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YOUNG ENGLAND." 
 
SKETCHES 
 
 Beyond the Sea. 
 
 By FKANC B. WILKIE, 
 
 ("POLTDTO,") 
 
 Author of "Davenport, Past and Present;'''' "'Walks About 
 Chicago;'''' '■'■The Chicago Bar,''^ etc. 
 
 ,:■ Or ■■O.iQTr- 
 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 HAZLITT & REED, PRINTERS, 172 AND 174 CLARK STREET. 
 1879. 
 
 9h 
 
IfBlt LIBRARY 
 I or CONGRESS 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, 
 
 bt franc B. WILKIE, 
 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 
 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The letters which make np this book are a part of 
 those sent to The Chicago Times from Europe, during 
 the years 1877 and 1878. Thev include no portion of 
 the correspondence which related to the Russo-Tiirkish 
 war, or English politics. 
 
 When their issue in their present form was first de- 
 cided on, it was thought best to modify the views 
 taken of the English people in the earlier portion of 
 the correspondence. It afterwards occurred to the 
 writer that it would be more in accord with the details 
 of the situation to let the letters stand as originally 
 published; because their progress keeps step with the 
 march of one who visits a strange country, encounters 
 first its more repellant qualities, and gradually moves 
 on till one gets face to face with its real, inner life. 
 The letters herewith given are believed to be fairly 
 representative of observations, whose commencement 
 developed a thorough dislike of, and whose end was a 
 hearty regard, and a most substantial respect for, those 
 among whom they were made. It should be noted 
 that the fault-finding, in the case of the English, is 
 confined to what may be termed their external char- 
 acter; and that there is no partisanship in the writer's 
 views, because he has nowhere failed to denounce the 
 weaknesses and follies of his own countrymen when- 
 ever the opportunity to do so fairly presented itself. 
 
 (3) 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 In Part II., while it is true that there was an excur- 
 sion party made up substantially as represented, it is 
 also true that the majority of the conversations re- 
 ported did not occur. The writer, in using the four 
 characters, was governed by a desire to present things 
 from various points of view; such as they would be 
 naturally seen by travelers of different ages, sexes, and 
 conditions in life. 
 
 For the permission to use these letters in book form, 
 the writer is indebted to Wilbur F, Stoi'ey, Esq., 
 editor and proprietor of The Chicago Times; a gen- 
 tleman whose great ability as a journalist, and inces- 
 sant devotion to his profession, have in no sense im- 
 paired the kindliness of his nature. 
 
 F. B. W. 
 
 Chicago, March, 1879. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. — ENGLAND. 
 
 XETTEB. PAGE. 
 
 I. In the Wilderness 9 
 
 II. A Glance Around, 12 
 
 III. In Ediaburgli Town, 17 
 
 IV. A Few Hours in Parliament, 27 
 
 V. English Oratory, 34 
 
 VI. The Happy Briton, 38 
 
 VII. External Views of the Briton 43 
 
 VIII. The London Fire-Department, ...... 47 
 
 IX. English Suavity, 56 
 
 X. " Trying it on a Dog," 62 
 
 XL The World's Metropolis, 68 
 
 XII. London Journalism, 74 
 
 XIII. London Journalism, 81 
 
 XIV. London Journalism, 86 
 
 XV. Americans Abroad 93 
 
 XVL The Yankee Abroad, 99 
 
 XVIL Among the Slums, . . . ' 107 
 
 XVIII. The London Slums, . . 114 
 
 XIX. British Red Tape, 121 
 
 XX. Getting into Position, - . . . 126 
 
 XXI. Curiosities in London Journalism, .... 132 
 
 XXII. Philological Excentricities, 136 
 
 XXIII. British Thoroughbreds 142 
 
 XXIV. British Cattle Show 150 
 
 XXV. Book-Makers, 154 
 
 XXVI. A Model Prison, 164 
 
 XXVII. A British Prison, . 171 
 
 XXVIII. London 'Bus Drivers 176 
 
 XXIX. George Eliot 183 
 
 XXX. Department of the Exterior, 188 
 
 (5) 
 
6 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER. PAGE. 
 
 XXXI. Prominent Men, 194 
 
 XXXII. Parliamentary Notabilities, 302 
 
 XXXIII. Gladstone's Meeting, etc., 210 
 
 XXXIV. All About Legs 313 
 
 XXXV. Leg Athletics, 219 
 
 XXXVI. English Social Qualities, . 228 
 
 XXXVII. The Boat-Race, 335 
 
 XXXVIII. Westminster Abbey, 344 
 
 PART II.— THE CONTINENT. 
 
 XXXIX. English and French, 353. 
 
 XL. Exposition Notes, 259' 
 
 XLI. An Excursion Party, 268 
 
 XLII. Getting Oti', 272 
 
 XLIII. Seeing Waterloo, 281 
 
 XLIV. Doing Holland, 287 
 
 XLV. Around Amsterdam, 395 
 
 XLVI. Amsterdam to the Rhine, 803 
 
 XLVII. Up the Rhine, 311 
 
 XLVIII. Up the Rhine, 330 
 
 XLIX. Through the Alps, 337 
 
 L. Among the Alps, 334 
 
 LI. An Open Letter 341 
 
 LII. The Excursionists in Paris, 349 
 
 LIII. The Excursionists in Paris, 357 
 
 LIV. Our Baby on the Steamer 363: 
 
PART I. --ENGLAND. 
 
SKETCHES 
 
 BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 IN THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 London, June 25, 1877. 
 Ii^ I 'AVINGr been here only some three days, I am unprepared 
 rill' "j. ^^ write anything intelligent in reference to the war, or 
 ^-^^ anj^ other subject, in fact. London roars like a hundred 
 Niagaras. The new comer is stunned by the tremendous clamor. 
 It takes a week to become used to this uproar. Meanwhile, 
 thought is suspended, the perceptions are dulled, the senses be- 
 come as if chloroformed. 
 
 A stranger who enters into this diabolical region of racket goes 
 about as helpless as a blind man lost in an interminable forest. 
 I have lost myself at least a thousand times since I have been 
 here. Sometimes others have found me when thus lost, and 
 sometimes I have found myself. Rarely the latter, however, be- 
 cause after having gone up one street and down another, and 
 through four others, and then discovered 1 was just where I 
 started from, instead of being, as I supposed, two miles away — T 
 have been bothered with the idea that it perhaps might not be 
 myself, but somebody else whom I had found going about thus 
 lost and bewildered. Generall}^, under such circumstances, I 
 have referred the matter to arbitration — let it out to a policeman. 
 All this is merely preliminary to saying that, as I as j'et have 
 not had time or opportunity to get posted on the war question, or 
 any other of importance, I shall have to devote this letter to 
 
 (9) 
 
10 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 something less complex. There's the ocean voyage, for instance. 
 It lias been written about before, perhaps. I think I have some- 
 where seen something in the public jiriuts about a trip across the 
 ocean; and, if such be the fact, then anything of the kind would 
 not have the charm of complete novelty. 
 
 They are pretty much alike, these ocean voyages— as much so, 
 almost, as one trip from Chicago to Omaha is like every other 
 one. There is always the same crowd at the piers at starting. 
 There is the husband who can't go, and his wife who can; and 
 liis grief at parting is generally intense in proportion as she is 
 young and handsome, and he reflects upon the awful temptations 
 of the further shoi'es There is the wife who can't go, and the 
 husband who must. She weeps, but whether from joy or sorrow 
 varies according to circumstances. There was one of those bereft 
 souls at our parting. Her husband stood by the guards throwing 
 yearning glances at her through misty eyes. She had her face 
 buried in a handkerchief, and the handkerchief rested upon the 
 shoulder of a handsome young fellow, who seemed in nowise un- 
 happy at the situation. As I afterward learned from the bereaved 
 husband that it was neither brother nor cousin, but a " friend of 
 mine, a devilish good fellow, you know," I am satisfied that there 
 was one wife who found the separation at least not beyond 
 endurance. 
 
 Two-thirds of the men and a certain jiercentage of the women 
 commence the voyage by ballasting themselves very liberally 
 with stimulants. Why men should get full on this i^articular 
 occasion, any more than at a wedding or a funeral, or going to 
 take a walk, or planting their mother-in-law, I know not. They 
 do, however, and the result is that " sea-sickness " commences 
 early in the voyage. One passenger was taken down by this 
 malady before we left the dock, while two or three others, having, 
 perhaps, a fear of becoming affected, were helped by sympathiz- 
 ing servants to their state-rooms. In fact, the most of the "sea- 
 sickness" on our trip occurred before we had lost sight of the 
 steeples of New York. One or two young misses left the break- 
 fast table the first morning out with very pale faces and tightly 
 compressed lips ; but this was all. The sea was almost as smooth 
 as glass; and, were it not for the absence of the odor, we might 
 have believed ourselves sailing along Chicago River. 
 
 On the voyage there are three things for the male passenger to 
 do : To do nothing, to make love, or to drink British ale. Which 
 
IN THE WILDERNESS. 11 
 
 is the most demoralizing of the three I am unprepared to say; 
 nor will I assume to advise any one about to cross the ocean as to 
 which of these three rocks it is most desirable, or least undesirable 
 to split upon. The love making is perhaps the most pleasant and 
 exciting while in progress; but then, it is much worse to "get 
 over " than a debauch arising from Allsop or Dry Verzenay. 
 Perhaps the role of doing nothing is the thing, because, while it 
 does not afford any positive pleasure, it has the substantial rec- 
 ommendation that it nowhere affords any supplementary pangs. 
 
 The trip was absolutely without incident. We left to the half 
 hour as advertised, and reached Liverpool within an hour of the 
 time that had been set for our arrival. The whole run had the 
 regularity of that of a well-managed railway train. 
 
 As this letter is to be devoted wholly to nothing in particular, 
 let me glance over the depot of the Midland Railway, which con- 
 nects Liverpool with London. It is grand in its proportions, 
 great in its dimensions, and complete in its finish, as appear to 
 be all the railway stations in this country. 
 
 What will attract the admiration of any American is the mar- 
 velous attention to detail everywhere exhibited. The dining 
 rooms are graded according to the purse of the traveler, as are 
 the cars, into first, second, and third classes. Everywhere are the 
 most scrupulous cleanliness and the most exact order. There is 
 a large wash-room with an abundance of towels, combs, brushes, 
 and other usual supplies. 
 
 The water-closets are in ample rooms, with cheerful walls, and 
 are as clean and free from odor as any similar appliance in any 
 private house or hotel in Chicago. Herein our British brethren 
 have it a long way the best of us. There is no excuse for the 
 atrocious water-closets with which the great majority of Ameri- 
 can railway stations are provided. Their existence shows a most 
 wretched indifference on the part of officials to the comfort of 
 their patrons. 
 
 The difference in the two systems of railway management ap- 
 pears to be that among us the official is the magnate, the digni- 
 tary, and the public the servant, while here the official is the 
 servant and the public the master. Perhaps the most desirable 
 situation is one located about midway between the two, in which 
 the public and officialism should occupy a common level, while 
 each should compromise between its own dignity and the de- 
 mands or rights of the others. 
 
12 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 This letter may be very stupid, but it shall at least have one 
 merit, that of being short. As soon as I can take the cotton out 
 of my ears and am able to go around a corner M'ithout a guide, I 
 may be able to furnish something of more interest. Meanwhile, 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 A GLANCE AROUND. 
 
 London, June 28, 1877. 
 "rir^THILE the Russians are crossing the Danube and getting 
 ^^^^)^ their forces in line, preparatory to forcing the Balkan 
 
 ■^ defenses, I may as yveU fill up the time by handling 
 some commonplace subjects. We Yankees have something to 
 learn from Johnny Bull ; and I am proud to say that, in many 
 respects, we are prepared to reciprocate. We know how to keep 
 a hotel, how to check baggage, how to build and run elevators, 
 and how to do a hundred other things concerning which our 
 British cousins have either very limited information or else know 
 absolutely nothing. 
 
 Wherein those differences lie, and what their character, may 
 perhaps be best shown by touching here and there upon a few, 
 things familiar to both countries. Many of the comforts of life 
 diftereuces in peoples, and characteristics of nations are made up 
 of comparatively little things, a few of which are herewith pre- 
 sented. 
 
 The most intolerable crucifixion which an American has to 
 undergo is at the hands of the English barber. He is not a bar- 
 T^er, however; he is a "hair dresser " ; but he adds shaving, or 
 skinning, faces to his multifarious accomplishments. In one 
 shop, after an attendant had taken some of the hair and most of 
 the skin from my jaws and throat, he inquired with all the vigor 
 of a Cliicago operator about to dispose of a piece of real estate, if 
 I did not want my corns pared or removed. Upon answering 
 him that I was just out of corns, he proposed to clean my teeth. 
 To this I demurred, on the ground that I was thinking some of 
 buying a tooth-brush and going into the business on my own ac- 
 count. Not yet repressed, he contemplated the patches of gore 
 
A GLANCE AROUND. IS 
 
 on my face, — produced by his razor, — and proposed to sell me a 
 bottle of wash which was a sure cure for all such lacerations. 
 " Mangling done here " should be the legend written over every 
 English barber shop. The chair is an ordinary low, cheap, mod- 
 ern affair with arms, and a narrow head rest, which seems rather 
 more designed for breaking the neck than supporting the head. 
 But it's all right and logical. A man, even though an English- 
 man, can't do everything well. If he excel in cutting corns or 
 cleaning teeth, he cannot be expected to excel in shaving. Life 
 is too short for the complete acquisition of all these accomplish- 
 ments. The manipulation of coi-ns requires an artistic mind — 
 one too lofty and too ethereal to ever fully master the coarse 
 and vulgar details of shaving a face. Yankees coming here will 
 do well enough to bring their corns, but, if they cannot shave 
 themselves, they had better leave their faces at home. 
 
 I am about to relate something which will be regarded in Chi- 
 cago as a scandalous exaggeration. 
 
 Passing down Chancery lane a couple of mornings ago, I saw 
 a drunken man. The sight of a drunken man in this great 
 metropolis is not so singular as to deserve special mention ; but 
 this is not all there is of it. He was engaged in an altercation 
 with a policeman, was this inebriated Briton. He called the 
 municipal guardian some hard names, did this obfuscated En- 
 glishman. He went further; he struck out from the shoulder, — 
 somewhat unsteadily, it is true, — and " landed one " on the police- 
 man's " bread basket." 
 
 Now, what was done by this insulted and outraged policeman ? 
 I hear this answer frorii distant Chicago : 
 
 " First, he took the offender by the collar and mopped a 
 couple of square rods of the street with him. 
 
 " Then he tore off his clothes, except a piece of his shirt and a 
 remnant of one stocking. 
 
 "Then he went at him with his club, smashed his jaw, broke 
 his skull, flattened his nose, and reduced the number of his 
 front teeth. 
 
 "After this he took him by the legs and dragged him to the 
 station, where he was rammed into a cell and allowed to remain 
 in gore and unconsciousness till the next morning." 
 
 Ah, no, Chicago, that won't do. You are judging things over 
 here from your own standpoint. You are all wrong. Nothing of 
 the kind occurred. The policeman simply put out his hand and 
 
14 
 
 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 gave the fellow a slight push, which sent him off the sidewalk 
 into the street. 
 
 This is grossly improbable, I know, and I dislike to state it to 
 an intelligent Chicago public. It is, however, not so improbable 
 as what I have yet to state. For pushing the man into the street 
 the policeman was arrested, and the next morning was tined by 
 the magistrate ! 
 
 Roars of incredulous laughter from every voting precinct in 
 Chicago. 
 
 The London policemen are not so fine in their physique as our 
 Chicago guardians — who, by the way, are probably the finest 
 appearing body of men in the world. But the London police- 
 man, although rarely a giant, has some compensating traits. He 
 can be found occasionally when he is wanted. He is always 
 civil when applied to for information. He is not hampered by 
 the interests of ward politics. In fine, his life is so arranged that 
 he has some little time each day to devote to his business as a 
 policeman. Upon the whole, I think he has an occasional point 
 of superiority over the average policeman of the States. 
 
 "We will tally one on barbers, while Johnny Bull may take a 
 
A GLANCE ABOUND. 15 
 
 mark on policemen. On hackmen, the score is certain to go 
 against us. Nobody here, on reaching a depot, would mistake a 
 hack driver for an Indian howling through some fantastic war 
 dance. He never shakes a whip at you, or seizes upon your lug- 
 gage, or yells in your ear, or floods your face with the fumes of a 
 tobacco-laden breath. He doesn't stamp, spit, or swear or ges- 
 ticulate. An American wouldn't know him without a letter of 
 introduction. The hacks are drawn up in a line, and the drivers 
 sit quietly upon their seats. An official inquires as to the kind 
 of vehicle the passenger wishes, and then he is led to the fore- 
 most one in the line. He enters this and is driven away, the 
 whole affair occupying but a moment, and not attended with any 
 noise or altercation. 
 
 Of course, it is scarcely to be expected that the free-born sover- 
 eign who bosses a hack in our glorious land would ever consent 
 to submit to any such slavish regulations. Still, if his free and 
 soaring soul would consent to come down to the level of the 
 British hackman, it would be an enormous comfort to the Amer- 
 ican traveler. This, however, is too much to ask. Let us wait, 
 and meanwhile continue to suffer. We cannot consent to adopt 
 the examples of the effete despotisms of the Old World. 
 
 It is a very common idea or belief on our side of the water that 
 living is much cheaper in England than in America. Whatever 
 may be the fact elsewhere, it is certain that London is far more 
 expensive in this respect than either Chicago or New York. 
 
 The liotels here charge from five to ten dollars a day for accom- 
 modations which are in nowise comparable to those furnished 
 by American hotels of equal pretensions. At a restaurant the 
 cheapest kind of a dinner of two courses costs about a dollar. 
 Several of these places advertise what they term two shilling six 
 penny dinners, andwhichlooks on the face to be very reasonable — 
 being only about sixty-five cents in American money. But when 
 the customer comes to settle he finds a charge of fifteen cents for 
 "attendance," and something else for other masters, which, with 
 the gratuity to the waiter, will bring the cost of the whole to 
 about one dollar. 
 
 A small bedroom costs about four dollars a week, and this 
 only on the upper floors. On the lower floors the cost of a bed- 
 room with a small sitting room is from twelve to twenty dollars 
 a week. To this outlay must be added the cost of omnibuses or 
 other form of travel, because nobody lives in the city proper. 
 
16 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Everybody does business in the city and lives in some one of 
 the suburbs or additions. 
 
 Wherever one lives, whether in hotels or in lodgings, he never 
 knows what his expenses are until he comes to settle. Extras 
 seem to form no inconsiderable stock in trade of the thrifty 
 Englishman. The soap is extra, the towels are extra, the light is 
 extra, boots are extra, until in settling an account the extras be- 
 come the bill, and the regular charges are a comparatively insig- 
 nificant element in the transaction. It is pretty nearly safe to 
 estimate that extras will nearly or quite double the original 
 amount of the agreement. 
 
 In some respects clothing is somewhat cheaper than at home. 
 A fair, substantial business suit can be had, made to order, for 
 about twenty dollars in gold. Finer goods cost about the same, 
 while gloves are scarcely more than half what they are in the 
 States. Upon the whole, one can dress more cheaply here than 
 at home, but in other respects the cost of living is from one-third 
 to one-half more. 
 
 In some of the hotels in London they have introduced the 
 elevator, known here as the " lift." If a person has all day to go- 
 from the top of a hotel to the bottom, or mce versa, the " lifts " 
 are a good thing — otherwise not. Once in them, it requires a. 
 good deal of nice calculation and close observation to know 
 whether or not they are in motion; and if so, whether they are 
 going up or down. When at the Charing Cross Hotel, I made 
 one or two pilgrimages in the " lift," but had to give it up, lest 
 during some one of the journeys peace would be declared in Turkey 
 and the armies all disbanded before I should get up or down 
 where I could hear of it. The individual who is the engineer on 
 this particular " lift " is as deliberate and immovable as the ma- 
 chine. I said to him : 
 
 " This is a very slow ' lift.' Now I can tell you how you can 
 get people up and down much faster." 
 
 He looked very much astonished, as if the idea of going anj,- 
 faster were preposterous and absurd. Finally, after pondering 
 over the matter a few moments, he said : 
 
 '"Ow?" 
 
 " Well, you can do it by anchoring the 'lift' and then raising 
 and lowering the rest of the hotel." 
 
 He looked at me with a sort of dumb astonishment for a while, 
 and then, failing to comprehend, he evidently put me down as a 
 
IN EDINBURGH TOWN. 17 
 
 crazy "furriner," and wrapped himself in a contemptuous 
 reserve. 
 
 Speaking of " furriners " reminds me that one morning on the 
 steamer I asked the waiter, an unmistakable Briton, if the eggs 
 were fresh. He said they were not. Why? 
 
 " Cos furrin heggs isn't to be depended on, you knaaw." 
 
 Further inquiry revealed the fact that the supply of " heggs " on 
 board was of American origin. My patriotic instincts outraged 
 by this indirect insult to the American flag, I queried : 
 
 " Look here ! Do you mean to insinuate that American hens 
 can't lay fresh eggs? " 
 
 Just then he conveniently had a call to another part of the 
 saloon ; but I am satisfied from his appearance as he left that he 
 does believe the American hen utterly incapable of laying an egg 
 less than from two to five weeks old. 
 
 So much for British prejudice against " furriners." 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 IK EDINBURGH TOWN. 
 
 London, July 14, 1877. 
 
 LTHOUGH this letter is dated London, it will mainly 
 have reference to some features connected with a late, brief 
 visit to Scotland. My correspondence * from Edinburgh 
 was so much taken up with Pan-Presbyterianism that much else 
 of interest was not made a matter of notice. 
 
 One of the very first things which will present itself to one 
 who goes from England to Scotland, or vice versa, is the marked 
 difference in the sociability of the people on both sides of the 
 dividing line. I had an excellent and characteristic illustration 
 of this difference in my journey between the English and Scotch 
 capitals. 
 
 At King's Cross Station, London, I found an unoccupied com- 
 partment, of which I took possession. Just before the train 
 started, a young Englishman made his entrance, escorted by 
 the guard, and from some remarks he made to the other, I infer- 
 
 * Omitted. 
 
18 
 
 SKETCHES BEYOKD THE SEA. 
 
 red that he was laboring under a high pressure of disgust at his 
 inability to secure a compartment all to himself. He gave me a 
 slight glance, and took the corner furthest from mine, and thence- 
 forth he devoted himself to making himself supremely alone. 
 He turned his back to me, glued his face to the opposite window, 
 and steadily peered at nothing out in the darkness. His position 
 was an exceedingly uncomfortable one ; and as he evidently took 
 it in order to avoid the possibility of speaking, or being spoken 
 to, I felt somewhat sorry for him, especially as I entertained no 
 conversational designs whatever in reference to him. 
 
 We made occasional stops. "Whenever we began to "slow 
 down" for a halt, he would apparently be seized by the dreadful 
 apprehension that I might ask him what station it was, or how 
 far it was to somewhere, or some other equally frightful inter- 
 rogatory. To avoid such a dire calamity, he would drop the 
 
 mm 
 
 A SOCIABLE BRITON. 
 
 glass, thrust himself far outside the car, exposing only a broad, 
 substantial British base, supported by a pair of sturdy legs ; and 
 would thus remain until the train, having gotten under full 
 motion, the danger of a remark had passed away. 
 
IN EDINBDEGH TOWN. 19 
 
 Just after daylight he left. Not a word had passed between us. 
 He left with the supreme satisfaction of knowing that the beauti- 
 ful chastity of English reserve had not been damaged by any 
 illicit or any other kind of intercourse with a stranger. He 
 was as happy as must have been some Sabine virgin who was 
 overlooked in the fierce raid that bore away her shrinking and 
 shrieking sisters. 
 
 A half hour later we crossed the Tweed and were in Scotland. 
 At Brunswick, there entered my compartment a young, hand- 
 some, intelligent Scotsman, who was about the same age as my 
 companion of the night. He said '' Gude mornin' " in a hearty, 
 good-natured way ; and, five minutes later, we were conversing 
 as glibly and as unaffectedly as if we had known each other 
 for months. He knew all the proprietors by whose beautiful 
 domains we were passing; he knew the name of every rock, 
 ruined church, tower, castle, villa, and village ; and all these he 
 gave me in response to my questions, or volunteered information 
 when I could think of no questions to ask. 
 
 The difference between my two traveling acquaintances is 
 exactly the difference between the English and Scotch charac- 
 ter in respect of sociability, geniality, and a regard for the com- 
 fort of others. With but a single brief card of introduction to 
 a resident of Edinburgh, I made more acquaintances during my 
 stay there of a week than I probably will make in England 
 in five years — were my banishment to extend over so long a 
 period. 
 
 Coming from Edinburgh to London I was fortunate enough to 
 have for my companion a large and wealthy manufacturer from 
 Glasgow. A more genial gentleman I have rarely met. The 
 very least that I could promise him when w^e parted was that I 
 would find time to spend a week with him, at his country resi- 
 dence, in one of the most romantic portions of Scotland. 
 
 I do not flatter myself that the treatment I received was wholly 
 from compliment to my nationality — although it is a fact that 
 the Scotch are very favorably disposed toward America and 
 Americans, while precisely the reverse seems to be the case in 
 England. I heard but one thing cliarged against America in 
 Scotland, and that is the character of our tariff laws. This is a 
 grievance among the manufacturers, and one which they omit 
 no opportunity of bringing to the front. So far as I could I 
 applied balm to their wounds, by assuring them that the great 
 
20 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 party of the future, as it once was of the past, is the democratic 
 party, every member of which is pledged to absolute free trade, 
 and with a tendency even to pay a small premium to encourage 
 the import of the better class of foreign goods. If I did not 
 relieve them wholly, I at least left them hopeful for the future, 
 and the success of the democratic party. 
 
 Speaking of American goods, there are evidences everywhere 
 of American push, energy, and success that are highly gratifying. 
 I see our reapers in every meadow and wheat-field wherever I 
 go into the country. A Grand Rapids man came on the same 
 steamer that I did, and although it has been less than four weeks 
 since landing he has disposed of a very large number of forks, 
 shovels, and the like, which he brought with him, and has taken 
 orders for all he can supply for a long time to come. 
 
 " Oh, what lovely beef," said an American lady at the Balmo- 
 ral Hotel in Edinburgh, one day at dinner. " Why can't we have 
 such beef at home? And the mutton we get here — its just per- 
 fectly lovely! I've heard so often of Scotch mutton; but I had 
 no idea that it is so superior! " 
 
 Hereupon, having previously posted myself, I proceeded to 
 inform my fair compatriot that every pound of beef and mutton 
 she had ever eaten in Edinburgh was American; and that Edin- 
 burgh is as much dependent upon America for its supply of beef 
 as Chicago is upon Lake Michigan for its water. 
 
 Such is the fact. I am not in possession of statistics as to the 
 trade in American meats, but 1 believe that Edinburgh alone 
 consumes some many car-loads each week of American beef and 
 mutton. A very large trade in canned American meats is carried 
 on, not only in Great Britain but in every state in continental 
 Europe. I cannot now go into this matter of American goods to 
 any considerable extent. I will only saj^ that the American 
 " drummer," or commercial traveler, is about as common here 
 as he is in any part of the country surrounding Chicago. 
 
 I am not going to bore The Times with any guide-book descrip- 
 tion of Edinburgh. I did not have time to take in the town. I 
 climbed up to the castle, of course, and from its lofty battlements 
 took in one of the loveliest scenes ever spread out on the surface 
 of this dull earth. I visited a dilapidated old court, in which 
 Sir Walter Scott used to come of an afternoon to gossip and sip 
 his whisky. I stood for a moment in front of John Knox's 
 house — a quaint old structure, whose overhanging upper story 
 
IN EDINBUKGH TOWN. 21 
 
 suggested somehow the massive forehead of the great reformer. 
 I stood a moment in a paved court-yard, where a small square 
 plate with the letters I K is believed to indicate the spot beneath 
 which, for so many generations, his ashes have rested. 
 
 I took in Holyrood palace ; lingered for a few moments in its 
 roofless chapel ; strolled through the bed-room of the beautiful 
 Mary Queen of Scots ; inspected her supper-room, in which the 
 brutal Darnley and his co-assassins seized the miserable Rizzio 
 and stabbed him as they dragged him from the presence of his 
 shrieking mistress; and I even tried to discover the stain of 
 blood where he fell and breathed out his soul. In this I was 
 unfortunate ; and assuring my guide that I hoped he would kill 
 another sheep and renew the blood before I should come again, 
 I left — left one of the most interesting places connected with 
 the history of Scotland. 
 
 I saw a few other things which I need not describe; but I may 
 say that, if there be anywhere in the world a more charming city 
 than Edinburgh, I have never seen it. It is not, however, a 
 business place of any great importance or enterprise. The 
 shops are rarely opened before ten o'clock in the morning; and 
 then it is apparently done more from habit than from any 
 expectation of doing business. The great publishing houses 
 of the city, once so famous, have become dwarfed by the enter- 
 prise of London, or they have disappeared. Glasgow is now 
 the great manufacturing city of Scotland, as well as its principal 
 seaport. Edinburgh's merchants, however, are wealthy and do 
 not require a heavy business to meet their wants. There is accu- 
 mulated in the city the wealth of generations. There is no need 
 for exertion among its residents. Even its laborers move about 
 and handle their barrows and picks more as if tliey were doing 
 it to pass time than from any motives relating to bread or earning 
 their wages. 
 
 There is one peculiarity about the locality which I had not 
 expected, and which I had never heard mentioned. This is the 
 shortness of the nights. I frequently wrote in my room till half 
 past nine in the evening without artificial light. It was not fairly 
 dark till after ten o'clock, and daylight began to dawn at half- 
 past one to two in the morning. Of course this is owing to the 
 place being so far north ; and equally, of course, the exact reverse 
 is true during the winter season. 
 
 All the faces that one sees among the Scotch are characterized 
 
22 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 by a marvelous shrewdness. This indicates a real trait in the 
 character of the people. It is said, and I have reason to believe 
 in its truthfulness, that not a single trader of that class of 
 operators commonly known as " Jews " is able to do business 
 in Edinburgh, owing to the superior sagacity of the native resi- 
 dents. Even the mendicants have a facial expression as if they 
 were engaged in studying the best method of making a financial 
 investment, or of calculating the interest upon a sum of money 
 yet to be gained. While the faces of the Scotch are rarely hand- 
 some, they are invariably strong, indicating great power and 
 self-reliance. 
 
 The first night after my arrival, I strolled into the smoking- 
 room of the Balmoral to enjoy a pipe. Close by where I seated 
 myself were three persons at a table, who were sipping whisky 
 and water with infinite enjoyment, and whose loud tones and 
 jolly laughter satisfied me that the present bowl was not their 
 first by half a dozen. 
 
 Discovering me, they discovered a Yankee, and forthwith, in 
 their good nature, resolved on a little amusement. 
 
 " How very singular," said one in a broad Scotch accent which 
 I won't attempt to reproduce — " How disorderly America is. 
 Now in the Highlands there hasn't been a man hung in forty 
 years." 
 
 As he looked at me very pointedly as he spoke, and as the 
 others seemed to be watching the eft'ect of his words, I saw that 
 a foreigner was attempting to pull down the American flag, and 
 at once I rallied to its defense. 
 
 " How strange ! " 1 remarked — " Is it because you can't catch 
 them ? " 
 
 "No, it's" he burst out, but I calmly interrupted him, and 
 
 proceeded : 
 
 " Or perhaps, it's the same as where I live, in a place called 
 Chicago, in America. There hasn't been a man hanged there for 
 ten years, but there's a many of them who ought to be." 
 
 " I tell you no ! It's " he roared out, but I hadn't finished 
 
 my discourse, and taking the floor, I proceeded : 
 
 " Or may be it's the same as in the case of our American In- 
 dians, who seem very like the Highlanders. They both wear 
 breech-clouts, have bare legs, steal cattle, wear bright colors, 
 stick feathers in their hat, and fill their belts full of knives and 
 pistols. We rarely hang these Indians, although they are very 
 
IN EDINBQKGH TOWN. 23 
 
 disorderly, and commit a great many murders. We don't hang 
 them because we regard them as savages, and don't hold them 
 amenable to the same laws that we do the civilized races. Per- 
 haps this will account, also for there not having been any hang- 
 ing in the Highlands for so many years." 
 
 The individual who had taken a pull at the American flag was 
 a small man with a flat, bald head. When I had finished, he 
 rose, and unsteadily, but with immense dignity, and evidently in 
 high dudgeon, left the room. He was accompanied by one of 
 the others, who, also, departed in evident ill-humor. The third 
 one remained. He was a paunchy man, with protruding, saucer- 
 like eyes, puffed, cheesy face, and a head surmounted by gray- 
 white hair. He was a good-natured looking chap, who seemed 
 rather pleased at the turn matters had taken. 
 
 " D — n it, mon," said he, " that's a Highland chief you were 
 talking to. But you served him right. Gie me yer haun! " . 
 
 I gied him my haun, and we shook cordially. We sat around 
 for an hour or two. He told many very juicy and very improper 
 stories, and interlarded their recital with many a strange oath. 
 About 2 A. M., by the assistance of a couple of waiters, he 
 went to his room, cursing vigorously that " last glass of whisky," 
 without which he would "have been all right." 
 
 The next day I went up to the convention. I gained a seat 
 among the press people and began looking around to see what 
 kind of a crowd was present, when suddenly I was caught by 
 something in the appearance of a delegate who sat in one of the 
 very front seats. He was a large man whose hands were clasped 
 devoutly across his ample paunch. A pair of gold-bowed spec- 
 tacles covered a pair of blue, saucer-like eyes. His face was 
 pu3"ed and beery in hue. His gray-white hair stood straight 
 up over his forehead. He had on a white choker, and on his 
 face there rested a profound, imperturbable solemnity exceeding 
 anything which the imagination could reproduce. His eyes 
 were fixed intently on the speaker, and his ears seemed to drink 
 in every word of a speech which was half Latin, and otherwise 
 as dry and unintelligible as a Chaldaic oration. No more dig- 
 nified, devout, grave, serene, imposing man was in all that 
 gathering of delegates. 
 
 While thus staring at him, with a vague idea that I somewhere 
 had seen him before, he suddenly turned his head a little, and 
 his gaze rested on me. It remained there a moment ; and then, 
 
24 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 without the slightest interruption in the solemnity of his visage, 
 there was a perceptible dropping of his left eyelid, and a cor- 
 responding rise, on the same side, of a corner of his mouth. 
 
 At once recognition came over me like a sudden burst of sun- 
 shine out of a dark cloud. It was my jolly companion of the 
 night before. 
 
 A few moments after he looked at me intently, and then went 
 out. I took the hint, and followed. We met on the sidewalk. 
 " D — d hot and dry in there," said he, as with an air of relief he 
 took off his gold-bowed specs, and put them in his pocket. 
 "Let's go somewhere and get a nip!" said he, and we went. 
 A " nip" is Scotch for a half drink of whisky; and a half drink 
 here is from four to six American drinks. 
 
 I had a great deal of curiositj^ relative to the Edinburgh news- 
 papers, and I took the time to go through all of them and to 
 inform myself as to their operations, cost of management, and 
 the like. 
 
 Edinburgh has three morning dailies and one evening issue. 
 The last named is The News; the others The Review, The Gourant, 
 and The Scotsjnan. The latter is the leading newspaper in news, 
 profit, energy, and circulation in Scotland. Like all the others, 
 it is a Presbyterian organ, and represents the liberal party in 
 politics. The Gouraiit is the tory sheet, and is a very old journal, 
 having been established in 1705. TJie Eeciew is rather independ- 
 ent and newsy, leaning somewhat to personality, sensationalism, 
 and head-lines — a faint imitation of the American type of news- 
 paper. The Scotsman, however, is to Scotland much what the 
 London Times is to England. It is a quarto, like The Chicago 
 Times, with the same number of columns, which, however, are 
 wider. Like The Times, on Saturdays it issues an extra sheet as 
 a supplement. Its average circulation is sixty-five thousand ; 
 and its annual profits reach the comfortable figure of $100,000. 
 
 It is printed upon the Walter press, and employs three of these 
 to work off its edition. The minimum performance of each of 
 these presses is thirteen thousand an hour, but I was assured by 
 the manager that, under wholly favorable circumstances, twenty 
 thousand an hour could be accomplished. Each machine has 
 two folders attached, and each takes the dry paper from the roll 
 and dampens it by passing it over a roller, whose surface, cov- 
 ered with coarse cloth, is wetted by steam, which is admitted to 
 the center of the cylinder. The presses work exquisitely, but 
 
IN EDINBURGH TOWN. 25 
 
 are noisy bej'^ond all conception. In no part of the press-room 
 is conversation, except by signs, at all possible. 
 
 In the composition of the paper about seventy-five men are 
 engaged, or about the same number as is required by The Chicago 
 Times. These men receive thirteen cents per thousand "ens" 
 for day work and fifteen cents for the same amount for night 
 work. The paper used is a strong, clear, white article, and costs 
 from five to six cents a pound, with five per cent. off. 
 
 As is the case with all the leading papers of Great Britain, The 
 Scotsman has what is termed a private wire.wliich connects it with 
 the British capital. It ends in the room of the telegraph editor, 
 and has operators who are furnished by the company who owns 
 the wire. It is not, as its name would indicate, the property of 
 the newspaper. It is put up by a company, and is rented to The 
 (S'co^sma??. during certain hours — that is to say, from 6 p. M. to, 
 6 a. m. During this period the paper has the exclusive use of 
 the wire; and for such use it pays £3,500, or $17,500 a year. 
 
 In addition to this, The Scotsman pays from three hundred to 
 five hundred dollars a month for specials from various portions 
 of the country. This amount represents a good deal of news, 
 for the reason that telegraph news from any part of the kingdom 
 costs only twenty-five cents per one hundred words during the 
 day, and seventy-five words during the uiglit. 
 
 This paper, containing an average of sixteen to twenty columns 
 of advertising, seven of market and commercial matters, four to 
 six of telegraph, and the remainder filled with editorial and 
 miscellany, is sold on the streets at two cents. The wholesale 
 price is one and one-half cents a number — a figure which does 
 not admit of a very large profit on the circulation. The paper, 
 however, has no middlemen between itself and the newsdealers. 
 It supplies them direct, as if The Chicago Times were to take 
 orders direct from dealers at Eockford, Beloit, and other places. 
 I found that The Scotsman had formerly disposed of its issue 
 according to the American system, but had finally abandoned it, 
 because the present method is found to work perfectly well, 
 besides affording a large additional profit. 
 
 The management of the journal, like the system everywhere 
 in the kingdom, is dual, — there being an editor, who controls 
 the literary department, and a manager, who lias charge of every, 
 thing else. Editorial writing is rarely done in the ofiice except 
 in the case of what is done by the editor. Other editorials are 
 
26 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 furnished from the outside by men who may or may not have a 
 permanent connection with the paper. And here may be noted 
 the somewhat queer fact that editorials are required to be of a 
 certain length. They may overrun, but they must not fall short. 
 Hence it is that everywhere in Scotch and English newspapers 
 the editorial articles are almost invariably about three-fourths of 
 a column in length. 
 
 In stereotyping, the machinery and other appliances are infe- 
 rior to what we have in Chicago. In casting the plate, the inner 
 surface is ribbed to the height of about one-eighth of an inch. 
 These ribs are about two inches apart, and cross the plate from 
 side to side. Their advantage is that the plate requires less 
 metal, and in planing the inner surface of the plate only the ribs 
 have to be " evened," which is done by a half revolution of a 
 cutting edge. If I remember correctly, in the American system 
 the planing is done by revolving chisels, carried forward on a 
 screw, and some little time is required for the operation. A 
 ribbed plate is planed in less than a second. In all other respects 
 our mechanical system is very much more complete. 
 
 The various offices in the building occupied by The Scotsman 
 are models of beauty and taste. The carpets are specially woven 
 for each room, and differ in design, while all have some apposite 
 reference to the location. The windows are beautifully stained, 
 and the furniture is massive, rich, and at once most convenient 
 and luxurious. 
 
 The cheapness at which the paper is sold and the comparative 
 smallness — sixty-five thousand — of The Scotsman circulation 
 may give birth to some astonishment at the comparatively great 
 magnitude of the yearly profits — one hundred thousand dol- 
 lars — were it not that the small cost of composition and of 
 telegraph news forms a partial explanation of the problem. A 
 complete explanation will be found when it is known that the 
 rates of advertising are about twice as high as in Chicago. 
 
 I may add that the office sends out every morning a special 
 newspaper train which goes to Glasgow. It thus supplies not 
 only the west of Scotland, but it intercepts all morning trains 
 running north and south, and thus reaches every part of Scot- 
 land within two or three hours after publication. 
 
 As I was shown through The Scotsman building, I gave in every 
 instance the corresponding methods of doing the same things in 
 the office of The Chicago Times. The enormous engines, the vast 
 
A FEW HOURS IN PAELIAMENT, 27 
 
 boilers, the duplicate system of macliineiy, the elevators, pneu- 
 matic tubes, and electric calls were, to them, all novelties. At the 
 urgent request of the manager, I gave him drawings of the pneu- 
 matic tubes, the "headers" in the stereotype department, and of 
 some other features which attracted his attention. It is quite pos- 
 sible that some of these features of The Times will be introduced 
 at once into the leading newspaper in Scotland. 
 
 That The Times is doing a missionary work is shown in the 
 fact that, when taking leave of the manager and tlianking him 
 for his courtesy and information, he assured me that the obliga- 
 tion was the other way, as The Times had given The Scotsman 
 more information than The Scotsman had The Times. While this 
 may be in part a compliment, in the main it expresses his honest 
 convictions. 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 A FEW HOURS IN PAKLIAMENT. 
 
 London, July 21, 1877. 
 
 'IGHT before last, through the influence of a member of 
 Parliament, to whom I have letters, I secured exception- 
 ally good seats in the House of Commons and that of 
 Lords. In both I happened to be present when the Eastern 
 question came up in various shapes, and therefore had a very fair 
 opportunity to judge the merits of the two parties. Whatever 
 may be said of the amount of brains on either side, it is certain 
 that the drill, the cohesion, are with the war party. They were 
 readiest with their remarks, more concentrated in their move- 
 ments, and more enthusiastic in their action than the opposition. 
 The ''hear, hear!" from the war partisans were concentrated as 
 though uttered by one voice and animated by one purpose, while 
 those on the other side were scattering, and not at all indicative 
 of a mutual and thorough agreement. It was artillery fire on 
 the one side, and on the other the dropping shots of independent 
 skirmishers. In this condition of things is exemplified the 
 actual condition of the two parties. 
 
 In order not to make this letter too tedious it may be well to 
 give the readers of The Times, who may not have an opportunity 
 
28 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 of seeing for themselves, a brief sketcli of wliat I saw in and 
 about ttie House of Parliament. Let me, then, first glance briefly 
 at the Commons. 
 
 It requires some influence to get into the houses, as the public 
 is not regarded here as of very great consequence except in the 
 abstract. Policemen are at the outer door, along the hall, at the 
 foot and top of the stairway leading to the floor on which 
 the two houses or lialls are situated. Once on this landing, one 
 finds himself in a large arched hall, from which passages lead 
 in all directions. Two of the broadest of them lead in opposite 
 directions — the one to the House of Commons and the other to 
 the House of Lords. 
 
 A stranger, if he be decent in appearance, can get as far as 
 this central hall or rotunda without diflaculty. Three doors, on 
 the one side, and a small army of lielmeted policemen in blue, 
 separate him from the Commons, and, on the other, the same 
 obstacles bar his progress to the Lords. Only officials, or specta- 
 tors with orders, are allowed to pass. 
 
 I sent in a card to my friend, and, a few moments later, I was 
 tucked under his arm, and we passed the first line of police and 
 the first door. Soon a second door and more policemen, and 
 then another arched rotunda, with passages leading to committee 
 rooms, library, and other rooms more directly intended for the 
 use of the Commons. Directly across from the large folding- 
 doors through which we entered is another pair of large folding- 
 doors, which open into the hall occupied by the members. This 
 Totunda seems a sort of lounging room for members, pages, and 
 the like, and has at every exit the inevitable policeman. 
 
 It was nearl}^ 4 p. M. when we entered this room, and almost 
 immediately after a stalwart policeman roared out: "Hats ofi! 
 Make way for the honorable Speaker ! " Instantly two lines 
 were formed by the people between a side door and the entrance 
 to the main hall, and every head was uncovered. I was so 
 astounded by the announcement and the quick falling into line 
 that I scarcely'' took in a procession which came from the side 
 room, moved at a swift pace between the human walls, and then 
 disappeared in the hall of tlie Commons. I think that the pro- 
 cession was headed by a gorgeous individual, who wore plush 
 knee-breeches, a swallow-tailed scarlet coat, with brass buttons, a 
 white wig, who had a red, bulbous nose, and who carried at 
 " present arms " a club, knotty and bulbous at one end, like his 
 
A FEW HOURS IN PARLIAMENT. 29^ 
 
 nose, and gilded till it looked like solid gold. Behind this 
 gorgeous skirmisher — he is the mace-bearer, I think — came the 
 main body, which consisted of a small man, who bent fcn'ward as 
 he walked, who had on his head and hanging down his shoulders 
 and covering his ears, what seemed a sheep-skin, with the front 
 cut out so as to show his face. He had on a black gown with an 
 enormously long trail which was tenderly borne, at a respectful 
 distance in the rear, by a solemn young man in black tights, a 
 cocked hat and a sword. Behind him was the chaplain, also 
 with sheepskin and gown, but whether somebody bore his trail, 
 in my confusion I failed to notice. A clerk or two followed, all 
 be-gowned and be-sheepskinned like their predecessors, and then 
 the weird procession vanished. 
 
 It came so suddenly, passed so quickly, was so astounding in 
 appearance, and disappeared so instantly, that sometimes I think 
 it must all have been a marvc41ous dream. 
 
 My friend very kindlj^ secured me a seat just over the main 
 seats, so that I had an excellent view of the hall. Unlike our 
 Representative Hall, there are no desks. A wide aisle runs 
 through the center of the hall. The seats are long benches run- 
 ning parallel with this aisle and each rising above the other 
 toward the sides. Thus the members, when seated, all face the 
 aisle, and exhibit only their profiles to the Speaker, who sits in 
 the center of the aisle at the end opposite the main entrance. 
 
 Every member has his hat on, except when entering or leaving 
 the room or addressing the Speaker — that is to say, he can keep 
 it on if he so elects. The most of them did so elect during my 
 visit, and, as the room was quite warm, the operation could not 
 have been a very comfortable one. This absurd custom goes to 
 show how closely our English cousins are attached to precedent. 
 They wear their hats simply because their fathers did, and their 
 children will wear their hats for the same reason. 
 
 To the right of the Speaker were the conservatives, to the left 
 was the opposition. On a bench immediately at his right were 
 the heads of the various bureaus of administration. They were 
 there in order to reply to such questions as might be put to them 
 by the House. These questions, by the way, are all printed on a 
 sheet, which is a programme of the work of a day's session. 
 The intention to ask any of the ministers a question on any sub- 
 ject is always embodied in a notice at some previous meeting, so 
 that the party to be questioned has time to frame a reply. 
 
30 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 In this process are seen some of the workings of a responsible 
 ministry — a something which we may yet find it advisable to 
 come to in order to amend our defective form of administration. 
 It is as if Evarts, Schurz, Slierman, and the remainder of the 
 cabinet were to appear before the House each day and answer 
 such interrogatories as might be put to them by tlie members. 
 Fancy Belknap coming up daily and being questioned on the 
 sale of sutlerships ; or Robeson to answer concerning repairs of 
 rotten steamers, or the letting of timber contracts. It is certain 
 that under such constant supervision and examination, malad- 
 ministration and malversation such as have disgraced our country 
 during the last decade, would be unknown. 
 
 I saw several notabilities in the House — Gladstone, Fawcette, 
 the blind member; Sir Charles Dilke, Gathorne Hardy, Major 
 O'Gorman, and many others — whom in some future letter I may 
 find room to sketch. I pass them for the present in order to 
 notice a more famous character than all of them — second to no 
 one in Europe in statecraft unless it be Bismark — the lately 
 created Earl of Beaconsfield, better known, however, as Disraeli. 
 Hearing that the Prime Minister was to speak, I left the House 
 of Commons, and upon the order of a noble Lord, was finally 
 admitted, along with a select few, into the " strangers' gallery " 
 of the House of Lords. The hall employed by the Lords is sub- 
 stantially like that of the Commons in its shape and furniture. 
 The news that Disraeli was to speak filled all the seats belonging 
 to members ; and all other points where he could be seen and 
 heard were crowded by members from the other house. 
 
 I did not need to be told which of all the men below me was 
 the famous Prime Minister. On the front bench, in nearly the 
 center of the hall, sat a figure in black, in whose motionless 
 attitude, swart face, and Hebrew cast of countenance I at once 
 recognized the famous Tory leader. He was the most marked 
 and striking figure in the house. His features are large ; his face 
 smoothlj' shaven and dark; his expression a dull, sullen immo- 
 bility. This sullenness of his swarthy features is intensified 
 by his raven black hair, worn long, and cut squarely around the 
 neck. His forehead is wide and high ; his perceptive organs 
 prominent, giving him a strong intellectual appearance, and 
 which is added to rather than detracted from by his broad, 
 massive jaws — indicating intellect backed or reinforced, by 
 enormous physical powers. 
 
' A FEW HOURS IN PARLIAMENT. 31 
 
 For a long time lie sat on the bench with one leg crossed over 
 the other, head bowed a little forward, and motionless as if cast 
 in bronze, save a twisting in and out of each other of his white, 
 shapely, slender hands. I may except another motion, but which 
 was so slight as to escape notice, unless one like myself were 
 watching him with close attention. This was in his eyelids. 
 They are very large, and drop over his eyes like two great cur- 
 tains. Ordinarily they were down, concealing the whole eye; 
 but now and then they would rise quickly for a short distance, 
 and a thin background of intense black would flash out upon the 
 audience. Until he rose to speak, had it not been for tliis nervous 
 twisting and untwisting of his fingers, and the occasional raising 
 of his eyelids, he might have passed for a chiseled marble, or a 
 casting of sternest bronze. 
 
 Whether he were poseing or not, I cannot say ; but even if he 
 were, he shows himself an artist of the highest power. Nothing 
 could have been arranged more striking, nothing .which so 
 bristled with salient points and mysterious suggestions. He sat 
 there displaying power in his heavy physique and unbroken 
 repose. One who saw him, saw not only suggestions of power, 
 but of secrecy, dark and unyielding as that of the grave. Not 
 only these, but cunning, tlioughtfulness, endurance, obstinacy; 
 and everywhere a mysterious something which defies reading, 
 which makes the face enigmatical, sphinx-like, and renders 
 abortive all attempts to penetrate through the swart and sullen 
 mask, and read what lies beneath. 
 
 When he rose to speak he seemed to be a powerful figure, a 
 little above the medium stature. He wore a frock coat, buttoned 
 about his waist, and which displayed to good advantage a strong 
 rather than a graceful figure. There was a table in front of him, 
 and to this he walked, so that he stood with a half-face to the 
 Speaker. He commenced his address in a low, but yet not indis- 
 tinct, and withal a rather musical voice. His head was thrown 
 forward, his eyes were fixed on the table, and his manner was 
 singularly hesitating. He appeared laboring under a painful 
 embarrassment. His voice had a tremor in it; he seemed to 
 stumble over a word here and to catch at some other one there. 
 His hands and arms were incessant in a species of nervous shift- 
 ing. The fingers would rest for a moment on the table. Then 
 the arms would be clasped behind his back, only to remain there 
 a second before swinging by his side, or being moved forward 
 again to rest upon the table. 
 
32 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 He was as uneasy with his feet and legs as with his hands. He 
 moved at first incessantly — now forward, now back, then poised 
 upon one leg and then upon the other. He was so uneasy ; he so 
 twisted, and swung, and rocked ; his utterance was so broken and 
 so hesitating, that one might almost fancy that he was about to 
 break down. 
 
 Nevertheless, all this time it was the eye and ear which took 
 in these developments. Beneath the senses was a conviction that 
 all" this was of no account, and that despite them he was moving 
 forward swiftly and irresistibly. And such was the case. His 
 Ideas were clear, logical in their arrangement, and his words 
 fitted to each other like the jewels in a diamond cluster. By 
 degrees, the apparent nervousness, hesitancy and indecision dis- 
 appeared. The feet became immovable; the shifting motion of 
 
 THE EUROPEAN SPHINX. 
 
 the arms gradually grew into quiet but artistic gestures; the 
 twisting of the body into a swaying motion full of power, defer- 
 ence, yet dignified and graceful. The heavy head was thrown 
 back ; the sullen, motionless features became lighted up and per- 
 meated by a flexible mobility; the broad eyelids rolled up, and 
 the great eyes flashed out with a sombre brilliancy. 
 
' A FEW IIOUKS m PARLIAMENT. 33 
 
 He spoke for nearly an hour. It was only upon some unim- 
 portant matter — a vote of censure by the Commons upon an 
 appointment he had made of a Mr. Pigott to the head of some 
 minor department. Nevertheless, he held his auditory intact. 
 If he can do so well upon so insignificant a topic, what can he 
 not do when handling any of greater importance ? 
 
 To-day he is one of the shrewdest, most ambitious and most 
 powerful men in Europe. Despite his age — he is now about 
 seventy years — he is as ambitious as when, many years ago, after 
 failing miserably in his maiden efibrt in Parliament, he defiantly 
 informed his jeering auditory that they would one day listen to 
 him, and that he should one day succeed. 
 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Northcole, 
 is the one who answered for the government, in the House 
 of Commons, when pressed by the questions of Messrs. Faw- 
 cette and others as to the intentions of the government during 
 the adjournment. He spoke evidently from inspiration afforded 
 him by the Prime Minister; and, from the tenor of his remarks, 
 he is, at least officially, in entire harmony with the chief of the 
 cabinet. This harmony is almost or quite a matter of course, so 
 far as it relates to official utterances. As to private opinion, it is 
 hinted that the Chancellor is not at all a believer, at least, in the 
 "manifest destiny" of the Oriental races. He may share the 
 belief that the capture, or even temporary occupation, of Con- 
 stantinople by the Kussians would be inimical to British inter- 
 ests, but he certainly goes no further. 
 
 In fact, his personal appearance will at once negative any sus- 
 picions of any Shemitic tendencies such as control his leader. 
 He is in every possible particular the exact opposite of Disraeli. 
 He is a blond of the purest type, with a long, abundant beard 
 of a rich yellow, and thick hair to match. He is almost pale as 
 to complexion, and with his blue eyes, substantial figure and 
 open face, he contrasts remarkably with the smoothly-shaven, 
 swai'thy-faced, raven-haired Prime Minister. As a speaker he is 
 just as remote from the other. Disraeli, although somewhat 
 awkward, and seemingly to some extent embarrassed at the out- 
 set of his speaking, soon becomes self-poised, collected, graceful. 
 Northcote, however, is awkward, stuttering, hesitating, at the 
 beginning, middle and end of all his speeches. He leans with 
 his hands upon the table in front of him, bends ungracefully for- 
 ward, and accentuates his remarks by pushing himself forward 
 3 
 
34 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 in a stiff and unpleasant manner. Every word he utters is 
 bridged to the next word by an "aw-aw" of several spans in 
 length, and whose enunciation is singularly harsh and disagreea- 
 ble. His ideas, however, are good, when he succeeds in deliver- 
 ing himself of them ; and his statements, when the " aws " are 
 dropped out and the files have closed up, are found to be a strong 
 and handsome presentation. 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 ENGLISH ORATOKY. 
 
 London, July 26, 1877. 
 
 fMUST say that, as a general thing, I like the English style 
 of oratory as exhibited in Parliament. There is no spread- 
 eagleism. A speaker does not saw the air, or howl, or stride 
 up and down the aisles — a la mode Blaine — shaking his extended 
 finger, or his closed fist, in the faces of his auditory. There is 
 nothing stagey; there are no sweeping windmill gestures, no 
 passion, or straining after mere oratorical effects. Now and 
 then the member from Skibbereen, or thereabouts, becomes 
 dreadfully in earnest, as he gets on the question of home rule, 
 or the oppression of Ireland, or British tyranny, and lets off a 
 few fireworks ; but ordinarily there is nothing of the kind. 
 
 Nor is there among any of the members that air and attitude 
 of self-satisfaction so common among our own speakers, and 
 which seems to say that the individual is entirely pleased with 
 his own effort, whatever may be the case with his hearers. I 
 have heard several of the leading men in both houses make 
 speeches, and in every case, from Disraeli down, each has inva- 
 riably commenced as if embarrassed, as if he felt he were about 
 to address a body of men of whose intelligence and dignity he 
 had a full appreciation, and as if he entertained serious doubts 
 as to his ability to properly demean himself and properly present 
 the subject of his discourse. There is an indirect but neverthe- 
 less a very strong and grateful compliment to an audience in 
 this modest demeanor of a speaker at the outset of his discourse. 
 
ENGLISH OBATOBT. 35 
 
 It is quite the reverse of the I-don't-care-a-d— n-for-you style 
 -with which so many of our Congressmen present themselves 
 before an audience. 
 
 The gestures of the average English speaker are few, but effec- 
 tive. I do not know that I have seen a full-arm gesture in the 
 case of a single speaker — or, at least, in any case where the arm 
 was above the head. A half-arm movement, horizontally given 
 from the elbow, is about the extent of the demonstration indulged 
 in by the majority. The delivery is close upon the conversational, 
 rarely rising above this, but always earnest and emphatic. In 
 Disraeli's speech to which I alluded in my last, there was not a 
 superfluous gesture, or accent, or inflection in it from exordium 
 to peroration, and yet, by turns, he was humorous, pathetic, 
 indignant, denunciatory, ironical, and always convincing, — hold- 
 ing the attention of the audience, without a break, from begin- 
 ning to flnish. A stronger speech, one which held so completely 
 the sympathies and which so perfectly carried the convictions of 
 an audience, and yet which had so few apparent oratorical graces 
 or displays, I never before heard. 
 
 Of course, all the speakers do not rise to the force and general 
 superiority of this style of oratory. There are some inferior 
 ones; some whom to hear excites mingled feelings of contempt 
 and pity. A member named Brown is an exception to the 
 average excellence. He is very tall, and thin, with a small head, 
 and no very commanding intellectual development. What he 
 said I do not know, owing to the infernal confusion ; nor does 
 anybody else, unless it be himself. I could see his lips move, 
 and that was nearly all. His gesturing was of the queerest 
 description, and altogether original and unique. About every 
 six seconds his head, his right forefinger, and his left knee would 
 be all pushed forward a few inches, as though he were using his 
 sharp nose, pointed finger, and bony knee to transfix his enemy. 
 This automatical shooting forward of these portions of his per- 
 son gave him a very bristling, and withal a very ludicrous 
 appearance, which I fancy may have had something to do with 
 the laughter and ironical cheering and other noisy demonstra- 
 tions which attended him at every step of his remarks, and most 
 completely obliterated every word that he uttered. Still Mr. 
 Brown is a conspicuous exception to the mass of speakers, who, 
 while in many cases lacking poise and finish, are nevertheless 
 convincing, and full of a quiet but potent energy. 
 
36 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Monday evening, I was sauntering about the large room or 
 lobby just outside the hall of the Commons. There were some 
 twenty or thirty others, some of whom were members ; others 
 members' friends, loungers from the House of Lords, and the 
 inevitable lackeys and policemen. 
 
 Suddenly a small electric gong somewhere in the vicinity 
 began to give out a regular devil's tatoo, which was taken up 
 by imitative gongs in various other parts of the building. 
 Instantly there was a dreadful, a terrific commotion. Every, 
 body started to run ; and, not to be out of fashion, I started on 
 a run also. Thinking there might be a fire, or a riot, or an 
 impending earthquake, I did not propose there should be any 
 running away unless I had a hand — or a leg — in it. Accord- 
 ingly I ran. Various people ran over me, and as far as I could, 
 without going too much out of my way, I ran over various other 
 people. As I was not running anywhere, but simply running 
 on general principles, my going out of my way to run over 
 somebody or be run over by somebody did not affect my average. 
 
 "This way! Come on now!" shouted the policemen as they 
 turned us down a long hall. Away we went, devil take the hind- 
 most, down the long passage-way until we reached the great 
 octagonal room beyond. Into it we went pell-mell, helter-skelter,, 
 breathless and demoralized as a column of runaway Bashi-Ba- 
 zouks. Here we found a line of policemen who ordered us 
 fiercely on our arrival to pass behind them. We did so ; and a 
 moment later the fugitives were behind the line of police, who 
 had so arranged themselves as to leave about one-half of the 
 octagon a clear space. Along this open space men madly shot 
 from outside passages and cantered madly down the hall along 
 which we had just retreated. The gongs still kept up their 
 infernal clatter, and Hades seemed suddenly let loose upon us. 
 
 Finally, feeling somewhat secure behind the line of policemen, 
 and being assured of their valor by the loud and imperative 
 manner in which they ordered the fugitives to "Stand back, 
 there! " I asked a party near me what it all meant. 
 
 " It's a division of the 'ouse." 
 
 " My God, is it possible ? Do you suppose the casualties would 
 have been tremendous if we had left only on a walk ? " 
 
 My companion evidently did not master the proposition 
 readily, and I dropped him. But I was relieved. It was not 
 an earthquake, or a conflagration, or the discovery of a Guy 
 
ENGLISH OKATOKY. 37 
 
 Fawkes' plot, but a division. A division ! There was about to 
 occur the awful ceremony of ascertaining how many British 
 legislators were in favor of a motion to add tuppence a month 
 to the salary of Irish school teachers, and how many British 
 legislators opposed this colossal, educational outlay. A division — 
 the terrific and awe-inspiring ceremony of counting affirmative 
 noses and negative noses, prior to which the vulgar public must 
 be run out, lackeys must become suddenly insolent, and police- 
 men must assume the airs and the powers of a grand Llama in 
 ■dealing with the public. 
 
 For just forty minutes we stood behind the impervious and 
 immovable policemen, while the sacred work of counting noses 
 went on. From the line of police in our front, down the hall, 
 there were other policemen at every few steps. The door at the 
 lurther end of the hall was closed, and policemen guarded it 
 zealously and jealously against every attempt that might be 
 made to secure a forcible entrance. No lodge of Freemasons ; 
 no meeting of hunted Covenanters; no conclave of assassins 
 conspiring against a throne, was ever more closely guarded, and 
 approach prevented, than the House of Commons during the 
 startling occurrence of a " division^" 
 
 I am now entirely satisfied that the most sacred, exclusive, 
 and altogether awful ceremony in the world is that involved in. 
 ascertaining how the member from the Red Dog and Yellow 
 Lamb district proposes to vote on a motion to make it a penal 
 offense for a non-landholder to catch a bullfinch without a license. 
 
 I may add that, after the first stampede was over, and I had 
 gotten back into the lobby next the Hall of Commons, I, in com- 
 pany with some others, was, in less than five minutes, run out in 
 precisely the same way, pending the performance of another of 
 these Eleusinian mysteries — a division. 
 
 Demoralized at this second stampede, I continued retreating 
 until I had left the Parliament buildings a long way in the rear, 
 and had established myself at such a distance from the scene of 
 operations that further stampedes from the advent of a Parlia- 
 mentary " division " became an impossibility. 
 
 So far as I have been unfortunate enough, as a member of the 
 general and unknown public, to encounter a certain class of 
 English officialism, I have found it insolent and tyrannical in 
 the extreme. I mean by this class more especially the lackeys 
 and others who surround and guard the approaches to officials. 
 
38 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 The men in brass buttons who bar the progress of the public 
 toward the office of a foreign secretary or the House of Com- 
 mons are a hundred times more imperious, condescending, 
 insolent, and overbearing than is the foreigu secretary himself, 
 or any member of the house. Upon the approach of a superior 
 they grovel, as it were, in the very dust ; they salaam ; they crawl 
 about ventre a terre in their wondrous humility ; and then turn 
 around and avenge themselves by bullying the first poor devil 
 of a citizen who has to pass them or wishes for information. 
 I am getting so permeated by this universal bullying of inferiors 
 that I feel seriously inclined to kick every bootblack and blind 
 match-peddler whom I encounter. 
 
 There is one commendable feature in all this ; and that is, that 
 while the average British citizen will stand any amount of airs 
 and insolence from these flunkeys, he' regards his person as- 
 sacred. A policeman, in ordering men to stand here, to go there, 
 or to go away, or to move on, may be just as arrogant and inso- 
 lent in his tone and demeanor as he likes; but he is mighty 
 careful not to lay the weight of his finger upon any one whom 
 he is thus ordering about like cattle. To touch a man, to push 
 him back, under such circumstances, would result in a tremens 
 dous row. You may abuse the British public all you please, if 
 you are an official, but woe unto you if you ever lay even your 
 little finger upon his sacred person. 
 
 For which redeeming trait I greatly admire the British public, 
 and almost forgive him for the patience with which he submits 
 to the arrogance of subordinate officialism. 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 THE HAPPY BRITON. 
 
 London, August 3, 1877. 
 
 UR British cousins have each made a Jonah of himself. 
 He has planted a vine, beneath whose shade he can sit 
 in comfort while he looks across and watches to see the 
 American Ninevah tumble into ruins.* The ancient Jonah, sit- 
 ting beneath a gourd, and watching and hoping for something^ 
 * Allusion is here made to the American labor riots in July, 1877. 
 
THE HAPPY BRITON. 39 
 
 which never came to pass, has always seemed to me a credul- 
 ous aud superlative old ass. I do not think the British Jonah is 
 any improvement upon the Hebrew original. 
 
 ■But they enjoy it. I don't believe the English people have 
 had so much right-down substantial enjoyment as they are hav- 
 ing now, since the days of Bull Run and the Confederate advance 
 on the National Capital. 
 
 In all this jubilation; in the assertion that the " strike is a far 
 more serious afi'air than the civil war, and one more indicative 
 of the weakness of the system of government," and in scores of 
 similar expressions, one finds only an ezemplification of English 
 dislike for America and Americans. In fact, this dislike of 
 Americans prevails everywhere here except among a very few. 
 There are some English people who hate their own kind, and 
 have a most extraordinary liking for people from the States. 
 They profess to admire the American "temperament" whose 
 flexibility and activity are in violent contrast to the phlegmatic 
 and heavy disposition of the representative Englishman. Out- 
 side this very small class, the word American is a synonym for 
 barbarism ; and not only this, but it means something to be 
 disliked, to be avoided, and oftentimes to be hated. 
 
 I can imagine no good reason for this. It is true that the 
 class of Americans who periodically invade this country are not 
 the best we have on the other side. They are often vulgar in 
 dress, and " loud v in manners, and narrow in their views and 
 estimates. Still it is not fair to estimate the whole American 
 people by the specimens who drift over here, any more than it 
 would be to judge the English people from the zebra-striped 
 Britons who invade America. There must be something inherent 
 which creates and keeps alive this mutual dislike. It may be 
 the case that a Briton does not dislike an American more than he 
 does any other foreigner. He seems to dislike all foreigners, 
 and we are made particularly aware of it because we happen to 
 speak the same language. He dislikes us rather more than 
 others because we reciprocate his hostility in a language whicli 
 he understands. In some sort, we are his relatives, and, as is 
 well known, there are no quarrels so intense, bitter, deadly as 
 among families. 
 
 It is true that, in speeches, we hear a great deal about kinship, 
 and all that, but you may be assured that, so far as the English 
 people are concerned, it is all bosh and pretense, without one 
 shadow of earnestness. 
 
40 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 While it is true that the Englishman hates all foreigners, there 
 may be special reasons why he is so averse to an American. The 
 two are utterly unlike in every conceivable respect, not except- 
 ing even the language. An American coming here can no more 
 understand the street cries of 'bus conductors, peddlers, news- 
 boys, and the like than if they were spoken in Choctaw. In 
 fact, it is often difficult to understand what is said by ordinary 
 people in conversation on common-place topics. 
 
 But the conti'asts between the two are much more marked in 
 other directions. An Englishman is a monarchist in govern- 
 ment, and an aristocrat in social organization; an American is 
 a republican in the first sense, and a democrat in the other. The 
 American is dark, the Englishman a blonde; the women of the 
 former are slight, graceful, willowy — those of the latter are 
 stout and often unwieldly. The American is social ; he makes 
 the acquaintance of his traveling companions, and of all with 
 whom he comes in contact. The Englishman is just the reverse, 
 and will travel all day in a car crowded with people and will 
 not exchange a word during the trip. 
 
 Going to Brighton, a couple of days since, there were nine 
 Englishmen and your correspondent in one compartment. Not 
 only was there not a word spoken on the trip, but each Briton 
 seemed to be laboring under a most distressing apprehension 
 that somebody might do the " beastly " thing of speaking to 
 him. All the way, each of them was incessantly engaged in 
 trj'ing to look in a manner that would arrest the calamity of being 
 addressed by anybody else, and in a laborious effort to keep his 
 knees, coat-tails, and elbows so well in, that nobody else could 
 touch them. 
 
 The American is exceedingly polite and reverential to women; 
 the Englishman either exactly the reverse or else stupidly indif- 
 ferent. I have never seen an Englishman give up a seat to a 
 woman, or in any way, in public, show her any attention. If a 
 man and wife are out walking, and there is a baby, the woman 
 generally carries it. An American joui'nalist, last week, under- 
 took to get a lady friend, who was quite ill, from one part of 
 the city to another. A 'bus came along, but it was full. The 
 journalist appealed to a man inside to take an outside seat, and 
 give the sick person the inside one. He did so after some hesita- 
 tion and grumbling, but a few minutes later he stopped the 'bus, 
 came down and claimed his seat, and the sick woman was landed 
 on. the sidewalk. 
 
THE HAPPY BRITON. 41 
 
 At Brighton, a large party went out on a yacht for an hour's 
 sail. It was very rough, and several of the passengers became 
 quite ill. Among others were an Englishwoman and four 
 children, one of whom was a beautiful baby which she carried 
 in her arms. The children got to the side of the boat, but the 
 mother, holding the baby, and sitting in the middle of the vessel 
 <lid not dare to move owing to the violent pitching. She was 
 deadly i^ale, and evidently in dreadful distress. All around her 
 were beefy, complacent men and women, who saw her condition 
 ■with supreme unconcern, never offering to lift a tinger to assist. 
 I finally came to her rescue, took the baby from her, led her to 
 the side, and then sat for half an hour endeavoring to quiet an 
 infant whom sea-sickness and terror had combined to make 
 especially uneasy and unhappy. Some of the men about wiped 
 their ej^eglass, and stuck it in their eye in order to look over a 
 specimen who did such a marvelous thing; and the women 
 watched with languid astonishment my etforts to quiet the child, 
 but not one volunteered to aid in the operation. There was 
 but one bright feature, to me, in the whole performance. Once 
 when my little charge commenced throwing up like a young 
 volcano, I so steered or manipulated the upheaval that what I 
 ■did not get myself went into the silken lap and over the ample 
 skirts of a female next to me. She was the one who should have 
 taken the baby. She did not take the baby, but she did most of 
 its contents. 
 
 Always are these contrasts presenting themselves. An Amer- 
 ican building a house surrounds his front yard with a light fence, 
 or with a low curb, in order that the flowers, or lawn, or plants 
 may be seen and enjoyed by the public. An Englishman, under 
 the same circumstances, constructs all around his premises a 
 thick brick wall fifteen feet high. He then buys up all the 
 broken bottles in the neighborhood, and cements these on the 
 top of the wall, with their sharp edges up. Then he goes inside, 
 locks the gate, takes out the key, pulls in the keyhole, walks into 
 his castle, and is happy. 
 
 Among us, defective vision is regarded as a defect, the sapie as 
 lameness or a tumor; here it is a merit. An Englishman is not 
 truly happy until he cannot see more than three feet in front of 
 him, whereupon, with a monocular glass, screwed in one eye, he 
 is supremely blest. Probably the reason that approximate blind- 
 ness is so much appreciated here is that it enables a native always 
 
42 
 
 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
EXTERNAL VIEWS OF THE BKITON. 43 
 
 to have an excuse for not seeing, and therefore not recognizing, 
 somebody else. 
 
 This exclusiveness will continue to work its way until a time 
 when its practical development will be perfect. At that time, 
 the railway coach will be so remodeled that each compartment 
 will be reduced to dimensions which will accommodate only one 
 Briton and a bull-dog. Seated thus, in solitary grandeur, the 
 Briton of the future will be happy beyond the conception of this 
 generation. 
 
 a^ 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 EXTERNAL VIEWS OF THE BRITON. 
 
 London, August 11, 1877. 
 
 CLOSED up my last letter by some comments to the effect 
 'W that the British lion is really the king of beasts* — with the 
 ^^^ emphasis on beasts, if you please. But, after all, he is a 
 magnificent animal, is this leonine representative. He is fierce 
 in his flashing eye; the perfection of vigor in his enormous 
 shoulders and muscular neck, and full of a strong, graceful 
 beauty in the poise of the massive head and the flow of his 
 tawny mane. 
 
 I have somewhere read of a lion who, when a little, squeaking,, 
 frightened mouse was put in his cage, dropped his lordly tail 
 between his legs, and went frantically bounding against the bars, 
 giving vent to thundering roars of abject terror. So occasionally 
 with the British lion. He at times becomes fearfully demoralized 
 when there is nothing larger than a poor little mouse to cause it; 
 but his average is good. As a general thing he can be relied on 
 irrespective of the size of his antagonist. See how he trounced 
 the Ab3'ssinian beast because the latter had interfered with one 
 of his progeny! 
 
 In brief, while a diplomatic mouse will sometimes demoralize 
 this lordly animal, he will fight the entire menagerie if necessary 
 to protect one of his subjects. Let it be asserted, and even 
 demonstrated, that a Russian advance is endangering British 
 interests, and it at once happens that one-half of England give 
 the matter no thought, and the other half are eager for a fight — 
 
 * Omitted. 
 
44: SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 providing they can get some other nation to do it for them. But 
 let some foreign power lay unlawful hands upon a British sub- 
 ject, and, in twenty-four hours or less, the black muzzle of a 
 British iron-clad has been thrust into the business. It is repara- 
 tion or fight, instanter ; and to enforce this alternative every able- 
 bodied male in England would shoulder his Snyder and marcli 
 to the front. Do you remember how quickly we dropped Mason 
 & Co. after we had picked them up from a British mail steamer? 
 Well, it's just so everywhere. The world may pluck the beard 
 of the British lion; it may call him opprobious names; it may 
 fling offal at him and insult him most egregiously, and he will 
 endure it as patiently as an ass will a feed of thistles; but lay a 
 hand in anger and unlawfully upon any of his subjects any- 
 where — tlien woe to the offender ! 
 
 The average Briton of the sterner sex, and between certain 
 ages, is the perfection of physical beauty in many respects. 
 Between eighteen and thirty, one finds a class of men who have 
 few equals and no superiors. They are a little above the medium 
 height, square as to shoulder, broad and deep as to chest, with 
 mighty thighs, and swelling muscles as to arm and leg, witness- 
 ing no end of devotion to rowing, cricket, bicycling and other 
 muscle and health-giving exercises. It is as good as looking at 
 •a fine picture to see one of these fellows walk. He has a long, 
 swinging stride; his swelling muscles, the poise of his trunk, 
 his advanced chest and the ease of his movement, all combine to 
 suggest power — a power ample for the work in hand, with a 
 further suggestion as to a reserve available for any imaginable 
 purpose. His cheeks are ruddy, his eye bright, his lips red, his 
 gleaming teeth faultless. He rides a horse as if a part of him, 
 rising with an easy, graceful motion as the animal trots, or sits as 
 immovable as a rock when flying along at a swift gallop. In 
 line, the British youth is the perfection of physical manhood, as 
 handsome as Apollo, as strong as Sampson, as swift as an antelope 
 and as enduring as iron. 
 
 Prior to this age, he is a callow, shame-faced youtli, with 
 enormous feet, ill-fitting jackets, and a plug hat. After passing 
 thirty, he grows beefy and stout. At forty he is paunchy, with a 
 nose that is growing bulbous. At fifty he is short-winded; he 
 measures forty-five around his chest and ninety-five around his 
 waist; his nose is pitted and blooming as a strawberry; the top 
 of his head is as white, as gleaming as a billiard ball, and he 
 
EXTERNAL VIEWS OF THE BRITON. 45 
 
 suffers from twinges in his big toe, coming from unlimited indul- 
 gence in port, sherry, champagne, bitter beer, Bass' ale, Guinness', 
 hock, claret, and brandy and water — all of which he decants 
 into himself at, or about, a grand, daily cramming performance, 
 which he calls his dinner. 
 
 From the time the British female makes her debut in a baby- 
 wagon up to the time she puts on long dresses, she is the most 
 charming creature in existence. She is generally a blonde, with 
 long, abundant hair, streaming like a yellow cataract adown her 
 back. Her eyes are blue and filled with an innocent light, which, 
 while saint-like, is yet healthful, and full of energy and a pleas- 
 ing, and not immodest, self-reliance. Her complexion is exquisite, 
 her features delicate, her ensemble pervaded with grace, health 
 and beauty. 
 
 What becomes of all these beautiful children and these charm- 
 ing misses ? Heaveri only knows. It would seem as if they were 
 annihilated upon reaching a certain age, and that the species is 
 continued by a special creation into which there enter no 
 elements of the preceding growth. Gone are the beautiful com- 
 plexions, gone the delicate features, gone the sylph-like figures, 
 gone the clear innocence of the eyes, gone everything character- 
 istic of childhood and girlhood. I have yet to see a dozen 
 entirely pretty or wholly well-dressed young ladies since my 
 arrival in England. Their breadth of shoulder is masculine; 
 their walk, although strong, is rarely graceful, and their taste in 
 dress often simply atrocious. 
 
 " Oh, you haven't seen anything but the lower classes! " 
 
 This from some disgusted Briton. Ah, yes, my friend, I've 
 heard that remark before. You always say that whenever I 
 venture to criticise or find fault. You not only mean by the 
 remark to neutralize what I am saying, but you also intend to 
 convey the meaning that you know a great deal better, because 
 you associate constantly with the higher classes. This is a par- 
 donable bit of snobbery on your part, my friend, but it won't 
 answer the purpose. I have sat in Hyde Park when all the 
 fashion of London was out on wheels. I have been at the " Zoo " 
 on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, in the season when everybody 
 was there, from the Earl of Beaconsfield down — or up, as your 
 politics may choose to have it. I've had old stagers with me 
 who knew everybody, and who pointed out the Earl of this, the 
 Duke of that, the Marquis of t'other, and no end of my lords 
 
46 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 and my ladies, and swells of all possible degrees and qualities. 
 I've seen enough members of the higher class to fill Moody's 
 Tabernacle, on Market street, at least seven times; and I will say 
 of them as a general thing that they are handsomely dressed and 
 entirely respectable people in appearance. 
 
 No, the British young woman is not handsome. She is health- 
 ful in appearance, and thoroughly removes any apprehension — 
 if there be any — that the baby-wagons of the future will not 
 continue, as now, to have an average of two occupants of the 
 same age, or of but a few months difference. As a wife and 
 mother she becomes, for a time, beautiful. Maternity softens the 
 lines of her face and supplies the blank, indifferent stare of 
 young womanhood with a warm and tender light. One of the 
 most charming of the many sights one sees here is a family car- 
 riage laden witli beautiful children and a woman whose face is 
 radiant with the beautiful, gentle glow of motherhood. 
 
 If there be reason to marvel over the disappearance of the 
 beautiful girl-children and the charming misses; if there be 
 cause for wonderment that there is no connecting link between 
 lithe, slender, vivacious, sprightly, tender girlhood and the im- 
 mobile, placid, expressionless young woman with her broad 
 shoulders and her promise of plentiful fruition as to population, 
 what cause is there not for marvel and wonderment, in excess, ■ 
 when one comes to examine, in detail, the British matron, who 
 has reached or passed her eighth lustrum ? My pen hesitates 
 and trembles as it nears the labor of attempting to outline one 
 of this notable class. 
 
 The rounded, lissom form of the girl disappears, or is merged 
 into the broad and often angular figure of the young woman. So 
 in time disappears the mother with the radiant glow on her face, 
 and the tender light in the eyes, and then the rigid features and 
 scowling face of the matron. Beer and maternity have done 
 their work, especially the former. 
 
 Sit down here a moment in Hyde Park. It is in the season, 
 and the magnificent roadway is filled to its utmost capacity. 
 Carriages, with ensignia of nobility on their panels, with liveried 
 drivers and blooded horses, roll by in endless succession. Every- 
 thing about them is quiet, rich, indicative of rank. Inside sit 
 the British matron and three daughters. The latter are as calm, 
 as immovable as if they were marble. Posed in reclining atti- 
 tudes, they look neither to the right nor the left ; they are as 
 
THE LONDON FTEE DEPARTMENT, 47 
 
 dispassionate, as fixed as if frozen into eternal rigidity. The 
 former is a picture — Flemish in its redundancy and coloring. 
 
 LETTTER VIII. 
 
 THE LONDON FIRE DEPARTMENT. 
 
 London, August 16, 1877. 
 
 f CONSULTED the directory various times ; went by 'bus and 
 underground railway to divers and remote parts of the city 
 and metropolis ; lost myself on a dozen or twenty occasions ; 
 was ignominiously repelled by awful and dignified flunkies when 
 I happened to get into the wrong ofiices ; and finally, one hot after- 
 noon, after being misdirected by twelve different policemen, 
 bootblacks, porters, and small boys, I discovered the location of 
 the chief of the London fire brigade, Capt. Eyre Massey Shaw, 
 and I also made the further interesting discovery that he was 
 not in. Even the discovery of the fact that he was not at home 
 was not a labor unattended with difiiculty. I was met at the 
 very threshold of the small engine-house where I finally ran him 
 to earth by a stern-looking personage, in a blue, undress uniform, 
 who regarded me with a severe and knowing expression which 
 conveyed perfectly the idea that he knew 1 was there for the pur- 
 pose of cribbing the old-fashioned hand-engine in the passage, 
 and that it couldn't be done while he had the strength to resist 
 any such felonious attempt. To his stern " What do you want?" 
 I humbly replied by mentioning the name of the chief. 
 
 " What do you want of him ? " 
 
 " I'm a pilgrim from a foreign land and desire to examine the 
 workings of your department." 
 
 "Are you connected with a fire department?" 
 
 "Unfortunately, no. I'm a simple journalist in search of 
 information. Won't you please hand my card to Capt. Shaw." 
 
 He took it doubtfully, as if he were under the impression that 
 this was simply a ruse to get rid of him, so that I might make 
 oflF with the hand-machine during his absence. But he was not 
 to be caught napping. He went into a back-room, remained a 
 
48 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 moment, came out, went down a passage, and disappeared. At 
 the same time the heads of two men appeared through the opea 
 door and their owners regarded me with ceaseless vigilance. 
 
 In about ten minutes the gentleman with the card returned and 
 informed me that Capt. Shaw was not in. Thereupon I drifted 
 out into the maze of the crowded streets of London. A week 
 later I tried it again. 
 
 I had to undergo the same preliminaries. I had to explain 
 who I was, whether I belonged to any fire department, and what 
 I wanted. The card was taken along the passage, and the same 
 individuals in the back room kept a vigilant eye upon the safety 
 of the hand-engine. In a few minutes the individual returned 
 with the statement that Capt. Shaw was engaged but would see 
 me after a little. The message seemed to have an ameliorating 
 effect upon the party who delivered it, and upon the two guard' 
 ians in the back room. It is true that they did not fail to keep 
 a lookout, but it was a trifle less severe than before. They still 
 knew, so to speak, that I was intending to elope with their small 
 machine, but they evidently concluded that I would not make 
 the attempt until I had seen the chief. Therefore, there was a 
 partial let up in their vigilance ; and, availing myself of this and 
 the time I had to wait for Capt. Shaw, I strolled about the engine 
 house and " took in " its character. 
 
 It is a small affair — about the size of an average bedroom. 
 Close to the street are two engines — one a small steamer, and the 
 other an old-fashioned hand-machine with brakes, and rigged 
 with a tongue and whitfletrees, so as to be drawn by horses. The 
 tongues of both machines were unshipped and tucked away 
 snugly beneath fhe axletrees, so as not to be in the way. It 
 occurred to me, as I noticed this, that haste in getting out an 
 engine, after an alarm, is not an essential feature, because it would 
 require some time to get these tongues out and place them in 
 position. As I afterward learned, I was not mistaken in this 
 conclusion. I saw nowhere any stables, harness, or signs of 
 hgrses. Back of the engines, in a row along the wall, were a 
 half dozen brass helmets, very highlj- polished, and very shapely 
 and handsome. The back portion of the room was partitioned 
 off, and from the tables, desks, and maps which I saw through 
 the open door I concluded it to be some sort of an office. 
 
 I had long become satiated with examining the two machines 
 and admiring the brass helmets, and had about made up my 
 
THE LONDOJSI FIKE DEPAKTMENT. 49 
 
 mind to send word to Capt. Shaw that I would call in again the 
 next time I should come to Europe, when I was rejoiced by the 
 appearance of my friend and by the information that I could 
 walk up stairs. I did so, and a moment later found myself in 
 the presence of the renowned Chief of the London Fire Brigade, 
 Capt. Eyre Massey Shaw. I found a tall, slender, handsome 
 blond, with an intelligent face, a moustache and imperial, and 
 who seems not niore than thirty-five years of age. He bowed 
 gravely and awaited in silence my pleasure. 
 
 I am rather of the impression from the expression on his face 
 that he had expected to meet an American who had called for 
 the purpose of inviting him out to take a few cocktails, and wlio, 
 thereafter, expected the captain to invite him to liis house to stay 
 a couple of weeks and, meanwhile, to devote his afternoons and 
 evenings to showing him, the American, the inside sights of 
 London. If such were the gallant captain's ideas, he was soon 
 undeceived, for I at once said to him: 
 
 " Capt. Shaw, you spent some time in examining our American 
 fire departments. In Chicago we have one of which we are 
 proud. I should like very much, in the interests of the journal 
 I represent, to look over your system and compare it with ours. 
 As you probably know, the people of Chicago have reason to 
 take a great interest in fires and all that relates to their handling." 
 
 "Certainly," said he, evidently very much relieved. He sat 
 down at once and gave me a card passing me everywhere through 
 the engine-houses. Then saying: "You may as well commence 
 here," he put on his cap and led the M'ay down stairs. 
 
 " I'm afraid," he said, " that we can't show you much that will 
 interest you. You are far ahead of us in a good many respects." 
 
 " But you don't need the same efficiency. You have fewer 
 fires, and your buildings are more substantially put up, and 
 don't burn as easily as ours." 
 
 " That's a mistake. We have more fires, and the building here 
 is not as good as yours. Besides, many of our buildings are two 
 or three hundred years old, and are as dry as tinder." 
 
 I may add here, that so far as substantial work is concerned, 
 Capt. Shaw is quite right. I have noticed a good many build- 
 ings in process of erection, and I am prepared to say that many 
 of them are so flimsy in their character that they would not be 
 allowed in Chicago. 
 
 We reached the foot of the stairs and there met face to face 
 4 
 
60 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 my friend, whom I had eacountered on my previous visit, and 
 who had apparently entertained such suspicions in regard to my 
 design to pocket and make off with tlie hand-engine. If he had 
 placed liimself at the foot of the stairway with the idea that he 
 could intercept me in some felonious design as I came down, he 
 immediately found himself mistaken, when he saw me coming 
 under the friendly escort of his chief. Capt. Shaw introduced 
 him as chief engineer, which, I believe, is equivalent to what is 
 termed foreman in America. He touched his hat politely, pro- 
 ceeded to show me all the details of the station, and proved 
 himself thereafter a most gentlemanly official. 
 
 I may state here that an English subordinate is quite one 
 thing, or quite another, according as you are presented to him. 
 Since my visit to Capt. Shaw, and the receipt of his card of 
 introduction, I have visited a dozen different engine houses, or 
 " fire-brigade stations." In every instance, when I have showed 
 signs of entering, an individual has presented himself, barred 
 my progress, while upon his face there was a grim expression 
 of: " Well, now, what do you want ? " Then I have leisurely 
 hunted through my inside pockets for my wallet, and then 
 through it for the card. During all this time the countenance 
 of the individual seemed to say: "That's all humbug! You've 
 got nothing, and, in a couple of seconds more, I'm going to kick 
 you into the middle of the street for your impudence in coming 
 around here, and making believe you have got something that 
 you haven't got! " And yet the very moment his eye would scan 
 the charmed card, his expression would change, his hand would 
 go up to his cap, and he would at once become the politest and 
 most accommodating of gentlemen. 
 
 After parting from Capt. Shaw, I was taken into the back 
 room by my conductor. A huge map of London hangs on the 
 wall, on which numbered red spots indicate the location of every 
 engine house in the city. The city is divided into four or more 
 districts, each of which has telegraph connections from its 
 various stations to the central station of that particular district. 
 The central district stations have telegraphic connections with 
 the main central station — the one where I was being shown 
 through. These stations were pointed out on the map ; and I 
 was shown the telegraph dials connecting with the central 
 sub-stations. 
 
 "Suppose now," I inquired, "a fire should break out, say 
 
THE LONDON FIRE DEPARTMENT. 
 
 51 
 
 here,"— as I indicated a remote part of the city, and some dis- 
 tance from an engine-liouse — " wliat is the modus operandi?" 
 
 "The nearest fire-brigade station is notified, and from there 
 word is sent to the central station of that district. The fact is 
 then telegraphed here to the central station." 
 
 LONDON FIRE ALARM. 
 
 " Suppose the engine which goes to the spot cannot handle the 
 fi!re — then what?" 
 
 "Word is telegraphed from this station how many other en- 
 gines must go to the fire." 
 
52 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " How is word first brought to a station that there is a fire?'* 
 
 " By any person who sees it." 
 
 " But suppose there is no one round?" 
 
 " Oh, there is always sure to be in a place as large as London, 
 Besides, the one who first discovers and reports a fire gets half a 
 crown. In the same way, the one who first reports a fire to a 
 fire-escape station gets half a crown." 
 
 " Then you don't have any fire-alarm boxes ? " 
 
 " No. What are they ? " 
 
 I explained that, in my town, in case of a fire, a person goes- 
 to the next corner, turns a little crank two or three times, and 
 then hurries home like the old boy to get there before the 
 steamer. I also explained the convenient district-telegraph sys-* 
 tem whereby a man, who, smelling smoke in the night, reaches- 
 his hand over his pillow, touches a knob, and then flies to open 
 his front door in order to prevent its being smashed in by firemen. 
 
 I saw he was a good deal incredulous ; but I had something- 
 else in store for him. 
 
 We went out to the front and looked over the engines. The 
 steamer is a small one, the opening into whose fire-box instead 
 of being at the rear, is at tlie sides between the wheels. A gas- 
 jet burning under the boiler keeps the water always warm. I 
 inquired if it was not inconvenient to have the furnace door at 
 the side instead of behind; and how they fed the coal when 
 going to a fire? He thought it is just as well at the side; and 
 beside, he said, they never have to feed on their way to a fire. 
 What material is in the furnace is suflBcient to gfet up the neces- 
 sary steam. 
 
 And then we went to the stables. They are next door, down a- 
 long inclined plane, fully one hundred and fifty feet from the 
 engines. There were some six horses standing in their stables, 
 none of them harnessed. 
 
 " How long does it take you to harness up, and run out after 
 an alarm is struck ? " 
 
 " Oh, not over three or four minutes." 
 
 I gave a long whistle. 
 
 He looked at me. " Can you do it any sooner?" he asked. 
 
 "Sooner!" I ejaculated; "Sooner! an engine in Chicago 
 that has not hitched up, pulled out, and run over at least three 
 people within from eight to fifteen seconds after an alarm has 
 struck, would not remain in the department twenty-four hours! " 
 
THE LONDON FIRE DEPARTMENT. 53 
 
 He almost laughed in my face as he asked, " How do you do 
 that?" 
 
 Then I went for him. " Why, the horses are always harnessed 
 night and day. Their stalls are just behind the steamers, and 
 the same electric current that strikes the gong drops the halters 
 off the horses. Trained to their business they instantly swing 
 into place, the tugs are hitched, the driver is iu his seat, the men 
 <5lamber into position, and away they go with a yell and a gallop ! 
 If the alarm be at night, the electric current tips up the bed of 
 the driver, which is exactly over the seat of the engine, drops 
 him into his place, and also overturns the beds of the men, 
 and"— I was about to add — "throws a jet of cold water into 
 «ach man's face to waken him, pulls on his boots, and then tosses 
 him into his place on the machine," when I forebore. There was 
 something in the face of my guide that warned me I had gone 
 far enough, and that a persistence in such monstrous exaggera- 
 ion would necessitate the adoption of severely-repressive meas- 
 ures. However, he is no exception to any number of people 
 -whom I have met over here. I have often attempted to explain 
 to them our district-telegraph, fire-alarm apparatus, and the 
 rapidity with which our firemen run out their machines, but I 
 have never found anybody who believes a word of it. I verily 
 believe that, among these people. I am looked upon as the biggest 
 liar in all London. 
 
 There were several other matters that I wished to ask about, 
 but the face of my conductor bore an expression which con- 
 vinced me that he no longer reposed confidence in my integrity, 
 and thereupon I came away. 
 
 Determined not to be balked in my search for information, I, 
 from time to time, as other business engagements would permit, 
 visited other stations, and obtained interviews, but was always 
 •careful to go only to stations remote from the central one, and 
 where 1 did not deem it likely that my reputation for mendacity 
 ■could have extended. 
 
 From the officer in charge of station Twenty, on Oxford street, 
 I was put in possession of further information of value. I said 
 to him : 
 
 " You have no hydrants. How do you take water? " 
 
 " You may have noticed," he answered, " on the corners of 
 buildings around town, and here and there a small tin sign with 
 the inscription, ' F. P. 15 ft.,' or 20 ft., or 50 ft. This means that 
 
54 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 there is a fire-plug within fifteen, or twenty, or fifty, or whatever 
 may be the number of feet from the corner, or the place where 
 the sign is put up." 
 
 I admitted having puzzled myself often over these cabalistic 
 signs. " But what is a fire-plug ? " I asked. 
 
 " It is simply a hole in the street about three inches in diam- 
 eter. This hole is the end of a pipe which connects with the 
 water mains beneath the street. In order to get water from them 
 a connection is opened with the street main." 
 
 "Must this connection be opened whenever you wish to take 
 water from a plug ? " 
 
 " Certainly; the water is only let into the plug when there is a 
 fire." 
 
 " Of course, then every station has a wrench to turn on the 
 water when wanted ? " 
 
 "No; that is the work of a turncock. He is an official in 
 the employ of the various companies wlio supply London with 
 water." 
 
 " But how do you find a turncock when you want him ? " 
 
 " Well, there is half a crown reward to tlie one who first notifies 
 a turncock that there is a fire." 
 
 "But can one always be found?" 
 
 " Most always. Sometimes he is late, but not very often." 
 
 " I see. After the turncock has been found and the water turned 
 on, how do you take it ? Does the hose screw into the opening 
 of the plug?" 
 
 He went to a hand-machine, opened the top, and fished out a 
 canvas concern about as long, high, and broad as a champagne, 
 basket. The top is open. In the center of the bottom is a hole 
 about four inches in diameter, whose edge is bound with leather. 
 
 " We put this over the plug," he said. " The water rushes into 
 it and fills it. We put the end of the suction-pipe into it, and 
 that's the way we get the water." 
 
 " But isn't there a great waste under the bottom ? " 
 
 " No, because as soon as the leather around the hole gets wet 
 it ' sucks ' the pavement, and becomes perfectly tight." 
 
 Cut off a hydrant flush with the street. Take an ordinary 
 champagne-basket and make it water-tight. Cut a hole in the 
 bottom just the size of the hole in the hydrant; put the basket 
 over the hole; and then let a steamer take its water from the 
 champagne-basket — in this way could Chicago avail itself of 
 
THE LONDON FIRE DEPARTMENT. 65 
 
 tlie advantages of the London system. In order to prevent the 
 water spurting above the basket there must be a leather band 
 stretched across the top in a position so that the up-rushing water 
 will strike it and fall back into the receptacle. 
 
 I commend this ingenious arrangement to Marshal Benner. 
 Perhaps, if we had had it in 1871 we might have put out the 
 October fire before it reached the river. 
 
 I had only one or two more questions. 
 
 " Why do you retain the hand-machines ? " 
 
 "Because they are lighter, and we can get to a fire quicker." 
 
 " Does it take any longer to hitch up for a steamer than for a 
 hand-machine?" 
 
 "No; but then we can get through the streets faster." 
 
 " Don't you have the right of way along the streets?" 
 
 "Not at all. We have just the same right as anybody else; 
 and if we damage anybody we are liable for it." 
 
 Ye gods ! My imagination at once drew a contrast between 
 the London steamer, picking its way gingerly along the streets, 
 and the mad rush of the Chicago steamer, the sonorous clang 
 of the bell, the trail of smoke rushing fiercely back, the rapid 
 pounding of iron hoofs, the tossing manes, and the roar and 
 clamor as the rocking machine shoots by like a burnished and 
 smoking thunderbolt! 
 
 And finally : " Do you have men enough to man the brakes ? " 
 
 " Not connected with the department. But we get them from 
 the crowd. There is no trouble about that! We've often to 
 pound men away, there's so many offer themselves." 
 
 I touched my hat, thanked him, and left. 
 
 The above conversations embody the main features of the Lon- 
 don fire system. A fire breaks out, and there is no systematic 
 method of giving an alarm. If somebody happens to discover 
 it, and if he happens to know where there is a brigade station, 
 and happens to be willing to go thither with the information, all 
 right. If not, then all wrong. Then again, if somebody hap- 
 pens to know where a turncock lives, and happens to be willing 
 to go and rout him out, then, once more, all right; otherwise all 
 wrong. It's just the same with the fire-escapes ; chance informa- 
 tion, the stimulus of half a crown, are all that assures to a family 
 shut up in a burning building the arrival of means of escape. 
 
 In a city so densely populated as London, it is impossible that 
 a fire can long escape notice ; and yet it is certain that where so 
 
56 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 many mere chances are depended on for getting engines, water, 
 and fire-escapes, tlie average results must be largely against 
 securing prompt action. 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 ENGLISH SUAVITY. 
 
 London, September 1, 1877. 
 
 |P7''R0M time to time, in this correspondence, I have done our 
 English friends the justice to abuse them whenever I 
 thought they were deserving of it. Having been engaged 
 in this work does not prevent my seeing another side to the Eng- 
 lish character and finding therein much which is equally 
 deserving of praise. By way of variety, let us glance at this 
 phase of English life. 
 
 One thing which will, in the end, favorably impress an Amer- 
 ican is the very universal politeness which is everywhere preva- 
 lent. I say in the end, because, at first, when a Yankee lands 
 here fresh from the breezy independence and don't-care-a-damn- 
 for-auy-body style which prevails among our people, he is in- 
 clined to fancy that politeness is overdone, and that it is a sham, 
 a something which lies all on the surface. This may be true to 
 a very considerable extent. 
 
 When a shop-keeper, of whom you have purchased tuppence 
 worth of something, and have taken up half an hour of his time, 
 bows you out, and says, "Thank you! thank you very much ! " 
 and does it all with an air of deferential regard, you cannot help 
 feeling that this volume of thanks comes from no deeper source 
 than his lips; you may suspect the motive and rather despise 
 the manner of giving it expression, and j^et you cannot but like 
 and be soothed by the flattery involved in the whole transaction. 
 
 " Have jrou any good smoking tobacco ? " I asked an old lady 
 who stood behind the counter of a tobacco-shop. 
 
 "Thank you, sir! Yes, sir! 'ere is some, tenpence the bounce, 
 sir!" 
 
 I examined it, smelled it, and concluded I didn't want it. 
 
 " No, I believe not. It's not just what I want." 
 
 "Thank you, sir! Good morning, sir! Thank you!" 
 
ENGIJSH SUAVITY. 
 
 57 
 
 This is not an uncommon case. The red-shirted bootblack 
 touches his cap as you approach, and lie thanks you and touches 
 his cap as you give him a penny for his labor; or if you decline 
 to patronize him, he is very apt to touch his cap with his dirty 
 fore-flnger, and say "Thank you, sir," all the same. 
 
 The barber who shaves you says " Thank you " when you turn 
 your face over so that he can shave on the opposite cheek ; the 
 cabmen, the 'bus conductor, the bar-maid, every one to whom 
 jou pay money, always receives it with a pleasant acknowledg- 
 ment. It may be that you know that in every one of the cases 
 not one is animated by any true spirit of politeness; and that 
 while thanking you with his lips he may, in his heart, regard 
 you as a nuisance, a barbarian, or anything else unpleasant — 
 nevertheless, the politeness is there, it is agreeable, and it com- 
 mends itself as far superior to the surly independence in use 
 among Americans of the same class. 
 
 If there is any particular thing which is calculated to make an 
 American homesick, to make him feel he is indeed in a foreign 
 clime, it is the entire absence of profanity. Except what I may 
 have overheard in a few soliloquies, I have not heard an oath 
 since my arrival in England. The cabman does not swear at 
 you, nor the policeman, nor the railway employe, nor anybody 
 else. Nobody in an ordinary conversation on the weather, or in 
 asking after some one's location, or inquiring after another's 
 health, employs from three- to five oaths to every sentence. It's 
 rather distressing to an American to get used to this state of 
 things ; to talk to a man for three or four minutes, and never 
 hear a single "d — n;" to wander all day through populous 
 streets, and not hear a solitary curse ; to go anywhere, and every- 
 where, and not be stirred up once by so much as the weakest of 
 blasphemies. What wonder that the average American becomes 
 homesick under such a deprivation, and that he longs for the 
 freedom and curses of his perrary home? 
 
 Another feature which I miss very much here are collections 
 of tobacco-chewing citizens, at street-crossings and other places, 
 who flood the sidewalks with saliva and make it "interesting" 
 for any lady who may happen to pass. I must confess that the 
 entire absence of all such gatherings, engaged in ribald conver- 
 sation, in staring insolently into women's faces, in making the 
 air foul with tobacco smoke and curses, has convinced me that I 
 am indeed far from home, and cast adrift among a strange, a 
 peculiar and unsympathetic people. 
 
58 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 All these various things are of minor consequence taken singly, 
 but when they are summed up thej^ have a material efiect upon 
 the comfort, the sensibilities of a resident. They are symptomatic 
 of important difi'erences ; and, in this sense, have a very signifi- 
 cant meaning. The fact that the average Englishman never puts 
 his muddy hoofs on the opposite car seat; that he will sometimes 
 make room for you in the car or 'bus if there be any room ; that 
 he never uses his fingers when engaged in blowing off his snout ; 
 that he doesn't spit all over every lady and everything with whom 
 or which he comes in contact ; that he is never profane or bois- 
 terous in his conversation in a public place; these, and a score 
 of similar things are all in his favor, and will excuse the lack on 
 his part of many things whose possession would make him much 
 more agreeable than he is at the present time. 
 
 While it is true that there is a tendency among certain classes 
 of Englishmen to black the eyes of their wives, or to kick them 
 into "kingdom come" with hob-nailed shoes, the average do- 
 mestic life of the English is one full of charm. Every family 
 must have a home. There is no uneasy, demoralizing hotel life 
 as among us. Every family has a home, even if it be but a single 
 room in a garret. 
 
 As to the harmony and happiness of these English homes, I 
 shall have nothing to say. They may, or may not, be happier 
 than the average American home; it is only certain that the 
 English people lay more stress upon this feature than we do, that 
 they surround it with more safeguards, that they endeavor in 
 every possible way to separate it from the world and give it an 
 individuality and an existence all its own. 
 
 This separation of the home from the rest of the world is car- 
 ried into and becomes a part of the family character. The Eng- 
 lish wife rarely goes off to a watering-place by herself, where 
 unlimited flirtation becomes the rule, and remediless demoraliza- 
 tion a not uncommon result. As a general thing the family here 
 is one, when at home or out in the world. It is not the wife, or 
 the husband, or the daughter, who goes off on a journey to the 
 mountains or the seaside, but they all go together, as a family, 
 as one. 
 
 One of the jolliest sights to be seen here, on almost any day, 
 but especially on Sunday, is a wagon with the family, bound for 
 a day in the country. There are the husband, the wife, the baby — 
 iand quite often two babies — and from three to a dozen children 
 
ENGLISH SUAVITY. 59 
 
 of all ages, sizes, aad sexes, packed in like herrings, and all 
 aglow with excitement and anticipation! Under the seat is a 
 basket, plethoric with sandwiches, cold chicken, bottles of beer, 
 and a flask of choice old brandy. 
 
 Away they go, rattling cheerily over the London pavements. 
 A proud man is pater familias as he draws the reins over his 
 powerful nag and dextrously touches him up occasionally with a 
 flick from a whip, long and imposing enough for a six-in-hand 
 turn-out. A proud woman is mater familias as she admires the 
 horsemanship of her husband, as she adjusts the multifarious 
 white wrappings of the chubby, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired baby. 
 Proud are the older children as they exercise a commanding 
 oversight of the younger ones, whose hats are ever getting loose 
 or awry, who are ever on the eve of being jolted nnto the street, 
 who are twisting and changing to see this, or hear that, and who 
 are ever a cause of profound anxiety to the mature miss of twelve, 
 or the lordly boy of sixteen. 
 
 Away out into the country they go at a slapping pace. They 
 select the quietest roads and travel along at a famous rate, between 
 trim green hedges, skirting fields of barley; coming suddenly to 
 brows of hills where a vast panorama unfolds itself of fields 
 yellow with ripened grain, green groves glinting with sunlight 
 above a maze of slumbering shadows ; low, vine-clad farm-houses 
 with their red-tiled roofs, and their yards ablaze with gorgeous 
 flowers, and here and there a stately residence, with columned 
 piazzas and pointed gables, its stretches of lawn and its winding 
 w^alks, bordered with geraniums and rarest of plants. 
 
 By and by, a grove is reached, a halt is made, the jolly load is 
 tumbled out ; and all the sunny day the husband lounges, lies, 
 smokes beneath the trees ; the children race and romp, the wife 
 nurses and cares for the baby, and keeps a vigilant oversight 
 upon her numerous brood. When the shadows lengthen there is 
 a return. The tired younger ones sleep with heads pillowed on 
 each other, and faces veiled by wandering curls ; the elders dis- 
 cuss the events of the day ; and, an hour or so after the darkness 
 has shrouded the great city, they are at home, and demonstrative 
 in their belief that it has been the jolliest day they ever saw in 
 all. their lives. 
 
 Such is a fair specimen of English recreation. It is a family 
 matter. They go as one; they hunt some locality where they can 
 be alone, and remain as one ; and from beginning to end the 
 
60 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 affair is based upon family unity and family enjoyment as a 
 whole. 
 
 Even the English vehicles are characteristic in this direction. 
 I do not believe that in all England there is anything like that 
 ineffably selfish road-wagon in America, and built to carry but 
 one person. The smallest donkey-cart in use here is companion- 
 able to the extent of being calculated for at least two. An ordi- 
 nary one-horse drag is so arranged with side seats that, although 
 occupying no more room than an ordinary American top-buggy, 
 it will accommodate from six to eight persons. In fine, the con- 
 veyances have reference to family unity, and nowhere suggest 
 individual isolation. 
 
 The average Londoner has four or five holidays in a year, and 
 €very Sunday, as days of recreation. He avails himself of these 
 economical excursions; they cost next to nothing, and are benefi- 
 cial in every respect. The railways run trains to the seaside 
 whereby a man, for a dollar, can go sixty or seventy miles and 
 return. These trains are run on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mon- 
 days. A man can go down in the morning, have a dip in the 
 sea, have his children play all day on the beach, and return home 
 early in the evening. At almost every half-hour in the day trains 
 leave London in every direction. Within an hour's ride is any 
 number of healthful and beautiful places, at which one can 
 profitably spend the day. 
 
 One can go scarcely anywhere within forty miles of London 
 without meeting a London family having a picnic all by itself 
 The city is full of magnificent park?, in which, especially on 
 Sundays, there are beneath every tree, charming family groups 
 of motherly women, staid young misses, and romping children. 
 
 Herein is another great point in favor of the English. Their 
 amusements are healthful and inexpensive. There is no splurge 
 at the seaside, no trips in which the outfits for mothers and 
 daughters cost a small fortune. An English family will get more 
 health and solid enjoyment out of a shilling jaunt into the 
 country, than an American family will get out of a two-thousand- 
 dollar trip to the seaside, or the White mountains. 
 
 This getting the most out of a little ; this simplicity permeates 
 everything. One never sees an English woman mopping the 
 dirty sidewalks with an expensive and useless trail. One never 
 sees one on the streets with diamond earrings, or a fortune dis- 
 played in lockets, pins, or other jewelry. I have seen but few 
 
ENGLISH SUAVITY. 61 
 
 "women dressed in good taste as regards colors and fit of dresses, 
 but I have never seen any who had the execrable taste to prome- 
 nade the streets in a costume blazing with ornaments, and wliose 
 value equals that of a small fortune. Herein our English cousins 
 have far the best of us. They — even the wealthiest^teach us 
 economy at every step. They constantly show us where we are 
 spending too much, and spending it for no useful end. The 
 amount which many a man in Chicago spends for cigars alone, 
 would support comfortably an English family of the less preten- 
 tious class. 
 
 Inasmuch as people do not spend so much they do not have to 
 earn so much, and in consequence they do not work so hard. 
 
 A fair illustration of the easy manner in which operations are 
 conducted is afforded by a coal-yard by which I have frequent 
 occasion to pass. There is a canal, and along side the yard are 
 four or five boats being unloaded. The force consists of six men. 
 Two are carriers, two are shovelers, and two are sifters. A 
 carrier climbs down a ladder into the boat, carrying a bag about 
 as long as he is tall, and some eighteen inches in diameter. He 
 places himself in front of a pile of coal, and next to him on his 
 right and left stand the sifters, each of whom holds a sieve about 
 the size of those in use in an American kitchen. On the outside 
 of the line thus formed, constituting its right and left flanks, are 
 the shovelers. One of the latter raises a shovel of coal, and 
 throws it into the sieve. The sifter gives it a few shakes to get 
 out the coal-dust, and then empties the residuum into the bag, 
 which is held by the carrier. In time, the bag is filled, it is 
 hoisted on the back of the carrier, who mounts the ladder and 
 leisurely proceeds to the yard, where he deposits it— the other car- 
 rier meanwhile having taken his place on the boat. 
 
 In excavating for a new building, or removing the brick from 
 one being torn down, carts are backed up to a point where there 
 will be the least interference with the street traffic, and then the 
 debris is brought out in baskets, on the backs of laborers and 
 emptied into the waiting carts. 
 
 These are indications of the slow and easy system employed 
 by the English. When I was in London in 1874, work had just 
 been commenced on a building directly opposite Temple Bar. 
 Work is still going on on the same building. The walls are 
 mainly up, but, from all appearances, two or three years more- 
 will be required to complete the structure. 
 
62 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 As a result people live longer. There is an enormous grave- 
 yard near my lodgings — in fact there is scarcely any lodging in. 
 London near which there is not an old and well-packed graveyard. 
 I have read any number of the inscriptions on the tomb-stones, 
 and liave been struck by the fact that it is the rare exception to 
 find a case in which the deceased was less than sixty years of 
 age. The ages run from 60 to 95, the average being from 80 to 90. 
 
 In Chicago, for instance, one sees comparatively few old men. 
 It is not because the country is young, and men have not had 
 time to grow old, but because men are worn out and die before 
 they have reached an advanced age. Here, hearty, rosy, jolly 
 old men, with active step, clear, keen eyes, and faces free from 
 traces of intellectual decay, are met at every step. All the great 
 political leaders are aged men; in fact, a man is not considered 
 mature until he has reached his 60th year. 
 
 The Englishman, then, is just at his maturity at the age when 
 an American, as a general thing, has ripened, is dead, bui'ied, 
 and nearly or quite forgotten. 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 'TRYING IT ON A DOG.' 
 
 London, September 5, 1877. 
 
 "rfir^TRITING letters from London, at the present time, is like 
 ^^Aa^^ the work imposed on the children of Israel by their 
 •^ Egyptian task-masters when they were compelled to 
 turn out their quotidian brick piles without any straw. The 
 straw is all absent from London. It is now what is known as 
 the "cilly season;" that is to say, a season, or the season when 
 "everybody" is out of town — or is supposed to be. "Every- 
 body " has put brown paper over his front windows and has left 
 the city. He is in Scotland shooting grouse or wandering over 
 the English turnip-fields popping among the partridges ; or, with 
 a checker-board traveling suit, he is climbing Pic du Nudi ; or, 
 eyeglass screwed in his right eye, he is staring at the Pyramids, 
 or examining the Icelandic Geysers. All continental Europe is 
 
"trying it on a dog." 63 
 
 so inundated with Englishmen that it loolis as if overrun by a 
 drove of zebras. 
 
 Strange that a Briton, who is a very decently-dressed indi- 
 vidual when he is going down Cheapside to his office, should 
 become such a fearful-looking creature the moment he crosses 
 the channel, or steps otf his native soil ! 
 
 But there is nobody in London ; Hyde Park is deserted ; Rotten 
 Row is no more cut up by the delicate hoofs of thoroughbreds ; 
 carriages with heraldic devices on their panels, and their liveried 
 drivers, have disappeared from Piccadilly and Regent street. 
 There is no opera. There is no nothing. 
 
 About the only thing going on is what may be termed experi- 
 mental operations. This is the time when dramatic authors 
 bring out their new pieces — something like what in the 
 theatrical slang of America is termed " trying it on a dog." 
 *' Trying it on a dog " means, I believe, in the locality of New 
 York, for instance, bringing out a new piece in some country 
 town like Brooklyn, Philadelphia, or Boston, with a view to 
 finally producing it in the metropolis — if it succeeds. 
 
 That's what is being done here at the present time. The 
 managers and dramatic authors are " trying it on a dog," with 
 the expectation that if the dog doesn't die under the operation 
 they will next try it on a man. The dog, in this case, is the hoi 
 poUoi who can't get out of town. The man is the swell "every- 
 body " who is " streaking the pale air " of continental Europe 
 with the monstrous abortions of Oxford street tailors. If the 
 dog, the hoi polloi, doesn't die under the experiment, then it will 
 be tried on the man when he shall return from abroad. 
 
 Rather cunning, isn't it? The stay-at-home public is credited 
 with having just enough sense to know, in a general way, whether 
 a piece is good or bad. This method, therefore, avoids all neces- 
 sity of experimenting oq the taste of the swell classes. They are 
 saved the disgust which might be created in their delicate system 
 by the presentation of a worthless piece. In addition to thus 
 being spared the infliction of a poor piece, they are saved the 
 further infliction of being obliged to endure the friction, delay 
 and crudeness inseparable from the earlier representations of a 
 new play. The thing is tried on the dog until it becomes perfect 
 in action. When the swell returns from the Highlands, the 
 Pyramids, or Iceland, the theatrical machine is presented for his 
 
64 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 patronage with the friction all obliterated, its journals oiled, its 
 parts polished, everything in perfect running order. 
 
 But how about the dog, who has to endure all the agony, dis- 
 comfort and misery connected with this experimental labor ? Ah, 
 well, that is another thing. Perhaps all that can be said about 
 that is that he has no business to be a dog. 
 
 There is something quite amazing to an American in a Londoa 
 theater, in all its essential respects. "What is popularly termed 
 the " pit " — that is, the parquette or tioor, and nearest the stage — 
 offers the best opportunity for seeing and hearing, and yet is not 
 more than a half or quarter as expensive as the first tier or gal- 
 lery just above it. The first gallery is the most expensive and 
 fashionable portion of the house. No woman is allowed to wear 
 a hat or bonnet in the balcony. Above is another gallery les» 
 expensive, and where a hat may be worn. The galleries decrease 
 in price until the one next to the roof is reached, which is for 
 the populace. Here shirt-sleeves, lunches, bottled-beer and pan- 
 demonium generally prevail without limit. 
 
 What is so very singular to an American is the contrast 
 between the lower gallery and the pit which spreads out in front 
 of it. In the former nearly everybody is in full dress ; while, in 
 the latter, the independent Briton of the male persuasion is just 
 as liable as not to sit all through the performance without 
 removing his hat — especially if it be a silk one and quite new 
 and shiny, and generally of a kind which he fancies is liable to 
 attract attention. It is no uncommon thing to see one of these 
 gentlemen, between the acts, rise in his seat, turn, face . the 
 audience, and then go over carefully each gallery with his lorgn- 
 ette. Generally the individual who does this has a glass- 
 screwed so artistically in one of his eyes, his hair is parted so 
 exactly in the middle, and plastered down so tightly to his head,, 
 his attitude is so effective, that I always fancy he rises to be seen 
 rather than to see, and that he scans the audience solely for the 
 purpose of discovering whether or not he is attracting a large 
 amount of admiration. I fancy that any one essaying such an 
 impudent, ill-mannered performance in an American theater 
 would very speedily get a most unequivocal opinion from the 
 audience as to what it thought of him and his operation. 
 
 There are various other things about an English theater that 
 seem somewhat strange to an uncivilized American. Between, 
 the acts a majority of the male population present rush out inta 
 
"trying it on a dog." 65 
 
 the adjacent lobbies, where there is always a " bar." Whether 
 they go there to gossip with the pretty bar-maids — English bar- 
 maids are nearly always pretty — or to get something out of a 
 tumbler, I am not prepared to say with exactness. To the best 
 of my belief both purposes are kept in view, and are faithfully 
 and often carried out. 
 
 Another peculiarity is that refreshments are carried around 
 through the audience. One can order cream, cake, something 
 liquid — almost anything, in brief, except a pipe — which one 
 wants and is willing to pay for. The individuals who distribute 
 these refreshments are always immaculate in full dress — black 
 swallow-tailed coat, white necktie, low-cnt vest and black pants. 
 For the matter of that, all waiters everywhere are always in full 
 dress, evening costume. I find it very difficult to know these 
 chaps from gentlemen — to distinguish between guests and ser- 
 vants. They dress exactly alike, they part the hair just the same 
 in the middle, both wear mustaches and mutton-chop 'whiskers. 
 As just said, I have much difficulty in distinguishing between 
 tlje two. After much study, and close, tireless observation, I am 
 getting to be able to discover some slight points of difference. 
 If the individual have a monocle the size of a small saucer 
 fastened in one eye the chances are that he is not a servant, but a 
 gentleman. If he have something white in his hand, and you 
 can discover that it is a napkin and not a handkerchief, then the 
 chances are that he is not a gentleman, but a servant. Finally, 
 if you speak to one of them wlio has neither eye-glass, handker- 
 chief, nor napkin, and he answers "Yissir," you may put him 
 down to be a'n attendant, while if he stares at you, and then walks 
 off without any reply, he may be classified as a guest, although 
 not certainly as a gentleman. 
 
 It requires much patient observation to get at these differences, 
 so far as they apply to theaters, private houses and restaurants. 
 
 In public the English avoid this perplexing similarity by a 
 very ingenious and easily-understood system. In driving, some- 
 times it is the gentleman who holds the reins, while his groom 
 sits beside iiim. In other cases it is the groom who drives. Now, 
 in order that the public may make no mistake — which they 
 would otherwise certainly do — as to which is master and which 
 man, which is earl and which flunky, the latter is designated by 
 some mark. He has a cockade on his hat, a plum-colored livery, 
 or knee-breeches. By these marks, much difficulty and a doubt 
 5 
 
66 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 as to identity are prevented, and awkward mistakes are very 
 cleverly avoided. 
 
 But all this has very little to do with theatrical or musical 
 matters. The confession of my ignorance, and the mention of 
 theatrical and musical matters, suggests that I have witnessed 
 some rather salient displays of English ignorance in regard to 
 American affairs and persons that are even more distressing than 
 my ignorance of the difference between an English flunky and 
 an English gentleman. 
 
 I was conversing, not long since, with an English acquaintance, 
 who is a musical amateur of no mean ability, in reference to 
 musical matters. After going over some English stars in the 
 musical firmament, he asked : 
 
 "And have you any musicians in America?" 
 
 "Why, yes; one or two." 
 
 He had asked the question with about the same air that one 
 might ask an Esquimaux as to the growth of sweet potatoes or 
 oranges in the higher arctic regions. When I answered affirm- 
 atively his look seemed to say: " Oh, aye, of course. Now we'll 
 have some Yankee rot! " 
 
 "Did you ever hear of Clara Louise Kellogg?" I asked. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Or of Theodore Thomas ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "OleBuU?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Camilla Urso?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Adelaide Phillips?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Pat Gilmore?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Pumpernickel of Calumet?" 
 No." 
 
 I gave it up. I am quite satisfied that, in a general way, in 
 common with the average Englishman who has never traveled, 
 he believes that the only music .we have on the other side is 
 nigger minstrelsy, with perhaps now and then a peformance on 
 a gong, or a drum with a single head, such as is common to all 
 barbarous nations. 
 
 Another Briton " harnessed " me on American domestic life. 
 
" TEYING IT ON A DOG." 67 
 
 "Tou have no domestic life in America; you have no privacy 
 
 in the family." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Why, you all live in hotels." 
 
 " In Chicago we have a population of five hundred thousand. 
 How in — — do you imagine we all live in hotels?" 
 
 " Oh, I suppose the lower classes don't, you know." 
 
 Here let me say that in English this word " classes," while 
 meaning about the same as in America, is pronounced quite 
 diflFerently. The "a" has the sound of "«" in father — very 
 much as if spelled closses. It is a word in such general use 
 here that I have deemed it worthy of special attention. 
 
 There are some Britons whom I meet occasionally whom I 
 have designated as "civilized Englishmen." There are men who 
 have visited America, who have spent some time there, and have 
 a fair knowledge of its facilities and capabilities. But the 
 average Englishman, whose traveling experience is limited to an 
 annual run of a few weeks on the continent, is usually an unmit- 
 igated ass as well as idiot, with reference to all matters pertain, 
 ing to America. He not only knows nothing of America, but he 
 doesn't wish to know anything. He has a general impression 
 that it is a half-civilized country where banks are always burst- 
 ing, and where railway accidents, swindling land schemes and 
 peculating officials are the rule. America and Americans as he 
 learned them in " Martin Chuzzlewit," are the America and 
 Americans that he knows, and he doesn't wish to believe in 
 anything else. 
 
 A letter in the London Times appeared a few days ago from 
 the pen of some eminent professor — Colquhon, I think. He was 
 discussing the pronunciation of Greek and Latin, which, he said, 
 had been lost. To illustrate the changes in pronunciation, he 
 pointed out that various words transferred to other countries lose 
 their original pronunciation. As an illustration he instanced 
 " Europe " and " genuine," which, he said, in North America are 
 universally pronounced Eu-rope and gen-u-«»e. Now, I'll venture 
 the assertion that there are not five people in America who ever 
 heard "Europe" pronounced Eu-rope; and that there is not one 
 educated person in America who ever spoke of " genuine " as 
 gen-u-'we. Yet this old ass thus ventilates his ignorance, and the 
 British public believe what he says, and languidly reflects: 
 "Aw — what a beastly people, aw — these Americans are, you 
 knaaw." 
 
€8 SKEl'CHES BEYOND THE SEA 
 
 LETTER XI. 
 
 THE world's metropolis. 
 
 London, Sept. 13, 1877. 
 
 ^Ip-T^EW people, even those who are born and raised here,. 
 t!jj|> know or appreciate the immensity of London. I have 
 '~-*-^^ repeatedly called the attention of Englishmen to this or 
 that notable feature, and have often found that the thing in question 
 was as strange to them as if they had never heard of the British 
 metropolis. For instance, on Fleet street, just beyond or within 
 Temple Bar, is a queer old building, which projects over into 
 the street, above its lower story. Its evident antiquity, its gilded, 
 albeit faded and battered, ornamentation, its unique architecture, 
 all unite to render it a most notable and noticeable building. I 
 very soon learned that it was once the residence of Cardinal 
 Wolsey, although now, alas, devoted to the vulgar uses of shav- 
 ing, shampooing and hair-cutting. It is situated on one of the 
 main streets leading to and from the business centre of London 
 — the Bank of England. More people pass it every twenty-four 
 hours than along any thoroughfare in London. 
 One dsij, on a 'bus, I called an Englishman's attention to it: 
 " Well, now, I must say," he said, " I have lived in Lon- 
 don forty years, and I've passed that building twice a day, at 
 least, for a quarter of a century, and I never before knew what it 
 was." To add to the singularity of this admission, is the fact 
 that, in large, conspicuous letters, across the front, and just be- 
 neath the cornice, appear the names of Cardinal Wolsey and 
 Henry VIII., and the announcement that it was formerly their 
 palace. As a matter of experiment, I have often since asked 
 some Englishmen the name of the queer structure, as we passed 
 it, and yet I have found but two residents who know its history. 
 The same thing has occurred in many other cases. Sometime 
 after my arrival, I started out to hunt up the church, St. Barthol- 
 omew the Grand, and of whose existence I had learned when a 
 boy in pouring over those spicy narrations relating to the burn- 
 ing of various gentlemen during the reign of " Bloody Queen 
 Mary." Here something over two hundred persons were burned, 
 with their faces turned toward the church of St. Bartholomew, 
 at whose entrance, according to the dramatic history aforesaid, 
 the prior stood and overlooked the jolly spectacle of roasting 
 
THE world's metropolis. 69 
 
 the enemies of the church. Here it was, I believe, that John 
 Rogers, so afflicted with children and heresy, underwent the 
 process of being cremated in defense of his faith, or as an expia- 
 tion of his heresy ; and here, in the open space in front of the 
 cliurch, was strucls; down and slain that doughty but short-lived 
 rebel, Wat Tyler. 
 
 I remembered that St. Bartholomew was in Smithfleld, a por- 
 tion of London famous for its executions, its fairs, its jousts and 
 burnings. I fancied still an open field with its booths, its fairs 
 and its variegated population. I found instead, that a densely 
 occupied locality, great markets of brick and stone, handsome 
 and lofty, and each occupying an entire square or block, had 
 grown up on the Smithfleld of my boyish reading. Paved 
 streets, long rows of shops and residences, and the great markets 
 had obliterated the Smithfleld of history. 
 
 It required an hour's diligent search when in the district once 
 known as Smithfleld, to flnd the church. I made inquiry after 
 Inquiry, of people who had been long residents of the locality, 
 -and they had never heard of St. Bartholomew the Grand. 
 
 Policemen did not like to confess their ignorance, and they 
 -directed me here and there, but never in the right direction. I 
 had about given the search up, thinking perhaps the old church 
 had given away to the march of modern improvement, when my 
 attention was attracted by seeing at the entrance of a narrow 
 -and squalid, covered-alley the remnant of a stone arch which 
 was unmistakably the work of some other age. It is broken, bat- 
 tered, with its arch gone — an arch without an arch — and pre- 
 serves only a portion of the fluted stonework above the foundation. 
 Happening to glance down the narrow alley, I saw some rusty 
 iron gates, between whose rails I caught the dull and moss- 
 :speckled gray of tomb-stones. 
 
 Going down to take a view of the old graveyard, I found a 
 narrow burial-place, fronting a church ediflce, whose ftigade had 
 been beaten and blackened by the storms of centuries, and in 
 which I at once recognized the oldest church in London, older 
 than the Norman invasion, built at least flve hundred years 
 before Columbus steered his prows across the Atlantic, a struct- 
 ure which unites the Norman with the Saxon — the Church of 
 St. Bartholomew the Grand. 
 
 I shall not attempt to describe this venerable pile, or speak of 
 its columns half eaten in two by the action of time, of its effl- 
 
70 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 gies, tombs, inscriptions and tenants, for such is the task rather 
 of the antiquary than the modern traveler. I have called atten- 
 tion to it more especially for the purpose of showing the immen- 
 sity of London, and how in that immensity may he entombed the 
 grandest remains of historic ages, of sublime importance, and 
 yet the men and w*omen, the generations who live in and around 
 the sacred spot, be utterly ignorant of the fact that every step they 
 take is upon holy ground. Here is a church, built when modern 
 civilization was undreamed of; when the Saxon kings held sway 
 in England ; about which cluster some of the saddest memories 
 connected with the bloody record of Christian intolerance; in 
 whose walls Hogarth was christened; and whose every black- 
 ened stone, could it speak and relate what it has seen, would fill 
 .our libraries with volumes of recitals of monstrous crimes, 
 resplendent chivalry, heart-sickening events and many a myriad 
 occurrences connected with the slow and painfal evolution of 
 civilization from semi-barbarism, and toleration from bigotry — 
 here is such a structure, and of the dense thousands who live 
 within the sound of its bells, scarcely one knows its history, and 
 few even know its name. 
 
 The atom known as the individual never feels his littleness so 
 much as when in London — one of the millions who compose its 
 mighty population. The stranger here is in the midst of a su- 
 preme isolation — he is as alone, as bereft of companionship, as 
 much a wretched, lonely nothing, as if the dust which the wind 
 tosses in his eyes were that of the central Sahara. One may for 
 months occupy a room and meet every day, or a dozen times a 
 day, the person who occupies the next room, and each know 
 nothing, care nothing for the other. Day after day, one may 
 drift hither and thither upon this mighty inland sea and never 
 attract any more attention than a tiny nautilus skimming the 
 surface of the mid-Pacific. 
 
 If one wishes to be a hermit, London and not the Barcan desert, 
 is the fit place. He can hide himself in an iron-clad seclusion. He 
 can exist, he can suffer, he can die, and the — to him — moment- 
 ous fact will never be noticed any more than will the presence 
 or absence of one individual drop of water in a storm of the 
 hugest dimentions. Even the hurrying crowds on the streets^ 
 and the thunderous roar of the thoroughfares intensify the isola- 
 tion and loneliness. They dwarf one by their magnitude — ^the 
 vast waves of human life dash him about and feel him as little^ 
 
THE WOKLd's METKOPOLIS. 71 
 
 are as ignorant of his existence, as a tornado of a bit of butterfly 
 dust which it may bear along in its tremendous progress. 
 
 I should think that London, more than any other place in the 
 world, would be one in which a man would be more inclined to 
 cut short what must seem to him a worthless and unrecognized 
 existence. 
 
 Every day crowds pass the house where Dickens lived and not 
 one in ten thousand knows the fact, and not one in a thousand 
 would think it worth while to give it a second thought or a 
 second glance if he should know it. I have stood over the slab 
 which marks the grave of Goldsmith. It is worn deeply by the 
 millions of careless feet that have passed over it. The inscrip- 
 tion is almost effaced. How many of the legions who have 
 made the sombre arches of the Temple church echo with their 
 ceaseless tread, know or care that Goldsmith sleeps in the vicin- 
 ity, or how many even know that such a man ever lived ? At 
 every step one meets the resting-place of the " mighty-dead " — 
 men and women who, in life, splendered athwart the sky with 
 an iridescent brilliancy that lighted the dai'kest corners of the 
 earth, and made the zenith of the ages blaze as from a conflagra- 
 tion. 
 
 And yet I find that often their burial-places are unknown. In 
 other cases, rotting slates and nearly-eff'aced inscriptions are the 
 only record of their resting-place. Over their graves, known 
 and unknown, ebb and flow the measureless human tides, as 
 ignorant of the sacred dust beneath them as the uneasy ocean 
 whose waves roll over the sunken vessel and imprisoned corpses 
 far down in its waters. 
 
 Viewing all these things, one cannot help reflecting: What 
 use in living or having lived ? Even the remembrance of the 
 greatest is speedily effaced, while the disappearance of the ordi- 
 nary man or woman is as unnoticed as the fall of a leaf in a 
 forest, where, at each moment, thousands are wrenched off by 
 the autumn winds and sent whirling down — to be tj-ampled over, 
 to rot, to be never even forgotten, because never even known. 
 
 An individual born in London is a thin needle thrust into 
 the surface of a boundless sea. His death is its withdrawal. 
 Neither his coming nor his going has created any displacement 
 or commotion in the illimitable waves. 
 
 As an illustration of the immensity of London and the utter 
 isolation of a resident, I may mention a fact in my own experi- 
 
72 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 ence. I know perhaps a hundred people in London. I know a 
 great many others, residents of the United States, whose names 
 I constantly see on the central register, and who pass through 
 here each week by dozens. On each day of six out of seven I 
 traverse London, through its most populous portions, for a dis- 
 tance of not less than twenty-five miles. Yet, despite knowing 
 so many people, despite encountering hundreds of thousands 
 every day, despite the immense distance which I travel daily, I 
 have never met on the streets but one person whom I have 
 ever met before. Nor have I ever seen, even twice, noticeable 
 faces, or carriages, such as will occur in smaller places. In New 
 York, or Chicago, there is a man with some deformity, a woman 
 with some striking quality of beauty or hideousness, a 'bus driver 
 with some peculiarity in manner or appearance, whom one meets 
 now and again, until they become recognized, and, to a greater or 
 less extent, familiar characters. It is never so here ; even the 
 twisted, stunted wretch, who, in tatters, sweeps the crossing before 
 your door when you go out in the morning, has given place to 
 some other mendicant when you return at night. 
 
 Looking, to-day, among the London crowds to discover a face 
 which you saw yesterday, is as vain as endeavoring, on one voy- 
 age across the Atlantic, to locate some crested wave which rushed 
 by the ship on a voyage made six months before. 
 
 One can nowhere be so lost, so hidden, as in these intermina- 
 ble streets and among this ocean of human beings. The very 
 multiplicity of things and people has the etFect to prevent their 
 being seen. It is often my experience to go five or six miles on 
 a 'bus through the most thronged and sightly portions of the city, 
 and yet not, from the beginning to the end of the journey, to 
 notice a face, a building, or an occurrence. There is so much to 
 be seen ; the crowds are so dense and so endless ; the shops and the 
 architecture so varied, that one cannot take them in detail, and 
 they then become a blurred mass, hurrying by, as indistinguish- 
 able as the spokes of a revolving wheel, or as a swift express 
 train passing close to the point of vision. 
 
 Incomprehensible as are the living millions of London, they 
 are to the dead of the city what a corporal's guard is numeri- 
 cally to a great army, or a handful of sand to the vast Sahara 
 desert. If I find myself stunned by the innumerable swarms of 
 life that fill this monstrous hive of modern civilization, what 
 word can I find to express the feeling which possesses me as I 
 
THE world's metropolis. 73 
 
 attempt to comprehend the dimensions of the mass once animate 
 with human life, but which now is dust ? London presents itself 
 to me as a place whose foundations rest upon the ashes of innu- 
 merable generations. Even the dust of the streets, eddying in the 
 wind, seems to possess a sacredness, as if it were a part of the 
 deep strata of mortality that underlie the great city. 
 
 Despite the Niagara-like roar of the living, the voices of the 
 populous past make themselves heard above the uproar. If I 
 may venture to interpret their plaintful utterance, it may be em- 
 bodied in the single word: "Forgotten." The omnibus on 
 which I ride twice a day to the city rolls over the spot where 
 Tyburn gallows once stood, and beneath which Cromwell is 
 buried ; and there is not even a slab to designate the locality. 
 In a little plat of four acres, in Finsbury, used as a place of in- 
 terment during the great plague, where over a thousand cart- 
 loads of human bones were dumped from the charnel-house of 
 8t. Paul's, where over one hundred and thirty thousand persons 
 were buried in the century preceding 1853 — here in the midst 
 of this colossal gathering of the bodies of paupers, of pest-field 
 accumulations, rest the remains of John Bunyan, Daniel De 
 Foe, George Fox the founder of the sect of Quakers, the mother 
 of John Wesley, Dr. Isaac Watts, and many another once-emi- 
 nent person. What a hideous chorus comes up from out this 
 horrible pit, where were dumped like offal the desecrated bones 
 of generations of dead, the rotten corpses of pi ague smitten 
 victims, of myriads of unknown paupers, and the honored re- 
 mains of men and women who, before death, wrote their names 
 ineffaceably upon the records of glorious human endeavor — a 
 chorus which at once protests against the cruel indifference of 
 their sepulture, and a complaint against the oblivion which, in the 
 case of nearly all the living, shrouds their hallowed memories. 
 
 Even St. Bartholomew the Grand is entombed among the liv- 
 ing, and forgotten. Among all the clatter of hob-nailed shoes on 
 adjacent pavements, in the neighboring tenements, whose narrow 
 windows are hung with tawdry curtains, and in front of whicli 
 ragged and dirty children make the street clamorous with their 
 shrill cries, in the filthy beer shops close by, in which brutal- 
 faced men and blear-eyed women tipple the live-long day and 
 night, there are no indications, no recognition of the grand and 
 solemn memories embodied in the time-scarred edifice, with its 
 foreground of toppling headstones and effaced graves. 
 
74 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 
 LONDON JOURNA.LISM. 
 
 London, Sept. 29, 1877. 
 
 jT>p<0]SrDON journalism, like everything else connected with 
 illiSj tliis great metropolis, is so extensive that it is impossible 
 (5=="" to handle it comprehensively and exhaustively within the 
 limits of a newspaper article. Not only is the magnitude of the 
 subject a difficulty, but, in some respects, the newspaper office, 
 and many of its internal arrangements, are a profound mystery. 
 
 One cannot drop into a newspaper office here, and ramble 
 through it led by his own sweet will, as he can through the aver- 
 age American newspaper office. One cannot pass beyond the 
 advertising office, or counting room, without first writing for 
 permission, and which, if granted, comes in the shape of a card 
 directed to " the printer," and designating the hour at which the 
 visit must be made. 
 
 Under such circumstances, a couple of days ago, I visited The 
 Times newspaper building. Of the details of the visit, more 
 anon; I simply refer to it now to illustrate the difficulties in the 
 way of gaining admission, and the profound mystery which sep- 
 arates the London newspaper from the vulgar public. 
 
 The gentleman who acted as my escort evidently felt that we 
 were treading on holy ground. We looked through the comjDos- 
 ing rooms with bared heads ; we stepped lightly and reverentially 
 when we penetrated the sacred precincts of the stereotyping 
 department. We stood before the eighty-horse-power engine as 
 solemnly and respectfully us though it were a catafalq.ue bearing 
 the body of an earl. In deferential silence I stood within the 
 arched press-room and listened to the infernal and deafening 
 clatter of the Walter presses, as if it were a mighty funeral chant 
 over the remains of England's most illustrious dead. 
 
 I know a good deal more about printing presses, stereotyping, 
 steam engines, and the like, than does the mourner who con- 
 ducted me through the mechanical departments. As I shall pres- 
 ently show, the London Times, in mechanical appliances, is far 
 behind its Chicago namesake. The latter has all the improve- 
 ments that the former has, and a good many more. Hence, I was 
 not greatly interested in being shown how a compositor picks up 
 a type, or how a stereotyper makes a cast of a form. I wanted to 
 
LONDON JOURNALISM. 75 
 
 get at the brains of the establishment; to know how the literary- 
 work is done, how many do it; but I succeeded about as well in 
 finding out as a non-member would succeed in working his way 
 into a lodge of Masons. 
 
 " How large a literary force does The Times employ? " 
 
 My bareheaded guide received the question very much as if I 
 had inquired suddenly whether his wife — if he have one — wears 
 her own teeth, or uses padding in her stays. It seemed to strike 
 him as an unwarranted impertinence. I had before exhibited 
 none of that profound emotion that ought to be manifested by an 
 uncivilized Yankee when shown the marvelous mysteries of 
 sticking type in the greatest newspaper office in the world. And 
 now I wanted to know, you know, something about the penetra- 
 lia, the sanctum sanctorum. He was dumbfounded beyond imme- 
 diate expression. Probably of all the hundreds, or thousands, 
 whom he had piloted through the printing office, I was the very 
 first who was not amazed at every step of the astounding revela- 
 tions; and I was probably the very first who, like Oliver Twist, 
 at the conclusion of his banquet of soup maigre, had ever ventured 
 to ask for " more." 
 
 " How large is the staff of editorial writers?" 
 
 He did not know. 
 
 " How extensive is the reportorial staff? " 
 • He could not say. 
 
 "What is the name of the editor?" 
 
 He declined to answer a question which evidently was a delib- 
 erate effort to unveil to the world the secrets of the inner temple. 
 
 Quite fortunately, I already knew some of these things ; but I 
 pushed some of my questions from pure enjoyment of his amaze- 
 ment over the unprecedented occurrence. He got rid of me as 
 soon as he could, after I had commenced on these sacred and for- 
 bidden topics; and it is not likely that he will soon forget this 
 awful attempt to penetrate the sacred secrets connected with get- 
 ting up a leader on the Colorado beetle, or penning a police-court 
 item relative to some Briton who, in a slight case of domestic 
 disagreement, had settled it by kicking in his wife's ribs with the 
 toe of his hob-nailed boot. i 
 
 This incident illustrates somewhat the difficulty of getting a 
 certain class of information in regard to the London press. 
 
 So far as appliances for the printing of a newspaper are con- 
 cerned, Chicago has nothing to learn from London ; in fact, the 
 
76 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 reverse is true. What would be novel and of interest is the intel- 
 lectual department of London journalism — who are the editors 
 and managers, what their training, education and temperaments. 
 The English have a very peculiar and inconsistent horror of 
 ■what they term personality. To describe a man's appearance in 
 print; to photograph him in type, so that his individuality can 
 be caught and enjoyed by the masses, is regarded as a gross 
 oflFense. Yet Punch and all the other illustrated papers do not 
 hesitate at all \o issue gross caricatures of public characters. 
 This kind of a personality is allowable, but to attempt to fairly 
 describe the personal appearance of the same public character — 
 as, for instance, I have done in the case of Sir Strafford North- 
 cote, Disraeli and others — is an unpardonable crime. 
 
 Let a manlike Grant, or some other noted character, appear in 
 public, and there will at once be a rush of thousands to see him. 
 This is a natural and wholly legitimate curiosity; but to attempt 
 to gratify this curiosity through a newspaper, or by giving Grant's 
 stature, the color of his eyes, and the like, is vulgar, and not to 
 be tolerated. 
 
 Englishmen defend this on the ground that a man's personality 
 is something so sacred that no one has a right to interfere with 
 it. Now, this explanation is a humbug. The real reason under- 
 lying this aversion to touching personality is, not that any 
 Englishman regards his personality as something too sacred to 
 meddle with, but that he does not wish to appear enough inter- 
 ested in anybody else to know, or notice how he looks, or what is 
 his personality. One supreme motive in most Englishmen's lives 
 is indifference to everybody else. To write i^p a man ; to give the 
 contour of his jaw, and the color of his eyes, would be equiva- 
 lent to admitting the degrading fact that the individual doing it 
 has condescended to notice the other fellow. 
 
 " Let me give you a bit of advice," said a friendly Englishman, 
 civilized by travel, whom I met on the steamer. " Whenever you 
 are in company in England, no matter where, always act as if 
 you didn't care tuppence for anybody present, and as if you con- 
 sidered yourself a little better than all the others. As soon as 
 they see this, they'll begin to think ' there must be something in 
 that chap.' " 
 
 My friend was right. I have since learned that, consciously or 
 x;nconsciously, the aim of the average Englishman is to have 
 people see him. while he appears to see nobody. 
 
LONDON JOURNALISM. 77 
 
 More or less connected with this very peculiar view of person- 
 alities, is the difficulty of getting at the men connected with the 
 management of the press. They are behind a veil which hides 
 them from the public. However mucli they might like to be 
 seen and admired, they dare not admit it, because that would at 
 once show the hypocrisy of the claim as to the sanctity of a 
 man's personality. 
 
 Another difficulty, that relating to the almost insuperable 
 number of publications, is so great that it is useless to attempt to 
 surmount it. Unless one is prepared to write a book as colossal 
 as a London directory, one cannot comprehensively handle the 
 London press. There is not only a score or more of dailies, but 
 there are weeklies as numerous as the hosts of Assyrians who 
 "came down on the fold." There is an army of tri-weeklies, 
 semi-weeklies, monthlies, and quarterlies. 
 
 Not only has every conceivable branch of industry its organ^ 
 but every subdivision of the metropolis has its hebdomadal rep- 
 resentative. In short, there is an " embarrassment of riches." la 
 view of this fact, I shall limit myself to the grouping of a few 
 of the more conspicuous features of London journalism. 
 
 The almost universal rule in the character of the editorial, or 
 "leader" writing of the London journals is that it is ponderous, 
 stately, dignified, sophomoric, classical. These leaders are usu- 
 ally of about the same length — a most suspicious fact as going 
 to show that the writer does not feel his subject, and that its 
 importance has no reference to the extent of its treatment. 
 When a leader on the Colorado beetle, and another on the polit- 
 ical condition of Europe, and a third on bicycles, are all precisely 
 the same length, it is not difficult to conceive that the writer aims 
 at measurement rather than forcible effect. Of course, any one 
 outside the profession can readily appreciate that, where a cer- 
 tain length is always aimed at, the more important subjects will 
 not be exhaustively treated, while the less important ones will be 
 stretched beyond a proper length. 
 
 That leaders are furnished by the yard is further seen in the 
 very natural consequence that they are never swift, impetuous, 
 impassioned. There is the difference between them and articles 
 written by one who feels intensely what he writes, that there is 
 between some canal, whose waters are always tranquil and whose 
 banks are always the same distance apart, and some river which 
 rolls on resistlessly, now in a narrow channel, again between two 
 
"78 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 banks which widen away, hut which is never stagnant, and 
 always full of motion, energy, and resistless force. • 
 
 There is occasionally some evidence of feeling in the utterances 
 of The News and The Spectator, when they have to comment on 
 some extraordinary horror occurring on the battle-fields — but 
 even in this case their feeling, their passionateness, is a matter of 
 about so many inches or feet of writing, and nothing beyond. 
 
 It must be a curious thing for a writer to be logical, appealing, 
 historical, argumentative, by lineal measurement! One reason 
 for this class of product is found in the fact that the journals 
 here do not, as a general thing, organize editorial staffs, as is done 
 in the case of American journals. The men who do the leader 
 writing do not belong to the paper for which they write. They 
 are men about town who may furnish leaders for a half dozen 
 different papers, all of varying views. That they write by the 
 yard is the inevitable result of being paid by the yard. 
 
 A man who is employed on one paper, who becomes identified 
 with its aims, and sympathetic with its views, will invariably 
 write under the inspiration of feeling. There is the difference 
 between his work and that of one employed by the piece, and 
 writing for a half dozen journals, that there is between a soldier 
 who fights in the defense of his own country, liberty, and fire- 
 side, and a mercenary who battles solely for . pay, and without 
 reference to the side for which he draws his sword. 
 
 As editorials are written without feeling, they are invariably 
 without any of the personalities of American journalism. No 
 journal ever alludes to the editor of any other journal, Herein 
 there rests a profound, undisturbed impersonality. Of course, 
 this fact is often the subject of felicitous mention by the English 
 newspaper; and it contrasts itself most admiringly with the 
 American newspaper in this particular. It is a virtue, a blessing, 
 a most desirable thing, beyond any question. However, I am not 
 inclined to believe that, in its origin, this lack of personality is 
 so very commendable. In the first place, a paid writer, having 
 no prominent connection with the journal for which he writes, 
 would not be likely to have any very strong feeling against the 
 editor of any other paper. In the next place, he does not know 
 who the editor of the other paper is, and finally, if he did know, 
 and had every possible desire to be personal, he would not, 
 because that would violate a cardinal rule in an Englishman's 
 
LONDON JOURNALISM. 79 
 
 conduct, and whicli is : Never seem lo know that any other fel- 
 low has an existence. 
 
 In the direction of news enterprise, as a general, and, perhaps, 
 as a universal thing, the London press is behind the metropolitan 
 press of America. In the matter of telegraphic news. The Chi- 
 cago Times incurs a much greater outlay annually than any paper, 
 or, perhaps, any two papers in London, 
 
 Not only is the outlay larger, but the quantity of news is also 
 larger. I am quite certain that the Chicago paper gives every 
 day more news from the Russo-Turkish war than tlie London 
 Times. 
 
 In estimating the comparative enterprise of these two jour- 
 nals, there are one or two very important facts to be considered. 
 In what may be termed inland news — that is, news from Great 
 Britain and Ireland — not only is telegraphing vastly cheaper 
 than in America, within the same radius, but the frequency and 
 speed of railway trains, in a very great number of cases, permits 
 sending news by letter. Anywhere within one hundred, or one 
 hundred and fifty miles of London, it is possible to forward infor- 
 mation hj mail up to 8, 9, or 10 o'clock at night. To a certain 
 extent the same is true of continental news, or certain portions 
 of the continent. Paris is only seven or eight hours from Lon- 
 don, and hence it is possible to send news by mail as late as 4 or 
 5 o'clock p. M. of each day. 
 
 The mail facilities, in connection with the fact that telegraph- 
 ing here costs less than one-half what it does at home, render 
 the getting of news much more easy and less expensive than 
 in America. It costs only twenty-five cents, at full rates, to 
 send twenty words to any part of London, or any part of the 
 kingdom. The press rates are much less. 
 
 A journalist is not very favorably impressed with the com- 
 pleteness or kind of news furnished by the London press. There 
 is no attempt, as in the case of The Chicago Times, to have each 
 issue a microcosm, in which one finds all the salient occurrences 
 of the world, for the previous twenty-four hours. 
 
 A veiy prominent judicial investigation may not be noticed 
 at all ; a fire in which six people are burned will be disposed 
 of in five lines, while a bicycle race will be given a column. An 
 atrocious murder docs well if it gets six lines of minion, while 
 the laying of the cornerstone of a new school-building is badly- 
 treated if it does not get a couple of columns of brevier. 
 
80 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 By far the most enterprising of the London dailies in the mat- 
 ter of war news is The Daily News. Its accounts are not only the 
 best in quality, the most clear, complete, and best written, but 
 they are the first to get before the public. Its account of the first 
 Russian repulse at Plevna was not only a model in its superior 
 descriptive writing, but also in its comprehensiveness and per- 
 fect accuracy. It was published witliin forty-eight hours after 
 the battle ; it cost over £100 to send it — a fact which has caused 
 far more wonderment and discussion in London than has the 
 marvelous completeness of the account. One hundred pounds 
 for a single telegram ! To the London public the thing is almost 
 incredible; and, so far as believed, is accepted as an enterprise 
 whose expense is without parallel in journalism. 
 
 "When going through The Times building, I undertook, in a 
 gentle and genial way, to convey to my conductor the fact that 
 The Chicago Times not only pays out from five to ten times as 
 much money for its news as its London namesake, but that it 
 also gives daily two or three times as much news from the seat 
 of war and all other parts of the world. It was a thankless task 
 which I had undertaken. He at once frowned me down, blasting 
 my budding efforts with frosty disapproval. From his expres- 
 sion, I became satisfied that there is no such journal as The Chi- 
 cago Times; and, moreover, that there are no newspapers in 
 America, no such place as America, and, finally, no newspaper 
 anywhere except the London Times. 
 
 There is something of this feeling prevalent among all Loadon 
 journals. Many of them never see any other than the English 
 newspapers, and others utterly ignore the existence of an outside 
 press, although thrown daily into contact with it. For this reas' n 
 there is little progress in the English newspapers as a whole. 
 The managers see only their own efforts; they care nothing 
 apparently for what others may be doing, and hence they are all 
 falling behind. Tlte News is an exception. It is exhibiting 
 bursts of enterprise, and now and then an appreciation of what 
 constitutes news, to an extent suggestive of the wide-awake efforts 
 of the American press. It has even advanced so far that occa- 
 sionally it has a mild eruption of head-lines, sometimes commit- 
 ting the enormous innovation of putting as many as five display 
 lines at the head of a more than usually-tremendous battle. 
 
LONDON JOUKNALISM. 81 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 LONDON JOUKNALISM. 
 
 London, Oct. 8, 1877. 
 
 fT is a matter apparently of some difficulty to penetrate the 
 mysteries of a London newspaper office. I have already 
 described a portion of my visit to the office of The Times, 
 and liow reverently my conductor showed me through limited 
 portions of the building, and how he repelled in a most zealous 
 and frightened manner my effort to gain any information beyond 
 the ineffable mystery of " sticking type," or taking a cast of a 
 form. 
 
 Somewliat the same — only more so — discouragement attended 
 my effort to visit Tlie Telegraph. A written request to visit The 
 Times met with a courteous response by return mail ; a similar 
 request, enclosing my professional card, elicited no reply from 
 The Telegraph for several days. I was about to write again, ask- 
 ing them to be good enough to return the stamp which I had 
 inclosed, when I received a note to the effect that they were about 
 to put in some new boilers, and could not receive any visitors. I 
 fancy the true reason of this discourteous response was the fail- 
 ure, on my part, to possess any certificate of circumcision — the 
 possession of which, or similar proofs of nationality, or race, or 
 religion, seems to be a sine qua non to admission to the inner 
 circle of The Telegraph. 
 
 Its owners are a family named Levy — presumably Moses 
 Levy, Abraham Levy, and Aaron Levy, and so on through — who 
 are graduates from the well-known Houndsditch of London, a 
 locality in which are gathered for purposes of plunder all the 
 more detestable elements of the lost tribes. When I add that 
 they have been blackballed by every decent club in London, I 
 have given all concerning them that needs be known. 
 
 The Telegraph first became known by linking its fortunes 
 with the New York Herald in the hunt for Livingstone, the 
 Abyssinian war, and the exploration of Central Africa. Thanks 
 to its connection with an American newspaper, it was able to 
 astonish England with some exhibitions of enterprise — although 
 the fact of this American connection is not known here, and The 
 Telegraph enjoys credit for enterprises which it did not originate, 
 6 
 
.83 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 and for results which, unaided, it would never have dreamed of 
 accomplishing. 
 
 In the earlier days it was liberal, and radical in the extreme, 
 and, by pandering to the demands of the mob, it attained a large 
 circulation. "When the Russo-Turkish war broke out, it swung 
 around to the conservative side, because that side included more 
 English people than the opposite, and, moreover, because the 
 Oriental origin of its owners leads them to sympathize with the 
 deism of an Asiatic race rather than with the Christianity of a 
 western people — whom Beaconsfield, in speaking of the "snub- 
 nosed Saxon," terms "the still more snub-nosed Slav." Taking 
 up the cause of the more long-nosed of the contestants. The Tele- 
 graph has struck the popular side in England; and now, although 
 the poorest newspaper in London, it prints many more copies 
 than any other journal. If the oaths of its owners can be relied 
 on, it is now printing an average daily edition of two hundred 
 and sixty-five thousand. 
 
 I have termed it the poorest newspaper in London, because it is 
 behind all the other first-class journals in the quantity and qual- 
 ity of its news In not one single case has it ever given an 
 account of a battle in advance of its cotemporaries, except when, 
 as has several times occurred, it has given details of bogus 
 engagements. Its corps of correspondents not only do not have 
 the enterprise possessed by The News and The Times., but they are 
 immeasurably inferior in ability. 
 
 It has had several opportunities for an immense journalistic 
 thing, as, notably, when it had the only English correspondent 
 with the Turks during the battles of Plevna. There was in the 
 viewing of the battles from this standpoint, and in the romantic 
 adventures of the correspondent in getting through the Russian 
 lines, opportunity for such a narration as no other phase of the 
 war has afibrded. It was not, however, taken advantage of It 
 amounted to a bare, unfervid, bungling account that would have 
 done discredit to the cheapest reporter on the poorest paper 
 in Chicago. 
 
 In its editorial writers, it has, in George Augustus Sala, one 
 very fair writer. Otherwise, The Telegraph carries no weight. 
 One line in The TimeSj in the shape of an opinion, goes further 
 with the English public than ten colums of The Telegraph. 
 
 The Telegraph, if, as said, the oaths of its owners can be 
 believed, prints about two hundred and sixty-five thousand copies 
 
 i 
 
LONDON JOURNALISM. 83 
 
 daily, while The Times prints less than one-quarter as many, or 
 sixty thousand. In comparing this difference, it must be under- 
 stood that the former sells for one penny, nearly two cents, and 
 the latter for three pence, or nearly six cents. In this instance 
 the number of copies printed is no test as to the number of read- 
 ers. Despite the difference of the number of copies printed, The 
 Times is read by more people than The Telegraph. 
 
 The masses do not buy The Times outright, on account of its 
 expense. Nearly all newsdealers in the kingdom rent The Times, 
 about their respective neighborhoods, to be read, at the rate of 
 two cents an hour. A dealer will take, say ten copies, each of 
 which will be rented to from six to ten people each day. Many 
 of the London newsdealers, after renting their Times till evening, 
 then ship them to smaller country newsdealers, who dispose of 
 them at a» reduced price. In this way a single copy of The Times 
 will be read and paid for by ten or fifteen people each day; and, 
 estimating readers upon this basis, it will be concluded that The 
 Times really has the larger actual circulation. 
 
 It is a generally-believed report that The Times refuses to print 
 above sixty thousand, because, as averred by the report, it is so 
 large that it loses on its circulation. This is not so. The Times 
 prints all the papers there is a demand for. There is another pop- 
 ular belief that, owing to pressure on its advertising columns, 
 it will give a customer only a limited amount of space. This 
 again is mainly false. There is a great pressure on the adver- 
 tising columns, but a man can have all the space he wishes, but 
 in order to discourage him from going to an extent that would 
 crowd out other advertisers, he is charged an extra and cumula- 
 tive price if he takes more than a reasonable amount of space. 
 
 The office of The Times is located well down towards the busi- 
 ness center of the city, although at least two miles from the Bank 
 of England. It is near Blackfriars bridge, and but a short dis- 
 tance from the Thames, toward which it fronts. The old Times 
 is some fifty or sixty feet back from the street on which the new 
 building fronts. 
 
 The latter is of plain red brick, with white trimmings, five 
 stories in height, and looks very much like a well-to-do grocery 
 or paint-shop. There is nothing in its magnitude or finish to 
 indicate its being the office of the greatest newspaper in the 
 world. A pediment rising above the roof-line encloses a clock, 
 
84 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 and two files, in stone, of The Times, the thickest of which is 
 labeled '' The Times Past," and the other simply " The Times." 
 
 This new building fronting on the street contains the advertis- 
 ing and other business offices, on the ground floor. The upper 
 floors are, I suppose, devoted to the editor-in-chief and others 
 connected with the publication of the paper. All above the- 
 counting room is in the nature of a sealed book. I w^as per- 
 mitted, hat in hand, to take a brief and respectful look at the 
 gentlemen engaged in taking in advertisements, and chalking^ 
 the transactions down in big books, but I could get no further. 
 
 Everybody connected with the literary department of The Times- 
 is surrounded by a hypothetical brick wall eighty-five feet high, 
 and covered all over with broken bottles with the sharp points 
 up. Within this sacred enclosure no vulgar eye is ever permit- 
 ted to gaze. 
 
 Passing through the new building to the rear, one reaches an 
 inclosed court, on the other side of which is a battered, dilap- 
 idated old brick structure, which was formerly The Times build- 
 ing, but is now given up to the mechanical department. Over 
 the rusty entrance is a large marble slab set into the 
 brick wall, and which bears an inscription to the e9"ect that it 
 was erected to commemorate the exposure by The Times of some 
 great fraud of a financial nature. 
 
 It occurred to me, as I was perusing this interesting record, tha* 
 if The Chicago Times should erect a mural tablet every time it 
 exposed a great fraud, it would soon have its entire fronts cov- 
 ered with inscribed records of its enterprise and its fidelity to 
 public interests. 
 
 Within the old building are a half-dozen rooms devoted to 
 type-setting, stereotyping, and the like. So far as composition is 
 concerned, the only dilference between the London Times and an 
 American paper is that the various kinds of type have separate 
 rooms. Advertisements are set up in one room, minion matter 
 goes to another, and brevier and nonpareil to still others. What 
 advantage there is in this division I could not learn. 
 
 In one room are six machines for setting type. I was very anx- 
 ious to examine their work in detail, but the moment I wanted to 
 know, you know, my conductor became alarmed. From his 
 point of view, a stranger going through the office should limit 
 himself to seeing, admiring reverently, and asking no questions. 
 " Whose make are these machines ? " I asked. 
 
LONDON JOURNALISM. 85 
 
 He didn't know. 
 
 " How many thousands of ems or ens can an active operator set 
 in an hour?" 
 
 He had no idea. 
 
 " Is there any economy in their use ? " 
 
 He was not in a condition to state. 
 
 Their cost, speed and the like were all asked after, but without 
 result. My guide either doesn't know, or will not communicate 
 what he does know. However, I saw tliat the type is fed to the 
 machine by flat, upright tubes, each one of which contains a dif- 
 ferent letter. A double key-board in front enables the operator 
 to set type as if he were playing an organ. The types success- 
 ively drop into a horizontal groove, and are pushed along to the 
 right, where they are spaced by an assistant. None of them were 
 being worked, and hence I could get no idea of their rapidity or 
 their value. In the center of this room is a large rack which is 
 stored with tubes, tilled with letters, and ready for the machines. 
 
 Some day I will find out all about these machines, despite the 
 mystery with which they were surrounded by my conductor. The 
 only inference I could make was that they are very compact, 
 each occupying scarcely as much room as the ordinary single 
 stand with its double cases ; and, moreover, that their use by The 
 Times is rather a guarantee that they are economical in labor 
 and expense. 
 
 The stereotyping room of the London Times is almost two- 
 thirds the size of that of The Ghicago Times. I happened to be 
 present during the casting of a form for the noon edition of The 
 Times. The time occupied was about twelve minutes ; and which, 
 I informed my guide is from five to six minutes more than is 
 required to perform the same work in Chicago. 
 
 I found nothing in this department of value to a learner, from 
 the fact that in handling a plate, planing, heading, and the like, 
 the processes are slower and more clumsy than those in use in 
 The Chicago Times office. Here, as in The Scotsman office, which I 
 described from Edinburgh, the plates are ribbed ; and, in brief, 
 one office is a very exact reproduction of the other. The Times 
 has the Walter press, invented by a Times employe, and named 
 after the principal editor and owner of The Times, Mr. Walter. It 
 has six of them, each of which prints and folds about fourteen 
 thousand an hour. It is a beautiful press, but its noise is simply 
 infernal ; Gabriel' trump or a thousand-pound gun could not be 
 
86 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 heard anywhere within ear-shot of one of these machines. In 
 respect of noise they are an unmitigated nuisance. 
 
 The Times employs almost two hundred compositors. It has 
 two telegraph wires ending in the office, from one of which it 
 talces its specials, and the other its Renter reports. 
 
 It also has a novelty — so my conductor assured me — in the 
 shape of a pneumatic tube some fifty feet long, which connects 
 the rooms of the editor and the proof-room. I am certain that my 
 amazement over this novelty of a pneumatic tube fifty feet in 
 length was far from being what my guide seemed to think it 
 ought to be. 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 LONDON JOURNALISM. 
 
 London. Oct. 11, 1877. 
 
 to an American journalist there is something queer in the 
 number of editions issued by many or all the daily news- 
 papers. Some of the papers are both morning and even- 
 ing papers, as, for instance, The Standard, which appears in the 
 early part of the day as The Morning Standard, and late as Th& 
 Evening Standard. It issues one edition of the former, and about 
 noon enters upon its twilight existence, under the title of the- 
 " first edition " of The Evening Standard. At intervals it puts^ 
 out an edition, labeling them successively, first, second, third and 
 fourth editions, after which, at about 7 p. m., it brings up the rear 
 with a " special edition." In all. The Standard has one morning 
 and five afternoon editions. 
 
 The Times is more modest, and limits itself to a regular morn- 
 ing issue, and occasionally another at 1 p. m., which is termed a 
 second edition. It does not go beyond these two issues. The- 
 same number in case of extra news is issued also by The News, 
 Telegraph, and, I believe, by The Morning Post and The Chronicle. 
 The two last-named journals are not very prominent; and, while 
 I hear of them occasionally, I have never seen but one copy, of 
 The Chronicle, and none of The Post. 
 
 The evening papers are almost as multifarious, having alwaya 
 
LONDON JOURNALISM. 87 
 
 not less than a second edition, while others run up to a fourth and 
 fifth, with the " special edition." 
 
 It is not unfrequently the case that the only difference between 
 these various editions is in the title, and not in the contents. The 
 first, second, third, fourth, and special editions are often precisely 
 the same, except in the single line which designates the particular 
 edition. This is especially the case with the evening papers, 
 whose successive editions follow each other so closely that there 
 is little opportunity for anything to occur. 
 
 In the case of the morning papers, it is somewhat different. 
 There is an interval of not less than from seven to eight hours 
 between the morning and the noon publication, so that there is 
 time for events to occur. In nearly every instance, however, 
 there is a difference. Whether intentionally, or because it is 
 unavoidable, any very interesting account, say of a battle, is bro- 
 ken off at its most thrilling point in the morning edition, and is 
 continued and finished in the noon edition. In this way a later 
 edition of a morning paper seems a necessity. It is true that? the 
 next morning's issue always contains the extra matter, and which 
 is credited to " our second edition of yesterday." Of course, 
 this serves to advertise the second edition by showing the public 
 that it contains news of importance. The News has probably 
 sold many thousand copies more than it otherwise would have 
 sold, by often reserving the denouement of its magnificent battle 
 accounts for its later edition. 
 
 The difference between a regular and a later edition seems lim- 
 ited wholly to telegraphic news. There are no additions to the 
 editorial, or to any other part, except simply war news coming 
 by telegraph. 
 
 A very convenient and economical feature of London journal- 
 ism is afforded by the evening papers. All of them give con- 
 densed accounts of the opinions of the leading morning press. 
 There is an evening paper called The Echo, a folio, which is a 
 trifle larger than half The Chicago Times, which plays a very use- 
 ful part in journalism. It condenses all the telegraphic news 
 from the morning papers; has the Associated Press dispatches 
 and brief special telegrams, and presents the gist of all the valu- 
 able editorials from the leading morning dailies. The average 
 reader who canijot spare the time to wade through all the great 
 morning newspapers, finds everything of value in them nicely 
 condensed in The Echo. Moreover, it enables such a reader to 
 
88 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 economize in money as well as time. It costs a fortune to buy 
 all the London newspapers, whereas for one cent The Echo will 
 give the substance, the marrow of all of them. 
 
 A great many take it as a substitute for all other papers. Again, 
 there are those addicted to some particular one of the morning 
 papers, because it is the exponent of their opinion, and who take 
 The Echo because in it they can at a glance get the cream of the 
 contents of all the other papers. 
 
 The same thing is done by The Pall Mall Gazette, whose price, 
 however, being four cents, prevents its being as popular in its 
 circulation as The Echo. The Pall Mall Gazette, in addition to 
 bearing in its bosom the condensed news of the morning dailies, 
 has a vast amount of material of other kinds. It is a sort of a 
 quarterly issued daily. It has essays, book reviews, and the like, 
 in each issue; has no war letters, or special telegraphic war 
 news; and is a kind of ponderous twenty-four-pound, muzzle- 
 loading gun, which its managers are laboring to employ for the 
 light, rapid service required of the smaller breech-loaders. It is 
 a journal which has never said a decent, fair thing of anything 
 Russian or American. 
 
 The Globe, a two-cent paper, which commences to issue at noon, 
 and has several editions, also summarizes the editorial opinions 
 of the morning papers. It is anti-Russian; in fact, The Echo, 
 among the evening papers, and The News, among the morning 
 papers, are the only journals of the many dailies published in 
 London which favor Russia, and are not the abject apologists of 
 the Ottoman government. 
 
 The London newspapers who keep correspondents in the field 
 deal munificently with them. The offices furnish them with 
 everything. Each of them has at least two horses, which the 
 office pays for, and one or more servants. Forbes, the corres- 
 pondent of The News, receives a clear salary of $5,000 a year, 
 and all his expenses paid. This $5,000 is in the shape of a 
 retainer. He is paid that amount by The News to retain liis ser- 
 vices, so as to prevent his writing for any other journal. When 
 he is actually at work, then he is paid an additional amount, but 
 he would receive the $5,000 were he not to do a stroke of work 
 within the twelve months. 
 
 Tlie cost of telegrams from Constantinople is about twelve and 
 a half cents a word. From neither Bucharest nor Constantinople 
 does it cost as much to get to London telegrams as it does The Ghi- 
 
LONDON JOURNALISM. 89 
 
 4Mgo Times to get its cablegrams from London ; and it is often the 
 case that The Times has more from London than any one of the 
 leading London journals has from the seat of war. The London 
 papers, considering their nearness to the scene of hostilities, and 
 their wealth, do not make nearly as much of the war as would an 
 average American newspaper were it possessed of similar advan- 
 tages. 
 
 The heaviest telegrams received by The Times and The Tele- 
 graph are from Paris; but as these papers have private wires 
 connecting them with the French capital, it costs them no more 
 to receive four thousand words than five hundred. They pay for 
 the use of the wire by the year, and hence quantity does not 
 count. The same is true of Vienna news, which comes by prir 
 vate wire — that is to saj^ a wire which these journals have the 
 right to use exclusivel}^ during certain hours of each twenty-four. 
 
 In a letter from Edinburgh I went over the system of news, 
 paper management at some length ; and, as exactly the same pre-, 
 vails here, I need do no more than recapitulate the chief points. 
 There are an editor and a manager, the latter of whom is really 
 the more important official. The former has little more to do 
 with the paper than to conduct the editorial page, or " leader-: 
 writing," as it is termed. The manager has charge of everything 
 else ; and, while he may not give character to the tone or policy 
 of the journal, it is he who is responsible for its enterprise, and 
 its success as a r^ewspaper. He combines in himself the man^ 
 aging editor and business manager of an American journal. 
 While he may not say who shall write leaders, he dictates all 
 other appointments, and is responsible for everything appearing 
 outside the editorial page. 
 
 The ablest manager in London to-day is Mr. Robinson, who has 
 charge of The Daily News. He is a wiry Scotchman of about 
 forty-five years of age, with a full, red beard, spectacles, thin hair, 
 and keen, intelligent face. He is active in his movements, afi'a- 
 ble, although guarded, in his conversation, and is, as his face and 
 manner alone would indicate, a man of great energy and shrewd- 
 ness. By his masterly handling of The News during the few 
 months of the present war, he has placed his paper immeasur- 
 ably in advance of all his English contemporaries, and has given 
 it a world-wide reputation for energy, enterprise and correctness. 
 
 Were his paper on the popular side of the Russo-Turkish ques- 
 tion, it would have a circulation of half a million, and all the 
 
90 SKETCHES BEVOND THE SEA. 
 
 advertising patronage it could handle. It is a quarto, just the 
 width of The Chicago Times, about tvs^o inches longer, and has aa 
 average of three pages of advertising. Three pages out of eight 
 seems an excellent average advertising patronage from a Chicago 
 standpoint, but it is small from a London point of view. The 
 Telegraph has five of its eight pages crowded with close-set adver- 
 tisements; the London Times has rarely less than from seven to 
 twelve of its sixteen pages crammed to repletion with the notices 
 and demands of the business community. 
 
 Thus it happens that, although under Manager Robinson The 
 News is beyond all dispute the best newspaper in the kingdom, it 
 receives but a limited advertising patronage, and this, because 
 Englishmen advertise in a paper according to their sympathies. 
 I interviewed Manager Robinson, but found him close as an 
 oyster on all points affecting the inner workings of The News, 
 especially its circulation. He declined to give the latter; and 
 thereupon, finding I had been repulsed in endeavoring to capture 
 Plevna Robinson by direct assault, I resolved upon resuming 
 offensive operations by a flank movement. As a preliminary, I 
 retreated in apparent disorder from the Gravitza redoubt of cir- 
 culation. After talking awhile on American journalism, I 
 inquired : 
 " What time do your early trains leave the city ? " 
 
 About 5 o'clock." 
 " Of course you have to have your edition worked off iu time 
 for these trains ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. We get through at about quarter before five." 
 I had captured one important position of the enemy. 
 We discussed something else for awhile, and finally I thought 
 of stereotyping. 
 
 "Do you usually go to press all at once — that is, do you 
 always start a press as soon as the plates are ready, or wait and 
 commence the press-work all at once ? " 
 ■ " We commence working all the presses at the same time." 
 "By your process of stereotyping are you much delayed in get- 
 ting the plates ready ? " 
 
 « -yy-g ggt along very well. It takes us about three-quarters of 
 an hour to stereotype." 
 
 Two more of the enemy's positions had been quietly "gob- 
 bled," and the enemy did not suspect it. 
 
LONDON JOURNALISM. 91 
 
 I gave him points on Yanlvee stereotyping, and so on, and, 
 after a time, ventured the delicate inquiry: 
 
 " How late do you keep open for news ? " 
 
 "Till a quarter before three." 
 
 The place was about to surrender, and didn't know it! 
 
 We strolled into the press-room. There were seven gleaming 
 Walter presses. 
 
 " Do you ever have any difficulty with the Walter presses ? " 
 
 ' Not the slightest." 
 
 ' How fast do you find it safe to run them ? " 
 
 "About fourteen thousand five hundred an hour." 
 
 " Indeed ! I'm astonished. Can you always run off your edi- 
 tions at that rate ? " 
 
 "Yes; always." 
 
 The great central redoubt of circulation had been turned and 
 had fallen. Let us see. News is received up to 3:45 a. m. 
 Forty-five minutes are required to stereotype the forms. This- 
 consumes the time till 3 : 30, when they go to press. One hour 
 and fifteen minutes later the edition is worked off. Here, now, 
 is a very simple problem : 
 
 How many papers will seven presses print in one hour and 
 fifteen minutes at the rate each of fourteen thousand five hundred 
 an hour? The sum total is one hundred and twenty-six thousand 
 eight hundred and seventy-five. Making some allowance for 
 time in getting the plates on the press would take oflt a few thou- 
 sand ; but the above is probaly a very close estimate of The News* 
 circulation. 
 
 I have related in detail the process by which I reached the cour 
 elusion, mainly for the purpose of illustrating the old saying^ 
 that "there's more than one way to skin a cat." 
 
 That The News is a success, and the other journals, in the mat- 
 ter of M'ar correspondence, a failure, is wholly owing to the fact 
 Manager Robinson knows how to select men for the service to be 
 performed. He does not select a man with reference to his social 
 standing, but with sole reference to his fitness for the desired 
 service. 
 
 The Times, for instance, makes the selections of its war correSr 
 pondents mainly with reference to their social position. Its rep: 
 resentatives in the field must be military men — nothing less. 
 than majors or colonels. Maj. Knowles, Sir Henry Havelock, and 
 a similar class of men have been chosen to represent The Times 
 
92 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 in the field, with the result that that journal has been about the 
 most backward of the English press in the quality, quantity, and 
 earliness of its news. 
 
 While it does not necessarily follow that a man cannot write 
 well because he is an officer, or a knight, it certainly does not fol- 
 low — as The Times seems to believe — that a man is necessarily 
 a good writer because he has received a military education, or 
 because he is entitled to write " Sir " before his front name. All 
 of TJie Times accounts, while bristling with military technical- 
 ities, have been clumsily written, and often days behind The News 
 in giving accounts of operations. 
 
 As stated in a former letter, editorial writers are not an office 
 fixture here as in America. The men who furnish editorials for 
 an English paper may or may not be professional writers — that 
 is, writers for newspapers. They may be magazinists, or novel 
 writers, or almost anything else. They occupy somewhat tlie 
 position of the mercenary soldier whose fealty is due to the 
 power which pays him, during the period for which he is 
 employed. 
 
 Suppose the London Times wishes to retain the services of 
 Prof. Musty Dryasdust for a leader-writer. The editor sends for 
 him, or to him, announces the wish, and if the professor consents 
 he is paid a retainer, which varies according to the man 
 employed. The retainer engages him for The Times, and he can- 
 not write for any other daily paper. It does not, however, guar- 
 antee him constant employment. He may have been retained to 
 write on will cases, and he writes only when there is a demand 
 for an article on wills. A journal may have five or fifty men 
 thus retained. Each day the editor decides what he wishes writ- 
 ten, assigns the subjects to the proper men, and pays them " by 
 the piece." A retaining fee varies, of course, according to the 
 quality of the man. As I have been told, and above said, Forbes, 
 of The NeiDs, has a retainer each year of $5,000. The retainer 
 does not usually include payment for services rendered. Edito- 
 rials on Tlie Times are paid for at rates varying from two to five 
 guineas each. 
 
 There are sub-editors who have charge of foreign news, corres- 
 pondence, local topics, commercial aftairs, and the like, who 
 receive regular salaries. An English reporter, who is almost 
 invariably a short-hand writer, gets from $15 to $35 per week. 
 
 Some of the London journals set the public an excellent exam- 
 
AMERICANS ABROAD. 9Z 
 
 pie by going extensively into advertising. There is not a railway 
 station in Great Britain, or a dead wall, that fails to have an 
 immense board with the words in huge letters : '^The Daily Tele- 
 graph, Largest Circulation in the World." Any number of star- 
 ing signs meet one everywhere with the information : " Standard, 
 Largest Daily Paper," although it isn't the " largest." The News 
 has gone to a large expense for signs, which read : '''■Daily News, 
 Large Circulation," or '■'■Daily News, War News and Correspond- 
 ence." These three journals do the most of this class of adver- 
 tising. The Times evidently considers it needs no such aid, or 
 else is too dignified to resort to any such agency. 
 
 Excepting The Times, all the daily papers send out with each 
 edition half-sheet posters which summarize the news in large 
 letters. Each newsboy has one of these, which he holds before 
 him, and each news agency has them in front of its door. The 
 benefit is great to the public, as it enables a man to know whether 
 a paper contains what he wants, or whether there is any news of 
 an additional battle, and the like. 
 
 So far as I know none of the London papers are distributed by 
 carriers. The mails and the news agencies are the means of dis- 
 tribution. One who wishes a paper delivered at his house sub- 
 scribes for it at the nearest newsdealer's. Some of the offices, and 
 perhaps all of them, have wagons which deliver the paper to the 
 local news stands and to the railways. 
 
 I have, as yet, but barely touched a few of the more salient 
 points of London journalism. Some time, I hope to be able to 
 say something of the men who are prominent in this field of 
 effort, and also to be able to analyze more carefully the character 
 of the most conspicuous feature of the world's metropolis. 
 
 LETTER XV. 
 
 AMERICANS ABROAD. 
 
 Lo^^50N, October 30. 1877. 
 
 fTT is almost invariably the case that an American who visits 
 f England begins his career by being proud of everything 
 "* American and English, and ends it in four or six months by 
 rather heartily disliking everything connected with both nation- 
 
94 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 alities. He falls out with Englishmen on account of their 
 insufferable exclusiveness, and with Americans on account of 
 their want of manners and their abominable egotism, their utter 
 obliviousness of the existence of any other fowl or animal except 
 the American eagle. 
 
 Of course this does not. apply to all Englishmen or to all 
 Americans. There are civilized specijnens connected with both 
 classes: Englishmen who are genial and cosmopolitan, and 
 Americans who are cultured and well bred. I am not prepared 
 to say — at least I am not willing to say — but that a majority of 
 both nationalities are ail that could be desired. Unfortunately a 
 little leaven will leaven a very large amount of dough ; unfor^ 
 tunately I mean in moral similitude to the efiect of one mauvais 
 sujet in a batch of a dozen. One bad specimen will spoil the 
 reputation of a dozen good ones. One swaggering, swearing, 
 impudent Yankee will damage the reputation of the entire popur 
 lation of the United States. 
 
 While it thus may be true that the majority of Americans who 
 come abroad are all that may be wished by the most fastidious, 
 it is easily seen how the presence of an exceptional character 
 may give tone to all the others. 
 
 One swindler may leave the impression that all are swindlers; 
 one ill-bred individual may give rise to the belief that he is a fair 
 average representative of a class or a nation. 
 
 Such a conclusion may be very short-sighted and unjust. Un- 
 doubtedly it is, and we have a right to conclude that a man or 
 woman is a fool who thus draws conclusions as to a whole from 
 the character of a part ; who pronounces a barrel of eggs rotten 
 because a single specimen proves to be bad. It is not, therefore, 
 as an apologist of English dislike of Americans that I call atten- 
 tion to the peculiarities of some of the subjects of the stars and 
 stripes who visit the shores of Great Britain. 
 
 England swarms with American swindlers and adventurers of 
 both sexes, who carry on a most successful business. Despite 
 this fact, Americans are themselves the frequent victims of 
 sharpers. I happened to be sitting in the office of one of the 
 chief inspectors of Great Scotland Yard, not long since, when 
 there entered a young man, son of a well-known family of New 
 York, who had a piteous tale to relate of having been swindled 
 out of several thousand pounds. It was some simple confidence 
 game that he had fallen a victim to ; and my patriotic American 
 
AMERICANS ABROAD. 95 
 
 ears burned with shame as I heard how* an American had been 
 gulled by such a simple and transparent operation. When he 
 left I said to the inspector : 
 
 " That chap 's the biggest idiot in all America." 
 
 "Why so?" 
 
 "For allowing himself to be taken in by such a game as that. 
 I blush to own myself a Yankee. I don't believe there is another 
 such a donkey in America, or out of it." 
 
 "You don't? Well, now, I don't wish to hurt your confidence 
 in American shrewdness, but I can tell you something that will 
 astonish you." 
 
 "Can you, now? What is it?" and I braced myself up to 
 hear I knew not what. 
 
 "The fact is," he said, "that eighty per cent, of all the people 
 who come to Scotland Yard to complain of being robbed by con- 
 fidence games, are Americans." 
 
 I folded up the American flag and came humbly away. 
 
 I think it hurt my amor patrice worse to hear this reflection 
 upon American gullibility, than I have been grieved in other 
 cases to hear of the career of shameless and successful adven- 
 turers from our side who have succeeded in reaping a golden 
 harvest from British tradesmen, bankers and hotel-keepers. To 
 be a knave is bad enough ; to be a fool is infinitely worse ; and 
 when the representatives of a nationality present decided symp- 
 toms of both knavery and folly, it ought not to be wondered at 
 that there grows up a prejudice against the entire body whom 
 they thus represent. 
 
 However, it is not of our gullibility that the English people 
 have any right to complain. They may despise a man who can 
 be easily tricked out of his money ; but they ought not to dislike 
 or hate him for that reason. American gullibility may safely be 
 omitted as a factor of the problem relating to English dislike of 
 Americans. The cause of this is something else. Were we sim- 
 ply gulls, while all the time we should be polite and free from 
 vulgarity, the English people would be very fond of us. They 
 like money so well that they would most heartily overlook a 
 faulty character whoso only defect would be an innocence which 
 could not guard against being constantly swindled. That kind 
 of a character would be a most delightful one from the stand- 
 point of a very large portion of the English people. 
 
 Thanks to the quality of news published by the English papers, 
 
96 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 there is a bad prima facie case of fraud and swindling made out 
 against every Yankee wlio " sliows up " on British shores. 
 Whether justly or not, the commercial morality of Americans ia 
 away below par. An English newspaper will give nothing, or 
 three lines, to some great enterprise in America, while it will 
 devote a column to the bursting of a savings bank, or the water- 
 ing of the stock of a railway company. 
 
 All the details of the savings banks' downfall in Chicago ; the 
 career of Morton, the Philadelphia horse-railway swindler; the 
 operations of Boss Tweed, and Edwards, the great insurance 
 thief, are all well known in this country. In fine, England keeps, 
 an accurate tally of all our vices, and pays no attention to our 
 virtues, either believing that we have none, or else that such 
 things are not worth bothering about. As an entirely legitimate 
 consequence of the ettect of this class of literature on the public 
 mind, every Yankee pilgrim who lands on these shores is sus- 
 pected of being a runaway bank president, or some other pecu- 
 lating individual who has "left his country for his country's 
 good." They know all about Spencer, and Myers, and Edwards, 
 and the result of it all is that we honest wanderers are mistaken 
 for these people and treated with a suspicion that harrows up our 
 souls. 
 
 One can readily fancy that, when every American who comes 
 here is believed to be guilty of some grave commercial or politi- 
 cal offense until he can prove himself innocent, he finds himself 
 unpleasantly situated. What he may feel is not, however, the 
 matter under discussion ; the real thing at issue is to explain the 
 status which Americans occupy in the English estimate, and to 
 show that, in many cases, the English are very far from being 
 wholly to blame for their conclusions. I have at least thus far 
 shown that, knowing us mainly through reports of bank failures 
 and the like, the mass of the English people are not to be blamed 
 if they look upon every American, whom they do not know, 
 with suspicion. 
 
 In America an ordinary letter of introduction means an invita- 
 tion out to take a drink, a five minutes' chat, and a request tO' 
 drop in again when it is convenient. Here it is quite a different 
 and much more solemn thing. English ideas of hospitality are 
 stately and full of warmth. A formal letter of introduction to 
 an Englishman always means an invitation to come around to 
 
AMERICANS ABROAD. 97 
 
 his castle, at 6 : 30 p. m., in a swallow-tail coat and white choker, 
 and sample his wines and pass upon the products of his cuisine. 
 
 Everybody who comes here brings stacks of letters of introduc- 
 tion. They don't cost anything in America, and, moreover, they 
 don't mean anything. One chap gives a letter directed to some 
 Englishman whom he met in Kansas and whose address he hap- 
 pened to note down. The traveler gets another letter from his 
 member of Congress, who good-naturedly gives him a document 
 commending him as a very remarkable man and a perfect gentle- 
 man, to some English M. P. whom the M. C. met at a clam-bake 
 during a visit of the former to uncivilized America. Everybody, 
 from his washerwoman to ward constable, is ready to give the 
 wyageur a letter to somebody, with the result that when his valise 
 is packed for the journey it contains a minimum of clean linen 
 and a maximum of letters of introduction. 
 
 Let some man, saj^ in Chicago, announce to ten of his acquaint- 
 ances that he is going to Europe, and three or four of the number 
 will ask to let them give him a letter to people on the other side. 
 The offer is made, in part, from good-natured motives, and, in 
 part, from a desire to appear to have an extended acquaintance. 
 When our traveler gets here, in place of forwarding his letter by 
 mail, awaiting an answer, he essays often to deliver it in person. 
 English people are rigid in their notions of etiquette, and any 
 violation of its canons is an almost unpardonable offense. The 
 simple fact that a man calls to deliver a letter of introduction in 
 person is enough to damn him among these formal people. They 
 start with the broad assumption that every American is a run- 
 away bank president, and, then, when he comes about their place 
 of business or their home to present a letter, they at once con- 
 clude that, while he is presumably an absconding bank president, 
 he is certainly a man who is unaccustomed to the demands of 
 polite society. In addition to these damaging conclusions, there 
 is often the unpleasant fact that the Englishman has a very faint 
 recollection, or none whatever, of the individual whose name 
 authenticates the letter of introduction and guarantees the status 
 of the visitor. 
 
 It must be seen that the indiscriminate giving of letters to 
 anybody and everybody who comes abroad, by anybody and 
 everybody on the other side, and addressed to people here who 
 are as likely as not not to know the people who give the letters, 
 is calculated to have a damaging eflfect on the English estimate 
 7 
 
98 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 of Americau character. From llie American standpoint it is all 
 well enough to give these letters, because they mean no more 
 than a five minutes' chat, a glass of beer or two, and an invita- 
 tion to call around to the office again, and then the whole affair 
 is forgotten. But the solemnity and weight attached to the samp 
 kind of an instrument by an Englishma,n make it altogether a 
 different thing. Hence, it is easy to see a good reason ■ why an 
 American letter of introduction has come to be regarded with 
 suspicion, and wliy, in circulation, it has about the same value 
 that in America, is attached to Confederate scrip or continental 
 shinplasters. 
 
 The inevitable invitation to dinner comes, and following it in 
 due season comes the American traveler, who, as often as not, 
 presents himself in the suit in which he crossed the ocean. He 
 is not proposing to stop for any length of time in London; he is 
 bound for that American paradise, Paris, where he proposes to 
 replenish his wardrobe ; and, hence, even if he have a suspicion 
 as to what custom demands, he is not in a condition to conform 
 to its requirements. The average Englishman will not pardon 
 any lapse from formality. Dinner is to him a sacred affair. He 
 surrounds it with as many ceremonials as a ritualist does the 
 rendering of religious services. The Mohammedan is no more 
 earnest in insisting that his mosque shall be entered with bare 
 feet than the Briton in demanding that the solemnities connected 
 with gorging liimself shall be conducted in vestments of a cer- 
 tain color and cut. 
 
 Probably all cultivated Americans understand this fact ; but 
 traveling is not limited to cultivated Americans. Quite the 
 contrary. 
 
 However, the fact that one American may present himself to 
 dinner without a dress coat is sufficient to damn that particular 
 American in the estimate of his British host, and inferentially 
 all other Americans of whom he is accepted as a representative. 
 
 Not long since a New York traveler made his way to London, 
 and, soon after, through the inevitable letter of introduction, into 
 the house of a gentleman of independent means, whose wife is a 
 lady of American birth. He came to dinner in a frock coat, 
 which excited the suspicions of his host, but being bright, voluble 
 and full of anecdote, his offense as to the breadth of his coat-tails 
 and the color of his necktie was condoned, greatly to the delight 
 of the wife, who is keenly sensitive as to the prevailing estimate 
 
THE YANKEE ABROAD. 99 
 
 of Americans, and who was extremely anxious to convert her 
 husband to her views on the American question. 
 
 She was more than delighted with the brilliancy of the guest, 
 who soon won the regard of every one, including the husband, 
 by his marvelous conversational powers. 
 
 After dinner, our Yankee hero strayed into the salon to have a 
 little homely chat on American affairs with his hostess. They 
 were alone, and they had a right jolly gossip about old times and 
 old places. Just in the midst of it, the gentleman, absorbed in 
 his conversation, drew closer a chair, and proceeded to deposit 
 upon it, in the most comfortable manner, a pair of substantial, 
 square-toed American hoofs. 
 
 Of course, just at that moment the host entered the salon. 
 There was before him the astounding spectacle of an individual 
 sitting on the small of his back, with his legs resting upon 
 a neighboring chair. He gazed for a single instant on the 
 marvelous tableau, and then turned and left the room. More- 
 over, he not only left the room, but he did not come back, at least 
 until the departure of his guest. 
 
 Now, all Americans do not go into sti'angers' parlors and put 
 their hoofs on chairs. This one, however, did, because the lady 
 herself told me of it. Perhaps the most melancholy result of 
 the whole affair is that the wife has never since dared to lift up 
 her voice in defense of the American flag. As a defender of the 
 stars and stripes she was worse licked than Mukhtar Pasha by 
 Louis Melikoff. 
 
 LETTER XVI. 
 
 THE YANKEE ABROAD. 
 
 London, Oct. 25, 1877. 
 
 fN undertaking to ascertain why Americans are unpopular in 
 England, I have already dwelt upon some of the peculiari- 
 ties of my countrymen. Allusion has been made to the 
 character of the letters of introduction — or many of them — 
 with which Americans are armed upon their arrival on British 
 soil. 
 
100 
 
 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
THE YANKEE ABROAD. 101 
 
 "An American," and "an American letter of introduction" 
 have become to be synonymous with expressions of contempt 
 and worthlessness. This fact is shown in one or two events that 
 I have been a party to. There is not a more punctilious people 
 in existence than the English. A letter to the queen, from the 
 humblest of her subjects, if properly worded, and having refer- 
 ence to business, would be certain to be answered by the private 
 secretary of her majesty. This state of things prevails every- 
 where. Consequently, when an Englishman does not answer a 
 letter, it is because he holds it in contempt. 1 forwarded with 
 my card and address a letter of introduction from an eminent 
 banker in New York to a well-kno\ra lord and Member of Par- 
 liament on this side of the water, and of which there was never 
 taken the slightest notice. 
 
 Such a breach of manners can only be accounted for on the 
 ground that an American letter of introduction is a document of 
 so small value that it is not worth attention. Other similar cases 
 have occurred, which go to prove that the action of the lord just 
 referred to is not singular in its character, but rather the out- 
 growth of a very wide-spread feeling. 
 
 London is overrun with American swindlers of both sexes, but 
 more especially women. An acquaintance of mine lately went 
 to a fashionable house to have about ten dollars' worth of repairs 
 put on a dress. The shop mistress, as soon as the 'order was 
 given, asked for either a deposit or a first-class reference, saying 
 she " had been so badly swindled by Americans that she would 
 never trust another one for a single hour." In one dressmaking 
 establishment in Pall Mall there are unpaid bills against an 
 American woman for some $3,500 — bills which my profane eyes 
 have been permitted to gaze upon. The woman in question 
 hasn't a dollar in the world, and yet she is one of the best-dressed 
 and best-lodged women in London. 
 
 She rents a carriage for which she owes a small fortune. She 
 owes grocers, wine merchants and lodging-house keepers without 
 limit. She has every possible luxury she can desire, and yet is 
 simply and purely a penniless dead-beat of the worst kind. She 
 has a fine personal appearance, a lofty, commanding manner, and 
 exquisite taste in dress. These constitute her capital, and upon 
 them she realizes a substantial income. 
 
 The case of this adventuress is not a singular one. I happen 
 individually to know no less than four such women, who are liv- 
 
102 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 ing here in lavish style, and who do not pay out per annum in 
 cash as many pounds as there are months in the year. It is they, 
 and their kind, who have discredited tlie financial standing of all 
 Americans. I have often noticed a conspicuous sign in a win- 
 dow on Bond street, and which reads : " No Orders Talien from 
 Americans without a Deposit." Of course this is a flagrant, 
 inexcusable afi'ront.; but, nevertheless, it is simply the case of one 
 dealer who has been bold enough to express in public what all 
 of the shop-keeping kind think among themselves. I have no 
 doubt that, did every London shop-keeper dare to be as hon- 
 est in the utterance of his views, half or more of the shops in 
 London would be decorated with a similar legend in less than 
 twenty-four hours. 
 
 It is only proper to say that one who knows all the facts is not 
 altogether sorry for these swindled shop-keepers, for the reason 
 that many, or a majority of them, do not have the smallest hesi- 
 tation in robbing an American whenever they have the opportu- 
 nity. Americans are all believed to be wealthy, and, therefore, 
 fair game. It cost me twice as much to live when I first came 
 here as it does at the present time. An American woman order- 
 ing a dress, or a man a suit of clothes, will have to pay from a 
 quarter to a third more than a native would for the same goods. 
 The cabmen habitually double up on the new-comer from Amer- 
 ica; servants give him half services and expect quadruple fees. 
 In short, while it is true that London has a limitless number of 
 American adventurers who commit havoc in every direction, I 
 am comforted with the conclusion that what political economists 
 call the "balance of trade " or exchange, is, upon the whole, in 
 favor of our thrifty cousins. Yankee swindlers may get away 
 with, say £10,000 each year from London shop-keepers, but, dur- 
 ing the same period, the London people will collect twice that 
 amount from the entire American population of London, in the 
 shape of overcharges and exactions, and downright robberies. 
 
 It thus happens that, while from the operations of American 
 swindlers we lose vastly in reputation, it also happens that, from 
 the same cause, we lose a large amount of money. We are " out " 
 in character and in pocket — a very unpleasant double affliction. 
 
 One strong reason for the dislike of Americans is found in our 
 adherenc^e to titles. The number of captains, majors, colonels, 
 generals and judges who are turned loose in, and who are roam- 
 ing about, London, is something frightful, even to a seasoned 
 
THE YANKEE ABROAD. 103 
 
 American who has known such dignitaries all his life. A Briton 
 finds tliat every alternate Yankee whom he meets is a colonel or 
 a general, and he at once concludes that anything which is so 
 very common cannot be of any value. He ascribes the frequency 
 of these titles to a love for distinction, and, although there is no 
 man who worships a title more than your Briton, yet he affects to 
 despise it, and invariably sneers at its possession by somebody else. 
 
 An "American colonel," or an "American general," or an 
 "American judge," is considerably below the average American 
 letter of introduction. Even the waiter at a cheap restaurant 
 grins in derision as he waits upon a party of four Americans, one 
 of whom is sure to be a general, one a colonel, one a judge, while 
 the fourth may be a high private, and the only one present. 
 
 Not only is the average Yankee visitor liable to be a colonel, at 
 least, but he is afflicted with an acquaintanceship of an infinite 
 host of the same class of dignitaries. 
 
 At an Englishman's house, not long since, I had the pleasure 
 of meeting an American colonel. Thore were present the host, 
 his wife, two grown-up daughters, an English clergyman, the 
 " colonel," an American lady, and myself. The members of the 
 family are people of refinement and extended cultivation. The 
 " colonel " is a gentleman with the acutest nasal tones, although 
 from the South. He manages to blend in his voice and idioms 
 all that is most offensive in the style of a New England Yankee 
 and the nigger dialect of the plantation. His manner is demon- 
 strative, his utterances loud, and his self-laudation incessant. 
 
 Now, I am not going to repeat any of the " colonel's " remarks, 
 further than to say that in the course of an hour he managed to 
 make himself the hero of everything he related, and to " ring in " 
 not less than a hundred times something about " my friend. Judge 
 This," "my intimate friend. General That," and "my most inti- 
 mate friend, the Member of Congress from the Second District." 
 
 Now, as to how hell may be in regard to this class of blather- 
 skites, I am not prepared to say at present ; but I do know that 
 London is full of them, and that they not only offend and disgust 
 every decent American, but they are making, or have made, the 
 name of American a stench in the nostrils of English people. 
 
 Coming up the Strand last week on a 'bus, I found a couple of 
 Yankees among the passengers. On all the routes it is the cus- 
 tom for the omnibuses to stop for a moment or two at certain 
 points, in order to permit the horses to " get their wind." The 
 
104 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 plan did not seem to meet the approval of one of my compatriots 
 — a gentleman with a soft black hat with a wide brim, and black 
 mustache and goatee. 
 
 " What in h — 1 are you stopping for? " was his opening remark, 
 made in a loud, offensive tone, to the driver at the first halting 
 place. 
 
 "G — d d — n you, why don't you go on?" was his remark at 
 
 the next place; and "You son of a , I'd like to jerk you off 
 
 that," was his comment at the succeeding stoppage. All these, 
 and several others too offensive to even indicate, were hurled at 
 the driver in a tone heard all over the 'bus. The blackguard 
 did not even have the poor excuse of being drunk. Of course 
 the Englishmen who heard his remarks looked upon him as a 
 representative American, and his course just that which all 
 Americans would take under the circumstances. 
 
 Referring again to the matter of American titles, there is a 
 point in it worthy of note, and which will explain, to some extent, 
 why so many Englishman look upon them with real or affected 
 contempt. 
 
 An Englishman who ranks as a colonel, or a judge, holds him- 
 self aloof from the mob — "his soul is like a star which dwells 
 apart." The average Englishman can no more get near him, or 
 into his company, than he can into that of Saturn. Hence, when 
 he finds that an American colonel, or judge, puts on no style; 
 that he is accessible and affable ; that he can descend to speak to 
 and even shake hands with everybody, the Englishman instantly 
 concludes it is because his rank is bogus, and he is a common 
 sort of a fellow. If the Yankee colonel would onlj'- go about as 
 if he were a dozen or twenty times better than anybody else, he 
 would at once command respect. 
 
 Somewhat the same is the case with an American who is always 
 bringing in " my friend, Senator So-and-So." An English Mem- 
 ber of Parliament is a lofty being, who does not permit himself 
 to be contaminated with ordinary friendships, or companionship. 
 The average Englishman cannot get within a league of such a 
 dignitary. Hence, when he hears an American talking of " my 
 friend. Senator Squiggins," he at once commences to reason 
 thus: " I am just as good, you know, as that chap, 3'^ou know. 
 Now I can't get near a colonel, a judge, or a Member of Parlia- 
 ment, you know. If he can, you know% and I cannot, you know, 
 it must be, do you see, because he is lying, you know, or else, do 
 
THE YANKEE ABROAD. 105 
 
 you see, because these American colonels and judges don't 
 amount to anything, you know ! " This is really one-half the 
 reason why the average Englishman holds American titles in 
 such contempt. 
 
 An American major general, who fought all through our late 
 war and gained a conspicuous record for gallantry and skill, 
 would not rank as high in this community as an English ser- 
 geant who has never seen a battle, and whose services has been 
 limited to barrack duty and strutting down Pall Mall with a 
 small whip in one hand and an inverted collar-box on his left ear. 
 
 The very best thing an American can do who has a title, and 
 who proposes to visit England, is to lock up his title till his 
 return. 
 
 Americans are an industrious, thrifty set, who go in for making 
 money entirely regardless of what may happen to be their rank. 
 Hence we have colonels and generals over here who are engaged 
 in everything, from offering to tow the island of Great Britain into 
 a different latitude, to introducing a patent mouse-trap. I meet 
 these titled gentlemen here engaged in pushing Yankee inven- 
 tions, in selling pickled beef, darning machines, soda-water, 
 canned oysters, — in short, everything. 
 
 A British colonel does nothing of the sort. He goes about in a 
 cab, with a glass in one eye, and oozing with dignity and hauteur 
 like a saturated sponge dripping water. He never presents his 
 card to a British merchant and asks him to try a new quality of 
 baking powder, or wishes to introduce a brand new article, 
 warranted to exterminate cock-roaches. Of course the British 
 merchant would look with suspicion upon a " colonel " or a gen- 
 eral engaged in any such business ; the more especially as he is 
 inclined to look with suspicion upon any man who approaches 
 him and attempts to be sociable and transact business without a 
 letter of introduction. 
 
 I miglit elaborate this topic to an unlimited extent. Possibly 
 enough has been said in this letter and its predecessor to explain, 
 in part, why Americans in England are not popular. As seen, 
 the fault, to some extent, is with us. Perhaps I cannot do better 
 than to wind up with a few suggestions to Americans who con- 
 template visiting Europe. 
 
 Let such a one take all the letters of introduction offered him, 
 but, except tlie one to the English banker, let them, as a general 
 thing, be burned. 
 
106 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Whoever has a title, let him before sailing scrape it oflF as 
 though it were rust. By doing this he will not only make it 
 more agreeable for himself here, but he will avoid making the 
 passenger list of the steamer ridiculous with entries, such as 
 " Lieut. Jones," " Capt. Jenkins," " Maj. Bobbins," and so on, as 
 is done in the case of every passenger-ship which leaves an 
 American port. A vessel lately left America, among whose reg- 
 istered passengers were " Mrs. Gen. Blank," and " Mrs. Capt. 
 Blank " — than which anything more likely to create ridicule 
 and contempt on this side cannot be imagined. 
 
 Once here let our American pilgrims, especially of the female 
 persuasion, avoid the attempt to force themselves into society. 
 The amount of this kind of effort indulged in by some ambitious 
 Americans is sufficiently pronounced and notable to attract much 
 unfavorable comment, and to assist in discrediting everything 
 which bears the name of American. 
 
 The American in England should, as soon as possible, submit 
 to be striped in the prevailing fashion, so as to look as much like 
 a native product as possible. 
 
 By doing this ; by asking no questions ; by encrusting himself 
 with a reserve which suggests a contemptuous obliviousness of 
 the existence of everybody, he will, if he does not gain anybody's 
 regard or good will, at least escape being the object of disagree- 
 able comment and unpleasant notice. 
 
 An American while here should let America severely alone, ex- 
 cept under exceptional circumstances. In conversation with the 
 ordinary people one meets, any assertion to the effect that America 
 has authors, poets, newspapers, telegraphs, operas, ingenious labor- 
 saving machinery, and the like, will only expose the person 
 making it to derision and contempt. Let the visitor remember 
 that while in England all other countries and peoples are infer- 
 ior, little known, and less cared about. This, however, is a con- 
 dition of things for which the English press is responsible. If it 
 ever mentions another country it is to relate some damaging 
 news, or to find fault with some existing quality, or contemplated 
 act. Boss Tweed in England represents all American politicians ; 
 our bursted savings banks represent our banking system ; our 
 business men are all George Francis Trains ; our newspapers are 
 Keyhole Listeners and Daily Stabbers, as delineated by Dickens. 
 Hence, it is far better to not attempt to disturb a belief which is 
 not only universally but willingly accepted. 
 
AMONG THE SLUMS. 107 
 
 LETTER XVII. 
 
 AMONG THE SLUMS. 
 
 London, Oct. 31, 1877. 
 
 f[ T came in due season, and was a massive blue envelope bear- 
 P ing the printed legend: "On Her Majesty's Service." It 
 ^ was lucky that the missive was not delivered at my humble 
 lodging-house, for, in that case, my landlady would have imme- 
 diately concluded that I had rank as well as wealth, and would 
 have proceeded to rob me to the extent of seventy-five per cent, 
 instead of fifty per cent, with which she had liitherto been satis- 
 fied. Fortunately for my slender purse, it came to another 
 address, and escaped that attention which it would otherwise 
 have attracted. 
 
 It is amazing as well as unpleasant — the effect upon one's 
 dignity and wealth, which the reception of such a missive will 
 create in this locality. Rank is at once worshiped and charged 
 two hundred per cent, extra among all with whom it comes in 
 contact. I escaped this time, but I did not on another occasion, 
 the which I shall tell all about at some other time. 
 
 Tlie particular document in question was a reply to a humble 
 request on my part, begging of the Chief Police Commissioner 
 of London an escort of policemen to visit, at night, some of the 
 lower haunts of London. In due season, Col. Henderson 
 responded, giving his consent, and naming an hour and place at 
 which the escort would be in waiting. 
 
 And this will explain how I was favored with a document " On 
 Her Majesty's Service." Her majesty, to all appearance, lias a 
 good deal to do with things in this country. She not only 
 "runs " a large and expensive family, but also the mails, the tel- 
 egraph, the police, the penitentiaries, the savings-banks, the 
 money-order office, and too many other things to mention. The 
 stern advocates of women's rights not unfrequently, and prop- 
 erly, call attention to all that is done by this excellent queen as 
 an evidence of woman's capacity for business and government. 
 If she gives her personal attention to everything that goes on in 
 her name, she is the busiest woman in the kingdom. It would 
 be unfair to the sisterhood to state that in reality, she has about 
 as much to do with the government of England as the barmaid 
 
108 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 around the corner, and that her life is passed in going from castle 
 to castle, and in collecting the last honest cent out of her ten- 
 antry, and in investing her enormous income to the best advan- 
 tage — and, being unfair, I decline firmly to make any such 
 statement, even if it be the truth. She stands now, in America, 
 as the bright particular star which best represents woman's 
 astonishing capabilities; and I certainly shall make no effort to 
 diminish the clear lustre of her radiant beams. 
 
 It was 10 p. M. of a starry night when I dismounted from a 
 Whitechapel 'bus — the guard and driver both called it " Witchr 
 ippel" — at the corner of Leman street, and which, according 
 to the curious and universal custom in this country of pro, 
 nouncing everything according to what it does not spell, is 
 known as Lemon street. The pronunciation in this instance may 
 be founded on a modest desire to escape using a not very polite 
 term in referring to the street. The word leman might be calcu, 
 lated to offend the dainty ears of the denizens of Whitechapel 
 somewhat in the same way that the term "thief" might be 
 objected to in a select gathering of pick-pockets, or a naughty 
 Saxon word — which I refuse to name — in a company of court- 
 esans. 
 
 After being lost a couple of times, and chasing up every red 
 lamp, under the impression that it indicated a police station, I 
 finally reached the rendezvous. Three-fourths of the people 
 whom I met, and all of whom I inquired, looked like thieves, or 
 worse, but they were virtuously ignorant as to the whereabouts 
 of the station — evidently laboring under the impression that a 
 pretended ignorance of the locality would force the inference 
 that they are very honest, virtuous people, who move in re- 
 mote and elevated circles, with which policemen have never 
 anything to do. 
 
 As if a resident of Chicago would be " come over " in that sort 
 of a way ! 
 
 A couple of detectives, in plain clothes, were in waiting, who, 
 on my production of Col. Henderson's letter, announced them- 
 selves as detailed to act as my escort. They were a couple of 
 stalwart, resolute fellows, full-bearded, and in the prime of life. 
 As I took in their magnificent physique I was satisfied that, in 
 case of a row, they could be relied on to hold any position 
 until — I could make good my retreat. 
 We moved off toward our destination ; and learning that there 
 
AMONG THE SLUMS. 109 
 
 was a fifteen-minutes' walk before we could reach our objective 
 point, I drew out my guides on matters and things in general. 
 
 They had heard of Chicago. This pleased me. Whenever I 
 wish to get at the true inwardness of an Englishman, I always 
 ask him if he ever heard of Chicago. If he says yes, I put him 
 down as a man of intelligence. Sometimes I meet a man who 
 not only has heard of Chicago, but who does not think it is in 
 New York city. Him I accord high rank in my esteem. Once 
 or twice I have met a man who has been there. Such a man is 
 at once a statesman, a scholar, and a gentleman. But, ah me t 
 there are millions here in London who wouldn't know, were they 
 to hear the word Chicago mentioned, whether or not it is a spe- 
 cies of cat-fish or a term used in a dog-fight. Such is the 
 astounded ignorance of these effete residents of the old world ! 
 And yet Chicago has one-eighth the population of London, and 
 bursts more banks in a month than London does in a century! 
 
 Can there be any excuse for such ignorance ? 
 
 " Of course you have a great many desperate characters in 
 London?" I ventured to remark, in order to test his information, 
 after having already, by the Chicago matter, tested his intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; we do have a great many ; and they are bad 'uns, 
 too, I assure you." 
 
 " On an expedition like this, you go armed, of course, don't 
 you?" 
 
 " Oh, no ; not at all." 
 
 " You don't ? How do you get along with your roughs ?" 
 
 " We have some trouble now and then ; but we never carry a 
 pistol." 
 
 " You don't, eh ? Well, I'd like to see a policeman doing Chi- 
 cago without a gun ! Why, a Chicago policeman would no more 
 think of going out without a revolver and a club than he would 
 think of letting pay-day pass without applying for his voucher." 
 
 " Do they have to use their pistols much ? " 
 
 " I don't know as they ' have ' to as a matter of law, or neces- 
 sity, but I know that they do as a matter of fact. They use the 
 pistol to bring their game down with, and then the club comes 
 into play to finish off tlie victim." 
 
 " But can't they get along as well without shooting so much ? " 
 
 " Well, they could, providing they could only induce the thieves 
 and roughs to quit first. But it can't be done, apparently ; and 
 
110 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 SO long as the roughs insist upon keeping up the practice, why, 
 our policemen have to follow suit. And besides, there is little or 
 no hanging for murder in our place, and hence we rather encour- 
 age the use of the pistol among the criminal classes and the 
 police, because it has the effect to thin out the bad element. It 
 spoils some promising voters, but the general result is rather 
 beneficial to society." 
 
 My companions couldn't take it all in, and one of them re- 
 marked that " if policemen went to shooting in this country 
 there would be some hanging, sure; and not wholly among the 
 classes that would be shot at, either." 
 
 Which only goes to show how many things the old world has 
 to learn from the new. 
 
 All this time we were leaving the better portions of the city, 
 and entering a different locality. The streets grew narrower, 
 and the houses older and more dilapidated. The people grew 
 more dirty and ragged, the hand-organs smaller and more dis- 
 cordant, the crowds more dense and noisy. We passed from 
 narrow streets into narrower ones, and thence into alleys choked 
 with foul smells, and running over with slouching, lounging, ill- 
 favored men and women. 
 
 At every few yards, streams of light from a building indicated 
 a saloon, in each of which a dense mob was gathered, pouring 
 down gin, smoking abominable tobacco, singing in hoarse, dis- 
 cordant tones, quarreling, clamorous, maudlin, garrulous. Among 
 them, and about the doors, were women, some young but never 
 pretty, some old, skinny, others bloated -^ all repulsive. Many 
 of them carried infants in their arms, wrapped in the dirty folds 
 of some nameless garment, and which they handled as if they 
 had been blocks of wood. Such babies as we ' saw among these 
 crowds! Some seemed scarcely more than a few days old. 
 Their lips were thin, their faces pinched, their weak little eyes 
 winked painfully in the glare of the gas-light. Some slept, 
 others wailed querulously, others were being nursed from dirty 
 dugs, revealing the flabby, long, misshapen breast of the mother. 
 
 And there were other children there, too. They were from 
 half-grown girls and boys to wee things toddling painfully along, 
 tugging at the skirt, or clutched by the hand of the mother. I 
 never saw so many children as I saw in these noisome slums. 
 They swarmed like vermin, tliey sat on the curbstones, they were 
 in the gutters, the doorways were filled with them, they littered 
 
AMONG THE SLUMS. Ill 
 
 the sidewalks, their heads filled every window. All were dirty, 
 ragged, unkempt beyond description. Here and there was one 
 with a crooked spine, another with shrunken, helpless legs, 
 another with some other and more shocking malformation. 
 And now and then there was one with regular features, large, 
 wistful eyes, and great masses of hair, and who was so beautiful 
 that no amount of dirt and rags could obliterate the fact. 
 
 There was something inexpressibly touching in two things 
 which I noticed in these little waifs. One was that all seemed 
 to derive some pleasure from whatever they were engaged in. 
 There were no toys, but from a battered old shoe, a piece of dirty 
 stick, a fragment of a brick, or a bit of earthenware, they man- 
 aged to extract some enjoyment, and in a sort of subdued and 
 plaintive way were as happy as if their toys had cost a fortune. 
 The other fact that touched me was their invariable kindness to 
 each other. Dirty little girls, themselves but bits of babies, often 
 carried a few-days-old infant, and found means also to care for 
 another who was just beginning to walk. Little boys danced 
 about, with a younger sister, crowing and laughing, astride their 
 shoulders. In their humble, narrow and dirty way, they were 
 happy — not buoyantly, vigorously, roysteringly happy, like 
 children who run and romp in the sunlight and unweighted by 
 the burdens of poverty, but nevertheless making the very most 
 out of their wretched surroundings. 
 
 In one of the very dirtiest, narrowest, worst-lighted of one of 
 these localities, my conductors suddenly turned into a contracted 
 doorway, traversed a narrow entry, and then passed through a 
 low door into a small room. We had to squeeze between a 
 couple of old hags who sat on the door-step, and who made way 
 for us with hoarse curses and grumbling. 
 
 At the further end of the room which we entered was a range for 
 cooking. A coal fire was burning in it, and a man, ragged, greasy, 
 dilapidated, and forlorn in the extreme, was standing over it, watch- 
 ing something which seemed to be warming in a small tin pail. 
 
 "Where's Mrs. Blank?" asked one of my escort of a pale, 
 thinly-clad woman, who came forward suddenly as we entered. 
 
 " What do you want of her ? " asked the woman, in a supicious 
 and insolent tone. 
 
 "Tell her Inspector wishes to see her," 
 
 The name acted like magic on the woman. Her look became 
 respectful, and she hurried from the room. 
 
112 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " What have we here ? " I asked, a good deal puzzled at the 
 appearance of the room and its occupant. 
 
 "This," he answered, "is a model lodging-house, and one of 
 the curiosities of London." 
 
 " Is it under government supervision ? '' 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " A.nd are there many in London ? " 
 
 He gave me the number. I do not recollect it, but it is several 
 hundreds. 
 
 Around the walls of the room are rude board tables, with 
 benches. At these tables were seated a dozen or more men wlio, 
 from their appearance, are the lowest, poorest class of mendi- 
 cants. They were foul and squalid to the very extreme. Some 
 were munching at crusts, others drank from mugs, others smoked 
 dirty black pipes, others did nothing, but sat and gazed on the 
 visitors in stupid and sullen silence. I had time to notice these 
 things, and that the floor and tables were scrupulously clean, 
 when the woman who had gone out in obedience to the order of 
 the inspector, returned with a middle-aged, harsh - featured 
 woman, who greeted us with a stiJBf nod. 
 
 " Good evening, Mary," said the inspector. " Here is a gen- 
 tleman who wishes to look through the house." 
 
 She nodded again, and led tlie way into the entiy, and thence 
 up a narrow, creaking, modern stairway to the floor above. It 
 was a room of medium size, in which are some forty single cots, 
 or low, single beds. 
 
 Some of the beds were already occupied. On one sat a man 
 entirely nude, who was engaged in washing a coarse shirt in a 
 tub of water. 
 
 " This house," said the inspector, who did most of the talking, 
 " is registered, is under government supervision, and is subject 
 at all times to police visitation and inspection. Tlie London 
 lodging-houses in tliese quarters became so bad that the govern- 
 ment had to take hold of them and regulate them. Now, when 
 anyone wishes to keep a lodging-house, application is made to 
 the authorities, and a license is granted." 
 
 " What are the regulation*^ ? " 
 
 " Simply that the premises shall be kept clean and orderly, and 
 that only a certain price shall be charged — fourpence a night 
 for each person. By paying this price a person has a right to 
 the kitchen fire, where he may do such cooking as he wishes." 
 
AMONG THE SLUMS. 113 
 
 " How often are the sheets changed ? " 
 
 " Once a week." 
 
 "Then they are not changed for each new lodger? " 
 
 " No. I should think not. You see," he said, as he turned 
 down the clothing of an empty bed, " that the sheets, although 
 far from being very fine, are clean. In order to prevent the 
 lodgers from stealing the blankets, which they would be sure 
 otherwise to do, each one has printed on it in indelible ink and 
 large letters, ' Stolen from No. 258,' which is the number of the 
 house." 
 
 We visited a half dozen or more of these establishments. 
 Some of them are in better and others in the very worst portions 
 of the city, but all are alike in being for the benefit of the poor, 
 and in being clean and comfortable. Some of the houses have 
 partitions between the beds, which are double, and for married 
 people. Others again are solely for women, and others only for 
 the use of single men. In the case of all, the kitchen, with its 
 range and fire, is for the use of the lodgers. In the case of 
 none of them is there any kind of malt or spirituous liquors sold 
 on the premises. 
 
 The patrons are the very poorest classes, many of them being 
 beggars. Sometimes they arc resorted to by workingmen out of 
 money and employment, but generally their customers are those 
 who otherwise Would prowl about on the streets all night, getting 
 a little sleep in such out of-the-way places as they could crawl 
 into and escape the notice of the police. When business is poor, 
 thieves find tlicse places of great utility, and patronize them 
 accordingly. 
 
 One place which we visited has, I believe, some six hundred 
 beds, and the proprietor of this particular place has half a dozen 
 others, none, however, so grand as the one just referred to. This 
 is a sort of a Palmer House among the lodging-houses, and its 
 occupants are quite aristocratic. I noticed some who even had 
 on shoes which were mates, while one or two other nabobs 
 among the patrons sipped a mug of two-penny at the dining- 
 room table, with all the dignity and empressment of a million- 
 aire sipping a choice brand of dry champagne. There was 
 actually one opulent cuss who was extravagant enough to wear a 
 silk hat which was not more than five years old, and whose coat- 
 ing of grease was not so thick but that occasional remnants of 
 the original nap could be discovered here and there upon the 
 
114 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 crown. Of course, however, such a lavish display of wealth 
 was extremely rare, although all the patrons of this particular 
 house wore an air of hauteur — proper to men who were habitues 
 of such a palatial establishment. 
 
 LETTER XVIII. 
 
 THE LONDON SLUMS. 
 
 London, November 3, 1877, 
 
 fN my last I gave The Times a partial account of a visit made 
 to the slums of London under the escort of a couple of de- 
 tectives. In the present letter I shall attempt to give the 
 remainder of the visit, although I cannot promise that it will be 
 very thrilling, or characterized by any astonishing adventures. 
 
 There was a time when a visit to the London slums was an 
 incident of some magnitude, and not unattended with danger. It 
 is now, however, a quite prosaic matter. Thanks to the reor- 
 ganization of the police force, the dens once the haunt of thieves 
 are abolished. There are no more Jonathan Wilds or Jack 
 Shepherds: The gentlemen who prowled around o' nights with 
 pitch plasters with whicli to stifle the cries of their victims, have 
 all been nicely hanged, and have taken their mantles and their 
 pitch plasters with them. They have no successors. London is 
 no more the London of old, with its chivalrous highwaymen, its 
 gentlemanly pickpockets, its "boozing-kens," where the light- 
 fingered gentry congregated with their "molls "to spend their 
 ill-gotten gains with lavish hand. Modern civilization has wiped 
 out all that and left London with a very prosaic supply of con- 
 fidence men, sneak-thieves and pickpockets. Hence, if anybody 
 supposes that this account includes any experiences with noted 
 criminals, they are mistaken, just as I was myself. I was under 
 the impression that these noted dens, with their inmates, still 
 exist. I was only undeceived after having thoroughly explored 
 all the worst haunts of London, under the guidance of two ex- 
 perts who know every inch of the metropolis. 
 
THE LOiiJDON SLUMS. 115 
 
 We finished the model lodging-houses in a very short time and 
 then commenced other explorations. 
 
 I may here state that in our visit to half a dozen of these 
 lodging-houses we saw plenty of squalor and wretchedness, but 
 little drunkenness in connection with them. As we were leaving 
 one of them I fell behind in order to examine something, when 
 there came into the room an individual with a napless silk hat, 
 much battered, with a wide band around it, as if he were in 
 mourning for something — possibly a clean shirt. He was a big, 
 ugly-looking fellow, with an enormous nos'e, and a greasy suit of 
 black, evidently once — many years ago — the property of some 
 person in the respectable walks of life. He saw me, saw a 
 stranger, alone, with a decent suit of clothes and *a clean shirt, 
 and the spectacle excited him as a red rag is said to irritate a 
 bull. My escort was out on the sidewalk and out of sight. Fast- 
 ening a pair of greenish, villainous eyes on me, he commenced 
 dancing about, with his arms and fists in boxing attitude, and, in 
 a jeering half-howl, said . 
 
 "Oo 'ave we 'ere? Ho, hit's the Prince o' Wales. The Prince 
 o' Wales jest kim to pay us a little visit! Kind o' yer royal 
 'ighness to kim 'ere! Ho, yes, jolly kind o' yer royal 'ighness! " 
 
 All the time he was dancing about, making passes at me witli 
 a pair of very dirty bunches of knuckles, and gradually closing 
 in on me. I confess to not enjoying the prospect. He was twice 
 as big as I, a muscular scoundrel, and evidently laboring under 
 an attack of delirium tremens in an incipient stage. He man- 
 aged to keep between me and the door, so that there was no 
 chance to run for it. I had no weapon, and, as for clinching 
 with him, I would as soon thought of hugging a night scavenger 
 up to his eyes in — business. 
 
 I was unwilling to fight and unable to run away. Several 
 torpid mendicants sat about the room, who, while evincing no 
 extraordinary interest in the affair, evidently sympathized with 
 the attacking party; and, hence, I had nothing to hope from 
 them. I had just made up my mind that I was about to get a 
 tremendous licking, when my friend suddenly paused, dropped 
 his arms, and then humbly and hurriedly slouched out through 
 a side door and disappeared. Amazed at my deliverance, I turned 
 to look for its cause, and saw my escort coming back in search 
 of me. I felt as much relieved as Wellington when he was rein- 
 forced by Blucher. 
 
116 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 This was the only speck of war on our horizon, althougli we 
 saw any number of figlits on tlie streets during our progress. 
 Pugilistic encounters are so common in London as to attract very 
 little attention. No longer ago than last night I attended Covent 
 Garden to listen to one of Arditi's promenade concerts. The 
 lower floor is cleared of seats and is used for promenaders. Ex- 
 actly in the middle of the performance of one of Mendelssohn's 
 most plaintive symphonies, two individuals got into a discussion 
 and very shortly came to blows. They fought for full five minutes, 
 in full view of all the audience in the upper tiers and of a dense 
 crowd who surrounded them. There was no loud talking or 
 oaths, or excitement. The crowd closed about the combatants 
 and watched* the battle without emotion. Finally there was a 
 clinch, a brief struggle, a fall, and the fight was over. 
 
 During its progress not a fiddler missed a note. There was no 
 perceptible excitement. There was a policeman not more than 
 twenty feet from the fight, who gave it no attention. Both men, 
 as well as I could judge, were respectable; that is to say, they 
 were well dressed and well appearing as to faces. 
 
 "Do you have such things in Chicago?" asked my com- 
 panion. 
 
 " No, not that I have ever seen. Such an affair in Chicago 
 would have some different features. There would be some loud 
 oaths, one pistol shot, perhaps two, and the thing would be over 
 in ten seconds." 
 
 Every few moments, as we passed through the streets, there 
 was a fight. There would be a rush toward the combatants, and a 
 dense black mass whose center seemed to writhe and twist about 
 like the central point in a whirlwind. My guides scarcely took 
 the trouble to even glance toward these assemblages. They 
 seemed to regard an occurrence in which a couple of the mob 
 were mauling each other with the most supreme indifference. 
 
 In curious, dirty, tortuous streets we pushed ahead until we 
 finally reached the neighborhood of the Thames. At short inter- 
 vals there were houses from out of which there came the sound 
 of music, and into one of these we entered. 
 
 It was a low, narrow, foul-smelling kennel. In front was the 
 inevitable bar, presided over by some brazen-faced and pers'piring 
 females, who were kept busy by a dense and thirsty throng of all 
 colors, ages and sexes, in front of the counter. Climbing a few 
 broad steps, we were in the hall devoted to Terpsichore. There 
 
THE LONDON SLUMS. 117 
 
 •were a fiddle, a flute and a piano as the " orchestra," and which 
 were being vigorously scraped, blown and pounded in order to 
 furnish inspiration for the whirling mob that filled the floor. 
 We were deferentially given seats with the musicians where we 
 could overlook the performance. 
 
 I must say that, after having inspected the worst dance-houses 
 in London, I have found them much better than similar houses 
 which I have seen in New York, and even in Chicago. In fact, 
 I was disappointed with the moral nature of the whole night's 
 show ; and about the last thing I said to my police escort, when 
 we finally parted, was that London is not so very wicked a city, 
 and that if they would honor Chicago with a visit, and desired 
 it, they would be shown places and individuals as much worse 
 than they had shown me as a thief is worse than a saint. And I 
 took the pains to add: "Not only will the show be a much 
 wickeder one, but you will be sure to get a ' head put on you ' 
 before you get through with the excursion." 
 
 The ubiquitous London police have obliterated all the romance 
 of London criminality. The/e were a half dozen men in the 
 room who had the inclination but lacked the courage to assault 
 and rob us. Two men in plain clothes, without arms and with- 
 out any assistance at hand, overawed a mob who could have over- 
 powered them in a moment. But behind these two men stood the 
 police force of the entire city; and we were as safe as if we had 
 been in Great Scotland Yard. Twenty years ago, or, perhaps, 
 even five years ago, it would have required a well-armed force to 
 have penetrated where we were and to have left without being 
 plundered, and, possibly, murdered. 
 
 The most noticeable things in a sailors' dance-house in London 
 were exhibited in the first one we entered. The men were of all 
 nationalities, and of the lowest and most brutal type; the women 
 were the most hideous lot I ever saw together. None of the latter 
 were young — all had passed girlhood and many had passed on to 
 middle life, or beyond. Their faces were simply bestial in their 
 formation, to which long dissipation had given increased and 
 revolting hideousness. Their clothing was coarse, their persons 
 were exposed to an unlimited extent, which exposure, it seemed 
 to me, was a most injudicious advertisement, as it revealed 
 nothing but what added to their repulsiveness. 
 
 The men were Englishmen, Irishmen, Germans, Spaniards, 
 Frenchmen, Italians, Swedes, and, in short, of every possible 
 
118 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 nationality. Tliere was a thick intermixture of negroes — yellow, 
 sooty, or otherwise, embracing all shades of the African. They 
 seemed to enjoy the situation immensely. But even when the 
 blackest of them secured the least repulsive of all the women, 
 and went whirling about with his sausage lips against her cheek 
 and his eyes now and again taking in her bared bosom, it seemed 
 to me that the nigger, black and coarse and brutal as he was, had 
 much the worst of the bargain, and that he lowered himself by 
 the contact. He even appeared a quite superior being when 
 brought into contrast with the swollen abomination which he 
 held in his arms. 
 
 The dancing was not exactly of a kind ttiat one sees in the 
 parlors of quiet families, on respectable streets. There was less 
 attention paid to grace than robustiousness — if there be any such 
 word. The emphasis of the music was not much regarded, and 
 polkas, redowas, waltzes and galops in the "orchestra" were 
 transformed into a furious whirl, crash and struggle among the 
 dancers. The chap who could clear the greatest amount of 
 space after a whirl was regarded as the best dancer. One rather 
 decent-looking German carried off the honors. Whirling him- 
 self and partner furiously for a moment, he would carry her from 
 her feet, and then with a grand tour deforce, swing her, heels up, 
 till, in a great swoop, her outstretched body and legs would clear 
 the heads of a half-dozen couples of other dancers. 
 
 I am aware that there is nothing particularly charming or 
 attractive in this silhouette of a sailors' dance-house in London. 
 It would be still more remote from anything charming were I to 
 give a tithe of the indecent conversations which I heard, or 
 details of the orgie of drunkenness and bestiality which I wit- 
 nessed. 
 
 Were such a house an exceptional matter, I would not uncover 
 it and invite attention to its abominations, nor would there be 
 any excuse for so doing. But these dance-houses are a feature 
 of London. There are scores, hundreds, such as the one I have 
 just touched upon; and being thus numerous and a regular 
 quality of London life, their description becomes a matter of 
 duty to one who undertakes, as I am, to faithfully portray the 
 world's metropolis. 
 
 After having, as is the custom, " set up " refreshments for the 
 "band," and paid for as many "three-penn'orths of Irish cold" 
 as were demanded by various hags, who had thirst, but no part- 
 
THE LONDON SLUMS. 119 
 
 ners, we came away. "We repeated the visit to various similar 
 institutions, but except tliat one place is larger or smaller than 
 another, there is no diflference. There are the same varieties 
 among the men as to nationality, and a perfect sameness among 
 men and women as to their brazen indecency and their utterly- 
 abandoned character. 
 
 When curiosity was gratified on the dance-liouse matter, it was 
 the hour when by law all such places, as well as drinking-places, 
 must close. The narrow, gloomy streets which we traversed 
 were filled with the people who had been to the bars and the 
 dance-houses. The sidewalks and the middle of the streets were 
 so full that movement was almost an impossibility. Every few 
 yards there was a figlit. Sometimes it was two men; sometimes 
 it was two women ; and quite as often it was a man and a woman 
 — generally a husband and wife — who were thus settling their 
 little difierences. Fighting is a quiet business in London. One 
 sees a dense little crowd in wliose center something is occurring. 
 One cannot tell from anything he can hear ten feet away whether 
 it is a fight, or a man with a patent mouse-trap, or a sick dog. 
 
 Long after midnight, we met women with infants in their arms 
 and children clutched at their dress, moving unsteadily along. 
 Now and then, in some wretched doorway, was a woman drunk 
 and asleep, while a little three-year-old girl, her bare legs on the 
 cold stones, slept with her head pillowed in the woman's lap. 
 All the night we never lost sight of the children. They thinned 
 out somewhat, as did the crowds on the streets, but hundreds of 
 them were to be met everywhere. At 2, 3, 4 o'clock they were 
 yet around, seemingly as if they had no home but the pavement. 
 
 Little girls, with babies wrapped in their scant dresses, and 
 with one or two little heads resting on their small laps, were in 
 alleys, seated on doorsteps, leaning against the walls of houses. 
 On some of the low window sills could be seen a mass of long, 
 yellow, tangled hair, in which was dimly discernible a child's 
 face, worn, wearied, asleep. Here and there the tiniest of chil- 
 dren went toddling along, as if they never had any night for 
 sleep, or pillow, or bosom on which to be hushed to rest. 
 
 Men and women slunk away somewhere, for the streets began 
 to empty. The rush of feet, the clamor died slowly out. The 
 streets began to be hollow and reverberating. The clatter of a 
 pair of hobnailed shoes rang between the narrow walls with ex- 
 aggerated repetition. Shrill whistles came from out the gloom 
 
120 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 of alleys, and went echoing by with a startling multiplication. 
 Skinny hags leered at us from doorways, and groups of sinister 
 men watched us keenly as we passed, and resumed their con: 
 versation in fierce and eager whispers. The echoes of our own 
 footsteps seemed those of an army of men who ceaselessly sur- 
 rounded us. 
 
 The tide of more presentable humanity seemed to have ebbed 
 and left stranded among the rotting hulks of houses a host of 
 unsightly objects. All sorts of deformities were to be met with. 
 Here an object without legs went hoppiijg along like a monstrous 
 toad. Faces with hideous ulcers came suddenly into view from 
 out the darkness of naiTow courts. Hunchbacks with shriveled 
 legs went limping painfully b,y ou cratches. Children with 
 monstrous heads and shrunken bodies, with staring lack-lustre 
 eyes, popped into view and disappeared like some hideous jacks- 
 iu-the-box. Blind men, with eyeless sockets of a deep, repulsive 
 red, went by feeling their way laboriously with canes, which 
 they struck ceaselessly against the pavement. 
 
 Everywhere rags, gaunt suflering, dirt, intolerable smells. The 
 odors of crowded, unwashed, diseased humanity. Everywhere 
 repulsive malformations, hungry faces, scowling countenances, 
 listless, apathetic misery. Night seemed to bring no oblivion to 
 these wretches. They are the moral and human sewage of a 
 great city. Their existence only serves to prove that nature is 
 more lavish in the quantity than choice in the quality of her 
 productions. 
 
 In a short, winding, dirty street, with low and rotten wooden 
 buildings, we came upon the opium smokers' resort spoken of by 
 Dickens in "Edwin Drood." It is closed now, although it was 
 not long since a reality, as described by the great novelist. 
 
 Close by is a wooden kennel, into whose narrow doorway we 
 passed, and then stumbled up a rotten, dark and twisting 
 wooden staircase, and thence into a low, wretched room, dimly 
 lighted w^ith a tallow candle. At a table four Chinamen were 
 gambling; on a wretched mass of rags, in one corner, lay 
 "John," the Chinese proprietor of the opium den. He had a 
 small lamp near him in whose flame he melted and turned the 
 bit of opium required for a pipefuU, and to which he held the 
 pipe when inhaling the fumes. His countenance was of a livid, 
 diaphanous yellow; his skin was drawn tight to the bones, giving 
 him the appearance of a skeleton. His eyes were glassy, with 
 
BRITISH RED TAPE. 121 
 
 great purple crescents beneath them, while his teeth shone out 
 through his drawn back lips like those of a grinning, ghastly 
 death-head. 
 
 " John's " customers had all gone home, and so we missed see- 
 ing the opium business in full blast. "John" thinks opium- 
 smoking not at all hurtful. He says he smokes a hundred pipes 
 a day and has done it for years. I sampled a couple of pipes, 
 and the next day felt somewhat as a man does who has been on a 
 tremendous drunk. "John" does a fair business. He has a 
 strapping Irish woman for a " wife." He attends to the opium 
 department, while she handles the finances, and,' with a weighty 
 hand, keeps order among the patrons of the establishment. 
 
 There was a pallid gray spreading over the eastern sky as we 
 emerged from "John's." An hour later, much lamed by a six- 
 hours' tramp over the London pavement, I crawled into bed. 
 
 LETTER XIX. 
 
 BBITISH RED TAPE. 
 
 London, November 7, 1877. 
 
 J HE readers of The Times have undoubtedly often seen 
 notices of the trial of the detectives, which case, in one 
 stage or another, has been in progress for some months. In 
 its preliminary stages— what we would term an examination— it 
 occupied some thirty days. This portion of the proceedings was 
 simply for the purpose of seeing whether or not the accused 
 should be held for trial. In one sense it was a trial. All the 
 testimony, both for and against the accused, was given ; a heavy 
 force of attorneys appeared for the State and the prisoners ; all 
 the forms of law were complied with, except that the case was 
 heard and decided by a judge without the aid of a jury. 
 
 The present trial differs from the other in no sense, except that 
 twelve men have been added to the case. It is being gone over 
 again for their benefit, and they will only do what was done by 
 the judge who before heard it— they will pass on the guilt of the 
 prisoners. Nothing more slow or tedious or useless than this 
 
122 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 duplicate trial can be imagined. Nevertheless, it is a character- 
 istic part of every public proceeding in this country. 
 
 Delay, red tape, roundabout processes seem to be everywhere 
 the rule. In the progress of this trial, as in all others, although 
 there are employed short-hand reporters, the presiding judge 
 takes down all the testimony as given by the witnesses. He does 
 this, not because the reports of the stenographers are not com- 
 plete and reliable, but because precedent demands it. Before 
 there were oflflcial stenographers, judges wrote out the testimony 
 as a matter of necessity. That necessity has disappeared, but the 
 precedent remains. Judges now write out the testimony simply 
 because it was done bj' their predecessors. 
 
 A week or two ago I met at the Savage Club a gentleman who 
 is connected with the government manufacture of ordnance, and 
 who is the inventor of one of the most formidable guns in use 
 by Great Britain. He gave me a strong invitation to visit the 
 government works at "Woolwich and inspect the manufacture of 
 cannon. In the United States all would be very simple. I would 
 accept the invitation ; the gentleman and myself would get in a 
 hack, drive out, look through the works, and the whole thing 
 would be over within twenty-four hours from the time the invita- 
 tion would be given. 
 
 Not so here. In order to visit Woolwich, one must go through 
 all the labyrinths of the circumlocution office. I had first to 
 hunt up Mr. Pierrepont, the American Ambassador. It requires 
 days to reach that official ; in fact, I didn't reach him at all, but 
 was referred by his flunky, or " gentleman's gentleman," to the 
 first secretary of the legation. The first secretary was not to be 
 found, and so the case went to secretary number two. To this 
 gentleman I gave my letter of introduction to Mr. Pierrepont, 
 and also exhibited notes of introduction given me by the State 
 Department at Washington. 
 
 This was as far as I could go in person. The rest of the pro- 
 cess is as follows : The second secretary of the legation makes 
 an abstract of the matter and reports to the first secretary. He> 
 in due course and season reaches the matter, and will make 
 a report to Mr. Pierrepont. That official will, in time, get to my 
 case, and will probably, if he thinks it worth while and doesn't 
 forget it, write to Lord Derby, asking permission for me to visit 
 Woolwich Arsenal. When the request will reach Lord Derby, 
 heaven only knows, but, of course, the document will have to 
 
BEITISH RED TAPE. 123 
 
 take its turn with other documents. In three or six months, the 
 matter will reach Derhy, and after due consideration will be 
 indorsed back to his secretary, and by him to the proper clerks, 
 for copying, filing and transmission. Then the reply will go to 
 Pierrepont, thence via the " gentleman's gentleman " to the first 
 secretary of the legation, then on to the second secretary of the 
 legation, and then, after copies have been duly filed, I will receive 
 a reply. When that time will come the readers of The Times 
 can judge as well as I. I can only say that if I ever do get an 
 answer, and it be favorable, and I am not dead from old age, and 
 The Chicago Times is still in existence, they — the readers of The 
 Times — shall have such benefit as can be derived from a free use 
 of the permission to visit a government arsenal. 
 
 Having always taken a good deal of interest in prison reform 
 and management, I concluded to take a look at some one of the 
 penal institutions of Great Britain. The Millbank Penitentiary 
 being most convenient in the matter of distance, I selected that 
 as my objective point. At Joliet, if a stranger wishes to visit the 
 penitentiary, he presents himself at the door, sends in his card, 
 and if he be half-way presentable, or have a half-reasonable 
 excuse for his claim, he will be shown through without hesita- 
 tion. I came very near rushing down to Millbank and sending 
 in my journalistic card, but I suddenly bethought myself of 
 British punctiliousness and concluded to write. I penned a 
 letter in my prettiest style, reciting my vocation, my interest in 
 prison reforms, giving a dozen London references, and sent it to 
 the governor of the penitentiary. 
 
 After sufficient time for reference to the necessary sub-depart- 
 ments of the prison bureaus, I received an answer from some 
 under official, stating that I must apply to some board. • More 
 correspondence on my wish to spend a half hour in looking 
 through Millbank Penitentiary, in order to see if our British 
 cousins have any improvements which I could recommend for 
 home use; the result of which was the information that I must 
 apply for permission to Right Honorable Richard Asheton Cross,, 
 Secretary of Home Affairs for the Kingdom of Great Britain. 
 
 Stunned at the magnitude of the effort required to look through 
 Millbank Penitentiary, I am waiting to regain my breath and 
 composure before tackling the Right Honorable Home Secretary. 
 When I do write to him, it will be with the expectation that I 
 will get his reply in time for my next visit to Great Britain. 
 
124 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Some days ago I determined to visit tlie court at Old Bailey 
 and witness some of the proceedings in the trial of the de- 
 tectives. 
 
 To go anyvphere in London where there is any officialism to be 
 encountered, the best thing to do at the beginning is to go the 
 other way — somewhat as if a person at Court-House Square, in 
 Cliicago, wishing to go on the North Side, should commence by 
 marching down to Douglas Place. In Chicago, a man wishing 
 to witness a trial would go to the place of trial, and if there were 
 any room he would walk in and take a seat. 
 
 That style of doing business won't do here. It's too direct; 
 it's a short cut to a place ; and short cuts are not recognized. 
 Wherever one goes, he can only get there by going all the way 
 around. And thus, in obedience to this rule, wanting to go east 
 to Old Bailey, I commenced by going west to Great Scotland 
 Yard. 
 
 Here I was interrupted by clerks and other subordinates. I 
 wished to see Inspector Shore for a moment ; but to go to In- 
 spector Shore's room at once was not the thing. The card, 
 however, went up from lowest to highest until it reached its 
 destination, and in about half an hour I was face to face with 
 my man. 
 
 Inspector Shore, who is a most affable and obliging official, 
 ^ave me a card to some official at Old Bailey. Armed with this 
 <Jocument, yesterday, at 2 p. m., I presented myself at Old Bailey, 
 a court adjoining Newgate Prison, of which both are too well- 
 tnown to need particular description. 
 
 There was a dense crowd in the room from out which led the 
 staircase to tlie court-room. There was a lane through the crowd 
 to the staircase, along which I traveled till I reached the police- 
 man who guarded it. He eyed me sharply as I approached, 
 evidently intending to crush me ignominously when I got within 
 reach. In fact, he had got his mouth ready to order me back 
 when I presented the card. He read it all through a couple of 
 times as though it might be a forgery, but finally let me in. 
 
 Climbing the stairway to the floor above, I found myself in 
 front of the doors leading into the court-room. There was a half 
 door, which was closed, and against this, with their bodies inside 
 and their shoulders and heads out, leaned two policemen. I pre- 
 sented the card to one, who took it with a half reluctant, half 
 indifferent air, which seemed to say: "Well, I'll look at it, but 
 
BRITISH KED TAPE. 125 
 
 then 3'ou can't get in if I do look at it! " He glanced over it a 
 few times, his companion meanwhile giving me the full benefit 
 of a breath redolent of unsweetened gin and the flavor of an 
 ancient pipe. Number one, after giving the card a most searching 
 and exhaustive examination, turned it over to number two. He 
 read it as if he were inspecting something with a microscope, 
 and then after pondering the matter over as if he were trying to 
 decide that he ought to "run me in," he said: "Next floor 
 above." 
 
 I climbed another stairway, and at its top found another barri- 
 cade, and another policeman. Him I gave the card, and he put 
 himself mightily to the task of endeavoring apparently to ascer- 
 tain if it did not contain some occult and treasonable meaning. 
 He labored over it for a couple of minutes and then said : 
 
 "The sargeant isn't here. You'll 'ave to wait till he comes." 
 
 I leaned against the railing and began to wait for the sergeant. 
 Evidently I was having altogether too comfortable a time waiting^ 
 for the sergeant, for he remarked : 
 
 " You go down stairs and wait." 
 
 I went. 
 
 Reaching the original barrier, I informed the policeman in 
 charge that I had been ordered down to wait for the sergeant. I 
 further asked him if he would be so good as to inform me what 
 particular part of London I could go to and wait for the sergeant 
 without incurring the liability of being ordered to go somewhere 
 else. He was a kind soul, and with a sudden and wholly unex- 
 pected burst of generosity, he permitted me to stand inside, on 
 the first landing, and there wait for the sergeant. 
 
 I waited twenty minutes for the sergeant, who, as I afterward 
 learned, was absent engaged in the sacred English sacrament 
 known as luncheon. Finally the policeman just below me, who- 
 had learned to suddenly take an interest in my loneliness and my 
 fortunes, said to me as he pointed to the top of the second stair- 
 way: "There's the sargeant." I ascended once more to the 
 highest floor and handed the card to a party with the regulation 
 blue pickelJmuhe helmet and a sergeant's stripes. He read it and 
 ordered the policeman to admit me. I went by him and found 
 myself a moment later in front of the door of the gallery, and 
 another policeman. He opened the door of the gallery, and^ 
 indicating a seat at the further end, said: 
 
 " Go and sit there ! " 
 
126 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " 1 don't wish to stay long. Can't I sit near the door, so when 
 I leave I can do so without disturbing everybody?" 
 
 " You go over there ! That's my borders." 
 
 I obeyed borders and went over there, glad to finally get in on 
 any conditions. I was about the first one admitted, and fortu- 
 nately " over there " was a front bench, which gave me an excel- 
 lent view of the entire court-room. 
 
 I have related in extemo my efforts to get in Old Bailey, not 
 because there is in them anything thrilling, or even sufficiently 
 interesting to warrant the employment of so much space, but 
 simply to illustrate the circumlocutory method of doing every- 
 thing which prevails in this country. 
 
 The same system prevails in business matters and in private 
 life. One wishing to see a man at his place of business may go 
 to it a dozen times without finding him in. The only way by 
 which a business man can, with any certainty be met, is through 
 the circumlocution of a correspondence. If one go without 
 appointment by post, the person, as said, will be absent or else 
 the visitor will have to submit to the humiliation of waiting, 
 possibly for hours, until the other is at leisure. 
 
 LETTER XX. 
 
 GETTING INTO POSITION. 
 
 London, Oct. 10, 1877. 
 
 fN my last I narrated the herculean labors which I performci. 
 to gain access to the court-room in which is taking place the 
 trial of the detectives. I secured a front seat in the gallery, 
 overlooking the main floor. There was room for three more 
 men of moderate dimensions in the same seat. This space was 
 at once taken up by four Englishmen, all above the average as 
 to size. The lateral pressure was tremendous, and I was only 
 prevented from being shot out of the seat like an apple-seed 
 between the thumb and finger, by a couple of other Britons who 
 came up from behind and reclined on my shoulders as they 
 leaned forward to get a view of the proceedings. Thus wedged 
 
GETTING INTO POSITION. 127 
 
 in, and weighted down, I commenced an examination of the 
 court below. 
 
 It was the hour which is devoted, by Britons to the sacramental 
 purposes of luncheon. While it was in progress everybody had 
 been turned out of the room — not because there was any neces- 
 sity for turning them out, but simply because that is the way it 
 is always done. When from an adjoining room the solemn fact 
 was conveyed that his honor had commenced to handle a tooth- 
 pick, then we, the mob, were admitted. In two minutes every 
 available seat in the gallery and body of the hall was packed, 
 excepting those belonging to officials. 
 
 And now there came a solemn, awe-inspiring hush. A police- 
 man obsequiously drew aside a red curtain, at one corner of the 
 room, and stood holding it, his eyes abashed, his attitude hum- 
 ble. Then everybody rose to his feet, and occupied a position 
 of respectful attention. 
 
 It was the court returning in procession from some side chapel, 
 where he had been engaged in the solemn services of luncheon. 
 
 At the head marched a gentleman clad in a crimson gown with 
 dark facings. He was a beardless man, with a good-looking, but 
 rather hatchety face, whose head was surmounted by a white wig, 
 in whose top was an opening about the size of a dollar, and used 
 evidently for ventilating the judicial cranium. Behind him 
 came a sour-looking man, with a bald head, and a purple gown 
 reaching to his heels and trimmed with fur. Next was a gray- 
 haired individual in a dark gown, richly furred, and about whose 
 neck there was wound many times a massive gold chain, whose 
 loops suspended some heavy golden ornament which lay on his 
 breast. 
 
 Behind this gorgeous procession came straggling a number of 
 individuals in black gowns, white wigs, and white neckties — 
 each gown, each wig, and each necktie being an exact fac simile 
 of eveiy other gown, wig and necktie. 
 
 The three took their places on raised seats, beneath a crimson 
 canopy. The rank and file, in black gowns, white wigs, and 
 white neckties, took their seats in a solid body, near the center 
 of the room. When the gorgeous three and the others had 
 seated themselves, then we, the mob, reverently took our seats, 
 and court was open. 
 
 The leader in the crimson gown, and with the thin, handsome 
 face, proved to be Mr. Baron Pollack, the presiding judge. Who 
 
128 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 the other gorgeous, fur-trimmed digaitaries are, I did not ascer- 
 tain. The Englishmen who were reclining on my shoulders 
 knew who was who among the prisoners, but had no knowledge 
 as to the occupants of the bench. 
 
 The tout-ensemble was contracted but imposing. To my left 
 were some raised seats, fenced in, in which sat the intelligent 
 jury. An inclined board running before them gave them an 
 elbow-rest, or a desk for writing. Directly opposite me was an 
 elevated platform with crimson hangings, on which sat the judge 
 and guests of honor. The only ornamentation is a very ornate 
 scabbard, whose sheathed sword reveals a cross-hilt of elaborate 
 workmanship. It is fastened against the wall, point up, just 
 behind his lordship; and probably is intended as a warning to 
 evil-doers. The body or center of the room is filled with wooden 
 pews, in whicli sit the lawyers. Directly beneath me was the 
 dock, a large, square pen, elevated above the main floor, and in- 
 closed by a wooden fence of such a height that a prisoner of 
 ordinary stature, when seated, has his nose on a level with the 
 top of the railing or fence. It communicates with the prison by 
 a well in its center, which incloses a winding staircase. From 
 where I was seated I had a magnificent view of the tops, 
 of the heads of the five prisoners, and of the two wardens 
 or policemen who guarded them. There was a bewigged and 
 begowned clerk of the court in an elevated pen in front of the 
 judge's desk; and when I add that back of the lawyers is one 
 pen labeled " reporters," and that back of that are a few seats 
 rising gradually back to the wall, for the use of privileged spec- 
 tators, I have given all the salient features of a British court of 
 justice. The entire room is about one-quarter the size of the 
 criminal court-room in the county building in Chicago. 
 
 The spirit of the two countries is exhibited in tlie construction of 
 court-rooms. We build so that the people have the largest space. 
 Here officialism takes nearly everything. The people, or masses, 
 do not count, and consequently are left out of the calculation. 
 
 The stupendous mountains of sheepskin literature which one 
 sees in an American court-room, even when the pending case may 
 be a charge of despoiling a hen's nest, is here nowhere to be 
 seen. There was not even a single law-book in sight. Either the 
 counsel have the law all committed to memory, or else there is 
 no use for any such article. Evidently the latter phase prevails to 
 some extent. There was no thundering "I object!" at short 
 
GETTING INTO POSITION. 129 
 
 intervals, followed by long arguments and the citation of innu- 
 merable authorities. It was often the case that one attorney 
 would object to a question being put to a witness by another, but 
 , in such instances there was never an argument, and the judge 
 either allowed it or ruled it out at once. Nor were there any 
 exceptions ever taken to any of the decisions of the judge — 
 which fact of course arises from there being no court of appeal 
 in criminal cases. Owing to the lack of objections and of the 
 everlasting arguments so common in our courts in similar cases, 
 the English court, despite the fact that proceedings move at a 
 pace which enables the judge to take down all the testimony, 
 the average progress is nevertheless greater than in one of our 
 courts. The progress of the trial is snail-like, but it is continu- 
 ous, with the result that a good deal of ground is gone over each 
 day. 
 
 There seems to be in a London court of law something 
 quite inseparable between justice and eye-glasses. Nobody 
 seems to wear them habitually, but on all special occasions. When 
 his honor commenced to write he straddled his judicial nose with 
 a pair of glasses. Whenever a witness was called on to identify 
 a letter, he always commenced operations by solemnly lifting a 
 pair of glasses to aid his vision. When the clerk went to read 
 any document, his first move was to saddle his nose with eye- 
 glasses. When a juryman wished to make a note, he began by 
 harnessing his face with the inevitable glasses. Whenever a 
 lawyer, or reporter, or spectator, had anything to look at, he al- 
 ways initiated the performance by getting himself behind a 
 binocular machine to aid his vision. It was not because the 
 light was bad, for it was not. It seemed to me that it was done 
 because it was the thing to do, and for no other reason whatever. 
 
 Another peculiarity that struck me is the unobstructed em- 
 ployment of leading questions. 
 
 Thus, if the prosecution wished to elicit certain facts, it would 
 ask: 
 
 " Were you at such a place on such a day?" 
 
 "Did you meet there, at that time, So-andso?" 
 
 " Did he say to you that he saw the defendant, and that the de- 
 fendant admitted having picked Johnson's pocket?" 
 
 Now, in our practice, I believe the same tiling would be about 
 as follows : 
 
 " Where were you at such a date ?" 
 9 
 
130 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " Whom, if anybody, did you meet there ? " 
 " Give the conversation, if any, that occurred." 
 This, I fancy, would be the American style, interspersed with 
 three wordy contests between the counsel, a couple of legal ar- 
 guments, a like number of rulings by the judge, and " excep- 
 ceptions noted " all around to his honor's decisions. 
 
 This process of supplying a witness with places, dates, and 
 conversations, makes the work of prosecution one of great ease, 
 because the prosecutor, with a pliable witness, can make up his 
 case as he goes along, only requiring the assent of witnesses to 
 whatever he may advance. It is a sort of conviction-made-certain 
 method of doing it ; and maj^ to some extent, account for the 
 fact that, as a general thing in this country, a trial and a convic- 
 tion are synonymous terms. I recollect but one case of a verdict 
 of not guilty since I have been here, and that was in a trial in 
 which, after the prosecuting witness swore positively to being 
 robbed by a courtesan, it quite accidentally came out in cross- 
 examination that for several hours before, at the time of, and after 
 the alleged robbery, he was so drunk as to have had no recollec- 
 tion as to where he had been or anything that occurred. But 
 any such deus ex machina does not often " show up " in time to aid 
 a defendant. 
 
 The conduct of the lawyers was in surprising contrast to what 
 one often witnesses in our American courts. There did not seem 
 to be an impression among the opposing counsel that they were 
 deadly enemies because they happened to be engaged on oppo- 
 site sides of the same case. Their treatment of each other was 
 characterized by all the courtesy of gentlemen, such as one would 
 find at a dinner-table, or in the social intercourse of a drawing- 
 room. The absence of unseemly squabbles, of the ill-tempered 
 wrangles of counsel, made me homesick, and was an emphatic 
 reminder that I was far from home, and among a strange, a sin- 
 gular people. 
 
 My nostalgia was increased by the entire absence of anything 
 like the bullying of witnesses. The man in the box was not 
 made to believe that he was regarded as a deliberate perjurer. 
 The savagery, the indecency of a Van Arman are unknown. 
 There seems to prevail here the singular — singular from an 
 American legal standpoint — conviction that a man can be a wit- 
 ness on the other side without necessarily being a liar and a 
 horse-thief, and treated accordingly. 
 
GETTING INTO POSITION. 131 
 
 I may add liere another noticeable peculiarrty. This case has 
 now been some months before the public. It is probably the 
 mpst remarkable trial since that of Tichborne, There is not a 
 hamlet in the kingdom where it is not known, and where it has 
 not been discussed. Despite all this notoriety and celebrity, not 
 a single English newspaper has ventured to discuss the guilt or 
 innocence of the defendants. There has been no hot conderana- 
 tion, no inflamed defense. The trial has been in the interests of 
 justice, and not for the sole purpose of influencing the autumn 
 elections. 
 
 These are a few things which I noticed during the couple of 
 hours I was present at the great trial of the detectives and Mr. 
 Froggatt. I would have staid longer, and noticed some more 
 things, had it not been for a remark on the part of Baron Pollack, 
 which I construed as having a slight personal application to 
 myself. 
 
 A witness named Flintofl' was giving his testimony, and did so 
 in a manner that, at times, was most ridiculous. At something 
 more than usually idiotic on his part, there was a roar of laugh- 
 ter from the lawyers and others seated on the main floor. His 
 honor at once remarked : " If there is a repetition of this un- 
 seemly disturbance, I will order an under-sheriff to clear the gal- 
 leries!''^ There had not been a smile from the galleries ; never- 
 theless, having heard that in the education of youthful blood 
 royal in this country, it is, or has been, the custom to thrash a 
 plebeian when the prince deserves punishment, I concluded that 
 the same vicarious system might prevail in a British court of 
 justice, and that when the aristocratic bar deserved punishment, 
 the visitation would be inflicted on the plebeian galleries. Not 
 wishing to incur any share in a penalty for an ofiense of which 
 some one else was guilty, I folded my teat like an Arab, and 
 quietly stole away. 
 
132 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 LETTER XXI. 
 cubiosities in london journmiism. 
 
 London, Nov. 17, 1877. 
 
 J[ N many points the London journals present tliemselves as 
 f studies of interest to an American. Much of their news, 
 "> their editorials comments, a good deal of their advertising, 
 are unique to one who is accustomed to the American methods. 
 
 Suppose, for instance, that, immediately after our great fire, 
 and when contributions were pouring in from all parts of the 
 world, the Chicago newspapers had declined to report the recep- 
 tion of gifts except as advertisements — in such a case one would 
 have seen what is seen here every day. No greater calamity 
 than the Indian famine has occurred during the present century. 
 Great Britain was flooded with appeals for relief; and the re- 
 sponse has been magnificent — one that reflects infinite credit 
 upon the benevolence of the English people. Relief funds were 
 begun everywhere. The principal one in London was one Or- 
 ganized by the mayor, and known as the Mansion House fund. 
 In a very short time it reached the unparalleled dimensions of 
 over £500,000, or $2,000,000. 
 
 In America, say in Chicago, the newspapers would have fought 
 for the privilege of publishing all the details connected with so 
 munificent a donation. In the case of the English newspapers, 
 they have given results onlj^ as an advertisement. Day by day, at 
 a round sum per line, the managers of the fund have been able 
 to inform the people as to the accretion of their benevolence. In 
 fine, buried among wants, to rent, to lease, among quinine pills, 
 auction sales, demands for nurses, housemaids, cooks, and coach- 
 men, is the only published record to be had of the grandest act 
 in modern English history. 
 
 The same journals which thus banish to their advertising col- 
 umns the culmination of a sublime charity will give column 
 after column to the tramp, and the number of birds bagged by my 
 Lord Tomnoddy in the course of a week's shooting on some 
 Scottish moors. A column or so daily is not begrudged to spec- 
 ulations as to what horse will be first, and what one second, and 
 so on, in a coming horse-race ; but not a line will be devoted to 
 showing in this handicap of good deeds what is leading, or what 
 are the results of the contest. 
 
CUEIOSITIES m LONDON JOURNALISM. 133 
 
 A most contemptible and unworthy setting for a jewel of such 
 a magnitude and such brilliancy. 
 
 No London journal condescends to announce a coming event 
 except it be a horse-race, or the marriage of Lady Rougefleur to 
 the Rt. Hon. De Noirlis of that ilk. To a stranger looking out 
 for forthcoming matters of importance, this feature of London 
 journalism is most embarrassing and provoking. He learns of 
 a general review of the troops, of an execution, a public demon- 
 stration, or anything else of that kind, after its occurrence, and 
 never before — always excepting, of course, an aristocratic mar- 
 riage and a horse-race. Outside these two particulars, the future 
 is as much ignored in London journalism as if it had no exist- 
 ence. 
 
 To some extent this is a matter of business. It is done, in 
 fact, to oblige everybody to advertise. This was seen in the pro- 
 gramme of the celebration of the Lord Mayor's day. There was 
 not a word in advance outside the advertising columns of the 
 press. Here only could one find that there was to be a celebra- 
 tion, and its character. It was a something in which everybody 
 had an interest, and of which all wished to know the details. In 
 America this universal interest would have brought the occur- 
 rence under the head of news, and it would have been treated 
 accordingly. 
 
 When everything relating to the future is made a matter of 
 advertising by a newspaper, it is a fair conclusion that such a 
 one has more business than journalistic enterprise — that it is 
 more the production of the business manager than of the editor. 
 
 In truth there is no enterprise, in the American sense of the 
 term, in the London press. Many of them rely upon one re- 
 porter for occurrences in and out the city; and, hence, it is not 
 unfrequently the case that one sees precisely the same matter in 
 a half dozen newspapers. It is as if all the Chicago papers 
 should unite upon one man to do their Joliet work, and he should 
 do it by sending duplicate accounts each day to all of his em- 
 ployers. 
 
 This process cheapens the cost of issuing a paper in London. 
 It is not journalism, but it is profitable. When nearly every- 
 thing in the shape of news is published only as paid adver- 
 tisements, it must be evident that the operation pays. It 
 does. The net income of The Telegraph is about half a million 
 dollars per annum. Such is the substantial result accruing from 
 
134 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 an ingenious system whereby the public is charged a round sum. 
 to get news published, and then is charged another round sum 
 for the privilege of reading it along with some classical com- 
 ments of the editor on the barbarity of the Russians. 
 
 I fancy that, when the English journal is perfected, it will 
 charge fifty cents a line for the admission of telegraphic news; 
 a dollar a line for the admission of editorials, and so much per 
 square for news clippings. When all this shall be done, the av- 
 erage English newspaper will be quite as entertaining and a trifle 
 more profitable than it is at present. 
 
 An American in London on the watch for news from home, 
 gets, now and then, in the local press, some novel and startling 
 information. Not long since, The Times referred, in its com- 
 ments on some American news, to the " Governor of Pittsburgh." 
 A day or two ago the same sheet gave us hungry Americans in- 
 formation as to the doings of a " congressional senatorial caucus 
 held in Maine." The Times commits more blunders than the 
 other papers in its treatment of American affairs, simply because 
 it affords more information in that direction. If the other papers- 
 blunder less, it is because they say less. 
 
 I do not know that there is more ignorance shown of Ameri- 
 can events and geography than of the same with reference to 
 other countries. This ignorance was most marvelously displayed 
 during Gladstone's trip to Ireland. The papers have lately been 
 full of letters from indignant Hibernians, who protest against 
 locating counties in towns, against the misnaming and mis-spell- 
 ing of prominent localities, and the putting of this or that town 
 in the northeast of Ireland, when it should be in the southwest. 
 
 A knowledge of geography does not seem to be the forte, nor 
 even an accomplishment, of the English journalist. He knows- 
 every territorial inch of the earth as it was surveyed and named 
 during the reign of the Caesars; but he cannot for the life of him 
 tell whether Chicago is in Illinois, or Illinois in Chicago, or 
 whether both are on Lake Pontchartrain or Lake Erie. I may 
 add that not only does he not know, but he does not care to know. 
 An accurate knowledge of such things would permit the infer- 
 ence that he had some interest in them — and that would never 
 do, you know. There is a fine kind of an intimation of super- 
 iority in their ignorance of American politics and geograpliy. 
 It is an intimation, you know, that the thing is not worth looking 
 into, you know. 
 
CURIOSITIES IN LONDON JOURNALISM. 135 
 
 There is a thing which occurs so regularly in the London press 
 that it must be designed ; and which, to a democratic looker-on 
 like myself, is very ludicrous. It is something which always 
 makes its appearance in book reviews, or in that class of 
 reviews in which social life and other society matters form a part. 
 
 Of course, no British novelist ever brings out a work of fiction 
 without having in it a plentiful sprinkling of earls, countesses, 
 and similar elevated characters. These august people are trotted 
 out, and made to show their paces over all sorts of roads, and 
 under all kinds of circumstances. How my lady eats, dresses, 
 sleeps; how she talks to her maid, her coachman, her sisters, 
 brothers, husband, lover, father; how she acts and converses at 
 receptions, picnics, balls, the opera„ and the like, are all worked 
 out in elaborate detail by the novelist. He has my lord in the 
 smoking-room, at the table, grouse-shooting, at the club, every, 
 where, and he exhibits that elevated personage in every possible 
 aspect from full dress to his night-shirt. 
 
 I won't say that these things are done in order that the public 
 will say of the author: " "Why, what a tremendous swell he must 
 be! He never could give all these details unless he were the in- 
 timate friend and associate of all these great people." I won't 
 even insinuate any such thing, because it might not be true, and 
 might therefore do an injustice to these worthy writers of fiction. 
 
 But now comes in the ludicrous element to which I have re- 
 ferred, and whose development is found in the book notices. All 
 the critics at once seize upon these social and other details in re- 
 gard to the characters of the Earl of Choufleur and the Countess 
 of Addlepate. They find fault in every direction. These descrip- 
 tions are not according to real life. They are unnatural. It is 
 not thus that these august personages talk and act under the given 
 circumstances. 
 
 Here there is a most obvious attempt on the part of the critics 
 to identify themselves with the aristocratic element. Every line 
 of their comment is a direct assertion to this effect : " These au- 
 thors do not know what they are talking about ! We, who do asso- 
 ciate intimately with these swells, will point out their mistakes 
 and blunders ! " 
 
 Again, the public in reading these criticisms must be forced to 
 conclude : " These critics cannot be less than earls themselves, 
 or their trusted and intimate friends, or else they could not speak 
 so authoritatively about their doings and sayings ! " 
 
136 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 There is not a periodical in London, liowever cheap or obscure, 
 whose critic does not thus freely condemn the social creations of 
 the bookmakers, when the locale is in any of the stone mansions 
 overlooking Hyde Park. It is a harmless sort of an affectation, 
 and, while it deceives nobody, it possibly adds somewhat to the 
 good feeling of the chap who does it — albeit he often is writing 
 at a salary of £2 a week ; and if he ever gets into a dress coat it 
 is one rented for the occasion from some one of the many old 
 clo' artists who are about everywhere in this great metropolis. 
 
 In fact, there seems to be a race among a large proportion of 
 the London journals as to which shall gain a prize for going 
 fastest and farthest in detraction of the lower, and worship of 
 the higher classes. The last number of The Tatler wishes to know 
 what can be "expected of a jury composed of small shop-keep- 
 ers? " It refers to the crowds that lined the route of the Lord 
 Mayor's procession as " gaping British mechanics." Of course 
 the object of the chap who engineers The Tatler is to impress on 
 his limited circle of readers the belief that he is a very elevated 
 being — possibly a juke in disguise — and one who is very far 
 above " small shop-keepers " and " gaping British mechanics." 
 
 LETTER XXII. 
 
 PHILOLOGICAL ECCENTRICITIES. 
 
 London, December 4, 1877. 
 
 f^HE individual who, daily, goes over my face with a razor, 
 \ performing an operation which is here mistermed " shav- 
 ing," is a native of London, and a resident of some flfty 
 years' standing. Lathering faces, scraping them and handling a 
 small stock of tobacco and so-called "cigars," which he keeps in 
 the front of his tonsorial parlors, have so occupied his time that 
 he has never found leisure for travel. His whole life has been 
 spent within a rough circle whose centre is Paddington Green, 
 and whose periphery does not extend beyond Petticoat Lane on 
 the east, the Elephant-and-Castle on the south, 'Ammersmith on 
 the west, and Primrose Hill in the direction of the arctic circle. 
 
PHILOLOGICAL ECCENTRICITIES. 137 
 
 Of course, having been thus circumscribed in his travels, his 
 knowledge of outlying countries and nations is limited. 
 
 In proportion as he has been debarred from actual contact with 
 men and things does he possess a thirst for information concern- 
 ing the unknown world lying just beyond the circle of which 
 his mangling establishment is the centre. When, after a time, 
 he learned that I am a native of that far-away country known 
 here somewhat vaguely as "America," his desire for information 
 developed into an intense yearning. Day by day as, by turns, he 
 denuded my face of hair and skin, he sought for knowledge con- 
 cerning those barbarian races of whom I am a member, and of 
 whom, during his life, there had come to him strange and often 
 startling rumors. Glad to be in a position to spread abroad facts 
 concerning our glorious people, I answered all his questions, 
 and occasionally gave him scraps of information which, if not 
 wholly reliable, are at least novel and startling in the extreme. 
 Yesterday he said to me : 
 
 " Tell me, mister, was you born in America ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! At least, I am almost certain I was. Tou see, it is 
 so long since I was born, and I was so very young at the time, I 
 can't exactly be certain about some points. But, I think, I was 
 born in America." 
 
 He was a little puzzled. There was something in the answer 
 which he didn't quite understand. 
 
 He pondered over it a moment, gave it up, and proceeded : 
 
 "But, of course, you 'aven't lived there all your life?" 
 
 " No. What makes you ask that ? " 
 
 "Why, you must 'ave lived in England a good bit of your life, 
 because you speak English just as good as anybody." 
 
 " Oh, I see. Well, I'll tell you. I was in England a week, 
 three years ago. That was all. But I learn a language very 
 easily. When I came here then I spoke only American. Before 
 the end of that week I could say a good many English words, 
 and could understand a great many things that were said to me 
 When I returned home I got a teacher, and studied until I could 
 speak English as well as I can now." 
 
 He conceded it to be the most remarkable thing he ever heard. 
 
 This barber, Webb by name, tobacconist and tonsorial artist 
 by occupation, and domiciled on Harrow road, Paddington Green, 
 belongs to the upper stratum of the lower classes. I find in this 
 shop The Telegraph, the London Chraphic, Punch, and various 
 
138 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Other periodicals. He is fairly posted on local matters, including 
 the parties, the war, church laws, and current events. And yet 
 he believes Americans from the United States speak a language 
 which is as unlike English as French, Spanish, or Russian. He 
 is a fair representative of the upper end of the lower classes, or 
 the lower end of the middle classes. 
 
 In a compartment of the underground were three of us— a 
 friend and myself, and an elderly gentleman. 
 
 The latter said: 
 
 " Pardon me. Are you not an American ? " 
 
 " I have the honor to be." 
 
 " Strange, isn't it ? I heard you say four words and I knew you 
 were an American. 
 
 ' " That's nothing. I knew you were not an Englishman before 
 you spoke. I know it now to a certainty." 
 
 " How do you know it ? " 
 
 " I knew it by looking at you, because you wear a mustache 
 and no other beard, a something which an Englishman never 
 does. I knew it when you spoke. You said ' Pardon me,' which 
 is French. An Englishman would say, ' I beg pardon,' so as to 
 get himself at the head of the procession. And finally I knew 
 you were not English, because an Englishman would never ask 
 such a question, or any other one, if he could help it." 
 
 " I was born in England, but you are right substantially. I 
 have lived and been in business nearly all my life in France. 
 But can you tell me why there is such a divergence in the English 
 of England and the English of America?" 
 
 " I can't, I'm sure. I can assure you, however, that the fault is 
 not with us. We speak English; the masses of the people of 
 this country do not. I have no less an authority than' Earl Man- 
 ville for the statement that educated Americans speak the English 
 language far better than educated Englishmen. I have no doubt 
 whatever that, were a wall built between England and America 
 so that there could be no intercourse, in two or three hundred 
 years, a native of one country could not iinderstand a word spoken 
 by a native of the other; and this would be because this country 
 is rapidly losing its knowledge of English. Even now, there are 
 hundreds of words in common use which I do not understand. 
 There is no part of the world where English is so poorly spoken 
 as in England. Already the cries of peddlers, of cabmen, 'bus 
 drivers, and scores of others who are omnipresent, and who are 
 
PHILOLOGICAL ECCENTRICITIES. 13& 
 
 spreading their language all through the masses, are or were as 
 unintelligible to me as if they were in Sanscrit." 
 
 A nation without a dictionary is like an army without a leader. 
 England has no dictionary, or what amounts to the same thing, 
 it has a dozen, which is as bad as an army commanded by a 
 dozen different men, no two of whom agree as to the conduct of 
 the campaign. You meet an intelligent man and ask him: 
 
 " What is your standard dictionary ? " 
 
 " Walker's, of course." 
 
 " And yours ? " to another. 
 
 "Johnson's, by all means." 
 
 "And yours?" to a third. 
 
 "The Imperial." 
 
 " And yours ? " 
 
 " Haven't any. We don't need any. All the standard of pro- 
 nunciation we need is the example of our educated speakers." 
 
 " Yes, but Gladstone says insoo when other intelligent men say 
 isshu. Some say Keltic, when others say Seltic, and still others 
 say TcJieltie. Now, what will you do in a case of this kind ? " 
 
 The answer will very likely be something of the "damfino" 
 order, and there the discussion will rest. A very natural 
 result is that there are about as many standards of pronunciation 
 as there are people who have anything to say. There is no agree- 
 ment even in the pronunciation of the dead languages, and a 
 wide difference of opinion as to accent. 
 
 In order to illustrate and demonstrate the gradual divergence 
 of English usage from the strait and narrow path trodden by 
 Americans, I will append a few cases which I have in my mem- 
 ory of the use of English words by Englishmen. Some of the 
 words given are in use by all classes, and others by the masses. 
 The first column presents certain words as spelled and generally 
 as they should be pronounced, while the other column gives the 
 method in which they are pronounced : 
 
 Colquhoun — Calhoun. Cockburn — Coburn. Beauchamp — 
 Beechem. Derby— Darby. Berkley— Barkley. Clerk — Clark. 
 Hertford — Hefford. Cholniondeley — Chumley. Bouverie — 
 Booberie. Greenwich — Grinnidge. Woolwich — Woolidge. Har- 
 wich— Harridge. Ludgate — Luggat. Telegraph — Telegra,wph. 
 Nasty — Nawsty. Cab, sir? — Kib, sir? Black your shoes? — 
 Shoebleck? Bank— Bink. High Holborn— Eye Oburn. White- 
 chapel— Witchipel. Trait— Tray. Out— Hout. Ounce— Hounce. 
 
Il 
 
 14:0 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Ass — Hass. Horse — Awse. Royal Oak — Relluke. Extra — 
 Hextra. Mile End — Meelen. Standard — Staindard. Cliance' 
 Chawnce. Bone Hill— Bunnel. Bath — Bawth. Hammersmith 
 — Ammersmith. Issue — Issoo. Gloucester — Gloster. Leicester — 
 Lester. Celtic — Keltic. Ecce-Homo — Ekke-Homo. Classes — 
 Glosses. Pall Mall— Pell Mell. ' 
 
 I might continue this list through a half a dozen ordinary- 
 letters, but enough has been given to show how widely in pro- 
 nunciation our English friends have wandered from the recog- 
 nized path. 
 
 Nor is this difference between the spelling of words and their 
 sound all there is to prove that the English are losing the English 
 language, and substituting a jargon that is totally unlike that 
 speech bequeathed to us by our Saxon and iSTorman ancestors. 
 
 What, for instance, is to be done by a man understanding and 
 recognizing the English of Macaulay, Longfellow, Byron, Lamb, 
 Whittier, Grant White, and the expurgated vernacular of the 
 venerable Bryant, who finds that a street-sprinkler in England's 
 English is a " hydrostatic van ; " that rails on a railroad are 
 "metals;" a railway track is a "line;" a store a "shop;" a 
 hardware man an " iron-monger?" He finds no policemen here, 
 but " constables." If he go into a store and ask for boots, he 
 will be shojvn a pair of shoes that lace or button about the ankle. 
 " I don't undersand you," is rendered by " I beg pardon, or pard- 
 ing," according to circumstances. 
 
 There are no groceries, or dry-goods stores. Baggage is " lug- 
 gage;" a traveling-bag is a "grip-sack;" there are no trunks, 
 but always " boxes." A freight-car is a " goods van ; " a conductor 
 on a 'bus or railway is a " guard ; " a street railway is a "tram- 
 way;" a baggage-car a "luggage-van;" a pitcher is a "jug;" 
 and two and a half pence is tuppence 'apenny. A sovereign is a 
 " squid ; " a shilling a " bob ; " a sixpence is a " tanner." 
 
 A traveler does not get his ticket from a ticket-office, but a 
 "booking-office." He does not seat himself in a car, but in a 
 "compartment." His train is never switched, it is "shunted." 
 
 The bewildered American steps out on the street and he hears 
 a prolonged, dismal howl, which, as he can make it out, sounds 
 like " Ne-he-mi-oh ! " and which he in time learns is the remark 
 of a newsboy to the effect: "■Fall Mall Gazette! " Another howl : 
 "Boo-goo-waa-hoo!" he learns to be, "Cabbages, a penny a 
 head." At a station, the dolorous call " Awl, Awl ! " of the guard, 
 
PHILOLOGICAL ECCENTRICITIES. 141 
 
 he discovers, after he has missed his destination a few times, and 
 has picked up a knowledge of the language, to be the English 
 for " Vauxhall." A decrepid old woman proffers him a box of 
 matches, with a curtsy, and with lightning rapidity rattles off 
 what sounds like, " Gurnmity, gurnmity, gurnmity, gum," and 
 which, as he gets along in English, he finds to mean, " I'm-a- 
 widdy-with ten-children-God- bless-you-sir-and-won't-you-buy-a- 
 box-of-matches-God-bless-you-sir-an-thank-you-sir-much-obleeged- 
 sir!" 
 
 Mary, the good-looking domestic, walks into my room, and, as 
 she anchors herself with one hand to the door-knob, says : 
 
 "The pipers beant come, sir." 
 
 " Oh, haven't they ? What's the matter, I wonder ? " 
 
 " I deoan't kneaouw, I'm sure. I'm going hout, and I'll see."' 
 
 " Thanks." 
 
 " An' wattle you 'ave for breakfass ? " 
 
 " I don't know. What can you get me that's good ? " 
 
 *' Ow'd you like a chump ? " 
 
 " Oh, very well, I reckon. Can't you get me a porter-house 
 steak ? " 
 
 "A wot, sir?" 
 
 " A porter-house steak." 
 
 "An' wot's that; hif you please?" 
 
 I explain. 
 
 " Never heerd hof hit, I'm sure." 
 
 " Well, then, can you get me a tenderloin steak ? " 
 
 "A wot?" 
 
 I explain. 
 
 "There isn't no such. But maybe as ow you'd like a fillet?" 
 
 "A fillet? What's that?" 
 
 Mary explains. 
 
 " An' would you like some poteyties ? " 
 
 " Yes, some potatoes, please." 
 
 " Anythink else ? " 
 
 "Nothing now but the papers." 
 
 " Oh yees. Eaouw baed ! (How bad !) I forgot the pipers.'» 
 
 And Mary trips oflF after the pipers, some 'am, poteyties, and a 
 couple of heggs. Mary is a good girl. "She lays the fire"— 
 i. e., gets it ready for lighting when I am away. She never 
 brings any coal, but to compensate for this, she always "fetches 
 some coals." She replenishes the "water-jug"— i. e., the wash-^ 
 
142 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 pitcher. She will never go to au apothecary shop or druggist's 
 for me, because she doesn't know what an apothecary shop or 
 druggist's is, but she will go around to the "kimmis' " on demand. 
 If I ask her to go to the saloon and get a pitcher of ale, she will 
 require an explanatory addendum to the effect that I wish her to 
 ^o to the public 'ouse and fetch me a jug of bitter. She won't 
 go to a dry-goods store, but she will to a haberdasher's. 
 
 I have a friend, and as there is no drinking-water, we must 
 quench our thirst with some other fluid. We enter a public 
 'ouse, and my friend asks for a thripenny go of cold Irish — 
 meaning that he wishes some plain Irish whisky. I ask for stout 
 and bitter, meaning thereby that I wish a glass of a mixture 
 composed one-half of beer and the other half of porter. In 
 doubt as to our location, I inquire the direction of the Tems — 
 meaning the Thames. We go along Hoxford (Oxford) street, 
 pass Ide Park (Hyde Park), keep on through 'Oburn (Holburn), 
 passing Tottenim (Tottenham) Court Road, Chawncery Lane, and 
 after a devious trip we reach Lunnon Bridge. We can now go by 
 way of the Helephant and Castle to Clapon (Clapham) Common, 
 returning by way of Chelsee (Chelsea) and Sin Jem's Park (St. 
 James' Park) to the Habbey (Westminster Abbey), and so on 'ome. 
 
 I might run this article through a dozen pages, and then would 
 have no more than made a beginning. Enough has been given 
 to show that the English people are fast losing their English and 
 are constructing a new language which, in a century, will be as 
 unlike the original and pure English of America as is Choctaw. 
 As I bring this article to a close, a man with magnificent lungs 
 is passing my window; I hear him call, " Bonna! Bonna! Pack- 
 a-pee ! Pack-a-pee ! " I rush to the window. It is a vender of 
 bonnet-boxes, who is offering them at eight pence apiece. 
 
 LETTER XXIII. 
 
 BKITISH THOROUGHBREDS. 
 
 London, Dec. 11, 1877. 
 
 OMEBODY very kindly sent me a couple of tickets for the 
 five-shilling day. Other and more common people come 
 in the next day, and it only .costs them a shilling. Just 
 
BKITISFI THOKOUGHBREDS. 143 
 
 why it should cost five shillings on Monday, and a shilling on 
 Tuesday, may seem strange at first view, but it is all right when 
 one understands it. The first day there is a double exhibition, 
 which includes thoroughbreds of both two-legged and four-legged 
 species. On this day there are viscounts and Devons, short-liorns 
 and dukes, Herefords and lords. Sutfolks and earls, Southdowns 
 and baronets, heifers, knights, ewes, countesses, oxen, peeresses, 
 steers and marquises ; in fine, the blue blood of Great Britain, 
 irrespective of age and sex, and inclusive of nobility of all 
 grades, from the Prince of TVales and a blooded Suffolk down to 
 a bishop's son and a tluck-wooled wether — all unrivaled in 
 breed, descent, or value. 
 
 I find by looking back that I have omitted to mention where I 
 went, and what, in the concrete, it is that I went to see. Of course 
 I refer to the cattle-show, as it is termed here, or agricultural 
 show, or fair, as we would term it in America. I omitted to say 
 where I was going, because it didn't occur to me. Any time 
 within these two weeks, had any one said to any native: 
 
 " Are you going ? " the answer would have been at once : 
 
 " Certainly I am; aren't you? " 
 
 It would not have been necessary to say, "Are you going to 
 the cattle-show?" because that was understood. The papers 
 have been full of it, the dead walls have been full of it, and so 
 have all London and all England. 
 
 I may say that the present is the eightieth annual exhibition; 
 that it is held in Agricultural Hall, London, and that Agricul- 
 tural Hall is about as large as the Exposition building in Chi- 
 cago. The show is a sort of a national fete, having reference to 
 Christmas. 
 
 At some hotels, especially in France, it is customary to place a 
 course on the table before it is carved. A brown and weighty 
 turbot, or a round of beef, or a platter of roast ducks, is placed 
 before the guests, who admire its dimensions and color, inhale 
 its odor, speculate as to its juiciness, thus through their imagin- 
 ation enjoying the dish in advance. By and by it is served, and 
 then the palate is brought into play; and thus, in turn, sight, 
 smell and taste are permitted to be gratified. It is a method of 
 increasing the pleasure of dining, and is often resorted to where it 
 is desirable to make the largest outlay upon the smallest capital. 
 
 The same principle — only more so — is at the base of this an- 
 nual exhibition. 
 
144 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Among our British cousins, the Christinas season is one devoted 
 to the belly. They are square eaters, as a general thing, as I know ; 
 but I am assured that all the heavy eating that I have yet seen 
 is to the Christmas gorge what a gimlet is to an augur, a rat-hole 
 to the Mont Cenis tunnel. 
 
 The gathering here in London, the second week in December, 
 of obese cattle, swollen pigs, and pinguidinous lambs, is solely 
 that the British eyesight may revel in advance upon that which 
 is soon to be eaten ; that the British touch may wander over the 
 vast haunches and padded ribs of the intended victims for the 
 Christmas sacrifice. Such, in brief, is the meaning of the 
 December cattle-show. It is caviare, luncheon, cocktails, and 
 other appetizers for the senses, except that of taste. There are 
 a few agricultural and other implements connected with the 
 show; but they are an innovation; they form no essential part 
 of it, and are put in the galleries of the hall simply because the 
 spaces up there would look badly without something, and to get 
 cattle up would be an impossibility. 
 
 The first day is remarkable as being devoted almost exclu- 
 sively to thoroughbreds, both men and animals. The price of ad- 
 mission is put at a figure which keeps the mob away. The 
 purpose of this is that the nobility may, so to speak, dine at the 
 first table. They have the first chance. Their aristocratic eyes 
 get the first view, their noble fingers first sample the thickness 
 of fat and muscle, their elevated imaginations have the first op- 
 portunity to cut oft" juicy and dripping slices from the rotund 
 masses on exhibition. After their betters have been served, the 
 common people throng in and dine their plebeian senses from 
 off the remnants. They inhale the rich porcine odor ; they punch 
 their dirty and stumpy fingers among ribs which but j'esterday 
 were deftly explored and gently titillated by the slender and lav- 
 ender-clad digits belonging to shapely and aristocratic hands. 
 Metaphorically speaking, on Monday the select, blue-blooded 
 few go in, consume the tenderloins and the delicate tid-bits ; later 
 comes the mass and devours the tripe, the neck-piece, the fatty 
 brains, the degenerated liver, and unsavory offal. 
 
 To get into anything public in London requires infinite pa- 
 tience, management, tact; in short, an executive ability of the 
 very highest order. In the present instance, considering the mo- 
 mentous character of the exhibition, the difliculties were 
 redoubled. Dense crowds lined the sidewalks for blocks itt 
 
BRinSH THOROUGHBREDS. 145 
 
 every direction. All the adjoining public houses had the Brit- 
 ish flag flying, and thirsty customers fought their way to and 
 from the reeking counters. A string of carriages filed up, as at 
 a grand gala night at the opera, and discharged their contents 
 with infinite slowness and difliculty. Dogs fought; men chaffed, 
 squeezed, swore ; small boys and infants were scattered through 
 the interstices of the crowd, and were stepped on and run over 
 with undeviating partiality. 
 
 I followed the crowd that was pouring in the entrance nearest 
 where I alighted. It took me five minutes to get to the barrier; 
 and then, just about as I thought myself in, a policeman took ray 
 ticket, and handed it back with the remark: 
 
 " Next hentrance." 
 
 It took me three minutes to get out, and then I started in 
 search of the next hentrance. The next hentrance was found, 
 and there I was told to go somewhere else. Entrance after en- 
 trance presented itself, but all were wrong ones. Finally, after 
 going around a series of irregular blocks, I came upon a file of 
 carriages, upon every seat of which were men in livery. Some- 
 how I felt that land was in sight. I was about to enter that par- 
 ticular hole in the building reserved for the titled. There was a 
 small, pellucid, and very select stream of us I was borne in on 
 the waves of aristocracy. There were lords to the right of me, 
 dukes to the left of me. 
 
 There was no crowding or struggling among us. We were de- 
 liberate and dignified, as befitted our exalted station. I informed 
 none of my noble companions that they were " rum coves," as 
 was done among the base elements who fringed our pathway. If 
 any peer in that procession fancied that I was not a nobleman 
 from any remark I made, he was mistaken, for I never opened 
 my lips, but bore myself after that English method, in which 
 there is exhibited a bearing as if there were no other fellow in 
 sight. 
 
 I assure my American compatriots that there is no difficulty in 
 passing in such a crowd for what you please. It is perfectly easy 
 to pass yourself for a prince ; it is easy because nobody pays the 
 slightest attention to you, or is aware of your presence. 
 
 I was half an hour getting in. There was not the smallest 
 
 reason why I should not have entered at the first door I tried. 
 
 But letting people into a building by the most convenient door 
 
 would not be a case of How-not-to-do-it. Doing a thing by the 
 
 10 
 
146 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 shortest method would violate precedent, would throw ianumer- 
 able officials out of office, would not give flunkeys an opportu- 
 nity to be insolent, and would greatly accommodate the public. 
 All these reasons probably account for the fact that nearly every 
 man who enters Agricultural Hall must enter a particular hole 
 cut to fit his size, and can enter by no other. 
 
 It has taken me some time to get the reader into the cattle- 
 show; but, as an excuse, let it be understood that this is not 
 America, and that nothing here is done in a hurry. 
 
 If the Chicago reader will fancy the floor of the Exposition 
 building given up to cattle, sheep and hogs, and the galleries to 
 implements, and racks of beets and turnips, he will have a very 
 good idea of Agricultural Hall — a building which, during any 
 popular day of one of the animal exhibitions, will be visited 
 by as many as sixty thousand people. It is not so handsome as 
 our building; the lighting is inferior; but as it encloses about 
 four acres, its capacity is rather greater. 
 
 On Monday afternoon, the main floor was just comfortably 
 filled with its blooded occupants — that is to say, blooded men, 
 women, cattle, sheep and hogs. There was room enough to walk 
 on all sides of every specimen, whether a duchess or a Devon, a 
 baron or a Berkshire ; and I made the most of my opportunity 
 to study the eflects of breeding on the British animals, in the 
 pens or around their edges. 
 
 What would not Mrs. Livermore have given to have thus stood 
 face to face with the human, bovine, and ovine products of a 
 thorough and scientific stirpiculture ! There were faces before 
 me in which were concentrated all the virtues of in-breeding and 
 crossing from the Norman conquest to the present generation. 
 There were Devons and Herefords whose ancestry dates back in 
 an unbroken line to some bovine progenitor, who, jumping the 
 wretched fences of a thin Normandy pasture, bolted into the juicy 
 meadows of some neighboring territory, where, by sharpness of 
 horn, fierceness of bellow, and strength of neck, he established 
 his supremacy and founded a posterity — a posterity approving 
 only of his antiquity, and never questioning the means by which 
 he secured his original foothold. 
 
 It was immense ! Nothing could be grander than this opportu- 
 nity to study thoroughbreds face to face. I could compare, con- 
 trast them. I could see at a glance wherein breeding had given 
 a grain of superiority to the human product, and again had con- 
 
BKITISH THOROUGHBREDS. 147 
 
 ferred it upon the animal. In some instances, one was in ad- 
 vance, and in some instances, the other was unmistakably ahead. 
 
 Sometimes 1 seemea to see wherein pedigree had clone more 
 for a Hereford than a human ; tor a fciouthclown than a squire ; 
 for a Berkshire than a baronet. Wliile adipose prevailed among 
 both, there was a more dignified repose among the thoroughbreds 
 witliin the pens than among those without. None of the former 
 appeared possessed of a vulgar curiosity as to the anatomy of 
 the latter. No Devon degraded himself by fumbling the fat on 
 the ribs of a duke; or occupied himself in squinting along the 
 backbone of his grace as if it were a gun which he was sight- 
 ing at the battery of an enemy. No Norfolk heifer looked dis- 
 dainfully at a Sussex cow in an adjoining pen, with a glance 
 which seemed to say, "Your ancestor came over ages and ages 
 after mine, you wretched plebeian! " 
 
 In all these respects the balance of valuable results seemed to 
 incline within the pens rather than outside them. Upon the 
 whole, I am rather inclined to fancy that breeding tells more ef- 
 fectively in steers than in peers — so to speak — in the steerage 
 than the peerage. While there were abundant cases of fat in 
 both, I was often compelled to notice that what was good, honest 
 layers of suet in the former, was quite often, in the latter, only a 
 case of dropsical expansion with a malt or vinous basis. Barring 
 the difference between the fragrance of attar of roses and the 
 well-known porcine emanation, there was a perceptible improve- 
 ment among the high-bred swine over their human competitors. 
 The former had none of that lack of geniality, none of that 
 hauteur characteristic of the latter. Any respectably-dressed, 
 fair-appearing stranger like myself could approach one of these 
 gentlemanly hogs without a letter of introduction, and could 
 scratch his back and take other similar innocent familiarities 
 without giving offense. . I could do no such things to any of the 
 titled ladies and gentlemen by whom I was surrounded. I had 
 no genealogy with me ; and without one, and a long one, the 
 well-meaning stranger is debarred, in this country, from doing 
 many things which would conduce to his pleasure. 
 
 In these respects, justice would seem to compel me, in an un- 
 biased summary of the respective values of the two classes, as 
 affected by culture and pedigree, to give the first prize to the 
 four-footed competitors. 
 
148 
 
BKinSH THOKOUGHBREDS. 149 
 
 I overhearu a most affecting incident during the course of my 
 wanderings. 
 
 It was related by a tall man, with gold eye-glasses and gray 
 whiskers, to a small knot of listeners, composed of a stout lady 
 in a velvet overcoat, a younger lady, with pale, clean-cut, regular 
 features, and a young man with a single glass stuck in a weak 
 blue eye, and whose reddish mustache was elaborately curled 
 upward at the ends. 
 
 "She was," he said, "descended in a direct line from the Duke 
 of Plymouth. Her great-grandmother was the Baroness of Avon. 
 Her grandfather was the Duke of Fyldon, and her father, Prince 
 Jerome. Her mother was Lady Flora, of Laddiport." 
 
 "Aw — naouw, was — aw — she naouw — aw?" asked the 
 young man with the single eye-glass. 
 
 The ladies looked interested and sympathetic. 
 
 " I got her at a cost of seven thousand pounds." 
 
 "Aw, naouw, aw — did you, aw — naouw?" asked the young 
 man with the single eye-glass. 
 
 " Yes, 1 did. I kept her three years, and she didn't breed, and 
 I had to sell her for beef." 
 
 " Aw, naouw, aw — did you, aw — naouw? " remarked the young 
 man with the single eye-glass. 
 
 The two ladies seemed on the point of weeping. Fearing I 
 might intrude on their sacred grief, I walked away. Ah, me! 
 how sad is the inner history of aristocratic lives! Who is the 
 poet who will embody in some sad dithyrambic monody the life, 
 the failure, the untimely death of this young descendant of so 
 princely a line ? Let us who are poor and humble cease to re- 
 pine over our misfortunes. No such calamity as this ever falls to 
 the lot of the obscure, the untitled. It is the castle on the tow- 
 ering crag that is struck by the howling tempest — the same 
 which passes harmlessly over the lowly cot which nestles hum- 
 bly in the valley. 
 
 It would be charming to wander longer, much longer, in this 
 sacred precinct of blooded men and titled cattle, but space for- 
 bids. Perhaps at some other time I may invite the readers of 
 The Times to join me again, and once more circulate in such 
 goodly company. Thoroughbred society is not easily attainable 
 on this island ; and this fact must excuse my having lingered so 
 long in this delightful company. 
 
150 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 LETTER XXIV. 
 
 BRITISH CATTLE SHOTV^. 
 
 London, Dec. 15, 1877. 
 
 fN my last I gave you a brief account of a visit to the great 
 annual cattle-show of England. My first visit was oii Mon- 
 day, the opening day, and from whicli the common people 
 were excluded, so as to give the gentry a chance to punch the 
 ribs of the cattle and scratch the backs of the Berkshires with- 
 out being exposed to the dangers of being rubbed against by 
 cockneys from the city, and English hoodlums from Edgware 
 Road. 
 
 The English grade things nicely with reference to rank. As, 
 for instance, in this cattle-show, his royal highness, the Prince 
 of Wales, and his immediate staff of noble adherents, were ad- 
 mitted to the hall at noon on Monday. Two hours later, people 
 below princes and above cockneys were given admission. After 
 these had had a view, the Iwi jpolloi, at the rate of a shilling per 
 caput, were allowed to follow in the footsteps of their betters. It 
 costs something to be a nobleman in this countrj^. We who went 
 in the first day had to pay five shillings for the privilege of being 
 somebody. The average difference, or ratio, of somebody to no- 
 body in England is as five to one — which is a convenient method 
 of expressing a social distinction by a mathematical formula. 
 
 On Monday I had an opportunity to compare the effect of high 
 breeding by examining it in the thoroughbred men and cattle, 
 and women and sheep and pigs who were gathered face to face 
 at Agricultural Hall. A later day I had an opportunity to com- 
 pare the thoroughbred with the common-bred, the vulgar. One 
 cannot thoroughly understand the high-bred specimen until one 
 has compared it with others of its own kind, and also contrasted 
 it with others of an opposite kind. I had seen how a Devon car- 
 ried himself in the presence of a duke. Before forming a con- 
 clusion as to his qualities, I had to see him in the presence of 
 a costermonger. People are often on their good behavior, simply 
 as a matter of policy when in good society, who, when with in- 
 feriors are insolent, overbearing, intolerable. A Dorset pig who 
 would be a perfect gentleman when in company with a peer, 
 might, if high breeding is of no value in manners, turn out a 
 perfect hog when brought into contact with a purveyor of cat's- 
 
BRITISH CATTLE SHOW. 151 
 
 meat. Truthfulness compels the admission that the thorough- 
 breds bore themselves in a manner so dignified, when exposed to 
 the crucial test of contact with inferiors, as to entitle them to 
 distinguished consideration; as to prove that blood does tell, and 
 that its effects are manifest in all the greater, as well as less 
 qualities that characterize action, demeanor, sentiments, and 
 bearing. 
 
 There is one point worthy of note in this connection; and that 
 is that, in some respects, culture and high-breeding seem to have 
 done rather more for the animals than the men; or, if it be 
 objected that there is no real difference between animals and 
 men, then, I may say, breeding seems to have done more for the 
 quadrupeds than the bipeds. For instance, among the former it 
 does not appear that blue blood has produced any aristocratic 
 defect of vision as among the latter. I saw no Hereford with a 
 glass stuck in one eye, and gazing about with a weak, imbecile 
 stare. I noticed also another difference. Among the aristocratic 
 bipeds of Monday there seemed a very prevalent effort on the 
 part of each individual to conduct himself as if he were the 
 only person present. Nothing of the sort was apparent among 
 the aristocratic quadrupeds. A Cheviot ewe would notice 
 kindly a Ryland wether, while a Dorset swell would recognize 
 with fraternal grunts his Coleshill neighbor in the adjoining sty. 
 
 In these, and other similar things, it seemed to me as if high 
 culture, long pedigree, and all that, arc doing more for the ani- 
 mals who occupy the pens than for those who live in the 
 castles. 
 
 So far as quality of thought and language is concerned, I have 
 no means of judging, as I can understand but little what the 
 people say, and none at all of what may be said or thought by 
 the others. 
 
 I overheard a conversation Monday, which may serve to show 
 what is said by thoroughbred men and women. It was between 
 a substantial gentleman with a very purple nose, an elderly lady, 
 very puffy, and red in the face, and a couple of tall young ladies, 
 whose principal labor seemed to be to look composed, uninter- 
 ested, but interesting, and altogether oblivious of the fact that 
 there was anybody but their party present at the exhibition. Said 
 the gentleman : 
 
 " She has a magnificent top and middle, a wonderful bosom, 
 and a very expanded chest " 
 
152 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA, 
 
 " Aye," interrupted the elderly woman, " but she lacks depth. 
 She is too narrow in the thighs " 
 
 " Yes, I dare say you're quite right," said the gentleman, " but 
 then you see her thighs only appear small because of the great 
 outpouring of her broad hips and loins." 
 
 " What a sweet, docile face she meets you with," remarked 
 languidly one of the young ladies. 
 
 " Yes, but don't you think she has quite an odd expression?" 
 said the other. "And yet sucli a lovely head, and waxy horns — " 
 
 It was only when the word " horns " was uttered that I learned 
 that the conversation did not refer to some lady, but to a shortr 
 horn heifer belonging to a gentleman from Ipswich, and which 
 has taken more prizes than any animal on the ground. I ought 
 to have known sooner that the conversation did not refer to any 
 woman, because it was altogether too complimentary, consider- 
 ing that three women were in the group of four who were 
 engaged iu the discussion. 
 
 As before said, the effect of breeding developed in the contrast 
 of the thoroughbred stock with the base-born mob is worthy of 
 all admiration and commendation. Anything less than the 
 most perfect high breeding would have lost its temper and been 
 guilty of breaches of politeness under the indignities to which 
 the animals were subjected. Fancy a^ gentleman or lady sur- 
 rounded for hours by a dense mob, odorous with foul pipes, 
 sweetened gin, and fermenting beer; compelled to listen to all 
 sorts of ungrammatical language embodying no refined ideas; 
 forced to breathe a vitiated atmosphere; and to be punched, 
 thumped, and prodded incessantly, by thick and dirty fingers; 
 and, in fancying this, one can get an idea as to what was under- 
 gone by the delicate and high-bred aristocrats of the paddock. 
 They bore it nobly. I will not say that now and then a look of 
 wearied disgust did not creep over the countenance of some 
 noble heifer, who could trace her ancestry in an unbroken line 
 to Victoria VIII., as the stumpy thumbs of the mob prodded 
 her rounded flanks; but then such manifestations of disappro- 
 bation were never boisterous or vulgar, and were always charac- 
 terized by that serenity and composure so much sought after by 
 the upper classes of Great Britain. 
 
 It was amusing to watch the movements of the crowds about 
 the pens. There is nothing a cockney desires so much as to be 
 thought a connoisseur in cattle and horseflesh. Every peddler 
 
BRITISH CATTLE SHOW. 153 
 
 of periwinkles out for a holiday went gravely all over each ani- 
 mal in succession. He dove his fingers into the fleeces of tlie 
 sheep, and appeared to be gravely calculating the fineness and 
 yield of the wool. He fingered the chines, pinched the backs, 
 and punched the ribs of the cattle ; and felt all the pigs with a 
 gravity and a deliberation intended to convey the idea tliat he 
 was a competent judge of every point bearing on the value of 
 . Tvool, beef and pork. 
 
 Another common and amusing feature was the hungry looks 
 upon men's faces as they hung about the pens. Paunchj^ chaps, 
 with bursting cheeks and protruding eyes, stood and gazed on 
 the rotund thoroughbreds with an expression which was that of 
 ecstatic anticipation. Present in body, they were absent in soul, 
 and sat about Christmas boards with napkins tucked under their 
 •chins, the odor of roast beef filling their nostrils, their whetted 
 knives cutting great slices from the juicy loin, and their palates 
 thrilling with grease and gore. No ragged hoodlum, with his 
 nose flattened against the window of a pastry-shop, was ever 
 half so complete an embodiment of eager, absorbed anticipation, 
 yearning, and hungry desire, as these Englishmen who looked 
 over the pens and devoured in advance their contents. 
 
 One thing is very noticeable in the characteristics of American 
 and English articles on exhibition. It is the higher finish and 
 liglitness of the former. A laborer who uses an American fork 
 saves immensely in the labor of carrying the implement. In 
 fact, heaviness is a prevailing English quality. A one-horse cart 
 is, by itself, a load for a horse. A hay-rigging is composed of 
 immense beams and timbers, and looks like the skeleton of a 
 mighty ship. The English plows, although beautifully finished, 
 are so large that they seem intended for anchors. An American 
 plow would not need more than half the draught to accomplish 
 the same amount and quality of work. Among the heaviest of 
 all the English articles on exhibition are several traction en- 
 gines. They are monstrous machines — long as a steamship and 
 as high as a house. They are mainly used for plowing, I under- 
 stand, and are said to do excellent work. One is placed at a 
 corner of a field, and by a system of cables and pulleys the plows 
 are drawn across from side to side. 
 
 Statistics furnished me by an English gentleman show that in 
 one hundred and fifty-nine days of the present year he plowed 
 five hundred and twenty-six acres, cultivated two hundred and 
 
154 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA 
 
 ten, rolled three hundred and seventy-one, and dragged three 
 hundred and twenty-seven, making a total of fourteen hundred 
 and thirty-four acres of work performed by one steam plow, in 
 the time specified. 
 
 In occasional portions of the gallery are displays of vegetables, 
 among which turnips, beets, mangels, potatoes and cabbages 
 predominate. Here, as in English machinery, bulk seems to 
 eclipse all other qualities. There are beets almost as tall and 
 thick as John Wentworth ; cabbages resembling the domes of 
 cathedrals ; turnips that have the dimensions of a planet. 
 
 Mangels, eighty to ninety tons to the acre, and other roots in. 
 proportion, are to be seen in abundance. At short intervals are 
 cards bearing the legend that these mangels, and those beets and 
 turnips were grown by her majesty the queen, or his royal 
 highness the Prince of Wales. I offered to buy a specimen, in 
 order to have a personal memento of these august agriculturists 
 — but was informed that none are for sale. I take it that they 
 are destined for a better fate than to become the trophy of a 
 Yankee journalist. Probably after being tipped with ivory and 
 furnished with silver-mounted handles, they will be placed among 
 the crown jewels at the tower, in order to convey to posterity 
 practical evidence of the bucolic tastes and simple pursuits of 
 the present representatives of the house of Hanover. 
 
 LETTER XXV. 
 
 BOOK-MAKERS. 
 
 London, January 6, 1878. 
 
 . URING my stay here in London I have from time to time 
 JiV^jJ been thrown into the company of journalists and littera- 
 ^^^^ teurs without number. Many of these whom I have thus 
 met are well known in America, others are partially known, and 
 still others not at all. I have thought that sketches of some of 
 these people would be of interest to the readers of The Times; 
 and to gratify such an interest I will in this letter outline a few 
 novelists. 
 
BOOK-MAKEKS. 155 
 
 It should be said at the outset that nearly all novels in England 
 first appear in a three-volume form, and with expensive paper 
 and binding. In this shape they are not put in the book-stores, 
 but in the circulating libraries. A library edition consists usually 
 of five hundred copies. The success achieved by a book during 
 the library stage shapes its future. If there be a brisk demand, 
 then a cheaper and larger edition is issued for the book-stores ; 
 and if this go, then a still cheaper " railway edition," for news- 
 stands and railway depots. 
 
 Before leaving this matter of book-makers, I hope to be able ta 
 give some facts of interest as to book-making, such as cost of 
 issue, circulation, profits, and the like, together with the remu- 
 neration paid to authors. Everybody, almost, in London, writes 
 a book of some kind — generally a novel or two ; and hence the 
 opportunity for reading live authors is uncommonly good. Of 
 every five English people who happen to be standing together, 
 the chances are that there will be one author, and perhaps two, 
 in the gathering. 
 
 I will at once to business, and commence the sketches with 
 Joseph Hatton. Mr. Hatton, although comparatively a young 
 man, has already produced some seven or eight novels ; several 
 plays, some of which are original products, and others, either 
 adaptations from his own works, or those of other authors. 
 Among the last named is "Liz; That Lass o' Lowrie," which 
 was brought out some months since at the Opera Comique, and 
 which is still having a most successful run. He has also drama- 
 tized his latest and most popular novel, " The Queen of Bohe- 
 mia ; " but the work has not yet been put on the stage, owing to 
 the press of holiday amusements. At the present moment he i& 
 engaged in the production of an original melodrama, and also a 
 novel, entitled " Cruel London," and of which one volume is 
 already completed. 
 
 He is about thirty-seven years of age, with an expression and 
 air of youthful ness that make him seem much younger. This is 
 added to by a boyish geniality, frankness and fresh enthusiasm. 
 He is just under medium height, athletic but not stout in figure, 
 and with an erect, soldiery bearing. Unlike most Englishmen, 
 he is dark, with full beard and mustache, which, like his abun- 
 dant hair, are a raven black. His mouth is large and indicative 
 of luxurious tastes, his nose sufficiently pronounced to establish 
 the existence of strong qualities. His eyes are large, dark-brown. 
 
156 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 keen, smiling, full of sympathy and a dreamy sensitiveness. As 
 a whole, his face is handsome, sunny, attractive. 
 
 Originally, I believe, from Lancaster, Mr. Hatton began life as 
 a journalist, and has never since entirely severed his connection 
 with the press. I have read only his " Queen of Bohemia," 
 a book which bears on every page the assurance that it is his 
 favorite child, conceived in love, and born and nurtured with a 
 partial and absorbing affection. It is a most charming work 
 from title page to finis. Its characters have all the sharpness of 
 outline, the rounded softness, the exquisite gradations of shading 
 of a first-class photograph. They have an intense realism that 
 makes them at once recognizable as from life, and yet all are 
 here and there "touched up " with a brush dipped in idealism 
 whereby the harsher details of nature are softened without 
 obliteration. His pastoral scenes are bright with sun-kissed 
 blossoms, drowsy with the hum of bees, musical with the sweeter 
 voices of nature — in short, nature in her warmest and most charm- 
 ing aspects, such as one learns them, not from books or canvas, 
 but by actual, studious, loving contact. 
 
 As a writer, Mr. Hatton is achieving a success. Nearly all his 
 books have passed the crucial test of the library edition, and 
 have reached second and third editions. He has visited America, 
 for which country he entertains a substantial liking, and from 
 which he selects most liberally in his search for characters and 
 novel combinations of human experience. Some of his works 
 have been republished in America and have been given' a cordial 
 reception. He is married and has a family thoroughly artistic 
 in its tendencies. Mrs. Hatton, a lady of a handsome and im- 
 posing presence, has demonstrated the possession of most superior 
 abilities in amateur theatricals. A son of seventeen is already a 
 fair geologist and linguist; and a daughter, a couple of years 
 younger, has taken to painting, and has already produced credit- 
 able and promising results. 
 
 A favorite here, Mr. Hatton is certain to become equally one in 
 America as our people become familiar with his productions. 
 
 Next to Miss Braddon, perhaps there is no English lady novel- 
 ist better known in America than Annie Thomas. Many of her 
 novels have been republished by American houses; and, in addi- 
 tion to having thus reached the American public, she has in- 
 creased the circulation of her writings by having contributed 
 directly, and very largely, to Harper's and Frank Leslie's period- 
 
BOOK-MAKERS. 15T 
 
 icals. Her American connections extended over several years, 
 and at present are, let me hope, only interrupted, not terminated,, 
 by the business depression in America, which has included book, 
 publishers as well as everybody else in its malign influences. 
 
 Annie Thomas is her maiden name, her present name being 
 the somewhat extraordinary one — to American ears — Mrs. Pender 
 Cudlip. She is married to a clergyman of the established church, 
 and from whom, of course, she receives her present designation. 
 She was born in affluence and reared in luxury imtil the age of 
 eighteen, when, by the death of her father, a distinguished naval 
 officer, she found herself and mother substantially penniless. By 
 mere accident she was induced to write a short article, which 
 was accepted by the publisher .of a society magazine, and for 
 which she received the — to her — munificent sum of twelve 
 guineas. She at once, very naturally, conceived a great fancy for 
 literary effort, and began and finished a three-volume novel. She 
 submitted it to Maxwell, better known as Miss Eraddon's hus- 
 band, who gave her any number of compliments and five pounds 
 for her manuscript. Disappointed but not discouraged, she 
 finished another, for which the liberal Maxwell offered her ten 
 pounds. Getting the manuscript from him with some difficulty, 
 she resolved to try some other publisher. The very first one to 
 whom she offered it, looked through it, and at once gave her 
 three hundred pounds for it. From that time to the present she 
 has been a hard worker, writing incessantly and achieving a 
 very substantial pecuniary success. It is about eighteen years 
 since she became a novelist, and within that time she has written 
 and had published some forty novels, many of which have ob- 
 tained several editions. This amount of work is the more extra- 
 ordinary when one reflects upon the fact that she has the care of 
 a family, and had the rearing of four children, of whom two 
 charming boys died within a couple of days. Two beautiful 
 little girls remain who, while necessary to the completion of the 
 domestic and maternal life, add necessarily to the difficulties and 
 burdens of her professional labor. All these surroundings have 
 the eff'ect to make her literary products seem out of all propor- 
 tion to the time and facilities given to their accomplishment. 
 There are a heroism, a devotion, an untiring industry and a 
 suffering included in such a life which make it one of excep- 
 tional beauty and grandeur. 
 
 Despite all her hard work and her domestic bereavements^ 
 
158 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Mrs. Cudlip is still young in appearance, and although ner eyes 
 have an appearance of much acquaintance with tears, and her 
 voice has here and there a plaintive suggestion, she has all the 
 elasticity and vivacity of a robust, healthful nature, to which 
 drudgery and sutfering are unknown. She is of medium height, 
 has dark, regular features, keen, dark, flashing eyes, and a cheery 
 and decisive utterance. Her head is small, her forehead womanly, 
 and her appearance and manners are suggestive of an exquisite 
 combination of the emotional, maternal, domestic woman, and 
 the intellectual thinker and worker. She seems an embodiment 
 of energj'- and determination — the possessor of a will-power 
 potent enough to overcome all obstacles. She is humorous, phil- 
 osophical, didatic, pathetic in conversation, rushing on force- 
 fully and exhibiting all the rapidity of change and the infinite 
 Tariations of a kaleidoscope. 
 
 Her books have few failures, and a most gratifying presenta- 
 tion of exceptional and most brilliant successes. Among the 
 latter are " Denis Doune," " Played Out," " He Cometh Not, She 
 Said," "False Colors," "Theo. Leigh," and others, several of 
 which will be recognized as old favorites by American readers. 
 It is to be hoped that the depression in business on our side may 
 soon sufficiently be lifted so that this very popular writer and 
 estimable lady may resume her connection with the American 
 public. 
 
 It is a most creditable fact to Englishwomen that, in the pres- 
 ent condition of literary production, they occupy so prominent — 
 in numbers and quality of efl'ort — a position. The fact becomes 
 more creditable when it is understood that many of these women 
 are in social positions which would afi"ord them the stimulus of 
 ample occupation; and are possessed of sufficient wealth, so that 
 they are not forced into literature either to escape from the ennui 
 of a life without extended social ameliorations and duties, or for 
 the purpose of securing a livelihood. Perhaps Miss Ida Duffus 
 Hardy is one to whom this creditable fact has an especial appli- 
 cation. Above the necessities of literary efforts, she has appar- 
 ently been drawn to her work because she loves it. 
 
 Not far along in the twenties, she has already produced excel- 
 lent results. She has written three, perhaps four, works, of which 
 the most noticeable are " Glencairn " and " Only a Love Story." 
 I have only had opportunity to read the last-named, which, 
 although far above mediocrity, is said to be inferior in some 
 
BOOK-MAKERS. 159 
 
 respects to " Glencairn," an opinion sliared by the author. " Only 
 a Love Story " is her latest published production, and is what 
 would be popularly termed a " society " novel. It seems to me, 
 however, to have a deeper purjDose than the mere portraiture of 
 social phases and every-day characters. There is an intensity in 
 much of the sentiment of the book, a fierce energy in its action, 
 a warmth and a mobile vital ization in its characters, and through- 
 out all of it a tender interest, which seem to demonstrate that the 
 author is no mere photographer who coldly " focuses " and repro- 
 duces a group of ordinary subjects. Some works are based on 
 observations directed witliout ; others upon observations directed 
 within. The former affords us imitations, the latter, creations — 
 that, copies; ihis^ originals. * 
 
 The principal characters in " Only a Love Story " have a 
 shapely fullness, a breathing individuality, which make them 
 seem the creatures of self-experience. If not, then they are mar- 
 velous in their accuracy, and i^rove that simulation may be made 
 to equal the fervid earnestness of real feeling. 
 
 Miss Hardy has an artistic face. She is of medium height, 
 with a shapely figure. Her head is small, which fact, taken in 
 connection with large, brilliant, dark-brown eyes, gives her an 
 expression whose intellectual interpretation is impetuous con- 
 centration. In this same direction there is an indication of an 
 almost morbid activity. Her dark hair, brunette complexion and 
 eyes are Oriental in their suggestions ; but these are negatived 
 by the absence of a languid repose and by the presence of a lithe 
 and strengthful mobility. She is a character the background of 
 vrhich seems concealed by impenetrable shadows, in which her 
 real nature and life are probably hidden, but whose gloom has the 
 effect to heighten, by contrast, the sunny and attractive qualities 
 which are lavishly distributed in the middle distance and the 
 foreground. It is very pleasant hereabout, although occasionally 
 there shoots from the cloud-land beyond a tiny flash, lightning- 
 like in its rapidity, scorching the too curious observer and 
 leaving behind a perceptibly sulphurous odor of irony or 
 sarcasm. 
 
 Miss Hardy's books are warmly praised, and justly so, by the 
 English press. Her composition is never heavy or turgid. Her 
 presentations are brilliant, rapid as her intellectual processess 
 and characterized by a warm, realistic accuracy. She ought to 
 be better known on our side of the water. Her creations will 
 
160 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 interest anywhere, because tliey are cosmopolitan and human. 
 One of the most salient characters in " Only a Love Story " is 
 Jules Lusada, an American, a poetical and dominating border- 
 rufRaQ. He is finely worked up, and his handling will suit the 
 American taste, even to his final and summary taking off by a 
 stray Frencli bullet. Let me liope that the American public will 
 duly and speedily make her acquaintance. 
 
 Miss Hardy has genius through hereditary. Her father, Sir 
 Thomas Hardy,* has written a good deal, mainly in the anti- 
 quarian line, and has successfully solved some of the mustiest, 
 dustiest and least insoluble of the problems which are everlast- 
 ingly arising from out the nooks and crannies of the remote past. 
 
 Her mother, Lady DufFus-Hardy, is a writer of considerable 
 prominence. Manj'- of her novels have been republished in 
 America by Harpers, and have met with prompt recognition. 
 Lady Hardy is a great favorite among her friends, of whom 
 Americans form no inconsiderable portion, and are by no means 
 the least enthusiastic of her admirers. 
 
 Among Lady Hardy's more prominent works are " The Two 
 Catherines," " Paul Wynters' Sacrifice," "A Hero's Work," "A 
 Woman's Triumph," " Daisy Nicol," and " Lizzie," besides sev- 
 eral earlier works, and one which she now has in press. Of 
 these the best is probably " Paul Wynters." 
 
 Sir Thomas has been deputy keeper of public records for over 
 half a century. His publications are mainlj'^ archaeological and 
 historical, and have been published by government order. 
 
 " He lisped in numbers ere the numbers came " implies a pre- 
 cocity in expression not limited, in London, to poetical produc- 
 tion. Miss Mary Hoppus, who has just launched her first 
 literary venture, is scarcely more than twenty years of age. She 
 is an orphan, the daughter,! believe, of a late professor in a promi- 
 nent educational institute, and lives in company with an only 
 brother, also young, in a quaint, comfortable residence near 
 Regent's Park. 
 
 Her novel is of the regular three-volume dimensions, and is 
 entitled " Five-Chimney Farm." The first volume is devoted to 
 pastoral life in an English agricultural district. The rich, warm 
 soil of this region is surprisingly fertile in the genesis of char- 
 acters who spring up with a rapidity and density that are mar- 
 velous — and all this without any especial efibrt at top-dressing 
 
 * Since Deceased. 
 
BOOK-MAKERS. 161 
 
 or sub-soiliag on the part of Miss Hoppus. Fortunately, while 
 she is thus fecund in creation, she is stern and pitiless in destruc- 
 tion. If she produces limitlessly, she destroys proportionately. 
 She mows down and uproots so that the sun and wind can have 
 free access to the plants she proposes to rear and permit to reach 
 fruition. One closes the first volume as if from reading a history 
 of a new creation and a new deluge. On the A.rarat, at the end 
 of volume one, there rests a little ark which contains the few 
 characters not drowned in the inundation, and these make their 
 way to France, where all are in time to witness, and a few of 
 them to get slaughtered by, a French revolution. 
 
 Miss Hoppus is a slender, shv, quaint, little lady, who seems a 
 part of the old, old-fashioned house, in which she lives. Its walls 
 are hung with rare old prints and paintings, ancient arms, antique 
 vases, costly china; and on shelves and cabinets, tables, all heavy, 
 dark, and old, are hric-a-hrac odds and ends, books rich with the 
 labors of the engraver, portfolios — everything, in short, that is 
 rare, curious and old. In these surroundings Miss Hoppus has 
 lived, grown, studied and written. She has become permeated, 
 as it were, with the atmosphere of this solid, ancient and sombre 
 environment. She is antique. Her blonde hair has a twist which 
 suggests an old picture; her sleeves are puflFed in a manner 
 which links itself intimately with something long past; her tout 
 ensemble has a rich and palpable flavor of the antique. 
 
 And yet within this old-fashioned casket are intellectual and 
 spiritual diamonds of the very first water. An incessant reader 
 and digester, she seems to have devoured and assimilated all 
 knowledge, ancient and modern. She is a linguist who reads all 
 the dead languages and speaks most of the modern ones. Know- 
 ing her isolation, her shyness, the painful embarrassments which 
 attend her contact with the world, her book becomes a marvel 
 in its accurate knowledge of men and women, their motives, 
 their ambitions, their faults. She cannot have gained this in- 
 formation from books, or study of character, but from some 
 species of intuition or inspiration. She seems to handle with 
 equal facility the weighty sequences of great political or diplo- 
 matic events, and the elusive intricacies of ordinary flirtations, 
 or the more elusive and mysterious relations of a love-affair. 
 
 I am strongly of the opinion that this slender girl, with her 
 shy embarrassment, her quaint mannerism, her brown, intro- 
 spective eyes, and her thin and almost unsmiling face, has a future 
 11 
 
162 
 
 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 of no ordinary character ; and that she will certainly take a high 
 rank among the thinkers and writers of her generation. 
 
 I find upon looking over what I have written, two things which 
 I must mention. One of these is that, although I have the names 
 of some ten or more writers in my note-hook, I have reached less 
 than one-half of them; and who, in order to prevent this letter 
 from being too long, will have to wait for some other mail. The 
 other thing is that I have quite inadvertently, in the present 
 group, put several ladies and but one gentleman. 
 
 "WELCOME TO AMERICA. " MY BOY, SHAKE ! " 
 
 So much the better for the gentleman. He is the escort of all 
 these fair and talented women. He has their company all to 
 himself; and they start, trusting to his attention and gallantry 
 for their safety and comfort. And what a journey these English 
 dames, squired bj" the lucky Hatton, have before them! For 
 three thousand miles they will go, rocked by Atlantic waVes, 
 plunging through mist and storm, and tossed by wintry hurrix 
 canes, till they reach the shores of the new world; then a thou- 
 sand miles through great cities, skirting the long stretch of ice* 
 
' BOOK-MAKEKS. ' 163 
 
 bound lakes, across the frozen marshes till they reach the Garden 
 City. There, where the sleigh-bells ring out cheerily, and the 
 skater's steel cuts the glistening ice ; where the frost has etched 
 the window panes, and the Paris of the new world displays its 
 miles of marble palaces — there, in dear old Chicago, their journey 
 will have but just begun. 
 
 A day, or two days, in The Times' building — whose dimensions 
 they will find have no rival in Europe — and tliey arc off again. 
 Speeding south, they traverse the illimitable prairies of Illinois, 
 cross the frozen Ohio, rush through cotton-fields, whose ragged 
 bolls toss drearily in the uneasy winds; down through sugar 
 plantations, by negro hovels, across green bayous in wliich alli- 
 gators lurk; through the dead cypress woodlands, melancholy 
 with their gray and trailing festoons of Spanish moss ; on and on 
 till the orange groves, the catalpas, and majestic magnolias, the 
 verandaed houses, and the beautiful quadroons of the Crescent 
 City are reached, and the Gulf bars their further progress. 
 
 But this is not all or even a considerable portion of the jour- 
 ney which must be taken by this lucky Hatton and his com- 
 panions. Wherever The Times goes must they go. Away up 
 into the cities of Wisconsin, up among the lumber regions of 
 Minnesota, where the wind howls dismally among the tufted 
 pines ; up to the sombre copper section of Superior, where the 
 great crushers are grinding the ore, and the smoke of the fur- 
 naces settles in the primeval forests, turning day into night ; over 
 to Mackinac, the silent, glacial queen of a frozen realm; and 
 thus on and on over thousands of miles of country locked in the 
 lethal grasp of winter, and dumb save as the voiceful frost, with 
 a mighty force, rends the ice-bound lakes — and even yet their 
 journey is not at end. 
 
 Straight as the flight of an arrow they go westward, crossing 
 the Father of Waters, the sublime Mississippi, and thence on 
 across the ever-sullen Missouri. Now come days of gray, alkali 
 deserts, with ragged sage-brush — the very epitome, the quintes- 
 sence of desolation. Then the Wasatch, with their lofty plateaus 
 and long-reaching ranges; then the miles of snow-sheds, the 
 snow-crowned summits, the yawning chasms, canons and ravines 
 of the Sierras. Beyond this the Sacramento, the Golden Gate ; 
 and then the new life, the unique civilization, the gorgeous 
 splendors of the American Eldorado — California — and beyond, 
 the other ocean, the Pacific. 
 
164: SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 It is a jolly trip this just marked out for Hatton and his fair 
 proUg^es. They will see more than they ever saw before ; more 
 than— dealers in imagination as they are — their wildest dreams 
 ever constructed. They will see miners, yellow with the stains 
 of the auriferous clay; Indians brilliant in gaudy colorings; 
 Asiatics, timid, shrinking from contact with "western barbar- 
 ism ; " areas in which all England might be lost beyond recovery ; 
 uncouth negroes ; much-married Mormons ; desperadoes to whom 
 the click of the pistol is the music of their gods ; shaggy and 
 lumbering buffaloes; monstrous grizzlies, which to follow is 
 no queen's stag hunt with its cowardl}^ atrocities — all these will 
 they see as they pursue their journeyings north, south, east, west, 
 taking in all climates and peoples, from boreal Itasca to the 
 tropical gulf, from the eastern slopes of the Alleghenies to the 
 western slopes of the Coast range. 
 
 Good-by, Hatton ! Good-by, ladies! Bon wy age I 
 
 LETTER XXVI. 
 
 A MODEL PRISON. 
 
 London, Jan. 13, 1878. 
 
 S I wrote some months ago, I fancied that our people at 
 home might be interested in prison management, and 
 thereupon made an effort to secure an entree to some of 
 the representative prisons. I first wrote, as already detailed, to 
 the governor of a penitentiary in London, known as Millbank, 
 for permission to visit his institution. After a due season of 
 delay, an answer came, referring me to some local board. Fur- 
 ther investigation revealed the fact that I would have to make an 
 application direct to the Secretary of State. I addressed a letter 
 to Rt. Hon. Richard Assheton Cross, home secretary, stating that 
 I am a journalist representing a paper whose patrons are inter- 
 ested in all that pertains to reform, asking permission to visit 
 the British prisons, and winding up with a substantial list of 
 gentlemen to whom I referred as being perhaps willing to certify 
 that my real purpose in making the request was not to convey 
 files or jimmies to the prisoners. 
 
A MODEL PRISON. 165 
 
 It was months ago that I wrote this request. It was so long 
 unattended to that I had given the project up, with the conclu- 
 sion tliat it was a matter so much beneath the attention of the 
 home offlce that my missive liad long since been tossed in the 
 waste basket and forgotten. But I was mistaken. British offi- 
 cialism may delay, but it does not forget. Two months after 
 sending a request to visit some British prisons, I received a doc- 
 ument labeled " On Her Majesty's Service," and which included 
 permission for me to visit a prison. 
 
 If it requires sixty days to secure permission to visit one 
 prison, how many days would be required to secure permission 
 to visit all the British prisons ? While life may be long enough 
 to work out the problem in theory, it is altogether too brief to 
 test it by practice. 
 
 There are several prisons in Great Britain, each of which is 
 unlike the others — which should I visit? There is the one at 
 Pentonville, which is known as a model prison. There is the 
 Millbank prison, which is for Roman Catholic convicts and cer- 
 tain other classes of offenders. There is the Portsmouth prison, 
 with which are connected the public works. Each of these has 
 some special attractions; but, after due consideration, I was 
 captured by the phrase " model prison," and determined to be- 
 stow the honor of my presence on Pentonville. 
 
 Like Millbank prison, the Pentonville institution is within 
 London, being located well up in tlie northern portion of the 
 metropolis. I took the underground to King's Cross station, and 
 there hailing a hansom, I was in five minutes before the great 
 iron gates of the prison. I handed the cabman a shilling. The 
 legal fare is a shilling for two miles ; I had been driven about 
 three-fourths of one mile. I placed the shilling in his out- 
 stretched palm. He did not withdraw it, but held it out, and 
 an expression of amazement and disgust came over his face. 
 
 " What's that? " he asked in a doubtful tone, as if he were not 
 quite certain. 
 
 "That? That's a shilling." 
 
 " A shilling, is it ? And wot's a shilling for ? " 
 
 "For bringing me up from King's Cross." 
 
 "A shilling for that! A shilling from King's Cross! All 
 that distance for a shilling! " 
 
 " Why, isn't that enough ? " 
 
 " Of course not ! Only a shilling from King's Cross ! " 
 
166 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 "How much more do you want?" 
 
 " Eighteen pence more. 'Alf a crown is little enough from 
 King's Cross! " 
 
 " Certainly, if you say so. I didn't know, you know." 
 
 1 reached inside my buttoned coat. A genial smile supple- 
 mented the amazement and disgust which had occupied his 
 face. I pulled out some silver coins, and then a note-book and 
 pencil. With serene composure I wrote his number in my book, 
 returned it deliberately to my pocket, and then, with a benevolent 
 smile, 1 said: 
 
 " I'm sorry, you know, I didn't know. Eighteen pence, was 
 it? Well, here is eighteen pence. Make it two shillings if you 
 say so." 
 
 " I won't 'ave yer eighteen pence! " said he, with a foul oath, 
 as he struck his horse a furious blow and tore away, leaving the air 
 sulphurous with profanity. I insert this occurrence, in the first 
 place because it took place exactly as narrated ; and, in the second 
 place, because it gives a method for handling cabmen, who are 
 the biggest thieves and extortionists in all London. The law is 
 strict and unrelenting as to overcharges. I have scarcely had 
 anything to do with any cabman who has not attempted an over- 
 charge, and I have never yet seen one who would take the over- 
 charge after I had taken his number. 
 
 Without, Pentonville does not look much like a place of con- 
 finement. The grounds are fronted on all sides by streets, from 
 which they are separated only by a brick wall, not higher than 
 those which usually surround the grounds of any English resi- 
 dence. The prison consists of a number of detached buildings 
 within the irregular grounds. They are of brick, and have none 
 of that appearance of tremendous strength such as characterizes 
 the buildings at Joliet. 
 
 In stating that the buildings are detached, I have given what 
 appears to be the case from an exterior view. If one were up in 
 a balloon, and should look down in Pentonville, he would see an 
 enclosure of eight to ten acres. The wall has some massive 
 posterns in front, and small towers, at intervals, for the use of 
 guards. The buildings are four or five in number, and are set 
 with their ends to the main corridor, from which they radiate 
 like spokes in a wheel — the central building being the hub. 
 
 An air of silence and depression seems to prevail in and about 
 the prison. The warden who admitted me through the entrance 
 
A MODEL PRISON. 167 
 
 gateway is a stalwart person, but mildewed with silence. I 
 handed him my paper, which lie received, glanced over, returned, 
 and then unlocked a small door constructed in the great gate, 
 and admitted me, without a single word. I followed a wide, 
 graveled walk which led to the main entrance of one of the 
 " spokes," and rang the bell. It was opened, after due waiting, 
 by a man in blue, who looked at my document, and then turned, 
 without a word, and went down the hall and disappeared in a 
 side room, into which I followed. There were a couple of 
 chairs, a plain desk and table, and two silent men in blue, who, . 
 in dumb show, were looking over my credentials. One of them 
 took the paper and left the room, while the other sat and gazed 
 quietly into vacancy. After a long time the other came back, laid 
 a large ledger before me, and said "Sign." I signed my name 
 and residence, noticing as I did so that the date of the one pre- 
 ceding mine was some three weeks before, whereat I concluded 
 that Pentonville is not a favorite resort for picnics and other 
 gayeties of excursionists. 
 
 I began to be oppressed with the horrible silence, and to wish 
 the Pentonville model prison to the devil, or somewhere where I 
 was not. 
 
 My name was scanned rigorously, as if there was a probability 
 that I was somebody else who was trying to gain access by a 
 reckless forgery. The book was then taken away ; and some min- 
 utes later, an undersized veteran in blue, with a score of keys in 
 a bunch, entered the room and motioned me to follow him. He 
 held in his hand the paper which I had brought, and during our 
 tour through the prison it never left his hand. 
 
 Traversing the long hall, we came to a high iron gate, through 
 which we passed, and then found ourselves in the center of the 
 hub. Radiating from this center are four lofty corridors, which 
 contain the cells, which line each side of each corridor, and are 
 four tiers in height. It is an admirable arrangement. A man 
 standing in the center can take in every cell in the building at a 
 glance. In case of an /meute, a force at the center, or a gun, 
 would command every portion of the prison. Galleries run 
 along in front of each tier of cells. Winding* stairways asce.nd 
 and descend at short intervals. Iron platforms with hand rails 
 connect the various balconies at the point where they abut on 
 the central hall. The high roof is a circular arch through whose 
 glass there comes no light. At the inner end of each gallery a 
 
168 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " lift " is arranged for the hoisting of provisions to the various 
 tiers of cells. Here and there were men in blue patrolling the 
 balconies, who seemed engaged mainly in keeping silence. 
 
 I think it was the intention of my guide to show me through 
 without saying a word — certainly, at least, without my saying a 
 word. If such were his intention he encountered at least a par- 
 tial failure. He had introduced me to the central hall, and then 
 halted, and commenced gazing down the various corridors in 
 silence, thereby intimating that I was also to gaze down the cor- 
 ridors, and in silence. Since the sepulchral order " Sign ! " there 
 had not been a word said. I gave utterance to the second word 
 that was spoken since my " row " with the cab-driver: 
 
 " Quite Napoleonic," I said in desperation. " This central 
 hall, commanding all the aisles, embodies the same plan em- 
 ployed in the reconstruction of Paris — a central place, from 
 which streets radiate, and which can be commanded by ar- 
 tillery." 
 
 My guide seemed frightened at this outburst. He made no 
 answer. I ventured on a question : 
 
 " How many prisoners have you here ? " 
 
 There was an effort to speak, as if he had been tongue-tied for 
 years ; it was a minute or two before he could break through his 
 habit of silence. Then he spoke, but it was in a scared, hushed 
 voice, as if it were an innovation, and he were liable to a fine of 
 a guinea a syllable for each utterance. 
 
 " A little over eleven hundred." 
 
 Having broken the ice, having gotten him started, I kept him 
 going. 
 
 "Pentonville is knoVn as a model prison, is it not? Why is 
 it so called ? " 
 
 " Because the effects of separate confinement were first tried 
 here." 
 
 " By separate confinement do you mean solitary confinement? " 
 
 " No. In the system in, use here, every man has a cell to him- 
 self. He works in his cell, sleeps in it, eats in it, and never has 
 any contact with any other prisoner except in chapel, or when 
 exercising." 
 
 " What class of convicts do you have here ? " 
 
 " Only men, and those who have to serve out sentences of over 
 five years. All such prisoners have to spend nine months here, 
 and then they are sent to Portsmouth and put on the public 
 
A MODEL PKISON. 169 
 
 works. Formerly they had to stay here eighteen months ; then 
 the time was reduced to twelve months, and later, to nine months. 
 But let us look at the cells." 
 
 He led the way into an open one on the ground floor. In it 
 were a loom, an earthen water-closet, a wash-basin, a stool, 
 drinking-cup, table, and a low cot. On the table were two or 
 three books. In one corner were some shelves fastened to the 
 wall, on which, neatly folded, was packed the bedding. There 
 are also a shaded gas-burner and a bell-pull. Each cell is thir- 
 teen and a half feet long, seven and a half wide, and nine feet in 
 height. The cell, like the hall and corridors, was exquisitely 
 clean, and the air perfectly sweet and pure — having none of 
 that prison-smell which one notices at Joliet. 
 
 " This cell," said my guide, " is exactly like every other cell in 
 the building. All are heated by hot water coming through pipes 
 from the basement; and ventilation is secured by pipes con- 
 nected with each cell, and which lead into a large central shaft." 
 
 " What books can a prisoner have ? " 
 
 " That depends on who he is. All of them have a Bible and 
 prayei"-book, and can get a book from the library every fort- 
 night. If a convict is a scholar he can get books oftener." 
 
 "Have you any noted characters here now?" 
 
 " We have no noted characters ; all are unknown ones. When 
 a man enters here he ceases to have a name. He becomes a num- 
 ber. See here," he said, as he motioned to me to step outside. 
 " You see the number on this plate ? " and he pointed to a black, 
 metal plate, about four inches square, on which was painted 
 a number. " We don't know whether the man in this cell is a 
 peer or a costermonger ; we only know that the occupant is 
 number 2,001, or whatever the number may be. The plate has 
 also another use." 
 
 He stepped into the cell and pulled the bell-cord. A sonorous 
 gong rang out at the further end of the hall, and, at the same 
 time, the plate turned on a hinge, and stood at right angles to 
 the wall. " When anything ails a convict, or if, for any good 
 reason, he wishes to see a guard, he pulls his bell, and the plate 
 at once indicates which is the cell." 
 
 "What industries are carried on here?" 
 
 "Weaving, tailormg, and shoemaking. Every cell on the 
 ground floor is devoted to weaving. Each tier on the upper 
 floor has its particular trade." 
 
170 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " You have, I believe, no contract system in any part of Great 
 Britain — that is, the convicts work only for the government? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 Do the convicts pay expenses ? " 
 
 "Not here. The cost, last year, of keeping a convict was 
 about ten shillings each, a week, while their earnings were about 
 six shillings each for the same time." 
 
 "Let us go and see a squad exercising," and he led the way 
 down one of the corridors till we came to a small side door. 
 This he unlocked, when we passed through, and found ourselves 
 in a large open space, known as an exercising-yard. Here are 
 three stone walks, circular in form, one within the other, the 
 largest being perhaps fifty feet in diameter, and the smallest some 
 thirty feet across. Around these three walks was circling a 
 gang of convicts at a five-mile pace, its operations being super- 
 intended by a couple of guards. The uniform is not one which 
 a gentleman would select to wear to an evening party or an 
 opera. In color, it is a sort of whitey-brown, or dirty yellow, 
 as if the men were miners who had been working in yellow soil. 
 The cap is conical, the coat a blouse or smock, the breeches 
 loose, and cut ofl' just below the knee. Striped stockings of a 
 dark color, and low, hob-nailed shoes complete the dress. The 
 faces of the convicts are smoothly shaven, and their hair cropped 
 close to the scalp. 
 
 "They are exercised in gangs, as you see; and it is so arranged 
 that each man gets an hour each day in the open air, providing 
 the weather will permit. Once the visors of their caps were 
 made long, so that when turned down they served as a mask, 
 and this was always worn when the convicts were in company 
 with each other. The mask system has been abolished, as it 
 didn't seem to eflfect any particular good." 
 
 There are five exercising yards, all in the main consisting of 
 concentric rings, like the ones just described. The men move 
 for a short time in one direction, when, at the command "halt I 
 face about!" they stop, turn about and commence moving the 
 other way. Moving with intervals of almost six feet, the dis- 
 tance, together with the rapid motion and the vigilance of the 
 wardens, prevents anything like effective communication among 
 the convicts. 
 
A BRITISH PRISON. 171 
 
 LETTER XXVII. 
 
 A BRITISH PBISON. 
 
 London, Jan. 17, 1878. 
 
 fN my last, I conducted such readers of The Times as were 
 kind enough to accompany me, to Pentonville prison, where 
 I was obliged to leave them a couple of days, including 
 a Sunday. Hoping that none of them are any the worse for hav- 
 ing been under lock and key for a short period, we will, with 
 their permission, finish our inspection of the model prison. 
 
 I continued, as we progressed, to ply my guide with an inces- 
 sant succession of questions. It had been such hard work to get 
 his mouth open that I dared not let him shut it. Hence, I kept 
 his unused jaws in a condition of activity which must have had 
 a most fatiguing effect. 
 
 "By the way," I asked, "is the idea involved in this prison 
 an English invention — that is to say, is it the first of the 
 kind ? " 
 
 " O, certainly. It's an English idea. It's been in use now 
 about forty years." 
 
 Having, since my arrival in England, had a rather unpleasant 
 experience in endeavoring to act the part of an evangelist in 
 spreading American ideas, I omitted to tell him that Pentonville 
 prison is founded upon an American model ; that Messrs. Craw, 
 ford and Russell were sent over to Philadelphia to examine the 
 system there in use; and that, some three years later, in 1837, 
 Lord John Russell, Secretary of State, issued a circular recom- 
 mending the employment of the Philadelphia, or separate, system 
 of penal treatment. 
 
 Just here some English gentleman may be tempted to exclaim: 
 " Oh, well, you know, America may have taught us something 
 about handling convicts, because she has had so many more of 
 them, you know ! " 
 
 To which I could only respond that, if America has had an 
 unusual experience in regard to .her great number of criminals, 
 there is only to be pleaded her English descent, and the uncom- 
 mon cheapness of steerage travel between Liverpool and the 
 shores of the New World. 
 
 As intimated, I did not inform my guide about Crawford and 
 Russell, or the parliamentary debates, or the official circular of 
 
172 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 the Secretary of State. I knew lie was disgusted at the rate I 
 was asking questions ; and, in case I told him we had the same 
 thing in America, he might, in his just irritation, have asked me 
 why the deuce I had traveled three thousand miles to see some- 
 thing which 1 knew all about already, 
 
 "Can a man shorten his period here by good behavior?" I 
 asked. 
 
 " No ; he must serve out his nine months in any case." 
 
 " What inducements, then, has he to good conduct ? " 
 
 " Several. If he carries a first-class certificate when he leaves 
 liere, it is taken into consideration at the public works, and gets 
 him, in time, a ticket-of-leave. Besides that, good behavior 
 counts for something, here. A convict may receive and send a 
 greater number of letters if his deportment is correct. He has 
 greater privileges in o|her directions. He is taken into the 
 bakery, or some other portion of the prison, where his work is 
 light, and he has companions. Those who work well, and have 
 no report against them, receive a gratuity for a certain amount 
 of labor. In short, a good-conduct badge entitles a convict to 
 many little favors which he highly values." 
 
 " How about letters to friends? " 
 
 " A convict may write one letter when he is received, and an- 
 other at the end of three months. If he be all right, the intervals 
 between writing grow shorter. All letters must be from respect- 
 «,ble friends, and contain no news of general events, or anything 
 of an improper tendency." 
 
 " Can they receive visits ? " 
 
 " Yes, at stated intervals of three months, and for half an hour. 
 IVhen a convict sees a relative or friend, they communicate 
 through iron grates, which keep them some distance apart. Be- 
 tween them a man is stationed who hears all that is said, and 
 who sees that nothing is passed to the prisoner." 
 
 Just then we turned into a corridor, and almost ran against a 
 stout, pleasant-faced individual in plain clothes. My guide in- 
 stantly placed himself at " attention," and brought his hand to 
 his cap with a respectful salute. 
 
 " Who is it?" asked the man in plain clothes, as he looked me 
 over. 
 
 " A gentleman to see the prison on the order of the Secretary 
 of State." 
 
 " Any profession ? " 
 
A BRITISH PKISON. 173- 
 
 I informed him tliat I was a humble American pilgrim, a 
 journalist by choice as well as necessity, and engaged in getting 
 information about all sorts of English excellencies for the pur- 
 pose of transporting them to the soil of the New World. 
 
 He graciously bowed, told my guide to "show him every- 
 thing," and then strode away. 
 
 "The governor of the prison," said my guide, humbly and 
 hurriedly, as soon as the dignitary was safely out of ear-shot. 
 
 I may here say that substantially the same thing occurred at 
 short intervals during the remainder of my visit. Whenever we 
 passed into any new room some Cerberus would pounce on us 
 and look me over with an expression which said as plainly as 
 
 words : 
 
 " Oh, I see throuo-h you ! You've got a pocket full of files, and 
 there are jimmies under your coat, and notes for convicts in the 
 lining of your hat." 
 
 " A gentleman to see the prison on an order from the Secretary 
 of State," would say my guide, apologetically, and with an air 
 which seemed to assert : " I know as well as you do that there's 
 something wrong here ; but I'll catch him at it yet." 
 
 The doctor rather pleased me. When we entered the hall of 
 the infirmary, my guide halted me before the open door of a 
 room, which, from its array of bottles, I saw was the drug-shop. 
 A man in civilian's dress stood in the further corner, at a desk, 
 with his side and half-face toward me. My guide entered, 
 reached the middle of the room, drew himself up, halted, and 
 saluted. 
 
 " Who is it?" said the man at the desk, without looking up. 
 
 " A gentleman to see the prison, on an order from the Secretary 
 of State." 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 "An American journalist." 
 
 " What does he want ? " 
 
 " To learn how this great country conducts her penal institu- 
 tions," I answered from the hall, through the open door. 
 
 " Humph ! " said the doctor. 
 
 My guide backed out. The doctor never looked up. He 
 missed seeing my benignant face. It might have been the great- 
 Josef Medill who stood before him, and yet he would never have 
 known it. 
 
 " Do you have to resort to punishment to any considerable ex- 
 
174 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 tent?" I asked, as soon as we had pulled away from the stoical 
 doctor. 
 
 "Not very largely." 
 
 "What punishments are inflicted?" 
 
 " Solitary confinement on bread and water, and loss of privi- 
 leges.'' 
 
 " In America, we sometimes duck a convict in ice-water when 
 he is feverish with heart disease or some other form of disobe- 
 dience. Do you cool off your refractory subjects in that way ; or 
 do you use the shower-bath, or the whip?" 
 
 " In cases where a prisoner assaults another we use the whip, 
 and he gets from five to twenty lashes, according to his oflFense. 
 We never use shower-baths or ice-water punishment. If a con- 
 vict tries to escape he is obliged, when he goes to bed, to put his 
 clothes outside the cell, so that in case he should get away he 
 would have nothing to wear." 
 
 The governor had told him to "show me everything." He 
 obeyed orders, except so far as nearly everything I wished to see 
 was concerned. He did not, for instance, show me the cells for 
 solitary punishment, or the cat with which the lashing is done, 
 and a few other little things of the same sort. 
 
 The general plan of the infirmary is that of cells, each of 
 "which is for a patient. They differ from the ordinary cells simply 
 in being a trifle larger, and with more light and ventilation. 
 There are two rooms which contain several beds each. These 
 are for patients whose cases demand an extra allowance of fresh 
 air. 
 
 "What are the prevailing types of disease?" 
 
 " Nearly all are bronchitis, consumption and catarrh." 
 
 "Don't you have fevers?" 
 
 " Very rarely." 
 
 " How about the eff'ect of separate confinement on the mental 
 condition of the convicts?" 
 
 " Oh, it doesn't affect them unfavorably." 
 
 " Is there no increase in lunacy over that connected with other 
 systems of confinement ? " 
 
 " No ; on the contrary the average is in favor of separate con- 
 finement." 
 
 Here I may inject a word or two bearing on this question. 
 Originally, the statistics of insanity showed that there were sev- 
 eral times as many cases at Pentonville as among convicts in 
 
A BRITISH PRISON. 175 
 
 other institutions. At one time the cases of insanity in the 
 model prison reached the extraordinary total of a fraction over 
 sixty-two for each ten thousand prisoners, while in the other in- 
 stitutions the percentage was only 5.8. By shortening the term 
 of imprisonment from eighteen months to nine months, and by 
 other alterations and improvements, such as abolishing the mask, 
 better ventilation, and the brisk, out-door daily walk, the ratio 
 of insanity has been reduced to nearly one-sixth of its original 
 dimensions, although, I believe, Pentonville still leads all other 
 prisons and systems in its percentage of lunacy. 
 
 " Do you have difBculty in preventing the prisoners from com- 
 municating with each other?" I asked, as we were inspecting 
 the bakeries. 
 
 " It is utterly impossible to prevent all communication. The 
 men exchange signs and glances when they are exercising. 
 Sometimes in passing a cell a convict will toss in a note. In the 
 chapel, although they are separated by partitions which reach 
 above their shoulders, they manage sometimes to pass notes to 
 each other, although there are wardens on elevated seats, who 
 overlook every portion of the chapel. They also have a dumb 
 alphabet, somewhat like that in use by mutes. Another method 
 is by rapping softly on the walls of the cells. One rap means 
 «, two means b, and so on through. With this they will commu- 
 nicate with each other, telling their names, history, offense, and 
 other matters. It is a sort of telegraphic system, and although 
 wardens in list slippers patrol the corridors all the time at night, 
 and are constantly flashing their bull's-eyes into the cells, the 
 thing can't be wholly prevented. Move on there! Look the 
 other way! " 
 
 This last remark was addressed to a convict who was standing 
 at the door of a cell, a few yards away, and was gazing very in- 
 tently at the warden and his visitor. Very humbly and rapidly, 
 the convict turned his back and walked away. 
 
 All the convicts seem to be under a sort of military drill and 
 discipline. Whenever we entered a bake-room or other place 
 where there were any of them, they instantly, upon our appear- 
 ance, ranged themselves in line, and stood faced to the front till 
 we passed. 
 
 The ration is a plentiful one, consisting of meat, bread, pota- 
 toes, soup, and cocoa — tea or coflee not being allowed. The 
 prisoners all seem robust and healthy, there being in the in- 
 
176 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 firmary not more than a dozen out of a total of over eleven 
 hundred convicts. 
 
 My guide rushed me along at such a pace that he had shown 
 me everything, raced me througli to the front hall, and had me- 
 locked out into the street in less than an hour from the time of 
 my entrance. Evidently visitors are not in demand at Penton- 
 ville. If I ever go there again, it will certainly not be under any 
 pressure less potent than a government escort. 
 
 It is claimed tliat the separate system now in use at Penton- 
 ville has great advantages oyer its predecessor — the " silent "^ 
 system — in reforming the convict. It certainly has one great 
 superiority over the system in use at Joliet in preventing the as- 
 sociation of criminals, whereby the comparatively young and 
 innocent are mixed by contact with the hardened ruffians in the 
 same gang. Under the Pentonville system, men are thrown upon 
 themselves. If there be anj^ good remaining in their nature, it 
 is apt to be developed by reflection, and by the absence of ma- 
 lignant examples, and ferocious sympathy. It is to be feared 
 that there is much hypocrisy in the profession of religious inter- 
 est among criminals; nevertheless, all are not to be regarded 
 with suspicion; and hence, making due allowance for the spu- 
 rious professions of the Pentonville convicts, there is no question 
 that most substantial reformatory results are obtained from, the 
 system in use. 
 
 LETTER XXVIII. 
 
 LONDON 'BUS DRIVER. 
 
 London, January 24, 1878. 
 
 tHE next best thing to keeping one's own carriage in Lon- 
 don is to ride by the side of the driver on an omnibus. 
 The perch is an elevated one. One looks down on the 
 crowds and gains an extended coup d^ceil of the streets. Elevated 
 so high, one is above the brick walls with their tops armed with 
 fractured glass, and can take in the yards beyond en passant. I 
 may say that, after having thus looked over many hundreds of 
 these brick and glass defenses to the average "Englishman's. 
 
LONDON 'bus driver. 177 
 
 castle," I am satisfied that they are not erected to guard anything 
 very precious. Rather they seem to be barriers put up to prevent 
 the world from seeing what a poor, dingy, unprepossessing 
 "yard" often lies behind them. A few stunted flowers, a few 
 square inches of grass, a thriving ivy, these are the treasures 
 which arc " protected " by these lofty walls with their broken 
 bottles and their general noli-me-tangere expression. 
 
 It reminds one of the Scotchman who made such a fight with 
 the highwaymen because lie was ashamed to let them know how 
 contemptible was the amount he had in his purse. 
 
 A seat by the 'bus driver has other advantages than those con- 
 nected with sight-seeing. The driver is a character of inex- 
 haustible interest. His world is limited in one respect — not 
 extending beyond the streets along which, year after year, he 
 comes and goes But the characters, incidents, occurrences 
 within this world are limitless, and he knows them as the lover 
 knows the details of his mistress' features, or a skillful violinist 
 knows the stops on the finger-board. 
 
 Views of life taken from such an elevated standpoint are 
 broader, freer, than those which we ordinary mortals obtain from 
 the dead level of the human plane. The driver is near enough 
 to humanity to comprehend it and sympathize with it, and yet 
 sutBciently remote not to be tainted with the dirt of its jostling 
 elbows, or to be splashed by the mud of its passing wheels. His 
 views of life are, therefore, at once correct and cleanly. 
 
 Withal, as a general thing, he is sociable. He has observed 
 much and is willing to communicate his knowledge to a patient 
 and respectful listener. Such am I ; and I hereby publicly and 
 most gratefully tender my sincere thanks to the guild of 'bus 
 drivers for the mass of interesting and always peculiar informa- 
 tion with which they have favored me. 
 
 Let me say here, for the benefit of any one who may be dis- 
 posed to become a student in this school, that he must come 
 humbly, and as a learner. His soul must be a tabula rasa. He 
 must sit at the feet of the professors on the box as at those of a 
 Gamaliel. He must commence by forcing himself to believe 
 that he knows nothing. Through all his course of study he must 
 always ask — never communicate. If he be thus humble, and 
 solicitous to learn, there is no end to the information he will ac- 
 quire, the novel, strengthening, valuable philosophy he will 
 become imbued with. 
 13 
 
178 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 One's admiration of the 'bus driver increases as one knows him 
 better. He is, in the main, a philosopher whose study is human 
 nature. But he is much more than a mere philosopher. He has 
 Ills practical duties to perform. All the time that he is studying 
 the great subject of humanity, he also fills the not inconsiderable 
 role of instructor to the endless succession of students who place 
 themselves beneath his care. One would fancy that either of 
 these pursuits would be enough for the capacity, the time, the 
 genius of one man. Each of them is suflBcient in the case of an 
 ordinary man. But he is no ordinary man ; fatiguing and com- 
 prehensive as are these two roles, they constitute but a small part 
 of the duties of this wonderful person. He has a thousand other 
 things to do. 
 
 He is careful of the interests of the company, and hence has 
 an eye upon the passing tlirongs so as never to overlook the up- 
 lifted finger, the waving umbrella of the would-be passenger. 
 Nay, more; so acute is his observation that he can tell by the 
 mere expression of a person whether he or she wishes a 'bus, and 
 if so, whether or not the particular one that is passing. This is 
 no boy's play; but this is not yet all. He must keep his eye out 
 for vehicles which are in his way, and be prepared to deluge the 
 offender with whatever class of chaflF or abuse is best suited to 
 tlie case. This feature is a wonderful one to the student who sits 
 humbly beside tlie great man. The flexibility and adaptation of 
 the Jehu of the 'bus are marvelous. The driver of a dust-cart 
 obviously needs different treatment from that deserved by a cos- 
 termonger who drives a donkey-cart, or the stiff and liveried 
 cuacliman of some swell turnout. All these, so to speak, require 
 different " handling," and thej^ get it. The chaff or the rebuke 
 which is extended to a coal-cart is varied in turn as the offender is 
 an equestrian, a flower-hawker, a four-horse drag, or a swell, with 
 a glass in one eye, wlio pulls the ribbons over a pair of high- 
 stepping thoroughbreds. 
 
 Nor is this all. He notices everything worthy of note in the 
 street or on the sidewalk. A woman with a pretty foot is de- 
 tected and commented on. He sees everything unique and outre, 
 and gives it a passing comment. Nor does he stop here. He 
 sees the driver of every other 'bus that we meet, and they ex- 
 change mystic signals with their whips, and confidences by 
 gestures, and enigmatical sentences, such as, " 'E's got it 'ot!" 
 There are whole volumes exchanged between two drivers, in 
 
LONDON 'bus DKIVEK. 179 
 
 passing, by a movemeat of the thumb, a lifting of the butt of the 
 whip. 
 
 And finally this wonderful man has, in addition to all these 
 duties, to keep up an incessant yelling to pedestrians. If we are 
 going to the bank and Whitechapel, he calls at every few steps, 
 ^'Bink! Bink! Wichipple! Wichipple! Bing-Bink!" If we 
 are going toward Royal Oak it is equally his duty to bawl " Re- 
 luke! Re-luke! " and to see that not a single person who desires 
 to go in either direction shall be left behind. 
 
 Of course an individual with such peculiarities of character 
 must be equally marked in his personal appearance. There are 
 differences naturally, but they are of degree rather than of kind. 
 The driver who pulls the reins over a pair of 'osses that travel 
 along aristocratic Knightsbridge and Piccadilly absorbs in his 
 appearance more or less of the aristocratic atmosphere through 
 which he constantly travels. His brother Jarvy, who comes 
 down Hamstead road, and so along Tottenham Court road toward 
 the city, breathes an air impregnated with the odors of work- 
 shops and the pungent ammoniacal aroma of mews and stabling. 
 He has less hauteur than the other. In politics he is a trifle less 
 a Tory, and occasionally would seem to have wild and fantastic 
 bursts which are pronouncedly democratic in their tendencies. 
 He is, in short, a little less genteel and poised and more radical 
 than the Piccadilly aristocrat. 
 
 Otherwise they are much the same. The representative 'bus 
 driver is a man about fifty to sixty years of age. He wears 
 always a dress hat. He is stout as to body, and, during these 
 wintry days of spring, he has his throat so wrapped up that the 
 diameter of his neck is but little less than that of his capacious 
 waist. His skin is the color of well-tanned sole leather — except 
 his cheeks. These are the richest purple, like ripest skin of 
 grapes. His jowls are great masses of flesh, which flow over his 
 neck-wrapping like a monstrous fleshy cataract. His nose is a 
 gigantic bulb, a royal purple in tone, mottled with spots of crim- 
 son and varied as to surface by a network of pits, or rather 
 caverns. His dress hat is pitched well forward on his nose ; his 
 hands are always carefully gloved ; his reins are clasped method- 
 ically in his left hand, and his whip, when in rest, crosses in front 
 of him at an artistic angle. 
 
 I have two of these distinguished gentlemen whom I usually 
 patronize, or, to be more exact, who patronize me. One is a 
 
180 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 veteran, who comes down from breezy Kilburn, and who usually 
 has a smart bouquet in his button-hole. The otlier is a younger 
 man, who comes over from Bayswater. They piclc me up at 
 Praed street, and tlien we go rattling over the stone blocks of 
 Edgware road till we strike Marble x\.rch of Hyde Park. Thence 
 we bowl merrily along the wooden pavement of Oxford street ; 
 turn and go grinding and crunching over the macadam of swell 
 Regent street; arouud into Pall Mall, and thence by Trafalgar 
 square and Nelson's towering monument into the Strand. 
 
 The veteran instructs by experience; the junior by observa- 
 tion. The one sees everything that does occur; the other has 
 seen everything that has occurred. The elder is a staunch con- 
 servative; the younger has just a flavor of radicalism. Both hate 
 the Rooshans; and both agree in believing that London is a 
 center around which all the rest of the world revolves, getting 
 from it heat, light and civilization. 
 
 From the elder I have received such stores of information that 
 I feel I am a better and a wiser man. It is not always that he 
 will talk. We sometimes go a whole trip without an exchange 
 of words. He is wrapped in deep thought; and knowing how 
 mighty are the problems which now and then invoke the aid of 
 his capacious intellect, I invariably respect his silence. Some- 
 times, however, he talks. On such occasions it is when the flavor 
 of juniper on his breath is strongest, and a richer than purple 
 dyes his cheek. 
 
 A couple of daj's ago when he came along he was in his better 
 or more communicative mood. As we waited a moment, he gave 
 a jerk of his thumb toward the sidewalk. A man stood there 
 whose countenance was a study. His complexion was a dirty 
 red. His features were swollen until the flesh seemed on the 
 point of bursting through the skin. One eye was closed. The 
 other looked through a narrow slit whose edges exuded pus. He 
 looked like a huge, disgusting boil in a high state of inflamma- 
 tion. 
 
 " For heaven's sake, what ails that creature? " I asked. 
 
 " Forty goes o' gin a day is wot's the matter with 'im," he 
 answered. 
 
 " Who is he ? Do you know him ? " 
 
 " Yes, I knows 'im. 'E's the time-keeper for the 'bus com- 
 pany." 
 
 He then proceeded to give me some points in the chap's his- 
 
LONDON 'BUS DRIVER. 
 
 181 
 
 tory. He had been transported many years ago for some crime. 
 This led me to ask how the London Omnibus Company would 
 employ such men. 
 
 " The company's a bad lot," he went on to say. " Now, there's 
 the general manager of the company. 'E's a bad un, 'e is, too.'" 
 
 " What's he done, and what kind of a man is he ? " I asked. 
 
 liONDON 'bus DRIVBB. 
 
 " He's a regular bad un. A good many years ago, 'e was sent 
 across the water for somethin' 'e'd done. Wen 'is time is hout, or 
 he gets a ticket-o'-leaf, he comes back and is made the general 
 manager of the Omnibus Company. Then he cuts down our 
 wages and puts all sorts o' chaps to watchin' the guards to see 
 whether they was fair with the company. But it isn't all. There's 
 something worse to come. 'E's an atheist, 'e is, and don't believe 
 
182 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 in either God nor devil. And that isn't all neither. 'E's a " 
 
 here he paused as if to give me time to brace myself for the 
 tremendous revelation, and then added, " 'E's a teetotaler! " 
 
 Was there ever anything more cumulative than this? He 
 "begins small. He only lets out at first that the man was once a 
 thief, or something similar. Then comes the more damaging fact 
 that he employs " spotters " to prevent the guards from stealing. 
 Then he begins to pile it on. He is an atheist ! Mark w^hat a 
 magnificent crescendo, and which leads and prepares one for the 
 astounding denouement. And now finally comes the tremendous 
 finish — the thief, the suspicious official, the hardened atheist capa 
 the infamy of his life by being a — teetotaler! 
 
 I was too much thunderstruck with the climax to even reply 
 to his closing question, " And wot worse could be said of a man 
 than that ? " 
 
 I asked: 
 
 " What wages are paid drivers and conductors ? " 
 
 " The London Omnibus Company pays drivers six shillings a 
 day, and conductors they gets four shillings a day," 
 
 " For how many hours' work ? " 
 
 " Fourteen hours a day." 
 
 To American readers not familiar with sterling money, I may 
 say that these amounts respectively represent $1 50 and $1 per 
 day. 
 
 " Can a man live on four shillings a day ? " 
 
 " 'E cawn't, indeed. If 'e's got a family 'e doesn't 'ave a 
 bloomin' time on four shillings a day." 
 
 " I suppose as the guards have to live, they make it up some- 
 how ? " 
 
 " Of course they does. They 'as a 'ard time. Many of 'em 
 never sees their families except in bed from one year's end ta 
 t'other." 
 
 " How many 'busses has the company?" 
 
 "About fifteen hundred." 
 
 "And what does each 'bus average a day?" 
 
 "From two pun ten to three pun ten" ($12 50 to $17 50). 
 " They pays ten shillings a day to driver and guard, and it costs 
 just a pound more a day to feed and keep up the stock." 
 
 " Then the profit is from one pound ten to two pounds ten a 
 day on each 'bus ? " 
 
 "That's hit to a farden." 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT. 183 
 
 "Well, I should call that a pretty fair profit. Omnibus stock 
 must be a good tiling to have around in a dull season. How many 
 miles does a team travel in a day ? " 
 
 " From ten to fifteen. Never hany more than that." 
 
 " Is this a regular 'bus ? " 
 
 "No; this 'bus do not belong to the company. There's a man 
 as owns three 'buses, and we runs in with the regilar ones and 
 makes time with 'em. Our guvner isn't no 'bus company. 'E 
 pays drivers seven shillings a day and guai'ds five shillings. 'E 
 don't spend his money for detectives a-watchin' to see if a guard 
 knocks down a penny — expendin' two shillings to save a ha'- 
 penny. 'E says to us: ' Boys, I'm a-runnin' these 'busses to make 
 money. I don't want to make too much. All I wants is wot is 
 fair. Now if you boys wants a drink any time just 'ave it. I 
 shawn't watch you, an' if the receipts come in satisfaktory, hits 
 all right. If they isn't satisfaktory, an' I thinks you doesn't 
 divide strictly fair an' honorbul, tiien I'll discharge you quicker'n 
 winkin'.' That's wot 'e says, an' I calls that a helevated way o' 
 doin' business." 
 
 I agreed with him, and wondered how such an arrangement 
 would work in Chicago. Perhaps Messrs. Lake, Turner, and 
 the rest may avail themselves of this suggestion and introduce 
 the system on the street railways. 
 
 LETTER XX:IX. 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 London, Jan. 31, 1878. 
 
 tN a letter sent a short time since I gave sketches of some 
 English writers whom I have met, from time to time ; and 
 in that I promised to continue the subject as opportunity 
 offered. The original intention was to group certain classes of 
 writers in each letter — novelists in one, journalists and essayists 
 in another, scientists in a third, and so on. I find, however, that 
 such a grouping is not possible, for the reason that many of the 
 English writers do not belong to any one class, but to several. 
 
184 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Men like Justin McCarthy, for instance, are novelists, essayists, 
 journalists, all in one. Hence, abandoning the original plan 
 of groups of similarities, I shall take the English bookmakers 
 as I find them on my note-book, and shall pay no attention to 
 anything save their personal qualities. 
 
 The foremost novelist in England to-day is George Eliot. She 
 is not only the first in England, but since the death of George 
 Sand — whom she resembles in many respects — she is the first 
 lady novelist in existence. At least, such seems to be the fact to 
 one who is within the powerful magnetism of her presence. It 
 may be that, at a great distance, she might seem less conspicu- 
 ous. In fact, while alwaj^s recognizing her great genius, she 
 never seemed so alone in the possession of transcendant ability 
 as since I have come within the atmosphere of her life and la- 
 bors. Probably you who are in distant America can judge her 
 more accurately; but in no case can distance, however great, 
 much impair the dimensions of her commanding position. 
 
 Before describing the George Eliot of to-day, let me refer for a 
 moment to her earlj^ life. Her father was steward of the estates 
 of the Marquis of Aylesbury, at Nuneaton, and those of Sir 
 Robert Peel at Tamworth. He was a very successful manager, 
 and when lie died he left his business to a son, who yet cares for 
 the same estates. I know nothing of Miss Evans' early life fur- 
 ther than that her first literary work dates back to 1845 or 1846, 
 and was a translation from the German of Strauss' "Life of 
 Jesus." The rationalistic quality of this work, and the knowl- 
 edge of German necessary to its translation, afford one a hint as 
 to the spiritual tendencies of, and the amount of informatioa 
 possessed by, one who could then have been only a very young 
 girl. Her next production made its a.\)\)eara.nce in Blackwood^ s, 
 and was entitled " Scenes in Clerical Life." Her first hit was 
 " Adam Bede." Perhaps it may be stated as probable that Miss 
 Evans was stimulated in the direction and production of fiction 
 by the wonderful success of Charlotte Bronte, whose " Jane 
 Eyre" had just then taken the English world by storm. 
 
 At that period in Miss Evans' life, or at least many years ago, 
 George H. Lewes was editor of some popular magazine — I be- 
 lieve The Westminster Review. He is a man* well known in lit- 
 erature, having written " Physiology of Common Life," " The 
 Life of Goethe," a translation of Comte's philosophical works, 
 
 * Since Deceased. 
 
GEOKGE ELIOT. 185 
 
 and other valuable and elevated books. Mr. Lewes and Miss 
 Evans became friends. Soon after this, Lewes' wife eloped with 
 Thornton Hunt, a son of the famous Leigh Hunt — a person who 
 in appearance and intellect was every way inferior to the man 
 whose wife he carried away. There were some children, whose 
 motherless condition excited Miss Evans' pity, and she took up 
 her residence in Lewes' house, in order to care for them. By 
 some trick, Mrs. Lewes managed to get an interview with Lewes 
 under circumstances which had the effect to prevent a divorce 
 during her lifetime. She then left, and never returned. Lewes 
 and Miss Evans went abroad, and were united under the laws 
 of a foreign state. Whatever may have been the quality of the 
 union then, the subsequent death of Mrs. Lewes has had the 
 effect to make it less objectionable. 
 
 I have thus very briefly outlined George Eliot's earlier life, for 
 the reason that there is a very general misunderstanding in re- 
 gard to it in America, and because it furnishes an explanation 
 of her extraordinary sensitiveness, her reserve, her almost total 
 seclusion from the general public. 
 
 George Eliot is a woman who must have passed her tenth lus- 
 trum. Despite this, her hair, a very dark brown, has none of 
 those silver threads which one might expect when the burden 
 of over half a century of years is superimposed by incessant 
 labor and by experiences full of desolation. She is not hand- 
 some. Her face is long, pale, with a small, sensitive mouth. Her 
 eyes are a vivid, warm, blue-gray, full of depth, now keenly per- 
 ceptive, now dreamily introspective, always full of sadness. Her 
 hair, worn low, gives a womanly effect to a finel3'-intellectual 
 forehead. Her general expression is that of wearied sensitive- 
 ness — a sensitiveness whose development touches so closely on 
 suffering that they merge into each other, leaving it doubtful 
 where the one ends or the other begins. 
 
 Despite its sadness and suggestion of suffering, it is a face full 
 of resolute determination. This quality, however, seems the 
 dominancy of pure will-power. Her slender figure has no ex- 
 pression of robust energy. Her will seems far in excess of her 
 physical capacities ; and her energy is thus an intellectual instead 
 of a physical fact. She is, in spite of her sensitive suggestions, 
 full of a grand repose. Her voice is low and penetrating ; and 
 she is, almost without exception, one of the greatest of living 
 conversationalists. 
 
186 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " Do you know George Eliot well ? " I inquired of a well-known 
 essayist. 
 
 " Yes, I do." 
 
 " Wliat is your estimate of lier ? " 
 
 " Well, I'll tell you. I am in a position where I often meet 
 such people as Huxley, Tyndall, Browning, and others. I am 
 not afraid to meet them, for I may say without any vanity that I 
 am their peer. But with George Eliot it is different. She knows 
 more than I do. I am afraid of her. She knows everything. 
 History, philosophy ancient and modern, all sciences and lan- 
 guages are known to her. She is the most accomplished amateur 
 pianist in England." 
 
 "And so you think " 
 
 " I think she is the most adoraoie woman that ever lived! " 
 
 What the witty Mrs. Trench once said of Madame de Stael — . 
 that she is " consolingly ugly " — will apply to George Eliot,, 
 with the reservation, however, that her plain features are so 
 sanctified by her expression that she becomes a very beautiful 
 woman. She is morbidly sensitive in regard to her appearance 
 and certain phases of her life. She has been offered fabulous 
 sums by London photographers if she would sit for her picture, 
 but she has always refused. So far as I know there is not a pic- 
 ture of her in existence. She goes little or none in society, but 
 has weekly receptions, to which only a certain class is admit- 
 ted. She may be often seen at the classical matinees, given 
 every Saturday at St. James' Hall ; and occasionally she may be 
 seen on the street with a pair of spanking bays, a very swell car- 
 riage, and liveried servants. 
 
 I have been assured that she has already cleared £40,000 on 
 her last work, "Daniel Deronda." This is a godsend in one 
 sense, for although Lewes is a man of unquestioned ability, his 
 books do not sell. 
 
 Her home-life is a very charming one. She exercises an active 
 supervision, and develops a most comprehensive management 
 and exquisite taste in every detail, of the household. In compo- 
 sition, she is very slow and methodical, writing, I have been 
 assured, not more than from forty to sixty lines a day. When a 
 book is completed, she is in such a state of nervous exhaustion 
 that Mr. Lewes takes her to Italy, or Southern France, to re- 
 cuperate. While writing she must be scrupulously arranged as 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 187 
 
 to person, while every detail of her surroundings must be in har- 
 monious place. 
 
 Her information is encyclopedical in its extent, and as exact as 
 the sciences. She belongs to a materialistic school of thought, 
 in which Leslie Stephens and George H. Lewes occupy about the 
 same position that do Huxley and Tyndall in the scientific school 
 of which they are the head. 
 
 I may conclude this notice of her with a conversation which I 
 had with a gentleman who has known her many years: 
 
 " How do you account for her extreme sensitiveness, and the 
 palpable flavor of hopelessness — something despairing — which 
 seems to pervade all her works ? " 
 
 " I think," said my friend, " it may be because all great genius 
 is more or less morbid and sensitive. There is, however, an or- 
 thodox element which sees in this hopelessness a consequence of 
 her religious belief, or rather unbelief In its view, she writes 
 as one without faith, without hope. But apart from this, she is 
 a most extraordinary woman. She is a profound student and a 
 genuine artist. She never undertakes anything, without com- 
 plete, exhaustive preparation." 
 
 " Why did she write ' Daniel Deronda ? ' There are people un- 
 appreciative enough to assert that she wrote it in order to bid for 
 the support of the Jewish world." 
 
 " It is not so She wrote the book because she became inter- 
 ested in Jewish history and Jewish men and women, whose 
 record as a race is full of the most dramatic interest to an artist 
 like herself Moreover, she was led into it by a chivalrous desire 
 to right a wronged people, just as she was led to taking charge 
 of Lewes' motherless children." 
 
 " But you know Disraeli has been all over the same ground?" 
 
 " Yes, and no. Her work is an entire contrast to Disraeli's. 
 She has elaborated the genuine qualities of tlie Jewish people. 
 Disraeli is a snob. He could handle only princes and people 
 who occupied high social positions. She has constructed charac- 
 ters which Disraeli could not even understand. In short, I be- 
 lieve 'Daniel Deronda' to be the highest production of an 
 inspired artist." 
 
 My friend then proceeded to argue «that, in addition to these 
 motives for writing " Daniel Deronda," there are others, promi- 
 nent among which is a desire to perpetuate a very profound and 
 
188 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 subtle philosophy connected with social life. But as this feature 
 belongs more especially to a review of her books rather than a 
 sketch of the woman, I omit his conclusions. 
 
 LETTER XXX 
 
 DSPARTMENT OP THK EXTERIOR. 
 
 London, Feb. 5, 1878. 
 
 to gain admission into either House of Parliament during 
 the evenings devoted to debate on the motion for a vote of 
 credit, has been as difficult for an outsider as getting into 
 heaven under the most cast-iron, exclusive system of orthodox 
 salvation. In the first place, the accommodations for spectators 
 are miserably circumscribed — it being in the House of Parlia- 
 ment, as in every other public building in the country, the case 
 that everything is for the officials and nothing for the public. 
 The latter seems regarded as an impertinent nuisance, which has 
 no business with official matters; and to snub and restrain which 
 no end of agencies is employed. If England would take the 
 money which she now pays to policemen and other understrap- 
 pers to keep back and brow-beat the public, and would use it to 
 enlarge the spectators' galleries of her public buildings, there 
 would be ample room for everybody, and some to spare. 
 
 The House of Commons has, away up under the roof, a kennel, 
 grated over on the side which overlooks the members' seats. 
 This is the "women's gallery." It holds the enormous number 
 of forty! One choosing to do so might draw from this fact a 
 conclusion as to the estimate placed upon women. This isolation 
 is the logical outgrowth of a domestic system akin to that of the 
 Turks, in which the seclusion of women is demanded. 
 
 This narrow kennel, with its close grating, is a permanent in- 
 sult to every English woman. It says, in substance: "Women 
 are so trivial and conteraptible that there is no need of any ex- 
 tended accommodations admitting them to witness the conduct 
 of public business. And there is so little confidence to be placed 
 in them that a grating must be used to prevent their getting up 
 
DEPARTMENT OF THE EXTEKIOR. 189 
 
 improper flirtations with the distinguislied and irresistible legis- 
 lators in the hall below." 
 
 As exhibited by the construction of the House of Commons, 
 the gradation of things here is about thus: Officialism, much 
 account; the British public, little account; women, less account; 
 foreigners and the outside world, no account whatever. 
 
 The reporters' gallery contains room for about one-fifth the 
 force needed to represent the leading journals of London. I 
 heard, on yesterday, the editor and chief proprietor of a leading 
 London newspaper complaining that he has been unable to gain 
 admission to the House as a spectator during the debates, and 
 equally unable to secure a seat for a reporter in the proper 
 gallery. 
 
 Each member of the House of Commons has the disposition 
 of two seats in the ladies' gallery. As there are some seven hun- 
 dred members, it becomes a problem how the fourteen hundred 
 seats which they control can be harmonized with the fact that 
 the woman's gallery only seats forty people. I believe this is 
 done by balloting, or drawing lots, whereby twenty members are 
 selected who have the right to give out the seats on a given 
 night. 
 
 Upon ordinary nights there is little difficulty in getting in,, 
 principally for the reason that nobody cares to go in. A person 
 wishing to go in has two methods. One of these is to write to 
 the Speaker, who will order the name to be entered on a list. 
 The individual then goes to the corridor and waits till his name 
 is called, which will be in the order in which he has been 
 entered. The other is to get a member's order, and then go and 
 stand in line. If he be at the head of the line, the visitor will 
 get a seat in the strangers' galleiy. When the gallery is filled, 
 the line waits; and as visitors leave the gallery, others at the 
 head of the line are admitted. 
 
 It is often the case that a man may go a dozen times, and after 
 standing about and waiting for hours, will be unable to get in. ' 
 A peer's order will admit one to the strangers' gallery in the 
 House of Lords, under the same circumstances as in the case 
 of the House of Commons — ^that is to say, by waiting in line,, 
 and passing in if there be room. 
 
 During the late debates on the vote of credit, there have been 
 a thousand applicants to each one who has succeeded in getting- 
 within the charmed precincts. Nearly all the admissions have 
 
190 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 been, a matter of favoritism, having no reference whatever to the 
 actual merits of the applicants. The members take in their 
 friends and seat them, and thus fill the galleries long before the 
 hohr whea the general public is admitted. For this reason a 
 Speaker's or member's order has been of no more value than is 
 a Confederate bank-note. It was only after infinite labor that I 
 succeeded in getting in. The same amount of intriguing, figur- 
 ing, wheedling, threatening, coaxing, labor, and perspiration, if 
 expended by any chimnej'-sweep in the United States, would 
 make him President of the Republic. , 
 
 The second day of the debates, I had returned to the American 
 Exchange utterly disheartened, having vainly attempted every 
 available means to secure admission to the debates of the coming 
 evening. I was indulging in a quiet but very heartfelt " swear," 
 when there entered the Paris representative of a leading Ameri- 
 can newspaper, T?ie , a paper with more " cheek " than all 
 
 the other newspapers in the world. 
 
 " Halloo! " said I, "what are you doing over here?" 
 
 " I came over to look after the Parliamentary debates." 
 
 " Ah, indeed ! " 
 
 " Yes. By the way, it's close to four. I must go down to the 
 House." 
 
 "Got your pass? " 
 
 " Oh, no ; I don't need any. Ths goes anywhere, you 
 
 know." 
 
 " Oh, yes. I see." 
 
 " Going down ? " 
 
 " No. I have an engagement. Sorry. When shall I see you 
 again ? " 
 
 " Well, I shall be at the House till midnight, so I won't see 
 you again before to-morrow " 
 
 " Au revoir ! " 
 
 " So long, old fellow! " 
 
 He is a fresh-faced youth, hopeful and enthusiastic. He went 
 off with his countenance in a glow and his eyes a-beaming. 
 
 Two hours later I dropped into the American Exchange. 
 Writing furiously at a table was my fair-faced friend with the 
 beaming eyes. His hat was pulled down over his forehead, his 
 teeth were set, his lips compressed, 
 
 " Halloo, old boy! House risen already? " I asked cheerily. 
 
 " House h — 1 ! " he said, as he looked up with a scowl. 
 
DEPARTMENT OF THE EXTERIOR. 191 
 
 " Why, what's the matter ? Didn't you get in? I thought T'Ae 
 could go anywhere." 
 
 " Oh, come, now, tliat's enough of that." 
 
 " Well, what's the trouble, then ? " 
 
 " The trouble is just here : No white man, or one who has any 
 business to go in, can gel in. I represent a paper which is read 
 by more than a hundred thousand people. I could make famous 
 the debate and every man who participates in it. I could make 
 their names household words all over America. I can't get in, 
 of course. But some retired dry-salter or wealthy costermonger, 
 who is actuated by no higher motive than vulgar curiosity and a 
 desire to be able to inform his cronies iu some public house that 
 he heard the debates — he can get- in and occupy a front seat! 
 This is like everything else in this beastly country ! " 
 
 "Just so. Well, what are you going to do about it? " 
 
 " Going back to Paris on the first train. The French people 
 have a decent comprehension of things. Such a thing as this 
 couldn't happen there." 
 
 He left ; and The , which goes everywhere, you know, will 
 
 have no detailed reports of the great debate on the vote of credit. 
 
 While it has been impossible, except for the few, to get into 
 the houses, it has been a matter of no small difficulty to stay 
 around on the outside. To keep people out, and to stir them up 
 after keeping them out, has appeared to be the main duty, as 
 well as the supreme pleasure, of the omnipresent and omnipotent 
 policemen. 
 
 The House of Commons assembles at four, and the House of 
 Lords at five. At as early as three in the afternoon, crowds begin 
 to gather in the vicinity of the Parliament buildings. The 
 principal entrance for the House of Commons leads through 
 " Westminster Hall," which is simply an immense space, with a 
 stone pavement, and arched over at a lofty height. Into this hall 
 anybody can enter ; and here, an hour before the time of meeting, 
 there come hundreds of people, who are ranged on one side of 
 the hall, so as to leave about half of it clear. Here, four or five 
 deep, and extending the entire length of the hall, stands a dense 
 mob of both sexes, waiting with craned necks and bated breath 
 to see the members pass. As nearly all of this waiting crowd are 
 strangers, they have no means of knowing who are members and 
 who are not. In front of them, along the cleared space, pass 
 members, messengers, and anybody who has the cheek to look as 
 
192 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA, 
 
 if he were somebody. This mixture malies it inconvenient for 
 the spectators. They can't tell whether a man who is passing is 
 a member or a merchant, and hence they do not know whether to 
 cheer and become enthused, or what to do, as each man hurries 
 down the open space. 
 
 It is certain that everybody wlio hurries along tries to look as 
 if he were at least a Cabinet Minister. He drops his head as 
 if from weight of thought, pretends not to notice the crowd as if 
 he were pondering some tremendous political problem, and 
 strides along as if he were the incarnation of political wisdom 
 and responsibility. 
 
 I went down yesterday earlj^ in company with Hatton, the 
 novelist, to see the outside show. We took position in the front 
 rank in the hall. Policemen moved up and down, keeping the 
 crowd in line and making themselves generally a nuisance. My 
 friend happened to lean a little forward, when a vigilant 
 " Bobby " espied him : 
 
 " Come, now ! Wot a you a doin' there ? Stand back ! " and, 
 using his broad shoulder as a sort of trowel, he leveled poor 
 Hatton off so that he was on a line with the others. 
 
 " Let's get out o' this ! " said he, in a tone of profound disgust. 
 " This all comes of these beastly liberals that you Yankees admire 
 so much. Formerly the public was admitted into the corridors 
 of the House, but the liberals, d — n 'em, who love the people so 
 much in theory and despise them in practice, were the ones who 
 turned the people out." 
 
 We went out into the yard, my friend indignant at being run 
 over by a " d— n insolent Bobby," I trying to soothe him. He 
 stopped a moment to give emphasis to some bit of feeling, when 
 another policeman espied us. One can't stop in the yard — like 
 poor Joe, one must "move on." 
 
 "Pass away! Pass away!" said this vigilant official. "Pass 
 away! or pass into the 'all ! " 
 
 My friend became angrier than ever. 
 
 " ' Pass into the 'all ! ' " he said, with deepest scorn. " ' Pass 
 into the 'all, is it?'" he continued, with tremendous emphasis 
 on " ^all.''' Then, changing his tone into one of freezing polite- 
 ness, he said: " I say, Bobby, my boy, you dropped somethiug."^ 
 
 The policeman looked dubious and inquiring. 
 
 "Yes, you dropped something. 'Pass into the 'aZL' You 
 dropped an aitch. ' Pass into the ''all,'' and be blowed to you ! " 
 
DEPARTMENT OF THE EXTEEIOR. 
 
 193 
 
 The policemuu got mad. 
 
 " Wot a you goin' to make of it! Come, now, you pass away, 
 will you ? " and he followed us slowly toward the gates. My 
 friend was at a white heat, but he was freezingly polite. 
 
 " Never mind, Bobby ! ' Pass into the 'a-a-all! ' You did dvop 
 something, Bobby! But never mind! You just go into the 
 House, and you'll find the floor covered with aiiches dropped by 
 the members. You can find there twice as many as you've lost 
 here. ' Pass into the 'a-a-all! ' " 
 
 "pass into the 'all." 
 
 We were now through the gates, and the policeman had reached 
 the end of his chain. He glared wildly at my friend, and re- 
 traced his steps. \ 
 
 " If you were to chaff a Chicago policeman that way," said I, 
 "he would take his club and hammer you on the top of your 
 head until he had driven the most of you down into your boots." 
 
 " Oh, d — n 'em, they daren't touch you here." 
 
 As just seen, about all there is in waiting to see the members 
 13 
 
194 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 go in, is not to see any members, and be ordered about by police- 
 men. At the peer's entrance, a small crowd usually collects at 
 five to cheer Beaconsfield as he enters. His portraits have made 
 him so vpell knovpn tliat he is alvFays at once recognized, and is 
 always the recipient of much complimentary attention. 
 
 LETTER XXX. 
 
 PROMINENT MEN. 
 
 London, February 7, 1878. 
 
 JT N my last* I promised some sketches of the men who have 
 jjr been prominent in the great parliamentary debate on the 
 motion for a vote of credit. Pre-eminent among these are 
 the Earl of Beaconsfield and William E. Gladstone. I am sorry 
 now that I have already done up the former, for the reason 
 that a description of these two great leaders would go so well 
 together. Brought out in this way, one could avail one's self of 
 the contrasts of their character, and thereby advance the effect 
 of the whole. To some extent, however, I may, without repeti- 
 tion, bring into view some of the points of more glaring dis- 
 similarity. 
 
 The best time to take Gladstone is as he appeared last Monday 
 night on the occasion of his great speech in favor of the amend- 
 ment to the motion for a vote of credit. It was known that he 
 was to speak, and, as a consequence, every available seat in the 
 House was taken. The opposition benches were all occupied; 
 the Peers' gallery was filled to overflowing with members of the 
 House of Lords, and other distinguished guests, among whom 
 were the Prince and Princess of Wales, Princes Leopold and 
 Christian, and the Crown Prince of Austria. The ladies' gallery 
 was dimly seen through its grating to be a brilliant jam. In fine, 
 scarcely ever was there assembled in the House a more distin- 
 guished auditory, as to wealth, title and intellect, than the one 
 which gathered to hear Mr. Gladstone. Thousands vainly sought 
 admittance ; the corridors were densely packed, and a great mul- 
 
 * Omitted. 
 
PJROMINEKT MEN. 195 
 
 titude stood beneath the century-old arches of Westminster Hall, 
 and waited for hours before and after tlie time of- opening with 
 the frail hope of seeing some distinguished members pass in, or 
 out, or of hearing some fragmentary eclioes of the debate. 
 
 There was some preliminary business transacted amidst an 
 impatient buzz and general inattention. Finally the question of 
 the evening was reached, when instantly a great hush fell upon 
 the audience and was immediately followed by a tremendous 
 burst of cheers from the liberal side of the House, as Mr. Glad- 
 stone rose to his feet, on the Speaker's left, and stepped forward 
 to a table, removed his hat, arranged a mass of manuscript on a 
 pile of books, and placed some water and his hat immediately in 
 front of him. He was as cool and' deliberate as if in his own 
 study alone and there were not about him the most brilliant and 
 critical audience that could be assembled in Great Britain. 
 
 He began in a low, distinct, musical voice that contrasted 
 almost painfully with the profound silence that fell upon the 
 assembly as he commenced his remarks. His intonations were 
 gentle; his tone almost pleading; his bearing was winning, 
 pacific. Evidently his rdle was that of peace. But a day or two 
 before he had made a most tremendous onslaught upon the gov- 
 ernment and its leader ; but now he had come with " healing on 
 his wings," and his voice was as sweet and his manner as gentle 
 as those of a woman at the bedside of a sick child. 
 
 The audience saw before them a slender man, of medium 
 height, in age close upon the sixties. His head is large, well- 
 balanced on his shoulders, with thin gray hair, and bald in the 
 regions of intellectuality. His complexion is almost ashen in 
 hue ; his face is covered with deep lines as if furrowed by thought; 
 , his expression is benignant and toned with a touch of sadness. 
 His nose is prominent, giving a massive strength to the face; his 
 eyes are brown, piercing, full of fire, which is somewhat hidden 
 by the partly-closed lids, and which has the efiect of making 
 him seem as if he wished to reveal nothing, while comprehend- 
 ing, seeing everything. 
 
 Such was the man as he appeared then ; as he stood erect, easy, 
 and poured forth a torrent of words which, however swift it 
 came, was never other than clear as crystal. 
 
 As his speech progressed, his voice, without losing its sweet- 
 ness, became more penetrating, full, sonorous. His tones are 
 powerful, of a grave quality, luxurious, and smooth and flexible 
 
196 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 as those of a singer. His words seem impassioned, and this seem- 
 ing is increased, by way of contrast, by the repose of his manner. 
 His gestures are few, simple, scarcely ever full length ; his body 
 emphasizes a sentiment with an easy forward motion, but is 
 never rocked or shaken, however passionate the utterance. So 
 pronounced was his repose, so sustained his equipoise, that 
 neither the enthusiastic cheers of his adherents nor the laughter 
 and ironical applause of his opponents produced a waver in the 
 level line of his movement. 
 
 But interruptions were not frequent. There were long stretches 
 in his progress— flights full of graceful beauty which his sympa- 
 thizers watched with entranced interest, and scarcely breathed 
 lest they might dispel, or injure, the charm of his wonderful 
 movements. 
 
 He spoke for three hours, and wound up with a peroration so 
 magnificent that not a whisper impeded its course as its rich 
 volume streamed away over the crowded benches, and up among 
 the galleries, where men sat in dumb admiration, and not con- 
 scious that hours had passed since he had risen to his feet. He 
 resumed his seat; there was a moment or more of profound 
 silence, as if men were slowly dragging themselves back to the 
 dull realities of the present, and then from the opposition benches 
 there rose a storm of applause that broke in wave-like succession 
 against the distant galleries and lofty roof— applause thunderous 
 in volume and seemingly endless in its continuation. 
 
 Thus ended what has been, thus far, the great speech of the 
 session. It is one which is perhaps second to no other delivered 
 by the leader of the opposition. It was an effort full of vehe- 
 mence without gush ; one sustained from exordium to peroration 
 without a break or waver; one that from source to termination 
 flowed on smoothly yet impetuously, always musical, always full 
 of unlimited power. 
 
 As a speaker, there is more warmth in Gladstone than in Dis- 
 raeli. The latter is an intellectual product, the former more an 
 eiJiotional one. Each in his role has no superior. They are 
 rivals in politics, but not in mental qualities, any more than are 
 a great astronomer and a great geologist. 
 
 The Right Hon. Gathorne Hardy, Secretary of State for War, 
 never presented a better opportunity for a portrait than as he 
 appeared when he applied himself to answering the speech of 
 Mr. Gladstone. He rose to his feet, and evidently was angry. 
 
PROMINENT MEN. 197 
 
 The olive branch proffered by Gladstone was wholly unexpected. 
 It had been thought that the ex-Premier would follow the line of 
 his vituperative Oxford speech ; and to meet this kind of attack 
 the government had prepared themselves. But in place of an 
 assault delivered, as expected, Gladstone had come tbe bearer of 
 a white flag, and had sweetly deprecated war and bloodshed, and 
 had proposed that the besieged government, in place of fighting, 
 should surrender. 
 
 It may easily be imagined that the government forces were 
 angry. They were burning to avenge the Oxford affair. They 
 had an overwhelming superiority of numbers ; they liad calcu- 
 lated that Gladstone would attack; they had massed their troops 
 and batteries to meet the assault; and they confidently and jubi- 
 lantly expected to annihilate the assaulting columns. There was 
 no attack. Their arrangements were all useless. The gunners 
 dropped the lanyards, the waiting infantry took their fingers 
 from the triggers. As a consequence of the change of tactics on 
 the part of Gladstone, all the speeches of the government — all 
 carefully prepared to meet something, which something did not 
 occur — were rendered useless. I have thought that it was for 
 this very purpose that the wily Gladstone took the position of 
 conciliation. 
 
 One sure result of such a course was to thoroughly test the 
 readiness of the government to adapt themselves suddenly to a 
 new and wholly unexpected situation. Fancy a man down for a 
 response to the toast, " The Ladies,'' who goes to the banquet-hall 
 with his speech in his brain, and his coat-tail pocket; and who, 
 when the toasts are read, finds himself suddenly and without a 
 moment's warning, called on to respond to " The President of 
 the United States." In such a case one can gain a faint reflec- 
 tion of the condition of Hardy. His toast was " War." He 
 had crammed for it, and had his response at his tongue's end. 
 In the twinkling of an eye he found himself on his feet to respond 
 to " Peace." His speech was waste paper. 
 
 It is only a man of great genius who can adapt himself to new 
 and unexpected situations. Hardy proved himself a great genius. 
 His reply could not have been better — I doubt that it would have 
 been as good — had he had months for its preparation. 
 
 "When the Secretary of State for War came to his feet, there was 
 a buzz of excitement and anticipation all over the densely-packed 
 house. It was a giant who rose to the right of the Speaker — a 
 
198 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 giant in nis commanding stature, bis great breadtli of shoulders 
 his deep chest, his colossal legs. He seems the product of the 
 soil — one of those mighty specimens grown far from the enervat- 
 ing atmosphere and dwarfing influences of city life. His head is 
 large, hair gray, complexion florid, eyes brown and clear, nose 
 rather fleshy and sensuous, features prominent, mouth large, with 
 lips indicative of strength. His expression is frank, open, kindly, 
 with a slight suggestion of bulkiness and weight. 
 
 I am told that, as a general thing, he is quiet and undemon- 
 strative. But now he was in a rage. The great Vesuvius that 
 suddenly rose before the audience was smoking at every pore and 
 crevice; its crater was choked with the upheaval of molten lava 
 and ruddy flames; and the whole mountain quaked with the 
 detonations of passion. 
 
 Hardy was mad. There was no doubt about it. 
 
 There was a very perceptible efi'ort at the start to hold him in. 
 He seemed like a horse about to run away, and who commences- 
 operations by vicious tossings of the head, switches of the tail, 
 and short, furious plunges against the bit. He is too powerful 
 an animal to be restrained when he makes up his mind to get 
 away. This was speedily seen, and he was let go. There was a 
 great jump or two, and, then, with bit between his teeth, his ears 
 laid well back, eyes aflame and nostrils snorting thunder, away 
 he went ! 
 
 He commenced his remarks in a broken voice, as if its flow 
 were choked by passion. He stuttered, hesitated, drawled, but 
 soon began to move without stumbling. His full, deep voice 
 became deeper and resounding. It grew stridente and stentorian, 
 and rang through the hall like the blare of a trumpet. He be- 
 came grand, inflamed, inspired— this stalwart man upon whose 
 broad shoulders rests the weight of over sixty winters and majjes- 
 no impression. 
 
 His action and sentiments were a cumulative succession of 
 shocks like those from a battering-ram, which grow heavier and 
 more destructive at every impact. He did not move evenly, but 
 rose from the ground in great leaps. He " went for that heathen 
 Chinee," Gladstone. Taunts, sneers, sarcasm, invective, were 
 flung from him in showers. He was appealing, he was denun- 
 ciatory, he was ironical. He shook the ex-Premier as a mastiff 
 would a lady's pug. 
 
 All this time it was evident that he is no cultured orator. Oc- 
 
PROMINENT MEN. 199 
 
 casionally he would drop into his normai condition, when it 
 would be seen that he is as simple and unpretentious as he is 
 strong and massive. Then his gestures are short, few, and un- 
 studied. Then he is modest, unassuming, and suggestive of 
 latent power. But these lulls in the storm were few and short. 
 He would suddenly start from them, and his attitude would be- 
 come bold, defiant, aggressive. His gestures, voice, intonations 
 would become vehement and demonstrative. Inspired by the 
 furious applause of his sympathizers, he became, at times, full 
 of inspired savagery, of fierce, irresistible insolence. 
 
 Such was Gathorne Hardy on the occasion of his reply to Mr. 
 Gladstone. It was the combat of a muscular, earnest, furious 
 gladiator, armed with ponderous sword and buckler, witli a 
 light-armed master of modern fence. Skill was of no use to the 
 latter. There was no parrying the tremendous descent of the 
 heavy weapon of the other. Agility could enable him to avoid 
 mortal hurt; but when the issue is narrowed to the sword of one 
 combatant and the nimble heels of the other there is no difficulty 
 in reaching a conclusion as to which is the victor. 
 
 Passing from the tempestuous Hardy to Bright, is like leaving 
 a foaming and howling sea and suddenly passing into some quiet 
 haven, where all is calm, where the shores are green with foliage 
 and the idle winds scarcely lift the languid leaves. Bright did 
 not appear on Monday night. He came out earlier in the debate. 
 He was a summer day — bright, breezy and perfumed— that pre. 
 ceded the one of the tempest. 
 
 Among all the great men in the English House of Commons, 
 John Bright is a conspicuous figure, both in intellect and appear- 
 ance. His square, stoutish form, florid complexion, and wliite 
 hair, render liim a noticeable object. As one studies him he 
 grows in attractiveness. His massive, leonine head is crowned 
 with a wealth of wavy, silvery hair, which is thrown back from 
 an expanded forehead, giving a noble effect to his intellectual 
 developments. His face is square, without there being especial 
 prominence in any feature, while the whole is radiant with a 
 kindly and benignant light. His mouth is rather large and full 
 of eloquent sensitiveness. As he is seen with his genial smile, 
 his gentle expression, his venerable head, he seems the imper- 
 sonation of a sympathetic benevolence. 
 
 When he rises .to sjjeak, he commands universal respect and 
 attention. He wins, through his gentleness, his sincerity, his 
 
200 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 warmth. Everybody knows that while he has the floor, there 
 will no slashing, no wounding, and that his effort will be to heal 
 dissensions, to restore peace. His voice is a rich baritone, and 
 as musical as a bell. He is quiet but earnest. Not only are his 
 thoughts powerful in their logic, but in their profound sincerity. 
 All who hear him feel at once that it is not a politician or parti- 
 san who speaks, but an Englishman who has risen above party, 
 and who speaks only from a party standpoint because the ma- 
 chinery of organization is of value in giving effect to his con- 
 victions. 
 
 He is the peer of Gladstone in the possession of all the graces 
 of oratory, with the difference that Gladstone is tlie result of 
 labor, while Bright is a product of nature. He is not the finished 
 result of a school. He differs from the ex-Premier as a fragrant 
 tuberose with its exquisite tracings and perfume, differs from a 
 finished statue. Both are complete in their way, and yet their 
 completeness is antipodean in its dissimilarity. All his attitudes 
 are strong and graceful, his gestures easy and flowing; and his 
 utterances distinct, smooth ; the quality of his tones sweet and 
 impressive. He can be poetical ; he is often intensely humorous ; 
 he is occasionally bitter, but never to an extent that pains, or 
 which has for its purpose other than the conviction — not irrita- 
 tion — of an opponent. Upon the whole, there are perhaps few 
 speakers in Great Britain who can command a larger or more 
 intelligent auditory than can the Rt. Hon. John Bright, the 
 shrewd, unaffected, universally-respected member from Bir- 
 mingham. 
 
 I have hitherto spoken only of Commoners. A Peer is neces- 
 sary to give tone to this article and to render it to some extent 
 representative of the Parliament from which these characters are 
 selected. 
 
 The Duke of Argyle is a member of the liberal party. He has 
 an ancestry that reaches unbroken in its flow of the bluest of 
 blue blood to the period — for aught that I know to the mists — 
 surrounding the life of pre-historic man. His wealth is so great, 
 his estates so numerous, his bank credit so large, and his rent roll 
 so long, that I dare not attempt to detail them. He is the father 
 of the Marquis of Lome, the father-in-law of a princess, and, 
 hence, after a fashion, the brother-in-law of the Queen. From 
 his manner and bearing, I have no doubt that he believes all the 
 honor coming from the connection is conferred on the Queen and 
 
PROMINENT MEN. 201 
 
 not at all lapon himself. When I have added that he is a shrewd 
 business man, and has one son in trade, I have said all that is 
 necessary to say of him outside his character and appearance as 
 a member of Parliament. 
 
 Fancy a man of some fifty-five years of age, of medium height, 
 light complexion, partially bald, with light, long hair. His head 
 is rather a fine one, his forehead broad and open; but there is 
 such an extraordinary development in the region of the organs 
 of self-esteem that the back part of the head is overweiglited, 
 throwing it back so that his face, in place of being perpendicular 
 to the horizon, is turned up till it fronts the sky. This gives him 
 a most pompous, not to say ridiculous, appearance. His face is 
 a modified Scotch one, with light, crafty, blue-gray eyes, medium 
 mouth, with thin, nervous lips. His expression is a combination 
 of the intellectual and the effeminate, with suggestions of Scotch 
 shrewdness and cunning. 
 
 As an orator, he is far from ranking with Gladstone and Bright. 
 His voice is pitched high, his manners are fussy, pompous, vapid, 
 conceited ; his demeanor is didactic, forced, demonstrative, and 
 pervaded with a thorough consciousness that he is " Sir Oracle," 
 and that when he speaks " no dog should ope his mouth." He is 
 unquestionably a man of good intellect and great force; but his 
 pompous egotism, as exhibited in his deference to himself and 
 his confidence in his own opinions, makes him anything but a 
 pleasant speaker. 
 
 I am sorry that I can't give you a better specimen of a peer in 
 this letter. In my next I hope to hunt down a more creditable 
 article. The parliamentary preserves are not exhausted, and my 
 next consignment may contain a specimen from the Lords' side 
 of the House which will be worth the trouble of examination. 
 
202 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 LETTER XXXII. 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY NOTABILITIES. 
 
 London, February 12, 1878. 
 
 flN my last I gave some outline sketches of Parliamentary 
 r notabilities. As the list was not entirely exhausted I add a 
 ^ few more, the first of which shall be that of Sir Stafford 
 Northcote, the well-known Chancellor of the Exchequer, This 
 gentleman, at least in his seat in the House of Commons, is the 
 hardest worked member of the cabinet. To him is directed a 
 majority of the questions having reference to the foreign policy 
 of the government. Either to answer questions, or in speaking 
 in defense of the policy of the government, he has been before 
 the House oftener than any other man, and has had much more 
 to say during the pendency of the debate on the vote of credit. 
 
 Ordinarily, Northcote is not only not a good speaker, but he is 
 positively a bad one. In this respect I refer more especially to 
 his manner, and not his ideas. In speaking in response to an 
 interrogation, he is slow, awkward, hesitating. His worst defect, 
 at such times, is his employment of the drawl — aw — aw — so much 
 in use by English speakers. 
 
 Apropos of this peculiarity, and which by many English 
 speakers is considered a graceful piece of ornamentation, I have 
 been told that it originated with Lord Palmerston when leader 
 of a party in the House. He had a ticklish task to perform, the 
 situation being delicate and critical, and his hold upon the mem- 
 bers precarious. Never being able to decide in advance what 
 shade of policy would suit his fractious following, he was com- 
 pelled to conform to the shifting temper of the House. He would 
 speak, watching the effect of each word as it fell upon his listen- 
 ers, thus constantly feeling his way, always ready to go ahead if 
 the signs were favorable, or to tack and go upon some other 
 course in case there were indications of dissent. In order that 
 he might find how each word was taken before putting out 
 another, he introduced a drawl — a series of aws — after a word, 
 which gave him time to observe its effect before launching its 
 successor. What was thus used originally as a matter of policy, 
 has since become an indispensable ornament in the addresses of 
 many English speakers. It consists not only in from one to half 
 
PARLIAMENTARY NOTABILITIES. 203 
 
 a dozen aws between each word, but in stuttering, or tripping 
 over tlie first syllable of every third or fourth polysyllable. Thus, 
 in the sentence : " G-entlemen, I am determined to conclude, etc.," 
 the prevailing style would render it thus : " Crentlemen, aw-aw I 
 aw-am aw-aw d' d' d' aw, d' aw, d' determined aw-aw to aw k' k' 
 k' k' conclude aw," etc. As said, this atrocious defacement is 
 regarded by no small number as a most graceful accompaniment 
 to a speech; and especially among clergymen, it is not uncom- 
 mon for an entire sermon to be composed to the extent of fifty 
 per cent, of awing and stuttering. 
 
 Northcote has this defect under ordinary circumstances. 
 When, however, he rises to the dignity of a speech, as was the 
 case once or twice during the great debate, he drops this abomi- 
 nable appendage, and becomes smooth, fluent and coherent. 
 While lacking the cultivated finish of Gladstone, or the natural 
 graces of Bright, he is still a fervid, forcible, impressive speaker. 
 In appearance he is striking. He has a massive head, whose 
 strength is added to by thick masses of light hair, and a heavy, 
 full beard, which give him a majestic effect. His hair and beard 
 being light, with just a tint of gold, suggest the idea of his being 
 enveloped in a mazy aureola. He is above medium size, strongly 
 built, without being stout ; and of sufficient dimensions to make 
 a striking, if not a commanding, figure when on his feet. He is 
 a pure Saxon in appearance. He has blue-gray ej^es of great 
 magnetic force, and shapely features. He is, in his peculiar style, 
 a very handsome man. As an official, he is considered invalua- 
 ble, not especially as leader of parties, but most competent as a 
 subordinate. Withal, he is generally liked, and is one of the 
 few members of the cabinet who have escaped being made the 
 subject of special and venomous attack by the opposition. Fresh 
 in face and complexion, always concise in his answers, even-tem- 
 pered and thoroughly informed, he seems, in his difficult posi- 
 tion, to be exactly the right man in the right place. 
 
 The Earl of Derby, as the head of the foreign office, plays a 
 conspicuous role in British politics. He is the son of one of 
 England's most sagacious statesmen, and who was one of the 
 most brilliant and scholarly men of his age. He translated 
 Homer, and, in various ways, demonstrated the possession of 
 great intellectual power and marvelous versatility. 
 
 The present Earl of Derby, in his younger days, was a violent 
 liberal. At one period, as Lord Stanley, he visited, and traveled 
 
•204 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 quite extensively in America. He was always very studious, 
 mainly, however, in the literature of Blue Books, which pos- 
 sessed for him a charm above all others. The veteran, Disraeli, 
 was his teacher, and spent many a day at the home of the pres- 
 ent earl, inducting him into the mysteries of statecraft. He is a 
 pupil who does no discredit to so great a teacher. He knows 
 all politics ; and, although lacking the brilliant versatility of 
 his famous father, he is certainly the peer, if not the superior of 
 the old earl, in this particular study to which he has given his 
 life. He is eminently a man of detail, in the broader sense of 
 the term. He is almost always right, although in one case, hav- 
 ing reference to the extradition difficulty with the United States, 
 he did commit a blunder. 
 
 He is tall, rather inclined to stoutness, with a frank, open, 
 handsome face. He dresses very plainly, and has a bearing 
 which would lead no one into thinking that he is anything but a 
 gentleman. During all the bitterness of the late conflict, he has 
 escaped all calumnious assault. He is universally recognized as 
 a man of great political fairness and unimpeachable honesty, 
 and, hence, is universally respected. 
 
 Henry Fawcett is tolerably well known in America, partly 
 from his fine ability, and in part because he is blind. He lost 
 his sight when nearly twenty-five years of age, from the acci- 
 dental dischai'ge of a gun in the hands of his father. He is the 
 member from Hackney, and is also professor of political econ- 
 omy at Cambridge. 
 
 Prof Fawcett is tall, robust, and about forty-five years of age. 
 He has a coarse, heavy voice, and speaks slowly and with few 
 gestures. He always speaks directly to the point, and is one who 
 brings to bear innumerable facts and strong logic upon the sub- 
 ject under discussion. 
 
 In politics, he is an advanced liberal, or radical, who occupies 
 a seat near the " gangway." The " gangway " is an aisle which 
 divides into two equal parts the seats of the members. Above 
 the "gangway" and nearest the Speaker, sit the leaders of the 
 two parties and the older and more reliable members. Below 
 the " gangway " are the younger men, the rank and file, who do 
 the most of the yelling and applause. Fawcett, while below the 
 ^' gangway," sits near it, which indicates that he is superior in 
 judgment and wisdom to those who, while also below the " gang- 
 way," are seated further from it. An expert, looking over the 
 
PAKLIAMENTAKY NOTABILITIES. 205 
 
 House, can tell at a glance the estimate a member is held in by 
 his party leaders, and also the grade of his politics. Fawcett 
 may be ranked as the head of the mob which sits below — that 
 is, their superior in judgment and party value. 
 
 J. H. Puleston is a member of the House of Commons from 
 Devonport. He is an ardent conservative who emphasizes his 
 views by the fervor of his convictions, and his incessant activity 
 in the interests of his party. He lived for many years in the 
 United States, and was, during all, or a portion of that period, in 
 business there; being, I believe, a member of the banking-house 
 of Jay Cooke. The fact of his having lived in America has 
 given rise to a belief that he is an American by birth; in fact, I 
 have frequently seen in the home ' papers allusions to him as an 
 American Member of Parliament. This is erroneous. I have 
 his own statement as authority for the assertion that he was born 
 in Wales, a fact which is further verified by his ability to speak 
 Welsh as well as English. 
 
 Having lived in America, Mr. Puleston is regarded as common 
 property by all Americans who visit the English metropolis. It 
 is to him that they apply for information ; it is he who introduces 
 them into the House of Commons or of Lords. It is an excep- 
 tional evening when Parliament is not graced by the presence of 
 at least a couple of Yankees who are indebted to Mr. Puleston 
 for their seats. Such is his attention to Americans that I have 
 come to regard him as a sort of representatlve-at-large from the 
 United States, although, for constitutional reasons, he consents to 
 appear on the records as the member from Devonport. 
 
 He is about forty-five years of age, medium height, and with a 
 figure which, without being stout, is well-knit, firm and well 
 rounded. He has a finely-shaped head ; dark hair, just becoming 
 sprinkled with gray; large, dark-brown, keen eyes; a firm, large, 
 good-natured mouth; and an expression at once intellectual, be- 
 nevolent, and full of shrewdness and good nature. Unlike the 
 majority of his Parliamentary confreres, he does not look like 
 an Englishman, but like a cosmopolitan who would seem equally 
 to belong to the place, were he in France, the United States, 
 Austria, or Great. Britain. 
 
 He is a most indefatigable worker, and a man of versatile 
 character. 
 
 " Can Puleston speak well ? " I asked a Londoner, before I had 
 heard the member from Devonport. 
 
206 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " I never heard him speak," was the answer, "but then I know 
 he can. I would like to know anything that Puleston can't do, 
 and can't do well." 
 
 He is a fluent, forcible speaker, when once warmed up. He 
 indulges in little ornamentation, but goes directly to his subject, 
 speaking always closely to the point. He is strong, argumenta- 
 tive, logical. He never speaks unless he has something to say, 
 his forte, or preference, I fancy, being what, in the United States, 
 would be termed caucus work. He is wily, shrewd, diplomatic; 
 and knows to a certainty whether a speech or a motion, and ex- 
 actly what kind of a speech or a motion, will best advance the 
 end in view. During all this long and heated debate he has not 
 once addressed the House ; but, despite this reticence, I have no 
 doubt that his quiet but effective work has done more to swell 
 the triumph of the government than any half-dozen of the most 
 eloquent of the conservative speeches. Untiring, vigilant, fruit- 
 ful in resources, sharpened by travel and experience, he is a most 
 capable partisan — a fact, I have reason to believe, which is recog- 
 nized by the conservative leaders, and by whom he is regarded 
 with unlimited respect and confidence. In fine, he is at once a 
 creditable representative of the county of Devon and the United 
 States of America. 
 
 Sir William Vernon Harcourt, a member of the liberal party, 
 and who represents Oxford, is generally known in America from 
 the fact that he is a son-in-law of Motley, the historian. He was 
 Solicitor-General under Gladstone, and is a man of marked abil- 
 itjr. He is full-faced, stout, almost forty-five years of age, has 
 a full beard, and no mustache. As a speaker, he is clear, argu- 
 mentative, and impressive. He is easy and fluent, but, like the 
 majority, he is quiet and undemonstrative. He probably is in- 
 fluenced by the prevailing opinion that oratorical flights, a la 
 Burke, are in " bad form." Gathorne Hardy, who has an ungov- 
 ernable temper, and some of the Irish members, are about the 
 only ones who ever do an}^ howling, or who ever, however heated 
 the debate, become excited or impassioned. 
 
 Harcourt stands high with his party and the country. He is , 
 very ambitious and aspires to the leadership of the opposition. 
 He and Foster were both candidates for the chieftainship, but the 
 honors were carried ofl' \>y the Marquis of Hartingdon. He is 
 certainly yet to be heard from. 
 
 "Rt. Hon. R, Lowe is, in many respects, one of the most remark- 
 
PAELIAMENTARY NOTABILITIES. 207 
 
 able men in the House of Commons. He is one of the readiest 
 and easiest speakers, the most admirable debater, and brilliant 
 man among the hundreds with whom he is associated. Schol- 
 arly, gentlemanly, abounding in epigrammatic utterances, cyn- 
 ical, sharp, cutting, forcible — he is at once to be admired, feared, 
 respected. He is a liberal, and represents the University of Lon- 
 don. He is tall, has an imposing figure, is very gray, and com- 
 manding in appearance. When he speaks, it is with half-shut 
 eyes, as if he were engaged in soliloquizing rather than in ad- 
 dressing an auditory. One of his greatest efforts was his speech 
 against the queen's title bill, a year or two ago, at which time all 
 his tremendous reserves of sarcasm, of irony, of epigrammatic 
 cynicism, as well as his magnificent oratorical abilities, were 
 brought into full play. He does not speak on all occasions, but 
 reserves himself for special topics of more than average interest, 
 when he has full demand for all his grand oratorical powers. 
 
 The Marquis of Lome* is a noted member of the House, 
 the eldest son of the Duke of Argyle, the husband of Louise the 
 daughter of Queen Victoria, and, hence, the son-in-law of roy- 
 alty. He has the further distinction of having translated, or 
 prepared a new version of, David's psalms ; and also of having a 
 popular brand of whisky named after him. He has a boyish face 
 and figure, light hair, blue eyes, and a light, clear complexion. 
 As a whole, he is prepossessing, without being handsome or con- 
 spicuously commanding in intellect. He seems good-natured, 
 and looks like a thorough good fellow. He needs to be good- 
 natured, because he is mercilessly snubbed by all his royal 
 relatives, and is rather hated by his equals who cannot forgive him 
 for having carried off so rich a prize as the royal and charming 
 Louise. As yet, he has made no mark, but he is said to be stu- 
 dious, diligent, and ambitious, and he may, in time, place himself 
 politically and intellectually in the position to which he is en- 
 titled from his great wealth and ancestry, and his royal connec- 
 tions. 
 
 Sir Robert Peel is the member from Tamworth, who has, at 
 least, the merit of being the son of a most illustrious sire. He 
 has none of the genius or breadth of view of his noted father, 
 and is equally lacking in the diligence and mastery of business 
 that characterized the elder Peel. He differs from his sire in 
 almost every possible respect. The latter was stately, formal, cold, 
 *Now Governor-General of Canada. 
 
208 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 precise. The former is, to put it mildly, eccentric. He speaks 
 not often, but then it is always to full and appreciative benches, 
 whose occupants, if not convinced and edified by his efforts, are, 
 at least, amused. He is racy, rollicking, a " chartered libertine " 
 in speech, who says what he pleases, and in what way, and at 
 what time, he pleases. He has a certain jerky sort of eloquence, 
 which is replete with oddities and humor. Were he to transfer 
 himself and his abilities to the United States, and devote his 
 time to " stump " efforts in some far-west State, he would achieve 
 a most brilliant success. In his present sphere, however, he 
 rather reminds one of a clown — a superior clown — in a circus. 
 
 Sir Coutts Lindsay is a member of the Plouse of Commons 
 from Wigan. He has thus far played no important part in the 
 debate; and I notice him because, from his seat on the opposi- 
 tion benches, he is a conspicuous figure. Tall, with a slender, 
 erect figure, he has a most aristocratic bearing, which is in keep- 
 ing with the pose of his head and his clear-cut features. He is a 
 man of fifty-five, with thick, gray hair, and a heavy, gray mus- 
 tache. He is unlike the majority of his fellow-members, in his 
 having a clear complexion, and in lacking that beefy, stall-fed 
 appearance which seems the dominant characteristic of the av- 
 erage English legislator. Upon the whole, he is nearly the most 
 refined and handsome man in the House. He is a fair speaker, 
 impressive, dignified, smiling yet earnest, who does not lose his 
 poise or temper from interruptions, and who takes more than a 
 superficial view of the subject under discussion. In any case, in 
 looks if not in intellectual consequence, he is certainly an inval- 
 uable addition to the ranks of the opposition benches. 
 
 In order to touch a majority of the noticeable characters among 
 the English legislators, I find I must get along faster, if I am 
 to get them all in this letter. The remainder I will, from neces- 
 sity, deal with more briefly. 
 
 Sir Henry James, member from Taunton, is one of the first 
 lawyers. and best speakers in the House, He is very clear, com- 
 pact, eloquent, and gentlemanly. 
 
 Sir "Wilfred Lawson, from Carlisle, is a very eff^ective, witty, 
 humorous speaker both in the House and on the platform. He 
 has identified himself with the temperance movement, and is an 
 ardent advocate of a certain class of proscriptive legislation. 
 His bans mots are innumerable. When Major O'Gorman, a bla- 
 tant Irish member, was speaking on the bill for closing Irish 
 
PAELIAMENTAKY NOTABILITIES. 209 
 
 dram-shops during certain hours, he said : " If you pass this 
 bill, Ireland will secede from the kingdom, and appeal her case 
 to the god of battles!" "He means to say the god of bottles," 
 was injected by the witty Lawson. 
 
 Among the young men on the government side who give great 
 promise are Lord George Hamilton, from Middlesex, and James 
 Lowther, from York. Both are rising young men. Lowther has 
 been in the House since he was twenty-one years of age. He is 
 a thorough gentleman, a careful, laborious man of business, and 
 in speaking, has a plain, straightforward, manly style. 
 
 Lord Elcho, from Haddingtonshire, is a handsome young Irish 
 nobleman, who supports the government party. He is a clear, 
 rapid, effective speaker, who often rises in the regions of true 
 eloquence. 
 
 Major O'Gorman I have already spoken of. It can only be 
 added that he is the member from Waterford, and the butt of the 
 House. 
 
 A member of the House who would achieve a grand success 
 in America is an Irish Presbyterian clergyman and professor — 
 Richard Smyth, from Londonderry. He is the author of the 
 Sunday-closing bill for Ireland. He has made but few speeches, 
 but these, by their breadth, copiousness, and beauty of language, 
 force, and graceful delivery, jjlace him in the very front rank of 
 the best speakers of the House. 
 
 Joseph Chamberlain, late mayor of Birmingham, has just en- 
 tered the House, and gives great promise. The same is true of 
 Sir Charles Dilke, of Chelsea. Both are radicals. 
 
 William Henry Foster, from Bridgenorth, is the member who 
 moved the amendment to the motion for the vote of credit. He 
 is a manufacturer in Lancashire, and is deserving of more space 
 than I can give him in this letter. He has visited the United 
 States, and is a very capable man, who is especially well posted 
 on all educational matters. 
 14 
 
210 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 LETTER XXXIII. 
 
 GLADSTONE'S MEETING, ETC. 
 
 London, Feb. 21, 1878. 
 
 GATHERING of Britons for political purposes does not 
 differ essentially from one held hy American sovereigns, 
 except that, if possible, the former is a good deal more 
 turbulent and less intelligent than the latter. The simple differ- 
 ence is that the world knows all about the one, and nothing, save 
 the creditable features, of the other. 
 
 Admitting that, in the matter of rowdyism both are alike, there 
 remains a point in which there is a difference — a difference 
 which, so far as my experience goes, is rather in our favor. This 
 point has reference to freedom of assemblage and discussion. 
 Any people can meet in America, providing their purpose is a 
 lawful one. Communists, Orangemen, Fenians, Democrats, Re- 
 publicans, all have the right to public assemblages, and are not 
 interfered with by law or antagonistic'organizations. The record 
 of the last two weeks proves that the same is not true here ; and 
 that the law is powerless or unwilling to protect in cases where 
 the purpose of the meeting is entirely legitimate. There has not 
 been a public meeting held for a month in the interest of the 
 peace party which has not been taken possession of, and broken 
 up, by the advocates of war. 
 
 The present week it was intended to hold a grand popular 
 meeting in the interests of peace. Gladstone was at the bottom 
 of it, and he and John Bright were to be the principal speakers. 
 Agricultural Hall, one of the largest buildings for public assem- 
 blages in London, was engaged, and the night appointed. In 
 order to prevent too great a rush, and keep out undesirable 
 people, it was determined to admit the public by use of tickets. 
 
 The morning of the day before the one appointed for the 
 demonstration, I went over to Agricultural Hall to make some 
 inquiries about tickets. It was early in the day, and I found the 
 ticketnoffice not yet open. Just then a " sandwich " — that is to 
 say, a man with a couple of large posters, one on his back, and 
 another on his breast, and both kept smooth by being pasted on 
 boards — came up and asked what I was looking for. I suavely 
 informed him that I was in search of information and tickets, 
 with reference to the Gladstone meeting. 
 
' . Gladstone's meeting, etc. 211 
 
 *' There ain't goin' to be any meeting! " 
 
 " No meeting ! Why so ? " 
 
 " Cos there ain't. If Gladstone shows his face up here, he'll 
 be murdered." 
 
 "Ah, indeed!" • 
 
 " Yes, sir ! An' there ain't any peace men in this neighborhood," 
 he continued, and meanwhile glared on me with no friendly eye, 
 being under the evident impression that, as I was hunting for 
 tickets to a peace meeting, I must be a peace man. "There 
 ain't any here," he went on to say, "becos it isn't healthy 
 for 'em." 
 
 He began to take his boards off. He was very dirty and ugly, 
 splay-footed and bandy-legged. I concluded that if he couldn't 
 lick me he could rub off a good deal of dirt on me, and make it 
 otherwise unpleasant for me, and so I resorted to diplomacy. 
 
 " Glad of it," I said, although I didn't say what I was glad 
 about. " They're a bad lot." I didn't say who was a bad lot, 
 although I had in my mind's eye the splay-footed advocate of 
 war before me, and who was encrusted with the dirt of a gen- 
 eration. 
 
 He was a trifle mollified by my remarks, and began to get him- 
 self between his boards. With very cordial thanks on my lips, 
 and a very cordial damn in my thoughts, I retreated in rapid and 
 fair order. 
 
 Hailing a 'bus for Charing Cross, I climbed up alongside the 
 driver. He was an independent-looking chap, with a napless 
 hat, much creased and wrinkled, a saucy, turn-up nose, and red 
 hair and whiskers. 
 
 A moment after we started we overtook a couple of policemen 
 leading between them a jolly chap, who had evidently been mak- 
 ing a night of it, and had not yet been to bed. 
 
 " Now, 'e's a good un, isn't 'e ? " said the gentleman with the 
 turn-up nose as he gave a jerk of his whip toward the party. 
 " 'Asn't 'ad 'is brekfus, 'e 'asn't. Now 'e thinks wen 'e gets to 
 the station 'e'll get a steak, but that'll be a mistake on 'is part, 
 you know." 
 
 Here was a pun from a London 'bus-driver. I had never read 
 of such a thing. I had never heard of one, and my experience 
 with this class is pretty extensive. I ventured to respond in 
 kind. 
 
 " He'll be grate-ful, anyhow, won't he ? " 
 
212 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 My man paid not the slightest attention. I was discouraged 
 and humiliated. 
 
 " Hover in France," he said, " they does these things hetter." 
 
 " How so ? " 
 
 '" There, you know, they use the gillotin, an' they alius gives a 
 man a cold chop." 
 
 "Haw! haw! haw!" I put in my work as heartily as if the 
 joke were brand new. 
 
 After I had roared over his joke till I thought he was satisfied 
 I understood him, I asked : 
 
 " HoYf about that Gladstone meeting that was to be held up here 
 in Islington ? I'm told that they've postponed, or given it up." 
 
 " You're right, they 'ave. An' bloody right they was in doin' 
 it, too!" 
 
 " You surprise me! " 
 
 " Come now, coal-ee, pull up there, will you I " (This to the 
 driver of a coal wagon which had gotten in the way.) He went 
 on : " W. E. is a traitor. I alius was a peace man, but W. E. 
 doesn't suit me, 'e doesn't, you know ! 'E'd 'ad a fresh, rosy 
 time, 'e would, if 'ed a-come up 'ere! I ain't flush o' money, but 
 I wouldn't a-mind five shillin's, I wouldn't, hif they'd been laid 
 hout in rotten heggs for W. E.'s benefit in case 'ed showed his- 
 self hup 'ere! Hi say, ware you two a-goin'? " (This to a chap 
 in front who was leading a very diminutive donkey b}^ the bridle, 
 and who had gotten in the way.) "An' Hi wouldn't a-minded five 
 shillin's more for flour wich about twenty gentlemen an' friends 
 o' mine would 'ave used to w'iten W. E. hup afore we'd a-laid on 
 the heggs." 
 
 Just then there came in sight a tall, emaciated, clerical-looking 
 individual, in a black suit, and a low-crowned, round-topped hat, 
 with a very broad, stiff brim. "We were going toward Charing^ 
 Cross, and, of course, as the man was coming toward us, he was 
 going directly from Charing Cross. The driver drew up his 
 horses to a slow walk, and when the clerical chap was within 
 twenty feet of us, my friend touched his hat most respectfully,, 
 and said : 
 
 " 'Ere you are, sir ! Ride down, sir ? 'Bus Charin' Cross ! 
 Going right down, sir! Only strikly relijus 'bus on this 'ere 
 route, sir! We alius gives 'alf our hearnings for the dear little 
 'Ottentots!" 
 
 By this time everybody had begun to stare at the clerical per- 
 
ALL ABOUT LEGS. 213 
 
 son, who dropped his head and quickened his pace, and so 
 got by. 
 
 "Who is it?" Tasked. 
 
 " Oh, 'e's some 'i.^h church bloke ! Now, Jarvee, come, now ! " 
 (This to the liveried driver of a private equipage, whose wheels 
 came near our horse's fore-legs.) " W. E. musn't show himself 
 up here, becos we 'ates traitors, and becos when heggs in this 
 part o' Luunon is rotten, they're very rotten, you may be sure. 
 'JE's a great haxman " 
 
 "A what?" 
 , " A great haxman, a goin' about an' choppin' trees." 
 
 " Ah, yes, I remember." 
 
 " Well, wot 'e wants to do, bein' 'e's such a great haxman, is to 
 hax 'is hi." 
 
 So much for the right of citizens to assemble to discuss public 
 affairs. Mr. Gladstone and his sympathizers won't meet to-night 
 at Agricultural Hall. The meeting has been " postponed," which 
 means that, owing to threats of terrorism, and rowdyism, its pro- 
 meters dare not attempt to hold it. 
 
 LETTER XXXIV. 
 
 ALL ABOUT LEGS. 
 
 London, March 19, 1878. 
 
 KE day last week I was seated on the " knife board " of a 
 'bus, on Marylebone road, when my eye was caught by 
 an immense picture on a fence — " hoarding " they call it 
 This picture was of two men, bare-headed, stripped nearly 
 naked, one on a run, and the other on a walk. I thought, for a 
 moment, that the man on the walk, who was represented as chas- 
 ing the man on the run, might be intended to represent a Briton 
 trying to head off a Russian from getting into Constantinople. 
 However, some staring letters and figures on the margin of the 
 poster dispelled the idea of a race for Stamboul, by informing 
 the public that the munificent sum of £750 was to be divided 
 among the men who could go furthest in six days. 
 
214 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 As I read this, the question flashed through my mind, "Where 
 is G'Leary, when all this money is lying around loose, and only 
 to be walked for?" Twenty minutes later I had reached the 
 Strand and forgotten the matter, when just in front of the American 
 Exchange I noticed a pair of legs coming along, and which pos- 
 sessed very unusual action. They passed each other alternately, 
 with great rapidity, and each in turn lifted and put down a square- 
 toed shoe with a lightness that was utterly unlike the English 
 method of getting a pair of feet along a sidewalk. I followed the 
 legs up a slender waist, along a chest well advanced, over a pair 
 of shoulders well thrown back, and then, after a short climb up a 
 substantial neck, I reached a chin, passed a blonde mustache, 
 went around a slightly retrouss^e nos,Q, and halted under a jutting 
 forehead, where I found a small, keen, good natured pair of brown 
 eyes that were unmistakably the property of Daniel O'Leary, ex- 
 book-peddler, ex-postman, and present champion walkist, of Chi- 
 cago. I had a presentiment where my journey would end before 
 I had entirely traversed the region between his instep and hi& 
 knees. 
 
 The O'Leary is of course the two legs and the pair of feet. He 
 carries a head along to save the legs the fatigue of thinking, a 
 stomach, so that they won't have to be bothered about food and 
 digestion, and a pair of hands to save the legs the trouble of 
 shaking with every friend whom they may meet. I greeted the 
 legs by shaking one of the hands in their employ, and received 
 from them, through the medium of the head and mouth, a very 
 cordial return. I was glad to see the legs. The legs were glad 
 to see me. They had just come from Chicago. The boys over 
 there were all well. No, they (the legs) were not very sick com- 
 ing across the ocean. They had had a fair passage, had slept 
 well, and taken their exercise with regularity. They were in 
 splendid condition, thank me. They had come over after the 
 prize of £500 and the champion's belt, worth £100 more, which 
 were to be the reward of the pair of legs which should, within 
 six days, put the most ground behind them. The pair of legs 
 with which I was holding converse did n't seem to have any 
 doubt that, barring accidents, they would secure that £500 and 
 that belt, although they modestly admitted that they would have 
 to get up early and retire very late, and keep passing each other 
 at a pretty rapid rate, in order to be able to snatch all the plunder 
 at the far end of the journey. Then the legs and I, having ex- 
 
ALL ABOUT LEGS. 215 
 
 changed all the news, went to Charing Cross hotel, and had a 
 couple of bitter beers, and then, for a time, we parted. 
 
 Having thus gotten this pair of legs, known as Dan. O'Leary, 
 before the public, I will proceed to state more in detail what had 
 brought these renowned legs four thousand miles from home — 
 from the delightful Garden city to the dingy English metropolis. 
 
 There is a member of Parliament here, whose full title and 
 name are Sir John D. Astley, Bart., M. P., and who represents the 
 county of Lincoln. Either because he believes legs are superior 
 to heads, or that reform will be more effective if directed at the 
 former rather than the latter, he conceived the idea of offering a 
 substantial reward to the owner of any pair of legs which, in the 
 course of a week, could measure off the longest distance. It was 
 to be a sort of contest to which any legs, regardless of nation- 
 ality, were to be admitted. To encourage all sorts of legs to come 
 forward, and for the purpose of keeping them within limits 
 when they did come, the following propositions and conditions 
 were promulgated : The competition to be open to the world, to 
 begin March 18, and extend through the five following days. 
 Sweeepstakes to the amount of ten sovereigns ($50) each for all 
 comers, and each man, by running or walking, to make the great- 
 est distance possible within the six days and nights. The man 
 who makes the greatest distance to receive a belt, value £100, and 
 £500 in money ; the next best man £100 ; the next £50 ; while any 
 man who walks 460 miles will receive back his money and £10 
 in addition. Any competitor, except the first three men, who 
 goes more than 500 miles, to have £5 for every three miles- over 
 500. The surplus receipts, if any, over expenses, to be divided 
 among the competitors, or to be employed for other prizes to 
 encourage pedestrianism. 
 
 These are the main conditions. There are some other ones, 
 such as that all must appear in university costumes ; each com- 
 petitor is allowed one attendant; two tracks to be laid down, one 
 for Englishmen and one for foreigners ; lavatories, retiring rooms, 
 hot and cold water, and a military cooking stove to be provided 
 for each of the competitors. When I add that the English track 
 is one-seventh of a mile in circumference, and that for the for- 
 eigners one-eighth of a mile, I have said all that is necessary at 
 present with reference to this portion of the subject. 
 
 The following aspirants for fame, money and the like, contrib- 
 uted their ten sovereigns, and were regularly entered: James 
 
216 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Bailey, of Littingbourue ; H. Browu, (''Blower,") Fulliam; W. 
 Corkey, London; Peter Crossland, Sheffield; Joseph Groves, 
 Oswestry, Salop ; George Ide, Woolwich ; George Hazael, Lon- 
 don; George Johnson, Lancashire; L. R. Johnson, Wrexam; W. 
 Lewis, Islington; C. C. Martyn, (amateur,) Bristol; P. M. Carty, 
 York; James McLeany, Alexandria; G. Parry, Manchester; J. 
 Smith, York; W. Smith, Paisley; Harry Yaughan, Chester; W. 
 H. Smythe, Dublin and America; Daniel O'Leary, Chicago; and 
 E. P. Weston, New York. Of these twenty entries, all are En- 
 glishmen except W. Smith, W. H. Smythe, O'Leary and Weston. 
 W. H. Smythe claimed to be an American, but failing to show 
 any documents to that effect, and not knowing who was the last 
 President of the United States, or who is the present one, or even 
 who will be the next one, it was believed that he made the claim 
 simply to get on the track constructed for foreigners, and which, 
 being less crowded than the other, is more desirable. 
 
 Before the walk began, CrOssland and Weston both flew the 
 track on account of illness. In the case of the latter, the " illness " 
 is supposed to proceed from a conviction that he could n't win ; 
 and in the case of the other, who is a very noted pedestrian, from 
 an intention to save his strength and challenge the winner of the 
 belt. There then remained eighteen competitors. 
 
 Among the men thus left there are none who have ever distin- 
 guislied themselves, except O'Leary, in anything but compara- 
 tively short efforts. Several of them have done extraordinary 
 things in the speed with which they have run or walked one hun- 
 dred miles, or the distance they have made in twenty-four hours. 
 
 In some of the walks heretofore had there has been always 
 more or less trouble in regard to the methods adopted by some 
 of the competitors. It was in part to do away with this difficulty 
 that it was determined in this match to allow every man to get 
 over the ground in any style he pleases. But there was another 
 reason, and that was, for the purpose of testing the merits of 
 walkers and runners for long distances — a something which, so 
 far as I know, has never before been attempted. 
 
 The novelty of such a contest, and the noted characters of many 
 of those entered, have excited a great amount of attention. Per- 
 haps no sporting event in England, except, always, the great 
 horse-racing events, has for many years awakened so general an 
 interest. Already, although the match is but in its second day, 
 the attendance of spectators is numbered by tens of thousands, 
 
ALL ABOUT LEGS. 217 
 
 while dense crowds surround the bulletin boards of the various 
 offices about the city, where there are given hourly records of the 
 progress being made by the contestants. 
 
 On Sunday, the pair of legs known as Daniel O'Leary, as was 
 proper in a pair of well-regulated legs, went to church. Whether 
 or not the discourse had reference to the assertion that the " race 
 is not always to the swift," thereby comforting the pair with a 
 hint that runners were not to be feared, I do not know. Suffice 
 it, that the legs went to church and bent themselves ; and, like 
 the knights of old, sought the consolations of religion before 
 commencing an arduous enterprise. 
 
 At half an hour past midnight, in company with the precious 
 pair of legs, I entered a cab, and was driven to Agricultural hall. 
 Late, or early, as it was, a great crowd had collected around the 
 private entrance to the hall to see the arrival of the various con- 
 testants. The gathering at this hour was remarkable, from the 
 fact that the general public was excluded until the next morning. 
 From six to eight thousand people thronged the various ap. 
 proaches to the hall, and, provided it would have been allowed, 
 a majority of them would have gladly secured admittance by 
 paying for it. "Wisely, however, it was determined to admit only 
 members of the press, and such others whose presence was abso- 
 lutely needed. The result was, that the men were gotten off 
 without much crowding or difficulty. 
 
 A small tent had been erected for O'Leary just within the track 
 devoted to the use of foreigners. Into this the O'Learjj- legs dis- 
 appeared as soon as we reached the place, in order to complete 
 their toilet. 
 
 At 1 : 15 Monday morning a dense little crowd had gathered in 
 front of the judges' stand. A man of some sixty winters, sub- 
 stantial as to figure, and gray as to beard and hair, uprose on the 
 judges' stand, and made a little speech. It was Sir John D. Ast- 
 ley, Bart., M. P., and he told them, in substance, that he had got- 
 ten this match up from a genuine love of sport. He would not 
 conceal from them, he said, that his eai'nest hope was that an 
 Englishman might be the successful man; but his love of fair 
 play was such, and that of his hearers was also such, that he 
 hoped the best man would win. This generous sentiment was 
 received with much clapping of hands, and many bravos and 
 "'Ear! 'Ears!" 
 
 Then there was a loud command, " Get ready ! " In a second 
 
218 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 there was a peeling of surtouts, hats and trousers, and the next 
 instant the black mass below came oul white, speckled with col- 
 ored breech-cloths, and relieved here and there by other bits of 
 color in the shape of sashes, shoulder knots, and tufts of fringe. 
 It was quite like a transformation scene in a pantomime, in which 
 the tattered beggar suddenly becomes a spangled and beautiful 
 fairy. 
 
 The crowd of white figures gathered behind a broad white line 
 drawn across the tracks. On the inside track, in virgin white 
 from chin to ankle, stood the O'Leary. His left toe touched the 
 chalk-mark. His chest was advanced, his body rested on his left 
 leg, his elbows were thrown back, and his forearms brought for- 
 ward on a horizontal line till they ended in hands clinched around 
 a couple of corn-cobs, whose rough surfaces gave him " some- 
 thing to feel." He was the handsomest man, the most statuesque 
 figure, the most gracefully poised athlete in the group. 
 
 Then somebody thundered " Go ! " and instantly the motionless 
 mass of white became alive. It split into large fragments, and 
 then these large fragments into smaller ones. Compactness 
 merged into difi"usion. Thirty-six legs, carrying one-half that 
 number of owners, began to reach forward for the purpose of 
 seeing which pair could put the most real estate behind it within 
 six days. 
 
 As the word " Go! " was given, the runners instantly separated 
 themselves from the mass, and stretched away in advance of the 
 athletes. As I looked at these runners, they moved so rapidly that 
 for a moment my heart failed me as I thought of the probable 
 fate of O'Leary, and the consequent humbling of the city of 
 Chicago. One of these runners especially attracted my atten- 
 tion. He was a man of some twenty -seven years of age, with, 
 a slender, compact figure, a small, round head, and a strongs 
 Scotch face. Bending forward, he struck a long, easy trot, and 
 seemed to skim the ground, rather than walk. There was ia 
 his rounded limbs and trunk something which reminded me of 
 the suppleness, compactness and strength of the panther. His 
 eyes were fixed on the ground a few feet in front of him, as if he 
 was searching for a trail. His movements, his attitude as he ran, 
 suggested an animal of prey following the tracks of a deer. 
 Round and round he went, never lifting his eyes from the ground 
 until he began to appear a remorseless, unflagging, untiring ani- 
 mal engaged in hunting down some flying game, whose pursuit 
 
LEG ATHLETICS. 219 
 
 he never would relinquish till he had overtaken and fastened his 
 fangs in the throat of his prey. 
 
 "He looks like a man," said I to a companion, " who is track- 
 ing a deer in the mountains, and who proposes to catch his game 
 by running it down." 
 
 " That's been his business all his life," said a voice with a 
 marked Scotch accent. " He's a deer hunter from the Heelans." 
 
 " How long can he run at that gait ?'' 
 
 "All the week. He never tires." 
 
 " And so, of course, he'll win the belt and first money." 
 
 " De'il a doot o' that," said the Scotch gentleman, quite con- 
 temptuously, as if a man were a fool to entertain even a suspicion 
 to the contrary. 
 
 When I left the hall five hours later. Smith, of Paisley, the 
 Heelan hunter, was still moving along in his easy, unflagging 
 trot. His face seemed motionless, his body tireless. 
 
 Last evening, some fifteen hours later, I again visited the hall. 
 I looked first of all for my Heelander. He was not running. 
 It was only after much scrutiny that 1 discovered, in a gentleman 
 who was hobbling along at a painful walk, mopping his inflamed 
 face with a handkerchief, and cooling his head and neck with a 
 sponge saturated with vinegar and water, my lithe friend of the 
 morning start. Evidently, in his case, chasing deer in the Heelans 
 is quite different from being dressed in tights and trotting around 
 a ring for the purpose of winning a wager. 
 
 LETTER XXXV. 
 
 LEG ATHLETICS. 
 
 London, March 24, 1878. 
 
 JT>j;<AST Monday morning, at the early hour of 1 a. m., a 
 ^\\iSj gallant transformation scene occurred within the dimly- 
 (5=^ lighted vastness of Agricultural Hall. At the word uttered 
 by the starter. Sir John Astley, Bart, M. P., some nineteen com- 
 mon-place figures, clad in sombre ulsters and dark caps of 
 multifarious patterns, were suddenly transformed into white-clad 
 
220 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 athletes, who, the next momeut, springy as steel, and with energy 
 exuding from every face, hounded away like a herd of rested and 
 startled deer. 
 
 Six days and nights lacking five hours and some odd minutes, 
 a miserable remnant of the same gallant crowd went limping 
 and hobbling painfully over the same course. Gone were the 
 springiness, the energy, the force. The swift progress had be- 
 come a labored crawl; the keen eyes had become fixed and 
 staring ; the eager faces cadaverous, emaciated, rigid. 
 
 But it was in the case of the O'Leary legs that, at that hour, on 
 last evening, the change was most marked. I watched them as 
 they jubilantly commenced their career a week ago. They were 
 then elastic. As each of them alternately struck the ground it 
 bounded off, as if it had the qualities of India rubber. Each 
 then passed the other with a rapidity that seemed born of exhaust- 
 less power. Last night the same two gallant legs would not have 
 been known by their most intimate friend. One of them had 
 become almost twice as large as its fellow. They were covered 
 with bruises and permeated with racking pains. They moved as 
 if they were the legs of a failing centenarian. They shuffled, 
 they limped, they passed each other hesitatingly, as if they were 
 afraid that, once parted ever so little, they could never again 
 come together. They had become a pair of poor old legs than 
 which there seemed none weaker or poorer outside a graveyard. 
 
 What reduced such a pretty pair of legs to such a woful condi- 
 tion will be the burden of this simple tale. 
 
 At the close of the letter describing the opening of the match, I 
 had gotten the eighteen or nineteen competitors well on their 
 way. There may have been but seventeen in all ; in reality, there 
 were but two, or, at most, three of them, at least as time passed 
 and the week grew old. " Many were called, but few chosen." 
 
 Monday was a sort of holiday, a jolly excursion to nearly all 
 the aspiring spirits who were engaged in the match. The 
 O'Leary probably knew from bitter experience what was before 
 him ; and there may have been one or two older heads who took 
 a correct view of the future. Not so the majority. They were 
 young and untried. They leaped, they bounded, they cavorted, 
 they ran, they waltzed in the exuberance of their joy. Like 
 children in play they had little races among themselves. They 
 gave out now and then beautiful little bursts of speed, as if they 
 could not restrain themselves. 
 
LEG ATHLETICS. 221 
 
 Walking! It was to them a joy, a recreation, an amusement. 
 They were out for a week's holiday and occupied in their favorite 
 amusement. A week seemed too short for such a lark. They 
 wished it had been for a fortnight, a month, all the year round ! 
 A week was not enough of such fun— not enough in which to 
 test their endurance. 
 
 The strains from the brasses of the band rang out from the 
 lofty balcony and filled the great enclosure with inspiration. The 
 few spectators cheered over the antics of these children at play; 
 and thus Monday passed, the shadows crept into the hall, and at 
 midnight the crowd went away, leaving the competitors to 
 solitude and their reflections. 
 
 When daylight visited Islington on Tuesday, it encountered a 
 more sober crowd of competitors. One festive youth, Hazael, 
 blackguard and drunkard from London town, had concluded to 
 withdraw. Walking gave him no opportunity for getting drunk. 
 All the day before he had kept alongside of O'Leary, a leer on 
 his brutal face, and the assertion, interlarded with many a foul 
 oath, constantly on his lips, that he was going " to kill this won- 
 derful Yankee before he got through with him." Fifty miles of 
 sobriety and O'Leary were enough for him, and he disappeared 
 and came no more into view. 
 
 There had come down from Bristol a " gentleman " — as he gave 
 out that he was — and entered himself as one of the contestants. 
 He had come in his own carriage. He brought with him a 
 flunky, who wore a swallow-tailed coat and a white choker, to wait 
 on him. He came to show the world that because a man is a 
 gentleman he can do anything better than a man whose ancestors 
 are not enriched by the spoliation of church property, or some 
 means not connected with honest industry. 
 
 Par exemple, on Friday evening, beyond the barricades sur- 
 rounding the tracks, was a howling mob ten thousand strong. 
 Within the tracks was an open space occupied only by the favored 
 few. There were about three hundred of us in this open space. 
 We included dukes, earls, barons, baronets, and the like; we were 
 the very flower of Great Britain. When the mob was howling 
 most tempestuously a naval officer said : 
 
 " There'll be a blooming row here presently." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " 
 
 "I know it!" 
 
 " That will break up the match, won't it ? " 
 
222 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 "Oh, no! All the people in here (the open space) are gentle- 
 men. Everyone of them will fight. We'll drive 'em back vi^itli- 
 out any trouble." 
 
 What he meant was that three hundred men, because they were 
 gentlemen, could withstand ten thousand others because they, 
 were not gentlemen. 
 
 It was in the same spirit that " Martyn," amateur and " gentle- 
 man " from Bristol, expected to carry off the honors. He is a 
 thin, haughty-looking youth. He went around gingerly so as 
 not to be rubbed against by any of the canaille. On Tuesday he 
 had reached the extraordinary total of sixty-four miles. As 
 O'Leary was now two hundred, and none of the rest had gone 
 less than twice as far as he, he gave up in disgust. Calling his 
 flunky, he was carefully done up in lavender, placed tenderly in 
 his coach, and was driven away. Thenceforward, his thin legs 
 and aristocratic lineamants graced the hall no more. 
 
 The choice and buoyant spirits of Monday had tamed down, 
 somewhat on Tuesday. W. Smith, the Scotch runner, who, at 
 the start, had made such a glorious beginning, was as sober as a 
 cart-horse. He ran only at long intervals. Walking seemed sud- 
 denly to become full of charms. He mostly walked. All the 
 others were less antic. There were fewer "spurts." The jolly 
 and friendly little races began to diminish in number. A more 
 serious expression began to come over their faces. A spectator 
 would conclude that the picnic and holiday idea was beginning 
 to evanish. 
 
 Tuesday rolled away. Tuesday night followed suit, and Wed- 
 nesday took possession of the building. 
 
 Wednesday was not notable except as rather intensifying the 
 occurrences of its predecessor. S. R. Johnson concluded that it 
 wasn't a good day for walking, and he quit after a little prome- 
 nade of eleven miles. Exactly the same number satisfied M'Leavy, 
 an ambitious young Scotchman, and a runner who has an extra- 
 ordinary record. James Bailey thought the matter over and 
 concluded that seven miles was a fair day's work. W. Smith, the 
 Heeland laddie, was more modest. He looked the thing over 
 and thought one mile would do for Wednesday. Several others 
 made substantial reductions in their speed, concluding probably 
 that as it was near the middle of the week, it was a good day for 
 a rest — a sort of a half-way house, where they would stop for a 
 bait and a little needed recuperation. 
 
LEG ATHLETICS. 223 
 
 Wednesday not only began to tell who couldn't walk, but. what 
 was of equal importance, who could. In the van of the latter 
 was, of course, the " Chicago representative," as the London 
 papers have generally termed him. It required no sagacity to 
 conclude that he could walk. His firm, equal stride, the angular 
 movements of his arms, the steady, motionless poise of his trunk 
 gave him the appearance of a machine which moved without 
 effort, or without fatigue. It was no experiment as to whether or 
 not he could walk ; but it was one in the case of the others. 
 
 It was on Wednesday that it became manifest that Chicago had 
 rivals. One of these was a tall, slender-waisted, broad-shouldered 
 man, with a small head, high cheek bones, small, keen blue eyes, 
 an aquiline nose and a itaiv of tremendously-long legs. He first 
 began to attract attention by his erect bearing and his slashing 
 gait. He measured off the miles as if it were a pastime. He 
 easily went eight laps to O'Leary's seven; but he was so tall that 
 nobody thought much of him, except that he was a swift, easy 
 walker, and that owing to his length of back he couldn't last. 
 This was Vaughan who thus began to attract some attention. 
 
 It was about the same time that strangers began to notice and 
 assign individuality to a queer little figure, not much more than 
 five feet four inches high, with a bullet-head, and an unmistak- 
 able Irish " mug," well browned by exposure He came into pro- 
 minence bj'- his queer style of locomotion. Sometimes he walked, 
 occasionally he ran, but his usual method of progression was to 
 get to the rear of the most rapid walker and follow him at a nice 
 little trot. Somebody said the little chap was Brown—" Blower" 
 Brown. Reference to " Blower's " score showed that he had run 
 trotted and walked one hundred miles the first day, eighty-eight 
 the second, and that his dog-trot was bringing him close to the 
 eighties toward the close of the third day. He looked so com- 
 pact, and tough, and smiling, that he gradually ceased to be an 
 indistinguishable unit of the mass, and secured a personality as 
 " Blower " Brown, and one whose trot and record thus far in the 
 match began to suggest him as a winner. 
 
 Wednesday was a fruitful day in individualities, for it also 
 brought out Corkey. Everybody had seen a little old chap about 
 five feet high, and with legs a trifie larger than ramrods, gallop- 
 ing around the track ; but he was so old, and thin, and withered, 
 that nobody paid any attention to him, except to wonder, What 
 the d — is he here for ? But he galloped on so untiringly that we 
 
22i SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 began, out of mere idle curiosity, to hunt up his score. Amazing f 
 Corkey, Monday, one hundred and thirteen miles, and next to 
 O'Leary! Corkey, Tuesday, seventy-six miles! Corkey, Wed- 
 nesday, still going like a runaway pony ! Corkey at once went 
 to the front in our esteem, and was classed as a possible winner. 
 
 Some others came out of the mass on Wednesday, but it was 
 for some other quality than speed. We learned to know " Smythe, 
 of Dublin and America," but Smythe, of Dublin and America^ 
 seemed a most pretentious ass, who was ambling around prin- 
 cipally to show his points. Lewis took shape because he is 
 young, long in legs, swift in action, and because of his immense 
 and evident appreciation of the gait of one Lewis. Others also 
 became identified, but for trivial reasons, and so I let them 
 pass. 
 
 Just after daylight Thursday, our worthy Chicago representa- 
 tive, a little tired of walking all by himself, flew the track, and 
 went over into the tent of a competitor to have a chat. Talking 
 is dry work you know; Britons are hospitable, and a nice bottle 
 of port wine was brought out for the beneflt of our representa- 
 tive. He talked the situation over, drank a quart or so of heavy 
 port, and then went to his work. Ah, me! but there was wailing 
 and gnasliing of teeth among Daniel's backers and well-wishers- 
 when, an hour later, they came on the ground and found their 
 favorite doing about two miles an hour, and not exactly certain 
 in his own mind whether he was going ahead, or circle fashion, 
 or moving on his head or his feet. A quart of heavy port in an 
 empty stomach is not a good thing to travel on. It was some 
 hours before the port evaporated, and the gentleman from West 
 Chicago began to put the miles behind him with his usual ease 
 and rapidity. 
 
 Thursday was not an eventful day. Bailey did two miles and 
 retired to recover from the tremendous exertion. S. R. Johnson 
 and Gregory concluded that it was a good day to lie off, and get 
 ready for Friday and Saturday. Poor little Corkey went twenty- 
 one miles, and having some scruples about further exercise, he 
 retired. Only Brown, Vaughan and O'Leary remained to keep 
 up the reputation of the contestants. Brown thought he ! ad 
 done a good day's work when he had trotted sixtj'-eight miles, 
 and then he was put in his little bed. Vaughan, with the tre- 
 mendous stride, encouraged by O'Leary's dalliance with the 
 port, let himself out for a walk. He was eighteen miles behind 
 
LEG ATHLETICS. 225 
 
 O'Leary when he commenced. He made ninety miles and re- 
 duced the distance by fourteen miles. 
 
 Friday morning at 3 o'clock the two principal men came on 
 the track. It was the most painful spectacle of the kind I ever 
 witnessed. Vaughan hobbled on as if every portion of his body 
 were raw, bruised, or blistered. He was half an hour getting 
 once around the track. It was almost as bad with O'Leary. It 
 was pitiable, brutal beyond exiDression. Each of them had walked 
 twenty-one of each twenty-four hours since the start. During 
 these three-hour rests not more than two hours could be given to 
 sleep, as some time had to be given to treatment of their bruises 
 and stiifened limbs. 
 
 But by and by the painful hobble was moderated into a slow 
 limp. Little by little the limp disajipeared, and the two moved 
 on — ^the one with his long, swinging gait, the other with the 
 precision and force of a small, compact steam engine. 
 
 The contest was now seen to be over except as between Brown, 
 O'Leary and Vaughan. Corkey's tongue had so swollen that he 
 could not swallow. All the otliers were miles in the rear. They 
 came on, went off, moved along, "spurted," ran, walked, but 
 nobody gave them any attention. All eyes were centered on the 
 three athletes who led the score. For them the crowd howled, 
 cheered and surged about the vast spaces beyond the barricades. 
 
 It was a tremendous contest. Hour after hour Vaughan, with 
 Brown trotting close to his heels, made eight miles to O'Leary 
 seyen ; but then he would be forced to leave the track for short 
 rests. O'Learjr never left the orbit in which he revolved. Around 
 and around he went, lap after lap, mile after mile, hour after 
 hour, never increasing, never slackening his gait. Vaughan's 
 desperate efforts were useless. O'Leary steadily gained on him 
 till the gap had increased to the twenties. The steady, untiring 
 gait that never wavered was the one that told. Vaughan " spurted " 
 desperately and gallantly toward midnight, but when at 12 o'clock 
 O'Leary left the track, the score was eighteen miles in favor of 
 the Chicagoan. 
 
 From midnight till a couple or three hours later, the contest- 
 ants slept and rested as they could, and then went on the track 
 for the closing day. 
 
 It seems to me that all England, Scotland and Ireland had 
 determined to witness the close of the contest. Great delegations 
 from across the Irish sea and from the frozen north were on 
 15 
 
226 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 hand, and began to throng the building as early as 6 o'clock on 
 Saturday morning. 
 
 London was excited from Bow Common to Kensal Green. All 
 Friday night crowds remained around the building to gain the 
 earliest news. It had gotten out that one of O'Leary's legs was 
 swelling. The evening papers had called attention to it, and the 
 morning papers made it a matter of elaborate comment and 
 speculation. 
 
 If that leg should keep on swelling, O'Leary must break "down 
 and Vaughan must win ! 
 
 Two more pitiable objects than O'Leary and Vaughan in the 
 dull light of Saturday morning were never visible in life. The 
 right leg of the former was swollen till it was oiie-third larger 
 than the other. His feet were bad, and every step he took was tor- 
 ture. The skin across his forehead was a ghastly yellow. His right 
 shoulder had sunk until it was two inches lower than the other. 
 
 Vaughan was even worse in appearance. His eyes had sunk 
 in his head until the sockets had become great caverns. The 
 skin on his face had shrunk until it seemed as if the cheek bones 
 were cutting through. His complexion was also a ghastly yellow. 
 His lips were drawn back, were white, thin, and full of suffering. 
 Two of the nails of his feet had been worn completely off". The 
 surfaces of his feet were raw and bleeding. A furious diarrhetic 
 disability seized upon him, and endeavored to drag him down. 
 
 It was in such condition that these two men started at 3 o'clock 
 Saturday morning— the one to keep open, the other to close *the 
 gap of eighteen miles which separated them. It was the work 
 of hours for them to get their stiff'ened limbs into play, and the 
 raw of their feet hardened to a modified insensibility. 
 
 Very early the spectators began to assemble. Long before 
 nightfall they were crowded a score deep behind the barricade 
 around the tracks. The surrounding galleries were jammed as 
 they never had been before. Below the galleries, tiers of ascend- 
 ing seats had been placed ; and soon the white background was 
 hidden by a dense mass of humanity in black. The central space 
 was well filled, and among those there gathered were scores of 
 aristocrats of every grade, from prince to baro ets. Ladies came, 
 too, in shoals. There were peeresses in the central space, wealthy 
 commoners in the raised seats, and the wives and sweethearts 
 of the shilling mob who howled and pressed against the barri- 
 cades. 
 
LEG ATHLETICS. 227 
 
 ITear O'Leary's tent, the galleries and floor were thronged with 
 O'Leary's supporters. The three-shilling seats favored Vaughan. 
 The crowd in the central space, as was becoming people of gentle 
 birth and breeding — we who were dukes, viscounts, barons, and 
 the like — applauded both men equally, not esteeming it " good 
 form " to show ourselves as partisans. 
 
 By dark, from sixteen thousand to twenty thousand people 
 had swarmed into the hall, and were taking in the spectacle with 
 as much interest as if the competitors had been their own 
 brothers, engaged in walking for money advanced by them- 
 selves. 
 
 The bands played alternately, the crowd surged and roared, 
 and meanwhile two men moved around the track. There were 
 others, but people saw only these two. One was O'Leary, limp- 
 ing painfully, moving as if every step drove a hot needle into 
 the marrow of his legs; but always moving. The other was 
 Vaughan, swinging along with his slashing stride, running the 
 corners, and going a third faster than his competitor. But some- 
 how, it was all useless. He had to stop often ; and run as hard, 
 or gain as much as he would, the slow but haltless pace of the 
 Chicago champion kept the gap open to its full extent. Vaughan 
 would stride along, shortening the gap a couple of miles, but 
 then he was compelled to stop, and when he would come out 
 again his limping antagonist would have obliterated all he had 
 gained. 
 
 About 3 o'clock a great roar went up from the crowd, as the 
 figures were exhibited showing that O'Leary had made five hun- 
 dred miles. 
 
 From this hour till 8 o'clock there was the sameness of a tre- 
 mendous excitement. As each man went around he was accom- 
 panied by a great tide of sound, that went with him as a swell 
 does with a moving ship. It was only this that kept them up. 
 If O'Leary had stopped for two minutes he could never have 
 started again. He was not allowed to stop even when he drank 
 his soup or tea. Vaughau's eyes were set and bloodshot. He 
 moved mechanically. He was borne on by the waves of sound, 
 and excitement, and knew it not. Both men lost their conscious- 
 ness. Except in the matter of motion, they were dead. 
 
 Vaughan, at half-past 7, reached his five hundred miles. 
 O'Leary was eighteen miles ahead. The contest would end at 
 10 : 30. Even if O'Leary should break down, he could not close 
 
228 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 up the gap ia the three remaining hours. Knowing this, his 
 friends yielded the figlit, and led the gallant fellow from the 
 track. 
 
 Thirty minutes later O'Leary reached five hundred and twenty 
 miles. He had beaten his record with Weston by more than five 
 hours. Bouquets rained upon him as he made a farewell lap 
 after passing the last mile-post. With one in eacli hand, and 
 bowing feebly right and left, he hobbled once more around. 
 Then he was bundled in wraps, and between a couple of strong 
 men he was led away, amidst a hurricane of hurrahs. It is now 
 twenty-four hours since then, and I doubt very much if even now 
 O'Leary is fully conscious that he has won the great match, or 
 Vaughan that he has lost it. 
 
 LETTER XXXVI, 
 
 ENGLISH SOCIAL QUALITIES. 
 
 London, April 3, 1878. 
 
 NE would scarcely believe it, and yet the English are a 
 social people — after their way. It is an intellectual affair 
 "^^^^ when the English attempt anything of the kind. It is 
 something which has very little of the emotional in it. 
 
 The usual method of intercourse in the metropolis is by means 
 of receptions. Nearly every family has a stated evening on 
 which it " receives." This night is known among a certain set as 
 "Lady Millefieur's niglit;" that one is the "Arundels' night," 
 and so on. These receptions are inexpensive as a general thing. 
 Coffee, tea, biscuits, sandwiches, and sherry, constitute the re- 
 freshments offered, except here and there, in the case of a family 
 by whom the furnishing of an elaborate supper is the rule. 
 
 As to the matter of costume, all gentlemen must go in evening 
 dress, while in the case of the ladies more latitude is allowed. 
 They are in full dress, or they compromise the affair in some 
 way, as they happen to feel about it. One lady in a walking- 
 dress, and another in an expensive silk, very low as to neck and 
 very long as to trail, may often be seen side by side on the same 
 sofa. 
 
ENGLISH SOCIAL QUALITIES. 229 
 
 Hn passant, I may say that the rules in regard to dress here are 
 apt to puzzle an American at the beginning of his experience. 
 What to wear and where to wear it requires no inconsiderable 
 amount of study. Generally, however, so far as a gentleman is 
 concerned, a " breakfast " or frock-coat will go anywhere up to 
 dinner-time. Then the reign of the swallow-tail begins, and is 
 never out of place, but is generally required, at everything from 
 dinner to bedtime. 
 
 There is only a very limited part of the opera-houses to which 
 ladies wearing a hat or bonnet, and a gentleman not with a dress- 
 coat and a white neck-tie will be admitted. In all the prominent 
 theaters, there is always at least one portion of the house whose 
 tickets inform the purchaser, "Evening dress indispensable." In 
 fine, a claw-hammer coat is as much of a necessity in London as 
 an umbrella, and more so. One can get along without an 
 umbrella, but one cannot go into society to any extent without a 
 white choker and a swallow-tail. 
 
 Supposing a stranger to have the dress-coat, the white choker, 
 and a few letters of introduction from the right people to the 
 right people, he can get all the English society he wishes — that 
 is to say, that if, in addition, he be a gentleman in manners. The 
 English are particular in this respect. A man may be a donkey 
 in intellect, and have ears rising high above his silk hat; he may 
 not know the author of this book from the man who discovered 
 the Cajje of Good Hope, and all will be forgiven if he have the 
 manners of a gentleman. 
 
 There is a peculiar phrase in great use here, which has a very 
 significant meaning. It is borrowed from " hoss-talk," and is 
 known as " good form." In its horsey acceptation it means a horse 
 perfect in every respect, and liable to win the race. It has be- 
 come transferred to society, and is used to stamp the quality of a 
 man or woman. To say of a man that he is, or has " good form," is 
 to furnish him with a passport into the politest and best society. 
 To say of him that he isn't, or hasn't, " good form," is to damn 
 him as certainly as if there were a brand of the word thief or 
 forger across his forehead. If he have it, his other qualities and 
 capabilities are little inquired for. He may be rich or poor, ig- 
 norant or wise, and all do not matter. Good form is of more 
 value to him than the most desirable of these possessions, and 
 will carry him through in spite of them. On the other hand, 
 the lack of it cannot be compensated for. Without it one may 
 
230 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 secure an entrance to a family, but he will be certain not to 
 be invited to repeat bis visit. 
 
 It is no easy matter to define with exactness what is meant 
 by " good form " as used in English society. Primarily it 
 means, of course, the possession of the manners of a gentleman. 
 It has, however, an additional significance. It is, I fancy, a re- 
 action from the exaggerated politeness of French manners. It 
 is something the opposite of the vivacity, the restlessness of 
 the French people. A man lias "good form" who is full of 
 repose, who knows what to do with his hands, who does not 
 fidget, who appears serene, who is easy in his attitudes, who 
 does not gush, and who has an easy air of don't-care-a-damn- 
 ativeness for everything that is said, and everybody with whom 
 he comes in contact. 
 
 Such, in a very general sense, is the meaning of "good form." 
 One learns it rather from contact with it, from breathing the at- 
 mosphere which surrounds it, rather than from definitions and 
 descriptions. 
 
 In a conversation with a gentleman, not long since, George 
 Eliot was discussed. In the course of the confab, I said : 
 
 " I am astonished at George Eliot in a phase developed in 
 ' Daniel Derouda.' You remember that Gwendolyn, the heroine, 
 is loved by her cousin Rex, a fine, handsome, intelligent, manly- 
 young fellow who is a year or two older than she, and has only 
 the fault that as yet he is poor, and has to establish himself in 
 life ? " 
 
 " Yes, I remember it." 
 
 " "Well, when he makes an avowal of his passion, she at once 
 becomes permeated with a physical antipathy toward him. She 
 declares she won't be made love to. Soon after she meets Grand- 
 court, who is twice her age. He is bold, blase, and a roue. He 
 has seduced a married woman, with whom he still preserves his 
 relations, and Gwendolyn is aware of the fact. He drawls ; he is 
 not a man of culture, or even of fair information. She fully com- 
 prehends his character, but he is rich and has a position, and she 
 marries him. She has an unconquerable physical antipathy to 
 the young and handsome Rex, but she does not object to being- 
 pawed over by the bald-headed, drawling old reprobate whom she 
 marries." 
 
 " True. Well ? " 
 
 "Well, what I wish to know is, whether this is a development 
 
ENGLISH SOCIAL QUALITIES. 231 
 
 from some peculiar inward consciousness of George Eliot, or a 
 characteristic of English, social life, or some profound philosoph- 
 ical fact which I don't happen to understand ? In any case, so 
 far as I can comprehend this presentation by this masterly writer, 
 it is unnatural and disgusting." 
 
 " The fact is that Kex was young and gushing, while Grand- 
 court was ' good form.' This gave him the advantage over his 
 young and handsome rival. It is not ' good form ' to gush. 
 There is nothing more distasteful to a well-bred English young 
 lady than sentimental excesses. She admires ' good form ' beyond 
 everything else, unless it may be the matter of wealth." 
 
 "Ah, I see." 
 
 " And here is a further fact indirectly connected with the same 
 social phase. It is that a marriageable English girl is rather 
 more likely than not to become enamored at the outset of her 
 career with a man much older than herself. I know personally 
 of hundreds of cases which justify this conclusion." 
 
 •' What is the explanation ? " 
 
 " Simply that an elderly man is usually ' good form,' doesn't 
 gush, and is so much developed that he may be relied on." 
 
 The suspicion crept into my mind, although I omitted to state 
 it, that the fact that an elderly man is more likely to be " well 
 fixed" than a younger one, may have some influence in leading 
 the British maiden's fancy toward the ripeness of bald heads and 
 whitened locks. 
 
 But to return to English society, or English social characteris- 
 tics, with which this epistle is intended more especially to deal. 
 I do not speak from an exhaustive acquaintance with English 
 society, but from a comparatively limited one. However, having, 
 so far as I have gone, found the salient characteristics nearly 
 always the same, I am, perhaps, warranted in drawing a general 
 conclusion. 
 
 As said at the beginning of this letter, the English are intel- 
 lectually social, and either very little, or not at all so, from an 
 emotional standpoint, or from one of the sentiments. Unless the 
 gathering is especially for musical purposes, an ordinary evening 
 at an English house will rarely be lightened by so much as a 
 song or a bit of instrumental music. The piano is always pres- 
 ent, always open, and suggestively lighted by towering wax can- 
 dles, while piles of music by the best composers are close at hand. 
 But nobody is asked to play, nobody seems even to think of music. 
 
2S2 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Equally tabooed are flirtations between the younger people; 
 and except among certain people with large dramatic acquaint- 
 ance and tendencies, a recitation is not on the programme. Jo- 
 vial, jolly evenings, bubbling over with merriment, and spark- 
 ling with the lighter coruscations of wit, or the broader flashes 
 of humor, are exceptional in their occurrence. 
 
 The entire lack of the emotional, or sentimental, makes an En- 
 glish evening seem much heavier and duller than it really is. Phil- 
 osophical discussion, frequently of the most frightfully abstruse 
 kind, is, at present, very greatly in fashion. Kant, Comte, Carlyle, 
 Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Swinburne — who, by the 
 way, strikes me as an intellectual epileptic — Emerson, and other 
 profound thinkers, including many of the French school, are all 
 subjects brought into prominence during the course of an even- 
 ing's conversation. One has to be everlastingly on the qui vive, 
 or he will become hopelessly entangled in these discussions of 
 authors, or of subjects in which the unknowable is handled in 
 terms almost unknown. 
 
 Last Sunday evening I was at a reception. The hostess had 
 lured four or five of the guests in a group. There were in it a 
 bald Oxford professor, a spectacled German doctor, who is at 
 work on a history of philosophy, or a philosophy of history, or 
 something ; the editor of a well-known literary weekly periodical 
 in London, the hostess, and your correspcmdent. After a little 
 preliminary talk, the conversation drifted on the cosmopolitan 
 character of the higher forms of education. It was finally taken 
 up by the Oxford professor, who talked while the rest listened. I 
 followed " for dear life," till finally, wearied by the speed of the 
 march and its length, I concluded that I might sneak out, and 
 nobody would notice my departure. I do not mean to sneak out 
 in a bodily sense. Oh, no ! But to sit there, and look intensely 
 appreciative and interested, but, at the same time, pay only a 
 seeming attention to the words of the speaker. 
 
 And so, in my mind, I quietly sneaked out of view. My soul 
 went to an upper room where, in imagination, seated on a sofa, 
 and with my heels on the back of a couple of chairs, I puff'ed 
 a fragrant cigar, while my thoughts went soaring away, any- 
 where, everywhere, nowhere, on the lazy cloudlets of smoke. 
 I was millions of leagues away from the Oxford professor, and 
 the cosmopolitanism of high culture, when there suddenly shot 
 across my wandering thoughts, like a great flash of lightning 
 
ENGLISH SOCIAL QUALITIES. 
 
 233 
 
234 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 across a pacific summer landscape, the words uttered in a musical, 
 feminine voice : » 
 
 " And don't you think these views will serve to explain the 
 tendency to mysticism among American writers ? " 
 
 I came back to consciousness with a rush. The hostess had 
 just fired off the damnable question at me, and was looking at me 
 with smiling expectancy. I glanced around. The Oxford pro- 
 fessor was looking at me to hear my reply. The editor of the 
 weekly gazed at me through his glasses, which seemed obscured 
 by a diabolical glare. I hadn't the remotest idea of what "these 
 views " were. I never in all my life felt so guilty, so mean, so con- 
 temptible. I would have given a year's earnings for an alarm 
 of fire. I could not answer, and so I prevaricated : 
 
 " May I ask just what you mean by mysticism among Ameri- 
 can writers? " I said, with a tremendous effort to get on my Intel- 
 lectual feet. 
 
 " Well, more especially the productions of Emerson, Thoreau, 
 the younger Hawthorne, and others." 
 
 This gave me no clue to those accursed " views." I felt that I 
 was gone. Deceit would avail no longer. I was about to be ex- 
 posed as an egregious humbug. I thought of claiming to be 
 suddenly seized with the colic, or toothache, or something, when 
 just then the German philosopher, whose whole frame, including 
 his spectacles, was convulsed with a desire to say somethings 
 burst out with : 
 " Will you " — meaning me — " permit me to say a word ? " 
 Would I permit him to say a word ? Would a half-strangledj, 
 drowning wretch, in love with life, permit somebody to hand 
 him into a life-boat? Would a duck swim ? I (^^■(^ permit him. 
 
 He commenced. He was a bottomless well, an inexhaustible 
 spring. He talked for an hour. He demonstrated that American 
 mysticism is the outgrowth of German thought and contact. He 
 talked and allowed no interruption. In a metaphorical sense I 
 took that Deutscher to my bosom, spectacles and all, and gave him 
 my eternal friendship, and conferred on him millions of pounds 
 sterling. The very moment he came to a pause, I pleaded neces- 
 sity, shook hands with the hostess, folded my tent, and quietly 
 stole away. I do not know yet what those "views" are which 
 will serve to explain the tendency to mysticism among American 
 ■writers. But it was the narrowest escape I ever had in my life. 
 I have related this simply as a specimen of much of the thought 
 
THE BOAT-EACE. 235 
 
 that is developed in an English gathering; and also the necessity 
 of the closest attention if one wishes to escape a catastrophe. 
 
 The difference between American and English culture is not 
 so much in dimensions as in proportions. There is less breadth 
 and greater height in the latter. The English are more special- 
 ists in education than the Americans. One of the latter, who is 
 a journalist, for instance, will be very likely to have a more or 
 less thorough knowledge of every branch of his profession, from 
 " sticking type " and " imposing a form " to writing a " leader." 
 The English journalist knows but one thing; but he is likely to 
 know that well. If a leader-writer, he reads, studies, educates 
 himself exclusively for leader-writing, and nothing else. The 
 same applies in otlier directions. The result is chemists who 
 know chemistry to the uttermost, but who cannot tell whether 
 the Missouri river runs through New York or the state of Havana ; 
 or whether or not the President of the United States is elected by 
 a popular vote, an Electoral College, or by throwing dice. In 
 short, the culture of England, like the possession of its land, is 
 limited to the few ; and these few are, in the main, specialists. I 
 need scarcely say that this differs materially from our condition, 
 in which education is cosmopolitan in its extent, and in which 
 there will be found ffew natives who are not tolerably familiar 
 with other countries as well as their own, and who are well " up " 
 on all the salient questions of the age. 
 
 These facts do not, however, bear materially on the social 
 characteristics of the English. I have, in this letter, scarcely 
 more than touched upon this phase of English life. Some other 
 time, I hope to be able to treat it in a more exhaustive manner. 
 
 LETTER XXXVII. 
 
 THE BOAf-KACE. 
 
 London, April 18, 1878. 
 
 ^jTpi^OR the last two or three weeks the London papers have 
 Cjrr^ been mysterious reading to a stranger. That is to say, 
 '^^^^ mysterious in some respects. Each issup of every paper 
 has devoted from half a column to a column to the approaching 
 
236 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 boat-race. This was easy enough, to understand. It was the 
 details that were puzzling and incomprehensible. For instance, 
 this morning it would be that the " dark-blues went tubbing." 
 Inquiry on this point, at one place, elicited the information that 
 " tubbing " meant taking a bath, while another equally respon- 
 sible authority asserted that to tub means to practice rowing in 
 a boat known as a tub. 
 
 Then again the startling fact was announced that the cantabs 
 did not " feather under the water." It was followed soon by the 
 demoralizing assertion that the "light blues were not rowing 
 with their legs," after which a distressed j^ublic was informed 
 that they didn't " row their stroke out." 
 
 Again the lugubrious fact appalled the metropolis that the 
 " sliding was bad," which was speedily followed by the sinister 
 opinion that the "time was not good." Before the world had 
 gotten used to this frightful accumulation, people were horrified 
 to learn that there was something wrong with the " swing," 
 which was irregular and lacked the quality of being simultane- 
 ous. To cap the horrors of the situation, some journals had the 
 temerity and the unwisdom to insinuate that the " catch was de- 
 fective ;" their "recovery" not all it should be; th^t they used 
 •up too much time in " straightening the arms ;" and, worst of 
 all, that too much work was left to the arms instead of econo- 
 mizing the weaker muscles by throwing the labor on the back 
 and legs. 
 
 Then, again, there were extensive dilations upon how neces- 
 sary it is " to have well-set arms, and an upright position to re- 
 sist the force of the wind ;" and which has the further advantage 
 that it " prepares for the ensuing stroke." Besides all these 
 enigmatical assertions and insinuations there was an abundance 
 of other alarming matter. Sometimes the public was told that 
 this crew or that had made a " burst." Again it had been 
 "spurting." At this point it had " easied," and at that it had 
 " paddled." It had encountered a " scratch at the Crab Tree," 
 and "slowed at the Soap-house," while at "Biffen's" they were 
 a " half a length to the good." Occasionally one was treated to 
 a dose of hieroglyphics such as " R. H. Labat (L. B. C.) ; C S. 
 Holmes (C. U. B. C), W. H. Cross (O. U. B. C.)," and so on to an 
 extent calculated to drive one of the uninitiated into remediless 
 insanity. 
 
 If the terms in use by the London newspapers have been 
 
THE BOAT-EACE. 237 
 
 mysterious, their critical Icnowledge of rowing has been astoaish- 
 ing. No matter how influeatial or liow obscure tlie journal, its 
 criticisms on the practice have all been ex cathedrd giving one the 
 impression that every London newspaper employs a professor of 
 aquatics to do up the boat-race. It is true that there has been 
 little agreement among these various gentlemen, for while some 
 have severely condemned a certain point in one or the other crew, 
 the same thing has been flatteringly commented on by some other 
 professors. I fancy that if the crews had taken all the sage 
 advice given them by the London critics, there would have been 
 not less than thirty-seven styles of rowing in each boat, which 
 would have been at the rate of four and three-eighths different 
 styles of execution per man. It might have been a trifle difficult 
 to have made much of a race under such circumstances; and 
 yet to conclude thus, would be to conclude that a London critic 
 is fallible. This wouldn't do, you know, for a moment, for every 
 Englishman is born possessed of a thorough knowledge of dogs, 
 'osses, boxing, riding, and rowing — at least he thinks he is. How 
 men can be thus intuitively endowed, thus infallible from a con- 
 genital standpoint, and yet so widely differ, is something whick 
 I will not explain because I do not understand it. 
 
 It is pleasant, after having been lost in these labyrinths, to get 
 out into an open country where progress is unobstructed, the 
 view clear, and the landmarks recognizable. Of the hearty ap- 
 preciation and enjoyment of the English people for athletic 
 exercises and out-door sports, there is no mystery, no obscurity, 
 no question. Nearly a hundred thousand people paid to witness 
 the late six-days walk. The very next week almost as many more 
 paid for the privilege of witnessing another and shorter walk at 
 the same place. As everybody knows, there are one or two 
 horse races each year that assume the magnitude of national 
 events. The same is true of the annual, university boat-races. An 
 approaching race forms a leading topic in the local columns of 
 the press for weeks before the event occurs. Every day, except 
 Sunda}rs, during the last two weeks, the attendance of people to 
 witness the practice of the crews has often reached the tens of 
 thousands. The tow-path on the south bank, the bridges, the 
 lawns, wharves, houses on the north side, from Putney to Mort- 
 lake, have been densely thronged with human beings, with, men, 
 women, children, equestrians, dogs, gypsies, solely to witness the 
 practice rowing of the crews. This fact becomes the more im- 
 
238 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 portant when it is understood that, owing to the great sweep 
 made by the river, in passing over the course a crew is at no 
 time visible for more than tliree or four minutes, and often for 
 not more tlian one minute. And yet to obtain this momentary 
 glimpse all these thousands have traveled from the city, have 
 stood about for hours, have braved cutting east winds, driving 
 rains, and furious storms of hail and snow. Whatever may be 
 the facts in the case of the thousand and one dogmatic critics of 
 the English newspapers, there is certainly no pretence or sliam 
 among the masses. Their sincerity is abundantly i^roved by their 
 attendance under such unfavorable circumstances, and their 
 enthusiasm over every incident and development of the fort- 
 night's daily half-hour practice of the crews. 
 
 I confess an entire inability to understand why a hundred or 
 two thousand people endure every conceivable discomfort for 
 hours, in order to see two boat-loads of students glance by and 
 disappear in a moment around a bend. There are philosophic 
 souls who profess to find the explanation of the pervading 
 interest and enthusiasm in the fact that only a section of it is 
 seen, and that then there are anticipation before the eights come 
 along, and speculation as to the result after they pass. There 
 may be something in this view of the matter; but I am inclined 
 to think precedent and fashion have everything to do in creating 
 public excitement. Oxford and Cambridge represent the wealth, 
 the blue blood, the old families of the kingdom. Of course the 
 families of all the contestants have an interest ; and, indirectly, 
 all who have anything to do with either of the universities. 
 
 Precedent has a good deal to do with the popularity of the 
 occurrence. It has been the custom to go; and that alone is 
 reason enough why people should go now, just as because it has 
 been the custom, on Guy Fawkes' day, to search beneath the 
 houses of parliament for barrels of gunpowder and combustibles; 
 the ridiculous search it still kept up. 
 
 The strongest reason why an Englishman should or should not 
 do a thing is, that his predecessors have or have not done it. In 
 the case of an American, the fact that people had been doing a 
 given thing in a given manner, would give rise to a question as 
 to whether it should not be done in some other way. 
 
 The university contest is an old affaii', in a comparative sense. 
 It commenced back as far as 1839. From and inclusive of that 
 contest and that just rowed, there have been forty-one races 
 
THE BOAT-KACE. 239 
 
 "between the universities. Before to-day the score stood : Oxford, 
 20 victories ; Cambridge, 18. Once, in 1849, there was a foul and 
 no result ; and last year there was a dead-heat. The first contest 
 was rowed at Henley ; then there were five from Westminster to 
 Putney. All the others have been rowed between Putney and 
 Mortlake, except on five occasions, between 1845 and 1855, when 
 the crews contended for the grand challenge cup at Henley. On 
 three occasions the course has been from Mortlake to Putney, but 
 since 1864, the course has been regularly from Putney to Mortlake. 
 
 At Mortlake the Thames bends to the north till it reaches Ham- 
 mersmith, when it sweeps around to the south to Putney, forming 
 a very creditable horseshoe, the distance being four miles and two 
 furlongs between the points rowed by the rival crews. The 
 shores, especially the north one, are full of historic and personal 
 interest. Putney, on the south bank, — the starting point, — has a 
 church in which Cromwell often held council of war with his 
 leaders. Pitt died in Putney, and Douglas Jerrold and Leigh 
 Hunt are among other notabilities who have lived in the quaint 
 old town. 
 
 Nearly opposite, on the north bank, is Fulham, celebrated for 
 its tapestry and "Fulham pottery." Here Theodore Hook is 
 buried, and here also is Fulham Palace, for several hundreds of 
 years the residence of the bishops of London. On the same bank 
 and further along, is Craven Cottage, once the residence of Bul- 
 wer, while a little further on is Crab Tree inn, a spot which 
 Queen Elizabeth once used to frequent, and about which there 
 are now some stately residences. 
 
 Next comes Hammersmith bridge. At Hammersmith Capt. 
 Marryatt once lived, and many another person who gained a 
 world-wide reputation as singer, dramatist, author, artist. A short 
 distance beyond Hammersmith, and on the same side — the north 
 — is the pleasant and antiquated suburb of Chiswick. Hogarth 
 lived, died, and was buried here. Further along on the other 
 side is Barnes, where a bridge crosses the river. The town is 
 mainly noted as being the place where, in 1812, the Count and 
 Countess d'Autraignes were murdered by their Italian valet, who 
 completed the affair by killing himself. A short distance beyond, 
 and also on the south bank, is Mortlake, where are located the 
 Ship inn and the winning post. The town has some historic 
 interest as having been a residence of the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, and for its once-famous tapestry looms. 
 
240 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 It is thus seen that the banks on both sides are classical in 
 their historic associations. The north bank is especially rich in 
 this respect; and it is also attractive from the many charming 
 villas whose stylish grounds extend down to the water. During 
 a race, nearly every inch of the space along both banks is 
 crowded with spectators. Platforms are erected close to the 
 water for the use of the owners of the private grounds. Every 
 liouse which commands a view of the river has its windows, 
 porticoes, balconies, roof, fences, black with siglit-seers. On the 
 south there are the tow-path along the river's brink, rows of 
 trees, and many open fields lying beyond. The tow-path is lined 
 for miles with people packed like herrings. The trees swarm 
 with occupants, while in the fields beyond, carriages, carts, 
 'buses, and every other conceivable form of vehicle are crowded 
 as thick as they can stand. All these are covered with people 
 whose enthusiasm over the race seems in an inverse ratio to 
 the smallness of the glimpse they can get of it. Were it not 
 that the bridges are closed against the crowd, tliey, too, would 
 be packed with humanity ; but, as there are well-founded fears 
 that the structures would not sustain the enormous weight, they 
 are rigidly closed during the hours of the contest. Could one 
 stand on Hammersmith bridge, one could look down both 
 limbs of the horse-shoe, and would see on either side masses 
 of people, enlivened by the gay colors of women's dresses, and 
 flanking the stream with dense, living walls. 
 
 The characteristics of this enormous mass, as well as the 
 scene on the water, will be given further along. 
 
 As is known, the crews consist of eight oarsmen, and a cox- 
 swain to each boat. The boats used are some forty to fifty feet 
 in length, have sliding seats, and no keels, and are rowed with 
 round oars. Up to 1845 the race was rowed in clumsy boats ; 
 and then a change was made for outriggers. In 1857 the present 
 style of boats without keels, and having round oars, was intro- 
 duced; and in 1873 a further improvement was made by the 
 addition of sliding seats. I may add here that the slowest time 
 ever made on the present course was 26 minutes and 5 seconds, 
 in 1863, and the fastest 19.35, in 1873, on the occasion of the 
 inti'oduction of the sliding seats. Time, however, is not wholly 
 a matter of rowing. The weather and state of the water are of 
 cardinal value in the matter of speed. The race is usually rowed 
 at whatever time of day the tide is most favorable, and this is 
 
THE BOAT-EACE. 241 
 
 believed to be when the tide is coming in, and just ])efore it is 
 full. As the tide flows with considerable speed, and as the 
 boats are rowed with it, and not against it, much better time is 
 made than could be in still water. 
 
 During the progress of a race the course is kept free from 
 steamers and other water craft. A boat carrying the umpire 
 goes just behind the crews, and next comes the press boat. All 
 others have to remain a certain distance in the rear. 
 
 Yesterday, the day before the contest, is known as " Boat-Race 
 day." It is the day upon which the students of Cambridge and 
 Oxford come in force to London, and, in their way, they count 
 upon "running the town," as far as they can. London is so 
 very large that despite the importance and aristocratic connec- 
 tions of the students, they cannot occujDy the entire city, clear 
 all the streets, and fill all the theatres, music-halls, and supper- 
 rooms. Failing to cover all the ground, they do the next most 
 feasible thing, which is to concentrate at one or two points, and 
 make, the most of the situation. Hitherto the Cremorne Gardens, 
 the Argyll Rooms, and Evans's supper and concert hall have 
 been honored by the presence of these gentlemen on the even- 
 ing of " Boat-Race day." A few months since the Cremorne 
 Gardens were closed up and dismantled. Latterly the Argyll 
 Rooms have found it expedient to shut the establishment on 
 this evening, on account of the behavior of the young gentlemen 
 from the universities. There thus remained to them only 
 " Evans'." I went down early and got a good seat, to witness 
 the row which everybody prophesied was certain to occur. On 
 several occasions they have gutted this classical place; and I 
 had strong hopes of witnessing something vigorous in the way 
 of a universal scrimmage. I think I am out of lucft, for, as the 
 race to-day is universally regarded as the poorest ever rowed, and 
 I therefore missed seeing a most exciting affair, so last night no 
 row rewarded my three hours' waiting. The students were there 
 and jammed the place to suffocation, but for the first time no 
 fight occurred. People console me by the assertion that there is 
 sure to be one in the same place to-night; and that the unusual 
 abstinence of last night will make to-night's doings all the more 
 " blooming " and emphatic. 
 
 At 8 :30 the press boat swung loose from Temple pier, and 
 started up the river. There were some twenty-five of us on board. 
 We started with fair hopes. We returned — but I won't anticipate. 
 16 
 
242 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Early as the hour was everything that could float was pressed 
 into service and was headed up the stream. There were the 
 long, narrow river steamers covered from bow to stern with men 
 and women. Small tugs were towing large barges, and these 
 were loaded down with human freight. The throng of small 
 boats propelled by oars was immense ; and the pluck of those 
 tugging at the oars something commendable, in view of the fact 
 that they had before them a pull of several miles to reach the 
 place of contest. Nearly everything that floated carried a flag. 
 Often it was the Union Jack. One or two more pretentious 
 crafts flew that colossal and highly-pictorial piece of bunting, 
 the British flag. There were banners of all patterns and all 
 colors. Some of the more pronounced partisans of the occasion 
 floated on the breeze the colors of the contestants — the light blue 
 of Cambridge or the deep azure of the Hoxfords. 
 
 Nor were the charms of music lacking. Now a dingey would 
 appear, two young women squeezed side by side in the stern 
 sheets, one man tugging valiantly at the stubby oars, while another 
 jerked a most excruciating version of " We don't want to fight." 
 (I don't believe they do) from a puffing concertina. A harji and 
 a violin came from the deck of a more pretentious craft, while 
 still higher in the scale darted along a vessel from whose decks 
 poured the strains of a full brass band. Along the noble Thames 
 embankment on the north shore, could be seen an unbroken tide 
 of vehicles and pedestrians setting up the river; and from the 
 roof of an omnibus here and there there rang out over the water 
 the clear ta-ra-la-la of some well-blown bugle. Hansoms, 
 "crawlers," omnibuses, four-in-hand drags, dog-carts; in short, 
 every possible kind of vehicle known to London could be seen 
 on the shore, all being propelled at a sharp trot up the sinuous 
 banks. 
 
 It was a grand, a stunning prelude to a most "lame and im- 
 potent" conclusion— something like what would be an orchestral 
 prelude of a hundred instruments played to a solo on a jews- 
 harp, by a fifteenth-rate performer. 
 
 Dodging, twisting, and winding about to avoid running over 
 the infinite press of small boats, or into the larger ones, we at 
 last passed under quaint old Putne}^ bridge, thence on beneath 
 the Aqueduct, and then, a few yards further, we tied up to a 
 dummy anchored near the north shore, and found ourselves at 
 the starting-point. 
 
THE BOAT-KACE. 243 
 
 There was an enormous crowd gathered here. The bridge 
 -was black with people. Upon the high Aqueduct groups had 
 gathered, dotting its lofty sweep like flies. On the adjacent 
 hanks the spectators were gathered in great masses, black as to 
 tone, but lightened here and there with the dresses of women. 
 Tip the shores as far as the eye could take in the banks, there 
 stood solid lines of spectators, gay with banners, from the mounte- 
 banks, gipsy shooting-galleries, cocoanut bowling-alleys, circular 
 swings, and other arrangements for amusing the crowd and 
 winning their money. 
 
 At 10:15' the press-boat was ordered to fall back to the bridge. 
 "We did so. Then the umpire's boat took the place we had left. 
 It was black with people. To the right of the umpire's boat 
 there came a steamer loaded to the guards with Oxford students. 
 To the left came another steamer laden to the same extent with 
 Cambridge students. These three formed a solid wall. 
 
 Somebody said "They're off !" I saw nobod}^ which answered 
 to "they." The three boats in front of us moved ahead. We 
 did the same. There was evidently something in front of these 
 boats. I could see the men in them waving their hands and 
 their hats. An excitement of some kind made its way along 
 the dense masses on the banks. Faintly came to us from the 
 living walls, " Oooray, Hoxford!" 
 
 Some twenty-three minutes after the start it was announced 
 that Oxford had won. I saw nothing of the race. The three 
 boats in advance of us, with their great human cargoes, com- 
 pletely shut us out, and we saw nothing. 
 
 An evening paper just out says : " We are indebted to a gentle- 
 man who stood on the paddle-box of the umpire's boat for the 
 following account of the race." 
 
 A greater fraud on journalism was never perpetrated. 
 
 At Mortlake, there were gathered illimitable masses of spec- 
 tators. They howled, swayed, swung their hats, canes, and um- 
 brellas. I judge from their actions that there was a race. 
 
 As for me, although in the press-boat, I never saw either crew, 
 or the drop of an oar in the water 
 
244 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 LETTER XXXVIII. 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 
 
 London, April 20, 1878. 
 
 ^^1^ EN" who, in America, know little, and often care less, 
 j/(^V^\ about the other salient features of London, or of En- 
 •"^^BS^ gland, such as Parliament House, the grand monu- 
 ments, the cathedrals, the historic castles, the ivy-clad ruins of 
 once-famous monasteries, are often men who have a thousand 
 times in fancy wandered through Westminster Abbey; have 
 stood over its graves, beside its monuments, and beneath its lofty 
 arches, inhaling, although thousands of miles away, an atmos- 
 phere heavy with a grandeur born of modern and mediaeval ages. 
 
 How often before I stood within the " awful shadows " of its 
 presence, have I constructed a mental picture, whose filling 
 lacked no breadth, no coloring, no details to make it the grand- 
 est work that ever grew into shape under the creative power of 
 my imagination. It was a picture with massive shadows in 
 which slumbered the mighty past; with bursts of sunlight here, 
 the gleam of marble there ; now a towering cenotaph, and again 
 the contrasts of dingy tombs whose legends were long since ef- 
 faced by remorseless time. And yet when, years after the con- 
 struction of this ideal picture, I saw the reality, they were the 
 same and yet not the same. 
 
 They were unlike because the ideal fell short of the real. In 
 the actiial presence of the grand old structure ; within its hal- 
 lowed walls the former shrank to puny dimensions. Its coloring 
 was faulty, its drawing inartistic, its ensemble to the actual thing 
 what a cracked, faded daub by a house-painter would be by the 
 side of a Frith, a Reynolds, or a Wilkie. Possibly there are 
 others who have undergone the same experience — who, in the 
 presence of the reality, have found their ideal shattered like a 
 penny mirror by a blazing thunderbolt. 
 
 It is because the creation of the imagination differs so widely 
 from that accretion of the centuries — Westminster Abbey — that 
 I am induced to essay a new description as I saw it. It is not 
 expected that anything novel will be presented. It is not ex- 
 pected that what may be said w^ill be even up to the average of 
 what others have already written. The most that is hoped is 
 that, as each observer sees a thing from a different stand-point, 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 245 
 
 the view about to be presented may correct a conclusion here, 
 add a suggestion there, to ideals already in existence — the crea- 
 tion of those who have yet to see, or, worse, may never see, the 
 reality of their dreams. Again, there may be others who hur- 
 riedly rushed along through nave and transept and cloisters, who 
 have glanced at here and there a tomb, a statue, a monumental 
 slab, who would be glad to have the rough outlines of their re- 
 membrance filled in with the finer details of the scene. 
 
 One who has formed a conception of Westminster Abbey will 
 scarcely know whether he is the more pleased or disappointed 
 when he first finds himself face to face with the reality. It is like 
 and unlike what he had conceived. He had never in his con- 
 struction made allowance for adjoining open spaces, for the pro- 
 pinquity of huge, and insignificant buildings, or for the effect 
 which comes from slopes, heights, and depressions. A building 
 with one class of surroundings is quite another thing when en- 
 vironed with a diiferent class. And thus it happens, if one 
 catches sight of the Abbey across the broad, open space that 
 stretches from Parliament street it seems dwarfed by comparison 
 with his ideal. If he first come from out the lofty buildings 
 from the direction of Westminster Palace hotel, its nearness 
 gives it increased height, and it towers as much above his con- 
 ception as, in the view across the open space, it fell below it. 
 Even against the background aflbrded by the long houses of par- 
 liament, with their innumerable and petty architectural details, 
 it becomes massive, solid, grand in its integrity. 
 
 And yet when one scans the outlines of the vast, dark gray 
 mass which looms before him, when one takes in one by one the 
 greater details of the structure, its integrity disappears. Vast 
 buttresses here, lighter ones there, windows of diverse shapes 
 and occupying dift'erent lines; ornamentation close upon orna- 
 mentation without harmony and intelligible connection; ana- 
 chronism in chronological sequences ; pinnacles, clustered col- 
 umns, arches ; nowhere apparent anything like homogeneity ; the 
 light and fanciful superimposing the dark and massive — these 
 are what one discovers when the front is interrogated little by 
 little, and each item is taken in detail. To study the exterior 
 thus in sections is a work which excites curiosity, pain, disap- 
 pointment, although there is here and there a bit of beauty that 
 comes with the force of a revelation. It is far better for the archi- 
 tectural critic to give little attention to the Abbey except from a 
 
246 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 distant point of view. Then its inharmonious details blend har- 
 moniously ; the massive grandeur alone becomes revealed. He 
 sees a great, dark, irregular mass, from out which spring sturdy- 
 towers, spires, pointed gables, pinnacles. He sees the long vertical 
 lines, the high-arched windows, and the whole flanked by vast 
 buttresses which seem powerful enough to hold the mass intact 
 against the shock of an earthquake. 
 
 It varies in its character and suggestions as one thus studies it 
 as a whole. It grows into a mausoleum gray with the attrition 
 of centuries; and "grand, gloomy, and peculiar," sits enthroned 
 in a panoply of its own shadows. It is a colossal, sombre con- 
 glomerate, in which are united all the grand suggestions and 
 ideas of more than a thousand years. Here are architectural 
 ideas from the days of the crude and barbarous Anglo-Norman^ 
 thence through the pure Gothic with its slender lines, to the Tu- 
 dor, and thence along to the recognizable features of compara- 
 tively modern days. In this agglomeration are suggestions of 
 remote Paganism, of the splendor of Romanism, of the days of 
 the Reformation, of stern Puritanism, and later religious eras. 
 It is a great rock over which have rolled and broken the wave* 
 and currents of centuries of social, religious and intellectual 
 changes. Within its capacious crypts reposes dust gathered 
 from a broad highway of life which runs straight back to a time 
 when modern civilization was in its infancy, — when the slender 
 new moon of intelligence had but barely risen above the hori- 
 zon. It embodies within and without every phase of English, 
 growth, from the sturdy Saxon to the era of a Gladstone and a 
 Beaconsfield. 
 
 Such, in brief, is Westminster Abbey to one who studies its ex- 
 terior, who reads the lettering written by time upon its moss- 
 grown walls, who comprehends a few of the suggestions eman- 
 ating from its shadowy bulk, its eloquent, voiceless silence. 
 
 The visitor who, for the first time, passes through the thick 
 walls to the interior of Westminster Abbey, will be at once con- 
 fused with the multiplicity of details. If he has formed an idea 
 at all of the interior, it will have perhaps been that of an ordi- 
 nary cruciform church, along whose nave and transepts he can 
 obtain uninterrupted views. Nothing is more erroneous. The 
 moment the observer steps within, he is stunned by a pervading- 
 particularity. He sees nothing which resembles the ordinary 
 church. Instead, there are narrow passages leading everywhere ; 
 
■WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 247 
 
 there are colonnades whose perspective is broken by the interpo- 
 sition of galleries, lofty statues, and massive emblematic groups, 
 and other objects which, in the distance, melt away into appa- 
 rent chaos. 
 
 Stunned by this endless accumulation of the unexpected, the 
 visitor finds himself at first disappointed. He anticipated great 
 spaces, unbroken lines, long perspectives, and finds them not. 
 Railed spaces, high partitions, niches in the massive walls, tombs, 
 effigies, gilded gates are all about him. If he attempt to study 
 the architecture within his view, his confusion, is redoubled, for 
 he sees everywhere evidence of the hands of widely-separated 
 ages, each of which, in shaft, architrave, and column, has worked 
 out its own idea, developed its "own taste, without reference of 
 what had gone, or what yet might come. Details by the million 
 flout him from the mosaic pavement, up along the towering col- 
 umns to the groined arches high up toward the fretted roof. 
 Everywhere armorial insignia, stained windows, sunk panels, 
 bosses, obelisks, dusty flags, marbles, and things without name 
 or number. Tliis changes only when one has traversed the cha- 
 otic wilderness of the transept, and has reached, after devious 
 wanderings, the north aisle of the nave. Here, and here only, 
 in the wliole structure, does one secure a view of any extent — • 
 one which atfords a commensurate idea of the length of the 
 Abbey. 
 
 As one steps into this aisle the chaos of the transepts disap, 
 pear. High over tlie observer rise, from either side, rows of col, 
 umns, whose tops are interwoven in pointed arches. Along this 
 vista the Abbey is seen from end to end. That is, one may see 
 it, if one can ; but the distance is so great, the interwoven arches 
 of the columns dip so rapidly, the columns unite so speedily, the 
 perspective so narrows, that long before the eye can reach the re- 
 mote end, it is lost in the dim and closing distance. 
 
 This view, such as it is, is the only one of any considerable 
 extent. It is true that, as the visitor branches into otlier aisles, 
 as he suddenly I'ounds the corner of a tomb, or a chapel, a long 
 and misty opening will now and tlien flash upon him, and which, 
 when followed, loses itself in an obscurity in which are dimly 
 seen dusty banners, and scarcely-outlined fret-work, and endless 
 ornamentation. Such views, however, are exceptional. The in- 
 terior of the Abbey has no general sense of vastness. There are 
 colossal and infinitesimal details. It is a great city of the dead, 
 
248 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 and their monumental piles have gradually changed the church 
 into a sepulchre. It is something which cannot be studied as a 
 whole. It is hardly to be resolved into groups, for even where 
 there are creations similar in name they are utterly unlike in re- 
 ality. There are cloisters and chapels and tombs, and yet no 
 cloister, or chapel, or tomb resembles in the least, any other of 
 the same designation. 
 
 Despite the fact that the Abbey is a mausoleum, and not a 
 church, yet so vast is it that room is found in tlie nave for a con- 
 gregation. Here an audience of thousands may assemble and 
 not impinge upon the monumental creations which so crowd the 
 space of the building. Each afternoon, and on the Sabbath, at 
 given hours, great volumes of liiusic go, rolling like the waves 
 through the breakers, among the sculptured marbles, by chapel, 
 column, oratory and porch, till they die away and are lost among 
 the tombs, or in the hazy recesses of the lofty roof 
 
 An attempt to intelligibly describe the interior in detail must, 
 almost of necessity, be a failure, unless in a great volume, which 
 should have a pictured illustration with every line of descrip- 
 tion. The most that can be done in an article like this, is to 
 group a few of the more salient features, and perhaps to elabor- 
 ate here and there a notable particular. 
 
 The interior of "Westminster Abbey divides itself into two gen- 
 eral parts. One of these is composed of the transepts and their 
 aisles, and the nave and its aisles. The other is made up of the 
 chapels and the choir. Of the former in detail, it is not neces- 
 sary to speak, as a description would unavoidably be architect- 
 ural and technical in its character, and, therefore, not of general 
 interest. The same may be said of the choir, which, however 
 interesting as a work of art, is, in the main, of modern construc- 
 tion. It forms no essential part of the idea which treats the 
 Abbey as a great mausoleum ; and, hence, it may be dismissed 
 from the present article. There remain the chapels, with their 
 tombs, and the nave and transepts, so far as they are occupied by 
 the graves or the monuments of the dead. 
 
 If one should picture a gigantic cross — emblem of suffering ! 
 — one would have the main outlines of the Abbey. In that por- 
 tion Ijdng above the arms, or transepts, in what may be termed 
 the head, are the chapels, some twelve in nu.mber. In the left 
 arm of the cross, or south transept, is what is known as " Poet's 
 Corner." Along the sides of the body of the cross, or nave, be- 
 
' "WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 249 
 
 iind the long rows of columns, on the walls, one sees each 
 square foot of space occupied with the mementoes of the 
 dead. Here are no graves, as in the chapels and the Poet's Cor- 
 ner. Here are statues, busts, intaglios, columns, hatchments, an- 
 aglyphs in bronze, brass, marble, iron, wood. 
 
 These, thefi, constitute the great charm, or attraction, of West- 
 minster Abbey. It is not the great resounding organ ; the groined 
 canopies of the stalls ; the variegated alabaster of the reredos 
 with its superb sculpture, and a fafade scarcely with an equal 
 for its elaborate beauty and its exquisite finish; nor the grand 
 windows with their venerated themes and rich colorings. These, 
 and the colonnades, the tracery, the mouldings, the gilding ; the 
 groined arches, and lofty roof losing itself in apparently im- 
 measurable distance, are all, despite their beauty and merit, mere 
 tinsel when compared to the interest which attaches itself to the 
 sublimity of the sepulchre. One can find elsewhere equal arch- 
 itectural beauty, equal antiquity of construction, equal claims in 
 decoration and finish, but nowhere else a place in which sleep so 
 many men and women who once shone as suns in the world's 
 firmament. Here one sees the tomb of royal Sebert, the Saxon, 
 who lived more than twelve hundred years ago — centuries be- 
 fore the Norman invasion, and at a time when the human race 
 had scarcely passed beyond the sound of the living voice of the 
 Nazarene. About him are Edward the Confessor — whose dust 
 is weighed down with the burden of more than a thousand years ; 
 the Henrys III., V., and VII.; the Edwards I., III., and V.; 
 Richard II. ; James I. ; Charles 11. ; William III. ; George II., 
 and fourteen Queens who once were reigning sovereigns, or the 
 consorts of Kings. Nowhere is there such an assemblage of 
 royal dust. Scarcely a family of any note in England, during 
 all the tempestuous periods of her existence, from the days of 
 the Roman invasion to that of the Danes and Normans, and 
 thence along through domestic strife or foreign wars in which 
 the English battle-flag swept victoriously the seas and lands of 
 the known world, but has here its representative. 
 
PAET IL--THE CONTINENT. 
 
" YOUNG FKAMCE." 
 
THE CONTINENT. 
 
 LETTER XXXIX. 
 
 ENGLISH AND FKENCH. 
 
 Paris, May 2, 1878. 
 
 tHE change from London, with its chilling east winds, its 
 eternal fogs, its smoke-stained buildings, to Paris, with its 
 bursts of sunshine, its April showers, its bright archi- 
 tecture, its trees all in green and the white of blossoms, is a most 
 marked one. Nothing can be more unlike than these two cities. 
 They are antipodean in every essential particular. After an 
 acquaintance with both, one would be almost tempted to con- 
 clude that there is something more than the mere accident of 
 nationality and location to account for this dissimilarity. 
 
 In fact, I know that intention, in many cases, underlies the 
 difference. The coldness, the indifference of polite English 
 society are a reaction from the extreme agreeability and polite- 
 ness of French manners. To do just what a Frenchman or 
 woman would not do under the same circumstances seems to be 
 the rule of action with a majority of the English people. 
 
 " Oh, the French! " said an intelligent Londoner to me, "they 
 are not men, they're monkeys ! They're undersized, contemptible, 
 everlastingly grinning, bowing and scraping. D — n 'em, they're 
 not men in any true sense of the word ! " 
 
 It might be worth while to endeavor to ascertain the origin of 
 this mutual dislike — for it is mutual, as I have discovered with- 
 out diflB.culty, even during my short residence in Paris. How- 
 ever, this is a something too dry for an ordinary correspondence, 
 and I will skip it for other topics more animated and requiring 
 less thought. 
 
 Without at present taking any notice of the question of motiveSj 
 (353) 
 
254 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 or stopping to inquire whetlier Englisli or French are more polite 
 at heart, I may say that the external manifestations are surpris- 
 ingly unlike. On the streets, in the cars, everywhere in public, 
 the English people are brutal, while the French are precisely the 
 reverse. An Englishman under these circumstances seems never 
 to have any regard except for himself, while a Frenchman seems 
 in the main possessed by the idea that it is his duty to deny him- 
 self in the interest of others. An Englishman never makes room 
 for you in a 'bus except with a most ungracious manner. If he 
 l)e in a compartment of a car, he resents the entrance of every- 
 body else as an intrusion. On the other hand, the Frenchman 
 goes out of his way to accommodate another. He indicates a 
 seat not occupied in a public conveyance. He appears glad to 
 see another enter a compartment where he may be by himself. 
 He always has a polite ^'■Bonjour''^ for the newcomer, and is 
 ready for a chat, to answer all questions, to volunteer informa- 
 tion. 
 
 The Englishman who enters an eating-room does it with a 
 scowl, if anybody else be present. He seeks the most secluded 
 corner, and always, if possible, a table by himself The French- 
 man always enters with a smile, lifting his hat politely as he 
 passes the door, and then, if he can, secures a table where there 
 are others with whom he can gossiji while he feeds. And so it is 
 everywhere and in everything. The Englisman, as a general 
 thing, dislikes Americans; the Frenchman, while cheating them 
 always, yet likes them. The latter is all upon the surface; he 
 lives on the streets, in the parks, at the cafe's, and only goes home 
 when he has no other place to go to. The former despises the 
 companionship of the streets ; he puts his worst qualities on the 
 surface, and prefers home to any other locality. 
 
 One distinguishes a great difference in the street cries of the 
 two countries. In the streets of London, one who has anything 
 to sell announces it with a straight, short, barbarous howl, that 
 is without decoration and without meaning, to a stranger. The 
 street-hawkers of Paris have their cries set to music. The fellow 
 who wishes to inform the public that he is in search of old hats 
 to buy or repair, does so in a cry of four or five notes that vary 
 from a monotone and fall always j^leasantly on the ear. The 
 architecture of London is dingy, plain, and full of severity, while 
 that of Paris is bright in material, ornamental and inviting. 
 
 Despite all these superficial differences, it does not follow that 
 
ENGLISH AND FRENCH. 255 
 
 the balance is against the English. After a stay among them of 
 nearly a year, I must say that all their worst qualities are on the 
 outside. At their homes, in their domestic and social life, they 
 are a people who have no superiors in intelligence, cultivation, 
 hospitality and generosity. I most gladly pay them this tribute, 
 because truth demands it, and because their treatment of your 
 corresi3ondent has been invariably of a kind which must com- 
 mand his life-long gratitude. If hospitality without ostentation ; 
 if fine appreciation and unceasing consideration; if hearty 
 Jionesty of character demand respect, then the English people, 
 in their social capacity, have most thoroughly won mine. I 
 began by disliking them, and have ended by concluding that 
 they have few, if any, superiors in their inner life. Give the 
 average Englishman the manners of a Frenchman, in public, 
 jand he would be a character to which little would need be 
 added. 
 
 Of the Englishman other than in his social life, I have nothing 
 at present to say. 
 
 Perhaps nothing shows more forcibly the difierence between 
 the two nations than the character of their funerals. There can 
 be no more lugubrious, clumsy, unpoetical affair than an English 
 funeral. The hearse is a house on wheels — massive, unwieldy, a 
 mountain of woe. The hired mourners, a lot of bottle-nosed 
 stablemen, with their long weepers, are the embodiment of 
 everything ridiculous and absurd. A dead body among the 
 English seems to be a thing which everybody fears and avoids 
 with horror. I have often seen an Englishman turn down a 
 street so as not to meet an approaching funeral. 
 
 In Paris there is no elephantine hearse, no paid mourners with 
 noses in red and faces covered with simulated woe. Often there 
 is no hearse at all. Several times have I met processions in which 
 •children in spotless white, and moving two and two, were, in 
 advance of a colfin buried in flowers, and carried on a light 
 framework of wood, covered with black and white cloth. Behind 
 would come other children and the relatives of the deceased, all 
 on foot, and with white dresses trimmed with crape and ribbons, 
 giving a hopeful character to the occurrence and relieving it of a 
 sombre, oppressive solemnity. Often, when a hearse is employed, 
 it is open, showing the outlines of the coflfln through a pall bor- 
 dered with white. Masses of flowers remove the last vestige of 
 anything offensive or sad or repellant. The drivers of the coaches 
 
256 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 do not have yards of crape hung from their hats like great 
 streamers. They wear black cocked hats, bordered with white ; 
 and while solemn in ai:)pearance and demeanor, are not so in an 
 offensive sense. As the procession moves along nobody regards 
 it with horror or loathing, or rushes up a by-street to escape 
 meeting it. On the contrary, everybody sees it without fear. As 
 it goes by the women cross themselves and the men lift their hats 
 with reverence. 
 
 Of course, there is nothing new in these customs, and I men- 
 tion them not as novelties, but simply in order to secure a contrast 
 between English and French qualities. 
 
 Quite as marked as anything else is the difference in sobriety. 
 One never sees a drunken Frenchriian, while in London the 
 spectacle of a man or woman in a state of disgusting intoxica- 
 tion is of common occurrence. In the latter city, one sees not 
 merely a man or woman in a condition of inebriety, but one sees 
 them in droves. A woman standing up at a bar and pouring 
 down gin or whisky, is something never seen here. Women do 
 frequent the cafes ; but they sit down at a table, either in the 
 room or on the sidewalk, and leisurely sip coffee or cheap wines. 
 They are always at least clean, never quarrelsome ; and as little 
 like the women of the English lower classes as can be imagined. 
 Nor does one meet in Paris the vile smoking habits which one 
 encounters everywhere in England. Nearly every Parisian of 
 the male sex smokes— and so perhaps do many of the other sex — 
 but it is rarely anything other than a cigar or cigarette. The 
 atrocious " shag " with which our English cousins perfume them- 
 selves and their surroundings would turn the delicate stomach 
 of a Parisian, and drive him into incurable insanity. 
 
 If the incessant use of cold water — except for drinking pur- 
 poses — be a virtue, then the English are not only virtuous beyond 
 Frenchmen, but beyond all others. An Englishman must have 
 his cold bath every morning. Not only this, but he must inform 
 some of his acquaintances during each day something about his 
 bath — the a being sounded like a in all. " The bath was quite 
 cold this morning," is a bit of information which nearly every 
 Englishman is almost certain to communicate to each of his 
 acquaintances between the hours of bathing and bedtime. 
 
 The thing goes even further than this. I do not recall many 
 English novels of a modern date in which it is not stated that the 
 hero takes a cold bath winter and summer upon getting out of 
 
ENGLISH AND FRENCH. 
 
 257 
 
 bed. Even George Eliot did not omit to hint that Gwendolyn was 
 in the habit of taken a cold dip each morning before going forth 
 to play roulette, or hunt a husband having, not youth or sense, 
 but wealth and "good form." 
 
 In a late English novel occurs the extraordinary assertion in 
 regard to something or somebody that it was a " platter clean on 
 the outside but inside full of dead men's bones." I am appre- 
 hensive that the something which was in the mind of the author 
 applies in a limited degree to the French. Public and private 
 
 A FRENCH BATH-TUB. 
 
 bathing establishments — hot, cold, swimming, Turkish, Russian — 
 meet one at every step in London. Here, such establishments 
 are as scarce as powder magazines are said to be in Hades. I 
 suppose a Frenchman would reply to this that if the English 
 have so many more bathing places, it is because they impera- 
 tively need them. However, I am not prepared to accept this 
 explanation. The houses of the better classes are badly venti- 
 17 
 
258 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 lated, the drainage is imperfect, and there is a very general and 
 careless mixing up of kitcliens and water-closets. The construc- 
 tion of batli-rooms in private houses, so far as I have seen, does 
 not generally prevail. Water is so scarce and dear, that the 
 amount allowed one for lavatory purposes scarcely amounts to 
 much more tlian a teacupful. Under such circumstances a 
 French wash is little more than a dry scrub. At none of the 
 cafes or restaurants are there any of the convenient lavatories or 
 water-closets wliich are to be found in connection with every eat- 
 ing-house of any pretensions in London. 
 
 And yet, on the surface, the people on the streets have no ap- 
 peai'ance of uncleanliness. Every French woman, in walking, 
 manages to display some portion of her under-clotliing, and it is 
 never bedraggled or soiled. As washing is done in tlie Seine, as 
 a general thing, and the water tliere is plentiful, there is no 
 excuse for dirty linen; but the case seems quite different so far 
 as cleanliness of person, apartments, and the like are concerned. 
 
 While Americans may be justly regarded as extravagant in 
 their expenditures when compared with the English, the latter 
 may be looked upon as la,vish in their outlay when compared 
 with the French. An ordinary French family will live luxuri- 
 ously upon what an English, but more especially an American, 
 family habitually wastes. 
 
 There is a market here known as the " Harlequin Market," at 
 which are offered for sale all the scraps left at the restaurants 
 and cafes. Nothing is wasted. The stub of a cigar, on the side- 
 walk, is speedily fished up, and carried off by some prowling 
 mendicant, or by a person who will sell it to a manufactory 
 where it will be made over into smoking tobacco. 
 
 A Paris dandy buys a pair of new gloves. A majority of 
 people who buy gloves do so for the purpose of wearing them. 
 So does he, in time, but not at the moment. He buys his gloves, he 
 thrusts them into the breast of his buttoned coat so that the ends 
 hang out, and display their newness. He then goes about bare- 
 handed, but always the new gloves showing themselves to the 
 world. His make-up is an assertion, "You see, cher public, 
 that the reason of my not wearing gloves is not that I haven't got 
 any. I just bought these around the corner, and shall put them 
 on in a few minutes." And yet I have seen the same chap wear- 
 ing the same gloves out on his breast, promenading the Boule- 
 vard des Italiens for the last ten daj's. It is no certain thing that 
 
EXPOSITION NOTES. 259 
 
 lie lias not worn the same pair of gloves in the same place for 
 the last two years. 
 
 Frenchmen are not ashamed to be economical in public. Yes- 
 terday afternoon I was sitting under the awning of the Cafe de 
 la Paix. A smart shower suddenly opened its sluices on the 
 throng of pedestrians. Happening to loolc across the Place de 
 rOpera, my eye was caught by two Frenchmen who were trying 
 their best to squeeze themselves under a small umbrella. It was 
 no use, it would do indifferently well even for one, but not at all 
 for two. Sometliing must be done, and something was done. 
 One of the men took off liis silk hat — a brand new one — and 
 handed it to the other. The latter put the hat well up under the 
 umbrella, and then the other stepped out in the pouring rain. 
 Thus the two walked along — the one witli tlie umbrella and his 
 friend's hat, the other bare-headed in the pelting shower. He 
 knew the rain would not hurt his head or his coat, but would 
 ruin his hat. He preferred the ducking to the loss of his beaver. 
 
 LETTER XL. 
 
 EXPOSITION NOTES. 
 
 Pakis, May 9, 1878. 
 
 NYBODY who enjoys a crowd can have all the fun he 
 wishes for in Paris at the present time. The hotels are 
 so full that the heads and feet of the guests bulge out 
 through every opening. The restaurants are so jammed that 
 only thirty-four per cent, of the mob have places to eat, while 
 the other sixty-six per cent, look on pcrspiringly and wait their 
 turn to snatch a place and a dirty napkin. 
 
 The person who enjoys a crowd cannot but be hilarious all the 
 time. If he wishes to sit down at a cafe he finds all the seats 
 taken. If he desires to go anywhere by a 'bus or street-car, and 
 goes to any of the stopping places, there are always from one 
 hundred and fifty to eight hundred and seventy-five there in 
 advance of him. If he go to a railway station to buy a ticket 
 anywhere, he finds a queue that reaches at least two squares. If 
 
260 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 he conclude to take a voiture, lie discovers that every one of these 
 vehicles is engaged, and that the street is lined for blocks with 
 other anxious ones, who are frantically shaking their umbrellas, 
 and vainly, at every passing hack. At the Exposition all the 
 seats are taken, all the boxes occupied, all the desirable sights 
 surrounded by an impenetrable throng. He can't get into a 
 church, a monument, or anywhere else, because, go as often and 
 early as he will, the mob has gone earlier and oftener. 
 
 But if a person doesn't like a mob, then he won't enjoy Paris 
 just now. He is thrust off the sidewalks. He is everlastingly 
 dodging millions of rushing vehicles at the crossings. He 
 wanders about all day, seeking vainly a place of rest, and if 
 he stop to lean against a tree, he hears, in common with other 
 weary vagabonds, the eternal monotone of sergents de villa, 
 " Circulez, Messieurs! " When he gets home — if he be fortunate 
 enough to have secured a kennel in the seventh story which he 
 may call "home " — at midnight, he has on his body the impres- 
 sions of thousands of elbows and umbrellas, and . on his feet in- 
 dentations from half the shoes, hob-nailed or otherwise, of Paris. 
 
 The only true way to enjoy Paris just now by a New Yorker 
 or Chicagoan is for him to stay at home and read the accounts, 
 such as are furnished by your correspondent and other dmes 
 damndes condemned to stay a while in this terrestrial enfer. If a 
 man will come and can arrange it, he will do well to bring his 
 own carriage, provisions, seats, benches, beds, house, lot, barn- 
 yard, and front garden, with a few plats of grass, beds of flowers, 
 and shade trees to make things pleasant and give them a decora- 
 tive, home-like appearance. 
 
 Our Americans are immense " on French " — at least a major- 
 ity of them insist that they are. Ask any of them if they speak 
 French, and the invariable reply is, " Oh, yes. Don't have any 
 trouble — get along first rate." I need scarcely say that many of 
 them are mistaken in their estimate of their own abilities in this 
 direction. 
 
 There is, among my American acquaintances, an American 
 "colonel "and liis family — wife, son and daughter. They all 
 speak French — pure American French with the genuine western 
 accent, and the true star-spangled idiom. They have apartments 
 rented from a French lady and her daughter, both the latter be- 
 ing of the educated class, and neither of them speaking a word 
 of English. 
 
EXPOSITION NOTES. 261 
 
 Last night I dropped in on the colonel. Both families were 
 gatliered in the grand salon, and were having a breezy chat in 
 the purest French. It was on the comparative difficulty of ac- 
 quiring the French and English languages. By-and-by, madame, 
 the wife of the colonel, ventured an opinion : 
 
 " La plus grande difflculte en Franjais est le gendre, n'est 
 pas?" 
 
 The landlady looked puzzled and astounded. The young 
 French lady seemed puzzled and immensely amused. 
 
 " Comment? Le gendre ? " 
 
 Then there were mutual inquiries and explanations, and finally 
 it came to be understood that Mrs. Colonel meant to ask if gen- 
 der is not the most difficult thing in French; but in place of 
 using the word genre for gender, she used the word gendre, which 
 means — son-in-law. The confusion of madame and the amuse- 
 ment of her daughter were now easily understood. 
 
 Scarcely had the American matron been raised out of the pit- 
 fall when the colonel tumbled into one with most surprising 
 alacrity. There was a little merriment over Mrs. Colonel's blun- 
 der, of which tbe colonel, in a true marital spirit, undertook to 
 -avail himself 
 
 "Ah," said he, pointing to his wife, "Elle est sage-femme, sans 
 doute!" 
 
 Mam'selle blushed, and looked as if she would like to leave the 
 room. 
 
 "Mais, Monsieur," said the lady of the house, "Madame n'est 
 pas accoucheuse ? " 
 
 It took some little time to convince the colonel that, instead of 
 speaking of his spouse as a modest, excellent woman, he had sim- 
 ply termed her a midwife. 
 
 And this was not enough. The budding youth who hailed the 
 colonel as father had been in another room, writing a note. It 
 was one which he wished to send to a young lady, an American 
 acquaintance who was attending the same school with mademoi- 
 selle; and he approached the daughter to ask her if she would 
 deliver it. 
 
 " Pardong, Mam'selle Esthere," said he, "voulez vous apporter 
 pour moi Une billy doux ? " 
 
 " Monsieur ?" responded the demoiselle, interrogatively. 
 
 "Voulez vous apporter pour moi une billy doux?" re- 
 peated he. 
 
262 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 She pondered the matter a moment, then seemed to compre- 
 hend. 
 
 "Oui! oui! certainment! un balaidoux!" She rushed from 
 the room, and in a moment returned with a feather-duster — the 
 balai doux whicli she supposed the youtli was in need of. 
 
 These actually occurred all within the space of ten minutes, 
 and are simply representative cases of others. They serve to 
 give an idea of how our natives get along in "wrastling" with 
 the langue Fran5aise. 
 
 It should be stated that, whenever an American comes here 
 he is always immediately taken in tow by some other Amer- 
 ican. The latter patronizes the new-comer. He takes the 
 late arrival to a cafe, calls " gargong ! " in a very imperative and 
 easy tone, and orders : " Ung tasse cafe," or "petty verre cogniac 
 poor doo," in a style as if French were his native language and 
 he never had spoken any other. It is just the same if the veteran 
 has been on French soil only twenty-four hours. He always 
 patronizes the next American who comes. He assumes that the 
 other fellow doesn't know the language, and takes charge of him 
 as if he were a new infant. 
 
 That is what the colonel has been doing to me. He has in- 
 vited me to drink more than a hundred times, so he could show 
 me how he could " sling " French at a gargon. He has invited 
 me to ride so that I could hear him tell the cocher : " Ally o roo- 
 Vang Katter September." It paid me, after a fashion, to be 
 patronized, and asked to take rides, drinks, and things, and so I 
 didn't object. I began to notice, however, that he never asked 
 me to dinner. 
 
 Yesterday I happened to pass a little restaurant on a street just 
 off the Boulevard des Capucines. It was about dinner time; the 
 asparagus and meats in the window looked clean and cool. I 
 was hungry and I popped in. Climbing the escalier I entered a 
 small room, to which I was attracted by the loud tones of what 
 seemed a familiar voice. At a snug table in one corner was 
 seated the substantial form of the colonel, whose bald head I at 
 once recognized. His back was toward me, he had a napkin un- 
 der his chin, and he was giving his order to a waiter in unmis- 
 takable English, and the latter was making i-esponses and sug- 
 gestions in the same language. As soon as the waiter left, I 
 "went around and took a seat at the colonel's table. When he saw 
 
EXPOSITION NOTES. 263 
 
 me his pnrj^le visage turned a greenisli white. I had caught him 
 at it. He was dining at a place where Englisli was spoken ! 
 
 " Never was in this place before," he said, trying to hide his 
 confusion. Just then the waiter entered with a half bottle of 
 wine. 
 
 " This is what you left over at dinner yesterday, colonel," said 
 the waiter as he put down the bottle. The colonel glared at him 
 with an expression of mute but frightful indignation. I was 
 sorry for the colonel, and pretended not to notice the painful in- 
 cident. 
 
 After dinner we strolled off for a little exercise. We went up 
 one street and down another, discussing Chicago and St. Louis — 
 the colonel is from St. Louis — until we discovered we were lost. 
 
 " Ask a sergent de ville, colonel." said L 
 
 " I'll do it." 
 
 A moment later we met one of these vigilant guardians of the 
 peace. 
 
 "Pardung, Musseer," said the colonel, with his politest bow; 
 " Vully-vous nous montray the — the — h — 1 and damnation ! " 
 
 "What's the matter, colonel?" 
 
 " I am trying to think of a word. Oh, d — n it, what is it? " 
 
 "Perhaps I can aid you. What is it? " 
 
 " Head station." 
 
 "Tete de ligne, is it?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, that's it. Vully-vous nous montray the tete de ligne 
 doo tramway poor Vincennes ? " 
 
 " Oui ! oui ! " said the policeman. And then he shot himself 
 off, and began vomiting French with a rapidity and a splendor 
 only equaled by the eruptions of a Roman candle. We were to 
 go down six streets, then go, a gauche, nine streets, go up an 
 alley, cross five places, turn short around to the right, and then 
 keep on straight ahead. The colonel listened to every word. He 
 smiled appreciatively, nodded incessantly, and said " Oui ! oui ! " 
 as fast as he could get the breath to do it. We both said " Merci," 
 and touched our hats to the sergent de ville, as he finished, and 
 then turned away. 
 
 " What did he say, colonel ? " I asked. 
 
 " D — d if I know ! " answered the colonel, with an air of su- 
 preme disgust. 
 
 And then he opened on the French in true western style. He 
 was mad. He swore worse than the army in Flanders. " Why 
 
264 
 
 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 in blank don't they speak a decent language ? Aug! ang! ang! " 
 said he, driving the air at fifty-liorse-power pressure through his 
 nose, in trying to imitate the French nasal sound. " It's all ang! 
 Blank 'em to blank and blanknation, why don't they speak En- 
 glish, like Christians! A lot of blank grinning, chattering, bob- 
 bing monkeys, blank 'em, with their blasted blank ang — ang — 
 
 ang 
 
 I let the colonel run till he ran down. We found the tete de 
 ligne, and he went home. But he won't ask me to take any more 
 
 A COLOSSAIi IMPOSTER. 
 
 drinks or drives with him. Pie knows that he stands revealed as 
 a colossal impostor. I've heard the last of his French and had 
 the last of his patronage. 
 
 The colonel, I may say, not only exists as I have described him, 
 but he stands as a representative of any number of Americans. 
 
 When I got over to the so-called exposition yesterday, I found 
 an addition had been made to the American department. Sev- 
 eral marines in full uniform guarded the approaches to the rooms 
 
EXPOSITION NOTES. 265 
 
 of the American commissioner. Two or three federal officers, in 
 the gayest of uniforms, were buzzing about, as gorgeous in hue 
 and as busy as bottle-flies. Passing by the sentries, I entered the 
 private room of the commissioner. There was an unusual crowd. 
 In the further corner stopd General Noyes, the American arnbas- 
 sador. To his right was Commissioner McCormick. Between 
 them was a short, thick-set man, with a close-clipped beard and 
 mustache, and upon whose swollen, pufiy features there prevailed 
 a sullen expression of indifference. People were walking up and 
 shaking hands with the man in the corner, the man with the 
 swollen features and the sullen expression. I followed suit. 
 
 " Glad to see you looking so well and stout, General," said I. 
 " You have not changed since we fought together from Belmont 
 to Vicksburg." 
 
 He looked at me with a cold, fishy stare. He shook my hand 
 as if it had been a chunk of cold meat. He made not the slight- 
 est reply to my genial allusion to our campaign experience. 
 
 Which, I take it, was very unkind on the part of Gen. Grant. 
 
 After everybody had had a shake, the General opened his 
 mouth for the first time. It was to put in a half smoked cigar, 
 which he had been holding in his left hand. Then a little pro- 
 cession was organized. Noyes and two or three other dignitaries 
 went ahead. Then came Grant. After him fifteen or twenty no- 
 bodies-in-particular. In this order, and gazed at by a curious 
 mob, the procession moved about. 
 
 I could not help but be pleased with the interest Grant showed 
 in everything. He moved by cases of silk, lines of sewing ma- 
 chines, bundles of hemp, machines for boring and machines for 
 not boring, with the same expression. He never turned his head. 
 His eyes wandered from side to side ; and these, with his legs, 
 seemed the only movable things about him. All the rest of him 
 appeared to be fixed, joiutless, immovable. 
 
 After the General had walked about for an hour, and not seen 
 anything, and been all around and apparently had taken the 
 slightest interest in nothing, he was marched back to the pressed- 
 meat, leaf lard and pickle-department of the American section. 
 
 Here a most complete collation had been improvised under the 
 management of some patriotic and thouglitful Yankees. Two 
 large, impromptu tables had been constructed from boxes covered 
 with boards. Upon these were canned meats, and poultry, 
 peaches peers pickled oysters, bottled beer, champagne ad lib- 
 
266 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 itum, strawberries, everything wholesome and delicious. The 
 Frencli and American press had been invited, and these, with the 
 rest, made up a party of a couple of hundreds. Grant took one 
 end of the table and General Noyes the other. A party named 
 Woods said grace, that is to say, he addressed a very eulogistic 
 speech to General Grant, to all of which the ex-President listened 
 — if he listened at all— without looking at the speaker, and 
 without the smallest change of countenance. When he finished. 
 Grant made a reply by harpooning a weighty piece of corned 
 beef, which he had dexteriously trausfei'red to his plate and half 
 swallowed before the roar of the three cheers and a tiger which 
 followed Woods' speech had ceased to vibrate the iron arches of 
 the roof. Then the General's jaws opened and shut after a fash- 
 ion which satisfied me that they were not locked. A processiou 
 of beef, poultry, champagne, pears, strawberries, champagne, 
 bread, peaches, champagne, and along with all some more cham- 
 pagne, entered the cavity which yawned and closed in his face — 
 entered and disappeared in quantities that somehow reminded 
 me of the manner in which he sent in the reserves at the battles. 
 of the Wilderness. 
 
 All the time the feed was in progress, a curious crowd pressed 
 around the outskirts of the area protected by the bayonets of the 
 marines. I am satisfied they did not understand it at all. Never- 
 theless, thene was one good eflfect, for, during the hour so de- 
 voted to demolishing the edibles and absorbing the potables, the 
 American section was crowded as it was never crowed before. 
 
 To-day the United States had an addition to its exhibit 
 which attracted more attention in the course of half an hour 
 than anything which has yet appeared. It was Albert Edward 
 and Alexandrina — otherwise the Prince, and Princess of Wales. 
 In French he is the Prince of Galles — which some wretched 
 punster, in view of the Prince's reputation, will at once twist 
 into the Prince of Gals. If so, I absolve myself in advance from 
 complicity in any such atrocity. 
 
 Could the Prince be kept in the American department, there 
 would be a permanent remedy for the paucity of visitors and 
 their languid interest in our exhibition. Of course, in the mob 
 which environed their royal highnesses on yesterdsy, every Yan- 
 kee in the American department was to be found. He pushed 
 himself as closely as possible to the royal pair ; and, in several 
 cases, made desperate efforts to shake hands with Albert. That 
 
EXPOSITION NOTES. 267 
 
 didn't work, however, except in the case of Commissioner Mc- 
 Cormick, who managed to extract a square shake from the Prince 
 and a bow and smile from Alexandrina. 
 
 The coviple went througli and created a much more favorable 
 impression than did Caesar Grant. He either didn't see anything 
 or pretended tliat he didn't, and went through witliout the sliglit- 
 est exhibition of curiosity or interest of any kind. The Prince 
 was polite, smiling, interested. He stepped inside the railings 
 of several of the exhibitors, asked questions, examined goods, 
 and appeared to be as anxious to seem interested as Grant was to 
 seem stolid and indifferent. The fine display of the "Waltham 
 Watch Company occupied the attention of tlie royal couple for 
 some minutes, and they examined with much curiosity the work- 
 manship of several watches shown them by a polite attendant. 
 When they left this case of goods, the Prince lifted his hat, as I 
 noticed he did in every instance when he asked any questions.. 
 
 Fancy Mr. Grant lifting his hat to an attendant ! 
 
 Fancy even Mr. Grant having enough interest to ask a ques 
 tion; but more especially asking one of an attendant. 
 
 The Prince and Princess spent half an hour in the American 
 department. They noticed everything, and stopped for some 
 time to admire an exquisite collection of photographs of babies, 
 arranged and sent over by Smith, a photographer on North Clark 
 street, Chicago. They took in the dental display, Tiffanj's col- 
 lection, everything, in short, of interest ; and then left with many 
 a polite adieu to the gentlemen who had escorted them through 
 the department. I fancy that, could there be a vote taken among 
 those Americans who were present, as to their preference for 
 Grant or the Prince for the next President, the latter would go in 
 by an almost unanimous majority. 
 
 For the benefit of the lady readers of Tlie Times, I will state 
 that Alexandrina is a lady of medium height, slender figure, 
 rather brunette as to complexion, has large, dark, handsome eyes, 
 a prominent nose, and a small mouth, with thin lips. She wore a 
 quiet hat, turned up on the side, and a dark dress, of some plain 
 material. She has a very intelligent, vivacious, sympathetic face ; 
 and so far as her expression is concerned, there is no contradic- 
 tion to the assertion I have often heard, to-wit, that she is the 
 most popular and most generally-loved woman in Great Britain. 
 As for the Prince, he went away leaving everybody convinced 
 that, however much a Prince he may be, his salient and most no- 
 
268 SKETCHES BEVOND THE SEA. 
 
 ticeable points are those of — a gentleman. If there are no rea- 
 sons, constitutional or otherwise, why a Prince cannot be a gen- 
 tleman, I can't see why the same cannot be true of an ex-President. 
 
 LETTER XLI. 
 
 AN EXCURSION PARTY. 
 
 On-the-Wing, June 7, 1878. 
 
 fT is something over two weeks since your correspondent 
 mailed his last letter to TJie Times. The interregnum is a 
 long one, and probably has given the readers of that sheet a 
 much-needed rest. There may be too much, even, of a good 
 thing; and hence the vacation enjoyed by the patrons of Chi- 
 cago's greatest journal has not been an undesirable one. 
 
 The exposition was dragging dreadfully. It was a display as 
 much of boxes as of contents. There was more to break the 
 shins than please the eyes of a spectator; as much to ruffle tem- 
 pers as to gratify artistic tastes. Hence, it was thought best to 
 intermit writing about the exposition till there is something 
 more than chaos to write about. Mud, slush, debris, litter, and 
 the like, are not pleasant or profitable themes for a long series of 
 letters. One who is fairly gifted with genius and imagination 
 can say all there can be said about such things in half a dozen 
 communications of an average length. Having written this num- 
 ber, it seemed to me well to " let up " on the exposition until 
 there should be an exhibition of something besides confusion 
 and unreadiness. 
 
 Meanwhile your correspondent has been investigating other 
 fields. In two weeks he has traveled much, although perhaps 
 he may have seen but little. It has been said of a distinguished 
 American traveler, now Minister at a foreign court, that he has 
 " traveled more and seen less than any other man in the world." 
 One can't see everything in two weeks ; but such few things as 
 have been seen by the present writer he will endeavor to lay 
 before the clientele of The. Times. 
 
 So far as the correspondent and the readers of The Tim^s are 
 
AN EXCURSION PAETT. 269 
 
 concerned, it is a transaction in which the latter have all the best 
 of it. They can sit comfortably at home and have an excursion 
 in addition. They can take in half or more of Europe without 
 a vexation or an annoyance. For them only clear skies and ge- 
 nial airs. For them no aching bones from long railway travel ; 
 no dust ; no cinders or smoke from wheezing locomotives. They 
 will escape the taste of vinegary wines ; no cold winds howling 
 down from snow-clad mountain-tops will freeze their marrow. 
 They will have no "rows" with porters and hackmen; they will 
 avoid the exactions of hotel-keepers, and thieves in other dis- 
 guises who infest every highway and by-way of Europe. Upon 
 them will pour no pelting rains. They will roam in eternal sun- 
 shine, incumbered with no baggage, bespattered by no mud, com- 
 pelled to spealj no language but their own, and take in Europe 
 with feet on fender, cigar in mouth, and contentment blossoming 
 all over their countenances. 
 
 As for me, in reference to my part in the transaction, I can 
 only say — au contraire. 
 
 There was a little party of pilgrims who went forth to do Eu- 
 rope, or who, I may say, are doing Europe; for although in 
 Paris to-day, it is only for a rest, and in a little time they will 
 resume their pilgrim staves and journey. There were, or are, 
 four of them. One of them is a gentleman, white as to hair, 
 erect as to figure, distinguished as to appearance, and who is so 
 well known in Chicago that of him I need give no further par- 
 ticulars. Him shall I term " The Commander," because for 
 many years he has been in the van of a great public and private 
 enterprise, and from that point has exercised the supervision and 
 authority of leader. Then there is one whom I shall designate 
 as "Madame" — a lady of artistic instincts, keen as to observa- 
 tion, and hunting always for rifts in clouds through which to 
 catch glimpses of sunshine. And next there is, in many respects, 
 the most notable member of the party, to-wit, a descendant of a 
 long line of Senegambian Princes, but who was born and reared on 
 American soil, and who, nobly superior to misfortune, blacks 
 boots and brushes coats as if he were only the commonest of 
 clay. Quite dark is he as to complexion, a trifle thick as to lip, 
 and pronouncedly kinky as to covering of skull. In Germany 
 he was known as "Herr Schwartze;" in Switzerland and Bel- 
 gium he was styled " Monsieur Lenoir." In a confidential com- 
 munication made to me one evening, I learned that he repudiates 
 
270 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 emphatically being what is commonly termed a " nigger," but 
 chooses rather to euphemistically class himself as a "shade." 
 So be it, and henceforth The Shade be the designation of the 
 dark descendant of the princely Senegambian line. 
 
 And, finally, there is another of this quartet who, although 
 not a French citizen, may be known as Soussigne, and who here- 
 after in these narrations shall travel under this Gallic pseudonym. 
 
 What these four have seen, where they saw it, and what they 
 thouglit about it, and such other germane facts and incidents as 
 have presented themselves, will form the topics of a few letters. 
 
 It is nearly three weeks ago that the four were assembled in a 
 room in the Westminster Palace Hotel, London. Tlie Com- 
 mander, with a pair of long-range spectacles on forehead, and a 
 pair of short-range glasses astride his nose, was engaged in por- 
 ing over an immense guide-book. The Madame, in an elegantly- 
 trimmed morning wrapper, toyed languidly with a bit of Gruyere, 
 and pensively awaited coming developments. The Shade was in 
 a corner, pretendedly gazing out of the window, but in reality 
 keeping a surreptitious, albeit a severe, watch upon a couple of 
 bottles of porter which had come up with the luncheon, and the 
 while speculating as to the probability of there remaining for 
 him a drink of respectable dimensions. Soussigne — who is a 
 tremendous smoker — sat on the sofa, and listened, while an 
 .imdercurrent of thouglit bore along noiseless conjectures as to 
 when he could slip away, and burn a choice cigar which he 
 twirled lovingly in his fingers. 
 
 " We have now," said The Commander, in his deep, emphatic 
 voice, as he looked up from the book and beamed upon the party, 
 " some nine or ten weeks to dispose of. The question is, Where 
 shall we go?" 
 
 " I favor Paris," said Madame. Soussigne ventured no opinion. 
 The Shade took advantage of the moment, and silently moved the 
 half-consumed bottles of porter from the table to the side-board. 
 
 "What we should do," continued the Commander, "is to put 
 in these weeks to the best advantage. We must combine a pur- 
 suit of health and pleasure with a pursuit after information. 
 We should go where there is the most to be seen within the 
 smallest space of time and under the most enjoyable circum- 
 stance. The only question is, How can this be accomplished ? " 
 
 " There is so much to be seen in Paris," said Madame, gently. 
 " It will take weeks and weeks to see all the picture galleries, the 
 
AN EXCURSION PARTY. 271 
 
 statuary, the monuments, palaces, and groves, and other things 
 of interest." 
 
 The Commander thought Paris should be seen, of course, but 
 later. Soussigne's opinion was invited. 
 
 " I do think," said that individual, deftly steering between 
 Scylla and Charybdis, so as not to collide with either, " that you 
 are right, and so is Madame. Paris is the world. One who goes 
 to Paris and studies it thoroughly can study all nations and all 
 products. It is a microcosm. At the same time, you are right 
 in the suggestion that we should hunt up new and enjoyable 
 routes. My idea would be that, in order to carry out the plan, 
 we should spend our nine weeks as follows : Two weeks in Lon- 
 don; then three weeks could be devoted to Belgium, Norway, 
 Sweden, Holland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy; after 
 which the other four weeks should be spent in Paris. This, I 
 fancy, would be a very sensible division of time." 
 
 " A capital suggestion ! " said Madame. " Only don't you think 
 we are giving more time to the other places than is necessary, 
 and that we might cut them down a little so as to devote niore 
 time to Paris? Two weeks, to be sure, is not too much for 
 London, but how about the time for those other places? " 
 
 " There are," said The Commander, " hundreds of old cathe- 
 drals and castles in England which are worth a journey half 
 around the globe to see, and which few or none of the rushing 
 hordes of tourists ever care to visit. Here is the old home of the 
 Warwicks, the king-makers of English history, for instance. 
 Who knows anything about them? There is the armor to be 
 seen of the gigantic earls so well known in history. Here may 
 also be seen the ' Warwick Vase ' found in Adrian's villa at 
 Tivoli. Here is the magnificent Castle of Warwick, with all its 
 curious relics and its inspiring historical reminiscences. Close 
 by it is the Castle of Kenilworth, which Scott has immortalized 
 in his novel. Within a few miles of these castles is Shakspeare's 
 birth-place, Stratford-upon-Avon, and also the church in which 
 he is buried. All these are within a circuit of less than a dozen 
 miles in diameter. Now, is it not more sensible to visit such 
 spots as these than to rush off to Paris with its tropical heats, its 
 mobs of visitors, its discomforts and inconvenience? Let us go 
 where we shall have rest, not excitement." 
 
 " How would it do," asked Soussigne, " to take the two weeks 
 from London, and one from Holland, Germany, etc., and devote 
 
272 SKETCHES UEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 them to such visits in England as you speak of? This would 
 give three weeks ; and one can see a great deal in three weeks if 
 one is only active and stirring." 
 
 " Yes," said Madame, " I like that suggestion, only wouldn't it 
 be better to give five weeks to English country places ? The other 
 week of the four could be " 
 
 " Added to the time at Paris, you are about to say," interrupted 
 The Commander. "No," continued he, "now this is exactly 
 what M'e will do ; it is rainy and cold in England, and it is now 
 fairly comfortable on the continent. In a few weeks it will be 
 more pleasant here, and less pleasant, on account of the heat, on 
 the continent. We will therefore leave here to-morrow. We will 
 give say five weeks to countries outside of France. Then one 
 week in Paris — which will be more than ample — and the re- 
 maining three weeks in England and Scotland." 
 
 As these last utterances of The Commander wei'e given in an 
 emphatic manner, it did not appear to his auditory that there 
 was any chance for argument. Madame said, " Oh, very well ! " 
 while Soussigue contented himself with "Certainly;" and then 
 the council of war came to an end. 
 
 When Soussigne left the room, he was followed closely by The 
 Shade, who had a very large swelling within his coat beneath 
 each arm. Soussigne wished to ask the Senegambian some ques- 
 tions in regard to his royal ancestry, but the latter evidently had 
 a pressing engagement somewhere below, for he declined to be 
 social, and at once hurried away. 
 
 LETTER XLII. 
 
 GETTING OFF. 
 
 On-the-Wing, June 10, 1878. 
 
 tHE next morning after the council of war — whose proceed- 
 ings were given at length in my last letter — that section 
 of London lying between Paddington and Regent's Park 
 might have seen a somewhat novel spectacle. That is to say, the 
 people of that section might, had they been out of their bed3» 
 
GETTING OFF. 
 
 273 
 
 But they were not. It was too early — not yet more than half- 
 past six. Only the garden carts were astir, and a few working- 
 men who were hurrying along, or who stopped for a moment to 
 swallow a cup of coffee at the stands of the all-night street mer- 
 chants. 
 
 The spectacle in question was that of a medium-sized man sit- 
 ting on the curb-stone, and alternately d — ning his eyes, and a big 
 hand-bag that lay in front of him. He was waiting for a cab, a 
 
 A CARPET-BAGGER. 
 
 cart, anything. He had the hand-bag, which was as large as a 
 Saratoga trunk, and weighed a ton; an umbrella, a cane, an over- 
 coat, a duster, a box of cigars, a small traveling-bag, a field-glass, 
 a portfolio containing materials for correspondence, a hat-box, 
 and a few other trifles. It was our new acquaincance Soussigne, 
 who was trying to reach an underground station, so as to get to 
 Charing Cross, where he was to meet the rest of the party. It 
 was no job for a Christian, because no Christian could have stood 
 the pressure of the occurrence without a display of temper which 
 18 
 
274 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 would have cost him his standing in any respectably-orthodox 
 religious denomination. 
 
 No hansom or " crawler " came along. They never do except 
 when not wanted. No small boys turned up begging to assist in 
 carrying the luggage. They never do except when not needed. 
 It was half a mile to the station, and there were fifteen minutes to 
 get there in. Waiting was no good ; and Soussigne had to march. 
 Taking the big hand-bag in one hand, the 1; it-box in the other, 
 putting a cane and umbrella under one arm, the box of cigars 
 under, and the overcoat and duster on, the other arm, he took up 
 his line of march. First the umbrella tipped down one way and 
 then the cane tipped up the other. In trying to catch them the 
 overcoat fell off, and the duster got tangled up with his legs. 
 "When everything was in order, and he would get started, his hat 
 would work down over his nose, obliging him to stop and unload 
 in order to adjust it. It was hot — the only hot morning they 
 have had in Great Britain since last July. The perspiration 
 poured out like young rivers. No one hand and arm could carry 
 the bag more than ten feet at a time, and hence he had to change 
 every few seconds. This involved switcliing the box of cigars, 
 moving the cane and umbrella, rebalancing the overcoat and 
 duster, and bringing the hat-box and other fixtures into new po- 
 sitions. 
 
 But why prolong this agonizing recital ? SuflBce it that, with 
 botli hands raw, backbone cracked through at three joints, and 
 remedilessly bent out of shape in several other places, he caught 
 the underground, and, ten minutes before train time, he was de- 
 posited in Charing Cross station. 
 
 The others came soon after. The Commander, albeit a trifle 
 lame, came up smiling ; and beamed as benevolently through his 
 gold-rimmed glasses as if /he were disposed to take the whole 
 world to his bosom. The Madame was radiant. The Shade 
 staggered along with four umbrellas, some maps. The Com- 
 mander's water-proof overcoat, a couple of guide-books, and five 
 satchels of varying dimensions. In order to make it as interest- 
 ing as possible for the Senegambian, Soussigne handed over his 
 few eff"ects to that person, with the result that he was so envel- 
 oped and covered up with satchels and things that there was but 
 little of him visible except his lips in front and his heels behind. 
 
 A little later and the train went hissing over the iron bridge 
 across the Thames, ran into and backed out of Cannon-street 
 
GETTING OFF. 275 
 
 Station ; and then went roaring and rattling over the roofs of tlie 
 houses to the southeast. The alto-relief of the millions of chim- 
 ney-pots grew flatter ; the steeples became shorter and shorter ; 
 the great dome of St. Paul sank into the horizon ; and, next, the 
 train was flying between the trim hedges, the grassy slopes and 
 quaint farm-houses of the open country. 
 
 "Ah me!" sighed the Madame, after a long look at the glo- 
 rious panorama that flew by, " how very lovely is the English 
 country ! It is everywhere a picture." 
 
 " Yes," said The Commander, " it is very charming; but what 
 strikes me most forcibly is tlie extraordinaiy neatness everywhere 
 visible, and the evidences of economical management. Tliere is 
 no litter or waste anywhere — no rotting hay-stacks, no tumble- 
 down fences, no out-houses in ruins. Every inch of land seems 
 to be utilized. While we can teach tliese people many things, 
 they can teach us something more valuable than everything else, 
 and that is the meaning and worth' of economy." 
 
 "Yes," said Soussigne, " the Britishers are a most economical 
 people, especially in manners in public. I never knew any peo- 
 ple so saving in this respect. The only extravagance they in- 
 dulge in is in the size of their feet. However," he proceeded to 
 say, with an apologetic sort of an air, " they may be saving as to 
 manners and extravagant as to feet, yet they are a grand people 
 commercially, financially, historically. Except, perhaps, in the 
 matter of certain departments of art, and in invention, they are 
 the foremost nation in existence. But" — and this he muttered 
 almost inaudibly — " d — n their self-conceit, their arrogance, and 
 their egotism!" 
 
 The Commander soon after gave the party a very interesting 
 comparison of British and American forms of government, whose 
 main feature was a strong leaning in favor of the system of min- 
 isterial responsibility. It was a terse, strongly-worded statement ; 
 and abounded with apt illustrations and pertinent historical 
 facts. As a whole, The Commander seemed of the opinion that 
 America has much to learn in ihe matter of government from the 
 English. 
 
 Dover was duly reached. Its vast cliffs of chalk excited Mad- 
 ame's artistic admiration, and she said she would make a sketch 
 of the harbor as soon as she reached the boat. She would have 
 done so except for the little circumstance that, upon getting 
 aboard, she discovered that she had neither pencil nor paper. 
 
276 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Besides this difficulty, in a little while she concluded that she 
 was tired, and it would be much nicer to go below and lie down. 
 The Shade soon after followed Madame, carrying a huge wash- 
 bowl, although for what purpose — as Madame always averred 
 that she was an excellent sailor and never the least bit sick in the 
 world — will never be known. Soussigne endeavored to interview 
 The Shade behind the smokestack, on the subject, but the Sene- 
 gambian was sublimely reticent, and only answered by a grin 
 which opened a chasm in his face like the yawn of a hippopot- 
 amus. 
 
 "They need a little American ingenuity and enterprise on this 
 route," said The Commander, as he made a frantic snatch at the 
 bulwarks to save himself from the effects of a sudden lurch; 
 " here is a route over which everybody travels, and yet they run 
 boats that are about as large as, and have no more accommoda- 
 tion for passengers than, a Chicago river tug-boat. If an Amer- 
 ican company had this route, it would run the cars on great 
 ferry-boats at Dover and transfer them to Calais and Ostend 
 without passengers even leaving their seats. It's scandalous — " 
 
 Just here the little tub gave a vicious pitch, and The Com- 
 mander, who had incautiously loosened his hold on the bulwarks 
 in order to give emphasis by gestures to his remarks, was flung 
 half around and tossed backward. Fortunately, a leathern camp- 
 stool caught him and saved him from a serious fall. What was 
 "scandalous," Soussigne never learned, as The Commander, with 
 his back against the wheel-house, and his cane planted firmly on 
 the deck, clung tenaciously to his stool during the remainder of 
 the voyage, and glared over the little boat in gloomy and con- 
 temptuous silence. 
 
 Some six hours after leaving Dover, the boat entered the har- 
 bor of Ostend. The Shade was loaded up, and the party pro- 
 ceeded to the train which was in waiting a few yards away. 
 
 There is a custom-house at Ostend, which gave our travelers but 
 little trouble. The Shade marched up to the platform for the re- 
 ception of baggage, and proceeded to place in a row the dozen or 
 fifteen packages witli which he was loaded. He then produced a 
 bundle of keys about as large as a half-gallon measure, and stood 
 awaiting orders. 
 
 '■'Mon Dieu! " was the remark of an astounded green-coated ofll- 
 cial, as he ran his eye down the long perspective of parcels, and 
 seemingly engaged in a calculation whether he could go through 
 
GETTING OFF. 
 
 2TT 
 
 the whole in a period much short of six weeks. Soussign6 saw 
 his look of dismay, and adroitly took advantage of it: 
 
 "Wovs Ti'avons rien a declarer^ Monsieur^'' he said, politely 
 touching his hat to the official. The latter was evidently im- 
 pressed with the politeness of Soussigne, as well as the supreme 
 honesty which was apparent in his face. 
 
 "Bon!'''' said he, with a relieved air, as he proceeded down the 
 line, chalking parcels as he went. Soon after the baggage was 
 all aboard, the locomotive whistled, the train rushed out, and, 
 half an hour later, was whirling through the lone and dreary 
 stretches of northern Belgium. 
 
 " An uninteresting country," said The Commander, as he looked 
 from the car-window — " a mere dead level, like an Illinois prai- 
 rie, without relief or break, except here and there rows of trees." 
 
 " Ugh ! " said Madame with a shudder, " how desolate ! And 
 see, it begins to rain." 
 
 It did rain. Over the low, marsh-like expanse on either side 
 came dismal clouds of a grayish black, and settled until they 
 seemed to touch the dark surface of the green earth. The drops 
 pelted the car-windows, rattled furiously against the roof, and 
 splashed into foam the water of the net-work of ditches which 
 extended everywhere over the adjacent area. The smoke from 
 the locomotive, borne down by the depressing atmosphere, clung 
 to the train and enveloped it in a moist and sticky pall. It was 
 inexpressibly dreary, desolate, depressing. The Commander was 
 overcome by the sinister welcome, and sank back into his seat 
 and stared gloomily and weariedly into vacuity. Madame shud- 
 deringly pulled her wraps about her and shrank into a corner as 
 if to escape the surroundings by retiring within herself. All 
 seemed overborne by the sad portents of the first journeyings on 
 the continent — all except Soussigne. It was evidently Bous- 
 signe's opportunity. Like a great general he seized it. 
 
 "Ostend," said he, "the town which we have just left, is a 
 strongly fortified seaport, with seventeen thousand inhabitants. 
 It is uninteresting save in August and September, when it has 
 crowds of visitors who go there to bathe. It has a sea-wall forty 
 feet high, which is used as a promenade. Historically, it is noted 
 for its siege by Spinola two hundred and seventy-four years ago, 
 when eighty thousand Spaniards and fifty thousand of the 
 Ijesieged perished." 
 
 Madame listened languidly. The Commander made no answer, 
 
278 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA 
 
 as if he thought silence the only proper thing for such a countrjr 
 and such weather. But Soussigne was not to be put down. He 
 proceeded : 
 
 " We pass through two towns of interest before reaching Brus- 
 sels, or Bruxelle, as the natives term it. The first is Bruges. 
 Bruges is a city of forty thousand inhabitants, although it once 
 had two hundred thousand. It was formerly the commercial 
 capital of northern Europe, but now it is of no particular conse- 
 quence. Once the richest and the most powerful city in the old 
 Flemish league, it has suffered persecution from various causes, 
 until it is now scarcely more than a railway station. It has a 
 cathedral, some pictures, and a chapel in which is a shrine said 
 to contain some of the blood of the Savior." 
 
 "Have you ever been through here before?" asked Madame. 
 
 " No, I never have been," answered Soussigne. 
 
 " It's strange how well informed you are in regard to these 
 places — and without ever having seen them! " 
 
 " Oh, a fondness for historical research and a fair memory will 
 account for it," said Soussigne, endeavoring to look as if all sucb 
 information in his case were a matter of course. 
 
 " What about that other town that you mentioned ? " 
 
 " Oh, you mean Ghent, but which is here known as Gand. 
 This town is a walled city, divided by a net-work of canals into 
 twenty-six islands. It is known as the ' Manchester of Belgium.* 
 It M^as begun eleven hundred years ago, and five hundred years- 
 since was lai-ger than Paris. At one time Ghent could put eighty 
 thousand armed men into the field. It has had its share of 
 trouble, but has managed to retain its prosperity. Charles V. 
 was born in Ghent in 1500. It has a cathedral, of course ; some 
 very valuable pictures, the remnants of a building in which Joha 
 of Gaunt was born; and the Beguinage, an extraordinary place, 
 in which live six hundred nuns in separate houses, who have 
 taken no vow, and who spend their time in prayer and attending 
 the sick. In Ghent, as in every other town in Belgium, lace- 
 making forms a principal industry." 
 
 " It was in Ghent," said The Commander, " that the treaty of 
 peace between the United States and Great Britain was concluded 
 m 1814." 
 
 " How very interesting ! " said Madame. " I can't see how it is- 
 possible to remember so many details, especially in regard to 
 foreign and remote places of comparative unimportance." 
 
GETTING OFF. 279 
 
 " It's not very diflflcult to one who is fond of history, and who 
 gives more or less time to its study," answered Soussigne, with a 
 polite bow, and a pleased expression at Madame's implied 
 compliments. 
 
 The train halted at Bruges, and Soussigne went into a smok- 
 ing-car to " draw a weed." He lighted a fragrant Havana, manu- 
 factured in London, threw himself into a corner, and then smoked, 
 at peace with all mankind, including himself. He sat thus for a 
 few minutes, and then reached lazily into the breast-pocket of his 
 coat in search of something. Whatever it was that he sought, it 
 was not there. The look of placid enjoyment on his face sud- 
 denly began to change into one of chagrin and anger. He 
 rapidly searched all his pockets — nothing ! He looked on the 
 floor, under the seats, behind the cushions — nothing ! He fidgeted ; 
 he inhaled great volumes of smoke ; he was profane in emphatic 
 undertones. When the train halted a moment at some small sta- 
 tion, he rushed back to the car containing The Commander and 
 Madame. The latter held in her hands a small book with a red 
 cover, which she was glancing over with an expression half 
 amusement, half sarcasm. 
 
 "You dropped this little book when you went out," she said. 
 
 Soussigne glanced at her sheepishly from the corner of his 
 eyes, but said nothing. 
 
 " Here, take it. But no ! I think I'll read you a little. It's 
 so interesting ! " 
 
 She began to read : . 
 
 " Ostend is a strongly fortified seaport with seventeen thousand 
 inhabitants. It is uninteresting save in August and September, 
 when it has crowds of visitors who go there to bathe. It has a 
 sea-wall forty feet high, which is used as a promenade," etc. 
 
 Glancing at Soussigne, who was looking somewhere else, 
 Madame said: 
 
 "Very interesting, isn't it? And then here is something about 
 a place called Bruges, which we have just left. Let me read." 
 . She began : 
 
 " Bruges is a city of forty thousand inhabitants, although it 
 once had two hundred thousand. It was formerly the commer- 
 cial capital of Northern Europe, but now it is of no particular 
 consequence. Once the richest and most powerful city in the old 
 Flemish league, it has suffered persecution from various quarters 
 until it is now scarcely more than a railway station," etc., etc. 
 
280 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Then Madame turned over^ a few leaves, and, with most ex- 
 quisite politeness, said: 
 
 " Here is something about a place called Ghent, but which is 
 known as Gand. Let me read: 'The town is a walled city, 
 divided by a network of canals into twenty-six islands; it is 
 known as the ' Manchester — ' " 
 
 " Oh, dernation ! " muttered Soussigne in an undertone. 
 
 " You have never traveled in this country before, I believe you 
 said ? Ah, well, it is astonishing what a fondness for historical 
 research and a fair memory will do for a man. Now, isn't it? " 
 
 The Commander had dropped into a doze, and was hearing 
 none of this interesting conversation. Soussigne stared sulkily 
 out into the rain and pretended to hear nothing. Madame con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " It is so easy for one to remember details as to foreign places, 
 especially when one is ' fond of history and gives more or less 
 time to its study.' So very nice ! Here, take your little guide- 
 book. It's a good thing. Don't lose it, or your excellent memory 
 as to historical details and all that might fail, you know! '' 
 
 Just here Madame burst into a peal of merry laughter, in which, 
 after a vain effort to continue sulky, Soussign6 was compelled to 
 join. 
 
 "I give it up, Madame," said he. "Now, if you won't say 
 any more about this, I'll show you a shop in Brussels where they 
 sell point-lace as cheap as they do second-hand bed-ticking in 
 Chicago." 
 
 "All right; it's a bargain," was the reply. 
 
 Peace was concluded. Soussigne put the little book in an 
 inside pocket and buttoned it in. A couple of hours later the 
 train pulled up in the depot of the Belgium capital. 
 
SEEING WATERLOO 281 
 
 LETTER XLIII. 
 
 SEEING WATERLOO. 
 
 On-the-Wing, June 13, 1878. 
 
 T a nice, clean hotel in Brussels, in a conservatory used as 
 a dining-room, three persons were engaged in dalliance 
 with the dessert. A broad shelf which ran around three 
 sides of the room was covered with pots of flowers. A subdued 
 light came down in floods through the glass roof, and was caught 
 by the red and white of blossoms and reflected from the thousand 
 angles of the rich ware which loaded the tables. A bottle — an 
 empty bottle — covered a half-inch thick with dust, occupied the 
 place of honor on the table at which the trio was seated. Some 
 glasses of delicate patterns, fragile, and diaphanous as if made of 
 sunlight, were there, their rich crystal flecked with the crimson 
 life-blood of Bordeaux grapes. 
 
 The Commander, none the worse for his journey, beamed on 
 the others with his customary kindliness. Madame was, as usual, 
 characterized by a charming repose of manner. The Shade stood 
 behind The Commander's chair, and had a far-away look in his 
 eyes which bore witness that he was dreaming of his princely 
 ancestral line, or else speculating as to the likelihood of his get- 
 ting any dinner. Soussigne sat at the table intently listening, 
 wondering when he could get away for a smoke, and now and 
 then regarding Madame as she adroitly put away a slight yawn 
 in her pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 " If this bottle of wine be a fair sample," said The Commander, 
 " of the best Bordeaux wines, then I am satisfied we get better 
 clarets in America. This wine is crude. It is not ' made.' And 
 then look at that. What would you call that? " 
 
 Madame threw a languid glance at the cork which The Com- 
 mander held up for examination. Soussigne asked permission 
 io examine it more closely, and after having scrutinized it with 
 the keenest attention, returned it, saying : 
 
 " Well, if I were put on my oath, I should say that to the best 
 of my knowledge and belief that is a cork." 
 
 " It's a cork, of course, but what kind of a cork? The cork is 
 something which is rarely deceptive. A good bottle of wine 
 never has a poor cork. See how coarse and porous it is. If it 
 
282 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 were a good cork it would be fine-grained, and with a surface as 
 soft and as finished as satin. That cork at once shows that the 
 wine is inferior, although it has cost the extravagant price — for 
 this country — of ten francs. All the clarets we have thus far 
 tasted lack age and finish. We get vastly better clarets from 
 New Orleans. They have the sea^ voyage in the first iDlace, which 
 is a good thing; and then they 'make' very fast in that climate. 
 However, to change the subject, what's the programme?" 
 
 " Of course," said Soussigne, " the main interest connected. 
 with Brussels is the battle-field where Napoleon would have 
 thrashed Wellington if Blucher had not gotten up with his 
 Prussians." 
 
 " Oh, yes, we must go to Waterloo. Brussels without Waterloa 
 would be ' Hamlet ' with Hamlet omitted," said The Com- 
 mander. 
 
 "As for me," said Madame, "while I would like to visit the 
 battle-field, I would prefer to see the room in which 
 
 There was a sound of revelry by night 
 And Belgium's capital had gathered then 
 Her beauty and her chivalry .' 
 
 But more especially should I like to see that place where 
 
 ' Within a windowed niche of that high hall 
 Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain .' " 
 
 " Ah well, suppose we see both," said The Commander. " We 
 will go to the battle-ground first, and afterward we will look up 
 that hall where Brunswick's fated chieftain sate. — " 
 
 "Provided jou can find it," interrupted Soussigne. "There 
 are several halls here which are claimed to be the ones where 
 Belgium gathered her 'beauty and chivalry' the night before the 
 battle ; and there are at least seventy -five ' windowed niches,' each 
 of which is said to be the one in which ' Sate Brunswick's fated 
 chieftain,' and heard his morrow's doom with ' Death's prophetic 
 ear.' In truth, in my private opinion, I don't believe there was 
 any ball, or any ' sound of revelry by night,' unless it was some 
 English officers bumming round the streets after a heavy wine 
 dinner." 
 
 "You are an iconoclast," said Madame. "As for me, I prefer 
 to believe these charming legends. They soften the harshness 
 
SEEING WATERLOO. 283 
 
 of actual occurrences. They are the oases in the deserts of 
 history." 
 
 " Waterloo was a one-horse fight, anyhow," said Boussigne. 
 "Why, Grant used to lose in one or two skirmishes as many men 
 as Wellington had to fight the battle with." 
 
 " It is not the number of the combatants engaged," said The 
 Commander, " which gives to Waterloo its importance. Nor is 
 it the desperate character of the fighting, whether we look at the 
 valor of the furious and repeated assaults made by the French, 
 or the stubborn and heroic resistance made by the English. 
 There has been any number of battles in wliich the forces en- 
 gaged were vastly greater, and the fighting qualities of the com- 
 batants equally marvelous. It is as a political fact that the battle 
 of Waterloo becomes of tremendous magnitude. Had Napoleon 
 won, it would have reversed the course of events, and the Europe 
 of to-day would have had no existence." 
 
 Just here Madame tried to put away another yawn in her hand- 
 kerchief. Either because the attempt was unskillfully made, or 
 the handkerchief was so full of yawns that it would hold no 
 more, the present one revealed itself to the whole table. Its 
 appearance bred infection. Tlie Shade slowly opened his jaws, 
 and kept on opening them until there was nothing visible above 
 his shoulders but a great chasm of red and white. 
 
 " I think,'' said The Commander, " as we have traveled a long 
 distance to-day, we will retire early and so get a good start in the 
 morning for Waterloo.'' 
 
 Good nights were exchanged and the parties separated. 
 
 The next day, soon after high twelve, a dilapidated and creak- 
 ing vehicle, drawn by a bony horse, and containing three 
 strangers, might have been seen crawling along the streets of 
 Brussels toward the depot of the railway leading to Waterloo. 
 As they thus moved along, one of them— it was Madame — said: 
 
 " Our progress is quite unlike a movement through these streets, 
 and toward the same destination, which was made one night 
 taany years ago. Then 
 
 ' There was mounting in hot haste ; the steed, 
 
 The mustering squadron, and the clattering car 
 Went pouring forward with impetuous speed. 
 And swiftly forming in the ranks of war.' " 
 
 "You are quite right," answered Soussigne; "nor is there any 
 "hurrying to and fro ; ' for, mark you, how leisurely that animal 
 
284 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 impels his skin full of bones along the street. There are no 
 ' gathering tears,' unless those black clouds on the horizon are 
 getting ready for a down-pour; in fact, our procession differs 
 very essentially from the other. It is true that there were then 
 'cheeks all pale which blushed at praise of their own loveliness,' 
 and there may be cheeks in our procession entitled to the same 
 tribute, and — " 
 
 "Za gave, Mossu,'' said the cocher. 
 
 The trio dismounted, and in less than an hour were deposited 
 at Braine Alleud, a little station a short distance beyond Water- 
 loo, and where the extreme right of the English forces was 
 posted. 
 
 Meanwhile it had begun to rain. It was not a mere rain, but 
 a flood, which poured down accompanied by a wind as cold as 
 if it had been lying for weeks on a glacier. 
 
 " Strange, isn't it," said The Commander, as the three huddled 
 shiveringly under a little shed which served as a station, " that 
 ■wherever we go a storm always goes with us ? I'm afraid there 
 is no "Waterloo for us to-day," he continued as he gazed sorrow- 
 fully at the black and pitiless sky. 
 
 The Commander was entirely right in his apprehension. There 
 was no let up in the storm. For three hours they waited and 
 shivered, till a return train came along and took them back to 
 Brussels. 
 
 " These Belgians don't seem to mind the rain," said The Com- 
 mander, as they were returning. " See, the grain fields have 
 droves of men and women who work on just the same as if it 
 were sunshine." 
 
 " They're an economical people," responded Soussigne ; " they 
 find a use for everything — even for women. Now, there goes a 
 cart in which is seated a man, while a dog and a woman draw it 
 along. I like that ! Women evidently have their rights in this 
 country." 
 
 " Ah, indeed," said Madame, with an ironical accent. 
 
 "Yes," said Soussigne, " everything works here. Nothing is 
 allowed to be idle. A Belgian dog, for instance, has no rosy time 
 of it. He doesn't spend his time treeing cats, or loafing around 
 with other dogs, or barking at small boys through a picket fence. 
 Not much! The first thing he knows, he's put at work hauling 
 a milk-cart, or a rag-wagon, or something of the kind. No cavor- 
 ting around and having a good time for him. When he wakes 
 
SEEING WATERLOO. 
 
 285 
 
286 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 in the morning, instead of trotting around a couple of blocks to 
 get up an appetite and see what's the news among the other dogs, 
 or to find out whether that cat that he ran up a tree the night 
 before has come down or not, he is put into his little harness and 
 earns his breakfast like a Christian. And then the women — 
 they don't sit around with a dozen silk dresses on hand, and 
 nothing fit to be seen in. Oh, no ! Just as soon as day begins to 
 break, they slip on a nice blue frock and go to business. They 
 don't dawdle around for a few hours, and then go down town and 
 make the rounds of the dry-goods shops to match a piece of 
 mauve ribbon. Nothing of the kind ! They haven't the remotest 
 idea as to what is the latest thing in 'bangs,' in waists, or pull- 
 backs. That old blue frock which they wear, ties at the neck and 
 buttons at the waist, and one of them can get into it, and be all 
 dressed and ready for business before an American woman can 
 get one eye open." 
 
 " How very wonderful ! " said Madame, with ironical polite- 
 ness. 
 
 "Yes, quite so," said Soussigne; "and then when a Belgian 
 woman is ready for bed, it doesn't take her two hours to unbutton, 
 unpin, unlace, unhook, untie, and unfasten generally. She gives 
 a pull at the neck-string, a twist at the waist-button, kicks otf her 
 wooden shoes, hops into bed, and in two minutes is snoring 
 musically — being altogether too tired to devote a couple of hours 
 to caudleizing and all that. That's the kind of a wife for a young 
 fellow to go into business with ! Only one pair of wooden shoes 
 and one frock in a lifetime. Think of the saving in millinery and 
 dry-goods bills ! The only fault I can find with the Belgian sys- 
 tem is that it puts too much on the men. Men are naturally, and 
 by virtue of their intellectual superiority, managers. All they 
 really ought to do is to plan the work and oversee its execution 
 by the women. Otherwise the Belgian system is admirable. As 
 soon as I get home, I am going to try and introduce it, dress and 
 all, in Chicago, with such improvements as 1 have suggested." 
 
 The Commander had not apparently taken much interest in 
 Soussigne's remarks. He sat and gazed gloomily out across the 
 fields on which the rain fell with sullen persistence. Finally he 
 said: 
 
 " Let's go somewhere else. We can do nothing here so long as 
 this weather continues. What is there of interest to be seen in 
 Brussels?" 
 
DOING HOLLAND. 
 
 287 
 
 " Nothing of great interest," responded Soussigne, " unless it 
 ■fae the house in which J. Russell Jones lived. "We ought to make 
 a pilgrimage to that shrine, I suppose." 
 
 "As for me," said Madame, "I should like to visit the palace 
 at Lacken, v^^here Josephine once lived, and near vphich is the 
 tomb of Malibran." 
 
 "That's all well enough," said The Commander, "but we can't 
 visit anything unless we have some respectable weather. I pro- 
 pose we take a run over to Holland and then come back and ' do ' 
 Brussels." 
 
 "Agreed, nem. con., so far as I'm concerned, replied Soussigne. 
 
 " What is there to see in Holland ? " asked Madame. 
 
 " "Why, don't you know." said Soussigne, " that Amsterdam is 
 the greatest diamond market in the world ? " 
 
 "Is it really? Oh, let us go to Holland, of course. How de- 
 lightful! How kind of you to think of it," said Madame, as she 
 gave The Commander a winning smile. 
 
 The next morning the party, including The Shade, was en route 
 to Holland. 
 
 LETTER XLIV. 
 
 DOING HOLLAND. 
 
 On-the-"Wing, June 14, 1878. 
 
 'HE same storm that used to hang around the "Westminster 
 Palace Hotel in London, so as to catch our excursionists 
 whenever they showed a nose beyond the door-posts ; which 
 chased them up and pelted them when they were going from 
 Ostend to Brussels ; which waylaid them and caught them when 
 they went to Waterloo — the same storm suddenly sprang upon 
 them from an ambush as soon as they were fairly under way for 
 Holland. It was a persistent, exhaustless, chilly, diabolical 
 storm. It followed the excursion party as the snows and the 
 Russians followed Napoleon in his retreat from Moscow. It 
 knocked fiercely against the windows f(jr admission : it clattered 
 
288 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 on the top of the car as it were attempting to reach them by 
 making a hole through the roof; it deployed its columns all 
 about the train as if to surround the victims and render escape 
 an impossibility. 
 
 The train was running across the low, flat lands of Belgium^ 
 going north towai'd Amsterdam. In due season it ran through 
 the colossal fortifications and into the city of Antwerp. 
 
 " I suppose," said The Commander, " that we ought to give a 
 little time to Antwerp ; but as tourists have done it so thoroughly 
 there is not much to be learned." 
 
 "I can give you all about Antwerp, or Anvers, as the French 
 term it," said Soussigne, " in a nutshell." 
 
 " Ah, yes," said Madame. " You have, I have been told, a taste 
 and an excellent memory for historical details " 
 
 "Taisez-vous, Madame! Here we have it in a dozen words," 
 and pulling out his little book with the red covers, he read: 
 
 "Antwerp, Belgium, one hundred and twenty-five thousand 
 inhabitants; place great historical interest; situated on banks 
 Scheldt; Rubens born and buried here. English Protestantism 
 owes much to Antwerp, because here were issued many of the 
 earliest editions of the New Testament. Very rich in historical, 
 artistic, and archaeological associations. .Particularly rich in art, 
 having given birth to Reubens, Van Dyck, Quentin Matsys, and 
 all the greatest painters of the Low Countries." 
 
 Here Soussigne closed the book and said; 
 
 "Voila tout! It has a cathedral, of course. They all have. 
 The women are an uninteresting combination of the stiffness of 
 the Spaniard, the stupidity of the Flemish, dashed with a little 
 French vivacity, taken from intercourse with modern civilization. 
 The best thing in Antwerp is its pictures. I suppose that, as 
 lovers of art, we should stop and go through the picture galr 
 leries." 
 
 " Can't we see Rubens and Van Dyck in the Paris galleries ? '* 
 asked Madame. 
 
 " Oh, certainly." 
 
 " Well, then, what's the use of stopping here to see pictures^ 
 when we can see them at Paris ? " 
 
 The party had a very narrow escape from missing a tour of 
 Rotterdam. The train had halted in the depot of that city for 
 refreshments. The Commander and Madame had returned to the 
 car Soussigne was walking up and down the platform, pulling 
 
DOING HOLLAND. 289 
 
 away at a big cigar, when it suddenly occurred to him that, as 
 they were in a new country, the proper thing to do was to inter- 
 view somebody. The guard of the train happened to be the 
 nearest somebody, and him the interviewer went for. 
 
 "Parlez-vous anglais, monsieur?" 
 
 "Na," was the reply of the Low-Dutch gentleman. 
 
 "Fraufais?" 
 
 "Na." 
 
 '♦ Allemand ? " 
 
 "Na." 
 
 "Sanscrit?" 
 
 " Na." 
 
 "Choctaw?" 
 
 " Na." 
 
 This not panning out satisfactorily, Soussigne, still determined 
 to interview somebody, went up to an individual with a red cap ; 
 and in order to have an excuse to say something, pulled out his 
 tickets. 
 
 " Monsieur parle anglais, n'est pas ? " 
 
 " Oh yes. What can I do for you ? " 
 
 " When does the train leave for Amsterdam ? " 
 
 He glanced at the tickets. 
 
 " It leaves in twenty minutes from a station about a mile from 
 here. If you take a carriage and drive fast you rhay catch it ! " 
 
 Soussigne tore himself away at a rate that must have aston- 
 ished the gentleman in the red cap. The Commander was pick- 
 ing his teeth, and with his legs extended to the opposite seat, was 
 particularly comfortable. Madame had wrapped up her head, 
 and was half asleep in a corner. 
 
 " Get out, quick ! Wrong train ! Have to change here ! Here, 
 j^ou Senegambian, tumble out with the traps! " 
 
 There was no time to spare. They had but barely reached the' 
 platform when the train rushed away. A cab was called, and the 
 party driven to another depot, on the opposite side of Rotter- 
 dam. Madame was annoyed, and refused to look out the window. 
 The Commander was evidently engaged in a speculation as to 
 who was responsible for obliging him to leave a train which was 
 going direct to Amsterdam, in order to take another train for the 
 same place. Soussigne, therefore, had to do all the sight-seeing. 
 He saw that Rotterdam is a quiet old town in which canals, 
 streets, vessels, quays, are intimately mixed up. There are no 
 19 
 
290 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 sidewalks to speak of, and consequently everybody, including 
 dogs, donkeys, men, women, carts, cabs, children, goes along the 
 middle of the street. 
 
 But there was little time for observation. Under pressure of 
 extra compensation, the driver stimulated his steed into what was 
 a suggestion of a trot, and they were soon at the other depot. 
 The train was ready, the excursionists tumbled in, the doors were 
 banged shut, and away they went. 
 
 "This is very provoking, I'm sure! " said the Madame. 
 
 " But console yourself, Madame," said Soussigne. " Don't you 
 see that if we had not changed cars you would have missed see- 
 ing Rotterdam ? How would it do to go back to Chicago, and 
 confess that you had not taken in Rotterdam — Rotterdam, the 
 second city in Holland — Rotterdam, near which is made the 
 celebrated Schiedam Schnapps — the city where the great Eras- 
 mus was born " 
 
 But Madame was chagrined at being rushed out of one train, 
 through a city, and into another at such an undignified rate of 
 speed. She shrugged her shoulders over Soussigne's remarks, 
 whereupon he took the hint and subsided. 
 
 The rain still pursued them, but it could not prevent their be- 
 coming interested in the singular country through which they 
 were running at thirty miles an hour. Everywhere canals, 
 ditches filled with water, dykes, sluice-gates. Everywhere flat 
 lands extending from horizon to horizon. Here and there dense 
 masses of vegetation, amidst which gleamed the rich purple and 
 gold and virgin white of blossoms. 
 
 " Oh, how lovely?" exclaimed Madame, whose artistic tenden- 
 cies speedily overcame her chagrin over the Rotterdam fiasco. 
 "See what exquisite tints in those flowers — how rich and mass- 
 ive the efiects of the great waves of green in yonder grove ! " 
 
 " I suppose you know," said The Commander, " that much of 
 Holland lies beneath the level of the ocean — in some places, I 
 am told, being from thirty to fifty feet below high-water mark ; 
 and that the country is only saved from being flooded by vast 
 dykes constructed all along tlie sea-coast. It is said that in case 
 of an invasion the entire region can be inundated." 
 
 " But in such a case," asked Madame, "what becomes of the 
 inhabitants ? " 
 
 " Oh, they go ashore, I fancy,'' said Soussigne. 
 
 " Inundating the country," continued The Commander, " would 
 
DOING HOLLAND. 291 
 
 he, it seems to me, veiy like the case of the chap who stood in 
 his shirt in a doorway at midnight, in mid-winter, holding a dog 
 out-doors for tlie purpose of freezing him to deatli — the Dutch 
 would get the worst of it. But it is a country full of grand his- 
 torical interest, dating back to the second century, when it was 
 overrun by the Saxons and " 
 
 "What in the world is that?" suddenlj- exclaimed Madame, 
 pointing to a melancholy-looking bird, shaped like a heron, 
 with slender legs about three feet long, and a neck and bill of 
 corresponding length, and which, poised upon one foot, with its 
 bill stuck under its wing, stood in a most disconsolate attitude 
 by a pool of water. 
 
 "That, Madame," replied Soussigne, "is a Dutch hen, one of 
 the regulation kind which lays eggs, cackles, and scratches for 
 worms. Its peculiar shape and length of legs prove the Dar- 
 winian theory that development depends on surroundings. This 
 is an aquatic country. Hens cannot swim, but as there is every- 
 where water, their legs have gradually grown so that they can 
 wade about without difficulty." 
 
 Madame received the philosophical statement with a look of 
 incredulity. 
 
 The country through which they were running between Rot- 
 terdam and Amsterdam lies along the east shore of the North 
 Sea, and is, with scarcely any exception, devoted to dairy pur- 
 poses. At intervals of three or four miles, the monotony of the 
 treeless level is relieved by railway stations, in and about which 
 are quaint houses, surrounded with charming flower-gardens, 
 while the whole is enveloped with the dense foliage of ever- 
 greens and annuals, all of which seem to thrive most luxuriously 
 in the wet soil and humid atmosphere. At all these stations are 
 doll-like summer-houses, witli living hedges trimmed into fan- 
 tastic shapes, beds of gorgeous flowers, winding walks bordered 
 with perennial plants, and arbors of light wicker-work, over 
 which clamber vines purple in hue and dense and impenetrable 
 in their luxurious growtli. 
 
 In the distance, dotting the prairie-like expanse, appear at in- 
 tervals, farm-houses, with their out-buildings. All these are 
 anchored in little islands of green, which serve to protect them 
 from the cold in winter, from the heat in summer, and to diver- 
 sify a landscape which otherwise would be intolerable in its 
 dreary monotony. Roads, there are comparatively none. Occa- 
 
292 SKETCHES BEYOISTD IHE SEA. 
 
 sionally a dyke, higher than the average is employed as a wagoa 
 tracli, and where one is thus used, there is usually a double row 
 of trees planted on either side, and which covers the roadway 
 with a living arch. 
 
 "Have you noticed," asked The Commander, "that since leav- 
 ing Ostend, we have found neither in Belgium nor Holland, a 
 single rod of fence upon any of the farm-lands?'' 
 
 Soussigne owned up frankly that his eyes had not been blessed 
 with Ihe sight of even a suggestion of worm-fence, stone-wall, 
 hedge, post-and-board, or any other of the numerous contriv- 
 ances employed in civilized England and still more enlightened 
 America. 
 
 " It is a good thing," continued The Commander. " It is esti- 
 mated that the fences in America, and their repair, cost more 
 than all the railways. In Nebraska they have passed a herd- 
 law, whose effect is to oblige each owner to herd his cattle, and 
 thus save the expense of fencing. The people seem to get along^ 
 here without fences, and I don't see why we can't do the same. 
 It is true that here in Holland the innumerable ditches serve as 
 fences; but in Belgium there are no ditches or dykes, and they 
 appear to have no difficulty." 
 
 "These ditches are really fences," said Soussigne. " Our fences 
 are above ground, while these are inverted and run into the 
 ground. The former is in alto-relief, the latter is an intaglio, or 
 in reverse. The jDrinciple is the same, only the application is 
 different. The intaglio style, it seems to me, is best. A cow 
 can't throw down a panel or two, and so get over into the clover 
 field. That white slave — the boy on a farm — does not have to 
 take a dog and an axe and go over and chase the cows out of a 
 corn-field, and then mend a couple of rods of rail fence, while 
 the able-bodied farm-hands are taking an after-dinner snooze under 
 a shade tree. I was a boy in the country once, and I know how it 
 is myself. Ugh ! " said he with a grimace of disgust, " I can even 
 yet feel the Canada thistles whicli used to run into my bare feet. 
 There was always a steer that would run four times around the 
 whole field pretending he didn't know the way out, and who 
 always went where the thistles and stones were the thickest and 
 sharpest. As a boy, give me the Holland fence which can't be 
 hooked down, and which doesn't stick slivers in a boy's hands, 
 or oblige him to smash his shins with an axe when he goes to 
 mend it." 
 
DOING HOLLAND. 293 
 
 In Madame, who had never been a boy in the country, these pa- 
 thetic reminiscences seemed to awake no sympathetic chord. As 
 for The Commander, never having gone barefooted when a lad, 
 and stubbed his toe against a stone in the road, while racing a 
 red squirrel along a rail fence, he too, seemed little or not at all 
 affected. He did not wipe away any tears, or seem even sorry, 
 which Soussigne took to be quite unfeeling on his part. The 
 Teteran mused awhile as if he were wondering what the deuce 
 steers, cornfields, and Canada thistles had to do with Holland 
 scenery, and then apparently giving it up, he said : 
 
 "It certainly cannot be a very healthy country. All these 
 ditches are stagnant and covered with a green slime. It must be 
 frightfully malarious. I wonder how they get along with so 
 few roads?" 
 
 The answer came almost at once. The train ran by a group of 
 ■cows which were being milked. In the nearest ditch was a flat- 
 bottomed boat, loaded with glistening tins, and which a man 
 with a pole was pushing along in the direction of a distant farm- 
 house. Frequently thereafter were the same vehicles to be seen, 
 loaded with milk-cans, bundles of wood, farming implements, or 
 Iiay, all being propelled in one direction or another. 
 
 "There are the Holland roads," said Soussigne. " In winter, 
 when frozen, all these ditches serve as road-ways for sleds and 
 skaters. When a Holland lover invites his sweetheart to take a 
 ride, he places her tenderly in a flat -bottomed scow, and then 
 with a pole sends her along, the while murmuring his passion in 
 the softest, gutteral Dutch. They go to christenings, to funerals, 
 to pay visits, to make love, to get married, in these primitive 
 vehicles. There, for instance, you see that boat to which is 
 hitched a cow, and in which are a man and a woman. That, I 
 have no doubt, is some nabob taking his mistress for a drive. 
 "With his cow, he is to other fellows who propel their craft with 
 a pole, what a four-in-hand in Hyde Park is to the donkey-cart 
 of a costermonger in Petticoat Lane." 
 
 " Holland seems iinique in everything," said The Commander. 
 "When I get home I shall read Motley's 'Dutch Republic' with 
 much more interest than I read it without having seen the 
 country." 
 
 " One must see a country, or a people,'' said Madame, " in order 
 to understand it. Writers somehow fail in doing what they 
 
294 
 
 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
AROUND AMSTERDAM. 295 
 
 should do, aud that is to present a country so the reader can see 
 it as a picture." 
 
 "True," said Soussigne, "there's nothing like travel to correct 
 false notions. I have no doubt, for instance, that many people 
 are under the impression that the Dutch are web-footed, and 
 have tails like beavers. Now that we see them, we discover 
 that all our life we have been laboring under a delusion." 
 
 Thus chatting they rolled along — along over resounding 
 bridges, across canals crowded with queer and clumsy boats ; by 
 herds of cows being milked in the open fields; through long 
 and dreary stretches gridironed with slimy ditches, by stations 
 with a whistle and a fierce rush, where flashed across the vision 
 women in short gowns with high-crowned caps and golden orna- 
 ments that curled like ram's-horns about their foreheads; on and 
 on until upon the horizon there came into view a dense black 
 mass which slowly grew into domes, steeples, wind-mills, towers 
 and houses ; and then, a little later the tourists were in the depot 
 among the odd figures, the queer architecture and unintelligible 
 jargon of Amsterdam. 
 
 LETTER XLV 
 
 ATIOUND AMSTERDAM. 
 
 On-the-Winq, June 17, 1878. 
 
 fHEY were going from the depot to the hotel, through the 
 streets of Amsterdam, in a close carriage, when Soussigne 
 suddenly exclaimed : 
 " What in heaven's name are all these people staring at? " 
 It was something marvellous. As they went along, people 
 stopped, and gazed at the carriage, with open mouths, and eyes 
 which grew big with wonder. Out of the windows of the nar- 
 row houses heads were thrust; the white-capped servant-girls who 
 were sweeping the front " stoops " suspended operations to lean 
 on their brooms and watch the carriage; men and women in 
 groups nudged each other to invite attention to the vehicle — in 
 fine, all that portion of Holland's capital through which the ex- 
 
296 SKETCHES BEVOND THE SEA. 
 
 cursionists were passing seemed possessed by a most singular 
 and lively curiosity in regard to the Yankee travelers. 
 
 "This isn't the first time," said Soussigne, " that this thing has 
 occurred, although the curiosity of these stolid Dutchmen seems 
 more pronounced than that of other places. We seemed to at- 
 tract an extraordinary amount of attention when we rode through 
 Brussels and Rotterdam. I wonder if there is anything remark- 
 able about us?" 
 
 "Perhaps they think we are grand dukes, or something, in dis- 
 guise," said Madame. 
 
 " It's infernally annoying, anyhow," said Soussigne. " I won- 
 der if there is anything going on outside. I think I'll take a 
 look." 
 
 He thrust his head and shoulders out of the carriage window. 
 The whole matter suddenly presented itself. On the seat with 
 the driver was The Shade. His shoulders were thrown far back, 
 and his thumbs were thrust into the arm-holes of his vest. His 
 head was tipped so far back that he seemed to be gazing into the 
 tenth stories of the houses along the street. His cap was on his 
 left ear; and across his broad nose was stretched a pair of 
 enormous eye-glasses, whose rims inclosed spaces as large as 
 saucers. 
 
 "It's that d— d nigger — beg pardon for the profanity," said 
 Soussigne, as in huge disgust he pulled himself in like a snail. And 
 then he proceeded to describe the spectacle on exhibition on the 
 driver's seat. The Commander was amused, the Madame fu- 
 rious. A moment later they halted at the hotel, whereupon The 
 Shade appeared as usual to open the door. His cap was square 
 on his head. There was no vestige of the eye-glasses except a 
 furrow which had been pinched into the half pear-like formation 
 which served for a nose. He was fairly round-shouldered with 
 humility, and seemed as if he were too modest to look anybody 
 squarely in the face. 
 
 Soon after the excursionists had gone to their rooms, Soussigne 
 happened to pass by that occupied by Madame. Just then The 
 Shade came out with a look on his countenance which convinced 
 Soussigne that he had been receiving a piece of Madame's mind. 
 He looked very chop-fallen and sheepish; and, during that even- 
 ing, he stood around on one leg, and seemed the incarnation of 
 wretchedness. 
 
 "The fact is," said Madame, at dinner, "they think more of a 
 
' AROCND AMSTERDAM. 297 
 
 negro on this side tlian they do of a white person. In England 
 every wliere the prettiest of the servant girls, at the hotels, thought 
 it an honor to get The Shade for an escort in a walk." 
 , " And I never go out in front of a hotel where we are stop- 
 ping," said Soussign6, "without finding him the center of an ad- 
 miring crowd. They evidently look upon him as a Russian 
 prince, and upon the rest of us as his attendants." 
 
 " It's a shame, and I won't have it," was Madame's reply, and 
 then the subject dropped. 
 
 Among the waiters at the dinner was a tallow-faced person, of 
 some thirty-four years of age, who became noticeable because he 
 spoke English very fairly, and because of his close attention to 
 the wants of the excursionists, and his general air of dejection. 
 
 After dinner, Soussigne was smoking a cigar in the hall, when 
 the tallow-faced waiter with the dejected countenance came up 
 to him, thrust a card into his hand, and said : 
 
 " I see you are from Chicago. I once lived in Chicago." 
 
 " Ah, indeed ! " 
 
 "Yes, I was a drummer for Field & Leiter." 
 
 "What are you doing here?" 
 
 " I was born here, but went to America wlien 1 was young. I 
 have been also in China, Japan, Australia, and Russia. I saved a 
 few thousand dollars in China, and went back to America and 
 invested in White Pine mining claims. That ended me, and I 
 came home to Holland." 
 
 " How do you amuse yourself now-a-days? " 
 
 "My mother is quite rich, and very old. She can't last long, 
 I'm sure. When she slips out, I'll be all right again. In the 
 meantime, I wait on the table here, and act as guide to travelers 
 around Amsterdam. I'd like to show you around," and as he 
 concluded he heaved a sigh that convulsed him like a young 
 earthquake. 
 
 The next day was Saturday, and under the guidance of Field 
 & Leiter's former protege, the party went abroad in an open car- 
 riage to view the city. It rained, of course; but the weather, 
 evidently wearying of its long effort to drown the party, had 
 changed its tactics. It was no longer a steady rain. It now 
 stormed in vicious showers, and between these a fierce wind 
 came howling down from the Zuyder Zee, and chilled the very 
 marrow of the excursionists. 
 
298 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " Of course," said Madame, " the first places we should visit 
 are the diamond establishments." 
 
 " Quite unfortunately," answered the guide, " that is impossible, 
 because to-day is Saturday, which is the Jewish Sabbath ; and, as 
 all the diamond business is in the hands of Jews, and every es- 
 tablishment closed, you cannot see any of the diamond works." 
 
 Here Soussigne informed the party that, for his part, had he 
 known this, he would have seen Amsterdam more dammed even 
 than it now is — and it is full of dams — before he would have 
 come hundreds of miles to see a played-out Dutch settlement, 
 which, outside of its diamond works, is of no possible interest. 
 
 " But," said The Commander, " there is certainly much else ta 
 see. Amsterdam is so intimately associated with the settlement 
 of various parts of America that it cannot but be of interest to a 
 traveler from that country, especially one from eastern New York. 
 The student of race will find here explanations of the peculiari- 
 ties in the manners and habits of one of the most respected and 
 influential branches of the American nation." 
 
 " I see at once," said Madame, " the origin of various names. 
 In fact, the English and Dutch seem very much alike. There, 
 for instance, is a sign which reads ' Scheep Victuallen.' That's 
 almost exactly like English, although it must be a queer business- 
 to furnish victuals for sheep." 
 
 "Pardon me, Madame," said Soussigne, "you are partly right 
 and partly wrong. ' Scheep Victuallen,' in my humble opinion, 
 does not exactly mean victuals for the sportive lamb and the in- 
 nocent sheep, but rather, ' Supplies for Vessels.' Otherwise, I 
 think you have it exactly." 
 
 The party rode for some hours, and saw much that thej'' haci 
 never seen before, or even dreamed of seeing. There are twO' 
 rivers and four principal canals, over which the town is ex- 
 tended, and these are connected by smaller canals in every direc- 
 tion. It is diflicult to say whether Amsterdam should be re- 
 garded as a system of water-conrses, with some houses on the 
 banks, or a city, through which extends a net-work of navigable 
 ditches. 
 
 " All Amsterdam," said the guide, " all the houses, streets, 
 quays, docks — everything you see, even the canals, are built oa 
 piles. Where we now ride, wherever we may ride was once 
 the sea." 
 
 The character of the houses struck the travelers as being very 
 
AROUND AMSTERDAM. 29& 
 
 queer. As a general thing, all have steep, double roofs, and 
 stand with the gables toward the street. Just under the gable is 
 a large, square window, over which projects a beam with a pul- 
 ■ ley and a rope. This, the guide informed them, is used for rais- 
 ing all the material used in housekeeping, so as to avoid the dirt 
 incidental to carrying tilings up the stairway. Few of the houses 
 are palatial in their exterior, those on the more aristocratic streets 
 falling behind even tlie third-rate private residences in Chicago. 
 Many of the houses which run up five, six, or seven stories in. 
 height, are often not more than from nine to twelve feet in width. 
 
 The widest streets are narrow compared with tliose of Paris or 
 New York. The majority are mere paths, through which, in 
 passing, the pedestrian can, with extended hands, touch the build- 
 ings on either side. In such cases the streets are mere fissures 
 opening down through the queer and antiquated tenements. 
 Nearly every house in Amsterdam is provided with small square 
 mirrors, placed at such angles before the upper windows, that 
 one sitting before one of them cannot only see callers, but alsa 
 all that is going on along the street in every direction. 
 
 "What are those mirrors used in such quantities for, do you 
 suppose?" asked Madame. 
 
 " Probably," said Soussigne, " that the Dutch house-wife may 
 know what is going on next door, without the trouble of dress- 
 ing in order to go out and get the latest news. She now can. 
 glance in her little mirror and see what the people over the way 
 have for dinner; who takes the young ladj'- in No. 12 out for a 
 walk or drive; who called at No. 25, and how long he stayed, 
 and all that. It seems to me these mirrors are great labor-saving- 
 institutions in the interest of over-worked women. A woman 
 can, with one of them, know all that is going on in a neighbor- 
 hood, and without expending a tithe of the labor which an 
 American woman must ordinarily employ in order to accom- 
 plish the same, and to her, desirable result." 
 
 Madame's answer was rather a contemptuous shrug of the 
 shoulders. 
 
 " Amsterdam," remarked The Commander, " is not, I believe, 
 either directly on the North sea or on the Zuyder Zee, is it ? " 
 
 "No," said the guide. "The river Ij here widens out into a 
 sort of bay, and the city is on the south bank. It is between the 
 North sea and the Zuyder Zee, being a little nearer the latter than 
 the former. It used to reach the German ocean by way of the 
 
SOO SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 2uyder Zee, but many years ago a sliip canal was built wliicli 
 runs from here north, and it is fifty miles long. Lately another 
 ship canal has been constructed which is some sixteen miles 
 long, and reaches the sea at the mouth of the Ij. It cost over 
 $10,000,000. It is about ninety feet wide at the bottom, over two 
 hundred feet at the surface, and will admit vessels having a 
 draught of twenty-four feet. It is expected that in time the en- 
 tire cost of the canal will be more than met by the waste land 
 on both sides of it, which was formcrlj' a marsh, or at the bot- 
 tom of a lake, and which is being gradually transformed into 
 excellent farming lands worth hundreds of dollars an acre." 
 
 " Sliould you make a note of these important details," said 
 Soussigne, " don't spell the river ' e-y-e,' for although it is pro- 
 nounced exactly like that important visual organ, it is really 
 spelt 'Ij.'" 
 
 " By-the-way," inquired Madame, "I see that every 'bus and 
 street car which we meet has the word 'Dam' on it. Has it 
 some particular meaning ? " 
 
 " Nearly the same as in English," said the guide. " It means 
 to dam a stream. The principal public square of Amsterdam is 
 known as the ' Dam.' To and from this all 'busses and street 
 cars run. Amsterdam comes from the river Amstel — which 
 juns through the city — and the word ' dam.' The city itself is 
 crescent-shaped and has four principal canals, which follow tlie 
 shape of the outer rim of the crescent, and lie within each other 
 — that is to say are concentric. All these canals are connected 
 by hundreds of shorter canals, which cut the others generally at 
 right angles.'' 
 
 " What a great pity," said The Commander, in an aside to 
 Soussigne, " that a man of such extended information, and who 
 once occupied tlie conspicuous position of drummer for Field & 
 Leiter, should be reduced to waiting — that is, waiting on a table, 
 and waiting for the death of his mother! " 
 
 They drove everywhere. They went out on the enormous 
 dykes which separate the city from the gulf of the Ij. Beneath 
 lay the city; higher up lay the gray and monotonous extent of 
 water. Mile after mile of masts, from which floated the flags of 
 every nation, bore witness to the extent and variety of the com- 
 merce of Amsterdam. Far to the northeast were banks of mist, 
 in hue like the leaden clouds, which marked the location of the 
 Zuyder Zee. Apart from the activity along the wharves, the scene 
 
AROUND AMSTERDAM. 301 
 
 •was cold, dead, cheerless. Away on every side from the city ex- 
 tended the monotonous level of the open country. Below lay the 
 city, sombre, without a single relieving tint of color. On the 
 north were the gray waters, wliose low horizon gave the impres- 
 sion of an ashen, illimitable waste. The heavy clouds hung low 
 in the sky, the wind came fiercelj^ and freezingly from the north. 
 The Commander shuddered. "Let us go to the hotel," said he. 
 *' This cold goes through me like a sword of ice." 
 
 On their return they made the circuit of the city, following the 
 bow of the crescent. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " suddenly ejaculated Madame. " How inhu- 
 man! See those poor little boys in this freezing weather, over 
 there, playing soldiers, and each with his nursing-bottle slung 
 over his shoulder ! " 
 
 The guide fired up instantly. " ' Little boys ! ' Those are 
 regular soldiers, and what you call 'nursing-bottles' arc car- 
 tridge-boxes." 
 
 " Soldiers ! Has Holland any soldiers ? " asked Soussigne. 
 " Yes, indeed ! Holland has a standing army of twenty thou- 
 sand troops." 
 
 "Is it possible ! And what for ? You must keep them to fight 
 water-rats." 
 
 But the guide had become sulky, and refused any further 
 information on the subject. The excursionists encountered large 
 squads of these " soldiers " drilling on the dykes. Madame was 
 right in her original impression. They were mere children as to 
 size and age. Many seemed no more than sixteen, and few were 
 more than five feet three or four inches in height. 
 
 " I can only account for the extreme youth of these soldiers," 
 said Soussigne, " by supposing that all the veterans have been 
 killed ofi" in those tremendous wars in which Holland is always 
 engaged." 
 
 " What wars ? " queried The Commander. " I am not aware of 
 her having had any very great war since the time of Pliilip L 
 and the infamous Duke Alva." 
 
 " The Avars I refer to," answered Soussigne, " are her ceaseless 
 combats with Schnapps, bad water, the malaria of these ever- 
 lasting marshes, and the stenches from these canals. Have we 
 seen a single healthy, ruddy face since we entered Amsterdam? 
 Not one. The men are stunted as to height. The women are, 
 without exception, pale, emaciated, cadaverous. There is not 
 
302 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 even a healthy-looking child. Last evening I spent an hour in 
 Rembrandt Square, which seems a great play-ground for chil- 
 dren, and among the hundreds whom I saw there, I did not see 
 one robust, vigorous specimen. As for beautiful women, I have 
 seen but one unmistakably handsome woman in Holland." 
 
 Here Soussigne looked carelessly at Madame. 
 
 " Indeed ! " said the latter, " where did you see her ? " 
 
 " Oh, I saw her at the hotel, and then I saw her out driving 
 to-day. I fancy, however, she is a foreigner; very likely an 
 American." 
 
 " How I wish I could see her," said Madame ; and then the 
 matter dropped. 
 
 Everywhere, as they circled the city, they found hundreds of 
 windmills, all tossing their long arms wildly in the stiff breeze. 
 The guide explained that they do all sorts of work — pumping, 
 grinding, sawing, turning, everything. Soussigne saw in them 
 additional evidence of Dutch economy. " Wind costs nothing," 
 he said, " and so it is a favorite power with these people. It 
 comes from the land, rushing toward the ocean ; but it finds here 
 toll to be paid. It must halt long enough to grind a grist for 
 these Dutch burghers, and then, gathering up armfuls of the 
 stenches which lie along the canals, it bears them away to the 
 distant ocean. Any wind coming this way has got something to 
 do before it can get out of town. It doesn't spend its time in 
 smelling at tulips and geraniums, or in tumbling up the green 
 masses of the trees, or in chasing hats up the street, or blowing 
 dust in the eyes of pedestrians. When it gets here it is just har- 
 nessed up and put to work, and like a casual in a London night- 
 shelter, it is not allowed to go until it has done a certain amount 
 of work. If you should treat these breezes in the same way at 
 home they would sober down, and not go about unroofing houses 
 smashing steeples, and making balloons of hay-stacks and small 
 children as they now do so often in Illinois and Wisconsin." 
 
 "Shall we stay and see the diamond works?" asked Madame, 
 when they had reached the hotel. 
 
 "Not necessary," said Soussigne, "because you can see the 
 same thing being carried on in the exposition at Paris." 
 
 The Commander complained that the weather was too atro- 
 cious for human endurance ; and despite the fact that they had 
 not visited any of the picture galleries or the museums, he 
 thought they had better hunt a warmer climate. 
 
AMSTERDAM TO THE RHINE. 303 
 
 "We will go back," said lie, " aud finisli Belgium and Water- 
 loo, and tlieu we will go south to Switzerland." 
 
 The next afternoon saw them seated beneath the glass roof, 
 with the warm light, and amidst the fragrant flowers of the con- 
 servatory of the hotel at Brussels. 
 
 LETTER XLVI. 
 
 AMSTERDAM TO THE RHINE. 
 
 On-the-Wing, June 19, 1878. 
 
 tHE excursionists were seated at the table in the hotel in 
 Brussels, where they were at the close of the last letter. 
 The Commander had the floor. He was saying : 
 
 " I'm sorry the weather was so against us in Holland, for the 
 people there are unquestionably the most unique in Europe, and, 
 more than any other, worthy of close study. Their industry ; 
 the colossal work they have performed in rescuing so large a ter- 
 ritory from the sea ; their enterprise in colonial extensions ; their 
 great maritime performances, and their commercial enteprise 
 place them second to no other European nation in all that con- 
 tributes to the true greatness of a people. What we saw in Am- 
 sterdam is not fairly representative of the Dutch character. That 
 city is scarcely more than a new or second Jerusalem, in which 
 the Jewish element predominates. We should have gone into 
 the country places; we should have gone into the farm-houses, 
 in order to get a true estimate of the excessive cleanliness, the 
 originality, the grand charitableness, the singular costumes and 
 customs, the real life of the people. It's a great pity that we 
 could not have given a week or two to a studious examination. 
 We would have found the originals of Washington Irving's 
 sketches, for these people do not change. We should have seen 
 the Dirk Hatteraicks, Rip Van Winkles, Von Tromps, De Ruy- 
 ters, and other characters, legendary or historical, exactly almost 
 as they were in the originals." 
 
 " True," said Soussigne, " I would not have been surprised to 
 have met the Flying Dutchman at any turning of the street. 
 
304 SKETCHES BEVOND THE SEA. 
 
 What I am astonished at, however, is that the Amsterdamers 
 allowed us to leave with any money. They evidently did not 
 intend to leave us any; they made up their minds as to the 
 amount they supposed we had, and made their bills to include 
 it all." 
 " What do you mean ? " asked Madame. 
 
 "Well, in plain English, I mean to be understood as saying 
 that I regard the Dutch as the biggest thieves in Europe. The 
 hotel bill was twice what it has been at any other place, and con- 
 sequently was four times as large as it should have been. Every- 
 thing that 1 priced at the shops was rated at six times its value. 
 Every waiter at the hotel had some photographs or cigars, or 
 guide-books, or something to sell ; and robbed me when I bought 
 anything, and abused me when I refused to purchase. You 
 remember, perhaps, that when we left the hotel there was no one 
 present, as is usually the case in European hotels, to touch his 
 hat and say good-bye ? Yes? Well, that was because I had just 
 refused to buy a box of ' real Havanas ' from the steward at ten 
 times their value. He was so disgusted at my refusal that he 
 did not come to see us off, although I had given him a fee of 
 five francs. His last remark to me was that every gentleman who 
 left the hotel always bought a box of his cigars." 
 
 " I must say," said Madame, " that I found many charming 
 things in Amsterdam. This was especially the case with the 
 chimes from the steeples. Every quarter of an hour they would 
 ring out softly, and at every hour the carillons were full, sonor- 
 ous and enchanting. Then the queer old boats in the canals, 
 stained the color of rich mahogany, and built as if to last for- 
 ever; the quaint head-dresses of the women; the tall buildings 
 with their pointed gables mirrored in the canals — all these were 
 odd, interesting, and often full of artistic qualities." 
 
 " And yet,'' said Soussigne, " strangely enough you missed one 
 of the most charming things in all Amsterdam.'' 
 
 "What was that?" 
 
 "A public house of confinement and correction to which a 
 husband can send a scolding or otherwise disagreeable wife for 
 punishment and reform." 
 
 " Humph ! I don't see anything very attractive about that. It 
 strikes me as being more brutal than attractive." 
 
 " But I haven't come to what a woman would regard as the 
 charming feature of this institution. That is, that a woman can 
 
AMSTERDAM TO THE KHINE. 305 
 
 send her husband there in case he doesn't behave himself. Now, 
 isn't that charming?" 
 
 Madame was silent. 
 
 " Just fancy how convenient such an arrangement for a wife 
 who finds her husband a bore — as some husbands are. She sends 
 him to the Spinhuis and keeps him there until he mellows and 
 agrees to behave himself — to buy a coviple of new bonnets, to 
 send her and the children for a mouth to a watering-place, to not 
 speak to that thing, Miss Millefleurs, and generally to conduct 
 himself as a well-regulated, obedient husband ought to. Ah, 
 you see, these thrifty people know how to care for the comfort of 
 their wives! " 
 
 "What's the programme for to-morrow?" asked The Com- 
 mander, suddenly breaking in on Soussigne's eloquent disserta- 
 tion on the domestic life of the Hollanders. 
 
 " I don't know," said the latter. " What's your idea?" 
 
 " We ought to see Waterloo, of course, then take a look around 
 Brussels, after which let us hunt a warmer climate." 
 
 "Where, for instance?" asked Soussigne. 
 
 "It must be delightfully warm and pleasant at Paris, just 
 now," said Madame. 
 
 " I think," said The Commander, apparently not hearing Mad- 
 ame's remark, " that after having finished here we might go over 
 to Cologne, and so up the Rhine. So much is said and written 
 about the trip up the Rhine that, it seems to me, while we are in 
 the neighborhood, so to speak, we ought to make it. After that 
 we can lake a run through Switzerland, over to Venice, perhaps 
 then to Genoa, and from there to Paris." 
 
 "All right," answered Soussigne. 
 
 " Delightful ! " said Madame. " I've always been dying to see 
 the Rhine. Let's go there by all means." 
 
 " Good night," said The Commander, as he left the table for his 
 room. 
 
 The next day it rained. No Waterloo. The Commander 
 thought fate was against them. " It's too bad," he said. " Here 
 is an opportunity to look over the ground from which history 
 has constructed its most illustrious page; and yet we are de- 
 feated by a contemptible shower. It is the lost opportunity of a 
 lifetime." 
 
 " Console yourself," said Soussigne. " When we were down to 
 Braine Alleud, on the verge of the battle-ground, I saw a vener- 
 20 
 
306 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 able old stick, wlio is a guide, and who, although not more than 
 fifty years old, fought all through the battle, and was decorated 
 on the spot, for his gallantry, by Napoleon. He informed me 
 that not long since he had shown ' zee great Zhenerale Zhereedon 
 over zee battle-feel.' Now, as the great General Sheridan has 
 been over 'zee battle-feel,' and he lives in Chicago, anybody who 
 is anxious to get full particulars about Waterloo has only to 
 apply to the general, either by letter or in person. The general 
 is a good-natured chap, and, not having much to do, will doubt- 
 less be very glad to answer all such applications; and, from his 
 experience in military matters, his description, I have no doubt, 
 will be very full, intelligent and instructive." 
 
 They dawdled around all that day. Madame managed to slip 
 out between a couple of showers and sample a few specimens of 
 Brussels lace. She returned with the information that for ten 
 dollars she could buy a piece of lace which in Chicago would 
 cost one hundred and fifty ; that Brussels lace is finer than any 
 other made in Belgium, or in the world, and that the spinning 
 of the thread is so delicate an operation that it must be done in a 
 darkened room, into which only a small bit of light is admitted. 
 Mechlin lace, she said, is, or was, made at Malines, Mechlin be- 
 ing the French name for the town. She gave much other inter- 
 esting information, among which was something to the effect 
 that, however cheap Brussels lace may be at Brussels, it can be 
 purchased at a considerably lower figure in Paris. 
 
 They had no opportunity for an examination of Brussels, ex- 
 cept as they saw it on the way to and from the railway station. 
 They saw that there are an old town and a new one ; the former 
 being quaint and antiquated, with narrow streets and no side- 
 walks. The latter is simply a reproduction of Paris in its archi- 
 tecture, its streets, its places, and boulevards. It struck the 
 excursionists as being, in the dress and manners of its people, 
 the display of its shops, the style of its monuments, and the like, 
 a thin imitation of Paris — that is to say, Paris of popular esti- 
 mate. Viewed from the west, Brussels is seen reclining on a hill- 
 side, and presents a most charming picture. As a whole, the 
 excursionists were pleased with it, and wished as they were leav- 
 ing it that they could have seen more of it, as the hotel fare and 
 accommodations were excellent, the prices reasonable, and 
 everybody polite and attentive. 
 
 On the next day, which was a Tuesday in May, A. D. 1878, the 
 
AMSTERDAM TO THE KIIINE. 307 
 
 excursionists were on board a train, flying nearly due east across 
 Belgium, toward Cologne. It was raining, by way of variety. 
 
 " I suppose," said The Commander, " that we are passing 
 oyer the most classic ground in Europe — perhaps in the entire 
 world. For a score of centuries, the population of Belgium or 
 Flanders, under one name or another, has occupied a conspicu- 
 ous position in the attention of mankind. The Romans found 
 here the most desperate resistance which they encountered in 
 their northern march. The Flamands have been overrun by the 
 French, by the Danes, and Swedes, by the Spaniards under the 
 infamous Duke of Alva, and finally by the French. No country 
 has experienced such tremendous changes — has been so barbar- 
 ous, so civilized; so poor, so wealthy; so ignorant, so enlight- 
 ened ; so given to superstition, and yet so tolerant ; so reduced to 
 slavery, and yet so free. I believe it is the first state which at- 
 tempted the management of railways by the government; and, 
 according to all accounts, the experiment has proved a grand 
 success. Fares are lower than in any other country in the world, 
 and travel is many times greater in proportion to population. I 
 am not certain that, in order to end the railway troubles in Amer- 
 ica, we may have to " 
 
 " Oh, just see there! " exclaimed Madame, pointing to a plowed 
 field, across which a cow, with distended udders, and a horse 
 twice as high as the cow, were harnessed together, and wfere drag- 
 ging an enormous harrow. A woman in a blue frock, a tight- 
 fitting cap, and wooden shoes, was driving the queer team, while 
 a man, with a pipe in his mouth, stood at one end of the plowed 
 field, and seemed to be overseeing the operations of the others, 
 "Now, isn't that a blistering shame?" continued Madame, with 
 hot indignation. "See that brute of a man, dawdling there, 
 while that poor woman wades through the heavy ground! " 
 
 " Madame," said Soussigne, " you don't look below the surface. 
 Now, that to me is the most beautiful and poetical thing I have 
 seen in many a day." 
 
 " Why, what do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean that when one looks at that scene properly he sees in 
 it something touching beyond description or comprehension. He 
 sees in it an illustration of woman's holy devotion to the other 
 sex. The true rendering of what you see, or saw, is that that 
 woman loves her husband. Yes, madame, loves him too well to 
 permit him to weary his dear limbs, to soil his beloved feet — " 
 
308 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " Oh, nonsense ! " said Madame, turning lier head away, and 
 cutting short Soussigne's remarks by gazing out of the opposite 
 window. 
 
 They flew along, noticing that every inch of Belgic soil is cul- 
 tivated. They saw grains of every kind ; and instead of great 
 square fields devoted to a particular species, they noted that the 
 face of the country is agreeably diversified, like a chess board, 
 by a succession of small patches, each of which was sowed or 
 planted with a difi'erent grain. The deep green of wheat lay 
 next to the dark-hued rye ; the straight and slender barley con- 
 trasted harmoniously with the mazy and sinuous potato-tops. 
 Everywhere thrift, industry, and a promise of plenty. Groups, 
 composed of men, women and children, were seen in every 
 wheat-field, uprooting invading weeds ; cows were at work drag- 
 ging cultivators through the potato drills ; dogs were hauling 
 light carts along the narrow roads. Nowhere anything unem- 
 ployed ; no person idle. 
 
 Suddenly the train drew up at a station. The doors were flung 
 open, and a heavily-bearded face, with a head surmounted by a 
 military cap of a new pattern, was thrust in, and the party or- 
 dered, in the hoarsest and most guttural of German, to descend. 
 
 " Halloo! " said Soussigne, "here we are on the North Side." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " queried The Commander. 
 
 " Why, that we've crossed the Chicago river and struck the 
 Nord Seite. This place is Herbesthal. We are in Germany. 
 Don't you recognize that roar outside? It's North Clark street. 
 I begin to feel as though there was an alderman to be elected, 
 and I ought to go out and ask the crowd to have some lager." 
 
 They dismounted, passed through the custom-house, had their 
 few dozen traps passed on, entered another car, and then went 
 thundering along German soil toward Cologne. 
 
 There was a great change. The small fatigue-cap of the Belgic 
 conductor was succeeded by an immense one with an overhang- 
 ing crown, such as is worn by the German soldiery. There was 
 a sliunt in the language. In place of the low nasal of the French 
 there was the hoarse, imperative roar of the Deutsch. In all the 
 stations in Belgium, the waiting-rooms, tickel^ofiice, eating-rooms, 
 and so forth are shown by signs conveying the necessary infor- 
 mation in Flemish, German and French. In the German stations, 
 with a sturdy disregard for all other nationalities, the same infor- 
 mation is given only in the vernacular. The Belgic conductors 
 
AMSTERDAM TO THE RHINE. 309 
 
 "were polite ; the German conductors thundered their demands for 
 billets with the brusqueness and volume of voice employed by a 
 boatswain in giving orders in a storm to reefers in the main-top. 
 All of the blond officers in spectacles who came along, seemed 
 to have in their faces the proud intimation that they had just 
 licked France, and were prepared to serve the rest of mankind 
 after the same fashion, at the earliest opportunity. 
 
 Everywhere soldiers in blue, a majority with spectacles or eye- 
 glasses, with the broad-crowned fatigue cap, thrown bravely up 
 in front, and bearing themselves as if they had just come from 
 Sedan. Fine-looking specimens are they, too; broad of chest, 
 square as to shoulders, straight as ramrods, and moving with an 
 easy grace, and a sturdy, powerful swing. 
 
 Thus the excursionists moved along North Clark street till to- 
 ward evening, when they saw in the flat distance a mass of gray 
 lying low on the horizon. This swiftly uplifted itself in Gothic 
 outlines and vast dimensions, till, a little later, when at a hotel 
 at its base, they found themselves on the banks of the Rhine, and 
 under the great shadows of Cologne's famed cathedral. 
 
 It rained. Nevertheless they rode a little while before dark 
 around the mazy, ancient, narrow streets of Cologne. They stood 
 for a moment beneath the sublime arches of the cathedral. They 
 vpent up to Farini's and bought some bottles of eau de Cologne, 
 so as to be sure to get it from the fountain-head ; and then, as it 
 became dark, they returned to the hotel. 
 
 The Commander and Soussigne sat in the salon, discussing the 
 situation. The Shade stood behind a chair, balancing himself 
 on one foot, as usual, and yawning dismally when he thouglit no- 
 body was looking. Madame, fatigued by the day's journey, had 
 retired. 
 
 " I do hope," said The Commander, " that we may have fair 
 weather for our trip on the Rhine, to-morrow." 
 
 "Yes," said Soussigne,"! hope so, too. There are so many 
 places of interest, all of which will be new to me. By the way, 
 I wonder if, before reaching Mayence, we pass "Worms ? " 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know," said The Commander, with a queer 
 look in his eyes. 
 
 Just then The Shade rushed out of the room in what seemed 
 lannecessary haste ; and a moment later, Soussigne, bidding The 
 ■Commander good night, followed him, 
 
 Hearing a choking sound in the opposite corner of the room 
 
310 
 
 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 as he entered it, Soussigne glanced over and saw The Shade 
 nearly bent double and evidently in a paroxysm of some kind. 
 He had stuffed the bolster from the sofa into his mouth, and was 
 now engaged in ramming in a boot-jack and a pair of blacking 
 brushes, while all the time he was wildly swinging his arms and 
 giving utterance to broken sounds. 
 
 ■ EE-YAK ! YAH ! EE-YAH ! 
 
 " What in heaven's name is the matter with youf " asked Sous- 
 signe, in great alarm. 
 
 " Yah ! yah ! e-yah ! " came in choking gutturals from the Sen- 
 egambian — "E-yah! Oh, de laud gaud amity! Passin' — E-yah! 
 E-yah! Oh, golly! Yah! Wums! Oh, e-yah! Passin' — E-yah! 
 E-yah ! Yah ! Oh, de good gaud ! " And then with an " e-yah " 
 that shook the hotel like an explosion of dynamite, he crammed 
 
UP THE RHINE. 311 
 
 the last brush into his mouth, and fled out into the hall and dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 Musing upon the singular actions of The Shade, and wonder- 
 ing whether it might not be hj^drophobia, or something, Sous- 
 signe betook himself to his couch. 
 
 LETTER XLVII. 
 
 UP THE RHINE. 
 
 On-the-Wing, June 21, 1878. 
 
 "Xirs^THEN the excursionists left the hotel at 8 : 30 the next 
 ^AcJ^liP morning, to go to the boat, it was raining as if it had 
 
 •^ not rained before since the flood. The even-tempered 
 Commander began to become a trifle ruffled under the persistent 
 down-pour, tlie more especially as it was now raining on the day 
 which of all days should have been a pleasant one. His lips as- 
 sumed the shape that they would naturally in giving expression 
 to an ejaculation which might be profane, but would certainly 
 be emphatic. They went up the gangway, climbed to the upper 
 deck, and took a seat under the canvas which was extended so as 
 to serve as an awning. 
 
 Just then a terrible clattering was heard on the stairway lead- 
 ing up from the gang-plank. Soussigne rushed over there, and 
 saw that the racket was being made by The Shade. He was 
 loaded down with the regular dozen or fifteen hand-bags, satch- 
 els, shawls, umbrellas, and the like ; and in addition, had slung 
 around his neck, by a stout cord, a couple of enormous wooden 
 articles which looked not unlike old-fashioned bed-troughs or a 
 couple of large canoes. These, banging about against the other 
 packages and the railing, were the cause of the tremendous 
 clatter. 
 
 "What in thunder have you got there?" asked Soussigne. 
 "Are you bringing along a couple of private life-boats?" 
 
 " Dese yere," responded The Shade, with an expression of m- 
 tense disgust, " ain't no life-boats ; deyse a paar o' wooden shoes 
 dat de Madame is a goin' to take home wid her." 
 
312 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " Oh, I see. Madame," said he, as he came to where that lady 
 was seated, " your two new wooden trunks have come aboard." 
 
 " What new wooden trunks ?" 
 
 " There they are. The Shade is going to see the captain, and 
 have him rig a derrick so as to lower them down off his neck." 
 
 "Trunks! Those are a pair of wooden shoes that I bought in 
 Cologne. I am going to take them home and exhibit them as 
 curiosities." 
 
 " Oh, I beg pardon. You had them made to measure, I sup- 
 pose of course. Have you tried them on so you are quite sure 
 they are not too small for you ? " 
 
 " I dunno what to do wid dem dam tings," said The Shade a 
 short time after to Soussigne. " Dey won't go into any ob de big 
 trunks, an' I s'pose I'se got to take 'em aroun' my neck all over 
 Europe." 
 
 " Put the big trunks into them, and get some wheels for them, 
 and then you'll get along without any trouble." 
 
 There was notliing to see except low, flat, uninteresting shores 
 from Cologne to Bonn. The rain poured in torrents ; and every- 
 body took advantage of the opportunity to relieve himself of a 
 cargo of ill-humor. The Shade had taken the initiative. Sous- 
 signe followed suit. 
 
 "I'm getting sick," said he, "of this infernal currency busi- 
 ness. In England, with sovereigns and shillings, there is no 
 trouble, nor is there any witli the francs and centimes in France 
 and Belgium. In Holland, it was florins, gulden and cents. Now 
 we have struck this enlightened country, it is sometliing else. 
 Now, how much do you suppose all that is worth?" and he drew 
 from his bulging pockets a couple of handfuls of coins. 
 
 "I don't know," said The Commander; "but it looks like a 
 small fortune." 
 
 " I don't know, either," said Sovissigne; "but as near as I can 
 make it out, it takes about one hundred of these to make one 
 nothing; then, one hundred nothings are equal to about the one- 
 half of an American cent. For a franc, this morning, I got a 
 dozen cigars and about a quart and a half of this stuff. What 
 with sovereigns, half-crowns, pennies, ha'pence, francs, sous, cen- 
 times,' florins, gulden, cents, marks, pfennigs, kreutzers, and sil- 
 bergroschen, my intellect is getting tied into a hard knot. What 
 I ought to do is to go to a lunatic asylum and get treatment before 
 my case becomes chronic." 
 
TIP THE KHINE. 313 
 
 "Wheu we get home," said The Commander, " we must go in 
 for a world's congress and a universal currency." 
 
 " It's provoking beyond all endurance," said Madame, whose 
 turn had now come, " that we can't have a single day of sun- 
 shine!. We have not seen the sUn for twenty minutes since we 
 left London. I'm sure that, having endured all this horrible 
 weather, we are entitled to at least one fair day for our trip up 
 the Rhine. If we had only gone to Paris first - — " 
 
 " Console yourself, Madame," said Soussigne, "^there's no mis- 
 fortune wholly without compensation. The region we are to pass 
 through to-dajr is as sombre as it can be made by spooks, goblins, 
 the wails of wandering and damned souls, the shrieks of mur- 
 dered victims and ravished virgins, the howls of demons, and the. 
 moans of unshriven wretches whose souls went out red-handed to 
 wander forever among the black recesses of this sinister re- 
 gion." 
 
 "Ugh! " said Madame, with a little shiver. 
 
 "All this should be seen, not by the innocent and happy light 
 of the sun, but only through the gray and solemn atmosphere 
 which covers yonder hills and mountains like a shroud. The 
 surroundings are eminently fit and proper for a section where the 
 devil and his imps, in one guise and another, had full sway for 
 centuries, where rapine, murder, torture, imprisonment, and un- 
 ceasing diabolical agencies were everywhere the salient features. 
 Suppose," continued he, "that in order to change the drift of our 
 melancholy thought, I read you a short poem ? I have here a 
 little book entitled ' The Legends of the Rhine,' which I bought 
 in Cologne. It is a translation from the German of F. J. Kieffer, 
 by a genius named L. W. Garnham, B. A. Mr. Garnham, B. A., 
 deserves encouragement. A few miles below Cologne is a place 
 named Kevlaar, and which has a shrine where Virgin Mary is 
 said to have dwelt, and where the sick resort, or did resort, to be 
 healed. Heinrich Heine wrote a poem concerning this pious 
 legend which Mr. Garnham, B. A., translates. I am sure you 
 would like to hear a few verses of it." And then Soussigne 
 read : 
 
 THE PILGRIMAGE TO KEVLAAR. 
 
 At the window stood the mother, 
 In the hed the son lay. 
 "Will you not rise, William, 
 
 The procession will not stay?" 
 
314 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 "I am so very ill, oh mother, 
 That I do not hear and see; 
 I think on the dead Gretchen, 
 My thoughts much pain me." 
 
 "Kise, we will go to Kevlaar, 
 Book and chaplet with might; 
 The Holy Virgin will cure yoa 
 And your sick heart quiet. 
 
 " There wave the church flags, 
 The holy tones I mention ; 
 That is at Collen on the Rhine, ,■ 
 
 There goes the procession." 
 
 The mother follows the crowd, 
 
 The son whom she leads. 
 They sing both in chorus; 
 
 With praised Mary she pleads! 
 
 The Holy Mother at Kevlaar 
 
 "Wears to-day her best dress ; 
 To-day she has much to do. 
 
 Many sick in great distress. 
 
 The sick people bring 
 
 Her there as offer-benefactioii, 
 Of wax-formed limbs 
 
 Both feet and hands all waxen. 
 
 And who a wax -hand offers. 
 
 Receives on hand the cure ; 
 And who wax-foot offers, 
 
 The foot will heal that's sure. 
 
 To Kevlaar went many on crutches, 
 
 Who now dance so stealthy. 
 Indeed many now play the viol, 
 
 Who formerly were not healthy. 
 
 " This is not all," said Soussigne, " but that is enough of it to 
 give you an idea as to the touching legend and Mr. Garnham 
 B. A.'s exquisite handling. I may say that Rise William was 
 cured in a most substantial manner — that is to say, he offered the 
 wax-heart, prayed for relief, went to sleep, and woke up dead. 
 The poem says : 
 
 The mother beheld all in a dream, 
 
 And seen more, but hark! 
 She awoke from her slumber, 
 
 The dogs so loudly bark. 
 
 There lay stretched out 
 Her son, and he was dead." 
 
UP THE KHINE. 31& 
 
 "Ah me! how touching! " said Madame, as she proceeded to 
 softly wipe her eyes. 
 
 «' That is not Mr. Garnham's best by any means," said Sous- 
 signe ; " it is not well to become too much aftected at once. We- 
 will reserve other agonies and other beauties for later perusal." 
 
 A few miles above Cologne the country begins to rouse itself 
 from its lethargy. It is a sleeping, motionless sea, which sud- 
 denly swells into enormous waves which roll off to the southward 
 till lost in the horizon. 
 
 " That town," said a communicative Englishman, who was ou 
 a tour with a patient-looking wife and two slender slips of girls 
 with flaxen hair, prominent feature and preposterous hats, " is 
 Bonn, and those great hills rising up to the left are the Sevea 
 Mountains. One of them is the Drachenfels, on whose top is a 
 castle, and in the side there, you see, is a great cavern where a 
 voracious dragon used to live and eat people." 
 
 "Oh yes," said Madame, "I remember that Byron wrote a 
 poem in which he speaks of 
 
 The castled crag of Drachenfels. 
 
 How charming! You don't suppose that there was a real dragon 
 there, do you, who used to eat people ? " 
 
 " Certainly," answered Soussigne, " Mr. Harper's guide-book 
 says so ; and the Harpers are gentlemen of too much character 
 to tell an untruth. They might crib an English book, but they 
 wouldn't misrepresent facts, because that would be unchristian^ 
 as well as ungentlemanly, you know." 
 
 The Madame made a sketch of Drachenfels as they flew by it, 
 and which was very creditable considering that it was taken on 
 the wing. 
 
 " We might fancy," said The Commander, " that we were gomg 
 up the Hudson river, if we only had the right kind of a boat. If 
 an American company had the management we should see a 
 very different class of conveyance. This thing is not even a fair 
 second-hand ferry-boat. Its paddles are not more than six feet 
 in diameter, and it is narrow and ugly in appearance. With fair 
 weather and a Hudson river boat, this trip might have been made 
 a most delightful one." 
 
 Just above Bonn they passed a small island in the river. Op- 
 posite, on the south bank, are seen the ruins of a castle. 
 
316 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 "Where those ruins are," said the English volunteer, "a great 
 knight once fell in love with the daughter of the owner. He 
 went to war and was reported to be killed. The young lady 
 thereupon entered a convent which was upon the island, and 
 took the vows. The knight came back after a while and spent 
 the rest of his life in gazing down from the castle into the nun- 
 nery to catch an occasional glimpse of his beloved one." 
 
 " How very touching such devotion," said Madame. 
 
 "What an immaculate ass he must have been," said Soussigne. 
 "The world is full of women, and why an ablc-boJied man should 
 make a bellows of himself and spend his life in sighing over one 
 of them, I can't understand. This story can't be true. Men and 
 women don't act in that way. In reality, the young woman, 
 upon hearing the reported death of her lover, would have con- 
 soled herself by a suit of the latest and most becoming style of 
 mourning, and then calmly awaited another offer. If this is the 
 kind of stuff these Rhine legends are made of, I shall have no 
 confidence in any of them.'' 
 
 " You are very unfeeling," was Madame's response. 
 
 "Andernach," said somebody, as not long afterward there 
 came into view, on the right, a handsome old town, nestled cosily 
 at the foot of the hills. 
 
 " If I remember," said The Commander, " Andernach was once 
 visited by Julius Cassar, and has played an important part in 
 modern wars." 
 
 "Is it not of this place," asked Madame, "that Longfellow has 
 given in ' Hyperion ' a very pretty legend ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Soussigne, " it is about a man with a ladder and a 
 lantern who used to go about nights patching leaky roofs and 
 mending old boots and kettles; and nobody could find out who 
 he was, or why he took such an erratic course. I don't believe 
 that yarn, either." 
 
 "Besides its improbability," said The Commander, "I must 
 look on such fabrication as demoralizing. They are a premium 
 on laziness. They induce people to let their thatches go un- 
 mended, in the hope that some supernatural philanthropist will 
 come along in the night and tinker them up. All these rotting 
 old towers along the river seem to show that the people are all 
 waiting for somebody to do for them what they ought to do for 
 themselves." 
 
UP THE KIIINE. 31 T 
 
 This utilitarian view of the case produced a warm " 'ear t 
 'ear! " of approval from the Eaglishman. 
 
 The boat puffed slowly along against the swift current, whose 
 muddy hue reminded the travelers of the Mississippi. There 
 were hills, and long winding ravines, and terraced vineyards. 
 Now the heights came close to the water's edge, and then retired 
 into the distance, leaving little plains upon which are gathered a 
 few gray old houses, which seem the creation of other centuries. 
 Thus they glided along until suddenly a bend in the river 
 brought them into view, on the right, of Coblentz, and on the 
 left of Ehrenbreitstein. The bluffs at this point come close to 
 the river and rise with scarcely any slope to the height of hun- 
 dreds of feet. All the front, the summit, the adjacent ravines, are 
 a network of fortifications. A wall of enormous thickness runs 
 along the foot of tiie hills, following the bend of the stream and 
 pierced for musketry and cannon. It has a well five hundred 
 and eighty feet deep, and cisterns which will hold water enough 
 to last a garrison three years. The fortress is said to be the 
 strongest in Europe ; and although it has been captured by the 
 French, its present condition is such under Prussian manage- 
 ment that there seems little likelihood of there being an early 
 repetition of a French occupation. All these facts, together with 
 the additional one that it was formerly a Roman camp, and that 
 it can accommodate one hundred thousand men, if necessary, 
 were communicated by Soussigne to the party, as they were 
 rounding to, to land at Coblentz. 
 
 "I will not deceive you," he said, with an air of unspeakable 
 candor. " I got it all from a guide-book, which is as necessary 
 to a traveler as an encyclopaedia to an editor." 
 
 "I wonder," said Madame, " when we shall reach Lurlei?" 
 
 " What's Lurlei ? '' queried The Commander. 
 
 "What! Don't you know about Lurlei? Why, it's the most 
 celebrated part of the Rhine. Here is where the scenery is finest 
 and where there is a great whirlpool. There is a siren who lives 
 on the side of the mountain, and when a boat passes she sings so 
 beautifully that the men stop to listen, and then they are drawn 
 into the whirlpool and are all drowned. Oh, it is exquisite ! " 
 
 " What's ' exquisite,' " asked Soussigne " the singing of the 
 siren, or the drowning of the men?" 
 
 " Oh, I mean the legend, of course." 
 
 "Ah, yes! Well, I can't see anything very 'exquisite' in such 
 
518 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 an arrangement. If it were some chap who sits up there, and 
 sings and drowns women by the operation, you would probably 
 think it anything but ' exquisite.' I think when we get there I'll 
 land, and go up, part my hair in the middle, put on a swallow- 
 tail and sing a few staves myself. Then when you ladies are 
 kicking and splashing around in the fatal whirlpool, you will 
 have some pity for the poor devils of men, because you will 
 know how it is yourself. I wonder, by the way," he continued, 
 " what Garnham, B. A., has to say about Lurlei. Ah, yes, here he 
 is on hand like a thousand of brick! There is a young chap 
 who falls in love witli the siren. One night he gets near her 
 grotto, and, says Garnham, B. A, 'he expressed his longing in 
 low singing, and, casting his glances to the height, there hovered 
 jound the top of the rock a brightness of unequaled clearness 
 and color, and in increasingly smaller circles thickened, was the 
 enchanting figure of the beautiful Lore.' Charming, isn't it? 
 The next night he goes around, and sings to her as follows : 
 
 Once I saw thee in dark night, 
 In supernatural beauty bright; 
 Of light rays was the figure wove, 
 To share its light locked-hair strove. 
 
 Thy garment color wave-dove, 
 By thy hand the sign of love, 
 Thy eyes sweet enchantment. 
 Raying to me, oh ! entrancement. 
 
 Oh, wert thou but my sweetheart 
 How willingly thy love to part! 
 With delight I should be bound 
 To thy rocky house in deep ground. 
 
 " As might be expected, the singing of such stuflE" raised the 
 very d — 1. Flames rose out of the waters, the waves surged about 
 the lover, and engulphed him. The next day the old man went 
 to hunt for his sou. He corrals the fairy and demands his son. 
 She points to the depths and sings : 
 
 There below stands in the wave's womb 
 Crystal-clear my fine castle tomb, 
 There conducted I my darling expected, 
 Whom already long since I have selected. 
 
 "Touching, isn't it?" said Soussigne. "Here is one more 
 poem, which might have been written by ' the sweet singer of 
 
UP THE RHINE. 319 
 
 Michigan, but isn't, because Garnham, B. A., says he has trans- 
 lated it from Heinricli Heine." 
 
 And then Soussigue read in liis low, musical voice, the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 THE LORE-LEI. 
 
 I do not know what it signifies, 
 
 That I am so sorrowful ! 
 A fable of old times so terrifies, 
 
 Leaves my heart so thoughtful. 
 
 The air is cool and it darkens, 
 
 And calmly flows the Rhine ; 
 The summit of the mountain hearkens 
 
 In evening sunshine line. 
 
 The most beautiful maiden entrances 
 
 Above wonderfully there, 
 Her beautiful golden attire glances, 
 
 She combs her golden hair. 
 
 With golden eomb so lustrous, 
 
 And thereby a song sings. 
 It has a tone so wondrous. 
 
 That powerful melody rings. 
 
 The shipper in the little ship 
 
 It effects with woes sad might; 
 He does not see the rocky clip. 
 
 He only regards the dreaded height. 
 
 I believe the turbulent waves 
 
 Swallow at last shipper and boat; 
 She with her singing craves 
 
 All to visit her magic moat. 
 
 And thus chatting, the excursionists went on toward the fatal 
 Lurlei, with its overhanging rocks, its swift current, its voracious 
 whirlpool and its sinister memories, 
 
320 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 LETTER XLVIII. 
 
 UP THE RHINE. 
 
 On-thb-Wing, June 24, 1878. 
 
 tHE boat bearing the excursionists reached the Lurlei and 
 passed its majestic rocks, througli its magnificent scenery, 
 and by the famous and dreaded wliirlpool, without expe- 
 riencing any liarm. No siren made her appearance in the densely- 
 wooded liillsides, combing lier long tresses and singing a song to 
 woo the travelers to destruction. Soussign6 suggested that she 
 might be absent shopping, or was out making a friendly call on 
 some other siren, and that the two, absorbed in discussing the 
 latest fashions, or some scandal about some other siren, had not 
 noticed the arrival and passage of the boat. "Whatever may have 
 been the cause, the excursionists were not the less grateful for 
 their escape. 
 
 " It would have been a nasty, damp thing," said one of the 
 party, " to be drowned in such weather as this. To have the job 
 a pleasant and comfortable affair, one should be drowned during 
 the dry season. Why, the way it rains now, we should have 
 all been soaking wet before we struck the water." 
 
 Not long after passing the dangerous Lurlei, they came to a 
 large rock in the middle of the river. 
 
 "This," said their English informant, "is one of what was 
 formerly a range of rocks, and which was known as the ' Seven 
 Sisters.' The legend is that there were once several young ladies, 
 sisters, who refused all the offers of marriage which came along, 
 and then, as a punishment, were turned into rocks." 
 
 Soussignfe averred that he didn't believe the statement. "That 
 is not like the sex," he said; "one might believe it if it were 
 said that they were thus punished for accepting every off"er which 
 they received, and being at the same time engaged to all the 
 eligible young men in the neighborhood. And, moreover, turn- 
 ing women into stone is impossible for the same reason that it is 
 impossible to turn water into — water. These Rhine legends are 
 as improbable as the promises of a Chicago ward politician made 
 to his constituents before election." 
 
 " It is rather a burlesque on religion," said The Commander, 
 "that wherever there is a ruined castle which was once the 
 
UP THE RHINE. 
 
 321 
 
 21 
 
322 SKETCHES EEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 residence of a Rhine robber, tliere is always a cliurcli in the 
 vicinity. Whenever we come in sight of a steeple I always look 
 for a castle on a neighboring height, and generally find it. I 
 suppose they went to the churches to pray for success before 
 starting out on a raid of robbery and throat-cutting, and to return 
 thanks when they came back loaded with booty and the scalps 
 of their neighbors. There is, however, one creditable fact, and 
 that is that the churches stand, while the castles are in ruins, 
 showing that in the end, the fittest has survived." 
 
 Not the least charming of the region through which they were 
 passing were the vineyards. This was especially the case between 
 Lurlei and Bingen, in what is termed the " Rheingau," and which 
 is probably the most noted of the Rhenish wine-growing regions. 
 Through here, and more particularly on the north bank, the 
 steep liills are cultivated wherever there is a slope which lies at 
 the proper angle to the sun. The efTect of the dark green of the 
 vines against the brown earth, and the effect, in turn, of these set 
 with surroundings of the dense and gloomy forests, was fine 
 beyond description. 
 
 "Along here," said the accommodating and well-informed 
 Englishman, "are produced some of the finest and most expen- 
 sive, of the Rhine wines. The labor involved is extraordinary 
 and almost incredible. In nearly every instance of the vineyards 
 along the north bank the earth has to be carried from the low- 
 lands below. Almost every foot of these brown patches has been 
 carried up these steep heights and around these dangerous preci- 
 pices in baskets on the heads or shoulders of men and women." 
 
 "There appear to be other slopes less precipitous and danger- 
 ous," said one of the party, " which are not cleared. Why are 
 they not used in preference to the others ? " 
 
 "Because they lack some essential feature. Their slope is not 
 just the proper one, or they are not protected from the wind by 
 the intervention of some other height. All of these unused 
 declivities would probably grow a fair article of wine, but none 
 of them have precisely everything needed to perfect the grape, 
 as is the case with those in use. In this Rheingau district the 
 cultivation of the vine was introduced by the Romans, of course 
 many centuries ago, and is now carried on to the highest possible 
 result." 
 
 "Is this the vicinity" queried The Commander, "that the 
 Johannisberger wine is produced ? " 
 
UP THE KHINE. 323 
 
 " Yes. The entire extent of the Johannisberger vineyard is 
 less than one hundred acres. Probably, however, the amount of 
 * Johannisberger wines,' so-called, put on the market could not be 
 grown from fifty times as many acres. The same is true of the 
 Hockheimer wines. The entire product of the Hockheimer vine- 
 yards is only about a dozen casks per annum ; and yet perhaps 
 more than this quantity of ' Hockheimer ' is sold and consumed 
 in each of the large cities through Christendom." 
 
 Thus innocently prattling, the excursionists went steadily on 
 up the river. They passed a castle on almost every height; they 
 went by Assmannshausen, whose vineyards produce a wine as 
 red as the hues of sunset; by Bingen, concerning which every 
 young lady in Chicago was once howling in a pathetic ballad, 
 whose burden was, " Bingen on the Rhine ; '' on by terraced 
 slopes, frowning heights, and great ravines in shadow, which 
 were always rushing at them from out the landscape, as they 
 wound about along the devious stream — and thus on, ever prat- 
 tling like innocent children, they came within sight of Rii- 
 desheim. 
 
 "This town,'' said the Englishman, " is full of interest. Char- 
 lemagne once lived here; that high, oblong tower was built by 
 the Romans, and the vineyards produce the Rudesheimerberg — 
 a very famous and excellent article." 
 
 " What a charming old ruin! " said Madame enthusiastically, 
 as she took out her material in order to sketch it. " I wonder 
 what its legend is, for of course it must have one." 
 
 " Certainly," answered Soussigne. " Mr. Garnham, B. A., tells 
 us all about it. A knight lived there once who had a beautiful 
 daughter. He went away to kill a few Saracens, and while 
 engaged in this truly Christian operation, some of the Saracens 
 surprised him and ' took him into camp.' They threw him into 
 a dungeon, whereupon, after standing it a few months, he vowed 
 if released to build a convent and make his daughter the first 
 nun. Providence, seduced by this bribe, let him out. He went 
 home, and after kissing his daughter a few times, he informed 
 her of his vow, and the felicity which was in store for her. 
 Meanwhile, as some young women occasionally do, she had 
 fallen in love with a handsome young Rhinelander, and as a 
 matter of course she preferred white, orange blossoms, and a 
 wedding trip to Paris, where she could do her shopping, rather 
 than a black stuff gown and a diet of black bread, with eternal 
 
324: SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 celibacy. After the old man had informed the young lady of the 
 happiness he had in view for her, she fell down in a fit, and was 
 thenceforth as crazy as a loon. Here is the sad denoument, ac- 
 cording to Garuham, B. A." Soussigne then read as follows: 
 
 " She wandered through, like a spirit, the wide corridors of 
 the castles, and once as a raging storm ploughed through the 
 waves of the Rhine at the midnight hour, and the howling tem- 
 pest broke the oaks of the near forest, the unfortunate one crept 
 to her father's bed, whimpered him farewell, hastened then to 
 the balcony, and pi-ecipitated herself into the Rhine. The hasten- 
 ing after father came too late, to be able to restrain her ; he only 
 saw her waving garments disappear in the profound depths. 
 
 " Grief and remorse now embittered the life of the childless 
 old man. It is true he omitted nothing, to restore his diseased 
 mind, and he not only accomplished the building of the convent 
 to calm his conscience, but also tried by other means, indeed by 
 mixing himself in quarrels, and the pleasures of hunting to pro- 
 cure himself distraction ; but neither private warfare nor hunt- 
 ing, could deafen the torment of his conscience." 
 
 " How very sad ! " said Madame in a voice which was tremu- 
 lous with emotion. 
 
 A little later, the boat reached Mayence, and the journey up 
 the Rhine was finished. 
 
 "I always had an idea," said Soussigne, as they were seated 
 that evening at dinner in the hotel, "that the journey up the 
 Rhine occupies two or three weeks, instead of the ten hours in 
 which we have made it." 
 
 " And as for me," said The Commander, " I never had much of 
 an idea about it. Accounts of trips up the Rhine are usually so 
 smothered in poetry, gush, and exaggerated description, that 
 until this visit, I had no more conception of the Rhine than if I 
 had never seen it. It would probably be a revelation to most 
 people who have not visited the Rhine in person, to inform them 
 that all that is worth seeing can be seen in a few hours' ride, and 
 that the scenery nowhere has any elements of grandeur, being 
 simply a very picturesque arrangement of river, hills, vineyards, 
 winding ravines, and ruined towers. In no essential respect can 
 it compare with the Wasatch and Sierra Nevada scenery in the 
 United States." 
 
 " It's great charm, I think," said Madame, " is found in its 
 hoary associations, its reaching back to the very childhood of 
 
UP THE RHINE. 325 
 
 man, and its beautiful legends which seem to embody every 
 phrase of human development." 
 
 The Commander was still in haste to reach a warmer climate ; 
 and so, the next morning early, they boarded a train, and went 
 rushing off to the south. By getting up at daylight, Soussigne 
 had managed to get a partial look over Mayence — the city where 
 Drusus was once encamped, where the Emperor Constantine was 
 located, which is famous for the splendor of its former archiepis- 
 copal rulers ; which was once the most famous stronghold on the 
 Rhine; and which — greatest thing of all — is the birth-place of 
 Gutenberg. Soussigne saw the quaint old house in which G-uten- 
 berg was born, the statue of the great printer, the wonderful old 
 cathedral of red sand-stone ; and many remnants of works erected 
 by the Roman invaders. He concluded that it is a very nice city 
 to visit, but so utterly unlike Chicago that it would be a most 
 undesirable city to live in, or even to die in. 
 
 The train rushed along through a most charming country. 
 To the travelers' right was the wide, level bottom-land of the 
 Rhine ; to their left was a succession of heights, valleys, forests, 
 beautiful and romantic beyond description, and which has a 
 thousand times been written about as the region of Odenwald. 
 Historical and scholastic Heidelberg was reached and passed. 
 Carlsruhe came along in due season, and was succeeded by 
 Preidburg, with its host of historical vicissitudes ; and then the 
 train rushed in from the open country to the Rhine, along whose 
 rocky east bank it tore around curves, through tunnels, and 
 across ravines, till a little before dark, it came to a halt in Bale, 
 the northmost city of Switzerland. A half-hour later the excur- 
 sionists were seated on a balcony of a hotel. Beneath them 
 went the foaming, furious torrents of the Rhine, just leaving here 
 its mountain cradle to commence its long and variegated jour- 
 ney to the Northern ocean. 
 
 "How did you stand the journey to-day?" asked Soussigne, a 
 little later, of The Shade, whom lie found leaning against the arch 
 of the doorway, his countenance expressing only intense disgust. 
 
 " Dam bad," was the rather profane answer. 
 
 " Bad ? What was the trouble ? " 
 
 " Trouble enuff ! Duz you remember dat yere Englishwoman 
 on de boat yesterday, wat sat on de deck all day wid her feet on 
 a stool, an' her head under a big umberrill, and who never lookt 
 once at all dem hills, an' cassels an' tings ? " 
 
326 
 
 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " O, yes, I remember her. She looked so lonely that I went up 
 and spoke to her, but she bluffed me so, I had to leave instanter." 
 
 "Well, dat yere ole cat was in de secon-class car ware I was. 
 You jess bet she talked fass enuff den." 
 
 " She did ? What did she have to say ? " 
 
 " Oh, it was de cussedest an' curiosses string o' stuff I ever 
 lissened to. I cuddent tell you de tousant part on it. Fust she 
 ast me if I lubbed de Lord, an' wen I tole her I spected I diddent 
 know fur certain, den she rolled up her eyes, and groned like she 
 
 A DISGUSTED NIGGER. 
 
 wos a sick boss. An' den she ast me sposin' de cars shud run 
 off de track an' I wos killed, wot I wos goin' to do about it. An'' 
 den I tole her dam if I know, an' den she tole me I was an offal 
 sinner; an' she give me a beep o' traks, an' all sorts o' Sunday 
 skool truck, an' jus kep a tawkin an' a tawkin like she wos- 
 greased fur it. Nebber had sich a missoobul day in all my life. 
 By golly, she jus moren worrid de seben sensus clean out o' me. 
 I cuddent git shut o' her no how. I ain't wuff a dam to-night, I 
 ain't ! " and so saying with a most woe-begone countenance The 
 Shade went out and mingled with the darkness. 
 
THROUGH THE ALPS. 327 
 
 LETTER XLIX. 
 
 THROUGH THE ALPS. 
 
 On-the-Wing, June 37, 1878. 
 
 rg\Y the first train the excursionists went southward from 
 Bale, toward a warmer clime. Up to this morning it had 
 rained every day since they had left London. It was still 
 cold, although the first of June. Summer seemed loth to enter 
 upon its regular annual campaign among the mountains, prefer- 
 ring apparently to linger in the classic plains of Italy. Although 
 the air was cold it was bracing and- inspiring. The sun shone 
 with a clear light, touching brilliantly the clover blossoms of up- 
 land meadows through which they were running. The fragrance 
 of flowers came in harmonious bursts through the open car- 
 windows. It was a charming change from the monotonous bot- 
 tomlands of the Rhine through which they had passed the day 
 before. 
 
 " How lovely! " exclaimed Madame as she inhaled the richly, 
 perfumed air, and her eye took in an expanse gorgeous with 
 blossoms and heavy with the massive green of orchards and 
 groves nestling about the farm-houses. " How unique everything 
 is," she continued. "See those quaint farm-houses with their 
 steep roofs, and which descend so as to form a covered way on 
 either side. What a subject for a picture ! " 
 
 " Very fine," said Soussigne, but still I don't think this region 
 is as attractive, especially for a woman, as the Rhine, the Oden- 
 ■wald, and the Black Forest, through wdiich, for the last two days, 
 we have been passing." 
 
 " No ? Why not ? " 
 
 " Because the Swiss are a plain, common-sense people, given 
 to the manufacture of honey, cheese, wooden images, and the 
 making of money. There is no Rhine or Black Forest non- 
 sense in their legends. They have no ruined castles, no rocks 
 which were once women, no love stories; in short, no nothing. 
 The only romance they have is concerning Tell and Gessler " 
 
 " Who," said The Commander, " are known to have never ex- 
 isted in reality. The same story in one guise or another appears 
 in the legends of a half-dozen nations. It may at some time, 
 have had a foundation of truth ; but in the present case it only 
 
328 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 typifies the Swiss hatred of oppression, and their determination 
 to liill a tyrant rather than to submit to him. I believe that 
 Switzerland is to-day the freest and most perfect type of a repub- 
 lic in existence. The form of government is verj^ simple, being 
 conducted at a very small expense, and run without friction. 
 They have an Assembly which corresponds somewhat to our 
 Congress; a Council whose seven members exercise executive 
 and administrative authority, and a Tribunal, whose eleven mem- 
 bers decide all legal questions relating to the confederacy. In 
 many respects the Swiss system is vastly superior to ours ; and 
 much of it could be studied and copied with profit by our 
 statesmen." 
 
 "Its very simplicity, I am apprehensive," said Soussigne, 
 " would render it unpopular in America. Politics in such a case 
 would form no trade ; and were we to adopt such a system it 
 would throw all our politicians out of business. That wouldn't 
 do at all. Politicians must live, you know. I think " 
 
 "And I think," interrupted Madame, "that politics are very 
 stupid and tiresome. You are missing all this charming coun- 
 try, these odd towns, and ever so many things worth looking at." 
 
 A hint as broad as this could not well be mistaken, and politics 
 were dropped like a hot potato. 
 
 They were running across a country almost perfectly level, and 
 with nothing resembling a mountain in sight. 
 
 " I thought," said Madame, "that Switzerland is all mountains. 
 Where are they ? This looks like an Illinois prairie in a high 
 state of cultivation." 
 
 ■ " Oh," said Soussigne, who was a great traveler, having been 
 to Calumet, Gutenberg, Iowa, and other remote points, " we shall 
 have plenty of mountains after a little. There are some Alps 
 here somewhere, and we can't keep on at the rate of twelve miles 
 an hoiir, in this small country, without running against them in 
 coui'se of time. You watch out of your window, and I will out 
 of mine, and we'll see who'll pick up a mountain first." 
 
 "Agreed! " said Madame. 
 
 An hour passed, each keeping a vigilant watch for a stray Alp, 
 or anything in the shape of a mountain. Gradually the level 
 line of the horizon grew wavy and broken. The outlying dis- 
 tance began to roll in low swells, as if touched by the first breath 
 of a tempest. The swells grew slowly into waves, which rushed, 
 now up to the train, and then receded, growing always higher, 
 
THROUGH THE ALPS. 329 
 
 as if feeling more and more the weight of a coming storm. On 
 flew the train, plunging deeper and deeper into the uplifted 
 waves, into the turbulent regions of the storm. The plains be- 
 came broken into swells, the swells grew into hillocks and hills, 
 and the hills grew and rose and mounted until - — - 
 
 " I see some mountains ! " suddenly exclaimed Madame. The 
 others rushed to her window and looked out. The train was just 
 issuing from a deep ravine which opened into a long vista be- 
 tween two lines of broken hills. At the end of this vista, on the 
 horizon, slept some vast, black masses whose tops and sides 
 showed great pencilings of white, which extended here and there 
 Jike reclining clouds. They had barely time to see them when 
 the train rounded a curve, and the mountains disappeared behind 
 a range of hills. 
 
 " I saw them first, didn't I ? " asked Madame with exultation. 
 
 " Yes, that's so," said the somewhat mortified Soussigne ; " and 
 yet I was the first to announce that we should see some mount- 
 ains before long.'' 
 
 " Indeed ! As if it required any great genius or foresight to 
 foresee that one traveling in Switzerland should see mountains! " 
 
 Soussigne gave it up. 
 
 From this time until they reached Lucerne, the scenery was of 
 charming variety. For a few minutes the train would be buried 
 in the drifts of the foothills, and then suddenly emerging on 
 some plateau, there would flash into view, high up in the sky, 
 the solemn and ponderous masses, cloud-kissed and snow- 
 crowned. Now the train ran along where the great Colossi 
 seemed to hang over the roadway; and they receded and disap- 
 peared, and came into view, veiled and softened by the blue haze 
 of a great distance. Every few minutes the track crossed some 
 mountain stream, whose crystal waters, with a mighty struggle 
 and rush, made their way between high and precipitous banks, 
 around the bases of jutting promontories, along crevices rent 
 through the naked rocks — alwaj's going fiercely and hurriedly, 
 as if mad to escape the broken uplands and gain the quiet of 
 the plains below. 
 
 " Ah, how beautiful ! " was Madame's incessant exclamation, 
 as, with pencil in hand, she sought to fasten on paper the outlines 
 of the grander features of the panorama which came and went 
 with kaleidoscopic variety and velocity. 
 
 The Commander said nothing, but his glistening eyes and rapt 
 
330 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 attention showed that he was appreciating the glorious scene ia 
 all its sublime entirety. 
 
 Some three or four hours after they had left Bale, the train sud- 
 denly came out from the maze of hills, and the excursionists saw 
 spread out before them a silvery sheet of water, while around one 
 side stretched from the shore of the lake into the very sky the 
 tremendous forms of the snow-covered Urner and Engleberger 
 Alps. 
 
 " Voila Lucerne ! " said Soussigne, who had been slyly study- 
 ing a pocket-map of Switzerland. " Here are the town of Lu- 
 cerne, Lake Lucerne, the noted Rigi, the stately Pilatus ; in shorty 
 behold one of the loveliest spots in all Switzerland, and perhaps 
 in all the world." 
 
 " How long do we stop here ? " asked The Commander. 
 
 "As long as we like, I suppose. Let us wait in the depot 
 awhile, and I will make some inquiries." 
 
 Soussigne interviewed several people, and found that the season 
 was not yet open. The boats would not commence excursions on 
 the lakes for several days. None of the hotels were yet in readi- 
 ness for visitors. He reported the situation ; and it was decided 
 to wait four hours for the next train to Berne, and during the in- 
 terval to see as mucli as was possible of Lucerne. 
 
 A mountain of satchels, almost equaling Pilatus in height, waa 
 erected in the waiting-room of the depot, and The Shade placed 
 over the whole as a guard. The rest of the party chartered a 
 French-speaking liackman, with a comfortable carriage contain- 
 ing two seats, and started out to look over the locality. The town 
 lies on the borders of the lake, and around it rises an amphi- 
 theater of mountains, some dressed to their very necks with gar- 
 ments of green ; others, more savage, bare to their waists, as if 
 stripped for some gigantic gladiatorial conflict. From out the 
 lake runs the river Reuss, about twice as wide as the Chicago 
 river, and more than ten times as attractive. The waters have the 
 clearness of glass, and they rush along as if time were of the ut- 
 most consequence, and they had a train to catch, oy an engage- 
 ment further away of the most pressing importance. 
 
 " What is there to be seen," asked The Commander, " apart 
 from the natural scenery ? " 
 
 This being interpreted to the driver, he informed them that 
 notable sights were to be found in the Garden of the Glaciers; 
 and thither accordingly the party was driven. After laboriously 
 
THROUGH THE ALPS. 331 
 
 climlaing a roadway that ascends a hill, the carriage stopped be» 
 fore the door of a high wall. Through this the trio passed, and 
 found themselves in a species of garden, on the side of a precip- 
 itous hill. Steps cut into the rock lead to a succession of narrow, 
 winding terraces, each of which is also cut on the rocky hillside. 
 Trellises, arbors, covered-ways, all luxuriantly clad with vines 
 and bright with flowers, give the place a fresh and charming 
 appearance. 
 
 A guide proffered his services at the entrance. Him they fol- 
 lowed up the stone stairways and around the rocky balconies un- 
 til they reached a large open space, which, upon first sight,, 
 seemed to be composed of holes of various sizes. 
 
 " Please look down into this," said the guide, as he stood upon 
 the edge of one of the cavities. The trio stepped up to the verge 
 and did as requested. They saw before and beneath them an 
 opening into the solid rock, and at the bottom a rounded bowl-' 
 der. The cavity is some fifteen feet across the top, and gradually 
 narrows, as it descends, until at the bottom it is some three feet 
 in diameter, which is a little more than that of the loose bowlder 
 at the bottom. 
 
 "How very odd! " exclaimed Madame. "What in the world 
 do you suppose it is ? " 
 
 The Commander, having no opinion on the subject, character- 
 istically said nothing. Soussign6 ventured the suggestion that it 
 might be a sort of devil's mortar and pestle. The guide waited 
 until his auditory was quite puzzled and bewildered, and then 
 said : 
 
 " Not long ago, the gentleman who owns this ground thought 
 he would build a house up here, because it has so commanding a 
 view. Workmen commenced to remove the surface soil and un- 
 dergrowth, when they came upon these places. They were filled 
 with dirt, which was removed, and the result is that all these 
 openings were brought to view." 
 
 " But what caused them?" asked one of the party. 
 
 " They are the work of glaciers. It is not long since, in a geo- 
 logical sense, that all this region was covered by a descending 
 glacier. As it moved, it carried with it fragments of rocks. That 
 loose rock you see there at the bottom is granite, and must have 
 come from the height of the mountain far above, where it is only 
 found. The glacier brought along that rock perhaps from a 
 dozen or fifty miles from here. At this point, a portion of the= 
 
332 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 glacier must have assumed a circular motion, whose result is the 
 grinding out of this cavity." 
 
 He then showed them a score or more other openings, all in- 
 cluded within the space of a sixteenth of an acre. They diSer 
 mainly in size, the largest being ten to fifteen feet across, the 
 smallest not more than from three to five. Some are twenty-five 
 feet deep, and others not more than five or six. All have the 
 round granite bowlder at their bottom. In the case of all, the 
 surface of the rock is as smooth as glass, but not always regular 
 in its proportions. Some are simply hollowed out evenly all 
 the way down, while others are spirals cut in intaglio — some- 
 what as if the opening had been molded around a gigantic cork- 
 screw. 
 
 " How long," asked The Commander generally, " do you sup- 
 pose it took a glacier to grind out one of these openings? " 
 
 Soussigne said he wouldn't like to say to a minute, but he 
 should think it must have taken somewhere from five hundred 
 and seventy-five thousand centuries to a couple of billions of 
 years. " Glaciers," he said, " although they keep busy, are never 
 in a hurry. They don't sit around when the foreman isn't look- 
 ing, nor do they lay off for noonings. They don't stop for church 
 on Sundays, nor quit work and go off" on a spree on the Fourth 
 of July or Thanksgiving Day. Still, they don't get ahead quite 
 as fast as a locomotive or a chap going from his work to dinner; 
 and in my opinion a glacier that managed to turn one of these 
 bowlders at the bottom once around in two years was doing 
 good work, and should have rated as A 1, and been entitled to full 
 wages." 
 
 The guide then proceeded to point out, in various points 
 within the wells, fossils, "showing," he said, "that this elevated 
 area must once have been the bottom of the ocean." 
 
 Here Madame glanced rather nervously at her watch, and in- 
 quired if the same thing was likely to occur again before train 
 time. She was calmed by the assurance that it was positively 
 certain the ocean would not come that afternoon, owing to pre- 
 vious engagements. 
 
 Half way down the Garden of the Glaciers they turned through 
 an opening to the left, and found themselves in front of the great- 
 est artificial attraction in Lucerne. Before them rose a perpendic- 
 ular wall of rock, a hundred or more feet in height. About half way 
 up, cut in alto-relief in the face of the rock, is an enormous lion, 
 
THROUGH THE ALPS. 333 
 
 some thirty feet long by twenty feet in lieiglit, and wlio is rep- 
 resented in his dying agonies. A spear is driven into liis side, 
 and beneatli liis paw are some lilies which he endeavors to pro- 
 tect at his last gasp. Tlie monument commemorates the twenty- 
 six officers and some seven hundred soldiers of the Swiss guard, 
 who, during the revolution in Paris in August, 1792, were mas- 
 sacred at the Tuileries. The model was made by the celebrated 
 Thorwaldsen, and the work executed by a Swiss sculptor. 
 
 The thing is unique in conception, and grand in its location 
 and surroundings. The mighty rock out of which the work is- 
 hewn affords a background — a support — of indescribable dig- 
 nity and strength. Far up in the air, the brow of the precipice is 
 covered with vegetation, which projiacts and looks not unlike a 
 gigantic wreath, in which a commingling of evergreens gives an 
 impression of perennial pride and rejoicing. A deep and tran- 
 quil pool at the base adds an element of flexible repose which 
 harmonizes perfectly with, while it softens, the rigid grandeur 
 of the rocky front. 
 
 After this, the party drove for a short time along the lake. They 
 visited one of the bridges across the Reuss, beneath whose roof 
 are more than a hundred half-ett'aced paintings, representing 
 saintly carnivals and scenes in Swiss history. They gazed up 
 the long sides of the mountainous amphitheater, admiring its 
 rugged contour, and its towering grandeur, and then, it being 
 close upon train time, they reluctantly tore themselves away. 
 
 " I duzzen't gib much fur dis yere country," said The Shade, 
 confidentially to Soussigne, just before the train started. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Cos dere's so many hills an' mountains yere, you can't see 
 anyting. De prarrarees ob Illinoy is de place where you oughter 
 go, ef you want to see something " 
 
 Here a rapid shutting of car-doors cut short The Shade's re- 
 marks by forcing everybody to go to his seat. 
 
 Some five hours later the excursionists found themselves in 
 Berne, the Swiss capital. 
 
334 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 LETTER L. 
 
 AMONG THE ALPS. 
 
 On-the-Wing, June 30, 1878. 
 
 tHE excursionists were to leave Berne, the Swiss capital, at 
 10:30 A.. M. ; and, as it was long after dark when they 
 reached the town, the night before, Soussign^ concluded 
 that what he saw of the city must be in the morning. Accord- 
 ingly, soon after daylight, a stranger, yawning fearfully, and 
 crouching under an umbrella, to escape a cold and driving rain, 
 might have been seen wandering about among the dismal streets 
 of Berne, and taking in its quaint peculiarities as thoroughly as 
 could be done considering the hour and the weather. What he 
 saw can perhaps be best told by giving his remarks to the others, 
 after they were on the train and going toward Geneva. 
 
 "Thus far," said Soussigne, " Berne is a more characteristic 
 town than any I have seen since we started. That is to say, it is 
 original, odd, and scarcely at all disturbed by modern or any 
 other kind of improvements. To begin at the bottom, it has a 
 river called the Aar. This occupies the lowest level along which 
 houses are built. Then on the left bank is a range of hills or 
 mountains, on which stands the town. There is a second tier 
 of houses which begin where the roofs of the river houses leave 
 off. Where the latter finish another series commences. You 
 walk along among the last-named, and the street suddenly ends 
 on a perpendicular precipice, walled up with solid masonry. Be- 
 low are the chimneys and steeples of other houses. You go 
 down among these, and ver}^ soon you find yourself on a level 
 with the roofs of tall houses on a terrace below. It is quite easy 
 anywhere in Berne to reach out your hand and play with the 
 weathercock on a church-steeple, or to climb to the top of a 
 steeple and get a look into the basement windows of the houses 
 of a neighbor." 
 
 "How do you get from one level to another?" asked Madame. 
 
 " Principally by the use of stone stairways for pedestrians, and 
 steep, winding streets for vehicles. But this system of terraces, 
 while nice for drainage, must be inconvenient in a great many 
 other respects. How, for instance, are Mrs. Brown and Mrs- 
 Smith to lean out of their back windows, and exchange their 
 
AMONa THE ALPS. 335 
 
 opinions of each other, when one lias to yell up a distance of 
 seventy-five or a hundred feet? As a whole, I think Berne is a 
 tov?n constructed with a shameful disregard for the conveniences 
 of its women. How can two women take any comfort in gossip- 
 ing over a back fence that is half a mile high on one side. There's 
 ■work there for Mrs. Livermore." 
 
 " Anything remarkable in the town otherwise ? " queried The 
 Commander. 
 
 " Well, yes. Nearly all the buildings extend over the sidewalk, 
 * flush ' with the street, leaving beneath arcades for pedestrians 
 ♦and traffic. Then there's a cathedral, of course, on one of whose 
 fronts is a very fine sculpture of the Last Judgment. As it was 
 so early I did not get in, but there is said to be a grand organ 
 there, which of course must be inferior to the one in Boston. 
 Then, 1 saw everywhere statues, alto-reliefs, and bas-reliefs of 
 bears, which animal the Bernese are said to worship. In one of 
 the squares is an odd old fountain, spouting the purest of mount- 
 ain water, and surmounted by a fat old chap, who is in the act of 
 ramming a small plump boy into his mouth, and who has a dozen 
 other small boys sticking out of his pocket and from under his 
 belt, and which apparently he proposes to eat in a few minutes. 
 Sensible people, these Bernese, for they evidently comprehend 
 what a nuisance the small boy is, and in-this figure have typified 
 his proper disposition. Finally, there is a wonderful clock in one 
 of the squares. Just before the hour, a sickly-looking, weather- 
 beaten rooster crows, in order to wake up the rest of the company 
 and get them ready for business. A moment later some bears 
 inarch around a circle, and a chap, looking something like a cir- 
 cus-clown, strikes a bell in order to let the rest know what hour 
 is to be announced. The rooster then crows again, as if to say, 
 ^All ready ! Let go ! ' whereupon the hour strikes. Then an old 
 gentleman who, I suppose, represents Time, turns an hour-glass, 
 nods his head, and opens his mouth. At the same time a bear 
 sitting by the old gentleman checks off the hour by nodding his 
 head at each stroke. Then a figure higher up hammers the hour 
 on a bell with a hammer, as though he were saying, ' You are 
 quite right down there ! ' Finally, the rooster who made the 
 opening makes the closing speech in a final crow; and that ends 
 the striking of the hour." 
 
 " It strikes me," said The Commander, " as being very compli- 
 cated." 
 
336 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 " Yes. It demonstrates that these Swiss are way behind in me- 
 chanical ingenuity and labor-saving machinery. The idea of 
 requiring a rooster, a half dozen bears, a circus clown, old Time, 
 some more bears, and an overseer in the shape of a big stone 
 figure, to do such a little thing as to strike the time of day ! A. 
 Yankee would let the Bernese know what time it is with a brand 
 new Connecticut clock, which would not cost over two dollars 
 and a half And then there's another thing. That Swiss ar- 
 rangement has got no ambition, no ' snap.' You couldn't get 
 that rooster for love or money to crow only at just such a time; 
 and just so often, and so of all the rest of the company. But a 
 Yankee clock isn't so particular, and has got some ' get-up-and- 
 get ' about it. It is always willing to do all it has contracted for 
 and a good deal more. It may have agreed to strike six, or ten, 
 or twelve, at a certain hour, but it's always ready to go on and 
 do some more. I've known one of those ambitious Yankee in- 
 stitutions to go right on and strike three or four hundred, and 
 never sweat a hair, when it needn't have struck but one or two. 
 That's the kind of machine to have to get through with a good 
 deal of work. But a Swiss clock, when it has fulfilled the pre- 
 cise letter of its contract, just lays down its tools and quits work 
 until the exact time to commence comes again. Suppose you 
 happen to be in a hurry, what can you do with one of these Swiss 
 concerns ? Nothing ! They're altogether too particular. That's 
 the difference between an old, effete people and a nation whose 
 veins pulsate with the blood of progress and of — of — well, all 
 the rest of the thingumbob — whatever it may be. And this, I 
 believe, except that such natives as I saw are a rather stupid, 
 sleepy-looking lot, is all I saw worth repeating, in Berne." 
 
 Swiss railways are probably the slowest, if not the worst in 
 all other respects, in Europe. The only explanation of such a 
 condition of things among so thriving and practical a people 
 is that the trains run slowly to permit travelers to get a good 
 view of the scenery, while it may be thought that the charm of 
 the country will distract one's attention from the discomfort of 
 the cars. 
 
 They rolled along southward, searching for tropical warmth 
 and finding it not. It grew cooler as they neared the equator. 
 Meanwhile, the travelers found no lack of mountains. They 
 passed the Bernese Alps on their left, skirted the rugged Breu- 
 laire, and soon after rolled into Freyburg, whose suspension 
 
AMONG THE ALPS. 337 
 
 bridge, with a single curve of over nine hundred feet, is said to 
 be the largest in the world. 
 
 " Boston must look on Freyburg with envy," said Madame, as 
 they sped away from the ancient town, with its tottering walls, 
 its baitlements and consijicuous watch-towers. 
 • "Why so?" 
 
 " Because there is there, I believe, the finest organ in the 
 world." 
 
 " If it be only the ' finest,' that does not concern Boston," said 
 The Commander; "if it were the largest, then Boston would 
 become at once an interested party." 
 
 Mountains to the right of them, mountains to the left of them, 
 through which the train rattled and thundered. They dashed 
 through tunnels, climbed hills, descended other hills, and rouaded 
 in vast sweeps the bases of towering heights. Now, the swollen 
 waves rolled over the train, and now they retreated, leaving long 
 troughs through which the travelers caught sight of blue-black 
 mountain-tops battlementing the sky line like the walls of a 
 fortress for the use of the gods. 
 
 Now and then, in the far and dim distance, there came into 
 view great masses, but so remote, so indistinct, and so lofty, that 
 they seemed rather the creation of the imagination than realties. 
 Foremost among these were the Moleson, with its broken walls, 
 the Deat de Jaman, and Dent du Midi, standing like advanced 
 works in the mighty range of fortifications. Beyond these, tower- 
 ing far above them, blue, intangible, and seeming a part of the 
 sky itself — a colossal continent in the upper air ^ was Mont 
 Blanc. 
 
 Tlie train halted a moment or two at Rue, which lies beneath 
 the shadow of a turreted castle, and then rolled on, and buried 
 itself among the hills. In the semi-darkness of overhanging 
 heights, in the total darkness of tunnel after tunnel, the train 
 drove on, until suddenly, with a shriek, it issued from the region 
 of night into one of blinding daylight, and the travelers saw 
 spread out before them a scene than which nothing more beauti- 
 ful could be imagined or created. Far below them, to the left, 
 extended Geneva Lake, or Lake Leman, widening, curving, glist- 
 ening, until lost in the distance. The train was running along 
 the crest of a lofty range of hills, every foot of whose slope, from 
 the track down to the water's edge, was covered with the green 
 and brown of thrifty vineyards. Across the lake could be seen 
 22 
 
338 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 the glistening "wliite of sleeping villages, beyond which rose 
 gradually green and wooded hills which seemed to serve as 
 mighty buttresses to a mountain chain behind them. The view 
 along the lake is uninterrupted for miles, so that the eye takes in, 
 at once, dozens of villages, dotting the shores far below the train ; 
 peak after peak lost in the clouds and blue of the distance — takes 
 in a scene in which there are repose, grandeur, limitless variety 
 simplicity, and a mysterious suggestion of infinite strength and 
 duration. 
 
 Madame was more charmed with the sudden and unexpected 
 scene than she could find words to express. She could only refer 
 to her favorite poet, Byron. 
 
 " And this is Lake Leman ? " said she after some moments of 
 speechless adoration of the glorious view, "this is the lake of 
 ■which Byron speaks when he describes the storm : 
 
 ' From peak to peak the rattling crags among 
 
 Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud. 
 
 But every mountain now hath found a tongue: 
 And Jura answers through her misty shroud 
 Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! ' " 
 
 The Commander, who was sufiering from some atrocious 
 twinges of rheumatism, nevertheless gave utterance to his admi- 
 ration in plain but emphatic prose, pronouncing it the most 
 charming view he had ever seen. 
 
 Gradually descending from its elevated way, the train passed 
 through Lausanne — the home of Gibbon — and finally, at the level 
 of the lake, it halted on the banks of the Rhone. A half-hour 
 later the excursionists were warming themselves at a fire in a 
 hotel in the famous city of Geneva. 
 
 The next morning, being in the mouth of June of the current 
 year, the party was huddled about a fire in the grate, engaged in 
 discussing the situation. 
 
 " 1 suppose," said The Commander, as with a shiver he hitched 
 nearer the grate, " that we are now in a town which is the most 
 celebrated — " 
 
 "And the coldest," Soussigne mariaged to insert. 
 
 " — In many respects in all Europe. Here have lived John 
 Knox, Calvin, Rousseau, Farel, Voltaire, Byron. From here has 
 emanated a religious influence that has exercised a greater power 
 on the world's history than the discovery of America by Colum- 
 bus. It may almost be termed the cradle of religious liberty, or 
 
AMONG THE ALPS. 339 
 
 intolerance, or reform, or wliatever is the proper name for that 
 phase of religion which Calvin elaborated." 
 
 "A. great man," said Soussigne, "was Mr. Jean Chauvin, alias 
 John Calvin. By the way, if we get time we should not omit to 
 visit a hill just south of the town, known as Champel. There 
 are many of our Chicago friends who are so attached to Calvin 
 that they would never forgive us if they knew we were near a 
 spot so intimately related to Calvin and his religious teachings, 
 and yet should fail to visit it." 
 
 " What is Champel ? " asked Madame. 
 
 "What! You don't know Champel, you who live in Chicago 
 and know Drs. Patton and Swing? Incredible ! Why, Champel 
 is the spot on which, by order of Jean Chauvin, alias John Cal- 
 vin, the theologian, Michael Servetus was burned, and all because 
 he had some views on the Trinity which were not Indorsed by 
 Monsieur Chauvin. I think I'll take home a vial of the soil from 
 Champel and present it to Bob Ingersoll, just to see how it will 
 make him spread himself and howl in his next theological dis- 
 course." 
 
 After a while they started out to visit the church where Calvin 
 preached, and the house in which he had lived for some twenty 
 years. They first interviewed the manager of the hotel : 
 
 ''^Calveene? Calveene? Maisje ne connais pas M^sieu Calveene," 
 was the answer of that worthy. A hack-driver had also never 
 heard of M'sieu Calveene. It was only after having been driven 
 twice across the Rhone, and up and down the adjoining heights, 
 that they managed to find the place. They finally entered Rue 
 d'Enfer, then passed into Rue du Purgatoire, and thence into 
 Place de la Madelaine, where they found themselves in front of 
 a ruinous old church, with decaying buttresses and toppling 
 cornices. 
 
 "Odd, isn't it," said Soussign6, "that in order to reach the 
 church in which Calvin and John Knox preached, we pass 
 through a street named ' Hell,' then into one called ' Purgatory,' 
 and finally discover it in ' The Square of the Courtesan ? ' " 
 
 The church was closed and they could not gain admittance. It 
 impressed them as mouldy, decaying, unsightly. All about it are 
 narrow streets and dirty alleys, whose mean shops are the per- 
 manent abode of filth, squalor, second-hand clothing and Jewish 
 faces. 
 
 "Strange," muttered The Commander, "that Calvinism does 
 
340 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 not rescue this, its Holy Sepulchre, from the infidels of povcrtjr,, 
 decay, and dirt which now have it in possession ! " 
 
 Near by is No. 11, Rue Chanoines, an old two-story house, with 
 a. stone front, a small court-yard, and a general appearance of 
 having been left far behind by advancing civilization. This is 
 the house where Calvin lived and died; and is now a hospital, as 
 the travelers learned from an inscription over a small side-door. 
 In a street still narrower and meaner, in the same neighborhood. 
 Grand Rue, No. 40, they found the house in which Jean Jacques 
 Rousseau was born. The house is in every respect more dilapi- 
 dated and mean than the one which was occupied by Calvin. 
 
 " In the matter of style," said Soussigne, " Calvin seems to 
 have had much the best of it." 
 
 " Two great men," was The Commander's response — " two great 
 men. One was the poison and the other the antidote." He 
 failed, however, for some reason, to say which was the antidote 
 and which the poison. 
 
 They drove around the town for a few hours, admiring ita 
 quays, the swift-rushing Rhone, and the charming views up and 
 down the lake. 
 
 "Geneva," said The Commander, " may be called a handsome 
 town, situated on a charming lake, and surrounded by some of 
 the grandest scenery in Europe. That is all. It has no great 
 buildings, or statues, or curiosities. Its renown is built upon 
 moral, social, religious foundations. It has never played an im- 
 portant part in the politics of the world — " 
 
 " You forget," said Soussigne, " that here was held that con- 
 vention which gave so many millions of John Bull's money to 
 Uncle Sam, for damages committed by the Alabama during the 
 civil war. This fact alone gives Geneva the greatest prominence, 
 at least in the United States. Among us tlie place is endeared by 
 just as many tender recollections as there are dollars in the 
 award." 
 
 Madame said that " the fact that Lord Byron had once lived in, 
 or near Geneva, was sufficient to confer upon it immorality — " 
 
 " You mean immortality," said Soussigne. 
 
 " Of course I mean immortality. That's what I said." 
 
 They ascended the heights leadmg to Pregny, and had spread 
 before them, across the lake, the entire range of the Alps of Savoy, 
 with Mont Blanc towering among them — the monarch among- 
 the giants which surround it. They thought of going to Ferney, 
 
AN OPEN LETTER. 341 
 
 "Where Yoltaire lived, but it was too cold. Madame wished to go 
 to Varemble io look over the chateau once occupied by Josephine, 
 "but the weather repressed them. For the same potential reason 
 they did not visit Diodati, where Byron once lived, which depriva- 
 tion almost broke Madame's heart. 
 
 " Without seeing Diodati," said she, " it seems to me that our 
 visit to Geneva will be in vain." 
 
 " I have made up my mind," said The Commander, " that we 
 are too early ; that it is still too cold to visit here with any com- 
 fort. I think, therefore, we will give up going to Italy — " 
 
 " What ! " ejaculated Madame, " give up a visit to beautiful and 
 classic Italy, where — " 
 
 "And," continued The Commander, as if he had not been 
 interrupted, " go direct to Paris." 
 
 " How delightful ! " said Madame," such a sensible conclusion! 
 Can we start in the mornmg ? '' 
 
 They did start the next day, and some sixteen hours later found 
 themselves in Paris. 
 
 LETTER LI. 
 
 AN OPEN LETTER. 
 
 Paris, July 3, 1878. 
 
 ■iTy^TEARIED bj^ his long ride, and affected by the severe 
 
 w 
 
 C/^S/^ weather which had attended them every day since 
 
 <~^ leaving London, The Commander found it necessary 
 to lay up a few days for repairs. So to speak, he went into 
 a dry-dock in a high and charming location on the Rue Fau- 
 bourg St. Honore, and there commenced having himself over- 
 hauled by one of the most skillful of the profession in Paris. 
 
 To him came, a couple of days later, Soussigne, who said: 
 
 " I have written an open letter, which I would like to submit 
 to you." 
 
 "What about?" 
 
 " Some points in our travels, and which will be explained as 
 the letter is read." 
 
 "Very well; go ahead." 
 
342 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Soussigne then proceeded to read the following open letter, 
 and which was dated Paris, July 1, 1878 : 
 
 " My Dear Mr. Harper : la your invaluable guide-book you 
 state that you will be glad to have tourists make any corrections 
 or suggest any improvements. I am prepared to do both. On 
 page 273 of your latest edition, in speaking of Strasbourg, you 
 say that ' although belonging to France, it is essentially,' etc. 
 Now, from some remarks I have heard since being in France, I 
 am inclined to think your statement may be a trifle inaccurate. 
 In any case it may be worth while for you to look the matter up, 
 and assure yourself that you are not mistaken. 
 
 " There are several assertions of this kind which require veri- 
 fication; but I shall pass them in order to touch upon some 
 omissions. It may not liave occurred to you, but it is a fact, that 
 people who are about to visit, say Europe, would like to know 
 something about prices of living at hotels, the rent of apart- 
 ments, cost of railway travel, and all that; and yet of these you 
 say not a word. It is true your guide-book is already so large 
 that, if much more were added to it, one would have to put 
 handles on it and carry it like a trunk; nevertheless, you might 
 omit some of the puffs of wine-houses, watch-makers, jewelers, 
 etc., which occupy so much space in your book, and insert the 
 class of information I have referred to. 
 
 " In company with some highly-respectable people, I have just 
 visited various portions of northern and central Europe ; and I 
 am, therefore, in a condition to call your attention to these 
 matters. 
 
 " In London, one may live in a hotel, boarding-house, or apart- 
 ments. The last-named is by far the best and cheapest for one 
 who proposes to remain in the English metropolis for not less than 
 a fortnight. A well-furnished parlor, with a bedroom attached, 
 can be had in an excellent quarter for about $5 to $10 a week. 
 The landlady will always serve meals in the rooms, cooked to 
 order, at reasonable rates. The boarding-houses are generally 
 inferior, while prices are high, ranging, for single rooms, from 
 $20 a week, up. The hotels are slow, substantial, and expensive, 
 as a general thing. But one or two in London have elevators. 
 The occupant pays so much a day for his room, and then dines 
 where he pleases. Some of the hotels have a table d'hote, at a 
 fixed price, but usually one dines and pays for what he orders. 
 Living at a hotel of a fair kind in London costs about $2 to $7 a 
 
AN OPEN LETTER. 343 
 
 day for room, includiag lights and service. A good dinner may- 
 be had anywhere at prices ranging from seventy-five cents to 
 $1.25. In securing apartments tlie first floor above the street is 
 best. As a summing up, I may state tliat two persons can live 
 very comfortably in London, having one parlor and two bed- 
 rooms, with meals served in rooms, at a cost of $10 each per 
 week. At a hotel the cost per week, inclusive of meals, will be 
 about $40 for each person, and includes only a bed-room without 
 a parlor. Of course these figures refer only to an excellent qual- 
 ity of living, and neither to tlie highest nor lowest. One can sub- 
 sist in London on twenty-five cents a day; and one can also pay 
 as many pounds per day, for extravagant rooms and furniture. 
 These medium figures cover what any well-to-do American fam- 
 ily would — or should — be satisfied with having. 
 
 "At the present time, during the exposition, prices are not at 
 all representative of Paris in ordinary years. Room rents are 
 more than twice as high as they are in other seasons ; and al- 
 most everything else has gone up proportionately. Much now, 
 however, depends upon the location, and the kind of people into 
 whose hands the travelers fall. At a hotel a single bed-room 
 costs everywliere from $1 to $3 a day. A parlor and a couple of 
 bed-rooms connected cost from $6 to $20 a day, according to the 
 style of hotel and floor upon which tlie rooms are located. 
 
 " Apartments for a family, including bed-room, small parlor, 
 and closets, cost from $50 to $200 a month, according to the part 
 of the city Ihey are in, and tlie etage, or story. This does not in- 
 elude service, which will cost from fifty cents to $1 a day. Then 
 there is the concierge, who must be paid from $1 to $10 a month. 
 
 " A table d'hote at first-class hotels may be had at from $1 to 
 $2, inclusive of ordinary claret. There are, however, abundant 
 places, notably at the Palais Royal, where dinner can be had — 
 and a good dinner, too — for fifty cents, or two and a half francs. 
 This will include a choice of three kinds of soup, fish, meat, 
 vegetables, dessert, and a pint of claret. From two to four cents 
 is expected to be paid to the waiter for his pour-boire — as many 
 servants at restaurants pay for their positions, and depend for 
 their remuneration upon the gratuities given them by customers. 
 In fine, the cost of living in a sufficiently comfortable style in 
 Paris, at tlie present time, may be averaged at from $15 to $20 
 per person for a week, in apartments. In hotels, it will nowhere 
 cost less, but always considerable more. In ordinary times one 
 
344 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 may live here in a tliorouglily comfortable manner for one-lialf 
 the sum. Getting about Paris is cheap. A carriage with seats 
 for two costs forty cents an hour and three to four cents more to 
 the driver. For three cents outside, and twice that sum inside, 
 one can cross Paris from one end to the other by means of busses 
 or street-cars. I may add that beer costs from six to ten cents a 
 glass; a very fine article of claret, St. Julienne or St. Estephe, 
 from sixty cents to $1.20 a bottle; champagne, $3, and the best 
 article of brandy about ten cents per glass. It may also be stated 
 here that what is known as the premiere, or first floor in Paris, 
 is usually what in America is the third floor. There is the floor 
 on the level with the street; next the entresol; then the premiere, 
 seconde, etc., so that a person occupying the seconde etage, for in- 
 stance, has to go up tliree flights of stairs to reach it. 
 
 " Brussels is very much the same as Paris in ordinary seasons. 
 The cookery, the hotels, in fine, the system of living generally, 
 is almost a precise reproduction of Paris. In our excursion to 
 that city we had a parlor on the first floor above the street, two 
 bed-rooms, and a servant's bed-room; these and the meals for the 
 party averaged about $16 per day. This included wines, attend- 
 ance, lights, fires, everything, and all in first-class order. 
 
 " Holland is very expensive. The bill for the same party for 
 one day at the Old Bible Hotel, Amsterdam, was seventy-one 
 florins, or nearly $30. This included very excellent living, but 
 nothing extra, and it did not include the amount wrung from the 
 party by a persistent horde of mendicants, who were composed 
 of every servant in the establishment. In Cologne, Mayence, and 
 other German towns, the cost per day of the party of four was 
 about seventy marks, or something near $30. At Bale, Lucerne, 
 Berne, and Geneva, the expenses of the quartet were about 
 seventy-five francs, or $15 per day. In the cases of Germany and 
 Switzerland, the amounts given do not include the fees paid to 
 the various servants. In fine, the cost per day per person aver- 
 aged during the Continental tour about $8. Considering that 
 the party always had a parlor ; always occupied floors as near as 
 possible to the street; and that, owing to the lameness from a 
 rheumatic attack of one of the party, meals were generally served 
 in the rooms, it may be estimated that the expenses of this party 
 in hotel bills were at least 50 per cent higher than they would be 
 for a party traveling under more favorable circumstances. In 
 other words, a person about to make a Continental tour may 
 
AN OPEN LETTER, 345 
 
 safely count upon being able to live in excellent style at an ex- 
 pense for hotels of $3.50 a day. 
 
 The food at all these points is generally of a good quality, well 
 Cooked, and well served. The custom is to serve coffee, hot milk, 
 and bread for the first meal at the time of rising. Breakfast 
 comes about noon, and dinner at from 5:30 to 7:80 P.M. In 
 Switzerland, at all the hotels, honey and butter are served in the 
 morning, with the coffee and hot milk. 
 
 " The item of fees to servants is not an inconsiderable one in 
 the expenses of a traveler anywhere in Europe. The rule ap- 
 pears to be that everybody who. does a service expects a ' tip.' If 
 one wishes a guard on an English railwaj'' to be attentive, to give 
 one compartments to one's self, to promptly unlock the door and 
 let one out at the stopping places, one must either give him a 
 shilling before the train starts, or at the end of the journey. 
 The porter who carries the luggage to the baggage-van, and the 
 one who takes it out and calls a cab, expect from six to twenty- 
 :five cents each. On the Continent about the same system pre- 
 vails. I have never yet seen a conductor on a continental train 
 refuse a ' tip,' except in one case ; and that was in Belgium. In 
 this instance he refused the amount offered him for the reason 
 that ' it wouldn't buy a chope of beer.' It was doubled ; and 
 then his hesitation vanished. 
 
 " At every Continental hotel the persons who expect fees are 
 the concierge, the porter, the head waiter, the waiter at the table, 
 the one who answers the bell, the woman who takes care of the 
 room, and the ' boots.' The concierge expects a franc a day, 
 and the others a smaller proportionate sum, — perhaps in all, 
 about five francs, or a dollar for a day. One need not pay these 
 fees; but few have the audacity to break in upon this custom of 
 universal robbery, and while cursing it, they submit with as good 
 a grace as possible. Of course, a single traveler with a hand- 
 bag escapes much more cheaply; and the longer a party stops in 
 a single hotel, the smaller in proportion are the fees, as a week's 
 stay will not require a much larger outlay than a single day and 
 night. In the case of the party of four, the fees at hotels, at de- 
 pots, and on the trains were nearly or quite a sum equal to one- 
 quarter of what was paid for hotel bills. 
 
 "The cost of traveling varies very much, according to the 
 country one may be in, and according to the class — whether 
 first, second, or third. Second class is generally about one-third 
 
346 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 less than first class, while third is not more than one-half that of 
 first class. A. first class compartment is finely upholstered, and 
 carries six people. The second class is less pretentious, and 
 holds eight. Third class has plain wooden seats, and accommo- 
 dates ten persons — all of the compartments being of the same 
 dimensions. For invalids and those who can afibrd it, first class 
 is every way preferable, for in no case is European first class 
 much in advance of an ordinary American car, while it is very 
 much behind an American drawing-room car. Second class is 
 not uncomfortable, and will do nicely for people who are dis- 
 posed to be economical, especially as all the lines are so short 
 that one can always arrange it so as only to travel during the 
 daytime. 
 
 " The cost of tickets may be inferred from the statement that 
 our party bought three first and one second class tickets from 
 London to Geneva, via Dover, Ostend, Brussels, Cologne, to May- 
 ence (by Rhine), Heidelberg, Bale, Lucerne, Berne, Lausanne, 
 for about $140 — or some $36 per head. This included the priv- 
 ilege of stopping oft at every place of importance, the tickets 
 holding good for sixty days from date. Second class for the 
 same distance would cost some $28, while third class can be had 
 for $20. The fare from London to Paris and return, via Dover 
 and Calais, first class, is almost $24 — by other routes it is not 
 more than two-thirds the same sum. 
 
 "The best plan for a Continental traveler is to buy a round- 
 trip ticket from London, which will take in the principal points 
 which he wishes to visit. He can then stop at these places, and 
 make side excursions in every direction. In every Continental 
 country except Switzerland a reasonable amount of baggage is 
 transported free. In Switzerland, everything except what is 
 carried in the hands is charged for by weight. The average 
 price of carriages from depots to hotels is about twenty cents a 
 person. 
 
 " The cars in all Continental countries except Switzerland, are 
 on the compartment plan. In Switzerland they have also com- 
 partments, but the traveler does not enter at the side of the car. 
 He goes in at the ends, as in the American car, and reaches his 
 compartment by passing down the central aisle. The compart- 
 ments, however, are separated from each other by doors. 
 
 " In Great Britain tickets are shown to and punched by an of- 
 flcial before the traveler enters the car, and then he is not called 
 
AN OPEN LETTEK. 347 
 
 upon to show his ticket until the end of the journey. On the 
 Continent, except in Switzerland, the conductor passes along the 
 outside of the car while the train is in motion, walking on a nar- 
 row railing. He opens the door and examines and punches tick- 
 ets without entering. In Switzerland, the guard goes through 
 after leaving a station, as in the American system. In all cases 
 the guard will accept a fee, whether he performs any particular 
 service or not. 
 
 "There are few or no sleeping-cars in the American sense, ex- 
 cept on one or two roads, in England and Germany, where the 
 Pullman cars are used. There are employed on the Continent 
 what are termed ' coupe'-lits ' and ' coup^-fauteuils.'' The former 
 are small kennels at the rear of a car, having three seats, which 
 may be arranged so as to make one bed and a seat. The ' coup/- 
 fauteuils ' are in the same location, with -three seats, which can 
 be extended so as to form sleeping arm-chairs. They must be 
 engaged several hours in advance and cost about $4.50 for each 
 seat. 
 
 " In going from Cologne to Mayence, up the Rhine, meals are 
 served in excellent style on the boat, at about double average 
 hotel rates. 
 
 " In Belgium the guards and employes all speak French, and 
 some speak in addition Flemish and German. In Holland the 
 same class speak little or no French, making travel there very 
 difficult. In Germany a majority speak French as well as Ger- 
 man, and the same is true in Switzerland. At every station every- 
 where is an official who may be known by his red fatigue cap, who 
 is the chef du station, and who is supposed to speak all modern- 
 languages. A majority of them speak English, and as they are 
 always present when a train enters or leaves a station, they are 
 very useful to the traveler who is in search of information, 
 and who can usually get it in the language in which he applies 
 for it. 
 
 " At every Continental hotel there is always a person with a 
 gold band on his cap, and who is the portier or concierge. His 
 business is to receive travelers and answer all questions. He is 
 expected to speak at least English, French, and German. Some- 
 times he adds to these Spanish and Italian. In Germany nearly 
 every waiter speaks English and French in addition to German 
 — many of them having spent years in France and England to 
 learn these languages and fit them for the position they occupy. 
 
348 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 Nevertheless, while one caa get along with only English, one will 
 find a knowledge of French almost indispensable. This is sub- 
 stantially spoken everywhere ; and the traveler who understands 
 it will learn twice as much from a trip as a man who has to 
 depend solely upon a knowledge of English. 
 
 " And, finally, let the traveler avoid too much baggage ; be 
 always polite and civil; resist extortion; be temperate in all 
 things ; and never forget that, as an American, he has to uphold 
 the dignity of his country. 
 
 " Begging your pardon for having troubled you at such great 
 length, my dear Mr. Harper, I am, very respectfully, 
 
 "Yours ; 
 
 " Signed on behalf of the excursionists by 
 
 "Le SoussiaNE." 
 
 "How will that do?" asked Soussigne, when he had finished 
 reading. " I could have made it longer, only I ran out of paper, 
 ink, and — ideas." 
 
 " 1 think that will do for the present," said The Commander — 
 "a good deal more might have been said which would be of 
 value to Americans coming abroad ; but perhaps the rest may be 
 said at another time." 
 
 " I should think," said Madame, " that something ought to be 
 said about the cost of laces and other articles peculiar to each 
 country, and the places where one can get them without being 
 robbed." 
 
 " You are quite right," answered Soussigne, " and as you are 
 now in Paris where you have not much to do " 
 
 "Not much to do?" interrupted Madame quickly, "and I 
 haven't yet bought a yard of ribbon or done the least bit of 
 shopping! " 
 
 " Oh, I beg pardon! Well, when you have nothing else to do, 
 how would it do for you to prepare a memorandum on the points 
 you suggest ? Something of that sort would be a sweet boon to 
 our countrywomen, and would save them bags of money and no 
 end of trouble." 
 
 Madame said she would think it over. 
 
 And here the matter rests at the present moment. 
 
THE EXCITKSIONISTS IN PAKIS. 349 
 
 LETTER LII. 
 
 THE EXCURSIONISTS IN PARIS. 
 
 Paris, July 8, 1878. 
 
 tHEY were all sitting in the parlor of The Commander's 
 apartments. Madame was busily engaged with a needle 
 on one of those elegant decorations upon which women 
 spend so much time, and in which they find so much pleasure. 
 Clad in purest white, and sitting where there fell upon her a soft- 
 ened flood of light strained through the crimson curtains, she 
 made a most charming picture. The Commander was on the sofa, 
 with a volume of Macauley by his side. Near him sat a youth of 
 seventeen, the son of an American acquaintance, and who occu- 
 pied himself mainly in close and surreptitious explorations over 
 the region of his upper lip, under the thrilling impression that 
 he had discovered something like down sprouting in that lo- 
 cality. Soussigne occupied a chair within easy hailing distance 
 of all parties. The Shade, with a white apron around his neck 
 which reached to the floor, and whose whiteness was in brilliant 
 contrast to the ebon hue of his skin, was engaged, cloth in hand, 
 in dusting an enormous music-box. The music-box was grind- 
 ing away at a classic excerpt from a famous opera, and doing it 
 in an unwilling, lugubrious sort of a way, as if it would much 
 have preferred a shy at " Ole Dan Tucker," or something a trifle 
 more lively and popular. 
 
 " I bought that music-box,'' said Madame, " expressly for The 
 Commander, so as to keep him company while I do my shop- 
 ping " 
 
 "Very thoughtful of you," I'm sure," said Soussigne, "and it 
 must be very thrilling for him to sit and listen to '■Robert! Rob- 
 ert! Toi Que J''aime!^ and 'Adclio! Addio! Bel Passato,'' and all 
 such cheerful things. I think, now, if I was sliut up with an ar- 
 rangement of miser/r/s like that all in minor F, I should be — well, 
 I am not exactly certain just how I should be. Somehow words, 
 seem to fail me just at this crisis.'' 
 
 At this moment Soussigne was interrupted by a suppressed 
 sound of giggling and choking on the sofa. Looking over there 
 he saw the American youth cramming his handkerchief into his 
 mouth. His face was blazing red, and his eyes, which seemed 
 
350 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 about to burst from their sockets, were fixed upon The Shade. 
 Turning in the direction of the latter, Soussigne saw that he was 
 occupied with an astonishing performance. Standing behind 
 the music-box — wliich was upon a table — he was engaged in 
 running his fingers up and down the edge of the box, as if it 
 were a piano. With eyes upturned till only the whites were vis- 
 ible, his head jerking from side to side in true artistic fashion, 
 iie ran along the suppositious keys, making the most extraor- 
 dinary runs, trills, arpeggios, chromatic chords, and other speci- 
 mens of instrumental efiloresccnce. Now and then he would 
 look at the youngster on the sofa, and wink in so tremendous a 
 style that it would bring the end of his mouth and the corner of 
 his eye into direct contact. Then again, in the midst of his most 
 ecstatic fingering, Madame would make some movement, where- 
 upon in a flash his face would drop into an expression of the 
 most lugubrious gravity and solemnity, and he would for a mo- 
 ment resume his dusting as if he had done nothing but dust all 
 his life. Fortunately, just in time to save the young man on the 
 sofa from a fit of apoplexy. The Shade was sent from the room 
 on some errand, and the performance terminated. 
 
 " How do you like it here ? " asked Soussigne ; " and do you 
 have any trouble with your landlady? " 
 
 "Nothing unusual, I fancy," said The Commander; "every- 
 thing goes in what is probably the regular French style." 
 
 "How is that?" 
 
 " Well, in the first place, we were_ to have the rooms for so 
 much a month, and everything, as we understood it, included. 
 After we got in we found that we must pay twenty francs a 
 month extra to the concierge. The next revelation was that we 
 must hire bed-linen and table-cloths, and furnish our own towels, 
 «oap, and lights. "When this had been agreed to, then we found 
 that we must furnish our own knives and forks, plates, in short, 
 table service of all kinds. We agreed to this, as we couldn't help 
 it very well, having signed a lease for a month ; and then the 
 next thing was that we are to pay twenty francs more to have the 
 rooms cleaned when we leave." 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 " Pretty much all, except that there was an inventory taken of 
 everything in the apartments, even to the carpets, curtains, cur- 
 tain-cords and rollers, rugs, candle-sticks — everything, in short, 
 to keys and key-holes, all of which covered a half-dozen closely- 
 
THE EXCDRSIONSTS IN PARIS. 
 
 351 
 
352 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 written pages of foolscap. All these are to be returned in first- 
 class order, we being bound to pay for every scratch, crack, nick, 
 chip, bruise, or any damage of any and all kinds whatever. I 
 suppose our real payments will begin only when we get ready- 
 to leave." 
 
 " it's hard, and stupid, and all that," said Soussigne, "but it is 
 the custom in la belle France. The French haven't built this 
 beautiful city, and put in it all these statues, fountains, parks, 
 drives, picture galleries, promenades, and the like, for nothing. 
 It's a speculation on tlieir part, and they intend that the outside 
 barbarians shall pay the bills. I suppose, of course, that you 
 have found out tliat the landlady is the widow of a nobleman, 
 and has been reduced to poverty and the necessity of renting- 
 rooms by the failure of the empire, or the establishment of the 
 republic, or something of tlie kind? That's the case with all of 
 them." 
 
 " Yes, something of the kind, I believe. The present female 
 doesn't say much about her own nobility, but she has a sister 
 who is the wife of a great mau. She uses this family connection 
 to overawe us with wlienever we feel like asking her to abate a 
 couple of sous in her extortionate charges. Of course one can't 
 'jew' a lady all ruffles and dignity, and who is the sister-in-law 
 of the peerage." 
 
 " Oh, certainly not. Nevertheless, I apprehend that you will 
 find when you come to settle that a sister-in-law of the peerage 
 won't hesitate to get a couple of sous the better of you on every 
 possible point. Tliat's the ditierence between an American sov- 
 ereign and the French nobility. Why, I know French noblemen 
 by the dozen whose average individual income is not over six- 
 teen American cents a day. They make soup from a cabbage- 
 leaf with a sprinkling of saffron. They luive a grisette up on 
 some seventh ^lage who furnishes them M'ith funds for an occjw 
 sional dinner. They walk up and down the boulevards for exer- 
 cise and occupation, and are on the lookout for an American 
 heiress. In this country, as you know, the woman must furnish 
 some money before she can marry. Usually she furnishes the 
 money and the man the position. That, it seems to me, is much 
 more sensible than the American system, in which a father sad- 
 •ites his daughter upon a young man just starting in life. In 
 other words he marries her ofl[ so as to get rid of paying her 
 board and millinery bills, by jjutting the expense on somebody 
 
THE EXCUESIONISTS IN PAKIS. 353 
 
 else — and which is particularly hard and mean on a young man 
 who is commencing business." 
 
 " By the way," asked Madame, " are there many Americans in 
 Paris just now?" 
 
 " Many Americans ! Wliy they are all here," replied Soussigne. 
 " Slouch hats are as thick in Paris as parasols on a hot day." 
 
 "Who are here, for instance?" 
 
 " Everybody ! The American general, he's here. The Ameri- 
 can colonel has come. The judge has arrived. The member of 
 Congress, the member of the Legislature, the alderman, the 
 lawyer, and the doctor, they're all in town, with and without 
 their families. They're occupying all the first floors at hotels, 
 all the best seats at the theaters, all the front places at the Cafes 
 Chantants. Their wives are visiting Jouvin's, the Bon Marche, 
 the Magazin du Louvre, and the Palais Royal shops, buying 
 everything, and paying from four to sixteen times as much for 
 goods as a Frenchman would pny for the same article. Thej' 
 pay five francs for vin ordinaire — worth twenty sous a bottle — 
 under the impression that it is St. Estephe ; they buy rotten Alex- 
 andi'ine gloves for Alexander's ; they applaud the wrong pieces, 
 and in the wrong place, at the concerts ; they are littering Paris 
 with a jargon which they fancy is French, and — " 
 
 " It seems to me," interrupted Madame, "that you are not in a 
 benevolent humor this morning. It isn't quite probable that all 
 the Americans who come here are idiots, gulls, fools, and all 
 that." 
 
 "Not at all, although it happens to be the fact that the Ameri- 
 cans who make themselves most conspicuously American are 
 precisely of this class. The modest and really gentlemanly 
 American element nowhere makes itself noticeable in dress, be- 
 havior, or conversation. The difference between the English and 
 American — of the 'loud ' kind — is, that one knows the former by 
 their dress, the latter by their manners. An American has a false 
 pride which prevents his cheapening an article, or exacting the 
 right change of a coachman. He fancies that this kind of thing 
 will pass for generosity, whereas it only lias the effect to make 
 the French think he is a prodigal fool, who is throwing away his 
 money without any consideration. The coachman, to whom such 
 an one gave yesterday a shillmg more than his due, will to-mor- 
 row try, if possible, to get two shillings extra from the same 
 customer. He doesn't give credit for an over-payment, but on 
 23 
 
354: SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 the contrary, he makes it a debt against the other to be collected 
 with one hundred per cent, added at the first opportunity. The 
 same is true of a shop-keeper. If overpaid to-day, in place of 
 substracting it from a bill which the American may make to- 
 morrow, he will rather increase the just amount, saying to him- 
 self: 'This idiot is throwing away his money; somebody will 
 get it, and I may as well get as much of it as I can while it is 
 going.' I tell you that American extravagance has almost doubled 
 the prices of everything in Paris without having at all increased 
 respects for Americans. However, I am happy to say, there are 
 abundant exceptions; but it is no easy task for this class to 
 redeem, by their just financial transactions, tlieir modest behavior, 
 their cultivated manners, the discredit which is brought upon the 
 name of American by the mob of shoddy Yankees who annually 
 inundate the French capital." 
 
 The Commander, deep in Macaulay, had paid no attention to 
 the discussion. ]\Iadame was called away by some household 
 matter, and Soussigne left to visit the Exposition — first being 
 assured by the Commander that he should not visit that institu- 
 tion for a few days, until rested and somewhat recovered from 
 his rheumatic attack. 
 
 " Beautiful Paris," thought Soussign6, " thou art the courtesan 
 of civilization — not the gross cyprian of the slums, but the suc- 
 cessor of the Greek ante-type whose home was in the gleaming 
 marble of palaces ; whose poetry and intellect exacted the respect- 
 ful admiration, as her beauty and graces did the devotion, of all 
 men. Thou art the artistic, the poetic courtesan of the nations. 
 Thy perfumed breath falls upon men, and they grow languid and 
 forget the world in which they live and the duties which demand 
 their attention. To sit at thy feet, to listen to the music of thj' 
 voice, to watch for the shimmer of thy white arms, to note the 
 ever-changing beauty of thy face becomes the task of all who 
 fall within tlie influence of thy potent spell. The stars seem to 
 shine with a softer light where thou art, and the wind to smooth 
 its brusqueness so as to touch thy cheek with only a light caress. 
 To be with thee, to be near thee, is to forget the world, is to have 
 the hours dance swiftly by, chanting amorous lullabys as they 
 pass, lulling the listener into a dreamy ecstasy. Already I feel 
 the languor of thy influence stealing over me like a — " 
 
 "Hullo, what the d — 1 you a doin' here!" suddenly fell upon 
 
THE EXCUBSIONISTS IN PAKIS. 355 
 
 Soussigne's ear like a nasal thunder-clap, scattering his reverie 
 as the advent of a big cat will " flush " a flock of snowbirds. 
 
 Soussigne turned and saw before liim a black slouch hat, with 
 the front turned down knowinglj^, so as to partially obscure a 
 pair of grey, small, keen eyes ; a red moustache, a big cigar, a 
 long " goatee." Below were a slim neck, a bony pair of shoulders, 
 a thin waist, and a pair of slender legs, ending in square-toed 
 boots. As a whole, it was a man of about thirty, with a shrewd 
 face, restless movements, and a suit of clothes which had evi- 
 dently been purchased ready-made and without especial reference 
 to fit or harmony of color. 
 
 It was the American member of the Legislature who had run 
 over to Paris for a three days' stay, after having given a few 
 weeks to hunting up his relatives and former acquaintances in 
 the south of Ireland. 
 
 They exchanged congratulations, and information on the 
 weather; and then the member gave SoussignS the latest news 
 from home. 
 
 " How do you like Paris ? " asked the latter. 
 
 " It's not a bad place to luk at," said the member as he fell into 
 an oratorial position and raised his forefinger as if he were ad- 
 dressing his constituents; "it's by no manes a bad i)lace to luk 
 at, an' that's all ye can thruthfully say about it. There isn't a 
 drop of dacent whisky in all Paris, an' divil a sowl ye can say a 
 wurred to owin' to their ignorance in not understhandin' English. 
 There's no bars where ye can walk up an' take a thimblefuU, an' 
 then go about yer business, but ye must sit down to a table, an' 
 ask a blundherin fool for something he hasn't at all, in a Ian- 
 guage which he doesn't understand. I'm thinkin' that the sooner 
 I get out o' this the betther. And yet what astonishes me is that 
 such mannikins, such hop-o-my-thumbs as these frog-aters, should 
 build up such a wonderful city. That bates me ! " 
 
 Soussigne took pity on the forlorn condition of the American 
 member. He told him where he could get a toothful of the rale 
 ould stuff, and where it could be called for in English, and where 
 it could be drunk standing, at the drop of a hat. And then the 
 two left the Palace of the Trocadero and went off together. 
 
356 
 
 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 THE AMERICAN MEMBER AT HOME. 
 
THE EXCUKSIONISTS IN PARIS. 357 
 
 LETTER LIII. 
 
 THE EXCURSIONISTS IN PARIS. 
 
 Paris, July 12, 1878. 
 
 fT was the American judge who had the floor this time. The 
 Commander sat on the sofa coddling his rheumatic leg. 
 Madame was out shopping. Soussigne was an attentive 
 listener. The Shade had tried to become interested, but, failing 
 to comprehend the subject, he put several immense yawns in his 
 white apron, and then quietly stole away. 
 
 "Yes," said the Judge, looking out from under his heavy eye- 
 brows with the same expression that his friends have noticed a 
 thousand times when he was settling an " objection " — " yes, there 
 are a good many things about the French tliat I like, especially 
 in the administration of justice. Now, I have often felt when 
 trying a case, that I was a mere dummy, a figure-head sitting up 
 there, and that the result had been arranged with the jury in 
 advance. There's nothing of that kind in the French courts of 
 justice. When a case is begun it moves straight on without im- 
 pediment until the end is reached. After judgment there is no 
 unnecessary delay in execution — that is to say, there are no thou- 
 sand and one processes and legal technicalities which can be 
 invoked to embarrass the carrying out of the decision. An illus- 
 tration of how easily the administration of French affairs pro- 
 gi'esses can be seen in the method of opening a new street." 
 
 " With us/' said The Commander, " a labor of that sort extends 
 through a generation." 
 
 " Exactly Well, there's none of that nonsense here. The gov- 
 ernment decides that a street should be opened through a certain 
 •quarter, and at once notifies owners along the route of its inten- 
 tion, and, moreover, that they must vacate by such a date. Juries 
 assess the value of the property to be taken, and the government 
 pays the owner the price thus determined on. There is a right 
 of appeal from the decision of the juries, but the court to which 
 it is taken passes on it at once — there is not a delay of two years 
 before the case is reached, and then another delay of two years 
 because parties are not ready for trial. No ! The case comes up 
 at once, and is passed on at once. Then the houses are torn down 
 
358 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 and the debris removed ; after which the government advertises 
 the lots for sale, and they are sold under an agreement that a cer- 
 tain kind of improvement shall be made within a given time. 
 The result of this system is that a new street is made within an 
 incredibly short space of time ; and, what is equally worthy of 
 note, the government makes money by the transaction — as the 
 lots, owing to the improvements put upon them, always sell for 
 more than they cost." 
 
 At this point Soussigne pleaded an engagement and left, after 
 having expressed his regret at being obliged to lose so much 
 valuable judicial information. Going down the Rue St. Honore, 
 he entered the Palais Royal, and then commenced flattening his 
 nose against the glass of the show-windows, as he greedily 
 devoured with his eyes the diamonds, jewelry, and other attrac- 
 tive features of this famous locality. While thus engaged he 
 suddenly felt himself rather rudely brushed against, and he- 
 turned with the impatient remark : 
 
 " Where in thunder are you going to ? " 
 
 It was a little chap whom he thus addressed — a young man of 
 twenty-two or thereabouts, and who, from his position when 
 Soussigne turned, had evidently backed against the latter with- 
 out seeing him. At the sound of Soussigne's voice the little chap^ 
 turned around and an expression of satisfaction flashed over his 
 face. 
 
 "You speak English, I see," said he. 
 
 "Yes, a little," was the answer. 
 
 " Can you speak French ? " and an eager, yearning look came 
 into his eyes. 
 
 " A little. What can I do for you ? " 
 
 " Well, there's a young lady standing there against that column, 
 and I want to ask her to go to breakfast with me. I can't speak 
 a word of French and she can't speak a word of English." 
 
 " Oh, certainly," said Soussigne. " Anything to help a lame 
 dog over a stile." 
 
 And then he walked over to where the young woman was 
 standing. She was at least ten years older than the little chap; 
 she was dark as a mulatto, was pitted by small-pox, and was 
 altogether, in Soussigne's estimate, what might be termed a 
 "tough citizen." He lifted his hat, and in his best French con- 
 veyed to her Monsieur's desire to have her breakfast with hinu. 
 
THE EXCURSIONISTS IX PARIS. 
 
 559 
 
 She assented. The little chap gallantly oflered his arm; she 
 took it, and they sailed away. 
 
 "That chap's a Yankee," thought Soussigne, as he marched 
 along, pondering on the astonishing number of idiots there are 
 in Paris as well as elsewhere— "he's a Yankee. Well dressed, 
 and with rich jewelry, he's evidently a young man of wealth, 
 who is over here to ' do ' Paris. I know all about him. His 
 mother and his two sisters are with him, and they occupy the 
 
 YOtma AMERICA ABROAD. 
 
 first floor at the Grand Hotel. The old man is at home with his 
 nose on the business grindstone ; and the family is over here for 
 a splurge, to do some shopping, to interview Worth, to pick up a 
 French count for one of the daughters. I know them — the old 
 woman is fifty, fat, stupid, stiff, and under the impression that it 
 is her mature charms which excite so much attention from the 
 fldneurs on the boulevards, when she goes out with her daughters. 
 The young women are tall, very slender, have an unabashed look, 
 
360 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 and can stare a four-horse wagon out of countenance. The little 
 chap is an only son. He has never clone anything all his life, 
 except to bully the servants, be petted and scolded in turn by the 
 old woman, and be snubbed and caressed by the girls. He plays 
 billiards, smokes strong cigars, sits up late with the seductive 
 champagne bottle, and wakes up the next day with a great pain 
 in his wretched little noddle. He will die of dissipation, and 
 they will chisel on his monument '^tat 27.' One of the girls 
 will marry a French count, who will gamble away all her money, 
 will keep a mistress near the Bois de Boulogne, and finally ship 
 her home to die of a broken heart. The other girl will go back, 
 and on the strength of her continental trip and her new dresses 
 will captivate and marry some young man around town in New 
 York. The old man will set them up in a brown-stone front on 
 an up-town avenue. The young man will get drunk, beat his 
 wife, and then there will be a divorce, and the old man will get 
 his daughter back again, with two grandchildren included. The 
 old man will give way to the weight of business and domestic 
 care, and will pass in his checks at sixty. The old woman, the 
 daughter, and the grandchildren will retire to a. cottage which 
 has been saved out of the old man's effects, and that'll be the end 
 of them, so far as the public will know their history." 
 
 Thus cogitating, and feeling inclined to wipe awaj^ a few tears 
 over the affecting picture which he had thus created, Soussign6 
 left the seductive precincts of the Palais Royal, and went over to 
 the Exposition. 
 
 A French woman is easily known by the artistic fit of her 
 dress, the quietness of its colors, and its harmonious adaptation 
 to the size and complexion of the wearer and the surroundings. 
 
 One can locate the nationality of an English woman as far as 
 one can see her. The material of her dress is of some " loud " 
 color and bizarre pattern. She strides in place of walking. She 
 is usually several sizes larger than the French and American 
 women, especially in the matter of boots. She wears a hat which 
 comes down over her forehead, while the other women wear theirs 
 far back on their heads. In place of the predominant olive tints 
 of the French, and the brown of the American, she has usually 
 a clear, healthful, red-and-white complexion. Her hair is seen 
 straggling out from under her hat, and this, with a general care- 
 lessness in her make-up, seems to convey the idea that she looks 
 upon herself as being among a rather inferior class, and that it 
 
THE EXCURSIONISTS IN PAKIS. 361 
 
 is uot necessary for lier to look her best. She falls as far behind 
 the just medium as the American woman goes in advance of it. 
 This one dresses too much; that one too little. Nevertheless, 
 oven with her great ill-fitting boots, her traveling dress which 
 looks not unlike the skin of a zebra, worn stripes outside, her 
 stride and her general appearance of carelessness, she always 
 has something about her that is attractive." She is lithe, supple, 
 vigorous. Her eyes have a modest firmness, and meet those of 
 others squarely, as if at once she knew no fear and suspected no 
 evil. The French girl goes along as if she regarded every man 
 as a trap set to catch her, and she passes him with downcast eyes, 
 as if she feared his presence. The difference between the three 
 classes of women in their estimate of men, as shown by their 
 action in public, is about as follows: 
 
 The French girl seems to think a man dangerous, and there- 
 fore to be avoided. 
 
 The English girl acts as if she sees nothing, knows nothing, 
 wrong in the other sex. 
 
 The American woman bears the appearance of knowing that 
 man is a very wicked, dangerous animal, but at the same time 
 she shows in every movement that, while knowing this, she don't 
 care a copper, and can take care of herself, anyhow. 
 
 Soussigne strolled hither and thither among the crowds, noting 
 these differences, and after a while, being a little tired, he took a 
 seat. Near him were several groups, all resting from their 
 fatigue, and discussing the situation. After a little he noticed 
 that there were two gentlemen near him who were talking 
 English, and who, from their dress and the subjects of conversa- 
 tion, were evidently Americans. Just then a lank, swarthy indi- 
 vidual passed them, and hearing the English, stopped and said : 
 
 " Excuse me, gentleman. You are speaking English. Are you 
 from Ameriky ? " 
 
 " Yes," said one, " we hail from the land of the free and the 
 home of the brave." 
 
 " "Well, now, excuse me, gentlewe/i," said the last comer, " I am 
 
 the Commissioner of the State of ," mentioning a State that 
 
 lies on the east shore of the Mississippi, and south of the Ohio, 
 " and I seen in an American paper this mornin' that thar's to be 
 a great agricultooral fair in Melborn, and I thought to myself 
 that while I was over hyar, I ought to get all the information I 
 could on agricultor. Now, I thought I'd run out to Melborn, if 
 
362 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 it waat more'n a couple or three hours from Paris. But I can't 
 find anybody who can understand what I say. Now, what I 
 want to know is, whar's Melborn, and what's the best way to git 
 thar?" 
 
 "Well," said one of his listeners, with great deliberation, "you're 
 just in time for the Melbourne fair, it you start at once. It is 
 true that the fair doesn't take place till 1880, but, as Melbourne's 
 in Australia, on the opposite side of the globe, and as the walk- 
 ing may not be good all the way, a man who wants to get there 
 on time, so as to get a front seat, ought to start now ! " 
 
 The commissioner from the State of looked a little puzzled 
 
 over this information. Finally he said : 
 
 " Oh, it's way thar, is it? Excuse me, ge\ii\Qmen, for troubling 
 you! I'm much obleeged, I'm sure. Good day, gentlewew.'" 
 and then he went his way. 
 
 A few days later the excursionists separated, and Europe, which 
 had known them as a party, knew them as such no longer. 
 
 ^ 
 
 LETTER LIV. 
 
 OUB BABY ON THE STEAMER. 
 
 On Ship Board, August, 187-. 
 
 rr^IFE on an ocean steamer, after the novelty of the situa- 
 'y\\£jj tion has worn off, becomes monotonous. There is, to be 
 ^*^ ' sure, variation in the surface of the ocean. Its hues 
 change everlastingly. Now it is of the deepest indigo, and again 
 of a diaphanous brown. Sometimes it presents a sombre same- 
 ness for hours ; again, within the same horizon, there is present 
 an infinite variety. 
 
 Inky waves push forward in endless banks, crested with milk- 
 white streamers, and which, now and again caught by the wind,, 
 are tossed away, and disappear in a vivid iris, which, for a brief 
 instant, crowns the wave, a gorgeous aureole. Nowhere, at such 
 times, is there uniformity of effects. Each wave, as it goes 
 careering by, is a kaleidoscope, in whose depths there is an ever- 
 
OUR BABY ON THE STEAMER. 36S 
 
 shifting, a superb opalescence. Yet all this grows wearisome in 
 time. Even variety becomes a burdensome monotony. The- 
 waves are ever baffling the observer. There is no effect that can 
 be retained ; there is no development that is permanent. Weary- 
 ing of an attempt to comprehend the evanescent, of endeavorinff 
 to fix ever-dissolving, ever-vanishing creations, the passenger 
 turns ennuyed from the ocean and occupies himself with the 
 microcosm of humanity within the ship. 
 
 Shut up within this little world, whose opposite horizons one 
 can almost touch with extended arms, every occurrence, however 
 minute, assumes importance. What would be mole-hills in the 
 great world itself, become here vast mountain ranges, with mon- 
 strous, overhanging precipices, and fathomless ravines. What 
 in another place would be trifles, become here of surpassing- 
 consequence. 
 
 Men and women, speedily exhausting each other of their expe- 
 riences, or their mental novelties, are compelled to fall back upoa 
 the chance developments of ship life to secure relief from an 
 overpowering monotony. 
 
 And so, when the doctor announced one day, over dessert, at the 
 dinner table, that there was a baby in the steerage, the tiny fact 
 became of great value. The intelligence passed from mouth to 
 ear until it had gone the rounds of the tables ; and the doctor 
 took rank as a public benefactor. Its age, its mother, her nation- 
 ality, her destination, all formed a welcome subject of specula- 
 tion and comment. Each day, when the doctor returned from 
 his official visit about the ship, he was interrogated concerning 
 the baby in the steerage. 
 
 In time, we all learned, by dint of much questioning, that the 
 mother was a young English woman, whose husband was a 
 farmer in far-away Minnesota. She had gone back to England 
 on business, and while there the babe was born, and now, although 
 but a few months old, she was carrying it across the broad oceaa 
 to her western home. 
 
 A surpassing interest grew up and about this dot of life in the 
 steerage. We canvassed its appearance ; we speculated upon the 
 feelings of the father as he waited the coming of this baby that 
 he had never seen. Surmises were expended upon his anxieties, 
 his apprehensions, his anticipations. All took a part in dis- 
 cussing the popular theme. Even some school-marms, returning 
 from a hurried trip abroad, became interested ; and their faces 
 
364 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 brightened, as if from some distant maternal light, as they par- 
 ticipated in tlie enthusiasm created by the absorbing event. 
 
 Such was the status of Our Baby when some four or five days 
 of sea-life had enveloped us with its monotony. 
 
 One day at luncheon the surgeon announced that Our Baby 
 was ill. Sad announcement! and yet one that came in time to 
 rescue the baby from the danger of being, like other subjects, 
 worn out and forgotten. Baby stock, already t^yo days old, and 
 losing its novelty, and consequently its value, at once rose, and 
 became in active demand for conversational circulation and 
 delivery. The next day's report was looked forward to with 
 expectant interest. 
 
 The next day Our Baby was reported a little worse ; and there- 
 •Upon the interest grew apace. "Men witli impassive faces, en- 
 gaged in handling pieces of painted paste-board in the smoking 
 cabin, intermitted the deal to ask a new-comer the latest bulletin 
 from the steerage nursery. The doctor found himself everywhere 
 the recipient of eager questions and tlie centre of inquiring little 
 groups. Passengers crouched in the lee of the skylights ; couples 
 flirting demurely as they leaned over the sides affecting to watch 
 the waters ; brisk passengers, with expanded chests, breasting the 
 salty air in a vigorous promenade, — all these found time and 
 opportunity to inquire, What about the baby ? 
 
 The morning reports became more depressing ; the evening bul- 
 letins less full of hope. And now, little pilgrimages were organ- 
 ized between cabin and steerage — not to the shrine of Our Lady 
 of this; but of Our Baby on shipboard. Forms clad in water- 
 proofs, and cowled like monks, might be met, threading the un- 
 easy larboard gangway, running tlie gauntlet of its multifarious 
 odors, lurching wildly like inebriated landsmen, all going to the 
 shrine of Our Baby to deposit the frankincense and myrrh of 
 sympathy, and kindred precious offerings. 
 
 Others came reeling back the self-same route who, with low 
 voices, evolved sad forebodings, or gave utterance only to the 
 most tenuous and fragile of hopes. 
 
 And then came one desolate morning; and with its gray mists 
 and sombre skies the announcement : Our Baby is dead. 
 
 Gloom came like a fog and enshrouded the ship, and settled 
 about the hearts of the occupants. Something salt, and misty, 
 like the spray caught up by the winds and dashed across the deck, 
 
ODE BABY ON THE STEAMEE. 365 
 
 filled men's eyes, fell like a fine rain against the windows of 
 each one's soul. 
 
 The diurnal game in the smoking room dragged as if with 
 much friction. A kind of silence came and hovered about the 
 vessel. The regular groupings seemed rent apart as if by the 
 repellant action of some internal force ; and the human atoms of 
 the aggregate wandered alone and apart, wrapped in their own 
 musings, and gazing out sj^mpathetically over the disconso- 
 late sea. 
 
 Solitary figures stole forward to once more and finally pay their 
 devoirs at the central shrine. Not much now to be seen. A form 
 so tiny that one wondered how death could pierce so small a 
 mark. The weak, querulous little wail of yesterday, hushed. 
 Half-closed lids, revealing a crescent of blue beneatli; ahead 
 ringletted with flaxen hair; waxen cheeks and forehead; thin 
 lips rounded and pushed out as if to clasp the tetin of the mater- 
 nal breast; a little face upon which there nestled an expression 
 half of pain and half of contented rest; a pair of transparent 
 mites crossed upon a speck of a breast — these, and a woman 
 with a bowed head, hot, tearless eyes, and sitting rigid as a statue 
 beside the recumbent form, were all. 
 
 That night, as the passengers lay rocking in their uneasy berths, 
 there were none who did not think : Poor mother, sitting there 
 by the side of her only one ! Poor father, waiting away across 
 the water for mother and child ! 
 
 The next day at noon there was gathei'ed a crowd about the 
 starboard gangway. Social distinctions were for the moment 
 obliterated, and the frieze and the corduroy of the steerage 
 brushed freely against the finer stuffs of tlie aristocratic cabin. 
 
 Two sailors in their full uniform dress came slowly along from 
 the forward part of the ship, bearing on their shoulders a long, 
 wide board. One end of this was placed upon the upper rail of 
 the bulwark; the other end was held by the two sailors, one of 
 whom stood upon each side. 
 
 Then came another seaman, bearing tenderly a tiny burden, 
 sown in canvas. This was laid upon the plank just over the 
 rail of the bulwark, and then an officer stepped forward and rev- 
 erently covered it with an American flag. 
 
 By the side of the two sailors holding the plank stood the Cap- 
 tain with uncovered head, an open prayer book in his hand, and 
 close beside him sat a young woman whose head lay heavily 
 
366 SKETCHES BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 against the breast of another woman, and whose eyes were 
 fastened clingingly on the shapeless object that was rudely out- 
 lined upon the plank. 
 
 A dull, leaden sky shut out the sun, and sent down long, va- 
 pory tentacula that seemed to clutch at the tossing hair of the 
 uncovered crowd. The storm rushed by in fierce haste, dashing 
 the spray high above the smoke-stacks, and mingling itself with 
 the lugubrious soughing of the escape-pipes. A twin trail of 
 smoke fled from the stacks, and, uniting at the stern, was crushed 
 down upon the crests of the waves, where it extended itself, a 
 long, shapeless, sombre mass of funeral black. From the direc- 
 tion of the wind, vast troops of waves rushed from out the 
 sinister void, tossing their crested manes, and bore down on the 
 vessel as if anxious to witness the pending spectacle. 
 
 And now was heard through the voices of the storm the solemn 
 tones of the reader: " I am the resurrection and the life." The 
 storm caught the words and flung them up, and out upon the 
 waters, smothering them with its clamor, and scattering them 
 broadcast upon the damp scud that hurried away above the 
 groaning ship. 
 
 "We therefore commit this body to the deep " 
 
 An ofiicer lifted the flag, the two seamen elevated the inner end 
 of the hearse, and the tiny bundle slid down into the wrinkled, 
 seething waves. A great gasp from the breast of the mother 
 echoed the thud that came back from the waters ; and soon after 
 kindly ones encircled her and led her away. 
 
 The great ship sped on^ and the courser- waves, tossing their 
 white manes, rushed over the grave of Our Baby, obliterating it 
 until there shall come a final resurrection. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 *3^02 
 
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