neatly dusted, lying on the parlor table, where they hadn't been
+    before, for I had carefully looked over every book. I think that when
+    it was borne in upon Miss Pondar's soul that we was accustomed to
+    having whitebait as a regular thing she made up her mind we was all
+    right, and that nothing but the Established Church would do for us.
+    Before, she might have thought we was Wesleyans.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Our maid Hannah is very nice to look at, and does her work as well as
+    anybody could do it, and, like most other English servants, she's in a
+    state of never-ending thankfulness, but as I can never understand a
+    word she says except "Thank you very much," I asked Jone if he didn't
+    think it would be a good thing for me to try to teach her a little
+    English.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now then," said he, "that's the opening of a big subject. Wait until I
+    fill my pipe and we'll discourse upon it." It was just after luncheon,
+    and we was sitting in the summer-house at the end of the garden,
+    looking out over the roses and pinks and all sorts of old-timey flowers
+    growing as thick as clover heads, with an air as if it wasn't the least
+    trouble in the world to them to flourish and blossom. Beyond the
+    flowers was a little brook with the ducks swimming in it, and beyond
+    that was a field, and on the other side of that field was a park
+    belonging to the lord of the manor, and scattered about the side of a
+    green hill in the park was a herd of his lordship's deer. Most of them
+    was so light-colored that I fancied I could almost see through them, as
+    if they was the little transparent bugs that crawl about on leaves.
+    That isn't a romantic idea to have about deers, but I can't get rid of
+    the notion whenever I see those little creatures walking about on the
+    hills.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that time it was hardly raining at all, just a little mist, with the
+    sun coming into the summer-house every now and then, making us feel
+    very comfortable and contented.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," said Jone, when he had got his pipe well started, "what I want
+    to talk about is the amount of reformation we expect to do while we're
+    sojourning in the kingdom of Great Britain."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Reformation!" said I; "we didn't come here to reform anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Jone, "if we're going to busy our minds with these
+    people's shortcomings and long-goings, and don't try to reform them,
+    we're just worrying ourselves and doing them no good, and I don't think
+    it will pay. Now, for instance, there's that rosy-cheeked Hannah. She's
+    satisfied with her way of speaking English, and Miss Pondar understands
+    it and is satisfied with it, and all the people around here are
+    satisfied with it. As for us, we know, when she comes and stands in the
+    doorway and dimples up her cheeks, and then makes those sounds that are
+    more like drops of molasses falling on a gong than anything else I know
+    of, we know that she is telling us in her own way that the next meal,
+    whatever it is, is ready, and we go to it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said I, "and as I do most of my talking with Miss Pondar, and as
+    we shall be here for such a short time anyway, it may be as well&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What I say about Hannah," said Jone, interrupting me as soon as I
+    began to speak about a short stay, "I have to say about everything else
+    in England that doesn't suit us. As long as Hannah doesn't try to make
+    us speak in her fashion I say let her alone. Of course, we shall find a
+    lot of things over here that we shall not approve of&mdash;we knew that
+    before we came&mdash;and when we find we can't stand their ways and manners
+    any longer we can pack up and go home, but so far as I'm concerned I'm
+    getting along very comfortable so far."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, so am I," I said to him, "and as to interfering with other
+    people's fashions, I don't want to do it. If I was to meet the most
+    paganish of heathens entering his temple with suitable humbleness I
+    wouldn't hurt his feelings on the subject of his religion, unless I was
+    a missionary and went about it systematic; but if that heathen turned
+    on me and jeered at me for attending our church at home, and told me I
+    ought to go down on my marrow-bones before his brazen idols, I'd whang
+    him over the head with a frying-pan or anything else that came handy.
+    That's the sort of thing I can't stand. As long as the people here
+    don't snort and sniff at my ways I won't snort and sniff at theirs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Jone, "that is a good rule, but I don't know that it's
+    going to work altogether. You see, there are a good many people in this
+    country and only two of us, and it will be a lot harder for them to
+    keep from sniffing and snorting than for us to do it. So it's my
+    opinion that if we expect to get along in a good-humored and friendly
+    way, which is the only decent way of living, we've got to hold up our
+    end of the business a little higher than we expect other people to hold
+    up theirs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I couldn't agree altogether with Jone about our trying to do better
+    than other people, but I said that as the British had been kind enough
+    to make their country free to us, we wouldn't look a gift horse in the
+    mouth unless it kicked. To which Jone said I sometimes got my figures
+    of speech hind part foremost, but he knew what I meant.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We've lived in our cottage two weeks, and every morning when I get up
+    and open our windows, which has little panes set in strips of lead, and
+    hinges on one side so that it works like a door, and look out over the
+    brook and the meadows and the thatched roofs, and see the peasant men
+    with their short jackets and woollen caps, and the lower part of their
+    trousers tied round with twine, if they don't happen to have leather
+    leggings, trudging to their work, my soul is filled with welling
+    emotions as I think that if Queen Elizabeth ever travelled along this
+    way she must have seen these great old trees and, perhaps, some of
+    these very houses; and as to the people, they must have been pretty
+    much the same, though differing a little in clothes, I dare say; but,
+    judging from Hannah, perhaps not very much in the kind of English they
+    spoke.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I declare that when Jone and me walk about through the village, and
+    over the fields, for there is a right of way&mdash;meaning a little
+    path&mdash;through most all of them, and when we go into the old church,
+    with its yew-trees, and its gravestones, and its marble effigies of two
+    of the old manor lords, both stretched flat on their backs, as large as
+    life, the gentleman with the end of his nose knocked off and with his
+    feet crossed to show he was a crusader, and the lady with her hands
+    clasped in front of her, as if she expected the generations who came to
+    gaze on her tomb to guess what she had inside of them, I feel like a
+    character in a novel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have kept a great many of my joyful sentiments to myself, because
+    Jone is too well contented as it is, and there is a great deal yet to
+    be seen in England. Sometimes we hire a dogcart and a black horse named
+    Punch, from the inn in the village, and we take long drives over roads
+    that are almost as smooth as bowling alleys. The country is very hilly,
+    and every time we get to the top of a hill we can see, spread about us
+    for miles and miles, the beautiful hills and vales, and lordly
+    residences and cottages, and steeple tops, looking as though they had
+    been stuck down here and there, to show where villages had been
+    planted.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Five</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img019.jpg" width="618" height="249"alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img019l.jpg" width="150" height="135" alt="T" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    his morning, when Jone was out taking a walk and I was talking to Miss
+    Pondar, and getting her to teach me how to make Devonshire clotted
+    cream, which we have for every meal, putting it on everything it will
+    go on, into everything it will go into, and eating it by itself when
+    there is nothing it will go on or into; and trying to find out why it
+    is that whitings are always brought on the table with their tails stuck
+    through their throats, as if they had committed suicide by cutting
+    their jugular veins in this fashion, I saw, coming along the road to
+    our cottage, a pretty little dogcart with two ladies in it. The horse
+    they drove was a pony, and the prettiest creature I ever saw, being
+    formed like a full-sized horse, only very small, and with as much fire
+    and spirit and gracefulness as could be got into an animal sixteen
+    hands high. I heard afterward that he came from Exmoor, which is about
+    twelve miles from here, and produces ponies and deers of similar size
+    and swiftness. They stopped at the door, and one of them got out and
+    came in. Miss Pondar told me she wished to see me, and that she was
+    Mrs. Locky, of the "Bordley Arms" in the village.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The innkeeper's wife?" said I; to which Miss Pondar said it was, and I
+    went into the parlor. Mrs. Locky was a handsome-looking lady, and
+    wearing as stylish clothes as if she was a duchess, and extremely
+    polite and respectful.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She said she would have asked Mrs. Shutterfield to come with her and
+    introduce her, but that lady was away from home, and so she had come by
+    herself to ask me a very great favor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I begged her to sit down and name it she went on to say there had
+    come that morning to the inn a very large party in a coach-and-four,
+    that was making a trip through the country, and as they didn't travel
+    on Sunday they wanted to stay at the "Bordley Arms" until Monday
+    morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," said she, "that puts me to a dreadful lot of trouble, because I
+    haven't room to accommodate them all, and even if I could get rooms for
+    them somewhere else they don't want to be separated. But there is one
+    of the best rooms at the inn which is occupied by an elderly gentleman,
+    and if I could get that room I could put two double beds in it and so
+    accommodate the whole party. Now, knowing that you had a pleasant
+    chamber here that you don't use, I thought I would make bold to come
+    and ask you if you would lodge Mr. Poplington until Monday?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What sort of a person is this Mr. Poplington, and is he willing to
+    come here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I haven't asked him yet," said she, "but he is so extremely
+    good-natured that I know he will be glad to come here. He has often
+    asked me who lived in this extremely picturesque cottage."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You must have an answer now?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes," said she, "for if you cannot do me this favor I must go
+    somewhere else, and where to go I don't know."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I had begun to think that the one thing we wanted in this little
+    home of ours was company, and that it was a great pity to have that
+    nice bedroom on the second floor entirely wasted, with nobody ever in
+    it. So, as far as I was concerned, I would be very glad to have some
+    pleasant person in the house, at least for a day or two, and I didn't
+    believe Jone would object. At any rate it would put a stop, at least
+    for a little while, to his eternally saying how Corinne, our daughter,
+    would enjoy that room, and how nice it would be if we was to take this
+    house for the rest of the season and send for her. Now, Corinne's as
+    happy as she can be at her grand-mother's farm, and her school will
+    begin before we're ready to come home, and, what is more, we didn't
+    come here to spend all our time in one place.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img020.jpg">
+<img src="images/img020s.jpg" width="162" height="200"
+alt="'THE YOUNG LADY WHO KEEPS THE BAR'" /><br />
+'THE YOUNG LADY WHO KEEPS THE BAR'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    While I was thinking of these things I was looking out of the window at
+    the lady in the dogcart who was holding the reins. She was as pretty as
+    a picture, and wore a great straw hat with lovely flowers in it. As I
+    had to give an answer without waiting for Jone to come home, and I
+    didn't expect him until luncheon time, I concluded to be neighborly,
+    and said we would take the gentleman to oblige her. Even if the
+    arrangement didn't suit him or us, it wouldn't matter much for that
+    little time. At which Mrs. Locky was very grateful indeed, and said she
+    would have Mr. Poplington's luggage sent around that afternoon, and
+    that he would come later.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As she got up to go I said to her, "Is that young lady out there one of
+    the party who came with the coach and four?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no," said Mrs. Locky, "she lives with me. She is the young lady
+    who keeps the bar."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I expect I opened my mouth and eyes pretty wide, for I was never so
+    astonished. A young lady like that keeping the bar! But I didn't want
+    Mrs. Locky to know how much I was surprised, and so I said nothing
+    about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When they had gone and I had stood looking after them for about a
+    minute, I remembered I hadn't asked whether Mr. Poplington would want
+    to take his meals here, or whether he would go to the inn for them. To
+    be sure, she only asked me to lodge him, but as the inn is more than
+    half a mile from here, he may want to be boarded. But this will have to
+    be found out when he comes, and when Jone comes home it will have to be
+    found out what he thinks about my taking a lodger while he's out taking
+    a walk.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Six</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone came home and I told him a gentleman was coming to live with
+    us, he thought at first I was joking; and when he found out that I
+    meant what I said he looked very blue, and stood with his hands in his
+    pockets and his eyes on the ground, considering.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's not going to take his meals here, is he?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't think he expects that," I said, "for Mrs. Locky only spoke of
+    lodging."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, well," said Jone, looking as if his clouds was clearing off a
+    little, "I don't suppose it will matter to us if that room is occupied
+    over Sunday, but I think the next time I go out for a stroll I'll take
+    you with me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't go out that afternoon, and sat on pins and needles until
+    half-past five o'clock. Jone wanted me to walk with him, but I wouldn't
+    do it, because I didn't want our lodger to come here and be received by
+    Miss Pondar. At half-past five there came a cart with the gentleman's
+    luggage, as they call it here, and I was glad Jone wasn't at home.
+    There was an enormous leather portmanteau which looked as if it had
+    been dragged by a boy too short to lift it from the ground, half over
+    the world; a hat-box, also of leather, but not so draggy looking; a
+    bundle of canes and umbrellas, a leather dressing-case, and a flat,
+    round bathing-tub. I had the things taken up to the room as quickly as
+    I could, for if Jone had seen them he'd think the gentleman was going
+    to bring his family with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was nine o'clock and still broad daylight when Mr. Poplington
+    himself came, carrying a fishing-rod put up in parts in a canvas bag, a
+    fish-basket, and a small valise. He wore leather leggings and was about
+    sixty years old, but a wonderful good walker. I thought, when I saw him
+    coming, that he had no rheumatism whatever, but I found out afterward
+    that he had a little in one of his arms. He had white hair and white
+    side-whiskers and a fine red face, which made me think of a strawberry
+    partly covered with Devonshire clotted cream. Jone and I was sitting in
+    the summer-house, he smoking his pipe, and we both went to meet the
+    gentleman. He had a bluff way of speaking, and said he was much obliged
+    to us for taking him in; and after saying that it was a warm evening, a
+    thing which I hadn't noticed, he asked to be shown to his room. I sent
+    Hannah with him, and then Jone and I went back to the summer-house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't know exactly why, but I wasn't in as good spirits as I had
+    been, and when Jone spoke he didn't make me feel any better.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0021"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img021.jpg">
+<img src="images/img021s.jpg" width="180" height="200"
+alt="'I SEE SIGNS OF WEAKENING IN THE SOCIAL BOOM'" /><br />
+'I SEE SIGNS OF WEAKENING IN THE SOCIAL BOOM'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "It seems to me," said he, "that I see signs of weakening in the social
+    boom. That man considers us exactly as we considered our lodging-house
+    keeper in London. Now, it doesn't strike me that that sample person you
+    was talking about, who is a cross between a rich farmer and a poor
+    gentleman, would go into the lodging-house business." I couldn't help
+    agreeing with Jone, and I didn't like it a bit. The gentleman hadn't
+    said anything or done anything that was out of the way, but there was a
+    benignant loftiness about him which grated on the inmost fibres of my
+    soul.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll tell you what we'll do," said I, turning sharp on Jone, "we won't
+    charge him a cent. That'll take him down, and show him what we are.
+    We'll give him the room as a favor to Mrs. Locky, considering her in
+    the light of a neighbor and one who sent us a cucumber."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right," said Jone, "I like that way of arranging the business. Up
+    goes the social boom again!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just as we was going up to bed Miss Pondar came to me and said that the
+    gentleman had called down to her and asked if he could have a new-laid
+    egg for his breakfast, and she asked if she should send Hannah early in
+    the morning to see if she could get a perfectly fresh egg from one of
+    the cottages. "I thought, ma'am, that perhaps you might object to
+    buying things on Sunday."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I do," I said. "Does that Mr. Poplington expect to have his breakfast
+    here? I only took him to lodge."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, ma'am," said Miss Pondar, "they always takes their breakfasts
+    where they has their rooms. Dinner and luncheon is different, and he
+    may expect to go to the inn for them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Indeed!" said I. "I think he may, and if he breakfasts here he can
+    take what we've got. If the eggs are not fresh enough for him he can
+    try to get along with some bacon. He can't expect that to be fresh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Knowing that English people take their breakfast late, Jone and I got
+    up early, so as to get through before our lodger came down. But, bless
+    me, when we went to the front door to see what sort of a day it was we
+    saw him coming in from a walk. "Fine morning," said he, and in fact
+    there was only a little drizzle of rain, which might stop when the sun
+    got higher; and he stood near us and began to talk about the trout in
+    the stream, which, to my utter amazement, he called a river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you take your license by the day or week?" he said to Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "License!" said Jone, "I don't fish."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Oh, I see, you are a cycler."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," said Jone, "I'm not that, either, I'm a pervader."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really!" said the old gentleman; "what do you mean by that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I mean that I pervade the scenery, sometimes on foot and sometimes in
+    a trap. That's my style of rural pleasuring."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But you do fish at home," I said to Jone, not wishing the English
+    gentleman to think my husband was a city man, who didn't know anything
+    about sport.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes," said Jone, "I used to fish for perch and sunfish."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sunfish?" said Mr. Poplington. "I don't know that fish at all. What
+    sort of a fly do you use?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't fish with any flies at all," said Jone; "I bait my hook with
+    worms."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington's face looked as if he had poured liquid shoe-blacking
+    on his meat, thinking it was Worcestershire sauce. "Fancy! Worms! I'd
+    never take a rod in my hands if I had to use worms. Never used a worm
+    in my life. There's no sort of science in worm fishing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There's double sport," said Jone, "for first you've got to catch your
+    worm. Then again, I hate shams; if you have to catch fish there's no
+    use cheating them into the bargain."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cheat!" cried Mr. Poplington. "If I had to catch a whale I'd fish for
+    him with a fly. But you Americans are strange people. Worms, indeed!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We don't all use worms," said Jone; "there's lots of fly fishers in
+    America, and they use all sorts of flies. If we are to believe all the
+    Californians tell us some of the artificial flies out there must be as
+    big as crows."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really?" said Mr. Poplington, looking hard at Jone, with a little
+    twinkling in his eyes. "And when gentlemen fish who don't like to cheat
+    the fishes, what size of worms do they use?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Jone, "in the far West I've heard that the common black
+    snake is the favorite bait. He's six or seven feet long, and fishermen
+    that use him don't have to have any line. He's bait and line all in
+    one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington laughed. "I see you are fond of a joke," said he, "and
+    so am I, but I'm also fond of my breakfast."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm with you there," said Jone, and we all went in.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington was very pleasant and chatty, and of course asked a
+    great many questions about America. Nearly all English people I've met
+    want to talk about our country, and it seems to me that what they do
+    know about it isn't any better, considered as useful information, than
+    what they don't know. But Mr. Poplington has never been to America, and
+    so he knows more about us than those Englishmen who come over to write
+    books, and only have time to run around the outside of things, and get
+    themselves tripped up on our ragged edges.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He said he had met a good many Americans, and liked them, but he
+    couldn't see for the life of him why they do some things English people
+    don't do, and don't do things English people do do. For instance, he
+    wondered why we don't drink tea for breakfast. Miss Pondar had made it
+    for him, knowing he'd want it, and he wonders why Americans drink
+    coffee when such good tea as that was comes in their reach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, if I had considered Mr. Poplington as a lodger it might have
+    nettled me to have him tell me I didn't know what was good, but
+    remembering that we was giving him hospitality, and not board, and
+    didn't intend to charge him a cent, but was just taking care of him out
+    of neighborly kindness, I was rather glad to have him find a little
+    fault, because that would make me feel as if I was soaring still higher
+    above him the next morning, when I should tell him there was nothing to
+    pay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So I took it all good-natured, and said to him, "Well, Americans like
+    to have the very best things that can be got out of every country.
+    We're like bees flying over the whole world, looking into every blossom
+    to see what sweetness there is to be got out of it. From the lily of
+    France we sip their coffee, from the national flower of India, whatever
+    it is, we take their chutney sauce, and as to those big apple tarts,
+    baked in a deep dish, with a cup in the middle to hold up the upper
+    crust, and so full of apples, and so delicious with Devonshire clotted
+    cream on them that if there was any one place in the world they could
+    be had I believe my husband would want to go and live there forever,
+    <i>they</i> are what we extract from the rose of England."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington laughed like anything at this, but said there was a
+    great many other things that he could show us and tell us about which
+    would be very well worth while sipping from the rose of England.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After breakfast he went to church with us, and as we was coming
+    home&mdash;for he didn't seem to have the least idea of going to the inn for
+    his luncheon&mdash;he asked if we didn't find the services very different
+    from those in America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said I, "they are about as different from Quaker services as a
+    squirting fountain is from a corked bottle. The Methodists and
+    Unitarians and Reformed Dutch and Campbellites and Hard-shell Baptists
+    have different services too, but in the Episcopal churches things are
+    all pretty much the same as they did this morning. You forget, sir,
+    that in our country there are religions to suit all sizes of minds. We
+    haven't any national religion any more than we have a national flower."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But you ought to have," said he; "you ought to have an established
+    church."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You may be sure we'll have it," said Jone, "as soon as we agree as to
+    which one it ought to be."
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Seven</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p>
+    Last Sunday afternoon Mr. Poplington asked us if we would not like to
+    walk over to a ruined abbey about four miles away, which he said was
+    very interesting. It seemed to me that four miles there and four miles
+    back was a pretty long walk, but I wanted to see the abbey, and I
+    wasn't going to let him think that a young American woman couldn't walk
+    as far as an elderly English gentleman; so I agreed and so did Jone.
+    The abbey is a wonderful place, and I never thought of being tired
+    while wandering in the rooms and in the garden, where the old monks
+    used to live and preach, and give food to the poor, and keep house
+    without women&mdash;which was pious enough, but must have been untidy. But
+    the thing that surprised me the most was what Mr. Poplington told us
+    about the age of the place. It was not built all at once, and it's part
+    ancient and part modern, and you needn't wonder, madam, that I was
+    astonished when he said that the part called modern was finished just
+    three years before America was discovered. When I heard that I seemed
+    to shrivel up as if my country was a new-born babe alongside of a
+    bearded patriarch; but I didn't stay shrivelled long, for it can't be
+    denied that a new-born babe has a good deal more to look forward to
+    than a patriarch has.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0022"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img022.jpg">
+<img src="images/img022.jpg" width="124" height="200"
+alt="AT THE ABBEY" /><br />AT THE ABBEY</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    It is amazing how many things in this part of the country we'd never
+    have thought of if it hadn't been for Mr. Poplington. At dinner he told
+    us about Exmoor and the Lorna Doone country, and the wild deer hunting
+    that can be had nowhere else in England, and lots of other things that
+    made me feel we must be up and doing if we wanted to see all we ought
+    to see before we left Chedcombe. When I went upstairs I said to Jone
+    that Mr. Poplington was a very different man from what I thought he
+    was.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's just as nice as he can be, and I'm going to charge him for his
+    room and his meals and for everything he's had."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone laughed, and asked me if that was the way I showed people I liked
+    them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We intended to humble him by not charging him anything," I said, "and
+    make him feel he had been depending on our bounty; but now I wouldn't
+    hurt his feelings for the world, and I'll make out his bill in the
+    morning myself. Women always do that sort of thing in England."
+</p>
+<p>
+    As you asked me, madam, to tell you everything that happened on our
+    travels, I'll go on about Mr. Poplington. After breakfast on Monday
+    morning he went over to the inn, and said he would come back and pack
+    up his things; but when he did come back he told us that those
+    coach-and-four people had determined not to leave Chedcombe that day,
+    but was going to stay and look at the sights in the neighborhood, and
+    that they would want the room for that night. He said this had made him
+    very angry, because they had no right to change their minds that way
+    after having made definite arrangements in which other people besides
+    themselves was concerned; and he had said so very plainly to the
+    gentleman who seemed to be at the head of the party.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I hope it will be no inconvenience to you, madam," he said, "to keep
+    me another night."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, dear, no," said I; "and my husband was saying this morning that he
+    wished you was going to stay with us the rest of our time here."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Then I'll do it. I'll go to the
+    inn this minute and have the rest of my luggage brought over here. If
+    this is any punishment to Mrs. Locky she deserves it, for she shouldn't
+    have told those people they could stay longer without consulting me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In less than an hour there came a van to our cottage with the rest of
+    his luggage. There must have been over a dozen boxes and packages,
+    besides things tied up and strapped; and as I saw them being carried up
+    one at a time, I said to Miss Pondar that in our country we'd have two
+    or three big trunks, which we could take about without any trouble.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, ma'am," said she; but I could see by her face that she didn't
+    believe luggage would be luggage unless you could lug it, but was too
+    respectful to say so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Mr. Poplington got settled down in our spare room he blossomed out
+    like a full-blown friend of the family, and accordingly began to give
+    us advice. He said we should go as soon as we could and see Exmoor and
+    all that region of country, and that if we didn't mind he'd like to go
+    with us; to which we answered, of course, we should like that very
+    much, and asked him what he thought would be the best way to go. So we
+    had ever so much talk about that, and although we all agreed it would
+    be nicer not to take a public coach, but travel private, we didn't find
+    it easy to decide as to the manner of travel. We all agreed that a
+    carriage and horses would be too expensive, and Jone was rather in
+    favor of a dogcart for us if Mr. Poplington would like to go on
+    horseback; but the old gentleman said it would be too much riding for
+    him, and if we took a dogcart he'd have to take another one. But this
+    wouldn't be a very sociable way of travelling, and none of us liked it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," exclaimed Mr. Poplington, striking his hand on the table, "I'll
+    tell you exactly how we ought to go through that country&mdash;we ought to
+    go on cycles."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Bicycles?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tricycles, if you like," he answered, "but that's the way to do it.
+    It'll be cheap, and we can go as we like and stop when we like. We'll
+    be as free and independent as the Stars and Stripes, and more so, for
+    they can't always flap when they like and stop flapping when they
+    choose. Have you ever tried it, madam?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I replied that I had, a little, because my daughter had a tricycle, and
+    I had ridden on it for a short distance and after sundown, but as for
+    regular travel in the daytime I couldn't think of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this Jone nearly took my breath away by saying that he thought that
+    the bicycle idea was a capital one, and that for his part he'd like it
+    better than any other way of travelling through a pretty country. He
+    also said he believed I could work a tricycle just as well as not, and
+    that if I got used to it I would think it fine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I stood out against those two men for about a half an hour, and then I
+    began to give in a little, and think that it might be nice to roll
+    along on my own little wheels over their beautiful smooth roads, and
+    stop and smell the hedges and pick flowers whenever I felt like it; and
+    so it ended in my agreeing to do the Exmoor country on a tricycle while
+    Mr. Poplington and Jone went on bicycles. As to getting the machines,
+    Mr. Poplington said he would attend to that. There was people in London
+    who hired them to excursionists, and all he had to do was to send an
+    order and they would be on hand in a day or two; and so that matter
+    was settled and he wrote to London. I thought Mr. Poplington was a
+    little old for that sort of exercise, but I found he had been used to
+    doing a great deal of cycling in the part of the country where he
+    lives; and besides, he isn't as old as I thought he was, being not much
+    over fifty. The kind of air that keeps a country always green is
+    wonderful in bringing out early red and white in a person.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Everything happens wonderfully well, madam," said he, coming in after
+    he had been to post his letter in a red iron box let into the side of
+    the Wesleyan chapel, "doesn't it? Now here we're not able to start on
+    our journey for two or three days, and I have just been told that the
+    great hay-making in the big meadow to the south of the village is to
+    begin to-morrow. They make the hay there only every other year, and
+    they have a grand time of it. We must be there, and you shall see some
+    of our English country customs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    We said we'd be sure to be in for that sort of thing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wish, madam, you could have seen that great hayfield. It belongs to
+    the lord of the manor, and must have twenty or thirty acres in it.
+    They've been three or four days cutting the grass on it with a machine,
+    and now there's been nearly two days with hardly any rain, only now and
+    then some drizzling, and a good, strong wind, which they think here is
+    better for the hay-making than sunshine, though they don't object to a
+    little sun. All the people in the village who had legs good enough to
+    carry them to that field went to help make hay. It was a regular
+    holiday, and as hay is clean, nearly everybody was dressed in good
+    clothes. Early in the morning some twenty regular farm laborers began
+    raking the hay at one end of the field, stretching themselves nearly
+    the whole way across it, and as the day went on more and more people
+    came, men and women, high and low. All the young women and some of the
+    older ones had rakes, and the way they worked them was amazing to see,
+    but they turned over the hay enough to dry it. As to schoolgirls and
+    boys, there was no end of them in the afternoon, for school let out
+    early. Some of them worked, but most of them played and cut up
+    monkey-shines on the hay. Even the little babies was brought on the
+    field, and nice, soft beds made for them under the trees at one side.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone saw the real farm-work going on, with a chance for everybody
+    to turn in to help, his farmer blood boiled within him, as if he was a
+    war-horse and sniffed the smoke of battle, and he got himself a rake
+    and went to work like a good-fellow. I never saw so many men at work in
+    a hayfield at home, but when I looked at Jone raking I could see why it
+    was it didn't take so many men to get in our hay. As for me, I raked a
+    little, but looked about a great deal more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Near the middle of the field was two women working together, raking as
+    steadily as if they had been brought up to it. One of these was young,
+    and even handsomer than Miss Dick, which was the name of the bar lady.
+    To look at her made me think of what I had read of Queen Marie
+    Antoinette and her court ladies playing the part of milkmaids. Her
+    straw hat was trimmed with delicate flowers, and her white muslin dress
+    and pale blue ribbons made her the prettiest picture I ever saw
+    out-of-doors. I could not help asking Mrs. Locky who she was, and she
+    told me that she was the chambermaid at the inn, and the other was the
+    cook. When I heard this I didn't make any answer, but just walked off a
+    little way and began raking and thinking. I have often wondered why it
+    is that English servants are so different from those we have, or, to
+    put it in a strictly confidential way between you and me, madam, why
+    the chambermaid at the "Bordley Arms," as she is, is so different from
+    me, as I used to be when I first lived with you. Now that young
+    chambermaid with the pretty hat is, as far as appearances go, as good a
+    woman as I am, and if Jone was a bachelor and intended to marry her I
+    would think it was as good a match as if he married me. But the
+    difference between us two is that when I got to be the kind of woman I
+    am I wasn't willing to be a servant, and if I had always been the kind
+    of young woman that chambermaid is I never would have been a servant.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I've kept a sharp eye on the young women in domestic service over here,
+    having a fellow-feeling for them, as you can well understand, madam,
+    and since I have been in the country I've watched the poor folks and
+    seen how they live, and it's just as plain to me as can be that the
+    young women who are maids and waitresses over here are the kind who
+    would have tried to be shop-girls and dressmakers and even
+    school-teachers in America, and many of the servants we have would be
+    working in the fields if they lived over here. The fact is, the English
+    people don't go to other countries to get their servants. Their way is
+    like a factory consuming its own smoke. The surplus young women, and
+    there must always be a lot of them, are used up in domestic service.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, if an American poor girl is good enough to be a first-class
+    servant, she wants to be something else. Sooner than go out to service
+    she will work twice as hard in a shop, or even go into a factory.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have talked a good deal about this to Jone, and he says I'm getting
+    to be a philosopher; but I don't think it takes much philosophizing to
+    find out how this case stands. If house service could be looked upon in
+    the proper way, it wouldn't take long for American girls who have to
+    work for their living to find out that it's a lot better to live with
+    nice people, and cook and wait on the table, and do all those things
+    which come natural to women the world over, than to stand all day
+    behind a counter under the thumb of a floor-walker, or grind their
+    lives out like slaves among a lot of steam-engines and machinery. The
+    only reason the English have better house servants than we have is that
+    here any girl who has to work is willing to be a house servant, and
+    very good house servants they are, too.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Eight</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0023"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img023.jpg" width="620" height="264" alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img023l.jpg" width="157" height="154" alt="I" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    &nbsp;will now finish telling you about the great hay-making day. Toward
+    the end of the afternoon a lot of boys and girls began playing a game
+    which seemed to belong to the hayfield. Each one of the bigger boys
+    would twist up a rope of hay and run after a girl, and when he had
+    thrown it over her neck he could kiss her. Girls are girls the whole
+    world over, and it was funny to see how some of them would run like mad
+    to get away from the boys, and how dreadfully troubled they would be
+    when they was caught, and yet, after they had been kissed and the boys
+    had left them, they would walk innocently back to the players as if
+    they never dreamed that anybody would think of disturbing them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At five o'clock everybody&mdash;farm hands, ladies, gentlemen,
+    school-children, and all&mdash;took tea together. Some were seated at long
+    tables made of planks, with benches at the sides, and others scattered
+    all over the grass. Miss Pondar and our maid Hannah helped to serve the
+    tea and sandwiches, and I was glad to see that Hannah wore her pointed
+    white cap and her black dress, for I had on my woollen travelling suit,
+    and I didn't want too much cart-before-the-horseness in my domestic
+    establishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After tea the work and the games began again, and as I think it is
+    always better for people to do what they can do best, I turned in and
+    helped clear away the tea-things, and after that I sat down by a female
+    person in black silk&mdash;and I am sure I didn't know whether she was the
+    lady of the manor or somebody else until I heard some h-words come out
+    in her talk, and then I knew she was the latter&mdash;and she told me ever
+    so much about the people in the village, and why the rector wasn't
+    there, on account of a dispute about the altar-cloths, and she was just
+    beginning to tell me about the doctor's wife sending her daughters to a
+    school that was much too high-priced for his practice, when I happened
+    to look across the field, and there, with the bar lady at the inn, with
+    her hat trimmed with pink, and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, with
+    her hat trimmed with blue, was Jone, and they was all three raking
+    together, as comfortable and confiding as if they had been singing
+    hymns out of the same book.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, I thought I had been sitting still long enough, and so I snipped
+    off the rest of the doctor story and got myself across that field with
+    pretty long steps. When I reached the happy three I didn't say
+    anything, but went round in front of them and stood there, throwing a
+    sarcastic and disdainful glance upon their farming. Jone stopped
+    working, and wiped his face with his handkerchief, as if he was hot and
+    tired, but hadn't thought of it until just then, and the two girls they
+    stopped too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's teaching us to rake, ma'am," said Miss Dick, revolving her
+    green-gage eyes in my direction, "and really, ma'am, it's wonderful to
+    see how good he does it. You Americans are so awful clever!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for the one with the blue trimmings, she said nothing, but stood
+    with her hands folded on her rake, and her chiselled features steeped
+    in a meek resignedness, though much too high colored, as though it had
+    just been borne in upon her that this world is all a fleeting show, for
+    man's illusion given, and such felicity as culling fragrant hay by the
+    side of that manly form must e'en be foregone by her, that I could
+    have taken a handle of a rake and given her such a punch among her blue
+    ribbons that her classic features would have frantically twined
+    themselves around one resounding howl&mdash;but I didn't. I simply remarked
+    to Jone, with a statuesque rigidity, that it was six o'clock and I was
+    going home; to which he said he was going too, and we went.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0024"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img024.jpg">
+<img src="images/img024s.jpg" width="282" height="180"
+alt="'THERE, WITH THE BAR LADY AND THE MARIE ANTOINETTE
+CHAMBERMAID, WAS JONE'" /><br />
+'THERE, WITH THE BAR LADY AND THE MARIE ANTOINETTE
+CHAMBERMAID, WAS JONE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "I thought," said I, as we proceeded with rapid steps across the field,
+    "that you didn't come to England for the purpose of teaching the
+    inhabitants."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone laughed a little. "That young lady put it rather strong," he said.
+    "She and her friend was merely trying to rake as I did. I think they
+    got on very well."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Indeed!" said I&mdash;I expect with flashing eye&mdash;"but the next time you go
+    into the disciple business I recommend that you take boys who really
+    need to know something about farming, and not fine-as-fiddle young
+    women that you might as well be ballet-dancing with as raking with, for
+    all the hankering after knowledge they have."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh!" said Jone, and that was all he did say, which was very wise in
+    him, for, considering my state of feelings, his case was like a
+    fish-hook in your finger&mdash;the more you pull and worry at it the harder
+    it is to get out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That evening, when I was quite cooled down, and we was talking to Mr.
+    Poplington about the hay-making and the free-and-easy way in which
+    everybody came together, he was a good deal surprised that we should
+    think that there was anything uncommon in that, coming from a country
+    where everybody was free and equal. Jone was smoking his pipe, and when
+    it draws well and he's had a good dinner and I haven't anything
+    particular to say, he often likes to talk slow and preach little
+    sermons.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir," said he, after considering the matter a little while,
+    "according to the Constitution of the United States we are all free and
+    equal, but there's a good many things the Constitution doesn't touch
+    on, and one of them is the sorting out and sizing up of the population.
+    Now, you people over here are like the metal types that the printers
+    use. You've all got your letters on one end of you, and you know just
+    where you belong, and if you happen to be knocked into 'pi' and mixed
+    all up in a pile it is easy enough to pick you out and put you all in
+    your proper cases; but it's different with us. According to the
+    Constitution we're like a lot of carpet-tacks, one just the same as
+    another, though in fact we're not alike, and it would not be easy if we
+    got mixed up, say in a hayfield, to get ourselves all sorted out again
+    according to the breadth of our heads and the sharpness of our points,
+    so we don't like to do too much mixing, don't you see?" To which Mr.
+    Poplington said he didn't see, and then I explained to him that what
+    Jone meant was that though in our country we was all equally free, it
+    didn't do for us to be as freely equal as the people are sometimes over
+    here, to which Mr. Poplington said, "Really!" but he didn't seem to be
+    standing in the glaring sunlight of convincement. But the shade is
+    often pleasant to be in, and he wound up by saying, as he bid us
+    good-night, that he thought it would be a great deal better for us, if
+    we had classes at all, to have them marked out plain, and stamped so
+    that there could be no mistake; to which I said that if we did that the
+    most of the mistakes would come in the sorting, which, according to my
+    reading of books and newspapers, had happened to most countries that
+    keep up aristocracies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I don't know that he heard all that I said, for he was going up-stairs
+    with his candle at the time, but when Jone and me got up-stairs in our
+    own room I said to him, and he always hears everything I say, that in
+    some ways the girls that we have for servants at home have some
+    advantages over those we find here; to which Jone said, "Yes," and
+    seemed to be sleepy.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Nine</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was still another day of hay-making, but we couldn't wait for
+    that, because our cycles had come from London and we was all anxious to
+    be off, and you would have laughed, madam, if you could have seen us
+    start. Mr. Poplington went off well enough, but Jone's bicycle seemed a
+    little gay and hard to manage, and he frisked about a good deal at
+    starting; but Jone had bought a bicycle long ago, when the things first
+    came out, and on days when the roads was good he used to go to the
+    post-office on it, and he said that if a man had ever ridden on top of
+    a wheel about six feet high he ought to be able to balance himself on
+    the pair of small wheels which they use nowadays. So, after getting his
+    long legs into working order, he went very well, though with a snaky
+    movement at first, and then I started.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Each one of us had a little hand-bag hung on our machine, and Mr.
+    Poplington said we needn't take anything to eat, for there was inns to
+    be found everywhere in England. Hannah started me off nicely by pushing
+    my tricycle until I got it going, and Miss Pondar waved her
+    handkerchief from the cottage door. When Hannah left me I went along
+    rather slow at first, but when I got used to the proper motion I began
+    to do better, and was very sure it wouldn't take me long to catch up
+    with Jone, who was still worm-fencing his way along the road. When I
+    got entirely away from the houses, and began to smell the hedges and
+    grassy banks so close to my nose, and feel myself gliding along over
+    the smooth white road, my spirits began to soar like a bird, and I
+    almost felt like singing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The few people I met didn't seem to think it was anything wonderful for
+    a woman to ride on a tricycle, and I soon began to feel as proper as if
+    I was walking on a sidewalk. Once I came very near tangling myself up
+    with the legs of a horse who was pulling a cart. I forgot that it was
+    the proper thing in this country to turn to the left, and not to the
+    right, but I gave a quick twist to my helm and just missed the
+    cart-wheel, but it was a close scratch. This turning to the right,
+    instead of to the left, was a mistake Jone made two or three times when
+    he began to drive me in England, but he got over it, and since my
+    grazing the cart it's not likely I shall forget it. As I breathed a
+    sigh of relief after escaping this danger I took in a breath full of
+    the scent of wild roses that nearly covered a bit of hedge, and my
+    spirits rose again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had asked Jone and Mr. Poplington to go ahead, because I knew I could
+    do a great deal better if I worked along by myself for a while, without
+    being told what I ought to do and what I oughtn't to do. There is
+    nothing that bothers me so much as to have people try to teach me
+    things when I am puzzling them out for myself. But now I found that
+    although they could not be far ahead, I couldn't see them, on account
+    of the twists in the road and the high hedges, and so I put on steam
+    and went along at a fine rate, sniffing the breeze like a charger of
+    the battlefield. Before very long I came to a place where the road
+    forked, but the road to the left seemed like a lane leading to
+    somebody's house, so I kept on in what was plainly the main road, which
+    made a little turn where it forked. Looking out ahead of me, to see if
+    I could catch sight of the two men, I could not see a sign of them, but
+    I did see that I was on the top of a long hill that seemed to lead on
+    and down and on and down, with no end to it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had hardly started down this hill when my tricycle became frisky and
+    showed signs of wanting to run, and I got a little nervous, for I
+    didn't fancy going fast down a slope like that. I put on the brake, but
+    I don't believe I managed it right, for I seemed to go faster and
+    faster; and then, as the machine didn't need any working, I took my
+    feet off the pedals, with an idea, I think, though I can't now
+    remember, that I would get off and walk down the hill. In an instant
+    that thing took the bit in its teeth and away it went wildly tearing
+    down hill. I never was so much frightened in all my life. I tried to
+    get my feet back on the pedals, but I couldn't do it, and all I could
+    do was to keep that flying tricycle in the middle of the road. As far
+    as I could see ahead there was not anything in the way of a wagon or a
+    carriage that I could run into, but there was such a stretch of slope
+    that it made me fairly dizzy. Just as I was having a little bit of
+    comfort from thinking there was nothing in the way, a black woolly dog
+    jumped out into the road some distance ahead of me and stood there
+    barking. My heart fell, like a bucket into a well with the rope broken.
+    If I steered the least bit to the right or the left I believe I would
+    have bounded over the hedge like a glass bottle from a railroad train,
+    and come down on the other side in shivers and splinters. If I didn't
+    turn I was making a bee-line for the dog; but I had no time to think
+    what to do, and in an instant that black woolly dog faded away like a
+    reminiscence among the buzzing wheels of my tricycle. I felt a little
+    bump, but was ignorant of further particulars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was now going at what seemed like a speed of ninety or a hundred
+    miles an hour, with the wind rushing in between my teeth like water
+    over a mill-dam, and I felt sure that if I kept on going down that hill
+    I should soon be whirling through space like a comet. The only way I
+    could think of to save myself was to turn into some level place where
+    the thing would stop, but not a crossroad did I pass; but presently I
+    saw a little house standing back from the road, which seemed to hump
+    itself a little at that place so as to be nearly level, and over the
+    edge of the hump it dipped so suddenly that I could not see the rest of
+    the road at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," thought I to myself, "if the gate of that house is open I'll
+    turn into it, and no matter what I run into, it would be better than
+    going over the edge of that rise beyond and down the awful hill that
+    must be on the other side of it." As I swooped down to the little house
+    and reached the level ground I felt I was going a little slower, but
+    not much. However, I steered my tricycle round at just the right
+    instant, and through the front gate I went like a flash.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was going so fast, and my mind was so wound up on account of the
+    necessity of steering straight, that I could not pay much attention to
+    things I passed. But the scene that showed itself in front of me as I
+    went through that little garden gate I could not help seeing and
+    remembering. From the gate to the door of the house was a path paved
+    with flagstones; the door was open, and there must have been a low step
+    before it; back of the door was a hall which ran through the house, and
+    this was paved with flagstones; the back door of the hall was open, and
+    outside of it was a sort of arbor with vines, and on one side of this
+    arbor was a bench, with a young man and a young woman sitting on it,
+    holding each other by the hand, and looking into each other's eyes;
+    the arbor opened out on to a piece of green grass, with flowers of
+    mixed colors on the edges of it, and at the back of this bit of lawn
+    was a lot of clothes hung out on clothes-lines. Of course, I could not
+    have seen all those things at once, but they came upon me like a single
+    picture, for in one tick of a watch I went over that flagstone path and
+    into that front door and through that house and out of that back door,
+    and past that young man and that young woman, and head and heels both
+    foremost at once, dashed slam-bang into the midst of all that linen
+    hanging out on the lines.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0025"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img025.jpg">
+<img src="images/img025s.jpg" width="241" height="160"
+alt="'AT LAST I DID GET ON MY FEET'" /><br />
+'AT LAST I DID GET ON MY FEET'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I heard the minglement of a groan and a scream, and in an instant I was
+    enveloped in a white, wet cloud of sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths,
+    and underwear. Some of the things stuck so close to me, and others I
+    grabbed with such a wild clutch, that nearly all the week's wash, lines
+    and all, came down on me, wrapping me up like an apple in a
+    dumpling&mdash;but I stopped. There was not anything in this world that
+    would have been better for me to run into than those lines full of wet
+    clothes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Where the tricycle went to I didn't know, but I was lying on the grass
+    kicking, and trying to get up and to get my head free, so that I could
+    see and breathe. At last I did get on my feet, and throwing out my arms
+    so as to shake off the sheets and pillowcases that were clinging all
+    over me I shook some of the things partly off my face, and with one
+    eye I saw that couple on the bench, but only for a second. With a yell
+    of horror, and with a face whiter than the linen I was wrapped in, that
+    young man bounced from the bench, dashed past the house, made one clean
+    jump over the hedge into the road, and disappeared. As for the young
+    woman, she just flopped over and went down in a faint on the floor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As soon as I could do it I got myself free from the clothes-line and
+    staggered out on the grass. I was trembling so much I could scarcely
+    walk, but when I saw that young woman looking as if she was dead on the
+    ground I felt I must do something, and seeing a pail of water standing
+    near by, I held it over her face and poured it down on her a little at
+    a time, and it wasn't long before she began to squirm, and then she
+    opened her eyes and her mouth just at the same time, so that she must
+    have swallowed about as much water as she would have taken at a meal.
+    This brought her to, and she began to cough and splutter and look
+    around wildly, and then I took her by the arm and helped her up on the
+    bench.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't you want a little something to drink?" I said. "Tell me where I
+    can get you something."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She didn't answer, but began looking from one side to the other. "Is he
+    swallowed?" said she in a whisper, with her eyes starting out of her
+    head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Swallowed?" said I. "Who?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Davy," said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, your young man," said I. "He is all right, unless he hurt himself
+    jumping over the hedge. I saw him run away just as fast as he could."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And the spirit?" said she. I looked hard at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What has happened to you?" said I. "How did you come to faint?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    She was getting quieter, but she still looked wildly out of her eyes,
+    and kept her back turned toward the bit of grass, as if she was afraid
+    to look in that direction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What happened to you?" said I again, for I wanted to know what she
+    thought about my sudden appearance. It took some little time for her to
+    get ready to answer, and then she said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Was you frightened, lady? Did you have to come in here? I'm sorry you
+    found me swooned. I don't know how long I was swooned. Davy and me was
+    sitting here talking about having the banns called, and it was a sorry
+    talk, lady, for the vicar, he's told me four times I should not marry
+    Davy, because he says he is a Radical; but for all that Davy and me
+    wants the banns called all the same, but not knowing how we was to have
+    it done, for the vicar, he's so set against Davy, and Davy, he had just
+    got done saying to me that he was going to marry me, vicar or no vicar,
+    banns or no banns, come what might, when that very minute, with an
+    awful hiss, something flashed in front of us, dazzling my eyes so that
+    I shut them and screamed, and then when I opened them again, there, in
+    the yard back of us, was a great white spirit twice as high as the cow
+    stable, with one eye in the middle of its forehead, turning around like
+    a firework. I don't remember anything after that, and I don't know how
+    long I was lying here when you came and found me, lady, but I know what
+    it means. There is a curse on our marriage, and Davy and me will never
+    be man and wife." And then she fell to groaning and moaning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I felt like laughing when I thought how much like a church ghost I must
+    have looked, standing there in solid white with my arms stretched out;
+    but the poor girl was in such a dreadful state of mind that I sat down
+    beside her and began to comfort her by telling her just what had
+    happened, and that she ought to be very glad that I had found a place
+    to turn into, and had not gone on down the hill and dashed myself into
+    little pieces at the bottom. But it wasn't easy to cheer her up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Davy's gone," said she. "He'll never come back for fear of the
+    curse. He'll be off with his uncle to sea. I'll never lay eyes on Davy
+    again."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just at that moment I heard somebody calling my name, and looking
+    through the house I saw Jone at the front door and two men behind him.
+    As I ran through the hall I saw that the two men with Jone was Mr.
+    Poplington and a young fellow with a pale face and trembling legs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is this Davy?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then go back to your young woman and comfort her," I said, which he
+    did, and when he had gone, not madly rushing into his loved one's arms,
+    but shuffling along in a timid way, as if he was afraid the ghost
+    hadn't gone yet, I asked Jone how he happened to think I was here, and
+    he told me that he and Mr. Poplington had taken the road to the left
+    when they reached the fork, because that was the proper one, but they
+    had not gone far before he thought I might not know which way to turn,
+    so they came back to the fork to wait for me. But I had been closer
+    behind them than they thought, and I must have come to the fork before
+    they turned back, so, after waiting a while and going back along the
+    road without seeing me, they thought that I must have taken the
+    right-hand road, and they came that way, going down the hill very
+    carefully. After a while Jone found my hat in the road, which up to
+    that moment I had not missed, and then he began to be frightened and
+    they went on faster.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They passed the little house, and as they was going down the hill they
+    saw ahead of them a man running as if something had happened, so they
+    let out their bicycles and soon caught up to him. This was Davy; and
+    when they stopped him and asked if anything was the matter he told
+    them that a dreadful thing had come to pass. He had been working in the
+    garden of a house about half a mile back when suddenly there came an
+    awful crash, and a white animal sprang out of the house with a bit of a
+    cotton mill fastened to its tail, and then, with a great peal of
+    thunder, it vanished, and a white ghost rose up out of the ground with
+    its arms stretching out longer and longer, reaching to clutch him by
+    the hair. He was not afraid of anything living, but he couldn't abide
+    spirits, so he laid down his spade and left the garden, thinking he
+    would go and see the sexton and have him come and lay the ghost.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then Jone went on to say that of course he could not make head or tail
+    out of such a story as that, but when he heard that an awful row had
+    been kicked up in a garden he immediately thought that as like as not I
+    was in it, and so he and Mr. Poplington ran back, leaving their
+    bicycles against the hedge, and bringing the young man with them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then I told my story, and Mr. Poplington said it was a mercy I was not
+    killed, and Jone didn't say much, but I could see that his teeth was
+    grinding.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We all went into the back yard, and there, on the other side of the
+    clothes, which was scattered all over the ground, we found my tricycle,
+    jammed into a lot of gooseberry bushes, and when it was dragged out we
+    found it was not hurt a bit. Davy and his young woman was standing in
+    the arbor looking very sheepish, especially Davy, for she had told him
+    what it was that had scared him. As we was going through the house,
+    Jone taking my tricycle, I stopped to say good-by to the girl.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now that you see there has been no curse and no ghost," said I, "I
+    hope that you will soon have your banns called, and that you and your
+    young man will be married all right."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you very much, ma'am," said she, "but I'm awful fearful about
+    it. Davy may say what he pleases, but my mother never will let me marry
+    him if the vicar's agen it; and Davy wouldn't have been here to-day if
+    she hadn't gone to town; and the vicar's a hard man and a strong Tory,
+    and he'll always be agen it, I fear."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I went out into the front yard I found Mr. Poplington and Jone
+    sitting on a little stone bench, for they was tired, and I told them
+    about that young woman and Davy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Humph," said Mr. Poplington, "I know the vicar of the parish. He is
+    the Rev. Osmun Green. He's a good Conservative, and is perfectly right
+    in trying to keep that poor girl from marrying a wretched Radical."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I looked straight at him and said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you mean, sir, to put politics before matrimonial happiness?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't," said he, "but a girl can't expect matrimonial happiness
+    with a Radical."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I saw that Jone was about to say something here, but I got in ahead of
+    him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I will tell you what it is, sir," said I, "if you think it is wrong to
+    be a Radical the best thing you can do is to write to your friend, that
+    vicar, and advise him to get those two young people married as soon as
+    possible, for it is easy to see that she is going to rule the roost,
+    and if anybody can get his Radicalistics out of him she will be the one
+    to do it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington laughed, and said that as the man looked as if he was a
+    fit subject to be henpecked it might be a good way of getting another
+    Tory vote.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But," said he, "I should think it would go against your conscience,
+    being naturally opposed to the Conservatives, to help even by one
+    vote."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, my conscience is all right," said I. "When politics runs against
+    the matrimonial altar I stand up for the altar."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said he, "I'll think of it." And we started off, walking down
+    the hill, Jone holding on to my tricycle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got to level ground, with about two miles to go before we would
+    stop for luncheon, Jone took a piece of thin rope out of his pocket&mdash;he
+    always carries some sort of cord in case of accidents&mdash;and he tied it
+    to the back part of my machine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," said he, "I'm going to keep hold of the other end of this, and
+    perhaps your tricycle won't run away with you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't much like going along this way, as if I was a cow being taken
+    to market, but I could see that Jone had been so troubled and
+    frightened about me that I didn't make any objection, and, in fact,
+    after I got started it was a comfort to think there was a tie between
+    Jone and me that was stronger, when hilly roads came into the question,
+    than even the matrimonial tie.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Ten</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p>
+    The place we stopped at on the first night of our cycle trip is named
+    Porlock, and after the walking and the pushing, and the strain on my
+    mind when going down even the smallest hill for fear Jone's rope would
+    give way, I was glad to get there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The road into Porlock goes down a hill, the steepest I have seen yet,
+    and we all walked down, holding our machines as if they had been fiery
+    coursers. This hill road twists and winds so you can only see part of
+    it at a time, and when we was about half-way down we heard a horn
+    blowing behind us, and looking around there came the mail-coach at full
+    speed, with four horses, with a lot of people on top. As this raging
+    coach passed by it nearly took my breath away, and as soon as I could
+    speak I said to Jone: "Don't you ever say anything in America about
+    having the roads made narrower so that it won't cost so much to keep
+    them in order, for in my opinion it's often the narrow road that
+    leadeth to destruction."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got into the town, and my mind really began to grapple with old
+    Porlock, I felt as if I was sliding backward down the slope of the
+    centuries, and liked it. As we went along Mr. Poplington told us about
+    everything, and said that this queer little town was a fishing village
+    and seaport in the days of the Saxons, and that King Harold was once
+    obliged to stop there for a while, and that he passed his time making
+    war on the neighbors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington took us to a tavern called the Ship Inn, and I simply
+    went wild over it. It is two hundred years old and two stories high,
+    and everything I ever read about the hostelries of the past I saw
+    there. The queer little door led into a queer little passage paved with
+    stone. A pair of little stairs led out of this into another little
+    room, higher up, and on the other side of the passage was a long,
+    mysterious hallway. We had our dinner in a tiny parlor, which reminded
+    me of a chapter in one of those old books where they use f instead of
+    s, and where the first word of the next page is at the bottom of the
+    one you are reading.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was a fireplace in the room with a window one side of it, through
+    which you could look into the street. It was not cold, but it had begun
+    to rain hard, and so I made the dampness an excuse for a fire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is antique, indeed," I said, when we were at the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are right there," said Mr. Poplington, who was doing his best to
+    carve a duck, and was a little cross about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I sat before the fire that evening, and Jone was asleep on a
+    settee of the days of yore, and Mr. Poplington had gone to bed, being
+    tired, my soul went back to the olden time, and, looking out through
+    the little window in the fireplace, I fancied I could see William the
+    Conqueror and the King of the Danes sneaking along the little street
+    under the eaves of the thatched roofs, until I was so worked up that I
+    was on the point of shouting, "Fly! oh, Saxon!" when the door opened
+    and the maid who waited on us at the table put her head in. I took this
+    for a sign that the curfew bell was going to ring, and so I woke up
+    Jone and we went to bed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But all night long the heroes of the past flocked about me. I had been
+    reading a lot of history, and I knew them all the minute my eyes fell
+    upon them. Charlemagne and Canute sat on the end of the bed, while
+    Alfred the Great climbed up one of the posts until he was stopped by
+    Hannibal's legs, who had them twisted about the post to keep himself
+    steady. When I got up in the morning I went down-stairs into the little
+    parlor, and there was the maid down on her knees cleaning the hearth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is your name?" I said to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jane, please," said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jane what?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jane Puddle, please," said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I took a carving-knife from off the table, and standing over her I
+    brought it down gently on top of her head. "Rise, Sir Jane Puddle,"
+    said I, to which the maid gave a smothered gasp, and&mdash;would you believe
+    it, madam?&mdash;she crept out of the room on her hands and knees. The cook
+    waited on us at breakfast, and I truly believe that the landlord and
+    his wife breathed a sigh of relief when we left the Ship Inn, for their
+    sordid souls had never heard of knighthood, but knew all about
+    assassination.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0026"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img026.jpg">
+<img src="images/img026s.jpg" width="145" height="200"
+alt="'RISE, SIR JANE PUDDLE'" /><br />
+'RISE, SIR JANE PUDDLE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    That morning we left Porlock by a hill which compared with the one we
+    came into it by, was like the biggest Pyramid of Egypt by the side of a
+    haycock. I don't suppose in the whole civilized world there is a worse
+    hill with a road on it than the one we went up by. I was glad we had to
+    go up it instead of down it, though it was very hard to walk, pushing
+    the tricycle, even when helped. I believe it would have taken away my
+    breath and turned me dizzy even to take one step face forward down such
+    a hill, and gaze into the dreadful depths below me; and yet they drive
+    coaches and fours down that hill. At the top of the hill is this
+    notice: "To cyclers&mdash;this hill is dangerous." If I had thought of it I
+    should have looked for the cyclers' graves at the bottom of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The reason I thought about this was that I had been reading about one
+    of the mountains in Switzerland, which is one of the highest and most
+    dangerous, and with the poorest view, where so many Alpine climbers
+    have been killed that there is a little graveyard nearly full of their
+    graves at the foot of the mountain. How they could walk through that
+    graveyard and read the inscriptions on the tombstones and then go and
+    climb that mountain is more than I can imagine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In walking up this hill, and thinking that it might have been in front
+    of me when my tricycle ran away, I could not keep my mind away from the
+    little graveyard at the foot of the Swiss mountain.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Eleven</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0027"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img027.jpg" width="620" height="268" alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img027l.jpg" width="153" height="156" alt="O" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    n the third day of our cycle trip we journeyed along a lofty road,
+    with the wild moor on one side and the tossing sea on the other, and at
+    night reached Lynton. It is a little town on a jutting crag, and far
+    down below it on the edge of the sea was another town named Lynmouth,
+    and there is a car with a wire rope to it, like an elevator, which they
+    call The Lift, which takes people up and down from one town to another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here we stopped at a house very different from the Ship Inn, for it
+    looked as if it had been built the day before yesterday. Everything was
+    new and shiny, and we had our supper at a long table with about twenty
+    other people, just like a boardinghouse. Some of their ways reminded
+    me of the backwoods, and I suppose there is nothing more modern than
+    backwoodsism, which naturally hasn't the least alloy of the past. When
+    the people got through with their cups of coffee or tea, mostly the
+    last, two women went around the table, one with a big bowl for us to
+    lean back and empty our slops into, and the other with the tea or
+    coffee to fill up the cups. A gentleman with a baldish head, who was
+    sitting opposite us, began to be sociable as soon as he heard us speak
+    to the waiters, and asked questions about America. After he got through
+    with about a dozen of them he said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is it true, as I have heard, that what you call native-born Americans
+    deteriorate in the third generation?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had been answering most of the questions, but now Jone spoke up
+    quick. "That depends," says he, "on their original blood. When
+    Americans are descended from Englishmen they steadily improve,
+    generation after generation." The baldish man smiled at this, and said
+    there was nothing like having good blood for a foundation. But Mr.
+    Poplington laughed, and said to me that Jone had served him right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The country about Lynton is wonderfully beautiful, with rocks and
+    valleys, and velvet lawns running into the sea, and woods and ancestral
+    mansions, and we spent the day seeing all this, and also going down to
+    Lynmouth, where the little ships lie high and dry on the sand when the
+    tide goes out, and the carts drive up to them and put goods on board,
+    and when the tide rises the ships sail away, which is very convenient.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wanted to keep on along the coast, but the others didn't, and the
+    next morning we started back to Chedcombe by a roundabout way, so that
+    we might see Exmoor and the country where Lorna Doone and John Ridd cut
+    up their didoes. I must say I liked the story a good deal better before
+    I saw the country where the things happened. The mind of man is capable
+    of soarings which Nature weakens at when she sees what she is called
+    upon to do. If you want a real, first-class, tooth-on-edge Doone
+    valley, the place to look for it is in the book. We went rolling along
+    on the smooth, hard roads, which are just as good here as if they was
+    in London, and all around us was stretched out the wild and desolate
+    moors, with the wind screaming and whistling over the heather, nearly
+    tearing the clothes off our backs, while the rain beat down on us with
+    a steady pelting, and the ragged sheep stopped to look at us, as if we
+    was three witches and they was Macbeths.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The very thought that I was out in a wild storm on a desolate moor
+    filled my soul with a sort of triumph, and I worked my tricycle as if I
+    was spurring my steed to battle. The only thing that troubled me was
+    the thought that if the water that poured off my mackintosh that day
+    could have run into our cistern at home, it would have been a glorious
+    good thing. Jone did not like the fierce blast and the inspiriting
+    rain, but I knew he'd stand it as long as Mr. Poplington did, and so I
+    was content, although, if we had been overtaken by a covered wagon, I
+    should have trembled for the result.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That night we stopped in the little village of Simonsbath at Somebody's
+    Arms. After dinner Mr. Poplington, who knew some people in the place,
+    went out, but Jone and me went to bed as quick as we could, for we was
+    tired. The next morning we was wakened by a tremendous pounding at the
+    door. I didn't know what to make of it, for it was too early and too
+    loud for hot water, but we heard Mr. Poplington calling to us, and Jone
+    jumped up to see what he wanted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Get up," said he, "if you want to see a sight that you never saw
+    before. We'll start off immediately and breakfast at Exford." The hope
+    of seeing a sight was enough to make me bounce at any time, and I never
+    dressed or packed a bag quicker than I did that morning, and Jone
+    wasn't far behind me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got down-stairs we found our cycles waiting ready at the door,
+    together with the stable man and the stable boy and the boy's helper
+    and the cook and the chambermaid and the waiters and the other
+    servants, waiting for their tips. Mr. Poplington seemed in a fine
+    humor, and he told us he had heard the night before that there was to
+    be a stag hunt that day, the first of the season. In fact, it was not
+    one of the regular meets, but what they called a by-meet, and not known
+    to everybody.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We will go on to Exford," said he, straddling his bicycle, "for though
+    the meet isn't to be there, there's where they keep the hounds and
+    horses, and if we make good speed we shall get there before they start
+    out."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The three of us travelled abreast, Mr. Poplington in the middle, and on
+    the way he told us a good deal about stag hunts. What I remember best,
+    having to go so fast and having to mind my steering, was that after the
+    hunting season began they hunted stags until a certain day&mdash;I forget
+    what it was&mdash;and then they let them alone and began to hunt the does;
+    and that after that particular day of the month, when the stags heard
+    the hounds coming they paid no attention to them, knowing very well it
+    was the does' turn to be chased, and that they would not be bothered;
+    and so they let the female members of their families take care of
+    themselves; which shows that ungentlemanliness extends itself even into
+    Nature.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got to Exford we left our cycles at the inn and followed Mr.
+    Poplington to the hunting stables, which are near by. I had not gone a
+    dozen steps from the door before I heard a great barking, and the next
+    minute there came around the corner a pack of hounds. They crossed the
+    bridge over the little river, and then they stopped. We went up to
+    them, and while Mr. Poplington talked to the men the whole of that pack
+    of hounds gathered about us as gentle as lambs. They were good big
+    dogs, white and brown. The head huntsman who had them in charge told me
+    there was thirty couple of them, and I thought that sixty dogs was
+    pretty heavy odds against one deer. Then they moved off as orderly as
+    if they had been children in a kindergarten, and we went to the stables
+    and saw the horses; and then the master of the hounds and a good many
+    other gentlemen in red coats, in all sorts of traps, rode up, and their
+    hunters were saddled, and the dogs barked and the men cracked their
+    whips to keep them together, and there was a bustle and liveliness to a
+    degree I can't write about, and Jone and I never thought about going in
+    to breakfast until all those horses, some led and some ridden, and the
+    men and the hounds, and even the dust from their feet, had disappeared.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wanted to go see the hunt start off, but Mr. Poplington said it was
+    two or three miles distant, and out of our way, and that we'd better
+    move on as soon as possible so as to reach Chedcombe that night; but
+    he was glad, he said, that we had had a chance to see the hounds and
+    the horses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for himself, I could see he was a little down in the mouth, for he
+    said he was very fond of hunting, and that if he had known of this meet
+    he would have been there with a horse and his hunting clothes. I think
+    he hoped somebody would lend him a horse, but nobody did, and not being
+    able to hunt himself he disliked seeing other people doing what he
+    could not. Of course, Jone and me could not go to the hunt by
+    ourselves, so after we'd had our tea and toast and bacon we started
+    off. I will say here that when I was at the Ship Inn I had tea for my
+    breakfast, for I couldn't bring my mind to order coffee&mdash;a drink the
+    Saxons must never have heard of&mdash;in such a place; and since that we
+    have been drinking it because Jone said there was no use fighting
+    against established drinks, and that anyway he thought good tea was
+    better than bad coffee.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twelve</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE
+</p>
+<p>
+    As I said in my last letter, we started out for Chedcombe, not abreast,
+    as we had been before, but strung along the road, and me and Mr.
+    Poplington pretty doleful, being disappointed and not wanting to talk.
+    But as for Jone, he seemed livelier than ever, and whistled a lot of
+    tunes he didn't know. I think it always makes him lively to get rid of
+    seeing sights. The sun was shining brightly, and there was no reason to
+    expect rain for two or three hours anyway, and the country we passed
+    through was so fine, with hardly any houses, and with great hills and
+    woods, and sometimes valleys far below the road, with streams rushing
+    and bubbling, that after a while I began to feel better, and I pricked
+    up my tricycle, and, of course, being followed by Jone, we left Mr.
+    Poplington, whose melancholy seemed to have gotten into his legs, a
+    good way behind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We must have travelled two or three hours when all of a sudden I heard
+    a noise afar, and I drew up and listened. The noise was the barking of
+    dogs, and it seemed to come from a piece of woods on the other side of
+    the field which lay to the right of the road. The next instant
+    something shot out from under the trees and began going over the field
+    in ten-foot hops. I sat staring without understanding, but when I saw a
+    lot of brown and white spots bounce out of the wood, and saw, a long
+    way back in the open field, two red-coated men on horseback, the truth
+    flashed upon me that this was the hunt. The creature in front was the
+    stag, who had chosen to come this way, and the dogs and the horses was
+    after him, and I was here to see it all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Almost before I got this all straight in my mind the deer was nearly
+    opposite me on the other side of the field, going the same way that we
+    were. In a second I clapped spurs into my tricycle and was off. In
+    front of me was a long stretch of down grade, and over this I went as
+    fast as I could work my pedals; no brakes or holding back for me. My
+    blood was up, for I was actually in a deer hunt, and to my amazement
+    and wild delight I found I was keeping up with the deer. I was going
+    faster than the men on horseback.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hi! Hi!" I shouted, and down I went with one eye on the deer and the
+    other on the road, every atom of my body tingling with fiery
+    excitement. When I began to go up the little slope ahead I heard Jone
+    puffing behind me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You will break your neck," he shouted, "if you go down hill that way,"
+    and getting close up to me he fastened his cord to my tricycle. But I
+    paid no attention to him or his advice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The stag! The stag!" I cried. "As long as he keeps near the road we
+    can follow him! Hi!" And having got up to the top of the next hill I
+    made ready to go down as fast as I had gone before, for we had fallen
+    back a little, and the stag was now getting ahead of us; but it made me
+    gnash my teeth to find that I could not go fast, for Jone held back
+    with all his force (and both feet on the ground, I expect), and I could
+    not get on at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let go of me," I cried, "we shall lose the stag. Stop holding back."
+    But it wasn't any use; Jone's heels must have been nearly rubbed off,
+    but he held back like a good fellow, and I seemed to be moving along no
+    faster than a worm. I could not stand this; my blood boiled and
+    bubbled; the deer was getting away from me; and if it had been Porlock
+    Hill in front of me I would have dashed on, not caring whether the road
+    was steep or level.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A thought flashed across my mind, and I clapped my hand into my pocket
+    and jerked out a pair of scissors. In an instant I was free. The world
+    and the stag was before me, and I was flying along with a tornado-like
+    swiftness that soon brought me abreast of the deer. This perfectly
+    splendid, bounding creature was not far away from me on the other side
+    of the hedge, and as the field was higher than the road I could see him
+    perfectly. His legs worked so regular and springy, except when he came
+    to a cross hedge, which he went over with a single clip, and came down
+    like India rubber on the other side, that one might have thought he was
+    measuring the grass, and keeping an account of his jumps in his head.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0028"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img028.jpg">
+<img src="images/img028s.jpg" width="157" height="160"
+alt="'IN AN INSTANT I WAS FREE.'" /><br />
+'IN AN INSTANT I WAS FREE.'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    For one instant I looked around for the hounds, and I saw there was not
+    more than half a dozen following him, and I could only see the two
+    hunters I had seen before, and these was still a good way back. As for
+    Jone, I couldn't hear him at all, and he must have been left far
+    behind. There was still the woods on the other side, and the deer
+    seemed to run to keep away from that and to cross the road, and he
+    came nearer and nearer until I fancied he kept an eye on me as if he
+    was wondering if I was of any consequence, and if I could hinder him
+    from crossing the road and getting away into the valley below where
+    there was a regular wilderness of woods and underbrush.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If he does that, I thought, he will be gone in a minute and I shall
+    lose him, and the hunt will be over. And for fear he would make for the
+    hedge and jump over it, not minding me, I jerked out my handkerchief
+    and shook it at him. You can't imagine how this frightened him. He
+    turned sharp to the right, dashed up the hill, cleared a hedge and was
+    gone. I gave a gasp and a scream as I saw him disappear. I believe I
+    cried, but I didn't stop, and glad I was that I didn't; for in less
+    than a minute I had come to a cross lane which led in the very
+    direction the deer had taken. I turned into this lane and went on as
+    fast as I could, and I soon found that it led through a thick wood.
+    Down in the hollow, which I could not see into, I heard a barking and
+    shouting, and I kept on just as fast as I could make that tricycle go.
+    Where the lane led to, or what I should ever come to, I didn't think
+    about. I was hunting a stag, and all I cared for was to feel my
+    tricycle bounding beneath me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I may have gone a half a mile or two miles&mdash;I have not an idea how far
+    it was&mdash;when suddenly I came to a place where there was green grass and
+    rocks in an opening in the woods, and what a sight I saw! There was
+    that beautiful, grand, red deer half down on his knees and perfectly
+    quiet, and there was one of the men in red coats coming toward him with
+    a great knife in his hand, and a little farther back was three or four
+    dogs with another man, still on horseback, whipping them to keep them
+    back, though they seemed willing enough to lie there with their tongues
+    out, panting. As the man with the knife came up to the deer, the poor
+    creature raised its eyes to him, and didn't seem to mind whether he
+    came or not. It was trembling all over and fairly tired to death. When
+    the man got near enough he took hold of one of the deer's horns and
+    lifted up the hand with the knife in it, but he didn't bring it down on
+    that deer's throat, I can tell you, madam, for I was there and had him
+    by the arm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He turned on me as if he had been struck by lightning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you mean?" he shouted. "Let go my arm."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't you touch that deer," said I&mdash;my voice was so husky I could
+    hardly speak&mdash;"don't you see it's surrendered? Can you have the heart
+    to cut that beautiful throat when he is pleading for mercy?" The man's
+    eyes looked as if they would burst out of his head. He gave me a pull
+    and a push as if he would stick the knife into me, and he actually
+    swore at me, but I didn't mind that.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0029"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img029.jpg">
+<img src="images/img029s.jpg" width="200" height="129"
+alt="'IF YOU WAS A MAN I'D BREAK YOUR HEAD'" /><br />
+'IF YOU WAS A MAN I'D BREAK YOUR HEAD'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "You have got that poor creature now," said I, "and that's enough. Keep
+    it and tame it and bring it up with your children." I didn't have time
+    to say anything more, and he didn't have time to answer, for two of the
+    dogs who had got a little of their wind back sprang up and made a jump
+    at the stag; and he, having got a little of his wind back, jerked his
+    horn out of the hand of the man, and giving a sort of side spring
+    backward among the bushes and rocks, away he went, the dogs after him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man with the knife rushed out into the lane, and so did I, and so
+    did the man on horseback, almost on top of me. On the other side of the
+    lane was a little gorge with rocks and trees and water at the bottom of
+    it, and I was just in time to see the stag spring over the lane and
+    drop out of sight among the rocks and the moss and the vines.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man stood and swore at me regardless of my sex, so violent was his
+    rage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you was a man I'd break your head," he yelled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm glad I'm not," said I, "for I wouldn't want my head broken. But
+    what troubles me is, that I'm afraid that deer has broken his legs or
+    hurt himself some way, for I never saw anything drop on rocks in such a
+    reckless manner, and the poor thing so tired."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man swore again, and said something about wishing somebody else's
+    legs had been broken; and then he shouted to the man on horseback to
+    call off the dogs, which was of no use, for he was doing it already.
+    Then he turned on me again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are an American," he shouted. "I might have known that. No English
+    woman would ever have done such a beastly thing as that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You're mistaken there," I said; "there isn't a true English woman that
+    lives who would not have done the same thing. Your mother&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Confound my mother!" yelled the man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right," said I; "that's all in your family and none of my
+    business." Then he went off raging to where he had left his horse by a
+    gatepost.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The other man, who was a good deal younger and more friendly, came up
+    to me and said he wouldn't like to be in my boots, for I had spoiled a
+    pretty piece of sport; and then he went on and told me that it had been
+    a bad hunt, for instead of starting only one stag, three or four of
+    them had been started, and they had had a bad time, for the hounds and
+    the hunters had been mixed up in a nasty way. And at last, when the
+    master of the hounds and most every one else had gone off over Dunkery
+    Hill, and he didn't know whether they was after two stags or one, he
+    and his mate, who was both whippers-in, had gone to turn part of the
+    pack that had broken away, and had found that these dogs was after
+    another stag, and so before they knew it they was in a hunt of their
+    own, and they would have killed that stag if it had not been for me;
+    and he said it was hard on his mate, for he knew he had it in mind that
+    he was going to kill the only stag of the day.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He went on to say, that as for himself he wasn't so sorry, for this was
+    Sir Skiddery Henchball's land, and when a stag was killed it belonged
+    to the man whose land it died on. He told me that the master of the
+    hunt gets the head and the antlers, and the huntsman some other part,
+    which I forget, but the owner of the land, no matter whether he's in
+    the hunt or not, gets the body of the stag. "There's a cottage not a
+    mile down this lane," said he, "with its thatch torn off, and my sister
+    and her children live there, and Sir Skiddery turned them out on
+    account of the rent, and so I'm glad the old skinflint didn't get the
+    venison." And then he went off, being called by the other man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't know what time it was, but it seemed as if it must be getting
+    on into the afternoon; and feeling that my deer hunt was over, I
+    thought I had better lose no time in hunting up Jone, so I followed on
+    after the men and the dogs, who was going to the main road, but keeping
+    a little back of them, though, for I didn't know what the older one
+    might do if he happened to turn and see me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was sure that Jone had passed the little lane without seeing it, so I
+    kept on the way we had been going, and got up all the speed I could,
+    though I must say I was dreadfully tired, and even trembling a little,
+    for while I had been stag hunting I was so excited I didn't know how
+    much work I was doing. There was sign-posts enough to tell me the way
+    to Chedcombe, and so I kept straight on, up hill and down hill, until
+    at last I saw a man ahead on a bicycle, which I soon knew to be Mr.
+    Poplington. He was surprised enough at seeing me, and told me my
+    husband had gone ahead. I didn't explain anything, and it wasn't until
+    we got nearly to Chedcombe that we met Jone. He had been to Chedcombe,
+    and was coming back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone is a good fellow, but he's got a will of his own, and he said that
+    this would be the end of my tricycle riding, and that the next time we
+    went out together on wheels he'd drive. I didn't tell him anything
+    about the stag hunt then, for he seemed to be in favor of doing all the
+    talking himself; but after dinner, when we was all settled down quiet
+    and comfortable, I told him and Mr. Poplington the story of the chase,
+    and they both laughed, Mr. Poplington the most.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Thirteen</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is now about a week since my stag hunt, and Jone and I have kept
+    pretty quiet, taking short walks, and doing a good deal of reading in
+    our garden whenever the sun shines into the little arbor there, and Mr.
+    Poplington spends most of his time fishing. He works very hard at this,
+    partly for the sake of his conscience, I think, for his bicycle trip
+    made him lose three or four days he had taken a license for.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was day before yesterday that rheumatism showed itself certain and
+    plain in Jone. I had been thinking that perhaps I might have it first,
+    but it wasn't so, and it began in Jone, which, though I don't want you
+    to think me hard-hearted, madam, was perhaps better; for if it had not
+    been for it, it might have been hard to get him out of this comfortable
+    little cottage, where he'd be perfectly content to stay until it was
+    time for us to sail for America. The beautiful greenness which spreads
+    over the fields and hills, and not only the leaves of trees and vines,
+    but down and around trunks and branches, is charming to look at and
+    never to be forgotten; but when this moist greenness spreads itself to
+    one's bones, especially when it creeps up to the parts that work
+    together, then the soul of man longs for less picturesqueness and more
+    easy-going joints. Jone says the English take their climate as they do
+    their whiskey; and he calls it climate-and-water, with a very little of
+    the first and a good deal of the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, we must now leave Chedcombe; and when we talked to Mr.
+    Poplington about it he said there was two places the English went to
+    for their rheumatism. One was Bath, not far from here, and the other
+    was Buxton, up in the north. As soon as I heard of Bath I was on pins
+    and needles to go there, for in all the novel-reading I've done, which
+    has been getting better and better in quality since the days when I
+    used to read dime novels on the canal-boat, up to now when I like the
+    best there is, I could not help knowing lots about Evelina and Beau
+    Brummel, and the Pump Room, and the fine ladies and young bucks, and it
+    would have joyed my soul to live and move where all these people had
+    been, and where all these things had happened, even if fictitiously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But Mr. Poplington came down like a shower on my notions, and said that
+    Bath was very warm, and was the place where everybody went for their
+    rheumatism in winter; but that Buxton was the place for the summer,
+    because it was on high land and cool. This cast me down a good deal;
+    for if we could have gone where I could have steeped my soul in
+    romanticness, and at the same time Jone could have steeped himself in
+    warm mineral water, there would not have been any time lost, and both
+    of us would have been happier. But Mr. Poplington stuck to it that it
+    would ruin anybody's constitution to go to such a hot place in August,
+    and so I had to give it up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So to-morrow we start for Buxton, which, from what I can make out, must
+    be a sort of invalid picnic ground. I always did hate diseases and
+    ailments, even of the mildest, when they go in caravan. I like to take
+    people's sicknesses separate, because then I feel I might do something
+    to help; but when they are bunched I feel as if it was sort of mean for
+    me to go about cheerful and singing when other people was all grunting.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But we are not going straight to Buxton. As I have often said, Jone is
+    a good fellow, and he told me last night if there was any bit of fancy
+    scenery I'd like to stop on the way to the unromantic refuge he'd be
+    glad to give me the chance, because he didn't suppose it would matter
+    much if he put off his hot soaks for a few days. It didn't take me long
+    to name a place I'd like to stop at&mdash;for most of my reading lately has
+    been in the guide books, and I had crammed myself with the descriptions
+    of places worth seeing, that would take us at least two years to look
+    at&mdash;so I said I would like to go to the River Wye, which is said to be
+    the most romantic stream in England, and when that is said, enough is
+    said for me, so Jone agreed, and we are going to do the Wye on our way
+    north.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is going to be an election here in a few days, and this morning
+    Jone and me hobbled into the village&mdash;that is, he hobbled in body, and
+    I did in mind to think of his going along like a creaky wheelbarrow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Everybody was agog about the election, and we was looking at some
+    placards posted against a wall, when Mr. Locky, the innkeeper, came
+    along, and after bidding us good-morning he asked Jone what party he
+    belonged to. "I'm a Home Ruler," said Jone, "especially in the matter
+    of tricycles." Mr. Locky didn't understand the last part of this
+    speech, but I did, and he said, "I am glad you are not a Tory, sir. If
+    you will read that, you will see what the Tory party has done for us,"
+    and he pointed out some lines at the bottom of a green placard, and
+    these was the words: "Remember it was the Tory party that lost us the
+    United States of America."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Jone, "that seems like going a long way off to get some
+    stones to throw at the Tories, but I feel inclined to heave a rock at
+    them myself for the injury that party has done to America."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To America!" said Mr. Locky, "Did the Tories ever harm America?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course they did," said Jone; "they lost us England, a very valuable
+    country, indeed, and a great loss to any nation. If it had not been for
+    the Tory party, Mr. Gladstone might now be in Washington as a senator
+    from Middlesex."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0030"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img030.jpg">
+<img src="images/img030.jpg" width="157" height="200"
+alt="'I'M A HOME RULER'" /><br />
+'I'M A HOME RULER'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    Mr. Locky didn't understand one word of this, and so he asked Jone
+    which leg his rheumatism was in; and when Jone told him it was his left
+    leg he said it was a very curious thing, but if you would take a
+    hundred men in Chedcombe there would be at least sixty with rheumatism
+    in the left leg, and perhaps not more than twenty with it in the right,
+    which was something the doctors never had explained yet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is awfully hard to go away and leave this lovely little cottage with
+    its roses and vines, and Miss Pondar, and all its sweet-smelling
+    comforts; and not only the cottage, but the village, and Mrs. Locky and
+    her husband at the Bordley Arms, who couldn't have been kinder to us
+    and more anxious to know what we wanted and what they could do. The
+    fact is, that when English people do like Americans they go at it with
+    just as much vim and earnestness as if they was helping Britannia to
+    rule more waves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While I was feeling badly at leaving Miss Pondar your letter came, dear
+    madam, and I must say it gave heavy hearts to Jone and me, to me
+    especially, as you can well understand. I went off into the
+    summer-house, and as I sat there thinking and reading the letter over
+    again, I do believe some tears came into my eyes; and Miss Pondar, who
+    was working in the garden only a little way off&mdash;for if there is
+    anything she likes to do it is to weed and fuss among the rose-bushes
+    and other flowers, which she does whenever her other work gives her a
+    chance&mdash;she happened to look up, and seeing that I was in trouble, she
+    came right to me, like the good woman she is, and asked me if I had
+    heard bad news, and if I would like a little gin and water.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I said that I had had bad news, but that I did not want any spirits,
+    and she said she hoped nothing had happened to any of my family, and I
+    told her not exactly; but in looking back it seemed as if it was almost
+    that way. I thought I ought to tell her what had happened, for I could
+    see that she was really feeling for me, and so I said: "Poor Lord
+    Edward is dead. To be sure, he was very old, and I suppose we had not
+    any right to think he'd live even as long as he did; and as he was
+    nearly blind and had very poor use of his legs it was, perhaps, better
+    that he should go. But when I think of what friends we used to be
+    before I was married, I can't help feeling badly to think that he has
+    gone; that when I go back to America he will not show he is glad to see
+    me home again, which he would be if there wasn't another soul on the
+    whole continent who felt that way."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Miss Pondar was now standing up with her hands folded in front of her,
+    and her head bowed down as if she was walking behind a hearse with
+    eight ostrich plumes on it. "Lord Edward," she said, in a melancholy,
+    respectful voice, "and will his remains be brought to England for
+    interment?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no," said I, not understanding what she was talking about. "I am
+    sure he will be buried somewhere near his home, and when I go back his
+    grave will be one of the first places I will visit."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A streak of bewilderment began to show itself in Miss Pondar's
+    melancholy respectfulness, and she said: "Of course, when one lives in
+    foreign parts one may die there, but I always thought in cases like
+    that they were brought home to their family vaults."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It may seem strange for me to think of anything funny at a time like
+    this, but when Miss Pondar mentioned family vaults when talking of Lord
+    Edward, there came into my mind the jumps he used to make whenever he
+    saw any of us coming home; but I saw what she was driving at and the
+    mistake she had made. "Oh," I said, "he was not a member of the British
+    nobility; he was a dog; Lord Edward was his name. I never loved any
+    animal as I loved him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I suppose, madam, that you must sometimes have noticed one of the top
+    candles of a chandelier, when the room gets hot, suddenly bending over
+    and drooping and shedding tears of hot paraffine on the candles below,
+    and perhaps on the table; and if you can remember what that overcome
+    candle looked like, you will have an idea of what Miss Pondar looked
+    like when she found out Lord Edward was a dog. I think that for one
+    brief moment she hugged to her bosom the fond belief that I was
+    intimate with the aristocracy, and that a noble lord, had he not
+    departed this life, would have been the first to welcome me home, and
+    that she&mdash;she herself&mdash;was in my service. But the drop was an awful
+    one. I could see the throes of mortified disappointment in her back, as
+    she leaned over a bed of pinks, pulling out young plants, I am afraid,
+    as well as weeds. When I looked at her, I was sorry I let her know it
+    was a dog I mourned. She has tried so hard to make everything all right
+    while we have been here, that she might just as well have gone on
+    thinking that it was a noble earl who died.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow morning we shall have our last Devonshire clotted cream, for
+    they tell me this is to be had only in the west of England, and when I
+    think of the beautiful hills and vales of this country I shall not
+    forget that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course we would not have time to stay here longer, even if Jone
+    hadn't got the rheumatism; but if he had to have it, for which I am as
+    sorry as anybody can be, it is a lucky thing that he did have it just
+    about the time that we ought to be going away, anyhow. And although I
+    did not think, when we came to England, that we should ever go to
+    Buxton, we are thankful that there is such a place to go to; although,
+    for my part, I can't help feeling disappointed that the season isn't
+    such that we could go to Bath, and Evelina and Beau Brummel.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0015"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Fourteen</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0031"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img031.jpg" width="618" height="313"
+alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img031l.jpg"width="156" height="153"
+alt="W" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    e came to this queer old English town, not because it is any better
+    than so many other towns, but because Mr. Poplington told us it was a
+    good place for our headquarters while we was seeing the River Wye and
+    other things in the neighborhood. This hotel is the best in the town
+    and very well kept, so that Jone made his usual remark about its being
+    a good place to stay in. We are near the point where the four principal
+    streets of the town, called Northgate, Eastgate, Southgate, and
+    Westgate, meet, and if there was nothing else to see it would be worth
+    while to stand there and look at so much Englishism coming and going
+    from four different quarters.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is another hotel here, called the New Inn, that was recommended
+    to us, but I thought we would not want to go there, for we came to see
+    old England, and I don't want to see its new and shiny things, so we
+    came to the Bell, as being more antique. But I have since found out
+    that the New Inn was built in 1450 to accommodate the pilgrims who came
+    to pay their respects to the tomb of Edward II. in the fine old
+    cathedral here. But though I should like to live in a four-hundred-and
+    forty-year-old house, we are very well satisfied where we are.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Two very good things come from Gloucester, for it is the well-spring of
+    Sunday schools and vaccination. They keep here the horns of the cow
+    that Dr. Jenner first vaccinated from, and not far from our hotel is
+    the house of Robert Raikes. This is an old-fashioned timber house, and
+    looks like a man wearing his skeleton outside of his skin. We are sorry
+    Mr. Poplington couldn't come here with us, for he could have shown us a
+    great many things; but he stayed at Chedcombe to finish his fishing,
+    and he said he might meet us at Buxton, where he goes every year for
+    his arm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To see the River Wye you must go down it, so with just one handbag we
+    took the train for the little town of Ross, which is near the beginning
+    of the navigable part of the river&mdash;I might almost say the wadeable
+    part, for I imagine the deepest soundings about Ross are not more than
+    half a yard. We stayed all night at a hotel overlooking the valley of
+    the little river, and as the best way to see this wonderful stream is
+    to go down it in a rowboat, as soon as we reached Ross we engaged a
+    boat and a man for the next morning to take us to Monmouth, which would
+    be about a day's row, and give us the best part of the river. But I
+    must say that when we looked out over the valley the prospect was not
+    very encouraging, for it seemed to me that if the sun came out hot it
+    would dry up that river, and Jone might not be willing to wait until
+    the next heavy rain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While we was at Chedcombe I read the "Maid of Sker," because its scenes
+    are laid in the Bristol Channel, about the coast near where we was, and
+    over in Wales. And when the next morning we went down to the boat which
+    we was going to take our day's trip in, and I saw the man who was to
+    row us, David Llewellyn popped straight into my mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This man was elderly, with gray hair, and a beard under his chin, with
+    a general air of water and fish. He was good-natured and sociable from
+    the very beginning. It seemed a shame that an old man should row two
+    people so much younger than he was, but after I had looked at him
+    pulling at his oars for a little while, I saw that there was no need
+    of pitying him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a good day, with only one or two drizzles in the morning, and we
+    had not gone far before I found that the Wye was more of a river than I
+    thought it was, though never any bigger than a creek. It was just about
+    warm enough for a boat trip, though the old man told us there had been
+    a "rime" that morning, which made me think of the "Ancient Mariner."
+    The more the boatman talked and made queer jokes, the more I wanted to
+    ask him his name; and I hoped he would say David Llewellyn, or at least
+    David, and as a sort of feeler I asked him if he had ever seen a
+    coracle. "A corkle?" said he. "Oh, yes, ma'am, I've seen many a one and
+    rowed in them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I couldn't wait any longer, and so I asked him his name. He stopped
+    rowing and leaned on his oars and let the boat drift. "Now," said he,
+    "if you've got a piece of paper and a pencil I wish you would listen
+    careful and put down my name, and if you ever know of any other people
+    in your country coming to the River Wye, I wish you would tell them my
+    name, and say I am a boatman, and can take them down the river better
+    than anybody else that's on it. My name is Samivel Jones. Be sure
+    you've got that right, please&mdash;Samivel Jones. I was born on this river,
+    and I rowed on it with my father when I was a boy, and I have rowed on
+    it ever since, and now I am sixty-five years old. Do you want to know
+    why this river is called the Wye? I will tell you. Wye means crooked,
+    so this river is called the Wye because it is crooked. Wye, the crooked
+    river."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was no doubt about the old man's being right about the
+    crookedness of the stream. If you have ever noticed an ant running over
+    the floor you will have an idea how the Wye runs through this beautiful
+    country. If it comes to a hill it doesn't just pass it and let you see
+    one side of it, but it goes as far around it as it can, and then goes
+    back again, and goes around some other hill or great rocky point, or a
+    clump of woods, or anything else that travellers might like to see. At
+    one place, called Symond's Yat, it makes a curve so great, that if we
+    was to get out of our boat and walk across the land, we would have to
+    walk less than half a mile before we came to the river again; but to
+    row around the curve as we did, we had to go five miles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Every now and then we came to rapids. I didn't count them, but I think
+    there must have been about one to every mile, where the river-bed was
+    full of rocks, and where the water rushed furiously around and over
+    them. If we had been rowing ourselves we would have gone on shore and
+    camped when we came to the first of these rapids, for we wouldn't have
+    supposed our little boat could go through those tumbling, rushing
+    waters; but old Samivel knew exactly how the narrow channel, just deep
+    enough sometimes for our boat to float without bumping the bottom, runs
+    and twists itself among the hidden rocks, and he'd stand up in the bow
+    and push the boat this way and that until it slid into the quiet water
+    again, and he sat down to his oars. After we had been through four or
+    five of these we didn't feel any more afraid than if we had been
+    sitting together on our own little back porch.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for the banks of this river, they got more and more beautiful as we
+    went on. There was high hills with some castles, woods and crags and
+    grassy slopes, and now and then a lordly mansion or two, and great
+    massive, rocky walls, bedecked with vines and moss, rising high up
+    above our heads and shutting us out from the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone and I was filled as full as our minds could hold with the romantic
+    loveliness of the river and its banks, and old Samivel was so pleased
+    to see how we liked it&mdash;for I believe he looked upon that river as his
+    private property&mdash;that he told us about everything we saw, and pointed
+    out a lot of things we wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for him,
+    as if he had been a man explaining a panorama, and pointing out with a
+    stick the notable spots as the canvas unrolled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The only thing in his show which didn't satisfy him was two very fine
+    houses which had both of them belonged to noble personages in days
+    gone by, but which had been sold, one to a man who had made his money
+    in tea, and the other to a man who had made money in cotton. "Think of
+    that," said he; "cotton and tea, and living in such mansions as them
+    are, once owned by lords. They are both good men, and gives a great
+    deal to the poor, and does all they can for the country; but only think
+    of it, madam, cotton and tea! But all that happened a good while ago,
+    and the world is getting too enlightened now for such estates as them
+    are to come to cotton and tea."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sometimes we passed houses and little settlements, but, for the most
+    part, the country was as wild as undiscovered lands, which, being that
+    to me, I felt happier, I am sure, than Columbus did when he first
+    sighted floating weeds. Jone was a good deal wound up too, for he had
+    never seen anything so beautiful as all this. We had our luncheon at a
+    little inn, where the bread was so good that for a time I forgot the
+    scenery, and then we went on, passing through the Forest of Dean,
+    lonely and solemn, with great oak and beech trees, and Robin Hood and
+    his merry men watching us from behind the bushes for all we knew.
+    Whenever the river twists itself around, as if to show us a new view,
+    old Samivel would say: "Now isn't that the prettiest thing you've seen
+    yet?" and he got prouder and prouder of his river every mile he rowed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At one place he stopped and rested on his oars. "Now, then," said he,
+    twinkling up his face as if he was really David Llewellyn showing us a
+    fish with its eyes bulged out with sticks to make it look fresh, "as we
+    are out on a kind of a lark, suppose we try a bit of a hecho," and then
+    he turned to a rocky valley on his left, and in a voice like the man at
+    the station calling out the trains he yelled, "Hello there, sir! What
+    are you doing there, sir? Come out of that!" And when the words came
+    back as if they had been balls batted against a wall, he turned and
+    looked at us as proud and grinny as if the rocks had been his own baby
+    saying "papa" and "mamma" for visitors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not long after this we came to a place where there was a wide field on
+    one side, and a little way off we could see the top of a house among
+    the trees. A hedge came across the field to the river, and near the
+    bank was a big gate, and on this gate sat two young women, and down on
+    the ground on the side of the hedge nearest to us was another young
+    woman, and not far from her was three black hogs, two of them pointing
+    their noses at her and grunting, and the other was grunting around a
+    place where those young women had been making sketches and drawings,
+    and punching his nose into the easels and portfolios on the ground. The
+    young woman on the grass was striking at the hogs with a stick and
+    trying to make them go away, which they wouldn't do; and just as we
+    came near she dropped the stick and ran, and climbed up on the gate
+    beside the others, after which all the hogs went to rooting among the
+    drawing things.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As soon as Samivel saw what was going on he stopped his boat, and
+    shouted to the hogs a great deal louder than he had shouted to the
+    echo, but they didn't mind any more than they had minded the girl with
+    the stick. "Can't we stop the boat," I said, "and get out and drive off
+    those hogs? They will eat up all the papers and sketches."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just put me ashore," said Jone, "and I'll clear them out in no time;"
+    and old Samivel rowed the boat close up to the bank.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But when Jone got suddenly up on his feet there was such a twitch
+    across his face that I said to him, "Now just you sit down. If you go
+    ashore to drive off those hogs you'll jump about so that you'll bring
+    on such a rheumatism you can't sleep."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll get out myself," said Samivel, "if I can find a place to fasten
+    the boat to. I can't run her ashore here, and the current is strong."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't you leave the boat," said I, for the thought of Jone and me
+    drifting off and coming without him to one of those rapids sent a
+    shudder through me; and as the stern of the boat where I sat was close
+    to the shore I jumped with Jone's stick in my hand before either of
+    them could hinder me. I was so afraid that Jone would do it that I was
+    very quick about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The minute I left the boat Jone got ready to come after me, for he had
+    no notion of letting me be on shore by myself, but the boat had drifted
+    off a little, and old Samivel said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is a pretty steep bank to get up with the rheumatism on you. I'll
+    take you a little farther down, where I can ground the boat, and you
+    can get off more steadier."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But this letter is getting as long as the River Wye itself, and I must
+    stop it.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0016"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Fifteen</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
+</p>
+<p>
+    As soon as I jumped on shore, as I told you in my last, and had taken a
+    good grip on Jone's heavy stick, I went for those hogs, for I wanted to
+    drive them off before Jone came ashore, for I didn't want him to think
+    he must come.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have driven hogs and cows out of lots and yards often enough, as you
+    know yourself, madam, so I just stepped up to the biggest of them and
+    hit him a whack across the head as he was rubbing his nose in among
+    some papers with bits of landscapes on them, as was enough to make him
+    give up studying art for the rest of his life; but would you believe
+    it, madam, instead of running away he just made a bolt at me, and gave
+    me such a push with his head and shoulders he nearly knocked me over? I
+    never was so astonished, for they looked like hogs that you might think
+    could be chased out of a yard by a boy. But I gave the fellow another
+    crack on the back, which he didn't seem to notice, but just turned
+    again to give me another push, and at the same minute the two others
+    stopped rooting among the paint-boxes and came grunting at me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the first time in my life I was frightened by hogs. I struck at
+    them as hard as I could, and before I knew what I was about I flung
+    down the stick, made a rush for that gate, and was on top of it in no
+    time, in company with the three other young women that was sitting
+    there already.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really," said the one next to me, "I fancied you was going to be gored
+    to atoms before our eyes. Whatever made you go to those nasty beasts?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I looked at her quite severe, getting my feet well up out of reach of
+    the hogs if they should come near us.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I saw you was in trouble, miss, and I came to help you. My husband
+    wanted to come, but he has the rheumatism and I wouldn't let him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The other two young women looked at me as well as they could around the
+    one that was near me, and the one that was farthest off said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If the creatures could have been driven off by a woman, we could have
+    done it ourselves. I don't know why you should think you could do it
+    any better than we could."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must say, madam, that at that minute I was a little humble-minded,
+    for I don't mind confessing to you that the idea of one American woman
+    plunging into a conflict that had frightened off three English women,
+    and coming out victorious, had a good deal to do with my trying to
+    drive away those hogs; and now that I had come out of the little end
+    of the horn, just as the young women had, I felt pretty small, but I
+    wasn't going to let them see that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think that English hogs," said I, "must be savager than American
+    ones. Where I live there is not any kind of a hog that would not run
+    away if I shook a stick at him." The young woman at the other end of
+    the gate now spoke again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Everything British is braver than anything American," said she; "and
+    all you have done has been to vex those hogs, and they are chewing up
+    our drawing things worse than they did before."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course I fired up at this, and said, "You are very much mistaken
+    about Americans." But before I could say any more she went on to tell
+    me that she knew all about Americans; she had been in America, and such
+    a place she could never have fancied.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Over there you let everybody trample over you as much as they please.
+    You have no conveniences. One cannot even get a cab. Fancy! Not a cab
+    to be had unless one pays enough for a drive in Hyde Park."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must say that the hogs charging down on me didn't astonish me any
+    more than to find myself on top of a gate with a young woman charging
+    on my country in this fashion, and it was pretty hard on me to have her
+    pitch into the cab question, because Jone and me had had quite a good
+    deal to say about cabs ourselves, comparing New York and London,
+    without any great fluttering of the stars and stripes; but I wasn't
+    going to stand any such talk as that, and so I said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I know very well that our cab charges are high, and it is not likely
+    that poor people coming from other countries are able to pay them; but
+    as soon as our big cities get filled up with wretched, half-starved
+    people, with the children crying for bread at home, and the father glad
+    enough that he's able to get people to pay him a shilling for a drive,
+    and that he's not among the hundreds and thousands of miserable men who
+    have not any work at all, and go howling to Hyde Park to hold meetings
+    for blood or bread, then we will be likely to have cheap cabs as you
+    have."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How perfectly awful!" said the young woman nearest me; but the one at
+    the other end of the gate didn't seem to mind what I said, but shifted
+    off on another track.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And then there's your horses' tails," said she; "anything nastier
+    couldn't be fancied. Hundreds of them everywhere with long tails down
+    to their heels, as if they belong to heathens who had never been
+    civilized."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Heathens?" said I. "If you call the Arabians heathens, who have the
+    finest horses in the world, and wouldn't any more think of cutting off
+    their tails than they would think of cutting their legs off; and if
+    you call the cruel scoundrels who torture their poor horses by sawing
+    their bones apart so as to get a little stuck-up bob on behind, like a
+    moth-eaten paint-brush&mdash;if you call them Christians, then I suppose
+    you're right. There is a law in some parts of our country against the
+    wickedness of chopping off the tails of live horses, and if you had
+    such a law here you'd be a good deal more Christian-like than you are,
+    to say nothing of getting credit for decent taste."
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this time I had forgotten all about what Jone and I had agreed upon
+    as to arguing over the differences between countries, and I was just as
+    peppery as a wasp. The young woman at the other end of the gate was
+    rather waspy too, for she seemed to want to sting me wherever she could
+    find a spot uncovered; and now she dropped off her horses' tails, and
+    began to laugh until her face got purple.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You Americans are so awfully odd," she said. "You say you raise your
+    corn and your plants instead of growing them. It nearly makes me die
+    laughing when I hear one of you Americans say raise when you mean
+    grow."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now Jone and me had some talk about growing and raising, and the
+    reasons for and against our way of using the words; but I was ready to
+    throw all this to the winds, and was just about to tell the impudent
+    young woman that we raised our plants just the same as we raised our
+    children, leaving them to do their own growing, when the young woman
+    in the middle of the three, who up to this time hadn't said a word,
+    screamed out:
+</p>
+<a name="image-0032"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img032.jpg">
+<img src="images/img032s.jpg" width="240" height="151"
+alt="'AND WITH A SCREECH I DASHED AT THOSE HOGS LIKE A STEAM ENGINE'" /><br />
+'AND WITH A SCREECH I DASHED AT THOSE HOGS LIKE A STEAM ENGINE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "Oh, dear! Oh, dear! He's pulled out my drawing of Wilton Bridge. He'll
+    eat it up. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Whatever shall I do?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Instead of speaking I turned quick and looked at the hogs, and there,
+    sure enough, one of them had rooted open a portfolio and had hold of
+    the corners of a colored picture, which, from where I sat, I could see
+    was perfectly beautiful. The sky and the trees and the water was just
+    like what we ourselves had seen a little while ago, and in about half a
+    minute that hog would chew it up and swallow it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The young woman next to me had an umbrella in her hand. I made a snatch
+    at this and dropped off that gate like a shot. I didn't stop to think
+    about anything except that beautiful picture was on the point of being
+    swallowed up, and with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam
+    engine. When they saw me coming with my screech and the umbrella they
+    didn't stop a second, but with three great wiggles and three scared
+    grunts they bolted as fast as they could go. I picked up the picture of
+    the bridge, together with the portfolio, and took them to the young
+    woman who owned them. As the hogs had gone, all three of the women was
+    now getting down from the gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you very much," she said, "for saving my drawings. It was
+    awfully good of you, especially&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, you are welcome," said I, cutting her off short; and, handing the
+    other young woman her umbrella, I passed by the impudent one without so
+    much as looking at her, and on the other side of the hedge I saw Jone
+    coming across the grass. I jerked open the gate, not caring who it
+    might swing against, and walked to meet Jone. When I was near enough I
+    called out to know what on earth had become of him that he had left me
+    there so long by myself, forgetting that I hadn't wanted him to come at
+    all; and he told me that he had had a hard time getting on shore,
+    because they found the banks very low and muddy, and when he had landed
+    he was on the wrong side of a hedge, and had to walk a good way around
+    it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was troubled," said he, "because I thought you might come to grief
+    with the hogs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hogs!" said I, so sarcastic, that Jone looked hard at me, but I didn't
+    tell him anything more till we was in the boat, and then I just said
+    right out what had happened. Jone couldn't help laughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If I had known," said he, "that you was on top of a gate discussing
+    horses' tails and cabs I wouldn't have felt in such a hurry to get to
+    you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And you would have made a mistake if you hadn't," I said, "for hogs
+    are nothing to such a person as was on that gate."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Samivel was rowing slow and looking troubled, and I believe at that
+    minute he forgot the River Wye was crooked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That was really hard, madam," he said, "really hard on you; but it was
+    a woman, and you have to excuse women. Now if they had been three
+    Englishmen sitting on that gate they would never have said such things
+    to you, knowing that you was a stranger in these parts and had come on
+    shore to do them a service. And now, madam, I'm glad to see you are
+    beginning to take notice of the landscapes again. Just ahead of us is
+    another bend, and when we get around that you'll see the prettiest
+    picture you've seen yet. This is a crooked river, madam, and that's how
+    it got its name. Wye means crooked."
+</p>
+<p>
+    After a while we came to a little church near the river bank, and here
+    Samivel stopped rowing, and putting his hands on his knees he laughed
+    gayly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It always makes me laugh," he said, "whenever I pass this spot. It
+    seems to me like such an awful good joke. Here's that church on this
+    side of the river, and away over there on the other side of the river
+    is the rector and the congregation."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And how do they get to church?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In the summer time," said he, "they come over with a ferry-boat and a
+    rope; but in the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over
+    at all. Many's the time I've lain in bed and laughed and laughed when
+    I thought of this church on one side of the river, and the whole
+    congregation and the rector on the other side, and not able to get
+    over."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Toward the end of the day, and when we had rowed nearly twenty miles,
+    we saw in the distance the town of Monmouth, where we was going to stop
+    for the night.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0033"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img033.jpg">
+<img src="images/img033s.jpg" width="256" height="160"
+alt="'IN THE WINTER, WHEN THE WATER IS FROZEN, THEY CAN'T GET OVER'" /><br />
+'IN THE WINTER, WHEN THE WATER IS FROZEN, THEY CAN'T GET OVER'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    Old Samivel asked us what hotel we was going to stop at, and when we
+    told him the one we had picked out he said he could tell us a better
+    one.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If I was you," he said, "I'd go to the Eyengel." We didn't know what
+    this name meant, but as the old man said he would take us there we
+    agreed to go.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I should think you would have a lonely time rowing back by yourself,"
+    I said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Rowing back?" said he. "Why, bless your soul, lady, there isn't
+    nobody who could row this boat back agen that current and up them
+    rapids. We take the boats back with the pony. We put the boat on a
+    wagon and the pony pulls it back to Ross; and as for me, I generally go
+    back by the train. It isn't so far from Monmouth to Ross by the road,
+    for the road is straight and the river winds and bends."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man took us to the inn which he recommended, and we found it
+    was the Angel. It was a nice, old-fashioned, queer English house. As
+    far as I could see, they was all women that managed it, and it couldn't
+    have been managed better; and as far as I could see, we was the only
+    guests, unless there was "commercial gents," who took themselves away
+    without our seeing them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We was sorry to have old Samivel leave us, and we bid him a most
+    friendly good-by, and promised if we ever knew of anybody who wanted to
+    go down the River Wye we would recommend them to ask at Ross for
+    Samivel Jones to row them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We found the landlady of the Angel just as good to us as if we had been
+    her favorite niece and nephew. She hired us a carriage the next day,
+    and we was driven out to Raglan Castle, through miles and miles of
+    green and sloping ruralness. When we got there and rambled through
+    those grand old ruins, with the drawbridge and the tower and the
+    courtyard, my soul went straight back to the days of knights and
+    ladies, and prancing steeds, and horns and hawks, and pages and
+    tournaments, and wild revels and vaulted halls.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The young man who had charge of the place seemed glad to see how much
+    we liked it, as is natural enough, for everybody likes to see us
+    pleased with the particular things they have on hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You haven't anything like this in your country," said he. But to this
+    I said nothing, for I was tired of always hearing people speak of my
+    national denomination as if I was something in tin cans, with a label
+    pasted on outside; but Jone said it was true enough that we didn't have
+    anything like it, for if we had such a noble edifice we would have
+    taken care of it, and not let it go to rack and ruin in this way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone has an idea that it don't show good sense to knock a bit of
+    furniture about from garret to cellar until most of its legs are
+    broken, and its back cracked, and its varnish all peeled off, and then
+    tie ribbons around it, and hang it up in the parlor, and kneel down to
+    it as a relic of the past. He says that people who have got old ruins
+    ought to be very thankful that there is any of them left, but it's no
+    use in them trying to fill up the missing parts with brag.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We took the train and went to Chepstow, which is near the mouth of the
+    Wye, and as the railroad ran near the river nearly all the way we had
+    lots of beautiful views, though, of course, it wasn't anything like as
+    good as rowing along the stream in a boat. The next day we drove to the
+    celebrated Tintern Abbey, and on the way the road passed two miles and
+    a half of high stone wall, which shut in a gentleman's place. What he
+    wanted to keep in or keep out by means of a wall like that, we couldn't
+    imagine; but the place made me think of a lunatic asylum.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The road soon became shady and beautiful, running through woods along
+    the river bank and under some great crags called the Wyndcliffe, and
+    then we came to the Abbey and got out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of all the beautiful high-pointed archery of ancient times, this ruined
+    Abbey takes the lead. I expect you've seen it, madam, or read about it,
+    and I am not going to describe it; but I will just say that Jone, who
+    had rather objected to coming out to see any more old ruins, which he
+    never did fancy, and only came because he wouldn't have me come by
+    myself, was so touched up in his soul by what he saw there, and by
+    wandering through this solemn and beautiful romance of bygone days, he
+    said he wouldn't have missed it for fifty dollars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We came back to Gloucester to-day, and to-morrow we are off for Buxton.
+    As we are so near Stratford and Warwick and all that, Jone said we'd
+    better go there on our way, but I wouldn't agree to it. I am too
+    anxious to get him skipping round like a colt, as he used to, to stop
+    anywhere now, and when we come back I can look at Shakespeare's tomb
+    with a clearer conscience.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p class="loc">
+    LONDON.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After all, the weather isn't the only changeable thing in this world,
+    and this letter, which I thought I was going to send to you from
+    Gloucester, is now being finished in London. We was expecting to start
+    for Buxton, but some money that Jone had ordered to be sent from London
+    two or three days before didn't come, and he thought it would be wise
+    for him to go and look after it. So yesterday, which was Saturday, we
+    started off for London, and came straight to the Babylon Hotel, where
+    we had been before.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course we couldn't do anything until Monday, and this morning when
+    we got up we didn't feel in very good spirits, for of all the doleful
+    things I know of, a Sunday in London is the dolefullest. The whole town
+    looks as if it was the back door of what it was the day before, and if
+    you want to get any good out of it, you feel as if you had to sneak in
+    by an alley, instead of walking boldly up the front steps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone said we'd better go to Westminster Abbey to church, because he
+    believed in getting the best there was when it didn't cost too much,
+    but I wouldn't do it.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0034"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img034.jpg">
+<img src="images/img034s.jpg" width="149" height="200"
+alt="'WHO DO YOU SUPPOSE WE MET? MR. POPLINGTON!'" /><br />
+'WHO DO YOU SUPPOSE WE MET? MR. POPLINGTON!'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "No," said I. "When I walk in that religious nave and into the hallowed
+    precincts of the talented departed, the stone passages are full of
+    cloudy forms of Chaucers, Addisons, Miltons, Dickenses, and all those
+    great ones of the past; and I would hate to see the place filled up
+    with a crowd of weekday lay people in their Sunday clothes, which would
+    be enough to wipe away every feeling of romantic piety which might rise
+    within my breast."
+</p>
+<p>
+    As we didn't go to the Abbey, and was so long making up our minds where
+    we should go, it got too late to go anywhere, and so we stayed in the
+    hotel and looked out into a lonely and deserted street, with the wind
+    blowing the little leaves and straws against the tight-shut doors of
+    the forsaken houses. As I stood by that window I got homesick, and at
+    last I could stand it no longer, and I said to Jone, who was smoking
+    and reading a paper:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let's put on our hats and go out for a walk, for I can't mope here
+    another minute."
+</p>
+<p>
+    So down we went, and coming up the front steps of the front entrance
+    who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington! He was stopping at that
+    hotel, and was just coming home from church, with his face shining like
+    a sunset on account of the comfortableness of his conscience after
+    doing his duty.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0017"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Sixteen</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    BUXTON
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I mentioned Mr. Poplington in my last letter in connection with
+    the setting sun I was wrong; he was like the rising orb of day, and he
+    filled London with effulgent light. No sooner had we had a talk, and we
+    had told him all that had happened, and finished up by saying what a
+    doleful morning we had had, than he clapped his hand on his knees and
+    said, "I'll tell you what we will do. We will spend the afternoon among
+    the landmarks." And what we did was to take a four-wheeler and go
+    around the old parts of London, where Mr. Poplington showed us a lot of
+    soul-awakening spots which no common stranger would be likely to find
+    for himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you are ever steeped in the solemnness of a London Sunday, and you
+    can get a jolly, red-faced, middle-aged English gentleman, who has made
+    himself happy by going to church in the morning, and is ready to make
+    anybody else happy in the afternoon, just stir him up in the mixture,
+    and then you will know the difference between cod-liver oil and
+    champagne, even if you have never tasted either of them. The afternoon
+    was piled-up-and-pressed-down joyfulness for me, and I seemed to be
+    walking in a dream among the beings and the things that we only see in
+    books.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington first took us to the old Watergate, which was the river
+    entrance to York House, where Lord Bacon lived, and close to the gate
+    was the small house where Peter the Great and David Copperfield lived,
+    though not at the same time; and then we went to Will's old
+    coffee-house, where Addison, Steele, and a lot of other people of that
+    sort used to go to drink and smoke before they was buried in
+    Westminster Abbey, and where Charles and Mary Lamb lived afterward, and
+    where Mary used to look out of the window to see the constables take
+    the thieves to the Old Bailey near by. Then we went to Tom-all-alone's,
+    and saw the very grating at the head of the steps which led to the old
+    graveyard where poor Joe used to sweep the steps when Lady Dedlock came
+    there, and I held on to the very bars that the poor lady must have
+    gripped when she knelt on the steps to die.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not far away was the Black Jack Tavern, where Jack Sheppard and all the
+    great thieves of the day used to meet. And bless me! I have read so
+    much about Jack Sheppard that I could fairly see him jumping out of the
+    window he always dropped from when the police came. After that we saw
+    the house where Mr. Tulkinghorn, Lady Dedlock's lawyer, used to live,
+    and also the house where old Krook was burned up by spontaneous
+    combustion. Then we went to Bolt Court, where old Samuel Johnson lived,
+    walked about, and talked, and then to another court where he lived when
+    he wrote the dictionary, and after that to the "Cheshire Cheese" Inn,
+    where he and Oliver Goldsmith often used to take their meals together.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then we saw St. John's Gate, where the Knights Templars met, and the
+    yard of the Court of Chancery, where little Miss Flite used to wait for
+    the Day of Judgment; and as we was coming home he showed us the church
+    of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where every other Friday the bells are
+    rung at five o'clock in the afternoon, most people not knowing what it
+    is for, but really because the famous Nell Gwynn, who was far from
+    being a churchwoman, left a sum of money for having a merry peal of
+    bells rung every Friday until the end of the world. I got so wound up
+    by all this, that I quite forgot Jone, and hardly thought of Mr.
+    Poplington, except that he was telling me all these things, and
+    bringing back to my mind so much that I had read about, though
+    sometimes very little.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got back to the hotel and had gone up to our room, Jone said to
+    me:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That was all very fine and interesting from top to toe, but it does
+    seem to me as if things were dreadfully mixed. Dr. Johnson and Jack
+    Sheppard, I suppose, was all real and could live in houses; but when
+    it comes to David Copperfields and Lady Dedlocks and little Miss
+    Flites, that wasn't real and never lived at all, they was all talked
+    about in just the same way, and their favorite tramping grounds pointed
+    out, and I can't separate the real people from the fancy folk, if we've
+    got to have the same bosom heaving for the whole of them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jone," said I, "they are all real, every one of them. If Mr. Dickens
+    had written history I expect he'd put Lady Dedlock and Miss Flite and
+    David Copperfield into it; and if the history writers had written
+    stories they would have been sure to get Dr. Johnson and Lord Bacon and
+    Peter the Great into them; and the people in the one kind of writing
+    would have been just as real as the people in the other. At any rate,
+    that's the way they are to me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the Monday after our landmark expedition with Mr. Poplington, which
+    I shall never forget, Jone settled up his business matters, and the
+    next day we started for Buxton and the rheumatism baths. To our great
+    delight Mr. Poplington said he would go with us, not all the way, for
+    he wanted to stop at a little place called Rowsley, where he would stay
+    for a few days and then go on to Buxton; but we was very glad to have
+    him with us during the greater part of the way, and we all left the
+    hotel in the same four-wheeler.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got to the station Jone got first-class tickets, for we have
+    found out that if you want to travel comfortable in England, and have
+    porters attend to your baggage and find an empty carriage for you, and
+    have the guard come along and smile in the window and say he'll try to
+    let you have that carriage all to yourselves if he's able&mdash;the ableness
+    depending a good deal on what you give him&mdash;and for everybody to do
+    their best to make your journey pleasant, you must travel first class.
+    Mr. Poplington also bought a first-class ticket, for there was no
+    seconds on this line. As we was walking along by the platform Jone and
+    I gave a sort of a jump, for there was a regular Pullman car, which
+    made us think we might be at home. We stopped and looked at it, and
+    then the guard, who was standing by, stepped up to us and touched his
+    hat, and asked us if we would like to take the Pullman, and when Jone
+    asked what the extra charge was, he said nothing at all for first-class
+    passengers. We didn't have to stop to think a minute, but said right
+    off that we would go in it, but Mr. Poplington would not come with us.
+    He said English people wasn't accustomed to that, they wanted to be
+    more private; and, although he'd like to be with us, he could not
+    travel in a caravan like that, and so he went off by himself, and we
+    got into the Pullman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The guard said we could take any seats we pleased; and when we got in
+    we found there was only two or three people in it, and we chose two
+    nice armchairs, hung up our wraps, and made ourselves comfortable and
+    cosey.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We expected that the people who engaged seats would soon come crowding
+    in, but when the train started there was only four people besides
+    ourselves in that beautiful car, which was a first-class one, built in
+    the United States, with all sorts of comforts and conveniences. There
+    was a porter who laid himself out to make us happy, and about one
+    o'clock we had a nice lunch on a little table which was set up between
+    us, with two waiters to attend to us, and then Jone went and had a
+    smoke in a small room at one end of the car.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We thought it was strange that there should be so few people travelling
+    on this train, but when we came to a town where we made a long stop
+    Jone got out to talk to Mr. Poplington, supposing it likely that he'd
+    have a carriage to himself; but he was amazed to see that the train was
+    jammed and crowded, and he found Mr. Poplington squeezed up in a
+    carriage with seven other people, four of them one side and four the
+    other, each row staring into the faces of the other. Some of them was
+    eating bread and cheese out of paper parcels, and a big fat man was
+    reading a newspaper, which he spread out so as to partly cover the two
+    people sitting next to him, and all of them seemed anxious to find
+    some way of stretching their legs so as not to strike against the legs
+    of somebody else.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington was sitting by the window, and Jone couldn't help
+    laughing when he said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is this what you call being private, sir? I think you would find a
+    caravan more pleasant. Don't you want to come to the Pullman with us?
+    There are plenty of seats there, nice big armchairs that you can turn
+    around and sit any way you like, and look at people or not look at
+    them, just as you please, and there's plenty of room to walk about and
+    stretch yourself a little if you want to. There's a smoking-room, too,
+    that you can go to and leave whenever you like. Come and try it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you very much," said Mr. Poplington, "but I really couldn't do
+    that. I am not prejudiced at all, and I have a good many democratic
+    ideas, but that is too much for me. An Englishman's house is his
+    castle, and when he's travelling his railway carriage is his house. He
+    likes privacy and dislikes publicity."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is a funny kind of privacy you have here," said Jone. "And how
+    about your big clubs? Would you like to have them all divided up into
+    little compartments with half a dozen men in each one, generally
+    strangers to each other?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, a club is a very different thing," said Mr. Poplington.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone was going to talk more about the comfort of the Pullman cars, but
+    they began to shut the carriage doors, and he had to come back to me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We like English railway carriages very well when we can have one to
+    ourselves, but if even one stranger gets in and has to sit looking at
+    us for all the rest of the trip you don't feel anything like as private
+    as if you was walking along a sidewalk in London.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But Jone and I both agreed we wouldn't find any fault with English
+    people for not liking Pullman cars, so long as they put them on their
+    trains for Americans who do like them. And one thing is certain, that
+    if our railroad conductors and brakes-men and porters was as polite and
+    kind as they are in England, tips or no tips, we'd be a great deal
+    better off than we are.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whenever we stopped at a station the people would come and look through
+    the windows at us, as if we was some sort of a travelling show. I don't
+    believe most of them had ever seen a comfortable room on wheels before.
+    The other people in our car was all men, and looked as if they hadn't
+    their families with them, and was glad to get a little comfort on the
+    sly. When we got to Rowsley we saw Mr. Poplington on the platform,
+    running about, collecting all his different bits of luggage, and
+    counting them to see that they was all there, and then, as we had a
+    window open and was looking out, he came and bid us good-by; and when
+    I asked him to, he looked into our car.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he said. "What a public apartment! I could not
+    travel like that, you know. Good-by; I will see you at Buxton in a few
+    days."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0035"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img035.jpg">
+<img src="images/img035s.jpg" width="220" height="160"
+alt="MR. POPLINGTON LOOKING FOR THE LUGGAGE" /><br />
+MR. POPLINGTON LOOKING FOR THE LUGGAGE</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    We talked a good deal with Mr. Poplington about the hotels of Buxton,
+    and we had agreed to go to one called the Old Hall, where we are now.
+    There was a good many reasons why we chose this house, one being that
+    it was not as expensive as some of the others, though very nice; and
+    another, which had a good deal of force with me, was, that Mary Queen
+    of Scots came here for her rheumatism, and the room she used to have is
+    still kept, with some words she scratched with her diamond ring on the
+    window-pane. Sometimes people coming to this hotel can get this room,
+    and I was mighty sorry we couldn't do it, but it was taken. If I could
+    have actually lived and slept in a room which had belonged to the
+    beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, I would have been willing to have just
+    as much rheumatism as she had when she was here.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, modern rheumatisms are not as interesting as the rheumatisms
+    people of the past ages had; but from what I have seen of this town, I
+    think I am going to like it very much.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0018"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Seventeen</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0036"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img036.jpg" width="619" height="119"alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img036l.jpg"width="150" height="159"
+alt="W" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    BUXTON
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    hen we were comfortably settled here, Jone went to see a doctor, who
+    is a nice, kind old gentleman, who looks as if he almost might have
+    told Mary Queen of Scots how hot she ought to have the water in her
+    baths. He charges four times as much as the others, and has about a
+    quarter as many patients, which makes it all the same to him, and a
+    good deal better for the rheumatic ones who come to him, for they have
+    more time to go into particulars. And if anything does good to a person
+    who has something the matter with him, it's being able to go into
+    particulars about it. It's often as good as medicine, and always more
+    comforting.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We unpacked our trunks and settled ourselves down for a three weeks'
+    stay here, for no matter how much rheumatism you have or how little,
+    you've got to take Buxton and its baths in three weeks' doses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Besides taking the baths Jone has to drink the waters, and as I cannot
+    do much else to help him, I am encouraging him by drinking them too.
+    There are two places where you can get the lukewarm water that people
+    come here to drink. One is the public well, where there is a pump free
+    to everybody, and the other is in the pump-room just across the street
+    from the well, where you pay a penny a glass for the same water, which
+    three doleful old women spend all their time pumping for visitors.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0037"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img037.jpg">
+<img src="images/img037s.jpg" width="170" height="150"
+alt="POMONA ENCOURAGES JONAS" /><br />
+POMONA ENCOURAGES JONAS</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    People are ordered to drink this water very carefully. It must be done
+    at regular times, beginning with a little, and taking more and more
+    each day until you get to a full tumbler, and then if it seems to be
+    too strong for you, you must take less. So far as I can find out there
+    is nothing particular about it, except that it is lukewarm water,
+    neither hot enough nor cold enough to make it a pleasant drink. It
+    didn't seem to agree with Jone at first, but after he kept at it three
+    or four days it began to suit him better, so that he could take nearly
+    a tumbler without feeling badly. Two or three times I felt it might be
+    better for my health if I didn't drink it, but I wanted to stand by
+    Jone as much as I could, and so I kept on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We have been here a week now, and this morning I found out that all the
+    water we drink at this hotel is brought from the well of St. Ann, where
+    the public pump is, and everybody drinks just as much of it as they
+    want whenever they want to, and they never think of any such thing as
+    feeling badly or better than if it was common water. The only
+    difference is, that it isn't quite as lukewarm when we get it here as
+    it is at the well. When I was told this I was real mad, after all the
+    measuring and fussing we had had when taking the water as a medicine,
+    and then drinking it just as we pleased at the table. But the people
+    here tell me that it is the gas in it which makes it medicinal, and
+    when that floats out it is just like common water. That may be; but if
+    there's a penny's worth of gas in every tumbler of water sold in the
+    pump-room, there ought to be some sort of a canopy put over the town to
+    catch what must escape in the pourings and pumpings, for it's too
+    valuable to be allowed to get away. If it's the gas that does it, a
+    rheumatic man anchored in a balloon over Buxton, and having the gas
+    coming up unmixed to him, ought to be well in about two days.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone told me his first bath was to be heated up to ninety-four
+    degrees I said to him that he'd be boiled alive, but he wasn't; and
+    when he came home he said he liked it. Everything is very systematic in
+    the great bathing-house. The man who tends to Jone hangs up his watch
+    on a little stand on the edge of the bathtub, and he stays in just so
+    many minutes, and when he's ready to come out he rings a bell, and then
+    he's wrapped up in about fourteen hot towels, and sits in an armchair
+    until he's dry. Jone likes all this, and says so much about it that it
+    makes me want to try it too; though as there isn't any reason for it I
+    haven't tried them yet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is an awfully queer, old-fashioned town, and must have been a good
+    deal like Bath in the days of Evelina. There is a long line of high
+    buildings curved like a half moon, which is called the Crescent, and at
+    one end of this is a pump-room, and at the other are the natural baths,
+    where the water is just as warm as when it comes out of the ground,
+    which is eighty-two degrees. This is said to chill people; but from
+    what I remember about summer time I don't see how eighty-two degrees
+    can be cold.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Opposite the Crescent is a public park called The Slopes, and farther
+    on there are great gardens with pavilions, and a band of music every
+    day, and a theatre, and a little river, and tennis courts, and all
+    sorts of things for people who haven't anything to do with their time,
+    which is generally the case with folks at rheumatic watering-places.
+    Opposite to our hotel is a bowling court, which they say has been
+    there for hundreds of years, and is just as hard and smooth as a boy's
+    slate. The men who play bowls here are generally those who have got
+    over the rheumatism of their youth, and whose joints have not been very
+    much stiffened up yet by old age. The people who are yet too young for
+    rheumatism, and have come here with their families, play tennis.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The baths take such a little time, not over six or seven minutes for
+    them each day, and every third day skipped, that there is a good deal
+    of time left on the hands of the people here; and those who can't play
+    tennis or bowl, and don't want to spend the whole time in the pavilion
+    listening to the music, go about in bath-chairs, which, so far as I can
+    see, are just as important as the baths. I don't know whether you ever
+    saw a bath-chair, madam, but it's a comfortable little cab on three
+    wheels, pulled by a man. They take people everywhere, and all the
+    streets are full of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As soon as I saw these nice little traps I said to Jone, "Now this is
+    the very thing for you. It hurts you to walk far, and you want to see
+    all over this town, and one of these bath-chairs will take you into
+    lots of places where you couldn't go in a carriage."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take me!" said Jone. "I should say not. You don't catch me being
+    hauled about in one of those things as if I was in a sort of
+    wheelbarrow ambulance being taken to the hospital, with you walking
+    along by my side like a trained nurse. No, indeed! I have not gone so
+    far as that yet."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I told him this was all stuff and nonsense, and if he wanted to get the
+    good out of Buxton he'd better go about and see it, and he couldn't go
+    about if he didn't take a bath-chair; but all he said to that was, that
+    he could see it without going about, and he was satisfied. But that
+    didn't count anything with me, for the trouble with Jone is, that he's
+    too easy satisfied.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It's true that there is a lot to be seen in Buxton without going about.
+    The Slopes are just across the street from the hotel, and when it
+    doesn't happen to be raining we can go and sit there on a bench and see
+    lively times enough. People are being trundled about in their
+    bath-chairs in every direction; there is always a crowd at St. Ann's
+    well, where the pump is; all sorts of cabs and carts are being driven
+    up and down just as fast as they can go, for the streets are as smooth
+    as floors, and in the morning and evening there are about half a dozen
+    coaches with four horses, and drivers and horn-blowers in red coats,
+    the horses prancing and whips cracking as they start out for country
+    trips or come back again. And as for the people on foot, they just
+    swarm like bees, and rain makes no difference, except that then they
+    wear mackintoshes, and when it's fine they don't. Some of these people
+    step along as brisk as if they hadn't anything the matter with them,
+    but a good many of them help out their legs with canes and crutches. I
+    begin to think I can tell how long a man has been at Buxton by the
+    number of sticks he uses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One day we was sitting on a bench in The Slopes, enjoying a bit of
+    sunshine that had just come along, when a middle-aged man, with a very
+    high collar and a silk hat, came and sat down by Jone. He spoke civilly
+    to us, and then went on to say that if ever we happened to take a house
+    near Liverpool he'd be glad to supply us with coals, because he was a
+    coal merchant. Jone told him that if he ever did take a house near
+    Liverpool he certainly would give him his custom. Then the man gave us
+    his card. "I come here every year," he said, "for the rheumatism in my
+    shoulder, and if I meet anybody that lives near Liverpool, or is likely
+    to, I try to get his custom. I like it here. There's a good many 'otels
+    in this town. You can see a lot of them from here. There's St. Ann's,
+    that's a good house, but they charge you a pound a day; and then
+    there's the Old Hall. That's good enough, too, but nobody goes there
+    except shopkeepers and clergymen. Of course, I don't mean bishops; they
+    go to St. Ann's."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wondered which the man would think Jone was, if he knew we was
+    stopping at the Old Hall; but I didn't ask him, and only said that
+    other people besides shopkeepers and clergymen went to the Old Hall,
+    for Mary Queen of Scots used to stop at that house when she came to
+    take the waters, and her room was still there, just as it used to be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mary Queen of Scots!" said he. "At the Old Hall?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said I, "that's where she used to go; that was her hotel."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Queen Mary, Queen of the Scots!" he said again. "Well, well, I
+    wouldn't have believed it. But them Scotch people always was
+    close-fisted. Now if it had been Queen Elizabeth, she wouldn't have
+    minded a pound a day;" and then, after asking Jone to excuse him for
+    forgetting his manners and not asking where his rheumatism was, and
+    having got his answer, he went away, wondering, I expect, how Mary
+    Queen of Scots could have been so stingy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But although we could see so much sitting on benches, I didn't give up
+    Jone and the bath-chairs, and day before yesterday I got the better of
+    him. "Now," said I, "it is stupid for you to be sitting around in this
+    way as if you was a statue of a public benefactor carved by
+    subscription and set up in a park. The only sensible thing for you to
+    do is to take a bath-chair and go around and see things. And if you are
+    afraid people will think you are being taken to a hospital, you can put
+    down the top of the thing, and sit up straight and smoke your pipe.
+    Patients in ambulances never smoke pipes. And if you don't want me
+    walking by your side like a trained nurse, I'll take another chair and
+    be pulled along with you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The idea of a pipe, and me being in another chair, rather struck his
+    fancy, and he said he would consider it; and so that afternoon we went
+    to the hotel door and looked at the long line of bath-chairs standing
+    at the curbstone on the other side of the street, with the men waiting
+    for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very
+    comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses.
+    Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn out, as if they
+    had belonged to sporting men and had been driven half to death. And
+    then again there was some that looked fat and lazy, like the old horses
+    on a farm, that the women drive to town.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone picked out a good man, who looked as if he was well broken and not
+    afraid of locomotives and able to do good work in single harness. When
+    I got Jone in the bath-chair, with the buggy-top down, and his pipe
+    lighted, and his hat cocked on one side a little, so as to look as if
+    he was doing the whole thing for a lark, I called another chair, not
+    caring what sort of one it was, and then we told the men to pull us
+    around for a couple of hours, leaving it to them to take us to
+    agreeable spots, which they said they would do.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After we got started Jone seemed to like it very well, and we went
+    pretty much all over the town, sometimes stopping to look in at the
+    shop windows, for the sidewalks are so narrow that it is no trouble to
+    see the things from the street. Then the men took us a little way out
+    of the town to a place where there was a good view for us, and a bench
+    where they could go and sit down and rest. I expect all the chair men
+    that work by the hour manage to get to this place with a view as soon
+    as they can.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After they had had a good rest we started off to go home by a different
+    route. Jone's man was a good strong fellow and always took the lead,
+    but my puller was a different kind of a steed, and sometimes I was left
+    pretty far behind. I had not paid much attention to the man at first,
+    only noticing that he was mighty slow; but going back a good deal of
+    the way was uphill, and then all his imperfections came out plain, and
+    I couldn't help studying him. If he had been a horse I should have said
+    he was spavined and foundered, with split frogs and tonsilitis; but as
+    he was a man, it struck me that he must have had several different
+    kinds of rheumatism and been sent to Buxton to have them cured, but not
+    taking the baths properly, or drinking the water at times when he ought
+    not to have done it, his rheumatisms had all run together and had
+    become fixed and immovable. How such a creaky person came to be a
+    bath-chair man I could not think, but it may be that he wanted to stay
+    in Buxton for the sake of the loose gas which could be had for nothing,
+    and that bath-chairing was all he could get to do.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I pitied the poor old fellow, who, if he had been a horse, would have
+    been no more than fourteen hands high, and as he went puffing along,
+    tugging and grunting as if I was a load of coal, I felt as if I
+    couldn't stand it another minute, and I called out to him to stop. It
+    did seem as if he would drop before he got me back to the hotel, and I
+    bounced out in no time, and then I walked in front of him and turned
+    around and looked at him. If it is possible for a human hack-horse to
+    have spavins in two joints in each leg, that man had them; and he
+    looked as if he couldn't remember what it was to have a good feed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He seemed glad to rest, but didn't say anything, standing and looking
+    straight ahead of him like an old horse that has been stopped to let
+    him blow. He did look so dreadful feeble that I thought it would be a
+    mercy to take him to some member of the Society for the Prevention of
+    Cruelty to Animals and have him chloroformed. "Look here," said I, "you
+    are not fit to walk. Get into that bath-chair, and I'll pull you back
+    to your stand."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lady," said he, "I couldn't do that. If you dunno mind walking home,
+    and will pay me for the two hours all the same, I will be right
+    thankful for that. I'm poorly to-day."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Get into the chair," said I, "and I'll pull you back. I'd like to do
+    it, for I want some exercise."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no, no!" said he. "That would be a sin; and besides I was engaged
+    to pull you two hours, and I must be paid for that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Get into that chair," I said, "and I'll pay you for your two hours and
+    give you a shilling besides."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He looked at me for a minute, and then he got into the chair, and I
+    shut him up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, lady," said he, "you can pull me a little way if you want
+    exercise, and as soon as you are tired you can stop, and I'll get out,
+    but you must pay me the extra shilling all the same."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right," said I, and taking hold of the handle I started off. It
+    was real fun; the bath-chair rolled along beautifully, and I don't
+    believe the old man weighed much more than my Corinne when I used to
+    push her about in her baby carriage. We were in a back street, where
+    there was hardly anybody; and as for Jone and his bath-chair, I could
+    just see them ever so far ahead, so I started to catch up, and as the
+    street was pretty level now I soon got going at a fine rate. I hadn't
+    had a bit of good exercise for a long time, and this warmed me up and
+    made me feel gay.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0038"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img038.jpg">
+<img src="images/img038s.jpg" width="127" height="200"
+alt="'STOP, LADY, AND I'LL GET OUT'" /><br />
+'STOP, LADY, AND I'LL GET OUT'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    We was not very far behind Jone when the man began to call to me in a
+    sort of frightened fashion, as if he thought I was running away.
+    "Stop, lady!" he said; "we are getting near the gardens, and the people
+    will laugh at me. Stop, lady, and I'll get out." But I didn't feel a
+    bit like stopping; the idea had come into my head that it would be
+    jolly to beat Jone. If I could pass him and sail on ahead for a little
+    while, then I'd stop and let my old man get out and take his bath-chair
+    home. I didn't want it any more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just as I got close up behind Jone, and was about to make a rush past
+    him, his man turned into a side street. Of course I turned too, and
+    then I put on steam, and, giving a laugh as I turned around to look at
+    Jone, I charged on, intending to stop in a minute and have some fun in
+    hearing what Jone had to say about it; but you may believe, ma'am, that
+    I was amazed when I saw only a little way in front of me the bath-chair
+    stand where we had hired our machines! And all the bath-chair men were
+    standing there with their mouths wide open, staring at a woman running
+    along the street, pulling an old bath-chair man in a bath-chair! For a
+    second I felt like dropping the handle I held and making a rush for the
+    front door of the hotel, which was right ahead of me; and then I
+    thought, as now I was in for it, it would be a lot better to put a good
+    face on the matter, and not look as if I had done anything I was
+    ashamed of, and so I just slackened speed and came up in fine style at
+    the door of the Old Hall. Four or five of the bath-chair men came
+    running across the street to know if anything had happened to the old
+    party I was pulling, and he got out looking as ashamed as if he had
+    been whipped by his wife.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's a lark, mates," said he; "the lady's to pay me two shillings
+    extra for letting her pull me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Two shillings?" said I. "I only promised you one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That would be for pulling me a little way," he said; "but you pulled
+    me all the way back, and I couldn't do it for less than two shillings."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone now came up and got out quick.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What's the meaning of all this, Pomona?" said he.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Meaning?" said I. "Look at that dilapidated old bag of bones. He
+    wasn't fit to pull me, and so I thought it would be fun to pull him;
+    but, of course, I didn't know when I turned the corner I would be here
+    at the stand."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone paid the men, including the two extra shillings, and when we went
+    up to our room he said, "The next time we go out in two bath-chairs, I
+    am going to have a chain fastened to yours, and I'll have hold of the
+    other end of it."
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0019"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Eighteen</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    BUXTON
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have begun to take the baths. There really is so little to do in this
+    place that I couldn't help it, and so, while Jone was off tending to
+    his hot soaks, I thought I might as well try the thing myself. At any
+    rate it would fill up the time when I was alone. I find I like this
+    sort of bathing very much, and I wish I had begun it before. It reminds
+    me of a kind of medicine for colds that you used to make for me, madam,
+    when I first came to the canal-boat. It had lemons and sugar in it, and
+    it was so good I remember I used to think that I would like to go into
+    a lingering consumption, so that I could have it three times a day,
+    until I finally passed away like a lily on a snowbank.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone's been going about a good deal in a bath-chair, and doesn't mind
+    my walking alongside of him. He says it makes him feel easier in his
+    mind, on the whole.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Poplington came two or three days ago, and he is stopping at our
+    hotel. We three have hired a carriage together two or three times and
+    have taken drives into, the country. Once we went to an inn, the Cat
+    and Fiddle, about five miles away, on a high bit of ground called Axe
+    Edge. It is said to be the highest tavern in England, and it's lucky
+    that it is, for that's the only recommendation it's got. The sign in
+    front of the house has on it a cat on its hind-legs playing a fiddle,
+    with a look on its face as if it was saying, "It's pretty poor, but
+    it's the best I can do for you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Inside is another painting of a cat playing a fiddle, and truly that
+    one might be saying, "Ha! Ha! You thought that that picture on the sign
+    was the worst picture you ever saw in your life, but now you see how
+    you are mistaken."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Up on that high place you get the rain fresher than you do in Buxton,
+    because it hasn't gone so far through the air, and it's mixed with more
+    chilly winds than anywhere else in England, I should say. But everybody
+    is bound to go to the Cat and Fiddle at least once, and we are glad we
+    have been there, and that it is over. I like the places near the town a
+    great deal better, and some of them are very pretty. One day we two and
+    Mr. Poplington took a ride on top of a stage to see Haddon Hall and
+    Chatsworth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Haddon Hall is to me like a dream of the past come true. Lots of other
+    old places have seemed like dreams, but this one was right before my
+    eyes, just as it always was. Of course, you must have read all about
+    it, madam, and I am not going to tell it over again. But think of it; a
+    grand old baronial mansion, part of it built as far back as the eleven
+    hundreds, and yet in good condition and fit to live in. That is what I
+    thought as I walked through its banqueting hall and courts and noble
+    chambers. "Why," said I to Jone, "in that kitchen our meals could be
+    cooked; at that table we could eat them; in these rooms we could sleep;
+    in these gardens and courts we could roam; we could actually live
+    here!" We haven't seen any other romance of the past that we could say
+    that about, and to this minute it puzzles me how any duke in this world
+    could be content to own a house like this and not live in it. But I
+    suppose he thinks more of water-pipes and electric lights than he does
+    of the memories of the past and time-hallowed traditions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for me, if I had been Dorothy Vernon, there's no man on earth, not
+    even Jone, that could make me run away from such a place as Haddon
+    Hall. They show the stairs down which she tripped with her lover when
+    they eloped; but if it had been me, it would have been up those stairs
+    I would have gone. Mr. Poplington didn't agree a bit with me about the
+    joy of living in this enchanting old house, and neither did Jone, I am
+    sure, although he didn't say so much. But then, they are both men, and
+    when it comes to soaring in the regions of romanticism you must not
+    expect too much of men.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After leaving Haddon Hall, which I did backward, the coach took us to
+    Chatsworth, which is a different sort of a place altogether. It is a
+    grand palace, at least it was built for one, but now it is an enormous
+    show place, bright and clean and sleek, and when we got there we saw
+    hundreds of visitors waiting to go in. They was taken through in squads
+    of about fifty, with a man to lead them, which he did very much as if
+    they was a drove of cattle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man who led our squad made us step along lively, and I must say
+    that never having been in a drove before, Jone and I began to get
+    restive long before we got through. As for the show, I like the British
+    Museum a great deal better. There is ever so much more to see there,
+    and you have time to stop and look at things. At Chatsworth they charge
+    you more, give you less, and treat you worse. When it came to taking us
+    through the grounds, Jone and I struck. We left the gang we was with,
+    and being shown where to find a gate out of the place, we made for that
+    gate and waited until our coach was ready to take us back to Buxton.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is a lot of fun going to the theatre here. It doesn't cost much, and
+    the plays are good and generally funny, and a rheumatic audience is a
+    very jolly one. The people seemed glad to forget their backs, their
+    shoulders, and their legs, and they are ready to laugh at things that
+    are only half comic, and keep up a lively chattering between the acts.
+    It's fun to see them when the play is over. The bath-chairs that have
+    come after some of them are brought right into the building, and are
+    drawn up just like carriages after the theatre. The first time we went I
+    wanted Jone to stop a while and see if we didn't hear somebody call
+    out, "Mrs. Barchester's bath-chair stops the way!" but he said I
+    expected too much, and would not wait.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We sit about so much in the gardens, which are lively when it is clear,
+    and not bad even in a little drizzle, that we've got to know a good
+    many of the people; and although Jone's a good deal given to reading, I
+    like to sit and watch them and see what they are doing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we first came here I noticed a good-looking young woman who was
+    hauled about in a bath-chair, generally with an open book in her lap,
+    which she never seemed to read much, because she was always gazing
+    around as if she was looking for something. Before long I found out
+    what she was looking for, for every day, sooner or later, generally
+    sooner, there came along a bath-chair with a good-looking young man in
+    it. He had a book in his lap too, but he was never reading it when I
+    saw him, because he was looking for the young woman; and as soon as
+    they saw each other they began to smile, and as they passed they always
+    said something, but didn't stop. I wondered why they didn't give their
+    pullers a rest and have a good talk if they knew each other, but before
+    long I noticed not very far behind the young lady's bath-chair was
+    always another bath-chair with an old gentleman in it with a
+    bottle-nose. After a while I found out that this was the young lady's
+    father, because sometimes he would call to her and have her stop, and
+    then she generally seemed to get some sort of a scolding.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, when I see anything of this kind going on, I can't help
+    taking one side or the other, and as you may well believe, madam, I
+    wouldn't be likely to take that of the old bottle-nosed man's side. I
+    had not been noticing these people for more than two or three days when
+    one morning, when Jone and me was sitting under an umbrella, for there
+    was a little more rain than common, I saw these two young people in
+    their bath-chairs, coming along side by side, and talking just as hard
+    as they could. At first I was surprised, but I soon saw how things was:
+    the old gentleman couldn't come out in the rain. It was plain enough
+    from the way these two young people looked at each other that they was
+    in love, and although it most likely hurt them just as much to come out
+    into the rain as it would the old man, love is all-powerful, even over
+    rheumatism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Pretty soon the clouds cleared away without notice, as they do in this
+    country, and it wasn't long before I saw, away off, the old man's
+    bath-chair coming along lively. His bottle-nose was sticking up in the
+    air, and he was looking from one side to the other as hard as he could.
+    The two lovers had turned off to the right and gone over a little
+    bridge and I couldn't see them; but by the way that old nose shook as
+    it got nearer and nearer to me, I saw they had reason to tremble,
+    though they didn't know it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the old father reached the narrow path he did not turn down it,
+    but kept straight on, and I breathed a sigh of deep relief. But the
+    next instant I remembered that the broad path turned not far beyond,
+    and that the little one soon ran into it, and so it could not be long
+    before the father and the lovers would meet. I like to tell Jone
+    everything I am going to do, when I am sure that he'll agree with me
+    that it is right; but this time I could not bother with explanations,
+    and so I just told him to sit still for a minute, for I wanted to see
+    something, and I walked after the young couple as fast as I could. When
+    I got to them, for they hadn't gone very far, I passed the young
+    woman's bath-chair, and then I looked around and I said to her, "I beg
+    your pardon, miss, but there is an old gentleman looking for you; but
+    as I think he is coming round this way, you'll meet him if you keep on
+    this path." "Oh, my!" said she unintentionally; and then she thanked me
+    very much, and I went on and turned a corner and went back to Jone, and
+    pretty soon the young man's bath-chair passed us going toward the
+    gate, he looking three-quarters happy, and the other quarter
+    disappointed, as lovers are if they don't get the whole loaf.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From that day until yesterday, which was a full week, I came into the
+    gardens every morning, sometimes even when Jone didn't want to come,
+    because I wanted to see as much of this love business as I could. For
+    my own use in thinking of them I named the young man Pomeroy and the
+    young woman Angelica, and as for the father, I called him Snortfrizzle,
+    being the worst name I could think of at the time. But I must wait
+    until my next letter to tell you the rest of the story of the lovers,
+    and I am sure you will be as much interested in them as I was.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0020"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Nineteen</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0039"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img039.jpg" width="619" height="226" alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img039l.jpg" width="155" height="153"
+alt="I" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    BUXTON
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    &nbsp;have a good many things to tell you, for we leave Buxton to-morrow,
+    but I will first finish the story of Angelica and Pomeroy. I think the
+    men who pulled the bath-chairs of the lovers knew pretty much how
+    things was going, for whenever they got a chance they brought their
+    chairs together, and I often noticed them looking out for the old
+    father, and if they saw him coming they would move away from each other
+    if they happened to be together.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If Snortfrizzle's puller had been one of the regular bath-chair men
+    they might have made an agreement with him so that he would have kept
+    away from them; but he was a man in livery, with a high hat, who walked
+    very regular, like a high-stepping horse, and who, it was plain enough
+    to see, never had anything to do with common bath-chair men. Old
+    Snortfrizzle seemed to be smelling a rat more and more&mdash;that is, if it
+    is proper to liken Cupid to such an animal&mdash;and his nose seemed to get
+    purpler and purpler. I think he would always have kept close to
+    Angelica's chair if it hadn't been that he had a way of falling asleep,
+    and whenever he did this his man always walked very slow, being
+    naturally lazy. Two or three times I have seen Snortfrizzle wake up,
+    shout to his man, and make him trot around a clump of trees and into
+    some narrow path where he thought his daughter might have gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Things began to look pretty bad, for the old man had very strong
+    suspicions about Pomeroy, and was so very wide awake when he was awake,
+    that I knew it couldn't be long before he caught the two together, and
+    then I didn't believe that Angelica would ever come into these gardens
+    again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was yesterday morning that I saw old Snortfrizzle with his chin down
+    on his shirt bosom, snoring so steady that his hat heaved, being very
+    slowly pulled along a shady walk, and then I saw his daughter, who was
+    not far ahead of him, turn into another walk, which led down by the
+    river. I knew very well that she ought not to turn into that walk,
+    because it didn't in any way lead to the place where Pomeroy was
+    sitting in his bath-chair behind a great clump of bushes and flowers,
+    with his face filled with the most lively emotions, but overspread
+    ever and anon by a cloudlet of despair on account of the approach of
+    the noontide hour, when Angelica and Snortfrizzle generally went home.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0040"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img040.jpg">
+<img src="images/img040s.jpg" width="204" height="160"
+alt="'YOUR BROTHER IS OVER THERE'" /><br />
+'YOUR BROTHER IS OVER THERE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    The time was short, and I believed that love's young dream must be put
+    off until the next day if Angelica could not be made aware where
+    Pomeroy was sitting, or Pomeroy where Angelica was going; so I got
+    right up and made a short cut down a steep little path, and, sure
+    enough, I met her when I got to the bottom. "I beg your pardon very
+    much, miss," said I, "but your brother is over there in the entrance to
+    the cave, and I think he has been looking for you." "My brother?" said
+    she, turning as red as her ribbons was blue. "Oh, thank you very much!
+    Robertson, you may take me that way."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It wasn't long before I saw those two bath-chairs alongside of each
+    other, and covered from general observation by masses of blooming
+    shrubbery. As I had been the cause of bringing them together I thought
+    I had a right to look at them a little while, as that would be the only
+    reward I'd be likely to get, and so I did it. It was as I thought;
+    things was coming to a climax; the bath-chair men standing with much
+    consideration with their backs to their vehicles, and, united for the
+    time being by their clasped hands, the lovers grew tender to a degree
+    which I would have fain checked, had I been nearer, for fear of notice
+    by passers-by.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But now my blood froze within my veins. I would never have believed
+    that a man in a high hat and livery a size too small for him could run,
+    but Snortfrizzle's man did, and at a pace which ought to have been
+    prohibited by law. I saw him coming from an unsuspected quarter, and
+    swoop around that clump of flowers and foliage. Regardless of
+    consequences I approached nearer. There was loud voices; there was
+    exclamations; there was a rattling of wheels; there was the sundering
+    of tender ties!
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a moment Pomeroy, who had backed off but a little way, began to
+    speak, but his voice was drowned in the thunder of Snortfrizzle's
+    denunciations. Angelica wept, and her head fell upon her lovely bosom,
+    and I am sure I heard her implore her man to remove her from the scene.
+    Pomeroy remained, his face firm, his eyes undaunted, but Snortfrizzle
+    shook his fist in unison with his nose, and, hurling an anathema at
+    him, followed his daughter, probably to incarcerate her in her
+    apartments.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All was over, and I returned to Jone with a heavy heart and faltering
+    step. I could not but feel that I had brought about the sad end of this
+    tender chapter in the lives of Pomeroy and Angelica. If I had let them
+    alone they would not have met and they would not have been discovered
+    together. I didn't tell Jone what had happened, because he does not
+    always sympathize with me in my interest in others, and for hours my
+    heart was heavy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was about a half an hour before dinner that day when I thought that
+    a little walk might raise my spirits, and I wandered into the gardens,
+    for which we each have a weekly ticket, and there, to my amazement, not
+    far from the gate I saw Angelica in tears and her bath-chair. Her man
+    was not with her, and she was alone. When she saw me she looked at me
+    for a minute, and then she beckoned to me to come to her. I flew. There
+    were but few people in the gardens, and we was alone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Madam," said she, "I think you must be very kind. I believe you knew
+    that gentleman was not my brother. He is not."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My dear miss," said I&mdash;I was almost on the point of calling her
+    Angelica&mdash;"I knew that. I know that he is something nearer and dearer
+    than even a brother."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She blushed. "Yes," said she, "you are right, and we are in great
+    trouble."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, what is it? Tell me quick. What can I do to help you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My father is very angry," said she, "and has forbidden me ever to see
+    him again, and he is going to take me home to-morrow. But we have
+    agreed to fly together to-day. It is our only chance, but he is not
+    here. Oh, dear! I do not know what I shall do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where are you going to fly to?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We want to take the Edinburgh train this evening if there is one," she
+    said, "and we get off at Carlisle, and from there it is only a little
+    way to Gretna Green."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Gretna Green!" I cried. "Oh, I will help you! I will help you! Why
+    isn't the gentleman here, and where has he gone?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He has gone to see about the trains," she said, almost crying, "and I
+    don't see what keeps him. I could not get away until father went into
+    his room to dress for dinner, and as soon as he is ready he will call
+    for me. Where can he be? I have sent my man to look for him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I'll go look for him! You wait here," I cried, forgetting that
+    she would have to, and away I went.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As I was hurrying out of the gates of the gardens I looked in the
+    direction of the railroad station, and there I saw Pomeroy pulled by
+    one bath-chair man and the other one talking to him. In twenty bounds I
+    reached him. "Go back for your young lady," I cried to Robertson,
+    Angelica's man, "and bring her here on the run. She sent me for you."
+    Away went Robertson, and then I said to the astonished Pomeroy, "Sir,
+    there is no time for explanations. Your lady-love will be with you in a
+    minute. My husband and I are going to Edinburgh to-morrow, and I have
+    looked up all the trains. There is one which leaves here at twenty
+    minutes past six. If she comes soon you will have time to catch it.
+    Have you your baggage ready?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He looked at me as if he wondered who on earth I was, but I am sure he
+    saw my soul in my face and trusted me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," he said, "she has a little bag in her bath-chair, and mine is
+    here."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here she comes," said I, "and you must fly to the station."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a moment Angelica was with us, her face beaming with delight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, thank you, thank you!" she cried, but I would not listen to her
+    gratitude. "Hurry!" I said, "or you will be too late. Joy go with
+    you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They hastened off, and I walked back to the gardens. I looked at my
+    watch, and to my horror I saw it was five minutes past six. Fifteen
+    minutes left yet. Fifteen minutes in which they might be overtaken. I
+    stopped for a moment irresolutely. What should I do? I thought of
+    running after them to the station. I thought in some way I might help
+    them&mdash;buy their tickets or do something. But while I was thinking I
+    heard a rattle, and down the street came the man in livery, and
+    Snortfrizzle's bottle-nose like a volcano behind him. The minute they
+    reached me, and there was nobody else in the street, the old man
+    shouted, "Hi! Have you seen two bath-chairs with a young man and a
+    young woman in them?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was on the point of saying No, but changed my mind like a flash. "Did
+    the young lady wear a hat with blue ribbons?" I asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes!" he roared. "Which way did they go?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And did the young man with her wear eyeglasses and a brown moustache?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "With her, was he?" screamed Snortfrizzle. "That's the rascal. Which
+    way did they go? Tell me instantly."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I was a very little girl I knew an old woman who told me that if a
+    person was really good at heart, the holy angels would allow that
+    person, in the course of her life, twelve fibs without charge, provided
+    they was told for the good of somebody and not to do harm. Now at
+    such a moment as this I could not remember how many fibs of that kind I
+    had left over to my credit, but I knew there must be at least one, and
+    so I didn't hesitate a second. "They have gone to the Cat and Fiddle,"
+    said I. "I heard them tell their bath-chair men so, as they urged them
+    forward at the top of their speed. They stopped for a second here, sir,
+    and I heard the gentleman send a cabman for a clergyman, post haste, to
+    meet them at the Cat and Fiddle."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0041"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img041.jpg">
+<img src="images/img041s.jpg" width="258" height="160"
+alt="TO THE CAT AND FIDDLE" /><br />
+TO THE CAT AND FIDDLE</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    If the sky had been lighted up by the eruption of Snortfrizzle's nose I
+    should not have been surprised.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The fools! They can't! Cat and Fiddle! But they can't be half way
+    there. Martin, to the Cat and Fiddle!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man touched his hat. "But I couldn't do that, sir. I couldn't run
+    to the Cat and Fiddle. It's long miles, sir. Shall I get a carriage?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Carriage!" cried the old man, and then he began to look about him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Horror struck me. Perhaps they would go to the station for one! Just
+    then a boy driving a pony and a grocery cart came up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There you are, sir," I cried. "Hire that boy to tow you. Your butler
+    can sit in the back of the cart and hold the handle of your bath-chair.
+    It may take long to get a carriage, and the cart will go much faster.
+    You may overtake them in a mile."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Snortfrizzle never so much as thanked me or looked at me. He yelled
+    to the boy in the cart, offered him ten shillings and sixpence to give
+    him a tow, and in less time than I could take to write it, that flunky
+    with a high hat was sitting in the tail of the cart, the pony was going
+    at full gallop, and the old man's bath-chair was spinning on behind it
+    at a great rate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I did not leave that spot&mdash;standing statue-like and looking along both
+    roads&mdash;until I heard the rumble of the departing train, and then I
+    repaired to the Old Hall, my soul uplifted. I found Jone in an awful
+    fluster about my being out so late; but I do stay pretty late sometimes
+    when I walk by myself, and so he hadn't anything new to say.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0021"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    EDINBURGH
+</p>
+<p>
+    We have been here five or six days now, but the first thing I must
+    write is the rest of the story of the lovers. We left Buxton the next
+    day after their flight, and I begged Jone to stop at Carlisle and let
+    us make a little trip to Gretna Green. I wanted to see the place that
+    has been such a well-spring of matrimonial joys, and besides, I thought
+    we might find Pomeroy and Angelica still there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had not seen old Snortfrizzle again, but late that night I had heard
+    a row in the hotel, and I expect it was him back from the Cat and
+    Fiddle. Whether he was inquiring for me or not I don't know, or what he
+    was doing, or what he did.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone thought I had done a good deal of meddling in other people's
+    business, but he agreed to go to Gretna Green, and we got there in the
+    afternoon. I left Jone to take a smoke at the station, because I
+    thought this was a business it would be better for me to attend to
+    myself, and I started off to look up the village blacksmith and ask him
+    if he had lately wedded a pair; but, will you believe it, madam, I had
+    not gone far on the main road of the village when, a little ahead of
+    me, I saw two bath-chairs coming toward me, one of them pulled by
+    Robertson, and the other by Pomeroy's man, and in these two chairs was
+    the happy lovers, evidently Mr. and Mrs.! Their faces was filled with
+    light enough to take a photograph, and I could almost see their hearts
+    swelling with transcendent joy. I hastened toward them, and in an
+    instant our hands was clasped as if we had been old friends.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They told me their tale. They had reached the station in plenty of
+    time, and Robertson had got a carriage for them, and he and the other
+    man had gone with them third class, with the bath-chairs in the goods
+    carriages. They had reached Gretna Green that morning, and had been
+    married two hours. Then I told my tale. The eyes of both of them was
+    dimmed with tears, hers the most, and again they clasped my hands.
+    "Poor father," said Angelica, "I hope he didn't go all the way to the
+    Cat and Fiddle, and that the night air didn't strike into his joints;
+    but he cannot separate us now." And she looked confiding at the other
+    bath-chair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What are you going to do?" said I, and they said they had just been
+    making plans. I saw, though, that their minds was in too exalted a
+    state to do this properly for themselves, and so I reflected a minute.
+    "How long have you been in Buxton?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have been there two weeks and two days," said she, "and my
+    husband"&mdash;oh, the effulgence that filled her countenance as she said
+    this&mdash;"has been there one day longer."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then," said I, "my advice to you is to go back to Buxton and stay
+    there five days, until you both have taken the waters and the baths for
+    the full three weeks. It won't be much to bear the old gentleman's
+    upbraiding for five days, and then, blessed with health and love, you
+    can depart. No matter what you do afterward, I'd stick it out at Buxton
+    for five days."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We'll do it," said they; and then, after more gratitude and
+    congratulations, we parted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And now I must tell you about ourselves. When Jone had been three weeks
+    at Buxton, and done all the things he ought to do, and hadn't done
+    anything he oughtn't to do, he hadn't any more rheumatism in him than a
+    squirrel that jumps from bough to bough. But will you believe it,
+    madam, I had such a rheumatism in one side and one arm that it made me
+    give little squeaks when I did up my back hair, and it all came from my
+    taking the baths when there wasn't anything the matter with me; for I
+    found out, but all too late, that while the waters of Buxton will cure
+    rheumatism in people that's got it, they will bring it out in people
+    who never had it at all. We was told that we ought not to do anything
+    in the bathing line without the advice of a doctor; but those little
+    tanks in the floors of the bathrooms, all lined with tiles and filled
+    with warm, transparent water, that you went down into by marble steps,
+    did seem so innocent, that I didn't believe there was no need in asking
+    questions about them. Jone wanted me to stay three weeks longer until I
+    was cured, but I wouldn't listen to that. I was wild to get to
+    Scotland, and as my rheumatism did not hinder me from walking, I didn't
+    mind what else it did.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And there is another thing I must tell you. One day when I was sitting
+    by myself on The Slopes waiting for Jone, about lunch time, and with a
+    reminiscence floating through my mind of the Devonshire clotted cream
+    of the past, never perhaps to return, I saw an elderly woman coming
+    along, and when she got near she stopped and spoke. I knew her in an
+    instant. She was the old body we met at the Babylon Hotel, who told us
+    about the cottage at Chedcombe. I asked her to sit down beside me and
+    talk, because I wanted to tell her what good times we had had, and how
+    we liked the place, but she said she couldn't, as she was obliged to go
+    on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And did you like Chedcombe?" said she. "I hope you and your husband
+    kept well."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I said yes, except Jone's rheumatism, we felt splendid; for my aches
+    hadn't come on then, and I was going on to gush about the lovely
+    country she had sent us to, but she didn't seem to want to listen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really," said she, "and your husband had the rheumatism. It was a
+    wise thing for you to come here. We English people have reason to be
+    proud of our country. If we have our banes, we also have our antidotes;
+    and it isn't every country that can say that, is it?"
+</p>
+<a name="image-0042"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img042.jpg">
+<img src="images/img042s.jpg" width="173" height="160"
+alt="'AND DID YOU LIKE CHEDCOMBE?'" /><br />
+'AND DID YOU LIKE CHEDCOMBE?'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I wanted to speak up for America, and tried to think of some good
+    antidote with the proper banes attached; but before I could do it she
+    gave her head a little wag, and said, "Good morning; nice weather,
+    isn't it?" and wobbled away. It struck me that the old body was a
+    little lofty, and just then Mr. Poplington, who I hadn't noticed, came
+    up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really," said he, "I didn't know you was acquainted with the
+    Countess."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The which?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Countess of Mussleby," said he, "that you was just talking to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Countess!" I cried. "Why, that's the old person who recommended us to
+    go to Chedcombe."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very natural," said he, "for her to do that, for her estates lie south
+    of Chedcombe, and she takes a great interest in the villages around
+    about, and knows all the houses to let."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I parted from him and wandered away, a sadness stealing o'er my soul.
+    Gone with the recollections of the clotted cream was my visions of
+    diamond tiaras, tossing plumes, and long folds of brocades and laces
+    sweeping the marble floors of palaces. If ever again I read a novel
+    with a countess in it, I shall see the edge of a yellow flannel
+    petticoat and a pair of shoes like two horse-hair bags, which was the
+    last that I saw of this thunderbolt into the middle of my visions of
+    aristocracy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone and me got to like Buxton very much. We met many pleasant people,
+    and as most of them had a chord in common, we was friendly enough. Jone
+    said it made him feel sad in the smoking-room to see the men he'd got
+    acquainted with get well and go home, but that's a kind of sadness that
+    all parties can bear up under pretty well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I haven't said a word yet about Scotland, though we have been here a
+    week, but I really must get something about it into this letter. I was
+    saying to Jone the other day that if I was to meet a king with a crown
+    on his head I am not sure that I should know that king if I saw him
+    again, so taken up would I be with looking at his crown, especially if
+    it had jewels in it such as I saw in the regalia at the Tower of
+    London. Now Edinburgh seems to strike me in very much the same way.
+    Prince Street is its crown, and whenever I think of this city it will
+    be of this magnificent street and the things that can be seen from it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is a great thing for a street to have one side of it taken away and
+    sunk out of sight so that there is a clear view far and wide, and
+    visitors can stand and look at nearly everything that is worth seeing
+    in the whole town, as if they was in the front seats of the balcony in
+    a theatre, and looking on the stage. You know I am very fond of the
+    theatre, madam, but I never saw anything in the way of what they call
+    spectacular representation that came near Edinburgh as seen from Prince
+    Street.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But as I said in one of my first letters, I am not going to write about
+    things and places that you can get much better description of in books,
+    and so I won't take up any time in telling how we stand at the window
+    of our room at the Royal Hotel, and look out at the Old Town standing
+    like a forest of tall houses on the other side of the valley, with the
+    great castle perched up high above them, and all the hills and towers
+    and the streets all spread out below us, with Scott's monument right in
+    front, with everybody he ever wrote about standing on brackets, which
+    stick out everywhere from the bottom up to the very top of the
+    monument, which is higher than the tallest house, and looks like a
+    steeple without a church to it. It is the most beautiful thing of the
+    kind I ever saw, and I have made out, or think I have, nearly every one
+    of the figures that's carved on it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I think I shall like the Scotch people very much, but just now there is
+    one thing about them that stands up as high above their other good
+    points as the castle does above the rest of the city, and that is the
+    feeling they have for anybody who has done anything to make his
+    fellow-countrymen proud of him. A famous Scotchman cannot die without
+    being pretty promptly born again in stone or bronze, and put in some
+    open place with seats convenient for people to sit and look at him. I
+    like this; glory ought to begin at home.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0022"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-one</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    EDINBURGH
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone being just as lively on his legs as he ever was in his life,
+    thanks to the waters of Buxton, and I having the rheumatism now only in
+    my arm, which I don't need to walk with, we have gone pretty much all
+    over Edinburgh, and a great place it is to walk in, so far as variety
+    goes. Some of the streets are so steep you have to go up steps if you
+    are walking, and about a mile around if you are driving. I never get
+    tired wandering about the Old Town with its narrow streets and awfully
+    tall houses, with family washes hanging out from every story.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The closes are queer places. They are very like little villages set
+    into the town as if they was raisins in a pudding. You get to them by
+    alleys or tunnels, and when you are inside you find a little
+    neighborhood that hasn't anything more to do with the next close, a
+    block away, than one country village has with another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We went to see John Knox's house, and although Mr. Knox was pretty hard
+    on vanities and frivolities, he didn't mind having a good house over
+    his head, with woodwork on the walls and ceilings that wasn't any more
+    necessary than the back buttons on his coat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We have been reading hard since we have been in Edinburgh, and whenever
+    Mr. Knox and Mary Queen of Scots come together, I take Mary's side
+    without asking questions. I have no doubt Mr. Knox was a good man, but
+    if meddling in other people's business gave a person the right to have
+    a monument, the top of his would be the first thing travellers would
+    see when they come near Edinburgh.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we went to Holyrood Palace it struck me that Mary Queen of Scots
+    deserved a better house. Of course, it wasn't built for her, but I
+    don't care very much for the other people who lived in it. The rooms
+    are good enough for an ordinary household's use, although the little
+    room that she had her supper party in when Rizzio was killed, wouldn't
+    be considered by Jone and me as anything like big enough for our family
+    to eat in. But there is a general air about the place as if it belonged
+    to a royal family that was not very well off, and had to abstain from a
+    good deal of grandeur.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If Mary Queen of Scots could come to life again, I expect the Scotch
+    people would give her the best palace that money could buy, for they
+    have grown to think the world of her, and her pictures blossom out all
+    over Edinburgh like daisies in a pasture field.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The first morning after we got here I was as much surprised as if I had
+    met Mary Queen of Scots walking along Prince Street with a parasol over
+    her head. We were sitting in the reading-room of the hotel, and on the
+    other side of the room was a long desk at which people was sitting,
+    writing letters, all with their backs to us. One of these was a young
+    man wearing a nice light-colored sack coat, with a shiny white collar
+    sticking above it, and his black derby hat was on the desk beside him.
+    When he had finished his letter he put a stamp on it and got up to mail
+    it. I happened to be looking at him, and I believe I stopped breathing
+    as I sat and stared. Under his coat he had on a little skirt of green
+    plaid about big enough for my Corinne when she was about five years
+    old, and then he didn't wear anything whatever until you got down to
+    his long stockings and low shoes. I was so struck with the feeling that
+    he was an absent-minded person that I punched Jone and whispered to him
+    to go quick and tell him. Jone looked at him and laughed, and said that
+    was the Highland costume.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now if that man had had his martial plaid wrapped around him, and had
+    worn a Scottish cap with a feather in it and a long ribbon hanging down
+    his back, with his claymore girded to his side, I wouldn't have been
+    surprised; for this is Scotland, and that would have been like the
+    pictures I have seen of Highlanders. But to see a man with the upper
+    half of him dressed like a clerk in a dry goods store and the lower
+    half like a Highland chief, was enough to make a stranger gasp.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0043"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img043.jpg">
+<img src="images/img043s.jpg" width="140" height="200"
+alt="'JONE LOOKED AT HIM AND SAID THAT WAS THE HIGHLAND COSTUME.'" />
+<br />'JONE LOOKED AT HIM AND SAID THAT WAS THE HIGHLAND COSTUME.'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    But since then I have seen a good many young men dressed that way. I
+    believe it is considered the tip of the fashion. I haven't seen any of
+    the bare-legged dandies yet with a high silk hat and an umbrella, but I
+    expect it won't be long before I meet one. We often see the Highland
+    soldiers that belong to the garrison at the castle, and they look
+    mighty fine with their plaid shawls and their scarfs and their
+    feathers; but to see a man who looks as if one half of him belonged to
+    London Bridge and the other half to the Highland moors, does look to
+    me like a pretty bad mixture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am not so sure, either, that the whole Highland dress isn't better
+    suited to Egypt, where it doesn't often rain, than to Scotland. Last
+    Saturday we was at St. Giles's Church, and the man who took us around
+    told us we ought to come early next morning and see the military
+    service, which was something very fine; and as Jone gave him a shilling
+    he said he would be on hand and watch for us, and give us a good place
+    where we could see the soldiers come in. On Sunday morning it rained
+    hard, but we was both at the church before eight o'clock, and so was a
+    good many other people, but the doors was shut and they wouldn't let us
+    in. They told us it was such a bad morning that the soldiers could not
+    come out, and so there would be no military service that day. I don't
+    know whether those fine fellows thought that the colors would run out
+    of their beautiful plaids, or whether they would get rheumatism in
+    their knees; but it did seem to me pretty hard that soldiers could not
+    come out in the weather that lots of common citizens didn't seem to
+    mind at all. I was a good deal put out, for I hate to get up early for
+    nothing, but there was no use saying anything, and all we could do was
+    to go home, as all the other people with full suits of clothes did.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone and I have got so much more to see before we go home, that it is
+    very well we are both able to skip around lively. Of course there are
+    ever and ever so many places that we want to go to, but can't do it,
+    but I am bound to see the Highlands and the country of the "Lady of the
+    Lake." We have been reading up Walter Scott, and I think more than I
+    ever did that he is perfectly splendid. While we was in Edinburgh we
+    felt bound to go and see Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford. I shall not say
+    much about these two places, but I will say that to go into Sir Walter
+    Scott's library and sit in the old armchair he used to sit in, at the
+    desk he used to write on, and see his books and things around me, gave
+    me more a feeling of reverentialism than I have had in any cathedral
+    yet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for Melrose Abbey, I could have walked about under those towering
+    walls and lovely arches until the stars peeped out from the lofty
+    vaults above; but Jone and the man who drove the carriage were of a
+    different way of thinking, and we left all too soon. But one thing I
+    did do: I went to the grave of Michael Scott the wizard, where once was
+    shut up the book of awful mysteries, with a lamp always burning by it,
+    though the flagstone was shut down tight on top of it, and I got a
+    piece of moss and a weed. We don't do much in the way of carrying off
+    such things, but I want Corinne to read the "Lady of the Lake," and
+    then I shall give her that moss and that weed, and tell where I got
+    them. I believe that, in the way of romantics, Corinne is going to be
+    more like me than like Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow we go to the Highlands, and we shall leave our two big trunks
+    in the care of the man in the red coat, who is commander-in-chief at
+    the Royal Hotel, and who said he would take as much care of them as if
+    they was two glass jars filled with rubies; and we believed him, for he
+    has done nothing but take care of us since we came to Edinburgh, and
+    good care, too.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0023"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-two</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0044"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img044.jpg" width="618" height="253" alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img044l.jpg "width="157" height="155"
+alt="I" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    KINLOCH RANNOCH.
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    t happened that the day we went north was a very fine one, and as soon
+    as we got into the real Highland country there was nothing to hinder me
+    from feeling that my feet was on my native heath, except that I was in
+    a railway carriage, and that I had no Scotch blood in me, but the joy
+    of my soul was all the same. There was an old gentleman got into our
+    carriage at Perth, and when he saw how we was taking in everything our
+    eyes could reach, for Jone is a good deal more fired up by travel than
+    he used to be&mdash;I expect it must have been the Buxton waters that made
+    the change&mdash;he began to tell us all about the places we were passing
+    through. There didn't seem to be a rock or a stream that hadn't a bit
+    of history to it for that old gentleman to tell us about.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We got out at a little town called Struan, and then we took a carriage
+    and drove across the wild moors and hills for thirteen miles till we
+    came to this village at the end of Loch Rannoch. The wind blew strong
+    and sharp, but we knew what we had to expect, and had warm clothes on.
+    And with the cool breeze, and remembering "Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace
+    bled," it made my blood tingle all the way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We are going to stay here at least a week. We shall not try to do
+    everything that can be done on Scottish soil, for we shall not stalk
+    stags or shoot grouse; and I have told Jone that he may put on as many
+    Scotch bonnets and plaids as he likes, but there is one thing he is not
+    going to do, and that is to go bare-kneed, to which he answered, he
+    would never do that unless he could dip his knees into weak coffee so
+    that they would be the same color as his face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is a nice inn here with beautiful scenery all around, and the
+    lovely Loch Rannoch stretches away for eleven miles. Everything is just
+    as Scotch as it can be. Even the English people who come here put on
+    knickerbockers and bonnets. I have never been anywhere else where it is
+    considered the correct thing to dress like the natives, and I will say
+    here that it is very few of the natives that wear kilts. That sort of
+    thing seems to be given up to the fancy Highlanders.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nearly all the talk at the inn is about, shooting and fishing.
+    Stag-hunting here is very different from what it is in England in more
+    ways than one. In the first place, stags are not hunted with horses and
+    hounds. In the second place, the sport is not free. A gentleman here
+    told Jone that if a man wanted to shoot a stag on these moors it would
+    cost him one rifle cartridge and six five pound notes; and when Jone
+    did not understand what that meant, the man went on and told him about
+    how the deer-stalking was carried on here. He said that some of the big
+    proprietors up here owned as much as ninety thousand acres of moorland,
+    and they let it out mostly to English people for hunting and fishing.
+    And if it is stag-hunting the tenant wants, the price he pays is
+    regulated by the number of stags he has the privilege of shooting. Each
+    stag he is allowed to kill costs him thirty pounds. So if he wants the
+    pleasure of shooting thirty stags in the season, his rent will be nine
+    hundred pounds. This he pays for the stag-shooting, but some kind of a
+    house and about ten thousand acres are thrown in, which he has a
+    perfect right to sit down on and rest himself on, but he can't shoot a
+    grouse on it unless he pays extra for that. And, what is more, if he
+    happens to be a bad shot, or breaks his leg and has to stay in the
+    house, and doesn't shoot his thirty stags, he has got to pay for them
+    all the same.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone told me all this, I said I thought a hundred and fifty
+    dollars a pretty high price to pay for the right to shoot one deer. But
+    Jone said I didn't consider all the rest the man got. In the first
+    place, he had the right to get up very early in the morning, in the
+    gloom and drizzle, and to trudge through the slop and the heather until
+    he got far away from the neighborhood of any human being, and then he
+    could go up on some high piece of ground and take a spyglass and search
+    the whole country round for a stag. When he saw one way off in the
+    distance snuffing the morning air, or hunting for his breakfast among
+    the heather, he had the privilege of walking two or three miles over
+    the moor so as to get that stag between the wind and himself, so that
+    it could not scent him or hear him. Then he had the glorious right to
+    get his rifle all ready, and steal and creep toward that stag to cut
+    short his existence. He has to be as careful and as sneaky as if he was
+    a snake in the grass, going behind little hills and down into gullies,
+    and sometimes almost crawling on his stomach where he goes over an open
+    place, and doing everything he can to keep that stag from knowing his
+    end is near. Sometimes he follows his victim all day, and the sun goes
+    down before he has the glorious right of standing up and lodging a
+    bullet in its unsuspecting heart. "So you see," said Jone, "he gets a
+    lot for his hundred and fifty dollars."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They do get a good deal more for their money than I thought they did,"
+    said I; "but I wonder if those rich sportsmen ever think that if they
+    would take the money that they pay for shooting thirty or forty stags
+    in one season, they might buy a rhinoceros, which they could set up on
+    a hill and shoot at every morning if they liked. A game animal like
+    that would last them for years, and if they ever felt like it, they
+    could ask their friends to help them shoot without costing them
+    anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone is pretty hard on sport with killing in it. He does not mind
+    eating meat, but he likes to have the butcher do the killing. But I
+    reckon he is a little too tender-hearted. But, as for me, I like sport
+    of some kinds, especially when you don't have your pity or your
+    sympathies awakened by seeing your prey enjoying life when you are
+    seeking to encompass his end. Of course, by that I mean fishing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There are a good many trout in the lake, and people can hire the
+    privilege of fishing for them; and I begged Jone to let me go out in a
+    boat and fish. He was rather in favor of staying ashore and fishing in
+    the little river, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go out and
+    have some regular lake fishing. At last Jone agreed, provided I would
+    not expect him to have anything to do with the fishing. "Of course I
+    don't expect anything like that," said I; "and it would be a good deal
+    better for you to stay on shore. The landlord says a gilly will go
+    along to row the boat and attend to the lines and rods and all that,
+    and so there won't be any need for you at all, and you can stay on
+    shore with your book, and watch if you like."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And suppose you tumble overboard," said Jone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then you can swim out," I said, "and perhaps wade a good deal of the
+    way. I don't suppose we need go far from the bank."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone laughed, and said he was going too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very well," said I; "but you have got to stay in the bow, with your
+    back to me, and take an interesting book with you, for it is a long
+    time since I have done any fishing, and I am not going to do it with
+    two men watching me and telling me how I ought to do it and how I
+    oughtn't to. One will be enough."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And that one won't be me," said Jone, "for fishing is not one of the
+    branches I teach in my school."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I would have liked it better if Jone and me had gone alone, he doing
+    nothing but row; but the landlord wouldn't let his boat that way, and
+    said we must take a gilly, which, as far as I can make out, is a sort
+    of sporting farmhand. That is the way to do fishing in these parts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Well, we started, and Jone sat in the front, with his back to me, and
+    the long-legged gilly rowed like a good fellow. When we got to a good
+    place to fish he stopped, and took a fishing-rod that was in pieces and
+    screwed them together, and fixed the line all right so that it would
+    run along the rod to a little wheel near the handle, and then he put on
+    a couple of hooks with artificial flies on them, which was so small I
+    couldn't imagine how the fish could see them. While he was doing all
+    this I got a little fidgety, because I had never fished except with a
+    straight pole and line with a cork to it, which would bob when the fish
+    bit; but this was altogether a different sort of a thing. When it was
+    all ready he handed me the pole, and then sat down very polite to look
+    at me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, if he had handed me the rod, and then taken another boat and gone
+    home, perhaps I might have known what to do with the thing after a
+    while, but I must say that at that minute I didn't. I held the rod out
+    over the water and let the flies dangle down into it, but do what I
+    would, they wouldn't sink; there wasn't weight enough on them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You must throw your fly, madam," said the gilly, always very polite.
+    "Let me give it a throw for you," and then he took the rod in his hand
+    and gave it a whirl and a switch which sent the flies out ever so far
+    from the boat; then he drew it along a little, so that the flies
+    skipped over the top of the water.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0045"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img045.jpg">
+<img src="images/img045s.jpg" width="248" height="152"
+alt="'I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, AND TAKING THE POLE IN BOTH
+HANDS I GAVE IT A WILD TWIRL OVER MY HEAD'" /><br />
+'I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, AND TAKING THE POLE IN BOTH
+HANDS I GAVE IT A WILD TWIRL OVER MY HEAD'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
+    wild twirl over my head, and then it flew out as if I was trying to
+    whip one of the leaders in a four-horse team. As I did this Jone gave a
+    jump that took him pretty near out of the boat, for two flies swished
+    just over the bridge of his nose, and so close to his eyes as he was
+    reading an interesting dialogue, and not thinking of fish or even of
+    me, that he gave a jump sideways, which, if it hadn't been for the
+    gilly grabbing him, would have taken him overboard. I was frightened
+    myself, and said to him that I had told him he ought not to come in the
+    boat, and it would have been a good deal better for him to have stayed
+    on shore.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He didn't say anything, but I noticed he turned up his collar and
+    pulled down his hat over his eyes and ears. The gilly said that perhaps
+    I had too much line out, and so he took the rod and wound up a good
+    deal of the line. I liked this better, because it was easier to whip
+    out the line and pull it in again. Of course, I would not be likely to
+    catch fish so much nearer the boat, but then we can't have everything
+    in this world. Once I thought I had a bite, and I gave the rod such a
+    jerk that the line flew back against me, and when I was getting ready
+    to throw it out again, I found that one of the little hooks had stuck
+    fast in my thumb. I tried to take it out with the other hand, but it
+    was awfully awkward to do, because the rod wobbled and kept jerking on
+    it. The gilly asked me if there was anything the matter with the flies,
+    but I didn't want him to know what had happened, and so I said, "Oh,
+    no," and turning my back on him I tried my best to get the hook out
+    without his helping me, for I didn't want him to think that the first
+    thing I caught was myself, after just missing my husband&mdash;he might be
+    afraid it would be his turn next. You cannot imagine how bothersome it
+    is to go fishing with a gilly to wait on you. I would rather wash
+    dishes with a sexton to wipe them and look for nicks on the edges.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last&mdash;and I don't know how it happened&mdash;I did hook a fish, and the
+    minute I felt him I gave a jerk, and up he came. I heard the gilly say
+    something about playing, but I was in no mood for play, and if that
+    fish had been shot up out of the water by a submarine volcano it
+    couldn't have ascended any quicker than when I jerked it up. Then as
+    quick as lightning it went whirling through the air, struck the pages
+    of Jone's book, turning over two or three of them, and then wiggled
+    itself half way down Jone's neck, between his skin and his collar,
+    while the loose hook swung around and nipped him in his ear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't pull, madam," shouted the gilly, and it was well he did, for I
+    was just on the point of giving an awful jerk to get the fish loose
+    from Jone. Jone gave a grab at the fish, which was trying to get down
+    his back, and pulling him out threw him down; but by doing this he
+    jerked the other hook into his ear, and then a yell arose such as I
+    never before heard from Jone. "I told you you ought not to come in this
+    boat," said I; "you don't like fishing, and something is always
+    happening to you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Like fishing!" cried Jone. "I should say not," and he made up such a
+    comical face that even the gilly, who was very polite, had to laugh as
+    he went to take the hook out of his ear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Jone and the fish had been got off my line, Jone turned to me and
+    said, "Are you going to fish any more?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not with you in the boat," I answered; and then he said he was glad to
+    hear that, and told the man he could row us ashore.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I can assure you, madam, that fishing in a rather wobbly boat with a
+    husband and a gilly in it, is not to my taste, and that was the end of
+    our sporting experiences in Scotland, but it did not end the glorious
+    times we had by that lake and on the moors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We hired a little pony trap and drove up to the other end of the lake,
+    and not far beyond that is the beginning of Rannoch Moor, which the
+    books say is one of the wildest and most desolate places in all Europe.
+    So far as we went over the moor we found that this was truly so, and I
+    know that I, at least, enjoyed it ever so much more because it was so
+    wild and desolate. As far as we could see, the moors stretched away in
+    every direction, covered in most places by heather, now out of blossom,
+    but with great rocks standing out of the ground in some places, and
+    here and there patches of grass. Sometimes we could see four or five
+    lochs at once, some of them two or three miles long, and down through
+    the middle of the moor came the maddest and most harum-scarum little
+    river that could be imagined. It actually seemed to go out of its way
+    to find rocks to jump over, just as if it was a young calf, and some of
+    the waterfalls were beautiful. All around us was melancholy mountains,
+    all of them with "Ben" for their first names, except Schiehallion,
+    which was the best shaped of any of them, coming up to a point and
+    standing by itself, which was what I used to think mountains always
+    did; but now I know they run into each other so that you can hardly
+    tell where one ends and the other begins.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For three or four days we went out on these moors, sometimes when the
+    sun was shining, and sometimes when there was a heavy rain and the wind
+    blew gales, and I think I liked this last kind of weather the best, for
+    it gave me an idea of lonely desolation which I never had in any part
+    of the world I have ever been in before. There is often not a house to
+    be seen, not even a crofter's hut, and we seldom met anybody. Sometimes
+    I wandered off by myself behind a hillock or rocks where I could not
+    even see Jone, and then I used to try to imagine how Eve would have
+    felt if she had early become a widow, and to put myself in her place.
+    There was always clouds in the sky, sometimes dark and heavy ones
+    coming down to the very peaks of the mountains, and not a tree was to
+    be seen, except a few rowan trees or bushes close to the river. But by
+    the side of Lock Rannoch, on our way back to the village, we passed
+    along the edge of a fine old forest called the "Black Woods of
+    Rannoch." There are only three of these ancient forests left in
+    Scotland, and some of the trees in this one are said to be eight
+    hundred years old.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0046"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img046.jpg">
+<img src="images/img046s.jpg" width="176" height="180"
+alt="POMONA DRINKING IT IN" /><br />
+POMONA DRINKING IT IN</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    The last time we was out on the Rannoch Moor there was such a savage
+    and driving wind, and the rain came down in such torrents, that my
+    mackintosh was blown nearly off of me, and I was wet from my head to my
+    heels. But I would have stayed out hours longer if Jone had been
+    willing, and I never felt so sorry to leave these Grampian Hills, where
+    I would have been glad to have had my father feed his flocks, and where
+    I might have wandered away my childhood, barefooted over the heather,
+    singing Scotch songs and drinking in deep draughts of the pure mountain
+    air, instead of&mdash;but no matter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow we leave the Highlands, but as we go to follow the shallop of
+    the "Lady of the Lake," I should not repine.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0024"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-three</i>
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0047"><!--IMG--></a>
+<img src="images/img047.jpg" width="617" height="256" alt="" /><br />
+<img align="left" src="images/img047l.jpg"width="158" height="155"
+alt="I" />
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="loc">
+    OBAN, SCOTLAND
+</p>
+<p class="frst">
+    t would seem to be the easiest thing in the world, when looking on the
+    map, to go across the country from Loch Rannoch over to Katrine and all
+    those celebrated parts, but we found we could not go that way, and so
+    we went back to Edinburgh and made a fresh start. We stopped one night
+    at the Royal Hotel, and there we found a letter from Mr. Poplington. We
+    had left him at Buxton, and he said he was not going to Scotland this
+    season, but would try to see us in London before we sailed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He is a good man, and he wrote this letter on purpose to tell me that
+    he had had a letter from his friend, the clergyman in Somersetshire,
+    who had forbidden the young woman whose wash my tricycle had run into
+    to marry her lover because he was a Radical. This letter was in answer
+    to one Mr. Poplington wrote to him, in which he gave the minister my
+    reasons for thinking that the best way to convert the young man from
+    Radicalism was to let him marry the young woman, who would be sure to
+    bring him around to her way of thinking, whatever that might be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't care about the Radicalism. All I wanted was to get the two
+    married, and then it would not make the least difference to me what
+    their politics might be; if they lived properly and was sober and
+    industrious and kept on loving each other, I didn't believe it would
+    make much difference to them. It was a long letter that the clergyman
+    wrote, but the point of it was, that he had concluded to tell the young
+    woman that she might marry the fellow if she liked, and that she must
+    do her best to make him a good Conservative, which, of course, she
+    promised to do. When I read this I clapped my hands, for who could have
+    suspected that I should have the good luck to come to this country to
+    spend the summer and make two matches before I left it!
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we left Edinburgh to gradually wend our way to this place, which
+    is on the west coast of Scotland, the first town we stopped at was
+    Stirling, where the Scotch kings used to live. Of course we went to the
+    castle, which stands on the rocks high above the town; but before we
+    started to go there Jone inquired if the place was a ruin or not, and
+    when he was told it was not, and that soldiers lived there, he said it
+    was all right, and we went. He now says he must positively decline to
+    visit any more houses out of repair. He is tired of them; and since he
+    has got over his rheumatism he feels less like visiting ruins than he
+    ever did. I tell him the ruins are not any more likely to be damp than
+    a good many of the houses that people live in; but this didn't shake
+    him, and I suppose if we come to any more vine-covered and shattered
+    remnants of antiquity I shall be obliged to go over them by myself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The castle is a great place, which I wouldn't have missed for the
+    world; but the spot that stirred my soul the most was in a little
+    garden, as high in the air as the top of a steeple, where we could look
+    out over the battlefield of Bannockburn. Besides this, we could see the
+    mountains of Ben-Lomond, Ben-Venue, Ben-A'an, Benledi, and ever so much
+    Scottish landscape spreading out for miles upon miles. There is a
+    little hole in the wall here called the Ladies' Look-Out, where the
+    ladies of the court could sit and see what was going on in the country
+    below without being seen themselves, but I stood up and took in
+    everything over the top of the wall.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I don't know whether I told you that the mountains of Scotland are
+    "Bens," and the mouths of rivers are "abers," and islands are
+    "inches." Walking about the streets of Stirling, and I didn't have time
+    to see half as much as I wanted to, I came to the shop of a "flesher."
+    I didn't know what it was until I looked into the window and saw that
+    it was a butcher shop.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I like a language just about as foreign as the Scotch is. There are a
+    good many words in it that people not Scotch don't understand, but that
+    gives a person the feeling that she is travelling abroad, which I want
+    to have when I am abroad. Then, on the other hand, there are not enough
+    of them to hinder a traveller from making herself understood. So it is
+    natural for me to like it ever so much better than French, in which,
+    when I am in it, I simply sink to the bottom if no helping hand is held
+    out to me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had some trouble with Jone that night at the hotel, because he had a
+    novel which he had been reading for I don't know how long, and which he
+    said he wanted to get through with before he began anything else. But
+    now I told him he was going to enter on the wonderful country of the
+    "Lady of the Lake," and that he ought to give up everything else and
+    read that book, because if he didn't go there with his mind prepared
+    the scenery would not sink into his soul as it ought to. He was of the
+    opinion that when my romantic feeling got on top of the scenery it
+    would be likely to sink into his soul as deep as he cared to have it,
+    without any preparation, but that sort of talk wouldn't do for me. I
+    didn't want to be gliding o'er the smooth waters of Loch Katrine, and
+    have him asking me who the girl was who rowed her shallop to the silver
+    strand, and the end of it was that I made him sit up until a quarter of
+    two o'clock in the morning while I read the "Lady of the Lake" to him.
+    I had read it before and he had not, but I hadn't got a quarter through
+    before he was just as willing to listen as I was to read. And when I
+    got through I was in such a glow that Jone said he believed that all
+    the blood in my veins had turned to hot Scotch.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I didn't pay any attention to this, and after going to the window and
+    looking out at the Gaelic moon, which was about half full and rolling
+    along among the clouds, I turned to Jone and said, "Jone, let's sing
+    'Scots wha ha',' before we go to bed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If we do roar out that thing," said Jone, "they will put us out on the
+    curbstone to spend the rest of the night."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let's whisper it, then," said I; "the spirit of it is all I want. I
+    don't care for the loudness."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'd be willing to do that," said Jone, "if I knew the tune and a few
+    of the words."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, bother!" said I; and when I got into bed I drew the clothes over
+    my head and sang that brave song all to myself. Doing it that way the
+    words and tune didn't matter at all, but I felt the spirit of it, and
+    that was all I wanted, and then I went to sleep.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next morning we went to Callander by train, and there we took a
+    coach for Trossachs. It is hardly worth while to say we went on top,
+    because the coaches here haven't any inside to them, except a hole
+    where they put the baggage. We drove along a beautiful road with
+    mountains and vales and streams, and the driver told us the name of
+    everything that had a name, which he couldn't help very well, being
+    asked so constant by me. But I didn't feel altogether satisfied, for we
+    hadn't come to anything quotable, and I didn't like to have Jone sit
+    too long without something happening to stir up some of the "Lady of
+    the Lake" which I had pumped into his mind the day before, and so keep
+    it fresh.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before long, however, the driver pointed out the ford of Coilantogle.
+    The instant he said this I half jumped up, and, seizing Jone by the
+    arm, I cried, "Don't you remember? This is the place where the Knight
+    of Snowdoun, James Fitz-James, fought Roderick Dhu!" And then without
+    caring who else heard me, I burst out with:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "'His back against a rock he bore,
+      And firmly placed his foot before:
+      "Come one, come all! This rock shall fly
+      From its firm base as soon as I."'"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    "No, madam," said the driver, politely touching his hat, "that was a
+    mile farther on. This place is:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "'And here his course the chieftain staid,
+      Threw down his target and his plaid.'"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    "You are right," said I; and then I began again:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "'Then each at once his falchion drew,
+      Each on the ground his scabbard threw,
+      Each look'd to sun, and stream, and plain,
+      As what they ne'er might see again;
+      Then foot, and point, and eye opposed,
+      In dubious strife they darkly closed.'"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    I didn't repeat any more of the poem, though everybody was listening
+    quite respectful without thinking of laughing, and as for Jone, I could
+    see by the way he sat and looked about him that his tinder had caught
+    my spark; but I knew that the thing for me to do here was not to give
+    out but take in, and so, to speak in figures, I drank in the whole of
+    Lake Vannachar, as we drove along its lovely marge until we came to the
+    other end, and the driver said we would now go over the Brigg of Turk.
+    At this up I jumped and said:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "'And when the Brigg of Turk was won,
+      The headmost horseman rode alone.'"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    I had sense enough not to quote the next two lines, because when I had
+    read them to Jone he said that it was a shame to use a horse that way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We now came to Loch Achray, at the other end of which is the
+    Trossachs, where we stopped for the night, and when the driver told me
+    the mountain we saw before us was Ben-Venue, I repeated the lines:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "'The hunter marked that mountain high,
+      The lone lake's western boundary,
+      And deem'd the stag must turn to bay,
+      Where that huge rampart barr'd the way.'"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    At last we reached the Trossachs Hotel, which stands near the wild
+    ravines filled with bristling woods where the stag was lost, with the
+    lovely lake in front and Ben-Venue towering up on the other side. I was
+    so excited I could scarcely eat, and no wonder, because for the greater
+    part of the day I had breathed nothing but the spirit of Scott's
+    poetry. I forgot to say that from the time we left Callander until we
+    got to the hotel the rain poured down steadily, but that didn't make
+    any difference to me. A human being soaked with the "Lady of the Lake"
+    is rain-proof.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0025"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-four</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    EDINBURGH
+</p>
+<p>
+    I was sorry to stop my last letter right in the middle of the "Lady of
+    the Lake" country, but I couldn't get it all in, and the fact is, I
+    can't get all I want to say in any kind of a letter. The things I have
+    seen and want to write about are crowded together like the Scottish
+    mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the day after we got to Trossachs Hotel, and I don't know any place
+    I would rather spend weeks at than there, Jone and I walked through the
+    "darksome glen" where the stag,
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken,
+     In the deep Trossachs' wildest nook
+     His solitary refuge took."
+</pre>
+<p>
+    And then we came out on the far-famed Loch Katrine. There was a little
+    steamboat there to take passengers to the other end, where a coach was
+    waiting, but it wasn't time for that to start, and we wandered on the
+    banks of that song-gilded piece of water. It didn't lie before us like
+    "one burnished sheet of living gold," as it appeared to James
+    Fitz-James but my soul could supply the sunset if I chose. There, too,
+    was the island of the fair Ellen, and beneath our very feet was the
+    "silver strand" to which she rowed her shallop. I am sorry to say there
+    isn't so much of the silver strand as there used to be, because, in
+    this world, as I have read, and as I have seen, the spirit of
+    realistics is always crowding and trampling on the toes of the
+    romantics, and the people of Glasgow have actually laid water-pipes
+    from their town to this lovely lake, and now they turn the faucets in
+    their back kitchens and out spouts the tide which kissed
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "With whispering sound and slow
+     The beach of pebbles bright as snow."
+</pre>
+<p>
+    This wouldn't have been so bad, because the lake has enough and to
+    spare of its limpid wave; but in order to make their water-works the
+    Glasgow people built a dam, and that has raised the lake a good deal
+    higher, so that it overflows ever so much of the silver strand. But I
+    can pick out the real from a scene like that as I can pick out and
+    throw away the seeds of an orange, and gazing o'er that enchanted scene
+    I felt like the Knight of Snowdoun himself, when he first beheld the
+    lake and said:
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "How blithely might the bugle horn
+     Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn!"
+</pre>
+<p>
+    and then I went on with the lines until I came to
+</p>
+<pre>
+    "Blithe were it then to wander here!
+     But now&mdash;beshrew yon nimble deer"&mdash;
+</pre>
+<p>
+    "You'd better beshrew that steamboat bell," said Jone, and away we went
+    and just caught the boat. Realistics come in very well sometimes when
+    they take the form of legs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The steamboat took us over nearly the whole of Lake Katrine, and I must
+    say that I was so busy fitting verses to scenery that I don't remember
+    whether it rained or the sun shone. When we left the boat we took a
+    coach to Inversnaid on Loch Lomond, and, as we rode along, it made my
+    heart almost sink to feel that I had to leave my poetry behind me, for
+    I didn't know any that suited this region. But when we got in sight of
+    Loch Lomond a Scotch girl who was on the seat behind me, and had
+    several friends with her, began to sing a song about Lomond, of which I
+    only remember, "You take the high road and I'll take the low road, and
+    I'll get to Scotland afore you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am sure I must have Scotch blood in me, for when I heard that song it
+    wound up my feelings to such a pitch that I believe if that girl had
+    been near enough I should have given her a hug and a kiss. As for Jone,
+    he seemed to be nearly as much touched as I was, though not in the same
+    way, of course.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We took a boat on Loch Lomond to Ardlui, another little town, and then
+    we drove nine miles to the railroad. This was through a wild and solemn
+    valley, and by the side of a rushing river, full of waterfalls and deep
+    and diresome pools. When we reached the railroad we found a train
+    waiting, and we took it and went to Oban, which we reached about six
+    o'clock. Even this railroad trip was delightful, for we went by the
+    great Lake Awe, with another rushing river and mountains and black
+    precipices. We had a carriage all to ourselves until an old lady got in
+    at a station, and she hadn't been sitting in her corner more than ten
+    minutes before she turned to me and said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You haven't any lakes like this in your country, I suppose."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I must say that, in the heated condition I had been in ever since I
+    came into Scotland, a speech like that was like a squirt of cold water
+    into a thing full of steam. For a couple of seconds my boiling stopped,
+    but my fires was just as blazing as ever, and I felt as if I could turn
+    them on that old woman and shrivel her up for plastering her
+    comparisons on me at such a time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course, we haven't anything just like this," I said, "but it takes
+    all sorts of scenery to make up a world."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's very true, isn't it?" said she. "But, really, one couldn't
+    expect in America such a lake as that, such mountains, such grandeur!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I made up my mind if she was going to keep up this sort of thing
+    Jone and me would change carriages when we stopped at the next station,
+    for comparisons are very different from poetry, and if you try to mix
+    them with scenery you make a mess that is not fit for a Christian. But
+    I thought first I would give her a word back:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have seen to-day," I said, "the loveliest scenery I ever met with;
+    but we've got grand ca&ntilde;ons in America where you could put the whole of
+    that scenery without crowding, and where it wouldn't be much noticed by
+    spectators, so busy would they be gazing at the surrounding wonders."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Fancy!" said she.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't want to say anything," said I, "against what I have seen
+    to-day, and I don't want to think of anything else while I am looking
+    at it; but this I will say, that landscape with Scott is very different
+    from landscape without him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is very true, isn't it?" said she; and then she stopped making
+    comparisons, and I looked out of the window.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Oban is a very pretty place on the coast, but we never should have gone
+    there if it had not been the place to start from for Staffa and Iona.
+    When I was only a girl I saw pictures of Fingal's Cave, and I have read
+    a good deal about it since, and it is one of the spots in the world
+    that I have been longing to see, but I feel like crying when I tell
+    you, madam, that the next morning there was such a storm that the boat
+    for Staffa didn't even start; and as the people told us that the storm
+    would most likely last two or three days, and that the sea for a few
+    days more would be so rough that Staffa would be out of the question,
+    we had to give it up, and I was obliged to fall back from the reality
+    to my imagination. Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that he would
+    be willing to bet ten to one that my fancy would soar a mile above the
+    real thing, and that perhaps it was very well I didn't see old Fingal's
+    Cave and so be disappointed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps it is a good thing," said I, "that you didn't go, and that you
+    didn't get so seasick that you would be ready to renounce your
+    country's flag and embrace Mormonism if such things would make you feel
+    better." But that is the only thing that is good about it, and I have a
+    cloud on my recollection which shall never be lifted until Corinne is
+    old enough to travel and we come here with her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But although the storm was so bad, it was not bad enough to keep us
+    from making our water trip to Glasgow, for the boat we took did not
+    have to go out to sea. It was a wonderfully beautiful passage we made
+    among the islands and along the coast, with the great mountains on the
+    mainland standing up above everything else. After a while we got to the
+    Crinan Canal, which is in reality a short cut across the field. It is
+    nine miles long and not much wider than a good-sized ditch, but it
+    saves more than a hundred miles of travel around an island. We was on a
+    sort of a toy steamboat which went its way through the fields and
+    bushes and grass so close we could touch them; and as there was eleven
+    locks where the boat had to stop, we got out two or three times and
+    walked along the banks to the next lock. That being the kind of a ride
+    Jone likes, he blessed Buxton. At the other end of the canal we took a
+    bigger steamboat which carried us to Glasgow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the morning it hailed, which afterward turned to rain, but in the
+    afternoon there was only showers now and then, so that we spent most of
+    the time on deck. On this boat we met a very nice Englishman and his
+    wife, and when they had heard us speak to each other they asked us if
+    we had ever been in this part of the world before, and when we said we
+    hadn't they told us about the places we passed. If we had been an
+    English couple who had never been there before they wouldn't have said
+    a word to us.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As we got near the Clyde the gentleman began to talk about
+    ship-building, and pretty soon I saw in his face plain symptoms that he
+    was going to have an attack of comparison making. I have seen so much
+    of this disorder that I can nearly always tell when it is coming on a
+    person. In about a minute the disease broke out on him, and he began to
+    talk about the differences between American and English ships. He told
+    Jone and me about a steamship that was built out in San Francisco which
+    shook three thousand bolts out of herself on her first voyage. It
+    seemed to me that that was a good deal like a codfish shaking his
+    bones out through swimming too fast. I couldn't help thinking that that
+    steamship must have had a lot of bolts so as to have enough left to
+    keep her from scattering herself over the bottom of the ocean.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I expected Jone to say something in behalf of his country's ships, but
+    he didn't seem to pay much attention to the boat story, so I took up
+    the cudgels myself, and I said to the gentleman that all nations, no
+    matter how good they might be at ship-building, sometimes made
+    mistakes, and then to make a good impression on him I whanged him over
+    the head with the "Great Eastern," and asked him if there ever was a
+    vessel that was a greater failure than that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He said, "Yes, yes, the 'Great Eastern' was not a success," and then he
+    stopped talking about ships.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got fairly into the Clyde and near Glasgow the scene was
+    wonderful. It was nearly night, and the great fires of the factories
+    lit up the sky, and we saw on the stocks a great ship being built.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We stayed in Glasgow one day, and Jone was delighted with it, because
+    he said it was like an American city. Now, on principle, I like
+    American cities, but I didn't come to Scotland to see them; and the
+    greatest pleasure I had in Glasgow was standing with a tumbler of water
+    in my hand, repeating to myself as much of the "Lady of the Lake" as I
+    could remember.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0026"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-five</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    LONDON
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here we are in this wonderful town, where, if you can't see everything
+    you want to see, you can generally see a sample of it, even if your fad
+    happens to be the ancientnesses of Egypt. We are at the Babylon Hotel,
+    where we shall stay until it is time to start for Southampton, where we
+    shall take the steamer for home. What we are going to do between here
+    and Southampton I don't know yet; but I do know that Jone is all on
+    fire with joy because he thinks his journeys are nearly over, and I am
+    chilled with grief when I think that my journeys are nearly over.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We left Edinburgh on the train called the "Flying Scotsman," and it
+    deserved its name. I suppose that in the days of Wallace and Bruce and
+    Rob Roy the Scots must often have skipped along in a lively way; but I
+    am sure if any of them had ever invaded England at the rate we went
+    into it, the British lion would soon have been living on thistles
+    instead of roses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The speed of this train was sometimes a mile a minute, I think; and I
+    am sure I was never on any railroad in America where I was given a
+    shorter time to get out for something to eat than we had at York. Jone
+    and I are generally pretty quick about such things, but we had barely
+    time to get back to our carriage before that "Flying Scotsman" went off
+    like a streak of lightning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the way we saw a part of York Minster, and had a splendid, view of
+    Durham Cathedral, standing high in the unreachable&mdash;that is, as far as
+    I was concerned. Peterborough Cathedral we also saw the outside of, and
+    I felt like a boy looking in at a confectioner's window with no money
+    to buy anything. It wasn't money that I wanted; it was time, and we had
+    very little of that left.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next day, after we reached London, I set out to attend to a piece
+    of business that I didn't want Jone to know anything about. My business
+    was to look up my family pedigree. It seemed to me that it would be a
+    shame if I went away from the home of my ancestors without knowing
+    something about those ancestors and about the links that connected me
+    with them. So I determined to see what I could do in the way of making
+    up a family tree.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By good luck, Jone had some business to attend to about money and rooms
+    on the steamer, and so forth, and so I could start out by myself
+    without his even asking me where I was going. Now, of course, it would
+    be a natural thing for a person to go and seek out his ancestors in the
+    ancient village from which they sprang, and to read their names on
+    the tombstones in the venerable little church, but as I didn't know
+    where this village was, of course I couldn't go to it. But in London is
+    the place where you can find out how to find out such things.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0048"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img048.jpg">
+<img src="images/img048s.jpg" width="130" height="200"
+alt="'A PERSON WHO WAS A FAMILY-TREE-MAN'" /><br />
+'A PERSON WHO WAS A FAMILY-TREE-MAN'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    As far back as when we was in Chedcombe I had had a good deal of talk
+    with Miss Pondar about ancestors and families. I told her that my
+    forefathers came from this country, which I was very sure of, judging
+    from my feelings; but as I couldn't tell her any particulars, I didn't
+    go into the matter very deep. But I did say there was a good many
+    points that I would like to set straight, and asked her if she knew
+    where I could find out something about English family trees. She said
+    she had heard there was a big heraldry office in London, but if I
+    didn't want to go there, she knew of a person who was a
+    family-tree-man. He had an office in London, and his business was to go
+    around and tend to trees of that kind which had been neglected, and to
+    get them into shape and good condition. She gave me his address, and I
+    had kept the thing quiet in my mind until now.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I found the family-tree-man, whose name was Brandish, in a small room
+    not too clean, over a shop not far from St. Paul's Churchyard. He had
+    another business, which related to patent poison for flies, and at
+    first he thought I had come to see him about that, but when he found
+    out I wanted to ask him about my family tree his face brightened up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When I told Mr. Brandish my business the first thing he asked me was my
+    family name. Of course I had expected this, and I had thought a great
+    deal about the answer I ought to give. In the first place, I didn't
+    want to have anything to do with my father's name. I never had anything
+    much to do with him, because he died when I was a little baby, and his
+    name had nothing high-toned about it, and it seemed to me to belong to
+    that kind of a family that you would be better satisfied with the less
+    you looked up its beginnings; but my mother's family was a different
+    thing. Nobody could know her without feeling that she had sprung from
+    good roots. It might have been from the stump of a tree that had been
+    cut down, but the roots must have been of no common kind to send up
+    such a shoot as she was. It was from her that I got my longings for the
+    romantic.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She used to tell me a good deal about her father, who must have been a
+    wonderful man in many ways. What she told me was not like a sketch of
+    his life, which I wish it had been, but mostly anecdotes of what he
+    said and did. So it was my mother's ancestral tree I determined to
+    find, and without saying whether it was on my mother's or father's side
+    I was searching for ancestors, I told Mr. Brandish that Dork was the
+    family name.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dork," said he; "a rather uncommon name, isn't it? Was your father
+    the eldest son of a family of that name?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I was hoping he wouldn't say anything about my father.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, sir," said I; "it isn't that line that I am looking up. It is my
+    mother's. Her name was Dork before she was married."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really! Now I see," said he, "you have the paternal line all correct,
+    and you want to look up the line on the other side. That is very
+    common; it is so seldom that one knows the line of ancestors on one's
+    maternal side. Dork, then, was the name of your maternal grandfather."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It struck me that a maternal grandfather must be a grandmother, but I
+    didn't say so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Can you tell me," said he, "whether it was he who emigrated from this
+    country to America, or whether it was his father or his grandfather?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I hadn't said anything about the United States, for I had learned
+    there was no use in wasting breath telling English people I had come
+    from America, so I wasn't surprised at his question, but I couldn't
+    answer it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I can't say much about that," I said, "until I have found out
+    something about the English branches of the family."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good," said he. "We will look over the records," and he took down
+    a big book and turned to the letter D. He ran his finger down two or
+    three pages, and then he began to shake his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dork?" said he. "There doesn't seem to be any Dork, but here is
+    Dorkminster. Now if that was your family name we'd have it all here. No
+    doubt you know all about that family. It's a grand old family, isn't
+    it? Isn't it possible that your grandfather or one of his ancestors may
+    have dropped part of the name when he changed his residence to
+    America?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I began to think hard; there was some reason in what the
+    family-tree-man said. I knew very well that the same family name was
+    often different in different countries, changes being made to suit
+    climates and people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Minster has a religious meaning, hasn't it?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, madam," said he; "it relates to cathedrals and that sort of
+    thing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, so far as I could remember, none of the things my mother had ever
+    told me about her father was in any ways related to religion. They was
+    mostly about horses; and although there is really no reason for the
+    disconnection between horses and religion, especially when you consider
+    the hymns with heavenly chariots in them must have had horses, it
+    didn't seem to me that my grandfather could have made it a point of
+    being religious, and perhaps he mightn't have cared for the cathedral
+    part of his name, and so might have dropped it for convenience in
+    signing, probably being generally in a hurry, judging from what my
+    mother had told me. I said as much to Mr. Brandish, and he answered
+    that he thought it was likely enough, and that that sort of thing was
+    often done.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, then," said he, "let us look into the Dorkminster line and trace
+    out your connection with that. From what place did your ancestors
+    come?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed to me that he was asking me a good deal more than he was
+    telling me, and I said to him: "That is what I want to find out. What
+    is the family home of the Dorkminsters?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, they were a great Hampshire family," said he. "For five hundred
+    years they lived on their estates in Hampshire. The first of the name
+    was Sir William Dorkminster, who came over with the Conqueror, and most
+    likely was given those estates for his services. Then we go on until we
+    come to the Duke of Dorkminster, who built a castle, and whose brother
+    Henry was made bishop and founded an abbey, which I am sorry to say
+    doesn't now exist, being totally destroyed by Oliver Cromwell."
+</p>
+<p>
+    You cannot imagine how my blood leaped and surged within me as I
+    listened to those words. William the Conqueror! An ancestral abbey! A
+    duke! "Is the family castle still standing?" said I.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It fell into ruins," said he, "during the reign of Charles I., and
+    even its site is now uncertain, the park having been devoted to
+    agricultural purposes. The fourth Duke of Dorkminster was to have
+    commanded one of the ships which destroyed the Spanish Armada, but was
+    prevented by a mortal fever which cut him off in his prime; he died
+    without issue, and the estates passed to the Culverhams of Wilts."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did that cut off the line?" said I, very quick.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no," said the family-tree man, "the line went on. One of the
+    duke's younger sisters must have married a man on condition that he
+    took the old family name, which is often done, and her descendants must
+    have emigrated somewhere, for the name no longer appears in Hampshire;
+    but probably not to America, for that was rather early for English
+    emigration."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you suppose," said I, "that they went to Scotland?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very likely," said he, after thinking a minute; "that would be
+    probable enough. Have you reason to suppose that there was a Scotch
+    branch in your family?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said I, for it would have been positively wrong in me to say
+    that the feelings that I had for the Scotch hadn't any meaning at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now then," said Mr. Brandish, "there you are, madam. There is a line
+    all the way down from the Conqueror to the end of the sixteenth
+    century, scarcely one man's lifetime before the Pilgrims landed on
+    Plymouth Rock."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I now began to calculate in my mind. I was thirty years old; my mother,
+    most likely, was about as old when I was born; that made sixty years.
+    Then my grandfather might have been forty when my mother was born, and
+    there was a century. As for my great-grandfather and his parents, I
+    didn't know anything about them. Of course, there must have been such
+    persons, but I didn't know where they came from or where they went to.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I can go back a century," said I, "but that doesn't begin to meet the
+    end of the line you have marked out. There's a gap of about two hundred
+    years."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I don't think I would mind that," said Mr. Brandish. "Gaps of that
+    kind are constantly occurring in family trees. In fact, if we was to
+    allow gaps of a century or so to interfere with the working out of
+    family lines, it would cut off a great many noble ancestries from
+    families of high position, especially in the colonies and abroad. I beg
+    you not to pay any attention to that, madam."
+</p>
+<p>
+    My nerves was tingling with the thought of the Spanish Armada, and
+    perhaps Bannockburn (which then made me wish I had known all this
+    before I went to Stirling, but which battle, now as I write, I know
+    must have been fought a long time before any of the Dorks went to
+    Scotland), and I expect my eyes flashed with family pride, for do what
+    I would I couldn't sit calm and listen to what I was hearing. But,
+    after all, that two hundred years did weigh upon my mind. "If you make
+    a family tree for me," said I, "you will have to cut off the trunk and
+    begin again somewhere up in the air."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no," said he, "we don't do that. We arrange the branches so that
+    they overlap each other, and the dotted lines which indicate the
+    missing portions are not noticed. Then, after further investigation and
+    more information, the dots can be run together and the tree made
+    complete and perfect."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, I had nothing more to say, and he promised to send me the
+    tree the next morning, though, of course, requesting me to pay him in
+    advance, which was the rule of the office, and you would be amazed,
+    madam, if you knew how much that tree cost. I got it the next morning,
+    but I haven't shown it to Jone yet. I am proud that I own it, and I
+    have thrills through me whenever my mind goes back to its Norman roots;
+    but I am bound to say that family trees sometimes throw a good deal of
+    shade over their owners, especially when they have gaps in them, which
+    seems contrary to nature, but is true to fact.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0027"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-six</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    SOUTHWESTERN HOTEL, SOUTHAMPTON
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-morrow our steamer sails, and this is the last letter I write on
+    English soil; and although I haven't done half that I wanted to, there
+    are ever so many things I have done that I can't write you about.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I had seen so few cathedrals that on the way down here I was bound to
+    see at least one good one, and so we stopped at Winchester. It was
+    while walking under the arches of that venerable pile that the thought
+    suddenly came to me that we were now in Hampshire, and that, perhaps,
+    in this cathedral might be some of the tombs of my ancestors. Without
+    saying what I was after I began at one of the doors, and I went clean
+    around that enormous church, and read every tablet in the walls and on
+    the floor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Once I had a shock. There was a good many small tombs with roofs over
+    them, and statues of people buried within, lying on top of the tombs,
+    and some of them had their faces and clothes colored so as to make them
+    look almost as natural as life. They was mostly bishops, and had been
+    lying there for centuries. While looking at these I came to a tomb
+    with an opening low down on the side of it, and behind some iron bars
+    there lay a stone figure that made me fairly jump. He was on his back
+    with hardly any clothes on, and was actually nothing but skin and
+    bones. His mouth was open, as if he was gasping for his last breath. I
+    never saw such an awful sight, and as I looked at the thing my blood
+    began to run cold, and then it froze. The freezing was because I
+    suddenly thought to myself that this might be a Dorkminster, and that
+    that horrible object was my ancestor. I was actually afraid to look at
+    the inscription on the tombstone for fear that this was so, for if it
+    was, I knew that whenever I should think of my family tree this bag of
+    bones would be climbing up the trunk, or sitting on one of the
+    branches. But I must know the truth, and trembling so that I could
+    scarcely read, I stooped down to look at the inscription and find out
+    who that dreadful figure had been. It was not a Dorkminster, and my
+    spirits rose.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0049"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img049.jpg">
+<img src="images/img049s.jpg" width="162" height="180"
+alt="'THIS MIGHT BE A DORKMINSTER'" /><br />
+ 'This Might Be a Dorkminster'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    We got here three days ago, and we have made a visit to the Isle of
+    Wight. We went straight down to the southern coast, and stopped all
+    night at the little town of Bonchurch. It was very lovely down there
+    with roses and other flowers blooming out-of-doors as if it was summer,
+    although it is now getting so cold everywhere else. But what pleased me
+    most was to stand at the top of a little hill, and look out over the
+    waters of the English Channel, and feel that not far out of eyeshot was
+    the beautiful land of France with its lower part actually touching
+    Italy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You know, madam, that when we was here before, we was in France, and a
+    happy woman was I to be there, although so much younger than now I
+    couldn't properly enjoy it; but even then France was only part of the
+    road to Italy, which, alas, we never got to. Some day, however, I shall
+    float in a gondola and walk amid the ruins of ancient Rome, and if Jone
+    is too sick of travel to go with me, it may be necessary for Corinne to
+    see the world, and I shall take her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I must finish this letter and bid good-by to beautiful Britain,
+    which has made us happy and treated us well in spite of some
+    comparisons in which we was expected to be on the wrong side, but which
+    hurt nobody, and which I don't want even to think of at such a moment
+    as this.
+</p>
+<hr />
+<a name="2H_4_0028"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<h2>
+    <i>Letter Number Twenty-seven</i>
+</h2>
+<p class="loc">
+    NEW YORK
+</p>
+<p>
+    I send you this, madam, to let you know that we arrived here safely
+    yesterday afternoon, and that we are going to-day to Jone's mother's
+    farm where Corinne is.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I liked sailing from Southampton because when I start to go to a place
+    I like to go, and when we went home before and had to begin by going
+    all the way up to Liverpool by land, and then coming all the way back
+    again by water, and after a couple of days of this to stop at
+    Queenstown and begin the real voyage from there, I did not like it,
+    although it was a good deal of fun seeing the bumboat women come aboard
+    at Queenstown and telescope themselves into each other as they hurried
+    up the ladder to get on deck and sell us things.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We had a very good voyage, with about enough rolling to make the dining
+    saloon look like some of the churches we've seen abroad on weekdays
+    where there was services regular, but mighty small congregations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When we got in sight of my native shore, England, Scotland, and even
+    the longed-for Italy, with her palaces and gondolas, faded from my
+    mind, and my every fibre tingled with pride and patriotism. We reached
+    our dock about six o'clock in the afternoon, and I could scarcely stand
+    still, so anxious was I to get ashore. There was a train at eight which
+    reached Rockbridge at half-past nine, and there we could take a
+    carriage and drive to the farm in less than an hour, and then Corinne
+    would be in my arms, so you may imagine my state of mind&mdash;Corinne
+    before bedtime! But a cloud blacker than the heaviest fog came down
+    upon me, for while we was standing on the deck, expecting every minute
+    to land, a man came along and shouted at the top of his voice that no
+    baggage could be examined by the custom-house officers after six
+    o'clock, and the passengers could take nothing ashore with them but
+    their hand-bags, and must come back in the morning and have their
+    baggage examined. When I heard this my soul simply boiled within me! I
+    looked at Jone, and I could see he was boiling just as bad.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jone," said I, "don't say a word to me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am not going to say a word," said he, and he didn't. All our
+    belongings was in our trunks. Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had
+    only a little one which had in it three newspapers, which we bought
+    from the pilot, a tooth-brush, a spool of thread and some needles, and
+    a pair of scissors with one point broken off. With these things we had
+    to go to a hotel and spend the night, and in the morning we had to go
+    back to have our trunks examined, which, as there was nothing in them
+    to pay duty on, was waste time for all parties, no matter when it was
+    done.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0050"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center><a href="images/img050.jpg">
+<img src="images/img050s.jpg" width="178" height="180"
+alt="'JONE DIDN'T CARRY ANY HAND-BAG, AND I HAD ONLY A LITTLE ONE'" />
+<br />'JONE DIDN'T CARRY ANY HAND-BAG, AND I HAD ONLY A LITTLE ONE'</a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    That night, when I was lying awake thinking about this welcome to our
+    native land, I don't say that I hauled down the stars and stripes, but
+    I did put them at half mast. When we arrived in England we got ashore
+    about twelve o'clock at night, but there was the custom-house officers
+    as civil and obliging as any people could be, ready to tend to us and
+    pass us on. And when I thought of them, and afterward of the lordly
+    hirelings who met us here, I couldn't help feeling what a glorious
+    thing it would be to travel if you could get home without coming back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that we ought to be very glad we
+    don't like this sort of thing. "In many foreign countries," said he,
+    "people are a good deal nagged by their governments and they like it;
+    we don't like it, so haul up your flag."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I hauled it up, and it's flying now from the tiptop of my tallest mast.
+    In an hour our train starts, and I shall see Corinne before the sun
+    goes down.
+</p>
+
+
+<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pomona's Travels, by Frank R. Stockton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pomona's Travels
+       A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former
+       Handmaiden
+
+
+Author: Frank R. Stockton
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2004 [EBook #12460]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POMONA'S TRAVELS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Asad Razzaki and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+_POMONA'S TRAVELS_
+
+_A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her former
+Handmaiden_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+POMONA'S TRAVELS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BY
+
+FRANK R. STOCKTON
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+BY
+A.B. FROST
+
+1894
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+_In Uniform Binding_
+
+_RUDDER GRANGE_
+_Illustrated by A.B. Frost._
+
+_POMONA'S TRAVELS_
+_Illustrated by A.B. Frost._
+
+
+[Illustration: CONTENTS]
+
+LETTER ONE.
+_Wanted,--a Vicarage_
+
+LETTER TWO.
+_On the Four-in-hand_
+
+LETTER THREE.
+_Jone overshadows the Waiter_
+
+LETTER FOUR.
+_The Cottage at Chedcombe_
+
+LETTER FIVE.
+_Pomona takes a Lodger_
+
+LETTER SIX.
+_Pomona expounds Americanisms_
+
+LETTER SEVEN.
+_The Hayfield_
+
+LETTER EIGHT.
+_Jone teaches Young Ladies how to Rake_
+
+LETTER NINE.
+_A Runaway Tricycle_
+
+LETTER TEN.
+_Pomona slides Backward down the Slope of the Centuries_
+
+LETTER ELEVEN.
+_On the Moors_
+
+LETTER TWELVE.
+_Stag-hunting on a Tricycle_
+
+LETTER THIRTEEN.
+_The Green Placard_
+
+LETTER FOURTEEN.
+_Pomona and her David Llewellyn_
+
+LETTER FIFTEEN.
+_Hogs and the Fine Arts_
+
+LETTER SIXTEEN.
+_With Dickens in London_
+
+LETTER SEVENTEEN.
+_Buxton and the Bath Chairs_
+
+LETTER EIGHTEEN.
+_Mr. Poplington as Guide_
+
+LETTER NINETEEN.
+_Angelica and Pomeroy_
+
+LETTER TWENTY.
+_The Countess of Mussleby_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-ONE.
+_Edinboro' Town_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-TWO.
+_Pomona and her Gilly_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-THREE.
+_They follow the Lady of the Lake_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-FOUR.
+_Comparisons become Odious to Pomona_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-FIVE.
+_The Family-Tree-Man_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-SIX.
+_Searching for Dorkminsters_
+
+LETTER TWENTY-SEVEN.
+_Their Country and their Custom House_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+[Illustration: List of Illustrations]
+
+_Title Page_
+
+_Vignette Heading to Table of Contents_
+
+_Tail piece to Table of Contents_
+
+_Vignette Heading to List of Illustrations_
+
+_Tail-piece to List of Illustrations_
+
+_Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"Boy, go order me a four-in-hand"_
+
+_The Landlady with an "underdone visage"_
+
+_"I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"_
+
+_"Down came a shower of rain"_
+
+_"Ask the waiter what the French words mean"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_Jone giving an order_
+
+_The Carver_
+
+_"You Americans are the speediest people"_
+
+_"That was our house"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"The young lady who keeps the bar"_
+
+_"I see signs of weakening in the social boom"_
+
+_At the Abbey_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"There, with the bar lady and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, was
+Jone"_
+
+_"At last I did get on my feet"_
+
+_"Rise, Sir Jane Puddle"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and initial Letter_
+
+_"In an instant I was free"_
+
+_"If you was a man I'd break your head"_
+
+_"I'm a Home Ruler"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"And with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam engine"_
+
+_"In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over"_
+
+_"Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"_
+
+_Mr. Poplington looking for luggage_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_Pomona encourages Jonas_
+
+_"Stop, lady, and I'll get out"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"Your brother is over there"_
+
+_To the Cat and Fiddle_
+
+_"And did you like Chedcombe?"_
+
+_"Jone looked at him and said that was the Highland costume"_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
+wild twirl over my head"_
+
+_Pomona drinking it in_
+
+_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
+
+_"A person who was a family-tree-man"_
+
+_"This might be a Dorkminster"_
+
+_Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had only a little one_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POMONA'S TRAVELS
+
+
+This series of letters, written by Pomona of "Rudder Grange" to her
+former mistress, Euphemia, may require a few words of introduction.
+Those who have not read the adventures and experiences of Pomona in
+"Rudder Grange" should be told that she first appeared in that story as
+a very young and illiterate girl, fond of sensational romances, and
+with some out-of-the-way ideas in regard to domestic economy and the
+conventions of society. This romantic orphan took service in the
+"Rudder Grange" family, and as the story progressed she grew up into a
+very estimable young woman, and finally married Jonas, the son of a
+well-to-do farmer. Even after she came into possession of a husband and
+a daughter Pomona did not lose her affection for her former employers.
+
+About a year before the beginning of the travels described in these
+letters Jonas's father died and left a comfortable little property,
+which placed Pomona and her husband in independent circumstances. The
+ideas and ambitions of this eccentric but sensible young woman
+enlarged with her fortune. As her daughter was now going to school,
+Pomona was seized with the spirit of emulation, and determined as far
+as was possible to make the child's education an advantage to herself.
+Some of the books used by the little girl at school were carefully and
+earnestly studied by her mother, and as Jonas joined with hearty
+good-will in the labors and pleasures of this system of domestic study,
+the family standard of education was considerably raised. In the
+quick-witted and observant Pomona the improvement showed itself
+principally in her methods of expression, and although she could not be
+called at the time of these travels an educated woman, she was by no
+means an ignorant one.
+
+When the daughter was old enough she was allowed to accept an
+invitation from her grandmother to spend the summer in the country, and
+Pomona determined that it was the duty of herself and husband to avail
+themselves of this opportunity for foreign travel.
+
+Accordingly, one fine spring morning, Pomona, still a young woman, and
+Jonas, not many years older, but imbued with a semi-pathetic
+complaisance beyond his years, embarked for England and Scotland, to
+which countries it was determined to limit their travels. The letters
+which follow were written in consequence of the earnest desire of
+Euphemia to have a full account of the travels and foreign impressions
+of her former handmaiden. Pruned of dates, addresses, signatures, and
+of many personal and friendly allusions, these letters are here
+presented as Pomona wrote them to Euphemia.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number One_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+
+The first thing Jone said to me when I told him I was going to write
+about what I saw and heard was that I must be careful of two things. In
+the first place, I must not write a lot of stuff that everybody ought
+to be expected to know, especially people who have travelled
+themselves; and in the second place, I must not send you my green
+opinions, but must wait until they were seasoned, so that I can see
+what they are good for before I send them.
+
+"But if I do that," said I, "I will get tired of them long before they
+are seasoned, and they will be like a bundle of old sticks that I
+wouldn't offer to anybody." Jone laughed at that, and said I might as
+well send them along green, for, after all, I wasn't the kind of a
+person to keep things until they were seasoned, to see if I liked them.
+"That's true," said I, "there's a great many things, such as husbands
+and apples, that I like a good deal better fresh than dry. Is that all
+the advice you've got to give?"
+
+"For the present," said he; "but I dare say I shall have a good deal
+more as we go along."
+
+"All right," said I, "but be careful you don't give me any of it green.
+Advice is like gooseberries, that's got to be soft and ripe, or else
+well cooked and sugared, before they're fit to take into anybody's
+stomach."
+
+Jone was standing at the window of our sitting-room when I said this,
+looking out into the street. As soon as we got to London we took
+lodgings in a little street running out of the Strand, for we both want
+to be in the middle of things as long as we are in this conglomerate
+town, as Jone calls it. He says, and I think he is about right, that it
+is made up of half a dozen large cities, ten or twelve towns, at least
+fifty villages, more than a hundred little settlements, or hamlets, as
+they call them here, and about a thousand country houses scattered
+along around the edges; and over and above all these are the
+inhabitants of a large province, which, there being no province to put
+them into, are crammed into all the cracks and crevices so as to fill
+up the town and pack it solid.
+
+When we was in London before, with you and your husband, madam, and we
+lost my baby in Kensington Gardens, we lived, you know, in a peaceful,
+quiet street by a square or crescent, where about half the inhabitants
+were pervaded with the solemnities of the past and the other half bowed
+down by the dolefulness of the present, and no way of getting anywhere
+except by descending into a movable tomb, which is what I always think
+of when we go anywhere in the underground railway. But here we can walk
+to lots of things we want to see, and if there was nothing else to keep
+us lively the fear of being run over would do it, you may be sure.
+
+But, after all, Jone and me didn't come here to London just to see the
+town. We have ideas far ahead of that. When we was in London before I
+saw pretty nearly all the sights, for when I've got work like that to
+do I don't let the grass grow under my feet, and what we want to do on
+this trip is to see the country part of England and Scotland. And in
+order to see English country life just as it is, we both agreed that
+the best thing to do was to take a little house in the country and live
+there a while; and I'll say here that this is the only plan of the
+whole journey that Jone gets real enthusiastic about, for he is a
+domestic man, as you well know, and if anything swells his veins with
+fervent rapture it is the idea of living in some one place continuous,
+even if it is only for a month.
+
+As we wanted a house in the country we came to London to get it, for
+London is the place to get everything. Our landlady advised us, when we
+told her what we wanted, to try and get a vicarage in some little
+village, because, she said, there are always lots of vicars who want to
+go away for a month in the summer, and they can't do it unless they
+rent their houses while they are gone. And in fact, some of them, she
+said, got so little salary for the whole year, and so much rent for
+their vicarages while they are gone, that they often can't afford to
+stay in places unless they go away.
+
+So we answered some advertisements, and there was no lack of them in
+the papers, and three agents came to see us, but we did not seem to
+have any luck. Each of them had a house to let which ought to have
+suited us, according to their descriptions, and although we found the
+prices a good deal higher than we expected, Jone said he wasn't going
+to be stopped by that, because it was only for a little while and for
+the sake of experience--and experience, as all the poets, and a good
+many of the prose writers besides, tell us, is always dear. But after
+the agents went away, saying they would communicate with us in the
+morning, we never heard anything more from them, and we had to begin
+all over again. There was something the matter, Jone and I both agreed
+on that, but we didn't know what it was. But I waked up in the night
+and thought about this thing for a whole hour, and in the morning I had
+an idea.
+
+"Jone," said I, when we was eating breakfast, "it's as plain as A B C
+that those agents don't want us for tenants, and it isn't because they
+think we are not to be trusted, for we'd have to pay in advance, and so
+their money's safe; it is something else, and I think I know what it
+is. These London men are very sharp, and used to sizing and sorting all
+kinds of people as if they was potatoes being got ready for market, and
+they have seen that we are not what they call over here gentlefolks."
+
+"No lordly airs, eh?" said Jone.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that," I answered him back; "lordly airs don't go
+into parsonages, and I don't mean either that they see from our looks
+or manners that you used to drive horses and milk cows and work in the
+garden, and that I used to cook and scrub and was maid-of-all-work on a
+canal-boat; but they do see that we are not the kind of people who are
+in the habit, in this country, at least, of spending their evenings in
+the best parlors of vicarages."
+
+"Do you suppose," said Jone, "that they think a vicar's kitchen would
+suit us better?"
+
+"No," said I, "they wouldn't put us in a vicarage at all; there
+wouldn't be no place there that would not be either too high or too low
+for us. It's my opinion that what they think we belong in is a lordly
+house, where you'd shine most as head butler or a steward, while I'd be
+the housekeeper or a leading lady's maid."
+
+"By George!" said Jone, getting up from the table, "if any of those
+fellows would favor me with an opinion like that I'd break his head."
+
+"You'd have a lot of heads to break," said I, "if you went through this
+country asking for opinions on the subject. It's all very well for us
+to remember that we've got a house of our own as good as most rectors
+have over here, and money enough to hire a minor canon, if we needed
+one in the house; but the people over here don't know that, and it
+wouldn't make much difference if they did, for it wouldn't matter how
+nice we lived or what we had so long as they knew we was retired
+servants."
+
+At this Jone just blazed up and rammed his hands into his pockets and
+spread his feet wide upon the floor. "Pomona," said he, "I don't mind
+it in you, but if anybody else was to call me a retired servant I'd--"
+
+"Hold up, Jone," said I, "don't waste good, wholesome anger." Now, I
+tell you, madam, it really did me good to see Jone blaze up and get red
+in the face, and I am sure that if he'd get his blood boiling oftener
+it would be a good thing for his dyspeptic tendencies and what little
+malaria may be left in his system. "It won't do any good to flare up
+here," I went on to say to him; "fact's fact, and we was servants, and
+good ones, too, though I say it myself, and the trouble is we haven't
+got into the way of altogether forgetting it, or, at least, acting as
+if we had forgotten it."
+
+Jone sat down on a chair. "It might help matters a little," he said,
+"if I knew what you was driving at."
+
+"I mean just this," said I, "as long as we are as anxious not to give
+trouble, or as careful of people's feelings, as good-mannered to
+servants, and as polite and good-natured to everybody we have anything
+to do with, as we both have been since we came here, and as it is our
+nature to be, I am proud to say, we're bound to be set down, at least
+by the general run of people over here, as belonging to the pick of the
+nobility and gentry, or as well-bred servants. It's only those two
+classes that act as we do, and anybody can see we are not special
+nobles and gents. Now, if we want to be reckoned anywhere in between
+these two we've got to change our manners."
+
+"Will you kindly mention just how?" said Jone.
+
+"Yes," said I, "I will. In the first place, we've got to act as if we
+had always been waited on and had never been satisfied with the way it
+was done; we've got to let people think that we think we are a good
+deal better than they are, and what they think about it doesn't make
+the least difference; and then again we've got to live in better
+quarters than these, and whatever they may be we must make people
+think that we don't think they are quite good enough for us. If we do
+all that, agents may be willing to let us vicarages."
+
+"It strikes me," said Jone, "that these quarters are good enough for
+us. I'm comfortable." And then he went on to say, madam, that when you
+and your husband was in London you was well satisfied with just such
+lodgings.
+
+"That's all very well," I said, "for they never moved in the lower
+paths of society, and so they didn't have to make any change, but just
+went along as they had been used to go. But if we want to make people
+believe we belong to that class I should choose, if I had my pick out
+of English social varieties, we've got to bounce about as much above it
+as we were born below it, so that we can strike somewhere near the
+proper average."
+
+"And what variety would you pick out, I'd like to know?" said Jone,
+just a little red in the face, and looking as if I had told him he
+didn't know timothy hay from oat straw.
+
+"Well," said I, "it is not easy to put it to you exactly, but it's a
+sort of a cross between a prosperous farmer without children and a poor
+country gentleman with two sons at college and one in the British army,
+and no money to pay their debts with."
+
+"That last is not to my liking," said Jone.
+
+"But the farmer part of the cross would make it all right," I said to
+him, "and it strikes me that a mixture like that would just suit us
+while we are staying over here. Now, if you will try to think of
+yourself as part rich farmer and part poor gentleman, I'll consider
+myself the wife of the combination, and I am sure we will get along
+better. We didn't come over here to be looked upon as if we was the
+bottom of a pie dish and charged as if we was the upper crust. I'm in
+favor of paying a little more money and getting a lot more
+respectfulness, and the way to begin is to give up these lodgings and
+go to a hotel such as the upper middlers stop at. From what I've heard,
+the Babylon Hotel is the one for us while we are in London. Nobody will
+suspect that any of the people at that hotel are retired servants."
+
+[Illustration: "Boy, go order me a four-in-hand"]
+
+This hit Jone hard, as I knew it would, and he jumped up, made three
+steps across the room, and rang the bell so that the people across the
+street must have heard it, and up came the boy in green jacket and
+buttons, with about every other button missing, and I never knew him to
+come up so quick before.
+
+"Boy," said Jone to him, as if he was hollering to a stubborn ox, "go
+order me a four-in-hand."
+
+But this letter is so long I must stop for the present.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Two_
+
+
+LONDON
+
+When Jone gave the remarkable order mentioned in my last letter I did
+not correct him, for I wouldn't do that before servants without giving
+him a chance to do it himself; but before either of us could say
+another word the boy was gone.
+
+"Mercy on us," I said, "what a stupid blunder! You meant four-wheeler."
+
+[Illustration: The Landlady with an "underdone visage"]
+
+"Of course I did," he said; "I was a little mad and got things mixed,
+but I expect the fellow understood what I meant."
+
+"You ought to have called a hansom any way," I said, "for they are a
+lot more stylish to go to a hotel in than in a four-wheeler."
+
+"If there was six-wheelers I would have ordered one," said he. "I don't
+want anybody to have more wheels than we have."
+
+At this moment the landlady came into the room with a sarcastic glimmer
+on her underdone visage, and, says she, "I suppose you don't
+understand about the vehicles we have in London. The four-in-hand is
+what the quality and coach people use when--" As I looked at Jone I saw
+his legs tremble, and I know what that means. If I was a wanderin' dog
+and saw Jone's legs tremble, the only thoughts that would fill my soul
+would be such as cluster around "Home, Sweet Home." Jone was too much
+riled by the woman's manner to be willing to let her think he had made
+a mistake, and he stopped her short. "Look here," he said to her, "I
+don't ask you to come here to tell me anything about vehicles. When I
+order any sort of a trap I want it." When I heard Jone say trap my soul
+lifted itself and I knew there was hope for us. The stiffness melted
+right out of the landlady, and she began to look soft and gummy.
+
+"If you want to take a drive in a four-in-hand coach, sir," she said,
+"there's two or three of them starts every morning from Trafalgar
+Square, and it's not too late now, sir, if you go over there
+immediate."
+
+"Go?" said Jone, throwing himself into a chair, "I said, order one to
+come. Where I live that sort of vehicle comes to the door for its
+passengers."
+
+The woman looked at Jone with a venerative uplifting of her eyebrows.
+"I can't say, sir, that a coach will come, but I'll send the boy. They
+go to Dorking, and Seven Oaks, and Virginia Water--"
+
+"I want to go to Virginia Water," said Jone, as quick as lightning.
+
+"Now, then," said I, when the woman had gone, "what are you going to do
+if the coach comes?"
+
+"Go to Virginia Water in it," said Jone, "and when we come back we can
+go to the hotel. I made a mistake, but I've got to stand by it or be
+called a greenhorn."
+
+I was in hopes the four-in-hand wouldn't come, but in less than ten
+minutes there drove up to our door a four-horse coach which, not having
+half enough passengers, was glad to come such a little ways to get some
+more. There was a man in a high hat and red coat, who was blowing a
+horn as the thing came around the corner, and just as I was looking
+into the coach and thinking we'd have it all to ourselves, for there
+was nobody in it, he put a ladder up against the top, and says he,
+touching his hat, "There's a seat for you, madam, right next the
+coachman, and one just behind for the gentleman. 'Tain't often that, on
+a fine morning like this, such seats as them is left vacant on account
+of a sudden case of croup in a baronet's family."
+
+I looked at the ladder and I looked at that top front seat, and I tell
+you, madam, I trembled in every pore, but I remembered then that all
+the respectable seats was on top, and the farther front the nobbier,
+and as there was a young woman sitting already on the box-seat, I made
+up my mind that if she could sit there I could, and that I wasn't
+going to let Jone or anybody else see that I was frightened by style
+and fashion, though confronted by it so sudden and unexpected. So up
+that ladder I went quick enough, having had practice in hay-mows, and
+sat myself down between the young woman and the coachman, and when Jone
+had tucked himself in behind me the horner blew his horn and away we
+went.
+
+[Illustration: "I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"]
+
+I tell you, madam, that box-seat was a queer box for me. I felt as
+though I was sitting on the eaves of a roof with a herd of horses
+cavoorting under my feet. I never had a bird's-eye view of horses
+before. Looking down on their squirming bodies, with the coachman
+almost standing on his tiptoes driving them, was so different from
+Jone's buggy and our tall gray horse, which in general we look up to,
+that for a good while I paid no attention to anything but the danger of
+falling out on top of them. But having made sure that Jone was holding
+on to my dress from behind, I began to take an interest in the things
+around me.
+
+Knowing as much as I thought I did about the bigness of London, I found
+that morning that I never had any idea of what an everlasting town it
+is. It is like a skein of tangled yarn--there doesn't seem to be any
+end to it. Going in this way from Nelson's Monument out into the
+country, it was amazing to see how long it took to get there. We would
+go out of the busy streets into a quiet rural neighborhood, or what
+looked like it, and the next thing we knew we'd be in another whirl of
+omnibuses and cabs, with people and shops everywhere; and we'd go on
+and through this and then come to another handsome village with country
+houses, and the street would end in another busy town; and so on until
+I began to think there was no real country, at least, in the direction
+we was going. It is my opinion that if London was put on a pivot and
+spun round in the State of Texas until it all flew apart, it would
+spread all over the State and settle up the whole country.
+
+At last we did get away from the houses and began to roll along on the
+best made road I ever saw, with a hedge on each side and the greenest
+grass in the fields, and the most beautiful trees, with the very trunks
+covered with green leaves, and with white sheep and handsome cattle and
+pretty thatched cottages, and everything in perfect order, looking as
+if it had just been sprinkled and swept. We had seen English country
+before, but that was from the windows of a train, and it was very
+different from this sort of thing, where we went meandering along
+lanes, for that is what the roads look like, being so narrow.
+
+Just as I was getting my whole soul full of this lovely ruralness, down
+came a shower of rain without giving the least notice. I gave a jump in
+my seat as I felt it on me, and began to get ready to get down as soon
+as the coachman should stop for us all to get inside; but he didn't
+stop, but just drove along as if the sun was shining and the balmy
+breezes blowing, and then I looked around and not a soul of the eight
+people on the top of that coach showed the least sign of expecting to
+get down and go inside. They all sat there just as if nothing was
+happening, and not one of them even mentioned the rain. But I noticed
+that each of them had on a mackintosh or some kind of cape, whereas
+Jone and I never thought of taking anything in the way of waterproof or
+umbrellas, as it was perfectly clear when we started.
+
+[Illustration: "DOWN CAME A SHOWER OF RAIN"]
+
+I looked around at Jone, but he sat there with his face as placid as a
+piece of cheese, looking as if he had no more knowledge it was raining
+than the two Englishmen on the seat next him. Seeing he wasn't going to
+let those men think he minded the rain any more than they did, I
+determined that I wouldn't let the young woman who was sitting by me
+have any notion that I minded it, and so I sat still, with as cheerful
+a look as I could screw up, gazing at the trees with as gladsome a
+countenance as anybody could have with water trickling down her nose,
+her cheeks dripping, and dewdrops on her very eyelashes, while the
+dampness of her back was getting more and more perceptible as each
+second dragged itself along. Jone turned up the hood of my coat, and so
+let down into the back of my neck what water had collected in it; but I
+didn't say anything, but set my teeth hard together and fixed my mind
+on Columbia, happy land, and determined never to say anything about
+rain until some English person first mentioned it.
+
+But when one of the flowers on my hat leaned over the brim and exuded
+bloody drops on the front of my coat I began to weaken, and to think
+that if there was nothing better to do I might get under one of the
+seats; but just then the rain stopped and the sun shone. It was so
+sudden that it startled me; but not one of those English people
+mentioned that the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, and so
+neither did Jone or I. We was feeling mighty moist and unhappy, but we
+tried to smile as if we was plants in a greenhouse, accustomed to being
+watered and feeling all the better for it.
+
+I can't write you all about the coach drive, which was very delightful,
+nor of that beautiful lake they call Virginia Water, and which I know
+you have a picture of in your house. They tell me it is artificial, but
+as it was made more than a hundred years ago, it might now be
+considered natural. We dined at an inn, and when we got back to town,
+with two more showers on the way, I said to Jone that I thought we'd
+better go straight to the Babylon Hotel, which we intended to start out
+for, although it was a long way round to go by Virginia Water, and see
+about engaging a room; and as Jone agreed I asked the coachman if he
+would put us down there, knowing that he'd pass near it. He agreed to
+this, would be an advertisement for his coach.
+
+When we got on the street where the Babylon Hotel was he whipped up his
+horses so that they went almost on a run, and the horner blew his horn
+until his eyes seemed bursting, and with a grand sweep and a clank and
+a jingle we pulled up at the front of the big hotel. Out marched the
+head porter in a blue uniform, and out ran two under-porters with red
+coats, and down jumped the horner and put up his ladder, and Jone and I
+got down, after giving the coachman half-a-crown, and receiving from
+the passengers a combined gaze of differentialism which had been wholly
+wanting before. The men in the red coats looked disappointed when they
+saw we had no baggage, but the great doors was flung open and we went
+straight up to the clerk's desk.
+
+When we was taken to look at rooms I remembered that there was always
+danger of Jone's tendency to thankful contentment getting the better of
+him, and I took the matter in hand myself. Two rooms good enough for
+anybody was shown us, but I was not going to take the first thing that
+was offered, no matter what it was. We settled the matter by getting a
+first-class room, with sofas and writing-desks and everything
+convenient, for only a little more than we was charged for the other
+rooms, and the next morning we went there.
+
+When we went back to our lodgings to pack up, and I looked in the glass
+and saw what a smeary, bedraggled state my hat and head was in, from
+being rained on, I said to Jone, "I don't see how those people ever
+let such a person as me have a room at their hotel."
+
+"It doesn't surprise me a bit," said Jone; "nobody but a very high and
+mighty person would have dared to go lording it about that hotel with
+her hat feathers and flowers all plastered down over her head. Most
+people can be uppish in good clothes, but to look like a scare-crow and
+be uppish can't be expected except from the truly lofty."
+
+"I hope you are right," I said, and I think he was.
+
+We hadn't been at the Babylon Hotel, where we are now, for more than
+two days when I said to Jone that this sort of thing wasn't going to
+do. He looked at me amazed. "What on earth is the matter now?" he said.
+"Here is a room fit for a royal duke, in a house with marble corridors
+and palace stairs, and gorgeous smoking-rooms, and a post-office, and a
+dining-room pretty nigh big enough for a hall of Congress, with waiters
+enough to make two military companies, and the bills of fare all in
+French. If there is anything more you want, Pomona--"
+
+"Stop there" said I; "the last thing you mention is the rub. It's the
+dining-room; it's in that resplendent hall that we've got to give
+ourselves a social boom or be content to fold our hands and fade away
+forever."
+
+"Which I don't want to do yet," said Jone, "so speak out your trouble."
+
+[Illustration: "Ask the waiter what the French words mean"]
+
+"The trouble this time is you," said I, "and your awful meekness. I
+never did see anybody anywhere as meek as you are in that dining-room.
+A half-drowned fly put into the sun to dry would be overbearing and
+supercilious compared to you. When you sit down at one of those tables
+you look as if you was afraid of hurting the chair, and when the waiter
+gives you the bill of fare you ask him what the French words mean, and
+then he looks down on you as if he was a superior Jove contemplating a
+hop-toad, and he tells you that this one means beef and the other
+means potatoes, and brings you the things that are easiest to get. And
+you look as if you was thankful from the bottom of your heart that he
+is good enough to give you anything at all. All the airs I put on are
+no good while you are so extra humble. I tell him I don't want this
+French thing--when I don't know what it is--and he must bring me some
+of the other--which I never heard of--and when it comes I eat it, no
+matter what it turns out to be, and try to look as if I was used to it,
+but generally had it better cooked. But, as I said before, it is of no
+use--your humbleness is too much for me. In a few days they will be
+bringing us cold victuals, and recommending that we go outside
+somewhere and eat them, as all the seats in the dining-room are wanted
+for other people."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "I must say I do feel a little overshadowed when I
+go into that dining-room and see those proud and haughty waiters, some
+of them with silver chains and keys around their necks, showing that
+they are lords of the wine-cellar, and all of them with an air of lofty
+scorn for the poor beings who have to sit still and be waited on; but
+I'll try what I can do. As far as I am able, I'll hold up my end of the
+social boom."
+
+You may think I break off my letters sudden, madam, like the
+instalments in a sensation weekly, which stops short in the most
+harrowing parts, so as to make certain the reader will buy the next
+number; but when I've written as much as I think two foreign stamps
+will carry--for more than fivepence seems extravagant for a letter--I
+generally stop.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Three_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+
+At dinner-time the day when I had the conversation with Jone mentioned
+in my last letter, we was sitting in the dining-room at a little table
+in a far corner, where we'd never been before. Not being considered of
+any importance they put us sometimes in one place and sometimes in
+another, instead of giving us regular seats, as I noticed most of the
+other people had, and I was looking around to see if anybody was ever
+coming to wait on us, when suddenly I heard an awful noise.
+
+I have read about the rumblings of earthquakes, and although I never
+heard any of them, I have felt a shock, and I can imagine the awfulness
+of the rumbling, and I had a feeling as if the building was about to
+sway and swing as they do in earthquakes. It wasn't all my imagining,
+for I saw the people at the other tables near us jump, and two waiters
+who was hurrying past stopped short as if they had been jerked up by a
+curb bit. I turned to look at Jone, but he was sitting up straight in
+his chair, as solemn and as steadfast as a gate-post, and I thought to
+myself that if he hadn't heard anything he must have been struck deaf,
+and I was just on the point of jumping up and shouting to him, "Fly,
+before the walls and roof come down upon us!" when that awful noise
+occurred again. My blood stood frigid in my veins, and as I started
+back I saw before me a waiter, his face ashy pale, and his knees
+bending beneath him. Some people near us were half getting up from
+their chairs, and I pushed back and looked at Jone again, who had not
+moved except that his mouth was open. Then I knew what it was that I
+thought was an earthquake--it was Jone giving an order to the waiter.
+
+[Illustration: Jone giving an order]
+
+I bit my lips and sat silent; the people around kept on looking at us,
+and the poor man who was receiving the shock stood trembling like a
+leaf. When the volcanic disturbance, so to speak, was over, the waiter
+bowed himself, as if he had been a heathen in a temple, and gasping,
+"Yes, sir, immediate," glided unevenly away. He hadn't waited on us
+before, and little thought, when he was going to stride proudly pass
+our table, what a double-loaded Vesuvius was sitting in Jone's chair. I
+leaned over the table and said to Jone that if he would stick to that
+we could rent a bishopric if we wanted to, and I was so proud I could
+have patted him on the back. Well, after that we had no more trouble
+about being waited on, for that waiter of ours went about as if he had
+his neck bared for the fatal stroke and Jone was holding the cimeter.
+
+The head waiter came to us before we was done dinner and asked if we
+had everything we wanted and if that table suited us, because if it did
+we could always have it. To which Jone distantly thundered that if he
+would see that it always had a clean tablecloth it would do well
+enough.
+
+[Illustration: The Carver]
+
+Even the man who stood at the big table in the middle of the room and
+carved the cold meats, with his hair parted in the middle, and who
+looked as if he were saying to himself, as with a bland dexterity and
+tastefulness he laid each slice upon its plate, "Now, then, the
+socialistic movement in Paris is arrested for the time being, and here
+again I put an end to the hopes of Russia getting to the sea through
+Afghanistan, and now I carefully spread contentment over the minds of
+all them riotous Welsh miners," even he turned around and bowed to us
+as we passed him, and once sent a waiter to ask if we'd like a little
+bit of potted beef, which was particularly good that day.
+
+Jone kept up his rumblings, though they sounded more distant and more
+deep under ground, and one day at luncheon an elderly woman, who was
+sitting alone at a table near us, turned to me and spoke. She was a
+very plain person, with her face all seamed and rough with exposure to
+the weather, like as if she had been captain to a pilot boat, and with
+a general appearance of being a cook with good recommendations, but at
+present out of a place. I might have wondered at such a person being at
+such a hotel, but remembering what I had been myself I couldn't say
+what mightn't happen to other people.
+
+"I'm glad to see," said she, "that you sent away that mutton, for if
+more persons would object to things that are not properly cooked we'd
+all be better served. I suppose that in your country most people are so
+rich that they can afford to have the best of everything and have it
+always. I fancy the great wealth of American citizens must make their
+housekeeping very different from ours."
+
+Now I must say I began to bristle at being spoken to like that. I'm as
+proud of being an American as anybody can be, but I don't like the home
+of the free thrown into my teeth every time I open my mouth. There's no
+knowing what money Jone and I have lost through giving orders to London
+cabmen in what is called our American accent. The minute we tell the
+driver of a hansom where we want to go, that place doubles its distance
+from the spot we start from. Now I think the great reason Jone's
+rumbling worked so well was that it had in it a sort of Great British
+chest-sound, as if his lungs was rusty. The waiter had heard that
+before and knew what it meant. If he had spoken out in the clear
+American fashion I expect his voice would have gone clear through the
+waiter without his knowing it, like the person in the story, whose neck
+was sliced through and who didn't know it until he sneezed and his head
+fell off.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said I, answering her with as much of a wearied feeling
+as I could put on, "our wealth is all very well in some ways, but it is
+dreadful wearing on us. However, we try to bear up under it and be
+content."
+
+"Well," said she, "contentment is a great blessing in every station,
+though I have never tried it in yours. Do you expect to make a long
+stay in London?"
+
+As she seemed like a civil and well-meaning woman, and was the first
+person who had spoken to us in a social way, I didn't mind talking to
+her, and I told her we was only stopping in London until we could find
+the kind of country house we wanted, and when she asked what kind that
+was, I described what we wanted and how we was still answering
+advertisements and going to see agents, who was always recommending
+exactly the kind of house we did not care for.
+
+"Vicarages are all very well," said she, "but it sometimes happens, and
+has happened to friends of mine, that when a vicar has let his house he
+makes up his mind not to waste his money in travelling, and he takes
+lodgings near by and keeps an eternal eye upon his tenants. I don't
+believe any independent American would fancy that."
+
+"No, indeed," said I; and then she went on to say that if we wanted a
+small country house for a month or two she knew of one which she
+believed would suit us, and it wasn't a vicarage either. When I asked
+her to tell me about it she brought her chair up to our table, together
+with her mug of beer, her bread and cheese, and she went into
+particulars about the house she knew of.
+
+"It is situated," said she, "in the west of England, in the most
+beautiful part of our country. It is near one of the quaintest little
+villages that the past ages have left us, and not far away are the
+beautiful waters of the Bristol Channel, with the mountains of Wales
+rising against the sky on the horizon, and all about are hills and
+valleys, and woods and beautiful moors and babbling streams, with all
+the loveliness of cultivated rurality merging into the wild beauties of
+unadorned nature." If these was not exactly her words, they express the
+ideas she roused in my mind. She said the place was far enough away
+from railways and the stream of travel, and among the simple peasantry,
+and that in the society of the resident gentry we would see English
+country life as it is, uncontaminated by the tourist or the commercial
+traveller.
+
+I can't remember all the things she said about this charming cottage in
+this most supremely beautiful spot, but I sat and listened, and the
+description held me spell-bound, as a snake fascinates a frog; with
+this difference, instead of being swallowed by the description, I
+swallowed it.
+
+When the old woman had given us the address of the person who had the
+letting of the cottage, and Jone and me had gone to our room, I said to
+him, before we had time to sit down:
+
+"What do you think?"
+
+"I think," said he, "that we ought to follow that old woman's advice
+and go and look at this house."
+
+"Go and look at it?" I exclaimed. "Not a bit of it. If we do that, we
+are bound to see something or hear something that will make us hesitate
+and consider, and if we do that, away goes our enthusiasm and our
+rapture. I say, telegraph this minute and say we'll take the house, and
+send a letter by the next mail with a postal order in it, to secure the
+place."
+
+Jone looked at me hard, and said he'd feel easier in his mind if he
+understood what I was talking about.
+
+"Never mind understanding," I said. "Go down and telegraph we'll take
+the house. There isn't a minute to lose!"
+
+"But," said Jone, "if we find out when we get there--"
+
+"Never mind that," said I. "If we find out when we get there it isn't
+all we thought it was, and we're bound to do that, we'll make the best
+of what doesn't suit us because it can't be helped; but if we go and
+look at it it's ten to one we won't take it."
+
+"How long are we to take it for?" said Jone.
+
+"A month anyway, and perhaps longer," I told him, giving him a push
+toward the door.
+
+"All right," said he, and he went and telegraphed. I believe if Jone
+was told he could go anywhere and stay for a month he'd choose that
+place from among all the most enchanting spots on the earth where he
+couldn't stay so long. As for me, the one thing that held me was the
+romanticness of the place. From what the old woman said I knew there
+couldn't be any mistake about that, and if I could find myself the
+mistress of a romantic cottage near an ancient village of the olden
+time I would put up with most everything except dirt, and as dirt and
+me seldom keeps company very long, even that can't frighten me.
+
+When I saw the old woman at luncheon the next day and told her what we
+had done she was fairly dumfounded.
+
+"Really! really!" she said, "you Americans are the speediest people I
+ever did see. Why, an English person would have taken a week to
+consider that place before taking it."
+
+"And lost it, ten to one," said I.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well," said she, "I suppose it's on account of your habits, and you
+can't help it, but it's a poor way of doing business."
+
+[Illustration: "You Americans are the speediest people"]
+
+Now I began to think from this that her conscience was beginning to
+trouble her for having given so fairy-like a picture of the house, and
+as I was afraid that she might think it her duty to bring up some
+disadvantages, I changed the conversation and got away as soon as I
+could. When we once get seated at our humble board in our rural cot I
+won't be afraid of any bugaboos, but I didn't want them brought up
+then. I can generally depend upon Jone, but sometimes he gets a little
+stubborn.
+
+We didn't see this old person any more, and when I asked the waiter
+about her the next day he said he was sure she had left the hotel, by
+which I suppose he must have meant he'd got his half-crown. Her fading
+away in this fashion made it all seem like a myth or a phantasm, but
+when, the next morning, we got a receipt for the money Jone sent, and a
+note saying the house was ready for our reception, I felt myself on
+solid ground again, and to-morrow we start, bag and baggage, for
+Chedcombe, which is the name of the village where the house is that we
+have taken. I'll write to you, madam, as soon as we get there, and I
+hope with all my heart and soul that when we see what's wrong with
+it--and there's bound to be something--that it may not be anything bad
+enough to make us give it up and go floating off in voidness, like a
+spider-web blown before a summer breeze, without knowing what it's
+going to run against and stick to, and, what is more, probably lose the
+money we paid in advance.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Four_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+Last winter Jone and I read all the books we could get about the rural
+parts of England, and we knew that the country must be very beautiful,
+but we had no proper idea of it until we came to Chedcombe. I am not
+going to write much about the scenery in this part of the country,
+because, perhaps, you have been here and seen it, and anyway my writing
+would not be half so good as what you could read in books, which don't
+amount to anything.
+
+All I'll say is that if you was to go over the whole of England, and
+collect a lot of smooth green hills, with sheep and deer wandering
+about on them; brooks, with great trees hanging over them, and vines
+and flowers fairly crowding themselves into the water; lanes and roads
+hedged in with hawthorn, wild roses, and tall purple foxgloves; little
+woods and copses; hills covered with heather; thatched cottages like
+the pictures in drawing-books, with roses against their walls, and thin
+blue smoke curling up from the chimneys; distant views of the sparkling
+sea; villages which are nearly covered up by greenness, except their
+steeples; rocky cliffs all green with vines, and flowers spreading and
+thriving with the fervor and earnestness you might expect to find in
+the tropics, but not here--and then, if you was to put all these points
+of scenery into one place not too big for your eye to sweep over and
+take it all in, you would have a country like that around Chedcombe.
+
+I am sure the old lady was right when she said it was the most
+beautiful part of England. The first day we was here we carried an
+umbrella as we walked through all this verdant loveliness, but
+yesterday morning we went to the village and bought a couple of thin
+mackintoshes, which will save us a lot of trouble opening and shutting
+umbrellas.
+
+When we got out at the Chedcombe station we found a man there with a
+little carriage he called a fly, who said he had been sent to take us
+to our house. There was also a van to carry our baggage. We drove
+entirely through the village, which looked to me as if a bit of the
+Middle Ages had been turned up by the plough, and on the other edge of
+it there was our house, and on the doorstep stood a lady, with a
+smiling eye and an umbrella, and who turned out to be our landlady.
+Back of her was two other females, one of them looking like a
+minister's wife, while the other one I knew to be a servant-maid, by
+her cap.
+
+[Illustration: "THAT WAS OUR HOUSE"]
+
+The lady, whose name was Mrs. Shutterfield, shook hands with us and
+seemed very glad to see us, and the minister's wife took our hand
+bags from us and told the men where to carry our trunks. Mrs.
+Shutterfield took us into a little parlor on one side of the hall, and
+then we three sat down, and I must say I was so busy looking at the
+queer, delightful room, with everything in it--chairs, tables, carpets,
+walls, pictures, and flower-vases--all belonging to a bygone epoch,
+though perfectly fresh, as if just made, that I could scarcely pay
+attention to what the lady said. But I listened enough to know that
+Mrs. Shutterfield told us that she had taken the liberty of engaging
+for us two most excellent servants, who had lived in the house before
+it had been let to lodgers, and who, she was quite sure, would suit us
+very well, though, of course, we were at liberty to do what we pleased
+about engaging them. The one that I took for the minister's wife was a
+combination of cook and housekeeper, by the name of Miss Pondar, and
+the other was a maid in general, named Hannah. When the lady mentioned
+two servants it took me a little aback, for we had not expected to have
+more than one, but when she mentioned the wages, and I found that both
+put together did not cost as much as a very poor cook would expect in
+America, and when I remembered we as now at work socially booming
+ourselves, and that it wouldn't do to let this lady think that we had
+not been accustomed to varieties of servants, I spoke up and said we
+would engage the two estimable women she recommended, and was much
+obliged to her for getting them.
+
+Then we went over that house, down stairs and up, and of all the
+lavender-smelling old-fashionedness anybody ever dreamed of, this
+little house has as much as it can hold. It is fitted up all through
+like one of your mother's bonnets, which she bought before she was
+married and never wore on account of a funeral in the family, but kept
+shut up in a box, which she only opens now and then to show to her
+descendants. In every room and on the stairs there was a general air of
+antiquated freshness, mingled with the odors of English breakfast tea
+and recollections of the story of Cranford, which, if Jone and me had
+been alone, would have made me dance from the garret of that house to
+the cellar. Every sentiment of romance that I had in my soul bubbled to
+the surface, and I felt as if I was one of my ancestors before she
+emigrated to the colonies. I could not say what I thought, but I
+pinched Jone's arm whenever I could get a chance, which relieved me a
+little; and when Miss Pondar had come to me with a little courtesy, and
+asked me what time I would like to have dinner, and told me what she
+had taken the liberty of ordering, so as to have everything ready by
+the time I came, and Mrs. Shutterfield had gone, after begging to know
+what more she could do for us, and we had gone to our own room, I let
+out my feelings in one wild scream of delirious gladness that would
+have been heard all the way to the railroad station if I had not
+covered my head with two pillows and the corner of a blanket.
+
+After we had dinner, which was as English as the British lion, and much
+more to our taste than anything we had had in London, Jone went out to
+smoke a pipe, and I had a talk with Miss Pondar about fish, meat, and
+groceries, and about housekeeping matters in general. Miss Pondar,
+whose general aspect of minister's wife began to wear off when I talked
+to her, mingles respectfulness and respectability in a manner I haven't
+been in the habit of seeing. Generally those two things run against
+each other, but they don't in her.
+
+When she asked what kind of wine we preferred I must say I was struck
+all in a heap, for wines to Jone and me is like a trackless wilderness
+without compass or binnacle light, and we seldom drink them except made
+hot, with nutmeg grated in, for colic; but as I wanted her to
+understand that if there was any luxuries we didn't order it was
+because we didn't approve of them, I told her that we was total
+abstainers, and at that she smiled very pleasant and said that was her
+persuasion also, and that she was glad not to be obliged to handle
+intoxicating drinks, though, of course, she always did it without
+objection when the family used them. When I told Jone this he looked a
+little blank, for foreign water generally doesn't agree with him. I
+mentioned this afterwards to Miss Pondar, and she said it was very
+common in total abstaining families, when water didn't agree with any
+one of them, especially if it happened to be the gentleman, to take a
+little good Scotch whiskey with it; but when I told this to Jone he
+said he would try to bear up under the shackles of abstinence.
+
+This morning, when I was talking with Miss Pondar about fish, and
+trying to show her that I knew something about the names of English
+fishes, I said that we was very fond of whitebait. At this she looked
+astonished for the first time.
+
+"Whitebait?" said she. "We always looked upon that as belonging
+entirely to the nobility and gentry." At this my back began to bristle,
+but I didn't let her know it, and I said, in a tone of emphatic
+mildness, that we would have whitebait twice a week, on Tuesday and
+Friday. At this Miss Pondar gave a little courtesy and thanked me very
+much, and said she would attend to it.
+
+When Jone and me came back after taking a long walk that morning I saw
+a pair of Church of England prayer-books, looking as if they had just
+been neatly dusted, lying on the parlor table, where they hadn't been
+before, for I had carefully looked over every book. I think that when
+it was borne in upon Miss Pondar's soul that we was accustomed to
+having whitebait as a regular thing she made up her mind we was all
+right, and that nothing but the Established Church would do for us.
+Before, she might have thought we was Wesleyans.
+
+Our maid Hannah is very nice to look at, and does her work as well as
+anybody could do it, and, like most other English servants, she's in a
+state of never-ending thankfulness, but as I can never understand a
+word she says except "Thank you very much," I asked Jone if he didn't
+think it would be a good thing for me to try to teach her a little
+English.
+
+"Now then," said he, "that's the opening of a big subject. Wait until I
+fill my pipe and we'll discourse upon it." It was just after luncheon,
+and we was sitting in the summer-house at the end of the garden,
+looking out over the roses and pinks and all sorts of old-timey flowers
+growing as thick as clover heads, with an air as if it wasn't the least
+trouble in the world to them to flourish and blossom. Beyond the
+flowers was a little brook with the ducks swimming in it, and beyond
+that was a field, and on the other side of that field was a park
+belonging to the lord of the manor, and scattered about the side of a
+green hill in the park was a herd of his lordship's deer. Most of them
+was so light-colored that I fancied I could almost see through them, as
+if they was the little transparent bugs that crawl about on leaves.
+That isn't a romantic idea to have about deers, but I can't get rid of
+the notion whenever I see those little creatures walking about on the
+hills.
+
+At that time it was hardly raining at all, just a little mist, with the
+sun coming into the summer-house every now and then, making us feel
+very comfortable and contented.
+
+"Now," said Jone, when he had got his pipe well started, "what I want
+to talk about is the amount of reformation we expect to do while we're
+sojourning in the kingdom of Great Britain."
+
+"Reformation!" said I; "we didn't come here to reform anything."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "if we're going to busy our minds with these
+people's shortcomings and long-goings, and don't try to reform them,
+we're just worrying ourselves and doing them no good, and I don't think
+it will pay. Now, for instance, there's that rosy-cheeked Hannah. She's
+satisfied with her way of speaking English, and Miss Pondar understands
+it and is satisfied with it, and all the people around here are
+satisfied with it. As for us, we know, when she comes and stands in the
+doorway and dimples up her cheeks, and then makes those sounds that are
+more like drops of molasses falling on a gong than anything else I know
+of, we know that she is telling us in her own way that the next meal,
+whatever it is, is ready, and we go to it."
+
+"Yes," said I, "and as I do most of my talking with Miss Pondar, and as
+we shall be here for such a short time anyway, it may be as well--"
+
+"What I say about Hannah," said Jone, interrupting me as soon as I
+began to speak about a short stay, "I have to say about everything else
+in England that doesn't suit us. As long as Hannah doesn't try to make
+us speak in her fashion I say let her alone. Of course, we shall find a
+lot of things over here that we shall not approve of--we knew that
+before we came--and when we find we can't stand their ways and manners
+any longer we can pack up and go home, but so far as I'm concerned I'm
+getting along very comfortable so far."
+
+"Oh, so am I," I said to him, "and as to interfering with other
+people's fashions, I don't want to do it. If I was to meet the most
+paganish of heathens entering his temple with suitable humbleness I
+wouldn't hurt his feelings on the subject of his religion, unless I was
+a missionary and went about it systematic; but if that heathen turned
+on me and jeered at me for attending our church at home, and told me I
+ought to go down on my marrow-bones before his brazen idols, I'd whang
+him over the head with a frying-pan or anything else that came handy.
+That's the sort of thing I can't stand. As long as the people here
+don't snort and sniff at my ways I won't snort and sniff at theirs."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "that is a good rule, but I don't know that it's
+going to work altogether. You see, there are a good many people in this
+country and only two of us, and it will be a lot harder for them to
+keep from sniffing and snorting than for us to do it. So it's my
+opinion that if we expect to get along in a good-humored and friendly
+way, which is the only decent way of living, we've got to hold up our
+end of the business a little higher than we expect other people to hold
+up theirs."
+
+I couldn't agree altogether with Jone about our trying to do better
+than other people, but I said that as the British had been kind enough
+to make their country free to us, we wouldn't look a gift horse in the
+mouth unless it kicked. To which Jone said I sometimes got my figures
+of speech hind part foremost, but he knew what I meant.
+
+We've lived in our cottage two weeks, and every morning when I get up
+and open our windows, which has little panes set in strips of lead, and
+hinges on one side so that it works like a door, and look out over the
+brook and the meadows and the thatched roofs, and see the peasant men
+with their short jackets and woollen caps, and the lower part of their
+trousers tied round with twine, if they don't happen to have leather
+leggings, trudging to their work, my soul is filled with welling
+emotions as I think that if Queen Elizabeth ever travelled along this
+way she must have seen these great old trees and, perhaps, some of
+these very houses; and as to the people, they must have been pretty
+much the same, though differing a little in clothes, I dare say; but,
+judging from Hannah, perhaps not very much in the kind of English they
+spoke.
+
+I declare that when Jone and me walk about through the village, and
+over the fields, for there is a right of way--meaning a little
+path--through most all of them, and when we go into the old church,
+with its yew-trees, and its gravestones, and its marble effigies of two
+of the old manor lords, both stretched flat on their backs, as large as
+life, the gentleman with the end of his nose knocked off and with his
+feet crossed to show he was a crusader, and the lady with her hands
+clasped in front of her, as if she expected the generations who came to
+gaze on her tomb to guess what she had inside of them, I feel like a
+character in a novel.
+
+I have kept a great many of my joyful sentiments to myself, because
+Jone is too well contented as it is, and there is a great deal yet to
+be seen in England. Sometimes we hire a dogcart and a black horse named
+Punch, from the inn in the village, and we take long drives over roads
+that are almost as smooth as bowling alleys. The country is very hilly,
+and every time we get to the top of a hill we can see, spread about us
+for miles and miles, the beautiful hills and vales, and lordly
+residences and cottages, and steeple tops, looking as though they had
+been stuck down here and there, to show where villages had been
+planted.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Five_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+This morning, when Jone was out taking a walk and I was talking to Miss
+Pondar, and getting her to teach me how to make Devonshire clotted
+cream, which we have for every meal, putting it on everything it will
+go on, into everything it will go into, and eating it by itself when
+there is nothing it will go on or into; and trying to find out why it
+is that whitings are always brought on the table with their tails stuck
+through their throats, as if they had committed suicide by cutting
+their jugular veins in this fashion, I saw, coming along the road to
+our cottage, a pretty little dogcart with two ladies in it. The horse
+they drove was a pony, and the prettiest creature I ever saw, being
+formed like a full-sized horse, only very small, and with as much fire
+and spirit and gracefulness as could be got into an animal sixteen
+hands high. I heard afterward that he came from Exmoor, which is about
+twelve miles from here, and produces ponies and deers of similar size
+and swiftness. They stopped at the door, and one of them got out and
+came in. Miss Pondar told me she wished to see me, and that she was
+Mrs. Locky, of the "Bordley Arms" in the village.
+
+"The innkeeper's wife?" said I; to which Miss Pondar said it was, and I
+went into the parlor. Mrs. Locky was a handsome-looking lady, and
+wearing as stylish clothes as if she was a duchess, and extremely
+polite and respectful.
+
+She said she would have asked Mrs. Shutterfield to come with her and
+introduce her, but that lady was away from home, and so she had come by
+herself to ask me a very great favor.
+
+When I begged her to sit down and name it she went on to say there had
+come that morning to the inn a very large party in a coach-and-four,
+that was making a trip through the country, and as they didn't travel
+on Sunday they wanted to stay at the "Bordley Arms" until Monday
+morning.
+
+"Now," said she, "that puts me to a dreadful lot of trouble, because I
+haven't room to accommodate them all, and even if I could get rooms for
+them somewhere else they don't want to be separated. But there is one
+of the best rooms at the inn which is occupied by an elderly gentleman,
+and if I could get that room I could put two double beds in it and so
+accommodate the whole party. Now, knowing that you had a pleasant
+chamber here that you don't use, I thought I would make bold to come
+and ask you if you would lodge Mr. Poplington until Monday?"
+
+"What sort of a person is this Mr. Poplington, and is he willing to
+come here?"
+
+"Oh, I haven't asked him yet," said she, "but he is so extremely
+good-natured that I know he will be glad to come here. He has often
+asked me who lived in this extremely picturesque cottage."
+
+"You must have an answer now?" said I.
+
+"Oh, yes," said she, "for if you cannot do me this favor I must go
+somewhere else, and where to go I don't know."
+
+Now I had begun to think that the one thing we wanted in this little
+home of ours was company, and that it was a great pity to have that
+nice bedroom on the second floor entirely wasted, with nobody ever in
+it. So, as far as I was concerned, I would be very glad to have some
+pleasant person in the house, at least for a day or two, and I didn't
+believe Jone would object. At any rate it would put a stop, at least
+for a little while, to his eternally saying how Corinne, our daughter,
+would enjoy that room, and how nice it would be if we was to take this
+house for the rest of the season and send for her. Now, Corinne's as
+happy as she can be at her grand-mother's farm, and her school will
+begin before we're ready to come home, and, what is more, we didn't
+come here to spend all our time in one place.
+
+[Illustration: "The young lady who keeps the bar"]
+
+While I was thinking of these things I was looking out of the window at
+the lady in the dogcart who was holding the reins. She was as pretty as
+a picture, and wore a great straw hat with lovely flowers in it. As I
+had to give an answer without waiting for Jone to come home, and I
+didn't expect him until luncheon time, I concluded to be neighborly,
+and said we would take the gentleman to oblige her. Even if the
+arrangement didn't suit him or us, it wouldn't matter much for that
+little time. At which Mrs. Locky was very grateful indeed, and said she
+would have Mr. Poplington's luggage sent around that afternoon, and
+that he would come later.
+
+As she got up to go I said to her, "Is that young lady out there one of
+the party who came with the coach and four?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Mrs. Locky, "she lives with me. She is the young lady
+who keeps the bar."
+
+I expect I opened my mouth and eyes pretty wide, for I was never so
+astonished. A young lady like that keeping the bar! But I didn't want
+Mrs. Locky to know how much I was surprised, and so I said nothing
+about it.
+
+When they had gone and I had stood looking after them for about a
+minute, I remembered I hadn't asked whether Mr. Poplington would want
+to take his meals here, or whether he would go to the inn for them. To
+be sure, she only asked me to lodge him, but as the inn is more than
+half a mile from here, he may want to be boarded. But this will have to
+be found out when he comes, and when Jone comes home it will have to be
+found out what he thinks about my taking a lodger while he's out taking
+a walk.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Six_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+When Jone came home and I told him a gentleman was coming to live with
+us, he thought at first I was joking; and when he found out that I
+meant what I said he looked very blue, and stood with his hands in his
+pockets and his eyes on the ground, considering.
+
+"He's not going to take his meals here, is he?"
+
+"I don't think he expects that," I said, "for Mrs. Locky only spoke of
+lodging."
+
+"Oh, well," said Jone, looking as if his clouds was clearing off a
+little, "I don't suppose it will matter to us if that room is occupied
+over Sunday, but I think the next time I go out for a stroll I'll take
+you with me."
+
+I didn't go out that afternoon, and sat on pins and needles until
+half-past five o'clock. Jone wanted me to walk with him, but I wouldn't
+do it, because I didn't want our lodger to come here and be received by
+Miss Pondar. At half-past five there came a cart with the gentleman's
+luggage, as they call it here, and I was glad Jone wasn't at home.
+There was an enormous leather portmanteau which looked as if it had
+been dragged by a boy too short to lift it from the ground, half over
+the world; a hat-box, also of leather, but not so draggy looking; a
+bundle of canes and umbrellas, a leather dressing-case, and a flat,
+round bathing-tub. I had the things taken up to the room as quickly as
+I could, for if Jone had seen them he'd think the gentleman was going
+to bring his family with him.
+
+It was nine o'clock and still broad daylight when Mr. Poplington
+himself came, carrying a fishing-rod put up in parts in a canvas bag, a
+fish-basket, and a small valise. He wore leather leggings and was about
+sixty years old, but a wonderful good walker. I thought, when I saw him
+coming, that he had no rheumatism whatever, but I found out afterward
+that he had a little in one of his arms. He had white hair and white
+side-whiskers and a fine red face, which made me think of a strawberry
+partly covered with Devonshire clotted cream. Jone and I was sitting in
+the summer-house, he smoking his pipe, and we both went to meet the
+gentleman. He had a bluff way of speaking, and said he was much obliged
+to us for taking him in; and after saying that it was a warm evening, a
+thing which I hadn't noticed, he asked to be shown to his room. I sent
+Hannah with him, and then Jone and I went back to the summer-house.
+
+I didn't know exactly why, but I wasn't in as good spirits as I had
+been, and when Jone spoke he didn't make me feel any better.
+
+[Illustration: "I see signs of weakening in the social boom"]
+
+"It seems to me," said he, "that I see signs of weakening in the social
+boom. That man considers us exactly as we considered our lodging-house
+keeper in London. Now, it doesn't strike me that that sample person you
+was talking about, who is a cross between a rich farmer and a poor
+gentleman, would go into the lodging-house business." I couldn't help
+agreeing with Jone, and I didn't like it a bit. The gentleman hadn't
+said anything or done anything that was out of the way, but there was a
+benignant loftiness about him which grated on the inmost fibres of my
+soul.
+
+"I'll tell you what we'll do," said I, turning sharp on Jone, "we won't
+charge him a cent. That'll take him down, and show him what we are.
+We'll give him the room as a favor to Mrs. Locky, considering her in
+the light of a neighbor and one who sent us a cucumber."
+
+"All right," said Jone, "I like that way of arranging the business. Up
+goes the social boom again!"
+
+Just as we was going up to bed Miss Pondar came to me and said that the
+gentleman had called down to her and asked if he could have a new-laid
+egg for his breakfast, and she asked if she should send Hannah early in
+the morning to see if she could get a perfectly fresh egg from one of
+the cottages. "I thought, ma'am, that perhaps you might object to
+buying things on Sunday."
+
+"I do," I said. "Does that Mr. Poplington expect to have his breakfast
+here? I only took him to lodge."
+
+"Oh, ma'am," said Miss Pondar, "they always takes their breakfasts
+where they has their rooms. Dinner and luncheon is different, and he
+may expect to go to the inn for them."
+
+"Indeed!" said I. "I think he may, and if he breakfasts here he can
+take what we've got. If the eggs are not fresh enough for him he can
+try to get along with some bacon. He can't expect that to be fresh."
+
+Knowing that English people take their breakfast late, Jone and I got
+up early, so as to get through before our lodger came down. But, bless
+me, when we went to the front door to see what sort of a day it was we
+saw him coming in from a walk. "Fine morning," said he, and in fact
+there was only a little drizzle of rain, which might stop when the sun
+got higher; and he stood near us and began to talk about the trout in
+the stream, which, to my utter amazement, he called a river.
+
+"Do you take your license by the day or week?" he said to Jone.
+
+"License!" said Jone, "I don't fish."
+
+"Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Oh, I see, you are a cycler."
+
+"No," said Jone, "I'm not that, either, I'm a pervader."
+
+"Really!" said the old gentleman; "what do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean that I pervade the scenery, sometimes on foot and sometimes in
+a trap. That's my style of rural pleasuring."
+
+"But you do fish at home," I said to Jone, not wishing the English
+gentleman to think my husband was a city man, who didn't know anything
+about sport.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Jone, "I used to fish for perch and sunfish."
+
+"Sunfish?" said Mr. Poplington. "I don't know that fish at all. What
+sort of a fly do you use?"
+
+"I don't fish with any flies at all," said Jone; "I bait my hook with
+worms."
+
+Mr. Poplington's face looked as if he had poured liquid shoe-blacking
+on his meat, thinking it was Worcestershire sauce. "Fancy! Worms! I'd
+never take a rod in my hands if I had to use worms. Never used a worm
+in my life. There's no sort of science in worm fishing."
+
+"There's double sport," said Jone, "for first you've got to catch your
+worm. Then again, I hate shams; if you have to catch fish there's no
+use cheating them into the bargain."
+
+"Cheat!" cried Mr. Poplington. "If I had to catch a whale I'd fish for
+him with a fly. But you Americans are strange people. Worms, indeed!"
+
+"We don't all use worms," said Jone; "there's lots of fly fishers in
+America, and they use all sorts of flies. If we are to believe all the
+Californians tell us some of the artificial flies out there must be as
+big as crows."
+
+"Really?" said Mr. Poplington, looking hard at Jone, with a little
+twinkling in his eyes. "And when gentlemen fish who don't like to cheat
+the fishes, what size of worms do they use?"
+
+"Well," said Jone, "in the far West I've heard that the common black
+snake is the favorite bait. He's six or seven feet long, and fishermen
+that use him don't have to have any line. He's bait and line all in
+one."
+
+Mr. Poplington laughed. "I see you are fond of a joke," said he, "and
+so am I, but I'm also fond of my breakfast."
+
+"I'm with you there," said Jone, and we all went in.
+
+Mr. Poplington was very pleasant and chatty, and of course asked a
+great many questions about America. Nearly all English people I've met
+want to talk about our country, and it seems to me that what they do
+know about it isn't any better, considered as useful information, than
+what they don't know. But Mr. Poplington has never been to America, and
+so he knows more about us than those Englishmen who come over to write
+books, and only have time to run around the outside of things, and get
+themselves tripped up on our ragged edges.
+
+He said he had met a good many Americans, and liked them, but he
+couldn't see for the life of him why they do some things English people
+don't do, and don't do things English people do do. For instance, he
+wondered why we don't drink tea for breakfast. Miss Pondar had made it
+for him, knowing he'd want it, and he wonders why Americans drink
+coffee when such good tea as that was comes in their reach.
+
+Now, if I had considered Mr. Poplington as a lodger it might have
+nettled me to have him tell me I didn't know what was good, but
+remembering that we was giving him hospitality, and not board, and
+didn't intend to charge him a cent, but was just taking care of him out
+of neighborly kindness, I was rather glad to have him find a little
+fault, because that would make me feel as if I was soaring still higher
+above him the next morning, when I should tell him there was nothing to
+pay.
+
+So I took it all good-natured, and said to him, "Well, Americans like
+to have the very best things that can be got out of every country.
+We're like bees flying over the whole world, looking into every blossom
+to see what sweetness there is to be got out of it. From the lily of
+France we sip their coffee, from the national flower of India, whatever
+it is, we take their chutney sauce, and as to those big apple tarts,
+baked in a deep dish, with a cup in the middle to hold up the upper
+crust, and so full of apples, and so delicious with Devonshire clotted
+cream on them that if there was any one place in the world they could
+be had I believe my husband would want to go and live there forever,
+_they_ are what we extract from the rose of England."
+
+Mr. Poplington laughed like anything at this, but said there was a
+great many other things that he could show us and tell us about which
+would be very well worth while sipping from the rose of England.
+
+After breakfast he went to church with us, and as we was coming
+home--for he didn't seem to have the least idea of going to the inn for
+his luncheon--he asked if we didn't find the services very different
+from those in America.
+
+"Yes," said I, "they are about as different from Quaker services as a
+squirting fountain is from a corked bottle. The Methodists and
+Unitarians and Reformed Dutch and Campbellites and Hard-shell Baptists
+have different services too, but in the Episcopal churches things are
+all pretty much the same as they did this morning. You forget, sir,
+that in our country there are religions to suit all sizes of minds. We
+haven't any national religion any more than we have a national flower."
+
+"But you ought to have," said he; "you ought to have an established
+church."
+
+"You may be sure we'll have it," said Jone, "as soon as we agree as to
+which one it ought to be."
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Seven_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+Last Sunday afternoon Mr. Poplington asked us if we would not like to
+walk over to a ruined abbey about four miles away, which he said was
+very interesting. It seemed to me that four miles there and four miles
+back was a pretty long walk, but I wanted to see the abbey, and I
+wasn't going to let him think that a young American woman couldn't walk
+as far as an elderly English gentleman; so I agreed and so did Jone.
+The abbey is a wonderful place, and I never thought of being tired
+while wandering in the rooms and in the garden, where the old monks
+used to live and preach, and give food to the poor, and keep house
+without women--which was pious enough, but must have been untidy. But
+the thing that surprised me the most was what Mr. Poplington told us
+about the age of the place. It was not built all at once, and it's part
+ancient and part modern, and you needn't wonder, madam, that I was
+astonished when he said that the part called modern was finished just
+three years before America was discovered. When I heard that I seemed
+to shrivel up as if my country was a new-born babe alongside of a
+bearded patriarch; but I didn't stay shrivelled long, for it can't be
+denied that a new-born babe has a good deal more to look forward to
+than a patriarch has.
+
+[Illustration: AT THE ABBEY]
+
+It is amazing how many things in this part of the country we'd never
+have thought of if it hadn't been for Mr. Poplington. At dinner he told
+us about Exmoor and the Lorna Doone country, and the wild deer hunting
+that can be had nowhere else in England, and lots of other things that
+made me feel we must be up and doing if we wanted to see all we ought
+to see before we left Chedcombe. When I went upstairs I said to Jone
+that Mr. Poplington was a very different man from what I thought he
+was.
+
+"He's just as nice as he can be, and I'm going to charge him for his
+room and his meals and for everything he's had."
+
+Jone laughed, and asked me if that was the way I showed people I liked
+them.
+
+"We intended to humble him by not charging him anything," I said, "and
+make him feel he had been depending on our bounty; but now I wouldn't
+hurt his feelings for the world, and I'll make out his bill in the
+morning myself. Women always do that sort of thing in England."
+
+As you asked me, madam, to tell you everything that happened on our
+travels, I'll go on about Mr. Poplington. After breakfast on Monday
+morning he went over to the inn, and said he would come back and pack
+up his things; but when he did come back he told us that those
+coach-and-four people had determined not to leave Chedcombe that day,
+but was going to stay and look at the sights in the neighborhood, and
+that they would want the room for that night. He said this had made him
+very angry, because they had no right to change their minds that way
+after having made definite arrangements in which other people besides
+themselves was concerned; and he had said so very plainly to the
+gentleman who seemed to be at the head of the party.
+
+"I hope it will be no inconvenience to you, madam," he said, "to keep
+me another night."
+
+"Oh, dear, no," said I; "and my husband was saying this morning that he
+wished you was going to stay with us the rest of our time here."
+
+"Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Then I'll do it. I'll go to the
+inn this minute and have the rest of my luggage brought over here. If
+this is any punishment to Mrs. Locky she deserves it, for she shouldn't
+have told those people they could stay longer without consulting me."
+
+In less than an hour there came a van to our cottage with the rest of
+his luggage. There must have been over a dozen boxes and packages,
+besides things tied up and strapped; and as I saw them being carried up
+one at a time, I said to Miss Pondar that in our country we'd have two
+or three big trunks, which we could take about without any trouble.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said she; but I could see by her face that she didn't
+believe luggage would be luggage unless you could lug it, but was too
+respectful to say so.
+
+When Mr. Poplington got settled down in our spare room he blossomed out
+like a full-blown friend of the family, and accordingly began to give
+us advice. He said we should go as soon as we could and see Exmoor and
+all that region of country, and that if we didn't mind he'd like to go
+with us; to which we answered, of course, we should like that very
+much, and asked him what he thought would be the best way to go. So we
+had ever so much talk about that, and although we all agreed it would
+be nicer not to take a public coach, but travel private, we didn't find
+it easy to decide as to the manner of travel. We all agreed that a
+carriage and horses would be too expensive, and Jone was rather in
+favor of a dogcart for us if Mr. Poplington would like to go on
+horseback; but the old gentleman said it would be too much riding for
+him, and if we took a dogcart he'd have to take another one. But this
+wouldn't be a very sociable way of travelling, and none of us liked it.
+
+"Now," exclaimed Mr. Poplington, striking his hand on the table, "I'll
+tell you exactly how we ought to go through that country--we ought to
+go on cycles."
+
+"Bicycles?" said I.
+
+"Tricycles, if you like," he answered, "but that's the way to do it.
+It'll be cheap, and we can go as we like and stop when we like. We'll
+be as free and independent as the Stars and Stripes, and more so, for
+they can't always flap when they like and stop flapping when they
+choose. Have you ever tried it, madam?"
+
+I replied that I had, a little, because my daughter had a tricycle, and
+I had ridden on it for a short distance and after sundown, but as for
+regular travel in the daytime I couldn't think of it.
+
+At this Jone nearly took my breath away by saying that he thought that
+the bicycle idea was a capital one, and that for his part he'd like it
+better than any other way of travelling through a pretty country. He
+also said he believed I could work a tricycle just as well as not, and
+that if I got used to it I would think it fine.
+
+I stood out against those two men for about a half an hour, and then I
+began to give in a little, and think that it might be nice to roll
+along on my own little wheels over their beautiful smooth roads, and
+stop and smell the hedges and pick flowers whenever I felt like it; and
+so it ended in my agreeing to do the Exmoor country on a tricycle while
+Mr. Poplington and Jone went on bicycles. As to getting the machines,
+Mr. Poplington said he would attend to that. There was people in London
+who hired them to excursionists, and all he had to do was to send an
+order and they would be on hand in a day or two; and so that matter
+was settled and he wrote to London. I thought Mr. Poplington was a
+little old for that sort of exercise, but I found he had been used to
+doing a great deal of cycling in the part of the country where he
+lives; and besides, he isn't as old as I thought he was, being not much
+over fifty. The kind of air that keeps a country always green is
+wonderful in bringing out early red and white in a person.
+
+"Everything happens wonderfully well, madam," said he, coming in after
+he had been to post his letter in a red iron box let into the side of
+the Wesleyan chapel, "doesn't it? Now here we're not able to start on
+our journey for two or three days, and I have just been told that the
+great hay-making in the big meadow to the south of the village is to
+begin to-morrow. They make the hay there only every other year, and
+they have a grand time of it. We must be there, and you shall see some
+of our English country customs."
+
+We said we'd be sure to be in for that sort of thing.
+
+I wish, madam, you could have seen that great hayfield. It belongs to
+the lord of the manor, and must have twenty or thirty acres in it.
+They've been three or four days cutting the grass on it with a machine,
+and now there's been nearly two days with hardly any rain, only now and
+then some drizzling, and a good, strong wind, which they think here is
+better for the hay-making than sunshine, though they don't object to a
+little sun. All the people in the village who had legs good enough to
+carry them to that field went to help make hay. It was a regular
+holiday, and as hay is clean, nearly everybody was dressed in good
+clothes. Early in the morning some twenty regular farm laborers began
+raking the hay at one end of the field, stretching themselves nearly
+the whole way across it, and as the day went on more and more people
+came, men and women, high and low. All the young women and some of the
+older ones had rakes, and the way they worked them was amazing to see,
+but they turned over the hay enough to dry it. As to schoolgirls and
+boys, there was no end of them in the afternoon, for school let out
+early. Some of them worked, but most of them played and cut up
+monkey-shines on the hay. Even the little babies was brought on the
+field, and nice, soft beds made for them under the trees at one side.
+
+When Jone saw the real farm-work going on, with a chance for everybody
+to turn in to help, his farmer blood boiled within him, as if he was a
+war-horse and sniffed the smoke of battle, and he got himself a rake
+and went to work like a good-fellow. I never saw so many men at work in
+a hayfield at home, but when I looked at Jone raking I could see why it
+was it didn't take so many men to get in our hay. As for me, I raked a
+little, but looked about a great deal more.
+
+Near the middle of the field was two women working together, raking as
+steadily as if they had been brought up to it. One of these was young,
+and even handsomer than Miss Dick, which was the name of the bar lady.
+To look at her made me think of what I had read of Queen Marie
+Antoinette and her court ladies playing the part of milkmaids. Her
+straw hat was trimmed with delicate flowers, and her white muslin dress
+and pale blue ribbons made her the prettiest picture I ever saw
+out-of-doors. I could not help asking Mrs. Locky who she was, and she
+told me that she was the chambermaid at the inn, and the other was the
+cook. When I heard this I didn't make any answer, but just walked off a
+little way and began raking and thinking. I have often wondered why it
+is that English servants are so different from those we have, or, to
+put it in a strictly confidential way between you and me, madam, why
+the chambermaid at the "Bordley Arms," as she is, is so different from
+me, as I used to be when I first lived with you. Now that young
+chambermaid with the pretty hat is, as far as appearances go, as good a
+woman as I am, and if Jone was a bachelor and intended to marry her I
+would think it was as good a match as if he married me. But the
+difference between us two is that when I got to be the kind of woman I
+am I wasn't willing to be a servant, and if I had always been the kind
+of young woman that chambermaid is I never would have been a servant.
+
+I've kept a sharp eye on the young women in domestic service over here,
+having a fellow-feeling for them, as you can well understand, madam,
+and since I have been in the country I've watched the poor folks and
+seen how they live, and it's just as plain to me as can be that the
+young women who are maids and waitresses over here are the kind who
+would have tried to be shop-girls and dressmakers and even
+school-teachers in America, and many of the servants we have would be
+working in the fields if they lived over here. The fact is, the English
+people don't go to other countries to get their servants. Their way is
+like a factory consuming its own smoke. The surplus young women, and
+there must always be a lot of them, are used up in domestic service.
+
+Now, if an American poor girl is good enough to be a first-class
+servant, she wants to be something else. Sooner than go out to service
+she will work twice as hard in a shop, or even go into a factory.
+
+I have talked a good deal about this to Jone, and he says I'm getting
+to be a philosopher; but I don't think it takes much philosophizing to
+find out how this case stands. If house service could be looked upon in
+the proper way, it wouldn't take long for American girls who have to
+work for their living to find out that it's a lot better to live with
+nice people, and cook and wait on the table, and do all those things
+which come natural to women the world over, than to stand all day
+behind a counter under the thumb of a floor-walker, or grind their
+lives out like slaves among a lot of steam-engines and machinery. The
+only reason the English have better house servants than we have is that
+here any girl who has to work is willing to be a house servant, and
+very good house servants they are, too.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Eight_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+I will now finish telling you about the great hay-making day. Toward
+the end of the afternoon a lot of boys and girls began playing a game
+which seemed to belong to the hayfield. Each one of the bigger boys
+would twist up a rope of hay and run after a girl, and when he had
+thrown it over her neck he could kiss her. Girls are girls the whole
+world over, and it was funny to see how some of them would run like mad
+to get away from the boys, and how dreadfully troubled they would be
+when they was caught, and yet, after they had been kissed and the boys
+had left them, they would walk innocently back to the players as if
+they never dreamed that anybody would think of disturbing them.
+
+At five o'clock everybody--farm hands, ladies, gentlemen,
+school-children, and all--took tea together. Some were seated at long
+tables made of planks, with benches at the sides, and others scattered
+all over the grass. Miss Pondar and our maid Hannah helped to serve the
+tea and sandwiches, and I was glad to see that Hannah wore her pointed
+white cap and her black dress, for I had on my woollen travelling suit,
+and I didn't want too much cart-before-the-horseness in my domestic
+establishment.
+
+After tea the work and the games began again, and as I think it is
+always better for people to do what they can do best, I turned in and
+helped clear away the tea-things, and after that I sat down by a female
+person in black silk--and I am sure I didn't know whether she was the
+lady of the manor or somebody else until I heard some h-words come out
+in her talk, and then I knew she was the latter--and she told me ever
+so much about the people in the village, and why the rector wasn't
+there, on account of a dispute about the altar-cloths, and she was just
+beginning to tell me about the doctor's wife sending her daughters to a
+school that was much too high-priced for his practice, when I happened
+to look across the field, and there, with the bar lady at the inn, with
+her hat trimmed with pink, and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, with
+her hat trimmed with blue, was Jone, and they was all three raking
+together, as comfortable and confiding as if they had been singing
+hymns out of the same book.
+
+Now, I thought I had been sitting still long enough, and so I snipped
+off the rest of the doctor story and got myself across that field with
+pretty long steps. When I reached the happy three I didn't say
+anything, but went round in front of them and stood there, throwing a
+sarcastic and disdainful glance upon their farming. Jone stopped
+working, and wiped his face with his handkerchief, as if he was hot and
+tired, but hadn't thought of it until just then, and the two girls they
+stopped too.
+
+"He's teaching us to rake, ma'am," said Miss Dick, revolving her
+green-gage eyes in my direction, "and really, ma'am, it's wonderful to
+see how good he does it. You Americans are so awful clever!"
+
+As for the one with the blue trimmings, she said nothing, but stood
+with her hands folded on her rake, and her chiselled features steeped
+in a meek resignedness, though much too high colored, as though it had
+just been borne in upon her that this world is all a fleeting show, for
+man's illusion given, and such felicity as culling fragrant hay by the
+side of that manly form must e'en be foregone by her, that I could
+have taken a handle of a rake and given her such a punch among her blue
+ribbons that her classic features would have frantically twined
+themselves around one resounding howl--but I didn't. I simply remarked
+to Jone, with a statuesque rigidity, that it was six o'clock and I was
+going home; to which he said he was going too, and we went.
+
+[Illustration: "THERE, WITH THE BAR LADY AND THE MARIE ANTOINETTE
+CHAMBERMAID, WAS JONE"]
+
+"I thought," said I, as we proceeded with rapid steps across the field,
+"that you didn't come to England for the purpose of teaching the
+inhabitants."
+
+Jone laughed a little. "That young lady put it rather strong," he said.
+"She and her friend was merely trying to rake as I did. I think they
+got on very well."
+
+"Indeed!" said I--I expect with flashing eye--"but the next time you go
+into the disciple business I recommend that you take boys who really
+need to know something about farming, and not fine-as-fiddle young
+women that you might as well be ballet-dancing with as raking with, for
+all the hankering after knowledge they have."
+
+"Oh!" said Jone, and that was all he did say, which was very wise in
+him, for, considering my state of feelings, his case was like a
+fish-hook in your finger--the more you pull and worry at it the harder
+it is to get out.
+
+That evening, when I was quite cooled down, and we was talking to Mr.
+Poplington about the hay-making and the free-and-easy way in which
+everybody came together, he was a good deal surprised that we should
+think that there was anything uncommon in that, coming from a country
+where everybody was free and equal. Jone was smoking his pipe, and when
+it draws well and he's had a good dinner and I haven't anything
+particular to say, he often likes to talk slow and preach little
+sermons.
+
+"Yes, sir," said he, after considering the matter a little while,
+"according to the Constitution of the United States we are all free and
+equal, but there's a good many things the Constitution doesn't touch
+on, and one of them is the sorting out and sizing up of the population.
+Now, you people over here are like the metal types that the printers
+use. You've all got your letters on one end of you, and you know just
+where you belong, and if you happen to be knocked into 'pi' and mixed
+all up in a pile it is easy enough to pick you out and put you all in
+your proper cases; but it's different with us. According to the
+Constitution we're like a lot of carpet-tacks, one just the same as
+another, though in fact we're not alike, and it would not be easy if we
+got mixed up, say in a hayfield, to get ourselves all sorted out again
+according to the breadth of our heads and the sharpness of our points,
+so we don't like to do too much mixing, don't you see?" To which Mr.
+Poplington said he didn't see, and then I explained to him that what
+Jone meant was that though in our country we was all equally free, it
+didn't do for us to be as freely equal as the people are sometimes over
+here, to which Mr. Poplington said, "Really!" but he didn't seem to be
+standing in the glaring sunlight of convincement. But the shade is
+often pleasant to be in, and he wound up by saying, as he bid us
+good-night, that he thought it would be a great deal better for us, if
+we had classes at all, to have them marked out plain, and stamped so
+that there could be no mistake; to which I said that if we did that the
+most of the mistakes would come in the sorting, which, according to my
+reading of books and newspapers, had happened to most countries that
+keep up aristocracies.
+
+I don't know that he heard all that I said, for he was going up-stairs
+with his candle at the time, but when Jone and me got up-stairs in our
+own room I said to him, and he always hears everything I say, that in
+some ways the girls that we have for servants at home have some
+advantages over those we find here; to which Jone said, "Yes," and
+seemed to be sleepy.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Nine_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+There was still another day of hay-making, but we couldn't wait for
+that, because our cycles had come from London and we was all anxious to
+be off, and you would have laughed, madam, if you could have seen us
+start. Mr. Poplington went off well enough, but Jone's bicycle seemed a
+little gay and hard to manage, and he frisked about a good deal at
+starting; but Jone had bought a bicycle long ago, when the things first
+came out, and on days when the roads was good he used to go to the
+post-office on it, and he said that if a man had ever ridden on top of
+a wheel about six feet high he ought to be able to balance himself on
+the pair of small wheels which they use nowadays. So, after getting his
+long legs into working order, he went very well, though with a snaky
+movement at first, and then I started.
+
+Each one of us had a little hand-bag hung on our machine, and Mr.
+Poplington said we needn't take anything to eat, for there was inns to
+be found everywhere in England. Hannah started me off nicely by pushing
+my tricycle until I got it going, and Miss Pondar waved her
+handkerchief from the cottage door. When Hannah left me I went along
+rather slow at first, but when I got used to the proper motion I began
+to do better, and was very sure it wouldn't take me long to catch up
+with Jone, who was still worm-fencing his way along the road. When I
+got entirely away from the houses, and began to smell the hedges and
+grassy banks so close to my nose, and feel myself gliding along over
+the smooth white road, my spirits began to soar like a bird, and I
+almost felt like singing.
+
+The few people I met didn't seem to think it was anything wonderful for
+a woman to ride on a tricycle, and I soon began to feel as proper as if
+I was walking on a sidewalk. Once I came very near tangling myself up
+with the legs of a horse who was pulling a cart. I forgot that it was
+the proper thing in this country to turn to the left, and not to the
+right, but I gave a quick twist to my helm and just missed the
+cart-wheel, but it was a close scratch. This turning to the right,
+instead of to the left, was a mistake Jone made two or three times when
+he began to drive me in England, but he got over it, and since my
+grazing the cart it's not likely I shall forget it. As I breathed a
+sigh of relief after escaping this danger I took in a breath full of
+the scent of wild roses that nearly covered a bit of hedge, and my
+spirits rose again.
+
+I had asked Jone and Mr. Poplington to go ahead, because I knew I could
+do a great deal better if I worked along by myself for a while, without
+being told what I ought to do and what I oughtn't to do. There is
+nothing that bothers me so much as to have people try to teach me
+things when I am puzzling them out for myself. But now I found that
+although they could not be far ahead, I couldn't see them, on account
+of the twists in the road and the high hedges, and so I put on steam
+and went along at a fine rate, sniffing the breeze like a charger of
+the battlefield. Before very long I came to a place where the road
+forked, but the road to the left seemed like a lane leading to
+somebody's house, so I kept on in what was plainly the main road, which
+made a little turn where it forked. Looking out ahead of me, to see if
+I could catch sight of the two men, I could not see a sign of them, but
+I did see that I was on the top of a long hill that seemed to lead on
+and down and on and down, with no end to it.
+
+I had hardly started down this hill when my tricycle became frisky and
+showed signs of wanting to run, and I got a little nervous, for I
+didn't fancy going fast down a slope like that. I put on the brake, but
+I don't believe I managed it right, for I seemed to go faster and
+faster; and then, as the machine didn't need any working, I took my
+feet off the pedals, with an idea, I think, though I can't now
+remember, that I would get off and walk down the hill. In an instant
+that thing took the bit in its teeth and away it went wildly tearing
+down hill. I never was so much frightened in all my life. I tried to
+get my feet back on the pedals, but I couldn't do it, and all I could
+do was to keep that flying tricycle in the middle of the road. As far
+as I could see ahead there was not anything in the way of a wagon or a
+carriage that I could run into, but there was such a stretch of slope
+that it made me fairly dizzy. Just as I was having a little bit of
+comfort from thinking there was nothing in the way, a black woolly dog
+jumped out into the road some distance ahead of me and stood there
+barking. My heart fell, like a bucket into a well with the rope broken.
+If I steered the least bit to the right or the left I believe I would
+have bounded over the hedge like a glass bottle from a railroad train,
+and come down on the other side in shivers and splinters. If I didn't
+turn I was making a bee-line for the dog; but I had no time to think
+what to do, and in an instant that black woolly dog faded away like a
+reminiscence among the buzzing wheels of my tricycle. I felt a little
+bump, but was ignorant of further particulars.
+
+I was now going at what seemed like a speed of ninety or a hundred
+miles an hour, with the wind rushing in between my teeth like water
+over a mill-dam, and I felt sure that if I kept on going down that hill
+I should soon be whirling through space like a comet. The only way I
+could think of to save myself was to turn into some level place where
+the thing would stop, but not a crossroad did I pass; but presently I
+saw a little house standing back from the road, which seemed to hump
+itself a little at that place so as to be nearly level, and over the
+edge of the hump it dipped so suddenly that I could not see the rest of
+the road at all.
+
+"Now," thought I to myself, "if the gate of that house is open I'll
+turn into it, and no matter what I run into, it would be better than
+going over the edge of that rise beyond and down the awful hill that
+must be on the other side of it." As I swooped down to the little house
+and reached the level ground I felt I was going a little slower, but
+not much. However, I steered my tricycle round at just the right
+instant, and through the front gate I went like a flash.
+
+I was going so fast, and my mind was so wound up on account of the
+necessity of steering straight, that I could not pay much attention to
+things I passed. But the scene that showed itself in front of me as I
+went through that little garden gate I could not help seeing and
+remembering. From the gate to the door of the house was a path paved
+with flagstones; the door was open, and there must have been a low step
+before it; back of the door was a hall which ran through the house, and
+this was paved with flagstones; the back door of the hall was open, and
+outside of it was a sort of arbor with vines, and on one side of this
+arbor was a bench, with a young man and a young woman sitting on it,
+holding each other by the hand, and looking into each other's eyes;
+the arbor opened out on to a piece of green grass, with flowers of
+mixed colors on the edges of it, and at the back of this bit of lawn
+was a lot of clothes hung out on clothes-lines. Of course, I could not
+have seen all those things at once, but they came upon me like a single
+picture, for in one tick of a watch I went over that flagstone path and
+into that front door and through that house and out of that back door,
+and past that young man and that young woman, and head and heels both
+foremost at once, dashed slam-bang into the midst of all that linen
+hanging out on the lines.
+
+[Illustration: "AT LAST I DID GET ON MY FEET"]
+
+I heard the minglement of a groan and a scream, and in an instant I was
+enveloped in a white, wet cloud of sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths,
+and underwear. Some of the things stuck so close to me, and others I
+grabbed with such a wild clutch, that nearly all the week's wash, lines
+and all, came down on me, wrapping me up like an apple in a
+dumpling--but I stopped. There was not anything in this world that
+would have been better for me to run into than those lines full of wet
+clothes.
+
+Where the tricycle went to I didn't know, but I was lying on the grass
+kicking, and trying to get up and to get my head free, so that I could
+see and breathe. At last I did get on my feet, and throwing out my arms
+so as to shake off the sheets and pillowcases that were clinging all
+over me I shook some of the things partly off my face, and with one
+eye I saw that couple on the bench, but only for a second. With a yell
+of horror, and with a face whiter than the linen I was wrapped in, that
+young man bounced from the bench, dashed past the house, made one clean
+jump over the hedge into the road, and disappeared. As for the young
+woman, she just flopped over and went down in a faint on the floor.
+
+As soon as I could do it I got myself free from the clothes-line and
+staggered out on the grass. I was trembling so much I could scarcely
+walk, but when I saw that young woman looking as if she was dead on the
+ground I felt I must do something, and seeing a pail of water standing
+near by, I held it over her face and poured it down on her a little at
+a time, and it wasn't long before she began to squirm, and then she
+opened her eyes and her mouth just at the same time, so that she must
+have swallowed about as much water as she would have taken at a meal.
+This brought her to, and she began to cough and splutter and look
+around wildly, and then I took her by the arm and helped her up on the
+bench.
+
+"Don't you want a little something to drink?" I said. "Tell me where I
+can get you something."
+
+She didn't answer, but began looking from one side to the other. "Is he
+swallowed?" said she in a whisper, with her eyes starting out of her
+head.
+
+"Swallowed?" said I. "Who?"
+
+"Davy," said she.
+
+"Oh, your young man," said I. "He is all right, unless he hurt himself
+jumping over the hedge. I saw him run away just as fast as he could."
+
+"And the spirit?" said she. I looked hard at her.
+
+"What has happened to you?" said I. "How did you come to faint?"
+
+She was getting quieter, but she still looked wildly out of her eyes,
+and kept her back turned toward the bit of grass, as if she was afraid
+to look in that direction.
+
+"What happened to you?" said I again, for I wanted to know what she
+thought about my sudden appearance. It took some little time for her to
+get ready to answer, and then she said:
+
+"Was you frightened, lady? Did you have to come in here? I'm sorry you
+found me swooned. I don't know how long I was swooned. Davy and me was
+sitting here talking about having the banns called, and it was a sorry
+talk, lady, for the vicar, he's told me four times I should not marry
+Davy, because he says he is a Radical; but for all that Davy and me
+wants the banns called all the same, but not knowing how we was to have
+it done, for the vicar, he's so set against Davy, and Davy, he had just
+got done saying to me that he was going to marry me, vicar or no vicar,
+banns or no banns, come what might, when that very minute, with an
+awful hiss, something flashed in front of us, dazzling my eyes so that
+I shut them and screamed, and then when I opened them again, there, in
+the yard back of us, was a great white spirit twice as high as the cow
+stable, with one eye in the middle of its forehead, turning around like
+a firework. I don't remember anything after that, and I don't know how
+long I was lying here when you came and found me, lady, but I know what
+it means. There is a curse on our marriage, and Davy and me will never
+be man and wife." And then she fell to groaning and moaning.
+
+I felt like laughing when I thought how much like a church ghost I must
+have looked, standing there in solid white with my arms stretched out;
+but the poor girl was in such a dreadful state of mind that I sat down
+beside her and began to comfort her by telling her just what had
+happened, and that she ought to be very glad that I had found a place
+to turn into, and had not gone on down the hill and dashed myself into
+little pieces at the bottom. But it wasn't easy to cheer her up.
+
+"Oh, Davy's gone," said she. "He'll never come back for fear of the
+curse. He'll be off with his uncle to sea. I'll never lay eyes on Davy
+again."
+
+Just at that moment I heard somebody calling my name, and looking
+through the house I saw Jone at the front door and two men behind him.
+As I ran through the hall I saw that the two men with Jone was Mr.
+Poplington and a young fellow with a pale face and trembling legs.
+
+"Is this Davy?" said I.
+
+"Yes," said he.
+
+"Then go back to your young woman and comfort her," I said, which he
+did, and when he had gone, not madly rushing into his loved one's arms,
+but shuffling along in a timid way, as if he was afraid the ghost
+hadn't gone yet, I asked Jone how he happened to think I was here, and
+he told me that he and Mr. Poplington had taken the road to the left
+when they reached the fork, because that was the proper one, but they
+had not gone far before he thought I might not know which way to turn,
+so they came back to the fork to wait for me. But I had been closer
+behind them than they thought, and I must have come to the fork before
+they turned back, so, after waiting a while and going back along the
+road without seeing me, they thought that I must have taken the
+right-hand road, and they came that way, going down the hill very
+carefully. After a while Jone found my hat in the road, which up to
+that moment I had not missed, and then he began to be frightened and
+they went on faster.
+
+They passed the little house, and as they was going down the hill they
+saw ahead of them a man running as if something had happened, so they
+let out their bicycles and soon caught up to him. This was Davy; and
+when they stopped him and asked if anything was the matter he told
+them that a dreadful thing had come to pass. He had been working in the
+garden of a house about half a mile back when suddenly there came an
+awful crash, and a white animal sprang out of the house with a bit of a
+cotton mill fastened to its tail, and then, with a great peal of
+thunder, it vanished, and a white ghost rose up out of the ground with
+its arms stretching out longer and longer, reaching to clutch him by
+the hair. He was not afraid of anything living, but he couldn't abide
+spirits, so he laid down his spade and left the garden, thinking he
+would go and see the sexton and have him come and lay the ghost.
+
+Then Jone went on to say that of course he could not make head or tail
+out of such a story as that, but when he heard that an awful row had
+been kicked up in a garden he immediately thought that as like as not I
+was in it, and so he and Mr. Poplington ran back, leaving their
+bicycles against the hedge, and bringing the young man with them.
+
+Then I told my story, and Mr. Poplington said it was a mercy I was not
+killed, and Jone didn't say much, but I could see that his teeth was
+grinding.
+
+We all went into the back yard, and there, on the other side of the
+clothes, which was scattered all over the ground, we found my tricycle,
+jammed into a lot of gooseberry bushes, and when it was dragged out we
+found it was not hurt a bit. Davy and his young woman was standing in
+the arbor looking very sheepish, especially Davy, for she had told him
+what it was that had scared him. As we was going through the house,
+Jone taking my tricycle, I stopped to say good-by to the girl.
+
+"Now that you see there has been no curse and no ghost," said I, "I
+hope that you will soon have your banns called, and that you and your
+young man will be married all right."
+
+"Thank you very much, ma'am," said she, "but I'm awful fearful about
+it. Davy may say what he pleases, but my mother never will let me marry
+him if the vicar's agen it; and Davy wouldn't have been here to-day if
+she hadn't gone to town; and the vicar's a hard man and a strong Tory,
+and he'll always be agen it, I fear."
+
+When I went out into the front yard I found Mr. Poplington and Jone
+sitting on a little stone bench, for they was tired, and I told them
+about that young woman and Davy.
+
+"Humph," said Mr. Poplington, "I know the vicar of the parish. He is
+the Rev. Osmun Green. He's a good Conservative, and is perfectly right
+in trying to keep that poor girl from marrying a wretched Radical."
+
+I looked straight at him and said:
+
+"Do you mean, sir, to put politics before matrimonial happiness?"
+
+"No, I don't," said he, "but a girl can't expect matrimonial happiness
+with a Radical."
+
+I saw that Jone was about to say something here, but I got in ahead of
+him.
+
+"I will tell you what it is, sir," said I, "if you think it is wrong to
+be a Radical the best thing you can do is to write to your friend, that
+vicar, and advise him to get those two young people married as soon as
+possible, for it is easy to see that she is going to rule the roost,
+and if anybody can get his Radicalistics out of him she will be the one
+to do it."
+
+Mr. Poplington laughed, and said that as the man looked as if he was a
+fit subject to be henpecked it might be a good way of getting another
+Tory vote.
+
+"But," said he, "I should think it would go against your conscience,
+being naturally opposed to the Conservatives, to help even by one
+vote."
+
+"Oh, my conscience is all right," said I. "When politics runs against
+the matrimonial altar I stand up for the altar."
+
+"Well," said he, "I'll think of it." And we started off, walking down
+the hill, Jone holding on to my tricycle.
+
+When we got to level ground, with about two miles to go before we would
+stop for luncheon, Jone took a piece of thin rope out of his pocket--he
+always carries some sort of cord in case of accidents--and he tied it
+to the back part of my machine.
+
+"Now," said he, "I'm going to keep hold of the other end of this, and
+perhaps your tricycle won't run away with you."
+
+I didn't much like going along this way, as if I was a cow being taken
+to market, but I could see that Jone had been so troubled and
+frightened about me that I didn't make any objection, and, in fact,
+after I got started it was a comfort to think there was a tie between
+Jone and me that was stronger, when hilly roads came into the question,
+than even the matrimonial tie.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Ten_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+The place we stopped at on the first night of our cycle trip is named
+Porlock, and after the walking and the pushing, and the strain on my
+mind when going down even the smallest hill for fear Jone's rope would
+give way, I was glad to get there.
+
+The road into Porlock goes down a hill, the steepest I have seen yet,
+and we all walked down, holding our machines as if they had been fiery
+coursers. This hill road twists and winds so you can only see part of
+it at a time, and when we was about half-way down we heard a horn
+blowing behind us, and looking around there came the mail-coach at full
+speed, with four horses, with a lot of people on top. As this raging
+coach passed by it nearly took my breath away, and as soon as I could
+speak I said to Jone: "Don't you ever say anything in America about
+having the roads made narrower so that it won't cost so much to keep
+them in order, for in my opinion it's often the narrow road that
+leadeth to destruction."
+
+When we got into the town, and my mind really began to grapple with old
+Porlock, I felt as if I was sliding backward down the slope of the
+centuries, and liked it. As we went along Mr. Poplington told us about
+everything, and said that this queer little town was a fishing village
+and seaport in the days of the Saxons, and that King Harold was once
+obliged to stop there for a while, and that he passed his time making
+war on the neighbors.
+
+Mr. Poplington took us to a tavern called the Ship Inn, and I simply
+went wild over it. It is two hundred years old and two stories high,
+and everything I ever read about the hostelries of the past I saw
+there. The queer little door led into a queer little passage paved with
+stone. A pair of little stairs led out of this into another little
+room, higher up, and on the other side of the passage was a long,
+mysterious hallway. We had our dinner in a tiny parlor, which reminded
+me of a chapter in one of those old books where they use f instead of
+s, and where the first word of the next page is at the bottom of the
+one you are reading.
+
+There was a fireplace in the room with a window one side of it, through
+which you could look into the street. It was not cold, but it had begun
+to rain hard, and so I made the dampness an excuse for a fire.
+
+"This is antique, indeed," I said, when we were at the table.
+
+"You are right there," said Mr. Poplington, who was doing his best to
+carve a duck, and was a little cross about it.
+
+When I sat before the fire that evening, and Jone was asleep on a
+settee of the days of yore, and Mr. Poplington had gone to bed, being
+tired, my soul went back to the olden time, and, looking out through
+the little window in the fireplace, I fancied I could see William the
+Conqueror and the King of the Danes sneaking along the little street
+under the eaves of the thatched roofs, until I was so worked up that I
+was on the point of shouting, "Fly! oh, Saxon!" when the door opened
+and the maid who waited on us at the table put her head in. I took this
+for a sign that the curfew bell was going to ring, and so I woke up
+Jone and we went to bed.
+
+But all night long the heroes of the past flocked about me. I had been
+reading a lot of history, and I knew them all the minute my eyes fell
+upon them. Charlemagne and Canute sat on the end of the bed, while
+Alfred the Great climbed up one of the posts until he was stopped by
+Hannibal's legs, who had them twisted about the post to keep himself
+steady. When I got up in the morning I went down-stairs into the little
+parlor, and there was the maid down on her knees cleaning the hearth.
+
+"What is your name?" I said to her.
+
+"Jane, please," said she.
+
+"Jane what?" said I.
+
+"Jane Puddle, please," said she.
+
+I took a carving-knife from off the table, and standing over her I
+brought it down gently on top of her head. "Rise, Sir Jane Puddle,"
+said I, to which the maid gave a smothered gasp, and--would you believe
+it, madam?--she crept out of the room on her hands and knees. The cook
+waited on us at breakfast, and I truly believe that the landlord and
+his wife breathed a sigh of relief when we left the Ship Inn, for their
+sordid souls had never heard of knighthood, but knew all about
+assassination.
+
+[Illustration: "Rise, Sir Jane Puddle"]
+
+That morning we left Porlock by a hill which compared with the one we
+came into it by, was like the biggest Pyramid of Egypt by the side of a
+haycock. I don't suppose in the whole civilized world there is a worse
+hill with a road on it than the one we went up by. I was glad we had to
+go up it instead of down it, though it was very hard to walk, pushing
+the tricycle, even when helped. I believe it would have taken away my
+breath and turned me dizzy even to take one step face forward down such
+a hill, and gaze into the dreadful depths below me; and yet they drive
+coaches and fours down that hill. At the top of the hill is this
+notice: "To cyclers--this hill is dangerous." If I had thought of it I
+should have looked for the cyclers' graves at the bottom of it.
+
+The reason I thought about this was that I had been reading about one
+of the mountains in Switzerland, which is one of the highest and most
+dangerous, and with the poorest view, where so many Alpine climbers
+have been killed that there is a little graveyard nearly full of their
+graves at the foot of the mountain. How they could walk through that
+graveyard and read the inscriptions on the tombstones and then go and
+climb that mountain is more than I can imagine.
+
+In walking up this hill, and thinking that it might have been in front
+of me when my tricycle ran away, I could not keep my mind away from the
+little graveyard at the foot of the Swiss mountain.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Eleven_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+On the third day of our cycle trip we journeyed along a lofty road,
+with the wild moor on one side and the tossing sea on the other, and at
+night reached Lynton. It is a little town on a jutting crag, and far
+down below it on the edge of the sea was another town named Lynmouth,
+and there is a car with a wire rope to it, like an elevator, which they
+call The Lift, which takes people up and down from one town to another.
+
+Here we stopped at a house very different from the Ship Inn, for it
+looked as if it had been built the day before yesterday. Everything was
+new and shiny, and we had our supper at a long table with about twenty
+other people, just like a boardinghouse. Some of their ways reminded
+me of the backwoods, and I suppose there is nothing more modern than
+backwoodsism, which naturally hasn't the least alloy of the past. When
+the people got through with their cups of coffee or tea, mostly the
+last, two women went around the table, one with a big bowl for us to
+lean back and empty our slops into, and the other with the tea or
+coffee to fill up the cups. A gentleman with a baldish head, who was
+sitting opposite us, began to be sociable as soon as he heard us speak
+to the waiters, and asked questions about America. After he got through
+with about a dozen of them he said:
+
+"Is it true, as I have heard, that what you call native-born Americans
+deteriorate in the third generation?"
+
+I had been answering most of the questions, but now Jone spoke up
+quick. "That depends," says he, "on their original blood. When
+Americans are descended from Englishmen they steadily improve,
+generation after generation." The baldish man smiled at this, and said
+there was nothing like having good blood for a foundation. But Mr.
+Poplington laughed, and said to me that Jone had served him right.
+
+The country about Lynton is wonderfully beautiful, with rocks and
+valleys, and velvet lawns running into the sea, and woods and ancestral
+mansions, and we spent the day seeing all this, and also going down to
+Lynmouth, where the little ships lie high and dry on the sand when the
+tide goes out, and the carts drive up to them and put goods on board,
+and when the tide rises the ships sail away, which is very convenient.
+
+I wanted to keep on along the coast, but the others didn't, and the
+next morning we started back to Chedcombe by a roundabout way, so that
+we might see Exmoor and the country where Lorna Doone and John Ridd cut
+up their didoes. I must say I liked the story a good deal better before
+I saw the country where the things happened. The mind of man is capable
+of soarings which Nature weakens at when she sees what she is called
+upon to do. If you want a real, first-class, tooth-on-edge Doone
+valley, the place to look for it is in the book. We went rolling along
+on the smooth, hard roads, which are just as good here as if they was
+in London, and all around us was stretched out the wild and desolate
+moors, with the wind screaming and whistling over the heather, nearly
+tearing the clothes off our backs, while the rain beat down on us with
+a steady pelting, and the ragged sheep stopped to look at us, as if we
+was three witches and they was Macbeths.
+
+The very thought that I was out in a wild storm on a desolate moor
+filled my soul with a sort of triumph, and I worked my tricycle as if I
+was spurring my steed to battle. The only thing that troubled me was
+the thought that if the water that poured off my mackintosh that day
+could have run into our cistern at home, it would have been a glorious
+good thing. Jone did not like the fierce blast and the inspiriting
+rain, but I knew he'd stand it as long as Mr. Poplington did, and so I
+was content, although, if we had been overtaken by a covered wagon, I
+should have trembled for the result.
+
+That night we stopped in the little village of Simonsbath at Somebody's
+Arms. After dinner Mr. Poplington, who knew some people in the place,
+went out, but Jone and me went to bed as quick as we could, for we was
+tired. The next morning we was wakened by a tremendous pounding at the
+door. I didn't know what to make of it, for it was too early and too
+loud for hot water, but we heard Mr. Poplington calling to us, and Jone
+jumped up to see what he wanted.
+
+"Get up," said he, "if you want to see a sight that you never saw
+before. We'll start off immediately and breakfast at Exford." The hope
+of seeing a sight was enough to make me bounce at any time, and I never
+dressed or packed a bag quicker than I did that morning, and Jone
+wasn't far behind me.
+
+When we got down-stairs we found our cycles waiting ready at the door,
+together with the stable man and the stable boy and the boy's helper
+and the cook and the chambermaid and the waiters and the other
+servants, waiting for their tips. Mr. Poplington seemed in a fine
+humor, and he told us he had heard the night before that there was to
+be a stag hunt that day, the first of the season. In fact, it was not
+one of the regular meets, but what they called a by-meet, and not known
+to everybody.
+
+"We will go on to Exford," said he, straddling his bicycle, "for though
+the meet isn't to be there, there's where they keep the hounds and
+horses, and if we make good speed we shall get there before they start
+out."
+
+The three of us travelled abreast, Mr. Poplington in the middle, and on
+the way he told us a good deal about stag hunts. What I remember best,
+having to go so fast and having to mind my steering, was that after the
+hunting season began they hunted stags until a certain day--I forget
+what it was--and then they let them alone and began to hunt the does;
+and that after that particular day of the month, when the stags heard
+the hounds coming they paid no attention to them, knowing very well it
+was the does' turn to be chased, and that they would not be bothered;
+and so they let the female members of their families take care of
+themselves; which shows that ungentlemanliness extends itself even into
+Nature.
+
+When we got to Exford we left our cycles at the inn and followed Mr.
+Poplington to the hunting stables, which are near by. I had not gone a
+dozen steps from the door before I heard a great barking, and the next
+minute there came around the corner a pack of hounds. They crossed the
+bridge over the little river, and then they stopped. We went up to
+them, and while Mr. Poplington talked to the men the whole of that pack
+of hounds gathered about us as gentle as lambs. They were good big
+dogs, white and brown. The head huntsman who had them in charge told me
+there was thirty couple of them, and I thought that sixty dogs was
+pretty heavy odds against one deer. Then they moved off as orderly as
+if they had been children in a kindergarten, and we went to the stables
+and saw the horses; and then the master of the hounds and a good many
+other gentlemen in red coats, in all sorts of traps, rode up, and their
+hunters were saddled, and the dogs barked and the men cracked their
+whips to keep them together, and there was a bustle and liveliness to a
+degree I can't write about, and Jone and I never thought about going in
+to breakfast until all those horses, some led and some ridden, and the
+men and the hounds, and even the dust from their feet, had disappeared.
+
+I wanted to go see the hunt start off, but Mr. Poplington said it was
+two or three miles distant, and out of our way, and that we'd better
+move on as soon as possible so as to reach Chedcombe that night; but
+he was glad, he said, that we had had a chance to see the hounds and
+the horses.
+
+As for himself, I could see he was a little down in the mouth, for he
+said he was very fond of hunting, and that if he had known of this meet
+he would have been there with a horse and his hunting clothes. I think
+he hoped somebody would lend him a horse, but nobody did, and not being
+able to hunt himself he disliked seeing other people doing what he
+could not. Of course, Jone and me could not go to the hunt by
+ourselves, so after we'd had our tea and toast and bacon we started
+off. I will say here that when I was at the Ship Inn I had tea for my
+breakfast, for I couldn't bring my mind to order coffee--a drink the
+Saxons must never have heard of--in such a place; and since that we
+have been drinking it because Jone said there was no use fighting
+against established drinks, and that anyway he thought good tea was
+better than bad coffee.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twelve_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE
+
+As I said in my last letter, we started out for Chedcombe, not abreast,
+as we had been before, but strung along the road, and me and Mr.
+Poplington pretty doleful, being disappointed and not wanting to talk.
+But as for Jone, he seemed livelier than ever, and whistled a lot of
+tunes he didn't know. I think it always makes him lively to get rid of
+seeing sights. The sun was shining brightly, and there was no reason to
+expect rain for two or three hours anyway, and the country we passed
+through was so fine, with hardly any houses, and with great hills and
+woods, and sometimes valleys far below the road, with streams rushing
+and bubbling, that after a while I began to feel better, and I pricked
+up my tricycle, and, of course, being followed by Jone, we left Mr.
+Poplington, whose melancholy seemed to have gotten into his legs, a
+good way behind.
+
+We must have travelled two or three hours when all of a sudden I heard
+a noise afar, and I drew up and listened. The noise was the barking of
+dogs, and it seemed to come from a piece of woods on the other side of
+the field which lay to the right of the road. The next instant
+something shot out from under the trees and began going over the field
+in ten-foot hops. I sat staring without understanding, but when I saw a
+lot of brown and white spots bounce out of the wood, and saw, a long
+way back in the open field, two red-coated men on horseback, the truth
+flashed upon me that this was the hunt. The creature in front was the
+stag, who had chosen to come this way, and the dogs and the horses was
+after him, and I was here to see it all.
+
+Almost before I got this all straight in my mind the deer was nearly
+opposite me on the other side of the field, going the same way that we
+were. In a second I clapped spurs into my tricycle and was off. In
+front of me was a long stretch of down grade, and over this I went as
+fast as I could work my pedals; no brakes or holding back for me. My
+blood was up, for I was actually in a deer hunt, and to my amazement
+and wild delight I found I was keeping up with the deer. I was going
+faster than the men on horseback.
+
+"Hi! Hi!" I shouted, and down I went with one eye on the deer and the
+other on the road, every atom of my body tingling with fiery
+excitement. When I began to go up the little slope ahead I heard Jone
+puffing behind me.
+
+"You will break your neck," he shouted, "if you go down hill that way,"
+and getting close up to me he fastened his cord to my tricycle. But I
+paid no attention to him or his advice.
+
+"The stag! The stag!" I cried. "As long as he keeps near the road we
+can follow him! Hi!" And having got up to the top of the next hill I
+made ready to go down as fast as I had gone before, for we had fallen
+back a little, and the stag was now getting ahead of us; but it made me
+gnash my teeth to find that I could not go fast, for Jone held back
+with all his force (and both feet on the ground, I expect), and I could
+not get on at all.
+
+"Let go of me," I cried, "we shall lose the stag. Stop holding back."
+But it wasn't any use; Jone's heels must have been nearly rubbed off,
+but he held back like a good fellow, and I seemed to be moving along no
+faster than a worm. I could not stand this; my blood boiled and
+bubbled; the deer was getting away from me; and if it had been Porlock
+Hill in front of me I would have dashed on, not caring whether the road
+was steep or level.
+
+A thought flashed across my mind, and I clapped my hand into my pocket
+and jerked out a pair of scissors. In an instant I was free. The world
+and the stag was before me, and I was flying along with a tornado-like
+swiftness that soon brought me abreast of the deer. This perfectly
+splendid, bounding creature was not far away from me on the other side
+of the hedge, and as the field was higher than the road I could see him
+perfectly. His legs worked so regular and springy, except when he came
+to a cross hedge, which he went over with a single clip, and came down
+like India rubber on the other side, that one might have thought he was
+measuring the grass, and keeping an account of his jumps in his head.
+
+[Illustration: "In an instant I was free."]
+
+For one instant I looked around for the hounds, and I saw there was not
+more than half a dozen following him, and I could only see the two
+hunters I had seen before, and these was still a good way back. As for
+Jone, I couldn't hear him at all, and he must have been left far
+behind. There was still the woods on the other side, and the deer
+seemed to run to keep away from that and to cross the road, and he
+came nearer and nearer until I fancied he kept an eye on me as if he
+was wondering if I was of any consequence, and if I could hinder him
+from crossing the road and getting away into the valley below where
+there was a regular wilderness of woods and underbrush.
+
+If he does that, I thought, he will be gone in a minute and I shall
+lose him, and the hunt will be over. And for fear he would make for the
+hedge and jump over it, not minding me, I jerked out my handkerchief
+and shook it at him. You can't imagine how this frightened him. He
+turned sharp to the right, dashed up the hill, cleared a hedge and was
+gone. I gave a gasp and a scream as I saw him disappear. I believe I
+cried, but I didn't stop, and glad I was that I didn't; for in less
+than a minute I had come to a cross lane which led in the very
+direction the deer had taken. I turned into this lane and went on as
+fast as I could, and I soon found that it led through a thick wood.
+Down in the hollow, which I could not see into, I heard a barking and
+shouting, and I kept on just as fast as I could make that tricycle go.
+Where the lane led to, or what I should ever come to, I didn't think
+about. I was hunting a stag, and all I cared for was to feel my
+tricycle bounding beneath me.
+
+I may have gone a half a mile or two miles--I have not an idea how far
+it was--when suddenly I came to a place where there was green grass and
+rocks in an opening in the woods, and what a sight I saw! There was
+that beautiful, grand, red deer half down on his knees and perfectly
+quiet, and there was one of the men in red coats coming toward him with
+a great knife in his hand, and a little farther back was three or four
+dogs with another man, still on horseback, whipping them to keep them
+back, though they seemed willing enough to lie there with their tongues
+out, panting. As the man with the knife came up to the deer, the poor
+creature raised its eyes to him, and didn't seem to mind whether he
+came or not. It was trembling all over and fairly tired to death. When
+the man got near enough he took hold of one of the deer's horns and
+lifted up the hand with the knife in it, but he didn't bring it down on
+that deer's throat, I can tell you, madam, for I was there and had him
+by the arm.
+
+He turned on me as if he had been struck by lightning.
+
+"What do you mean?" he shouted. "Let go my arm."
+
+"Don't you touch that deer," said I--my voice was so husky I could
+hardly speak--"don't you see it's surrendered? Can you have the heart
+to cut that beautiful throat when he is pleading for mercy?" The man's
+eyes looked as if they would burst out of his head. He gave me a pull
+and a push as if he would stick the knife into me, and he actually
+swore at me, but I didn't mind that.
+
+[Illustration: "IF YOU WAS A MAN I'D BREAK YOUR HEAD"]
+
+"You have got that poor creature now," said I, "and that's enough. Keep
+it and tame it and bring it up with your children." I didn't have time
+to say anything more, and he didn't have time to answer, for two of the
+dogs who had got a little of their wind back sprang up and made a jump
+at the stag; and he, having got a little of his wind back, jerked his
+horn out of the hand of the man, and giving a sort of side spring
+backward among the bushes and rocks, away he went, the dogs after him.
+
+The man with the knife rushed out into the lane, and so did I, and so
+did the man on horseback, almost on top of me. On the other side of the
+lane was a little gorge with rocks and trees and water at the bottom of
+it, and I was just in time to see the stag spring over the lane and
+drop out of sight among the rocks and the moss and the vines.
+
+The man stood and swore at me regardless of my sex, so violent was his
+rage.
+
+"If you was a man I'd break your head," he yelled.
+
+"I'm glad I'm not," said I, "for I wouldn't want my head broken. But
+what troubles me is, that I'm afraid that deer has broken his legs or
+hurt himself some way, for I never saw anything drop on rocks in such a
+reckless manner, and the poor thing so tired."
+
+The man swore again, and said something about wishing somebody else's
+legs had been broken; and then he shouted to the man on horseback to
+call off the dogs, which was of no use, for he was doing it already.
+Then he turned on me again.
+
+"You are an American," he shouted. "I might have known that. No English
+woman would ever have done such a beastly thing as that."
+
+"You're mistaken there," I said; "there isn't a true English woman that
+lives who would not have done the same thing. Your mother--"
+
+"Confound my mother!" yelled the man.
+
+"All right," said I; "that's all in your family and none of my
+business." Then he went off raging to where he had left his horse by a
+gatepost.
+
+The other man, who was a good deal younger and more friendly, came up
+to me and said he wouldn't like to be in my boots, for I had spoiled a
+pretty piece of sport; and then he went on and told me that it had been
+a bad hunt, for instead of starting only one stag, three or four of
+them had been started, and they had had a bad time, for the hounds and
+the hunters had been mixed up in a nasty way. And at last, when the
+master of the hounds and most every one else had gone off over Dunkery
+Hill, and he didn't know whether they was after two stags or one, he
+and his mate, who was both whippers-in, had gone to turn part of the
+pack that had broken away, and had found that these dogs was after
+another stag, and so before they knew it they was in a hunt of their
+own, and they would have killed that stag if it had not been for me;
+and he said it was hard on his mate, for he knew he had it in mind that
+he was going to kill the only stag of the day.
+
+He went on to say, that as for himself he wasn't so sorry, for this was
+Sir Skiddery Henchball's land, and when a stag was killed it belonged
+to the man whose land it died on. He told me that the master of the
+hunt gets the head and the antlers, and the huntsman some other part,
+which I forget, but the owner of the land, no matter whether he's in
+the hunt or not, gets the body of the stag. "There's a cottage not a
+mile down this lane," said he, "with its thatch torn off, and my sister
+and her children live there, and Sir Skiddery turned them out on
+account of the rent, and so I'm glad the old skinflint didn't get the
+venison." And then he went off, being called by the other man.
+
+I didn't know what time it was, but it seemed as if it must be getting
+on into the afternoon; and feeling that my deer hunt was over, I
+thought I had better lose no time in hunting up Jone, so I followed on
+after the men and the dogs, who was going to the main road, but keeping
+a little back of them, though, for I didn't know what the older one
+might do if he happened to turn and see me.
+
+I was sure that Jone had passed the little lane without seeing it, so I
+kept on the way we had been going, and got up all the speed I could,
+though I must say I was dreadfully tired, and even trembling a little,
+for while I had been stag hunting I was so excited I didn't know how
+much work I was doing. There was sign-posts enough to tell me the way
+to Chedcombe, and so I kept straight on, up hill and down hill, until
+at last I saw a man ahead on a bicycle, which I soon knew to be Mr.
+Poplington. He was surprised enough at seeing me, and told me my
+husband had gone ahead. I didn't explain anything, and it wasn't until
+we got nearly to Chedcombe that we met Jone. He had been to Chedcombe,
+and was coming back.
+
+Jone is a good fellow, but he's got a will of his own, and he said that
+this would be the end of my tricycle riding, and that the next time we
+went out together on wheels he'd drive. I didn't tell him anything
+about the stag hunt then, for he seemed to be in favor of doing all the
+talking himself; but after dinner, when we was all settled down quiet
+and comfortable, I told him and Mr. Poplington the story of the chase,
+and they both laughed, Mr. Poplington the most.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Thirteen_
+
+
+CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
+
+It is now about a week since my stag hunt, and Jone and I have kept
+pretty quiet, taking short walks, and doing a good deal of reading in
+our garden whenever the sun shines into the little arbor there, and Mr.
+Poplington spends most of his time fishing. He works very hard at this,
+partly for the sake of his conscience, I think, for his bicycle trip
+made him lose three or four days he had taken a license for.
+
+It was day before yesterday that rheumatism showed itself certain and
+plain in Jone. I had been thinking that perhaps I might have it first,
+but it wasn't so, and it began in Jone, which, though I don't want you
+to think me hard-hearted, madam, was perhaps better; for if it had not
+been for it, it might have been hard to get him out of this comfortable
+little cottage, where he'd be perfectly content to stay until it was
+time for us to sail for America. The beautiful greenness which spreads
+over the fields and hills, and not only the leaves of trees and vines,
+but down and around trunks and branches, is charming to look at and
+never to be forgotten; but when this moist greenness spreads itself to
+one's bones, especially when it creeps up to the parts that work
+together, then the soul of man longs for less picturesqueness and more
+easy-going joints. Jone says the English take their climate as they do
+their whiskey; and he calls it climate-and-water, with a very little of
+the first and a good deal of the other.
+
+Of course, we must now leave Chedcombe; and when we talked to Mr.
+Poplington about it he said there was two places the English went to
+for their rheumatism. One was Bath, not far from here, and the other
+was Buxton, up in the north. As soon as I heard of Bath I was on pins
+and needles to go there, for in all the novel-reading I've done, which
+has been getting better and better in quality since the days when I
+used to read dime novels on the canal-boat, up to now when I like the
+best there is, I could not help knowing lots about Evelina and Beau
+Brummel, and the Pump Room, and the fine ladies and young bucks, and it
+would have joyed my soul to live and move where all these people had
+been, and where all these things had happened, even if fictitiously.
+
+But Mr. Poplington came down like a shower on my notions, and said that
+Bath was very warm, and was the place where everybody went for their
+rheumatism in winter; but that Buxton was the place for the summer,
+because it was on high land and cool. This cast me down a good deal;
+for if we could have gone where I could have steeped my soul in
+romanticness, and at the same time Jone could have steeped himself in
+warm mineral water, there would not have been any time lost, and both
+of us would have been happier. But Mr. Poplington stuck to it that it
+would ruin anybody's constitution to go to such a hot place in August,
+and so I had to give it up.
+
+So to-morrow we start for Buxton, which, from what I can make out, must
+be a sort of invalid picnic ground. I always did hate diseases and
+ailments, even of the mildest, when they go in caravan. I like to take
+people's sicknesses separate, because then I feel I might do something
+to help; but when they are bunched I feel as if it was sort of mean for
+me to go about cheerful and singing when other people was all grunting.
+
+But we are not going straight to Buxton. As I have often said, Jone is
+a good fellow, and he told me last night if there was any bit of fancy
+scenery I'd like to stop on the way to the unromantic refuge he'd be
+glad to give me the chance, because he didn't suppose it would matter
+much if he put off his hot soaks for a few days. It didn't take me long
+to name a place I'd like to stop at--for most of my reading lately has
+been in the guide books, and I had crammed myself with the descriptions
+of places worth seeing, that would take us at least two years to look
+at--so I said I would like to go to the River Wye, which is said to be
+the most romantic stream in England, and when that is said, enough is
+said for me, so Jone agreed, and we are going to do the Wye on our way
+north.
+
+There is going to be an election here in a few days, and this morning
+Jone and me hobbled into the village--that is, he hobbled in body, and
+I did in mind to think of his going along like a creaky wheelbarrow.
+
+Everybody was agog about the election, and we was looking at some
+placards posted against a wall, when Mr. Locky, the innkeeper, came
+along, and after bidding us good-morning he asked Jone what party he
+belonged to. "I'm a Home Ruler," said Jone, "especially in the matter
+of tricycles." Mr. Locky didn't understand the last part of this
+speech, but I did, and he said, "I am glad you are not a Tory, sir. If
+you will read that, you will see what the Tory party has done for us,"
+and he pointed out some lines at the bottom of a green placard, and
+these was the words: "Remember it was the Tory party that lost us the
+United States of America."
+
+"Well," said Jone, "that seems like going a long way off to get some
+stones to throw at the Tories, but I feel inclined to heave a rock at
+them myself for the injury that party has done to America."
+
+"To America!" said Mr. Locky, "Did the Tories ever harm America?"
+
+"Of course they did," said Jone; "they lost us England, a very valuable
+country, indeed, and a great loss to any nation. If it had not been for
+the Tory party, Mr. Gladstone might now be in Washington as a senator
+from Middlesex."
+
+[Illustration: "I'm a Home Ruler"]
+
+Mr. Locky didn't understand one word of this, and so he asked Jone
+which leg his rheumatism was in; and when Jone told him it was his left
+leg he said it was a very curious thing, but if you would take a
+hundred men in Chedcombe there would be at least sixty with rheumatism
+in the left leg, and perhaps not more than twenty with it in the right,
+which was something the doctors never had explained yet.
+
+It is awfully hard to go away and leave this lovely little cottage with
+its roses and vines, and Miss Pondar, and all its sweet-smelling
+comforts; and not only the cottage, but the village, and Mrs. Locky and
+her husband at the Bordley Arms, who couldn't have been kinder to us
+and more anxious to know what we wanted and what they could do. The
+fact is, that when English people do like Americans they go at it with
+just as much vim and earnestness as if they was helping Britannia to
+rule more waves.
+
+While I was feeling badly at leaving Miss Pondar your letter came, dear
+madam, and I must say it gave heavy hearts to Jone and me, to me
+especially, as you can well understand. I went off into the
+summer-house, and as I sat there thinking and reading the letter over
+again, I do believe some tears came into my eyes; and Miss Pondar, who
+was working in the garden only a little way off--for if there is
+anything she likes to do it is to weed and fuss among the rose-bushes
+and other flowers, which she does whenever her other work gives her a
+chance--she happened to look up, and seeing that I was in trouble, she
+came right to me, like the good woman she is, and asked me if I had
+heard bad news, and if I would like a little gin and water.
+
+I said that I had had bad news, but that I did not want any spirits,
+and she said she hoped nothing had happened to any of my family, and I
+told her not exactly; but in looking back it seemed as if it was almost
+that way. I thought I ought to tell her what had happened, for I could
+see that she was really feeling for me, and so I said: "Poor Lord
+Edward is dead. To be sure, he was very old, and I suppose we had not
+any right to think he'd live even as long as he did; and as he was
+nearly blind and had very poor use of his legs it was, perhaps, better
+that he should go. But when I think of what friends we used to be
+before I was married, I can't help feeling badly to think that he has
+gone; that when I go back to America he will not show he is glad to see
+me home again, which he would be if there wasn't another soul on the
+whole continent who felt that way."
+
+Miss Pondar was now standing up with her hands folded in front of her,
+and her head bowed down as if she was walking behind a hearse with
+eight ostrich plumes on it. "Lord Edward," she said, in a melancholy,
+respectful voice, "and will his remains be brought to England for
+interment?"
+
+"Oh, no," said I, not understanding what she was talking about. "I am
+sure he will be buried somewhere near his home, and when I go back his
+grave will be one of the first places I will visit."
+
+A streak of bewilderment began to show itself in Miss Pondar's
+melancholy respectfulness, and she said: "Of course, when one lives in
+foreign parts one may die there, but I always thought in cases like
+that they were brought home to their family vaults."
+
+It may seem strange for me to think of anything funny at a time like
+this, but when Miss Pondar mentioned family vaults when talking of Lord
+Edward, there came into my mind the jumps he used to make whenever he
+saw any of us coming home; but I saw what she was driving at and the
+mistake she had made. "Oh," I said, "he was not a member of the British
+nobility; he was a dog; Lord Edward was his name. I never loved any
+animal as I loved him."
+
+I suppose, madam, that you must sometimes have noticed one of the top
+candles of a chandelier, when the room gets hot, suddenly bending over
+and drooping and shedding tears of hot paraffine on the candles below,
+and perhaps on the table; and if you can remember what that overcome
+candle looked like, you will have an idea of what Miss Pondar looked
+like when she found out Lord Edward was a dog. I think that for one
+brief moment she hugged to her bosom the fond belief that I was
+intimate with the aristocracy, and that a noble lord, had he not
+departed this life, would have been the first to welcome me home, and
+that she--she herself--was in my service. But the drop was an awful
+one. I could see the throes of mortified disappointment in her back, as
+she leaned over a bed of pinks, pulling out young plants, I am afraid,
+as well as weeds. When I looked at her, I was sorry I let her know it
+was a dog I mourned. She has tried so hard to make everything all right
+while we have been here, that she might just as well have gone on
+thinking that it was a noble earl who died.
+
+To-morrow morning we shall have our last Devonshire clotted cream, for
+they tell me this is to be had only in the west of England, and when I
+think of the beautiful hills and vales of this country I shall not
+forget that.
+
+Of course we would not have time to stay here longer, even if Jone
+hadn't got the rheumatism; but if he had to have it, for which I am as
+sorry as anybody can be, it is a lucky thing that he did have it just
+about the time that we ought to be going away, anyhow. And although I
+did not think, when we came to England, that we should ever go to
+Buxton, we are thankful that there is such a place to go to; although,
+for my part, I can't help feeling disappointed that the season isn't
+such that we could go to Bath, and Evelina and Beau Brummel.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Fourteen_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
+
+We came to this queer old English town, not because it is any better
+than so many other towns, but because Mr. Poplington told us it was a
+good place for our headquarters while we was seeing the River Wye and
+other things in the neighborhood. This hotel is the best in the town
+and very well kept, so that Jone made his usual remark about its being
+a good place to stay in. We are near the point where the four principal
+streets of the town, called Northgate, Eastgate, Southgate, and
+Westgate, meet, and if there was nothing else to see it would be worth
+while to stand there and look at so much Englishism coming and going
+from four different quarters.
+
+There is another hotel here, called the New Inn, that was recommended
+to us, but I thought we would not want to go there, for we came to see
+old England, and I don't want to see its new and shiny things, so we
+came to the Bell, as being more antique. But I have since found out
+that the New Inn was built in 1450 to accommodate the pilgrims who came
+to pay their respects to the tomb of Edward II. in the fine old
+cathedral here. But though I should like to live in a four-hundred-and
+forty-year-old house, we are very well satisfied where we are.
+
+Two very good things come from Gloucester, for it is the well-spring of
+Sunday schools and vaccination. They keep here the horns of the cow
+that Dr. Jenner first vaccinated from, and not far from our hotel is
+the house of Robert Raikes. This is an old-fashioned timber house, and
+looks like a man wearing his skeleton outside of his skin. We are sorry
+Mr. Poplington couldn't come here with us, for he could have shown us a
+great many things; but he stayed at Chedcombe to finish his fishing,
+and he said he might meet us at Buxton, where he goes every year for
+his arm.
+
+To see the River Wye you must go down it, so with just one handbag we
+took the train for the little town of Ross, which is near the beginning
+of the navigable part of the river--I might almost say the wadeable
+part, for I imagine the deepest soundings about Ross are not more than
+half a yard. We stayed all night at a hotel overlooking the valley of
+the little river, and as the best way to see this wonderful stream is
+to go down it in a rowboat, as soon as we reached Ross we engaged a
+boat and a man for the next morning to take us to Monmouth, which would
+be about a day's row, and give us the best part of the river. But I
+must say that when we looked out over the valley the prospect was not
+very encouraging, for it seemed to me that if the sun came out hot it
+would dry up that river, and Jone might not be willing to wait until
+the next heavy rain.
+
+While we was at Chedcombe I read the "Maid of Sker," because its scenes
+are laid in the Bristol Channel, about the coast near where we was, and
+over in Wales. And when the next morning we went down to the boat which
+we was going to take our day's trip in, and I saw the man who was to
+row us, David Llewellyn popped straight into my mind.
+
+This man was elderly, with gray hair, and a beard under his chin, with
+a general air of water and fish. He was good-natured and sociable from
+the very beginning. It seemed a shame that an old man should row two
+people so much younger than he was, but after I had looked at him
+pulling at his oars for a little while, I saw that there was no need
+of pitying him.
+
+It was a good day, with only one or two drizzles in the morning, and we
+had not gone far before I found that the Wye was more of a river than I
+thought it was, though never any bigger than a creek. It was just about
+warm enough for a boat trip, though the old man told us there had been
+a "rime" that morning, which made me think of the "Ancient Mariner."
+The more the boatman talked and made queer jokes, the more I wanted to
+ask him his name; and I hoped he would say David Llewellyn, or at least
+David, and as a sort of feeler I asked him if he had ever seen a
+coracle. "A corkle?" said he. "Oh, yes, ma'am, I've seen many a one and
+rowed in them."
+
+I couldn't wait any longer, and so I asked him his name. He stopped
+rowing and leaned on his oars and let the boat drift. "Now," said he,
+"if you've got a piece of paper and a pencil I wish you would listen
+careful and put down my name, and if you ever know of any other people
+in your country coming to the River Wye, I wish you would tell them my
+name, and say I am a boatman, and can take them down the river better
+than anybody else that's on it. My name is Samivel Jones. Be sure
+you've got that right, please--Samivel Jones. I was born on this river,
+and I rowed on it with my father when I was a boy, and I have rowed on
+it ever since, and now I am sixty-five years old. Do you want to know
+why this river is called the Wye? I will tell you. Wye means crooked,
+so this river is called the Wye because it is crooked. Wye, the crooked
+river."
+
+There was no doubt about the old man's being right about the
+crookedness of the stream. If you have ever noticed an ant running over
+the floor you will have an idea how the Wye runs through this beautiful
+country. If it comes to a hill it doesn't just pass it and let you see
+one side of it, but it goes as far around it as it can, and then goes
+back again, and goes around some other hill or great rocky point, or a
+clump of woods, or anything else that travellers might like to see. At
+one place, called Symond's Yat, it makes a curve so great, that if we
+was to get out of our boat and walk across the land, we would have to
+walk less than half a mile before we came to the river again; but to
+row around the curve as we did, we had to go five miles.
+
+Every now and then we came to rapids. I didn't count them, but I think
+there must have been about one to every mile, where the river-bed was
+full of rocks, and where the water rushed furiously around and over
+them. If we had been rowing ourselves we would have gone on shore and
+camped when we came to the first of these rapids, for we wouldn't have
+supposed our little boat could go through those tumbling, rushing
+waters; but old Samivel knew exactly how the narrow channel, just deep
+enough sometimes for our boat to float without bumping the bottom, runs
+and twists itself among the hidden rocks, and he'd stand up in the bow
+and push the boat this way and that until it slid into the quiet water
+again, and he sat down to his oars. After we had been through four or
+five of these we didn't feel any more afraid than if we had been
+sitting together on our own little back porch.
+
+As for the banks of this river, they got more and more beautiful as we
+went on. There was high hills with some castles, woods and crags and
+grassy slopes, and now and then a lordly mansion or two, and great
+massive, rocky walls, bedecked with vines and moss, rising high up
+above our heads and shutting us out from the world.
+
+Jone and I was filled as full as our minds could hold with the romantic
+loveliness of the river and its banks, and old Samivel was so pleased
+to see how we liked it--for I believe he looked upon that river as his
+private property--that he told us about everything we saw, and pointed
+out a lot of things we wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for him,
+as if he had been a man explaining a panorama, and pointing out with a
+stick the notable spots as the canvas unrolled.
+
+The only thing in his show which didn't satisfy him was two very fine
+houses which had both of them belonged to noble personages in days
+gone by, but which had been sold, one to a man who had made his money
+in tea, and the other to a man who had made money in cotton. "Think of
+that," said he; "cotton and tea, and living in such mansions as them
+are, once owned by lords. They are both good men, and gives a great
+deal to the poor, and does all they can for the country; but only think
+of it, madam, cotton and tea! But all that happened a good while ago,
+and the world is getting too enlightened now for such estates as them
+are to come to cotton and tea."
+
+Sometimes we passed houses and little settlements, but, for the most
+part, the country was as wild as undiscovered lands, which, being that
+to me, I felt happier, I am sure, than Columbus did when he first
+sighted floating weeds. Jone was a good deal wound up too, for he had
+never seen anything so beautiful as all this. We had our luncheon at a
+little inn, where the bread was so good that for a time I forgot the
+scenery, and then we went on, passing through the Forest of Dean,
+lonely and solemn, with great oak and beech trees, and Robin Hood and
+his merry men watching us from behind the bushes for all we knew.
+Whenever the river twists itself around, as if to show us a new view,
+old Samivel would say: "Now isn't that the prettiest thing you've seen
+yet?" and he got prouder and prouder of his river every mile he rowed.
+
+At one place he stopped and rested on his oars. "Now, then," said he,
+twinkling up his face as if he was really David Llewellyn showing us a
+fish with its eyes bulged out with sticks to make it look fresh, "as we
+are out on a kind of a lark, suppose we try a bit of a hecho," and then
+he turned to a rocky valley on his left, and in a voice like the man at
+the station calling out the trains he yelled, "Hello there, sir! What
+are you doing there, sir? Come out of that!" And when the words came
+back as if they had been balls batted against a wall, he turned and
+looked at us as proud and grinny as if the rocks had been his own baby
+saying "papa" and "mamma" for visitors.
+
+Not long after this we came to a place where there was a wide field on
+one side, and a little way off we could see the top of a house among
+the trees. A hedge came across the field to the river, and near the
+bank was a big gate, and on this gate sat two young women, and down on
+the ground on the side of the hedge nearest to us was another young
+woman, and not far from her was three black hogs, two of them pointing
+their noses at her and grunting, and the other was grunting around a
+place where those young women had been making sketches and drawings,
+and punching his nose into the easels and portfolios on the ground. The
+young woman on the grass was striking at the hogs with a stick and
+trying to make them go away, which they wouldn't do; and just as we
+came near she dropped the stick and ran, and climbed up on the gate
+beside the others, after which all the hogs went to rooting among the
+drawing things.
+
+As soon as Samivel saw what was going on he stopped his boat, and
+shouted to the hogs a great deal louder than he had shouted to the
+echo, but they didn't mind any more than they had minded the girl with
+the stick. "Can't we stop the boat," I said, "and get out and drive off
+those hogs? They will eat up all the papers and sketches."
+
+"Just put me ashore," said Jone, "and I'll clear them out in no time;"
+and old Samivel rowed the boat close up to the bank.
+
+But when Jone got suddenly up on his feet there was such a twitch
+across his face that I said to him, "Now just you sit down. If you go
+ashore to drive off those hogs you'll jump about so that you'll bring
+on such a rheumatism you can't sleep."
+
+"I'll get out myself," said Samivel, "if I can find a place to fasten
+the boat to. I can't run her ashore here, and the current is strong."
+
+"Don't you leave the boat," said I, for the thought of Jone and me
+drifting off and coming without him to one of those rapids sent a
+shudder through me; and as the stern of the boat where I sat was close
+to the shore I jumped with Jone's stick in my hand before either of
+them could hinder me. I was so afraid that Jone would do it that I was
+very quick about it.
+
+The minute I left the boat Jone got ready to come after me, for he had
+no notion of letting me be on shore by myself, but the boat had drifted
+off a little, and old Samivel said:
+
+"That is a pretty steep bank to get up with the rheumatism on you. I'll
+take you a little farther down, where I can ground the boat, and you
+can get off more steadier."
+
+But this letter is getting as long as the River Wye itself, and I must
+stop it.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Fifteen_
+
+
+BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
+
+As soon as I jumped on shore, as I told you in my last, and had taken a
+good grip on Jone's heavy stick, I went for those hogs, for I wanted to
+drive them off before Jone came ashore, for I didn't want him to think
+he must come.
+
+I have driven hogs and cows out of lots and yards often enough, as you
+know yourself, madam, so I just stepped up to the biggest of them and
+hit him a whack across the head as he was rubbing his nose in among
+some papers with bits of landscapes on them, as was enough to make him
+give up studying art for the rest of his life; but would you believe
+it, madam, instead of running away he just made a bolt at me, and gave
+me such a push with his head and shoulders he nearly knocked me over? I
+never was so astonished, for they looked like hogs that you might think
+could be chased out of a yard by a boy. But I gave the fellow another
+crack on the back, which he didn't seem to notice, but just turned
+again to give me another push, and at the same minute the two others
+stopped rooting among the paint-boxes and came grunting at me.
+
+For the first time in my life I was frightened by hogs. I struck at
+them as hard as I could, and before I knew what I was about I flung
+down the stick, made a rush for that gate, and was on top of it in no
+time, in company with the three other young women that was sitting
+there already.
+
+"Really," said the one next to me, "I fancied you was going to be gored
+to atoms before our eyes. Whatever made you go to those nasty beasts?"
+
+I looked at her quite severe, getting my feet well up out of reach of
+the hogs if they should come near us.
+
+"I saw you was in trouble, miss, and I came to help you. My husband
+wanted to come, but he has the rheumatism and I wouldn't let him."
+
+The other two young women looked at me as well as they could around the
+one that was near me, and the one that was farthest off said:
+
+"If the creatures could have been driven off by a woman, we could have
+done it ourselves. I don't know why you should think you could do it
+any better than we could."
+
+I must say, madam, that at that minute I was a little humble-minded,
+for I don't mind confessing to you that the idea of one American woman
+plunging into a conflict that had frightened off three English women,
+and coming out victorious, had a good deal to do with my trying to
+drive away those hogs; and now that I had come out of the little end
+of the horn, just as the young women had, I felt pretty small, but I
+wasn't going to let them see that.
+
+"I think that English hogs," said I, "must be savager than American
+ones. Where I live there is not any kind of a hog that would not run
+away if I shook a stick at him." The young woman at the other end of
+the gate now spoke again.
+
+"Everything British is braver than anything American," said she; "and
+all you have done has been to vex those hogs, and they are chewing up
+our drawing things worse than they did before."
+
+Of course I fired up at this, and said, "You are very much mistaken
+about Americans." But before I could say any more she went on to tell
+me that she knew all about Americans; she had been in America, and such
+a place she could never have fancied.
+
+"Over there you let everybody trample over you as much as they please.
+You have no conveniences. One cannot even get a cab. Fancy! Not a cab
+to be had unless one pays enough for a drive in Hyde Park."
+
+I must say that the hogs charging down on me didn't astonish me any
+more than to find myself on top of a gate with a young woman charging
+on my country in this fashion, and it was pretty hard on me to have her
+pitch into the cab question, because Jone and me had had quite a good
+deal to say about cabs ourselves, comparing New York and London,
+without any great fluttering of the stars and stripes; but I wasn't
+going to stand any such talk as that, and so I said:
+
+"I know very well that our cab charges are high, and it is not likely
+that poor people coming from other countries are able to pay them; but
+as soon as our big cities get filled up with wretched, half-starved
+people, with the children crying for bread at home, and the father glad
+enough that he's able to get people to pay him a shilling for a drive,
+and that he's not among the hundreds and thousands of miserable men who
+have not any work at all, and go howling to Hyde Park to hold meetings
+for blood or bread, then we will be likely to have cheap cabs as you
+have."
+
+"How perfectly awful!" said the young woman nearest me; but the one at
+the other end of the gate didn't seem to mind what I said, but shifted
+off on another track.
+
+"And then there's your horses' tails," said she; "anything nastier
+couldn't be fancied. Hundreds of them everywhere with long tails down
+to their heels, as if they belong to heathens who had never been
+civilized."
+
+"Heathens?" said I. "If you call the Arabians heathens, who have the
+finest horses in the world, and wouldn't any more think of cutting off
+their tails than they would think of cutting their legs off; and if
+you call the cruel scoundrels who torture their poor horses by sawing
+their bones apart so as to get a little stuck-up bob on behind, like a
+moth-eaten paint-brush--if you call them Christians, then I suppose
+you're right. There is a law in some parts of our country against the
+wickedness of chopping off the tails of live horses, and if you had
+such a law here you'd be a good deal more Christian-like than you are,
+to say nothing of getting credit for decent taste."
+
+By this time I had forgotten all about what Jone and I had agreed upon
+as to arguing over the differences between countries, and I was just as
+peppery as a wasp. The young woman at the other end of the gate was
+rather waspy too, for she seemed to want to sting me wherever she could
+find a spot uncovered; and now she dropped off her horses' tails, and
+began to laugh until her face got purple.
+
+"You Americans are so awfully odd," she said. "You say you raise your
+corn and your plants instead of growing them. It nearly makes me die
+laughing when I hear one of you Americans say raise when you mean
+grow."
+
+Now Jone and me had some talk about growing and raising, and the
+reasons for and against our way of using the words; but I was ready to
+throw all this to the winds, and was just about to tell the impudent
+young woman that we raised our plants just the same as we raised our
+children, leaving them to do their own growing, when the young woman
+in the middle of the three, who up to this time hadn't said a word,
+screamed out:
+
+[Illustration: "AND WITH A SCREECH I DASHED AT THOSE HOGS LIKE A STEAM
+ENGINE"]
+
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! He's pulled out my drawing of Wilton Bridge. He'll
+eat it up. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Whatever shall I do?"
+
+Instead of speaking I turned quick and looked at the hogs, and there,
+sure enough, one of them had rooted open a portfolio and had hold of
+the corners of a colored picture, which, from where I sat, I could see
+was perfectly beautiful. The sky and the trees and the water was just
+like what we ourselves had seen a little while ago, and in about half a
+minute that hog would chew it up and swallow it.
+
+The young woman next to me had an umbrella in her hand. I made a snatch
+at this and dropped off that gate like a shot. I didn't stop to think
+about anything except that beautiful picture was on the point of being
+swallowed up, and with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam
+engine. When they saw me coming with my screech and the umbrella they
+didn't stop a second, but with three great wiggles and three scared
+grunts they bolted as fast as they could go. I picked up the picture of
+the bridge, together with the portfolio, and took them to the young
+woman who owned them. As the hogs had gone, all three of the women was
+now getting down from the gate.
+
+"Thank you very much," she said, "for saving my drawings. It was
+awfully good of you, especially--"
+
+"Oh, you are welcome," said I, cutting her off short; and, handing the
+other young woman her umbrella, I passed by the impudent one without so
+much as looking at her, and on the other side of the hedge I saw Jone
+coming across the grass. I jerked open the gate, not caring who it
+might swing against, and walked to meet Jone. When I was near enough I
+called out to know what on earth had become of him that he had left me
+there so long by myself, forgetting that I hadn't wanted him to come at
+all; and he told me that he had had a hard time getting on shore,
+because they found the banks very low and muddy, and when he had landed
+he was on the wrong side of a hedge, and had to walk a good way around
+it.
+
+"I was troubled," said he, "because I thought you might come to grief
+with the hogs."
+
+"Hogs!" said I, so sarcastic, that Jone looked hard at me, but I didn't
+tell him anything more till we was in the boat, and then I just said
+right out what had happened. Jone couldn't help laughing.
+
+"If I had known," said he, "that you was on top of a gate discussing
+horses' tails and cabs I wouldn't have felt in such a hurry to get to
+you."
+
+"And you would have made a mistake if you hadn't," I said, "for hogs
+are nothing to such a person as was on that gate."
+
+Old Samivel was rowing slow and looking troubled, and I believe at that
+minute he forgot the River Wye was crooked.
+
+"That was really hard, madam," he said, "really hard on you; but it was
+a woman, and you have to excuse women. Now if they had been three
+Englishmen sitting on that gate they would never have said such things
+to you, knowing that you was a stranger in these parts and had come on
+shore to do them a service. And now, madam, I'm glad to see you are
+beginning to take notice of the landscapes again. Just ahead of us is
+another bend, and when we get around that you'll see the prettiest
+picture you've seen yet. This is a crooked river, madam, and that's how
+it got its name. Wye means crooked."
+
+After a while we came to a little church near the river bank, and here
+Samivel stopped rowing, and putting his hands on his knees he laughed
+gayly.
+
+"It always makes me laugh," he said, "whenever I pass this spot. It
+seems to me like such an awful good joke. Here's that church on this
+side of the river, and away over there on the other side of the river
+is the rector and the congregation."
+
+"And how do they get to church?" said I.
+
+"In the summer time," said he, "they come over with a ferry-boat and a
+rope; but in the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over
+at all. Many's the time I've lain in bed and laughed and laughed when
+I thought of this church on one side of the river, and the whole
+congregation and the rector on the other side, and not able to get
+over."
+
+Toward the end of the day, and when we had rowed nearly twenty miles,
+we saw in the distance the town of Monmouth, where we was going to stop
+for the night.
+
+[Illustration: "In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get
+over"]
+
+Old Samivel asked us what hotel we was going to stop at, and when we
+told him the one we had picked out he said he could tell us a better
+one.
+
+"If I was you," he said, "I'd go to the Eyengel." We didn't know what
+this name meant, but as the old man said he would take us there we
+agreed to go.
+
+"I should think you would have a lonely time rowing back by yourself,"
+I said.
+
+"Rowing back?" said he. "Why, bless your soul, lady, there isn't
+nobody who could row this boat back agen that current and up them
+rapids. We take the boats back with the pony. We put the boat on a
+wagon and the pony pulls it back to Ross; and as for me, I generally go
+back by the train. It isn't so far from Monmouth to Ross by the road,
+for the road is straight and the river winds and bends."
+
+The old man took us to the inn which he recommended, and we found it
+was the Angel. It was a nice, old-fashioned, queer English house. As
+far as I could see, they was all women that managed it, and it couldn't
+have been managed better; and as far as I could see, we was the only
+guests, unless there was "commercial gents," who took themselves away
+without our seeing them.
+
+We was sorry to have old Samivel leave us, and we bid him a most
+friendly good-by, and promised if we ever knew of anybody who wanted to
+go down the River Wye we would recommend them to ask at Ross for
+Samivel Jones to row them.
+
+We found the landlady of the Angel just as good to us as if we had been
+her favorite niece and nephew. She hired us a carriage the next day,
+and we was driven out to Raglan Castle, through miles and miles of
+green and sloping ruralness. When we got there and rambled through
+those grand old ruins, with the drawbridge and the tower and the
+courtyard, my soul went straight back to the days of knights and
+ladies, and prancing steeds, and horns and hawks, and pages and
+tournaments, and wild revels and vaulted halls.
+
+The young man who had charge of the place seemed glad to see how much
+we liked it, as is natural enough, for everybody likes to see us
+pleased with the particular things they have on hand.
+
+"You haven't anything like this in your country," said he. But to this
+I said nothing, for I was tired of always hearing people speak of my
+national denomination as if I was something in tin cans, with a label
+pasted on outside; but Jone said it was true enough that we didn't have
+anything like it, for if we had such a noble edifice we would have
+taken care of it, and not let it go to rack and ruin in this way.
+
+Jone has an idea that it don't show good sense to knock a bit of
+furniture about from garret to cellar until most of its legs are
+broken, and its back cracked, and its varnish all peeled off, and then
+tie ribbons around it, and hang it up in the parlor, and kneel down to
+it as a relic of the past. He says that people who have got old ruins
+ought to be very thankful that there is any of them left, but it's no
+use in them trying to fill up the missing parts with brag.
+
+We took the train and went to Chepstow, which is near the mouth of the
+Wye, and as the railroad ran near the river nearly all the way we had
+lots of beautiful views, though, of course, it wasn't anything like as
+good as rowing along the stream in a boat. The next day we drove to the
+celebrated Tintern Abbey, and on the way the road passed two miles and
+a half of high stone wall, which shut in a gentleman's place. What he
+wanted to keep in or keep out by means of a wall like that, we couldn't
+imagine; but the place made me think of a lunatic asylum.
+
+The road soon became shady and beautiful, running through woods along
+the river bank and under some great crags called the Wyndcliffe, and
+then we came to the Abbey and got out.
+
+Of all the beautiful high-pointed archery of ancient times, this ruined
+Abbey takes the lead. I expect you've seen it, madam, or read about it,
+and I am not going to describe it; but I will just say that Jone, who
+had rather objected to coming out to see any more old ruins, which he
+never did fancy, and only came because he wouldn't have me come by
+myself, was so touched up in his soul by what he saw there, and by
+wandering through this solemn and beautiful romance of bygone days, he
+said he wouldn't have missed it for fifty dollars.
+
+We came back to Gloucester to-day, and to-morrow we are off for Buxton.
+As we are so near Stratford and Warwick and all that, Jone said we'd
+better go there on our way, but I wouldn't agree to it. I am too
+anxious to get him skipping round like a colt, as he used to, to stop
+anywhere now, and when we come back I can look at Shakespeare's tomb
+with a clearer conscience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LONDON.
+
+After all, the weather isn't the only changeable thing in this world,
+and this letter, which I thought I was going to send to you from
+Gloucester, is now being finished in London. We was expecting to start
+for Buxton, but some money that Jone had ordered to be sent from London
+two or three days before didn't come, and he thought it would be wise
+for him to go and look after it. So yesterday, which was Saturday, we
+started off for London, and came straight to the Babylon Hotel, where
+we had been before.
+
+Of course we couldn't do anything until Monday, and this morning when
+we got up we didn't feel in very good spirits, for of all the doleful
+things I know of, a Sunday in London is the dolefullest. The whole town
+looks as if it was the back door of what it was the day before, and if
+you want to get any good out of it, you feel as if you had to sneak in
+by an alley, instead of walking boldly up the front steps.
+
+Jone said we'd better go to Westminster Abbey to church, because he
+believed in getting the best there was when it didn't cost too much,
+but I wouldn't do it.
+
+[Illustration: "Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"]
+
+"No," said I. "When I walk in that religious nave and into the hallowed
+precincts of the talented departed, the stone passages are full of
+cloudy forms of Chaucers, Addisons, Miltons, Dickenses, and all those
+great ones of the past; and I would hate to see the place filled up
+with a crowd of weekday lay people in their Sunday clothes, which would
+be enough to wipe away every feeling of romantic piety which might rise
+within my breast."
+
+As we didn't go to the Abbey, and was so long making up our minds where
+we should go, it got too late to go anywhere, and so we stayed in the
+hotel and looked out into a lonely and deserted street, with the wind
+blowing the little leaves and straws against the tight-shut doors of
+the forsaken houses. As I stood by that window I got homesick, and at
+last I could stand it no longer, and I said to Jone, who was smoking
+and reading a paper:
+
+"Let's put on our hats and go out for a walk, for I can't mope here
+another minute."
+
+So down we went, and coming up the front steps of the front entrance
+who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington! He was stopping at that
+hotel, and was just coming home from church, with his face shining like
+a sunset on account of the comfortableness of his conscience after
+doing his duty.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Sixteen_
+
+
+BUXTON
+
+When I mentioned Mr. Poplington in my last letter in connection with
+the setting sun I was wrong; he was like the rising orb of day, and he
+filled London with effulgent light. No sooner had we had a talk, and we
+had told him all that had happened, and finished up by saying what a
+doleful morning we had had, than he clapped his hand on his knees and
+said, "I'll tell you what we will do. We will spend the afternoon among
+the landmarks." And what we did was to take a four-wheeler and go
+around the old parts of London, where Mr. Poplington showed us a lot of
+soul-awakening spots which no common stranger would be likely to find
+for himself.
+
+If you are ever steeped in the solemnness of a London Sunday, and you
+can get a jolly, red-faced, middle-aged English gentleman, who has made
+himself happy by going to church in the morning, and is ready to make
+anybody else happy in the afternoon, just stir him up in the mixture,
+and then you will know the difference between cod-liver oil and
+champagne, even if you have never tasted either of them. The afternoon
+was piled-up-and-pressed-down joyfulness for me, and I seemed to be
+walking in a dream among the beings and the things that we only see in
+books.
+
+Mr. Poplington first took us to the old Watergate, which was the river
+entrance to York House, where Lord Bacon lived, and close to the gate
+was the small house where Peter the Great and David Copperfield lived,
+though not at the same time; and then we went to Will's old
+coffee-house, where Addison, Steele, and a lot of other people of that
+sort used to go to drink and smoke before they was buried in
+Westminster Abbey, and where Charles and Mary Lamb lived afterward, and
+where Mary used to look out of the window to see the constables take
+the thieves to the Old Bailey near by. Then we went to Tom-all-alone's,
+and saw the very grating at the head of the steps which led to the old
+graveyard where poor Joe used to sweep the steps when Lady Dedlock came
+there, and I held on to the very bars that the poor lady must have
+gripped when she knelt on the steps to die.
+
+Not far away was the Black Jack Tavern, where Jack Sheppard and all the
+great thieves of the day used to meet. And bless me! I have read so
+much about Jack Sheppard that I could fairly see him jumping out of the
+window he always dropped from when the police came. After that we saw
+the house where Mr. Tulkinghorn, Lady Dedlock's lawyer, used to live,
+and also the house where old Krook was burned up by spontaneous
+combustion. Then we went to Bolt Court, where old Samuel Johnson lived,
+walked about, and talked, and then to another court where he lived when
+he wrote the dictionary, and after that to the "Cheshire Cheese" Inn,
+where he and Oliver Goldsmith often used to take their meals together.
+
+Then we saw St. John's Gate, where the Knights Templars met, and the
+yard of the Court of Chancery, where little Miss Flite used to wait for
+the Day of Judgment; and as we was coming home he showed us the church
+of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where every other Friday the bells are
+rung at five o'clock in the afternoon, most people not knowing what it
+is for, but really because the famous Nell Gwynn, who was far from
+being a churchwoman, left a sum of money for having a merry peal of
+bells rung every Friday until the end of the world. I got so wound up
+by all this, that I quite forgot Jone, and hardly thought of Mr.
+Poplington, except that he was telling me all these things, and
+bringing back to my mind so much that I had read about, though
+sometimes very little.
+
+When we got back to the hotel and had gone up to our room, Jone said to
+me:
+
+"That was all very fine and interesting from top to toe, but it does
+seem to me as if things were dreadfully mixed. Dr. Johnson and Jack
+Sheppard, I suppose, was all real and could live in houses; but when
+it comes to David Copperfields and Lady Dedlocks and little Miss
+Flites, that wasn't real and never lived at all, they was all talked
+about in just the same way, and their favorite tramping grounds pointed
+out, and I can't separate the real people from the fancy folk, if we've
+got to have the same bosom heaving for the whole of them."
+
+"Jone," said I, "they are all real, every one of them. If Mr. Dickens
+had written history I expect he'd put Lady Dedlock and Miss Flite and
+David Copperfield into it; and if the history writers had written
+stories they would have been sure to get Dr. Johnson and Lord Bacon and
+Peter the Great into them; and the people in the one kind of writing
+would have been just as real as the people in the other. At any rate,
+that's the way they are to me."
+
+On the Monday after our landmark expedition with Mr. Poplington, which
+I shall never forget, Jone settled up his business matters, and the
+next day we started for Buxton and the rheumatism baths. To our great
+delight Mr. Poplington said he would go with us, not all the way, for
+he wanted to stop at a little place called Rowsley, where he would stay
+for a few days and then go on to Buxton; but we was very glad to have
+him with us during the greater part of the way, and we all left the
+hotel in the same four-wheeler.
+
+When we got to the station Jone got first-class tickets, for we have
+found out that if you want to travel comfortable in England, and have
+porters attend to your baggage and find an empty carriage for you, and
+have the guard come along and smile in the window and say he'll try to
+let you have that carriage all to yourselves if he's able--the ableness
+depending a good deal on what you give him--and for everybody to do
+their best to make your journey pleasant, you must travel first class.
+Mr. Poplington also bought a first-class ticket, for there was no
+seconds on this line. As we was walking along by the platform Jone and
+I gave a sort of a jump, for there was a regular Pullman car, which
+made us think we might be at home. We stopped and looked at it, and
+then the guard, who was standing by, stepped up to us and touched his
+hat, and asked us if we would like to take the Pullman, and when Jone
+asked what the extra charge was, he said nothing at all for first-class
+passengers. We didn't have to stop to think a minute, but said right
+off that we would go in it, but Mr. Poplington would not come with us.
+He said English people wasn't accustomed to that, they wanted to be
+more private; and, although he'd like to be with us, he could not
+travel in a caravan like that, and so he went off by himself, and we
+got into the Pullman.
+
+The guard said we could take any seats we pleased; and when we got in
+we found there was only two or three people in it, and we chose two
+nice armchairs, hung up our wraps, and made ourselves comfortable and
+cosey.
+
+We expected that the people who engaged seats would soon come crowding
+in, but when the train started there was only four people besides
+ourselves in that beautiful car, which was a first-class one, built in
+the United States, with all sorts of comforts and conveniences. There
+was a porter who laid himself out to make us happy, and about one
+o'clock we had a nice lunch on a little table which was set up between
+us, with two waiters to attend to us, and then Jone went and had a
+smoke in a small room at one end of the car.
+
+We thought it was strange that there should be so few people travelling
+on this train, but when we came to a town where we made a long stop
+Jone got out to talk to Mr. Poplington, supposing it likely that he'd
+have a carriage to himself; but he was amazed to see that the train was
+jammed and crowded, and he found Mr. Poplington squeezed up in a
+carriage with seven other people, four of them one side and four the
+other, each row staring into the faces of the other. Some of them was
+eating bread and cheese out of paper parcels, and a big fat man was
+reading a newspaper, which he spread out so as to partly cover the two
+people sitting next to him, and all of them seemed anxious to find
+some way of stretching their legs so as not to strike against the legs
+of somebody else.
+
+Mr. Poplington was sitting by the window, and Jone couldn't help
+laughing when he said:
+
+"Is this what you call being private, sir? I think you would find a
+caravan more pleasant. Don't you want to come to the Pullman with us?
+There are plenty of seats there, nice big armchairs that you can turn
+around and sit any way you like, and look at people or not look at
+them, just as you please, and there's plenty of room to walk about and
+stretch yourself a little if you want to. There's a smoking-room, too,
+that you can go to and leave whenever you like. Come and try it."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Mr. Poplington, "but I really couldn't do
+that. I am not prejudiced at all, and I have a good many democratic
+ideas, but that is too much for me. An Englishman's house is his
+castle, and when he's travelling his railway carriage is his house. He
+likes privacy and dislikes publicity."
+
+"This is a funny kind of privacy you have here," said Jone. "And how
+about your big clubs? Would you like to have them all divided up into
+little compartments with half a dozen men in each one, generally
+strangers to each other?"
+
+"Oh, a club is a very different thing," said Mr. Poplington.
+
+Jone was going to talk more about the comfort of the Pullman cars, but
+they began to shut the carriage doors, and he had to come back to me.
+
+We like English railway carriages very well when we can have one to
+ourselves, but if even one stranger gets in and has to sit looking at
+us for all the rest of the trip you don't feel anything like as private
+as if you was walking along a sidewalk in London.
+
+But Jone and I both agreed we wouldn't find any fault with English
+people for not liking Pullman cars, so long as they put them on their
+trains for Americans who do like them. And one thing is certain, that
+if our railroad conductors and brakes-men and porters was as polite and
+kind as they are in England, tips or no tips, we'd be a great deal
+better off than we are.
+
+Whenever we stopped at a station the people would come and look through
+the windows at us, as if we was some sort of a travelling show. I don't
+believe most of them had ever seen a comfortable room on wheels before.
+The other people in our car was all men, and looked as if they hadn't
+their families with them, and was glad to get a little comfort on the
+sly. When we got to Rowsley we saw Mr. Poplington on the platform,
+running about, collecting all his different bits of luggage, and
+counting them to see that they was all there, and then, as we had a
+window open and was looking out, he came and bid us good-by; and when
+I asked him to, he looked into our car.
+
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he said. "What a public apartment! I could not
+travel like that, you know. Good-by; I will see you at Buxton in a few
+days."
+
+[Illustration: Mr. Poplington looking for the luggage]
+
+We talked a good deal with Mr. Poplington about the hotels of Buxton,
+and we had agreed to go to one called the Old Hall, where we are now.
+There was a good many reasons why we chose this house, one being that
+it was not as expensive as some of the others, though very nice; and
+another, which had a good deal of force with me, was, that Mary Queen
+of Scots came here for her rheumatism, and the room she used to have is
+still kept, with some words she scratched with her diamond ring on the
+window-pane. Sometimes people coming to this hotel can get this room,
+and I was mighty sorry we couldn't do it, but it was taken. If I could
+have actually lived and slept in a room which had belonged to the
+beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, I would have been willing to have just
+as much rheumatism as she had when she was here.
+
+Of course, modern rheumatisms are not as interesting as the rheumatisms
+people of the past ages had; but from what I have seen of this town, I
+think I am going to like it very much.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Seventeen_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BUXTON
+
+When we were comfortably settled here, Jone went to see a doctor, who
+is a nice, kind old gentleman, who looks as if he almost might have
+told Mary Queen of Scots how hot she ought to have the water in her
+baths. He charges four times as much as the others, and has about a
+quarter as many patients, which makes it all the same to him, and a
+good deal better for the rheumatic ones who come to him, for they have
+more time to go into particulars. And if anything does good to a person
+who has something the matter with him, it's being able to go into
+particulars about it. It's often as good as medicine, and always more
+comforting.
+
+We unpacked our trunks and settled ourselves down for a three weeks'
+stay here, for no matter how much rheumatism you have or how little,
+you've got to take Buxton and its baths in three weeks' doses.
+
+Besides taking the baths Jone has to drink the waters, and as I cannot
+do much else to help him, I am encouraging him by drinking them too.
+There are two places where you can get the lukewarm water that people
+come here to drink. One is the public well, where there is a pump free
+to everybody, and the other is in the pump-room just across the street
+from the well, where you pay a penny a glass for the same water, which
+three doleful old women spend all their time pumping for visitors.
+
+[Illustration: Pomona encourages Jonas]
+
+People are ordered to drink this water very carefully. It must be done
+at regular times, beginning with a little, and taking more and more
+each day until you get to a full tumbler, and then if it seems to be
+too strong for you, you must take less. So far as I can find out there
+is nothing particular about it, except that it is lukewarm water,
+neither hot enough nor cold enough to make it a pleasant drink. It
+didn't seem to agree with Jone at first, but after he kept at it three
+or four days it began to suit him better, so that he could take nearly
+a tumbler without feeling badly. Two or three times I felt it might be
+better for my health if I didn't drink it, but I wanted to stand by
+Jone as much as I could, and so I kept on.
+
+We have been here a week now, and this morning I found out that all the
+water we drink at this hotel is brought from the well of St. Ann, where
+the public pump is, and everybody drinks just as much of it as they
+want whenever they want to, and they never think of any such thing as
+feeling badly or better than if it was common water. The only
+difference is, that it isn't quite as lukewarm when we get it here as
+it is at the well. When I was told this I was real mad, after all the
+measuring and fussing we had had when taking the water as a medicine,
+and then drinking it just as we pleased at the table. But the people
+here tell me that it is the gas in it which makes it medicinal, and
+when that floats out it is just like common water. That may be; but if
+there's a penny's worth of gas in every tumbler of water sold in the
+pump-room, there ought to be some sort of a canopy put over the town to
+catch what must escape in the pourings and pumpings, for it's too
+valuable to be allowed to get away. If it's the gas that does it, a
+rheumatic man anchored in a balloon over Buxton, and having the gas
+coming up unmixed to him, ought to be well in about two days.
+
+When Jone told me his first bath was to be heated up to ninety-four
+degrees I said to him that he'd be boiled alive, but he wasn't; and
+when he came home he said he liked it. Everything is very systematic in
+the great bathing-house. The man who tends to Jone hangs up his watch
+on a little stand on the edge of the bathtub, and he stays in just so
+many minutes, and when he's ready to come out he rings a bell, and then
+he's wrapped up in about fourteen hot towels, and sits in an armchair
+until he's dry. Jone likes all this, and says so much about it that it
+makes me want to try it too; though as there isn't any reason for it I
+haven't tried them yet.
+
+This is an awfully queer, old-fashioned town, and must have been a good
+deal like Bath in the days of Evelina. There is a long line of high
+buildings curved like a half moon, which is called the Crescent, and at
+one end of this is a pump-room, and at the other are the natural baths,
+where the water is just as warm as when it comes out of the ground,
+which is eighty-two degrees. This is said to chill people; but from
+what I remember about summer time I don't see how eighty-two degrees
+can be cold.
+
+Opposite the Crescent is a public park called The Slopes, and farther
+on there are great gardens with pavilions, and a band of music every
+day, and a theatre, and a little river, and tennis courts, and all
+sorts of things for people who haven't anything to do with their time,
+which is generally the case with folks at rheumatic watering-places.
+Opposite to our hotel is a bowling court, which they say has been
+there for hundreds of years, and is just as hard and smooth as a boy's
+slate. The men who play bowls here are generally those who have got
+over the rheumatism of their youth, and whose joints have not been very
+much stiffened up yet by old age. The people who are yet too young for
+rheumatism, and have come here with their families, play tennis.
+
+The baths take such a little time, not over six or seven minutes for
+them each day, and every third day skipped, that there is a good deal
+of time left on the hands of the people here; and those who can't play
+tennis or bowl, and don't want to spend the whole time in the pavilion
+listening to the music, go about in bath-chairs, which, so far as I can
+see, are just as important as the baths. I don't know whether you ever
+saw a bath-chair, madam, but it's a comfortable little cab on three
+wheels, pulled by a man. They take people everywhere, and all the
+streets are full of them.
+
+As soon as I saw these nice little traps I said to Jone, "Now this is
+the very thing for you. It hurts you to walk far, and you want to see
+all over this town, and one of these bath-chairs will take you into
+lots of places where you couldn't go in a carriage."
+
+"Take me!" said Jone. "I should say not. You don't catch me being
+hauled about in one of those things as if I was in a sort of
+wheelbarrow ambulance being taken to the hospital, with you walking
+along by my side like a trained nurse. No, indeed! I have not gone so
+far as that yet."
+
+I told him this was all stuff and nonsense, and if he wanted to get the
+good out of Buxton he'd better go about and see it, and he couldn't go
+about if he didn't take a bath-chair; but all he said to that was, that
+he could see it without going about, and he was satisfied. But that
+didn't count anything with me, for the trouble with Jone is, that he's
+too easy satisfied.
+
+It's true that there is a lot to be seen in Buxton without going about.
+The Slopes are just across the street from the hotel, and when it
+doesn't happen to be raining we can go and sit there on a bench and see
+lively times enough. People are being trundled about in their
+bath-chairs in every direction; there is always a crowd at St. Ann's
+well, where the pump is; all sorts of cabs and carts are being driven
+up and down just as fast as they can go, for the streets are as smooth
+as floors, and in the morning and evening there are about half a dozen
+coaches with four horses, and drivers and horn-blowers in red coats,
+the horses prancing and whips cracking as they start out for country
+trips or come back again. And as for the people on foot, they just
+swarm like bees, and rain makes no difference, except that then they
+wear mackintoshes, and when it's fine they don't. Some of these people
+step along as brisk as if they hadn't anything the matter with them,
+but a good many of them help out their legs with canes and crutches. I
+begin to think I can tell how long a man has been at Buxton by the
+number of sticks he uses.
+
+One day we was sitting on a bench in The Slopes, enjoying a bit of
+sunshine that had just come along, when a middle-aged man, with a very
+high collar and a silk hat, came and sat down by Jone. He spoke civilly
+to us, and then went on to say that if ever we happened to take a house
+near Liverpool he'd be glad to supply us with coals, because he was a
+coal merchant. Jone told him that if he ever did take a house near
+Liverpool he certainly would give him his custom. Then the man gave us
+his card. "I come here every year," he said, "for the rheumatism in my
+shoulder, and if I meet anybody that lives near Liverpool, or is likely
+to, I try to get his custom. I like it here. There's a good many 'otels
+in this town. You can see a lot of them from here. There's St. Ann's,
+that's a good house, but they charge you a pound a day; and then
+there's the Old Hall. That's good enough, too, but nobody goes there
+except shopkeepers and clergymen. Of course, I don't mean bishops; they
+go to St. Ann's."
+
+I wondered which the man would think Jone was, if he knew we was
+stopping at the Old Hall; but I didn't ask him, and only said that
+other people besides shopkeepers and clergymen went to the Old Hall,
+for Mary Queen of Scots used to stop at that house when she came to
+take the waters, and her room was still there, just as it used to be.
+
+"Mary Queen of Scots!" said he. "At the Old Hall?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "that's where she used to go; that was her hotel."
+
+"Queen Mary, Queen of the Scots!" he said again. "Well, well, I
+wouldn't have believed it. But them Scotch people always was
+close-fisted. Now if it had been Queen Elizabeth, she wouldn't have
+minded a pound a day;" and then, after asking Jone to excuse him for
+forgetting his manners and not asking where his rheumatism was, and
+having got his answer, he went away, wondering, I expect, how Mary
+Queen of Scots could have been so stingy.
+
+But although we could see so much sitting on benches, I didn't give up
+Jone and the bath-chairs, and day before yesterday I got the better of
+him. "Now," said I, "it is stupid for you to be sitting around in this
+way as if you was a statue of a public benefactor carved by
+subscription and set up in a park. The only sensible thing for you to
+do is to take a bath-chair and go around and see things. And if you are
+afraid people will think you are being taken to a hospital, you can put
+down the top of the thing, and sit up straight and smoke your pipe.
+Patients in ambulances never smoke pipes. And if you don't want me
+walking by your side like a trained nurse, I'll take another chair and
+be pulled along with you."
+
+The idea of a pipe, and me being in another chair, rather struck his
+fancy, and he said he would consider it; and so that afternoon we went
+to the hotel door and looked at the long line of bath-chairs standing
+at the curbstone on the other side of the street, with the men waiting
+for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very
+comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses.
+Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn out, as if they
+had belonged to sporting men and had been driven half to death. And
+then again there was some that looked fat and lazy, like the old horses
+on a farm, that the women drive to town.
+
+Jone picked out a good man, who looked as if he was well broken and not
+afraid of locomotives and able to do good work in single harness. When
+I got Jone in the bath-chair, with the buggy-top down, and his pipe
+lighted, and his hat cocked on one side a little, so as to look as if
+he was doing the whole thing for a lark, I called another chair, not
+caring what sort of one it was, and then we told the men to pull us
+around for a couple of hours, leaving it to them to take us to
+agreeable spots, which they said they would do.
+
+After we got started Jone seemed to like it very well, and we went
+pretty much all over the town, sometimes stopping to look in at the
+shop windows, for the sidewalks are so narrow that it is no trouble to
+see the things from the street. Then the men took us a little way out
+of the town to a place where there was a good view for us, and a bench
+where they could go and sit down and rest. I expect all the chair men
+that work by the hour manage to get to this place with a view as soon
+as they can.
+
+After they had had a good rest we started off to go home by a different
+route. Jone's man was a good strong fellow and always took the lead,
+but my puller was a different kind of a steed, and sometimes I was left
+pretty far behind. I had not paid much attention to the man at first,
+only noticing that he was mighty slow; but going back a good deal of
+the way was uphill, and then all his imperfections came out plain, and
+I couldn't help studying him. If he had been a horse I should have said
+he was spavined and foundered, with split frogs and tonsilitis; but as
+he was a man, it struck me that he must have had several different
+kinds of rheumatism and been sent to Buxton to have them cured, but not
+taking the baths properly, or drinking the water at times when he ought
+not to have done it, his rheumatisms had all run together and had
+become fixed and immovable. How such a creaky person came to be a
+bath-chair man I could not think, but it may be that he wanted to stay
+in Buxton for the sake of the loose gas which could be had for nothing,
+and that bath-chairing was all he could get to do.
+
+I pitied the poor old fellow, who, if he had been a horse, would have
+been no more than fourteen hands high, and as he went puffing along,
+tugging and grunting as if I was a load of coal, I felt as if I
+couldn't stand it another minute, and I called out to him to stop. It
+did seem as if he would drop before he got me back to the hotel, and I
+bounced out in no time, and then I walked in front of him and turned
+around and looked at him. If it is possible for a human hack-horse to
+have spavins in two joints in each leg, that man had them; and he
+looked as if he couldn't remember what it was to have a good feed.
+
+He seemed glad to rest, but didn't say anything, standing and looking
+straight ahead of him like an old horse that has been stopped to let
+him blow. He did look so dreadful feeble that I thought it would be a
+mercy to take him to some member of the Society for the Prevention of
+Cruelty to Animals and have him chloroformed. "Look here," said I, "you
+are not fit to walk. Get into that bath-chair, and I'll pull you back
+to your stand."
+
+"Lady," said he, "I couldn't do that. If you dunno mind walking home,
+and will pay me for the two hours all the same, I will be right
+thankful for that. I'm poorly to-day."
+
+"Get into the chair," said I, "and I'll pull you back. I'd like to do
+it, for I want some exercise."
+
+"Oh, no, no!" said he. "That would be a sin; and besides I was engaged
+to pull you two hours, and I must be paid for that."
+
+"Get into that chair," I said, "and I'll pay you for your two hours and
+give you a shilling besides."
+
+He looked at me for a minute, and then he got into the chair, and I
+shut him up.
+
+"Now, lady," said he, "you can pull me a little way if you want
+exercise, and as soon as you are tired you can stop, and I'll get out,
+but you must pay me the extra shilling all the same."
+
+"All right," said I, and taking hold of the handle I started off. It
+was real fun; the bath-chair rolled along beautifully, and I don't
+believe the old man weighed much more than my Corinne when I used to
+push her about in her baby carriage. We were in a back street, where
+there was hardly anybody; and as for Jone and his bath-chair, I could
+just see them ever so far ahead, so I started to catch up, and as the
+street was pretty level now I soon got going at a fine rate. I hadn't
+had a bit of good exercise for a long time, and this warmed me up and
+made me feel gay.
+
+[Illustration: "STOP, LADY, AND I'LL GET OUT"]
+
+We was not very far behind Jone when the man began to call to me in a
+sort of frightened fashion, as if he thought I was running away.
+"Stop, lady!" he said; "we are getting near the gardens, and the people
+will laugh at me. Stop, lady, and I'll get out." But I didn't feel a
+bit like stopping; the idea had come into my head that it would be
+jolly to beat Jone. If I could pass him and sail on ahead for a little
+while, then I'd stop and let my old man get out and take his bath-chair
+home. I didn't want it any more.
+
+Just as I got close up behind Jone, and was about to make a rush past
+him, his man turned into a side street. Of course I turned too, and
+then I put on steam, and, giving a laugh as I turned around to look at
+Jone, I charged on, intending to stop in a minute and have some fun in
+hearing what Jone had to say about it; but you may believe, ma'am, that
+I was amazed when I saw only a little way in front of me the bath-chair
+stand where we had hired our machines! And all the bath-chair men were
+standing there with their mouths wide open, staring at a woman running
+along the street, pulling an old bath-chair man in a bath-chair! For a
+second I felt like dropping the handle I held and making a rush for the
+front door of the hotel, which was right ahead of me; and then I
+thought, as now I was in for it, it would be a lot better to put a good
+face on the matter, and not look as if I had done anything I was
+ashamed of, and so I just slackened speed and came up in fine style at
+the door of the Old Hall. Four or five of the bath-chair men came
+running across the street to know if anything had happened to the old
+party I was pulling, and he got out looking as ashamed as if he had
+been whipped by his wife.
+
+"It's a lark, mates," said he; "the lady's to pay me two shillings
+extra for letting her pull me."
+
+"Two shillings?" said I. "I only promised you one."
+
+"That would be for pulling me a little way," he said; "but you pulled
+me all the way back, and I couldn't do it for less than two shillings."
+
+Jone now came up and got out quick.
+
+"What's the meaning of all this, Pomona?" said he.
+
+"Meaning?" said I. "Look at that dilapidated old bag of bones. He
+wasn't fit to pull me, and so I thought it would be fun to pull him;
+but, of course, I didn't know when I turned the corner I would be here
+at the stand."
+
+Jone paid the men, including the two extra shillings, and when we went
+up to our room he said, "The next time we go out in two bath-chairs, I
+am going to have a chain fastened to yours, and I'll have hold of the
+other end of it."
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Eighteen_
+
+
+BUXTON
+
+I have begun to take the baths. There really is so little to do in this
+place that I couldn't help it, and so, while Jone was off tending to
+his hot soaks, I thought I might as well try the thing myself. At any
+rate it would fill up the time when I was alone. I find I like this
+sort of bathing very much, and I wish I had begun it before. It reminds
+me of a kind of medicine for colds that you used to make for me, madam,
+when I first came to the canal-boat. It had lemons and sugar in it, and
+it was so good I remember I used to think that I would like to go into
+a lingering consumption, so that I could have it three times a day,
+until I finally passed away like a lily on a snowbank.
+
+Jone's been going about a good deal in a bath-chair, and doesn't mind
+my walking alongside of him. He says it makes him feel easier in his
+mind, on the whole.
+
+Mr. Poplington came two or three days ago, and he is stopping at our
+hotel. We three have hired a carriage together two or three times and
+have taken drives into, the country. Once we went to an inn, the Cat
+and Fiddle, about five miles away, on a high bit of ground called Axe
+Edge. It is said to be the highest tavern in England, and it's lucky
+that it is, for that's the only recommendation it's got. The sign in
+front of the house has on it a cat on its hind-legs playing a fiddle,
+with a look on its face as if it was saying, "It's pretty poor, but
+it's the best I can do for you."
+
+Inside is another painting of a cat playing a fiddle, and truly that
+one might be saying, "Ha! Ha! You thought that that picture on the sign
+was the worst picture you ever saw in your life, but now you see how
+you are mistaken."
+
+Up on that high place you get the rain fresher than you do in Buxton,
+because it hasn't gone so far through the air, and it's mixed with more
+chilly winds than anywhere else in England, I should say. But everybody
+is bound to go to the Cat and Fiddle at least once, and we are glad we
+have been there, and that it is over. I like the places near the town a
+great deal better, and some of them are very pretty. One day we two and
+Mr. Poplington took a ride on top of a stage to see Haddon Hall and
+Chatsworth.
+
+Haddon Hall is to me like a dream of the past come true. Lots of other
+old places have seemed like dreams, but this one was right before my
+eyes, just as it always was. Of course, you must have read all about
+it, madam, and I am not going to tell it over again. But think of it; a
+grand old baronial mansion, part of it built as far back as the eleven
+hundreds, and yet in good condition and fit to live in. That is what I
+thought as I walked through its banqueting hall and courts and noble
+chambers. "Why," said I to Jone, "in that kitchen our meals could be
+cooked; at that table we could eat them; in these rooms we could sleep;
+in these gardens and courts we could roam; we could actually live
+here!" We haven't seen any other romance of the past that we could say
+that about, and to this minute it puzzles me how any duke in this world
+could be content to own a house like this and not live in it. But I
+suppose he thinks more of water-pipes and electric lights than he does
+of the memories of the past and time-hallowed traditions.
+
+As for me, if I had been Dorothy Vernon, there's no man on earth, not
+even Jone, that could make me run away from such a place as Haddon
+Hall. They show the stairs down which she tripped with her lover when
+they eloped; but if it had been me, it would have been up those stairs
+I would have gone. Mr. Poplington didn't agree a bit with me about the
+joy of living in this enchanting old house, and neither did Jone, I am
+sure, although he didn't say so much. But then, they are both men, and
+when it comes to soaring in the regions of romanticism you must not
+expect too much of men.
+
+After leaving Haddon Hall, which I did backward, the coach took us to
+Chatsworth, which is a different sort of a place altogether. It is a
+grand palace, at least it was built for one, but now it is an enormous
+show place, bright and clean and sleek, and when we got there we saw
+hundreds of visitors waiting to go in. They was taken through in squads
+of about fifty, with a man to lead them, which he did very much as if
+they was a drove of cattle.
+
+The man who led our squad made us step along lively, and I must say
+that never having been in a drove before, Jone and I began to get
+restive long before we got through. As for the show, I like the British
+Museum a great deal better. There is ever so much more to see there,
+and you have time to stop and look at things. At Chatsworth they charge
+you more, give you less, and treat you worse. When it came to taking us
+through the grounds, Jone and I struck. We left the gang we was with,
+and being shown where to find a gate out of the place, we made for that
+gate and waited until our coach was ready to take us back to Buxton.
+
+It is a lot of fun going to the theatre here. It doesn't cost much, and
+the plays are good and generally funny, and a rheumatic audience is a
+very jolly one. The people seemed glad to forget their backs, their
+shoulders, and their legs, and they are ready to laugh at things that
+are only half comic, and keep up a lively chattering between the acts.
+It's fun to see them when the play is over. The bath-chairs that have
+come after some of them are brought right into the building, and are
+drawn up just like carriages after the theatre. The first time we went I
+wanted Jone to stop a while and see if we didn't hear somebody call
+out, "Mrs. Barchester's bath-chair stops the way!" but he said I
+expected too much, and would not wait.
+
+We sit about so much in the gardens, which are lively when it is clear,
+and not bad even in a little drizzle, that we've got to know a good
+many of the people; and although Jone's a good deal given to reading, I
+like to sit and watch them and see what they are doing.
+
+When we first came here I noticed a good-looking young woman who was
+hauled about in a bath-chair, generally with an open book in her lap,
+which she never seemed to read much, because she was always gazing
+around as if she was looking for something. Before long I found out
+what she was looking for, for every day, sooner or later, generally
+sooner, there came along a bath-chair with a good-looking young man in
+it. He had a book in his lap too, but he was never reading it when I
+saw him, because he was looking for the young woman; and as soon as
+they saw each other they began to smile, and as they passed they always
+said something, but didn't stop. I wondered why they didn't give their
+pullers a rest and have a good talk if they knew each other, but before
+long I noticed not very far behind the young lady's bath-chair was
+always another bath-chair with an old gentleman in it with a
+bottle-nose. After a while I found out that this was the young lady's
+father, because sometimes he would call to her and have her stop, and
+then she generally seemed to get some sort of a scolding.
+
+Of course, when I see anything of this kind going on, I can't help
+taking one side or the other, and as you may well believe, madam, I
+wouldn't be likely to take that of the old bottle-nosed man's side. I
+had not been noticing these people for more than two or three days when
+one morning, when Jone and me was sitting under an umbrella, for there
+was a little more rain than common, I saw these two young people in
+their bath-chairs, coming along side by side, and talking just as hard
+as they could. At first I was surprised, but I soon saw how things was:
+the old gentleman couldn't come out in the rain. It was plain enough
+from the way these two young people looked at each other that they was
+in love, and although it most likely hurt them just as much to come out
+into the rain as it would the old man, love is all-powerful, even over
+rheumatism.
+
+Pretty soon the clouds cleared away without notice, as they do in this
+country, and it wasn't long before I saw, away off, the old man's
+bath-chair coming along lively. His bottle-nose was sticking up in the
+air, and he was looking from one side to the other as hard as he could.
+The two lovers had turned off to the right and gone over a little
+bridge and I couldn't see them; but by the way that old nose shook as
+it got nearer and nearer to me, I saw they had reason to tremble,
+though they didn't know it.
+
+When the old father reached the narrow path he did not turn down it,
+but kept straight on, and I breathed a sigh of deep relief. But the
+next instant I remembered that the broad path turned not far beyond,
+and that the little one soon ran into it, and so it could not be long
+before the father and the lovers would meet. I like to tell Jone
+everything I am going to do, when I am sure that he'll agree with me
+that it is right; but this time I could not bother with explanations,
+and so I just told him to sit still for a minute, for I wanted to see
+something, and I walked after the young couple as fast as I could. When
+I got to them, for they hadn't gone very far, I passed the young
+woman's bath-chair, and then I looked around and I said to her, "I beg
+your pardon, miss, but there is an old gentleman looking for you; but
+as I think he is coming round this way, you'll meet him if you keep on
+this path." "Oh, my!" said she unintentionally; and then she thanked me
+very much, and I went on and turned a corner and went back to Jone, and
+pretty soon the young man's bath-chair passed us going toward the
+gate, he looking three-quarters happy, and the other quarter
+disappointed, as lovers are if they don't get the whole loaf.
+
+From that day until yesterday, which was a full week, I came into the
+gardens every morning, sometimes even when Jone didn't want to come,
+because I wanted to see as much of this love business as I could. For
+my own use in thinking of them I named the young man Pomeroy and the
+young woman Angelica, and as for the father, I called him Snortfrizzle,
+being the worst name I could think of at the time. But I must wait
+until my next letter to tell you the rest of the story of the lovers,
+and I am sure you will be as much interested in them as I was.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Nineteen_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BUXTON
+
+I have a good many things to tell you, for we leave Buxton to-morrow,
+but I will first finish the story of Angelica and Pomeroy. I think the
+men who pulled the bath-chairs of the lovers knew pretty much how
+things was going, for whenever they got a chance they brought their
+chairs together, and I often noticed them looking out for the old
+father, and if they saw him coming they would move away from each other
+if they happened to be together.
+
+If Snortfrizzle's puller had been one of the regular bath-chair men
+they might have made an agreement with him so that he would have kept
+away from them; but he was a man in livery, with a high hat, who walked
+very regular, like a high-stepping horse, and who, it was plain enough
+to see, never had anything to do with common bath-chair men. Old
+Snortfrizzle seemed to be smelling a rat more and more--that is, if it
+is proper to liken Cupid to such an animal--and his nose seemed to get
+purpler and purpler. I think he would always have kept close to
+Angelica's chair if it hadn't been that he had a way of falling asleep,
+and whenever he did this his man always walked very slow, being
+naturally lazy. Two or three times I have seen Snortfrizzle wake up,
+shout to his man, and make him trot around a clump of trees and into
+some narrow path where he thought his daughter might have gone.
+
+Things began to look pretty bad, for the old man had very strong
+suspicions about Pomeroy, and was so very wide awake when he was awake,
+that I knew it couldn't be long before he caught the two together, and
+then I didn't believe that Angelica would ever come into these gardens
+again.
+
+It was yesterday morning that I saw old Snortfrizzle with his chin down
+on his shirt bosom, snoring so steady that his hat heaved, being very
+slowly pulled along a shady walk, and then I saw his daughter, who was
+not far ahead of him, turn into another walk, which led down by the
+river. I knew very well that she ought not to turn into that walk,
+because it didn't in any way lead to the place where Pomeroy was
+sitting in his bath-chair behind a great clump of bushes and flowers,
+with his face filled with the most lively emotions, but overspread
+ever and anon by a cloudlet of despair on account of the approach of
+the noontide hour, when Angelica and Snortfrizzle generally went home.
+
+[Illustration: "Your brother is over there"]
+
+The time was short, and I believed that love's young dream must be put
+off until the next day if Angelica could not be made aware where
+Pomeroy was sitting, or Pomeroy where Angelica was going; so I got
+right up and made a short cut down a steep little path, and, sure
+enough, I met her when I got to the bottom. "I beg your pardon very
+much, miss," said I, "but your brother is over there in the entrance to
+the cave, and I think he has been looking for you." "My brother?" said
+she, turning as red as her ribbons was blue. "Oh, thank you very much!
+Robertson, you may take me that way."
+
+It wasn't long before I saw those two bath-chairs alongside of each
+other, and covered from general observation by masses of blooming
+shrubbery. As I had been the cause of bringing them together I thought
+I had a right to look at them a little while, as that would be the only
+reward I'd be likely to get, and so I did it. It was as I thought;
+things was coming to a climax; the bath-chair men standing with much
+consideration with their backs to their vehicles, and, united for the
+time being by their clasped hands, the lovers grew tender to a degree
+which I would have fain checked, had I been nearer, for fear of notice
+by passers-by.
+
+But now my blood froze within my veins. I would never have believed
+that a man in a high hat and livery a size too small for him could run,
+but Snortfrizzle's man did, and at a pace which ought to have been
+prohibited by law. I saw him coming from an unsuspected quarter, and
+swoop around that clump of flowers and foliage. Regardless of
+consequences I approached nearer. There was loud voices; there was
+exclamations; there was a rattling of wheels; there was the sundering
+of tender ties!
+
+In a moment Pomeroy, who had backed off but a little way, began to
+speak, but his voice was drowned in the thunder of Snortfrizzle's
+denunciations. Angelica wept, and her head fell upon her lovely bosom,
+and I am sure I heard her implore her man to remove her from the scene.
+Pomeroy remained, his face firm, his eyes undaunted, but Snortfrizzle
+shook his fist in unison with his nose, and, hurling an anathema at
+him, followed his daughter, probably to incarcerate her in her
+apartments.
+
+All was over, and I returned to Jone with a heavy heart and faltering
+step. I could not but feel that I had brought about the sad end of this
+tender chapter in the lives of Pomeroy and Angelica. If I had let them
+alone they would not have met and they would not have been discovered
+together. I didn't tell Jone what had happened, because he does not
+always sympathize with me in my interest in others, and for hours my
+heart was heavy.
+
+It was about a half an hour before dinner that day when I thought that
+a little walk might raise my spirits, and I wandered into the gardens,
+for which we each have a weekly ticket, and there, to my amazement, not
+far from the gate I saw Angelica in tears and her bath-chair. Her man
+was not with her, and she was alone. When she saw me she looked at me
+for a minute, and then she beckoned to me to come to her. I flew. There
+were but few people in the gardens, and we was alone.
+
+"Madam," said she, "I think you must be very kind. I believe you knew
+that gentleman was not my brother. He is not."
+
+"My dear miss," said I--I was almost on the point of calling her
+Angelica--"I knew that. I know that he is something nearer and dearer
+than even a brother."
+
+She blushed. "Yes," said she, "you are right, and we are in great
+trouble."
+
+"Oh, what is it? Tell me quick. What can I do to help you?"
+
+"My father is very angry," said she, "and has forbidden me ever to see
+him again, and he is going to take me home to-morrow. But we have
+agreed to fly together to-day. It is our only chance, but he is not
+here. Oh, dear! I do not know what I shall do."
+
+"Where are you going to fly to?" said I.
+
+"We want to take the Edinburgh train this evening if there is one," she
+said, "and we get off at Carlisle, and from there it is only a little
+way to Gretna Green."
+
+"Gretna Green!" I cried. "Oh, I will help you! I will help you! Why
+isn't the gentleman here, and where has he gone?"
+
+"He has gone to see about the trains," she said, almost crying, "and I
+don't see what keeps him. I could not get away until father went into
+his room to dress for dinner, and as soon as he is ready he will call
+for me. Where can he be? I have sent my man to look for him."
+
+"Oh, I'll go look for him! You wait here," I cried, forgetting that
+she would have to, and away I went.
+
+As I was hurrying out of the gates of the gardens I looked in the
+direction of the railroad station, and there I saw Pomeroy pulled by
+one bath-chair man and the other one talking to him. In twenty bounds I
+reached him. "Go back for your young lady," I cried to Robertson,
+Angelica's man, "and bring her here on the run. She sent me for you."
+Away went Robertson, and then I said to the astonished Pomeroy, "Sir,
+there is no time for explanations. Your lady-love will be with you in a
+minute. My husband and I are going to Edinburgh to-morrow, and I have
+looked up all the trains. There is one which leaves here at twenty
+minutes past six. If she comes soon you will have time to catch it.
+Have you your baggage ready?"
+
+He looked at me as if he wondered who on earth I was, but I am sure he
+saw my soul in my face and trusted me.
+
+"Yes," he said, "she has a little bag in her bath-chair, and mine is
+here."
+
+"Here she comes," said I, "and you must fly to the station."
+
+In a moment Angelica was with us, her face beaming with delight.
+
+"Oh, thank you, thank you!" she cried, but I would not listen to her
+gratitude. "Hurry!" I said, "or you will be too late. Joy go with
+you."
+
+They hastened off, and I walked back to the gardens. I looked at my
+watch, and to my horror I saw it was five minutes past six. Fifteen
+minutes left yet. Fifteen minutes in which they might be overtaken. I
+stopped for a moment irresolutely. What should I do? I thought of
+running after them to the station. I thought in some way I might help
+them--buy their tickets or do something. But while I was thinking I
+heard a rattle, and down the street came the man in livery, and
+Snortfrizzle's bottle-nose like a volcano behind him. The minute they
+reached me, and there was nobody else in the street, the old man
+shouted, "Hi! Have you seen two bath-chairs with a young man and a
+young woman in them?"
+
+I was on the point of saying No, but changed my mind like a flash. "Did
+the young lady wear a hat with blue ribbons?" I asked.
+
+"Yes!" he roared. "Which way did they go?"
+
+"And did the young man with her wear eyeglasses and a brown moustache?"
+
+"With her, was he?" screamed Snortfrizzle. "That's the rascal. Which
+way did they go? Tell me instantly."
+
+When I was a very little girl I knew an old woman who told me that if a
+person was really good at heart, the holy angels would allow that
+person, in the course of her life, twelve fibs without charge, provided
+they was told for the good of somebody and not to do harm. Now at
+such a moment as this I could not remember how many fibs of that kind I
+had left over to my credit, but I knew there must be at least one, and
+so I didn't hesitate a second. "They have gone to the Cat and Fiddle,"
+said I. "I heard them tell their bath-chair men so, as they urged them
+forward at the top of their speed. They stopped for a second here, sir,
+and I heard the gentleman send a cabman for a clergyman, post haste, to
+meet them at the Cat and Fiddle."
+
+[Illustration: TO THE CAT AND FIDDLE]
+
+If the sky had been lighted up by the eruption of Snortfrizzle's nose I
+should not have been surprised.
+
+"The fools! They can't! Cat and Fiddle! But they can't be half way
+there. Martin, to the Cat and Fiddle!"
+
+The man touched his hat. "But I couldn't do that, sir. I couldn't run
+to the Cat and Fiddle. It's long miles, sir. Shall I get a carriage?"
+
+"Carriage!" cried the old man, and then he began to look about him.
+
+Horror struck me. Perhaps they would go to the station for one! Just
+then a boy driving a pony and a grocery cart came up.
+
+"There you are, sir," I cried. "Hire that boy to tow you. Your butler
+can sit in the back of the cart and hold the handle of your bath-chair.
+It may take long to get a carriage, and the cart will go much faster.
+You may overtake them in a mile."
+
+Old Snortfrizzle never so much as thanked me or looked at me. He yelled
+to the boy in the cart, offered him ten shillings and sixpence to give
+him a tow, and in less time than I could take to write it, that flunky
+with a high hat was sitting in the tail of the cart, the pony was going
+at full gallop, and the old man's bath-chair was spinning on behind it
+at a great rate.
+
+I did not leave that spot--standing statue-like and looking along both
+roads--until I heard the rumble of the departing train, and then I
+repaired to the Old Hall, my soul uplifted. I found Jone in an awful
+fluster about my being out so late; but I do stay pretty late sometimes
+when I walk by myself, and so he hadn't anything new to say.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty_
+
+
+EDINBURGH
+
+We have been here five or six days now, but the first thing I must
+write is the rest of the story of the lovers. We left Buxton the next
+day after their flight, and I begged Jone to stop at Carlisle and let
+us make a little trip to Gretna Green. I wanted to see the place that
+has been such a well-spring of matrimonial joys, and besides, I thought
+we might find Pomeroy and Angelica still there.
+
+I had not seen old Snortfrizzle again, but late that night I had heard
+a row in the hotel, and I expect it was him back from the Cat and
+Fiddle. Whether he was inquiring for me or not I don't know, or what he
+was doing, or what he did.
+
+Jone thought I had done a good deal of meddling in other people's
+business, but he agreed to go to Gretna Green, and we got there in the
+afternoon. I left Jone to take a smoke at the station, because I
+thought this was a business it would be better for me to attend to
+myself, and I started off to look up the village blacksmith and ask him
+if he had lately wedded a pair; but, will you believe it, madam, I had
+not gone far on the main road of the village when, a little ahead of
+me, I saw two bath-chairs coming toward me, one of them pulled by
+Robertson, and the other by Pomeroy's man, and in these two chairs was
+the happy lovers, evidently Mr. and Mrs.! Their faces was filled with
+light enough to take a photograph, and I could almost see their hearts
+swelling with transcendent joy. I hastened toward them, and in an
+instant our hands was clasped as if we had been old friends.
+
+They told me their tale. They had reached the station in plenty of
+time, and Robertson had got a carriage for them, and he and the other
+man had gone with them third class, with the bath-chairs in the goods
+carriages. They had reached Gretna Green that morning, and had been
+married two hours. Then I told my tale. The eyes of both of them was
+dimmed with tears, hers the most, and again they clasped my hands.
+"Poor father," said Angelica, "I hope he didn't go all the way to the
+Cat and Fiddle, and that the night air didn't strike into his joints;
+but he cannot separate us now." And she looked confiding at the other
+bath-chair.
+
+"What are you going to do?" said I, and they said they had just been
+making plans. I saw, though, that their minds was in too exalted a
+state to do this properly for themselves, and so I reflected a minute.
+"How long have you been in Buxton?"
+
+"I have been there two weeks and two days," said she, "and my
+husband"--oh, the effulgence that filled her countenance as she said
+this--"has been there one day longer."
+
+"Then," said I, "my advice to you is to go back to Buxton and stay
+there five days, until you both have taken the waters and the baths for
+the full three weeks. It won't be much to bear the old gentleman's
+upbraiding for five days, and then, blessed with health and love, you
+can depart. No matter what you do afterward, I'd stick it out at Buxton
+for five days."
+
+"We'll do it," said they; and then, after more gratitude and
+congratulations, we parted.
+
+And now I must tell you about ourselves. When Jone had been three weeks
+at Buxton, and done all the things he ought to do, and hadn't done
+anything he oughtn't to do, he hadn't any more rheumatism in him than a
+squirrel that jumps from bough to bough. But will you believe it,
+madam, I had such a rheumatism in one side and one arm that it made me
+give little squeaks when I did up my back hair, and it all came from my
+taking the baths when there wasn't anything the matter with me; for I
+found out, but all too late, that while the waters of Buxton will cure
+rheumatism in people that's got it, they will bring it out in people
+who never had it at all. We was told that we ought not to do anything
+in the bathing line without the advice of a doctor; but those little
+tanks in the floors of the bathrooms, all lined with tiles and filled
+with warm, transparent water, that you went down into by marble steps,
+did seem so innocent, that I didn't believe there was no need in asking
+questions about them. Jone wanted me to stay three weeks longer until I
+was cured, but I wouldn't listen to that. I was wild to get to
+Scotland, and as my rheumatism did not hinder me from walking, I didn't
+mind what else it did.
+
+And there is another thing I must tell you. One day when I was sitting
+by myself on The Slopes waiting for Jone, about lunch time, and with a
+reminiscence floating through my mind of the Devonshire clotted cream
+of the past, never perhaps to return, I saw an elderly woman coming
+along, and when she got near she stopped and spoke. I knew her in an
+instant. She was the old body we met at the Babylon Hotel, who told us
+about the cottage at Chedcombe. I asked her to sit down beside me and
+talk, because I wanted to tell her what good times we had had, and how
+we liked the place, but she said she couldn't, as she was obliged to go
+on.
+
+"And did you like Chedcombe?" said she. "I hope you and your husband
+kept well."
+
+I said yes, except Jone's rheumatism, we felt splendid; for my aches
+hadn't come on then, and I was going on to gush about the lovely
+country she had sent us to, but she didn't seem to want to listen.
+
+"Really," said she, "and your husband had the rheumatism. It was a
+wise thing for you to come here. We English people have reason to be
+proud of our country. If we have our banes, we also have our antidotes;
+and it isn't every country that can say that, is it?"
+
+[Illustration: "And did you like Chedcombe?"]
+
+I wanted to speak up for America, and tried to think of some good
+antidote with the proper banes attached; but before I could do it she
+gave her head a little wag, and said, "Good morning; nice weather,
+isn't it?" and wobbled away. It struck me that the old body was a
+little lofty, and just then Mr. Poplington, who I hadn't noticed, came
+up.
+
+"Really," said he, "I didn't know you was acquainted with the
+Countess."
+
+"The which?" said I.
+
+"The Countess of Mussleby," said he, "that you was just talking to."
+
+"Countess!" I cried. "Why, that's the old person who recommended us to
+go to Chedcombe."
+
+"Very natural," said he, "for her to do that, for her estates lie south
+of Chedcombe, and she takes a great interest in the villages around
+about, and knows all the houses to let."
+
+I parted from him and wandered away, a sadness stealing o'er my soul.
+Gone with the recollections of the clotted cream was my visions of
+diamond tiaras, tossing plumes, and long folds of brocades and laces
+sweeping the marble floors of palaces. If ever again I read a novel
+with a countess in it, I shall see the edge of a yellow flannel
+petticoat and a pair of shoes like two horse-hair bags, which was the
+last that I saw of this thunderbolt into the middle of my visions of
+aristocracy.
+
+Jone and me got to like Buxton very much. We met many pleasant people,
+and as most of them had a chord in common, we was friendly enough. Jone
+said it made him feel sad in the smoking-room to see the men he'd got
+acquainted with get well and go home, but that's a kind of sadness that
+all parties can bear up under pretty well.
+
+I haven't said a word yet about Scotland, though we have been here a
+week, but I really must get something about it into this letter. I was
+saying to Jone the other day that if I was to meet a king with a crown
+on his head I am not sure that I should know that king if I saw him
+again, so taken up would I be with looking at his crown, especially if
+it had jewels in it such as I saw in the regalia at the Tower of
+London. Now Edinburgh seems to strike me in very much the same way.
+Prince Street is its crown, and whenever I think of this city it will
+be of this magnificent street and the things that can be seen from it.
+
+It is a great thing for a street to have one side of it taken away and
+sunk out of sight so that there is a clear view far and wide, and
+visitors can stand and look at nearly everything that is worth seeing
+in the whole town, as if they was in the front seats of the balcony in
+a theatre, and looking on the stage. You know I am very fond of the
+theatre, madam, but I never saw anything in the way of what they call
+spectacular representation that came near Edinburgh as seen from Prince
+Street.
+
+But as I said in one of my first letters, I am not going to write about
+things and places that you can get much better description of in books,
+and so I won't take up any time in telling how we stand at the window
+of our room at the Royal Hotel, and look out at the Old Town standing
+like a forest of tall houses on the other side of the valley, with the
+great castle perched up high above them, and all the hills and towers
+and the streets all spread out below us, with Scott's monument right in
+front, with everybody he ever wrote about standing on brackets, which
+stick out everywhere from the bottom up to the very top of the
+monument, which is higher than the tallest house, and looks like a
+steeple without a church to it. It is the most beautiful thing of the
+kind I ever saw, and I have made out, or think I have, nearly every one
+of the figures that's carved on it.
+
+I think I shall like the Scotch people very much, but just now there is
+one thing about them that stands up as high above their other good
+points as the castle does above the rest of the city, and that is the
+feeling they have for anybody who has done anything to make his
+fellow-countrymen proud of him. A famous Scotchman cannot die without
+being pretty promptly born again in stone or bronze, and put in some
+open place with seats convenient for people to sit and look at him. I
+like this; glory ought to begin at home.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-one_
+
+
+EDINBURGH
+
+Jone being just as lively on his legs as he ever was in his life,
+thanks to the waters of Buxton, and I having the rheumatism now only in
+my arm, which I don't need to walk with, we have gone pretty much all
+over Edinburgh, and a great place it is to walk in, so far as variety
+goes. Some of the streets are so steep you have to go up steps if you
+are walking, and about a mile around if you are driving. I never get
+tired wandering about the Old Town with its narrow streets and awfully
+tall houses, with family washes hanging out from every story.
+
+The closes are queer places. They are very like little villages set
+into the town as if they was raisins in a pudding. You get to them by
+alleys or tunnels, and when you are inside you find a little
+neighborhood that hasn't anything more to do with the next close, a
+block away, than one country village has with another.
+
+We went to see John Knox's house, and although Mr. Knox was pretty hard
+on vanities and frivolities, he didn't mind having a good house over
+his head, with woodwork on the walls and ceilings that wasn't any more
+necessary than the back buttons on his coat.
+
+We have been reading hard since we have been in Edinburgh, and whenever
+Mr. Knox and Mary Queen of Scots come together, I take Mary's side
+without asking questions. I have no doubt Mr. Knox was a good man, but
+if meddling in other people's business gave a person the right to have
+a monument, the top of his would be the first thing travellers would
+see when they come near Edinburgh.
+
+When we went to Holyrood Palace it struck me that Mary Queen of Scots
+deserved a better house. Of course, it wasn't built for her, but I
+don't care very much for the other people who lived in it. The rooms
+are good enough for an ordinary household's use, although the little
+room that she had her supper party in when Rizzio was killed, wouldn't
+be considered by Jone and me as anything like big enough for our family
+to eat in. But there is a general air about the place as if it belonged
+to a royal family that was not very well off, and had to abstain from a
+good deal of grandeur.
+
+If Mary Queen of Scots could come to life again, I expect the Scotch
+people would give her the best palace that money could buy, for they
+have grown to think the world of her, and her pictures blossom out all
+over Edinburgh like daisies in a pasture field.
+
+The first morning after we got here I was as much surprised as if I had
+met Mary Queen of Scots walking along Prince Street with a parasol over
+her head. We were sitting in the reading-room of the hotel, and on the
+other side of the room was a long desk at which people was sitting,
+writing letters, all with their backs to us. One of these was a young
+man wearing a nice light-colored sack coat, with a shiny white collar
+sticking above it, and his black derby hat was on the desk beside him.
+When he had finished his letter he put a stamp on it and got up to mail
+it. I happened to be looking at him, and I believe I stopped breathing
+as I sat and stared. Under his coat he had on a little skirt of green
+plaid about big enough for my Corinne when she was about five years
+old, and then he didn't wear anything whatever until you got down to
+his long stockings and low shoes. I was so struck with the feeling that
+he was an absent-minded person that I punched Jone and whispered to him
+to go quick and tell him. Jone looked at him and laughed, and said that
+was the Highland costume.
+
+Now if that man had had his martial plaid wrapped around him, and had
+worn a Scottish cap with a feather in it and a long ribbon hanging down
+his back, with his claymore girded to his side, I wouldn't have been
+surprised; for this is Scotland, and that would have been like the
+pictures I have seen of Highlanders. But to see a man with the upper
+half of him dressed like a clerk in a dry goods store and the lower
+half like a Highland chief, was enough to make a stranger gasp.
+
+[Illustration: "Jone looked at him and said that was the Highland
+costume."]
+
+But since then I have seen a good many young men dressed that way. I
+believe it is considered the tip of the fashion. I haven't seen any of
+the bare-legged dandies yet with a high silk hat and an umbrella, but I
+expect it won't be long before I meet one. We often see the Highland
+soldiers that belong to the garrison at the castle, and they look
+mighty fine with their plaid shawls and their scarfs and their
+feathers; but to see a man who looks as if one half of him belonged to
+London Bridge and the other half to the Highland moors, does look to
+me like a pretty bad mixture.
+
+I am not so sure, either, that the whole Highland dress isn't better
+suited to Egypt, where it doesn't often rain, than to Scotland. Last
+Saturday we was at St. Giles's Church, and the man who took us around
+told us we ought to come early next morning and see the military
+service, which was something very fine; and as Jone gave him a shilling
+he said he would be on hand and watch for us, and give us a good place
+where we could see the soldiers come in. On Sunday morning it rained
+hard, but we was both at the church before eight o'clock, and so was a
+good many other people, but the doors was shut and they wouldn't let us
+in. They told us it was such a bad morning that the soldiers could not
+come out, and so there would be no military service that day. I don't
+know whether those fine fellows thought that the colors would run out
+of their beautiful plaids, or whether they would get rheumatism in
+their knees; but it did seem to me pretty hard that soldiers could not
+come out in the weather that lots of common citizens didn't seem to
+mind at all. I was a good deal put out, for I hate to get up early for
+nothing, but there was no use saying anything, and all we could do was
+to go home, as all the other people with full suits of clothes did.
+
+Jone and I have got so much more to see before we go home, that it is
+very well we are both able to skip around lively. Of course there are
+ever and ever so many places that we want to go to, but can't do it,
+but I am bound to see the Highlands and the country of the "Lady of the
+Lake." We have been reading up Walter Scott, and I think more than I
+ever did that he is perfectly splendid. While we was in Edinburgh we
+felt bound to go and see Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford. I shall not say
+much about these two places, but I will say that to go into Sir Walter
+Scott's library and sit in the old armchair he used to sit in, at the
+desk he used to write on, and see his books and things around me, gave
+me more a feeling of reverentialism than I have had in any cathedral
+yet.
+
+As for Melrose Abbey, I could have walked about under those towering
+walls and lovely arches until the stars peeped out from the lofty
+vaults above; but Jone and the man who drove the carriage were of a
+different way of thinking, and we left all too soon. But one thing I
+did do: I went to the grave of Michael Scott the wizard, where once was
+shut up the book of awful mysteries, with a lamp always burning by it,
+though the flagstone was shut down tight on top of it, and I got a
+piece of moss and a weed. We don't do much in the way of carrying off
+such things, but I want Corinne to read the "Lady of the Lake," and
+then I shall give her that moss and that weed, and tell where I got
+them. I believe that, in the way of romantics, Corinne is going to be
+more like me than like Jone.
+
+To-morrow we go to the Highlands, and we shall leave our two big trunks
+in the care of the man in the red coat, who is commander-in-chief at
+the Royal Hotel, and who said he would take as much care of them as if
+they was two glass jars filled with rubies; and we believed him, for he
+has done nothing but take care of us since we came to Edinburgh, and
+good care, too.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-two_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+KINLOCH RANNOCH.
+
+It happened that the day we went north was a very fine one, and as soon
+as we got into the real Highland country there was nothing to hinder me
+from feeling that my feet was on my native heath, except that I was in
+a railway carriage, and that I had no Scotch blood in me, but the joy
+of my soul was all the same. There was an old gentleman got into our
+carriage at Perth, and when he saw how we was taking in everything our
+eyes could reach, for Jone is a good deal more fired up by travel than
+he used to be--I expect it must have been the Buxton waters that made
+the change--he began to tell us all about the places we were passing
+through. There didn't seem to be a rock or a stream that hadn't a bit
+of history to it for that old gentleman to tell us about.
+
+We got out at a little town called Struan, and then we took a carriage
+and drove across the wild moors and hills for thirteen miles till we
+came to this village at the end of Loch Rannoch. The wind blew strong
+and sharp, but we knew what we had to expect, and had warm clothes on.
+And with the cool breeze, and remembering "Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace
+bled," it made my blood tingle all the way.
+
+We are going to stay here at least a week. We shall not try to do
+everything that can be done on Scottish soil, for we shall not stalk
+stags or shoot grouse; and I have told Jone that he may put on as many
+Scotch bonnets and plaids as he likes, but there is one thing he is not
+going to do, and that is to go bare-kneed, to which he answered, he
+would never do that unless he could dip his knees into weak coffee so
+that they would be the same color as his face.
+
+There is a nice inn here with beautiful scenery all around, and the
+lovely Loch Rannoch stretches away for eleven miles. Everything is just
+as Scotch as it can be. Even the English people who come here put on
+knickerbockers and bonnets. I have never been anywhere else where it is
+considered the correct thing to dress like the natives, and I will say
+here that it is very few of the natives that wear kilts. That sort of
+thing seems to be given up to the fancy Highlanders.
+
+Nearly all the talk at the inn is about, shooting and fishing.
+Stag-hunting here is very different from what it is in England in more
+ways than one. In the first place, stags are not hunted with horses and
+hounds. In the second place, the sport is not free. A gentleman here
+told Jone that if a man wanted to shoot a stag on these moors it would
+cost him one rifle cartridge and six five pound notes; and when Jone
+did not understand what that meant, the man went on and told him about
+how the deer-stalking was carried on here. He said that some of the big
+proprietors up here owned as much as ninety thousand acres of moorland,
+and they let it out mostly to English people for hunting and fishing.
+And if it is stag-hunting the tenant wants, the price he pays is
+regulated by the number of stags he has the privilege of shooting. Each
+stag he is allowed to kill costs him thirty pounds. So if he wants the
+pleasure of shooting thirty stags in the season, his rent will be nine
+hundred pounds. This he pays for the stag-shooting, but some kind of a
+house and about ten thousand acres are thrown in, which he has a
+perfect right to sit down on and rest himself on, but he can't shoot a
+grouse on it unless he pays extra for that. And, what is more, if he
+happens to be a bad shot, or breaks his leg and has to stay in the
+house, and doesn't shoot his thirty stags, he has got to pay for them
+all the same.
+
+When Jone told me all this, I said I thought a hundred and fifty
+dollars a pretty high price to pay for the right to shoot one deer. But
+Jone said I didn't consider all the rest the man got. In the first
+place, he had the right to get up very early in the morning, in the
+gloom and drizzle, and to trudge through the slop and the heather until
+he got far away from the neighborhood of any human being, and then he
+could go up on some high piece of ground and take a spyglass and search
+the whole country round for a stag. When he saw one way off in the
+distance snuffing the morning air, or hunting for his breakfast among
+the heather, he had the privilege of walking two or three miles over
+the moor so as to get that stag between the wind and himself, so that
+it could not scent him or hear him. Then he had the glorious right to
+get his rifle all ready, and steal and creep toward that stag to cut
+short his existence. He has to be as careful and as sneaky as if he was
+a snake in the grass, going behind little hills and down into gullies,
+and sometimes almost crawling on his stomach where he goes over an open
+place, and doing everything he can to keep that stag from knowing his
+end is near. Sometimes he follows his victim all day, and the sun goes
+down before he has the glorious right of standing up and lodging a
+bullet in its unsuspecting heart. "So you see," said Jone, "he gets a
+lot for his hundred and fifty dollars."
+
+"They do get a good deal more for their money than I thought they did,"
+said I; "but I wonder if those rich sportsmen ever think that if they
+would take the money that they pay for shooting thirty or forty stags
+in one season, they might buy a rhinoceros, which they could set up on
+a hill and shoot at every morning if they liked. A game animal like
+that would last them for years, and if they ever felt like it, they
+could ask their friends to help them shoot without costing them
+anything."
+
+Jone is pretty hard on sport with killing in it. He does not mind
+eating meat, but he likes to have the butcher do the killing. But I
+reckon he is a little too tender-hearted. But, as for me, I like sport
+of some kinds, especially when you don't have your pity or your
+sympathies awakened by seeing your prey enjoying life when you are
+seeking to encompass his end. Of course, by that I mean fishing.
+
+There are a good many trout in the lake, and people can hire the
+privilege of fishing for them; and I begged Jone to let me go out in a
+boat and fish. He was rather in favor of staying ashore and fishing in
+the little river, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go out and
+have some regular lake fishing. At last Jone agreed, provided I would
+not expect him to have anything to do with the fishing. "Of course I
+don't expect anything like that," said I; "and it would be a good deal
+better for you to stay on shore. The landlord says a gilly will go
+along to row the boat and attend to the lines and rods and all that,
+and so there won't be any need for you at all, and you can stay on
+shore with your book, and watch if you like."
+
+"And suppose you tumble overboard," said Jone.
+
+"Then you can swim out," I said, "and perhaps wade a good deal of the
+way. I don't suppose we need go far from the bank."
+
+Jone laughed, and said he was going too.
+
+"Very well," said I; "but you have got to stay in the bow, with your
+back to me, and take an interesting book with you, for it is a long
+time since I have done any fishing, and I am not going to do it with
+two men watching me and telling me how I ought to do it and how I
+oughtn't to. One will be enough."
+
+"And that one won't be me," said Jone, "for fishing is not one of the
+branches I teach in my school."
+
+I would have liked it better if Jone and me had gone alone, he doing
+nothing but row; but the landlord wouldn't let his boat that way, and
+said we must take a gilly, which, as far as I can make out, is a sort
+of sporting farmhand. That is the way to do fishing in these parts.
+
+Well, we started, and Jone sat in the front, with his back to me, and
+the long-legged gilly rowed like a good fellow. When we got to a good
+place to fish he stopped, and took a fishing-rod that was in pieces and
+screwed them together, and fixed the line all right so that it would
+run along the rod to a little wheel near the handle, and then he put on
+a couple of hooks with artificial flies on them, which was so small I
+couldn't imagine how the fish could see them. While he was doing all
+this I got a little fidgety, because I had never fished except with a
+straight pole and line with a cork to it, which would bob when the fish
+bit; but this was altogether a different sort of a thing. When it was
+all ready he handed me the pole, and then sat down very polite to look
+at me.
+
+Now, if he had handed me the rod, and then taken another boat and gone
+home, perhaps I might have known what to do with the thing after a
+while, but I must say that at that minute I didn't. I held the rod out
+over the water and let the flies dangle down into it, but do what I
+would, they wouldn't sink; there wasn't weight enough on them.
+
+"You must throw your fly, madam," said the gilly, always very polite.
+"Let me give it a throw for you," and then he took the rod in his hand
+and gave it a whirl and a switch which sent the flies out ever so far
+from the boat; then he drew it along a little, so that the flies
+skipped over the top of the water.
+
+[Illustration: "I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, AND TAKING THE POLE IN BOTH
+HANDS I GAVE IT A WILD TWIRL OVER MY HEAD"]
+
+I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
+wild twirl over my head, and then it flew out as if I was trying to
+whip one of the leaders in a four-horse team. As I did this Jone gave a
+jump that took him pretty near out of the boat, for two flies swished
+just over the bridge of his nose, and so close to his eyes as he was
+reading an interesting dialogue, and not thinking of fish or even of
+me, that he gave a jump sideways, which, if it hadn't been for the
+gilly grabbing him, would have taken him overboard. I was frightened
+myself, and said to him that I had told him he ought not to come in the
+boat, and it would have been a good deal better for him to have stayed
+on shore.
+
+He didn't say anything, but I noticed he turned up his collar and
+pulled down his hat over his eyes and ears. The gilly said that perhaps
+I had too much line out, and so he took the rod and wound up a good
+deal of the line. I liked this better, because it was easier to whip
+out the line and pull it in again. Of course, I would not be likely to
+catch fish so much nearer the boat, but then we can't have everything
+in this world. Once I thought I had a bite, and I gave the rod such a
+jerk that the line flew back against me, and when I was getting ready
+to throw it out again, I found that one of the little hooks had stuck
+fast in my thumb. I tried to take it out with the other hand, but it
+was awfully awkward to do, because the rod wobbled and kept jerking on
+it. The gilly asked me if there was anything the matter with the flies,
+but I didn't want him to know what had happened, and so I said, "Oh,
+no," and turning my back on him I tried my best to get the hook out
+without his helping me, for I didn't want him to think that the first
+thing I caught was myself, after just missing my husband--he might be
+afraid it would be his turn next. You cannot imagine how bothersome it
+is to go fishing with a gilly to wait on you. I would rather wash
+dishes with a sexton to wipe them and look for nicks on the edges.
+
+At last--and I don't know how it happened--I did hook a fish, and the
+minute I felt him I gave a jerk, and up he came. I heard the gilly say
+something about playing, but I was in no mood for play, and if that
+fish had been shot up out of the water by a submarine volcano it
+couldn't have ascended any quicker than when I jerked it up. Then as
+quick as lightning it went whirling through the air, struck the pages
+of Jone's book, turning over two or three of them, and then wiggled
+itself half way down Jone's neck, between his skin and his collar,
+while the loose hook swung around and nipped him in his ear.
+
+"Don't pull, madam," shouted the gilly, and it was well he did, for I
+was just on the point of giving an awful jerk to get the fish loose
+from Jone. Jone gave a grab at the fish, which was trying to get down
+his back, and pulling him out threw him down; but by doing this he
+jerked the other hook into his ear, and then a yell arose such as I
+never before heard from Jone. "I told you you ought not to come in this
+boat," said I; "you don't like fishing, and something is always
+happening to you."
+
+"Like fishing!" cried Jone. "I should say not," and he made up such a
+comical face that even the gilly, who was very polite, had to laugh as
+he went to take the hook out of his ear.
+
+When Jone and the fish had been got off my line, Jone turned to me and
+said, "Are you going to fish any more?"
+
+"Not with you in the boat," I answered; and then he said he was glad to
+hear that, and told the man he could row us ashore.
+
+I can assure you, madam, that fishing in a rather wobbly boat with a
+husband and a gilly in it, is not to my taste, and that was the end of
+our sporting experiences in Scotland, but it did not end the glorious
+times we had by that lake and on the moors.
+
+We hired a little pony trap and drove up to the other end of the lake,
+and not far beyond that is the beginning of Rannoch Moor, which the
+books say is one of the wildest and most desolate places in all Europe.
+So far as we went over the moor we found that this was truly so, and I
+know that I, at least, enjoyed it ever so much more because it was so
+wild and desolate. As far as we could see, the moors stretched away in
+every direction, covered in most places by heather, now out of blossom,
+but with great rocks standing out of the ground in some places, and
+here and there patches of grass. Sometimes we could see four or five
+lochs at once, some of them two or three miles long, and down through
+the middle of the moor came the maddest and most harum-scarum little
+river that could be imagined. It actually seemed to go out of its way
+to find rocks to jump over, just as if it was a young calf, and some of
+the waterfalls were beautiful. All around us was melancholy mountains,
+all of them with "Ben" for their first names, except Schiehallion,
+which was the best shaped of any of them, coming up to a point and
+standing by itself, which was what I used to think mountains always
+did; but now I know they run into each other so that you can hardly
+tell where one ends and the other begins.
+
+For three or four days we went out on these moors, sometimes when the
+sun was shining, and sometimes when there was a heavy rain and the wind
+blew gales, and I think I liked this last kind of weather the best, for
+it gave me an idea of lonely desolation which I never had in any part
+of the world I have ever been in before. There is often not a house to
+be seen, not even a crofter's hut, and we seldom met anybody. Sometimes
+I wandered off by myself behind a hillock or rocks where I could not
+even see Jone, and then I used to try to imagine how Eve would have
+felt if she had early become a widow, and to put myself in her place.
+There was always clouds in the sky, sometimes dark and heavy ones
+coming down to the very peaks of the mountains, and not a tree was to
+be seen, except a few rowan trees or bushes close to the river. But by
+the side of Lock Rannoch, on our way back to the village, we passed
+along the edge of a fine old forest called the "Black Woods of
+Rannoch." There are only three of these ancient forests left in
+Scotland, and some of the trees in this one are said to be eight
+hundred years old.
+
+[Illustration: Pomona drinking it in]
+
+The last time we was out on the Rannoch Moor there was such a savage
+and driving wind, and the rain came down in such torrents, that my
+mackintosh was blown nearly off of me, and I was wet from my head to my
+heels. But I would have stayed out hours longer if Jone had been
+willing, and I never felt so sorry to leave these Grampian Hills, where
+I would have been glad to have had my father feed his flocks, and where
+I might have wandered away my childhood, barefooted over the heather,
+singing Scotch songs and drinking in deep draughts of the pure mountain
+air, instead of--but no matter.
+
+To-morrow we leave the Highlands, but as we go to follow the shallop of
+the "Lady of the Lake," I should not repine.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-three_
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+OBAN, SCOTLAND
+
+It would seem to be the easiest thing in the world, when looking on the
+map, to go across the country from Loch Rannoch over to Katrine and all
+those celebrated parts, but we found we could not go that way, and so
+we went back to Edinburgh and made a fresh start. We stopped one night
+at the Royal Hotel, and there we found a letter from Mr. Poplington. We
+had left him at Buxton, and he said he was not going to Scotland this
+season, but would try to see us in London before we sailed.
+
+He is a good man, and he wrote this letter on purpose to tell me that
+he had had a letter from his friend, the clergyman in Somersetshire,
+who had forbidden the young woman whose wash my tricycle had run into
+to marry her lover because he was a Radical. This letter was in answer
+to one Mr. Poplington wrote to him, in which he gave the minister my
+reasons for thinking that the best way to convert the young man from
+Radicalism was to let him marry the young woman, who would be sure to
+bring him around to her way of thinking, whatever that might be.
+
+I didn't care about the Radicalism. All I wanted was to get the two
+married, and then it would not make the least difference to me what
+their politics might be; if they lived properly and was sober and
+industrious and kept on loving each other, I didn't believe it would
+make much difference to them. It was a long letter that the clergyman
+wrote, but the point of it was, that he had concluded to tell the young
+woman that she might marry the fellow if she liked, and that she must
+do her best to make him a good Conservative, which, of course, she
+promised to do. When I read this I clapped my hands, for who could have
+suspected that I should have the good luck to come to this country to
+spend the summer and make two matches before I left it!
+
+When we left Edinburgh to gradually wend our way to this place, which
+is on the west coast of Scotland, the first town we stopped at was
+Stirling, where the Scotch kings used to live. Of course we went to the
+castle, which stands on the rocks high above the town; but before we
+started to go there Jone inquired if the place was a ruin or not, and
+when he was told it was not, and that soldiers lived there, he said it
+was all right, and we went. He now says he must positively decline to
+visit any more houses out of repair. He is tired of them; and since he
+has got over his rheumatism he feels less like visiting ruins than he
+ever did. I tell him the ruins are not any more likely to be damp than
+a good many of the houses that people live in; but this didn't shake
+him, and I suppose if we come to any more vine-covered and shattered
+remnants of antiquity I shall be obliged to go over them by myself.
+
+The castle is a great place, which I wouldn't have missed for the
+world; but the spot that stirred my soul the most was in a little
+garden, as high in the air as the top of a steeple, where we could look
+out over the battlefield of Bannockburn. Besides this, we could see the
+mountains of Ben-Lomond, Ben-Venue, Ben-A'an, Benledi, and ever so much
+Scottish landscape spreading out for miles upon miles. There is a
+little hole in the wall here called the Ladies' Look-Out, where the
+ladies of the court could sit and see what was going on in the country
+below without being seen themselves, but I stood up and took in
+everything over the top of the wall.
+
+I don't know whether I told you that the mountains of Scotland are
+"Bens," and the mouths of rivers are "abers," and islands are
+"inches." Walking about the streets of Stirling, and I didn't have time
+to see half as much as I wanted to, I came to the shop of a "flesher."
+I didn't know what it was until I looked into the window and saw that
+it was a butcher shop.
+
+I like a language just about as foreign as the Scotch is. There are a
+good many words in it that people not Scotch don't understand, but that
+gives a person the feeling that she is travelling abroad, which I want
+to have when I am abroad. Then, on the other hand, there are not enough
+of them to hinder a traveller from making herself understood. So it is
+natural for me to like it ever so much better than French, in which,
+when I am in it, I simply sink to the bottom if no helping hand is held
+out to me.
+
+I had some trouble with Jone that night at the hotel, because he had a
+novel which he had been reading for I don't know how long, and which he
+said he wanted to get through with before he began anything else. But
+now I told him he was going to enter on the wonderful country of the
+"Lady of the Lake," and that he ought to give up everything else and
+read that book, because if he didn't go there with his mind prepared
+the scenery would not sink into his soul as it ought to. He was of the
+opinion that when my romantic feeling got on top of the scenery it
+would be likely to sink into his soul as deep as he cared to have it,
+without any preparation, but that sort of talk wouldn't do for me. I
+didn't want to be gliding o'er the smooth waters of Loch Katrine, and
+have him asking me who the girl was who rowed her shallop to the silver
+strand, and the end of it was that I made him sit up until a quarter of
+two o'clock in the morning while I read the "Lady of the Lake" to him.
+I had read it before and he had not, but I hadn't got a quarter through
+before he was just as willing to listen as I was to read. And when I
+got through I was in such a glow that Jone said he believed that all
+the blood in my veins had turned to hot Scotch.
+
+I didn't pay any attention to this, and after going to the window and
+looking out at the Gaelic moon, which was about half full and rolling
+along among the clouds, I turned to Jone and said, "Jone, let's sing
+'Scots wha ha',' before we go to bed."
+
+"If we do roar out that thing," said Jone, "they will put us out on the
+curbstone to spend the rest of the night."
+
+"Let's whisper it, then," said I; "the spirit of it is all I want. I
+don't care for the loudness."
+
+"I'd be willing to do that," said Jone, "if I knew the tune and a few
+of the words."
+
+"Oh, bother!" said I; and when I got into bed I drew the clothes over
+my head and sang that brave song all to myself. Doing it that way the
+words and tune didn't matter at all, but I felt the spirit of it, and
+that was all I wanted, and then I went to sleep.
+
+The next morning we went to Callander by train, and there we took a
+coach for Trossachs. It is hardly worth while to say we went on top,
+because the coaches here haven't any inside to them, except a hole
+where they put the baggage. We drove along a beautiful road with
+mountains and vales and streams, and the driver told us the name of
+everything that had a name, which he couldn't help very well, being
+asked so constant by me. But I didn't feel altogether satisfied, for we
+hadn't come to anything quotable, and I didn't like to have Jone sit
+too long without something happening to stir up some of the "Lady of
+the Lake" which I had pumped into his mind the day before, and so keep
+it fresh.
+
+Before long, however, the driver pointed out the ford of Coilantogle.
+The instant he said this I half jumped up, and, seizing Jone by the
+arm, I cried, "Don't you remember? This is the place where the Knight
+of Snowdoun, James Fitz-James, fought Roderick Dhu!" And then without
+caring who else heard me, I burst out with:
+
+    "'His back against a rock he bore,
+      And firmly placed his foot before:
+      "Come one, come all! This rock shall fly
+      From its firm base as soon as I."'"
+
+"No, madam," said the driver, politely touching his hat, "that was a
+mile farther on. This place is:
+
+    "'And here his course the chieftain staid,
+      Threw down his target and his plaid.'"
+
+"You are right," said I; and then I began again:
+
+    "'Then each at once his falchion drew,
+      Each on the ground his scabbard threw,
+      Each look'd to sun, and stream, and plain,
+      As what they ne'er might see again;
+      Then foot, and point, and eye opposed,
+      In dubious strife they darkly closed.'"
+
+I didn't repeat any more of the poem, though everybody was listening
+quite respectful without thinking of laughing, and as for Jone, I could
+see by the way he sat and looked about him that his tinder had caught
+my spark; but I knew that the thing for me to do here was not to give
+out but take in, and so, to speak in figures, I drank in the whole of
+Lake Vannachar, as we drove along its lovely marge until we came to the
+other end, and the driver said we would now go over the Brigg of Turk.
+At this up I jumped and said:
+
+    "'And when the Brigg of Turk was won,
+      The headmost horseman rode alone.'"
+
+I had sense enough not to quote the next two lines, because when I had
+read them to Jone he said that it was a shame to use a horse that way.
+
+We now came to Loch Achray, at the other end of which is the
+Trossachs, where we stopped for the night, and when the driver told me
+the mountain we saw before us was Ben-Venue, I repeated the lines:
+
+    "'The hunter marked that mountain high,
+      The lone lake's western boundary,
+      And deem'd the stag must turn to bay,
+      Where that huge rampart barr'd the way.'"
+
+At last we reached the Trossachs Hotel, which stands near the wild
+ravines filled with bristling woods where the stag was lost, with the
+lovely lake in front and Ben-Venue towering up on the other side. I was
+so excited I could scarcely eat, and no wonder, because for the greater
+part of the day I had breathed nothing but the spirit of Scott's
+poetry. I forgot to say that from the time we left Callander until we
+got to the hotel the rain poured down steadily, but that didn't make
+any difference to me. A human being soaked with the "Lady of the Lake"
+is rain-proof.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-four_
+
+
+EDINBURGH
+
+I was sorry to stop my last letter right in the middle of the "Lady of
+the Lake" country, but I couldn't get it all in, and the fact is, I
+can't get all I want to say in any kind of a letter. The things I have
+seen and want to write about are crowded together like the Scottish
+mountains.
+
+On the day after we got to Trossachs Hotel, and I don't know any place
+I would rather spend weeks at than there, Jone and I walked through the
+"darksome glen" where the stag,
+
+    "Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken,
+     In the deep Trossachs' wildest nook
+     His solitary refuge took."
+
+And then we came out on the far-famed Loch Katrine. There was a little
+steamboat there to take passengers to the other end, where a coach was
+waiting, but it wasn't time for that to start, and we wandered on the
+banks of that song-gilded piece of water. It didn't lie before us like
+"one burnished sheet of living gold," as it appeared to James
+Fitz-James but my soul could supply the sunset if I chose. There, too,
+was the island of the fair Ellen, and beneath our very feet was the
+"silver strand" to which she rowed her shallop. I am sorry to say there
+isn't so much of the silver strand as there used to be, because, in
+this world, as I have read, and as I have seen, the spirit of
+realistics is always crowding and trampling on the toes of the
+romantics, and the people of Glasgow have actually laid water-pipes
+from their town to this lovely lake, and now they turn the faucets in
+their back kitchens and out spouts the tide which kissed
+
+    "With whispering sound and slow
+     The beach of pebbles bright as snow."
+
+This wouldn't have been so bad, because the lake has enough and to
+spare of its limpid wave; but in order to make their water-works the
+Glasgow people built a dam, and that has raised the lake a good deal
+higher, so that it overflows ever so much of the silver strand. But I
+can pick out the real from a scene like that as I can pick out and
+throw away the seeds of an orange, and gazing o'er that enchanted scene
+I felt like the Knight of Snowdoun himself, when he first beheld the
+lake and said:
+
+    "How blithely might the bugle horn
+     Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn!"
+
+and then I went on with the lines until I came to
+
+    "Blithe were it then to wander here!
+     But now--beshrew yon nimble deer"--
+
+"You'd better beshrew that steamboat bell," said Jone, and away we went
+and just caught the boat. Realistics come in very well sometimes when
+they take the form of legs.
+
+The steamboat took us over nearly the whole of Lake Katrine, and I must
+say that I was so busy fitting verses to scenery that I don't remember
+whether it rained or the sun shone. When we left the boat we took a
+coach to Inversnaid on Loch Lomond, and, as we rode along, it made my
+heart almost sink to feel that I had to leave my poetry behind me, for
+I didn't know any that suited this region. But when we got in sight of
+Loch Lomond a Scotch girl who was on the seat behind me, and had
+several friends with her, began to sing a song about Lomond, of which I
+only remember, "You take the high road and I'll take the low road, and
+I'll get to Scotland afore you."
+
+I am sure I must have Scotch blood in me, for when I heard that song it
+wound up my feelings to such a pitch that I believe if that girl had
+been near enough I should have given her a hug and a kiss. As for Jone,
+he seemed to be nearly as much touched as I was, though not in the same
+way, of course.
+
+We took a boat on Loch Lomond to Ardlui, another little town, and then
+we drove nine miles to the railroad. This was through a wild and solemn
+valley, and by the side of a rushing river, full of waterfalls and deep
+and diresome pools. When we reached the railroad we found a train
+waiting, and we took it and went to Oban, which we reached about six
+o'clock. Even this railroad trip was delightful, for we went by the
+great Lake Awe, with another rushing river and mountains and black
+precipices. We had a carriage all to ourselves until an old lady got in
+at a station, and she hadn't been sitting in her corner more than ten
+minutes before she turned to me and said:
+
+"You haven't any lakes like this in your country, I suppose."
+
+Now I must say that, in the heated condition I had been in ever since I
+came into Scotland, a speech like that was like a squirt of cold water
+into a thing full of steam. For a couple of seconds my boiling stopped,
+but my fires was just as blazing as ever, and I felt as if I could turn
+them on that old woman and shrivel her up for plastering her
+comparisons on me at such a time.
+
+"Of course, we haven't anything just like this," I said, "but it takes
+all sorts of scenery to make up a world."
+
+"That's very true, isn't it?" said she. "But, really, one couldn't
+expect in America such a lake as that, such mountains, such grandeur!"
+
+Now I made up my mind if she was going to keep up this sort of thing
+Jone and me would change carriages when we stopped at the next station,
+for comparisons are very different from poetry, and if you try to mix
+them with scenery you make a mess that is not fit for a Christian. But
+I thought first I would give her a word back:
+
+"I have seen to-day," I said, "the loveliest scenery I ever met with;
+but we've got grand canons in America where you could put the whole of
+that scenery without crowding, and where it wouldn't be much noticed by
+spectators, so busy would they be gazing at the surrounding wonders."
+
+"Fancy!" said she.
+
+"I don't want to say anything," said I, "against what I have seen
+to-day, and I don't want to think of anything else while I am looking
+at it; but this I will say, that landscape with Scott is very different
+from landscape without him."
+
+"That is very true, isn't it?" said she; and then she stopped making
+comparisons, and I looked out of the window.
+
+Oban is a very pretty place on the coast, but we never should have gone
+there if it had not been the place to start from for Staffa and Iona.
+When I was only a girl I saw pictures of Fingal's Cave, and I have read
+a good deal about it since, and it is one of the spots in the world
+that I have been longing to see, but I feel like crying when I tell
+you, madam, that the next morning there was such a storm that the boat
+for Staffa didn't even start; and as the people told us that the storm
+would most likely last two or three days, and that the sea for a few
+days more would be so rough that Staffa would be out of the question,
+we had to give it up, and I was obliged to fall back from the reality
+to my imagination. Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that he would
+be willing to bet ten to one that my fancy would soar a mile above the
+real thing, and that perhaps it was very well I didn't see old Fingal's
+Cave and so be disappointed.
+
+"Perhaps it is a good thing," said I, "that you didn't go, and that you
+didn't get so seasick that you would be ready to renounce your
+country's flag and embrace Mormonism if such things would make you feel
+better." But that is the only thing that is good about it, and I have a
+cloud on my recollection which shall never be lifted until Corinne is
+old enough to travel and we come here with her.
+
+But although the storm was so bad, it was not bad enough to keep us
+from making our water trip to Glasgow, for the boat we took did not
+have to go out to sea. It was a wonderfully beautiful passage we made
+among the islands and along the coast, with the great mountains on the
+mainland standing up above everything else. After a while we got to the
+Crinan Canal, which is in reality a short cut across the field. It is
+nine miles long and not much wider than a good-sized ditch, but it
+saves more than a hundred miles of travel around an island. We was on a
+sort of a toy steamboat which went its way through the fields and
+bushes and grass so close we could touch them; and as there was eleven
+locks where the boat had to stop, we got out two or three times and
+walked along the banks to the next lock. That being the kind of a ride
+Jone likes, he blessed Buxton. At the other end of the canal we took a
+bigger steamboat which carried us to Glasgow.
+
+In the morning it hailed, which afterward turned to rain, but in the
+afternoon there was only showers now and then, so that we spent most of
+the time on deck. On this boat we met a very nice Englishman and his
+wife, and when they had heard us speak to each other they asked us if
+we had ever been in this part of the world before, and when we said we
+hadn't they told us about the places we passed. If we had been an
+English couple who had never been there before they wouldn't have said
+a word to us.
+
+As we got near the Clyde the gentleman began to talk about
+ship-building, and pretty soon I saw in his face plain symptoms that he
+was going to have an attack of comparison making. I have seen so much
+of this disorder that I can nearly always tell when it is coming on a
+person. In about a minute the disease broke out on him, and he began to
+talk about the differences between American and English ships. He told
+Jone and me about a steamship that was built out in San Francisco which
+shook three thousand bolts out of herself on her first voyage. It
+seemed to me that that was a good deal like a codfish shaking his
+bones out through swimming too fast. I couldn't help thinking that that
+steamship must have had a lot of bolts so as to have enough left to
+keep her from scattering herself over the bottom of the ocean.
+
+I expected Jone to say something in behalf of his country's ships, but
+he didn't seem to pay much attention to the boat story, so I took up
+the cudgels myself, and I said to the gentleman that all nations, no
+matter how good they might be at ship-building, sometimes made
+mistakes, and then to make a good impression on him I whanged him over
+the head with the "Great Eastern," and asked him if there ever was a
+vessel that was a greater failure than that.
+
+He said, "Yes, yes, the 'Great Eastern' was not a success," and then he
+stopped talking about ships.
+
+When we got fairly into the Clyde and near Glasgow the scene was
+wonderful. It was nearly night, and the great fires of the factories
+lit up the sky, and we saw on the stocks a great ship being built.
+
+We stayed in Glasgow one day, and Jone was delighted with it, because
+he said it was like an American city. Now, on principle, I like
+American cities, but I didn't come to Scotland to see them; and the
+greatest pleasure I had in Glasgow was standing with a tumbler of water
+in my hand, repeating to myself as much of the "Lady of the Lake" as I
+could remember.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-five_
+
+
+LONDON
+
+Here we are in this wonderful town, where, if you can't see everything
+you want to see, you can generally see a sample of it, even if your fad
+happens to be the ancientnesses of Egypt. We are at the Babylon Hotel,
+where we shall stay until it is time to start for Southampton, where we
+shall take the steamer for home. What we are going to do between here
+and Southampton I don't know yet; but I do know that Jone is all on
+fire with joy because he thinks his journeys are nearly over, and I am
+chilled with grief when I think that my journeys are nearly over.
+
+We left Edinburgh on the train called the "Flying Scotsman," and it
+deserved its name. I suppose that in the days of Wallace and Bruce and
+Rob Roy the Scots must often have skipped along in a lively way; but I
+am sure if any of them had ever invaded England at the rate we went
+into it, the British lion would soon have been living on thistles
+instead of roses.
+
+The speed of this train was sometimes a mile a minute, I think; and I
+am sure I was never on any railroad in America where I was given a
+shorter time to get out for something to eat than we had at York. Jone
+and I are generally pretty quick about such things, but we had barely
+time to get back to our carriage before that "Flying Scotsman" went off
+like a streak of lightning.
+
+On the way we saw a part of York Minster, and had a splendid, view of
+Durham Cathedral, standing high in the unreachable--that is, as far as
+I was concerned. Peterborough Cathedral we also saw the outside of, and
+I felt like a boy looking in at a confectioner's window with no money
+to buy anything. It wasn't money that I wanted; it was time, and we had
+very little of that left.
+
+The next day, after we reached London, I set out to attend to a piece
+of business that I didn't want Jone to know anything about. My business
+was to look up my family pedigree. It seemed to me that it would be a
+shame if I went away from the home of my ancestors without knowing
+something about those ancestors and about the links that connected me
+with them. So I determined to see what I could do in the way of making
+up a family tree.
+
+By good luck, Jone had some business to attend to about money and rooms
+on the steamer, and so forth, and so I could start out by myself
+without his even asking me where I was going. Now, of course, it would
+be a natural thing for a person to go and seek out his ancestors in the
+ancient village from which they sprang, and to read their names on
+the tombstones in the venerable little church, but as I didn't know
+where this village was, of course I couldn't go to it. But in London is
+the place where you can find out how to find out such things.
+
+[Illustration: "A PERSON WHO WAS A FAMILY-TREE-MAN"]
+
+As far back as when we was in Chedcombe I had had a good deal of talk
+with Miss Pondar about ancestors and families. I told her that my
+forefathers came from this country, which I was very sure of, judging
+from my feelings; but as I couldn't tell her any particulars, I didn't
+go into the matter very deep. But I did say there was a good many
+points that I would like to set straight, and asked her if she knew
+where I could find out something about English family trees. She said
+she had heard there was a big heraldry office in London, but if I
+didn't want to go there, she knew of a person who was a
+family-tree-man. He had an office in London, and his business was to go
+around and tend to trees of that kind which had been neglected, and to
+get them into shape and good condition. She gave me his address, and I
+had kept the thing quiet in my mind until now.
+
+I found the family-tree-man, whose name was Brandish, in a small room
+not too clean, over a shop not far from St. Paul's Churchyard. He had
+another business, which related to patent poison for flies, and at
+first he thought I had come to see him about that, but when he found
+out I wanted to ask him about my family tree his face brightened up.
+
+When I told Mr. Brandish my business the first thing he asked me was my
+family name. Of course I had expected this, and I had thought a great
+deal about the answer I ought to give. In the first place, I didn't
+want to have anything to do with my father's name. I never had anything
+much to do with him, because he died when I was a little baby, and his
+name had nothing high-toned about it, and it seemed to me to belong to
+that kind of a family that you would be better satisfied with the less
+you looked up its beginnings; but my mother's family was a different
+thing. Nobody could know her without feeling that she had sprung from
+good roots. It might have been from the stump of a tree that had been
+cut down, but the roots must have been of no common kind to send up
+such a shoot as she was. It was from her that I got my longings for the
+romantic.
+
+She used to tell me a good deal about her father, who must have been a
+wonderful man in many ways. What she told me was not like a sketch of
+his life, which I wish it had been, but mostly anecdotes of what he
+said and did. So it was my mother's ancestral tree I determined to
+find, and without saying whether it was on my mother's or father's side
+I was searching for ancestors, I told Mr. Brandish that Dork was the
+family name.
+
+"Dork," said he; "a rather uncommon name, isn't it? Was your father
+the eldest son of a family of that name?"
+
+Now I was hoping he wouldn't say anything about my father.
+
+"No, sir," said I; "it isn't that line that I am looking up. It is my
+mother's. Her name was Dork before she was married."
+
+"Really! Now I see," said he, "you have the paternal line all correct,
+and you want to look up the line on the other side. That is very
+common; it is so seldom that one knows the line of ancestors on one's
+maternal side. Dork, then, was the name of your maternal grandfather."
+
+It struck me that a maternal grandfather must be a grandmother, but I
+didn't say so.
+
+"Can you tell me," said he, "whether it was he who emigrated from this
+country to America, or whether it was his father or his grandfather?"
+
+Now I hadn't said anything about the United States, for I had learned
+there was no use in wasting breath telling English people I had come
+from America, so I wasn't surprised at his question, but I couldn't
+answer it.
+
+"I can't say much about that," I said, "until I have found out
+something about the English branches of the family."
+
+"Very good," said he. "We will look over the records," and he took down
+a big book and turned to the letter D. He ran his finger down two or
+three pages, and then he began to shake his head.
+
+"Dork?" said he. "There doesn't seem to be any Dork, but here is
+Dorkminster. Now if that was your family name we'd have it all here. No
+doubt you know all about that family. It's a grand old family, isn't
+it? Isn't it possible that your grandfather or one of his ancestors may
+have dropped part of the name when he changed his residence to
+America?"
+
+Now I began to think hard; there was some reason in what the
+family-tree-man said. I knew very well that the same family name was
+often different in different countries, changes being made to suit
+climates and people.
+
+"Minster has a religious meaning, hasn't it?" said I.
+
+"Yes, madam," said he; "it relates to cathedrals and that sort of
+thing."
+
+Now, so far as I could remember, none of the things my mother had ever
+told me about her father was in any ways related to religion. They was
+mostly about horses; and although there is really no reason for the
+disconnection between horses and religion, especially when you consider
+the hymns with heavenly chariots in them must have had horses, it
+didn't seem to me that my grandfather could have made it a point of
+being religious, and perhaps he mightn't have cared for the cathedral
+part of his name, and so might have dropped it for convenience in
+signing, probably being generally in a hurry, judging from what my
+mother had told me. I said as much to Mr. Brandish, and he answered
+that he thought it was likely enough, and that that sort of thing was
+often done.
+
+"Now, then," said he, "let us look into the Dorkminster line and trace
+out your connection with that. From what place did your ancestors
+come?"
+
+It seemed to me that he was asking me a good deal more than he was
+telling me, and I said to him: "That is what I want to find out. What
+is the family home of the Dorkminsters?"
+
+"Oh, they were a great Hampshire family," said he. "For five hundred
+years they lived on their estates in Hampshire. The first of the name
+was Sir William Dorkminster, who came over with the Conqueror, and most
+likely was given those estates for his services. Then we go on until we
+come to the Duke of Dorkminster, who built a castle, and whose brother
+Henry was made bishop and founded an abbey, which I am sorry to say
+doesn't now exist, being totally destroyed by Oliver Cromwell."
+
+You cannot imagine how my blood leaped and surged within me as I
+listened to those words. William the Conqueror! An ancestral abbey! A
+duke! "Is the family castle still standing?" said I.
+
+"It fell into ruins," said he, "during the reign of Charles I., and
+even its site is now uncertain, the park having been devoted to
+agricultural purposes. The fourth Duke of Dorkminster was to have
+commanded one of the ships which destroyed the Spanish Armada, but was
+prevented by a mortal fever which cut him off in his prime; he died
+without issue, and the estates passed to the Culverhams of Wilts."
+
+"Did that cut off the line?" said I, very quick.
+
+"Oh, no," said the family-tree man, "the line went on. One of the
+duke's younger sisters must have married a man on condition that he
+took the old family name, which is often done, and her descendants must
+have emigrated somewhere, for the name no longer appears in Hampshire;
+but probably not to America, for that was rather early for English
+emigration."
+
+"Do you suppose," said I, "that they went to Scotland?"
+
+"Very likely," said he, after thinking a minute; "that would be
+probable enough. Have you reason to suppose that there was a Scotch
+branch in your family?"
+
+"Yes," said I, for it would have been positively wrong in me to say
+that the feelings that I had for the Scotch hadn't any meaning at all.
+
+"Now then," said Mr. Brandish, "there you are, madam. There is a line
+all the way down from the Conqueror to the end of the sixteenth
+century, scarcely one man's lifetime before the Pilgrims landed on
+Plymouth Rock."
+
+I now began to calculate in my mind. I was thirty years old; my mother,
+most likely, was about as old when I was born; that made sixty years.
+Then my grandfather might have been forty when my mother was born, and
+there was a century. As for my great-grandfather and his parents, I
+didn't know anything about them. Of course, there must have been such
+persons, but I didn't know where they came from or where they went to.
+
+"I can go back a century," said I, "but that doesn't begin to meet the
+end of the line you have marked out. There's a gap of about two hundred
+years."
+
+"Oh, I don't think I would mind that," said Mr. Brandish. "Gaps of that
+kind are constantly occurring in family trees. In fact, if we was to
+allow gaps of a century or so to interfere with the working out of
+family lines, it would cut off a great many noble ancestries from
+families of high position, especially in the colonies and abroad. I beg
+you not to pay any attention to that, madam."
+
+My nerves was tingling with the thought of the Spanish Armada, and
+perhaps Bannockburn (which then made me wish I had known all this
+before I went to Stirling, but which battle, now as I write, I know
+must have been fought a long time before any of the Dorks went to
+Scotland), and I expect my eyes flashed with family pride, for do what
+I would I couldn't sit calm and listen to what I was hearing. But,
+after all, that two hundred years did weigh upon my mind. "If you make
+a family tree for me," said I, "you will have to cut off the trunk and
+begin again somewhere up in the air."
+
+"Oh, no," said he, "we don't do that. We arrange the branches so that
+they overlap each other, and the dotted lines which indicate the
+missing portions are not noticed. Then, after further investigation and
+more information, the dots can be run together and the tree made
+complete and perfect."
+
+Of course, I had nothing more to say, and he promised to send me the
+tree the next morning, though, of course, requesting me to pay him in
+advance, which was the rule of the office, and you would be amazed,
+madam, if you knew how much that tree cost. I got it the next morning,
+but I haven't shown it to Jone yet. I am proud that I own it, and I
+have thrills through me whenever my mind goes back to its Norman roots;
+but I am bound to say that family trees sometimes throw a good deal of
+shade over their owners, especially when they have gaps in them, which
+seems contrary to nature, but is true to fact.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-six_
+
+
+SOUTHWESTERN HOTEL, SOUTHAMPTON
+
+To-morrow our steamer sails, and this is the last letter I write on
+English soil; and although I haven't done half that I wanted to, there
+are ever so many things I have done that I can't write you about.
+
+I had seen so few cathedrals that on the way down here I was bound to
+see at least one good one, and so we stopped at Winchester. It was
+while walking under the arches of that venerable pile that the thought
+suddenly came to me that we were now in Hampshire, and that, perhaps,
+in this cathedral might be some of the tombs of my ancestors. Without
+saying what I was after I began at one of the doors, and I went clean
+around that enormous church, and read every tablet in the walls and on
+the floor.
+
+Once I had a shock. There was a good many small tombs with roofs over
+them, and statues of people buried within, lying on top of the tombs,
+and some of them had their faces and clothes colored so as to make them
+look almost as natural as life. They was mostly bishops, and had been
+lying there for centuries. While looking at these I came to a tomb
+with an opening low down on the side of it, and behind some iron bars
+there lay a stone figure that made me fairly jump. He was on his back
+with hardly any clothes on, and was actually nothing but skin and
+bones. His mouth was open, as if he was gasping for his last breath. I
+never saw such an awful sight, and as I looked at the thing my blood
+began to run cold, and then it froze. The freezing was because I
+suddenly thought to myself that this might be a Dorkminster, and that
+that horrible object was my ancestor. I was actually afraid to look at
+the inscription on the tombstone for fear that this was so, for if it
+was, I knew that whenever I should think of my family tree this bag of
+bones would be climbing up the trunk, or sitting on one of the
+branches. But I must know the truth, and trembling so that I could
+scarcely read, I stooped down to look at the inscription and find out
+who that dreadful figure had been. It was not a Dorkminster, and my
+spirits rose.
+
+[Illustration: "This might be a Dorkminster"]
+
+We got here three days ago, and we have made a visit to the Isle of
+Wight. We went straight down to the southern coast, and stopped all
+night at the little town of Bonchurch. It was very lovely down there
+with roses and other flowers blooming out-of-doors as if it was summer,
+although it is now getting so cold everywhere else. But what pleased me
+most was to stand at the top of a little hill, and look out over the
+waters of the English Channel, and feel that not far out of eyeshot was
+the beautiful land of France with its lower part actually touching
+Italy.
+
+You know, madam, that when we was here before, we was in France, and a
+happy woman was I to be there, although so much younger than now I
+couldn't properly enjoy it; but even then France was only part of the
+road to Italy, which, alas, we never got to. Some day, however, I shall
+float in a gondola and walk amid the ruins of ancient Rome, and if Jone
+is too sick of travel to go with me, it may be necessary for Corinne to
+see the world, and I shall take her.
+
+Now I must finish this letter and bid good-by to beautiful Britain,
+which has made us happy and treated us well in spite of some
+comparisons in which we was expected to be on the wrong side, but which
+hurt nobody, and which I don't want even to think of at such a moment
+as this.
+
+
+
+
+_Letter Number Twenty-seven_
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+I send you this, madam, to let you know that we arrived here safely
+yesterday afternoon, and that we are going to-day to Jone's mother's
+farm where Corinne is.
+
+I liked sailing from Southampton because when I start to go to a place
+I like to go, and when we went home before and had to begin by going
+all the way up to Liverpool by land, and then coming all the way back
+again by water, and after a couple of days of this to stop at
+Queenstown and begin the real voyage from there, I did not like it,
+although it was a good deal of fun seeing the bumboat women come aboard
+at Queenstown and telescope themselves into each other as they hurried
+up the ladder to get on deck and sell us things.
+
+We had a very good voyage, with about enough rolling to make the dining
+saloon look like some of the churches we've seen abroad on weekdays
+where there was services regular, but mighty small congregations.
+
+When we got in sight of my native shore, England, Scotland, and even
+the longed-for Italy, with her palaces and gondolas, faded from my
+mind, and my every fibre tingled with pride and patriotism. We reached
+our dock about six o'clock in the afternoon, and I could scarcely stand
+still, so anxious was I to get ashore. There was a train at eight which
+reached Rockbridge at half-past nine, and there we could take a
+carriage and drive to the farm in less than an hour, and then Corinne
+would be in my arms, so you may imagine my state of mind--Corinne
+before bedtime! But a cloud blacker than the heaviest fog came down
+upon me, for while we was standing on the deck, expecting every minute
+to land, a man came along and shouted at the top of his voice that no
+baggage could be examined by the custom-house officers after six
+o'clock, and the passengers could take nothing ashore with them but
+their hand-bags, and must come back in the morning and have their
+baggage examined. When I heard this my soul simply boiled within me! I
+looked at Jone, and I could see he was boiling just as bad.
+
+"Jone," said I, "don't say a word to me."
+
+"I am not going to say a word," said he, and he didn't. All our
+belongings was in our trunks. Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had
+only a little one which had in it three newspapers, which we bought
+from the pilot, a tooth-brush, a spool of thread and some needles, and
+a pair of scissors with one point broken off. With these things we had
+to go to a hotel and spend the night, and in the morning we had to go
+back to have our trunks examined, which, as there was nothing in them
+to pay duty on, was waste time for all parties, no matter when it was
+done.
+
+[Illustration: "Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had only a little
+one"]
+
+That night, when I was lying awake thinking about this welcome to our
+native land, I don't say that I hauled down the stars and stripes, but
+I did put them at half mast. When we arrived in England we got ashore
+about twelve o'clock at night, but there was the custom-house officers
+as civil and obliging as any people could be, ready to tend to us and
+pass us on. And when I thought of them, and afterward of the lordly
+hirelings who met us here, I couldn't help feeling what a glorious
+thing it would be to travel if you could get home without coming back.
+
+Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that we ought to be very glad we
+don't like this sort of thing. "In many foreign countries," said he,
+"people are a good deal nagged by their governments and they like it;
+we don't like it, so haul up your flag."
+
+I hauled it up, and it's flying now from the tiptop of my tallest mast.
+In an hour our train starts, and I shall see Corinne before the sun
+goes down.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pomona's Travels, by Frank R. Stockton
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