':*>*;;^I'^N#.;':'2 ■Mm'' ■iiV/iSiil® THE G-IRLHOOID SERIB3S, SIX VOLUMES. ILLUbTRATED. AN AMERICAN GIKL ABROAD . Adeline F. Traftok THE DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER . . . . Sophie Mat. ONLY GIRLS Virginia F. ':^ownsend, SALLY WILLIAMS ..... Edna D. Cheney. LOTTIE EAMES. RHODA THORNTON'S GIRLHOOD . Mary E. Pratt, LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston. AN American Girl Abroad. ADELINE TRAFTON. ILLUSTRATED BY MISS L. B. HUMPHREY. BOSTON LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 1900 l.?brary of Sdagf^^A^i offjcQ of tjia Register of Copyrlghf^- ITHE LIBRARY Of CONGRESS WASHINOTON 51108 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, By lee and SHEPAED, In the OflBce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. COPYKIQHT, 1900, BT ADELINE TeAFTON KNOX. All nights Reserved. An Amseican Gibl Abeoad. SECOND COPY, NortooflU ^res8 : I DEDICATE m f etorb of |lcHsant §ags TO MY FATHER, REV. MARK TRAFTON. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. I. ' " At night wc descended into the depths of the steamer to wor- ship with the steerage passengers." Frontispiece. II. i " A dozen umbrellas were tipped up ; the rain fell fast upon a dozen upturned, expecttmt faces." . . ^ . , 57 III. / "At the word of command they struck the most extraordinary attitudes." 157 IV. i/ " Frowsy, sleepy, cross, and caring nothing whatever for the sun, moon, or stars, we stood like a company of Bedlamites, ankle deep in the wet grass upon the summit." , . ,176 V. y *' Evidently the little old woman is going a journey." . 196 VI. " Together we stared at him with rigid and severe counte- nances." 240 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. ABOARD THE STEAMER. We two alone. — " Good by." — "Are you the captain of this ship ? " — Wretchedness. — The jolly Englishman and the Yankee. — A sail ! — The Cattle-man. — The Jersey-man whose bark was on the sea. — Church services under difficulties. — The sweet young English face. — Down into the depths to worship. — " BcAvare ! I stand by the parson." — Singing to the fishes. — Green Erin. — One long cheer. — Farew^ell, Ireland 13 CHAPTER II. FIRST DAYS IN ENGLAND. Up the harbor of Liverpool. — We all emerge as butterflies. — The Mersey tender. — Lot's wife. — " Any tobacco ? " — "Names, please." — St. George's Hall. — The fashionable promenade. — The coffee-room. — The military man who showed the purple tide of war in his face. — The railway carriage. — The young man with hair all aflame. — English villages. — London. — No place for us. — The H. house.— The Babes in the Wood. — The party from the country. — We are taken in charge by the Good Man. — The Golden Cross. — Solitary confinement. — Mrs. B.'s at last. . . . .27 7 8 CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON. Strange ways. — " The bears that went-over to Charlestown." — The delights of a runaway without its dangers. — Flower show at the Crystal Palace, -r "Whit-Monday at Hampton Court. — A queen baby. — "But the carpets?" — Poor Nell Gwynne. — Vandyck faces. — Royal beds. — Lunch at the King's Arms. — Music, how many murders have been com- mitted in thy name ! — Queen Victoria's home at Windsor. — A new "house that Jack built." — The Round Tower. — Stoke Pogis. — Frogmore. — The Knights of the Garter. — The queen's gallery. — The queen's plate. — The royal mews. — The wicker baby- wagons. — The state equipages. . . . 4iJ CHAPTER IV. SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON. The Tower.. — The tall Yankee of inquiring mind. — Our guide in gorgeous array. — War trophies. — Knights in armor. — A professional joke. — The crown jewels — The room where the little princes were smothered. — The "Traitor's Gate." — The Houses of Parliament. — What a throne is like. — The " woolsack." — The Peeping Gallery for ladies. — Westminster Hall and the law courts. — The three drowsy old women. — The Great Panjandrum himself. — Johnson and the pump. — St. Paul's. — Wellington's funeral car. — The Whispering Gallery.— The bell 55 CHAPTER V. AWAY TO PARIS. The wedding par^. — The canals. — New Haven. — Around the tea-table. — Separating the sheep from the goats. — " Will it CONTENTS. 9 be a rough passage ? " — Gymnastic feats of the little steamer. — O, what were officers to us ? — ""Who ever invented ear- rings ? " — Dieppe. — Fish- wives. — Train for Paris. — Fellow- passengers. — Rouen. — Babel. — Deliverance. . . .68 CHAPTER VI. THE PARIS OF 1869. The devil. — Cathedrals and churches. — The Louvre. — Mod- ern French art. — The Beauvais clock, with its droll, little puppets. — Virtue in a red gown. — The Luxembourg Palace. — The yawning statue of Marshal Ney. — Gay life by gas- light. — The Imperial Chcus. — The Opera — How the em- peror and empress rode through the streets after the riots. — The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was her fortune. — Napoleon's tomb 76 CHAPTER Vn. SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITY. The Gobelin tapestry. — How and where it is made. — Pere La- Chaise. — Poor Rachel ! — The baby establishment. — " Now I lay me." — The little mother. — The old woman who lived in a shoe. — The American chapel. — Beautiful women and children. — The last conference meeting. — "I'm a proof- reader, I am." 90 CHAPTER VIII. SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS. The river omnibuses. — Sevres and its porcelain. — St, Cloud as it was. — The crooked little town. — Versailles. — Eugenie's " spare bedroom." — The queen who played she was a farmer's wife. — Seven miles of paintings, — The portraits of the presi- dents . . 100 10 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. A VISIT TO BRUSSELS. To Brussels. — The old and new city. — The paradise and purga- tory of dogs. — The Hotel de Ville and Grand Place. — St. Gudule. — The picture galleries. — Wiertz and his odd paint- ings. — Brussels lace and an hour with the lace-makers. — How the girls found Charlotte Bronte's school. — The scene of " Villette." 109 CHAPTER X. WATERLOO AND THROUGH BELGIUM. To "Waterloo. — Beggars and guides. — The Mound. — Chateau Hougomont. — Victor Hugo's " sunken road." — Antwerp. — A visit to the cathedral. — A drive about the city. — An ex- cursion to Ghent. — The funeral services in the cathedral. — " Poisoned ? Ah, poor man ! " — The watch-tower. — The Friday-market square. — The nunnery. — Longfellow's pil- grims to " the belfry of Bruges." . , 122 CHAPTER XI. A TRIP THROUGH HOLLAND. Up the Meuse to Rotterdam. — Dutch sights and ways. — The pretty milk-carriers. — The tea-gardens. — Preparations for the Sabbath.— An English chapel. — "The Lord's barn." — From Rotterdam to the Hague. — The queen's " House in the "W'ood." — Pictures in private drawing-rooms. — The bazaar. — An evening in a Dutch tea-garden. — Amsterdam to a stranger. — The " sights." — The Jews' quarter. — The family whose home was upon the canals. — Out of the city. — The pilgrims 134 CONTENTS. 11 CHAPTER XII. THE RHINE AND RHENISH PRUSSIA. First glimpse of the Rhine. — Cologne and the Cathedral.— " Shosef in ter red coat." — St. Ursula and the eleven thou- sand virgins. — Up the Rhine to Bonn. — The German stu- dents. — Rolandseek. — A search for a resting-place. — Our Dutch friend and his Malays. — The story of Hildegund. — A quiet Sabbath. — Our Dutch friend's reply. — Coblentz. — The bridge of boats. — Ehrenbreitstein, over the river. — A scorching day upon the Rhine. — Romance under difficulties. — Mayence. — Frankfort. — Heidelberg. — The ruined castle. — Baden-Baden. — A glimpse at the gambling. — The new and the old " Schloss." — The Black Forest. — Strasbourg. — The mountains. 147 CHAPTER XIII. DAYS IN SWITZERLAND. The Lake of Lucerne. — Days of rest in the city. — An excur- sion up the Righi. — The crowd at the summit. — Dinner at midnight. — Rising before "the early worm." — The "sun- rise " according to Murray. — Animated scarecrows. — OIF for a tour through Switzerland. — The lake for the last time. — Grutlii. —William Tell's chapel. — Fluellen. — Altorf. — Swiss haymakers. — An hour at Amsteg. — The rocks close in. — The Devil's Bridge. — The dangerous road. — "A carriage has gone over the precipice ! " — Andermatt. — Desolate rocks. — Exquisite wild flowers. — The summit of the Furka. — A de- scent to the Rhone glacier. — Into the ice. — Swiss villages. — Brieg. — The convent inn. — The bare little chapel on the hill. — To Martigny 168 12 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIV. AMONG THE EVERLASTING HILLS. The quaint inn. — The Falls of the Sallenches, and the Gorge de Trient. — Shopping in a Swiss village. — A mule ride to Chamouni. — Peculiarities of the animals. — Entrance to the village. — Egyptian mummies lifted from the mules. — Rainy- days. — Chamois. — The Mer de Glace. — *' Look out of your window." — Mont Blanc. — Sallenches. — A diligence ride to Geneva. — Our little old woman. — The clownish peasant. — The fork in the road. — " Adieu." 189 CHAPTER XV. LAST DAYS IN SWITZERLAND. Geneva. — Calvin and jewelry. — Up Lake Leman. — Ouchy and Lausanne.—" Sweet Clarens."— Chillon. — Freyburg. — Sight- seers. — The Last Judgment. — Berne and its bears. — The town like a story. — The Lake of Thun, — Interlaken. — Over the Wengern Alp. — The Falls of Giessbach. — The Brunig Pass. — Lucerne again 201 CHAPTER XVL BACK TO PARIS ALONE. Coming home. — The breaking up of the party. — We start for Paris alone. — Basle, and a search for a hotel. — The twilight ride. — The shopkeeper whose wits had gone "a wool-gathering." — "Two tickets for Paris." — What can be the matter now? — Michel Angelo's Moses. — Paris at mid-. . night. — The kind commissionaire. — The good French gentle- man and his fussy little wife. — A search for Miss H.'s. — " Come up, come up." — " Can women travel through Europe alone ? " A word about a woman's outfit 220 AN AMERICAI^ GIRL ABROAD. CHAPTER I. ABOAED THE STEAMER. We two alone. — '♦ Good by." — " Are you the captain of this ship?" — Wretchedness. — The jolly Englishman and the Yankee. — A sail ! —The cattle-man. — The Jersey-man whose bark was on the sea. — Church services under difficulties. — The sweet young English face. — Down into the depths to worship. — "Beware! I stand by the Parson." — Singing to the fishes. — Green Erin. — One long cheer. — Farewell Ireland, WE were going to Europe, Mrs. K. and I — alone, with the exception of the ship's com- pany — unprotected, save by Him who watches over the least of his creatures. We packed our one trunk, upon which both name and nationality were conspicu- ously blazoned, with the necessaries, not luxuries, of a woman's toilet, and made our simple preparations for departure without a shadow of anxiety. " They who know nothing, fear nothing," said the paterfamilias, but added his consent and blessing. The lain poured in torrents as we drove down to the wharf But 13 14 AJV AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. floods could not have dampened our enthusiasm. A wild Irishman, with a suggestion of spirituous things in his air and general appearance, received us at the foot of tlie plank, one end of which touched earth, the other that unexplored region, the steamer. We followed the direction of his dirty finger, and there fell from our eyes, as it were, scales. In our ignorance, we had ex- pected to find vast space, elegant surroundings, glass, glare, and glitter. We peered into the contracted quar- ters of the ladies' cabin. One side was filled with boxes and bundles ; thie other, with the prostrate form of an old lady, her head enveloped in a mammoth ruf- fle. We explored the saloon. The purser, with a wen and a gilt-banded caj) on his head, was flying about like one distracted. An old gentleman similarly attired, with the exception of the wen, — the surgeon as we af- terwards learned, — read a large book complacently in one corner, murmuring gently to himself His upper teeth Jacked fixity, so to speak; and as they fell with every word, he had the appearance of gnashing them continually at the invisible author. There was a hurry- ing to and fro of round, fresh-faced stewards in short jackets, a pushing ahd pulling of trunks and boxes, the sudden appearance and disaj^pearance of nondescript individuals in slouched hats and water-proofs, the stir- ring about of heavy feet upon the deck aboA^e, the rat- tling of chains, the 'yo-ing' of hoarse voices, as the sailors pulled at the ropes, and, with it all, that sicken- inp: odor of oil, of dead dinners — of everything, so in^ describable, so never-to-be-forgotten. Somewhat sad- dened, and considerably enlightened upon the subject <^^ ocean steamers, we sought our state-room. It ABOARD THE STEAMER. lo boasted two berths (the upper conveniently gamed by mounting the stationary wash-stand), and a velvet-cov- ered sofa beneath the large, square window, which last we learned, months later, when reduced to a port-hole for light and air, to appreciate. A rack and half a dozen hooks against the wall completed its furniture. The time of departure arrived. We said the two little words that bring so many tears and heartaches, and ran up on the deck with the rain in our faces, and something that w^as not all rain in our eyes, for one last look at our friends ; but they were hidden from sio-ht. Tliere comes to me a dim recollection of at- tempting to mount to an inaccessible place : of clinging to wet roj^es with the intention of seeing the last of the land; of thinking it, after a time, a senseless proceeding, and of resigning ourselves finally to our berths and inevitable circumstances. Eight bells and the dinner bell; some one darkened our doorway. " What's this ? Don't give it up so. D'ye hear the dinner bell ? " " Are — are you the captain of this ship ? " gasped Mrs. K., feebly, from the sofa. " To be sure, madam. Don't give it up so." Mrs. K. groaned. There came to me one last gleam of hope. What if it were possible to brave it out! In a moment my feet were on the floor, but whether my name were McGregor, or not, I could not tell. I made an abortive attempt after the pretty hood, prepared with such pleasant anticipations, and had a dim con- sciousness that somebody's hands tied it about my head. Then we started. We climbed heicjhts, we de- scended depths indescribable, in that short walk to the 16 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD.^ saloon, and there was a queer feeling of having a wind- mill, instead of a head, upon my shoulders. A number of sympathizing faces were nodding in the most vn- markable manner, as we reached the door, and the tables performed antic evolutions. " Take me back ! " and the berth and the little round stewardess received me. There followed a night of misery. One can form no idea, save from experience, of the horrors of the first night ujjon an ocean steamer. There are the whir, and buzz, and jai", and rattle, and bang of the screw and engine; the pitcliing and rolling of the ship, with the sensation of standing upright for a moment, and then of being made to rest comfortably upon the top of your head; the sense of undergoing in- ternal somersaults, to say nothing of describing every known curve externally. You study physiology invol- imtarily, and doubt if your heart, your lungs, or indeed any of your internal organs, are firmly attached, after all; if you shall not lose them at the next lurch of the ship. Your head is burning with fever, your hands and feet like ice, and you feel dimly, but Avretchedly, that this is but the beginning of sorrows ; that there are a dozen more days to come. You are conscious of a vague wonder (as the night lengthens out intermina- bly) what eternity can be, since time is so long. The bells strike the half hours, toi*menting you with calcula- tions which amount to nothing. Everything within the room, as well as without, swings, and rolls, and rattles. You are confident your bottles in the rack will go next, and don't much care if they do, though you lie and dread the crash. You are tormented with thirst, and the ice-water is in that same ABOARD THE STEAMER. 17 rack, just beyond your reach. The candle in its silver case, hinged against the wall, swings back and forth with dizzy motion, throwing moving distorted shad- ows over everything, and making the night like a sickly day. You long for darkness, and, when at last the light grows dim, until only a red spark remains and the smoke that adds its mite to your misery, long for its return. At regular intervals you hear the tramp, tramp, overhead, of the relieving watch ; and, in the midst of iitful slumbers, the hoarse voices of tlie sailors, as the wind freshens and they hoist the siils, wake you from fiightful dreams. At the first gray ni morning till night, with a voice that could carry no air correctly, but with an enjoyment de- iightfiil to witness — always a song suggested by exist- ing circumstances, but with ** Cheer, boys, cheer; my motlier"'s sold her mangle," when everything else failed. He was forward among the men on the deck with an eye to the wind, down below brino'in^ fruit and comfort to the sick in the steerag(% dealing out apples and oranges to the chih dren, with an encouraging word and the iirst line of a song for everybody. The life of the ship was an Englishman, with the fresh com])lexion almost invariably seen upon Eng- lishmen, and forty years upon a head that looked twenty-live. He was going home after a short tour through the United States, with his mind as full of prepidices as his memorandum-book was of notes. He chanced, oddly enough, to room with the genuine Yankee of the company — a long, lean, good-natured in- dividual from one of the eastern states, " close on tor Varmont," who had a w\ay of rolling his eyes fearfully, especially when he glared at his food. He represente tlian strength, when perfect exhilaration, came to us ; Avhen existence alone was a delight? To sit upon the low wheel-house, with wraps and ribbons and hair flying in the wind, while we sang, — " O, a life on the ocean wave ! " to admiring fishes ; to watch the long, lazy swell of the sea, or the spray breaking from the tops of the white caps into tiny rainbows ; to walk the rolling deck for hours with never a shadow of weariness ; to cling to the flag-staff when the stern of the ship rose in the air then dropped like a heavy stone into the sea, sending the spray far over and above us ; to count the stars at night, watching the other gleaming phosjDhorescent stars that seemed to have fallen from heaven upon the long wake of the steamer, — all this was a delight unspeakable. One morning, when the land seemed a forgotten dream, we awoke to find green Erin close beside us. All the day before the sea-gulls had been hovering over us — beautiful creatures, gray above and white beneath, clouds with a silver lining. Tiny land birds, too, flew about us, resting wearily upon the rigging. The sea all at once became like glass. It seemed like the book of Revelation when the sun shone on it, — • the sea of glass mingled with fire. For a time the land was but a line of rock, with martello towers perched upon the points. On the right, F;istnet Kock rose out of the sea, crowned with a light-house ; then the gray barren shore of Cape Clear Island, and soon the sharp- pointed Stag Rocks. It is a treacherous coast. "I've been here many a night," said the captain, as he gave us his glass, "wdien I never expected to see 26 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. morning." And all the wdiile he was speaking, the sea smiled and smiled, as though it could never be cruel. We drew nearer and nearer, until we could see the green fields bounded by stone walls, the white, winding roads, and little villages nestling among tlie hills. Towards noon the lovely harbor of Queens- town opened before us, surrouaded and almost shut in by rocky islands. Through the glass we could see the city, with its feet in the bay. We were no longer alone. The horizon was dotted with sails. Sometimes a steamer crossed our wake, or a ship bore down upon us. We hoisted our signals. We dipped our flag. The sailors were busy painting the boats, and polishing the brass till it shone again. Now the tender steams out from Queenstown. The steerage passengers in unwonted finery, tall hats and unearthly bonnets, and one in a black silk gown, are running about forward, shaking hands, gathering up boxes and bundles, and pressing towards the side which tiie tender has reached. There are the shouting of orders, the throwing of a rope, and in a moment they are crowding the plank. One long cheer, echoed from the stern of our steamer, and they are off. All day we walked the deck ; even the sick crawled up at last to see the panorama. We still lingered when night fell, and we had turned away from the land to strike across the channel, and the picture rests with me now ; the purjole sky with one long stretch of piu'ple, hazy cloud, behind which the sun went down ; the long, low line of purjjle rock, our last glimpse of Ireland, and the shining, purple sea, with not a ripple upon its sur- face. FIRST BATS IN ENGLAND. 27 CHAPTER II. FIRST DAYS IN ENGLAND. U[t the liarbor of Liverpool. — We all emerge as butterflies. — The Mersey tender. — Lot's wife. — " Any tobacco ? " — "Names, please." — St. George's Hall. — The fashionable promenade. — The coffee-room. — The military man who showed the purple tide of war in his face. — Tiie railway carriage. — The young man with liair all aflame — English villages. — London. — No place for us. — The H. house. — The Babes in the Wood. — The party from the country. — We are taken in charge by the Good Man. — The Golden Cross. — Solitary confinement. — Mrs. B.'s at last. WE Steamed np the harbor of Liverpool the next morning. ISTew Brighton, witli its green ter- races, its Chinese-pagoda villas, spread out npon one side, upon tlie other that solid wall of docks, the barri- cade that breaks the constant charges of the sea, witli the masts of sliips from every land for an abattis. Tlie wraps and shapeless garments worn so long were laid aside; the pretty hood which had, like charity, covered so many sins of omission, hidden, itself, at last, the soft wool stiffened with the sea spray, the bright colors dimmed by smoke, and soot, and burning sun. We crept shyly upon the deck in our unaccustomed finery, as though called at a moment's notice to play another 28 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. woman's part, half-learned. Not in ns alone was the transformation. The girl in blue had blossomed into a a bell — a blue bell. The Cattle Man, his hands re- leased at last from the thraldom of his pockets, stalked about, funereal, in wrinkled black. A solferino neck-tie and tall hat of a pre Adamite formation transmogrified our Mowing Machine friend. Nondescripts, that had lain about the deck wrapped in cocoons of rugs and shawls, emerged suddenly — butterflies! A pMiiiful courtesy seized us all. We had doffed the old familiar intercourse with our sea-gnrments. We gathered in knots, or stood apart singly, mindful at last of our dignity. The Mersey tender (a tender mercy to some) puffed out to meet us, and we descended the j^l^nk as those who turn away fiom home, leaving much of our thoughts, and something of our hearts, within the sltip. It liad been such a place of rest, of blessed idleness! Only when our feet touched tlie whaif did we take up the burden of life ng.-jin. TIrmc were the meeting of friends, in which Ave had no part; the mael- strcmi of horses, nnd cnrts, and struggling humanity, in which we found a most unwilling ])lace; and then we followed fast in the footsteps of the Mowing Machine Man, who in his turn followed a hair-covered trunk upon the shoulders of a stout ])orter, our destination the custom-house shed close by. For a moment, as we were tossed hither and thither by the swaying mass, our desires followed our thoughts to a certain sheltered nook, upon a still, white deck, with the sunbeams slanting down through the furled sails above, with the lazy, lapping sea below, and only our own idle thoughts for company. Then we remembered Lot's wife. FIRST DATS IN ENGLAND. 29 There was a little meek-faced custom-house officer in waiting, witli a voice so out of proportion to his size, that he seemed to have hired it lor the occasion, or come into it with his uniform by virtue of his office. "Any tobacco? "he asked, severely, as we lifted tlie lid of our one trunk. We gave a virtuous and indig- nant negative. That was ail. We might go our sev- eral ways now unmolested. One fervent expression of good wishes among our little company, while we make for a moment a network of clasi)ed hands, and then we pass out of the great gates into our new world, and into the chitches of the waiting cabmen. By what stroke of good fortune we and our belongings were consigned to one and the same cab, in the confusion and terror of the moment, we did not know at the time. It was clearly through the intervention of a kind fellow-])as- senger, who, seeing that amazement enveloped us like a garment, kindly took us in charge. The dazed, as well as the lame and lazy, are cared for, it seems. By what stroke of good fortune we ever reached our desti- nation, we knew still less. Our cab was a triumph of impossibilities, uncertainties, and discomfort. Our at- tenuated beast, like an animated hoop skirt, whose bones were only prevented, by the encasing skin, from flying off as we turned the corners, experienced hardly less difficulty in drawing his breath than in drawing his load. We descended at the entrance to the hotel as those who have escaped from imminent peril. We mounted the steps — two lone, but by no means lorn, damsels, two anxious, but by no means aimless females, knowing little of the world, less of travelling, and nothing whatever of foreign ways. Our 30 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. very air, as we entered the door, was an apology for the intrusion. " Names, please," said the smiling man in waiting, opening what appeared to be the book of fate. We added ours to the long list of pilgrims and strangers wlio had sojourned here, dotting our i's and crossing our t's in the most elegant manner imaginable. If any one has a doubt as to our early advantages, let him ex- amine the record of the Washington Hotel, Liverpool. Tiie heading, "Remarks," upon the page, puzzled us. Were they to be of a sacred or profane nature? Of an autobiographical character? Were they to refer to the dear land we had just left? Through some ])olitical tliroes she had just brought forth a ruler. Sliould we add to the U. S. against our names, "As well as could be expected"? We hesitated, — and wrote nothing. Up the wide stairs, 23ast the transparency of Washing- ton — in the bluest of blue coat-^, the yellowest of top boots, and an air of making the best of an unsought and rather ridiculous position — we followed the doily upon the head of the pretty chambermaid to our wide, comfortable room, with its formidable, higli-curtained beds. The satchels and parcels innumerable were pro])ped carefully into rectitude upon the dressing table, under the impression that tlie ship would give a lurch ; and then, gazing out through the great plate glass windows upon the busy square below, Ave endeav- ei'ed to compose our perturbed minds and gather our scattered w-its. It is not beautiful, this great city of Liverpool, ci'eep- ing up from the sea. It has little to interest a stranger Jiside from its magnificent docks and warehouses. F-JRST DAI'S IN ENGLAND. 31 • There are mammoth truck horses from Suffolk, with feet like cart wheels ; there is St. George's Hall, the pride of the people, standing in the busy square of the same name, with a statue of the saint himself — a ter- ror to ail dragons — just before it. It is gray, many col- umned, wide stepped, vast in its proportions. Do you care for its measurement? Having seen that, you are ready to depart; and, indeed, there is nothing to detain one here beyond a day of rest, a moment to regain com230Sure after the tossing of the sea. There are some substantial dwellings, — for commerce has its kings, — and some fine shops, — for commerce also has its queens, — and one fine drive, of which we learned too late. The air of endurance, which pervades the whole city, as it does all cities in the old world, impresses one greatly, as though they were built for eternity, not time ; the founders having forgotten that here we are to have no continuing city. In the new world, man tears down and builds up. Every generation moulds and fashions its towns and cities after its own desires, or to suit its own means. Man is master. In the old world, one generation after another surges in and out of these grim, gray walls, leaving not so much as the mark the waves leave upon the rocks. Unchanged, unchanging, they stand age after age, time only soften- ing the hard outlines, deepening the shadows it has cast upon them, and so bringing them into a likeness of each other that they seem to have been the design of one mind, the work of one pair of hands, and hardly of mortal mind or hands at that. Th(^y seem to say to man, "We have stood here ages before you were born. We shall stand here ages after you are forgotten." 32 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. « Tliey must be filled with echoes, with ghosts, and }];iuntino- memories. Bold Street, a tolerably narrow nnd winding way, in which many are found to walk,^ — contrary to all prece- dent, — boasts the finest shops. Here the Lancashi'c witches, as the beauties of the county are called, walk, and talk, and buy gewgaws of an afternoon. It was something strange to us to see long silken skills en- tirely destitute of crinoline, rufHe, or flounce, trailed here through mud and mire, or raised displaying low Congress gaitei'S, destitute of heels. For our- selves, if we had been the king of the Cannibal Islands, we could hardly have attracted more attention than we did in our plain, short travelling suits and high- heeled boots. It grew embarrassing, especially when our expression of unqualified benevolence drew after us a train of beggars. They crossed the street to meet us. They emerged from every side street and alley, thrusting dirty hands into our faces, and repeating twice-told tales in our ears, until we were thankful when oblivion and the shadow of the hotel fell upon us. We dined in the coffee-room, — that comfortable and often delightfully cosy apartment fitted with little tables, and with its corner devoted to books, to papers and conversation, — that combination of dining, tea and reading-room unknown to an American hotel, — sacred to the sterner sex from all time, and only opened to us within a few yeai*s, — the gates being forced then, I imagine, by American women, who will not consent to hide their light under a bushel, or keep to some far- awav corner, unseeing and unseen. English women, FIRST DAI'S IN ENGLAND. ' 33 Rs a rale, take their meals in their own private parlors. Perhaps because English men generally desire the flow- ers intrusted to their fostering care to blush unseen. It may be better for the gardeners ; it may be better for the flowers — I cannot tell; but we dined in the coffee- room, as Americans usually do. One of the dergynien, who attend at such places, received our order. It was not so very formidable an affair, after all, this going down by ourselves; or woul:l not have been, if the big- eyed waiter, who w-atched our every movement, would have left us, and the military man at the next table, Avlio showed "the purple tide of war," or something else, in his face, and blew his nose like a trombone, ceased to stare. As it was, we aired our most elegant table manners. We turned in our elbows and turned out our toes, — so to speak, — and ate our mutton with a grace that destroyed all appetite. We tried to appear as though we had frequently dined in the presence of a wdiole battalion of soldiery, under the scrutiny of in- numerable waiters, — and failed, I am sure. "With verdure clad " was written upon every line of our faces. The occasion of this cross fire we do not know^ to this day. Was it unbounded admiration ? Was it spoons ? Having brushed off the spray of the sea, having balanced ourselves upon the solid earth, having seen St. George's Hall, there was nothing to detain us longerj and the next morning we were on our way to London. We had scrutinized our bill, — which might have been reckoned in pounds, ounces, and penny- weights, for aught we knew to the contrary, — and in- formed the big-eyed waiter that it was correct. We 3 34 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. had also offered him imploringly our largest piece ot silver, which he condescended to accept; and having been presented with a ticket and a handful of silver and copper by the porter who accompanied us to the station across the way, in return for two or three gold pieces, we shook off the dust of Liverpool from our feet, turned our eyes from the splendors of St. George's Hall, and set our faces steadfastly towards our destina^ tion. There was a kind of luxury, notwithstanding our prejudices, in this English railway cairiage, with its cushions all about us, even beneath our elbows ; a rest- fulness unknown in past experience of travel, in the ability to turn our eyes away from the flying landscape without, to the peaceful quiet, never intruded upon, within. We did not miss the woman who will insist upon closing the window behind you, or opening it, as the case may be. JSTot one regret had we for the " B-o-s-t-o-n papers ! " nor for the last periodical or novel. The latest foshion gazette was not thrown into our lap only to be snatched away, as we became interest- ed in a plan for rejuvenating our wardrobe; nor were we assailed by venders of pop corn, apples, or gift packages of candy. Even the blind man, with his offering of execrable poetry, was unknown, and the conductor examined our tickets from outside the win- dow. Settling back among our cushions, while we mentally enumerated these blessings of omission, there came a thought of the perils incurred by solitary fe- males locked into these same comfortable carriages with madmen. If the danger had been so great for one solitary female, what must it be for two, we thought with horror. We gave a quick glance at our FIRST DATS IN ENGLAND. 35 fellow-passenger, a young man Avith hair all aflame. Certainly his eyes did roll at that moment, but it was only in search of a newsboy; and when he exclaimed, like any American gentleman, "Hang the boy!" we became perfectly reassured. He proved a most agree- able travelling companion. We exchanged questions and opinions upon every subject of mutual interest, from the geological fonnation of the earth to the Alabama claims. I can hardly tell which astonished us most, his profound erudition or our own. Now, I have not the least idea as to whether Lord John Rus- sell sailed the Alabama, or the Alabama sailed of itself j spontaneously ; but, whichever way it was, I am con- vinced it was a most iniquitious proceeding, and so thought it safe to take high moral ground, and assure liim that as a nation we could not allow it to 2:0 un- punished. You have no idea what an assistance it is. Avhen one is somewhat ignorant and a good deal at a loss for arguments, to take high moral ground. When we were weary of discussion, when knowl- edge palled upon our taste, we pulled aside the little blue curtain, and gave ourselves up to gazing upon the picture from the window. I doubt if any part of Eng- land is looked upon with more curious eyes than that lying between Liverpool and London. It is to so many Americans the first glimpse of strange lands. Spread out in almost imperceptible furrows were tlie velvet turfed meadows, the undipped hedges a mass of tangled greenness between. For miles and miles tliey stretched away, with seldom a road, never a solitary house. The banks on either side were tufted with broom and yellow with gorse; the hill-sides in the 36 ^^ AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. distance, white with chalk, or black with the heather that would blossom into i)urple beauty with the sum- mer. We rushed beneath arches festooned, as for a gala-day, with hanging vines. Tiny gardens bloomed beside the track at every station, and all along the walls, the arched bridges, and every bit of stone u]X)n the wayside, was a mass of clinging, glistening i\y. Not the half-dead, straggling thing we tend and shield so carefully at home, with here and there a leaf put fortli for very shame. These, bright, clear-cut, deep- tinted, crowded and overlapped each other, and ran riot over the land, transforming the dingy, mildewy cottages, bits of imperishable ugliness, into things of beauty, if not eternal joys. Not in the least picturesque or pleasing to the eye were these English villages; straoG:lini>; rows of dull red brick houses set amidst tlie fields — dirty city children upon a picnic — with a ' foot square garden before each door, cared for possibly, possibly neglected. A row of liower-pots upon the etone ledge of every little wdndow, a row of chimney- pots upon the slate roof of every dwelling. Sometimes /I narrow road twisted and writhed itself from one to another, edged by high brick walls, hidden beneath a weight of ivy; sometimes romantic lanes, shaded by old elms, and green beyond all telling. The towns were much the same, — outgrown villages. And the glimpse we caught, as we flew^ by, so far above the roofs often that we could almost peep down upon the hearths through the chimney tops, was by no means inviting. Dusk fell upon us with the smoke, and mist, and diiz- aling rain of London, bringing no anxiety ; for was there FIRST DATS IN ENGLAND. 37 not, through the though tfiilness of friends, a plac& prepared for us ? Our pleasant acquaintance of the golden locks forsook his own boxes, and bundles, and innumerable belongings to look for our baggage, and saw us safely consigned to one of the dingy cabs in waiting. I trust the people of our own country repay to wanderers there something of the kindness which American women, travelling alone, receive at the handa of strangers abroad. It was neither tlie first nor the last courtesy proiFered most respectfully, and received in the spirit in which it was oiFered. There is a deal of nonsense in the touch-me-not air with which many go out to see the world, as there is a deal of folly in the opposite extreme. But these acquaintances of a day, the opportunity of coming face to face with the people in whose country you chance to be, of hearing and answering their strange questions in regard to our government, our manners and customs, as well as in displaying our own ignorance in regard to their insti- tutions, in giving information and assistance when it is in our power, and in gratefully receiving the same from others, — all this constitutes one of the greatest -pleasures of journeying. Our peace of mind received a rude* shock, when, after rattling over the pavings around the little park in Queen's Square, and pulling the bell at Mr. B.'s boarding-house, we found that we were indeed ex- pected, but indefinitely, and no place awaited us. We had forgotten to telegraph. It was May, the Lon- don season, and the hotels full. "X. told us you were coming," said the most lady-like landlady, lead- ing us into the drawing-room from the dank darkness 38 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD, of the street. TJiere was a glow of red-hot coals in the grate, a suggestion of warmth and comfort in the bright colors and cosy appointments of the room — but no place for us. " I'm very son-y ; if you had teh^- graphed — but we can take you by Monday certainly," she said. I counted my fingers. Two days. Ah ! but we might perish in the streets before that. Every= thing began to grow dark and doleful in contemplation. Some one entered the room. The landlady turned to him : " O, here is the good man to whose care you were consigned by X." We gave a sigh of relief, as "we greeted the Good Man, for all our courage, like the immortal Bob Acres's, had been oozing from our finger ends. And if we possess one gift above another, it is an ability to be taken care of "Do you know X. ? " asked another gentleman, glancing up from his writing at tlie long, red-covered table. "We trav- elled with him," nodding towards his daughter, whose feet touched the fender, "through Italy, last winter." "Indeed-^" " I'll just send out to a hotel near by," interrupted kind Mrs. B., " and see if you can be accommodated a day or two." How very bright the room became ! Tlie world was not hollow, after all, nor our dolls stuffed with sawdust. Even the cabman's rattle at tlie knocker, and demand of an extra sixpence for waiting, could not disturb our serenity. The messenger re- turned. Yes ; we could be taken in (?) at the H. house ; and accepting Mrs. B.'s invitation to return and spend the evening, we mounted to our places in the little cab, as though it had been a triumphal car, and wei e whizzed around the corner at an alarming pace by the impatient calnnnn. FIRST DATS IN ENGLAND. 39 I should be sorry to prejudice any one against the H. house — which I might perhaps say is not the H. house at all; I hardly like to compare it to a whited sepulchre, though that simile did occur to my mind. Very fair in its exterior it was, with much plate glass, and ground glass, and gilding of letters, and shining of brass. It had been two dwelling-houses; it was now one select family hotel. But the two dwelling- houses had never been completely merged into one ; never married, but joined, like the Siamese twins. Tliere was a confusing double stairway ; having as- cended the light one, you were morally certain to de- scend the wrong. There was a confusing double hall, with doors in every direction opening everywhere but upon the way you desired to go. We mounted to the top of the house, followed by two porters with our lug- gage, one chambermaid with the key, another to ask if we would dine, and two more bearing large tin cans of hot water. We grew confused, and gasped, " We — we believe we don't care for any more at present, thank you," and so dismissed them all. The furniture was so out of proportion to the room that I think it must have been introduced in an infant state, and grown to its present proportions there. The one window was so high that we were obliged to jump up to look out over the mirror upon the bureau — a gymnastic feat we did not care to i*epeat. The bed curtains were gray; mdeed there was a gi'ay chill through the whole place. We sat down to hold a council of war. We resolved ourselves into a committee of ways and means, our feet upon the cans of hot water. "Pleas- ant," I said, as a leading remark, my heart beginnnig 40 AiV AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. to warm under the influence of the hot water. " Picas ant ? " repeated Mrs. K. ; " it's enough to make one homesick. We can't stay here." " But," I interposed, "suppose we leave here, and can't get in anywhere else ? " A vision of the Babes in the Wood rose be- fore me. Tliere was a rap at the door; the fourth cliambermaid, to announce dinner. We finished our consultation Imrriedly, and descended to the ])arlor, where we were to dine. It was a small room, already occupied by a large table and a party from the country; an old lady to play propriet}^ a middle-aged person of severe countenance to act it, and a pair of incipient and insi])id lovers. He was a spectacled prig in a white necktie, a clergyman, I suppose, though he looked amazingly like a waiter, and she a little round combi- nation of dim})les and giggle. He. " Have you been out for a walk this morn- ing?" 8he. "No; te-he-he-he." He. " You ouglit to, you know." She. " Te-he-he-he — yes." He. " You should always exercise before dinner." 8he. " Te-he-he-he." Here the words gave out entirely, and, it being re- markably droll, all joined in the chorus. " We must go somewhere else, if possible," we explained to Mrs. B., when, a little later, we found our way to her door. "At least we shall be better contented if we make the attempt." The Good Man offered his protection ; we found a cab, and proceeded to explore the city, asking admittance in vain at one hotel after another, until at last the Golden Cross u2:>on the Strand, more charitable FIRST DATS IN ENGLAND. 41 than its neighbor, or less full, opened its doors, and the good landlady, of unbounded proportions, made us both welcome and comfortable. Quite palatial did our neat bed-room, draped in white, appear. We were the proud possessors, also, of a parlor, with a round mirror over the mantel, a round table in the centre, a sofa, of which Pharaoh's heart is no comparison as regards hardness, a row of stiff, proper arm-chairs, and any amount of or- namentation in the way of works of art upon the walls, and shining snuffers and candlesticks upon the mantel. Our bargain completed, there remained nothing to be done but to remove our baggage from the other house, which I am sure we could never have attempted alone. Think of walking in and addressing the land- lady, while the chambermaids and waiters peeped from behind the doors, with, " We don't like your house, madam. Your rooms are tucked up, your beds uninvit- ing, your chambermaids frowsy, your waiters stupid, and your little parlor an abomination." How could we have done it? The Good Man volunteered. " But do you not mind?" "Not in the least." Is it not wonderful ? How can we believe in the equality of the sexes ? In less than an hour we were temporarily settled in our new quarters, our rescued trunks con- signed to the little bed-room, our heart-felt gratitude in the possession of the Good Man. We took our meals now in our own parlor, trying the solitary confinement system of the English during our two days'" stay. It seemed a month. Not a sign of life was there, save the landlady's pleasant face behind the bar and the waiter who answered our bell, with the exception of a pair of mammoth shoes before the next 42 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. cloor, mornings, and the bearded face of a man that star- tled us, once, upon the stairs. And yet the house was full. It was a relief when our two days of banishment were over, when in Mrs. B.'s pretty drawing-room, and around her table, we could again meet friends, and real- ize that we were still in the world. EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON. 43 CHAPTER III. EXCURSIONS FKOM LONDON. Strange ways. — " The bears that went over to Charlestown.'*— - The delights of a runaway without its dangers. — Flower show at the Crystal Palace. — Whit-Monday at Hampton Court. — A queen baby. — "But the carpets?" — Poor Nell Gwynne. — Vandyck faces. — Royal beds. — Lunch at the King's Arms. — O Music, how many murders have been com- mitted in thy name ! — Queen Victoria's home at Windsor. — A new " house that Jack built." — The Round Tower. — Stoke Pogis. — Frogmore. — The Knights of the Garter. — The queen's gallery. — The queen's plate. — The royal mews. — The wicker baby-wagons. — 'The state equipages. E bought an umbrella, — everyone buys an umbrella who goes to London, — and this, in its alpaca glory, became our constant companion. We purchased a guide-book to complete our equipments ; but so disreputable, so yellow-covered, was its outward appearance, so suggestive of everything but facts, that we consigned it to oblivion, and put ourselves under the guidance of our Boston friends, the Good Man and his family. For two busy weeks we rattled over the flat pavings of the city in the low, one-horse cabs. We climbed towers, we descended into cry[)ts, we examined tomb- 44 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD, stones, we gazed upon mummies. Everything wr.s new, strange, and wonderful, even to the little boys in the street, who, as well as the omnibus drivers, were decked out in tall silk hats — a piece of absurdity in one case, and extravagance in the other, to our minds. The one-horse carriages rolled about upon two wheels; the occupants, like cross children, facing in every direc- tion but the one they were going, and everybody, con- trary to all our preconceived ideas of law and order, turned to the left, instead of to the right, — to say nothing of other strange and perplexing ways that came under our observation. We had come abroad upon the same errand as the bears who " went over to Charlestown to see what they could see," and so stared into every window, into every passing face, as though we were seekincc the lost. We became known as the women who wanted a cab ; our appeai-ance within the iron posts that guard the entrance to Queen's Square from Southampton Row being the signal for a per- fect Babel of unintelligible shouts and gesticulations down the long line of waiting vehicles, with the char- ging down upon us of the first half dozen in a highly dangerous manner. Wisdom is sometimes the growth of days ; and we soon learned to dart out in an un. expected moment, utterly deaf and blind to everything and everybody but the first man and the first horse, and thus to go off in triumph. But if our exit was triumphant, what was our entry to the square, when weary, faint with seeing, hearing, and trying in vain to fix everything seen and heard in our minds, we returned in a hansom! English ladies do not much affect this mode of conveyance, but Araer EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON. 45 ican wo7iien abroad have, or take, a wide margin in '.natters of mere conventionality, — and so ride in lian- dom cabs at will. They are grown-up baby perambu- lators upon two wheels ; the driver sitting up behind, where the handle would be, and drawing the reins of interminable length over the top of the vehicle. Pic- ture it in your mind, and then wonder, as I did, what power of attraction keeps the horse upon the gTound ; what prevents his flying into the air when the driver settles down into his seat. A pair of low, folding doors take the place of a lap robe ; you dash through the street at an alarming rate without any visible guide, experiencing all the delights of a runaway without any of its dangers. FLOWER SHOW AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE. A ride by rail of half an hour takes one to Syden- ham. It is a charming walk from the station through the tastefully arranged grounds, with their shrubberies, roseries, and fountains, along the pebble-strewn paths, crowded this day with visitors. The palace itself is so like its familiar pictures as to need no description. Much of the grandeur of its vast proportions within is lost by its divisions and subdivisions. There are courts representing the various nations of the earth, — America, as usual, felicitously and truthfully shown up by a pair of scantily attired savages under a palm tree; there are the courts of the Alhambra, of Nin- eveh, and of Pompeii ; there are fountains, and statues, and bazaars innumerable, where one may purchase al- most anything as a souvenir; there are cafes where one may refresh the body, and an immense concert 46 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. liall where one may delight the soul, — and how mucli more I cannot tell, for the crowd was almost beyond beliet* and a much more interesting study than Egyp- tian remains, or even the exquisite mass of perfumed bloom, that made the air like summer, and the whole ]jlace a garden. They were of the English middle class, the upper middle class, bordering upon the no- bility, — these rotund, fine-looking gentlemen in white vests and irreproachable broadcloth, these stout, red- faced, richly-attired ladies, with their soft-eyed, angular daughters following in their train, or clinging to their arms. We listened for an hour to the queen's own band in scarlet and gold, and then came back to town, meeting train after train filled to overflowing with ex- pensively arrayed humanity in white kids, going out for the evening. A DAY AT HAMPTON COURT. It was Whit-Monday, — the workingman's holiday, — a day of sun and shower; but we took our turn upon the outside of the private omnibus chartered for the occasion, unmindful of the drops ; our propelling power, six gray horses. By virtue of this private es- tablishment we were free to pass through Hyde Park, — that breathing-place of aristocracy, where no public vehicle, no servant without livery, is tolerated. It was early, and only the countless hoof prints upon Rotten Row suggested the crowd of wealth and fashion that would throng here later in the day. One solitary equestrian there was ; perched upon a guarded saddle, held in her place by some concealed band, serenely content, rode a queen baby in long, white robes. A ^XCURSIOA^S FROM LONDON. 47 gi'oom led the little pony. She looked at us in grave wonder as we dashed by, — born to tlie purple ! I can- not begin to describe to you the lising up of London for tliis day of pleasure ; the decking of itself out in holiday attire ; the garnishing of itself with paper flow- ers ; the smooth, hard roads leading into the country, all alive; the drinking, noisy crowd about the door of every pot-house along the way. It was a delightful drive of a dozen or more miles, through the most charming suburbs imaginable, — past lawns, and gar- dens, and green old trees shading miniature parks ; past " detached " villas that had blossomed into win- dows; indeed, the plate glass upon houses of most modest pretension was almost reckless extravagance in our eyes, forgetting, as w^e did, the slight duty to be paid 'here upon what is, with us, an expensive luxury. ^No wonder the English are a healthful people, — the sun shines upon them. I like their man- ner of house-building, of home-making. They set up first a great bay-window, with a room behind it, wdiich is of secondary importance, with wide steps leading up to a door at the side. They fill this window with the rarest, rosiest, most rollicksorae flowers. Then, if there remain time, and space, and means, other rooms are added, the bay-windows increasing in direct propor- tion; while shades, drawn shades, are a thing un- known. " But the carpets ? " They are so foolish as to value health above carpets. It was high noon when we rolled up the wide ave- nue of Bushey Park, with its double border of gigantic cliestnuts and limes, through Richmond Park, with its vast sweep of greensward flecked with the sunbeams, 48 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. dripping like the rain through the royal oaks, past Richmond terrace, with its fine residences looking out upon tlie Thames, the translucent stream, pure and beau- tii ul here, before going down to the city to be defiled — like many a life. We dismounted at the gates to the palace, in the rambling old village that clings to its skirts, and joined the crowd passing through its wide portals. It is an old palace thrown aside, given over to poor relatives, by royalty, — as we throw aside an old gown; a vast pile of dingy, red brick that has straggled over acres of Hampton parish, and is kept within bounds by a high wall of the same ugly material. It has pushed itself up into towers and turrets, w^ith pinnacles and spires rising from its battlemented walls. It has thrust itself out into oriel and queer little latticed windows that peep into the gardens and overhang the three quad- rangles, and is with its vast gardens and park, w^ith its wide canal and avenues of green old trees, the most delightfully ugly, old place imaginable. Here kmgs and queens have lived and loved, suffered and died, from Cardinal Wolsey's time down to the days of Queen Anne. It is now one of England's show places; one portion of its vast extent, with the grounds, being thrown oi3en to the public, the remainder given to de- C3iyed nobility, or wandering, homeless representatives of royalty, — a kind of royal almshouse, in fact. A curtained window, the flutter of a white hand, were to us the only signs of inhabitation. Through thirty or more narrow, dark, bare rooms, — bare but for the pictures that crowded the walls, — we wandered. There were two or three halls of stately EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON. 49 pro;^ortions finely decorated with frescoes by Verrio^ r.nd one or two royal stairways, up and down which slippered feet have passed, silken skirts trailed, and heavy hearts been carried, in days gone by. The ])ictures ^'e mostly portraits of brave men and lovely women, of kings and queens and royal favorites, — poor Nell Gwynne among them, who began life by selling oranges in a theatre, and ended it by selling vir- tue in a palace. The Vandyck faces are wonderfully beautiful. They gaze upon you through a mist, a gold- en haze, — like that which hangs over the hills in the Indian summer, — from out deep, spiritual eyes ; a dream of fair women they are. There were one or two royal beds, where uneas^^ have lain the heads that wore a crown, and half a dozen chairs worked in tapestry by royal fingers, — whether preserved for their questionable beauty, or be- cause of the rarity of royal industry, I do not know. We wandered through the shrubberies, paid a penny to see the largest grape vine in the world, — and wished we had given it to the heathen, so like its less distin- guished sisters did the vine appear, — and at last lunched at the King's Arms, a queer little inn just outside the gates, edging our way with some difficulty through the noisy, guzzling crowd around the door — the crowd that, having reached the acme of the day's felicity, was fast degenerating into a quarrel. In the long, bare room at the head of the narrow, winding stairs, we found ^comparative quiet. The tables were covered with joints of beef, with loaves of bread, pitchers of ale, and the ubiquitous cheese. A red-faced young man in tight new clothes — like a strait-jacket — occupied one end 4 50 A A' AMZIUCAN GIRL ABROAD. of our table with his blushing sweetheart. A band of" wandering harjDers harped upon their harps to the ciovvd of wrangling men and blowsy women in the open court below ; strangely out of tune were the harps, out of time the measure, according well with»the spirit of the hour. A loud-voiced girl decked out in tawdry finery, with face like solid brass, sang "Annie Laurie" in hard, metallic tones, — O Music, how m_any murders have been committed in thy name ! — then passed a cup for pennies, with many a jest and rude, bold laugh. We were glad when the day was done, — glad when we had turned away from it all. QUEEN VICTORIxl's HOME AT WINDSOR. The castle itself is a huge, battlemented structure of gray stone, — a fortress as well as a palace, — with a home park of five hundred acres, the private grounds of Mrs. Guelph, and, beyond that, a grand park of eigh- teen hundred acres. But do not imagine that she lives liere with only her children and servants about her, — this kindly German widow, whose throne was once in tlie hearts of her people. Royalty is a complicated affair, — a wheel within a wheel, — and reminds us of nothino' so much as " the house that Jack built." This is the Castle of Windsor. This is the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor. These are the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor. These are the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor. These are the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor. EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON. 51 These are the soldiers, tried and sworn, that gunrd the crown from the nnicorn, that stand by tlie lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor. These are the "military knights" forlorn, founded by Edward before you were bora, that outrank the sol- diers, tried and sworn, that guard the crown from the unicorn, that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor. These are the knights that the garter have worn, with armorial banners tattered and torn, that look down on the military knights forlorn, founded by Ed- ward before you were born, that outrank the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard the crown from the unicorn, that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the ladies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor. This is the dean, all shaven and shorn, with the canons and clerks that doze in the morn, that inst.-Jl the knights that the garter have worn, with armori:d banners tattered and tcn-n, that look down on the mili- tary knights forlorn, founded by Edward before you were born, that outrank the soldiers, tried and sworn, that guard the crown from the unicorn, that stand by the lackeys that wait on the pages that bow to the la- dies that 'tend on the queen that lives in the Castle of Windsor. And so on. The train within the castle w^alls that follows the queen is endless. We passed through the great, grand, state aj^ail- ments, refurnished at the time of the marriage of the 52 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. Prince of Wales, for the use of the Danish family. We mounted to the battlements of the Round Tower by the hundred steps, the grim cannon gazing down upon us from the top. Half a dozen visitors were al- ready there, gathered as closely as possible about the angular guide, listening to his geography lesson, and looking off upon the wonderful panorama of park, and wood, and winding river. Away to the right rose tlie spire of Stoke Pogis Church, where the curfew still " tolls the knell of parting day." To the lelt, in the great park below, lay Frogmore, where sleeps Prince Albert the Good. Eton College, too, peeped out from among the trees, its gardens touching the Thames, and in the distance, — beyond the sleeping villages tucked in among the trees, — the shadowy blue hills held up the sky. St. George's Chapel is in the quadrangle below. It is the chapel of the Knights of the Garter. And now, when you read of the chapels, or churches, or cathedrals in the old world, — and they are all in a sense alike, — pray don't imagine a New England meeting-house with a double row of stiff pews and a choir in the gallery sing- ing " Antioch " ! The body of the chajDcl w\as a great, bare space, with tablets and elaborate monuments against the walls. Opening from tliis were alcoves, — also called chapels, — each one containing the tombs and monuments of some family. As many of the inscriptions are dated centuries back, you can imagine they are often quaintly expressed. One old knight, who died in Catholic times, desired an open Breviary to remain ahvays in the niche before his tomb, that passers niiglit read to their comfort, and say for him an orison. EXCURSIONS FROM LONDON. 53 Of course this would never do in the days when the chapel fell into Protestant hands. A Bible was sub- stituted, chained into its place; but the old inscription, cut deep in the stone, still remains, beginning " Who leyde thys book here ? " with a startling appropriate- ness of which the author never dreamed. Over an- other of these chapels is rudely cut an ox, an N, and a bovv", — the owner having, in an antic manner, hardly befitting the place, thus written his name — Oxenbow. You enter the clioir, where the installations take place, by steps, passing under the organ. In the chancel is a fine memorial window to Prince Albert. On either side are the stalls or seats for the knights, with the armorial banner of each hanging over his place. Projecting over the chancel, upon one side, is what ap- l)ears to be a bay-window. This is the queen's gallery, a little room witli blue silk hangings, — for blue is the color worn by Knights of the Garter, — where she sits durino' the service. Through these curtains she lookcnl CI? o down upon the marriage of the Piince of Wales. Think of being thus put away from everybody, as though one were plague-stricken. A private station awaits her when she steps from the train at the castle gates. A private room is attached to the green-houses, to the riding-school in the park, and even to the private chapel. A private photograph-room, for the taking of the royal pictures, adjoins her apartments. It must be a fine thing to be a queen, — and so tiresome! Even the gold spoon in one's mouth could not offset the wea- riness of it all, and of gold spoons she has an unbound' ed supply ; from ten to fifteen millions of dolhu's worth of gold plate for her majesty's table being guard- ed within the castle! Tiiiiik of it, little women who 64 AN AMERICAN GIRL A.BR O AD. set up house-keeping with half a dozen silver tear spoons and a salt-spoon ! We waited before a great gate until the striking of some forgotten hour, to visit the royal mews. You may walk through aU these stables in slippers and in your daintiest gown, without fear. A stiff young man in black — a cross between an undertaker and an in- cipient clergyman in manner — acted as guide. Other parties, led by other stiff young men, followed or crossed our path. There weie stalls and stalls, upon either side, in room after room, — for one could not think of calling them stables, — filled by sleek bays for carriage or saddle. And the ponies! — the dear little shaggy browns, with sweeping tails, and wonderful eyes peeping out from beneath moppy manes, the milk- white, tiny steeds, with hair like softest silk, — they won our hearts. Curled up on the back of one, fast asleep, lay a Maltese kitten ; the "royal mew" some one called it. The cai-riages were all plain and dark, for the ordinary use of the court. In one corner a prim row of little yellow, wicker, baby-wagons attracted our attention, like those uyed by the poorest mother in the land. In these the royal babies have taken their first airings. The state equipages we saw^ another day at Bucking- ham Palace, — the cream-colored horses, the carringes and harnesses all crimson and gold. There they stand, weeks and months together, waiting for an occasion. The effect upon a fine day, under favoring auspices, — the sun shining, the bands playing, the crowd of gazers, the prancing horses, the gilded chariots, — must almost equal the triumphal entry of a first class circus into a New Enuiand town I .itiNWV MWiVt.'<\-'5C.'» A dozen umbrellas were tipped up; the rain fell fast upon a dozen upturned, expectant faces.'' Page 57. SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON. 55 CHAPTER IV. SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON. The Tower. — The tall Yankee of inquiring mind. — Our g^iide in gorgeous array. — War trophies. — Knights in armor. — A professional joke. — The crown jewels. — The house where tlie little princes were smothered. — The " Traitor's Gate." — The Houses of Parliament. — What a throne is like. — The • "woolsack." — The Peeping Gallery for ladies. — Westminster Hall and tlie law courts. — The three drowsy old women. — The Great Panjandrum liimself. — Johnson and the pump. — St. Paul's. — Wellington's funeral car. — The Whispering Gallery. — The bell. THE TOWER. IT is not a tower at all, as we reckon towers, yon must know, but a walled town upon the banks of the Thames, in the very heart of London. Hundreds of years ago, when what is now this great city was only moor and marsh, the Romans built here — a castle, perhaj:)s. Only a bit of crumbling wall, of mouldering pavement, remain to tell the story. When the Nor- mans came in to possess the land, William the Con- queror erected upon this spot a square fortress, with towers rising from its four corners. Every succeeding monarch added a castle, a tow^er, a moat, to strengthen its strength and extend its limits, until, in time, it cov- ered twelve acres of land, as it does to this day. Here 56 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. the kings and queens of England lived in comfortless state, until the time of Queen Elizabeth, having need to be hedged about with something more than royalty to insure safety. Times have changed; swords have been beaten into ploughshares ; and where the moat once encircled the tower wall, flowers blossom now. The dungeons that for centuries held prisoners of state do not confine any one to-day; and the strongholds that guarded the person of England's sovereign keep in safety now the jewels and the crown. There are round towers, and square towers, and, for anything! know, three-cornered towers, each with its own history of horrors. There are windows from which people were thrown, bridges over which they were dragged, and dark holes in which they were incarcerated. To a])preciate all this, you should see it — as we did one chilly May morning. We huddled about the stove in tlie waiting-room upon the site of the old royal menagerie, our companions a round man, with a limp gingham cravat and shabby coat, a little old womnn in a poke bonnet, and half a dozen or more school- boys from the country. A tall Yankee of inquiring mind joined us as we sallied from the door, led by a guide gorgeous in ruif and buckles, cotton velvet and gilt lace, and with all these glories surmounted by a black hat, that swelled out at the top in a wonderful manner. Down the narrow street within the gates, over the slippery cobble-stones, under considerable mental excitement, and our alpaca umbrella, w^e fol- lowed our guide to an archway, before which he paused, and struck an attitude. The long Yankee darted for- ward. "Stand back, my friends, stand back," said tlie SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON. 57 guide. " You will please form a circle." Immediately a dozen umbrellas surrounded him. He pointed to a narrow window over our heads ; a dozen umbrellas were tipped up ; the rain fell fast upon a dozen up- turned, expectant faces. " In that room, Sir " (I could not catch the name) " spent the night befoi-e his execution, in solemn meditation and prayer." There was a circular groan of sympathy and approval from a dozen lips, the re-cant of a dozen dripping umbrellas, and we pattered on to the next point of interest, following our leader through pools of blood, figuratively speaking, — literally, through pools of wa- ter, — our eyes distended, our cheeks pale v/ith horror. Ah, what treasures of credulity we must have been to the guides in those days ! Time brought unbelief and hardness of heart. We mounted stairs narrow and dark; we descended stairs dark and narrow ; we entered chambers gloomy and grim. The half I could not tell — of the rooms filled with war trophies — scalps in the belt of the na- tion — from the Spanish Armada down to the Sepoy rebellion ; the long hall, with its double row of lumber- ing old warriors encased in steel, as though they had stepped into a steel tower and walked off, tower and all, some fine morning ; the armory, with its stacked arms for thirty thousand men. " We may have occa- sion to use them," said the guide, facetiously, making some reference to the sj^eech of Mr. Sumner, just then acting the part of a stick to stir up the British lion. The Yankee chuckled complacently, and we, too, re- fused to quake. There was a room rilled with instru- ments of torture, diabolical inventions, recalling the 58 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. days of the Inquisition. The Yankee expressed a de- sire to " see how some o' them things worked." Open- ing from this was an unb'ghted apartment, with walls of stone, a dungeon indeed, in which we were made to believe that Sir Walter Raleigh spent twelve years of his life. No shadow of doubt would have fallen upon our unquestioning minds, had we been told that he amused himself during this time by standing upon his head. " Walk in, walk in," said the smiling guide, :is we peered into its darkness. We obeyed. "Now," said he, " that you may appreciate his situation, I will step out and close the door." The little old woman screamed; the Yankee made one stride to the opening; the guide laughed. It was only a professional joke ; there was no door. We saw the bare prison-room, with its rough fireplace, the slits between the stones of the wall to admit light and air, and the initials of Lady Jane Grey, Avith a host more of forgotten names, upon the walls. Just outside, within the quadrangle, Avhere the grass grew green beneath the summer rain, she Avas beheaded, — j^oor little innocent, — who had no desire to be a queen ! In another tower close by, guarded by iron bars, were the royal jewels and the crown, for which all this blood was shed — pretty bau- bles of gold and jDrecious stones, but hardly worth so many lives. You remember the story of the princes smothered in the Tower by command of their cruel uncle ? There was the narrow passage in the wall where the murder- ers came at night ; the worn step by which they entered the great, bare room where the little victims slept ; the windinix stairs down which the bodies were SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON. 59 th"ONvn. Beneath the great stone at the foot tliey were PC'cretly buric'l. Then the stairway was walled up, le.sl the stones should cry out ; and no one knew tlie story of the burial until long, long afterwards — only a few years since — when the wall.ed-up stairway was discovered, the stones at the foot dis- ])laced, and a heap of dust, of little crumbling bones, revealed it. A rosy-ficed, motherly woman, the wife of a soldier quartered in the barracks here, answered the rap of the guide upon the nail-studded door open- ing from one of the courts, and told us the old story*. "The bed of the princes stood just there," she said, pointing to one corner, where, by a curious coincidence, a little bed was standing now. She answered the ques- tion in our eyes with, " My boys sleep there." But do you not fear that the murdei'ers will come back some night by this same winding way, and smother them ? " How she laughed ! And, indeed, what had ghosts to do with such a cheery body ! Down through the " Traitors' Gate," with its spiked ])ortcullis, we could see the steps leading to the water. Through this gate prisoners were brought from trial at Westminster. It is said that the Princess Elizabeth was dragged up here when she refused to come of her own will, knowing too well that they who entered here left hope behind. A little later, with music and the waving of banners, and amid the shouts of ^the people, she rode out of the great gates into the city, the Queen of England. THE HOUSES OF PARLIA.MENT. Though they have stood barely thirty years, already the soft gray limestone begins to crumble awn-/ — ^' -^ GO AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. elements, with a sense of the fitness of things, striving to act the part of time, and bring them into a Ukeness of the adjoining abbey. There is an exquisite beauty in the thousand gilded points and pinnacles that pierce the fog, or shine softly through the mist that veils the city. Ethereal, shadowy, unreal they are, like the spires of a celestial city, or the far away towers and turrets we see sometimes at sunset in the western sky. Here, you know, are the chambers of the Houses of Lords and Commons, with the attendant lobbies, libra- ries, committee-rooms, &c., and a withdrawing-room for the nse of the queen when she is graciously pleased to open Parliament in person. The speaker of the House of Commons, as well as some other officials, reside here — a novel idea to us, who could hardly imagine the speaker of our House of Representatives taking up his abode in the Capitol ! Parliament was not in session, and we walked through the various rooms at will, even to the robing-roora of the noble lords, where the peg upon which Lord Stanley hangs his hat was jDointed out ; and very like other pegs it was. At one end of the chamber of the House of Lords is the throne. It is a simple affair enough — a gilded arm-chair on a little platform reached by two or three steps, and with crim- son hangings. Extending down on either side are the crimson-cushioned seats without desks. Lithecentie is a large ^square ottoman, — the woolsack, — which might, with equal appropriateness, be called almost anything else. Above, a narrow gallery offers a loun- ging-place to the sons and friends of the peers ; and at one end, above the throne, is a high loft, a kind of uplifted amen corner, for strangers, with a sj)ace where SIGHTSEEING IN LONDON. 61 worn en' may sit and look down through a screen of lat- tice-work upon the proceedings below. It seems a rem- nant of Eastern customs, strangely out of place in this Western world, and akin to the shrouding of ourselves in veils, like our Oriental sisters. Or can it be that the noble lords are more keenly sensitive to the distracting influence of bright eyes than other men ? WESTMINSTER HALL AND THE LAW COURTS. Adjoining the Houses of Parliament is this vast old hall. For almost five hundred years has it stood, its curiously carved roof unsupported by column or pillar. Here royal banquets, as well as Parliaments, have been held, and more than one court of justice. Here was the great trial of Warren Hastings. It was empty now of everything but echoes and the long line of statuary on either side, except the lawyers in their long, black gowns, who hastened up and down its length, or darted in and out the three baize doors upon one side, opening into the Courts of Chancery, Common Pleas, and the Exchequer. Our national curiosity was aroused, and we mounted the steps to the second, which had won our sympathies from its democratic name. There were high, straight-backed pews of f imilinr appearance, rising one above the other, into the last of which we climbed, a certain Sunday solemnity stealing over us, a certain awkward consciousness that we were the observed of all observers, since we were the only spectators — a delusion of our vanity, however. In the high gallery before us, in complacent comfort, sat three fat, drowsy old women (?) in white, curling wigs, and 62 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. voluminous gowns, asking all manner of distracting questions, and requiring to be told over and over again, • — after the manner of drowsy old women, — to the ut- ter confusion of a poor witness in the front pew, who clung to the rail and swayed about hopelessly, while he tried to tell his story, as if by this rotary motion he could churn his ideas into form. Not only did he lose the thread of his discourse, — he became hopelessly en- tangled in it. Scratch, scratch, scratch, went the pens all around him. Every word, as it fell from his lips, was pounced upon by the begowned, bewigged, be- wildering judges, was twisted and turned by the law- yers, was tossed back and forth throusfhout the court- room, until there arose a question in our minds, as to who was telling the story. All the while the lawyers were glaring upon him as though he was peijuring himself with every word — as who would not be, under the circumstances ? And such lawyers ! They dotted the pews ail around us. The long, black gowns were not so bad ; they liid a deal of awkwardness, I doubt not. But the wigs! the queer little curly thing's, perched u])on every head, and worn with such a perverse de- light in misfits! the small men being invariably hid- den beneath the big wigs, and the large men strutting about like the great Panjandrum himself with the little round button at the top! The appearance of one, whose head, through some uncommon development, rose to a ridge-pole behind, was surprising, to say tlie least. It was not alone that liis wig was too small, that a fringe of straight, black hair fell below its entire white circumference ; it was not alone that it was parted upon the wrong side, or that, being mansard in form, SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON. 63 and his head hip-roofed, it could never, by anf process, have been shaped thereto ; but I doubt if the wearing of it upside down, added to all these little drawbacks, could conduce to the beauty or dignity of any man. Unmindful of this rev^ersed order of nature, its happy possessor skipped about the court-room, nodding to his brethren with a blithesome air, to the imminent peril of his top-knot, which sustained about the same rela- tion to his liead as the sword to that of Damocles. He speered down upon the poor witness. He pretended to make notes of dreadful import with a screaming quill, and, in fact, comported himself with an airy, unconsciousness delightful to see. In regard to the proceedings of the court, I only know that the point under discussion concerned one Johnson, and a pump; and Mr. Pickwick's judge sat upon the bench. Whether he was originally round, red-faced, with gooseberry eyes, I do not remember; but all these pleasing characteristics he possessed at this present time, as well as a pudgy forefinger, witlj which to point his remarks. "You sa}^," he repeated, with a solemnity of winch my pen is incapable, and impressing every word upon the poor man in the front pew with this same forefin- ger, " that — Bunsen — went — to — the — pmnp ? " "Johnson, my lord," the witness ventured to cor- rect him, in a low tone. " It makes no difference," responded the judge, irate, " whether it is Bunsen or Jillson. The question is, Did — Jillson — go — to — the — pump ? " Whom the gods destroy they first deju'ive of their five senses. Four, at least, of the poor man's had de- 64 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. parted some time since. The fifth followefl. *'■ John- sou went, my lord," he replied, doggedly. Hjivinsj found one point upon whitli his mind was clear, he clung to it with the tenacity of despair. "Johnson ! who's Johnson .^" gasped the bewildered judge, over whose face a net of perplexed lines spread itself upon the introduction of this new character. In the confusion of denials and explanations that followed, we descended from our perch, and stole away ; nor are we at all sure, to this day, as to whether Johnson did or did not really go to the pump. ST. Paul's. Imagine our surj^rise, one day, when admiring a pretty ribbon upon a friend, to be told that it came from St. Paul's Churchyard. Hardly the place for rib- bons, one would think; but the narrow street which encircles the cathedral in the form of a bow and its string goes by this name, and contains, besides the bookstores and publishing houses, some fine " silk mercers' " establishments. The gray surface of the grand edifice is streaked with black, as though time had beaten it with stripes, and a pall of smoke and dust covers the statues in the court before it. Consecrated ground this is, indeed. From the earliest times of the Christian religion, through all the bigotry and fanaticism of the ages that followed, down to the present time, the word of God has been proclaimed here — in weakness often, in bit- terness many times that belied the spirit of its mes- sage ; by a priesthood more corrupt than the people ; by noble men, beyond the age in which they lived, and SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON. 65 whom tliu fiames of martyrdom could not appall. Un- der Diocletian the first church was destroyed. It was rebuilt, and destroyed again by the Saxons. Twice has it been levelled to the ground by fire. But neither 3vvord nor flame could subdue it, and firm as a rock it stands to-day, as it has stood for nearly two hundred years, and as it seems likely to stand for ages to come. The sacred stillness that invests the place was rudely broken, the morning of our visit, by the blows from the hammers of the workmen, resounding through the dome like a discharge of artillery. A great stage, and seats in the form of an amphitheatre, were being erected in the nave for a children's festival, which prevented our doing more than glance down its length. We read some of the inscriptions upon the monuments, that one, so often quoted, of Sir Christopher Wren, among them — "Do you seek his monument? Look around you;" glanced into the choir, with its Gothic stalls, where the service is performed, and then descended into the crypt beneath all this, that labyrinth of damp darkness where so many lie entombed. Here is the funeral car of Wellington, with candles burning around it, cast from the conquering cannon wdiich thundered victo- ry to a nation, but sorrow and death to many a home. Shrouded with velvet it is, as are the horses, in imi- tation of those which bore him to his rest. All around were marble effigies, blackened, broken, as they survived the burning of the late cathedral, at the time of the great fire. Tombstones formed the pavement. " Whose can this be ? " I said, trying to follow with the point of my umbrella the half-worn inscription beneath my feet. It was that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Strange 4 66 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. enough it seemed to iis, coming from a country so new as to have been by no means proUfic in great men, to find them here lying about under our feet. Having explored the crypt, we prepared to mount the endless winding stairs, wliose final termination is the ball under the cross that surmounts the whole. Our ambition aimed only at the bell beneath the ball. We paid an occasional sixpence for the priv- ilege of peeping into the library, — a most tidy and put-to-rights room, with a floor of wood patchwork, — and for the right to look down upon the geo- metrical staircase which winds around- and clings to the wall upon one side, but is without any visible sup- port upon the other. The " whispering gallery" was reached after a time. It is the encircling cornice with- in the dome, surrounded by a rniling, and forming a narrow gallery. " I will remain here," said the guide, " while you pass around until you are exactly opposite ; wait there until I whisi3er." Had we possessed the spirit of Casablanca, we should at this moment be sit- ting upon that narrow bench against the wall, with our feet upon the gas-pipes. We waited and listened, and listened and waited ; but the sound of the blows from the hammers below reverberated like thunder around us. We could not have heard the crack of doom. Be- coming conscious, after a time, that our guide had dis- appeared, we came out and continued our ascent. Mrs. K.'s curiosity, if not satisfied, 'was at least quenched, and she refused to go farther. My aspirations still pointed upward. There was another sixpence, another dizzy mount of dark, twisting stairs, with strength, ambition, and even curiosity gradually left behind, and SIGHT-SEEING IN LONDON. G7 with only one blind instinct remaining — to go on. Tliere was a long, dingy passage, through wiiich ghost ly forms were flitting ; there were more stairs, with twists and turns, forgotten now witli other torments ; there was the mounting of half a dozen rickety wood- en steps at last, for no object but to descend shakily upon the other side, and then we found ourselves in a little dark corner, peering over a dingy rail, with a great, dusky object filling all the space below. And that was the bell! "Well, and what of it?" I don't know ; but we saw it ! 08 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. CFIAPTER V. AWAY TO PARIS. The Tvedding party. — The canals. — New Haven. — Around the tea-table. — Separating the sheep from the goats. — " Will it be a rough passage? " — Gymnastic feats of the little steamer. — O, what were officers to us? — "Who ever invented ear- rings ! " — Dieppe. — Fish-wives. — Train for Paris. — Fellow- passengers. — Rouen. — Babel. — Deliverance. T was the last week in May, and by no means the " merry, merry month of May " had we found it. Not only was the sky vyeighed down with clouds, but they dripped upon the earth continually, the sun show- ing his ghastly, white, half-drowned face for a moment only to be swept from sight again by the cloud waves. A friend was going to Paris. Would we shake the drops from our garments, close our umbrellas, and go with him? We not only would, we did. We gath- ered a lunch, packed our trunk, said our adieus, and drove down to the station in the usual pouring rain, the tearful accompaniment to all our movements. But one party besides our own awaited the train upon the platform — a young man with the insignia of bliss in the gloves of startling whiteness upon his hands, and a middle-aged woman of seraphic expression of counte- nance, clad in robes of spotless white, her feet encased A WAT TO PARIS. 69 In capacious white slippers. In this airy costume, oi\e hand grasping a liuge bouquet devoid of color, the other the arm of her companion, she paced back and forth, to the great amusement of the laughing portere, casting .upon us less fortunate ones, who shivered meekly in our wraps, glances of triumphant pity indescribable. " Weddin' party, zui"," explained the guard, touching his cap to our friend. "Jus' come down in fly." They looked to us a good deal more as if they were just go- ing up in a " fly." The train shrieked into the station, and we were soon I'ushing over the road to New Ha- ven, from whicli, in an evil moment, we had planned to cross the Channel. There was little new or sti-ange in the picture seen from our wdndow. The cottages were now of a dull, clay color, instead of the dingy red we had observed before, as though they had been erected in sudden need, without w^aiting for the burning of the bricks. There were brick-yards all along the way, an- swering a vexed question in ray mind as to where all the bricks came from which were used so entirely in town and village here, in the absence of the wood so plentiful with us. The canals added much to the beauty of the landscape, winding through the meadows as if they were going to no particular place, and were in no haste to reach their destination. They turned aside for a clump of wallows or a mound of daisy- crowned earth ; they w^ent quite out of their way to peep into the back doors of a village, and, in fact, strolled along in a lazy, serpentine manner that would have crazed the proprietor of a Yankee canal boat. It was Ave o'clock when we reached New Haven, having drojiped our fellow-passengers along the way, 70 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. the blissful couple among them. Through some error in calculation we had taken an earlier train than we need have, and found hom-s of doleful leisure awaiting us in this sleepy little town, lying upon an arm of the sea. Its outer appearance was not inviting. Here were the first and last houses of wood we saw in England, — high, ugly things, that might have been built of old boats or drift wood, with an economy that precluded all thought of grace in architecture. The train, in a gracious spirit of accommodation, instead of plunging into the sea, as it might have done, paused before the door of a hotel upon the wharf There, in a little parlor, we improvised a home for a time. Our friend went off to explore the town. We took posses- sion of the faded red arm-chairs by the wide windows. Down below, beyond the wet platform, rose the well- colored meerschaum of the little French steamer, whose long-boats hung just above the edge of the wharf. Through the closed window stole the breath of the srJt sea, that, only a hand-breadth here, widened out below into boundlessness, bringing^ visions of tlie ocean and a thrill of remembered delight. The rain had ceased. The breeze rolled the clouds into snow-balls, pure white against the blue of the sky. Over the narrow stream came the twitter of birds, hidden in the hawthorn hedge all abloom. Everything smiled, and beamed, and glistened without, though far out to sea the white caps crowned the dancing waves. When night fell, and the lights glimmered all through the town, we drew the heavy curtains, lighted the candles in the shin- ing candlesticks, w^hose light cast a delusive glow ovei the dingy dustiness of the room, bringing out chees^ A WAT TO PARIS. 71 fully the little round tea-table in the centre, with its bright silver and steaming urn, over which we lingered a long hour, measuring and weighing our comfort, tell- ing tales, seeing visions, and dreaming dreams of home. The clock struck nine as we crossed the plank to the Alexandra, trying in vain to find in its toy appoint- ments some likeness to our ocean steamer of delii^htful memory. The train whizzed in from London, bringing our fellow-voyagers. The sheep were separated from the goats by the officer at the foot of the plank, who asked each one descendino^. " First or second cabin ? " — sending one to the right, the other to' the left. The wind swept in from the sea raw and cold. The foot- square deck was cheerless and wet. Even a diagonal promenade proved short and unsatisfactory, and in de- spair we descended the slippery, perpendicular stairs between boxes and bales, and down still another flight, to the cabin. A narrow, cushioned seat clung to its four sides, divided into lengths for berths. " Will it be a rough night?" we carelessly asked the young stew- ardess. "O, no!" was the stereotyped reply, though all the while the wicked weaves w^ere dancing beneath the white caps just outside. We divested ourselves of hats, and wraps, and useless ornaments, reserving only that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, under a name- less fear, grew every moment meeker and more quiet. We undid the interminable buttons of our American boots, and prepared for a comfortable rest, with an ig- norance that at the time approximated bliss. There was leisure for the working out of elaborate schemes. Something possessed the tide. Whether it was high 72 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. or low, narrow or wide, I do not know ; but there at tlie wharf we were to await the working of its own will, regardless of time. Accordingly we selected our ]ilaces with a dehberation that bore no pi-oportion to the time we were to fill them, advising with the stew- ardess, who had settled herself comfortably to sleep. We tried our heads to England and our feet to the foe, and then revei-sed the order, finally compromising by taking a position across the Clinnnel. But the loading of the steamer overhead, with the chattering of our fel- low-passengere below, — two English girls, a pretty brunette and her sister, — banished sleep. At three o'clock our voyage began — the succession of quivering leaps, plunges, and somersaults which miraculously landed us upon the French coast. I can think of no words to describe it. The first night upon the ocean was paradise and the perfection of peace in comparison. To this day the thought of the swashing water, beat- en white against the port-hole before my eyes, is sickening. A calm — to me, of utter prostration — fell upon us long after the day dawned, only to be broken by the stewardess, when sleep had brought par- tial forgetfulness, with, "It's nine o'clock; we're at Dieppe, and the oflScers want to come in here." We tried to raise our heads. Officers! What officers? Had we crossed the Styx? Were they of light or darkness ? We sank back. O, what were officers to us! "But you must get up ! " — and she began an awk- ward attempt at the buttons of those horrible boots. That recalled to life. American boots are of this world, and we made a feeble attempt to don some of its van- AWAT TO PARIS, 73 ities. O, how senseless did the cuffs appear that went on upside down ! — tlie collar which was fastened under one ear! — the ribbons that were consigned to our pockets ! Making blind stabs at our ears, " Good heavens ! " we ejacnlated, " who ever invented ear- rings? Relics of barbarism ! " We made hasty thrusts at the hair-pins, standing out from our heads in every direction like enraged porcupine quills ; being pulled, and twisted, and scolded by the stewardess all the while ; hearing the thump, thump, upon our door as one pair of knuckles after another awoke the echoes, as one strange voice after another shouted, "Why don't those ladies come out ? " O the trembling fingers that refused to hold the pins ! — the trembling feet that staggered up the ladder-like stairs as we were thrust out of the cabin — out of the cruel little steamer to take refuge in one of the waiting cabs ! O the blessed- ness of our thick veils and charitable wraps ! I recall, as though it were a dream, the narrow, roughly-paved street of Diepjje ; a latticed window filled with flowers, and a dark-eyed maiden peeping through the leaves ; the fish-wives in short petticoats and with high white caps, clattering over the stones in their wooden sabots,, wheeling barrows of fish to the market near the station, where they bartered, and bar- gained, and gossiped. Evidently it is a woman's right in Normandy to work — to grow as withered, and hard, and old before the time as she chooses, or as she has need ; for to put away year after year, as do these poor women, every grace and charm of womanhood, cannot be of choice. At the lonir table in the refreshment-room of the sta- 74 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. tion we drank the tasteless tea, and ate a slice from the roll four feet in length. The English-speaking girl who attended us found a j)lace— rough enough, to be sure — where in the few moments of waiting we could complete our hasty toilets. Beside us at the table, our fellow- voyagers, were two j^rofessors from a Connecticut col- lege of fnmiliar name, whom we had met in London. They joined us in the comfortable railway carriage, and added not a little to the pleasant chat that shortened the long day and the wfeary journey to Paris. Our number — for the compartment held eight — Avas com- pleted by a young American gentleman, and a French- man of evil countenance, who drank wine and made love to his pretty Lizette in an unblushing manner, strange, and by no means pleasing, to us, demonstrating the annoyance, if nothing worse, to which one is often subjected in these compartment cars. It needed but one glance from the window to convince us that we were no longer in England. To be sure, the sky is blue, the grass green, in all lands ; but in place of the level swee]) of meadow through which we had passed across the Channel, the land swelled here into hills on every side. Long rows of stiff poplars divided the fields, or stretched away in straight avenues as far as the eye could reach. The English remember the beauty of a curved line ; the French, with a painful rectitude, describe only right angles. Scarlet poppies blushed among the purple, yellow, and white wild flowers along the way. The j^l^stered cottages with their high, thatched roofs, the tortuous Kiver Seine with its green islands, as we neared Paris, the neat little stations along the way — like gingerbread houses — made for us a new A WAT TO PARIS. 75 nn 1 charming panorama. Hanging over a gale at one of these stations was an old man, wliite-liaired, blind; liis guide, an old woman, who waited, with a kind of wondering awe stealing over her withered face, while he played some simple air upon a little pipe — thus ask- ing alms. So simple was the air, the very shadow of a melody, that the scene might have been amusing, had it not been so pitiful. At noon we lunched in the comfortless waiting-room at Rouen, while the professors made a hasty visit to the cathedral during our stay of half an hour. We still suffered from the tossing of the sea, and cathedrals pos- •sessed no charms in our eyes. It was almost night when we reached Paris, and joined the hurrying crowd descending from the train. It was a descent into Pan- demonium. There was a confusion of unintelligible sounds in our ears like the roll of a watchman's rattle, bringing no suggestion of meaning. The calmness of despair fell upon our crushed spirits, with a sense of powerlessness such as we never experienced before or since. A dim recollection of school-days — of Ollen- dorff — rose above the chaos in our minds. "Has the physician of the shoemaker the canary of the carpen- ter?" we repeated mechanically; and with that our minds became a blank. Deliverance awaited us ; and when, just outside the closed gates, first in the expectant crowd, we espied the face of a friend, peace enveloped us like a garment. Our troubles were over. 76 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. CHAPTER YI. THE PARIS OF 18G9. The devil. — Cathedrals and churches. — The Louvre. — Mod" ern French art. — The Beauvais clock, with its droll little puppets. — Virtue in a red gown. — The Luxembourg Palace. — The yawning statue of Marshal Ney. — Gay life by gas- light. — The Imperial Circus. — The Opera. — How tlie emperor and empress rode through tlie streets after the riots. — The beautiful Spanish woman whose face was her fortune. — Napoleon's tomb. IT may be the City of Destruction, the very gate. Avay to dej^ths unknown ; but with its fair, a\ liite dwellings, its fair, wliite streets, that gleamed almost like gold beneath a summer sun, it seemed much more a City Celestial. It may be, as some affirm, that tlie devil here walks abroad at midday ; but we saw neither the print of his hoofs upon the asphaltum, nor the shadow of his horns upon the cream-like Caen stone. We walked, and rode, and dwelt a time within its limits ; and but for a certain reckless gayety that gave to the Sabbath an air of Vanity Fair, but for the mallet of the workman that disturbed our Sunday worship, we should never have known that we were not in the most Christian of all Christian cities. It is by no means imperative to do in Kome as the Ro* THE PARIS OF 1S69. 77 mnns do, nnd one need not in Paris drink absinthe or visit the Jardin Mabille. Our first expedition was to the banker's and to the shops, and having replenished our purse and ward- robe, we were prepared to besiege the city. There was a day or two of rest in the gilded chairs, cushioned with blue satin, of our jDretty salon, whence we peeped down upon the street below between the yellow satin curtains that draped its wide Fiench window; or rolled our eyes meditatively to the delicately tinted ceiling, with its rose-colored clouds skimmed by tiny, impossible birds ; or made abortive attempts to pen- etrate the secrets of the buhl cabinets, and to guess at the time from the pretty clocks of disordered or- ganism; or admired ourselves in the mirrors which gazed at each other from morning till night, for our apartments in the little Hotel Friedland we found most charming. You will hardly care for a description of the dozen, more or less, churches, old, new, and restored, with which we began and ended our sight-seeing in Paris, where we looked upon sculptured saints without num- ber, and studied ecclesiastical architecture to more than our hearts' content. There was St. Germain L'Auxerrois, the wicked old bell of which tolled the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. We stood with the honnes and babies under the trees of the square before it, gazing up at the belfry with most severe countenances, — and learned, afterwards, that the bell had been long since removed! There was the Madeleine of more recent date, built in the form of a Greek temple, and interesting just now for having 78 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. been the chiircli of Father Hyacinthe, to which we could for a time find no entrance. We shook the iron gate; we inquired in excellent English of a French shopkeeper, and found at last an oj^en gateway, a little unlocked door, beyond which we spent a time of search and inquiry in darkness, and among wood, and shavings, and broken chaire, and holy dust-pans, before passing around and entering the great bronze doors. There were the Pantheon and St. Sulpice, grand and beautiful, erected piously from the proceeds of lotteries. There was St. Etienne du Mont, and within one of its chapels the gilded tomb of the patron saint of Paris — St. Genevieve. Who she wns, or what she did to gain this rather unenviable i:>osition, I failed to learn. Her name seems to have outlived her deeds. Whether she was beautiful and beloved, and put away earthly vanities for a holy life, or old and ugly, and bore her lot with a patience that won saint- shi]i, I do not know. I can only tell that tapers burn always upon her tomb, and if you buy one it will burn a prayer for you. So we were told. There is one old cliurch, St. Germain des Pres, most beautifully colored within. Its pictures seem to have melted upon the wmUs. But admired above all is the Sainte Chapelle, in the Palais de Justice, a chapel fitted up by the fa- natical St. Louis, when this palace of justice, whicii holds now the courts of law, was a royal residence. Of course all its brightness was dimmed long ago. Its a'lories became dust, like its founder. But it has re- cently been restored, and is a marvel of gilt, well- blended colors, and stained glass. A graceful s|)ire surmounts it, but the old, cone-capped towers, rising THE PARIS OF 1S69. 79 from another part of the same building, possessed far greater interest in our eyes ; for liere was the Concier- gerie, where were confined Marie Antoinette and so many more victims of the reign of terror. On the "isle of the city," in the Seine, where, under the Roman rule, a few mnd huts constituted Paris, stands the churcli of Notre Dame, which was three hun- dred years in building. With its spire and two square towers, it may be seen from almost any part of the city. I wish you might look upon the relics and the vestments which the priests wear upon occasions of ceremony, hidden within this churcli, and displayed upon the payment of an extra fee. I did not wonder that the Sisters of Charity, who went into the little room with us, gazed aghast upon the gold and silver, and precious stones. Every one visits the galleries of the Louvre, of course. A little, worn shoe, belonging once to Marie Antoinette, and the old gray coat of the first emperor, were to us the most interesting objects among the relics. From out the sea of pictures rise Murillo's Madonna, the lovely face with a soul behind it, shining througli, and the burial of the heroine of Chateau- briand. Do you know it? The fair form, the sweeping liair of Attila, and the dark lover with despair in his face? As for the Rubens gallery, — his fat, red, uu' draped w^omen here ampng the clouds, surrounded by puffy little cherubs, had for us no charms. Rubens in Antwerp was a revelation. We wandered through room after room, lighted from above, crowded with paintings. To live for a time among them would be a delight; to glance at them for a moment was tantalization. All 80 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. firoimd were the easels of the artists who come here to sketch — shari>featurecl, heavy-browed men, with mikemj3t hair and flowing beards, and in shabby coats, stood before them, pallet and brushes in hand; and women by the score, — some of them young and pleas- ing, w^ith duennas patiently waiting near by ; but more often they were neither young nor beautifol, and with an evident renunciation of pomps and vanities. We glanced at their copies curiously. Sometimes they seemed the original in miniature, and sometimes, — ah well, we all fail. We looked in upon the annual exhibition of pictures at the Palais de I'lndustrie one day, and were particu- larly impressed with the nudite of the modern school of French art. Pink-tinted flesh may be very beautiful, but there must be something higher ! We saw there, too, another day, the clock on exhibition for a time be- fore being consigned to its destined place at Beauvais. It was even more Avonderful than the one so famous at Strasbourg. This was of the size of an ordinary church organ, and of similar shape; a mass of gilt and chocolate-colored w^ood ; a mass of dials, great and small — of time tables, and, indeed, of tables for com- puting everything earthly and heavenly, with dials to show the time in fifty different places, and evei'y thing else that could, by any possible connection with time, be supposed to belong to a clock. Upon the to]), Christ, seated in an arm-chair, was represented as judging the w^orld, his feet upon the clouds ; on either side kneeling female figures adored him. Just below, a pair of scales bided their time. On every peak stood little images, while fifty puppets peeped out of THE PARIS OF 1869. 81 fifty windows. Just below the image of the S;iviour, a Hgiire emerged through an open door at the striking of every quarter of an hour, — coming out with a sUde and occasional jerk by no means graceful. We had an opportunity of observing all this in the three quarters of an hour of waiting. We viewed the clock upon every side, being especially interested in a picture at one point representing a rocky coast, a light-house, and a long stretch of waves upon which labored two ships attached in some way to the works within. They pitched back and forth without making any progress whatever, in a way very suggestive to us, who had lately suffered from a similar motion. A dozen priests seated themselves with us upon the bench before the clock as the hand ai^proached the hour. They wore the long black robes and odd little skull-caj^s, that fit so like a plaster, and which are, I am sure, kept in place by some law of attraction unknown to us. One, of a different order, or higher grade, in a shorter robe and with very thin legs, encased in black stockings that added to their shadowy appearance, shuffled up to his place just in time to throw back his head and open his mouth as the clock struck, and the last judg- ment began. The cock upon the front gave a prelim- inary and weak flap of his wings, and emitted three feeble, squeaky crows, that must, I am sure, have con- vulsed the very puppets. Certainly they all disap- peared ii'om the windows, and something jumped into their places intended to represent flames, but which looked so much like reversed tin petticoats, that we supposed for a moment they wxre all standing on their heads. All the figures upon the peaks turned 6 82 A.V AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. tlieir backs upon us. The image of Christ began to wave its hands. The kneeling women swayed back and fortli, clasping their own. Two angels raised to their lips long, gilt trumpets, as if to blow a blast; then dropped them ; then raised them a second time, and even made a third abortive attempt. From one of the open doors Virtue was jerked out to be judged, Virtue in a red gown. The scales began to dance up and down. An angel appeared playing a guitar, and Virtue went triumphantly off to the right, to slow and appropriate music, an invisible organ playing mean- while. Then Vice appeared. I confess he excited my instant and profound pity. Such a poor, naked, wretched-looking object as he was ! with his hands to his face, as thougli he were heart ly ashamed to come out in such a plight. I venture to say, if he had been decked out like Virtue, he might have stolen off to the right, and nobody been the wiser. Good clothes do a great deal in Paris. As it was, the scales danced up and down a moment, and then the devil appeared with a sharp stick, and drove him around the corner to the left, with very distant and feeble thunder for an ac- companiment. That ended the show. All the little puppets jumped back into all the little windows, and we came away. Speaking of picture galleries, we spent a pleasant hour in the gallery of the Luxembourg — a collection of paintings made up from the works of living artists, and of those who have been less than a year deceased. It is sufficiently small to be enjoyable. There is some- thing positively oppressive in the vastness of many of these galleries. You feel utterly unequal to them ; a« THE PARIS OF :869. 83 tliough the finite were about to attempt the compre- hension of the infinite. One picture here, by Ary SchefFer, was exliibited in America, a few years since. It is the head and bust of a dead youth in armor — • a youth with a girlish face. There are others by Henri Scheffer, PauUn Guerin, and a host more I will not name. One, a scene in the Conciergerie, "Reading the List of the Condemned to the Pris- oners," by MuUer, haunted me long after the doors had swung together behind us. The palace of the Luxembourg, small, remarkable for the beauty of its architecture and charming garden, built for that grace- less regent, Marie de Medici, is now the residence of the president of the Senate; and indeed the Senate itself meets here. We were shown through the rooms open to the public, the private apartments of Marie de Medici among them, in one of which was a bust of the regent. The garden, like all gardens, is filled with trees and shrubs, flowers and fountains, but yet with a certain charm of its own. The festooning of vines from point to point was a novelty to us, as wns the design of one of the fountains. Approaching it from the rear, we thought it a tomb, — perhaps the tomb of Marshal Ney, we said, whose statue we were seek- ing. It proved to be an artificial grotto, and w^ithin it, sprinkled with the spray of the fountain, embowered in a mass of glistening, green ivy, reclined a pair of pretty, marble lovers ; peering in upon them from above, scowled a dreadful ogre — a horrible giant. The whole effect, coming upon it unexpectedly, was startling. We had a tiresome ' search for this same statue of 84 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD, Marshal Ney. We chased every marble nymph \\\ the garden, and walked and walked, over burning pebbles and under a scorclilng sun, until we almost wished he had never been shot. At last, away beyond the gar- den, out upon a long avenue, longer and hotter if pos- sible than the garden paths, we found it, — erected upon the very spot where he was executed. He stands with arm outstretcherl, and mouth opened wide, as though he were yawning with the wearisomeness of it all. It is a pity that he should give way to his feelings so soon, since he must stand there for hun- dreds of years to come. The guide-books say he is represented in the act of encouraging his men. They must have been easily encouraged. Of the out-door gay life by gas-light, we saw less than we had hoped to see in the French capital. The sea- son was unusually cold and wet, and most of the time it would have required the spirit of a martyr to si]) coffee upon the sidewalk. One garden concert we did attend, and found it very bright and fairy-like, and all the other adjectives used in this connection. We sat wrapped in shawls, our feet upon the rounds of the chair before us, and shivered a little, and enjoyed a great deal. We went one night — in most orthodox company — to the Cirque de ITmperatrice, a royal amphitheatre with handsome horees, pretty equestriennes, and a child balanced and tossed about on horseback, showing a frightened, painful smile, which made of the man who held her a Herod in our eyes. A girl very rich in paint and powder, but somewhat destitute in other particulars, skipped and danced upon a slack roi3e in a most joyous and airy manner. When we came out, a THE PARIS OF 1869. 85 fi«aggard woman, with an old, worn face, was crouching in a little weary heap by the door that led into the sta- bles, wrapped in an old cloak ; and that was our dancing girl! \^e went to the opera, too ; it was Les Huguenots. To this day I cannot tell who were the singers. 1 never knew, or thought, or cared. And the bare shoul- ders flashing with jewels in the boxes around us, the claqueurs in the centre, hired to applaud, clapping their hands with the regularity of clock-work, the empty imperial box, were nothing to the sight of Paris portrayed within itself. You know the familiar opera ; do think how strange it was to see it in Paris; to look upon the stage and behold the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame; the excited populace rising up to slay and to be slain, with all the while this same fickle French people serenely smiling, and chatting, and look- ing upon it — the people who were even then ready at a word to reenact the same scenes for a different cause. Just outside, only a day or two before, something of the same spirit, portrayed here for our amusement, had broken out again in the election riots. And we re- membered that, as we drove around the corner to the opera house, mounted soldiers stood upon either side, while every other man upon the street was the eye, and ear, and arm of the emperor, who knew that the very ground beneath his fliir, white city tottered and reeled. We saw the emperor and empress one day, after having looked for them long and in vain upon the Champs Elysees, and in the Bois de Boulogne where gay Paris disports itself It was the morning after the riot, when they drove unattended, you will remember, 86 AJM AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD, through the streets where the rioters had gathered. We were in one of the shops upon the Rue de Rivoli. Just across the way rose the Tuileries from the si vain to pacify a nature that seemed peaceless. Who SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITT. 95 was its mother, or how the little stranger chanced to be here, we did not learn. On either side of tlic long, narrow room hung the white-curtained cradles, each with its pretty, pink quilt. At one end was an altar, most modest in its appointments, consisting of hardly more than a crncitix and a vase of. flowers upon tlie mantel. As we entered the room, the sister stood he- fore it with a circle of white caps and blue checked aprons around her, a circle of little clasped hands, of upLurued eyes and lisping lips, repeating what might iiave been, " Now I lay me," tor anything we knew. Our entrance brought wandering eyes and thoughts. At tlie opposite end of the room, a wide, long win- dow swung open, revealing a pleasant garden down below, all green and blossoming, with an image of the Virgin half hid among the vines. Cool, and fresh, and ijreen it seemed after the o-lare of the hot streets, a pleasant picture for the baby eyes. Out from this window the little feet could trot upon the guarded roof of a piazza. A little chair, a broken doll, and limbless horse here were familiar objects to the eyes of the • mothers in our party, and when two children seized upon one block with a determination which threatened a breach of the peace, we were convinced that even baby nature was the same the, world over. Supper time came, and the children were gathered together in a, small room, before the drollest little table imagina- ble — a kind of elongated doughnut, raised a foot from the floor, with a circular seat around it. All the little outer shells of blue check were slipped on, all the little fat bodies lifted over and set into their places, to roll off, or about, at will, A grace was said, to us, I 96 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. think, since all the little eyes turned towards us, and a plate of oatmeal porridge put before eaelrone. Some ate with a relish, and a painful search over the face with a spoon for the open, waiting mouth ; some leaiied back to stare at the company; and others persisted in dij^ping into the -dish of their next neighbor. One little thing, hardly more than a year old, drew down the corners of her mouth in a portentous manner, when the motherly one beside her, of the advanced age of three years, perhaps, rapped on the table with her spoon, and patted the doleful little face, smiling all the while, until she actually drew out smiles in return. The dear little mother ! An attendant with a homely- face, creased into all manner of good-natured lines, re- solved herself into the old woman who lived in a shoe, holding two babies and the porridge dish in her lap, balancing one upon the end of the low bench beside her, while two or three more stood at her knee, clinging to her apron. It was like a nest of open-mouthed birdlings. Blessings on the babies, and those, whether of our faith or not, who teach and care for them, we thought, as we came away. '• Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me," said the Master. Although I said nothing of our church-going in London, I cannot pass over our American chapel in Paris, with its carved, umbrella-like canopy, shading the good Dr. R., wlio did so much socially, as well as spiritually, for Americans there. Here came many whose names are well known ; among them our min- ister to France, an elderly gentleman of unpretending dress and manner, with a kindly, care-worn face. And here gathered also a company of beautiful women SIGHTS IN THE BEAUTIFUL CITT. 97 and children, proving the truth of all that has been said of our countrywomen. A blending of all types were they, as our people are a blending of all nation- alities, each more lovely than the other, and all making up a picture well worth seeing. I wish I might say as much for the opposite sex. One gentleman, who woie a red rose always in l)is button-hole, and turned his back upon the minister to stare at the women, had a handsome though hlase face, and more than one head above the pews would have been marked anywhere ; but the women and children bore away the palm. The delicate, sensitive faces which characterize American women, whether the effect of climate, manner of life, or of the nerves for which we arc so celebrated, are found nowhere else, I am sure. Jiesides the Sabbath services a weekly prayer-meet- ing was held here. They were singing some sweet familiar hymn as we entered one evening and took our place among the pilgrims and strangers like our- selves. It was the last gathering for the winter. Some were off for home, some for a summer of travel ; only a few, with the pastor, were to remain. One followed another in words of retrospection, and regret at part- ing, until a pall settled over the little company — untii even we, who had never been there before, wiped our eyes beeaiuse of the general dolefulness. A hush and universal mistiness pervaded the air of the dimly-lighted house ; the assembly seemed about to pass out of ex- istence, Niobe-like. Then up rose Dr. R.,the pastor. I wondered what he could say to add to the gloom ; something like this, perhaps: "Dear people, everybody is off; let us shut up the church, lock the door, and 7 08 AN AMERICAN GIRL ABROAD. llirow away the key. Receive the benediction." But no ; I wish you might feel the thrill tliat went througli the little company as his words fell from his lips. I wish I dared attempt to repeat them. " And now to you who go," he said, at last, " wlio take with you some- thing of our hearts, be sure our prayers will follow you. Keep us in memoiy; but, above all, keep in memo- ry your church vows. Make yourselves known as Christians among Christians. And when you have reached home — the home to which our thoughts have so often turned together — let this be a lesson. When summer comes and you leave the city for the countiy, for the mountains, for the sea-side, take your religion with you. Search out some struggling little church with a discouraged pastor, — you'll not look far or long to find such a one, — an