To-morrow morning we shall have our last Devonshire clotted cream, for
they tell me this is to be had only in the west of England, and when I
think of the beautiful hills and vales of this country I shall not
forget that.

Of course we would not have time to stay here longer, even if Jone
hadn't got the rheumatism; but if he had to have it, for which I am as
sorry as anybody can be, it is a lucky thing that he did have it just
about the time that we ought to be going away, anyhow. And although I
did not think, when we came to England, that we should ever go to
Buxton, we are thankful that there is such a place to go to; although,
for my part, I can't help feeling disappointed that the season isn't
such that we could go to Bath, and Evelina and Beau Brummel.




_Letter Number Fourteen_


[Illustration]

BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER

We came to this queer old English town, not because it is any better
than so many other towns, but because Mr. Poplington told us it was a
good place for our headquarters while we was seeing the River Wye and
other things in the neighborhood. This hotel is the best in the town
and very well kept, so that Jone made his usual remark about its being
a good place to stay in. We are near the point where the four principal
streets of the town, called Northgate, Eastgate, Southgate, and
Westgate, meet, and if there was nothing else to see it would be worth
while to stand there and look at so much Englishism coming and going
from four different quarters.

There is another hotel here, called the New Inn, that was recommended
to us, but I thought we would not want to go there, for we came to see
old England, and I don't want to see its new and shiny things, so we
came to the Bell, as being more antique. But I have since found out
that the New Inn was built in 1450 to accommodate the pilgrims who came
to pay their respects to the tomb of Edward II. in the fine old
cathedral here. But though I should like to live in a four-hundred-and
forty-year-old house, we are very well satisfied where we are.

Two very good things come from Gloucester, for it is the well-spring of
Sunday schools and vaccination. They keep here the horns of the cow
that Dr. Jenner first vaccinated from, and not far from our hotel is
the house of Robert Raikes. This is an old-fashioned timber house, and
looks like a man wearing his skeleton outside of his skin. We are sorry
Mr. Poplington couldn't come here with us, for he could have shown us a
great many things; but he stayed at Chedcombe to finish his fishing,
and he said he might meet us at Buxton, where he goes every year for
his arm.

To see the River Wye you must go down it, so with just one handbag we
took the train for the little town of Ross, which is near the beginning
of the navigable part of the river--I might almost say the wadeable
part, for I imagine the deepest soundings about Ross are not more than
half a yard. We stayed all night at a hotel overlooking the valley of
the little river, and as the best way to see this wonderful stream is
to go down it in a rowboat, as soon as we reached Ross we engaged a
boat and a man for the next morning to take us to Monmouth, which would
be about a day's row, and give us the best part of the river. But I
must say that when we looked out over the valley the prospect was not
very encouraging, for it seemed to me that if the sun came out hot it
would dry up that river, and Jone might not be willing to wait until
the next heavy rain.

While we was at Chedcombe I read the "Maid of Sker," because its scenes
are laid in the Bristol Channel, about the coast near where we was, and
over in Wales. And when the next morning we went down to the boat which
we was going to take our day's trip in, and I saw the man who was to
row us, David Llewellyn popped straight into my mind.

This man was elderly, with gray hair, and a beard under his chin, with
a general air of water and fish. He was good-natured and sociable from
the very beginning. It seemed a shame that an old man should row two
people so much younger than he was, but after I had looked at him
pulling at his oars for a little while, I saw that there was no need
of pitying him.

It was a good day, with only one or two drizzles in the morning, and we
had not gone far before I found that the Wye was more of a river than I
thought it was, though never any bigger than a creek. It was just about
warm enough for a boat trip, though the old man told us there had been
a "rime" that morning, which made me think of the "Ancient Mariner."
The more the boatman talked and made queer jokes, the more I wanted to
ask him his name; and I hoped he would say David Llewellyn, or at least
David, and as a sort of feeler I asked him if he had ever seen a
coracle. "A corkle?" said he. "Oh, yes, ma'am, I've seen many a one and
rowed in them."

I couldn't wait any longer, and so I asked him his name. He stopped
rowing and leaned on his oars and let the boat drift. "Now," said he,
"if you've got a piece of paper and a pencil I wish you would listen
careful and put down my name, and if you ever know of any other people
in your country coming to the River Wye, I wish you would tell them my
name, and say I am a boatman, and can take them down the river better
than anybody else that's on it. My name is Samivel Jones. Be sure
you've got that right, please--Samivel Jones. I was born on this river,
and I rowed on it with my father when I was a boy, and I have rowed on
it ever since, and now I am sixty-five years old. Do you want to know
why this river is called the Wye? I will tell you. Wye means crooked,
so this river is called the Wye because it is crooked. Wye, the crooked
river."

There was no doubt about the old man's being right about the
crookedness of the stream. If you have ever noticed an ant running over
the floor you will have an idea how the Wye runs through this beautiful
country. If it comes to a hill it doesn't just pass it and let you see
one side of it, but it goes as far around it as it can, and then goes
back again, and goes around some other hill or great rocky point, or a
clump of woods, or anything else that travellers might like to see. At
one place, called Symond's Yat, it makes a curve so great, that if we
was to get out of our boat and walk across the land, we would have to
walk less than half a mile before we came to the river again; but to
row around the curve as we did, we had to go five miles.

Every now and then we came to rapids. I didn't count them, but I think
there must have been about one to every mile, where the river-bed was
full of rocks, and where the water rushed furiously around and over
them. If we had been rowing ourselves we would have gone on shore and
camped when we came to the first of these rapids, for we wouldn't have
supposed our little boat could go through those tumbling, rushing
waters; but old Samivel knew exactly how the narrow channel, just deep
enough sometimes for our boat to float without bumping the bottom, runs
and twists itself among the hidden rocks, and he'd stand up in the bow
and push the boat this way and that until it slid into the quiet water
again, and he sat down to his oars. After we had been through four or
five of these we didn't feel any more afraid than if we had been
sitting together on our own little back porch.

As for the banks of this river, they got more and more beautiful as we
went on. There was high hills with some castles, woods and crags and
grassy slopes, and now and then a lordly mansion or two, and great
massive, rocky walls, bedecked with vines and moss, rising high up
above our heads and shutting us out from the world.

Jone and I was filled as full as our minds could hold with the romantic
loveliness of the river and its banks, and old Samivel was so pleased
to see how we liked it--for I believe he looked upon that river as his
private property--that he told us about everything we saw, and pointed
out a lot of things we wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for him,
as if he had been a man explaining a panorama, and pointing out with a
stick the notable spots as the canvas unrolled.

The only thing in his show which didn't satisfy him was two very fine
houses which had both of them belonged to noble personages in days
gone by, but which had been sold, one to a man who had made his money
in tea, and the other to a man who had made money in cotton. "Think of
that," said he; "cotton and tea, and living in such mansions as them
are, once owned by lords. They are both good men, and gives a great
deal to the poor, and does all they can for the country; but only think
of it, madam, cotton and tea! But all that happened a good while ago,
and the world is getting too enlightened now for such estates as them
are to come to cotton and tea."

Sometimes we passed houses and little settlements, but, for the most
part, the country was as wild as undiscovered lands, which, being that
to me, I felt happier, I am sure, than Columbus did when he first
sighted floating weeds. Jone was a good deal wound up too, for he had
never seen anything so beautiful as all this. We had our luncheon at a
little inn, where the bread was so good that for a time I forgot the
scenery, and then we went on, passing through the Forest of Dean,
lonely and solemn, with great oak and beech trees, and Robin Hood and
his merry men watching us from behind the bushes for all we knew.
Whenever the river twists itself around, as if to show us a new view,
old Samivel would say: "Now isn't that the prettiest thing you've seen
yet?" and he got prouder and prouder of his river every mile he rowed.

At one place he stopped and rested on his oars. "Now, then," said he,
twinkling up his face as if he was really David Llewellyn showing us a
fish with its eyes bulged out with sticks to make it look fresh, "as we
are out on a kind of a lark, suppose we try a bit of a hecho," and then
he turned to a rocky valley on his left, and in a voice like the man at
the station calling out the trains he yelled, "Hello there, sir! What
are you doing there, sir? Come out of that!" And when the words came
back as if they had been balls batted against a wall, he turned and
looked at us as proud and grinny as if the rocks had been his own baby
saying "papa" and "mamma" for visitors.

Not long after this we came to a place where there was a wide field on
one side, and a little way off we could see the top of a house among
the trees. A hedge came across the field to the river, and near the
bank was a big gate, and on this gate sat two young women, and down on
the ground on the side of the hedge nearest to us was another young
woman, and not far from her was three black hogs, two of them pointing
their noses at her and grunting, and the other was grunting around a
place where those young women had been making sketches and drawings,
and punching his nose into the easels and portfolios on the ground. The
young woman on the grass was striking at the hogs with a stick and
trying to make them go away, which they wouldn't do; and just as we
came near she dropped the stick and ran, and climbed up on the gate
beside the others, after which all the hogs went to rooting among the
drawing things.

As soon as Samivel saw what was going on he stopped his boat, and
shouted to the hogs a great deal louder than he had shouted to the
echo, but they didn't mind any more than they had minded the girl with
the stick. "Can't we stop the boat," I said, "and get out and drive off
those hogs? They will eat up all the papers and sketches."

"Just put me ashore," said Jone, "and I'll clear them out in no time;"
and old Samivel rowed the boat close up to the bank.

But when Jone got suddenly up on his feet there was such a twitch
across his face that I said to him, "Now just you sit down. If you go
ashore to drive off those hogs you'll jump about so that you'll bring
on such a rheumatism you can't sleep."

"I'll get out myself," said Samivel, "if I can find a place to fasten
the boat to. I can't run her ashore here, and the current is strong."

"Don't you leave the boat," said I, for the thought of Jone and me
drifting off and coming without him to one of those rapids sent a
shudder through me; and as the stern of the boat where I sat was close
to the shore I jumped with Jone's stick in my hand before either of
them could hinder me. I was so afraid that Jone would do it that I was
very quick about it.

The minute I left the boat Jone got ready to come after me, for he had
no notion of letting me be on shore by myself, but the boat had drifted
off a little, and old Samivel said:

"That is a pretty steep bank to get up with the rheumatism on you. I'll
take you a little farther down, where I can ground the boat, and you
can get off more steadier."

But this letter is getting as long as the River Wye itself, and I must
stop it.




_Letter Number Fifteen_


BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER

As soon as I jumped on shore, as I told you in my last, and had taken a
good grip on Jone's heavy stick, I went for those hogs, for I wanted to
drive them off before Jone came ashore, for I didn't want him to think
he must come.

I have driven hogs and cows out of lots and yards often enough, as you
know yourself, madam, so I just stepped up to the biggest of them and
hit him a whack across the head as he was rubbing his nose in among
some papers with bits of landscapes on them, as was enough to make him
give up studying art for the rest of his life; but would you believe
it, madam, instead of running away he just made a bolt at me, and gave
me such a push with his head and shoulders he nearly knocked me over? I
never was so astonished, for they looked like hogs that you might think
could be chased out of a yard by a boy. But I gave the fellow another
crack on the back, which he didn't seem to notice, but just turned
again to give me another push, and at the same minute the two others
stopped rooting among the paint-boxes and came grunting at me.

For the first time in my life I was frightened by hogs. I struck at
them as hard as I could, and before I knew what I was about I flung
down the stick, made a rush for that gate, and was on top of it in no
time, in company with the three other young women that was sitting
there already.

"Really," said the one next to me, "I fancied you was going to be gored
to atoms before our eyes. Whatever made you go to those nasty beasts?"

I looked at her quite severe, getting my feet well up out of reach of
the hogs if they should come near us.

"I saw you was in trouble, miss, and I came to help you. My husband
wanted to come, but he has the rheumatism and I wouldn't let him."

The other two young women looked at me as well as they could around the
one that was near me, and the one that was farthest off said:

"If the creatures could have been driven off by a woman, we could have
done it ourselves. I don't know why you should think you could do it
any better than we could."

I must say, madam, that at that minute I was a little humble-minded,
for I don't mind confessing to you that the idea of one American woman
plunging into a conflict that had frightened off three English women,
and coming out victorious, had a good deal to do with my trying to
drive away those hogs; and now that I had come out of the little end
of the horn, just as the young women had, I felt pretty small, but I
wasn't going to let them see that.

"I think that English hogs," said I, "must be savager than American
ones. Where I live there is not any kind of a hog that would not run
away if I shook a stick at him." The young woman at the other end of
the gate now spoke again.

"Everything British is braver than anything American," said she; "and
all you have done has been to vex those hogs, and they are chewing up
our drawing things worse than they did before."

Of course I fired up at this, and said, "You are very much mistaken
about Americans." But before I could say any more she went on to tell
me that she knew all about Americans; she had been in America, and such
a place she could never have fancied.

"Over there you let everybody trample over you as much as they please.
You have no conveniences. One cannot even get a cab. Fancy! Not a cab
to be had unless one pays enough for a drive in Hyde Park."

I must say that the hogs charging down on me didn't astonish me any
more than to find myself on top of a gate with a young woman charging
on my country in this fashion, and it was pretty hard on me to have her
pitch into the cab question, because Jone and me had had quite a good
deal to say about cabs ourselves, comparing New York and London,
without any great fluttering of the stars and stripes; but I wasn't
going to stand any such talk as that, and so I said:

"I know very well that our cab charges are high, and it is not likely
that poor people coming from other countries are able to pay them; but
as soon as our big cities get filled up with wretched, half-starved
people, with the children crying for bread at home, and the father glad
enough that he's able to get people to pay him a shilling for a drive,
and that he's not among the hundreds and thousands of miserable men who
have not any work at all, and go howling to Hyde Park to hold meetings
for blood or bread, then we will be likely to have cheap cabs as you
have."

"How perfectly awful!" said the young woman nearest me; but the one at
the other end of the gate didn't seem to mind what I said, but shifted
off on another track.

"And then there's your horses' tails," said she; "anything nastier
couldn't be fancied. Hundreds of them everywhere with long tails down
to their heels, as if they belong to heathens who had never been
civilized."

"Heathens?" said I. "If you call the Arabians heathens, who have the
finest horses in the world, and wouldn't any more think of cutting off
their tails than they would think of cutting their legs off; and if
you call the cruel scoundrels who torture their poor horses by sawing
their bones apart so as to get a little stuck-up bob on behind, like a
moth-eaten paint-brush--if you call them Christians, then I suppose
you're right. There is a law in some parts of our country against the
wickedness of chopping off the tails of live horses, and if you had
such a law here you'd be a good deal more Christian-like than you are,
to say nothing of getting credit for decent taste."

By this time I had forgotten all about what Jone and I had agreed upon
as to arguing over the differences between countries, and I was just as
peppery as a wasp. The young woman at the other end of the gate was
rather waspy too, for she seemed to want to sting me wherever she could
find a spot uncovered; and now she dropped off her horses' tails, and
began to laugh until her face got purple.

"You Americans are so awfully odd," she said. "You say you raise your
corn and your plants instead of growing them. It nearly makes me die
laughing when I hear one of you Americans say raise when you mean
grow."

Now Jone and me had some talk about growing and raising, and the
reasons for and against our way of using the words; but I was ready to
throw all this to the winds, and was just about to tell the impudent
young woman that we raised our plants just the same as we raised our
children, leaving them to do their own growing, when the young woman
in the middle of the three, who up to this time hadn't said a word,
screamed out:

[Illustration: "AND WITH A SCREECH I DASHED AT THOSE HOGS LIKE A STEAM
ENGINE"]

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! He's pulled out my drawing of Wilton Bridge. He'll
eat it up. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Whatever shall I do?"

Instead of speaking I turned quick and looked at the hogs, and there,
sure enough, one of them had rooted open a portfolio and had hold of
the corners of a colored picture, which, from where I sat, I could see
was perfectly beautiful. The sky and the trees and the water was just
like what we ourselves had seen a little while ago, and in about half a
minute that hog would chew it up and swallow it.

The young woman next to me had an umbrella in her hand. I made a snatch
at this and dropped off that gate like a shot. I didn't stop to think
about anything except that beautiful picture was on the point of being
swallowed up, and with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam
engine. When they saw me coming with my screech and the umbrella they
didn't stop a second, but with three great wiggles and three scared
grunts they bolted as fast as they could go. I picked up the picture of
the bridge, together with the portfolio, and took them to the young
woman who owned them. As the hogs had gone, all three of the women was
now getting down from the gate.

"Thank you very much," she said, "for saving my drawings. It was
awfully good of you, especially--"

"Oh, you are welcome," said I, cutting her off short; and, handing the
other young woman her umbrella, I passed by the impudent one without so
much as looking at her, and on the other side of the hedge I saw Jone
coming across the grass. I jerked open the gate, not caring who it
might swing against, and walked to meet Jone. When I was near enough I
called out to know what on earth had become of him that he had left me
there so long by myself, forgetting that I hadn't wanted him to come at
all; and he told me that he had had a hard time getting on shore,
because they found the banks very low and muddy, and when he had landed
he was on the wrong side of a hedge, and had to walk a good way around
it.

"I was troubled," said he, "because I thought you might come to grief
with the hogs."

"Hogs!" said I, so sarcastic, that Jone looked hard at me, but I didn't
tell him anything more till we was in the boat, and then I just said
right out what had happened. Jone couldn't help laughing.

"If I had known," said he, "that you was on top of a gate discussing
horses' tails and cabs I wouldn't have felt in such a hurry to get to
you."

"And you would have made a mistake if you hadn't," I said, "for hogs
are nothing to such a person as was on that gate."

Old Samivel was rowing slow and looking troubled, and I believe at that
minute he forgot the River Wye was crooked.

"That was really hard, madam," he said, "really hard on you; but it was
a woman, and you have to excuse women. Now if they had been three
Englishmen sitting on that gate they would never have said such things
to you, knowing that you was a stranger in these parts and had come on
shore to do them a service. And now, madam, I'm glad to see you are
beginning to take notice of the landscapes again. Just ahead of us is
another bend, and when we get around that you'll see the prettiest
picture you've seen yet. This is a crooked river, madam, and that's how
it got its name. Wye means crooked."

After a while we came to a little church near the river bank, and here
Samivel stopped rowing, and putting his hands on his knees he laughed
gayly.

"It always makes me laugh," he said, "whenever I pass this spot. It
seems to me like such an awful good joke. Here's that church on this
side of the river, and away over there on the other side of the river
is the rector and the congregation."

"And how do they get to church?" said I.

"In the summer time," said he, "they come over with a ferry-boat and a
rope; but in the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over
at all. Many's the time I've lain in bed and laughed and laughed when
I thought of this church on one side of the river, and the whole
congregation and the rector on the other side, and not able to get
over."

Toward the end of the day, and when we had rowed nearly twenty miles,
we saw in the distance the town of Monmouth, where we was going to stop
for the night.

[Illustration: "In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get
over"]

Old Samivel asked us what hotel we was going to stop at, and when we
told him the one we had picked out he said he could tell us a better
one.

"If I was you," he said, "I'd go to the Eyengel." We didn't know what
this name meant, but as the old man said he would take us there we
agreed to go.

"I should think you would have a lonely time rowing back by yourself,"
I said.

"Rowing back?" said he. "Why, bless your soul, lady, there isn't
nobody who could row this boat back agen that current and up them
rapids. We take the boats back with the pony. We put the boat on a
wagon and the pony pulls it back to Ross; and as for me, I generally go
back by the train. It isn't so far from Monmouth to Ross by the road,
for the road is straight and the river winds and bends."

The old man took us to the inn which he recommended, and we found it
was the Angel. It was a nice, old-fashioned, queer English house. As
far as I could see, they was all women that managed it, and it couldn't
have been managed better; and as far as I could see, we was the only
guests, unless there was "commercial gents," who took themselves away
without our seeing them.

We was sorry to have old Samivel leave us, and we bid him a most
friendly good-by, and promised if we ever knew of anybody who wanted to
go down the River Wye we would recommend them to ask at Ross for
Samivel Jones to row them.

We found the landlady of the Angel just as good to us as if we had been
her favorite niece and nephew. She hired us a carriage the next day,
and we was driven out to Raglan Castle, through miles and miles of
green and sloping ruralness. When we got there and rambled through
those grand old ruins, with the drawbridge and the tower and the
courtyard, my soul went straight back to the days of knights and
ladies, and prancing steeds, and horns and hawks, and pages and
tournaments, and wild revels and vaulted halls.

The young man who had charge of the place seemed glad to see how much
we liked it, as is natural enough, for everybody likes to see us
pleased with the particular things they have on hand.

"You haven't anything like this in your country," said he. But to this
I said nothing, for I was tired of always hearing people speak of my
national denomination as if I was something in tin cans, with a label
pasted on outside; but Jone said it was true enough that we didn't have
anything like it, for if we had such a noble edifice we would have
taken care of it, and not let it go to rack and ruin in this way.

Jone has an idea that it don't show good sense to knock a bit of
furniture about from garret to cellar until most of its legs are
broken, and its back cracked, and its varnish all peeled off, and then
tie ribbons around it, and hang it up in the parlor, and kneel down to
it as a relic of the past. He says that people who have got old ruins
ought to be very thankful that there is any of them left, but it's no
use in them trying to fill up the missing parts with brag.

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.

[Illustration: "Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"]

"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."

[Illustration: Mr. Poplington looking for the luggage]

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_


[Illustration]

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.

[Illustration: Pomona encourages Jonas]

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.