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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An American Girl Abroad, by Adeline Trafton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An American Girl Abroad
+
+Author: Adeline Trafton
+
+Illustrator: Miss L. B. Humphrey
+
+Release Date: May 8, 2010 [EBook #32289]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Emmy, Tor Martin Kristiansen and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "At night we descended into the depths of the steamer to
+worship with the steerage passengers." Page 23]
+
+
+
+
+AN
+
+AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.
+
+BY
+
+ADELINE TRAFTON.
+
+_ILLUSTRATED_
+
+_BY MISS L. B. HUMPHREY._
+
+          BOSTON:
+          LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS.
+          NEW YORK:
+          LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM.
+
+
+
+
+          Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1872,
+          BY LEE AND SHEPARD,
+          In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
+
+
+          Electrotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry,
+          No. 19 Spring Lane.
+
+
+
+
+          I DEDICATE
+
+          This Record of Pleasant Days
+
+          TO MY FATHER,
+
+          REV. MARK TRAFTON.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS FOR "OUR GIRLS."
+
+THE GIRLHOOD SERIES.
+
+By Popular Authors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.
+
+By ADELINE F. TRAFTON. 16mo, cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
+
+One of the most bright, chatty, wide-awake books of travel ever written.
+It abounds in information, is as pleasant reading as a story book, and
+full of the wit and sparkle of "An American Girl" let loose from school
+and ready for a frolic.
+
+
+ONLY GIRLS.
+
+By VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND, Author of "That Queer Girl," &c., &c. 12mo,
+cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
+
+"It is a thrilling story, written in a fascinating style, and the plot
+is adroitly handled."
+
+It might be placed in any Sabbath School library, so pure is it in tone,
+and yet it is so free from the mawkishness and silliness that mar the
+class of books usually found there, that the veteran novel reader is apt
+to finish it at a sitting.
+
+
+THE DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER.
+
+By SOPHIE MAY, Author of "Our Helen," "The Asbury Twins," &c. 12mo,
+cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
+
+"A delightful book, original and enjoyable," says the _Brownville Echo_.
+
+"A fascinating story, unfolding, with artistic touch, the young life of
+one of our impulsive, sharp-witted, transparent and pure-minded girls of
+the nineteenth century," says _The Contributor_, Boston.
+
+
+SALLY WILLIAMS.
+
+=The Mountain Girl.= By Mrs. EDNA D. CHENEY, Author of "Patience,"
+"Social Games," "The Child of the Tide," &c. 12mo, cloth, illustrated.
+$1.50.
+
+Pure, strong, healthy, just what might be expected from the pen of so
+gifted a writer as Mrs. Cheney. A very interesting picture of life among
+the New Hampshire hills, enlivened by the tangle of a story of the ups
+and downs of every-day life in this out-of-the-way locality. The
+characters introduced are quaintly original, and the adventures are
+narrated with remarkable skill.
+
+
+LOTTIE EAMES.
+
+=Or, do your best and leave the rest.= By a Popular Author. 16mo, illus.
+$1.50.
+
+"A wholesome story of home life, full of lessons of self-sacrifice, but
+always bright and attractive in its varied incidents."
+
+
+RHODA THORNTON'S GIRLHOOD.
+
+By Mrs. MARY E. PRATT. 16mo, cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
+
+A hearty and healthy story, dealing with young folks and home scenes,
+with sleighing, fishing and other frolics to make things lively.
+
+
+_The above six volumes are furnished in a handsome box, for $9.00, or
+sold separately by all booksellers, or sent by mail, postpaid, on
+receipt of price by_
+
+          LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers,      Boston.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                           PAGE
+
+  I.
+
+  "At night we descended into the depths of the steamer
+     to worship with the steerage passengers."      FRONTISPIECE.
+
+
+  II.
+
+  "A dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain fell
+     fast upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces."           57
+
+
+  III.
+
+  "At the word of command they struck the most
+     extraordinary attitudes."                              157
+
+
+  IV.
+
+  "Frowsy, sleepy, cross, and caring nothing
+     whatever for the sun, moon, or stars, we stood
+     like a company of Bedlamites, ankle deep in
+     the wet grass upon the summit."                        176
+
+
+  V.
+
+  "Evidently the little old woman is going a
+     journey."                                              196
+
+
+  VI.
+
+  "Together we stared at him with rigid and severe
+     countenances."                                         240
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+          CHAPTER I.
+
+          ABOARD THE STEAMER.
+
+          We two alone.--"Good by."--"Are you the captain of this
+             ship?"--Wretchedness.--The jolly Englishman and the
+             Yankee.--A sail!--The Cattle-man.--The Jersey-man
+             whose bark was on the sea.--Church services under
+             difficulties.--The sweet young English face.--Down
+             into the depths to worship.--"Beware! I stand by
+             the parson."--Singing to the fishes.--Green Erin.--One
+             long cheer.--Farewell, Ireland.                         13
+
+
+          CHAPTER II.
+
+          FIRST DAYS IN ENGLAND.
+
+          Up the harbor of Liverpool.--We all emerge as
+             butterflies.--The Mersey tender.--Lot's
+             wife.--"Any tobacco?"--"Names, please."--St.
+             George's Hall.--The fashionable promenade.--The
+             coffee-room.--The military man who showed the
+             purple tide of war in his face.--The railway
+             carriage.--The young man with hair all
+             aflame.--English villages.--London.--No place
+             for us.--The H. house.--The Babes in the
+             Wood.--The party from the country.--We are taken
+             in charge by the Good Man.--The Golden
+             Cross.--Solitary confinement.--Mrs. B.'s at last.       27
+
+
+          CHAPTER III.
+
+          EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON.
+
+          Strange ways.--"The bears that went over to
+             Charlestown."--The delights of a runaway without
+             its dangers.--Flower show at the Crystal
+             Palace.--Whit-Monday at Hampton Court.--A queen
+             baby.--"But the carpets?"--Poor Nell Gwynne.--Vandyck
+             faces.--Royal beds.--Lunch at the King's Arms.--O
+             Music, how many murders have been committed in thy
+             name!--Queen Victoria's home at Windsor.--A new
+             "house that Jack built."--The Round Tower.--Stoke
+             Pogis.--Frogmore.--The Knights of the Garter.--The
+             queen's gallery.--The queen's plate.--The royal
+             mews.--The wicker baby-wagons.--The state equipages.    43
+
+
+          CHAPTER IV.
+
+          SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON.
+
+          The Tower.--The tall Yankee of inquiring mind.--Our
+             guide in gorgeous array.--War trophies.--Knights
+             in armor.--A professional joke.--The crown
+             jewels.--The room where the little princes were
+             smothered.--The "Traitor's Gate."--The Houses of
+             Parliament.--What a throne is like.--The
+             "woolsack."--The Peeping Gallery for
+             ladies.--Westminster Hall and the law courts.--The
+             three drowsy old women.--The Great Panjandrum
+             himself.--Johnson and the pump.--St.
+             Paul's.--Wellington's funeral car.--The Whispering
+             Gallery.--The bell.                                     55
+
+
+          CHAPTER V.
+
+          AWAY TO PARIS.
+
+          The wedding party.--The canals.--New Haven.--Around
+             the tea-table.--Separating the sheep from the
+             goats.--"Will it be a rough passage?"--Gymnastic
+             feats of the little steamer.--O, what were officers
+             to us?--"Who ever invented earrings?"--Dieppe.--
+             Fish-wives.--Train for Paris.--Fellow-passengers.--
+             Rouen.--Babel.--Deliverance.                            68
+
+
+          CHAPTER VI.
+
+          THE PARIS OF 1869.
+
+          The devil.--Cathedrals and churches.--The Louvre.--Modern
+             French art.--The Beauvais clock, with its droll, little
+             puppets.--Virtue in a red gown.--The Luxembourg
+             Palace.--The yawning statue of Marshal Ney.--Gay life
+             by gas-light.--The Imperial Circus.--The Opera.--How
+             the emperor and empress rode through the streets after
+             the riots.--The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was
+             her fortune.--Napoleon's tomb.                          76
+
+
+          CHAPTER VII.
+
+          SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITY.
+
+          The Gobelin tapestry.--How and where it is made.--Père
+             La-Chaise.--Poor Rachel!--The baby establishment.--"Now
+             I lay me."--The little mother.--The old woman who lived
+             in a shoe.--The American chapel.--Beautiful women and
+             children.--The last conference meeting.--"I'm a
+             proof-reader, I am."                                    90
+
+
+          CHAPTER VIII.
+
+          SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.
+
+          The river omnibuses.--Sèvres and its porcelain.--St.
+             Cloud as it was.--The crooked little town.--
+             Versailles.--Eugenie's "spare bedroom."--The queen
+             who played she was a farmer's wife.--Seven miles of
+             paintings.--The portraits of the presidents.           100
+
+
+          CHAPTER IX.
+
+          A VISIT TO BRUSSELS.
+
+          To Brussels.--The old and new city.--The paradise and
+             purgatory of dogs.--The Hôtel de Ville and Grand
+             Place.--St. Gudule.--The picture galleries.--Wiertz
+             and his odd paintings.--Brussels lace and an hour
+             with the lace-makers.--How the girls found Charlotte
+             Brontë's school.--The scene of "Villette."             109
+
+
+          CHAPTER X.
+
+          WATERLOO AND THROUGH BELGIUM.
+
+          To Waterloo.--Beggars and guides.--The Mound.--Chateau
+             Hougomont.--Victor Hugo's "sunken road."--Antwerp.--A
+             visit to the cathedral.--A drive about the city.--An
+             excursion to Ghent.--The funeral services in the
+             cathedral.--"Poisoned? Ah, poor man!"--The
+             watch-tower.--The Friday-market square.--The
+             nunnery.--Longfellow's pilgrims to "the belfry of
+             Bruges."                                               122
+
+
+          CHAPTER XI.
+
+          A TRIP THROUGH HOLLAND.
+
+          Up the Meuse to Rotterdam.--Dutch sights and
+             ways.--The pretty milk-carriers.--The
+             tea-gardens.--Preparations for the Sabbath.--An
+             English chapel.--"The Lord's barn."--From Rotterdam
+             to the Hague.--The queen's "House in the
+             Wood."--Pictures in private drawing-rooms.--The
+             bazaar.--An evening in a Dutch tea-garden.--Amsterdam
+             to a stranger.--The "sights."--The Jews' quarter.--The
+             family whose home was upon the canals.--Out of the
+             city.--The pilgrims.                                   134
+
+
+          CHAPTER XII.
+
+          THE RHINE AND RHENISH PRUSSIA.
+
+          First glimpse of the Rhine.--Cologne and the
+             Cathedral.--"Shosef in ter red coat."--St. Ursula
+             and the eleven thousand virgins.--Up the Rhine to
+             Bonn.--The German students.--Rolandseck.--A search
+             for a resting-place.--Our Dutch friend and his
+             Malays.--The story of Hildegund.--A quiet Sabbath.--
+             Our Dutch friend's reply.--Coblentz.--The bridge of
+             boats.--Ehrenbreitstein, over the river.--A scorching
+             day upon the Rhine.--Romance under difficulties.--
+             Mayence.--Frankfort.--Heidelberg.--The ruined
+             castle.--Baden-Baden.--A glimpse at the gambling.--The
+             new and the old "Schloss."--The Black Forest.--
+             Strasbourg.--The mountains.                            147
+
+
+          CHAPTER XIII.
+
+          DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.
+
+          The Lake of Lucerne.--Days of rest in the city.--An
+             excursion up the Righi.--The crowd at the summit.--
+             Dinner at midnight.--Rising before "the early
+             worm."--The "sun-rise" according to Murray.--Animated
+             scarecrows.--Off for a tour through Switzerland.--The
+             lake for the last time.--Grütlii.--William Tell's
+             chapel.--Fluellen.--Altorf.--Swiss haymakers.--An hour
+             at Amsteg.--The rocks close in.--The Devil's Bridge.--
+             The dangerous road.--"A carriage has gone over the
+             precipice!"--Andermatt.--Desolate rocks.--Exquisite
+             wild flowers.--The summit of the Furka.--A descent to
+             the Rhone glacier.--Into the ice.--Swiss villages.--
+             Brieg.--The convent inn.--The bare little chapel on the
+             hill.--To Martigny.                                    168
+
+
+          CHAPTER XIV.
+
+          AMONG THE EVERLASTING HILLS.
+
+          The quaint inn.--The Falls of the Sallenches, and the
+             Gorge de Trient.--Shopping in a Swiss village.--A
+             mule ride to Chamouni.--Peculiarities of the
+             animals.--Entrance to the village.--Egyptian mummies
+             lifted from the mules.--Rainy days.--Chamois.--The
+             Mer de Glace.--"Look out of your window."--Mont
+             Blanc.--Sallenches.--A diligence ride to Geneva.--Our
+             little old woman.--The clownish peasant.--The fork in
+             the road.--"Adieu."                                    189
+
+
+          CHAPTER XV.
+
+          LAST DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.
+
+          Geneva.--Calvin and jewelry.--Up Lake Leman.--Ouchy and
+             Lausanne.--"Sweet Clarens."--Chillon.--Freyburg.--
+             Sight-seers.--The Last Judgment.--Berne and its
+             bears.--The town like a story.--The Lake of Thun.--
+             Interlaken.--Over the Wengern Alp.--The Falls of
+             Giessbach.--The Brunig Pass.--Lucerne again.           201
+
+
+          CHAPTER XVI.
+
+          BACK TO PARIS ALONE.
+
+          Coming home.--The breaking up of the party.--We start
+             for Paris alone.--Basle, and a search for a hotel.--
+             The twilight ride.--The shopkeeper whose wits had
+             gone "a wool-gathering."--"Two tickets for Paris."--
+             What can be the matter now?--Michel Angelo's Moses.--
+             Paris at midnight.--The kind _commissionaire_.--The
+             good French gentleman and his fussy little wife.--A
+             search for Miss H.'s.--"Come up, come up."--"Can women
+             travel through Europe alone?" A word about a woman's
+             outfit.                                                220
+
+
+
+
+AN
+
+AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ABOARD THE STEAMER.
+
+          We two alone.--"Good by."--"Are you the captain of
+          this ship?"--Wretchedness.--The jolly Englishman
+          and the Yankee.--A sail!--The cattle-man.--The
+          Jersey-man whose bark was on the sea.--Church
+          services under difficulties.--The sweet young
+          English face.--Down into the depths to
+          worship.--"Beware! I stand by the
+          Parson."--Singing to the fishes.--Green Erin.--One
+          long cheer.--Farewell Ireland.
+
+
+WE were going to Europe, Mrs. K. and I--alone, with the exception of the
+ship's company--unprotected, save by Him who watches over the least of
+his creatures. We packed our one trunk, upon which both name and
+nationality were conspicuously blazoned, with the necessaries, not
+luxuries, of a woman's toilet, and made our simple preparations for
+departure without a shadow of anxiety. "They who know nothing, fear
+nothing," said the paterfamilias, but added his consent and blessing.
+The rain poured in torrents as we drove down to the wharf. But floods
+could not have dampened our enthusiasm. A wild Irishman, with a
+suggestion of spirituous things in his air and general appearance,
+received us at the foot of the plank, one end of which touched earth,
+the other that unexplored region, the steamer. We followed the direction
+of his dirty finger, and there fell from our eyes, as it were, scales.
+In our ignorance, we had expected to find vast space, elegant
+surroundings, glass, glare, and glitter. We peered into the contracted
+quarters of the ladies' cabin. One side was filled with boxes and
+bundles; the other, with the prostrate form of an old lady, her head
+enveloped in a mammoth ruffle. We explored the saloon. The purser, with
+a wen and a gilt-banded cap on his head, was flying about like one
+distracted. An old gentleman similarly attired, with the exception of
+the wen,--the surgeon as we afterwards learned,--read a large book
+complacently in one corner, murmuring gently to himself. His upper teeth
+lacked fixity, so to speak; and as they fell with every word, he had the
+appearance of gnashing them continually at the invisible author. There
+was a hurrying to and fro of round, fresh-faced stewards in short
+jackets, a pushing and pulling of trunks and boxes, the sudden
+appearance and disappearance of nondescript individuals in slouched hats
+and water-proofs, the stirring about of heavy feet upon the deck above,
+the rattling of chains, the 'yo-ing' of hoarse voices, as the sailors
+pulled at the ropes, and, with it all, that sickening odor of oil, of
+dead dinners--of everything, so indescribable, so never-to-be-forgotten.
+Somewhat saddened, and considerably enlightened upon the subject of
+ocean steamers, we sought our state-room. It boasted two berths (the
+upper conveniently gained by mounting the stationary wash-stand), and a
+velvet-covered sofa beneath the large, square window, which last we
+learned, months later, when reduced to a port-hole for light and air, to
+appreciate. A rack and half a dozen hooks against the wall completed its
+furniture.
+
+The time of departure arrived. We said the two little words that bring
+so many tears and heartaches, and ran up on the deck with the rain in
+our faces, and something that was not all rain in our eyes, for one last
+look at our friends; but they were hidden from sight. There comes to me
+a dim recollection of attempting to mount to an inaccessible place: of
+clinging to wet ropes with the intention of seeing the last of the land;
+of thinking it, after a time, a senseless proceeding, and of resigning
+ourselves finally to our berths and inevitable circumstances. Eight
+bells and the dinner bell; some one darkened our doorway.
+
+"What's this? Don't give it up so. D'ye hear the dinner bell?"
+
+"Are--are you the captain of this ship?" gasped Mrs. K., feebly, from
+the sofa.
+
+"To be sure, madam. Don't give it up so."
+
+Mrs. K. groaned. There came to me one last gleam of hope. What if it
+were possible to brave it out! In a moment my feet were on the floor,
+but whether my name were McGregor, or not, I could not tell. I made an
+abortive attempt after the pretty hood, prepared with such pleasant
+anticipations, and had a dim consciousness that somebody's hands tied it
+about my head. Then we started. We climbed heights, we descended depths
+indescribable, in that short walk to the saloon, and there was a queer
+feeling of having a windmill, instead of a head, upon my shoulders. A
+number of sympathizing faces were nodding in the most remarkable manner,
+as we reached the door, and the tables performed antic evolutions.
+
+"Take me back!" and the berth and the little round stewardess received
+me. There followed a night of misery. One can form no idea, save from
+experience, of the horrors of the first night upon an ocean steamer.
+There are the whir, and buzz, and jar, and rattle, and bang of the screw
+and engine; the pitching and rolling of the ship, with the sensation of
+standing upright for a moment, and then of being made to rest
+comfortably upon the top of your head; the sense of undergoing internal
+somersaults, to say nothing of describing every known curve externally.
+You study physiology involuntarily, and doubt if your heart, your lungs,
+or indeed any of your internal organs, are firmly attached, after all;
+if you shall not lose them at the next lurch of the ship. Your head is
+burning with fever, your hands and feet like ice, and you feel dimly,
+but wretchedly, that this is but the beginning of sorrows; that there
+are a dozen more days to come. You are conscious of a vague wonder (as
+the night lengthens out interminably) what eternity _can_ be, since time
+is so long. The bells strike the half hours, tormenting you with
+calculations which amount to nothing. Everything within the room, as
+well as without, swings, and rolls, and rattles. You are confident your
+bottles in the rack will go next, and don't much care if they do, though
+you lie and dread the crash. You are tormented with thirst, and the
+ice-water is in that same rack, just beyond your reach. The candle in
+its silver case, hinged against the wall, swings back and forth with
+dizzy motion, throwing moving distorted shadows over everything, and
+making the night like a sickly day. You long for darkness, and, when at
+last the light grows dim, until only a red spark remains and the smoke
+that adds its mite to your misery, long for its return. At regular
+intervals you hear the tramp, tramp, overhead, of the relieving watch;
+and, in the midst of fitful slumbers, the hoarse voices of the sailors,
+as the wind freshens and they hoist the sails, wake you from frightful
+dreams. At the first gray dawn of light come the swash of water and the
+trickling down of the stream against your window, with the sound of the
+holy-stones pushed back and forth upon the deck. And with the light--O,
+blessed light!--came to us a dawn of better things.
+
+There followed days when we lay contented upon the narrow sofa, or
+within the contracted berths, but when to lift our heads was woe. A kind
+of negative blessedness--absence from misery. We felt as if we had lost
+our heart, our conscience, and almost our immortal soul, to quote Mark
+Twain. There remained to us only those principles and prejudices most
+firmly rooted and grounded. Even our personal vanity left us at last,
+and nothing could be more forsaken and appropriate than the plain green
+gown with its one row of military buttons, attired in which, day after
+day, I idly watched the faces that passed our door. "That's like you
+Americans," said our handsome young Irish doctor, pointing to these same
+buttons. "You can't leave your country without taking the spread-eagle
+with you!"
+
+Our officers, with this one exception, were English. Our captain, a
+living representative of the traditional English sailor. Not young, save
+in heart; simple, unaffected, and frank in manner, but with a natural
+dignity that prevented undue familiarity, he sang about the ship from
+morning till night, with a voice that could carry no air correctly, but
+with an enjoyment delightful to witness--always a song suggested by
+existing circumstances, but with
+
+          "Cheer, boys, cheer; my mother's sold her mangle,"
+
+when everything else failed. He was forward among the men on the deck
+with an eye to the wind, down below bringing fruit and comfort to the
+sick in the steerage, dealing out apples and oranges to the children,
+with an encouraging word and the first line of a song for everybody.
+
+The life of the ship was an Englishman, with the fresh complexion almost
+invariably seen upon Englishmen, and forty years upon a head that looked
+twenty-five. He was going home after a short tour through the United
+States, with his mind as full of prejudices as his memorandum-book was
+of notes. He chanced, oddly enough, to room with the genuine Yankee of
+the company--a long, lean, good-natured individual from one of the
+eastern states, "close on ter Varmont," who had a way of rolling his
+eyes fearfully, especially when he glared at his food. He represented a
+mowing machine company, and we called him "the Mowing Machine Man." He
+accosted us one day, sidling up to our door, with, "How d'ye do to-day?"
+
+"Better, thank you," I replied from the sofa.
+
+"That's real nice. Tell ye what, we'll be glad to see the ladies out.
+How's yer mar?" nodding towards the berth from which twinkled Mrs. K.'s
+eyes. I laughed, and explained that our relations were of affection
+rather than consanguinity. His interest increased when he found we were
+travelling alone. He gave us his London address, evidently considering
+us in the light of Daniels about to enter the lions' den. "Ef ye have
+any trouble," said he, as he wrote down the street and number, "there's
+one Yankee'll stand up for ye." He amused the Englishman by calling out,
+"Hullo. D'ye feel _good_ this morning?" "No," would be the reply, with a
+burst of laughter; "I feel awful wicked; think I'll go right out and
+kill somebody."
+
+There was a shout one morning, "A sail! See the stars and stripes!" I
+had not raised my head for days, but staggered across the floor at that,
+and clinging to the frame, thrust my head out of the window. Yes, there
+was a ship close by, with the stars and stripes floating from the
+mast-head, I found, when the roll of the steamer carried my window to
+its level. "Seems good ter see the old rag!" I looked up to find the
+Mowing Machine Man gazing upon it with eyes all afloat. "I'd been a
+thinking," said he, "all them fellers have got somebody waiting for 'em
+over there,"--our passengers were mostly English,--"but there wasn't
+nobody a waiting for me. Tell ye what,"--and he shook out the folds of a
+red and yellow handkerchief,--"it does my heart good ter see the old
+flag." There was a bond of sympathy between us from that moment.
+
+We had another and less agreeable specimen of this free people--a tall,
+tough western cattle dealer, who quarrelled if he could find an
+antagonist, swore occasionally, drank liquor, and chewed tobacco
+perpetually, wore his trousers tucked into his long boots, his hands
+tucked into his pockets, and, to crown these attributes, believed in
+Andrew Johnson!--a middle-aged man, with soft, curling brown hair above
+a face that could be cruelly cold and hard. His hair should have been
+wire; his blue eyes were steel. But hard as was his face, it softened
+and smoothed itself a little at sight of the sick women. He paused
+beside us one day with a rough attempt to interest and amuse by
+displaying a knife case containing a dozen different articles. "This is
+ter take a stun out of a hoss's huf, and this, d'ye see, is a
+tooth-pick;" putting it to immediate use by way of explanation. At the
+table he talked long and loud upon the rinderpest, and other kindred and
+appetizing topics. "I've been a butcher myself," he would say. "I've cut
+up hundreds o' critters. What part of an ox, now, d'ye think that was
+taken from?" pointing to the joint before him, and addressing a refined,
+delicate-faced old gentleman across the table, who only stared in silent
+horror.
+
+But even the "Cattle Man" was less marked in his peculiarities than the
+"Jersey Man," a melancholy-eyed, curly-wigged individual from the Jersey
+shore, who wore his slouched hat upon one side of his head, and looked
+as though he were doing the rakish lover in some fifth-rate theatre; who
+was "in the musical line myself; Smith and Jones's organs, you know;
+that's me;" and who, being neither Smith nor Jones, we naturally
+concluded must be the organ. He recited poetry in a loud tone at
+daybreak, and discussed politics for hours together, arguing in the most
+satisfactory manner with the principles, and standing most willingly
+upon the platform, of everybody. He assumed a patronizing air towards
+the Mowing Machine Man. "Well, you _are_ a green Yankee," he would say;
+"lucky for you that you fell in with me;" to which the latter only
+chuckled, "That's so." He had much to tell of himself, of his
+grandmother, and of his friends generally, who came to see him off;
+"felt awfully, too," which we could hardly credit; rolled out snatches
+of sentimental songs, iterating and reiterating that his bark was on the
+sea,--and a most disagreeable one we found it; wished we had a piano on
+board, to which we murmured, "The Lord forbid;" and hoped we should soon
+be well enough to join him in the "White Squall." He was constantly
+reminding us that we were a very happy family party, so "congenial," and
+evidently agreed with the Mowing Machine Man, who said, "They're the
+best set of fellows I ever see. They'll tell ye anything."
+
+We numbered a clergyman among us, of course. "Always a head wind when
+there's a parson aboard," say the sailors. So this poor dyspeptic little
+man bore the blame of our constant adverse winds. Nothing more bigoted,
+more fanatical than his religious belief could be imagined. You read the
+terrors of the Lord in his eye; and yet he won respect, and something
+more, by his consistency and zeal. Earnestness will tell. "The parson
+will have great influence over the Cattle Man," the captain said,
+Sabbath morning, as we were walking the deck. "The Cattle Man?" "Yes,
+the parson will get a good hold of him." Just then, as if to prove the
+old proverb true, that his satanic majesty is always in the immediate
+neighborhood when his character is under discussion, the Cattle Man and
+Jersey came up the companion-way. "If you please, captain," said the
+former, "we are a committee to ask if the parson may preach to the
+steerage people to-night." "Certainly," was the reply; "I will attend
+myself." They thanked him, and went below, leaving me utterly amazed.
+They were the last men upon the ship whom one would have selected as a
+committee upon spiritual things!
+
+The church service for the cabin passengers was held in the saloon. A
+velvet cushion upon one end of the long table constituted the pulpit,
+before which the minister stood, holding fast to the rack on either
+side, and bracing himself against the captain's chair in the rear. Even
+then he made, involuntarily, more bows than any ritualist, and the
+scripture, "What went ye out for to see? A reed shaken by the wind?"
+would present itself. The sailors in their neat dress filed in and
+ranged themselves in one corner. The stewards gathered about the door,
+one, with face like an owl, most conspicuous. The passengers filled
+their usual seats, and a delegation from the steerage crept shyly into
+the unoccupied space--women with shawls over their heads and babies in
+their arms, shock-headed men and toddling children, but all with an
+evident attempt at appropriate dress and manner. Among them was one
+sweet young English face beneath an old crape bonnet. A pair of shapely
+hands, which the shabby black gloves could not disguise, held fast a
+little child. Widowhood and want in the old world; what was waiting her
+in the new? The captain read the service, and all the people responded.
+The women's eyes grew wet at the sound of the familiar words. The little
+English widow bent her face over the head of the child in her lap, and
+something glistened in its hair. Our sympathies grew wide, and we joined
+in the prayer for the queen, that she might have victory over her
+enemies, and even murmured a response to the petition for Albert Edward
+and the nobility, dimly conscious that they needed prayers. The good
+captain added a petition for the president of the United States, to
+which the Mowing Machine Man and I said, "Amen." Then the minister,
+having poised himself carefully, read a discourse, sulphurous but
+sincere; the Mowing Machine Man thrusting his elbow into my side in a
+most startling manner at every particularly blue point. We were
+evidently in sympathy; but I could have dispensed with the expression of
+it. We closed with the doxology, standing upon our feet and swaying back
+and forth as though it had been a Shaker chant, led by an improvised
+choir and the Jersey Man.
+
+At night we descended into the depths of the steamer to worship with the
+steerage passengers. It was like one of Rembrandt's pictures--the
+darkness, the wild, strangely-attired people, the weird light from the
+lanterns piercing the gloom, and bringing out group after group with
+fearful distinctness; the pale, earnest face of the preacher, made
+almost unearthly by the glare of the yellow light--a face with its
+thin-drawn lips, its eyes like coals of fire such as the flames of
+martyrdom lit once, I imagine. Close beside him stood the Cattle Man,
+towering like Saul above the people, and with an air that plainly said,
+"Beware--I stand by the parson."
+
+          "There is a land of pure delight,"
+
+repeated the minister; and in a moment the words rolled out of the
+Cattle Man's mouth while he beckoned with his long arm for the people to
+rise. Throwing back his head, he sang with an unction indescribable,
+verse after verse, caught doubtless at some western camp-meeting, where
+he had tormented the saints. One after another took up the strain. Clear
+and strong came the tones from every dark corner, until, like one mighty
+voice, while the steamer rolled and the waves dashed against its sides,
+rose the words
+
+          "Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood,
+            Shall fright us from that shore."
+
+A great stillness fell upon the people as the minister gave out his
+text, and began his discourse. He had lacked freedom in the saloon, but
+here he forgot everything save the words given him; hard words they
+seemed to me, containing little of the love of God. I glanced at the
+Mowing Machine Man, who had made a seat of half a barrel under the
+stairs. He winked in a fearful manner, as though he would say, "Just see
+how he's a goin' on!" But the people received it gladly. One after
+another of the sailors crept down the stairs and stood in the shadow. I
+watched them curiously. It may be that this stern, hard doctrine suited
+these stern, hard men. It made me shudder.
+
+But the record of all these days would have no end. How can I tell of
+the long, happy hours, when more than strength, when perfect
+exhilaration, came to us; when existence alone was a delight? To sit
+upon the low wheel-house, with wraps and ribbons and hair flying in the
+wind, while we sang,--
+
+          "O, a life on the ocean wave!"
+
+to admiring fishes; to watch the long, lazy swell of the sea, or the
+spray breaking from the tops of the white caps into tiny rainbows; to
+walk the rolling deck for hours with never a shadow of weariness; to
+cling to the flag-staff when the stern of the ship rose in the air then
+dropped like a heavy stone into the sea, sending the spray far over and
+above us; to count the stars at night, watching the other gleaming
+phosphorescent stars that seemed to have fallen from heaven upon the
+long wake of the steamer,--all this was a delight unspeakable.
+
+One morning, when the land seemed a forgotten dream, we awoke to find
+green Erin close beside us. All the day before the sea-gulls had been
+hovering over us--beautiful creatures, gray above and white beneath,
+clouds with a silver lining. Tiny land birds, too, flew about us,
+resting wearily upon the rigging. The sea all at once became like glass.
+It seemed like the book of Revelation when the sun shone on it,--the sea
+of glass mingled with fire. For a time the land was but a line of rock,
+with martello towers perched upon the points. On the right, Fastnet Rock
+rose out of the sea, crowned with a light-house; then the gray barren
+shore of Cape Clear Island, and soon the sharp-pointed Stag Rocks. It is
+a treacherous coast. "I've been here many a night," said the captain, as
+he gave us his glass, "when I never expected to see morning." And all
+the while he was speaking, the sea smiled and smiled, as though it could
+never be cruel.
+
+We drew nearer and nearer, until we could see the green fields bounded
+by stone walls, the white, winding roads, and little villages nestling
+among the hills. Towards noon the lovely harbor of Queenstown opened
+before us, surrounded and almost shut in by rocky islands. Through the
+glass we could see the city, with its feet in the bay. We were no longer
+alone. The horizon was dotted with sails. Sometimes a steamer crossed
+our wake, or a ship bore down upon us. We hoisted our signals. We dipped
+our flag. The sailors were busy painting the boats, and polishing the
+brass till it shone again. Now the tender steams out from Queenstown.
+The steerage passengers in unwonted finery, tall hats and unearthly
+bonnets, and one in a black silk gown, are running about forward,
+shaking hands, gathering up boxes and bundles, and pressing towards the
+side which the tender has reached. There are the shouting of orders, the
+throwing of a rope, and in a moment they are crowding the plank. One
+long cheer, echoed from the stern of our steamer, and they are off.
+
+All day we walked the deck; even the sick crawled up at last to see the
+panorama. We still lingered when night fell, and we had turned away from
+the land to strike across the channel, and the picture rests with me
+now; the purple sky with one long stretch of purple, hazy cloud, behind
+which the sun went down; the long, low line of purple rock, our last
+glimpse of Ireland, and the shining, purple sea, with not a ripple upon
+its surface.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FIRST DAYS IN ENGLAND.
+
+          Up the harbor of Liverpool.--We all emerge as
+          butterflies.--The Mersey tender.--Lot's
+          wife.--"Any tobacco?"--"Names, please."--St.
+          George's Hall.--The fashionable promenade.--The
+          coffee-room.--The military man who showed the
+          purple tide of war in his face.--The railway
+          carriage.--The young man with hair all
+          aflame.--English villages.--London.--No place for
+          us.--The H. house.--The Babes in the Wood.--The
+          party from the country.--We are taken in charge by
+          the Good Man.--The Golden Cross.--Solitary
+          confinement.--Mrs. B.'s at last.
+
+
+WE steamed up the harbor of Liverpool the next morning. New Brighton,
+with its green terraces, its Chinese-pagoda villas, spread out upon one
+side, upon the other that solid wall of docks, the barricade that breaks
+the constant charges of the sea, with the masts of ships from every land
+for an abattis. The wraps and shapeless garments worn so long were laid
+aside; the pretty hood which had, like charity, covered so many sins of
+omission, hidden, itself, at last, the soft wool stiffened with the sea
+spray, the bright colors dimmed by smoke, and soot, and burning sun. We
+crept shyly upon the deck in our unaccustomed finery, as though called
+at a moment's notice to play another woman's part, half-learned. Not in
+us alone was the transformation. The girl in blue had blossomed into a
+bell--a blue bell. The Cattle Man, his hands released at last from the
+thraldom of his pockets, stalked about, funereal, in wrinkled black. A
+solferino neck-tie and tall hat of a pie-Adamite formation
+transmogrified our Mowing Machine friend. Nondescripts, that had lain
+about the deck wrapped in cocoons of rugs and shawls, emerged
+suddenly--butterflies! A painful courtesy seized us all. We had doffed
+the old familiar intercourse with our sea-garments. We gathered in
+knots, or stood apart singly, mindful at last of our dignity.
+
+The Mersey tender (a tender mercy to some) puffed out to meet us, and we
+descended the plank as those who turn away from home, leaving much of
+our thoughts, and something of our hearts, within the ship. It had been
+such a place of rest, of blessed idleness! Only when our feet touched
+the wharf did we take up the burden of life again. There were the
+meeting of friends, in which we had no part; the maelstrom of horses,
+and carts, and struggling humanity, in which we found a most unwilling
+place; and then we followed fast in the footsteps of the Mowing Machine
+Man, who in his turn followed a hair-covered trunk upon the shoulders of
+a stout porter, our destination the custom-house shed close by. For a
+moment, as we were tossed hither and thither by the swaying mass, our
+desires followed our thoughts to a certain sheltered nook, upon a still,
+white deck, with the sunbeams slanting down through the furled sails
+above, with the lazy, lapping sea below, and only our own idle thoughts
+for company. Then we remembered Lot's wife.
+
+There was a little meek-faced custom-house officer in waiting, with a
+voice so out of proportion to his size, that he seemed to have hired it
+for the occasion, or come into it with his uniform by virtue of his
+office. "Any tobacco?" he asked, severely, as we lifted the lid of our
+one trunk. We gave a virtuous and indignant negative. That was all. We
+might go our several ways now unmolested. One fervent expression of good
+wishes among our little company, while we make for a moment a network of
+clasped hands, and then we pass out of the great gates into our new
+world, and into the clutches of the waiting cabmen. By what stroke of
+good fortune we and our belongings were consigned to one and the same
+cab, in the confusion and terror of the moment, we did not know at the
+time. It was clearly through the intervention of a kind
+fellow-passenger, who, seeing that amazement enveloped us like a
+garment, kindly took us in charge. The dazed, as well as the lame and
+lazy, are cared for, it seems. By what stroke of good fortune we ever
+reached our destination, we knew still less. Our cab was a triumph of
+impossibilities, uncertainties, and discomfort. Our attenuated beast,
+like an animated hoop skirt, whose bones were only prevented, by the
+encasing skin, from flying off as we turned the corners, experienced
+hardly less difficulty in drawing his breath than in drawing his load.
+We descended at the entrance to the hotel as those who have escaped from
+imminent peril. We mounted the steps--two lone, but by no means lorn,
+damsels, two anxious, but by no means aimless females, knowing little of
+the world, less of travelling, and nothing whatever of foreign ways.
+Our very air, as we entered the door, was an apology for the intrusion.
+
+"Names, please," said the smiling man in waiting, opening what appeared
+to be the book of fate. We added ours to the long list of pilgrims and
+strangers who had sojourned here, dotting our i's and crossing our t's
+in the most elegant manner imaginable. If any one has a doubt as to our
+early advantages, let him examine the record of the Washington Hotel,
+Liverpool. The heading, "Remarks," upon the page, puzzled us. Were they
+to be of a sacred or profane nature? Of an autobiographical character?
+Were they to refer to the dear land we had just left? Through some
+political throes she had just brought forth a ruler. Should we add to
+the U. S. against our names, "As well as could be expected"? We
+hesitated,--and wrote nothing. Up the wide stairs, past the transparency
+of Washington--in the bluest of blue coats, the yellowest of top boots,
+and an air of making the best of an unsought and rather ridiculous
+position--we followed the doily upon the head of the pretty chambermaid
+to our wide, comfortable room, with its formidable, high-curtained beds.
+The satchels and parcels innumerable were propped carefully into
+rectitude upon the dressing table, under the impression that the ship
+would give a lurch; and then, gazing out through the great plate glass
+windows upon the busy square below, we endeavored to compose our
+perturbed minds and gather our scattered wits.
+
+It is not beautiful, this great city of Liverpool, creeping up from the
+sea. It has little to interest a stranger aside from its magnificent
+docks and warehouses. There are mammoth truck horses from Suffolk, with
+feet like cart wheels; there is St. George's Hall, the pride of the
+people, standing in the busy square of the same name, with a statue of
+the saint himself--a terror to all dragons--just before it. It is gray,
+many columned, wide stepped, vast in its proportions. Do you care for
+its measurement? Having seen that, you are ready to depart; and, indeed,
+there is nothing to detain one here beyond a day of rest, a moment to
+regain composure after the tossing of the sea. There are some
+substantial dwellings,--for commerce has its kings,--and some fine
+shops,--for commerce also has its queens,--and one fine drive, of which
+we learned too late. The air of endurance, which pervades the whole
+city, as it does all cities in the old world, impresses one greatly, as
+though they were built for eternity, not time; the founders having
+forgotten that here we are to have no continuing city. In the new world,
+man tears down and builds up. Every generation moulds and fashions its
+towns and cities after its own desires, or to suit its own means. Man is
+master. In the old world, one generation after another surges in and out
+of these grim, gray walls, leaving not so much as the mark the waves
+leave upon the rocks. Unchanged, unchanging, they stand age after age,
+time only softening the hard outlines, deepening the shadows it has cast
+upon them, and so bringing them into a likeness of each other that they
+seem to have been the design of one mind, the work of one pair of hands,
+and hardly of mortal mind or hands at that. They seem to say to man, "We
+have stood here ages before you were born. We shall stand here ages
+after you are forgotten." They must be filled with echoes, with ghosts,
+and haunting memories.
+
+Bold Street, a tolerably narrow and winding way, in which many are found
+to walk,--contrary to all precedent,--boasts the finest shops. Here the
+Lancashire witches, as the beauties of the county are called, walk, and
+talk, and buy gewgaws of an afternoon. It was something strange to us to
+see long silken skirts entirely destitute of crinoline, ruffle, or
+flounce, trailed here through mud and mire, or raised displaying low
+Congress gaiters, destitute of heels. For ourselves, if we had been the
+king of the Cannibal Islands, we could hardly have attracted more
+attention than we did in our plain, short travelling suits and
+high-heeled boots. It grew embarrassing, especially when our expression
+of unqualified benevolence drew after us a train of beggars. They
+crossed the street to meet us. They emerged from every side street and
+alley, thrusting dirty hands into our faces, and repeating twice-told
+tales in our ears, until we were thankful when oblivion and the shadow
+of the hotel fell upon us.
+
+We dined in the coffee-room,--that comfortable and often delightfully
+cosy apartment fitted with little tables, and with its corner devoted to
+books, to papers and conversation,--that combination of dining, tea and
+reading-room unknown to an American hotel,--sacred to the sterner sex
+from all time, and only opened to us within a few years,--the gates
+being forced then, I imagine, by American women, who will not consent to
+hide their light under a bushel, or keep to some faraway corner,
+unseeing and unseen. English women, as a rule, take their meals in
+their own private parlors. Perhaps because English men generally desire
+the flowers intrusted to their fostering care to blush unseen. It may be
+better for the gardeners; it may be better for the flowers--I cannot
+tell; but we dined in the coffee-room, as Americans usually do. One of
+the _clergymen_, who attend at such places, received our order. It was
+not so very formidable an affair, after all, this going down by
+ourselves; or would not have been, if the big-eyed waiter, who watched
+our every movement, would have left us, and the military man at the next
+table, who showed "the purple tide of war," or something else, in his
+face, and blew his nose like a trombone, ceased to stare. As it was, we
+aired our most elegant table manners. We turned in our elbows and turned
+out our toes,--so to speak,--and ate our mutton with a grace that
+destroyed all appetite. We tried to appear as though we had frequently
+dined in the presence of a whole battalion of soldiery, under the
+scrutiny of innumerable waiters,--and failed, I am sure. "With verdure
+clad" was written upon every line of our faces. The occasion of this
+cross fire we do not know to this day. Was it unbounded admiration? Was
+it spoons?
+
+Having brushed off the spray of the sea, having balanced ourselves upon
+the solid earth, having seen St. George's Hall, there was nothing to
+detain us longer, and the next morning we were on our way to London. We
+had scrutinized our bill,--which might have been reckoned in pounds,
+ounces, and penny-weights, for aught we knew to the contrary,--and
+informed the big-eyed waiter that it was correct. We had also offered
+him imploringly our largest piece of silver, which he condescended to
+accept; and having been presented with a ticket and a handful of silver
+and copper by the porter who accompanied us to the station across the
+way, in return for two or three gold pieces, we shook off the dust of
+Liverpool from our feet, turned our eyes from the splendors of St.
+George's Hall, and set our faces steadfastly towards our destination.
+There was a kind of luxury, notwithstanding our prejudices, in this
+English railway carriage, with its cushions all about us, even beneath
+our elbows; a restfulness unknown in past experience of travel, in the
+ability to turn our eyes away from the flying landscape without, to the
+peaceful quiet, never intruded upon, within. We did not miss the woman
+who will insist upon closing the window behind you, or opening it, as
+the case may be. Not one regret had we for the "B-o-s-t-o-n papers!" nor
+for the last periodical or novel. The latest fashion gazette was not
+thrown into our lap only to be snatched away, as we became interested in
+a plan for rejuvenating our wardrobe; nor were we assailed by venders of
+pop corn, apples, or gift packages of candy. Even the blind man, with
+his offering of execrable poetry, was unknown, and the conductor
+examined our tickets from outside the window. Settling back among our
+cushions, while we mentally enumerated these blessings of omission,
+there came a thought of the perils incurred by solitary females locked
+into these same comfortable carriages with madmen. If the danger had
+been so great for one solitary female, what must it be for two, we
+thought with horror. We gave a quick glance at our fellow-passenger, a
+young man with hair all aflame. Certainly his eyes did roll at that
+moment, but it was only in search of a newsboy; and when he exclaimed,
+like any American gentleman, "Hang the boy!" we became perfectly
+reassured. He proved a most agreeable travelling companion. We exchanged
+questions and opinions upon every subject of mutual interest, from the
+geological formation of the earth to the Alabama claims. I can hardly
+tell which astonished us most, his profound erudition or our own. Now, I
+have not the least idea as to whether Lord John Russell sailed the
+Alabama, or the Alabama sailed of itself, spontaneously; but, whichever
+way it was, I am convinced it was a most iniquitous proceeding, and so
+thought it safe to take high moral ground, and assure him that as a
+nation we could not allow it to go unpunished. You have no idea what an
+assistance it is, when one is somewhat ignorant and a good deal at a
+loss for arguments, to take high moral ground.
+
+When we were weary of discussion, when knowledge palled upon our taste,
+we pulled aside the little blue curtain, and gave ourselves up to gazing
+upon the picture from the window. I doubt if any part of England is
+looked upon with more curious eyes than that lying between Liverpool and
+London. It is to so many Americans the first glimpse of strange lands.
+Spread out in almost imperceptible furrows were the velvet turfed
+meadows, the unclipped hedges a mass of tangled greenness between. For
+miles and miles they stretched away, with seldom a road, never a
+solitary house. The banks on either side were tufted with broom and
+yellow with gorse; the hill-sides in the distance, white with chalk, or
+black with the heather that would blossom into purple beauty with the
+summer. We rushed beneath arches festooned, as for a gala-day, with
+hanging vines. Tiny gardens bloomed beside the track at every station,
+and all along the walls, the arched bridges, and every bit of stone upon
+the wayside, was a mass of clinging, glistening ivy. Not the half-dead,
+straggling thing we tend and shield so carefully at home, with here and
+there a leaf put forth for very shame. These, bright, clear-cut,
+deep-tinted, crowded and overlapped each other, and ran riot over the
+land, transforming the dingy, mildewy cottages, bits of imperishable
+ugliness, into things of beauty, if not eternal joys. Not in the least
+picturesque or pleasing to the eye were these English villages;
+straggling rows of dull red brick houses set amidst the fields--dirty
+city children upon a picnic--with a foot square garden before each door,
+cared for possibly, possibly neglected. A row of flower-pots upon the
+stone ledge of every little window, a row of chimney-pots upon the slate
+roof of every dwelling. Sometimes a narrow road twisted and writhed
+itself from one to another, edged by high brick walls, hidden beneath a
+weight of ivy; sometimes romantic lanes, shaded by old elms, and green
+beyond all telling. The towns were much the same,--outgrown villages.
+And the glimpse we caught, as we flew by, so far above the roofs often
+that we could almost peep down upon the hearths through the chimney
+tops, was by no means inviting.
+
+Dusk fell upon us with the smoke, and mist, and drizzling rain of
+London, bringing no anxiety; for was there not, through the
+thoughtfulness of friends, a place prepared for us? Our pleasant
+acquaintance of the golden locks forsook his own boxes, and bundles, and
+innumerable belongings to look for our baggage, and saw us safely
+consigned to one of the dingy cabs in waiting. I trust the people of our
+own country repay to wanderers there something of the kindness which
+American women, travelling alone, receive at the hands of strangers
+abroad. It was neither the first nor the last courtesy proffered most
+respectfully, and received in the spirit in which it was offered. There
+is a deal of nonsense in the touch-me-not air with which many go out to
+see the world, as there is a deal of folly in the opposite extreme. But
+these acquaintances of a day, the opportunity of coming face to face
+with the people in whose country you chance to be, of hearing and
+answering their strange questions in regard to our government, our
+manners and customs, as well as in displaying our own ignorance in
+regard to their institutions, in giving information and assistance when
+it is in our power, and in gratefully receiving the same from
+others,--all this constitutes one of the greatest pleasures of
+journeying.
+
+Our peace of mind received a rude shock, when, after rattling over the
+pavings around the little park in Queen's Square, and pulling the bell
+at Mr. B.'s boarding-house, we found that we were indeed expected, but
+indefinitely, and no place awaited us. We had forgotten to telegraph. It
+was May, the London season, and the hotels full. "X. told us you were
+coming," said the most lady-like landlady, leading us into the
+drawing-room from the dank darkness of the street. There was a glow of
+red-hot coals in the grate, a suggestion of warmth and comfort in the
+bright colors and cosy appointments of the room--but no place for us.
+"I'm very sorry; if you had telegraphed--but we can take you by Monday
+certainly," she said. I counted my fingers. Two days. Ah! but we might
+perish in the streets before that. Everything began to grow dark and
+doleful in contemplation. Some one entered the room. The landlady turned
+to him: "O, here is the good man to whose care you were consigned by X."
+We gave a sigh of relief, as we greeted the Good Man, for all our
+courage, like the immortal Bob Acres's, had been oozing from our finger
+ends. And if we possess one gift above another, it is an ability to be
+taken care of. "Do you know X.?" asked another gentleman, glancing up
+from his writing at the long, red-covered table. "We travelled with
+him," nodding towards his daughter, whose feet touched the fender,
+"through Italy, last winter." "Indeed--"
+
+"I'll just send out to a hotel near by," interrupted kind Mrs. B., "and
+see if you can be accommodated a day or two." How very bright the room
+became! The world was not hollow, after all, nor our dolls stuffed with
+sawdust. Even the cabman's rattle at the knocker, and demand of an extra
+sixpence for waiting, could not disturb our serenity. The messenger
+returned. Yes; we could be taken in (?) at the H. house; and accepting
+Mrs. B.'s invitation to return and spend the evening, we mounted to our
+places in the little cab, as though it had been a triumphal car, and
+were whizzed around the corner at an alarming pace by the impatient
+cabman.
+
+I should be sorry to prejudice any one against the H. house--which I
+might perhaps say is not the H. house at all; I hardly like to compare
+it to a whited sepulchre, though that simile did occur to my mind. Very
+fair in its exterior it was, with much plate glass, and ground glass,
+and gilding of letters, and shining of brass. It had been two
+dwelling-houses; it was now one select family hotel. But the two
+dwelling-houses had never been completely merged into one; never
+married, but joined, like the Siamese twins. There was a confusing
+double stairway; having ascended the right one, you were morally certain
+to descend the wrong. There was a confusing double hall, with doors in
+every direction opening everywhere but upon the way you desired to go.
+We mounted to the top of the house, followed by two porters with our
+luggage, one chambermaid with the key, another to ask if we would dine,
+and two more bearing large tin cans of hot water. We grew confused, and
+gasped, "We--we believe we don't care for any more at present, thank
+you," and so dismissed them all. The furniture was so out of proportion
+to the room that I think it must have been introduced in an infant
+state, and grown to its present proportions there. The one window was so
+high that we were obliged to jump up to look out over the mirror upon
+the bureau--a gymnastic feat we did not care to repeat. The bed curtains
+were gray; indeed there was a gray chill through the whole place. We sat
+down to hold a council of war. We resolved ourselves into a committee of
+ways and means, our feet upon the cans of hot water. "Pleasant," I said,
+as a leading remark, my heart beginning to warm under the influence of
+the hot water. "Pleasant?" repeated Mrs. K.; "it's enough to make one
+homesick. We can't stay here." "But," I interposed, "suppose we leave
+here, and can't get in anywhere else?" A vision of the Babes in the Wood
+rose before me. There was a rap at the door; the fourth chambermaid, to
+announce dinner. We finished our consultation hurriedly, and descended
+to the parlor, where we were to dine. It was a small room, already
+occupied by a large table and a party from the country; an old lady to
+play propriety, a middle-aged person of severe countenance to act it,
+and a pair of incipient and insipid lovers. He was a spectacled prig in
+a white necktie, a clergyman, I suppose, though he looked amazingly like
+a waiter, and she a little round combination of dimples and giggle.
+
+_He._ "Have you been out for a walk this morning?"
+
+_She._ "No; te-he-he-he."
+
+_He._ "You ought to, you know."
+
+_She._ "Te-he-he-he--yes."
+
+_He._ "You should always exercise before dinner."
+
+_She._ "Te-he-he-he."
+
+Here the words gave out entirely, and, it being remarkably droll, all
+joined in the chorus. "We must go somewhere else, if possible," we
+explained to Mrs. B., when, a little later, we found our way to her
+door. "At least we shall be better contented if we make the attempt."
+The Good Man offered his protection; we found a cab, and proceeded to
+explore the city, asking admittance in vain at one hotel after another,
+until at last the Golden Cross upon the Strand, more charitable than
+its neighbor, or less full, opened its doors, and the good landlady, of
+unbounded proportions, made us both welcome and comfortable. Quite
+palatial did our neat bed-room, draped in white, appear. We were the
+proud possessors, also, of a parlor, with a round mirror over the
+mantel, a round table in the centre, a sofa, of which Pharaoh's heart is
+no comparison as regards hardness, a row of stiff, proper arm-chairs,
+and any amount of ornamentation in the way of works of art upon the
+walls, and shining snuffers and candlesticks upon the mantel. Our
+bargain completed, there remained nothing to be done but to remove our
+baggage from the other house, which I am sure we could never have
+attempted alone. Think of walking in and addressing the landlady, while
+the chambermaids and waiters peeped from behind the doors, with, "We
+don't like your house, madam. Your rooms are tucked up, your beds
+uninviting, your chambermaids frowsy, your waiters stupid, and your
+little parlor an abomination." How could we have done it? The Good Man
+volunteered. "But do you not mind?" "Not in the least." Is it not
+wonderful? How can we believe in the equality of the sexes? In less than
+an hour we were temporarily settled in our new quarters, our rescued
+trunks consigned to the little bed-room, our heart-felt gratitude in the
+possession of the Good Man.
+
+We took our meals now in our own parlor, trying the solitary confinement
+system of the English during our two days' stay. It seemed a month. Not
+a sign of life was there, save the landlady's pleasant face behind the
+bar and the waiter who answered our bell, with the exception of a pair
+of mammoth shoes before the next door, mornings, and the bearded face
+of a man that startled us, once, upon the stairs. And yet the house was
+full. It was a relief when our two days of banishment Mere over, when in
+Mrs. B.'s pretty drawing-room, and around her table, we could again meet
+friends, and realize that we were still in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON.
+
+          Strange ways.--"The bears that went over to
+          Charlestown."--The delights of a runaway without
+          its dangers.--Flower show at the Crystal
+          Palace.--Whit-Monday at Hampton Court.--A queen
+          baby.--"But the carpets?"--Poor Nell
+          Gwynne.--Vandyck faces.--Royal beds.--Lunch at the
+          King's Arms.--O Music, how many murders have been
+          committed in thy name!--Queen Victoria's home at
+          Windsor.--A new "house that Jack built."--The
+          Round Tower.--Stoke Pogis.--Frogmore.--The Knights
+          of the Garter.--The queen's gallery.--The queen's
+          plate.--The royal mews.--The wicker
+          baby-wagons.--The state equipages.
+
+
+WE bought an umbrella,--every one buys an umbrella who goes to
+London,--and this, in its alpaca glory, became our constant companion.
+We purchased a guide-book to complete our equipments; but so
+disreputable, so yellow-covered, was its outward appearance, so
+suggestive of everything but facts, that we consigned it to oblivion,
+and put ourselves under the guidance of our Boston friends, the Good Man
+and his family.
+
+For two busy weeks we rattled over the flat pavings of the city in the
+low, one-horse cabs. We climbed towers, we descended into crypts, we
+examined tombstones, we gazed upon mummies. Everything was new,
+strange, and wonderful, even to the little boys in the street, who, as
+well as the omnibus drivers, were decked out in tall silk hats--a piece
+of absurdity in one case, and extravagance in the other, to our minds.
+The one-horse carriages rolled about upon two wheels; the occupants,
+like cross children, facing in every direction but the one they were
+going, and everybody, contrary to all our preconceived ideas of law and
+order, turned to the left, instead of to the right,--to say nothing of
+other strange and perplexing ways that came under our observation. We
+had come abroad upon the same errand as the bears who "went over to
+Charlestown to see what they could see," and so stared into every
+window, into every passing face, as though we were seeking the lost. We
+became known as the women who wanted a cab; our appearance within the
+iron posts that guard the entrance to Queen's Square from Southampton
+Row being the signal for a perfect Babel of unintelligible shouts and
+gesticulations down the long line of waiting vehicles, with the charging
+down upon us of the first half dozen in a highly dangerous manner.
+Wisdom is sometimes the growth of days; and we soon learned to dart out
+in an unexpected moment, utterly deaf and blind to everything and
+everybody but the first man and the first horse, and thus to go off in
+triumph.
+
+But if our exit was triumphant, what was our entry to the square, when
+weary, faint with seeing, hearing, and trying in vain to fix everything
+seen and heard in our minds, we returned in a hansom! English ladies do
+not much affect this mode of conveyance, but American women abroad
+have, or take, a wide margin in matters of mere conventionality,--and so
+ride in hansom cabs at will. They are grown-up baby perambulators upon
+two wheels; the driver sitting up behind, where the handle would be, and
+drawing the reins of interminable length over the top of the vehicle.
+Picture it in your mind, and then wonder, as I did, what power of
+attraction keeps the horse upon the ground; what prevents his flying
+into the air when the driver settles down into his seat. A pair of low,
+folding doors take the place of a lap robe; you dash through the street
+at an alarming rate without any visible guide, experiencing all the
+delights of a runaway without any of its dangers.
+
+
+FLOWER SHOW AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE.
+
+A ride by rail of half an hour takes one to Sydenham. It is a charming
+walk from the station through the tastefully arranged grounds, with
+their shrubberies, roseries, and fountains, along the pebble-strewn
+paths, crowded this day with visitors. The palace itself is so like its
+familiar pictures as to need no description. Much of the grandeur of its
+vast proportions within is lost by its divisions and subdivisions. There
+are courts representing the various nations of the earth,--America, as
+usual, felicitously and truthfully shown up by a pair of scantily
+attired savages under a palm tree; there are the courts of the Alhambra,
+of Nineveh, and of Pompeii; there are fountains, and statues, and
+bazaars innumerable, where one may purchase almost anything as a
+souvenir; there are cafés where one may refresh the body, and an immense
+concert hall where one may delight the soul,--and how much more I
+cannot tell, for the crowd was almost beyond belief, and a much more
+interesting study than Egyptian remains, or even the exquisite mass of
+perfumed bloom, that made the air like summer, and the whole place a
+garden. They were of the English middle class, the upper middle class,
+bordering upon the nobility,--these rotund, fine-looking gentlemen in
+white vests and irreproachable broadcloth, these stout, red-faced,
+richly-attired ladies, with their soft-eyed, angular daughters following
+in their train, or clinging to their arms. We listened for an hour to
+the queen's own band in scarlet and gold, and then came back to town,
+meeting train after train filled to overflowing with expensively arrayed
+humanity in white kids, going out for the evening.
+
+
+A DAY AT HAMPTON COURT.
+
+It was Whit-Monday,--the workingman's holiday,--a day of sun and shower;
+but we took our turn upon the outside of the private omnibus chartered
+for the occasion, unmindful of the drops; our propelling power, six gray
+horses. By virtue of this private establishment we were free to pass
+through Hyde Park,--that breathing-place of aristocracy, where no public
+vehicle, no servant without livery, is tolerated. It was early, and only
+the countless hoof-prints upon Rotten Row suggested the crowd of wealth
+and fashion that would throng here later in the day. One solitary
+equestrian there was; perched upon a guarded saddle, held in her place
+by some concealed band, serenely content, rode a queen baby in long,
+white robes. A groom led the little pony. She looked at us in grave
+wonder as we dashed by,--born to the purple! I cannot begin to describe
+to you the rising up of London for this day of pleasure; the decking of
+itself out in holiday attire; the garnishing of itself with paper
+flowers; the smooth, hard roads leading into the country, all alive; the
+drinking, noisy crowd about the door of every pot-house along the way.
+It was a delightful drive of a dozen or more miles, through the most
+charming suburbs imaginable,--past lawns, and gardens, and green old
+trees shading miniature parks; past "detached" villas that had blossomed
+into windows; indeed, the plate glass upon houses of most modest
+pretension was almost reckless extravagance in our eyes, forgetting, as
+we did, the slight duty to be paid here upon what is, with us, an
+expensive luxury. No wonder the English are a healthful people,--the sun
+shines upon them. I like their manner of house-building, of home-making.
+They set up first a great bay-window, with a room behind it, which is of
+secondary importance, with wide steps leading up to a door at the side.
+They fill this window with the rarest, rosiest, most rollicksome
+flowers. Then, if there remain time, and space, and means, other rooms
+are added, the bay-windows increasing in direct proportion; while
+shades, drawn shades, are a thing unknown. "But the carpets?" They are
+so foolish as to value health above carpets.
+
+It was high noon when we rolled up the wide avenue of Bushey Park, with
+its double border of gigantic chestnuts and limes, through Richmond
+Park, with its vast sweep of greensward flecked with the sunbeams,
+dripping like the rain through the royal oaks, past Richmond terrace,
+with its fine residences looking out upon the Thames, the translucent
+stream, pure and beautiful here, before going down to the city to be
+defiled--like many a life. We dismounted at the gates to the palace, in
+the rambling old village that clings to its skirts, and joined the crowd
+passing through its wide portals.
+
+It is an old palace thrown aside, given over to poor relatives, by
+royalty,--as we throw aside an old gown; a vast pile of dingy, red brick
+that has straggled over acres of Hampton parish, and is kept within
+bounds by a high wall of the same ugly material. It has pushed itself up
+into towers and turrets, with pinnacles and spires rising from its
+battlemented walls. It has thrust itself out into oriel and queer little
+latticed windows that peep into the gardens and overhang the three
+quadrangles, and is with its vast gardens and park, with its wide canal
+and avenues of green old trees, the most delightfully ugly, old place
+imaginable. Here kings and queens have lived and loved, suffered and
+died, from Cardinal Wolsey's time down to the days of Queen Anne. It is
+now one of England's show places; one portion of its vast extent, with
+the grounds, being thrown open to the public, the remainder given to
+decayed nobility, or wandering, homeless representatives of royalty,--a
+kind of royal almshouse, in fact. A curtained window, the flutter of a
+white hand, were to us the only signs of inhabitation.
+
+Through thirty or more narrow, dark, bare rooms,--bare but for the
+pictures that crowded the walls,--we wandered. There were two or three
+halls of stately proportions finely decorated with frescoes by Verrio,
+and one or two royal stairways, up and down which slippered feet have
+passed, silken skirts trailed, and heavy hearts been carried, in days
+gone by. The pictures are mostly portraits of brave men and lovely
+women, of kings and queens and royal favorites,--poor Nell Gwynne among
+them, who began life by selling oranges in a theatre, and ended it by
+selling virtue in a palace. The Vandyck faces are wonderfully beautiful.
+They gaze upon you through a mist, a golden haze,--like that which hangs
+over the hills in the Indian summer,--from out deep, spiritual eyes; a
+dream of fair women they are.
+
+There were one or two royal beds, where uneasy have lain the heads that
+wore a crown, and half a dozen chairs worked in tapestry by royal
+fingers,--whether preserved for their questionable beauty, or because of
+the rarity of royal industry, I do not know. We wandered through the
+shrubberies, paid a penny to see the largest grape vine in the
+world,--and wished we had given it to the heathen, so like its less
+distinguished sisters did the vine appear,--and at last lunched at the
+King's Arms, a queer little inn just outside the gates, edging our way
+with some difficulty through the noisy, guzzling crowd around the
+door--the crowd that, having reached the acme of the day's felicity, was
+fast degenerating into a quarrel. In the long, bare room at the head of
+the narrow, winding stairs, we found comparative quiet. The tables were
+covered with joints of beef, with loaves of bread, pitchers of ale, and
+the ubiquitous cheese. A red-faced young man in tight new clothes--like
+a strait-jacket--occupied one end of our table with his blushing
+sweetheart. A band of wandering harpers harped upon their harps to the
+crowd of wrangling men and blowsy women in the open court below;
+strangely out of tune were the harps, out of time the measure, according
+well with the spirit of the hour. A loud-voiced girl decked out in
+tawdry finery, with face like solid brass, sang "Annie Laurie" in hard,
+metallic tones,--O Music, how many murders have been committed in thy
+name!--then passed a cup for pennies, with many a jest and rude, bold
+laugh. We were glad when the day was done,--glad when we had turned away
+from it all.
+
+
+QUEEN VICTORIA'S HOME AT WINDSOR.
+
+The castle itself is a huge, battlemented structure of gray stone,--a
+fortress as well as a palace,--with a home park of five hundred acres,
+the private grounds of Mrs. Guelph, and, beyond that, a grand park of
+eighteen hundred acres. But do not imagine that she lives here with only
+her children and servants about her,--this kindly German widow, whose
+throne was once in the hearts of her people. Royalty is a complicated
+affair,--a wheel within a wheel,--and reminds us of nothing so much as
+"the house that Jack built."
+
+This is the Castle of Windsor.
+
+This is the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+These are the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of
+Windsor.
+
+These are the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that
+lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+These are the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies that
+'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+These are the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard the crown from the
+unicorn, that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to
+the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+These are the "military knights" forlorn, founded by Edward before you
+were born, that outrank the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard the
+crown from the unicorn, that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages
+that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle
+of Windsor.
+
+These are the knights that the garter have worn, with armorial banners
+tattered and torn, that look down on the military knights forlorn,
+founded by Edward before you were born, that outrank the soldiers, tried
+and sworn, that guard the crown from the unicorn, that stand by the
+lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the
+queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+This is the dean, all shaven and shorn, with the canons and clerks that
+doze in the morn, that install the knights that the garter have worn,
+with armorial banners tattered and torn, that look down on the military
+knights forlorn, founded by Edward before you were born, that outrank
+the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard the crown from the unicorn,
+that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies
+that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+And so on. The train within the castle walls that follows the queen is
+endless.
+
+We passed through the great, grand, state apartments, refurnished at the
+time of the marriage of the Prince of Wales, for the use of the Danish
+family. We mounted to the battlements of the Round Tower by the hundred
+steps, the grim cannon gazing down upon us from the top. Half a dozen
+visitors were already there, gathered as closely as possible about the
+angular guide, listening to his geography lesson, and looking off upon
+the wonderful panorama of park, and wood, and winding river. Away to the
+right rose the spire of Stoke Pogis Church, where the curfew still
+"tolls the knell of parting day." To the left, in the great park below,
+lay Frogmore, where sleeps Prince Albert the Good. Eton College, too,
+peeped out from among the trees, its gardens touching the Thames, and in
+the distance,--beyond the sleeping villages tucked in among the
+trees,--the shadowy blue hills held up the sky.
+
+St. George's Chapel is in the quadrangle below. It is the chapel of the
+Knights of the Garter. And now, when you read of the chapels, or
+churches, or cathedrals in the old world,--and they are all in a sense
+alike,--pray don't imagine a New England meeting-house with a double row
+of stiff pews and a choir in the gallery singing "Antioch"! The body of
+the chapel was a great, bare space, with tablets and elaborate monuments
+against the walls. Opening from this were alcoves,--also called
+chapels,--each one containing the tombs and monuments of some family. As
+many of the inscriptions are dated centuries back, you can imagine they
+are often quaintly expressed. One old knight, who died in Catholic
+times, desired an open Breviary to remain always in the niche before his
+tomb, that passers might read to their comfort, and say for him an
+orison. Of course this would never do in the days when the chapel fell
+into Protestant hands. A Bible was substituted, chained into its place;
+but the old inscription, cut deep in the stone, still remains, beginning
+"Who leyde thys book here?" with a startling appropriateness of which
+the author never dreamed. Over another of these chapels is rudely cut an
+ox, an N, and a bow,--the owner having, in an antic manner, hardly
+befitting the place, thus written his name--Oxenbow.
+
+You enter the choir, where the installations take place, by steps,
+passing under the organ. In the chancel is a fine memorial window to
+Prince Albert. On either side are the stalls or seats for the knights,
+with the armorial banner of each hanging over his place. Projecting over
+the chancel, upon one side, is what appears to be a bay-window. This is
+the queen's gallery, a little room with blue silk hangings,--for blue is
+the color worn by Knights of the Garter,--where she sits during the
+service. Through these curtains she looked down upon the marriage of the
+Prince of Wales. Think of being thus put away from everybody, as though
+one were plague-stricken. A private station awaits her when she steps
+from the train at the castle gates. A private room is attached to the
+green-houses, to the riding-school in the park, and even to the private
+chapel. A private photograph-room, for the taking of the royal pictures,
+adjoins her apartments. It must be a fine thing to be a queen,--and so
+tiresome! Even the gold spoon in one's mouth could not offset the
+weariness of it all, and of gold spoons she has an unbounded supply;
+from ten to fifteen millions of dollars worth of gold plate for her
+majesty's table being guarded within the castle! Think of it, little
+women who set up house-keeping with half a dozen silver teaspoons and a
+salt-spoon!
+
+We waited before a great gate until the striking of some forgotten hour,
+to visit the royal mews. You may walk through all these stables in
+slippers and in your daintiest gown, without fear. A stiff young man in
+black--a cross between an undertaker and an incipient clergyman in
+manner--acted as guide. Other parties, led by other stiff young men,
+followed or crossed our path. There were stalls and stalls, upon either
+side, in room after room,--for one could not think of calling them
+stables,--filled by sleek bays for carriage or saddle. And the
+ponies!--the dear little shaggy browns, with sweeping tails, and
+wonderful eyes peeping out from beneath moppy manes, the milk-white,
+tiny steeds, with hair like softest silk,--they won our hearts. Curled
+up on the back of one, fast asleep, lay a Maltese kitten; the "royal
+mew" some one called it. The carriages were all plain and dark, for the
+ordinary use of the court. In one corner a prim row of little yellow,
+wicker, baby-wagons attracted our attention, like those used by the
+poorest mother in the land. In these the royal babies have taken their
+first airings.
+
+The state equipages we saw another day at Buckingham Palace,--the
+cream-colored horses, the carriages and harnesses all crimson and gold.
+There they stand, weeks and months together, waiting for an occasion.
+The effect upon a fine day, under favoring auspices,--the sun shining,
+the bands playing, the crowd of gazers, the prancing horses, the gilded
+chariots,--must almost equal the triumphal entry of a first class circus
+into a New England town!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON.
+
+          The Tower.--The tall Yankee of inquiring
+          mind.--Our guide in gorgeous array.--War
+          trophies.--Knights in armor.--A professional
+          joke.--The crown jewels.--The house where the
+          little princes were smothered.--The "Traitor's
+          Gate."--The Houses of Parliament.--What a throne
+          is like.--The "woolsack."--The Peeping Gallery for
+          ladies.--Westminster Hall and the law courts.--The
+          three drowsy old women.--The Great Panjandrum
+          himself.--Johnson and the pump.--St.
+          Paul's.--Wellington's funeral car.--The Whispering
+          Gallery.--The bell.
+
+
+THE TOWER.
+
+IT is not a tower at all, as we reckon towers, you must know, but a
+walled town upon the banks of the Thames, in the very heart of London.
+Hundreds of years ago, when what is now this great city was only moor
+and marsh, the Romans built here--a castle, perhaps. Only a bit of
+crumbling wall, of mouldering pavement, remain to tell the story. When
+the Normans came in to possess the land, William the Conqueror erected
+upon this spot a square fortress, with towers rising from its four
+corners. Every succeeding monarch added a castle, a tower, a moat, to
+strengthen its strength and extend its limits, until, in time, it
+covered twelve acres of land, as it does to this day. Here the kings
+and queens of England lived in comfortless state, until the time of
+Queen Elizabeth, having need to be hedged about with something more than
+royalty to insure safety. Times have changed; swords have been beaten
+into ploughshares; and where the moat once encircled the tower wall,
+flowers blossom now. The dungeons that for centuries held prisoners of
+state do not confine any one to-day; and the strongholds that guarded
+the person of England's sovereign keep in safety now the jewels and the
+crown. There are round towers, and square towers, and, for anything I
+know, three-cornered towers, each with its own history of horrors. There
+are windows from which people were thrown, bridges over which they were
+dragged, and dark holes in which they were incarcerated.
+
+[Illustration: "A dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain fell fast
+upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces." Page 57.]
+
+To appreciate all this, you should see it--as we did one chilly May
+morning. We huddled about the stove in the waiting-room upon the site of
+the old royal menagerie, our companions a round man, with a limp gingham
+cravat and shabby coat, a little old woman in a poke bonnet, and half a
+dozen or more schoolboys from the country. A tall Yankee of inquiring
+mind joined us as we sallied from the door, led by a guide gorgeous in
+ruff and buckles, cotton velvet and gilt lace, and with all these
+glories surmounted by a black hat, that swelled out at the top in a
+wonderful manner. Down the narrow street within the gates, over the
+slippery cobble-stones, under considerable mental excitement, and our
+alpaca umbrella, we followed our guide to an archway, before which he
+paused, and struck an attitude. The long Yankee darted forward. "Stand
+back, my friends, stand back," said the guide. "You will please form
+a circle." Immediately a dozen umbrellas surrounded him. He pointed to a
+narrow window over our heads; a dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain
+fell fast upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces. "In that room, Sir
+----" (I could not catch the name) "spent the night before his
+execution, in solemn meditation and prayer." There was a circular groan
+of sympathy and approval from a dozen lips, the re-cant of a dozen
+dripping umbrellas, and we pattered on to the next point of interest,
+following our leader through pools of blood, figuratively
+speaking,--literally, through pools of water,--our eyes distended, our
+cheeks pale with horror. Ah, what treasures of credulity we must have
+been to the guides in those days! Time brought unbelief and hardness of
+heart.
+
+We mounted stairs narrow and dark; we descended stairs dark and narrow;
+we entered chambers gloomy and grim. The half I could not tell--of the
+rooms filled with war trophies--scalps in the belt of the nation--from
+the Spanish Armada down to the Sepoy rebellion; the long hall, with its
+double row of lumbering old warriors encased in steel, as though they
+had stepped into a steel tower and walked off, tower and all, some fine
+morning; the armory, with its stacked arms for thirty thousand men. "We
+may have occasion to use them," said the guide, facetiously, making some
+reference to the speech of Mr. Sumner, just then acting the part of a
+stick to stir up the British lion. The Yankee chuckled complacently, and
+we, too, refused to quake. There was a room filled with instruments of
+torture, diabolical inventions, recalling the days of the Inquisition.
+The Yankee expressed a desire to "see how some o' them things worked."
+Opening from this was an unlighted apartment, with walls of stone, a
+dungeon indeed, in which we were made to believe that Sir Walter Raleigh
+spent twelve years of his life. No shadow of doubt would have fallen
+upon our unquestioning minds, had we been told that he amused himself
+during this time by standing upon his head. "Walk in, walk in," said the
+smiling guide, as we peered into its darkness. We obeyed. "Now," said
+he, "that you may appreciate his situation, I will step out and close
+the door." The little old woman screamed; the Yankee made one stride to
+the opening; the guide laughed. It was only a professional joke; there
+was no door. We saw the bare prison-room, with its rough fireplace, the
+slits between the stones of the wall to admit light and air, and the
+initials of Lady Jane Grey, with a host more of forgotten names, upon
+the walls. Just outside, within the quadrangle, where the grass grew
+green beneath the summer rain, she was beheaded,--poor little
+innocent,--who had no desire to be a queen! In another tower close by,
+guarded by iron bars, were the royal jewels and the crown, for which all
+this blood was shed--pretty baubles of gold and precious stones, but
+hardly worth so many lives.
+
+You remember the story of the princes smothered in the Tower by command
+of their cruel uncle? There was the narrow passage in the wall where the
+murderers came at night; the worn step by which they entered the great,
+bare room where the little victims slept; the winding stairs down which
+the bodies were thrown. Beneath the great stone at the foot they were
+secretly buried. Then the stairway was walled up, lest the stones should
+cry out; and no one knew the story of the burial until long, long
+afterwards--only a few years since--when the walled-up stairway was
+discovered, the stones at the foot displaced, and a heap of dust, of
+little crumbling bones, revealed it. A rosy-faced, motherly woman, the
+wife of a soldier quartered in the barracks here, answered the rap of
+the guide upon the nail-studded door opening from one of the courts, and
+told us the old story. "The bed of the princes stood just there," she
+said, pointing to one corner, where, by a curious coincidence, a little
+bed was standing now. She answered the question in our eyes with, "My
+boys sleep there." "But do you not fear that the murderers will come
+back some night by this same winding way, and smother them?" How she
+laughed! And, indeed, what had ghosts to do with such a cheery body!
+
+Down through the "Traitors' Gate," with its spiked portcullis, we could
+see the steps leading to the water. Through this gate prisoners were
+brought from trial at Westminster. It is said that the Princess
+Elizabeth was dragged up here when she refused to come of her own will,
+knowing too well that they who entered here left hope behind. A little
+later, with music and the waving of banners, and amid the shouts of the
+people, she rode out of the great gates into the city, the Queen of
+England.
+
+
+THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.
+
+Though they have stood barely thirty years, already the soft gray
+limestone begins to crumble away,--the elements, with a sense of the
+fitness of things, striving to act the part of time, and bring them into
+a likeness of the adjoining abbey. There is an exquisite beauty in the
+thousand gilded points and pinnacles that pierce the fog, or shine
+softly through the mist that veils the city. Ethereal, shadowy, unreal
+they are, like the spires of a celestial city, or the far away towers
+and turrets we see sometimes at sunset in the western sky.
+
+Here, you know, are the chambers of the Houses of Lords and Commons,
+with the attendant lobbies, libraries, committee-rooms, &c., and a
+withdrawing-room for the use of the queen when she is graciously pleased
+to open Parliament in person. The speaker of the House of Commons, as
+well as some other officials, reside here--a novel idea to us, who could
+hardly imagine the speaker of our House of Representatives taking up his
+abode in the Capitol! Parliament was not in session, and we walked
+through the various rooms at will, even to the robing-room of the noble
+lords, where the peg upon which Lord Stanley hangs his hat was pointed
+out; and very like other pegs it was. At one end of the chamber of the
+House of Lords is the throne. It is a simple affair enough--a gilded
+arm-chair on a little platform reached by two or three steps, and with
+crimson hangings. Extending down on either side are the
+crimson-cushioned seats without desks. In the centre is a large square
+ottoman,--the woolsack,--which might, with equal appropriateness, be
+called almost anything else. Above, a narrow gallery offers a
+lounging-place to the sons and friends of the peers; and at one end,
+above the throne, is a high loft, a kind of uplifted amen corner, for
+strangers, with a space where women may sit and look down through a
+screen of lattice-work upon the proceedings below. It seems a remnant of
+Eastern customs, strangely out of place in this Western world, and akin
+to the shrouding of ourselves in veils, like our Oriental sisters. Or
+can it be that the noble lords are more keenly sensitive to the
+distracting influence of bright eyes than other men?
+
+
+WESTMINSTER HALL AND THE LAW COURTS.
+
+Adjoining the Houses of Parliament is this vast old hall. For almost
+five hundred years has it stood, its curiously carved roof unsupported
+by column or pillar. Here royal banquets, as well as Parliaments, have
+been held, and more than one court of justice. Here was the great trial
+of Warren Hastings. It was empty now of everything but echoes and the
+long line of statuary on either side, except the lawyers in their long,
+black gowns, who hastened up and down its length, or darted in and out
+the three baize doors upon one side, opening into the Courts of
+Chancery, Common Pleas, and the Exchequer. Our national curiosity was
+aroused, and we mounted the steps to the second, which had won our
+sympathies from its democratic name.
+
+There were high, straight-backed pews of familiar appearance, rising one
+above the other, into the last of which we climbed, a certain Sunday
+solemnity stealing over us, a certain awkward consciousness that we were
+the observed of all observers, since we were the only spectators--a
+delusion of our vanity, however. In the high gallery before us, in
+complacent comfort, sat three fat, drowsy old women (?) in white,
+curling wigs, and voluminous gowns, asking all manner of distracting
+questions, and requiring to be told over and over again,--after the
+manner of drowsy old women,--to the utter confusion of a poor witness in
+the front pew, who clung to the rail and swayed about hopelessly, while
+he tried to tell his story, as if by this rotary motion he could churn
+his ideas into form. Not only did he lose the thread of his
+discourse,--he became hopelessly entangled in it. Scratch, scratch,
+scratch, went the pens all around him. Every word, as it fell from his
+lips, was pounced upon by the begowned, bewigged, bewildering judges,
+was twisted and turned by the lawyers, was tossed back and forth
+throughout the court-room, until there arose a question in our minds, as
+to who was telling the story. All the while the lawyers were glaring
+upon him as though he was perjuring himself with every word--as who
+would not be, under the circumstances? And such lawyers! They dotted the
+pews all around us. The long, black gowns were not so bad; they hid a
+deal of awkwardness, I doubt not. But the wigs! the queer little curly
+things, perched upon every head, and worn with such a perverse delight
+in misfits! the small men being invariably hidden beneath the big wigs,
+and the large men strutting about like the great Panjandrum himself with
+the little round button at the top! The appearance of one, whose head,
+through some uncommon development, rose to a ridge-pole behind, was
+surprising, to say the least. It was not alone that his wig was too
+small, that a fringe of straight, black hair fell below its entire white
+circumference; it was not alone that it was parted upon the wrong side,
+or that, being mansard in form, and his head hip-roofed, it could
+never, by any process, have been shaped thereto; but I doubt if the
+wearing of it upside down, added to all these little drawbacks, could
+conduce to the beauty or dignity of any man. Unmindful of this reversed
+order of nature, its happy possessor skipped about the court-room,
+nodding to his brethren with a blithesome air, to the imminent peril of
+his top-knot, which sustained about the same relation to his head as the
+sword to that of Damocles. He speered down upon the poor witness. He
+pretended to make notes of dreadful import with a screaming quill, and,
+in fact, comported himself with an airy unconsciousness delightful to
+see.
+
+In regard to the proceedings of the court, I only know that the point
+under discussion concerned one Johnson, and a pump; and Mr. Pickwick's
+judge sat upon the bench. Whether he was originally round, red-faced,
+with gooseberry eyes, I do not remember; but all these pleasing
+characteristics he possessed at this present time, as well as a pudgy
+forefinger, with which to point his remarks.
+
+"You say," he repeated, with a solemnity of which my pen is incapable,
+and impressing every word upon the poor man in the front pew with this
+same forefinger, "that--Bunsen--went--to--the--pump?"
+
+"Johnson, my lord," the witness ventured to correct him, in a low tone.
+
+"It makes no difference," responded the judge, irate, "whether it is
+Bunsen or Jillson. The question is, Did--Jillson--go--to--the--pump?"
+
+Whom the gods destroy they first deprive of their five senses. Four, at
+least, of the poor man's had departed some time since. The fifth
+followed. "Johnson went, my lord," he replied, doggedly. Having found
+one point upon which his mind was clear, he clung to it with the
+tenacity of despair.
+
+"Johnson! who's _Johnson_?" gasped the bewildered judge, over whose face
+a net of perplexed lines spread itself upon the introduction of this new
+character. In the confusion of denials and explanations that followed,
+we descended from our perch, and stole away; nor are we at all sure, to
+this day, as to whether Johnson did or did not really go to the pump.
+
+
+ST. PAUL'S.
+
+Imagine our surprise, one day, when admiring a pretty ribbon upon a
+friend, to be told that it came from St. Paul's Churchyard. Hardly the
+place for ribbons, one would think; but the narrow street which
+encircles the cathedral in the form of a bow and its string goes by this
+name, and contains, besides the bookstores and publishing houses, some
+fine "silk mercers'" establishments.
+
+The gray surface of the grand edifice is streaked with black, as though
+time had beaten it with stripes, and a pall of smoke and dust covers the
+statues in the court before it. Consecrated ground this is, indeed. From
+the earliest times of the Christian religion, through all the bigotry
+and fanaticism of the ages that followed, down to the present time, the
+word of God has been proclaimed here--in weakness often, in bitterness
+many times that belied the spirit of its message; by a priesthood more
+corrupt than the people; by noble men, beyond the age in which they
+lived, and whom the flames of martyrdom could not appall. Under
+Diocletian the first church was destroyed. It was rebuilt, and destroyed
+again by the Saxons. Twice has it been levelled to the ground by fire.
+But neither sword nor flame could subdue it, and firm as a rock it
+stands to-day, as it has stood for nearly two hundred years, and as it
+seems likely to stand for ages to come. The sacred stillness that
+invests the place was rudely broken, the morning of our visit, by the
+blows from the hammers of the workmen, resounding through the dome like
+a discharge of artillery. A great stage, and seats in the form of an
+amphitheatre, were being erected in the nave for a children's festival,
+which prevented our doing more than glance down its length. We read some
+of the inscriptions upon the monuments, that one, so often quoted, of
+Sir Christopher Wren, among them--"Do you seek his monument? Look around
+you;" glanced into the choir, with its Gothic stalls, where the service
+is performed, and then descended into the crypt beneath all this, that
+labyrinth of damp darkness where so many lie entombed. Here is the
+funeral car of Wellington, with candles burning around it, cast from the
+conquering cannon which thundered victory to a nation, but sorrow and
+death to many a home. Shrouded with velvet it is, as are the horses, in
+imitation of those which bore him to his rest. All around were marble
+effigies, blackened, broken, as they survived the burning of the late
+cathedral, at the time of the great fire. Tombstones formed the
+pavement. "Whose can this be?" I said, trying to follow with the point
+of my umbrella the half-worn inscription beneath my feet. It was that of
+Sir Joshua Reynolds. Strange enough it seemed to us, coming from a
+country so new as to have been by no means prolific in great men, to
+find them here lying about under our feet.
+
+Having explored the crypt, we prepared to mount the endless winding
+stairs, whose final termination is the ball under the cross that
+surmounts the whole. Our ambition aimed only at the bell beneath the
+ball. We paid an occasional sixpence for the privilege of peeping into
+the library,--a most tidy and put-to-rights room, with a floor of wood
+patchwork,--and for the right to look down upon the geometrical
+staircase which winds around and clings to the wall upon one side, but
+is without any visible support upon the other. The "whispering gallery"
+was reached after a time. It is the encircling cornice within the dome,
+surrounded by a railing, and forming a narrow gallery. "I will remain
+here," said the guide, "while you pass around until you are exactly
+opposite; wait there until I whisper." Had we possessed the spirit of
+Casabianca, we should at this moment be sitting upon that narrow bench
+against the wall, with our feet upon the gas-pipes. We waited and
+listened, and listened and waited; but the sound of the blows from the
+hammers below reverberated like thunder around us. We could not have
+heard the crack of doom. Becoming conscious, after a time, that our
+guide had disappeared, we came out and continued our ascent. Mrs. K.'s
+curiosity, if not satisfied, was at least quenched, and she refused to
+go farther. My aspirations still pointed upward. There was another
+sixpence, another dizzy mount of dark, twisting stairs, with strength,
+ambition, and even curiosity gradually left behind, and with only one
+blind instinct remaining--to go on. There was a long, dingy passage,
+through which ghostly forms were flitting; there were more stairs, with
+twists and turns, forgotten now with other torments; there was the
+mounting of half a dozen rickety wooden steps at last, for no object but
+to descend shakily upon the other side, and then we found ourselves in a
+little dark corner, peering over a dingy rail, with a great, dusky
+object filling all the space below. And that was the bell! "Well, and
+what of it?" I don't know; but we saw it!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+AWAY TO PARIS.
+
+          The wedding party.--The canals.--New
+          Haven.--Around the tea-table.--Separating the
+          sheep from the goats.--"Will it be a rough
+          passage?"--Gymnastic feats of the little
+          steamer.--O, what were officers to us?--"Who ever
+          invented earrings!"--Dieppe.--Fish-wives.--Train
+          for
+          Paris.--Fellow-passengers.--Rouen.--Babel.--Deliverance.
+
+
+IT was the last week in May, and by no means the "merry, merry month of
+May" had we found it. Not only was the sky weighed down with clouds, but
+they dripped upon the earth continually, the sun showing his ghastly,
+white, half-drowned face for a moment only to be swept from sight again
+by the cloud waves. A friend was going to Paris. Would we shake the
+drops from our garments, close our umbrellas, and go with him? We not
+only would, we did. We gathered a lunch, packed our trunk, said our
+adieus, and drove down to the station in the usual pouring rain, the
+tearful accompaniment to all our movements. But one party besides our
+own awaited the train upon the platform--a young man with the insignia
+of bliss in the gloves of startling whiteness upon his hands, and a
+middle-aged woman of seraphic expression of countenance, clad in robes
+of spotless white, her feet encased in capacious white slippers. In
+this airy costume, one hand grasping a huge bouquet devoid of color, the
+other the arm of her companion, she paced back and forth, to the great
+amusement of the laughing porters, casting upon us less fortunate ones,
+who shivered meekly in our wraps, glances of triumphant pity
+indescribable.
+
+"Weddin' party, zur," explained the guard, touching his cap to our
+friend. "Jus' come down in fly." They looked to us a good deal more as
+if they were just going up in a "fly." The train shrieked into the
+station, and we were soon rushing over the road to New Haven, from
+which, in an evil moment, we had planned to cross the Channel. There was
+little new or strange in the picture seen from our window. The cottages
+were now of a dull, clay color, instead of the dingy red we had observed
+before, as though they had been erected in sudden need, without waiting
+for the burning of the bricks. There were brick-yards all along the way,
+answering a vexed question in my mind as to where all the bricks came
+from which were used so entirely in town and village here, in the
+absence of the wood so plentiful with us. The canals added much to the
+beauty of the landscape, winding through the meadows as if they were
+going to no particular place, and were in no haste to reach their
+destination. They turned aside for a clump of willows or a mound of
+daisy-crowned earth; they went quite out of their way to peep into the
+back doors of a village, and, in fact, strolled along in a lazy,
+serpentine manner that would have crazed the proprietor of a Yankee
+canal boat.
+
+It was five o'clock when we reached New Haven, having dropped our
+fellow-passengers along the way, the blissful couple among them.
+Through some error in calculation we had taken an earlier train than we
+need have, and found hours of doleful leisure awaiting us in this sleepy
+little town, lying upon an arm of the sea. Its outer appearance was not
+inviting. Here were the first and last houses of wood we saw in
+England,--high, ugly things, that might have been built of old boats or
+drift wood, with an economy that precluded all thought of grace in
+architecture. The train, in a gracious spirit of accommodation, instead
+of plunging into the sea, as it might have done, paused before the door
+of a hotel upon the wharf. There, in a little parlor, we improvised a
+home for a time. Our friend went off to explore the town. We took
+possession of the faded red arm-chairs by the wide windows. Down below,
+beyond the wet platform, rose the well-colored meerschaum of the little
+French steamer, whose long-boats hung just above the edge of the wharf.
+Through the closed window stole the breath of the salt sea, that, only a
+hand-breadth here, widened out below into boundlessness, bringing
+visions of the ocean and a thrill of remembered delight. The rain had
+ceased. The breeze rolled the clouds into snow-balls, pure white against
+the blue of the sky. Over the narrow stream came the twitter of birds,
+hidden in the hawthorn hedge all abloom. Everything smiled, and beamed,
+and glistened without, though far out to sea the white caps crowned the
+dancing waves. When night fell, and the lights glimmered all through the
+town, we drew the heavy curtains, lighted the candles in the shining
+candlesticks, whose light cast a delusive glow over the dingy dustiness
+of the room, bringing out cheerfully the little round tea-table in the
+centre, with its bright silver and steaming urn, over which we lingered
+a long hour, measuring and weighing our comfort, telling tales, seeing
+visions, and dreaming dreams of home.
+
+The clock struck nine as we crossed the plank to the Alexandra, trying
+in vain to find in its toy appointments some likeness to our ocean
+steamer of delightful memory. The train whizzed in from London, bringing
+our fellow-voyagers. The sheep were separated from the goats by the
+officer at the foot of the plank, who asked each one descending, "First
+or second cabin?"--sending one to the right, the other to the left. The
+wind swept in from the sea raw and cold. The foot-square deck was
+cheerless and wet. Even a diagonal promenade proved short and
+unsatisfactory, and in despair we descended the slippery, perpendicular
+stairs between boxes and bales, and down still another flight, to the
+cabin. A narrow, cushioned seat clung to its four sides, divided into
+lengths for berths. "Will it be a rough night?" we carelessly asked the
+young stewardess. "O, no!" was the stereotyped reply, though all the
+while the wicked waves were dancing beneath the white caps just outside.
+We divested ourselves of hats, and wraps, and useless ornaments,
+reserving only that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, under a nameless
+fear, grew every moment meeker and more quiet. We undid the interminable
+buttons of our American boots, and prepared for a comfortable rest, with
+an ignorance that at the time approximated bliss. There was leisure for
+the working out of elaborate schemes. Something possessed the tide.
+Whether it was high or low, narrow or wide, I do not know; but there at
+the wharf we were to await the working of its own will, regardless of
+time. Accordingly we selected our places with a deliberation that bore
+no proportion to the time we were to fill them, advising with the
+stewardess, who had settled herself comfortably to sleep. We tried our
+heads to England and our feet to the foe, and then reversed the order,
+finally compromising by taking a position across the Channel. But the
+loading of the steamer overhead, with the chattering of our
+fellow-passengers below,--two English girls, a pretty brunette and her
+sister,--banished sleep. At three o'clock our voyage began--the
+succession of quivering leaps, plunges, and somersaults which
+miraculously landed us upon the French coast. I can think of no words to
+describe it. The first night upon the ocean was paradise and the
+perfection of peace in comparison. To this day the thought of the
+swashing water, beaten white against the port-hole before my eyes, is
+sickening. A calm--to me, of utter prostration--fell upon us long after
+the day dawned, only to be broken by the stewardess, when sleep had
+brought partial forgetfulness, with, "It's nine o'clock; we're at
+Dieppe, and the officers want to come in here." We tried to raise our
+heads. Officers! What officers? Had we crossed the Styx? Were they of
+light or darkness? We sank back. O, what were officers to us!
+
+"But you must get up!"--and she began an awkward attempt at the buttons
+of those horrible boots. That recalled to life. American boots are of
+this world, and we made a feeble attempt to don some of its vanities.
+O, how senseless did the cuffs appear that went on upside down!--the
+collar which was fastened under one ear!--the ribbons that were
+consigned to our pockets! Making blind stabs at our ears, "Good
+heavens!" we ejaculated, "who ever invented earrings? Relics of
+barbarism!" We made hasty thrusts at the hair-pins, standing out from
+our heads in every direction like enraged porcupine quills; being
+pulled, and twisted, and scolded by the stewardess all the while;
+hearing the thump, thump, upon our door as one pair of knuckles after
+another awoke the echoes, as one strange voice after another shouted,
+"Why don't those ladies come out?" O the trembling fingers that refused
+to hold the pins!--the trembling feet that staggered up the ladder-like
+stairs as we were thrust out of the cabin--out of the cruel little
+steamer to take refuge in one of the waiting cabs! O the blessedness of
+our thick veils and charitable wraps!
+
+I recall, as though it were a dream, the narrow, roughly-paved street of
+Dieppe; a latticed window filled with flowers, and a dark-eyed maiden
+peeping through the leaves; the fish-wives in short petticoats and with
+high white caps, clattering over the stones in their wooden _sabots_,
+wheeling barrows of fish to the market near the station, where they
+bartered, and bargained, and gossiped. Evidently it is a woman's right
+in Normandy to work--to grow as withered, and hard, and old before the
+time as she chooses, or as she has need; for to put away year after
+year, as do these poor women, every grace and charm of womanhood, cannot
+be of choice.
+
+At the long table in the refreshment-room of the station we drank the
+tasteless tea, and ate a slice from the roll four feet in length. The
+English-speaking girl who attended us found a place--rough enough, to be
+sure--where in the few moments of waiting we could complete our hasty
+toilets. Beside us at the table, our fellow-voyagers, were two
+professors from a Connecticut college of familiar name, whom we had met
+in London. They joined us in the comfortable railway carriage, and added
+not a little to the pleasant chat that shortened the long day and the
+weary journey to Paris. Our number--for the compartment held eight--was
+completed by a young American gentleman, and a Frenchman of evil
+countenance, who drank wine and made love to his pretty Lizette in an
+unblushing manner, strange, and by no means pleasing, to us,
+demonstrating the annoyance, if nothing worse, to which one is often
+subjected in these compartment cars. It needed but one glance from the
+window to convince us that we were no longer in England. To be sure, the
+sky is blue, the grass green, in all lands; but in place of the level
+sweep of meadow through which we had passed across the Channel, the land
+swelled here into hills on every side. Long rows of stiff poplars
+divided the fields, or stretched away in straight avenues as far as the
+eye could reach. The English remember the beauty of a curved line; the
+French, with a painful rectitude, describe only right angles. Scarlet
+poppies blushed among the purple, yellow, and white wild flowers along
+the way. The plastered cottages with their high, thatched roofs, the
+tortuous River Seine with its green islands, as we neared Paris, the
+neat little stations along the way--like gingerbread houses--made for us
+a new and charming panorama. Hanging over a gate at one of these
+stations was an old man, white-haired, blind; his guide, an old woman,
+who waited, with a kind of wondering awe stealing over her withered
+face, while he played some simple air upon a little pipe--thus asking
+alms. So simple was the air, the very shadow of a melody, that the scene
+might have been amusing, had it not been so pitiful.
+
+At noon we lunched in the comfortless waiting-room at Rouen, while the
+professors made a hasty visit to the cathedral during our stay of half
+an hour. We still suffered from the tossing of the sea, and cathedrals
+possessed no charms in our eyes. It was almost night when we reached
+Paris, and joined the hurrying crowd descending from the train. It was a
+descent into Pandemonium. There was a confusion of unintelligible sounds
+in our ears like the roll of a watchman's rattle, bringing no suggestion
+of meaning. The calmness of despair fell upon our crushed spirits, with
+a sense of powerlessness such as we never experienced before or since. A
+dim recollection of school-days--of Ollendorff--rose above the chaos in
+our minds. "Has the physician of the shoemaker the canary of the
+carpenter?" we repeated mechanically; and with that our minds became a
+blank.
+
+Deliverance awaited us; and when, just outside the closed gates, first
+in the expectant crowd, we espied the face of a friend, peace enveloped
+us like a garment. Our troubles were over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE PARIS OF 1869.
+
+          The devil.--Cathedrals and churches.--The
+          Louvre.--Modern French art.--The Beauvais clock,
+          with its droll little puppets.--Virtue in a red
+          gown.--The Luxembourg Palace.--The yawning statue
+          of Marshal Ney.--Gay life by gas-light.--The
+          Imperial Circus.--The Opera.--How the emperor and
+          empress rode through the streets after the
+          riots.--The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was
+          her fortune.--Napoleon's tomb.
+
+
+IT may be the City of Destruction, the very gateway to depths unknown;
+but with its fair, white dwellings, its fair, white streets, that
+gleamed almost like gold beneath a summer sun, it seemed much more a
+City Celestial. It may be, as some affirm, that the devil here walks
+abroad at midday; but we saw neither the print of his hoofs upon the
+asphaltum, nor the shadow of his horns upon the cream-like Caen stone.
+We walked, and rode, and dwelt a time within its limits; and but for a
+certain reckless gayety that gave to the Sabbath an air of Vanity Fair,
+but for the mallet of the workman that disturbed our Sunday worship, we
+should never have known that we were not in the most Christian of all
+Christian cities. It is by no means imperative to do in Rome as the
+Romans do, and one need not in Paris drink absinthe or visit the Jardin
+Mabille.
+
+Our first expedition was to the banker's and to the shops, and having
+replenished our purse and wardrobe, we were prepared to besiege the
+city. There was a day or two of rest in the gilded chairs, cushioned
+with blue satin, of our pretty _salon_, whence we peeped down upon the
+street below between the yellow satin curtains that draped its wide
+French window; or rolled our eyes meditatively to the delicately tinted
+ceiling, with its rose-colored clouds skimmed by tiny, impossible birds;
+or made abortive attempts to penetrate the secrets of the buhl cabinets,
+and to guess at the time from the pretty clocks of disordered organism;
+or admired ourselves in the mirrors which gazed at each other from
+morning till night, for our apartments in the little Hotel Friedland we
+found most charming.
+
+You will hardly care for a description of the dozen, more or less,
+churches, old, new, and restored, with which we began and ended our
+sight-seeing in Paris, where we looked upon sculptured saints without
+number, and studied ecclesiastical architecture to more than our hearts'
+content. There was St. Germain L'Auxerrois, the wicked old bell of which
+tolled the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. We stood with the
+_bonnes_ and babies under the trees of the square before it, gazing up
+at the belfry with most severe countenances,--and learned, afterwards,
+that the bell had been long since removed! There was the Madeleine of
+more recent date, built in the form of a Greek temple, and interesting
+just now for having been the church of Father Hyacinthe, to which we
+could for a time find no entrance. We shook the iron gate; we inquired
+in excellent English of a French shopkeeper, and found at last an open
+gateway, a little unlocked door, beyond which we spent a time of search
+and inquiry in darkness, and among wood, and shavings, and broken
+chairs, and holy dust-pans, before passing around and entering the great
+bronze doors. There were the Pantheon and St. Sulpice, grand and
+beautiful, erected piously from the proceeds of lotteries. There was St.
+Etienne du Mont, and within one of its chapels the gilded tomb of the
+patron saint of Paris--St. Genevieve. Who she was, or what she did to
+gain this rather unenviable position, I failed to learn. Her name seems
+to have outlived her deeds. Whether she was beautiful and beloved, and
+put away earthly vanities for a holy life, or old and ugly, and bore her
+lot with a patience that won saintship, I do not know. I can only tell
+that tapers burn always upon her tomb, and if you buy one it will burn a
+prayer for you. So we were told. There is one old church, St. Germain
+des Prés, most beautifully colored within. Its pictures seem to have
+melted upon the walls. But admired above all is the Sainte Chapelle, in
+the Palais de Justice, a chapel fitted up by the fanatical St. Louis,
+when this palace of justice, which holds now the courts of law, was a
+royal residence. Of course all its brightness was dimmed long ago. Its
+glories became dust, like its founder. But it has recently been
+restored, and is a marvel of gilt, well-blended colors, and stained
+glass. A graceful spire surmounts it, but the old, cone-capped towers,
+rising from another part of the same building, possessed far greater
+interest in our eyes; for here was the Conciergerie, where were confined
+Marie Antoinette and so many more victims of the reign of terror.
+
+On the "isle of the city," in the Seine, where, under the Roman rule, a
+few mud huts constituted Paris, stands the church of Notre Dame, which
+was three hundred years in building. With its spire and two square
+towers, it may be seen from almost any part of the city. I wish you
+might look upon the relics and the vestments which the priests wear upon
+occasions of ceremony, hidden within this church, and displayed upon the
+payment of an extra fee. I did not wonder that the Sisters of Charity,
+who went into the little room with us, gazed aghast upon the gold and
+silver, and precious stones.
+
+Every one visits the galleries of the Louvre, of course. A little, worn
+shoe, belonging once to Marie Antoinette, and the old gray coat of the
+first emperor, were to us the most interesting objects among the relics.
+From out the sea of pictures rise Murillo's Madonna, the lovely face
+with a soul behind it, shining through, and the burial of the heroine of
+Chateaubriand. Do you know it? The fair form, the sweeping hair of
+Attila, and the dark lover with despair in his face? As for the Rubens
+gallery,--his fat, red, undraped women here among the clouds, surrounded
+by puffy little cherubs, had for us no charms. Rubens in Antwerp was a
+revelation. We wandered through room after room, lighted from above,
+crowded with paintings. To live for a time among them would be a
+delight; to glance at them for a moment was tantalization. All around
+were the easels of the artists who come here to sketch--sharp-featured,
+heavy-browed men, with unkempt hair and flowing beards, and in shabby
+coats, stood before them, pallet and brushes in hand; and women by the
+score,--some of them young and pleasing, with duennas patiently waiting
+near by; but more often they were neither young nor beautiful, and with
+an evident renunciation of pomps and vanities. We glanced at their
+copies curiously. Sometimes they seemed the original in miniature, and
+sometimes,--ah well, we all fail.
+
+We looked in upon the annual exhibition of pictures at the Palais de
+l'Industrie one day, and were particularly impressed with the _nudité_
+of the modern school of French art. Pink-tinted flesh may be very
+beautiful, but there must be something higher! We saw there, too,
+another day, the clock on exhibition for a time before being consigned
+to its destined place at Beauvais. It was even more wonderful than the
+one so famous at Strasbourg. This was of the size of an ordinary church
+organ, and of similar shape; a mass of gilt and chocolate-colored wood;
+a mass of dials, great and small--of time tables, and, indeed, of tables
+for computing everything earthly and heavenly, with dials to show the
+time in fifty different places, and everything else that could, by any
+possible connection with time, be supposed to belong to a clock. Upon
+the top, Christ, seated in an arm-chair, was represented as judging the
+world, his feet upon the clouds; on either side kneeling female figures
+adored him. Just below, a pair of scales bided their time. On every peak
+stood little images, while fifty puppets peeped out of fifty windows.
+Just below the image of the Saviour, a figure emerged through an open
+door at the striking of every quarter of an hour,--coming out with a
+slide and occasional jerk by no means graceful. We had an opportunity of
+observing all this in the three quarters of an hour of waiting. We
+viewed the clock upon every side, being especially interested in a
+picture at one point representing a rocky coast, a light-house, and a
+long stretch of waves upon which labored two ships attached in some way
+to the works within. They pitched back and forth without making any
+progress whatever, in a way very suggestive to us, who had lately
+suffered from a similar motion. A dozen priests seated themselves with
+us upon the bench before the clock as the hand approached the hour. They
+wore the long black robes and odd little skull-caps, that fit so like a
+plaster, and which are, I am sure, kept in place by some law of
+attraction unknown to us. One, of a different order, or higher grade, in
+a shorter robe and with very thin legs, encased in black stockings that
+added to their shadowy appearance, shuffled up to his place just in time
+to throw back his head and open his mouth as the clock struck, and the
+last judgment began. The cock upon the front gave a preliminary and weak
+flap of his wings, and emitted three feeble, squeaky crows, that must, I
+am sure, have convulsed the very puppets. Certainly they all disappeared
+from the windows, and something jumped into their places intended to
+represent flames, but which looked so much like reversed tin petticoats,
+that we supposed for a moment they were all standing on their heads. All
+the figures upon the peaks turned their backs upon us. The image of
+Christ began to wave its hands. The kneeling women swayed back and
+forth, clasping their own. Two angels raised to their lips long, gilt
+trumpets, as if to blow a blast; then dropped them; then raised them a
+second time, and even made a third abortive attempt. From one of the
+open doors Virtue was jerked out to be judged, Virtue in a red gown. The
+scales began to dance up and down. An angel appeared playing a guitar,
+and Virtue went triumphantly off to the right, to slow and appropriate
+music, an invisible organ playing meanwhile. Then Vice appeared. I
+confess he excited my instant and profound pity. Such a poor, naked,
+wretched-looking object as he was! with his hands to his face, as though
+he were heartily ashamed to come out in such a plight. I venture to say,
+if he had been decked out like Virtue, he might have stolen off to the
+right, and nobody been the wiser. Good clothes do a great deal in Paris.
+As it was, the scales danced up and down a moment, and then the devil
+appeared with a sharp stick, and drove him around the corner to the
+left, with very distant and feeble thunder for an accompaniment. That
+ended the show. All the little puppets jumped back into all the little
+windows, and we came away.
+
+Speaking of picture galleries, we spent a pleasant hour in the gallery
+of the Luxembourg--a collection of paintings made up from the works of
+living artists, and of those who have been less than a year deceased. It
+is sufficiently small to be enjoyable. There is something positively
+oppressive in the vastness of many of these galleries. You feel utterly
+unequal to them; as though the finite were about to attempt the
+comprehension of the infinite. One picture here, by Ary Scheffer, was
+exhibited in America, a few years since. It is the head and bust of a
+dead youth in armor--a youth with a girlish face. There are others by
+Henri Scheffer, Paulin Guerin, and a host more I will not name. One, a
+scene in the Conciergerie, "Reading the List of the Condemned to the
+Prisoners," by Müller, haunted me long after the doors had swung
+together behind us. The palace of the Luxembourg, small, remarkable for
+the beauty of its architecture and charming garden, built for that
+graceless regent, Marie de Medici, is now the residence of the president
+of the Senate; and indeed the Senate itself meets here. We were shown
+through the rooms open to the public, the private apartments of Marie de
+Medici among them, in one of which was a bust of the regent. The garden,
+like all gardens, is filled with trees and shrubs, flowers and
+fountains, but yet with a certain charm of its own. The festooning of
+vines from point to point was a novelty to us, as was the design of one
+of the fountains. Approaching it from the rear, we thought it a
+tomb,--perhaps the tomb of Marshal Ney, we said, whose statue we were
+seeking. It proved to be an artificial grotto, and within it, sprinkled
+with the spray of the fountain, embowered in a mass of glistening, green
+ivy, reclined a pair of pretty, marble lovers; peering in upon them from
+above, scowled a dreadful ogre--a horrible giant. The whole effect,
+coming upon it unexpectedly, was startling.
+
+We had a tiresome search for this same statue of Marshal Ney. We chased
+every marble nymph in the garden, and walked and walked, over burning
+pebbles and under a scorching sun, until we almost wished he had never
+been shot. At last, away beyond the garden, out upon a long avenue,
+longer and hotter if possible than the garden paths, we found
+it,--erected upon the very spot where he was executed. He stands with
+arm outstretched, and mouth opened wide, as though he were yawning with
+the wearisomeness of it all. It is a pity that he should give way to his
+feelings so soon, since he must stand there for hundreds of years to
+come. The guide-books say he is represented in the act of encouraging
+his men. They must have been easily encouraged.
+
+Of the out-door gay life by gas-light, we saw less than we had hoped to
+see in the French capital. The season was unusually cold and wet, and
+most of the time it would have required the spirit of a martyr to sip
+coffee upon the sidewalk. One garden concert we did attend, and found it
+very bright and fairy-like, and all the other adjectives used in this
+connection. We sat wrapped in shawls, our feet upon the rounds of the
+chair before us, and shivered a little, and enjoyed a great deal. We
+went one night--in most orthodox company--to the Cirque de
+l'Impératrice, a royal amphitheatre with handsome horses, pretty
+equestriennes, and a child balanced and tossed about on horseback,
+showing a frightened, painful smile, which made of the man who held her
+a Herod in our eyes. A girl very rich in paint and powder, but somewhat
+destitute in other particulars, skipped and danced upon a slack rope in
+a most joyous and airy manner. When we came out, a haggard woman, with
+an old, worn face, was crouching in a little weary heap by the door that
+led into the stables, wrapped in an old cloak; and that was our dancing
+girl!
+
+We went to the opera, too; it was Les Huguenots. To this day I cannot
+tell who were the singers. I never knew, or thought, or cared. And the
+bare shoulders flashing with jewels in the boxes around us, the
+_claqueurs_ in the centre, hired to applaud, clapping their hands with
+the regularity of clock-work, the empty imperial box, were nothing to
+the sight of Paris portrayed within itself. You know the familiar opera;
+do think how strange it was to see it in Paris; to look upon the stage
+and behold the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame; the excited populace
+rising up to slay and to be slain, with all the while this same fickle
+French people serenely smiling, and chatting, and looking upon it--the
+people who were even then ready at a word to reënact the same scenes for
+a different cause. Just outside, only a day or two before, something of
+the same spirit, portrayed here for our amusement, had broken out again
+in the election riots. And we remembered that, as we drove around the
+corner to the opera house, mounted soldiers stood upon either side,
+while every other man upon the street was the eye, and ear, and arm of
+the emperor, who knew that the very ground beneath his fair, white city
+tottered and reeled.
+
+We saw the emperor and empress one day, after having looked for them
+long and in vain upon the Champs Elysées, and in the Bois de Boulogne
+where gay Paris disports itself. It was the morning after the riot, when
+they drove unattended, you will remember, through the streets where the
+rioters had gathered. We were in one of the shops upon the Rue de
+Rivoli. Just across the way rose the Tuileries from the sidewalk. A
+crowd began to collect about the open archway through the palace, which
+affords entrance and egress to the great square around which the palace
+is built. "What is it?" we asked of the voluble Frenchman who was
+gradually persuading us that brass was gold. "L'Empereur," he replied;
+which sent us to the sidewalk, and put from our minds all thoughts of
+oxidized silver and copper-colored gold. Just within the arch paced a
+lackey in livery of scarlet and gold, wearing a powdered wig and general
+air of importance. On either side, the sentries froze into position. The
+_gendarmes_ shouted and gesticulated, clearing the streets. A mounted
+attendant emerged from the archway; there followed four bay horses
+attached to a plain, dark, open carriage; upon the front seat were two
+gentlemen, upon the back, a gentleman with a lady by his side. His hair
+was iron gray, almost silvery. He turned his face from us as he raised
+his hat gravely to the crowd, displaying a very perceptible bald spot
+upon the back of his head as he was whizzed around the corner and down
+the street. And that was Napoleon III. We saw no American lady in Paris
+dressed so simply as the empress. Something of black lace draped her
+shoulders; a white straw bonnet, trimmed with black, with a few pink
+roses resting upon her hair, crowned her head. She bowed low to the
+right and left, with a peculiar, graceful motion, and a smile upon the
+face a little worn and pale, a little faded,--but yet the face we all
+know so well. Beautiful Spanish woman, whose face was your fortune,
+though you smiled that day upon the people, your cheeks were pale, your
+eyes were full of tears.
+
+There is nothing more wonderful in Paris than the tomb prepared to
+receive the remains of the first Napoleon, in the chapel of the Hôtel
+des Invalides; fitting, it would seem to be, that he should rest here
+among his old soldiers. We left the carriage at the gateway, and crossed
+the open court, mounted the wide steps, followed the half dozen other
+parties through the open doors, and this was what we saw. At the farther
+end of the great chapel or church, an altar, approached by wide, marble
+steps; gilt and candles embellished it, and a large, gilt cross upon it
+bore an image of the crucified Lord. All this was not unlike what we had
+seen many times. But four immense twisted columns rose from its four
+corners--columns of Egyptian marble, writhing like spotted serpents.
+They supported a canopy of gold, and the play of lights upon this,
+through the stained windows above and on either side, was indescribable.
+As we entered the door, darkness enveloped it, save where an invisible
+sun seemed to touch the roof of gold and rest lightly upon the pillars;
+an invisible sun, indeed, for, without, the sky was heavy with clouds.
+As we advanced, this unearthly light touched new points--the gilded
+candlesticks, the dying Saviour, but above all the writhings of these
+monster serpents, until the whole seemed a thing of life, a something
+which grew and expanded every moment, and was almost fearful to look
+upon. Filling the centre of the chapel was a circular marble wall
+breast-high. Do you remember, in going to the old Senate chamber at
+Washington, after passing through the rotunda, the great marble
+well-curb down which you could look into the room below? This was like
+that, only more vast. Over it leaned a hundred people, at least, gazing
+down upon what? A circular, roofless room, a crypt to hold a tomb; each
+pillar around its circumference was the colossal figure of a woman;
+between these hung the tattered tri-colors borne in many a fierce
+conflict, beneath the burning suns of Egypt and over the dreary snows of
+Russia, with seventy colors captured from the enemies of France. A
+wreath of laurel in the mosaic floor surrounded the names Austerlitz,
+Marengo, Friedland, Jena, Wagram, Moscow, and Pyramids, and in the
+centre rose the sarcophagus of Finland granite, prepared to hold the
+body of him whose ambition knew no bounds. The letter N upon one
+polished side was the only inscription it bore. He who wrote his name in
+blood needed no epitaph. The entrance to this crypt is through bronze
+doors, behind the altar, and gained by passing under it. On either side
+stood a colossal figure in bronze; kings they seemed to be, giant kings,
+in long black robes and with crowns of black upon their heads. One held,
+upon the black cushion in his hands, a crown of gold and a golden sword;
+the other, a globe crowned with a cross and a golden sceptre. They were
+so grand, and dark, and still, they gazed upon us so fixedly from out
+their great, grave eyes, that I felt a chill in all my bones. They guard
+his tomb. They hold his sword and sceptre while he sleeps. I almost
+expected the great doors to swing open at the touch of his hand, and to
+see him come forth. Over these doors were his own words: "I desire that
+my ashes may repose upon the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the
+French people I have loved so well." On either side, as we came out, we
+read upon the tombs the names of Bertrand and Duroc,--faithful in death!
+We wondered idly whose remains were guarded in the simple tomb near the
+door. It was surrounded by an iron railing, and bore no inscription. Who
+can it be, we said, that is nameless here among the brave? Little did we
+imagine at the time that here rested the body of the great Napoleon, as
+it was brought from St. Helena; but his spirit seemed to pervade the
+very atmosphere, and we came out into the gloom of the day as though we
+had, indeed, come from the presence of the dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITY.
+
+          The Gobelin tapestry.--How and where it is
+          made.--Père la-Chaise.--Poor Rachel!--The baby
+          establishment.--"Now I lay me."--The little
+          mother.--The old woman who lived in a shoe.--The
+          American chapel.--Beautiful women and
+          children.--The last conference-meeting.--"I'm a
+          proof-reader, I am."
+
+
+BY no means least among the places of interest in Paris is the
+manufactory of the Gobelin tapestry which serves to adorn the walls of
+the palace _salons_. O, these long, tiresome _salons_, which must be
+visited, though your head is ready to burst with seeing, your feet to
+drop off with sliding and slipping over the polished floors. The wicked
+_stand_ upon slippery places, and nothing so convinced us of the
+demoralizing effect of foreign travel as our growing ability to do the
+same. When you have seen one or two, you have seen all. There may be
+degrees in gorgeous splendor, but we were filled with all the
+appropriate and now-forgotten emotions at sight of the first, and one
+cannot be more than full. Many of the old palace apartments are dull and
+dingy beyond belief, by no means the marble halls of our dreams; but of
+the others let me say something once for all. Under your feet is the
+treacherous, bare floor of dark wood, laid in diamonds, squares, &c.;
+over your head, exquisite frescoes of gods and goddesses, and all manner
+of unearthly and impossible beings enveloped in clouds by the
+bale,--usually an apotheosis of some king or queen, or both, and, as a
+rule, of the most wicked known at that time. The Medici were especially
+glorified and raised above the flesh,--and they had need to be. On every
+side pictures in Gobelin tapestry, framed into the walls, often so large
+as to cover the entire space from corner to corner, from cornice to
+within a few feet of the floor, and in this latter space doors, formed
+of a panel sometimes, for the entrance and egress of servants. Imagine,
+with all this, the gilt, and stucco, and wood-carving; the flowers, and
+arabesques, and entwined initials; the massive chandeliers, with
+glittering pendants; the mantels of rare marbles, of porphyry, and
+malachite; the cabinets, and tables, and escritoires of marqueterie and
+mosaic; the gilded chairs, stiff and stark, richly covered; the bronzes,
+vases, and curious clocks: and over all the air of having never been
+used from all time, and of continuing to be a bare show to all
+eternity,--and you have a faint conception of the _salons_ of half the
+palaces.
+
+As for the tapestry, pray don't confound it with the worsted dogs and
+Rebekahs-at-the-Well with which we sometimes adorn (?) our homes, since
+one would never in any way suggest the other. In these every delicate
+line is faithfully reproduced, and the effect exactly that of an oil
+painting. After long years the colors fade; and we were startled
+sometimes, in the old palaces, to come upon one of these gray shadows
+of pictures, out from which, perhaps, a pair of wonderful eyes alone
+would seem to shine. In old times the rough walls of the grim prison
+palaces were hung with tapestry wrought by the fair fingers of court
+ladies, the designs of tournament and battle being rudely sketched by
+gay gallants. Many a bright dream was worked into the canvas, I doubt
+not, never found upon the pattern; many a sweet word said over the task
+that beguiled the dull hours, and kept from mischief idle hands. But in
+the reign of Louis XIV. the art of weaving tapestry was brought from
+Flanders, and a manufactory established on the outskirts of Paris which
+still remains. To visit it a pass is required. Accordingly we addressed
+a note of solicitation to some high official, and in due time came a
+permit for Madame K. and family; and an ill-assorted family we must have
+appeared to the official at the gate. There were the rooms, hung with
+specimens of the tapestry, for which we did not care, and then the six
+devoted to the weaving; long, low, and narrow they were, with hand-looms
+ranged down one side. Through the threads of the warp we could see the
+weavers sitting behind their work, each with his box of worsteds and
+pattern beside him. The colors were wound upon quills, numbers of which
+hung, each by its thread, from the half-completed work. Taking one of
+these in one hand, the workman dexterously separated the threads of the
+warp with the other, and passed the quill through, pressing down the one
+stitch thus formed with its pointed end. You can imagine how slow this
+work must be. How tiresome a task it is to delight the eyes of princes!
+The making of carpets, which has been recently added, is equally
+tiresome. This, too, is hand work, they being woven in some way over a
+round stick, and then cut and trimmed with a pair of shears. To make one
+requires from five to ten years, and their cost is from six to twenty
+thousand dollars. About six hundred weavers are said to be here, though
+we saw but a small proportion of that number. They receive only from
+three to five hundred dollars a year, with a pension of about half as
+much if they are disabled.
+
+From the Gobelins we drove across the Seine again, and out to Père
+la-Chaise, where stood once the house of the confessor of Louis XIV.,
+from whom the cemetery takes its name, the Jesuit priest through whose
+influence the edict of Nantes was revoked. A kind of ghastly imitation
+of life it all seemed--the narrow houses on either side of the paved
+streets, that were not houses at all, hung with dead flowers and
+corpse-like wreaths, stained an unnatural hue. We peered through the
+bars of the locked gate opening into the Jews' quarter, trying to
+distinguish the tomb where lie the ashes of a life that blazed, and
+burned itself out. Poor Rachel! Through the solemn streets, among the
+quiet dwellings of the noiseless city, whence comes no sound of joy or
+grief, where they need no candle, neither light of the sun, we walked a
+while, then plucked a leaf or two, and came away.
+
+One day, when the sun lay hot upon the white streets of the beautiful
+city, we searched among the shops of the crooked Faubourg St. Honoré for
+a number forgotten now, and the Créche, where the working mothers may
+leave their children during the day. In another and more quiet street
+we found it. We pulled the bell before a massive gateway; the wide doors
+opened upon a smiling portress, who led the way across the paved court
+to the house, where she pointed up some stairs, and left us to mount and
+turn until it was no longer possible, until a confusion of doors barred
+our way, when we rapped upon one. Another was opened, and we found
+ourselves among the babies. There were, perhaps, twenty in all, the
+larger children being in the school-room below; but even twenty
+toddling, rolling babies, looking so very like the same image done in
+putty over and over again, appears an alarming and unlimited number when
+taken in a body. They rolled beneath our feet, they clung to our skirts,
+they peeped out, finger in mouth, from behind the doors, they kicked
+pink toes up from the swinging cradles, and in fact, like the clansmen
+of Rhoderic Dhu, appeared in a most startling manner from the most
+unexpected places. Plump little things they were, encased in shells of
+blue-checked aprons, from the outer one of which they were
+surreptitiously slipped upon our entrance to disclose a fresher one
+beneath. How long this process could have continued with a similar happy
+result, we did not inquire. Every head was tied up in a tight little
+night-cap, giving them the appearance of so many little bag puddings.
+Every face was a marvel of health and contentment, with one kicking,
+screaming exception upon the floor. "Eengleesh," explained the Sister of
+Charity who seemed to have them in charge, giving a sweeping wipe to the
+eyes, nose, and mouth, gradually liquidizing, of this one, and trying in
+vain to pacify a nature that seemed peaceless. Who was its mother, or
+how the little stranger chanced to be here, we did not learn. On either
+side of the long, narrow room hung the white-curtained cradles, each
+with its pretty, pink quilt. At one end was an altar, most modest in its
+appointments, consisting of hardly more than a crucifix and a vase of
+flowers upon the mantel. As we entered the room, the sister stood before
+it with a circle of white caps and blue checked aprons around her, a
+circle of little clasped hands, of upturned eyes and lisping lips,
+repeating what might have been, "Now I lay me," for anything we knew.
+Our entrance brought wandering eyes and thoughts.
+
+At the opposite end of the room, a wide, long window swung open,
+revealing a pleasant garden down below, all green and blossoming, with
+an image of the Virgin half hid among the vines. Cool, and fresh, and
+green it seemed after the glare of the hot streets, a pleasant picture
+for the baby eyes. Out from this window the little feet could trot upon
+the guarded roof of a piazza. A little chair, a broken doll, and
+limbless horse here were familiar objects to the eyes of the mothers in
+our party, and when two children seized upon one block with a
+determination which threatened a breach of the peace, we were convinced
+that even baby nature was the same the world over. Supper time came, and
+the children were gathered together in a small room, before the drollest
+little table imaginable--a kind of elongated doughnut, raised a foot
+from the floor, with a circular seat around it. All the little outer
+shells of blue check were slipped on, all the little fat bodies lifted
+over and set into their places, to roll off, or about, at will. A grace
+was said, to us, I think, since all the little eyes turned towards us,
+and a plate of oatmeal porridge put before each one. Some ate with a
+relish, and a painful search over the face with a spoon for the open,
+waiting mouth; some leaned back to stare at the company; and others
+persisted in dipping into the dish of their next neighbor. One little
+thing, hardly more than a year old, drew down the corners of her mouth
+in a portentous manner, when the motherly one beside her, of the
+advanced age of three years, perhaps, rapped on the table with her
+spoon, and patted the doleful little face, smiling all the while, until
+she actually drew out smiles in return. The dear little mother! An
+attendant with a homely face, creased into all manner of good-natured
+lines, resolved herself into the old woman who lived in a shoe, holding
+two babies and the porridge dish in her lap, balancing one upon the end
+of the low bench beside her, while two or three more stood at her knee,
+clinging to her apron. It was like a nest of open-mouthed birdlings.
+Blessings on the babies, and those, whether of our faith or not, who
+teach and care for them, we thought, as we came away. "Inasmuch as ye
+have done it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me," said
+the Master.
+
+Although I said nothing of our church-going in London, I cannot pass
+over our American chapel in Paris, with its carved, umbrella-like
+canopy, shading the good Dr. R., who did so much socially, as well as
+spiritually, for Americans there. Here came many whose names are well
+known; among them our minister to France, an elderly gentleman of
+unpretending dress and manner, with a kindly, care-worn face. And here
+gathered also a company of beautiful women and children, proving the
+truth of all that has been said of our countrywomen. A blending of all
+types were they, as our people are a blending of all nationalities, each
+more lovely than the other, and all making up a picture well worth
+seeing. I wish I might say as much for the opposite sex. One gentleman,
+who wore a red rose always in his button-hole, and turned his back upon
+the minister to stare at the women, had a handsome though _blasé_ face,
+and more than one head above the pews would have been marked anywhere;
+but the women and children bore away the palm. The delicate, sensitive
+faces which characterize American women, whether the effect of climate,
+manner of life, or of the nerves for which we are so celebrated, are
+found nowhere else, I am sure.
+
+Besides the Sabbath services a weekly prayer-meeting was held here. They
+were singing some sweet familiar hymn as we entered one evening and took
+our place among the pilgrims and strangers like ourselves. It was the
+last gathering for the winter. Some were off for home, some for a summer
+of travel; only a few, with the pastor, were to remain. One followed
+another in words of retrospection, and regret at parting, until a pall
+settled over the little company--until even we, who had never been there
+before, wiped our eyes because of the general dolefulness. A hush and
+universal mistiness pervaded the air of the dimly-lighted house; the
+assembly seemed about to pass out of existence, Niobe-like. Then up rose
+Dr. R., the pastor. I wondered what he could say to add to the gloom;
+something like this, perhaps: "Dear people, everybody is off; let us
+shut up the church, lock the door, and throw away the key. Receive the
+benediction." But no; I wish you might feel the thrill that went through
+the little company as his words fell from his lips. I wish I dared
+attempt to repeat them. "And now to you who go," he said, at last, "who
+take with you something of our hearts, be sure our prayers will follow
+you. Keep us in memory; but, above all, keep in memory your church vows.
+Make yourselves known as Christians among Christians. And when you have
+reached home--the home to which our thoughts have so often turned
+together--let this be a lesson. When summer comes and you leave the city
+for the country, for the mountains, for the sea-side, take your religion
+with you. Search out some struggling little church with a discouraged
+pastor,--you'll not look far or long to find such a one,--and work for
+that, as you have worked for us. And one thing more; send your friends
+who are coming abroad to us. Send us the Christians, for we need them,
+and by all means send us those who are not Christians; they may need us;
+and the Lord bless you, and keep you in all your goings, and give you
+peace."
+
+Then the people gathered in knots for last words--for hand-clasps and
+good-byes. Now a spirit of peace and good will having fallen upon us
+with the pastor's benediction, we gazed wistfully upon the strangers in
+the hope of finding one familiar face; but there was none; so we came
+sorrowfully down the aisle. The door was almost reached when a sharp,
+twanging voice behind us began, "I'm sent out by X. & Y., book
+publishers." "O," said I to the friend at my side, "I believe I will
+speak to that man. I know Mr. X., and I do so want to speak to
+somebody." How he accomplished the introduction I cannot tell, but in a
+moment my hand was grasped by that of a stout little man, with bushy
+hair and twinkling eyes. "Know Mr. X.? Mr. Q. X.?" he began. To tell the
+truth I had not that honor, my acquaintance having been with his
+brother; but there was no time to explain, and retreat was equally
+impossible; so I replied that my father knew him well; then thinking
+that something more was necessary to explain the sudden and intense
+interest manifested in his behalf, added, desperately, "indeed,
+intimately." To this he paid no manner of attention,--I doubt if he
+heard it,--but rattled on: "Fine man, Mr. X., Mr. Q. X. Know Mr. Y.?
+Fine man, Mr. Y.; been abroad a year; I'm goin' out to meet him, I am.
+He's in Switzerland, Mr. Y. is; been abroad a year. I'm a proof-reader,
+I am. I s'pose you know what a proof-reader is." "Yes," I succeeded in
+inserting while he took breath, remembering some amateur attempts of my
+own in that direction. He began anew: "I'm sent out by X. & Y.; expect
+to find Mr. Y. in Switzerland; fine man--" Will he never stop, I
+thought, beginning a backward retreat from the pew down the aisle, with
+all the while ringing in my ears, "I'm a proof-reader, I am," &c. "Don't
+laugh, pray don't," I said to the friends waiting at the door. "It's
+dreadful--is it not?" What became of him we never knew, but in all
+probability the sexton removed him--still vocal--to the sidewalk that
+night; where, since we do not know for how long a time he was wound up,
+he may be iterating and reiterating to this day the interesting fact of
+his occupation, with the eulogy upon Messrs. X. & Y.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.
+
+          The river omnibuses.--Sèvres and its
+          porcelain.--St. Cloud as it was.--The crooked
+          little town.--Versailles.--Eugenie's "spare
+          bedroom."--The queen who played she was a farmer's
+          wife.--Seven miles of paintings.--The portraits of
+          the presidents.
+
+
+THERE are four ways of going to St. Cloud, from Paris, says the
+guide-book; we chose the fifth, and took one of the little
+steamboats--the river omnibuses--that follow the course of the Seine,
+stopping at the piers along the city, which occur almost as often as the
+street crossings. Very insignificant little steamers they are, made up
+of puff, and snort, and smoke, a miniature deck, and a man with a big
+bell. Up the river we steamed through a mist that hid everything but the
+green banks, the pretty villas whose lawns drabbled their skirts in the
+river, and after a time the islands that seemed to have dropped cool,
+wet, and green into the middle of the stream. We plunged beneath the
+dark arches of the stone bridges--the Pont d'Alma not to be forgotten,
+with its colossal sentinels on either side of the middle arch, calm,
+white, and still, leaning upon their muskets, their feet almost dipping
+into the water, their great, stony eyes gazing away down the river.
+What is it they seem to see beyond the bend? What is it they watch and
+wait for, gun in hand? We pulled our wraps about us, found a sheltered
+place, and went on far beyond our destination, through the gray vapor
+that gathered sometimes into great, plashing drops to fall upon the
+deck, or, hovering in mid-air, wiped out the distance from the landscape
+as effectually as the sweep of a painter's brush, while it softened and
+spiritualized everything near, from the sharply outlined eaves, and
+gables, and narrow windows of the village struggling up from the water,
+to the shadowy span of the bridges that seemed to rest upon air. Then
+down with the rain and the current we swept again, to land at the
+forsaken pier of Sèvres, from which we made our way over the pavings, so
+inviting in these French towns for missile or barricade, to the
+porcelain factory. No fear of missing it, since it is the one object of
+interest to strangers in the town; and whatever question we asked, the
+reply would have been the pointing of the finger in that one direction.
+Once there, we clattered and slipped over the tiled floor after a polite
+attendant, through its many show-rooms, and among its wilderness of
+pottery, ancient and modern. The manufactory was established by--I'm
+sure I don't know whom--in seventeen hundred and--something, at
+Vincennes, quite the other side of Paris; but a few years later, in the
+reign of Louis XV., was transferred to Sèvres, and put under the
+direction of government. It is almost impossible to gain permission to
+visit the workshops, but a permit to pass through the show-rooms can
+easily be obtained. There were queer old-fashioned attempts at glazed
+ware here, some of them adorned with pictures like those we used to see
+in our grandmothers' china closets, of puffy little pink gentlemen and
+ladies ambling over a pink foreground; a pink mountain, of pyramidal
+form, rising from the wide-rimmed hat of the roseate gentlemen; a pink
+lake standing on end at the feet of the lady, and a little pink house,
+upon which they might both have sat comfortably, with a few clouds of
+jeweller's cotton completing the picture. A striking contrast were these
+to the marvels of frailty and grace of later times. The rooms were hung
+with paintings upon porcelain, the burial of Attila, which we had seen
+at the Louvre, among them. Every conceivable model of vase, pitcher, and
+jar was here--quaint, beautiful conceptions of form adorned by the hand
+of skilful artists, from mammoth vases, whirling upon stationary
+pedestals, to the most delicate cup that ever touched red lips.
+
+At noon we strolled over to St. Cloud, a pleasant walk of a mile,
+beginning with a shaded avenue, rough as a country road; then on, down a
+street leading to the gates of the park of St. Cloud--a street so vain
+of its destination that it was actually lifted up above the gardens on
+either side. From the wide gates we passed into a labyrinth of shaded,
+clean-swept ways, and followed one to the avenue of the fountains, where
+we sat upon the edge of a stone basin to await the opening of the
+palace. For do not imagine, dear reader, that you can run in and out of
+palaces without ceremony and at all hours of the day. There is an
+appointed time; there is the gathering outside of the curious; there is
+the coming of a man with rattling, ringing keys; there is the throwing
+open of wide gates and massive doors, and then--and not until then--the
+entering in. As for the fountains, next to those at Versailles they have
+been widely celebrated; but as they only played upon Sundays and fête
+days, we did not see them. Their Sunday gowns of mist and flowing water
+were laid aside, and naked and bare enough they were this day. The wide
+basins, the lions and dolphins, were here, with the marble nymphs, and
+fauns and satyrs, that make a shower-bath spectacle of themselves upon
+gala days. When the hour refused to strike, and we grew hungry,--as one
+will among the rarest and most wonderful things,--we left the park, to
+find the crooked little town that sits in the dust always at the feet of
+palaces. Its narrow streets ran close up to the gates, and would have
+run in had they not been shut. Here in the low, smoke-stained room of an
+inn that was only a wine-shop, we spent the time of waiting,--our elbows
+upon the round, dark table, which, with the dirt and wooden chairs, made
+up its only furnishing,--sipping the sour wine, cutting slices from the
+long, melancholy stick of bread, all dust and ashes, and nibbling the
+cheese that might have vied with Samson for strength. The diamond-paned
+window was flung wide open, for the air seemed soiled and stained, like
+the floor. Just across the narrow, empty street, an old house elbowed
+our inn. The eaves of its thatched roof were tufted with moss, out from
+which rose a mass of delicate pink blossoms--pretty innocents, fairly
+blushing for shame of their surroundings. Through the long passage-way
+came the sound of high-pitched voices--of a strange jargon from the
+room opening upon the street, where a heavy-eyed maid, behind a pewter
+bar, served the blue-bloused workmen gathered about the little tables.
+
+The white palace of St. Cloud, with its Corinthian columns, stood
+daintily back from its gates and the low-bred town; but its long wings
+had run down, like curious children, to peep out through the bars; so,
+you will see, it formed three sides of a square. It had lately been
+refurnished for the prince imperial. The grand _salons_ need not be
+described; one is especially noted as having been the place where a baby
+was once baptized, who is now ex-emperor of France. In the same room the
+civil contract of marriage between Napoleon I. and Marie Louise was
+celebrated. A few elegant but less spacious rooms were interesting from
+having been the private apartments of the poor queens and empresses who
+have shared the throne of France. Gorgeous they were in tapestry and
+gilding, filled with a gaping crowd of visitors, and echoing to the
+voice of a voluble guide. Royal fingers may have touched the pretty
+trinkets lying about; royal forms reclined upon the soft couches; royal
+aching hearts beat to the tick of the curious gilt clock, that bore as
+many faces as a woman, some one wickedly said; but it was impossible to
+realize it, or to believe that high heels, and panniers, and jaunty hats
+upon sweet-faced, shrill-voiced American girls had not ruled and reigned
+here always, as they did this day.
+
+Versailles lies out beyond St. Cloud, but we gave to it another day. We
+were a merry party, led by Dr. R., who left the train at the station,
+and filled the omnibus for the palace. There was an air of having seen
+better days about the city, which was at one time the second of
+importance in France; it fed and fattened upon the court, and when at
+last the court went away not to return, it came to grief. The most vivid
+recollection I have of the great court-yard, around which extend three
+sides of the palace, is of its round paving-stones--that seemed to have
+risen up preparatory to crying out--and the grove of weather-stained
+statues upon high pedestals,--generals, cardinals, and statesmen who
+hated and connived against each other in life, doomed now in stone to
+stare each other out of countenance. I am sure we detected a wry face
+here and there, to say nothing of clinched fists. It is a gloomy old
+court-yard at best. The front of the main building is all that remains
+of the old hunting-seat of Louis XIII., which his son would not suffer
+to be destroyed. It is of dingy, mildewed brick, that can never in any
+possible light appear palatial; and so blackened and purple-stained are
+the statues before it that they might have been just brought from the
+Morgue. The whole palace is only a show place now--a museum of painting
+and statuary. As for the celebrated gardens, we walked for hours, and
+still they stretched away on every side. We explored paths wide and
+narrow, crooked and straight, and saw clipped trees by the mile, with
+grottoes and the skeletons of the fountains that, like naughty children,
+play o' Sundays, and all the wonderful trees, shrubs, and flowers
+brought from the ends of the earth, and ate honey gingerbread (flavored
+with extract of turpentine) before an open booth, and were ready to
+faint with weariness; and when at last a broad avenue opened before us
+with the Trianons, which must be seen, at the farther end, we would not
+have taken the whole place as a gift. It must have been at this point
+that we fortified ourselves with the gingerbread.
+
+The Grand Trianon alone were we permitted to enter. It is in the form of
+an Italian villa, with a ground floor only, and long windows opening
+upon delightful gardens. Like Versailles, it is now a mere show,
+although a suit of apartments was fitted up here some time since, in
+anticipation of a neighborly visit from Queen Victoria to Eugenie,
+making of the little palace a kind of guest chamber, a spare bedroom. As
+we followed a winding path through the park, we came suddenly upon an
+open glade, surrounded and shaded by forest trees. Over the tiny lake,
+in the centre, swans were sailing. Half hidden among the wide-spread,
+sweeping branches of the trees were the scattered farm-houses of a
+deserted village--only half a dozen in all, of rude, half Swiss
+architecture, made to imitate age and decay, quaintly picturesque. Here
+Marie Antoinette and her court played at poverty. Do you remember how,
+when she grew weary of solemn state, she came here with a few favored
+ones to forget her crown, and dream she was a farmer's wife? The dairy
+was empty, the marble slab bare upon which she made butter for her
+guests. Just beyond was the mill, but the wheel was still. It was a
+pleasant dream--a dream of Arcadia. Ah, but there was a fearful
+awakening! "The poorest peasant in the land," said the queen, "has one
+little spot which she can call her own; the Queen of France asks no
+more." So she shut the gates upon the people who had claimed and held
+the right, from all time, to wander at will through the gardens of
+their kings. Then they hated her, whom they had greeted with shouts of
+welcome when she came a bride from over the border. "The Austrian! the
+Austrian!" they hissed through the closed gates. And one day they
+dragged her out from a bare cell in the Conciergerie,--no make-believe
+of rough walls, of coarse fare there,--they bound the slender hands
+behind her, they thrust into a prison cart the form that had been used
+to rest upon down and silken cushions, and bore her over the rough
+stones to the scaffold. Ah, it makes one shudder!
+
+To see the two hundred rooms of the palace of Versailles requires a day,
+at least; but we, fearful that this might be our last opportunity,
+determined to spend the remaining hour or two and our last atom of
+strength in the attempt. A wandering cabman pounced upon us as we came
+down the avenue from the Trianons, and bore us back to the palace, where
+we toiled up and down the grand stairway, and peeped into the chapel
+that had echoed to the mockery of worship in the time of the king who
+built all this--the king who loved everybody's wife but his own--so
+faithlessly! There was a dizzy hurrying through corridors lined with
+statuary, through one _salon_ after another hung with Horace Vernet's
+paintings describing the glories of France--the crowning of its kings,
+the reception of its ambassadors, the signing of its treaties, the
+winning of its battles; but was all this bloodshed, and all this agony
+depicted upon canvas, for the glory of France? There were immense
+galleries, where, on every side, from cornice to floor, one was
+conscious of nothing but smoke and cannon, wounds and gore, and rolling
+eyes. We walked over the prescribed three miles and a half of floors
+slippery as ice, and gazed upon the seven miles of pictures, with a
+feeling less of pleasure or gratified curiosity than of satisfaction at
+having _done_ Versailles. Room after room was devoted to portraits, full
+lengths and half lengths, side faces and full fronts; faces to be
+remembered, if one had not been in such mortal haste, and faces that
+would never have been missed from the ermined robes. In a quiet corner
+we were startled to find some of our good presidents staring down upon
+us from the wall. A mutual surprise it seemed to be. But if we Americans
+must be awkward and clownish to the last degree, half civilized, and but
+one remove from barbarism, don't let us put the acme of all this upon
+canvas, and hang it in the palace of kings. Here was President Grant
+represented in the saloon of a steamboat,--America to the last,--one leg
+crossed, one heel upon the opposite knee, and his head about to sink
+into his coat collar in an agony of terror at finding himself among
+quality. His attitude might have been considered graceful and dignified
+in a bar-room, or even in the saloon of a Mississippi steamer; but it
+utterly failed in both particulars in the Palace of Versailles, among
+courtly men and high-bred women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A VISIT TO BRUSSELS.
+
+          To Brussels.--The old and new city.--The paradise
+          and purgatory of dogs.--The Hôtel de Ville and
+          Grand Place.--St. Gudule.--The picture
+          galleries.--Wiertz and his odd
+          paintings.--Brussels lace and an hour with the
+          lace-makers. How the girls found Charlotte
+          Brontë's school.--The scene of "Villette."
+
+
+THERE were one or two more excursions from Paris, and then, when we had
+grasped the fat hand of Monsieur, our landlord, and kissed the dark
+cheeks of Madame, his wife, and submitted to the same from Mademoiselle,
+their daughter, with light hearts, serene consciences, and the ----
+family we started for Brussels. It is a six hours' ride by rail.
+
+Almost as soon as the line between France and Belgium is passed, the low
+hills drop away, the thatch-roofed cottages give place to those of
+whitewashed brick, with bright, red-tiled roofs. All along the way were
+the straight poplars overrun with ivy, and the land was cared for,
+coaxed, and fairly driven to the highest point of cultivation. Women
+were at work in the fields, and more than one Maud Müller leaned upon
+her rake to gaze after us. Soon, when there were only level fields
+beneath a level sky, the windmills began to appear in the distance,
+slowly swinging the ghostly arms that became long, narrow sails as we
+neared them. At two o'clock we reached Brussels, after being nearly
+resolved into our original element--dust. Nothing but a sand-hill ever
+equalled the appearance we presented when we stepped from the train; nor
+did we need anything so much as to be thrown over a line and beaten like
+a carpet when we finally gained our hotel.
+
+The old city of Brussels is crooked, and dull, and picturesque; but
+joined to it--like an old man with a gay young wife--is the beautiful
+Paris-like upper town, with its houses covered with white stucco, and a
+little mirror outside of every window, placed at an angle of forty-five
+degrees, so that Madame, sitting within, can see all that passes upon
+the street, herself unseen. Here in the new town are the palaces, the
+finest churches, the hotels, and Marie Therese's park, where young and
+old walk, and chat, and make eyes at each other summer evenings. Scores
+of strings, with a poodle at one extremity and a woman at the other, may
+here be seen, with little rugs laid upon the ground for the pink-eyed
+puff-balls to rest upon. Truly Brussels is the paradise and purgatory of
+dogs. Anywhere upon the streets you may see great, hungry-eyed animals
+dragging little carts pushed by women; and it is difficult to determine
+which is the most forlorn--the dog, the cart, or the woman. We never
+understood before what it was to "work like a dog." At one extremity of
+the park was the white, new Senate-house; opposite, the gray,
+barrack-like palace of the king; upon the third side, among others, our
+hotel. Here we were happy in finding another family of friends. With
+them we strolled down into the old town, after dinner, taking to the
+middle of the street, in continental fashion, as naturally as ducks to
+water; crossing back and forth to stare up at a church or into a shop
+window,--straggling along one after another in a way that would have
+been marked at home, but was evidently neither new nor strange here,
+where the native population attended to their own affairs with a zeal
+worthy of reward, and other parties of sight-seers were plying their
+vocation with a perseverance that would have won eminence in any other
+profession. Through crooked by-ways we wandered to the Grand Place of
+the old city--a paved square shut in by high Spanish-gabled houses
+ornamented with the designs of the various guilds. From the windows of
+one hung the red, yellow, and black Belgian flag. There was no rattle of
+carts, no clatter of hoofs. Down upon the dark paving-stones a crowd of
+women, old and young, with handkerchiefs crossed over their bosoms, were
+holding a flower-market. Just behind them rose the grim statues of the
+two counts, Egmont and Van Horn,--who lost their heads while striving to
+gain their cause against Spanish tyranny and the Spanish
+Inquisition,--and the old royal palace, blackened and battered by time
+and the hand of forgotten sculptors, until it seemed like the mummy of a
+palace, half eaten away. Just before them was the Hôtel de Ville, with
+its beautiful tower of gray stone, its roof a mass of dormer windows. It
+comes to me like a picture now--the gathering shadows of a summer night,
+the time-worn houses, lovely in decay, the tawdry flag, and the heads of
+the old women nodding over their flowers.
+
+Brussels has a grand church dedicated to Saints Michael and Gudule. If I
+could only give to you, who have not seen them, some idea of the
+vastness and beauty of these cathedrals! But descriptions are tiresome,
+and dimensions nobody reads. If I could only tell you how far extending
+they are, both upon earth and towards heaven--how they seem not so much
+to have been built stone upon stone, as to have stood from the
+foundation of the world, solitary, alone, until, after long ages, some
+strolling town came to wonder, and worship, and sit at their feet in
+awe! We crept in through the narrow door that shut behind us with a dull
+echo. A chill like that of a tomb pervaded the air, though a summer sun
+beat down upon the stones outside. A forest of clustered columns rose
+all around us. Far above our heads was a gray sky, the groined arches
+where little birds flew about. Stained windows gleamed down the vast
+length, broken by the divisions and subdivisions,--one, far above the
+grand entrance, like the wheel of a chariot of fire. All along the
+walls, over the altar, and filling the chapel niches, were pictures of
+saints, and martyrs, and blessed virgins, that seemed in the dim
+distance like dots upon the wall. Muffled voices broke upon the
+stillness. Far up the nave a little company of worshippers knelt before
+the altar--workingmen who had thrown down mallet and chisel for a
+moment, to creep within the shadows of the sanctuary; market-women, a
+stray water-cress still clinging to the folds of their gowns; children
+dropping upon the rush kneeling-chairs, to mutter a prayer God grant
+they feel, with ever and anon, above the murmur of the prayer, above the
+drone of white-robed priests, the low, full chant from hidden singers,
+echoing through the arches and among the pillars, following us down the
+aisles to where we read upon the monuments the deeds of some old knight
+of heathen times, whose image has survived his dust--whose works have
+followed him.
+
+After leaving the church we wandered among and through the picture
+galleries in the old palaces of the city,--galleries of modern Belgian
+art, with one exception, where were numberless flat old Flemish
+pictures, and dead Christs, livid, ghastly, horrible to look upon. The
+best of Flemish art is not in Brussels. Among the galleries of modern
+paintings, that of the odd artist, recently deceased, Wiertz, certainly
+deserves mention. It contains materials for a fortune to an enterprising
+Yankee. The subjects of the pictures are allegorical, parabolical, and
+diabolical, the scenes being laid in heaven, hell, and mid-air. In one,
+Napoleon I. is represented surrounded by the flames of hell, folding his
+arms in the Napoleonic attitude, while his soldiers crowd around him to
+hold up maimed limbs and ghastly wounds with a denunciatory and angry
+air. Widows and orphans thrust themselves before his face with
+anathematizing countenances. In fact, the situation is decidedly
+unpleasant for the hero, and one longs for a bucket of cold water. Many
+of the pictures were behind screens, and to be seen through
+peep-holes--one of them a ghastly thing, of coffins broken open and
+their risen occupants emerging in shrouds. Upon the walls around the
+room were painted half-open doors and windows with pretty girls peeping
+out; close down to the floor, a dog kennel, from which its savage
+occupant was ready to spring; just above him, from a latticed window,
+an old _concierge_ leaned out to ask our business. Even in the pictures
+hanging upon the walls was something of this trickery. In one the foot
+and hand of a giant were painted out upon the frame, so that he seemed
+to be just stepping out from his place; and I am half inclined to think
+that many of the people walking about the room were originally framed
+upon the walls.
+
+Brussels is always associated in one's mind with its laces. We visited
+one of the manufactories. A dozen or twenty women were busy in a sunny,
+cheerful room, working out the pretty leaves and flowers, with needle
+and thread, for the _point_ lace, or twisting the bobbins among the
+innumerable pins in the cushion before them to follow the pattern for
+the _point appliqué_. When completed, you know, the delicate designs are
+sewed upon gossamer lace. Upon a long, crimson-covered table in the room
+above were spread out, in tempting array, the results of this tiresome
+labor--coiffures that would almost resign one to a bald spot,
+handkerchiefs insnaring as cobwebs, _barbes_ that fairly pierced our
+hearts, and shawls for which there are no words. I confess that these
+soft, delicate things have for women a wonderful charm--that as we
+turned over and over in our hands the frail, yellow-white cobwebs, some
+of us more than half forgot the tenth commandment.
+
+_Table-d'hôte_ over, one evening, "Where shall we go? What can we do?"
+queried one of the four girls in our party, two of whom had but just now
+escaped from the thraldom of a French _pensionnat_.
+
+"It would be so delightful if we could walk out for once by ourselves.
+If there were only something to see--somewhere to go."
+
+"Girls!" exclaimed Axelle, suddenly, "was not the scene of _Villette_
+laid in Brussels? Is not Charlotte Brontë's boarding-school here? I am
+sure it is. Suppose we seek it out--we four girls alone."
+
+"But how, and where?" and "Wouldn't that be fine?" chorused the others.
+There was a hasty search through guide-books; but alas! not a clew could
+we find, not a peg upon which to hang the suspicions that were almost
+certainties.
+
+"I am sure it was here," persisted Axelle. "I wish we had a _Villette_."
+
+"We could get one at an English library," suggested another.
+
+"If there is any English library here," added a third, doubtfully.
+
+Evidently that must be our first point of departure. We could ask for
+information there. Accordingly we planned our crusade, as girls do,--the
+elders smiling unbelief, as elders will,--and sallied out at last into
+the summer sunshine, very brave in our hopes, very glad in our unwonted
+liberty. A _commissionaire_ gave us the address of the bookstore we
+sought as we were leaving the hotel. "There are no obstacles in the path
+of the determined," we said, stepping out upon the Rue Royale. Across
+the way was the grand park, a maze of winding avenues, shaded by lofty
+trees, with nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs hiding among the shrubbery,
+and with all the tortuous paths made into mosaic pavement by the
+shimmering sunlight. But to Axelle _Villette_ was more real than that
+June day.
+
+"Do you remember," she said, "how Lucy Snow reached the city alone and
+at night?--how a young English stranger conducted her across the park,
+she following in his footsteps through the darkness, and hearing only
+the tramp, tramp, before her, and the drip of the rain as it fell from
+the soaked leaves? This must be the park."
+
+When we had passed beyond its limits, we espied a little square, only a
+kind of alcove in the street, in the centre of which was the statue of
+some military hero. Behind it a quadruple flight of broad stone steps
+led down into a lower and more quiet street. Facing us, as we looked
+down, was a white stuccoed house, with a glimpse of a garden at one
+side.
+
+"See!" exclaimed Axelle, joyfully; "I believe this is the very place.
+Don't you remember when they had come out from the park, and Lucy's
+guide left her to find an inn near by, she ran,--being frightened,--and
+losing her way, came at last to a flight of steps like these, which she
+descended, and found, instead of the inn, the _pensionnat_ of Madame
+Beck?" Only the superior discretion and worldly wisdom of the others
+prevented Axelle from following in Lucy Snow's footsteps, and settling
+the question of identity then and there. As it was, we went on to the
+library, a stuffy little place, with a withered old man for sole
+attendant, who, seated before a table in the back shop, was poring over
+an old book. We darted in, making a bewildering flutter of wings, and
+pecked him with a dozen questions at once, oddly inflected: "_Was_ the
+scene of _Villette_ laid in Brussels?" and "_Is_ the school really
+here?" and "You _don't_ say so!" though we had insisted upon it from the
+first, and he had just replied in the affirmative; lastly, "O, _do_ tell
+us how we may find it."
+
+"You must go so-and-so," he said at length, when we paused.
+
+"Yes," we replied in chorus; "we have just come from there."
+
+"And," he went on, "you will see the statue of General Beliard."
+
+We nudged each other significantly.
+
+"Go down the steps in the rear, and the house facing you--"
+
+"We knew it. We felt it," we cried, triumphantly; and his directions
+ended there. We neither heeded nor interpreted the expression of
+expectation that stole over his face. We poured out only a stream of
+thanks which should have moistened the parched sands of his soul, and
+then hastened to retrace our steps. We found the statue again. We
+descended into the narrow, noiseless street, and stood,--an awe-struck
+group,--before the great square house, upon the door-plate of which we
+read,--
+
+          "PENSIONNAT DE DEMOISELLES.
+                HÉGER--PARENT."
+
+"Now," said Axelle, when we had drawn in with a deep breath, the
+satisfaction and content which shone out again from our glad eyes, "we
+will ring the bell."
+
+"You will not think of it," gasped the choir of startled girls.
+
+"To be sure; what have we come for?" was her reply. "We will only ask
+permission to see the garden, and as the portress will doubtless speak
+nothing but French, some one of you, fresh from school, must act as
+mouthpiece." They stared at Axelle, at each other, and at the steps
+leading into the upper town, as though they meditated flight. "I
+cannot," and "_I_ cannot," said each one of the shrinking group.
+
+Axelle laid her hand upon the bell, and gave one long, strong pull.
+"Now," she said, quietly, "some one of you must speak. You are ladies:
+you will not run away."
+
+And they accepted the situation.
+
+We were shown into a small _salon_, where presently there entered to us
+a brisk, sharp-featured little French woman,--a teacher in the
+establishment,--who smiled a courteous welcome from out her black eyes
+as we apologized for the intrusion, and made known our wishes.
+
+"We are a party of American girls," we said, "who, having learned to
+know and love Charlotte Brontë through her books, desire to see the
+garden of which she wrote in _Villette_."
+
+"O, certainly, certainly," was the gracious response. "Americans often
+come to visit the school and the garden."
+
+"Then this _is_ the school where she was for so long a time?" we burst
+out simultaneously, forgetting our little prepared speeches.
+
+"Yes, _mesdemoiselles_; I also was a pupil at that time," was the
+reply. We viewed the dark little woman with sudden awe.
+
+"But tell us," we said, crowding around her, "was she like--like--" We
+could think of no comparison that would do justice to the subject.
+
+The reply was a shrug of the shoulders, and, "She was just a quiet
+little thing, in no way remarkable. I am sure," she added, "we did not
+think her a genius; and indeed, though I have read her books, I can see
+nothing in them to admire or praise so highly!"
+
+"But they are _so_ wonderful!" ventured one of our number, gushingly.
+
+"They are very untrue," she replied, while something like a spark shot
+from the dark eyes.
+
+O, shades of departed story-tellers, is it thus ye are to be judged?
+
+"Madame Héger," she went on, "who still has charge of the school, is a
+most excellent lady, and not at all the person described as 'Madame
+Beck.'"
+
+"And M. Paul Emmanuel,--Lucy Snow's teacher-lover,"--we ventured to
+suggest with some timidity.
+
+"Is Madame Héger's husband, and was at that time," she replied, with a
+little angry toss of the head. After this terrible revelation there was
+nothing more to be said.
+
+She led the way through a narrow passage, and opening a door at the end,
+we stepped into the garden. We had passed the class-rooms on our
+right--where, "on the last row, in the quietest corner," Charlotte and
+Emily used to sit. We could almost see the pale faces, the shy figures
+bending over the desk in the gathering dusk.
+
+The garden is less spacious than it was in Charlotte's time, new
+class-rooms having been added, which cut off something from its length.
+But the whole place was strangely familiar and pleasant to our eyes.
+Shut in by surrounding houses, more than one window overlooks its narrow
+space. Down its length upon one side extends the shaded walk, the
+"_allée défendue_," which Charlotte paced alone so many weary hours,
+when Emily had returned to England. Parallel to this is the row of giant
+pear trees,--huge, misshapen, gnarled,--that bore no fruit to us but
+associations vivid as memories. From behind these, in the summer
+twilight, the ghost of _Villette_ was wont to steal, and buried at the
+foot of "Methuselah," the oldest, we knew poor Lucy's love-letters were
+hidden to-day. A seat here and there, a few scattered shrubs, evergreen,
+laurel, and yew, scant blossoms, paths damp, green-crusted--that was
+all. Not a cheerful place at its brightest; not a sunny spot associated
+in one's mind with summer and girlish voices. It was very still that
+day; the pupils were off for the long vacation, and yet how full the
+place was to us! The very leaves overhead, the stones in the walls
+around us, whispered a story, as we walked to and fro where little feet,
+that tired even then of life's rough way, had gone long years before.
+
+"May we take one leaf--only one?" we asked, as we turned away.
+
+"As many as you please;" and the little French woman grasped at the
+leaves growing thick and dark above her head. We plucked them with our
+own hands, tenderly, almost reverently; then, with many thanks, and our
+adieus, we came away.
+
+"We have found it!" we exclaimed, when we had returned to the hotel and
+our friends. They only smiled their unbelief.
+
+"Do you not know--can you not see--O, do you not feel?" we cried,
+displaying our glistening trophies, "that these could have grown nowhere
+but upon the pear trees in the old garden where Charlotte Brontë used to
+walk and dream?"
+
+And our words carried conviction to their hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+WATERLOO AND THROUGH BELGIUM.
+
+          To Waterloo.--Beggars and guides.--The
+          Mound.--Chateau Hougomont.--Victor Hugo's "sunken
+          road."--Antwerp.--A visit to the cathedral.--A
+          drive about the city.--An excursion to Ghent.--The
+          funeral services in the cathedral.--"Poisoned? Ah,
+          poor man!"--The watch-tower.--The Friday-market
+          square.--The nunnery.--Longfellow's pilgrims to
+          "the belfry of Bruges."
+
+
+WE could not leave the city without driving out to the battle-field of
+Waterloo. It is about a dozen miles to The Mound, and you may take the
+public coach if you choose--it runs daily. Our party being large, we
+preferred to engage a carriage.
+
+We left the house after breakfast, and passed through the wide,
+delightful avenues of the Forêt de Soignes,--the Bois de Boulogne of
+Brussels,--then across the peaceful country which seemed never to have
+known anything so disturbing as war. Beyond the park lies the village
+which gave its name to the battle-field though the thickest of the fight
+was not there. In an old brick church, surmounted by a dome, lie
+intombed many minor heroes of the conflict. But heroes soon pall upon
+the taste, and nothing less than Wellington or Napoleon himself could
+have awakened a spark of interest in us by this time. Then, too, the
+vivid present blinded us to the past. The air was sweet with summer
+scents. Mowers were busy in the hayfields. A swarm of little barefooted
+beggars importuned us, turning dizzy somersaults until we could see only
+a maze of flying, dusty feet on either side. One troop, satisfied or
+despairing, gave way to another, and the guides were almost as annoying
+as the beggars. They walk for miles out of their villages to forestall
+each other, and meet the carriages that are sure to come from Brussels
+on pleasant days. They drive sharp bargains. As you near the centre of
+interest, competition is greater, and their demands proportionately
+less. We refused the extortionate overtures of two or three, and finally
+picked up a shrewd-faced young fellow in a blue blouse, who hung upon
+the step of the carriage, or ran beside it for the last mile or two of
+the distance. The village of Mont St. Jean follows that of Waterloo. It
+is only a scant collection of whitewashed farm buildings of brick. We
+rolled through it without stopping, and out again between the quiet,
+smiling fields, our minds utterly refusing to grasp the idea that they
+had swarmed once with an army; that in this little village we had just
+left--dull, half asleep in the sunshine--dreadful slaughter had held
+high carnival one July day, not many years before. Even when the guide,
+clinging to the door of the carriage, rattled over the story of the
+struggle in a _patois_ all his own, hardly a shadow of the scene was
+presented to us.
+
+As our horses slackened their pace, he stepped down from his perch to
+gather a nosegay of the flowers by the road-side, making no pause in his
+mechanical narrative--of how the Anglo-Belgian army were gathered upon
+this road and the fields back to the wood, on the last day of the fight;
+how many of the officers had been called at a moment's notice from the
+gayeties at Brussels, and more than one was found dead upon the field
+the next day, under the soaking rain, dressed as for a ball. He pushed
+back his visorless cap, uttering an exclamation over the heat, and
+adding, in the same breath, that just here, about Mont St. Jean, the
+battle waged fiercely in the afternoon, when Ney, with his brave
+cuirassiers, tried in vain to carry the position; and all the time, the
+summer sounds of twittering birds and hum of locusts were in our ears;
+the barefooted children still turned upon their axles beside the
+carriage wheels as we rolled along, and that other day seemed so far
+away, that we could neither bring it near nor realize it. One grim
+reminder of the past rose in the distance, and, as we drew near, swelled
+and grew before our eyes. It was the huge mound of earth raised two
+hundred feet, to commemorate the victory of the allies. Hills were cut
+down, the very face of nature changed for miles around, to rear this
+monument to pride and vain-glory. Upon its summit crouches the Belgian
+lion.
+
+We turn from the paved road, when we have reached what seems to be a
+mass of unsightly ruins, with only a tumbling outbuilding left here and
+there. The whole is enclosed by a wall, which skirts also an orchard,
+neglected, grown to weeds. The carriage stops before the great gates. It
+is very cool and quiet in the shaded angle of the battered wall as we
+step down. It has been broken and chipped as if by pick-axes. Ah! the
+shot struck hardest here. The top of the low wall is irregular; the
+bricks have been knocked out; the dust has sifted down; the mosses have
+gathered, and a fringe of grass follows all its length. Even sweet wild
+flowers blossom where the muskets rested in those dreadful days. At
+intervals, half way up its height, a brick is missing. Accident? Ah, no;
+hastily constructed loopholes, through which the English fired at first,
+before the horrible time when they beat each other down with the butts
+of their guns while they fought hand to hand here, like wild beasts.
+
+We enter the court-yard. Only a roughly plastered room or two remain,
+where the greed that gloats even over the field of blood offers
+_souvenirs_ of the place importunately. In the centre of this court-yard
+may still be seen the well that was filled with corpses. It must have
+given out blood for many a day. Upon one side are the remains of the
+building used for a hospital in the beginning of the fight, but where
+the wounded and dying perished in torment, when the French succeeded in
+firing the chateau; for this is _Hougomont_.
+
+We came out at the gateway where we had entered; crossed the slope under
+the shadow of the branches from the apple trees, and followed the road
+winding through wheat-fields to The Mound. Breast-high on either side
+rose the nodding crests; and among them wild flowers, purple, scarlet,
+and blue, fairly dazzled our eyes, as they waved with the golden grain
+in the sunshine. "O, smiling harvest-fields," we said, "you have been
+sown with heroes; you have been enriched with blood!"
+
+It was a long, dizzy climb up the face of The Mound to the narrow
+foothold beside the platform where rests that grim, gigantic lion. Once
+there, we held to every possible support in the hurricane of wind that
+seized us, while the guide gave a name to each historic farm and village
+spread out before our eyes. Only a couple of miles cover all the
+battle-field--the smallest where grand armies ever met; but the
+slaughter was the more terrible.
+
+Connected with an inn at the foot of The Mound is a museum of
+curiosities. Here are queer old helmets worn by the cuirassiers, hacked
+and rust-stained; broken swords, and old-fashioned muskets; buttons, and
+bullets even--everything that could be garnered after such a sowing of
+the earth.
+
+In unquestioning faith we bought buttons stained with mildew, and
+bearing upon them, in raised letters, the number of a regiment. Alas!
+reason told us, later, that the buttons disposed of annually here would
+supply an ordinary army. And rumor added, that they are buried now in
+quantities, to be exhumed as often as the supply fails.
+
+I remembered Victor Hugo to have said in _Les Misérables_ something in
+regard to a sunken road here, which proved a pitfall to the French, and
+helped, in his judgment, to turn the fortunes of the day. But we had
+seen no sunken road. I mentioned it to the guide, who said that Victor
+Hugo spent a fortnight examining the ground before writing that
+description of the battle. "He lodged at our house," he added. "My
+father was his guide. What he wrote was all quite true. There is now no
+road such as he described; that was all changed when the earth was
+scraped together to form The Mound."
+
+We lunched at the inn, surrounded by mementos and trophies, and served
+by an elderly woman, whose father had been a sergeant in the Belgian
+army, then late in the afternoon drove back to town.
+
+The pleasant days at Brussels soon slipped by, and then we were off to
+Antwerp--only an hour's ride. I will tell you nothing about the former
+wealth and commercial activity of the city--that in the sixteenth
+century it was the wealthiest city in Europe, &c, &c. For all these
+interesting particulars, see Murray's Handbook of Northern Germany. As
+soon as we had secured rooms at the hotel, dropped our satchels and
+umbrellas, we followed the chimes to the cathedral. The houses of the
+people have crept close to it, until many of them, old and gray, have
+fairly grown to it, like barnacles to a ship; or it seemed as though
+they had built their nests, like the rooks, under the moss-grown eaves.
+The interior of the cathedral was singularly grand and open. As we threw
+our shawls about us--a precaution never omitted--an old man shuffled out
+from a dark corner to show the church, take our _francs_, and pull aside
+the curtains from before the principal pictures, if so dignified a name
+as curtain can be applied to the dusty, brown cambric that obstructed
+our vision. Rubens's finest pictures are here, and indeed the city
+abounds in all that is best of Flemish art,--most justly, since it was
+the birthplace of its master. Rubens in the flesh we had seen at the
+Louvre; the spiritual manifestation was reserved for Antwerp; and to
+recall the city is to recall a series of visions of which one may not
+speak lightly.
+
+Across, from the cathedral, upon a wide wooden bench in the market-place
+we sat a moment to consider our ways--the signal for the immediate
+swooping down upon us of guides and carriages, and the result of which
+was, our departure in a couple of dingy open vehicles to finish the
+city. We crawled about the town like a diminutive funeral procession,
+dismounting at the Church of St. Jacques to see the pictures, with which
+it is filled. In one of the chapels was a young American artist, copying
+Rubens's picture of "A Holy Family"--the one in which his two wives and
+others of his family enact the part of Mary, Martha, St. Jerome, &c.
+Behind the high altar is the tomb of Rubens, with an inscription of
+sufficient length to extinguish an ordinary man. There was a museum,
+too, in the city, rich in the works of Rubens and Vandyck, and the fine
+park in the new part of the town, as well as the massive docks built by
+the first Napoleon, were yet to be seen. The older members of the party
+were in the first carriage, and received any amount of valuable
+information, which was transmitted to us who followed in a succession of
+shouts sounding as much like "fire!" as anything else, with all manner
+of beckoning, and pointing, and wild throwing up of arms, that
+undoubtedly gave vent to their feelings, but brought only confusion and
+distraction to our minds. Not to be outdone, our driver began a series
+of utterly unintelligible explanations, the only part of which we
+understood in the least was, when pointing to the docks, he ejaculated,
+"Napoleon!" At that we nodded our heads frantically, which only
+encouraged him to go on. Pausing before a low, black house, exactly like
+all the others, he pointed to it with his whip. It said "Hydraulics"
+upon a rickety sign over the door. There were old casks, and anchors,
+and ropes, and rotting wood all around, for it was down upon the
+wharves. We tried to look enlightened, gratified even, and succeeded so
+well that he entered upon an elaborate dissertation in an unknown
+tongue. What do you suppose it was all about? Can it be that he was
+explaining the principles of hydraulics?
+
+We made, one clay, an excursion from Antwerp to Ghent and Bruges. We
+left the train at Ghent to walk up through the narrow streets, that have
+no sidewalks, to the cathedral. There was a funeral within. The driver
+of the hearse profusely decorated with inverted feather dusters, was
+comfortably smoking his pipe outside. A little hunchbacked guide, with
+great, glassy eyes, and teeth like yellow fangs, led us up the aisle to
+the screen beside the high altar, where we looked between the tombs and
+the monuments, upon the long procession of men circling around the
+coffin in the choir, each with a lighted candle in hand. As there were
+only about a dozen candles in all, and each must hold one while he
+passed the coffin, it was a piece of dexterity, at least, to manage
+them, which so engrossed our attention, that we caught but an occasional
+sentence from our guide's whispered story of the seventh bishop of
+Ghent, who donated the pulpit to the cathedral, and around whose marble
+feet we were trying to peep; of the ninth, who was poisoned as he went
+upon some mission ("Poisoned? Ah, poor man!" we ejaculated, absently,
+our eyes anxiously fixed upon one man to whom had been given no candle
+as yet); of the tall brass candlesticks, supposed to have been brought
+from England in the time of Cromwell, and a host more of fragmentary
+information, forgotten now. The whole interior of the church is rich in
+decoration, black and white marble predominating, with pictures of the
+early Flemish school filling every available space. Once out of the
+church, we climbed into an ark of a carriage, and drove about the city,
+our little guide standing beside the driver, back to the horses most of
+the time, to pour out a torrent of history and romance. A most edifying
+spectacle it would have been anywhere else. Do read Henry Taylor's
+"Philip von Artevelde" before going to Ghent: the mingled romance and
+history throw a charm about the place and people which bare history can
+never give. Veritable Yankees these old Flemish weavers seem to have
+been, with a touch of the Irish in their composition--always up in arms
+for their rights, and striking out wherever they saw a head. There is a
+new part to the city, with a grand opera-house, shaded promenades and
+palatial dwellings, but one cares only for the narrow, dingy streets,
+and the old market squares, in which every stone could tell a story.
+
+We saw the tall, brick watch-tower, where still hangs the bell that
+tolled,--
+
+          "I am Roland, I am Roland! There is victory in the land,"
+
+and the old Hôtel de Ville, of conglomerate architecture, one side of
+which, in the loveliest flamboyant Gothic imaginable, seems crumbling
+away from its very richness. In the Friday-market square--it chancing to
+be Friday--was a score of bustling busybodies, swarming like bees.
+Here, in the old, quarrelsome times, battles were fought between the
+different guilds. I say battles, because at one time fifteen hundred
+were slain in this very square. Such a peaceful old square as it seemed
+to be the day of our visit! the old gray houses, that have echoed to the
+sound of strife, fairly smiling in the sunshine, and the market women
+kneeling upon the stones which have run with blood. At one corner rose a
+tower, and half way up its height may still be seen the iron rod, over
+which was hung imperfect linen, to shame the weaver who had dared to
+offer it in the market.
+
+There is a great nunnery here in Ghent--a town of itself, surrounded by
+a moat and a wall, where are six hundred or more sisters, from families
+high and low, who tend the sick, weave lace, and mortify the flesh in
+black robes and white veils. When they become weary of it, they may
+return to the world, the flesh, and--their homes: no vows bind them. We
+drove along the streets past the cell-like houses where they dwell. Over
+the door of each was the name of her patron saint. It seemed a quiet
+retreat, a noiseless city, notwithstanding the six hundred women! But by
+far the most interesting sight, because the most ancient in the quaint
+old city, was the archway and turret of the old royal castle, erected a
+thousand years ago; only this gateway remains. Here John o' Gaunt was
+born. Built all round, and joined to it, are houses of more recent date,
+themselves old and tottering, and the arch beneath which kings and
+queens rode once, is now the entrance to a cotton factory.
+
+We had only a few hours at Bruges--the city once more powerful than
+Antwerp even, but where not a house has been raised for a hundred years,
+and where nearly a third of its inhabitants are paupers. But decay and
+dilapidation are strong elements of the picturesque, and nothing seen
+that day was more charming than a piece of wall, still standing,
+belonging to the old Charles V.'s palace--honey-combed, black, of florid
+Gothic architecture, rising from the quiet waters of the canal. At one
+end it threw an arch over the street, with a latticed window above it,
+beneath which we passed, after crossing the bridge. More than one
+picture of Bruges rests within my memory--its canals spanned by the
+picturesque bridges, and overhung with willows that dipped their long
+branches into the water, and the quaint old houses with many-stepped
+gables, rising sheer from the stream.
+
+But with all its past grandeur, the old city is best known to us
+Americans through the chimes from its belfry tower, and we were some of
+Longfellow's pilgrims. We drove into the great paved Place under the
+shadow of the belfry tower when its shadows were growing long, and
+watched the stragglers across the square--women in queer black-hooded
+cloaks; chubby little blue-eyed maidens with school-books in hand; a
+party of tourists; and last, but by no means least, the ubiquitous
+American girl, with an immense bow on the back of her dress, and her eye
+fixed steadily upon the milliner's shop just visible around the corner.
+Almost three hundred feet the dingy brick tower rose above us, with low
+wings on either side, where were once the halls of some guilds, in the
+days when the tower was a lookout to warn of coming foes,--when the
+square was planned for defence. In a little court-yard, gained by
+passing under its arch, we watched and listened, until at last the sweet
+tinkle of the silver-toned bells broke the hush of waiting--so far away,
+so heavenly, we held our breath, lest we should lose the sound that fell
+
+  "Like the psalms from some old cloister when the nuns sing in the choir,
+   And the great bell tolled among them like the chanting of a friar."
+
+We came back to Antwerp that night, tired, but triumphant, feeling as
+though we had read a page from an old book, or sung a strain from an old
+song.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A TRIP THROUGH HOLLAND.
+
+          Up the Meuse to Rotterdam.--Dutch sights and
+          ways.--The pretty milk-carriers.--The
+          tea-gardens.--Preparations for the Sabbath.--An
+          English chapel.--"The Lord's barn."--From
+          Rotterdam to the Hague.--The queen's "House in the
+          Wood."--Pictures in private drawing-rooms.--The
+          bazaar.--An evening in a Dutch
+          tea-garden.--Amsterdam to a stranger.--The
+          "sights."--The Jews' quarter.--The family whose
+          home was upon the canals.--Out of the city.--The
+          pilgrims.
+
+
+AT nine o'clock, the next morning, we left Antwerp for Rotterdam. Two
+hours by rail brought us to a place with an unpronounceable name, ending
+in "djk," where we were to take a steamer. How delightful, after the
+dust and heat of the railway carriage, were the two hours that followed!
+The day was charming, the passengers numerous, but scattered about the
+clean, white deck, picturesquely, upon the little camp stools, drinking
+brandy and water as a preventive to what seemed impossible, eating
+fruit, reading, chatting, or pleased, like ourselves, with the panorama
+before their eyes. In and out of the intricate passages to the sea we
+steamed, the land and water all around us level as a floor; the only
+sign of life the slow-revolving arms of the windmills, near and far,
+with here and there a solitary mansion shut in by tall trees; or, as we
+wound in and out among the islands fringed with green rushes, and waving
+grasses that fairly came out into the water to meet us, and sailed up
+the Meuse, the odd Dutch villages that had turned their backs to the
+river, though their feet were still in the water over which hung rude
+wooden balconies, or still ruder bay-windows, filled with pots of
+flowers. This monotonous stretch of sea and land might grow tiresome
+after a while, but there was something peculiarly restful in that sail
+up the wide mouth of the river, beckoned on by the solemn arms of the
+windmills.
+
+When we reached Rotterdam, how strange it was to find, instead of a row
+of houses across from our hotel, a wharf and a row of ships! Such a
+great, comfortable room as awaited us! with deep, wide arm-chairs, a
+heavy round table suggesting endless teas, and toast unlimited, and
+everything else after the same hearty, substantial manner. There was no
+paper upon the walls, but, in its place, paintings upon canvas. Delilah
+sat over the mantel, with the head of the sleeping Samson in her lap,
+and Rebekah and the thirsty camels were behind our bed curtains. From
+the wide windows we watched the loading and unloading of the ships,
+while the song of the sailors came in on the evening breeze, and with
+it, we half-fancied, the odor of sandal-wood and spices from the East
+Indiamen anchored across the way. Our hotel was upon the Boompjes, the
+quay that borders the river; but through nearly all the streets flow the
+canals, deep enough to float large ships. You can appreciate the
+advantage of sailing a ship to the very door of one's warehouse, as you
+might drive a cart up to unload; and you can imagine, perhaps, the
+peculiar appearance of the city, with its mingled masts and chimneys,
+its irregular, but by no means picturesque, houses, and the inhabitants
+equally at home upon water or land. Among the women of the lower classes
+may still be seen some national peculiarities in dress, shown
+principally in the startling ornaments--twisted gold wire horns, and
+balls, and rings of mammoth size thrust out from their caps just above
+their ears. Whether their bare red arms would come under the head of
+dress, might be questioned; but a national peculiarity they certainly
+were, and unlike anything ever seen before in the way of human flesh.
+Was that painfully deep magenta hue nature or art? We could never tell.
+There were some very pretty faces among the girls carrying milk about
+the city in bright brass cans, or in pails suspended from a yoke over
+their shoulders--faces of one type, round, red-cheeked, blue-eyed, with
+the mouth called rosebud by poets, and bewitching little brown noses of
+an upward tendency. As they all wore clean purple calico gowns, and had
+each a small white cap on their heads, the resemblance among them was
+rather striking. These caps left the whole top of the head exposed to
+the sun. Only an iron-clad, fire-proof brain could endure it, I am sure.
+
+Not a beggar did we see anywhere in Holland. The people seemed
+thoroughly industrious and thrifty. A gentleman connected with the civil
+service there--an agreeable, cultivated man, who had been half over the
+world, written a book or two, and parted his hair in the middle--gave
+the people credit for all these, with many more good qualities, and
+added, "They are the simplest minded people in the world. Why, would you
+believe it, one of the canal bridges was run into and broken down, the
+other day,--a fortnight ago,--and it has been town talk ever since. No
+two men meet upon the street without, 'Have you heard about the
+bridge?'" And sure enough, when we reached the scene of the accident, in
+our after-dinner walk through the city, quite a crowd was collected to
+watch the passage of a temporary ferry-boat, the simplest contrivance
+imaginable, only an old barge pulled back and forth by ropes. Still
+later we found the entrance to a narrow street choked with people,
+though nothing more unusual seemed to be taking place than the bringing
+out of a table and a few chairs.
+
+Upon the outskirts of the city are pleasant tea-gardens, often attached
+to club-rooms, where concerts are held Sunday evenings, attended by the
+upper classes. We walked through one, over the pebbled paths, and among
+the deserted tables, and then returned to see more of the town. It was
+Saturday night. All the little girls upon the street had their locks
+twisted up in papers so tight and fast that they could shut neither eyes
+nor mouth, but seemed to be in a continual state of wonderment. All
+their mothers were down upon their hands and knees, scrubbing the
+doorsteps and sidewalk, in preparation for the Sabbath. The streets were
+dirty and uninviting with a few exceptions, yet hardly more so than
+could be expected, when you remember that nearly the whole city is a
+line of wharves; but we felt no disposition to walk through it in our
+slippers, as the guide book in praising its cleanliness, says you may.
+What an advantage it would be to the world if the compilers of
+guide-books would only visit the places they describe so graphically! We
+spent a quiet Sabbath here--the fourth of July--with not so much as a
+torpedo to disturb its serenity or mark the day, attending church at the
+English chapel, and joining in the responses led by a clear soprano
+voice behind us, which we had some desire to locate; but when we turned,
+at the conclusion of the service, there was only a row of horrible
+chignons to be seen, to none of which, I am sure, the voice belonged.
+
+There is nothing to be seen in Rotterdam but its shipping. One great,
+bare church we did visit--"the Lord's barn;" for these cathedrals,
+stripped of altar, and image, and stained glass, and boarded into stiff
+pews, without the least regard to the eternal fitness of things, are
+ugly enough. There is somewhere here a collection of Ary Scheffer's
+works,--in the city I mean,--but we did not see it. It is less than an
+hour's ride by rail from Rotterdam to the Hague, with the same
+delightfully monotonous scenery all along the way--meadows smooth and
+green, and fields white for the harvest, separated by the almost
+invisible canals. No wonder the Spaniards held the Low Countries with a
+grasp of iron--the whole land is a garden. The Hague, being the
+residence of the court, is much after the pattern of all continental
+capitals, with wide, white streets, white stuccoed houses of regular and
+beautiful appearance, and fine, large parks and pleasure-grounds filled
+with deer, and shaded by grand old elms as large as those in our own
+land, but lacking the long, sweeping branches. A mile from the city is
+"The House in the Wood," the private residence of the queen of the
+Netherlands. The wood is heavy and of funereal air, but the little
+palace is quite charming within, though upon the exterior only a plain
+brick country-house. The rooms are small, and hung with rice-paper, or
+embroidered white satin, with which also much of the furniture is
+covered. The bare floors are of polished wood, with a square of carpet
+in the centre, the border of which was worked by hand. "Please step over
+it," said the neat little old woman who was showing us through, which we
+accordingly did. There was a home-like air, very unpalatial, about it
+all,--as though the lady of the house might have been entertaining
+callers, or having a dress-maker in the next room. Delicate trinkets
+were scattered about--pretty, rare things worth a fortune, with any
+amount of old Dutch china in the cosy dining-room. In one of the rooms
+hung the portrait of a handsome young man,--just as there hang portraits
+of handsome young men in our houses. This was the eldest son of the
+queen,--heir to the throne,--who, rumor says, is still engaged in that
+agricultural pursuit so fascinating to young men--the sowing of wild
+oats. In the next room was a portrait of Queen Sophie herself--a
+delicate, queenly face--a face of character. The walls of the ball-room
+are entirely covered with paintings upon wood by Rubens and his pupils.
+"Speak low, if you please," said our little old woman; "the queen is in
+the next room, and she has a bad headache to-day." I am sure she had a
+dress-maker! As we stooped to examine a rug worked by the royal
+fingers, an attendant passed, bearing upon a silver salver the remains
+of her majesty's lunch.
+
+From the palace we drove back to town to visit two private collections
+of paintings. It seemed odd, if not impertinent, to walk through the
+drawing-rooms of strangers, criticise their pictures, and fee their
+servants. Upon the table, in one, were thrown down carelessly the bonnet
+and gloves of the lady of the house. I was tempted to carry them off.
+Only a vigorous early training, and the thought of a long line of pious
+ancestors, prevented. Here were pictures from most of the earlier and
+some of the later Dutch artists--Paul Potter's animals, Jan Steen's pots
+and pans, Vandervelde's quays and luggers, and green, foaming seas, and
+even a touch or two from the brush of the master of Dutch art. We
+stopped on our way back to the hotel, at a bazaar,--a place of
+beguilement, with long rooms full of everything beautiful in art,
+everything tempting to the eye,--and after dinner went out to one of the
+adjacent tea-gardens. It was filled with family parties drinking tea
+around little tables. The music was fine, though unexpected at times,
+as, for instance, when a trumpet blew a startling blast, and a little
+man in its range sprang from his seat as though blown out of his place.
+It was amusing and interesting to watch the stream of promenaders
+circling around the musicians' stand--broad, heavily-built men, long of
+body, short of limbs; women "square-rigged," of easy, good-natured
+countenance. I doubt if there was a nerve in the whole assembly.
+
+At noon the next day, we took the train for Amsterdam--another two
+hours' ride. The land began to undulate as we went towards the sea,
+with the shifting hillocks of sand raised by wind and wave. We passed
+Leyden, famous for its resistance to the Spaniards, as well as for
+having been the birthplace of Rembrandt and a score of lesser lights,
+and Haarlem, known for its great organ, and still the sand-hills rose
+one above the other, until they shut out everything beyond. It was only
+when we made a sharp turn, and struck out in a straight line for the
+city, that the Zuyder Zee opened before us, the curving line of land
+along its edge alive with windmills. We counted a hundred and twenty in
+sight at one time, and still did not exhaust them; so many skipped and
+whirled about, and refused to be counted. It hardly seems possible that
+the city of Amsterdam is built upon piles driven into the sand and mud.
+Certainly, when you have been jolted and shaken until your teeth
+chatter, for a long mile, in one of the hotel omnibuses from the station
+through the narrow streets and over the rough pavements, you will think
+there must be a tolerably firm foundation. Such a peaceful, sleepy,
+free-from-danger air, these slimy canals give to the cities! You forget
+that just beyond the dikes the mighty, restless sea lurks, and watches
+day and night for a chance to rush in and claim its own. The canals run
+in a succession of curves, one within the other, all through the city.
+Upon the quays are the dwellings and warehouses. In the narrow streets,
+crossing them by means of endless bridges, are the shops and dwellings
+of the lower classes. Looking down a street, no two houses present an
+unbroken line. They have all settled in their places until they nod, and
+leer, and wink at each other, in a decidedly sociable, intoxicated
+manner. The whole city, to a stranger, is a curious sight--the arched
+bridges over the interminable canals; the clumsy boats (for the canals
+are too shallow to admit anything but coasters and river boats); the
+antic and antiquated houses with high gables, rising in steps, to the
+street; the women of the lower classes, with yokes over their shoulders,
+and long-eared white caps on their heads, surmounted by naked straw
+bonnets of obsolete fashion and coal-scuttle shape, and out and from
+which, on either side, protruded all the wonderful tinkling ornaments of
+which the prophet speaks; the long quays and streets utterly bare of
+trees; the iron rods thrust out from the houses half way up their
+height, upon which all manner of garments, freshly washed, hang over the
+street to dry. Down in an open Place stands the dark, square palace,
+grand and grim, where Hortense played queen a little time while Louis
+Bonaparte was king of Holland. Near the palace is a national monument,
+for the Dutch, too, remember their brave. There are old and new churches
+also to be seen, but churches bare of everything which clothes
+cathedrals with beauty, having been stripped in the time of the
+reformation. I suppose one should rejoice; but we did miss the high
+altar, the old carved saints, and the pictures in the chapels.
+
+Some of the finest paintings of the Dutch school are in the national
+museum here; _genre_ pictures, many, if not most of them, but pleasant
+to look at, if not of the highest art; and we visited another collection
+of the same, left by a M. Van der Hoop. There are several other private
+collections thrown open to the public. But after all, the most charming
+picture was the Jews' quarter of the city. I know it was horribly
+filthy, and so crowded that we could hardly make our way; I know it was
+filled with squalor and rags, and great dark eyes, and breathed an odor
+by no means of sanctity. The dusky, luminous-eyed people seemed to move,
+and breathe, and hold a constant bazaar in the lane-like streets filled
+with everything known and unknown in merchandise, or leaning out from
+the windows of the tottering houses, their arms crossed over the sill,
+to dream away a lifetime. Still there was a fascination about it all, a
+suggestion of vagabondism, of Ishmaelitish wanderings, of having "here
+no continuing city," that touched the heart of a certain Methodist
+minister's daughter in our party.
+
+Sometimes the houses rise directly from the water, as did our hotel, the
+entrance being gained from another street in front. Our room was like a
+town hall, with mediæval bed furniture and sofa, high chest of drawers,
+and great round table that might have come in with the Dutch when they
+took Holland. The deep windows looked down upon a canal. Across from
+them, anchored to the quay as if for a lifetime, was one of the river
+boats. Early in the morning the wife of the skipper--a square woman,
+brown-faced, with faded, braided hair--ran out bareheaded into the town,
+coming back with her arms mysteriously full. Down into the cabin she
+disappeared, from whence directly came a sound of sputtering and frying,
+with a most savory odor. Up she would come again--frying pan in hand to
+corroborate her statement--to call her husband to breakfast. He was
+never ready to respond, never, though he was doing nothing to support
+his energetic family at the time, but coiling and uncoiling old ropes,
+or rubbing at invisible spots with a handful of rope-yarn. I know he
+only delayed to add to his own dignity and the importance of his final
+advent. Breakfast over, there followed such a commotion in the little
+world as I cannot describe--a shaking out of garments, a scraping out of
+plates, and throwing into the canal the refuse of the feast, a flying up
+with pots and pans for no object whatever but to clatter down again with
+the same, and all in the face and eyes of the town, with nevertheless
+the most absorbed and unconscious air imaginable. When it was over,
+somewhat what red in the face, but serene, the wife would appear upon
+the deck, to sit in the shadow of a sail and mend her husband's
+stockings, or put on a needed patch. We left the boat still fast to the
+quay; but I know that some day, when it was filled with scented oils,
+and rouge, and borax, and all the other things exported from the
+manufactories here, our skipper and his wife went sailing out of the
+canals and along the edge of the sea or up the Rhine, the stockings all
+mended, and the good woman not above giving a strong pull at the ropes.
+
+To drive about the streets of Amsterdam is slow torture, so rough are
+the pavings, so springless the carriages; but to roll along the smooth,
+wide roads in the suburbs is delightful. Upon one side is a canal,
+stagnant, lifeless, with a green weed growing upon its still surface,
+which often for a long distance entirely hides the water; beyond the
+canal are pleasant little gardens and a row of low, comfortable-looking
+wooden houses with green doors. Before each door is a narrow bridge--a
+neatly-painted plank with hand-rails--thrown over the canal, to be swung
+around or raised like a drawbridge at night, making every man's house a
+moated castle. We passed a fine zoölogical garden here upon the
+outskirts of the city, a garden of animals that ranks next to the famous
+one in London; but had no time to visit it, nor did we see any of the
+charitable institutions in which Amsterdam excels.
+
+"You know the pilgrim fathers?" said Emmie--whose family had preceded us
+by a day or two--the night after our arrival. "O, yes; had not our whole
+lives been straightened out after their maxims?" "Well, we've found the
+house where it is said they held meetings before they embarked for
+America. Wouldn't you like to see it?" Of course we would; in fact, it
+would be showing no more than proper respect to our forefathers. So six
+of us--women and girls--put ourselves under her guidance. We found a
+narrow, dirty street, the dwellers in which stared after us curiously.
+Between two old houses was an opening, hardly wide enough to be called
+an alley, hardly narrow enough to be looked upon as a gutter. Into this
+we crowded. "There; this is the house," said Emmie, laying her slight
+fingers upon the old stone wall before us. It was quite bare, and devoid
+of ornament or entrance, being evidently the back or side of a house.
+Down from the peak of the gable looked a solitary window. A rude
+balcony, holding a few plants, was below it, with freshly-washed clothes
+hanging from its rail. We rolled our eyes, experienced a shiver that may
+have been caused by awe or the damp chill of the spot, and came out to
+find the narrow street half filled with staring men and women crowding
+about the point of our disappearance, while from the upper end of the
+street, and even around the corner, others hastened to join the
+whispering, wondering crowd. How could we explain? It was utterly
+impossible; so we came quickly and quietly away; but whether this house
+had ever been a church, whether the pilgrim fathers ever saw it, or
+indeed whether there ever were any pilgrim fathers, are questions I
+cannot undertake to answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE RHINE AND RHENISH PRUSSIA.
+
+          First glimpse of the Rhine.--Cologne and the
+          Cathedral.--"Shosef in ter red coat."--St. Ursula
+          and the eleven thousand virgins.--Up the Rhine to
+          Bonn.--The German students.--Rolandseck.--A search
+          for a resting-place.--Our Dutch friend and his
+          Malays.--The story of Hildegund.--A quiet
+          Sabbath.--Our Dutch friend's
+          reply.--Coblentz.--The bridge of
+          boats.--Ehrenbreitstein, over the river.--A
+          scorching day upon the Rhine.--Romance under
+          difficulties.--Mayence.--Frankfort.--Heidelberg.--The
+          ruined castle.--Baden-Baden.--A glimpse at the
+          gambling.--The new, and the old "Schloss."--The
+          Black Forest.--Strasbourg.--The mountains.
+
+
+WE had made a sweep through Belgium and Holland, intending to return by
+way of the Rhine and Switzerland. Accordingly, in leaving Amsterdam, we
+struck across the country to Arnhem, where we found a pleasant hotel
+near the station, outside of the town. Here we spent the night in order
+to break the monotony of the ride to Cologne. After climbing stairs to
+gain our room, wide, but so perpendicular that we were really afraid to
+descend by them, we had, from a rickety, upper piazza, our first glimpse
+of the Rhine, winding through flat, green meadows, with hardly more than
+a suggestion of hills in the distance. There is nothing of interest to
+detain one at Arnhem. The guide-book informed us that it was the scene
+of Sir Philip Sidney's death; but no one in the hotel seemed ever to
+have heard of that gentle knight--_sans peur et sans reproche_.
+
+We reached Cologne at noon the next day. The road makes a _détour_
+through the plain, so that, for some time before gaining it, we could
+see the city nestling under the wings of the great cathedral. How can I
+tell you anything about it? If I say that it is five times the length of
+any church you know, and that the towers, when completed, are to be the
+same height as the length, will my words bring to you any conception of
+its size? If I say that it was partially built a couple of centuries
+before the discovery of America; that it was worked upon for three
+hundred years, and then suffered to remain untouched until recently;
+that the architect who planned it has been forgotten for centuries, so
+that the idea embodied in its form is like some beautiful old tradition,
+whose origin is unknown,--will this give you any idea of its age? The
+new part, seen from our hotel, was so white and beautiful, that, when we
+had passed around to the farther side, it was like waking from a sleep
+of a thousand years. The blackened, broken Gothic front told its own
+story of age and decay. Ah, the interminable dusky length of its
+interior, when we had crept within the doors! It was a very world in
+itself, full of voices, and echoes, and shadows of its own. We followed
+the guide over the rough stone floor, giving no heed to the tiresome
+details that fell in broken words and monotonous tones from his lips. I
+recall nothing now but the fact (!) that behind the choir lie buried,
+in all their magnificence, the Three Wise Men of the East. As we came
+down one of the shadowy aisles, we paused before a fine, old, stained
+window. Our guide immediately became prolix again. "Dis," he said,
+pointing to one of the figures upon the glass, "is Shosef, in ter red
+coat; and dis is Shon ter Baptised; and dis, ter Holy Ghos' in ter form
+off a duff."
+
+When the old woman at the door offered pictures of the cathedral, he
+assured us that they were quite correct, having been taken "from
+_nature_, _outzide_ and _inzide_."
+
+You must see the old Roman remains of towers and crumbling walls, sniff
+the vile odors of the streets, which have become proverbial, and be
+sprinkled with cologne--then your duty to the city is done. But almost
+everybody visits the Church of St. Ursula, which is lined with the
+skulls of that unfortunate young woman and her eleven thousand virgin
+followers.
+
+The story is, that she was an English princess, who lived--nobody knows
+at what remote period of antiquity. For some reason equally obscure, she
+started with her lover and eleven thousand maidens to make a pilgrimage
+to Rome. Fancy this lover undertaking a continental tour with eleven
+thousand and one young women under his care! Even modern travel presents
+no analogy to the case. "And they staid over night at my aunt's," droned
+the sleepy guide, who was telling the story. The girls looked at each
+other. "Good gracious! what unbounded hospitality!" whispered one. "At
+his _aunt's_!" exclaimed a second, somewhat puzzled by the anachronism.
+"Don't interrupt," said a third interested listener; "he means
+_Mayence_;" and he proceeded with the narrative. They accomplished their
+pilgrimage in safety; but, upon their return, were "fetched up py ter
+parparians," as the guide expressed it, which means, in English, that
+they were murdered, here at Cologne. If you doubt the story, behold the
+skulls! We turned suddenly upon the guide.
+
+"Do _you_ believe this?"
+
+"I mus; sinz I tells it to you," was his enigmatical reply, dropping his
+eyes.
+
+The scenery along the Rhine from Cologne, for twenty miles, is
+uninteresting; just now, too, the weather was uncomfortably hot, and we
+were glad to leave the steamer for a few hours at Bonn. Upon the balcony
+of a hotel, looking out upon the river, we found a score of young men in
+bright-colored caps--students from the university here. When dinner was
+announced, they crowded in and filled the table, at which the ladies of
+our party were the only ones present. Such a noisy, loud-talking set as
+they were! When each one had dined, he coolly leaned back in his chair,
+and lighted his pipe! Before we had finished our almonds and raisins the
+room was quite beclouded. Then they adjourned with pipe and wine-glass
+to the balcony again, where we left them when we went out to see the
+town.
+
+The university was formerly a palace, the guide-book had told us; but
+all our childish conceptions of palaces had been rudely destroyed before
+now, so that we were not surprised to find it without any especial
+beauty of architecture--only a pile of brown stone, three quarters of a
+mile long. I think we had left all the students drinking wine upon the
+balcony, for we saw none here,--though we went through the library,
+museum, and various halls,--except one party outside, who stared
+unblushingly at the girls remaining in the carriage.
+
+Somewhere in the town we found a lovely old minster, through the aisles
+of which we wandered for a while, happy in having no guide and knowing
+nothing whatever about it. Outside, in a little park, was a statue of
+Beethoven, and in a quiet street near the water the musical girls of our
+party found the house where he was born. In the cool of the day we took
+another steamer, and went on towards the beckoning hills, at nightfall
+reaching Rolandseck. There was no town in sight, only a pier and three
+quiet hotels upon the bank, with a narrow road between their gardens and
+the water. We chose the one farthest away, and were rowed down to it,
+dabbling our hands in the water, and saying over and over again, "It is
+the _Rhine_!"
+
+But the hotel was full; so we filled our arms with luggage, and walked
+back, up the dusty road to the second. A complacent waiter stood in the
+doorway, with nothing of that hungry, eager air about him which betokens
+an empty house; cool, comfortable-looking tourists, in enviable, fresh
+toilets, stared at us from the windows; a pretty German girl upon the
+balcony overhead was sketching the river and the Seven Mountains just
+below, uttering little womanly exclamations at times, ending in "_ach_"
+and "_ich_." After some delay, four single rooms were offered us; our
+party numbered twelve; we left a portion of our company here; the others
+went on--to the pier where we had landed, in fact, and with all meekness
+and humility sued for accommodations of the little hotel here, which we
+had at first looked upon with disdain. Fortunately, we were not refused.
+
+When we came down the next morning, the sole occupant of the piazza
+opening upon the garden--where our breakfast was spread--was a stout,
+red-faced gentleman of general sleek appearance, who smiled a courteous
+"good morning." He proved to be a Dutchman from Rotterdam, who had in
+charge a couple of Malay youths sent to Holland to be
+educated--bright-faced boys, with straight, blue-black hair, olive
+complexions, and eyes like velvet. They were below us, walking in the
+garden now.
+
+"We have but just come from Holland," we said, after some conversation;
+and, with a desire to be sociable, added that it was a very charming,
+garden-like _little_ (!) country. (O dreadful American spirit!)
+
+He smiled, showing his gums above his short teeth, and with a kind of
+enraged humility replied,--
+
+"It is nothing."
+
+"It is indeed wonderful," we went on, trying to improve upon our former
+attempt, and quoting a sentiment from the guide-book, "how your people
+have rescued the land from the clutch of the sea!"
+
+But his only reply was the same smile, and the "Yes?" so fatal to
+sentiment.
+
+"We visited your queen's 'House in the Wood,'" we ventured, presently.
+"Is it true that the domestic relations of the royal family are so
+unhappy?"
+
+"O, the king and the queen are most happy," he replied. "You may always
+be sure that when _he_ is in town _she_ will be in the country."
+
+This was a phase of domestic bliss so new to us that we were fain to
+consider it for a moment. Various other attempts we made at gaining
+information, with equally questionable success. Our Dutch acquaintance,
+though disposed to conversation, avoided the topic of his own country.
+Still he sought our society persistently, asking at dinner that his
+plate might be laid at the same table. Our vanity was considerably
+flattered, until he chanced to remark that he embraced every opportunity
+of conversing with English and American travellers, _it did so improve
+his English_. From that time we found him tiresome. Think of being used
+as an exercise-book!
+
+It is here at Rolandseck that the romance of the Rhine, as well as its
+world-renowned scenery, commences. Across the river is the
+Drachenfels--the crag upon which the remains of a castle may still be
+seen, where, "in the most ancient time," dwelt Hildegund, a maiden
+beautiful as those of all stories, and beloved by Roland, a nephew of
+Charlemagne. When he went away to the wars, she waited and watched at
+home--as other maidens have done; but alas! instead of her lover, came
+after a time only the news of his death. Then Hildegund laid aside her
+gay attire and happy heart, with her hopes, and leaving her father's
+castle, came down to bury her young life in the nunnery upon the island
+at its foot. But the rumor was false; and in time Roland returned, only
+to find himself too late, for Hildegund was bound by vows which could
+not be broken. Then, upon the rock called now Rolandseck, the unhappy
+lover built a castle opposite the Drachenfels and overlooking the
+Island of Nonnenworth. Here he could watch the nuns as they walked in
+the convent garden, and perhaps among them distinguish the form of
+Hildegund.
+
+On our way down from the arch, which, with a few crumbling stones is all
+that remains now of Roland's castle, we passed through one of the
+vineyards for which the banks of this river are so noted. Do you imagine
+them to be picturesque? They are almost ugly. The vines are planted in
+regular order and pruned closely. They are not suffered to grow above
+three feet in height, and each one is fastened to a stout stake until
+the wood itself becomes self-supporting.
+
+We spent a quiet Sabbath at Rolandseck. There was no church, no church
+service at either of the hotels. We rested and wrote letters, sitting in
+the grape arbors of the garden; only a low hedge and narrow, grass-grown
+road between us and the river. Down below, the rocks and the island shut
+out the world; across, the hills rose to the sky, their slopes covered
+with yellow grain, or dotted with red-roofed farm-houses, while tiny
+villages had curled up and gone to sleep at their feet. It was
+impossible to write. The breeze that rippled the yellow water blew away
+our paper and our thoughts; and when the steamer, puffing, and evidently
+breathless from stemming the current, touched at the little pier, we
+left everything and ran out to see the passengers disembark. A band
+played at the railroad station just above our hotel, and the park
+attached to it swarmed with excursionists during the afternoon. At dusk,
+when they had all gone, we wandered up the magnificent road which
+follows the course of the river; built originally by the Romans, and
+said to extend for a long distance--five hundred miles or more--into
+Germany, returning with our hands full of wild flowers. When we went on
+board the steamer, Monday morning, we were closely followed by our Dutch
+friend and his Malays. They strolled off by themselves, as they seemed
+always to do; he joined our group under the awning spread over the deck.
+An English tourist seized upon him immediately, and when he had
+disclosed his nationality, proceeded with a glance towards us, to quiz
+him upon Dutch ways.
+
+"Now, really," said the tourist, tilting back against the rail in his
+camp chair, "how dreadful it must be to live in a country where there
+are no mountains! nothing but a stretch of flat land, you know. I fancy
+it would be unendurable."
+
+"Yes?" was the Dutchman's sole response.
+
+"You still keep up your peculiar customs, I observe from Murray," the
+Englishman went on, loftily. "Your women carry the same old foot-stoves
+to church, I fancy. They hang up, you know, in every house."
+
+"Ah!" and the Dutchman only smiled that same incomprehensible smile that
+had so puzzled us.
+
+"And you smoke constantly," continued the inquisitor, growing dogmatic;
+"a pipe is seldom out of your mouths. Really, you are a nation of
+perpetual smokers."
+
+"Yes," assented the Dutchman; "but then--" and here his eyes, and indeed
+his whole round, rosy face twinkled with irresistible humor, "_you know
+we have no mountains_."
+
+A shout went up from the listeners, and our English acquaintance became
+at once intensely interested in the scenery.
+
+[Illustration: "At the word of command they struck the most
+extraordinary attitudes." Page 157.]
+
+The sail of half an hour to Coblentz was a continual delight. The rocky
+mountains rose abruptly from the water, terraced to their peaks with
+vineyards, or stood back to give place to modest towns and villages that
+dipped their skirts in the stream. At their wharves we touched for a
+moment, to make an exchange of passengers or baggage. Often from the
+lesser villages a boat shot out, the oars held by a brown-armed maiden,
+who boarded us to take, perhaps, a single box or bale, or, it might be,
+some bearded tourist with sketch-book under his arm. The passengers
+walked the deck, or gathered in groups to eat ices and drink the wines
+made from the grapes grown in these vineyards, with the pictured maps of
+the river spread out upon their laps, and the ubiquitous Murray in their
+hands.
+
+As we neared Coblentz the villages increased as the hills vanished. Each
+had its point of interest, or monkish legend--the palace of a duke, a
+bit of crumbling Roman wall rising from the water--something to invest
+it with a charm. One--Neuwied--is noted for holding harmoniously within
+its limits, Jews, Moravians, Anabaptists, and Catholics. The Millennium
+will doubtless begin at Neuwied.
+
+At Coblentz we remained a day, in order to visit the fortress of
+Ehrenbreitstein. From our windows at the hotel we could look directly
+across to this grim giant of rock, as well as down upon the bridge of
+boats which crosses the Rhine here. It was endless amusement to watch
+the approach of the steamers, when, as if impelled by invisible boatmen,
+a part of the bridge would swing slowly round to make an opening,
+while the crowd of soldiers, market-women, and towns-people, waiting
+impatiently, furnished a constant and interesting study.
+
+An hour or two after noon we too crossed the bridge in an open carriage,
+nearly overcome by the stifling heat, and after passing through the
+village of Ehrenbreitstein, ascended the winding road--a steep ascent,
+leading under great arches of solid masonry, through massive gateways,
+and shut in by the rock which forms the fortress. At various points,
+guards of Prussian soldiers, as immovable as the stone under their feet,
+were stationed. Suddenly in the gloomy silence, as we toiled slowly up,
+echoed a sharp tramp, tramp, and a line of soldiers filed by in grim
+silence, each one with a couple of loaves of bread slung by a cord over
+his shoulder. In a moment another line followed with a quantity of iron
+bedsteads, each borne solemnly upon the shoulders of four men. The
+guards accompanying them were armed, and wore queer, shining helmets.
+Still another company came swinging down to meet us, with fixed,
+imperturbable countenances, each bearing a towel in one hand, with
+military precision. They were on their way to the bathing-house upon the
+bridge.
+
+Scattered about upon the broad esplanade at the summit, or rather
+arranged in lines upon the breezy, grass-grown space, were squads of
+recruits being drilled. At the word of command they struck the most
+extraordinary attitudes. Taking a tremendous stride, they endeavored to
+poise themselves on one foot, while they threw the other leg straight
+out behind into the air. Being of all sizes, forms, and degrees of
+grace in movement, the effect, to say the least, was surprising;
+especially as the most intense silence and seriousness prevailed. A
+second stride and fling followed, then a third, when a pert young
+officer, of the bantam species, seized a gun, and strutting to the
+front, proceeded to illustrate the idea more perfectly. At this point
+our gravity gave way.
+
+A young sergeant, with a stupid but good-natured face, attached himself
+to us in the capacity of guide. He could speak nothing but German, of
+which not one of us understood a word. We followed him from point to
+point, politely attending to all his elaborate explanations, and were
+surprised to find how many ideas we had finally gained by means of the
+patient and painful pantomimic accompaniment to his words.
+
+The view from the summit is wonderfully extensive. All the kingdoms of
+the earth and the glory of them seemed spread out at our feet; and our
+fat little guide grew fairly red in the face in his efforts to make us
+comprehend the names of the various points of interest.
+
+When we returned to the carriage the animated jumping-Jacks were still
+engaged in their remarkable evolutions; and as we came down we had a
+last glimpse of our Dutch friend and his Malays, who were making the
+ascent on foot.
+
+The next day, though passed upon the beautiful river, was a day of
+torment. The stream narrowed; the frowning rocks closed in upon us,
+shutting out every breath of air; the sun beat down upon the water and
+the low awning over our heads with fiery fury; in a moment of idiocy we
+answered the call to _table d'hôte_, which was served upon deck with a
+refinement of imbecility just as the climax of the striking scenery
+approached. For one mortal hour we were wedged in at that table, peering
+between heads and under the awning which cut off every peak, making
+frantic attempts to turn in our places, as parties across the table
+exclaimed over the scenery behind us, and consoling ourselves with
+reading up the legends in the guide-book held open by the rim of our
+soup-plates,--of the Seven Sisters, for instance, who were turned into
+seven stones which stand in the stream to this day, because they refused
+to smile upon their lovers (fortunately for navigation, maidens in these
+days are less obdurate); of the bishop who shut his starving peasants
+into his barn and set fire to it, though his granaries were full, and
+who, in poetic justice, was afterwards devoured by rats; of the Lurlei
+siren, who lured men to destruction, and became historical from the
+individuality of the case; of various maidens bereft of lovers by cruel
+fathers, and of various lovers bereft of maidens by cruel fate, &c.,
+while storied ruins crowned the crags on every hand, always half hidden
+under a weight of ivy, and often indistinguishable from the rock on
+which they seemed to have grown.
+
+At Bingen, which is not especially "fair" from the river, the precipices
+drop away, the stream spreads out in nearly twice its former width, and
+is dotted with islands. At Mayence you may leave the steamer; the
+beauties of the Rhine are passed.
+
+From Mayence we made an excursion to Wiesbaden; then on to
+Frankfort-on-the-Maine, to rest only a few hours, _doing_ the city
+hastily and imperfectly; and finally reached Heidelberg at night, in
+time for _table d'hôte_. A talkative young Irishman sat beside us at the
+table, who spoke five or six languages "with different degrees of
+badness," he informed us; had travelled half the world over, but held in
+reserve the pleasure of visiting America.
+
+"I have a friend there," he added, "though he is in _South_ America."
+
+"Ah?"
+
+"Yes; at _Mobile_," he replied. "He held some office under government
+for a number of years, but during your recent war--for some reason which
+I do not understand--he seems to have lost it."
+
+It did not seem so inexplicable to us.
+
+Our conception of Heidelberg had been most imperfect. We knew simply
+that it held a university and a ruin. The former did not especially
+attract us, and we were sated with ruins. So, when we took possession of
+our lovely room,--a charming _salon_, converted temporarily into a
+bedroom,--it was with a kind of listless indifference that we stepped
+out upon the balcony before the window. And, behold! down below, an old,
+paved square, walled in by delightfully dingy old houses; a stone
+fountain; a string of waiting landaus (for Landau itself is near by),
+with scarlet linings to their tops--giving a bit of color to the
+picture; a party of German students crossing the square, wearing the
+caps of different colors to betoken different societies or clubs, and
+almost every one with a scarred cheek or suggestive patch upon his nose;
+and, lastly, on the right hand, and so precipitous as almost to overhang
+the square, a hill crowned with the castle, grand, though in ruins,
+which nature vainly tries to conceal. There are ruins, and ruins.
+Except the Alhambra, in Spain, none in the world equal these.
+
+What this castle must have been in the days of its glory, when it was
+the residence of a court, we could only faintly imagine. It is of red
+sandstone, and was a succession of palaces, built to enclose a square,
+or great court-yard, each of entirely different architecture and design,
+the _façade_ of one being covered with statues, another having pointed
+gables, &c.; all having been erected at periods fifty or a hundred years
+remote from each other. At each corner were watch-towers to apprise of
+coming foes. You may still ascend the winding stairs of one, though the
+steps have been hollowed into bowls by dripping rain and mounting feet.
+Between these towers, upon one side, and on the verge of the hill, still
+remains the grand stone terrace,--where a hundred couples might
+promenade in solitude on moonlight evenings,--with summer-houses at each
+end; and beautiful gardens are still connected with the ruins. For all
+these palaces are in ruins. A few habitable rooms only remain among them
+all. Several sieges, and partial demolition at times, the castle
+suffered, and at last, a hundred years ago, lightning completed the
+work, since which time no efforts at restoration have been made.
+
+The whole is overgrown with ivy, and embowered in shrubbery. Great trees
+spread their branches in the midst of the walls that still remain
+standing, and crumbling earth and drifting dust have filled many parts,
+even up to the broken window ledges of the second story. Across the
+broad stone steps leading to one of these palaces, tangled vines
+disputed right of way, and a neglected cherry-tree had scattered with
+wanton hand its over-ripe fruitage. Thrust through a casement was an ivy
+that might have vied with many of the trees around in the size of its
+trunk, and no artistic hand could have trailed its creepers with the
+grace Nature alone had displayed.
+
+There was a grand banqueting-hall, with the blue heavens for a ceiling
+overhead. There was a drawing-room, the floor long since crumbled away,
+and only the broken walls remaining. Standing upon the loose earth, you
+may see the blackened fireplace far above your head, before which fair
+faces grew rosy centuries ago, and where white hands were outspread that
+have been dust and mould for ages. There was-- But words cannot describe
+it, though I should speak of the winding ways like a labyrinth beneath
+it all; of the queer paved court-yard, from whence the knights sallied
+out in the olden time; of the great tower, split in twain by an
+explosion during the last siege; of the wine-cellars and the "Great
+Tun," upon which the servants of the castle danced when the vintage was
+gathered. In all attempts at word-painting there remains something that
+defies description, that will not be portrayed by language. And, alas!
+in that the charm lies.
+
+We turned away from it with regret. One might linger here for days; but
+we had little time for dreaming.
+
+The road from Heidelberg to Baden-Baden led through a charming country:
+indeed, we ceased to exclaim after a time over the cultivation of the
+land. So far as we saw it, the whole of Europe was a market-garden,
+with prize meadows interspersed. Not a foot of neglected or
+carelessly-tilled ground did we see anywhere.
+
+We chanced to spend the Sabbath in this most un-Sabbath-like city of
+Baden-Baden. But so far as we knew to the contrary, it might have been a
+Puritan village. There was a little English chapel out in the fields
+beyond the city, where morning service was held, and our windows,
+overlooking a quiet square, told nothing of the gayeties of the town. It
+is an interesting old city in itself, built upon a side hill, full of
+unexpected stone steps leading from one street to another, and by and
+crooked ways, that were my especial delight. It being just now "the
+season," the town was full of visitors. The hot springs are of course
+the nominal attraction; the shops, parks, and new parts of the city,
+fine; but, after all, the interest centres at the Kursaal, or
+Conversation-haus. It is a great white structure, with a colonnade where
+it fronts an open square, and contains reading-rooms, _cafés_, a grand
+ball-room, and the gambling _salons_. Government has at length
+interfered, and these last, hired by companies paying a certain sum for
+the privilege of beguiling and beggaring visitors, were to be closed now
+in two years, I think, or less. In front of the Kursaal a band plays
+every afternoon; the colonnade and square are thronged with people
+promenading or occupying the chairs placed there, eating ices, drinking
+wine, and enjoying the fine music, but all perfectly quiet in manner and
+plain of dress. No one was gaudily or even strikingly attired. The
+Hanoverian women were the most marked for their queer head-dresses,
+consisting of an enormous bow and ends of wide, black ribbon perched
+upon their crowns, and giving their heads a peculiar, bat-like
+appearance. And in this connection I might say that national
+peculiarities in dress are seldom met with in the ordinary course of
+continental travel. They still exist to some extent among the lower
+classes, and are often assumed and perpetuated to attract the attention
+of travellers; but ordinarily you will find people whom you meet
+anywhere and everywhere to be costumed much alike. Paris fashions, with
+modifications (and in America with _intensifications_), have prevailed
+universally, until there are few outward dissimilarities to be observed
+among the people of different nationalities. Nothing strikes the
+attention of the traveller more than this universal homogeneousness; and
+not in dress alone. In Bruges, under the shadow of the belfry tower,
+little girls trot off to school in water-proofs, just as they do at home
+with us; and at the entrance to Stirling Castle, we passed a sturdy
+little boy with his hands in his pockets, whistling, "Not for Jo,"
+exactly like other sturdy little boys we know at home.
+
+But to return to Baden-Baden.
+
+We almost fancied a sulphurous odor hung about the gambling _salons_.
+Not a footfall echoed upon the softly-carpeted floors as we entered. The
+most breathless silence hung over everything. In the centre, a crowd,
+three in depth at least, surrounded and hid the table covered with green
+cloth, before which sat the _croupier_, with a kind of little rake in
+his hand. In our eyes he was the incarnation of evil, though to
+unprejudiced vision he would appear simply a well-dressed--not
+flashily-arrayed--gentleman, of a rather intellectual countenance, who
+might have passed upon the street as a lawyer in good practice, or
+possibly a doctor somewhat overworked.
+
+One after another of the bystanders covered the figures stamped upon the
+table with gold or silver. The ball in the centre, spinning in its
+circle, fell into a pocket with a "click." The _croupier_ called the
+winning number I think (though confessing that the game is a hidden
+mystery). That quick, sharp utterance was the only sound breaking the
+silence. At the same time, with wonderful dexterity, he raked the money
+into a pile, and pushed it towards the winner, or, more frequently,
+added it to the pile before himself.
+
+I looked in vain for any exhibition of excitement or anxiety among the
+players sitting or standing around the table. All were serious, silent;
+some few absorbed. Both sexes were equally represented, and old as well
+as young. Beside us was standing a woman with a worn, though still fine
+face, unobtrusive in dress and manner; a traveller and spectator, I
+judged, like ourselves. It was something of a surprise, not to say a
+shock, to see her suddenly stretch out her hand, and lay down a handful
+of gold pieces, selecting the numbers with an air that proved her to be
+no novice. "Click," fell the ball. The _croupier_, with a sweep of the
+rake, gathered up her Napoleons. The bank had won. Again she laid down
+her gold, placing each piece with thoughtful deliberation. Again they
+were swept away; and even the third time. She made no exclamation. She
+did not so much as raise her eyes from the table as she prepared to make
+a fourth attempt. There was no change in her face, except a certain
+fixedness which came over it, and a faint tinge of color rising in her
+cheeks.
+
+We breathed more freely when we had gained the open air. I am sure there
+was an odor of sulphur about the place.
+
+The scenery around Baden-Baden is striking and wild. Gloomy valleys
+abound, and dark forests cover many of the hills. We took a kind of
+wagonet one morning, and climbed the mountain behind the city, passing
+what is known as the "New Schloss," or castle, before leaving its
+limits. It is anything but _new_, however, having been erected some four
+or five hundred years. Its horrible dungeons, where all manner of
+torments were inflicted, and tortures suffered by the unfortunate
+wretches incarcerated here, attract scores of visitors. We went on, by
+the zigzag road up the mountain, to the Old Schloss upon its summit.
+This was the residence of the reigning family of Baden before the
+erection of the New Schloss. Hardly anything remains of it now but the
+walls of a square tower, from the battlements of which, by mounting to
+an encircling gallery, you may obtain a view well worth the effort. As
+far as the eye can see in one direction, extends the Black Forest--the
+very name of which brings to mind elfish legends innumerable. But,
+though our way led along its edge, so that we were shut in by the chill
+and gloom of the evergreens which give it its name, we saw neither elves
+nor gnomes, nor the traditional "wood-cutter, named Hans, who lived upon
+the borders of the Black Forest," about whom we used to read when we
+were children.
+
+From Baden-Baden we took the railroad, following the course of the
+Rhine to Strasbourg, spending only a night here, in order to visit the
+beautiful cathedral; then on to Lucerne, waiting an hour or two to break
+the long day's ride, at Basle. Here the mountains began to grow before
+our eyes. We shot through tunnel after tunnel, cut in the solid rock,
+and suddenly sweeping around a curve, the everlasting hills wrapped in
+perpetual snows, greeted our astonished sight. We had reached the Mecca
+of our hopes at last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.
+
+          The Lake of Lucerne.--Days of rest in the
+          city.--An excursion up the Righi.--The crowd at
+          the summit.--Dinner at midnight.--Rising before
+          "the early worm."--The "sun-rise" according to
+          Murray.--Animated scarecrows.--Off for a tour
+          through Switzerland.--The lake for the last
+          time.--Grütlii.--William Tell's
+          chapel.--Fluellen.--Altorf.--Swiss haymakers.--An
+          hour at Amsteg.--The rocks close in.--The Devil's
+          Bridge.--The dangerous road.--"A carriage has gone
+          over the precipice!"--Andermatt.--Desolate
+          rocks.--Exquisite wild flowers.--The summit of the
+          Furka.--A descent to the Rhone glacier.--Into the
+          ice.--Swiss villages.--Brieg.--The convent
+          inn.--The bare little chapel on the hill.--To
+          Martigny.
+
+
+WHEN we forget the scene before our dazzled eyes as we stepped out upon
+the balcony of the hotel Bellevue at Lucerne, earth will have passed
+away. There lay the fair lake, the emerald hills rising from its blue
+depths on every side, save where the queer old town sweeps around its
+curve, or beyond Pilatus, where the chain is broken, and a strip of
+level land lies along the water's edge, sprinkled with red-roofed
+farm-houses set in the midst of grain-fields, and with rows of tall,
+straight poplars extending to the water. This sight of peaceful homes
+among the heavenly hills is like a vision of earth in mid-heaven.
+Beyond, above, overlapping each other, rise these delectable hills. No
+earthly air envelops them. No earthly feet tread their fair summits.
+Upon the highest, among the eternal snows, rest the clouds. Truly, the
+heavens declare the glory of God; but Switzerland showeth his handiwork!
+
+Beautiful was the lake in the hazy morning light, when the hills cast
+purple and green shadows over its bosom, when the breeze rippled its
+surface, and the path in the wake of the little steamer widened into an
+endless way; beautiful in the glare of the noonday sun, when a veil of
+mist half hid the far-off mountains, and the water gleamed like molten
+gold; but most beautiful of all when the mountains wrapped themselves in
+the shadows of night, and stole away into the darkness, while upon their
+white, still faces shone the rays of the setting sun. Then grim Pilatus
+stepped forth; the moon, like a burnished globe, hung over the water,
+across which the little steamer ploughed silver furrows, or tiny boats,
+impelled by flashing oars, shot over the still surface, now near, now
+far away; but dim, unreal, always.
+
+It was a place of rest to us--this city of Lucerne; the "House
+Beautiful," where we tarried for a time before setting out again upon
+our pilgrimage. We wandered about the narrow streets, visited the dingy
+shops full of wood carvings or ornaments cut in the many-hued crystals;
+strayed over the low hills behind the town, through fields set with
+painted shrines; paused before Thorwaldsen's Dying Lion, cut in the
+living rock--the grandest monument that heroes ever won; and once, in
+the stillness of a summer morning, sat in the cathedral and heard the
+angels sing, when the old organist laid his hands upon the keys. Sabbath
+mornings we sang the old versified psalms, and listened to the
+exposition of a rigid faith from the lips of a Scotch Presbyterian
+minister, in an old Roman Catholic church--the walls hung with pictured
+saints and martyrs, the high altar only partially concealed, and a
+company of women kneeling by the door to tell their beads. Not only
+rest, but Christian charity, had we found here.
+
+Almost every one who spends any time at Lucerne ascends the Righi to see
+the sun rise. Accordingly, five of our number prepared to follow the
+universal custom. In one of the little shops of the town we found some
+light, straw hats, with wide rims, for which we gave the extravagant
+price of three cents apiece, trimming them afterwards to suit individual
+taste, with ribbons, soft white lawn, and even mountain ferns and
+grasses. We slung our wraps over our shoulders by a strap,--a most
+uncomfortable arrangement by the way,--discarded crinoline, brought into
+use the shabbiest gowns in our possession, packed hand-satchels with
+whatever was necessary for a night upon the mountain, and then declared
+ourselves ready for any disclosures of the future or the Righi.
+
+A little steamer bore us from Lucerne to Weggis--a half hour's sail. We
+found Weggis to be only an insignificant village, almost pushed into the
+lake by the crowding mountain, and seeming to contain nothing but guides
+and shabby horses. As we left the steamer, the open space between the
+pier and the hotel facing it was crowded with tourists, waiting for or
+bargaining with the guides for these sorry-looking beasts. No matter of
+what age, sex, or condition in life you may be, if you visit
+Switzerland, you will make, at least one, equestrian attempt; but in
+truth, there is nothing to fear for even the most inexperienced, as a
+guide usually leads each horse. The saddles for the use of ladies are
+provided with a rail upon one side, and the nature of the paths are
+such, that it would be impossible to go beyond a walk. The only danger
+is from over-fatigue in descending the rocky, slippery way, often like
+flights of stairs; then, exhausted from trying to hold back in the
+saddle, dizzy from gazing into frightful depths, one might easily become
+unseated.
+
+When our guides were secured, one dejected beast after another was led
+to the wooden steps, always provided for mounting and dismounting; we
+climbed to our several elevations with some inward quaking, fell into
+line,--for single file is the invariable rule,--and passed out of the
+village by immediately beginning the ascent, describing, in our saddles
+every known curve and angle, as the path became more and more rough and
+precipitous. For guides we had a man with a rakish air, and--we judged
+from his gait--a wooden leg, who tragically wrung the perspiration from
+his red flannel shirt at intervals; a boy, with one of those open
+countenances only saved from complete lateral division by the merciful
+interposition of the ears, and a wizen-faced old man of so feeble an
+appearance as to excite my constant sympathy, since his place chanced to
+be by my side. He assured me continually that he was not tired, though
+before half of the three hours of the ascent had passed, his pale face
+belied his words. He was quite ready to converse, but I could with
+difficulty understand his English. We had paused at a wayside shed to
+rest the horses, and offer some refreshment to the guides, when I
+addressed him with,--
+
+"What is that you are drinking? Is it goat's milk?"
+
+"Noo, leddy," was his reply. "It is coo's;" at the same time, and with
+the utmost simplicity and good will, offering me the glass from which he
+had been drinking, that I might taste and judge for myself.
+
+It is nearly nine miles to the summit, or Righi-Kulm. The bridle-path is
+rocky, rough, and steep, with a grassy slope upon either side, sprinkled
+at this season with dandelions, blue-bells, and odd yellow butter-cups.
+Often this slope changed to a precipice, still smiling with flowers.
+Upon every level spot orchards of pear trees and apricots had been
+planted, while evergreens and shrubs innumerable clung to the mountain
+sides, or sprang from among the rocks.
+
+Tossed about wherever they could find a resting-place, were great
+boulders of pudding-stone, overhanging the path, rising in our way, or
+rolling in broken masses under the horses' feet. Sometimes, perched upon
+a natural terrace, was a _châlet_, sheltered from sweep of wind or
+avalanche by overhanging rocks half covered with ivy and dainty
+clematis. Occasionally a beggar barred the way with outstretched hand,
+or offered for sale some worthless trinket, as an excuse for asking
+alms. We hugged the rocks upon one side, as other lines of tourists
+wound down to meet us, upon horseback or afoot with alpenstocks to aid
+their steps. Peasants, laden like beasts of burden, passed as we paused
+to rest, with trunks, provisions, and even the red tiles for the new
+hotel above, strapped upon their backs, or resting there on wooden
+frames. They came and went; but ever present were the wonderful glimpses
+of earth, and sky, and shimmering lake far down below.
+
+At the half-way house we turn to climb a gentle slope upon the mountain
+face. On either side the land spreads out smooth and green. It had been
+hot below. The air strikes us here with an icy chill. A party of young
+Englishmen in knickerbockers, with blue veils tied about their hats,
+lean over the railing of the piazza, and scan us as we pass. A Spaniard,
+with his dark-faced wife, step out of the path--all manner of oily words
+dropping from their lips. We reach the Righi-Staffel. Suddenly, upon one
+side, the land falls away. Among the reverberating hills echoes the
+_jödel_, and from a terrace far below, where a herd of dun cows are
+feeding, rises the tinkle of sweet-toned bells. From every path--and
+there are many now--winds a slow procession. The grassy slopes are all
+alive with people; the hotel piazza, as we pass, is crowded with
+travellers. Still they pour in from every side. Still the mountain-peak
+rises above us as we go on joining other trains, and leading others in
+turn. We pass through a rough gateway, ascend the broken rocks that rise
+like steps, follow again the narrow path, and reach at last the hotel,
+just before which rises the Kulm.
+
+Talk of the solitude of nature! It is not found among these mountain
+peaks, grand though they are. We dismounted in the midst of a noisy
+crowd. Exclamations in seemingly every known tongue echoed about us, as
+one party after another arrived to swell the confusion. The hill before
+us swarmed with tourists, who had come, like ourselves, to see the sun
+rise. The hotel, and even the adjoining house into which the former
+overflows, were more than full. Since we had taken the precaution to
+telegraph,--for telegraphic communication is held with most of these
+mountain resorts,--some show of civility awaited us. A single room was
+given to the four ladies of our party, where, a few hours later, we
+disposed ourselves as best we could. It was only a rough place, with
+bare plastered walls, and unpainted wooden floor; but we were not
+disposed to be fastidious. Dropping our satchels, we hastened up the
+hill before the house. It fell in a precipice upon the other side--to
+what frightful depth I know not. Down below, the hills spread out like
+level land, with lakes where every valley should be, and villages, like
+white dots only, upon the universal green, among which the River Reuss
+wound like a silver thread. But above and over all, against the sky,
+rose the mountains--the Bernese Alps, like alabaster walls, the gates of
+which, flung back, would open heavenward.
+
+We wandered over the hillocks, which make up the summit, until the sun
+was gone. Gradually the darkness gathered--a thickening of the shadows
+until they seemed almost tangible. There was no flame of gold and
+crimson where the sun had disappeared; there were no clouds to reflect
+the warm yellow light that hung about the west. But when the night
+wrapped us in, the little lakes down below gleamed out like stars.
+
+The crowd that pushed and fairly wedged itself into the _salle à
+manger_, when dinner was announced at eight o'clock, was quite beyond
+belief or computation. Everybody was tired, hungry, and impatient, after
+the ride to the summit. For once, silver was at a discount. One of the
+waiters was finally bribed to give us a private room, and slyly edged
+our party into a pantry, where he brought us, at immense intervals, a
+spoonful of soup and a hot plate apiece, after which, his resources
+utterly failing, he acknowledged that he could do no more. The second
+_table d'hôte_ was served between the hours of ten and eleven at night,
+and consisted of numerous courses, with a similarity of flavor,
+suggesting one universal saucepan.
+
+It was midnight when we finally gained our rooms, and threw ourselves
+upon the uncomfortable beds. The linen was wet, rather than damp. The
+only covering consisted of a single blanket, and the _duvet_ or down
+pillow, always found upon the foot of continental beds.
+
+We imagined that the sun would appear with the very earliest known worm,
+and at least an hour before the most ambitious lark, and dared not close
+our eyes, lest they should not open in time to greet him. At last,
+however, sleep overpowered our fears. Katie's voice roused us.
+
+"It is three o'clock," she said, "and growing light, and I believe
+people are hurrying up the hill."
+
+Profane persons should avoid the Righi; it is a place of terrible
+temptation. "Good heavens!" we responded, "what kind of a sun can it be
+to rise at such an hour?"
+
+[Illustration: "Frowsy, sleepy, cross, and caring nothing whatever for
+the sun, moon, or stars, we stood like a company of Bedlamites, ankle
+deep in the wet grass upon the summit." Page 176.]
+
+Our room was upon the ground floor. We pushed open the shutters and
+peered out, facing an untimely Gabriel, just raising to his lips an
+Alpine horn some six feet in length. Evidently the hour had arrived. We
+thrust our feet into our boots, tied our hats under our chins, and ran
+out to join a most ridiculous collection of animated scarecrows like
+ourselves. Frowsy, sleepy, cross, and caring nothing whatever for the
+sun, moon, or stars, we stood like a company of Bedlamites, ankle deep
+in the wet grass upon the summit. No sun of irreproachable moral
+character and well-regulated habits would appear at such an hour, we
+knew. The light strengthened with our impatience. Every half-closed eye
+was fixed upon that corner of the heavens from which the sun would sally
+forth. The golden gates had opened. A red banner floated out. Tiny
+clouds on either side awaited his coming, dressed in crimson and yellow
+livery. Every one of us stood upon tiptoe--the heels of our unbuttoned
+boots thereupon dropping down. One collarless tourist, in whose outward
+adorning suspenders played a conspicuous part, gravely opened his
+guide-book, found the place with some difficulty, and buried his head in
+the pages, to assure himself that everything was proceeding according to
+Murray. Suddenly the white faces of the distant mountains grew purple
+with a rage which we all shared; the flaming banner streamed out across
+the east, and the king of day, with most majestic step, but frightfully
+swollen, tell-tale countenance, rose in the heavens. I am sure he had
+been out all night.
+
+The light grew clearer now. The mountains rose reluctantly, and shook
+off their wrappings of mist. The little clouds doffed their crimson
+finery. The man held together by the marvellous complication of
+shoulder-straps, closed his guide-book with an air of entire
+satisfaction. Evidently the programme, as laid down by Murray, had been
+accurately carried out. Everybody exclaimed, "Wonderful!" in his or her
+native tongue. All the knickerbockers, and woollen shirts, and lank
+water-proofs, without any back hair to speak of, trotted off down the
+hill to be metamorphosed into human beings, and prepare for breakfast,
+even to the individual who had been stalking about in a white bed
+blanket, with a striped border--though printed notices in every room
+expressly forbade the using of bed blankets as morning wraps.
+
+When breakfast was over, there was nothing to do but to make the descent
+to Weggis, and return to Lucerne.
+
+After a time, when weariness could no longer be made an excuse for
+lingering, we prepared for a tour through Switzerland. Engaging
+carriages to meet us at Fluellen, we embarked for the last time upon the
+beautiful lake, winding in and out its intricate ways, shut in by the
+towering cliffs that closed before us, only to re-open, revealing new
+charms as we rounded some promontory, and the lake widened again. Upon
+the bays thus formed, villages lean against the mountain-side. Where the
+rocks fall abruptly to the water, an occasional _châlet_ is perched upon
+some natural terrace, in the midst of an orchard or scanty garden. As we
+touched at these lake villages, brown-faced girls, in scant blue
+petticoats and black bodices, and with faded hair braided in their
+necks, offered us fruits--apricots and cherries--in pretty, rustic
+baskets.
+
+One of these green spots, high among the rocks, forms a sloping meadow,
+touching the water at last. It is an oasis in the surrounding desert of
+barren rock. Do you know why the grass is greener here than elsewhere?
+why the sun bestows its kisses more warmly? why the foliage upon the
+scattered walnut and chestnut trees is thicker, darker, than upon those
+on other mountain-sides? It is because this is Grütlii--the birthplace
+of Swiss liberty. Here, more than five hundred years ago, the three
+confederates met at night to plan the throwing off of the Austrian yoke.
+
+Not far from Grütlii, resting apparently upon the water, at the base of
+one of these cliffs, is what appears at first sight to be a pretty green
+and white summer-house, open towards the lake. It is Tell's Chapel,
+built upon a shelf of rock, and only approachable from the water.
+Here--so the story runs--William Tell sprang ashore, and escaped the
+tyrant Gessler. We sweep around this promontory and gain the last bay
+where lies Fluellen--a ragged village, swarming with tourists,
+vetturinos, and diligences. Among the carriages we find our own. It is a
+roomy landau, luxuriously lined with scarlet velvet, drawn by three
+horses which wear tinkling bells, and is capable of carrying six
+passengers. The top is thrown back, but a kind of calash-shade screens
+from the sun the occupants of what we should call the driver's seat. Our
+driver's place is a narrow board behind the horses. One crack of a long
+whip, and we are off at a rattling pace over the hard road, smooth as a
+floor.
+
+For the first day we are to follow the pass of St. Gothard--that
+well-travelled highway which leads through mountain defiles into Italy.
+We dashed by Altorf, where the family of Queen Victoria's husband
+originated, passing the open square in which William Tell shot the apple
+from the head of his son. An old man is watering a horse at the basin of
+the stone fountain which marks the spot where the father stood. All this
+valley is sacred to the memory of William Tell. In a village near by he
+was born; in the mountain stream, just beyond, he is said to have lost
+his life in the attempt to save a drowning child. After Altorf, the road
+winds among the meadows, though the mountains rise on every side, with
+_châlets_ perched upon points which seem inaccessible, so steep are
+their sides. It is haying time, and men and women are at work in the
+fields and upon the mountain-sides, carefully securing every blade of
+grass. Once, when we had begun to wind up the mountains, where a
+grass-grown precipice fell almost sheer to the valley below, a girl
+clung to its side, and pulled with one hand the grass from between the
+rocks, thrusting it into a bag that hung about her neck. She paused to
+gaze after us as we dashed by, a kind of dull awe that never rose to
+envy lighting her face for an instant. O, the hungry, pitiful faces of
+these dwellers upon the heights! the pinched, starved faces of the
+little ones especially, who forgot to smile--how they haunted us! At
+noon we sweep up to the post-house at Amsteg, with a jingle of bells, a
+crack of the whip, and an annunciatory shout from the driver. There is
+no village that we can see. The piazza of the post-house is filled with
+travellers, lunching before a long table; half a dozen waiting carriages
+stand in the open space before it; as many hostlers, with knit caps
+upon their heads, from which hang long, bright-colored tassels, are busy
+among the horses. At a short distance the Reuss River rushes past the
+house; upon its bank is a little shop, with its store of Swiss
+curiosities and trinkets. A couple of girls fill a tray with the dainty
+wares, and cross the space to tempt us. One has a scarlet handkerchief
+knotted under her handsome, dark face. She turns her brown cheek to her
+shoulder, tossing a word back as the young hostlers contrive to stand in
+her way.
+
+One by one the carriages take up their loads and go on. We soon follow
+and overtake them, winding slowly up among the rocks, which seem ready
+to fall upon us. We form a long train, a strange procession, bound by no
+tie but that of common humanity. The meadows and soft, green
+mountain-slopes are left behind as we ascend, crossing from one side to
+the other by arched bridges thrown over the chasm, at the foot of which
+foams the torrent. Higher and higher rise the rent rocks--bare, black
+walls, seamed, and scarred, and riven, their summits reaching to the
+sky. They close about us, shutting out everything of earth and heaven,
+save a narrow strip of blue far above all. Even the sweet light of day
+departs, and a gloom and darkness as of a brooding tempest falls upon us
+as the way narrows. Suddenly a mad, foaming torrent, with angry roar,
+leaps from the rocks above, to toss, and writhe, and moan upon the rocks
+below the arch upon which we stand. The water rushes over them, and
+dashes against them. It swirls, and pants, and foams, while high above
+it all we stand, our faces wet with the spray, our ears deafened by the
+terrible roar. Truly, this _is_ "The Devil's Bridge."
+
+Think of armies meeting here, as they did in the old Napoleonic wars,
+contending for the passage of the bridge below. Think of the shrieks of
+the wounded and dying, mingling with the raging of the waters. Think of
+the white foam surging red among the rocks; of the angry torrent beating
+out the ebbing life of those who checked its flow. Think of the meeting
+of hosts in mortal conflict where no eye but God's could witness it,
+upon which not even bird or startled beast looked down. It was like a
+dreadful dream from which we passed--as through deep sleep--by a way cut
+in the solid rock out into God's world again. Still, from one side of
+the road rose the rocks that began to show signs of scanty vegetation
+now; from the other fell the precipice to the torrent. We had left the
+carriages at the bridge, and singly or in companies toiled up the road
+that doubled back upon itself continually. Often we climbed from one of
+these windings to the next above, by paths among the rocks, leaving the
+carriages to make the turn and follow more slowly. Often our way was the
+bed of a last year's torrent, or our feet touched the borders of the
+stream, as we pulled ourselves up by the shrubs that grew among the
+rocks. The ice-chill in the air brought strength for the time, and
+perfect exhilaration. It seemed as if we could go on forever, scaling
+these mountain heights.
+
+At last the carriages overtake us, and we reluctantly resume our places.
+The road is built out upon the mountain-side. It offers no protection
+against the fall of the precipice. It narrows here. We look down, and
+say, "How dreadful a careless driver might make this place!" and,
+shuddering, draw back. Suddenly the train pauses, and down the long
+hill runs a shout, "A carriage has gone over." We spring out, and run to
+the front. "Is any one killed?" "No; thank God, no one is harmed." We
+gather upon the edge of the precipice. Upon the rocks below lies the
+body of a horse--dead, with his fore feet raised, as though pawing the
+air; and mingling with the white waters, and tossed about in the raging
+stream, are the shattered remains of a carriage and its contents.
+
+It seems that two young men from Canton Zurich essayed to make a tour of
+the mountains with their own horse and carriage--a foolhardy experiment,
+since none but tried horses, used to these passes, are considered safe
+here. All went well, however, until they reached this point, where a
+torrent falls down the mountain-side to the road, under which it passes
+with a fearful noise. It might, indeed, startle the strongest nerves.
+The horse, young and high-spirited, shied to the edge of the precipice,
+then reared high in the air. They saw that he must go over when his fore
+feet came down, and springing out, barely escaped a similar fate. We all
+passed the spot with some trepidation, the most of us preferring to
+walk; but our horses, accustomed to the road, were utterly unmoved by
+the swooping torrent. At night we reached Andermatt--only an untidy
+little village, lying in one of these upper valleys, bustling and all
+alive around the door of its one inn; but how green and beautiful were
+the mountains, shutting us in all around, after the desolation through
+which much of our way had led! Upon the side of the nearest was a
+triangular patch of wood-land,--firs and spruces,--said to divide and
+break the force of the avalanches that sweep down here in the spring.
+It can be nothing but a story of what had been true formerly, when the
+wood was more extensive. Down these mountains, as night closed in,
+straggled a herd of goats to the milking, tinkling countless little
+bells, while the roar of the Reuss, which we had followed until it was
+now hardly more than a mountain brook, mingled with our dreams as it ran
+noisily through the village.
+
+On we went the next morning, wrapping ourselves warmly, for the air was
+chill as November, though at Lucerne, only twenty-four hours before, we
+had suffered a torrid heat. Just beyond Andermatt, at Hospenthal, we
+left the St. Gothard, to follow the Furka pass. All around was barren
+desolation, as we went on, still ascending, leaving every sign of human
+life behind. Rocky and black the mountains rose, bearing only lichens
+and ferns. Occasional patches of snow appeared, lying in the beds of the
+last year's torrents, or scattered along beside the road. But here,
+where Nature had bestowed little to soften and beautify, she had spread
+upon the barren land, and tucked in among the rocks, a covering of
+exquisitely delicate flowers. You cannot realize, until you have seen
+them, the variety, beauty, and profusion of the Alpine flowers. Looking
+back in memory upon the bare rocks, doomed to stand here through all
+time in solitude and in the midst of desolation, as though in expiation
+of some sin, it is pleasant to remember that at their feet and in their
+clefts these little flowers nestle and bloom.
+
+We gathered nosegays and made snowballs, and at noon gained the summit
+of the Furka, and rested an hour or two at the inn--the only sign of
+house or hut we had seen since morning. The rough _salons_, the passage,
+the doorway, even the space outside, were alive with tourists. It is a
+continual jar upon one's sense of the fitness of things, something to
+which you never become thoroughly accustomed, until all freshness of
+sight-seeing is passed--this coming suddenly upon the world in the midst
+of the unutterable solitude of nature; this plunging into a crowd
+dressed in the latest style, and discussing universal frivolities where
+the very rocks and hills seem to stand in silent adoration. But after
+the first moment you, too, form one of the frivolous throng, the sight
+and sound of which shock the sensibilities of the next comer.
+
+From the inn a tongue of land, green and dotted with flowers, falls into
+the valley below. On either side rises a mountain, scarred by the
+torrents dried away now, and stained this day with the last year's snow,
+while beyond--ever beyond, like some heavenly heights we vainly strove
+to gain--rose the Bernese Alps.
+
+From the summit of the Furka we descended to the Rhone glacier by one of
+the zigzag mountain roads. Looking down over the edge, we could see
+below, the ways we were yet to follow on the mountain face before
+accomplishing the descent. The horses dashed down at a flying pace. The
+inclination of the road was not sufficient to alarm; but the turns are
+always so frightfully abrupt as to make it seem as though the leader
+must dash off. But no; he invariably swung around just upon the outer
+edge, held, it seemed sometimes, by the traces, and with a crack of the
+driver's whip was off again before our fears, if we had any, could find
+words.
+
+One of these abrupt turns fairly hangs over the glacier, where the icy
+river has fallen into broken masses from a higher point, before
+spreading out in the narrow valley just here where it ends. Only a short
+distance from the foot of the glacier is the inn, with its scattered
+out-buildings, where we were to spend the night. The sheer descent from
+the summit of the Furka is only about half a mile; but though our horses
+had galloped the whole distance, and the inn was in sight all the time,
+we were three hours reaching it; so many turns did the road make upon
+the face of the mountain.
+
+It was a gloomy valley, shut in by mountains, and surrounded by lesser
+hills all soaked and dripping with icy streams that chilled the air. We
+gained the foot of the glacier from the inn by a rough path over and
+among the rocks, and stones, and heaps of gravel it had brought down and
+deposited here. From beneath the solid mass of ice flowed a hundred
+shallow streams, which, uniting, form the beginning of the River Rhone.
+We penetrated for a short distance the gallery cut into the glacier,
+surrounded and shut down upon by the walls and ceiling, of a deep blue
+color, and were preceded by an old man, who awoke the echoes by uttering
+a series of broken cries. What with the echoes and horrible chill, the
+place seemed most unearthly, and we were glad to retreat.
+
+The roar of torrents, and hardly less thunderous noise of departing
+diligences, awakened us the next morning. We were soon off upon the
+road, skirting the mountains, rolling through the pleasant valleys, and
+passing village after village now. They seemed silent and deserted,
+their occupants perhaps busy in the fields, or serving at the inns, or
+among the mountains as guides. One was a mass of ruins, thrown down in
+the bed of a torrent, among which a few dull-faced peasants were at
+work, with a hopeless, aimless air, that promised little. A mountain
+stream, swollen to a flood by melting snows, had swept it away in a
+night.
+
+At noon we lunched at Viesch--a slipshod, unwashed village, by the side
+of the young Rhone, which so far, in its dirty, chalk-white color, was
+not unlike the white-headed children that played upon its banks. Some of
+the party left the horses to their noon rest, and strayed out upon the
+road beyond the village. On its outskirts was a fine new church, of
+stone. If only something of its beauty could but come into the every-day
+lives of the poor people here! We sat down upon the steps to wait.
+Across the road was an orchard, roughly fenced in; beside it one of the
+picturesque Swiss peasant houses--all steps, and queer old galleries,
+from which a little tow-headed girl stared out at us in open-eyed
+wonder, as we blew the down from the dried dandelions we had pulled
+along the way, and questioned if, in our far-off homes, our mothers
+wanted us!
+
+It seemed as though we could descend no farther; and yet, after sweeping
+through a valley, a sudden turn would disclose another, far below, to
+which this was as a mountain. So down we sped the whole day long; once
+by a frightfully-narrow zigzag road, the worst by far of any we had
+seen; passing still through the villages so charming in the distance,
+but dirty, and full of odors by no means pleasing, as we drew near. At
+night we rattled into the paved square before the inn at Brieg, just as
+the first drops of a coming shower wet its stones.
+
+This was evidently something more than a village. The houses were
+plastered, instead of being of wood with a rich, burnt-sienna color,
+like those we had seen along the road through the day. They were thickly
+clustered together, and from their midst rose the four turrets of a
+chateau. Our inn was a delightfully-dingy old place. It had been an
+Ursuline convent, and abounded in queer, dark passages, rough stone
+stairways, and old wooden galleries overlooking the square. One of our
+rooms had been a part of the convent chapel, and was still lighted by a
+window just beneath the groined roof. Here we braided our hair, and
+knotted our ribbons, and dreamed, in the twilight that followed the
+rain, of the hopeless ones who had sought comfort in other days within
+these walls, and fell asleep at last, knowing full well that the fringe
+of many an old prayer was still caught and held in the arches high over
+our heads. We walked up through the town the next morning, to the
+beginning of the Simplon Pass. Somewhere in the narrow streets we passed
+the old chateau, and pressed our faces against the bars of a gate, in
+order to gain some idea as to the domestic economy of the family which
+had bestowed upon Brieg its air of importance. But the chateau had
+degenerated into a brewery, and the court-yard was filled with old
+carts, clumsy and broken.
+
+Farther up the hill the door of a little chapel stood invitingly open,
+waiting for stray worshippers, or a chance-burdened heart (for even so
+far away as Brieg, hearts do grow heavy, I doubt not). Something in its
+narrow, whitewashed poverty touched our sympathies. It is rare indeed in
+these countries to find a chapel without at least some votive offering
+to make it beautiful in the eyes of the simple people: here was only a
+crucifix, and we pleased ourselves with the fancy that when the ships
+come in that we sent out as children--laden with hopes that were to be
+bartered for treasures--we would return, and hang the walls with
+pictures, and make the whole place wonderful in the eyes that had seen
+only its bareness. The shower the night before had laid the dust, and
+the drive that morning was most enjoyable. Following the course of the
+noisy Rhone, we reached Sierre at noon, where we left the carriages with
+regret, and took the railway train to Martigny.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+AMONG THE EVERLASTING HILLS.
+
+          The quaint inn.--The Falls of the Sallenches, and
+          the Gorge de Trient.--Shopping in a Swiss
+          village.--A mule ride to Chamouni.--Peculiarities
+          of the animals.--Entrance to the
+          village.--Egyptian mummies lifted from the
+          mules.--Rainy days.--Chamois.--The Mer de
+          Glace.--"Look out of your window."--Mont
+          Blanc.--Sallenches.--A diligence ride to
+          Geneva.--Our little old woman.--The clownish
+          peasant.--The fork in the road.--"Adieu."
+
+
+OUR hotel here at Martigny, was even more suggestive of romance than the
+one at Brieg. It had been a monastery, and was an old, yellow-washed
+structure facing the street, with a rambling garden surrounded by high
+walls, clinging to it in the rear. Low, dark rooms, with bare, unpainted
+floors, like the waves of the sea in smoothness, were given to some of
+our party, while Mrs. K. and I were consigned again, with singular
+appropriateness, to what had been the chapel. Its windows overlooked the
+straggling, half-dead trees, and bare, hard-baked earth of the open
+space before the door, which was always being crossed by strings of
+mules ornamented with bright saddle-cloths, and still further with the
+ubiquitous tourist arrayed in every known costume of the period.
+Village girls, too, passed under the trees, knitting as they went, and
+horrible creatures afflicted with the _goître_--that curse of this
+region--which we met at every turn now.
+
+To gain the long, low refectory where we dined, or to pass from one room
+to another, necessitated crossing the brick-paved cloisters, upon which
+all the doors of the second story opened. Here a row of columns
+encircled a narrow, inner court-yard--so narrow as to be nothing more
+than a slit in the walls, yet wide enough to allow the shimmering
+sunlight to drop down upon the vines twined around the columns, and
+light the whole dingy interior into a weird, strange beauty.
+
+We rode out to the Falls of the Sallenches,--one of the mist veils left
+hanging from many of these Swiss mountains by the water-sprites,--and
+penetrated the Gorge de Trient upon the shaky gallery that follows its
+windings; wandered about and beyond the town; stole into an old church,
+and brought away the memory of a lovely virgin face; and haunted the
+dingy shops in the vain hope of making a few necessary purchases. These
+shops were not unlike our New England country stores in their combined
+odors and confused incapabilities. Behind the counters, or more likely
+sitting in the doorway with the inevitable blue knitting in hand, were
+old women, of hard, baked-apple faces, whose ideas of the luxuries of a
+woman's wardrobe were so far below what we considered its necessaries,
+that we parted in mutual surprise, to say the least, and without gain on
+either side.
+
+Sabbath morning, English church service was held in the parlor of one of
+the hotels; after which a clergyman in gown and bands discoursed from
+the text, "And there shall be no more sea,"--a peculiarly comforting
+hope to some of us.
+
+Monday morning, we mounted the horses and mules waiting in dejected
+impatience before the door, and started upon the long ride of twenty-two
+miles to Chamouni by the Tête Noir Pass. A wide, pleasant avenue, shaded
+by walnut trees, led out of the town; after which we began to ascend the
+gently-sloping mountain-sides, passing occasional villages, and besieged
+by beggars and venders of fruit, as usual. Indeed, these beggars are so
+constant in their attendance and importunity that one forgets to mention
+them, unless recalling flies and similar swarming annoyances.
+
+The scenery, as we went on, was often grand, always interesting; the sky
+overcast, but at times the clouds, drifting apart, disclosed peaks or
+"needles" so far above the mountains about us as to seem a revelation of
+heaven. The path was treacherous and rough--skirting precipices,
+descending in rocky steps or slippery mire, and crossing mountain
+streams by narrow, insecure bridges. Single file is the invariable rule
+in all these mountain excursions, and after a time the isolations of
+this mode of travelling adds to its wearisomeness. Solitude is
+delightful; but as some one has said, "How pleasant it is to have a
+friend near by to whom you may remark, 'How delightful is solitude!'"
+
+As you follow the windings of the narrow, steep path, you have a choice
+between addressing the back of the one who precedes you, and throwing a
+remark over your shoulder to those who come after. Involuntarily you
+fall to studying the curves of the former, and are utterly indifferent
+to the fact that the latter are probably meditating upon the intricacies
+of your back hair. Mule-riding is conducive to grace of neither soul nor
+body; still you know you are not making such a spectacle of yourself as
+did the woman just passed--who twisted about in the saddle as though
+worked along by rotary motion. Perhaps not.
+
+As you leave the villages to plunge into the woods, the flies swarm like
+beggars; and it is only when the guides have cut boughs from the trees,
+which you wave before you, wickedly suggesting palm branches, that you
+can proceed with tolerable comfort, and without the fear of an
+unexpected toss in the air, as one kick after another runs down the
+line.
+
+Each horse or mule has his own slight peculiarities of habit and
+disposition. I recall one whose inordinate curiosity led him to walk
+always upon the verge of the precipices, so that the rider's feet
+overhung the frightful depths. Murray says it is best to allow these
+animals to choose their own paths. But to hang suspended between heaven
+and earth at the mercy of a strap and a mule, will shake one's faith,
+even in Murray.
+
+My horse this day was possessed of the dreamy, melancholy nature of a
+poet, with the attendant lack of ambition. Every time we wound
+funereally through a village, he would walk deliberately to the
+mounting-steps, and wait most suggestively. Indeed, an air of
+abstraction characterized all his movements; even when, as we approached
+these villages, raising his head, he would seem to sniff the odors of
+Araby the Blest; which was a mistake, a delusion of his fancy shared by
+none of the others of the party. That he was without pride I must
+confess. No stable did we pass so poor, none so mean, that he was
+ashamed to pause and offer to enter with meek obdurateness.
+
+Poetic as was his temperament, his appetites were developed in a
+remarkable degree. Once upon a narrow bridge we met two walking
+haystacks, out from which peered great, blue eyes. If the size of his
+mouth had corresponded at all to his desires, they would have vanished
+from sight in a twinkling; as it was, they barely escaped. Whether or
+not insatiable thirst is an attribute of a poet, I do not know; but each
+stream which crossed the path,--and the whole country seemed
+liquidizing,--each drinking-trough beside the way,--and to my excited
+imagination they seemed to form an unbroken line,--was an irresistible
+temptation. It was only by shouting, "Yeep! Yeep!" in staccato chorus,
+and vigorously applying the palm branches, thus engaging his attention
+and diverting his thoughts into less watery channels, that we succeeded
+in making any progress whatever. Under this disciplinary process his
+nature was at last so far subdued that he would have passed the ocean
+itself without a sigh, I am sure.
+
+There was a rest of an hour at the Tête Noir inn at noon, shut in by the
+firs, and rocks, and mountains, then we went on to Argentière, where we
+gladly exchanged the horses and mules for some low, open carts with a
+couple of villagers in blue blouses for drivers. In these we
+accomplished the remaining three or four miles, and made a triumphal
+entry into Chamouni.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when we crawled up the narrow, thronged
+street to the Hôtel Royal, from which the English, French, and American
+flags were flying. The clouds had dropped lower and lower, until a fine
+mist was beginning to deepen into rain, and the guides and tourists
+detained in the village fairly jostled each other at the intersection of
+the two principal streets, which seemed to form the village Exchange.
+The mire of the streets was thickly stamped with hoof-prints and the
+marks from the nails that stud the shoe-soles of the mountain climbers.
+Line after line of doleful looking objects, which might prove Egyptian
+mummies when unwrapped, were being lifted from still more sorry looking
+beasts before the door of the hotel, and assaying to mount the steps,
+with a stiffness and angularity of movement in which we all sympathized.
+
+Indeed, after dinner, when a bright fire was lighted in the long _salon_
+where the various parties gathered to read, write, look over
+stereoscopic views, or chat among themselves, it was amusing, as well as
+pitiable to observe the abortive attempts at ease and flexibility as
+these individuals crossed the polished floor, to hear the groans
+smothered to sighs as they resumed their seats. "Mules!" whispered the
+girls, nudging each other, and mindful of the delight which misery is
+said to find in company.
+
+All the next day the rain dripped down upon the village from the heavy
+clouds that hid the mountains. Everybody improved the opportunity to
+write letters, or yawned over the books scattered about the _salon_.
+Among them was a well-thumbed copy of "Artemus Ward, His Book." At the
+foot of each page the local allusions of the jokes were explained, I
+remember. Out in the street, umbrellas were dodging about from one shop
+to another. These rainy days, though a loss to the guides, are harvest
+times for the shopkeepers. Photographs and stereoscopic views of the
+mountains, the glaciers, and daring climbers hanging on by their
+eyelids, abound here, with any amount of wood and chamois (?) horn
+carving and crystal ornaments. Speaking of chamois-horn, if you expect
+to see in Switzerland--as you do in geographies--chamois perched upon
+every crag, preparatory to bounding from peak to peak, you will be
+grievously disappointed. Not a chamois will greet your eyes. We
+passed--I have forgotten where--a pen in which, by paying a certain sum,
+we might look upon a veritable live chamois; but we had no desire to see
+the incarnation of liberty thus degraded.
+
+We waited two days for the uplifting of the clouds, making, in the mean
+time, an excursion up the Montanvert to overlook the Mer de Glace--which
+is not a sea, but a river of ice, like all the glaciers that have worked
+themselves down into these valleys. We retired one night with the cloud
+curtains spread low over our heads; the next morning a voice from
+outside of our door called, "Look out of your window." We sprang up,
+seized the cord of the shutters, and behold! a new heaven and new earth!
+Every vestige of cloud was gone. The mountains were bathed in sunlight,
+vivid green were the peaks before us, which had never met our gaze until
+now, while behind the nearest, against the deep blue of the summer sky,
+rose the three vast white steps which lead heavenward, the highest of
+which men call Mont Blanc. All that morning, as we descended from the
+valley of Chamouni to Sallenches, we turned continually to look back;
+and still, white and beautiful, but growing less in the distance, rose
+the triple domes.
+
+We had taken a carriage to Sallenches: here we find places in the open
+diligence for Geneva. We pause in the first village through which we
+pass, where a knot of people gathers about a round little old woman. She
+wears a wide-rimmed hat over her neat frilled cap, and carries another
+upon her arm. Her waist is dimly defined by the strings of a voluminous
+apron, and her mind entirely distracted by the cares attendant upon the
+disposal of a cotton bag, a wicker basket, an old umbrella, and a box,
+which half a dozen men seize upon with clumsy hands, in good-natured
+officiousness, and thrust into the baggage compartment, while the women
+and children press about her, kissing the rough, ruddy cheeks, and
+uttering what we are sure must be blessings--odds and ends of which
+float up to us. Evidently the little, old woman is going a journey.
+Aided by a dozen rough, helpful hands, she climbs the ladder to her
+place beside us, with a deprecatory though cheerful "_Bon jour_" to us
+all, subsiding into a corner, where she is immediately submerged as her
+belongings are showered down upon her; last of all a crumpled letter is
+tossed into her lap.
+
+The driver mounts to his place; she leans over; a perfect gust of
+blessings, and kisses, and adieus follow us, as with a crack of the whip
+the horses spring away, and we leave the village far behind.
+
+Suddenly--for we have turned away our faces--the little old woman's hand
+is plunged into the cotton bag under our feet. We venture to look
+around. The tears have gone; her face beams like the sun, as she brings
+out of the depths a couple of eggs. Another dive, and she emerges with a
+piece of bread. A pinch of salt is added from the basket, and her
+breakfast is complete. She hospitably offers a share to each of us. We
+decline; and as a shadow dims the brightness of her face, Katie adds
+quickly,--
+
+"We have had two breakfasts already."
+
+The little old woman rolls her round, blue eyes to heaven, with a pious
+ejaculation. Such lavish extravagance is beyond her comprehension.
+
+"That is like you rich people," she says. "We are only too happy if the
+good God sends us _one_." And she relapses into a wondering silence.
+
+"Does madame travel far?" we venture presently.
+
+"Ah, yes." And she shakes her head slowly. Words cannot express the
+distance, it is so great.
+
+"But she has been this way before?" we go on.
+
+"No, never before." And again the round, blue eyes seek heaven, and
+again a deep sigh follows the words. She has finished her lunch, and,
+diving under our feet, emerges after a time with a box, which, opened,
+discloses a small store of peppermints. This she offers with some
+hesitation, and we each hasten to accept one, her countenance beaming
+more and more as they disappear. "Given to hospitality," the little old
+woman has been, we know.
+
+When the box is with difficulty replaced, the string of the bag drawn,
+the basket arranged to her satisfaction, the umbrella placed at a
+pleasing angle, she balances herself upon the edge of the seat, and
+glances fearfully from side to side as we swing along the smooth road.
+Once, when the wheel passes over a stone, she seems to murmur a prayer.
+
+"Madame is not afraid?" we say.
+
+"O, very much. These diligences are most dangerous." And now she is
+glancing over her shoulder at a rocky wall of mountains which follows
+the road at a distance. "They might fall." And she shudders with the
+thought. We assure her that it is impossible; but she has heard of a
+rock falling upon a diligence, and thinks it was upon this road. And all
+the horror of the fearful catastrophe is depicted upon her face.
+Gradually we learn that the little old woman has never travelled in a
+diligence before; that she has never before made any journey, in fact.
+For forty years she has kept the house of the _curé_ in her native
+village. Now, she tells us with a sigh, and uplifted eyes, he has
+"become dead," and she is obliged to seek a home elsewhere among
+strangers. Here she turns away her eyes, which grow dim as her smile,
+and for a moment forgets her fears.
+
+We are approaching a village. She hastily searches her basket and brings
+out the crumpled letter which had been thrown into her lap. As we dart
+through the narrow street and across an open square, she leans out,
+utters a word in a sharp, excited tone, and, to our surprise, throws the
+letter far out into the dust of the street. An idle lounger in the
+square starts at her voice, runs heavily across the street, and picks it
+up. She sinks back, all cheerful smiles again. She has chanced upon the
+very man to whom the letter was addressed.
+
+The dust rolls up from the great wheels. She exchanges the hat upon her
+head for the one over her arm, covering the former carefully with a
+corner of her apron. This, she tells us, as she arranges the second
+upon her head, she was accustomed to wear when she picked vegetables of
+a morning in the garden of the good _curé_. And the sighs return with
+the recollection of her master.
+
+The day wears on with heat and sifting dust. By and by, at another
+village, a filthy, dull-faced peasant clambers up the ladder and
+stumbles into a vacant place. We shrink away from him in disgust. Our
+little old woman only furtively draws aside her neat petticoats. Soon
+she engages him in conversation. We see her lean far forward with
+intense, questioning gaze upon the distance where he points with
+dirt-begrimed finger. Then with a sigh which seems to come from the
+baggage compartment beneath us, so very deep and long-drawn it is, she
+turns to us. She, too, points to a range of hills, very dark and gloomy
+now, for they are covered with woods, and the shadow of a cloud lies
+upon them.
+
+"It is there, beyond the mountains, I am going;" and the shadow of the
+cloud has fallen upon her face. All the sunshine has faded out of it.
+Then, with something warmer, brighter than any sunshine gleaming in her
+eyes, she adds, "But the good God takes care of us wherever we go."
+
+We have reached a fork in the road. There is no village, no house even,
+in sight. Why, then, do we pause? The ladder is raised.
+
+[Illustration: "Evidently the little old woman is going a journey." Page
+195.]
+
+"It must be for me!" gasps the little old woman, casting one bewildered
+glance over to where the shadows are creeping, and then calmly gathering
+together her possessions. We grasp the hands she extends, we pour out
+confused, unintelligible blessings. Is it the dust which blinds our
+eyes? Even the clownish peasant stumbles down the ladder, and lifts out
+her box. The driver remounts. The whip cracks. We lean far out. We wave
+our hands. Again the dust fills our eyes so that our sight for a moment
+is dim, as we dash away, leaving her sitting there alone upon her box,
+where the two roads meet. But beyond the hills where the shadows rested,
+we know that the sun still shines for our little old woman whose master
+"became dead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+LAST DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.
+
+          Geneva.--Calvin and jewelry.--Up Lake
+          Leman.--Ouchy and Lausanne.--"Sweet
+          Clarens."--Chillon.--Freyburg.--Sight-seers.--The
+          Last Judgment.--Berne and its bears.--The town
+          like a story.--The Lake of
+          Thun.--Interlaken.--Over the Wengern Alp.--The
+          Falls of Giessbach.--The Brunig Pass.--Lucerne
+          again.
+
+
+WE dashed up to the hotel upon one of the fine quays at Geneva, and
+descended from the open diligence with all the appearance of travellers
+who had crossed a sandy desert. There is an air of experienced travel
+which only dust can impart.
+
+The most charming sight in the city, to us, was our own names upon the
+waiting letters here. In truth, there are no sights in Geneva. Tourists
+visit the city because they have been or are going elsewhere, beyond. If
+they pause, it is to rest or buy the jewelry so far-famed. To be sure
+the view from almost any window opening upon the blue Rhone is pleasing,
+crossed by various bridges as it is, one of which touches Rousseau's
+Island. But our heads by this time were as full of views as that of a
+Boston woman.
+
+Calvinists and Arminians alike visit the Cathedral, and sit for a moment
+in the old reformer's chair, or at least look upon the canopy of carved
+wood from beneath which he used to preach. There are few monuments here.
+The interior is bare, and boarded into the stiff pews, which belong by
+right and the fitness of things, not to these grand, Gothic cathedrals,
+but to the Puritan meeting-houses, where we gather less to breathe a
+prayer than to sit solemnly apart and listen to a denunciation of each
+other's sins.
+
+It is a little remarkable that the city where Calvin made and enforced
+such rigid laws against luxury and the vanities of the world should, in
+these latter days, be noted for the manufacture of jewelry. But so it
+is; and to walk the streets and gaze in at the shop windows would turn
+the head of any but the strongest-minded woman. Two or three addresses
+had been given us of manufactories where we could be served at more
+reasonable rates than at the grand shops. We climbed flight after flight
+of dingy stone stairs, in dingier buildings, to reach them, and found
+ourselves at last in little dark rooms, almost filled by a counter, a
+desk, and a safe or two. Certainly no one would think of looking for
+beautiful things here! But we had become tolerably accustomed to such
+places in Paris, and were not at all surprised when one shallow drawer
+after another was produced from behind the counter, and a blaze of gems
+and bewildering show of delicately executed gold work met our eyes. If
+you care for a _souvenir_ only, there are pretty little finger-rings
+encircled by blue forget-me-nots in enamel, which are a specialty of
+Geneva. But if you possess the means and disposition, you may gratify
+the most extravagant desires, and rival Solomon in magnificence.
+
+Twice a day steamers leave Geneva to ascend the lake. It was a bright,
+summer afternoon when we embarked from the pier beyond our hotel, and
+steamed away past the villages that lie along its edge. Among them is
+Coppet, the home of Madame de Staël, the towers of which rise up behind
+the town. The deck of the steamer was alive with tourists. One party,
+from meeting at every turn, rests even yet in memory; the ladies stout,
+red-faced, and showily dressed, with immense "charms" pendent from their
+_chatelaines_--shovels, tongs, and pokers, _life-size_--the result of a
+sojourn at Geneva, doubtless.
+
+For some time after leaving the city, we could look back upon Mont
+Blanc, white and beautiful, rising above the dark mountains, and lying
+close against the sky blue as the waters of the lake. The likeness of a
+recumbent figure of Napoleon--the head and shoulders alone,--in the garb
+of a grenadier was startling, haunting us even after it had changed
+again to a snow-white mountain. As though the hero slept, like those in
+German legends, until his country called him to awake and lead its hosts
+to battle.
+
+At Ouchy we leave the steamer, where the gardens of the grand hotel
+Beaurivage come down to meet us. How delightful are these Swiss hotels!
+with their pleasant gardens, many balconies, wide windows, and the
+flying flags outside; and within, scrupulous neatness, and even elegant
+appointments. The rooms vary in size rather than in degree of comfort,
+there being none of the sudden leaps or plunges between luxury and utter
+discomfort, found in so many hotels--elsewhere. The floors are bare, the
+strips of wood forming squares or diamonds, waxed, and highly polished.
+A rug here and there invites bare feet. A couple of neatly-spread beds
+stand foot to foot upon one side of the room, sometimes with silk or
+lace coverlets, but with always the _duvet_, or large down pillow, at
+the foot. There is no stint of toilet arrangements. A lounge and
+easy-chairs tempt to idleness and repose; and a round table, of generous
+proportions, awaits the chocolate, rolls, fresh butter, and amber honey,
+when the last curl is in order, the last ribbon knotted, and you have
+rung for your breakfast. Of course the rooms vary in degree of
+ornamentation. The walls are often beautifully tinted or frescoed, and
+the furniture elegant; but the neatness and comfort among these summer
+hotels are almost universal. Sometimes, in one corner, or built into the
+wall, stands the high, white porcelain stove, so like a stray monument
+that has forgotten its inscription, and is sacred to many memories; and
+the long, plate-glass windows, swinging back, open often upon a balcony
+and a charming view. No wonder that half the hotels in Switzerland are
+named _Bellevue_.
+
+An omnibus bears you from Ouchy, which is simply the port of Lausanne,
+back into the city, past pretty country residences, walled in, over the
+gates of which the owners have placed suggestive names: "My Rest;"
+"Heart's Desire;" "Good Luck;" "Beautiful Situation;" anything which
+fancy or individual taste may dictate. Of Lausanne I recall little but
+an endless mounting and descending of stairs. The city is built upon a
+hill, intersected by ravines, which accounts for this peculiar method of
+gaining many streets from others above and below. We made but a hurried
+visit. It was market day, and ugly women, old and young, were sitting
+upon the sidewalks in the narrow streets, knitting, with the yarn held
+over the fore-finger of the left hand, and selling fruits and vegetables
+between times. In the honey market the air fairly buzzed and swarmed;
+yet still these women knit, and gossiped, and bargained complacently,
+unmindful of the bees in their bonnets. From Ouchy we made an excursion
+to the head of the lake. It is a short voyage of two hours to
+Villeneuve, the last town. Clouds hid the distant mountains; but those
+lesser and nearer, upon our right, as we went on, were bare, and broken,
+and rocky, contrasting strangely with the gently swelling slopes upon
+the other side, covered with vineyards, and with quiet little villages
+at their feet. Each of these villages has its romantic association; or,
+failing in that, a grand hotel to attract summer visitors. Vevay boasts
+the largest hotel, but nothing more. Just beyond Vevay is "Clarens,
+sweet Clarens," the willows of which dip into the lake. Here, if
+Rousseau and Byron are to be believed, Love was born; possibly in some
+one of the mean little houses which border the narrow streets.
+
+Soon after leaving Clarens, the gray, stained tower of Chillon rises
+from the water, near enough to the shore to be reached by a bridge. With
+the "little isle" and its three tall trees marked by the prisoner as he
+paced his lonely cell, ends the romance of the lake. Poets have sung its
+beauties, but Lucerne had stolen away our hearts, and we gazed upon the
+rocks, and vineyards, and villages, with cold, critical eyes. It was
+only later, when the summer twilight fell as we lingered upon the
+balcony before our windows at Ouchy that we acknowledged its charm. The
+witching sound of music came up from the garden below. Upon the silver
+lake before us, the lateen sails, like the white wings of great
+sea-birds, gleamed out from the darkness; the tiny wavelets rippled and
+plashed softly against the breakwater; and where the clouds had parted
+overhead, a horned moon hung low in the sky, while the mountains
+resolved themselves into shadows or other waiting clouds.
+
+There was a little church between Ouchy and Lausanne, gained by crossing
+the fields, where we remembered the Sabbath day, and joined in the
+church service led by an English clergyman. These Sabbaths are like
+green spots now in memory,--restful, cool, refreshing, and pleasant to
+recall,--when the world, and all haste and perplexity of strange sights,
+and sounds, and ways, were rolled off like a heavy burden, while we
+gathered, a little company of strangers in a strange land, yet of one
+family, to unite in the familiar prayers, and hymns, and grand old
+chants.
+
+Monday morning the "American cars" bore us away from Lausanne to
+Freyburg. But such a caricature are they upon our railway carriages,
+that we were inclined to resent the appellation. Low, bare, box-like,
+with only three or four seats upon each side, they hardly suggested the
+original.
+
+We had chosen the route through Freyburg that we might visit the
+suspension bridge, and hear the celebrated organ. The city clings to the
+sides of a ravine after the perverse manner of cities, instead of
+spreading itself out comfortably upon level land. So steep is the
+declivity that the roofs of some of the houses form the pavement for
+the street above. At the foot of the ravine flows a river crossed by
+bridges, and the towns-people have for centuries descended from the
+summit on one side to climb to that upon the other, until some humane
+individual planned and perfected this suspension bridge,--the longest in
+the world save one,--which is thrown across the chasm. In order to test
+its strength, when completed, the inhabitants of the city, or a portion
+of them, gathered in a mass, with artillery and horses, _and stood upon
+it_! Then they marched over it, preceded by a band of music, with all
+the dignitaries of the town at the head of the column. Since it did not
+bend or break beneath their weight, it is deemed entirely safe.
+
+Through the most closely-built portion of the city runs the old city
+wall, with its high, cone-capped watch-towers, and the narrow, crooked,
+and often steep streets are very quaint. The sense of satisfaction which
+returns with the memory of these streets is perhaps partly due to the
+fact, that the girls of the party surveyed them from above great squares
+of gingerbread bought at a _pâtisserie_ near the station, and ate as
+they strolled through the town over the pavings of these crooked ways.
+The bread of dependence is said to be exceedingly bitter; but the
+gingerbread of Freyburg is uncommonly sweet, in memory.
+
+When the suspension bridge has been crossed and commented upon, every
+one strikes a bee-line to the Cathedral, which rises conspicuously above
+its surroundings. It would be very amusing to watch the professional
+sight-seers at all these places, if one did not belong to the
+fraternity, which makes of it quite another affair. There is no air of
+pleasuring about them; no placid expression of content and
+sweet-to-do-nothing. They seldom are found meandering along the tortuous
+streets, the milk of human kindness moistening every feature, beams of
+satisfaction irradiating every countenance. They never spend long hours
+wandering among the cloisters of old cathedrals, or dream away days by
+storied shrines, as friends at home, who read of these places, fondly
+imagine. By no means. The sight-seer is a man of business. He has
+undertaken a certain amount of work, to be done in a given time. He will
+do or die. And since it is a serious matter, involving doubt, he wears
+an appropriately solemn and preoccupied expression of countenance. He
+darts from point to point. He climbs stairs as though impatient Fame
+waited for him at the top. His emotions of wonder, admiration, or
+delight, must bestir themselves. He drives to the first point of
+interest, strikes a bee-line to the second, cuts every corner between
+that and the third, and then, consulting his watch, desires to know if
+there is anything more, and experiences his only moment of satisfaction
+when the reply is in the negative. And the most remarkable part of all
+is, that he goes abroad to enjoy himself.
+
+But even if one is less ambitious, if you are so fortunate as to be
+naturally indolent, and to delight to dwell in the shadow of dreams, you
+will shake off dull sloth here. You live and move in a bustling crowd.
+Every storied spot is thronged with visitors. Far from musing by
+yourself, you can at best but follow in the wake of the crowd, with the
+drone of an endless story from the lips of a stupid guide in your ears,
+bringing only confusion and weariness.
+
+A notice upon the door of the Cathedral informed us that the organ would
+not be played until evening. We held a council of war, and decided to go
+on. Just over our heads, as we stood before the entrance, was a
+representation of the Last Judgment, cut in the stone, in which the
+good, very scantily attired, and of most self-satisfied countenances,
+trotted off after St. Peter, who carried the father of all keys, to the
+door of a castle representing heaven, while the poor wicked were borne
+away in a Swiss basket, strapped upon the back of a pig-headed devil, to
+a great pot over a blazing fire, which a little imp was vigorously
+blowing up with a pair of bellows. The wicked seeming to outnumber the
+good (this was designed many centuries ago), and the pot not being large
+enough to hold them all, the surplus were thrust into the jaws of a
+patient crocodile near by. Seated in an arm-chair, above all this, the
+devil looked down with an expression of entire satisfaction.
+
+The interior of the Cathedral was in no way remarkable. In the choir
+(which you know, perhaps, is not a place where girls stand in their best
+bonnets to sing on Sundays, but the corner of these great cathedrals in
+which the church service is held) were some fine stained glass windows;
+but even here, horrible monkeys and hideous animal figures, life-size,
+were cut from the wood, and made to stand or crouch above the stalls
+where the priests sit. Those old ecclesiastic artists must have believed
+in a personal devil, who assumed many forms.
+
+A threatened shower hastened our steps to the station some time before
+the arrival of the train, which seemed to come and go without regard to
+the hour appointed. While waiting, we read the advertisements framed and
+hanging upon the walls, of hotels, shops, &c. One of the latter, in a
+triumph of English, ran,--
+
+          WOOD CARWINGS;
+          CHOOSE AS NOWHERE ELSE.
+
+We reached Berne before night, and drove to the Hotel ----. If it could
+by some happy chance have been turned inside out, how comfortable we
+might have been! The exterior was most inviting. A German waiter of
+Irish face, who had a polyglot manner of speech, difficult to be
+understood, showed us to our rooms; and the _table d'hôte_, to which we
+descended an hour later, was made up of an uncommon array of
+prim-visaged individuals. Dickens's Mr. Chadband, in a very stiff, white
+neckcloth, was my _vis-à-vis_. I looked every moment for his lips to
+open, and--"Wherefore air we gathered here, my friends?" to issue forth.
+
+The guide-book had informed us that the greatest attraction of Berne to
+strangers was the fine view of the Bernese Alps to be gained from here;
+but a curtain of cloud hung before them during all our stay. Still we
+were interested in the queer old city, with the second story of the
+houses, through many of the streets, projecting over the sidewalk,
+forming gloomy arcades, and bright red cushions in the window seats,
+where pretty girls sat and sewed, and watched the passers down below. I
+remember it rained, and there was a market held out in the square before
+the hotel windows in the early morning, where the umbrellas made every
+old woman to dwell in her own tent for the time. When it was over, and
+the rain had ceased to fall, we waited in front of the old clock-tower
+before driving out through the pleasant suburbs, with market women,
+baskets on their arms, stray children, idle loungers, and alert
+tourists, for the feeble puppet-show heralded by the asthmatic crow of a
+rheumatic cock. Of course it was a procession of bears. Everything in
+Berne is, or has to do with, a bear, since the city was founded upon the
+spot where somebody killed a bear. Bears surmount most of the stone
+fountains in the streets; they ornament the monuments erected to heroes.
+Cut from wood, they are offered for sale as _souvenirs_; stuffed, they
+are exhibited at the zoölogical gardens; and, to crown all, government
+supports in luxury a whole family of bruins. We left the carriage upon
+the Nydeck bridge, to look down into the immense circular basin where
+they are kept. It must be a dull life, even for a bear. They are ugly
+creatures, with reddish fur, and spend their time climbing a leafless
+semblance of a tree, with no object but to descend again, or in sitting
+up to beg for biscuits of visitors. So universal has the custom of
+begging become in Switzerland, that even the bears take to it quite
+naturally.
+
+The mountains obstinately refusing to appear, we left Berne for Thun,
+passing through a lovely country. Only occasionally did a road appear;
+then it would seem to extend for long miles, bordered by immense,
+close-planted trees. Neither fences nor hedges were there to divide the
+fields; but patches of grain were thrown down anywhere and at any angle.
+Potatoes were sown like grass instead of being planted in hills, and
+were devoured this year by rot--the worst feature in the landscape. All
+through the early summer we had seen hemp growing everywhere. Now it was
+cut, and lying outspread upon the ground in odd regularity, an
+occasional head only being left to run to seed.
+
+There was nothing to visit in Thun. But the whole town is like a story.
+Not an elegant, high-toned story, to be sure, though a picturesque old
+castle and church lifted themselves aristocratically above the more
+humble town. The streets are narrow, and as picturesque as they are
+dirty, with a sidewalk sometimes above the first, low, projecting story
+of the houses.
+
+It is a mile from the town to the lake of the same name. Close by the
+steamer landing, where we were to embark for Newhaus, is the hotel
+Bellevue. Within the garden enclosure were several little _châlets_; one
+to serve as reading-room, another as _salle à manger_, while a third,
+beyond the pond, where swan were sailing, displayed Swiss wares for
+sale. Here we lunched and rested for an hour, before going up the lake.
+It is a voyage of an hour and a half to its head, past beautiful villas
+upon one side, and precipitous rocks upon the other. Once landed at
+Newhaus,--where there was not a _new house_ that we could see, but only
+a scanty collection of little huts,--we searched about, with the mud
+ankle deep, among the crowd of waiting vehicles, for the omnibus which
+was to bear us the two miles and a half to Interlaken and the hotel Jung
+Frau. If you recall your geography lessons, you will perhaps know that
+the two lakes, Thun and Brienz, are separated by a strip of land, upon
+which is this village of Interlaken. It is hardly more than one long
+street, with green fields and a row of trees upon one side, and a line
+of houses standing back upon the other. In full view from the windows of
+these summer hotels, when the sky is clear, rises the Jung Frau, between
+two great mountain peaks. This is the only _sight_ in Interlaken, and
+yet the town throngs with visitors. It must be intolerably hot here at
+times, lying low among the mountains as does this valley. In the fields,
+behind the grand hotels, is a long, low Kursaal, a rustic affair, with a
+wide piazza. You may lunch, and read the newspapers; but government has
+prohibited the gambling. There are delightful excursions to be made from
+here, which accounts, perhaps, for the crowded hotels. And there are
+several fine shops, where you may buy all or any of the curiosities for
+which the country is well known.
+
+A rainy day crowded these shops and the hotel parlors, and made a busy
+scene the length of the street, which is very like a country road. But
+the second morning after our arrival, we rose early, to prepare for an
+excursion over the Wengern Alp. The Jung Frau, hidden the day before,
+appeared in full view with the rolling away of the clouds, and we
+desired to approach nearer to the shy maiden. All the listlessness of
+the day before was past. As we stepped out of the little _châlet_, in
+the hotel garden, where--the hotel being full--we had slept in a room
+only vacated for the night, with a pair of immense red slippers behind
+the door, and Madame's gowns hanging from pegs on the wall, everybody
+was astir. More than one party was sipping their scalding coffee as we
+entered the hotel breakfast-room, while, under the great trees outside,
+guides and saddled horses waited impatiently.
+
+When we had tied on our wide-rimmed hats, and gathered our shawls, we
+found a roomy carriage, an open landau, waiting for us at the side-door
+of the hotel. We drove quickly out of the town, followed by and
+following other carriages, until we formed a long procession by the time
+we had reached the valley of Lauterbrunnen and began the ascent. It is a
+deep, dark valley, shut in by innumerable overhanging rocks, from which
+thread-like waterfalls hang suspended in air, or are lost in spray.
+Hardly does the sun seem to penetrate its depth, and an indescribable
+gloom, as well as chill, pervades the place. From a few scattered
+cottages women and children emerged to follow the carriages, begging
+mutely or offering fruits, while at one point a man awaited our approach
+to awake the echoes with an Alpine horn.
+
+After an hour we reach Lauterbrunnen, and leave the carriage at the door
+of an inn, where a crowd bargains and waits for guides and horses. We
+swell the number. When we are served, we mount to our places, and file
+out of the straggling village, turning before we reach the Staubach
+Falls--a stream of silvery spray that never touches earth, but swings
+and waves in mid-air. The ascent grows more and more steep. The recent
+rain has added to the icy streams, which filter constantly from snows
+above, and the horses sink in the mire, or slide and slip in a way by no
+means reassuring. Often the path is mounted by steps of slippery logs;
+when added to this is a precipice upon one side, we hold our breath--and
+pass in safety. We commend each other as we perform feats of valor and
+intrepidity which would make our fortune in the ring, we fancy. The
+guides, insolent and careless, stroll on in advance, leaving the most
+timid to their own devices. Presently, as we enter a perfect slough of
+despond, we see a man before us scraping the mire with a hoe vigorously,
+as we come in sight.
+
+"You should give this poor man something," says one of the guides. "He
+keeps the road in order." I wish you might have seen the _orderly_ road!
+
+Suddenly we gain a point where the land spreads out into green knolls
+before us and on either side--a strip of almost level verdure, with, on
+one hand, peak on peak, rising till they touch heaven; upon the other,
+the Jung Frau, draped in snow. It seems so near, so very near,--though
+the land drops between us and it into a deep ravine, and the snow-clad
+peaks and needles are a mile away,--I almost thought I might guide my
+horse to the verge of the chasm, and reaching out, gather the snow in my
+hand. Across the summit, the clouds, white as itself, drifted
+constantly, hiding it completely at times. It had been a tiresome climb
+of two hours and a half, and we were glad to rest an hour before
+descending. As we turned the corner of the Jung Frau inn, having
+dismounted from our horses, we were met by our ubiquitous, stout friends
+of Lake Leman memory, to whom, I presume, we seemed equally omnipresent.
+_Table d'hôte_ was served here, one party following another, until the
+long table was full. Occasionally the noise of an avalanche, like the
+sound of distant thunder, aroused and startled us, and caused us to
+vacate every seat. But though the mountain appeared to be so near, these
+avalanches, which sweep with tremendous force, carrying tons of ice and
+snow, seen from this distance, seemed like nothing more than tiny
+mountain streams let loose.
+
+From the inn, we mounted and went on half a mile, before reaching the
+summit and beginning the uncomfortable descent. We thought every bad
+place must be the worst, as the horses slid down the slippery stones, or
+descended the log steps with a peculiar jerky motion, suggesting
+imminent and unpleasant possibilities. But, after fording torrents
+swollen by the rain, crossing narrow, treacherous bridges, sliding down
+inclined planes, and whole flights of stairs, the guides informed us
+that we should reach a _dangerous place_ presently!
+
+When, finally, we came to it, we were quite willing to dismount, and
+make our way down over the rocks for a mile, trusting to our own feet,
+and beset continually by women and children, who appeared most
+unexpectedly at every turn, to thrust little baskets of fruit or flowers
+into our hands. The very youngest child toddled after us with a withered
+field-flower, if nothing more. So early do they begin to learn the trade
+of a lifetime.
+
+We entered Grindelwald late in the afternoon. The shadows of night,
+which fall earlier in these valleys than elsewhere, were already
+gathering. The few, scattered cottages, walled in by the everlasting
+hills, with the snow-covered Wetterhorn in full view, and the glacier
+behind it, wore a cheerless and gloomy air in the quick-coming twilight.
+Train after train of tourists, upon horses and mules, or dragging weary
+feet, descended from among the mountains, to find carriages here and
+hasten away. Only these arrivals and departures gave a momentary life to
+the spot. What must it be when the summer sun and the last visitor have
+left it?
+
+We, too, sought out our waiting carriage, and rolled away in the summer
+twilight, down the beautiful road, wide and smooth enough to lead to
+more dreadful places than the pleasant valley of Interlaken, where, for
+a day at least, was our home.
+
+The next afternoon, instead of spending the Sabbath here, we decided to
+go on to Giessbach, on the Lake of Brienz, to visit the celebrated
+falls. We had rested comfortably in the hope of a quiet day in the
+little _châlet_, where more permanent arrangements had been made for our
+disposal. But the enterprising member of the party, to whom we owed not
+a little, in a happy moment of leisure, gave herself to the study of the
+guide-book, the result of which was--Giessbach. We gathered our personal
+effects together, under the pressure of great excitement and limited
+time, reached the little steamer, fairly breathless, and then sat and
+waited half an hour for it to move. It was not, however, a tedious time;
+for there occurred an incident which engaged our attention.
+
+"What do you suppose they're going to do with that calf?" asked the boy
+of the party, who, like all boys, was of an inquiring turn of mind.
+"They've got him into the water, and are poking him with sticks."
+
+Upon this we all became immensely interested. A calf had fallen into the
+water, between the pier and the steamer; but the fruitless efforts made
+by everybody, interested or disinterested, were to rescue, not drown,
+the creature, as a bystander would have inferred. Suddenly, as his own
+struggles carried him away from the wharf and he was about to sink, a
+white, delicate hand, bound with rings, and an arm daintily draped, were
+thrust out from one of the cabin windows, seized upon the head
+disappearing in a final _bob_, and held on until assistance came, when
+the poor animal, half dead with fright, was drawn from the water.
+
+At last the steamer moved away from the wharf, and in an hour or less
+the little pier at Giessbach received us. There is a tiny valley, one
+hotel, and a series of pretty cascades here. But all these are reached
+by a smooth road, winding back upon itself continually, and so steep
+that carriages do not ascend it. You must walk, or rather climb it, for
+twenty minutes, or accept the disagreeable alternative of being carried
+up by two men in a chair, resting on poles. The day was warm; our arms
+were weighed down with satchels, &c.; but we pressed on, while,
+commenting upon our personal peculiarities in dress, gait, and general
+air, as they looked down upon us from the height we almost despaired of
+gaining, were the complacent, comfortable souls, who always reach these
+desirable places the day before any one else, and, in the freshest
+possible toilets, sit, like Mordecai, in the gates.
+
+It may have been droll to them; it was a most serious matter to us. It
+was Saturday afternoon, and each one felt and acted upon the realized
+necessity of outstripping his neighbor, in order to secure rooms.
+Finally the gentlemen hastened on, our ambition failing with our
+strength, and we were happy in finding comfortable quarters awaiting us
+when we had gained the hotel at last.
+
+It was the most delightful little nook imaginable when we were rested
+and refreshed. Until then it possessed no charms in our eyes. It is a
+little valley, high above the lake, towards which it opens, but shut in
+on three sides by precipitous hills. Down the face of one the cascades
+fall. Back against another the hotel is built, facing the lake; its
+_dépendance_, and the inevitable shops for the sale of Swiss
+wood-carving and crystals, being ranged along the third side. The whole
+place is not larger than a flower-garden of moderate size.
+
+We were served at our meals by pretty, red-cheeked girls, in charming
+Swiss costumes; and when we had been out after dark to see the falls
+illuminated in different colors, while the rustic bridges, which span
+the cascades at various heights, were crossed by these picturesque
+figures, I felt as if we were all part of a travelling show, for whom
+this dear little level spot was the stage, and that a vast audience
+waited outside, where the walls of hills opened upon the lake, for the
+curtain to fall. It was like the Happy Valley of Rasselas, which we left
+with regret when the peaceful Sabbath was over.
+
+Across the lake, at Brienz, Monday morning, a carriage waited to bear us
+on, over the Brunig Pass, into the clouds and out again; then down,
+down, past village, and lake, and towering hills, resting again at
+Sarnen, then on to Lucerne, into which we swept, with tinkling bells and
+cracking whip, to find the city gay with streaming flags and flowery
+arches, erected for some singing _fête_, but which to us were all signs
+of a happy welcoming.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+BACK TO PARIS ALONE.
+
+          Coming home.--The breaking up of the party.--We
+          start for Paris alone.--Basle, and a search for a
+          hotel.--The twilight ride.--The shopkeeper whose
+          wits had gone "a wool-gathering."--"Two tickets
+          for Paris."--What can be the matter now?--'Michel
+          Angelo's Moses.--Paris at midnight.--The kind
+          _commissionaire_.--The good French gentleman, and
+          his fussy little wife.--A search for Miss
+          H.'s.--"Come up, come up."--"Can women travel
+          through Europe alone?"--A word about a woman's
+          outfit.
+
+
+TO dash through the town, along the quay where we had walked so many
+times beneath the trees or leaning over the low parapet fed the fishes,
+past the two-spired cathedral, the cloisters of which had become so
+familiar, to mount the hill and draw up before the door of the Bellevue
+again, welcomed by the innkeeper, and greeted with outstretched hands by
+"Charles," who had served our chocolate, while familiar faces met us at
+every window or upon the stairs, to pull up the shutters, throw wide
+open the windows, and drink in the glorious beauty of the scene before
+our eyes--all this was delightful, but fleeting, like all earthly joys,
+and mixed with pain; for here we were to say "good by."
+
+Our pleasant party was to break up. The friends in whose care we had
+been so long, were off for Germany, and Mrs. K. and I must turn our
+faces towards home. We were to renew our early and brief experience in
+travelling alone. It had been as limited as our French, which consisted
+principally of "_Est-ce que vous avez?_" followed by a pantomimic
+display that would have done credit to a professional, and "_Quel est le
+prix?_" succeeded by the blankest amazement, since we could seldom, if
+ever, understand a reply.
+
+"Are you afraid?" queried our friends.
+
+"No; O, no." The state of our minds transcended fear.
+
+It was a hot day when we took our last view of the lake, as we rode down
+the hill from the hotel, past the cathedral, past the shaded promenade
+upon the quay, to the station; but we heeded neither the heat nor the
+landscape when we were once in the train and on the way. Our hearts were
+heavy with grief at parting from friends, our spirits weighed down by
+nameless fears. It was a wicked world, we suddenly remembered. Wolves in
+sheep's clothing doubtless awaited us at every turn. Roaring lions
+guarded every station. We clutched our travelling-bags, umbrellas, and
+wraps, with a grasp only attained by grim fate or lone women. Gradually,
+however, as the uneventful hours wore away, we forgot that in eternal
+vigilance lay our safety, and relaxed our hold.
+
+We had left Lucerne at noon; at five o'clock we reached Basle. Here we
+were to spend the night at the hotel _Les Trois Rois_. Every step of the
+way to Paris had been made plain to us by our kind friends.
+
+"Let me see; the hotel is close by the station?" queried Mrs. K., when
+we had left our trunks, as our friends had advised, and followed the
+crowd to the sidewalk.
+
+"Yes," I replied with assurance, "close by, they said; I am sure."
+
+Accordingly we turned away from the long line of hotel omnibuses backed
+up against the curb-stone, to the fine hotels on each side of the
+straight avenue, extending as far as the eye could see. Alas! among
+their blazing names was no "_Trois Rois_." We read them over and over
+again. We even tried to pronounce them. Not a king was there, to say
+nothing of _three_.
+
+In a kind of bewilderment we strayed down the avenue. Might not some one
+of the fair dwellings gleaming out from the shrubbery prove the house we
+sought? There was a rattle and clatter behind us; a passing omnibus.
+Another, and still another followed. Serene faces beamed out upon our
+perplexity. A cloud of dust enveloped us as the last rolled cheerfully
+by, upon the end of which we read, with staring eyes, "_Les Trois
+Rois_."
+
+"Ah!" gasped Mrs. K.
+
+"Sure enough," I replied.
+
+"Why, suppose we take it?" said she, slowly.
+
+"Suppose we do," I assented, with equal deliberation. But by this time
+the little red omnibus was a speck in the distance.
+
+"At least we can follow it." And we quickened our steps, when, with
+almost human perversity, it turned a distant corner, and vanished from
+sight.
+
+Fixing our eyes steadily upon the point of disappearance, we hastened
+on, and on, and on! I have a faint recollection of green trees, of
+stately houses, of an immense fountain swaying its white arms in the
+distance--mirage-like, for we never approached it; of the sun pouring
+its fierce rays upon us as we toiled on, with our wraps and satchels
+turning to lead in our arms.
+
+We reached the corner at last. There was no omnibus; no hotel in sight;
+only the meeting of half a dozen narrow, crooked streets, crowded with
+carriages, and alive with humanity. All settled purpose left us then;
+our wits, never very firmly attached, followed. We became completely
+demoralized.
+
+"Suppose you inquire," suggested Mrs. K., after a period of inaction,
+during which we were pushed, and jostled, and trampled under foot by the
+crowd.
+
+If I possessed one capability above another, it was that of asking
+questions, especially in a strange language. Upon this corner where we
+were standing, rose an imposing building, in the open doorway of which
+stood a portly gentleman, with a countenance like the setting sun, in
+glow and warmth. A heavy mane flowed over his shoulders. Evidently this
+was the first of the roaring lions! Taking our lives in our hands, we
+approached him.
+
+"Do you speak English?" I ventured.
+
+"_Nein_," was his reply, with a shrug of the leonine shoulders.
+
+I drew a long breath and began again.
+
+"_Parlez-vous Français?_"
+
+His reply to this was as singular as unprecedented. He turned his back
+and disappeared up the wide stairs in the rear.
+
+"This _may_ be foreign politeness," I was beginning, doubtfully, when he
+reappeared, accompanied by an intensified counterpart of himself. The
+setting sun in the face of this man gave promise of a scorching day.
+
+"_Parlez-vous Français, monsieur?_" I began again, when we had bowed and
+"_bon-jour_"-ed for some time.
+
+"_Oui, oui, mademoiselle._"
+
+Here was an unexpected dilemma. A terrible pause ensued. Then, with an
+effort which in some minds would have produced a poem at least, I
+attempted to make known the object of our quest. I cannot begin to tell
+of the facial contortions which accompanied this sentence, nor of the
+ineffable peace which followed its conclusion. It made no manner of
+difference that his reply was a jargon of unintelligible sounds. Virtue
+is its own reward. One sentence alone I caught, as the indistinguishable
+tones flew by. We were to take the first street, and then turn to the
+right.
+
+"What did he say?" asked Mrs. K., when we had _merci_-d ourselves out of
+their radiant presences.
+
+I explained the direction we were to follow.
+
+"Horrible countenance he had," she remarked, as we pursued our way.
+
+"O, dreadful," I assented.
+
+"Nobody knows where he may send us," she continued.
+
+Sure enough! In our alarm we stopped short in the street, and stared at
+each other with horrified countenances.
+
+"I have heard--" I began.
+
+"Yes; and so have I," she went on, shaking her head, and expressing by
+that gesture most fearful possibilities.
+
+A bright thought seized me. "He told us to turn to the _right_; we will
+turn to the _left_!" And with that happy, womanly instinct, said to
+transcend all judgment, _we did_. Strange as it may appear, though we
+went on for a long half hour, no "_Trois Rois_" gladdened our eyes.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. K. struck an attitude. "A fine appearance we shall
+present," said she; "two lone women, dusty and heated, our arms full of
+baggage, straggling up to a hotel two mortal hours after the arrival of
+the train. We'll take a carriage."
+
+To me this inglorious advent was so distant in prospect that it held no
+terrors, nothing of mortification even. "_Les Trois Rois_" had become a
+myth, an idea towards which we vainly struggled.
+
+"If it were only across the street," she went on, rising to the occasion
+and warming with the subject, "we would go in a carriage."
+
+One approached at that moment. We motioned to it _à la Mandarin_, with
+our heads, our hands and arms being full. The driver raised his whip and
+pointed solemnly into the distance. We turned to gaze, seeing nothing
+but the heavens in that direction. When we looked back, he was gone. We
+should not like to affirm--we hardly dare suggest--we are sure of
+nothing but that he vanished from before our eyes.
+
+A second appeared in the distance. We began in time. We pawed the air
+wildly with our umbrellas. The very satchels and wraps upon our arms
+nodded and beckoned. In serene unconsciousness the driver held to his
+course.
+
+"Well!" I exclaimed, indignantly.
+
+"I should think so," added Mrs. K., with emphasis.
+
+"Is there anything peculiar, anything unusual in our personal
+appearance?" I asked, glancing down upon our dusty appointments. As we
+concentrated our energies and belongings for one final effort, a
+benignant countenance smiled out upon us from above a _cipher_. We were
+storming a private carriage!
+
+The third attempt was more successful. The driver paused. We requested
+him, in English, to take us to "The Three Kings." He only stared and
+shook his head. We tried him with "_Les Trois Rois_." He seemed still
+more mystified.
+
+"What can be done with people who do not understand their own language!"
+I exclaimed in despair.
+
+We tried it again with our purest Parisian accent. An inkling of our
+meaning pierced his dull understanding. He rolled heavily down from his
+seat, and opened the door with the usual "_Oui, oui_." We entered and
+were driven away.
+
+"Do you think he understood you?" queried Mrs. K.
+
+"No-o."
+
+"Well, where do you suppose he will take us?"
+
+"I don't know, and I don't much care," I responded, in desperation.
+
+We settled back upon the cushions. The peace that follows resignation
+possessed our souls. O, the luxury of that jolting, rattling ride, as we
+wound in and out among the tortuous streets! A full half hour passed
+before the dusky old hotel darkened above us, surmounted by "The Three
+Kings" arrayed in Eastern magnificence, and wearing gilded crowns upon
+their heads.
+
+Fate had been propitious. This was our destination, without doubt,
+though we had made a grand mistake as to its location. We descended at
+the entrance with the air, I trust, of being equal to the occasion. We
+calmly surveyed the assembled porters, who hastened to seize our
+satchels and wraps. We demanded a room, and inquired the hour of _table
+d'hôte_, as though we had done the same thing a thousand times before.
+Mrs. K. was right; there was a moral support in that blessed carriage.
+
+_Table d'hôte_ over, we strayed into a pretty _salon_ opening from the
+_salle à manger_. Both were crowded--over doors and windows, and within
+cabinets filling every niche and corner--with quaint specimens of
+pottery--pitchers, vases, and jars, ancient enough in appearance to have
+graced the domestic establishment of the original "Three Kings." The
+glass doors thrown back enticed us upon a long, low balcony, almost
+swept by the rushing river below--the beautiful Rhine hastening on to
+its hills and vineyards. We leaned over, smitten with sudden
+homesickness, and sent a message back to Rolandseck of happy memory.
+
+With the faint shadows of coming twilight we wandered out into the
+square before the hotel. A line of _voitures_ extended down one side,
+every one of which was quickened into life at our approach. We paused,
+with foot upon the step of the first, for the _carte_ always proffered,
+upon which is the number of the driver and the established rate of
+fares. He only touched his shiny hat and prepared to gather up his
+reins.
+
+"O, dear!" we said; "this will never do; we must not go." And we
+stepped down. The porters upon the hotel steps began to cast inquiring
+glances. One or two stray passers added their mite of curiosity, when
+the knight-errant, who always breaks a lance for distressed womanhood,
+appeared upon the scene. We recognized him at once, though his armor was
+only a suit of gray tweed, and he wore a fashionable round-topped hat
+for a casque.
+
+Almost before we knew it, we were seated in the carriage, the _carte_ in
+our hands, and were slowly crawling out of the square--for a subdued
+snail-pace is the highest point of speed attained by these public
+vehicles.
+
+The memory of Basle is as shadowy, dim, delightful, as was that twilight
+ride. Where we were going, we neither knew nor cared; nor, later, where
+we had been. We wound in and out the close streets of the old part of
+the city, full of a busy life so far removed from our own, that it
+seemed a show, a picture; below the surface we could not penetrate. We
+rolled along wide avenues where the houses on either side were white as
+the dust under the wheels. Once in a quiet square, we paused before an
+old _Hôtel de Ville_, frescoed in warm, rich colors. Again upon the
+outskirts of the city, before a monument; but whether it had been
+erected to hero or saint I cannot now recall. And somewhere, when the
+dusk was deepening, we found an old church, gray as the shadows
+enveloping it, with a horseman, spear in hand, cut in _bas relief_ upon
+one side. What dragon he made tilt against in the darkness we never
+knew.
+
+Even our driver seemed to warm beneath the influences which subdued and
+dissipated our cares. He nodded gently and complacently to
+acquaintances, eliciting greetings in return, in which we, in a measure,
+shared. He hummed a guttural, though cheerful song, which found an echo
+in our hearts. He stood up in his place to point the way to misguided
+strangers, in whose perplexities we could so well sympathize. And once,
+having laid down the reins, and paused in our slow advance, he held a
+long and seemingly enjoyable conversation with a passing friend. To all
+this we made no manner of objection, rather we entered into the spirit
+of the hour, and were filled with a complacency which was hastily
+banished upon our return to the hotel, where, as we put into the hand of
+our benevolent driver his due, and the generous _pour boire_ which gave
+always such a twinge to our temperance principles, he demanded more.
+
+"He claims," said the porter, who was assisting our descent, "that he
+has been driving with the carriage lamps lighted. There is an extra
+charge for that."
+
+"But he left his seat to light them this moment, just before we turned
+into the square," we replied, indignantly.
+
+The porter shrugged his shoulders. That is the end of an argument. There
+is never anything more to be said. We submitted at once, though our
+faith in benevolent humanity went to the winds.
+
+Somewhat dispirited, we climbed the stairs to our room. "One day more,"
+we said, "and our troubles will be at an end." But, alas! one day was as
+a thousand years!
+
+It was to be an all-day's ride to Paris, from nine o'clock in the
+morning until half past nine or ten at night. So, while waiting for
+breakfast, we hastened out into the town, in search of a bookstore, and
+something to while away the dull hours before us.
+
+A young man, of preternaturally serious countenance, was removing the
+shutters as we entered a musty little shop. We turned over the
+Tauchnitz's editions of English novels until we had made a choice, the
+value of our purchases amounting to four or five francs, and gave him a
+napoleon. With profuse apologies he left us to get it changed. Returning
+presently, he threw the silver into a drawer, and handed the books to
+us, with a "_Merci_."
+
+"Yes," we said; "but--" Arithmetic had never been my strength; still
+something was clearly wrong here.
+
+"The change," said Mrs. K. "He has given us no change." Sure enough; but
+still he continued to bow and thank us, evidently expecting us to go.
+
+We tried to explain; eliciting only one of the blank stares that usually
+followed our attempts at explanation.
+
+"The man must be an idiot," Mrs. K. said, gravely.
+
+"He certainly has an imbecile expression of countenance," I assented. He
+stood still, bowing at intervals, while we calmly weighed and balanced
+his wits before his eyes. We tried signs; having through much practice
+developed a system to which the deaf and dumb alphabet is as nothing. We
+attempted to convince him that a part of the money was ours.
+
+He smiled, and assured us, in a similar way, that the books belonged to
+us, the money to him.
+
+There was so much justice in this, that we should doubtless have
+assented, had not his own wits finally asserted themselves. Blushing
+like a bashful boy, he suddenly exclaimed, counted out the change, and
+poured it into our hands with so many apologies, that we were glad to
+retreat.
+
+It was a discouraging beginning for the new day. Still we would not
+despair. We had assured our anxious friends that we were quite able to
+take care of ourselves. We would triumphantly prove our own words.
+Breakfast over, and our bill settled without mishap or misunderstanding,
+we started for the station in the hotel omnibus, in company with a
+stout, genial Frenchman, who spoke a little English, and his fussy
+little wife. When we entered the station, the line formed before the
+ticket-window was already formidable. It lacked fifteen minutes of the
+hour when the train would start, and our baggage was--where? We seized a
+_commissionaire_, slipped a piece of money into his hand in a very
+bungling, shamefaced way, and, presto! in a moment our trunks appeared
+among the other baggage, though we had looked in vain for them before.
+Then, with a sensation of self-consciousness approaching guilt, I
+stepped to the foot of the line before the ticket-window.
+
+"Two tickets for Paris," I gasped, finding myself, after a time, brought
+face to face with the sharp-eyed official. "What is the price?" But
+before I could utter the words, the reply rattled through my head like a
+discharge of grape-shot. Every finger resolved itself into ten, as I
+essayed to open my purse and count out the gold pieces. What should I
+do! I had not enough into ten francs; it might as well have been ten
+thousand! Mrs. K. was waiting at a little distance; but the place once
+lost in the line could not be regained, and there was our baggage yet to
+be weighed, and the hands of the clock frightfully near the hour of
+departure. There was an impatient stamping of feet behind me, as I stood
+for a moment dizzy, bewildered, with an angry buzz of voices ringing
+with the din and roar in my ears. Then I rushed down the room to Mrs.
+K., and explained as hastily as possible. She filled my purse, and I
+flew back to find the line pushed forward and my place gone. One glance
+at the hands of the clock, at the discouraging line of ticket-seekers
+yet to be served,--how could I go to the foot again! Then I walked
+straight to the window with the courage of despair. A low growl ran down
+the line, the _gendarme_ on guard stepped forward, expostulating
+excitedly; but, blessings on the man at the head of the line, who pushed
+the others back, and gave me a place, and even upon the grim official
+behind the window, who smiled encouragement, and gave me the tickets,
+while the _gendarme_ stormed. I stepped out again, conscious only of the
+wish--strong as a prayer--that we were safe again in Lucerne, or--some
+other place of peaceful rest.
+
+Wedged in among the crowd, we saw one trunk after another weighed and
+removed, while ours remained untouched. I pulled the sleeve of a porter.
+My hand held my purse. The suggestion was enough. In a moment our trunks
+were weighed, and the little paper ticket corresponding to our "check"
+safe in our possession. I turned, conscientiously, to reward the
+porter; but we were jostled by a score of elbows, each encased in the
+sleeve of a blue blouse. Which was the one I sought? I could not tell.
+Each answered my glance of puzzled inquiry with one of expectation.
+Diving to the depths of my purse, I found it to contain one solitary
+centime--nothing more. I slipped it into the hand nearest, and from the
+start of surprise and delight was immediately convinced that it was the
+wrong man. However, it did not matter. There was no time to explain. The
+doors opening upon the platform, which remain locked until the last
+moment, were thrown open, and we hurried away, found places upon the
+train, and sank back upon the cushions exhausted, but happy. For ten
+hours at least, nothing could happen to us. The guard passed the window,
+examining the tickets, and slamming the doors, making our safety doubly
+sure. A moment more, and with a noiseless motion we were off. Hardly had
+the train started before it stopped again. One after another our
+companions left us--for we were not alone in the compartment. "Strange,"
+we said, yet too thoroughly exhausted to be curious. It was still more
+strange when, after a short time, they each and all returned. They began
+to whisper among themselves, pointing to us. "What _can_ be the matter
+_now_?" we queried, suddenly mindful that life is a warfare, and roused
+to interest.
+
+Our fellow-travellers proceeded to enlighten us in chorus, and in the
+confusion of the outburst, we caught--by inspiration--at their meaning.
+We had crossed the frontier into France, and the baggage was examined
+here. We hastened out and into the station. All the trunks but our own
+had been checked. With his hand upon one of these, an official demanded
+the key, upon our appearance. Remembering an episode in its packing, we
+demurred, and proffered the key of another. Already vexed by the delay,
+his suspicions were roused now. He demanded the key of the first, which
+we gave up with wicked delight. The by-standers drew near. Indeed, a
+crowd was the embarrassing accompaniment to all our unfortunate
+experiences. The official turned the key with the air of doing his duty
+if he perished in the attempt, when the lid flew open, and a hoop-skirt,
+compressed to the final degree, sprang up into his startled face, like a
+Jack-in-the-box. The spectators laughed--French though they were--as,
+very red in the face, he vainly tried to replace it, entirely forgetting
+to search for contraband articles.
+
+No other incident disturbed the quiet of that long day's ride to Paris.
+At some queer little station we descended to lunch, and returned to our
+places, laden, like the spies of Eschol, with luscious grapes. Our
+fellow-travellers dropped out along the way, only, however, to be
+replaced by others. We had not succeeded in securing places in the
+compartment reserved for ladies alone; but the French gentlemen who were
+our companions proved most courteous in their polite indifference to our
+movements. An old gentleman among these, elicited our outspoken
+admiration for his grand head. We were secure in our native language, we
+knew.
+
+"Lovely face!" we exclaimed, unblushingly. "What a head for a sculptor!
+Quite like Michel Angelo's Moses, I declare."
+
+Before the day was over, "Michel Angelo's Moses" addressed us in
+excellent English.
+
+When the darkness gathered, when the night settled down, something of
+its gloom oppressed us. Once safely housed in Paris, we should be at
+rest; but there were still difficulties to be overcome. Our friends had
+telegraphed to Miss H. that we should arrive by this train; but the
+number of her house we did not know, nor did they. We were only sure
+that her apartments were over the _Magasin au Printemps_. Still that was
+tolerably exact; we would not be uneasy. At ten o'clock at night we
+stepped down from the train into a confusion of tongues and elbows which
+I cannot describe, and followed the crowd into the baggage-room. I say
+_followed_--we were literally lifted from our feet and borne along.
+There was no baggage in sight. We waited until an hour seemed to have
+passed, and still no trunks appeared.
+
+"Suppose we leave them, and send a porter from the house in the morning
+to find them;" and acting upon this, we struggled out of the station
+into the great paved square at one side. The night was dark; but the
+gas-lights dimly lighted up a line of carriages at the farther side,
+towards which we hastened, and had seated ourselves in one, when a
+_commissionaire_ came running across the square, and putting his head in
+at the carriage window, asked if we had any baggage.
+
+"Yes," we replied; but the rattling words that followed brought only
+confusion to us. Our minds, already overtaxed, gave way at once. It is
+pleasant to recall the patience and good-nature of that official. It is
+pleasant, when old things have so entirely passed away, to remember the
+Paris of 1869 as, at least, a city into which women might come at
+midnight, alone, unprotected, and be not only free from insult and
+imposition, but actually cared for, and sent to their rightful
+destination, in spite of their own ignorance and incompetence.
+
+"Stay here," said our friend in uniform; and he disappeared, to return
+in a moment with the stout French gentleman who had been our companion
+in the hotel omnibus at Basle. We met with mutual surprise, and pleasure
+on our side at least.
+
+"_Do_ any one look for your baggage?" he asked.
+
+"No," we replied. "We thought we might leave it."
+
+"You must go," he said.
+
+The _commissionaire_ took possession of our check and the driver's
+_carte_, and I followed the two back to the station, leaving Mrs. K. to
+guard our satchels, &c., in the carriage.
+
+"Wait one leetle moment," said the kind French gentleman; "I bring
+madame." And in a moment he dragged the fussy little woman from the
+crowd, handing her over with the triumphant air of having now settled
+all difficulties.
+
+"Madame speak ze Eengleesh fine," he said.
+
+Looking down from an immeasurable height, the little madam condescended
+to remark that their servant was looking for their baggage.
+
+"Ah!" I responded. "Then we are not permitted to leave our trunks."
+
+"I am sure I don't know," she replied, looking so greatly bored, not to
+say exhausted, that I did not think it best to press the matter. "Our
+servant is attending to it," she repeated.
+
+Her husband's face fairly glowed with satisfaction while this side
+conversation was being carried on. Evidently he believed the whole
+French baggage system to have been elucidated for my benefit. I thanked
+him heartily, as we exchanged cordial adieus. Even the fussy little
+woman gathered, for the moment, sufficient life to attempt to bow;
+which, alas! never got beyond a stare. The _commissionaire_ seized upon
+a blue-bloused porter, and gave me to him with the check, the _carte_,
+and a few sharply-spoken directions. Clinging to that blue sleeve, I was
+borne through the swaying, surging mass of humanity, into the
+baggage-room--how, I never knew. Our trunks were identified, lifted, not
+thrown, by my porter upon a hand-truck, which dragged for itself and us
+an opening in the crowd. Once out upon the platform, the porter pushed
+doggedly on into the darkness, though I had left Mrs. K. and the
+carriage in the square at one side. I expostulated. He held persistently
+to his course. I gave one thought to poor Mrs. K., resigned to what fate
+I knew not, and then, woman-like, followed my trunks.
+
+It was all explained, when, dimly outlined in the darkness before the
+station, we espied a sea of shiny hats and shadowy cabs; and when, after
+long shouting of the number of our own, by the porter and everybody
+else, it finally crawled up to the steps where we were standing, Mrs.
+K.'s anxious face looking out of the window.
+
+"I began to think you were lost," she said. "You can fancy my feelings
+when the driver gathered up the reins and drove out of that square."
+
+We made a thank-offering upon the palm of every grimy hand, suddenly
+outstretched; then the driver paused, whip in the air, for the address
+of our destination.
+
+"_Magasin au Printemps_, Boulevard Haussman." He stared, as everybody
+had, and did, along the way. If they only wouldn't! We repeated it. He
+conferred, in a low tone, with the man on the next box, who got down
+from his place, and came around to our window to look at us. One or two
+lounging porters joined him. The _Magasin au Printemps_ is a large dry
+and fancy goods establishment, which had been closed, of course, for
+hours, since it was now nearly midnight. It was as though we had reached
+New York late at night, and insisted upon being driven to _Stewart's_.
+The little crowd stared at us solemnly, in a kind of pitiful curiosity,
+I fancied. I think, by this time, our countenances may have expressed
+incipient idiocy. We attempted to explain that Miss H.'s apartments were
+over the _Magasin_, and the driver mounted to his seat, though, I am
+obliged to confess, with an ominous shake of his head.
+
+As we rolled out into the wide boulevards our spirits rose. The
+sidewalks were crowded with promenaders, the streets with carriages. The
+light of a glorious day seemed to have burst upon our dazzled eyes.
+Paris, gay, beautiful Paris, which never sleeps, was out, disporting
+herself.
+
+"We will not be anxious," we said; nor were we in the least. "Even if we
+cannot find Miss H.'s, some hotel will take us in. Or, failing in that,
+we can drive about until morning."
+
+A thought of our respective and respectable families did cross our minds
+with this lawless suggestion. In happy unconsciousness, they believed us
+still safe with our friends.
+
+We crawled up the Boulevard Haussman. There were the closed doors and
+shutters of the _Magasin au Printemps_. Two or three other doors met our
+gaze. The driver paused before one. We descended, and pulled the bell.
+You must know there are no doorsteps, in Paris, leading to front doors,
+as with us. The first floor is, almost without exception, given up to
+shops; and dwellings, unless pretentious enough to be houses enclosing a
+court-yard and entered from the street by passing through great gates,
+are simply apartments in the two, three, and four stories above these
+shops.
+
+Some invisible mechanism swung back the great double doors as we pulled
+the bell, disclosing a pretty, paved court-yard, with a fountain in the
+centre, surrounded by pots of flowers. A glass door at one side,
+revealed wide marble stairs, down which a charming little portress was
+tripping.
+
+"Is this Miss H.'s?" we asked in English. She only shook her head. We
+paraded our French. She seemed lost in thought for a moment, then, with
+a "_Oui, oui_," ran past us to the carriage, and gave some directions to
+the driver, emphasizing her words with a pair of plump little hands.
+Then, with a "_bon nuit_," she disappeared, and the great doors closed
+again. Evidently we were being taken care of, we thought, as we settled
+back again in the carriage. We stopped before another door, already
+open, and disclosing a flight of wide, stone stairs, ascending almost
+from the sidewalk. Immediately upon pulling the bell--as though the wire
+had been attached to it--a long, loose-jointed, grotesque, yet horrible
+figure appeared at the head of the stairs, half-stooping to bring
+himself within the range of my vision, swinging his arms like a Dutch
+windmill, and grinning in a way which seemed to open his whole head.
+
+[Illustration: "Together we stared at him with rigid and severe
+countenances." Page 240.]
+
+"Is--is this Miss H.'s?" I ventured from the sidewalk.
+
+He only beckoned still more wildly for me to ascend. I drew back. Good
+Heavens! What was the matter with him? And still, while I stared
+fascinated, yet horror-stricken, he continued, without intermission,
+these speechless contortions and evolutions. Although he uttered not a
+sound, he seemed to say with every cracking joint, "Come up, come up,"
+while he scooped the air with his bony hands.
+
+I remembered that it was midnight; that we were alone, and in wicked
+Paris; that we had been religiously brought up; that Mrs. K.'s husband
+was the superintendent of a large and flourishing Sunday school; that my
+father was a minister of the gospel. I planted my feet firmly upon the
+sidewalk. I folded my arms rigidly. I shook my head virtuously. Come up?
+Chains should not drag me. Then I turned to the carriage.
+
+"Mrs. K., do come and see this man."
+
+She came. Together we stared at him with rigid and severe countenances.
+
+"Dreadful!" said I, remembering the Sunday school.
+
+"Awful!" said she, recalling the pious ancestors. And again we shook our
+heads at his blandishments to the point of dislocation. The driver, who
+had been all this time tipped back against a tree, began to show
+symptoms of impatience. Something must be done.
+
+"Suppose you ask for some one who can speak English," suggested Mrs. K.
+
+"Sure enough." And I did. With one last, terrible grimace the ogre's
+heels disappeared up the second flight of stairs.
+
+There came down in a moment a thoroughly respectable appearing porter,
+who informed us, in English, that we were expected, our telegram having
+been received; though, through the ambiguity of its address, it had been
+sent first to a house below. The people there had promised to forward
+us, however, in case we followed the telegram. This accounted for the
+movements of the little portress.
+
+The _ogre_ proved to be a most good-natured _concierge_, who had been
+instructed to keep the door open in anticipation of our arrival.
+
+So our fears had been but feathers, after all, blown away by a breath;
+our troubles only a dream, to be laughed over in the awakening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here the story of our journeying may end. The remaining distance,
+through the kindness of friends, new and old, was accomplished without
+difficulty or annoyance. We reached our own homes in due time, and like
+the princess in the fairy tales, "lived happily forever afterwards."
+
+A few practical words suggest themselves here which would pass unnoticed
+in a preface--where, perhaps, they belong. First, in regard to the
+question often asked, "Can women travel alone through Europe?" Recalling
+our own experience,--too brief to serve as a criterion,--I should still
+say, "_Yes_." We met, frequently, parties of ladies who had made the
+whole grand tour alone. In Switzerland we found English women,
+constantly, without escort. The care of choosing routes, of looking
+after baggage and buying tickets, of managing the sometimes complicated
+affairs attendant upon sight-seeing, with the vexations and impositions
+met with and suffered on every hand, no woman would voluntarily accept
+without great compensation, I am sure. But if she prefers even these
+cares to seeing nothing of the world, they can be borne, and the
+annoyances, to a great extent overcome, through patience and growing
+experience.
+
+Then, if you start alone, or without being consigned to friends upon the
+other side,--which no _young_ woman would think of doing,--you are
+almost sure to join, at different times, other parties, whose way is
+your own; and far preferable this is to making up a large company before
+leaving home--the members of which usually disagree before reaching the
+continent, and often part in mutual disgust. "There is nothing like
+travelling to bring out a person's real nature," say some. But this is
+untrue. Travelling develops, rather than reveals, I think, and under
+conditions favorable only to the worse side of one's nature. You are
+bewildered by the multitude of strange sights and ways; the very
+foundation of usages is broken up; you are putting forth physical
+exertions that would seem superhuman at home, and are mentally racked
+until utterly exhausted,--for there is nothing so exhausting as
+continued sight-seeing,--and at this point people say they begin "to
+find each other out."
+
+An occasional period of rest--not staying within doors to study up the
+guide-books, but entire cessation from seeing, hearing, or doing--and a
+scrap from the mantle of charity, will save many a threatened friendship
+at these times. We learned to know our strength--how weak it was; and to
+await in some delightful spot, chosen for the purpose, returning energy,
+courage, and _interest_; for even that would be banished at times by
+utter weariness and exhaustion.
+
+In former times, Americans fitted themselves out for Europe as though
+bound to a desert island. Wider intelligence and experience have opened
+their eyes and reformed their judgment; still, a word upon this subject
+will not be unwelcome, I am sure, to girls especially, who contemplate a
+trip over the ocean.
+
+In the first place, your steamer outfit is a distinct affair. You are
+allowed to take any baggage you wish for into your state-room; but, if
+wise, you will not fill the narrow space, nor encumber yourself with
+anything larger than a lady's _hat box_, which may offer a tolerable
+seat to the stewardess, or visitors of condolence, in case seasickness
+confines you to berth or sofa. Even preferable to this is a flat,
+English portmanteau, which can be slipped under the lower berth. If you
+sail for Liverpool, you can leave this at your hotel there in charge of
+the head waiter until you return, and thus avoid the expense and care of
+useless baggage.
+
+Its contents your own good sense will in a measure suggest. Let me
+add--a double gown or woollen wrapper, in which you may sleep, flannels
+(even though you cross the ocean in summer), merino stockings, warm
+gloves or mittens, as pretty a hood as you please, only be sure that it
+covers the back of your head, since you will ignore all cunning craft of
+hair dressing, for a few days at least, and even after you are well
+enough to appear at the table, perhaps. Bear in mind that the Northern
+Atlantic is a cold place, and horribly open to the wind _at all seasons
+of the year_; that you will live on the deck when not in your berth or
+at your meals, and that the deck of an ocean steamer partakes of the
+nature of a whirlwind. Fur is by no means out of place, and skirts
+should be sufficiently heavy to defy the gales, which convert everything
+into a sail. Take as many wraps as you choose--and then you will wish
+you had one more. A large shawl, or, better, a carriage-robe, is
+indispensable, as you will very likely lie rolled up like a cocoon much
+of the time. A low sea-chair, or common camp-chair, is useful to older
+people; but almost any girl will prefer a seat upon the deck itself;
+there are comfortable crannies into which no chair can be wedged.
+
+By all means avoid elaborate fastenings to garments. A multiplicity of
+unmanageable "hooks and eyes" is untold torment at sea; and let these
+garments be few, but warm. You will appreciate the wisdom of this
+suggestion, when you have accomplished the herculean task of making your
+first state-room toilet.
+
+If you are really going abroad for a season of _travel_, take almost
+nothing. You can never know what you will need until the necessity
+arises. If you anticipate, you misjudge. Your American outfit will
+render you an oddity in England. But do not change there, or you will
+be still more singular in Paris. It is as well to start with but one
+dress besides the one you wear on the steamer--anything you chance to
+have; a black alpaca, or half-worn black silk, is very serviceable. When
+you reach Paris, circumstances and the season will govern your
+purchases; and this same dress will be almost a necessity for constant
+railway journeys, rainy-day sight-seeing, and mule-riding in
+Switzerland. A little care and brushing, fresh linen, and a pretty
+French tie, will make it presentable--if not more--at any hotel dinner
+table.
+
+A warm shawl or wrap of some kind you will need for evenings,--even
+though you travel in summer,--for visiting the cathedrals, which are
+chill as a tomb; and for weeks together among the mountains you will
+never throw it aside. But if you can take but one, _don't_ provide
+yourself with a _water-proof_. They are too undeniably ugly, and not
+sufficiently warm for constant wear. If it rains slightly, the umbrella,
+which you will buy from force of necessity and example in England, will
+protect you; if in torrents, you will ride. Indeed, you will always
+ride, time is so precious, cab-hire so cheap, and distances so great in
+most foreign cities.
+
+Lastly, let me beg of you to provide yourself with an abundant supply of
+patience and good-nature. Without these, no outfit is complete. Try to
+laugh at annoyances. Smile, at least. And do not anticipate
+difficulties. Above all, enjoy yourself, and then everybody you meet
+will enjoy you. And so good by, and "God bless us every one."
+
+
+
+
+LEE AND SHEPARD'S HANDBOOKS.
+
+
+"JUST AS THE TWIG IS BENT, THE TREE'S INCLINED."
+
+          =LESSONS ON MANNERS.= For home and school use. A
+          Manual by EDITH E. WIGGIN. Cloth, 50 cents; school
+          edition, boards, 30 cents net.
+
+This little book is being rapidly introduced into schools as a
+text-book.
+
+
+SHOWS WHY THE WINDS BLOW.
+
+          =WHIRLWINDS, CYCLONES, AND TORNADOES.= By Prof. W.
+          M. DAVIS of Harvard University. Illustrated. 50
+          cents.
+
+The cyclones of our great West, the whirlwinds of the desert, every
+thing in the shape of storms, scientifically and popularly treated.
+
+
+"THIS VOLUME IS SUBLIME POETRY"
+
+          =THE STARS AND THE EARTH;= or, Thoughts upon
+          Space, Time, and Eternity. With an Introduction by
+          THOMAS HILL, D.D., LL.D., late President of
+          Harvard University. Cloth. 50 cents.
+
+"It cannot but be valuable to the student of science as well as to the
+professors of religion, and tends to bring them closer together, and
+reconcile them."--_Potter's Monthly._
+
+
+KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DRINKING.
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF WATER ANALYSIS.= By Dr. GEORGE L.
+          AUSTIN. Cloth. 50 cents.
+
+"It condenses into fifty pages what one would have to wander through a
+small chemical library to find. We commend the book as worthy of a wide
+circulation."--_Independent._
+
+
+EVERY LADY HER OWN FLORIST.
+
+          =THE PARLOR GARDENER.= A Treatise on the
+          House-Culture of Ornamental Plants. Translated
+          from the French, and adapted to American use. By
+          CORNELIA J. RANDOLPH. With eleven illustrative
+          cuts. 50 cents.
+
+It contains minute directions for the "mantel-piece garden," the
+"_étagère_-garden," the "flower-stand garden," the "portable
+green-house," the "house-aquarium," the garden upon the balcony, the
+terrace, and the double window, besides describing many curious and
+interesting experiments in grafting.
+
+
+"HELLO, CENTRAL!"
+
+          =THE TELEPHONE.= An Account of the Phenomena of
+          Electricity, Magnetism, and Sound, as involved in
+          its action, with directions for making a
+          Speaking-Telephone. By Professor A. E. DOLBEAR of
+          Tufts College. 16mo. Illustrated. Price 50 cents.
+
+"An interesting little book upon this most fascinating subject, which is
+treated in a very clear and methodical way. First we have a thorough
+review of the discoveries in electricity, then of magnetism, then of
+those in the study of sound,--pitch, velocity, timbre, tone, resonance,
+sympathetic vibrations, etc. From these the telephone is reached, and by
+them in a measure explained."--_Hartford Courant._
+
+
+A PRACTICAL PROOF-READER'S ADVICE.
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF PUNCTUATION=, and other Typographical
+          Matters. For the use of Printers, Authors,
+          Teachers, and Scholars. By MARSHALL T. BIGELOW,
+          Corrector at the University Press, Cambridge,
+          Mass. 18mo. Cloth. 50 cts.
+
+"It is intended for the use of authors and teachers; while business men
+who have occasion to print circulars, advertisements, etc., can hardly
+afford to be without a copy of it for reference."--_Schenectady Daily
+Union._
+
+
+"A USEFUL LITTLE MANUAL."
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF LIGHT GYMNASTICS.= By LUCY B. HUNT,
+          Instructor in Gymnastics at Smith (Female)
+          College, Northampton, Mass. 50 cents.
+
+"It is designed as a guide to teachers of girls; but it will be found of
+use, also, to such as wish to practise the exercises at
+home."--_New-York World._
+
+
+LOOK OUT FOR SQUALLS.
+
+          =PRACTICAL BOAT-SAILING.= By DOUGLAS FRAZAR.
+          Classic size. $1.00. With numerous diagrams and
+          illustrations.
+
+"Its directions are so plain, that, with the aid of the accompanying
+pictorial illustrations and diagrams given in the book, it does seem as
+if 'anybody,' after reading it, could safely handle a sailboat in a
+squall."--_Times, Hartford._
+
+
+"A HELPFUL LITTLE BOOK."--_Springfield Republican._
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF WOOD-ENGRAVING.= With Practical
+          Instructions in the Art for Persons wishing to
+          learn without an Instructor. By WILLIAM A.
+          EMERSON, Wood-Engraver. New Edition. Illustrated.
+          $1.00.
+
+"A valuable handbook, explanatory of an art which is gradually
+attracting the attention of amateurs more and more, and which affords,
+not only a pleasing pastime, but an excellent means of procuring a
+livelihood."--_Cleveland Sun._
+
+
+"A LITERARY TIDBIT."
+
+          =SHORT STUDIES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS.= By THOMAS
+          WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 50 cents.
+
+"These 'Studies' are rather those of the characters themselves than of
+their works, and, written in Mr. Higginson's best analytical style, fill
+up a leisure hour charmingly."--_Toledo Journal._
+
+
+"NO LITTLE BOOK IS CAPABLE OF DOING BETTER SERVICE."
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF ELOCUTION SIMPLIFIED.= By WALTER K.
+          FOBES, with an Introduction by GEORGE M. BAKER.
+          Cloth. 50 cents.
+
+"This valuable little book occupies a place heretofore left vacant, as a
+digest of elocution that is both practical and methodical, and low in
+price."--_New-York Tribune._
+
+
+SHORT-HAND WITHOUT A MASTER.
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF UNIVERSAL PHONOGRAPHY;= or,
+          Short-hand by the "Allen Method." A
+          self-instructor, whereby more speed than long-hand
+          writing is gained at the first lesson, and
+          additional speed at each subsequent lesson. By G.
+          G. ALLEN, Principal of the Allen Stenographic
+          Institute, Boston. 50 cents.
+
+"By this method one can, in an hour a day for two or three months,
+become so expert as to report a lecture _verbatim_."
+
+
+THE STUDY OF GEOGRAPHY MADE PRACTICAL.
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF THE EARTH.= Natural methods in
+          geography. By LOUISA PARSONS HOPKINS, Teacher of
+          Normal Methods in the Swain Free School, New
+          Bedford. 50 cents.
+
+The work is designed for the use of teachers and normal-school classes
+as a review and generalization of geographical facts, and for general
+readers as a guide to right methods of study and instruction.
+
+
+DAILY FOOD FOR THE MIND.
+
+          =PRONOUNCING HANDBOOK= of 3,000 words often
+          mispronounced, and of words as to which a choice
+          of pronunciation is allowed. By RICHARD SOULE and
+          LOOMIS J. CAMPBELL. 50 cts.
+
+"This book can be carried in a gentleman's vest-pocket, or tucked in a
+lady's belt, and we wish several hundred thousand copies might thus be
+disposed of, with a view to daily consultation."--_Congregationalist._
+
+
+ABOUT 40,000 SYNONYMOUS WORDS.
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF ENGLISH SYNONYMS=, with an appendix
+          showing the correct use of prepositions, also a
+          collection of foreign phrases. By LOOMIS J.
+          CAMPBELL. Cloth. 50 cents.
+
+"Clearly printed, well arranged, adapted to help any one who writes much
+to enrich his vocabulary, vary his expressions, and secure accuracy in
+conveying his thoughts."--_Boston Journal._
+
+
+"A BOOK OF INCALCULABLE VALUE."
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF CONVERSATION.= Its Faults and its
+          Graces. Compiled by ANDREW P. PEABODY, D.D., LL.D.
+          Comprising: 1. Dr. Peabody's Lecture. 2. Mr.
+          Trench's Lecture. 3. Mr. Perry Gwynn's "A Word to
+          the Wise; or, Hints on the Current Improprieties
+          of Expression in Writing and Speaking." 4.
+          Mistakes and Improprieties in Speaking and Writing
+          Corrected. Cloth. 50 cents.
+
+"It is worth owning, and ought to be studied by many who heedlessly
+misuse their mother tongue."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+
+"WE COMMEND IT HIGHLY."--_Chicago Herald._
+
+          =HINTS AND HELPS= for those who Write, Print, or
+          Read. By BENJAMIN DREW, Proof-reader. 50 cents.
+
+"The information is imparted in a very lively and remembering
+way."--_Boston Commonwealth._
+
+
+ARE YOU INTERESTED IN BUGS?
+
+          =INSECTS;= How to Catch and how to Prepare them
+          for the Cabinet. Comprising a Manual of
+          Instruction for the Field Naturalist. By WALTER P.
+          MANTON. Illustrated. Cloth, 50 cents.
+
+"Nothing essential is omitted: every boy who has any taste for natural
+history should have this neat little volume. The many 'Agassiz Clubs'
+which have sprung up amid the youth of the country, should add it to
+their libraries."--_Chicago Advance._
+
+
+"OF INESTIMABLE VALUE TO YOUNG BOTANISTS."--_Rural New-Yorker._
+
+          =FIELD BOTANY.= A Handbook for the Collector.
+          Containing Instructions for Gathering and
+          Preserving Plants, and the Formation of a
+          Herbarium. Also Complete Instructions in Leaf
+          Photography, Plant Printing, and the Skeletonizing
+          of Leaves. By WALTER P. MANTON. Illustrated. 50
+          cents.
+
+"A most valuable companion. The amount of information conveyed in the
+small compass is surprising."--_Demorest's Monthly._
+
+
+"EVERY NATURALIST OUGHT TO HAVE A COPY FOR IMMEDIATE USE."
+
+          =TAXIDERMY WITHOUT A TEACHER.= Comprising a
+          Complete Manual of Instruction for Preparing and
+          Preserving Birds, Animals, and Fishes; with a
+          Chapter on Hunting and Hygiene; together with
+          Instructions for Preserving Eggs and Making
+          Skeletons, and a number of valuable Recipes. By
+          _Walter P. Manton_. Illustrated. 50 cents.
+
+"We would be glad if all teachers would take this little book, study it
+faithfully, become interested themselves, and interest their pupils in
+this wonderful art."--_Practical Teacher._
+
+
+HOW TO ENLARGE THE ANT TO THE SIZE OF AN ELEPHANT.
+
+          =BEGINNINGS WITH THE MICROSCOPE.= A Working
+          Handbook, containing simple Instructions in the
+          Art and Method of using the Microscope and
+          preparing Objects for Examination. By WALTER P.
+          MANTON, M.D. Small 4to. Cloth, 50 cents.
+
+Uniform with the author's "Handbooks of Natural History," and equally
+valuable.
+
+
+PARLEZ VOUS FRANCAIS?
+
+          =BROKEN ENGLISH.= A Frenchman's Struggles with the
+          English Language. By Professor E. C. DUBOIS,
+          author of "The French Teacher." Cloth, 50 cents;
+          cheap edition, paper, 30 cents.
+
+The Professor's famous lecture, delivered all over the country. Amusing
+as a narrative, instructive as a handbook of French conversation.
+
+
+AN EMERGENCY HANDBOOK.
+
+          =WHAT IS TO BE DONE.= A Handbook for the Nursery,
+          with useful Hints for Children and Adults. By
+          ROBERT B. DIXON, M.D. Small 4to. Cloth, 50 cents.
+
+Dr. Dixon has produced a work that will be gladly welcomed by parents.
+His "remedies" are indorsed by many prominent medical men.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of
+price._
+
+=LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.=
+
+
+
+
+TROPHIES OF TRAVEL.
+
+
+          =DRIFTING ROUND THE WORLD;= A Boy's Adventures by
+          Sea and Land. By CAPT. CHARLES W. HALL, author of
+          "Adrift in the Ice-Fields," "The Great Bonanza,"
+          etc. With numerous full-page and letter-press
+          illustrations. Royal 8vo. Handsome cover. $1.75.
+          Cloth. Gilt. $2.50.
+
+"Out of the beaten track" in its course of travel, record of adventures,
+and descriptions of life in Greenland, Labrador, Ireland, Scotland,
+England, France, Holland, Russia, Asia, Siberia, and Alaska. Its hero is
+young, bold, and adventurous; and the book is in every way interesting
+and attractive.
+
+
+EDWARD GREÉY'S JAPANESE SERIES.
+
+          =YOUNG AMERICANS IN JAPAN;= or, The Adventures of
+          the Jewett Family and their Friend Oto Nambo. With
+          170 full-page and letter-press illustrations. Royal
+          8vo, 7 x 9½ inches. Handsomely illuminated cover.
+          $1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50.
+
+This story, though essentially a work of fiction, is filled with
+interesting and truthful descriptions of the curious ways of living of
+the good people of the land of the rising sun.
+
+          =THE WONDERFUL CITY OF TOKIO;= or, The Further
+          Adventures of the Jewett Family and their Friend
+          Oto Nambo. With 169 illustrations. Royal 8vo, 7 x
+          9½ inches. With cover in gold and colors, designed
+          by the author. $1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50.
+
+"A book full of delightful information. The author has the happy gift of
+permitting the reader to view things as he saw them. The illustrations
+are mostly drawn by a Japanese artist, and are very unique."--_Chicago
+Herald._
+
+          =THE BEAR WORSHIPPERS OF YEZO AND THE ISLAND OF
+          KARAFUTO;= being the further Adventures of the
+          Jewett Family and their Friend Oto Nambo. 180
+          illustrations. Boards. $1.75. Cloth, $2.50.
+
+Graphic pen and pencil pictures of the remarkable bearded people who
+live in the north of Japan. The illustrations are by native Japanese
+artists, and give queer pictures of a queer people, who have been seldom
+visited.
+
+
+HARRY W. FRENCH'S BOOKS.
+
+          =OUR BOYS IN INDIA.= The wanderings of two young
+          Americans in Hindustan, with their exciting
+          adventures on the sacred rivers and wild mountains.
+          With 145 illustrations. Royal 8vo, 7 x 9½ inches.
+          Bound in emblematic covers of Oriental design,
+          $1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50.
+
+While it has all the exciting interest of a romance, it is remarkably
+vivid in its pictures of manners and customs in the land of the Hindu.
+The illustrations are many and excellent.
+
+          =OUR BOYS IN CHINA.= The adventures of two young
+          Americans, wrecked in the China Sea on their
+          return from India, with their strange wanderings
+          through the Chinese Empire. 188 illustrations.
+          Boards, ornamental covers in colors and gold.
+          $1.75. Cloth, $2.50.
+
+This gives the further adventures of "Our Boys" of India fame in the
+land of Teas and Queues.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of
+price._
+
+LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.
+
+
+
+
+HARRY W. FRENCH'S BOOKS.
+
+
+          =THE ONLY ONE.= A Novel. 16mo. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+"The Only One" is a powerful story, dealing with the lights and shadows
+of life in America, Naples, and Persia. Written in a dashing style,
+sometimes deeply tragic, at others humorous in the extreme, it presents
+pictures of human life that attract and interest by their naturalness
+and vividness.
+
+
+          =CASTLE FOAM;= or, The Pauper Prince. A story of
+          real life, true love, and intrigue in the
+          brilliant capital of Prussia. 12mo. $1.50.
+
+"A novel of remarkable power, and strangely unlike any yet written by an
+American. There is something in the beauty and intensity of expression
+that reminds one of Bulwer in his best days."--_Cincinnati Commercial._
+
+
+          =NUNA, THE BRAMIN GIRL.= 16mo. Cloth. $1.25.
+
+"This book is beautifully written, and abounds in novel and dramatic
+incidents."--_St. Louis Globe Democrat._
+
+
+          =EGO=, The Life Struggles of Lawrence Edwards.
+          16mo. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+"Both an interesting and an exciting work, written with freedom,
+effectiveness, and power."--_Philadelphia Item._
+
+          =GEMS OF GENIUS.= 4to. Illuminated covers. Gilt.
+          $2.00.
+
+"Fifty full-page illustrations, selected from the art-works of as many
+foreign painters, with text descriptive of each, from the pen of one of
+our native Ruskins."--_New-York Mail._
+
+
+          ART AND ARTISTS. A history of the birth of art in
+          America, with biographical studies of many
+          prominent American artists, and nearly one hundred
+          illus. from their studios. Cloth. Gilt. $3.00.
+
+"A work that will grow in value every year, showing the most patient
+research and elaboration, skilfully executed, and admirably worked up.
+An honor to the author, an honor to the publishers, an honor to the
+country."--_New-York Evening Post._
+
+
+          =OUR BOYS IN INDIA.= The wanderings of two young
+          Americans in Hindustan, with their exciting
+          adventures on the sacred rivers and wild mountains.
+          With 145 illustrations. Royal octavo, 7 x 9½
+          inches. Bound in emblematical covers of Oriental
+          design, $1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50.
+
+A new edition of the most popular of books of travel for young folks,
+issued last season. While it has all the exciting interest of a romance,
+it is remarkably vivid in its pictures of manners and customs in the
+land of the Hindu. The illustrations are many and excellent.
+
+
+          =OUR BOYS IN CHINA.= The adventures of two young
+          Americans, wrecked in the China Sea on their
+          return from India, with their strange wanderings
+          through the Chinese Empire. 188 Illustrations.
+          Boards, ornamental covers in colors and gold,
+          $1.75. Cloth, $2.50.
+
+After successfully starting the young heroes of his previous book, "Our
+Boys in India," on their homeward trip, the popular lecturer, extensive
+traveller, and remarkable story-teller, has them wrecked in the China
+Sea, saved, and transported across China: giving him an opportunity to
+spread for young folks an appetizing feast of good things.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of
+price._
+
+=LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.=
+
+
+
+MISS VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND'S BOOKS.
+
+Uniform Edition. Cloth. $1.50 Each.
+
+
+BUT A PHILISTINE.
+
+"Another novel by the author of 'A Woman's Word' and 'Lenox Dare,' will
+be warmly welcomed by hosts of readers of Miss Townsend's stories. There
+is nothing of the 'sensational,' or so-called realistic, school in her
+writings. On the contrary, they are noted for their healthy moral tone
+and pure sentiment, and yet are not wanting in STRIKING SITUATIONS AND
+DRAMATIC INCIDENTS."--_Chicago Journal._
+
+
+LENOX DARE.
+
+"Her stories, always sunny and healthful, touch the springs of social
+life, and make the reader better acquainted with this great human
+organization of which we all form a part, and tend to bring him into
+more intimate sympathy with what is most pure and noble in our nature.
+Among the best of her productions we place the volume here under notice.
+In temper and tone the volume is calculated to exert a healthful and
+elevating influence."--_New-England Methodist._
+
+
+DARYLL GAP; or, Whether it Paid.
+
+A story of the petroleum days, and of a family who struck oil. "Miss
+Townsend is a very entertaining writer, and, while she entertains, at
+the same time instructs. Her plots are well arranged, and her characters
+are clearly and strongly drawn. The present volume will not detract from
+the reputation she has heretofore enjoyed."--_Pittsburg Recorder._
+
+
+A WOMAN'S WORD, AND HOW SHE KEPT IT.
+
+"The celebrity of Virginia F. Townsend as an authoress, her brilliant
+descriptive powers, and pure, vigorous imagination, will insure a hearty
+welcome for the above-entitled volume in the writer's happiest vein.
+Every woman will understand the self-sacrifice of Genevieve Weir, and
+will entertain only scorn for the miserable man who imbittered her life
+to hide his own wrong-doing."--_Fashion Quarterly._
+
+
+THAT QUEER GIRL.
+
+"A fresh, wholesome book about good men and good women, bright and
+cheery in style, and pure in morals. Just the book to take a young
+girl's fancy, and help her to grow up, like Madeline and Argia, into the
+sweetness of real girlhood; there being more of that same sweetness
+under the fuss and feathers of the present day than a casual observer
+might suppose."--_People's Monthly._
+
+
+ONLY GIRLS.
+
+"This volume shows how two persons, 'only girls,' saved two men from
+crime, even from ruin of body and soul; and all this came about in their
+lives without their purpose or knowledge at the time, and not at all as
+they or anybody else would have planned it; but it comes about well and
+naturally enough. The story is ingenious and graphic, and kept the
+writer of this notice up far into the small hours of yesterday
+morning."--_Washington Chronicle._
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers and newsdealers, and sent by mail, postpaid on
+receipt of price._
+
+=LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.=
+
+
+
+
+LEE AND SHEPARD'S DOLLAR NOVELS.
+
+
+          =JOHN THORN'S FOLKS.= By ANGELINE TEAL. Cloth.
+          $1.00.
+
+
+          =BARBARA THAYER.= By MISS ANNIE JENNESS. Cloth.
+          $1.00. Popular Edition. Paper. 50 cents.
+
+
+          =THE ONLY ONE.= A Novel by HARRY W. FRENCH, author
+          of "Castle Foam," "Nuna, the Bramin Girl," "Our
+          Boys in China," "Our Boys in India," etc. 16mo.
+          Cloth. $1.00.
+
+This work was published as a serial in "The Boston Globe," and made a
+sensation. It will have a large sale in its new dress.
+
+
+          =LORD OF HIMSELF.= A Novel by FRANCIS H.
+          UNDERWOOD, author of "Handbook of English
+          Literature," etc. A new edition. 16mo. Cloth.
+          $1.00.
+
+"This novel is one that has come into American literature to
+stay."--_Boston Post._
+
+"Spirited, fresh, clean-cut, and deeply thoughtful."--_Boston Gazette._
+
+
+          =DORA DARLING:= The Daughter of the Regiment. By
+          J. G. AUSTIN. 16mo. Cloth, $l.00. A thrilling
+          story of the great Rebellion.
+
+
+          =OUTPOST.= By J. G. AUSTIN. 16mo. Cloth. $1.00. A
+          Sequel to "Dora Darling," but each story complete
+          in itself.
+
+
+          =NUMA ROUMESTAN.= By ALPHONSE DAUDET. Translated
+          from the French by Virginia Champlin. With ten
+          illustrations. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+The latest work of fiction from the pen of Alphonse Daudet, and derives
+its main interest from the generally accepted belief that the hero of
+the novel is really Gambetta, the French statesman.
+
+
+          =KINGS IN EXILE.= By ALPHONSE DAUDET. A new
+          edition. 16mo. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+
+          =LIKE A GENTLEMAN.= By Mrs. MARY A. DENISON. A
+          Temperance Novel, by a well-known author. Cloth.
+          $1.00.
+
+Mrs. Denison is well known as the author of "That Husband of Mine," a
+summer book which exceeded in sale any thing published in America. This
+book is in a more thoughtful vein, but is very entertaining. The style
+is bright and witty.
+
+          =HIS TRIUMPH.= By the author of "That Husband of
+          Mine," "Like a Gentleman," etc. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+
+          =A TIGHT SQUEEZE.= The adventures of a gentleman,
+          who, on a wager of ten thousand dollars, undertook
+          to go from New York to New Orleans in three weeks,
+          without money or the assistance of friends. Cloth,
+          $1.00. Paper, 50 cents.
+
+
+          =PUDDLEFORD PAPERS;= or, Humors of the West. By H.
+          R. RILEY. Illustrated. A new edition. $1.00.
+
+"This is a rich book. Any one who wants a genuine, hearty laugh, should
+purchase this volume."--_Columbus Gazette._
+
+
+          =THE FORTUNATE ISLAND=, and other Stories. By MAX
+          ADELER. Illustrated. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+"Max Adeler is a fellow of infinite humor."--_Albany Evening Journal._
+
+"Extravagant, of course, are these stories, but entertaining and
+amusing, and instructive too."--MARGERY DEANE, _Newport News._
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers and newsdealers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on
+receipt of price._
+
+LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.
+
+
+
+
+YOUNG FOLKS' HEROES OF HISTORY.
+
+By GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE.
+
+Handsomely Illustrated. Price per vol., $1.25. Sets in neat boxes.
+
+
+VASCO DA GAMA: HIS VOYAGES AND ADVENTURES.
+
+"Da Gama's history is full of striking adventures, thrilling incidents,
+and perilous situations; and Mr. Towle, while not sacrificing historical
+accuracy, has so skilfully used his materials, that we have a charmingly
+romantic tale."--_Rural New-Yorker._
+
+
+PIZARRO: HIS ADVENTURES AND CONQUESTS.
+
+"No hero of romance possesses greater power to charm the youthful reader
+than the conqueror of Peru. Not even King Arthur, or Thaddeus of Warsaw,
+has the power to captivate the imagination of the growing boy. Mr. Towle
+has handled his subject in a glowing but truthful manner; and we venture
+the assertion, that, were our children led to read such books as this,
+the taste for unwholesome, exciting, wrong-teaching boys' books--dime
+novels in books' clothing--would be greatly diminished, to the great
+gain of mental force and moral purpose in the rising generation."--_Chicago
+Alliance._
+
+
+MAGELLAN; OR, THE FIRST VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD.
+
+"What more of romantic and spirited adventures any bright boy could want
+than is to be found in this series of historical biography, it is
+difficult to imagine. This volume is written in a most sprightly manner;
+and the life of its hero, Fernan Magellan, with its rapid stride from
+the softness of a petted youth to the sturdy courage and persevering
+fortitude of manhood, makes a tale of marvellous fascination."--_Christian
+Union._
+
+
+MARCO POLO: HIS TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES.
+
+"The story of the adventurous Venetian, who six hundred years ago
+penetrated into India and Cathay and Thibet and Abyssinia, is pleasantly
+and clearly told; and nothing better can be put into the hands of the
+school boy or girl than this series of the records of noted travellers.
+The heroism displayed by these men was certainly as great as that ever
+shown by conquering warrior; and it was exercised in a far nobler
+cause,--the cause of knowledge and discovery, which has made the
+nineteenth century what it is."--_Graphic._
+
+
+RALEGH: HIS EXPLOITS AND VOYAGES.
+
+"This belongs to the 'Young Folks' Heroes of History' series, and deals
+with a greater and more interesting man than any of its predecessors.
+With all the black spots on his fame, there are few more brilliant and
+striking figures in English history than the soldier, sailor, courtier,
+author, and explorer, Sir Walter Ralegh. Even at this distance of time,
+more than two hundred and fifty years after his head fell on the
+scaffold, we cannot read his story without emotion. It is graphically
+written, and is pleasant reading, not only for young folks, but for old
+folks with young hearts."--_Woman's Journal._
+
+
+DRAKE: THE SEA-LION OF DEVON.
+
+Drake was the foremost sea-captain of his age, the first English admiral
+to send a ship completely round the world, the hero of the magnificent
+victory which the English won over the Invincible Armada. His career was
+stirring, bold, and adventurous, from early youth to old age.
+
+
+_Sold by all Booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of
+price._
+
+=LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers BOSTON.=
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Varied hyphenation was retained. Boldface type is depicted by = and
+italic by _.
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 28, repeated word "a" removed from text (blossomed into a bell)
+
+Page 35, "iniquitious" changed to "iniquitous" (most iniquitous
+proceeding)
+
+Page 39, "beginnnig" changed to "beginning" (my heart beginning)
+
+Page 82, "heartly" changed to "heartily" (were heartily ashamed)
+
+Page 101, "Sevres" changed to "Sèvres" (pier of Sèvres)
+
+Page 101, "Sevres" changed to "Sèvres" (transferred to Sèvres)
+
+Page 130, "Hotel" changed to "Hôtel" (and the old Hôtel de Ville)
+
+Page 212, "beautifull" changed to "beautiful" (head, past beautiful)
+
+Page 216, "momentry" changed to "momentary" (a momentary life)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's An American Girl Abroad, by Adeline Trafton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD ***
+
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of An American Girl Abroad, by Adeline Trafton.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An American Girl Abroad, by Adeline Trafton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An American Girl Abroad
+
+Author: Adeline Trafton
+
+Illustrator: Miss L. B. Humphrey
+
+Release Date: May 8, 2010 [EBook #32289]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Emmy, Tor Martin Kristiansen and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 329px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="329" height="500" alt="Cover" title="" />
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/inscription.jpg" width="300" height="222" alt="Inscription" title="" />
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illus-1.jpg" width="600" height="368" alt="&quot;At night we descended into the depths of the steamer to worship with the steerage passengers.&quot; Page 23" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;At night we descended into the depths of the steamer to worship with the steerage passengers.&quot; <a href="#Page_23">Page 23</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h3>AN</h3>
+
+<h1><span class="smcap">American Girl Abroad.</span></h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>ADELINE TRAFTON.</h2>
+
+<div class='center'><i>ILLUSTRATED</i><br />
+<i>BY MISS L. B. HUMPHREY.</i><br />
+
+<br /><br /><br />
+BOSTON:<br />
+LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS.<br />
+<span class="smcap">New York</span>:<br />
+<small>LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM.</small><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='copyright'>
+Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1872,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By LEE AND SHEPARD</span>,<br />
+In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Electrotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry,<br />
+No. 19 Spring Lane.<br />
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+I DEDICATE<br />
+<br />
+<b>This Record of Pleasant Days</b><br />
+<br />
+TO MY FATHER,<br />
+<br />
+<big>REV. MARK TRAFTON.</big><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
+<h3>BOOKS FOR "OUR GIRLS."</h3>
+
+<h2>THE GIRLHOOD SERIES.</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>By Popular Authors.</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class='center'><b>AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.</b><br />
+
+By <span class="smcap">Adeline F. Trafton</span>. 16mo, cloth, illustrated. $1.50.</div>
+
+<p>One of the most bright, chatty, wide-awake books of travel ever written. It abounds
+in information, is as pleasant reading as a story book, and full of the wit and sparkle of
+"An American Girl" let loose from school and ready for a frolic.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />ONLY GIRLS.</b><br />
+
+By <span class="smcap">Virginia F. Townsend</span>, Author of "That Queer Girl," &amp;c., &amp;c. 12mo, cloth,
+illustrated. $1.50.</div>
+
+<p>"It is a thrilling story, written in a fascinating style, and the plot is adroitly handled."</p>
+
+<p>It might be placed in any Sabbath School library, so pure is it in tone, and yet it is so
+free from the mawkishness and silliness that mar the class of books usually found there,
+that the veteran novel reader is apt to finish it at a sitting.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />THE DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER.</b><br />
+
+By <span class="smcap">Sophie May</span>, Author of "Our Helen," "The Asbury Twins," &amp;c. 12mo, cloth,
+illustrated. $1.50.</div>
+
+<p>"A delightful book, original and enjoyable," says the <i>Brownville Echo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"A fascinating story, unfolding, with artistic touch, the young life of one of our impulsive,
+sharp-witted, transparent and pure-minded girls of the nineteenth century,"
+says <i>The Contributor</i>, Boston.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />SALLY WILLIAMS.</b><br />
+
+<b>The Mountain Girl.</b> By Mrs. <span class="smcap">Edna D. Cheney</span>, Author of "Patience," "Social
+Games," "The Child of the Tide," &amp;c. 12mo, cloth, illustrated. $1.50.</div>
+
+<p>Pure, strong, healthy, just what might be expected from the pen of so gifted a writer
+as Mrs. Cheney. A very interesting picture of life among the New Hampshire hills,
+enlivened by the tangle of a story of the ups and downs of every-day life in this out-of-the-way
+locality. The characters introduced are quaintly original, and the adventures
+are narrated with remarkable skill.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />LOTTIE EAMES.</b><br />
+
+<b>Or, do your best and leave the rest.</b> By a Popular Author. 16mo, illus. $1.50.</div>
+
+<p>"A wholesome story of home life, full of lessons of self-sacrifice, but always bright
+and attractive in its varied incidents."</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />RHODA THORNTON'S GIRLHOOD.</b><br />
+
+By Mrs. <span class="smcap">Mary E. Pratt</span>. 16mo, cloth, illustrated. $1.50.</div>
+
+<p>A hearty and healthy story, dealing with young folks and home scenes, with sleighing,
+fishing and other frolics to make things lively.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><i>The above six volumes are furnished in a handsome box, for $9.00, or sold
+separately by all booksellers, or sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price by</i><br />
+
+
+<b>LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers,  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    Boston.</b><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>I.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"At night we descended into the depths of the steamer to worship with the steerage passengers."</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_1"><span class="smcap">Frontispiece.</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>II.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"A dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain fell fast upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces."</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>III.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"At the word of command they struck the most extraordinary attitudes."</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>IV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"Frowsy, sleepy, cross, and caring nothing whatever for the sun, moon, or stars, we stood like a company of Bedlamites, ankle deep in the wet grass upon the summit."</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>V.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"Evidently the little old woman is going a journey."</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>VI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"Together we stared at him with rigid and severe countenances."</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER I.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>ABOARD THE STEAMER.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>We two alone.&mdash;"Good by."&mdash;"Are you the captain of this ship?"&mdash;Wretchedness.&mdash;The jolly Englishman and the Yankee.&mdash;A sail!&mdash;The Cattle-man.&mdash;The Jersey-man whose bark was on the sea.&mdash;Church services under difficulties.&mdash;The sweet young English face.&mdash;Down into the depths to worship.&mdash;"Beware! I stand by the parson."&mdash;Singing to the fishes.&mdash;Green Erin.&mdash;One long cheer.&mdash;Farewell, Ireland.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER II.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>FIRST DAYS IN ENGLAND.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>Up the harbor of Liverpool.&mdash;We all emerge as butterflies.&mdash;The Mersey tender.&mdash;Lot's wife.&mdash;"Any tobacco?"&mdash;"Names, please."&mdash;St. George's Hall.&mdash;The fashionable promenade.&mdash;The coffee-room.&mdash;The military man who showed the purple tide of war in his face.&mdash;The railway carriage.&mdash;The young man with hair all aflame.&mdash;English villages.&mdash;London.&mdash;No place for us.&mdash;The H. house.&mdash;The Babes in the Wood.&mdash;The party from the country.&mdash;We are taken in charge by the Good Man.&mdash;The Golden Cross.&mdash;Solitary confinement.&mdash;Mrs. B.'s at last.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER III.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Strange ways.&mdash;"The bears that went over to Charlestown."&mdash;The delights of a runaway without its dangers.&mdash;Flower show at the Crystal Palace.&mdash;Whit-Monday at Hampton Court.&mdash;A queen baby.&mdash;"But the carpets?"&mdash;Poor Nell Gwynne.&mdash;Vandyck faces.&mdash;Royal beds.&mdash;Lunch at the King's Arms.&mdash;O Music, how many murders have been committed in thy name!&mdash;Queen Victoria's home at Windsor.&mdash;A new "house that Jack built."&mdash;The Round Tower.&mdash;Stoke Pogis.&mdash;Frogmore.&mdash;The Knights of the Garter.&mdash;The queen's gallery.&mdash;The queen's plate.&mdash;The royal mews.&mdash;The wicker baby-wagons.&mdash;The state equipages.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER IV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Tower.&mdash;The tall Yankee of inquiring mind.&mdash;Our guide in gorgeous array.&mdash;War trophies.&mdash;Knights in armor.&mdash;A professional joke.&mdash;The crown jewels.&mdash;The room where the little princes were smothered.&mdash;The "Traitor's Gate."&mdash;The Houses of Parliament.&mdash;What a throne is like.&mdash;The "woolsack."&mdash;The Peeping Gallery for ladies.&mdash;Westminster Hall and the law courts.&mdash;The three drowsy old women.&mdash;The Great Panjandrum himself.&mdash;Johnson and the pump.&mdash;St. Paul's.&mdash;Wellington's funeral car.&mdash;The Whispering Gallery.&mdash;The bell.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER V.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>AWAY TO PARIS.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>The wedding party.&mdash;The canals.&mdash;New Haven.&mdash;Around the tea-table.&mdash;Separating the sheep from the goats.&mdash;"Will it be a rough passage?"&mdash;Gymnastic feats of the little steamer.&mdash;O, what were officers to us?&mdash;"Who ever invented earrings?"&mdash;Dieppe.&mdash;Fish-wives.&mdash;Train for Paris.&mdash;Fellow-passengers.&mdash;Rouen.&mdash;Babel.&mdash;Deliverance.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>THE PARIS OF 1869.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The devil.&mdash;Cathedrals and churches.&mdash;The Louvre.&mdash;Modern French art.&mdash;The Beauvais clock, with its droll, little puppets.&mdash;Virtue in a red gown.&mdash;The Luxembourg Palace.&mdash;The yawning statue of Marshal Ney.&mdash;Gay life by gas-light.&mdash;The Imperial Circus.&mdash;The Opera.&mdash;How the emperor and empress rode through the streets after the riots.&mdash;The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was her fortune.&mdash;Napoleon's tomb.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITY.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Gobelin tapestry.&mdash;How and where it is made.&mdash;P&egrave;re La-Chaise.&mdash;Poor Rachel!&mdash;The baby establishment.&mdash;"Now I lay me."&mdash;The little mother.&mdash;The old woman who lived in a shoe.&mdash;The American chapel.&mdash;Beautiful women and children.&mdash;The last conference meeting.&mdash;"I'm a proof-reader, I am."</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VIII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>The river omnibuses.&mdash;S&egrave;vres and its porcelain.&mdash;St. Cloud as it was.&mdash;The crooked little town.&mdash;Versailles.&mdash;Eugenie's "spare bedroom."&mdash;The queen who played she was a farmer's wife.&mdash;Seven miles of paintings.&mdash;The portraits of the presidents.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER IX.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>A VISIT TO BRUSSELS.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>To Brussels.&mdash;The old and new city.&mdash;The paradise and purgatory of dogs.&mdash;The H&ocirc;tel de Ville and Grand Place.&mdash;St. Gudule.&mdash;The picture galleries.&mdash;Wiertz and his odd paintings.&mdash;Brussels lace and an hour with the lace-makers.&mdash;How the girls found Charlotte Bront&euml;'s school.&mdash;The scene of "Villette."</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER X.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>WATERLOO AND THROUGH BELGIUM.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>To Waterloo.&mdash;Beggars and guides.&mdash;The Mound.&mdash;Chateau Hougomont.&mdash;Victor Hugo's "sunken road."&mdash;Antwerp.&mdash;A visit to the cathedral.&mdash;A drive about the city.&mdash;An excursion to Ghent.&mdash;The funeral services in the cathedral.&mdash;"Poisoned? Ah, poor man!"&mdash;The watch-tower.&mdash;The Friday-market square.&mdash;The nunnery.&mdash;Longfellow's pilgrims to "the belfry of Bruges."</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>A TRIP THROUGH HOLLAND.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>Up the Meuse to Rotterdam.&mdash;Dutch sights and ways.&mdash;The pretty milk-carriers.&mdash;The tea-gardens.&mdash;Preparations for the Sabbath.&mdash;An English chapel.&mdash;"The Lord's barn."&mdash;From Rotterdam to the Hague.&mdash;The queen's "House in the Wood."&mdash;Pictures in private drawing-rooms.&mdash;The bazaar.&mdash;An evening in a Dutch tea-garden.&mdash;Amsterdam to a stranger.&mdash;The "sights."&mdash;The Jews' quarter.&mdash;The family whose home was upon the canals.&mdash;Out of the city.&mdash;The pilgrims.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>THE RHINE AND RHENISH PRUSSIA.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>First glimpse of the Rhine.&mdash;Cologne and the Cathedral.&mdash;"Shosef in ter red coat."&mdash;St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins.&mdash;Up the Rhine to Bonn.&mdash;The German students.&mdash;Rolandseck.&mdash;A search for a resting-place.&mdash;Our Dutch friend and his Malays.&mdash;The story of Hildegund.&mdash;A quiet Sabbath.&mdash;Our Dutch friend's reply.&mdash;Coblentz.&mdash;The bridge of boats.&mdash;Ehrenbreitstein, over the river.&mdash;A scorching day upon the Rhine.&mdash;Romance under difficulties.&mdash;Mayence.&mdash;Frankfort.&mdash;Heidelberg.&mdash;The ruined castle.&mdash;Baden-Baden.&mdash;A glimpse at the gambling.&mdash;The new and the old "Schloss."&mdash;The Black Forest.&mdash;Strasbourg.&mdash;The mountains.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XIII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>The Lake of Lucerne.&mdash;Days of rest in the city.&mdash;An excursion up the Righi.&mdash;The crowd at the summit.&mdash;Dinner at midnight.&mdash;Rising before "the early worm."&mdash;The "sun-rise" according to Murray.&mdash;Animated scarecrows.&mdash;Off for a tour through Switzerland.&mdash;The lake for the last time.&mdash;Gr&uuml;tlii.&mdash;William Tell's chapel.&mdash;Fluellen.&mdash;Altorf.&mdash;Swiss haymakers.&mdash;An hour at Amsteg.&mdash;The rocks close in.&mdash;The Devil's Bridge.&mdash;The dangerous road.&mdash;"A carriage has gone over the precipice!"&mdash;Andermatt.&mdash;Desolate rocks.&mdash;Exquisite wild flowers.&mdash;The summit of the Furka.&mdash;A descent to the Rhone glacier.&mdash;Into the ice.&mdash;Swiss villages.&mdash;Brieg.&mdash;The convent inn.&mdash;The bare little chapel on the hill.&mdash;To Martigny.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XIV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>AMONG THE EVERLASTING HILLS.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The quaint inn.&mdash;The Falls of the Sallenches, and the Gorge de Trient.&mdash;Shopping in a Swiss village.&mdash;A mule ride to Chamouni.&mdash;Peculiarities of the animals.&mdash;Entrance to the village.&mdash;Egyptian mummies lifted from the mules.&mdash;Rainy days.&mdash;Chamois.&mdash;The Mer de Glace.&mdash;"Look out of your window."&mdash;Mont Blanc.&mdash;Sallenches.&mdash;A diligence ride to Geneva.&mdash;Our little old woman.&mdash;The clownish peasant.&mdash;The fork in the road.&mdash;"Adieu."</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>LAST DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Geneva.&mdash;Calvin and jewelry.&mdash;Up Lake Leman.&mdash;Ouchy and Lausanne.&mdash;"Sweet Clarens."&mdash;Chillon.&mdash;Freyburg.&mdash;Sight-seers.&mdash;The Last Judgment.&mdash;Berne and its bears.&mdash;The town like a story.&mdash;The Lake of Thun.&mdash;Interlaken.&mdash;Over the Wengern Alp.&mdash;The Falls of Giessbach.&mdash;The Brunig Pass.&mdash;Lucerne again.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER XVI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>BACK TO PARIS ALONE.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Coming home.&mdash;The breaking up of the party.&mdash;We start for Paris alone.&mdash;Basle, and a search for a hotel.&mdash;The twilight ride.&mdash;The shopkeeper whose wits had gone "a wool-gathering."&mdash;"Two tickets for Paris."&mdash;What can be the matter now?&mdash;Michel Angelo's Moses.&mdash;Paris at midnight.&mdash;The kind <i>commissionaire</i>.&mdash;The good French gentleman and his fussy little wife.&mdash;A search for Miss H.'s.&mdash;"Come up, come up."&mdash;"Can women travel through Europe alone?" A word about a woman's outfit.</td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+<h2>AN</h2>
+
+<h3>AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>ABOARD THE STEAMER.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>We two alone.&mdash;"Good by."&mdash;"Are you the captain of this
+ship?"&mdash;Wretchedness.&mdash;The jolly Englishman and the
+Yankee.&mdash;A sail!&mdash;The cattle-man.&mdash;The Jersey-man whose
+bark was on the sea.&mdash;Church services under difficulties.&mdash;The
+sweet young English face.&mdash;Down into the depths to
+worship.&mdash;"Beware! I stand by the Parson."&mdash;Singing
+to the fishes.&mdash;Green Erin.&mdash;One long cheer.&mdash;Farewell
+Ireland.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>WE were going to Europe, Mrs. K. and I&mdash;alone,
+with the exception of the ship's company&mdash;unprotected,
+save by Him who watches over
+the least of his creatures. We packed our one trunk,
+upon which both name and nationality were conspicuously
+blazoned, with the necessaries, not luxuries, of a
+woman's toilet, and made our simple preparations for
+departure without a shadow of anxiety. "They who
+know nothing, fear nothing," said the paterfamilias,
+but added his consent and blessing. The rain poured
+in torrents as we drove down to the wharf. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+floods could not have dampened our enthusiasm. A
+wild Irishman, with a suggestion of spirituous things in
+his air and general appearance, received us at the foot
+of the plank, one end of which touched earth, the other
+that unexplored region, the steamer. We followed the
+direction of his dirty finger, and there fell from our
+eyes, as it were, scales. In our ignorance, we had expected
+to find vast space, elegant surroundings, glass,
+glare, and glitter. We peered into the contracted quarters
+of the ladies' cabin. One side was filled with
+boxes and bundles; the other, with the prostrate form
+of an old lady, her head enveloped in a mammoth ruffle.
+We explored the saloon. The purser, with a wen
+and a gilt-banded cap on his head, was flying about like
+one distracted. An old gentleman similarly attired,
+with the exception of the wen,&mdash;the surgeon as we afterwards
+learned,&mdash;read a large book complacently in
+one corner, murmuring gently to himself. His upper
+teeth lacked fixity, so to speak; and as they fell with
+every word, he had the appearance of gnashing them
+continually at the invisible author. There was a hurrying
+to and fro of round, fresh-faced stewards in short
+jackets, a pushing and pulling of trunks and boxes, the
+sudden appearance and disappearance of nondescript
+individuals in slouched hats and water-proofs, the stirring
+about of heavy feet upon the deck above, the rattling
+of chains, the 'yo-ing' of hoarse voices, as the
+sailors pulled at the ropes, and, with it all, that sickening
+odor of oil, of dead dinners&mdash;of everything, so indescribable,
+so never-to-be-forgotten. Somewhat saddened,
+and considerably enlightened upon the subject
+of ocean steamers, we sought our state-room. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+boasted two berths (the upper conveniently gained by
+mounting the stationary wash-stand), and a velvet-covered
+sofa beneath the large, square window, which last
+we learned, months later, when reduced to a port-hole
+for light and air, to appreciate. A rack and half a
+dozen hooks against the wall completed its furniture.</div>
+
+<p>The time of departure arrived. We said the two
+little words that bring so many tears and heartaches,
+and ran up on the deck with the rain in our faces, and
+something that was not all rain in our eyes, for one
+last look at our friends; but they were hidden from
+sight. There comes to me a dim recollection of attempting
+to mount to an inaccessible place: of
+clinging to wet ropes with the intention of seeing the
+last of the land; of thinking it, after a time, a senseless
+proceeding, and of resigning ourselves finally to our
+berths and inevitable circumstances. Eight bells and
+the dinner bell; some one darkened our doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"What's this? Don't give it up so. D'ye hear the
+dinner bell?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are&mdash;are you the captain of this ship?" gasped
+Mrs. K., feebly, from the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, madam. Don't give it up so."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. K. groaned. There came to me one last gleam
+of hope. What if it were possible to brave it out! In
+a moment my feet were on the floor, but whether my
+name were McGregor, or not, I could not tell. I made
+an abortive attempt after the pretty hood, prepared
+with such pleasant anticipations, and had a dim consciousness
+that somebody's hands tied it about my
+head. Then we started. We climbed heights, we descended
+depths indescribable, in that short walk to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+saloon, and there was a queer feeling of having a windmill,
+instead of a head, upon my shoulders. A number
+of sympathizing faces were nodding in the most remarkable
+manner, as we reached the door, and the
+tables performed antic evolutions.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me back!" and the berth and the little round
+stewardess received me. There followed a night of
+misery. One can form no idea, save from experience,
+of the horrors of the first night upon an ocean steamer.
+There are the whir, and buzz, and jar, and rattle, and
+bang of the screw and engine; the pitching and rolling
+of the ship, with the sensation of standing upright for
+a moment, and then of being made to rest comfortably
+upon the top of your head; the sense of undergoing internal
+somersaults, to say nothing of describing every
+known curve externally. You study physiology involuntarily,
+and doubt if your heart, your lungs, or indeed
+any of your internal organs, are firmly attached, after
+all; if you shall not lose them at the next lurch of
+the ship. Your head is burning with fever, your hands
+and feet like ice, and you feel dimly, but wretchedly,
+that this is but the beginning of sorrows; that there are
+a dozen more days to come. You are conscious of a
+vague wonder (as the night lengthens out interminably)
+what eternity <i>can</i> be, since time is so long. The
+bells strike the half hours, tormenting you with calculations
+which amount to nothing. Everything within
+the room, as well as without, swings, and rolls, and
+rattles. You are confident your bottles in the rack
+will go next, and don't much care if they do, though
+you lie and dread the crash. You are tormented
+with thirst, and the ice-water is in that same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+rack, just beyond your reach. The candle in its silver
+case, hinged against the wall, swings back and forth
+with dizzy motion, throwing moving distorted shadows
+over everything, and making the night like a
+sickly day. You long for darkness, and, when at last
+the light grows dim, until only a red spark remains
+and the smoke that adds its mite to your misery,
+long for its return. At regular intervals you hear the
+tramp, tramp, overhead, of the relieving watch; and,
+in the midst of fitful slumbers, the hoarse voices of
+the sailors, as the wind freshens and they hoist the
+sails, wake you from frightful dreams. At the first gray
+dawn of light come the swash of water and the trickling
+down of the stream against your window, with the
+sound of the holy-stones pushed back and forth upon
+the deck. And with the light&mdash;O, blessed light!&mdash;came
+to us a dawn of better things.</p>
+
+<p>There followed days when we lay contented upon the
+narrow sofa, or within the contracted berths, but when
+to lift our heads was woe. A kind of negative blessedness&mdash;absence
+from misery. We felt as if we had lost
+our heart, our conscience, and almost our immortal
+soul, to quote Mark Twain. There remained to us
+only those principles and prejudices most firmly
+rooted and grounded. Even our personal vanity left
+us at last, and nothing could be more forsaken and appropriate
+than the plain green gown with its one row of
+military buttons, attired in which, day after day, I idly
+watched the faces that passed our door. "That's like
+you Americans," said our handsome young Irish doctor,
+pointing to these same buttons. "You can't leave
+your country without taking the spread-eagle with you!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Our officers, with this one exception, were English.
+Our captain, a living representative of the traditional
+English sailor. Not young, save in heart; simple,
+unaffected, and frank in manner, but with a natural
+dignity that prevented undue familiarity, he sang about
+the ship from morning till night, with a voice that
+could carry no air correctly, but with an enjoyment delightful
+to witness&mdash;always a song suggested by existing
+circumstances, but with</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"Cheer, boys, cheer; my mother's sold her mangle,"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>when everything else failed. He was forward among
+the men on the deck with an eye to the wind, down
+below bringing fruit and comfort to the sick in the
+steerage, dealing out apples and oranges to the children,
+with an encouraging word and the first line of a
+song for everybody.</div>
+
+<p>The life of the ship was an Englishman, with the
+fresh complexion almost invariably seen upon Englishmen,
+and forty years upon a head that looked
+twenty-five. He was going home after a short tour
+through the United States, with his mind as full of
+prejudices as his memorandum-book was of notes. He
+chanced, oddly enough, to room with the genuine
+Yankee of the company&mdash;a long, lean, good-natured individual
+from one of the eastern states, "close on ter
+Varmont," who had a way of rolling his eyes fearfully,
+especially when he glared at his food. He represented
+a mowing machine company, and we called him "the
+Mowing Machine Man." He accosted us one day, sidling
+up to our door, with, "How d'ye do to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Better, thank you," I replied from the sofa.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's real nice. Tell ye what, we'll be glad to see
+the ladies out. How's yer mar?" nodding towards
+the berth from which twinkled Mrs. K.'s eyes. I
+laughed, and explained that our relations were of affection
+rather than consanguinity. His interest increased
+when he found we were travelling alone. He gave us
+his London address, evidently considering us in the light
+of Daniels about to enter the lions' den. "Ef ye have
+any trouble," said he, as he wrote down the street and
+number, "there's one Yankee'll stand up for ye." He
+amused the Englishman by calling out, "Hullo. D'ye
+feel <i>good</i> this morning?" "No," would be the reply,
+with a burst of laughter; "I feel awful wicked; think
+I'll go right out and kill somebody."</p>
+
+<p>There was a shout one morning, "A sail! See the
+stars and stripes!" I had not raised my head for
+days, but staggered across the floor at that, and clinging
+to the frame, thrust my head out of the window.
+Yes, there was a ship close by, with the stars and
+stripes floating from the mast-head, I found, when the
+roll of the steamer carried my window to its level.
+"Seems good ter see the old rag!" I looked up to find
+the Mowing Machine Man gazing upon it with eyes all
+afloat. "I'd been a thinking," said he, "all them fellers
+have got somebody waiting for 'em over there,"&mdash;our
+passengers were mostly English,&mdash;"but there
+wasn't nobody a waiting for me. Tell ye what,"&mdash;and
+he shook out the folds of a red and yellow handkerchief,&mdash;"it
+does my heart good ter see the old flag."
+There was a bond of sympathy between us from that
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>We had another and less agreeable specimen of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+this free people&mdash;a tall, tough western cattle dealer,
+who quarrelled if he could find an antagonist, swore
+occasionally, drank liquor, and chewed tobacco perpetually,
+wore his trousers tucked into his long boots, his
+hands tucked into his pockets, and, to crown these
+attributes, believed in Andrew Johnson!&mdash;a middle-aged
+man, with soft, curling brown hair above a
+face that could be cruelly cold and hard. His hair
+should have been wire; his blue eyes were steel. But
+hard as was his face, it softened and smoothed itself a
+little at sight of the sick women. He paused beside
+us one day with a rough attempt to interest and
+amuse by displaying a knife case containing a dozen
+different articles. "This is ter take a stun out of a
+hoss's huf, and this, d'ye see, is a tooth-pick;" putting
+it to immediate use by way of explanation. At the
+table he talked long and loud upon the rinderpest, and
+other kindred and appetizing topics. "I've been a
+butcher myself," he would say. "I've cut up hundreds
+o' critters. What part of an ox, now, d'ye think that
+was taken from?" pointing to the joint before him,
+and addressing a refined, delicate-faced old gentleman
+across the table, who only stared in silent horror.</p>
+
+<p>But even the "Cattle Man" was less marked in
+his peculiarities than the "Jersey Man," a melancholy-eyed,
+curly-wigged individual from the Jersey shore,
+who wore his slouched hat upon one side of his head,
+and looked as though he were doing the rakish lover
+in some fifth-rate theatre; who was "in the musical
+line myself; Smith and Jones's organs, you know;
+that's me;" and who, being neither Smith nor Jones, we
+naturally concluded must be the organ. He recited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+poetry in a loud tone at daybreak, and discussed politics
+for hours together, arguing in the most satisfactory
+manner with the principles, and standing most willingly
+upon the platform, of everybody. He assumed a
+patronizing air towards the Mowing Machine Man.
+"Well, you <i>are</i> a green Yankee," he would say; "lucky
+for you that you fell in with me;" to which the latter
+only chuckled, "That's so." He had much to tell of
+himself, of his grandmother, and of his friends generally,
+who came to see him off; "felt awfully, too," which we
+could hardly credit; rolled out snatches of sentimental
+songs, iterating and reiterating that his bark was on
+the sea,&mdash;and a most disagreeable one we found it;
+wished we had a piano on board, to which we murmured,
+"The Lord forbid;" and hoped we should soon
+be well enough to join him in the "White Squall." He
+was constantly reminding us that we were a very
+happy family party, so "congenial," and evidently
+agreed with the Mowing Machine Man, who said,
+"They're the best set of fellows I ever see. They'll
+tell ye anything."</p>
+
+<p>We numbered a clergyman among us, of course.
+"Always a head wind when there's a parson aboard,"
+say the sailors. So this poor dyspeptic little man
+bore the blame of our constant adverse winds. Nothing
+more bigoted, more fanatical than his religious belief
+could be imagined. You read the terrors of the
+Lord in his eye; and yet he won respect, and something
+more, by his consistency and zeal. Earnestness
+will tell. "The parson will have great influence over
+the Cattle Man," the captain said, Sabbath morning,
+as we were walking the deck. "The Cattle Man?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+"Yes, the parson will get a good hold of him." Just
+then, as if to prove the old proverb true, that his
+satanic majesty is always in the immediate neighborhood
+when his character is under discussion, the Cattle
+Man and Jersey came up the companion-way. "If
+you please, captain," said the former, "we are a committee
+to ask if the parson may preach to the steerage
+people to-night." "Certainly," was the reply; "I will
+attend myself." They thanked him, and went below,
+leaving me utterly amazed. They were the last men
+upon the ship whom one would have selected as a
+committee upon spiritual things!</p>
+
+<p>The church service for the cabin passengers was held
+in the saloon. A velvet cushion upon one end of the
+long table constituted the pulpit, before which the minister
+stood, holding fast to the rack on either side, and
+bracing himself against the captain's chair in the rear.
+Even then he made, involuntarily, more bows than any
+ritualist, and the scripture, "What went ye out for to
+see? A reed shaken by the wind?" would present itself.
+The sailors in their neat dress filed in and ranged
+themselves in one corner. The stewards gathered
+about the door, one, with face like an owl, most
+conspicuous. The passengers filled their usual seats,
+and a delegation from the steerage crept shyly into
+the unoccupied space&mdash;women with shawls over
+their heads and babies in their arms, shock-headed
+men and toddling children, but all with an evident attempt
+at appropriate dress and manner. Among them
+was one sweet young English face beneath an old
+crape bonnet. A pair of shapely hands, which the
+shabby black gloves could not disguise, held fast a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+child. Widowhood and want in the old world;
+what was waiting her in the new? The captain read
+the service, and all the people responded. The
+women's eyes grew wet at the sound of the familiar
+words. The little English widow bent her face over
+the head of the child in her lap, and something glistened
+in its hair. Our sympathies grew wide, and we
+joined in the prayer for the queen, that she might have
+victory over her enemies, and even murmured a response
+to the petition for Albert Edward and the nobility,
+dimly conscious that they needed prayers. The
+good captain added a petition for the president of the
+United States, to which the Mowing Machine Man and
+I said, "Amen." Then the minister, having poised
+himself carefully, read a discourse, sulphurous but sincere;
+the Mowing Machine Man thrusting his elbow
+into my side in a most startling manner at every particularly
+blue point. We were evidently in sympathy;
+but I could have dispensed with the expression of it.
+We closed with the doxology, standing upon our
+feet and swaying back and forth as though it had been
+a Shaker chant, led by an improvised choir and the
+Jersey Man.</p>
+
+<p>At night we descended into the depths of the steamer
+to worship with the steerage passengers. It was
+like one of Rembrandt's pictures&mdash;the darkness, the
+wild, strangely-attired people, the weird light from the
+lanterns piercing the gloom, and bringing out group
+after group with fearful distinctness; the pale, earnest
+face of the preacher, made almost unearthly by the glare
+of the yellow light&mdash;a face with its thin-drawn lips, its
+eyes like coals of fire such as the flames of martyrdom lit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+once, I imagine. Close beside him stood the Cattle
+Man, towering like Saul above the people, and with an
+air that plainly said, "Beware&mdash;I stand by the parson."</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"There is a land of pure delight,"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>repeated the minister; and in a moment the words rolled
+out of the Cattle Man's mouth while he beckoned with
+his long arm for the people to rise. Throwing back
+his head, he sang with an unction indescribable, verse
+after verse, caught doubtless at some western camp-meeting,
+where he had tormented the saints. One after
+another took up the strain. Clear and strong came the
+tones from every dark corner, until, like one mighty
+voice, while the steamer rolled and the waves dashed
+against its sides, rose the words</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: .5em;">Shall fright us from that shore."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>A great stillness fell upon the people as the minister
+gave out his text, and began his discourse. He had
+lacked freedom in the saloon, but here he forgot everything
+save the words given him; hard words they
+seemed to me, containing little of the love of God. I
+glanced at the Mowing Machine Man, who had made a
+seat of half a barrel under the stairs. He winked in a
+fearful manner, as though he would say, "Just see how
+he's a goin' on!" But the people received it gladly.
+One after another of the sailors crept down the stairs
+and stood in the shadow. I watched them curiously.
+It may be that this stern, hard doctrine suited these
+stern, hard men. It made me shudder.</div>
+
+<p>But the record of all these days would have no end.
+How can I tell of the long, happy hours, when more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+than strength, when perfect exhilaration, came to us;
+when existence alone was a delight? To sit upon the low
+wheel-house, with wraps and ribbons and hair flying in
+the wind, while we sang,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"O, a life on the ocean wave!"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>to admiring fishes; to watch the long, lazy swell of the
+sea, or the spray breaking from the tops of the white
+caps into tiny rainbows; to walk the rolling deck for
+hours with never a shadow of weariness; to cling to the
+flag-staff when the stern of the ship rose in the air then
+dropped like a heavy stone into the sea, sending the
+spray far over and above us; to count the stars at night,
+watching the other gleaming phosphorescent stars that
+seemed to have fallen from heaven upon the long wake
+of the steamer,&mdash;all this was a delight unspeakable.</div>
+
+<p>One morning, when the land seemed a forgotten
+dream, we awoke to find green Erin close beside us.
+All the day before the sea-gulls had been hovering
+over us&mdash;beautiful creatures, gray above and white
+beneath, clouds with a silver lining. Tiny land birds,
+too, flew about us, resting wearily upon the rigging.
+The sea all at once became like glass. It seemed like
+the book of Revelation when the sun shone on it,&mdash;the
+sea of glass mingled with fire. For a time the land
+was but a line of rock, with martello towers perched
+upon the points. On the right, Fastnet Rock rose out
+of the sea, crowned with a light-house; then the gray
+barren shore of Cape Clear Island, and soon the sharp-pointed
+Stag Rocks. It is a treacherous coast. "I've
+been here many a night," said the captain, as he
+gave us his glass, "when I never expected to see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+morning." And all the while he was speaking, the sea
+smiled and smiled, as though it could never be cruel.</p>
+
+<p>We drew nearer and nearer, until we could see
+the green fields bounded by stone walls, the white,
+winding roads, and little villages nestling among the
+hills. Towards noon the lovely harbor of Queenstown
+opened before us, surrounded and almost shut
+in by rocky islands. Through the glass we could
+see the city, with its feet in the bay. We were no
+longer alone. The horizon was dotted with sails.
+Sometimes a steamer crossed our wake, or a ship bore
+down upon us. We hoisted our signals. We dipped
+our flag. The sailors were busy painting the boats,
+and polishing the brass till it shone again. Now the
+tender steams out from Queenstown. The steerage
+passengers in unwonted finery, tall hats and unearthly
+bonnets, and one in a black silk gown, are running
+about forward, shaking hands, gathering up boxes
+and bundles, and pressing towards the side which the
+tender has reached. There are the shouting of orders,
+the throwing of a rope, and in a moment they are
+crowding the plank. One long cheer, echoed from
+the stern of our steamer, and they are off.</p>
+
+<p>All day we walked the deck; even the sick crawled up
+at last to see the panorama. We still lingered when
+night fell, and we had turned away from the land to strike
+across the channel, and the picture rests with me now;
+the purple sky with one long stretch of purple, hazy
+cloud, behind which the sun went down; the long, low
+line of purple rock, our last glimpse of Ireland, and
+the shining, purple sea, with not a ripple upon its surface.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>FIRST DAYS IN ENGLAND.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>Up the harbor of Liverpool.&mdash;We all emerge as butterflies.&mdash;The
+Mersey tender.&mdash;Lot's wife.&mdash;"Any tobacco?"&mdash;"Names,
+please."&mdash;St. George's Hall.&mdash;The fashionable
+promenade.&mdash;The coffee-room.&mdash;The military man who
+showed the purple tide of war in his face.&mdash;The railway
+carriage.&mdash;The young man with hair all aflame.&mdash;English
+villages.&mdash;London.&mdash;No place for us.&mdash;The H. house.&mdash;The
+Babes in the Wood.&mdash;The party from the country.&mdash;We
+are taken in charge by the Good Man.&mdash;The Golden
+Cross.&mdash;Solitary confinement.&mdash;Mrs. B.'s at last.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>WE steamed up the harbor of Liverpool the next
+morning. New Brighton, with its green terraces,
+its Chinese-pagoda villas, spread out upon one
+side, upon the other that solid wall of docks, the barricade
+that breaks the constant charges of the sea, with
+the masts of ships from every land for an abattis. The
+wraps and shapeless garments worn so long were laid
+aside; the pretty hood which had, like charity, covered
+so many sins of omission, hidden, itself, at last, the
+soft wool stiffened with the sea spray, the bright colors
+dimmed by smoke, and soot, and burning sun. We crept
+shyly upon the deck in our unaccustomed finery, as
+though called at a moment's notice to play another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+woman's part, half-learned. Not in us alone was the
+transformation. The girl in blue had blossomed into <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'a a'">a</ins>
+bell&mdash;a blue bell. The Cattle Man, his hands released
+at last from the thraldom of his pockets, stalked
+about, funereal, in wrinkled black. A solferino neck-tie
+and tall hat of a pie-Adamite formation transmogrified
+our Mowing Machine friend. Nondescripts, that had
+lain about the deck wrapped in cocoons of rugs and
+shawls, emerged suddenly&mdash;butterflies! A painful
+courtesy seized us all. We had doffed the old familiar
+intercourse with our sea-garments. We gathered in
+knots, or stood apart singly, mindful at last of our
+dignity.</div>
+
+<p>The Mersey tender (a tender mercy to some) puffed
+out to meet us, and we descended the plank as those
+who turn away from home, leaving much of our
+thoughts, and something of our hearts, within the
+ship. It had been such a place of rest, of blessed
+idleness! Only when our feet touched the wharf did
+we take up the burden of life again. There were the
+meeting of friends, in which we had no part; the maelstrom
+of horses, and carts, and struggling humanity, in
+which we found a most unwilling place; and then we
+followed fast in the footsteps of the Mowing Machine
+Man, who in his turn followed a hair-covered trunk
+upon the shoulders of a stout porter, our destination the
+custom-house shed close by. For a moment, as we
+were tossed hither and thither by the swaying mass,
+our desires followed our thoughts to a certain sheltered
+nook, upon a still, white deck, with the sunbeams
+slanting down through the furled sails above, with the
+lazy, lapping sea below, and only our own idle thoughts
+for company. Then we remembered Lot's wife.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was a little meek-faced custom-house officer
+in waiting, with a voice so out of proportion to his
+size, that he seemed to have hired it for the occasion,
+or come into it with his uniform by virtue of his office.
+"Any tobacco?" he asked, severely, as we lifted the
+lid of our one trunk. We gave a virtuous and indignant
+negative. That was all. We might go our several
+ways now unmolested. One fervent expression of
+good wishes among our little company, while we make
+for a moment a network of clasped hands, and then we
+pass out of the great gates into our new world, and into
+the clutches of the waiting cabmen. By what stroke
+of good fortune we and our belongings were consigned
+to one and the same cab, in the confusion and terror
+of the moment, we did not know at the time. It was
+clearly through the intervention of a kind fellow-passenger,
+who, seeing that amazement enveloped us like
+a garment, kindly took us in charge. The dazed, as
+well as the lame and lazy, are cared for, it seems. By
+what stroke of good fortune we ever reached our destination,
+we knew still less. Our cab was a triumph of
+impossibilities, uncertainties, and discomfort. Our attenuated
+beast, like an animated hoop skirt, whose
+bones were only prevented, by the encasing skin,
+from flying off as we turned the corners, experienced
+hardly less difficulty in drawing his breath than in
+drawing his load. We descended at the entrance to
+the hotel as those who have escaped from imminent
+peril. We mounted the steps&mdash;two lone, but by no
+means lorn, damsels, two anxious, but by no means
+aimless females, knowing little of the world, less of
+travelling, and nothing whatever of foreign ways. Our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+very air, as we entered the door, was an apology for
+the intrusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Names, please," said the smiling man in waiting,
+opening what appeared to be the book of fate. We
+added ours to the long list of pilgrims and strangers
+who had sojourned here, dotting our i's and crossing
+our t's in the most elegant manner imaginable. If any
+one has a doubt as to our early advantages, let him examine
+the record of the Washington Hotel, Liverpool.
+The heading, "Remarks," upon the page, puzzled us.
+Were they to be of a sacred or profane nature? Of an
+autobiographical character? Were they to refer to the
+dear land we had just left? Through some political
+throes she had just brought forth a ruler. Should we
+add to the U. S. against our names, "As well as could
+be expected"? We hesitated,&mdash;and wrote nothing.
+Up the wide stairs, past the transparency of Washington&mdash;in
+the bluest of blue coats, the yellowest of top
+boots, and an air of making the best of an unsought
+and rather ridiculous position&mdash;we followed the doily
+upon the head of the pretty chambermaid to our wide,
+comfortable room, with its formidable, high-curtained
+beds. The satchels and parcels innumerable were
+propped carefully into rectitude upon the dressing
+table, under the impression that the ship would give
+a lurch; and then, gazing out through the great plate
+glass windows upon the busy square below, we endeavored
+to compose our perturbed minds and gather our
+scattered wits.</p>
+
+<p>It is not beautiful, this great city of Liverpool, creeping
+up from the sea. It has little to interest a stranger
+aside from its magnificent docks and warehouses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+There are mammoth truck horses from Suffolk, with
+feet like cart wheels; there is St. George's Hall, the
+pride of the people, standing in the busy square of the
+same name, with a statue of the saint himself&mdash;a terror
+to all dragons&mdash;just before it. It is gray, many columned,
+wide stepped, vast in its proportions. Do you
+care for its measurement? Having seen that, you are
+ready to depart; and, indeed, there is nothing to detain
+one here beyond a day of rest, a moment to regain
+composure after the tossing of the sea. There are some
+substantial dwellings,&mdash;for commerce has its kings,&mdash;and
+some fine shops,&mdash;for commerce also has its
+queens,&mdash;and one fine drive, of which we learned too
+late. The air of endurance, which pervades the whole
+city, as it does all cities in the old world, impresses one
+greatly, as though they were built for eternity, not
+time; the founders having forgotten that here we are
+to have no continuing city. In the new world, man
+tears down and builds up. Every generation moulds
+and fashions its towns and cities after its own desires,
+or to suit its own means. Man is master. In the old
+world, one generation after another surges in and out
+of these grim, gray walls, leaving not so much as the
+mark the waves leave upon the rocks. Unchanged,
+unchanging, they stand age after age, time only softening
+the hard outlines, deepening the shadows it has
+cast upon them, and so bringing them into a likeness
+of each other that they seem to have been the design
+of one mind, the work of one pair of hands, and hardly
+of mortal mind or hands at that. They seem to say to
+man, "We have stood here ages before you were born.
+We shall stand here ages after you are forgotten."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+They must be filled with echoes, with ghosts, and
+haunting memories.</p>
+
+<p>Bold Street, a tolerably narrow and winding way, in
+which many are found to walk,&mdash;contrary to all precedent,&mdash;boasts
+the finest shops. Here the Lancashire
+witches, as the beauties of the county are called, walk,
+and talk, and buy gewgaws of an afternoon. It was
+something strange to us to see long silken skirts entirely
+destitute of crinoline, ruffle, or flounce, trailed
+here through mud and mire, or raised displaying
+low Congress gaiters, destitute of heels. For ourselves,
+if we had been the king of the Cannibal Islands,
+we could hardly have attracted more attention than
+we did in our plain, short travelling suits and high-heeled
+boots. It grew embarrassing, especially when
+our expression of unqualified benevolence drew after
+us a train of beggars. They crossed the street to meet
+us. They emerged from every side street and alley,
+thrusting dirty hands into our faces, and repeating
+twice-told tales in our ears, until we were thankful
+when oblivion and the shadow of the hotel fell
+upon us.</p>
+
+<p>We dined in the coffee-room,&mdash;that comfortable and
+often delightfully cosy apartment fitted with little
+tables, and with its corner devoted to books, to papers
+and conversation,&mdash;that combination of dining, tea and
+reading-room unknown to an American hotel,&mdash;sacred
+to the sterner sex from all time, and only opened to us
+within a few years,&mdash;the gates being forced then, I
+imagine, by American women, who will not consent to
+hide their light under a bushel, or keep to some faraway
+corner, unseeing and unseen. English women,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+as a rule, take their meals in their own private parlors.
+Perhaps because English men generally desire the flowers
+intrusted to their fostering care to blush unseen.
+It may be better for the gardeners; it may be better for
+the flowers&mdash;I cannot tell; but we dined in the coffee-room,
+as Americans usually do. One of the <i>clergymen</i>,
+who attend at such places, received our order. It was
+not so very formidable an affair, after all, this going
+down by ourselves; or would not have been, if the big-eyed
+waiter, who watched our every movement, would
+have left us, and the military man at the next table,
+who showed "the purple tide of war," or something
+else, in his face, and blew his nose like a trombone,
+ceased to stare. As it was, we aired our most elegant
+table manners. We turned in our elbows and turned
+out our toes,&mdash;so to speak,&mdash;and ate our mutton with a
+grace that destroyed all appetite. We tried to appear
+as though we had frequently dined in the presence of
+a whole battalion of soldiery, under the scrutiny of innumerable
+waiters,&mdash;and failed, I am sure. "With
+verdure clad" was written upon every line of our
+faces. The occasion of this cross fire we do not know
+to this day. Was it unbounded admiration? Was it
+spoons?</p>
+
+<p>Having brushed off the spray of the sea, having
+balanced ourselves upon the solid earth, having seen
+St. George's Hall, there was nothing to detain us
+longer, and the next morning we were on our way to
+London. We had scrutinized our bill,&mdash;which might
+have been reckoned in pounds, ounces, and penny-weights,
+for aught we knew to the contrary,&mdash;and informed
+the big-eyed waiter that it was correct. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+had also offered him imploringly our largest piece of
+silver, which he condescended to accept; and having
+been presented with a ticket and a handful of silver
+and copper by the porter who accompanied us to the
+station across the way, in return for two or three gold
+pieces, we shook off the dust of Liverpool from our
+feet, turned our eyes from the splendors of St. George's
+Hall, and set our faces steadfastly towards our destination.
+There was a kind of luxury, notwithstanding our
+prejudices, in this English railway carriage, with its
+cushions all about us, even beneath our elbows; a restfulness
+unknown in past experience of travel, in the
+ability to turn our eyes away from the flying landscape
+without, to the peaceful quiet, never intruded upon,
+within. We did not miss the woman who will insist
+upon closing the window behind you, or opening it, as
+the case may be. Not one regret had we for the
+"B-o-s-t-o-n papers!" nor for the last periodical or novel.
+The latest fashion gazette was not thrown into our lap
+only to be snatched away, as we became interested
+in a plan for rejuvenating our wardrobe; nor were
+we assailed by venders of pop corn, apples, or gift
+packages of candy. Even the blind man, with his
+offering of execrable poetry, was unknown, and the
+conductor examined our tickets from outside the window.
+Settling back among our cushions, while we
+mentally enumerated these blessings of omission, there
+came a thought of the perils incurred by solitary females
+locked into these same comfortable carriages
+with madmen. If the danger had been so great for
+one solitary female, what must it be for two, we
+thought with horror. We gave a quick glance at our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+fellow-passenger, a young man with hair all aflame.
+Certainly his eyes did roll at that moment, but it was
+only in search of a newsboy; and when he exclaimed,
+like any American gentleman, "Hang the boy!" we
+became perfectly reassured. He proved a most agreeable
+travelling companion. We exchanged questions
+and opinions upon every subject of mutual interest,
+from the geological formation of the earth to the
+Alabama claims. I can hardly tell which astonished
+us most, his profound erudition or our own. Now, I
+have not the least idea as to whether Lord John Russell
+sailed the Alabama, or the Alabama sailed of itself,
+spontaneously; but, whichever way it was, I am convinced
+it was a most iniquitous<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'iniquitious'">iniquitous</ins> proceeding, and so
+thought it safe to take high moral ground, and assure
+him that as a nation we could not allow it to go unpunished.
+You have no idea what an assistance it is,
+when one is somewhat ignorant and a good deal at
+a loss for arguments, to take high moral ground.</p>
+
+<p>When we were weary of discussion, when knowledge
+palled upon our taste, we pulled aside the little
+blue curtain, and gave ourselves up to gazing upon the
+picture from the window. I doubt if any part of England
+is looked upon with more curious eyes than that
+lying between Liverpool and London. It is to so many
+Americans the first glimpse of strange lands. Spread
+out in almost imperceptible furrows were the velvet
+turfed meadows, the unclipped hedges a mass of
+tangled greenness between. For miles and miles they
+stretched away, with seldom a road, never a solitary
+house. The banks on either side were tufted with
+broom and yellow with gorse; the hill-sides in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+distance, white with chalk, or black with the heather
+that would blossom into purple beauty with the summer.
+We rushed beneath arches festooned, as for a
+gala-day, with hanging vines. Tiny gardens bloomed
+beside the track at every station, and all along the
+walls, the arched bridges, and every bit of stone upon
+the wayside, was a mass of clinging, glistening ivy.
+Not the half-dead, straggling thing we tend and shield
+so carefully at home, with here and there a leaf put
+forth for very shame. These, bright, clear-cut, deep-tinted,
+crowded and overlapped each other, and ran
+riot over the land, transforming the dingy, mildewy
+cottages, bits of imperishable ugliness, into things of
+beauty, if not eternal joys. Not in the least picturesque
+or pleasing to the eye were these English villages;
+straggling rows of dull red brick houses set amidst
+the fields&mdash;dirty city children upon a picnic&mdash;with a
+foot square garden before each door, cared for possibly,
+possibly neglected. A row of flower-pots upon the
+stone ledge of every little window, a row of chimney-pots
+upon the slate roof of every dwelling. Sometimes
+a narrow road twisted and writhed itself from one to
+another, edged by high brick walls, hidden beneath a
+weight of ivy; sometimes romantic lanes, shaded by
+old elms, and green beyond all telling. The towns
+were much the same,&mdash;outgrown villages. And the
+glimpse we caught, as we flew by, so far above the
+roofs often that we could almost peep down upon the
+hearths through the chimney tops, was by no means
+inviting.</p>
+
+<p>Dusk fell upon us with the smoke, and mist, and drizzling
+rain of London, bringing no anxiety; for was there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+not, through the thoughtfulness of friends, a place
+prepared for us? Our pleasant acquaintance of the
+golden locks forsook his own boxes, and bundles, and
+innumerable belongings to look for our baggage, and
+saw us safely consigned to one of the dingy cabs in
+waiting. I trust the people of our own country repay
+to wanderers there something of the kindness which
+American women, travelling alone, receive at the hands
+of strangers abroad. It was neither the first nor the
+last courtesy proffered most respectfully, and received
+in the spirit in which it was offered. There is a deal
+of nonsense in the touch-me-not air with which many
+go out to see the world, as there is a deal of folly in
+the opposite extreme. But these acquaintances of a
+day, the opportunity of coming face to face with the
+people in whose country you chance to be, of hearing
+and answering their strange questions in regard to
+our government, our manners and customs, as well as in
+displaying our own ignorance in regard to their institutions,
+in giving information and assistance when it is
+in our power, and in gratefully receiving the same
+from others,&mdash;all this constitutes one of the greatest
+pleasures of journeying.</p>
+
+<p>Our peace of mind received a rude shock, when,
+after rattling over the pavings around the little park
+in Queen's Square, and pulling the bell at Mr. B.'s
+boarding-house, we found that we were indeed expected,
+but indefinitely, and no place awaited us. We
+had forgotten to telegraph. It was May, the London
+season, and the hotels full. "X. told us you
+were coming," said the most lady-like landlady, leading
+us into the drawing-room from the dank darkness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+of the street. There was a glow of red-hot coals in
+the grate, a suggestion of warmth and comfort in the
+bright colors and cosy appointments of the room&mdash;but
+no place for us. "I'm very sorry; if you had telegraphed&mdash;but
+we can take you by Monday certainly,"
+she said. I counted my fingers. Two days. Ah!
+but we might perish in the streets before that. Everything
+began to grow dark and doleful in contemplation.
+Some one entered the room. The landlady turned to
+him: "O, here is the good man to whose care you were
+consigned by X." We gave a sigh of relief, as we
+greeted the Good Man, for all our courage, like the
+immortal Bob Acres's, had been oozing from our finger
+ends. And if we possess one gift above another, it
+is an ability to be taken care of. "Do you know
+X.?" asked another gentleman, glancing up from his
+writing at the long, red-covered table. "We travelled
+with him," nodding towards his daughter, whose
+feet touched the fender, "through Italy, last winter."
+"Indeed&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll just send out to a hotel near by," interrupted
+kind Mrs. B., "and see if you can be accommodated a
+day or two." How very bright the room became! The
+world was not hollow, after all, nor our dolls stuffed
+with sawdust. Even the cabman's rattle at the
+knocker, and demand of an extra sixpence for waiting,
+could not disturb our serenity. The messenger returned.
+Yes; we could be taken in (?) at the H. house;
+and accepting Mrs. B.'s invitation to return and spend
+the evening, we mounted to our places in the little
+cab, as though it had been a triumphal car, and were
+whizzed around the corner at an alarming pace by the
+impatient cabman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I should be sorry to prejudice any one against the
+H. house&mdash;which I might perhaps say is not the H.
+house at all; I hardly like to compare it to a whited
+sepulchre, though that simile did occur to my mind.
+Very fair in its exterior it was, with much plate glass,
+and ground glass, and gilding of letters, and shining
+of brass. It had been two dwelling-houses; it was
+now one select family hotel. But the two dwelling-houses
+had never been completely merged into one;
+never married, but joined, like the Siamese twins.
+There was a confusing double stairway; having ascended
+the right one, you were morally certain to descend
+the wrong. There was a confusing double hall,
+with doors in every direction opening everywhere but
+upon the way you desired to go. We mounted to the
+top of the house, followed by two porters with our luggage,
+one chambermaid with the key, another to ask
+if we would dine, and two more bearing large tin cans
+of hot water. We grew confused, and gasped, "We&mdash;we
+believe we don't care for any more at present,
+thank you," and so dismissed them all. The furniture
+was so out of proportion to the room that I think it
+must have been introduced in an infant state, and grown
+to its present proportions there. The one window
+was so high that we were obliged to jump up to look
+out over the mirror upon the bureau&mdash;a gymnastic feat
+we did not care to repeat. The bed curtains were
+gray; indeed there was a gray chill through the whole
+place. We sat down to hold a council of war. We
+resolved ourselves into a committee of ways and
+means, our feet upon the cans of hot water. "Pleasant,"
+I said, as a leading remark, my heart <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'beginnnig'">beginning</ins><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+to warm under the influence of the hot water. "Pleasant?"
+repeated Mrs. K.; "it's enough to make one
+homesick. We can't stay here." "But," I interposed,
+"suppose we leave here, and can't get in anywhere
+else?" A vision of the Babes in the Wood rose before
+me. There was a rap at the door; the fourth
+chambermaid, to announce dinner. We finished our
+consultation hurriedly, and descended to the parlor,
+where we were to dine. It was a small room, already
+occupied by a large table and a party from the country;
+an old lady to play propriety, a middle-aged person of
+severe countenance to act it, and a pair of incipient
+and insipid lovers. He was a spectacled prig in a
+white necktie, a clergyman, I suppose, though he looked
+amazingly like a waiter, and she a little round combination
+of dimples and giggle.</p>
+
+<p><i>He.</i> "Have you been out for a walk this morning?"</p>
+
+<p><i>She.</i> "No; te-he-he-he."</p>
+
+<p><i>He.</i> "You ought to, you know."</p>
+
+<p><i>She.</i> "Te-he-he-he&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p><i>He.</i> "You should always exercise before dinner."</p>
+
+<p><i>She.</i> "Te-he-he-he."</p>
+
+<p>Here the words gave out entirely, and, it being remarkably
+droll, all joined in the chorus. "We must
+go somewhere else, if possible," we explained to Mrs.
+B., when, a little later, we found our way to her door.
+"At least we shall be better contented if we make the
+attempt." The Good Man offered his protection; we
+found a cab, and proceeded to explore the city, asking
+admittance in vain at one hotel after another, until at
+last the Golden Cross upon the Strand, more charitable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+than its neighbor, or less full, opened its doors, and the
+good landlady, of unbounded proportions, made us both
+welcome and comfortable. Quite palatial did our neat
+bed-room, draped in white, appear. We were the proud
+possessors, also, of a parlor, with a round mirror over
+the mantel, a round table in the centre, a sofa, of which
+Pharaoh's heart is no comparison as regards hardness,
+a row of stiff, proper arm-chairs, and any amount of ornamentation
+in the way of works of art upon the walls,
+and shining snuffers and candlesticks upon the mantel.
+Our bargain completed, there remained nothing to be
+done but to remove our baggage from the other house,
+which I am sure we could never have attempted
+alone. Think of walking in and addressing the landlady,
+while the chambermaids and waiters peeped from
+behind the doors, with, "We don't like your house,
+madam. Your rooms are tucked up, your beds uninviting,
+your chambermaids frowsy, your waiters stupid,
+and your little parlor an abomination." How could
+we have done it? The Good Man volunteered. "But
+do you not mind?" "Not in the least." Is it not
+wonderful? How can we believe in the equality of
+the sexes? In less than an hour we were temporarily
+settled in our new quarters, our rescued trunks consigned
+to the little bed-room, our heart-felt gratitude
+in the possession of the Good Man.</p>
+
+<p>We took our meals now in our own parlor, trying
+the solitary confinement system of the English during
+our two days' stay. It seemed a month. Not a sign of
+life was there, save the landlady's pleasant face behind
+the bar and the waiter who answered our bell, with the
+exception of a pair of mammoth shoes before the next<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+door, mornings, and the bearded face of a man that startled
+us, once, upon the stairs. And yet the house was
+full. It was a relief when our two days of banishment
+Mere over, when in Mrs. B.'s pretty drawing-room, and
+around her table, we could again meet friends, and realize
+that we were still in the world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>Strange ways.&mdash;"The bears that went over to Charlestown."&mdash;The
+delights of a runaway without its dangers.&mdash;Flower
+show at the Crystal Palace.&mdash;Whit-Monday at Hampton
+Court.&mdash;A queen baby.&mdash;"But the carpets?"&mdash;Poor Nell
+Gwynne.&mdash;Vandyck faces.&mdash;Royal beds.&mdash;Lunch at the
+King's Arms.&mdash;O Music, how many murders have been committed
+in thy name!&mdash;Queen Victoria's home at Windsor.&mdash;A
+new "house that Jack built."&mdash;The Round Tower.&mdash;Stoke
+Pogis.&mdash;Frogmore.&mdash;The Knights of the Garter.&mdash;The
+queen's gallery.&mdash;The queen's plate.&mdash;The royal mews.&mdash;The
+wicker baby-wagons.&mdash;The state equipages.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>WE bought an umbrella,&mdash;every one buys an
+umbrella who goes to London,&mdash;and this, in
+its alpaca glory, became our constant companion. We
+purchased a guide-book to complete our equipments;
+but so disreputable, so yellow-covered, was its outward
+appearance, so suggestive of everything but facts, that
+we consigned it to oblivion, and put ourselves under
+the guidance of our Boston friends, the Good Man and
+his family.</div>
+
+<p>For two busy weeks we rattled over the flat pavings
+of the city in the low, one-horse cabs. We climbed
+towers, we descended into crypts, we examined tombstones,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+we gazed upon mummies. Everything was
+new, strange, and wonderful, even to the little boys in
+the street, who, as well as the omnibus drivers, were
+decked out in tall silk hats&mdash;a piece of absurdity in
+one case, and extravagance in the other, to our minds.
+The one-horse carriages rolled about upon two wheels;
+the occupants, like cross children, facing in every direction
+but the one they were going, and everybody, contrary
+to all our preconceived ideas of law and order,
+turned to the left, instead of to the right,&mdash;to say
+nothing of other strange and perplexing ways that
+came under our observation. We had come abroad
+upon the same errand as the bears who "went over to
+Charlestown to see what they could see," and so stared
+into every window, into every passing face, as though
+we were seeking the lost. We became known as the
+women who wanted a cab; our appearance within the
+iron posts that guard the entrance to Queen's Square
+from Southampton Row being the signal for a perfect
+Babel of unintelligible shouts and gesticulations
+down the long line of waiting vehicles, with the charging
+down upon us of the first half dozen in a highly
+dangerous manner. Wisdom is sometimes the growth
+of days; and we soon learned to dart out in an unexpected
+moment, utterly deaf and blind to everything
+and everybody but the first man and the first horse,
+and thus to go off in triumph.</p>
+
+<p>But if our exit was triumphant, what was our entry
+to the square, when weary, faint with seeing, hearing,
+and trying in vain to fix everything seen and heard in
+our minds, we returned in a hansom! English ladies
+do not much affect this mode of conveyance, but American<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+women abroad have, or take, a wide margin in
+matters of mere conventionality,&mdash;and so ride in hansom
+cabs at will. They are grown-up baby perambulators
+upon two wheels; the driver sitting up behind,
+where the handle would be, and drawing the reins of
+interminable length over the top of the vehicle. Picture
+it in your mind, and then wonder, as I did, what
+power of attraction keeps the horse upon the ground;
+what prevents his flying into the air when the driver
+settles down into his seat. A pair of low, folding
+doors take the place of a lap robe; you dash through
+the street at an alarming rate without any visible
+guide, experiencing all the delights of a runaway
+without any of its dangers.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />FLOWER SHOW AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE.</div>
+
+<p>A ride by rail of half an hour takes one to Sydenham.
+It is a charming walk from the station through
+the tastefully arranged grounds, with their shrubberies,
+roseries, and fountains, along the pebble-strewn paths,
+crowded this day with visitors. The palace itself is so
+like its familiar pictures as to need no description.
+Much of the grandeur of its vast proportions within is
+lost by its divisions and subdivisions. There are
+courts representing the various nations of the earth,&mdash;America,
+as usual, felicitously and truthfully shown up
+by a pair of scantily attired savages under a palm
+tree; there are the courts of the Alhambra, of Nineveh,
+and of Pompeii; there are fountains, and statues,
+and bazaars innumerable, where one may purchase almost
+anything as a souvenir; there are caf&eacute;s where
+one may refresh the body, and an immense concert<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+hall where one may delight the soul,&mdash;and how much
+more I cannot tell, for the crowd was almost beyond
+belief, and a much more interesting study than Egyptian
+remains, or even the exquisite mass of perfumed
+bloom, that made the air like summer, and the whole
+place a garden. They were of the English middle
+class, the upper middle class, bordering upon the nobility,&mdash;these
+rotund, fine-looking gentlemen in white
+vests and irreproachable broadcloth, these stout, red-faced,
+richly-attired ladies, with their soft-eyed, angular
+daughters following in their train, or clinging to their
+arms. We listened for an hour to the queen's own
+band in scarlet and gold, and then came back to town,
+meeting train after train filled to overflowing with expensively
+arrayed humanity in white kids, going out
+for the evening.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />A DAY AT HAMPTON COURT.</div>
+
+<p>It was Whit-Monday,&mdash;the workingman's holiday,&mdash;a
+day of sun and shower; but we took our turn
+upon the outside of the private omnibus chartered for
+the occasion, unmindful of the drops; our propelling
+power, six gray horses. By virtue of this private establishment
+we were free to pass through Hyde Park,&mdash;that
+breathing-place of aristocracy, where no public
+vehicle, no servant without livery, is tolerated. It was
+early, and only the countless hoof-prints upon Rotten
+Row suggested the crowd of wealth and fashion that
+would throng here later in the day. One solitary
+equestrian there was; perched upon a guarded saddle,
+held in her place by some concealed band, serenely
+content, rode a queen baby in long, white robes. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+groom led the little pony. She looked at us in grave
+wonder as we dashed by,&mdash;born to the purple! I cannot
+begin to describe to you the rising up of London
+for this day of pleasure; the decking of itself out in
+holiday attire; the garnishing of itself with paper flowers;
+the smooth, hard roads leading into the country,
+all alive; the drinking, noisy crowd about the door
+of every pot-house along the way. It was a delightful
+drive of a dozen or more miles, through the most
+charming suburbs imaginable,&mdash;past lawns, and gardens,
+and green old trees shading miniature parks;
+past "detached" villas that had blossomed into windows;
+indeed, the plate glass upon houses of most
+modest pretension was almost reckless extravagance
+in our eyes, forgetting, as we did, the slight duty to
+be paid here upon what is, with us, an expensive
+luxury. No wonder the English are a healthful
+people,&mdash;the sun shines upon them. I like their manner
+of house-building, of home-making. They set up
+first a great bay-window, with a room behind it, which
+is of secondary importance, with wide steps leading up
+to a door at the side. They fill this window with the
+rarest, rosiest, most rollicksome flowers. Then, if there
+remain time, and space, and means, other rooms are
+added, the bay-windows increasing in direct proportion;
+while shades, drawn shades, are a thing unknown.
+"But the carpets?" They are so foolish as
+to value health above carpets.</p>
+
+<p>It was high noon when we rolled up the wide avenue
+of Bushey Park, with its double border of gigantic
+chestnuts and limes, through Richmond Park, with its
+vast sweep of greensward flecked with the sunbeams,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+dripping like the rain through the royal oaks, past
+Richmond terrace, with its fine residences looking out
+upon the Thames, the translucent stream, pure and beautiful
+here, before going down to the city to be defiled&mdash;like
+many a life. We dismounted at the gates to the
+palace, in the rambling old village that clings to its
+skirts, and joined the crowd passing through its wide
+portals.</p>
+
+<p>It is an old palace thrown aside, given over to poor
+relatives, by royalty,&mdash;as we throw aside an old gown;
+a vast pile of dingy, red brick that has straggled over
+acres of Hampton parish, and is kept within bounds by
+a high wall of the same ugly material. It has pushed
+itself up into towers and turrets, with pinnacles and
+spires rising from its battlemented walls. It has thrust
+itself out into oriel and queer little latticed windows that
+peep into the gardens and overhang the three quadrangles,
+and is with its vast gardens and park, with its
+wide canal and avenues of green old trees, the most
+delightfully ugly, old place imaginable. Here kings
+and queens have lived and loved, suffered and died,
+from Cardinal Wolsey's time down to the days of
+Queen Anne. It is now one of England's show places;
+one portion of its vast extent, with the grounds, being
+thrown open to the public, the remainder given to decayed
+nobility, or wandering, homeless representatives
+of royalty,&mdash;a kind of royal almshouse, in fact. A
+curtained window, the flutter of a white hand, were to
+us the only signs of inhabitation.</p>
+
+<p>Through thirty or more narrow, dark, bare rooms,&mdash;bare
+but for the pictures that crowded the walls,&mdash;we
+wandered. There were two or three halls of stately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+proportions finely decorated with frescoes by Verrio,
+and one or two royal stairways, up and down which
+slippered feet have passed, silken skirts trailed, and
+heavy hearts been carried, in days gone by. The
+pictures are mostly portraits of brave men and lovely
+women, of kings and queens and royal favorites,&mdash;poor
+Nell Gwynne among them, who began life by
+selling oranges in a theatre, and ended it by selling virtue
+in a palace. The Vandyck faces are wonderfully
+beautiful. They gaze upon you through a mist, a golden
+haze,&mdash;like that which hangs over the hills in the
+Indian summer,&mdash;from out deep, spiritual eyes; a
+dream of fair women they are.</p>
+
+<p>There were one or two royal beds, where uneasy
+have lain the heads that wore a crown, and half a
+dozen chairs worked in tapestry by royal fingers,&mdash;whether
+preserved for their questionable beauty, or because
+of the rarity of royal industry, I do not know.
+We wandered through the shrubberies, paid a penny to
+see the largest grape vine in the world,&mdash;and wished
+we had given it to the heathen, so like its less distinguished
+sisters did the vine appear,&mdash;and at last lunched
+at the King's Arms, a queer little inn just outside the
+gates, edging our way with some difficulty through the
+noisy, guzzling crowd around the door&mdash;the crowd that,
+having reached the acme of the day's felicity, was fast
+degenerating into a quarrel. In the long, bare room
+at the head of the narrow, winding stairs, we found
+comparative quiet. The tables were covered with joints
+of beef, with loaves of bread, pitchers of ale, and the
+ubiquitous cheese. A red-faced young man in tight
+new clothes&mdash;like a strait-jacket&mdash;occupied one end<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+of our table with his blushing sweetheart. A band
+of wandering harpers harped upon their harps to the
+crowd of wrangling men and blowsy women in the
+open court below; strangely out of tune were the harps,
+out of time the measure, according well with the spirit
+of the hour. A loud-voiced girl decked out in tawdry
+finery, with face like solid brass, sang "Annie Laurie"
+in hard, metallic tones,&mdash;O Music, how many murders
+have been committed in thy name!&mdash;then passed a
+cup for pennies, with many a jest and rude, bold laugh.
+We were glad when the day was done,&mdash;glad when
+we had turned away from it all.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />QUEEN VICTORIA'S HOME AT WINDSOR.</div>
+
+<p>The castle itself is a huge, battlemented structure of
+gray stone,&mdash;a fortress as well as a palace,&mdash;with a
+home park of five hundred acres, the private grounds
+of Mrs. Guelph, and, beyond that, a grand park of eighteen
+hundred acres. But do not imagine that she lives
+here with only her children and servants about her,&mdash;this
+kindly German widow, whose throne was once in
+the hearts of her people. Royalty is a complicated
+affair,&mdash;a wheel within a wheel,&mdash;and reminds us of
+nothing so much as "the house that Jack built."</p>
+
+<p>This is the Castle of Windsor.</p>
+
+<p>This is the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.</p>
+
+<p>These are the ladies that 'tend on the queen that
+lives in the Castle of Windsor.</p>
+
+<p>These are the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend
+on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.</p>
+
+<p>These are the lackeys that wait on the pages that
+bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in
+the Castle of Windsor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These are the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard
+the crown from the unicorn, that stand by the lackeys
+that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend
+on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.</p>
+
+<p>These are the "military knights" forlorn, founded by
+Edward before you were born, that outrank the soldiers,
+tried and sworn, that guard the crown from the
+unicorn, that stand by the lackeys that wait on the
+pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen
+that lives in the Castle of Windsor.</p>
+
+<p>These are the knights that the garter have worn,
+with armorial banners tattered and torn, that look
+down on the military knights forlorn, founded by Edward
+before you were born, that outrank the soldiers,
+tried and sworn, that guard the crown from the unicorn,
+that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages that
+bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in
+the Castle of Windsor.</p>
+
+<p>This is the dean, all shaven and shorn, with the
+canons and clerks that doze in the morn, that install
+the knights that the garter have worn, with armorial
+banners tattered and torn, that look down on the military
+knights forlorn, founded by Edward before you
+were born, that outrank the soldiers, tried and sworn,
+that guard the crown from the unicorn, that stand by
+the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies
+that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of
+Windsor.</p>
+
+<p>And so on. The train within the castle walls that
+follows the queen is endless.</p>
+
+<p>We passed through the great, grand, state apartments,
+refurnished at the time of the marriage of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+Prince of Wales, for the use of the Danish family.
+We mounted to the battlements of the Round Tower
+by the hundred steps, the grim cannon gazing down
+upon us from the top. Half a dozen visitors were already
+there, gathered as closely as possible about the
+angular guide, listening to his geography lesson, and
+looking off upon the wonderful panorama of park, and
+wood, and winding river. Away to the right rose the
+spire of Stoke Pogis Church, where the curfew still
+"tolls the knell of parting day." To the left, in the
+great park below, lay Frogmore, where sleeps Prince
+Albert the Good. Eton College, too, peeped out from
+among the trees, its gardens touching the Thames, and
+in the distance,&mdash;beyond the sleeping villages tucked
+in among the trees,&mdash;the shadowy blue hills held
+up the sky.</p>
+
+<p>St. George's Chapel is in the quadrangle below. It is
+the chapel of the Knights of the Garter. And now, when
+you read of the chapels, or churches, or cathedrals in the
+old world,&mdash;and they are all in a sense alike,&mdash;pray
+don't imagine a New England meeting-house with a
+double row of stiff pews and a choir in the gallery singing
+"Antioch"! The body of the chapel was a great,
+bare space, with tablets and elaborate monuments
+against the walls. Opening from this were alcoves,&mdash;also
+called chapels,&mdash;each one containing the tombs and
+monuments of some family. As many of the inscriptions
+are dated centuries back, you can imagine they are
+often quaintly expressed. One old knight, who died
+in Catholic times, desired an open Breviary to remain
+always in the niche before his tomb, that passers
+might read to their comfort, and say for him an orison.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+Of course this would never do in the days when the
+chapel fell into Protestant hands. A Bible was substituted,
+chained into its place; but the old inscription,
+cut deep in the stone, still remains, beginning "Who
+leyde thys book here?" with a startling appropriateness
+of which the author never dreamed. Over another
+of these chapels is rudely cut an ox, an N, and a
+bow,&mdash;the owner having, in an antic manner, hardly
+befitting the place, thus written his name&mdash;Oxenbow.</p>
+
+<p>You enter the choir, where the installations take
+place, by steps, passing under the organ. In the
+chancel is a fine memorial window to Prince Albert.
+On either side are the stalls or seats for the knights,
+with the armorial banner of each hanging over his place.
+Projecting over the chancel, upon one side, is what appears
+to be a bay-window. This is the queen's gallery,
+a little room with blue silk hangings,&mdash;for blue is the
+color worn by Knights of the Garter,&mdash;where she sits
+during the service. Through these curtains she looked
+down upon the marriage of the Prince of Wales. Think
+of being thus put away from everybody, as though one
+were plague-stricken. A private station awaits her
+when she steps from the train at the castle gates. A
+private room is attached to the green-houses, to the
+riding-school in the park, and even to the private
+chapel. A private photograph-room, for the taking of
+the royal pictures, adjoins her apartments. It must be
+a fine thing to be a queen,&mdash;and so tiresome! Even
+the gold spoon in one's mouth could not offset the weariness
+of it all, and of gold spoons she has an unbounded
+supply; from ten to fifteen millions of dollars
+worth of gold plate for her majesty's table being guarded
+within the castle! Think of it, little women who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+set up house-keeping with half a dozen silver teaspoons
+and a salt-spoon!</p>
+
+<p>We waited before a great gate until the striking of
+some forgotten hour, to visit the royal mews. You
+may walk through all these stables in slippers and in
+your daintiest gown, without fear. A stiff young man
+in black&mdash;a cross between an undertaker and an incipient
+clergyman in manner&mdash;acted as guide. Other
+parties, led by other stiff young men, followed or
+crossed our path. There were stalls and stalls, upon
+either side, in room after room,&mdash;for one could not
+think of calling them stables,&mdash;filled by sleek bays for
+carriage or saddle. And the ponies!&mdash;the dear little
+shaggy browns, with sweeping tails, and wonderful
+eyes peeping out from beneath moppy manes, the milk-white,
+tiny steeds, with hair like softest silk,&mdash;they
+won our hearts. Curled up on the back of one, fast
+asleep, lay a Maltese kitten; the "royal mew" some
+one called it. The carriages were all plain and dark,
+for the ordinary use of the court. In one corner a prim
+row of little yellow, wicker, baby-wagons attracted our
+attention, like those used by the poorest mother in the
+land. In these the royal babies have taken their first
+airings.</p>
+
+<p>The state equipages we saw another day at Buckingham
+Palace,&mdash;the cream-colored horses, the carriages
+and harnesses all crimson and gold. There they stand,
+weeks and months together, waiting for an occasion.
+The effect upon a fine day, under favoring auspices,&mdash;the
+sun shining, the bands playing, the crowd of gazers,
+the prancing horses, the gilded chariots,&mdash;must almost
+equal the triumphal entry of a first class circus into a
+New England town!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>The Tower.&mdash;The tall Yankee of inquiring mind.&mdash;Our guide
+in gorgeous array.&mdash;War trophies.&mdash;Knights in armor.&mdash;A
+professional joke.&mdash;The crown jewels.&mdash;The house where
+the little princes were smothered.&mdash;The "Traitor's Gate."&mdash;The
+Houses of Parliament.&mdash;What a throne is like.&mdash;The
+"woolsack."&mdash;The Peeping Gallery for ladies.&mdash;Westminster
+Hall and the law courts.&mdash;The three drowsy old women.&mdash;The
+Great Panjandrum himself.&mdash;Johnson and the pump.&mdash;St.
+Paul's.&mdash;Wellington's funeral car.&mdash;The Whispering
+Gallery.&mdash;The bell.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='center'>THE TOWER.</div>
+
+<div class='cap'>IT is not a tower at all, as we reckon towers, you
+must know, but a walled town upon the banks of
+the Thames, in the very heart of London. Hundreds
+of years ago, when what is now this great city was only
+moor and marsh, the Romans built here&mdash;a castle,
+perhaps. Only a bit of crumbling wall, of mouldering
+pavement, remain to tell the story. When the Normans
+came in to possess the land, William the Conqueror
+erected upon this spot a square fortress, with
+towers rising from its four corners. Every succeeding
+monarch added a castle, a tower, a moat, to strengthen
+its strength and extend its limits, until, in time, it covered
+twelve acres of land, as it does to this day. Here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+the kings and queens of England lived in comfortless
+state, until the time of Queen Elizabeth, having need
+to be hedged about with something more than royalty
+to insure safety. Times have changed; swords have
+been beaten into ploughshares; and where the moat
+once encircled the tower wall, flowers blossom now.
+The dungeons that for centuries held prisoners of state
+do not confine any one to-day; and the strongholds
+that guarded the person of England's sovereign keep
+in safety now the jewels and the crown. There are
+round towers, and square towers, and, for anything I
+know, three-cornered towers, each with its own history
+of horrors. There are windows from which people
+were thrown, bridges over which they were dragged,
+and dark holes in which they were incarcerated.</div>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 313px;">
+<img src="images/illus-2.png" width="313" height="500" alt="&quot;A dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain fell fast upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces.&quot; Page 57." title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;A dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain fell fast upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces.&quot; <a href="#Page_57">Page 57.</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>To appreciate all this, you should see it&mdash;as we did
+one chilly May morning. We huddled about the stove
+in the waiting-room upon the site of the old royal
+menagerie, our companions a round man, with a limp
+gingham cravat and shabby coat, a little old woman
+in a poke bonnet, and half a dozen or more schoolboys
+from the country. A tall Yankee of inquiring
+mind joined us as we sallied from the door, led by a
+guide gorgeous in ruff and buckles, cotton velvet and
+gilt lace, and with all these glories surmounted by a
+black hat, that swelled out at the top in a wonderful
+manner. Down the narrow street within the gates,
+over the slippery cobble-stones, under considerable
+mental excitement, and our alpaca umbrella, we followed
+our guide to an archway, before which he paused,
+and struck an attitude. The long Yankee darted forward.
+"Stand back, my friends, stand back," said the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+guide. "You will please form a circle." Immediately
+a dozen umbrellas surrounded him. He pointed to a
+narrow window over our heads; a dozen umbrellas
+were tipped up; the rain fell fast upon a dozen upturned,
+expectant faces. "In that room, Sir &mdash;&mdash;"
+(I could not catch the name) "spent the night before
+his execution, in solemn meditation and prayer."
+There was a circular groan of sympathy and approval
+from a dozen lips, the re-cant of a dozen dripping
+umbrellas, and we pattered on to the next point of
+interest, following our leader through pools of blood,
+figuratively speaking,&mdash;literally, through pools of water,&mdash;our
+eyes distended, our cheeks pale with horror.
+Ah, what treasures of credulity we must have been to
+the guides in those days! Time brought unbelief and
+hardness of heart.</p>
+
+<p>We mounted stairs narrow and dark; we descended
+stairs dark and narrow; we entered chambers gloomy
+and grim. The half I could not tell&mdash;of the rooms
+filled with war trophies&mdash;scalps in the belt of the nation&mdash;from
+the Spanish Armada down to the Sepoy
+rebellion; the long hall, with its double row of lumbering
+old warriors encased in steel, as though they had
+stepped into a steel tower and walked off, tower and
+all, some fine morning; the armory, with its stacked
+arms for thirty thousand men. "We may have occasion
+to use them," said the guide, facetiously, making
+some reference to the speech of Mr. Sumner, just then
+acting the part of a stick to stir up the British lion.
+The Yankee chuckled complacently, and we, too, refused
+to quake. There was a room filled with instruments
+of torture, diabolical inventions, recalling the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+days of the Inquisition. The Yankee expressed a desire
+to "see how some o' them things worked." Opening
+from this was an unlighted apartment, with walls
+of stone, a dungeon indeed, in which we were made to
+believe that Sir Walter Raleigh spent twelve years of
+his life. No shadow of doubt would have fallen upon
+our unquestioning minds, had we been told that he
+amused himself during this time by standing upon his
+head. "Walk in, walk in," said the smiling guide, as
+we peered into its darkness. We obeyed. "Now,"
+said he, "that you may appreciate his situation, I will
+step out and close the door." The little old woman
+screamed; the Yankee made one stride to the opening;
+the guide laughed. It was only a professional joke;
+there was no door. We saw the bare prison-room,
+with its rough fireplace, the slits between the stones
+of the wall to admit light and air, and the initials of
+Lady Jane Grey, with a host more of forgotten names,
+upon the walls. Just outside, within the quadrangle,
+where the grass grew green beneath the summer rain,
+she was beheaded,&mdash;poor little innocent,&mdash;who had
+no desire to be a queen! In another tower close by,
+guarded by iron bars, were the royal jewels and the
+crown, for which all this blood was shed&mdash;pretty baubles
+of gold and precious stones, but hardly worth so
+many lives.</p>
+
+<p>You remember the story of the princes smothered
+in the Tower by command of their cruel uncle? There
+was the narrow passage in the wall where the murderers
+came at night; the worn step by which they entered
+the great, bare room where the little victims slept;
+the winding stairs down which the bodies were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+thrown. Beneath the great stone at the foot they were
+secretly buried. Then the stairway was walled up,
+lest the stones should cry out; and no one knew
+the story of the burial until long, long afterwards&mdash;only
+a few years since&mdash;when the walled-up
+stairway was discovered, the stones at the foot displaced,
+and a heap of dust, of little crumbling bones,
+revealed it. A rosy-faced, motherly woman, the wife
+of a soldier quartered in the barracks here, answered
+the rap of the guide upon the nail-studded door opening
+from one of the courts, and told us the old story.
+"The bed of the princes stood just there," she said,
+pointing to one corner, where, by a curious coincidence,
+a little bed was standing now. She answered the question
+in our eyes with, "My boys sleep there." "But do
+you not fear that the murderers will come back some
+night by this same winding way, and smother them?"
+How she laughed! And, indeed, what had ghosts to do
+with such a cheery body!</p>
+
+<p>Down through the "Traitors' Gate," with its spiked
+portcullis, we could see the steps leading to the water.
+Through this gate prisoners were brought from trial
+at Westminster. It is said that the Princess Elizabeth
+was dragged up here when she refused to come of her
+own will, knowing too well that they who entered here
+left hope behind. A little later, with music and the
+waving of banners, and amid the shouts of the people,
+she rode out of the great gates into the city, the Queen of
+England.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.</div>
+
+<p>Though they have stood barely thirty years, already
+the soft gray limestone begins to crumble away,&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+elements, with a sense of the fitness of things, striving
+to act the part of time, and bring them into a likeness
+of the adjoining abbey. There is an exquisite beauty
+in the thousand gilded points and pinnacles that pierce
+the fog, or shine softly through the mist that veils the
+city. Ethereal, shadowy, unreal they are, like the spires
+of a celestial city, or the far away towers and turrets
+we see sometimes at sunset in the western sky.</p>
+
+<p>Here, you know, are the chambers of the Houses of
+Lords and Commons, with the attendant lobbies, libraries,
+committee-rooms, &amp;c., and a withdrawing-room for
+the use of the queen when she is graciously pleased to
+open Parliament in person. The speaker of the House of
+Commons, as well as some other officials, reside here&mdash;a
+novel idea to us, who could hardly imagine the speaker
+of our House of Representatives taking up his abode
+in the Capitol! Parliament was not in session, and we
+walked through the various rooms at will, even to the
+robing-room of the noble lords, where the peg upon
+which Lord Stanley hangs his hat was pointed out;
+and very like other pegs it was. At one end of the
+chamber of the House of Lords is the throne. It is a
+simple affair enough&mdash;a gilded arm-chair on a little
+platform reached by two or three steps, and with crimson
+hangings. Extending down on either side are the
+crimson-cushioned seats without desks. In the centre
+is a large square ottoman,&mdash;the woolsack,&mdash;which
+might, with equal appropriateness, be called almost
+anything else. Above, a narrow gallery offers a lounging-place
+to the sons and friends of the peers; and
+at one end, above the throne, is a high loft, a kind of
+uplifted amen corner, for strangers, with a space where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+women may sit and look down through a screen of lattice-work
+upon the proceedings below. It seems a remnant
+of Eastern customs, strangely out of place in this
+Western world, and akin to the shrouding of ourselves
+in veils, like our Oriental sisters. Or can it be that the
+noble lords are more keenly sensitive to the distracting
+influence of bright eyes than other men?</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />WESTMINSTER HALL AND THE LAW COURTS.</div>
+
+<p>Adjoining the Houses of Parliament is this vast old
+hall. For almost five hundred years has it stood, its
+curiously carved roof unsupported by column or pillar.
+Here royal banquets, as well as Parliaments, have been
+held, and more than one court of justice. Here was
+the great trial of Warren Hastings. It was empty
+now of everything but echoes and the long line of
+statuary on either side, except the lawyers in their
+long, black gowns, who hastened up and down its
+length, or darted in and out the three baize doors upon
+one side, opening into the Courts of Chancery, Common
+Pleas, and the Exchequer. Our national curiosity was
+aroused, and we mounted the steps to the second,
+which had won our sympathies from its democratic
+name.</p>
+
+<p>There were high, straight-backed pews of familiar
+appearance, rising one above the other, into the last of
+which we climbed, a certain Sunday solemnity stealing
+over us, a certain awkward consciousness that we were
+the observed of all observers, since we were the only
+spectators&mdash;a delusion of our vanity, however. In the
+high gallery before us, in complacent comfort, sat three
+fat, drowsy old women (?) in white, curling wigs, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+voluminous gowns, asking all manner of distracting
+questions, and requiring to be told over and over again,&mdash;after
+the manner of drowsy old women,&mdash;to the utter
+confusion of a poor witness in the front pew, who
+clung to the rail and swayed about hopelessly, while
+he tried to tell his story, as if by this rotary motion he
+could churn his ideas into form. Not only did he lose
+the thread of his discourse,&mdash;he became hopelessly entangled
+in it. Scratch, scratch, scratch, went the pens
+all around him. Every word, as it fell from his lips,
+was pounced upon by the begowned, bewigged, bewildering
+judges, was twisted and turned by the lawyers,
+was tossed back and forth throughout the court-room,
+until there arose a question in our minds, as to
+who was telling the story. All the while the lawyers
+were glaring upon him as though he was perjuring
+himself with every word&mdash;as who would not be, under
+the circumstances? And such lawyers! They dotted
+the pews all around us. The long, black gowns were not
+so bad; they hid a deal of awkwardness, I doubt not.
+But the wigs! the queer little curly things, perched
+upon every head, and worn with such a perverse delight
+in misfits! the small men being invariably hidden
+beneath the big wigs, and the large men strutting
+about like the great Panjandrum himself with the
+little round button at the top! The appearance of one,
+whose head, through some uncommon development,
+rose to a ridge-pole behind, was surprising, to say the
+least. It was not alone that his wig was too small, that
+a fringe of straight, black hair fell below its entire
+white circumference; it was not alone that it was parted
+upon the wrong side, or that, being mansard in form,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+and his head hip-roofed, it could never, by any process,
+have been shaped thereto; but I doubt if the wearing
+of it upside down, added to all these little drawbacks,
+could conduce to the beauty or dignity of any man.
+Unmindful of this reversed order of nature, its happy
+possessor skipped about the court-room, nodding to his
+brethren with a blithesome air, to the imminent peril
+of his top-knot, which sustained about the same relation
+to his head as the sword to that of Damocles. He
+speered down upon the poor witness. He pretended
+to make notes of dreadful import with a screaming
+quill, and, in fact, comported himself with an airy
+unconsciousness delightful to see.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the proceedings of the court, I only
+know that the point under discussion concerned one
+Johnson, and a pump; and Mr. Pickwick's judge sat
+upon the bench. Whether he was originally round,
+red-faced, with gooseberry eyes, I do not remember;
+but all these pleasing characteristics he possessed at
+this present time, as well as a pudgy forefinger, with
+which to point his remarks.</p>
+
+<p>"You say," he repeated, with a solemnity of which
+my pen is incapable, and impressing every word upon
+the poor man in the front pew with this same forefinger,
+"that&mdash;Bunsen&mdash;went&mdash;to&mdash;the&mdash;pump?"</p>
+
+<p>"Johnson, my lord," the witness ventured to correct
+him, in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes no difference," responded the judge, irate,
+"whether it is Bunsen or Jillson. The question is,
+Did&mdash;Jillson&mdash;go&mdash;to&mdash;the&mdash;pump?"</p>
+
+<p>Whom the gods destroy they first deprive of their
+five senses. Four, at least, of the poor man's had departed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+some time since. The fifth followed. "Johnson
+went, my lord," he replied, doggedly. Having
+found one point upon which his mind was clear, he
+clung to it with the tenacity of despair.</p>
+
+<p>"Johnson! who's <i>Johnson?</i>" gasped the bewildered
+judge, over whose face a net of perplexed lines spread
+itself upon the introduction of this new character. In
+the confusion of denials and explanations that followed,
+we descended from our perch, and stole away; nor are
+we at all sure, to this day, as to whether Johnson did
+or did not really go to the pump.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />ST. PAUL'S.</div>
+
+<p>Imagine our surprise, one day, when admiring a
+pretty ribbon upon a friend, to be told that it came
+from St. Paul's Churchyard. Hardly the place for ribbons,
+one would think; but the narrow street which
+encircles the cathedral in the form of a bow and its
+string goes by this name, and contains, besides the
+bookstores and publishing houses, some fine "silk
+mercers'" establishments.</p>
+
+<p>The gray surface of the grand edifice is streaked
+with black, as though time had beaten it with stripes,
+and a pall of smoke and dust covers the statues in the
+court before it. Consecrated ground this is, indeed.
+From the earliest times of the Christian religion,
+through all the bigotry and fanaticism of the ages that
+followed, down to the present time, the word of God
+has been proclaimed here&mdash;in weakness often, in bitterness
+many times that belied the spirit of its message;
+by a priesthood more corrupt than the people;
+by noble men, beyond the age in which they lived, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+whom the flames of martyrdom could not appall. Under
+Diocletian the first church was destroyed. It was
+rebuilt, and destroyed again by the Saxons. Twice
+has it been levelled to the ground by fire. But neither
+sword nor flame could subdue it, and firm as a rock it
+stands to-day, as it has stood for nearly two hundred
+years, and as it seems likely to stand for ages to come.
+The sacred stillness that invests the place was rudely
+broken, the morning of our visit, by the blows from the
+hammers of the workmen, resounding through the dome
+like a discharge of artillery. A great stage, and seats
+in the form of an amphitheatre, were being erected in
+the nave for a children's festival, which prevented our
+doing more than glance down its length. We read
+some of the inscriptions upon the monuments, that one,
+so often quoted, of Sir Christopher Wren, among them&mdash;"Do
+you seek his monument? Look around you;"
+glanced into the choir, with its Gothic stalls, where the
+service is performed, and then descended into the crypt
+beneath all this, that labyrinth of damp darkness
+where so many lie entombed. Here is the funeral car
+of Wellington, with candles burning around it, cast
+from the conquering cannon which thundered victory
+to a nation, but sorrow and death to many a home.
+Shrouded with velvet it is, as are the horses, in imitation
+of those which bore him to his rest. All
+around were marble effigies, blackened, broken, as they
+survived the burning of the late cathedral, at the time
+of the great fire. Tombstones formed the pavement.
+"Whose can this be?" I said, trying to follow with the
+point of my umbrella the half-worn inscription beneath
+my feet. It was that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+enough it seemed to us, coming from a country so
+new as to have been by no means prolific in great
+men, to find them here lying about under our feet.</p>
+
+<p>Having explored the crypt, we prepared to mount
+the endless winding stairs, whose final termination is
+the ball under the cross that surmounts the whole.
+Our ambition aimed only at the bell beneath the
+ball. We paid an occasional sixpence for the privilege
+of peeping into the library,&mdash;a most tidy and
+put-to-rights room, with a floor of wood patchwork,&mdash;and
+for the right to look down upon the geometrical
+staircase which winds around and clings to
+the wall upon one side, but is without any visible support
+upon the other. The "whispering gallery" was
+reached after a time. It is the encircling cornice within
+the dome, surrounded by a railing, and forming a
+narrow gallery. "I will remain here," said the guide,
+"while you pass around until you are exactly opposite;
+wait there until I whisper." Had we possessed the
+spirit of Casabianca, we should at this moment be sitting
+upon that narrow bench against the wall, with our
+feet upon the gas-pipes. We waited and listened, and
+listened and waited; but the sound of the blows from
+the hammers below reverberated like thunder around
+us. We could not have heard the crack of doom. Becoming
+conscious, after a time, that our guide had disappeared,
+we came out and continued our ascent. Mrs.
+K.'s curiosity, if not satisfied, was at least quenched,
+and she refused to go farther. My aspirations still
+pointed upward. There was another sixpence, another
+dizzy mount of dark, twisting stairs, with strength,
+ambition, and even curiosity gradually left behind, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+with only one blind instinct remaining&mdash;to go on.
+There was a long, dingy passage, through which ghostly
+forms were flitting; there were more stairs, with
+twists and turns, forgotten now with other torments;
+there was the mounting of half a dozen rickety wooden
+steps at last, for no object but to descend shakily
+upon the other side, and then we found ourselves in a
+little dark corner, peering over a dingy rail, with a
+great, dusky object filling all the space below. And
+that was the bell! "Well, and what of it?" I don't
+know; but we saw it!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>AWAY TO PARIS.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>The wedding party.&mdash;The canals.&mdash;New Haven.&mdash;Around the
+tea-table.&mdash;Separating the sheep from the goats.&mdash;"Will it
+be a rough passage?"&mdash;Gymnastic feats of the little steamer.&mdash;O,
+what were officers to us?&mdash;"Who ever invented earrings!"&mdash;Dieppe.&mdash;Fish-wives.&mdash;Train
+for Paris.&mdash;Fellow-passengers.&mdash;Rouen.&mdash;Babel.&mdash;Deliverance.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>IT was the last week in May, and by no means the
+"merry, merry month of May" had we found it.
+Not only was the sky weighed down with clouds, but
+they dripped upon the earth continually, the sun showing
+his ghastly, white, half-drowned face for a moment
+only to be swept from sight again by the cloud waves.
+A friend was going to Paris. Would we shake the
+drops from our garments, close our umbrellas, and go
+with him? We not only would, we did. We gathered
+a lunch, packed our trunk, said our adieus, and
+drove down to the station in the usual pouring rain,
+the tearful accompaniment to all our movements. But
+one party besides our own awaited the train upon the
+platform&mdash;a young man with the insignia of bliss in
+the gloves of startling whiteness upon his hands, and a
+middle-aged woman of seraphic expression of countenance,
+clad in robes of spotless white, her feet encased<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+in capacious white slippers. In this airy costume, one
+hand grasping a huge bouquet devoid of color, the other
+the arm of her companion, she paced back and forth, to
+the great amusement of the laughing porters, casting
+upon us less fortunate ones, who shivered meekly in
+our wraps, glances of triumphant pity indescribable.</div>
+
+<p>"Weddin' party, zur," explained the guard, touching
+his cap to our friend. "Jus' come down in fly." They
+looked to us a good deal more as if they were just going
+up in a "fly." The train shrieked into the station,
+and we were soon rushing over the road to New Haven,
+from which, in an evil moment, we had planned
+to cross the Channel. There was little new or strange in
+the picture seen from our window. The cottages were
+now of a dull, clay color, instead of the dingy red we
+had observed before, as though they had been erected in
+sudden need, without waiting for the burning of the
+bricks. There were brick-yards all along the way, answering
+a vexed question in my mind as to where all
+the bricks came from which were used so entirely in
+town and village here, in the absence of the wood so
+plentiful with us. The canals added much to the
+beauty of the landscape, winding through the meadows
+as if they were going to no particular place, and were
+in no haste to reach their destination. They turned
+aside for a clump of willows or a mound of daisy-crowned
+earth; they went quite out of their way to
+peep into the back doors of a village, and, in fact, strolled
+along in a lazy, serpentine manner that would have
+crazed the proprietor of a Yankee canal boat.</p>
+
+<p>It was five o'clock when we reached New Haven,
+having dropped our fellow-passengers along the way,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+the blissful couple among them. Through some error
+in calculation we had taken an earlier train than we
+need have, and found hours of doleful leisure awaiting
+us in this sleepy little town, lying upon an arm of the
+sea. Its outer appearance was not inviting. Here
+were the first and last houses of wood we saw in
+England,&mdash;high, ugly things, that might have been
+built of old boats or drift wood, with an economy that
+precluded all thought of grace in architecture. The
+train, in a gracious spirit of accommodation, instead of
+plunging into the sea, as it might have done, paused
+before the door of a hotel upon the wharf. There, in a
+little parlor, we improvised a home for a time. Our
+friend went off to explore the town. We took possession
+of the faded red arm-chairs by the wide windows.
+Down below, beyond the wet platform, rose the well-colored
+meerschaum of the little French steamer, whose
+long-boats hung just above the edge of the wharf.
+Through the closed window stole the breath of the salt
+sea, that, only a hand-breadth here, widened out below
+into boundlessness, bringing visions of the ocean and a
+thrill of remembered delight. The rain had ceased.
+The breeze rolled the clouds into snow-balls, pure white
+against the blue of the sky. Over the narrow stream
+came the twitter of birds, hidden in the hawthorn
+hedge all abloom. Everything smiled, and beamed,
+and glistened without, though far out to sea the white
+caps crowned the dancing waves. When night fell,
+and the lights glimmered all through the town, we
+drew the heavy curtains, lighted the candles in the shining
+candlesticks, whose light cast a delusive glow over
+the dingy dustiness of the room, bringing out cheerfully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+the little round tea-table in the centre, with its
+bright silver and steaming urn, over which we lingered
+a long hour, measuring and weighing our comfort, telling
+tales, seeing visions, and dreaming dreams of
+home.</p>
+
+<p>The clock struck nine as we crossed the plank to
+the Alexandra, trying in vain to find in its toy appointments
+some likeness to our ocean steamer of delightful
+memory. The train whizzed in from London, bringing
+our fellow-voyagers. The sheep were separated from
+the goats by the officer at the foot of the plank, who
+asked each one descending, "First or second cabin?"&mdash;sending
+one to the right, the other to the left. The
+wind swept in from the sea raw and cold. The foot-square
+deck was cheerless and wet. Even a diagonal
+promenade proved short and unsatisfactory, and in despair
+we descended the slippery, perpendicular stairs
+between boxes and bales, and down still another flight,
+to the cabin. A narrow, cushioned seat clung to its four
+sides, divided into lengths for berths. "Will it be a
+rough night?" we carelessly asked the young stewardess.
+"O, no!" was the stereotyped reply, though
+all the while the wicked waves were dancing beneath
+the white caps just outside. We divested ourselves of
+hats, and wraps, and useless ornaments, reserving only
+that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, under a nameless
+fear, grew every moment meeker and more quiet.
+We undid the interminable buttons of our American
+boots, and prepared for a comfortable rest, with an ignorance
+that at the time approximated bliss. There
+was leisure for the working out of elaborate schemes.
+Something possessed the tide. Whether it was high<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+or low, narrow or wide, I do not know; but there at
+the wharf we were to await the working of its own
+will, regardless of time. Accordingly we selected our
+places with a deliberation that bore no proportion to
+the time we were to fill them, advising with the stewardess,
+who had settled herself comfortably to sleep.
+We tried our heads to England and our feet to the foe,
+and then reversed the order, finally compromising by
+taking a position across the Channel. But the loading
+of the steamer overhead, with the chattering of our fellow-passengers
+below,&mdash;two English girls, a pretty
+brunette and her sister,&mdash;banished sleep. At three
+o'clock our voyage began&mdash;the succession of quivering
+leaps, plunges, and somersaults which miraculously
+landed us upon the French coast. I can think of no
+words to describe it. The first night upon the ocean
+was paradise and the perfection of peace in comparison.
+To this day the thought of the swashing water, beaten
+white against the port-hole before my eyes, is
+sickening. A calm&mdash;to me, of utter prostration&mdash;fell
+upon us long after the day dawned, only to be
+broken by the stewardess, when sleep had brought partial
+forgetfulness, with, "It's nine o'clock; we're at
+Dieppe, and the officers want to come in here." We
+tried to raise our heads. Officers! What officers?
+Had we crossed the Styx? Were they of light
+or darkness? We sank back. O, what were officers
+to us!</p>
+
+<p>"But you must get up!"&mdash;and she began an awkward
+attempt at the buttons of those horrible boots.
+That recalled to life. American boots are of this world,
+and we made a feeble attempt to don some of its vanities.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+O, how senseless did the cuffs appear that went
+on upside down!&mdash;the collar which was fastened under
+one ear!&mdash;the ribbons that were consigned to our
+pockets! Making blind stabs at our ears, "Good
+heavens!" we ejaculated, "who ever invented earrings?
+Relics of barbarism!" We made hasty thrusts
+at the hair-pins, standing out from our heads in every
+direction like enraged porcupine quills; being pulled,
+and twisted, and scolded by the stewardess all the while;
+hearing the thump, thump, upon our door as one pair
+of knuckles after another awoke the echoes, as one
+strange voice after another shouted, "Why don't
+those ladies come out?" O the trembling fingers that
+refused to hold the pins!&mdash;the trembling feet that
+staggered up the ladder-like stairs as we were thrust
+out of the cabin&mdash;out of the cruel little steamer to
+take refuge in one of the waiting cabs! O the blessedness
+of our thick veils and charitable wraps!</p>
+
+<p>I recall, as though it were a dream, the narrow,
+roughly-paved street of Dieppe; a latticed window
+filled with flowers, and a dark-eyed maiden peeping
+through the leaves; the fish-wives in short petticoats
+and with high white caps, clattering over the stones in
+their wooden <i>sabots</i>, wheeling barrows of fish to the
+market near the station, where they bartered, and bargained,
+and gossiped. Evidently it is a woman's right
+in Normandy to work&mdash;to grow as withered, and hard,
+and old before the time as she chooses, or as she has
+need; for to put away year after year, as do these poor
+women, every grace and charm of womanhood, cannot
+be of choice.</p>
+
+<p>At the long table in the refreshment-room of the station<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+we drank the tasteless tea, and ate a slice from the
+roll four feet in length. The English-speaking girl who
+attended us found a place&mdash;rough enough, to be sure&mdash;where
+in the few moments of waiting we could complete
+our hasty toilets. Beside us at the table, our fellow-voyagers,
+were two professors from a Connecticut college
+of familiar name, whom we had met in London.
+They joined us in the comfortable railway carriage, and
+added not a little to the pleasant chat that shortened
+the long day and the weary journey to Paris. Our
+number&mdash;for the compartment held eight&mdash;was completed
+by a young American gentleman, and a Frenchman
+of evil countenance, who drank wine and made
+love to his pretty Lizette in an unblushing manner,
+strange, and by no means pleasing, to us, demonstrating
+the annoyance, if nothing worse, to which one is often
+subjected in these compartment cars. It needed but one
+glance from the window to convince us that we were no
+longer in England. To be sure, the sky is blue, the
+grass green, in all lands; but in place of the level
+sweep of meadow through which we had passed across
+the Channel, the land swelled here into hills on every
+side. Long rows of stiff poplars divided the fields,
+or stretched away in straight avenues as far as the
+eye could reach. The English remember the beauty
+of a curved line; the French, with a painful rectitude,
+describe only right angles. Scarlet poppies blushed
+among the purple, yellow, and white wild flowers along
+the way. The plastered cottages with their high,
+thatched roofs, the tortuous River Seine with its green
+islands, as we neared Paris, the neat little stations along
+the way&mdash;like gingerbread houses&mdash;made for us a new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+and charming panorama. Hanging over a gate at one
+of these stations was an old man, white-haired, blind;
+his guide, an old woman, who waited, with a kind of
+wondering awe stealing over her withered face, while
+he played some simple air upon a little pipe&mdash;thus asking
+alms. So simple was the air, the very shadow of
+a melody, that the scene might have been amusing, had
+it not been so pitiful.</p>
+
+<p>At noon we lunched in the comfortless waiting-room
+at Rouen, while the professors made a hasty visit to
+the cathedral during our stay of half an hour. We still
+suffered from the tossing of the sea, and cathedrals possessed
+no charms in our eyes. It was almost night
+when we reached Paris, and joined the hurrying crowd
+descending from the train. It was a descent into Pandemonium.
+There was a confusion of unintelligible
+sounds in our ears like the roll of a watchman's rattle,
+bringing no suggestion of meaning. The calmness of
+despair fell upon our crushed spirits, with a sense of
+powerlessness such as we never experienced before or
+since. A dim recollection of school-days&mdash;of Ollendorff&mdash;rose
+above the chaos in our minds. "Has the
+physician of the shoemaker the canary of the carpenter?"
+we repeated mechanically; and with that our
+minds became a blank.</p>
+
+<p>Deliverance awaited us; and when, just outside the
+closed gates, first in the expectant crowd, we espied
+the face of a friend, peace enveloped us like a garment.
+Our troubles were over.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PARIS OF 1869.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>The devil.&mdash;Cathedrals and churches.&mdash;The Louvre.&mdash;Modern
+French art.&mdash;The Beauvais clock, with its droll little
+puppets.&mdash;Virtue in a red gown.&mdash;The Luxembourg Palace.&mdash;The
+yawning statue of Marshal Ney.&mdash;Gay life by gas-light.&mdash;The
+Imperial Circus.&mdash;The Opera.&mdash;How the
+emperor and empress rode through the streets after the
+riots.&mdash;The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was her
+fortune.&mdash;Napoleon's tomb.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>IT may be the City of Destruction, the very gateway
+to depths unknown; but with its fair, white
+dwellings, its fair, white streets, that gleamed almost
+like gold beneath a summer sun, it seemed much more
+a City Celestial. It may be, as some affirm, that the
+devil here walks abroad at midday; but we saw neither
+the print of his hoofs upon the asphaltum, nor the
+shadow of his horns upon the cream-like Caen stone.
+We walked, and rode, and dwelt a time within its
+limits; and but for a certain reckless gayety that gave
+to the Sabbath an air of Vanity Fair, but for the
+mallet of the workman that disturbed our Sunday
+worship, we should never have known that we were
+not in the most Christian of all Christian cities. It is
+by no means imperative to do in Rome as the Romans<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+do, and one need not in Paris drink absinthe or
+visit the Jardin Mabille.</div>
+
+<p>Our first expedition was to the banker's and to the
+shops, and having replenished our purse and wardrobe,
+we were prepared to besiege the city. There was
+a day or two of rest in the gilded chairs, cushioned
+with blue satin, of our pretty <i>salon</i>, whence we peeped
+down upon the street below between the yellow
+satin curtains that draped its wide French window;
+or rolled our eyes meditatively to the delicately tinted
+ceiling, with its rose-colored clouds skimmed by tiny,
+impossible birds; or made abortive attempts to penetrate
+the secrets of the buhl cabinets, and to guess
+at the time from the pretty clocks of disordered organism;
+or admired ourselves in the mirrors which
+gazed at each other from morning till night, for our
+apartments in the little Hotel Friedland we found
+most charming.</p>
+
+<p>You will hardly care for a description of the dozen,
+more or less, churches, old, new, and restored, with
+which we began and ended our sight-seeing in Paris,
+where we looked upon sculptured saints without number,
+and studied ecclesiastical architecture to more
+than our hearts' content. There was St. Germain
+L'Auxerrois, the wicked old bell of which tolled the
+signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. We
+stood with the <i>bonnes</i> and babies under the trees of
+the square before it, gazing up at the belfry with most
+severe countenances,&mdash;and learned, afterwards, that
+the bell had been long since removed! There was
+the Madeleine of more recent date, built in the form of
+a Greek temple, and interesting just now for having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+been the church of Father Hyacinthe, to which we
+could for a time find no entrance. We shook the iron
+gate; we inquired in excellent English of a French
+shopkeeper, and found at last an open gateway, a
+little unlocked door, beyond which we spent a time
+of search and inquiry in darkness, and among wood,
+and shavings, and broken chairs, and holy dust-pans,
+before passing around and entering the great bronze
+doors. There were the Pantheon and St. Sulpice,
+grand and beautiful, erected piously from the proceeds
+of lotteries. There was St. Etienne du Mont, and
+within one of its chapels the gilded tomb of the patron
+saint of Paris&mdash;St. Genevieve. Who she was, or
+what she did to gain this rather unenviable position, I
+failed to learn. Her name seems to have outlived her
+deeds. Whether she was beautiful and beloved, and
+put away earthly vanities for a holy life, or old and
+ugly, and bore her lot with a patience that won saintship,
+I do not know. I can only tell that tapers burn
+always upon her tomb, and if you buy one it will burn
+a prayer for you. So we were told. There is one old
+church, St. Germain des Pr&eacute;s, most beautifully colored
+within. Its pictures seem to have melted upon the
+walls. But admired above all is the Sainte Chapelle,
+in the Palais de Justice, a chapel fitted up by the fanatical
+St. Louis, when this palace of justice, which
+holds now the courts of law, was a royal residence.
+Of course all its brightness was dimmed long ago. Its
+glories became dust, like its founder. But it has recently
+been restored, and is a marvel of gilt, well-blended
+colors, and stained glass. A graceful spire
+surmounts it, but the old, cone-capped towers, rising<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+from another part of the same building, possessed far
+greater interest in our eyes; for here was the Conciergerie,
+where were confined Marie Antoinette and so
+many more victims of the reign of terror.</p>
+
+<p>On the "isle of the city," in the Seine, where, under
+the Roman rule, a few mud huts constituted Paris,
+stands the church of Notre Dame, which was three hundred
+years in building. With its spire and two square
+towers, it may be seen from almost any part of the
+city. I wish you might look upon the relics and the
+vestments which the priests wear upon occasions of
+ceremony, hidden within this church, and displayed
+upon the payment of an extra fee. I did not wonder
+that the Sisters of Charity, who went into the little
+room with us, gazed aghast upon the gold and silver,
+and precious stones.</p>
+
+<p>Every one visits the galleries of the Louvre, of
+course. A little, worn shoe, belonging once to Marie
+Antoinette, and the old gray coat of the first emperor,
+were to us the most interesting objects among the
+relics. From out the sea of pictures rise Murillo's
+Madonna, the lovely face with a soul behind it, shining
+through, and the burial of the heroine of Chateaubriand.
+Do you know it? The fair form, the sweeping
+hair of Attila, and the dark lover with despair in his
+face? As for the Rubens gallery,&mdash;his fat, red, undraped
+women here among the clouds, surrounded by
+puffy little cherubs, had for us no charms. Rubens in
+Antwerp was a revelation. We wandered through room
+after room, lighted from above, crowded with paintings.
+To live for a time among them would be a delight;
+to glance at them for a moment was tantalization. All<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+around were the easels of the artists who come here
+to sketch&mdash;sharp-featured, heavy-browed men, with
+unkempt hair and flowing beards, and in shabby coats,
+stood before them, pallet and brushes in hand; and
+women by the score,&mdash;some of them young and pleasing,
+with duennas patiently waiting near by; but more
+often they were neither young nor beautiful, and with
+an evident renunciation of pomps and vanities. We
+glanced at their copies curiously. Sometimes they
+seemed the original in miniature, and sometimes,&mdash;ah
+well, we all fail.</p>
+
+<p>We looked in upon the annual exhibition of pictures
+at the Palais de l'Industrie one day, and were particularly
+impressed with the <i>nudit&eacute;</i> of the modern school
+of French art. Pink-tinted flesh may be very beautiful,
+but there must be something higher! We saw there,
+too, another day, the clock on exhibition for a time before
+being consigned to its destined place at Beauvais.
+It was even more wonderful than the one so famous
+at Strasbourg. This was of the size of an ordinary
+church organ, and of similar shape; a mass of gilt
+and chocolate-colored wood; a mass of dials, great and
+small&mdash;of time tables, and, indeed, of tables for computing
+everything earthly and heavenly, with dials to
+show the time in fifty different places, and everything
+else that could, by any possible connection with time,
+be supposed to belong to a clock. Upon the top,
+Christ, seated in an arm-chair, was represented as
+judging the world, his feet upon the clouds; on either
+side kneeling female figures adored him. Just below,
+a pair of scales bided their time. On every peak
+stood little images, while fifty puppets peeped out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+fifty windows. Just below the image of the Saviour,
+a figure emerged through an open door at the striking
+of every quarter of an hour,&mdash;coming out with a slide
+and occasional jerk by no means graceful. We had an
+opportunity of observing all this in the three quarters
+of an hour of waiting. We viewed the clock upon
+every side, being especially interested in a picture at
+one point representing a rocky coast, a light-house, and
+a long stretch of waves upon which labored two ships
+attached in some way to the works within. They
+pitched back and forth without making any progress
+whatever, in a way very suggestive to us, who had
+lately suffered from a similar motion. A dozen priests
+seated themselves with us upon the bench before the
+clock as the hand approached the hour. They wore
+the long black robes and odd little skull-caps, that fit
+so like a plaster, and which are, I am sure, kept in
+place by some law of attraction unknown to us. One,
+of a different order, or higher grade, in a shorter robe
+and with very thin legs, encased in black stockings
+that added to their shadowy appearance, shuffled up
+to his place just in time to throw back his head and
+open his mouth as the clock struck, and the last judgment
+began. The cock upon the front gave a preliminary
+and weak flap of his wings, and emitted three
+feeble, squeaky crows, that must, I am sure, have convulsed
+the very puppets. Certainly they all disappeared
+from the windows, and something jumped into
+their places intended to represent flames, but which
+looked so much like reversed tin petticoats, that we
+supposed for a moment they were all standing on
+their heads. All the figures upon the peaks turned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+their backs upon us. The image of Christ began to
+wave its hands. The kneeling women swayed back
+and forth, clasping their own. Two angels raised to
+their lips long, gilt trumpets, as if to blow a blast;
+then dropped them; then raised them a second time,
+and even made a third abortive attempt. From one
+of the open doors Virtue was jerked out to be judged,
+Virtue in a red gown. The scales began to dance up
+and down. An angel appeared playing a guitar, and
+Virtue went triumphantly off to the right, to slow and
+appropriate music, an invisible organ playing meanwhile.
+Then Vice appeared. I confess he excited my
+instant and profound pity. Such a poor, naked,
+wretched-looking object as he was! with his hands
+to his face, as though he were <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'heartly'">heartily</ins> ashamed to come
+out in such a plight. I venture to say, if he had been
+decked out like Virtue, he might have stolen off to the
+right, and nobody been the wiser. Good clothes do a
+great deal in Paris. As it was, the scales danced up
+and down a moment, and then the devil appeared with
+a sharp stick, and drove him around the corner to the
+left, with very distant and feeble thunder for an accompaniment.
+That ended the show. All the little
+puppets jumped back into all the little windows, and
+we came away.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking of picture galleries, we spent a pleasant
+hour in the gallery of the Luxembourg&mdash;a collection
+of paintings made up from the works of living artists,
+and of those who have been less than a year deceased.
+It is sufficiently small to be enjoyable. There is something
+positively oppressive in the vastness of many of
+these galleries. You feel utterly unequal to them; as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+though the finite were about to attempt the comprehension
+of the infinite. One picture here, by Ary
+Scheffer, was exhibited in America, a few years since.
+It is the head and bust of a dead youth in armor&mdash;a
+youth with a girlish face. There are others by
+Henri Scheffer, Paulin Guerin, and a host more I
+will not name. One, a scene in the Conciergerie,
+"Reading the List of the Condemned to the Prisoners,"
+by M&uuml;ller, haunted me long after the doors
+had swung together behind us. The palace of the
+Luxembourg, small, remarkable for the beauty of its
+architecture and charming garden, built for that graceless
+regent, Marie de Medici, is now the residence of
+the president of the Senate; and indeed the Senate
+itself meets here. We were shown through the rooms
+open to the public, the private apartments of Marie de
+Medici among them, in one of which was a bust
+of the regent. The garden, like all gardens, is filled
+with trees and shrubs, flowers and fountains, but yet
+with a certain charm of its own. The festooning of
+vines from point to point was a novelty to us, as was
+the design of one of the fountains. Approaching it from
+the rear, we thought it a tomb,&mdash;perhaps the tomb
+of Marshal Ney, we said, whose statue we were seeking.
+It proved to be an artificial grotto, and within it,
+sprinkled with the spray of the fountain, embowered
+in a mass of glistening, green ivy, reclined a pair of
+pretty, marble lovers; peering in upon them from
+above, scowled a dreadful ogre&mdash;a horrible giant.
+The whole effect, coming upon it unexpectedly, was
+startling.</p>
+
+<p>We had a tiresome search for this same statue of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+Marshal Ney. We chased every marble nymph in the
+garden, and walked and walked, over burning pebbles
+and under a scorching sun, until we almost wished he
+had never been shot. At last, away beyond the garden,
+out upon a long avenue, longer and hotter if possible
+than the garden paths, we found it,&mdash;erected
+upon the very spot where he was executed. He
+stands with arm outstretched, and mouth opened wide,
+as though he were yawning with the wearisomeness
+of it all. It is a pity that he should give way to his
+feelings so soon, since he must stand there for hundreds
+of years to come. The guide-books say he is
+represented in the act of encouraging his men. They
+must have been easily encouraged.</p>
+
+<p>Of the out-door gay life by gas-light, we saw less
+than we had hoped to see in the French capital. The season
+was unusually cold and wet, and most of the time it
+would have required the spirit of a martyr to sip coffee
+upon the sidewalk. One garden concert we did attend,
+and found it very bright and fairy-like, and all the other
+adjectives used in this connection. We sat wrapped
+in shawls, our feet upon the rounds of the chair before
+us, and shivered a little, and enjoyed a great deal.
+We went one night&mdash;in most orthodox company&mdash;to
+the Cirque de l'Imp&eacute;ratrice, a royal amphitheatre
+with handsome horses, pretty equestriennes, and a
+child balanced and tossed about on horseback, showing
+a frightened, painful smile, which made of the man who
+held her a Herod in our eyes. A girl very rich in
+paint and powder, but somewhat destitute in other
+particulars, skipped and danced upon a slack rope in
+a most joyous and airy manner. When we came out, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+haggard woman, with an old, worn face, was crouching
+in a little weary heap by the door that led into the stables,
+wrapped in an old cloak; and that was our dancing
+girl!</p>
+
+<p>We went to the opera, too; it was Les Huguenots.
+To this day I cannot tell who were the singers. I
+never knew, or thought, or cared. And the bare shoulders
+flashing with jewels in the boxes around us, the
+<i>claqueurs</i> in the centre, hired to applaud, clapping their
+hands with the regularity of clock-work, the empty
+imperial box, were nothing to the sight of Paris
+portrayed within itself. You know the familiar opera;
+do think how strange it was to see it in Paris; to
+look upon the stage and behold the Seine and the towers
+of Notre Dame; the excited populace rising up to
+slay and to be slain, with all the while this same fickle
+French people serenely smiling, and chatting, and looking
+upon it&mdash;the people who were even then ready at a
+word to re&euml;nact the same scenes for a different cause.
+Just outside, only a day or two before, something of
+the same spirit, portrayed here for our amusement,
+had broken out again in the election riots. And we remembered
+that, as we drove around the corner to the
+opera house, mounted soldiers stood upon either side,
+while every other man upon the street was the eye, and
+ear, and arm of the emperor, who knew that the very
+ground beneath his fair, white city tottered and reeled.</p>
+
+<p>We saw the emperor and empress one day, after
+having looked for them long and in vain upon the
+Champs Elys&eacute;es, and in the Bois de Boulogne where
+gay Paris disports itself. It was the morning after the
+riot, when they drove unattended, you will remember,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+through the streets where the rioters had gathered.
+We were in one of the shops upon the Rue de Rivoli.
+Just across the way rose the Tuileries from the sidewalk.
+A crowd began to collect about the open archway
+through the palace, which affords entrance and
+egress to the great square around which the palace is
+built. "What is it?" we asked of the voluble
+Frenchman who was gradually persuading us that
+brass was gold. "L'Empereur," he replied; which sent
+us to the sidewalk, and put from our minds all thoughts
+of oxidized silver and copper-colored gold. Just within
+the arch paced a lackey in livery of scarlet and gold,
+wearing a powdered wig and general air of importance.
+On either side, the sentries froze into position. The
+<i>gendarmes</i> shouted and gesticulated, clearing the
+streets. A mounted attendant emerged from the archway;
+there followed four bay horses attached to a plain,
+dark, open carriage; upon the front seat were two gentlemen,
+upon the back, a gentleman with a lady by his
+side. His hair was iron gray, almost silvery. He
+turned his face from us as he raised his hat gravely to
+the crowd, displaying a very perceptible bald spot upon
+the back of his head as he was whizzed around the corner
+and down the street. And that was Napoleon
+III. We saw no American lady in Paris dressed so
+simply as the empress. Something of black lace draped
+her shoulders; a white straw bonnet, trimmed with black,
+with a few pink roses resting upon her hair, crowned her
+head. She bowed low to the right and left, with a peculiar,
+graceful motion, and a smile upon the face a little
+worn and pale, a little faded,&mdash;but yet the face we all
+know so well. Beautiful Spanish woman, whose face<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+was your fortune, though you smiled that day upon the
+people, your cheeks were pale, your eyes were full of
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing more wonderful in Paris than the
+tomb prepared to receive the remains of the first Napoleon,
+in the chapel of the H&ocirc;tel des Invalides; fitting,
+it would seem to be, that he should rest here among his
+old soldiers. We left the carriage at the gateway, and
+crossed the open court, mounted the wide steps, followed
+the half dozen other parties through the open
+doors, and this was what we saw. At the farther end
+of the great chapel or church, an altar, approached by
+wide, marble steps; gilt and candles embellished it, and
+a large, gilt cross upon it bore an image of the crucified
+Lord. All this was not unlike what we had seen many
+times. But four immense twisted columns rose from
+its four corners&mdash;columns of Egyptian marble, writhing
+like spotted serpents. They supported a canopy
+of gold, and the play of lights upon this, through the
+stained windows above and on either side, was indescribable.
+As we entered the door, darkness enveloped it,
+save where an invisible sun seemed to touch the roof
+of gold and rest lightly upon the pillars; an invisible
+sun, indeed, for, without, the sky was heavy with
+clouds. As we advanced, this unearthly light touched
+new points&mdash;the gilded candlesticks, the dying Saviour,
+but above all the writhings of these monster serpents,
+until the whole seemed a thing of life, a something
+which grew and expanded every moment, and was
+almost fearful to look upon. Filling the centre of the
+chapel was a circular marble wall breast-high. Do you
+remember, in going to the old Senate chamber at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+Washington, after passing through the rotunda, the
+great marble well-curb down which you could look into
+the room below? This was like that, only more vast.
+Over it leaned a hundred people, at least, gazing down
+upon what? A circular, roofless room, a crypt to hold
+a tomb; each pillar around its circumference was the
+colossal figure of a woman; between these hung the
+tattered tri-colors borne in many a fierce conflict, beneath
+the burning suns of Egypt and over the dreary
+snows of Russia, with seventy colors captured from the
+enemies of France. A wreath of laurel in the mosaic
+floor surrounded the names Austerlitz, Marengo, Friedland,
+Jena, Wagram, Moscow, and Pyramids, and in the
+centre rose the sarcophagus of Finland granite, prepared
+to hold the body of him whose ambition knew no
+bounds. The letter N upon one polished side was the
+only inscription it bore. He who wrote his name in
+blood needed no epitaph. The entrance to this crypt is
+through bronze doors, behind the altar, and gained by
+passing under it. On either side stood a colossal figure
+in bronze; kings they seemed to be, giant kings, in long
+black robes and with crowns of black upon their heads.
+One held, upon the black cushion in his hands,
+a crown of gold and a golden sword; the other,
+a globe crowned with a cross and a golden sceptre.
+They were so grand, and dark, and still, they
+gazed upon us so fixedly from out their great, grave
+eyes, that I felt a chill in all my bones. They guard
+his tomb. They hold his sword and sceptre while
+he sleeps. I almost expected the great doors to
+swing open at the touch of his hand, and to see him
+come forth. Over these doors were his own words:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+"I desire that my ashes may repose upon the banks of
+the Seine, in the midst of the French people I have
+loved so well." On either side, as we came out, we read
+upon the tombs the names of Bertrand and Duroc,&mdash;faithful
+in death! We wondered idly whose remains
+were guarded in the simple tomb near the door. It was
+surrounded by an iron railing, and bore no inscription.
+Who can it be, we said, that is nameless here among
+the brave? Little did we imagine at the time that
+here rested the body of the great Napoleon, as it was
+brought from St. Helena; but his spirit seemed to pervade
+the very atmosphere, and we came out into the
+gloom of the day as though we had, indeed, come from
+the presence of the dead.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITY.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>The Gobelin tapestry.&mdash;How and where it is made.&mdash;P&egrave;re la-Chaise.&mdash;Poor
+Rachel!&mdash;The baby establishment.&mdash;"Now
+I lay me."&mdash;The little mother.&mdash;The old woman who lived
+in a shoe.&mdash;The American chapel.&mdash;Beautiful women and
+children.&mdash;The last conference-meeting.&mdash;"I'm a proof-reader,
+I am."</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>BY no means least among the places of interest in
+Paris is the manufactory of the Gobelin tapestry
+which serves to adorn the walls of the palace <i>salons</i>.
+O, these long, tiresome <i>salons</i>, which must be visited,
+though your head is ready to burst with seeing,
+your feet to drop off with sliding and slipping over
+the polished floors. The wicked <i>stand</i> upon slippery
+places, and nothing so convinced us of the demoralizing
+effect of foreign travel as our growing ability
+to do the same. When you have seen one or
+two, you have seen all. There may be degrees in
+gorgeous splendor, but we were filled with all the
+appropriate and now-forgotten emotions at sight of
+the first, and one cannot be more than full. Many of
+the old palace apartments are dull and dingy beyond
+belief, by no means the marble halls of our dreams;
+but of the others let me say something once for all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+Under your feet is the treacherous, bare floor of dark
+wood, laid in diamonds, squares, &amp;c.; over your head,
+exquisite frescoes of gods and goddesses, and all manner
+of unearthly and impossible beings enveloped in
+clouds by the bale,&mdash;usually an apotheosis of some
+king or queen, or both, and, as a rule, of the most
+wicked known at that time. The Medici were especially
+glorified and raised above the flesh,&mdash;and
+they had need to be. On every side pictures in Gobelin
+tapestry, framed into the walls, often so large as to
+cover the entire space from corner to corner, from cornice
+to within a few feet of the floor, and in this latter
+space doors, formed of a panel sometimes, for the entrance
+and egress of servants. Imagine, with all this,
+the gilt, and stucco, and wood-carving; the flowers,
+and arabesques, and entwined initials; the massive
+chandeliers, with glittering pendants; the mantels of
+rare marbles, of porphyry, and malachite; the cabinets,
+and tables, and escritoires of marqueterie and mosaic;
+the gilded chairs, stiff and stark, richly covered; the
+bronzes, vases, and curious clocks: and over all the
+air of having never been used from all time, and of
+continuing to be a bare show to all eternity,&mdash;and you
+have a faint conception of the <i>salons</i> of half the
+palaces.</div>
+
+<p>As for the tapestry, pray don't confound it with the
+worsted dogs and Rebekahs-at-the-Well with which we
+sometimes adorn (?) our homes, since one would never
+in any way suggest the other. In these every delicate
+line is faithfully reproduced, and the effect exactly that
+of an oil painting. After long years the colors fade;
+and we were startled sometimes, in the old palaces, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+come upon one of these gray shadows of pictures, out
+from which, perhaps, a pair of wonderful eyes alone
+would seem to shine. In old times the rough walls
+of the grim prison palaces were hung with tapestry
+wrought by the fair fingers of court ladies, the designs
+of tournament and battle being rudely sketched by gay
+gallants. Many a bright dream was worked into the
+canvas, I doubt not, never found upon the pattern;
+many a sweet word said over the task that beguiled
+the dull hours, and kept from mischief idle hands.
+But in the reign of Louis XIV. the art of weaving
+tapestry was brought from Flanders, and a manufactory
+established on the outskirts of Paris which still
+remains. To visit it a pass is required. Accordingly
+we addressed a note of solicitation to some high official,
+and in due time came a permit for Madame K. and
+family; and an ill-assorted family we must have appeared
+to the official at the gate. There were the
+rooms, hung with specimens of the tapestry, for which
+we did not care, and then the six devoted to the weaving;
+long, low, and narrow they were, with hand-looms
+ranged down one side. Through the threads of the
+warp we could see the weavers sitting behind their
+work, each with his box of worsteds and pattern beside
+him. The colors were wound upon quills, numbers
+of which hung, each by its thread, from the half-completed
+work. Taking one of these in one hand,
+the workman dexterously separated the threads of the
+warp with the other, and passed the quill through,
+pressing down the one stitch thus formed with its
+pointed end. You can imagine how slow this work
+must be. How tiresome a task it is to delight the eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+of princes! The making of carpets, which has been
+recently added, is equally tiresome. This, too, is hand
+work, they being woven in some way over a round
+stick, and then cut and trimmed with a pair of shears.
+To make one requires from five to ten years, and their
+cost is from six to twenty thousand dollars. About six
+hundred weavers are said to be here, though we saw
+but a small proportion of that number. They receive
+only from three to five hundred dollars a year, with a
+pension of about half as much if they are disabled.</p>
+
+<p>From the Gobelins we drove across the Seine again,
+and out to P&egrave;re la-Chaise, where stood once the house of
+the confessor of Louis XIV., from whom the cemetery
+takes its name, the Jesuit priest through whose influence
+the edict of Nantes was revoked. A kind of
+ghastly imitation of life it all seemed&mdash;the narrow
+houses on either side of the paved streets, that were not
+houses at all, hung with dead flowers and corpse-like
+wreaths, stained an unnatural hue. We peered through
+the bars of the locked gate opening into the Jews'
+quarter, trying to distinguish the tomb where lie the
+ashes of a life that blazed, and burned itself out. Poor
+Rachel! Through the solemn streets, among the quiet
+dwellings of the noiseless city, whence comes no sound
+of joy or grief, where they need no candle, neither
+light of the sun, we walked a while, then plucked a
+leaf or two, and came away.</p>
+
+<p>One day, when the sun lay hot upon the white
+streets of the beautiful city, we searched among the
+shops of the crooked Faubourg St. Honor&eacute; for a number
+forgotten now, and the Cr&eacute;che, where the working
+mothers may leave their children during the day. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+another and more quiet street we found it. We pulled
+the bell before a massive gateway; the wide doors
+opened upon a smiling portress, who led the way
+across the paved court to the house, where she pointed
+up some stairs, and left us to mount and turn until
+it was no longer possible, until a confusion of doors
+barred our way, when we rapped upon one. Another
+was opened, and we found ourselves among the babies.
+There were, perhaps, twenty in all, the larger children
+being in the school-room below; but even twenty
+toddling, rolling babies, looking so very like the same
+image done in putty over and over again, appears an
+alarming and unlimited number when taken in a body.
+They rolled beneath our feet, they clung to our skirts,
+they peeped out, finger in mouth, from behind the
+doors, they kicked pink toes up from the swinging
+cradles, and in fact, like the clansmen of Rhoderic Dhu,
+appeared in a most startling manner from the most
+unexpected places. Plump little things they were,
+encased in shells of blue-checked aprons, from the outer
+one of which they were surreptitiously slipped upon
+our entrance to disclose a fresher one beneath. How
+long this process could have continued with a similar
+happy result, we did not inquire. Every head was tied
+up in a tight little night-cap, giving them the appearance
+of so many little bag puddings. Every face was
+a marvel of health and contentment, with one kicking,
+screaming exception upon the floor. "Eengleesh," explained
+the Sister of Charity who seemed to have them
+in charge, giving a sweeping wipe to the eyes, nose,
+and mouth, gradually liquidizing, of this one, and trying
+in vain to pacify a nature that seemed peaceless. Who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+was its mother, or how the little stranger chanced to
+be here, we did not learn. On either side of the long,
+narrow room hung the white-curtained cradles, each
+with its pretty, pink quilt. At one end was an altar,
+most modest in its appointments, consisting of hardly
+more than a crucifix and a vase of flowers upon the
+mantel. As we entered the room, the sister stood before
+it with a circle of white caps and blue checked
+aprons around her, a circle of little clasped hands, of
+upturned eyes and lisping lips, repeating what might
+have been, "Now I lay me," for anything we knew.
+Our entrance brought wandering eyes and thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>At the opposite end of the room, a wide, long window
+swung open, revealing a pleasant garden down
+below, all green and blossoming, with an image of the
+Virgin half hid among the vines. Cool, and fresh, and
+green it seemed after the glare of the hot streets, a
+pleasant picture for the baby eyes. Out from this
+window the little feet could trot upon the guarded roof
+of a piazza. A little chair, a broken doll, and limbless
+horse here were familiar objects to the eyes of the
+mothers in our party, and when two children seized
+upon one block with a determination which threatened
+a breach of the peace, we were convinced that even baby
+nature was the same the world over. Supper time
+came, and the children were gathered together in a
+small room, before the drollest little table imaginable&mdash;a
+kind of elongated doughnut, raised a foot
+from the floor, with a circular seat around it. All the
+little outer shells of blue check were slipped on, all the
+little fat bodies lifted over and set into their places, to
+roll off, or about, at will. A grace was said, to us, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+think, since all the little eyes turned towards us, and
+a plate of oatmeal porridge put before each one. Some
+ate with a relish, and a painful search over the face
+with a spoon for the open, waiting mouth; some leaned
+back to stare at the company; and others persisted in
+dipping into the dish of their next neighbor. One
+little thing, hardly more than a year old, drew down
+the corners of her mouth in a portentous manner, when
+the motherly one beside her, of the advanced age of
+three years, perhaps, rapped on the table with her
+spoon, and patted the doleful little face, smiling all the
+while, until she actually drew out smiles in return.
+The dear little mother! An attendant with a homely
+face, creased into all manner of good-natured lines, resolved
+herself into the old woman who lived in a shoe,
+holding two babies and the porridge dish in her lap,
+balancing one upon the end of the low bench beside her,
+while two or three more stood at her knee, clinging to
+her apron. It was like a nest of open-mouthed birdlings.
+Blessings on the babies, and those, whether of our faith
+or not, who teach and care for them, we thought, as we
+came away. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of
+the least of these, ye did it unto me," said the Master.</p>
+
+<p>Although I said nothing of our church-going in
+London, I cannot pass over our American chapel in
+Paris, with its carved, umbrella-like canopy, shading
+the good Dr. R., who did so much socially, as well as
+spiritually, for Americans there. Here came many
+whose names are well known; among them our minister
+to France, an elderly gentleman of unpretending
+dress and manner, with a kindly, care-worn face. And
+here gathered also a company of beautiful women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+and children, proving the truth of all that has been
+said of our countrywomen. A blending of all types
+were they, as our people are a blending of all nationalities,
+each more lovely than the other, and all making
+up a picture well worth seeing. I wish I might say as
+much for the opposite sex. One gentleman, who wore
+a red rose always in his button-hole, and turned his
+back upon the minister to stare at the women, had a
+handsome though <i>blas&eacute;</i> face, and more than one head
+above the pews would have been marked anywhere;
+but the women and children bore away the palm. The
+delicate, sensitive faces which characterize American
+women, whether the effect of climate, manner of life,
+or of the nerves for which we are so celebrated, are
+found nowhere else, I am sure.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the Sabbath services a weekly prayer-meeting
+was held here. They were singing some sweet
+familiar hymn as we entered one evening and took
+our place among the pilgrims and strangers like ourselves.
+It was the last gathering for the winter. Some
+were off for home, some for a summer of travel; only a
+few, with the pastor, were to remain. One followed
+another in words of retrospection, and regret at parting,
+until a pall settled over the little company&mdash;until
+even we, who had never been there before, wiped our
+eyes because of the general dolefulness. A hush and
+universal mistiness pervaded the air of the dimly-lighted
+house; the assembly seemed about to pass out of existence,
+Niobe-like. Then up rose Dr. R., the pastor. I
+wondered what he could say to add to the gloom;
+something like this, perhaps: "Dear people, everybody
+is off; let us shut up the church, lock the door, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+throw away the key. Receive the benediction." But
+no; I wish you might feel the thrill that went through
+the little company as his words fell from his lips. I
+wish I dared attempt to repeat them. "And now to
+you who go," he said, at last, "who take with you something
+of our hearts, be sure our prayers will follow you.
+Keep us in memory; but, above all, keep in memory
+your church vows. Make yourselves known as
+Christians among Christians. And when you have
+reached home&mdash;the home to which our thoughts have
+so often turned together&mdash;let this be a lesson. When
+summer comes and you leave the city for the country,
+for the mountains, for the sea-side, take your religion
+with you. Search out some struggling little church
+with a discouraged pastor,&mdash;you'll not look far or long
+to find such a one,&mdash;and work for that, as you have
+worked for us. And one thing more; send your
+friends who are coming abroad to us. Send us the
+Christians, for we need them, and by all means send us
+those who are not Christians; they may need us; and
+the Lord bless you, and keep you in all your goings,
+and give you peace."</p>
+
+<p>Then the people gathered in knots for last words&mdash;for
+hand-clasps and good-byes. Now a spirit of peace
+and good will having fallen upon us with the pastor's
+benediction, we gazed wistfully upon the strangers in
+the hope of finding one familiar face; but there was
+none; so we came sorrowfully down the aisle. The door
+was almost reached when a sharp, twanging voice behind
+us began, "I'm sent out by X. &amp; Y., book publishers."
+"O," said I to the friend at my side, "I believe I
+will speak to that man. I know Mr. X., and I do so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+want to speak to somebody." How he accomplished
+the introduction I cannot tell, but in a moment my
+hand was grasped by that of a stout little man, with
+bushy hair and twinkling eyes. "Know Mr. X.? Mr.
+Q. X.?" he began. To tell the truth I had not that
+honor, my acquaintance having been with his brother;
+but there was no time to explain, and retreat was
+equally impossible; so I replied that my father knew
+him well; then thinking that something more was necessary
+to explain the sudden and intense interest manifested
+in his behalf, added, desperately, "indeed,
+intimately." To this he paid no manner of attention,&mdash;I
+doubt if he heard it,&mdash;but rattled on: "Fine man,
+Mr. X., Mr. Q. X. Know Mr. Y.? Fine man, Mr. Y.;
+been abroad a year; I'm goin' out to meet him, I am.
+He's in Switzerland, Mr. Y. is; been abroad a year.
+I'm a proof-reader, I am. I s'pose you know what a
+proof-reader is." "Yes," I succeeded in inserting
+while he took breath, remembering some amateur
+attempts of my own in that direction. He began anew:
+"I'm sent out by X. &amp; Y.; expect to find Mr. Y. in
+Switzerland; fine man&mdash;" Will he never stop, I
+thought, beginning a backward retreat from the pew
+down the aisle, with all the while ringing in my ears,
+"I'm a proof-reader, I am," &amp;c. "Don't laugh, pray
+don't," I said to the friends waiting at the door. "It's
+dreadful&mdash;is it not?" What became of him we never
+knew, but in all probability the sexton removed him&mdash;still
+vocal&mdash;to the sidewalk that night; where, since
+we do not know for how long a time he was wound
+up, he may be iterating and reiterating to this day the
+interesting fact of his occupation, with the eulogy upon
+Messrs. X. &amp; Y.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>The river omnibuses.&mdash;S&egrave;vres and its porcelain.&mdash;St. Cloud as
+it was.&mdash;The crooked little town.&mdash;Versailles.&mdash;Eugenie's
+"spare bedroom."&mdash;The queen who played she was a farmer's
+wife.&mdash;Seven miles of paintings.&mdash;The portraits of the presidents.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>THERE are four ways of going to St. Cloud, from
+Paris, says the guide-book; we chose the fifth, and
+took one of the little steamboats&mdash;the river omnibuses&mdash;that
+follow the course of the Seine, stopping at the piers
+along the city, which occur almost as often as the street
+crossings. Very insignificant little steamers they are,
+made up of puff, and snort, and smoke, a miniature deck,
+and a man with a big bell. Up the river we steamed
+through a mist that hid everything but the green
+banks, the pretty villas whose lawns drabbled their
+skirts in the river, and after a time the islands that
+seemed to have dropped cool, wet, and green into the
+middle of the stream. We plunged beneath the dark
+arches of the stone bridges&mdash;the Pont d'Alma not to
+be forgotten, with its colossal sentinels on either side
+of the middle arch, calm, white, and still, leaning upon
+their muskets, their feet almost dipping into the water,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+their great, stony eyes gazing away down the river.
+What is it they seem to see beyond the bend? What
+is it they watch and wait for, gun in hand? We pulled
+our wraps about us, found a sheltered place, and went
+on far beyond our destination, through the gray vapor
+that gathered sometimes into great, plashing drops to
+fall upon the deck, or, hovering in mid-air, wiped out
+the distance from the landscape as effectually as the
+sweep of a painter's brush, while it softened and
+spiritualized everything near, from the sharply outlined
+eaves, and gables, and narrow windows of the village
+struggling up from the water, to the shadowy span of
+the bridges that seemed to rest upon air. Then down
+with the rain and the current we swept again, to land
+at the forsaken pier of <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Sevres'">S&egrave;vres</ins>, from which we made our
+way over the pavings, so inviting in these French
+towns for missile or barricade, to the porcelain factory.
+No fear of missing it, since it is the one object of interest
+to strangers in the town; and whatever question
+we asked, the reply would have been the pointing of
+the finger in that one direction. Once there, we clattered
+and slipped over the tiled floor after a polite attendant,
+through its many show-rooms, and among its
+wilderness of pottery, ancient and modern. The manufactory
+was established by&mdash;I'm sure I don't know
+whom&mdash;in seventeen hundred and&mdash;something, at
+Vincennes, quite the other side of Paris; but a few
+years later, in the reign of Louis XV., was transferred
+to <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Sevres'">S&egrave;vres</ins>, and put under the direction of government.
+It is almost impossible to gain permission to visit the
+workshops, but a permit to pass through the show-rooms
+can easily be obtained. There were queer old-fashioned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+attempts at glazed ware here, some of them
+adorned with pictures like those we used to see in our
+grandmothers' china closets, of puffy little pink gentlemen
+and ladies ambling over a pink foreground; a pink
+mountain, of pyramidal form, rising from the wide-rimmed
+hat of the roseate gentlemen; a pink lake
+standing on end at the feet of the lady, and a little
+pink house, upon which they might both have sat
+comfortably, with a few clouds of jeweller's cotton completing
+the picture. A striking contrast were these to
+the marvels of frailty and grace of later times. The
+rooms were hung with paintings upon porcelain, the
+burial of Attila, which we had seen at the Louvre,
+among them. Every conceivable model of vase, pitcher,
+and jar was here&mdash;quaint, beautiful conceptions of
+form adorned by the hand of skilful artists, from mammoth
+vases, whirling upon stationary pedestals, to the
+most delicate cup that ever touched red lips.</div>
+
+<p>At noon we strolled over to St. Cloud, a pleasant
+walk of a mile, beginning with a shaded avenue, rough
+as a country road; then on, down a street leading to
+the gates of the park of St. Cloud&mdash;a street so vain
+of its destination that it was actually lifted up above
+the gardens on either side. From the wide gates we
+passed into a labyrinth of shaded, clean-swept ways,
+and followed one to the avenue of the fountains, where
+we sat upon the edge of a stone basin to await the
+opening of the palace. For do not imagine, dear
+reader, that you can run in and out of palaces without
+ceremony and at all hours of the day. There is an appointed
+time; there is the gathering outside of the
+curious; there is the coming of a man with rattling,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+ringing keys; there is the throwing open of wide gates
+and massive doors, and then&mdash;and not until then&mdash;the
+entering in. As for the fountains, next to those at
+Versailles they have been widely celebrated; but as
+they only played upon Sundays and f&ecirc;te days, we did
+not see them. Their Sunday gowns of mist and flowing
+water were laid aside, and naked and bare enough
+they were this day. The wide basins, the lions and
+dolphins, were here, with the marble nymphs, and fauns
+and satyrs, that make a shower-bath spectacle of themselves
+upon gala days. When the hour refused to
+strike, and we grew hungry,&mdash;as one will among the
+rarest and most wonderful things,&mdash;we left the park,
+to find the crooked little town that sits in the dust always
+at the feet of palaces. Its narrow streets ran
+close up to the gates, and would have run in had they
+not been shut. Here in the low, smoke-stained room
+of an inn that was only a wine-shop, we spent the time
+of waiting,&mdash;our elbows upon the round, dark table,
+which, with the dirt and wooden chairs, made up its
+only furnishing,&mdash;sipping the sour wine, cutting slices
+from the long, melancholy stick of bread, all dust and
+ashes, and nibbling the cheese that might have vied
+with Samson for strength. The diamond-paned window
+was flung wide open, for the air seemed soiled and
+stained, like the floor. Just across the narrow, empty
+street, an old house elbowed our inn. The eaves of
+its thatched roof were tufted with moss, out from which
+rose a mass of delicate pink blossoms&mdash;pretty innocents,
+fairly blushing for shame of their surroundings.
+Through the long passage-way came the sound of high-pitched
+voices&mdash;of a strange jargon from the room<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+opening upon the street, where a heavy-eyed maid, behind
+a pewter bar, served the blue-bloused workmen
+gathered about the little tables.</p>
+
+<p>The white palace of St. Cloud, with its Corinthian
+columns, stood daintily back from its gates and the
+low-bred town; but its long wings had run down, like
+curious children, to peep out through the bars; so, you
+will see, it formed three sides of a square. It had
+lately been refurnished for the prince imperial. The
+grand <i>salons</i> need not be described; one is especially
+noted as having been the place where a baby was once
+baptized, who is now ex-emperor of France. In the
+same room the civil contract of marriage between Napoleon I.
+and Marie Louise was celebrated. A few
+elegant but less spacious rooms were interesting from
+having been the private apartments of the poor queens
+and empresses who have shared the throne of France.
+Gorgeous they were in tapestry and gilding, filled with
+a gaping crowd of visitors, and echoing to the voice of
+a voluble guide. Royal fingers may have touched the
+pretty trinkets lying about; royal forms reclined upon
+the soft couches; royal aching hearts beat to the tick
+of the curious gilt clock, that bore as many faces as a
+woman, some one wickedly said; but it was impossible
+to realize it, or to believe that high heels, and panniers,
+and jaunty hats upon sweet-faced, shrill-voiced American
+girls had not ruled and reigned here always, as they
+did this day.</p>
+
+<p>Versailles lies out beyond St. Cloud, but we gave to
+it another day. We were a merry party, led by Dr.
+R., who left the train at the station, and filled the
+omnibus for the palace. There was an air of having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+seen better days about the city, which was at one time
+the second of importance in France; it fed and fattened
+upon the court, and when at last the court went away
+not to return, it came to grief. The most vivid recollection
+I have of the great court-yard, around which
+extend three sides of the palace, is of its round paving-stones&mdash;that
+seemed to have risen up preparatory to
+crying out&mdash;and the grove of weather-stained statues
+upon high pedestals,&mdash;generals, cardinals, and statesmen
+who hated and connived against each other in
+life, doomed now in stone to stare each other out of
+countenance. I am sure we detected a wry face here
+and there, to say nothing of clinched fists. It is a
+gloomy old court-yard at best. The front of the main
+building is all that remains of the old hunting-seat of
+Louis XIII., which his son would not suffer to be destroyed.
+It is of dingy, mildewed brick, that can never
+in any possible light appear palatial; and so blackened
+and purple-stained are the statues before it that they
+might have been just brought from the Morgue. The
+whole palace is only a show place now&mdash;a museum
+of painting and statuary. As for the celebrated gardens,
+we walked for hours, and still they stretched away
+on every side. We explored paths wide and narrow,
+crooked and straight, and saw clipped trees by the
+mile, with grottoes and the skeletons of the fountains
+that, like naughty children, play o' Sundays, and all
+the wonderful trees, shrubs, and flowers brought from
+the ends of the earth, and ate honey gingerbread (flavored
+with extract of turpentine) before an open booth,
+and were ready to faint with weariness; and when at last
+a broad avenue opened before us with the Trianons,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+which must be seen, at the farther end, we would not
+have taken the whole place as a gift. It must have
+been at this point that we fortified ourselves with the
+gingerbread.</p>
+
+<p>The Grand Trianon alone were we permitted to enter.
+It is in the form of an Italian villa, with a ground floor
+only, and long windows opening upon delightful gardens.
+Like Versailles, it is now a mere show, although
+a suit of apartments was fitted up here some time since,
+in anticipation of a neighborly visit from Queen Victoria
+to Eugenie, making of the little palace a kind of
+guest chamber, a spare bedroom. As we followed a
+winding path through the park, we came suddenly
+upon an open glade, surrounded and shaded by forest
+trees. Over the tiny lake, in the centre, swans were
+sailing. Half hidden among the wide-spread, sweeping
+branches of the trees were the scattered farm-houses
+of a deserted village&mdash;only half a dozen in all, of rude,
+half Swiss architecture, made to imitate age and decay,
+quaintly picturesque. Here Marie Antoinette and her
+court played at poverty. Do you remember how,
+when she grew weary of solemn state, she came here
+with a few favored ones to forget her crown, and dream
+she was a farmer's wife? The dairy was empty, the
+marble slab bare upon which she made butter for her
+guests. Just beyond was the mill, but the wheel was
+still. It was a pleasant dream&mdash;a dream of Arcadia.
+Ah, but there was a fearful awakening! "The poorest
+peasant in the land," said the queen, "has one little
+spot which she can call her own; the Queen of France
+asks no more." So she shut the gates upon the people
+who had claimed and held the right, from all time, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+wander at will through the gardens of their kings.
+Then they hated her, whom they had greeted with
+shouts of welcome when she came a bride from over
+the border. "The Austrian! the Austrian!" they
+hissed through the closed gates. And one day they
+dragged her out from a bare cell in the Conciergerie,&mdash;no
+make-believe of rough walls, of coarse fare there,&mdash;they
+bound the slender hands behind her, they thrust
+into a prison cart the form that had been used to rest
+upon down and silken cushions, and bore her over
+the rough stones to the scaffold. Ah, it makes one
+shudder!</p>
+
+<p>To see the two hundred rooms of the palace of
+Versailles requires a day, at least; but we, fearful that
+this might be our last opportunity, determined to spend
+the remaining hour or two and our last atom of strength
+in the attempt. A wandering cabman pounced upon
+us as we came down the avenue from the Trianons,
+and bore us back to the palace, where we toiled up
+and down the grand stairway, and peeped into the
+chapel that had echoed to the mockery of worship in
+the time of the king who built all this&mdash;the king who
+loved everybody's wife but his own&mdash;so faithlessly!
+There was a dizzy hurrying through corridors lined
+with statuary, through one <i>salon</i> after another hung
+with Horace Vernet's paintings describing the glories
+of France&mdash;the crowning of its kings, the reception
+of its ambassadors, the signing of its treaties, the
+winning of its battles; but was all this bloodshed, and
+all this agony depicted upon canvas, for the glory of
+France? There were immense galleries, where, on
+every side, from cornice to floor, one was conscious of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+nothing but smoke and cannon, wounds and gore,
+and rolling eyes. We walked over the prescribed
+three miles and a half of floors slippery as ice, and
+gazed upon the seven miles of pictures, with a feeling
+less of pleasure or gratified curiosity than of satisfaction
+at having <i>done</i> Versailles. Room after room was devoted
+to portraits, full lengths and half lengths, side
+faces and full fronts; faces to be remembered, if one
+had not been in such mortal haste, and faces that
+would never have been missed from the ermined robes.
+In a quiet corner we were startled to find some of our
+good presidents staring down upon us from the wall.
+A mutual surprise it seemed to be. But if we Americans
+must be awkward and clownish to the last degree,
+half civilized, and but one remove from barbarism, don't
+let us put the acme of all this upon canvas, and hang
+it in the palace of kings. Here was President Grant
+represented in the saloon of a steamboat,&mdash;America to
+the last,&mdash;one leg crossed, one heel upon the opposite
+knee, and his head about to sink into his coat collar in
+an agony of terror at finding himself among quality.
+His attitude might have been considered graceful and
+dignified in a bar-room, or even in the saloon of a
+Mississippi steamer; but it utterly failed in both particulars
+in the Palace of Versailles, among courtly men
+and high-bred women.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>A VISIT TO BRUSSELS.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>To Brussels.&mdash;The old and new city.&mdash;The paradise and
+purgatory of dogs.&mdash;The H&ocirc;tel de Ville and Grand Place.&mdash;St.
+Gudule.&mdash;The picture galleries.&mdash;Wiertz and his odd
+paintings.&mdash;Brussels lace and an hour with the lace-makers.
+How the girls found Charlotte Bront&euml;'s school.&mdash;The scene
+of "Villette."</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>THERE were one or two more excursions from
+Paris, and then, when we had grasped the fat
+hand of Monsieur, our landlord, and kissed the dark
+cheeks of Madame, his wife, and submitted to the same
+from Mademoiselle, their daughter, with light hearts,
+serene consciences, and the &mdash;&mdash; family we started for
+Brussels. It is a six hours' ride by rail.</div>
+
+<p>Almost as soon as the line between France and Belgium
+is passed, the low hills drop away, the thatch-roofed
+cottages give place to those of whitewashed
+brick, with bright, red-tiled roofs. All along the way
+were the straight poplars overrun with ivy, and the
+land was cared for, coaxed, and fairly driven to the highest
+point of cultivation. Women were at work in the
+fields, and more than one Maud M&uuml;ller leaned upon her
+rake to gaze after us. Soon, when there were only
+level fields beneath a level sky, the windmills began<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+to appear in the distance, slowly swinging the ghostly
+arms that became long, narrow sails as we neared them.
+At two o'clock we reached Brussels, after being nearly
+resolved into our original element&mdash;dust. Nothing but
+a sand-hill ever equalled the appearance we presented
+when we stepped from the train; nor did we need anything
+so much as to be thrown over a line and beaten
+like a carpet when we finally gained our hotel.</p>
+
+<p>The old city of Brussels is crooked, and dull, and
+picturesque; but joined to it&mdash;like an old man with
+a gay young wife&mdash;is the beautiful Paris-like upper
+town, with its houses covered with white stucco, and a
+little mirror outside of every window, placed at an angle
+of forty-five degrees, so that Madame, sitting within,
+can see all that passes upon the street, herself unseen.
+Here in the new town are the palaces, the finest
+churches, the hotels, and Marie Therese's park, where
+young and old walk, and chat, and make eyes at each
+other summer evenings. Scores of strings, with a
+poodle at one extremity and a woman at the other,
+may here be seen, with little rugs laid upon the
+ground for the pink-eyed puff-balls to rest upon.
+Truly Brussels is the paradise and purgatory of dogs.
+Anywhere upon the streets you may see great, hungry-eyed
+animals dragging little carts pushed by women;
+and it is difficult to determine which is the most forlorn&mdash;the
+dog, the cart, or the woman. We never
+understood before what it was to "work like a dog."
+At one extremity of the park was the white, new Senate-house;
+opposite, the gray, barrack-like palace of
+the king; upon the third side, among others, our hotel.
+Here we were happy in finding another family of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+friends. With them we strolled down into the old
+town, after dinner, taking to the middle of the street,
+in continental fashion, as naturally as ducks to water;
+crossing back and forth to stare up at a church or into
+a shop window,&mdash;straggling along one after another
+in a way that would have been marked at home, but
+was evidently neither new nor strange here, where the
+native population attended to their own affairs with a
+zeal worthy of reward, and other parties of sight-seers
+were plying their vocation with a perseverance that
+would have won eminence in any other profession.
+Through crooked by-ways we wandered to the Grand
+Place of the old city&mdash;a paved square shut in by high
+Spanish-gabled houses ornamented with the designs
+of the various guilds. From the windows of one hung
+the red, yellow, and black Belgian flag. There was no
+rattle of carts, no clatter of hoofs. Down upon the
+dark paving-stones a crowd of women, old and young,
+with handkerchiefs crossed over their bosoms, were
+holding a flower-market. Just behind them rose the
+grim statues of the two counts, Egmont and Van Horn,&mdash;who
+lost their heads while striving to gain their cause
+against Spanish tyranny and the Spanish Inquisition,&mdash;and
+the old royal palace, blackened and battered by
+time and the hand of forgotten sculptors, until it seemed
+like the mummy of a palace, half eaten away. Just
+before them was the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, with its beautiful
+tower of gray stone, its roof a mass of dormer windows.
+It comes to me like a picture now&mdash;the gathering
+shadows of a summer night, the time-worn houses,
+lovely in decay, the tawdry flag, and the heads of the
+old women nodding over their flowers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Brussels has a grand church dedicated to Saints
+Michael and Gudule. If I could only give to you,
+who have not seen them, some idea of the vastness
+and beauty of these cathedrals! But descriptions are
+tiresome, and dimensions nobody reads. If I could
+only tell you how far extending they are, both upon
+earth and towards heaven&mdash;how they seem not so much
+to have been built stone upon stone, as to have stood
+from the foundation of the world, solitary, alone, until,
+after long ages, some strolling town came to wonder,
+and worship, and sit at their feet in awe! We crept in
+through the narrow door that shut behind us with a
+dull echo. A chill like that of a tomb pervaded the
+air, though a summer sun beat down upon the stones
+outside. A forest of clustered columns rose all around
+us. Far above our heads was a gray sky, the groined
+arches where little birds flew about. Stained windows
+gleamed down the vast length, broken by the divisions
+and subdivisions,&mdash;one, far above the grand entrance,
+like the wheel of a chariot of fire. All along the walls,
+over the altar, and filling the chapel niches, were pictures
+of saints, and martyrs, and blessed virgins, that
+seemed in the dim distance like dots upon the wall.
+Muffled voices broke upon the stillness. Far up the
+nave a little company of worshippers knelt before the
+altar&mdash;workingmen who had thrown down mallet
+and chisel for a moment, to creep within the shadows
+of the sanctuary; market-women, a stray water-cress
+still clinging to the folds of their gowns; children
+dropping upon the rush kneeling-chairs, to mutter a
+prayer God grant they feel, with ever and anon, above
+the murmur of the prayer, above the drone of white-robed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+priests, the low, full chant from hidden singers,
+echoing through the arches and among the pillars, following
+us down the aisles to where we read upon the
+monuments the deeds of some old knight of heathen
+times, whose image has survived his dust&mdash;whose
+works have followed him.</p>
+
+<p>After leaving the church we wandered among and
+through the picture galleries in the old palaces of the
+city,&mdash;galleries of modern Belgian art, with one exception,
+where were numberless flat old Flemish pictures,
+and dead Christs, livid, ghastly, horrible to look
+upon. The best of Flemish art is not in Brussels.
+Among the galleries of modern paintings, that of the
+odd artist, recently deceased, Wiertz, certainly deserves
+mention. It contains materials for a fortune to an enterprising
+Yankee. The subjects of the pictures are
+allegorical, parabolical, and diabolical, the scenes being
+laid in heaven, hell, and mid-air. In one, Napoleon I.
+is represented surrounded by the flames of hell, folding
+his arms in the Napoleonic attitude, while his soldiers
+crowd around him to hold up maimed limbs and ghastly
+wounds with a denunciatory and angry air. Widows
+and orphans thrust themselves before his face with
+anathematizing countenances. In fact, the situation is
+decidedly unpleasant for the hero, and one longs for a
+bucket of cold water. Many of the pictures were behind
+screens, and to be seen through peep-holes&mdash;one
+of them a ghastly thing, of coffins broken open and
+their risen occupants emerging in shrouds. Upon the
+walls around the room were painted half-open doors
+and windows with pretty girls peeping out; close down
+to the floor, a dog kennel, from which its savage occupant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+was ready to spring; just above him, from a latticed
+window, an old <i>concierge</i> leaned out to ask our
+business. Even in the pictures hanging upon the walls
+was something of this trickery. In one the foot and
+hand of a giant were painted out upon the frame, so
+that he seemed to be just stepping out from his place;
+and I am half inclined to think that many of the people
+walking about the room were originally framed
+upon the walls.</p>
+
+<p>Brussels is always associated in one's mind with its
+laces. We visited one of the manufactories. A dozen
+or twenty women were busy in a sunny, cheerful room,
+working out the pretty leaves and flowers, with needle
+and thread, for the <i>point</i> lace, or twisting the bobbins
+among the innumerable pins in the cushion before
+them to follow the pattern for the <i>point appliqu&eacute;</i>.
+When completed, you know, the delicate designs are
+sewed upon gossamer lace. Upon a long, crimson-covered
+table in the room above were spread out, in
+tempting array, the results of this tiresome labor&mdash;coiffures
+that would almost resign one to a bald spot,
+handkerchiefs insnaring as cobwebs, <i>barbes</i> that fairly
+pierced our hearts, and shawls for which there are no
+words. I confess that these soft, delicate things have
+for women a wonderful charm&mdash;that as we turned
+over and over in our hands the frail, yellow-white cobwebs,
+some of us more than half forgot the tenth commandment.</p>
+
+<p><i>Table-d'h&ocirc;te</i> over, one evening, "Where shall we
+go? What can we do?" queried one of the four girls
+in our party, two of whom had but just now escaped
+from the thraldom of a French <i>pensionnat</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It would be so delightful if we could walk out for
+once by ourselves. If there were only something to
+see&mdash;somewhere to go."</p>
+
+<p>"Girls!" exclaimed Axelle, suddenly, "was not the
+scene of <i>Villette</i> laid in Brussels? Is not Charlotte
+Bront&euml;'s boarding-school here? I am sure it is. Suppose
+we seek it out&mdash;we four girls alone."</p>
+
+<p>"But how, and where?" and "Wouldn't that be
+fine?" chorused the others. There was a hasty search
+through guide-books; but alas! not a clew could we
+find, not a peg upon which to hang the suspicions that
+were almost certainties.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure it was here," persisted Axelle. "I wish
+we had a <i>Villette</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"We could get one at an English library," suggested
+another.</p>
+
+<p>"If there is any English library here," added a third,
+doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently that must be our first point of departure.
+We could ask for information there. Accordingly we
+planned our crusade, as girls do,&mdash;the elders smiling
+unbelief, as elders will,&mdash;and sallied out at last into
+the summer sunshine, very brave in our hopes, very
+glad in our unwonted liberty. A <i>commissionaire</i>
+gave us the address of the bookstore we sought as
+we were leaving the hotel. "There are no obstacles
+in the path of the determined," we said, stepping
+out upon the Rue Royale. Across the way was
+the grand park, a maze of winding avenues, shaded by
+lofty trees, with nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs hiding
+among the shrubbery, and with all the tortuous paths
+made into mosaic pavement by the shimmering sunlight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+But to Axelle <i>Villette</i> was more real than that
+June day.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember," she said, "how Lucy Snow
+reached the city alone and at night?&mdash;how a young
+English stranger conducted her across the park, she following
+in his footsteps through the darkness, and hearing
+only the tramp, tramp, before her, and the drip of
+the rain as it fell from the soaked leaves? This must
+be the park."</p>
+
+<p>When we had passed beyond its limits, we espied a
+little square, only a kind of alcove in the street, in the
+centre of which was the statue of some military hero.
+Behind it a quadruple flight of broad stone steps led
+down into a lower and more quiet street. Facing us,
+as we looked down, was a white stuccoed house, with a
+glimpse of a garden at one side.</p>
+
+<p>"See!" exclaimed Axelle, joyfully; "I believe this is
+the very place. Don't you remember when they had
+come out from the park, and Lucy's guide left her
+to find an inn near by, she ran,&mdash;being frightened,&mdash;and
+losing her way, came at last to a flight of steps
+like these, which she descended, and found, instead of
+the inn, the <i>pensionnat</i> of Madame Beck?" Only the
+superior discretion and worldly wisdom of the others
+prevented Axelle from following in Lucy Snow's footsteps,
+and settling the question of identity then and
+there. As it was, we went on to the library, a stuffy
+little place, with a withered old man for sole attendant,
+who, seated before a table in the back shop, was poring
+over an old book. We darted in, making a bewildering
+flutter of wings, and pecked him with a dozen
+questions at once, oddly inflected: "<i>Was</i> the scene of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+<i>Villette</i> laid in Brussels?" and "<i>Is</i> the school really
+here?" and "You <i>don't</i> say so!" though we had insisted
+upon it from the first, and he had just replied in
+the affirmative; lastly, "O, <i>do</i> tell us how we may
+find it."</p>
+
+<p>"You must go so-and-so," he said at length, when we
+paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," we replied in chorus; "we have just come
+from there."</p>
+
+<p>"And," he went on, "you will see the statue of
+General Beliard."</p>
+
+<p>We nudged each other significantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Go down the steps in the rear, and the house facing
+you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We knew it. We felt it," we cried, triumphantly;
+and his directions ended there. We neither heeded
+nor interpreted the expression of expectation that stole
+over his face. We poured out only a stream of thanks
+which should have moistened the parched sands of his
+soul, and then hastened to retrace our steps. We
+found the statue again. We descended into the narrow,
+noiseless street, and stood,&mdash;an awe-struck group,&mdash;before
+the great square house, upon the door-plate
+of which we read,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"<span class="smcap">pensionnat de demoiselles.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">H&eacute;ger&mdash;Parent.</span>"<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Now," said Axelle, when we had drawn in with a
+deep breath, the satisfaction and content which shone
+out again from our glad eyes, "we will ring the
+bell."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You will not think of it," gasped the choir of
+startled girls.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure; what have we come for?" was her
+reply. "We will only ask permission to see the garden,
+and as the portress will doubtless speak nothing
+but French, some one of you, fresh from school, must
+act as mouthpiece." They stared at Axelle, at each
+other, and at the steps leading into the upper town, as
+though they meditated flight. "I cannot," and "<i>I</i>
+cannot," said each one of the shrinking group.</p>
+
+<p>Axelle laid her hand upon the bell, and gave one
+long, strong pull. "Now," she said, quietly, "some one
+of you must speak. You are ladies: you will not run
+away."</p>
+
+<p>And they accepted the situation.</p>
+
+<p>We were shown into a small <i>salon</i>, where presently
+there entered to us a brisk, sharp-featured little French
+woman,&mdash;a teacher in the establishment,&mdash;who smiled
+a courteous welcome from out her black eyes as we
+apologized for the intrusion, and made known our
+wishes.</p>
+
+<p>"We are a party of American girls," we said, "who,
+having learned to know and love Charlotte Bront&euml;
+through her books, desire to see the garden of which
+she wrote in <i>Villette</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"O, certainly, certainly," was the gracious response.
+"Americans often come to visit the school and the
+garden."</p>
+
+<p>"Then this <i>is</i> the school where she was for so long
+a time?" we burst out simultaneously, forgetting our
+little prepared speeches.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, <i>mesdemoiselles;</i> I also was a pupil at that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+time," was the reply. We viewed the dark little woman
+with sudden awe.</p>
+
+<p>"But tell us," we said, crowding around her, "was
+she like&mdash;like&mdash;" We could think of no comparison
+that would do justice to the subject.</p>
+
+<p>The reply was a shrug of the shoulders, and, "She
+was just a quiet little thing, in no way remarkable. I
+am sure," she added, "we did not think her a genius;
+and indeed, though I have read her books, I can see
+nothing in them to admire or praise so highly!"</p>
+
+<p>"But they are <i>so</i> wonderful!" ventured one of our
+number, gushingly.</p>
+
+<p>"They are very untrue," she replied, while something
+like a spark shot from the dark eyes.</p>
+
+<p>O, shades of departed story-tellers, is it thus ye are
+to be judged?</p>
+
+<p>"Madame H&eacute;ger," she went on, "who still has charge
+of the school, is a most excellent lady, and not at all
+the person described as 'Madame Beck.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And M. Paul Emmanuel,&mdash;Lucy Snow's teacher-lover,"&mdash;we
+ventured to suggest with some timidity.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Madame H&eacute;ger's husband, and was at that time,"
+she replied, with a little angry toss of the head. After
+this terrible revelation there was nothing more to be
+said.</p>
+
+<p>She led the way through a narrow passage, and opening
+a door at the end, we stepped into the garden.
+We had passed the class-rooms on our right&mdash;where,
+"on the last row, in the quietest corner," Charlotte
+and Emily used to sit. We could almost see the pale
+faces, the shy figures bending over the desk in the
+gathering dusk.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The garden is less spacious than it was in Charlotte's
+time, new class-rooms having been added, which cut
+off something from its length. But the whole place
+was strangely familiar and pleasant to our eyes. Shut
+in by surrounding houses, more than one window overlooks
+its narrow space. Down its length upon one
+side extends the shaded walk, the "<i>all&eacute;e d&eacute;fendue</i>,"
+which Charlotte paced alone so many weary hours,
+when Emily had returned to England. Parallel to
+this is the row of giant pear trees,&mdash;huge, misshapen,
+gnarled,&mdash;that bore no fruit to us but associations
+vivid as memories. From behind these, in the summer
+twilight, the ghost of <i>Villette</i> was wont to steal,
+and buried at the foot of "Methuselah," the oldest, we
+knew poor Lucy's love-letters were hidden to-day. A
+seat here and there, a few scattered shrubs, evergreen,
+laurel, and yew, scant blossoms, paths damp, green-crusted&mdash;that
+was all. Not a cheerful place at its
+brightest; not a sunny spot associated in one's mind
+with summer and girlish voices. It was very still that
+day; the pupils were off for the long vacation, and yet
+how full the place was to us! The very leaves overhead,
+the stones in the walls around us, whispered a
+story, as we walked to and fro where little feet, that
+tired even then of life's rough way, had gone long years
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"May we take one leaf&mdash;only one?" we asked, as
+we turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"As many as you please;" and the little French woman
+grasped at the leaves growing thick and dark
+above her head. We plucked them with our own
+hands, tenderly, almost reverently; then, with many
+thanks, and our adieus, we came away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We have found it!" we exclaimed, when we had
+returned to the hotel and our friends. They only
+smiled their unbelief.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not know&mdash;can you not see&mdash;O, do
+you not feel?" we cried, displaying our glistening
+trophies, "that these could have grown nowhere but
+upon the pear trees in the old garden where Charlotte
+Bront&euml; used to walk and dream?"</p>
+
+<p>And our words carried conviction to their hearts.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>WATERLOO AND THROUGH BELGIUM.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>To Waterloo.&mdash;Beggars and guides.&mdash;The Mound.&mdash;Chateau
+Hougomont.&mdash;Victor Hugo's "sunken road."&mdash;Antwerp.&mdash;A
+visit to the cathedral.&mdash;A drive about the city.&mdash;An
+excursion to Ghent.&mdash;The funeral services in the cathedral.&mdash;"Poisoned?
+Ah, poor man!"&mdash;The watch-tower.&mdash;The
+Friday-market square.&mdash;The nunnery.&mdash;Longfellow's
+pilgrims to "the belfry of Bruges."</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>WE could not leave the city without driving out
+to the battle-field of Waterloo. It is about a
+dozen miles to The Mound, and you may take the public
+coach if you choose&mdash;it runs daily. Our party being
+large, we preferred to engage a carriage.</div>
+
+<p>We left the house after breakfast, and passed through
+the wide, delightful avenues of the For&ecirc;t de Soignes,&mdash;the
+Bois de Boulogne of Brussels,&mdash;then across the
+peaceful country which seemed never to have known
+anything so disturbing as war. Beyond the park lies
+the village which gave its name to the battle-field
+though the thickest of the fight was not there. In an
+old brick church, surmounted by a dome, lie intombed
+many minor heroes of the conflict. But heroes soon
+pall upon the taste, and nothing less than Wellington
+or Napoleon himself could have awakened a spark of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+interest in us by this time. Then, too, the vivid present
+blinded us to the past. The air was sweet with
+summer scents. Mowers were busy in the hayfields.
+A swarm of little barefooted beggars importuned us,
+turning dizzy somersaults until we could see only a
+maze of flying, dusty feet on either side. One troop,
+satisfied or despairing, gave way to another, and the
+guides were almost as annoying as the beggars. They
+walk for miles out of their villages to forestall each
+other, and meet the carriages that are sure to come
+from Brussels on pleasant days. They drive sharp bargains.
+As you near the centre of interest, competition
+is greater, and their demands proportionately less. We
+refused the extortionate overtures of two or three, and
+finally picked up a shrewd-faced young fellow in a blue
+blouse, who hung upon the step of the carriage, or ran
+beside it for the last mile or two of the distance. The
+village of Mont St. Jean follows that of Waterloo. It
+is only a scant collection of whitewashed farm buildings
+of brick. We rolled through it without stopping,
+and out again between the quiet, smiling fields, our
+minds utterly refusing to grasp the idea that they
+had swarmed once with an army; that in this little
+village we had just left&mdash;dull, half asleep in the sunshine&mdash;dreadful
+slaughter had held high carnival one
+July day, not many years before. Even when the guide,
+clinging to the door of the carriage, rattled over the
+story of the struggle in a <i>patois</i> all his own, hardly a
+shadow of the scene was presented to us.</p>
+
+<p>As our horses slackened their pace, he stepped down
+from his perch to gather a nosegay of the flowers by
+the road-side, making no pause in his mechanical narrative&mdash;of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+how the Anglo-Belgian army were gathered
+upon this road and the fields back to the wood, on
+the last day of the fight; how many of the officers had
+been called at a moment's notice from the gayeties at
+Brussels, and more than one was found dead upon the
+field the next day, under the soaking rain, dressed as
+for a ball. He pushed back his visorless cap, uttering
+an exclamation over the heat, and adding, in the same
+breath, that just here, about Mont St. Jean, the battle
+waged fiercely in the afternoon, when Ney, with his
+brave cuirassiers, tried in vain to carry the position;
+and all the time, the summer sounds of twittering
+birds and hum of locusts were in our ears; the barefooted
+children still turned upon their axles beside the
+carriage wheels as we rolled along, and that other day
+seemed so far away, that we could neither bring it
+near nor realize it. One grim reminder of the past
+rose in the distance, and, as we drew near, swelled and
+grew before our eyes. It was the huge mound of earth
+raised two hundred feet, to commemorate the victory
+of the allies. Hills were cut down, the very face of
+nature changed for miles around, to rear this monument
+to pride and vain-glory. Upon its summit
+crouches the Belgian lion.</p>
+
+<p>We turn from the paved road, when we have
+reached what seems to be a mass of unsightly ruins,
+with only a tumbling outbuilding left here and there.
+The whole is enclosed by a wall, which skirts also an
+orchard, neglected, grown to weeds. The carriage
+stops before the great gates. It is very cool and quiet
+in the shaded angle of the battered wall as we step
+down. It has been broken and chipped as if by pick-axes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+Ah! the shot struck hardest here. The top of
+the low wall is irregular; the bricks have been knocked
+out; the dust has sifted down; the mosses have
+gathered, and a fringe of grass follows all its length.
+Even sweet wild flowers blossom where the muskets
+rested in those dreadful days. At intervals, half way
+up its height, a brick is missing. Accident? Ah, no;
+hastily constructed loopholes, through which the
+English fired at first, before the horrible time when
+they beat each other down with the butts of their
+guns while they fought hand to hand here, like wild
+beasts.</p>
+
+<p>We enter the court-yard. Only a roughly plastered
+room or two remain, where the greed that gloats even
+over the field of blood offers <i>souvenirs</i> of the place
+importunately. In the centre of this court-yard may
+still be seen the well that was filled with corpses. It
+must have given out blood for many a day. Upon
+one side are the remains of the building used for a
+hospital in the beginning of the fight, but where the
+wounded and dying perished in torment, when the
+French succeeded in firing the chateau; for this is
+<i>Hougomont</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We came out at the gateway where we had entered;
+crossed the slope under the shadow of the branches
+from the apple trees, and followed the road winding
+through wheat-fields to The Mound. Breast-high on
+either side rose the nodding crests; and among them
+wild flowers, purple, scarlet, and blue, fairly dazzled
+our eyes, as they waved with the golden grain in the
+sunshine. "O, smiling harvest-fields," we said, "you
+have been sown with heroes; you have been enriched
+with blood!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was a long, dizzy climb up the face of The Mound
+to the narrow foothold beside the platform where
+rests that grim, gigantic lion. Once there, we held to
+every possible support in the hurricane of wind that
+seized us, while the guide gave a name to each historic
+farm and village spread out before our eyes. Only a
+couple of miles cover all the battle-field&mdash;the smallest
+where grand armies ever met; but the slaughter was
+the more terrible.</p>
+
+<p>Connected with an inn at the foot of The Mound is
+a museum of curiosities. Here are queer old helmets
+worn by the cuirassiers, hacked and rust-stained; broken
+swords, and old-fashioned muskets; buttons, and
+bullets even&mdash;everything that could be garnered after
+such a sowing of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>In unquestioning faith we bought buttons stained
+with mildew, and bearing upon them, in raised letters,
+the number of a regiment. Alas! reason told us, later,
+that the buttons disposed of annually here would supply
+an ordinary army. And rumor added, that they
+are buried now in quantities, to be exhumed as often
+as the supply fails.</p>
+
+<p>I remembered Victor Hugo to have said in <i>Les Mis&eacute;rables</i>
+something in regard to a sunken road here,
+which proved a pitfall to the French, and helped, in
+his judgment, to turn the fortunes of the day. But
+we had seen no sunken road. I mentioned it to the
+guide, who said that Victor Hugo spent a fortnight examining
+the ground before writing that description of
+the battle. "He lodged at our house," he added. "My
+father was his guide. What he wrote was all quite
+true. There is now no road such as he described;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+that was all changed when the earth was scraped together
+to form The Mound."</p>
+
+<p>We lunched at the inn, surrounded by mementos
+and trophies, and served by an elderly woman, whose
+father had been a sergeant in the Belgian army, then
+late in the afternoon drove back to town.</p>
+
+<p>The pleasant days at Brussels soon slipped by, and
+then we were off to Antwerp&mdash;only an hour's ride.
+I will tell you nothing about the former wealth and
+commercial activity of the city&mdash;that in the sixteenth
+century it was the wealthiest city in Europe, &amp;c., &amp;c.
+For all these interesting particulars, see Murray's Handbook
+of Northern Germany. As soon as we had secured
+rooms at the hotel, dropped our satchels and
+umbrellas, we followed the chimes to the cathedral.
+The houses of the people have crept close to it, until
+many of them, old and gray, have fairly grown to it,
+like barnacles to a ship; or it seemed as though they
+had built their nests, like the rooks, under the moss-grown
+eaves. The interior of the cathedral was singularly
+grand and open. As we threw our shawls
+about us&mdash;a precaution never omitted&mdash;an old man
+shuffled out from a dark corner to show the church,
+take our <i>francs</i>, and pull aside the curtains from before
+the principal pictures, if so dignified a name as curtain
+can be applied to the dusty, brown cambric that obstructed
+our vision. Rubens's finest pictures are here,
+and indeed the city abounds in all that is best of Flemish
+art,&mdash;most justly, since it was the birthplace of its
+master. Rubens in the flesh we had seen at the
+Louvre; the spiritual manifestation was reserved for
+Antwerp; and to recall the city is to recall a series of
+visions of which one may not speak lightly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Across, from the cathedral, upon a wide wooden
+bench in the market-place we sat a moment to consider
+our ways&mdash;the signal for the immediate swooping
+down upon us of guides and carriages, and the
+result of which was, our departure in a couple of dingy
+open vehicles to finish the city. We crawled about
+the town like a diminutive funeral procession, dismounting
+at the Church of St. Jacques to see the pictures,
+with which it is filled. In one of the chapels
+was a young American artist, copying Rubens's picture
+of "A Holy Family"&mdash;the one in which his two wives
+and others of his family enact the part of Mary, Martha,
+St. Jerome, &amp;c. Behind the high altar is the
+tomb of Rubens, with an inscription of sufficient length
+to extinguish an ordinary man. There was a museum,
+too, in the city, rich in the works of Rubens and Vandyck,
+and the fine park in the new part of the town, as well
+as the massive docks built by the first Napoleon, were
+yet to be seen. The older members of the party
+were in the first carriage, and received any amount of
+valuable information, which was transmitted to us who
+followed in a succession of shouts sounding as much
+like "fire!" as anything else, with all manner of beckoning,
+and pointing, and wild throwing up of arms, that
+undoubtedly gave vent to their feelings, but brought
+only confusion and distraction to our minds. Not to
+be outdone, our driver began a series of utterly unintelligible
+explanations, the only part of which we understood
+in the least was, when pointing to the docks, he
+ejaculated, "Napoleon!" At that we nodded our
+heads frantically, which only encouraged him to go on.
+Pausing before a low, black house, exactly like all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+others, he pointed to it with his whip. It said "Hydraulics"
+upon a rickety sign over the door. There
+were old casks, and anchors, and ropes, and rotting
+wood all around, for it was down upon the wharves.
+We tried to look enlightened, gratified even, and succeeded
+so well that he entered upon an elaborate dissertation
+in an unknown tongue. What do you suppose
+it was all about? Can it be that he was explaining
+the principles of hydraulics?</p>
+
+<p>We made, one clay, an excursion from Antwerp to
+Ghent and Bruges. We left the train at Ghent to
+walk up through the narrow streets, that have no sidewalks,
+to the cathedral. There was a funeral within.
+The driver of the hearse profusely decorated with inverted
+feather dusters, was comfortably smoking his
+pipe outside. A little hunchbacked guide, with great,
+glassy eyes, and teeth like yellow fangs, led us up the
+aisle to the screen beside the high altar, where we
+looked between the tombs and the monuments, upon
+the long procession of men circling around the coffin
+in the choir, each with a lighted candle in hand. As
+there were only about a dozen candles in all, and each
+must hold one while he passed the coffin, it was a piece
+of dexterity, at least, to manage them, which so engrossed
+our attention, that we caught but an occasional
+sentence from our guide's whispered story of the
+seventh bishop of Ghent, who donated the pulpit to the
+cathedral, and around whose marble feet we were trying
+to peep; of the ninth, who was poisoned as he went
+upon some mission ("Poisoned? Ah, poor man!" we
+ejaculated, absently, our eyes anxiously fixed upon one
+man to whom had been given no candle as yet); of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+tall brass candlesticks, supposed to have been brought
+from England in the time of Cromwell, and a host more
+of fragmentary information, forgotten now. The whole
+interior of the church is rich in decoration, black and
+white marble predominating, with pictures of the early
+Flemish school filling every available space. Once out
+of the church, we climbed into an ark of a carriage, and
+drove about the city, our little guide standing beside
+the driver, back to the horses most of the time, to
+pour out a torrent of history and romance. A most
+edifying spectacle it would have been anywhere else.
+Do read Henry Taylor's "Philip von Artevelde" before
+going to Ghent: the mingled romance and history
+throw a charm about the place and people which
+bare history can never give. Veritable Yankees these
+old Flemish weavers seem to have been, with a touch
+of the Irish in their composition&mdash;always up in arms
+for their rights, and striking out wherever they saw a
+head. There is a new part to the city, with a grand
+opera-house, shaded promenades and palatial dwellings,
+but one cares only for the narrow, dingy streets, and
+the old market squares, in which every stone could
+tell a story.</p>
+
+<p>We saw the tall, brick watch-tower, where still hangs
+the bell that tolled,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"I am Roland, I am Roland! There is victory in the land,"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and the old <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Hotel'">H&ocirc;tel</ins> de Ville, of conglomerate architecture,
+one side of which, in the loveliest flamboyant
+Gothic imaginable, seems crumbling away from its very
+richness. In the Friday-market square&mdash;it chancing
+to be Friday&mdash;was a score of bustling busybodies,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+swarming like bees. Here, in the old, quarrelsome times,
+battles were fought between the different guilds. I say
+battles, because at one time fifteen hundred were slain
+in this very square. Such a peaceful old square as it
+seemed to be the day of our visit! the old gray houses,
+that have echoed to the sound of strife, fairly smiling in
+the sunshine, and the market women kneeling upon the
+stones which have run with blood. At one corner rose
+a tower, and half way up its height may still be seen
+the iron rod, over which was hung imperfect linen, to
+shame the weaver who had dared to offer it in the
+market.</div>
+
+<p>There is a great nunnery here in Ghent&mdash;a town
+of itself, surrounded by a moat and a wall, where are
+six hundred or more sisters, from families high and
+low, who tend the sick, weave lace, and mortify the
+flesh in black robes and white veils. When they become
+weary of it, they may return to the world, the
+flesh, and&mdash;their homes: no vows bind them. We
+drove along the streets past the cell-like houses where
+they dwell. Over the door of each was the name of
+her patron saint. It seemed a quiet retreat, a noiseless
+city, notwithstanding the six hundred women! But
+by far the most interesting sight, because the most
+ancient in the quaint old city, was the archway and
+turret of the old royal castle, erected a thousand years
+ago; only this gateway remains. Here John o' Gaunt
+was born. Built all round, and joined to it, are houses
+of more recent date, themselves old and tottering, and
+the arch beneath which kings and queens rode once, is
+now the entrance to a cotton factory.</p>
+
+<p>We had only a few hours at Bruges&mdash;the city once<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+more powerful than Antwerp even, but where not a
+house has been raised for a hundred years, and where
+nearly a third of its inhabitants are paupers. But decay
+and dilapidation are strong elements of the picturesque,
+and nothing seen that day was more charming
+than a piece of wall, still standing, belonging to
+the old Charles V.'s palace&mdash;honey-combed, black,
+of florid Gothic architecture, rising from the quiet
+waters of the canal. At one end it threw an arch
+over the street, with a latticed window above it, beneath
+which we passed, after crossing the bridge.
+More than one picture of Bruges rests within my
+memory&mdash;its canals spanned by the picturesque
+bridges, and overhung with willows that dipped
+their long branches into the water, and the quaint old
+houses with many-stepped gables, rising sheer from
+the stream.</p>
+
+<p>But with all its past grandeur, the old city is best
+known to us Americans through the chimes from its
+belfry tower, and we were some of Longfellow's pilgrims.
+We drove into the great paved Place under
+the shadow of the belfry tower when its shadows were
+growing long, and watched the stragglers across the
+square&mdash;women in queer black-hooded cloaks; chubby
+little blue-eyed maidens with school-books in hand; a
+party of tourists; and last, but by no means least, the
+ubiquitous American girl, with an immense bow on the
+back of her dress, and her eye fixed steadily upon the
+milliner's shop just visible around the corner. Almost
+three hundred feet the dingy brick tower rose above
+us, with low wings on either side, where were once the
+halls of some guilds, in the days when the tower was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+a lookout to warn of coming foes,&mdash;when the square
+was planned for defence. In a little court-yard, gained
+by passing under its arch, we watched and listened,
+until at last the sweet tinkle of the silver-toned bells
+broke the hush of waiting&mdash;so far away, so heavenly,
+we held our breath, lest we should lose the sound
+that fell</p>
+
+<div class='poem2'>
+"Like the psalms from some old cloister when the nuns sing in the choir,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the great bell tolled among them like the chanting of a friar."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>We came back to Antwerp that night, tired, but triumphant,
+feeling as though we had read a page from
+an old book, or sung a strain from an old song.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A TRIP THROUGH HOLLAND.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>Up the Meuse to Rotterdam.&mdash;Dutch sights and ways.&mdash;The
+pretty milk-carriers.&mdash;The tea-gardens.&mdash;Preparations for
+the Sabbath.&mdash;An English chapel.&mdash;"The Lord's barn."&mdash;From
+Rotterdam to the Hague.&mdash;The queen's "House in the
+Wood."&mdash;Pictures in private drawing-rooms.&mdash;The bazaar.&mdash;An
+evening in a Dutch tea-garden.&mdash;Amsterdam to a stranger.&mdash;The
+"sights."&mdash;The Jews' quarter.&mdash;The family
+whose home was upon the canals.&mdash;Out of the city.&mdash;The
+pilgrims.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>AT nine o'clock, the next morning, we left Antwerp
+for Rotterdam. Two hours by rail brought
+us to a place with an unpronounceable name, ending in
+"djk," where we were to take a steamer. How delightful,
+after the dust and heat of the railway carriage,
+were the two hours that followed! The day was
+charming, the passengers numerous, but scattered
+about the clean, white deck, picturesquely, upon the
+little camp stools, drinking brandy and water as a preventive
+to what seemed impossible, eating fruit, reading,
+chatting, or pleased, like ourselves, with the panorama
+before their eyes. In and out of the intricate
+passages to the sea we steamed, the land and water all
+around us level as a floor; the only sign of life the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+slow-revolving arms of the windmills, near and far,
+with here and there a solitary mansion shut in by tall
+trees; or, as we wound in and out among the islands
+fringed with green rushes, and waving grasses that fairly
+came out into the water to meet us, and sailed up the
+Meuse, the odd Dutch villages that had turned their
+backs to the river, though their feet were still in the
+water over which hung rude wooden balconies, or still
+ruder bay-windows, filled with pots of flowers. This
+monotonous stretch of sea and land might grow tiresome
+after a while, but there was something peculiarly
+restful in that sail up the wide mouth of the river,
+beckoned on by the solemn arms of the windmills.</div>
+
+<p>When we reached Rotterdam, how strange it was to
+find, instead of a row of houses across from our hotel,
+a wharf and a row of ships! Such a great, comfortable
+room as awaited us! with deep, wide arm-chairs, a
+heavy round table suggesting endless teas, and toast
+unlimited, and everything else after the same hearty,
+substantial manner. There was no paper upon the
+walls, but, in its place, paintings upon canvas. Delilah
+sat over the mantel, with the head of the sleeping Samson
+in her lap, and Rebekah and the thirsty camels
+were behind our bed curtains. From the wide windows
+we watched the loading and unloading of the
+ships, while the song of the sailors came in on the evening
+breeze, and with it, we half-fancied, the odor of
+sandal-wood and spices from the East Indiamen anchored
+across the way. Our hotel was upon the
+Boompjes, the quay that borders the river; but
+through nearly all the streets flow the canals, deep
+enough to float large ships. You can appreciate the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+advantage of sailing a ship to the very door of one's
+warehouse, as you might drive a cart up to unload;
+and you can imagine, perhaps, the peculiar appearance
+of the city, with its mingled masts and chimneys, its
+irregular, but by no means picturesque, houses, and
+the inhabitants equally at home upon water or land.
+Among the women of the lower classes may still be
+seen some national peculiarities in dress, shown principally
+in the startling ornaments&mdash;twisted gold wire
+horns, and balls, and rings of mammoth size thrust out
+from their caps just above their ears. Whether their
+bare red arms would come under the head of dress,
+might be questioned; but a national peculiarity they
+certainly were, and unlike anything ever seen before
+in the way of human flesh. Was that painfully deep
+magenta hue nature or art? We could never tell.
+There were some very pretty faces among the girls
+carrying milk about the city in bright brass cans, or in
+pails suspended from a yoke over their shoulders&mdash;faces
+of one type, round, red-cheeked, blue-eyed, with
+the mouth called rosebud by poets, and bewitching
+little brown noses of an upward tendency. As they all
+wore clean purple calico gowns, and had each a small
+white cap on their heads, the resemblance among them
+was rather striking. These caps left the whole top of
+the head exposed to the sun. Only an iron-clad, fire-proof
+brain could endure it, I am sure.</p>
+
+<p>Not a beggar did we see anywhere in Holland.
+The people seemed thoroughly industrious and thrifty.
+A gentleman connected with the civil service there&mdash;an
+agreeable, cultivated man, who had been half over
+the world, written a book or two, and parted his hair in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+the middle&mdash;gave the people credit for all these, with
+many more good qualities, and added, "They are the
+simplest minded people in the world. Why, would you
+believe it, one of the canal bridges was run into and
+broken down, the other day,&mdash;a fortnight ago,&mdash;and
+it has been town talk ever since. No two men meet
+upon the street without, 'Have you heard about the
+bridge?'" And sure enough, when we reached the
+scene of the accident, in our after-dinner walk through
+the city, quite a crowd was collected to watch the passage
+of a temporary ferry-boat, the simplest contrivance
+imaginable, only an old barge pulled back and forth by
+ropes. Still later we found the entrance to a narrow
+street choked with people, though nothing more unusual
+seemed to be taking place than the bringing out
+of a table and a few chairs.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the outskirts of the city are pleasant tea-gardens,
+often attached to club-rooms, where concerts are
+held Sunday evenings, attended by the upper classes.
+We walked through one, over the pebbled paths, and
+among the deserted tables, and then returned to see
+more of the town. It was Saturday night. All the
+little girls upon the street had their locks twisted up
+in papers so tight and fast that they could shut neither
+eyes nor mouth, but seemed to be in a continual state
+of wonderment. All their mothers were down upon
+their hands and knees, scrubbing the doorsteps and
+sidewalk, in preparation for the Sabbath. The streets
+were dirty and uninviting with a few exceptions, yet
+hardly more so than could be expected, when you
+remember that nearly the whole city is a line of
+wharves; but we felt no disposition to walk through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+it in our slippers, as the guide book in praising its
+cleanliness, says you may. What an advantage it
+would be to the world if the compilers of guide-books
+would only visit the places they describe so
+graphically! We spent a quiet Sabbath here&mdash;the
+fourth of July&mdash;with not so much as a torpedo to disturb
+its serenity or mark the day, attending church at
+the English chapel, and joining in the responses led by
+a clear soprano voice behind us, which we had some
+desire to locate; but when we turned, at the conclusion
+of the service, there was only a row of horrible
+chignons to be seen, to none of which, I am sure, the
+voice belonged.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing to be seen in Rotterdam but its
+shipping. One great, bare church we did visit&mdash;"the
+Lord's barn;" for these cathedrals, stripped of altar,
+and image, and stained glass, and boarded into stiff
+pews, without the least regard to the eternal fitness of
+things, are ugly enough. There is somewhere here a
+collection of Ary Scheffer's works,&mdash;in the city I mean,&mdash;but
+we did not see it. It is less than an hour's ride
+by rail from Rotterdam to the Hague, with the same
+delightfully monotonous scenery all along the way&mdash;meadows
+smooth and green, and fields white for the
+harvest, separated by the almost invisible canals. No
+wonder the Spaniards held the Low Countries with a
+grasp of iron&mdash;the whole land is a garden. The
+Hague, being the residence of the court, is much after
+the pattern of all continental capitals, with wide, white
+streets, white stuccoed houses of regular and beautiful
+appearance, and fine, large parks and pleasure-grounds
+filled with deer, and shaded by grand old elms as large<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+as those in our own land, but lacking the long, sweeping
+branches. A mile from the city is "The House in the
+Wood," the private residence of the queen of the
+Netherlands. The wood is heavy and of funereal air,
+but the little palace is quite charming within, though
+upon the exterior only a plain brick country-house.
+The rooms are small, and hung with rice-paper, or embroidered
+white satin, with which also much of the
+furniture is covered. The bare floors are of polished
+wood, with a square of carpet in the centre, the border
+of which was worked by hand. "Please step over it,"
+said the neat little old woman who was showing us
+through, which we accordingly did. There was a
+home-like air, very unpalatial, about it all,&mdash;as though
+the lady of the house might have been entertaining callers,
+or having a dress-maker in the next room. Delicate
+trinkets were scattered about&mdash;pretty, rare things
+worth a fortune, with any amount of old Dutch china
+in the cosy dining-room. In one of the rooms hung
+the portrait of a handsome young man,&mdash;just as there
+hang portraits of handsome young men in our houses.
+This was the eldest son of the queen,&mdash;heir to the
+throne,&mdash;who, rumor says, is still engaged in that agricultural
+pursuit so fascinating to young men&mdash;the
+sowing of wild oats. In the next room was a portrait
+of Queen Sophie herself&mdash;a delicate, queenly face&mdash;a
+face of character. The walls of the ball-room are entirely
+covered with paintings upon wood by Rubens
+and his pupils. "Speak low, if you please," said our
+little old woman; "the queen is in the next room, and
+she has a bad headache to-day." I am sure she had a
+dress-maker! As we stooped to examine a rug worked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+by the royal fingers, an attendant passed, bearing upon
+a silver salver the remains of her majesty's lunch.</p>
+
+<p>From the palace we drove back to town to visit two
+private collections of paintings. It seemed odd, if not
+impertinent, to walk through the drawing-rooms of
+strangers, criticise their pictures, and fee their servants.
+Upon the table, in one, were thrown down carelessly
+the bonnet and gloves of the lady of the house. I was
+tempted to carry them off. Only a vigorous early
+training, and the thought of a long line of pious ancestors,
+prevented. Here were pictures from most of
+the earlier and some of the later Dutch artists&mdash;Paul
+Potter's animals, Jan Steen's pots and pans, Vandervelde's
+quays and luggers, and green, foaming seas, and
+even a touch or two from the brush of the master of
+Dutch art. We stopped on our way back to the hotel,
+at a bazaar,&mdash;a place of beguilement, with long rooms
+full of everything beautiful in art, everything tempting
+to the eye,&mdash;and after dinner went out to one of the
+adjacent tea-gardens. It was filled with family parties
+drinking tea around little tables. The music was fine,
+though unexpected at times, as, for instance, when a
+trumpet blew a startling blast, and a little man in its
+range sprang from his seat as though blown out of his
+place. It was amusing and interesting to watch the
+stream of promenaders circling around the musicians'
+stand&mdash;broad, heavily-built men, long of body, short
+of limbs; women "square-rigged," of easy, good-natured
+countenance. I doubt if there was a nerve in
+the whole assembly.</p>
+
+<p>At noon the next day, we took the train for Amsterdam&mdash;another
+two hours' ride. The land began to undulate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+as we went towards the sea, with the shifting
+hillocks of sand raised by wind and wave. We passed
+Leyden, famous for its resistance to the Spaniards, as
+well as for having been the birthplace of Rembrandt
+and a score of lesser lights, and Haarlem, known for
+its great organ, and still the sand-hills rose one above
+the other, until they shut out everything beyond. It
+was only when we made a sharp turn, and struck out
+in a straight line for the city, that the Zuyder Zee
+opened before us, the curving line of land along its
+edge alive with windmills. We counted a hundred
+and twenty in sight at one time, and still did not
+exhaust them; so many skipped and whirled about, and
+refused to be counted. It hardly seems possible that
+the city of Amsterdam is built upon piles driven into
+the sand and mud. Certainly, when you have been
+jolted and shaken until your teeth chatter, for a long
+mile, in one of the hotel omnibuses from the station
+through the narrow streets and over the rough pavements,
+you will think there must be a tolerably firm
+foundation. Such a peaceful, sleepy, free-from-danger
+air, these slimy canals give to the cities! You forget
+that just beyond the dikes the mighty, restless sea
+lurks, and watches day and night for a chance to rush
+in and claim its own. The canals run in a succession
+of curves, one within the other, all through the city.
+Upon the quays are the dwellings and warehouses. In
+the narrow streets, crossing them by means of endless
+bridges, are the shops and dwellings of the lower
+classes. Looking down a street, no two houses present
+an unbroken line. They have all settled in their places
+until they nod, and leer, and wink at each other, in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+decidedly sociable, intoxicated manner. The whole
+city, to a stranger, is a curious sight&mdash;the arched
+bridges over the interminable canals; the clumsy boats
+(for the canals are too shallow to admit anything but
+coasters and river boats); the antic and antiquated
+houses with high gables, rising in steps, to the street;
+the women of the lower classes, with yokes over their
+shoulders, and long-eared white caps on their heads,
+surmounted by naked straw bonnets of obsolete fashion
+and coal-scuttle shape, and out and from which, on
+either side, protruded all the wonderful tinkling ornaments
+of which the prophet speaks; the long quays
+and streets utterly bare of trees; the iron rods thrust
+out from the houses half way up their height, upon
+which all manner of garments, freshly washed, hang
+over the street to dry. Down in an open Place stands
+the dark, square palace, grand and grim, where Hortense
+played queen a little time while Louis Bonaparte
+was king of Holland. Near the palace is a
+national monument, for the Dutch, too, remember their
+brave. There are old and new churches also to be
+seen, but churches bare of everything which clothes cathedrals
+with beauty, having been stripped in the time
+of the reformation. I suppose one should rejoice; but
+we did miss the high altar, the old carved saints, and
+the pictures in the chapels.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the finest paintings of the Dutch school are
+in the national museum here; <i>genre</i> pictures, many, if
+not most of them, but pleasant to look at, if not of the
+highest art; and we visited another collection of the
+same, left by a M. Van der Hoop. There are several
+other private collections thrown open to the public.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+But after all, the most charming picture was the Jews'
+quarter of the city. I know it was horribly filthy, and
+so crowded that we could hardly make our way;
+I know it was filled with squalor and rags, and great
+dark eyes, and breathed an odor by no means of sanctity.
+The dusky, luminous-eyed people seemed to
+move, and breathe, and hold a constant bazaar in the
+lane-like streets filled with everything known and unknown
+in merchandise, or leaning out from the windows
+of the tottering houses, their arms crossed over the
+sill, to dream away a lifetime. Still there was a fascination
+about it all, a suggestion of vagabondism, of
+Ishmaelitish wanderings, of having "here no continuing
+city," that touched the heart of a certain Methodist
+minister's daughter in our party.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the houses rise directly from the water,
+as did our hotel, the entrance being gained from
+another street in front. Our room was like a town
+hall, with medi&aelig;val bed furniture and sofa, high chest
+of drawers, and great round table that might have
+come in with the Dutch when they took Holland. The
+deep windows looked down upon a canal. Across from
+them, anchored to the quay as if for a lifetime, was
+one of the river boats. Early in the morning the wife
+of the skipper&mdash;a square woman, brown-faced, with
+faded, braided hair&mdash;ran out bareheaded into the
+town, coming back with her arms mysteriously full.
+Down into the cabin she disappeared, from whence directly
+came a sound of sputtering and frying, with a
+most savory odor. Up she would come again&mdash;frying
+pan in hand to corroborate her statement&mdash;to call her
+husband to breakfast. He was never ready to respond,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+never, though he was doing nothing to support his energetic
+family at the time, but coiling and uncoiling
+old ropes, or rubbing at invisible spots with a handful
+of rope-yarn. I know he only delayed to add to his
+own dignity and the importance of his final advent.
+Breakfast over, there followed such a commotion in the
+little world as I cannot describe&mdash;a shaking out of
+garments, a scraping out of plates, and throwing into
+the canal the refuse of the feast, a flying up with pots
+and pans for no object whatever but to clatter down
+again with the same, and all in the face and eyes of
+the town, with nevertheless the most absorbed and unconscious
+air imaginable. When it was over, somewhat
+what red in the face, but serene, the wife would appear
+upon the deck, to sit in the shadow of a sail and mend
+her husband's stockings, or put on a needed patch.
+We left the boat still fast to the quay; but I know
+that some day, when it was filled with scented oils, and
+rouge, and borax, and all the other things exported from
+the manufactories here, our skipper and his wife went
+sailing out of the canals and along the edge of the sea
+or up the Rhine, the stockings all mended, and the
+good woman not above giving a strong pull at the
+ropes.</p>
+
+<p>To drive about the streets of Amsterdam is slow
+torture, so rough are the pavings, so springless the carriages;
+but to roll along the smooth, wide roads in the
+suburbs is delightful. Upon one side is a canal, stagnant,
+lifeless, with a green weed growing upon its still
+surface, which often for a long distance entirely hides
+the water; beyond the canal are pleasant little gardens
+and a row of low, comfortable-looking wooden houses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+with green doors. Before each door is a narrow bridge&mdash;a
+neatly-painted plank with hand-rails&mdash;thrown
+over the canal, to be swung around or raised like a
+drawbridge at night, making every man's house a
+moated castle. We passed a fine zo&ouml;logical garden
+here upon the outskirts of the city, a garden of animals
+that ranks next to the famous one in London; but had
+no time to visit it, nor did we see any of the charitable
+institutions in which Amsterdam excels.</p>
+
+<p>"You know the pilgrim fathers?" said Emmie&mdash;whose
+family had preceded us by a day or two&mdash;the
+night after our arrival. "O, yes; had not our whole lives
+been straightened out after their maxims?" "Well,
+we've found the house where it is said they held meetings
+before they embarked for America. Wouldn't you
+like to see it?" Of course we would; in fact, it would
+be showing no more than proper respect to our forefathers.
+So six of us&mdash;women and girls&mdash;put ourselves
+under her guidance. We found a narrow, dirty
+street, the dwellers in which stared after us curiously.
+Between two old houses was an opening, hardly wide
+enough to be called an alley, hardly narrow enough to
+be looked upon as a gutter. Into this we crowded.
+"There; this is the house," said Emmie, laying her
+slight fingers upon the old stone wall before us. It was
+quite bare, and devoid of ornament or entrance, being
+evidently the back or side of a house. Down from the
+peak of the gable looked a solitary window. A rude
+balcony, holding a few plants, was below it, with
+freshly-washed clothes hanging from its rail. We
+rolled our eyes, experienced a shiver that may have
+been caused by awe or the damp chill of the spot, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+came out to find the narrow street half filled with staring
+men and women crowding about the point of our
+disappearance, while from the upper end of the street,
+and even around the corner, others hastened to join the
+whispering, wondering crowd. How could we explain?
+It was utterly impossible; so we came quickly and
+quietly away; but whether this house had ever been a
+church, whether the pilgrim fathers ever saw it, or indeed
+whether there ever were any pilgrim fathers, are
+questions I cannot undertake to answer.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RHINE AND RHENISH PRUSSIA.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>First glimpse of the Rhine.&mdash;Cologne and the Cathedral.&mdash;"Shosef
+in ter red coat."&mdash;St. Ursula and the eleven thousand
+virgins.&mdash;Up the Rhine to Bonn.&mdash;The German students.&mdash;Rolandseck.&mdash;A
+search for a resting-place.&mdash;Our
+Dutch friend and his Malays.&mdash;The story of Hildegund.&mdash;A
+quiet Sabbath.&mdash;Our Dutch friend's reply.&mdash;Coblentz.&mdash;The
+bridge of boats.&mdash;Ehrenbreitstein, over the river.&mdash;A
+scorching day upon the Rhine.&mdash;Romance under difficulties.&mdash;Mayence.&mdash;Frankfort.&mdash;Heidelberg.&mdash;The
+ruined castle.&mdash;Baden-Baden.&mdash;A
+glimpse at the gambling.&mdash;The new,
+and the old "Schloss."&mdash;The Black Forest.&mdash;Strasbourg.&mdash;The
+mountains.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>WE had made a sweep through Belgium and Holland,
+intending to return by way of the Rhine
+and Switzerland. Accordingly, in leaving Amsterdam,
+we struck across the country to Arnhem, where we
+found a pleasant hotel near the station, outside of the
+town. Here we spent the night in order to break the
+monotony of the ride to Cologne. After climbing stairs
+to gain our room, wide, but so perpendicular that we
+were really afraid to descend by them, we had, from a
+rickety, upper piazza, our first glimpse of the Rhine,
+winding through flat, green meadows, with hardly
+more than a suggestion of hills in the distance. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+is nothing of interest to detain one at Arnhem. The
+guide-book informed us that it was the scene of Sir
+Philip Sidney's death; but no one in the hotel seemed
+ever to have heard of that gentle knight&mdash;<i>sans peur
+et sans reproche</i>.</div>
+
+<p>We reached Cologne at noon the next day. The
+road makes a <i>d&eacute;tour</i> through the plain, so that, for
+some time before gaining it, we could see the city
+nestling under the wings of the great cathedral. How
+can I tell you anything about it? If I say that it is
+five times the length of any church you know, and that
+the towers, when completed, are to be the same height
+as the length, will my words bring to you any conception
+of its size? If I say that it was partially built
+a couple of centuries before the discovery of America;
+that it was worked upon for three hundred years, and
+then suffered to remain untouched until recently; that
+the architect who planned it has been forgotten for
+centuries, so that the idea embodied in its form is like
+some beautiful old tradition, whose origin is unknown,&mdash;will
+this give you any idea of its age? The new
+part, seen from our hotel, was so white and beautiful,
+that, when we had passed around to the farther side,
+it was like waking from a sleep of a thousand years.
+The blackened, broken Gothic front told its own story
+of age and decay. Ah, the interminable dusky length
+of its interior, when we had crept within the doors!
+It was a very world in itself, full of voices, and echoes,
+and shadows of its own. We followed the guide over
+the rough stone floor, giving no heed to the tiresome
+details that fell in broken words and monotonous tones
+from his lips. I recall nothing now but the fact (!)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+that behind the choir lie buried, in all their magnificence,
+the Three Wise Men of the East. As we came
+down one of the shadowy aisles, we paused before a
+fine, old, stained window. Our guide immediately became
+prolix again. "Dis," he said, pointing to one of
+the figures upon the glass, "is Shosef, in ter red coat;
+and dis is Shon ter Baptised; and dis, ter Holy Ghos'
+in ter form off a duff."</p>
+
+<p>When the old woman at the door offered pictures
+of the cathedral, he assured us that they were quite
+correct, having been taken "from <i>nature</i>, <i>outzide</i> and
+<i>inzide</i>."</p>
+
+<p>You must see the old Roman remains of towers
+and crumbling walls, sniff the vile odors of the streets,
+which have become proverbial, and be sprinkled with
+cologne&mdash;then your duty to the city is done. But
+almost everybody visits the Church of St. Ursula, which
+is lined with the skulls of that unfortunate young woman
+and her eleven thousand virgin followers.</p>
+
+<p>The story is, that she was an English princess, who
+lived&mdash;nobody knows at what remote period of antiquity.
+For some reason equally obscure, she started
+with her lover and eleven thousand maidens to make
+a pilgrimage to Rome. Fancy this lover undertaking
+a continental tour with eleven thousand and one young
+women under his care! Even modern travel presents
+no analogy to the case. "And they staid over night
+at my aunt's," droned the sleepy guide, who was telling
+the story. The girls looked at each other. "Good
+gracious! what unbounded hospitality!" whispered
+one. "At his <i>aunt's!</i>" exclaimed a second, somewhat
+puzzled by the anachronism. "Don't interrupt," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+a third interested listener; "he means <i>Mayence;</i>" and
+he proceeded with the narrative. They accomplished
+their pilgrimage in safety; but, upon their return, were
+"fetched up py ter parparians," as the guide expressed
+it, which means, in English, that they were murdered,
+here at Cologne. If you doubt the story, behold the
+skulls! We turned suddenly upon the guide.</p>
+
+<p>"Do <i>you</i> believe this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mus; sinz I tells it to you," was his enigmatical
+reply, dropping his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The scenery along the Rhine from Cologne, for
+twenty miles, is uninteresting; just now, too, the
+weather was uncomfortably hot, and we were glad to
+leave the steamer for a few hours at Bonn. Upon the
+balcony of a hotel, looking out upon the river, we found
+a score of young men in bright-colored caps&mdash;students
+from the university here. When dinner was announced,
+they crowded in and filled the table, at which the ladies
+of our party were the only ones present. Such a noisy,
+loud-talking set as they were! When each one had
+dined, he coolly leaned back in his chair, and lighted his
+pipe! Before we had finished our almonds and raisins
+the room was quite beclouded. Then they adjourned
+with pipe and wine-glass to the balcony again, where
+we left them when we went out to see the town.</p>
+
+<p>The university was formerly a palace, the guide-book
+had told us; but all our childish conceptions of palaces
+had been rudely destroyed before now, so that we were
+not surprised to find it without any especial beauty of
+architecture&mdash;only a pile of brown stone, three quarters
+of a mile long. I think we had left all the students
+drinking wine upon the balcony, for we saw none<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+here,&mdash;though we went through the library, museum,
+and various halls,&mdash;except one party outside, who
+stared unblushingly at the girls remaining in the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in the town we found a lovely old minster,
+through the aisles of which we wandered for a while,
+happy in having no guide and knowing nothing whatever
+about it. Outside, in a little park, was a statue
+of Beethoven, and in a quiet street near the water the
+musical girls of our party found the house where he
+was born. In the cool of the day we took another
+steamer, and went on towards the beckoning hills, at
+nightfall reaching Rolandseck. There was no town in
+sight, only a pier and three quiet hotels upon the bank,
+with a narrow road between their gardens and the
+water. We chose the one farthest away, and were
+rowed down to it, dabbling our hands in the water, and
+saying over and over again, "It is the <i>Rhine!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>But the hotel was full; so we filled our arms with
+luggage, and walked back, up the dusty road to the
+second. A complacent waiter stood in the doorway,
+with nothing of that hungry, eager air about him
+which betokens an empty house; cool, comfortable-looking
+tourists, in enviable, fresh toilets, stared at us
+from the windows; a pretty German girl upon the
+balcony overhead was sketching the river and the
+Seven Mountains just below, uttering little womanly
+exclamations at times, ending in "<i>ach</i>" and "<i>ich</i>."
+After some delay, four single rooms were offered us;
+our party numbered twelve; we left a portion of our
+company here; the others went on&mdash;to the pier where
+we had landed, in fact, and with all meekness and humility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+sued for accommodations of the little hotel here,
+which we had at first looked upon with disdain. Fortunately,
+we were not refused.</p>
+
+<p>When we came down the next morning, the sole occupant
+of the piazza opening upon the garden&mdash;where
+our breakfast was spread&mdash;was a stout, red-faced
+gentleman of general sleek appearance, who smiled a
+courteous "good morning." He proved to be a Dutchman
+from Rotterdam, who had in charge a couple of
+Malay youths sent to Holland to be educated&mdash;bright-faced
+boys, with straight, blue-black hair, olive complexions,
+and eyes like velvet. They were below us,
+walking in the garden now.</p>
+
+<p>"We have but just come from Holland," we said,
+after some conversation; and, with a desire to be sociable,
+added that it was a very charming, garden-like
+<i>little</i> (!) country. (O dreadful American spirit!)</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, showing his gums above his short teeth,
+and with a kind of enraged humility replied,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"It is indeed wonderful," we went on, trying to improve
+upon our former attempt, and quoting a sentiment
+from the guide-book, "how your people have
+rescued the land from the clutch of the sea!"</p>
+
+<p>But his only reply was the same smile, and the
+"Yes?" so fatal to sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>"We visited your queen's 'House in the Wood,'"
+we ventured, presently. "Is it true that the domestic
+relations of the royal family are so unhappy?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, the king and the queen are most happy," he replied.
+"You may always be sure that when <i>he</i> is in
+town <i>she</i> will be in the country."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This was a phase of domestic bliss so new to us that
+we were fain to consider it for a moment. Various
+other attempts we made at gaining information, with
+equally questionable success. Our Dutch acquaintance,
+though disposed to conversation, avoided the
+topic of his own country. Still he sought our society
+persistently, asking at dinner that his plate might be laid
+at the same table. Our vanity was considerably flattered,
+until he chanced to remark that he embraced
+every opportunity of conversing with English and
+American travellers, <i>it did so improve his English</i>.
+From that time we found him tiresome. Think of being
+used as an exercise-book!</p>
+
+<p>It is here at Rolandseck that the romance of the
+Rhine, as well as its world-renowned scenery, commences.
+Across the river is the Drachenfels&mdash;the
+crag upon which the remains of a castle may still be
+seen, where, "in the most ancient time," dwelt Hildegund,
+a maiden beautiful as those of all stories, and
+beloved by Roland, a nephew of Charlemagne. When
+he went away to the wars, she waited and watched at
+home&mdash;as other maidens have done; but alas! instead
+of her lover, came after a time only the news of
+his death. Then Hildegund laid aside her gay attire
+and happy heart, with her hopes, and leaving her
+father's castle, came down to bury her young life in
+the nunnery upon the island at its foot. But the
+rumor was false; and in time Roland returned, only
+to find himself too late, for Hildegund was bound by
+vows which could not be broken. Then, upon the
+rock called now Rolandseck, the unhappy lover built
+a castle opposite the Drachenfels and overlooking the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+Island of Nonnenworth. Here he could watch the
+nuns as they walked in the convent garden, and perhaps
+among them distinguish the form of Hildegund.</p>
+
+<p>On our way down from the arch, which, with a few
+crumbling stones is all that remains now of Roland's
+castle, we passed through one of the vineyards for
+which the banks of this river are so noted. Do you
+imagine them to be picturesque? They are almost ugly.
+The vines are planted in regular order and pruned
+closely. They are not suffered to grow above three feet
+in height, and each one is fastened to a stout stake until
+the wood itself becomes self-supporting.</p>
+
+<p>We spent a quiet Sabbath at Rolandseck. There
+was no church, no church service at either of the
+hotels. We rested and wrote letters, sitting in the
+grape arbors of the garden; only a low hedge and
+narrow, grass-grown road between us and the river.
+Down below, the rocks and the island shut out the
+world; across, the hills rose to the sky, their slopes
+covered with yellow grain, or dotted with red-roofed
+farm-houses, while tiny villages had curled up and
+gone to sleep at their feet. It was impossible to write.
+The breeze that rippled the yellow water blew away
+our paper and our thoughts; and when the steamer,
+puffing, and evidently breathless from stemming the
+current, touched at the little pier, we left everything
+and ran out to see the passengers disembark. A band
+played at the railroad station just above our hotel, and
+the park attached to it swarmed with excursionists
+during the afternoon. At dusk, when they had all
+gone, we wandered up the magnificent road which
+follows the course of the river; built originally by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+Romans, and said to extend for a long distance&mdash;five
+hundred miles or more&mdash;into Germany, returning
+with our hands full of wild flowers. When we went
+on board the steamer, Monday morning, we were closely
+followed by our Dutch friend and his Malays. They
+strolled off by themselves, as they seemed always to
+do; he joined our group under the awning spread over
+the deck. An English tourist seized upon him immediately,
+and when he had disclosed his nationality,
+proceeded with a glance towards us, to quiz him upon
+Dutch ways.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, really," said the tourist, tilting back against
+the rail in his camp chair, "how dreadful it must be to
+live in a country where there are no mountains! nothing
+but a stretch of flat land, you know. I fancy it
+would be unendurable."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" was the Dutchman's sole response.</p>
+
+<p>"You still keep up your peculiar customs, I observe
+from Murray," the Englishman went on, loftily. "Your
+women carry the same old foot-stoves to church, I fancy.
+They hang up, you know, in every house."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" and the Dutchman only smiled that same incomprehensible
+smile that had so puzzled us.</p>
+
+<p>"And you smoke constantly," continued the inquisitor,
+growing dogmatic; "a pipe is seldom out of
+your mouths. Really, you are a nation of perpetual
+smokers."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," assented the Dutchman; "but then&mdash;" and
+here his eyes, and indeed his whole round, rosy face
+twinkled with irresistible humor, "<i>you know we have
+no mountains</i>."</p>
+
+<p>A shout went up from the listeners, and our English<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+acquaintance became at once intensely interested in
+the scenery.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />The sail of half an hour to Coblentz was a continual
+delight. The rocky mountains rose abruptly from the
+water, terraced to their peaks with vineyards, or stood
+back to give place to modest towns and villages that
+dipped their skirts in the stream. At their wharves
+we touched for a moment, to make an exchange of
+passengers or baggage. Often from the lesser villages
+a boat shot out, the oars held by a brown-armed maiden,
+who boarded us to take, perhaps, a single box or
+bale, or, it might be, some bearded tourist with sketch-book
+under his arm. The passengers walked the deck,
+or gathered in groups to eat ices and drink the wines
+made from the grapes grown in these vineyards, with
+the pictured maps of the river spread out upon their
+laps, and the ubiquitous Murray in their hands.</div>
+
+<p>As we neared Coblentz the villages increased as the
+hills vanished. Each had its point of interest, or
+monkish legend&mdash;the palace of a duke, a bit of
+crumbling Roman wall rising from the water&mdash;something
+to invest it with a charm. One&mdash;Neuwied&mdash;is
+noted for holding harmoniously within its limits,
+Jews, Moravians, Anabaptists, and Catholics. The Millennium
+will doubtless begin at Neuwied.</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 318px;">
+<img src="images/illus-3.png" width="318" height="500" alt="&quot;At the word of command they struck the most extraordinary attitudes.&quot; Page 157." title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;At the word of command they struck the most extraordinary attitudes.&quot; <a href="#Page_157">Page 157</a>.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>At Coblentz we remained a day, in order to visit
+the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein. From our windows
+at the hotel we could look directly across to this grim
+giant of rock, as well as down upon the bridge of boats
+which crosses the Rhine here. It was endless amusement
+to watch the approach of the steamers, when, as
+if impelled by invisible boatmen, a part of the bridge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+would swing slowly round to make an opening, while
+the crowd of soldiers, market-women, and towns-people,
+waiting impatiently, furnished a constant and interesting
+study.</p>
+
+<p>An hour or two after noon we too crossed the
+bridge in an open carriage, nearly overcome by the
+stifling heat, and after passing through the village
+of Ehrenbreitstein, ascended the winding road&mdash;a
+steep ascent, leading under great arches of solid
+masonry, through massive gateways, and shut in by
+the rock which forms the fortress. At various points,
+guards of Prussian soldiers, as immovable as the stone
+under their feet, were stationed. Suddenly in the gloomy
+silence, as we toiled slowly up, echoed a sharp tramp,
+tramp, and a line of soldiers filed by in grim silence,
+each one with a couple of loaves of bread slung by a
+cord over his shoulder. In a moment another line followed
+with a quantity of iron bedsteads, each borne
+solemnly upon the shoulders of four men. The guards
+accompanying them were armed, and wore queer, shining
+helmets. Still another company came swinging
+down to meet us, with fixed, imperturbable countenances,
+each bearing a towel in one hand, with military
+precision. They were on their way to the bathing-house
+upon the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Scattered about upon the broad esplanade at the
+summit, or rather arranged in lines upon the breezy,
+grass-grown space, were squads of recruits being drilled.
+At the word of command they struck the most extraordinary
+attitudes. Taking a tremendous stride, they
+endeavored to poise themselves on one foot, while they
+threw the other leg straight out behind into the air.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+Being of all sizes, forms, and degrees of grace in movement,
+the effect, to say the least, was surprising; especially
+as the most intense silence and seriousness
+prevailed. A second stride and fling followed, then a
+third, when a pert young officer, of the bantam species,
+seized a gun, and strutting to the front, proceeded to
+illustrate the idea more perfectly. At this point our
+gravity gave way.</p>
+
+<p>A young sergeant, with a stupid but good-natured
+face, attached himself to us in the capacity of guide.
+He could speak nothing but German, of which not one
+of us understood a word. We followed him from point
+to point, politely attending to all his elaborate explanations,
+and were surprised to find how many ideas we
+had finally gained by means of the patient and painful
+pantomimic accompaniment to his words.</p>
+
+<p>The view from the summit is wonderfully extensive.
+All the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them
+seemed spread out at our feet; and our fat little guide
+grew fairly red in the face in his efforts to make us comprehend
+the names of the various points of interest.</p>
+
+<p>When we returned to the carriage the animated
+jumping-Jacks were still engaged in their remarkable
+evolutions; and as we came down we had a last glimpse
+of our Dutch friend and his Malays, who were making
+the ascent on foot.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, though passed upon the beautiful
+river, was a day of torment. The stream narrowed;
+the frowning rocks closed in upon us, shutting out
+every breath of air; the sun beat down upon the
+water and the low awning over our heads with fiery
+fury; in a moment of idiocy we answered the call<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+to <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i>, which was served upon deck with a
+refinement of imbecility just as the climax of the striking
+scenery approached. For one mortal hour we
+were wedged in at that table, peering between heads
+and under the awning which cut off every peak, making
+frantic attempts to turn in our places, as parties across
+the table exclaimed over the scenery behind us, and
+consoling ourselves with reading up the legends in the
+guide-book held open by the rim of our soup-plates,&mdash;of
+the Seven Sisters, for instance, who were turned into
+seven stones which stand in the stream to this day, because
+they refused to smile upon their lovers (fortunately
+for navigation, maidens in these days are less
+obdurate); of the bishop who shut his starving peasants
+into his barn and set fire to it, though his granaries
+were full, and who, in poetic justice, was afterwards
+devoured by rats; of the Lurlei siren, who lured men
+to destruction, and became historical from the individuality
+of the case; of various maidens bereft of
+lovers by cruel fathers, and of various lovers bereft of
+maidens by cruel fate, &amp;c., while storied ruins crowned
+the crags on every hand, always half hidden under a
+weight of ivy, and often indistinguishable from the
+rock on which they seemed to have grown.</p>
+
+<p>At Bingen, which is not especially "fair" from the
+river, the precipices drop away, the stream spreads out
+in nearly twice its former width, and is dotted with
+islands. At Mayence you may leave the steamer; the
+beauties of the Rhine are passed.</p>
+
+<p>From Mayence we made an excursion to Wiesbaden;
+then on to Frankfort-on-the-Maine, to rest only a few
+hours, <i>doing</i> the city hastily and imperfectly; and finally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+reached Heidelberg at night, in time for <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i>. A
+talkative young Irishman sat beside us at the table, who
+spoke five or six languages "with different degrees of
+badness," he informed us; had travelled half the world
+over, but held in reserve the pleasure of visiting America.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a friend there," he added, "though he is in
+<i>South</i> America."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; at <i>Mobile</i>," he replied. "He held some office
+under government for a number of years, but during
+your recent war&mdash;for some reason which I do not
+understand&mdash;he seems to have lost it."</p>
+
+<p>It did not seem so inexplicable to us.</p>
+
+<p>Our conception of Heidelberg had been most imperfect.
+We knew simply that it held a university
+and a ruin. The former did not especially attract us,
+and we were sated with ruins. So, when we took possession
+of our lovely room,&mdash;a charming <i>salon</i>, converted
+temporarily into a bedroom,&mdash;it was with a
+kind of listless indifference that we stepped out upon
+the balcony before the window. And, behold! down
+below, an old, paved square, walled in by delightfully
+dingy old houses; a stone fountain; a string of waiting
+landaus (for Landau itself is near by), with scarlet
+linings to their tops&mdash;giving a bit of color to the picture;
+a party of German students crossing the square,
+wearing the caps of different colors to betoken different
+societies or clubs, and almost every one with a scarred
+cheek or suggestive patch upon his nose; and, lastly,
+on the right hand, and so precipitous as almost to overhang
+the square, a hill crowned with the castle, grand,
+though in ruins, which nature vainly tries to conceal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+There are ruins, and ruins. Except the Alhambra, in
+Spain, none in the world equal these.</p>
+
+<p>What this castle must have been in the days of its
+glory, when it was the residence of a court, we could
+only faintly imagine. It is of red sandstone, and was a
+succession of palaces, built to enclose a square, or great
+court-yard, each of entirely different architecture and
+design, the <i>fa&ccedil;ade</i> of one being covered with statues,
+another having pointed gables, &amp;c.; all having been
+erected at periods fifty or a hundred years remote from
+each other. At each corner were watch-towers to
+apprise of coming foes. You may still ascend the
+winding stairs of one, though the steps have been hollowed
+into bowls by dripping rain and mounting feet.
+Between these towers, upon one side, and on the verge
+of the hill, still remains the grand stone terrace,&mdash;where
+a hundred couples might promenade in solitude on
+moonlight evenings,&mdash;with summer-houses at each end;
+and beautiful gardens are still connected with the ruins.
+For all these palaces are in ruins. A few habitable
+rooms only remain among them all. Several sieges, and
+partial demolition at times, the castle suffered, and at
+last, a hundred years ago, lightning completed the
+work, since which time no efforts at restoration have
+been made.</p>
+
+<p>The whole is overgrown with ivy, and embowered
+in shrubbery. Great trees spread their branches in
+the midst of the walls that still remain standing, and
+crumbling earth and drifting dust have filled many
+parts, even up to the broken window ledges of the second
+story. Across the broad stone steps leading to
+one of these palaces, tangled vines disputed right of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+way, and a neglected cherry-tree had scattered with
+wanton hand its over-ripe fruitage. Thrust through a
+casement was an ivy that might have vied with many
+of the trees around in the size of its trunk, and no artistic
+hand could have trailed its creepers with the grace
+Nature alone had displayed.</p>
+
+<p>There was a grand banqueting-hall, with the blue
+heavens for a ceiling overhead. There was a drawing-room,
+the floor long since crumbled away, and only
+the broken walls remaining. Standing upon the loose
+earth, you may see the blackened fireplace far above
+your head, before which fair faces grew rosy centuries
+ago, and where white hands were outspread that have
+been dust and mould for ages. There was&mdash; But
+words cannot describe it, though I should speak of
+the winding ways like a labyrinth beneath it all; of
+the queer paved court-yard, from whence the knights
+sallied out in the olden time; of the great tower, split
+in twain by an explosion during the last siege; of the
+wine-cellars and the "Great Tun," upon which the
+servants of the castle danced when the vintage was
+gathered. In all attempts at word-painting there remains
+something that defies description, that will not
+be portrayed by language. And, alas! in that the
+charm lies.</p>
+
+<p>We turned away from it with regret. One might
+linger here for days; but we had little time for
+dreaming.</p>
+
+<p>The road from Heidelberg to Baden-Baden led
+through a charming country: indeed, we ceased to exclaim
+after a time over the cultivation of the land. So
+far as we saw it, the whole of Europe was a market-garden,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+with prize meadows interspersed. Not a foot
+of neglected or carelessly-tilled ground did we see
+anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>We chanced to spend the Sabbath in this most un-Sabbath-like
+city of Baden-Baden. But so far as we
+knew to the contrary, it might have been a Puritan
+village. There was a little English chapel out in the
+fields beyond the city, where morning service was held,
+and our windows, overlooking a quiet square, told nothing
+of the gayeties of the town. It is an interesting
+old city in itself, built upon a side hill, full of unexpected
+stone steps leading from one street to another, and by
+and crooked ways, that were my especial delight. It
+being just now "the season," the town was full of
+visitors. The hot springs are of course the nominal
+attraction; the shops, parks, and new parts of the city,
+fine; but, after all, the interest centres at the Kursaal,
+or Conversation-haus. It is a great white structure,
+with a colonnade where it fronts an open square, and
+contains reading-rooms, <i>caf&eacute;s</i>, a grand ball-room, and
+the gambling <i>salons</i>. Government has at length interfered,
+and these last, hired by companies paying a certain
+sum for the privilege of beguiling and beggaring
+visitors, were to be closed now in two years, I think, or
+less. In front of the Kursaal a band plays every afternoon;
+the colonnade and square are thronged with
+people promenading or occupying the chairs placed
+there, eating ices, drinking wine, and enjoying the fine
+music, but all perfectly quiet in manner and plain of
+dress. No one was gaudily or even strikingly attired.
+The Hanoverian women were the most marked for their
+queer head-dresses, consisting of an enormous bow and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+ends of wide, black ribbon perched upon their crowns,
+and giving their heads a peculiar, bat-like appearance.
+And in this connection I might say that national peculiarities
+in dress are seldom met with in the ordinary
+course of continental travel. They still exist to some
+extent among the lower classes, and are often assumed
+and perpetuated to attract the attention of travellers;
+but ordinarily you will find people whom you meet
+anywhere and everywhere to be costumed much alike.
+Paris fashions, with modifications (and in America with
+<i>intensifications</i>), have prevailed universally, until there
+are few outward dissimilarities to be observed among
+the people of different nationalities. Nothing strikes
+the attention of the traveller more than this universal
+homogeneousness; and not in dress alone. In Bruges,
+under the shadow of the belfry tower, little girls trot
+off to school in water-proofs, just as they do at home
+with us; and at the entrance to Stirling Castle, we
+passed a sturdy little boy with his hands in his pockets,
+whistling, "Not for Jo," exactly like other sturdy little
+boys we know at home.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to Baden-Baden.</p>
+
+<p>We almost fancied a sulphurous odor hung about
+the gambling <i>salons</i>. Not a footfall echoed upon the
+softly-carpeted floors as we entered. The most breathless
+silence hung over everything. In the centre, a
+crowd, three in depth at least, surrounded and hid the
+table covered with green cloth, before which sat the
+<i>croupier</i>, with a kind of little rake in his hand. In our
+eyes he was the incarnation of evil, though to unprejudiced
+vision he would appear simply a well-dressed&mdash;not
+flashily-arrayed&mdash;gentleman, of a rather intellectual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+countenance, who might have passed upon the
+street as a lawyer in good practice, or possibly a
+doctor somewhat overworked.</p>
+
+<p>One after another of the bystanders covered the
+figures stamped upon the table with gold or silver.
+The ball in the centre, spinning in its circle, fell into a
+pocket with a "click." The <i>croupier</i> called the winning
+number I think (though confessing that the game
+is a hidden mystery). That quick, sharp utterance was
+the only sound breaking the silence. At the same time,
+with wonderful dexterity, he raked the money into a
+pile, and pushed it towards the winner, or, more
+frequently, added it to the pile before himself.</p>
+
+<p>I looked in vain for any exhibition of excitement or
+anxiety among the players sitting or standing around
+the table. All were serious, silent; some few absorbed.
+Both sexes were equally represented, and old as well
+as young. Beside us was standing a woman with a
+worn, though still fine face, unobtrusive in dress and
+manner; a traveller and spectator, I judged, like ourselves.
+It was something of a surprise, not to say a
+shock, to see her suddenly stretch out her hand, and
+lay down a handful of gold pieces, selecting the numbers
+with an air that proved her to be no novice.
+"Click," fell the ball. The <i>croupier</i>, with a sweep of
+the rake, gathered up her Napoleons. The bank had
+won. Again she laid down her gold, placing each
+piece with thoughtful deliberation. Again they were
+swept away; and even the third time. She made no
+exclamation. She did not so much as raise her eyes
+from the table as she prepared to make a fourth attempt.
+There was no change in her face, except a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+certain fixedness which came over it, and a faint tinge
+of color rising in her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>We breathed more freely when we had gained the
+open air. I am sure there was an odor of sulphur
+about the place.</p>
+
+<p>The scenery around Baden-Baden is striking and
+wild. Gloomy valleys abound, and dark forests cover
+many of the hills. We took a kind of wagonet one
+morning, and climbed the mountain behind the city,
+passing what is known as the "New Schloss," or castle,
+before leaving its limits. It is anything but <i>new</i>, however,
+having been erected some four or five hundred
+years. Its horrible dungeons, where all manner of
+torments were inflicted, and tortures suffered by the
+unfortunate wretches incarcerated here, attract scores
+of visitors. We went on, by the zigzag road up the
+mountain, to the Old Schloss upon its summit. This
+was the residence of the reigning family of Baden before
+the erection of the New Schloss. Hardly anything
+remains of it now but the walls of a square tower,
+from the battlements of which, by mounting to an
+encircling gallery, you may obtain a view well worth
+the effort. As far as the eye can see in one direction,
+extends the Black Forest&mdash;the very name of which
+brings to mind elfish legends innumerable. But,
+though our way led along its edge, so that we were
+shut in by the chill and gloom of the evergreens which
+give it its name, we saw neither elves nor gnomes, nor
+the traditional "wood-cutter, named Hans, who lived
+upon the borders of the Black Forest," about whom we
+used to read when we were children.</p>
+
+<p>From Baden-Baden we took the railroad, following<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+the course of the Rhine to Strasbourg, spending only a
+night here, in order to visit the beautiful cathedral;
+then on to Lucerne, waiting an hour or two to break
+the long day's ride, at Basle. Here the mountains
+began to grow before our eyes. We shot through
+tunnel after tunnel, cut in the solid rock, and suddenly
+sweeping around a curve, the everlasting hills wrapped
+in perpetual snows, greeted our astonished sight. We
+had reached the Mecca of our hopes at last.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>The Lake of Lucerne.&mdash;Days of rest in the city.&mdash;An excursion
+up the Righi.&mdash;The crowd at the summit.&mdash;Dinner at
+midnight.&mdash;Rising before "the early worm."&mdash;The "sun-rise"
+according to Murray.&mdash;Animated scarecrows.&mdash;Off
+for a tour through Switzerland.&mdash;The lake for the last time.&mdash;Gr&uuml;tlii.&mdash;William
+Tell's chapel.&mdash;Fluellen.&mdash;Altorf.&mdash;Swiss
+haymakers.&mdash;An hour at Amsteg.&mdash;The rocks close
+in.&mdash;The Devil's Bridge.&mdash;The dangerous road.&mdash;"A carriage
+has gone over the precipice!"&mdash;Andermatt.&mdash;Desolate
+rocks.&mdash;Exquisite wild flowers.&mdash;The summit of the Furka.&mdash;A
+descent to the Rhone glacier.&mdash;Into the ice.&mdash;Swiss
+villages.&mdash;Brieg.&mdash;The convent inn.&mdash;The bare little
+chapel on the hill.&mdash;To Martigny.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>WHEN we forget the scene before our dazzled
+eyes as we stepped out upon the balcony of
+the hotel Bellevue at Lucerne, earth will have passed
+away. There lay the fair lake, the emerald hills rising
+from its blue depths on every side, save where the
+queer old town sweeps around its curve, or beyond Pilatus,
+where the chain is broken, and a strip of level
+land lies along the water's edge, sprinkled with red-roofed
+farm-houses set in the midst of grain-fields, and
+with rows of tall, straight poplars extending to the
+water. This sight of peaceful homes among the heavenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+hills is like a vision of earth in mid-heaven. Beyond,
+above, overlapping each other, rise these delectable
+hills. No earthly air envelops them. No earthly
+feet tread their fair summits. Upon the highest, among
+the eternal snows, rest the clouds. Truly, the heavens
+declare the glory of God; but Switzerland showeth
+his handiwork!</div>
+
+<p>Beautiful was the lake in the hazy morning light,
+when the hills cast purple and green shadows over its
+bosom, when the breeze rippled its surface, and the
+path in the wake of the little steamer widened into an
+endless way; beautiful in the glare of the noonday
+sun, when a veil of mist half hid the far-off mountains,
+and the water gleamed like molten gold; but most
+beautiful of all when the mountains wrapped themselves
+in the shadows of night, and stole away into the
+darkness, while upon their white, still faces shone the
+rays of the setting sun. Then grim Pilatus stepped
+forth; the moon, like a burnished globe, hung over the
+water, across which the little steamer ploughed silver
+furrows, or tiny boats, impelled by flashing oars, shot
+over the still surface, now near, now far away; but dim,
+unreal, always.</p>
+
+<p>It was a place of rest to us&mdash;this city of Lucerne;
+the "House Beautiful," where we tarried for a time before
+setting out again upon our pilgrimage. We wandered
+about the narrow streets, visited the dingy shops
+full of wood carvings or ornaments cut in the many-hued
+crystals; strayed over the low hills behind the
+town, through fields set with painted shrines; paused
+before Thorwaldsen's Dying Lion, cut in the living rock&mdash;the
+grandest monument that heroes ever won; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+once, in the stillness of a summer morning, sat in the
+cathedral and heard the angels sing, when the old organist
+laid his hands upon the keys. Sabbath mornings
+we sang the old versified psalms, and listened to the
+exposition of a rigid faith from the lips of a Scotch
+Presbyterian minister, in an old Roman Catholic church&mdash;the
+walls hung with pictured saints and martyrs,
+the high altar only partially concealed, and a company
+of women kneeling by the door to tell their beads.
+Not only rest, but Christian charity, had we found
+here.</p>
+
+<p>Almost every one who spends any time at Lucerne
+ascends the Righi to see the sun rise. Accordingly,
+five of our number prepared to follow the universal
+custom. In one of the little shops of the town we
+found some light, straw hats, with wide rims, for which
+we gave the extravagant price of three cents apiece,
+trimming them afterwards to suit individual taste, with
+ribbons, soft white lawn, and even mountain ferns and
+grasses. We slung our wraps over our shoulders by a
+strap,&mdash;a most uncomfortable arrangement by the way,&mdash;discarded
+crinoline, brought into use the shabbiest
+gowns in our possession, packed hand-satchels with
+whatever was necessary for a night upon the mountain,
+and then declared ourselves ready for any disclosures
+of the future or the Righi.</p>
+
+<p>A little steamer bore us from Lucerne to Weggis&mdash;a
+half hour's sail. We found Weggis to be only an
+insignificant village, almost pushed into the lake by the
+crowding mountain, and seeming to contain nothing
+but guides and shabby horses. As we left the steamer,
+the open space between the pier and the hotel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+facing it was crowded with tourists, waiting for or bargaining
+with the guides for these sorry-looking beasts.
+No matter of what age, sex, or condition in life you
+may be, if you visit Switzerland, you will make, at
+least one, equestrian attempt; but in truth, there is
+nothing to fear for even the most inexperienced, as a
+guide usually leads each horse. The saddles for the
+use of ladies are provided with a rail upon one side,
+and the nature of the paths are such, that it would be
+impossible to go beyond a walk. The only danger is
+from over-fatigue in descending the rocky, slippery way,
+often like flights of stairs; then, exhausted from trying
+to hold back in the saddle, dizzy from gazing into
+frightful depths, one might easily become unseated.</p>
+
+<p>When our guides were secured, one dejected beast
+after another was led to the wooden steps, always provided
+for mounting and dismounting; we climbed to
+our several elevations with some inward quaking,
+fell into line,&mdash;for single file is the invariable rule,&mdash;and
+passed out of the village by immediately beginning
+the ascent, describing, in our saddles every known
+curve and angle, as the path became more and more
+rough and precipitous. For guides we had a man
+with a rakish air, and&mdash;we judged from his gait&mdash;a
+wooden leg, who tragically wrung the perspiration
+from his red flannel shirt at intervals; a boy, with one
+of those open countenances only saved from complete
+lateral division by the merciful interposition of the
+ears, and a wizen-faced old man of so feeble an appearance
+as to excite my constant sympathy, since his
+place chanced to be by my side. He assured me continually
+that he was not tired, though before half of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+the three hours of the ascent had passed, his pale face
+belied his words. He was quite ready to converse,
+but I could with difficulty understand his English.
+We had paused at a wayside shed to rest the horses,
+and offer some refreshment to the guides, when I addressed
+him with,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What is that you are drinking? Is it goat's
+milk?"</p>
+
+<p>"Noo, leddy," was his reply. "It is coo's;" at the
+same time, and with the utmost simplicity and good
+will, offering me the glass from which he had been
+drinking, that I might taste and judge for myself.</p>
+
+<p>It is nearly nine miles to the summit, or Righi-Kulm.
+The bridle-path is rocky, rough, and steep,
+with a grassy slope upon either side, sprinkled at this
+season with dandelions, blue-bells, and odd yellow butter-cups.
+Often this slope changed to a precipice, still
+smiling with flowers. Upon every level spot orchards
+of pear trees and apricots had been planted, while
+evergreens and shrubs innumerable clung to the mountain
+sides, or sprang from among the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>Tossed about wherever they could find a resting-place,
+were great boulders of pudding-stone, overhanging
+the path, rising in our way, or rolling in broken
+masses under the horses' feet. Sometimes, perched
+upon a natural terrace, was a <i>ch&acirc;let</i>, sheltered from
+sweep of wind or avalanche by overhanging rocks half
+covered with ivy and dainty clematis. Occasionally a
+beggar barred the way with outstretched hand, or
+offered for sale some worthless trinket, as an excuse
+for asking alms. We hugged the rocks upon one side,
+as other lines of tourists wound down to meet us,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+upon horseback or afoot with alpenstocks to aid their
+steps. Peasants, laden like beasts of burden, passed
+as we paused to rest, with trunks, provisions, and
+even the red tiles for the new hotel above, strapped
+upon their backs, or resting there on wooden frames.
+They came and went; but ever present were the wonderful
+glimpses of earth, and sky, and shimmering
+lake far down below.</p>
+
+<p>At the half-way house we turn to climb a gentle
+slope upon the mountain face. On either side the land
+spreads out smooth and green. It had been hot below.
+The air strikes us here with an icy chill. A party of
+young Englishmen in knickerbockers, with blue veils
+tied about their hats, lean over the railing of the piazza,
+and scan us as we pass. A Spaniard, with his dark-faced
+wife, step out of the path&mdash;all manner of oily
+words dropping from their lips. We reach the Righi-Staffel.
+Suddenly, upon one side, the land falls away.
+Among the reverberating hills echoes the <i>j&ouml;del</i>, and
+from a terrace far below, where a herd of dun cows
+are feeding, rises the tinkle of sweet-toned bells. From
+every path&mdash;and there are many now&mdash;winds a slow
+procession. The grassy slopes are all alive with people;
+the hotel piazza, as we pass, is crowded with travellers.
+Still they pour in from every side. Still the
+mountain-peak rises above us as we go on joining
+other trains, and leading others in turn. We pass
+through a rough gateway, ascend the broken rocks that
+rise like steps, follow again the narrow path, and reach
+at last the hotel, just before which rises the Kulm.</p>
+
+<p>Talk of the solitude of nature! It is not found
+among these mountain peaks, grand though they are.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+We dismounted in the midst of a noisy crowd. Exclamations
+in seemingly every known tongue echoed
+about us, as one party after another arrived to swell
+the confusion. The hill before us swarmed with tourists,
+who had come, like ourselves, to see the sun rise.
+The hotel, and even the adjoining house into which
+the former overflows, were more than full. Since we
+had taken the precaution to telegraph,&mdash;for telegraphic
+communication is held with most of these mountain
+resorts,&mdash;some show of civility awaited us. A single
+room was given to the four ladies of our party, where,
+a few hours later, we disposed ourselves as best we
+could. It was only a rough place, with bare plastered
+walls, and unpainted wooden floor; but we were not
+disposed to be fastidious. Dropping our satchels, we
+hastened up the hill before the house. It fell in a precipice
+upon the other side&mdash;to what frightful depth I
+know not. Down below, the hills spread out like level
+land, with lakes where every valley should be, and
+villages, like white dots only, upon the universal green,
+among which the River Reuss wound like a silver
+thread. But above and over all, against the sky, rose
+the mountains&mdash;the Bernese Alps, like alabaster
+walls, the gates of which, flung back, would open
+heavenward.</p>
+
+<p>We wandered over the hillocks, which make up the
+summit, until the sun was gone. Gradually the darkness
+gathered&mdash;a thickening of the shadows until they
+seemed almost tangible. There was no flame of gold
+and crimson where the sun had disappeared; there
+were no clouds to reflect the warm yellow light that
+hung about the west. But when the night wrapped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+us in, the little lakes down below gleamed out like
+stars.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd that pushed and fairly wedged itself into
+the <i>salle &agrave; manger</i>, when dinner was announced at
+eight o'clock, was quite beyond belief or computation.
+Everybody was tired, hungry, and impatient, after the
+ride to the summit. For once, silver was at a discount.
+One of the waiters was finally bribed to give
+us a private room, and slyly edged our party into a
+pantry, where he brought us, at immense intervals, a
+spoonful of soup and a hot plate apiece, after which,
+his resources utterly failing, he acknowledged that he
+could do no more. The second <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i> was served
+between the hours of ten and eleven at night, and consisted
+of numerous courses, with a similarity of flavor,
+suggesting one universal saucepan.</p>
+
+<p>It was midnight when we finally gained our rooms,
+and threw ourselves upon the uncomfortable beds. The
+linen was wet, rather than damp. The only covering
+consisted of a single blanket, and the <i>duvet</i> or down
+pillow, always found upon the foot of continental beds.</p>
+
+<p>We imagined that the sun would appear with the
+very earliest known worm, and at least an hour before
+the most ambitious lark, and dared not close our eyes,
+lest they should not open in time to greet him. At
+last, however, sleep overpowered our fears. Katie's
+voice roused us.</p>
+
+<p>"It is three o'clock," she said, "and growing light,
+and I believe people are hurrying up the hill."</p>
+
+<p>Profane persons should avoid the Righi; it is a place
+of terrible temptation. "Good heavens!" we responded,
+"what kind of a sun can it be to rise at such an
+hour?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 313px;">
+<img src="images/illus-4.png" width="313" height="500" alt="&quot;Frowsy, sleepy, cross, and caring nothing whatever for the sun, moon, or stars, we stood like a company of Bedlamites, ankle deep in the wet grass upon the summit.&quot; Page 176." title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Frowsy, sleepy, cross, and caring nothing whatever for the sun, moon, or stars, we stood like a company of Bedlamites, ankle deep in the wet grass upon the summit.&quot; <a href="#Page_176">Page 176</a>.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Our room was upon the ground floor. We pushed
+open the shutters and peered out, facing an untimely
+Gabriel, just raising to his lips an Alpine horn some
+six feet in length. Evidently the hour had arrived.
+We thrust our feet into our boots, tied our hats under
+our chins, and ran out to join a most ridiculous collection
+of animated scarecrows like ourselves. Frowsy, sleepy,
+cross, and caring nothing whatever for the sun, moon,
+or stars, we stood like a company of Bedlamites, ankle
+deep in the wet grass upon the summit. No sun
+of irreproachable moral character and well-regulated
+habits would appear at such an hour, we knew. The
+light strengthened with our impatience. Every half-closed
+eye was fixed upon that corner of the heavens
+from which the sun would sally forth. The golden
+gates had opened. A red banner floated out. Tiny
+clouds on either side awaited his coming, dressed in
+crimson and yellow livery. Every one of us stood
+upon tiptoe&mdash;the heels of our unbuttoned boots thereupon
+dropping down. One collarless tourist, in whose
+outward adorning suspenders played a conspicuous
+part, gravely opened his guide-book, found the place
+with some difficulty, and buried his head in the pages,
+to assure himself that everything was proceeding according
+to Murray. Suddenly the white faces of the
+distant mountains grew purple with a rage which we
+all shared; the flaming banner streamed out across the
+east, and the king of day, with most majestic step, but
+frightfully swollen, tell-tale countenance, rose in the
+heavens. I am sure he had been out all night.</p>
+
+<p>The light grew clearer now. The mountains rose
+reluctantly, and shook off their wrappings of mist.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+The little clouds doffed their crimson finery. The
+man held together by the marvellous complication of
+shoulder-straps, closed his guide-book with an air of
+entire satisfaction. Evidently the programme, as laid
+down by Murray, had been accurately carried out.
+Everybody exclaimed, "Wonderful!" in his or her
+native tongue. All the knickerbockers, and woollen
+shirts, and lank water-proofs, without any back hair to
+speak of, trotted off down the hill to be metamorphosed
+into human beings, and prepare for breakfast, even to
+the individual who had been stalking about in a white
+bed blanket, with a striped border&mdash;though printed
+notices in every room expressly forbade the using of
+bed blankets as morning wraps.</p>
+
+<p>When breakfast was over, there was nothing to do but
+to make the descent to Weggis, and return to Lucerne.</p>
+
+<p>After a time, when weariness could no longer be
+made an excuse for lingering, we prepared for a tour
+through Switzerland. Engaging carriages to meet us
+at Fluellen, we embarked for the last time upon the
+beautiful lake, winding in and out its intricate ways,
+shut in by the towering cliffs that closed before us,
+only to re-open, revealing new charms as we rounded
+some promontory, and the lake widened again. Upon
+the bays thus formed, villages lean against the mountain-side.
+Where the rocks fall abruptly to the water,
+an occasional <i>ch&acirc;let</i> is perched upon some natural terrace,
+in the midst of an orchard or scanty garden. As
+we touched at these lake villages, brown-faced girls, in
+scant blue petticoats and black bodices, and with faded
+hair braided in their necks, offered us fruits&mdash;apricots
+and cherries&mdash;in pretty, rustic baskets.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of these green spots, high among the rocks,
+forms a sloping meadow, touching the water at last.
+It is an oasis in the surrounding desert of barren rock.
+Do you know why the grass is greener here than elsewhere?
+why the sun bestows its kisses more warmly?
+why the foliage upon the scattered walnut and chestnut
+trees is thicker, darker, than upon those on other
+mountain-sides? It is because this is Gr&uuml;tlii&mdash;the
+birthplace of Swiss liberty. Here, more than five hundred
+years ago, the three confederates met at night to
+plan the throwing off of the Austrian yoke.</p>
+
+<p>Not far from Gr&uuml;tlii, resting apparently upon the
+water, at the base of one of these cliffs, is what appears
+at first sight to be a pretty green and white summer-house,
+open towards the lake. It is Tell's Chapel,
+built upon a shelf of rock, and only approachable from
+the water. Here&mdash;so the story runs&mdash;William Tell
+sprang ashore, and escaped the tyrant Gessler. We
+sweep around this promontory and gain the last bay
+where lies Fluellen&mdash;a ragged village, swarming with
+tourists, vetturinos, and diligences. Among the carriages
+we find our own. It is a roomy landau, luxuriously
+lined with scarlet velvet, drawn by three
+horses which wear tinkling bells, and is capable of carrying
+six passengers. The top is thrown back, but a kind
+of calash-shade screens from the sun the occupants of
+what we should call the driver's seat. Our driver's
+place is a narrow board behind the horses. One crack
+of a long whip, and we are off at a rattling pace over
+the hard road, smooth as a floor.</p>
+
+<p>For the first day we are to follow the pass of St.
+Gothard&mdash;that well-travelled highway which leads<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+through mountain defiles into Italy. We dashed by
+Altorf, where the family of Queen Victoria's husband
+originated, passing the open square in which William
+Tell shot the apple from the head of his son. An old
+man is watering a horse at the basin of the stone fountain
+which marks the spot where the father stood. All
+this valley is sacred to the memory of William Tell.
+In a village near by he was born; in the mountain
+stream, just beyond, he is said to have lost his life in
+the attempt to save a drowning child. After Altorf,
+the road winds among the meadows, though the mountains
+rise on every side, with <i>ch&acirc;lets</i> perched upon
+points which seem inaccessible, so steep are their sides.
+It is haying time, and men and women are at work in
+the fields and upon the mountain-sides, carefully securing
+every blade of grass. Once, when we had begun
+to wind up the mountains, where a grass-grown precipice
+fell almost sheer to the valley below, a girl clung
+to its side, and pulled with one hand the grass from
+between the rocks, thrusting it into a bag that hung
+about her neck. She paused to gaze after us as we
+dashed by, a kind of dull awe that never rose to envy
+lighting her face for an instant. O, the hungry, pitiful
+faces of these dwellers upon the heights! the pinched,
+starved faces of the little ones especially, who forgot to
+smile&mdash;how they haunted us! At noon we sweep up
+to the post-house at Amsteg, with a jingle of bells, a
+crack of the whip, and an annunciatory shout from the
+driver. There is no village that we can see. The piazza
+of the post-house is filled with travellers, lunching
+before a long table; half a dozen waiting carriages stand
+in the open space before it; as many hostlers, with knit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+caps upon their heads, from which hang long, bright-colored
+tassels, are busy among the horses. At a short
+distance the Reuss River rushes past the house; upon
+its bank is a little shop, with its store of Swiss curiosities
+and trinkets. A couple of girls fill a tray with
+the dainty wares, and cross the space to tempt us.
+One has a scarlet handkerchief knotted under her handsome,
+dark face. She turns her brown cheek to her
+shoulder, tossing a word back as the young hostlers
+contrive to stand in her way.</p>
+
+<p>One by one the carriages take up their loads and
+go on. We soon follow and overtake them, winding
+slowly up among the rocks, which seem ready to fall
+upon us. We form a long train, a strange procession,
+bound by no tie but that of common humanity. The
+meadows and soft, green mountain-slopes are left behind
+as we ascend, crossing from one side to the other
+by arched bridges thrown over the chasm, at the foot
+of which foams the torrent. Higher and higher rise
+the rent rocks&mdash;bare, black walls, seamed, and scarred,
+and riven, their summits reaching to the sky. They
+close about us, shutting out everything of earth and
+heaven, save a narrow strip of blue far above all. Even
+the sweet light of day departs, and a gloom and darkness
+as of a brooding tempest falls upon us as the way narrows.
+Suddenly a mad, foaming torrent, with angry
+roar, leaps from the rocks above, to toss, and writhe,
+and moan upon the rocks below the arch upon which
+we stand. The water rushes over them, and dashes
+against them. It swirls, and pants, and foams, while
+high above it all we stand, our faces wet with the spray,
+our ears deafened by the terrible roar. Truly, this <i>is</i>
+"The Devil's Bridge."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Think of armies meeting here, as they did in the old
+Napoleonic wars, contending for the passage of the
+bridge below. Think of the shrieks of the wounded
+and dying, mingling with the raging of the waters.
+Think of the white foam surging red among the rocks;
+of the angry torrent beating out the ebbing life of those
+who checked its flow. Think of the meeting of hosts
+in mortal conflict where no eye but God's could witness
+it, upon which not even bird or startled beast looked
+down. It was like a dreadful dream from which we
+passed&mdash;as through deep sleep&mdash;by a way cut in
+the solid rock out into God's world again. Still, from
+one side of the road rose the rocks that began to
+show signs of scanty vegetation now; from the other
+fell the precipice to the torrent. We had left the carriages
+at the bridge, and singly or in companies toiled
+up the road that doubled back upon itself continually.
+Often we climbed from one of these windings to the
+next above, by paths among the rocks, leaving the carriages
+to make the turn and follow more slowly. Often
+our way was the bed of a last year's torrent, or our
+feet touched the borders of the stream, as we pulled
+ourselves up by the shrubs that grew among the rocks.
+The ice-chill in the air brought strength for the time,
+and perfect exhilaration. It seemed as if we could go
+on forever, scaling these mountain heights.</p>
+
+<p>At last the carriages overtake us, and we reluctantly
+resume our places. The road is built out upon the
+mountain-side. It offers no protection against the fall
+of the precipice. It narrows here. We look down,
+and say, "How dreadful a careless driver might make
+this place!" and, shuddering, draw back. Suddenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+the train pauses, and down the long hill runs a shout,
+"A carriage has gone over." We spring out, and run
+to the front. "Is any one killed?" "No; thank
+God, no one is harmed." We gather upon the edge
+of the precipice. Upon the rocks below lies the
+body of a horse&mdash;dead, with his fore feet raised, as
+though pawing the air; and mingling with the white
+waters, and tossed about in the raging stream, are the
+shattered remains of a carriage and its contents.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that two young men from Canton Zurich
+essayed to make a tour of the mountains with their
+own horse and carriage&mdash;a foolhardy experiment, since
+none but tried horses, used to these passes, are considered
+safe here. All went well, however, until they
+reached this point, where a torrent falls down the
+mountain-side to the road, under which it passes with
+a fearful noise. It might, indeed, startle the strongest
+nerves. The horse, young and high-spirited, shied to
+the edge of the precipice, then reared high in the air.
+They saw that he must go over when his fore feet came
+down, and springing out, barely escaped a similar fate.
+We all passed the spot with some trepidation, the most
+of us preferring to walk; but our horses, accustomed
+to the road, were utterly unmoved by the swooping
+torrent. At night we reached Andermatt&mdash;only an
+untidy little village, lying in one of these upper valleys,
+bustling and all alive around the door of its one inn;
+but how green and beautiful were the mountains, shutting
+us in all around, after the desolation through which
+much of our way had led! Upon the side of the nearest
+was a triangular patch of wood-land,&mdash;firs and
+spruces,&mdash;said to divide and break the force of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+avalanches that sweep down here in the spring. It
+can be nothing but a story of what had been true formerly,
+when the wood was more extensive. Down
+these mountains, as night closed in, straggled a herd
+of goats to the milking, tinkling countless little bells,
+while the roar of the Reuss, which we had followed
+until it was now hardly more than a mountain brook,
+mingled with our dreams as it ran noisily through the
+village.</p>
+
+<p>On we went the next morning, wrapping ourselves
+warmly, for the air was chill as November, though at
+Lucerne, only twenty-four hours before, we had suffered
+a torrid heat. Just beyond Andermatt, at Hospenthal,
+we left the St. Gothard, to follow the Furka pass. All
+around was barren desolation, as we went on, still ascending,
+leaving every sign of human life behind.
+Rocky and black the mountains rose, bearing only lichens
+and ferns. Occasional patches of snow appeared,
+lying in the beds of the last year's torrents, or scattered
+along beside the road. But here, where Nature had
+bestowed little to soften and beautify, she had spread
+upon the barren land, and tucked in among the rocks, a
+covering of exquisitely delicate flowers. You cannot
+realize, until you have seen them, the variety, beauty,
+and profusion of the Alpine flowers. Looking back in
+memory upon the bare rocks, doomed to stand here
+through all time in solitude and in the midst of desolation,
+as though in expiation of some sin, it is pleasant
+to remember that at their feet and in their clefts these
+little flowers nestle and bloom.</p>
+
+<p>We gathered nosegays and made snowballs, and at
+noon gained the summit of the Furka, and rested an hour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+or two at the inn&mdash;the only sign of house or hut we
+had seen since morning. The rough <i>salons</i>, the passage,
+the doorway, even the space outside, were alive
+with tourists. It is a continual jar upon one's sense of
+the fitness of things, something to which you never
+become thoroughly accustomed, until all freshness of
+sight-seeing is passed&mdash;this coming suddenly upon the
+world in the midst of the unutterable solitude of nature;
+this plunging into a crowd dressed in the latest
+style, and discussing universal frivolities where the
+very rocks and hills seem to stand in silent adoration.
+But after the first moment you, too, form one of the
+frivolous throng, the sight and sound of which shock
+the sensibilities of the next comer.</p>
+
+<p>From the inn a tongue of land, green and dotted
+with flowers, falls into the valley below. On either
+side rises a mountain, scarred by the torrents dried
+away now, and stained this day with the last year's
+snow, while beyond&mdash;ever beyond, like some heavenly
+heights we vainly strove to gain&mdash;rose the
+Bernese Alps.</p>
+
+<p>From the summit of the Furka we descended to the
+Rhone glacier by one of the zigzag mountain roads.
+Looking down over the edge, we could see below, the
+ways we were yet to follow on the mountain face before
+accomplishing the descent. The horses dashed
+down at a flying pace. The inclination of the road
+was not sufficient to alarm; but the turns are always
+so frightfully abrupt as to make it seem as though the
+leader must dash off. But no; he invariably swung
+around just upon the outer edge, held, it seemed sometimes,
+by the traces, and with a crack of the driver's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+whip was off again before our fears, if we had any,
+could find words.</p>
+
+<p>One of these abrupt turns fairly hangs over the
+glacier, where the icy river has fallen into broken
+masses from a higher point, before spreading out in
+the narrow valley just here where it ends. Only a
+short distance from the foot of the glacier is the inn,
+with its scattered out-buildings, where we were to
+spend the night. The sheer descent from the summit
+of the Furka is only about half a mile; but though our
+horses had galloped the whole distance, and the inn
+was in sight all the time, we were three hours reaching
+it; so many turns did the road make upon the face of
+the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>It was a gloomy valley, shut in by mountains, and
+surrounded by lesser hills all soaked and dripping with
+icy streams that chilled the air. We gained the foot
+of the glacier from the inn by a rough path over and
+among the rocks, and stones, and heaps of gravel it
+had brought down and deposited here. From beneath
+the solid mass of ice flowed a hundred shallow streams,
+which, uniting, form the beginning of the River Rhone.
+We penetrated for a short distance the gallery cut into
+the glacier, surrounded and shut down upon by the
+walls and ceiling, of a deep blue color, and were preceded
+by an old man, who awoke the echoes by uttering
+a series of broken cries. What with the echoes and
+horrible chill, the place seemed most unearthly, and
+we were glad to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>The roar of torrents, and hardly less thunderous
+noise of departing diligences, awakened us the next
+morning. We were soon off upon the road, skirting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+the mountains, rolling through the pleasant valleys,
+and passing village after village now. They seemed
+silent and deserted, their occupants perhaps busy in
+the fields, or serving at the inns, or among the mountains
+as guides. One was a mass of ruins, thrown
+down in the bed of a torrent, among which a few dull-faced
+peasants were at work, with a hopeless, aimless
+air, that promised little. A mountain stream, swollen
+to a flood by melting snows, had swept it away in a
+night.</p>
+
+<p>At noon we lunched at Viesch&mdash;a slipshod, unwashed
+village, by the side of the young Rhone, which
+so far, in its dirty, chalk-white color, was not unlike the
+white-headed children that played upon its banks.
+Some of the party left the horses to their noon rest,
+and strayed out upon the road beyond the village. On
+its outskirts was a fine new church, of stone. If only
+something of its beauty could but come into the every-day
+lives of the poor people here! We sat down upon
+the steps to wait. Across the road was an orchard,
+roughly fenced in; beside it one of the picturesque
+Swiss peasant houses&mdash;all steps, and queer old galleries,
+from which a little tow-headed girl stared out
+at us in open-eyed wonder, as we blew the down from
+the dried dandelions we had pulled along the way,
+and questioned if, in our far-off homes, our mothers
+wanted us!</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as though we could descend no farther;
+and yet, after sweeping through a valley, a sudden turn
+would disclose another, far below, to which this was as
+a mountain. So down we sped the whole day long;
+once by a frightfully-narrow zigzag road, the worst by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+far of any we had seen; passing still through the villages
+so charming in the distance, but dirty, and full
+of odors by no means pleasing, as we drew near.
+At night we rattled into the paved square before the
+inn at Brieg, just as the first drops of a coming shower
+wet its stones.</p>
+
+<p>This was evidently something more than a village.
+The houses were plastered, instead of being of wood
+with a rich, burnt-sienna color, like those we had seen
+along the road through the day. They were thickly
+clustered together, and from their midst rose the four
+turrets of a chateau. Our inn was a delightfully-dingy
+old place. It had been an Ursuline convent, and
+abounded in queer, dark passages, rough stone stairways,
+and old wooden galleries overlooking the square.
+One of our rooms had been a part of the convent chapel,
+and was still lighted by a window just beneath the
+groined roof. Here we braided our hair, and knotted
+our ribbons, and dreamed, in the twilight that followed
+the rain, of the hopeless ones who had sought comfort
+in other days within these walls, and fell asleep at
+last, knowing full well that the fringe of many an old
+prayer was still caught and held in the arches high
+over our heads. We walked up through the town the
+next morning, to the beginning of the Simplon Pass.
+Somewhere in the narrow streets we passed the old
+chateau, and pressed our faces against the bars of a
+gate, in order to gain some idea as to the domestic
+economy of the family which had bestowed upon Brieg
+its air of importance. But the chateau had degenerated
+into a brewery, and the court-yard was filled with old
+carts, clumsy and broken.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Farther up the hill the door of a little chapel stood
+invitingly open, waiting for stray worshippers, or a
+chance-burdened heart (for even so far away as Brieg,
+hearts do grow heavy, I doubt not). Something in its
+narrow, whitewashed poverty touched our sympathies.
+It is rare indeed in these countries to find a chapel
+without at least some votive offering to make it beautiful
+in the eyes of the simple people: here was only a
+crucifix, and we pleased ourselves with the fancy that
+when the ships come in that we sent out as children&mdash;laden
+with hopes that were to be bartered for treasures&mdash;we
+would return, and hang the walls with
+pictures, and make the whole place wonderful in the
+eyes that had seen only its bareness. The shower the
+night before had laid the dust, and the drive that morning
+was most enjoyable. Following the course of the
+noisy Rhone, we reached Sierre at noon, where we left
+the carriages with regret, and took the railway train to
+Martigny.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>AMONG THE EVERLASTING HILLS.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>The quaint inn.&mdash;The Falls of the Sallenches, and the Gorge
+de Trient.&mdash;Shopping in a Swiss village.&mdash;A mule ride to
+Chamouni.&mdash;Peculiarities of the animals.&mdash;Entrance to the
+village.&mdash;Egyptian mummies lifted from the mules.&mdash;Rainy
+days.&mdash;Chamois.&mdash;The Mer de Glace.&mdash;"Look out of
+your window."&mdash;Mont Blanc.&mdash;Sallenches.&mdash;A diligence
+ride to Geneva.&mdash;Our little old woman.&mdash;The clownish
+peasant.&mdash;The fork in the road.&mdash;"Adieu."</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>OUR hotel here at Martigny, was even more suggestive
+of romance than the one at Brieg. It
+had been a monastery, and was an old, yellow-washed
+structure facing the street, with a rambling garden
+surrounded by high walls, clinging to it in the rear.
+Low, dark rooms, with bare, unpainted floors, like the
+waves of the sea in smoothness, were given to some of
+our party, while Mrs. K. and I were consigned again,
+with singular appropriateness, to what had been the
+chapel. Its windows overlooked the straggling, half-dead
+trees, and bare, hard-baked earth of the open
+space before the door, which was always being crossed
+by strings of mules ornamented with bright saddle-cloths,
+and still further with the ubiquitous tourist
+arrayed in every known costume of the period. Village<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+girls, too, passed under the trees, knitting as they
+went, and horrible creatures afflicted with the <i>go&icirc;tre</i>&mdash;that
+curse of this region&mdash;which we met at every
+turn now.</div>
+
+<p>To gain the long, low refectory where we dined, or
+to pass from one room to another, necessitated crossing
+the brick-paved cloisters, upon which all the doors
+of the second story opened. Here a row of columns
+encircled a narrow, inner court-yard&mdash;so narrow as to
+be nothing more than a slit in the walls, yet wide
+enough to allow the shimmering sunlight to drop down
+upon the vines twined around the columns, and light
+the whole dingy interior into a weird, strange beauty.</p>
+
+<p>We rode out to the Falls of the Sallenches,&mdash;one of
+the mist veils left hanging from many of these Swiss
+mountains by the water-sprites,&mdash;and penetrated the
+Gorge de Trient upon the shaky gallery that follows
+its windings; wandered about and beyond the town;
+stole into an old church, and brought away the memory
+of a lovely virgin face; and haunted the dingy
+shops in the vain hope of making a few necessary purchases.
+These shops were not unlike our New England
+country stores in their combined odors and confused
+incapabilities. Behind the counters, or more
+likely sitting in the doorway with the inevitable blue
+knitting in hand, were old women, of hard, baked-apple
+faces, whose ideas of the luxuries of a woman's wardrobe
+were so far below what we considered its necessaries,
+that we parted in mutual surprise, to say the
+least, and without gain on either side.</p>
+
+<p>Sabbath morning, English church service was held
+in the parlor of one of the hotels; after which a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+clergyman in gown and bands discoursed from the
+text, "And there shall be no more sea,"&mdash;a peculiarly
+comforting hope to some of us.</p>
+
+<p>Monday morning, we mounted the horses and mules
+waiting in dejected impatience before the door, and
+started upon the long ride of twenty-two miles to
+Chamouni by the T&ecirc;te Noir Pass. A wide, pleasant
+avenue, shaded by walnut trees, led out of the town;
+after which we began to ascend the gently-sloping
+mountain-sides, passing occasional villages, and besieged
+by beggars and venders of fruit, as usual. Indeed,
+these beggars are so constant in their attendance
+and importunity that one forgets to mention them, unless
+recalling flies and similar swarming annoyances.</p>
+
+<p>The scenery, as we went on, was often grand, always
+interesting; the sky overcast, but at times the clouds,
+drifting apart, disclosed peaks or "needles" so far
+above the mountains about us as to seem a revelation of
+heaven. The path was treacherous and rough&mdash;skirting
+precipices, descending in rocky steps or slippery
+mire, and crossing mountain streams by narrow, insecure
+bridges. Single file is the invariable rule in all
+these mountain excursions, and after a time the isolations
+of this mode of travelling adds to its wearisomeness.
+Solitude is delightful; but as some one has said,
+"How pleasant it is to have a friend near by to whom
+you may remark, 'How delightful is solitude!'"</p>
+
+<p>As you follow the windings of the narrow, steep path,
+you have a choice between addressing the back of the
+one who precedes you, and throwing a remark over your
+shoulder to those who come after. Involuntarily you
+fall to studying the curves of the former, and are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+utterly indifferent to the fact that the latter are probably
+meditating upon the intricacies of your back hair.
+Mule-riding is conducive to grace of neither soul nor
+body; still you know you are not making such a spectacle
+of yourself as did the woman just passed&mdash;who
+twisted about in the saddle as though worked along
+by rotary motion. Perhaps not.</p>
+
+<p>As you leave the villages to plunge into the woods,
+the flies swarm like beggars; and it is only when the
+guides have cut boughs from the trees, which you
+wave before you, wickedly suggesting palm branches,
+that you can proceed with tolerable comfort, and without
+the fear of an unexpected toss in the air, as one
+kick after another runs down the line.</p>
+
+<p>Each horse or mule has his own slight peculiarities
+of habit and disposition. I recall one whose inordinate
+curiosity led him to walk always upon the verge of
+the precipices, so that the rider's feet overhung the
+frightful depths. Murray says it is best to allow these
+animals to choose their own paths. But to hang suspended
+between heaven and earth at the mercy of
+a strap and a mule, will shake one's faith, even in
+Murray.</p>
+
+<p>My horse this day was possessed of the dreamy, melancholy
+nature of a poet, with the attendant lack of
+ambition. Every time we wound funereally through a
+village, he would walk deliberately to the mounting-steps,
+and wait most suggestively. Indeed, an air of
+abstraction characterized all his movements; even
+when, as we approached these villages, raising his head,
+he would seem to sniff the odors of Araby the Blest;
+which was a mistake, a delusion of his fancy shared by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+none of the others of the party. That he was without
+pride I must confess. No stable did we pass so poor,
+none so mean, that he was ashamed to pause and offer
+to enter with meek obdurateness.</p>
+
+<p>Poetic as was his temperament, his appetites were developed
+in a remarkable degree. Once upon a narrow
+bridge we met two walking haystacks, out from which
+peered great, blue eyes. If the size of his mouth had
+corresponded at all to his desires, they would have
+vanished from sight in a twinkling; as it was, they
+barely escaped. Whether or not insatiable thirst is an
+attribute of a poet, I do not know; but each stream
+which crossed the path,&mdash;and the whole country seemed
+liquidizing,&mdash;each drinking-trough beside the way,&mdash;and
+to my excited imagination they seemed to form an
+unbroken line,&mdash;was an irresistible temptation. It was
+only by shouting, "Yeep! Yeep!" in staccato chorus,
+and vigorously applying the palm branches, thus engaging
+his attention and diverting his thoughts into
+less watery channels, that we succeeded in making any
+progress whatever. Under this disciplinary process his
+nature was at last so far subdued that he would have
+passed the ocean itself without a sigh, I am sure.</p>
+
+<p>There was a rest of an hour at the T&ecirc;te Noir inn at
+noon, shut in by the firs, and rocks, and mountains,
+then we went on to Argenti&egrave;re, where we gladly exchanged
+the horses and mules for some low, open carts
+with a couple of villagers in blue blouses for drivers.
+In these we accomplished the remaining three or four
+miles, and made a triumphal entry into Chamouni.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon when we crawled up the
+narrow, thronged street to the H&ocirc;tel Royal, from which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+the English, French, and American flags were flying.
+The clouds had dropped lower and lower, until a fine
+mist was beginning to deepen into rain, and the guides
+and tourists detained in the village fairly jostled each
+other at the intersection of the two principal streets,
+which seemed to form the village Exchange. The mire
+of the streets was thickly stamped with hoof-prints
+and the marks from the nails that stud the shoe-soles
+of the mountain climbers. Line after line of doleful
+looking objects, which might prove Egyptian mummies
+when unwrapped, were being lifted from still
+more sorry looking beasts before the door of the hotel,
+and assaying to mount the steps, with a stiffness and
+angularity of movement in which we all sympathized.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, after dinner, when a bright fire was lighted
+in the long <i>salon</i> where the various parties gathered
+to read, write, look over stereoscopic views, or chat
+among themselves, it was amusing, as well as pitiable
+to observe the abortive attempts at ease and flexibility
+as these individuals crossed the polished floor, to hear
+the groans smothered to sighs as they resumed their
+seats. "Mules!" whispered the girls, nudging each
+other, and mindful of the delight which misery is said
+to find in company.</p>
+
+<p>All the next day the rain dripped down upon the
+village from the heavy clouds that hid the mountains.
+Everybody improved the opportunity to write letters,
+or yawned over the books scattered about the <i>salon</i>.
+Among them was a well-thumbed copy of "Artemus
+Ward, His Book." At the foot of each page the local
+allusions of the jokes were explained, I remember.
+Out in the street, umbrellas were dodging about from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+one shop to another. These rainy days, though a loss
+to the guides, are harvest times for the shopkeepers.
+Photographs and stereoscopic views of the mountains,
+the glaciers, and daring climbers hanging on by their
+eyelids, abound here, with any amount of wood and
+chamois (?) horn carving and crystal ornaments. Speaking
+of chamois-horn, if you expect to see in Switzerland&mdash;as
+you do in geographies&mdash;chamois perched
+upon every crag, preparatory to bounding from peak to
+peak, you will be grievously disappointed. Not a chamois
+will greet your eyes. We passed&mdash;I have forgotten
+where&mdash;a pen in which, by paying a certain sum, we
+might look upon a veritable live chamois; but we had no
+desire to see the incarnation of liberty thus degraded.</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 321px;">
+<img src="images/illus-5.png" width="321" height="500" alt="&quot;Evidently the little old woman is going a journey.&quot; Page 195." title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Evidently the little old woman is going a journey.&quot; <a href="#Page_195">Page 195</a>.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We waited two days for the uplifting of the clouds,
+making, in the mean time, an excursion up the Montanvert
+to overlook the Mer de Glace&mdash;which is not a
+sea, but a river of ice, like all the glaciers that have
+worked themselves down into these valleys. We retired
+one night with the cloud curtains spread low over
+our heads; the next morning a voice from outside of
+our door called, "Look out of your window." We sprang
+up, seized the cord of the shutters, and behold! a new
+heaven and new earth! Every vestige of cloud was
+gone. The mountains were bathed in sunlight, vivid
+green were the peaks before us, which had never met
+our gaze until now, while behind the nearest, against
+the deep blue of the summer sky, rose the three vast
+white steps which lead heavenward, the highest of which
+men call Mont Blanc. All that morning, as we descended
+from the valley of Chamouni to Sallenches, we
+turned continually to look back; and still, white and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+beautiful, but growing less in the distance, rose the
+triple domes.</p>
+
+<p>We had taken a carriage to Sallenches: here we find
+places in the open diligence for Geneva. We pause in
+the first village through which we pass, where a knot
+of people gathers about a round little old woman. She
+wears a wide-rimmed hat over her neat frilled cap, and
+carries another upon her arm. Her waist is dimly defined
+by the strings of a voluminous apron, and her
+mind entirely distracted by the cares attendant upon
+the disposal of a cotton bag, a wicker basket, an old
+umbrella, and a box, which half a dozen men seize upon
+with clumsy hands, in good-natured officiousness, and
+thrust into the baggage compartment, while the women
+and children press about her, kissing the rough, ruddy
+cheeks, and uttering what we are sure must be blessings&mdash;odds
+and ends of which float up to us. Evidently
+the little, old woman is going a journey. Aided
+by a dozen rough, helpful hands, she climbs the ladder
+to her place beside us, with a deprecatory though cheerful
+"<i>Bon jour</i>" to us all, subsiding into a corner, where
+she is immediately submerged as her belongings are
+showered down upon her; last of all a crumpled letter
+is tossed into her lap.</p>
+
+<p>The driver mounts to his place; she leans over; a
+perfect gust of blessings, and kisses, and adieus follow
+us, as with a crack of the whip the horses spring away,
+and we leave the village far behind.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly&mdash;for we have turned away our faces&mdash;the
+little old woman's hand is plunged into the cotton bag
+under our feet. We venture to look around. The tears
+have gone; her face beams like the sun, as she brings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+out of the depths a couple of eggs. Another dive,
+and she emerges with a piece of bread. A pinch of
+salt is added from the basket, and her breakfast is complete.
+She hospitably offers a share to each of us.
+We decline; and as a shadow dims the brightness of
+her face, Katie adds quickly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We have had two breakfasts already."</p>
+
+<p>The little old woman rolls her round, blue eyes to
+heaven, with a pious ejaculation. Such lavish extravagance
+is beyond her comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"That is like you rich people," she says. "We are
+only too happy if the good God sends us <i>one</i>." And
+she relapses into a wondering silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Does madame travel far?" we venture presently.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes." And she shakes her head slowly.
+Words cannot express the distance, it is so great.</p>
+
+<p>"But she has been this way before?" we go on.</p>
+
+<p>"No, never before." And again the round, blue
+eyes seek heaven, and again a deep sigh follows the
+words. She has finished her lunch, and, diving under
+our feet, emerges after a time with a box, which,
+opened, discloses a small store of peppermints. This
+she offers with some hesitation, and we each hasten to
+accept one, her countenance beaming more and more
+as they disappear. "Given to hospitality," the little
+old woman has been, we know.</p>
+
+<p>When the box is with difficulty replaced, the string
+of the bag drawn, the basket arranged to her satisfaction,
+the umbrella placed at a pleasing angle, she balances
+herself upon the edge of the seat, and glances
+fearfully from side to side as we swing along the smooth
+road. Once, when the wheel passes over a stone, she
+seems to murmur a prayer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Madame is not afraid?" we say.</p>
+
+<p>"O, very much. These diligences are most dangerous."
+And now she is glancing over her shoulder at a
+rocky wall of mountains which follows the road at a distance.
+"They might fall." And she shudders with
+the thought. We assure her that it is impossible; but
+she has heard of a rock falling upon a diligence, and
+thinks it was upon this road. And all the horror of
+the fearful catastrophe is depicted upon her face.
+Gradually we learn that the little old woman has never
+travelled in a diligence before; that she has never before
+made any journey, in fact. For forty years she
+has kept the house of the <i>cur&eacute;</i> in her native village.
+Now, she tells us with a sigh, and uplifted eyes, he has
+"become dead," and she is obliged to seek a home
+elsewhere among strangers. Here she turns away her
+eyes, which grow dim as her smile, and for a moment
+forgets her fears.</p>
+
+<p>We are approaching a village. She hastily searches
+her basket and brings out the crumpled letter which had
+been thrown into her lap. As we dart through the
+narrow street and across an open square, she leans out,
+utters a word in a sharp, excited tone, and, to our
+surprise, throws the letter far out into the dust of the
+street. An idle lounger in the square starts at her
+voice, runs heavily across the street, and picks it up.
+She sinks back, all cheerful smiles again. She has
+chanced upon the very man to whom the letter was
+addressed.</p>
+
+<p>The dust rolls up from the great wheels. She exchanges
+the hat upon her head for the one over her
+arm, covering the former carefully with a corner of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+her apron. This, she tells us, as she arranges the
+second upon her head, she was accustomed to wear
+when she picked vegetables of a morning in the garden
+of the good <i>cur&eacute;</i>. And the sighs return with the
+recollection of her master.</p>
+
+<p>The day wears on with heat and sifting dust. By
+and by, at another village, a filthy, dull-faced peasant
+clambers up the ladder and stumbles into a vacant
+place. We shrink away from him in disgust. Our
+little old woman only furtively draws aside her neat
+petticoats. Soon she engages him in conversation.
+We see her lean far forward with intense, questioning
+gaze upon the distance where he points with dirt-begrimed finger.
+Then with a sigh which seems to come
+from the baggage compartment beneath us, so very
+deep and long-drawn it is, she turns to us. She, too,
+points to a range of hills, very dark and gloomy now,
+for they are covered with woods, and the shadow of a
+cloud lies upon them.</p>
+
+<p>"It is there, beyond the mountains, I am going;"
+and the shadow of the cloud has fallen upon her face.
+All the sunshine has faded out of it. Then, with
+something warmer, brighter than any sunshine gleaming
+in her eyes, she adds, "But the good God takes
+care of us wherever we go."</p>
+
+<p>We have reached a fork in the road. There is no
+village, no house even, in sight. Why, then, do we
+pause? The ladder is raised.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be for me!" gasps the little old woman,
+casting one bewildered glance over to where the shadows
+are creeping, and then calmly gathering together
+her possessions. We grasp the hands she extends, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+pour out confused, unintelligible blessings. Is it the
+dust which blinds our eyes? Even the clownish peasant
+stumbles down the ladder, and lifts out her box. The
+driver remounts. The whip cracks. We lean far out.
+We wave our hands. Again the dust fills our eyes
+so that our sight for a moment is dim, as we dash away,
+leaving her sitting there alone upon her box, where the
+two roads meet. But beyond the hills where the
+shadows rested, we know that the sun still shines for
+our little old woman whose master "became dead."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>LAST DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>Geneva.&mdash;Calvin and jewelry.&mdash;Up Lake Leman.&mdash;Ouchy and
+Lausanne.&mdash;"Sweet Clarens."&mdash;Chillon.&mdash;Freyburg.&mdash;Sight-seers.&mdash;The
+Last Judgment.&mdash;Berne and its bears.&mdash;The
+town like a story.&mdash;The Lake of Thun.&mdash;Interlaken.&mdash;Over
+the Wengern Alp.&mdash;The Falls of Giessbach.&mdash;The
+Brunig Pass.&mdash;Lucerne again.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>WE dashed up to the hotel upon one of the fine
+quays at Geneva, and descended from the
+open diligence with all the appearance of travellers
+who had crossed a sandy desert. There is an air of
+experienced travel which only dust can impart.</div>
+
+<p>The most charming sight in the city, to us, was our
+own names upon the waiting letters here. In truth,
+there are no sights in Geneva. Tourists visit the city
+because they have been or are going elsewhere, beyond.
+If they pause, it is to rest or buy the jewelry
+so far-famed. To be sure the view from almost any
+window opening upon the blue Rhone is pleasing,
+crossed by various bridges as it is, one of which
+touches Rousseau's Island. But our heads by this
+time were as full of views as that of a Boston woman.</p>
+
+<p>Calvinists and Arminians alike visit the Cathedral,
+and sit for a moment in the old reformer's chair, or at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+least look upon the canopy of carved wood from beneath
+which he used to preach. There are few monuments
+here. The interior is bare, and boarded into
+the stiff pews, which belong by right and the fitness
+of things, not to these grand, Gothic cathedrals, but to
+the Puritan meeting-houses, where we gather less to
+breathe a prayer than to sit solemnly apart and listen
+to a denunciation of each other's sins.</p>
+
+<p>It is a little remarkable that the city where Calvin
+made and enforced such rigid laws against luxury and
+the vanities of the world should, in these latter days,
+be noted for the manufacture of jewelry. But so it is;
+and to walk the streets and gaze in at the shop windows
+would turn the head of any but the strongest-minded
+woman. Two or three addresses had been
+given us of manufactories where we could be served
+at more reasonable rates than at the grand shops. We
+climbed flight after flight of dingy stone stairs, in
+dingier buildings, to reach them, and found ourselves
+at last in little dark rooms, almost filled by a counter,
+a desk, and a safe or two. Certainly no one would
+think of looking for beautiful things here! But we
+had become tolerably accustomed to such places in
+Paris, and were not at all surprised when one shallow
+drawer after another was produced from behind the
+counter, and a blaze of gems and bewildering show of
+delicately executed gold work met our eyes. If you
+care for a <i>souvenir</i> only, there are pretty little finger-rings
+encircled by blue forget-me-nots in enamel, which
+are a specialty of Geneva. But if you possess the
+means and disposition, you may gratify the most extravagant
+desires, and rival Solomon in magnificence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Twice a day steamers leave Geneva to ascend the
+lake. It was a bright, summer afternoon when we embarked
+from the pier beyond our hotel, and steamed
+away past the villages that lie along its edge. Among
+them is Coppet, the home of Madame de Sta&euml;l, the
+towers of which rise up behind the town. The deck
+of the steamer was alive with tourists. One party,
+from meeting at every turn, rests even yet in memory;
+the ladies stout, red-faced, and showily dressed, with
+immense "charms" pendent from their <i>chatelaines</i>&mdash;shovels,
+tongs, and pokers, <i>life-size</i>&mdash;the result of a
+sojourn at Geneva, doubtless.</p>
+
+<p>For some time after leaving the city, we could look
+back upon Mont Blanc, white and beautiful, rising
+above the dark mountains, and lying close against the
+sky blue as the waters of the lake. The likeness of a
+recumbent figure of Napoleon&mdash;the head and shoulders
+alone,&mdash;in the garb of a grenadier was startling,
+haunting us even after it had changed again to a snow-white
+mountain. As though the hero slept, like those
+in German legends, until his country called him to
+awake and lead its hosts to battle.</p>
+
+<p>At Ouchy we leave the steamer, where the gardens
+of the grand hotel Beaurivage come down to meet us.
+How delightful are these Swiss hotels! with their pleasant
+gardens, many balconies, wide windows, and the
+flying flags outside; and within, scrupulous neatness,
+and even elegant appointments. The rooms vary in
+size rather than in degree of comfort, there being none
+of the sudden leaps or plunges between luxury and
+utter discomfort, found in so many hotels&mdash;elsewhere.
+The floors are bare, the strips of wood forming squares<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+or diamonds, waxed, and highly polished. A rug here
+and there invites bare feet. A couple of neatly-spread
+beds stand foot to foot upon one side of the room,
+sometimes with silk or lace coverlets, but with always
+the <i>duvet</i>, or large down pillow, at the foot. There is
+no stint of toilet arrangements. A lounge and easy-chairs
+tempt to idleness and repose; and a round table,
+of generous proportions, awaits the chocolate, rolls,
+fresh butter, and amber honey, when the last curl is in
+order, the last ribbon knotted, and you have rung for
+your breakfast. Of course the rooms vary in degree
+of ornamentation. The walls are often beautifully
+tinted or frescoed, and the furniture elegant; but the
+neatness and comfort among these summer hotels are
+almost universal. Sometimes, in one corner, or built
+into the wall, stands the high, white porcelain stove,
+so like a stray monument that has forgotten its inscription,
+and is sacred to many memories; and the long,
+plate-glass windows, swinging back, open often upon a
+balcony and a charming view. No wonder that half
+the hotels in Switzerland are named <i>Bellevue</i>.</p>
+
+<p>An omnibus bears you from Ouchy, which is simply
+the port of Lausanne, back into the city, past pretty
+country residences, walled in, over the gates of which
+the owners have placed suggestive names: "My Rest;"
+"Heart's Desire;" "Good Luck;" "Beautiful Situation;"
+anything which fancy or individual taste may dictate.
+Of Lausanne I recall little but an endless mounting
+and descending of stairs. The city is built upon a hill,
+intersected by ravines, which accounts for this peculiar
+method of gaining many streets from others above and
+below. We made but a hurried visit. It was market<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+day, and ugly women, old and young, were sitting
+upon the sidewalks in the narrow streets, knitting,
+with the yarn held over the fore-finger of the left hand,
+and selling fruits and vegetables between times. In
+the honey market the air fairly buzzed and swarmed;
+yet still these women knit, and gossiped, and bargained
+complacently, unmindful of the bees in their bonnets.
+From Ouchy we made an excursion to the head of the
+lake. It is a short voyage of two hours to Villeneuve,
+the last town. Clouds hid the distant mountains; but
+those lesser and nearer, upon our right, as we went on,
+were bare, and broken, and rocky, contrasting strangely
+with the gently swelling slopes upon the other side,
+covered with vineyards, and with quiet little villages at
+their feet. Each of these villages has its romantic association;
+or, failing in that, a grand hotel to attract
+summer visitors. Vevay boasts the largest hotel, but
+nothing more. Just beyond Vevay is "Clarens, sweet
+Clarens," the willows of which dip into the lake.
+Here, if Rousseau and Byron are to be believed, Love
+was born; possibly in some one of the mean little
+houses which border the narrow streets.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after leaving Clarens, the gray, stained tower
+of Chillon rises from the water, near enough to the
+shore to be reached by a bridge. With the "little
+isle" and its three tall trees marked by the prisoner
+as he paced his lonely cell, ends the romance of the
+lake. Poets have sung its beauties, but Lucerne had
+stolen away our hearts, and we gazed upon the rocks,
+and vineyards, and villages, with cold, critical eyes.
+It was only later, when the summer twilight fell as we
+lingered upon the balcony before our windows at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+Ouchy that we acknowledged its charm. The witching
+sound of music came up from the garden below.
+Upon the silver lake before us, the lateen sails, like the
+white wings of great sea-birds, gleamed out from the
+darkness; the tiny wavelets rippled and plashed softly
+against the breakwater; and where the clouds had
+parted overhead, a horned moon hung low in the sky,
+while the mountains resolved themselves into shadows
+or other waiting clouds.</p>
+
+<p>There was a little church between Ouchy and Lausanne,
+gained by crossing the fields, where we remembered
+the Sabbath day, and joined in the church service
+led by an English clergyman. These Sabbaths
+are like green spots now in memory,&mdash;restful, cool,
+refreshing, and pleasant to recall,&mdash;when the world,
+and all haste and perplexity of strange sights, and
+sounds, and ways, were rolled off like a heavy burden,
+while we gathered, a little company of strangers in a
+strange land, yet of one family, to unite in the familiar
+prayers, and hymns, and grand old chants.</p>
+
+<p>Monday morning the "American cars" bore us away
+from Lausanne to Freyburg. But such a caricature
+are they upon our railway carriages, that we were inclined
+to resent the appellation. Low, bare, box-like,
+with only three or four seats upon each side, they
+hardly suggested the original.</p>
+
+<p>We had chosen the route through Freyburg that we
+might visit the suspension bridge, and hear the celebrated
+organ. The city clings to the sides of a ravine
+after the perverse manner of cities, instead of spreading
+itself out comfortably upon level land. So steep
+is the declivity that the roofs of some of the houses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+form the pavement for the street above. At the foot
+of the ravine flows a river crossed by bridges, and the
+towns-people have for centuries descended from the
+summit on one side to climb to that upon the other,
+until some humane individual planned and perfected
+this suspension bridge,&mdash;the longest in the world save
+one,&mdash;which is thrown across the chasm. In order to
+test its strength, when completed, the inhabitants of
+the city, or a portion of them, gathered in a mass, with
+artillery and horses, <i>and stood upon it!</i> Then they
+marched over it, preceded by a band of music, with all
+the dignitaries of the town at the head of the column.
+Since it did not bend or break beneath their weight, it
+is deemed entirely safe.</p>
+
+<p>Through the most closely-built portion of the city
+runs the old city wall, with its high, cone-capped watch-towers,
+and the narrow, crooked, and often steep
+streets are very quaint. The sense of satisfaction
+which returns with the memory of these streets is
+perhaps partly due to the fact, that the girls of the
+party surveyed them from above great squares of gingerbread
+bought at a <i>p&acirc;tisserie</i> near the station, and
+ate as they strolled through the town over the pavings
+of these crooked ways. The bread of dependence is
+said to be exceedingly bitter; but the gingerbread of
+Freyburg is uncommonly sweet, in memory.</p>
+
+<p>When the suspension bridge has been crossed and
+commented upon, every one strikes a bee-line to the
+Cathedral, which rises conspicuously above its surroundings.
+It would be very amusing to watch the
+professional sight-seers at all these places, if one did
+not belong to the fraternity, which makes of it quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+another affair. There is no air of pleasuring about
+them; no placid expression of content and sweet-to-do-nothing.
+They seldom are found meandering along
+the tortuous streets, the milk of human kindness moistening
+every feature, beams of satisfaction irradiating
+every countenance. They never spend long hours
+wandering among the cloisters of old cathedrals, or
+dream away days by storied shrines, as friends at home,
+who read of these places, fondly imagine. By no
+means. The sight-seer is a man of business. He has
+undertaken a certain amount of work, to be done in a
+given time. He will do or die. And since it is a serious
+matter, involving doubt, he wears an appropriately
+solemn and preoccupied expression of countenance.
+He darts from point to point. He climbs stairs as
+though impatient Fame waited for him at the top. His
+emotions of wonder, admiration, or delight, must bestir
+themselves. He drives to the first point of interest,
+strikes a bee-line to the second, cuts every corner
+between that and the third, and then, consulting his
+watch, desires to know if there is anything more, and
+experiences his only moment of satisfaction when the
+reply is in the negative. And the most remarkable
+part of all is, that he goes abroad to enjoy himself.</p>
+
+<p>But even if one is less ambitious, if you are so fortunate
+as to be naturally indolent, and to delight to
+dwell in the shadow of dreams, you will shake off dull
+sloth here. You live and move in a bustling crowd.
+Every storied spot is thronged with visitors. Far from
+musing by yourself, you can at best but follow in the
+wake of the crowd, with the drone of an endless story
+from the lips of a stupid guide in your ears, bringing
+only confusion and weariness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A notice upon the door of the Cathedral informed
+us that the organ would not be played until evening.
+We held a council of war, and decided to go on. Just
+over our heads, as we stood before the entrance, was a
+representation of the Last Judgment, cut in the stone,
+in which the good, very scantily attired, and of most
+self-satisfied countenances, trotted off after St. Peter,
+who carried the father of all keys, to the door of a
+castle representing heaven, while the poor wicked were
+borne away in a Swiss basket, strapped upon the back
+of a pig-headed devil, to a great pot over a blazing fire,
+which a little imp was vigorously blowing up with a
+pair of bellows. The wicked seeming to outnumber
+the good (this was designed many centuries ago), and
+the pot not being large enough to hold them all, the
+surplus were thrust into the jaws of a patient crocodile
+near by. Seated in an arm-chair, above all this,
+the devil looked down with an expression of entire
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>The interior of the Cathedral was in no way remarkable.
+In the choir (which you know, perhaps, is not a
+place where girls stand in their best bonnets to sing
+on Sundays, but the corner of these great cathedrals
+in which the church service is held) were some fine
+stained glass windows; but even here, horrible monkeys
+and hideous animal figures, life-size, were cut from
+the wood, and made to stand or crouch above the stalls
+where the priests sit. Those old ecclesiastic artists
+must have believed in a personal devil, who assumed
+many forms.</p>
+
+<p>A threatened shower hastened our steps to the station
+some time before the arrival of the train, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+seemed to come and go without regard to the hour appointed.
+While waiting, we read the advertisements
+framed and hanging upon the walls, of hotels, shops, &amp;c.
+One of the latter, in a triumph of English, ran,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<span class="smcap">Wood Carwings;<br />
+Choose as nowhere else.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>We reached Berne before night, and drove to the Hotel
+&mdash;&mdash;. If it could by some happy chance have been
+turned inside out, how comfortable we might have been!
+The exterior was most inviting. A German waiter of
+Irish face, who had a polyglot manner of speech, difficult
+to be understood, showed us to our rooms; and the
+<i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i>, to which we descended an hour later, was
+made up of an uncommon array of prim-visaged individuals.
+Dickens's Mr. Chadband, in a very stiff,
+white neckcloth, was my <i>vis-&agrave;-vis</i>. I looked every moment
+for his lips to open, and&mdash;"Wherefore air we
+gathered here, my friends?" to issue forth.</p>
+
+<p>The guide-book had informed us that the greatest
+attraction of Berne to strangers was the fine view of
+the Bernese Alps to be gained from here; but a curtain
+of cloud hung before them during all our stay.
+Still we were interested in the queer old city, with the
+second story of the houses, through many of the
+streets, projecting over the sidewalk, forming gloomy
+arcades, and bright red cushions in the window seats,
+where pretty girls sat and sewed, and watched the
+passers down below. I remember it rained, and there
+was a market held out in the square before the hotel
+windows in the early morning, where the umbrellas
+made every old woman to dwell in her own tent for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+the time. When it was over, and the rain had ceased
+to fall, we waited in front of the old clock-tower before
+driving out through the pleasant suburbs, with market
+women, baskets on their arms, stray children, idle
+loungers, and alert tourists, for the feeble puppet-show
+heralded by the asthmatic crow of a rheumatic cock.
+Of course it was a procession of bears. Everything
+in Berne is, or has to do with, a bear, since the city
+was founded upon the spot where somebody killed a
+bear. Bears surmount most of the stone fountains in
+the streets; they ornament the monuments erected to
+heroes. Cut from wood, they are offered for sale
+as <i>souvenirs;</i> stuffed, they are exhibited at the
+zo&ouml;logical gardens; and, to crown all, government supports
+in luxury a whole family of bruins. We left the
+carriage upon the Nydeck bridge, to look down into
+the immense circular basin where they are kept. It
+must be a dull life, even for a bear. They are ugly
+creatures, with reddish fur, and spend their time climbing
+a leafless semblance of a tree, with no object but
+to descend again, or in sitting up to beg for biscuits of
+visitors. So universal has the custom of begging become
+in Switzerland, that even the bears take to it
+quite naturally.</p>
+
+<p>The mountains obstinately refusing to appear, we
+left Berne for Thun, passing through a lovely country.
+Only occasionally did a road appear; then it would
+seem to extend for long miles, bordered by immense,
+close-planted trees. Neither fences nor hedges were
+there to divide the fields; but patches of grain were
+thrown down anywhere and at any angle. Potatoes
+were sown like grass instead of being planted in hills,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+and were devoured this year by rot&mdash;the worst feature
+in the landscape. All through the early summer we
+had seen hemp growing everywhere. Now it was cut,
+and lying outspread upon the ground in odd regularity,
+an occasional head only being left to run to seed.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to visit in Thun. But the whole
+town is like a story. Not an elegant, high-toned story,
+to be sure, though a picturesque old castle and church
+lifted themselves aristocratically above the more humble
+town. The streets are narrow, and as picturesque
+as they are dirty, with a sidewalk sometimes above the
+first, low, projecting story of the houses.</p>
+
+<p>It is a mile from the town to the lake of the same
+name. Close by the steamer landing, where we were
+to embark for Newhaus, is the hotel Bellevue. Within
+the garden enclosure were several little <i>ch&acirc;lets;</i> one
+to serve as reading-room, another as <i>salle &agrave; manger</i>,
+while a third, beyond the pond, where swan were sailing,
+displayed Swiss wares for sale. Here we lunched
+and rested for an hour, before going up the lake. It is
+a voyage of an hour and a half to its head, past <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'beautifull'">beautiful</ins>
+villas upon one side, and precipitous rocks upon the
+other. Once landed at Newhaus,&mdash;where there was
+not a <i>new house</i> that we could see, but only a scanty
+collection of little huts,&mdash;we searched about, with the
+mud ankle deep, among the crowd of waiting vehicles,
+for the omnibus which was to bear us the two miles
+and a half to Interlaken and the hotel Jung Frau. If
+you recall your geography lessons, you will perhaps
+know that the two lakes, Thun and Brienz, are separated
+by a strip of land, upon which is this village of
+Interlaken. It is hardly more than one long street,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+with green fields and a row of trees upon one side, and
+a line of houses standing back upon the other. In full
+view from the windows of these summer hotels, when
+the sky is clear, rises the Jung Frau, between two great
+mountain peaks. This is the only <i>sight</i> in Interlaken,
+and yet the town throngs with visitors. It must be
+intolerably hot here at times, lying low among the
+mountains as does this valley. In the fields, behind the
+grand hotels, is a long, low Kursaal, a rustic affair, with
+a wide piazza. You may lunch, and read the newspapers;
+but government has prohibited the gambling.
+There are delightful excursions to be made from here,
+which accounts, perhaps, for the crowded hotels. And
+there are several fine shops, where you may buy all or
+any of the curiosities for which the country is well
+known.</p>
+
+<p>A rainy day crowded these shops and the hotel parlors,
+and made a busy scene the length of the street,
+which is very like a country road. But the second
+morning after our arrival, we rose early, to prepare for
+an excursion over the Wengern Alp. The Jung Frau,
+hidden the day before, appeared in full view with the
+rolling away of the clouds, and we desired to approach
+nearer to the shy maiden. All the listlessness
+of the day before was past. As we stepped out of the
+little <i>ch&acirc;let</i>, in the hotel garden, where&mdash;the hotel being
+full&mdash;we had slept in a room only vacated for the
+night, with a pair of immense red slippers behind the
+door, and Madame's gowns hanging from pegs on the
+wall, everybody was astir. More than one party was
+sipping their scalding coffee as we entered the hotel
+breakfast-room, while, under the great trees outside,
+guides and saddled horses waited impatiently.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When we had tied on our wide-rimmed hats, and
+gathered our shawls, we found a roomy carriage, an
+open landau, waiting for us at the side-door of the
+hotel. We drove quickly out of the town, followed by
+and following other carriages, until we formed a long
+procession by the time we had reached the valley of
+Lauterbrunnen and began the ascent. It is a deep, dark
+valley, shut in by innumerable overhanging rocks, from
+which thread-like waterfalls hang suspended in air, or
+are lost in spray. Hardly does the sun seem to penetrate
+its depth, and an indescribable gloom, as well as
+chill, pervades the place. From a few scattered cottages
+women and children emerged to follow the carriages,
+begging mutely or offering fruits, while at one
+point a man awaited our approach to awake the echoes
+with an Alpine horn.</p>
+
+<p>After an hour we reach Lauterbrunnen, and leave
+the carriage at the door of an inn, where a crowd bargains
+and waits for guides and horses. We swell the
+number. When we are served, we mount to our places,
+and file out of the straggling village, turning before we
+reach the Staubach Falls&mdash;a stream of silvery spray that
+never touches earth, but swings and waves in mid-air.
+The ascent grows more and more steep. The recent
+rain has added to the icy streams, which filter constantly
+from snows above, and the horses sink in the
+mire, or slide and slip in a way by no means reassuring.
+Often the path is mounted by steps of slippery logs;
+when added to this is a precipice upon one side, we
+hold our breath&mdash;and pass in safety. We commend
+each other as we perform feats of valor and intrepidity
+which would make our fortune in the ring, we fancy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+The guides, insolent and careless, stroll on in advance,
+leaving the most timid to their own devices. Presently,
+as we enter a perfect slough of despond, we see
+a man before us scraping the mire with a hoe vigorously,
+as we come in sight.</p>
+
+<p>"You should give this poor man something," says
+one of the guides. "He keeps the road in order." I
+wish you might have seen the <i>orderly</i> road!</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly we gain a point where the land spreads out
+into green knolls before us and on either side&mdash;a strip
+of almost level verdure, with, on one hand, peak on
+peak, rising till they touch heaven; upon the other, the
+Jung Frau, draped in snow. It seems so near, so very
+near,&mdash;though the land drops between us and it into a
+deep ravine, and the snow-clad peaks and needles are
+a mile away,&mdash;I almost thought I might guide my horse
+to the verge of the chasm, and reaching out, gather the
+snow in my hand. Across the summit, the clouds,
+white as itself, drifted constantly, hiding it completely
+at times. It had been a tiresome climb of two hours
+and a half, and we were glad to rest an hour before descending.
+As we turned the corner of the Jung Frau
+inn, having dismounted from our horses, we were met
+by our ubiquitous, stout friends of Lake Leman memory,
+to whom, I presume, we seemed equally omnipresent.
+<i>Table d'h&ocirc;te</i> was served here, one party following
+another, until the long table was full. Occasionally the
+noise of an avalanche, like the sound of distant thunder,
+aroused and startled us, and caused us to vacate every
+seat. But though the mountain appeared to be so near,
+these avalanches, which sweep with tremendous force,
+carrying tons of ice and snow, seen from this distance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+seemed like nothing more than tiny mountain streams
+let loose.</p>
+
+<p>From the inn, we mounted and went on half a mile,
+before reaching the summit and beginning the uncomfortable
+descent. We thought every bad place
+must be the worst, as the horses slid down the slippery
+stones, or descended the log steps with a peculiar jerky
+motion, suggesting imminent and unpleasant possibilities.
+But, after fording torrents swollen by the
+rain, crossing narrow, treacherous bridges, sliding down
+inclined planes, and whole flights of stairs, the guides
+informed us that we should reach a <i>dangerous place</i>
+presently!</p>
+
+<p>When, finally, we came to it, we were quite willing to
+dismount, and make our way down over the rocks for a
+mile, trusting to our own feet, and beset continually by
+women and children, who appeared most unexpectedly
+at every turn, to thrust little baskets of fruit or flowers
+into our hands. The very youngest child toddled after
+us with a withered field-flower, if nothing more. So
+early do they begin to learn the trade of a lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>We entered Grindelwald late in the afternoon. The
+shadows of night, which fall earlier in these valleys
+than elsewhere, were already gathering. The few, scattered
+cottages, walled in by the everlasting hills, with
+the snow-covered Wetterhorn in full view, and the
+glacier behind it, wore a cheerless and gloomy air in
+the quick-coming twilight. Train after train of tourists,
+upon horses and mules, or dragging weary feet,
+descended from among the mountains, to find carriages
+here and hasten away. Only these arrivals and departures
+gave a <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'momentry'">momentary</ins> life to the spot. What must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+it be when the summer sun and the last visitor have
+left it?</p>
+
+<p>We, too, sought out our waiting carriage, and rolled
+away in the summer twilight, down the beautiful road,
+wide and smooth enough to lead to more dreadful
+places than the pleasant valley of Interlaken, where,
+for a day at least, was our home.</p>
+
+<p>The next afternoon, instead of spending the Sabbath
+here, we decided to go on to Giessbach, on the
+Lake of Brienz, to visit the celebrated falls. We had
+rested comfortably in the hope of a quiet day in the
+little <i>ch&acirc;let</i>, where more permanent arrangements had
+been made for our disposal. But the enterprising
+member of the party, to whom we owed not a little, in
+a happy moment of leisure, gave herself to the study
+of the guide-book, the result of which was&mdash;Giessbach.
+We gathered our personal effects together, under the
+pressure of great excitement and limited time, reached
+the little steamer, fairly breathless, and then sat and
+waited half an hour for it to move. It was not, however,
+a tedious time; for there occurred an incident
+which engaged our attention.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you suppose they're going to do with
+that calf?" asked the boy of the party, who, like all
+boys, was of an inquiring turn of mind. "They've
+got him into the water, and are poking him with
+sticks."</p>
+
+<p>Upon this we all became immensely interested. A
+calf had fallen into the water, between the pier and the
+steamer; but the fruitless efforts made by everybody,
+interested or disinterested, were to rescue, not drown,
+the creature, as a bystander would have inferred. Suddenly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+as his own struggles carried him away from the
+wharf and he was about to sink, a white, delicate hand,
+bound with rings, and an arm daintily draped, were
+thrust out from one of the cabin windows, seized upon
+the head disappearing in a final <i>bob</i>, and held on until
+assistance came, when the poor animal, half dead with
+fright, was drawn from the water.</p>
+
+<p>At last the steamer moved away from the wharf, and
+in an hour or less the little pier at Giessbach received
+us. There is a tiny valley, one hotel, and a series of
+pretty cascades here. But all these are reached by a
+smooth road, winding back upon itself continually, and
+so steep that carriages do not ascend it. You must
+walk, or rather climb it, for twenty minutes, or accept
+the disagreeable alternative of being carried up by two
+men in a chair, resting on poles. The day was warm;
+our arms were weighed down with satchels, &amp;c.; but
+we pressed on, while, commenting upon our personal peculiarities
+in dress, gait, and general air, as they looked
+down upon us from the height we almost despaired of
+gaining, were the complacent, comfortable souls, who
+always reach these desirable places the day before any
+one else, and, in the freshest possible toilets, sit, like
+Mordecai, in the gates.</p>
+
+<p>It may have been droll to them; it was a most serious
+matter to us. It was Saturday afternoon, and each
+one felt and acted upon the realized necessity of
+outstripping his neighbor, in order to secure rooms.
+Finally the gentlemen hastened on, our ambition failing
+with our strength, and we were happy in finding comfortable
+quarters awaiting us when we had gained the
+hotel at last.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was the most delightful little nook imaginable
+when we were rested and refreshed. Until then it
+possessed no charms in our eyes. It is a little valley,
+high above the lake, towards which it opens, but shut
+in on three sides by precipitous hills. Down the face
+of one the cascades fall. Back against another the
+hotel is built, facing the lake; its <i>d&eacute;pendance</i>, and the
+inevitable shops for the sale of Swiss wood-carving and
+crystals, being ranged along the third side. The whole
+place is not larger than a flower-garden of moderate
+size.</p>
+
+<p>We were served at our meals by pretty, red-cheeked
+girls, in charming Swiss costumes; and when we had
+been out after dark to see the falls illuminated in different
+colors, while the rustic bridges, which span the
+cascades at various heights, were crossed by these
+picturesque figures, I felt as if we were all part of a
+travelling show, for whom this dear little level spot
+was the stage, and that a vast audience waited outside,
+where the walls of hills opened upon the lake, for the
+curtain to fall. It was like the Happy Valley of Rasselas,
+which we left with regret when the peaceful
+Sabbath was over.</p>
+
+<p>Across the lake, at Brienz, Monday morning, a carriage
+waited to bear us on, over the Brunig Pass, into
+the clouds and out again; then down, down, past village,
+and lake, and towering hills, resting again at
+Sarnen, then on to Lucerne, into which we swept, with
+tinkling bells and cracking whip, to find the city gay
+with streaming flags and flowery arches, erected for
+some singing <i>f&ecirc;te</i>, but which to us were all signs of a
+happy welcoming.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>BACK TO PARIS ALONE.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class='hang1'>Coming home.&mdash;The breaking up of the party.&mdash;We start
+for Paris alone.&mdash;Basle, and a search for a hotel.&mdash;The twilight
+ride.&mdash;The shopkeeper whose wits had gone "a
+wool-gathering."&mdash;"Two tickets for Paris."&mdash;What can be
+the matter now?&mdash;'Michel Angelo's Moses.&mdash;Paris at midnight.&mdash;The
+kind <i>commissionaire</i>.&mdash;The good French gentleman,
+and his fussy little wife.&mdash;A search for Miss H.'s.&mdash;"Come
+up, come up."&mdash;"Can women travel through Europe
+alone?"&mdash;A word about a woman's outfit.</div><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='cap'>TO dash through the town, along the quay where
+we had walked so many times beneath the trees
+or leaning over the low parapet fed the fishes, past
+the two-spired cathedral, the cloisters of which had
+become so familiar, to mount the hill and draw up before
+the door of the Bellevue again, welcomed by the
+innkeeper, and greeted with outstretched hands by
+"Charles," who had served our chocolate, while familiar
+faces met us at every window or upon the stairs, to pull
+up the shutters, throw wide open the windows, and
+drink in the glorious beauty of the scene before our eyes&mdash;all
+this was delightful, but fleeting, like all earthly
+joys, and mixed with pain; for here we were to say
+"good by."</div>
+
+<p>Our pleasant party was to break up. The friends<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+in whose care we had been so long, were off for
+Germany, and Mrs. K. and I must turn our faces
+towards home. We were to renew our early and
+brief experience in travelling alone. It had been as
+limited as our French, which consisted principally
+of "<i>Est-ce que vous avez?</i>" followed by a pantomimic
+display that would have done credit to a professional,
+and "<i>Quel est le prix?</i>" succeeded by the
+blankest amazement, since we could seldom, if ever,
+understand a reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you afraid?" queried our friends.</p>
+
+<p>"No; O, no." The state of our minds transcended fear.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hot day when we took our last view of the
+lake, as we rode down the hill from the hotel, past the
+cathedral, past the shaded promenade upon the quay,
+to the station; but we heeded neither the heat nor the
+landscape when we were once in the train and on the
+way. Our hearts were heavy with grief at parting
+from friends, our spirits weighed down by nameless
+fears. It was a wicked world, we suddenly remembered.
+Wolves in sheep's clothing doubtless awaited
+us at every turn. Roaring lions guarded every station.
+We clutched our travelling-bags, umbrellas, and wraps,
+with a grasp only attained by grim fate or lone women.
+Gradually, however, as the uneventful hours wore
+away, we forgot that in eternal vigilance lay our safety,
+and relaxed our hold.</p>
+
+<p>We had left Lucerne at noon; at five o'clock we
+reached Basle. Here we were to spend the night at
+the hotel <i>Les Trois Rois</i>. Every step of the way to
+Paris had been made plain to us by our kind friends.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see; the hotel is close by the station?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+queried Mrs. K., when we had left our trunks, as our
+friends had advised, and followed the crowd to the
+sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I replied with assurance, "close by, they
+said; I am sure."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly we turned away from the long line of
+hotel omnibuses backed up against the curb-stone, to
+the fine hotels on each side of the straight avenue, extending
+as far as the eye could see. Alas! among their
+blazing names was no "<i>Trois Rois</i>." We read them
+over and over again. We even tried to pronounce
+them. Not a king was there, to say nothing of <i>three</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In a kind of bewilderment we strayed down the
+avenue. Might not some one of the fair dwellings
+gleaming out from the shrubbery prove the house we
+sought? There was a rattle and clatter behind us; a
+passing omnibus. Another, and still another followed.
+Serene faces beamed out upon our perplexity. A cloud
+of dust enveloped us as the last rolled cheerfully by,
+upon the end of which we read, with staring eyes,
+"<i>Les Trois Rois</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" gasped Mrs. K.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure enough," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, suppose we take it?" said she, slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we do," I assented, with equal deliberation.
+But by this time the little red omnibus was a
+speck in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>"At least we can follow it." And we quickened our
+steps, when, with almost human perversity, it turned a
+distant corner, and vanished from sight.</p>
+
+<p>Fixing our eyes steadily upon the point of disappearance,
+we hastened on, and on, and on! I have a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+faint recollection of green trees, of stately houses, of
+an immense fountain swaying its white arms in the
+distance&mdash;mirage-like, for we never approached it;
+of the sun pouring its fierce rays upon us as we toiled
+on, with our wraps and satchels turning to lead in our
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>We reached the corner at last. There was no omnibus;
+no hotel in sight; only the meeting of half a
+dozen narrow, crooked streets, crowded with carriages,
+and alive with humanity. All settled purpose left us
+then; our wits, never very firmly attached, followed.
+We became completely demoralized.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose you inquire," suggested Mrs. K., after a
+period of inaction, during which we were pushed, and
+jostled, and trampled under foot by the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>If I possessed one capability above another, it was
+that of asking questions, especially in a strange language.
+Upon this corner where we were standing,
+rose an imposing building, in the open doorway of
+which stood a portly gentleman, with a countenance
+like the setting sun, in glow and warmth. A heavy
+mane flowed over his shoulders. Evidently this was
+the first of the roaring lions! Taking our lives in our
+hands, we approached him.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you speak English?" I ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Nein</i>," was his reply, with a shrug of the leonine
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>I drew a long breath and began again.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Parlez-vous Fran&ccedil;ais?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>His reply to this was as singular as unprecedented.
+He turned his back and disappeared up the wide stairs
+in the rear.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"This <i>may</i> be foreign politeness," I was beginning,
+doubtfully, when he reappeared, accompanied by an
+intensified counterpart of himself. The setting sun in
+the face of this man gave promise of a scorching day.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Parlez-vous Fran&ccedil;ais, monsieur?</i>" I began again,
+when we had bowed and "<i>bon-jour</i>"-ed for some time.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Oui, oui, mademoiselle.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Here was an unexpected dilemma. A terrible pause
+ensued. Then, with an effort which in some minds
+would have produced a poem at least, I attempted to
+make known the object of our quest. I cannot begin
+to tell of the facial contortions which accompanied this
+sentence, nor of the ineffable peace which followed its
+conclusion. It made no manner of difference that his
+reply was a jargon of unintelligible sounds. Virtue is
+its own reward. One sentence alone I caught, as the
+indistinguishable tones flew by. We were to take the
+first street, and then turn to the right.</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?" asked Mrs. K., when we had
+<i>merci</i>-d ourselves out of their radiant presences.</p>
+
+<p>I explained the direction we were to follow.</p>
+
+<p>"Horrible countenance he had," she remarked, as
+we pursued our way.</p>
+
+<p>"O, dreadful," I assented.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody knows where he may send us," she continued.</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough! In our alarm we stopped short in the
+street, and stared at each other with horrified countenances.</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard&mdash;" I began.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and so have I," she went on, shaking her
+head, and expressing by that gesture most fearful possibilities.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A bright thought seized me. "He told us to turn
+to the <i>right;</i> we will turn to the <i>left!</i>" And with
+that happy, womanly instinct, said to transcend all
+judgment, <i>we did</i>. Strange as it may appear, though
+we went on for a long half hour, no "<i>Trois Rois</i>"
+gladdened our eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Mrs. K. struck an attitude. "A fine appearance
+we shall present," said she; "two lone women,
+dusty and heated, our arms full of baggage, straggling
+up to a hotel two mortal hours after the arrival of the
+train. We'll take a carriage."</p>
+
+<p>To me this inglorious advent was so distant in prospect
+that it held no terrors, nothing of mortification
+even. "<i>Les Trois Rois</i>" had become a myth, an idea
+towards which we vainly struggled.</p>
+
+<p>"If it were only across the street," she went on,
+rising to the occasion and warming with the subject,
+"we would go in a carriage."</p>
+
+<p>One approached at that moment. We motioned to
+it <i>&agrave; la Mandarin</i>, with our heads, our hands and arms
+being full. The driver raised his whip and pointed
+solemnly into the distance. We turned to gaze, seeing
+nothing but the heavens in that direction. When
+we looked back, he was gone. We should not like to
+affirm&mdash;we hardly dare suggest&mdash;we are sure of
+nothing but that he vanished from before our eyes.</p>
+
+<p>A second appeared in the distance. We began in
+time. We pawed the air wildly with our umbrellas.
+The very satchels and wraps upon our arms nodded
+and beckoned. In serene unconsciousness the driver
+held to his course.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" I exclaimed, indignantly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I should think so," added Mrs. K., with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything peculiar, anything unusual in our
+personal appearance?" I asked, glancing down upon
+our dusty appointments. As we concentrated our
+energies and belongings for one final effort, a benignant
+countenance smiled out upon us from above a <i>cipher</i>.
+We were storming a private carriage!</p>
+
+<p>The third attempt was more successful. The driver
+paused. We requested him, in English, to take us to
+"The Three Kings." He only stared and shook his
+head. We tried him with "<i>Les Trois Rois</i>." He
+seemed still more mystified.</p>
+
+<p>"What can be done with people who do not understand
+their own language!" I exclaimed in despair.</p>
+
+<p>We tried it again with our purest Parisian accent.
+An inkling of our meaning pierced his dull understanding.
+He rolled heavily down from his seat, and opened
+the door with the usual "<i>Oui, oui</i>." We entered and
+were driven away.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think he understood you?" queried Mrs. K.</p>
+
+<p>"No-o."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, where do you suppose he will take us?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, and I don't much care," I responded,
+in desperation.</p>
+
+<p>We settled back upon the cushions. The peace that
+follows resignation possessed our souls. O, the luxury
+of that jolting, rattling ride, as we wound in and out
+among the tortuous streets! A full half hour passed
+before the dusky old hotel darkened above us, surmounted
+by "The Three Kings" arrayed in Eastern
+magnificence, and wearing gilded crowns upon their
+heads.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Fate had been propitious. This was our destination,
+without doubt, though we had made a grand mistake
+as to its location. We descended at the entrance with
+the air, I trust, of being equal to the occasion. We
+calmly surveyed the assembled porters, who hastened
+to seize our satchels and wraps. We demanded a room,
+and inquired the hour of <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i>, as though we
+had done the same thing a thousand times before.
+Mrs. K. was right; there was a moral support in that
+blessed carriage.</p>
+
+<p><i>Table d'h&ocirc;te</i> over, we strayed into a pretty <i>salon</i>
+opening from the <i>salle &agrave; manger</i>. Both were crowded&mdash;over
+doors and windows, and within cabinets filling
+every niche and corner&mdash;with quaint specimens of
+pottery&mdash;pitchers, vases, and jars, ancient enough
+in appearance to have graced the domestic establishment
+of the original "Three Kings." The glass doors
+thrown back enticed us upon a long, low balcony, almost
+swept by the rushing river below&mdash;the beautiful
+Rhine hastening on to its hills and vineyards. We
+leaned over, smitten with sudden homesickness, and
+sent a message back to Rolandseck of happy memory.</p>
+
+<p>With the faint shadows of coming twilight we
+wandered out into the square before the hotel. A line
+of <i>voitures</i> extended down one side, every one of
+which was quickened into life at our approach. We
+paused, with foot upon the step of the first, for the
+<i>carte</i> always proffered, upon which is the number of
+the driver and the established rate of fares. He only
+touched his shiny hat and prepared to gather up his
+reins.</p>
+
+<p>"O, dear!" we said; "this will never do; we must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+not go." And we stepped down. The porters upon the
+hotel steps began to cast inquiring glances. One or two
+stray passers added their mite of curiosity, when the
+knight-errant, who always breaks a lance for distressed
+womanhood, appeared upon the scene. We recognized
+him at once, though his armor was only a suit of gray
+tweed, and he wore a fashionable round-topped hat for
+a casque.</p>
+
+<p>Almost before we knew it, we were seated in the
+carriage, the <i>carte</i> in our hands, and were slowly crawling
+out of the square&mdash;for a subdued snail-pace is
+the highest point of speed attained by these public
+vehicles.</p>
+
+<p>The memory of Basle is as shadowy, dim, delightful,
+as was that twilight ride. Where we were going, we
+neither knew nor cared; nor, later, where we had been.
+We wound in and out the close streets of the old part
+of the city, full of a busy life so far removed from our
+own, that it seemed a show, a picture; below the
+surface we could not penetrate. We rolled along wide
+avenues where the houses on either side were white as
+the dust under the wheels. Once in a quiet square,
+we paused before an old <i>H&ocirc;tel de Ville</i>, frescoed in
+warm, rich colors. Again upon the outskirts of the
+city, before a monument; but whether it had been
+erected to hero or saint I cannot now recall. And
+somewhere, when the dusk was deepening, we found
+an old church, gray as the shadows enveloping it, with
+a horseman, spear in hand, cut in <i>bas relief</i> upon one
+side. What dragon he made tilt against in the darkness
+we never knew.</p>
+
+<p>Even our driver seemed to warm beneath the influences<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+which subdued and dissipated our cares. He
+nodded gently and complacently to acquaintances,
+eliciting greetings in return, in which we, in a measure,
+shared. He hummed a guttural, though cheerful song,
+which found an echo in our hearts. He stood up in
+his place to point the way to misguided strangers, in
+whose perplexities we could so well sympathize. And
+once, having laid down the reins, and paused in our
+slow advance, he held a long and seemingly enjoyable
+conversation with a passing friend. To all this we
+made no manner of objection, rather we entered into
+the spirit of the hour, and were filled with a complacency
+which was hastily banished upon our return to
+the hotel, where, as we put into the hand of our benevolent
+driver his due, and the generous <i>pour boire</i> which
+gave always such a twinge to our temperance principles,
+he demanded more.</p>
+
+<p>"He claims," said the porter, who was assisting our
+descent, "that he has been driving with the carriage
+lamps lighted. There is an extra charge for that."</p>
+
+<p>"But he left his seat to light them this moment,
+just before we turned into the square," we replied,
+indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>The porter shrugged his shoulders. That is the end
+of an argument. There is never anything more to be
+said. We submitted at once, though our faith in
+benevolent humanity went to the winds.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhat dispirited, we climbed the stairs to our
+room. "One day more," we said, "and our troubles
+will be at an end." But, alas! one day was as a thousand
+years!</p>
+
+<p>It was to be an all-day's ride to Paris, from nine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+o'clock in the morning until half past nine or ten at
+night. So, while waiting for breakfast, we hastened
+out into the town, in search of a bookstore, and something
+to while away the dull hours before us.</p>
+
+<p>A young man, of preternaturally serious countenance,
+was removing the shutters as we entered a
+musty little shop. We turned over the Tauchnitz's
+editions of English novels until we had made a choice,
+the value of our purchases amounting to four or five
+francs, and gave him a napoleon. With profuse
+apologies he left us to get it changed. Returning
+presently, he threw the silver into a drawer, and handed
+the books to us, with a "<i>Merci</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," we said; "but&mdash;" Arithmetic had never
+been my strength; still something was clearly wrong
+here.</p>
+
+<p>"The change," said Mrs. K. "He has given us no
+change." Sure enough; but still he continued to bow
+and thank us, evidently expecting us to go.</p>
+
+<p>We tried to explain; eliciting only one of the
+blank stares that usually followed our attempts at
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"The man must be an idiot," Mrs. K. said, gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"He certainly has an imbecile expression of countenance,"
+I assented. He stood still, bowing at intervals,
+while we calmly weighed and balanced his wits before
+his eyes. We tried signs; having through much
+practice developed a system to which the deaf and
+dumb alphabet is as nothing. We attempted to convince
+him that a part of the money was ours.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, and assured us, in a similar way, that the
+books belonged to us, the money to him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was so much justice in this, that we should
+doubtless have assented, had not his own wits finally
+asserted themselves. Blushing like a bashful boy, he
+suddenly exclaimed, counted out the change, and
+poured it into our hands with so many apologies, that
+we were glad to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>It was a discouraging beginning for the new day.
+Still we would not despair. We had assured our anxious
+friends that we were quite able to take care of
+ourselves. We would triumphantly prove our own
+words. Breakfast over, and our bill settled without
+mishap or misunderstanding, we started for the station
+in the hotel omnibus, in company with a stout, genial
+Frenchman, who spoke a little English, and his fussy
+little wife. When we entered the station, the line
+formed before the ticket-window was already formidable.
+It lacked fifteen minutes of the hour when the
+train would start, and our baggage was&mdash;where? We
+seized a <i>commissionaire</i>, slipped a piece of money into
+his hand in a very bungling, shamefaced way, and,
+presto! in a moment our trunks appeared among the
+other baggage, though we had looked in vain for them
+before. Then, with a sensation of self-consciousness
+approaching guilt, I stepped to the foot of the line
+before the ticket-window.</p>
+
+<p>"Two tickets for Paris," I gasped, finding myself,
+after a time, brought face to face with the sharp-eyed
+official. "What is the price?" But before I could
+utter the words, the reply rattled through my head
+like a discharge of grape-shot. Every finger resolved
+itself into ten, as I essayed to open my purse and count
+out the gold pieces. What should I do! I had not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+enough into ten francs; it might as well have been ten
+thousand! Mrs. K. was waiting at a little distance;
+but the place once lost in the line could not be regained,
+and there was our baggage yet to be weighed,
+and the hands of the clock frightfully near the hour of
+departure. There was an impatient stamping of feet
+behind me, as I stood for a moment dizzy, bewildered,
+with an angry buzz of voices ringing with the din and
+roar in my ears. Then I rushed down the room to
+Mrs. K., and explained as hastily as possible. She
+filled my purse, and I flew back to find the line pushed
+forward and my place gone. One glance at the hands
+of the clock, at the discouraging line of ticket-seekers
+yet to be served,&mdash;how could I go to the foot again!
+Then I walked straight to the window with the courage
+of despair. A low growl ran down the line, the
+<i>gendarme</i> on guard stepped forward, expostulating
+excitedly; but, blessings on the man at the head of
+the line, who pushed the others back, and gave me a
+place, and even upon the grim official behind the
+window, who smiled encouragement, and gave me
+the tickets, while the <i>gendarme</i> stormed. I stepped
+out again, conscious only of the wish&mdash;strong as a
+prayer&mdash;that we were safe again in Lucerne, or&mdash;some
+other place of peaceful rest.</p>
+
+<p>Wedged in among the crowd, we saw one trunk
+after another weighed and removed, while ours remained
+untouched. I pulled the sleeve of a porter.
+My hand held my purse. The suggestion was enough.
+In a moment our trunks were weighed, and the little
+paper ticket corresponding to our "check" safe in our
+possession. I turned, conscientiously, to reward the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+porter; but we were jostled by a score of elbows, each
+encased in the sleeve of a blue blouse. Which was
+the one I sought? I could not tell. Each answered
+my glance of puzzled inquiry with one of expectation.
+Diving to the depths of my purse, I found it to contain
+one solitary centime&mdash;nothing more. I slipped it into
+the hand nearest, and from the start of surprise and
+delight was immediately convinced that it was the
+wrong man. However, it did not matter. There was
+no time to explain. The doors opening upon the platform,
+which remain locked until the last moment,
+were thrown open, and we hurried away, found places
+upon the train, and sank back upon the cushions exhausted,
+but happy. For ten hours at least, nothing
+could happen to us. The guard passed the window,
+examining the tickets, and slamming the doors, making
+our safety doubly sure. A moment more, and with a
+noiseless motion we were off. Hardly had the train
+started before it stopped again. One after another
+our companions left us&mdash;for we were not alone in the
+compartment. "Strange," we said, yet too thoroughly
+exhausted to be curious. It was still more strange
+when, after a short time, they each and all returned.
+They began to whisper among themselves, pointing to
+us. "What <i>can</i> be the matter <i>now?</i>" we queried,
+suddenly mindful that life is a warfare, and roused to
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>Our fellow-travellers proceeded to enlighten us in
+chorus, and in the confusion of the outburst, we caught&mdash;by
+inspiration&mdash;at their meaning. We had crossed
+the frontier into France, and the baggage was examined
+here. We hastened out and into the station.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+All the trunks but our own had been checked. With
+his hand upon one of these, an official demanded the
+key, upon our appearance. Remembering an episode in
+its packing, we demurred, and proffered the key of
+another. Already vexed by the delay, his suspicions
+were roused now. He demanded the key of the first,
+which we gave up with wicked delight. The by-standers
+drew near. Indeed, a crowd was the embarrassing
+accompaniment to all our unfortunate experiences.
+The official turned the key with the air of doing his
+duty if he perished in the attempt, when the lid flew
+open, and a hoop-skirt, compressed to the final degree,
+sprang up into his startled face, like a Jack-in-the-box.
+The spectators laughed&mdash;French though they were&mdash;as,
+very red in the face, he vainly tried to replace it,
+entirely forgetting to search for contraband articles.</p>
+
+<p>No other incident disturbed the quiet of that long
+day's ride to Paris. At some queer little station we
+descended to lunch, and returned to our places, laden,
+like the spies of Eschol, with luscious grapes. Our
+fellow-travellers dropped out along the way, only, however,
+to be replaced by others. We had not succeeded
+in securing places in the compartment reserved for
+ladies alone; but the French gentlemen who were our
+companions proved most courteous in their polite indifference
+to our movements. An old gentleman among
+these, elicited our outspoken admiration for his grand
+head. We were secure in our native language, we
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Lovely face!" we exclaimed, unblushingly. "What
+a head for a sculptor! Quite like Michel Angelo's
+Moses, I declare."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before the day was over, "Michel Angelo's Moses"
+addressed us in excellent English.</p>
+
+<p>When the darkness gathered, when the night settled
+down, something of its gloom oppressed us. Once
+safely housed in Paris, we should be at rest; but there
+were still difficulties to be overcome. Our friends had
+telegraphed to Miss H. that we should arrive by this
+train; but the number of her house we did not know,
+nor did they. We were only sure that her apartments
+were over the <i>Magasin au Printemps</i>. Still that
+was tolerably exact; we would not be uneasy. At ten
+o'clock at night we stepped down from the train into
+a confusion of tongues and elbows which I cannot
+describe, and followed the crowd into the baggage-room.
+I say <i>followed</i>&mdash;we were literally lifted from
+our feet and borne along. There was no baggage in
+sight. We waited until an hour seemed to have
+passed, and still no trunks appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we leave them, and send a porter from
+the house in the morning to find them;" and acting
+upon this, we struggled out of the station into the
+great paved square at one side. The night was dark;
+but the gas-lights dimly lighted up a line of carriages at
+the farther side, towards which we hastened, and had
+seated ourselves in one, when a <i>commissionaire</i> came
+running across the square, and putting his head in at
+the carriage window, asked if we had any baggage.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," we replied; but the rattling words that followed
+brought only confusion to us. Our minds, already
+overtaxed, gave way at once. It is pleasant to recall
+the patience and good-nature of that official. It is
+pleasant, when old things have so entirely passed away,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+to remember the Paris of 1869 as, at least, a city into
+which women might come at midnight, alone, unprotected,
+and be not only free from insult and imposition,
+but actually cared for, and sent to their rightful
+destination, in spite of their own ignorance and incompetence.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay here," said our friend in uniform; and he disappeared,
+to return in a moment with the stout French
+gentleman who had been our companion in the hotel
+omnibus at Basle. We met with mutual surprise, and
+pleasure on our side at least.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Do</i> any one look for your baggage?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No," we replied. "We thought we might leave it."</p>
+
+<p>"You must go," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>commissionaire</i> took possession of our check
+and the driver's <i>carte</i>, and I followed the two back to
+the station, leaving Mrs. K. to guard our satchels, &amp;c.,
+in the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait one leetle moment," said the kind French
+gentleman; "I bring madame." And in a moment he
+dragged the fussy little woman from the crowd, handing
+her over with the triumphant air of having now
+settled all difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame speak ze Eengleesh fine," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Looking down from an immeasurable height, the little
+madam condescended to remark that their servant was
+looking for their baggage.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" I responded. "Then we are not permitted
+to leave our trunks."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure I don't know," she replied, looking so
+greatly bored, not to say exhausted, that I did not
+think it best to press the matter. "Our servant is
+attending to it," she repeated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her husband's face fairly glowed with satisfaction
+while this side conversation was being carried on.
+Evidently he believed the whole French baggage system
+to have been elucidated for my benefit. I thanked
+him heartily, as we exchanged cordial adieus. Even
+the fussy little woman gathered, for the moment, sufficient
+life to attempt to bow; which, alas! never got
+beyond a stare. The <i>commissionaire</i> seized upon a
+blue-bloused porter, and gave me to him with the
+check, the <i>carte</i>, and a few sharply-spoken directions.
+Clinging to that blue sleeve, I was borne through the
+swaying, surging mass of humanity, into the baggage-room&mdash;how,
+I never knew. Our trunks were
+identified, lifted, not thrown, by my porter upon a
+hand-truck, which dragged for itself and us an opening
+in the crowd. Once out upon the platform, the porter
+pushed doggedly on into the darkness, though I had
+left Mrs. K. and the carriage in the square at one side.
+I expostulated. He held persistently to his course. I
+gave one thought to poor Mrs. K., resigned to what
+fate I knew not, and then, woman-like, followed my
+trunks.</p>
+
+<p>It was all explained, when, dimly outlined in the
+darkness before the station, we espied a sea of shiny
+hats and shadowy cabs; and when, after long shouting
+of the number of our own, by the porter and everybody else,
+it finally crawled up to the steps where we
+were standing, Mrs. K.'s anxious face looking out of
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>"I began to think you were lost," she said. "You
+can fancy my feelings when the driver gathered up
+the reins and drove out of that square."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We made a thank-offering upon the palm of every
+grimy hand, suddenly outstretched; then the driver
+paused, whip in the air, for the address of our destination.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Magasin au Printemps</i>, Boulevard Haussman."
+He stared, as everybody had, and did, along the way.
+If they only wouldn't! We repeated it. He conferred,
+in a low tone, with the man on the next box,
+who got down from his place, and came around to our
+window to look at us. One or two lounging porters
+joined him. The <i>Magasin au Printemps</i> is a large
+dry and fancy goods establishment, which had been
+closed, of course, for hours, since it was now nearly
+midnight. It was as though we had reached New
+York late at night, and insisted upon being driven to
+<i>Stewart's</i>. The little crowd stared at us solemnly, in
+a kind of pitiful curiosity, I fancied. I think, by this
+time, our countenances may have expressed incipient
+idiocy. We attempted to explain that Miss H.'s
+apartments were over the <i>Magasin</i>, and the driver
+mounted to his seat, though, I am obliged to confess,
+with an ominous shake of his head.</p>
+
+<p>As we rolled out into the wide boulevards our spirits
+rose. The sidewalks were crowded with promenaders,
+the streets with carriages. The light of a
+glorious day seemed to have burst upon our dazzled
+eyes. Paris, gay, beautiful Paris, which never sleeps,
+was out, disporting herself.</p>
+
+<p>"We will not be anxious," we said; nor were we in
+the least. "Even if we cannot find Miss H.'s, some
+hotel will take us in. Or, failing in that, we can drive
+about until morning."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A thought of our respective and respectable families
+did cross our minds with this lawless suggestion. In
+happy unconsciousness, they believed us still safe with
+our friends.</p>
+
+<p>We crawled up the Boulevard Haussman. There
+were the closed doors and shutters of the <i>Magasin au
+Printemps</i>. Two or three other doors met our gaze.
+The driver paused before one. We descended, and
+pulled the bell. You must know there are no doorsteps,
+in Paris, leading to front doors, as with us. The
+first floor is, almost without exception, given up to
+shops; and dwellings, unless pretentious enough to
+be houses enclosing a court-yard and entered from
+the street by passing through great gates, are simply
+apartments in the two, three, and four stories above
+these shops.</p>
+
+<p>Some invisible mechanism swung back the great
+double doors as we pulled the bell, disclosing a pretty,
+paved court-yard, with a fountain in the centre, surrounded
+by pots of flowers. A glass door at one side,
+revealed wide marble stairs, down which a charming
+little portress was tripping.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this Miss H.'s?" we asked in English. She
+only shook her head. We paraded our French. She
+seemed lost in thought for a moment, then, with a
+"<i>Oui, oui</i>," ran past us to the carriage, and gave some
+directions to the driver, emphasizing her words with a
+pair of plump little hands. Then, with a "<i>bon nuit</i>,"
+she disappeared, and the great doors closed again.
+Evidently we were being taken care of, we thought,
+as we settled back again in the carriage. We stopped
+before another door, already open, and disclosing a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+flight of wide, stone stairs, ascending almost from the
+sidewalk. Immediately upon pulling the bell&mdash;as
+though the wire had been attached to it&mdash;a long, loose-jointed,
+grotesque, yet horrible figure appeared at the
+head of the stairs, half-stooping to bring himself within
+the range of my vision, swinging his arms like a Dutch
+windmill, and grinning in a way which seemed to open
+his whole head.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 315px;">
+<img src="images/illus-6.png" width="315" height="500" alt="&quot;Together we stared at him with rigid and severe countenances.&quot; Page 240." title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Together we stared at him with rigid and severe countenances.&quot; <a href="#Page_240">Page 240</a>.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Is&mdash;is this Miss H.'s?" I ventured from the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p>He only beckoned still more wildly for me to ascend.
+I drew back. Good Heavens! What was the matter
+with him? And still, while I stared fascinated, yet
+horror-stricken, he continued, without intermission,
+these speechless contortions and evolutions. Although
+he uttered not a sound, he seemed to say with every
+cracking joint, "Come up, come up," while he scooped
+the air with his bony hands.</p>
+
+<p>I remembered that it was midnight; that we were
+alone, and in wicked Paris; that we had been religiously
+brought up; that Mrs. K.'s husband was the
+superintendent of a large and flourishing Sunday
+school; that my father was a minister of the gospel.
+I planted my feet firmly upon the sidewalk. I folded
+my arms rigidly. I shook my head virtuously. Come
+up? Chains should not drag me. Then I turned to
+the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. K., do come and see this man."</p>
+
+<p>She came. Together we stared at him with rigid
+and severe countenances.</p>
+
+<p>"Dreadful!" said I, remembering the Sunday
+school.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Awful!" said she, recalling the pious ancestors.
+And again we shook our heads at his blandishments to
+the point of dislocation. The driver, who had been
+all this time tipped back against a tree, began to show
+symptoms of impatience. Something must be done.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose you ask for some one who can speak English,"
+suggested Mrs. K.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure enough." And I did. With one last, terrible
+grimace the ogre's heels disappeared up the second
+flight of stairs.</p>
+
+<p>There came down in a moment a thoroughly respectable
+appearing porter, who informed us, in English,
+that we were expected, our telegram having been received;
+though, through the ambiguity of its address,
+it had been sent first to a house below. The people
+there had promised to forward us, however, in case we
+followed the telegram. This accounted for the movements
+of the little portress.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>ogre</i> proved to be a most good-natured <i>concierge</i>,
+who had been instructed to keep the door open in
+anticipation of our arrival.</p>
+
+<p>So our fears had been but feathers, after all, blown
+away by a breath; our troubles only a dream, to be
+laughed over in the awakening.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Here the story of our journeying may end. The
+remaining distance, through the kindness of friends,
+new and old, was accomplished without difficulty or
+annoyance. We reached our own homes in due time,
+and like the princess in the fairy tales, "lived happily
+forever afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>A few practical words suggest themselves here which
+would pass unnoticed in a preface&mdash;where, perhaps,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+they belong. First, in regard to the question often
+asked, "Can women travel alone through Europe?"
+Recalling our own experience,&mdash;too brief to serve as
+a criterion,&mdash;I should still say, "<i>Yes</i>." We met, frequently,
+parties of ladies who had made the whole
+grand tour alone. In Switzerland we found English
+women, constantly, without escort. The care of choosing
+routes, of looking after baggage and buying tickets,
+of managing the sometimes complicated affairs
+attendant upon sight-seeing, with the vexations and
+impositions met with and suffered on every hand, no
+woman would voluntarily accept without great compensation,
+I am sure. But if she prefers even these
+cares to seeing nothing of the world, they can be
+borne, and the annoyances, to a great extent overcome,
+through patience and growing experience.</p>
+
+<p>Then, if you start alone, or without being consigned
+to friends upon the other side,&mdash;which no <i>young</i> woman
+would think of doing,&mdash;you are almost sure to
+join, at different times, other parties, whose way is your
+own; and far preferable this is to making up a large
+company before leaving home&mdash;the members of which
+usually disagree before reaching the continent, and
+often part in mutual disgust. "There is nothing like
+travelling to bring out a person's real nature," say
+some. But this is untrue. Travelling develops,
+rather than reveals, I think, and under conditions
+favorable only to the worse side of one's nature. You
+are bewildered by the multitude of strange sights and
+ways; the very foundation of usages is broken up;
+you are putting forth physical exertions that would
+seem superhuman at home, and are mentally racked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>
+until utterly exhausted,&mdash;for there is nothing so exhausting
+as continued sight-seeing,&mdash;and at this point
+people say they begin "to find each other out."</p>
+
+<p>An occasional period of rest&mdash;not staying within
+doors to study up the guide-books, but entire cessation
+from seeing, hearing, or doing&mdash;and a scrap from the
+mantle of charity, will save many a threatened friendship
+at these times. We learned to know our strength&mdash;how
+weak it was; and to await in some delightful
+spot, chosen for the purpose, returning energy, courage,
+and <i>interest;</i> for even that would be banished at times
+by utter weariness and exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>In former times, Americans fitted themselves out for
+Europe as though bound to a desert island. Wider
+intelligence and experience have opened their eyes and
+reformed their judgment; still, a word upon this subject
+will not be unwelcome, I am sure, to girls especially,
+who contemplate a trip over the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, your steamer outfit is a distinct
+affair. You are allowed to take any baggage you wish
+for into your state-room; but, if wise, you will not fill
+the narrow space, nor encumber yourself with anything
+larger than a lady's <i>hat box</i>, which may offer a
+tolerable seat to the stewardess, or visitors of condolence,
+in case seasickness confines you to berth or sofa.
+Even preferable to this is a flat, English portmanteau,
+which can be slipped under the lower berth. If you
+sail for Liverpool, you can leave this at your hotel there
+in charge of the head waiter until you return, and thus
+avoid the expense and care of useless baggage.</p>
+
+<p>Its contents your own good sense will in a measure
+suggest. Let me add&mdash;a double gown or woollen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+wrapper, in which you may sleep, flannels (even though
+you cross the ocean in summer), merino stockings,
+warm gloves or mittens, as pretty a hood as you please,
+only be sure that it covers the back of your head,
+since you will ignore all cunning craft of hair dressing,
+for a few days at least, and even after you are
+well enough to appear at the table, perhaps. Bear in
+mind that the Northern Atlantic is a cold place, and
+horribly open to the wind <i>at all seasons of the year;</i>
+that you will live on the deck when not in your berth
+or at your meals, and that the deck of an ocean
+steamer partakes of the nature of a whirlwind. Fur
+is by no means out of place, and skirts should be sufficiently
+heavy to defy the gales, which convert everything
+into a sail. Take as many wraps as you choose&mdash;and
+then you will wish you had one more. A large
+shawl, or, better, a carriage-robe, is indispensable, as
+you will very likely lie rolled up like a cocoon much
+of the time. A low sea-chair, or common camp-chair,
+is useful to older people; but almost any girl will prefer
+a seat upon the deck itself; there are comfortable
+crannies into which no chair can be wedged.</p>
+
+<p>By all means avoid elaborate fastenings to garments.
+A multiplicity of unmanageable "hooks and eyes" is
+untold torment at sea; and let these garments be few,
+but warm. You will appreciate the wisdom of this
+suggestion, when you have accomplished the herculean
+task of making your first state-room toilet.</p>
+
+<p>If you are really going abroad for a season of <i>travel</i>,
+take almost nothing. You can never know what you
+will need until the necessity arises. If you anticipate,
+you misjudge. Your American outfit will render you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+an oddity in England. But do not change there, or
+you will be still more singular in Paris. It is as well
+to start with but one dress besides the one you wear
+on the steamer&mdash;anything you chance to have; a
+black alpaca, or half-worn black silk, is very serviceable.
+When you reach Paris, circumstances and the
+season will govern your purchases; and this same
+dress will be almost a necessity for constant railway
+journeys, rainy-day sight-seeing, and mule-riding in
+Switzerland. A little care and brushing, fresh linen,
+and a pretty French tie, will make it presentable&mdash;if
+not more&mdash;at any hotel dinner table.</p>
+
+<p>A warm shawl or wrap of some kind you will need
+for evenings,&mdash;even though you travel in summer,&mdash;for
+visiting the cathedrals, which are chill as a tomb;
+and for weeks together among the mountains you will
+never throw it aside. But if you can take but one,
+<i>don't</i> provide yourself with a <i>water-proof</i>. They are
+too undeniably ugly, and not sufficiently warm for constant
+wear. If it rains slightly, the umbrella, which
+you will buy from force of necessity and example in
+England, will protect you; if in torrents, you will ride.
+Indeed, you will always ride, time is so precious, cab-hire
+so cheap, and distances so great in most foreign
+cities.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, let me beg of you to provide yourself with
+an abundant supply of patience and good-nature.
+Without these, no outfit is complete. Try to laugh at
+annoyances. Smile, at least. And do not anticipate
+difficulties. Above all, enjoy yourself, and then everybody
+you meet will enjoy you. And so good by, and
+"God bless us every one."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p>
+<h2>LEE AND SHEPARD'S HANDBOOKS.</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /><br />
+"JUST AS THE TWIG IS BENT, THE TREE'S INCLINED."</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>LESSONS ON MANNERS.</b> For home and school use. A
+Manual by <span class="smcap">Edith E. Wiggin</span>. Cloth, 50 cents; school edition,
+boards, 30 cents net.</div>
+
+<p>This little book is being rapidly introduced into schools as a text-book.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />SHOWS WHY THE WINDS BLOW.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>WHIRLWINDS, CYCLONES, AND TORNADOES.</b> By
+Prof. <span class="smcap">W. M. Davis</span> of Harvard University. Illustrated. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>The cyclones of our great West, the whirlwinds of the desert, every
+thing in the shape of storms, scientifically and popularly treated.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />"THIS VOLUME IS SUBLIME POETRY"</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>THE STARS AND THE EARTH;</b> or, Thoughts upon
+Space, Time, and Eternity. With an Introduction by
+<span class="smcap">Thomas Hill</span>, D.D., LL.D., late President of Harvard University.
+Cloth. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"It cannot but be valuable to the student of science as well as to the
+professors of religion, and tends to bring them closer together, and
+reconcile them."&mdash;<i>Potter's Monthly.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DRINKING.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>HANDBOOK OF WATER ANALYSIS.</b> By Dr. <span class="smcap">George
+L. Austin.</span> Cloth. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"It condenses into fifty pages what one would have to wander through
+a small chemical library to find. We commend the book as worthy of a
+wide circulation."&mdash;<i>Independent.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />EVERY LADY HER OWN FLORIST.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>THE PARLOR GARDENER.</b> A Treatise on the House-Culture
+of Ornamental Plants. Translated from the French, and adapted
+to American use. By <span class="smcap">Cornelia J. Randolph</span>. With eleven
+illustrative cuts. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>It contains minute directions for the "mantel-piece garden," the
+"<i>&eacute;tag&egrave;re</i>-garden," the "flower-stand garden," the "portable green-house,"
+the "house-aquarium," the garden upon the balcony, the terrace,
+and the double window, besides describing many curious and
+interesting experiments in grafting.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />"HELLO, CENTRAL!"</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>THE TELEPHONE.</b> An Account of the Phenomena of Electricity,
+Magnetism, and Sound, as involved in its action, with directions for
+making a Speaking-Telephone. By Professor <span class="smcap">A. E. Dolbear</span> of
+Tufts College. 16mo. Illustrated. Price 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"An interesting little book upon this most fascinating subject, which
+is treated in a very clear and methodical way. First we have a thorough
+review of the discoveries in electricity, then of magnetism, then of those
+in the study of sound,&mdash;pitch, velocity, timbre, tone, resonance, sympathetic
+vibrations, etc. From these the telephone is reached, and by
+them in a measure explained."&mdash;<i>Hartford Courant.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />A PRACTICAL PROOF-READER'S ADVICE.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>HANDBOOK OF PUNCTUATION</b>, and other Typographical
+Matters. For the use of Printers, Authors,
+Teachers, and Scholars. By <span class="smcap">Marshall T. Bigelow</span>, Corrector
+at the University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 18mo. Cloth. 50 cts.</div>
+
+<p>"It is intended for the use of authors and teachers; while business men
+who have occasion to print circulars, advertisements, etc., can hardly
+afford to be without a copy of it for reference."&mdash;<i>Schenectady Daily
+Union.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />"A USEFUL LITTLE MANUAL."</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>HANDBOOK OF LIGHT GYMNASTICS.</b> By <span class="smcap">Lucy B.
+Hunt</span>, Instructor in Gymnastics at Smith (Female) College,
+Northampton, Mass. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"It is designed as a guide to teachers of girls; but it will be found of
+use, also, to such as wish to practise the exercises at home."&mdash;<i>New-York
+World.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />LOOK OUT FOR SQUALLS.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>PRACTICAL BOAT-SAILING.</b> By <span class="smcap">Douglas Frazar</span>. Classic
+size. $1.00. With numerous diagrams and illustrations.</div>
+
+<p>"Its directions are so plain, that, with the aid of the accompanying
+pictorial illustrations and diagrams given in the book, it does seem as if
+'anybody,' after reading it, could safely handle a sailboat in a squall."&mdash;<i>Times,
+Hartford.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />"A HELPFUL LITTLE BOOK."&mdash;<i>Springfield Republican.</i></div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>HANDBOOK OF WOOD-ENGRAVING.</b> With Practical
+Instructions in the Art for Persons wishing to learn without an
+Instructor. By <span class="smcap">William A. Emerson</span>, Wood-Engraver. New
+Edition. Illustrated. $1.00.</div>
+
+<p>"A valuable handbook, explanatory of an art which is gradually
+attracting the attention of amateurs more and more, and which affords,
+not only a pleasing pastime, but an excellent means of procuring a livelihood."&mdash;<i>Cleveland
+Sun.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />"A LITERARY TIDBIT."</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>SHORT STUDIES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS.</b> By
+<span class="smcap">Thomas Wentworth Higginson</span>. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"These 'Studies' are rather those of the characters themselves than
+of their works, and, written in Mr. Higginson's best analytical style, fill
+up a leisure hour charmingly."&mdash;<i>Toledo Journal.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />"NO LITTLE BOOK IS CAPABLE OF DOING BETTER SERVICE."</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>HANDBOOK OF ELOCUTION SIMPLIFIED.</b> By <span class="smcap">Walter
+K. Fobes</span>, with an Introduction by <span class="smcap">George M. Baker</span>.
+Cloth. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"This valuable little book occupies a place heretofore left vacant, as a
+digest of elocution that is both practical and methodical, and low in
+price."&mdash;<i>New-York Tribune.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />SHORT-HAND WITHOUT A MASTER.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>HANDBOOK OF UNIVERSAL PHONOGRAPHY;</b> or,
+Short-hand by the "Allen Method." A self-instructor,
+whereby more speed than long-hand writing is gained at the first
+lesson, and additional speed at each subsequent lesson. By <span class="smcap">G. G.
+Allen</span>, Principal of the Allen Stenographic Institute, Boston.
+50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"By this method one can, in an hour a day for two or three months,
+become so expert as to report a lecture <i>verbatim</i>."</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />THE STUDY OF GEOGRAPHY MADE PRACTICAL.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>HANDBOOK OF THE EARTH.</b> Natural methods in geography.
+By <span class="smcap">Louisa Parsons Hopkins</span>, Teacher of Normal
+Methods in the Swain Free School, New Bedford. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>The work is designed for the use of teachers and normal-school classes
+as a review and generalization of geographical facts, and for general
+readers as a guide to right methods of study and instruction.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />DAILY FOOD FOR THE MIND.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>PRONOUNCING HANDBOOK</b> of 3,000 words often mispronounced,
+and of words as to which a choice of pronunciation is
+allowed. By <span class="smcap">Richard Soule</span> and <span class="smcap">Loomis J. Campbell</span>. 50 cts.</div>
+
+<p>"This book can be carried in a gentleman's vest-pocket, or tucked in a
+lady's belt, and we wish several hundred thousand copies might thus be
+disposed of, with a view to daily consultation."&mdash;<i>Congregationalist.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />ABOUT 40,000 SYNONYMOUS WORDS.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>HANDBOOK OF ENGLISH SYNONYMS</b>, with an appendix
+showing the correct use of prepositions, also a collection of
+foreign phrases. By <span class="smcap">Loomis J. Campbell</span>. Cloth. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"Clearly printed, well arranged, adapted to help any one who writes
+much to enrich his vocabulary, vary his expressions, and secure accuracy
+in conveying his thoughts."&mdash;<i>Boston Journal.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />"A BOOK OF INCALCULABLE VALUE."</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>HANDBOOK OF CONVERSATION.</b> Its Faults and its
+Graces. Compiled by <span class="smcap">Andrew P. Peabody, D.D., LL.D.</span>
+Comprising: 1. Dr. Peabody's Lecture. 2. Mr. Trench's Lecture.
+3. Mr. Perry Gwynn's "A Word to the Wise; or, Hints on the
+Current Improprieties of Expression in Writing and Speaking."
+4. Mistakes and Improprieties in Speaking and Writing Corrected.
+Cloth. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"It is worth owning, and ought to be studied by many who heedlessly
+misuse their mother tongue."&mdash;<i>Boston Beacon.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />"WE COMMEND IT HIGHLY."&mdash;<i>Chicago Herald.</i></div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>HINTS AND HELPS</b> for those who Write, Print, or
+Read. By <span class="smcap">Benjamin Drew</span>, Proof-reader. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"The information is imparted in a very lively and remembering way."&mdash;<i>Boston
+Commonwealth.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />ARE YOU INTERESTED IN BUGS?</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>INSECTS;</b> How to Catch and how to Prepare them for
+the Cabinet. Comprising a Manual of Instruction for the
+Field Naturalist. By <span class="smcap">Walter P. Manton</span>. Illustrated. Cloth,
+50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"Nothing essential is omitted: every boy who has any taste for natural
+history should have this neat little volume. The many 'Agassiz
+Clubs' which have sprung up amid the youth of the country, should
+add it to their libraries."&mdash;<i>Chicago Advance.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />"OF INESTIMABLE VALUE TO YOUNG BOTANISTS."&mdash;<i>Rural New-Yorker.</i></div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>FIELD BOTANY.</b> A Handbook for the Collector. Containing Instructions
+for Gathering and Preserving Plants, and the Formation
+of a Herbarium. Also Complete Instructions in Leaf Photography,
+Plant Printing, and the Skeletonizing of Leaves. By <span class="smcap">Walter
+P. Manton</span>. Illustrated. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"A most valuable companion. The amount of information conveyed
+in the small compass is surprising."&mdash;<i>Demorest's Monthly.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />"EVERY NATURALIST OUGHT TO HAVE A COPY FOR IMMEDIATE
+USE."</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>TAXIDERMY WITHOUT A TEACHER.</b> Comprising a
+Complete Manual of Instruction for Preparing and Preserving
+Birds, Animals, and Fishes; with a Chapter on Hunting and Hygiene;
+together with Instructions for Preserving Eggs and Making
+Skeletons, and a number of valuable Recipes. By <i>Walter P.
+Manton</i>. Illustrated. 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>"We would be glad if all teachers would take this little book, study
+it faithfully, become interested themselves, and interest their pupils in
+this wonderful art."&mdash;<i>Practical Teacher.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />HOW TO ENLARGE THE ANT TO THE SIZE OF AN ELEPHANT.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>BEGINNINGS WITH THE MICROSCOPE.</b> A Working
+Handbook, containing simple Instructions in the Art and Method
+of using the Microscope and preparing Objects for Examination.
+By <span class="smcap">Walter P. Manton, M.D.</span> Small 4to. Cloth, 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>Uniform with the author's "Handbooks of Natural History," and
+equally valuable.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />PARLEZ VOUS FRANCAIS?</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>BROKEN ENGLISH.</b> A Frenchman's Struggles with the English
+Language. By Professor <span class="smcap">E. C. Dubois</span>, author of "The French
+Teacher." Cloth, 50 cents; cheap edition, paper, 30 cents.</div>
+
+<p>The Professor's famous lecture, delivered all over the country. Amusing
+as a narrative, instructive as a handbook of French conversation.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />AN EMERGENCY HANDBOOK.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>WHAT IS TO BE DONE.</b> A Handbook for the Nursery, with
+useful Hints for Children and Adults. By <span class="smcap">Robert B. Dixon,
+M.D.</span> Small 4to. Cloth, 50 cents.</div>
+
+<p>Dr. Dixon has produced a work that will be gladly welcomed by
+parents. His "remedies" are indorsed by many prominent medical men.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><i>Sold by all booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price.</i><br />
+
+<b>LEE &amp; SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.</b></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span></p>
+<h2>TROPHIES OF TRAVEL.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>DRIFTING ROUND THE WORLD;</b> A Boy's Adventures
+by Sea and Land. By <span class="smcap">Capt. Charles W. Hall</span>,
+author of "Adrift in the Ice-Fields," "The Great Bonanza," etc.
+With numerous full-page and letter-press illustrations. Royal 8vo.
+Handsome cover. $1.75. Cloth. Gilt. $2.50.</div>
+
+<p>"Out of the beaten track" in its course of travel, record of adventures,
+and descriptions of life in Greenland, Labrador, Ireland, Scotland, England,
+France, Holland, Russia, Asia, Siberia, and Alaska. Its hero is
+young, bold, and adventurous; and the book is in every way interesting
+and attractive.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />EDWARD GRE&Eacute;Y'S JAPANESE SERIES.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>YOUNG AMERICANS IN JAPAN;</b> or, The Adventures
+of the Jewett Family and their Friend Oto Nambo.
+With 170 full-page and letter-press illustrations. Royal 8vo, 7 x 9&frac12;
+inches. Handsomely illuminated cover. $1.75. Cloth, black and
+gold, $2.50.</div>
+
+<p>This story, though essentially a work of fiction, is filled with interesting
+and truthful descriptions of the curious ways of living of the good
+people of the land of the rising sun.</p>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>THE WONDERFUL CITY OF TOKIO;</b> or, The Further
+Adventures of the Jewett Family and their
+Friend Oto Nambo. With 169 illustrations. Royal 8vo,
+7 x 9&frac12; inches. With cover in gold and colors, designed by the
+author. $1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50.</div>
+
+<p>"A book full of delightful information. The author has the happy
+gift of permitting the reader to view things as he saw them. The illustrations
+are mostly drawn by a Japanese artist, and are very unique."&mdash;<i>Chicago
+Herald.</i></p>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>THE BEAR WORSHIPPERS OF YEZO AND THE
+ISLAND OF KARAFUTO;</b> being the further Adventures
+of the Jewett Family and their Friend
+Oto Nambo. 180 illustrations. Boards. $1.75. Cloth, $2.50.</div>
+
+<p>Graphic pen and pencil pictures of the remarkable bearded people who
+live in the north of Japan. The illustrations are by native Japanese
+artists, and give queer pictures of a queer people, who have been seldom
+visited.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />HARRY W. FRENCH'S BOOKS.</div>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>OUR BOYS IN INDIA.</b> The wanderings of two young Americans
+in Hindustan, with their exciting adventures on the sacred rivers
+and wild mountains. With 145 illustrations. Royal 8vo, 7 x 9&frac12;
+inches. Bound in emblematic covers of Oriental design, $1.75.
+Cloth, black and gold, $2.50.</div>
+
+<p>While it has all the exciting interest of a romance, it is remarkably
+vivid in its pictures of manners and customs in the land of the Hindu.
+The illustrations are many and excellent.</p>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>OUR BOYS IN CHINA.</b> The adventures of two young Americans,
+wrecked in the China Sea on their return from India, with
+their strange wanderings through the Chinese Empire. 188 illustrations.
+Boards, ornamental covers in colors and gold. $1.75.
+Cloth, $2.50.</div>
+
+<p>This gives the further adventures of "Our Boys" of India fame in the
+land of Teas and Queues.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><i>Sold by all booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price.</i><br />
+
+<b>LEE &amp; SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.</b></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span></p>
+<h2>HARRY W. FRENCH'S BOOKS.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>THE ONLY ONE.</b> A Novel. 16mo. Cloth. $1.00.</div>
+
+<p>"The Only One" is a powerful story, dealing with the lights and
+shadows of life in America, Naples, and Persia. Written in a dashing
+style, sometimes deeply tragic, at others humorous in the extreme, it
+presents pictures of human life that attract and interest by their naturalness
+and vividness.<br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>CASTLE FOAM;</b> or, The Pauper Prince. A story of real
+life, true love, and intrigue in the brilliant capital of Prussia.
+12mo. $1.50.</div>
+
+<p>"A novel of remarkable power, and strangely unlike any yet written
+by an American. There is something in the beauty and intensity of
+expression that reminds one of Bulwer in his best days."&mdash;<i>Cincinnati
+Commercial.</i><br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>NUNA, THE BRAMIN GIRL.</b> 16mo. Cloth. $1.25.</div>
+
+<p>"This book is beautifully written, and abounds in novel and dramatic
+incidents."&mdash;<i>St. Louis Globe Democrat.</i><br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>EGO</b>, The Life Struggles of Lawrence Edwards. 16mo.
+Cloth. $1.00.</div>
+
+<p>"Both an interesting and an exciting work, written with freedom,
+effectiveness, and power."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Item.</i><br /><br /></p>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>GEMS OF GENIUS.</b> 4to. Illuminated covers. Gilt. $2.00.</div>
+
+<p>"Fifty full-page illustrations, selected from the art-works of as many
+foreign painters, with text descriptive of each, from the pen of one of
+our native Ruskins."&mdash;<i>New-York Mail.</i><br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>ART AND ARTISTS. A history of the birth of art in America,
+with biographical studies of many prominent American artists, and
+nearly one hundred illus. from their studios. Cloth. Gilt. $3.00.</p></div>
+
+<p>"A work that will grow in value every year, showing the most patient
+research and elaboration, skilfully executed, and admirably worked up.
+An honor to the author, an honor to the publishers, an honor to the
+country."&mdash;<i>New-York Evening Post.</i><br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>OUR BOYS IN INDIA.</b> The wanderings of two young Americans
+in Hindustan, with their exciting adventures on the sacred rivers
+and wild mountains. With 145 illustrations. Royal octavo, 7 x 9&frac12;
+inches. Bound in emblematical covers of Oriental design, $1.75.
+Cloth, black and gold, $2.50.<br /><br /></div>
+
+<p>A new edition of the most popular of books of travel for young folks,
+issued last season. While it has all the exciting interest of a romance,
+it is remarkably vivid in its pictures of manners and customs in the land
+of the Hindu. The illustrations are many and excellent.</p>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>OUR BOYS IN CHINA.</b> The adventures of two young Americans,
+wrecked in the China Sea on their return from India, with
+their strange wanderings through the Chinese Empire. 188 Illustrations.
+Boards, ornamental covers in colors and gold, $1.75.
+Cloth, $2.50.</div>
+
+<p>After successfully starting the young heroes of his previous book,
+"Our Boys in India," on their homeward trip, the popular lecturer,
+extensive traveller, and remarkable story-teller, has them wrecked in the
+China Sea, saved, and transported across China: giving him an opportunity
+to spread for young folks an appetizing feast of good things.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><i>Sold by all booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price.</i><br />
+
+<b>LEE &amp; SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.</b></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="smcap">Miss Virginia F. Townsend's Books.</span></h2>
+
+<div class='center'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+Uniform Edition. Cloth. $1.50 Each.<br />
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</div>
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />BUT A PHILISTINE.</b></div>
+
+<p>"Another novel by the author of 'A Woman's Word' and 'Lenox
+Dare,' will be warmly welcomed by hosts of readers of Miss Townsend's
+stories. There is nothing of the 'sensational,' or so-called realistic,
+school in her writings. On the contrary, they are noted for their healthy
+moral tone and pure sentiment, and yet are not wanting in <span class="smcap">striking
+situations and dramatic incidents</span>."&mdash;<i>Chicago Journal.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />LENOX DARE.</b></div>
+
+<p>"Her stories, always sunny and healthful, touch the springs of social
+life, and make the reader better acquainted with this great human organization
+of which we all form a part, and tend to bring him into more intimate
+sympathy with what is most pure and noble in our nature. Among
+the best of her productions we place the volume here under notice. In
+temper and tone the volume is calculated to exert a healthful and
+elevating influence."&mdash;<i>New-England Methodist.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />DARYLL GAP; or, Whether it Paid.</b></div>
+
+<p>A story of the petroleum days, and of a family who struck oil.
+"Miss Townsend is a very entertaining writer, and, while she entertains,
+at the same time instructs. Her plots are well arranged, and her
+characters are clearly and strongly drawn. The present volume will not
+detract from the reputation she has heretofore enjoyed."&mdash;<i>Pittsburg
+Recorder.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />A WOMAN'S WORD, AND HOW SHE KEPT IT.</b></div>
+
+<p>"The celebrity of Virginia F. Townsend as an authoress, her brilliant
+descriptive powers, and pure, vigorous imagination, will insure a hearty
+welcome for the above-entitled volume in the writer's happiest vein.
+Every woman will understand the self-sacrifice of Genevieve Weir, and
+will entertain only scorn for the miserable man who imbittered her life
+to hide his own wrong-doing."&mdash;<i>Fashion Quarterly.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />THAT QUEER GIRL.</b></div>
+
+<p>"A fresh, wholesome book about good men and good women, bright
+and cheery in style, and pure in morals. Just the book to take a young
+girl's fancy, and help her to grow up, like Madeline and Argia, into the
+sweetness of real girlhood; there being more of that same sweetness
+under the fuss and feathers of the present day than a casual observer
+might suppose."&mdash;<i>People's Monthly.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />ONLY GIRLS.</b></div>
+
+<p>"This volume shows how two persons, 'only girls,' saved two men
+from crime, even from ruin of body and soul; and all this came about in
+their lives without their purpose or knowledge at the time, and not at all
+as they or anybody else would have planned it; but it comes about well
+and naturally enough. The story is ingenious and graphic, and kept the
+writer of this notice up far into the small hours of yesterday morning."&mdash;<i>Washington
+Chronicle.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><i>Sold by all booksellers and newsdealers, and sent by mail, postpaid
+on receipt of price.</i><br />
+
+<b>LEE &amp; SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.</b></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span></p>
+<h2>LEE AND SHEPARD'S DOLLAR NOVELS.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>JOHN THORN'S FOLKS.</b> By <span class="smcap">Angeline Teal</span>. Cloth. $1.00.</div>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>BARBARA THAYER.</b> By <span class="smcap">Miss Annie Jenness</span>. Cloth. $1.00.
+Popular Edition. Paper. 50 cents.</div>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>THE ONLY ONE.</b> A Novel by <span class="smcap">Harry W. French</span>, author of
+"Castle Foam," "Nuna, the Bramin Girl," "Our Boys in China,"
+"Our Boys in India," etc. 16mo. Cloth. $1.00.</div>
+
+<p>This work was published as a serial in "The Boston Globe," and made
+a sensation. It will have a large sale in its new dress.</p>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>LORD OF HIMSELF.</b> A Novel by <span class="smcap">Francis H. Underwood</span>,
+author of "Handbook of English Literature," etc. A new edition.
+16mo. Cloth. $1.00.</div>
+
+<p>"This novel is one that has come into American literature to stay."&mdash;<i>Boston
+Post.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Spirited, fresh, clean-cut, and deeply thoughtful."&mdash;<i>Boston Gazette.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>DORA DARLING:</b> The Daughter of the Regiment.
+By <span class="smcap">J. G. Austin</span>. 16mo. Cloth, $l.00. A thrilling story of the
+great Rebellion.</div>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>OUTPOST.</b> By <span class="smcap">J. G. Austin</span>. 16mo. Cloth. $1.00. A Sequel to
+"Dora Darling," but each story complete in itself.</div>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>NUMA ROUMESTAN.</b> By <span class="smcap">Alphonse Daudet</span>. Translated
+from the French by Virginia Champlin. With ten illustrations.
+Cloth. $1.00.</div>
+
+<p>The latest work of fiction from the pen of Alphonse Daudet, and
+derives its main interest from the generally accepted belief that the hero
+of the novel is really Gambetta, the French statesman.</p>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>KINGS IN EXILE.</b> By <span class="smcap">Alphonse Daudet</span>. A new edition.
+16mo. Cloth. $1.00.</div>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>LIKE A GENTLEMAN.</b> By Mrs. <span class="smcap">Mary A. Denison</span>. A Temperance
+Novel, by a well-known author. Cloth. $1.00.</div>
+
+<p>Mrs. Denison is well known as the author of "That Husband of Mine,"
+a summer book which exceeded in sale any thing published in America.
+This book is in a more thoughtful vein, but is very entertaining. The
+style is bright and witty.</p>
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>HIS TRIUMPH.</b> By the author of "That Husband of Mine,"
+"Like a Gentleman," etc. Cloth. $1.00.</div>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>A TIGHT SQUEEZE.</b> The adventures of a gentleman, who, on a
+wager of ten thousand dollars, undertook to go from New York to
+New Orleans in three weeks, without money or the assistance of
+friends. Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 50 cents.</div>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>PUDDLEFORD PAPERS;</b> or, Humors of the West. By
+<span class="smcap">H. R. Riley</span>. Illustrated. A new edition. $1.00.</div>
+
+<p>"This is a rich book. Any one who wants a genuine, hearty laugh,
+should purchase this volume."&mdash;<i>Columbus Gazette.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="hang1"><b>THE FORTUNATE ISLAND</b>, and other Stories. By
+<span class="smcap">Max Adeler</span>. Illustrated. Cloth. $1.00.</div>
+
+<p>"Max Adeler is a fellow of infinite humor."&mdash;<i>Albany Evening Journal.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Extravagant, of course, are these stories, but entertaining and amusing,
+and instructive too."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Margery Deane</span>, <i>Newport News.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><i>Sold by all booksellers and newsdealers, and sent by mail, postpaid,
+on receipt of price.</i></div>
+
+<div class='sig'><b>LEE &amp; SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.</b></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span></p>
+<h2>YOUNG FOLKS' HEROES OF HISTORY.</h2>
+
+<h3>By GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE.</h3>
+
+<div class='center'>Handsomely Illustrated. Price per vol., $1.25. Sets in neat boxes.</div>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />VASCO DA GAMA:</b><br />
+HIS VOYAGES AND ADVENTURES.</div>
+
+<p>"Da Gama's history is full of striking adventures, thrilling incidents, and
+perilous situations; and Mr. Towle, while not sacrificing historical accuracy,
+has so skilfully used his materials, that we have a charmingly romantic tale."&mdash;<i>Rural
+New-Yorker.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />PIZARRO:</b><br />
+HIS ADVENTURES AND CONQUESTS.</div>
+
+<p>"No hero of romance possesses greater power to charm the youthful reader
+than the conqueror of Peru. Not even King Arthur, or Thaddeus of Warsaw,
+has the power to captivate the imagination of the growing boy. Mr.
+Towle has handled his subject in a glowing but truthful manner; and we
+venture the assertion, that, were our children led to read such books as this,
+the taste for unwholesome, exciting, wrong-teaching boys' books&mdash;dime
+novels in books' clothing&mdash;would be greatly diminished, to the great gain of
+mental force and moral purpose in the rising generation."&mdash;<i>Chicago Alliance.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />MAGELLAN;</b><br />
+OR, THE FIRST VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD.</div>
+
+<p>"What more of romantic and spirited adventures any bright boy could
+want than is to be found in this series of historical biography, it is difficult
+to imagine. This volume is written in a most sprightly manner; and the
+life of its hero, Fernan Magellan, with its rapid stride from the softness of
+a petted youth to the sturdy courage and persevering fortitude of manhood,
+makes a tale of marvellous fascination."&mdash;<i>Christian Union.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />MARCO POLO:</b><br />
+HIS TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES.</div>
+
+<p>"The story of the adventurous Venetian, who six hundred years ago penetrated
+into India and Cathay and Thibet and Abyssinia, is pleasantly and
+clearly told; and nothing better can be put into the hands of the school boy
+or girl than this series of the records of noted travellers. The heroism displayed
+by these men was certainly as great as that ever shown by conquering
+warrior; and it was exercised in a far nobler cause,&mdash;the cause of knowledge
+and discovery, which has made the nineteenth century what it is."&mdash;<i>Graphic.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />RALEGH:</b><br  />
+HIS EXPLOITS AND VOYAGES.</div>
+
+<p>"This belongs to the 'Young Folks' Heroes of History' series, and deals
+with a greater and more interesting man than any of its predecessors. With
+all the black spots on his fame, there are few more brilliant and striking
+figures in English history than the soldier, sailor, courtier, author, and explorer,
+Sir Walter Ralegh. Even at this distance of time, more than two
+hundred and fifty years after his head fell on the scaffold, we cannot read his
+story without emotion. It is graphically written, and is pleasant reading,
+not only for young folks, but for old folks with young hearts."&mdash;<i>Woman's
+Journal.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><b><br />DRAKE:</b><br />
+THE SEA-LION OF DEVON.</div>
+
+<p>Drake was the foremost sea-captain of his age, the first English admiral
+to send a ship completely round the world, the hero of the magnificent
+victory which the English won over the Invincible Armada. His career was
+stirring, bold, and adventurous, from early youth to old age.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br /><i>Sold by all Booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price.</i><br />
+
+<b>LEE &amp; SHEPARD, Publishers &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   BOSTON.</b></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+
+<p>Varied hyphenation has been retained.</p>
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's An American Girl Abroad, by Adeline Trafton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD ***
+
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,7733 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An American Girl Abroad, by Adeline Trafton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An American Girl Abroad
+
+Author: Adeline Trafton
+
+Illustrator: Miss L. B. Humphrey
+
+Release Date: May 8, 2010 [EBook #32289]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Emmy, Tor Martin Kristiansen and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "At night we descended into the depths of the steamer to
+worship with the steerage passengers." Page 23]
+
+
+
+
+AN
+
+AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.
+
+BY
+
+ADELINE TRAFTON.
+
+_ILLUSTRATED_
+
+_BY MISS L. B. HUMPHREY._
+
+          BOSTON:
+          LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS.
+          NEW YORK:
+          LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM.
+
+
+
+
+          Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1872,
+          BY LEE AND SHEPARD,
+          In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
+
+
+          Electrotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry,
+          No. 19 Spring Lane.
+
+
+
+
+          I DEDICATE
+
+          This Record of Pleasant Days
+
+          TO MY FATHER,
+
+          REV. MARK TRAFTON.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS FOR "OUR GIRLS."
+
+THE GIRLHOOD SERIES.
+
+By Popular Authors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.
+
+By ADELINE F. TRAFTON. 16mo, cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
+
+One of the most bright, chatty, wide-awake books of travel ever written.
+It abounds in information, is as pleasant reading as a story book, and
+full of the wit and sparkle of "An American Girl" let loose from school
+and ready for a frolic.
+
+
+ONLY GIRLS.
+
+By VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND, Author of "That Queer Girl," &c., &c. 12mo,
+cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
+
+"It is a thrilling story, written in a fascinating style, and the plot
+is adroitly handled."
+
+It might be placed in any Sabbath School library, so pure is it in tone,
+and yet it is so free from the mawkishness and silliness that mar the
+class of books usually found there, that the veteran novel reader is apt
+to finish it at a sitting.
+
+
+THE DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER.
+
+By SOPHIE MAY, Author of "Our Helen," "The Asbury Twins," &c. 12mo,
+cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
+
+"A delightful book, original and enjoyable," says the _Brownville Echo_.
+
+"A fascinating story, unfolding, with artistic touch, the young life of
+one of our impulsive, sharp-witted, transparent and pure-minded girls of
+the nineteenth century," says _The Contributor_, Boston.
+
+
+SALLY WILLIAMS.
+
+=The Mountain Girl.= By Mrs. EDNA D. CHENEY, Author of "Patience,"
+"Social Games," "The Child of the Tide," &c. 12mo, cloth, illustrated.
+$1.50.
+
+Pure, strong, healthy, just what might be expected from the pen of so
+gifted a writer as Mrs. Cheney. A very interesting picture of life among
+the New Hampshire hills, enlivened by the tangle of a story of the ups
+and downs of every-day life in this out-of-the-way locality. The
+characters introduced are quaintly original, and the adventures are
+narrated with remarkable skill.
+
+
+LOTTIE EAMES.
+
+=Or, do your best and leave the rest.= By a Popular Author. 16mo, illus.
+$1.50.
+
+"A wholesome story of home life, full of lessons of self-sacrifice, but
+always bright and attractive in its varied incidents."
+
+
+RHODA THORNTON'S GIRLHOOD.
+
+By Mrs. MARY E. PRATT. 16mo, cloth, illustrated. $1.50.
+
+A hearty and healthy story, dealing with young folks and home scenes,
+with sleighing, fishing and other frolics to make things lively.
+
+
+_The above six volumes are furnished in a handsome box, for $9.00, or
+sold separately by all booksellers, or sent by mail, postpaid, on
+receipt of price by_
+
+          LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers,      Boston.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                           PAGE
+
+  I.
+
+  "At night we descended into the depths of the steamer
+     to worship with the steerage passengers."      FRONTISPIECE.
+
+
+  II.
+
+  "A dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain fell
+     fast upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces."           57
+
+
+  III.
+
+  "At the word of command they struck the most
+     extraordinary attitudes."                              157
+
+
+  IV.
+
+  "Frowsy, sleepy, cross, and caring nothing
+     whatever for the sun, moon, or stars, we stood
+     like a company of Bedlamites, ankle deep in
+     the wet grass upon the summit."                        176
+
+
+  V.
+
+  "Evidently the little old woman is going a
+     journey."                                              196
+
+
+  VI.
+
+  "Together we stared at him with rigid and severe
+     countenances."                                         240
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+          CHAPTER I.
+
+          ABOARD THE STEAMER.
+
+          We two alone.--"Good by."--"Are you the captain of this
+             ship?"--Wretchedness.--The jolly Englishman and the
+             Yankee.--A sail!--The Cattle-man.--The Jersey-man
+             whose bark was on the sea.--Church services under
+             difficulties.--The sweet young English face.--Down
+             into the depths to worship.--"Beware! I stand by
+             the parson."--Singing to the fishes.--Green Erin.--One
+             long cheer.--Farewell, Ireland.                         13
+
+
+          CHAPTER II.
+
+          FIRST DAYS IN ENGLAND.
+
+          Up the harbor of Liverpool.--We all emerge as
+             butterflies.--The Mersey tender.--Lot's
+             wife.--"Any tobacco?"--"Names, please."--St.
+             George's Hall.--The fashionable promenade.--The
+             coffee-room.--The military man who showed the
+             purple tide of war in his face.--The railway
+             carriage.--The young man with hair all
+             aflame.--English villages.--London.--No place
+             for us.--The H. house.--The Babes in the
+             Wood.--The party from the country.--We are taken
+             in charge by the Good Man.--The Golden
+             Cross.--Solitary confinement.--Mrs. B.'s at last.       27
+
+
+          CHAPTER III.
+
+          EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON.
+
+          Strange ways.--"The bears that went over to
+             Charlestown."--The delights of a runaway without
+             its dangers.--Flower show at the Crystal
+             Palace.--Whit-Monday at Hampton Court.--A queen
+             baby.--"But the carpets?"--Poor Nell Gwynne.--Vandyck
+             faces.--Royal beds.--Lunch at the King's Arms.--O
+             Music, how many murders have been committed in thy
+             name!--Queen Victoria's home at Windsor.--A new
+             "house that Jack built."--The Round Tower.--Stoke
+             Pogis.--Frogmore.--The Knights of the Garter.--The
+             queen's gallery.--The queen's plate.--The royal
+             mews.--The wicker baby-wagons.--The state equipages.    43
+
+
+          CHAPTER IV.
+
+          SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON.
+
+          The Tower.--The tall Yankee of inquiring mind.--Our
+             guide in gorgeous array.--War trophies.--Knights
+             in armor.--A professional joke.--The crown
+             jewels.--The room where the little princes were
+             smothered.--The "Traitor's Gate."--The Houses of
+             Parliament.--What a throne is like.--The
+             "woolsack."--The Peeping Gallery for
+             ladies.--Westminster Hall and the law courts.--The
+             three drowsy old women.--The Great Panjandrum
+             himself.--Johnson and the pump.--St.
+             Paul's.--Wellington's funeral car.--The Whispering
+             Gallery.--The bell.                                     55
+
+
+          CHAPTER V.
+
+          AWAY TO PARIS.
+
+          The wedding party.--The canals.--New Haven.--Around
+             the tea-table.--Separating the sheep from the
+             goats.--"Will it be a rough passage?"--Gymnastic
+             feats of the little steamer.--O, what were officers
+             to us?--"Who ever invented earrings?"--Dieppe.--
+             Fish-wives.--Train for Paris.--Fellow-passengers.--
+             Rouen.--Babel.--Deliverance.                            68
+
+
+          CHAPTER VI.
+
+          THE PARIS OF 1869.
+
+          The devil.--Cathedrals and churches.--The Louvre.--Modern
+             French art.--The Beauvais clock, with its droll, little
+             puppets.--Virtue in a red gown.--The Luxembourg
+             Palace.--The yawning statue of Marshal Ney.--Gay life
+             by gas-light.--The Imperial Circus.--The Opera.--How
+             the emperor and empress rode through the streets after
+             the riots.--The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was
+             her fortune.--Napoleon's tomb.                          76
+
+
+          CHAPTER VII.
+
+          SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITY.
+
+          The Gobelin tapestry.--How and where it is made.--Pere
+             La-Chaise.--Poor Rachel!--The baby establishment.--"Now
+             I lay me."--The little mother.--The old woman who lived
+             in a shoe.--The American chapel.--Beautiful women and
+             children.--The last conference meeting.--"I'm a
+             proof-reader, I am."                                    90
+
+
+          CHAPTER VIII.
+
+          SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.
+
+          The river omnibuses.--Sevres and its porcelain.--St.
+             Cloud as it was.--The crooked little town.--
+             Versailles.--Eugenie's "spare bedroom."--The queen
+             who played she was a farmer's wife.--Seven miles of
+             paintings.--The portraits of the presidents.           100
+
+
+          CHAPTER IX.
+
+          A VISIT TO BRUSSELS.
+
+          To Brussels.--The old and new city.--The paradise and
+             purgatory of dogs.--The Hotel de Ville and Grand
+             Place.--St. Gudule.--The picture galleries.--Wiertz
+             and his odd paintings.--Brussels lace and an hour
+             with the lace-makers.--How the girls found Charlotte
+             Bronte's school.--The scene of "Villette."             109
+
+
+          CHAPTER X.
+
+          WATERLOO AND THROUGH BELGIUM.
+
+          To Waterloo.--Beggars and guides.--The Mound.--Chateau
+             Hougomont.--Victor Hugo's "sunken road."--Antwerp.--A
+             visit to the cathedral.--A drive about the city.--An
+             excursion to Ghent.--The funeral services in the
+             cathedral.--"Poisoned? Ah, poor man!"--The
+             watch-tower.--The Friday-market square.--The
+             nunnery.--Longfellow's pilgrims to "the belfry of
+             Bruges."                                               122
+
+
+          CHAPTER XI.
+
+          A TRIP THROUGH HOLLAND.
+
+          Up the Meuse to Rotterdam.--Dutch sights and
+             ways.--The pretty milk-carriers.--The
+             tea-gardens.--Preparations for the Sabbath.--An
+             English chapel.--"The Lord's barn."--From Rotterdam
+             to the Hague.--The queen's "House in the
+             Wood."--Pictures in private drawing-rooms.--The
+             bazaar.--An evening in a Dutch tea-garden.--Amsterdam
+             to a stranger.--The "sights."--The Jews' quarter.--The
+             family whose home was upon the canals.--Out of the
+             city.--The pilgrims.                                   134
+
+
+          CHAPTER XII.
+
+          THE RHINE AND RHENISH PRUSSIA.
+
+          First glimpse of the Rhine.--Cologne and the
+             Cathedral.--"Shosef in ter red coat."--St. Ursula
+             and the eleven thousand virgins.--Up the Rhine to
+             Bonn.--The German students.--Rolandseck.--A search
+             for a resting-place.--Our Dutch friend and his
+             Malays.--The story of Hildegund.--A quiet Sabbath.--
+             Our Dutch friend's reply.--Coblentz.--The bridge of
+             boats.--Ehrenbreitstein, over the river.--A scorching
+             day upon the Rhine.--Romance under difficulties.--
+             Mayence.--Frankfort.--Heidelberg.--The ruined
+             castle.--Baden-Baden.--A glimpse at the gambling.--The
+             new and the old "Schloss."--The Black Forest.--
+             Strasbourg.--The mountains.                            147
+
+
+          CHAPTER XIII.
+
+          DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.
+
+          The Lake of Lucerne.--Days of rest in the city.--An
+             excursion up the Righi.--The crowd at the summit.--
+             Dinner at midnight.--Rising before "the early
+             worm."--The "sun-rise" according to Murray.--Animated
+             scarecrows.--Off for a tour through Switzerland.--The
+             lake for the last time.--Gruetlii.--William Tell's
+             chapel.--Fluellen.--Altorf.--Swiss haymakers.--An hour
+             at Amsteg.--The rocks close in.--The Devil's Bridge.--
+             The dangerous road.--"A carriage has gone over the
+             precipice!"--Andermatt.--Desolate rocks.--Exquisite
+             wild flowers.--The summit of the Furka.--A descent to
+             the Rhone glacier.--Into the ice.--Swiss villages.--
+             Brieg.--The convent inn.--The bare little chapel on the
+             hill.--To Martigny.                                    168
+
+
+          CHAPTER XIV.
+
+          AMONG THE EVERLASTING HILLS.
+
+          The quaint inn.--The Falls of the Sallenches, and the
+             Gorge de Trient.--Shopping in a Swiss village.--A
+             mule ride to Chamouni.--Peculiarities of the
+             animals.--Entrance to the village.--Egyptian mummies
+             lifted from the mules.--Rainy days.--Chamois.--The
+             Mer de Glace.--"Look out of your window."--Mont
+             Blanc.--Sallenches.--A diligence ride to Geneva.--Our
+             little old woman.--The clownish peasant.--The fork in
+             the road.--"Adieu."                                    189
+
+
+          CHAPTER XV.
+
+          LAST DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.
+
+          Geneva.--Calvin and jewelry.--Up Lake Leman.--Ouchy and
+             Lausanne.--"Sweet Clarens."--Chillon.--Freyburg.--
+             Sight-seers.--The Last Judgment.--Berne and its
+             bears.--The town like a story.--The Lake of Thun.--
+             Interlaken.--Over the Wengern Alp.--The Falls of
+             Giessbach.--The Brunig Pass.--Lucerne again.           201
+
+
+          CHAPTER XVI.
+
+          BACK TO PARIS ALONE.
+
+          Coming home.--The breaking up of the party.--We start
+             for Paris alone.--Basle, and a search for a hotel.--
+             The twilight ride.--The shopkeeper whose wits had
+             gone "a wool-gathering."--"Two tickets for Paris."--
+             What can be the matter now?--Michel Angelo's Moses.--
+             Paris at midnight.--The kind _commissionaire_.--The
+             good French gentleman and his fussy little wife.--A
+             search for Miss H.'s.--"Come up, come up."--"Can women
+             travel through Europe alone?" A word about a woman's
+             outfit.                                                220
+
+
+
+
+AN
+
+AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ABOARD THE STEAMER.
+
+          We two alone.--"Good by."--"Are you the captain of
+          this ship?"--Wretchedness.--The jolly Englishman
+          and the Yankee.--A sail!--The cattle-man.--The
+          Jersey-man whose bark was on the sea.--Church
+          services under difficulties.--The sweet young
+          English face.--Down into the depths to
+          worship.--"Beware! I stand by the
+          Parson."--Singing to the fishes.--Green Erin.--One
+          long cheer.--Farewell Ireland.
+
+
+WE were going to Europe, Mrs. K. and I--alone, with the exception of the
+ship's company--unprotected, save by Him who watches over the least of
+his creatures. We packed our one trunk, upon which both name and
+nationality were conspicuously blazoned, with the necessaries, not
+luxuries, of a woman's toilet, and made our simple preparations for
+departure without a shadow of anxiety. "They who know nothing, fear
+nothing," said the paterfamilias, but added his consent and blessing.
+The rain poured in torrents as we drove down to the wharf. But floods
+could not have dampened our enthusiasm. A wild Irishman, with a
+suggestion of spirituous things in his air and general appearance,
+received us at the foot of the plank, one end of which touched earth,
+the other that unexplored region, the steamer. We followed the direction
+of his dirty finger, and there fell from our eyes, as it were, scales.
+In our ignorance, we had expected to find vast space, elegant
+surroundings, glass, glare, and glitter. We peered into the contracted
+quarters of the ladies' cabin. One side was filled with boxes and
+bundles; the other, with the prostrate form of an old lady, her head
+enveloped in a mammoth ruffle. We explored the saloon. The purser, with
+a wen and a gilt-banded cap on his head, was flying about like one
+distracted. An old gentleman similarly attired, with the exception of
+the wen,--the surgeon as we afterwards learned,--read a large book
+complacently in one corner, murmuring gently to himself. His upper teeth
+lacked fixity, so to speak; and as they fell with every word, he had the
+appearance of gnashing them continually at the invisible author. There
+was a hurrying to and fro of round, fresh-faced stewards in short
+jackets, a pushing and pulling of trunks and boxes, the sudden
+appearance and disappearance of nondescript individuals in slouched hats
+and water-proofs, the stirring about of heavy feet upon the deck above,
+the rattling of chains, the 'yo-ing' of hoarse voices, as the sailors
+pulled at the ropes, and, with it all, that sickening odor of oil, of
+dead dinners--of everything, so indescribable, so never-to-be-forgotten.
+Somewhat saddened, and considerably enlightened upon the subject of
+ocean steamers, we sought our state-room. It boasted two berths (the
+upper conveniently gained by mounting the stationary wash-stand), and a
+velvet-covered sofa beneath the large, square window, which last we
+learned, months later, when reduced to a port-hole for light and air, to
+appreciate. A rack and half a dozen hooks against the wall completed its
+furniture.
+
+The time of departure arrived. We said the two little words that bring
+so many tears and heartaches, and ran up on the deck with the rain in
+our faces, and something that was not all rain in our eyes, for one last
+look at our friends; but they were hidden from sight. There comes to me
+a dim recollection of attempting to mount to an inaccessible place: of
+clinging to wet ropes with the intention of seeing the last of the land;
+of thinking it, after a time, a senseless proceeding, and of resigning
+ourselves finally to our berths and inevitable circumstances. Eight
+bells and the dinner bell; some one darkened our doorway.
+
+"What's this? Don't give it up so. D'ye hear the dinner bell?"
+
+"Are--are you the captain of this ship?" gasped Mrs. K., feebly, from
+the sofa.
+
+"To be sure, madam. Don't give it up so."
+
+Mrs. K. groaned. There came to me one last gleam of hope. What if it
+were possible to brave it out! In a moment my feet were on the floor,
+but whether my name were McGregor, or not, I could not tell. I made an
+abortive attempt after the pretty hood, prepared with such pleasant
+anticipations, and had a dim consciousness that somebody's hands tied it
+about my head. Then we started. We climbed heights, we descended depths
+indescribable, in that short walk to the saloon, and there was a queer
+feeling of having a windmill, instead of a head, upon my shoulders. A
+number of sympathizing faces were nodding in the most remarkable manner,
+as we reached the door, and the tables performed antic evolutions.
+
+"Take me back!" and the berth and the little round stewardess received
+me. There followed a night of misery. One can form no idea, save from
+experience, of the horrors of the first night upon an ocean steamer.
+There are the whir, and buzz, and jar, and rattle, and bang of the screw
+and engine; the pitching and rolling of the ship, with the sensation of
+standing upright for a moment, and then of being made to rest
+comfortably upon the top of your head; the sense of undergoing internal
+somersaults, to say nothing of describing every known curve externally.
+You study physiology involuntarily, and doubt if your heart, your lungs,
+or indeed any of your internal organs, are firmly attached, after all;
+if you shall not lose them at the next lurch of the ship. Your head is
+burning with fever, your hands and feet like ice, and you feel dimly,
+but wretchedly, that this is but the beginning of sorrows; that there
+are a dozen more days to come. You are conscious of a vague wonder (as
+the night lengthens out interminably) what eternity _can_ be, since time
+is so long. The bells strike the half hours, tormenting you with
+calculations which amount to nothing. Everything within the room, as
+well as without, swings, and rolls, and rattles. You are confident your
+bottles in the rack will go next, and don't much care if they do, though
+you lie and dread the crash. You are tormented with thirst, and the
+ice-water is in that same rack, just beyond your reach. The candle in
+its silver case, hinged against the wall, swings back and forth with
+dizzy motion, throwing moving distorted shadows over everything, and
+making the night like a sickly day. You long for darkness, and, when at
+last the light grows dim, until only a red spark remains and the smoke
+that adds its mite to your misery, long for its return. At regular
+intervals you hear the tramp, tramp, overhead, of the relieving watch;
+and, in the midst of fitful slumbers, the hoarse voices of the sailors,
+as the wind freshens and they hoist the sails, wake you from frightful
+dreams. At the first gray dawn of light come the swash of water and the
+trickling down of the stream against your window, with the sound of the
+holy-stones pushed back and forth upon the deck. And with the light--O,
+blessed light!--came to us a dawn of better things.
+
+There followed days when we lay contented upon the narrow sofa, or
+within the contracted berths, but when to lift our heads was woe. A kind
+of negative blessedness--absence from misery. We felt as if we had lost
+our heart, our conscience, and almost our immortal soul, to quote Mark
+Twain. There remained to us only those principles and prejudices most
+firmly rooted and grounded. Even our personal vanity left us at last,
+and nothing could be more forsaken and appropriate than the plain green
+gown with its one row of military buttons, attired in which, day after
+day, I idly watched the faces that passed our door. "That's like you
+Americans," said our handsome young Irish doctor, pointing to these same
+buttons. "You can't leave your country without taking the spread-eagle
+with you!"
+
+Our officers, with this one exception, were English. Our captain, a
+living representative of the traditional English sailor. Not young, save
+in heart; simple, unaffected, and frank in manner, but with a natural
+dignity that prevented undue familiarity, he sang about the ship from
+morning till night, with a voice that could carry no air correctly, but
+with an enjoyment delightful to witness--always a song suggested by
+existing circumstances, but with
+
+          "Cheer, boys, cheer; my mother's sold her mangle,"
+
+when everything else failed. He was forward among the men on the deck
+with an eye to the wind, down below bringing fruit and comfort to the
+sick in the steerage, dealing out apples and oranges to the children,
+with an encouraging word and the first line of a song for everybody.
+
+The life of the ship was an Englishman, with the fresh complexion almost
+invariably seen upon Englishmen, and forty years upon a head that looked
+twenty-five. He was going home after a short tour through the United
+States, with his mind as full of prejudices as his memorandum-book was
+of notes. He chanced, oddly enough, to room with the genuine Yankee of
+the company--a long, lean, good-natured individual from one of the
+eastern states, "close on ter Varmont," who had a way of rolling his
+eyes fearfully, especially when he glared at his food. He represented a
+mowing machine company, and we called him "the Mowing Machine Man." He
+accosted us one day, sidling up to our door, with, "How d'ye do to-day?"
+
+"Better, thank you," I replied from the sofa.
+
+"That's real nice. Tell ye what, we'll be glad to see the ladies out.
+How's yer mar?" nodding towards the berth from which twinkled Mrs. K.'s
+eyes. I laughed, and explained that our relations were of affection
+rather than consanguinity. His interest increased when he found we were
+travelling alone. He gave us his London address, evidently considering
+us in the light of Daniels about to enter the lions' den. "Ef ye have
+any trouble," said he, as he wrote down the street and number, "there's
+one Yankee'll stand up for ye." He amused the Englishman by calling out,
+"Hullo. D'ye feel _good_ this morning?" "No," would be the reply, with a
+burst of laughter; "I feel awful wicked; think I'll go right out and
+kill somebody."
+
+There was a shout one morning, "A sail! See the stars and stripes!" I
+had not raised my head for days, but staggered across the floor at that,
+and clinging to the frame, thrust my head out of the window. Yes, there
+was a ship close by, with the stars and stripes floating from the
+mast-head, I found, when the roll of the steamer carried my window to
+its level. "Seems good ter see the old rag!" I looked up to find the
+Mowing Machine Man gazing upon it with eyes all afloat. "I'd been a
+thinking," said he, "all them fellers have got somebody waiting for 'em
+over there,"--our passengers were mostly English,--"but there wasn't
+nobody a waiting for me. Tell ye what,"--and he shook out the folds of a
+red and yellow handkerchief,--"it does my heart good ter see the old
+flag." There was a bond of sympathy between us from that moment.
+
+We had another and less agreeable specimen of this free people--a tall,
+tough western cattle dealer, who quarrelled if he could find an
+antagonist, swore occasionally, drank liquor, and chewed tobacco
+perpetually, wore his trousers tucked into his long boots, his hands
+tucked into his pockets, and, to crown these attributes, believed in
+Andrew Johnson!--a middle-aged man, with soft, curling brown hair above
+a face that could be cruelly cold and hard. His hair should have been
+wire; his blue eyes were steel. But hard as was his face, it softened
+and smoothed itself a little at sight of the sick women. He paused
+beside us one day with a rough attempt to interest and amuse by
+displaying a knife case containing a dozen different articles. "This is
+ter take a stun out of a hoss's huf, and this, d'ye see, is a
+tooth-pick;" putting it to immediate use by way of explanation. At the
+table he talked long and loud upon the rinderpest, and other kindred and
+appetizing topics. "I've been a butcher myself," he would say. "I've cut
+up hundreds o' critters. What part of an ox, now, d'ye think that was
+taken from?" pointing to the joint before him, and addressing a refined,
+delicate-faced old gentleman across the table, who only stared in silent
+horror.
+
+But even the "Cattle Man" was less marked in his peculiarities than the
+"Jersey Man," a melancholy-eyed, curly-wigged individual from the Jersey
+shore, who wore his slouched hat upon one side of his head, and looked
+as though he were doing the rakish lover in some fifth-rate theatre; who
+was "in the musical line myself; Smith and Jones's organs, you know;
+that's me;" and who, being neither Smith nor Jones, we naturally
+concluded must be the organ. He recited poetry in a loud tone at
+daybreak, and discussed politics for hours together, arguing in the most
+satisfactory manner with the principles, and standing most willingly
+upon the platform, of everybody. He assumed a patronizing air towards
+the Mowing Machine Man. "Well, you _are_ a green Yankee," he would say;
+"lucky for you that you fell in with me;" to which the latter only
+chuckled, "That's so." He had much to tell of himself, of his
+grandmother, and of his friends generally, who came to see him off;
+"felt awfully, too," which we could hardly credit; rolled out snatches
+of sentimental songs, iterating and reiterating that his bark was on the
+sea,--and a most disagreeable one we found it; wished we had a piano on
+board, to which we murmured, "The Lord forbid;" and hoped we should soon
+be well enough to join him in the "White Squall." He was constantly
+reminding us that we were a very happy family party, so "congenial," and
+evidently agreed with the Mowing Machine Man, who said, "They're the
+best set of fellows I ever see. They'll tell ye anything."
+
+We numbered a clergyman among us, of course. "Always a head wind when
+there's a parson aboard," say the sailors. So this poor dyspeptic little
+man bore the blame of our constant adverse winds. Nothing more bigoted,
+more fanatical than his religious belief could be imagined. You read the
+terrors of the Lord in his eye; and yet he won respect, and something
+more, by his consistency and zeal. Earnestness will tell. "The parson
+will have great influence over the Cattle Man," the captain said,
+Sabbath morning, as we were walking the deck. "The Cattle Man?" "Yes,
+the parson will get a good hold of him." Just then, as if to prove the
+old proverb true, that his satanic majesty is always in the immediate
+neighborhood when his character is under discussion, the Cattle Man and
+Jersey came up the companion-way. "If you please, captain," said the
+former, "we are a committee to ask if the parson may preach to the
+steerage people to-night." "Certainly," was the reply; "I will attend
+myself." They thanked him, and went below, leaving me utterly amazed.
+They were the last men upon the ship whom one would have selected as a
+committee upon spiritual things!
+
+The church service for the cabin passengers was held in the saloon. A
+velvet cushion upon one end of the long table constituted the pulpit,
+before which the minister stood, holding fast to the rack on either
+side, and bracing himself against the captain's chair in the rear. Even
+then he made, involuntarily, more bows than any ritualist, and the
+scripture, "What went ye out for to see? A reed shaken by the wind?"
+would present itself. The sailors in their neat dress filed in and
+ranged themselves in one corner. The stewards gathered about the door,
+one, with face like an owl, most conspicuous. The passengers filled
+their usual seats, and a delegation from the steerage crept shyly into
+the unoccupied space--women with shawls over their heads and babies in
+their arms, shock-headed men and toddling children, but all with an
+evident attempt at appropriate dress and manner. Among them was one
+sweet young English face beneath an old crape bonnet. A pair of shapely
+hands, which the shabby black gloves could not disguise, held fast a
+little child. Widowhood and want in the old world; what was waiting her
+in the new? The captain read the service, and all the people responded.
+The women's eyes grew wet at the sound of the familiar words. The little
+English widow bent her face over the head of the child in her lap, and
+something glistened in its hair. Our sympathies grew wide, and we joined
+in the prayer for the queen, that she might have victory over her
+enemies, and even murmured a response to the petition for Albert Edward
+and the nobility, dimly conscious that they needed prayers. The good
+captain added a petition for the president of the United States, to
+which the Mowing Machine Man and I said, "Amen." Then the minister,
+having poised himself carefully, read a discourse, sulphurous but
+sincere; the Mowing Machine Man thrusting his elbow into my side in a
+most startling manner at every particularly blue point. We were
+evidently in sympathy; but I could have dispensed with the expression of
+it. We closed with the doxology, standing upon our feet and swaying back
+and forth as though it had been a Shaker chant, led by an improvised
+choir and the Jersey Man.
+
+At night we descended into the depths of the steamer to worship with the
+steerage passengers. It was like one of Rembrandt's pictures--the
+darkness, the wild, strangely-attired people, the weird light from the
+lanterns piercing the gloom, and bringing out group after group with
+fearful distinctness; the pale, earnest face of the preacher, made
+almost unearthly by the glare of the yellow light--a face with its
+thin-drawn lips, its eyes like coals of fire such as the flames of
+martyrdom lit once, I imagine. Close beside him stood the Cattle Man,
+towering like Saul above the people, and with an air that plainly said,
+"Beware--I stand by the parson."
+
+          "There is a land of pure delight,"
+
+repeated the minister; and in a moment the words rolled out of the
+Cattle Man's mouth while he beckoned with his long arm for the people to
+rise. Throwing back his head, he sang with an unction indescribable,
+verse after verse, caught doubtless at some western camp-meeting, where
+he had tormented the saints. One after another took up the strain. Clear
+and strong came the tones from every dark corner, until, like one mighty
+voice, while the steamer rolled and the waves dashed against its sides,
+rose the words
+
+          "Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood,
+            Shall fright us from that shore."
+
+A great stillness fell upon the people as the minister gave out his
+text, and began his discourse. He had lacked freedom in the saloon, but
+here he forgot everything save the words given him; hard words they
+seemed to me, containing little of the love of God. I glanced at the
+Mowing Machine Man, who had made a seat of half a barrel under the
+stairs. He winked in a fearful manner, as though he would say, "Just see
+how he's a goin' on!" But the people received it gladly. One after
+another of the sailors crept down the stairs and stood in the shadow. I
+watched them curiously. It may be that this stern, hard doctrine suited
+these stern, hard men. It made me shudder.
+
+But the record of all these days would have no end. How can I tell of
+the long, happy hours, when more than strength, when perfect
+exhilaration, came to us; when existence alone was a delight? To sit
+upon the low wheel-house, with wraps and ribbons and hair flying in the
+wind, while we sang,--
+
+          "O, a life on the ocean wave!"
+
+to admiring fishes; to watch the long, lazy swell of the sea, or the
+spray breaking from the tops of the white caps into tiny rainbows; to
+walk the rolling deck for hours with never a shadow of weariness; to
+cling to the flag-staff when the stern of the ship rose in the air then
+dropped like a heavy stone into the sea, sending the spray far over and
+above us; to count the stars at night, watching the other gleaming
+phosphorescent stars that seemed to have fallen from heaven upon the
+long wake of the steamer,--all this was a delight unspeakable.
+
+One morning, when the land seemed a forgotten dream, we awoke to find
+green Erin close beside us. All the day before the sea-gulls had been
+hovering over us--beautiful creatures, gray above and white beneath,
+clouds with a silver lining. Tiny land birds, too, flew about us,
+resting wearily upon the rigging. The sea all at once became like glass.
+It seemed like the book of Revelation when the sun shone on it,--the sea
+of glass mingled with fire. For a time the land was but a line of rock,
+with martello towers perched upon the points. On the right, Fastnet Rock
+rose out of the sea, crowned with a light-house; then the gray barren
+shore of Cape Clear Island, and soon the sharp-pointed Stag Rocks. It is
+a treacherous coast. "I've been here many a night," said the captain, as
+he gave us his glass, "when I never expected to see morning." And all
+the while he was speaking, the sea smiled and smiled, as though it could
+never be cruel.
+
+We drew nearer and nearer, until we could see the green fields bounded
+by stone walls, the white, winding roads, and little villages nestling
+among the hills. Towards noon the lovely harbor of Queenstown opened
+before us, surrounded and almost shut in by rocky islands. Through the
+glass we could see the city, with its feet in the bay. We were no longer
+alone. The horizon was dotted with sails. Sometimes a steamer crossed
+our wake, or a ship bore down upon us. We hoisted our signals. We dipped
+our flag. The sailors were busy painting the boats, and polishing the
+brass till it shone again. Now the tender steams out from Queenstown.
+The steerage passengers in unwonted finery, tall hats and unearthly
+bonnets, and one in a black silk gown, are running about forward,
+shaking hands, gathering up boxes and bundles, and pressing towards the
+side which the tender has reached. There are the shouting of orders, the
+throwing of a rope, and in a moment they are crowding the plank. One
+long cheer, echoed from the stern of our steamer, and they are off.
+
+All day we walked the deck; even the sick crawled up at last to see the
+panorama. We still lingered when night fell, and we had turned away from
+the land to strike across the channel, and the picture rests with me
+now; the purple sky with one long stretch of purple, hazy cloud, behind
+which the sun went down; the long, low line of purple rock, our last
+glimpse of Ireland, and the shining, purple sea, with not a ripple upon
+its surface.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FIRST DAYS IN ENGLAND.
+
+          Up the harbor of Liverpool.--We all emerge as
+          butterflies.--The Mersey tender.--Lot's
+          wife.--"Any tobacco?"--"Names, please."--St.
+          George's Hall.--The fashionable promenade.--The
+          coffee-room.--The military man who showed the
+          purple tide of war in his face.--The railway
+          carriage.--The young man with hair all
+          aflame.--English villages.--London.--No place for
+          us.--The H. house.--The Babes in the Wood.--The
+          party from the country.--We are taken in charge by
+          the Good Man.--The Golden Cross.--Solitary
+          confinement.--Mrs. B.'s at last.
+
+
+WE steamed up the harbor of Liverpool the next morning. New Brighton,
+with its green terraces, its Chinese-pagoda villas, spread out upon one
+side, upon the other that solid wall of docks, the barricade that breaks
+the constant charges of the sea, with the masts of ships from every land
+for an abattis. The wraps and shapeless garments worn so long were laid
+aside; the pretty hood which had, like charity, covered so many sins of
+omission, hidden, itself, at last, the soft wool stiffened with the sea
+spray, the bright colors dimmed by smoke, and soot, and burning sun. We
+crept shyly upon the deck in our unaccustomed finery, as though called
+at a moment's notice to play another woman's part, half-learned. Not in
+us alone was the transformation. The girl in blue had blossomed into a
+bell--a blue bell. The Cattle Man, his hands released at last from the
+thraldom of his pockets, stalked about, funereal, in wrinkled black. A
+solferino neck-tie and tall hat of a pie-Adamite formation
+transmogrified our Mowing Machine friend. Nondescripts, that had lain
+about the deck wrapped in cocoons of rugs and shawls, emerged
+suddenly--butterflies! A painful courtesy seized us all. We had doffed
+the old familiar intercourse with our sea-garments. We gathered in
+knots, or stood apart singly, mindful at last of our dignity.
+
+The Mersey tender (a tender mercy to some) puffed out to meet us, and we
+descended the plank as those who turn away from home, leaving much of
+our thoughts, and something of our hearts, within the ship. It had been
+such a place of rest, of blessed idleness! Only when our feet touched
+the wharf did we take up the burden of life again. There were the
+meeting of friends, in which we had no part; the maelstrom of horses,
+and carts, and struggling humanity, in which we found a most unwilling
+place; and then we followed fast in the footsteps of the Mowing Machine
+Man, who in his turn followed a hair-covered trunk upon the shoulders of
+a stout porter, our destination the custom-house shed close by. For a
+moment, as we were tossed hither and thither by the swaying mass, our
+desires followed our thoughts to a certain sheltered nook, upon a still,
+white deck, with the sunbeams slanting down through the furled sails
+above, with the lazy, lapping sea below, and only our own idle thoughts
+for company. Then we remembered Lot's wife.
+
+There was a little meek-faced custom-house officer in waiting, with a
+voice so out of proportion to his size, that he seemed to have hired it
+for the occasion, or come into it with his uniform by virtue of his
+office. "Any tobacco?" he asked, severely, as we lifted the lid of our
+one trunk. We gave a virtuous and indignant negative. That was all. We
+might go our several ways now unmolested. One fervent expression of good
+wishes among our little company, while we make for a moment a network of
+clasped hands, and then we pass out of the great gates into our new
+world, and into the clutches of the waiting cabmen. By what stroke of
+good fortune we and our belongings were consigned to one and the same
+cab, in the confusion and terror of the moment, we did not know at the
+time. It was clearly through the intervention of a kind
+fellow-passenger, who, seeing that amazement enveloped us like a
+garment, kindly took us in charge. The dazed, as well as the lame and
+lazy, are cared for, it seems. By what stroke of good fortune we ever
+reached our destination, we knew still less. Our cab was a triumph of
+impossibilities, uncertainties, and discomfort. Our attenuated beast,
+like an animated hoop skirt, whose bones were only prevented, by the
+encasing skin, from flying off as we turned the corners, experienced
+hardly less difficulty in drawing his breath than in drawing his load.
+We descended at the entrance to the hotel as those who have escaped from
+imminent peril. We mounted the steps--two lone, but by no means lorn,
+damsels, two anxious, but by no means aimless females, knowing little of
+the world, less of travelling, and nothing whatever of foreign ways.
+Our very air, as we entered the door, was an apology for the intrusion.
+
+"Names, please," said the smiling man in waiting, opening what appeared
+to be the book of fate. We added ours to the long list of pilgrims and
+strangers who had sojourned here, dotting our i's and crossing our t's
+in the most elegant manner imaginable. If any one has a doubt as to our
+early advantages, let him examine the record of the Washington Hotel,
+Liverpool. The heading, "Remarks," upon the page, puzzled us. Were they
+to be of a sacred or profane nature? Of an autobiographical character?
+Were they to refer to the dear land we had just left? Through some
+political throes she had just brought forth a ruler. Should we add to
+the U. S. against our names, "As well as could be expected"? We
+hesitated,--and wrote nothing. Up the wide stairs, past the transparency
+of Washington--in the bluest of blue coats, the yellowest of top boots,
+and an air of making the best of an unsought and rather ridiculous
+position--we followed the doily upon the head of the pretty chambermaid
+to our wide, comfortable room, with its formidable, high-curtained beds.
+The satchels and parcels innumerable were propped carefully into
+rectitude upon the dressing table, under the impression that the ship
+would give a lurch; and then, gazing out through the great plate glass
+windows upon the busy square below, we endeavored to compose our
+perturbed minds and gather our scattered wits.
+
+It is not beautiful, this great city of Liverpool, creeping up from the
+sea. It has little to interest a stranger aside from its magnificent
+docks and warehouses. There are mammoth truck horses from Suffolk, with
+feet like cart wheels; there is St. George's Hall, the pride of the
+people, standing in the busy square of the same name, with a statue of
+the saint himself--a terror to all dragons--just before it. It is gray,
+many columned, wide stepped, vast in its proportions. Do you care for
+its measurement? Having seen that, you are ready to depart; and, indeed,
+there is nothing to detain one here beyond a day of rest, a moment to
+regain composure after the tossing of the sea. There are some
+substantial dwellings,--for commerce has its kings,--and some fine
+shops,--for commerce also has its queens,--and one fine drive, of which
+we learned too late. The air of endurance, which pervades the whole
+city, as it does all cities in the old world, impresses one greatly, as
+though they were built for eternity, not time; the founders having
+forgotten that here we are to have no continuing city. In the new world,
+man tears down and builds up. Every generation moulds and fashions its
+towns and cities after its own desires, or to suit its own means. Man is
+master. In the old world, one generation after another surges in and out
+of these grim, gray walls, leaving not so much as the mark the waves
+leave upon the rocks. Unchanged, unchanging, they stand age after age,
+time only softening the hard outlines, deepening the shadows it has cast
+upon them, and so bringing them into a likeness of each other that they
+seem to have been the design of one mind, the work of one pair of hands,
+and hardly of mortal mind or hands at that. They seem to say to man, "We
+have stood here ages before you were born. We shall stand here ages
+after you are forgotten." They must be filled with echoes, with ghosts,
+and haunting memories.
+
+Bold Street, a tolerably narrow and winding way, in which many are found
+to walk,--contrary to all precedent,--boasts the finest shops. Here the
+Lancashire witches, as the beauties of the county are called, walk, and
+talk, and buy gewgaws of an afternoon. It was something strange to us to
+see long silken skirts entirely destitute of crinoline, ruffle, or
+flounce, trailed here through mud and mire, or raised displaying low
+Congress gaiters, destitute of heels. For ourselves, if we had been the
+king of the Cannibal Islands, we could hardly have attracted more
+attention than we did in our plain, short travelling suits and
+high-heeled boots. It grew embarrassing, especially when our expression
+of unqualified benevolence drew after us a train of beggars. They
+crossed the street to meet us. They emerged from every side street and
+alley, thrusting dirty hands into our faces, and repeating twice-told
+tales in our ears, until we were thankful when oblivion and the shadow
+of the hotel fell upon us.
+
+We dined in the coffee-room,--that comfortable and often delightfully
+cosy apartment fitted with little tables, and with its corner devoted to
+books, to papers and conversation,--that combination of dining, tea and
+reading-room unknown to an American hotel,--sacred to the sterner sex
+from all time, and only opened to us within a few years,--the gates
+being forced then, I imagine, by American women, who will not consent to
+hide their light under a bushel, or keep to some faraway corner,
+unseeing and unseen. English women, as a rule, take their meals in
+their own private parlors. Perhaps because English men generally desire
+the flowers intrusted to their fostering care to blush unseen. It may be
+better for the gardeners; it may be better for the flowers--I cannot
+tell; but we dined in the coffee-room, as Americans usually do. One of
+the _clergymen_, who attend at such places, received our order. It was
+not so very formidable an affair, after all, this going down by
+ourselves; or would not have been, if the big-eyed waiter, who watched
+our every movement, would have left us, and the military man at the next
+table, who showed "the purple tide of war," or something else, in his
+face, and blew his nose like a trombone, ceased to stare. As it was, we
+aired our most elegant table manners. We turned in our elbows and turned
+out our toes,--so to speak,--and ate our mutton with a grace that
+destroyed all appetite. We tried to appear as though we had frequently
+dined in the presence of a whole battalion of soldiery, under the
+scrutiny of innumerable waiters,--and failed, I am sure. "With verdure
+clad" was written upon every line of our faces. The occasion of this
+cross fire we do not know to this day. Was it unbounded admiration? Was
+it spoons?
+
+Having brushed off the spray of the sea, having balanced ourselves upon
+the solid earth, having seen St. George's Hall, there was nothing to
+detain us longer, and the next morning we were on our way to London. We
+had scrutinized our bill,--which might have been reckoned in pounds,
+ounces, and penny-weights, for aught we knew to the contrary,--and
+informed the big-eyed waiter that it was correct. We had also offered
+him imploringly our largest piece of silver, which he condescended to
+accept; and having been presented with a ticket and a handful of silver
+and copper by the porter who accompanied us to the station across the
+way, in return for two or three gold pieces, we shook off the dust of
+Liverpool from our feet, turned our eyes from the splendors of St.
+George's Hall, and set our faces steadfastly towards our destination.
+There was a kind of luxury, notwithstanding our prejudices, in this
+English railway carriage, with its cushions all about us, even beneath
+our elbows; a restfulness unknown in past experience of travel, in the
+ability to turn our eyes away from the flying landscape without, to the
+peaceful quiet, never intruded upon, within. We did not miss the woman
+who will insist upon closing the window behind you, or opening it, as
+the case may be. Not one regret had we for the "B-o-s-t-o-n papers!" nor
+for the last periodical or novel. The latest fashion gazette was not
+thrown into our lap only to be snatched away, as we became interested in
+a plan for rejuvenating our wardrobe; nor were we assailed by venders of
+pop corn, apples, or gift packages of candy. Even the blind man, with
+his offering of execrable poetry, was unknown, and the conductor
+examined our tickets from outside the window. Settling back among our
+cushions, while we mentally enumerated these blessings of omission,
+there came a thought of the perils incurred by solitary females locked
+into these same comfortable carriages with madmen. If the danger had
+been so great for one solitary female, what must it be for two, we
+thought with horror. We gave a quick glance at our fellow-passenger, a
+young man with hair all aflame. Certainly his eyes did roll at that
+moment, but it was only in search of a newsboy; and when he exclaimed,
+like any American gentleman, "Hang the boy!" we became perfectly
+reassured. He proved a most agreeable travelling companion. We exchanged
+questions and opinions upon every subject of mutual interest, from the
+geological formation of the earth to the Alabama claims. I can hardly
+tell which astonished us most, his profound erudition or our own. Now, I
+have not the least idea as to whether Lord John Russell sailed the
+Alabama, or the Alabama sailed of itself, spontaneously; but, whichever
+way it was, I am convinced it was a most iniquitous proceeding, and so
+thought it safe to take high moral ground, and assure him that as a
+nation we could not allow it to go unpunished. You have no idea what an
+assistance it is, when one is somewhat ignorant and a good deal at a
+loss for arguments, to take high moral ground.
+
+When we were weary of discussion, when knowledge palled upon our taste,
+we pulled aside the little blue curtain, and gave ourselves up to gazing
+upon the picture from the window. I doubt if any part of England is
+looked upon with more curious eyes than that lying between Liverpool and
+London. It is to so many Americans the first glimpse of strange lands.
+Spread out in almost imperceptible furrows were the velvet turfed
+meadows, the unclipped hedges a mass of tangled greenness between. For
+miles and miles they stretched away, with seldom a road, never a
+solitary house. The banks on either side were tufted with broom and
+yellow with gorse; the hill-sides in the distance, white with chalk, or
+black with the heather that would blossom into purple beauty with the
+summer. We rushed beneath arches festooned, as for a gala-day, with
+hanging vines. Tiny gardens bloomed beside the track at every station,
+and all along the walls, the arched bridges, and every bit of stone upon
+the wayside, was a mass of clinging, glistening ivy. Not the half-dead,
+straggling thing we tend and shield so carefully at home, with here and
+there a leaf put forth for very shame. These, bright, clear-cut,
+deep-tinted, crowded and overlapped each other, and ran riot over the
+land, transforming the dingy, mildewy cottages, bits of imperishable
+ugliness, into things of beauty, if not eternal joys. Not in the least
+picturesque or pleasing to the eye were these English villages;
+straggling rows of dull red brick houses set amidst the fields--dirty
+city children upon a picnic--with a foot square garden before each door,
+cared for possibly, possibly neglected. A row of flower-pots upon the
+stone ledge of every little window, a row of chimney-pots upon the slate
+roof of every dwelling. Sometimes a narrow road twisted and writhed
+itself from one to another, edged by high brick walls, hidden beneath a
+weight of ivy; sometimes romantic lanes, shaded by old elms, and green
+beyond all telling. The towns were much the same,--outgrown villages.
+And the glimpse we caught, as we flew by, so far above the roofs often
+that we could almost peep down upon the hearths through the chimney
+tops, was by no means inviting.
+
+Dusk fell upon us with the smoke, and mist, and drizzling rain of
+London, bringing no anxiety; for was there not, through the
+thoughtfulness of friends, a place prepared for us? Our pleasant
+acquaintance of the golden locks forsook his own boxes, and bundles, and
+innumerable belongings to look for our baggage, and saw us safely
+consigned to one of the dingy cabs in waiting. I trust the people of our
+own country repay to wanderers there something of the kindness which
+American women, travelling alone, receive at the hands of strangers
+abroad. It was neither the first nor the last courtesy proffered most
+respectfully, and received in the spirit in which it was offered. There
+is a deal of nonsense in the touch-me-not air with which many go out to
+see the world, as there is a deal of folly in the opposite extreme. But
+these acquaintances of a day, the opportunity of coming face to face
+with the people in whose country you chance to be, of hearing and
+answering their strange questions in regard to our government, our
+manners and customs, as well as in displaying our own ignorance in
+regard to their institutions, in giving information and assistance when
+it is in our power, and in gratefully receiving the same from
+others,--all this constitutes one of the greatest pleasures of
+journeying.
+
+Our peace of mind received a rude shock, when, after rattling over the
+pavings around the little park in Queen's Square, and pulling the bell
+at Mr. B.'s boarding-house, we found that we were indeed expected, but
+indefinitely, and no place awaited us. We had forgotten to telegraph. It
+was May, the London season, and the hotels full. "X. told us you were
+coming," said the most lady-like landlady, leading us into the
+drawing-room from the dank darkness of the street. There was a glow of
+red-hot coals in the grate, a suggestion of warmth and comfort in the
+bright colors and cosy appointments of the room--but no place for us.
+"I'm very sorry; if you had telegraphed--but we can take you by Monday
+certainly," she said. I counted my fingers. Two days. Ah! but we might
+perish in the streets before that. Everything began to grow dark and
+doleful in contemplation. Some one entered the room. The landlady turned
+to him: "O, here is the good man to whose care you were consigned by X."
+We gave a sigh of relief, as we greeted the Good Man, for all our
+courage, like the immortal Bob Acres's, had been oozing from our finger
+ends. And if we possess one gift above another, it is an ability to be
+taken care of. "Do you know X.?" asked another gentleman, glancing up
+from his writing at the long, red-covered table. "We travelled with
+him," nodding towards his daughter, whose feet touched the fender,
+"through Italy, last winter." "Indeed--"
+
+"I'll just send out to a hotel near by," interrupted kind Mrs. B., "and
+see if you can be accommodated a day or two." How very bright the room
+became! The world was not hollow, after all, nor our dolls stuffed with
+sawdust. Even the cabman's rattle at the knocker, and demand of an extra
+sixpence for waiting, could not disturb our serenity. The messenger
+returned. Yes; we could be taken in (?) at the H. house; and accepting
+Mrs. B.'s invitation to return and spend the evening, we mounted to our
+places in the little cab, as though it had been a triumphal car, and
+were whizzed around the corner at an alarming pace by the impatient
+cabman.
+
+I should be sorry to prejudice any one against the H. house--which I
+might perhaps say is not the H. house at all; I hardly like to compare
+it to a whited sepulchre, though that simile did occur to my mind. Very
+fair in its exterior it was, with much plate glass, and ground glass,
+and gilding of letters, and shining of brass. It had been two
+dwelling-houses; it was now one select family hotel. But the two
+dwelling-houses had never been completely merged into one; never
+married, but joined, like the Siamese twins. There was a confusing
+double stairway; having ascended the right one, you were morally certain
+to descend the wrong. There was a confusing double hall, with doors in
+every direction opening everywhere but upon the way you desired to go.
+We mounted to the top of the house, followed by two porters with our
+luggage, one chambermaid with the key, another to ask if we would dine,
+and two more bearing large tin cans of hot water. We grew confused, and
+gasped, "We--we believe we don't care for any more at present, thank
+you," and so dismissed them all. The furniture was so out of proportion
+to the room that I think it must have been introduced in an infant
+state, and grown to its present proportions there. The one window was so
+high that we were obliged to jump up to look out over the mirror upon
+the bureau--a gymnastic feat we did not care to repeat. The bed curtains
+were gray; indeed there was a gray chill through the whole place. We sat
+down to hold a council of war. We resolved ourselves into a committee of
+ways and means, our feet upon the cans of hot water. "Pleasant," I said,
+as a leading remark, my heart beginning to warm under the influence of
+the hot water. "Pleasant?" repeated Mrs. K.; "it's enough to make one
+homesick. We can't stay here." "But," I interposed, "suppose we leave
+here, and can't get in anywhere else?" A vision of the Babes in the Wood
+rose before me. There was a rap at the door; the fourth chambermaid, to
+announce dinner. We finished our consultation hurriedly, and descended
+to the parlor, where we were to dine. It was a small room, already
+occupied by a large table and a party from the country; an old lady to
+play propriety, a middle-aged person of severe countenance to act it,
+and a pair of incipient and insipid lovers. He was a spectacled prig in
+a white necktie, a clergyman, I suppose, though he looked amazingly like
+a waiter, and she a little round combination of dimples and giggle.
+
+_He._ "Have you been out for a walk this morning?"
+
+_She._ "No; te-he-he-he."
+
+_He._ "You ought to, you know."
+
+_She._ "Te-he-he-he--yes."
+
+_He._ "You should always exercise before dinner."
+
+_She._ "Te-he-he-he."
+
+Here the words gave out entirely, and, it being remarkably droll, all
+joined in the chorus. "We must go somewhere else, if possible," we
+explained to Mrs. B., when, a little later, we found our way to her
+door. "At least we shall be better contented if we make the attempt."
+The Good Man offered his protection; we found a cab, and proceeded to
+explore the city, asking admittance in vain at one hotel after another,
+until at last the Golden Cross upon the Strand, more charitable than
+its neighbor, or less full, opened its doors, and the good landlady, of
+unbounded proportions, made us both welcome and comfortable. Quite
+palatial did our neat bed-room, draped in white, appear. We were the
+proud possessors, also, of a parlor, with a round mirror over the
+mantel, a round table in the centre, a sofa, of which Pharaoh's heart is
+no comparison as regards hardness, a row of stiff, proper arm-chairs,
+and any amount of ornamentation in the way of works of art upon the
+walls, and shining snuffers and candlesticks upon the mantel. Our
+bargain completed, there remained nothing to be done but to remove our
+baggage from the other house, which I am sure we could never have
+attempted alone. Think of walking in and addressing the landlady, while
+the chambermaids and waiters peeped from behind the doors, with, "We
+don't like your house, madam. Your rooms are tucked up, your beds
+uninviting, your chambermaids frowsy, your waiters stupid, and your
+little parlor an abomination." How could we have done it? The Good Man
+volunteered. "But do you not mind?" "Not in the least." Is it not
+wonderful? How can we believe in the equality of the sexes? In less than
+an hour we were temporarily settled in our new quarters, our rescued
+trunks consigned to the little bed-room, our heart-felt gratitude in the
+possession of the Good Man.
+
+We took our meals now in our own parlor, trying the solitary confinement
+system of the English during our two days' stay. It seemed a month. Not
+a sign of life was there, save the landlady's pleasant face behind the
+bar and the waiter who answered our bell, with the exception of a pair
+of mammoth shoes before the next door, mornings, and the bearded face
+of a man that startled us, once, upon the stairs. And yet the house was
+full. It was a relief when our two days of banishment Mere over, when in
+Mrs. B.'s pretty drawing-room, and around her table, we could again meet
+friends, and realize that we were still in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON.
+
+          Strange ways.--"The bears that went over to
+          Charlestown."--The delights of a runaway without
+          its dangers.--Flower show at the Crystal
+          Palace.--Whit-Monday at Hampton Court.--A queen
+          baby.--"But the carpets?"--Poor Nell
+          Gwynne.--Vandyck faces.--Royal beds.--Lunch at the
+          King's Arms.--O Music, how many murders have been
+          committed in thy name!--Queen Victoria's home at
+          Windsor.--A new "house that Jack built."--The
+          Round Tower.--Stoke Pogis.--Frogmore.--The Knights
+          of the Garter.--The queen's gallery.--The queen's
+          plate.--The royal mews.--The wicker
+          baby-wagons.--The state equipages.
+
+
+WE bought an umbrella,--every one buys an umbrella who goes to
+London,--and this, in its alpaca glory, became our constant companion.
+We purchased a guide-book to complete our equipments; but so
+disreputable, so yellow-covered, was its outward appearance, so
+suggestive of everything but facts, that we consigned it to oblivion,
+and put ourselves under the guidance of our Boston friends, the Good Man
+and his family.
+
+For two busy weeks we rattled over the flat pavings of the city in the
+low, one-horse cabs. We climbed towers, we descended into crypts, we
+examined tombstones, we gazed upon mummies. Everything was new,
+strange, and wonderful, even to the little boys in the street, who, as
+well as the omnibus drivers, were decked out in tall silk hats--a piece
+of absurdity in one case, and extravagance in the other, to our minds.
+The one-horse carriages rolled about upon two wheels; the occupants,
+like cross children, facing in every direction but the one they were
+going, and everybody, contrary to all our preconceived ideas of law and
+order, turned to the left, instead of to the right,--to say nothing of
+other strange and perplexing ways that came under our observation. We
+had come abroad upon the same errand as the bears who "went over to
+Charlestown to see what they could see," and so stared into every
+window, into every passing face, as though we were seeking the lost. We
+became known as the women who wanted a cab; our appearance within the
+iron posts that guard the entrance to Queen's Square from Southampton
+Row being the signal for a perfect Babel of unintelligible shouts and
+gesticulations down the long line of waiting vehicles, with the charging
+down upon us of the first half dozen in a highly dangerous manner.
+Wisdom is sometimes the growth of days; and we soon learned to dart out
+in an unexpected moment, utterly deaf and blind to everything and
+everybody but the first man and the first horse, and thus to go off in
+triumph.
+
+But if our exit was triumphant, what was our entry to the square, when
+weary, faint with seeing, hearing, and trying in vain to fix everything
+seen and heard in our minds, we returned in a hansom! English ladies do
+not much affect this mode of conveyance, but American women abroad
+have, or take, a wide margin in matters of mere conventionality,--and so
+ride in hansom cabs at will. They are grown-up baby perambulators upon
+two wheels; the driver sitting up behind, where the handle would be, and
+drawing the reins of interminable length over the top of the vehicle.
+Picture it in your mind, and then wonder, as I did, what power of
+attraction keeps the horse upon the ground; what prevents his flying
+into the air when the driver settles down into his seat. A pair of low,
+folding doors take the place of a lap robe; you dash through the street
+at an alarming rate without any visible guide, experiencing all the
+delights of a runaway without any of its dangers.
+
+
+FLOWER SHOW AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE.
+
+A ride by rail of half an hour takes one to Sydenham. It is a charming
+walk from the station through the tastefully arranged grounds, with
+their shrubberies, roseries, and fountains, along the pebble-strewn
+paths, crowded this day with visitors. The palace itself is so like its
+familiar pictures as to need no description. Much of the grandeur of its
+vast proportions within is lost by its divisions and subdivisions. There
+are courts representing the various nations of the earth,--America, as
+usual, felicitously and truthfully shown up by a pair of scantily
+attired savages under a palm tree; there are the courts of the Alhambra,
+of Nineveh, and of Pompeii; there are fountains, and statues, and
+bazaars innumerable, where one may purchase almost anything as a
+souvenir; there are cafes where one may refresh the body, and an immense
+concert hall where one may delight the soul,--and how much more I
+cannot tell, for the crowd was almost beyond belief, and a much more
+interesting study than Egyptian remains, or even the exquisite mass of
+perfumed bloom, that made the air like summer, and the whole place a
+garden. They were of the English middle class, the upper middle class,
+bordering upon the nobility,--these rotund, fine-looking gentlemen in
+white vests and irreproachable broadcloth, these stout, red-faced,
+richly-attired ladies, with their soft-eyed, angular daughters following
+in their train, or clinging to their arms. We listened for an hour to
+the queen's own band in scarlet and gold, and then came back to town,
+meeting train after train filled to overflowing with expensively arrayed
+humanity in white kids, going out for the evening.
+
+
+A DAY AT HAMPTON COURT.
+
+It was Whit-Monday,--the workingman's holiday,--a day of sun and shower;
+but we took our turn upon the outside of the private omnibus chartered
+for the occasion, unmindful of the drops; our propelling power, six gray
+horses. By virtue of this private establishment we were free to pass
+through Hyde Park,--that breathing-place of aristocracy, where no public
+vehicle, no servant without livery, is tolerated. It was early, and only
+the countless hoof-prints upon Rotten Row suggested the crowd of wealth
+and fashion that would throng here later in the day. One solitary
+equestrian there was; perched upon a guarded saddle, held in her place
+by some concealed band, serenely content, rode a queen baby in long,
+white robes. A groom led the little pony. She looked at us in grave
+wonder as we dashed by,--born to the purple! I cannot begin to describe
+to you the rising up of London for this day of pleasure; the decking of
+itself out in holiday attire; the garnishing of itself with paper
+flowers; the smooth, hard roads leading into the country, all alive; the
+drinking, noisy crowd about the door of every pot-house along the way.
+It was a delightful drive of a dozen or more miles, through the most
+charming suburbs imaginable,--past lawns, and gardens, and green old
+trees shading miniature parks; past "detached" villas that had blossomed
+into windows; indeed, the plate glass upon houses of most modest
+pretension was almost reckless extravagance in our eyes, forgetting, as
+we did, the slight duty to be paid here upon what is, with us, an
+expensive luxury. No wonder the English are a healthful people,--the sun
+shines upon them. I like their manner of house-building, of home-making.
+They set up first a great bay-window, with a room behind it, which is of
+secondary importance, with wide steps leading up to a door at the side.
+They fill this window with the rarest, rosiest, most rollicksome
+flowers. Then, if there remain time, and space, and means, other rooms
+are added, the bay-windows increasing in direct proportion; while
+shades, drawn shades, are a thing unknown. "But the carpets?" They are
+so foolish as to value health above carpets.
+
+It was high noon when we rolled up the wide avenue of Bushey Park, with
+its double border of gigantic chestnuts and limes, through Richmond
+Park, with its vast sweep of greensward flecked with the sunbeams,
+dripping like the rain through the royal oaks, past Richmond terrace,
+with its fine residences looking out upon the Thames, the translucent
+stream, pure and beautiful here, before going down to the city to be
+defiled--like many a life. We dismounted at the gates to the palace, in
+the rambling old village that clings to its skirts, and joined the crowd
+passing through its wide portals.
+
+It is an old palace thrown aside, given over to poor relatives, by
+royalty,--as we throw aside an old gown; a vast pile of dingy, red brick
+that has straggled over acres of Hampton parish, and is kept within
+bounds by a high wall of the same ugly material. It has pushed itself up
+into towers and turrets, with pinnacles and spires rising from its
+battlemented walls. It has thrust itself out into oriel and queer little
+latticed windows that peep into the gardens and overhang the three
+quadrangles, and is with its vast gardens and park, with its wide canal
+and avenues of green old trees, the most delightfully ugly, old place
+imaginable. Here kings and queens have lived and loved, suffered and
+died, from Cardinal Wolsey's time down to the days of Queen Anne. It is
+now one of England's show places; one portion of its vast extent, with
+the grounds, being thrown open to the public, the remainder given to
+decayed nobility, or wandering, homeless representatives of royalty,--a
+kind of royal almshouse, in fact. A curtained window, the flutter of a
+white hand, were to us the only signs of inhabitation.
+
+Through thirty or more narrow, dark, bare rooms,--bare but for the
+pictures that crowded the walls,--we wandered. There were two or three
+halls of stately proportions finely decorated with frescoes by Verrio,
+and one or two royal stairways, up and down which slippered feet have
+passed, silken skirts trailed, and heavy hearts been carried, in days
+gone by. The pictures are mostly portraits of brave men and lovely
+women, of kings and queens and royal favorites,--poor Nell Gwynne among
+them, who began life by selling oranges in a theatre, and ended it by
+selling virtue in a palace. The Vandyck faces are wonderfully beautiful.
+They gaze upon you through a mist, a golden haze,--like that which hangs
+over the hills in the Indian summer,--from out deep, spiritual eyes; a
+dream of fair women they are.
+
+There were one or two royal beds, where uneasy have lain the heads that
+wore a crown, and half a dozen chairs worked in tapestry by royal
+fingers,--whether preserved for their questionable beauty, or because of
+the rarity of royal industry, I do not know. We wandered through the
+shrubberies, paid a penny to see the largest grape vine in the
+world,--and wished we had given it to the heathen, so like its less
+distinguished sisters did the vine appear,--and at last lunched at the
+King's Arms, a queer little inn just outside the gates, edging our way
+with some difficulty through the noisy, guzzling crowd around the
+door--the crowd that, having reached the acme of the day's felicity, was
+fast degenerating into a quarrel. In the long, bare room at the head of
+the narrow, winding stairs, we found comparative quiet. The tables were
+covered with joints of beef, with loaves of bread, pitchers of ale, and
+the ubiquitous cheese. A red-faced young man in tight new clothes--like
+a strait-jacket--occupied one end of our table with his blushing
+sweetheart. A band of wandering harpers harped upon their harps to the
+crowd of wrangling men and blowsy women in the open court below;
+strangely out of tune were the harps, out of time the measure, according
+well with the spirit of the hour. A loud-voiced girl decked out in
+tawdry finery, with face like solid brass, sang "Annie Laurie" in hard,
+metallic tones,--O Music, how many murders have been committed in thy
+name!--then passed a cup for pennies, with many a jest and rude, bold
+laugh. We were glad when the day was done,--glad when we had turned away
+from it all.
+
+
+QUEEN VICTORIA'S HOME AT WINDSOR.
+
+The castle itself is a huge, battlemented structure of gray stone,--a
+fortress as well as a palace,--with a home park of five hundred acres,
+the private grounds of Mrs. Guelph, and, beyond that, a grand park of
+eighteen hundred acres. But do not imagine that she lives here with only
+her children and servants about her,--this kindly German widow, whose
+throne was once in the hearts of her people. Royalty is a complicated
+affair,--a wheel within a wheel,--and reminds us of nothing so much as
+"the house that Jack built."
+
+This is the Castle of Windsor.
+
+This is the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+These are the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of
+Windsor.
+
+These are the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that
+lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+These are the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies that
+'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+These are the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard the crown from the
+unicorn, that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to
+the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+These are the "military knights" forlorn, founded by Edward before you
+were born, that outrank the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard the
+crown from the unicorn, that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages
+that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle
+of Windsor.
+
+These are the knights that the garter have worn, with armorial banners
+tattered and torn, that look down on the military knights forlorn,
+founded by Edward before you were born, that outrank the soldiers, tried
+and sworn, that guard the crown from the unicorn, that stand by the
+lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the
+queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+This is the dean, all shaven and shorn, with the canons and clerks that
+doze in the morn, that install the knights that the garter have worn,
+with armorial banners tattered and torn, that look down on the military
+knights forlorn, founded by Edward before you were born, that outrank
+the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard the crown from the unicorn,
+that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies
+that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor.
+
+And so on. The train within the castle walls that follows the queen is
+endless.
+
+We passed through the great, grand, state apartments, refurnished at the
+time of the marriage of the Prince of Wales, for the use of the Danish
+family. We mounted to the battlements of the Round Tower by the hundred
+steps, the grim cannon gazing down upon us from the top. Half a dozen
+visitors were already there, gathered as closely as possible about the
+angular guide, listening to his geography lesson, and looking off upon
+the wonderful panorama of park, and wood, and winding river. Away to the
+right rose the spire of Stoke Pogis Church, where the curfew still
+"tolls the knell of parting day." To the left, in the great park below,
+lay Frogmore, where sleeps Prince Albert the Good. Eton College, too,
+peeped out from among the trees, its gardens touching the Thames, and in
+the distance,--beyond the sleeping villages tucked in among the
+trees,--the shadowy blue hills held up the sky.
+
+St. George's Chapel is in the quadrangle below. It is the chapel of the
+Knights of the Garter. And now, when you read of the chapels, or
+churches, or cathedrals in the old world,--and they are all in a sense
+alike,--pray don't imagine a New England meeting-house with a double row
+of stiff pews and a choir in the gallery singing "Antioch"! The body of
+the chapel was a great, bare space, with tablets and elaborate monuments
+against the walls. Opening from this were alcoves,--also called
+chapels,--each one containing the tombs and monuments of some family. As
+many of the inscriptions are dated centuries back, you can imagine they
+are often quaintly expressed. One old knight, who died in Catholic
+times, desired an open Breviary to remain always in the niche before his
+tomb, that passers might read to their comfort, and say for him an
+orison. Of course this would never do in the days when the chapel fell
+into Protestant hands. A Bible was substituted, chained into its place;
+but the old inscription, cut deep in the stone, still remains, beginning
+"Who leyde thys book here?" with a startling appropriateness of which
+the author never dreamed. Over another of these chapels is rudely cut an
+ox, an N, and a bow,--the owner having, in an antic manner, hardly
+befitting the place, thus written his name--Oxenbow.
+
+You enter the choir, where the installations take place, by steps,
+passing under the organ. In the chancel is a fine memorial window to
+Prince Albert. On either side are the stalls or seats for the knights,
+with the armorial banner of each hanging over his place. Projecting over
+the chancel, upon one side, is what appears to be a bay-window. This is
+the queen's gallery, a little room with blue silk hangings,--for blue is
+the color worn by Knights of the Garter,--where she sits during the
+service. Through these curtains she looked down upon the marriage of the
+Prince of Wales. Think of being thus put away from everybody, as though
+one were plague-stricken. A private station awaits her when she steps
+from the train at the castle gates. A private room is attached to the
+green-houses, to the riding-school in the park, and even to the private
+chapel. A private photograph-room, for the taking of the royal pictures,
+adjoins her apartments. It must be a fine thing to be a queen,--and so
+tiresome! Even the gold spoon in one's mouth could not offset the
+weariness of it all, and of gold spoons she has an unbounded supply;
+from ten to fifteen millions of dollars worth of gold plate for her
+majesty's table being guarded within the castle! Think of it, little
+women who set up house-keeping with half a dozen silver teaspoons and a
+salt-spoon!
+
+We waited before a great gate until the striking of some forgotten hour,
+to visit the royal mews. You may walk through all these stables in
+slippers and in your daintiest gown, without fear. A stiff young man in
+black--a cross between an undertaker and an incipient clergyman in
+manner--acted as guide. Other parties, led by other stiff young men,
+followed or crossed our path. There were stalls and stalls, upon either
+side, in room after room,--for one could not think of calling them
+stables,--filled by sleek bays for carriage or saddle. And the
+ponies!--the dear little shaggy browns, with sweeping tails, and
+wonderful eyes peeping out from beneath moppy manes, the milk-white,
+tiny steeds, with hair like softest silk,--they won our hearts. Curled
+up on the back of one, fast asleep, lay a Maltese kitten; the "royal
+mew" some one called it. The carriages were all plain and dark, for the
+ordinary use of the court. In one corner a prim row of little yellow,
+wicker, baby-wagons attracted our attention, like those used by the
+poorest mother in the land. In these the royal babies have taken their
+first airings.
+
+The state equipages we saw another day at Buckingham Palace,--the
+cream-colored horses, the carriages and harnesses all crimson and gold.
+There they stand, weeks and months together, waiting for an occasion.
+The effect upon a fine day, under favoring auspices,--the sun shining,
+the bands playing, the crowd of gazers, the prancing horses, the gilded
+chariots,--must almost equal the triumphal entry of a first class circus
+into a New England town!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON.
+
+          The Tower.--The tall Yankee of inquiring
+          mind.--Our guide in gorgeous array.--War
+          trophies.--Knights in armor.--A professional
+          joke.--The crown jewels.--The house where the
+          little princes were smothered.--The "Traitor's
+          Gate."--The Houses of Parliament.--What a throne
+          is like.--The "woolsack."--The Peeping Gallery for
+          ladies.--Westminster Hall and the law courts.--The
+          three drowsy old women.--The Great Panjandrum
+          himself.--Johnson and the pump.--St.
+          Paul's.--Wellington's funeral car.--The Whispering
+          Gallery.--The bell.
+
+
+THE TOWER.
+
+IT is not a tower at all, as we reckon towers, you must know, but a
+walled town upon the banks of the Thames, in the very heart of London.
+Hundreds of years ago, when what is now this great city was only moor
+and marsh, the Romans built here--a castle, perhaps. Only a bit of
+crumbling wall, of mouldering pavement, remain to tell the story. When
+the Normans came in to possess the land, William the Conqueror erected
+upon this spot a square fortress, with towers rising from its four
+corners. Every succeeding monarch added a castle, a tower, a moat, to
+strengthen its strength and extend its limits, until, in time, it
+covered twelve acres of land, as it does to this day. Here the kings
+and queens of England lived in comfortless state, until the time of
+Queen Elizabeth, having need to be hedged about with something more than
+royalty to insure safety. Times have changed; swords have been beaten
+into ploughshares; and where the moat once encircled the tower wall,
+flowers blossom now. The dungeons that for centuries held prisoners of
+state do not confine any one to-day; and the strongholds that guarded
+the person of England's sovereign keep in safety now the jewels and the
+crown. There are round towers, and square towers, and, for anything I
+know, three-cornered towers, each with its own history of horrors. There
+are windows from which people were thrown, bridges over which they were
+dragged, and dark holes in which they were incarcerated.
+
+[Illustration: "A dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain fell fast
+upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces." Page 57.]
+
+To appreciate all this, you should see it--as we did one chilly May
+morning. We huddled about the stove in the waiting-room upon the site of
+the old royal menagerie, our companions a round man, with a limp gingham
+cravat and shabby coat, a little old woman in a poke bonnet, and half a
+dozen or more schoolboys from the country. A tall Yankee of inquiring
+mind joined us as we sallied from the door, led by a guide gorgeous in
+ruff and buckles, cotton velvet and gilt lace, and with all these
+glories surmounted by a black hat, that swelled out at the top in a
+wonderful manner. Down the narrow street within the gates, over the
+slippery cobble-stones, under considerable mental excitement, and our
+alpaca umbrella, we followed our guide to an archway, before which he
+paused, and struck an attitude. The long Yankee darted forward. "Stand
+back, my friends, stand back," said the guide. "You will please form
+a circle." Immediately a dozen umbrellas surrounded him. He pointed to a
+narrow window over our heads; a dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain
+fell fast upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces. "In that room, Sir
+----" (I could not catch the name) "spent the night before his
+execution, in solemn meditation and prayer." There was a circular groan
+of sympathy and approval from a dozen lips, the re-cant of a dozen
+dripping umbrellas, and we pattered on to the next point of interest,
+following our leader through pools of blood, figuratively
+speaking,--literally, through pools of water,--our eyes distended, our
+cheeks pale with horror. Ah, what treasures of credulity we must have
+been to the guides in those days! Time brought unbelief and hardness of
+heart.
+
+We mounted stairs narrow and dark; we descended stairs dark and narrow;
+we entered chambers gloomy and grim. The half I could not tell--of the
+rooms filled with war trophies--scalps in the belt of the nation--from
+the Spanish Armada down to the Sepoy rebellion; the long hall, with its
+double row of lumbering old warriors encased in steel, as though they
+had stepped into a steel tower and walked off, tower and all, some fine
+morning; the armory, with its stacked arms for thirty thousand men. "We
+may have occasion to use them," said the guide, facetiously, making some
+reference to the speech of Mr. Sumner, just then acting the part of a
+stick to stir up the British lion. The Yankee chuckled complacently, and
+we, too, refused to quake. There was a room filled with instruments of
+torture, diabolical inventions, recalling the days of the Inquisition.
+The Yankee expressed a desire to "see how some o' them things worked."
+Opening from this was an unlighted apartment, with walls of stone, a
+dungeon indeed, in which we were made to believe that Sir Walter Raleigh
+spent twelve years of his life. No shadow of doubt would have fallen
+upon our unquestioning minds, had we been told that he amused himself
+during this time by standing upon his head. "Walk in, walk in," said the
+smiling guide, as we peered into its darkness. We obeyed. "Now," said
+he, "that you may appreciate his situation, I will step out and close
+the door." The little old woman screamed; the Yankee made one stride to
+the opening; the guide laughed. It was only a professional joke; there
+was no door. We saw the bare prison-room, with its rough fireplace, the
+slits between the stones of the wall to admit light and air, and the
+initials of Lady Jane Grey, with a host more of forgotten names, upon
+the walls. Just outside, within the quadrangle, where the grass grew
+green beneath the summer rain, she was beheaded,--poor little
+innocent,--who had no desire to be a queen! In another tower close by,
+guarded by iron bars, were the royal jewels and the crown, for which all
+this blood was shed--pretty baubles of gold and precious stones, but
+hardly worth so many lives.
+
+You remember the story of the princes smothered in the Tower by command
+of their cruel uncle? There was the narrow passage in the wall where the
+murderers came at night; the worn step by which they entered the great,
+bare room where the little victims slept; the winding stairs down which
+the bodies were thrown. Beneath the great stone at the foot they were
+secretly buried. Then the stairway was walled up, lest the stones should
+cry out; and no one knew the story of the burial until long, long
+afterwards--only a few years since--when the walled-up stairway was
+discovered, the stones at the foot displaced, and a heap of dust, of
+little crumbling bones, revealed it. A rosy-faced, motherly woman, the
+wife of a soldier quartered in the barracks here, answered the rap of
+the guide upon the nail-studded door opening from one of the courts, and
+told us the old story. "The bed of the princes stood just there," she
+said, pointing to one corner, where, by a curious coincidence, a little
+bed was standing now. She answered the question in our eyes with, "My
+boys sleep there." "But do you not fear that the murderers will come
+back some night by this same winding way, and smother them?" How she
+laughed! And, indeed, what had ghosts to do with such a cheery body!
+
+Down through the "Traitors' Gate," with its spiked portcullis, we could
+see the steps leading to the water. Through this gate prisoners were
+brought from trial at Westminster. It is said that the Princess
+Elizabeth was dragged up here when she refused to come of her own will,
+knowing too well that they who entered here left hope behind. A little
+later, with music and the waving of banners, and amid the shouts of the
+people, she rode out of the great gates into the city, the Queen of
+England.
+
+
+THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.
+
+Though they have stood barely thirty years, already the soft gray
+limestone begins to crumble away,--the elements, with a sense of the
+fitness of things, striving to act the part of time, and bring them into
+a likeness of the adjoining abbey. There is an exquisite beauty in the
+thousand gilded points and pinnacles that pierce the fog, or shine
+softly through the mist that veils the city. Ethereal, shadowy, unreal
+they are, like the spires of a celestial city, or the far away towers
+and turrets we see sometimes at sunset in the western sky.
+
+Here, you know, are the chambers of the Houses of Lords and Commons,
+with the attendant lobbies, libraries, committee-rooms, &c., and a
+withdrawing-room for the use of the queen when she is graciously pleased
+to open Parliament in person. The speaker of the House of Commons, as
+well as some other officials, reside here--a novel idea to us, who could
+hardly imagine the speaker of our House of Representatives taking up his
+abode in the Capitol! Parliament was not in session, and we walked
+through the various rooms at will, even to the robing-room of the noble
+lords, where the peg upon which Lord Stanley hangs his hat was pointed
+out; and very like other pegs it was. At one end of the chamber of the
+House of Lords is the throne. It is a simple affair enough--a gilded
+arm-chair on a little platform reached by two or three steps, and with
+crimson hangings. Extending down on either side are the
+crimson-cushioned seats without desks. In the centre is a large square
+ottoman,--the woolsack,--which might, with equal appropriateness, be
+called almost anything else. Above, a narrow gallery offers a
+lounging-place to the sons and friends of the peers; and at one end,
+above the throne, is a high loft, a kind of uplifted amen corner, for
+strangers, with a space where women may sit and look down through a
+screen of lattice-work upon the proceedings below. It seems a remnant of
+Eastern customs, strangely out of place in this Western world, and akin
+to the shrouding of ourselves in veils, like our Oriental sisters. Or
+can it be that the noble lords are more keenly sensitive to the
+distracting influence of bright eyes than other men?
+
+
+WESTMINSTER HALL AND THE LAW COURTS.
+
+Adjoining the Houses of Parliament is this vast old hall. For almost
+five hundred years has it stood, its curiously carved roof unsupported
+by column or pillar. Here royal banquets, as well as Parliaments, have
+been held, and more than one court of justice. Here was the great trial
+of Warren Hastings. It was empty now of everything but echoes and the
+long line of statuary on either side, except the lawyers in their long,
+black gowns, who hastened up and down its length, or darted in and out
+the three baize doors upon one side, opening into the Courts of
+Chancery, Common Pleas, and the Exchequer. Our national curiosity was
+aroused, and we mounted the steps to the second, which had won our
+sympathies from its democratic name.
+
+There were high, straight-backed pews of familiar appearance, rising one
+above the other, into the last of which we climbed, a certain Sunday
+solemnity stealing over us, a certain awkward consciousness that we were
+the observed of all observers, since we were the only spectators--a
+delusion of our vanity, however. In the high gallery before us, in
+complacent comfort, sat three fat, drowsy old women (?) in white,
+curling wigs, and voluminous gowns, asking all manner of distracting
+questions, and requiring to be told over and over again,--after the
+manner of drowsy old women,--to the utter confusion of a poor witness in
+the front pew, who clung to the rail and swayed about hopelessly, while
+he tried to tell his story, as if by this rotary motion he could churn
+his ideas into form. Not only did he lose the thread of his
+discourse,--he became hopelessly entangled in it. Scratch, scratch,
+scratch, went the pens all around him. Every word, as it fell from his
+lips, was pounced upon by the begowned, bewigged, bewildering judges,
+was twisted and turned by the lawyers, was tossed back and forth
+throughout the court-room, until there arose a question in our minds, as
+to who was telling the story. All the while the lawyers were glaring
+upon him as though he was perjuring himself with every word--as who
+would not be, under the circumstances? And such lawyers! They dotted the
+pews all around us. The long, black gowns were not so bad; they hid a
+deal of awkwardness, I doubt not. But the wigs! the queer little curly
+things, perched upon every head, and worn with such a perverse delight
+in misfits! the small men being invariably hidden beneath the big wigs,
+and the large men strutting about like the great Panjandrum himself with
+the little round button at the top! The appearance of one, whose head,
+through some uncommon development, rose to a ridge-pole behind, was
+surprising, to say the least. It was not alone that his wig was too
+small, that a fringe of straight, black hair fell below its entire white
+circumference; it was not alone that it was parted upon the wrong side,
+or that, being mansard in form, and his head hip-roofed, it could
+never, by any process, have been shaped thereto; but I doubt if the
+wearing of it upside down, added to all these little drawbacks, could
+conduce to the beauty or dignity of any man. Unmindful of this reversed
+order of nature, its happy possessor skipped about the court-room,
+nodding to his brethren with a blithesome air, to the imminent peril of
+his top-knot, which sustained about the same relation to his head as the
+sword to that of Damocles. He speered down upon the poor witness. He
+pretended to make notes of dreadful import with a screaming quill, and,
+in fact, comported himself with an airy unconsciousness delightful to
+see.
+
+In regard to the proceedings of the court, I only know that the point
+under discussion concerned one Johnson, and a pump; and Mr. Pickwick's
+judge sat upon the bench. Whether he was originally round, red-faced,
+with gooseberry eyes, I do not remember; but all these pleasing
+characteristics he possessed at this present time, as well as a pudgy
+forefinger, with which to point his remarks.
+
+"You say," he repeated, with a solemnity of which my pen is incapable,
+and impressing every word upon the poor man in the front pew with this
+same forefinger, "that--Bunsen--went--to--the--pump?"
+
+"Johnson, my lord," the witness ventured to correct him, in a low tone.
+
+"It makes no difference," responded the judge, irate, "whether it is
+Bunsen or Jillson. The question is, Did--Jillson--go--to--the--pump?"
+
+Whom the gods destroy they first deprive of their five senses. Four, at
+least, of the poor man's had departed some time since. The fifth
+followed. "Johnson went, my lord," he replied, doggedly. Having found
+one point upon which his mind was clear, he clung to it with the
+tenacity of despair.
+
+"Johnson! who's _Johnson_?" gasped the bewildered judge, over whose face
+a net of perplexed lines spread itself upon the introduction of this new
+character. In the confusion of denials and explanations that followed,
+we descended from our perch, and stole away; nor are we at all sure, to
+this day, as to whether Johnson did or did not really go to the pump.
+
+
+ST. PAUL'S.
+
+Imagine our surprise, one day, when admiring a pretty ribbon upon a
+friend, to be told that it came from St. Paul's Churchyard. Hardly the
+place for ribbons, one would think; but the narrow street which
+encircles the cathedral in the form of a bow and its string goes by this
+name, and contains, besides the bookstores and publishing houses, some
+fine "silk mercers'" establishments.
+
+The gray surface of the grand edifice is streaked with black, as though
+time had beaten it with stripes, and a pall of smoke and dust covers the
+statues in the court before it. Consecrated ground this is, indeed. From
+the earliest times of the Christian religion, through all the bigotry
+and fanaticism of the ages that followed, down to the present time, the
+word of God has been proclaimed here--in weakness often, in bitterness
+many times that belied the spirit of its message; by a priesthood more
+corrupt than the people; by noble men, beyond the age in which they
+lived, and whom the flames of martyrdom could not appall. Under
+Diocletian the first church was destroyed. It was rebuilt, and destroyed
+again by the Saxons. Twice has it been levelled to the ground by fire.
+But neither sword nor flame could subdue it, and firm as a rock it
+stands to-day, as it has stood for nearly two hundred years, and as it
+seems likely to stand for ages to come. The sacred stillness that
+invests the place was rudely broken, the morning of our visit, by the
+blows from the hammers of the workmen, resounding through the dome like
+a discharge of artillery. A great stage, and seats in the form of an
+amphitheatre, were being erected in the nave for a children's festival,
+which prevented our doing more than glance down its length. We read some
+of the inscriptions upon the monuments, that one, so often quoted, of
+Sir Christopher Wren, among them--"Do you seek his monument? Look around
+you;" glanced into the choir, with its Gothic stalls, where the service
+is performed, and then descended into the crypt beneath all this, that
+labyrinth of damp darkness where so many lie entombed. Here is the
+funeral car of Wellington, with candles burning around it, cast from the
+conquering cannon which thundered victory to a nation, but sorrow and
+death to many a home. Shrouded with velvet it is, as are the horses, in
+imitation of those which bore him to his rest. All around were marble
+effigies, blackened, broken, as they survived the burning of the late
+cathedral, at the time of the great fire. Tombstones formed the
+pavement. "Whose can this be?" I said, trying to follow with the point
+of my umbrella the half-worn inscription beneath my feet. It was that of
+Sir Joshua Reynolds. Strange enough it seemed to us, coming from a
+country so new as to have been by no means prolific in great men, to
+find them here lying about under our feet.
+
+Having explored the crypt, we prepared to mount the endless winding
+stairs, whose final termination is the ball under the cross that
+surmounts the whole. Our ambition aimed only at the bell beneath the
+ball. We paid an occasional sixpence for the privilege of peeping into
+the library,--a most tidy and put-to-rights room, with a floor of wood
+patchwork,--and for the right to look down upon the geometrical
+staircase which winds around and clings to the wall upon one side, but
+is without any visible support upon the other. The "whispering gallery"
+was reached after a time. It is the encircling cornice within the dome,
+surrounded by a railing, and forming a narrow gallery. "I will remain
+here," said the guide, "while you pass around until you are exactly
+opposite; wait there until I whisper." Had we possessed the spirit of
+Casabianca, we should at this moment be sitting upon that narrow bench
+against the wall, with our feet upon the gas-pipes. We waited and
+listened, and listened and waited; but the sound of the blows from the
+hammers below reverberated like thunder around us. We could not have
+heard the crack of doom. Becoming conscious, after a time, that our
+guide had disappeared, we came out and continued our ascent. Mrs. K.'s
+curiosity, if not satisfied, was at least quenched, and she refused to
+go farther. My aspirations still pointed upward. There was another
+sixpence, another dizzy mount of dark, twisting stairs, with strength,
+ambition, and even curiosity gradually left behind, and with only one
+blind instinct remaining--to go on. There was a long, dingy passage,
+through which ghostly forms were flitting; there were more stairs, with
+twists and turns, forgotten now with other torments; there was the
+mounting of half a dozen rickety wooden steps at last, for no object but
+to descend shakily upon the other side, and then we found ourselves in a
+little dark corner, peering over a dingy rail, with a great, dusky
+object filling all the space below. And that was the bell! "Well, and
+what of it?" I don't know; but we saw it!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+AWAY TO PARIS.
+
+          The wedding party.--The canals.--New
+          Haven.--Around the tea-table.--Separating the
+          sheep from the goats.--"Will it be a rough
+          passage?"--Gymnastic feats of the little
+          steamer.--O, what were officers to us?--"Who ever
+          invented earrings!"--Dieppe.--Fish-wives.--Train
+          for
+          Paris.--Fellow-passengers.--Rouen.--Babel.--Deliverance.
+
+
+IT was the last week in May, and by no means the "merry, merry month of
+May" had we found it. Not only was the sky weighed down with clouds, but
+they dripped upon the earth continually, the sun showing his ghastly,
+white, half-drowned face for a moment only to be swept from sight again
+by the cloud waves. A friend was going to Paris. Would we shake the
+drops from our garments, close our umbrellas, and go with him? We not
+only would, we did. We gathered a lunch, packed our trunk, said our
+adieus, and drove down to the station in the usual pouring rain, the
+tearful accompaniment to all our movements. But one party besides our
+own awaited the train upon the platform--a young man with the insignia
+of bliss in the gloves of startling whiteness upon his hands, and a
+middle-aged woman of seraphic expression of countenance, clad in robes
+of spotless white, her feet encased in capacious white slippers. In
+this airy costume, one hand grasping a huge bouquet devoid of color, the
+other the arm of her companion, she paced back and forth, to the great
+amusement of the laughing porters, casting upon us less fortunate ones,
+who shivered meekly in our wraps, glances of triumphant pity
+indescribable.
+
+"Weddin' party, zur," explained the guard, touching his cap to our
+friend. "Jus' come down in fly." They looked to us a good deal more as
+if they were just going up in a "fly." The train shrieked into the
+station, and we were soon rushing over the road to New Haven, from
+which, in an evil moment, we had planned to cross the Channel. There was
+little new or strange in the picture seen from our window. The cottages
+were now of a dull, clay color, instead of the dingy red we had observed
+before, as though they had been erected in sudden need, without waiting
+for the burning of the bricks. There were brick-yards all along the way,
+answering a vexed question in my mind as to where all the bricks came
+from which were used so entirely in town and village here, in the
+absence of the wood so plentiful with us. The canals added much to the
+beauty of the landscape, winding through the meadows as if they were
+going to no particular place, and were in no haste to reach their
+destination. They turned aside for a clump of willows or a mound of
+daisy-crowned earth; they went quite out of their way to peep into the
+back doors of a village, and, in fact, strolled along in a lazy,
+serpentine manner that would have crazed the proprietor of a Yankee
+canal boat.
+
+It was five o'clock when we reached New Haven, having dropped our
+fellow-passengers along the way, the blissful couple among them.
+Through some error in calculation we had taken an earlier train than we
+need have, and found hours of doleful leisure awaiting us in this sleepy
+little town, lying upon an arm of the sea. Its outer appearance was not
+inviting. Here were the first and last houses of wood we saw in
+England,--high, ugly things, that might have been built of old boats or
+drift wood, with an economy that precluded all thought of grace in
+architecture. The train, in a gracious spirit of accommodation, instead
+of plunging into the sea, as it might have done, paused before the door
+of a hotel upon the wharf. There, in a little parlor, we improvised a
+home for a time. Our friend went off to explore the town. We took
+possession of the faded red arm-chairs by the wide windows. Down below,
+beyond the wet platform, rose the well-colored meerschaum of the little
+French steamer, whose long-boats hung just above the edge of the wharf.
+Through the closed window stole the breath of the salt sea, that, only a
+hand-breadth here, widened out below into boundlessness, bringing
+visions of the ocean and a thrill of remembered delight. The rain had
+ceased. The breeze rolled the clouds into snow-balls, pure white against
+the blue of the sky. Over the narrow stream came the twitter of birds,
+hidden in the hawthorn hedge all abloom. Everything smiled, and beamed,
+and glistened without, though far out to sea the white caps crowned the
+dancing waves. When night fell, and the lights glimmered all through the
+town, we drew the heavy curtains, lighted the candles in the shining
+candlesticks, whose light cast a delusive glow over the dingy dustiness
+of the room, bringing out cheerfully the little round tea-table in the
+centre, with its bright silver and steaming urn, over which we lingered
+a long hour, measuring and weighing our comfort, telling tales, seeing
+visions, and dreaming dreams of home.
+
+The clock struck nine as we crossed the plank to the Alexandra, trying
+in vain to find in its toy appointments some likeness to our ocean
+steamer of delightful memory. The train whizzed in from London, bringing
+our fellow-voyagers. The sheep were separated from the goats by the
+officer at the foot of the plank, who asked each one descending, "First
+or second cabin?"--sending one to the right, the other to the left. The
+wind swept in from the sea raw and cold. The foot-square deck was
+cheerless and wet. Even a diagonal promenade proved short and
+unsatisfactory, and in despair we descended the slippery, perpendicular
+stairs between boxes and bales, and down still another flight, to the
+cabin. A narrow, cushioned seat clung to its four sides, divided into
+lengths for berths. "Will it be a rough night?" we carelessly asked the
+young stewardess. "O, no!" was the stereotyped reply, though all the
+while the wicked waves were dancing beneath the white caps just outside.
+We divested ourselves of hats, and wraps, and useless ornaments,
+reserving only that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, under a nameless
+fear, grew every moment meeker and more quiet. We undid the interminable
+buttons of our American boots, and prepared for a comfortable rest, with
+an ignorance that at the time approximated bliss. There was leisure for
+the working out of elaborate schemes. Something possessed the tide.
+Whether it was high or low, narrow or wide, I do not know; but there at
+the wharf we were to await the working of its own will, regardless of
+time. Accordingly we selected our places with a deliberation that bore
+no proportion to the time we were to fill them, advising with the
+stewardess, who had settled herself comfortably to sleep. We tried our
+heads to England and our feet to the foe, and then reversed the order,
+finally compromising by taking a position across the Channel. But the
+loading of the steamer overhead, with the chattering of our
+fellow-passengers below,--two English girls, a pretty brunette and her
+sister,--banished sleep. At three o'clock our voyage began--the
+succession of quivering leaps, plunges, and somersaults which
+miraculously landed us upon the French coast. I can think of no words to
+describe it. The first night upon the ocean was paradise and the
+perfection of peace in comparison. To this day the thought of the
+swashing water, beaten white against the port-hole before my eyes, is
+sickening. A calm--to me, of utter prostration--fell upon us long after
+the day dawned, only to be broken by the stewardess, when sleep had
+brought partial forgetfulness, with, "It's nine o'clock; we're at
+Dieppe, and the officers want to come in here." We tried to raise our
+heads. Officers! What officers? Had we crossed the Styx? Were they of
+light or darkness? We sank back. O, what were officers to us!
+
+"But you must get up!"--and she began an awkward attempt at the buttons
+of those horrible boots. That recalled to life. American boots are of
+this world, and we made a feeble attempt to don some of its vanities.
+O, how senseless did the cuffs appear that went on upside down!--the
+collar which was fastened under one ear!--the ribbons that were
+consigned to our pockets! Making blind stabs at our ears, "Good
+heavens!" we ejaculated, "who ever invented earrings? Relics of
+barbarism!" We made hasty thrusts at the hair-pins, standing out from
+our heads in every direction like enraged porcupine quills; being
+pulled, and twisted, and scolded by the stewardess all the while;
+hearing the thump, thump, upon our door as one pair of knuckles after
+another awoke the echoes, as one strange voice after another shouted,
+"Why don't those ladies come out?" O the trembling fingers that refused
+to hold the pins!--the trembling feet that staggered up the ladder-like
+stairs as we were thrust out of the cabin--out of the cruel little
+steamer to take refuge in one of the waiting cabs! O the blessedness of
+our thick veils and charitable wraps!
+
+I recall, as though it were a dream, the narrow, roughly-paved street of
+Dieppe; a latticed window filled with flowers, and a dark-eyed maiden
+peeping through the leaves; the fish-wives in short petticoats and with
+high white caps, clattering over the stones in their wooden _sabots_,
+wheeling barrows of fish to the market near the station, where they
+bartered, and bargained, and gossiped. Evidently it is a woman's right
+in Normandy to work--to grow as withered, and hard, and old before the
+time as she chooses, or as she has need; for to put away year after
+year, as do these poor women, every grace and charm of womanhood, cannot
+be of choice.
+
+At the long table in the refreshment-room of the station we drank the
+tasteless tea, and ate a slice from the roll four feet in length. The
+English-speaking girl who attended us found a place--rough enough, to be
+sure--where in the few moments of waiting we could complete our hasty
+toilets. Beside us at the table, our fellow-voyagers, were two
+professors from a Connecticut college of familiar name, whom we had met
+in London. They joined us in the comfortable railway carriage, and added
+not a little to the pleasant chat that shortened the long day and the
+weary journey to Paris. Our number--for the compartment held eight--was
+completed by a young American gentleman, and a Frenchman of evil
+countenance, who drank wine and made love to his pretty Lizette in an
+unblushing manner, strange, and by no means pleasing, to us,
+demonstrating the annoyance, if nothing worse, to which one is often
+subjected in these compartment cars. It needed but one glance from the
+window to convince us that we were no longer in England. To be sure, the
+sky is blue, the grass green, in all lands; but in place of the level
+sweep of meadow through which we had passed across the Channel, the land
+swelled here into hills on every side. Long rows of stiff poplars
+divided the fields, or stretched away in straight avenues as far as the
+eye could reach. The English remember the beauty of a curved line; the
+French, with a painful rectitude, describe only right angles. Scarlet
+poppies blushed among the purple, yellow, and white wild flowers along
+the way. The plastered cottages with their high, thatched roofs, the
+tortuous River Seine with its green islands, as we neared Paris, the
+neat little stations along the way--like gingerbread houses--made for us
+a new and charming panorama. Hanging over a gate at one of these
+stations was an old man, white-haired, blind; his guide, an old woman,
+who waited, with a kind of wondering awe stealing over her withered
+face, while he played some simple air upon a little pipe--thus asking
+alms. So simple was the air, the very shadow of a melody, that the scene
+might have been amusing, had it not been so pitiful.
+
+At noon we lunched in the comfortless waiting-room at Rouen, while the
+professors made a hasty visit to the cathedral during our stay of half
+an hour. We still suffered from the tossing of the sea, and cathedrals
+possessed no charms in our eyes. It was almost night when we reached
+Paris, and joined the hurrying crowd descending from the train. It was a
+descent into Pandemonium. There was a confusion of unintelligible sounds
+in our ears like the roll of a watchman's rattle, bringing no suggestion
+of meaning. The calmness of despair fell upon our crushed spirits, with
+a sense of powerlessness such as we never experienced before or since. A
+dim recollection of school-days--of Ollendorff--rose above the chaos in
+our minds. "Has the physician of the shoemaker the canary of the
+carpenter?" we repeated mechanically; and with that our minds became a
+blank.
+
+Deliverance awaited us; and when, just outside the closed gates, first
+in the expectant crowd, we espied the face of a friend, peace enveloped
+us like a garment. Our troubles were over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE PARIS OF 1869.
+
+          The devil.--Cathedrals and churches.--The
+          Louvre.--Modern French art.--The Beauvais clock,
+          with its droll little puppets.--Virtue in a red
+          gown.--The Luxembourg Palace.--The yawning statue
+          of Marshal Ney.--Gay life by gas-light.--The
+          Imperial Circus.--The Opera.--How the emperor and
+          empress rode through the streets after the
+          riots.--The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was
+          her fortune.--Napoleon's tomb.
+
+
+IT may be the City of Destruction, the very gateway to depths unknown;
+but with its fair, white dwellings, its fair, white streets, that
+gleamed almost like gold beneath a summer sun, it seemed much more a
+City Celestial. It may be, as some affirm, that the devil here walks
+abroad at midday; but we saw neither the print of his hoofs upon the
+asphaltum, nor the shadow of his horns upon the cream-like Caen stone.
+We walked, and rode, and dwelt a time within its limits; and but for a
+certain reckless gayety that gave to the Sabbath an air of Vanity Fair,
+but for the mallet of the workman that disturbed our Sunday worship, we
+should never have known that we were not in the most Christian of all
+Christian cities. It is by no means imperative to do in Rome as the
+Romans do, and one need not in Paris drink absinthe or visit the Jardin
+Mabille.
+
+Our first expedition was to the banker's and to the shops, and having
+replenished our purse and wardrobe, we were prepared to besiege the
+city. There was a day or two of rest in the gilded chairs, cushioned
+with blue satin, of our pretty _salon_, whence we peeped down upon the
+street below between the yellow satin curtains that draped its wide
+French window; or rolled our eyes meditatively to the delicately tinted
+ceiling, with its rose-colored clouds skimmed by tiny, impossible birds;
+or made abortive attempts to penetrate the secrets of the buhl cabinets,
+and to guess at the time from the pretty clocks of disordered organism;
+or admired ourselves in the mirrors which gazed at each other from
+morning till night, for our apartments in the little Hotel Friedland we
+found most charming.
+
+You will hardly care for a description of the dozen, more or less,
+churches, old, new, and restored, with which we began and ended our
+sight-seeing in Paris, where we looked upon sculptured saints without
+number, and studied ecclesiastical architecture to more than our hearts'
+content. There was St. Germain L'Auxerrois, the wicked old bell of which
+tolled the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. We stood with the
+_bonnes_ and babies under the trees of the square before it, gazing up
+at the belfry with most severe countenances,--and learned, afterwards,
+that the bell had been long since removed! There was the Madeleine of
+more recent date, built in the form of a Greek temple, and interesting
+just now for having been the church of Father Hyacinthe, to which we
+could for a time find no entrance. We shook the iron gate; we inquired
+in excellent English of a French shopkeeper, and found at last an open
+gateway, a little unlocked door, beyond which we spent a time of search
+and inquiry in darkness, and among wood, and shavings, and broken
+chairs, and holy dust-pans, before passing around and entering the great
+bronze doors. There were the Pantheon and St. Sulpice, grand and
+beautiful, erected piously from the proceeds of lotteries. There was St.
+Etienne du Mont, and within one of its chapels the gilded tomb of the
+patron saint of Paris--St. Genevieve. Who she was, or what she did to
+gain this rather unenviable position, I failed to learn. Her name seems
+to have outlived her deeds. Whether she was beautiful and beloved, and
+put away earthly vanities for a holy life, or old and ugly, and bore her
+lot with a patience that won saintship, I do not know. I can only tell
+that tapers burn always upon her tomb, and if you buy one it will burn a
+prayer for you. So we were told. There is one old church, St. Germain
+des Pres, most beautifully colored within. Its pictures seem to have
+melted upon the walls. But admired above all is the Sainte Chapelle, in
+the Palais de Justice, a chapel fitted up by the fanatical St. Louis,
+when this palace of justice, which holds now the courts of law, was a
+royal residence. Of course all its brightness was dimmed long ago. Its
+glories became dust, like its founder. But it has recently been
+restored, and is a marvel of gilt, well-blended colors, and stained
+glass. A graceful spire surmounts it, but the old, cone-capped towers,
+rising from another part of the same building, possessed far greater
+interest in our eyes; for here was the Conciergerie, where were confined
+Marie Antoinette and so many more victims of the reign of terror.
+
+On the "isle of the city," in the Seine, where, under the Roman rule, a
+few mud huts constituted Paris, stands the church of Notre Dame, which
+was three hundred years in building. With its spire and two square
+towers, it may be seen from almost any part of the city. I wish you
+might look upon the relics and the vestments which the priests wear upon
+occasions of ceremony, hidden within this church, and displayed upon the
+payment of an extra fee. I did not wonder that the Sisters of Charity,
+who went into the little room with us, gazed aghast upon the gold and
+silver, and precious stones.
+
+Every one visits the galleries of the Louvre, of course. A little, worn
+shoe, belonging once to Marie Antoinette, and the old gray coat of the
+first emperor, were to us the most interesting objects among the relics.
+From out the sea of pictures rise Murillo's Madonna, the lovely face
+with a soul behind it, shining through, and the burial of the heroine of
+Chateaubriand. Do you know it? The fair form, the sweeping hair of
+Attila, and the dark lover with despair in his face? As for the Rubens
+gallery,--his fat, red, undraped women here among the clouds, surrounded
+by puffy little cherubs, had for us no charms. Rubens in Antwerp was a
+revelation. We wandered through room after room, lighted from above,
+crowded with paintings. To live for a time among them would be a
+delight; to glance at them for a moment was tantalization. All around
+were the easels of the artists who come here to sketch--sharp-featured,
+heavy-browed men, with unkempt hair and flowing beards, and in shabby
+coats, stood before them, pallet and brushes in hand; and women by the
+score,--some of them young and pleasing, with duennas patiently waiting
+near by; but more often they were neither young nor beautiful, and with
+an evident renunciation of pomps and vanities. We glanced at their
+copies curiously. Sometimes they seemed the original in miniature, and
+sometimes,--ah well, we all fail.
+
+We looked in upon the annual exhibition of pictures at the Palais de
+l'Industrie one day, and were particularly impressed with the _nudite_
+of the modern school of French art. Pink-tinted flesh may be very
+beautiful, but there must be something higher! We saw there, too,
+another day, the clock on exhibition for a time before being consigned
+to its destined place at Beauvais. It was even more wonderful than the
+one so famous at Strasbourg. This was of the size of an ordinary church
+organ, and of similar shape; a mass of gilt and chocolate-colored wood;
+a mass of dials, great and small--of time tables, and, indeed, of tables
+for computing everything earthly and heavenly, with dials to show the
+time in fifty different places, and everything else that could, by any
+possible connection with time, be supposed to belong to a clock. Upon
+the top, Christ, seated in an arm-chair, was represented as judging the
+world, his feet upon the clouds; on either side kneeling female figures
+adored him. Just below, a pair of scales bided their time. On every peak
+stood little images, while fifty puppets peeped out of fifty windows.
+Just below the image of the Saviour, a figure emerged through an open
+door at the striking of every quarter of an hour,--coming out with a
+slide and occasional jerk by no means graceful. We had an opportunity of
+observing all this in the three quarters of an hour of waiting. We
+viewed the clock upon every side, being especially interested in a
+picture at one point representing a rocky coast, a light-house, and a
+long stretch of waves upon which labored two ships attached in some way
+to the works within. They pitched back and forth without making any
+progress whatever, in a way very suggestive to us, who had lately
+suffered from a similar motion. A dozen priests seated themselves with
+us upon the bench before the clock as the hand approached the hour. They
+wore the long black robes and odd little skull-caps, that fit so like a
+plaster, and which are, I am sure, kept in place by some law of
+attraction unknown to us. One, of a different order, or higher grade, in
+a shorter robe and with very thin legs, encased in black stockings that
+added to their shadowy appearance, shuffled up to his place just in time
+to throw back his head and open his mouth as the clock struck, and the
+last judgment began. The cock upon the front gave a preliminary and weak
+flap of his wings, and emitted three feeble, squeaky crows, that must, I
+am sure, have convulsed the very puppets. Certainly they all disappeared
+from the windows, and something jumped into their places intended to
+represent flames, but which looked so much like reversed tin petticoats,
+that we supposed for a moment they were all standing on their heads. All
+the figures upon the peaks turned their backs upon us. The image of
+Christ began to wave its hands. The kneeling women swayed back and
+forth, clasping their own. Two angels raised to their lips long, gilt
+trumpets, as if to blow a blast; then dropped them; then raised them a
+second time, and even made a third abortive attempt. From one of the
+open doors Virtue was jerked out to be judged, Virtue in a red gown. The
+scales began to dance up and down. An angel appeared playing a guitar,
+and Virtue went triumphantly off to the right, to slow and appropriate
+music, an invisible organ playing meanwhile. Then Vice appeared. I
+confess he excited my instant and profound pity. Such a poor, naked,
+wretched-looking object as he was! with his hands to his face, as though
+he were heartily ashamed to come out in such a plight. I venture to say,
+if he had been decked out like Virtue, he might have stolen off to the
+right, and nobody been the wiser. Good clothes do a great deal in Paris.
+As it was, the scales danced up and down a moment, and then the devil
+appeared with a sharp stick, and drove him around the corner to the
+left, with very distant and feeble thunder for an accompaniment. That
+ended the show. All the little puppets jumped back into all the little
+windows, and we came away.
+
+Speaking of picture galleries, we spent a pleasant hour in the gallery
+of the Luxembourg--a collection of paintings made up from the works of
+living artists, and of those who have been less than a year deceased. It
+is sufficiently small to be enjoyable. There is something positively
+oppressive in the vastness of many of these galleries. You feel utterly
+unequal to them; as though the finite were about to attempt the
+comprehension of the infinite. One picture here, by Ary Scheffer, was
+exhibited in America, a few years since. It is the head and bust of a
+dead youth in armor--a youth with a girlish face. There are others by
+Henri Scheffer, Paulin Guerin, and a host more I will not name. One, a
+scene in the Conciergerie, "Reading the List of the Condemned to the
+Prisoners," by Mueller, haunted me long after the doors had swung
+together behind us. The palace of the Luxembourg, small, remarkable for
+the beauty of its architecture and charming garden, built for that
+graceless regent, Marie de Medici, is now the residence of the president
+of the Senate; and indeed the Senate itself meets here. We were shown
+through the rooms open to the public, the private apartments of Marie de
+Medici among them, in one of which was a bust of the regent. The garden,
+like all gardens, is filled with trees and shrubs, flowers and
+fountains, but yet with a certain charm of its own. The festooning of
+vines from point to point was a novelty to us, as was the design of one
+of the fountains. Approaching it from the rear, we thought it a
+tomb,--perhaps the tomb of Marshal Ney, we said, whose statue we were
+seeking. It proved to be an artificial grotto, and within it, sprinkled
+with the spray of the fountain, embowered in a mass of glistening, green
+ivy, reclined a pair of pretty, marble lovers; peering in upon them from
+above, scowled a dreadful ogre--a horrible giant. The whole effect,
+coming upon it unexpectedly, was startling.
+
+We had a tiresome search for this same statue of Marshal Ney. We chased
+every marble nymph in the garden, and walked and walked, over burning
+pebbles and under a scorching sun, until we almost wished he had never
+been shot. At last, away beyond the garden, out upon a long avenue,
+longer and hotter if possible than the garden paths, we found
+it,--erected upon the very spot where he was executed. He stands with
+arm outstretched, and mouth opened wide, as though he were yawning with
+the wearisomeness of it all. It is a pity that he should give way to his
+feelings so soon, since he must stand there for hundreds of years to
+come. The guide-books say he is represented in the act of encouraging
+his men. They must have been easily encouraged.
+
+Of the out-door gay life by gas-light, we saw less than we had hoped to
+see in the French capital. The season was unusually cold and wet, and
+most of the time it would have required the spirit of a martyr to sip
+coffee upon the sidewalk. One garden concert we did attend, and found it
+very bright and fairy-like, and all the other adjectives used in this
+connection. We sat wrapped in shawls, our feet upon the rounds of the
+chair before us, and shivered a little, and enjoyed a great deal. We
+went one night--in most orthodox company--to the Cirque de
+l'Imperatrice, a royal amphitheatre with handsome horses, pretty
+equestriennes, and a child balanced and tossed about on horseback,
+showing a frightened, painful smile, which made of the man who held her
+a Herod in our eyes. A girl very rich in paint and powder, but somewhat
+destitute in other particulars, skipped and danced upon a slack rope in
+a most joyous and airy manner. When we came out, a haggard woman, with
+an old, worn face, was crouching in a little weary heap by the door that
+led into the stables, wrapped in an old cloak; and that was our dancing
+girl!
+
+We went to the opera, too; it was Les Huguenots. To this day I cannot
+tell who were the singers. I never knew, or thought, or cared. And the
+bare shoulders flashing with jewels in the boxes around us, the
+_claqueurs_ in the centre, hired to applaud, clapping their hands with
+the regularity of clock-work, the empty imperial box, were nothing to
+the sight of Paris portrayed within itself. You know the familiar opera;
+do think how strange it was to see it in Paris; to look upon the stage
+and behold the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame; the excited populace
+rising up to slay and to be slain, with all the while this same fickle
+French people serenely smiling, and chatting, and looking upon it--the
+people who were even then ready at a word to reenact the same scenes for
+a different cause. Just outside, only a day or two before, something of
+the same spirit, portrayed here for our amusement, had broken out again
+in the election riots. And we remembered that, as we drove around the
+corner to the opera house, mounted soldiers stood upon either side,
+while every other man upon the street was the eye, and ear, and arm of
+the emperor, who knew that the very ground beneath his fair, white city
+tottered and reeled.
+
+We saw the emperor and empress one day, after having looked for them
+long and in vain upon the Champs Elysees, and in the Bois de Boulogne
+where gay Paris disports itself. It was the morning after the riot, when
+they drove unattended, you will remember, through the streets where the
+rioters had gathered. We were in one of the shops upon the Rue de
+Rivoli. Just across the way rose the Tuileries from the sidewalk. A
+crowd began to collect about the open archway through the palace, which
+affords entrance and egress to the great square around which the palace
+is built. "What is it?" we asked of the voluble Frenchman who was
+gradually persuading us that brass was gold. "L'Empereur," he replied;
+which sent us to the sidewalk, and put from our minds all thoughts of
+oxidized silver and copper-colored gold. Just within the arch paced a
+lackey in livery of scarlet and gold, wearing a powdered wig and general
+air of importance. On either side, the sentries froze into position. The
+_gendarmes_ shouted and gesticulated, clearing the streets. A mounted
+attendant emerged from the archway; there followed four bay horses
+attached to a plain, dark, open carriage; upon the front seat were two
+gentlemen, upon the back, a gentleman with a lady by his side. His hair
+was iron gray, almost silvery. He turned his face from us as he raised
+his hat gravely to the crowd, displaying a very perceptible bald spot
+upon the back of his head as he was whizzed around the corner and down
+the street. And that was Napoleon III. We saw no American lady in Paris
+dressed so simply as the empress. Something of black lace draped her
+shoulders; a white straw bonnet, trimmed with black, with a few pink
+roses resting upon her hair, crowned her head. She bowed low to the
+right and left, with a peculiar, graceful motion, and a smile upon the
+face a little worn and pale, a little faded,--but yet the face we all
+know so well. Beautiful Spanish woman, whose face was your fortune,
+though you smiled that day upon the people, your cheeks were pale, your
+eyes were full of tears.
+
+There is nothing more wonderful in Paris than the tomb prepared to
+receive the remains of the first Napoleon, in the chapel of the Hotel
+des Invalides; fitting, it would seem to be, that he should rest here
+among his old soldiers. We left the carriage at the gateway, and crossed
+the open court, mounted the wide steps, followed the half dozen other
+parties through the open doors, and this was what we saw. At the farther
+end of the great chapel or church, an altar, approached by wide, marble
+steps; gilt and candles embellished it, and a large, gilt cross upon it
+bore an image of the crucified Lord. All this was not unlike what we had
+seen many times. But four immense twisted columns rose from its four
+corners--columns of Egyptian marble, writhing like spotted serpents.
+They supported a canopy of gold, and the play of lights upon this,
+through the stained windows above and on either side, was indescribable.
+As we entered the door, darkness enveloped it, save where an invisible
+sun seemed to touch the roof of gold and rest lightly upon the pillars;
+an invisible sun, indeed, for, without, the sky was heavy with clouds.
+As we advanced, this unearthly light touched new points--the gilded
+candlesticks, the dying Saviour, but above all the writhings of these
+monster serpents, until the whole seemed a thing of life, a something
+which grew and expanded every moment, and was almost fearful to look
+upon. Filling the centre of the chapel was a circular marble wall
+breast-high. Do you remember, in going to the old Senate chamber at
+Washington, after passing through the rotunda, the great marble
+well-curb down which you could look into the room below? This was like
+that, only more vast. Over it leaned a hundred people, at least, gazing
+down upon what? A circular, roofless room, a crypt to hold a tomb; each
+pillar around its circumference was the colossal figure of a woman;
+between these hung the tattered tri-colors borne in many a fierce
+conflict, beneath the burning suns of Egypt and over the dreary snows of
+Russia, with seventy colors captured from the enemies of France. A
+wreath of laurel in the mosaic floor surrounded the names Austerlitz,
+Marengo, Friedland, Jena, Wagram, Moscow, and Pyramids, and in the
+centre rose the sarcophagus of Finland granite, prepared to hold the
+body of him whose ambition knew no bounds. The letter N upon one
+polished side was the only inscription it bore. He who wrote his name in
+blood needed no epitaph. The entrance to this crypt is through bronze
+doors, behind the altar, and gained by passing under it. On either side
+stood a colossal figure in bronze; kings they seemed to be, giant kings,
+in long black robes and with crowns of black upon their heads. One held,
+upon the black cushion in his hands, a crown of gold and a golden sword;
+the other, a globe crowned with a cross and a golden sceptre. They were
+so grand, and dark, and still, they gazed upon us so fixedly from out
+their great, grave eyes, that I felt a chill in all my bones. They guard
+his tomb. They hold his sword and sceptre while he sleeps. I almost
+expected the great doors to swing open at the touch of his hand, and to
+see him come forth. Over these doors were his own words: "I desire that
+my ashes may repose upon the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the
+French people I have loved so well." On either side, as we came out, we
+read upon the tombs the names of Bertrand and Duroc,--faithful in death!
+We wondered idly whose remains were guarded in the simple tomb near the
+door. It was surrounded by an iron railing, and bore no inscription. Who
+can it be, we said, that is nameless here among the brave? Little did we
+imagine at the time that here rested the body of the great Napoleon, as
+it was brought from St. Helena; but his spirit seemed to pervade the
+very atmosphere, and we came out into the gloom of the day as though we
+had, indeed, come from the presence of the dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITY.
+
+          The Gobelin tapestry.--How and where it is
+          made.--Pere la-Chaise.--Poor Rachel!--The baby
+          establishment.--"Now I lay me."--The little
+          mother.--The old woman who lived in a shoe.--The
+          American chapel.--Beautiful women and
+          children.--The last conference-meeting.--"I'm a
+          proof-reader, I am."
+
+
+BY no means least among the places of interest in Paris is the
+manufactory of the Gobelin tapestry which serves to adorn the walls of
+the palace _salons_. O, these long, tiresome _salons_, which must be
+visited, though your head is ready to burst with seeing, your feet to
+drop off with sliding and slipping over the polished floors. The wicked
+_stand_ upon slippery places, and nothing so convinced us of the
+demoralizing effect of foreign travel as our growing ability to do the
+same. When you have seen one or two, you have seen all. There may be
+degrees in gorgeous splendor, but we were filled with all the
+appropriate and now-forgotten emotions at sight of the first, and one
+cannot be more than full. Many of the old palace apartments are dull and
+dingy beyond belief, by no means the marble halls of our dreams; but of
+the others let me say something once for all. Under your feet is the
+treacherous, bare floor of dark wood, laid in diamonds, squares, &c.;
+over your head, exquisite frescoes of gods and goddesses, and all manner
+of unearthly and impossible beings enveloped in clouds by the
+bale,--usually an apotheosis of some king or queen, or both, and, as a
+rule, of the most wicked known at that time. The Medici were especially
+glorified and raised above the flesh,--and they had need to be. On every
+side pictures in Gobelin tapestry, framed into the walls, often so large
+as to cover the entire space from corner to corner, from cornice to
+within a few feet of the floor, and in this latter space doors, formed
+of a panel sometimes, for the entrance and egress of servants. Imagine,
+with all this, the gilt, and stucco, and wood-carving; the flowers, and
+arabesques, and entwined initials; the massive chandeliers, with
+glittering pendants; the mantels of rare marbles, of porphyry, and
+malachite; the cabinets, and tables, and escritoires of marqueterie and
+mosaic; the gilded chairs, stiff and stark, richly covered; the bronzes,
+vases, and curious clocks: and over all the air of having never been
+used from all time, and of continuing to be a bare show to all
+eternity,--and you have a faint conception of the _salons_ of half the
+palaces.
+
+As for the tapestry, pray don't confound it with the worsted dogs and
+Rebekahs-at-the-Well with which we sometimes adorn (?) our homes, since
+one would never in any way suggest the other. In these every delicate
+line is faithfully reproduced, and the effect exactly that of an oil
+painting. After long years the colors fade; and we were startled
+sometimes, in the old palaces, to come upon one of these gray shadows
+of pictures, out from which, perhaps, a pair of wonderful eyes alone
+would seem to shine. In old times the rough walls of the grim prison
+palaces were hung with tapestry wrought by the fair fingers of court
+ladies, the designs of tournament and battle being rudely sketched by
+gay gallants. Many a bright dream was worked into the canvas, I doubt
+not, never found upon the pattern; many a sweet word said over the task
+that beguiled the dull hours, and kept from mischief idle hands. But in
+the reign of Louis XIV. the art of weaving tapestry was brought from
+Flanders, and a manufactory established on the outskirts of Paris which
+still remains. To visit it a pass is required. Accordingly we addressed
+a note of solicitation to some high official, and in due time came a
+permit for Madame K. and family; and an ill-assorted family we must have
+appeared to the official at the gate. There were the rooms, hung with
+specimens of the tapestry, for which we did not care, and then the six
+devoted to the weaving; long, low, and narrow they were, with hand-looms
+ranged down one side. Through the threads of the warp we could see the
+weavers sitting behind their work, each with his box of worsteds and
+pattern beside him. The colors were wound upon quills, numbers of which
+hung, each by its thread, from the half-completed work. Taking one of
+these in one hand, the workman dexterously separated the threads of the
+warp with the other, and passed the quill through, pressing down the one
+stitch thus formed with its pointed end. You can imagine how slow this
+work must be. How tiresome a task it is to delight the eyes of princes!
+The making of carpets, which has been recently added, is equally
+tiresome. This, too, is hand work, they being woven in some way over a
+round stick, and then cut and trimmed with a pair of shears. To make one
+requires from five to ten years, and their cost is from six to twenty
+thousand dollars. About six hundred weavers are said to be here, though
+we saw but a small proportion of that number. They receive only from
+three to five hundred dollars a year, with a pension of about half as
+much if they are disabled.
+
+From the Gobelins we drove across the Seine again, and out to Pere
+la-Chaise, where stood once the house of the confessor of Louis XIV.,
+from whom the cemetery takes its name, the Jesuit priest through whose
+influence the edict of Nantes was revoked. A kind of ghastly imitation
+of life it all seemed--the narrow houses on either side of the paved
+streets, that were not houses at all, hung with dead flowers and
+corpse-like wreaths, stained an unnatural hue. We peered through the
+bars of the locked gate opening into the Jews' quarter, trying to
+distinguish the tomb where lie the ashes of a life that blazed, and
+burned itself out. Poor Rachel! Through the solemn streets, among the
+quiet dwellings of the noiseless city, whence comes no sound of joy or
+grief, where they need no candle, neither light of the sun, we walked a
+while, then plucked a leaf or two, and came away.
+
+One day, when the sun lay hot upon the white streets of the beautiful
+city, we searched among the shops of the crooked Faubourg St. Honore for
+a number forgotten now, and the Creche, where the working mothers may
+leave their children during the day. In another and more quiet street
+we found it. We pulled the bell before a massive gateway; the wide doors
+opened upon a smiling portress, who led the way across the paved court
+to the house, where she pointed up some stairs, and left us to mount and
+turn until it was no longer possible, until a confusion of doors barred
+our way, when we rapped upon one. Another was opened, and we found
+ourselves among the babies. There were, perhaps, twenty in all, the
+larger children being in the school-room below; but even twenty
+toddling, rolling babies, looking so very like the same image done in
+putty over and over again, appears an alarming and unlimited number when
+taken in a body. They rolled beneath our feet, they clung to our skirts,
+they peeped out, finger in mouth, from behind the doors, they kicked
+pink toes up from the swinging cradles, and in fact, like the clansmen
+of Rhoderic Dhu, appeared in a most startling manner from the most
+unexpected places. Plump little things they were, encased in shells of
+blue-checked aprons, from the outer one of which they were
+surreptitiously slipped upon our entrance to disclose a fresher one
+beneath. How long this process could have continued with a similar happy
+result, we did not inquire. Every head was tied up in a tight little
+night-cap, giving them the appearance of so many little bag puddings.
+Every face was a marvel of health and contentment, with one kicking,
+screaming exception upon the floor. "Eengleesh," explained the Sister of
+Charity who seemed to have them in charge, giving a sweeping wipe to the
+eyes, nose, and mouth, gradually liquidizing, of this one, and trying in
+vain to pacify a nature that seemed peaceless. Who was its mother, or
+how the little stranger chanced to be here, we did not learn. On either
+side of the long, narrow room hung the white-curtained cradles, each
+with its pretty, pink quilt. At one end was an altar, most modest in its
+appointments, consisting of hardly more than a crucifix and a vase of
+flowers upon the mantel. As we entered the room, the sister stood before
+it with a circle of white caps and blue checked aprons around her, a
+circle of little clasped hands, of upturned eyes and lisping lips,
+repeating what might have been, "Now I lay me," for anything we knew.
+Our entrance brought wandering eyes and thoughts.
+
+At the opposite end of the room, a wide, long window swung open,
+revealing a pleasant garden down below, all green and blossoming, with
+an image of the Virgin half hid among the vines. Cool, and fresh, and
+green it seemed after the glare of the hot streets, a pleasant picture
+for the baby eyes. Out from this window the little feet could trot upon
+the guarded roof of a piazza. A little chair, a broken doll, and
+limbless horse here were familiar objects to the eyes of the mothers in
+our party, and when two children seized upon one block with a
+determination which threatened a breach of the peace, we were convinced
+that even baby nature was the same the world over. Supper time came, and
+the children were gathered together in a small room, before the drollest
+little table imaginable--a kind of elongated doughnut, raised a foot
+from the floor, with a circular seat around it. All the little outer
+shells of blue check were slipped on, all the little fat bodies lifted
+over and set into their places, to roll off, or about, at will. A grace
+was said, to us, I think, since all the little eyes turned towards us,
+and a plate of oatmeal porridge put before each one. Some ate with a
+relish, and a painful search over the face with a spoon for the open,
+waiting mouth; some leaned back to stare at the company; and others
+persisted in dipping into the dish of their next neighbor. One little
+thing, hardly more than a year old, drew down the corners of her mouth
+in a portentous manner, when the motherly one beside her, of the
+advanced age of three years, perhaps, rapped on the table with her
+spoon, and patted the doleful little face, smiling all the while, until
+she actually drew out smiles in return. The dear little mother! An
+attendant with a homely face, creased into all manner of good-natured
+lines, resolved herself into the old woman who lived in a shoe, holding
+two babies and the porridge dish in her lap, balancing one upon the end
+of the low bench beside her, while two or three more stood at her knee,
+clinging to her apron. It was like a nest of open-mouthed birdlings.
+Blessings on the babies, and those, whether of our faith or not, who
+teach and care for them, we thought, as we came away. "Inasmuch as ye
+have done it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me," said
+the Master.
+
+Although I said nothing of our church-going in London, I cannot pass
+over our American chapel in Paris, with its carved, umbrella-like
+canopy, shading the good Dr. R., who did so much socially, as well as
+spiritually, for Americans there. Here came many whose names are well
+known; among them our minister to France, an elderly gentleman of
+unpretending dress and manner, with a kindly, care-worn face. And here
+gathered also a company of beautiful women and children, proving the
+truth of all that has been said of our countrywomen. A blending of all
+types were they, as our people are a blending of all nationalities, each
+more lovely than the other, and all making up a picture well worth
+seeing. I wish I might say as much for the opposite sex. One gentleman,
+who wore a red rose always in his button-hole, and turned his back upon
+the minister to stare at the women, had a handsome though _blase_ face,
+and more than one head above the pews would have been marked anywhere;
+but the women and children bore away the palm. The delicate, sensitive
+faces which characterize American women, whether the effect of climate,
+manner of life, or of the nerves for which we are so celebrated, are
+found nowhere else, I am sure.
+
+Besides the Sabbath services a weekly prayer-meeting was held here. They
+were singing some sweet familiar hymn as we entered one evening and took
+our place among the pilgrims and strangers like ourselves. It was the
+last gathering for the winter. Some were off for home, some for a summer
+of travel; only a few, with the pastor, were to remain. One followed
+another in words of retrospection, and regret at parting, until a pall
+settled over the little company--until even we, who had never been there
+before, wiped our eyes because of the general dolefulness. A hush and
+universal mistiness pervaded the air of the dimly-lighted house; the
+assembly seemed about to pass out of existence, Niobe-like. Then up rose
+Dr. R., the pastor. I wondered what he could say to add to the gloom;
+something like this, perhaps: "Dear people, everybody is off; let us
+shut up the church, lock the door, and throw away the key. Receive the
+benediction." But no; I wish you might feel the thrill that went through
+the little company as his words fell from his lips. I wish I dared
+attempt to repeat them. "And now to you who go," he said, at last, "who
+take with you something of our hearts, be sure our prayers will follow
+you. Keep us in memory; but, above all, keep in memory your church vows.
+Make yourselves known as Christians among Christians. And when you have
+reached home--the home to which our thoughts have so often turned
+together--let this be a lesson. When summer comes and you leave the city
+for the country, for the mountains, for the sea-side, take your religion
+with you. Search out some struggling little church with a discouraged
+pastor,--you'll not look far or long to find such a one,--and work for
+that, as you have worked for us. And one thing more; send your friends
+who are coming abroad to us. Send us the Christians, for we need them,
+and by all means send us those who are not Christians; they may need us;
+and the Lord bless you, and keep you in all your goings, and give you
+peace."
+
+Then the people gathered in knots for last words--for hand-clasps and
+good-byes. Now a spirit of peace and good will having fallen upon us
+with the pastor's benediction, we gazed wistfully upon the strangers in
+the hope of finding one familiar face; but there was none; so we came
+sorrowfully down the aisle. The door was almost reached when a sharp,
+twanging voice behind us began, "I'm sent out by X. & Y., book
+publishers." "O," said I to the friend at my side, "I believe I will
+speak to that man. I know Mr. X., and I do so want to speak to
+somebody." How he accomplished the introduction I cannot tell, but in a
+moment my hand was grasped by that of a stout little man, with bushy
+hair and twinkling eyes. "Know Mr. X.? Mr. Q. X.?" he began. To tell the
+truth I had not that honor, my acquaintance having been with his
+brother; but there was no time to explain, and retreat was equally
+impossible; so I replied that my father knew him well; then thinking
+that something more was necessary to explain the sudden and intense
+interest manifested in his behalf, added, desperately, "indeed,
+intimately." To this he paid no manner of attention,--I doubt if he
+heard it,--but rattled on: "Fine man, Mr. X., Mr. Q. X. Know Mr. Y.?
+Fine man, Mr. Y.; been abroad a year; I'm goin' out to meet him, I am.
+He's in Switzerland, Mr. Y. is; been abroad a year. I'm a proof-reader,
+I am. I s'pose you know what a proof-reader is." "Yes," I succeeded in
+inserting while he took breath, remembering some amateur attempts of my
+own in that direction. He began anew: "I'm sent out by X. & Y.; expect
+to find Mr. Y. in Switzerland; fine man--" Will he never stop, I
+thought, beginning a backward retreat from the pew down the aisle, with
+all the while ringing in my ears, "I'm a proof-reader, I am," &c. "Don't
+laugh, pray don't," I said to the friends waiting at the door. "It's
+dreadful--is it not?" What became of him we never knew, but in all
+probability the sexton removed him--still vocal--to the sidewalk that
+night; where, since we do not know for how long a time he was wound up,
+he may be iterating and reiterating to this day the interesting fact of
+his occupation, with the eulogy upon Messrs. X. & Y.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.
+
+          The river omnibuses.--Sevres and its
+          porcelain.--St. Cloud as it was.--The crooked
+          little town.--Versailles.--Eugenie's "spare
+          bedroom."--The queen who played she was a farmer's
+          wife.--Seven miles of paintings.--The portraits of
+          the presidents.
+
+
+THERE are four ways of going to St. Cloud, from Paris, says the
+guide-book; we chose the fifth, and took one of the little
+steamboats--the river omnibuses--that follow the course of the Seine,
+stopping at the piers along the city, which occur almost as often as the
+street crossings. Very insignificant little steamers they are, made up
+of puff, and snort, and smoke, a miniature deck, and a man with a big
+bell. Up the river we steamed through a mist that hid everything but the
+green banks, the pretty villas whose lawns drabbled their skirts in the
+river, and after a time the islands that seemed to have dropped cool,
+wet, and green into the middle of the stream. We plunged beneath the
+dark arches of the stone bridges--the Pont d'Alma not to be forgotten,
+with its colossal sentinels on either side of the middle arch, calm,
+white, and still, leaning upon their muskets, their feet almost dipping
+into the water, their great, stony eyes gazing away down the river.
+What is it they seem to see beyond the bend? What is it they watch and
+wait for, gun in hand? We pulled our wraps about us, found a sheltered
+place, and went on far beyond our destination, through the gray vapor
+that gathered sometimes into great, plashing drops to fall upon the
+deck, or, hovering in mid-air, wiped out the distance from the landscape
+as effectually as the sweep of a painter's brush, while it softened and
+spiritualized everything near, from the sharply outlined eaves, and
+gables, and narrow windows of the village struggling up from the water,
+to the shadowy span of the bridges that seemed to rest upon air. Then
+down with the rain and the current we swept again, to land at the
+forsaken pier of Sevres, from which we made our way over the pavings, so
+inviting in these French towns for missile or barricade, to the
+porcelain factory. No fear of missing it, since it is the one object of
+interest to strangers in the town; and whatever question we asked, the
+reply would have been the pointing of the finger in that one direction.
+Once there, we clattered and slipped over the tiled floor after a polite
+attendant, through its many show-rooms, and among its wilderness of
+pottery, ancient and modern. The manufactory was established by--I'm
+sure I don't know whom--in seventeen hundred and--something, at
+Vincennes, quite the other side of Paris; but a few years later, in the
+reign of Louis XV., was transferred to Sevres, and put under the
+direction of government. It is almost impossible to gain permission to
+visit the workshops, but a permit to pass through the show-rooms can
+easily be obtained. There were queer old-fashioned attempts at glazed
+ware here, some of them adorned with pictures like those we used to see
+in our grandmothers' china closets, of puffy little pink gentlemen and
+ladies ambling over a pink foreground; a pink mountain, of pyramidal
+form, rising from the wide-rimmed hat of the roseate gentlemen; a pink
+lake standing on end at the feet of the lady, and a little pink house,
+upon which they might both have sat comfortably, with a few clouds of
+jeweller's cotton completing the picture. A striking contrast were these
+to the marvels of frailty and grace of later times. The rooms were hung
+with paintings upon porcelain, the burial of Attila, which we had seen
+at the Louvre, among them. Every conceivable model of vase, pitcher, and
+jar was here--quaint, beautiful conceptions of form adorned by the hand
+of skilful artists, from mammoth vases, whirling upon stationary
+pedestals, to the most delicate cup that ever touched red lips.
+
+At noon we strolled over to St. Cloud, a pleasant walk of a mile,
+beginning with a shaded avenue, rough as a country road; then on, down a
+street leading to the gates of the park of St. Cloud--a street so vain
+of its destination that it was actually lifted up above the gardens on
+either side. From the wide gates we passed into a labyrinth of shaded,
+clean-swept ways, and followed one to the avenue of the fountains, where
+we sat upon the edge of a stone basin to await the opening of the
+palace. For do not imagine, dear reader, that you can run in and out of
+palaces without ceremony and at all hours of the day. There is an
+appointed time; there is the gathering outside of the curious; there is
+the coming of a man with rattling, ringing keys; there is the throwing
+open of wide gates and massive doors, and then--and not until then--the
+entering in. As for the fountains, next to those at Versailles they have
+been widely celebrated; but as they only played upon Sundays and fete
+days, we did not see them. Their Sunday gowns of mist and flowing water
+were laid aside, and naked and bare enough they were this day. The wide
+basins, the lions and dolphins, were here, with the marble nymphs, and
+fauns and satyrs, that make a shower-bath spectacle of themselves upon
+gala days. When the hour refused to strike, and we grew hungry,--as one
+will among the rarest and most wonderful things,--we left the park, to
+find the crooked little town that sits in the dust always at the feet of
+palaces. Its narrow streets ran close up to the gates, and would have
+run in had they not been shut. Here in the low, smoke-stained room of an
+inn that was only a wine-shop, we spent the time of waiting,--our elbows
+upon the round, dark table, which, with the dirt and wooden chairs, made
+up its only furnishing,--sipping the sour wine, cutting slices from the
+long, melancholy stick of bread, all dust and ashes, and nibbling the
+cheese that might have vied with Samson for strength. The diamond-paned
+window was flung wide open, for the air seemed soiled and stained, like
+the floor. Just across the narrow, empty street, an old house elbowed
+our inn. The eaves of its thatched roof were tufted with moss, out from
+which rose a mass of delicate pink blossoms--pretty innocents, fairly
+blushing for shame of their surroundings. Through the long passage-way
+came the sound of high-pitched voices--of a strange jargon from the
+room opening upon the street, where a heavy-eyed maid, behind a pewter
+bar, served the blue-bloused workmen gathered about the little tables.
+
+The white palace of St. Cloud, with its Corinthian columns, stood
+daintily back from its gates and the low-bred town; but its long wings
+had run down, like curious children, to peep out through the bars; so,
+you will see, it formed three sides of a square. It had lately been
+refurnished for the prince imperial. The grand _salons_ need not be
+described; one is especially noted as having been the place where a baby
+was once baptized, who is now ex-emperor of France. In the same room the
+civil contract of marriage between Napoleon I. and Marie Louise was
+celebrated. A few elegant but less spacious rooms were interesting from
+having been the private apartments of the poor queens and empresses who
+have shared the throne of France. Gorgeous they were in tapestry and
+gilding, filled with a gaping crowd of visitors, and echoing to the
+voice of a voluble guide. Royal fingers may have touched the pretty
+trinkets lying about; royal forms reclined upon the soft couches; royal
+aching hearts beat to the tick of the curious gilt clock, that bore as
+many faces as a woman, some one wickedly said; but it was impossible to
+realize it, or to believe that high heels, and panniers, and jaunty hats
+upon sweet-faced, shrill-voiced American girls had not ruled and reigned
+here always, as they did this day.
+
+Versailles lies out beyond St. Cloud, but we gave to it another day. We
+were a merry party, led by Dr. R., who left the train at the station,
+and filled the omnibus for the palace. There was an air of having seen
+better days about the city, which was at one time the second of
+importance in France; it fed and fattened upon the court, and when at
+last the court went away not to return, it came to grief. The most vivid
+recollection I have of the great court-yard, around which extend three
+sides of the palace, is of its round paving-stones--that seemed to have
+risen up preparatory to crying out--and the grove of weather-stained
+statues upon high pedestals,--generals, cardinals, and statesmen who
+hated and connived against each other in life, doomed now in stone to
+stare each other out of countenance. I am sure we detected a wry face
+here and there, to say nothing of clinched fists. It is a gloomy old
+court-yard at best. The front of the main building is all that remains
+of the old hunting-seat of Louis XIII., which his son would not suffer
+to be destroyed. It is of dingy, mildewed brick, that can never in any
+possible light appear palatial; and so blackened and purple-stained are
+the statues before it that they might have been just brought from the
+Morgue. The whole palace is only a show place now--a museum of painting
+and statuary. As for the celebrated gardens, we walked for hours, and
+still they stretched away on every side. We explored paths wide and
+narrow, crooked and straight, and saw clipped trees by the mile, with
+grottoes and the skeletons of the fountains that, like naughty children,
+play o' Sundays, and all the wonderful trees, shrubs, and flowers
+brought from the ends of the earth, and ate honey gingerbread (flavored
+with extract of turpentine) before an open booth, and were ready to
+faint with weariness; and when at last a broad avenue opened before us
+with the Trianons, which must be seen, at the farther end, we would not
+have taken the whole place as a gift. It must have been at this point
+that we fortified ourselves with the gingerbread.
+
+The Grand Trianon alone were we permitted to enter. It is in the form of
+an Italian villa, with a ground floor only, and long windows opening
+upon delightful gardens. Like Versailles, it is now a mere show,
+although a suit of apartments was fitted up here some time since, in
+anticipation of a neighborly visit from Queen Victoria to Eugenie,
+making of the little palace a kind of guest chamber, a spare bedroom. As
+we followed a winding path through the park, we came suddenly upon an
+open glade, surrounded and shaded by forest trees. Over the tiny lake,
+in the centre, swans were sailing. Half hidden among the wide-spread,
+sweeping branches of the trees were the scattered farm-houses of a
+deserted village--only half a dozen in all, of rude, half Swiss
+architecture, made to imitate age and decay, quaintly picturesque. Here
+Marie Antoinette and her court played at poverty. Do you remember how,
+when she grew weary of solemn state, she came here with a few favored
+ones to forget her crown, and dream she was a farmer's wife? The dairy
+was empty, the marble slab bare upon which she made butter for her
+guests. Just beyond was the mill, but the wheel was still. It was a
+pleasant dream--a dream of Arcadia. Ah, but there was a fearful
+awakening! "The poorest peasant in the land," said the queen, "has one
+little spot which she can call her own; the Queen of France asks no
+more." So she shut the gates upon the people who had claimed and held
+the right, from all time, to wander at will through the gardens of
+their kings. Then they hated her, whom they had greeted with shouts of
+welcome when she came a bride from over the border. "The Austrian! the
+Austrian!" they hissed through the closed gates. And one day they
+dragged her out from a bare cell in the Conciergerie,--no make-believe
+of rough walls, of coarse fare there,--they bound the slender hands
+behind her, they thrust into a prison cart the form that had been used
+to rest upon down and silken cushions, and bore her over the rough
+stones to the scaffold. Ah, it makes one shudder!
+
+To see the two hundred rooms of the palace of Versailles requires a day,
+at least; but we, fearful that this might be our last opportunity,
+determined to spend the remaining hour or two and our last atom of
+strength in the attempt. A wandering cabman pounced upon us as we came
+down the avenue from the Trianons, and bore us back to the palace, where
+we toiled up and down the grand stairway, and peeped into the chapel
+that had echoed to the mockery of worship in the time of the king who
+built all this--the king who loved everybody's wife but his own--so
+faithlessly! There was a dizzy hurrying through corridors lined with
+statuary, through one _salon_ after another hung with Horace Vernet's
+paintings describing the glories of France--the crowning of its kings,
+the reception of its ambassadors, the signing of its treaties, the
+winning of its battles; but was all this bloodshed, and all this agony
+depicted upon canvas, for the glory of France? There were immense
+galleries, where, on every side, from cornice to floor, one was
+conscious of nothing but smoke and cannon, wounds and gore, and rolling
+eyes. We walked over the prescribed three miles and a half of floors
+slippery as ice, and gazed upon the seven miles of pictures, with a
+feeling less of pleasure or gratified curiosity than of satisfaction at
+having _done_ Versailles. Room after room was devoted to portraits, full
+lengths and half lengths, side faces and full fronts; faces to be
+remembered, if one had not been in such mortal haste, and faces that
+would never have been missed from the ermined robes. In a quiet corner
+we were startled to find some of our good presidents staring down upon
+us from the wall. A mutual surprise it seemed to be. But if we Americans
+must be awkward and clownish to the last degree, half civilized, and but
+one remove from barbarism, don't let us put the acme of all this upon
+canvas, and hang it in the palace of kings. Here was President Grant
+represented in the saloon of a steamboat,--America to the last,--one leg
+crossed, one heel upon the opposite knee, and his head about to sink
+into his coat collar in an agony of terror at finding himself among
+quality. His attitude might have been considered graceful and dignified
+in a bar-room, or even in the saloon of a Mississippi steamer; but it
+utterly failed in both particulars in the Palace of Versailles, among
+courtly men and high-bred women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A VISIT TO BRUSSELS.
+
+          To Brussels.--The old and new city.--The paradise
+          and purgatory of dogs.--The Hotel de Ville and
+          Grand Place.--St. Gudule.--The picture
+          galleries.--Wiertz and his odd
+          paintings.--Brussels lace and an hour with the
+          lace-makers. How the girls found Charlotte
+          Bronte's school.--The scene of "Villette."
+
+
+THERE were one or two more excursions from Paris, and then, when we had
+grasped the fat hand of Monsieur, our landlord, and kissed the dark
+cheeks of Madame, his wife, and submitted to the same from Mademoiselle,
+their daughter, with light hearts, serene consciences, and the ----
+family we started for Brussels. It is a six hours' ride by rail.
+
+Almost as soon as the line between France and Belgium is passed, the low
+hills drop away, the thatch-roofed cottages give place to those of
+whitewashed brick, with bright, red-tiled roofs. All along the way were
+the straight poplars overrun with ivy, and the land was cared for,
+coaxed, and fairly driven to the highest point of cultivation. Women
+were at work in the fields, and more than one Maud Mueller leaned upon
+her rake to gaze after us. Soon, when there were only level fields
+beneath a level sky, the windmills began to appear in the distance,
+slowly swinging the ghostly arms that became long, narrow sails as we
+neared them. At two o'clock we reached Brussels, after being nearly
+resolved into our original element--dust. Nothing but a sand-hill ever
+equalled the appearance we presented when we stepped from the train; nor
+did we need anything so much as to be thrown over a line and beaten like
+a carpet when we finally gained our hotel.
+
+The old city of Brussels is crooked, and dull, and picturesque; but
+joined to it--like an old man with a gay young wife--is the beautiful
+Paris-like upper town, with its houses covered with white stucco, and a
+little mirror outside of every window, placed at an angle of forty-five
+degrees, so that Madame, sitting within, can see all that passes upon
+the street, herself unseen. Here in the new town are the palaces, the
+finest churches, the hotels, and Marie Therese's park, where young and
+old walk, and chat, and make eyes at each other summer evenings. Scores
+of strings, with a poodle at one extremity and a woman at the other, may
+here be seen, with little rugs laid upon the ground for the pink-eyed
+puff-balls to rest upon. Truly Brussels is the paradise and purgatory of
+dogs. Anywhere upon the streets you may see great, hungry-eyed animals
+dragging little carts pushed by women; and it is difficult to determine
+which is the most forlorn--the dog, the cart, or the woman. We never
+understood before what it was to "work like a dog." At one extremity of
+the park was the white, new Senate-house; opposite, the gray,
+barrack-like palace of the king; upon the third side, among others, our
+hotel. Here we were happy in finding another family of friends. With
+them we strolled down into the old town, after dinner, taking to the
+middle of the street, in continental fashion, as naturally as ducks to
+water; crossing back and forth to stare up at a church or into a shop
+window,--straggling along one after another in a way that would have
+been marked at home, but was evidently neither new nor strange here,
+where the native population attended to their own affairs with a zeal
+worthy of reward, and other parties of sight-seers were plying their
+vocation with a perseverance that would have won eminence in any other
+profession. Through crooked by-ways we wandered to the Grand Place of
+the old city--a paved square shut in by high Spanish-gabled houses
+ornamented with the designs of the various guilds. From the windows of
+one hung the red, yellow, and black Belgian flag. There was no rattle of
+carts, no clatter of hoofs. Down upon the dark paving-stones a crowd of
+women, old and young, with handkerchiefs crossed over their bosoms, were
+holding a flower-market. Just behind them rose the grim statues of the
+two counts, Egmont and Van Horn,--who lost their heads while striving to
+gain their cause against Spanish tyranny and the Spanish
+Inquisition,--and the old royal palace, blackened and battered by time
+and the hand of forgotten sculptors, until it seemed like the mummy of a
+palace, half eaten away. Just before them was the Hotel de Ville, with
+its beautiful tower of gray stone, its roof a mass of dormer windows. It
+comes to me like a picture now--the gathering shadows of a summer night,
+the time-worn houses, lovely in decay, the tawdry flag, and the heads of
+the old women nodding over their flowers.
+
+Brussels has a grand church dedicated to Saints Michael and Gudule. If I
+could only give to you, who have not seen them, some idea of the
+vastness and beauty of these cathedrals! But descriptions are tiresome,
+and dimensions nobody reads. If I could only tell you how far extending
+they are, both upon earth and towards heaven--how they seem not so much
+to have been built stone upon stone, as to have stood from the
+foundation of the world, solitary, alone, until, after long ages, some
+strolling town came to wonder, and worship, and sit at their feet in
+awe! We crept in through the narrow door that shut behind us with a dull
+echo. A chill like that of a tomb pervaded the air, though a summer sun
+beat down upon the stones outside. A forest of clustered columns rose
+all around us. Far above our heads was a gray sky, the groined arches
+where little birds flew about. Stained windows gleamed down the vast
+length, broken by the divisions and subdivisions,--one, far above the
+grand entrance, like the wheel of a chariot of fire. All along the
+walls, over the altar, and filling the chapel niches, were pictures of
+saints, and martyrs, and blessed virgins, that seemed in the dim
+distance like dots upon the wall. Muffled voices broke upon the
+stillness. Far up the nave a little company of worshippers knelt before
+the altar--workingmen who had thrown down mallet and chisel for a
+moment, to creep within the shadows of the sanctuary; market-women, a
+stray water-cress still clinging to the folds of their gowns; children
+dropping upon the rush kneeling-chairs, to mutter a prayer God grant
+they feel, with ever and anon, above the murmur of the prayer, above the
+drone of white-robed priests, the low, full chant from hidden singers,
+echoing through the arches and among the pillars, following us down the
+aisles to where we read upon the monuments the deeds of some old knight
+of heathen times, whose image has survived his dust--whose works have
+followed him.
+
+After leaving the church we wandered among and through the picture
+galleries in the old palaces of the city,--galleries of modern Belgian
+art, with one exception, where were numberless flat old Flemish
+pictures, and dead Christs, livid, ghastly, horrible to look upon. The
+best of Flemish art is not in Brussels. Among the galleries of modern
+paintings, that of the odd artist, recently deceased, Wiertz, certainly
+deserves mention. It contains materials for a fortune to an enterprising
+Yankee. The subjects of the pictures are allegorical, parabolical, and
+diabolical, the scenes being laid in heaven, hell, and mid-air. In one,
+Napoleon I. is represented surrounded by the flames of hell, folding his
+arms in the Napoleonic attitude, while his soldiers crowd around him to
+hold up maimed limbs and ghastly wounds with a denunciatory and angry
+air. Widows and orphans thrust themselves before his face with
+anathematizing countenances. In fact, the situation is decidedly
+unpleasant for the hero, and one longs for a bucket of cold water. Many
+of the pictures were behind screens, and to be seen through
+peep-holes--one of them a ghastly thing, of coffins broken open and
+their risen occupants emerging in shrouds. Upon the walls around the
+room were painted half-open doors and windows with pretty girls peeping
+out; close down to the floor, a dog kennel, from which its savage
+occupant was ready to spring; just above him, from a latticed window,
+an old _concierge_ leaned out to ask our business. Even in the pictures
+hanging upon the walls was something of this trickery. In one the foot
+and hand of a giant were painted out upon the frame, so that he seemed
+to be just stepping out from his place; and I am half inclined to think
+that many of the people walking about the room were originally framed
+upon the walls.
+
+Brussels is always associated in one's mind with its laces. We visited
+one of the manufactories. A dozen or twenty women were busy in a sunny,
+cheerful room, working out the pretty leaves and flowers, with needle
+and thread, for the _point_ lace, or twisting the bobbins among the
+innumerable pins in the cushion before them to follow the pattern for
+the _point applique_. When completed, you know, the delicate designs are
+sewed upon gossamer lace. Upon a long, crimson-covered table in the room
+above were spread out, in tempting array, the results of this tiresome
+labor--coiffures that would almost resign one to a bald spot,
+handkerchiefs insnaring as cobwebs, _barbes_ that fairly pierced our
+hearts, and shawls for which there are no words. I confess that these
+soft, delicate things have for women a wonderful charm--that as we
+turned over and over in our hands the frail, yellow-white cobwebs, some
+of us more than half forgot the tenth commandment.
+
+_Table-d'hote_ over, one evening, "Where shall we go? What can we do?"
+queried one of the four girls in our party, two of whom had but just now
+escaped from the thraldom of a French _pensionnat_.
+
+"It would be so delightful if we could walk out for once by ourselves.
+If there were only something to see--somewhere to go."
+
+"Girls!" exclaimed Axelle, suddenly, "was not the scene of _Villette_
+laid in Brussels? Is not Charlotte Bronte's boarding-school here? I am
+sure it is. Suppose we seek it out--we four girls alone."
+
+"But how, and where?" and "Wouldn't that be fine?" chorused the others.
+There was a hasty search through guide-books; but alas! not a clew could
+we find, not a peg upon which to hang the suspicions that were almost
+certainties.
+
+"I am sure it was here," persisted Axelle. "I wish we had a _Villette_."
+
+"We could get one at an English library," suggested another.
+
+"If there is any English library here," added a third, doubtfully.
+
+Evidently that must be our first point of departure. We could ask for
+information there. Accordingly we planned our crusade, as girls do,--the
+elders smiling unbelief, as elders will,--and sallied out at last into
+the summer sunshine, very brave in our hopes, very glad in our unwonted
+liberty. A _commissionaire_ gave us the address of the bookstore we
+sought as we were leaving the hotel. "There are no obstacles in the path
+of the determined," we said, stepping out upon the Rue Royale. Across
+the way was the grand park, a maze of winding avenues, shaded by lofty
+trees, with nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs hiding among the shrubbery,
+and with all the tortuous paths made into mosaic pavement by the
+shimmering sunlight. But to Axelle _Villette_ was more real than that
+June day.
+
+"Do you remember," she said, "how Lucy Snow reached the city alone and
+at night?--how a young English stranger conducted her across the park,
+she following in his footsteps through the darkness, and hearing only
+the tramp, tramp, before her, and the drip of the rain as it fell from
+the soaked leaves? This must be the park."
+
+When we had passed beyond its limits, we espied a little square, only a
+kind of alcove in the street, in the centre of which was the statue of
+some military hero. Behind it a quadruple flight of broad stone steps
+led down into a lower and more quiet street. Facing us, as we looked
+down, was a white stuccoed house, with a glimpse of a garden at one
+side.
+
+"See!" exclaimed Axelle, joyfully; "I believe this is the very place.
+Don't you remember when they had come out from the park, and Lucy's
+guide left her to find an inn near by, she ran,--being frightened,--and
+losing her way, came at last to a flight of steps like these, which she
+descended, and found, instead of the inn, the _pensionnat_ of Madame
+Beck?" Only the superior discretion and worldly wisdom of the others
+prevented Axelle from following in Lucy Snow's footsteps, and settling
+the question of identity then and there. As it was, we went on to the
+library, a stuffy little place, with a withered old man for sole
+attendant, who, seated before a table in the back shop, was poring over
+an old book. We darted in, making a bewildering flutter of wings, and
+pecked him with a dozen questions at once, oddly inflected: "_Was_ the
+scene of _Villette_ laid in Brussels?" and "_Is_ the school really
+here?" and "You _don't_ say so!" though we had insisted upon it from the
+first, and he had just replied in the affirmative; lastly, "O, _do_ tell
+us how we may find it."
+
+"You must go so-and-so," he said at length, when we paused.
+
+"Yes," we replied in chorus; "we have just come from there."
+
+"And," he went on, "you will see the statue of General Beliard."
+
+We nudged each other significantly.
+
+"Go down the steps in the rear, and the house facing you--"
+
+"We knew it. We felt it," we cried, triumphantly; and his directions
+ended there. We neither heeded nor interpreted the expression of
+expectation that stole over his face. We poured out only a stream of
+thanks which should have moistened the parched sands of his soul, and
+then hastened to retrace our steps. We found the statue again. We
+descended into the narrow, noiseless street, and stood,--an awe-struck
+group,--before the great square house, upon the door-plate of which we
+read,--
+
+          "PENSIONNAT DE DEMOISELLES.
+                HEGER--PARENT."
+
+"Now," said Axelle, when we had drawn in with a deep breath, the
+satisfaction and content which shone out again from our glad eyes, "we
+will ring the bell."
+
+"You will not think of it," gasped the choir of startled girls.
+
+"To be sure; what have we come for?" was her reply. "We will only ask
+permission to see the garden, and as the portress will doubtless speak
+nothing but French, some one of you, fresh from school, must act as
+mouthpiece." They stared at Axelle, at each other, and at the steps
+leading into the upper town, as though they meditated flight. "I
+cannot," and "_I_ cannot," said each one of the shrinking group.
+
+Axelle laid her hand upon the bell, and gave one long, strong pull.
+"Now," she said, quietly, "some one of you must speak. You are ladies:
+you will not run away."
+
+And they accepted the situation.
+
+We were shown into a small _salon_, where presently there entered to us
+a brisk, sharp-featured little French woman,--a teacher in the
+establishment,--who smiled a courteous welcome from out her black eyes
+as we apologized for the intrusion, and made known our wishes.
+
+"We are a party of American girls," we said, "who, having learned to
+know and love Charlotte Bronte through her books, desire to see the
+garden of which she wrote in _Villette_."
+
+"O, certainly, certainly," was the gracious response. "Americans often
+come to visit the school and the garden."
+
+"Then this _is_ the school where she was for so long a time?" we burst
+out simultaneously, forgetting our little prepared speeches.
+
+"Yes, _mesdemoiselles_; I also was a pupil at that time," was the
+reply. We viewed the dark little woman with sudden awe.
+
+"But tell us," we said, crowding around her, "was she like--like--" We
+could think of no comparison that would do justice to the subject.
+
+The reply was a shrug of the shoulders, and, "She was just a quiet
+little thing, in no way remarkable. I am sure," she added, "we did not
+think her a genius; and indeed, though I have read her books, I can see
+nothing in them to admire or praise so highly!"
+
+"But they are _so_ wonderful!" ventured one of our number, gushingly.
+
+"They are very untrue," she replied, while something like a spark shot
+from the dark eyes.
+
+O, shades of departed story-tellers, is it thus ye are to be judged?
+
+"Madame Heger," she went on, "who still has charge of the school, is a
+most excellent lady, and not at all the person described as 'Madame
+Beck.'"
+
+"And M. Paul Emmanuel,--Lucy Snow's teacher-lover,"--we ventured to
+suggest with some timidity.
+
+"Is Madame Heger's husband, and was at that time," she replied, with a
+little angry toss of the head. After this terrible revelation there was
+nothing more to be said.
+
+She led the way through a narrow passage, and opening a door at the end,
+we stepped into the garden. We had passed the class-rooms on our
+right--where, "on the last row, in the quietest corner," Charlotte and
+Emily used to sit. We could almost see the pale faces, the shy figures
+bending over the desk in the gathering dusk.
+
+The garden is less spacious than it was in Charlotte's time, new
+class-rooms having been added, which cut off something from its length.
+But the whole place was strangely familiar and pleasant to our eyes.
+Shut in by surrounding houses, more than one window overlooks its narrow
+space. Down its length upon one side extends the shaded walk, the
+"_allee defendue_," which Charlotte paced alone so many weary hours,
+when Emily had returned to England. Parallel to this is the row of giant
+pear trees,--huge, misshapen, gnarled,--that bore no fruit to us but
+associations vivid as memories. From behind these, in the summer
+twilight, the ghost of _Villette_ was wont to steal, and buried at the
+foot of "Methuselah," the oldest, we knew poor Lucy's love-letters were
+hidden to-day. A seat here and there, a few scattered shrubs, evergreen,
+laurel, and yew, scant blossoms, paths damp, green-crusted--that was
+all. Not a cheerful place at its brightest; not a sunny spot associated
+in one's mind with summer and girlish voices. It was very still that
+day; the pupils were off for the long vacation, and yet how full the
+place was to us! The very leaves overhead, the stones in the walls
+around us, whispered a story, as we walked to and fro where little feet,
+that tired even then of life's rough way, had gone long years before.
+
+"May we take one leaf--only one?" we asked, as we turned away.
+
+"As many as you please;" and the little French woman grasped at the
+leaves growing thick and dark above her head. We plucked them with our
+own hands, tenderly, almost reverently; then, with many thanks, and our
+adieus, we came away.
+
+"We have found it!" we exclaimed, when we had returned to the hotel and
+our friends. They only smiled their unbelief.
+
+"Do you not know--can you not see--O, do you not feel?" we cried,
+displaying our glistening trophies, "that these could have grown nowhere
+but upon the pear trees in the old garden where Charlotte Bronte used to
+walk and dream?"
+
+And our words carried conviction to their hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+WATERLOO AND THROUGH BELGIUM.
+
+          To Waterloo.--Beggars and guides.--The
+          Mound.--Chateau Hougomont.--Victor Hugo's "sunken
+          road."--Antwerp.--A visit to the cathedral.--A
+          drive about the city.--An excursion to Ghent.--The
+          funeral services in the cathedral.--"Poisoned? Ah,
+          poor man!"--The watch-tower.--The Friday-market
+          square.--The nunnery.--Longfellow's pilgrims to
+          "the belfry of Bruges."
+
+
+WE could not leave the city without driving out to the battle-field of
+Waterloo. It is about a dozen miles to The Mound, and you may take the
+public coach if you choose--it runs daily. Our party being large, we
+preferred to engage a carriage.
+
+We left the house after breakfast, and passed through the wide,
+delightful avenues of the Foret de Soignes,--the Bois de Boulogne of
+Brussels,--then across the peaceful country which seemed never to have
+known anything so disturbing as war. Beyond the park lies the village
+which gave its name to the battle-field though the thickest of the fight
+was not there. In an old brick church, surmounted by a dome, lie
+intombed many minor heroes of the conflict. But heroes soon pall upon
+the taste, and nothing less than Wellington or Napoleon himself could
+have awakened a spark of interest in us by this time. Then, too, the
+vivid present blinded us to the past. The air was sweet with summer
+scents. Mowers were busy in the hayfields. A swarm of little barefooted
+beggars importuned us, turning dizzy somersaults until we could see only
+a maze of flying, dusty feet on either side. One troop, satisfied or
+despairing, gave way to another, and the guides were almost as annoying
+as the beggars. They walk for miles out of their villages to forestall
+each other, and meet the carriages that are sure to come from Brussels
+on pleasant days. They drive sharp bargains. As you near the centre of
+interest, competition is greater, and their demands proportionately
+less. We refused the extortionate overtures of two or three, and finally
+picked up a shrewd-faced young fellow in a blue blouse, who hung upon
+the step of the carriage, or ran beside it for the last mile or two of
+the distance. The village of Mont St. Jean follows that of Waterloo. It
+is only a scant collection of whitewashed farm buildings of brick. We
+rolled through it without stopping, and out again between the quiet,
+smiling fields, our minds utterly refusing to grasp the idea that they
+had swarmed once with an army; that in this little village we had just
+left--dull, half asleep in the sunshine--dreadful slaughter had held
+high carnival one July day, not many years before. Even when the guide,
+clinging to the door of the carriage, rattled over the story of the
+struggle in a _patois_ all his own, hardly a shadow of the scene was
+presented to us.
+
+As our horses slackened their pace, he stepped down from his perch to
+gather a nosegay of the flowers by the road-side, making no pause in his
+mechanical narrative--of how the Anglo-Belgian army were gathered upon
+this road and the fields back to the wood, on the last day of the fight;
+how many of the officers had been called at a moment's notice from the
+gayeties at Brussels, and more than one was found dead upon the field
+the next day, under the soaking rain, dressed as for a ball. He pushed
+back his visorless cap, uttering an exclamation over the heat, and
+adding, in the same breath, that just here, about Mont St. Jean, the
+battle waged fiercely in the afternoon, when Ney, with his brave
+cuirassiers, tried in vain to carry the position; and all the time, the
+summer sounds of twittering birds and hum of locusts were in our ears;
+the barefooted children still turned upon their axles beside the
+carriage wheels as we rolled along, and that other day seemed so far
+away, that we could neither bring it near nor realize it. One grim
+reminder of the past rose in the distance, and, as we drew near, swelled
+and grew before our eyes. It was the huge mound of earth raised two
+hundred feet, to commemorate the victory of the allies. Hills were cut
+down, the very face of nature changed for miles around, to rear this
+monument to pride and vain-glory. Upon its summit crouches the Belgian
+lion.
+
+We turn from the paved road, when we have reached what seems to be a
+mass of unsightly ruins, with only a tumbling outbuilding left here and
+there. The whole is enclosed by a wall, which skirts also an orchard,
+neglected, grown to weeds. The carriage stops before the great gates. It
+is very cool and quiet in the shaded angle of the battered wall as we
+step down. It has been broken and chipped as if by pick-axes. Ah! the
+shot struck hardest here. The top of the low wall is irregular; the
+bricks have been knocked out; the dust has sifted down; the mosses have
+gathered, and a fringe of grass follows all its length. Even sweet wild
+flowers blossom where the muskets rested in those dreadful days. At
+intervals, half way up its height, a brick is missing. Accident? Ah, no;
+hastily constructed loopholes, through which the English fired at first,
+before the horrible time when they beat each other down with the butts
+of their guns while they fought hand to hand here, like wild beasts.
+
+We enter the court-yard. Only a roughly plastered room or two remain,
+where the greed that gloats even over the field of blood offers
+_souvenirs_ of the place importunately. In the centre of this court-yard
+may still be seen the well that was filled with corpses. It must have
+given out blood for many a day. Upon one side are the remains of the
+building used for a hospital in the beginning of the fight, but where
+the wounded and dying perished in torment, when the French succeeded in
+firing the chateau; for this is _Hougomont_.
+
+We came out at the gateway where we had entered; crossed the slope under
+the shadow of the branches from the apple trees, and followed the road
+winding through wheat-fields to The Mound. Breast-high on either side
+rose the nodding crests; and among them wild flowers, purple, scarlet,
+and blue, fairly dazzled our eyes, as they waved with the golden grain
+in the sunshine. "O, smiling harvest-fields," we said, "you have been
+sown with heroes; you have been enriched with blood!"
+
+It was a long, dizzy climb up the face of The Mound to the narrow
+foothold beside the platform where rests that grim, gigantic lion. Once
+there, we held to every possible support in the hurricane of wind that
+seized us, while the guide gave a name to each historic farm and village
+spread out before our eyes. Only a couple of miles cover all the
+battle-field--the smallest where grand armies ever met; but the
+slaughter was the more terrible.
+
+Connected with an inn at the foot of The Mound is a museum of
+curiosities. Here are queer old helmets worn by the cuirassiers, hacked
+and rust-stained; broken swords, and old-fashioned muskets; buttons, and
+bullets even--everything that could be garnered after such a sowing of
+the earth.
+
+In unquestioning faith we bought buttons stained with mildew, and
+bearing upon them, in raised letters, the number of a regiment. Alas!
+reason told us, later, that the buttons disposed of annually here would
+supply an ordinary army. And rumor added, that they are buried now in
+quantities, to be exhumed as often as the supply fails.
+
+I remembered Victor Hugo to have said in _Les Miserables_ something in
+regard to a sunken road here, which proved a pitfall to the French, and
+helped, in his judgment, to turn the fortunes of the day. But we had
+seen no sunken road. I mentioned it to the guide, who said that Victor
+Hugo spent a fortnight examining the ground before writing that
+description of the battle. "He lodged at our house," he added. "My
+father was his guide. What he wrote was all quite true. There is now no
+road such as he described; that was all changed when the earth was
+scraped together to form The Mound."
+
+We lunched at the inn, surrounded by mementos and trophies, and served
+by an elderly woman, whose father had been a sergeant in the Belgian
+army, then late in the afternoon drove back to town.
+
+The pleasant days at Brussels soon slipped by, and then we were off to
+Antwerp--only an hour's ride. I will tell you nothing about the former
+wealth and commercial activity of the city--that in the sixteenth
+century it was the wealthiest city in Europe, &c, &c. For all these
+interesting particulars, see Murray's Handbook of Northern Germany. As
+soon as we had secured rooms at the hotel, dropped our satchels and
+umbrellas, we followed the chimes to the cathedral. The houses of the
+people have crept close to it, until many of them, old and gray, have
+fairly grown to it, like barnacles to a ship; or it seemed as though
+they had built their nests, like the rooks, under the moss-grown eaves.
+The interior of the cathedral was singularly grand and open. As we threw
+our shawls about us--a precaution never omitted--an old man shuffled out
+from a dark corner to show the church, take our _francs_, and pull aside
+the curtains from before the principal pictures, if so dignified a name
+as curtain can be applied to the dusty, brown cambric that obstructed
+our vision. Rubens's finest pictures are here, and indeed the city
+abounds in all that is best of Flemish art,--most justly, since it was
+the birthplace of its master. Rubens in the flesh we had seen at the
+Louvre; the spiritual manifestation was reserved for Antwerp; and to
+recall the city is to recall a series of visions of which one may not
+speak lightly.
+
+Across, from the cathedral, upon a wide wooden bench in the market-place
+we sat a moment to consider our ways--the signal for the immediate
+swooping down upon us of guides and carriages, and the result of which
+was, our departure in a couple of dingy open vehicles to finish the
+city. We crawled about the town like a diminutive funeral procession,
+dismounting at the Church of St. Jacques to see the pictures, with which
+it is filled. In one of the chapels was a young American artist, copying
+Rubens's picture of "A Holy Family"--the one in which his two wives and
+others of his family enact the part of Mary, Martha, St. Jerome, &c.
+Behind the high altar is the tomb of Rubens, with an inscription of
+sufficient length to extinguish an ordinary man. There was a museum,
+too, in the city, rich in the works of Rubens and Vandyck, and the fine
+park in the new part of the town, as well as the massive docks built by
+the first Napoleon, were yet to be seen. The older members of the party
+were in the first carriage, and received any amount of valuable
+information, which was transmitted to us who followed in a succession of
+shouts sounding as much like "fire!" as anything else, with all manner
+of beckoning, and pointing, and wild throwing up of arms, that
+undoubtedly gave vent to their feelings, but brought only confusion and
+distraction to our minds. Not to be outdone, our driver began a series
+of utterly unintelligible explanations, the only part of which we
+understood in the least was, when pointing to the docks, he ejaculated,
+"Napoleon!" At that we nodded our heads frantically, which only
+encouraged him to go on. Pausing before a low, black house, exactly like
+all the others, he pointed to it with his whip. It said "Hydraulics"
+upon a rickety sign over the door. There were old casks, and anchors,
+and ropes, and rotting wood all around, for it was down upon the
+wharves. We tried to look enlightened, gratified even, and succeeded so
+well that he entered upon an elaborate dissertation in an unknown
+tongue. What do you suppose it was all about? Can it be that he was
+explaining the principles of hydraulics?
+
+We made, one clay, an excursion from Antwerp to Ghent and Bruges. We
+left the train at Ghent to walk up through the narrow streets, that have
+no sidewalks, to the cathedral. There was a funeral within. The driver
+of the hearse profusely decorated with inverted feather dusters, was
+comfortably smoking his pipe outside. A little hunchbacked guide, with
+great, glassy eyes, and teeth like yellow fangs, led us up the aisle to
+the screen beside the high altar, where we looked between the tombs and
+the monuments, upon the long procession of men circling around the
+coffin in the choir, each with a lighted candle in hand. As there were
+only about a dozen candles in all, and each must hold one while he
+passed the coffin, it was a piece of dexterity, at least, to manage
+them, which so engrossed our attention, that we caught but an occasional
+sentence from our guide's whispered story of the seventh bishop of
+Ghent, who donated the pulpit to the cathedral, and around whose marble
+feet we were trying to peep; of the ninth, who was poisoned as he went
+upon some mission ("Poisoned? Ah, poor man!" we ejaculated, absently,
+our eyes anxiously fixed upon one man to whom had been given no candle
+as yet); of the tall brass candlesticks, supposed to have been brought
+from England in the time of Cromwell, and a host more of fragmentary
+information, forgotten now. The whole interior of the church is rich in
+decoration, black and white marble predominating, with pictures of the
+early Flemish school filling every available space. Once out of the
+church, we climbed into an ark of a carriage, and drove about the city,
+our little guide standing beside the driver, back to the horses most of
+the time, to pour out a torrent of history and romance. A most edifying
+spectacle it would have been anywhere else. Do read Henry Taylor's
+"Philip von Artevelde" before going to Ghent: the mingled romance and
+history throw a charm about the place and people which bare history can
+never give. Veritable Yankees these old Flemish weavers seem to have
+been, with a touch of the Irish in their composition--always up in arms
+for their rights, and striking out wherever they saw a head. There is a
+new part to the city, with a grand opera-house, shaded promenades and
+palatial dwellings, but one cares only for the narrow, dingy streets,
+and the old market squares, in which every stone could tell a story.
+
+We saw the tall, brick watch-tower, where still hangs the bell that
+tolled,--
+
+          "I am Roland, I am Roland! There is victory in the land,"
+
+and the old Hotel de Ville, of conglomerate architecture, one side of
+which, in the loveliest flamboyant Gothic imaginable, seems crumbling
+away from its very richness. In the Friday-market square--it chancing to
+be Friday--was a score of bustling busybodies, swarming like bees.
+Here, in the old, quarrelsome times, battles were fought between the
+different guilds. I say battles, because at one time fifteen hundred
+were slain in this very square. Such a peaceful old square as it seemed
+to be the day of our visit! the old gray houses, that have echoed to the
+sound of strife, fairly smiling in the sunshine, and the market women
+kneeling upon the stones which have run with blood. At one corner rose a
+tower, and half way up its height may still be seen the iron rod, over
+which was hung imperfect linen, to shame the weaver who had dared to
+offer it in the market.
+
+There is a great nunnery here in Ghent--a town of itself, surrounded by
+a moat and a wall, where are six hundred or more sisters, from families
+high and low, who tend the sick, weave lace, and mortify the flesh in
+black robes and white veils. When they become weary of it, they may
+return to the world, the flesh, and--their homes: no vows bind them. We
+drove along the streets past the cell-like houses where they dwell. Over
+the door of each was the name of her patron saint. It seemed a quiet
+retreat, a noiseless city, notwithstanding the six hundred women! But by
+far the most interesting sight, because the most ancient in the quaint
+old city, was the archway and turret of the old royal castle, erected a
+thousand years ago; only this gateway remains. Here John o' Gaunt was
+born. Built all round, and joined to it, are houses of more recent date,
+themselves old and tottering, and the arch beneath which kings and
+queens rode once, is now the entrance to a cotton factory.
+
+We had only a few hours at Bruges--the city once more powerful than
+Antwerp even, but where not a house has been raised for a hundred years,
+and where nearly a third of its inhabitants are paupers. But decay and
+dilapidation are strong elements of the picturesque, and nothing seen
+that day was more charming than a piece of wall, still standing,
+belonging to the old Charles V.'s palace--honey-combed, black, of florid
+Gothic architecture, rising from the quiet waters of the canal. At one
+end it threw an arch over the street, with a latticed window above it,
+beneath which we passed, after crossing the bridge. More than one
+picture of Bruges rests within my memory--its canals spanned by the
+picturesque bridges, and overhung with willows that dipped their long
+branches into the water, and the quaint old houses with many-stepped
+gables, rising sheer from the stream.
+
+But with all its past grandeur, the old city is best known to us
+Americans through the chimes from its belfry tower, and we were some of
+Longfellow's pilgrims. We drove into the great paved Place under the
+shadow of the belfry tower when its shadows were growing long, and
+watched the stragglers across the square--women in queer black-hooded
+cloaks; chubby little blue-eyed maidens with school-books in hand; a
+party of tourists; and last, but by no means least, the ubiquitous
+American girl, with an immense bow on the back of her dress, and her eye
+fixed steadily upon the milliner's shop just visible around the corner.
+Almost three hundred feet the dingy brick tower rose above us, with low
+wings on either side, where were once the halls of some guilds, in the
+days when the tower was a lookout to warn of coming foes,--when the
+square was planned for defence. In a little court-yard, gained by
+passing under its arch, we watched and listened, until at last the sweet
+tinkle of the silver-toned bells broke the hush of waiting--so far away,
+so heavenly, we held our breath, lest we should lose the sound that fell
+
+  "Like the psalms from some old cloister when the nuns sing in the choir,
+   And the great bell tolled among them like the chanting of a friar."
+
+We came back to Antwerp that night, tired, but triumphant, feeling as
+though we had read a page from an old book, or sung a strain from an old
+song.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A TRIP THROUGH HOLLAND.
+
+          Up the Meuse to Rotterdam.--Dutch sights and
+          ways.--The pretty milk-carriers.--The
+          tea-gardens.--Preparations for the Sabbath.--An
+          English chapel.--"The Lord's barn."--From
+          Rotterdam to the Hague.--The queen's "House in the
+          Wood."--Pictures in private drawing-rooms.--The
+          bazaar.--An evening in a Dutch
+          tea-garden.--Amsterdam to a stranger.--The
+          "sights."--The Jews' quarter.--The family whose
+          home was upon the canals.--Out of the city.--The
+          pilgrims.
+
+
+AT nine o'clock, the next morning, we left Antwerp for Rotterdam. Two
+hours by rail brought us to a place with an unpronounceable name, ending
+in "djk," where we were to take a steamer. How delightful, after the
+dust and heat of the railway carriage, were the two hours that followed!
+The day was charming, the passengers numerous, but scattered about the
+clean, white deck, picturesquely, upon the little camp stools, drinking
+brandy and water as a preventive to what seemed impossible, eating
+fruit, reading, chatting, or pleased, like ourselves, with the panorama
+before their eyes. In and out of the intricate passages to the sea we
+steamed, the land and water all around us level as a floor; the only
+sign of life the slow-revolving arms of the windmills, near and far,
+with here and there a solitary mansion shut in by tall trees; or, as we
+wound in and out among the islands fringed with green rushes, and waving
+grasses that fairly came out into the water to meet us, and sailed up
+the Meuse, the odd Dutch villages that had turned their backs to the
+river, though their feet were still in the water over which hung rude
+wooden balconies, or still ruder bay-windows, filled with pots of
+flowers. This monotonous stretch of sea and land might grow tiresome
+after a while, but there was something peculiarly restful in that sail
+up the wide mouth of the river, beckoned on by the solemn arms of the
+windmills.
+
+When we reached Rotterdam, how strange it was to find, instead of a row
+of houses across from our hotel, a wharf and a row of ships! Such a
+great, comfortable room as awaited us! with deep, wide arm-chairs, a
+heavy round table suggesting endless teas, and toast unlimited, and
+everything else after the same hearty, substantial manner. There was no
+paper upon the walls, but, in its place, paintings upon canvas. Delilah
+sat over the mantel, with the head of the sleeping Samson in her lap,
+and Rebekah and the thirsty camels were behind our bed curtains. From
+the wide windows we watched the loading and unloading of the ships,
+while the song of the sailors came in on the evening breeze, and with
+it, we half-fancied, the odor of sandal-wood and spices from the East
+Indiamen anchored across the way. Our hotel was upon the Boompjes, the
+quay that borders the river; but through nearly all the streets flow the
+canals, deep enough to float large ships. You can appreciate the
+advantage of sailing a ship to the very door of one's warehouse, as you
+might drive a cart up to unload; and you can imagine, perhaps, the
+peculiar appearance of the city, with its mingled masts and chimneys,
+its irregular, but by no means picturesque, houses, and the inhabitants
+equally at home upon water or land. Among the women of the lower classes
+may still be seen some national peculiarities in dress, shown
+principally in the startling ornaments--twisted gold wire horns, and
+balls, and rings of mammoth size thrust out from their caps just above
+their ears. Whether their bare red arms would come under the head of
+dress, might be questioned; but a national peculiarity they certainly
+were, and unlike anything ever seen before in the way of human flesh.
+Was that painfully deep magenta hue nature or art? We could never tell.
+There were some very pretty faces among the girls carrying milk about
+the city in bright brass cans, or in pails suspended from a yoke over
+their shoulders--faces of one type, round, red-cheeked, blue-eyed, with
+the mouth called rosebud by poets, and bewitching little brown noses of
+an upward tendency. As they all wore clean purple calico gowns, and had
+each a small white cap on their heads, the resemblance among them was
+rather striking. These caps left the whole top of the head exposed to
+the sun. Only an iron-clad, fire-proof brain could endure it, I am sure.
+
+Not a beggar did we see anywhere in Holland. The people seemed
+thoroughly industrious and thrifty. A gentleman connected with the civil
+service there--an agreeable, cultivated man, who had been half over the
+world, written a book or two, and parted his hair in the middle--gave
+the people credit for all these, with many more good qualities, and
+added, "They are the simplest minded people in the world. Why, would you
+believe it, one of the canal bridges was run into and broken down, the
+other day,--a fortnight ago,--and it has been town talk ever since. No
+two men meet upon the street without, 'Have you heard about the
+bridge?'" And sure enough, when we reached the scene of the accident, in
+our after-dinner walk through the city, quite a crowd was collected to
+watch the passage of a temporary ferry-boat, the simplest contrivance
+imaginable, only an old barge pulled back and forth by ropes. Still
+later we found the entrance to a narrow street choked with people,
+though nothing more unusual seemed to be taking place than the bringing
+out of a table and a few chairs.
+
+Upon the outskirts of the city are pleasant tea-gardens, often attached
+to club-rooms, where concerts are held Sunday evenings, attended by the
+upper classes. We walked through one, over the pebbled paths, and among
+the deserted tables, and then returned to see more of the town. It was
+Saturday night. All the little girls upon the street had their locks
+twisted up in papers so tight and fast that they could shut neither eyes
+nor mouth, but seemed to be in a continual state of wonderment. All
+their mothers were down upon their hands and knees, scrubbing the
+doorsteps and sidewalk, in preparation for the Sabbath. The streets were
+dirty and uninviting with a few exceptions, yet hardly more so than
+could be expected, when you remember that nearly the whole city is a
+line of wharves; but we felt no disposition to walk through it in our
+slippers, as the guide book in praising its cleanliness, says you may.
+What an advantage it would be to the world if the compilers of
+guide-books would only visit the places they describe so graphically! We
+spent a quiet Sabbath here--the fourth of July--with not so much as a
+torpedo to disturb its serenity or mark the day, attending church at the
+English chapel, and joining in the responses led by a clear soprano
+voice behind us, which we had some desire to locate; but when we turned,
+at the conclusion of the service, there was only a row of horrible
+chignons to be seen, to none of which, I am sure, the voice belonged.
+
+There is nothing to be seen in Rotterdam but its shipping. One great,
+bare church we did visit--"the Lord's barn;" for these cathedrals,
+stripped of altar, and image, and stained glass, and boarded into stiff
+pews, without the least regard to the eternal fitness of things, are
+ugly enough. There is somewhere here a collection of Ary Scheffer's
+works,--in the city I mean,--but we did not see it. It is less than an
+hour's ride by rail from Rotterdam to the Hague, with the same
+delightfully monotonous scenery all along the way--meadows smooth and
+green, and fields white for the harvest, separated by the almost
+invisible canals. No wonder the Spaniards held the Low Countries with a
+grasp of iron--the whole land is a garden. The Hague, being the
+residence of the court, is much after the pattern of all continental
+capitals, with wide, white streets, white stuccoed houses of regular and
+beautiful appearance, and fine, large parks and pleasure-grounds filled
+with deer, and shaded by grand old elms as large as those in our own
+land, but lacking the long, sweeping branches. A mile from the city is
+"The House in the Wood," the private residence of the queen of the
+Netherlands. The wood is heavy and of funereal air, but the little
+palace is quite charming within, though upon the exterior only a plain
+brick country-house. The rooms are small, and hung with rice-paper, or
+embroidered white satin, with which also much of the furniture is
+covered. The bare floors are of polished wood, with a square of carpet
+in the centre, the border of which was worked by hand. "Please step over
+it," said the neat little old woman who was showing us through, which we
+accordingly did. There was a home-like air, very unpalatial, about it
+all,--as though the lady of the house might have been entertaining
+callers, or having a dress-maker in the next room. Delicate trinkets
+were scattered about--pretty, rare things worth a fortune, with any
+amount of old Dutch china in the cosy dining-room. In one of the rooms
+hung the portrait of a handsome young man,--just as there hang portraits
+of handsome young men in our houses. This was the eldest son of the
+queen,--heir to the throne,--who, rumor says, is still engaged in that
+agricultural pursuit so fascinating to young men--the sowing of wild
+oats. In the next room was a portrait of Queen Sophie herself--a
+delicate, queenly face--a face of character. The walls of the ball-room
+are entirely covered with paintings upon wood by Rubens and his pupils.
+"Speak low, if you please," said our little old woman; "the queen is in
+the next room, and she has a bad headache to-day." I am sure she had a
+dress-maker! As we stooped to examine a rug worked by the royal
+fingers, an attendant passed, bearing upon a silver salver the remains
+of her majesty's lunch.
+
+From the palace we drove back to town to visit two private collections
+of paintings. It seemed odd, if not impertinent, to walk through the
+drawing-rooms of strangers, criticise their pictures, and fee their
+servants. Upon the table, in one, were thrown down carelessly the bonnet
+and gloves of the lady of the house. I was tempted to carry them off.
+Only a vigorous early training, and the thought of a long line of pious
+ancestors, prevented. Here were pictures from most of the earlier and
+some of the later Dutch artists--Paul Potter's animals, Jan Steen's pots
+and pans, Vandervelde's quays and luggers, and green, foaming seas, and
+even a touch or two from the brush of the master of Dutch art. We
+stopped on our way back to the hotel, at a bazaar,--a place of
+beguilement, with long rooms full of everything beautiful in art,
+everything tempting to the eye,--and after dinner went out to one of the
+adjacent tea-gardens. It was filled with family parties drinking tea
+around little tables. The music was fine, though unexpected at times,
+as, for instance, when a trumpet blew a startling blast, and a little
+man in its range sprang from his seat as though blown out of his place.
+It was amusing and interesting to watch the stream of promenaders
+circling around the musicians' stand--broad, heavily-built men, long of
+body, short of limbs; women "square-rigged," of easy, good-natured
+countenance. I doubt if there was a nerve in the whole assembly.
+
+At noon the next day, we took the train for Amsterdam--another two
+hours' ride. The land began to undulate as we went towards the sea,
+with the shifting hillocks of sand raised by wind and wave. We passed
+Leyden, famous for its resistance to the Spaniards, as well as for
+having been the birthplace of Rembrandt and a score of lesser lights,
+and Haarlem, known for its great organ, and still the sand-hills rose
+one above the other, until they shut out everything beyond. It was only
+when we made a sharp turn, and struck out in a straight line for the
+city, that the Zuyder Zee opened before us, the curving line of land
+along its edge alive with windmills. We counted a hundred and twenty in
+sight at one time, and still did not exhaust them; so many skipped and
+whirled about, and refused to be counted. It hardly seems possible that
+the city of Amsterdam is built upon piles driven into the sand and mud.
+Certainly, when you have been jolted and shaken until your teeth
+chatter, for a long mile, in one of the hotel omnibuses from the station
+through the narrow streets and over the rough pavements, you will think
+there must be a tolerably firm foundation. Such a peaceful, sleepy,
+free-from-danger air, these slimy canals give to the cities! You forget
+that just beyond the dikes the mighty, restless sea lurks, and watches
+day and night for a chance to rush in and claim its own. The canals run
+in a succession of curves, one within the other, all through the city.
+Upon the quays are the dwellings and warehouses. In the narrow streets,
+crossing them by means of endless bridges, are the shops and dwellings
+of the lower classes. Looking down a street, no two houses present an
+unbroken line. They have all settled in their places until they nod, and
+leer, and wink at each other, in a decidedly sociable, intoxicated
+manner. The whole city, to a stranger, is a curious sight--the arched
+bridges over the interminable canals; the clumsy boats (for the canals
+are too shallow to admit anything but coasters and river boats); the
+antic and antiquated houses with high gables, rising in steps, to the
+street; the women of the lower classes, with yokes over their shoulders,
+and long-eared white caps on their heads, surmounted by naked straw
+bonnets of obsolete fashion and coal-scuttle shape, and out and from
+which, on either side, protruded all the wonderful tinkling ornaments of
+which the prophet speaks; the long quays and streets utterly bare of
+trees; the iron rods thrust out from the houses half way up their
+height, upon which all manner of garments, freshly washed, hang over the
+street to dry. Down in an open Place stands the dark, square palace,
+grand and grim, where Hortense played queen a little time while Louis
+Bonaparte was king of Holland. Near the palace is a national monument,
+for the Dutch, too, remember their brave. There are old and new churches
+also to be seen, but churches bare of everything which clothes
+cathedrals with beauty, having been stripped in the time of the
+reformation. I suppose one should rejoice; but we did miss the high
+altar, the old carved saints, and the pictures in the chapels.
+
+Some of the finest paintings of the Dutch school are in the national
+museum here; _genre_ pictures, many, if not most of them, but pleasant
+to look at, if not of the highest art; and we visited another collection
+of the same, left by a M. Van der Hoop. There are several other private
+collections thrown open to the public. But after all, the most charming
+picture was the Jews' quarter of the city. I know it was horribly
+filthy, and so crowded that we could hardly make our way; I know it was
+filled with squalor and rags, and great dark eyes, and breathed an odor
+by no means of sanctity. The dusky, luminous-eyed people seemed to move,
+and breathe, and hold a constant bazaar in the lane-like streets filled
+with everything known and unknown in merchandise, or leaning out from
+the windows of the tottering houses, their arms crossed over the sill,
+to dream away a lifetime. Still there was a fascination about it all, a
+suggestion of vagabondism, of Ishmaelitish wanderings, of having "here
+no continuing city," that touched the heart of a certain Methodist
+minister's daughter in our party.
+
+Sometimes the houses rise directly from the water, as did our hotel, the
+entrance being gained from another street in front. Our room was like a
+town hall, with mediaeval bed furniture and sofa, high chest of drawers,
+and great round table that might have come in with the Dutch when they
+took Holland. The deep windows looked down upon a canal. Across from
+them, anchored to the quay as if for a lifetime, was one of the river
+boats. Early in the morning the wife of the skipper--a square woman,
+brown-faced, with faded, braided hair--ran out bareheaded into the town,
+coming back with her arms mysteriously full. Down into the cabin she
+disappeared, from whence directly came a sound of sputtering and frying,
+with a most savory odor. Up she would come again--frying pan in hand to
+corroborate her statement--to call her husband to breakfast. He was
+never ready to respond, never, though he was doing nothing to support
+his energetic family at the time, but coiling and uncoiling old ropes,
+or rubbing at invisible spots with a handful of rope-yarn. I know he
+only delayed to add to his own dignity and the importance of his final
+advent. Breakfast over, there followed such a commotion in the little
+world as I cannot describe--a shaking out of garments, a scraping out of
+plates, and throwing into the canal the refuse of the feast, a flying up
+with pots and pans for no object whatever but to clatter down again with
+the same, and all in the face and eyes of the town, with nevertheless
+the most absorbed and unconscious air imaginable. When it was over,
+somewhat what red in the face, but serene, the wife would appear upon
+the deck, to sit in the shadow of a sail and mend her husband's
+stockings, or put on a needed patch. We left the boat still fast to the
+quay; but I know that some day, when it was filled with scented oils,
+and rouge, and borax, and all the other things exported from the
+manufactories here, our skipper and his wife went sailing out of the
+canals and along the edge of the sea or up the Rhine, the stockings all
+mended, and the good woman not above giving a strong pull at the ropes.
+
+To drive about the streets of Amsterdam is slow torture, so rough are
+the pavings, so springless the carriages; but to roll along the smooth,
+wide roads in the suburbs is delightful. Upon one side is a canal,
+stagnant, lifeless, with a green weed growing upon its still surface,
+which often for a long distance entirely hides the water; beyond the
+canal are pleasant little gardens and a row of low, comfortable-looking
+wooden houses with green doors. Before each door is a narrow bridge--a
+neatly-painted plank with hand-rails--thrown over the canal, to be swung
+around or raised like a drawbridge at night, making every man's house a
+moated castle. We passed a fine zoological garden here upon the
+outskirts of the city, a garden of animals that ranks next to the famous
+one in London; but had no time to visit it, nor did we see any of the
+charitable institutions in which Amsterdam excels.
+
+"You know the pilgrim fathers?" said Emmie--whose family had preceded us
+by a day or two--the night after our arrival. "O, yes; had not our whole
+lives been straightened out after their maxims?" "Well, we've found the
+house where it is said they held meetings before they embarked for
+America. Wouldn't you like to see it?" Of course we would; in fact, it
+would be showing no more than proper respect to our forefathers. So six
+of us--women and girls--put ourselves under her guidance. We found a
+narrow, dirty street, the dwellers in which stared after us curiously.
+Between two old houses was an opening, hardly wide enough to be called
+an alley, hardly narrow enough to be looked upon as a gutter. Into this
+we crowded. "There; this is the house," said Emmie, laying her slight
+fingers upon the old stone wall before us. It was quite bare, and devoid
+of ornament or entrance, being evidently the back or side of a house.
+Down from the peak of the gable looked a solitary window. A rude
+balcony, holding a few plants, was below it, with freshly-washed clothes
+hanging from its rail. We rolled our eyes, experienced a shiver that may
+have been caused by awe or the damp chill of the spot, and came out to
+find the narrow street half filled with staring men and women crowding
+about the point of our disappearance, while from the upper end of the
+street, and even around the corner, others hastened to join the
+whispering, wondering crowd. How could we explain? It was utterly
+impossible; so we came quickly and quietly away; but whether this house
+had ever been a church, whether the pilgrim fathers ever saw it, or
+indeed whether there ever were any pilgrim fathers, are questions I
+cannot undertake to answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE RHINE AND RHENISH PRUSSIA.
+
+          First glimpse of the Rhine.--Cologne and the
+          Cathedral.--"Shosef in ter red coat."--St. Ursula
+          and the eleven thousand virgins.--Up the Rhine to
+          Bonn.--The German students.--Rolandseck.--A search
+          for a resting-place.--Our Dutch friend and his
+          Malays.--The story of Hildegund.--A quiet
+          Sabbath.--Our Dutch friend's
+          reply.--Coblentz.--The bridge of
+          boats.--Ehrenbreitstein, over the river.--A
+          scorching day upon the Rhine.--Romance under
+          difficulties.--Mayence.--Frankfort.--Heidelberg.--The
+          ruined castle.--Baden-Baden.--A glimpse at the
+          gambling.--The new, and the old "Schloss."--The
+          Black Forest.--Strasbourg.--The mountains.
+
+
+WE had made a sweep through Belgium and Holland, intending to return by
+way of the Rhine and Switzerland. Accordingly, in leaving Amsterdam, we
+struck across the country to Arnhem, where we found a pleasant hotel
+near the station, outside of the town. Here we spent the night in order
+to break the monotony of the ride to Cologne. After climbing stairs to
+gain our room, wide, but so perpendicular that we were really afraid to
+descend by them, we had, from a rickety, upper piazza, our first glimpse
+of the Rhine, winding through flat, green meadows, with hardly more than
+a suggestion of hills in the distance. There is nothing of interest to
+detain one at Arnhem. The guide-book informed us that it was the scene
+of Sir Philip Sidney's death; but no one in the hotel seemed ever to
+have heard of that gentle knight--_sans peur et sans reproche_.
+
+We reached Cologne at noon the next day. The road makes a _detour_
+through the plain, so that, for some time before gaining it, we could
+see the city nestling under the wings of the great cathedral. How can I
+tell you anything about it? If I say that it is five times the length of
+any church you know, and that the towers, when completed, are to be the
+same height as the length, will my words bring to you any conception of
+its size? If I say that it was partially built a couple of centuries
+before the discovery of America; that it was worked upon for three
+hundred years, and then suffered to remain untouched until recently;
+that the architect who planned it has been forgotten for centuries, so
+that the idea embodied in its form is like some beautiful old tradition,
+whose origin is unknown,--will this give you any idea of its age? The
+new part, seen from our hotel, was so white and beautiful, that, when we
+had passed around to the farther side, it was like waking from a sleep
+of a thousand years. The blackened, broken Gothic front told its own
+story of age and decay. Ah, the interminable dusky length of its
+interior, when we had crept within the doors! It was a very world in
+itself, full of voices, and echoes, and shadows of its own. We followed
+the guide over the rough stone floor, giving no heed to the tiresome
+details that fell in broken words and monotonous tones from his lips. I
+recall nothing now but the fact (!) that behind the choir lie buried,
+in all their magnificence, the Three Wise Men of the East. As we came
+down one of the shadowy aisles, we paused before a fine, old, stained
+window. Our guide immediately became prolix again. "Dis," he said,
+pointing to one of the figures upon the glass, "is Shosef, in ter red
+coat; and dis is Shon ter Baptised; and dis, ter Holy Ghos' in ter form
+off a duff."
+
+When the old woman at the door offered pictures of the cathedral, he
+assured us that they were quite correct, having been taken "from
+_nature_, _outzide_ and _inzide_."
+
+You must see the old Roman remains of towers and crumbling walls, sniff
+the vile odors of the streets, which have become proverbial, and be
+sprinkled with cologne--then your duty to the city is done. But almost
+everybody visits the Church of St. Ursula, which is lined with the
+skulls of that unfortunate young woman and her eleven thousand virgin
+followers.
+
+The story is, that she was an English princess, who lived--nobody knows
+at what remote period of antiquity. For some reason equally obscure, she
+started with her lover and eleven thousand maidens to make a pilgrimage
+to Rome. Fancy this lover undertaking a continental tour with eleven
+thousand and one young women under his care! Even modern travel presents
+no analogy to the case. "And they staid over night at my aunt's," droned
+the sleepy guide, who was telling the story. The girls looked at each
+other. "Good gracious! what unbounded hospitality!" whispered one. "At
+his _aunt's_!" exclaimed a second, somewhat puzzled by the anachronism.
+"Don't interrupt," said a third interested listener; "he means
+_Mayence_;" and he proceeded with the narrative. They accomplished their
+pilgrimage in safety; but, upon their return, were "fetched up py ter
+parparians," as the guide expressed it, which means, in English, that
+they were murdered, here at Cologne. If you doubt the story, behold the
+skulls! We turned suddenly upon the guide.
+
+"Do _you_ believe this?"
+
+"I mus; sinz I tells it to you," was his enigmatical reply, dropping his
+eyes.
+
+The scenery along the Rhine from Cologne, for twenty miles, is
+uninteresting; just now, too, the weather was uncomfortably hot, and we
+were glad to leave the steamer for a few hours at Bonn. Upon the balcony
+of a hotel, looking out upon the river, we found a score of young men in
+bright-colored caps--students from the university here. When dinner was
+announced, they crowded in and filled the table, at which the ladies of
+our party were the only ones present. Such a noisy, loud-talking set as
+they were! When each one had dined, he coolly leaned back in his chair,
+and lighted his pipe! Before we had finished our almonds and raisins the
+room was quite beclouded. Then they adjourned with pipe and wine-glass
+to the balcony again, where we left them when we went out to see the
+town.
+
+The university was formerly a palace, the guide-book had told us; but
+all our childish conceptions of palaces had been rudely destroyed before
+now, so that we were not surprised to find it without any especial
+beauty of architecture--only a pile of brown stone, three quarters of a
+mile long. I think we had left all the students drinking wine upon the
+balcony, for we saw none here,--though we went through the library,
+museum, and various halls,--except one party outside, who stared
+unblushingly at the girls remaining in the carriage.
+
+Somewhere in the town we found a lovely old minster, through the aisles
+of which we wandered for a while, happy in having no guide and knowing
+nothing whatever about it. Outside, in a little park, was a statue of
+Beethoven, and in a quiet street near the water the musical girls of our
+party found the house where he was born. In the cool of the day we took
+another steamer, and went on towards the beckoning hills, at nightfall
+reaching Rolandseck. There was no town in sight, only a pier and three
+quiet hotels upon the bank, with a narrow road between their gardens and
+the water. We chose the one farthest away, and were rowed down to it,
+dabbling our hands in the water, and saying over and over again, "It is
+the _Rhine_!"
+
+But the hotel was full; so we filled our arms with luggage, and walked
+back, up the dusty road to the second. A complacent waiter stood in the
+doorway, with nothing of that hungry, eager air about him which betokens
+an empty house; cool, comfortable-looking tourists, in enviable, fresh
+toilets, stared at us from the windows; a pretty German girl upon the
+balcony overhead was sketching the river and the Seven Mountains just
+below, uttering little womanly exclamations at times, ending in "_ach_"
+and "_ich_." After some delay, four single rooms were offered us; our
+party numbered twelve; we left a portion of our company here; the others
+went on--to the pier where we had landed, in fact, and with all meekness
+and humility sued for accommodations of the little hotel here, which we
+had at first looked upon with disdain. Fortunately, we were not refused.
+
+When we came down the next morning, the sole occupant of the piazza
+opening upon the garden--where our breakfast was spread--was a stout,
+red-faced gentleman of general sleek appearance, who smiled a courteous
+"good morning." He proved to be a Dutchman from Rotterdam, who had in
+charge a couple of Malay youths sent to Holland to be
+educated--bright-faced boys, with straight, blue-black hair, olive
+complexions, and eyes like velvet. They were below us, walking in the
+garden now.
+
+"We have but just come from Holland," we said, after some conversation;
+and, with a desire to be sociable, added that it was a very charming,
+garden-like _little_ (!) country. (O dreadful American spirit!)
+
+He smiled, showing his gums above his short teeth, and with a kind of
+enraged humility replied,--
+
+"It is nothing."
+
+"It is indeed wonderful," we went on, trying to improve upon our former
+attempt, and quoting a sentiment from the guide-book, "how your people
+have rescued the land from the clutch of the sea!"
+
+But his only reply was the same smile, and the "Yes?" so fatal to
+sentiment.
+
+"We visited your queen's 'House in the Wood,'" we ventured, presently.
+"Is it true that the domestic relations of the royal family are so
+unhappy?"
+
+"O, the king and the queen are most happy," he replied. "You may always
+be sure that when _he_ is in town _she_ will be in the country."
+
+This was a phase of domestic bliss so new to us that we were fain to
+consider it for a moment. Various other attempts we made at gaining
+information, with equally questionable success. Our Dutch acquaintance,
+though disposed to conversation, avoided the topic of his own country.
+Still he sought our society persistently, asking at dinner that his
+plate might be laid at the same table. Our vanity was considerably
+flattered, until he chanced to remark that he embraced every opportunity
+of conversing with English and American travellers, _it did so improve
+his English_. From that time we found him tiresome. Think of being used
+as an exercise-book!
+
+It is here at Rolandseck that the romance of the Rhine, as well as its
+world-renowned scenery, commences. Across the river is the
+Drachenfels--the crag upon which the remains of a castle may still be
+seen, where, "in the most ancient time," dwelt Hildegund, a maiden
+beautiful as those of all stories, and beloved by Roland, a nephew of
+Charlemagne. When he went away to the wars, she waited and watched at
+home--as other maidens have done; but alas! instead of her lover, came
+after a time only the news of his death. Then Hildegund laid aside her
+gay attire and happy heart, with her hopes, and leaving her father's
+castle, came down to bury her young life in the nunnery upon the island
+at its foot. But the rumor was false; and in time Roland returned, only
+to find himself too late, for Hildegund was bound by vows which could
+not be broken. Then, upon the rock called now Rolandseck, the unhappy
+lover built a castle opposite the Drachenfels and overlooking the
+Island of Nonnenworth. Here he could watch the nuns as they walked in
+the convent garden, and perhaps among them distinguish the form of
+Hildegund.
+
+On our way down from the arch, which, with a few crumbling stones is all
+that remains now of Roland's castle, we passed through one of the
+vineyards for which the banks of this river are so noted. Do you imagine
+them to be picturesque? They are almost ugly. The vines are planted in
+regular order and pruned closely. They are not suffered to grow above
+three feet in height, and each one is fastened to a stout stake until
+the wood itself becomes self-supporting.
+
+We spent a quiet Sabbath at Rolandseck. There was no church, no church
+service at either of the hotels. We rested and wrote letters, sitting in
+the grape arbors of the garden; only a low hedge and narrow, grass-grown
+road between us and the river. Down below, the rocks and the island shut
+out the world; across, the hills rose to the sky, their slopes covered
+with yellow grain, or dotted with red-roofed farm-houses, while tiny
+villages had curled up and gone to sleep at their feet. It was
+impossible to write. The breeze that rippled the yellow water blew away
+our paper and our thoughts; and when the steamer, puffing, and evidently
+breathless from stemming the current, touched at the little pier, we
+left everything and ran out to see the passengers disembark. A band
+played at the railroad station just above our hotel, and the park
+attached to it swarmed with excursionists during the afternoon. At dusk,
+when they had all gone, we wandered up the magnificent road which
+follows the course of the river; built originally by the Romans, and
+said to extend for a long distance--five hundred miles or more--into
+Germany, returning with our hands full of wild flowers. When we went on
+board the steamer, Monday morning, we were closely followed by our Dutch
+friend and his Malays. They strolled off by themselves, as they seemed
+always to do; he joined our group under the awning spread over the deck.
+An English tourist seized upon him immediately, and when he had
+disclosed his nationality, proceeded with a glance towards us, to quiz
+him upon Dutch ways.
+
+"Now, really," said the tourist, tilting back against the rail in his
+camp chair, "how dreadful it must be to live in a country where there
+are no mountains! nothing but a stretch of flat land, you know. I fancy
+it would be unendurable."
+
+"Yes?" was the Dutchman's sole response.
+
+"You still keep up your peculiar customs, I observe from Murray," the
+Englishman went on, loftily. "Your women carry the same old foot-stoves
+to church, I fancy. They hang up, you know, in every house."
+
+"Ah!" and the Dutchman only smiled that same incomprehensible smile that
+had so puzzled us.
+
+"And you smoke constantly," continued the inquisitor, growing dogmatic;
+"a pipe is seldom out of your mouths. Really, you are a nation of
+perpetual smokers."
+
+"Yes," assented the Dutchman; "but then--" and here his eyes, and indeed
+his whole round, rosy face twinkled with irresistible humor, "_you know
+we have no mountains_."
+
+A shout went up from the listeners, and our English acquaintance became
+at once intensely interested in the scenery.
+
+[Illustration: "At the word of command they struck the most
+extraordinary attitudes." Page 157.]
+
+The sail of half an hour to Coblentz was a continual delight. The rocky
+mountains rose abruptly from the water, terraced to their peaks with
+vineyards, or stood back to give place to modest towns and villages that
+dipped their skirts in the stream. At their wharves we touched for a
+moment, to make an exchange of passengers or baggage. Often from the
+lesser villages a boat shot out, the oars held by a brown-armed maiden,
+who boarded us to take, perhaps, a single box or bale, or, it might be,
+some bearded tourist with sketch-book under his arm. The passengers
+walked the deck, or gathered in groups to eat ices and drink the wines
+made from the grapes grown in these vineyards, with the pictured maps of
+the river spread out upon their laps, and the ubiquitous Murray in their
+hands.
+
+As we neared Coblentz the villages increased as the hills vanished. Each
+had its point of interest, or monkish legend--the palace of a duke, a
+bit of crumbling Roman wall rising from the water--something to invest
+it with a charm. One--Neuwied--is noted for holding harmoniously within
+its limits, Jews, Moravians, Anabaptists, and Catholics. The Millennium
+will doubtless begin at Neuwied.
+
+At Coblentz we remained a day, in order to visit the fortress of
+Ehrenbreitstein. From our windows at the hotel we could look directly
+across to this grim giant of rock, as well as down upon the bridge of
+boats which crosses the Rhine here. It was endless amusement to watch
+the approach of the steamers, when, as if impelled by invisible boatmen,
+a part of the bridge would swing slowly round to make an opening,
+while the crowd of soldiers, market-women, and towns-people, waiting
+impatiently, furnished a constant and interesting study.
+
+An hour or two after noon we too crossed the bridge in an open carriage,
+nearly overcome by the stifling heat, and after passing through the
+village of Ehrenbreitstein, ascended the winding road--a steep ascent,
+leading under great arches of solid masonry, through massive gateways,
+and shut in by the rock which forms the fortress. At various points,
+guards of Prussian soldiers, as immovable as the stone under their feet,
+were stationed. Suddenly in the gloomy silence, as we toiled slowly up,
+echoed a sharp tramp, tramp, and a line of soldiers filed by in grim
+silence, each one with a couple of loaves of bread slung by a cord over
+his shoulder. In a moment another line followed with a quantity of iron
+bedsteads, each borne solemnly upon the shoulders of four men. The
+guards accompanying them were armed, and wore queer, shining helmets.
+Still another company came swinging down to meet us, with fixed,
+imperturbable countenances, each bearing a towel in one hand, with
+military precision. They were on their way to the bathing-house upon the
+bridge.
+
+Scattered about upon the broad esplanade at the summit, or rather
+arranged in lines upon the breezy, grass-grown space, were squads of
+recruits being drilled. At the word of command they struck the most
+extraordinary attitudes. Taking a tremendous stride, they endeavored to
+poise themselves on one foot, while they threw the other leg straight
+out behind into the air. Being of all sizes, forms, and degrees of
+grace in movement, the effect, to say the least, was surprising;
+especially as the most intense silence and seriousness prevailed. A
+second stride and fling followed, then a third, when a pert young
+officer, of the bantam species, seized a gun, and strutting to the
+front, proceeded to illustrate the idea more perfectly. At this point
+our gravity gave way.
+
+A young sergeant, with a stupid but good-natured face, attached himself
+to us in the capacity of guide. He could speak nothing but German, of
+which not one of us understood a word. We followed him from point to
+point, politely attending to all his elaborate explanations, and were
+surprised to find how many ideas we had finally gained by means of the
+patient and painful pantomimic accompaniment to his words.
+
+The view from the summit is wonderfully extensive. All the kingdoms of
+the earth and the glory of them seemed spread out at our feet; and our
+fat little guide grew fairly red in the face in his efforts to make us
+comprehend the names of the various points of interest.
+
+When we returned to the carriage the animated jumping-Jacks were still
+engaged in their remarkable evolutions; and as we came down we had a
+last glimpse of our Dutch friend and his Malays, who were making the
+ascent on foot.
+
+The next day, though passed upon the beautiful river, was a day of
+torment. The stream narrowed; the frowning rocks closed in upon us,
+shutting out every breath of air; the sun beat down upon the water and
+the low awning over our heads with fiery fury; in a moment of idiocy we
+answered the call to _table d'hote_, which was served upon deck with a
+refinement of imbecility just as the climax of the striking scenery
+approached. For one mortal hour we were wedged in at that table, peering
+between heads and under the awning which cut off every peak, making
+frantic attempts to turn in our places, as parties across the table
+exclaimed over the scenery behind us, and consoling ourselves with
+reading up the legends in the guide-book held open by the rim of our
+soup-plates,--of the Seven Sisters, for instance, who were turned into
+seven stones which stand in the stream to this day, because they refused
+to smile upon their lovers (fortunately for navigation, maidens in these
+days are less obdurate); of the bishop who shut his starving peasants
+into his barn and set fire to it, though his granaries were full, and
+who, in poetic justice, was afterwards devoured by rats; of the Lurlei
+siren, who lured men to destruction, and became historical from the
+individuality of the case; of various maidens bereft of lovers by cruel
+fathers, and of various lovers bereft of maidens by cruel fate, &c.,
+while storied ruins crowned the crags on every hand, always half hidden
+under a weight of ivy, and often indistinguishable from the rock on
+which they seemed to have grown.
+
+At Bingen, which is not especially "fair" from the river, the precipices
+drop away, the stream spreads out in nearly twice its former width, and
+is dotted with islands. At Mayence you may leave the steamer; the
+beauties of the Rhine are passed.
+
+From Mayence we made an excursion to Wiesbaden; then on to
+Frankfort-on-the-Maine, to rest only a few hours, _doing_ the city
+hastily and imperfectly; and finally reached Heidelberg at night, in
+time for _table d'hote_. A talkative young Irishman sat beside us at the
+table, who spoke five or six languages "with different degrees of
+badness," he informed us; had travelled half the world over, but held in
+reserve the pleasure of visiting America.
+
+"I have a friend there," he added, "though he is in _South_ America."
+
+"Ah?"
+
+"Yes; at _Mobile_," he replied. "He held some office under government
+for a number of years, but during your recent war--for some reason which
+I do not understand--he seems to have lost it."
+
+It did not seem so inexplicable to us.
+
+Our conception of Heidelberg had been most imperfect. We knew simply
+that it held a university and a ruin. The former did not especially
+attract us, and we were sated with ruins. So, when we took possession of
+our lovely room,--a charming _salon_, converted temporarily into a
+bedroom,--it was with a kind of listless indifference that we stepped
+out upon the balcony before the window. And, behold! down below, an old,
+paved square, walled in by delightfully dingy old houses; a stone
+fountain; a string of waiting landaus (for Landau itself is near by),
+with scarlet linings to their tops--giving a bit of color to the
+picture; a party of German students crossing the square, wearing the
+caps of different colors to betoken different societies or clubs, and
+almost every one with a scarred cheek or suggestive patch upon his nose;
+and, lastly, on the right hand, and so precipitous as almost to overhang
+the square, a hill crowned with the castle, grand, though in ruins,
+which nature vainly tries to conceal. There are ruins, and ruins.
+Except the Alhambra, in Spain, none in the world equal these.
+
+What this castle must have been in the days of its glory, when it was
+the residence of a court, we could only faintly imagine. It is of red
+sandstone, and was a succession of palaces, built to enclose a square,
+or great court-yard, each of entirely different architecture and design,
+the _facade_ of one being covered with statues, another having pointed
+gables, &c.; all having been erected at periods fifty or a hundred years
+remote from each other. At each corner were watch-towers to apprise of
+coming foes. You may still ascend the winding stairs of one, though the
+steps have been hollowed into bowls by dripping rain and mounting feet.
+Between these towers, upon one side, and on the verge of the hill, still
+remains the grand stone terrace,--where a hundred couples might
+promenade in solitude on moonlight evenings,--with summer-houses at each
+end; and beautiful gardens are still connected with the ruins. For all
+these palaces are in ruins. A few habitable rooms only remain among them
+all. Several sieges, and partial demolition at times, the castle
+suffered, and at last, a hundred years ago, lightning completed the
+work, since which time no efforts at restoration have been made.
+
+The whole is overgrown with ivy, and embowered in shrubbery. Great trees
+spread their branches in the midst of the walls that still remain
+standing, and crumbling earth and drifting dust have filled many parts,
+even up to the broken window ledges of the second story. Across the
+broad stone steps leading to one of these palaces, tangled vines
+disputed right of way, and a neglected cherry-tree had scattered with
+wanton hand its over-ripe fruitage. Thrust through a casement was an ivy
+that might have vied with many of the trees around in the size of its
+trunk, and no artistic hand could have trailed its creepers with the
+grace Nature alone had displayed.
+
+There was a grand banqueting-hall, with the blue heavens for a ceiling
+overhead. There was a drawing-room, the floor long since crumbled away,
+and only the broken walls remaining. Standing upon the loose earth, you
+may see the blackened fireplace far above your head, before which fair
+faces grew rosy centuries ago, and where white hands were outspread that
+have been dust and mould for ages. There was-- But words cannot describe
+it, though I should speak of the winding ways like a labyrinth beneath
+it all; of the queer paved court-yard, from whence the knights sallied
+out in the olden time; of the great tower, split in twain by an
+explosion during the last siege; of the wine-cellars and the "Great
+Tun," upon which the servants of the castle danced when the vintage was
+gathered. In all attempts at word-painting there remains something that
+defies description, that will not be portrayed by language. And, alas!
+in that the charm lies.
+
+We turned away from it with regret. One might linger here for days; but
+we had little time for dreaming.
+
+The road from Heidelberg to Baden-Baden led through a charming country:
+indeed, we ceased to exclaim after a time over the cultivation of the
+land. So far as we saw it, the whole of Europe was a market-garden,
+with prize meadows interspersed. Not a foot of neglected or
+carelessly-tilled ground did we see anywhere.
+
+We chanced to spend the Sabbath in this most un-Sabbath-like city of
+Baden-Baden. But so far as we knew to the contrary, it might have been a
+Puritan village. There was a little English chapel out in the fields
+beyond the city, where morning service was held, and our windows,
+overlooking a quiet square, told nothing of the gayeties of the town. It
+is an interesting old city in itself, built upon a side hill, full of
+unexpected stone steps leading from one street to another, and by and
+crooked ways, that were my especial delight. It being just now "the
+season," the town was full of visitors. The hot springs are of course
+the nominal attraction; the shops, parks, and new parts of the city,
+fine; but, after all, the interest centres at the Kursaal, or
+Conversation-haus. It is a great white structure, with a colonnade where
+it fronts an open square, and contains reading-rooms, _cafes_, a grand
+ball-room, and the gambling _salons_. Government has at length
+interfered, and these last, hired by companies paying a certain sum for
+the privilege of beguiling and beggaring visitors, were to be closed now
+in two years, I think, or less. In front of the Kursaal a band plays
+every afternoon; the colonnade and square are thronged with people
+promenading or occupying the chairs placed there, eating ices, drinking
+wine, and enjoying the fine music, but all perfectly quiet in manner and
+plain of dress. No one was gaudily or even strikingly attired. The
+Hanoverian women were the most marked for their queer head-dresses,
+consisting of an enormous bow and ends of wide, black ribbon perched
+upon their crowns, and giving their heads a peculiar, bat-like
+appearance. And in this connection I might say that national
+peculiarities in dress are seldom met with in the ordinary course of
+continental travel. They still exist to some extent among the lower
+classes, and are often assumed and perpetuated to attract the attention
+of travellers; but ordinarily you will find people whom you meet
+anywhere and everywhere to be costumed much alike. Paris fashions, with
+modifications (and in America with _intensifications_), have prevailed
+universally, until there are few outward dissimilarities to be observed
+among the people of different nationalities. Nothing strikes the
+attention of the traveller more than this universal homogeneousness; and
+not in dress alone. In Bruges, under the shadow of the belfry tower,
+little girls trot off to school in water-proofs, just as they do at home
+with us; and at the entrance to Stirling Castle, we passed a sturdy
+little boy with his hands in his pockets, whistling, "Not for Jo,"
+exactly like other sturdy little boys we know at home.
+
+But to return to Baden-Baden.
+
+We almost fancied a sulphurous odor hung about the gambling _salons_.
+Not a footfall echoed upon the softly-carpeted floors as we entered. The
+most breathless silence hung over everything. In the centre, a crowd,
+three in depth at least, surrounded and hid the table covered with green
+cloth, before which sat the _croupier_, with a kind of little rake in
+his hand. In our eyes he was the incarnation of evil, though to
+unprejudiced vision he would appear simply a well-dressed--not
+flashily-arrayed--gentleman, of a rather intellectual countenance, who
+might have passed upon the street as a lawyer in good practice, or
+possibly a doctor somewhat overworked.
+
+One after another of the bystanders covered the figures stamped upon the
+table with gold or silver. The ball in the centre, spinning in its
+circle, fell into a pocket with a "click." The _croupier_ called the
+winning number I think (though confessing that the game is a hidden
+mystery). That quick, sharp utterance was the only sound breaking the
+silence. At the same time, with wonderful dexterity, he raked the money
+into a pile, and pushed it towards the winner, or, more frequently,
+added it to the pile before himself.
+
+I looked in vain for any exhibition of excitement or anxiety among the
+players sitting or standing around the table. All were serious, silent;
+some few absorbed. Both sexes were equally represented, and old as well
+as young. Beside us was standing a woman with a worn, though still fine
+face, unobtrusive in dress and manner; a traveller and spectator, I
+judged, like ourselves. It was something of a surprise, not to say a
+shock, to see her suddenly stretch out her hand, and lay down a handful
+of gold pieces, selecting the numbers with an air that proved her to be
+no novice. "Click," fell the ball. The _croupier_, with a sweep of the
+rake, gathered up her Napoleons. The bank had won. Again she laid down
+her gold, placing each piece with thoughtful deliberation. Again they
+were swept away; and even the third time. She made no exclamation. She
+did not so much as raise her eyes from the table as she prepared to make
+a fourth attempt. There was no change in her face, except a certain
+fixedness which came over it, and a faint tinge of color rising in her
+cheeks.
+
+We breathed more freely when we had gained the open air. I am sure there
+was an odor of sulphur about the place.
+
+The scenery around Baden-Baden is striking and wild. Gloomy valleys
+abound, and dark forests cover many of the hills. We took a kind of
+wagonet one morning, and climbed the mountain behind the city, passing
+what is known as the "New Schloss," or castle, before leaving its
+limits. It is anything but _new_, however, having been erected some four
+or five hundred years. Its horrible dungeons, where all manner of
+torments were inflicted, and tortures suffered by the unfortunate
+wretches incarcerated here, attract scores of visitors. We went on, by
+the zigzag road up the mountain, to the Old Schloss upon its summit.
+This was the residence of the reigning family of Baden before the
+erection of the New Schloss. Hardly anything remains of it now but the
+walls of a square tower, from the battlements of which, by mounting to
+an encircling gallery, you may obtain a view well worth the effort. As
+far as the eye can see in one direction, extends the Black Forest--the
+very name of which brings to mind elfish legends innumerable. But,
+though our way led along its edge, so that we were shut in by the chill
+and gloom of the evergreens which give it its name, we saw neither elves
+nor gnomes, nor the traditional "wood-cutter, named Hans, who lived upon
+the borders of the Black Forest," about whom we used to read when we
+were children.
+
+From Baden-Baden we took the railroad, following the course of the
+Rhine to Strasbourg, spending only a night here, in order to visit the
+beautiful cathedral; then on to Lucerne, waiting an hour or two to break
+the long day's ride, at Basle. Here the mountains began to grow before
+our eyes. We shot through tunnel after tunnel, cut in the solid rock,
+and suddenly sweeping around a curve, the everlasting hills wrapped in
+perpetual snows, greeted our astonished sight. We had reached the Mecca
+of our hopes at last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.
+
+          The Lake of Lucerne.--Days of rest in the
+          city.--An excursion up the Righi.--The crowd at
+          the summit.--Dinner at midnight.--Rising before
+          "the early worm."--The "sun-rise" according to
+          Murray.--Animated scarecrows.--Off for a tour
+          through Switzerland.--The lake for the last
+          time.--Gruetlii.--William Tell's
+          chapel.--Fluellen.--Altorf.--Swiss haymakers.--An
+          hour at Amsteg.--The rocks close in.--The Devil's
+          Bridge.--The dangerous road.--"A carriage has gone
+          over the precipice!"--Andermatt.--Desolate
+          rocks.--Exquisite wild flowers.--The summit of the
+          Furka.--A descent to the Rhone glacier.--Into the
+          ice.--Swiss villages.--Brieg.--The convent
+          inn.--The bare little chapel on the hill.--To
+          Martigny.
+
+
+WHEN we forget the scene before our dazzled eyes as we stepped out upon
+the balcony of the hotel Bellevue at Lucerne, earth will have passed
+away. There lay the fair lake, the emerald hills rising from its blue
+depths on every side, save where the queer old town sweeps around its
+curve, or beyond Pilatus, where the chain is broken, and a strip of
+level land lies along the water's edge, sprinkled with red-roofed
+farm-houses set in the midst of grain-fields, and with rows of tall,
+straight poplars extending to the water. This sight of peaceful homes
+among the heavenly hills is like a vision of earth in mid-heaven.
+Beyond, above, overlapping each other, rise these delectable hills. No
+earthly air envelops them. No earthly feet tread their fair summits.
+Upon the highest, among the eternal snows, rest the clouds. Truly, the
+heavens declare the glory of God; but Switzerland showeth his handiwork!
+
+Beautiful was the lake in the hazy morning light, when the hills cast
+purple and green shadows over its bosom, when the breeze rippled its
+surface, and the path in the wake of the little steamer widened into an
+endless way; beautiful in the glare of the noonday sun, when a veil of
+mist half hid the far-off mountains, and the water gleamed like molten
+gold; but most beautiful of all when the mountains wrapped themselves in
+the shadows of night, and stole away into the darkness, while upon their
+white, still faces shone the rays of the setting sun. Then grim Pilatus
+stepped forth; the moon, like a burnished globe, hung over the water,
+across which the little steamer ploughed silver furrows, or tiny boats,
+impelled by flashing oars, shot over the still surface, now near, now
+far away; but dim, unreal, always.
+
+It was a place of rest to us--this city of Lucerne; the "House
+Beautiful," where we tarried for a time before setting out again upon
+our pilgrimage. We wandered about the narrow streets, visited the dingy
+shops full of wood carvings or ornaments cut in the many-hued crystals;
+strayed over the low hills behind the town, through fields set with
+painted shrines; paused before Thorwaldsen's Dying Lion, cut in the
+living rock--the grandest monument that heroes ever won; and once, in
+the stillness of a summer morning, sat in the cathedral and heard the
+angels sing, when the old organist laid his hands upon the keys. Sabbath
+mornings we sang the old versified psalms, and listened to the
+exposition of a rigid faith from the lips of a Scotch Presbyterian
+minister, in an old Roman Catholic church--the walls hung with pictured
+saints and martyrs, the high altar only partially concealed, and a
+company of women kneeling by the door to tell their beads. Not only
+rest, but Christian charity, had we found here.
+
+Almost every one who spends any time at Lucerne ascends the Righi to see
+the sun rise. Accordingly, five of our number prepared to follow the
+universal custom. In one of the little shops of the town we found some
+light, straw hats, with wide rims, for which we gave the extravagant
+price of three cents apiece, trimming them afterwards to suit individual
+taste, with ribbons, soft white lawn, and even mountain ferns and
+grasses. We slung our wraps over our shoulders by a strap,--a most
+uncomfortable arrangement by the way,--discarded crinoline, brought into
+use the shabbiest gowns in our possession, packed hand-satchels with
+whatever was necessary for a night upon the mountain, and then declared
+ourselves ready for any disclosures of the future or the Righi.
+
+A little steamer bore us from Lucerne to Weggis--a half hour's sail. We
+found Weggis to be only an insignificant village, almost pushed into the
+lake by the crowding mountain, and seeming to contain nothing but guides
+and shabby horses. As we left the steamer, the open space between the
+pier and the hotel facing it was crowded with tourists, waiting for or
+bargaining with the guides for these sorry-looking beasts. No matter of
+what age, sex, or condition in life you may be, if you visit
+Switzerland, you will make, at least one, equestrian attempt; but in
+truth, there is nothing to fear for even the most inexperienced, as a
+guide usually leads each horse. The saddles for the use of ladies are
+provided with a rail upon one side, and the nature of the paths are
+such, that it would be impossible to go beyond a walk. The only danger
+is from over-fatigue in descending the rocky, slippery way, often like
+flights of stairs; then, exhausted from trying to hold back in the
+saddle, dizzy from gazing into frightful depths, one might easily become
+unseated.
+
+When our guides were secured, one dejected beast after another was led
+to the wooden steps, always provided for mounting and dismounting; we
+climbed to our several elevations with some inward quaking, fell into
+line,--for single file is the invariable rule,--and passed out of the
+village by immediately beginning the ascent, describing, in our saddles
+every known curve and angle, as the path became more and more rough and
+precipitous. For guides we had a man with a rakish air, and--we judged
+from his gait--a wooden leg, who tragically wrung the perspiration from
+his red flannel shirt at intervals; a boy, with one of those open
+countenances only saved from complete lateral division by the merciful
+interposition of the ears, and a wizen-faced old man of so feeble an
+appearance as to excite my constant sympathy, since his place chanced to
+be by my side. He assured me continually that he was not tired, though
+before half of the three hours of the ascent had passed, his pale face
+belied his words. He was quite ready to converse, but I could with
+difficulty understand his English. We had paused at a wayside shed to
+rest the horses, and offer some refreshment to the guides, when I
+addressed him with,--
+
+"What is that you are drinking? Is it goat's milk?"
+
+"Noo, leddy," was his reply. "It is coo's;" at the same time, and with
+the utmost simplicity and good will, offering me the glass from which he
+had been drinking, that I might taste and judge for myself.
+
+It is nearly nine miles to the summit, or Righi-Kulm. The bridle-path is
+rocky, rough, and steep, with a grassy slope upon either side, sprinkled
+at this season with dandelions, blue-bells, and odd yellow butter-cups.
+Often this slope changed to a precipice, still smiling with flowers.
+Upon every level spot orchards of pear trees and apricots had been
+planted, while evergreens and shrubs innumerable clung to the mountain
+sides, or sprang from among the rocks.
+
+Tossed about wherever they could find a resting-place, were great
+boulders of pudding-stone, overhanging the path, rising in our way, or
+rolling in broken masses under the horses' feet. Sometimes, perched upon
+a natural terrace, was a _chalet_, sheltered from sweep of wind or
+avalanche by overhanging rocks half covered with ivy and dainty
+clematis. Occasionally a beggar barred the way with outstretched hand,
+or offered for sale some worthless trinket, as an excuse for asking
+alms. We hugged the rocks upon one side, as other lines of tourists
+wound down to meet us, upon horseback or afoot with alpenstocks to aid
+their steps. Peasants, laden like beasts of burden, passed as we paused
+to rest, with trunks, provisions, and even the red tiles for the new
+hotel above, strapped upon their backs, or resting there on wooden
+frames. They came and went; but ever present were the wonderful glimpses
+of earth, and sky, and shimmering lake far down below.
+
+At the half-way house we turn to climb a gentle slope upon the mountain
+face. On either side the land spreads out smooth and green. It had been
+hot below. The air strikes us here with an icy chill. A party of young
+Englishmen in knickerbockers, with blue veils tied about their hats,
+lean over the railing of the piazza, and scan us as we pass. A Spaniard,
+with his dark-faced wife, step out of the path--all manner of oily words
+dropping from their lips. We reach the Righi-Staffel. Suddenly, upon one
+side, the land falls away. Among the reverberating hills echoes the
+_joedel_, and from a terrace far below, where a herd of dun cows are
+feeding, rises the tinkle of sweet-toned bells. From every path--and
+there are many now--winds a slow procession. The grassy slopes are all
+alive with people; the hotel piazza, as we pass, is crowded with
+travellers. Still they pour in from every side. Still the mountain-peak
+rises above us as we go on joining other trains, and leading others in
+turn. We pass through a rough gateway, ascend the broken rocks that rise
+like steps, follow again the narrow path, and reach at last the hotel,
+just before which rises the Kulm.
+
+Talk of the solitude of nature! It is not found among these mountain
+peaks, grand though they are. We dismounted in the midst of a noisy
+crowd. Exclamations in seemingly every known tongue echoed about us, as
+one party after another arrived to swell the confusion. The hill before
+us swarmed with tourists, who had come, like ourselves, to see the sun
+rise. The hotel, and even the adjoining house into which the former
+overflows, were more than full. Since we had taken the precaution to
+telegraph,--for telegraphic communication is held with most of these
+mountain resorts,--some show of civility awaited us. A single room was
+given to the four ladies of our party, where, a few hours later, we
+disposed ourselves as best we could. It was only a rough place, with
+bare plastered walls, and unpainted wooden floor; but we were not
+disposed to be fastidious. Dropping our satchels, we hastened up the
+hill before the house. It fell in a precipice upon the other side--to
+what frightful depth I know not. Down below, the hills spread out like
+level land, with lakes where every valley should be, and villages, like
+white dots only, upon the universal green, among which the River Reuss
+wound like a silver thread. But above and over all, against the sky,
+rose the mountains--the Bernese Alps, like alabaster walls, the gates of
+which, flung back, would open heavenward.
+
+We wandered over the hillocks, which make up the summit, until the sun
+was gone. Gradually the darkness gathered--a thickening of the shadows
+until they seemed almost tangible. There was no flame of gold and
+crimson where the sun had disappeared; there were no clouds to reflect
+the warm yellow light that hung about the west. But when the night
+wrapped us in, the little lakes down below gleamed out like stars.
+
+The crowd that pushed and fairly wedged itself into the _salle a
+manger_, when dinner was announced at eight o'clock, was quite beyond
+belief or computation. Everybody was tired, hungry, and impatient, after
+the ride to the summit. For once, silver was at a discount. One of the
+waiters was finally bribed to give us a private room, and slyly edged
+our party into a pantry, where he brought us, at immense intervals, a
+spoonful of soup and a hot plate apiece, after which, his resources
+utterly failing, he acknowledged that he could do no more. The second
+_table d'hote_ was served between the hours of ten and eleven at night,
+and consisted of numerous courses, with a similarity of flavor,
+suggesting one universal saucepan.
+
+It was midnight when we finally gained our rooms, and threw ourselves
+upon the uncomfortable beds. The linen was wet, rather than damp. The
+only covering consisted of a single blanket, and the _duvet_ or down
+pillow, always found upon the foot of continental beds.
+
+We imagined that the sun would appear with the very earliest known worm,
+and at least an hour before the most ambitious lark, and dared not close
+our eyes, lest they should not open in time to greet him. At last,
+however, sleep overpowered our fears. Katie's voice roused us.
+
+"It is three o'clock," she said, "and growing light, and I believe
+people are hurrying up the hill."
+
+Profane persons should avoid the Righi; it is a place of terrible
+temptation. "Good heavens!" we responded, "what kind of a sun can it be
+to rise at such an hour?"
+
+[Illustration: "Frowsy, sleepy, cross, and caring nothing whatever for
+the sun, moon, or stars, we stood like a company of Bedlamites, ankle
+deep in the wet grass upon the summit." Page 176.]
+
+Our room was upon the ground floor. We pushed open the shutters and
+peered out, facing an untimely Gabriel, just raising to his lips an
+Alpine horn some six feet in length. Evidently the hour had arrived. We
+thrust our feet into our boots, tied our hats under our chins, and ran
+out to join a most ridiculous collection of animated scarecrows like
+ourselves. Frowsy, sleepy, cross, and caring nothing whatever for the
+sun, moon, or stars, we stood like a company of Bedlamites, ankle deep
+in the wet grass upon the summit. No sun of irreproachable moral
+character and well-regulated habits would appear at such an hour, we
+knew. The light strengthened with our impatience. Every half-closed eye
+was fixed upon that corner of the heavens from which the sun would sally
+forth. The golden gates had opened. A red banner floated out. Tiny
+clouds on either side awaited his coming, dressed in crimson and yellow
+livery. Every one of us stood upon tiptoe--the heels of our unbuttoned
+boots thereupon dropping down. One collarless tourist, in whose outward
+adorning suspenders played a conspicuous part, gravely opened his
+guide-book, found the place with some difficulty, and buried his head in
+the pages, to assure himself that everything was proceeding according to
+Murray. Suddenly the white faces of the distant mountains grew purple
+with a rage which we all shared; the flaming banner streamed out across
+the east, and the king of day, with most majestic step, but frightfully
+swollen, tell-tale countenance, rose in the heavens. I am sure he had
+been out all night.
+
+The light grew clearer now. The mountains rose reluctantly, and shook
+off their wrappings of mist. The little clouds doffed their crimson
+finery. The man held together by the marvellous complication of
+shoulder-straps, closed his guide-book with an air of entire
+satisfaction. Evidently the programme, as laid down by Murray, had been
+accurately carried out. Everybody exclaimed, "Wonderful!" in his or her
+native tongue. All the knickerbockers, and woollen shirts, and lank
+water-proofs, without any back hair to speak of, trotted off down the
+hill to be metamorphosed into human beings, and prepare for breakfast,
+even to the individual who had been stalking about in a white bed
+blanket, with a striped border--though printed notices in every room
+expressly forbade the using of bed blankets as morning wraps.
+
+When breakfast was over, there was nothing to do but to make the descent
+to Weggis, and return to Lucerne.
+
+After a time, when weariness could no longer be made an excuse for
+lingering, we prepared for a tour through Switzerland. Engaging
+carriages to meet us at Fluellen, we embarked for the last time upon the
+beautiful lake, winding in and out its intricate ways, shut in by the
+towering cliffs that closed before us, only to re-open, revealing new
+charms as we rounded some promontory, and the lake widened again. Upon
+the bays thus formed, villages lean against the mountain-side. Where the
+rocks fall abruptly to the water, an occasional _chalet_ is perched upon
+some natural terrace, in the midst of an orchard or scanty garden. As we
+touched at these lake villages, brown-faced girls, in scant blue
+petticoats and black bodices, and with faded hair braided in their
+necks, offered us fruits--apricots and cherries--in pretty, rustic
+baskets.
+
+One of these green spots, high among the rocks, forms a sloping meadow,
+touching the water at last. It is an oasis in the surrounding desert of
+barren rock. Do you know why the grass is greener here than elsewhere?
+why the sun bestows its kisses more warmly? why the foliage upon the
+scattered walnut and chestnut trees is thicker, darker, than upon those
+on other mountain-sides? It is because this is Gruetlii--the birthplace
+of Swiss liberty. Here, more than five hundred years ago, the three
+confederates met at night to plan the throwing off of the Austrian yoke.
+
+Not far from Gruetlii, resting apparently upon the water, at the base of
+one of these cliffs, is what appears at first sight to be a pretty green
+and white summer-house, open towards the lake. It is Tell's Chapel,
+built upon a shelf of rock, and only approachable from the water.
+Here--so the story runs--William Tell sprang ashore, and escaped the
+tyrant Gessler. We sweep around this promontory and gain the last bay
+where lies Fluellen--a ragged village, swarming with tourists,
+vetturinos, and diligences. Among the carriages we find our own. It is a
+roomy landau, luxuriously lined with scarlet velvet, drawn by three
+horses which wear tinkling bells, and is capable of carrying six
+passengers. The top is thrown back, but a kind of calash-shade screens
+from the sun the occupants of what we should call the driver's seat. Our
+driver's place is a narrow board behind the horses. One crack of a long
+whip, and we are off at a rattling pace over the hard road, smooth as a
+floor.
+
+For the first day we are to follow the pass of St. Gothard--that
+well-travelled highway which leads through mountain defiles into Italy.
+We dashed by Altorf, where the family of Queen Victoria's husband
+originated, passing the open square in which William Tell shot the apple
+from the head of his son. An old man is watering a horse at the basin of
+the stone fountain which marks the spot where the father stood. All this
+valley is sacred to the memory of William Tell. In a village near by he
+was born; in the mountain stream, just beyond, he is said to have lost
+his life in the attempt to save a drowning child. After Altorf, the road
+winds among the meadows, though the mountains rise on every side, with
+_chalets_ perched upon points which seem inaccessible, so steep are
+their sides. It is haying time, and men and women are at work in the
+fields and upon the mountain-sides, carefully securing every blade of
+grass. Once, when we had begun to wind up the mountains, where a
+grass-grown precipice fell almost sheer to the valley below, a girl
+clung to its side, and pulled with one hand the grass from between the
+rocks, thrusting it into a bag that hung about her neck. She paused to
+gaze after us as we dashed by, a kind of dull awe that never rose to
+envy lighting her face for an instant. O, the hungry, pitiful faces of
+these dwellers upon the heights! the pinched, starved faces of the
+little ones especially, who forgot to smile--how they haunted us! At
+noon we sweep up to the post-house at Amsteg, with a jingle of bells, a
+crack of the whip, and an annunciatory shout from the driver. There is
+no village that we can see. The piazza of the post-house is filled with
+travellers, lunching before a long table; half a dozen waiting carriages
+stand in the open space before it; as many hostlers, with knit caps
+upon their heads, from which hang long, bright-colored tassels, are busy
+among the horses. At a short distance the Reuss River rushes past the
+house; upon its bank is a little shop, with its store of Swiss
+curiosities and trinkets. A couple of girls fill a tray with the dainty
+wares, and cross the space to tempt us. One has a scarlet handkerchief
+knotted under her handsome, dark face. She turns her brown cheek to her
+shoulder, tossing a word back as the young hostlers contrive to stand in
+her way.
+
+One by one the carriages take up their loads and go on. We soon follow
+and overtake them, winding slowly up among the rocks, which seem ready
+to fall upon us. We form a long train, a strange procession, bound by no
+tie but that of common humanity. The meadows and soft, green
+mountain-slopes are left behind as we ascend, crossing from one side to
+the other by arched bridges thrown over the chasm, at the foot of which
+foams the torrent. Higher and higher rise the rent rocks--bare, black
+walls, seamed, and scarred, and riven, their summits reaching to the
+sky. They close about us, shutting out everything of earth and heaven,
+save a narrow strip of blue far above all. Even the sweet light of day
+departs, and a gloom and darkness as of a brooding tempest falls upon us
+as the way narrows. Suddenly a mad, foaming torrent, with angry roar,
+leaps from the rocks above, to toss, and writhe, and moan upon the rocks
+below the arch upon which we stand. The water rushes over them, and
+dashes against them. It swirls, and pants, and foams, while high above
+it all we stand, our faces wet with the spray, our ears deafened by the
+terrible roar. Truly, this _is_ "The Devil's Bridge."
+
+Think of armies meeting here, as they did in the old Napoleonic wars,
+contending for the passage of the bridge below. Think of the shrieks of
+the wounded and dying, mingling with the raging of the waters. Think of
+the white foam surging red among the rocks; of the angry torrent beating
+out the ebbing life of those who checked its flow. Think of the meeting
+of hosts in mortal conflict where no eye but God's could witness it,
+upon which not even bird or startled beast looked down. It was like a
+dreadful dream from which we passed--as through deep sleep--by a way cut
+in the solid rock out into God's world again. Still, from one side of
+the road rose the rocks that began to show signs of scanty vegetation
+now; from the other fell the precipice to the torrent. We had left the
+carriages at the bridge, and singly or in companies toiled up the road
+that doubled back upon itself continually. Often we climbed from one of
+these windings to the next above, by paths among the rocks, leaving the
+carriages to make the turn and follow more slowly. Often our way was the
+bed of a last year's torrent, or our feet touched the borders of the
+stream, as we pulled ourselves up by the shrubs that grew among the
+rocks. The ice-chill in the air brought strength for the time, and
+perfect exhilaration. It seemed as if we could go on forever, scaling
+these mountain heights.
+
+At last the carriages overtake us, and we reluctantly resume our places.
+The road is built out upon the mountain-side. It offers no protection
+against the fall of the precipice. It narrows here. We look down, and
+say, "How dreadful a careless driver might make this place!" and,
+shuddering, draw back. Suddenly the train pauses, and down the long
+hill runs a shout, "A carriage has gone over." We spring out, and run to
+the front. "Is any one killed?" "No; thank God, no one is harmed." We
+gather upon the edge of the precipice. Upon the rocks below lies the
+body of a horse--dead, with his fore feet raised, as though pawing the
+air; and mingling with the white waters, and tossed about in the raging
+stream, are the shattered remains of a carriage and its contents.
+
+It seems that two young men from Canton Zurich essayed to make a tour of
+the mountains with their own horse and carriage--a foolhardy experiment,
+since none but tried horses, used to these passes, are considered safe
+here. All went well, however, until they reached this point, where a
+torrent falls down the mountain-side to the road, under which it passes
+with a fearful noise. It might, indeed, startle the strongest nerves.
+The horse, young and high-spirited, shied to the edge of the precipice,
+then reared high in the air. They saw that he must go over when his fore
+feet came down, and springing out, barely escaped a similar fate. We all
+passed the spot with some trepidation, the most of us preferring to
+walk; but our horses, accustomed to the road, were utterly unmoved by
+the swooping torrent. At night we reached Andermatt--only an untidy
+little village, lying in one of these upper valleys, bustling and all
+alive around the door of its one inn; but how green and beautiful were
+the mountains, shutting us in all around, after the desolation through
+which much of our way had led! Upon the side of the nearest was a
+triangular patch of wood-land,--firs and spruces,--said to divide and
+break the force of the avalanches that sweep down here in the spring.
+It can be nothing but a story of what had been true formerly, when the
+wood was more extensive. Down these mountains, as night closed in,
+straggled a herd of goats to the milking, tinkling countless little
+bells, while the roar of the Reuss, which we had followed until it was
+now hardly more than a mountain brook, mingled with our dreams as it ran
+noisily through the village.
+
+On we went the next morning, wrapping ourselves warmly, for the air was
+chill as November, though at Lucerne, only twenty-four hours before, we
+had suffered a torrid heat. Just beyond Andermatt, at Hospenthal, we
+left the St. Gothard, to follow the Furka pass. All around was barren
+desolation, as we went on, still ascending, leaving every sign of human
+life behind. Rocky and black the mountains rose, bearing only lichens
+and ferns. Occasional patches of snow appeared, lying in the beds of the
+last year's torrents, or scattered along beside the road. But here,
+where Nature had bestowed little to soften and beautify, she had spread
+upon the barren land, and tucked in among the rocks, a covering of
+exquisitely delicate flowers. You cannot realize, until you have seen
+them, the variety, beauty, and profusion of the Alpine flowers. Looking
+back in memory upon the bare rocks, doomed to stand here through all
+time in solitude and in the midst of desolation, as though in expiation
+of some sin, it is pleasant to remember that at their feet and in their
+clefts these little flowers nestle and bloom.
+
+We gathered nosegays and made snowballs, and at noon gained the summit
+of the Furka, and rested an hour or two at the inn--the only sign of
+house or hut we had seen since morning. The rough _salons_, the passage,
+the doorway, even the space outside, were alive with tourists. It is a
+continual jar upon one's sense of the fitness of things, something to
+which you never become thoroughly accustomed, until all freshness of
+sight-seeing is passed--this coming suddenly upon the world in the midst
+of the unutterable solitude of nature; this plunging into a crowd
+dressed in the latest style, and discussing universal frivolities where
+the very rocks and hills seem to stand in silent adoration. But after
+the first moment you, too, form one of the frivolous throng, the sight
+and sound of which shock the sensibilities of the next comer.
+
+From the inn a tongue of land, green and dotted with flowers, falls into
+the valley below. On either side rises a mountain, scarred by the
+torrents dried away now, and stained this day with the last year's snow,
+while beyond--ever beyond, like some heavenly heights we vainly strove
+to gain--rose the Bernese Alps.
+
+From the summit of the Furka we descended to the Rhone glacier by one of
+the zigzag mountain roads. Looking down over the edge, we could see
+below, the ways we were yet to follow on the mountain face before
+accomplishing the descent. The horses dashed down at a flying pace. The
+inclination of the road was not sufficient to alarm; but the turns are
+always so frightfully abrupt as to make it seem as though the leader
+must dash off. But no; he invariably swung around just upon the outer
+edge, held, it seemed sometimes, by the traces, and with a crack of the
+driver's whip was off again before our fears, if we had any, could find
+words.
+
+One of these abrupt turns fairly hangs over the glacier, where the icy
+river has fallen into broken masses from a higher point, before
+spreading out in the narrow valley just here where it ends. Only a short
+distance from the foot of the glacier is the inn, with its scattered
+out-buildings, where we were to spend the night. The sheer descent from
+the summit of the Furka is only about half a mile; but though our horses
+had galloped the whole distance, and the inn was in sight all the time,
+we were three hours reaching it; so many turns did the road make upon
+the face of the mountain.
+
+It was a gloomy valley, shut in by mountains, and surrounded by lesser
+hills all soaked and dripping with icy streams that chilled the air. We
+gained the foot of the glacier from the inn by a rough path over and
+among the rocks, and stones, and heaps of gravel it had brought down and
+deposited here. From beneath the solid mass of ice flowed a hundred
+shallow streams, which, uniting, form the beginning of the River Rhone.
+We penetrated for a short distance the gallery cut into the glacier,
+surrounded and shut down upon by the walls and ceiling, of a deep blue
+color, and were preceded by an old man, who awoke the echoes by uttering
+a series of broken cries. What with the echoes and horrible chill, the
+place seemed most unearthly, and we were glad to retreat.
+
+The roar of torrents, and hardly less thunderous noise of departing
+diligences, awakened us the next morning. We were soon off upon the
+road, skirting the mountains, rolling through the pleasant valleys, and
+passing village after village now. They seemed silent and deserted,
+their occupants perhaps busy in the fields, or serving at the inns, or
+among the mountains as guides. One was a mass of ruins, thrown down in
+the bed of a torrent, among which a few dull-faced peasants were at
+work, with a hopeless, aimless air, that promised little. A mountain
+stream, swollen to a flood by melting snows, had swept it away in a
+night.
+
+At noon we lunched at Viesch--a slipshod, unwashed village, by the side
+of the young Rhone, which so far, in its dirty, chalk-white color, was
+not unlike the white-headed children that played upon its banks. Some of
+the party left the horses to their noon rest, and strayed out upon the
+road beyond the village. On its outskirts was a fine new church, of
+stone. If only something of its beauty could but come into the every-day
+lives of the poor people here! We sat down upon the steps to wait.
+Across the road was an orchard, roughly fenced in; beside it one of the
+picturesque Swiss peasant houses--all steps, and queer old galleries,
+from which a little tow-headed girl stared out at us in open-eyed
+wonder, as we blew the down from the dried dandelions we had pulled
+along the way, and questioned if, in our far-off homes, our mothers
+wanted us!
+
+It seemed as though we could descend no farther; and yet, after sweeping
+through a valley, a sudden turn would disclose another, far below, to
+which this was as a mountain. So down we sped the whole day long; once
+by a frightfully-narrow zigzag road, the worst by far of any we had
+seen; passing still through the villages so charming in the distance,
+but dirty, and full of odors by no means pleasing, as we drew near. At
+night we rattled into the paved square before the inn at Brieg, just as
+the first drops of a coming shower wet its stones.
+
+This was evidently something more than a village. The houses were
+plastered, instead of being of wood with a rich, burnt-sienna color,
+like those we had seen along the road through the day. They were thickly
+clustered together, and from their midst rose the four turrets of a
+chateau. Our inn was a delightfully-dingy old place. It had been an
+Ursuline convent, and abounded in queer, dark passages, rough stone
+stairways, and old wooden galleries overlooking the square. One of our
+rooms had been a part of the convent chapel, and was still lighted by a
+window just beneath the groined roof. Here we braided our hair, and
+knotted our ribbons, and dreamed, in the twilight that followed the
+rain, of the hopeless ones who had sought comfort in other days within
+these walls, and fell asleep at last, knowing full well that the fringe
+of many an old prayer was still caught and held in the arches high over
+our heads. We walked up through the town the next morning, to the
+beginning of the Simplon Pass. Somewhere in the narrow streets we passed
+the old chateau, and pressed our faces against the bars of a gate, in
+order to gain some idea as to the domestic economy of the family which
+had bestowed upon Brieg its air of importance. But the chateau had
+degenerated into a brewery, and the court-yard was filled with old
+carts, clumsy and broken.
+
+Farther up the hill the door of a little chapel stood invitingly open,
+waiting for stray worshippers, or a chance-burdened heart (for even so
+far away as Brieg, hearts do grow heavy, I doubt not). Something in its
+narrow, whitewashed poverty touched our sympathies. It is rare indeed in
+these countries to find a chapel without at least some votive offering
+to make it beautiful in the eyes of the simple people: here was only a
+crucifix, and we pleased ourselves with the fancy that when the ships
+come in that we sent out as children--laden with hopes that were to be
+bartered for treasures--we would return, and hang the walls with
+pictures, and make the whole place wonderful in the eyes that had seen
+only its bareness. The shower the night before had laid the dust, and
+the drive that morning was most enjoyable. Following the course of the
+noisy Rhone, we reached Sierre at noon, where we left the carriages with
+regret, and took the railway train to Martigny.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+AMONG THE EVERLASTING HILLS.
+
+          The quaint inn.--The Falls of the Sallenches, and
+          the Gorge de Trient.--Shopping in a Swiss
+          village.--A mule ride to Chamouni.--Peculiarities
+          of the animals.--Entrance to the
+          village.--Egyptian mummies lifted from the
+          mules.--Rainy days.--Chamois.--The Mer de
+          Glace.--"Look out of your window."--Mont
+          Blanc.--Sallenches.--A diligence ride to
+          Geneva.--Our little old woman.--The clownish
+          peasant.--The fork in the road.--"Adieu."
+
+
+OUR hotel here at Martigny, was even more suggestive of romance than the
+one at Brieg. It had been a monastery, and was an old, yellow-washed
+structure facing the street, with a rambling garden surrounded by high
+walls, clinging to it in the rear. Low, dark rooms, with bare, unpainted
+floors, like the waves of the sea in smoothness, were given to some of
+our party, while Mrs. K. and I were consigned again, with singular
+appropriateness, to what had been the chapel. Its windows overlooked the
+straggling, half-dead trees, and bare, hard-baked earth of the open
+space before the door, which was always being crossed by strings of
+mules ornamented with bright saddle-cloths, and still further with the
+ubiquitous tourist arrayed in every known costume of the period.
+Village girls, too, passed under the trees, knitting as they went, and
+horrible creatures afflicted with the _goitre_--that curse of this
+region--which we met at every turn now.
+
+To gain the long, low refectory where we dined, or to pass from one room
+to another, necessitated crossing the brick-paved cloisters, upon which
+all the doors of the second story opened. Here a row of columns
+encircled a narrow, inner court-yard--so narrow as to be nothing more
+than a slit in the walls, yet wide enough to allow the shimmering
+sunlight to drop down upon the vines twined around the columns, and
+light the whole dingy interior into a weird, strange beauty.
+
+We rode out to the Falls of the Sallenches,--one of the mist veils left
+hanging from many of these Swiss mountains by the water-sprites,--and
+penetrated the Gorge de Trient upon the shaky gallery that follows its
+windings; wandered about and beyond the town; stole into an old church,
+and brought away the memory of a lovely virgin face; and haunted the
+dingy shops in the vain hope of making a few necessary purchases. These
+shops were not unlike our New England country stores in their combined
+odors and confused incapabilities. Behind the counters, or more likely
+sitting in the doorway with the inevitable blue knitting in hand, were
+old women, of hard, baked-apple faces, whose ideas of the luxuries of a
+woman's wardrobe were so far below what we considered its necessaries,
+that we parted in mutual surprise, to say the least, and without gain on
+either side.
+
+Sabbath morning, English church service was held in the parlor of one of
+the hotels; after which a clergyman in gown and bands discoursed from
+the text, "And there shall be no more sea,"--a peculiarly comforting
+hope to some of us.
+
+Monday morning, we mounted the horses and mules waiting in dejected
+impatience before the door, and started upon the long ride of twenty-two
+miles to Chamouni by the Tete Noir Pass. A wide, pleasant avenue, shaded
+by walnut trees, led out of the town; after which we began to ascend the
+gently-sloping mountain-sides, passing occasional villages, and besieged
+by beggars and venders of fruit, as usual. Indeed, these beggars are so
+constant in their attendance and importunity that one forgets to mention
+them, unless recalling flies and similar swarming annoyances.
+
+The scenery, as we went on, was often grand, always interesting; the sky
+overcast, but at times the clouds, drifting apart, disclosed peaks or
+"needles" so far above the mountains about us as to seem a revelation of
+heaven. The path was treacherous and rough--skirting precipices,
+descending in rocky steps or slippery mire, and crossing mountain
+streams by narrow, insecure bridges. Single file is the invariable rule
+in all these mountain excursions, and after a time the isolations of
+this mode of travelling adds to its wearisomeness. Solitude is
+delightful; but as some one has said, "How pleasant it is to have a
+friend near by to whom you may remark, 'How delightful is solitude!'"
+
+As you follow the windings of the narrow, steep path, you have a choice
+between addressing the back of the one who precedes you, and throwing a
+remark over your shoulder to those who come after. Involuntarily you
+fall to studying the curves of the former, and are utterly indifferent
+to the fact that the latter are probably meditating upon the intricacies
+of your back hair. Mule-riding is conducive to grace of neither soul nor
+body; still you know you are not making such a spectacle of yourself as
+did the woman just passed--who twisted about in the saddle as though
+worked along by rotary motion. Perhaps not.
+
+As you leave the villages to plunge into the woods, the flies swarm like
+beggars; and it is only when the guides have cut boughs from the trees,
+which you wave before you, wickedly suggesting palm branches, that you
+can proceed with tolerable comfort, and without the fear of an
+unexpected toss in the air, as one kick after another runs down the
+line.
+
+Each horse or mule has his own slight peculiarities of habit and
+disposition. I recall one whose inordinate curiosity led him to walk
+always upon the verge of the precipices, so that the rider's feet
+overhung the frightful depths. Murray says it is best to allow these
+animals to choose their own paths. But to hang suspended between heaven
+and earth at the mercy of a strap and a mule, will shake one's faith,
+even in Murray.
+
+My horse this day was possessed of the dreamy, melancholy nature of a
+poet, with the attendant lack of ambition. Every time we wound
+funereally through a village, he would walk deliberately to the
+mounting-steps, and wait most suggestively. Indeed, an air of
+abstraction characterized all his movements; even when, as we approached
+these villages, raising his head, he would seem to sniff the odors of
+Araby the Blest; which was a mistake, a delusion of his fancy shared by
+none of the others of the party. That he was without pride I must
+confess. No stable did we pass so poor, none so mean, that he was
+ashamed to pause and offer to enter with meek obdurateness.
+
+Poetic as was his temperament, his appetites were developed in a
+remarkable degree. Once upon a narrow bridge we met two walking
+haystacks, out from which peered great, blue eyes. If the size of his
+mouth had corresponded at all to his desires, they would have vanished
+from sight in a twinkling; as it was, they barely escaped. Whether or
+not insatiable thirst is an attribute of a poet, I do not know; but each
+stream which crossed the path,--and the whole country seemed
+liquidizing,--each drinking-trough beside the way,--and to my excited
+imagination they seemed to form an unbroken line,--was an irresistible
+temptation. It was only by shouting, "Yeep! Yeep!" in staccato chorus,
+and vigorously applying the palm branches, thus engaging his attention
+and diverting his thoughts into less watery channels, that we succeeded
+in making any progress whatever. Under this disciplinary process his
+nature was at last so far subdued that he would have passed the ocean
+itself without a sigh, I am sure.
+
+There was a rest of an hour at the Tete Noir inn at noon, shut in by the
+firs, and rocks, and mountains, then we went on to Argentiere, where we
+gladly exchanged the horses and mules for some low, open carts with a
+couple of villagers in blue blouses for drivers. In these we
+accomplished the remaining three or four miles, and made a triumphal
+entry into Chamouni.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when we crawled up the narrow, thronged
+street to the Hotel Royal, from which the English, French, and American
+flags were flying. The clouds had dropped lower and lower, until a fine
+mist was beginning to deepen into rain, and the guides and tourists
+detained in the village fairly jostled each other at the intersection of
+the two principal streets, which seemed to form the village Exchange.
+The mire of the streets was thickly stamped with hoof-prints and the
+marks from the nails that stud the shoe-soles of the mountain climbers.
+Line after line of doleful looking objects, which might prove Egyptian
+mummies when unwrapped, were being lifted from still more sorry looking
+beasts before the door of the hotel, and assaying to mount the steps,
+with a stiffness and angularity of movement in which we all sympathized.
+
+Indeed, after dinner, when a bright fire was lighted in the long _salon_
+where the various parties gathered to read, write, look over
+stereoscopic views, or chat among themselves, it was amusing, as well as
+pitiable to observe the abortive attempts at ease and flexibility as
+these individuals crossed the polished floor, to hear the groans
+smothered to sighs as they resumed their seats. "Mules!" whispered the
+girls, nudging each other, and mindful of the delight which misery is
+said to find in company.
+
+All the next day the rain dripped down upon the village from the heavy
+clouds that hid the mountains. Everybody improved the opportunity to
+write letters, or yawned over the books scattered about the _salon_.
+Among them was a well-thumbed copy of "Artemus Ward, His Book." At the
+foot of each page the local allusions of the jokes were explained, I
+remember. Out in the street, umbrellas were dodging about from one shop
+to another. These rainy days, though a loss to the guides, are harvest
+times for the shopkeepers. Photographs and stereoscopic views of the
+mountains, the glaciers, and daring climbers hanging on by their
+eyelids, abound here, with any amount of wood and chamois (?) horn
+carving and crystal ornaments. Speaking of chamois-horn, if you expect
+to see in Switzerland--as you do in geographies--chamois perched upon
+every crag, preparatory to bounding from peak to peak, you will be
+grievously disappointed. Not a chamois will greet your eyes. We
+passed--I have forgotten where--a pen in which, by paying a certain sum,
+we might look upon a veritable live chamois; but we had no desire to see
+the incarnation of liberty thus degraded.
+
+We waited two days for the uplifting of the clouds, making, in the mean
+time, an excursion up the Montanvert to overlook the Mer de Glace--which
+is not a sea, but a river of ice, like all the glaciers that have worked
+themselves down into these valleys. We retired one night with the cloud
+curtains spread low over our heads; the next morning a voice from
+outside of our door called, "Look out of your window." We sprang up,
+seized the cord of the shutters, and behold! a new heaven and new earth!
+Every vestige of cloud was gone. The mountains were bathed in sunlight,
+vivid green were the peaks before us, which had never met our gaze until
+now, while behind the nearest, against the deep blue of the summer sky,
+rose the three vast white steps which lead heavenward, the highest of
+which men call Mont Blanc. All that morning, as we descended from the
+valley of Chamouni to Sallenches, we turned continually to look back;
+and still, white and beautiful, but growing less in the distance, rose
+the triple domes.
+
+We had taken a carriage to Sallenches: here we find places in the open
+diligence for Geneva. We pause in the first village through which we
+pass, where a knot of people gathers about a round little old woman. She
+wears a wide-rimmed hat over her neat frilled cap, and carries another
+upon her arm. Her waist is dimly defined by the strings of a voluminous
+apron, and her mind entirely distracted by the cares attendant upon the
+disposal of a cotton bag, a wicker basket, an old umbrella, and a box,
+which half a dozen men seize upon with clumsy hands, in good-natured
+officiousness, and thrust into the baggage compartment, while the women
+and children press about her, kissing the rough, ruddy cheeks, and
+uttering what we are sure must be blessings--odds and ends of which
+float up to us. Evidently the little, old woman is going a journey.
+Aided by a dozen rough, helpful hands, she climbs the ladder to her
+place beside us, with a deprecatory though cheerful "_Bon jour_" to us
+all, subsiding into a corner, where she is immediately submerged as her
+belongings are showered down upon her; last of all a crumpled letter is
+tossed into her lap.
+
+The driver mounts to his place; she leans over; a perfect gust of
+blessings, and kisses, and adieus follow us, as with a crack of the whip
+the horses spring away, and we leave the village far behind.
+
+Suddenly--for we have turned away our faces--the little old woman's hand
+is plunged into the cotton bag under our feet. We venture to look
+around. The tears have gone; her face beams like the sun, as she brings
+out of the depths a couple of eggs. Another dive, and she emerges with a
+piece of bread. A pinch of salt is added from the basket, and her
+breakfast is complete. She hospitably offers a share to each of us. We
+decline; and as a shadow dims the brightness of her face, Katie adds
+quickly,--
+
+"We have had two breakfasts already."
+
+The little old woman rolls her round, blue eyes to heaven, with a pious
+ejaculation. Such lavish extravagance is beyond her comprehension.
+
+"That is like you rich people," she says. "We are only too happy if the
+good God sends us _one_." And she relapses into a wondering silence.
+
+"Does madame travel far?" we venture presently.
+
+"Ah, yes." And she shakes her head slowly. Words cannot express the
+distance, it is so great.
+
+"But she has been this way before?" we go on.
+
+"No, never before." And again the round, blue eyes seek heaven, and
+again a deep sigh follows the words. She has finished her lunch, and,
+diving under our feet, emerges after a time with a box, which, opened,
+discloses a small store of peppermints. This she offers with some
+hesitation, and we each hasten to accept one, her countenance beaming
+more and more as they disappear. "Given to hospitality," the little old
+woman has been, we know.
+
+When the box is with difficulty replaced, the string of the bag drawn,
+the basket arranged to her satisfaction, the umbrella placed at a
+pleasing angle, she balances herself upon the edge of the seat, and
+glances fearfully from side to side as we swing along the smooth road.
+Once, when the wheel passes over a stone, she seems to murmur a prayer.
+
+"Madame is not afraid?" we say.
+
+"O, very much. These diligences are most dangerous." And now she is
+glancing over her shoulder at a rocky wall of mountains which follows
+the road at a distance. "They might fall." And she shudders with the
+thought. We assure her that it is impossible; but she has heard of a
+rock falling upon a diligence, and thinks it was upon this road. And all
+the horror of the fearful catastrophe is depicted upon her face.
+Gradually we learn that the little old woman has never travelled in a
+diligence before; that she has never before made any journey, in fact.
+For forty years she has kept the house of the _cure_ in her native
+village. Now, she tells us with a sigh, and uplifted eyes, he has
+"become dead," and she is obliged to seek a home elsewhere among
+strangers. Here she turns away her eyes, which grow dim as her smile,
+and for a moment forgets her fears.
+
+We are approaching a village. She hastily searches her basket and brings
+out the crumpled letter which had been thrown into her lap. As we dart
+through the narrow street and across an open square, she leans out,
+utters a word in a sharp, excited tone, and, to our surprise, throws the
+letter far out into the dust of the street. An idle lounger in the
+square starts at her voice, runs heavily across the street, and picks it
+up. She sinks back, all cheerful smiles again. She has chanced upon the
+very man to whom the letter was addressed.
+
+The dust rolls up from the great wheels. She exchanges the hat upon her
+head for the one over her arm, covering the former carefully with a
+corner of her apron. This, she tells us, as she arranges the second
+upon her head, she was accustomed to wear when she picked vegetables of
+a morning in the garden of the good _cure_. And the sighs return with
+the recollection of her master.
+
+The day wears on with heat and sifting dust. By and by, at another
+village, a filthy, dull-faced peasant clambers up the ladder and
+stumbles into a vacant place. We shrink away from him in disgust. Our
+little old woman only furtively draws aside her neat petticoats. Soon
+she engages him in conversation. We see her lean far forward with
+intense, questioning gaze upon the distance where he points with
+dirt-begrimed finger. Then with a sigh which seems to come from the
+baggage compartment beneath us, so very deep and long-drawn it is, she
+turns to us. She, too, points to a range of hills, very dark and gloomy
+now, for they are covered with woods, and the shadow of a cloud lies
+upon them.
+
+"It is there, beyond the mountains, I am going;" and the shadow of the
+cloud has fallen upon her face. All the sunshine has faded out of it.
+Then, with something warmer, brighter than any sunshine gleaming in her
+eyes, she adds, "But the good God takes care of us wherever we go."
+
+We have reached a fork in the road. There is no village, no house even,
+in sight. Why, then, do we pause? The ladder is raised.
+
+[Illustration: "Evidently the little old woman is going a journey." Page
+195.]
+
+"It must be for me!" gasps the little old woman, casting one bewildered
+glance over to where the shadows are creeping, and then calmly gathering
+together her possessions. We grasp the hands she extends, we pour out
+confused, unintelligible blessings. Is it the dust which blinds our
+eyes? Even the clownish peasant stumbles down the ladder, and lifts out
+her box. The driver remounts. The whip cracks. We lean far out. We wave
+our hands. Again the dust fills our eyes so that our sight for a moment
+is dim, as we dash away, leaving her sitting there alone upon her box,
+where the two roads meet. But beyond the hills where the shadows rested,
+we know that the sun still shines for our little old woman whose master
+"became dead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+LAST DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.
+
+          Geneva.--Calvin and jewelry.--Up Lake
+          Leman.--Ouchy and Lausanne.--"Sweet
+          Clarens."--Chillon.--Freyburg.--Sight-seers.--The
+          Last Judgment.--Berne and its bears.--The town
+          like a story.--The Lake of
+          Thun.--Interlaken.--Over the Wengern Alp.--The
+          Falls of Giessbach.--The Brunig Pass.--Lucerne
+          again.
+
+
+WE dashed up to the hotel upon one of the fine quays at Geneva, and
+descended from the open diligence with all the appearance of travellers
+who had crossed a sandy desert. There is an air of experienced travel
+which only dust can impart.
+
+The most charming sight in the city, to us, was our own names upon the
+waiting letters here. In truth, there are no sights in Geneva. Tourists
+visit the city because they have been or are going elsewhere, beyond. If
+they pause, it is to rest or buy the jewelry so far-famed. To be sure
+the view from almost any window opening upon the blue Rhone is pleasing,
+crossed by various bridges as it is, one of which touches Rousseau's
+Island. But our heads by this time were as full of views as that of a
+Boston woman.
+
+Calvinists and Arminians alike visit the Cathedral, and sit for a moment
+in the old reformer's chair, or at least look upon the canopy of carved
+wood from beneath which he used to preach. There are few monuments here.
+The interior is bare, and boarded into the stiff pews, which belong by
+right and the fitness of things, not to these grand, Gothic cathedrals,
+but to the Puritan meeting-houses, where we gather less to breathe a
+prayer than to sit solemnly apart and listen to a denunciation of each
+other's sins.
+
+It is a little remarkable that the city where Calvin made and enforced
+such rigid laws against luxury and the vanities of the world should, in
+these latter days, be noted for the manufacture of jewelry. But so it
+is; and to walk the streets and gaze in at the shop windows would turn
+the head of any but the strongest-minded woman. Two or three addresses
+had been given us of manufactories where we could be served at more
+reasonable rates than at the grand shops. We climbed flight after flight
+of dingy stone stairs, in dingier buildings, to reach them, and found
+ourselves at last in little dark rooms, almost filled by a counter, a
+desk, and a safe or two. Certainly no one would think of looking for
+beautiful things here! But we had become tolerably accustomed to such
+places in Paris, and were not at all surprised when one shallow drawer
+after another was produced from behind the counter, and a blaze of gems
+and bewildering show of delicately executed gold work met our eyes. If
+you care for a _souvenir_ only, there are pretty little finger-rings
+encircled by blue forget-me-nots in enamel, which are a specialty of
+Geneva. But if you possess the means and disposition, you may gratify
+the most extravagant desires, and rival Solomon in magnificence.
+
+Twice a day steamers leave Geneva to ascend the lake. It was a bright,
+summer afternoon when we embarked from the pier beyond our hotel, and
+steamed away past the villages that lie along its edge. Among them is
+Coppet, the home of Madame de Stael, the towers of which rise up behind
+the town. The deck of the steamer was alive with tourists. One party,
+from meeting at every turn, rests even yet in memory; the ladies stout,
+red-faced, and showily dressed, with immense "charms" pendent from their
+_chatelaines_--shovels, tongs, and pokers, _life-size_--the result of a
+sojourn at Geneva, doubtless.
+
+For some time after leaving the city, we could look back upon Mont
+Blanc, white and beautiful, rising above the dark mountains, and lying
+close against the sky blue as the waters of the lake. The likeness of a
+recumbent figure of Napoleon--the head and shoulders alone,--in the garb
+of a grenadier was startling, haunting us even after it had changed
+again to a snow-white mountain. As though the hero slept, like those in
+German legends, until his country called him to awake and lead its hosts
+to battle.
+
+At Ouchy we leave the steamer, where the gardens of the grand hotel
+Beaurivage come down to meet us. How delightful are these Swiss hotels!
+with their pleasant gardens, many balconies, wide windows, and the
+flying flags outside; and within, scrupulous neatness, and even elegant
+appointments. The rooms vary in size rather than in degree of comfort,
+there being none of the sudden leaps or plunges between luxury and utter
+discomfort, found in so many hotels--elsewhere. The floors are bare, the
+strips of wood forming squares or diamonds, waxed, and highly polished.
+A rug here and there invites bare feet. A couple of neatly-spread beds
+stand foot to foot upon one side of the room, sometimes with silk or
+lace coverlets, but with always the _duvet_, or large down pillow, at
+the foot. There is no stint of toilet arrangements. A lounge and
+easy-chairs tempt to idleness and repose; and a round table, of generous
+proportions, awaits the chocolate, rolls, fresh butter, and amber honey,
+when the last curl is in order, the last ribbon knotted, and you have
+rung for your breakfast. Of course the rooms vary in degree of
+ornamentation. The walls are often beautifully tinted or frescoed, and
+the furniture elegant; but the neatness and comfort among these summer
+hotels are almost universal. Sometimes, in one corner, or built into the
+wall, stands the high, white porcelain stove, so like a stray monument
+that has forgotten its inscription, and is sacred to many memories; and
+the long, plate-glass windows, swinging back, open often upon a balcony
+and a charming view. No wonder that half the hotels in Switzerland are
+named _Bellevue_.
+
+An omnibus bears you from Ouchy, which is simply the port of Lausanne,
+back into the city, past pretty country residences, walled in, over the
+gates of which the owners have placed suggestive names: "My Rest;"
+"Heart's Desire;" "Good Luck;" "Beautiful Situation;" anything which
+fancy or individual taste may dictate. Of Lausanne I recall little but
+an endless mounting and descending of stairs. The city is built upon a
+hill, intersected by ravines, which accounts for this peculiar method of
+gaining many streets from others above and below. We made but a hurried
+visit. It was market day, and ugly women, old and young, were sitting
+upon the sidewalks in the narrow streets, knitting, with the yarn held
+over the fore-finger of the left hand, and selling fruits and vegetables
+between times. In the honey market the air fairly buzzed and swarmed;
+yet still these women knit, and gossiped, and bargained complacently,
+unmindful of the bees in their bonnets. From Ouchy we made an excursion
+to the head of the lake. It is a short voyage of two hours to
+Villeneuve, the last town. Clouds hid the distant mountains; but those
+lesser and nearer, upon our right, as we went on, were bare, and broken,
+and rocky, contrasting strangely with the gently swelling slopes upon
+the other side, covered with vineyards, and with quiet little villages
+at their feet. Each of these villages has its romantic association; or,
+failing in that, a grand hotel to attract summer visitors. Vevay boasts
+the largest hotel, but nothing more. Just beyond Vevay is "Clarens,
+sweet Clarens," the willows of which dip into the lake. Here, if
+Rousseau and Byron are to be believed, Love was born; possibly in some
+one of the mean little houses which border the narrow streets.
+
+Soon after leaving Clarens, the gray, stained tower of Chillon rises
+from the water, near enough to the shore to be reached by a bridge. With
+the "little isle" and its three tall trees marked by the prisoner as he
+paced his lonely cell, ends the romance of the lake. Poets have sung its
+beauties, but Lucerne had stolen away our hearts, and we gazed upon the
+rocks, and vineyards, and villages, with cold, critical eyes. It was
+only later, when the summer twilight fell as we lingered upon the
+balcony before our windows at Ouchy that we acknowledged its charm. The
+witching sound of music came up from the garden below. Upon the silver
+lake before us, the lateen sails, like the white wings of great
+sea-birds, gleamed out from the darkness; the tiny wavelets rippled and
+plashed softly against the breakwater; and where the clouds had parted
+overhead, a horned moon hung low in the sky, while the mountains
+resolved themselves into shadows or other waiting clouds.
+
+There was a little church between Ouchy and Lausanne, gained by crossing
+the fields, where we remembered the Sabbath day, and joined in the
+church service led by an English clergyman. These Sabbaths are like
+green spots now in memory,--restful, cool, refreshing, and pleasant to
+recall,--when the world, and all haste and perplexity of strange sights,
+and sounds, and ways, were rolled off like a heavy burden, while we
+gathered, a little company of strangers in a strange land, yet of one
+family, to unite in the familiar prayers, and hymns, and grand old
+chants.
+
+Monday morning the "American cars" bore us away from Lausanne to
+Freyburg. But such a caricature are they upon our railway carriages,
+that we were inclined to resent the appellation. Low, bare, box-like,
+with only three or four seats upon each side, they hardly suggested the
+original.
+
+We had chosen the route through Freyburg that we might visit the
+suspension bridge, and hear the celebrated organ. The city clings to the
+sides of a ravine after the perverse manner of cities, instead of
+spreading itself out comfortably upon level land. So steep is the
+declivity that the roofs of some of the houses form the pavement for
+the street above. At the foot of the ravine flows a river crossed by
+bridges, and the towns-people have for centuries descended from the
+summit on one side to climb to that upon the other, until some humane
+individual planned and perfected this suspension bridge,--the longest in
+the world save one,--which is thrown across the chasm. In order to test
+its strength, when completed, the inhabitants of the city, or a portion
+of them, gathered in a mass, with artillery and horses, _and stood upon
+it_! Then they marched over it, preceded by a band of music, with all
+the dignitaries of the town at the head of the column. Since it did not
+bend or break beneath their weight, it is deemed entirely safe.
+
+Through the most closely-built portion of the city runs the old city
+wall, with its high, cone-capped watch-towers, and the narrow, crooked,
+and often steep streets are very quaint. The sense of satisfaction which
+returns with the memory of these streets is perhaps partly due to the
+fact, that the girls of the party surveyed them from above great squares
+of gingerbread bought at a _patisserie_ near the station, and ate as
+they strolled through the town over the pavings of these crooked ways.
+The bread of dependence is said to be exceedingly bitter; but the
+gingerbread of Freyburg is uncommonly sweet, in memory.
+
+When the suspension bridge has been crossed and commented upon, every
+one strikes a bee-line to the Cathedral, which rises conspicuously above
+its surroundings. It would be very amusing to watch the professional
+sight-seers at all these places, if one did not belong to the
+fraternity, which makes of it quite another affair. There is no air of
+pleasuring about them; no placid expression of content and
+sweet-to-do-nothing. They seldom are found meandering along the tortuous
+streets, the milk of human kindness moistening every feature, beams of
+satisfaction irradiating every countenance. They never spend long hours
+wandering among the cloisters of old cathedrals, or dream away days by
+storied shrines, as friends at home, who read of these places, fondly
+imagine. By no means. The sight-seer is a man of business. He has
+undertaken a certain amount of work, to be done in a given time. He will
+do or die. And since it is a serious matter, involving doubt, he wears
+an appropriately solemn and preoccupied expression of countenance. He
+darts from point to point. He climbs stairs as though impatient Fame
+waited for him at the top. His emotions of wonder, admiration, or
+delight, must bestir themselves. He drives to the first point of
+interest, strikes a bee-line to the second, cuts every corner between
+that and the third, and then, consulting his watch, desires to know if
+there is anything more, and experiences his only moment of satisfaction
+when the reply is in the negative. And the most remarkable part of all
+is, that he goes abroad to enjoy himself.
+
+But even if one is less ambitious, if you are so fortunate as to be
+naturally indolent, and to delight to dwell in the shadow of dreams, you
+will shake off dull sloth here. You live and move in a bustling crowd.
+Every storied spot is thronged with visitors. Far from musing by
+yourself, you can at best but follow in the wake of the crowd, with the
+drone of an endless story from the lips of a stupid guide in your ears,
+bringing only confusion and weariness.
+
+A notice upon the door of the Cathedral informed us that the organ would
+not be played until evening. We held a council of war, and decided to go
+on. Just over our heads, as we stood before the entrance, was a
+representation of the Last Judgment, cut in the stone, in which the
+good, very scantily attired, and of most self-satisfied countenances,
+trotted off after St. Peter, who carried the father of all keys, to the
+door of a castle representing heaven, while the poor wicked were borne
+away in a Swiss basket, strapped upon the back of a pig-headed devil, to
+a great pot over a blazing fire, which a little imp was vigorously
+blowing up with a pair of bellows. The wicked seeming to outnumber the
+good (this was designed many centuries ago), and the pot not being large
+enough to hold them all, the surplus were thrust into the jaws of a
+patient crocodile near by. Seated in an arm-chair, above all this, the
+devil looked down with an expression of entire satisfaction.
+
+The interior of the Cathedral was in no way remarkable. In the choir
+(which you know, perhaps, is not a place where girls stand in their best
+bonnets to sing on Sundays, but the corner of these great cathedrals in
+which the church service is held) were some fine stained glass windows;
+but even here, horrible monkeys and hideous animal figures, life-size,
+were cut from the wood, and made to stand or crouch above the stalls
+where the priests sit. Those old ecclesiastic artists must have believed
+in a personal devil, who assumed many forms.
+
+A threatened shower hastened our steps to the station some time before
+the arrival of the train, which seemed to come and go without regard to
+the hour appointed. While waiting, we read the advertisements framed and
+hanging upon the walls, of hotels, shops, &c. One of the latter, in a
+triumph of English, ran,--
+
+          WOOD CARWINGS;
+          CHOOSE AS NOWHERE ELSE.
+
+We reached Berne before night, and drove to the Hotel ----. If it could
+by some happy chance have been turned inside out, how comfortable we
+might have been! The exterior was most inviting. A German waiter of
+Irish face, who had a polyglot manner of speech, difficult to be
+understood, showed us to our rooms; and the _table d'hote_, to which we
+descended an hour later, was made up of an uncommon array of
+prim-visaged individuals. Dickens's Mr. Chadband, in a very stiff, white
+neckcloth, was my _vis-a-vis_. I looked every moment for his lips to
+open, and--"Wherefore air we gathered here, my friends?" to issue forth.
+
+The guide-book had informed us that the greatest attraction of Berne to
+strangers was the fine view of the Bernese Alps to be gained from here;
+but a curtain of cloud hung before them during all our stay. Still we
+were interested in the queer old city, with the second story of the
+houses, through many of the streets, projecting over the sidewalk,
+forming gloomy arcades, and bright red cushions in the window seats,
+where pretty girls sat and sewed, and watched the passers down below. I
+remember it rained, and there was a market held out in the square before
+the hotel windows in the early morning, where the umbrellas made every
+old woman to dwell in her own tent for the time. When it was over, and
+the rain had ceased to fall, we waited in front of the old clock-tower
+before driving out through the pleasant suburbs, with market women,
+baskets on their arms, stray children, idle loungers, and alert
+tourists, for the feeble puppet-show heralded by the asthmatic crow of a
+rheumatic cock. Of course it was a procession of bears. Everything in
+Berne is, or has to do with, a bear, since the city was founded upon the
+spot where somebody killed a bear. Bears surmount most of the stone
+fountains in the streets; they ornament the monuments erected to heroes.
+Cut from wood, they are offered for sale as _souvenirs_; stuffed, they
+are exhibited at the zoological gardens; and, to crown all, government
+supports in luxury a whole family of bruins. We left the carriage upon
+the Nydeck bridge, to look down into the immense circular basin where
+they are kept. It must be a dull life, even for a bear. They are ugly
+creatures, with reddish fur, and spend their time climbing a leafless
+semblance of a tree, with no object but to descend again, or in sitting
+up to beg for biscuits of visitors. So universal has the custom of
+begging become in Switzerland, that even the bears take to it quite
+naturally.
+
+The mountains obstinately refusing to appear, we left Berne for Thun,
+passing through a lovely country. Only occasionally did a road appear;
+then it would seem to extend for long miles, bordered by immense,
+close-planted trees. Neither fences nor hedges were there to divide the
+fields; but patches of grain were thrown down anywhere and at any angle.
+Potatoes were sown like grass instead of being planted in hills, and
+were devoured this year by rot--the worst feature in the landscape. All
+through the early summer we had seen hemp growing everywhere. Now it was
+cut, and lying outspread upon the ground in odd regularity, an
+occasional head only being left to run to seed.
+
+There was nothing to visit in Thun. But the whole town is like a story.
+Not an elegant, high-toned story, to be sure, though a picturesque old
+castle and church lifted themselves aristocratically above the more
+humble town. The streets are narrow, and as picturesque as they are
+dirty, with a sidewalk sometimes above the first, low, projecting story
+of the houses.
+
+It is a mile from the town to the lake of the same name. Close by the
+steamer landing, where we were to embark for Newhaus, is the hotel
+Bellevue. Within the garden enclosure were several little _chalets_; one
+to serve as reading-room, another as _salle a manger_, while a third,
+beyond the pond, where swan were sailing, displayed Swiss wares for
+sale. Here we lunched and rested for an hour, before going up the lake.
+It is a voyage of an hour and a half to its head, past beautiful villas
+upon one side, and precipitous rocks upon the other. Once landed at
+Newhaus,--where there was not a _new house_ that we could see, but only
+a scanty collection of little huts,--we searched about, with the mud
+ankle deep, among the crowd of waiting vehicles, for the omnibus which
+was to bear us the two miles and a half to Interlaken and the hotel Jung
+Frau. If you recall your geography lessons, you will perhaps know that
+the two lakes, Thun and Brienz, are separated by a strip of land, upon
+which is this village of Interlaken. It is hardly more than one long
+street, with green fields and a row of trees upon one side, and a line
+of houses standing back upon the other. In full view from the windows of
+these summer hotels, when the sky is clear, rises the Jung Frau, between
+two great mountain peaks. This is the only _sight_ in Interlaken, and
+yet the town throngs with visitors. It must be intolerably hot here at
+times, lying low among the mountains as does this valley. In the fields,
+behind the grand hotels, is a long, low Kursaal, a rustic affair, with a
+wide piazza. You may lunch, and read the newspapers; but government has
+prohibited the gambling. There are delightful excursions to be made from
+here, which accounts, perhaps, for the crowded hotels. And there are
+several fine shops, where you may buy all or any of the curiosities for
+which the country is well known.
+
+A rainy day crowded these shops and the hotel parlors, and made a busy
+scene the length of the street, which is very like a country road. But
+the second morning after our arrival, we rose early, to prepare for an
+excursion over the Wengern Alp. The Jung Frau, hidden the day before,
+appeared in full view with the rolling away of the clouds, and we
+desired to approach nearer to the shy maiden. All the listlessness of
+the day before was past. As we stepped out of the little _chalet_, in
+the hotel garden, where--the hotel being full--we had slept in a room
+only vacated for the night, with a pair of immense red slippers behind
+the door, and Madame's gowns hanging from pegs on the wall, everybody
+was astir. More than one party was sipping their scalding coffee as we
+entered the hotel breakfast-room, while, under the great trees outside,
+guides and saddled horses waited impatiently.
+
+When we had tied on our wide-rimmed hats, and gathered our shawls, we
+found a roomy carriage, an open landau, waiting for us at the side-door
+of the hotel. We drove quickly out of the town, followed by and
+following other carriages, until we formed a long procession by the time
+we had reached the valley of Lauterbrunnen and began the ascent. It is a
+deep, dark valley, shut in by innumerable overhanging rocks, from which
+thread-like waterfalls hang suspended in air, or are lost in spray.
+Hardly does the sun seem to penetrate its depth, and an indescribable
+gloom, as well as chill, pervades the place. From a few scattered
+cottages women and children emerged to follow the carriages, begging
+mutely or offering fruits, while at one point a man awaited our approach
+to awake the echoes with an Alpine horn.
+
+After an hour we reach Lauterbrunnen, and leave the carriage at the door
+of an inn, where a crowd bargains and waits for guides and horses. We
+swell the number. When we are served, we mount to our places, and file
+out of the straggling village, turning before we reach the Staubach
+Falls--a stream of silvery spray that never touches earth, but swings
+and waves in mid-air. The ascent grows more and more steep. The recent
+rain has added to the icy streams, which filter constantly from snows
+above, and the horses sink in the mire, or slide and slip in a way by no
+means reassuring. Often the path is mounted by steps of slippery logs;
+when added to this is a precipice upon one side, we hold our breath--and
+pass in safety. We commend each other as we perform feats of valor and
+intrepidity which would make our fortune in the ring, we fancy. The
+guides, insolent and careless, stroll on in advance, leaving the most
+timid to their own devices. Presently, as we enter a perfect slough of
+despond, we see a man before us scraping the mire with a hoe vigorously,
+as we come in sight.
+
+"You should give this poor man something," says one of the guides. "He
+keeps the road in order." I wish you might have seen the _orderly_ road!
+
+Suddenly we gain a point where the land spreads out into green knolls
+before us and on either side--a strip of almost level verdure, with, on
+one hand, peak on peak, rising till they touch heaven; upon the other,
+the Jung Frau, draped in snow. It seems so near, so very near,--though
+the land drops between us and it into a deep ravine, and the snow-clad
+peaks and needles are a mile away,--I almost thought I might guide my
+horse to the verge of the chasm, and reaching out, gather the snow in my
+hand. Across the summit, the clouds, white as itself, drifted
+constantly, hiding it completely at times. It had been a tiresome climb
+of two hours and a half, and we were glad to rest an hour before
+descending. As we turned the corner of the Jung Frau inn, having
+dismounted from our horses, we were met by our ubiquitous, stout friends
+of Lake Leman memory, to whom, I presume, we seemed equally omnipresent.
+_Table d'hote_ was served here, one party following another, until the
+long table was full. Occasionally the noise of an avalanche, like the
+sound of distant thunder, aroused and startled us, and caused us to
+vacate every seat. But though the mountain appeared to be so near, these
+avalanches, which sweep with tremendous force, carrying tons of ice and
+snow, seen from this distance, seemed like nothing more than tiny
+mountain streams let loose.
+
+From the inn, we mounted and went on half a mile, before reaching the
+summit and beginning the uncomfortable descent. We thought every bad
+place must be the worst, as the horses slid down the slippery stones, or
+descended the log steps with a peculiar jerky motion, suggesting
+imminent and unpleasant possibilities. But, after fording torrents
+swollen by the rain, crossing narrow, treacherous bridges, sliding down
+inclined planes, and whole flights of stairs, the guides informed us
+that we should reach a _dangerous place_ presently!
+
+When, finally, we came to it, we were quite willing to dismount, and
+make our way down over the rocks for a mile, trusting to our own feet,
+and beset continually by women and children, who appeared most
+unexpectedly at every turn, to thrust little baskets of fruit or flowers
+into our hands. The very youngest child toddled after us with a withered
+field-flower, if nothing more. So early do they begin to learn the trade
+of a lifetime.
+
+We entered Grindelwald late in the afternoon. The shadows of night,
+which fall earlier in these valleys than elsewhere, were already
+gathering. The few, scattered cottages, walled in by the everlasting
+hills, with the snow-covered Wetterhorn in full view, and the glacier
+behind it, wore a cheerless and gloomy air in the quick-coming twilight.
+Train after train of tourists, upon horses and mules, or dragging weary
+feet, descended from among the mountains, to find carriages here and
+hasten away. Only these arrivals and departures gave a momentary life to
+the spot. What must it be when the summer sun and the last visitor have
+left it?
+
+We, too, sought out our waiting carriage, and rolled away in the summer
+twilight, down the beautiful road, wide and smooth enough to lead to
+more dreadful places than the pleasant valley of Interlaken, where, for
+a day at least, was our home.
+
+The next afternoon, instead of spending the Sabbath here, we decided to
+go on to Giessbach, on the Lake of Brienz, to visit the celebrated
+falls. We had rested comfortably in the hope of a quiet day in the
+little _chalet_, where more permanent arrangements had been made for our
+disposal. But the enterprising member of the party, to whom we owed not
+a little, in a happy moment of leisure, gave herself to the study of the
+guide-book, the result of which was--Giessbach. We gathered our personal
+effects together, under the pressure of great excitement and limited
+time, reached the little steamer, fairly breathless, and then sat and
+waited half an hour for it to move. It was not, however, a tedious time;
+for there occurred an incident which engaged our attention.
+
+"What do you suppose they're going to do with that calf?" asked the boy
+of the party, who, like all boys, was of an inquiring turn of mind.
+"They've got him into the water, and are poking him with sticks."
+
+Upon this we all became immensely interested. A calf had fallen into the
+water, between the pier and the steamer; but the fruitless efforts made
+by everybody, interested or disinterested, were to rescue, not drown,
+the creature, as a bystander would have inferred. Suddenly, as his own
+struggles carried him away from the wharf and he was about to sink, a
+white, delicate hand, bound with rings, and an arm daintily draped, were
+thrust out from one of the cabin windows, seized upon the head
+disappearing in a final _bob_, and held on until assistance came, when
+the poor animal, half dead with fright, was drawn from the water.
+
+At last the steamer moved away from the wharf, and in an hour or less
+the little pier at Giessbach received us. There is a tiny valley, one
+hotel, and a series of pretty cascades here. But all these are reached
+by a smooth road, winding back upon itself continually, and so steep
+that carriages do not ascend it. You must walk, or rather climb it, for
+twenty minutes, or accept the disagreeable alternative of being carried
+up by two men in a chair, resting on poles. The day was warm; our arms
+were weighed down with satchels, &c.; but we pressed on, while,
+commenting upon our personal peculiarities in dress, gait, and general
+air, as they looked down upon us from the height we almost despaired of
+gaining, were the complacent, comfortable souls, who always reach these
+desirable places the day before any one else, and, in the freshest
+possible toilets, sit, like Mordecai, in the gates.
+
+It may have been droll to them; it was a most serious matter to us. It
+was Saturday afternoon, and each one felt and acted upon the realized
+necessity of outstripping his neighbor, in order to secure rooms.
+Finally the gentlemen hastened on, our ambition failing with our
+strength, and we were happy in finding comfortable quarters awaiting us
+when we had gained the hotel at last.
+
+It was the most delightful little nook imaginable when we were rested
+and refreshed. Until then it possessed no charms in our eyes. It is a
+little valley, high above the lake, towards which it opens, but shut in
+on three sides by precipitous hills. Down the face of one the cascades
+fall. Back against another the hotel is built, facing the lake; its
+_dependance_, and the inevitable shops for the sale of Swiss
+wood-carving and crystals, being ranged along the third side. The whole
+place is not larger than a flower-garden of moderate size.
+
+We were served at our meals by pretty, red-cheeked girls, in charming
+Swiss costumes; and when we had been out after dark to see the falls
+illuminated in different colors, while the rustic bridges, which span
+the cascades at various heights, were crossed by these picturesque
+figures, I felt as if we were all part of a travelling show, for whom
+this dear little level spot was the stage, and that a vast audience
+waited outside, where the walls of hills opened upon the lake, for the
+curtain to fall. It was like the Happy Valley of Rasselas, which we left
+with regret when the peaceful Sabbath was over.
+
+Across the lake, at Brienz, Monday morning, a carriage waited to bear us
+on, over the Brunig Pass, into the clouds and out again; then down,
+down, past village, and lake, and towering hills, resting again at
+Sarnen, then on to Lucerne, into which we swept, with tinkling bells and
+cracking whip, to find the city gay with streaming flags and flowery
+arches, erected for some singing _fete_, but which to us were all signs
+of a happy welcoming.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+BACK TO PARIS ALONE.
+
+          Coming home.--The breaking up of the party.--We
+          start for Paris alone.--Basle, and a search for a
+          hotel.--The twilight ride.--The shopkeeper whose
+          wits had gone "a wool-gathering."--"Two tickets
+          for Paris."--What can be the matter now?--'Michel
+          Angelo's Moses.--Paris at midnight.--The kind
+          _commissionaire_.--The good French gentleman, and
+          his fussy little wife.--A search for Miss
+          H.'s.--"Come up, come up."--"Can women travel
+          through Europe alone?"--A word about a woman's
+          outfit.
+
+
+TO dash through the town, along the quay where we had walked so many
+times beneath the trees or leaning over the low parapet fed the fishes,
+past the two-spired cathedral, the cloisters of which had become so
+familiar, to mount the hill and draw up before the door of the Bellevue
+again, welcomed by the innkeeper, and greeted with outstretched hands by
+"Charles," who had served our chocolate, while familiar faces met us at
+every window or upon the stairs, to pull up the shutters, throw wide
+open the windows, and drink in the glorious beauty of the scene before
+our eyes--all this was delightful, but fleeting, like all earthly joys,
+and mixed with pain; for here we were to say "good by."
+
+Our pleasant party was to break up. The friends in whose care we had
+been so long, were off for Germany, and Mrs. K. and I must turn our
+faces towards home. We were to renew our early and brief experience in
+travelling alone. It had been as limited as our French, which consisted
+principally of "_Est-ce que vous avez?_" followed by a pantomimic
+display that would have done credit to a professional, and "_Quel est le
+prix?_" succeeded by the blankest amazement, since we could seldom, if
+ever, understand a reply.
+
+"Are you afraid?" queried our friends.
+
+"No; O, no." The state of our minds transcended fear.
+
+It was a hot day when we took our last view of the lake, as we rode down
+the hill from the hotel, past the cathedral, past the shaded promenade
+upon the quay, to the station; but we heeded neither the heat nor the
+landscape when we were once in the train and on the way. Our hearts were
+heavy with grief at parting from friends, our spirits weighed down by
+nameless fears. It was a wicked world, we suddenly remembered. Wolves in
+sheep's clothing doubtless awaited us at every turn. Roaring lions
+guarded every station. We clutched our travelling-bags, umbrellas, and
+wraps, with a grasp only attained by grim fate or lone women. Gradually,
+however, as the uneventful hours wore away, we forgot that in eternal
+vigilance lay our safety, and relaxed our hold.
+
+We had left Lucerne at noon; at five o'clock we reached Basle. Here we
+were to spend the night at the hotel _Les Trois Rois_. Every step of the
+way to Paris had been made plain to us by our kind friends.
+
+"Let me see; the hotel is close by the station?" queried Mrs. K., when
+we had left our trunks, as our friends had advised, and followed the
+crowd to the sidewalk.
+
+"Yes," I replied with assurance, "close by, they said; I am sure."
+
+Accordingly we turned away from the long line of hotel omnibuses backed
+up against the curb-stone, to the fine hotels on each side of the
+straight avenue, extending as far as the eye could see. Alas! among
+their blazing names was no "_Trois Rois_." We read them over and over
+again. We even tried to pronounce them. Not a king was there, to say
+nothing of _three_.
+
+In a kind of bewilderment we strayed down the avenue. Might not some one
+of the fair dwellings gleaming out from the shrubbery prove the house we
+sought? There was a rattle and clatter behind us; a passing omnibus.
+Another, and still another followed. Serene faces beamed out upon our
+perplexity. A cloud of dust enveloped us as the last rolled cheerfully
+by, upon the end of which we read, with staring eyes, "_Les Trois
+Rois_."
+
+"Ah!" gasped Mrs. K.
+
+"Sure enough," I replied.
+
+"Why, suppose we take it?" said she, slowly.
+
+"Suppose we do," I assented, with equal deliberation. But by this time
+the little red omnibus was a speck in the distance.
+
+"At least we can follow it." And we quickened our steps, when, with
+almost human perversity, it turned a distant corner, and vanished from
+sight.
+
+Fixing our eyes steadily upon the point of disappearance, we hastened
+on, and on, and on! I have a faint recollection of green trees, of
+stately houses, of an immense fountain swaying its white arms in the
+distance--mirage-like, for we never approached it; of the sun pouring
+its fierce rays upon us as we toiled on, with our wraps and satchels
+turning to lead in our arms.
+
+We reached the corner at last. There was no omnibus; no hotel in sight;
+only the meeting of half a dozen narrow, crooked streets, crowded with
+carriages, and alive with humanity. All settled purpose left us then;
+our wits, never very firmly attached, followed. We became completely
+demoralized.
+
+"Suppose you inquire," suggested Mrs. K., after a period of inaction,
+during which we were pushed, and jostled, and trampled under foot by the
+crowd.
+
+If I possessed one capability above another, it was that of asking
+questions, especially in a strange language. Upon this corner where we
+were standing, rose an imposing building, in the open doorway of which
+stood a portly gentleman, with a countenance like the setting sun, in
+glow and warmth. A heavy mane flowed over his shoulders. Evidently this
+was the first of the roaring lions! Taking our lives in our hands, we
+approached him.
+
+"Do you speak English?" I ventured.
+
+"_Nein_," was his reply, with a shrug of the leonine shoulders.
+
+I drew a long breath and began again.
+
+"_Parlez-vous Francais?_"
+
+His reply to this was as singular as unprecedented. He turned his back
+and disappeared up the wide stairs in the rear.
+
+"This _may_ be foreign politeness," I was beginning, doubtfully, when he
+reappeared, accompanied by an intensified counterpart of himself. The
+setting sun in the face of this man gave promise of a scorching day.
+
+"_Parlez-vous Francais, monsieur?_" I began again, when we had bowed and
+"_bon-jour_"-ed for some time.
+
+"_Oui, oui, mademoiselle._"
+
+Here was an unexpected dilemma. A terrible pause ensued. Then, with an
+effort which in some minds would have produced a poem at least, I
+attempted to make known the object of our quest. I cannot begin to tell
+of the facial contortions which accompanied this sentence, nor of the
+ineffable peace which followed its conclusion. It made no manner of
+difference that his reply was a jargon of unintelligible sounds. Virtue
+is its own reward. One sentence alone I caught, as the indistinguishable
+tones flew by. We were to take the first street, and then turn to the
+right.
+
+"What did he say?" asked Mrs. K., when we had _merci_-d ourselves out of
+their radiant presences.
+
+I explained the direction we were to follow.
+
+"Horrible countenance he had," she remarked, as we pursued our way.
+
+"O, dreadful," I assented.
+
+"Nobody knows where he may send us," she continued.
+
+Sure enough! In our alarm we stopped short in the street, and stared at
+each other with horrified countenances.
+
+"I have heard--" I began.
+
+"Yes; and so have I," she went on, shaking her head, and expressing by
+that gesture most fearful possibilities.
+
+A bright thought seized me. "He told us to turn to the _right_; we will
+turn to the _left_!" And with that happy, womanly instinct, said to
+transcend all judgment, _we did_. Strange as it may appear, though we
+went on for a long half hour, no "_Trois Rois_" gladdened our eyes.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. K. struck an attitude. "A fine appearance we shall
+present," said she; "two lone women, dusty and heated, our arms full of
+baggage, straggling up to a hotel two mortal hours after the arrival of
+the train. We'll take a carriage."
+
+To me this inglorious advent was so distant in prospect that it held no
+terrors, nothing of mortification even. "_Les Trois Rois_" had become a
+myth, an idea towards which we vainly struggled.
+
+"If it were only across the street," she went on, rising to the occasion
+and warming with the subject, "we would go in a carriage."
+
+One approached at that moment. We motioned to it _a la Mandarin_, with
+our heads, our hands and arms being full. The driver raised his whip and
+pointed solemnly into the distance. We turned to gaze, seeing nothing
+but the heavens in that direction. When we looked back, he was gone. We
+should not like to affirm--we hardly dare suggest--we are sure of
+nothing but that he vanished from before our eyes.
+
+A second appeared in the distance. We began in time. We pawed the air
+wildly with our umbrellas. The very satchels and wraps upon our arms
+nodded and beckoned. In serene unconsciousness the driver held to his
+course.
+
+"Well!" I exclaimed, indignantly.
+
+"I should think so," added Mrs. K., with emphasis.
+
+"Is there anything peculiar, anything unusual in our personal
+appearance?" I asked, glancing down upon our dusty appointments. As we
+concentrated our energies and belongings for one final effort, a
+benignant countenance smiled out upon us from above a _cipher_. We were
+storming a private carriage!
+
+The third attempt was more successful. The driver paused. We requested
+him, in English, to take us to "The Three Kings." He only stared and
+shook his head. We tried him with "_Les Trois Rois_." He seemed still
+more mystified.
+
+"What can be done with people who do not understand their own language!"
+I exclaimed in despair.
+
+We tried it again with our purest Parisian accent. An inkling of our
+meaning pierced his dull understanding. He rolled heavily down from his
+seat, and opened the door with the usual "_Oui, oui_." We entered and
+were driven away.
+
+"Do you think he understood you?" queried Mrs. K.
+
+"No-o."
+
+"Well, where do you suppose he will take us?"
+
+"I don't know, and I don't much care," I responded, in desperation.
+
+We settled back upon the cushions. The peace that follows resignation
+possessed our souls. O, the luxury of that jolting, rattling ride, as we
+wound in and out among the tortuous streets! A full half hour passed
+before the dusky old hotel darkened above us, surmounted by "The Three
+Kings" arrayed in Eastern magnificence, and wearing gilded crowns upon
+their heads.
+
+Fate had been propitious. This was our destination, without doubt,
+though we had made a grand mistake as to its location. We descended at
+the entrance with the air, I trust, of being equal to the occasion. We
+calmly surveyed the assembled porters, who hastened to seize our
+satchels and wraps. We demanded a room, and inquired the hour of _table
+d'hote_, as though we had done the same thing a thousand times before.
+Mrs. K. was right; there was a moral support in that blessed carriage.
+
+_Table d'hote_ over, we strayed into a pretty _salon_ opening from the
+_salle a manger_. Both were crowded--over doors and windows, and within
+cabinets filling every niche and corner--with quaint specimens of
+pottery--pitchers, vases, and jars, ancient enough in appearance to have
+graced the domestic establishment of the original "Three Kings." The
+glass doors thrown back enticed us upon a long, low balcony, almost
+swept by the rushing river below--the beautiful Rhine hastening on to
+its hills and vineyards. We leaned over, smitten with sudden
+homesickness, and sent a message back to Rolandseck of happy memory.
+
+With the faint shadows of coming twilight we wandered out into the
+square before the hotel. A line of _voitures_ extended down one side,
+every one of which was quickened into life at our approach. We paused,
+with foot upon the step of the first, for the _carte_ always proffered,
+upon which is the number of the driver and the established rate of
+fares. He only touched his shiny hat and prepared to gather up his
+reins.
+
+"O, dear!" we said; "this will never do; we must not go." And we
+stepped down. The porters upon the hotel steps began to cast inquiring
+glances. One or two stray passers added their mite of curiosity, when
+the knight-errant, who always breaks a lance for distressed womanhood,
+appeared upon the scene. We recognized him at once, though his armor was
+only a suit of gray tweed, and he wore a fashionable round-topped hat
+for a casque.
+
+Almost before we knew it, we were seated in the carriage, the _carte_ in
+our hands, and were slowly crawling out of the square--for a subdued
+snail-pace is the highest point of speed attained by these public
+vehicles.
+
+The memory of Basle is as shadowy, dim, delightful, as was that twilight
+ride. Where we were going, we neither knew nor cared; nor, later, where
+we had been. We wound in and out the close streets of the old part of
+the city, full of a busy life so far removed from our own, that it
+seemed a show, a picture; below the surface we could not penetrate. We
+rolled along wide avenues where the houses on either side were white as
+the dust under the wheels. Once in a quiet square, we paused before an
+old _Hotel de Ville_, frescoed in warm, rich colors. Again upon the
+outskirts of the city, before a monument; but whether it had been
+erected to hero or saint I cannot now recall. And somewhere, when the
+dusk was deepening, we found an old church, gray as the shadows
+enveloping it, with a horseman, spear in hand, cut in _bas relief_ upon
+one side. What dragon he made tilt against in the darkness we never
+knew.
+
+Even our driver seemed to warm beneath the influences which subdued and
+dissipated our cares. He nodded gently and complacently to
+acquaintances, eliciting greetings in return, in which we, in a measure,
+shared. He hummed a guttural, though cheerful song, which found an echo
+in our hearts. He stood up in his place to point the way to misguided
+strangers, in whose perplexities we could so well sympathize. And once,
+having laid down the reins, and paused in our slow advance, he held a
+long and seemingly enjoyable conversation with a passing friend. To all
+this we made no manner of objection, rather we entered into the spirit
+of the hour, and were filled with a complacency which was hastily
+banished upon our return to the hotel, where, as we put into the hand of
+our benevolent driver his due, and the generous _pour boire_ which gave
+always such a twinge to our temperance principles, he demanded more.
+
+"He claims," said the porter, who was assisting our descent, "that he
+has been driving with the carriage lamps lighted. There is an extra
+charge for that."
+
+"But he left his seat to light them this moment, just before we turned
+into the square," we replied, indignantly.
+
+The porter shrugged his shoulders. That is the end of an argument. There
+is never anything more to be said. We submitted at once, though our
+faith in benevolent humanity went to the winds.
+
+Somewhat dispirited, we climbed the stairs to our room. "One day more,"
+we said, "and our troubles will be at an end." But, alas! one day was as
+a thousand years!
+
+It was to be an all-day's ride to Paris, from nine o'clock in the
+morning until half past nine or ten at night. So, while waiting for
+breakfast, we hastened out into the town, in search of a bookstore, and
+something to while away the dull hours before us.
+
+A young man, of preternaturally serious countenance, was removing the
+shutters as we entered a musty little shop. We turned over the
+Tauchnitz's editions of English novels until we had made a choice, the
+value of our purchases amounting to four or five francs, and gave him a
+napoleon. With profuse apologies he left us to get it changed. Returning
+presently, he threw the silver into a drawer, and handed the books to
+us, with a "_Merci_."
+
+"Yes," we said; "but--" Arithmetic had never been my strength; still
+something was clearly wrong here.
+
+"The change," said Mrs. K. "He has given us no change." Sure enough; but
+still he continued to bow and thank us, evidently expecting us to go.
+
+We tried to explain; eliciting only one of the blank stares that usually
+followed our attempts at explanation.
+
+"The man must be an idiot," Mrs. K. said, gravely.
+
+"He certainly has an imbecile expression of countenance," I assented. He
+stood still, bowing at intervals, while we calmly weighed and balanced
+his wits before his eyes. We tried signs; having through much practice
+developed a system to which the deaf and dumb alphabet is as nothing. We
+attempted to convince him that a part of the money was ours.
+
+He smiled, and assured us, in a similar way, that the books belonged to
+us, the money to him.
+
+There was so much justice in this, that we should doubtless have
+assented, had not his own wits finally asserted themselves. Blushing
+like a bashful boy, he suddenly exclaimed, counted out the change, and
+poured it into our hands with so many apologies, that we were glad to
+retreat.
+
+It was a discouraging beginning for the new day. Still we would not
+despair. We had assured our anxious friends that we were quite able to
+take care of ourselves. We would triumphantly prove our own words.
+Breakfast over, and our bill settled without mishap or misunderstanding,
+we started for the station in the hotel omnibus, in company with a
+stout, genial Frenchman, who spoke a little English, and his fussy
+little wife. When we entered the station, the line formed before the
+ticket-window was already formidable. It lacked fifteen minutes of the
+hour when the train would start, and our baggage was--where? We seized a
+_commissionaire_, slipped a piece of money into his hand in a very
+bungling, shamefaced way, and, presto! in a moment our trunks appeared
+among the other baggage, though we had looked in vain for them before.
+Then, with a sensation of self-consciousness approaching guilt, I
+stepped to the foot of the line before the ticket-window.
+
+"Two tickets for Paris," I gasped, finding myself, after a time, brought
+face to face with the sharp-eyed official. "What is the price?" But
+before I could utter the words, the reply rattled through my head like a
+discharge of grape-shot. Every finger resolved itself into ten, as I
+essayed to open my purse and count out the gold pieces. What should I
+do! I had not enough into ten francs; it might as well have been ten
+thousand! Mrs. K. was waiting at a little distance; but the place once
+lost in the line could not be regained, and there was our baggage yet to
+be weighed, and the hands of the clock frightfully near the hour of
+departure. There was an impatient stamping of feet behind me, as I stood
+for a moment dizzy, bewildered, with an angry buzz of voices ringing
+with the din and roar in my ears. Then I rushed down the room to Mrs.
+K., and explained as hastily as possible. She filled my purse, and I
+flew back to find the line pushed forward and my place gone. One glance
+at the hands of the clock, at the discouraging line of ticket-seekers
+yet to be served,--how could I go to the foot again! Then I walked
+straight to the window with the courage of despair. A low growl ran down
+the line, the _gendarme_ on guard stepped forward, expostulating
+excitedly; but, blessings on the man at the head of the line, who pushed
+the others back, and gave me a place, and even upon the grim official
+behind the window, who smiled encouragement, and gave me the tickets,
+while the _gendarme_ stormed. I stepped out again, conscious only of the
+wish--strong as a prayer--that we were safe again in Lucerne, or--some
+other place of peaceful rest.
+
+Wedged in among the crowd, we saw one trunk after another weighed and
+removed, while ours remained untouched. I pulled the sleeve of a porter.
+My hand held my purse. The suggestion was enough. In a moment our trunks
+were weighed, and the little paper ticket corresponding to our "check"
+safe in our possession. I turned, conscientiously, to reward the
+porter; but we were jostled by a score of elbows, each encased in the
+sleeve of a blue blouse. Which was the one I sought? I could not tell.
+Each answered my glance of puzzled inquiry with one of expectation.
+Diving to the depths of my purse, I found it to contain one solitary
+centime--nothing more. I slipped it into the hand nearest, and from the
+start of surprise and delight was immediately convinced that it was the
+wrong man. However, it did not matter. There was no time to explain. The
+doors opening upon the platform, which remain locked until the last
+moment, were thrown open, and we hurried away, found places upon the
+train, and sank back upon the cushions exhausted, but happy. For ten
+hours at least, nothing could happen to us. The guard passed the window,
+examining the tickets, and slamming the doors, making our safety doubly
+sure. A moment more, and with a noiseless motion we were off. Hardly had
+the train started before it stopped again. One after another our
+companions left us--for we were not alone in the compartment. "Strange,"
+we said, yet too thoroughly exhausted to be curious. It was still more
+strange when, after a short time, they each and all returned. They began
+to whisper among themselves, pointing to us. "What _can_ be the matter
+_now_?" we queried, suddenly mindful that life is a warfare, and roused
+to interest.
+
+Our fellow-travellers proceeded to enlighten us in chorus, and in the
+confusion of the outburst, we caught--by inspiration--at their meaning.
+We had crossed the frontier into France, and the baggage was examined
+here. We hastened out and into the station. All the trunks but our own
+had been checked. With his hand upon one of these, an official demanded
+the key, upon our appearance. Remembering an episode in its packing, we
+demurred, and proffered the key of another. Already vexed by the delay,
+his suspicions were roused now. He demanded the key of the first, which
+we gave up with wicked delight. The by-standers drew near. Indeed, a
+crowd was the embarrassing accompaniment to all our unfortunate
+experiences. The official turned the key with the air of doing his duty
+if he perished in the attempt, when the lid flew open, and a hoop-skirt,
+compressed to the final degree, sprang up into his startled face, like a
+Jack-in-the-box. The spectators laughed--French though they were--as,
+very red in the face, he vainly tried to replace it, entirely forgetting
+to search for contraband articles.
+
+No other incident disturbed the quiet of that long day's ride to Paris.
+At some queer little station we descended to lunch, and returned to our
+places, laden, like the spies of Eschol, with luscious grapes. Our
+fellow-travellers dropped out along the way, only, however, to be
+replaced by others. We had not succeeded in securing places in the
+compartment reserved for ladies alone; but the French gentlemen who were
+our companions proved most courteous in their polite indifference to our
+movements. An old gentleman among these, elicited our outspoken
+admiration for his grand head. We were secure in our native language, we
+knew.
+
+"Lovely face!" we exclaimed, unblushingly. "What a head for a sculptor!
+Quite like Michel Angelo's Moses, I declare."
+
+Before the day was over, "Michel Angelo's Moses" addressed us in
+excellent English.
+
+When the darkness gathered, when the night settled down, something of
+its gloom oppressed us. Once safely housed in Paris, we should be at
+rest; but there were still difficulties to be overcome. Our friends had
+telegraphed to Miss H. that we should arrive by this train; but the
+number of her house we did not know, nor did they. We were only sure
+that her apartments were over the _Magasin au Printemps_. Still that was
+tolerably exact; we would not be uneasy. At ten o'clock at night we
+stepped down from the train into a confusion of tongues and elbows which
+I cannot describe, and followed the crowd into the baggage-room. I say
+_followed_--we were literally lifted from our feet and borne along.
+There was no baggage in sight. We waited until an hour seemed to have
+passed, and still no trunks appeared.
+
+"Suppose we leave them, and send a porter from the house in the morning
+to find them;" and acting upon this, we struggled out of the station
+into the great paved square at one side. The night was dark; but the
+gas-lights dimly lighted up a line of carriages at the farther side,
+towards which we hastened, and had seated ourselves in one, when a
+_commissionaire_ came running across the square, and putting his head in
+at the carriage window, asked if we had any baggage.
+
+"Yes," we replied; but the rattling words that followed brought only
+confusion to us. Our minds, already overtaxed, gave way at once. It is
+pleasant to recall the patience and good-nature of that official. It is
+pleasant, when old things have so entirely passed away, to remember the
+Paris of 1869 as, at least, a city into which women might come at
+midnight, alone, unprotected, and be not only free from insult and
+imposition, but actually cared for, and sent to their rightful
+destination, in spite of their own ignorance and incompetence.
+
+"Stay here," said our friend in uniform; and he disappeared, to return
+in a moment with the stout French gentleman who had been our companion
+in the hotel omnibus at Basle. We met with mutual surprise, and pleasure
+on our side at least.
+
+"_Do_ any one look for your baggage?" he asked.
+
+"No," we replied. "We thought we might leave it."
+
+"You must go," he said.
+
+The _commissionaire_ took possession of our check and the driver's
+_carte_, and I followed the two back to the station, leaving Mrs. K. to
+guard our satchels, &c., in the carriage.
+
+"Wait one leetle moment," said the kind French gentleman; "I bring
+madame." And in a moment he dragged the fussy little woman from the
+crowd, handing her over with the triumphant air of having now settled
+all difficulties.
+
+"Madame speak ze Eengleesh fine," he said.
+
+Looking down from an immeasurable height, the little madam condescended
+to remark that their servant was looking for their baggage.
+
+"Ah!" I responded. "Then we are not permitted to leave our trunks."
+
+"I am sure I don't know," she replied, looking so greatly bored, not to
+say exhausted, that I did not think it best to press the matter. "Our
+servant is attending to it," she repeated.
+
+Her husband's face fairly glowed with satisfaction while this side
+conversation was being carried on. Evidently he believed the whole
+French baggage system to have been elucidated for my benefit. I thanked
+him heartily, as we exchanged cordial adieus. Even the fussy little
+woman gathered, for the moment, sufficient life to attempt to bow;
+which, alas! never got beyond a stare. The _commissionaire_ seized upon
+a blue-bloused porter, and gave me to him with the check, the _carte_,
+and a few sharply-spoken directions. Clinging to that blue sleeve, I was
+borne through the swaying, surging mass of humanity, into the
+baggage-room--how, I never knew. Our trunks were identified, lifted, not
+thrown, by my porter upon a hand-truck, which dragged for itself and us
+an opening in the crowd. Once out upon the platform, the porter pushed
+doggedly on into the darkness, though I had left Mrs. K. and the
+carriage in the square at one side. I expostulated. He held persistently
+to his course. I gave one thought to poor Mrs. K., resigned to what fate
+I knew not, and then, woman-like, followed my trunks.
+
+It was all explained, when, dimly outlined in the darkness before the
+station, we espied a sea of shiny hats and shadowy cabs; and when, after
+long shouting of the number of our own, by the porter and everybody
+else, it finally crawled up to the steps where we were standing, Mrs.
+K.'s anxious face looking out of the window.
+
+"I began to think you were lost," she said. "You can fancy my feelings
+when the driver gathered up the reins and drove out of that square."
+
+We made a thank-offering upon the palm of every grimy hand, suddenly
+outstretched; then the driver paused, whip in the air, for the address
+of our destination.
+
+"_Magasin au Printemps_, Boulevard Haussman." He stared, as everybody
+had, and did, along the way. If they only wouldn't! We repeated it. He
+conferred, in a low tone, with the man on the next box, who got down
+from his place, and came around to our window to look at us. One or two
+lounging porters joined him. The _Magasin au Printemps_ is a large dry
+and fancy goods establishment, which had been closed, of course, for
+hours, since it was now nearly midnight. It was as though we had reached
+New York late at night, and insisted upon being driven to _Stewart's_.
+The little crowd stared at us solemnly, in a kind of pitiful curiosity,
+I fancied. I think, by this time, our countenances may have expressed
+incipient idiocy. We attempted to explain that Miss H.'s apartments were
+over the _Magasin_, and the driver mounted to his seat, though, I am
+obliged to confess, with an ominous shake of his head.
+
+As we rolled out into the wide boulevards our spirits rose. The
+sidewalks were crowded with promenaders, the streets with carriages. The
+light of a glorious day seemed to have burst upon our dazzled eyes.
+Paris, gay, beautiful Paris, which never sleeps, was out, disporting
+herself.
+
+"We will not be anxious," we said; nor were we in the least. "Even if we
+cannot find Miss H.'s, some hotel will take us in. Or, failing in that,
+we can drive about until morning."
+
+A thought of our respective and respectable families did cross our minds
+with this lawless suggestion. In happy unconsciousness, they believed us
+still safe with our friends.
+
+We crawled up the Boulevard Haussman. There were the closed doors and
+shutters of the _Magasin au Printemps_. Two or three other doors met our
+gaze. The driver paused before one. We descended, and pulled the bell.
+You must know there are no doorsteps, in Paris, leading to front doors,
+as with us. The first floor is, almost without exception, given up to
+shops; and dwellings, unless pretentious enough to be houses enclosing a
+court-yard and entered from the street by passing through great gates,
+are simply apartments in the two, three, and four stories above these
+shops.
+
+Some invisible mechanism swung back the great double doors as we pulled
+the bell, disclosing a pretty, paved court-yard, with a fountain in the
+centre, surrounded by pots of flowers. A glass door at one side,
+revealed wide marble stairs, down which a charming little portress was
+tripping.
+
+"Is this Miss H.'s?" we asked in English. She only shook her head. We
+paraded our French. She seemed lost in thought for a moment, then, with
+a "_Oui, oui_," ran past us to the carriage, and gave some directions to
+the driver, emphasizing her words with a pair of plump little hands.
+Then, with a "_bon nuit_," she disappeared, and the great doors closed
+again. Evidently we were being taken care of, we thought, as we settled
+back again in the carriage. We stopped before another door, already
+open, and disclosing a flight of wide, stone stairs, ascending almost
+from the sidewalk. Immediately upon pulling the bell--as though the wire
+had been attached to it--a long, loose-jointed, grotesque, yet horrible
+figure appeared at the head of the stairs, half-stooping to bring
+himself within the range of my vision, swinging his arms like a Dutch
+windmill, and grinning in a way which seemed to open his whole head.
+
+[Illustration: "Together we stared at him with rigid and severe
+countenances." Page 240.]
+
+"Is--is this Miss H.'s?" I ventured from the sidewalk.
+
+He only beckoned still more wildly for me to ascend. I drew back. Good
+Heavens! What was the matter with him? And still, while I stared
+fascinated, yet horror-stricken, he continued, without intermission,
+these speechless contortions and evolutions. Although he uttered not a
+sound, he seemed to say with every cracking joint, "Come up, come up,"
+while he scooped the air with his bony hands.
+
+I remembered that it was midnight; that we were alone, and in wicked
+Paris; that we had been religiously brought up; that Mrs. K.'s husband
+was the superintendent of a large and flourishing Sunday school; that my
+father was a minister of the gospel. I planted my feet firmly upon the
+sidewalk. I folded my arms rigidly. I shook my head virtuously. Come up?
+Chains should not drag me. Then I turned to the carriage.
+
+"Mrs. K., do come and see this man."
+
+She came. Together we stared at him with rigid and severe countenances.
+
+"Dreadful!" said I, remembering the Sunday school.
+
+"Awful!" said she, recalling the pious ancestors. And again we shook our
+heads at his blandishments to the point of dislocation. The driver, who
+had been all this time tipped back against a tree, began to show
+symptoms of impatience. Something must be done.
+
+"Suppose you ask for some one who can speak English," suggested Mrs. K.
+
+"Sure enough." And I did. With one last, terrible grimace the ogre's
+heels disappeared up the second flight of stairs.
+
+There came down in a moment a thoroughly respectable appearing porter,
+who informed us, in English, that we were expected, our telegram having
+been received; though, through the ambiguity of its address, it had been
+sent first to a house below. The people there had promised to forward
+us, however, in case we followed the telegram. This accounted for the
+movements of the little portress.
+
+The _ogre_ proved to be a most good-natured _concierge_, who had been
+instructed to keep the door open in anticipation of our arrival.
+
+So our fears had been but feathers, after all, blown away by a breath;
+our troubles only a dream, to be laughed over in the awakening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here the story of our journeying may end. The remaining distance,
+through the kindness of friends, new and old, was accomplished without
+difficulty or annoyance. We reached our own homes in due time, and like
+the princess in the fairy tales, "lived happily forever afterwards."
+
+A few practical words suggest themselves here which would pass unnoticed
+in a preface--where, perhaps, they belong. First, in regard to the
+question often asked, "Can women travel alone through Europe?" Recalling
+our own experience,--too brief to serve as a criterion,--I should still
+say, "_Yes_." We met, frequently, parties of ladies who had made the
+whole grand tour alone. In Switzerland we found English women,
+constantly, without escort. The care of choosing routes, of looking
+after baggage and buying tickets, of managing the sometimes complicated
+affairs attendant upon sight-seeing, with the vexations and impositions
+met with and suffered on every hand, no woman would voluntarily accept
+without great compensation, I am sure. But if she prefers even these
+cares to seeing nothing of the world, they can be borne, and the
+annoyances, to a great extent overcome, through patience and growing
+experience.
+
+Then, if you start alone, or without being consigned to friends upon the
+other side,--which no _young_ woman would think of doing,--you are
+almost sure to join, at different times, other parties, whose way is
+your own; and far preferable this is to making up a large company before
+leaving home--the members of which usually disagree before reaching the
+continent, and often part in mutual disgust. "There is nothing like
+travelling to bring out a person's real nature," say some. But this is
+untrue. Travelling develops, rather than reveals, I think, and under
+conditions favorable only to the worse side of one's nature. You are
+bewildered by the multitude of strange sights and ways; the very
+foundation of usages is broken up; you are putting forth physical
+exertions that would seem superhuman at home, and are mentally racked
+until utterly exhausted,--for there is nothing so exhausting as
+continued sight-seeing,--and at this point people say they begin "to
+find each other out."
+
+An occasional period of rest--not staying within doors to study up the
+guide-books, but entire cessation from seeing, hearing, or doing--and a
+scrap from the mantle of charity, will save many a threatened friendship
+at these times. We learned to know our strength--how weak it was; and to
+await in some delightful spot, chosen for the purpose, returning energy,
+courage, and _interest_; for even that would be banished at times by
+utter weariness and exhaustion.
+
+In former times, Americans fitted themselves out for Europe as though
+bound to a desert island. Wider intelligence and experience have opened
+their eyes and reformed their judgment; still, a word upon this subject
+will not be unwelcome, I am sure, to girls especially, who contemplate a
+trip over the ocean.
+
+In the first place, your steamer outfit is a distinct affair. You are
+allowed to take any baggage you wish for into your state-room; but, if
+wise, you will not fill the narrow space, nor encumber yourself with
+anything larger than a lady's _hat box_, which may offer a tolerable
+seat to the stewardess, or visitors of condolence, in case seasickness
+confines you to berth or sofa. Even preferable to this is a flat,
+English portmanteau, which can be slipped under the lower berth. If you
+sail for Liverpool, you can leave this at your hotel there in charge of
+the head waiter until you return, and thus avoid the expense and care of
+useless baggage.
+
+Its contents your own good sense will in a measure suggest. Let me
+add--a double gown or woollen wrapper, in which you may sleep, flannels
+(even though you cross the ocean in summer), merino stockings, warm
+gloves or mittens, as pretty a hood as you please, only be sure that it
+covers the back of your head, since you will ignore all cunning craft of
+hair dressing, for a few days at least, and even after you are well
+enough to appear at the table, perhaps. Bear in mind that the Northern
+Atlantic is a cold place, and horribly open to the wind _at all seasons
+of the year_; that you will live on the deck when not in your berth or
+at your meals, and that the deck of an ocean steamer partakes of the
+nature of a whirlwind. Fur is by no means out of place, and skirts
+should be sufficiently heavy to defy the gales, which convert everything
+into a sail. Take as many wraps as you choose--and then you will wish
+you had one more. A large shawl, or, better, a carriage-robe, is
+indispensable, as you will very likely lie rolled up like a cocoon much
+of the time. A low sea-chair, or common camp-chair, is useful to older
+people; but almost any girl will prefer a seat upon the deck itself;
+there are comfortable crannies into which no chair can be wedged.
+
+By all means avoid elaborate fastenings to garments. A multiplicity of
+unmanageable "hooks and eyes" is untold torment at sea; and let these
+garments be few, but warm. You will appreciate the wisdom of this
+suggestion, when you have accomplished the herculean task of making your
+first state-room toilet.
+
+If you are really going abroad for a season of _travel_, take almost
+nothing. You can never know what you will need until the necessity
+arises. If you anticipate, you misjudge. Your American outfit will
+render you an oddity in England. But do not change there, or you will
+be still more singular in Paris. It is as well to start with but one
+dress besides the one you wear on the steamer--anything you chance to
+have; a black alpaca, or half-worn black silk, is very serviceable. When
+you reach Paris, circumstances and the season will govern your
+purchases; and this same dress will be almost a necessity for constant
+railway journeys, rainy-day sight-seeing, and mule-riding in
+Switzerland. A little care and brushing, fresh linen, and a pretty
+French tie, will make it presentable--if not more--at any hotel dinner
+table.
+
+A warm shawl or wrap of some kind you will need for evenings,--even
+though you travel in summer,--for visiting the cathedrals, which are
+chill as a tomb; and for weeks together among the mountains you will
+never throw it aside. But if you can take but one, _don't_ provide
+yourself with a _water-proof_. They are too undeniably ugly, and not
+sufficiently warm for constant wear. If it rains slightly, the umbrella,
+which you will buy from force of necessity and example in England, will
+protect you; if in torrents, you will ride. Indeed, you will always
+ride, time is so precious, cab-hire so cheap, and distances so great in
+most foreign cities.
+
+Lastly, let me beg of you to provide yourself with an abundant supply of
+patience and good-nature. Without these, no outfit is complete. Try to
+laugh at annoyances. Smile, at least. And do not anticipate
+difficulties. Above all, enjoy yourself, and then everybody you meet
+will enjoy you. And so good by, and "God bless us every one."
+
+
+
+
+LEE AND SHEPARD'S HANDBOOKS.
+
+
+"JUST AS THE TWIG IS BENT, THE TREE'S INCLINED."
+
+          =LESSONS ON MANNERS.= For home and school use. A
+          Manual by EDITH E. WIGGIN. Cloth, 50 cents; school
+          edition, boards, 30 cents net.
+
+This little book is being rapidly introduced into schools as a
+text-book.
+
+
+SHOWS WHY THE WINDS BLOW.
+
+          =WHIRLWINDS, CYCLONES, AND TORNADOES.= By Prof. W.
+          M. DAVIS of Harvard University. Illustrated. 50
+          cents.
+
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+thing in the shape of storms, scientifically and popularly treated.
+
+
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+
+          =THE STARS AND THE EARTH;= or, Thoughts upon
+          Space, Time, and Eternity. With an Introduction by
+          THOMAS HILL, D.D., LL.D., late President of
+          Harvard University. Cloth. 50 cents.
+
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+professors of religion, and tends to bring them closer together, and
+reconcile them."--_Potter's Monthly._
+
+
+KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DRINKING.
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF WATER ANALYSIS.= By Dr. GEORGE L.
+          AUSTIN. Cloth. 50 cents.
+
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+small chemical library to find. We commend the book as worthy of a wide
+circulation."--_Independent._
+
+
+EVERY LADY HER OWN FLORIST.
+
+          =THE PARLOR GARDENER.= A Treatise on the
+          House-Culture of Ornamental Plants. Translated
+          from the French, and adapted to American use. By
+          CORNELIA J. RANDOLPH. With eleven illustrative
+          cuts. 50 cents.
+
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+
+
+"HELLO, CENTRAL!"
+
+          =THE TELEPHONE.= An Account of the Phenomena of
+          Electricity, Magnetism, and Sound, as involved in
+          its action, with directions for making a
+          Speaking-Telephone. By Professor A. E. DOLBEAR of
+          Tufts College. 16mo. Illustrated. Price 50 cents.
+
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+
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+
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+          Matters. For the use of Printers, Authors,
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+
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+Union._
+
+
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+
+          =HANDBOOK OF LIGHT GYMNASTICS.= By LUCY B. HUNT,
+          Instructor in Gymnastics at Smith (Female)
+          College, Northampton, Mass. 50 cents.
+
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+home."--_New-York World._
+
+
+LOOK OUT FOR SQUALLS.
+
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+          Classic size. $1.00. With numerous diagrams and
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+
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+
+
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+
+          =HANDBOOK OF WOOD-ENGRAVING.= With Practical
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+          $1.00.
+
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+
+
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+          WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 50 cents.
+
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+
+
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+
+          =HANDBOOK OF ELOCUTION SIMPLIFIED.= By WALTER K.
+          FOBES, with an Introduction by GEORGE M. BAKER.
+          Cloth. 50 cents.
+
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+digest of elocution that is both practical and methodical, and low in
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+
+
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+
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+          Short-hand by the "Allen Method." A
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+          G. ALLEN, Principal of the Allen Stenographic
+          Institute, Boston. 50 cents.
+
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+become so expert as to report a lecture _verbatim_."
+
+
+THE STUDY OF GEOGRAPHY MADE PRACTICAL.
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF THE EARTH.= Natural methods in
+          geography. By LOUISA PARSONS HOPKINS, Teacher of
+          Normal Methods in the Swain Free School, New
+          Bedford. 50 cents.
+
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+as a review and generalization of geographical facts, and for general
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+
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+
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+
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+
+
+ABOUT 40,000 SYNONYMOUS WORDS.
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF ENGLISH SYNONYMS=, with an appendix
+          showing the correct use of prepositions, also a
+          collection of foreign phrases. By LOOMIS J.
+          CAMPBELL. Cloth. 50 cents.
+
+"Clearly printed, well arranged, adapted to help any one who writes much
+to enrich his vocabulary, vary his expressions, and secure accuracy in
+conveying his thoughts."--_Boston Journal._
+
+
+"A BOOK OF INCALCULABLE VALUE."
+
+          =HANDBOOK OF CONVERSATION.= Its Faults and its
+          Graces. Compiled by ANDREW P. PEABODY, D.D., LL.D.
+          Comprising: 1. Dr. Peabody's Lecture. 2. Mr.
+          Trench's Lecture. 3. Mr. Perry Gwynn's "A Word to
+          the Wise; or, Hints on the Current Improprieties
+          of Expression in Writing and Speaking." 4.
+          Mistakes and Improprieties in Speaking and Writing
+          Corrected. Cloth. 50 cents.
+
+"It is worth owning, and ought to be studied by many who heedlessly
+misuse their mother tongue."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+
+"WE COMMEND IT HIGHLY."--_Chicago Herald._
+
+          =HINTS AND HELPS= for those who Write, Print, or
+          Read. By BENJAMIN DREW, Proof-reader. 50 cents.
+
+"The information is imparted in a very lively and remembering
+way."--_Boston Commonwealth._
+
+
+ARE YOU INTERESTED IN BUGS?
+
+          =INSECTS;= How to Catch and how to Prepare them
+          for the Cabinet. Comprising a Manual of
+          Instruction for the Field Naturalist. By WALTER P.
+          MANTON. Illustrated. Cloth, 50 cents.
+
+"Nothing essential is omitted: every boy who has any taste for natural
+history should have this neat little volume. The many 'Agassiz Clubs'
+which have sprung up amid the youth of the country, should add it to
+their libraries."--_Chicago Advance._
+
+
+"OF INESTIMABLE VALUE TO YOUNG BOTANISTS."--_Rural New-Yorker._
+
+          =FIELD BOTANY.= A Handbook for the Collector.
+          Containing Instructions for Gathering and
+          Preserving Plants, and the Formation of a
+          Herbarium. Also Complete Instructions in Leaf
+          Photography, Plant Printing, and the Skeletonizing
+          of Leaves. By WALTER P. MANTON. Illustrated. 50
+          cents.
+
+"A most valuable companion. The amount of information conveyed in the
+small compass is surprising."--_Demorest's Monthly._
+
+
+"EVERY NATURALIST OUGHT TO HAVE A COPY FOR IMMEDIATE USE."
+
+          =TAXIDERMY WITHOUT A TEACHER.= Comprising a
+          Complete Manual of Instruction for Preparing and
+          Preserving Birds, Animals, and Fishes; with a
+          Chapter on Hunting and Hygiene; together with
+          Instructions for Preserving Eggs and Making
+          Skeletons, and a number of valuable Recipes. By
+          _Walter P. Manton_. Illustrated. 50 cents.
+
+"We would be glad if all teachers would take this little book, study it
+faithfully, become interested themselves, and interest their pupils in
+this wonderful art."--_Practical Teacher._
+
+
+HOW TO ENLARGE THE ANT TO THE SIZE OF AN ELEPHANT.
+
+          =BEGINNINGS WITH THE MICROSCOPE.= A Working
+          Handbook, containing simple Instructions in the
+          Art and Method of using the Microscope and
+          preparing Objects for Examination. By WALTER P.
+          MANTON, M.D. Small 4to. Cloth, 50 cents.
+
+Uniform with the author's "Handbooks of Natural History," and equally
+valuable.
+
+
+PARLEZ VOUS FRANCAIS?
+
+          =BROKEN ENGLISH.= A Frenchman's Struggles with the
+          English Language. By Professor E. C. DUBOIS,
+          author of "The French Teacher." Cloth, 50 cents;
+          cheap edition, paper, 30 cents.
+
+The Professor's famous lecture, delivered all over the country. Amusing
+as a narrative, instructive as a handbook of French conversation.
+
+
+AN EMERGENCY HANDBOOK.
+
+          =WHAT IS TO BE DONE.= A Handbook for the Nursery,
+          with useful Hints for Children and Adults. By
+          ROBERT B. DIXON, M.D. Small 4to. Cloth, 50 cents.
+
+Dr. Dixon has produced a work that will be gladly welcomed by parents.
+His "remedies" are indorsed by many prominent medical men.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, or sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of
+price._
+
+=LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.=
+
+
+
+
+TROPHIES OF TRAVEL.
+
+
+          =DRIFTING ROUND THE WORLD;= A Boy's Adventures by
+          Sea and Land. By CAPT. CHARLES W. HALL, author of
+          "Adrift in the Ice-Fields," "The Great Bonanza,"
+          etc. With numerous full-page and letter-press
+          illustrations. Royal 8vo. Handsome cover. $1.75.
+          Cloth. Gilt. $2.50.
+
+"Out of the beaten track" in its course of travel, record of adventures,
+and descriptions of life in Greenland, Labrador, Ireland, Scotland,
+England, France, Holland, Russia, Asia, Siberia, and Alaska. Its hero is
+young, bold, and adventurous; and the book is in every way interesting
+and attractive.
+
+
+EDWARD GREEY'S JAPANESE SERIES.
+
+          =YOUNG AMERICANS IN JAPAN;= or, The Adventures of
+          the Jewett Family and their Friend Oto Nambo. With
+          170 full-page and letter-press illustrations. Royal
+          8vo, 7 x 91/2 inches. Handsomely illuminated cover.
+          $1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50.
+
+This story, though essentially a work of fiction, is filled with
+interesting and truthful descriptions of the curious ways of living of
+the good people of the land of the rising sun.
+
+          =THE WONDERFUL CITY OF TOKIO;= or, The Further
+          Adventures of the Jewett Family and their Friend
+          Oto Nambo. With 169 illustrations. Royal 8vo, 7 x
+          91/2 inches. With cover in gold and colors, designed
+          by the author. $1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50.
+
+"A book full of delightful information. The author has the happy gift of
+permitting the reader to view things as he saw them. The illustrations
+are mostly drawn by a Japanese artist, and are very unique."--_Chicago
+Herald._
+
+          =THE BEAR WORSHIPPERS OF YEZO AND THE ISLAND OF
+          KARAFUTO;= being the further Adventures of the
+          Jewett Family and their Friend Oto Nambo. 180
+          illustrations. Boards. $1.75. Cloth, $2.50.
+
+Graphic pen and pencil pictures of the remarkable bearded people who
+live in the north of Japan. The illustrations are by native Japanese
+artists, and give queer pictures of a queer people, who have been seldom
+visited.
+
+
+HARRY W. FRENCH'S BOOKS.
+
+          =OUR BOYS IN INDIA.= The wanderings of two young
+          Americans in Hindustan, with their exciting
+          adventures on the sacred rivers and wild mountains.
+          With 145 illustrations. Royal 8vo, 7 x 91/2 inches.
+          Bound in emblematic covers of Oriental design,
+          $1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50.
+
+While it has all the exciting interest of a romance, it is remarkably
+vivid in its pictures of manners and customs in the land of the Hindu.
+The illustrations are many and excellent.
+
+          =OUR BOYS IN CHINA.= The adventures of two young
+          Americans, wrecked in the China Sea on their
+          return from India, with their strange wanderings
+          through the Chinese Empire. 188 illustrations.
+          Boards, ornamental covers in colors and gold.
+          $1.75. Cloth, $2.50.
+
+This gives the further adventures of "Our Boys" of India fame in the
+land of Teas and Queues.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of
+price._
+
+LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.
+
+
+
+
+HARRY W. FRENCH'S BOOKS.
+
+
+          =THE ONLY ONE.= A Novel. 16mo. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+"The Only One" is a powerful story, dealing with the lights and shadows
+of life in America, Naples, and Persia. Written in a dashing style,
+sometimes deeply tragic, at others humorous in the extreme, it presents
+pictures of human life that attract and interest by their naturalness
+and vividness.
+
+
+          =CASTLE FOAM;= or, The Pauper Prince. A story of
+          real life, true love, and intrigue in the
+          brilliant capital of Prussia. 12mo. $1.50.
+
+"A novel of remarkable power, and strangely unlike any yet written by an
+American. There is something in the beauty and intensity of expression
+that reminds one of Bulwer in his best days."--_Cincinnati Commercial._
+
+
+          =NUNA, THE BRAMIN GIRL.= 16mo. Cloth. $1.25.
+
+"This book is beautifully written, and abounds in novel and dramatic
+incidents."--_St. Louis Globe Democrat._
+
+
+          =EGO=, The Life Struggles of Lawrence Edwards.
+          16mo. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+"Both an interesting and an exciting work, written with freedom,
+effectiveness, and power."--_Philadelphia Item._
+
+          =GEMS OF GENIUS.= 4to. Illuminated covers. Gilt.
+          $2.00.
+
+"Fifty full-page illustrations, selected from the art-works of as many
+foreign painters, with text descriptive of each, from the pen of one of
+our native Ruskins."--_New-York Mail._
+
+
+          ART AND ARTISTS. A history of the birth of art in
+          America, with biographical studies of many
+          prominent American artists, and nearly one hundred
+          illus. from their studios. Cloth. Gilt. $3.00.
+
+"A work that will grow in value every year, showing the most patient
+research and elaboration, skilfully executed, and admirably worked up.
+An honor to the author, an honor to the publishers, an honor to the
+country."--_New-York Evening Post._
+
+
+          =OUR BOYS IN INDIA.= The wanderings of two young
+          Americans in Hindustan, with their exciting
+          adventures on the sacred rivers and wild mountains.
+          With 145 illustrations. Royal octavo, 7 x 91/2
+          inches. Bound in emblematical covers of Oriental
+          design, $1.75. Cloth, black and gold, $2.50.
+
+A new edition of the most popular of books of travel for young folks,
+issued last season. While it has all the exciting interest of a romance,
+it is remarkably vivid in its pictures of manners and customs in the
+land of the Hindu. The illustrations are many and excellent.
+
+
+          =OUR BOYS IN CHINA.= The adventures of two young
+          Americans, wrecked in the China Sea on their
+          return from India, with their strange wanderings
+          through the Chinese Empire. 188 Illustrations.
+          Boards, ornamental covers in colors and gold,
+          $1.75. Cloth, $2.50.
+
+After successfully starting the young heroes of his previous book, "Our
+Boys in India," on their homeward trip, the popular lecturer, extensive
+traveller, and remarkable story-teller, has them wrecked in the China
+Sea, saved, and transported across China: giving him an opportunity to
+spread for young folks an appetizing feast of good things.
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of
+price._
+
+=LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.=
+
+
+
+MISS VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND'S BOOKS.
+
+Uniform Edition. Cloth. $1.50 Each.
+
+
+BUT A PHILISTINE.
+
+"Another novel by the author of 'A Woman's Word' and 'Lenox Dare,' will
+be warmly welcomed by hosts of readers of Miss Townsend's stories. There
+is nothing of the 'sensational,' or so-called realistic, school in her
+writings. On the contrary, they are noted for their healthy moral tone
+and pure sentiment, and yet are not wanting in STRIKING SITUATIONS AND
+DRAMATIC INCIDENTS."--_Chicago Journal._
+
+
+LENOX DARE.
+
+"Her stories, always sunny and healthful, touch the springs of social
+life, and make the reader better acquainted with this great human
+organization of which we all form a part, and tend to bring him into
+more intimate sympathy with what is most pure and noble in our nature.
+Among the best of her productions we place the volume here under notice.
+In temper and tone the volume is calculated to exert a healthful and
+elevating influence."--_New-England Methodist._
+
+
+DARYLL GAP; or, Whether it Paid.
+
+A story of the petroleum days, and of a family who struck oil. "Miss
+Townsend is a very entertaining writer, and, while she entertains, at
+the same time instructs. Her plots are well arranged, and her characters
+are clearly and strongly drawn. The present volume will not detract from
+the reputation she has heretofore enjoyed."--_Pittsburg Recorder._
+
+
+A WOMAN'S WORD, AND HOW SHE KEPT IT.
+
+"The celebrity of Virginia F. Townsend as an authoress, her brilliant
+descriptive powers, and pure, vigorous imagination, will insure a hearty
+welcome for the above-entitled volume in the writer's happiest vein.
+Every woman will understand the self-sacrifice of Genevieve Weir, and
+will entertain only scorn for the miserable man who imbittered her life
+to hide his own wrong-doing."--_Fashion Quarterly._
+
+
+THAT QUEER GIRL.
+
+"A fresh, wholesome book about good men and good women, bright and
+cheery in style, and pure in morals. Just the book to take a young
+girl's fancy, and help her to grow up, like Madeline and Argia, into the
+sweetness of real girlhood; there being more of that same sweetness
+under the fuss and feathers of the present day than a casual observer
+might suppose."--_People's Monthly._
+
+
+ONLY GIRLS.
+
+"This volume shows how two persons, 'only girls,' saved two men from
+crime, even from ruin of body and soul; and all this came about in their
+lives without their purpose or knowledge at the time, and not at all as
+they or anybody else would have planned it; but it comes about well and
+naturally enough. The story is ingenious and graphic, and kept the
+writer of this notice up far into the small hours of yesterday
+morning."--_Washington Chronicle._
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers and newsdealers, and sent by mail, postpaid on
+receipt of price._
+
+=LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.=
+
+
+
+
+LEE AND SHEPARD'S DOLLAR NOVELS.
+
+
+          =JOHN THORN'S FOLKS.= By ANGELINE TEAL. Cloth.
+          $1.00.
+
+
+          =BARBARA THAYER.= By MISS ANNIE JENNESS. Cloth.
+          $1.00. Popular Edition. Paper. 50 cents.
+
+
+          =THE ONLY ONE.= A Novel by HARRY W. FRENCH, author
+          of "Castle Foam," "Nuna, the Bramin Girl," "Our
+          Boys in China," "Our Boys in India," etc. 16mo.
+          Cloth. $1.00.
+
+This work was published as a serial in "The Boston Globe," and made a
+sensation. It will have a large sale in its new dress.
+
+
+          =LORD OF HIMSELF.= A Novel by FRANCIS H.
+          UNDERWOOD, author of "Handbook of English
+          Literature," etc. A new edition. 16mo. Cloth.
+          $1.00.
+
+"This novel is one that has come into American literature to
+stay."--_Boston Post._
+
+"Spirited, fresh, clean-cut, and deeply thoughtful."--_Boston Gazette._
+
+
+          =DORA DARLING:= The Daughter of the Regiment. By
+          J. G. AUSTIN. 16mo. Cloth, $l.00. A thrilling
+          story of the great Rebellion.
+
+
+          =OUTPOST.= By J. G. AUSTIN. 16mo. Cloth. $1.00. A
+          Sequel to "Dora Darling," but each story complete
+          in itself.
+
+
+          =NUMA ROUMESTAN.= By ALPHONSE DAUDET. Translated
+          from the French by Virginia Champlin. With ten
+          illustrations. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+The latest work of fiction from the pen of Alphonse Daudet, and derives
+its main interest from the generally accepted belief that the hero of
+the novel is really Gambetta, the French statesman.
+
+
+          =KINGS IN EXILE.= By ALPHONSE DAUDET. A new
+          edition. 16mo. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+
+          =LIKE A GENTLEMAN.= By Mrs. MARY A. DENISON. A
+          Temperance Novel, by a well-known author. Cloth.
+          $1.00.
+
+Mrs. Denison is well known as the author of "That Husband of Mine," a
+summer book which exceeded in sale any thing published in America. This
+book is in a more thoughtful vein, but is very entertaining. The style
+is bright and witty.
+
+          =HIS TRIUMPH.= By the author of "That Husband of
+          Mine," "Like a Gentleman," etc. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+
+          =A TIGHT SQUEEZE.= The adventures of a gentleman,
+          who, on a wager of ten thousand dollars, undertook
+          to go from New York to New Orleans in three weeks,
+          without money or the assistance of friends. Cloth,
+          $1.00. Paper, 50 cents.
+
+
+          =PUDDLEFORD PAPERS;= or, Humors of the West. By H.
+          R. RILEY. Illustrated. A new edition. $1.00.
+
+"This is a rich book. Any one who wants a genuine, hearty laugh, should
+purchase this volume."--_Columbus Gazette._
+
+
+          =THE FORTUNATE ISLAND=, and other Stories. By MAX
+          ADELER. Illustrated. Cloth. $1.00.
+
+"Max Adeler is a fellow of infinite humor."--_Albany Evening Journal._
+
+"Extravagant, of course, are these stories, but entertaining and
+amusing, and instructive too."--MARGERY DEANE, _Newport News._
+
+
+_Sold by all booksellers and newsdealers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on
+receipt of price._
+
+LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.
+
+
+
+
+YOUNG FOLKS' HEROES OF HISTORY.
+
+By GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE.
+
+Handsomely Illustrated. Price per vol., $1.25. Sets in neat boxes.
+
+
+VASCO DA GAMA: HIS VOYAGES AND ADVENTURES.
+
+"Da Gama's history is full of striking adventures, thrilling incidents,
+and perilous situations; and Mr. Towle, while not sacrificing historical
+accuracy, has so skilfully used his materials, that we have a charmingly
+romantic tale."--_Rural New-Yorker._
+
+
+PIZARRO: HIS ADVENTURES AND CONQUESTS.
+
+"No hero of romance possesses greater power to charm the youthful reader
+than the conqueror of Peru. Not even King Arthur, or Thaddeus of Warsaw,
+has the power to captivate the imagination of the growing boy. Mr. Towle
+has handled his subject in a glowing but truthful manner; and we venture
+the assertion, that, were our children led to read such books as this,
+the taste for unwholesome, exciting, wrong-teaching boys' books--dime
+novels in books' clothing--would be greatly diminished, to the great
+gain of mental force and moral purpose in the rising generation."--_Chicago
+Alliance._
+
+
+MAGELLAN; OR, THE FIRST VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD.
+
+"What more of romantic and spirited adventures any bright boy could want
+than is to be found in this series of historical biography, it is
+difficult to imagine. This volume is written in a most sprightly manner;
+and the life of its hero, Fernan Magellan, with its rapid stride from
+the softness of a petted youth to the sturdy courage and persevering
+fortitude of manhood, makes a tale of marvellous fascination."--_Christian
+Union._
+
+
+MARCO POLO: HIS TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES.
+
+"The story of the adventurous Venetian, who six hundred years ago
+penetrated into India and Cathay and Thibet and Abyssinia, is pleasantly
+and clearly told; and nothing better can be put into the hands of the
+school boy or girl than this series of the records of noted travellers.
+The heroism displayed by these men was certainly as great as that ever
+shown by conquering warrior; and it was exercised in a far nobler
+cause,--the cause of knowledge and discovery, which has made the
+nineteenth century what it is."--_Graphic._
+
+
+RALEGH: HIS EXPLOITS AND VOYAGES.
+
+"This belongs to the 'Young Folks' Heroes of History' series, and deals
+with a greater and more interesting man than any of its predecessors.
+With all the black spots on his fame, there are few more brilliant and
+striking figures in English history than the soldier, sailor, courtier,
+author, and explorer, Sir Walter Ralegh. Even at this distance of time,
+more than two hundred and fifty years after his head fell on the
+scaffold, we cannot read his story without emotion. It is graphically
+written, and is pleasant reading, not only for young folks, but for old
+folks with young hearts."--_Woman's Journal._
+
+
+DRAKE: THE SEA-LION OF DEVON.
+
+Drake was the foremost sea-captain of his age, the first English admiral
+to send a ship completely round the world, the hero of the magnificent
+victory which the English won over the Invincible Armada. His career was
+stirring, bold, and adventurous, from early youth to old age.
+
+
+_Sold by all Booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of
+price._
+
+=LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers BOSTON.=
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Varied hyphenation was retained. Boldface type is depicted by = and
+italic by _.
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 28, repeated word "a" removed from text (blossomed into a bell)
+
+Page 35, "iniquitious" changed to "iniquitous" (most iniquitous
+proceeding)
+
+Page 39, "beginnnig" changed to "beginning" (my heart beginning)
+
+Page 82, "heartly" changed to "heartily" (were heartily ashamed)
+
+Page 101, "Sevres" changed to "Sevres" (pier of Sevres)
+
+Page 101, "Sevres" changed to "Sevres" (transferred to Sevres)
+
+Page 130, "Hotel" changed to "Hotel" (and the old Hotel de Ville)
+
+Page 212, "beautifull" changed to "beautiful" (head, past beautiful)
+
+Page 216, "momentry" changed to "momentary" (a momentary life)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's An American Girl Abroad, by Adeline Trafton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD ***
+
+***** This file should be named 32289.txt or 32289.zip *****
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