We took the train and went to Chepstow, which is near the mouth of the Wye, and as the railroad ran near the river nearly all the way we had lots of beautiful views, though, of course, it wasn't anything like as good as rowing along the stream in a boat. The next day we drove to the celebrated Tintern Abbey, and on the way the road passed two miles and a half of high stone wall, which shut in a gentleman's place. What he wanted to keep in or keep out by means of a wall like that, we couldn't imagine; but the place made me think of a lunatic asylum.

The road soon became shady and beautiful, running through woods along the river bank and under some great crags called the Wyndcliffe, and then we came to the Abbey and got out.

Of all the beautiful high-pointed archery of ancient times, this ruined Abbey takes the lead. I expect you've seen it, madam, or read about it, and I am not going to describe it; but I will just say that Jone, who had rather objected to coming out to see any more old ruins, which he never did fancy, and only came because he wouldn't have me come by myself, was so touched up in his soul by what he saw there, and by wandering through this solemn and beautiful romance of bygone days, he said he wouldn't have missed it for fifty dollars.

We came back to Gloucester to-day, and to-morrow we are off for Buxton. As we are so near Stratford and Warwick and all that, Jone said we'd better go there on our way, but I wouldn't agree to it. I am too anxious to get him skipping round like a colt, as he used to, to stop anywhere now, and when we come back I can look at Shakespeare's tomb with a clearer conscience.

* * * * *

LONDON.

After all, the weather isn't the only changeable thing in this world, and this letter, which I thought I was going to send to you from Gloucester, is now being finished in London. We was expecting to start for Buxton, but some money that Jone had ordered to be sent from London two or three days before didn't come, and he thought it would be wise for him to go and look after it. So yesterday, which was Saturday, we started off for London, and came straight to the Babylon Hotel, where we had been before.

Of course we couldn't do anything until Monday, and this morning when we got up we didn't feel in very good spirits, for of all the doleful things I know of, a Sunday in London is the dolefullest. The whole town looks as if it was the back door of what it was the day before, and if you want to get any good out of it, you feel as if you had to sneak in by an alley, instead of walking boldly up the front steps.

Jone said we'd better go to Westminster Abbey to church, because he believed in getting the best there was when it didn't cost too much, but I wouldn't do it.



"No," said I. "When I walk in that religious nave and into the hallowed precincts of the talented departed, the stone passages are full of cloudy forms of Chaucers, Addisons, Miltons, Dickenses, and all those great ones of the past; and I would hate to see the place filled up with a crowd of weekday lay people in their Sunday clothes, which would be enough to wipe away every feeling of romantic piety which might rise within my breast."

As we didn't go to the Abbey, and was so long making up our minds where we should go, it got too late to go anywhere, and so we stayed in the hotel and looked out into a lonely and deserted street, with the wind blowing the little leaves and straws against the tight-shut doors of the forsaken houses. As I stood by that window I got homesick, and at last I could stand it no longer, and I said to Jone, who was smoking and reading a paper:

"Let's put on our hats and go out for a walk, for I can't mope here another minute."

So down we went, and coming up the front steps of the front entrance who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington! He was stopping at that hotel, and was just coming home from church, with his face shining like a sunset on account of the comfortableness of his conscience after doing his duty.



Letter Number Sixteen

BUXTON

When I mentioned Mr. Poplington in my last letter in connection with the setting sun I was wrong; he was like the rising orb of day, and he filled London with effulgent light. No sooner had we had a talk, and we had told him all that had happened, and finished up by saying what a doleful morning we had had, than he clapped his hand on his knees and said, "I'll tell you what we will do. We will spend the afternoon among the landmarks." And what we did was to take a four-wheeler and go around the old parts of London, where Mr. Poplington showed us a lot of soul-awakening spots which no common stranger would be likely to find for himself.

If you are ever steeped in the solemnness of a London Sunday, and you can get a jolly, red-faced, middle-aged English gentleman, who has made himself happy by going to church in the morning, and is ready to make anybody else happy in the afternoon, just stir him up in the mixture, and then you will know the difference between cod-liver oil and champagne, even if you have never tasted either of them. The afternoon was piled-up-and-pressed-down joyfulness for me, and I seemed to be walking in a dream among the beings and the things that we only see in books.

Mr. Poplington first took us to the old Watergate, which was the river entrance to York House, where Lord Bacon lived, and close to the gate was the small house where Peter the Great and David Copperfield lived, though not at the same time; and then we went to Will's old coffee-house, where Addison, Steele, and a lot of other people of that sort used to go to drink and smoke before they was buried in Westminster Abbey, and where Charles and Mary Lamb lived afterward, and where Mary used to look out of the window to see the constables take the thieves to the Old Bailey near by. Then we went to Tom-all-alone's, and saw the very grating at the head of the steps which led to the old graveyard where poor Joe used to sweep the steps when Lady Dedlock came there, and I held on to the very bars that the poor lady must have gripped when she knelt on the steps to die.

Not far away was the Black Jack Tavern, where Jack Sheppard and all the great thieves of the day used to meet. And bless me! I have read so much about Jack Sheppard that I could fairly see him jumping out of the window he always dropped from when the police came. After that we saw the house where Mr. Tulkinghorn, Lady Dedlock's lawyer, used to live, and also the house where old Krook was burned up by spontaneous combustion. Then we went to Bolt Court, where old Samuel Johnson lived, walked about, and talked, and then to another court where he lived when he wrote the dictionary, and after that to the "Cheshire Cheese" Inn, where he and Oliver Goldsmith often used to take their meals together.

Then we saw St. John's Gate, where the Knights Templars met, and the yard of the Court of Chancery, where little Miss Flite used to wait for the Day of Judgment; and as we was coming home he showed us the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where every other Friday the bells are rung at five o'clock in the afternoon, most people not knowing what it is for, but really because the famous Nell Gwynn, who was far from being a churchwoman, left a sum of money for having a merry peal of bells rung every Friday until the end of the world. I got so wound up by all this, that I quite forgot Jone, and hardly thought of Mr. Poplington, except that he was telling me all these things, and bringing back to my mind so much that I had read about, though sometimes very little.

When we got back to the hotel and had gone up to our room, Jone said to me:

"That was all very fine and interesting from top to toe, but it does seem to me as if things were dreadfully mixed. Dr. Johnson and Jack Sheppard, I suppose, was all real and could live in houses; but when it comes to David Copperfields and Lady Dedlocks and little Miss Flites, that wasn't real and never lived at all, they was all talked about in just the same way, and their favorite tramping grounds pointed out, and I can't separate the real people from the fancy folk, if we've got to have the same bosom heaving for the whole of them."

"Jone," said I, "they are all real, every one of them. If Mr. Dickens had written history I expect he'd put Lady Dedlock and Miss Flite and David Copperfield into it; and if the history writers had written stories they would have been sure to get Dr. Johnson and Lord Bacon and Peter the Great into them; and the people in the one kind of writing would have been just as real as the people in the other. At any rate, that's the way they are to me."

On the Monday after our landmark expedition with Mr. Poplington, which I shall never forget, Jone settled up his business matters, and the next day we started for Buxton and the rheumatism baths. To our great delight Mr. Poplington said he would go with us, not all the way, for he wanted to stop at a little place called Rowsley, where he would stay for a few days and then go on to Buxton; but we was very glad to have him with us during the greater part of the way, and we all left the hotel in the same four-wheeler.

When we got to the station Jone got first-class tickets, for we have found out that if you want to travel comfortable in England, and have porters attend to your baggage and find an empty carriage for you, and have the guard come along and smile in the window and say he'll try to let you have that carriage all to yourselves if he's able—the ableness depending a good deal on what you give him—and for everybody to do their best to make your journey pleasant, you must travel first class. Mr. Poplington also bought a first-class ticket, for there was no seconds on this line. As we was walking along by the platform Jone and I gave a sort of a jump, for there was a regular Pullman car, which made us think we might be at home. We stopped and looked at it, and then the guard, who was standing by, stepped up to us and touched his hat, and asked us if we would like to take the Pullman, and when Jone asked what the extra charge was, he said nothing at all for first-class passengers. We didn't have to stop to think a minute, but said right off that we would go in it, but Mr. Poplington would not come with us. He said English people wasn't accustomed to that, they wanted to be more private; and, although he'd like to be with us, he could not travel in a caravan like that, and so he went off by himself, and we got into the Pullman.

The guard said we could take any seats we pleased; and when we got in we found there was only two or three people in it, and we chose two nice armchairs, hung up our wraps, and made ourselves comfortable and cosey.

We expected that the people who engaged seats would soon come crowding in, but when the train started there was only four people besides ourselves in that beautiful car, which was a first-class one, built in the United States, with all sorts of comforts and conveniences. There was a porter who laid himself out to make us happy, and about one o'clock we had a nice lunch on a little table which was set up between us, with two waiters to attend to us, and then Jone went and had a smoke in a small room at one end of the car.

We thought it was strange that there should be so few people travelling on this train, but when we came to a town where we made a long stop Jone got out to talk to Mr. Poplington, supposing it likely that he'd have a carriage to himself; but he was amazed to see that the train was jammed and crowded, and he found Mr. Poplington squeezed up in a carriage with seven other people, four of them one side and four the other, each row staring into the faces of the other. Some of them was eating bread and cheese out of paper parcels, and a big fat man was reading a newspaper, which he spread out so as to partly cover the two people sitting next to him, and all of them seemed anxious to find some way of stretching their legs so as not to strike against the legs of somebody else.

Mr. Poplington was sitting by the window, and Jone couldn't help laughing when he said:

"Is this what you call being private, sir? I think you would find a caravan more pleasant. Don't you want to come to the Pullman with us? There are plenty of seats there, nice big armchairs that you can turn around and sit any way you like, and look at people or not look at them, just as you please, and there's plenty of room to walk about and stretch yourself a little if you want to. There's a smoking-room, too, that you can go to and leave whenever you like. Come and try it."

"Thank you very much," said Mr. Poplington, "but I really couldn't do that. I am not prejudiced at all, and I have a good many democratic ideas, but that is too much for me. An Englishman's house is his castle, and when he's travelling his railway carriage is his house. He likes privacy and dislikes publicity."

"This is a funny kind of privacy you have here," said Jone. "And how about your big clubs? Would you like to have them all divided up into little compartments with half a dozen men in each one, generally strangers to each other?"

"Oh, a club is a very different thing," said Mr. Poplington.

Jone was going to talk more about the comfort of the Pullman cars, but they began to shut the carriage doors, and he had to come back to me.

We like English railway carriages very well when we can have one to ourselves, but if even one stranger gets in and has to sit looking at us for all the rest of the trip you don't feel anything like as private as if you was walking along a sidewalk in London.

But Jone and I both agreed we wouldn't find any fault with English people for not liking Pullman cars, so long as they put them on their trains for Americans who do like them. And one thing is certain, that if our railroad conductors and brakes-men and porters was as polite and kind as they are in England, tips or no tips, we'd be a great deal better off than we are.

Whenever we stopped at a station the people would come and look through the windows at us, as if we was some sort of a travelling show. I don't believe most of them had ever seen a comfortable room on wheels before. The other people in our car was all men, and looked as if they hadn't their families with them, and was glad to get a little comfort on the sly. When we got to Rowsley we saw Mr. Poplington on the platform, running about, collecting all his different bits of luggage, and counting them to see that they was all there, and then, as we had a window open and was looking out, he came and bid us good-by; and when I asked him to, he looked into our car.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he said. "What a public apartment! I could not travel like that, you know. Good-by; I will see you at Buxton in a few days."



We talked a good deal with Mr. Poplington about the hotels of Buxton, and we had agreed to go to one called the Old Hall, where we are now. There was a good many reasons why we chose this house, one being that it was not as expensive as some of the others, though very nice; and another, which had a good deal of force with me, was, that Mary Queen of Scots came here for her rheumatism, and the room she used to have is still kept, with some words she scratched with her diamond ring on the window-pane. Sometimes people coming to this hotel can get this room, and I was mighty sorry we couldn't do it, but it was taken. If I could have actually lived and slept in a room which had belonged to the beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, I would have been willing to have just as much rheumatism as she had when she was here.

Of course, modern rheumatisms are not as interesting as the rheumatisms people of the past ages had; but from what I have seen of this town, I think I am going to like it very much.



Letter Number Seventeen



BUXTON

When we were comfortably settled here, Jone went to see a doctor, who is a nice, kind old gentleman, who looks as if he almost might have told Mary Queen of Scots how hot she ought to have the water in her baths. He charges four times as much as the others, and has about a quarter as many patients, which makes it all the same to him, and a good deal better for the rheumatic ones who come to him, for they have more time to go into particulars. And if anything does good to a person who has something the matter with him, it's being able to go into particulars about it. It's often as good as medicine, and always more comforting.

We unpacked our trunks and settled ourselves down for a three weeks' stay here, for no matter how much rheumatism you have or how little, you've got to take Buxton and its baths in three weeks' doses.

Besides taking the baths Jone has to drink the waters, and as I cannot do much else to help him, I am encouraging him by drinking them too. There are two places where you can get the lukewarm water that people come here to drink. One is the public well, where there is a pump free to everybody, and the other is in the pump-room just across the street from the well, where you pay a penny a glass for the same water, which three doleful old women spend all their time pumping for visitors.



People are ordered to drink this water very carefully. It must be done at regular times, beginning with a little, and taking more and more each day until you get to a full tumbler, and then if it seems to be too strong for you, you must take less. So far as I can find out there is nothing particular about it, except that it is lukewarm water, neither hot enough nor cold enough to make it a pleasant drink. It didn't seem to agree with Jone at first, but after he kept at it three or four days it began to suit him better, so that he could take nearly a tumbler without feeling badly. Two or three times I felt it might be better for my health if I didn't drink it, but I wanted to stand by Jone as much as I could, and so I kept on.

We have been here a week now, and this morning I found out that all the water we drink at this hotel is brought from the well of St. Ann, where the public pump is, and everybody drinks just as much of it as they want whenever they want to, and they never think of any such thing as feeling badly or better than if it was common water. The only difference is, that it isn't quite as lukewarm when we get it here as it is at the well. When I was told this I was real mad, after all the measuring and fussing we had had when taking the water as a medicine, and then drinking it just as we pleased at the table. But the people here tell me that it is the gas in it which makes it medicinal, and when that floats out it is just like common water. That may be; but if there's a penny's worth of gas in every tumbler of water sold in the pump-room, there ought to be some sort of a canopy put over the town to catch what must escape in the pourings and pumpings, for it's too valuable to be allowed to get away. If it's the gas that does it, a rheumatic man anchored in a balloon over Buxton, and having the gas coming up unmixed to him, ought to be well in about two days.

When Jone told me his first bath was to be heated up to ninety-four degrees I said to him that he'd be boiled alive, but he wasn't; and when he came home he said he liked it. Everything is very systematic in the great bathing-house. The man who tends to Jone hangs up his watch on a little stand on the edge of the bathtub, and he stays in just so many minutes, and when he's ready to come out he rings a bell, and then he's wrapped up in about fourteen hot towels, and sits in an armchair until he's dry. Jone likes all this, and says so much about it that it makes me want to try it too; though as there isn't any reason for it I haven't tried them yet.

This is an awfully queer, old-fashioned town, and must have been a good deal like Bath in the days of Evelina. There is a long line of high buildings curved like a half moon, which is called the Crescent, and at one end of this is a pump-room, and at the other are the natural baths, where the water is just as warm as when it comes out of the ground, which is eighty-two degrees. This is said to chill people; but from what I remember about summer time I don't see how eighty-two degrees can be cold.

Opposite the Crescent is a public park called The Slopes, and farther on there are great gardens with pavilions, and a band of music every day, and a theatre, and a little river, and tennis courts, and all sorts of things for people who haven't anything to do with their time, which is generally the case with folks at rheumatic watering-places. Opposite to our hotel is a bowling court, which they say has been there for hundreds of years, and is just as hard and smooth as a boy's slate. The men who play bowls here are generally those who have got over the rheumatism of their youth, and whose joints have not been very much stiffened up yet by old age. The people who are yet too young for rheumatism, and have come here with their families, play tennis.

The baths take such a little time, not over six or seven minutes for them each day, and every third day skipped, that there is a good deal of time left on the hands of the people here; and those who can't play tennis or bowl, and don't want to spend the whole time in the pavilion listening to the music, go about in bath-chairs, which, so far as I can see, are just as important as the baths. I don't know whether you ever saw a bath-chair, madam, but it's a comfortable little cab on three wheels, pulled by a man. They take people everywhere, and all the streets are full of them.

As soon as I saw these nice little traps I said to Jone, "Now this is the very thing for you. It hurts you to walk far, and you want to see all over this town, and one of these bath-chairs will take you into lots of places where you couldn't go in a carriage."

"Take me!" said Jone. "I should say not. You don't catch me being hauled about in one of those things as if I was in a sort of wheelbarrow ambulance being taken to the hospital, with you walking along by my side like a trained nurse. No, indeed! I have not gone so far as that yet."

I told him this was all stuff and nonsense, and if he wanted to get the good out of Buxton he'd better go about and see it, and he couldn't go about if he didn't take a bath-chair; but all he said to that was, that he could see it without going about, and he was satisfied. But that didn't count anything with me, for the trouble with Jone is, that he's too easy satisfied.

It's true that there is a lot to be seen in Buxton without going about. The Slopes are just across the street from the hotel, and when it doesn't happen to be raining we can go and sit there on a bench and see lively times enough. People are being trundled about in their bath-chairs in every direction; there is always a crowd at St. Ann's well, where the pump is; all sorts of cabs and carts are being driven up and down just as fast as they can go, for the streets are as smooth as floors, and in the morning and evening there are about half a dozen coaches with four horses, and drivers and horn-blowers in red coats, the horses prancing and whips cracking as they start out for country trips or come back again. And as for the people on foot, they just swarm like bees, and rain makes no difference, except that then they wear mackintoshes, and when it's fine they don't. Some of these people step along as brisk as if they hadn't anything the matter with them, but a good many of them help out their legs with canes and crutches. I begin to think I can tell how long a man has been at Buxton by the number of sticks he uses.

One day we was sitting on a bench in The Slopes, enjoying a bit of sunshine that had just come along, when a middle-aged man, with a very high collar and a silk hat, came and sat down by Jone. He spoke civilly to us, and then went on to say that if ever we happened to take a house near Liverpool he'd be glad to supply us with coals, because he was a coal merchant. Jone told him that if he ever did take a house near Liverpool he certainly would give him his custom. Then the man gave us his card. "I come here every year," he said, "for the rheumatism in my shoulder, and if I meet anybody that lives near Liverpool, or is likely to, I try to get his custom. I like it here. There's a good many 'otels in this town. You can see a lot of them from here. There's St. Ann's, that's a good house, but they charge you a pound a day; and then there's the Old Hall. That's good enough, too, but nobody goes there except shopkeepers and clergymen. Of course, I don't mean bishops; they go to St. Ann's."

I wondered which the man would think Jone was, if he knew we was stopping at the Old Hall; but I didn't ask him, and only said that other people besides shopkeepers and clergymen went to the Old Hall, for Mary Queen of Scots used to stop at that house when she came to take the waters, and her room was still there, just as it used to be.

"Mary Queen of Scots!" said he. "At the Old Hall?"

"Yes," said I, "that's where she used to go; that was her hotel."

"Queen Mary, Queen of the Scots!" he said again. "Well, well, I wouldn't have believed it. But them Scotch people always was close-fisted. Now if it had been Queen Elizabeth, she wouldn't have minded a pound a day;" and then, after asking Jone to excuse him for forgetting his manners and not asking where his rheumatism was, and having got his answer, he went away, wondering, I expect, how Mary Queen of Scots could have been so stingy.

But although we could see so much sitting on benches, I didn't give up Jone and the bath-chairs, and day before yesterday I got the better of him. "Now," said I, "it is stupid for you to be sitting around in this way as if you was a statue of a public benefactor carved by subscription and set up in a park. The only sensible thing for you to do is to take a bath-chair and go around and see things. And if you are afraid people will think you are being taken to a hospital, you can put down the top of the thing, and sit up straight and smoke your pipe. Patients in ambulances never smoke pipes. And if you don't want me walking by your side like a trained nurse, I'll take another chair and be pulled along with you."

The idea of a pipe, and me being in another chair, rather struck his fancy, and he said he would consider it; and so that afternoon we went to the hotel door and looked at the long line of bath-chairs standing at the curbstone on the other side of the street, with the men waiting for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses. Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn out, as if they had belonged to sporting men and had been driven half to death. And then again there was some that looked fat and lazy, like the old horses on a farm, that the women drive to town.

Jone picked out a good man, who looked as if he was well broken and not afraid of locomotives and able to do good work in single harness. When I got Jone in the bath-chair, with the buggy-top down, and his pipe lighted, and his hat cocked on one side a little, so as to look as if he was doing the whole thing for a lark, I called another chair, not caring what sort of one it was, and then we told the men to pull us around for a couple of hours, leaving it to them to take us to agreeable spots, which they said they would do.

After we got started Jone seemed to like it very well, and we went pretty much all over the town, sometimes stopping to look in at the shop windows, for the sidewalks are so narrow that it is no trouble to see the things from the street. Then the men took us a little way out of the town to a place where there was a good view for us, and a bench where they could go and sit down and rest. I expect all the chair men that work by the hour manage to get to this place with a view as soon as they can.

After they had had a good rest we started off to go home by a different route. Jone's man was a good strong fellow and always took the lead, but my puller was a different kind of a steed, and sometimes I was left pretty far behind. I had not paid much attention to the man at first, only noticing that he was mighty slow; but going back a good deal of the way was uphill, and then all his imperfections came out plain, and I couldn't help studying him. If he had been a horse I should have said he was spavined and foundered, with split frogs and tonsilitis; but as he was a man, it struck me that he must have had several different kinds of rheumatism and been sent to Buxton to have them cured, but not taking the baths properly, or drinking the water at times when he ought not to have done it, his rheumatisms had all run together and had become fixed and immovable. How such a creaky person came to be a bath-chair man I could not think, but it may be that he wanted to stay in Buxton for the sake of the loose gas which could be had for nothing, and that bath-chairing was all he could get to do.

I pitied the poor old fellow, who, if he had been a horse, would have been no more than fourteen hands high, and as he went puffing along, tugging and grunting as if I was a load of coal, I felt as if I couldn't stand it another minute, and I called out to him to stop. It did seem as if he would drop before he got me back to the hotel, and I bounced out in no time, and then I walked in front of him and turned around and looked at him. If it is possible for a human hack-horse to have spavins in two joints in each leg, that man had them; and he looked as if he couldn't remember what it was to have a good feed.

He seemed glad to rest, but didn't say anything, standing and looking straight ahead of him like an old horse that has been stopped to let him blow. He did look so dreadful feeble that I thought it would be a mercy to take him to some member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and have him chloroformed. "Look here," said I, "you are not fit to walk. Get into that bath-chair, and I'll pull you back to your stand."

"Lady," said he, "I couldn't do that. If you dunno mind walking home, and will pay me for the two hours all the same, I will be right thankful for that. I'm poorly to-day."

"Get into the chair," said I, "and I'll pull you back. I'd like to do it, for I want some exercise."

"Oh, no, no!" said he. "That would be a sin; and besides I was engaged to pull you two hours, and I must be paid for that."

"Get into that chair," I said, "and I'll pay you for your two hours and give you a shilling besides."

He looked at me for a minute, and then he got into the chair, and I shut him up.

"Now, lady," said he, "you can pull me a little way if you want exercise, and as soon as you are tired you can stop, and I'll get out, but you must pay me the extra shilling all the same."

"All right," said I, and taking hold of the handle I started off. It was real fun; the bath-chair rolled along beautifully, and I don't believe the old man weighed much more than my Corinne when I used to push her about in her baby carriage. We were in a back street, where there was hardly anybody; and as for Jone and his bath-chair, I could just see them ever so far ahead, so I started to catch up, and as the street was pretty level now I soon got going at a fine rate. I hadn't had a bit of good exercise for a long time, and this warmed me up and made me feel gay.



We was not very far behind Jone when the man began to call to me in a sort of frightened fashion, as if he thought I was running away. "Stop, lady!" he said; "we are getting near the gardens, and the people will laugh at me. Stop, lady, and I'll get out." But I didn't feel a bit like stopping; the idea had come into my head that it would be jolly to beat Jone. If I could pass him and sail on ahead for a little while, then I'd stop and let my old man get out and take his bath-chair home. I didn't want it any more.

Just as I got close up behind Jone, and was about to make a rush past him, his man turned into a side street. Of course I turned too, and then I put on steam, and, giving a laugh as I turned around to look at Jone, I charged on, intending to stop in a minute and have some fun in hearing what Jone had to say about it; but you may believe, ma'am, that I was amazed when I saw only a little way in front of me the bath-chair stand where we had hired our machines! And all the bath-chair men were standing there with their mouths wide open, staring at a woman running along the street, pulling an old bath-chair man in a bath-chair! For a second I felt like dropping the handle I held and making a rush for the front door of the hotel, which was right ahead of me; and then I thought, as now I was in for it, it would be a lot better to put a good face on the matter, and not look as if I had done anything I was ashamed of, and so I just slackened speed and came up in fine style at the door of the Old Hall. Four or five of the bath-chair men came running across the street to know if anything had happened to the old party I was pulling, and he got out looking as ashamed as if he had been whipped by his wife.

"It's a lark, mates," said he; "the lady's to pay me two shillings extra for letting her pull me."

"Two shillings?" said I. "I only promised you one."

"That would be for pulling me a little way," he said; "but you pulled me all the way back, and I couldn't do it for less than two shillings."

Jone now came up and got out quick.

"What's the meaning of all this, Pomona?" said he.

"Meaning?" said I. "Look at that dilapidated old bag of bones. He wasn't fit to pull me, and so I thought it would be fun to pull him; but, of course, I didn't know when I turned the corner I would be here at the stand."

Jone paid the men, including the two extra shillings, and when we went up to our room he said, "The next time we go out in two bath-chairs, I am going to have a chain fastened to yours, and I'll have hold of the other end of it."



Letter Number Eighteen

BUXTON

I have begun to take the baths. There really is so little to do in this place that I couldn't help it, and so, while Jone was off tending to his hot soaks, I thought I might as well try the thing myself. At any rate it would fill up the time when I was alone. I find I like this sort of bathing very much, and I wish I had begun it before. It reminds me of a kind of medicine for colds that you used to make for me, madam, when I first came to the canal-boat. It had lemons and sugar in it, and it was so good I remember I used to think that I would like to go into a lingering consumption, so that I could have it three times a day, until I finally passed away like a lily on a snowbank.

Jone's been going about a good deal in a bath-chair, and doesn't mind my walking alongside of him. He says it makes him feel easier in his mind, on the whole.

Mr. Poplington came two or three days ago, and he is stopping at our hotel. We three have hired a carriage together two or three times and have taken drives into, the country. Once we went to an inn, the Cat and Fiddle, about five miles away, on a high bit of ground called Axe Edge. It is said to be the highest tavern in England, and it's lucky that it is, for that's the only recommendation it's got. The sign in front of the house has on it a cat on its hind-legs playing a fiddle, with a look on its face as if it was saying, "It's pretty poor, but it's the best I can do for you."

Inside is another painting of a cat playing a fiddle, and truly that one might be saying, "Ha! Ha! You thought that that picture on the sign was the worst picture you ever saw in your life, but now you see how you are mistaken."

Up on that high place you get the rain fresher than you do in Buxton, because it hasn't gone so far through the air, and it's mixed with more chilly winds than anywhere else in England, I should say. But everybody is bound to go to the Cat and Fiddle at least once, and we are glad we have been there, and that it is over. I like the places near the town a great deal better, and some of them are very pretty. One day we two and Mr. Poplington took a ride on top of a stage to see Haddon Hall and Chatsworth.

Haddon Hall is to me like a dream of the past come true. Lots of other old places have seemed like dreams, but this one was right before my eyes, just as it always was. Of course, you must have read all about it, madam, and I am not going to tell it over again. But think of it; a grand old baronial mansion, part of it built as far back as the eleven hundreds, and yet in good condition and fit to live in. That is what I thought as I walked through its banqueting hall and courts and noble chambers. "Why," said I to Jone, "in that kitchen our meals could be cooked; at that table we could eat them; in these rooms we could sleep; in these gardens and courts we could roam; we could actually live here!" We haven't seen any other romance of the past that we could say that about, and to this minute it puzzles me how any duke in this world could be content to own a house like this and not live in it. But I suppose he thinks more of water-pipes and electric lights than he does of the memories of the past and time-hallowed traditions.

As for me, if I had been Dorothy Vernon, there's no man on earth, not even Jone, that could make me run away from such a place as Haddon Hall. They show the stairs down which she tripped with her lover when they eloped; but if it had been me, it would have been up those stairs I would have gone. Mr. Poplington didn't agree a bit with me about the joy of living in this enchanting old house, and neither did Jone, I am sure, although he didn't say so much. But then, they are both men, and when it comes to soaring in the regions of romanticism you must not expect too much of men.

After leaving Haddon Hall, which I did backward, the coach took us to Chatsworth, which is a different sort of a place altogether. It is a grand palace, at least it was built for one, but now it is an enormous show place, bright and clean and sleek, and when we got there we saw hundreds of visitors waiting to go in. They was taken through in squads of about fifty, with a man to lead them, which he did very much as if they was a drove of cattle.

The man who led our squad made us step along lively, and I must say that never having been in a drove before, Jone and I began to get restive long before we got through. As for the show, I like the British Museum a great deal better. There is ever so much more to see there, and you have time to stop and look at things. At Chatsworth they charge you more, give you less, and treat you worse. When it came to taking us through the grounds, Jone and I struck. We left the gang we was with, and being shown where to find a gate out of the place, we made for that gate and waited until our coach was ready to take us back to Buxton.

It is a lot of fun going to the theatre here. It doesn't cost much, and the plays are good and generally funny, and a rheumatic audience is a very jolly one. The people seemed glad to forget their backs, their shoulders, and their legs, and they are ready to laugh at things that are only half comic, and keep up a lively chattering between the acts. It's fun to see them when the play is over. The bath-chairs that have come after some of them are brought right into the building, and are drawn up just like carriages after the theatre. The first time we went I wanted Jone to stop a while and see if we didn't hear somebody call out, "Mrs. Barchester's bath-chair stops the way!" but he said I expected too much, and would not wait.

We sit about so much in the gardens, which are lively when it is clear, and not bad even in a little drizzle, that we've got to know a good many of the people; and although Jone's a good deal given to reading, I like to sit and watch them and see what they are doing.

When we first came here I noticed a good-looking young woman who was hauled about in a bath-chair, generally with an open book in her lap, which she never seemed to read much, because she was always gazing around as if she was looking for something. Before long I found out what she was looking for, for every day, sooner or later, generally sooner, there came along a bath-chair with a good-looking young man in it. He had a book in his lap too, but he was never reading it when I saw him, because he was looking for the young woman; and as soon as they saw each other they began to smile, and as they passed they always said something, but didn't stop. I wondered why they didn't give their pullers a rest and have a good talk if they knew each other, but before long I noticed not very far behind the young lady's bath-chair was always another bath-chair with an old gentleman in it with a bottle-nose. After a while I found out that this was the young lady's father, because sometimes he would call to her and have her stop, and then she generally seemed to get some sort of a scolding.

Of course, when I see anything of this kind going on, I can't help taking one side or the other, and as you may well believe, madam, I wouldn't be likely to take that of the old bottle-nosed man's side. I had not been noticing these people for more than two or three days when one morning, when Jone and me was sitting under an umbrella, for there was a little more rain than common, I saw these two young people in their bath-chairs, coming along side by side, and talking just as hard as they could. At first I was surprised, but I soon saw how things was: the old gentleman couldn't come out in the rain. It was plain enough from the way these two young people looked at each other that they was in love, and although it most likely hurt them just as much to come out into the rain as it would the old man, love is all-powerful, even over rheumatism.

Pretty soon the clouds cleared away without notice, as they do in this country, and it wasn't long before I saw, away off, the old man's bath-chair coming along lively. His bottle-nose was sticking up in the air, and he was looking from one side to the other as hard as he could. The two lovers had turned off to the right and gone over a little bridge and I couldn't see them; but by the way that old nose shook as it got nearer and nearer to me, I saw they had reason to tremble, though they didn't know it.

When the old father reached the narrow path he did not turn down it, but kept straight on, and I breathed a sigh of deep relief. But the next instant I remembered that the broad path turned not far beyond, and that the little one soon ran into it, and so it could not be long before the father and the lovers would meet. I like to tell Jone everything I am going to do, when I am sure that he'll agree with me that it is right; but this time I could not bother with explanations, and so I just told him to sit still for a minute, for I wanted to see something, and I walked after the young couple as fast as I could. When I got to them, for they hadn't gone very far, I passed the young woman's bath-chair, and then I looked around and I said to her, "I beg your pardon, miss, but there is an old gentleman looking for you; but as I think he is coming round this way, you'll meet him if you keep on this path." "Oh, my!" said she unintentionally; and then she thanked me very much, and I went on and turned a corner and went back to Jone, and pretty soon the young man's bath-chair passed us going toward the gate, he looking three-quarters happy, and the other quarter disappointed, as lovers are if they don't get the whole loaf.

From that day until yesterday, which was a full week, I came into the gardens every morning, sometimes even when Jone didn't want to come, because I wanted to see as much of this love business as I could. For my own use in thinking of them I named the young man Pomeroy and the young woman Angelica, and as for the father, I called him Snortfrizzle, being the worst name I could think of at the time. But I must wait until my next letter to tell you the rest of the story of the lovers, and I am sure you will be as much interested in them as I was.



Letter Number Nineteen



BUXTON

I have a good many things to tell you, for we leave Buxton to-morrow, but I will first finish the story of Angelica and Pomeroy. I think the men who pulled the bath-chairs of the lovers knew pretty much how things was going, for whenever they got a chance they brought their chairs together, and I often noticed them looking out for the old father, and if they saw him coming they would move away from each other if they happened to be together.

If Snortfrizzle's puller had been one of the regular bath-chair men they might have made an agreement with him so that he would have kept away from them; but he was a man in livery, with a high hat, who walked very regular, like a high-stepping horse, and who, it was plain enough to see, never had anything to do with common bath-chair men. Old Snortfrizzle seemed to be smelling a rat more and more—that is, if it is proper to liken Cupid to such an animal—and his nose seemed to get purpler and purpler. I think he would always have kept close to Angelica's chair if it hadn't been that he had a way of falling asleep, and whenever he did this his man always walked very slow, being naturally lazy. Two or three times I have seen Snortfrizzle wake up, shout to his man, and make him trot around a clump of trees and into some narrow path where he thought his daughter might have gone.

Things began to look pretty bad, for the old man had very strong suspicions about Pomeroy, and was so very wide awake when he was awake, that I knew it couldn't be long before he caught the two together, and then I didn't believe that Angelica would ever come into these gardens again.

It was yesterday morning that I saw old Snortfrizzle with his chin down on his shirt bosom, snoring so steady that his hat heaved, being very slowly pulled along a shady walk, and then I saw his daughter, who was not far ahead of him, turn into another walk, which led down by the river. I knew very well that she ought not to turn into that walk, because it didn't in any way lead to the place where Pomeroy was sitting in his bath-chair behind a great clump of bushes and flowers, with his face filled with the most lively emotions, but overspread ever and anon by a cloudlet of despair on account of the approach of the noontide hour, when Angelica and Snortfrizzle generally went home.



The time was short, and I believed that love's young dream must be put off until the next day if Angelica could not be made aware where Pomeroy was sitting, or Pomeroy where Angelica was going; so I got right up and made a short cut down a steep little path, and, sure enough, I met her when I got to the bottom. "I beg your pardon very much, miss," said I, "but your brother is over there in the entrance to the cave, and I think he has been looking for you." "My brother?" said she, turning as red as her ribbons was blue. "Oh, thank you very much! Robertson, you may take me that way."

It wasn't long before I saw those two bath-chairs alongside of each other, and covered from general observation by masses of blooming shrubbery. As I had been the cause of bringing them together I thought I had a right to look at them a little while, as that would be the only reward I'd be likely to get, and so I did it. It was as I thought; things was coming to a climax; the bath-chair men standing with much consideration with their backs to their vehicles, and, united for the time being by their clasped hands, the lovers grew tender to a degree which I would have fain checked, had I been nearer, for fear of notice by passers-by.

But now my blood froze within my veins. I would never have believed that a man in a high hat and livery a size too small for him could run, but Snortfrizzle's man did, and at a pace which ought to have been prohibited by law. I saw him coming from an unsuspected quarter, and swoop around that clump of flowers and foliage. Regardless of consequences I approached nearer. There was loud voices; there was exclamations; there was a rattling of wheels; there was the sundering of tender ties!

In a moment Pomeroy, who had backed off but a little way, began to speak, but his voice was drowned in the thunder of Snortfrizzle's denunciations. Angelica wept, and her head fell upon her lovely bosom, and I am sure I heard her implore her man to remove her from the scene. Pomeroy remained, his face firm, his eyes undaunted, but Snortfrizzle shook his fist in unison with his nose, and, hurling an anathema at him, followed his daughter, probably to incarcerate her in her apartments.

All was over, and I returned to Jone with a heavy heart and faltering step. I could not but feel that I had brought about the sad end of this tender chapter in the lives of Pomeroy and Angelica. If I had let them alone they would not have met and they would not have been discovered together. I didn't tell Jone what had happened, because he does not always sympathize with me in my interest in others, and for hours my heart was heavy.

It was about a half an hour before dinner that day when I thought that a little walk might raise my spirits, and I wandered into the gardens, for which we each have a weekly ticket, and there, to my amazement, not far from the gate I saw Angelica in tears and her bath-chair. Her man was not with her, and she was alone. When she saw me she looked at me for a minute, and then she beckoned to me to come to her. I flew. There were but few people in the gardens, and we was alone.

"Madam," said she, "I think you must be very kind. I believe you knew that gentleman was not my brother. He is not."

"My dear miss," said I—I was almost on the point of calling her Angelica—"I knew that. I know that he is something nearer and dearer than even a brother."

She blushed. "Yes," said she, "you are right, and we are in great trouble."

"Oh, what is it? Tell me quick. What can I do to help you?"

"My father is very angry," said she, "and has forbidden me ever to see him again, and he is going to take me home to-morrow. But we have agreed to fly together to-day. It is our only chance, but he is not here. Oh, dear! I do not know what I shall do."

"Where are you going to fly to?" said I.

"We want to take the Edinburgh train this evening if there is one," she said, "and we get off at Carlisle, and from there it is only a little way to Gretna Green."

"Gretna Green!" I cried. "Oh, I will help you! I will help you! Why isn't the gentleman here, and where has he gone?"

"He has gone to see about the trains," she said, almost crying, "and I don't see what keeps him. I could not get away until father went into his room to dress for dinner, and as soon as he is ready he will call for me. Where can he be? I have sent my man to look for him."

"Oh, I'll go look for him! You wait here," I cried, forgetting that she would have to, and away I went.

As I was hurrying out of the gates of the gardens I looked in the direction of the railroad station, and there I saw Pomeroy pulled by one bath-chair man and the other one talking to him. In twenty bounds I reached him. "Go back for your young lady," I cried to Robertson, Angelica's man, "and bring her here on the run. She sent me for you." Away went Robertson, and then I said to the astonished Pomeroy, "Sir, there is no time for explanations. Your lady-love will be with you in a minute. My husband and I are going to Edinburgh to-morrow, and I have looked up all the trains. There is one which leaves here at twenty minutes past six. If she comes soon you will have time to catch it. Have you your baggage ready?"

He looked at me as if he wondered who on earth I was, but I am sure he saw my soul in my face and trusted me.

"Yes," he said, "she has a little bag in her bath-chair, and mine is here."

"Here she comes," said I, "and you must fly to the station."

In a moment Angelica was with us, her face beaming with delight.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" she cried, but I would not listen to her gratitude. "Hurry!" I said, "or you will be too late. Joy go with you."

They hastened off, and I walked back to the gardens. I looked at my watch, and to my horror I saw it was five minutes past six. Fifteen minutes left yet. Fifteen minutes in which they might be overtaken. I stopped for a moment irresolutely. What should I do? I thought of running after them to the station. I thought in some way I might help them—buy their tickets or do something. But while I was thinking I heard a rattle, and down the street came the man in livery, and Snortfrizzle's bottle-nose like a volcano behind him. The minute they reached me, and there was nobody else in the street, the old man shouted, "Hi! Have you seen two bath-chairs with a young man and a young woman in them?"

I was on the point of saying No, but changed my mind like a flash. "Did the young lady wear a hat with blue ribbons?" I asked.

"Yes!" he roared. "Which way did they go?"

"And did the young man with her wear eyeglasses and a brown moustache?"

"With her, was he?" screamed Snortfrizzle. "That's the rascal. Which way did they go? Tell me instantly."

When I was a very little girl I knew an old woman who told me that if a person was really good at heart, the holy angels would allow that person, in the course of her life, twelve fibs without charge, provided they was told for the good of somebody and not to do harm. Now at such a moment as this I could not remember how many fibs of that kind I had left over to my credit, but I knew there must be at least one, and so I didn't hesitate a second. "They have gone to the Cat and Fiddle," said I. "I heard them tell their bath-chair men so, as they urged them forward at the top of their speed. They stopped for a second here, sir, and I heard the gentleman send a cabman for a clergyman, post haste, to meet them at the Cat and Fiddle."



If the sky had been lighted up by the eruption of Snortfrizzle's nose I should not have been surprised.

"The fools! They can't! Cat and Fiddle! But they can't be half way there. Martin, to the Cat and Fiddle!"

The man touched his hat. "But I couldn't do that, sir. I couldn't run to the Cat and Fiddle. It's long miles, sir. Shall I get a carriage?"

"Carriage!" cried the old man, and then he began to look about him.

Horror struck me. Perhaps they would go to the station for one! Just then a boy driving a pony and a grocery cart came up.

"There you are, sir," I cried. "Hire that boy to tow you. Your butler can sit in the back of the cart and hold the handle of your bath-chair. It may take long to get a carriage, and the cart will go much faster. You may overtake them in a mile."

Old Snortfrizzle never so much as thanked me or looked at me. He yelled to the boy in the cart, offered him ten shillings and sixpence to give him a tow, and in less time than I could take to write it, that flunky with a high hat was sitting in the tail of the cart, the pony was going at full gallop, and the old man's bath-chair was spinning on behind it at a great rate.

I did not leave that spot—standing statue-like and looking along both roads—until I heard the rumble of the departing train, and then I repaired to the Old Hall, my soul uplifted. I found Jone in an awful fluster about my being out so late; but I do stay pretty late sometimes when I walk by myself, and so he hadn't anything new to say.



Letter Number Twenty

EDINBURGH

We have been here five or six days now, but the first thing I must write is the rest of the story of the lovers. We left Buxton the next day after their flight, and I begged Jone to stop at Carlisle and let us make a little trip to Gretna Green. I wanted to see the place that has been such a well-spring of matrimonial joys, and besides, I thought we might find Pomeroy and Angelica still there.

I had not seen old Snortfrizzle again, but late that night I had heard a row in the hotel, and I expect it was him back from the Cat and Fiddle. Whether he was inquiring for me or not I don't know, or what he was doing, or what he did.

Jone thought I had done a good deal of meddling in other people's business, but he agreed to go to Gretna Green, and we got there in the afternoon. I left Jone to take a smoke at the station, because I thought this was a business it would be better for me to attend to myself, and I started off to look up the village blacksmith and ask him if he had lately wedded a pair; but, will you believe it, madam, I had not gone far on the main road of the village when, a little ahead of me, I saw two bath-chairs coming toward me, one of them pulled by Robertson, and the other by Pomeroy's man, and in these two chairs was the happy lovers, evidently Mr. and Mrs.! Their faces was filled with light enough to take a photograph, and I could almost see their hearts swelling with transcendent joy. I hastened toward them, and in an instant our hands was clasped as if we had been old friends.

They told me their tale. They had reached the station in plenty of time, and Robertson had got a carriage for them, and he and the other man had gone with them third class, with the bath-chairs in the goods carriages. They had reached Gretna Green that morning, and had been married two hours. Then I told my tale. The eyes of both of them was dimmed with tears, hers the most, and again they clasped my hands. "Poor father," said Angelica, "I hope he didn't go all the way to the Cat and Fiddle, and that the night air didn't strike into his joints; but he cannot separate us now." And she looked confiding at the other bath-chair.

"What are you going to do?" said I, and they said they had just been making plans. I saw, though, that their minds was in too exalted a state to do this properly for themselves, and so I reflected a minute. "How long have you been in Buxton?"

"I have been there two weeks and two days," said she, "and my husband"—oh, the effulgence that filled her countenance as she said this—"has been there one day longer."

"Then," said I, "my advice to you is to go back to Buxton and stay there five days, until you both have taken the waters and the baths for the full three weeks. It won't be much to bear the old gentleman's upbraiding for five days, and then, blessed with health and love, you can depart. No matter what you do afterward, I'd stick it out at Buxton for five days."

"We'll do it," said they; and then, after more gratitude and congratulations, we parted.

And now I must tell you about ourselves. When Jone had been three weeks at Buxton, and done all the things he ought to do, and hadn't done anything he oughtn't to do, he hadn't any more rheumatism in him than a squirrel that jumps from bough to bough. But will you believe it, madam, I had such a rheumatism in one side and one arm that it made me give little squeaks when I did up my back hair, and it all came from my taking the baths when there wasn't anything the matter with me; for I found out, but all too late, that while the waters of Buxton will cure rheumatism in people that's got it, they will bring it out in people who never had it at all. We was told that we ought not to do anything in the bathing line without the advice of a doctor; but those little tanks in the floors of the bathrooms, all lined with tiles and filled with warm, transparent water, that you went down into by marble steps, did seem so innocent, that I didn't believe there was no need in asking questions about them. Jone wanted me to stay three weeks longer until I was cured, but I wouldn't listen to that. I was wild to get to Scotland, and as my rheumatism did not hinder me from walking, I didn't mind what else it did.

And there is another thing I must tell you. One day when I was sitting by myself on The Slopes waiting for Jone, about lunch time, and with a reminiscence floating through my mind of the Devonshire clotted cream of the past, never perhaps to return, I saw an elderly woman coming along, and when she got near she stopped and spoke. I knew her in an instant. She was the old body we met at the Babylon Hotel, who told us about the cottage at Chedcombe. I asked her to sit down beside me and talk, because I wanted to tell her what good times we had had, and how we liked the place, but she said she couldn't, as she was obliged to go on.

"And did you like Chedcombe?" said she. "I hope you and your husband kept well."

I said yes, except Jone's rheumatism, we felt splendid; for my aches hadn't come on then, and I was going on to gush about the lovely country she had sent us to, but she didn't seem to want to listen.

"Really," said she, "and your husband had the rheumatism. It was a wise thing for you to come here. We English people have reason to be proud of our country. If we have our banes, we also have our antidotes; and it isn't every country that can say that, is it?"



I wanted to speak up for America, and tried to think of some good antidote with the proper banes attached; but before I could do it she gave her head a little wag, and said, "Good morning; nice weather, isn't it?" and wobbled away. It struck me that the old body was a little lofty, and just then Mr. Poplington, who I hadn't noticed, came up.

"Really," said he, "I didn't know you was acquainted with the Countess."

"The which?" said I.

"The Countess of Mussleby," said he, "that you was just talking to."

"Countess!" I cried. "Why, that's the old person who recommended us to go to Chedcombe."

"Very natural," said he, "for her to do that, for her estates lie south of Chedcombe, and she takes a great interest in the villages around about, and knows all the houses to let."

I parted from him and wandered away, a sadness stealing o'er my soul. Gone with the recollections of the clotted cream was my visions of diamond tiaras, tossing plumes, and long folds of brocades and laces sweeping the marble floors of palaces. If ever again I read a novel with a countess in it, I shall see the edge of a yellow flannel petticoat and a pair of shoes like two horse-hair bags, which was the last that I saw of this thunderbolt into the middle of my visions of aristocracy.

Jone and me got to like Buxton very much. We met many pleasant people, and as most of them had a chord in common, we was friendly enough. Jone said it made him feel sad in the smoking-room to see the men he'd got acquainted with get well and go home, but that's a kind of sadness that all parties can bear up under pretty well.

I haven't said a word yet about Scotland, though we have been here a week, but I really must get something about it into this letter. I was saying to Jone the other day that if I was to meet a king with a crown on his head I am not sure that I should know that king if I saw him again, so taken up would I be with looking at his crown, especially if it had jewels in it such as I saw in the regalia at the Tower of London. Now Edinburgh seems to strike me in very much the same way. Prince Street is its crown, and whenever I think of this city it will be of this magnificent street and the things that can be seen from it.

It is a great thing for a street to have one side of it taken away and sunk out of sight so that there is a clear view far and wide, and visitors can stand and look at nearly everything that is worth seeing in the whole town, as if they was in the front seats of the balcony in a theatre, and looking on the stage. You know I am very fond of the theatre, madam, but I never saw anything in the way of what they call spectacular representation that came near Edinburgh as seen from Prince Street.

But as I said in one of my first letters, I am not going to write about things and places that you can get much better description of in books, and so I won't take up any time in telling how we stand at the window of our room at the Royal Hotel, and look out at the Old Town standing like a forest of tall houses on the other side of the valley, with the great castle perched up high above them, and all the hills and towers and the streets all spread out below us, with Scott's monument right in front, with everybody he ever wrote about standing on brackets, which stick out everywhere from the bottom up to the very top of the monument, which is higher than the tallest house, and looks like a steeple without a church to it. It is the most beautiful thing of the kind I ever saw, and I have made out, or think I have, nearly every one of the figures that's carved on it.

I think I shall like the Scotch people very much, but just now there is one thing about them that stands up as high above their other good points as the castle does above the rest of the city, and that is the feeling they have for anybody who has done anything to make his fellow-countrymen proud of him. A famous Scotchman cannot die without being pretty promptly born again in stone or bronze, and put in some open place with seats convenient for people to sit and look at him. I like this; glory ought to begin at home.



Letter Number Twenty-one

EDINBURGH

Jone being just as lively on his legs as he ever was in his life, thanks to the waters of Buxton, and I having the rheumatism now only in my arm, which I don't need to walk with, we have gone pretty much all over Edinburgh, and a great place it is to walk in, so far as variety goes. Some of the streets are so steep you have to go up steps if you are walking, and about a mile around if you are driving. I never get tired wandering about the Old Town with its narrow streets and awfully tall houses, with family washes hanging out from every story.

The closes are queer places. They are very like little villages set into the town as if they was raisins in a pudding. You get to them by alleys or tunnels, and when you are inside you find a little neighborhood that hasn't anything more to do with the next close, a block away, than one country village has with another.

We went to see John Knox's house, and although Mr. Knox was pretty hard on vanities and frivolities, he didn't mind having a good house over his head, with woodwork on the walls and ceilings that wasn't any more necessary than the back buttons on his coat.

We have been reading hard since we have been in Edinburgh, and whenever Mr. Knox and Mary Queen of Scots come together, I take Mary's side without asking questions. I have no doubt Mr. Knox was a good man, but if meddling in other people's business gave a person the right to have a monument, the top of his would be the first thing travellers would see when they come near Edinburgh.

When we went to Holyrood Palace it struck me that Mary Queen of Scots deserved a better house. Of course, it wasn't built for her, but I don't care very much for the other people who lived in it. The rooms are good enough for an ordinary household's use, although the little room that she had her supper party in when Rizzio was killed, wouldn't be considered by Jone and me as anything like big enough for our family to eat in. But there is a general air about the place as if it belonged to a royal family that was not very well off, and had to abstain from a good deal of grandeur.

If Mary Queen of Scots could come to life again, I expect the Scotch people would give her the best palace that money could buy, for they have grown to think the world of her, and her pictures blossom out all over Edinburgh like daisies in a pasture field.

The first morning after we got here I was as much surprised as if I had met Mary Queen of Scots walking along Prince Street with a parasol over her head. We were sitting in the reading-room of the hotel, and on the other side of the room was a long desk at which people was sitting, writing letters, all with their backs to us. One of these was a young man wearing a nice light-colored sack coat, with a shiny white collar sticking above it, and his black derby hat was on the desk beside him. When he had finished his letter he put a stamp on it and got up to mail it. I happened to be looking at him, and I believe I stopped breathing as I sat and stared. Under his coat he had on a little skirt of green plaid about big enough for my Corinne when she was about five years old, and then he didn't wear anything whatever until you got down to his long stockings and low shoes. I was so struck with the feeling that he was an absent-minded person that I punched Jone and whispered to him to go quick and tell him. Jone looked at him and laughed, and said that was the Highland costume.

Now if that man had had his martial plaid wrapped around him, and had worn a Scottish cap with a feather in it and a long ribbon hanging down his back, with his claymore girded to his side, I wouldn't have been surprised; for this is Scotland, and that would have been like the pictures I have seen of Highlanders. But to see a man with the upper half of him dressed like a clerk in a dry goods store and the lower half like a Highland chief, was enough to make a stranger gasp.



But since then I have seen a good many young men dressed that way. I believe it is considered the tip of the fashion. I haven't seen any of the bare-legged dandies yet with a high silk hat and an umbrella, but I expect it won't be long before I meet one. We often see the Highland soldiers that belong to the garrison at the castle, and they look mighty fine with their plaid shawls and their scarfs and their feathers; but to see a man who looks as if one half of him belonged to London Bridge and the other half to the Highland moors, does look to me like a pretty bad mixture.

I am not so sure, either, that the whole Highland dress isn't better suited to Egypt, where it doesn't often rain, than to Scotland. Last Saturday we was at St. Giles's Church, and the man who took us around told us we ought to come early next morning and see the military service, which was something very fine; and as Jone gave him a shilling he said he would be on hand and watch for us, and give us a good place where we could see the soldiers come in. On Sunday morning it rained hard, but we was both at the church before eight o'clock, and so was a good many other people, but the doors was shut and they wouldn't let us in. They told us it was such a bad morning that the soldiers could not come out, and so there would be no military service that day. I don't know whether those fine fellows thought that the colors would run out of their beautiful plaids, or whether they would get rheumatism in their knees; but it did seem to me pretty hard that soldiers could not come out in the weather that lots of common citizens didn't seem to mind at all. I was a good deal put out, for I hate to get up early for nothing, but there was no use saying anything, and all we could do was to go home, as all the other people with full suits of clothes did.

Jone and I have got so much more to see before we go home, that it is very well we are both able to skip around lively. Of course there are ever and ever so many places that we want to go to, but can't do it, but I am bound to see the Highlands and the country of the "Lady of the Lake." We have been reading up Walter Scott, and I think more than I ever did that he is perfectly splendid. While we was in Edinburgh we felt bound to go and see Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford. I shall not say much about these two places, but I will say that to go into Sir Walter Scott's library and sit in the old armchair he used to sit in, at the desk he used to write on, and see his books and things around me, gave me more a feeling of reverentialism than I have had in any cathedral yet.

As for Melrose Abbey, I could have walked about under those towering walls and lovely arches until the stars peeped out from the lofty vaults above; but Jone and the man who drove the carriage were of a different way of thinking, and we left all too soon. But one thing I did do: I went to the grave of Michael Scott the wizard, where once was shut up the book of awful mysteries, with a lamp always burning by it, though the flagstone was shut down tight on top of it, and I got a piece of moss and a weed. We don't do much in the way of carrying off such things, but I want Corinne to read the "Lady of the Lake," and then I shall give her that moss and that weed, and tell where I got them. I believe that, in the way of romantics, Corinne is going to be more like me than like Jone.

To-morrow we go to the Highlands, and we shall leave our two big trunks in the care of the man in the red coat, who is commander-in-chief at the Royal Hotel, and who said he would take as much care of them as if they was two glass jars filled with rubies; and we believed him, for he has done nothing but take care of us since we came to Edinburgh, and good care, too.



Letter Number Twenty-two



KINLOCH RANNOCH.

It happened that the day we went north was a very fine one, and as soon as we got into the real Highland country there was nothing to hinder me from feeling that my feet was on my native heath, except that I was in a railway carriage, and that I had no Scotch blood in me, but the joy of my soul was all the same. There was an old gentleman got into our carriage at Perth, and when he saw how we was taking in everything our eyes could reach, for Jone is a good deal more fired up by travel than he used to be—I expect it must have been the Buxton waters that made the change—he began to tell us all about the places we were passing through. There didn't seem to be a rock or a stream that hadn't a bit of history to it for that old gentleman to tell us about.

We got out at a little town called Struan, and then we took a carriage and drove across the wild moors and hills for thirteen miles till we came to this village at the end of Loch Rannoch. The wind blew strong and sharp, but we knew what we had to expect, and had warm clothes on. And with the cool breeze, and remembering "Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace bled," it made my blood tingle all the way.

We are going to stay here at least a week. We shall not try to do everything that can be done on Scottish soil, for we shall not stalk stags or shoot grouse; and I have told Jone that he may put on as many Scotch bonnets and plaids as he likes, but there is one thing he is not going to do, and that is to go bare-kneed, to which he answered, he would never do that unless he could dip his knees into weak coffee so that they would be the same color as his face.

There is a nice inn here with beautiful scenery all around, and the lovely Loch Rannoch stretches away for eleven miles. Everything is just as Scotch as it can be. Even the English people who come here put on knickerbockers and bonnets. I have never been anywhere else where it is considered the correct thing to dress like the natives, and I will say here that it is very few of the natives that wear kilts. That sort of thing seems to be given up to the fancy Highlanders.

Nearly all the talk at the inn is about, shooting and fishing. Stag-hunting here is very different from what it is in England in more ways than one. In the first place, stags are not hunted with horses and hounds. In the second place, the sport is not free. A gentleman here told Jone that if a man wanted to shoot a stag on these moors it would cost him one rifle cartridge and six five pound notes; and when Jone did not understand what that meant, the man went on and told him about how the deer-stalking was carried on here. He said that some of the big proprietors up here owned as much as ninety thousand acres of moorland, and they let it out mostly to English people for hunting and fishing. And if it is stag-hunting the tenant wants, the price he pays is regulated by the number of stags he has the privilege of shooting. Each stag he is allowed to kill costs him thirty pounds. So if he wants the pleasure of shooting thirty stags in the season, his rent will be nine hundred pounds. This he pays for the stag-shooting, but some kind of a house and about ten thousand acres are thrown in, which he has a perfect right to sit down on and rest himself on, but he can't shoot a grouse on it unless he pays extra for that. And, what is more, if he happens to be a bad shot, or breaks his leg and has to stay in the house, and doesn't shoot his thirty stags, he has got to pay for them all the same.

When Jone told me all this, I said I thought a hundred and fifty dollars a pretty high price to pay for the right to shoot one deer. But Jone said I didn't consider all the rest the man got. In the first place, he had the right to get up very early in the morning, in the gloom and drizzle, and to trudge through the slop and the heather until he got far away from the neighborhood of any human being, and then he could go up on some high piece of ground and take a spyglass and search the whole country round for a stag. When he saw one way off in the distance snuffing the morning air, or hunting for his breakfast among the heather, he had the privilege of walking two or three miles over the moor so as to get that stag between the wind and himself, so that it could not scent him or hear him. Then he had the glorious right to get his rifle all ready, and steal and creep toward that stag to cut short his existence. He has to be as careful and as sneaky as if he was a snake in the grass, going behind little hills and down into gullies, and sometimes almost crawling on his stomach where he goes over an open place, and doing everything he can to keep that stag from knowing his end is near. Sometimes he follows his victim all day, and the sun goes down before he has the glorious right of standing up and lodging a bullet in its unsuspecting heart. "So you see," said Jone, "he gets a lot for his hundred and fifty dollars."

"They do get a good deal more for their money than I thought they did," said I; "but I wonder if those rich sportsmen ever think that if they would take the money that they pay for shooting thirty or forty stags in one season, they might buy a rhinoceros, which they could set up on a hill and shoot at every morning if they liked. A game animal like that would last them for years, and if they ever felt like it, they could ask their friends to help them shoot without costing them anything."

Jone is pretty hard on sport with killing in it. He does not mind eating meat, but he likes to have the butcher do the killing. But I reckon he is a little too tender-hearted. But, as for me, I like sport of some kinds, especially when you don't have your pity or your sympathies awakened by seeing your prey enjoying life when you are seeking to encompass his end. Of course, by that I mean fishing.

There are a good many trout in the lake, and people can hire the privilege of fishing for them; and I begged Jone to let me go out in a boat and fish. He was rather in favor of staying ashore and fishing in the little river, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go out and have some regular lake fishing. At last Jone agreed, provided I would not expect him to have anything to do with the fishing. "Of course I don't expect anything like that," said I; "and it would be a good deal better for you to stay on shore. The landlord says a gilly will go along to row the boat and attend to the lines and rods and all that, and so there won't be any need for you at all, and you can stay on shore with your book, and watch if you like."

"And suppose you tumble overboard," said Jone.

"Then you can swim out," I said, "and perhaps wade a good deal of the way. I don't suppose we need go far from the bank."

Jone laughed, and said he was going too.

"Very well," said I; "but you have got to stay in the bow, with your back to me, and take an interesting book with you, for it is a long time since I have done any fishing, and I am not going to do it with two men watching me and telling me how I ought to do it and how I oughtn't to. One will be enough."

"And that one won't be me," said Jone, "for fishing is not one of the branches I teach in my school."

I would have liked it better if Jone and me had gone alone, he doing nothing but row; but the landlord wouldn't let his boat that way, and said we must take a gilly, which, as far as I can make out, is a sort of sporting farmhand. That is the way to do fishing in these parts.

Well, we started, and Jone sat in the front, with his back to me, and the long-legged gilly rowed like a good fellow. When we got to a good place to fish he stopped, and took a fishing-rod that was in pieces and screwed them together, and fixed the line all right so that it would run along the rod to a little wheel near the handle, and then he put on a couple of hooks with artificial flies on them, which was so small I couldn't imagine how the fish could see them. While he was doing all this I got a little fidgety, because I had never fished except with a straight pole and line with a cork to it, which would bob when the fish bit; but this was altogether a different sort of a thing. When it was all ready he handed me the pole, and then sat down very polite to look at me.

Now, if he had handed me the rod, and then taken another boat and gone home, perhaps I might have known what to do with the thing after a while, but I must say that at that minute I didn't. I held the rod out over the water and let the flies dangle down into it, but do what I would, they wouldn't sink; there wasn't weight enough on them.

"You must throw your fly, madam," said the gilly, always very polite. "Let me give it a throw for you," and then he took the rod in his hand and gave it a whirl and a switch which sent the flies out ever so far from the boat; then he drew it along a little, so that the flies skipped over the top of the water.



I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a wild twirl over my head, and then it flew out as if I was trying to whip one of the leaders in a four-horse team. As I did this Jone gave a jump that took him pretty near out of the boat, for two flies swished just over the bridge of his nose, and so close to his eyes as he was reading an interesting dialogue, and not thinking of fish or even of me, that he gave a jump sideways, which, if it hadn't been for the gilly grabbing him, would have taken him overboard. I was frightened myself, and said to him that I had told him he ought not to come in the boat, and it would have been a good deal better for him to have stayed on shore.

He didn't say anything, but I noticed he turned up his collar and pulled down his hat over his eyes and ears. The gilly said that perhaps I had too much line out, and so he took the rod and wound up a good deal of the line. I liked this better, because it was easier to whip out the line and pull it in again. Of course, I would not be likely to catch fish so much nearer the boat, but then we can't have everything in this world. Once I thought I had a bite, and I gave the rod such a jerk that the line flew back against me, and when I was getting ready to throw it out again, I found that one of the little hooks had stuck fast in my thumb. I tried to take it out with the other hand, but it was awfully awkward to do, because the rod wobbled and kept jerking on it. The gilly asked me if there was anything the matter with the flies, but I didn't want him to know what had happened, and so I said, "Oh, no," and turning my back on him I tried my best to get the hook out without his helping me, for I didn't want him to think that the first thing I caught was myself, after just missing my husband—he might be afraid it would be his turn next. You cannot imagine how bothersome it is to go fishing with a gilly to wait on you. I would rather wash dishes with a sexton to wipe them and look for nicks on the edges.

At last—and I don't know how it happened—I did hook a fish, and the minute I felt him I gave a jerk, and up he came. I heard the gilly say something about playing, but I was in no mood for play, and if that fish had been shot up out of the water by a submarine volcano it couldn't have ascended any quicker than when I jerked it up. Then as quick as lightning it went whirling through the air, struck the pages of Jone's book, turning over two or three of them, and then wiggled itself half way down Jone's neck, between his skin and his collar, while the loose hook swung around and nipped him in his ear.

"Don't pull, madam," shouted the gilly, and it was well he did, for I was just on the point of giving an awful jerk to get the fish loose from Jone. Jone gave a grab at the fish, which was trying to get down his back, and pulling him out threw him down; but by doing this he jerked the other hook into his ear, and then a yell arose such as I never before heard from Jone. "I told you you ought not to come in this boat," said I; "you don't like fishing, and something is always happening to you."

"Like fishing!" cried Jone. "I should say not," and he made up such a comical face that even the gilly, who was very polite, had to laugh as he went to take the hook out of his ear.

When Jone and the fish had been got off my line, Jone turned to me and said, "Are you going to fish any more?"

"Not with you in the boat," I answered; and then he said he was glad to hear that, and told the man he could row us ashore.

I can assure you, madam, that fishing in a rather wobbly boat with a husband and a gilly in it, is not to my taste, and that was the end of our sporting experiences in Scotland, but it did not end the glorious times we had by that lake and on the moors.

We hired a little pony trap and drove up to the other end of the lake, and not far beyond that is the beginning of Rannoch Moor, which the books say is one of the wildest and most desolate places in all Europe. So far as we went over the moor we found that this was truly so, and I know that I, at least, enjoyed it ever so much more because it was so wild and desolate. As far as we could see, the moors stretched away in every direction, covered in most places by heather, now out of blossom, but with great rocks standing out of the ground in some places, and here and there patches of grass. Sometimes we could see four or five lochs at once, some of them two or three miles long, and down through the middle of the moor came the maddest and most harum-scarum little river that could be imagined. It actually seemed to go out of its way to find rocks to jump over, just as if it was a young calf, and some of the waterfalls were beautiful. All around us was melancholy mountains, all of them with "Ben" for their first names, except Schiehallion, which was the best shaped of any of them, coming up to a point and standing by itself, which was what I used to think mountains always did; but now I know they run into each other so that you can hardly tell where one ends and the other begins.

For three or four days we went out on these moors, sometimes when the sun was shining, and sometimes when there was a heavy rain and the wind blew gales, and I think I liked this last kind of weather the best, for it gave me an idea of lonely desolation which I never had in any part of the world I have ever been in before. There is often not a house to be seen, not even a crofter's hut, and we seldom met anybody. Sometimes I wandered off by myself behind a hillock or rocks where I could not even see Jone, and then I used to try to imagine how Eve would have felt if she had early become a widow, and to put myself in her place. There was always clouds in the sky, sometimes dark and heavy ones coming down to the very peaks of the mountains, and not a tree was to be seen, except a few rowan trees or bushes close to the river. But by the side of Lock Rannoch, on our way back to the village, we passed along the edge of a fine old forest called the "Black Woods of Rannoch." There are only three of these ancient forests left in Scotland, and some of the trees in this one are said to be eight hundred years old.



The last time we was out on the Rannoch Moor there was such a savage and driving wind, and the rain came down in such torrents, that my mackintosh was blown nearly off of me, and I was wet from my head to my heels. But I would have stayed out hours longer if Jone had been willing, and I never felt so sorry to leave these Grampian Hills, where I would have been glad to have had my father feed his flocks, and where I might have wandered away my childhood, barefooted over the heather, singing Scotch songs and drinking in deep draughts of the pure mountain air, instead of—but no matter.

To-morrow we leave the Highlands, but as we go to follow the shallop of the "Lady of the Lake," I should not repine.



Letter Number Twenty-three



OBAN, SCOTLAND

It would seem to be the easiest thing in the world, when looking on the map, to go across the country from Loch Rannoch over to Katrine and all those celebrated parts, but we found we could not go that way, and so we went back to Edinburgh and made a fresh start. We stopped one night at the Royal Hotel, and there we found a letter from Mr. Poplington. We had left him at Buxton, and he said he was not going to Scotland this season, but would try to see us in London before we sailed.

He is a good man, and he wrote this letter on purpose to tell me that he had had a letter from his friend, the clergyman in Somersetshire, who had forbidden the young woman whose wash my tricycle had run into to marry her lover because he was a Radical. This letter was in answer to one Mr. Poplington wrote to him, in which he gave the minister my reasons for thinking that the best way to convert the young man from Radicalism was to let him marry the young woman, who would be sure to bring him around to her way of thinking, whatever that might be.

I didn't care about the Radicalism. All I wanted was to get the two married, and then it would not make the least difference to me what their politics might be; if they lived properly and was sober and industrious and kept on loving each other, I didn't believe it would make much difference to them. It was a long letter that the clergyman wrote, but the point of it was, that he had concluded to tell the young woman that she might marry the fellow if she liked, and that she must do her best to make him a good Conservative, which, of course, she promised to do. When I read this I clapped my hands, for who could have suspected that I should have the good luck to come to this country to spend the summer and make two matches before I left it!

When we left Edinburgh to gradually wend our way to this place, which is on the west coast of Scotland, the first town we stopped at was Stirling, where the Scotch kings used to live. Of course we went to the castle, which stands on the rocks high above the town; but before we started to go there Jone inquired if the place was a ruin or not, and when he was told it was not, and that soldiers lived there, he said it was all right, and we went. He now says he must positively decline to visit any more houses out of repair. He is tired of them; and since he has got over his rheumatism he feels less like visiting ruins than he ever did. I tell him the ruins are not any more likely to be damp than a good many of the houses that people live in; but this didn't shake him, and I suppose if we come to any more vine-covered and shattered remnants of antiquity I shall be obliged to go over them by myself.

The castle is a great place, which I wouldn't have missed for the world; but the spot that stirred my soul the most was in a little garden, as high in the air as the top of a steeple, where we could look out over the battlefield of Bannockburn. Besides this, we could see the mountains of Ben-Lomond, Ben-Venue, Ben-A'an, Benledi, and ever so much Scottish landscape spreading out for miles upon miles. There is a little hole in the wall here called the Ladies' Look-Out, where the ladies of the court could sit and see what was going on in the country below without being seen themselves, but I stood up and took in everything over the top of the wall.

I don't know whether I told you that the mountains of Scotland are "Bens," and the mouths of rivers are "abers," and islands are "inches." Walking about the streets of Stirling, and I didn't have time to see half as much as I wanted to, I came to the shop of a "flesher." I didn't know what it was until I looked into the window and saw that it was a butcher shop.

I like a language just about as foreign as the Scotch is. There are a good many words in it that people not Scotch don't understand, but that gives a person the feeling that she is travelling abroad, which I want to have when I am abroad. Then, on the other hand, there are not enough of them to hinder a traveller from making herself understood. So it is natural for me to like it ever so much better than French, in which, when I am in it, I simply sink to the bottom if no helping hand is held out to me.

I had some trouble with Jone that night at the hotel, because he had a novel which he had been reading for I don't know how long, and which he said he wanted to get through with before he began anything else. But now I told him he was going to enter on the wonderful country of the "Lady of the Lake," and that he ought to give up everything else and read that book, because if he didn't go there with his mind prepared the scenery would not sink into his soul as it ought to. He was of the opinion that when my romantic feeling got on top of the scenery it would be likely to sink into his soul as deep as he cared to have it, without any preparation, but that sort of talk wouldn't do for me. I didn't want to be gliding o'er the smooth waters of Loch Katrine, and have him asking me who the girl was who rowed her shallop to the silver strand, and the end of it was that I made him sit up until a quarter of two o'clock in the morning while I read the "Lady of the Lake" to him. I had read it before and he had not, but I hadn't got a quarter through before he was just as willing to listen as I was to read. And when I got through I was in such a glow that Jone said he believed that all the blood in my veins had turned to hot Scotch.

I didn't pay any attention to this, and after going to the window and looking out at the Gaelic moon, which was about half full and rolling along among the clouds, I turned to Jone and said, "Jone, let's sing 'Scots wha ha',' before we go to bed."

"If we do roar out that thing," said Jone, "they will put us out on the curbstone to spend the rest of the night."

"Let's whisper it, then," said I; "the spirit of it is all I want. I don't care for the loudness."

"I'd be willing to do that," said Jone, "if I knew the tune and a few of the words."

"Oh, bother!" said I; and when I got into bed I drew the clothes over my head and sang that brave song all to myself. Doing it that way the words and tune didn't matter at all, but I felt the spirit of it, and that was all I wanted, and then I went to sleep.

The next morning we went to Callander by train, and there we took a coach for Trossachs. It is hardly worth while to say we went on top, because the coaches here haven't any inside to them, except a hole where they put the baggage. We drove along a beautiful road with mountains and vales and streams, and the driver told us the name of everything that had a name, which he couldn't help very well, being asked so constant by me. But I didn't feel altogether satisfied, for we hadn't come to anything quotable, and I didn't like to have Jone sit too long without something happening to stir up some of the "Lady of the Lake" which I had pumped into his mind the day before, and so keep it fresh.

Before long, however, the driver pointed out the ford of Coilantogle. The instant he said this I half jumped up, and, seizing Jone by the arm, I cried, "Don't you remember? This is the place where the Knight of Snowdoun, James Fitz-James, fought Roderick Dhu!" And then without caring who else heard me, I burst out with:

"'His back against a rock he bore, And firmly placed his foot before: "Come one, come all! This rock shall fly From its firm base as soon as I."'"

"No, madam," said the driver, politely touching his hat, "that was a mile farther on. This place is:

"'And here his course the chieftain staid, Threw down his target and his plaid.'"

"You are right," said I; and then I began again:

"'Then each at once his falchion drew, Each on the ground his scabbard threw, Each look'd to sun, and stream, and plain, As what they ne'er might see again; Then foot, and point, and eye opposed, In dubious strife they darkly closed.'"

I didn't repeat any more of the poem, though everybody was listening quite respectful without thinking of laughing, and as for Jone, I could see by the way he sat and looked about him that his tinder had caught my spark; but I knew that the thing for me to do here was not to give out but take in, and so, to speak in figures, I drank in the whole of Lake Vannachar, as we drove along its lovely marge until we came to the other end, and the driver said we would now go over the Brigg of Turk. At this up I jumped and said:

"'And when the Brigg of Turk was won, The headmost horseman rode alone.'"

I had sense enough not to quote the next two lines, because when I had read them to Jone he said that it was a shame to use a horse that way.

We now came to Loch Achray, at the other end of which is the Trossachs, where we stopped for the night, and when the driver told me the mountain we saw before us was Ben-Venue, I repeated the lines:

"'The hunter marked that mountain high, The lone lake's western boundary, And deem'd the stag must turn to bay, Where that huge rampart barr'd the way.'"

At last we reached the Trossachs Hotel, which stands near the wild ravines filled with bristling woods where the stag was lost, with the lovely lake in front and Ben-Venue towering up on the other side. I was so excited I could scarcely eat, and no wonder, because for the greater part of the day I had breathed nothing but the spirit of Scott's poetry. I forgot to say that from the time we left Callander until we got to the hotel the rain poured down steadily, but that didn't make any difference to me. A human being soaked with the "Lady of the Lake" is rain-proof.



Letter Number Twenty-four

EDINBURGH

I was sorry to stop my last letter right in the middle of the "Lady of the Lake" country, but I couldn't get it all in, and the fact is, I can't get all I want to say in any kind of a letter. The things I have seen and want to write about are crowded together like the Scottish mountains.