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A TOO SHORT 
 
 VA CA TION 
 
 / 
 
 LUCY LANGDON WILLIAMS 
 AND EMMA V. McLOUGHLIN 
 WITH FORTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRA- 
 TIONS FROM THEIR OWN 
 KODAK 
 
 W$HINGT05*_ r 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 l8$2 
 
|THB LIBRARY, 
 OF CONGRESS 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 Copyright, 1892, by 
 
 Lucy Langdon Williams 
 
 and 
 
 Emma V. McLoughlin. 
 
 Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. 
 
 <\\°\ 
 ^ 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Writing Home 5 
 
 Oi'll Roar an' Cry 12 
 
 The Chaperon 15 
 
 Sanguinelle's Expression of Indifference . 18 
 
 An Irish Church 33 
 
 An Irish Road 33 
 
 Goat's Milk an' a Drap of Poteen 35 
 
 A Pig Fair 39 
 
 Tom Moore's Birthplace 41 
 
 Phoznix Park, Dublin 46 
 
 Eileen O'Connor. . . , 50 
 
 The Old Welsh Church, Holyhead .... 51 
 
 The Water Tower, Chester 53 
 
 Corner House of the " Rows," Chester . . 54 
 
 A Chester Real- Estate Office 55 
 
 Our Conductor 56 
 
 Kenilworth 73 
 
 In Honor of the Emperor 84 
 
 From a London 'Bus 89 
 
 "And Unaccountable," I Said . 107 
 
 3 
 
4 List of Illustrations. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Avenue of Silver Poplars, St. Cloud . . 114 
 
 Gambetta's House, Ville d'Avray 116 
 
 Marie Antoinette's Thatched Cottage . . 118 
 
 Our Only Guide 137 
 
 Mer de Glace 138 
 
 Monument to Three Little Brothers . . . 148 
 
 Chillon 150 
 
 The Old Lime-Tree, Freiburg 153 
 
 The Madonna Shrine, Freiburg 154 
 
 Ogre Fountain, Bern 155 
 
 Bernese Peasants 156 
 
 A Bern Milk-Cart and Carrier 157 
 
 The Lower Part of the Staubbach .... 162 
 
 From Meyringen to the Grimsel 169 
 
 The Grimsel Hospice 173 
 
 The Church at Andermatt 176 
 
 The Loving Couple on Lake Lucerne ... 181 
 
 The Old Castle, Baden 198 
 
 In Holland 230 
 
 Boats at Scheveningen 233 
 
 A Dutch Fisherman 234 
 
 On the Beach 235 
 
 Sanguinelle at Scheveningen 236 
 
 Bathing Machines at Scheveningen .... 237 
 
 The Schreyerstoren 240 
 
 Amsterdam 242 
 
 Houses of the Zaandam Millionaires . . . 243 
 
 Dutch Children at Play 247 
 
T. 
 
 SANGUINELLE'S buoyant tempera- 
 ment enables her to sail over ob- 
 stacles as readily as a ship rides the 
 To my hesitating " I'm afraid we 
 
 waves. 
 
 cannot," she opposes her jubilant " I'm 
 confident that we can !" 
 
 2 5 
 
6 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 What to others is an experiment, in em- 
 bryo, is to her vivid optimism already an 
 established success. 
 
 The other day she grew eloquent over 
 the prospect of aerial navigation. 
 
 " That it is practicable, Langely's experi- 
 ments have proved. We are waiting now 
 only for the air-ship to be built, and since 
 aluminum " 
 
 " They'll wait a long time," I interrupted, 
 " before they'll find any one sufficiently 
 foolhardy to take passage in it." 
 
 " Not at all," she replied. " I intend to 
 secure my passage — with a return ticket — 
 for its first trip." 
 
 As she thus delivered herself, she looked 
 steadily into my eyes and I knew at once 
 that I was to go, too. I made a nerveless 
 resistance. I feebly suggested the wisdom of 
 not getting a return ticket — it is agreeable 
 sometimes to come back by a different 
 route, and — and — " it might not be needed," 
 I blurted out, actually boo-hooing at this 
 melancholy possibility. But it is useless to 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 7 
 
 struggle against the compelling force of 
 her enthusiasm. The occasional presenti- 
 ment of that dreadful expedition I am cer- 
 tain to make some day chills me to the 
 marrow. 
 
 It did not surprise me, therefore, in the 
 least, to find myself accompanying San- 
 guinelle again to Europe, although there 
 were some obstacles which challenged 
 prudence as peremptorily as the air-ship 
 does. For instance, — the propriety of two 
 young girls travelling alone. 
 
 Sanguinelle received this suggestion with 
 a burst of mirth that disconcerted me, and 
 made me almost suspect that she — but, ot 
 course, that couldn't be. When she recov- 
 ered, she began, — 
 
 " No doubt you imply that because you 
 have never attained to matrimony, you " 
 
 " Not yet, you mean," I interrupted, 
 stiffly. " But let us drop the subject; it is 
 extremely painful to me." 
 
 Sanguinelle was the active member ot 
 the concern, the Kodak and myself the 
 
8 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 silent partners. While she transacted the 
 business of the company, it was our task 
 to receive impressions. After examining 
 our first contributions, she seemed dis- 
 couraged in spite of her constitutional 
 buoyancy. She said that mine had to be 
 revised and the Kodak's reversed to get at 
 the truth. 
 
 " And I want this to be an absolutely 
 truthful chronicle," she said, looking an 
 admonition at me, and sternly tapping the 
 black box with her fingers. 
 
II. 
 
 SHORTLY after getting under way, 
 most of those on board became mere 
 pallid bundles of misery. We, who 
 always enjoy immunity from this humili- 
 ating period of transition, exhibited our 
 good health too aggressively, perhaps, as 
 he is apt to do whose stomach behaves 
 itself the first day at sea. 
 
 When these human cocoons began to 
 emerge from their wrappings, we distin- 
 guished easily, first, The Personage and her 
 Lorgnette. I was very unhappy after this 
 combination made its appearance, and pro- 
 foundly grateful for the occasions when It 
 had to be carried below again by its maid. 
 I am convinced that the only thing that 
 enables one to stand up bravely before a 
 lorgnette is the possession of another. 
 
 9 
 
io A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 Whenever the Personage turned her 
 lorgnette upon us (and we were her chief 
 victims), I tried to assume an expression of 
 serene and haughty indifference, but felt 
 like a poor little worm under a microscope, 
 and usually sought the shelter of a remote 
 corner of the deck behind Sanguinelle. 
 
 She never wilts. 
 
 " Maybe she disapproves of our hoods," 
 I tremulously suggest. Now, a black silk 
 hood edged with black fur sounds aestheti- 
 cally possible. I knew very early in our 
 journey that it was a tear-compelling fail- 
 ure. I think one might have been tolerated, 
 but we had committed a double atrocity. 
 
 To propitiate our Personage, I put mine 
 aside and donned the more usual small cap. 
 Relentless ! Unappeasable ! 
 
 One day the decks were slippery, the 
 boat was tossing ; the maid was below ; the 
 Personage essayed a few steps alone, — she 
 broke her nose. 
 
 Then became visible the demure young 
 lady whose mother remains accommo- 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 1 1 
 
 datingly ill in her state-room during the 
 voyage, while her daughter carries on a 
 serious flirtation with a German baron, in 
 the result of which we all took a live 
 interest. 
 
 The ardor of his sentiments was fast 
 making him " too full for utterance" in his 
 stumbling English, and he tried to help his 
 poor, faltering tongue by frequent reference 
 to a small, red pocket dictionary. 
 
 The tender affair came to a sudden end, 
 and every one was conjecturing why. San- 
 guinelle, strolling in their vicinity, had 
 heard him murmur lovingly, " Ah, Frau- 
 lein, you haf sooch a beautiful hide !" We 
 all wondered if that had anything to do 
 with it. 
 
 A little Irish girl, returning home from a 
 visit to Fred and Sister Mary in Brooklyn, 
 was our neighbor at the table. I wish that 
 we could have photographed her brogue, 
 " Oi du," and her delightful confidence in 
 our intimate acquaintance with Fred and 
 Mary and all the babies, Onty Lou, Cousin 
 
12 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 Helen, Mr. Herbert, and all the rest of 
 them. 
 
 She had some fears that she might not 
 be met at the landing by her father. " An' 
 
 if he do not, 
 now, oi'll be 
 that mahd, oi'll 
 roar an' cry, 
 just." 
 
 She imparted 
 to us the fol- 
 lowing startling 
 proof of hered- 
 ity:- 
 
 " In aich gin- 
 iration wan of 
 the family meets her fate crossin' the At- 
 lantic. 
 
 " Me gran'mother met gran'father on a 
 voyage to America. Onty Lou met Oncle 
 James in the same way, and Fred proposed 
 to me sister Mary after makin' her acquain- 
 tance on board wan of the Atlantic steam- 
 ers." 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 13 
 
 She told us that the next time we saw 
 her she might be Lady Grace and her 
 father the Airl of G. " But it is not likela, 
 there are so manny in bitwain ; but wance 
 there was only wan. And now there are 
 so manny we are tired o' countin'." 
 
 Our neighbor to the left, a slender young 
 woman with a mournful, far-away look in 
 her eyes, had interested us from the be- 
 ginning. We had formed conjectures as 
 to the cause of that pathetic expression. 
 Sanguinelle, who had grown quite enthu- 
 siastic over her, said that she looked as 
 if she were " hungering for the infinite." 
 That proved to be just what ailed her, as 
 we discovered at dinner-time, when for one 
 " fashioned so slenderly" her achievements 
 bordered very closely on the marvellous. 
 
 The Dyspeptic opposite watched her 
 with curiosity and amazement. He, poor 
 man, was evidently allowed nothing for 
 dinner but boiled rice. When she pro- 
 ceeded to finish a hearty meal with small 
 pastry, plum pudding, ice-cream, vol an 
 
14 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 vent of pears, nuts, a cup of coffee, and 
 Gorgonzola cheese, he left in disgust for 
 the nearest port-hole. We could easily tell 
 when some unusual performance was going 
 on on our left by his absorbed counte- 
 nance. Once when a look of horror was 
 followed by his precipitate departure, I 
 turned to detect her in the act of devour- 
 ing prunes and rice with such avidity that 
 she was obliged to use the fingers of her 
 left hand as a push-piece ! You remember 
 the tale of the American girl whose low 
 social grade was determined by the fact 
 that she swallowed her push-piece, so you 
 can easily imagine our relief when we 
 realized that, at the worst, she could only 
 carry hers to her rosy lips. 
 
 Towards the end of the voyage he 
 seemed to regard her gastronomic antics 
 with more toleration, and even offered sac- 
 rifice in the shape of a glass of champagne, 
 and watched with admiration the disappear- 
 ance of the delicious fluid down her del- 
 icate throat 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 15 
 
 M 
 
 The Chaperon was on board with her 
 charges — young and otherwise. She was 
 the embodiment of cut-and-dried conven- 
 tionalities. How deep one would have to 
 probe to discover the living woman under 
 this mass of artificiality and pedantic pru- 
 dery ! I wonder if she ever found herself 
 out! 
 
 Occasionally she was seized with an art- 
 less enthusiasm, — for the benefit of the 
 Dear Girls and effectually to silence her 
 rival, — for there were two of them. 
 
1 6 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 About Wordsworth now, and the Eng- 
 lish Lakes — 
 
 No. I (with girlish fervor). I love my 
 Wordsworth always — always ! But to read 
 him when my soul is drinking in the 
 delicious scenery of the English Lakes is 
 rapture ! Dear girls (archly), perhaps I 
 may not be able to tear myself away from 
 that delightful region, and take up our 
 travels anew. Then what will you do ? 
 
 The Dear Girls look meekly apprehen- 
 sive, and then bend their pretty heads to 
 meditate upon the possibility presented to 
 them. One saucy one, who pinched her 
 neighbor's arm and made a wry face, 
 seemed quite capable of continuing her 
 journey alone, and with great satisfaction 
 to herself. 
 
 In the mean time, No. 2, with painful 
 deliberation, was saying : 
 
 " It is indeed true, — every one must have 
 experienced it, — we have a nicer — I should 
 say a — ah — more delicate, more — ah — sen- 
 sitive appreciation of genius when we visit 
 
A Too Short Vacation. iy 
 
 its home, — where it has — ah — lived and 
 breathed and dreamed. It makes us rev- 
 erent ; it gives to one's thoughts an up- 
 ward impulse " 
 
 Here the Dear Girls and every one else 
 took an upward impulse at the shout from 
 the deck, " A whale ! A whale !" 
 
 Sunday we attended divine service,— 
 and, we hope, bolstered up our tottering 
 reputation. A very young man and a 
 venerable negro conducted the service. 
 The former made the sign of the cross 
 before beginning his sermon in a way that 
 would have " knocked Pat spacheless." He 
 seemed ill at ease in the act, and glanced 
 around furtively, as if apprehensive of dis- 
 approval. In the evening we were wick- 
 edly decoyed into attending another service 
 by the promise of a solo from " A sweet 
 singer of Washington." Instead, we had a 
 discourse from a gentleman whose theory 
 was evidently to divest religion of its 
 gloom. He frequently interspersed his 
 remarks with " Bless God for that !" with 
 
1 8 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 the airy grace of an elephant and a smile 
 on his face like that of the famous Cheshire 
 feline. 
 
 Of course there was a concert at the end 
 for the benefit of the Seamen's Orphans' 
 Home, which ought to be a very pros- 
 perous institution, if it gets all that is con- 
 tributed to it. The feature of the evening 
 was a comic song, which seemed to be 
 good enough for the rest of the company. 
 Sanguinelle sat so far back that she did 
 not think it necessary to smile. She says 
 that she assumed an expression of indif- 
 ference. This is what the Kodak said : 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 19 
 
 As an example of the effrontery of 
 some people at sea, the following will 
 serve : While sitting in the companion- 
 way, I saw a woman struggling into an 
 ulster that looked strangely like mine. 
 The farther she got into it, the more 
 striking was the resemblance. While my 
 eyes were painfully bulging out of my 
 head with astonishment, she came to me 
 and said, sweetly, " Is this your garment ? 
 I wanted to take a little walk on the deck, 
 and one feels as if one were at liberty to 
 take up anything at hand." 
 
 I tried to throw polite indifference into 
 my countenance as I assured her that she 
 was welcome to it for a short time. For 
 two hours that woman promenaded the 
 deck in my coat, while I, impatient of 
 waiting, started for a walk, shivering under 
 what Mother calls a miserable " skigwag" 
 of a cape ! We passed and repassed each 
 other. I looked at her appealingly; I 
 shivered, and my teeth chattered audi- 
 bly as she approached. But all in vain. 
 
20 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 Finally I said, humbly, while my blue lips 
 trembled as if I had an ague fit, — 
 " Please, lady, give me my coat." 
 " Oh, was it from you that I borrowed 
 the ulster ?" she replied. " Thanks, aw- 
 fully." 
 
 
III. 
 
 LATER than we had expected, — a disaster 
 j attributed by the officers to American 
 coal and the intense heat of two days, 
 which prevented the fireman from working, 
 — we reached the coast of Ireland. 
 
 When we left the tender at Queenstown 
 there was a shower of sarcastic remarks 
 following those who ventured to carry even 
 a small satchel ashore. 
 
 " Oh, ye would save yer fee, would ye?" 
 We asked a sturdy dwarf to carry our 
 bag, but he was already loaded up, and, as 
 we were in a hurry to catch the boat, we 
 carried it ourselves into the Custom-House. 
 " Any wine or spirits ?" the officer asked, 
 with a searching look. 
 " A flask only." 
 " Or perfumery ?" 
 
 3 21 
 
22 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Or ammunition, or firearms ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Or tobacco, or cigars ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 - Then, with the most cursory look, he 
 affixed the yellow stamp which set us free, 
 just too late for the boat that connected 
 with the train at Blackrock. It was almost 
 an hour before the next went, too. If 
 we had not been fearfully hungry, it 
 would not have been unpleasant. Queens- 
 town looked charming with its background 
 of a green hill, somewhat Montreal fashion. 
 There were boat-races going on, and crowds 
 to witness them, — the soldiers with their 
 brilliant scarlet coats, men, women, and 
 children, — all chattering in the richest and 
 broadest brogue that we had ever dreamed 
 of. It was hot and my head ached. Our 
 Irish girl's remedy for overwrought nerves 
 occurred to me, and I sat down to roar and 
 cry. Strange to say, my headache disap- 
 peared, my hunger was stilled, the water 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 23 
 
 was blue, and the people gay. So great 
 was my relief that I have determined to 
 weep now whenever anything goes wrong. 
 
 The ride up the river was delightful. 
 We looked at the people with much more 
 curiosity than they regarded us, an un- 
 usual state of affairs, which we did not 
 know whether to attribute to the natural 
 politeness of the natives or to our own un- 
 obtrusiveness. 
 
 Prudentia and I made a mutual confes- 
 sion which rather amused us. It happened 
 as we were steaming into Queenstown 
 harbor, we passed a sailing vessel carrying 
 the American flag. One of the party, the 
 " Bless-God-For-That" man, proposed three 
 cheers, and had hardly gotten the words 
 out before the hearty hurrahs sounded. I 
 had not felt in the least touched at the time, 
 but when Prudentia said, — 
 
 " Look, that big man is brushing away 
 the tears from his eyes just at the sight of 
 the flag !" I turned away to hide the quick 
 tears in my own, and it seems that Pru- 
 
24 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 dentia did the same, though neither of us 
 can tell why we wept. 
 
 Arrived in Cork, I insisted that we should 
 get our lunch away from the hotel, because 
 it would be cheaper. Prudentia said that 
 the coffee might have been better, and so it 
 might, but there were unexplored potenti- 
 alities in the hotel coffee, as we discovered 
 the next morning. After lunch, warned by 
 passing showers, we pinned up our gowns, 
 donned mackintoshes and rubbers, to search 
 
 for 
 
 " The sweet bells of Shandon, 
 
 Which sound so grand on 
 The pleasant waters of the river Lee." 
 
 By the combined efforts of various 
 women, sturdy and vigorous, robed in 
 knee-high dresses, with long, loose-hooded 
 cloaks, — a baby somewhere in its folds, — 
 and stockingless, often shoeless, feet, we 
 reached Shandon at a quarter of six, just 
 in time to hear the chimes, which are placed 
 in a fantastic steeple looking as if it were 
 built in stories. At its base rests the body 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 25 
 
 of Father Prout. The church seems to be 
 unknown by its proper name, St. Ann, 
 though everyone brightened when we added 
 " Shandon." 
 
 The women of Cork, and the men, too, 
 are really fine-looking, with aquiline noses, 
 bright eyes, and magnificent hair. They 
 looked clean and hearty, and we saw no 
 signs of awful poverty or filth. 
 
 Throughout Southern Ireland, however, 
 the thatched cottages are wretched dwell- 
 ings. In the most squalid, for even this 
 misery has grades, the single room with its 
 mud floor is the living-room of the family, 
 and the " drawing-room" of the pig. 
 
 There is a better kind which has a second 
 apartment containing a neat bed, a table 
 with books, some colored prints on the 
 wall, and shelves with a few china cups and 
 saucers thereon. 
 
 If you make a visit, these are quickly 
 taken down and spread on a white cloth, 
 the ubiquitous pot of tea is brewed, and 
 you are served with a simple hospitality 
 
26 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 which is not marred by vulgar apologies, 
 and which, therefore, indirectly pays you 
 the compliment of supposing that you have 
 sufficient nobility to ignore the very humble 
 condition of your entertainers. 
 
 They hope to see the lady's bonny face 
 soon again, and " Johnny, can't ye run out 
 and pick a nosegay for the lady ?" For 
 both flowers and children flourish amid all 
 this poverty, in an amazing fashion. Every 
 cottage seemed overflowing with curly- 
 headed, rosy-cheeked youngsters. We saw 
 no instances of the diseases of the skin and 
 eyes which Dr. Wood described. 
 
 We drove out to Blarney in a jaunting- 
 car, and were so fortunate as to have a 
 dear, patriotic old Irishman for a driver. 
 His face lighted up when he told us, — 
 
 " An' shure, miss, it is the wholesomest 
 country in the wurrld." 
 
 Still, we could not get him to say a word 
 about evictions, though we asked him vari- 
 ous leading questions suggested by aban- 
 doned cottages, the thatch completely 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 27 
 
 gone, which we fancied might have been 
 torn off by the evicted. 
 
 " There is a stone there 
 That whoever kisses, — 
 Oh, he never misses 
 To grow eloquent." 
 
 Blarney Castle is a really magnificent 
 ruin built by the MacCarthys, who seem 
 to be the elite of county Cork. The dun- 
 geons are not more than five feet square 
 and six high. They are lighted by the 
 merest line of a window, and are much 
 more dreadful than anything that we saw 
 in Germany. We climbed to the very top, 
 and kissed the real Blarney-stone, for, 
 though the guide-book says that there is 
 a second one equally efficacious and more 
 accessible, it was not shown to us, perhaps 
 because since the poor man fell to the 
 ground, head foremost, eighteen months 
 ago, they have put up a grating to prevent 
 accidents, and the process, which does not 
 now necessitate a friend to hold you by 
 
28 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 the heels, though not less disagreeable, is 
 safer. 
 
 The Dean was buried from the beautiful 
 cathedral of St. Fin Bar, which he had 
 been very active in bringing to completion, 
 the day we left for Bantry. In consequence 
 our train was thronged with clergymen 
 returning from the funeral. The only 
 other person in our compartment was a 
 very old clergyman, with one of his upper 
 false teeth knocked out, in whom we were 
 quite interested at first when he told us 
 that he read our magazines, and named 
 Harper s, the Century, the Atlantic, and 
 Scribner's ; but he became very tiresome 
 after awhile, and must have been in his 
 dotage, I think, for immediately after mak- 
 ing a remark his lips moved until he said 
 something else. Whether he was rehears- 
 ing or repeating, we could not make out. 
 He insisted upon giving us an orange, 
 which he bought from a fine-looking old 
 woman at a small station. He had patron- 
 ized her for twenty-five years, he said. In 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 29 
 
 the midst of his enthusiastic history, and 
 before he had paid her, the train started, 
 and the guard had to shove him into our 
 unwilling arms, head foremost. 
 
 At Bantry we took the coach and drove 
 to Glengariff through a beautiful country. 
 The road follows the windings of Bantry 
 Bay, filled with islands, on one of which 
 (Whiddy) there is a real castle, an O'Sul- 
 livan ruin, and an equally picturesque, 
 castle-like tower. The indentations are 
 such that the bay does not seem like an 
 arm of the sea at all, but like a lake, sur- 
 rounded by rows after, rows of mountains. 
 Except for the continual view of the water, 
 the scenery is like, and is not more beauti- 
 ful than, that of my own Vermont, but the 
 vegetation is infinitely more luxuriant. 
 Even in winter it must be very green, 
 there is so much pine, cedar, yew, laurel, 
 arbutus, and holly. Fuchsia is here almost 
 a tree, and grows wild. 
 
 Our honeysuckle, sweet alyssum, gar- 
 den forget-me-nots, and ice-plant grow 
 
30 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 uncultivated everywhere, besides heather 
 and quantities of flowers whose names I 
 do not know. And such roses ! A " rose- 
 embowered cottage" is literally true here. 
 
 Glengariff means, in Irish, Glengruff, — 
 like our word gruff, — gariff. It is indeed 
 wild, and when the rain falls in torrents on 
 a gray sea, dismal in the extreme ; but the 
 air is always balmy. Our companion on 
 the coach, another clergyman whom we 
 first took for a farmer (his wraps covered 
 his clerical coat), named the mountains for 
 us. He was evidently curious about us, 
 and though plainly a gentleman of culture, 
 yet he manifested his interest by leading 
 questions, instead of the furtive looks of 
 the other reverend. When at last he 
 discovered that we were Americans, and 
 that it was not our first trip to Europe, 
 his amazement, though inward, was evi- 
 dent. He thought we might be Cook's 
 tourists, but when we indignantly denied 
 the imputation, he seemed to surmise 
 that we were eccentric heiresses in search 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 31 
 
 of titled husbands. He recommended us 
 to go to Eccles', not, however, with refer- 
 ence to the design he mentally ascribed to 
 us, but simply as a unique hotel like an 
 English country-house, with old pictures, 
 china, silver, and a fine library, the resort 
 of lords and ladies and of those poor, 
 unmarried, Honorable Misses who, though 
 thirty, seem to have no ideas nor savoir 
 vivre. 
 
 Although we had not confided our family 
 history to the reverend gentleman, nor 
 mentioned its members to him, he inno- 
 cently asked, — 
 
 " And has your father been over, too ?" 
 " He wanted to come over this year, sir, 
 but business kept him home. Next sum- 
 mer, perhaps, though he cannot take a 
 very long vacation," I answered, with equal 
 innocence, for I could see by his eyes that 
 now we were being put down as extrava- 
 gant Americans, spending all the money 
 that our indulgent fathers could rake and 
 scrape together. 
 
32 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 At Glengariff we saw the funeral of a 
 little child, the son of a peasant. The 
 very small coffin, covered with white, was 
 carried by one of the men, followed by 
 perhaps twenty others, the women and 
 children with shawls over their heads, and 
 long cloaks ; the men bearing spades, with 
 which they dug the shallow grave, not 
 more than three feet under ground. Then, 
 laying the little coffin in it and covering it 
 with earth, they silently departed. The 
 Catholic church here is the most poverty- 
 stricken affair imaginable, but, although 
 in a three-mile walk one way and a ten- 
 mile drive another we did not see a dozen 
 houses, yet when twelve o'clock came, the 
 church was packed to overflowing, a large 
 number of men and women kneeling out- 
 side on the wet sod. Inside, the odor was 
 intolerable, like a stable. We made up 
 our minds that, though the peasants looked 
 clean, it was a cleanliness produced by the 
 sweat of labor. Later, one of the natives 
 told us that it was only the smell of peat, 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 which they burn in 
 their cottages, and with 
 which they become thor- 
 oughly impregnated. 
 
 The picture in our 
 text and the Pig Fair 
 on page 39 are two of 
 sixty (she took every 
 defenceless thing within 
 reach) which Prudentia brought back with 
 her after an affecting visit to her relations. 
 In the ardor of her affection for her native 
 soil, she developed a pronounced brogue, 
 and with that rich roll assured me, — 
 
 " Oi think it a very nate little chapel, 
 this of Capen Rush. Sure, me own mither 
 was baptized there." 
 
 The English church was attended 
 mainly by visitors, soldiers 
 acting as a choir and the 
 plate being passed by police- 
 men. 
 
 We drove from Glengariff 
 to Kenmare for dinner, and 
 
 rf 
 
34 ^ Too Short Vacation. 
 
 thence to Killarney, passing by Muck- 
 ross, where there is a beautiful abbey 
 and the tombs of the old chieftains, the 
 ubiquitous MacCarthys and O'Donohues, 
 amongst others. There was a neat and 
 tidy inn there, cheap, too ; but we had 
 not the moral courage to dismount before 
 the Dowager Lady Allen and maid, to say 
 nothing of the Hon. Miss Gascoigne Scott, 
 who was also of the party. 
 
 It is fourteen miles from Killarney to the 
 Gap of Dunloe. Most of the way we were 
 pursued by men on fine-looking ponies, 
 who wished us to ride on them through 
 the Gap. 
 
 " Ye'll niver git betther vally fur yer 
 money, mum. Only two shillings sixpence. 
 The road is very wet, mum, an' toward the 
 cottage, mum, the waather it do just lie in 
 pools." 
 
 " If ye say, miss, that ye could 'a gotten 
 along widout, ye shall have all me labor an' 
 wurrk for nathin', miss." 
 
 " Four Oirish miles, which be aiqual to 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 35 
 
 foive an' a half English wans, sur. Won't 
 ye take a pony for the ladies, surr ?" 
 
 We remained firm, though we had some 
 inward qualms, for rain had fallen with 
 little intermission ever since we landed, but 
 the path turned out to be very fine. We 
 were followed all the way by girls and 
 women, bare-legged and curly-headed, 
 
 holding two bottles ; in the one goat's 
 milk, in the other " poteen," and a tumbler 
 under the inevitable shawl. They pretend 
 (for, of course, they would be the last to 
 tell of it, if it were true) that the whiskey 
 
36 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 is made in a private still down in the Black 
 Valley, which is no darker than the other 
 valleys, and owes its name to a mistransla- 
 tion of the Irish for O'Duff's valley. The 
 general opinion seemed to be that it was 
 bought in the village and diluted with 
 water. The nearest approach to the curs- 
 ing for which they are so famous, if you do 
 not scatter coppers, was, — 
 
 " Ye hang on to a ha'penny an' it were 
 siller." 
 
 We might have told her that she begged 
 for it as if it were gold. There was plenty 
 of Blarney, though, and a great deal about 
 the darling American ladies who always 
 give so much to the poor. Afterwards we 
 were sorry that we had not given to them 
 more generously. They were no more 
 persistent or numerous than the beggars 
 everywhere else (except Germany, where 
 they are not allowed), and they were a vast 
 deal more amusing. 
 
 Lord Brandon's cottage we did not see, 
 though we had to pay a shilling to go in- 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 37 
 
 side the gate. Probably it was a couple of 
 miles from the gateway. I often wonder if 
 these lords have seen once even the whole 
 of their estates, they seem so enormous 
 and so appallingly troublesome. Lady 
 Kenmare keeps an alleged cottage — a care- 
 taker always there — on the lake, to lunch 
 in when she happens to go a-boating, which, 
 perhaps, is once a leap-year. 
 
 " The fact is, and I don't care to own it, 
 they are too beautiful ; and as for a man 
 coming from his desk in London and seeing 
 the whole lakes in a single day, he is an ass 
 for his pains. A child doing sums in addi- 
 tion might as well read the multiplication- 
 table and fancy he knew it by heart," said 
 Thackeray. 
 
 We rowed through the three lakes, two 
 of them connected by a river five miles in 
 length, to Ross Castle, a fine old ivy-covered 
 ruin, the last stronghold in Ireland to sur- 
 render. It is said that O'Donohue, its 
 former lord, returns every seven years to 
 inspect it. When he comes on the wings 
 
38 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 of the setting sun, flowers dropping before 
 him, the castle is restored for the night to 
 all its former glory. The boatman shows 
 his footprints in the rocks and his library 
 of books, " all written in the good old Irish 
 tongue." Colleen Bawn's habitation was 
 there, too, and Innisfallen, with its lovely 
 abbey, endeared to us by Moore's poem, to 
 say nothing of its near neighbor, the little 
 Mouse Island, where dwell the seven white 
 mice. 
 
 It rained fearfully on the ride home. 
 A scrubby Englishman in knee-breeches 
 nearly burst with rage because Prudentia's 
 umbrella dripped on his bride. It had to 
 drip on somebody, so she took it out on 
 the Dowager, who was most beautifully 
 gotten up in a rubber hood. It looked 
 hideous ; still we sighed for it and later got 
 one. At any rate it must have been more 
 becoming to ?is, for zve have no mustaches. 
 
 At one of the smallest stations on the 
 road to Dublin we witnessed a strange 
 scene. A large party of peasants came 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 39 
 
 down, accompanying a strong, white- 
 teethed, handsome girl, who, nevertheless, 
 looked and acted like a maniac. She fell 
 upon the neck of every one in the crowd 
 in the wildest grief; she kissed them; 
 she threw her arms up and shouted. The 
 tears were streaming down their faces, and 
 they kept up a sort of wild chant, which is 
 known as a Caoine (pronounced " keeny"). 
 This weird droning is usually sung over 
 
 the corpse at an Irish wake. The guard 
 finally lifted her into the carriage, with her 
 companion, a loutish fellow, and locked the 
 door. We supposed they were prisoners, 
 but she was only going to America. 
 
 Further on there were two of the famous 
 " round-towers," one with a conical top, and 
 
40 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 the other turreted. Our fellow-traveller 
 who pointed them out to us, and gave us 
 also a York and Lancaster rose (variegated 
 red and white), was a very charming woman. 
 She innocently expected us to share her 
 enthusiasm for her husband and children. 
 She took out her children's letters, written 
 beautifully in French (they are only twelve), 
 told us that she had never left them before, 
 and spoke with bated breath of their learned 
 father. She had chosen to come on the ac- 
 commodation train, because, since it did not 
 go fast, it must be safer. Do you wonder 
 that, down in the depths of her heart, we fan- 
 cied that we must be written down "freaks?" 
 She was too polite to say more than, — 
 
 "You American ladies are so coura- 
 geous !" 
 
 Prudentia left me at Maryborough to 
 visit her mother's second cousin twice re- 
 moved, — I did not wish to intrude on that 
 sacred meeting, and went on to Dublin. 
 
 After establishing myself at the hotel, 
 which was, after all, very pleasant, and 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 4i 
 
 beautifully situated on a park, with lake, 
 band, shady walks and seats, — like many 
 others sprinkled all over Dublin, I started 
 for St. Patrick's Cathedral, rebuilt by Guin- 
 ess, the brewer, whose statue 
 — and he is a fine-looking 
 man — is in the yard, intend- 
 ing to drop a tear on the 
 grave of Swift and Stella, 
 who are buried side by 
 side ; but as it was neces- 
 sary to arouse the sexton, I 
 resolved to delay my emo- 
 tion — and the shilling— 
 until Prudentia came. 
 Patrick's I passed Moore's birthplace, a 
 neat, three-story brown brick building, a 
 wine-shop underneath, and Moore's bust, 
 youthfully pink, in a niche above. 
 
 And see the house where Moore was born, 
 Though how could we ere know it ? 
 
 Or think that it could ever be 
 The birthplace of a poet ? 
 
 For nothing that the eye can see, 
 I'm sure, would ever show it ! 
 
 Before reaching St. 
 
42 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 But, as the poet says himself, 
 
 That sweet scents ivill keep clinging 
 
 Around the vase that held the rose, 
 So memory still is flinging 
 
 A glamour o'er the spot from which 
 Such " melodies" came springing. 
 
 Jane Campbell. 
 
 Christ Church is a beautiful modernized 
 building, restored by Roe, another brewer. 
 
 I rode out to Glassnevin to see O'Con- 
 nell's monument, an Irish round-tower. In 
 the surrounding moat lies buried his faith- 
 ful and enthusiastic retainer. " Honest 
 Tom Steele" is all the epitaph says, or 
 needs to say. Not far off is an elaborate 
 monument bearing an inscription, certainly 
 explicit enough, — 
 
 " Pray for the soul of . He left 
 
 ^"20,000 [the figures in gilt] to the charities 
 of his native town." 
 
 The Botanic Gardens were fairly near, 
 and though the notice said that none but 
 " respectably-attired" people would be ad- 
 mitted, still, as no one was looking, I ven- 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 43 
 
 tured to enter. It was very fine, — large and 
 well arranged, the families growing together 
 as much as possible. 
 
 Sackville Street is quite magnificent. 
 The Nationalists insist upon calling it 
 something else, — O'Connell, I believe. 
 O'Connell's house is a very aristocratic 
 mansion in a fashionable neighborhood. I 
 cannot help feeling disappointed when the 
 abodes of genius are also, apparently, the 
 abodes of prosperity. 
 
 In a mad moment, we paid three pence 
 each for the privilege of mounting to the 
 top of Nelson's Monument for a " foine" 
 view of the city. It was a dark and dis- 
 mal climb ; and the higher we went, the 
 lower our spirits fell. Occasionally, we 
 stopped to still the beating of our hearts, 
 and to ask ourselves, between our gasps, if 
 we had not better give it up and return. 
 But, urged by the desire to get the value 
 of our money, we pushed on to the top 
 heroically. Sanguinelle's heroism, how- 
 ever, ended with that achievement, for 
 
44 A Too Sliort Vacation. 
 
 when we stepped out upon the narrow 
 platform on the summit, she nervously 
 clutched my skirts and begged me not to 
 be so rash as to take another step. While 
 I was remonstrating with her, she imme- 
 diately dropped down on the wet stones at 
 the feet of the great Nelson, and wailed 
 forth that she was afraid to move. For a 
 time it seemed as if our European trip 
 must end right there ; but she finally crept 
 to the door, and we began the weary 
 descent. When we found ourselves on the 
 sidewalk again, Sanguinelle was so dazed 
 as actually to condescend to ask to be 
 directed to the 'bus that would take us 
 to Phoenix Park. This was an alarming 
 symptom, and shows the weak condition 
 to which she was reduced, for her usual 
 custom is to select an open spot on which 
 the entire city can have a " foine" view of 
 her, open a map of the town six feet by 
 ten, study it for half an hour, make many 
 mysterious gyrations to the four points 
 of the compass, dart convulsively up the 
 
A Too Short Vacatioji. 45 
 
 street, only to return with painful haste to 
 her former post of observation. During 
 the solemn process, I stand at a respectful 
 distance, dart obediently when she darts, 
 return in a shamefaced sort of a way when 
 she returns, and glance furtively around to 
 see how many small boys are watching 
 our efforts to get under way. Therefore, I 
 was quite alarmed at her request, which 
 was answered gallantly by an Irish news- 
 boy, who escorted us a few steps and 
 helped us gently, on the car. Then he 
 placed an evening paper insinuatingly 
 under Sanguinelle's nose. She firmly 
 declined to purchase it, which convinced 
 me at once that she was rapidly recovering. 
 But even her firmness was not equal to his. 
 The paper remained in its position, and 
 she finally paid a ha'penny for the privilege 
 of lowering it to her knees. 
 
 We had time for only a very short visit 
 to Phoenix Park, but it was long enough 
 to satisfy us that it deserved its reputation 
 of being one of the beautiful parks of 
 
46 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 Europe. The day was sunny (the hour, 
 rather, for we have yet to see one unclouded 
 day), so we took some pictures, one of 
 which illustrates the meaning of Phoenix, 
 — clear water, — for the reflection of the 
 trees was as bright as the real trees above 
 the lake. 
 
 
 We paid a visit to St. Patrick's Cathe- 
 dral, now gay with flags, once used by 
 Cromwell as a law-court, and by James I. 
 as a stable ; and among the various tombs 
 therein, stopped a few minutes by the 
 grave of Dean Swift and Stella. " Cruel 
 anger can no longer break the heart," he 
 wrote for his own epitaph, a sentence that 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 47 
 
 touched us more than what followed, " Go, 
 traveller, and, if possible, emulate him who 
 was a strenuous vindicator of justice." 
 
 In one corner of the great church is St. 
 Patrick's Well, with the waters of which 
 he baptized his converts. The verger 
 unchained the cup, let it down, and, drawing 
 it up full to the brim, we devoutly drank 
 therefrom. 
 
 St. Patrick Street is little more than a 
 narrow, dirty lane. It seems to be the 
 chief market for old clothes, which are 
 arranged in piles, either on the narrow 
 sidewalks or in the middle of the road. 
 Alternating with these are fish-stands and 
 vegetable mounds, while the whole street 
 is filled with the sounds of buying, selling, 
 bargaining, the cries of children, and the 
 yelping of dogs. 
 
 We had been debating (or, rather, San- 
 guinelle had not made up the company's 
 mind) whether it would be more advanta- 
 geous to remain in Dublin another night, 
 or to go on to Holyhead, and thence in the 
 
48 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 early morning to Chester. Since the boat 
 reached Holyhead a little after midnight, 
 we naturally felt some concern as to where 
 we should lay our weary heads for the rest 
 of the night. To discover the time of 
 departure of boat and train seemed to be 
 a difficult matter for the clerk at Cook's 
 office, to whom, having lost our Bradshaw, 
 we applied; and after three visits to the 
 office, the question as to whether we would 
 be allowed to remain on board till morning 
 was answered by another clerk, very 
 glibly- 
 
 " Oh, to be sure, miss, you may remain 
 on board till morning. There is no ques- 
 tion about that, at all !" 
 
 " Well, I have been obliged to come 
 three times to find it out," I replied. 
 
 " I wish you had asked me in the first 
 place," responded the ready clerk. So, 
 with our minds at ease on that point, we 
 packed our bag, and, after a parting strug- 
 gle with the cabman, whom we expected to 
 overwhelm us with thanks for our really 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 49 
 
 generous fee, and who, on the contrary, 
 demanded more, we stepped on board the 
 " Violet," and immediately hunted up the 
 stewardess, to whom we applied for berths. 
 Thereupon we learned, to our dismay, that 
 the boat returned to Dublin, and that, if 
 we remained on board all night, we would 
 wake up in " Swate ould Oireland" again, 
 and, no doubt, find our irate cabman still 
 swearing at us and clamoring for more. 
 However, we learned that there was an 
 excellent railway-hotel at the terminus ; 
 and here, sure enough, we were provided 
 with a delightful bed in a beautiful room, 
 and we were both soon in Murphy's arms 
 (adopted by the Greeks as " Morpheus"). 
 We were to make the 7.45 train to Chester, 
 but although called before seven, we missed 
 it ! Now, / say that it was Sanguinelle's 
 fault, who will scrub her face in that mer- 
 ciless fashion of hers if all the trains in 
 railroaddom were to be caught ; and she 
 blames it on the time consumed by me in 
 a private rehearsal of the part of " Eileen 
 
5o 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 O'Connor," in the costume — or lack of it — 
 of that Irish beauty whom Sanguinelle 
 thinks resembles me. So we glowered at 
 
 each other across the breakfast-table until, 
 at the same moment precisely, each seemed 
 to conclude to make the best of it, and our 
 faces assumed a grin that rivalled Eileen's 
 own. Taking a stroll through the town, we 
 were rewarded by coming upon a beautiful 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 5i 
 
 old church, eight hundred years old. San- 
 guinelle mounted nimbly upon the spiked 
 railing that inclosed it, to get at the proper 
 
 height for a picture. It was worth missing 
 the train to carry away such a gem in our 
 Kodak. 
 
T 
 
 IV. 
 
 HE ride through Wales was fine, — high, 
 rugged mountains on one side, and 
 the sea on the other. At Conway, 
 the railroad passes right through the middle 
 of a beautiful old castle, of which Hawthorne 
 writes, " Nothing can have ever been so 
 perfect in its own style, and for its own 
 purposes, when it was first built ; and 
 nothing else can be so perfect now as a 
 picture of ivy-grown, peaceful ruin." 
 
 We reached Chester about noon, taking 
 lunch at a quaint, old-fashioned inn, — but 
 everything here is quaint and old. We 
 walked the whole circuit of the walls, took 
 some views of the old Water Tower, its 
 name dating from the days when the river 
 Dee brought boats to it to be anchored ; 
 saw Phoenix Tower, from which Charles I. 
 52 
 
b» 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 53 
 
 watched the defeat of his troops in the 
 Civil War ; listened to the singing of some 
 children down in 
 their doorway 
 and wondered at 
 i t s excellence, 
 due, no doubt, to 
 the almost uni- 
 versal teaching 
 
 of the Tonic Sol Fa system. They san 
 in parts, and the second was clear and 
 beautiful. We could see, too, the Roodee, 
 the famous race-course of Chester. 
 
 The Cathedral is a magnificent building, 
 but our attempts to see the interior were 
 frustrated by the fact that a service was in 
 progress. We devoutly walked away and 
 inspected " God's Providence" house, so 
 called from the inscription on it; the 
 " Rows," a covered archway to the shops, 
 not more odd than that of Berne, nor as 
 quaint as that of Thun, though more 
 celebrated than either, and other curiosi- 
 ties, including two shillings' worth of ice- 
 5 
 
54 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 cream which only made us wish our money 
 back again within our purses. Finally, after 
 thus whiling away two hours, we returned 
 to find the service still going on ! We 
 
 thought that we might steal around the 
 back part, without disturbing anybody, and 
 so get a view of the main body of the 
 church ; but the stern-eyed verger saw us, 
 and we meekly took the seat that he indi- 
 cated to us, taking the opportunity to con- 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 55 
 
 suit our watch while his back was merci- 
 fully turned on us. We discovered that 
 we had ten minutes left 
 in which to get a glimpse 
 of the interior. Perhaps 
 it was our fervent, men- 
 tal prayers that caused 
 the preacher, at that 
 identical moment, to 
 stop. We took our 
 way towards the main 
 aisle in company with another lot of heathen 
 tourists. When we arrived at the desired 
 point, a verger greeted us with, — 
 
 " Has the bahg come around, madam?" 
 immediately following his query by jingling 
 the bag under our eyes. In her embar- 
 rassment, Sanguinelle put in a whole penny, 
 then went to the graveyard and had a fit. 
 With strenuous efforts on my part, she 
 recovered sufficiently to look at the dear 
 little devils under the stalls of the beautiful 
 choir. The conductors on the cars were 
 all small boys. The one who collected 
 
56 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 our fare on the way to the station was a 
 very business-like little man, fourteen years 
 old, he said, and had been on the road 
 
 over a year. We took his picture and 
 gave him a tuppence, to his extreme de- 
 light. 
 
V. 
 
 THE Company had previously convinced 
 itself that the " Falcon," in Stratford, 
 was the inn that alone could cater to 
 its exclusive and exacting needs, and so we 
 instructed the cab to take us there. A 
 glance at the house showed us darkness 
 and nothing more. However, in response 
 to Cabby's ring, a voice was heard, and in 
 a few minutes we entered the portals. The 
 host showed us into the coffee-room : the 
 gas was lighted, and a pretty girl who ap- 
 peared was instructed to make ready our 
 room. Sanguinelle sustained the burden 
 of the conversation with the proprietor, 
 while we were waiting, for the long ride 
 and the weary delays had put me very deep 
 in the dumps, indeed ; and I was convinced 
 that we had brought up now, at midnight, 
 
 57 
 
58 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 at some strange place. This conviction 
 was strengthened when I heard him ex- 
 plaining that, — 
 
 " My missus 'as gone on a short vacation 
 for a few weeks. Hi don't know much 
 about the 'ouse. Hi'm not hoften round." 
 
 In reply to Sanguinelle's expression of 
 admiration for the flowers that decorated 
 the room, — and indeed, everything was 
 beautifully clean and homelike, — he an- 
 swered, — 
 
 " Hi fahncy that they are very pretty. 
 Hi'm fond of 'osses myself. Hi leave 
 flowers to the ladies." 
 
 We had just noticed that there were 
 pictures of race-horses and jockeys on the 
 wall, when the pretty girl announced that 
 the room was ready. Once safely inside, 
 and the door locked, we hastened to con- 
 fide to each other our fears. We had 
 each surmised that his unhappy wife must 
 have left because of the pretty girl. We 
 made a solemn resolution to leave early 
 the next morning, and reluctantly prepared 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 59 
 
 for bed. I surveyed the last, with its cur- 
 tains and canopies, with suspicion, and after 
 a searching examination, seized the candle, 
 and pointed, with a tragic air, to a slight 
 mark on the outside of the spread, which, 
 to my warped judgment, seemed to indicate 
 that other occupants of the bed were in 
 possession. I became all over goose-flesh 
 as my fancy painted how we were shortly 
 to be bled. We both sat down and swal- 
 lowed our tears heroically, when Sanguin- 
 elle proved herself well-named by seizing 
 the candle and declaring our fears without 
 foundation. In proof thereof, she showed 
 my gloomy eyes the fresh crease down the 
 centre ! Both made an elaborate show of 
 being satisfied, crept into bed, and — slept. 
 For all our surmises were wrong and all 
 our fears were groundless. It was a de- 
 lightful inn, as we discovered the next day. 
 Moreover, we had the entire place at our 
 disposal. 
 
 " What time do you have dinner ?" we 
 asked. 
 
60 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 " Dinner shall be ordered for whatever 
 time you fix, miss." 
 
 We were the only guests at the inn, but 
 the visitors' book showed a long list of 
 notables who had enjoyed the hospitali- 
 ties of the Falcon before us. One entry 
 amused us greatly. Surely, only an Ameri- 
 can child would dare to write, — 
 
 " Winifred Blake and parents." 
 
 Some one had written, too, — 
 
 " Here oft our Shakespeare quaffed a quaff, 
 Here ofttimes smoked a smoke, 
 The centre of the merry laugh, 
 The author of the joke." 
 
 Which brought to our notice the painted 
 statue of him in the bar-room, a fac-simile 
 of the one in the church, plus pipe and 
 glass, a not incongruous addition, for, as 
 some one wrote in the church autograph- 
 book, — 
 
 " Stranger, to whom this monument is shown, 
 Invoke the poet's curses on Malone, 
 Whose meddling zeal his barb'rous taste displays, 
 And daubs his tombstone, as he marred his plays." 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 61 
 
 After a delicious breakfast — and we must 
 particularly speak of the home-made bread 
 and marmalade — we started to walk to the 
 " Shottery," Anne Hathaway's cottage. It 
 was the only sight open to us, in fact, for it 
 was Sunday, and in Great Britain that is 
 a day that may be safely reckoned on to 
 interfere with all the plans of travellers. 
 It was one of Sanguinelle's short distances 
 (" four Oirish miles, miss, which be aiqual 
 to foive English wans"). The light drizzle 
 that was falling soon developed into a 
 steady pour. On we trudged, our feet 
 sinking almost to the ankles in the soft, 
 wet earth, our hearts sinking deeper as we 
 prodded ourselves along with, — 
 
 " Brace up, now, Will Shakespeare trod 
 this very path when he was going courting." 
 
 Oh, yes, but if his feet were wet he 
 probably sat in the chimney-corner and 
 drank his spiced wine, while Anne dried 
 his shoes by the fire. Now, it was evi- 
 dent that the demure old lady who occu- 
 pies the cottage to-day, and who enjoys the 
 
62 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 distinction of being Anne's Collateral De- 
 scendant, proposed to do no such service 
 for us. It is true that she showed us the 
 Hathaway family Bible with its record. One 
 ought to thrill, but with wet feet one is apt 
 to chill. There was a quaint old carved 
 bedstead in an upper room, but the best of 
 all was the old settle in the chimney-place, 
 on which the lovers sat, and which, with 
 an old carved chair on the other side, makes 
 this portion of the room exactly as it is 
 supposed to have been when Shakespeare 
 " paid attention" to Miss Hathaway. We 
 begged permission to take a picture of this 
 end, and asked the Collateral Descendant 
 to sit in the chair to be taken. But the 
 good old lady declared that she could not 
 make up her mind to do it on Sunday, but 
 gave her consent to our taking the room. 
 After the operation, I observed, with alarm, 
 that Sanguinelle made no motion to take 
 out the Company's purse. I communicated 
 with pleading eyes. She hesitatingly drew 
 forth a shilling, and, with inward misgivings, 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 63 
 
 eave it to the Collateral Descendant. That 
 good old lady took it, — and it was Sunday ! 
 We were compelled to walk the whole dis- 
 tance back in pelting rain, — no vehicle to 
 be had in that pious region on Sunday. 
 
 We dined with our host, who, at our 
 entreaty, permitted his children to come to 
 the table, and his niece, who was no other 
 than the pretty girl of the night before. 
 Five pretty children thereupon filed into 
 the room, shook hands with us smilingly, 
 and then took their places at the table. 
 Suddenly our host rapped his knuckles 
 sharply on the table and uttered one 
 word, — " Grace." 
 
 Five little heads dropped down in a 
 flash, and a chorus of little voices said 
 something that Heaven understood, per- 
 haps, but we did not, and the little mouths 
 were ready for work. We were stunned 
 at this performance ; but I, who had to 
 do the polite act for the company on all 
 occasions, managed, with my usual happy 
 tact, to cover my surprise. Sanguinelle's 
 
64 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 jaws fell open to such a degree that only 
 after a convulsive effort on her part would 
 they come together, and then with a click 
 that sounded through the room and caused 
 our host anxiously to ask, — 
 
 " Roast goose or roast lamb, miss ?" 
 She took goose, and, with the example 
 of those well-behaved children before her, 
 exercised the greatest self-denial in manipu- 
 lating it. Once only did she grasp the 
 joint with her fingers, when the sharp rap 
 of the master's knuckles caused her to 
 drop it guiltily. It was simply, however, 
 a gentle admonition to one of the children, 
 and was immediately obeyed. I never 
 saw such well-behaved and obedient chil- 
 dren. It was " yes, papa," or " if you 
 please, papa." They never asked for any- 
 thing, but accepted what was placed before 
 them. We expressed our admiration for 
 their admirable training, which caused the 
 father to give us his theory on the subject, — 
 " You take a young vine hand you cut 
 hit hand train hit, hand hit will go what- 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 65 
 
 ever way you want hit ; but hif you wait 
 till hit grows hup, you cahn't do nothing 
 with hit. A child that does not hobey his 
 a trouble to heverybody, hand a mortifica- 
 tion to hits parents." 
 
 We felt that our host's ideas were sounder 
 than his English. 
 
 In the afternoon we were admitted to 
 the quaint old school where Shakespeare 
 attended as a boy, and in the evening 
 piously went to church, in the hope of 
 seeing his bust and the spot where he is 
 buried, with its famous epitaph. We had, 
 as a sort of preparation for the function, 
 meditated on what we should put in the 
 collection-bag. Sanguinelle generously 
 fixed upon a sixpence, and I, feeling that 
 it was a heretic church, did wickedly hunt 
 up a shining U. S. nickel that looked like 
 silver, and did think that I might contrive 
 to slip it in the " bahg." Now, it turned 
 out to be a plate, and furthermore, we had to 
 start the collection with our miserable little 
 offerings, right under the eye of the rector. 
 
66 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 The oldest son of our host is a choir- 
 boy, and his father permitted him to take 
 supper with us, a feast not allowed the 
 others. He is a very clever and interesting 
 child. His attempts to explain to us about 
 the school and the methods pursued there 
 were as good as a play. He often sits 
 where Shakespeare's desk formerly stood, 
 and receives his education there free, on 
 account of his services in the choir. They 
 seem still to use the primitive means of 
 enforcing obedience, for he explained that 
 any boy who failed to obtain a certain 
 standard in his work was called up and 
 compelled to " touch his toes." 
 
 The full meaning of this did not dawn 
 upon us at first, until the boy explained 
 that the culprit was caned. 
 
 " Oh," exclaimed we, " the master canes 
 him over the back !" 
 
 " Not across the back," hesitated our 
 truthful but modest informant, "but across 
 the — a " 
 
 Here he broke down and finished with 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 67 
 
 blushes. To cover his embarrassment, we 
 asked him if he had ever been made to 
 touch his toes. 
 
 " No," he replied. " But I have been 
 very, very near it." 
 
 From Stratford, we went directly to War- 
 wick, searching first for " Mann's," well 
 known as a cheap and comfortable place 
 for lunch. The outside was sufficiently 
 modest to induce us to enter, for, some 
 way, much plate-glass and fine gilding 
 alarms us. The maiden ladies, who suavely 
 pressed ham-pies upon us, — 
 
 " They are home-made, ladies. I am 
 sure that you will find them very nice. 
 They are not like store-pies," did not reas- 
 sure us in the least, but the eating did. We 
 called for another, and still another, then 
 departed, leaving with the gentle " Misses 
 Mann," as we paid our small bill, the 
 conviction that their efforts in the way 
 of ham-pies had been thoroughly appre- 
 ciated. 
 
 The church where Elizabeth's Dudley 
 
68 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 is buried we visited first. His effigy, the 
 hands peacefully and piously folded across 
 his breast, lies beside that of his third wife, 
 Lettice, who has written the tender tablet 
 that marks his resting-place. In the middle 
 stands Robert Beauchamp's tomb, said to 
 be the most beautiful — after Henry VII. 's, 
 of course — in England. At one side is a 
 charming little effigy of the Earl of Leices- 
 ter's only legitimate child. At Warwick 
 Castle we afterwards saw his tiny suit of 
 armor. A little farther up the street is Lei- 
 cester Hospital, a fine old half-timber, wagon- 
 road building, like many others still stand- 
 ing in Warwick and Stratford. The next to 
 the oldest inmate took us around. We did 
 not know it, however, until he showed us his 
 particular patch in the garden, which he 
 proudly told us was next to the master's, — 
 
 " And twenty-three years it has taken to 
 get there, miss." 
 
 We had expected to see the brethren 
 wearing their cloaks and silver buckles, but 
 he explained that they only donned them 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 69 
 
 for chapel, because there was no money to 
 replace them if they should wear out. He 
 took us up to show us his quarters, and in- 
 troduced us to his wife. 
 
 " That is my master, miss." 
 
 She giggled delightedly, in spite of her 
 sixty odd, as she told us to, 
 
 " Listen to the impudence of him, now." 
 
 The cloaks were of thick dark blue 
 broadcloth, with beautiful large silver 
 buckles, the bear and ragged staff for orna- 
 mentation, eleven of them the identical ones 
 given by Leicester to the original twelve 
 brethren. The lost one has been replaced. 
 The brethren are chosen from five towns, 
 three of them being Warwick, Stratford, 
 Kenilworth. They must be army men and 
 have their rector's certificate of good moral 
 character. He will not give it to them, 
 either, unless he has known them at least 
 five years. The Hospital contains many 
 relics in the way of swords and guns, but 
 nothing that touched us so much as poor 
 Amy Robsart's half-finished embroidery, 
 
yo A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 and in particular the one bearing upon it 
 her lord's coat of arms, the bear and ragged 
 staff. 
 
 The brethren, or their wives, or some one 
 (if one may believe the evidence of one's 
 nose) now wash clothes in the little alcove 
 out from the large hall where once dined 
 His Most Gracious Majesty Edward VI. 
 
 A Warwick vase stands in the grounds, 
 said to have been used by the Egyptians to 
 measure the rise and fall of the Nile. The 
 Warwick vase at the castle is a Roman 
 affair, and the elaborate ornamentation is 
 beautifully carried out. The handles, for in- 
 stance, are parts of the grape-vines which 
 twine around the top. Lady Warwick did 
 not allow us to take in our Kodak, which 
 made us " mahd," for we had to pay a 
 shilling to enter, to say nothing of the tup- 
 pence to leave it behind. To add to our 
 wrath, it was one of the few sunny days of 
 our trip. The castle is as magnificently 
 strong and fresh as if it had been built ten 
 years ago, instead of four hundred. The 
 
A Too Short Vacation. yi 
 
 grass was everywhere like the softest of 
 green velvet carpets, and on it in front of the 
 castle promenaded many beautiful peacocks, 
 who seemed as proud as the servants of the 
 treasures that they guard. The man who 
 had charge inside might have been the earl 
 himself in manners and appearance, but he 
 used his aspirates more promiscuously. 
 Two photographs of Lady Brooke were ly- 
 ing around rather ostentatiously. We failed 
 to see her beauty. There were many fine 
 pictures, buhl tables, Marie Antoinette rel- 
 ics, and the like, but the gem of all, in our 
 eyes, was a charming, childish picture of 
 Henry VIII. One gets surfeited with Hol- 
 bein's famous portrait of him. It is so 
 coarse and unpleasing, — and then so ubiq- 
 uitous. Like Guido's Ecce Homo, every 
 gallery has one. I always think of His 
 Majesty's ugly ears when I look on Hol- 
 bein's picture of him. " If you paint my 
 ears, I'll cut off yours," said this gayly grim 
 monarch. Thereupon, the full face was 
 taken by the artist. 
 
72 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 From Warwick we journeyed to Leam- 
 ington, a mild Saratoga with distinctly 
 bad-tasting water. While waiting for the 
 train, Prudentia asked me the price of the 
 tickets. 
 
 " Two shillings," I answered. 
 
 Thereupon, a frisky young American, 
 gotten up in a marvellous shawl costume, 
 exclaimed, — 
 
 " Two shillings ? Why, how much did 
 you pay, mamma ?" 
 
 " Only one shilling six," responded mam- 
 ma, with ill-concealed triumph. 
 
 I frigidly remarked that there was but 
 one price for railway tickets, — no bargains, 
 — and asked what class they were booked 
 for, an unexpected turning of tables that 
 they did not enjoy. The young lady petu- 
 lantly asked the mother why she had bought 
 third-class tickets. To which the latter in- 
 nocently responded, — 
 
 "Oh, I really don't know, dear. I just 
 asked for a ticket, and he asked me if I 
 wanted third-class, and I said yes." 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 73 
 
 " All Americans travel third-class, you 
 know," added the daughter, quite chipper 
 again. 
 
 We were disappointed in Kenilworth at 
 first, but as we wandered around the old 
 ruin, — for it is a ruin, though scarcely older 
 
 than Warwick, — looking down the wells, 
 finding the places where had been the 
 leather curtains which protected those 
 inside from arrows, Elizabeth's dressing- 
 room, the magnificent banqueting-hall, and, 
 above all, the places that Scott has asso- 
 iated with Amy Robsart, we grew very 
 fond of it. 
 
74 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 On our way to the station again, Prudentia 
 condescended to notice the lintel of a cot- 
 tage-door, the bear and ragged staff carved 
 upon it, and then R. L. underneath, for the 
 Earl of Leicester, of course. I had gone 
 into raptures over it going up, but she had 
 declined even to look at it until relieved of 
 her luggage, her appetite appeased, and her 
 mind at ease about the hotel, for which we 
 had been looking for some time. 
 
 We had only a day for Oxford, and came 
 near missing that little, too, for both of us 
 dropped to sleep, — we had the compartment 
 to ourselves, — and only happened to wake 
 up just as we got to Oxford. Pour, pour, 
 pour, — but we heroically wandered down 
 Old High Street, with its magnificent 
 churches and colleges to the very end, 
 where stands Maudlin (spelled Magdalen). 
 The square tower with its six spires, and 
 the beautiful grounds, are lovely enough 
 to make one weep, even when the skies 
 seem determined to perform that duty for 
 one. 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 75 
 
 : Oh, ye spires of Oxford ! domes and towers ! 
 Gardens and groves ! Your presence overpowers 
 The soberness of reason." 
 
 There were more things, perhaps, to see 
 at Christ's. We heard " Tom" toll, and the 
 chimes of the chapel ring, went to the 
 kitchen and saw Wolsey's gridiron on 
 wheels, and thrilled generally and continu- 
 ously, as one must at Oxford. Just after 
 leaving Christ's, we went to Folly Bridge to 
 see the beautiful University barges and the 
 site of Friar Bacon's famous study, which 
 he is said to have so contrived that if any 
 wiser than he should pass underneath it 
 would fall down. Hence the sarcastic ad- 
 vice to new students, — Beware of Friar 
 Bacon's study. 
 
 " When first the college rolls receive his name, 
 The young enthusiast quits ease for fame. 
 Restless burns the fever of renown, 
 Caught from the contagion of the gown, 
 O'er Bodley's dome his future labors spread, 
 And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head." 
 
J 6 A Too Slwrt Vacation. 
 
 We were dead tired, and made up our 
 minds not to ascend the Radcliffe Camera 
 for the view, but to save our energies and 
 emotions for Charles's death-warrant, Eliza- 
 beth's and Edward VI. 's Latin exercises, 
 and the other treasures of the Bodleian. I 
 am always either exactly right or exactly 
 wrong, and this time it must have been the 
 latter, for the first thing that we knew we 
 were on a roof, Magdalen's spire before us. 
 We tried to locate other things that we had 
 seen, but with small success, until it dawned 
 upon our tired minds that we were on top 
 of the Radcliffe, after all. It did not matter, 
 for we had time enough left for the Bodleian 
 and those wonderful treasures which Marat 
 had tried to steal. All over were the quaint 
 notices, — 
 
 " Touch what you like with your eyes, 
 but do not see with your hands." 
 
 We arrived at the station a half-hour be- 
 fore train-time, so I distributed my boxes 
 and bundles around, stretched out my feet, 
 and prepared to get rested, while Prudentia 
 
A Too Short Vacation. jj 
 
 raced around to find something to drink 
 (she was always wanting something expen- 
 sive to eat or drink). All of a sudden I 
 heard a breathless, — 
 
 " Sanguinelle, it is the London train !" 
 I screamed, scooped up my various pack- 
 ages, knocked down several people and an 
 umbrella, which Prudentia stopped to pick 
 up, — nothing ever causes her to lose her 
 urbanity, — and reached the train just in 
 time. 
 
VI. 
 
 " A mighty mass of brick and stone and shipping, 
 Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye 
 
 Could reach 
 
 A wilderness of steeples peeping 
 On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy ; 
 A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown 
 On a fool's head, — and there is London town.'' 
 
 We found at the banker's, in London, a 
 card from Dean Bradley, admitting us to 
 the wax effigies. Through the Islip chapel, 
 whose name is the sole remaining memento 
 of the good abbot, we were ushered into the 
 chamber of the effigies, gorgeous with lace, 
 either very life-like or very corpse-like, as 
 the case might be. Most of them had been 
 carried in the funeral procession, after the 
 custom of exposing the body had become 
 obsolete. Elizabeth was there, as ugly as 
 78 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 79 
 
 my early childish hatred had painted her, 
 and Charles II., with his wicked black eyes 
 and coarse, sensual mouth. A corpse-like 
 Duke of Buckingham lay in the centre of 
 the room. On the other side stood Queen 
 Anne, looking quite handsome, and Wil- 
 liam, whose very high heels, even, did not 
 make him equal in height to Mary. Lord 
 Nelson's figure, however, was made to draw 
 away the great crowds from St. Paul's, in the 
 crypt of which he was buried. Wellington's 
 tomb is there, too, — a solid piece of por- 
 phyry, like Napoleon's, — and his funeral 
 car, made from cannons that he took in 
 battle, his own swords and armor in front. 
 A verger escorted us to the tomb, rattled off 
 his little lesson, and then sent us flying back. 
 We could not get in without his escort, so 
 we made the best of it, but it is very un- 
 pleasant to be one of a driven herd. Perhaps 
 for this reason we enjoyed better reading 
 (in uninstructed bliss) the great names and 
 epitaphs on the flooring outside. Reynolds 
 was there, and near him, as he wished to be, 
 
80 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 Turner; Lawrence, Landseer, Cruikshank, 
 Opie, Wren, and Samuel Johnson keeping 
 them company. 
 
 We went to the Whispering Gallery, too, 
 and were as delighted and amazed at the 
 wonderful echo, as if we had not heard of it 
 all our lives, and had not disdained to listen 
 to it before. Then we ascended to the Stone 
 Gallery, and, the day being clear, — for Lon- 
 don, — there was a fine view. After all, I am 
 glad that we did not go before, it is such a 
 delight to see and recognize the now famil- 
 iar buildings : Newgate, fallen from its high 
 estate and only a temporary prison ; the 
 square tower of St. Sepulchre, where the 
 criminals used to hear their ante-funeral 
 sermon and receive a nosegay on the way 
 to the gallows, — where Roger Ascham lies 
 buried, and our own John Smith. Only the 
 first line of his epitaph could we make out, 
 perhaps because that was the only line that 
 we knew, — " Here lies one conquered, who 
 hath conquered kings." Near by, stands 
 Christ Hospital, whose pupils still wear the 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 81 
 
 yellow stockings and long blue gowns made 
 famous by such wearers as Coleridge, Lamb, 
 and Leigh Hunt. Beyond it stands Char- 
 terhouse, but it is not of Addison and Steele 
 that we think, but of Thackeray and dear 
 old Colonel Newcome. Farther to the east 
 is Guildhall, with its pigeons and its fasci- 
 nating museum ; then the Little Old Lady 
 of Threadneedle Street and her handsome 
 neighbors. Nearer us is the beautiful 
 steeple of St. Mary le Bow. The Monu- 
 ment with its golden flame, and the iron 
 cage below to prevent suicides, is visible, 
 but we look in vain for the Tower, though 
 the Thames shipping and bridges we could 
 see for a long distance. 
 
 We came to London determined to go 
 to the Temple, but nowhere else unless we 
 longed for it. We had already done our 
 duty to the sights, from the Crystal Palace 
 and Madame Tussaud's to the National 
 Gallery and the British Museum. The 
 Memorial to the old Temple Bar, which we 
 chanced to see, did not encourage us much. 
 
82 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 Statues of the Queen and the Prince of 
 Wales may be all very well in their way, 
 but they are too much of an anti-climax 
 when one's soul is attuned to gory heads 
 of traitors, resting on blood-rusted iron 
 spikes. 
 
 The place was full of lawyers, full-blown 
 and budding, coming and going ; but when 
 we entered the church we forget the Law 
 Court. We forgot, even, that earlier time 
 when the Round Church had been a 
 meeting-place for lawyer and client, and 
 remembered only the knights. The tiles 
 of the floor bore the Templar design of 
 the Agnus Dei in blue and white, but the 
 crowning glory of the church is the seven 
 beautiful statues of knights in full armor. 
 One of them is said to be Henry III.'s 
 Earl of Pembroke, and another, one of the 
 Magna Charta barons. 
 
 We did not go to Goldsmith's grave, 
 because we did not know that he was 
 buried in the Temple until later, but we 
 visited the gardens. The Duke of Suffolk 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 83 
 
 would not have found it now a " more con- 
 venient place," for, though it is still beau- 
 tifully kept, new buildings have made it 
 smaller. Once the Thames was its boun- 
 dary, but now the Victoria Embankment, 
 rescued from the waters, comes in between. 
 
 At the Royal Academy was the famous 
 St. Elizabeth. The faces of the monks, 
 looking beyond, not at, the lovely, naked 
 form of the saint, have a wonderful expres- 
 sion of earnestness and holiness. It may 
 be that the story is not true, — when did we 
 begin to demand historical accuracy in the 
 pictures of the saints? — but the painting is 
 certainly very fine, and far from immodest. 
 
 Just as we were leaving Hyde Park, after 
 watching the grand e monde on horseback 
 and in carriages, we noticed a large crowd, 
 which we soon discovered was to watch 
 the Queen drive from Buckingham to the 
 station for Windsor. We waited patiently 
 for an hour or more. Prudentia won't sit 
 on the curb-stone, — she draws the line 
 there, — so we were fearfully tired ; but at 
 
8 4 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 last horsemen, gorgeous in red and gold, 
 appeared, after many preliminary clearings ; 
 then a carriage with two fat old women, 
 Marie of Teck and the Queen, followed by 
 a carriage full of ladies-in-waiting. We 
 had a splendid view of her, and were quite 
 excited enough to cheer, but the crowd 
 uttered not a sound. 
 
 The streets were all beautifully decorated, 
 — in our honor, we of course supposed, 
 
A Too Short Vacation. . 85 
 
 but it turned out to be for the German 
 Emperor's procession to Guildhall. So 
 we made the best of it, and got seats at 
 St. Clement's le Dane, Dr. Johnson's old 
 church, to see it. As a parade it was not 
 much. The carriages were few and far 
 between, with two horses instead of the 
 four that we had paid our money to see. 
 Moreover, the stupid Londoners around us 
 seemed to know no more about the nota- 
 bles than we. We had good views of 
 the Prince and Princess of Wales, both 
 of whom were cordially received, and re- 
 sponded graciously to the cheers, — so, like- 
 wise, did Marie of Teck, who seems to be 
 very popular. The Empress was gracious, 
 too, but the Emperor was plainly bored. 
 We had a much better view of them both, 
 and a more pleasant impression of him, the 
 day that we left for Canterbury, when we 
 hung around Buckingham to see them drive 
 out, — and were rewarded. 
 
 The streets were filled with a very good- 
 natured crowd, ready to hurrah for any- 
 7 
 
86 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 thing, from royalty to the mail-wagons, the 
 only vehicles allowed to pass for hours 
 before the procession. Many of the women 
 wandering about the streets wore plush hats 
 covered with bedraggled feathers, though 
 it was July. Afterwards we heard that it 
 was the badge of the street-walker. 
 
 In the evening we went to see charming 
 Ellen Terry as " Nance Oldfield," and Irving 
 in the " Corsican Brothers," a fine play, 
 though high-strung and melodramatic for 
 these unromantic days. It goes without 
 saying that it was magnificently mounted. 
 We sat in the — (let me whisper it in your 
 good ear, my dear) — in the pit ! It corre- 
 sponds in position with our parquet circle. 
 Prudentia had staked a small sum on the 
 assertion that only men and peanuts were 
 admitted to this part of the house. She 
 lost, of course. The occupants of the pit 
 seemed to be well-to-do people (after all, it 
 is sixty-two cents for a seat) of the small 
 shop-keeping class. The rest of the house 
 was in evening dress. 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 87 
 
 Next day we went to Richmond. 
 
 " Heavens ! what a goodly prospect spreads around, 
 Of hills, and dales, and woods, and lawns, and spires, 
 And glittering towns, and gilded streams, till all 
 The stretching landscape into smoke decays." 
 
 I almost hesitate to mention another of 
 the famous charms of Richmond, which 
 we searched for with more enthusiasm than 
 we afterwards thought that the occasion 
 warranted, — maids of honor, a small cake 
 of precisely the same flavor as our lady- 
 locks. We drove, after lunch, over Straw- 
 berry Hill, past Pope's villa, — a ginger- 
 bread affair, — Twickenham Ferry, Cunard's 
 magnificent residence, and the fine old trees 
 of Bushey Park. Hampton Court disap- 
 pointed us. It is a large, rambling brick 
 building, but the grounds are fine and the 
 pictures are good, though a doubtless 
 laudable effort to make them seem better, 
 by attributing them to more distinguished 
 painters than the facts of the case warrant, 
 made it troublesome to find them in our 
 correct catalogue. 
 
88 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 In spite of a penny already thrown away 
 on the mammoth grape-vine, I proposed 
 entering the Maze. Prudentia suggested 
 that we might lose the way and wear 
 ourselves out, but I insisted that that was 
 impossible, since the directions in Baedeker 
 were plain enough. As we entered, how- 
 ever, the guard told us something else, and 
 we foolishly did as he said. In consequence, 
 we wandered around the wretched place 
 for hours, unable to get either in or out, 
 although it could not have measured more 
 than a quarter of an acre in area. When, 
 finally, we did succed in extricating our- 
 selves, we hastened to Kew Gardens and 
 lingered there just long enough to miss the 
 last boat. We chose to go home by the 
 'bus, thinking to see the insides of the little 
 villages that look so charming from the 
 river. We did, too, but there was nothing 
 to see but a dreary stretch of houses, — 
 London, the poor, Philistine side of it, 
 continuously, though called by different 
 names. 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 8 9 
 
 On Sunday, Prudentia piously went to 
 church, and I with equal piety went to see 
 about registering our luggage to Paris. 
 My own private opinion is that we both 
 
 wasted our 'bus fares and time. At least, 
 I was shoo'd out of the station, and told 
 that the luggage office was not open for 
 such unnecessaries on Sunday. Later, we 
 walked into Hyde Park, being still a-hunger 
 8* 
 
go A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 for the sight of greatness, but no one re- 
 markable — except ourselves — was there. 
 And we were chiefly noticeable for a gen- 
 eral unwashed and trampy air, which the 
 middle and lower classes have not yet 
 attained. 
 
 On our way to the train, we saw a great 
 crowd in front of Buckingham Palace. Of 
 course, we immediately smelt royalty, and 
 alighted to wait with the other fools for sev- 
 eral hours to see the Emperor and Empress 
 go a-riding. Happily for us, the excited 
 people in front stepped beyond the curb- 
 stone and were driven back by the dignified 
 police, leaving us in the front row. just as 
 the royal pair drove out. He looked much 
 handsomer, and, though still glum, re- 
 sponded more cordially to the cheers with 
 which he was greeted. The Empress was, 
 as ever, gracious. She expressed herself 
 as very much pleased with Prudentia's nose 
 and my sensible mode of dress. Which 
 reminds me, they have not mamma's size 
 of Jaeger's over here, nor my length of leg, 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 91 
 
 so that, unless I get them in Germany, we 
 shall both have to do without. 
 
 It is my turn .to take up the tale, and 
 I begin by entering a protest against the 
 introduction in this narrative of matters 
 of such an intimate personal character as 
 " mamma's underwear." I had hoped to 
 use these pages, as Sanguinelle does, by 
 sending them home to an eager and expect- 
 ant family. Now they can hardly be blamed 
 if they refuse to be comforted by any such 
 record as the foregoing, to say nothing of 
 the mortification that it would cause both 
 Sanguinelle and her mamma to have their 
 heroic but appalling resolution to do with- 
 out underwear made public. 
 
 We reached Canterbury about eleven 
 o'clock in the evening. The business man- 
 ager of the company had discovered that 
 all the hotels were dear, — that is, high- 
 priced — the cheap ones are those inshrined 
 as dear in the books of the concern, — and 
 that therefore we might as well go at once 
 to the best. The silent partner assented, — 
 
92 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 silently, of course, as became such a mem- 
 ber, but with much internal satisfaction. 
 The room was so delightful that I wanted 
 to go down and beg them to take a shilling 
 more, but with marvellous penetration they 
 anticipated our request, and added the shil- 
 ling without solicitation. 
 
 We had made our customary resolution 
 before going to bed, to get up early in the 
 morning, and fulfilled it in the same solemn 
 manner by getting under way for sight-see- 
 ing about ten o'clock. At any rate, it was 
 but a few minutes before that hour that we 
 reached the Cathedral, for we were just in 
 time for the morning service, in which we 
 were politely invited to take part, being told 
 that the interesting portions could not be 
 shown until after its conclusion. Now, it 
 one is booked for the 1 1. 30 train, and had 
 made a Spartan resolution to see the chief 
 sights of the place before leaving, one is not 
 in a sufficiently meditative and introspective 
 state of mind for divine service. Indeed, 
 the proposition had the effect of ruffling my 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 93 
 
 very even temper, and, not to put too fine 
 a point on it, of making me quite " mahd." 
 So it was rather a cheerless walk that we 
 took on leaving the Cathedral, in the direc- 
 tion of St. Martin's, which is supposed to 
 be the oldest church in England. The 
 direction is such an easy thing to take, if 
 all obstacles in the way could be levelled. 
 Sanguinelle does her best to level them, I 
 admit, for with her head buried in a book 
 she goes bravely on, until she brings up 
 with violence against a stone wall or a ten- 
 story house. Fortunately, in Canterbury 
 they have old-fashioned low houses, and 
 so we finally reached St. Martin's. It is 
 a very small, picturesque old church, and 
 contains two interesting relics : the font in 
 which St. Augustine baptized Ethelbert, 
 and the sarcophagus of Queen Bertha, 
 which was opened some years ago and 
 found to contain only dust. So it is 
 thought that it must have been opened 
 before and robbed. We reached the 
 Cathedral just in time to join another party 
 
94 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 on the same train intent, and were allowed 
 to pass by what we did not care to see, and 
 give our time to what we were really inter- 
 ested in. It would not be easy to give an 
 idea of the magnificence of the building 
 and the beauty of its wonderful old stained 
 glass. We "thrilled" chiefly over the tomb 
 of the Black Prince, with the armor that he 
 wore at the battle of Crecy. Among the 
 other tombs were those of Henry IV., 
 Stephen Langton, and the great monument 
 erected by Margaret Holland to the mem- 
 ory of her two husbands, — the first a 
 brother to Henry IV., and the other his 
 second son. The lady herself lies in the 
 middle, while the two husbands rest con- 
 tentedly on either side. 
 
 We were shown the site of the house of 
 Thomas a Becket, and walked through the 
 cloisters that he threaded the day that he 
 sought refuge in the church from his mur- 
 derers, and we stood on the very spot on 
 which he was slain in 1170. His relics 
 reposed in a magnificent shrine in the choir, 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 95 
 
 and were visited by numberless pilgrims, 
 who have left the marks of their devotion 
 in the deep hollows which their knees have 
 worn in the marble steps. The shrine itself 
 was destroyed by the order of Henry VIII., 
 and only a fragment of the mosaic pave- 
 ment remains to tell of its glory. 
 
 In the crypt, one of the most magnificent 
 in England, Elizabeth allowed the Protes- 
 tant exiles from Flanders to set up their 
 silk-looms, and their descendants still use 
 one of the side aisles as a place of worship. 
 
 Old St. Dunstan's is near the ancient 
 gateway of the Roper mansion (Margaret 
 More's Ropers), now a part of a brewery. 
 In the Roper vault rests the head of Sir 
 Thomas More, carried there by his loving 
 daughter. Strange to say, it was forgotten, 
 and when recently found caused some dis- 
 cussion until its identity was finally settled. 
 
 Mercery Lane reminds one of the ill- 
 wind proverb. It is the street leading to 
 the Cathedral, so called from the many 
 merchants who used to expose their wares 
 
96 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 there to tempt the pilgrims. At its other end 
 stood, formerly, Chaucer's Checquers Inn. 
 
 The fear that we might lose the train 
 made Sanguinelle an easy prey to the 
 blandishments of a cabman. Well, not 
 exactly an easy prey, — he proposed to take 
 us to the station for two shillings, and she 
 offered him one. He mournfully fell to one 
 and a half, but we declared that we would 
 walk. We reckoned that it would touch 
 his heart to see us starting, so we began to 
 play upon his feelings by taking some steps 
 forward, and then looking back to observe 
 the effect. But our time was too short to 
 m^lt his adamantine heart, and so we were 
 obliged to return meekly and pay the price 
 that he demanded. 
 
 
VII. 
 
 OUR abiding-place in Paris on the 
 occasion of our first visit was the 
 Avenue d'lena, one of the numerous 
 avenues that radiate from the Place d'Etoile. 
 It was a great distance from all places of 
 interest, and our movements each day hung 
 upon the question, " Can we get back in time 
 for dinner?" This anxiety tended to chill 
 our enthusiasm at the most sacred moments. 
 It is hard to be rudely awakened from the 
 contemplation of the Venus de Milo by the 
 threat of cold soup, or, while thrilling with 
 awe at the sarcophagus of the great 
 Napoleon, to hear in your ear a reproach- 
 ful voice, saying, " You like roast duck, 
 don't you ? Well, you won't get any if 
 you stay here much longer." 
 
 So we determined to have a room in the 
 
 97 
 
98 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 very centre of the great city, and to get 
 dinner when and where we found conve- 
 nient. We desired particularly to be near 
 the Louvre, so that we could spend a short 
 time there every morning, and thus take it 
 by degrees. To pass hours in a picture- 
 gallery fatigues the brain and leaves you 
 with a confused and weary sense, as if you 
 had been waltzing all evening without 
 reversing. 
 
 We found what we wanted at the Hotel 
 Sainte-Marie, on the Rue de Rivoli, one 
 square from the Louvre. It is true that it 
 was on the " quatrieme etage," to which add 
 the " rez de chausse" and the " entresol," 
 and you have in plain English, — " Sixth 
 story and no elevator." But we travelled 
 up and down but once each day, in the 
 evening to bed, and in the morning to the 
 street. Moreover, when the height was 
 reached we entered a charming room, 
 nicely furnished, with its casement doors 
 opening upon a veranda overhanging the 
 Rue de Rivoli, from which we could see 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 99 
 
 the splendid street stretching for miles, 
 with its innumerable lights and its surging 
 crowds of human beings, and hear, till far 
 into the night, the roll of myriads of cabs 
 over its smooth asphalt. 
 
 We had our coffee or chocolate and the 
 delicious French bread that they serve with 
 it every morning in our room. 
 
 No doubt the Parisian who can escape 
 from the city on the fourteenth of July and 
 find a cool and quiet refuge in some suburb 
 does so. But to a stranger who sees Paris 
 under that aspect for the first time, the 
 sight is something to be remembered. 
 
 We had read the announcements in the 
 papers of free performances at the theatres 
 and at the Grand Opera-House. At the 
 latter was to be given " William Tell," and 
 at the end of the second act the " Marseil- 
 laise" was to be sung by the tenor, Mel- 
 chisedic, and a large chorus. Sanguinelle 
 said that she would like to go. She 
 thought it would be an excellent opportunity 
 for critical observation of the masses. 
 
ioo A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 I thought it would be a good test of our 
 glibness with colloquial French. Then we 
 smiled and confided to each other that, 
 after all, it was only human nature to like 
 to go to the theatre free. 
 
 The next morning we started out, hoping 
 that the holiday would not hinder us, dur- 
 ing the morning hours, from getting our 
 mail from the bankers. As we passed the 
 Opera-House, at ten o'clock, the people 
 were already waiting in groups of about 
 fifty, although the hour fixed for the 
 opening of the doors was half-past one. 
 We learned from the papers, later, that 
 some had begun to assemble as early as 
 four o'clock in the morning. On our 
 return from the banker's, the number of 
 groups had increased and was still growing. 
 They were intelligent-looking, orderly 
 crowds. After a group was complete, no 
 one was allowed to join it. Occasionally 
 some one would saunter up and, imagining 
 he had escaped the eye of the guard, try to 
 lose himself in the group. But invariably 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 101 
 
 he would be discovered, touched politely 
 on the shoulder, and invited to go further 
 down and join the last group forming. He 
 invariably obeyed, smilingly. There was 
 no such jostling or pushing as has been 
 experienced at the Academy of Music on a 
 Patti night, for example. 
 
 We hesitated for some time, fearing 
 chiefly that they might resent our coming 
 as strangers, taking part in a feast that was 
 not spread for us. Finally we took cour- 
 age and joined the last group. We were at 
 once taken to their arms, — metaphorically, 
 be it understood. They knew we were 
 foreigners, and judged us to be English, 
 from our costumes, no doubt. Of course, 
 our conversation would not betray us ! 
 When they discovered that we were Ameri- 
 cans we had simply in that group forty- 
 eight devoted admirers. They found out 
 the soft spots in the wall for us to lean 
 against. When Sanguinelle agilely raised 
 herself to a broad window-seat a short dis- 
 tance from the ground, they approved in a 
 8 
 
102 A Too Slwrt Vacation. 
 
 most voluble way, and a broad shoulder 
 X once placed at my disposal to lift 
 me up to the same comfortable perch. 
 
 ders of all sorts of refreshments 
 i along, and strange cries assaulted 
 our ears. Menthe! Men:. ieked 
 
 an old woman, almost angrily. We tried 
 to appease her by investing in some, and, 
 before we had taken it from its wrappings, 
 our noses recognized the mint of our child- 
 hood. " Limonade ou vi: stributed 
 impartially from s uspended on the 
 right and left side of the vender on a 
 wooden bar which crossed his shoulders. 
 Sanguinelle took a glass of limonade on the 
 recommendation of our neighbors, anc 
 to me afterwards, with a ghastly smile. — 
 Talk about the heroism of your Spartan 
 with something gnawing at his vitals, — 
 I am suffering agony from that dose of var- 
 nish, and yet I must sm: 
 
 I begged her to howl if it would relieve 
 \nd assured her that all who were ob- 
 serving her would find it more endurable 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 103 
 
 than her smiles. But she feared the people 
 might think she was pretending that she 
 had an aristocratic stomach, and so she re- 
 mained a smiling martyr to republican preju- 
 dices. 
 
 Finally the doors were opened, and each 
 group advanced in turn to the main entrance, 
 preceded by a line of six gendarmes. We 
 felt like persons of distinguished considera- 
 tion, escorted to the opera in this official 
 way. 
 
 After our admittance, we found ourselves 
 in the vast corridors of the Opera-House, 
 but we could not get into the boxes. It did 
 not take long to discover that a small coin 
 dropped in the hand of the box-opener 
 was the proper thing to do. Twenty cen- 
 times thus expended admitted us both into 
 a box facing the stage, giving a magnificent 
 view of the house. The opera was finely 
 given ; the singing of the Marseillaise a 
 revelation. The stage at this point was 
 beautifully set, and decorated with the tri- 
 color. The chorus likewise wore the tri- 
 
104 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 color on their white dresses. The tenor 
 wore the uniform of a French soldier. At 
 the conclusion of the hymn the whole house 
 rose and shouted with the wild enthusiasm 
 that only a French audience on such an 
 occasion can command. 
 
 In the evening the city seemed as if it 
 had been suddenly transported to the land 
 of the midnight sun. Light everywhere. 
 In every open space the people were dan- 
 cing to the music of bands furnished by the 
 municipality. The city took on the appear- 
 ance of one vast ball-room. We walked 
 the length of the brilliant Champs-Elysees, 
 and were near the Arc de Triomphe before 
 we began to feel fatigued or thought of re- 
 turning. Then we made an awful discovery. 
 After a certain hour on the evening of the 
 Fourteenth, all vehicles were forbidden to 
 run, and the streets were given completely 
 over to the people. After the fatigue of the 
 day, to walk back ! My knees struck work 
 promptly, refusing to support me, much 
 less help to propel me, and I sank, a limp 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 105 
 
 and nerveless mass, upon a bench, and be- 
 gan feebly to calculate the perils of spend- 
 ing the night there. Sanguinelle was very 
 kind, and did her best to comfort me. She 
 
 said, — 
 
 " I never saw any one like you : you let 
 your imagination take such a hold on you ! 
 You are always more tired, and more sick, 
 and more hot, and more cold than anybody 
 
 else." 
 
 Then she quoted, " One step and then 
 another, and the longest walk is ended." 
 The last words of this touching sentiment 
 were lost to me. I was miles ahead and in 
 my first sweet sleep by the time she reached 
 home. 
 
 In this and all subsequent walks in Paris 
 we never had an unpleasant experience. 
 No one stared at us rudely, no one spoke 
 to us, no one followed us. I mention this 
 because of the indignant complaints I have 
 heard uttered by ladies who, as Sanguinelle 
 naively remarked, were " much plainer than 
 we." 
 
106 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 " Do you remember Nellie S., that thin 
 girl with pale hair, and a slight cast in her 
 eye, who was in Paris two years ago with 
 her sister? Why, she had to leave the car 
 one morning, she told me, because every 
 man put his paper on his knee and stared 
 at her." 
 
 " Yes," said Sanguinelle, " and there was 
 Mary B., who stayed here some time study- 
 ing art. She was quite plain and nearly 
 forty years old, and she was obliged always 
 to go in a cab, accompanied by her aunt, 
 an old lady who died shortly from the phys- 
 ical exertion and mental care which this 
 vigilance necessitated." 
 
 These memories made us sad and uncom- 
 fortable. We suddenly found that we had 
 developed a serious grievance. Why were 
 we left alone so emphatically ? Why were 
 no admiring glances cast at us ? We did 
 not want them, understand. Oh, not at all ! 
 Only, in view of the testimony of others, we 
 could not but feel their absence strange 
 — "and unaccountable." We consolingly 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 °7 
 
 assured each other, after a careful scrutiny 
 in the glass, — 
 
 " Perhaps our gowns are not sufficiently 
 fin-de-siecle" I suggested. " I think that I 
 shall decide to take the costume that I was 
 looking at in the Bon Marche." 
 
 Where the narrow Rue du Bac crosses 
 the Rue de Sevres, stands the woman's para- 
 dise, the Bon Marche. We had fallen vic- 
 tims to its fascinations some time before. 
 
108 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 To-day, I was to try on my new gown. The 
 saleswoman stood waiting with the skirt on 
 her arm. I began to loose the fastenings 
 of my old one, when a horrible remem- 
 brance of what was underneath arrested my 
 fingers. How could I step out before that 
 French girl in all the baldness of a divided 
 skirt? I sidled back of Sanguinelle and 
 tried to gain time by all sorts of devices, 
 while the girl regarded my antics with 
 amazement. I hoped to be able to accom- 
 plish some sort of lightning change in a 
 moment when her eyes would not be fixed 
 on me. But her eye was fixed on me every 
 moment. She was evidently prepared, in 
 case I should prove violently insane, to call 
 for help. So with one reckless movement 
 I let my skirt fall, and covered my face with 
 my hands, but she clapped hers together 
 and exclaimed, — 
 
 " Le pantalon !" 
 
 Back of magnificent Notre Dame is the 
 Morgue. The two are knit together in our 
 memories by the following incident, which 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 109 
 
 we witnessed. We had entered the Cathe- 
 dral and had spent some time admiring the 
 old stained glass in the beautiful rose win- 
 dow over the portal. The silence of the 
 vast place took possession of us. We seated 
 ourselves in a dim corner, and watched un- 
 consciously the few worshippers, some of 
 whom were going the rounds of the sta- 
 tions; others were mechanically passing the 
 beads of a rosary through their fingers, 
 while their lips muttered inaudibly, and their 
 eyes followed the movements of the passers- 
 by. In a side chapel near by, were votive 
 candles burning before a shrine, and here 
 we saw the figure of a woman, — young, as 
 the light from the candle on her occasion- 
 ally upturned face showed us, — seemingly 
 convulsed with grief, and praying with a 
 fervor and agony strangely in contrast with 
 the mechanical devotion that we had ob- 
 served in others. We instinctively turned 
 away, and, outside, conjectured what could 
 be the sorrow that oppressed her. Still 
 talking of her, we came upon an excited 
 
iio A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 and voluble crowd. We were in front of 
 the Morgue, and a new " case" had just been 
 exposed. The place had always a morbid 
 fascination for us, and we went in with the 
 rest to look. The bodies are placed in a 
 slanting position behind a glass partition, 
 and a small stream of water falls unceasingly 
 on each one. Near the body are hung the 
 clothes taken from it, to help in identifica- 
 tion. 
 
 The new case was a young man, whose 
 fairly handsome face was marred by a great 
 purple bruise on the left temple. His eyes 
 were partly open, giving to the dead face 
 the awful semblance of a leer, which was 
 accentuated by the cruel-looking teeth, 
 showing through the parted lips. As we 
 turned to go, a movement of the crowd 
 momentarily arrested us, wedged us in, and 
 brought us to a stand-still. Suddenly we 
 heard a woman's cry, — not a shriek, — an 
 agonized wail, — 
 
 " Mon Dieu ! c'est lui ! II est mort !" and 
 she sank down insensible. As they carried 
 
A Too Short Vacation. I 1 1 
 
 her out, we recognized the woman in the 
 Cathedral. This, then, was the end of her 
 prayers ! Her votive candle had hardly 
 time rightly to set up its little blaze before 
 her prayers were answered. 
 
 The crowd around were ignorant of her 
 story, but a kw days later, in a shop in the 
 vicinity where we had bought some trifles, 
 we gleaned the facts which formed the gen- 
 erally received account in the neighbor- 
 hood. 
 
 He was a young workman, whose hand- 
 some face won him many successes. She 
 was a young girl from one of the provinces, 
 near Dijon, I think, who had abandoned 
 her home for his sake, and who clung to 
 him with jealous passion, in spite of his 
 efforts to throw her off after he had tired of 
 her. She was too new to the life of the 
 city to console herself for his desertion as 
 most of her class do, and, moreover, she 
 blamed herself for the sudden death of her 
 mother, which had taken place soon after 
 her flight. So remorse and jealousy and 
 
112 A Too S/iort Vacation. 
 
 loneliness combined to make her miserable. 
 They had many stormy scenes, and after 
 one of these violent periods he had gone 
 off, swearing that he would put an end to 
 it. The fourth day after his disappearance, 
 his body was placed in the Morgue. 
 
 To take a bath in one of the establish- 
 ments on the Seine is an agreeable sensa- 
 tion. You must first decide how you will 
 have it, simple, au fond du bain, avec pei- 
 gnoir, etc. We took the most elaborate, 
 although we did not know in the least 
 what we were contracting for in an au fond 
 du bain. Two deft handmaidens immedi- 
 ately appeared and began to open an im- 
 mense sheet, which they spread in the 
 bottom of the tub, smoothing it out nicely 
 on the sides. 
 
 There is a swimming establishment in 
 the north part of the city, fitted up in fine 
 style, with a magnificent tank lined with 
 marble, wherein we disported ourselves. 
 Nothing clears the mind and refreshes the 
 body, after the fatigues of sight-seeing, like 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 1 1 3 
 
 a plunge in the water and a few vigorous 
 strokes. 
 
 The trip on the Seine to St.- Cloud (I 
 proudly informed Sanguinelle that its name 
 came from St. Clodoald, grandson of Clovis, 
 who here founded a monastery) is a very 
 agreeable ride on the river. After passing 
 under the numerous bridges of the Seine, 
 we come to the long, narrow Isle de Cygne, 
 on the extremity of which is a copy, re- 
 duced in size, of Bartholdi's Liberty statue 
 in New York. 
 
 The Chateau of St. Cloud is a picturesque 
 ruin. Its deserted pride touches you, and 
 your heart feels heavy for the two unhappy 
 ones that held court here, — Josephine and 
 Eugenie. The parks are the great attrac- 
 tion, particularly when the fountains play. 
 From a high point in the grounds, one gets 
 a magnificent view, — below the Seine, to 
 the right, the bridge of St. -Cloud ; further 
 on, the Bois de Boulogne ; then Arc de Tri- 
 omphe, Montmartre, the Trocadero, the Eifel 
 Tower, of course, the domes of Des Inva- 
 
H4 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 lides and of the Pantheon, and the count- 
 less houses of Paris. 
 
 From St.-Cloud, it is a pleasant walk 
 through shaded avenues to Ville d'Avray, 
 where we proposed to take the train for 
 Versailles. I must enter for the second 
 time in this journal the fact that we lost 
 the train. Now, Sanguinelle has the most 
 remarkable antipathy to asking the route. 
 She takes as much delight in working it out 
 from the directions in Baedeker as if it were 
 a prize problem. I must follow close be- 
 hind with a countenance illuminated with 
 the same unfaltering faith, and be prepared 
 to execute the same sudden and bewilder- 
 ing changes of base that she does, else she 
 suspects me of meanly trying to work it out 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 1 1 5 
 
 on an independent plan of my own. I 
 strive to do my part, but occasionally I have 
 lapses. We are all weak creatures, Heaven 
 help us! On this occasion, I was seized 
 with a strong desire to ask the way from a 
 workman who was coming along. I craftily 
 measured my distance from Sanguinelle, 
 and, satisfied that I was safe, sailed into the 
 colloquy. His answer was not very clear. 
 It seemed to me, from what I could gather 
 from his remarks, that he was giving me his 
 ideas on the permanence of the French 
 Republic. It is almost a drawback to ac- 
 custom your ear exclusively to the pure 
 Parisian accent ; it leaves you helpless in a 
 case like this. When I had sufficiently re- 
 covered from my stunned condition, I saw 
 Sanguinelle at the end of the street, wildly 
 gesticulating. I made the best time possi- 
 ble, but it was too late. 
 
 Five minutes later, we changed recrimi- 
 nations to congratulation. Here, at Ville 
 d'Avray, is the house in which Gambetta 
 breathed his last. We found it readily, a 
 
u6 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 pretty place in the midst of shrubbery and 
 flowers. The room where he died remains 
 much as it was. The bed was covered with 
 wreathes of immortelles and those beady 
 monstrosities which play such a large part 
 in the expression of French grief. The 
 
 drawing-room below is also full of similar 
 souvenirs. The memory of another great 
 man dwells in this house, where he lived 
 and wrote, — Balzac. 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 117 
 
 We had visited Versailles before. In a 
 stern devotion to duty, we had looked at 
 all the pictures in the whole weary length 
 of its galleries, and had tried to say that we 
 liked them. We had essayed the perilous 
 feat of walking with calm, untroubled dig- 
 nity the slippery floor of the Galerie des 
 Glaces, without permitting anxiety for our 
 feet to lower the aristocratic poise of our 
 head. We had thrilled in the chambre-a- 
 coucher of Marie Antoinette, and touched 
 with reverent hands the bed on which 
 Louis XIV. died. We did not want to do 
 it over, however, but we did want to visit 
 Petit Trianon again, or rather " Le hameau," 
 the group of rustic houses in which the 
 ladies of the court played at being dairy- 
 maids and villagers. These poor little 
 houses, deserted, closed, with a mournful 
 silence brooding over them, make one very 
 sad, like the toys of a dead child. Through 
 the windows of the laiterie one can see 
 the marble slabs on which the butter was 
 placed. In front of a little thatched cot- 
 9 
 
1 1 8 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 tage, used by Marie Antoinette, stands a 
 tree planted by her hand. It is dead. On 
 a rustic bench, in the porch, a priest sat 
 reading his breviary. We lingered here 
 
 long after sunset, and when we came out, 
 we found that the cabmen had gone to seek 
 other and (at that hour, no doubt,) more 
 promising pastures. We were consequently 
 obliged to walk to the station. The road 
 was long and we were weary ; moreover, 
 I was distinctly hungry, — the symptoms 
 made it easy to diagnose the case. Having 
 arrived at the station but half an hour 
 before the train started, we ordered, in a 
 cafe close by, what might be quickly pre- 
 pared, — steak for me ; for Sanguinelle, an 
 omelette with cheese, her morbid taste 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 1 1 9 
 
 craving these strange combinations. The 
 garcon spread the cloth, adjusting with 
 painful nicety the crease to the centre of 
 the table, laid the knife over the fork, then 
 thought better of it and reversed the 
 arrangement, went away for a long time, 
 came back with the salt-cellar, and could 
 not satisfy himself on what spot of the table 
 it looked best. Ten minutes were gone, and 
 I had begun to play on the floor an adagio 
 movement with my right foot. His next 
 visit was more promising, for he came bear- 
 ing bread and a bottle of wine. He had 
 disappeared again before we discovered 
 that the cork was not drawn. Five minutes 
 were spent in munching dry bread, and the 
 movement was markedly allegro, but the 
 motif remained the same. " I heard his 
 footfall's music," — he had the tooth-picks 
 in one hand, and placed them in the centre 
 of the table, laying a dainty finger-bowl on 
 a side table for later use. Allegro resolved 
 naturally into vivace. My French rose to 
 the occasion. I said, — 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 - 
 les desire pas du tout. Je desire bifstek et 
 tout de suite. Comprenez-v*: 
 
 And, after all, I could not eat it. My 
 ; ::~:i:~ r. :.t: .:- :. z:± i::± i^zr.' ~.±i: 
 on Friday winch I have never been able to 
 reason it out o£ ant 1 so I had to eat San- 
 guinelle's awful combination and watch her 
 come up to time in the most amazing way 
 on my beefsteak, which came on steaming 
 hot eight minutes before the train started. 
 
 and third Saturday of each month by an 
 order from the Director of Public Works. 
 It is necessary to be provided with a candle 
 — which may be purchased (ingeniously 
 placed on a box-cover for a candle-sti : 
 
 The catacombs are ancient quarries 
 which, in the time of the Romans, fur- 
 nished the stone for the building of their 
 
 - 
 of the city on the left bank of the river. 
 
 About a century ago, some of the streets 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 121 
 
 under which they ran began to sink. 
 Thereupon the government caused walls 
 and supports to be constructed, and ordered 
 that the bones from the suppressed cem- 
 eteries should be transported here. Hence 
 their name. During the Reign of Terror, 
 too, some bodies were thrown into the 
 passages. The bones have since been 
 arranged according to a systematic plan, 
 and are disposed in fantastic shapes and 
 intricate patterns on either side of the long 
 galleries, varied with rows of skulls. In 
 one passage are found bones presenting 
 some anomaly, — in another those deformed 
 by disease, and so on. A sight like this 
 makes one long to secure for his remains 
 the decent annihiliation of the crematory 
 and the repose of the funeral urn. Think 
 of your tibia and fibula helping to eke out 
 an elaborate Greek pattern, or your ver- 
 tebrae, with the aid of the spinal column of 
 some other unfortunate, making concentric 
 circles, or your dainty finger-bones, paired 
 off with just as dainty ones furnished by 
 
122 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 another party to the contract, forced to 
 radiate from a common centre consisting of 
 a pomum Adami. On the opposite side 
 of the wall will be your skull, well pleased, 
 to judge from its broad grin, at the distin- 
 guished figure(s) the rest of you is cutting. 
 I feel that mine would weep, — that out of 
 the caverns of the eyes would roll great 
 tears, and from the awful jaws would come 
 a supplication, — 
 
 " Cover us up decently. Let our poor, 
 naked repulsiveness be hidden. Put out 
 the light and let the show be over." 
 
 Coming from dinner, we were often 
 tempted to flatten our noses against the 
 plate-glass of the shop windows of the 
 Palais Royal and hunger after the pretty 
 things on the other side. Thus absorbed, 
 we would hear a buzzing sound whose 
 gentle persistence would force us finally to 
 look up. It was the proprietor, saying, — 
 
 " Come into my parlor," or words to 
 that effect. Then we would move on to 
 the next window, to hear the same little 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 123 
 
 ditty transposed three semitones to suit the 
 tenor voice of the new performer. After 
 a while, it was amusing to hear the theme 
 begun, suddenly cease, and the singer dis- 
 appear as he recognized the fact that he 
 had chanted before to the same audience 
 to no profit. 
 
 The cabs of Paris are delightful little 
 carriages, running smoothly and swiftly 
 along the magnificently-paved streets of 
 the city. They are, as a rule, well kept, 
 and the costume of the driver quite correct, 
 though the horses seem poor after the fine 
 ones of London. One feels like a bloated 
 aristocrat, taking an agreeable ride in one of 
 these elegant vehicles, but grows more 
 humble on passing one in which is seated 
 a laundress, bareheaded, with her huge 
 bundle at her feet ; or another, with three 
 workmen in their blue blouses, returning 
 from their work. They are so cheap (forty 
 cents an hour, and a pourboire of five or 
 six cents extra to the driver), that all 
 classes use them. They are owned by 
 
124 ^ Too Short Vacation. 
 
 companies who rent them to the drivers, 
 who really only receive the little that is 
 given them in pour mangers, as the tem- 
 perate Pomona called them. Monsieur le 
 cocher cannot easily cheat you if you have 
 the smallest knowledge of French, for the 
 tariff is printed on the slip of paper which 
 he is obliged to hand you if you demand, — 
 
 " Le numero, s'il vous plait." 
 
 Any overcharge is punished by impris- 
 onment, the illegal money being returned. 
 
 The announcement " complet" on an om- 
 nibus is, to an American, one of the mar- 
 vels of Europe, probably because no living 
 man or woman ever saw our cars in that 
 condition. Likewise, it is exasperating 
 when one is impatient to get to the other 
 end of the city. At certain hours — dinner- 
 time, for example, when every one wants to 
 get to his home, or to his particular cafe — 
 you need the patience of Job and the years 
 of Methuselah to wait for your number 
 to be called. For, gentlemen, there is no 
 chance here to practise your artful little 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 125 
 
 plan of walking down a square and board- 
 ing the 'bus while yet in full speed, en- 
 sconcing yourselves in the various snug 
 corners with an innocent, absorbed expres- 
 sion ! You must go to the station and get 
 your number, which will probably be 555, 
 and likewise get an attack of St. Vitus's 
 dance in the nervous effort to recognize 
 your number when the conductor, with the 
 speed of a lightning calculator, calls 
 out, — 
 
 " Cinque cent cinquante cinque." 
 There you must be, on the spot, to tum- 
 ble right in, or the play begins over again 
 for you. If you have forgotten to buy 
 your evening paper before mounting the 
 imperial, do not despair. The newsman 
 will hand it up to you on top of a long 
 stick and deftly catch the sous that you 
 throw him. Occasionally an inspector 
 boards the car and examines the conductor's 
 accounts. More than once we witnessed a 
 heated discussion between them. Our 
 sympathy was always on the side of the 
 
126 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 conductor, for, as a rule, he is long-suffering 
 and polite. 
 
 A walk in Paris is a delight, although a 
 greater delight must be to occupy a seat in 
 front of a cafe, like a reserved place at a 
 show, and watch the changing panorama of 
 street life. We did not try it. We always 
 formed part of the spectacle. There were 
 other figures almost as unique. The innu- 
 merable fruit-sellers, for example, with 
 their hand-carts filled with delicious 
 apricots, luscious plums, and mammoth 
 gooseberries. These were a constant 
 irritant to Sanguinelle's appetite, and con- 
 sequently a perpetual threat to our purse. 
 In one encounter, she was so anxious to 
 set her teeth in the luscious things that she 
 threw her coins down impetuously before 
 the bag was filled, whereupon the shrewd 
 old villain, first satisfying himself that no 
 gendarme was near, declared that the 
 money had been placed there by a previous 
 customer. There was some rapid French 
 on both sides. I supported Sanguinelle in 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 127 
 
 her extremity, though usually I frown 
 
 upon these extravagances, and I have a 
 
 confused remembrance of getting my 
 
 moods and tenses miserably mixed up, 
 
 and even exploding upon his old head 
 
 some German words, for, when angry, I 
 
 am 
 
 " More fluent than a parrot is, 
 
 And far more polly-glottish." 
 
 Perhaps the German capped the climax 
 of the old man's anger, for he became 
 quite awful, and as we had brought no 
 passports with us, and did not wish the risk 
 of having our departure from Paris that 
 evening delayed, we beat a prudent retreat, 
 leaving with the old sinner both plums and 
 pennies. 
 
 On passing a funeral one day, every man 
 on top of the 'bus on which we were took 
 off his hat, and every one in the street 
 below also uncovered his head. A beauti- 
 ful custom, we thought, though we failed 
 to understand the same sentiment, perhaps, 
 which prompts the Frenchman to leave his 
 
128 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 visiting-card, with the corner turned down, 
 in the tomb of the dear departed. 
 
 In front of the Venus de Milo, a young 
 woman, dressed in the prevailing mode, a 
 long, waspish waist, the lines of her bodice, 
 as much as possible, arranged to conceal 
 the presence of hips, — for, as some one 
 remarks, the ribs may, unfortunately, be 
 compressed, but hip-bones, like facts, are 
 stubborn things, — and, of course, the pro- 
 verbial little mice peeping out from under 
 her petticoat, — remarked to her husband, — 
 
 "Well, my dear, now look at her dis- 
 passionately and confess the truth. Put 
 clothes on the Venus de Milo and she 
 would look like a guy." 
 
 He (after careful meditation). Yes, I 
 agree with you. She would. 
 
 She (gleefully). At last I have convinced 
 you ! 
 
 He. Not so fast, my dear ; let me ask 
 you a question first. Do you agree with 
 the unanimous opinion of the rest of the 
 world that this is a perfect form ? 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 129 
 
 She (not seeing his drift too well). 
 Ye-es. 
 
 He. Suppose that all the world agrees 
 with you in the opinion that she would 
 look like a guy in clothes, — tell me, then, 
 who must bear the reproach, Venus or the 
 dressmaker ? 
 
 Which only proves that man's mind is 
 more logical than woman's, — at least, a 
 mind kept in such a poor, distorted envel- 
 ope as the one that pouted half-angrily, 
 and turned to go up-stairs to see the pic- 
 tures. 
 
1ft 
 
 VIII. 
 
 / E had the whole compartment to our- 
 selves on the train to Lausanne, 
 better luck than we had dared to 
 hope for ; but everything else about the trip 
 went wrong, from the chicken without salt 
 and the wine without a cup, which we had 
 bought for a midnight repast, to a small 
 bottle of ammonia that impudently spilled 
 over and stained Prudentia's new couverture. 
 We had taken other advice than Baedeker's 
 in choosing the Pontarlier route, and did 
 not think that the scenery, though fine, was 
 worth the extra time and bother. Four 
 o'clock in the morning is too early in the 
 day for the expression of very warm en- 
 thusiasm, particularly when one is still 
 lamenting a wholly paid for, and only half 
 swallowed, breakfast. We saw, as once 
 130 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 131 
 
 before on a night journey, the Parisienne, 
 who, with toilette vinegar, powder, hand- 
 glass, and perfumery, succeeds in making 
 herself look as if she had just stepped from 
 her boudoir. We could not help wonder- 
 ing whom she expected to meet. 
 
 Though the steamer route from Lausanne 
 to Geneva is not over the most picturesque 
 part of the lake, we were charmed with its 
 crystal, clear blue, blue, blue water, and 
 the lovely villages on its banks, many of 
 them, like Coppet and Ferney, the former 
 residences of the great of the earth. At 
 Morges we had our first view of Mont 
 Blanc It was magnificent, so huge and 
 white, that I am almost afraid to say, lest 
 it should make him seem less grand, that 
 we could see a strong resemblance to the 
 great head of a frog. 
 
 Arrived in Geneva, we went on a wild 
 search for Calvin's house. Heaven alone 
 knows why either of us cared to see it, but 
 we console ourselves with the thought that 
 otherwise we might not have seen the old 
 
132 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 and more interesting part of the town. The 
 new part is quite handsome, but a disagree- 
 able mixture of Paris and America. We 
 did not care for it at all, and I feel sure 
 that the American travellers (it is, of course, 
 different if one comes to stay or study) 
 who have liked it must have been those 
 who rejoiced to speak English again, or 
 men addicted to the real American drinks. 
 We saw them all, and for the first time in 
 Europe, from ice-water to sherry cobblers 
 and gin cocktails. There is a fine view of 
 the Mont Blanc and Jura ranges. The 
 lake is beautiful, and the boats, with their 
 bright-colored, lateen-shaped sails, pictur- 
 esque. Beside the lake plays a fountain of 
 great height, which, in the rays of the sun, 
 continually changes its color. The hotel 
 was one of the best that we visited, too, yet 
 we were very willing to leave Geneva. 
 
 Our fellow-travellers to Cluses were two 
 clergymen and two American ladies whom 
 we had previously noticed in a wild state of 
 excitement, searching for a Cook interpreter 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 133 
 
 to help them about their luggage, two 
 enormous Saratogas. 
 
 " How odd that they do not speak Eng- 
 lish in the baggage-room, of all places !" 
 said one, settling herself and opening a 
 Phrase-Book. In twenty minutes she 
 handed the book to her friend, and pro- 
 ceeded to repeat, with becoming owl-like 
 gravity, — 
 
 " Donne z-moi une fourchette et un conteau } 
 sHl vons plait. 
 
 " At any rate, I can ask for a knife and 
 fork," she added, congratulatory. 
 
 We refrained from disturbing her seren- 
 ity with the thought that even in uncivilized 
 Europe the table was usually previously 
 provided with them. 
 
 At Bonneville there was a magnificent 
 view of Mont Blanc, white and dazzling, 
 but the diligence ride was more tiresome 
 than pleasant, and we determined thereafter 
 to take a carriage, or walk. The three 
 glaciers — our first — were disappointing, seen 
 from the road. One has to be near them, 
 
134 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 on them, and in them, to get any idea of 
 their enormous size. Afterwards we were 
 enthusiastic over the last of the three, the 
 Glacier des Bossons, with its huge needles 
 of ice and its lighted grotto, but that day 
 we were only anxious to get to a hotel to 
 stretch our weary limbs. My idea of Cha- 
 mouni had been a peaceful valley under the 
 shadow of Mont Blanc. It was that once, 
 perhaps ; now it is a collection of hotels, 
 inhabited by tourists, surrounded by guides, 
 mules, and souvenir dealers. 
 
 Early the next morning, armed with 
 newly-purchased alpenstocks and scorning 
 the proprietor's offer of a guide, we set out 
 to ascend Montanvert. Baedeker says, 
 "passing the little English church, cross 
 the meadow to the houses of Les Mouilles," 
 which we did all right, though I could not 
 help thinking that we were on the wrong 
 side of the Arve. Prudentia remarked 
 that it was strange that no one else was 
 travelling the same road, but I was too full 
 of the beautiful flowers to let these doubts 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 135 
 
 weigh heavily. The next chalets were to 
 be reached in a quarter of an hour. An 
 hour passed and there were still no signs of 
 them. Prudentia looked doubtful, which, 
 in view of the fact that I was feeling the 
 same way, was irritating. 
 
 " We are on the right road, of course. 
 We could not have made a wrong turn, for 
 there has been no choice," said I, decid- 
 edly. 
 
 " It seems strange that no one else is 
 coming up," reiterates Prudentia for the 
 twentieth time, but with a deeper expression 
 of gloom. 
 
 " You always think that we are wrong. 
 We can't be." 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " I know that we are right," threateningly, 
 " aren't we ?" 
 
 " Yes, yes," said she, and immediately 
 begins to mutter paters and avcs in extenu- 
 ation of the lie. 
 
 It seems that there are two churches in 
 Chamouni, and we had taken the road 
 
136 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 leading past the Catholic church in the vil- 
 lage. There was nothing to do but to 
 retrace our steps, which made it late when 
 we finally started up Montanvert. More- 
 over, it had begun to rain and the path was 
 muddy. All the natives assured us that 
 it was only a passing shower, except the 
 woman in the cantine where we lunched, 
 and we had grave doubts of the disinterest- 
 edness of her weather lore, for she had an 
 umbrella to rent. Prudentia paid two francs 
 of her own for it (I declined to share any 
 such sybaritic luxury), and we trudged 
 ahead with the extra burden. At last the 
 hotel was reached. Hungry, wet, and tired, 
 we hastily ate a dinner, and, giving our 
 clothes to be dried and cleaned, went to 
 bed. The room was beautiful, ceiled with 
 a natural pine of exquisite gloss and grain. 
 The window looked down on the Mer de 
 Glace, which, for the first time, seemed 
 huge. All around rose the snow-covered 
 mountains of stone, whose sharp peaks 
 deserve their name, Aiguilles. 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 37 
 
 Baedeker says that a guide to cross the 
 glacier is necessary for the inexperienced ; 
 therefore we took one, though much 
 against our wills, and if he had not been 
 
 steeped in admiration for our agility and 
 French, we should have regretted it, for 
 there was no danger, plenty of deep 
 crevices, to be sure, but always a plain way 
 to avoid them. I did not even wear socks 
 
38 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 over my shoes, and yet had no difficulty in 
 keeping upright. 
 
 So encouraged were we that we went 
 down the Mauvais Pas alone, undismayed 
 by Baedeker's warning to elderly people, and 
 by the stories of fainting women carried 
 down by guides. The descent was not 
 even exciting, for, though the steps are cut 
 
 out of the solid rock, down a steep cliff, yet 
 a railing makes one safe. The Chapeau is 
 a ledge of rock looking down on the Mer 
 de Glace and up to the great snow moun- 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 139 
 
 tains back of it. We entered the inn there 
 to have our sticks marked and to order a 
 lunch. The prices were so exorbitant that, 
 as it was still early, we deferred it to a more 
 convenient time, and, trying to forget the 
 soreness and lameness consequent on yes- 
 terday's walk in the rain, we ascended the 
 Flegere. I cannot say that we were quite 
 comfortable, but we were glad that we had 
 not given up when we looked at the mag- 
 nificent panorama from that mountain. In 
 the middle flowed the Mer de Glace, as 
 gracefully curved and as white as a foamy 
 river ; on all sides rose up huge mountains 
 of stone and snow, while at the left, whiter 
 than all, stood Mont Blanc, so far away 
 that he seemed less high than the nearer 
 peaks. 
 
 Next morning we were less sore than the 
 previous day, so after an early breakfast we 
 sent on our valise, and, carrying a small 
 net bag provided with two pairs of stock- 
 ings, a comb, two night-dresses, and a flask 
 of cognac for emergencies, alpenstocks in 
 
140 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 hand, set out for Martigny. The first part 
 of the road was familiar, for we had taken 
 it on our return from the Flegere. It was 
 quite level, the day fine, and as we swung 
 our sticks gayly forward we felt that the 
 whole earth was ours. Suddenly I ex- 
 claimed, — 
 
 "Where is the Baedeker?" 
 
 Prudentia insisted upon going back alone 
 for it, whereat I wept aloud, and ceased 
 only to find her gone. I tried to sit calmly 
 by the roadside, but finally, urged on by 
 the remembrance of the hotel proprietor's 
 charge for our luggage, which we had 
 thought exorbitant at the time, but had 
 paid with only one murmur because of our 
 haste to be on our way, I returned to find 
 the Baedeker lost. It was too much. I 
 opened the vials of my wrath on the land- 
 lord, who luckily (for me) understood 
 English. I could not have said all that was 
 in my heart in any other language. We 
 searched the village through for another 
 book, and had almost given up when one 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 141 
 
 of the natives kindly escorted us to the 
 hiding-place of the only one in town, the 
 latest edition, fortunately, and once more, 
 but with weary hearts, we set forth on our 
 travels. A sight of the great glacier of 
 Argentiere cheered us a little, but it was the 
 excellent lunch at the inn that really recon- 
 ciled us to our lot. While we were eating, 
 it suddenly began to pour. We looked at 
 each other and — laughed. We had walked 
 in the rain before and enjoyed it; moreover, 
 a pretty young lady, an American, though 
 she looked English, advised us to go on, 
 and told us of a short cut, for which we 
 thanked her profusely, but mentally re- 
 solved not to take, feeling it wiser to keep 
 to the main road, We had only gone a 
 short distance, however, when she and her 
 sister overtook us. They had kindly come 
 out in the rain to show us the beginning of 
 the shorter route, which, after all, was sim- 
 ple enough. The carriage-road ascends in 
 wide, bold curves which her path cut across. 
 On we went in the rain and strong wind 
 
142 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 (luckily back of us), but warm and happy 
 with the glow of walking. Our attire 
 freed us from the chief discomfort a woman 
 feels in walking in the rain, — the slimy 
 clasp of long, wet skirts clinging to the 
 ankles with every step. We turned fre- 
 quently to look at the valley and mountains 
 behind us, which were visible in spite of the 
 storm, and our eyes dwelt on a landscape 
 so acutely desolate that we felt the same 
 poignant pleasure a great tragedy begets. 
 At last we reached the summit of the pass. 
 The descent, though less exhilarating, was 
 more interesting, with its beautiful cascades, 
 a lonely valley, and wayside crosses often 
 covered with flowers. I shall never forget 
 the delightful feeling of awe which filled us 
 when we stood on the Eau Noire bridge, 
 which connects France with Switzerland. 
 To choose which country we should step 
 to, just as if we had a fairy wishing-cap, 
 made delicious thrills run up and down our 
 happy bodies. 
 
 There were many people coming from 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 143 
 
 Martigny on the road. The women tried 
 to look superior, and, I suppose, so many 
 superstitions and shams are attached to the 
 word comfort, they may really have felt as 
 they looked ; but the men were always cor- 
 dial and admiring, with the single exception 
 of a pale-faced misanthrope with two mules 
 (one for his luggage) and a guide, who con- 
 fided to the air in front of him, in a falsetto 
 voice, that we were, — 
 
 " Two brave ladies !" 
 
 The inn at Chatelard, where, after the 
 mishap of the morning, we had expected 
 to spend the night, was cheap and looked 
 clean ; but we were not tired, we were wet, 
 and it was too early for dinner and bed. 
 Moreover, there was the Pont Mysterieux 
 at Tete Noire to be seen, and nothing in 
 particular at Chatelard. 
 
 While we were debating the pros and 
 cons, the proprietor and chambermaid came 
 out of the house and watched our hesita- 
 tion with alternating hope and fear. In- 
 
144 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 deed, I do not believe that they quite gave 
 us up until we were out of sight. 
 
 After walking another hour, the road, 
 which was very narrow and cut out of the 
 rocky side of the mountain overlooking a 
 deep valley, pierced a rock and brought us 
 in sight of the inn. Prudentia declared 
 that it was the grim determination that 
 she read in my eye, that made the sleepy, 
 heavy-looking proprietress come down 
 from six to four francs, on condition that 
 we went up another flight, and then give 
 us the first room for the last price. After 
 a delicious dinner, we went to sleep to the 
 sound of tinkling cow-bells, and a pleased 
 remembrance of Alphonse Daudet's name 
 on the hotel register. 
 
 Early the next morning we put on our 
 now thoroughly dried and cleaned gar- 
 ments, and walked to Martigny. I remem- 
 ber the beautiful Glacier of Trient and the 
 fine view of the Rhone Valley with pleasure, 
 but the walk as a whole was not nearly as 
 interesting as that of the day before, and 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 145 
 
 we regretted that we had not returned to 
 Chatelard to take the Salvan route to Ver- 
 nayaz, or, better still, cut across from the 
 Tete Noire to Finhaut. 
 
 Martigny is a beautiful little town sur- 
 rounded by hills, on one of which is perched 
 the old castle of the Bishops of Sion. It 
 was gayly decorated with flags and trees, 
 " In honor of the fete," said a little boy. 
 " What fete ?" staggered him ; but he ran 
 after us to lisp out, " The sixth hundredth 
 anniversary of our independence." 
 
 Every town must celebrate on a different 
 day, and they seem, too, to have had our 
 itinerary in mind, for it was always the day 
 of our arrival. 
 
 The visitor's book was so full of refer- 
 ences to the excellent attendance and our 
 waitress was so pretty that Prudentia's 
 always easily-awakened suspicions were 
 aroused. I told her that it was starred in 
 Baedeker, which apparently convinced her 
 of its respectability. What did people do 
 before that book was written ? 
 
146 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 The pretty waitress assured us that the 
 dinner was excellent, so we took table 
 d'hote, a function not ordinarily popular 
 with us. It is such a melancholy ordeal ! 
 A solemn silence prevails ; the bashful ones 
 keep their eyes cast down in the fear of 
 encountering the others ; the swaggering 
 ones look boldly around, and pretend that 
 they do not care ; the nervous ones feebly 
 play with the salt-cellar, until suddenly 
 remembering that it is not good form, they 
 guiltily drop it. Just as we are expecting 
 the funeral service to begin, the soup is 
 brought in. Then the plates are cleaned 
 one after another, according to the particu- 
 lar style of each manipulator of the knife 
 and fork. The style in greatest favor is 
 " The Expeditious." They mercifully in- 
 form you of the name of the approaching 
 dish, but that by no means always prepares 
 you for what appears on the plate ! One 
 has only a veto power, no choice either of 
 comestibles or company. Yet we heard a 
 lady give as a convincing proof of the satis- 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 147 
 
 factory arrangements of Cook's Eastern 
 tours, that while they were camping out 
 in Arabia, they yet had table d'hote every 
 day ! 
 
 This time it was not so bad, for, with one 
 exception, our companions were Germans, 
 who said their say in a hearty, jovial way 
 that was refreshing. The exception was 
 an Englishman, who ate with a pocket 
 dictionary, and took possession of us with 
 an enthusiasm that we could not reciprocate. 
 He confided to us that, — 
 
 " Travelling is lonesome, don't you know. 
 One is always meeting such a lot of people, 
 don't you know, only to lose them again." 
 
 We did not know, but it was a mitigating 
 circumstance that we could look forward to 
 losing sight of him. 
 
 The dinner was good, but the famous 
 Lamarque wine, known and praised by the 
 Romans, was so long in coming, the label 
 was so damp with the paste, and the flavor 
 of the wine was so ordinary, that we sus- 
 pected that only the price was genuine. 
 
148 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 At five the next morning there was a 
 serenade underneath our window. The 
 chimes of the neighboring church took up 
 one of the airs, and streams of people, some 
 of them in the beautiful gala dress of the 
 peasants, went past to mass. 
 
 We stopped over a train at St. Maurice, 
 with the intention of visiting its ancient 
 monastery, but it was not the chalice of 
 Queen Bertha, nor yet the Gospels of 
 Charlemagne, that roused us to enthusiasm ; 
 instead, a pathetic little monument to three 
 brothers. 
 
 Prudentia said the monastery, the first 
 in Switzerland, would be yet more ancient 
 had the lord of St. Maurice kept his vow. 
 Being without an heir, he besought Heaven, 
 with tears and bribes, to give him a son, 
 one of the most frequent of his promises 
 being the erection of a handsome monas- 
 tery. Time went by ; Heaven, allured by 
 his magnificent proposals, — or, perhaps, in 
 supernal generosity, — sent him, not one 
 child, but three — triplets. 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 149 
 
 Secure in the number of his offspring, 
 and more anxious to provide for them 
 properly on earth than to propitiate a 
 Heaven which seemed easily satisfied with 
 promises, he put off the building of the 
 
 monastery from day to day and from year 
 to year. They had whooping-cough and 
 measles successively, but the poor, confi- 
 dent father refused to be warned. Even 
 chicken-pox did not alarm him. Imagine, 
 
150 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 then, his despair when a green cucumber 
 ended their lives ! The monastery was 
 built at last, but its first inmate was the 
 repentant and heart-broken father. 
 
 The band played enticingly at Bouveret, 
 but we lingered not, and hastened to the 
 boat. For a long distance the swift, gray 
 current of the Rhone is sharply outlined 
 in the blue waters of the lake. This day a 
 week we saw it rushing from the lake with 
 the same impetuosity that it now sought it. 
 " The little isle which in my face did smile" 
 looked too much like Rousseau's Isle, with 
 its trees and geometrical boundaries. Chil- 
 lon, too, disappointed us. To hear a pretty 
 peasant-girl, her arm twined affectionately 
 around the waist of another, who was evi- 
 dently learning the trade, — perhaps because 
 of No. i's approaching nuptials, — recite, in 
 a precise, sweet voice, with dates, those 
 stories over which we had wept in our 
 childhood, took away most of their interest 
 and horror, and the open-mouthed, vacant- 
 eyed crowd made away with the rest. We 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 151 
 
 tried to be either first or last, and, when we 
 succeeded, all our old awe came back with 
 a rush. After the others left the dungeons, 
 
 we managed hastily and guiltily to walk in 
 the circle Bonnivard's feet had worn in the 
 floor of rock. Still the names on the 
 pillars, Byron, Sue, George Sand, Victor 
 Hugo, and, on the wall further on, our own 
 Shelley, touched us more than the story 
 of Bonnivard, for, after all, did he not die 
 a respectable and highly respected citizen ? 
 The oubliettes, whose horror we could only 
 
152 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 guess at, for their knife-lined rocks could 
 not be seen, so deep and dark was the 
 cavern, seemed less dreadful than the burnt 
 places where the torturing-iron had missed 
 the flesh and seared the wood instead. The 
 chapel and my lady's chamber contained 
 finer carving than one would expect to see 
 in the home of such primitive cruelty, but 
 perhaps the Countess Peter was more dainty 
 than her lord. 
 
 We were fond of Freiburg from the be- 
 ginning. One of the first things that we 
 stumbled upon in our walk through the 
 town, which is picturesquely built on a 
 rocky hill surrounded by the Sarine River, 
 was an old, old, lime-tree supported by 
 stone pillars. Through the hollow trunk 
 grew a younger, presumably slipt from the 
 older. The story is that it came from a 
 twig carried by a young Freiburgian who, 
 in his anxiety to carry the good news of 
 Morat to his native city, forgot his wounds 
 and weakness. He had only the strength 
 left to gasp out " Victory," and died. The 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 153 
 
 identical story paraphrased from Euripides 
 by Browning, is it not ? 
 
 Some of the suspension bridges were 
 anchored in the hills themselves, and the 
 massive iron ropes of others went through 
 houses. At the end of one was a curious 
 building dug out of the solid rock. In the 
 middle of the wall was a charming little 
 Madonna shrine. 
 
154 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 One of Freiburg's daughters, the Duch- 
 ess Adela Colonna, " Marcello," has be- 
 
 queathed her gallery of paintings and her 
 own sculptures to the town. I suppose 
 that the latter were good, — portraits, 
 mostly, — but we could not help feeling 
 that she bought better than she wrought. 
 
 The famous organ was well played ; 
 " Walkure" and "William Tell" we recog- 
 nized. It was very full and powerful, and 
 the Vox Humana more like Vox Angeli. 
 
 Bern was a revelation of snow moun- 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 155 
 
 tains. From every open high place the 
 peaks of the Berner-Oberland can be seen 
 in fine weather, particularly at evening, 
 when we would sit for hours waiting for 
 the Alpengluhen. 
 
 The other side of Bern is the mediaeval. 
 Every one knows of the famous ogre 
 
 fountain, the little man upon it devouring 
 children with as much gusto now as if they 
 had not been his daily food for three cen- 
 
156 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 turies. Then there is Samson, the Bag- 
 piper, Themis, the Bear in Armor, — when- 
 ever one looks out from the covered 
 Lauben, — which are like Chester's Rows, — 
 one sees some hitherto unobserved conceit 
 in the fountain line. 
 
 The famous clock was being repaired, 
 but we forgave it, for bears were every- 
 where, from the gingerbread, chocolate, and 
 frosting ones for which I sighed, but upon 
 which Prudentia frowned, to the real live 
 ones, who prance and caper about as gayly 
 as if they had never eaten the poor British 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 157 
 
 officer who fell in the den one dinner-time. 
 To be a bear in Bern is to be a prince ; but 
 the next best thing must be to be born able 
 to sit all day in the cushioned window-seats 
 which belong to every house. 
 
 The Thun steamer was frightfully 
 crowded. We fancied that a " Cook," or 
 " Gaze, Personally Conducted" was on 
 board, and we ran right into the jaws of a 
 so-called " Private Party," in making room 
 for a poor little old woman, who evidently 
 felt that she could only express her grati- 
 tude adequately by friendly conversation. 
 
158 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 " How many are there in your party ?" 
 she asked, in gentle falsetto. 
 
 " Only we two." 
 
 " Oh !" she said, trying to conceal her 
 astonishment. " We have thirty in ours. 
 Mr. Brown takes us around. Perhaps 
 you know him, — Mr. Brown of Brook- 
 lyn? 
 
 " Why, there he is now," she added, as a 
 fat, perspiring, ignorant-looking man came 
 up, brusquely tearing off the old lady's 
 coupons. A few minutes later, we saw him 
 in excited converse with an official who 
 answered his blustering English, " It's all 
 right," by quietly pointing out to him the 
 statement on the ticket that the coupon 
 without the cover was valueless. Mr. B. 
 seemed disposed still further to argue the 
 matter, from which we concluded that 
 he neither spoke French nor read Eng- 
 lish. 
 
 If Mr. Brown left the little old woman to 
 her own devices, she did not have a similar 
 amount of confidence in us ; for each time 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 159 
 
 that we started up to look at anything, she 
 hastened to reassure us with, — 
 
 " Mr. Brown will tell us when it is time 
 to get off, and I will tell you." All of 
 which led us to reflect on the halo thrown 
 about incompetence and ignorance when 
 equipped with trousers. 
 
 As soon as we had settled ourselves at 
 the hotel in Interlaken, we walked to the 
 Hoheweg, just in time to see the famous 
 view of the Jungfrau, rising so white and 
 still above the darker hills. Almost imme- 
 diately it began to cloud over, and we never 
 saw it again, or anything else in Interlaken 
 except the shops, which were enjoyable 
 enough, to be sure. Still they were not 
 what we came for ; so, in hopes that we 
 might strike better weather later, we made 
 a trip to Giessbach. One ascends and 
 descends the mountain in cars connected 
 by a rope of wire, which runs over a mov- 
 able pulley at the top. As one heavily 
 loaded with water descends, its weight 
 pulls up the other. It is a delightfully 
 
160 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 cheap arrangement, and safe, too, for the 
 brakes are strong and instantaneous in their 
 action. We spent the afternoon exploring 
 above and underneath the beautiful fall, 
 which makes seven leaps before it enters 
 the lake at last, nearly twelve hundred feet 
 from its source. At night we sat before it 
 awaiting the illumination, not particularly 
 disposed to be enraptured. A few Roman 
 candles went up. We looked at each other. 
 
 " I wish that I had put my franc in carved 
 wood," said we both. 
 
 In another moment we were glad to be 
 there, such marvellous colors the foamy 
 waters took. All too soon the violet turned 
 to blue, the blue to green, the green to red, 
 whose last pink glow faded away and left 
 us in darkness. 
 
 It rained again in Interlaken, forcing us 
 to take the train to Lauterbrunnen. We 
 had hardly started before the sun came out 
 and filled us with regret that we had not 
 walked. On all sides rose the magnificent 
 mountains, old friends and two new ones, — 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 161 
 
 the Wetterhorn and a pillar-shaped hill of 
 rock the name of which I have forgotten. 
 We had expected to go by the new rail- 
 road to Miirren, from which point, accord- 
 ing to many, the most magnificent view in 
 Switzerland may be had. I carefully con- 
 cealed from Prudentia that there had been 
 an accident the first time that it had run, 
 but I might just as well have relieved my 
 mind, for it was not yet running again. 
 Three times we started to walk up the path, 
 which was unmentionably muddy on ac- 
 count of the continuous rain, and then, as 
 we really had not time, gave it up unwil- 
 lingly and started for a nearer view of the 
 Staubbach, a long, slender veil of mist 
 floating down from one of the perpendicu- 
 lar rocks which shut in Lauterbrunnen. 
 The Trummelsbach, farther on, has a 
 greater volume of water ; the round basin 
 which it has worn is interesting, and 
 though, perhaps, less well known, is more 
 popular among those who do visit it, but it 
 
l62 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 had not for us the wonderful, dainty charm 
 of the Dust-Brook. 
 
 After a few abortive attempts to buy 
 carved wood as cheap as we had seen it in 
 Interlaken, we started for the Wengern, not 
 by the usual path, which we did not bother 
 to find, for we knew the general direction. 
 Hardly had we left the main road when we 
 were besieged by guides of all ages. Finally 
 they left us in disgust, except one small boy, 
 who persistently followed us, saying, — 
 
 " Sie sind nicht auf dem rechten Weg. 
 Sie sind nicht auf dem rechten Weg." 
 (You are not on the right road.) 
 
 To our repeated shrugs he would invari- 
 ably answer, — 
 
 " Ich luge nicht. Ich kann nicht lugen. 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 163 
 
 Sie sind nicht auf dem rechten Weg." (I 
 do not lie. I cannot lie. You are not on 
 the right road.) 
 
 Finally Prudentia said to him, — 
 
 " Das wissen wir wohl, aber wir gehen 
 nach dem Wengern nicht." 
 
 She does invest her most preposterous 
 falsehoods with a most deceptive air of 
 truth; still we were both astonished, as well 
 as relieved, when, apparently suddenly con- 
 vinced of the uselessness of his pursuit, he 
 left us. 
 
 The road was distinctly bad, in spite of 
 Baedeker's assurance to the contrary, but it 
 was interesting, and we were sufficiently 
 comfortable not to be discouraged by the 
 advice of people descending, who all ad- 
 vised us, in a variety of languages, not to 
 go on, saying that the mud was knee-deep. 
 We did not believe that it could be worse, 
 first, because nothing muddier could be 
 imagined, indeed, we had never seen any- 
 thing so bad, and then the shoes of our 
 advisers looked about like our own. So on 
 
164 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 we jogged contentedly, listening to the mar- 
 vellous echoes and looking back on dark 
 Lauterbrunnen, with Miirren high above ; 
 but it did get worse, too bad to be thought 
 of, much less mentioned in polite society. 
 Even our short skirts were loaded with 
 mud. But we were full of rapture when 
 the gigantic Jungfrau, flanked on either side 
 by the Schnee Horn and the Silber Horn, 
 loomed up before us, pink in the setting 
 sun, and seemingly so near that we could 
 almost touch them. Chamouni showed us 
 nothing to compare with it. 
 
 With surprise we recognized a little boy 
 rushing down the path as our would-be 
 guide of the morning, and greeted him 
 cordially with, — 
 
 " Guten Abend, Kindchen." 
 
 " Sie sind nach dem Wengern gegangen. 
 Sie haben mich betriigen, — betrugen" 
 (You went to the Wengern. You have de- 
 ceived me, — deceived me), he screamed at 
 us with angry emphasis, evidently feeling 
 outraged at our conduct, and either for- 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 165 
 
 getting his own little lie, or else thinking it 
 quite venial. 
 
 After a fine dinner we went up-stairs to 
 our room, which looked out on the snow 
 mountains, and rang for the porter to attend 
 to our clothes. Something or other was 
 forgotten; we rushed to the door to call him 
 back, and beheld him nearly doubled up 
 with amusement and astonishment, — not at 
 the mud, but at our spring-heeled shoes. 
 It is impossible to tell how they manage it, 
 but even German men and women walk in 
 pointed-toed, rather high-heeled, shoes. 
 
 It was so very cold that we each got in 
 the same bed and piled on top of us both 
 feather-beds and sets of blankets. Pruden- 
 tia woke up early (/ sleep always the deep 
 sleep of innocence), and was rewarded by a 
 glowing Jungfrau, with a solitary star at its 
 very tip. Would you credit the meanness, 
 the perfidy of her? She crawled quietly 
 back to bed and told me of it three hours 
 later. 
 
 Early the next morning we set forth on 
 
1 66 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 the excellent road to the Scheidegg, hear- 
 ing, though not seeing, many avalanches. 
 Beyond, however, the steep, uninteresting 
 descent to Grindehvald was a marsh, and to 
 add to our discomfort it began to rain hard. 
 We were just as wet as we could be, and 
 for that very reason I wanted to push on at 
 once to the pink glacier of Rosenlaui, 
 visiting on the way the well-known, but 
 very ordinary, ones at Grindehvald. For 
 the first and only time, Prudentia wanted 
 to do the opposite, and take the train to 
 Interlaken for Meyringen. 
 
 " We are wet through. It would not be 
 safe to sit in the cars," I said, using the 
 argument most likely to influence her. 
 
 " The roads are frightful ; we might be 
 too used-up to walk over the Grimsel," 
 said she, trying to touch my vulnerable 
 point. 
 
 After lengthy arguments on both sides, 
 we each became overwhelmingly polite, 
 offering effusively to do as the other wished. 
 But even this did not persuade either of 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 167 
 
 us, so finally we threw up a coin, — heads, 
 feet ; tails, rail. 
 
 Tails came up. 
 
 " Best out of three," said I, hastily. 
 
 Tails, the second time. 
 
 Tails, the third time. 
 
 Very unwillingly I bought the tickets for 
 Interlaken, and very eloquently I talked of 
 the Wetterhorn, the beautiful rose-colored 
 glacier of Rosenlaui, the Reichenbach 
 Falls. Prudentia listened unmoved. Then 
 I complained bitterly of the cold, my damp 
 clothes, my aching bones. In vain. She 
 afterwards told me that she kept saying to 
 herself, — 
 
 " Well, if she were doing what she 
 wished, she would be warm as wool and 
 dry as a bone," which enabled her to re- 
 main firm. 
 
 In Interlaken we had time enough to 
 buy some of the carved wood that we had 
 before refrained from, under the delusion 
 that we could get it cheaper and better in 
 Lauterbrunnen. We went to the banker's, 
 
1 68 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 too, and all in the pouring rain. I called 
 Prudentia's attention to the fact that in 
 spite of this we were much more comfort- 
 able than we had been in the train, but she 
 wilfully refused to see the application. 
 
 To our great delight, the sun was very 
 bright the next day, and we set out for the 
 Grimsel in the most excellent spirits. Our 
 hotel at Meyringen had been cheap and 
 clean, the breakfast good (the waitress 
 actually wanted to refill the jar of honey 
 that we had shamelessly emptied), and we 
 had succeeded in getting our shoes mended. 
 
 The road was dry to the foot and pictu- 
 resque to the eye, passing numberless cas- 
 cades, piercing through rocks, and once 
 going underneath a broad sheet of water. 
 Suggestive of fearful storms were the fields, 
 covered with stones and debris, while the 
 roofs of all the houses were weighted down 
 with heavy stones. 
 
 Even the rainbowy ham and bottled beer 
 of the only inn at Guttannen did not subdue 
 our high spirits. As for the Schweitzer 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 169 
 
 cheese, it gives Prudentia's nose a perpet- 
 ual surprise. She cannot understand why, 
 with so many holes in it, it seems so badly 
 
 ventilated. From there on we were in a 
 continual state of delight over the wildness 
 of the route. Huge masses of rock were 
 in our path, across which the festive chamois 
 leaped occasionally. We crossed the foam- 
 ing Aar many times, and looking down 
 could pick out all sorts of fantastic shapes 
 worn by its swift gray waters. And then 
 the magnificent Falls of Handegg, — as high 
 
170 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 as Montmorency, but infinitely swifter, and 
 with thousands of rainbows in the great 
 cloud of mist which apparently rebounds 
 half-way up from the depths below. 
 
 We met a good many pedestrians, mostly 
 Germans, with whom I exchanged the 
 cheerful " Guten Morgen." Looking back, 
 I frequently discovered Prudentia in deep 
 converse with them ; but to all my curious 
 questions she responded, — 
 
 " I remarked that the pepper of the 
 country was fine." 
 
 A little boy-friend of mine, who had 
 visited Albany, was listening to an account 
 of the trip with the greatest eagerness, 
 evidently anxious to get in a word, and not 
 to be left entirely out of the conversation. 
 Finally, there was a slight pause, which 
 he filled by saying, with the utmost 
 vivacity, — 
 
 " And oh, aunty, wasn't the pepper fine 
 there ?" 
 
 Gradually the road became lonelier. No 
 one seemed to be going our way, and we 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 171 
 
 had not met any travellers from the Grimsel 
 for quite a while, until suddenly, sitting on 
 a rock, I espied a friend (Prudentia insists 
 upon saying that when she has suddenly 
 sat upon a rock her vision has been stellar 
 rather than friendly) whom I had fancied 
 that I had stupidly passed in a walk through 
 Saxon Switzerland two years before. The 
 three of us sat down to talk for a while, 
 compare itineraries, and arrange for a future 
 meeting. All this took time ; sunset was 
 near, and yet we had a two-hours' walk 
 before us, with no human habitation on the 
 road except two chalets. Prudentia was 
 worried. The bleak, desolate valley, — veg- 
 etation had long since disappeared, — shut 
 in by rocky, precipitous mountains, sug- 
 gested all sorts of disasters, with no one to 
 tell the tale. I suggested that no one ever 
 heard of such things in Switzerland ; that 
 they could not afford to have it happen, for 
 their living depended on the comfort of 
 travellers. In vain, Prudentia insisted that 
 the lucky villain who saw us would not 
 
172 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 be likely to be dissuaded by abstract ideas 
 of patriotism. 
 
 At last, after an hour's walk (in spite of 
 our haste, we stopped to look at the scene 
 behind and at each side of us), we reached 
 the two chalets, and saw, milking his eoat, 
 the first human being since our three-cor- 
 nered conversation. It was seven o'clock, 
 we had eaten a very slight breakfast, and 
 almost nothing for lunch ; so, though we 
 had another hour before us, we asked him 
 for some cold goat's milk (to which we 
 added, to his great delight, a " drap o' 
 poteen"), and, giving him the usual coin, 
 we departed, refreshed by the milk and his 
 gratitude. He might have been that simple 
 peasant to whom, at his own request, the 
 French had given Ratherrichsboden, the 
 rocky, unproductive land around the cha- 
 lets, because he had guided them over the 
 Grimsel to the Austrian encampment. The 
 Swiss government annulled the grant, so I 
 suppose that it could not have been he, but we 
 were always sorry that we did not ask him. 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 173 
 
 Shortly after, I happened to look up, and 
 there, on the height above us, stood two 
 men, looking at us and gesticulating vio- 
 lently. Unfortunately, I said nothing to 
 Prudentia, and when they finally clattered 
 down upon us with a wild whoop, she 
 bruised my arm in her fright. And that 
 was the worst that happened to us. They 
 were guides, who merely wished to say, 
 "Guten Abend;" and ask, with friendly 
 curiosity, " Gehen sie nach dem Grimsel ?" 
 
 We reached the Hospice just before 
 night fell, fortunately, for, when darkness 
 comes here, it comes rapidly. The house 
 
T74 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 was built originally for poor travellers, and 
 the rooms, in consequence, are very small, 
 with the thinnest of partitions ; but the 
 dinner was excellent, the whole place de- 
 lightfully quaint and clean. Inside, every- 
 thing was cheerful, from the Frenchman in 
 knickerbockers, who waltzed around the 
 room alone to his own whistling, to the 
 German in a skull-cap, whose surprising 
 music-boxes and fine carvings found many 
 admirers, but few purchasers. Outside, 
 everything was dreary, from the poor 
 cattle trying to find grass on the stones 
 to the brackish little lake in which no fish 
 can live. The Todten See, farther on, re- 
 sembles it, but it has a gorier history, for 
 here both the Austrians and the French 
 buried their dead after the battle that fol- 
 lowed the surprise of the Austrians by the 
 French, led to the spot by the guide of 
 whom I spoke before. 
 
 We almost slid down the steep hill in our 
 eagerness to reach the " frozen cascade" of 
 the Rhone Glacier, from which flow, in the 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 175 
 
 midst of the debris, the gray, gray waters 
 of the infant Rhone, so narrow that we 
 could step across it. The Grotto, a long 
 passage in the clear, blue ice, taking one 
 some distance into the glacier, was inter- 
 esting. The curious light made us look so 
 like ghosts that we did not dare to talk 
 until we were safely out. The most mag- 
 nificent views of the glacier are on the 
 Furka road, which ascends from the hotel 
 high above it. Here one has very fine 
 views of the snow mountains, the Furka- 
 horn, with its heavy ledge of snow, attract- 
 ing us particularly by its fantastic appear- 
 ance. 
 
 At Andermatt, in a little chapel, is placed, 
 over the door, a box of skulls, many of them 
 bearing a paper tag with a name, presumably 
 that of the original owner. One poor, sin- 
 ful mortal had been stood on his head. We 
 never succeeded in discovering the whys 
 and wherefores of the curious case, though 
 we asked several priests who might be 
 expected to know. It is plainly not a 
 
176 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 sight for tourists, for two reasons, — there 
 was no one around to receive a fee, and 
 then there were two black bottles behind 
 the small pulpit. We unwittingly added 
 two incongruous things to our picture, — 
 the net bag and the two alpenstocks. 
 
 Andermatt is the chief town of the valley 
 of Urseren, of which it is said that it is 
 winter eight months, and cold the other 
 four. From this valley, the Urner Loch, 
 
A Too Short Vacation. iy/ 
 
 a seventy-yard hole in the solid rock, leads 
 to the wild scenery of the Devil's Bridge. 
 It seems a great pity that the so-called 
 American idea of advertising on the rocks 
 should be allowed to intrude here. We 
 wished that the aptly-termed " hat-rogue" 
 wind could carry off the more pressing of 
 the hotel invitations " to come into my 
 chamber." 
 
 From Goschenen to Amsteg the St. Gott- 
 hard road darts through hills and winds 
 around itself in the most perplexing way. 
 It travels miles and advances not at all. 
 Luckily, the scenery rewards one for the 
 scrutiny one must give it. Prudentia was 
 constantly possessed of a mysterious illu- 
 sion that we were taking the wrong train, — 
 mysterious because no experience of this 
 sort gave it birth. In fact, even a stupid 
 person could not make such a mistake here, 
 where they carefully examine the tickets 
 before the train starts, and tenderly give any 
 one who is where he does not belong the 
 " grand bounce." 
 
178 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 She generally struggles silently with her 
 unbelief, and only attempts to reassure her- 
 self by surreptitious glances at the tickets 
 of her neighbors, or by taking an official 
 into an obscure corner, where she hopes 
 that I cannot see her, and asking him as 
 many questions as that patient creature 
 will endure. Now, in going over the St. 
 Gotthard road, she was convinced that we 
 had taken an excursion train and would 
 spend the whole day in exciting trips 
 between Goschenen and Amsteg. Her 
 anxiety as the train continued to travel 
 backward increased, and finally she could 
 not help expressing it to a German who 
 sat near. He replied, — 
 
 " Geben Sie sich kein Acht. Der Schaff- 
 ner hat sein Taschentuch vergessen, und da 
 gehen wir zuriick !" (Don't be alarmed. 
 The conductor has forgotten his handker- 
 chief. That is why we are going back.) 
 
 We would have given a good deal for 
 the same leisurely progress later on, that 
 we might have observed with more ease the 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 179 
 
 places associated with Schiller's " William 
 Tell," — Zwing Uri, Gessler's castle, — 
 
 " Zwing Uri soil sie heissen, 
 Denn unter dieses Joch wird man euch beugen." 
 
 Then came Attinghaussen's death-place, 
 and Altdorf, where he shot the apple from 
 his son's head. Above the monastery is 
 the Bannwald of which Schiller speaks, 
 where now, as then, no woodman's axe is 
 ever heard, for now, as then, it protects 
 Altdorf from the falling rocks. 
 
 Tell. Die Baiime sind gebannt, das ist die Wahrheit. 
 Siehst du die Firnen dort, die weissen Horner 
 Die hoch bis in dem Himmel sich verlieren ? 
 
 Walther. Das sind die Gletcher, die des Nachts so 
 donnern 
 Und uns die Schlaglawine niedersenden. 
 
 Tell. So ist's, und die Lawine hatten langst 
 Den Flecken Altdorf unter ihrer Last 
 Verschuttet, wenn der Wald dort oben nicht 
 Als eine Landwehr sich dagegen stellte. 
 
 From Fluelen one may walk to Tell's 
 Chapel by the Axenstrasse, a broad, level 
 street, cut half-way up the mountain-side, 
 
180 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 often piercing the oddly-twisted rocks. 
 The chapel is said to have been originally 
 built by the people of Uri, shortly after 
 TelFs famous leap there from Gessler's boat, 
 and in commemoration thereof. 
 
 " Ich kenn', es ist am Fuss des grossen Axen." 
 
 The present chapel, though picturesque, 
 is plainly modern. Once a year the people 
 assemble, and, in their gayly-decorated 
 boats, listen to the Mass that is said there. 
 
 Further on is the Rutli, — 
 
 " Der Bergweg Sfifnet sich nur frisch mir an ! 
 Den Fels erkenn' ich und das Kreuzlein drauf ; 
 Wir sind am Ziel, hier ist das Rutli," 
 
 — that meadow where the Swiss assembled 
 and swore to free the country from Aus- 
 trian oppression. Where three of them 
 took the oath, the three springs burst forth, 
 says tradition. 
 
 " These beautiful mountains," said I to 
 Prudentia, when we had settled ourselves 
 in the boat. 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 181 
 
 " The Three Graces," said she to me, 
 indicating with her eyes three maidens of 
 uncertain age, whose long-waisted forms 
 and one-idea toilettes made each resemble 
 the other like the proverbial pins on the 
 same paper. English clergyman's daugh- 
 ters, we thought. Each laughed feebly at 
 the feeble remarks of the other, and each 
 hung on the other's words with an en- 
 thusiasm that was touching, as were their 
 efforts to appear to be having a " perfectly 
 glorious time." Only the mother had 
 gotten beyond that. No wonder that she 
 looked hopeless with such impossibles on 
 her hands. 
 
 13 
 
1 82 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 In front of us sat a loving couple whose 
 elephantine caresses we quite enjoyed, 
 thinking them to be poor German peas- 
 ants, but when the man handed out the 
 little green book of the Cook excursionists 
 we mournfully turned our attention to the 
 lake again. 
 
 There is one thing in Lucerne that can 
 never have disappointed any one, — the 
 Lion. The finest picture, the cleverest 
 carving, gives but the slightest idea of the 
 grandeur of that great lion, who, in the 
 agony of death, still protects the lilies of 
 France. Aside from the sentimental and 
 the historical interest, the artistic impression 
 of the bold relief in gray stone hidden in a 
 grove of trees, is sublime. 
 
 The shops are full of carvings and casts, 
 from one franc up to thirty. It seemed at 
 first as if we would buy them all, but we 
 finally contented ourselves with two modest 
 five-franc affairs. Our next enthusiasm was 
 for the beautiful handkerchiefs in the shop 
 windows.— marvels of cobweb fineness and 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 183 
 
 delicate embroidery, and yet costing only 
 two and three francs. 
 
 Next to the Lion and the handkerchiefs 
 came the old Wasserthurm, which, when 
 it was a light-house (lucerna), gave its 
 name to the city. The bridges Longfellow 
 had prepared us for. A bath taken in a 
 sunken marble tub endeared the Muhlen- 
 briicke to us more than the hour that we 
 spent, at the risk of our necks, gazing up- 
 wards at the ghastly " Dance of Death" 
 pictures. 
 
 In spite of the fact that grim Pilatus 
 wielded his sword, a sure sign of foul 
 weather, we waited on the quay for the 
 boat that was to take us to the Rigi with 
 some impatience. It was so late and I was 
 so tired that I finally seated myself on a 
 barrel. It was my duty to carry the sticks. 
 Now that we were in the region of rail- 
 roads, they seemed to excite as much 
 curiosity as they would at home, and yet 
 we did not dare to send them on to the 
 steamer lest they, with their precious record 
 
184 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 of our tramp, should be broken. Shortly 
 after I had made myself comfortable, I 
 noticed with pain that Prudentia was trans- 
 fixing with her eye an inoffensive-looking 
 woman. As usual, the victim of her glance 
 finally succumbed, though at first she made 
 a brave show of indifference. I had noticed 
 her before, looking at our sticks in a 
 friendly sort of a way, trying to read the 
 names of the places that descended spirally 
 from the top. My sympathies were all with 
 her, and, though I did not know her crime, 
 I ventured to remonstrate with Prudentia, 
 who replied, — 
 
 " The impertinent creature was smiling 
 at your patch. I do wish that you would 
 not exhibit it so publicly ;" and, in spite 
 of my representations to the contrary, she 
 insisted upon believing her version of the 
 smile, and pooh-poohed my theory of a 
 kindly interest in our travels. She has no 
 faith in human nature, — not even in our- 
 selves, that is, in myself. 
 
 Everybody pushed everybody else aside 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 185 
 
 in his eagerness to step from the boat to 
 the car. We, who were well in the rear, 
 took a savage delight in seeing them all 
 shooed back to the luggage-room, and a 
 still greater pleasure when we discovered 
 that one of the most pushing had to pay 
 ten francs extra for his luggage. One can 
 carry only ten pounds free, and the charge 
 for overweight must be enormous, for the 
 ten-franc man had only two ordinary-sized 
 valises. It was just sunset. Suddenly, as 
 we ascended, the lovely lake burst upon 
 us, reflecting the red and gold of the sky, 
 surrounded by mountains, dark Pilatus the 
 chief. As we rose higher, the mountains 
 behind became gradually visible. 
 
 The hotel on the summit of Rigi-kulm 
 is considered excellent, but, after paying 
 twelve francs for a room that was as high 
 as the price, we felt quite cold about its 
 merits, a coldness that was increased the 
 following morning by a wretched, uneat- 
 able, undrinkable breakfast. 
 
 We slept together under the two feather 
 
1 86 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 beds for the first time since our tramp, — 
 that is, I did, for Prudentia, with her habit- 
 ual distrust, roused herself every two min- 
 utes to assure herself that it was not yet 
 time to get up. Finally, she awoke me, — 
 
 " Sanguinelle, I am sure that it is long 
 past daybreak." 
 
 " Nonsense," said I, " they awaken you 
 with a bugle." 
 
 " Did you ask ?" she persisted. 
 
 " No, I did not; but Baedeker says so," 
 said I, impatiently, turning over so as more 
 effectually to close the conversation. 
 
 But Prudentia had no intention of coming 
 up the Rigi, like Mark Twain, to miss the 
 sunrise. She threw open both shutters, 
 and I was obliged to acknowledge that the 
 darkness was not exactly Cimmerian. On 
 the belvedere we could see one solitary 
 man. Making a three-minute toilette, we 
 hastened to join him, feeling like thieves 
 as we stole down the seemingly unending 
 stairs and through the quiet house. 
 
 " Sunrise is not for two hours yet," 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 187 
 
 was his gruff acknowledgment of our 
 presence. We knew this to be a generous 
 exaggeration, but did not understand the 
 reason for his evident bad temper. We 
 were too wide awake now to think of going 
 back ; besides, we could see that daybreak 
 was near at hand, for the stars were pale, 
 and all around us rose the gray, spectral 
 mountains. We had forgotten the Baede- 
 ker, and, as it had the Rigi panorama, it 
 seemed worth the while to go back for it. 
 I was just in time to hear the pretty bugle- 
 call in the house. At its very first notes, 
 all kinds of fantastically-dressed and un- 
 dressed people sprang into life. When I 
 came out, I understood our friend's gruff- 
 ness, for there he stood, the soi-disant bugler, 
 with a silver plate in his hands, upon which 
 I hard-heartedly refused to put a contribu- 
 tion. 
 
 By the time that I reached the belvedere 
 again, the whole place was alive. The 
 ubiquitous souvenir-sellers were plying 
 their trade with the persistence of later 
 
1 88 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 hours. Soon the snow mountains next to 
 Pilatus grew to rosiness, and we recognized 
 them, with intense delight, as our old friends 
 of the Berner-Oberland, the Jungfrau, the 
 Monch, the Eiger, the Wetterhorn, and 
 the Finsteraarhorn. Further on were the 
 mountains of the Bliimlisalp, but we had 
 not shaken hands with them, and felt, 
 therefore, a more moderate pleasure in 
 seeing them. Below us was a beautiful 
 sea of mist, through which we could see 
 gleams of Lucerne and other lakes which 
 Baedeker helped us to place. 
 
 " Und unter den Fussen, ein nebliges Meer, 
 Erkennt er die Stadte der Menschen nicht mehr; 
 Durch den Riss nur den Wolken 
 Erblickt er die Welt, 
 Tief unter den Wassern 
 Das griinende Feld." 
 
 The Zug boat was invaded by a school- 
 picnic, led by a handsome priest and a 
 picturesque, brown-cassocked monk, and 
 chaperoned by a number of ladies, pre- 
 
A Too Slwrt Vacation. 189 
 
 sumably teachers, who all had distinctly 
 bad teeth, though not Americans. The 
 children seemed very happy in a prim, 
 quiet way, particularly when, in the inter- 
 vals of their songs, the handsome priest 
 came around. He had a kindly word for 
 each, which they stood up to receive, some- 
 times quite a while before he reached them. 
 It was a day for schools. We had 
 scarcely seated ourselves for lunch, in a 
 dear little garden at Zug, before a half- 
 dozen modest school-girls came in. After 
 some conversation with the waitress, who 
 plainly thought that they ought to come 
 inside, where we could dimly see a sister 
 and other girls eating, they sat down, each 
 with a huge quart-mug of foaming beer. 
 Almost before they had had time to raise 
 it demurely to their lips, the sister inside, 
 followed by her charges in single file, 
 approached. They all rose respectfully, 
 making, apparently, a satisfactory expla- 
 nation, for she returned with the small 
 army, and they sat down again to their 
 
190 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 beer. After a few sips, a middle-aged man 
 appeared, evidently an acquaintance, and, 
 ordering a cup of coffee, sat down beside 
 them. There was awful horror on the 
 sister's face as she looked out and saw 
 them talking bashfully with him, and, with- 
 out waiting for the little army to follow her, 
 she dashed out, this time compelling them 
 to return with her. Very shamefaced they 
 looked, as, carrying their gigantic mugs, 
 they obediently followed her, leaving the 
 man half angry, half amused, and ourselves 
 very sorry, but very much amused. In our 
 country, the beer would have been the 
 offence and the man a palliation. 
 
 Baedeker does not put a star to Hotel 
 Schloss Laufen, but otherwise it seemed to 
 us to be the best place to stop. It was just 
 above the Falls, so that we could see the 
 illumination that night, and by getting up a 
 little early, visit the Falls by daylight, and 
 yet take the morning train for Schaffhausen. 
 It was late when we arrived ; the guide- 
 book gave their price as two francs a person 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 191 
 
 for the room, which a card of theirs con- 
 firmed, so that, for almost the first time, 
 we did not ask for terms. Though we 
 were there so short a time, the thermom- 
 eter of our sentiments varied most errati- 
 cally. 
 
 Cold. — While eating our supper, we were 
 told that it was a twenty minutes' walk to 
 see the illumination, which would take place 
 in exactly twenty minutes, — a coincidence 
 that gave us no time for fine work in the 
 way of mastication. Escorted by a maid 
 carrying a miserable lantern, we ran up hill 
 and down, discovering that the twenty 
 minutes was no exaggeration, as we had 
 fondly hoped ; but 
 
 Hot. — A beautiful, illuminated castle 
 above the Falls, we were astonished to 
 find to be our hotel. Our host escorted 
 me home, telling me of his trip to America 
 to seek a fortune which he had not found 
 there, and of the fortune that he had found 
 at home in the shape of a wife, with the 
 true German sentiment which I think 
 
192 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 charming. The porter fell to Prudentia's 
 lot, and though he was certainly a little 
 touched, she forgave him because he ad- 
 mired her German effusively. 
 
 Freezing. — We asked the next morning 
 for our bill, and found that we had been 
 charged ten francs for the room. Feeling 
 that, though we had been imposed upon 
 and cheated, — for the first time, too, — we 
 deserved it for going to an unstarred hotel 
 in the first place, and not making a bargain 
 in the second place, we shook its dust from 
 our feet and departed. 
 
 The different points of view of the Falls 
 in the grounds of Schloss Laufen are im- 
 pressive on account of the immense mass 
 of green, foaming water; but from Schlos- 
 chen Worth, or even from the Schweizerhof, 
 it is disappointing in spite of the volume, 
 because of the lack of height. Our sym- 
 pathies are all with those who think the 
 Falls of Handegg finer, though I can 
 understand that a longer and more intimate 
 acquaintance might cause one to lose the 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 193 
 
 feeling of disappointment that the passing 
 traveller feels. 
 
 Our only fellow-travellers on the road to 
 Strassburg were two American gentlemen, 
 travelling with Cook's tickets and hotel 
 coupons, who, in a fever of anxiety, asked 
 us if we could speak German. We told 
 the conductor for them that they wished to 
 stop off for the night at Triberg, and won- 
 dered why they did not go on, for they did 
 not look like Black Forest Explorers. 
 Their gratitude was profuse and their 
 curiosity evident. They alluded to parties 
 of teachers travelling in Europe, but our 
 indifference was so profound that their 
 suspicions were lulled. They plainly 
 thought that we must be public characters 
 of some kind, for soon they suggested 
 insinuatingly that we could give a fine lec- 
 ture with the contents of our Kodak. 
 
IX. 
 
 WE reached Strassburg in time to get 
 comfortably settled in our room, 
 eat a good dinner, and take a stroll, 
 which naturally led us in the direction of 
 the great Cathedral Twilight had already 
 far advanced before we reached it, but, 
 while the details were lost in the failing- 
 light, the solemn grandeur of the great 
 Dom was augmented. On the morrow San- 
 guinelle kept her eyes wide open for storks 
 and storks' nests. The storks, she deigned 
 to enlighten me, are sacred to Strassburg, 
 and did not desert the city even in the 
 siege of 1870. Suddenly she espied a 
 miserable specimen on top of a high chim- 
 ney, and as a result of her enthusiasm my 
 arm was disabled for the rest of the day. 
 The facade of the Cathedral is particu- 
 194 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 195 
 
 larly beautiful, with its innumerable sculp- 
 tures and delicate tracery. In the interior 
 is the famous clock, and here, before the 
 hour of noon, waiting for the automatical 
 wonder to begin, we encountered our 
 American acquaintances of the day before. 
 They explained that they had not come on 
 the day we had met them, because the por- 
 ter of their hotel had wickedly led them to 
 believe that the train did not arrive until 
 eight in the evening ! But after all, they 
 said, they were glad that they had stayed 
 over, for they had had a most excellent 
 dinner. They kindly explained the clock 
 to us, having obtained their information 
 from a guide, who, they innocently assured 
 us, had tried both German and French on 
 them to no avail. We naturally felt some 
 uncertainty about the reliability of their 
 knowledge, especially when one of them 
 exclaimed, when the cock began to flap his 
 wings, — 
 
 " Oh, look at the eagle !" 
 
 Three-fourths of the population of Strass- 
 
196 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 burg are soldiers, and the remaining fourth 
 Alsatian bows. I do not quote these fig- 
 ures from any statistical table ; it is merely 
 the impression that the population makes 
 on a stranger. Also, it would seem that 
 every soldier was somebody's superior 
 officer, whom it was de figueur to salute. 
 The salutor in one street is the saluted in 
 the next. Nor is salutation the affair of a 
 second. The hand is raised to the cap, 
 palm out, and remains rigidly placed there 
 until the officer has passed. 
 
 There was a strong fascination for us in 
 Baden, a beautiful place on the edge of the 
 Black Forest, with long avenues shaded by 
 magnificent old trees, and a general air of 
 leisurely holiday-making. We found our 
 breathless, tourist speed giving way to this 
 indolent, pleasure-seeking pace, as we 
 sauntered gently to the Trinkhalle and 
 drank of the hot springs, the efficacy of 
 whose waters was known even to the 
 Romans. In the evening we listened to 
 the concert in the Cursaal, and looked in 
 
 
A Too Slwrt Vacation. 197 
 
 vain for the people of wealth and fashion. 
 Since the closing of the gaming-tables, 
 Baden has become a mere health-resort. It 
 has the gently melancholy air of one who 
 has seen better days. As if she said, — 
 
 " Oh, I am quite comfortable, thank you, 
 but it is nothing like the style to which I 
 have been accustomed !" 
 
 The Old Castle is a picturesque ruin near 
 Baden, parts of which date from the third 
 century. It was the residence of the Mar- 
 grave until he built himself the New Castle 
 on a hill to the north of the town. The 
 story is that during the prevalence of a 
 pestilence, one of the Margravines shut 
 herself up in the highest tower, with her 
 two children, allowing no one to enter, and 
 no one even to approach the castle, except 
 an old and trusted servant, who brought 
 provisions which she raised by a string to her 
 apartment. One night, as she was giving 
 thanks for her preservation and praying 
 for a continuance of favor, she saw a vision 
 of the hot springs and of the lovely con- 
 14 
 
9 8 
 
 A Too SJwrt Vacation. 
 
 vent of Lichtenthal, to which an angel 
 pointed after indicating the sleeping chil- 
 dren. The next day she ordered the springs 
 to be opened until the streets should be full 
 
 of their steam. The pestilence was imme- 
 diately stayed. Later, the daughter became 
 the Abbess of Lichtenthal, and the son 
 Bishop of Utrecht. 
 
 The view from the top of the tower is 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 199 
 
 extensive, stretching to a point even beyond 
 Strassburg. In the foreground lies the 
 beautiful valley of Baden, with its pretty 
 villas in strong contrast to its sombre pine 
 forests. 
 
 We walked from the Castle to the town. 
 Sanguinelle said, — 
 
 " You keep to the road. I shall make 
 some short cuts, and let us see where we 
 will meet." 
 
 Sanguinelle's cardinal principle is, " Never 
 take the beaten track — in anything." She 
 always prescribes it for me, however. We 
 did not meet. I woke the echoes of the 
 wood with fruitless cries for Sanguinelle. 
 While I was thus employed, she returned 
 to the hotel, reported her loss, and started 
 out anew. As I was entering the town, I 
 met her, and I feel certain that my words 
 aroused her to a fuller appreciation of the 
 serious responsibility that she had assumed 
 in carrying me through Europe. We vis- 
 ited the banker, and our strained relations 
 were augmented by finding his doors 
 
200 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 closed, — not to us personally, I hope that 
 is understood. It is the custom here to 
 take a siesta from twelve to three. Our 
 good temper was restored by the dinner, 
 and we regretfully left Baden with our faces 
 turned Frankfortward. 
 
 I do not know what Frankfort thought 
 had arrived within her gates that late after- 
 noon. I only know that we created an 
 immense sensation. The people were going 
 in streams to the " Electrische Ausstellung," 
 and we, with bag and alpenstocks, walked 
 against the stream. We pushed on bravely 
 to the hotel and found but one room vacant, 
 for which an exorbitant price was demanded. 
 We refused it, with the independence be- 
 fitting perfectly wide-awake Americans, but 
 we little knew what was in store for us. 
 We knocked at two other hotels in the 
 vicinity, and found them besetzt, in conse- 
 quence of the aforesaid exposition. By 
 this time a slight rain was falling, and the 
 streets were growing deliciously muddy. 
 We took a cab, and ended by being glad to 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 201 
 
 get a room at ten francs and going to bed 
 thoroughly out of humor. 
 
 There are three things in Frankfort that 
 no one can afford to miss, — the Romer, 
 Goethe's house, and the Ariadneum. The 
 first is attractive historically. The building 
 itself is a beautiful Gothic structure, dating 
 from the fifteenth century. It contains the 
 Walibimmer, in which the German electors 
 assembled to deliberate on the choice of an 
 emperor, and the Kaisersaal, adorned with 
 portraits of the emperors, in which the 
 newly-chosen ruler dined with the electors 
 and showed himself from the balcony to 
 the people waiting on the Romersberg. 
 
 In Goethe's house we saw the room in 
 which the poet was born, his library, his 
 sleeping-room, the desk, placed at the win- 
 dow which commanded a view of the house 
 of his first love, Gretchen, and on which he 
 wrote his love-sonnets. The visitor can see, 
 likewise, autograph letters and drawings, a 
 lock of his hair, the cast of his hand, and 
 numerous other relics. The guide in charge 
 
202 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 of the house not only permitted us to take 
 breath (a rare indulgence on the part of 
 guides in general), but joined in our enthu- 
 siasm in the most cordial way, being evi- 
 dently very proud of Unser Dicliter. 
 
 Dannecker's Ariadne is one of the most 
 magnificent works that mortal hand has 
 ever produced to gladden mortal eye. It 
 almost weakened our allegiance to the 
 Venus de Milo. One must pass behind a 
 curtain, and there, in a soft, rosy light, sits 
 the beautiful nude figure of Ariadne on the 
 back of the panther. It revolves slowly, 
 showing first the majestic throat and bust, 
 the slender limbs, the deliciously-poised 
 head, — then the beautiful back, the tender 
 pink soles of the feet. What a divinely 
 beautiful thing is a woman's form ! This is 
 the thought that springs to your lips as you 
 gaze at the Ariadne. 
 
 A quaint part of the town is the Jttden- 
 gasse, or Jews' Street, which, as late as 
 1806, was closed every evening and all day 
 Sunday and holidays with lock and key, 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 203 
 
 and none of the inhabitants permitted to 
 enter the city. Originally, the Rothschilds 
 lived in this quarter. 
 
 It was Sunday afternoon when we 
 arrived in Wiesbaden. The shops and 
 churches were both open, and the worldly 
 and devout formed two distinct streams. I 
 proposed to Sanguinelle that we should go 
 to church. She said yes, but she thought 
 that she ought to have a pair of gloves, 
 and she was really not able to find hers. 
 Sanguinelle's only known use for gloves was 
 to leave them under the table of a cafe, or 
 in a cab as a tender little memento to the 
 driver, or, if they really persisted in leaving 
 town with her, she would tuck them away 
 snugly in the railway-carriage. So, to make 
 ourselves worthy of the devout throng, we 
 were forced to join the heathen one and 
 buy a pair of gloves, which Sanguinelle 
 promptly left on the Rhine boat the next day. 
 
 Wiesbaden, as the rival of Baden-Baden, 
 presents too much the aspect of a city, 
 though the suburban excursions — notably 
 
204 -A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 the Neroberg, with its dainty Greek Tem- 
 ple — are delightful. I suppose that the 
 water might be worse, though to drink a 
 glass of it and keep upon your lips the 
 placid smile that played upon them before 
 they touched the nauseating beverage re- 
 quires fortitude of a high order. 
 
 A bath in a German house must be 
 troublesome to prepare. A stove stands in 
 the corner of the room, and in this the ser- 
 vant builds a great fire to heat the water. 
 It heats, likewise, a great many other things. 
 The room is about 250 Fahrenheit, and 
 filled with the sound and odor of sizzling 
 paint. You hate to lock the door and shut 
 yourself up with that hot giant in the cor- 
 ner, and you keep your eye fixed on him to 
 see that he does not send his fiery tongues 
 in your direction while you take your bath. 
 After a little, to draw your breath becomes 
 difficult, and you feel that you must fly 
 or die. Instantly (minus one-half minute 
 sacrificed to the tyranny of conventionality), 
 you unlock the door and flee. 
 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 205 
 
 We heard our neighbor in the hotel 
 struggling with his German particles and 
 trying to put enough words together to tell 
 the patient Dienstmadchen that he wanted a 
 bath at a certain hour. He was trying to 
 be very grammatical, but he ended by being 
 very profane. 
 
 " Das Bad," he said, " no, der Bad oder 
 die Bad. Oh, it's damn Bad/' 
 
 The only interesting part of the Rhine is 
 from Bingen to Bonn, so that we had plenty 
 of time to observe our fellow-passengers. 
 A German and his wife were the centre 
 of amazed interest to every one on board. 
 They ate perpetual lunches, and yet seemed 
 to be afflicted with perpetual hunger — and 
 thirst. These lunches they had brought 
 with them in mammoth paper bags, and as 
 the contents of one were stowed away, its 
 successor made its appearance from under 
 the table. 
 
 In strong contrast to these were two 
 young German pedestrians. We decided 
 that they were students and poor, and that 
 
206 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 the suit of one of them was certainly made 
 by his mother. They ordered a bottle of 
 beer, and used the greatest ingenuity in 
 making it last, eating with it small roils 
 which they took from their pockets. 
 
 A German family, a mother with two 
 painfully plain daughters, insisted upon air- 
 ing their passable English in a conversation 
 with me, and I anxiously, but in vain, 
 sought an opportunity to try on them my 
 equally passable Deutsch. They were going 
 down the Rhine, like epicures, from town 
 to town, and from castle to castle, often on 
 foot. I inadvertently confessed that we 
 had sailed down the Rhine from Mainz to 
 Cologne two years ago, and were sailing 
 from Mainz to Cologne again to-day, to the 
 fury and discomfiture of Sanguinelle, who 
 never ceased to deplore the lack of time 
 which made this method imperative. 
 
 We thought that we knew Cologne, and 
 reckoned that our hotel in Dom-Platz was 
 very near. But the boat did not land us 
 near the Dom-Platz, and after winding- 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 207 
 
 through tortuous ways to reach the Dom, 
 which all the time towered so close to us, 
 apparently, we said, " Why is this thus ?" 
 Suddenly we remembered that we had been 
 beguiled into taking our tickets from the 
 Netherlands Company on our previous 
 visit, which, of course, landed at a differ- 
 ent pier. Our hotel was full, and the one 
 to which the polite waiter escorted us is 
 patronized by the English chiefly. San- 
 guinelle complained scornfully that the 
 waiter insisted on talking English, trans- 
 lating the menu, advising her what to order, 
 and trying his best, poor fellow, to make 
 the English strangers feel at home. Well, 
 we most emphatically do not want to feel 
 at home. We want it borne in upon us 
 every moment that we are on our 
 travels. 
 
 The English and American traveller, as a 
 rule, likes to fancy himself at home. He 
 seeks on the menu the dishes to which he 
 is accustomed, and he seeks on the streets 
 for familiar faces, and only when he finds 
 
208 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 one or the other is he happy. Particularly 
 is his joy great when he meets Jones, whom 
 he knew slightly at home. He takes him 
 literally to his arms ; he looks into his 
 eyes with tender delight ; he asks, " When 
 did you come over, old boy ?" and confides 
 to him that " It's a deuced dull place, don't 
 you know. Let's come around this way, — 
 there is a place where they mix American 
 drinks." 
 
 The mystery is, — Why cross the ocean 
 to search for familiar faces, when too often 
 the quest — like hope deferred — maketh the 
 heart sick ? 
 
 It is only the American who scorns to 
 practise economy in his travels, and who 
 insists upon being regarded with awe and 
 admiration because his per diem expenses 
 reach an absurdly high figure. German or 
 French travellers would be more likely to 
 boast of their economies, and every coin 
 passing through their fingers brings its 
 full equivalent. Unnecessary outlay means 
 ignorance and mismanagement. All of 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 209 
 
 which was suggested by the colloquy of a 
 German family near us, as to the smallest 
 amount of coffee that they could order, 
 with a reasonable hope of having a cup 
 for each one for breakfast ! 
 
 All our old affection for the Cathedral 
 returned at the first glimpse of its lacy 
 towers. Mine, indeed, had never wandered ; 
 but fickle Sanguinelle had had fleeting pas- 
 sions for others. Illuminated by the moon- 
 light, as we saw it from our window, it 
 would woo the most faithless soul back to 
 his allegiance. 
 
 At the door of St. Ursula, we met again 
 our American friends. The party was 
 swollen by several additions, among them 
 a priest. I am sure that this gentleman 
 was unconscious of the amazement with 
 which his friends regarded him. 
 
 " We are rejoiced to have met him. He 
 has travelled this way before, and has helped 
 us considerably," whispered one of them in 
 my ear. 
 
 " You may not believe it, but he is one of 
 
210 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 the brightest and best-read men that I ever 
 encountered. I was never more surprised 
 in my life !" 
 
 I say that occasionally, I believe, there 
 is a vara avis among them who can read ; 
 but my sarcasm is lost on the retreating 
 gentleman, who hurried away to catch the 
 priest's account of the poor little virgins 
 whose naked little bones decorate the ceil- 
 ing and walls of the Goldcnc Kammer, in 
 which we stood. 
 
 " He actually believes all these stories ! 
 It is wonderful, the credulity of these 
 people !" came again, with a compassionate 
 shake of the head. 
 
 We were likewise a source of surprise to 
 the reverend gentleman himself. 
 
 " Even gentlemen have difficulty in get- 
 ting along, especially in Germany." 
 
 We must have convinced him that we 
 were sufficiently well equipped to get 
 along in Germany or anywhere else, for 
 the shadow passed from his face and he 
 wished us a cordial good-by, expressing 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 2 1 1 
 
 a desire to meet us on our side of the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 There are fine shops in Cologne, and at 
 night the brightly-illuminated windows and 
 gay crowds make a brilliant sight. A street- 
 car ride around the new boulevards showed 
 us the handsome modern town, though I 
 cannot say that it was particularly inter- 
 esting. 
 
 In each city the one commercial com- 
 modity of interest to Sanguinelle was postal 
 cards. She made at once, on our arrival, 
 for the nearest promising shop, and greeted 
 the proprietor with a demand for postal 
 cards with views on them. Having made 
 her purchase, she went into temporary re- 
 tirement, and only emerged therefrom when 
 they had all left her hands. In Cologne 
 she had several bad spells of this sort, and 
 one attacked her at the station on seeing 
 some specimens that she had not yet 
 secured. Needless to say, she immediately 
 bought them, and while she was writing in 
 the waiting-room, that Brussels train meanly 
 
212 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 sneaked off around the corner. This was 
 unaccountable, — the German trains are 
 usually so accommodating, and Sanguinelle 
 was not really more than fifteen minutes 
 writing her cards. I had seen it steal off, 
 but reproved myself as sternly as she would 
 have done for thinking that it was our 
 train. I knew that I had a weakness for 
 thinking that every train was our train — 
 except the one that we were on ! It was 
 only when on rounding the last curve it 
 gave a malicious little toot, as if trying to 
 suppress a diabolical mirth at our discom- 
 fiture, that I took courage to go in to San- 
 guinelle, and say, — 
 
 " I think — I may be wrong, but I am 
 afraid — that the train did not wait for 
 us." 
 
 " Nonsense," she replied, putting her last 
 card in the box ; " let us go on board, though, 
 to quiet your anxiety." 
 
 " Not until ten o'clock to-night," said the 
 station-master. 
 
 Five hours to wait, and then to get our 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 213 
 
 first glimpse of Brussels at the uncanny 
 hour of four in the morning ! 
 
 We consulted each other in painfully 
 polished tones as to what was to be done. 
 These occasions developed in each of us a 
 genius for politeness, rivalling Chesterfield 
 himself. 
 
 We determined to employ the waiting 
 hours in exploring Cologne anew, but we 
 found it flat, stale, and unprofitable, even 
 the Cathedral taking on the color of our 
 chagrin and disappointment. 
 
 We were not by any means the only late 
 travellers to Brussels. Seven women, to 
 say nothing of the dog, were crowded in 
 that voiture pour dames. Each glared at 
 the other, and wondered why she had not 
 taken an earlier train. Then all the hostile 
 forces united in one great congregate scowl 
 focussed on the possessor of the dog. The 
 animal, not at all deterred by unsympathetic 
 repulses, sought a warm corner for his nose 
 in the lap of every one in the compartment, 
 while his mistress, equally indifferent to our 
 15 
 
214 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 displeasure, settled herself comfortably in 
 her shawls, and sweetly went to sleep. 
 Later, when we changed cars, we dis- 
 covered that she was English, and the 
 guard's questions elicited the fact that she 
 was bound for Calais, the people with whom 
 she was travelling being in the sleeper 
 ahead. 
 
 " Yes, very much ahead," said the guard. 
 " That section of the train goes on without 
 delay. This only goes to Brussels." 
 
 There was an additional sum due to make 
 her ticket good ; but, as she said that she 
 had not a pfennig, he shut the door, and we 
 started. She gave expression to the most 
 bitter reproaches for the people who had 
 neglected her, but failed to enlighten her 
 audience how she was related to them. 
 
 On our arrival in Brussels, two American 
 ladies, who had been our companions on 
 the journey, took compassion on her ; the 
 son of one of them, a manly young fellow, 
 coming gallantly to her assistance in her 
 struggle with her numerous boxes and 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 215 
 
 traps, and we saw them all going off 
 together, Bruno following contentedly in 
 the rear. 
 
 I could not feel for Brussels the enthusi- 
 asm that it inspires in others. It is a copy, 
 an echo, a silhouette of Paris. It has no 
 strong, unique, or personal characteristic. 
 Undoubtedly the old buildings are beautiful 
 and the new ones magnificent, but even the 
 Palais dc Justice becomes tiresome when 
 the guide insists upon opening every room 
 for your inspection, and waits expectantly 
 for an enthusiastic expression of admira- 
 tion. Of course, we admired it all collec- 
 tively and in detail, but our list of French 
 adjectives was not long enough to fit so 
 many rooms without tiresome repetition. 
 The lawyers, whom we saw in one of the 
 court-rooms, aroused us to the greatest 
 enthusiasm, they looked so handsome in 
 their toga-like gowns, with collars of sheer, 
 fine lawn. 
 
 Just as we entered, a perplexed gentle- 
 man was trying to make one of the guides, 
 
216 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 whom he had succeeded in cornering, un- 
 derstand, in good, clear American, that he 
 had lost his party, who were led by a cou- 
 rier in a white hat. The little guide, with a 
 scared, troubled look, had replied in equally 
 good and clear French that he did not 
 understand. If monsieur would only be 
 good enough to remember that he did not 
 speak English, etc. To this the American 
 replied, — 
 
 " A white cap, so — ," making circles 
 around his head, under the impression that 
 it was now extremely lucid. Sanguinelle, 
 appealed to, helped the conversation on both 
 sides, and the gentleman learned that his 
 party had left some time before. He did 
 not know the next place on the programme 
 for the day, and seemed really afraid to set 
 foot outside. He had better return to the 
 hotel in a cab, he thought, and wait until 
 some one of the party came back to take 
 him out. We suggested that the car at 
 the door would take him to the Picture 
 Gallery, where, doubtless, the party had 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 217 
 
 directed their steps, which led him to be- 
 lieve that we were residents. We told him 
 that only eight hours had passed since our 
 arrival in Brussels. We felt quite unhappy 
 at leaving him, — it was so like taking the 
 proverbial last straw from the sinking man. 
 
 Speaking of tramways, they are divided 
 into first- and second-class places. The 
 seats run transversely, and the row at the 
 end, whose occupants sit with their backs 
 to the horses, pay only half the regular 
 fare. It was amusing to see the demand 
 for these places. A lady with diamonds in 
 her ears as large as the sou that she paid 
 for her fare would crowd in between a 
 workman and a cook, while the whole body 
 of the car would be empty. 
 
 In the shops English is spoken almost 
 universally, and even the baby shopkeeper 
 knows one English word, — cheap. It is 
 hurled at you incessantly, as if they knew 
 that it would go to the right spot. One 
 little shopkeeper was treated to a genuine 
 surprise. She was showing her yards of 
 
2i8 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 lace, and thrusting them upon us with her 
 everlasting, — 
 
 " It is sheep, madame, so sheep !" 
 
 Sanguinelle said suddenly in her vehement 
 way, — 
 
 " I do not want it." 
 
 " Mais," in her amazement relapsing into 
 her mother tongue, " c'est tres, tres — 
 sheep." 
 
 " I do not want it because it is cheap. 
 Bring me something tres, tres cher." She 
 therefore indulged in some lace extrava- 
 gance for her mother, which I declared 
 that that lady should attribute to pique 
 rather than filial devotion. 
 
 They have ingenious little tricks for ad- 
 vertising their wares that make you dis- 
 trust them. A handkerchief will be 
 
 marked FIVE FRANCS, ninety-five centimes. 
 
 If you stop to look, you are urged to 
 enter. Taking the lace in your hands, 
 you may say, " What a beautiful hand- 
 kerchief for five francs !" and no one will 
 enlighten you ; but when you pay for the 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 219 
 
 little parcel your attention is called to the 
 ninety-five centimes in the corner. 
 
 Since travellers have found out that 
 " English Spoken" means " High Prices 
 Here," some shopkeepers try to conceal 
 their knowledge of English. We were 
 .endeavoring to buy a spoon, — for, alas ! I 
 had fallen a victim to the spoon mania, and, 
 once embarked on the perilous voyage, there 
 seemed no retreat. I had selected one not 
 desirable at all, simply acceptable. The 
 price was exorbitant. Up to this point, the 
 conversation had been in French. San- 
 guinelle said to me, — 
 
 " I think it is too much." 
 
 These few words effected a complete rev- 
 olution in the man behind the counter. He 
 became absolutely awful with anger. 
 
 " You tink it too much, hey ? How you 
 like dis vun for vun franc, hey ? You like 
 him not, hey?" 
 
 We said, " Bon soir, mon ami," and after 
 we got out some one besides Bob swore, I 
 am afraid. 
 
220 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 The interior of the Cathedral (Ste. Gu- 
 dule) is more beautiful than the exterior, 
 particularly the stained-glass windows of 
 the Chapel of the Sacrament, and the pulpit, 
 in marvellously-carved wood, the subject be- 
 ing the expulsion from Paradise. Among 
 the foliage are carved all kinds of animals, 
 conspicuous among them a monkey eating 
 an apple. The eye is distracted from the 
 beauties of the Cathedral by the multitude 
 of incongruous and incomprehensible things 
 that it encounters. At least, so they must 
 appear to any but a devoutly simple soul. 
 Against the walls of some of the side 
 chapels are pinned waxen hands, feet, 
 fingers, legs, babies, eyes, ears, left there, 
 no doubt, as grateful offerings for prayers 
 heard and infirmities cured. Conspicuous 
 in the centre of the Cathedral is a figure of 
 " Our Lady of Deliverance," clad in a mag- 
 nificently-embroidered and trained robe of 
 velvet and silk. 
 
 The Market-Place is a fine mediaeval 
 square, fronting on which are the Hotel de 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 221 
 
 Ville, a noble building, and the ancient 
 Guild Houses,— the Guild of Butchers in- 
 dicated by a swan ; the Hall of Carpenters 
 adorned with gilding ; the Hall of Archers 
 with a group representing Romulus and 
 Remus with the She-wolf, etc. It was in 
 this square that Egmont and Horn were 
 executed, passing their last night in the 
 Halle au Pain, opposite the Hotel de Ville, 
 with which it was connected by a subterra- 
 nean passage. 
 
 The Manikin back of the Hotel de Ville 
 was not dressed up in any of his gala cos- 
 tumes. He has eight, be it known, and a 
 valet who is appointed by the government 
 and receives a salary. These are insignifi- 
 cant honors in view of the fact that he was 
 invested by Louis XV. with the cross of 
 St. Louis. 
 
 The Weird, that is, the Wiertz Museum, 
 is a collection of the works of that eccen- 
 tric master, purchased by the government 
 after his death (he would sell none of his 
 pictures, except the few portraits that he was 
 
222 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 induced to do, during his lifetime), together 
 with the studio of the artist, in which they 
 are now exhibited. Many of the pictures 
 have been so arranged as artificially to 
 heighten the weird effect. You look 
 through a small aperture in the wall and 
 find yourself the witness of a terrible 
 scene, — a woman, famished with hunger," 
 is cutting up the body of her child, a small 
 foot and leg are already simmering in a pot 
 over a few blazing logs. Through another 
 eye-hole, a person buried alive has just 
 burst his coffin lid, and, raising himself on 
 one elbow, shows the horror of his situation 
 by his fallen jaws and protruding eyes. At 
 another, you are startled to find yourself 
 assisting at the toilet of a young girl, and 
 step back, thinking that you have unwit- 
 tingly intruded in a private apartment. In 
 the picture called " The Things of the 
 Present before the Man of the Future," a 
 giant holds in his mammoth palm a cannon, 
 flags, ribbons, stars, orders. These baubles 
 he is examining with benevolent curiosity, 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 223 
 
 while his children look on smilingly at the 
 strange toys. In the Expulsion from Para- 
 dise, the wings of the picture are, respect- 
 ively, Eve, in whose figure and face one can 
 see the first dawn of knowledge, and Satan, 
 a magnificent figure, of more than earthly 
 beauty, who might just as well be the Arch- 
 angel Michael, but for the evil, death-deal- 
 ing glance that darts from his terrible eyes. 
 The largest, and esteemed the greatest, of 
 his pictures, the " Contest for the Body of 
 Patroclus," is painted in oils ; but on the 
 wall beside it is a detail, painted in the 
 distemper which he invented, and which, 
 though placed there to prove its superiority, 
 fails to do so. It has a dull, rough surface, 
 to which is due its greatest advantage — it 
 does not reflect the light. 
 
 An inhospitable rain poured upon us on 
 our arrival in Antwerp ; so, taking a cab, 
 we drove at once to the Museum, hoping 
 that, after a few hours spent there, the storm 
 would abate. Antwerp worships two heroes, 
 Rubens and Quentin Matsys, and their mas- 
 
224 <A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 terpieces are inshrined here. Rubens's chef- 
 d'oeuvre, Christ between the two Thieves 
 (Le Coup de Lance), is a marvellous picture. 
 No one can realize the truth of that oft- 
 repeated saying, that it is impossible to 
 know Rubens unless one has seen him 
 here, until he stands before this picture. 
 We looked at the Pieta of Quentin Matsys 
 a long time as we recalled the story of the 
 blacksmith who, to win his love, a painter's 
 daughter, took up the brush and made him- 
 self one of the great of the earth. 
 
 Later, near the principal portal of the 
 Cathedral, we saw the canopy of iron, 
 erected to protect an old well, and exe- 
 cuted by Matsys, the blacksmith, whom 
 connubial love made a painter, as the in- 
 scription on his tombstone adjoining the 
 entrance to the tower of the Cathedral tells 
 us. 
 
 The Cathedral, with its beautiful tower 
 of " Mechlin Lace," contains the great 
 Descent from the Cross. The interesting, 
 though not authentic, story is that it was 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 225 
 
 painted for a guild of arquebusiers, who 
 contracted for a picture of St. Christopher, 
 the Christ-bearer. Rubens treated the sub- 
 ject metaphorically : on one wing, Mary 
 bearing Christ before his birth; on the other, 
 the Presentation in the Temple ; and then the 
 central picture, the Bearing of the Dead 
 Body from the Cross. The guild, however, 
 refused to accept the picture, on the ground 
 that there was no St. Christopher, and, dis- 
 gusted with their stupidity, Rubens painted 
 on the back of the wings a figure of the 
 actual St. Christopher, an owl, and a 
 hermit. Most of the figures are portraits, 
 and, of course, his favorite models ; his 
 wives are prominent characters. The guide, 
 whose kindly offices we declined, tried to 
 arouse our curiosity by a voluble account, 
 begun in stentorian tones, but ending in the 
 merest of whispers, of which we caught 
 only something about the " fat Mrs. Rubens 
 and the tin Mrs. R." 
 
 In the Market-Place, in front of the 
 Hotel de Ville, is a bronze fountain sur- 
 
226 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 mounted by a statue of Salvio Brabo, a 
 hero, who cut off the hand of the giant 
 Antigonus. According to the legend, this 
 giant used to demand a heavy toll from 
 vessels entering the harbor, cutting off and 
 throwing into the river the hand of every 
 one who refused to pay. Hence the name 
 of the city, Antwerp, hand-werpen (werfen, 
 to throw). 
 
X. 
 
 THE chief recollections that we have 
 kept of Holland are of windmills, 
 some of them with gigantic arms 
 sixty feet in length, flat pastures, water 
 everywhere, and narrow canals enclosing 
 fields and gardens, as fences and hedges do 
 with us. We remarked, also, the clean, 
 well-scrubbed appearance of everything, 
 but we wished that the manners of the 
 people had been as polished as — their 
 windows, for example. They were abso- 
 lutely the rudest people that we encoun- 
 tered. You would suppose that they had 
 never set eyes on any but a Dutch face 
 before. If you were bold enough to stop 
 a moment to look at anything in the street 
 that interested you, a knot of curious 
 people gathered at your back. Yet we 
 
 227 
 
228 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 were annoyed with guides, who addressed 
 us always in English, commencing with a 
 festive and familiar " Say !" In Rotterdam, 
 Sanguinelle tried to take a picture of some 
 tall, narrow old houses, very much out of 
 the perpendicular, a circumstance not un- 
 usual, owing to the soft, yielding nature of 
 the soil. At the first stage of the opera- 
 tion all the people in the vicinity stood 
 still, and then began to make slowly to- 
 wards us. I induced Sanguinelle to desist, 
 and we walked away between a double 
 line of heavy-eyed, open-mouthed Rotter- 
 damers. But we did succeed in getting one 
 or two views of some of the great canals 
 that intersect the city, filled with large, 
 heavy vessels, mostly from the East Indies. 
 The communication between the different 
 parts of the city is made by drawbridges, 
 or the more curious swing-bridges. 
 
 In the Groote Markt is a bronze statue, 
 erected to the illustrious Erasmus, and the 
 house in which he was born, in a small 
 thoroughfare leading from the Hoogstraat, 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 229 
 
 is indicated by a small statue and the in- 
 scription, " This is a small house, great 
 because in it was born Erasmus." 
 
 Sanguinelle said, — 
 
 " We must see the Bompjes." 
 
 " Oh, yes, by all means," I replied, throw- 
 ing into my voice and countenance an ex- 
 pression of eager longing, artfully intended 
 to conceal the fact that I was " struck all of 
 a heap" by the Bompjes. I prayed that 
 kind chance would open my eyes to the 
 true inwardness of these mysterious things 
 before Sanguinelle discovered my ignorance. 
 
 Evidently she held them very dear, for, 
 guide-book in hand, she searched for them 
 industriously, until finally, turning a corner, 
 she exclaimed, exultingly, — 
 
 " Yes, I was right. Here it is !" 
 
 Now, I looked up and down that street 
 to seize upon any object that might fit in 
 with a poor, weary brain's preconceived 
 idea of a Bompjes, but I saw only a quay 
 stretching along the bank of a river in 
 which were anchored a number of heavy 
 16 
 
230 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 vessels, and along which was planted a row 
 of trees. I did not dare ask, after my 
 assumption of knowing all about it, and the 
 only phrase at all explanatory that she let 
 drop was, — 
 
 " The trees give it its name." 
 
 On the road to the Hague we passed 
 Schiedam, famous for its schnapps, and 
 Delft, likewise famous for its pottery. A 
 historical interest surrounds the Prisenhof 
 in this city, as the scene of the assassination 
 of William of Orange (the Silent). The 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 231 
 
 spot where the crime was committed is in- 
 dicated by an inscription, and the mark 
 left by the fatal bullet still pointed out. 
 
 On our arrival at the Hague, we took 
 the car at the station for the Vieux Doelen, 
 being attracted by its name and the reputa- 
 tion that Baedeker gives it of being an old- 
 established house. It looked high-priced 
 and American (afterwards we learned that 
 it was one of the coupon hotels). The por- 
 ter evidently regarded our use of the car 
 as a sign of poverty instead of intelligence, 
 and, consulting his list of rooms, he re- 
 gretted that we had not written to engage 
 rooms beforehand, as the season at the 
 Hague was at its height. We begged him 
 not to make himself seriously uneasy about 
 that, as we could doubtless succeed in get- 
 ting accommodations elsewhere. There- 
 upon he had one room to which he showed 
 us, and for which we were to pay twelve 
 francs. 
 
 " Table d'hote will be served in a half- 
 hour," he announced. 
 
232 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 " We have already dined." 
 
 " You must dine very early," he remarked. 
 We said, — 
 
 " It would be worth while stopping here, 
 my friend, to get some valuable hints from 
 you as to the correct way of travelling and 
 the proper hour for dining, but we are not 
 yet sufficiently chastened to accept these 
 points in the proper spirit, and so we will 
 go on to Scheveningen." 
 
 This little fishing-village is only about 
 two miles from the Hague, and may be 
 reached by the street-cars, which drive 
 through a beautiful road shaded by mag- 
 nificent trees. On the right, a magnificent 
 park with numerous fine old oaks ; on the 
 left, handsome chateaus, one of them the 
 property of the Grand Duchess of Weimar. 
 No view of the sea is obtained until, pass- 
 ing through the village, the top of the 
 lofty dunes is reached. We secured a de- 
 lightful room at the Hotel Garni, a large 
 place with about two hundred rooms, the 
 property of a company, for twenty thousand 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 233 
 
 visitors come to Scheveningen during the 
 season. We could not congratulate our- 
 selves enough on finding ourselves in this 
 delightful spot, taking a walk on the smooth, 
 firm sands, and later, from our window, 
 seeing the moon making a long, silvery, 
 shivering line of light on the water. 
 
 It is a beautiful place. The great fishing- 
 boats (pinken), some of them large enough 
 to cross to the shores of Scotland, were 
 anchored on the sands. The next day was 
 Sunday, and the little Dutch fisher-boys 
 were disporting themselves after the manner 
 
234 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 of small boys of every land. We took the 
 picture of one of them leaning against his 
 father's boat, and with a saucy grin on his 
 face that took our hearts captive. The 
 
 
 :; %;i : 
 
 /.IT m 
 
 quaint costume of the villagers and the 
 click of their wooden shoes were a constant 
 source of delight. 
 
 The beach was covered with a great num- 
 ber of strange-looking chairs, which, how- 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 235 
 
 ever, proved to be very comfortable. They 
 protect one both from the sun and the strong 
 breeze, and, though light, are firmly made 
 and not easily overturned. Five cents en- 
 
 titles you to the use of one for an entire 
 morning or the afternoon. Sanguinelle 
 leaned her elbow on the little shelf provided 
 for it and lost herself in a delicious day- 
 dream. She would take a model of the 
 delightful chair home, patent the idea, and 
 introduce it into our own watering-places. 
 A great company would be formed and she 
 would grow wealthy. Here she stuck out 
 the foot with the patch so conspicuously 
 that I was compelled to say, — 
 
 " Sanguinelle, what are you thinking of?" 
 " Oh," she said, with a start, " I was 
 thinking that I was rich." 
 
 "Well," I remarked, " a glance at your 
 
236 
 
 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 foot will, no doubt, make you at least open 
 to conviction on the subject." 
 
 The bathing at Scheveningen is done in a 
 most decorous way. The bathing-machines 
 are similar to those that we saw in use in 
 Wales and England. The little sheds are 
 drawn to the water's edge by horses, and 
 the bather steps at once from his house 
 to the concealment of the waves. But in 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 237 
 
 addition to this, at Scheveningen there is a 
 place reserved for women, and no one, not 
 even a woman, is allowed to linger there for 
 an instant. Not observing the sign to that 
 
 fj| # j ^ 1* .imMMmm* 
 
 effect, we stood for a few seconds, but were 
 at once told by an officer to move on. 
 
 We returned to the Hague about noon, 
 and went at once to the Gallery and sought 
 out Rembrandt's School of Anatomy and 
 Paul Potter's Bull. Engravings and photo- 
 graphs have made the first familiar to every 
 one, but they do not prepare you for the 
 effect of the great original. You can 
 scarcely help listening for the words of the 
 lecturer which must accompany the explan- 
 atory gesture of the left hand, and you look 
 with the eagerness of a student at the ex- 
 posed muscles and sinews of the arm of the 
 corpse on the dissecting-table. 
 
238 A Too Sliort Vacation. 
 
 Paul Potter's Bull is a magnificent animal, 
 and very naturally casts into the shade his 
 companions in the picture, — a cow, a sheep, 
 a lamb, a ram, and the shepherd himself. 
 There are many other pictures of the Dutch 
 school here, particularly Jan Steen's and 
 Gerard Dow's. 
 
 The city itself is the handsomest in Hol- 
 land. The streets are broad, the houses 
 imposing, and the squares spacious and 
 well kept. The Binnenhof is an irregular 
 pile of buildings of mediaeval origin, around 
 which cluster most of the historical mem- 
 ories of the Hague. 
 
 Some of the signs are peculiar. For in- 
 stance, a Turk's head means a drug-store. 
 Almost all the notices are amusing, from the 
 resemblance to the English. Thus, " Det 
 huis is to huur" means "this house is 
 to let." 
 
 In Amsterdam our hotel fronted on the 
 Dam, an open square, the focus of the 
 business-life of the city. Opposite was the 
 Royal Palace, and on the other side the 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 239 
 
 handsome Exchange. During a week in 
 August and September the Exchange is 
 given over as a play-ground for the boys of 
 the city. The story is that while some boys 
 were playing here in 1600, they discovered 
 a conspiracy of the Spaniards against Am- 
 sterdam, and ever since this privilege has 
 been granted to the children of the citizens 
 in commemoration of the service. 
 
 All the houses are built on a founda- 
 tion of piles. The upper stratum of the 
 natural soil is loose sand, and a firm founda- 
 tion must be secured by driving piles into 
 the firmer soil beneath. It is said that 
 several times the city has been in danger 
 from the ravages of the wood-worm. 
 
 The Schreyerstoren (criers' tower) dates 
 from 1432, and received its name from the 
 tears shed here by persons parting from 
 their relatives and friends. We shed a few 
 ourselves as we thought of these poor pil- 
 grims starting on a sad and perilous jour- 
 ney over the yet unknown and mysterious 
 ocean, and to a land holding out death in a 
 
240 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 hundred ways, — disease, starvation, or the 
 tomahawk of the savage, — over that ocean 
 which we now cross so gayly to that land 
 that we now call home. 
 
 Ryks Museum, the great store-house of 
 pictures and art treasure, is closed on Mon- 
 day. This was Monday, and Sanguinelle's 
 face grew as long as a German word. To 
 comfort her, I suggested that maybe a florin 
 or two slipped into somebody's hand would 
 let us in, just for a glance. We boarded a 
 car, and the conductor, finding out our des- 
 tination, told us generously that it was closed. 
 We thanked him with a superior smile, and 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 241 
 
 insisted on going. He retreated to the 
 back platform, and regarded us with a look 
 that said plainly, — 
 
 " Women are queer ones. They don't 
 know never where they want to go, and 
 you can't help them, you know. You must 
 just let them go until they drop off them- 
 selves." 
 
 We dropped off at the Ryks Museum and 
 found not a hand into which to drop our 
 florin, and we had to content ourselves with 
 admiring the tasteful wrought-iron railing 
 that incloses it. I think myself that it 
 was a kind and discerning Providence that 
 closed the door to us, for, glancing over 
 the contents as described in the cata- 
 logue, I am convinced that we should still 
 be there, instead of making joyful the 
 bosoms of our respective families, as we 
 are at present. 
 
 Amsterdam presents to the traveller a 
 most unique and picturesque appearance. 
 The wide and deep canals that intersect the 
 city divide it into ninety islands, connected 
 
242 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 by three hundred bridges. To prevent 
 malaria, the water is constantly renewed by 
 an arm of the North Sea Canal, while the 
 
 mud is removed by dredges. Most of the 
 canals are planted with avenues of elms, 
 and bordered with handsome rows of houses 
 of Dutch brick. The only modern-looking 
 thing that we saw — and that took away our 
 breath — was on one of the little ferry-boats 
 crossing a canal, painted in large letters, — 
 
 " Hecker's Buckwheat!" 
 
 We visited a diamond-cutting establish- 
 ment, the city still being famous for this 
 art, the knowledge of which for centuries 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 243 
 
 was confined to the Jews here and in Ant- 
 werp. We did not succeed in concealing 
 one of the precious things, nor did they 
 succeed in forcing us to buy. Later, at 
 Antwerp, we made a small investment which 
 forced the seller (he complained) to do with- 
 out meat for a week, and which won us the 
 compliment from a reputable dealer here of 
 being the first ladies, to his knowledge, who 
 had procured a bona fide bargain. 
 
 We made an excursion from Amster- 
 dam to Zaandam, to see the hut of Peter 
 the Great. The town itself is said to be 
 
 inhabited chiefly by millionaires, although 
 the small houses surrounded by gardens 
 are generally only a story or two high. 
 
244 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 The landscape is enlivened by four hundred 
 windmills ! Another remarkable thing is 
 that this small town covers an area equal in 
 extent to the State of Pennsylvania ! At 
 least, I am convinced that we walked that 
 much in looking for Peter's hut. We tried 
 on the natives, without avail, every sort of 
 language and every left-over piece of lan- 
 guage that our tongues had ever lisped. 
 At least, I did, for Sanguinelle had given 
 up the quest in despair, and said that " she 
 wasn't going to play." I left out the " hut," 
 and "where," and such trifling words, and 
 rung the changes on " Peter," " Peter der 
 Groote," holding my hand a yard above my 
 head. A dull stare was my only reward, 
 and the figure escaped. " Peter der Grosse," 
 I say, standing on tip-toe and opening my 
 eyes wide, hoping to give the impression 
 of bigness. No. 2, a small boy, yells and 
 flees. Sanguinelle sarcastically inquires if 
 I am under the impression that it was 
 Peter's physical proportions that won him 
 the title of Great. Without heeding her, I 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 245 
 
 tried " Pierre le Grand" on the next victim. 
 He replied, — 
 
 " Met Vragen komt mon to Rome." 
 Now, this was enough to discourage one, 
 particularly when Sanguinelle laughed anew 
 at every fresh failure. However, my am- 
 bition was not so easily subdued, and I 
 attacked the next comer, a tall and dig- 
 nified gentleman, with " Peter der Groote." 
 After a moment's pause, he broke out 
 with, — 
 
 " Ah, vous cherchez la petite maison de 
 Pierre le Grand ? Oui, oui, je vous la mon- 
 trerai," but first would we not like to inspect 
 his school ? 
 
 Now here was a triumph, to be taken for 
 a Frenchwoman ! It is true that I had not 
 addressed him in that language, and like- 
 wise that he spoke it falteringly himself; 
 but still I felt gratified, especially when, 
 after giving us an opportunity to admire 
 his school, of which he was very proud, he 
 conducted us gallantly to the hut of Peter 
 the Great. It is a rude structure, consisting 
 17 
 
246 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 of two rooms and a bed-closet, protected 
 now by a roof supported by pillars of brick. 
 Peter the Great occupied this hut while 
 working as a ship-carpenter in the yard of 
 a master-builder, with the view of learning 
 the art and teaching it to his people. He 
 assumed the dress of a workman and the 
 name of Peter Michaelof, but he did not 
 escape recognition, and was so pestered by 
 the curiosity of his idle neighbors that in 
 a few weeks he left his hut, returned to 
 Amsterdam, and pursued his works in the 
 ship-yards there. It was some satisfaction 
 to know that the illustrious Peter made the 
 same complaint against the Dutch that we 
 have. In the interior a marble slab bear- 
 ing the inscription, " Petro Magno — Alex- 
 ander," is placed over the chimney-piece, 
 commemorative of the visit of the Emperor 
 Alexander in 18 14. The means now taken 
 to preserve the hut are by the orders of the 
 Emperor of Russia. 
 
 The following day we returned to Ant- 
 werp, and hunted up our various parcels, 
 
A Too Short Vacation. 247 
 
 preparatory to going on board for the return 
 voyage. This took but little time, for we 
 
 found that everything sent to our name 
 had arrived. The company had but one 
 name, — Sanguinelle's, — barbarous tongues 
 not being able to master the delicate intrica- 
 cies of mine. We thus had several hours to 
 spare, with nothing in particular to fill them. 
 "And they might just as well have been 
 spent in Ryks Museum," said Sanguinelle, 
 bitterly, looking at me resentfully. I felt 
 guilty, and offered no defence, for I had 
 
248 A Too Short Vacation. 
 
 insisted on coming back in time to look 
 after the parcel from London, the box from 
 Paris, and the trunks from Liverpool. 
 
 " And if they have not arrived, you pro- 
 pose to go to these various points to secure 
 them. I see now how useful these few 
 hours may be. Let us go, by all means." 
 
 We almost had strained relations again, 
 Sanguinelle takes one up so short like. 
 But we quickly forgot our momentary 
 displeasure in the consideration of our 
 common regret that at last it was all over 
 and we must return. We were sorry. 
 Sorry that our tramp was ended, and that 
 we must break into a " measured pace and 
 slow." Sorry to turn our backs on the 
 unaccustomed and take up again the usual. 
 Sorry to say good-by to Freedom and 
 Variety and Pleasure, and all that family 
 pronounced fascinating but dangerous, and 
 turn to their sisters, Restraint and Mo- 
 notony and Duty, pronounced slow but 
 salutary. It was not the proper spirit, per- 
 haps, but then this is a truthful chronicle. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Two questions, all-important to the trav- 
 eller's comfort, we feel that we have success- 
 fully solved, — How shall one dress ? What 
 is the minimum to which luggage may be 
 reduced consistent with comfort ? 
 
 Imprimis, the costume. — A union suit of 
 wool ; a divided skirt, gathered into an 
 elastic band below the knee ; stockings ; 
 broad-soled, spring-heeled shoes; a soft 
 felt or cloth walking-hat, with no feathers 
 or flowers to become melancholy or be- 
 draggled-looking ; a dress of genuine Scotch 
 cheviot, the skirt supported by a light 
 cambric waist ; a shirt of silk and one of 
 wool ; a three-quarters length coat of the 
 style known as a reefer. No corsets, no 
 petticoats. In the dark linen bag, our only 
 
 249 
 
250 Appendix. 
 
 luggage after we left the steamer, were for 
 each a gauze shirt and a cambric chemi- 
 sette, for hot weather (which we did not 
 encounter) ; four pairs of stockings (half of 
 them silk and half of them wool) ; an extra 
 union suit, two night-gowns, some hand- 
 kerchiefs, toilet appliances, film for our 
 camera, and, for emergencies, a bottle of 
 cognac. In all the larger hotels there are 
 immense drying-rooms, so that it is possible 
 to give out washing at night and get it the 
 next noon. I am sure that we were never 
 uncomfortable. No one who has not suf- 
 fered from it can imagine the nuisance and 
 expense of a trunk abroad. In Switzerland, 
 Italy, and Southern Germany, every pound 
 of it has to be paid for, which often means 
 a half added to the cost of the ticket. In 
 Great Britain no check is given, and often 
 one has to wait for the weighing and fee 
 the weigher, even if there is nothing else 
 to pay. We took mackintoshes and re- 
 gretted it. A hood, attached to a short 
 cape, such as our dowager and the London 
 
Appendix. 2 5 1 
 
 policemen wore, is an equal protection and 
 infinitely more portable. 
 
 We were plentifully supplied with pock- 
 ets, — one for copper and nickel coins, 
 another for the small silver, and a third 
 deep one for everything else. It is an 
 immense simplification of the fee nuisance 
 to be able to lay one's hand on the proper 
 coin. Fees, let me say in passing, we got 
 down to a fine point. To guides (we had 
 but one, by the way), drivers, and the like, 
 we gave one-tenth of the regular charge 
 additional. To the chambermaid, about 
 ten cents, and to the waiter, if he had been 
 very attentive, — he generally was, — about 
 twenty cents, for a stay of a few days. The 
 porter we did not often fee, for, since we 
 had no luggage, there was nothing that he 
 could do for us. He often tried, though, 
 and many were the discarded gloves or 
 rubbers that we were obliged to refuse. 
 Fifty centimes, a sixpence, or a fifty -pfennig 
 piece go a great way abroad, and it is 
 astonishing to hear Americans, who fee at 
 
252 Appendix. 
 
 home, and much more liberally than they 
 need to in Europe, complain of the system. 
 
 The rule at restaurants is a sou for each 
 franc, a penny for the shilling, and five 
 pfennigs for the mark. But no one gives 
 less than two sous, a penny, or a ten-pfen- 
 nig piece, nor is the waiter apt to receive 
 more than fifty centimes or pfennigs, or a 
 sixpence. The foreign equivalent for two 
 cents is the usual fee for small services, such 
 as the handing of one's luggage to the 
 cab. The drain on one's purse is constant, 
 but it is also regular and just. I can re- 
 member giving no fee, however small, that 
 was not deserved. 
 
 Our three months' trip, including every 
 expense from the time that we left Phila- 
 delphia until we returned to it, cost three 
 hundred and fifty dollars. It is possible 
 to go for much less; indeed, we have done 
 it ourselves. But I doubt if any one else 
 could do the same thing in the same way 
 for less. We were travelling constantly, 
 visiting over fifty different places, and went 
 
Appendix. 253 
 
 always to a hotel, never to a pension. The 
 latter is cheaper, of course ; but no number 
 of dollars saved would make up to us for 
 the wear and tear of being obliged to say 
 " good-morning," at least, and generally 
 going through with the conventional and 
 meaningless chatter of the table when we 
 did not feel in the mood for it. 
 
 Our morning coffee or chocolate and rolls 
 with butter, honey, or jam, we ate in our 
 own room. Lunch and dinner we took 
 wherever we chose. Lunch was usually 
 steak or omelettes, or some appetizing fancy 
 dish, a fine vegetable and potatoes, and des- 
 sert or fruit. But when we were walking 
 we found it impossible to take more 
 than a sandwich and a glass of wine or 
 beer. We avoided the dismal table d'hote 
 as much as we could, both because of the 
 oppressive silence that it necessitated, 
 watched as one is by all the other partici- 
 pants in that solemn function, and because 
 we liked to choose what we would eat. But 
 we always had a regular dinner, — soup, fish, 
 
254 Appendix. 
 
 entree, joint or game, vegetables, and des- 
 serts. Both for lunch and dinner we had 
 a bottle of good wine, sometimes Johan- 
 nisberger, sometimes Champagne, though 
 oftener a good Bordeaux or Rhine wine. 
 Except in Paris we never thought of drink- 
 ing vin ordinaire. We are not wine-drink- 
 ers at home, but we had no desire to be 
 made sick by our devotion to temperance 
 principles, and the water is said to be 
 bad. Certainly its taste is not reassuring, 
 and the addition of a little sour wine does 
 not make it any better. 
 
 In Paris we patronized the dinners a prix 
 fixe, and found the better class of them to 
 be as cheap as table d'hote, or cheaper, 
 and infinitely better, because more private 
 (we always had to ourselves a particular 
 table overlooking the gardens of the Palais 
 Royal), because one was permitted to choose 
 what one wished, and because, too, there 
 was less restriction in regard to the hour. 
 The Duval restaurants (a la carte) are very 
 popular on account of their supposed 
 
Appendix. 255 
 
 cheapness, their pretty waitresses, with neat 
 white caps and aprons over a black dress, 
 and because it is a recognized fact that 
 unattended ladies may safely venture in. 
 They are not really cheap, however, for they 
 serve always a small portion, barely suffi- 
 cient for one. 
 
 It is generally possible to get a good 
 room, in any of the good hotels not fre- 
 quented by coupon-holders and the Ameri- 
 can public generally, for about two and a 
 half francs a night each person. But it is 
 necessary to ask for it, otherwise you will 
 be given the six-franc apartment that even 
 the most unpretentious inn has in store for 
 the unwary. When we intended stopping 
 in a place more than a day or two, we wrote 
 on for terms to two or more hotels which, 
 according to Baedeker, seemed to suit our 
 purse and tastes, and even when we stayed 
 but the night we regretted it on the few 
 occasions that we did not ask the price 
 beforehand. On the mountains, of course, 
 it was not possible to get a room with a 
 
256 Appendix. 
 
 view for much less than five or six francs 
 apiece, but then it was always worth it. 
 
 Our passage, first cabin, of course, going 
 on the " City of Berlin" and returning by 
 the Red Star Line, was one hundred and 
 four dollars and fifty cents. The fees 
 amounted to about five dollars more. Our 
 travelling expenses were over eighty dollars, 
 and would have been much greater had we 
 not taken advantage of the cheap circular- 
 tickets whenever they suited our plans, 
 which was not very often, after all, and we 
 were not travelling to save money exactly. 
 It would have cost us much more, too, if 
 we had ridden and taken guides, but we 
 did neither. Our living expenses were 
 about two dollars a day, and the rest went 
 for guide-books, theatre, 'bus fares, cabs, 
 fess, and postage. 
 
 Our itinerary is about as follows, though 
 we did not stay so long in either London 
 or Paris, for we had been there before, nor 
 did we stop a second time at some of the 
 German cities mentioned : 
 
Appendix. 257 
 
 Queenstown, up the river Lee to Black- 
 rock, thence by rail to Cork, one day. 
 Cork, one day. Ride from Bandon, via 
 Bantry, to Glengariff, one day, and at least 
 a day should be spent there. The drive to 
 Killarney takes another day, and at least 
 two days should be given to the lakes. 
 There is a night express to Dublin, and 
 sleepers are moderate in price in Great 
 Britain. Dublin and its excursions, two 
 days. Night boat to Holyhead. Morning 
 train to Chester through Northern Wales, a 
 region so beautiful that only those who are 
 pressed for time can resist the temptation to 
 stop, at least, at Conway. Chester the rest 
 of the day. Stratford, one day. The walk 
 from Stratford, visiting Charlcote on the 
 way, about twelve miles, to Warwick, one 
 day. Warwick, and the five-mile walk to 
 Kenilworth, one day. Kenilworth, and to 
 Oxford, one day. Oxford, at least two 
 days. London, two weeks. To Canter- 
 bury, including the stay there, one day. To 
 Paris, including a few hours at Amiens, one 
 
258 Appendix. 
 
 day. Paris, not less than three weeks. The 
 evening train from Paris reaches Geneva 
 the next morning, and that day is enough 
 for that city. The Sallanches route to 
 Chamouni which we took is not worth the 
 while, if one has the time to go to Martigny 
 and walk over the Col de Balme, two days. 
 It is the excursions that make Chamouni 
 interesting. We stayed there three days, 
 returning to it from each trip ; but another 
 time we would visit the Glacier des Bossons 
 in the morning, ascend Montanvert in the 
 afternoon, and remain there for the night. 
 Next day, cross the Mer de Glace, descend 
 the Mauvais Pas to the Chapeau, ascend 
 the Flegere, and there spend the night. The 
 next day, descend and walk to the Tete 
 Noire to spend the night. Return to Cha- 
 telard, and follow the Salvan road to Ver- 
 nayaz, one day. Steamer, stopping suffi- 
 ciently long at Chillon and Vevay, to Lau- 
 sanne, one day. To Freiburg, including a 
 short stay, and to Bern, one day. Bern, 
 one day. Interlaken and its excursions, 
 
Appendix. 259 
 
 including Giessbach, three days. Lauter- 
 brunnen and Miirren, one day. Walk to 
 the Wengern Alp, one day. Walk to 
 Grindelwald, visit to its glaciers, and a part 
 of the walk to Meyringen, one day. Walk 
 to the Rosenlaui Glacier, Reichenbach Falls, 
 to Meyringen, one day. Walk to the Grim- 
 sel, one day. Walk to the Rhone Glacier, 
 over the Furka, Andermatt, to Goschenen, 
 one day. Train to Fliielen, walk on the 
 Axenstrasse to Tellsplatte, and Rutli, boat 
 to Lucerne, one day. Lucerne, one day ; 
 ascend the Rigi that evening. Zug and 
 Zurich, one day. Falls of the Rhine, and 
 to Strassburg, one day. Strassburg, one 
 day. Baden and Heidelberg, a day each. 
 Frankfort, two days. Wiesbaden, a day. 
 One can go down the Rhine in a single 
 day, and have time to see Cologne, after 
 a fashion, by taking the train to Bingen, 
 the boat to Bonn, and the train to Cologne. 
 It is a waste of time to go by boat more 
 than from Bingen to Bonn, but, of course, 
 a walking trip between these points is the 
 
260 Appendix. 
 
 only thing that will leave one with any more 
 than a hazy remembrance of vineyards, 
 castles, and hills. Brussels, three days. 
 Antwerp, one day, and Rotterdam, the 
 Hague, Scheveningen, and Amsterdam, the 
 same. 
 
 If one has the strength of mind to omit 
 Bern, he can go from Martigny to Visp 
 and Zermatt, thence over the Gemmi to In- 
 terlaken, ascending the Niesen en route. 
 
 For two hundred dollars one can spend 
 a profitable two months abroad, using the 
 same steamers : 
 
 Round-trip ticket $104 50 
 
 Fees and chairs 6 00 
 
 Hotel bills (35 days on land) . . 70 00 
 Second-class travel 20 00 
 
 Total $200 50 
 
 Liverpool to Chester, Stratford, Kenil- 
 worth, and Warwick ; Woodstock (Blen- 
 heim), one day each. Oxford, two days. 
 London, ten days. To Paris, stopping at 
 Rouen, one day. Paris, thirteen days. 
 
Appendix. 261 
 
 Brussels, two days. Antwerp, one day. 
 Third-class tickets would save one only 
 about five dollars. A four-days' trip 
 through Holland (Rotterdam, the Hague, 
 Scheveningen, Amsterdam, and return to 
 Antwerp) costs about five dollars for the 
 railway fare. One may land at Queens- 
 town, go up the river Lee to Black rock, 
 thence to Cork, thence by coach to Glen- 
 gariff, to Dublin, Holyhead, Conway, to 
 Chester, with a week more time. The 
 travelling expenses come to about eleven 
 dollars more. British hotels are more ex- 
 pensive than those on the Continent. 
 
 For about two hundred and twenty-five 
 dollars one may take a six weeks' to two 
 months' trip to Scotland and England : 
 
 "City of Rome" to Glasgow . . $120 00 
 Fees and keeping luggage ... 6 00 
 
 Railway tickets 30 00 
 
 Hotel bills 67 00 
 
 Total $223 00 
 
 But by walking and third-class fares one 
 18 
 
262 Appendix. 
 
 may save from eight to ten dollars. The 
 fare on the smaller steamers of the same 
 line is ten dollars less, and there is a line 
 landing at the same place whose rates 
 are fifty-five dollars less for the round 
 trip ! 
 
 Glasgow to Keswick, one day. Keswick 
 to Grasmere (beautiful walk), Ambleside, 
 Windermere, and to Chester, one week. 
 Stratford, Warwick, etc., as before. Lon- 
 don to York, one day. Edinboro' (in- 
 cluding Melrose), three days. Through 
 the Trosachs to Glasgow, two days. 
 
 For about one dollar and eighty cents 
 one may go from Glasgow to Ayr (Burns's 
 country) and return. Glasgow to Oban 
 and return, cost about five dollars, one day. 
 Oban to Staffa and Iona and return, one 
 day, about four dollars and twenty-five 
 cents. Oban to Glencoe and return, one 
 day, about the same cost. Oban to Inverness, 
 via the Caledonian Canal, one day (better 
 two), two dollars and twenty-five cents. 
 Inverness to Edinboro', five dollars. One 
 
Appendix. 263 
 
 may land at Londonderry, too, and, with 
 three days' extra time, visit the Causeway, 
 Belfast to Glasgow, eight dollars. 
 
 A tour through Germany and Austria 
 costs about fifty dollars, and takes about 
 sixty days on land, — which makes a three 
 months' trip cost only about three hun- 
 dred dollars. The small German inns 
 are exquisitely clean and extremely low- 
 priced. 
 
 Hamburg, two days. Berlin and Pots- 
 dam, five days. Leipzig, two days. Dres- 
 den, three days. Walk through Saxon 
 Switzerland, three days. Prague, two days. 
 Vienna, ten days. Walking tour via Salz- 
 burg, through the Austrian Tyrol, a week. 
 Munich, three days. Nuremberg, two days. 
 Heidelberg, one day. Darmstadt and Frank- 
 fort, three days. Wiesbaden, one day. 
 Down the Rhine, two days. Cologne, one 
 day. Brussels, three days. Paris, ten days. 
 The German lines stop at Havre and 
 Southampton. To go to London and re- 
 turn costs from twelve to seventeen dol- 
 
264 Appendix. 
 
 lars additional. Going from Dresden to 
 Baireuth, and thence to Nuremberg, makes 
 the travelling expenses about twenty-five 
 dollars less. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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