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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Penelope's Postscripts, by Wiggin
+#12 in our series by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+This is the last of the Penelope Series
+
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+Penelope's Postscripts
+
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+August, 1999  [Etext #1868]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Penelope's Postscripts, by Wiggin
+******This file should be named pnlps10.txt or pnlps10.zip******
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+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1915 Hodder and Stoughton edition.
+
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+
+
+
+Penelope's Postscripts
+
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+Penelope in Switzerland
+Penelope in Venice
+Penelope's Prints of Wales
+Penelope in Devon
+Penelope at Home
+
+
+
+PENELOPE IN SWITZERLAND
+
+
+
+A DAY IN PESTALOZZI-TOWN
+
+Salemina and I were in Geneva.  If you had ever travelled through
+Europe with a charming spinster who never sat down at a Continental
+table d'hote without being asked by an American vis-a-vis whether
+she were one of the P.'s of Salem, Massachusetts, you would
+understand why I call my friend Salemina.  She doesn't mind it.
+She knows that I am simply jealous because I came from a vulgarly
+large tribe that never had any coat-of-arms, and whose ancestors
+always sealed their letters with their thumb nails.
+
+Whenever Francesca and I call her "Salemina," she knows, and we
+know that she knows, that we are seeing a group of noble ancestors
+in a sort of halo over her serene and dignified head, so she
+remains unruffled under her petit nom, inasmuch as the casual
+public comprehends nothing of its spurious origin and thinks it was
+given her by her sponsors in baptism.
+
+Francesca, Salemina, and I have very different backgrounds.  The
+first-named is an extremely pretty person of large income who is
+travelling with us simply because her relatives think that she will
+"see Europe" more advantageously under our chaperonage than if she
+were accompanied by persons of her own age or "set."
+
+Salemina is a philanthropist and educator of the first rank, and is
+collecting all sorts of valuable material to put at the service of
+her own country when she returns to it, which will not be a moment
+before her letter of credit is exhausted.
+
+I, too, am quasi-educational, for I had a few years of experience
+in mothering and teaching little waifs and strays of the streets
+before I began to paint pictures.  Never shall I regret those
+nerve-racking, back-breaking, heart-warming, weary, and beautiful
+years, when, all unconsciously, I was learning to paint children by
+living with them.  Even now the spell still works and it is the
+curly head, the "shining morning face," the ready tear, the
+glancing smile of childhood that enchains me and gives my brush
+whatever skill it possesses.
+
+We had not been especially high-minded or educational in
+Switzerland, Salemina and I.  The worm will turn; and there is a
+point where the improvement of one's mind seems a farce, and the
+service of humanity, for the moment, a duty only born of a diseased
+imagination.
+
+How can one sit on a vine-embowered balcony facing lovely Lake
+Geneva and think about modern problems,--Improved Tenements, Child
+Labour, Single Tax, Sweat Shops, and the Right Training of the
+Rising Civilization?  Blue Lake Geneva!--blue as a woman's eye,
+blue as the vault of heaven, dropped into the lap of the green
+earth like a great sparkling sapphire!  Mont Blanc you know to be
+just behind the clouds on the other side, and that presently, after
+hours or days of patient waiting, he may condescend to unveil
+himself to your worshipful gaze.
+
+"He is wise in his dignity and reserve," mused Salemina as we sat
+on the veranda.  "He is all the more sublime because he withdraws
+himself from time to time.  In fact, if he didn't see fit to cover
+himself occasionally, one could neither eat nor sleep, nor do
+anything but adore and magnify."
+
+The day before this interview we had sailed to the end of the
+sapphire lake and visited the "snow-white battlements" of the
+Castle of Chillon; seen its "seven pillars of Gothic mould," and
+its dungeons deep and old, where poor Bonnivard, Byron's famous
+"Prisoner of Chillon," lay captive for so many years, and where
+Rousseau fixes the catastrophe of his Heloise.
+
+We had just been to Coppet too; Coppet where the Neckers lived and
+Madame de Stael was born and lived during many years of her life.
+We had wandered through the shaded walks of the magnificent chateau
+garden, and strolled along the terrace where the eloquent Corinne
+had walked with the Schlegels and other famous habitues of her
+salon.  We had visited Calvin's house at 11 Rue des Chanoines,
+Rousseau's at No. 40 on the Grande Rue, and Voltaire's at Ferney.
+
+And so we had been living the past, Salemina and I.  But
+
+
+"Early one morning,
+Just as the day was dawning."
+
+
+my slumbering conscience rose in Puritan strength and asserted its
+rights to a hearing.
+
+"Salemina," said I, as I walked into her room, "this life that we
+are leading will not do for me any longer.  I have been too much
+immersed in ruins.  Last night in writing to a friend in New York I
+uttered the most disloyal and incendiary statements.  I said that I
+would rather die than live without ruins of some kind; that America
+was so new, and crude, and spick and span, that it was obnoxious to
+any aesthetic soul; that our tendency to erect hideous public
+buildings and then keep them in repair afterwards would make us the
+butt of ridicule among future generations.  I even proposed the
+founding of an American Ruin Company, Limited,--in which the
+stockholders should purchase favourably situated bits of land and
+erect picturesque ruins thereon.  To be sure, I said, these ruins
+wouldn't have any associations at first, but what of that?  We have
+plenty of poets and romancers; we could manufacture suitable
+associations and fit them to the premises.  At first, it is true,
+they might not fire the imagination; but after a few hundred years,
+in being crooned by mother to infant and handed down by father to
+son, they would mellow with age, as all legends do, and they would
+end by being hallowed by rising generations.  I do not say they
+would be absolutely satisfactory from every standpoint, but I do
+say that they would be better than nothing.
+
+"However," I continued, "all this was last night, and I have had a
+change of heart this morning.  Just on the borderland between
+sleeping and waking, I had a vision.  I remembered that to-day
+would be Monday the 1st of September; that all over our beloved
+land schools would be opening and that your sister pedagogues would
+be doing your work for you in your absence.  Also I remembered that
+I am the dishonourable but Honorary President of a Froebel Society
+of four hundred members, that it meets to-morrow, and that I can't
+afford to send them a cable."
+
+"It is all true," said Salemina.  "It might have been said more
+briefly, but it is quite true."
+
+"Now, my dear, I am only a painter with an occasional excursion
+into educational fields, but you ought to be gathering stories of
+knowledge to lay at the feet of the masculine members of your
+School Board."
+
+"I ought, indeed!" sighed Salemina.
+
+"Then let us begin!" I urged.  "I want to be good to-day and you
+must be good with me.  I never can be good alone and neither can
+you, and you know it.  We will give up the lovely drive in the
+diligence; the luncheon at the French restaurant and those heavenly
+little Swiss cakes" (here Salemina was almost unmanned); "the
+concert on the great organ and all the other frivolous things we
+had intended; and we will make an educational pilgrimage to
+Yverdon.  You may not remember, my dear,"--this was said severely
+because I saw that she meditated rebellion and was going to refuse
+any programme which didn't include the Swiss cakes,--"you may not
+remember that Jean Henri Pestalozzi lived and taught in Yverdon.
+Your soul is so steeped in illusions; so submerged in the Lethean
+waters of the past; so emasculated by thrilling legends, paltry
+titles, and ruined castles, that you forget that Pestalozzi was the
+father of popular education and the sometime teacher of Froebel,
+our patron saint.  When you return to your adored Boston, your
+faithful constituents in that and other suburbs of Salem,
+Massachusetts, will not ask you if you have seen the Castle of
+Chillon and the terrace of Corinne, but whether you went to
+Yverdon."
+
+Salemina gave one last fond look at the lake and picked up her
+Baedeker.  She searched languidly in the Y's and presently read in
+a monotonous, guide-book voice.  "Um--um--um--yes, here it is,
+'Yverdon is sixty-one miles from Geneva, three hours forty minutes,
+on the way to Neuchatel and Bale.'  (Neuchatel is the cheese place;
+I'd rather go there and we could take a bag of those Swiss cakes.)
+'It is on the southern bank of Lake Neuchatel at the influx of the
+Orbe or Thiele.  It occupies the site of the Roman town of
+Ebrodunum.  The castle dates from the twelfth century and was
+occupied by Pestalozzi as a college.'"
+
+This was at eight, and at nine, leaving Francesca in bed, we were
+in the station at Geneva.  Finding that we had time to spare, we
+went across the street and bargained for an in-transit luncheon
+with one of those dull native shopkeepers who has no idea of
+American-French.
+
+Your American-French, by the way, succeeds well enough so long as
+you practise, in the seclusion of your apartment, certain assorted
+sentences which the phrase-book tells you are likely to be needed.
+But so far as my experience goes, it is always the unexpected that
+happens, and one is eternally falling into difficulties never
+encountered by any previous traveller.
+
+For instance, after purchasing a cold chicken, some French bread,
+and a bit of cheese, we added two bottles of lemonade.  We managed
+to ask for a glass, from which to drink it, but the man named two
+francs as the price.  This was more than Salemina could bear.  Her
+spirit was never dismayed at any extravagance, but it reared its
+crested head in the presence of extortion.  She waxed wroth.  The
+man stood his ground.  After much crimination and recrimination I
+threw myself into the breach.
+
+"Salemina," said I, "I wish to remark, first:  That we have three
+minutes to catch the train.  Second:  That, occupying the position
+we do in America,--you the member of a School Board and I the
+Honorary President of a Froebel Society,--we cannot be seen
+drinking lemonade from a bottle, in a public railway carriage; it
+would be too convivial.  Third:  You do not understand this
+gentleman.  You have studied the language longer than I, but I have
+studied it more lately than you, and I am fresher, much fresher
+than you."  (Here Salemina bridled obviously.)  "The man is not
+saying that two francs is the price of the glass.  He says that we
+can pay him two francs now, and if we will return the glass to-
+night when we come home he will give us back one franc fifty
+centimes.  That is fifty centimes for the rent of the glass, as I
+understand it."
+
+Salemina's right hand, with the glass in it, dropped nervelessly at
+her side.  "If he uttered one single syllable of all that
+rigmarole, then Ollendorf is a myth, that's all I have to say."
+
+"The gift of tongues is not vouchsafed to all," I responded with
+dignity.  "I happen to possess a talent for languages, and I
+apprehend when I do not comprehend."
+
+Salemina was crushed by the weight of my self-respect, and we took
+the tumbler, and the train.
+
+It was a cloudless day and a beautiful journey, along the side of
+the sapphire lake for miles, and always in full view of the
+glorious mountains.  We arrived at Yverdon about noon, and had
+eaten our luncheon on the train, so that we should have a long,
+unbroken afternoon.  We left our books and heavy wraps in the
+station with the porter, with whom we had another slight
+misunderstanding as to general intentions and terms; then we
+started, Salemina carrying the lemonade glass in her hand, with her
+guide-book, her red parasol, and her Astrakhan cape.  The tumbler
+was a good deal of trouble, but her heart was set on returning it
+safely to the Geneva pirate; not so much to reclaim the one franc
+fifty centimes as to decide conclusively whether he had ever
+proposed such restitution.  I knew her mental processes, so I
+refused to carry any of her properties; besides, the pirate had
+used a good many irregular verbs in his conversation, and upon due
+reflection I was a trifle nervous about the true nature of the
+bargain.
+
+The Yverdon station fronted on a great open common dotted with a
+few trees.  There were a good many mothers and children sitting on
+the benches, and a number of young lads playing ball.  The town
+itself is one of the quaintest, quietest, and sleepiest in
+Switzerland.  From 1803 to 1810 it was a place of pilgrimage for
+philanthropists from all parts of Europe; for at that time
+Pestalozzi was at the zenith of his fame, having under him one
+hundred and sixty-five pupils from Europe and America, and thirty-
+two adult teachers, who were learning his method.
+
+But Yverdon has lost its former greatness now!  Scarcely any
+English travellers go there and still fewer Americans.  We fancied
+that there was nothing extraordinary in our appearance;
+nevertheless a small crowd of children followed at our heels, and
+the shopkeepers stood at their open doors and regarded us with
+intense interest.
+
+"No English spoken here, that is evident," said Salemina ruefully;
+"but you have such a gift for languages you can take the command
+to-day and make the blunders and bear the jeers of the public.  You
+must find out where the new Pestalozzi Monument is,--where the
+Chateau is,--where the schools are, and whether visitors are
+admitted,--whether there is a respectable hotel where we can get
+dinner,--whether we can get back to Geneva to-night, whether it's a
+fast or a slow train, and what time it gets there,--whether the
+methods of Pestalozzi are still maintained,--whether they know
+anything about Froebel,--whether they know what a kindergarten is,
+and whether they have one in the village.  Some of these questions
+will be quite difficult even for you."
+
+Well, the monument was not difficult to find, at all events.  We
+accosted two or three small boys and demanded boldly of one of
+them, "Ou est le monument de Pestalozzi, s'il vous plait?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders like an American small boy and said
+vacantly, "Je ne sais pas."
+
+"Of course he does know," said Salemina; "he means to be
+disagreeable; or else 'monument' isn't monument."
+
+"Well," I answered, "there is a monument in the distance, and there
+cannot be two in this village."
+
+Sure enough it was the very one we sought.  It stands in a little
+open place quite "in the business heart of the city,"--as we should
+say in America, and is an exceedingly fine and impressive bit of
+sculpture.  The group of three figures is in bronze and was done by
+M. Gruet of Paris.
+
+The modelling is strong, the expression of Pestalozzi benign and
+sweet, and the trusting upturned faces of the children equally
+genuine and attractive.
+
+One side of the pedestal bears the inscription:-
+
+
+A
+Pestalozzi
+1746-1827
+Monument erige
+par souscription populaire
+MDCCCXC
+
+
+On a second side these words are carved in the stone:-
+
+
+Sauveur des Pauvres a Neuhof
+Pere des Orphelins a Stanz
+Fondateur de l'ecole
+populaire a Burgdorf
+Educateur de l'humanite
+a Yverdon
+Tout pour les autres, pour lui,--rien!
+
+
+An older monument erected in 1846 by the Canton of Argovia bears
+this same inscription, save that it adds, "Preacher to the people
+in 'Leonard and Gertrude.'  Man.  Christian.  Citizen.  Blessed be
+his name!"
+
+On the third side of the Yverdon Monument is Pestalozzi's noble
+speech, fine enough indeed, to be cut in stone:-
+
+
+"J'ai vecu moi-meme
+comme un mendiant,
+pour apprendre a des
+mendiants a vivre comme
+des hommes."
+
+
+We sat a long time on the great marble pedestal, gazing into the
+benevolent face, and reviewing the simple, self-sacrificing life of
+the great educator, and then started on a tour of inspection.
+After wandering through most of the shops, buying photographs and
+mementoes, Salemina discovered that she had left the expensive
+tumbler in one of them.  After a long discussion as to whether
+tumbler was masculine or feminine, and as to whether "Ai-je laisse
+un verre ici?" or "Est-ce que j'ai laisse un verre ici?" was the
+proper query, we retraced our steps, Salemina asking in one shop,
+"Excusez-moi, je vous prie, mais ai-je laisse un verre ici?",--and
+I in the next, "Je demands pardon, Madame, est-ce que j'ai laisse
+un verre dans ce magasin-ci?--J'en ai perdu un, somewhere."
+Finally we found it, and in response not to mine but to Salemina's
+question, so that she was superior and obnoxious for several
+minutes.
+
+Our next point of interest was the old castle, which is still a
+public school.  Finding the caretaker, we visited first the museum
+and library--a small collection of curiosities, books, and
+mementoes, various portraits of Pestalozzi and his wife,
+manuscripts and so forth.  The simple-hearted woman who did the
+honours was quite overcome by our knowledge of and interest in her
+pedagogical hero, but she did not return the compliment.  I asked
+her if the townspeople knew about Friedrich Froebel, but she looked
+blank.
+
+"Froebel?  Froebel?" she asked; "qui est-ce?"
+
+"Mais, Madame," I said eloquently, "c'etait un grand homme!  Un
+heros!  Le plus grand eleve de Pestalozzi!  Aussi grand que
+Pestalozzi soi-meme!"
+
+("PLUS grand!  Why don't you say plus grand?" murmured Salemina
+loyally.)
+
+"Je ne sais!" she returned, with an indifferent shrug of the
+shoulders.  "Je ne sais!  Il y a des autres, je crois; mais moi, je
+connais Pestalozzi, c'est assez!"
+
+All the younger children had gone home, but she took us through the
+empty schoolrooms, which were anything but attractive.  We found an
+unhappy small boy locked in one of them.  I slipped behind the
+concierge to chat with him, for he was so exactly like all other
+small boys in disgrace that he made me homesick.
+
+"Tu etais mechant, n'est ce-pas?" I whispered consolingly; "mais tu
+seras sage demain, j'en suis sure!"
+
+I thought this very pretty, but he wriggled from under my
+benevolent hand, saying "Va!" (which I took to be, "Go 'long,
+you!") "je n'etais mechant aujourd'hui et je ne serai pas sage
+demain!"
+
+I asked the concierge if the general methods of Pestalozzi were
+still used in the schools of Yverdon, "Mais certainement!" she
+replied as we went into a room where twenty to thirty girls of ten
+years were studying.  There were three pleasant windows looking out
+into the street; the ordinary platform and ordinary teacher's
+table, with the ordinary teacher (in an extraordinary state of
+coma) behind it; and rather rude desks and seats for the children,
+but not a single ornament, picture, map, or case of objects and
+specimens around the room.  The children were nice, clean,
+pleasant, stolid little things with braided hair and pinafores.
+The sole decoration of the apartment was a highly-coloured chart
+that we had noticed on the walls of all the other schoolrooms.
+Feeling that this must be a sacred relic, and that it probably
+illustrated some of the Pestalozzian foundation principles, I
+walked up to it reverently,
+
+"Qu'est-ce-que c'est cela, Madame?" I inquired, rather puzzled by
+its appearance.
+
+"C'est la methode de Pestalozzi," the teacher replied absently.
+
+I wished that we kindergarten people could get Froebel's
+educational idea in such a snug, portable shape, and drew nearer to
+gaze at it.  I can give you a very complete description of the
+pictures from memory, as I copied the titles verbatim et literatim.
+The whole chart was a powerful moral object-lesson on the dangers
+of incendiarism and the evils of reckless disobedience.  It was
+printed appropriately in the most lurid colours, and divided into
+nine tableaux.
+
+These were named as follows:-
+
+
+I--LA VRAIE GAITE
+
+Twelve or fifteen boys and girls are playing together so happily
+and innocently that their good angels sing for joy.
+
+II--UNE PROPOSITION FATALE!
+
+Suddenly "LE PETIT Charles" says to his comrades, "Come! let us
+build a fire!"  LE PETIT Charles is a typical infant villain and is
+surrounded at once by other incendiary spirits all in accord with
+his insidious plans.
+
+III--LA PROTESTATION
+
+The Good Little Marie, a Sunday-school heroine of the true type,
+approaches the group and, gazing heavenward, remarks that it is
+wicked to play with matches.  The G. L. M. is of saintly presence,-
+-so clean and well groomed that you feel inclined to push her into
+a puddle.  Her hands are not full of vulgar toys and sweetmeats,
+like those of the other children, but are extended graciously as if
+she were in the habit of pronouncing benedictions.
+
+IV--INSOUCIANCE!
+
+LE PETIT Charles puts his evil little paw in his dangerous pockets
+and draws out a wicked lucifer match, saying with abominable
+indifference, "Bah! what do we care?  We're going to build a fire,
+whatever you say.  Come on, boys!"
+
+V--UN PLAISIR DANGEREUX!
+
+The boys "come on."  Led by "LE PETIT VILAIN Charles" they light a
+dangerous little fire in a dangerous little spot.  Their faces
+shine with unbridled glee.  The G. L. M. retires to a distance with
+a few saintly followers, meditating whether she shall run and tell
+her mother.  "LE PETIT Paul," an infant of three summers, draws
+near the fire, attracted by the cheerful blaze.
+
+VI--MALHEUR ET INEXPERIENCE
+
+LE PETIT Paul somehow or other tumbles into the fire.  Nothing but
+a desire to influence posterity as an awful example could have
+induced him to take this unnecessary step, but having walked in he
+stays in, like an infant John Rogers.  The bad boys are so horror-
+stricken it does not occur to them to pull him out, and the G. L.
+M. is weeping over the sin of the world.
+
+VII--TROP TARD!!
+
+The male parent of LE PETIT Paul is seen rushing down an adjacent
+Alp.  He leads a flock of frightened villagers who have seen the
+smoke and heard the wails of their offspring.  As the last shred of
+LE PETIT Paul has vanished in said smoke, the observer notes that
+the poor father is indeed "too late."
+
+VIII--DESESPOIR!!
+
+The despair of all concerned would draw tears from the dryest eye.
+Only one person wears a serene expression, and that is the G. L.
+M., who is evidently thinking:  "Perhaps they will listen to me the
+next time."
+
+IX--LA FIN!
+
+The charred remains of LE PETIT Paul are being carried to the
+cemetery.  The G. L. M. heads the procession in a white veil.  In a
+prominent place among the mourners is "LE PAUVRE PETIT Charles," so
+bowed with grief and remorse that he can scarcely be recognized.
+
+
+It was a telling sermon!  If I had been a child I should never have
+looked at a match again; and old as I was, I could not, for days
+afterwards, regard a box of them without a shudder.  I thought that
+probably Yverdon had been visited in the olden time by a series of
+disastrous holocausts, all set by small boys, and that this was the
+powerful antidote presented; so I asked the teacher whether
+incendiarism was a popular failing in that vicinity and whether the
+chart was one of a series inculcating various moral lessons.  I
+don't know whether she understood me or not, but she said no, it
+was "la methode de Pestalozzi."
+
+Just at this juncture she left the room, apparently to give the
+pupils a brief study-period, and simultaneously the concierge was
+called downstairs by a crying baby.  A bright idea occurred to me
+and I went hurriedly into the corridor where my friend was taking
+notes.
+
+"Salemina," said I, "here is an opportunity of a lifetime!  We
+ought to address these children in their native tongue.  It will be
+something to talk about in educational pow-wows.  They do not know
+that we are distinguished visitors, but we know it.  A female
+member of a School Board and the Honorary President of a Froebel
+Society owe a duty to their constituents.  You go in and tell them
+who and what I am and make a speech in French.  Then I'll tell them
+who and what you are and make another speech."
+
+Salemina assumed a modest violet attitude, declined the honour
+absolutely, and intimated that there were persons who would prefer
+talking in a language they didn't know rather than to remain
+sensibly silent.
+
+However the plan struck me as being so fascinating that I went back
+alone, looked all ways to see if any one were coming, mounted the
+platform, cleared my throat, and addressed the awe-struck
+youngsters in the following words.  I will spare you the French,
+but you will perceive by the construction of the sentences, that I
+uttered only those sentiments possible in an early stage of
+language-study.
+
+"My dear children," I began, "I live many thousand miles across the
+ocean in America.  You do not know me and I do not know you, but I
+do know all about your good Pestalozzi and I love him"
+
+"Il est mort!" interpolated one offensive little girl in the front
+row.
+
+Salemina tittered audibly in the corridor, and I crossed the room
+and closed the door.  I think the children expected me to put the
+key in my pocket and then murder them and stuff them into the
+stove.
+
+"I know perfectly well that he is dead, my child," I replied
+winningly,--"it is his life, his memory that I love.--And once upon
+a time, long ago, a great man named Friedrich Froebel came here to
+Yverdon and studied with your great Pestalozzi.  It was he who made
+kindergartens for little children, jardins des enfants, you know.
+Some of your grand-mothers remember Froebel, I think?"
+
+Hereupon two of the smaller chits shouted some sort of a negation
+which I did not in the least comprehend, but which from large
+American experience I took to be, "My grandmother doesn't!"  "My
+grandmother doesn't!"
+
+Seeing that the others regarded me favourably, I continued, "It is
+because I love Pestalozzi and Froebel, that I came here to day to
+see your beautiful new monument.  I have just bought a photograph
+taken on that day last year when it was first uncovered.  It shows
+the flags and the decorations, the flowers and garlands, and ever
+so many children standing in the sunshine, dressed in white and
+singing hymns of praise.  You are all in the picture, I am sure!"
+
+This was a happy stroke.  The children crowded about me and showed
+me where they were standing in the photograph, what they wore on
+the august occasion, how the bright sun made them squint, how a
+certain malheureuse Henriette couldn't go to the festival because
+she was ill.
+
+I could understand very little of their magpie chatter, but it was
+a proud moment.  Alone, unaided, a stranger in a strange land, I
+had gained the attention of children while speaking in a foreign
+tongue.  Oh, if I had only left the door open that Salemina might
+have witnessed this triumph!  But hearing steps in the distance, I
+said hastily, "Asseyez-vous, mes enfants, tout-de-suite!"  My tone
+was so authoritative that they obeyed instantly, and when the
+teacher entered it was as calm as the millennium.
+
+We rambled through the village for another hour, dined at a quaint
+little inn, gave a last look at the monument, and left for Geneva
+at seven o'clock in the pleasant September twilight.  Arriving a
+trifle after ten, somewhat weary in body and slightly anxious in
+mind, I followed Salemina into the tiny cake-shop across the street
+from the station.  She returned the tumbler, and the man, who
+seemed to consider it an unexpected courtesy, thanked us volubly.
+I held out my hand and reminded him timidly of the one franc fifty
+centimes.
+
+He inquired what I meant.  I explained.  He laughed scornfully.  I
+remonstrated.  He asked me if I thought him an imbecile.  I
+answered no, and wished that I knew the French for several other
+terms nearer the truth, but equally offensive.  Then we retired,
+having done our part, as good Americans, to swell the French
+revenues, and that was the end of our day in Pestalozzi-town; not
+the end, however, of the lemonade glass episode, which was always a
+favourite story in Salemina's repertory
+
+
+
+PENELOPE IN VENICE
+
+
+
+This noble citie doth in a manner chalenge this at my hands, that I
+should describe her also as well as the other cities I saw in my
+journey, partly because she gave me most louing and kinde
+entertainment for the sweetest time (I must needes confesse) that
+euer I spent in my life; and partly for that she ministered vnto me
+more variety of remarkable and delicious objects than mine eyes
+euer suruayed in any citie before, or euer shall . . . the fairest
+Lady, yet the richest Paragon and Queene of Christendome.
+
+Coryat's Crudities:  1611
+
+
+VENICE, May 12--HOTEL PAOLO ANAFESTO
+
+
+I have always wished that I might have discovered Venice for
+myself.  In the midst of our mad acquisition and frenzied
+dissemination of knowledge, these latter days, we miss how many
+fresh and exquisite sensations!  Had I a daughter, I should like to
+inform her mind on every other possible point and keep her in
+absolute ignorance of Venice.  Well do I realize that it would be
+impracticable, although no more so, after all, than Rousseau's plan
+of educating Emile, which certainly obtained a wide hearing and
+considerable support in its time.  No, tempting as it would be, it
+would be difficult to carry out such a theory in these days of
+logic and common sense, and in some moment of weakness I might
+possibly succumb and tell her all about it, for fear that some
+stranger, whom she might meet at a ball, would have the pleasure of
+doing it first.
+
+The next best woman-person in the world with whom to see Venice,
+barring the lovely non-existent daughter, is Salemina.
+
+It is our first visit, but, alas! we are, nevertheless, much better
+informed than I could wish.  Salemina's mind is particularly well
+furnished, but, luckily she cannot always remember the point wished
+for at the precise moment of need; so that, taking her all in all,
+she is nearly as agreeable as if she were ignorant.  Her knowledge
+never bulks heavily and insistently in the foreground or middle-
+distance, like that of Miss Celia Van Tyck, but remains as it
+should, in the haze of a melting and delicious perspective.  She
+has plenty of enthusiasms, too, and Miss Van Tyck has none.
+Imagine our plight at being accidentally linked to that
+encyclopaedic lady in Italy!  She is an old acquaintance of
+Salemina's and joined us in Florence, where she had been staying
+for a month, waiting for her niece Kitty Schuyler,--Kitty Copley
+now,--who is in Spain with her husband.
+
+Miss Van Tyck would be endurable in Sheffield, Glasgow, Lyons,
+Genoa, Kansas City, Pompeii, or Pittsburg, but she should never
+have blighted Venice with her presence.  She insisted, however, on
+accompanying us, and I can only hope that the climate and
+associations will have a relaxing effect on her habits of thought
+and speech.  When she was in Florence, she was so busy in "reading
+up" Verona and Padua that she had no time for the Uffizi Gallery.
+In Verona and Padua she was absorbed in Hare's "Venice,"
+vaccinating herself, so to speak, with information, that it might
+not steal upon, and infect her, unawares.  If there is anything
+that Miss Van abhors, it is knowing a thing without knowing that
+she knows it; while for me, the most charming knowledge is the sort
+that comes by unconscious absorption, like the free grace of God.
+
+We intended to enter Venice in orthodox fashion, by moonlight, and
+began to consult about trains when we were in Milan.  The porter
+said that there was only one train between the eight and the
+twelve, and gave me a pamphlet on the subject, but Salemina objects
+to an early start, and Miss Van refuses to arrive anywhere after
+dusk, so it is fortunate that the distances are not great.
+
+They have a curious way of reckoning time in Italy, for I found
+that the train leaving Milan at eight-thirty was scheduled to
+arrive at ten minutes past eighteen.
+
+"You could never sit up until then, Miss Van," I said; "but, on the
+other hand, if we leave later, to please Salemina, say at ten in
+the morning, we do not arrive until eight minutes before twenty-
+one!  I haven't the faintest idea what time that will really be,
+but it sounds too late for three defenceless women--all of them
+unmarried--to be prowling about in a strange city."
+
+It proved on investigation, however, that twenty-one o'clock is
+only nine in Christian language (that is, one's mother tongue), so
+we united in choosing that hour as being the most romantic
+possible, and there was a full yellow moon as we arrived in the
+railway station.  My heart beat high with joy and excitement, for I
+succeeded in establishing Miss Van with Salemina in one gondola,
+while I took all the luggage in another, ridding myself thus
+cleverly of the disenchanting influence of Miss Van's company.
+
+"Do come with us, Penelope," she said, as we issued from the
+portico of the station and heard, instead of the usual cab-drivers'
+pandemonium, only the soft lapping of waves against the marble
+steps--"Do come with us, Penelope, and let us enter 'dangerous and
+sweet-charmed Venice' together.  It does, indeed, look a 'veritable
+sea-bird's nest.'"
+
+She had informed me before, in Milan, that Cassiodorus, Theodoric's
+secretary, had thus styled Venice, but somehow her slightest remark
+is out of key.  I can always see it printed in small type in a
+footnote at the bottom of the page, and I always wish to skip it,
+as I do other footnotes, and annotations, and marginal notes and
+addenda.  If Miss Van's mother had only thought of it, Addenda
+would have been a delightful Christian name for her, and much more
+appropriate than Celia.
+
+If I should be asked on bended knees, if I should be reminded that
+every intelligent and sympathetic creature brings a pair of fresh
+eyes to the study of the beautiful, if it should be affirmed that
+the new note is as likely to be struck by the 'prentice as by the
+master hand, if I should be assured that my diary would never be
+read, I should still refuse to write my first impressions of
+Venice.  My best successes in life have been achieved by knowing
+what not to do, and I consider it the finest common sense to step
+modestly along in beaten paths, not stirring up, even there, any
+more dust than is necessary.  If my friends and acquaintances ever
+go to Venice, let them read their Ruskin, their Goethe, their
+Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, their Rogers, Gautier, Michelet,
+their Symonds and Howells, not forgetting old "Coryat's Crudities,"
+and be thankful I spared them mine.
+
+It was the eve of Ascension Day, and a yellow May moon was hanging
+in the blue.  I wished with all my heart that it were a little
+matter of seven or eight hundred years earlier in the world's
+history, for then the people would have been keeping vigil and
+making ready for that nuptial ceremony of Ascension-tide when the
+Doge married Venice to the sea.  Why can we not make pictures
+nowadays, as well as paint them?  We are banishing colour as fast
+as we can, clothing our buildings, our ships, ourselves, in black
+and white and sober hues, and if it were not for dear, gaudy Mother
+Nature, who never puts her palette away, but goes on painting her
+reds and greens and blues and yellows with the same lavish hand, we
+should have a sad and discreet universe indeed.
+
+But so long as we have more or less stopped making pictures, is it
+not fortunate that the great ones of the olden time have been
+eternally fixed on the pages of the world's history, there to glow
+and charm and burn for ever and a day?  To be able to recall those
+scenes of marvellous beauty so vividly that one lives through them
+again in fancy, and reflect, that since we have stopped being
+picturesque and fascinating, we have learned, on the whole, to
+behave much better, is as delightful a trend of thought as I can
+imagine, and it was mine as I floated toward the Piazza of San
+Marco in my gondola.
+
+I could see the Doge descend the Giant's Stairs, and issue from the
+gate of the Ducal Palace.  I could picture the great Bucentaur as
+it reached the open beyond the line of the tide.  I could see the
+white-mitred Patriarch walking from his convent on the now deserted
+isle of Sant' Elena to the shore where his barge lay waiting to
+join the glittering procession.
+
+And then there floated before my entranced vision the princely
+figure of the Doge taking the Pope-blessed ring, and, advancing to
+the little gallery behind his throne on the Bucentaur, raising it
+high, and dropping it into the sea.  I could almost hear the faint
+splash as it sank in the golden waves, and hear, too, the sonorous
+words of the old wedding ceremony:  "Desponsamus te, Mare, in
+signum veri perpetuique dominii!"
+
+Then when the shouts of mirth and music had died away and the
+Bucentaur and its train had drifted back into the lagoon, the blue
+sea, new-wedded, slept through the night with the May moon on her
+breast and the silent stars for sentinels.
+
+
+II
+
+
+LA GIUDECCA, May 15,
+CASA ROSA.
+
+Not for a moment have we regretted leaving our crowded,
+conventional hotel in Venice proper, for these rooms in a house on
+the Giudecca.  The very vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck sitting on a
+balcony surrounded by a group of friends from the various Boston
+suburbs, the vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck melting into delicious
+distance with every movement of our gondola, even this was
+sufficient for Salemina's happiness and mine, had it been
+accompanied by no more tangible joys.
+
+This island, hardly ten minutes by gondola from the Piazza of San
+Marco, was the summer resort of the Doges, you will remember, and
+there they built their pleasure-houses, with charming gardens at
+the back--gardens the confines of which stretched to the Laguna
+Viva.  Our Casa Rosa is one of the few old palazzi left, for many
+of them have been turned into granaries.
+
+We should never have found this romantic dwelling by ourselves; the
+Little Genius brought us here.  The Little Genius is Miss Ecks, who
+draws, and paints, and carves, and models in clay, preaching and
+practising the brotherhood of man and the sisterhood of woman in
+the intervals; Miss Ecks, who is the custodian of all the talents
+and most of the virtues, and the invincible foe of sordid common
+sense and financial prosperity.  Miss Ecks met us by chance in the
+Piazza and breathlessly explained that she was searching for paying
+guests to be domiciled under the roof of Numero Sessanta, Giudecca.
+She thought we should enjoy living there, or at least she did very
+much, and she had tried it for two years; but our enjoyment was not
+the special point in question.  The real reason and desire for our
+immediate removal was that the padrona might pay off a vexatious
+and encumbering mortgage which gave great anxiety to everybody
+concerned, besides interfering seriously with her own creative
+work.
+
+"You must come this very day," exclaimed Miss Ecks.  "The Madonna
+knows that we do not desire boarders, but you are amiable and
+considerate, as well as financially sound and kind, and will do
+admirably.  Padrona Angela is very unhappy, and I cannot model
+satisfactorily until the house is on a good paying basis and she is
+putting money in the bank toward the payment of the mortgage.  You
+can order your own meals, entertain as you like, and live precisely
+as if you were in your own home."
+
+The Little Genius is small, but powerful, with a style of oratory
+somewhat illogical, but always convincing at the moment.  There
+were a good many trifling objections to our leaving Miss Van Tyck
+and the hotel, but we scarcely remembered them until we and our
+luggage were skimming across the space of water that divides Venice
+from our own island.
+
+We explored the cool, wide, fragrant spaces of the old casa, with
+its outer walls of faded, broken stucco, all harmonized to a
+pinkish yellow by the suns and winds of the bygone centuries.  We
+admired its lofty ceilings, its lovely carvings and frescoes, its
+decrepit but beautiful furniture, and then we mounted to the top,
+where the Little Genius has a sort of eagle's eyrie, a floor to
+herself under the eaves, from the windows of which she sees the
+sunlight glimmering on the blue water by day, and the lights of her
+adored Venice glittering by night.  The walls are hung with
+fragments of marble and wax and stucco and clay; here a beautiful
+foot, or hand, or dimple-cleft chin; there an exquisitely ornate
+facade, a miniature campanile, or a model of some ancient palazzo
+or chiesa.
+
+The little bedroom off at one side is draped in coarse white
+cotton, and is simple enough for a nun.  Not a suggestion there of
+the fripperies of a fine lady's toilet, but, in their stead, heads
+of cherubs, wings of angels, slender bell-towers, friezes of
+acanthus leaves,--beauty of line and form everywhere, and not a
+hint of colour save in the riotous bunches of poppies and oleanders
+that lie on the broad window-seats or stand upright in great blue
+jars.
+
+Here the Little Genius lives, like the hermit crab that she calls
+herself; here she dwells apart from kith and kin, her mind and
+heart and miracle-working hands taken captive by the charms of the
+siren city of the world.
+
+When we had explored Casa Rosa from turret to foundation stone we
+went into the garden at the rear of the house--a garden of flowers
+and grape-vines, of vegetables and fruit-trees, of birds and bee-
+hives, a full acre of sweet summer sounds and odours, stretching to
+the lagoon, which sparkled and shimmered under the blue Italian
+skies.  The garden completed our subjugation, and here we stay
+until we are removed by force, or until the padrona's mortgage is
+paid unto the last penny, when I feel that the Little Genius will
+hang a banner on the outer ramparts, a banner bearing the
+relentless inscription:  "No paying guests allowed on these
+premises until further notice."
+
+Our domestics are unique and interesting.  Rosalia, the cook, is a
+graceful person with brown eyes, wavy hair, and long lashes, and
+when she is coaxing her charcoal fire with a primitive fan of
+cock's feathers, her cheeks as pink as oleanders, the Little Genius
+leads us to the kitchen door and bids us gaze at her beauty.  We
+are suitably enthralled at the moment, but we suffer an inevitable
+reaction when the meal is served, and sometimes long for a plain
+cook.
+
+Peppina is the second maid, and as arrant a coquette as lives in
+all Italy.  Her picture has been painted on more than one
+fisherman's sail, for it is rumoured that she has been six times
+betrothed and she is still under twenty.  The unscrupulous little
+flirt rids herself of her suitors, after they become a weariness to
+her, by any means, fair or foul, and her capricious affections are
+seldom good for more than three months.  Her own loves have no deep
+roots, but she seems to have the power of arousing in others
+furious jealousy and rage and a very delirium of pleasure.  She
+remains light, gay, joyous, unconcerned, but she shakes her lovers
+as the Venetian thunderstorms shake the lagoons.  Not long ago she
+tired of her chosen swain, Beppo the gardener, and one morning the
+padrona's ducks were found dead.  Peppina, her eyes dewy with
+crocodile tears, told the padrona that although the suspicion
+almost rent her faithful heart in twain, she must needs think Beppo
+the culprit.  The local detective, or police officer, came and
+searched the unfortunate Beppo's humble room, and found no
+incriminating poison, but did discover a pound or two of contraband
+tobacco, whereupon he was marched off to court, fined eighty
+francs, and jilted by his perfidious lady-love, who speedily
+transferred her affections.  If she had been born in the right
+class and the right century, Peppina would have made an admirable
+and brilliant Borgia.
+
+Beppo sent a stinging reproof in verse to Peppina by the new
+gardener, and the Little Genius read it to us, to show the poetic
+instinct of the discarded lover, and how well he had selected his
+rebuke from the store of popular verses known to gondoliers and
+fishermen of Venice:-
+
+
+"No te fidar de l' albaro che piega,
+Ne de la dona quando la te giura.
+La te impromete, e po la te denega;
+No te fidar de l' albaro che piega."
+
+("Trust not the mast that bends.
+Trust not a woman's oath;
+She'll swear to you, and there it ends,
+Trust not the mast that bends.")
+
+
+Beppo, Salemina, and I were talking together one morning,--just a
+casual meeting in the street,--when Peppina passed us.  She had a
+market-basket in each hand, and was in her gayest attire, a fresh
+crimson rose between her teeth being the last and most fetching
+touch to her toilet.  She gave a dainty shrug of her shoulders as
+she glanced at Beppo's hanging head and hungry eye, and then with a
+light laugh hummed, "Trust not the mast that bends," the first line
+of the poem that Beppo had sent her.
+
+"It is better to let her go," I said to him consolingly.
+
+"Si, madama; but"--with a profound sigh--"she is very pretty."
+
+So she is, and although my idea of the fitness of things is
+somewhat unsettled when Peppina serves our dinner wearing a yoke
+and sleeves of coarse lace with her blue cotton gown, and a bunch
+of scarlet poppies in her hair, I can do nothing in the way of
+discipline because Salemina approves of her as part of the picture.
+Instead of trying to develop some moral sense in the little
+creature, Salemina asked her to alternate roses and oleanders with
+poppies in her hair, and gave her a coral comb and ear-rings on her
+birthday.  Thus does a warm climate undermine the strict virtue
+engendered by Boston east winds.
+
+Francesco--Cecco for short--is general assistant in the kitchen,
+and a good gondolier to boot.  When our little family is increased
+by more than three guests at dinner, Cecco is pressed into dining-
+room service, and becomes under-butler to Peppina.  Here he is not
+at ease.  He scrubs his tanned face until it shines like San
+Domingo mahogany, brushes his black hair until the gloss resembles
+a varnish, and dons coarse white cotton gloves to conceal his work-
+stained hands and give an air of fashion and elegance to the
+banquet.  His embarrassment is equalled only by his earnestness and
+devotion to the dreaded task.  Our American guests do not care what
+we have upon our bill of fare when they can steal a glance at the
+intensely dramatic and impassioned Cecco taking Pina into a corner
+of the dining-room and, seizing her hand, despairingly endeavour to
+find out his next duty.  Then, with incredibly stiff back, he
+extends his right hand to the guest, as if the proffered plate held
+a scorpion instead of a tidbit.  There is an extra butler to be
+obtained when the function is a sufficiently grand one to warrant
+the expense, but as he wears carpet slippers and Pina flirts with
+him from soup to fruit, we find ourselves no better served on the
+whole, and prefer Cecco, since he transforms an ordinary meal into
+a beguiling comedy.
+
+"What does it matter, after all?" asks Salemina.  "It is not life
+we are living, for the moment, but an act of light opera, with the
+scenes all beautifully painted, the music charming and melodious,
+the costumes gay and picturesque.  We are occupying exceptionally
+good seats, and we have no responsibility whatever:  we left it in
+Boston, where it is probably rolling itself larger and larger, like
+a snowball; but who cares?"
+
+"Who cares, indeed?" I echo.  We are here not to form our
+characters or to improve our minds, but to let them relax; and when
+we see anything which opposses the Byronic ideal of Venice (the use
+of the concertina as the national instrument having this tendency),
+we deliberately close our eyes to it.  I have a proper regard for
+truth in matters of fact like statistics.  I want to know the exact
+population of a town, the precise total of children of school age,
+the number of acres in the Yellowstone Park, and the amount of
+wheat exported in 1862; but when it comes to things touching my
+imagination I resent the intrusion of some laboriously excavated
+truth, after my point of view is all nicely settled, and my saints,
+heroes, and martyrs are all comfortably and picturesquely arranged
+in their respective niches or on their proper pedestals.
+
+When the Man of Fact demolishes some pretty fallacy like William
+Tell and the apple, he should be required to substitute something
+equally delightful and more authentic.  But he never does.  He is a
+useful but uninteresting creature, the Man of Fact, and for a
+travelling companion or a neighbour at dinner give me the Man of
+Fancy, even if he has not a grain of exact knowledge concealed
+about his person.  It seems to me highly important that the
+foundations of Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, or Spokane Falls
+should be rooted in certainty; but Verona, Padua, and Venice--well,
+in my opinion, they should be rooted in Byron and Ruskin and
+Shakespeare.
+
+
+III
+
+
+CASA ROSA, May 18.
+
+Such a fanfare of bells as greeted our ears on the morning of our
+first awakening in Casa Rosa!
+
+"Rise at once and dress quickly, Salemina!" I said.  "Either an
+heir has been born to the throne, or a foreign Crown Prince has
+come to visit Venice, or perhaps a Papal Bull is loose in the
+Piazza San Marco.  Whatever it is, we must not miss it, as I am
+keeping a diary."
+
+But Peppina entered with a jug of hot water, and assured us that
+there were no more bells than usual; so we lay drowsily in our
+comfortable little beds, gazing at the frescoes on the ceiling.
+
+One difficulty about the faithful study of Italian frescoes is that
+they can never be properly viewed unless one is extended at full-
+length on the flat of one's honourable back (as they might say in
+Japan), a position not suitable in a public building.
+
+The fresco on my bedroom ceiling is made mysteriously attractive by
+a wilderness of mythologic animals and a crowd of cherubic heads,
+wings and legs, on a background of clouds; the mystery being that
+the number of cherubic heads does not correspond with the number of
+extremities, one or two cherubs being a wing or a leg short.
+Whatever may be their limitations in this respect, the old painters
+never denied their cherubs cheek, the amount of adipose tissue
+uniformly provided in that quarter being calculated to awake envy
+and jealousy on the part of the predigested-food-babies pictured in
+the American magazine advertisements.
+
+Padrona Angela furnishes no official key to the ceiling-paintings
+of Casa Rosa; and yesterday, during the afternoon call of four
+pretty American girls, they asked and obtained our permission to
+lie upon the marble floor and compete for a prize to be given to
+the person who should offer the cleverest interpretation of the
+symbolisms in the frescoes.  It may be stated that the entire
+difference of opinion proved that mythologic art is apt to be
+misunderstood.  After deciding in the early morning what our
+bedroom ceiling is intended to represent (a decision made and
+unmade every day since our arrival), Salemina and I make a
+leisurely toilet and then seat ourselves at one of the open windows
+for breakfast.
+
+The window itself looks on the Doge's Palace and the Campanile, St.
+Theodore and the Lion of St. Mark's being visible through a maze of
+fishing-boats and sails, some of these artistically patched in
+white and yellow blocks, or orange and white stripes, while others
+of grey have smoke-coloured figures in the tops and corners.
+
+Sometimes the broad stone-flagging pavement bordering the canal is
+busy with people:  gondoliers, boys with nets for crab-catching,
+'longshoremen, and facchini.  This is when ships are loading or
+unloading, but at other times we look upon a tranquil scene.
+
+Peppina brings in dell' acqua bollente, and I make the coffee in
+the little copper coffee-pot we bought in Paris, while Salemina
+heats the milk over the alcohol-lamp, which is the most precious
+treasure in her possession.
+
+The butter and eggs are brought every morning before breakfast, and
+nothing is more delicious than our freshly churned pat of
+solidified cream, without salt, which is sweeter than honey in the
+comb.  The cows are milked at dawn on the campagna, and the milk is
+brought into Venice in large cans.  In the early morning, when the
+light is beginning to steal through the shutters, one hears the
+tinkling of a mule's bell and the rattling of the milk-cans, and,
+if one runs to the window, may see the contadini, looking, in their
+sheepskin trousers, like brethren of John the Baptist, driving
+through the streets and delivering the milk at the vaccari.  It is
+then heated, the cream raised and churned, and the pats of butter,
+daintily set on green leaves, delivered for a seven-o'clock
+breakfast.
+
+Finally la colazione is spread on our table by the window.  A neat
+white cloth covers it, and we have gold-rimmed plates and cups of
+delicate china.  There is a pot of honey, an egg a la coque for
+each, a plate of brown and white bread, on some days a dish of
+scarlet cherries on a bed of green, on others a mound of luscious
+berries in their frills; sometimes, too, we have a bowl of tiny
+wild strawberries that seem to have grown with their faces close
+pressed to the flowers, so sweet and fragrant are they.
+
+This al fresco morning meal makes a delicious prelude to our
+comfortable dejeuner a la fourchette at one o'clock, when the
+Little Genius, if not absorbed in some unusually exacting piece of
+work, joins us and gives zest to the repast.  Her own breakfast,
+she explains, is a dejeuner a la thumb, the sort enjoyed by the
+peasant who carves a bit of bread and cheese in his hand, and she
+promises us a sight, some leisure day, of a certain dejeuner a la
+toothpick celebrated for the moment among the artists.  A
+mysterious painter, shabby, but of a certain elegance and
+distinction even in his poverty, comes daily at noon into a well-
+known restaurant.  He buys for five sous a glass of chianti, a roll
+for one sou, and with stately grace bestows another sou upon the
+waiter who serves him.  These preparations made, he breaks the roll
+in small bits, and poising them delicately on the point of a wooden
+toothpick, he dips them in wine before eating them.
+
+"This may be a frugal repast," he has an air of saying, "but it is
+at least refined, and no man would dare insult me by asking me
+whether or not I leave the table satisfied."
+
+
+IV
+
+
+CASA ROSA, May 20.
+
+One of the pleasantest sights to be noted from our windows at
+breakfast time is Angelo making ready our private gondola for the
+day.  Angelo himself is not attractive to the eye by reason of the
+silliest possible hat for a man of forty-five whose hair is
+slightly grey.  It is a white straw sailor, with a turned-up brim,
+a blue ribbon encircling the crown, and a white elastic under the
+chin; such a hat as you would expect to see crowning the flaxen
+curls of mother's darling boy of four.
+
+I love to look at the gondola, with its solemn caracoling like that
+of a possible water-horse, of which the arched neck is the graceful
+ferro.  This is a strange, weird, beautiful thing when the black
+gondola sways a little from side to side in the moonlight.  Angelo
+keeps ours polished so that it shines like silver in the morning
+sun, and he has an exquisite conscientiousness in rubbing every
+trace of brass about his precious craft.  He has a little box under
+the prow full of bottles and brushes and rags.  The cushions are
+laid on the bank of the canal; the pieces of carpet are taken out,
+shaken, and brushed, and the narrow strips are laid over the curved
+wood ends of the gondola to keep the sun from cracking them.  The
+felze, or cabin, is freed of all dust, the tiny four-legged stools
+and the carved chair are wiped off, and occasionally a thin coat of
+black paint is needed here and there, and a touching-up of the gold
+lines which relieve the sombreness.  The last thing to be done is
+to polish the vases and run back into the garden for nosegays, and
+when these are disposed in their niches on each side of the felze,
+Angelo waves his infantile hat gaily to us at the window, and
+smiles his readiness to be off.
+
+On other mornings we watch the loading and unloading of grain.
+There are many small boats always in view, their orange sails
+patched with all sorts of emblems and designs in a still deeper
+colour, and day before yesterday a large ship appeared at our
+windows and attached itself to our very doorsteps, much to the
+wrath of Salemina, who finds the poetry of existence much disturbed
+under the new conditions.  All is life and motion now.  The men are
+stripped naked to the waist, with bright handkerchiefs on their
+heads, and, in many cases, others tied over their mouths.  Each has
+a thick wisp of short twine strings tucked into his waistband.  The
+bags are weighed by one, who takes out or puts in a shovelful of
+grain, as the case may be.  Then the carrier ties up his bag with
+one of the twine strings, two other men lift it to his shoulder,
+while a boy removes a pierced piece of copper from a long wire and
+gives it to him, this copper being handed in turn to still another
+man, who apparently keeps the account.  This not uninteresting,
+indeed, but sordid and monotonous operation began before eight
+yesterday morning and even earlier to-day, obliging Salemina to
+decline strawberries and eat her breakfast with her back to the
+window.
+
+This afternoon at four the injured lady departed on a tour in Miss
+Palett's gondola.  Miss Palett is a water-colourist who has lived
+in Venice for five years and speaks the language "like a native."
+(You are familiar with the phrase, and perhaps familiar, too, with
+the native like whom they speak.)
+
+Returning after tea, Salemina was observed to radiate a kind of
+subdued triumph, which proved on investigation to be due to the
+fact that she had met the comandante of the offending ship and that
+he had gallantly promised to remove it without delay.  I cannot
+help feeling that the proper time for departure had come; but this
+destroys the story and robs the comandante of his reputation for
+chivalry.
+
+As Miss Palett's gondola neared the grain-ship, Salemina, it seems,
+spied the commanding officer pacing the deck.
+
+"See," she said to her companion, "there is a gang-plank from the
+side of the ship to that small flat-boat.  We could perfectly well
+step from our gondola to the flat-boat and then go up and ask
+politely if we may be allowed to examine the interesting grain-
+ship.  While you are interviewing the first officer about the
+foreign countries he has seen, I will ask the comandante if he will
+kindly tie his boat a little farther down on the island.  No, that
+won't do, for he may not speak English; we should have an awkward
+scene, and I should defeat my own purposes.  You are so fluent in
+Italian, suppose you call upon him with my card and let me stay in
+the gondola."
+
+"What shall I say to the man?" objected Miss Palett.
+
+"Oh, there's plenty to say," returned Salemina.  "Tell him that
+Penelope and I came over from the hotel on the Grand Canal only
+that we might have perfect quiet.  Tell him that if I had not
+unpacked my largest trunk, I should not stay an instant longer.
+Tell him that his great, bulky ship ruins the view; that it hides
+the most beautiful church and part of the Doge's Palace.  Tell him
+that I might as well have stayed at home and built a cottage on the
+dock in Boston Harbour.  Tell him that his steam-whistles, his
+anchor-droppings, and his constant loadings or unloadings give us
+headache.  Tell him that seven or eight of his sailormen brought
+clean garments and scrubbing brushes and took their bath at our
+front entrance.  Tell him that one of them, almost absolutely nude,
+instead of running away to put on more clothing, offered me his arm
+to assist me into the gondola."
+
+Miss Palett demurred at the subject-matter of some of these
+remarks, and affirmed that she could not translate others into
+proper Italian.  She therefore proposed that Salemina should write
+a few dignified protests on her visiting-card, and her own part
+would be to instruct the man in the flat-boat to deliver it at once
+to his superior officer.  The comandante spoke no English,--of that
+fact the sailorman in the flat-boat was certain,--but as the
+gondola moved away, the ladies could see the great man pondering
+over the little piece of pasteboard, and it was plain that he was
+impressed.  Herein lies perhaps a seed of truth.  The really great
+thing triumphs over all obstacles, and reaches the common mind and
+heart in some way, delivering its message we know not how.
+
+Salemina's card teemed with interesting information, at least to
+the initiated.  Her surname was in itself a passport into the best
+society.  To be an X- was enough of itself, but her Christian name
+was one peculiar to the most aristocratic and influential branch of
+the X-s.  Her mother's maiden name, engraved at full length in the
+middle, established the fact that Mr. X- had not married beneath
+him, but that she was the child of unblemished lineage on both
+sides.  Her place of residence was the only one possible to the
+possessor of three such names, and as if these advantages were not
+enough, the street and number proved that Salemina's family
+undoubtedly possessed wealth; for the small numbers, and especially
+the odd numbers, on that particular street, could be flaunted only
+by people of fortune.
+
+You have now all the facts in your possession, and I can only add
+that the ship weighed anchor at twilight, so Salemina again gazed
+upon the Doge's Palace and slept tranquilly.
+
+
+V
+
+
+CASA ROSA, May 22
+
+I am like the schoolgirl who wrote home from Venice:  "I am sitting
+on the edge of the Grand Canal drinking it all in, and life never
+seemed half so full before."  Was ever the city so beautiful as
+last night on the arrival of foreign royalty?  It was a memorable
+display and unique in its peculiar beauty.  The palaces that line
+the canal were bright with flags; windows and water-steps were
+thronged, the broad centre of the stream was left empty.
+Presently, round the bend below the Rialto, swept into view a
+double line of gondolas--long, low, gleaming with every hue of
+brilliant colour, most of them with ten, some with twelve,
+gondoliers in resplendent liveries, red, blue, green, white,
+orange, all bending over their oars with the precision of machinery
+and the grace of absolute mastery of their craft.  In the middle,
+between two lines, came one small and beautifully modelled gondola,
+rowed by four men in red and black, while on the white silk
+cushions in the stern sat the Prince and Princess.  There was no
+splash of oar or rattle of rowlock; swiftly, silently, with an air
+of stately power and pride, the lovely pageant came, passed, and
+disappeared under the shining evening sky and the gathering shadows
+of "the dim, rich city."  I never saw, or expect to see, anything
+of its kind so beautiful.
+
+I stay for hours in the gondola, writing my letters or watching the
+thousand and one sights of the streets, for I often allow Salemina
+and the Little Genius to tread their way through the highways and
+byways of Venice while I stay behind and observe life from beneath
+the grateful shade of the black felze.
+
+The women crossing the many little bridges look like the characters
+in light opera; the young girls, with their hair bobbed in a round
+coil, are sometimes bareheaded and sometimes have a lace scarf over
+their dark, curly locks.  A little fan is often in their hands, and
+one remarks the graceful way in which the crepe shawl rests upon
+the women's shoulders, remembering that it is supposed to take
+generations to learn to wear a shawl or wield a fan.
+
+My favourite waiting-place is near the Via del Paradiso, just where
+some scarlet pomegranate blossoms hang out over the old brick walls
+by the canal-side, and where one splendid acanthus reminds me that
+its leaves inspired some of the most beautiful architecture in the
+world; where, too, the ceaseless chatter of the small boys cleaning
+crabs with scrubbing-brushes gives my ear a much-needed familiarity
+with the language.
+
+Now a girl with a red parasol crosses the Ponte del Paradiso,
+making a brilliant silhouette against the blue sky.  She stops to
+prattle with the man at the bell-shop just at the corner of the
+little calle.  There are beautiful bells standing in rows in the
+window, one having a border of finely traced crabs and sea-horses
+at the base; another has a top like a Doge's cap, while the body of
+another has a delicately wrought tracery, as if a fish-net had been
+thrown over it.
+
+Sometimes the children crowd about me as the pigeons in the Piazza
+San Marco struggle for the corn flung to them by the tourists.  If
+there are only three or four, I sometimes compromise with my
+conscience and give them something.  If one gets a lira put into
+small coppers, one can give them a couple of centesimi apiece
+without feeling that one is pauperizing them, but that one is
+fostering the begging habit in young Italy is a more difficult sin
+to face.
+
+To-day when the boys took off the tattered hats from their bonny
+little heads, all black waves and riotous curls, and with disarming
+dimples and sparkling eyes presented them to me for alms, I looked
+at them with smiling admiration, thinking how like Raphael's
+cherubs they were, and then said in my best Italian:  "Oh, yes, I
+see them; they are indeed most beautiful hats.  I thank you for
+showing them to me, and I am pleased to see you courteously take
+them off to a lady."
+
+This American pleasantry was passed from mouth to mouth gleefully,
+and so truly enjoyed that they seemed to forget they had been
+denied.  They ran, still laughing and chattering, to the wood-
+carver's shop near-by and told him the story, or so I judged, for
+he came to his window and smiled benignly upon me as I sat in the
+gondola with my writing-pad on my knees.  I was pleased at the
+friendly glance, for he is the hero of a pretty little romance, and
+I long to make his acquaintance.
+
+It seems that, some years ago, the Queen, with one lady-in-waiting
+in attendance, came to his shop quite early in the morning.  Both
+were plainly dressed in cotton gowns, and neither made any
+pretensions.  He was carving something that could not be dropped, a
+cherub's face that had to be finished while his thought of it was
+fresh.  Hurriedly asking pardon, he continued his work, and at end
+of an hour raised his eyes, breathless and apologetic, to look at
+his visitors.  The taller lady had a familiar appearance.  He gazed
+steadily, and then, to his surprise and embarrassment, recognized
+the Queen.  Far from being offended, she respected his devotion to
+his art, and before she left the shop she gave him a commission for
+a royal staircase.  I am going to ask the Little Genius to take me
+to see his work, but, alas! there will be an unsurmountable barrier
+between us, for I cannot utter in my new Italian anything but the
+most commonplace and conventional statements.
+
+
+VI
+
+
+CASA ROSA, May 28.
+
+Oh, this misery of being dumb, incoherent, unintelligible, foolish,
+inarticulate in a foreign land, for lack of words!  It is unwise, I
+fear, to have at the outset too high an ideal either in grammar or
+accent.  As our gondola passed one of the hotels this afternoon, we
+paused long enough to hear an intrepid lady converse with an
+Italian who carried a mandolin and had apparently come to give a
+music lesson to her husband.  She seemed to be from the Middle West
+of America, but I am not disposed to insist upon this point, nor to
+make any particular State in the Union blush for her crudities of
+speech.  She translated immediately everything that she said into
+her own tongue, as if the hearer might, between French and English,
+possibly understand something.
+
+"Elle nay pars easy--he ain't here," she remarked, oblivious of
+gender.  "Elle retoorneray ah seas oors et dammi--he'll be back
+sure by half-past six.  Bone swar, I should say Bony naughty--Good-
+night to you, and I won't let him forget to show up to-morrer."
+
+This was neither so ingenious nor so felicitous as the language-
+expedient of the man who wished to leave some luggage at a railway
+station in Rome, and knowing nothing of any foreign tongue but a
+few Latin phrases, mostly of an obituary character, pointed several
+times to his effects, saying, "Requiescat in pace," and then,
+pointing again to himself, uttered the one pregnant word
+"Resurgam."  This at any rate had the merit of tickling his own
+sense of humour, if it availed nothing with the railway porters,
+and if any one remarks that he has read the tale in some ancient
+"Farmers' Almanack," I shall only retort that it is still worth
+repeating.
+
+My little red book on the "Study of Italian Made Easy for the
+Traveller" is always in my pocket, but it is extraordinary how
+little use it is to me.  The critics need not assert that
+individuality is dying out in the human race and that we are all
+more or less alike.  If we were, we should find our daily practical
+wants met by such little books.  Mine gives me a sentence
+requesting the laundress to return the clothes three days hence, at
+midnight, at cock-crow, or at the full of the moon, but nowhere can
+the new arrival find the phrase for the next night or the day after
+to-morrow.  The book implores the washerwoman to use plenty of
+starch, but the new arrival wishes scarcely any, or only the frills
+dipped.
+
+Before going to the dressmaker's yesterday, I spent five minutes
+learning the Italian for the expression "This blouse bags; it sits
+in wrinkles between the shoulders."  As this was the only criticism
+given in the little book, I imagined that Italian dressmakers erred
+in this special direction.  What was my discomfiture to find that
+my blouse was much too small and refused to meet.  I could only use
+gestures for the dressmaker's enlightenment, but in order not to
+waste my recently gained knowledge, I tried to tell a melodramatic
+tale of a friend of mine whose blouse bagged and sat in wrinkles
+between the shoulders.  It was not successful, because I was
+obliged to substitute the past for the present tense of the verb.
+
+Somebody says that if we learn the irregular verbs of a language
+first, all will be well.  I think by the use of considerable mental
+agility one can generally avoid them altogether, although it
+materially reduces one's vocabulary; but at all events there is no
+way of learning them thoroughly save by marrying a native.  A
+native, particularly after marriage, uses the irregular verbs with
+great freedom, and one acquires a familiarity with them never
+gained in the formal instruction of a teacher.  This method of
+education may be considered radical, and in cases where one is
+already married, illegal and bigamous, but on the whole it is not
+attended with any more difficulty than the immersing of one's self
+in a study day after day and month after month learning the
+irregular verbs from a grammar.
+
+My rule in studying a language is to seize upon some salient point,
+or one generally overlooked by foreigners, or some very subtle one
+known only to the scholar, and devote myself to its mastery.  A
+little knowledge here blinds the hearer to much ignorance
+elsewhere.  In Italian, for example, the polite way of addressing
+one's equal is to speak in the third person singular, using Ella
+(she) as the pronoun.  "Come sta Ella?"  (How are you? but
+literally "How is she?")
+
+I pay great attention to this detail, and make opportunities to
+meet our padrona on the staircase and say "How is she?" to her.  I
+can never escape the feeling that I am inquiring for the health of
+an absent person; moreover, I could not understand her symptoms if
+she should recount them, and I have no language in which to
+describe my own symptoms, which, so far as I have observed, is the
+only reason we ever ask anybody else how he feels.
+
+To remember on the instant whether one is addressing equals,
+superiors, or inferiors, and to marshal hastily the proper pronoun,
+adds a new terror to conversation, so that I find myself constantly
+searching my memory to decide whether it shall be:
+
+Scusate or Scusi, Avanti or Passi, A rivederci or Addio, Che cosa
+dite? or Che coma dice?  Quanto domandate? or Quanto domanda?  Dove
+andate? or Dove va?  Come vi chiamate? or Come si chiama? and so
+forth and so forth until one's mind seems to be arranged in
+tabulated columns, with special N.B.'s to use the infinitive in
+talking to the gondolier.
+
+Finding the hours of time rather puzzling as recorded in the "Study
+of Italian Made Easy," I devoted twenty-four hours to learning how
+to say the time from one o'clock at noon to midnight, or thirteen
+to twenty-three o'clock.  My soul revolted at the task, for a
+foreign tongue abounds in these malicious little refinements of
+speech, invented, I suppose, to prevent strangers from making too
+free with it on short acquaintance.  I found later on that my
+labour had been useless, and that evidently the Italians themselves
+have no longer the leisure for these little eccentricities of
+language and suffer them to pass from common use.  If the Latin
+races would only meet in convention and agree to bestow the
+comfortable neuter gender on inanimate objects and commodities, how
+popular they might make themselves with the English-speaking
+nations; but having begun to "enrich" their language, and make it
+more "subtle" by these perplexities, centuries ago, they will no
+doubt continue them until the end of time.
+
+If one has been a devoted patron of the opera or student of music,
+one has an Italian vocabulary to begin with.  This, if accompanied
+by the proper gestures (for it is vain to speak without liberal
+movements, of the hands, shoulders, and eyebrows), this, I
+maintain, will deceive all the English-speaking persons who may be
+seated near your table in a foreign cafe.
+
+The very first evening after our arrival, Jack Copley asked
+Salemina and me to dine with him at the best restaurant in Venice.
+Jack Copley is a well of nonsense undefiled, and he, like
+ourselves, had been in Italy only a few hours.  He called for us in
+his gondola, and in the row across from the Giudecca we amused
+ourselves by calling to mind the various Italian words or phrases
+with which we were familiar.  They were mostly titles of arias or
+songs, but Jack insisted, notwithstanding Salemina's protestations,
+that, properly interlarded with names of famous Italians, he could
+maintain a brilliant conversation with me at table, to the envy and
+amazement of our neighbours.  The following paragraph, then, was
+our stock in trade, and Jack's volubility and ingenuity in its use
+kept Salemina quite helpless with laughter:-
+
+
+Guarda che bianca luna--Il tempo passato--Lascia ch' io pianga--
+Dolce far niente--Batti batti nel Masetto--Da capo--Ritardando--
+Andante--Piano--Adagio--Spaghetti--Macaroni--Polenta--Non e ver--
+Ah, non giunge--Si la stanchezza--Bravo--Lento--Presto--Scherzo--
+Dormi pura--La ci darem la mano--Celeste Aida--Spirito gentil--Voi
+che sapete--Crispino e la Comare--Pieta, Signore--Tintoretto--
+Boccaccio--Garibaldi--Mazzini--Beatrice Cenci--Gordigiani--Santa
+Lucia--Il mio tesoro--Margherita--Umberto--Vittoria Colonna -Tutti
+frutti--Botticelli--Una furtiva lagrima.
+
+
+No one who has not the privilege of Jack Copley's acquaintance
+could believe with what effect he used these unrelated words and
+sentences.  I could only assist, and lead him to ever higher
+flights of fancy.
+
+We perceive with pleasure that our mother tongue presents equal
+difficulties to Italian manufacturers and men of affairs.  The so-
+called mineral water we use at table is specially still and dead,
+and we think it may have been compared to its disadvantage with
+other more sparkling beverages, since every bottle bears a printed
+label announcing, "To Distrust of the mineral waters too foaming,
+since that they do invariable spread the Stomach."
+
+We learn also by studying another bottle that "The Wermouth is a
+white wine slightly bitter, and parfumed with who leso me aromatic
+herbs."  Who leso me we printed in italics in our own minds, giving
+the phrase a pure Italian accent until we discovered that it was
+the somewhat familiar adjective "wholesome."
+
+In one of the smaller galleries we were given the usual pasteboard
+fans bearing explanations of the frescoes:-
+
+Room I.  In the middle.  The sin of our fathers.
+
+On every side.  The ovens of Babylony.  Moise saved from the water.
+
+Room II.  In the middle.  Moise who sprung the water.
+
+On every side.  The luminous column in the dessert and the ardent
+wood.
+
+Room III.  In the middle.  Elia transported in the heaven.
+
+On every side.  Eliseus dispansing brods.
+
+Room IV.  The wood carvings are by Anonymous.  The tapestry shows
+the multiplications of brods and fishs.
+
+
+VII
+
+
+CASA ROSA, May 30.
+
+We have had a battle royal in Casa Rosa--a battle over the breaking
+of a huge blue pitcher valued at eight francs, a pitcher belonging
+to the Little Genius.
+
+The room that leads from the dining-room to the kitchen is reached
+by the descent of two or three stone steps.  It is always full, and
+is like the orthodox hell in one respect, that though myriads of
+people are seen to go into it, none ever seem to come out.  It is
+not more than twelve feet square, and the persons most continuously
+in it, not counting those who are in transit, are the Padrona
+Angela; the Padrona Angela's daughter, Signorina Rita; the
+Signorina Rita's temporary suitor; the suitor's mother and cousin;
+the padrona's great-aunt; a few casual acquaintances of the two
+families, and somebody's baby:  not always the same baby; any baby
+answers the purpose and adds to the confusion and chatter of
+tongues.
+
+This morning, the door from the dining-room being ajar, I heard a
+subdued sort of Bedlam in the distance, and finally went nearer to
+the scene of action, finding the cause in a heap of broken china in
+the centre of the floor.  I glanced at the excited company, but
+there was nothing to show me who was the criminal.  There was a
+spry girl washing dishes; the fritter-woman (at least we call her
+so, because she brings certain goodies called, if I mistake not,
+frittoli); the gardener's wife; Angelo, the gondolier; Peppina, the
+waiting-maid; and the men that had just brought the sausages and
+sweetmeats for the gondolier's ball, which we were giving in the
+evening.  There was also the contralto, with a large soup-ladle in
+her hand.  (We now call Rosalia, the cook, "the contralto," because
+she sings so much better than she cooks that it seems only proper
+to distinguish her in the line of her special talent.)
+
+The assembled company were all talking and gesticulating at once.
+There was a most delicate point of justice involved, for, as far as
+I could gather, the sweetmeat-man had come in unexpectedly and
+collided with the sausage-man, thereby startling the fritter-woman,
+who turned suddenly and jostled the spry girl:  hence the pile of
+broken china.
+
+The spry girl was all for justice.  If she had carelessly or
+wilfully dropped the pitcher, she would have been willing to suffer
+the extreme penalty,--the number of saints she called upon to
+witness this statement was sufficient to prove her honesty,--but
+under the circumstances she would be blessed if she suffered
+anything, even the abuse that filled the air.  The fritter-woman
+upbraided the sweetmeat-man, who in return reviled the sausage-
+vender, who remarked that if Angelo or Peppina had received the
+sausages at the door, as they should, he would never have been in
+the house at all; adding a few picturesque generalizations
+concerning the moral turpitude of Angelo's parents and the vicious
+nature of their offspring.
+
+The contralto, who was divided in her soul, being betrothed to the
+sausage-vender, but aunt to the spry girl, sprang into the arena,
+armed with the soup-ladle, and dispensed injustice on all sides.
+The feud now reached its height.  There is nothing that the chief
+participants did not call one another, and no intimation or
+aspersion concerning the reputation of ancestors to the remotest
+generation that was not cast in the others' teeth.  The spry girl
+referred to the sausage-vender as a generalissimo of all the
+fiends, and the compliments concerning the gentle art of cookery
+which flew between the fritter-woman and the contralto will not
+bear repetition.  I listened breathlessly, hoping to hear one of
+the party refer to somebody as the figure of a pig (strangely
+enough the most unforgettable of insults), for each of the
+combatants held, suspended in air, the weapon of his choice--broken
+crockery, soup-ladle, rolling-pin, or sausage.  Each, I say,
+flourished the emblem of his craft wildly in the air--and then,
+with a change of front like that of the celebrated King of France
+in the Mother Goose rhyme, dropped it swiftly and silently; for at
+this juncture the Little Genius flew down the broad staircase from
+her eagle's nest.  Her sculptor's smock surmounted her blue cotton
+gown, and her blond hair was flying in the breeze created by her
+rapid descent.  I wish I could affirm that by her gentle dignity
+and serene self-control she awed the company into silence, or that
+there was a holy dignity about her that held them spellbound; but
+such, unhappily, is not the case.  It was her pet blue pitcher that
+had been broken--the pitcher that was to serve as just the right
+bit of colour at the evening's feast.  She took command of the
+situation in a masterly manner--a manner that had American energy
+and decision as its foundation and Italian fluency as its
+superstructure.  She questioned the virtue of no one's ancestors,
+cast no shadow of doubt on the legitimacy of any one's posterity,
+called no one by the name of any four-footed beast or crawling,
+venomous thing, yet she somehow brought order out of chaos.  Her
+language (for which she would have been fined thirty days in her
+native land) charmed and enthralled the Venetians by its delicacy,
+reserve, and restraint, and they dispersed pleasantly.  The
+sausage-vender wished good appetite to the cook,--she had need of
+it, Heaven knows, and we had more,--while the spry girl embraced
+the fritter-woman ardently, begging her to come in again soon and
+make a longer visit.
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+CASA ROSA, June 10
+
+I am saying all my good-byes--to Angelo and the gondola; to the
+greedy pigeons of San Marco, so heavy in the crop that they can
+scarcely waddle on their little red feet; to the bees and birds and
+flowers and trees of the beautiful garden behind the casa; to the
+Little Genius and her eagle's nest on the house-top; to "the city
+that is always just putting out to sea."  It has been a month of
+enchantment, and although rather expensive, it is pleasant to think
+that the padrona's mortgage is nearly paid.
+
+It is a saint's day, and to-night there will be a fiesta.  Coming
+home to our island, we shall hear the laughter and the song
+floating out from the wine shops and the caffes; we shall see the
+lighted barges with their musicians; we shall thrill with the cries
+of "Viva Italia! viva el Re!"  The moon will rise above the white
+palaces; their innumerable lights will be reflected in the glassy
+surface of the Grand Canal.  We shall feel for the last time "the
+quick silent passing" of the only Venetian cab.
+
+
+"How light we move, how softly!  Ah,
+Were life but as the gondola!"
+
+
+To-morrow we shall be rowed against the current to Padua.  We shall
+see Malcontenta and its ruined villa:  Oriago and Mira and the
+campanile of Dolo.  Venice will lie behind us, but she will never
+be forgotten.  Many a time on such a night as this we shall say
+with other wandering Venetians:-
+
+
+"O Venezia benedetta!
+Non ti voglio piu lasciar!"
+
+
+
+PENELOPE'S PRINTS OF WALES
+
+
+
+And at length it chanced that I came to the fairest Valley in the
+World, wherein were trees of equal growth; and a river ran through
+the Valley, and a path was by the side of the river.  And I
+followed the path until midday, and I continued my journey along
+the remainder of the Valley until the evening:  and at the
+extremity of a plain I came to a lone and lustrous Castle, at the
+foot of which was a torrent.
+
+
+We are coaching in Wales, having journeyed by easy stages from
+Liverpool through Llanberis, Penygwryd, Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert
+and Dolgelly on our way to Bristol, where we shall make up our
+minds as to the next step; deciding in solemn conclave, with floods
+of argument and temperamental differences of opinion, what is best
+worth seeing where all is beautiful and inspiring.  If I had
+possessed a little foresight I should have avoided Wales, for,
+having proved apt at itinerary doggerel, I was solemnly created,
+immediately on arrival, Mistress of Rhymes and Travelling Laureate
+to the party--an office, however honourable, that is no sinecure
+since it obliges me to write rhymed eulogies or diatribes on
+Dolgelly, Tan-y-Bulch, Gyn-y-Coed, Llanrychwyn, and other Welsh
+hamlets whose names offer breakneck fences to the Muse.
+
+I have not wanted for training in this direction, having made a
+journey (heavenly in reminiscence) along the Thames, stopping at
+all the villages along its green banks.  It was Kitty Schuyler and
+Jack Copley who insisted that I should rhyme Henley and Streatley
+and Wargrave before I should be suffered to eat luncheon, and they
+who made me a crown of laurel and hung a pasteboard medal about my
+blushing neck when I succeeded better than usual with Datchett!--I
+well remember Datchett, where the water-rats crept out of the reeds
+in the shallows to watch our repast; and better still do I recall
+Medmenham Abbey, which defied all my efforts till I found that it
+was pronounced Meddenam with the accent on the first syllable.  The
+results of my enforced tussles with the Muse stare at me now from
+my Commonplace Book.
+
+
+"Said a rat to a hen once, at Datchett,
+'Throw an egg to me, dear, and I'll catch it!'
+'I thank you, good sir,
+But I greatly prefer
+To sit on mine HERE till I hatch it.'"
+
+"Few hairs had the Vicar of Medmenham,
+Few hairs, and he still was a-sheddin' 'em,
+But had none remained,
+He would not have complained,
+Because there was FAR too much red in 'em!"
+
+
+It was Jack Copley, too, who incited me to play with rhymes for
+Venice until I produced the following tour de force:
+
+
+"A giddy young hostess in Venice
+Gave her guests hard-boiled eggs to play tennis.
+She said 'If they SHOULD break,
+What odds would it make?
+You can't THINK how prolific my hen is."
+
+
+Reminiscences of former difficulties bravely surmounted faded into
+insignificance before our first day in Wales was over.
+
+Jack Copley is very autocratic, almost brutal in discipline.  It is
+he who leads me up to the Visitors' Books at the wayside inns, and
+putting the quill in my reluctant fingers bids me write in cheerful
+hexameters my impressions of the unpronounceable spot.  My
+martyrdom began at Penygwryd (Penny-goo-rid').  We might have
+stopped at Conway or some other town of simple name, or we might
+have allowed the roof of the Cambrian Arms or the Royal Goat or the
+Saracen's Read to shelter us comfortably, and provide me a
+comparatively easy task; but no; Penygwryd it was, and the
+outskirts at that, because of two inns that bore on their swinging
+signs the names:  Ty Ucha and Ty Isaf, both of which would make any
+minor poet shudder.  When I saw the sign over the door of our
+chosen hostelry I was moved to disappear and avert my fate.  Hunger
+at length brought me out of my lair, and promising to do my duty, I
+was allowed to join the irresponsible ones at luncheon.
+
+Such a toothsome feast it was!  A delicious ham where roses and
+lilies melted sweetly into one another; some crisp lettuces, ale in
+pewter mugs, a good old cheese, and that stodgy cannon-ball the
+"household loaf," dear for old association's sake.  We were served
+at table by the granddaughter of the house, a little damsel of
+fifteen summers with sleek brown hair and the eyes of a doe.  The
+pretty creature was all blushes and dimples and pinafores and
+curtsies and eloquent goodwill.  With what a sweet politeness do
+they invest their service, some of these soft-voiced British maids!
+Their kindness almost moves one to tears when one is fresh from the
+resentful civility fostered by Democracy.
+
+As we strolled out on the greensward by the hawthorn hedge we were
+followed by the little waitress, whose name, however pronounced,
+was written Nelw Evans.  She asked us if we would write in the
+"Locked Book," whereupon she presented us with the key.  It seems
+that there is an ordinary Visitors' Book, where the common herd is
+invited to scrawl its unknown name; but when persons of evident
+distinction and genius patronize the inn, this "Locked Book" is put
+into their hands.
+
+I found that many a lord and lady had written on its pages, and men
+mighty in Church and State had left their mark, with much bad
+poetry commendatory of the beds, the food, the scenery, and the
+fishing.  Nobody, however, had given a line to pretty Nelw Evans;
+so I pencilled her a rhyme, for which I was well paid in dimples:-
+
+
+"At the Inn called the Penygwryd
+A sweet little maiden is hid.
+She's so rosy and pretty
+I write her this ditty
+And leave it at Penygwryd."
+
+
+Our next halt was at Bettws-y-Coed, where we passed the week-end.
+It was a memorable spot, as I failed at first to rhyme the name,
+and only succeeded under threats of a fate like unto that of the
+immortal babes in the wood.  I left the verse to be carved on a
+bronze tablet in the village church, should any one be found fitted
+to bear the weight of its eulogy:-
+
+
+"Here lies an old woman of Bettws-y-CoED;
+Wherever she went, it was there that she goED.
+She frequently said:  'My own row have I hoED,
+And likewise the church water-mark have I toED.
+I'm therefore expecting to reap what I've sowED,
+And go straight to heaven from Bettws-y-CoED.'"
+
+
+At another stage of our journey, when the coaching tour was nearly
+ended, we were stopping at the Royal Goat at Beddgelert.  We were
+seated about the cheerful blaze (one and sixpence extra), portfolio
+in lap, making ready our letters for the post.  I announced my
+intention of writing to Salemina, left behind in London with a
+sprained ankle, and determined that the missive should be saturated
+with local colour.  None of us were able to spell the few Welsh
+words we had picked up in our journeyings, but I evaded the
+difficulties by writing an exciting little episode in which all the
+principal substantives were names of Welsh towns, dragged in
+bodily, and so used as to deceive the casual untravelled reader.
+
+I read it aloud.  Jack Copley declared that it made capital sense,
+and sounded as if it had happened exactly as stated.  Perhaps you
+will agree with him:-
+
+
+DDOLGHYHGGLLWN, WALES
+
+. . . We left Bettws-y-Coed yesterday morning, and coached thirty-
+three miles to this point.  (How do you like this point when you
+see it spelled?)  We lunched at a wayside inn, and as we journeyed
+on we began to see pposters on the ffences announcing the ffact
+that there was to be a Festiniog that day in the village of
+Portmadoc, through which we were to pass.
+
+I always enoyw a Festiniog yn any country, and my hheart beat hhigh
+with anticipation.  Yt was ffive o'clock yn the cool of the dday,
+and ppresently the roadw became ggay with the returning
+festinioggers.  Here was a fine Llanberis, its neck encircled with
+shining meddals wonw in previous festiniogs; there, just behind, a
+wee shaggy Rhyl led along proudly by its owner.  Evydently the
+gayety was over for the day, for the ppeople now came yn crowds,
+the women with gay plaid Rhuddlans over their shoulders and straw
+Beddgelerts on their hheads.
+
+The guardd ttooted his hhorn continuously, for we now approached
+the principalw street of the village, where hhundreds of ppeople
+were conggreggated.  Of course there were allw manner of Dolgelleys
+yn the crowd, and allw that had taken pprizes were gayly decked
+with ribbons.  Just at this moment the hhorn of our gguard
+ffrightened a superb Llanrwst, a spirited black creature of
+enormous size.  It made a ddash through the lines of tterrified
+mothers, who caught their innocent Pwllhelis closer to their
+bbosoms.  In its madd course it bruised the side of a huge
+Llandudno hitched to a stout Tyn-y-Coed by the way-side.  It bbroke
+its Bettws and leaped ynto the air.  Ddeath stared us yn the face.
+David the whip grew ppale, and signalled to Absalom the gguard to
+save as many lives as he could and leave the rrest to Pprovidence.
+Absalom spprang from his seat, and taking a sharp Capel Curig from
+his ppocket (Hheaven knows how he chanced to have it about his
+pperson), he aimed straight between the Llangollens of the
+infuriated Llandudno.  With a moan of baffled rrage, he sank to
+earth with a hheavy thuddw.  Absalom withdrew the bbloody Capel
+Curig from the dying Llandudno, and wiping yt on his Penygwryd,
+replaced yt yn his pocket for future possible use.
+
+The local Dolwyddelan approached, and ordered a detachment of Tan-
+y-Bulchs to remove the corpse of the Llandudno.  With a shudder we
+saw him borne to his last rrest, for we realized that had yt not
+bbeen for Absalom's Capel Curig we had bbeen bburied yn an
+unpronounceable Welsh ggrave.
+
+
+
+PENELOPE IN DEVON
+
+
+
+We are in Bristol after a week's coaching in Wales; the Jack
+Copleys, Tommy Schuyler, Mrs. Jack's younger brother, and Miss Van
+Tyck, Mrs. Jack's "Aunt Celia," who played a grim third in that
+tour of the English Cathedrals during which Jack Copley was
+ostensibly studying architecture but in reality courting Kitty
+Schuyler.  Also there is Bertram Ferguson, whom we call "Atlas"
+because he carries the world on his shoulders, gazing more or less
+vaguely and absent-mindedly at all the persons and things in the
+universe not in need of immediate reformation.
+
+We had journeyed by easy stages from Liverpool through Carnarvon,
+Llanberis, Penygwyrd, Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert, and Tan-y-Bulch.
+Arriving finally at Dolgelly, we sent the coach back to Carnarvon
+and took the train to Ross,--the gate of the Wye,--from whence we
+were to go down the river in boats.  As to that, everybody knows
+Symond's Yat, Monmouth, Raglan Castle, Tintern Abbey, Chepstow; but
+at Bristol a brilliant idea took possession of Jack Copley's mind.
+Long after we were in bed o' nights the blessed man interviewed
+landlords and studied guidebooks that he might show us something
+beautiful next day, and above all, something out of the common
+route.  Mrs. Jack didn't like common routes; she wanted her
+appetite titillated with new scenes.
+
+At breakfast we saw the red-covered Baedeker beside our host's
+plate.  This was his way of announcing that we were to "move on,"
+like poor Jo in "Bleak House."  He had already reached the
+marmalade stage, and while we discussed our bacon and eggs and
+reviled our coffee, he read us the following:-
+
+"Clovelly lies in a narrow and richly-wooded combe descending
+abruptly to the sea." -
+
+"Any place that descends to the sea abruptly or otherwise has my
+approval in advance," said Tommy.
+
+"Be quiet, my boy."--"It consists of one main street, or rather a
+main staircase, with a few houses climbing on each side of the
+combe so far as the narrow space allows.  The houses, each standing
+on a higher or lower level than its neighbour, are all whitewashed,
+with gay green doors and lattices." -
+
+"Heavenly!" cried Mrs. Jack.  "It sounds like an English Amalfi;
+let us take the first train."
+
+- "And the general effect is curiously foreign; the views from the
+quaint little pier and, better still, from the sea, with the pier
+in the foreground, are also very striking.  The foundations of the
+cottages at the lower end of the village are hewn out of the living
+rock."
+
+"How does a living rock differ from other rocks--dead rocks?" Tommy
+asked facetiously.  "I have always wanted to know; however, it
+sounds delightful, though I can't remember anything about
+Clovelly."
+
+"Did you never read Dickens's 'Message from the Sea,' Thomas?"
+asked Miss Van Tyck.  Aunt Celia always knows the number of the
+unemployed in New York and Chicago, the date when North Carolina
+was admitted to the Union, why black sheep eat less than white
+ones, the height of the highest mountain and the length of the
+longest river in the world, when the first potato was dug from
+American soil, when the battle of Bull Run was fought, who invented
+the first fire-escape, how woman suffrage has worked in Colorado
+and California, the number of trees felled by Mr. Gladstone, the
+principle of the Westinghouse brake and the Jacquard loom, the
+difference between peritonitis and appendicitis, the date of the
+introduction of postal-cards and oleomargarine, the price of
+mileage on African railways, the influence of Christianity in the
+Windward Islands, who wrote "There's Another, not a Sister," "At
+Midnight in his Guarded Tent," "A Thing of Beauty is a Joy
+Forever," and has taken in through the pores much other information
+likely to be of service on journeys where an encyclopaedia is not
+available.
+
+If she could deliver this information without gibes at other
+people's ignorance she would, of course, be more agreeable; but it
+is only justice to say that a person is rarely instructive and
+agreeable at the same moment.
+
+"It is settled, then, that we go to Clovelly," said Jack.  "Bring
+me the ABC Guide, please" (this to the waiter who had just brought
+in the post).
+
+"Quite settled, and we go at once," said Mrs. Jack, whose joy at
+arriving at a place is only equalled by her joy in leaving it.
+"Penelope, hand me my letters, please; if you were not my guest I
+should say I had never witnessed such an appetite.  Tommy, what
+news from father?  Atlas, how can you drink three cups of British
+coffee?  Oh-h-h, how more than lucky, how heavenly, how
+providential!  Egeria is coming!"
+
+"Egeria?" we cried with one rapturous voice.
+
+"Read your letter carefully, Kitty," said Jack; "you will probably
+find that she wishes she might come, but finds it impossible."
+
+"Or that she certainly would come if she had anything to wear,"
+drawled Tommy.
+
+"Or that she could come perfectly well if it were a few days
+later," quoth I.
+
+Mrs. Jack stared at us superciliously, and lifting an absurd watch
+from her antique chatelaine, observed calmly, "Egeria will be at
+this hotel in one hour and fifteen minutes; I telegraphed her the
+night before last, and this letter is her reply."
+
+"Who is Egeria?" asked Atlas, looking up from his own letters.
+"She sounds like a character in a book."
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "You begin, Penelope."
+
+Penelope:  "No, I'd rather finish; then I can put in everything
+that you omit."
+
+Atlas:  "Is there so much to tell?"
+
+Tommy:  "Rather.  Begin with her hair, Penelope."
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "No; I'll do that!  Don't rattle your knives and forks,
+shut up your Baedeker, Jackie, and listen while I quote what a
+certain poet wrote of Egeria when she last visited us:-
+
+
+"'She has a knot of russet hair:
+It seems a simple thing to wear
+Through years, despite of fashion's check,
+The same deep coil about the neck,
+But there it twined
+When first I knew her,
+And learned with passion to pursue her,
+And if she changed it, to my mind
+She were a creature of new kind.
+
+"'O first of women who has laid
+Magnetic glory on a braid!
+In others' tresses we may mark
+If they be silken, blonde, or dark,
+But thine we praise and dare not feel them,
+Not Hermes, god of theft, dare steal them;
+It is enough for eye to gaze
+Upon their vivifying maze.'"
+
+
+Jack:  "She has beautiful hair, but as an architect I shouldn't
+think of mentioning it first.  Details should follow, not precede,
+general characteristics.  Her hair is an exquisite detail; so, you
+might say, is her nose, her foot, her voice; but viewed as a
+captivating whole, Egeria might be described epigrammatically as an
+animated lodestone.  When a man approaches her he feels his iron-
+work gently and gradually drawn out of him."
+
+Atlas looked distinctly incredulous at this statement, which was
+reinforced by the affirmative nods of the whole party.
+
+Penelope:  "A man cannot talk to Egeria an hour without wishing the
+assistance of the Society for First Aid to the Injured.  She is a
+kind of feminine fly-paper; the men are attracted by the sweetness,
+and in trying to absorb a little of it, they stick fast."
+
+Tommy:  "Egeria is worth from two to two and a half times more than
+any girl alive; I would as lief talk to her as listen to myself."
+
+Atlas:  "Great Jove, what a concession!  I wish I could find a
+woman--an unmarried woman (with a low bow to Mrs. Jack)--that would
+produce that effect upon me.  So you all like her?"
+
+Aunt Celia:  "She is not what I consider a well-informed girl."
+
+Penelope:  "Now don't carp, Miss Van Tyck.  You love her as much as
+we all do.  'Like her,' indeed!  I detest the phrase.  Werther said
+when asked how he liked Charlotte, 'What sort of creature must he
+be who merely liked her; whose whole heart and senses were not
+entirely absorbed by her!  Some one asked me lately how I 'liked'
+Ossian."
+
+Atlas:  "Don't introduce Ossian, Werther and Charlotte into this
+delightful breakfast chat, I beseech you; the most tiresome trio
+that ever lived.  If they were travelling with us, how they would
+jar!  Ossian would tear the scenery in tatters with his
+apostrophes, Werther would make love to Mrs. Jack, and Charlotte
+couldn't cut an English household loaf with a hatchet.  Keep to
+Egeria,--though if one cannot stop at liking her, she is a
+dangerous subject."
+
+Jack:  "Don't imagine from these panegyrics that, to the casual
+observer, Egeria is anything more than a nice girl.  The deadly
+qualities that were mentioned only appeal to the sympathetic eye
+(which you have not), and the susceptible heart (which is not
+yours), and after long acquaintance (which you can't have, for she
+stays only a week).  Tommy, you can meet the charmer at the
+station; your sister will pack up, and I'll pay the bills and make
+arrangements for the journey."
+
+Jack Copley (when left alone with his spouse):  "Kitty, I wonder,
+why you invited Egeria to travel in the same party with Atlas."
+
+Mrs. Jack (fencing):  "Pooh! Atlas is safe anywhere."
+
+Jack:  "He is a man."
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "No; he is a reformer."
+
+Jack:  "Even reformers fall in love."
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "Not unless they can find a woman to reform.  Egeria is
+too nearly perfect to attract Atlas; besides, what does it matter,
+anyway?"
+
+Jack:  "It matters a good deal if it makes him unhappy; he is too
+good a fellow."
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "I've lived twenty-five years and I have never seen a
+man's unhappiness last more than six months, and I have never seen
+a woman make a wound in a man's heart that another woman couldn't
+heal.  The modern young man is as tough as--well, I can't think of
+anything tough enough to compare him to.  I've always thought it a
+pity that the material of which men's hearts is made couldn't be
+utilized for manufacturing purposes; think of its value for hinges,
+or for the toes of little boys' boots, or the heels of their
+stockings!"
+
+Jack:  "I should think you had just been jilted, my dear; how has
+Atlas offended you?"
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "He hasn't offended me; I love him, but I think he is
+too absent-minded lately."
+
+Jack:  "And is Egeria invited to join us in order that she may
+bring his mind forcibly back to the present?"
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "Not at all; I consider Atlas as safe as a--as a
+church, or a dictionary, or a guide-post, or anything; he is too
+much interested in tenement-house reform to fall in love with a
+woman."
+
+Jack:  "I think a sensible woman wouldn't be out of place in Atlas'
+schemes for the regeneration of humanity."
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "No; but Egeria isn't a--yes, she is, too; I can't deny
+it, but I don't believe she knows anything about the sweating
+system, and she adores Ossian and Fiona Macleod, so she probably
+won't appeal to Atlas in his present state, which, to my mind, is
+unnecessarily intense.  The service of humanity renders a young man
+perfectly callous to feminine charms.  It's the proverbial safety
+of numbers, I suppose, for it's always the individual that leads a
+man into temptation, if you notice, never the universal;--Woman,
+not women.  I have studied Atlas profoundly, and he is nearly as
+blind as a bat.  He paid no attention to my new travelling-dress
+last week, and yesterday I wore four rings on my middle finger and
+two on each thumb all day long, just to see if I could catch his
+eye and hold his attention.  I couldn't."
+
+Jack:  "That may all be; a man may be blind to the charms of all
+women but one (and precious lucky if he is), but he is particularly
+keen where the one is concerned."
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "Atlas isn't keen about anything but the sweating
+system.  You needn't worry about him; your favourite Stevenson says
+that a wet rag goes safely by the fire, and if a man is blind, he
+cannot expect to be much impressed by romantic scenery.  Atlas
+momentarily a wet rag and temporarily blind.  He told me on
+Wednesday that he intended to leave all his money to one of those
+long-named regenerating societies--I can't remember which."
+
+Jack:  "And it was on Wednesday you sent for Egeria.  I see."
+
+Mrs. Jack (haughtily):  "Then you see a figment of your own
+imagination; there is nothing else to see.  There!  I've packed
+everything that belongs to me, while you've been smoking and gazing
+at that railway guide.  When do we start?"
+
+Jack:  "11.59.  We arrive in Bideford at 4.40, and have a twelve-
+mile drive to Clovelly.  I will telegraph for a conveyance to the
+inn and for five bedrooms and a sitting-room."
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "I hope that Egeria's train will be on time, and I hope
+that it will rain so that I can wear my five-guinea mackintosh.  It
+poured every day when I was economizing and doing without it."
+
+Jack:  "I never could see the value of economy that ended in extra
+extravagance."
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "Very likely; there are hosts of things you never can
+see, Jackie.  But there she is, stepping out of a hansom, the
+darling!  What a sweet gown!  She's infinitely more interesting
+than the sweating system."
+
+
+We thought we were a merry party before Egeria joined us, but she
+certainly introduced a new element of interest.  I could not help
+thinking of it as we were flying about the Bristol station, just
+before entering the first-class carriage engaged by our host.
+Tommy had bought us rosebuds at a penny each; Atlas had a bundle of
+illustrated papers under his arm--The Sketch, Black and White, The
+Queen, The Lady's Pictorial, and half a dozen others.  The guard
+was pasting an "engaged" placard on the carriage window and piling
+up six luncheon-baskets in the corner on the cushions, and speedily
+we were off.
+
+It is a sincere tribute to the intrinsic charm of Egeria's
+character that Mrs. Jack and I admire her so unreservedly, for she
+is for ever being hurled at us as an example in cases where men are
+too stupid to see that there is no fault in us, nor any special
+virtue in her.  For instance, Jack tells Kitty that she could walk
+with less fatigue if she wore sensible shoes like Egeria's.  Now,
+Egeria's foot is very nearly as lovely as Trilby's in the story,
+and much prettier than Trilby's in the pictures; consequently, she
+wears a hideous, broad-toed, low-heeled boot, and looks trim and
+neat in it.  Her hair is another contested point:  she dresses it
+in five minutes in the morning, walks or drives in the rain and
+wind for a few hours, rides in the afternoon, bathes in the surf,
+lies in a hammock, and, if circumstances demand, the creature can
+smooth it with her hands and walk in to dinner!  Kitty and I, on
+the contrary, rise a half-hour earlier to curl or wave; our spirit-
+lamps leak into our dressing-bags, and our beauty is decidedly
+damaged by damp or hot weather.  Most women's hair is a mere
+covering to the scalp, growing out of the head, or pinned on, as
+the case may be.  Egeria's is a glory like Eve's; it is expressive,
+breathing a hundred delicate suggestions of herself; not tortured
+into frizzles, or fringes, or artificial shapes, but winding its
+lustrous lengths about her head, just high enough to show the
+beautiful nape of her neck, "where this way and that the little
+lighter-coloured irreclaimable curls run truant from the knot,--
+curls, half curls, root curls, vine ringlets, wedding-rings,
+fledgling feathers, tufts of down, blown wisps,--all these wave, or
+fall, or stray, loose and downward in the form of small, silken
+paws, hardly any of them thicker than a crayon shading, cunninger
+than long, round locks of gold to trick the heart."
+
+At one o'clock we lifted the covers of our luncheon-baskets.
+
+"Aren't they the tidiest, most self-respecting, satisfying things!"
+exclaimed Egeria, as she took out her plate, and knife, and fork,
+opened her Japanese napkin, set in dainty order the cold fowl and
+ham, the pat of butter, crusty roll, bunch of lettuce, mustard and
+salt, the corkscrew, and, finally, the bottle of ale.  "I cannot
+bear to be unpatriotic, but compare this with the ten minutes for
+refreshments at an American lunch-counter, its baked beans, and
+pies, and its cream cakes and doughnuts under glass covers.  I
+don't believe English people are as good as we are; they can't be;
+they're too comfortable.  I wonder if the little discomforts of
+living in America, the dissatisfaction and incompetency of
+servants, and all the other problems, will work out for the nation
+a more exceeding weight of glory, or whether they will simply ruin
+the national temper."
+
+"It's wicked to be too luxurious, Egeria," said Tommy, with a sly
+look at Atlas.  "It's the hair shirt, not the pearl-studded bosom,
+that induces virtue."
+
+"Is it?" she asked innocently, letting her clear gaze follow
+Tommy's.  "You don't believe, Mr. Atlas, that modest people like
+you, and me, and Tommy, and the Copleys, incur danger in being too
+comfortable; the trouble lies in the fact that the other half is
+too uncomfortable, does it not?  But I am just beginning to think
+of these things," she added soberly.
+
+"Egeria," said Mrs. Jack sternly, "you may think about them as much
+as you like; I have no control over your mental processes, but if
+you mention single tax, or tenement-house reform, or Socialism, or
+altruism, or communism, or the sweating system, you will be dropped
+at Bideford.  Atlas is only travelling with us because he needs
+complete moral and intellectual rest.  I hope, oh, how I hope, that
+there isn't a social problem in Clovelly!  It seems as if there
+couldn't be, in a village of a single street and that a stone
+staircase."
+
+"There will be," I said, "if nothing more than the problem of
+supply and demand; of catching and selling herrings."
+
+We had time at Bideford to go into a quaint little shop for tea
+before starting on our twelve-mile drive; time also to be dragged
+by Tommy to Bideford Bridge, that played so important a part in
+Kingsley's "Westward Ho!"  We did not approach Clovelly finally
+through the beautiful Hobby Drive, laid out in former years by one
+of the Hamlyn ladies of Clovelly Court, but by the turnpike road,
+which, however, was not uninteresting.  It had been market-day at
+Bideford and there were many market carts and "jingoes" on the
+road, with perhaps a heap of yellow straw inside and a man and a
+rosy boy on the seat.  The roadway was prettily bordered with
+broom, wild honeysuckle, fox-glove, and single roses, and there was
+a certain charming post-office called the Fairy Cross, in a garden
+of blooming fuchsias, where Egeria almost insisted upon living and
+officiating as postmistress.
+
+All at once our driver checked his horses on the brink of a hill,
+apparently leading nowhere in particular.
+
+"What is it?" asked Mrs. Jack, who is always expecting accidents.
+
+"Clovelly, mum."
+
+"Clovelly!" we repeated automatically, gazing about us on every
+side for a roof, a chimney, or a sign of habitation.
+
+"You'll find it, mum, as you walk down-along."
+
+"How charming!" cried Egeria, who loves the picturesque.  "Towns
+are generally so obtrusive; isn't it nice to know that Clovelly is
+here and that all we have to do is to walk 'down-along' and find
+it?  Come, Tommy.  Ho, for the stone staircase!"
+
+We who were left behind discovered by more questioning that one
+cannot drive into Clovelly; that although an American president or
+an English chancellor might, as a great favour, be escorted down on
+a donkey's back, or carried down in a sedan chair if he chanced to
+have one about his person, the ordinary mortal must walk to the
+door of the New Inn, his luggage being dragged "down-along" on
+sledges and brought "up-along" on donkeys.  In a word, Clovelly is
+not built like unto other towns; it seems to have been flung up
+from the sea into a narrow rift between wooded hills, and to have
+clung there these eight hundred years of its existence.  It has
+held fast, but it has not expanded, for the very good reason that
+it completely fills the hollow in the cliffs, the houses clinging
+like limpets to the rocks on either side, so that it would be a
+costly and difficult piece of engineering indeed to build any
+extensions or additions.
+
+We picked our way "down-along" until we caught the first glimpse of
+white-washed cottages covered with creepers, their doors hospitably
+open, their windows filled with blooming geraniums and fuchsias.
+All at once, as we began to descend the winding, rocky pathway, we
+saw that it pitched headlong into the bluest sea in the world.  No
+wonder the painters have loved it!  Shall we ever forget that first
+vision!  There were a couple of donkeys coming "up-along" laden,
+one with coals, the other with bread-baskets; a fisherman was
+mending his nets in front of his door; others were lounging "down
+to quay pool" to prepare for their evening drift-fishing.  A little
+further on, at a certain abrupt turning called the "lookout," where
+visitors stop to breathe and villagers to gossip, one could catch a
+glimpse of the beach and "Crazed Kate's Cottage," the drying-ground
+for nets, the lifeboat house, the pier, and the breakwater.
+
+We were all enchanted when we arrived at the door of the inn.
+
+"Devonshire for me!  I shall live here!" cried Mrs. Jack.  "I said
+that a few times in Wales, but I retract it.  You had better live
+here, too, Atlas; there aren't any problems in Clovelly."
+
+"I am sure of that," he assented smilingly.  "I noticed dozens of
+live snails in the rocks of the street as we came down; snails
+cannot live in combination with problems."
+
+"Then I am a snail," answered Mrs. Jack cheerfully; "for that is
+exactly my temperament."
+
+We found that we could not get room enough for all at the tiny inn,
+but this only exhilarated Egeria and Tommy.  They disappeared and
+came back triumphant ten minutes later.
+
+"We got lodgings without any difficulty," said Egeria.  "Tommy's
+isn't half bad; we saw a small boy who had been taking a box 'down-
+along' on a sledge, and he referred us to a nice place where they
+took Tommy in; but you should see my lodging--it is ideal.  I
+noticed the prettiest yellow-haired girl knitting in a doorway.
+'There isn't room for me at the inn,' I said; 'could you let me
+sleep here?'  She asked her mother, and her mother said 'Yes,' and
+there was never anything so romantic as my vine-embowered window.
+Juliet would have jumped at it."
+
+"She would have jumped out of it, if Romeo had been below," said
+Mrs. Jack, "but there are no Romeos nowadays; they are all busy
+settling the relations of labour and capital."
+
+The New Inn proved some years ago to be too small for its would-be
+visitors.  An addition couldn't be built because there wasn't any
+room; but the landlady succeeded in getting a house across the way.
+Here there are bedrooms, a sort of quiet tap-room of very great
+respectability, and the kitchens.  As the dining-room is in house
+number one, the matter of serving dinner might seem to be attended
+with difficulty, but it is not apparent.  The maids run across the
+narrow street with platters and dishes surmounted by great
+Britannia covers, and in rainy weather they give the soup or joint
+the additional protection of a large cotton umbrella.  The walls of
+every room in the inn are covered with old china, much of it
+pretty, and some of it valuable, though the finest pieces are not
+hung, but are placed in glass cabinets.  One cannot see an inch of
+wall space anywhere in bedrooms, dining- or sitting-rooms for the
+huge delft platters, whole sets of the old green dragon pattern,
+quaint perforated baskets, pitchers and mugs of British lustre,
+with queer dogs, and cats, and peacocks, and clocks of china.  The
+massing of colour is picturesque and brilliant, and the whole
+effect decidedly unique.  The landlady's father and grandfather had
+been Bideford sea-captains and had brought here these and other
+treasures from foreign parts.  As Clovelly is a village of seafolk
+and fisher-folk, the houses are full of curiosities, mostly from
+the Mediterranean.  Egeria had no china in her room, but she had
+huge branches of coral, shells of all sizes and hues, and an
+immense coloured print of the bay of Naples.  Tommy's landlady was
+volcanic in her tastes, and his walls were lined with pictures of
+Vesuvius in all stages of eruption.  My room, a wee, triangular box
+of a thing, was on the first floor of the inn.  It opened
+hospitably on a bit of garden and street by a large glass door that
+wouldn't shut, so that a cat or a dog spent the night by my bed-
+side now and then, and many a donkey tried to do the same, but was
+evicted.
+
+Oh, the Clovelly mornings! the sunshine, the salt air, the savour
+of the boats and the nets, the limestone cliffs of Gallantry Bower
+rising steep and white at the head of the village street, with the
+brilliant sea at the foot; the walks down by the quay pool (not key
+pool, you understand, but quaay puul in the vernacular), the sails
+in a good old herring-boat called the Lorna Doone, for we are in
+Blackmore's country here.
+
+We began our first day early in the morning, and met at nine-
+o'clock breakfast in the coffee-room.  Egeria came in glowing.  She
+reminds me of a phrase in a certain novel, where the heroine is
+described as always dressing (seemingly) to suit the season and the
+sky.  Clad in sea-green linen with a white collar, and belt, she
+was the very spirit of a Clovelly morning.  She had risen at six,
+and in company with Phoebe, daughter of her house (the yellow-
+haired lassie mentioned previously), had prowled up and down North
+Hill, a transverse place or short street much celebrated by
+painters.  They had met a certain bold fisher-lad named Jem,
+evidently Phoebe's favourite swain, and explored the short passage
+where Fish Street is built over, nicknamed Temple Bar.
+
+Atlas came in shortly after and laid a nosegay at Egeria's plate.
+
+"My humble burnt-offering, your ladyship," he said.
+
+Tommy:  "She has lots of offerings, but she generally prefers to
+burn 'em herself.  When Egeria's swains talk about her, it is
+always 'ut vidi,' how I saw, succeeded by 'ut perii,' how I sudden
+lost my brains."
+
+Egeria:  "YOU don't indulge in burnt-offerings" (laughing, with
+slightly heightened colour); "but how you do burn incense!  You
+speak as if the skeletons of my rejected suitors were hanging on
+imaginary lines all over the earth's surface."
+
+Tommy:  "They are not hanging on 'imaginary' lines."
+
+Mrs. Jack:  "Turn your thoughts from Egeria's victims, you
+frivolous people, and let me tell you that I've been 'up-along'
+this morning and found--what do you think?--a library:  a
+circulating library maintained by the Clovelly Court people.  It is
+embowered in roses and jasmine, and there is a bird's nest hanging
+just outside one of the open windows next to a shelf of Dickens and
+Scott.  Never before have young families of birds been born and
+brought up with similar advantages.  The snails were in the path
+just as we saw them yesterday evening, Atlas; not one has moved,
+not one has died!  Oh, I certainly must come and live here.  The
+librarian is a dear old lady; if she ever dies, I am coming to take
+her place.  You will be postmistress at the Fairy Cross then,
+Egeria, and we'll visit each other.  And I've brought Dickens'
+'Message from the Sea' for you, and Kingsley's 'Westward Ho!' for
+Tommy, and 'The Wages of Sin' for Atlas, and 'Hypatia' for Egeria,
+'Lorna Doone' for Jack, and Charles Kingsley's sermons for myself.
+We will read aloud every evening."
+
+"I won't," said Tommy succinctly.  "I've been down by the quay
+pool, and I've got acquainted with a lot of A1 chaps that have
+agreed to take me drift-fishing every night, and they are going to
+put out the Clovelly lifeboat for exercise this week, and if the
+weather is fine, Bill Marks is going to take Atlas and me to Lundy
+Island.  You don't catch me round the evening lamp very much in
+Clovelly."
+
+"Don't be too slangy, Tommy, and who on earth is Bill Marks?" asked
+Jack.
+
+"He's our particular friend, Tommy's and mine," answered Atlas,
+seeing that Tommy was momentarily occupied with bacon and eggs.
+"He told us more yarns than we ever before heard spun in the same
+length of time.  He is seventy-seven, and says he was a teetotaler
+until he was sixty-nine, but has been trying to make up time ever
+since.  From his condition last evening, I should say he was likely
+to do it.  He was so mellow, I asked him how he could manage to
+walk down the staircase.  'Oh, I can walk down neat enough,' he
+said, 'when I'm in good sailing trim, as I am now, feeling just
+good enough, but not too good, your honour; but when I'm half seas
+over or three sheets in the wind, I roll down, your honour!'  He
+spends three shillings a week for his food and the same for his
+'rummidge.'  He was thrilling when he got on the subject of the
+awful wreck just outside this harbour, 'the fourth of October,
+seventy-one years ago, two-and-thirty men drowned, your honour, and
+half of 'em from Clovelly parish.  And I was one of the three men
+saved in another storm twenty-four years agone, when two-and-twenty
+men were drowned; that's what it means to plough the great salt
+field that is never sown, your honour.'  When he found we'd been in
+Scotland, he was very anxious to know if we could talk 'Garlic,'
+said he'd always wanted to know what it sounded like."
+
+Somehow, in the days that followed, Tommy was always with his
+particular friends, the fishermen, on the beach, at the Red Lion,
+or in the shop of a certain boat-builder, learning the use of the
+calking-iron.  Mr. and Mrs. Jack, Aunt Celia, and I unexpectedly
+found ourselves a quartette for hours together, while Egeria and
+Atlas walked in the churchyard, in the beautiful grounds of
+Clovelly Court, or in the deer park, where one finds as perfect a
+union of marine and woodland scenery as any in England.
+
+Atlas may have taken her there because he could discuss single tax
+more eloquently when he was walking over the entailed estates of
+the English landed gentry, but I suspect that single tax had taken
+off its hat, and bowing profoundly to Egeria, had said, "After you,
+Madam!" and retired to its proper place in the universe; for not
+even the most blatant economist would affirm that any other problem
+can be so important as that which confronts a man when he enters
+that land of Beulah, which is upon the borders of Heaven and within
+sight of the City of Love.
+
+Atlas was young, warm of heart, high of mind, and generous of soul.
+All the necessary chords, therefore, were in him, ready to be set
+in vibration.  No one could do this more cunningly than Egeria; the
+only question was whether love would "run out to meet love," as it
+should, "with open arms."
+
+We simply waited to see.  Mrs. Jack, with that fine lack of logic
+that distinguished her, disclaimed all responsibility.  "He is
+awake, at least," she said, "and that is a great comfort; and now
+and then he observes a few very plain facts, mostly relating to
+Egeria, it is true.  If it does come to anything, I hope he won't
+ask her to live in a college settlement the year round, though I
+haven't the slightest doubt that she would like it.  If there were
+ever two beings created expressly for each other, it is these two,
+and for that reason I have my doubts about the matter.  Almost all
+marriages are made between two people who haven't the least thing
+in common, so far as outsiders can judge.  Egeria and Atlas are
+almost too well suited for marriage."
+
+The progress of the affair had thus far certainly been
+astonishingly rapid, but it might mean nothing.  Egeria's mind and
+heart were so easy of access up to a certain point that the
+traveller sometimes overestimated the distance covered and the
+distance still to cover.  Atlas quoted something about her at the
+end of the very first day, that described her charmingly:
+"Ordinarily, the sweetest ladies will make us pass through cold
+mist and cross a stile or two, or a broken bridge, before the
+formalities are cleared away, to grant us rights of citizenship.
+She is like those frank lands where we have not to hand out a
+passport at the frontier and wait for dubious inspection."  But the
+description is incomplete.  Egeria, indeed, made no one wait at the
+frontier for a dubious inspection of his passport; but once in the
+new domain, while he would be cordially welcomed to parks, gardens,
+lakes, and pleasure grounds, he would find unexpected difficulty in
+entering the queen's private apartments, a fact that occasioned
+surprise to some of the travellers.
+
+We all took the greatest interest, too, in the romance of Phoebe
+and Jem, for the course of true love did not run at all smooth for
+this young couple.  Jack wrote a ballad about her, and Egeria made
+a tune to it, and sang it to the tinkling, old-fashioned piano of
+an evening:-
+
+
+"Have you e'er seen the street of Clovelly?
+The quaint, rambling street of Clovelly,
+With its staircase of stone leading down to the sea,
+To the harbour so sleepy, so old, and so wee,
+The queer, crooked street of Clovelly.
+
+"Have you e'er seen the lass of Clovelly?
+The sweet little lass of Clovelly,
+With kirtle of grey reaching just to her knee,
+And ankles as neat as ankles may be,
+The yellow-haired lass of Clovelly.
+
+"There's a good honest lad in Clovelly,
+A bold, fisher lad of Clovelly,
+With purpose as straight and swagger as free
+As the course of his boat when breasting a sea,
+The brave sailor lad of Clovelly.
+
+"Have you e'er seen the church at Clovelly?
+Have you heard the sweet bells of Clovelly?
+The lad and the lassie will hear them, maybe,
+And join hand in hand to sail over life's sea
+From the little stone church at Clovelly."
+
+
+When the nights were cool or damp we crowded into Mrs. Jack's tiny
+china-laden sitting-room, and had a blaze in the grate with a bit
+of driftwood burning blue and green and violet on top of the coals.
+Tommy sometimes smelled of herring to such a degree that we were
+obliged to keep the door open; but his society was so precious that
+we endured the odours.
+
+But there were other evenings out of doors, when we sat in a
+sheltered corner down on the pier, watching the line of limestone
+cliffs running westward to the revolving light at Hartland Point
+that sent us alternate flashes of ruby and white across the water.
+Clovelly lamps made glittering disks in the quay pool, shining
+there side by side with the reflected star-beams.  We could hear
+the regular swish-swash of the waves on the rocks, and to the
+eastward the dripping of a stream that came tumbling over the
+cliff.
+
+Such was our last evening in Clovelly; a very quiet one, for the
+charm of the place lay upon us and we were loath to leave it.  It
+was warm and balmy, and the moonlight lay upon the beach.  Egeria
+leaned against the parapet, the serge of her dress showing white
+against the background of rock.  The hood of her dark blue
+yachting-cape was slipping off her head, and her eyes were as deep
+and clear as crystal pools.
+
+Presently she began to sing,--first, "The Sands o' Dee," then,--
+
+
+"Three fishers went sailing out into the west,
+Out into the west as the sun went down;
+Each thought of the woman who loved him the best,
+And the children stood watching them out of the town."
+
+
+Egeria is one of the few women who can sing well without an
+accompaniment.  She has a thrilling voice, and what with the scene,
+the hour, and the pathos of Kingsley's verses, tears rushed into my
+eyes, and Bill Marks' words came back to me--"Two-and-twenty men
+drowned; that's what it means to plough the great salt field that
+is never sown."
+
+Atlas gazed at her with eyes that no longer cared to keep their
+secret.  Mrs. Jack was still uncertain; for me, I was sure.  Love
+had rushed past him like a galloping horseman, and shooting an
+arrow almost without aim, had struck him full in the heart, that
+citadel that had withstood a dozen deliberate sieges.
+
+It was midnight, and our few belongings were packed.  Egeria had
+come to the Inn to sleep, and stole into my room to warm her toes
+before the blaze in my grate, for I was chilly and had ordered a
+sixpenny fire.  When I say that she came in to warm her toes, I am
+asking you to accept her statement, not mine; it is my opinion that
+she came in for no other purpose than to tell me something that was
+in her mind and heart pleading for utterance.
+
+I didn't help her by leading up to the subject, because I thought
+her fib so flagrant and unnecessary; accordingly, we talked over a
+multitude of things,--Phoebe and Jem and their hard-hearted
+parents, our visit to Cardiff and Ilfracombe, Bill Marks and his
+wife, the service at the church, and finally her walk with Atlas in
+the churchyard.
+
+"We went inside," said Egeria, "and I copied the inscription on the
+bronze tablet that Atlas liked so much on Sunday:  'Her grateful
+and affectionate husband's last and proudest wish will be that
+whenever Divine Providence shall call him hence, his name may be
+engraved on the same tablet that is sacred in perpetuating as much
+virtue and goodness as could adorn human nature.'"  Then she went
+on, with apparent lack of sequence:  "Penelope, don't you think it
+is always perfectly safe to obey a Scriptural command, because I
+have done it?"
+
+"Did you find it in the Old or the New Testament?"
+
+"The Old."
+
+"I should say that if you found some remarks about breaking the
+bones of your enemy, and have twisted it out of its connection, it
+would be particularly bad advice to follow."
+
+"It is nothing of that sort."
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+She took out a tortoise-shell dagger just here, and gave her head
+an absent-minded shake so that her lustrous coil of hair uncoiled
+itself and fell on her shoulders in a ruddy spiral.  It was a sight
+to induce covetousness, but one couldn't be envious of Egeria.  She
+charmed one by her lack of consciousness.
+
+
+"The happy lot
+Be his to follow
+Those threads through lovely curve and hollow,
+And muse a lifetime how they got
+Into that wild, mysterious knot," -
+
+
+quoted I, as I gave her head an insinuating pat.  "Come, Egeria,
+stand and deliver!  What is the Scriptural command, that having
+first obeyed, you ask my advice about afterwards?"
+
+"Have you a Bible?"
+
+"You might not think it, but I have, and it is here on my table."
+
+"Then I am going into my room, to lock the door, and call the verse
+through the keyhole.  But you must promise not to say a word to me
+till to-morrow morning."
+
+I was not in a position to dictate terms, so I promised.  The door
+closed, the bolt shot into the socket, and Egeria's voice came so
+faintly through the keyhole that I had to stoop to catch the
+words:-
+
+"Deuteronomy, 10:19."
+
+I flew to my Bible.  Genesis--Exodus--Leviticus--Numbers--
+Deuteronomy--Deut-er-on-omy--Ten--Nineteen -
+
+"Love ye therefore the stranger--"
+
+
+
+PENELOPE AT HOME
+
+
+
+"'Tis good when you have crossed the sea and back
+To find the sit-fast acres where you left them."
+Emerson.
+
+Beresford Broadacres,
+April 15, 19-.
+
+Penelope, in the old sense, is no more!  No mound of grass and
+daisies covers her; no shaft of granite or marble marks the place
+where she rests;--as a matter of fact she never does rest; she
+walks and runs and sits and stands, but her travelling days are
+over.  For the present, in a word, the reason that she is no longer
+"Penelope," with dozens of portraits and three volumes of
+"Experiences" to her credit, is, that she is Mrs. William Hunt
+Beresford.
+
+As for Himself, he is just as much William Hunt Beresford as ever
+he was, for marriage has not staled, nor fatherhood withered, his
+infinite variety.  There may be, indeed, a difference, ever so
+slight; a new dignity, and an air of responsibility that harmonizes
+well with the inch of added girth at his waist-line and the grey
+thread or two that becomingly sprinkle his dark hair.
+
+And where is Herself, the vanished Penelope, you ask; the companion
+of Salemina and Francesca; the traveller in England, Scotland,
+Ireland, and Wales; the wanderer in Switzerland and Italy?  Well,
+if she is a thought less irresponsible, merry, and loquacious, she
+is happier and wiser.  If her easel and her palette are not in
+daily evidence, neither are they altogether banished from the
+scene; and whatever measure of cunning Penelope's hand possessed in
+other days, Mrs. Beresford has contrived to preserve.
+
+If she wields the duster occasionally, in alternation with the
+paint-brush and the pen, she has now a new choice of weapons; and
+as for models,--her friends, her neighbours, even her enemies and
+rivals, might admire her ingenuity, her thrift, and her positive
+genius in selecting types to paint!  She never did paint anything
+beautifully but children, though her backgrounds have been praised,
+also the various young things that were a vital part of every
+composition.  She could never draw a horse or a cow or an ox to her
+satisfaction, but a long-legged colt, or a newborn Bossy-calf were
+well within her powers.  Her puppies and kittens and chickens and
+goslings were always admired by the public, and the fact that the
+mothers and fathers in the respective groups were never quite as
+convincing as their offspring,--this somehow escaped the notice of
+the critics.
+
+Very well, then, what was Penelope inspired to do when she became
+Mrs. Beresford and left the Atlantic rolling between the beloved
+Salemina, Francesca, and herself?  Why, having "crossed the sea and
+back" repeatedly, she found "the sit-fast acres" of the house of
+Beresford where she "left them" and where they had been sitting
+fast for more than a hundred years.
+
+"Here is the proper place for us to live," she said to Himself,
+when they first viewed the dear delightful New England landscape
+over together.  "Here is where your long roots are, and as my roots
+have been in half a hundred places they can be easily transplanted.
+You have a decent income to begin on; why not eke it out with
+apples and hay and corn and Jersey cows and Plymouth Rock cocks and
+hens, while I use the scenery for my pictures?  There are
+backgrounds here for a thousand canvases, all within a mile of your
+ancestral doorstep."
+
+"I don't know what you will do for models in this remote place,"
+said Himself, putting his hands in his pockets and gazing dubiously
+at the abandoned farm-houses on the hillsides; the still green
+dooryards on the village street where no children were playing, and
+the quiet little brick school-house at the turn of the road, from
+which a dozen half-grown boys and girls issued decorously, looking
+at us like scared rabbits.
+
+"I have an idea about models," said Mrs. Beresford.
+
+And it turned out that she had, for all that was ten years ago, and
+Penelope the Painter, merged in Mrs. Beresford the mother, has the
+three loveliest models in all the countryside!
+
+Children, of course, are common enough everywhere; not, perhaps, as
+common as they should be, but there are a good many clean, well-
+behaved, truthful, decently-featured little boys and girls who
+will, in course of time, become the bulwarks of the Republic, who
+are of no use as models.  The public is not interested in, and will
+neither purchase nor hang on its walls anything but a winsome
+child, a beautiful child, a pathetic child, or a picturesquely
+ragged and dirty child.  (The latter type is preferably a
+foreigner, as dirty American children are for some reason or other
+quite unsalable.)
+
+All this is in explanation of the foregoing remarks about Mrs.
+Beresford's ingenuity, thrift, and genius in selecting types to
+paint.  The ingenuity lay in the idea itself; the thrift, in
+securing models that should belong to the Beresford "sit-fast
+acres" and not have to be searched for and "hired in" by the day;
+and the genius, in producing nothing but enchanting, engrossing,
+adorable, eminently "paintable" children.  They are just as
+obedient, interesting, grammatical, and virtuous as other people's
+offspring, yet they are so beautiful that it would be the height of
+selfishness not to let the world see them and turn green with envy.
+
+When viewed by the casual public in a gallery, nobody of course
+believes that they are real until some kind friend says:  "No, oh,
+no! not ideal heads at all; perfect likenesses; the children of Mr.
+and Mrs. Beresford; Penelope Hamilton, whose signature you see in
+the corner, IS Mrs. Beresford."
+
+When they are exhibited in the guise of, and under such titles as:
+"Young April," "In May Time," "Girl with Chickens," "Three of a
+Kind" (Billy with a kitten and a puppy tumbling over him), "Little
+Mothers" (Frances and Sally with their dolls), "When all the World
+is Young" (Billy, Frances, and Sally under the trees surrounded by
+a riot of young feathered things, with a lamb and a Jersey calf
+peeping over a fence in the background), then Himself stealthily
+visits the gallery.  He stands somewhere near the pictures pulling
+his moustache nervously and listening to the comments of the
+bystanders.  Not a word of his identity or paternity does he
+vouchsafe, but occasionally some acquaintance happens to draw near,
+perhaps to compliment or congratulate him.  Then he has been heard
+to say vaingloriously:  "Oh, no! they are not flattered; rather the
+reverse.  My wife has an extraordinary faculty of catching
+likenesses, and of course she has a wonderful talent, but she
+agrees with me that she never quite succeeds in doing the children
+justice!"
+
+Here we are, then, Himself and I, growing old with the country that
+gave us birth (God bless it!) and our children growing up with it,
+as they always should; for it must have occurred to the reader that
+I am Penelope, Hamilton that was, and also, and above all, that I
+am Mrs. William Hunt Beresford.
+
+
+April 20, 19-
+
+Himself and I have gone through the inevitable changes that life
+and love, marriage and parenthood, bring to all human creatures;
+but no one of the dear old group of friends has so developed as
+Francesca.  Her last letter, posted in Scotland and delivered here
+seven days later, is like a breath of the purple heather and brings
+her vividly to mind.
+
+In the old days when we first met she was gay, irresponsible,
+vivacious, and a decided flirt,--with symptoms of becoming a
+coquette.  She was capricious and exacting; she had far too large
+an income for a young girl accountable to nobody; she was lovely to
+look upon, a product of cities and a trifle spoiled.
+
+She danced through Europe with Salemina and me, taking in no more
+information than she could help, but charming everybody that she
+met.  She was only fairly well educated, and such knowledge as she
+possessed was vague, uncertain, and never ready for instant use.
+In literature she knew Shakespeare, Balzac, Thackeray, Hawthorne,
+and Longfellow, but if you had asked her to place Homer, Schiller,
+Dante, Victor Hugo, James Fenimore Cooper, or Thoreau she couldn't
+have done it within a hundred years.
+
+In history she had a bowing acquaintance with Napoleon, Washington,
+Wellington, Prince Charlie, Henry of Navarre, Paul Revere, and
+Stonewall Jackson, but as these gallant gentlemen stand on the
+printed page, so they stood shoulder to shoulder, elbowing one
+another in her pretty head, made prettier by a wealth of hair,
+Marcel-waved twice a week.
+
+These facts were brought out once in examination, by one of
+Francesca's earliest lovers, who, at Salemina's request and my own,
+acted as her tutor during the spring before our first trip abroad,
+the general idea being to prepare her mind for foreign travel.
+
+I suppose we were older and should have known better than to allow
+any man under sixty to tutor Francesca in the spring.  Anyhow, the
+season worked its maddest pranks on the pedagogue.  He fell in love
+with his pupil within a few days,--they were warm, delicious,
+budding days, for it was a very early, verdant, intoxicating spring
+that produced an unusual crop of romances in our vicinity.
+Unfortunately the tutor was a scholar at heart, as well as a
+potential lover, and he interested himself in making psychological
+investigations of Francesca's mind.  She was perfectly willing, for
+she always regarded her ignorance as a huge joke, instead of
+viewing it with shame and embarrassment.  What was more natural,
+when she drove, rode, walked, sailed, danced, and "sat out" to her
+heart's content, while more learned young ladies stayed within
+doors and went to bed at nine o'clock with no vanity-provoking
+memories to lull them to sleep?  The fact that she might not be
+positive as to whether Dante or Milton wrote "Paradise Lost," or
+Palestrina antedated Berlioz, or the Mississippi River ran north
+and south or east and west,--these trifling uncertainties had never
+cost her an offer of marriage or the love of a girl friend; so she
+was perfectly frank and offered no opposition to the investigations
+of the unhappy but conscientious tutor, meeting his questions with
+the frankness of a child.  Her attitude of mind was the more candid
+because she suspected the passion of the teacher and knew of no
+surer way to cure him than to let him know her mind for what it
+was.
+
+When the staggering record of her ignorance on seven subjects was
+set down in a green-covered blank book, she awaited the result not
+only with resignation, but with positive hope; a hope that proved
+to be ill-founded, for curiously enough the tutor was still in love
+with her.  Salemina was surprised, but I was not.  Of course I had
+to know anatomy in order to paint, but there is more in it than
+that.  In painting the outsides of people I assure you that I
+learned to guess more of what was inside them than their bony
+structures!  I sketched the tutor while he was examining Francesca
+and I knew that there were no abysmal depths of ignorance that
+could appall him where she was concerned.  He couldn't explain the
+situation at all, himself.  If there was anything that he admired
+and respected in woman, it was a well-stored, logical mind, and
+three months' tutoring of Francesca had shown him that her mental
+machinery was of an obsolete pattern and that it was not even in
+good working order.  He could not believe himself influenced (so he
+confessed to me) by such trivial things as curling lashes, pink
+ears, waving hair (he had never heard of Marcel), or mere beauties
+of colour and line and form.  He said he was not so sure about
+Francesca's eyes.  Eyes like hers, he remarked in confidence, were
+not beneath the notice of any man, be he President of Harvard
+University or Master of Balliol College, for they seemed to promise
+something never once revealed in the green examination book.
+
+"You are quite right," I answered him; "the green book is not all
+there is of Miss Monroe, but whatever there is is plainly not for
+you"; and he humbly agreed with my dictum.
+
+Is it not strange that a man will talk to one woman about the
+charms of another for days upon days without ever realizing that
+she may possibly be born for some other purpose than listening to
+him?  For an hour or two, of course, any sympathetic or generous-
+minded person can be interested in the confidences of a lover; but
+at the end of weeks or months, during which time he has never once
+regarded his listener as a human being of the feminine gender, with
+eyes, nose, and hair in no way inferior to those of his beloved,--
+at the end of that time he should be shaken, smitten, waked from
+his dreams, and told in ringing tones that in a tolerably large
+universe there are probably two women worth looking at, the one
+about whom he is talking, and the one to whom he is talking!
+
+
+May 12, 19-
+
+To go on about Francesca, she always had a quick intelligence, a
+sense of humour, a heart, and a conscience; four things not to be
+despised in the equipment of a woman.  The wit she used lavishly
+for the delight of the world at large; the heart had not (in the
+tutor's time) found anything or anybody on which to spend itself;
+the conscience certainly was not working overtime at the same
+period, but I always knew that it was there and would be an
+excellent reliable organ when once aroused.
+
+Of course there is no reason why the Reverend Ronald MacDonald, of
+the Established Church of Scotland, should have been the instrument
+chosen to set all the wheels of Francesca's being in motion, but so
+it was; and a great clatter and confusion they made in our
+Edinburgh household when the machinery started!  If Ronald was
+handsome he was also a splendid fellow; if he was a preacher he was
+also a man; and no member of the laity could have been more
+ardently and satisfactorily in love than he.  It was the ardour
+that worked the miracle; and when Francesca was once warmed through
+to the core, she began to grow.  Her modest fortune helped things a
+little at the beginning of their married life, for it not only made
+existence easier, but enabled them to be of more service in the
+straggling, struggling country parishes where they found themselves
+at first.
+
+Francesca's beautiful American clothes shocked Ronald's
+congregations now and then, and it was felt that, though possible,
+it was not very probable, that the grace of God could live with
+such hats and shoes, such gloves and jewels as hers.  But by the
+time Ronald was called from his Argyllshire church to St. Giles's
+Cathedral in Edinburgh there was a better understanding of young
+Mrs. MacDonald's raiment and its relation to natural and revealed
+religion.  It appeared now that a clergyman's wife, by strict
+attention to parochial duties; by being the mother of three
+children all perfectly well behaved in church; by subscribing
+generously to all worthy charities; by never conducting herself as
+light-mindedly as her eyes and conversation seemed to portend,--it
+appeared that a woman COULD live down her clothes!  It was a
+Bishop, I think, who argued in Francesca's behalf that godliness
+did not necessarily dwell in frieze and stout leather and that it
+might flourish in lace and chiffon.  Salemina and I used to call
+Ronald and Francesca the antinomic pair.  Antinomics, one finds by
+consulting the authorities, are apparently contradictory poles,
+which, however, do not really contradict, but are only
+correlatives, the existence of one making the existence of the
+other necessary, explaining each other and giving each other a real
+standing and equilibrium.
+
+
+May 7, 19-
+
+What immeasurable leagues of distance lie between Salemina,
+Francesca, and me!  Not only leagues of space divide us, but the
+difference in environment, circumstances, and responsibilities that
+give reality to space; yet we have bridged the gulf successfully by
+a particular sort of three-sided correspondence, almost impersonal
+enough to be published, yet revealing all the little details of
+daily life one to the other.
+
+When we three found that we should be inevitably separated for some
+years, we adopted the habit of a "loose-leaf diary."  The pages are
+perforated with large circular holes and put together in such a way
+that one can remove any leaf without injuring the book.  We write
+down, as the spirit moves us, the more interesting happenings of
+the day, and once in a fortnight, perhaps, we slip a half-dozen
+selected pages into an envelope and the packet starts on its round
+between America, Scotland, and Ireland.  In this way we have kept
+up with each other without any apparent severing of intimate
+friendship, and a farmhouse in New England, a manse in Scotland,
+and the Irish home of a Trinity College professor and his lady are
+brought into frequent contact.
+
+Inspired by Francesca's last budget, full of all sorts of revealing
+details of her daily life, I said to Himself at breakfast:  "I am
+not going to paint this morning, nor am I going to 'keep house'; I
+propose to write in my loose-leaf diary, and what is more I propose
+to write about marriage!"
+
+When I mentioned to Himself the subject I intended to treat, he
+looked up in alarm.
+
+"Don't, I beg of you, Penelope," he said.  "If you do it the other
+two will follow suit.  Women cannot discuss marriage without
+dragging in husbands, and MacDonald, La Touche, and I won't have a
+leg to stand upon.  The trouble with these 'loose leaves' that you
+three keep for ever in circulation is, that the cleverer they are
+the more publicity they get.  Francesca probably reads your screeds
+at her Christian Endeavour meetings just as you cull extracts from
+Salemina's for your Current Events Club.  In a word, the loosened
+leaf leads to the loosened tongue, and that's rather epigrammatic
+for a farmer at breakfast time."
+
+"I am not going to write about husbands," I said, "least of all my
+own, but about marriage as an institution; the part it plays in the
+evolution of human beings."
+
+"Nevertheless, everything you say about it will reflect upon me,"
+argued Himself.  "The only husband a woman knows is her own
+husband, and everything she thinks about marriage is gathered from
+her own experience."
+
+"Your attitude is not only timid, it is positively cowardly!" I
+exclaimed.  "You are an excellent husband as husbands go, and I
+don't consider that I have retrograded mentally or spiritually
+during our ten years of life together.  It is true nothing has been
+said in private or public about any improvement in me due to your
+influence, but perhaps that is because the idea has got about that
+your head is easily turned by flattery.--Anyway, I shall be
+entirely impersonal in what I write.  I shall say I believe in
+marriage because I cannot think of any better arrangement; also
+that I believe in marrying men because there is nothing else TO
+marry.  I shall also quote that feminist lecturer who said that the
+bitter business of every woman in the world is to convert a trap
+into a home.  Of course I laughed inwardly, but my shoulders didn't
+shake for two minutes as yours did.  They were far more eloquent
+than any loose leaf from a diary; for they showed every other man
+in the audience that you didn't consider that YOU had to set any
+'traps' for ME!"
+
+Himself leaned back in his chair and gave way to unbridled mirth.
+When he could control his speech, he wiped the tears from his eyes
+and said offensively:-
+
+"Well, I didn't; did I?"
+
+"No," I replied, flinging the tea-cosy at his head, missing it, and
+breaking the oleander on the plant-shelf ten feet distant.
+
+"You wouldn't be unmarried for the world!" said Himself.  "You
+couldn't paint every day, you know you couldn't; and where could
+you find anything so beautiful to paint as your own children unless
+you painted me; and it just occurs to me that you never paid me the
+compliment of asking me to sit for you."
+
+"I can't paint men," I objected.  "They are too massive and rugged
+and ugly.  Their noses are big and hard and their bones show
+through everywhere excepting when they are fat and then they are
+disgusting.  Their eyes don't shine, their hair is never beautiful,
+they have no dimples in their hands and elbows; you can't see their
+mouths because of their moustaches, and generally it's no loss; and
+their clothes are stiff and conventional with no colour, nor any
+flowing lines to paint."
+
+"I know where you keep your 'properties,' and I'll make myself a
+mass of colour and flowing lines if you'll try me," Himself said
+meekly.
+
+"No, dear," I responded amiably.  "You are very nice, but you are
+not a costume man, and I shudder to think what you would make of
+yourself if I allowed you to visit my property-room.  If I ever
+have to paint you (not for pleasure, but as a punishment), you
+shall wear your everyday corduroys and I'll surround you with the
+children; then you know perfectly well that the public will never
+notice you at all."  Whereupon I went to my studio built on the top
+of the long rambling New England shed and loved what I painted
+yesterday so much that I went on with it, finding that I had said
+to Himself almost all that I had in mind to say, about marriage as
+an institution.
+
+
+June 15, 19-.
+
+We were finishing luncheon on the veranda with all out of doors to
+give us appetite.  It was Buttercup Sunday, a yellow June one that
+had been preceded by Pussy Willow Sunday, Dandelion Sunday, Apple
+Blossom, Wild Iris, and Lilac Sunday, to be followed by Daisy and
+Black-Eyed Susan and White Clematis and Goldenrod and Wild Aster
+and Autumn Leaf Sundays.
+
+Francie was walking over the green-sward with a bowl and spoon,
+just as our Scottish men friends used to do with oat-meal at
+breakfast time.  The Sally-baby was blowing bubbles in her milk,
+and Himself and I were discussing a book lately received from
+London.
+
+Suddenly I saw Billy, who had wandered from the table, sitting on
+the steps bending over a tiny bird's egg in his open hand.  I knew
+that he must have taken it from some low-hung nest, but taken it in
+innocence, for he looked at it with solicitude as an object of
+tender and fragile beauty.  He had never given a thought to the
+mother's days of patient brooding, nor that he was robbing the
+summer world of one bird's flight and one bird's song.
+
+"Did you hear the whippoorwills singing last night, Daddy?" I
+asked.
+
+"I did, indeed, and long before sunrise this morning.  There must
+be a new family in our orchard, I think; but then we have coaxed
+hundreds of birds our way this spring by our little houses, our
+crumbs, and our drinking dishes."
+
+"Yes, we have never had so many since we came here to live.  Look
+at that little brown bird flying about in the tall apple-tree,
+Francie; she seems to be in trouble."
+
+"P'r'haps it's Mrs. Smiff's wenomous cat," exclaimed Francie,
+running to look for a particularly voracious animal that lived
+across the fields, but had been known to enter our bird-Eden.
+
+"Hear this, Daddy; isn't it pretty?" I said, taking up the "Life of
+Dorothy Grey."
+
+Billy pricked up his ears, for he can never see a book opened
+without running to join the circle, so eager he is not to lose a
+precious word.
+
+"The wren sang early this morning" (I read slowly).  "We talked
+about it at breakfast and how many people there were who would not
+be aware of it; and E. said, 'Fancy, if God came in and said:  "Did
+you notice my wren?" and they were obliged to say they had not
+known it was there!'"
+
+Billy rose quietly and stole away behind the trees, returning in a
+few moments, empty-handed, to stand by my side.
+
+"Does God know how many eggs there are in a bird's nest, mother?"
+he asked.
+
+"People have so many different ideas about what God sees and takes
+note of, that it's hard to say, sonny.  Of course you remember that
+the Bible says not one sparrow falls to the ground but He knows
+it."
+
+"The mother bird can't count her eggs, can she, mother?"
+
+"Oh! Billy, you do ask the hardest questions; ones that I can never
+answer by Yes and No!  She broods her eggs all day and all night
+and never lets them get cold, so she must know, at any rate, that
+they are going to BE birds, don't you think?  And of course she
+wouldn't want to lose one; that's the reason she's so faithful!"
+
+"Well!" said Billy, after a long pause, "I don't care quite so much
+about the mother, because sometimes there are five eggs in a weeny,
+weeny nest that never could hold five little ones without their
+scrunching each other and being uncomfortable.  But if God should
+come in and say:  'Did you take my egg, that was going to be a
+bird?' I just couldn't bear it!"
+
+
+June 15, 19-.
+
+Another foreign mail is in and the village postmistress has sent an
+impassioned request that I steam off the stamps for her boy's
+album, enriched during my residence here by specimens from eleven
+different countries. ("Mis' Beresford beats the Wanderin' Jew all
+holler if so be she's be'n to all them places, an' come back
+alive!"--so she says to Himself.)  Among the letters there is a
+budget of loose leaves from Salemina's diary, Salemina, who is now
+Mrs. Gerald La Touche, wife of Professor La Touche, of Trinity
+College, Dublin, and stepmother to Jackeen and Broona La Touche.
+
+It is midsummer, College is not in session, and they are at
+Rosnaree House, their place in County Meath.
+
+Salemina is the one of our trio who continues to move in grand
+society.  She it is who dines at the Viceregal Lodge and Dublin
+Castle.  She it is who goes with her distinguished husband for
+week-ends with the Master of the Horse, the Lord Chancellor, and
+the Dean of the Chapel Royal.  Francesca, it is true, makes her
+annual bow to the Lord High Commissioner at Holyrood Palace and
+dines there frequently during Assembly Week; and as Ronald numbers
+one Duke, two Earls, and several Countesses and Dowager Countesses
+in his parish, there are awe-inspiring visiting cards to be found
+in the silver salver on her hall table,--but Salemina in Ireland
+literally lives with the great, of all classes and conditions!  She
+is in the heart of the Irish Theatre and the Modern Poetry
+movements,--and when she is not hobnobbing with playwrights and
+poets she is consorting with the Irish nobility and gentry.
+
+I cannot help thinking that she would still be Miss Peabody, of
+Salem, Massachusetts, had it not been for my generous and helpful
+offices, and those of Francesca!  Never were two lovers, parted in
+youth in America and miraculously reunited in middle age in
+Ireland, more recalcitrant in declaring their mutual affection than
+Dr. La Touche and Salemina!  Nothing in the world divided them but
+imaginary barriers.  He was not rich, but he had a comfortable
+salary and a dignified and honourable position among men.  He had
+two children, but they were charming, and therefore so much to the
+good.  Salemina was absolutely "foot loose" and tied down to no
+duties in America, so no one could blame her for marrying an
+Irishman.  She had never loved any one else, and Dr. La Touche
+might have had that information for the asking; but he was such a
+bat for blindness, adder for deafness, and lamb for meekness that
+because she refused him once, when she was the only comfort of an
+aged mother and father, he concluded that she would refuse him
+again, though she was now alone in the world.  His late wife, a
+poor, flighty, frivolous invalid, the kind of woman who always
+entangles a sad, vague, absent-minded scholar, had died six years
+before, and never were there two children so in need of a mother as
+Jackeen and Broona, a couple of affectionate, hot-headed,
+bewitching, ragged, tousled Irish darlings.  I would cheerfully
+have married Dr. Gerald myself, just for the sake of his neglected
+babies, but I dislike changes and I had already espoused Himself.
+
+However, a summer in Ireland, undertaken with no such great stakes
+in mind as Salemina's marriage, made possible a chance meeting of
+the two old friends.  This was followed by several others, devised
+by us with incendiary motives, and without Salemina's knowledge.
+There was also the unconscious plea of the children working a daily
+spell; there was the past, with its memories, tugging at both their
+hearts; and above all there was a steady, dogged, copious stream of
+mental suggestion emanating from Francesca and me, so that, in
+course of time, our middle-aged couple did succeed in confessing to
+each other that a separate future was impossible for them.
+
+They never would have encountered each other had it not been for
+us; never, never would have become engaged; and as for the wedding,
+we forcibly led them to the altar, saying that we must leave
+Ireland and the ceremony could not be delayed.
+
+Not that we are the recipients of any gratitude for all this!
+Rather the reverse!  They constantly allude to their marriage as
+made in Heaven, although there probably never was another union
+where creatures of earth so toiled and slaved to assist the
+celestial powers.
+
+I wonder why middle-aged and elderly lovers make such an appeal to
+me!  Is it because I have lived much in New England, where "ladies-
+in-waiting" are all too common,--where the wistful bride-groom has
+an invalid mother to support, or a barren farm out of which he
+cannot wring a living, or a malignant father who cherishes a bitter
+grudge against his son's chosen bride and all her kindred,--where
+the woman herself is compassed about with obstacles, dragging out a
+pinched and colourless existence year after year?
+
+And when at length the two waiting ones succeed in triumphing over
+circumstances, they often come together wearily, soberly, with half
+the joy pressed out of life.  Young lovers have no fears!  That the
+future holds any terrors, difficulties, bugbears of any sort they
+never seem to imagine, and so they are delightful and amusing to
+watch in their gay and sometimes irresponsible and selfish
+courtships; but they never tug at my heart-strings as their elders
+do, when the great, the long-delayed moment comes.
+
+Francesca and I, in common with Salemina's other friends, thought
+that she would never marry.  She had been asked often enough in her
+youth, but she was not the sort of woman who falls in love at
+forty.  What we did not know was that she had fallen in love with
+Gerald La Touche at five-and-twenty and had never fallen out,--
+keeping her feelings to herself during the years that he was
+espoused to another, very unsuitable lady.  Our own sentimental
+experiences, however, had sharpened our eyes, and we divined at
+once that Dr. La Touche, a scholar of fifty, shy, reserved, self-
+distrustful, and oh! so in need of anchor and harbour,--that he was
+the only husband in the world for Salemina; and that he, after
+giving all that he had and was to an unappreciative woman, would be
+unspeakably blessed in the wife of our choosing.
+
+I remember so well something that he said to me once as we sat at
+twilight on the bank of the lake near Devorgilla.  The others were
+rowing toward us bringing the baskets for a tea picnic, and we, who
+had come in the first boat, were talking quietly together about
+intimate things.  He told me that a frail old scholar, a brother
+professor, used to go back from the college to his house every
+night bowed down with weariness and pain and care, and that he used
+to say to his wife as he sank into his seat by the fire:  "Oh!
+praise me, my wife, praise me!"
+
+My eyes filled and I turned away to hide the tears when Dr. Gerald
+continued absently:  "As for me, Mistress Beresford, when I go home
+at night I take my only companion from the mantelshelf and leaning
+back in my old armchair say, 'Praise me, my pipe, praise me!'"
+
+And Salemina Peabody was in the boat coming toward us, looking as
+serenely lovely in a grey tweed and broad white hat as any good
+sweet woman of forty could look, while he gazed at her "through a
+glass darkly" as if she were practically non-existent, or had
+nothing whatever to do with the case.
+
+I concealed rebellious opinions of blind bats, deaf adders, meek
+lambs, and obstinate pigs, but said very gently and impersonally:
+"I hope you won't always allow your pipe to be your only
+companion;--you, with your children, your name and position, your
+home and yourself to give--to somebody!"
+
+But he only answered:  "You exaggerate, my dear madam; there is not
+enough left in me or of me to offer to any woman!"
+
+And I could do nothing but make his tea graciously and hand it to
+him, wondering that he was able to see the cup or the bread-and-
+butter sandwich that I put into his modest, ungrateful hand.
+
+However, it is all a thing of the past, that dim, sweet, grey
+romance that had its rightful background in a country of subdued
+colourings, of pensive sweetness, of gentle greenery, where there
+is an eternal wistfulness in the face of the natural world,
+speaking of the springs of hidden tears.
+
+Their union is a perfect success, and I echo the Boots of the inn
+at Devorgilla when he said:  "An' sure it's the doctor that's the
+satisfied man an' the luck is on him as well as on e'er a man
+alive!  As for her ladyship, she's one o' the blessings o' the
+wurruld an' 't would be an o'jus pity to spile two houses wid 'em."
+
+
+July 12, 19-.
+
+We were all out in the orchard sunning ourselves on the little
+haycocks that the "hired man" had piled up here and there under the
+trees.
+
+"It is not really so beautiful as Italy," I said to Himself, gazing
+up at the newly set fruit on the apple boughs and then across the
+close-cut hay field to the level pasture, with its rocks and cow
+paths, its blueberry bushes and sweet fern, its clumps of young
+sumachs, till my eyes fell upon the deep green of the distant
+pines.  "I can't bear to say it, because it seems disloyal, but I
+almost believe I think so."
+
+"It is not as picturesque," Himself agreed grudgingly, his eye
+following mine from point to point; "and why do we love it so?"
+
+"There is nothing delicious and luxuriant about it," I went on
+critically, "yet it has a delicate, ethereal, austere, straight-
+forward Puritanical loveliness of its own; but, no, it is not as
+beautiful as Italy or Ireland, and it isn't as tidy as England.  If
+you keep away from the big manufacturing towns and their outskirts
+you may go by motor or railway through shire after shire in England
+and never see anything unkempt, down-at-the-heel, out-at-elbows, or
+ill-cared-for; no broken-down fences or stone walls; no heaps of
+rubbish or felled trees by the wayside; no unpainted or tottering
+buildings--"
+
+"You see plenty of ruins," interrupted Himself in a tone that
+promised argument.
+
+"Yes, but ruins are different; they are finished; they are not
+tottering, they HAVE tottered!  Our country is too big, I suppose,
+to be 'tidy,' but how I should like to take just one of the United
+States and clear it up, back yards and all, from border line to
+border line!"
+
+"You are talking like a housewife now, not like an artist," said
+Himself reprovingly.
+
+"Well, I am both, I hope, and I don't intend that any one shall
+know where the one begins or the other leaves off, either!  And if
+any foreigner should remark that America is unfinished or untidy I
+shall deny it!"
+
+"Fie!  Penelope!  You who used to be a citizen of the world!"
+
+"So I am still, so far as a roving foot and a knowledge of three
+languages can make me; but you remember that the soul 'retains the
+characteristic of its race and the heart is true to its own
+country, even to its own parish.'"
+
+"When shall we be going to the other countries, mother?" asked
+Billy.  "When shall we see our aunt in Scotland and our aunt in
+Ireland?"  (Poor lambs!  Since the death of their Grandmother
+Beresford they do not possess a real relation in the world!)
+
+"It will not be very long, Billy," I said.  "We don't want to go
+until we can leave the perambulator behind.  The Sally-baby toddles
+now, but she must be able to walk on the English downs and the
+Highland heather."
+
+"And the Irish bogs," interpolated Billy, who has a fancy for
+detail.
+
+"Well, the Irish bogs are not always easy travelling," I answered,
+"but the Sally-baby will soon be old enough to feel the spring of
+the Irish turf under her feet."
+
+"What will the chickens and ducklings and pigeons do while we are
+gone?" asked Francie.
+
+"An' the lammies?" piped the Sally-baby, who has all the qualities
+of Mary in the immortal lyric.
+
+"Oh! we won't leave home until the spring has come and all the
+young things are born.  The grass will be green, the dandelions
+will have their puff-balls on, the apple blossoms will be over, and
+Daddy will get a kind man to take care of everything for us.  It
+will be May time and we will sail in a big ship over to the aunts
+and uncles in Scotland and Ireland and I shall show them my
+children--"
+
+"And we shall play 'hide-and-go-coop' with their children,"
+interrupted Francie joyously.
+
+"They will never have heard of that game, but you will all play
+together!"  And here I leaned back on the warm haycock and blinked
+my eyes a bit in moist anticipation of happiness to come.  "There
+will be eight-year-old Ronald MacDonald to climb and ride and sail
+with our Billy; and there will be little Penelope who is named for
+me, and will be Francie's playmate; and the new little boy baby--"
+
+"Proba'ly Aunt Francie's new boy baby will grow up and marry our
+girl one," suggested Billy.
+
+"He has my consent to the alliance in advance," said Himself, "but
+I dare say your mother has arranged it all in her own mind and my
+advice will not be needed."
+
+"I have not arranged anything," I retorted; "or if I have it was
+nothing more than a thought of young Ronald or Jack La Touche in--
+another quarter,"--this with discreetly veiled emphasis.
+
+"What is another quarter, mother?" inquired Francie, whose mental
+agility is somewhat embarrassing.
+
+"Oh, why,--well,--it is any other place than the one you are
+talking about.  Do you see?"
+
+"Not so very well, but p'r'aps I will in a minute."
+
+"Hope springs eternal!" quoted Francie's father.
+
+"And then, as I was saying before being interrupted by the entire
+family, we will go and visit the Irish cousins, Jackeen and Broona,
+who belong to Aunt Salemina and Uncle Gerald, and the Sally-baby
+will be the centre of attraction because she is her Aunt Salemina's
+godchild--"
+
+"But we are all God's children," insisted Billy.
+
+"Of course we are."
+
+"What's the difference between a god-child and a God's child?"
+
+"The bottle of chloroform is in the medicine closet, my poor dear;
+shall I run and get it?" murmured Himself sotto voce.
+
+"Every child is a child of God," I began helplessly, "and when she
+is somebody's godchild she--oh! lend me your handkerchief, Billy!"
+
+"Is it the nose-bleed, mother?" he asked, bending over me
+solicitously.
+
+"No, oh, no! it's nothing at all, dear.  Perhaps the hay was going
+to make me sneeze.  What was I saying?"
+
+"About the god--"
+
+"Oh, yes!  I remember!  (Ka-choo!)  We will take the Irish cousins
+and the Scotch cousins and go all together to see the Tower of
+London and Westminster Abbey.  We'll go to Bushey Park and see the
+chestnuts in bloom, and will dine at Number 10, Dovermarle Street--
+"
+
+"I shall not go there, Billy," said Himself.  "It was at Number 10,
+Dovermarle Street that your mother told me she wouldn't marry me;
+or at least that she'd have to do a lot of thinking before she'd
+say Yes; so she left London and went to North Malvern."
+
+"Couldn't she think in London?"  (This was Billy.)
+
+"Didn't she always want to be married to you?"  (This was Francie.)
+
+"Not always."
+
+"Didn't she like US?"  (Still Francie.)
+
+"You were never mentioned,--not one of you!"
+
+"That seems rather queer!" remarked Billy, giving me a reproachful
+look.
+
+"So we'll leave the Irish and Scotch uncles and aunts behind and go
+to North Malvern just by ourselves.  It was there that your mother
+concluded that she WOULD marry me, and I rather like the place."
+
+"Mother loves it, too; she talks to me about it when she puts me to
+bed."  (Francie again.)
+
+"No doubt; but you'll find your mother's heart scattered all over
+the Continent of Europe.  One bit will be clinging to a pink thorn
+in England; another will be in the Highlands somewhere,--wherever
+the heather's in bloom; another will be hanging on the Irish gorse
+bushes where they are yellowest; and another will be hidden under
+the seat of a Venetian gondola."
+
+"Don't listen to Daddy's nonsense, children!  He thinks mother
+throws her heart about recklessly while he loves only one thing at
+a time."
+
+"Four things!" expostulated Himself, gallantly viewing our little
+group at large.
+
+"Strictly speaking, we are not four things, we are only four parts
+of one thing;--counting you in, and I really suppose you ought to
+be counted in, we are five parts of one thing."
+
+"Shall we come home again from the other countries?" asked Billy.
+
+"Of course, sonny!  The little Beresfords must come back and grow
+up with their own country."
+
+"Am I a little Beresford, mother?" asked Francie, looking wistfully
+at her brother as belonging to the superior sex and the eldest
+besides.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"And is the Sally-baby one too?"
+
+Himself laughed unrestrainedly at this.
+
+"She is," he said, "but you are more than half mother, with your
+unexpectednesses."
+
+"I love to be more than half mother!" cried Francie, casting
+herself violently about my neck and imbedding me in the haycock.
+
+"Thank you, dear, but pull me up now.  It's supper-time."
+
+Billy picked up the books and the rug and made preparations for the
+brief journey to the house.  I put my hair in order and smoothed my
+skirts.
+
+"Will there be supper like ours in the other countries, mother?" he
+asked.  "And if we go in May time, when do we come back again?"
+
+Himself rose from the ground with a luxurious stretch of his arms,
+looking with joy and pride at our home fields bathed in the
+afternoon midsummer sun.  He took the Sally-baby's outstretched
+hands and lifted her, crowing, to his shoulder.
+
+"Help sister over the stubble, my son.--We'll come away from the
+other countries whenever mother says:  'Come, children, it's time
+for supper.'"
+
+"We'll be back for Thanksgiving," I assured Billy, holding him by
+one hand and Francie by the other, as we walked toward the
+farmhouse.  "We won't live in the other countries, because Daddy's
+'sit-fast acres' are here in New England."
+
+"But whenever and wherever we five are together, especially
+wherever mother is, it will always be home," said Himself
+thankfully, under his breath.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Penelope's Postscripts, by Wiggin
+
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