PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN Cornell University Library The original of tinis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924073071544 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 924 073 071 544 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS SWITZERLAND; VENICE wales: DEVON HTOME BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY C3C{)e Siibecjjibe ^tz0 Cam6ri&0e 1915 COPYRIGHT, I915, BY KATB DOUGLAS RIGGS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published August SQ15 CONTENTS I. PENELOPE IN SWITZERLAND i II. PENELOPE IN VENICE 37 III. PENELOPE'S PRINTS OF WALES 103 IV. PENELOPE IN DEVON 117 V. PENELOPE AT HOME 165 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS I Penelope in Switzerland PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS I Penelope in Switzerland A DAY IN PESTALOZZI^rOWN SALEMINA and I were in Geneva. If you had ever traveled through Eu- rope with a charming spinster who never sat down at a Continental table d'hote without being asked by an American vis-d- vis whether she were one of the P.'s of Salem, Massachusetts, you would under- stand why I call my friend Salemina. She does n't mind it. She knows that I am siniply jealous because I came from a vul- garly large tribe that never had any coat of 3 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS arms, and whose ancestors always sealed their letters with their thumb-nails. Whenever Francesca and I call her "Salemina," she knows, and we know that she knows, that we are seeing a group of noble ancestors in a sort of halo over her serene and dignified head, so she remains unrufHed under her petit nom, inasmuch as the casual public comprehends nothing of its spurious origin and thinks it was given her hy her sponsors in baptism. Francesca, Salemina, and I have very different backgrounds. The first-named is an extremely pretty person of large income who is traveling with us simply because her relatives think that she will "see Eu- rope" more advantageously under our chaperonage than if she were accompanied by persons of her own age or "set." Salemina is a philanthropist and educa- tor of the first rank and is collecting all sorts of valuable material to put at the IN SWITZERLAND service of her own country when she re- turns to it, which will not be a moment before her letter of credit is exhausted. I, too, am quasi-educational, for I had a few years of experience in mothering and teaching little waifs and strays of the streets before I began to paint pictures. Never shall I regret those nerve-racking, back-breaking, heart-warming, weary, and beautiful years, when, all unconsciously, I was learning to paint children by living with them. Even now the spell still works and it is the curly head, the "shining morning face," the ready tear, the glanc- ing smile of childhood that enchains me and gives my brush whatever skill it pos- sesses. We had not been especially high-minded or educational in Switzerland, Salemina and I. The worm will turn; and there is a point where the improvement of one's mind seems a farce, and the service of 5 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS humanity, for the moment, a duty only born of a diseased imagination. How can one sit on a vine-embowered balcony facing lovely Lake Geneva and think about modern problems, — Im- proved Tenements, Child Labor, Single Tax, Sweat Shops, and the Right Training of the Rising Civilization? Blue Lake Geneva ! — blue as a woman's eye, blue as the vault of heaven, dropped into the lap of the green earth like a great spar- kling sapphire! Mont Blanc you know to be just behind the clouds on the other sid.e, and that presently, after hours or days of patient waiting, he may condescend to unveil himself to your worshipful gaze. "He is wise in his dignity and reserve," mused Salemina as we sat on the veranda. "He is all the more sublime because he withdraws himself from time to time. In fact, if he did n't see fit to cover himself occasionally, one could neither eat nor 6 IN SWITZERLAND sleep, nor do anything but adore and magnify." The day before this Interview we had sailed to the end of the sapphire lake and visited the "snow-white battlements" of the Castle of Chillon; seen its "seven pil- lars of Gothic mould," and its dungeons deep and old, where poor Bonnivard, Byron's famous "Prisoner of Chillon" lay captive for so many years, and where Rousseau fixes the catastrophe of his He- loise. We had just been to Coppet too; Coppet where the Neckers lived and Madame de Stael was born and lived during many years of her life. We had wandered through the shaded walks of the magnificent cha- teau garden, and strolled along the terrace where the eloquent Corinne had walked with the Schlegels and other famous habi- tues of her salon. We had visited Calvin's house at II Rue des Chanoines, Rous- 7 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS seau's at No. 40 on the Grande Rue, and Voltaire's at Ferney. And so we had been living the past, Salemina and I. But "Early one morning Just as the day was dawning," my slumbering conscience rose in Puritan strength and asserted its rights to a hearing. "Salemina," said I, as I walked into her room, "this life that we are leading will not do for me any longer. I have been too much immersed in ruins. Last night in writing to a friend in New York I uttered the most disloyal and incendiary state- ments. I said that I would rather die than live without ruins of some kind; that America was so new, and crude, and spick and span, that it was obnoxious to any aesthetic soul; that our tendency to erect hideous public buildings and then keep them in repair afterwards would make us the butt of ridicule among future genera-' 8 IN SWITZERLAND tions. I even proposed the founding of an American Ruin Company, Limited, — in which the stockholders should purchase favorably situated bits of land and erect picturesque ruins thereon. To be sure, I said, these ruins would n't have any asso- ciations at first, but what of that? We have plenty of poets and romancers; we could manufacture suitable associations and fit them to the premises. At first, it is true, they might not fire the imagina- tion; but after a few hundred years, in being crooned by mother to infant and handed down by father to son, they would mellow with age, as all legends do, and they would end by being hallowed by rising generations. I do not say they would be absolutely satisfactory from every standpoint, but I do say that they would be better than nothing. "However," I continued, "all this was last night, and I have had a change of 9 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS heart this morning. Just on the border- land between sleeping and waking, I had a vision. I remembered that to-day would be Monday the ist of September; that all over our beloved land schools would be opening and that your sister pedagogues would be doing your work for you in your absence. Also I remembered that I am the dishonorable but Honorary President of a Froebel Society of four hundred mem- bers, that it meets to-morrow, and that I Ban't aflFord to send them a cable." "It is all true," said Salemina. "It might have been said more briefly, but it is quite true." "Now, my dear, I am only a painter with an occasional excursion into educa- tional fields, but you ought to be gath- ering stores of knowledge to lay at the feet of the masculine members of your School Board." "I ought, indeed!" sighed Salemina. lO IN SWITZERLAND "Then let us begin!" I urged. "I want to be good to-day and you must be good with me. I never can be good alone and neither can you, and you know it. We will give up the lovely drive in the dili- gence; the luncheon at the French restau-< rant and those heavenly little Swiss cakes" (here Salemina was almost unmanned); "the concert on the great organ and all the other frivolous things we had intended ; and we will make an educational pilgrim- age to Yverdon. You may not remember, my dear," — this was said severely be- cause I saw that she meditated rebellion and was going to refuse any programme which did n't include the Swiss cakes, — "you may not remember that Jean Henri Pestalozzi lived and taught in Yverdon. Your soul is so steeped in illusions ; so sub- merged in the Lethean waters of the past; so emasculated by thrilling legends, pal- try titles, and ruined castles, that you for- II PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS get that Pestalozzi was the father of pop- ular education and the sometime teacher of Froebel, our patron saint. When you return to your adored Boston, your faith- ful constituents in that and other suburbs of Salem, Massachusetts, will not ask you if you have seen the Castle of Chillon and the terrace of Corinne, but whether you went to Yverdon." Salemina gave one last fond look at the lake and picked up her Baedeker. She searched languidly in the Y's and preis- ently read in a monotonous, guidebook voice. "Um — um — um — yes, here it is, ' Yverdon is sixty-one miles from Geneva, three hours, forty minutes, on the way to Neuchdtel and Bale.' (Neuchatel is the cheese place; I'd rather go there and we could take a bag of those Swiss cakes.) ^It is on the southern hank of Lake Neuchdtel at the influx of the Orhe or Thiele. It occu- pies the site of the Roman town of Ebrodu- 12 IN SWITZERLAND num. The castle dates from the twelfth cen- tury and was occupied by Pestalozzi as a college.^ " This was at eight, and at nine, leaving Francesca in bed, we were in the station at Geneva. Finding that we had time to spare, we went across the street and bar- gained for an in transit luncheon with one of those dull, native shopkeepers who has no idea of American-French. Your American-French, by the way, succeeds well enough so long as you prac- tice, in the seclusion of your apartment, certain assorted sentences which the phrase book tells you are likely to be needed. But so far as my experience goes, it is always the unexpected that happens, and one is eternally falling into difficulties never en- countered by any previous traveler, For instance, after purchasing a cold chicken, some French bread, and a bit of cheese, we added two bottles of lemonade. 13 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS We managed to ask for a glass, from which fto drink it, but the man named two francs as the price. This was more than Salemina could bear. Her spirit was never dismayed at any extravagance, but it reared its crested head in the presence of extortion. She waxed wroth. The man stood his ground. After much crimina- tion and recrimination I threw myself into the breach. "Salemina," said I, "I wish to remark, first : That we have three minutes to catch the train. Second: That, occupying the position we do in America, — you the member of a School Board and I the Hon- orary President of a Froebel Society, — we cannot be seen drinking lemonade from a bottle, in a public railway carriage; it would be too convivial. Third: You do not understand this gentleman. You have studied the language longer than I, but I have studied it more lately than you, and 14 IN SWITZERLAND I am fresher, much fresher than you." (Here Salemina bridled obviously.) "The man is not saying that two francs is the price of the glass. He says that we can pay him two francs now, and if we will return the glass to-night when we come home he will give us back one franc fifty centimes. That is fifty centimes for the rent of the glass, as I understand it." Salemina's right hand, with the glass in it, dropped nervelessly at her side. "If he uttered one single syllable of all that rig- marole, then OUendorf is a myth, that's all I have to say." "The gift of tongues is not vouchsafed to all," I responded with dignity. "I happen to possess a talent for languages and I apprehend when I do not compre- hend." Salemina was crushed by the weight of my self-respect, and we took the tumbler, and the train. IS PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS It was a cloudless day and a beautiful journey, along the side of the sapphire lake for miles, and always in full view of the glorious mountains. We arrived at Yver- don about noon, and had eaten our lunch- eon on the train, so that we should have a long, unbroken afternoon. We left our books and heavy wraps in the station with the porter, with whom we had another slight misunderstanding as to general intentions and terms ; then we started, Salemina car- rying the lemonade glass in her hand, with her guidebook, her red parasol, and her Astrakhan cape. The tumbler was a good deal of trouble, but her heart was set on re- turning it safely to the Geneva pirate; not so much to reclaim the one franc fifty cen- times as to decide conclusively whether he had ever proposed such restitution. I knew her mental processes, so I refused to carry any of her properties; besides, the pirate had used a good many irregular verbs in i6 IN SWITZERLAND his conversation and upon due reflection I was a trifle nervous about the true na- ture of the bargain. The Yverdon station fronted on a great open common dotted with a few trees. There were a good many mothers and children sitting on the benches, and a num- ber of young lads playing ball. The town itself is one of the quaintest, quietest, and sleepiest in Switzerland. From 1803 to 1810 it was a place of pilgrimage for philanthropists from all parts of Europe; for at that tiijie Pestalozzi was at the ze- nith of his fame, having under him one hundred and sixty-five pupils from Europe and America, and thirty-two adult teach- ers, who were learning his method. But Yverdon has lost its former great- ness now! Scarcely any English travelers go there and still fewer Americans. We fancied that there was nothing extraor- dinary in our appearance; nevertheless a 17 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS small crowd of children followed at our heels, and the shopkeepers stood at their open doors and regarded us with intense interest- "No English spoken here, that is evi- dent," said Salemina ruefully; "but you have such a gift for languages you can take the command to-day and make the blun- ders and bear the jeers of the public. You must find out where the new Pestalozzi Monument is, — where the Chateau is, — where the schools are, and whether visi- tors are admitted, — whether there is a re- spectable hotel where we can get dinner, — whether we can get back to Geneva to-night, whether it's a fast or a slow train, and what time it gets there, — whether the methods of Pestalozzi are still main- tained, — whether they know anything about Froebel, — whether they know what a kindergarten is, and whether they have one in the village. Some of these questions will be quite difficult even for you." i8 IN SWITZERLAND Well, the monument was not difficult to find, at all events. We accosted two or three small boys and demanded boldly of one of them, "Ou est le monument de Pester lozzi, s'il vous plait?" He shrugged his shoulders like an Amer- ican small boy and said vacantly, " Je ne sais pas." "Of course he does know," said Sal- emina; "he means to be disagreeable; or else 'monument' is n't monument." "Well," I answered, "there is a monu- ment in the distance, and there cannot be two in this village." Sure enough it was the very one we sought. It stands in a little open place quite " in the business heart of the city," — as we should say in America, and is an ex- ceedingly fine and impressive bit of sculp- ture. The group of three figures is in bronze and was done by M. Gruet of Paris. The modeling is strong, the expression 19 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS of Pestalozzi benign and sweet, and the trusting upturned faces of the children equally genuine and attractive. One side of the pedestal bears the in- scription : — A Pestalozzi 174.6-1827 Monument erige par souscription populaire MDCCCXC On a second side these words are carved in the stone : — Sauveur des Pauvres a Neuhof Pete des Orphelins a Stam Fondateur de I'ecole populaire a. Burgdorf Sducateur de I'kumanite a Yverdon Tout pour les autres, pour lui, — rien ! An older monument erected in 1846 by the Canton of Argovia bears this same in- scription, save that it adds, "Preacher to the people in 'Leonard and Gertrude.' 20 IN SWITZERLAND Man. Christian. Citizen. Blessed be his name!" On the third side of the Yverdon Monu- ment is Pestalozzi's noble speech, fine enough indeed, to be cut in stone: — "J'ai vecu moi-minu comme un mendiant, pour apprendre d des mendiants a vivre comme des hommes." We sat a long time on the great marble pedestal, gazing into the benevolent face, and reviewing the simple, self-sacrificing life of the great educator, and then started on a tour of inspection. After wandering through most of the shops, buying photo- graphs and mementoes, Salemina dis- covered that she had left the expensive tumbler in one of them. After a long dis- cussion as to whether tumbler was mas- culine or feminine, and as to whether " Ai-je laisse un verre ici?" or "Est-ce que 21 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS fai laisse un verre ici ? " was the proper query, we retraced our steps, Salemina ask- ing in one shop, " Excusez-moi, je vous prie, Mais ai-je laisse un verre ici ? " — and I in the next, " Je demande pardon, Madame, est-ce que j'ai laisse un verre dans ce maga- sin-ci — J' en ai perdu un, somewhere." Finally we found it, and in response not to mine but to Salemina's question, so that she was superior and obnoxious for several minutes. Our next point of interest was the old castle, which is still a public school. Find- ing the caretaker, we visited first the mu- seum and library — a small collection of curiosities, books, and mementoes, various portraits of Pestalozzi and his wife, manu- scripts, and so forth. The simple-hearted woman who did the honors was quite over- come by our knowledge of and interest in her pedagogical hero, but she did not re- turn the compliment. I asked her if the 22 IN SWITZERLAND townspeople knew about Friedrich Froebel, but she looked blank. "Froebel? Froebel?" she asked; "qui est-ce?" "Mats, Madame," I said eloquently, "c'etait un grand homme! Un heros! Le plus grand Sieve de Pestalozzi! Aussi grand que Pestalozzi soi-meme!" ("Plus grand! Why don't you say plus grand?" murmured Salemina loyally.) "Jenesais!" she returned, with an in- diiFerent shrug of the shoulders. "Je ne sais! II y a des autres,je crois; mats moi, je connais Pestalozzi, c'est assez!" All the younger children had gone home, but she took us through the empty school- rooms, which were anything but attrac- tive. We found an unhappy small boy locked in one of them. I slipped behind the concierge to chat with him, for he was so exactly like all other small boys in disgrace that he made me homesick. 23 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS "Tu etais mechant, n'est-ce-pas?" I whispered consolingly; "mais tu seras sage demain, fen suis sure ! " I thought this very pretty, but he wrig- gled from under my benevolent hand, say- ing " Fa!" (which I took to be, "Go 'long' you!") "je rC etais mechant aujourd'hui et je ne serai pas sage demain ! " I asked the concierge if the general methods of Pestalozzi were still used in the schools of Yverdon. "Mais certainement!" she replied as we went into a room where twenty to thirty girls of ten years were studying. There were three pleasant win- dows looking out into the street; the ordi- nary platform and ordinary teacher's table with the ordinary teacher (in an extraor- dinary state of coma) behind it; and rather rude desks and seats for the children, but not a single ornament, picture, map, or case of objects and specimens around the room. The children were nice, clean, pleasant, 24 IN SWITZERLAND stolid little things with braided hair and pinafores. The sole decoration of the apart- ment was a highly-colored chart that we had noticed on the walls of all the other schoolrooms. Feeling that this must be a sacred relic, and that it probably illustrated some of the Pestalozzian foundation prin- ciples, I walked up to it reverently. " Qu^ est-ce-que c'est cela, Madame ? " I in- quired, rather puzzled by its appearance. "C'est la methode de Pestalozzi" the teacher replied absently. I wished that we kindergarten people could get Froebel's educational idea in such a snug, portable shape, and drew nearer fto gaze at it. I can give you a very complete description of the pictures from memory, as I copied the titles verbatim et literatim. The whole chart was a powerful moral object lesson on the dangers of incendia- rism and the evils of reckless disobedience. It was printed appropriately in the most 25 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS lurid colors, and divided into nine ta- bleaux. These were named as follows : — I — LA VRAIE GAITE. Twelve or fifteen boys and girls are play- ing together so happily and innocently that their good angels sing for joy. II — UNE PROPOSITION FATALe! Suddenly "le petit Charles" says to his comrades, "Come! let us build a fire!" Le petit Charles is a typical infant villain and is surrounded at once by other incendiary spirits all in accord with his insidious plans. III — LA protestation. The Good Little Marie, a Sunday-School heroine of the true type, approaches the group and, gazing heavenward, remarks that it is wicked to play with matches. The G. L. M. is of saintly presence, — so clean 26 IN SWITZERLAND and well groomed that you feel inclined to push her into a puddle. Her hands are not full of vulgar toys and sweetmeats, like those of the other children, but are ex- tended graciously as if she were in the habit of pronouncing benedictions. IV INSOUCIANCE ! Le petit Charles puts his evil little paw in his dangerous pockets and draws out a wicked lucifer match, saying with abomi- nable indifference, "Bah! what do we care.'' We're going to build a fire, whatever you say. Come on, boys!" V UN PLAISIR DANGEREUX! The boys "come on." Led by "le petit vilain Charles" they light a dangerous little fire in a dangerous little spot. Their faces shine with unbridled glee. The G. L. M. retires to a distance with a few saintly followers, meditating whether she shall run and tell her mother. "Le petit Paul," an 27 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS infant of three summers, draws near the fire, attracted by the cheerful blaze. VI — MALHEUR ET INEXPERIENCE. Le petit Paul somehow or other tumbles into the fire. Nothing but a desire to influ- ence posterity as an awful example could have induced him to take this unnecessary step, but having walked in he stays in, like an infant John Rogers. The bad boys are so horror-stricken it does not occur to them to pull him out, and the G. L. M. is weep- ing over the sin of the world. VII — TROP TARD ! ! The male parent of le petit Paul is seen rushing down an adjacent Alp. He leads a flock of frightened villagers who have seen the smoke and heard the wails of their oflf- spring. As the last shred of le petit Paul has vanished in said smoke, the observer notes that the poor father is indeed "too late." 28 IN SWITZERLAND VIII — desespoir!!! The despair of all concerned would draw tears from the dryest eye. Only one per- son wears a serene expression, and that is the G. L. M., who is evidently thinking: "Perhaps they will listen to me the next time." IX — LA fin! The charred remains of le petit Paul are being carried to the cemetery. The G. L. M. heads the procession in a white veil. In a prominent place among the mourners is "le pauvre petit Charles," so bowed with grief and remorse that he can scarcely be recognized. It was a telling sermon! If I had.been a child I should never have looked at a match again; and old as I was, I could not, for days afterward, regard a box of them with- out a shudder* I thought that probably 29 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS Yverdon had been visited in the olden time by a series of disastrous holocausts, all set by small boys, and that this was the powerful antidote presented; so I asked the teacher whether incendiarism was a popu- lar failing in that vicinity and whether the chart was one of a series inculcating various moral lessons. I don't know whether she understood me or not, but she said no, it was la mhhode de Pestalozzi." Just at this juncture she left the room, apparently to give the pupils a brief study- period, and simultaneously the concierge was called downstairs by a crying baby. A bright idea occurred to me and I went hurriedly into the corridor where my friend was taking notes. "Salemina," said I, "here is an oppor- tunity of a lifetime! We ought to address these children in their native tongue. It will be something to talk about in educa- tional pow-wows. They do not know that 30 IN SWITZERLAND we are distinguished visitors, but we know it. A female member of a School Board and the Honorary President of a Froebel Society owe a duty to their constituents. You go in and tell them who and what I am and make a speech in French. Then I'll tell them who and what you are and make another speech." Salemina assumed a modest violet at- titude, declined the honor absolutely, and intimated that there were persons who would prefer talking in a language they did n't know rather than to remain sensi- bly silent. However the plan struck me as being so fasfinating that I went back alone, looked all ways to see if any one were coming, mounted the platform, cleared my throat, and addressed the awe-struck youngsters in the following words. I will spare you the French, but you will perceive by the con- struction of the sentences, that I. uttered 31 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS only those sentiments possible in an early- stage of language-study. "My dear children," I began, "I live many thousand miles across the ocean ifi America. You do not know me and I do not know you, but I do know all about your good Pestalozzi and I love him." "// est mort!" interpolated one offensive little girl in the front row. Salemina tittered audibly in the corridor and I crossed the room and closed the door. I think the children expected me to put the key in my pocket and then murder them and stuff them into the stove. "I know perfectly well that he is dead, my child," I replied winningly, — "it is his life, his memory that I love. — And once upon a time, long ago, a great man named Friedrich Froebel came here to Yverdon and studied with your great Pes- talozzi. It was he who made kindergartens for little children, jardinf des enjants, you 32 IN SWITZERLAND know. Some of your grandmothers re- member Froebel, I think?" Hereupon two of the smaller chits shouted some sort of a negation which I did not in the least comprehend, but which from large American experience I took to be, "My grandmother doesn't!" "My grandmother does n't!" Seeing that the others regarded me fa- vorably, I continued, " It is because I love Pestalozzi and Froebel, that I came here to-day to see your beautiful new monument. I have just bought a photograph taken on that day last year when it was first uncov- ered. It shows the flags and the decora- tions, the flowers and garlands, and ever so many children standing in the sunshine, dressed in white and singing hymns of praise. You are all in the picture, I am sure!" This was a happy stroke. The children crowded about me and showed me where 33 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS they were standing In the photograph, what they wore on the august occasion, how the bright sun made them squint, how a certain malheureuse Henriette could n't go to the festival because she was ill. I could understand very little of their magpie chatter, but it was a proud mo- ment. Alone, unaided, a stranger in a strange land, I had gained the attention of children while speaking in a foreign tongue. O, if I had only left the door open that Salemina might have witnessed this tri- umph! But hearing steps in the distance, I said hastily, "Asseyezrvous, mes enfants, tout-de-suite!" My tone was so author- itative that they obeyed instantly, and when the teacher entered it was as calm as the millennium. We rambled through the village for another hour, dined at a quaint little inn, gave a last look at the monument, and left for Geneva at seven o'clock in the pleasant 34 IN SWITZERLAND September twilight. Arriving a trifle after ten, somewhat weary in body and slightly anxious in mind, I followed Salemina into the tiny cake-shop across the street from the station. She returned the tumbler, and the man, who seemed to consider it an un- expected courtesy, thanked us volubly. I held out my hand and reminded him tim- idly of the one franc fifty centimes. He inquired what I meant. I explained. He laughed scornfully. I remonstrated. He asked me if I thought him an imbe- cile. I answered no, and wished that I knew the French for several other terms nearer the truth, but equally offensive. Then we retired, having done our part, as good Americans, to swell the French rev- enues, and that was the end of our day in Pestalozzi-town; not the end, however, of the lemonade-glass episode, which was always a favorite story in Salemina's rep- ertory. II Penelope in Venice This noble citie doth in a manner chalenge this at my hands, that I should describe her also as well as the other cities I saw in my journey, partly because she gave me most louing and kinde entertainment for the sweetest time (I must needes confesse) that euer I spent in my life; and partly for that she ministered vnto me more variety of re- markable and delicious objects than mine eyes euer sur- uayed in any citie before, or euer shall . . . the fairest Lady, yet the richest Paragon and Queene of Christendome. Cory at' s Crudities: 1611. II Penelope in Venice Venice, May 12 Hotel Paolo Anafesto I HAVE always wished that I might have discovered Venice for myself. In the midst of our mad acquisition and fren- zied dissemination of knowledge, these latter days, we miss how many fresh and exquisite sensations! Had I a daughter, I should like to inform her mind on every other possible point and keep her in abso- lute ignorance of Venice. Well do I realize that it would be impracticable, although no more so, after all, than Rousseau's plan of educating Emile, which certainly ob- tained a wide hearing and considerable support in its time. No, tempting as it 39 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS would be, it would be difficult to carry out such a theory in these days of logic and common sense, and in some moment of weakness I might possibly succumb and tell her all about it, for fear that some stranger, whom she might meet at a ball, would have the pleasure of doing it first. The next best woman-person in the world with whom to see Venice, barring the lovely non-existent daughter, is Salemina. It is our first visit, but, alas! we are, nevertheless, much better informed than I could wish. Salemina's mind is particu- larly well furnished, but luckily she can- not always remember the point wished for at the precise moment of need; so that, taking her all in all, she is nearly as agree- able as if she were ignorant. Her knowl- edge never bulks heavily and insistently in the foreground or middle-distance like that of Miss Celia Van Tyck, but remains as it should, in the haze of a melting and 40 IN VENICE delicious perspective. She has plenty of enthusiasms, too, and Miss Van Tyck has none. Imagine our plight at being acci- dentally linked to that encyclopaedic lady in Italy! She is an old acquaintance of Sale- mina's and joined us in Florence, where she had been staying for a month, waiting for her niece Kitty Schuyler, — Kitty Copley now, — who is in Spain with her husband. Miss Van Tyck would be endurable in Sheffield, Glasgow, Lyons, Genoa, Kan- sas City, Pompeii, or Pittsburg, but she should never have blighted Venice with her presence. She insisted, however, on accompanying us, and I can only hope that the climate and associations will have a relaxing effect on her habits of thought and speech. When she was in Florence, she was so busy in " reading up " Verona and Padua that she had no time for the Uffizi Gallery. In Verona and Padua she was absorbed in Hare's "Venice," vaccinating herself, so 41 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS to speak, with information, that it might not steal upon, and infect her, unawares. If there is anything that Miss Van abhors, it is knowing a thing without knowing that she knows it; while for me, the most charm- ing knowledge is the sort that comes by un- conscious absorption, like the free grace of God. We intended to enter Venice in orthodox fashion, by moonlight, and began to con- sult about trains when we were in Milan. The porter said that there was only one train between the eight and the twelve, and gave me a pamphlet on the subject; but Salemina objects to an early start, and Miss'Van refuses to arrive anywhere after dusk, so it is fortunate that the dis- tances are not great. They have a curious way of reckoning time in Italy, for I found that the train leaving Milan at eight-thirty was sched- uled to arrive at ten minutes past eighteen. 42 IN VENICE " You could never sit up until then, Miss Van," I said; "but, on the other hand, if we leave later, to please Salemina, say at ten in the morning, we do not arrive until eight minutes before twenty-one! I have n't the faintest idea what tirne that will really be, but it sounds too late for three defenseless women — all of them unmarried — to be prowling about in a strange city." It proved on investigation, however, that twenty-one o'clock is only nine in Christian language (that is, one's mother tongue), so we united in choosing that hour as being the most romantic possible, and there was a full yellow moon as we arrived in the railway station. My heart beat high with joy and excitement, for I succeeded in establishing Miss Van with Salemina in one gondola, while I took all the luggage in another, ridding myself thus cleverly of the disenchanting influence of Miss Van's company. 43 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS "Do come with us, Penelope," she said, as we issued from the portico of the station and heard, instead of the usual cabdrivers' pandemonium, only the soft lapping of waves against the marble steps — " Do come with us, Penelope, and let us enter 'dangerous and sweet-charmed Venice' to- gether. It does, indeed, look a 'veritable sea-bird's nest.' " She had informed me before, in Milan, that Cassiodorus, Theodoric's secretary, had thus styled Venice, but somehow her slightest remark is out of key. I can al- ways see it printed in small type in a foot- note at the bottom of the page, and I always wish to skip it, as I do other foot- notes, and annotations, and marginal notes and addenda. If Miss Van's mother had only thought of it. Addenda would have been a delightful Christian name for her, and much more appropriate than Celia. If I should be asked on bended knees, 44 IN VENICE if I should be reminded that every intel- ligent and sympathetic creature brings a pair of fresh eyes to the study of the beau- tiful, if it should be affirmed that the new note is as likely to be struck by the 'pren- tice as by the master hand, if I should be assured that my diary would never be read, I should still refuse to write my first impressions of Venice. My best successes in life have been achieved by knowing what not to do, and I consider it the fin- est common sense to step modestly along in beaten paths, not stirring up, even there, any more dust than is necessary. If my friends and acquaintances ever go to Ven- ice, let them read their Ruskin, their Goethe, their Byron, Shelley, and Words- worth, their Rogers, Gautier, Michelet, their Symonds and Howells, not forgetting old "Coryat's Crudities," and be thank- ful I spared them mine. It was the eve of Ascension Day, and a 45 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS yellow May moon was hanging in the blue. I wished with all my heart that it were a little matter of seven or eight hundred years earlier in the world's history, for then the people would have been ^keeping vigil and making ready for that nuptial cere- mony of Ascension-tide when the Doge married Venice to the sea. Why can we not make pictures nowadays, as well as paint them? We are banishing color as fast as we can, clothing our buildings, our ships, ourselves, in black and white and sober hues, and if it were not for dear, gaudy Mother Nature, who never puts her palette away, but goes on painting her reds and greens and blues and yellows with the same lavish hand, we should have a sad and discreet universe indeed. But so long as we have more or less stopped making pictures, is it not fortu- nate that the great ones of the olden time have been eternally fixed on the pages of 46 IN VENICE the world's history, there to glow and charm and burn forever and a day? To be able to recall those scenes of marvelous beauty so vividly that one lives through them again in fancy, and reflect, that since we have stopped being picturesque and fascinating, we have learned, on the whole, to behave much better, is as delightful a trend of thought as I can imagine, and it was mine as I floated toward the Piazza of San Marco in my gondola. I could see the Doge descend the Giant's Stairs, and issue from the gate of the Ducal Palace. I could picture the great Bucentaur as it reached the open beyond the line of the tide. I could see the white- mitered Patriarch walking from his con- vent on the now deserted isle of Sant' Elena to the shore where his barge lay waiting to join the glittering procession. And then there floated before my en- tranced vision the princely figure of the 47 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS Doge taking the Pope-blessed ring, and, advancing to the little gallery behind his throne on the Bucentaur, raising it high, and dropping it into the sea. I could al- most hear the faint splash as it sank in the golden waves, and hear, too, the sonorous words of the old wedding ceremony : " De- sponsamus te, Mare, in signum veri per- petuique dominii!" Then when the shouts of mirth and music had died away and the Bucentaur and its train had drifted back into the la- goon, the blue sea, new-wedded, slept through the night with the May moon on her breast and the silent stars for sentinels. II La Giudecca, May I J Casa Rosa Not for a moment have we regretted leaving our crowded, conventional hotel in Venice proper, for these rooms in a house 48 IN VENICE on the Giudecca. The very vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck sitting on a balcony sur- rounded by a group of friends from the various Boston suburbs, the vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck melting into delicious dis- tance with every movement of our gondola, even this was sufficient for Salemlna's happiness and mine, had it been accom- panied by no more tangible joys- This island, hardly ten minutes by gon- dola from the Piazza of San Marco, was the summer resort of the Doges, you will re- member, and there they built their pleas- ure-houses, with charming gardens at the back — gardens the confines of which streMBched to the Laguna Viva. Our Casa Rosa is one of the few old palazzi left, for many of them have been turned into granaries. We should never have found this ro- mantic dwelling by ourselves; the Little Genius brought us here. The Little Genius 49 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS is Miss Ecks, who draws, and paints, and carves, and models in clay, preaching and practising the brotherhood of man and the sisterhood of woman in the intervals; Miss Ecks, who is the custodian of all the talents and most of the virtues, and the in- vincible foe of sordid common sense and financial prosperity. Miss Ecks met us by chance in the Piazza and breathlessly ex- plained that she was searching for paying guests, to be domiciled under the roof of Numero Sessanta, Giudecca. She thought we should enjoy living there, or at least she did very much, and she had tried it for two years; but our enjoyment was not the special point in question. The real reason and desire for our immediate removal was that the padrona might pay off a vexatious and encumbering mortgage which gave great anxiety to everybody concerned, be- sides interfering seriously with hen. own creative work. SO IN VENICE "You must come this very day," ex- claimed Miss Ecks. "The Madonna knows that we do not desire boarders, but you are amiable and considerate, as well as finan- cially sound and kind, and will do ad- mirably. Padrona Angela is very unhappy, and I cannot model satisfactorily until the house is on a good paying basis and she is putting money in the bank toward the payment of the mortgage. You can order your own meals, entertain as you like, and live precisely as if you were in your own home." The Little Genius is small, but powerful, with a style of oratory somewhat illogical, but always convincing at the moment. There were a good many trifling objections to our leaving Miss Van Tyck and the hotel, but we scarcely remembered them until we and our luggage were skimming across the space of water that divides Venice from our own island. SI PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS We explored the cool, wide, fragrant spaces of the old casa, with its outer walls of faded, broken stucco, all harmonized to a pinkish yellow by the suns and winds of the bygone centuries. We admired its lofty ceilings, its lovely carvings and fres- coes, its decrepit but beautiful furniture, and then we mounted to the top, where the Little Genius has a sort of eagle's eyrie, a floor to herself under the eaves, from the windows of which she sees the sunlight glimmering on the blue water by day, and the lights of her adored Venice glittering by night. The walls are hung with frag- ments of marble and wax and stucco and clay: here a beautiful foot, or hand, or dimple-cleft chin; there an exquisitely or- nate fa9ade, a miniature campanile, or a model of some ancient palazzo or chiesa. The little bedroom off at one side is draped in coarse white cotton, and is sim- ple enough for a nun. Not a suggestion 52 IN VENICE there of the fripperies of a fine lady's toilet, but, in their stead, heads of cherubs, wings of angels, slender bell-towers, friezes of acanthus leaves, — beauty of line and form everywhere, and not a hint of color save in the riotous bunches of poppies and olean- ders that lie on the broad window-seats or stand upright in great blue jars. Here the Little Genius lives, like the hermit crab that she calls herself; here she dwells apart from kith and kin, her mind and heart and miracle-working hands taken captive by the charms of the siren city of the world. When we had explored Casa Rosa from turret to foundation stone we went into the garden at the rear of the house — a garden of flowers and grape-vines, of vege- tables and fruit-trees, of birds and bee- hives, a full acre of sweet summer sounds and odors, stretching to the lagoon, which sparkled and shimmered under the blue S3 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS Italian skies. The garden completed our subjugation, and here we stay until we are removed by force, or until the padrona's mortgage is paid unto the last penny, when I feel that the Little Genius will hang a banner on the outer ramparts, a banner bearing the relentless inscription: "No paying guests allowed on these premises until further notice." Our domestics are unique and interest- ing. Rosalia, the cook, is a graceful per- son with brown eyes, wavy hair, and long lashes; and when she is coaxing her char- coal fire with a primitive fan of cock's feathers, her cheeks as pink as oleanders, the Little Genius leads us to the kitchen door and bids us gaze at her beauty. We are suitably enthralled at the moment, but we suffer an inevitable reaction when the meal is served, and sometimes long for a plain cook. Peppina is the second maid, and as ar- rant a coquette as lives in all Italy. Her 54 IN VENICE picture has been painted on more than one fisherman's sail, for it is rumored that she has been six times betrothed and she is still under twenty. The unscrupulous little flirt rids herself of her suitors, after they become a weariness to her, by any means, fair or foul, and her capricious affections are seldom good for more than three months. Her own loves have no deep roots, but she seems to have the powpr of arous- ing in others furious jealousy and rage and a very delirium of pleasure. She remains light, gay, joyous, unconcerned, but she shakes her lovers as the Venetian thunder- storms shake the lagoons. Not long ago she tired of her chosen swain, Beppo the gardener, and one morning the padrona's ducks were found dead. Peppina, her eyes dewy with crocodile tears, told the padrona that although the suspicion almost rent her faithful heart in twain, she must needs think Beppo the culprit. The local detective, 55 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS or police officer, came and searched the un- fortunate Beppo's humble room, and found no incriminating poison, but did discover a pound or two of contraband tobacco, whereupon he was marched off to court, fined eighty francs, and jilted by his per- fidious lady-love, who speedily transferred her affections. If she had been born in the right class and the right century, Peppina would have made an admirable and bril- liant Borgia. Beppo sent a stinging reproof in verse to Peppina by the new gardener, and the Little Genius read it to us, to show the poetic instinct of the discarded lover, and how well he had selected his rebuke from the store of popular verses known to gon- doliers and fishermen of Venice: — No te fidar de 1' albaro che piega, Ne de la dona quando la te giura. La te impromete, e po la te denega; No te fidar de 1' albaro che piega. S6 IN VENICE (Trust not the mast that bends. Trust not a woman's oath; She'll swear to you, and there it ends. Trust not the mast that bends.) Beppo, Salemina, and I were talking to- gether one morning, — just a casual meet- ing in the street, — when Peppina passed us. She had a market-basket in each hand, and was in her gayest attire, a fresh crim- son rose between her teeth being the last and most fetching touch to her toilet. She gave a dainty shrug of her shoulders as she glanced at Beppo's hanging head and hungry eye, and then with a light laugh hummed "Trust not the mast that bends," the first line of the poem that Beppo had sent her. "It is better to let her go," I said to him consolingly. "Si, madama; but" — with a profound sigh — "she Is very pretty." , So she is, and although my idea of the 57 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS fitness of things is somewhat unsettled when Peppina serves our dinner wearing a yoke and sleeves of coarse lace with her blue cotton gown, and a bunch of scarlet pop- pies in her hair, I can do nothing in the way of discipline because Salemina ap- proves of her as part of the picture. In- stead of trying to develop some moral sense in the little creature, Salemina asked her to alternate roses and oleanders with pop-' pies in her hair, and gave her a coral comb and ear-rings on her birthday. Thus does a warm climate undermine the strict virtue engendered by Boston east winds. Francesco — Cecco for short — is gen- eral assistant in the kitchen, and a good gondolier to boot. When our little family is increased by more than three guests at dinner, Cecco is pressed into dining-room service, and becomes under-butler to Pep- pina. Here he is not at ease. He scrubs his tanned face until it shines like San 58 IN VENICE Domingo mahogany, brushes his black hair until the gloss resembles a varnish, and dons coarse white cotton gloves to con- ceal his work-stained hands and give an air of fashion and elegance to the banquet. His embarrassment is equaled only by his earnestness and devotion to the^dreaded task. Our American, guests do not care what we have upon our bill of fare when they can steal a glance at the intensely dramatic and impassioned Cecco taking Pina into a corner of the dining-room and, seizing her hand, despairingly endeavor to find out his next duty. Then, with incredi- bly stiff back, he extends his right hand to the guest, as if the proffered plate held a scorpion instead of a tidbit. There is an extra butler to be obtained when the func- tion is a sufficiently grand one to warrant the expense; but as he wears carpet slippers and Pina flirts with him from soup to fruit, we find ourselves no better served on the 59 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS whole, and prefer Cecco, since he trans- forms an ordinary meal into a beguiling comedy. "What does it matter, after all?" asks Salemina. "It is not life we are living, for the moment, but an act of light opera, with the scenes all beautifully painted, the music charming and melodious, the cos- tumes gay and picturesque. We are occu- pying exceptionally good seats, and we have no responsibility whatever : we left it in Boston, where it is probably rolling it- self larger and larger, like a snowball; but who cares ? " "Who cares, indeed.?" I echo. We are here not to form our characters or to im- prove our minds, but to let them relax; and when we see anything which opposes the Byronic ideal of Venice (the use of the concertina as the national instrument hav- ing this tendency), we deliberately close our eyes to it. I have a proper regard for 60 IN VENICE truth in matters of fact like statistics. I want to know the exact population of a town, the precise total of children of school age, the number of acres in the Yellow- stone .Park, and the amount of wheat exported in 1862; but when it comes to things touching my imagination I resent the intrusion of some laboriously exca- vated truth, after my point of view is all nicely settled, and my saints, heroes, and martyrs are all comfortably and pictur- esquely arranged in their respective niches or on their proper pedestals. When the Man of Fact demolishes some pretty fallacy like William Tell and the apple, he should be required to substitute something equally delightful and more authentic. But he never does. He is a use- ful but uninteresting creature, the Man of Fact, and for a traveling companion or a neighbor at dinner give me the Man of Fancy, even if he has not a grain of exact 61 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS knowledge concealed about his person. It seems to me highly important that the foundations of Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, or Spokane Falls should be rooted in certainty; but Verona, Padua, and Venice — well, in my opinion, they should be rooted in Byron and Ruskin and Shakespeare. HI Casa Rosa, May i8 Such a fanfare of bells as greeted our ears on the morning of our first awakening in^Casa Rosa! "Rise at once and dress quickly, Salem- ina!" I said. "Either an heir has been born to the throne, or a foreign Crown Prince has come to visit Venice, or per- haps a Papal Bull is loose in the Piazza San Marco. Whatever it is, we must not miss it, as I am keeping a diary." But Peppina entered with a jug of hot 62 IN VENICE water, and assured us that there were no more bells than usual; so we lay drowsily in our comfortable little beds, gazing at the frescoes on the ceiling. One difficulty about the faithful study of Italian frescoes is that they can never be properly viewed unless one is extended at full-length on the flat of one's honorable back (as they might say in Japan), a posi- tion not suitable in a public building. The fresco on my bedroom ceiling is made mysteriously attractive by a wilder- ness of mythologic animals and a crowd of cherubic heads, wings and legs, on a back- ground of clouds; the mystery being that the number of cherubic heads does not correspond with the number of extremi- ties, one or two cherubs being a wing or a leg short. Whatever may be their limita- tions in this respect, the old painters never denied their cherubs cheek, the amount of adipose tissue uniformly provided in that 63 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS quarter being calculated to awake envy and jealousy on the part of the predl- gested-food-babies pictured in the Ameri- can magazine advertisements. Padrona Angela iurnishes no official key to the ceiling-paintings of Casa Rosa, and yesterday, during the afternoon call of four pretty American girls, they asked and ob- tained our permission to lie upon the marble floor and compete for a prize to be given to the person who should offer the cleverest interpretation of the symbolisms in the fres- coes. It may be stated that the entire differ- ence of opinion proved that mythologic art is apt to be misunderstood. After deciding in the early morning what our bedroom ceiling is intended to represent (a decision made and unmade every day since our arrival), Salemina and I make a leisurely toilet and then seat ourselves at one of the open windows for breakfast. The window itself looks on the Doge's 64 IN VENICE Palace and the Campanile, St. Theodore and the Lion of St. Mark's being visible through a maze of fishing-boats and sails, some of these artistically patched in white and yellow blocks, or orange and white stripes, while others of gray have smoke- colored figures in the tops and corners. Sometimes the broad stone-flagging pavement bordering the canal is busy with people : gondoliers, boys with nets for crab- catching, 'longshoremen, and facchini. This is when ships are loading or unload- ing, but at other times we look upon a tranquil scene. Peppina brings in dell' acqua bollente, and I make the coffee in the little copper coffee-pot we bought in Paris, while Salem-^ ina heats the milk over the alcohol-lamp, which is the most precious treasure in her possession. The butter and eggs are brought every morning before breakfast, and nothing is 6s PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS more delicious than our freshly churned pat of solidified cream, without salt, which is sweeter than honey in the comb. The cows are milked at dawn on the campagna, and the milk is brought into Venice in large cans. In the early morning, when the light is beginning to steal through the shut- ters, one hears the tinkling of a mule'9 bell and the rattling of the milk-cans, and, if one runs to the window, may see the cofv- tadini, looking, in their sheepskin trousers like brethren of John the Baptist, driving through the streets and delivering the milk at the vaccari. It is then heated, the cream raised and churned, and the pats of butter, daintily set on green leaves, deliv- ered for a seven-,o'clock breakfast. Finally la colazione is spread on our table by the window. A neat white cloth covers it, and we have gold-rimmed plates and cups of delicate china. There is a pot of honey, an egg a la cogue for each, a plate of 66 IN VENICE brown and white ^bread, on some days a dish of scarlet cherries on a bed of green, on others a mound of luscious berries in their frills; sometimes, too, we have a bowl of tiny wild strawberries that seem to have grown with their faces olose pressed to the flowers, so sweet and fragrant are they. This alfresco morning meal makes a de- licious prelude to our comfortable dejeuner d la fourchette at-*one o'clock, when the Little Genius, if not absorbed in some un- usually exacting piece of work, joins us and gives zest to the repast. Her own break- fast, she explains, is a dejeuner a la thumb, the sort enjoyed by the peasant who carves a bit of bread and cheese in his hand, and she promises us a sight, some leisure day, of a certain dejeuner a la toothpick cele- brated for the moment among the artists. A mysterious painter, shabby, but of a certain elegance and distinction even in 67 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS his poverty, comes daily at noon into a well-known restaurant. He buys for five sous a glass of chianti, a roll for one sou, and with stately grace bestows another sou upon the waiter who serves him. These preparations made, he breaks the roll in small bits, and poising them delicately on the point of a wooden toothpick, he dips them in wine before eating them. "This may be a frugal repast," he has an air of saying, "but it is at least refined, and no man would dare insult me by ask- ing me whether or not I leave the table satisfied." IV Casa Rosa, May 20 One of the pleasantest sights to be noted from our windows at breakfast time is Angelo making ready our private gondola for the day. Angelo himself is not attrac- tive to the eye by reason of the silliest pos- 68 IN VENICE sible hat for a man of forty-five whose hair is slightly gray. It is a white straw sailor, with a turned-up brim, a blue ribbon en- circling the crown, and a white elastic under the chin; such a hat as you would expect to see crowning the flaxen curls of mother's darling boy of four. I love to look at the gondola, with its solemn caracoling like that of a possible water-horse, of which the arched neck is the graceful /^rro. This is a strange, weird, beautiful thing when the black gondola sways a little from side to side in the moon- light. Angelo keeps ours polished so that it shines like silver in the morning sun, and he has an exquisite conscientiousness in rubbing every trace of brass about his precious craft. He has a little box under the prow full of bottles and brushes and rags. The cushions are laid on the bank of the canal; the pieces of carpet are taken out, shaken, and brushed, and the narrow 69 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS strips are laid over the curved wood ends of the gondola to keep the sun from crack- ing them. The felze, or cabin, is freed of all dust, the tiny four-legged stools and the carved chair are wiped off, and occasion- ally a thin coat of black paint is needed here and there, and a touching-up of the gold lines which relieve the somberness. The last thing to be done is to polish the vases and run back into the garden for nosegays, and when these are disposed in their niches on each side of the felze, Angelo waves his infantile hat gayly to us at the window, and smiles his readiness to be off. On other mornings we watch the load- ing and unloading of grain. There are many small boats always in view, their orange sails patched with all sorts of em- blems and designs in a still deeper color, and day before yesterday a large ship ap- peared at our windows and attached itself 70 IN VENICE to our very doorsteps, much to the wrath of Salemina, who finds the poetry of ex- istence much disturbed under the new con- ditions. All is life and motion now. The men are stripped naked to the waist, with bright handkerchiefs on their heads, and, in many ' cases, others tied over their mouths. Each has a thick wisp of short twine strings tucked into his waistband. The bags are weighed by one, who takes out or puts in a shovelful of grain, as the case may be. Then the carrier ties up his bag with one of the twine strings, two other men lift it to his shoulder, while a boy removes a pierced piece of copper from a long wire and gives it to him, this copper being handed in turn to still an- other man, who apparently keeps the ac- count. This not uninteresting, indeed, but sordid and monotonous operation began before eight yesterday morning and even earlier to-day, obliging Salemina to decline 71 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS strawberries and eat her breakfast with her back to the window. This afternoon at four the injured lady departed on a tour in Miss Palett's gon- dola. Miss Palett is a water-colorist who has lived in Venice for five years and speaks the language " like a native." (You are fami- liar with the phrase, and perhaps, familiar, too, with the native like whom they speak.) Returning after tea, Salemina was ob- served to radiate a kind of subdued tri- umph, which proved on investigation to be due to the fact that she had met the comandante of the offending ship and that he had gallantly promised to remove it without delay. I cannot help feeling that the proper time for departure had come; but this destroys the story and robs the comandante of his reputation for chivalry. As Miss Palett's gondola neared the grain-ship, Salemina, it seems, spied the commanding officer pacing the deck. 72 IN VENICE "See," she said to her companion, " there is a gang-plank from the side of the ship to that small flat-boat. We could per- fectly well step from our gondola to the flat-boat and then go up and ask politely if we may be allowed to examine the in- teresting grain-ship. While you are inter- viewing the first officer about the foreign countries he has seen, I will ask the coman- dante if he will kindly tie his boat a little farther down on the island. No, that won't do, for he may not speak English; we should have an awkward scene, and I should defeat my own purposes. You are so fluent in Italian, suppose you call upon him with my card and let me stay in the gondola." "What shall I say to the man.?" ob- jected Miss Palett. "Oh, there's plenty to say," returned Salemina. "Tell him that Penelope and T came over from the hotel on the Grand Canal only that we might have perfect 73 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS quiet. Tell him that if I had not unpacked my largest trunk, I should not stay an in- stant longer. Tell him that his great, bulky ship ruins the view; that it hides the most beautiful church and part of the Doge's Palace. Tell him that I might as well have stayed at home and built a cottage on the dock in Boston Harbor. Tell him that his steam-whistles, his anchor-droppings, and his constant loadings or unloadings give us headache. Tell him that seven or eight of his sailormen brought clean garments and scrubbing brushes and took their bath at our front entrance. Tell him that one of them, almost absolutely nude, instead of running away to put on more clothing, oflFered me his arm to assist me into the gondola." Miss Palett demurred at the subject matter of some of these remarks, and af- firmed that she could not translate others into proper Italian. She therefore pro- posed that Salemina should write a few 74 IN VENICE dignified protests on her visiting-card, and her own part would be to instruct the man in the flat-boat to deliver it at once to his superior officer. The comandante spoke no English, — of that fact the sailorman in the flat-boat was certain, — but as the gondola moved away, the ladies could see the great man pondering over the little piece of pasteboard, and it was plain that he was impressed. Herein lies perhaps a seed of truth. The really great thing tri- umphs over all obstacles, and reaches the common mind and heart in some way, de- livering its message we know not how. Salemina's card teemed with interesting information, at least to the initiated. Her surname was in itself a passport into the best society. To be an X was enough of itself, but her Christian name was one peculiar to the most aristocratic and in- fluential branch of the X s. Her moth- er's maiden name, engraved at full length 75 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS in the middle, established the fact that Mr. X had not married beneath him, but that she was the child of unblemished lineage on both sides. Her place of resi- dence was the only one possible to the possessor of three such names, and as if these advantages were not enough, the street and number proved that Salemina's family undoubtedly possessed wealth; for the small numbers, and especially the odd numbers, on that particular street, could be flaunted only by people of fortune. You have now all the facts in your pos- session, and I can only add that the ship weighed anchor at twilight, so Salemina again gazed upon the Doge's Palace and slept tranquilly. Casa Rosa, May 22 I AM like the school-girl who wrote home from Venice: "I am sitting on the edge of 76 IN VENICE the Grand Canal drinking it all in, and life never seemed half so full before." Was ever the city so beautiful as last night on the arrival of foreign royalty? It was a memorable display and unique in its pe- culiar beauty. The palaces that line the canal were bright with flags ; windows and water-steps were thronged, the broad center of the stream was left empty. Pres- ently, round the bend below the Rialto, swept into view a double line of gondolas — long, low, gleaming with every hue of -brilliant color, most of them with ten, some with twelve, gondoliers in resplendent liveries, red, blue, green, white, orange, all bending over their oars with the preci- sion of machinery and the grace of abso- lute mastery of their craft. In the middle, between two lines, came one small and beau- tifully modeled gondola, rowed by four men in red and black, while on the white silk cushions in the stern sat the Prince 77 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS and Princess. There was no splash of oar or rattle of rowlock; swiftly, silently, with an air of stately power and pride, the lovely pageant came, passed, and disap- peared under the shining evening sky and the gathering shadows of "the dim, rich city." I never saw, or expect to see, any- thing of its kind so beautiful. I stay for hours in the gondola, writing my letters or watching the thousand and one sights of the streets, for I often allow Salemina and the Little Genius to tread their way through the highways and by- ways of Venice while I stay behind and observe life from beneath the grateful shade of the black felze. The women crossing the many little bridges look like the characters in light opera; the young girls, with their hair bobbed in a round coil, are sometimes bare- headed and sometimes have a lace scarf over their dark, curly locks. A little fan is 78 IN VENICE often in their hands, and one remarks the graceful way in which the crepe shawl rests upon the women's shoulders, re- membering that it is supposed to take gen- erations to learn to wear a shawl or wield a fan. My favorite waiting-place is near the Via del Paradiso, just where some scarlet pomegranate blossoms hang out over the old brick walls by the canal-side, and where one splendid acanthus reminds me that its leaves inspired some of the most beautiful architecture in the world ; where, too, the ceaseless chatter of the small boys cleaning crabs with scrubbing-brushes gives my ear a much-needed familiarity with the language. Now a girl with a red parasol crosses the Ponte del Paradiso, making a brilliant silhouette against the blue sky. She stops to prattle with the man at the bell-shop just at the corner of the little calle. There 79 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS are beautiful bells standing in rows in the window, one having a border of finely traced crabs and sea-horses at the base; another has a top like a Doge's cap, while the body of another has a delicately wrought tracery, as if a fish-net had been thrown over it. Sometimes the children crowd about me as the pigeons in the Piazza San Marco struggle for the corn flung to them by the tourists. If there are only three or four, I sometimes compromise with my conscience and give them something. If one gets a lira put into small coppers, one can give them a couple of centesimi apiece without feeling that one is pauperizing them; but that one is fostering the begging habit in young Italy is a more difficult sin to face. To-day when the boys took off the tat- tered hats from their bonny little heads, all black waves and riotous curls, and with disarming dimples and sparkling eyes pre- 80 IN VENICE sented them to me for alms, I looked at them with smiling admiration, thinking how like Raphael's cherubs they were, and then said in my best Italian: "Oh, yes, I see them; they are indeed most beautiful hats. I thank you for showing them to me, and I am pleased to see you courteously take them off to a lady." This American pleasantry was passed from mouth to mouth gleefully, and so truly enjoyed that they seemed to forget they had been denied. They ran, still laughing and chattering, to the wood- carver's shop near by and told him the story, or so I judged, for he came to his window and smiled benignly upon me as I sat in the gondola with my writing-pad on my knees. I was pleased at the friendly glance, for he is the hero of a pretty little romance, and I long to make his acquain- tance. It seems that, some years ago, the 8i PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS Queen, with one lady-in-waiting in atten- dance, came to his shop quite early in the morning. Both were plainly dressed in cotton gowns, and neither made any pre- tensions. He was carving something that could not be dropped, a cherub's face that had to be finished while his thought of it was fresh. Hurriedly asking pardon, he continued his work, and at the end of an hour raised his eyes, breathless and apolo- getic, to look at his visitors. The taller lady had a familiar appearance. He gazed steadily, and then, to his surprise and em- barrassment, recognized the Queen. Far from being offended, she respected his devotion to his art, and before she left the shop she gave him a commission for a royal staircase. I am going to ask the Little Genius to take me to see his work, but, alas! there will be an unsurmounta- ble barrier between us, for I cannot utter in my new Italian anything but the most 82 IN VENICE commonplace and conventional state- ments. VI Casa Rosa, May 28 Oh, this misery of being dumb, incoher- ent, unintelligible, foolish, inarticulate in a foreign land, for lack of words ! It is un- wise, I fear, to have at the outset too high an ideal either in grammar or accent. As our gondola passed one of the hotels this afternoon, we paused long enough to hear an intrepid lady converse with an Italian who carried a mandolin and had appar- ently come to give a music lesson to her husband. She seemed to be from the Middle West of America, but I am not disposed to insist upon this point, nor to make any particular State in the Union blush for her crudities of speech. She translated immediately everything that she said into her own tongue, as if the hearer 83 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS might, between French and English, pos- sibly understand something. " Elle nay pars easy — he ain't here," she remarked, oblivious of gender. "Elle retoorernay ah seas oors et dammi — he'll be back sure by half-past six. Bone swar, I should say Bony naughty — Good-night to you, and I won't let him forget to show up to-morrer." This was neither so ingenious nor so felicitous as the language-expedient of the man who wished to leave some luggage at a railway station in Rome, and knowing nothing of any foreign tongue but a few Latin phrases, mostly of an obituary char- acter, pointed several times to his effects, saying, " Requiescat in face" and then, pointing again to himself, uttered the one pregnant word " Resurgam." This at any rate had the merit of tickling his own sense of humor, if it had availed nothing with the railway porters, and if any one re- 84 IN VENICE marks that he has read the tale in some ancient "Farmers' Almanack," I shall only retort that it is still worth repeating. My little red book on the "Study of Italian Made Easy for the Traveler" is always in my pocket, but it is extraordi- nary how little use it is to me. The critics need not assert that individuality is dying out in the human race and that we are all more or less alike. If we were, we should find our daily practical wants met by such little books. Mine gives me a sentence re- questing the laundress to return the clothes three days hence, at midnight, at cock- crow, or at the full of the moon, but no- where can the new arrival find the phrase for the next night or the day after to- morrow. The book implores the washer- woman to use plenty of starch, but the new arrival wishes scarcely any, or only the frills dipped. Before going to the dressmaker's yester- 85 PENELOPE^S POSTSCRIPTS day, I spent five minutes learning the Italian for the expression "This blouse bags ; it sits in wrinkles between the shoul- ders." As this was the only criticism given in the little book, I imagined that Italian dressmakers erred in this special direction. What was my discomfiture to find that my blouse was much too small and refused to meet. I could only use gestures for the dressmaker's enlightenment, but in order not to waste my recently gained knowledge, I tried to tell a melodramatic tale of a friend of mine whose blouse bagged and sat in wrinkles between the shoulders. It was not successful, because I was obliged to substitute the past for the present tense of the verb. Somebody says that if we learn the irreg- ular verbs of a language first, all will be well. I think by the use of considerable mental agility one can generally avoid them altogether, although it materially reduces 86 IN VENICE one's vocabulary; but at all events there is no way of learning them thoroughly save by marrying a native. A native, particu- larly after marriage, uses the irregular verbs with great freedom, and one ac- quires a familiarity with them never gained in the formal instruction of a teacher. This method of education may be con- sidered radical, and in cases where one is already married, illegal and bigamous, but on the whole it is not attended with any more difficulty than the immersing of one's self in a study day after day and month after month learning the irregular verbs from a grammar. My rule in studying a language is to seize upon some salient point, or one gen- erally overlooked by foreigners, or some very subtle one known only to the scholar, and devote myself to its mastery. A little knowledge here blinds the hearer to much ignorance elsewhere. In Italian, for ex- 87 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS ample, the polite way of addressing one's equal is to speak in the third person singu- lar, using Ella (she) as the pronoun. "Come sta ella?" (How are you?" But literally "How is she?") I pay great attention to this detail, and make opportunities to meet our padrona on the staircase and say "How is she?" to her. I can never escape the feeling that I am inquiring for the health of an absent person; moreover, I could not understand her symptoms if she should recount them, and I have no language in which to de- scribe my own symptoms, which, so far as I have observed, is the only reason we ever ask anybody else how he feels. To remember on the instant whether one is addressing equals, superiors, or inferiors, and to marshal hastily the proper pronoun, adds a new terror to conversation, so that I find myself constantly searching my memory to decide whether it shall be: 88 IN VENICE Scusate or Scusi, Avanti or Passi, A rivederci or Addio, Che cosa dite? or Che cosa dice? Quanta domandate? or Quanta damanda ? Dove andate ? or Dave va ? Came vi chiamate? or Came si chiama? and so forth and so forth until one's mind seems to be arranged in tabulated columns, with special N.B.'s to use the infinitive in talk- ing to the gondolier. Finding the hours of time rather puz- zling as recorded in the "Study of Italian Made Easy," I devoted twenty-four hours to learning how to say the time from one o'clock at noon to midnight, or thirteen to twenty-four o'clock. My soul revolted at the task, for a foreign tongue abounds in these malicious little refinements of speech, invented, I suppose, to prevent strangers from making too free with it on short acquaintance. I found later on that my labor had been useless, and that evi- dently the Italians themselves have no 89 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS longer the leisure for these little eccen- tricities of language and suffer them to pass from common use. If the Latin races would only meet in convention and agree to bestow the comfortable neuter gender on inanimate objects and commodities, how popular they might make themselves with the English-speaking nations; but having begun to "enrich" their language, and make it more "subtle" by these per- plexities, centuries ago, they will no doubt continue them until the end of time. If one has been a devoted patron of the opera or student of music, one has an Ital- ian vocabulary to begin with. This, if ac- companied by the proper gestures (for it is vain to speak without liberal movements of the hands, shoulders, and eyebrows), this, I maintain, will deceive all the Eng- lish-speaking persons who may be seated near your table in a foreign cafe. The very first evening after our arrival, 90 IN VENICE Jack Copley asked Salemina and me to dine with him at the best restaurant in Venice. Jack Copley is a well of non- sense undefiled, and he, like ourselves, had been in Italy only a few hours. He called for us in his gondola, and in the row across from the Giudecca we amused ourselves by calling to mind the various Italian words or phrases with which we were fa- miliar. They were mostly titles of arias or songs, but Jack insisted, notwithstanding Salemina's protestations, that, properly in- terlarded with names of famous Italians he could maintain a brilliant conversation with me at table, to the envy and amazement of our neighbors. The following paragraph, then, was our stock in trade, and Jack's volubility and ingenuity in its use kept Salemina quite helpless with laughter: — Guarda che bianca luna — // tempo pas- sato — Lascia ch' io pianga — Dolce far niente — Batti batti nelMasetto — Da capo — 91 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS Ritardando — Andante — Piano — Adagio — Spaghetti — Macaroni — Polenta — Non e ver — Ah, non giunge — Si la stan- chezza — Bravo — Lento — Presto — Scherzo — Dormi pure — La ci darem la mano — — Celeste A'ida — Spirito gentil — Voi che sapete — Crispino e la Comare — Pietd, Signore — Tintoretto — Boccaccio — Gari- baldi — Mazzini — Beatrice Cenci — Gor- digiani — Santa Lucia — // mio tesoro — Margherita — Umberto — Fittoria Colonna — Tutti frutti — Botticelli — Una furtiva lagrima. No one who has not the privilege of Jack Copley's acquaintance could believe with what effect he used these unrelated words and sentences. I could only assist, and lead him to ever higher flights of fancy. We perceive with pleasure that our mother tongue presents equal difficulties to Italian manufacturers and men of affairs. The so-called mineral water we use at table 92 IN VENICE is specially still and dead, and we think it may have been compared to its disadvan- tage with other more sparkling beverages, since every bottle bears a printed label an- nouncing, "To Distrust of the mineral waters too foaming, since that they do in- variable spread the Stomach." We learn also by studying another bot- tle that "The Wermouth is a white wine slightly bitter, and parfumed with who leso me aromatic herbs." Who leso me we printed in italics in our own minds, giving the phrase a pure Italian accent until we discovered that it was the somewhat fa- miliar adjective "wholesome.", In one of the smaller galleries we were given the usual pasteboard fans bearing explanations of the frescoes : — Room I. In the middle. The sin of our fathers. On every side. The ovens of Babylony. Mo'ise saved from the water. 93 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS Room II. In the middle. Moise who sprung the water. On every side. The luminous column in the dessert and the ardent wood. Room III. In the middle. Elia trans- ported in the heaven. ■ On every side. Eliseus dispansing brods. Room IV. The wood carvings are by Anonymous. The tapestry shows the multiplications of brods and fishs. vrr Casa Rosa, May 30 We have had a battle royal in Casa Rosa — a battle over the breaking of a huge blue pitcher valued at eight francs, a pitcher belonging to the Little Genius. The room that leads from the dining- room to the kitchen is reached by the de- scent of two or three stone steps. It is al- ways full, and is like the orthodox hell in one respect, that though myriads of people 94 IN VENICE are seen to go into it, none ever seem to come out. It is not more than twelve feet square, and the persons most continuously in it, not counting those who are in transit, are the Padrona Angela; the Padrona An- gela's daughter, Signorina Rita; the Sig- norina Rita's temporary suitor; the suitor's mother and cousin; the padrona's great aunt; a few casual acquaintances of the two families, and somebody's baby; not always the same baby; any baby answers the purpose and adds to the confusion and chatter of tongues. This morning the door from the dining- room being ajar, I heard a subdued sort of Bedlam in the distance, and finally went nearer to the scene of action, finding the cause in a heap of broken china in the cen- ter of the floor. I glanced at the excited company, but there was nothing to show me who was the criminal. There was a spry girl washing dishes; the fritter-woman 95 PENELOPE'S POSTSeRIPTS (at least we call her so, because she brings certain goodies called, if I mistake not, frittoli); the gardener's wife; Angelo, the gondolier; Peppina, the waiting-maid; and the men that had just brought the sausages and sweetmeats for the gondolier's ball, which we were giving in the evening. There was also the contralto, with a large soup-ladle in her hand. (We now call Rosalia, the cook, "the contralto" because she sings so much better than she cooks that it seems only proper to distinguish her in the line of her special talent.) The assembled company were all talk- ing and gesticulating at once. There was a most delicate point of justice involved, for, as far as I could gather, the sweet- meat-man had come in unexpectedly and collided with the sausage-man, thereby startling the fritter-woman, who turned suddenly and jostled the spry girl: hence the pile of broken china. 96 IN VENICE The spry girl was all for justice. If she had carelessly or willfully dropped the pitchef, she would have been willing to suffer the extreme penalty, — the number of saints she called upon to witness this statement was sufficient to prove her hon- esty, — but under the circumstances she would be blessed if she suffered anything, even the abuse that filled the air. The fritter-woman upbraided the sweetmeat- man, who in return reviled the sausage- vender, who remarked that if Angelo or Peppina had received the sausages at the door, as they should, he would never have been in the house at all; adding a few pic- turesque generalizations concerning the moral turpitude of Angelo's parents and the vicious nature of their offspring. The contralto, who was divided in her soul, being betrothed to the sausage-ven- der, but aunt to the spry girl, sprang into the arena, armed with the soup-ladle, and 97 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS dispensed injustice on all sides. The feud now reached its height. There is nothing that the chief participants did not call one another, and no intimation or aspersion concerning the reputation of ancestors to the remotest generation, that was not cast in the others' teeth. The spry girl referred to the sausage-vender as a generalissimo of all the fiends, and the compliments con- cerning the gentle art of cookery which flew between the fritter-woman and the contralto will not bear repetition. I lis- tened breathlessly, hoping to hear one of the party refer to somebody as the figure of a pig (strangely enough the most unfor- gettable of insults), for each of the combat- ants held, suspended in air, the weapon of his choice — broken crockery, soup-ladle, rolling-pin, or sausage. Each, I say, flour- ished the emblem of his craft wildly in the air — and then with a change of front like that of the celebrated King of France in 98 IN VENICE the Mother Goose rhyme, dropped it swiftly and silently; for at this juncture the Little Genius flew down the broad stair- case from her eagle's nest. Her sculptor's smock surmounted her blue cotton gown, and her blond hair was flying in the breeze created by her rapid descent. I wish I could affirm that by her gentle dignity and serene self-control she awed the company into silence, or that there was a holy dig- nity about her that held them spellbound; but such, unhappily, is not the case. It was her pet blue pitcher that had been broken — the pitcher that was to serve as just the right bit of color at the evening's feast. She took command of the situation in a masterly manner — a manner that had American energy and decision as its foundation and Italian fluency as its super- structure. She questioned the virtue of no one's ancestors, cast no shadow of doubt on the legitim'acy of any one's posterity, 99 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS called no one by the name of any four- footed beast or crawling, venomous thing, yet she somehow brought order out of chaos. Her language (for which she would have been fined thirty days in her native land) charmed and enthralled the Vene- tians by its delicacy, reserve, and restraint, and they dispersed pleasantly. The sau- sage-vender wished good appetite to the cook, — she had need of it. Heaven knows, and we had more, — while the spry girl embraced the fritter-woman ardently, beg- ging her to come in again soon and make a longer visit. VIII Casa Rosa, June lo I AM saying all my good-byes — to Angelo and the gondola ; to the greedy pigeons of San Marco, so heavy in the crop that they can scarcely waddle on their little red feet; to the bees and birds and ICO IN VENICE flowers and trees of the beautiful garden behind the casa; to the Little Genius and her eagle's nest on the 'housetop ; to "the city that is always just putting out to sea." It has been a month of enchantment, and although rather expensive, it is pleasant to think that the padrona's mortgage is nearly paid. It is a saint's day, and to-night there will be & fiesta. Coming home to our island, we shall hear the laughter and the song floating out from the wine shops and the caffes ; we shall see the lighted barges with their musicians; we shall thrill with the cries of "Viva Italia! viva el Re!" The moon will rise above the white palaces; their innumerable lights will be reflected in the glassy surface of the Grand Canal. We shall feel for the last time "the quick silent passing" of the only Venetian cab. How light we move, how softly! Ah, Were life but as the gondola! lOI PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS To-morrow we shall be rowed against the current to Padua. We shall see Mal- contenta and its ruined villa: Oriago and Mira and the campanile of Dolo. Venice will lie behind us, but she will never be for- gotten. Many a time on such a night as this we shall say with other wandering Venetians: — Venexia henedeUa ! Non ti voglio piu lasciar! Ill Penelope's Prints of Wales And at length it chanced that I came to the fairest Valley in the World, wherein were trees of equal growth; and a river ran through the Valley, and a path was by the side of the river. And I followed the path until midday, and I continued my journey along the remainder of the Valley until the evening: and at the extremity of a plain I came to a large and lustrous Castle, at the foot of which was a torrent. Ill Penelope's Prints of Wales WE are now coaching in Wales, hav- ing journeyed by easy stages from Liverpool through Llanberis, Penygwryd, Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert and Dolgelly on our way to Bristol, where we shall make up our minds as to the next step ; de- ciding in solemn, conclave, with floods of argument and temperamental differences of opinion, what is best worth seeing where all is beautiful and inspiring. If I had possessed a little foresight I should have avoided Wales, for, having proved apt at itinerary doggerel, I was solemnly created, immediately on arrival. Mistress of Rhymes and Traveling Laureate to the party — an office, however honorable, that is no sine- cure since it obliges me to write rhymed PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS eulogies or diatribes on Dolgelly, Tan-y- Bulch, Gyn-y-Coed, Llanrychwyn, and other Welsh hamlets whose names offer breakneck fences to the Muse. I have not wanted for training in this direction, having made a journey (heav- enly in reminiscence) along the Thames, stopping at all the villages along its green banks. It was Kitty Schuyler and Jack Copley who insisted that I should rhyme Henley and Streatleigh and Wargrave be- fore I should be suffered to eat luncheon, and they who made me a crown of laurel and hung a pasteboard medal about my blushing neck when I succeeded better than usual with Datchett! — I well re- member Datchett, where the water-rats crept out of the reeds in the shallows to watch our repast, and, better still, do I re- call Medmenham Abbey, which defied all my efforts till I found that it was pro- nounced Meddenam with the accent on the io6 PRINTS OF WALES first syllable. The results of my enforced tussles with the Muse stare at me now from my Commonplace Book. Said a rat to a hen once, at Datchett, "Throw aji egg to me, dear, and I'll catch it!" — "I thank you, good sir. But I greatly prefer To sit, on mine here till I hatch it.'" Few hairs had the Vicar of Medmenham, Few hairs, and he still was a sheddin' 'em, , But had none remained, He would not have complained. Because there was far too much red in 'em! It was Jack Copley, too, who incited me to play with rhymes for Venice until I produced the following tour de force: A giddy young hostess in Venice, Gave her guests hard boiled eggs to play tennis. She said " If they should break. What odds would it make? You can't think how prolific my hen is." Reminiscences of former difficulties bravely surmounted faded into insignifi- cance before our first day in Wales was over. 107 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS Jack Copley is very autocratic, almost brutal in discipline. It is he who leads me up to the Visitors' Books at the wayside inns, and putting the quill in my reluctant fingers bids me write in cheerful hexam- eters my impressions of the unpronounce- able spot. My martyrdom began at Peny- gwryd (Penny-goo-rid'). We might have stopped at Conway or some other town of simple name, or we might have allowed ' the roof of the Cambrian Arms or the Royal Goat or the Saracen's Head to shelter us comfortably, and provide me a comparatively easy task; but no; Peny- gwryd it was, and the outskirts at that, ber cause of two inns that bore on their swing- ing signs the name: Ty Ucha and Ty Isaf, both of which would make any minor poet shudder. When I saw the sign over the door of our chosen hostelry I was moved to disappear and avert my fate. Hunger at length brought me out of my lair, and io8 PRINTS OF WALES promising to do my duty, I was allowed to join the irresponsible ones at luncheon. Such a toothsome feast it was ! A delicious ham where roses and lilies melted sweetly into one another; some crisp lettuces, ale in pewter mugs, a good old cheese, and that stodgy cannon-ball the "household loaf," dear for old association's sake. We were served at table by the granddaughter of the house, a little damsel of fifteen summers with sleek brown hair and the eyes of a doe. The pretty creature was all blushes and dimples and pinafores and curt- sies and eloquent good-will. With what a sweet politeness do they invest their service, some of these soft-voiced British maids! Their kindness almost moves one to tears when one is fresh from the resentful civility fostered by Democracy. As we strolled out on the greensward by the hawthorn hedge we were followed by the little waitress, whose name, however 109 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS pronounced, was written Nelw Evans. Site asked us if we would write in the "Locked Book," whereupon she presented us with the key. It seems that there is an ordinary- Visitor's Book, where the common herd is invited to scrawl its unknown name; but when persons of evident distinction and genius patronize the inn, this "Locked Book" is put into their hands. I found that many a lord and lady had written on its pages, and men mighty in Church and State had left their mark, with much bad poetry commendatory of the beds, the food, the scenery, and the fishing. Nobody, however, had given a line to pretty Nelw Evans ; so I penciled her a rhyme, for which I was well paid in dim- ples : — At the Inn called the Penygwryd A sweet little maiden is hid. " ■' f She's so rosy and pretty I write her this ditty And leave it at Penygwryd. no PRINTS OF WALES Our next halt was at Bettwys-y-Coed, where we passed the week-end. It was a memorable spot, as I failed at first to rhyme the name, and only succeeded under threats of a fate like unto that of the im- mortal babes in the wood. I left the verse to be carved on a bronze tablet in the vil- lage church, should any one be found fitted to bear the weight of its eulogy : — Here lies an old woman of Bettws-y-Coed; Wherever she went, it was there that she goed. She frequently said: "My own row have I hoed, , And likewise the church water-mark have I toed. I'm therefore expecting to reap what I've sowed, ' And go straight to heaven from Bettws-y-Co?(i."J At another stage of our journey, when the coaching tour was nearly ended, we were stopping at the Royal Goat at Bedd- gelert. We were seated about the cheerful blaze (one and sixpence extra), portfolio in lap, making ready our letters for the post. I announced my intention of writing to Salemina, left behind in London with a III PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS sprained ankle, and determined that the missive should be saturated with local color. None of us were able to spell the few Welsh words we had picked up in our journeyings, but I evaded the difficulties by writing an exciting little episode in which all the principal substantives were names of Welsh towns, dragged in bodily, and so used as to deceive the casual un- traveled reader. I read it aloud. Jack Copley declared that it made capital sense, and sounded as if it had happened exactly as stated. Per- haps you will agree with him : — Ddolghyhggi^lwn, Wales. . . . We left Bettws-y-Coed yesterday morning, and coached thirty-three miles to this point. (How do you like this point when you see it spelled.?) We lunched at a way-side inn, and as we journeyed on we began to see pposters on the ffences an- 112 PRINTS OF WALES nouncing the ffact that there was to be a Festiniog that day in the village of Port- madoc, through which we were to pass. I always enjoyw a Festiniog yn any coun- try, and my hheart beath high with antici- pation. Yt was ffive o'clock yn the cool of the dday, and ppresently the roadw be- came ggay with the returning festinioggers. Here was a fine Llanberis, its neck en- circled with shining meddals wonw in pre- vious festiniogs; there, just behind, a wee shaggy Rhyl led along proudly by its owner. Evydently the gayety was over for the day, for the ppeople now came yn crowds, the women with gay plaid Rhud- dlans over their shoulders and straw Bedd- gelerts on their hheads. The guardd ttooted his hhorn continu- ously, for we now approached the princi- palw street of the village, where hhundreds of ppeople were conggreggated. Of course there were allw manner of Dolgelleys yn the "3 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS crowd, and allw that had taken pprizes were gayly decked with rribbons. Just at this moment the hhorn of our gguard iFrightened a superb Llanrwst, a spirited black creature of enormous size. It made a ddash through the lines of tterrified moth- ers, who caught their innocent Pyllhelis closer to their bbosoms. In its madd course it bruised the side of a huge Llandudno hitched to a stout Tyn-y-Coed by the way-side. It bbroke its Bettws and leaped ynto the air. Ddeath stared us yn the face. David the whip grew ppale, and signalled to Absalom the gguard to save as many lives as he could and leave the rrest to Pprovi- dence. Absalom spprang from his seat, and taking a sharp Capel Curig from his ppocket (Hheaven knows how he chanced to have it about his pperson), he aimed straight between the Llangollens of the infuriated Llandudno. With a moan of baffled rrage, he sank to earth with a hheavy thuddw. 114 PRINTS OF WALES Absalom withdrew the bbloody Capel Curig from the dying Llandudno, and wip- ing yt on his Penygwryd, replaced yt yn his pocket for future possible use. The local Dolwyddelan approached, and ordered a detachment of Tan-y-Bulchs to remove the corpse of the Llandudno. With a shudder we saw him borne to his last rrest, for we realized that had yt not bbeen for Absalom's Capel Curig we had bbeen bburied yn an unpronounceable Welsh ggrave. IV Penelope in Devon IV Penelope in Devon WE are in Bristol after a week's coach- ing trip in Wales; the Jack Copleys, Tommy Schuyler, Mrs. Jack's younger brother, and Miss Van Tyck, Mrs. Jack's "Aunt Celia," who played a grim third in that tour of the English Cathedrals during which Jack Copley was ostensibly studying architecture but in reality courting Kitty Schuyler. Also there is Bertram Ferguson, whom we call "Atlas" because he carries the world on his shoulders, gazing more or less vaguely and absent-mindedly at all the persons and things in the universe not in need of immediate reformation. We had journeyed by easy stages from Liverpool through Carnarvon, Llanberis, Penygwyrd," Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert, "9. PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS and Tan-y-Bulch. Arriving finally at Dol- gelly, we sent the coach back to Carnar- von and took the train to Ross, — the gate of the Wye, — from whence we were to go down the river in boats. As to that, everybody knows Simond's Yat, Mon- mouth, Raglan Castle, Tintern Abbey, Chepstow; but at Bristol a brilliant idea took possession of Jack Copley's mind. Long after we were in bed o' nights the blessed man interviewed landlords and studied guidebooks that he might show us something beautiful next day, and above all, something out of the common route. Mrs. Jack did n't like common routes; she wanted her appetite titillated with new scenes. At breakfast we saw the red-covered Baedeker beside our host's plate. This was his way of announcing that we were to "move on," like poor Jo in "Bleak House." He had already reached the marmalade 1 20 IN I>EVON stage, and while we discussed our bacon and eggs and reviled our coffee, he read us the following : — "Clovelly lies in a narrow and richly- wooded combe descending abruptly to the sea." — "Any place that descends to the sea abruptly or otherwise has my approval in advance," said Tommy. "Be quiet, my boy." — "It consists of one main street, or rather a main staircase, with a few houses climbing on each side of the combe so far as the narrow space al- lows. The houses, each standing on a higher or lower level than its neighbor, are all whitewashed, with gay green doors and lattices." — "Heavenly!" cried Mrs. Jack. "It sounds like an English Amalfi.; let us take the first train." — "And the general effect is curiously foreign; the views from the quaint little 121 PENELOPE'S jfiOSTSCRIPTS pier and, better still, from the sea, with the pier in the foreground, are also very- striking. The foundations of the cottages at the lower end of the village are hewn out of the living rock." " How does a living rock differ from other rocks — dead rocks ? " Tommy asked face- tiously. "I have always wanted to know; however, it sounds delightful, though I can't remember anything about Clovelly." "Did you never read Dickens's 'Message from the Sea,' Thomas?" asked Miss Van Tyck. Aunt Celia always knows the num- ber of the unemployed in New York and Chicago, the date when North Carolina was admitted to the Union, why black sheep eat less than white ones, the height of the highest mountain and the length of the longest river in the world, when the first potato was dug from American soil, when the battle of Bull Run was fought, who invented the first fire-escape, how 122 IN DEVON woman suffrage has worked in Colorado and California, the number of trees felled by Mr. Gladstone, the principle of the Westinghouse brake and the Jacquard loom, the difference between peritonitis and appendicitis,^ the date of the intro- duction of postal-cards and oleomargarine, the price of mileage on African railways, the Influence of Christianity in the Wind- ward Islands, who wrote "There 's An- other, not a Sister," "At Midnight in his Guarded Tent," "A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever," and has taken in through the pores much other information likely to be of service on journeys where an ency- clopaedia is not available. If she could deliver this information without gibes at other people's ignorance she would, of course, be more agreeable; but it is only justice to say that a person is rarely instructive and agreeable a,t the same moment. 123, PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS "It is settled, then, that we go to Clo- velly," said Jack. "Bring me the A B C Guide, please" (this to the waiter who had just brought in the post). "Quite settled, and we go at once," said Mrs. Jack, whose joy at arriving at a place is only equaled by her joy in leaving it. "Penelope, hand me my letters, please; if you were not my guest I should say I had never witnessed such an appetite. Tommy, what news from father.? Atlas, how can you drink three cups of British coifee? Oh-h-h, how more than lucky, how heav- enly, how providential! Egeria is coming!" "Egeria?" we cried with one rapturous voice. "Read your letter carefully, Kitty," said Jack; "you will probably find that she wishes she might come, but finds it im- possible." "Or that she certainly would come if she had anything to wear," drawled Tommy. 124 IN DEVON "Or that she could come perfectly well, if it were a few days later," quoth I. Mrs. Jack stared at us superciliously, and lifting an absurd watch from her an- tique chatelaine, observed calmly, "Egeria will be at this hotel in one hour and fifteen minutes ; I telegraphed her the night before last, and this letter is her reply." "Who is Egeria?" asked Atlas, looking up from his own lettefs. " She sounds like a character in a book." . Mrs. Jack: "You begin, Penelope." Penelope: "No, I'd rather finish; then I can put in everything that you omit." Atlas: "Is there so much to tell?" Tommy: "Rather. Begin with her hair, Penelope." Mrs. Jack: "No; I'll do that ! Don't rattle your knives and forks, shut up your Baedeker, Jackie, and listen while I quote what a certain poet wrote of Egeria when she last visited us : — 1 25 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS "She has a knot of russet hair: It seems a simple thing to wear Through years, despite of fashion's check. The same deep coil about the neck; But there it twined When first I knew her, And learned with passion to pursue her, And if she changed it, to my mind She were a creature of new kind. "O first of women who has laid Magnetic glory on a braid! In others' tresses we may mark If they be silken, blonde, or dark. But thine we praise and dare not feel them, Not Hermes, god of theft, dare steal them; It is enough for eye to gaze Upon their vivifying maze." Jack: "She has beautiful hair but as an architect I should n't think of mentioning it first. Details should follow, not precede, general characteristics. Her, hair is an ex- quisite detail; so, you might say, is her nose, her foot, her voice; but viewed as a captivating whole, Egeria might be de- scribed epigrammatically as an animated 126 IN DEVON lodestone. When a man approaches her he feels his iron-work gently and gradually drawn out of him." Atlas looked distinctly incredulous at this statement, which was reinforced by the affirmative nods of the whole party. Penelope: "A man cannot talk to Egeria an hour without wishing the assistance of the Society for First Aid to the Injured. She is a kind of feminine fly-paper; the men are attracted by the sweetness, and in trying to absorb a little of it, they stick fast." Tommy: "Egeria is worth from two to two and a half times more than any girl alive; I would as lief talk to her as listen to myself." Atlas: "Great Jove, what a concession! I wish I could find a woman — an un- married woman (with a low bow to Mrs. Jack) — that would produce that effect upon me. So you all like her?" 127 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS jiunt Celia: "She is not what I consider a well-informed girl." Penelope: "Now don't carp, Miss Van Tyck. You love her as much as we all do. 'Like her,' indeed! I detest the phrase. Werther said when asked how he liked Charlotte, 'What sort of creature must he be who merely liked her; whose whole heart and senses were not entirely absorbed by her!' Some one asked me lately how I ' liked ' Ossian." Atlas: "Don't introduce Ossian, Wer- ther, and Charlotte into this delightful breakfast chat, I beseech you; the most tiresome trio that ever lived. If they were traveling with us, how they would jar! Ossian would tear the scenery in tatters with his apostrophes, Werther would make love to Mrs. Jack, and Charlotte could n't cut an English household loaf with a hatchet. Keep toEgeria, — though if one cannot stop at liking her, she is a dangerous subject." 128 IN DEVON Jack: "Don't imagine from these pane- gyrics that, to the casual observer, Egeria is anything more than a nice girl. The deadly qualities that were mentioned only appeal to the sympathetic eye (which you have not), and the susceptible heart (which is not yours), and after long acquaintance (which you can't have, for she stays only a week). Tommy, you can meet the charmer at the station; your sister will pack up, and I'll pay the bills and make arrangements for the journey." Jack Copley {when left alone with his spouse) : " Kitty, I wonder why you invited Egeria to travel in the same party with Atlas." Mrs. Jack {fencing) : "Pooh! Atlas is safe anywhere." Jack: "He is a man." Mrs. Jack: "No; he is a reformer." Jack: "Even reformers fall in love." Mrs. Jack: "Not unless they can find a 129 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS woman to reform. Egeria is too nearly perfect to attract Atlas ; besides, what does it matter, anyway?" Jack: "It matters a good deal if it ihakes him unhappy; he is too good a fellow." Mrs. Jack: " I 've lived twenty-five years and I have never seen a man's linhappiness last more than six months, and I have never seen a woman make a wound in a man's heart that another woman could n't heal. The modern young man is as tough as — well, I can't think of anything tough enough to compare him to. I 've always thought it a pity that the material of which men's hearts is made could n't be utilized for manufacturing purposes ; think of its value for hinges, or for the toes of little boys' boots, or the heels of their stockings ! " Jack: "I should think you had just been jilted, my dear; how has Atlas offended you?" Mrs. Jack: "He has n't offended me; 130 IN DEVON I love him, but I think he is too absent- minded lately." Jack: "And is Egeria iiivited to join us in order that she may bring his mind forcibly back to the present?" Mrs. Jack: "Not at all; I consider Atlas as safe as a — as a church or a dictionary, or a guide-post, or anything; he is too much interested in tenement-house reform to fall in love with a woman." Jack: "I think a sensible woman would n't be out of place in Atlas' schemes for the regeneration of humanity.'^ Mrs. Jack: "No; but Egeria is n't a — yes, she is, too; I can't deny it, but I don't believe she knows anything about the sweating system, and she adores Ossian and Fiona Macleod, so she probably won't appeal to Atlas in his present state, which, to my mind, is unnecessarily intense. The service of humanity renders a young man perfectly callous to feminine charms. It's 131 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS the proverbial safety of numbers, I sup- pose, for it's always the individual that leads a man into temptation, if you notice, never the universal, — Woman, not women. I have studied Atlas profoundly, and he is nearly as blind as a bat. He paid no atten- tion to my new traveling-dress last week, and yesterday I wore four rings on my middle finger and two on each thumb all day long, just to see if I could catch his eye and hold his attention. I could n't." Jack: "That may all be; a man may be blind to the charms of all women but one (and precious lucky if he is), but he is particularly keen where the one is con- cerned." Mrs. Jack: "Atlas is n't keen about any- thing but the sweating system. You need n't worry about him; your favorite Stevenson says that a wet rag goes safely by the fire, and if a man is blind, he cannot expect to be much impressed hy 132 IN DEVON romantic scenery. Atlas is momentarily a wet rag and temporarily blind. He told me on Wednesday that he intended to leave all his money to one of those long-named regenerating societies — I can't remember which." Jack: "And it was on Wednesday you sent for Egeria. I see." Mrs. Jack {haughtily)'. "Then you see a figment of your own imagination; there is nothing else to see. There! I've packed everything that belongs to me, while you 've been smoking and gazing at that railway guide. When do we start.""' Jack: "11.59. We arrive in Bideford at 4.40, and have a twelve-mile drive to Clo- velly. I will telegraph for a conveyance to the inn and for five bedrooms and a sitting- room." Mrs. Jack: "I hope that Egeria's train will be on time, and I hope that it will rain so that I can wear my five-guinea mackin- 133. PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS tosh. It poured every day when I was econ- omizing and doing without it." Jack: "I never could see the value of economy that ended in extra extrava- gance." Mrs. Jack: "Very likely; there are hosts of things you never can see, Jackie, — .but there she is, stepping out of a hansom, the darling! What a sweet gown! She's infi- nitely more interesting than thet^ sweating system." We thought we were a merry party be- fore Egeria joined us, but she certainly introduced a new element of interest. I could not help thinking of it as we were flying about the Bristol station, just be- fore entering the first-class carriage en- gaged by our host. Tommy had bought us rosebuds at a penny each; Atlas had a bundle of illustrated papers under his arm — "The Sketch," "Black and White," 134 IN DEVON "The Queen," "The Lady's Pictorial," and half a dozen others. The guard was pasting an "engaged" placard on the car- riage window and piling up six luncheon- baskets in the corner on the cushions, and speedily we were off. It is a sincere tribute to the intrinsic charm of Egeria's character that Mrs. Jack and I admire her so unreservedly, for she is forever being hurled at us as an example in cases where men are too stupid to see that there is no fault in us, nor any special virtue in her. For instance, Jack tells Khty that she could walk with less fatigue if she wore sensible shoes like Egeria's. Now, Egeria's foot is very nearly as lovely as Trilby's in the story, and much prettier than Trilby's in the pictures ; conse- quently, she wears a hideous, broad-toed, low-heeled boot, and looks trim and neat in it. Her hair is another contested point; she dresses it in five minutes in the morning, I3S PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS walks or drives in the rain and wind for a few hours, rides in the afternoon, bathes in the surf, lies in a hammock, and, if cir- cumstances demand, the creature can smooth it with her hands and walk in to dinner! Kitty and I, on the contrary, rise a half-hour earlier to curl or wave; our spirit-lamps leak into our dressing-bags, and our beauty is decidedly damaged by damp or hot weather. Most women's hair is a mere covering to the scalp, growing out of the head, or pinned on, as the case may be. Egerla's is a glory like Eve's; it is ex- pressive, breathing a hundred delicate suggestions of herself; not tortured into frizzles, or fringes, or artificial shapes, but winding its lustrous lengths about her head, just high enough to show the beautiful nape of her neck, "where this way and that the little lighter-colored irreclaimable curls run truant from the knot, — curls, half curls, root curls, vine ringlets, wedding- 136 IN DEVON rings, fledgling feathers, tufts of down, blown wisps, — all these wave, or fall, or stray, loose and downward in the form of small, silken paws, hardly any of them thicker than a crayon shading, cunninger than long, round locks of gold to trick the heart." At one o'clock we lifted the covers of our luncheon-baskets. "Are n't they the tidiest, most self-re- specting, satisfying things!" exclaimed Egeria, as she took out her plate, and knife, and fork, opened her Japanese napkin, set in dainty order the cold fowl and ham, the pat of butter, crusty roll, bunch of lettuce, mustard and salt, the corkscrew, and fi- nally, the bottle of ale. " I cannot bear to be unpatriotic, but compare this with the ten minutes for refreshments at an American lunch-counter, its baked beans, and pies, and its cream cakes and doughnuts under glass covers. I don't believe English peo- 137 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS pie are as good as we are; they can't be; they're too comfortable. I wonder if the little discomforts of living in America, the dissatisfaction and incompetency of serv- "ants, and all the other problems, will work out for the nation a more exceeding weight of glory, or whether they will simply ruin the national temper." "It's wicked to be too luxurious, Egeria," said Tommy, with a sly look at Atlas. "It's the hair shirt, not the pearl- studded bosom, that induces virtue." "Is it?" she asked innocently, letting her clear gaze follow Tommy's. "You don't believe, Mr. Atlas, that modest people like you, and me, and Tommy, and the Copleys, incur danger in being too comfortable; the trouble lies in the fact that the other half is too uncomfortable, does it not? But I am just beginning to think of these things," she added soberly. "Egeria," said Mrs. Jack sternly, "you 138 IN DEVON may think about them as much as you like; I have no control over your mental proc- esses, but if you mention single tax, or tenement-house reform, or socialism, or altruism, or communism, or the sweating system, you will be dropped at Bideford. Atlas is only traveling with us because he needs complete moral and intellectual rest. I hope, oh, how I hope, that there is n't a social problem in Clovelly! It seems as if there could n't be, in a village of a single street and that a stone staircase." "There will be," I said, "if nothing more than the problem of supply and de- mand; of catching and selling herrings." We had time at Bideford to go into a quaint little shop for tea before starting on our twelve-mile drive; time also to be dragged by Tommy to Bideford Bridge, that played so important a part in Kings- ley's "Westward Ho!" We did not ap- proach Clovelly finally through the beau- 139 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS tiful Hobby Drive, laid out in former years by one of the Hamlyn ladies of Clovelly Court, but by the turnpike road, which, however, was not uninteresting. It had been market-day at Bideford and there were many market-carts and "jingoes" on the road, with perhaps a heap of yellow straw inside and a man and a rosy boy on the seat. The roadway was prettily bor- dered with broom, wild honeysuckle, fox- glove, and single roses, and there was a certain charming post-office called the Fairy Cross, in a garden of blooming fuch- sias, where Egeria almost insisted upon living and officiating as postmistress. All at once our driver checked his horses on the brink of a hill, apparently leading nowhere in particular. "What is it?" asked Mrs. Jack, who is always expecting accidents. "Clovelly, mum." "Clovelly!" we repeated automatically, 140 IN DEVON gazing about us on every side for a roof, a chimney, or a sign of habitation. "You'll find it, mum, as you walk down along." "How charming!" cried Egeria, who loves the picturesque. "Towns are gener- ally so obtrusive; is n't it nice to know that Clovelly is here and that all we have to do is to walk 'down-along' and find it. Come, Tommy. Ho, for the stone staircase!" We who were left behind discovered by more questioning, that one cannot drive into Clovelly; that although an American president or an English chancellor might, as a great favor, be escorted down on a donkey's back, or carried down in a sedan chair if he chanced to have one about his person, the ordinary mortal must walk to the door of the New Inn, his luggage be- ing dragged "down-along" on sledges and brought "up-along" on donkeys. In a word, Clovelly is not built like unto other 141 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS towns; it seems to have been flung up from the sea into a narrow rift between wooded hills, and to have clung there these eight hundred years of its existence. It has held fast, but it has not expanded, for the very good reason that it completely fills the hollow in the cliffs, the houses clinging like limpets to the rocks on either side, so that it would be a costly and difficult piece of engineering indeed to build any extensions or additions. • We picked our way "down-along" un- til we caught the first glimpse of white- washed cottages covered with creepers, their doors hospitably open, their win- dows filled with blooming geraniums and fuchsias. All at once, as we began to de- scend the winding, rocky pathway, we saw that it pitched headlong into the bluest sea in the world. No wonder the painters have loved it! Shall we ever forget that first vision ! There were a couple of donkeys coming "up-along" laden, one with coals, 142 IN DEVON the other with bread-baskets; a fisherman was mending his nets in front of his door; others were lounging "down to quay pool" to/prepare for their evening drift-fishing. A little further on, at a certain abrupt turn- ing called the "lookout," where visitors stop to breathe and villagers to gossip, one could catch a glimpse of the beach and "Crazed Kate's Cottage," the drying- ground for nets, the lifeboat house, the pier, and the breakwater. We were all enchanted when we arrived at the door of the inn. "Devonshire for me! I shall live here!" cried Mrs. Jacki "I said that a few times in Wales, but I retract it. You had better live here, too, Atlas ; there are n't any problems in Clovelly." "I am sure of that," he assented smil- ingly. " I noticed dozens of live snails in the rocks of the street as we came down; snails cannot live in combination with problems." H3 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS "Then I am a snail," answered Mrs. Jack cheerfully; "for that is exactly my temperament." We found that we could not get room enough for all at the tiny inn, but this only exhilarated Egeria and Tommy, They disappeared and came back triumphant ten minutes later. ".We got lodgings without any diffi- culty," said Egeria. "Tommy's is n't half bad; we saw a small boy whb had been taking a box 'down-along' on a sledge, and he referred us to a nice place where they took Tommy in; but you should see my lodging, it is ideal. I noticed the prettiest yellow-haired girl knitting in a doorway. 'There is n't room for me at the inn,' I said ; 'could you let me sleep here?' She asked her mother, and her mother said ' yes,' and there was never anything so romantic as my vine-embowered window. Juliet would have jumped at it. " 144 IN DEVON "She would have jumped out of it, if Romeo had been below," said Mrs. Jack, " but there are no Romeos nowadays ; they are all busy settling the relations of labor and capital." The New Inn proved some years ago to be too small for its would-be visitors. An addition could n't be built because there was n't any room; but the landlady suc- ceeded in getting a house across the way. Here there are bedrooms, a sort of quiet tap-room of very great respectability, and the kitchens. As the dining-room is in house number one, the matter of serving dinner might seem to be attended with difficulty, but it is not apparent. The maids run across the narrow street with platters and dishes surmounted by great Britannia covers, and in rainy weather they give the soup or joint the additional protection of a large cotton umbrella. The walls of every room in the inn are covered H5 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS with old china, much of it pretty, and some of it valuable, though the finest pieces are not hung, but are placed in glass cabinets. One cannot see an inch of wall space any- where in bedrooms, dining- or sitting-rooms for the huge delft platters, whole sets of the old green dragon pattern, quaint perfor- ated baskets, pitchers and mugs of Brit- ish luster, with queer dogs, and cats, and peacocks, and clocks of china. The massing of color is picturesque and brilliant, and the whole eifect decidedly unique. The land- lady's father and grandfather had been Bideford sea-captains and had brought here these and other treasures from for- eign parts. As Clovelly is a village of sea- folk and fisher-folk, the houses are full of curiosities, mostly from the Mediter- ranean. Egeria had no china in her room, but she had huge branches of coral, shells of all sizes and hues, and an immense colored print of the bay of Naples. Tom- 146 IN DEVON my's landlady was volcanic In her tastes, and his walls were lined with pictures of Vesuvius in all stages of eruption. My room, a wee, triangular box of a thing, was on the first floor of the inn. It opened hospitably on a bit of garden and street by a large glass door that would n't shut, so that a cat or a dog spent the night by my bedside now and then, and many a donkey tried to do the same, but was evicted. Oh, the Clovelly mornings! the sun- shine, the salt air, the savor of the boats and the nets, the limestone cliffs of Gal- lantry Bower rising steep and white at the head of the village street, with the brilliant sea at the foot; the walks down by the quay pool (not key pool, you understand, but quady piiul in the vernacular), the sails in a good old herring-boat called the Lorna Doone, for we are in Blackmore's country here. We began our first day early in the morn- 147 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS ing, and met at nine-o'clock breakfast in the coffee-room. Egeria came in glowing. She reminds me of a phrase in a certain novel, where the heroine is described as always dressing (seemingly) to suit the season and the sky. Clad in sea-green linen with a white collar, and belt, she was the very spirit of a Clovelly morning. She had risen at six, and in company with Phoebe, daughter of her house (the yellow- haired lassie mentioned previously), had prowled up and down North Hill, a trans- verse place or short street much celebrated by painters. They had met a certain bold fisher-lad named Jem, evidently Phoebe's favorite swain, and explored the short pas- sage where Fish street is built over, nick- named Temple Bar. Atlas came in shortly after and laid a nosegay at Egeria's plate. "My humble burnt-offering, your lady- ship," he said. 148 IN DEVON Tommy: "She has lots of oflFerings, but she generally prefers to burn 'em herself. When Egeria's swains talk about her, it is always 'ut vidi' how I saw, succeeded by ^ut perii,' how I sudden lost my brains." Egeria: " You don't indulge in burnt- offerings" (laughing, with slightly height- ened color) ; "but how you do burn incense! You speak as if the skeletons of my re- jected suitors were hanging on imaginary lines all over the earth's surface." Tommy: "They are not hanging on ' im- aginary' lines." Mrs. Jack: "Turn your thoughts from Egeria's victims, you frivolous people, and let me tell you that I've been 'up-along' this morning and found — what do you think.? — a library: a circulating library maintained by the Clovelly Court people. It is embowered in roses and jasmine, and there is a bird's nest hanging just outside one of the open windows next to a shelf 149 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS of Dickens and Scott. Never before have young families of birds been born and brought up with similar advantages. The snails were in the path just as we saw them yesterday evening, Atlas, not one has moved, not one has died! Oh, I certainly must come and live here. The librarian is a dear old lady; if she ever dies, I am com- ing to take her place. You will be post- mistress at the Fairy Cross then, Egeria, and we'll visit each other. And I've brought Dickens' 'Message from the Sea' for you, and Kingsley's 'Westward Hoi' for Tommy, and 'The Wages of Sin' for Atlas, and 'Hypatia' for Egeria, 'Lorna Doone' for Jack, and Charles Kingsley's sermons for myself. We will read aloud every evening." "I won't," said Tommy succinctly. "I've been down by the quay pool, and I've got acquainted with a lot of Ai chaps that have agreed to take me drift-fishing ISO IN DEVON every night, and they are going to put out the Clovelly lifeboat for exercise this week, arid if the weather is fine. Bill Marks Is going to take Atlas and me to Lundy Island. You don't catch me round the evening lamp very much in Clovelly." "Don't be too slangy, Tommy, and who on earth is Bill Marks.?" asked Jack. "He's our particular friend, Tommy's and mine," answered Atlas, seeing that Tommy was momentarily occupied with bacon and eggs. "He told us more yarns than we ever before heard spun in the same length of time. He Is seventy-seven, and says he was a teetotaler until he was sixty-nine, but has been trying to make up time ever since. From his condition last evening, I should say he was likely to do it. He was so mellow, I asked him how he could manage to walk down the staircase. 'Oh, I can walk down neat enough,' he said, 'when I'm in good sail- PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS ing trim, as I am now, feeling just good enough, but not too good, your honor; but when I'm half seas over or three sheets in the wind, I roll down, your honor!' He spends three shillings a week for his food and the same for his 'rummidge.' He was thrilling when he got on the subject of the awful wreck just outside this harbor, 'the fourth of October, seventy-one years ago, two-and-thirty men drowned, your honor, and half of 'em from Clovelly parish. And I was one of the three men saved in another storm twenty-four years agone, when two- and-twenty men were drowned; that's what it means to plow the great salt field that is never sown, your honor.' When he found we 'd been in Scotland, he was very anxious to know if we could talk 'Garlic,' said he 'd always wanted to know what it sounded like." Somehow, in the days that followed. Tommy was always with his particular IS2 IN DEVON friends, the fishermen, on the beach, at the Red Lion, or in the shop of a certain boat- builder, learning the use of the calking- iron. Mr. and Mrs Jack, Aunt Celia, and I unexpectedly found ourselves a quartette for hours together, while Egeria and Atlas walked in the churchyard, in the beauti- ful grounds of Clovelly Court, or in the deer park, where one finds as perfect a union of marine and woodland scenery as any in England. Atlas may have taken her there because he could discuss sinjgle tax more eloquently when he was walking over the entailed estates of the English landed gentry, but I suspect that single tax had taken off its hat, and bowing profoundly to Egeria, had said, "After you. Madam!" and retired to its proper place in the universe; for not even the most blatant economist would affirm that any other problem can be so important as that which confronts a man IS3 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS when he enters that land of Beulah, which is upon the borders of Heaven and within sight of the City of Love. Atlas was young, warm of heart, high of mind, and generous of soul. All the necessary chords, therefore, were in him, ready to be set in vibration. No one could do this more cunningly than Egeria; the only question was whether love would "run out to meet love," as it should, "with open arms." We simply waited to see. Mrs. Jack with that fine lack of logic that distinguished her, disclaimed all responsibility. "He is awake, at least," she said, "and that is a great comfort; and now and then he ob- serves a few very plain facts, mostly relat- ing to Egeria, it is true. If it does come to anything, I hope he won't ask her to live in a college settlement the year round, though I have n't the slightest doubt that she would like it. If there were ever two beings 154. IN DEVON created expressly for each other, it is these two, and for that reason I have my doubts about the matter. Almost all marriages are made between two people who have n't the least thing in common, so far as out- siders can judge. Egeria and Atlas are almost too well suited for marriage." The progress of the affair had thus far certainly been astonishingly rapid, but it might mean nothing. Egeria's mind and heart were so easy of access up to a cer- tain point that the traveler sometimes overestimated the distance covered and the distance still to cover. Atlas quoted something about her at the end of the very first day, that described her charmingly: "Ordinarily, the sweetest ladies will make us pass through cold mist and cross a stile or two, or a broken bridge, before the for- malities are cleared away, to grant us rights of citizenship. She is like those frank lands where we have not to hand out a pass- PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS port at the frontier and wait for dubious inspection." But the description is incom- plete. Egeria, indeed, made no one wait at the frontier for a dubious inspection of his passport; but once in the new domain, while he would be cordially welcomed to parks, gardens, lakes, and pleasure grounds, he would find unexpected difficulty in en- tering the queen's private apartments, a fact that occasioned surprise to some of the travelers. We all took the greatest interest, too, in the romance of Phoebe and Jem, for the course of true love did not run at all smooth for this young couple. Jack wrote a ballad about her, and Egeria made a tune to it, and sung it to the tinkling, old-fashioned piano of an evening : — "Have you e'er seen the street of Clovelly? The quaint, rambling street of Clovelly, With its staircase of stone leading down to the sea, To the harbor so sleepy, so old, and so wee, The queer, crooked street of Clovelly. IS6' IN DEVON "Have you e'er seen the lass of Clovelly? The sweet, little lass of Clovelly, With kirtle of gray reaching just to her knee, And ankles as neat as ankles may be. The yellow-haired lass of Clovelly. "There's a good, honest lad in Clovelly, A bold, fisher lad of Clovelly, With purpose as straight and swagger as free As the course of his boat when breasting a sea, The brave sailor lad of Clovelly. "Have you e'er seen the church at Clovelly? Have you heard the sweet bells of Clovelly? The lad and the lassie will hear them, may be, And join hand in hand to sail over life's sea From the little stone church at Clovelly." When the nights were cool or damp we crowded into Mrs. Jack's tiny china-laden sitting-room, and had a blaze in the grate with a bit of driftwood burning blue and green and violet on top of the coals. Tommy sometimes smelled of herring to such a degree that we were obliged to keep the door open; but his society was so pre- cious that we endured the odors. IS7 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS But there were other evenings out of doors, when we sat in a shelterted corner down on the pier, watching the line of limestone cliffs running westward to the revolving light at Hartland Point that sent us alternate flashes of ruby and white across the water. Clovelly lamps made glittering disks in the quay pool, shining there side by side with the reflected star- beams. We could hear the regular swish- swash of the waves on the rocks, and to the eastward the dripping of a stream that came tumbling over the cliff. Such was our last evening in Clovelly; a very quiet one, for the charm of the place lay upon us and we were loath to leave it. It was warm and balmy, and the moon- light lay upon the beach. Egeria leaned against the parapet, the serge of her dress showing white against the background of rock. The hood of her dark blue yachting- cape was slipping off her head, and her IS8 IN DEVON eyes were as deep and clear as crystal pools. Presently she began to sing, — first, "The Sands o' Dee," then, — "Three fishers went sailing out into the west, Out into the west as the sun went down; Each thought of the woman who loved him the best, And the children stood watching them out of the town." Egeria is one of the few women who can sing well without an accompaniment. She has a thrilling voice, and what with the scene, the hour, and the pathos of Kings- ley's verses, tears rushed into my eyes, and Bill Marks' words came back to me — "Two-and-twenty men drowned; that's what it means to plow the great salt field that is never sown." Atlas gazed at her with eyes that no longer cared to keep their secret. Mrs. Jack was still uncertain ; for me, I was sure. Love had rushed past him like a galloping IS9 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS horseman, and shooting an arrow almost without aim, had struck him full in the heart, that citadel that had withstood a dozen deliberate sieges. It was midnight, and our few belongings were packed. Egeria had come to the Inn to sleep, and stole into my room to warm her toes before the blaze in my grate, for I was chilly and had ordered a sixpenny fire. When I say that she came in to warm her toes, I am' asking you to accept her state- ment, not mine; it is my opinion that she came in for no other purpose than to tell me something that was in her mind and heart pleading for utterance. I did n't help her by leading up to the subject, because I thought her fib so fla- grant and unnecessary; accordingly, we talked over a multitude of things, — Phoebe and Jem and their hard-hearted parents, our visit to Cardiff and Ilfra- combe. Bill Marks and his wife, the service 1 60 IN DEVON at the church, and finally her walk with Atlas in the churchyard. "We went inside," said Egeria, "and I copied the inscription on the bronze tablet that Atlas liked so much on Sun- day: 'Her grateful and affectionate hus- band's last and proudest wish will be that whenever Divine Providence shall call him hence, his name may be engraved on the same tablet that is sacred in perpetuating as much virtue and goodness as could adorn human nature.'" Then she went on with apparent lack of sequence: "Penelope, don't you think it is always perfectly safe to obey a Scriptural command, because I have done it?" "Did you find it in the Old or the New Testament?" "The Old." "I should say that if you found some remarks about breaking the bones of your enemy, and have twisted it out of Its con- i6i IN DEVON "Have you a Bible?" "You might not think it, but I have, and it is here on my table." "Then I am going into my room, lock the door, and call the verse through the keyhole. But you must promise not to say a word to me till to-morrow morning." I was not in a position to dictate terms, so I promised. The door closed, the bolt shot into the socket, and Egeria's voice came so faintly through the keyhole that I had to stoop to catch the words : — "Deuteronomy, 10:19." I flew to my Bible. Genesis — Exodus — Leviticus — Numbers — Deuteronomy — Deut-er-on-omy — Ten — Nineteen — "Love ye, therefore, the stranger — " V Penelope at Home 'T is good when you have crossed the sea and back To find the sit-fast acres where you left them. Emerson. v Penelope at Home Beresford Broadacres, April IS, 19— PENELOPE, in the old sense, is no more ! No mound of grass and daisies covers her; no shaft of granite or marble marks the place where she rests ; — as a matter of fact she never does rest; she walks and runs and sits and stands, but her traveling days are over. For the pres- ent, in a word, the reason that she is no longer "Penelope," with dozens of por- traits and three volumes of "Experiences" to her credit, is, that she is Mrs. William Hunt Beresford. As for Himself, he is just as much Wil- liam Hunt Beresford as ever he was, for marriage has not staled, nor fatherhood 167 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS withered, his infinite variety. There may be, indeed, a difference, ever so slight; a new dignity, and an air of responsibility that harmonizes well with the inch of added girth at his waist-line and the gray thread or two that becomingly sprinkle his dark hair. And where is Herself, the vanished Penel- ope, you ask; the companion of Salemina and Francesca; the traveler in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; the wan- derer in Switzerland and Italy? Well, if she is a thought less irresponsible, merry, and loquacious, she is happier and wiser. If her easel and her palette are not in daily evidence, neither are they altogether ban- ished from the scene; and whatever meas- ure of cunning Penelope's hand possessed in other days Mrs. Beresford has contrived to preserve. If she wields the duster occasionally, in alternation with the paint-brush and the 1 68 AT HOME pen, she has now a new choice of weapons ; and as for models, — her friends, her neighbors, even her enemies and rivals, might admire her ingenuity, her thrift, and her positive genius in selecting types to paint! She never did paint anything beautifully but children, though her back- grounds have been praised, also the vari- ous young things that were a vital part of every composition. She could never draw a horse or a cow or an ox to her satisfac- tion, but a long-legged colt, or a newborn Bossy-calf were well within her powers. Her puppies and kittens and chickens and goslings were always admired by the pub- lic, and the fact that the mothers and fathers in the respective groups were never quite as convincing as 'their offspring, — this somehow escaped the notice of the critics. Very well, then, what was Penelope in- spired to do when she became Mrs. Beres- 169 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS ford and left the Atlantic rolling between the beloved Salenaina, Francesca, and her- self? Why, having "crossed the sea and back" repeatedly, she found "the sit-fast acres" of the house of Beresford where she "left them" and where they had been sitting fast for more than a hundred years. "Here is the proper place for us to live," she said to Himself, when they first viewed the dear delightful New England land- scape over together, "Here is where your long roots are, and as my roots have been in half a hundred places they can be easily transplanted. You have a decent income to begin on; why not eke it out with apples and hay and corn and Jersey cows and Plymouth Rock cocks and hens, while I use the scenery for my pictures? There are backgrounds here for a thousand can- vases, all within a mile of your ancestral doorstep." "I don't know what you will do for 170 AT HOME models in this remote place," said Himself, putting his hands In his pockets and gazing dubiously at the abandoned farmhouses on the hillsides; the still green dooryards on the village street where no children were playing, and the quiet little brick school- house at the turn of the road, from which a dozen half-grown boys and girls issued decorously, looking at us like scared rabbits. "I have an idea about models," said Mrs. Beresford. And it turned out that she had, for all that was ten years ago and Penelope the Painter, merged in Mrs. Beresford the mother, has the three loveliest models in all the countryside! Children, of course, are common enough everywhere; not, perhaps, as common as they should be, but there are a good many clean, well-behaved, truthful, decently- featured little boys and girls who will, in 171 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS course of time, become the bulwarks of the Republic, who are of no use as models. The public is not interested in, and will neither purchase nor hang on its walls, anything but a winsome child, a beautiful child, a pathetic child, or a picturesquely ragged and dirty child. (The latter type is preferably a foreigner, as dirty Ameri- can children are for some reason or other quite unsalable.) All this is in explanation of the foregoing remarks about Mrs. Beresford's ingenuity, thrift, and genius in selecting types to paint. The ingenuity lay in the idea itself; the thrift, in securing models that should belong to the Beresford "sit-fast acres" and not have to be searched for and " hired in" by the day; and the genius, in produc- ing nothing but enchanting, engrossing, adorable, eminently "paintable" children. They are just as obedient, interesting, grammatical, and virtuous as other 172 AT HOME peoples' offspring, yet they are so beau- tiful that it would be the height of selfish- ness not to let the world see them and turn green with envy. When viewed by the casual public in a gallery, nobody of course believes that they are real until some kind friend says : "No, oh, no! not ideal heads at all; perfect likenesses; the children of Mr. and Mrs. Beresford; Penelope Hamilton, whose sig- nature you see in the corner, is Mrs. Beres- ford." When they are exhibited in the guise of, and under such titles as: "Young April," "In May Time," "Girl with Chickens," "Three of a Kind" (Billy with a kitten and a puppy tumbling over him), "Little Mothers" (Frances and Sally with their dolls), "When all the World is Young" (Billy, Frances, and Sally under the trees, surrounded by a riot of young feathered things, with a lamb and a Jersey calf peep- 173 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS ing over a fence in the background), then Himself stealthily visits the gallery. He stands somewhere near the pictures, pull- ing his moustache nervously and listen- ing to the comments of the bystanders. Not a word of his identity or paternity does he vouchsafe, but occasionally some acquaintance happens to draw near, per- haps to compliment or congratulate him. Then he has been heard to say vainglori- ously: "Oh, no! they are not flattered; rather the reverse. My wife has an ex- traordinary faculty of catching likenesses and of course she has a wonderful talent, but she agrees with me that she never quite succeeds in doing the children justice!" Here we are, then. Himself and I, grow- ing old with the country that gave us birth (God bless it!) and our children growing up with it, as they always should ; for it must have occurred to the reader that I am Penelope, Hamilton that was, 174 AT HOME and also, and above all, that I am Mrs. William Hunt Beresford. April 20, 19 — . Himself and I have gone through the inevitable changes that life and love, mairiage and parenthood, bring to all hu- man creatures ; but no one of the dear old group of friends has so developed as Fran- cesca. Her last letter, posted in Scotland and delivered here seven days later, is like a breath of the purple heather and brings her vividly to mind. In the old days when we first met she was gay, irresponsible, vivacious, and a decided flirt, — with symptoms of be- coming a coquette. She was capricious and exacting; she had far too large an income for a young girl accountable to nobody; she was lovely to look upon, a product of cities and a trifle spoiled. She danced through Europe with Salem- 175 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS ina and me, taking in no more informa- tion than she could help, but charming everybody that she met. She was only fairly well educated, and such knowledge as she possessed was vague, uncertain, and never ready for instant use. In literature she knew Shakespeare, Balzac, Thackeray, Hawthorne, and Longfellow, but if you had asked her to place Homer, Schiller, Dante, Victor Hugo, James Fenimore Cooper, or Thoreau, she could n't have done it within a hundred years. In history she had a bowing acquaint- ance with Napoleon, Washington, Wel- lington, Prince Charlie, Henry of Navarre, Paul Revere, and Stonewall Jackson, but as these gallant gentlemen stand on the printed page, so they stood shoulder to shoulder, elbowing one another in her pretty head, made prettier by a wealth of hair. Marcel-waved twice a week. These facts were brought out once in 176 AT HOME examination, by one of Francesca's earliest lovers, who, at Salemina's request and my own, acted as her tutor during the spring before our first trip abroad, the general idea being to prepare her mind for foreign travel. I suppose we were older and should have known better than to allow any man under sixty to tutor Francesca in the spring. Anyhow, the season worked its maddest pranks on the pedagogue. He fell in love with his pupil within a few days, — they were warm, delicious, budding days, for it was a very early, verdant, intoxicating spring that produced an unusual crop of romances in our vicinity. Unfortunately the tutor was a scholar at heart, as well as a potential lover, and he interested him- self in making psychological investigations of Francesca's mind. She was perfectly willing, for she always regarded her igno- rance as a huge joke, instead of viewing it with shame and embarrassment. What 177 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS ^ ^ ^ TTT^ — ^ _ . was more natural, when she drove, rode, walked, sailed, danced, and "sat out" to her heart's content, while more learned young ladies stayed within doors and went to bed at nine o'clock with no vanity- provoking memories to lull them to sleep ? The fact that she might not be positive as to whether Dante or Milton wrote "Para- dise Lost," or Palestrina antedated Ber- lioz, or the Mississippi River ran north and south or east and west, — these trifling uncertainties had ijwer cost her an offer of marriage or the love of a girl friend; so she was perfectly frank and offered no opposition to the investigations of the un- happy but conscientious tutor, meeting his questions with the frankness of a child. Her attitude of mind was the more candid because she suspected the passion of the teacher and knew of no surer way to cure him than to let him know her mind for what it was. 178 AT HOME When the staggering record of her igno- rance on seven subjects was ^et down in a green-covered blank book, she awaited the result not only with resignation, but with positive hope; a hope that proved to be ill-founded, for curiously enough the tutor was still in love with her. Salemina was surprised, but I was not. Of course I had to know anatomy in order to paint, but there is more in it than that. In paint- ing the outsides of people I assure you that I learned to guess mc * of what was in- side them than their bony structures! I sketched the tutor while he was examin- ing Francesca and I knew that there were no abysmal depths of ignorance that could appall him where she was concerned. He could n't explain the situation at all, him- self. If there was anything that he ad- mired and respected in woman, it was a well-stored, logical mind, and three months' tutoring of Francesca had shown 179 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS him that her mental machinery was of an obsolete pattern and that it was not even in good working order. He could not believe himself influenced (so he confessed to me) by such trivial things as curling lashes, pink ears, waving hair (he had never heard of Marcel), or mere beauties of color and line and form. He said he was not so sure about Francesca's eyes. Eyes like hers, he remarked in con- fidence, were not beneath the notice of any man, be he President of Harvard University or Master of Balliol College, for they seemed to promise something never once revealed in the green exami- nation book. "You are quite right," I answered him; "the green book is not all there'is of Miss Monroe, but whatever there is is plainly not for you"; and he humbly agreed with my dictum. Is it not strange that a man will talk to 1 80 AT HOME one woman about the charms of another for days upon days without ever realizing that she may possibly be born for some other purpose than listening to him? For an hour or two, of course, any sympathetic or generous-minded person can be inter- ested in the confidences of a lover; but at the end of weeks or months, during which time he has never once regarded his listener as a human being of the feminine gender, with eyes, nose, and hair in no way inferior to those of his beloved, — at the end of that time he should be shaken, smitten, waked from his dreams, and told in ring- ing tones that in a tolerably large uni- verse there are probably two women worth looking at, the one about whom he is talk- ing, and the one to whom he is talking! May 12, 19 — To go on about Francesca, she always had a quick intelligence, a sense of humor, iSi PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS a heart, and a conscience; four things not to be despised in the equipment of a woman. The wit she used lavishly for the delight of the world at large; the heart had not (in the tutor's time) found anything or anybody on which to spend itself; the conscience certainly was not working over- time at the same period, but I always knew that it was there and would be an excellent reliable organ when once aroused. Of course there is no reason why the Reverend Ronald MacDonald, of the Es- tablished Church of Scotland, should have been the instrument chosen to set all the wheels of Francesca's being in motion, but so it was; and a great clatter and confusion they made in our Edinburgh household when the machinery started ! If Ronald was handsome he was also a splen- did fellow; if he was a preacher he was also a man; and no member of the laity could have been more ardently and satisfactorily 182 AT HOME in love than he. It was the ardor that worked the miracle; and when Francesca was once warmed through to the core, she began to grow. Her modest fortune helped things a little at the beginning of their married life, for it not only made ex- istence easier, but enabled them to be of more service in the straggling, struggling country parishes where they found them- selves at first. Francesca's beautiful American clothes shocked Ronald's congregations now and then, and it was felt that, though possible, it was not very probable, that the grace of God could live with such hats and shoes, such gloves and jewels as hers. But by the time Ronald was called from his Argyll- shire church to St. Giles's Cathedral in Edinburgh there was a better understand- ing of young Mrs. MacDonald's raiment and its relation to natural and revealed religion. It appeared now that a clergy- 183 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS man's wife, by strict attention to parochial duties; by being the mother of three chil- dren all perfectly well behaved in church; by subscribing generously to all worthy charities; by never conducting herself as light-mindedly as her eyes and conver- sation seemed to portend, — it appeared that a woman could live down her clothes ! It was a Bishop, I think, who argued in Francesca's behalf that godliness did not necessarily dwell in frieze and Stout leather and that it might flourish in lace and chiffon. Salemina and I used to call Ron- ald and Francesca the antinomic pair. An- tinomies, one finds by consulting the authorities, are apparently contradictory poles, which, however, do not really con- tradict, but are only correlatives, the ex- istence of one making the existence of the other necessary, explaining each other and giving each other a real standing and equilibrium. 184 AT HOME May 7, 19 — What immeasurable leagues of distance lie between Salemina, Francesca, and me! Not only leagues of space divide us, but the difference in environment, circum- stances, and responsibilities that give real- ity to space; yet we have bridged the gulf successfully by a particular sort of three- sided correspondence, almost impersonal enough to be published, yet revealing all the little details of daily life one to the other. When we three found that we should be inevitably separated for some years, we adopted the habit of a "loose-leaf diary." The pages -are perforated with large circular holes and put together in such a way that one can remove any leaf without injuring the book. We write down, as the spirit moves us, the more in- teresting happenings of the day, and once in a fortnight, perhaps, we slip a half- 18s PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS dozen selected pages into an envelope and the packet starts on its round between America, Scotland, and Ireland. In this way we have kept up with each other without any apparent severing of intimate friendship, and a farmhouse in New Eng-. land, a manse in Scotland, and the Irish home of a Trinity College professor and his lady are brought into frequent contact. Inspired by Francesca's last budget, full of all sorts of revealing details of her daily life, I said to Himself at breakfast: "I am not going to paint this morning, nor am I going to 'keep house'; I propose to write in my loose-leaf diary and what is more I propose to write about marriage ! " When I mentioned to Himself the subject I intended to treat he looked up in alarm. "Don't, I beg of you, Penelope," he said. "If you do it the other two will fol- low suit. Women cannot discuss marriage without dragging in husbands, and Mac- i86 AT HOME Donald, La Touche, and I won't have a leg to stand upon. The trouble with these 'loose leaves' that you three keep forever in circulation is, that the cleverer they are the more publicity they get. Francesca probably reads your screeds at her Chris- tian Endeavor meetings just as you cull extracts from Salemina's for your Current Events Club. In a word, the loosened leaf leads to the loosened tongue, and that's rather epigrammatic for a farmer at break- fast time." "I am not going to write about hus- bands," I said, "least of all my own, but about marriage as an institution ; the part it plays in the evolution of human beings." "Nevertheless, everything you say about it will reflect upon me," argued Himself. "The only husband a woman knows is her own husband and everything she thinks about marriage is gathered from her own experience." 187 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS "Your attitude is not only timid, it is positively cowardly!" I exclaimed. "Vou are an excellent husband as husbands go and I don't consider that I have retro- graded mentally or spiritually during our ten years of life together, jit, is true noth- ing has been said in private or public about any improvement in me due to your influence, but perhaps that is because the idea has got about that your head is easily turned by flattery. — Anyway, I shall be entirely impersonal in what I write. I shall say I believe in marriage because I cannot think of any better arrangement; also that I believe in marrying men be- cause there is nothing else to marry.. I shall also quote that feminist lecturer who said that the bitter business of every woman in the world is to convert a trap into a home. Of course I laughed inwardly, but my shoulders did n't shake for two minutes as yours did. They were far more 1 88 AT HOME eloquent than any loose leaf from a diary; for they showed every other man in the audience that you did n't consider that you had to set any 'traps' for me!" Himself leaned back in his chair and gave way to unbridled mirth. When he could control his speech he wiped the tears from his eyes and said offensively: — "Well, I did n't; did I?" "No," I replied, flinging the tea cosy at his head, missing it, and breaking the oleander on the plant-shelf ten feet distant. ' "You wouian't be unmarried for the world!" said Himself. "You couldn't paint every day, you know you could n't; and where could you find anything so beautiful to paint as your own children unless you painted me; and it just occurs to me that you never paid me the compli- ment of asking me to sit for you." "I can't paint men," I objected. "They are too massive and rugged and ugly, 189 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS Their noses are big and hard and their bones show through everywhere excepting when they are fat and then they are dis- gusting. Their eyes don't shine, their hair is never beautiful, they have no dimples in their hands and elbows; you can't see their mouths because of, their moustaches, and generally it's no loss; and their clothes are stiff and conventional, with no color, nor any flowing lines to paint." ''I know where you keep your 'proper- ties' ard I'll make myself amass of color and flowing lines if you'll try me," Him- self said meekly. , "No, dear," I responded amiably. "You are very nice, but you are not a costume man, and I shudder to think what you would make of yourself if I allowed you to visit my property-room. If I ever have to paint you (not for pleasure, but as a pun- ishment), you shall wear your everyday corduroys and I'll surround you with the 190 AT HOME- children; then you know perfectly well that the public will never notice you at all." Whereupon I went to my studio built on the top of the long rambling New England shed and loved what I painted yesterday so much that I went on with it, finding that I had said to Himself almost all that I had in mind to say, about marriage as an in- stitution. June 15, 19— We were finishing luncheon on the ve- randa with all out of doors to give us ap- petite. It was Buttercup Sunday, a yellow June one that had been preceded by Pussy Willow Sunday, Dandelion Sunday, Apple Blossom, Wild Iris, and Lilac Sun- day, to be followed by Daisy and Black- Eyed Susan and White Clematis and Goldenrod and Wild Aster and Autumn Leaf Sundays. Francie was walking* over the green- 191 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS sward with a bowl and spoon, just as our Scottish men friends used to do with oat- meal at breakfast time. The Sally-baby was blowing bubbles in her milk, and Him- self and I were discussing a book lately received from London. Suddenly I saw Billy, who had wandered from the table, sitting on the steps bending over a tiny bird's egg in his open hand. I knew that he must have taken it from some low-hung nest, but taken it in innocence, for he looked at it with solicitude as an object of tender and fragile beauty. He had never given a thought to the mother's days of patient brooding, nor that he was robbing the summer world of one bird's flight and one bird's song. "Did you hear the whippoorwills sing- ing last night. Daddy.?" I asked. "I did, indeed, and long before sunrise this morning. There must be a new family in our orchard, I think; but then we have 192 AT HOME coaxed hundreds of birds our way this spring by our little houses, our crumbs, and our drinking dishes." "Yes, we have never had so many since we came here to live. Look at that little brown bird flying about in the tall apple tree, Francie, she seems to be in trouble." "P'r'haps it's Mrs. SmiflF's wenomous cat," exclaimed Francie, running to look for a particularly voracious animal that lived across the fields, but had been known to enter our bird-Eden. "Hear this. Daddy, is n't it pretty.?" I said, taking up the " Life of Dorothy Grey." Billy pricked up his ears, for he can never see a book opened without running to join the circle, so eager he is not to lose a precious word. "The wren sang early this morning" (I read slowly). "We talked about it at breakfast and how many people there were who would not be aware of it; and E. said, 193 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS 'Fancy, if God came in and said: "Did you notice my wren?" and they were obliged to say they had not known it was there ! ' " Billy rose quietly and stole away behind the trees, returning in a few moments, empty-handed, to stand by my side. "Does God know how many eggs there are in a bird's nest, mother?" he asked. "People have so many different ideas, about what God sees and takes note of, that it 's hard to say, sonny. Of course you remember that the Bible says not one sparrow falls to the ground but He knows it." "The mother bird can't count her eggs, can she, mother?" "Oh! Billy, you do ask the hardest ques- tions ; ones that I can never answer by Yes and No! She broods her eggs all day and all night and never lets them get cold, so she must know, at any rate, that they are going to be birds, don't you think? And 194 AT HOME of course she would n't want to lose one ; that's the reason she's so faithful!" "Well!" said Billy, after a long pause, "I don't care quite so much about the mother because sometimes there are five eggs in a weeny, weeny nest that never could hold five little ones without their scrunching each other and being uncom- fortable. But if God should come in and say : ' Did you take my egg, that was going to be a bird?' I just could n't bear it!" June IS, 19— Another foreign mail is in and the vil- lage postmistress has sent an impassioned request that I steam off the stamps for her boy's album, enriched during my residence here by specimens from eleven different countries. ("Mis' Beresford beats the Wanderin' Jew all holler if so be she's be'n to all them places, an' come back alive!" — so she says to Himself.) Among the let- 19s PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS ters there is a budget of loose leayes from Salemina's diary, Salemina, who is now Mrs. Gerald La Touche, wife of Professor La Touche, of Trinity College, Dublin, and stepmother to Jackeen and Broona La Touche. It is midsummer. College is not in session, and they are at Rosnaree House, their place in County Meath. Salemina is the one of our trio who con- tinues to move in grand society. She it is who dines at the Viceregal Lodge and Dublin Castle. She it is who goes with her distinguished husband for week-ends with the Master of the Horse, the Lord Chan- cellor, and the Dean of the Chapel Royal. Francesca, it is true, makes her annual bow to the Lord High Commissioner at Holy- rood Palace and dines there frequently during Assembly Week; and as Ronald numbers one Duke, two Earls, and several Countesses and Dowager Countesses in 196 AT HOME his parish there are awe-inspiring visiting cards to be found in the silver salver on her hall table, — but Salemina in Ireland lit- erally lives with the great, of all classes and conditions! She is in the heart of the Irish Theater and the Modern Poetry movements, — and when she is not hob- nobbing with playwrights and poets she is consorting with the Irish nobility and gentry. I cannot help thinking that she would still be Miss Peabody, of Salem, Massachu- setts, had it not been for my generous and helpful offices, and those of Francesca! Never were two lovers parted in youth in America and miraculously reunited in middle age, in Ireland, more recalcitrant in declaring their mutual affection than Dr. La Touche and Salemina ! Nothing in the world divided them but imaginary barriers. He was not rich, but he had a comfort- able salary and a dignified and honorable 197 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS position among men. He had two children, but they were charming, and therefore so much to the good. Salemina was absolutely "foot loose" and tied down to no duties in America, so no one could blame her for marrying an Irishman. She had never loved any one else, and Dr. La Touche might have had that information for the asking; but he was such a bat for blindnessi, adder for deafness, and lamb for meekness that because she refused him once, when she was the only comfort of an aged mother and father, he concluded that she would refuse him again, though she was now alone in the world. His late wife, a poor, flighty, frivolous invalid, the kind of woman who always entarigles a sad, vague, absent- minded scholar, had died six years before, and never were there two children so in need of a mother as Jackeen and Broona, a couple of affectionate, hot-headed, be- witching, ragged, tousled Irish darlings. 198 AT HOME I would cheerfully have married Dr. Gerald myself, just for the sake of his neglected babies, but I dislike changes and I had already espoused Himself. However, a summer in Ireland, under- taken with no such ^reat stakes in mind as Salemina's marriage, made possible a chance meeting of the two old friends. This was followed by several others, de- vised by us with incendiary motives, and without Salemina's knowledge. There was also the unconscious plea of the children working a daily spell; there was the past, with its memories, tugging at both their hearts; and above all there was a steady, dogged, copious stream of mental sugges- tion emanating from Francesca and me, so that, in, course of time, our middle-aged couple did succeed in confessing to each other that a separate future was impossi- ble for them. They never would have encountered 199 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS each other had it not been for us; never, never would have become engaged ; and as for the wedding, we forcibly led them to the altar, saying that we must leave Ireland and the ceremony could not be delayed. Not that we are the recipients of any gratitude for all this! Rather the reverse! They constantly allude to their marriage as made in Heaven, although there prob- ably never was another union where crea- tures of earth so toiled and slaved to as- sist the celestial powers. I wonder why middle-aged and elderly lovers make such an appeal to me! Is it because I have lived much in New Eng- land, where "ladies-in-waiting" are all too comnion, — where the wistful bridegroom has an invalid mother to support, or a barren farm out of which he cannot wring a living, or a malignant father who cher- ishes a bitter grudge against his son's chosen bride and all her kindred, — where 200 AT HOME the woman herself is compassed about with obstacles, dragging out a pinched and col- orless existence year after year? And when at length the two waiting ones succeed in triumphing over circumstances, they often come together wearily, soberly, with half the joy pressed out of life. Young lovers have no fears ! That the future holds any terrors, difficulties, bugbears of any sort, they never seem to imagine, and so they are delightful and amusing to watch in their gay and sometimes irresponsible and selfish courtships ; but they never tug at my heart-strings as their elders do, when the great, the long-delayed moment comes. Francesca and I, in common with Sa- lemina's other friends, thought that she would never marry. She had been asked often enough in her youth, but she was not the sort of woman who falls in love at forty. What we did not know was that she had fallen in love with Gerald La Touche at 201 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS five-and-twenty and had never fallen out, — keeping her feelings to herself during the years that he was espoused to another, very unsuitable, lady. Our own senti- mental experiences, however, had sharp- ened our eyes, and we divined at once that Dr. La Touche, a scholar of fifty, shy, reserved, self-distrustful, and oh! so in need of anchor and harbor, — that he was the only husband in the world for Salem- ina ; and that he, after giving all that he had and was to an unappreciative woman, would be unspeakably blessed in the wife of our choosing. I remember so well something that he said to me once as we sat at twilight on the bank of the lake near Devorgilla. The others were rowing toward us bringing the baskets for a tea picnic, and we, who had come in the first boat, were talking quietly together about intimate things. He told me that a frail old scholar, a brother pro- 202 AT HOME fessor, used to go back from the college to his house every night bowed down with weariness and pain and care, and that he used to say to his wife as he sank into his seat by the fire: "Oh! praise me, my wife, praise me!" My eyes filled and I turned away to hide the tears when Dr. Gerald continued absently: "As for me, Mistress Beresford, when I go home at night I take my only companion from the mantel-shelf and lean- ing back in my old armchair say, 'Praise me, my pipe, praise me!'" And Salemina Peabody was in the boat coming toward us, looking as serenely lovely in a gray tweed and broad white hat as any good sweet woman of forty could look, while hegazed at her "through a glass darkly" as if she were practically non- existent, or had nothing whatever to do with the case. I concealed rebellious opinions of blind 203 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS bats, deaf adders, meek lambs, and obsti- nate pigs, but said very gently and imper- sonally: "I hope you won't always allow your pipe to be your only companion; — you, with your children, your name and position, your home and yourself to give — to somebody!" But he only answered: "You exagger- ate, my dear madam; there is not enough left in me or of me to offer to any woman ! " And I could do nothing but make his tea graciously and hand it to him, wondering that he was able to see the cup or the bread- and-butter sandwich that I put into his modest, ungrateful hand. However, it is all a thing of the past, that dim, sweet, gray romance that had its rightful background in a country of sub- dued colorings, of pensive sweetness, of gentle greenery, where there is an eternal wistfulness in the face of the natural world, speaking of the springs of hidden tears. 204 AT HOME Their union is a perfect success and I echo the Boots of the inn at Devorgilla when he said: "An' sure it's the doctor that's the satisfied man an' the luck is on him as well as on e'er a man alive! As for her ladyship, she's one o' the blessings o' thewurruld an' 't would be an o'jus pity to spile two houses wid 'em." July 12, 19—. We were all out in the orchard sunning ourselves on the little haycocks that the "hired man" had piled up here and there under the trees. "It is not really so beautiful as Italy," I said to Himself, gazing up at the newly set fruit on the apple boughs and then across the close-cut hay field to the level pasture, with its rocks and cow paths, its blueberry bushes and sweet fern, its clumps of young sumachs, till my eyes fell upon the deep green of the distant pines. "I can't 20s PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS bear to say it, because it seems disloyal, but I almost believe I think so." "It is not as picturesque," Himself agreed grudgingly, his eye following mine from point to point; "and why do we love it so?" "There is nothing delicious and luxuri- ant about it," I went on critically, "yet it has a delicate, ethereal, austere, straight- forward Puritanical loveliness of its own; but, no, it is not as beautiful as Italy or Ireland, and it is n't as tidy as England. If you keep away from the big manufac- turing towns and their outskirts you may go by motor or railway through shire after shire in England and never see any- thing unkempt, down-at-the-heel, out-at- elbows, or ill-cared-for; no broken-down fences or stonewalls; no heaps of rubbish or felled trees by the wayside; no unpainted or tottering buildings — " "You see plenty of ruins," interrupted 206 AT HOME Himself in a tone that promised argu- ment. "Yes, but ruins are different; they are finished; they are not tottering, they have tottered ! Our country is too big, I suppose, to be *tidy,' but how I should like to take just one of the United States and clear it up, back yards and all, from border line to border line!" "You are talking like a housewife now, not like an artist," said Himself reprov- ingly. "Well, I am both, I hope, and I don't intend that any one shall know where the one begins or the other leaves off, either! And if any foreigner should remark that America is unfinished or untidy I shall deny it!" "Fie! Penelope! You who used to be a citizen of the world! " " So I am still, so far as a roving foot and a knowledge of three languages can 207 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS make me ; but you remember that the soul ' retains the characteristic of its race and the heart is true to its own country, even to its own parish.' " "When shall we be going to the other countries, mother?" asked Billy. "When shall we see our aunt in Scotland and our aunt in Ireland.?" (Poor lambs! Since the death of their Grandmother Beresford they do not possess a real relation in the world !) "It will not be very long, Billy," I said. "We don't want to go until we can leave the perambulator behind. The Sally-baby toddles now, but she must be able to walk on the English downs and the Highland heather." "And the Irish bogs," interpolated Billy, who has a fancy for detail. "Well, the Irish bogs are not always easy traveling," I answered, "but the Sally-baby will soon be old enough to 208 AT HOME feel the spring of the Irish turf under her feet." "What will the chickens and ducklings and pigeons do while we are gone ? " asked Francie. "An' the lammies?" piped the Sally- baby, who has all the qualities of Mary in the immortal lyric. "Oh! we won't leave home until the spring has come and all the young things are born. The grass will be green, the dan- delions will have their puff-balls on, the apple blossoms will be over, and Daddy will get a kind man to take care of every- thing for us. It will be May time and we will sail in a big ship over to the aunts and uncles in Scotland and Ireland and I shall show them my children — " "And we shall play ' hide-and-go-coop' with their children," interrupted Francie joyously. "They will never have heard of that 209 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS game, but you will all play together!" And here I leaned back on the warm hay- cock and blinked my eyes a bit in moist anticipation of happiness to come. "There will be eight-year-old Ronald MacDonald to climb and ride and sail with our Billy; and there will be little Penelope who, is named for me, and will be Francie's play- mate; and the new little boy baby — " " Proba'ly Aunt Francie's new boy baby will grow up and marry our girl one," sug- gested Billy. "He has my consent to the alliance in advance," said Himself, "but I dare say your mother has arranged it all in her own mind and my advice will not be needed." "I have not arranged anything," I re- torted; "or if I have it was nothing more than a thought of young Ronald or Jack La Touche in — another quarter," — this with discreetly veiled emphasis. 2IO AT HOME "What is another quarter, mother?" in- quired Francie whose mental agility is somewhat embarrassing. "Oh, why, — well, — it is any other place than the one you are talking about, Do you see?" "Not so very well, but p'r'aps I will in a minute." "Hope springs eternal!" quoted Fran- cie's father. "And then, as I was saying before being interrupted by the entire family, we will go and visit the Irish cousins, Jackeen and Broona, who belong to Aunt Salemina and Uncle Gerald, and the Sally-baby will be the center of attraction because she is her Aunt Salemina's godchild — " "But we are all God's children," in- sisted Billy. "Of course we are." "What's the difference between a god- child and a God's child?" 211 PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS "The bottle of chloroform is in the medicine closet, my poor dear; shall I run and get it?" murmured Himself sotto voce. "Every child is a child of God," I began helplessly, "and when she is somebody's godchild she — oh ! lend me your hand- kerchief, Billy!" " Is it the nose-bleed, mother ? " he asked, ' bending over me solicitously. "No, oh, no! it's nothing at all, dear. Perhaps the hay was going to make me sneeze. What was I saying? — " "About the god — " "Oh, yes! I remember! (Ka-chool) We will take the Irish cousins and the Scotch cousins and go all together to see the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. We '11 go to Bushey Park and see the chest- nuts in bloom and will dine at Number lo, Dovermarle Street — " "I shall not go there, Billy," said Him- 212 AT HOME self. "It was at Number lo, Dovermarle Street, that your mother told me she would n't marry me; or at least that she'd have to do a lot of thinking before she'd say Yes; so she left London and went to North Malvern." "Could n't she think in London?" (This was Billy.) "Did n't she always want to be married to you ? " . (This was Francie.) "Not always." "Did n't she like us?" (Still Francie.) "You were never mentioned, — not one of you!" "That seems rather queer!" remarked Billy, giving me a reproachful look. " So we '11 leave the Irish and Scotch uncles and aunts behind and go to North Malvern just by ourselves. It was there that your mother concluded that she would marry me and I rather like the place." "Mother loves it, too; she talks to me 213 PENELOPE,'S POSTSCRIPTS about it when she puts me to bed." (Francie again.) "No doubt; but you '11 find your mother's heart scattered all over the Continent of Europe. One bit will be clinging to a pink thorn in England; another will be in the Highlands somewhere, — wherever the heather 's in bloom ; another will be hang- ing on the Irish gorse bushes where they are yellowest, and another will be hidden under the seat of a Venetian gondola." "Don't listen to Daddy's nonsense, children! He thinks mother throws her heart about recklessly while he loves only one thing at a time." "Four things!" expostulated Himself, gallantly viewing our little group at large. "Strictly speaking, we are not four things, we are only four parts of one thing; ■: — counting you in, and I really suppose you ought to be counted in, we are five parts of one thing." 214 AT HOME "Shall we come home again from the other countries?" asked Billy. "Of course, sonny! The little Beresfords must come back and grow up with their own country." "Am I a little Beresford, mother?" asked Francie, looking wistfully at her brother as belonging to the superior sex and the eldest besides. "Certainly." "And is the Sally-baby one too?" Himself laughed unrestrainedly at this. "She is," he said, "but you are more than half mother, with your unexpected- nesses." " I love to be more than half mother!" cried Francie, casting herself violently about my neck and imbedding me in the haycock. " Thank you, dear, but pull me up now. It's supper-time." Billy picked up the books and the rug 2IS PENELOPE'S POSTSCRIPTS and made preparations for the brief jour- ney to the house. I put my hair in order and smoothed my skirts. "Will there be supper like ours in the other countries, mother?" he asked. "And if we go in May time when do we come back again?" Himself rose from the ground with a luxurious stretch of his arms, looking with joy and pride at our home fields bathed in the afternoon midsummer sun. He took the Sally-baby's outstretched hands and lifted her, crowing, to his shoulder. "Help sister over the stubble, my son. — We'll come away from the other countries whenever mother says: 'Come, children, it's time for supper.' " "We'll be back for Thanksgiving," I assured Billy, holding him by one hand and Francie by the other, as we walked toward the farmhouse. "We won't live in the other countries because Daddy's 216 AT HOME * sit-fast acres' are here in New Eng- land." "But whenever and wherever we five are together, especially wherever mother is, it will always be home," said Himself thankfully, under his breath. THE END CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . 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