A Voyage of Consolation E-Book

Sara Jeannette Duncan

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

This story begins with the termination of the protagonist’s engagement to his daughter-in-law. narrator with a fiancee who does not approve of the change. The protagonist decides to travel to Europe, to Italy and France. Travel provides an opportunity for witty observation of people and places, and by the end, romance has re-entered the storyteller’s life.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER I

It seems inexcusable to remind the public that one has written a book. Poppa says I ought not to feel that way about it–that he might just as well be shy about referring to the baking soda that he himself invented–but I do, and it is with every apology that I mention it. I once had such a good time in England that I printed my experiences, and at the very end of the volume it seemed necessary to admit that I was engaged to Mr. Arthur Greenleaf Page, of Yale College, Connecticut. I remember thinking this was indiscreet at the time, but I felt compelled to bow to the requirements of fiction. I was my own heroine, and I had to be disposed of. There seemed to be no alternative. I did not wish to marry Mr. Mafferton, even for literary purposes, and Peter Corke’s suggestion, that I should cast myself overboard in mid-ocean at the mere idea of living anywhere out of England for the future, was autobiographically impossible even if I had felt so inclined. So I committed the indiscretion. In order that the world might be assured that my heroine married and lived happily ever afterwards, I took it prematurely into my confidence regarding my intention. The thing that occurred, as naturally and inevitably as the rain if you leave your umbrella at home, was that within a fortnight after my return to Chicago my engagement to Mr. Page terminated; and the even more painful consequence is that I feel obliged on that account to refer to it again.

Even an American man has his lapses into unreasonableness. Arthur especially encouraged the idea of my going to England on the ground that it would be so formative. He said that to gaze upon the headsman’s block in the Tower was in itself a liberal education. As we sat together in the drawing-room–momma and poppa always preferred the sitting-room when Arthur was there–he used to gild all our future with the culture which I should acquire by actual contact with the hoary traditions of Great Britain. He advised me earnestly to disembark at Liverpool in a receptive and appreciative, rather than a critical and antagonistic, state of mind, to endeavour to assimilate all that was worth assimilating over there, remembering that this might give me as much as I wanted to do in the time. I remember he expressed himself rather finely about the only proper attitude for Americans visiting England being that of magnanimity, and about the claims of kinship, only once removed, to our forbearance and affection. He put me on my guard, so to speak, about only one thing, and that was spelling. American spelling, he said, had become national, and attachment to it ranked next to patriotism. Such words as “color,” “program,” “center,” had obsolete English forms which I could only acquire at the sacrifice of my independence, and the surrender of my birthright to make such improvements upon the common language as I thought desirable. And I know that I was at some inconvenience to mention “color,” “program,” and “center,” in several of my letters just to assure Mr. Page that my orthography was not in the least likely to be undermined.

Indeed, I took his advice at every point. I hope I do not presume in asking you to remember that I did. I know I was receptive, even to penny buns, and sometimes simply wild with appreciation. I found it as easy as possible to subdue the critical spirit, even in connection with things which I should never care to approve of. I shook hands with Lord Mafferton without the slightest personal indignation with him for being a peer, and remember thinking that if he had been a duke I should have had just the same charity for him. Indeed, I was sorry, and am still sorry, that during the four months I spent in England I didn’t meet a single duke. This is less surprising than it looks, as they are known to be very scarce, and at least a quarter of a million Americans visit Great Britain every year; but I should like to have known one or two. As it was, four or five knights–knights are very thick–one baronet, Lord Mafferton, one marquis–but we had no conversation–one colonel of militia, one Lord Mayor, and a Horse Guard, rank unknown, comprise my acquaintance with the aristocracy. A duke or so would have completed the set. And the magnanimity which I would so willingly have stretched to include a duke spread itself over other British institutions as amply as Arthur could have wished. When I saw things in Hyde Park on Sunday that I was compelled to find excuses for, I thought of the tyrant’s iron heel; and when I was obliged to overlook the superiorities of the titled great, I reflected upon the difficulty of walking in iron heels without inconveniencing a prostrate population. I should defy anybody to be more magnanimous than I was.

As to the claims of kinship, only once removed, to our forbearance and affection, I never so much as sat out a dance on a staircase with Oddie Pratte without recognising them.

It seems almost incredible that Arthur should not have been gratified, but the fact remains that he was not. Anyone could see, after the first half hour, that he was not. During the first half hour it is, of course, impossible to notice anything. We had sunk to the level of generalities when I happened to mention Oddie.

“He had darker hair than you have, dear,” I said, “and his eyes were blue. Not sky blue, or china blue, but a kind of sea blue on a cloudy day. He had rather good eyes,” I added reminiscently.

“Had he?” said Arthur.

“But your noses,” I went on reassuringly, “were not to be compared with each other.”

“Oh!” said Arthur.

“He wasso impulsive!” I couldn’t help smiling a little at the recollection. “But for that matter they all were.”

“Impulsive?” asked Arthur.

“Yes. Ridiculously so. They thought as little of proposing as of asking one to dance.”

“Ah!” said Arthur.

“Of course, I never accepted any of them, even for a moment. But they had such a way of taking things for granted. Why one man actually thought I was engaged to him!”

“Really!” said Arthur. “May I inquire–”

“No, dear,” I replied, “I think not. I couldn’t tell anybody about it–for his sake. It was all a silly mistake. Some of them,” I added thoughtfully, “were very stupid.”

“Judging from the specimens that find their way over here,” Arthur remarked, “I should say there was plenty of room in their heads for their brains.”

Arthur was sitting on the other side of the fireplace, and by this time his expression was aggressive. I thought his remark unnecessarily caustic, but I did not challenge it.

“Someof them were stupid,” I repeated, “but they were nearly all nice.” And I went on to say that what Chicago people as a whole thought about it I didn’t know and I didn’t care, but so far as myexperience went the English were the loveliest nation in the world.

“A nation like a box of strawberries,” Mr. Page suggested, “all the big ones on top, all the little ones at the bottom.”

“That doesn’t matter to us,” I replied cheerfully, “we never get any further than the top. And you’ll admit there’s a great tendency for little ones to shake down. It’s only a question of time. They’ve had so much time in England. You see the effects of it everywhere.”

“Not at all. By no means. Ourlittle strawberries rise,” he declared.

“Do they? Dear me, so they do! I suppose the American law of gravity is different. In England they would certainly smile at that.”

Arthur said nothing, but his whole bearing expressed a contempt for puns.

“Of course,” I said, “I mean the loveliest nation after Americans.”

I thought he might have taken that for granted. Instead, he looked incredulous and smiled, in an observing, superior way.

“Why do you say ‘ahfter’?” he asked. His tone was sweetly acidulated.

“Why do you say ‘affter’?” I replied simply.

“Because,” he answered with quite unnecessary emphasis, “in the part of the world I come from everybody says it. Because my mother has brought me up to say it.”

“Oh,” I said, looking at the lamp, “they say it like that in other parts of the world too. In Yorkshire–and such places. As far as mothersgo, I must tell you that momma approves of my pronunciation. She likes it better than anything else I have brought back with me–even my tailor-mades–and thinks it wonderful that I should have acquired it in the time.”

“Don’t you think you could remember a little of your good old American? Doesn’t it seem to come back to you?”

All the Wicks hate sarcasm, especially from those they love, and I certainly had not outgrown my fondness for Mr. Page at this time.

“It all came back to me, my dear Arthur,” I said, “the moment you opened your lips!”

At that not only Mr. Page’s features and his shirt front, but his whole personality seemed to stiffen. He sat up and made an outward movement on the seat of his chair which signified, “My hat and overcoat are in the hall, and if you do not at once retract–”

“Rather than allow anything to issue from them which would imply that I was not an American I would keep them closed for ever,” he said.

“You needn’t worry about that,” I observed. “Nothing ever will. But I don’t know why we should gloryin talking through our noses.” Involuntarily I played with my engagement ring, slipping it up and down, as I spoke.

Arthur rose with an expression of tolerant amusement–entirely forced–and stood by the fireplace. He stood beside it, with his elbow on the mantelpiece, not in front of it with his legs apart, and I thought with a pang how much more graceful the American attitude was.

“Have you come back to tell us that we talk through our noses?” he asked.

“I don’t like being called an Anglomaniac,” I replied, dropping my ring from one finger to another. Fortunately I was sitting in a rocking chair–the only one I had not been able to persuade momma to have taken out of the drawing-room. The rock was a considerable relief to my nerves.

“I knew that the cockneys on the other side were fond of inventing fictions about what they are pleased to call the ‘American accent,’” continued Mr. Page, with a scorn which I felt in the very heels of my shoes, “but I confess I thought you too patriotic to be taken in by them.”

“Taken in by them” was hard to bear, but I thought if I said nothing at this point we might still have a peaceful evening. So I kept silence.

“Of course, I speak as a mere product of the American Constitution–a common unit of the democracy,” he went on, his sentences gathering wrath as he rolled them out, “but if there were such a thing as an American accent, I think I’ve lived long enough, and patrolled this little Union of ours extensively enough, to hear it by this time. But it appears to be necessary to reside four months in England, mixing freely with earls and countesses, to detect it.”

“Perhaps it is,” I said, and I mayhave smiled.

“I should hate to pay the price.”

Mr. Page’s tone distinctly expressed that the society of earls and countesses would be, to him, contaminating.

Again I made no reply. I wanted the American accent to drop out of the conversation, if possible, but Fate had willed it otherwise.

“I sai, y’know, awfly hard luck, you’re havin’ to settle down amongst these barbarians again, bai Jove!”

I am not quite sure that it’s a proper term for use in a book, but by this time I was mad. There was criticism in my voice, and a distinct chill as I said composedly, “You don’t do it very well.”

I did not look at him, I looked at the lamp, but there was that in the air which convinced me that we had arrived at a crisis.

“I suppose not. I’m not a marquis, nor the end man at a minstrel show. I’m only an American, like sixty million other Americans, and the language of Abraham Lincoln is good enough for me. But I suppose I, like the other sixty million, emit it through my nose!”

“I should be sorry to contradict you,” I said.

Arthur folded his arms and gathered himself up until he appeared to taper from his stem like a florist’s bouquet, and all the upper part of him was pink and trembling with emotion. Arthur may one day attain corpulence; he is already well rounded.

“I need hardly say,” he said majestically, “that when I did myself the honour of proposing, I was under the impression that I had a suitable larynx to offer you.”

“You see I didn’t know,” I murmured, and by accident I dropped my engagement ring, which rolled upon the carpet at his feet. He stooped and picked it up.

“Shall I take this with me?” he asked, and I said “By all means.”

That was all.

I gave ten minutes to reflection and to the possibility of Arthur’s coming back and pleading, on his knees, to be allowed to restore that defective larynx. Then I went straight upstairs to the telephone and rang up the Central office. When they replied “Hello,” I said, in the moderate and concentrated tone which we all use through telephones, “Can you give me New York?”

Poppa was in New York, and in an emergency poppa and I always turn to one another. There was a delay, during which I listened attentively, with one eye closed–I believe it is the sign of an unbalanced intellect to shut one eye when you use the telephone, but I needn’t go into that–and presently I got New York. In a few minutes more I was accommodated with the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

“Mr. T.P. Wick, of Chicago,” I demanded.

“Is his room number Sixty-two?”

That is the kind of mind which you usually find attached to the New York end of a trans-American telephone. But one does not bandy words across a thousand miles of country with a hotel clerk, so I merely responded:

“Very probably.”

There was a pause, and then the still small voice came again.

“Mr. Wick is in bed at present. Anything important?”

I reflected that while I in Chicago was speaking to the hotel clerk at half-past nine o’clock, the hotel clerk in New York was speaking to me at eleven. This in itself was enough to make our conversation disjointed.

“Yes,” I responded, “it is important. Ask Mr. Wick to get out of bed.”

Sufficient time elapsed to enable poppa to put on his clothes and come down by the elevator, and then I heard:

“Mr. Wick is now speaking.”

“Yes, poppa,” I replied, “I guess you are. Your old American accent comes singing across in a way that no member of your family would ever mistake. But you needn’t be stiff about it. Sorry to disturb you.”

Poppa and I were often personal in our intercourse. I had not the slightest hesitation in mentioning his American accent.

“Hello, Mamie! Don’t mention it. What’s up? House on fire? Water pipes burst? Strike in the kitchen? Sound the alarm–send for the plumber–raise Gladys’s wages and sack Marguerite.”

“My engagement to Mr. Page is broken. Do you get me? What do you suggest?”

I heard a whistle, which I cannot express in italics, and then, confidentially:

“You don’t say so! Bad break?”

“Very,” I responded firmly.

“Any details of the disaster available? What?”

“Not at present,” I replied, for it would have been difficult to send them by telephone.

I could hear poppa considering the matter at the other end. He coughed once or twice and made some indistinct inquiries of the hotel clerk. Then he called my attention again.

“Hello!” he said. “On to me? All right. Go abroad. Always done. Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome, and the other places. I’ll stand in. Germanic sails Wednesdays. Start by night train to-morrow. Bring momma. We can get Germanic in good shape and ten minutes to spare. Right?”

“Right,” I responded, and hung up the handle. I did not wish to keep poppa out of bed any longer than was necessary, he was already up so much later than I was. I turned away from the instrument to go down stairs again, and there, immediately behind me, stood momma.

“Well, really!” I exclaimed. It did not occur to me that the privacy of telephonic communication between Chicago and New York was not inviolable. Besides, there are moments when one feels a little annoyed with one’s momma for having so lightly undertaken one’s existence. This was one of them. But I decided not to express it.

“I was only going to say,” I remarked, “that if I had shrieked it would have been your fault.”

“I knew everything,” said momma, “the minute I heard him shut the gate. I came up immediately, and all this time, dear, you’ve been confiding in us both. My dear daughter.”

Momma carries about with her a well-spring of sentiment, which she did not bequeath to me. In that respect I take almost entirely after my other parent.

“Very well,” I said, “then I won’t have to do it again.”

Her look of disappointment compelled me to speak with decision. “I know what you would like at this juncture, momma. You’d like me to get down on the floor and put my head in your lap and weep all over your new brocade. That’s what you’d really enjoy. But, under circumstances like these, I never do things like that. Now the question is, can you get ready to start for Europe to-morrow night, or have you a headache coming on?”

Momma said that she expected Mrs. Judge Simmons to tea to-morrow afternoon, that she hadn’t been thinking of it, and that she was out of nerve tincture. At least, these were her principal objections. I said, on mature consideration, I didn’t see why Mrs. Simmons shouldn’t come to tea, that there were twenty-four hours for all necessary thinking, and that a gallon of nerve tincture, if required, could be at her disposal in ten minutes.

“Being Protestants,” I added, “I suppose a convent wouldn’t be of any use to us–what do you think?”

Momma thought she could go.

There was no need for hurry, and I attended to only one other matter before I went to bed. That was a communication to the Herald, which I sent off in plenty of time to appear in the morning. It was addressed to the Society Editor, and ran as follows:

“The marriage arranged between Professor Arthur Greenleaf Page, of Yale University, and Miss Mamie Wick, of 1453, Lakeside-avenue, Chicago, will not take place. Mr. and Mrs. Wick, and Miss Wick, sail for Europe on Wednesday by s.s. Germanic.”

I reflected, as I closed my eyes, that Arthur was a regular reader of the Herald.

CHAPTER II

We met poppa on the Germanic gangway, his hat on the back of his head and one finger in each of his waistcoat pockets, an attitude which, with him, always betokens concern. The vessel was at that stage of departure when the people who have been turned off are feeling injured that it should have been done so soon, and apparently only the weight of poppa’s personality on its New York end kept the gangway out. As we drove up he appeared to lift his little finger and three dishevelled navigators darted upon the cab. They and we and our trunks swept up the gangway together, which immediately closed behind us, under the direction of an extremely irritated looking Chief Officer. We reunited as a family as well as we could in connection with uncoiled ropes and ship discipline. Then poppa, with his watch in his hand, exclaimed reproachfully, well in hearing of the Chief Officer, “I gave you ten minutes and you hadten minutes. You stopped at Huyler’s for candy, I’ll lay my last depreciated dollar on it.”

My other parent looked guiltily at some oblong boxes tied up in white paper with narrow red ribbon, which, innocently enough I consider, enhance the value of life to us both. But she ignored the charge–momma hates arguments.

“Dear me!” she said, as the space widened between us and the docks. “So we are all going to Europe together this morning! I can hardly realise it. Farewell America! How interesting life is.”

“Yes,” replied poppa. “And now I guess I’d better show you your cabins before it gets any more interesting.”

We had a calm evening, though nothing would induce momma to think so, and at ten o’clock Senator J.P. Wick and I were still pacing the deck talking business. The moon rose, and threw Arthur’s shadow across our conversation, but we looked at it with precision and it moved away. That is one of poppa’s most comforting characteristics, he would as soon open his bosom to a shot-gun as to a confidence. He asked for details through the telephone merely for bravado. As a matter of fact, if I had begun to send them he would have rung off the connection and said it was an accident. We dipped into politics, and I told the Senator that while I considered his speech on the Silver Compromise a credit to the family on the whole, I thought he had let himself out somewhat unnecessarily at the expense of the British nation.

“We are always twisting a tail,” I said reproachfully, “that does nothing but wag at us.”

This poppa reluctantly admitted with the usual reference to the Irish vote. We both hoped sincerely that any English friends who saw that speech, and paused to realise that the orator was a parent of mine, would consider the number of Irish resident in Illinois, and the amount of invective which their feelings require. Poppa doesn’t really know sometimes whether he is himself or a shillelagh, but whatever his temporary political capacity he is never ungrateful. He went on to give me the particulars of his interview with the President about the Chicago Post Office, and then I gradually unfolded my intention of preparing our foreign experiences as a family for publication in book form. While I was unfolding it poppa eyed me askance.

“Is that usual?” he inquired.

“Very usual indeed,” I replied.

“I mean–under the circumstances?”

“Under what circumstances?” I demanded boldly. I knew that nothing would induce him to specify them.

“Oh, I only meant–it wasn’t exactly my idea.”

“What was your idea–exactly?” It was mean of me to put poppa to the blush, but I had to define the situation.

“Oh,” said he, with unlooked-for heroism, “I was basing my calculations with reference to you on the distractions of change–Paris dry-goods, rowing round Venice in gondolas, riding through the St. Gothard tunnel, and the healing hand of time. I don’t intend to give a day less than six weeks to it. I’m looking forward to the tranquilising effect of the antique some myself,” he added, hedging. “I find these new self-risers that we’ve undertaken to carry almost more than my temperament can stand. They went up from an output of five hundred dollars to six hundred and fifty thousand, and back again inside seven days last month. I’m looking forward to examining something that hasn’t moved for a couple of thousand years with considerable pleasure.”

“Poppa,” said I, ignoring the self-risers, “if you were as particular about the quality of your fiction as you are about the quality of your table-butter, you would know that the best heroines never have recourse to such measures now. They are simply obsolete. Except for my literary intention, I should be ashamed to go to Europe at all–under the circumstances. But that, you see, brings the situation up to date. I transmit my European impressions through the prism of damaged affection. Nothing could be more modern.”

“I see,” replied poppa, rubbing his chin searchingly, which is his manner of expressing sagacious doubt. His beard descends from the lower part of his chin in the long unfettered American manner, without which it is impossible for Punchto indicate a citizen of the United States. When he positively disapproves he pulls it severely.

“But Europe’s been done before, you know,” he continued. “In fact, I don’t know any continent more popular than Europe with people that want to publish books of travel. It’s been done before.”

“Never,” I rejoined, “in connection with you, poppa!”

Poppa removed his hand from his chin.

“Oh, if I’m to assist, that’s quite another anecdote,” he said briskly. “I didn’t understand you intended to ring me in. Of course, I don’t mean to imply there is any special prejudice against books of travel in Europe. About how many pages did you think of running it to?”

“My idea was three hundred,” I replied.

“And how many words to a page?”

“Two hundred and fifty–more or less.”

“That’s seventy-five thousand words! Pretty big undertaking, if you look at it in bulk.”

“We shall have to rely upon momma,” I remarked.

Poppa’s expression disparaged the idea, and he began to feel round for his beard.

“If I were you,” he said, “I wouldn’t place much dependence on momma. She’ll be able to give you a few hints on sunsets and a pointer or two about the various Venuses, likely–she’s had photographs of several of them in the house for years–but I expect it’s going to be a question of historical fact pretty often, and momma won’t be in it. Not that I want to choke momma off,” he continued, “but she will necessitate a whole reference library. And in some parts of Europe I believe they charge you for every pound of luggage, including your lunch, if you don’t happen to have concealed it in your person.”

“We’ll have to pin her down to the guide-books,” I remarked.

“That depends. I’ve always understood that the guide-book market was largely controlled by Mr. Murray and Mr. Baedeker. Also, that Mr. Murray writes in a vein of pretty lofty sentiment, while Mr. Baedeker is about as interesting as a directory. Now where the right emotion is included at the price I don’t see the use of momma, but when it’s a question of Baedeker we might turn her on. See?”

“Poppa,” I replied with emotion, “you will both be invaluable. I will bid you good-night. I believe the electric light burns all night long in the smoking-cabin, but that is not supposed to indicate that gentlemen are expected to stay there till dawn. I see you have two Havanas left. That will be quite enough for one evening. Good-night, poppa.”

CHAPTER III

All the way across momma implored me to become reconciled to Arthur. In extreme moments, when it was very choppy, she composed telegrams on lines which were to drive him wild with contrition without compromising my dignity; and when I suggested the difficulty of tampering with the Atlantic cable in mid-ocean without a diving machine, she wept, hinting that, if I were a true daughter of hers, things would never have come to such a pass. My position, from a filial point of view, was most trying. I could not deny my responsibility for momma’s woes–she never left her cabin–yet I was powerless to put an end to them. Young women in novels have thrown themselves into the arms of the wrong man under far less parental pressure, but although it was indeed the hour the man was not available. Neither, such was the irony of circumstances, would our immediate union have affected the motion in the slightest degree. But although I presented these considerations to momma many times a day, she adhered so persistently to the idea of promoting a happy reunion that I was obliged to keep a very careful eye on the possibility of surreptitious messages from Liverpool. Once on dry land, however, momma saw her duty in another light. I might say that she swallowed her principles with the first meal she really enjoyed, after which she expressed her conviction that it was best to let the dead past bury its dead, so long as the obsequies did not necessitate her immediate return to America.

I was looking forward immensely to observing the Senator in London, remembering the effect it had upon my own imagination, but on our arrival he conducted himself in a manner which can only be described as non-committal. He went about with his hands in his pockets, smoking large cigars with an air of reserved criticism that vastly impressed the waiters, acquiescing in strawberry jam for breakfast, for example, in a manner which said that, although this might be to him a new and complex custom, he was acquainted with Chicago ones much more recondite. His air was superior, but modestly so, and if he said nothing you would never suppose it was because he had nothing to say. He meant to give Great Britain a chance before he pronounced anything distinctly unfavourable even to her steaks, and in the meantime to remember what an up-to-date American owes to his country’s reputation in the hotels of a foreign town.

He was very much at his ease, and I saw him looking at a couple of just introduced Englishmen embarking in conversation, as if he wondered what could possibly be the matter with them. I am sorry that I can’t say as much for my other parent, but before monarchical institutions momma weakened. She had moments of terrible indecision as to how to do her hair, and I am certain it was not a matter of indifference to her that she should make a good impression upon the head butler. Also, she hesitated about examining the mounted Guardsman on duty at Whitehall, preferring to walk past with a casual glance, as if she were accustomed to see things quite as wonderful every day at home, whereas nothing to approach it has ever existed in America, except in the imagination of Mr. Barnum, and he is dead. And shopwalkers patronised her. I congratulated myself sometimes that I was there to assert her dignity.

I must be permitted to generalise in this way about our London experiences because they only lasted a day and a half, and it is impossible to get many particulars into that space. It was really a pity we had so little time. Nothing would have been more interesting than to bring momma into contact with the Poets’ Corner, or introduce poppa to the House of Lords, and watch the effect. I am sure, from what I know of my parents, that the effect would have been crisp. But we decided that six weeks was not too much to give to the Continent, also that an opportunity, six weeks long, of absorbing Europe is not likely to occur twice in the average American lifetime. We stayed over two or three trains in London, however, just long enough to get in a background, as it were, for our Continental experiences. The weather was typical, and the background, from an artistic point of view, was perfect. While not precisely opaque, you couldn’t see through it anywhere.

When it became a question of how we were to put in the time, it seemed to momma as if she would rather lie down than anything.

“You and your father, dear,” she said, “might drive to St. Paul’s, when it stops raining. Have a good look at the dome and try to bring me back the sound of the echo. It is said to be very weird. See that poppa doesn’t forget to take off his hat in the body of the church, but he might put it on in the Whispering Gallery, where it is sure to be draughty. And remember that the funeral coach of the Duke of Wellington is down in the crypt, darling. You might bring me an impression of that. I think I’ll have a cup of chocolate and try to get a little sleep.”

“Is it,” asked poppa, “the coach which the Duke sent to represent him at the other people’s funerals, or the one in which he attended his own?”

“You can look that up,” momma replied; “but my belief is that it was presented to the Duke by a grateful nation after his demise. In which case he couldn’t possibly have used it more than once.”

I looked at momma reprovingly, but, seeing that she had no suspicion of being humorous, I said nothing. The Senator pushed out his under lip and pulled his beard.

“I don’t know about St. Paul’s,” he said; “wouldn’t any other impression do as well, momma? It doesn’t seem to be just the weather for crypts, and I don’t suppose the hearse of a military man is going to make the surroundings any more cheerful. Now, my idea is that when time is limited you’ve got to let some things go. I’d let the historical go every time. I’d let the instructive go–we can’t drag around an idea of the British Museum, for instance. I’d let ancient associations go–unless you’re particularly interested in the parties associated.”

I thought of the morning I once spent picking up details, traditions, and remains of Dr. Johnson in various parts of the West Central district, and privately sympathised with this view, though I felt compelled to look severe. Momma, who was now lying down, dissented. What, then, she demanded, had we crossed the ocean for?

“Rather,” said she, “where time is limited let us spread ourselves, so to speak, over the area of culture available. This morning, for example, you, husband, might ramble round the Tower and try to picture the various tragedies that have been enacted there. You, daughter, might go and bring us those impressions from St. Paul’s, while I will content myself with observing the manners of the British chambermaid. So far, I must say, I think they are lovely. Thus, each doing what he can and she can, we shall take back with us, as a family, more real benefit than we could possibly obtain if we all derived it from the same source.”

“No,” said poppa firmly. “I take exception to your theory right there, Augusta. Culture is a very harmless thing, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take it in, till your back gives out, every day we’re here. But I consider that we’ve got the article in very good shape in our little town over there in Illinois, and personally I don’t propose to go nosing round after it in Europe. And as a family man I should hate to be divided up for any such purpose.”

“Oh, if you’re going to steel yourself against it, my love–”

“Now, what Bramley said to me the day before we sailed was this–No, I’m not steeling myself against it; my every pore is open to it–Bramley said: ‘Your time is limited, you can’t see everything. Very well. See the unique. Keep that in mind,’ he said; ‘the unique. And you’ll be surprised to find how very little there is in the world, outside Chicago, that is unique.’”

“Applying that rule,” continued the Senator, strolling up and down, “the things to see in London are the Crystal Palace and the Albert Memorial. Especially the Albert Memorial. That was a man who played second fiddle to his wife, and enjoyed it, all his life long; and there he sits in Hyde Park to-day, I understand, still receiving the respectful homage of the nation–the only case on record.”

“Westminster Abbey would be much better foryou,” said momma.

“Don’t you think,” I put in, “that if momma is to get any sleep–”

“Certainly. Now, another thing that Bramley said was, ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘remember the Unattainable Elsewhere–and get it. You’re likely to be in London. Now the Unattainable Elsewhere, for that town, is gentlemen’s suitings. For style, price, and quality of goods the London tailor leads the known universe. Wick,’ he said–he was terribly in earnest–‘if you have one hourin London, leave your measure!’”

“In that case,” said momma, sitting up and ascertaining the condition of her hair, “you would like me to be with you, love.”

Now, if momma doesn’t like poppa’s clothes, she always gives them away without telling him. This would be thought arbitrary in England, and I have certainly known the Senator suddenly reduced to great destitution through it, but America is a free country, and there is no law to compel us to see our male relations unbecomingly clad against our will.