 CHETCOM As I said in my last letter, we started out for Chetcom, not abreast as we had been before, but strung along the road, and me and Mr. Poplington pretty doleful, being disappointed and not wanting to talk. But as for Joan, he seemed livelier than ever, and whistled a lot of tunes he didn't know. I think it always makes him lively to get rid of seeing sights. The sun was shining brightly, and there was no reason to expect rain for two or three hours anyway, and the country we passed through was so fine, with hardly any houses, and with great hills and woods, and sometimes valleys far below the road, with streams rushing and bubbling, that after a while I began to feel better, and I pricked up my tricycle, and, of course, being followed by Joan, we left Mr. Poplington, whose melancholy seemed to have gotten into his legs, a good way behind. We must have traveled two or three hours when all of a sudden I heard a noise afar, and I drew up and listened. The noise was the barking of dogs, and it seemed to come from a piece of woods on the other side of the field which lay to the right of the road. The next instant something shot out from under the trees and began going over the field in ten-foot hops. I sat staring without understanding, but when I saw a lot of brown and white spots, bounce out of the woods, and saw a long way back in the open field, two red-coated men on horseback, the truth flashed upon me that this was the hunt. The creature in front was the stag who had chosen to come this way, and the dogs and the horses was after him, and I was here to see it all. Almost before I got this all straight in my mind the deer was nearly opposite me on the other side of the field, going the same way that we were. In a second I clapped spurs into my tricycle and was off. In front of me was a long stretch of downgrade, and over this I went as fast as I could work my pedals, no brakes or holding back for me. My blood was up, for I was actually in a deer hunt, and to my amazement and wild delight I found I was keeping up with the deer. I was going faster than the men on horseback. Hi, hi, I shouted, and down I went with one eye on the deer and the other on the road, every atom of my body tingling with fiery excitement. When I began to go up the little slope ahead I heard Joan puffing behind me. You will break your neck, he shouted, if you go downhill that way, and getting close up to me he fastened his cord to my tricycle, but I paid no attention to him or his advice. The stag, the stag, I cried, as long as he keeps near the road we can follow him. Hi! And having got up to the top of the next hill I made ready to go down as fast as I had gone before, for we had fallen back a little and the stag was now getting ahead of us, but it made me gnash my teeth to find that I could not go fast, for Joan held back with all his force and both feet on the ground I expect, and I could not get on at all. Let go of me, I cried, we shall lose the stag, stop holding me back. But it wasn't any use, Joan's heels must have been nearly rubbed off, but he held back like a good fellow, and I seemed to be moving along no faster than a worm. I could not stand this, my blood boiled and bubbled, the deer was getting away from me, and if it had been poorlock hill in front of me I would have dashed on, not caring whether the road was steep or level. A thought flashed across my mind, and I clapped my hand into my pocket and jerked out a pair of scissors. In an instant I was free. The world and the stag was before me, and I was flying along with a tornado-like swiftness that soon brought me abreast of the deer. This perfectly splendid, bounding creature was not far away from me on the other side of the hedge, and as the field was higher than the road I could see him perfectly. His legs worked regular and springy except when he came to a cross-hedge, which he went over with a single clip, and came down like India rubber on the other side, that one might have thought he was measuring the grass and keeping an account of his jumps in his head. For one instant I looked around for the hounds, and saw there was not more than half a dozen following him, and I could only see the two hunters I had seen before, and these was still a good way back. As for Joan I couldn't hear him at all, and he must have been left far behind. There was still the woods on the other side, and the deer seemed to run to keep away from that and to cross the road, and he came nearer and nearer until I fancied he kept an eye on me, as if he was wondering if I was of any consequence, and if I could hinder him from crossing the road and getting away into the valley below where there was a regular wilderness of woods and underbrush. If he does that I thought he will be gone in a minute and I shall lose him, and the hunt will be over. And for fear he would make for the hedge and jump over it, not minding me, I jerked out my handkerchief and shook it at him. You can't imagine how this frightened him. He turned sharp to the right, dashed up the hill, cleared a hedge and was gone. I gave a gasp and a scream as I saw him disappear. I believe I cried but I didn't stop, and I was glad that I didn't, for in less than a minute I had come to a cross-lane which led in the very direction the deer had taken. I turned into this lane and went on as fast as I could, and I soon found that it led through a thick wood. Down in the hollow, which I could not see into, I heard barking and shouting, and I kept on just as fast as I could make that tricycle go. Where the lane led to, or whatever I should come to, I didn't think about. I was hunting a stag, and all I cared for was to feel my tricycle bounding beneath me. I may have gone a half a mile or two miles. I have not an idea how far it was, when suddenly I came to a place where there was green grass and rocks in an opening in the woods, and what a sight I saw! There was that beautiful, grand, red deer half down on his knees and perfectly quiet, and there was one of the men in red coats coming toward him with a great knife in his hand, and a little farther back was three or four dogs with another man, still on horseback, whipping them to keep them back, though they seemed willing enough to lie there with their tongues out, panting. As the man with the knife came up to the deer, the poor creature raised its eyes to him, and didn't seem to mind whether he came or not. It was trembling all over and fairly tired to death. When the man got near enough he took a hold of one of the deer's horns and lifted up the hand with the knife in it, but he didn't bring it down on that deer's throat, I can tell you, madam, for I was there and had him by the arm. He turned on me as if he had been struck by lightning. What do you mean, he shouted, let go my arm. Don't you touch that deer, said I, my voice was so husky I could hardly speak. Don't you see it surrendered? Can you have the heart to cut that beautiful throat when he is pleading for mercy? The man's eyes looked as if they would burst out of his head. He gave me a pull and a push as if he would stick the knife into me, and he actually swore at me, but I didn't mind that. You have got that poor creature now, said I, and that's enough. Keep it and tame it and bring it up with your children. I didn't have time to say anything more, and he didn't have time to answer. For two of the dogs who had got a little of their wind-back sprang up and made a jump at the stag, and he, having got a little of his wind-back, jerked his horn out of the hand of the man, and giving a sort of side-spring backward among the bushes and rocks, away he went, the dogs after him. The man with the knife rushed out into the lane, and so did I, and so did the man on horse-back, almost on top of me. On the other side of the lane was a little gorge with rocks and trees and water at the bottom of it, and I was just in time to see the stag spring over the lane and drop out of sight among the rocks and the moss and the vines. The man stood and swore at me, regardless of my sex, so violent was his rage. If you as a man I'd break your head, he yelled. I'm glad I'm not, said I, for I wouldn't want my head broken. But what troubles me is that I'm afraid that deer has broken his legs or hurt himself some way, for I never saw anything drop on rocks in such a reckless manner, and the poor thing so tired. The man swore again, and said something about wishing somebody else's legs had been broken, and then he shouted to the man on horse-back to call off the dogs, which was of no use, for he was doing it already. Then he turned on me again. You are an American, he shouted. I might have known that. No English woman would have ever done such a beastly thing as that. You're mistaken there, I said. There isn't a true English woman that lives who would not have done the same thing. Your mother, confound my mother, yelled the man. All right, said I, that's all in your family and none of my business. Then he went off raging to where he had left his horse by a gate-post. The other man, who was a good deal younger and more friendly, came up to me and said he wouldn't like to be in my boots, for I had spoiled a pretty piece of sport. And then he went on and told me that it had been a bad hunt, for instead of starting only one stag, three or four of them had been started, and there had been a bad time, for the hounds and the hunters had been mixed up in a nasty way. And at last, when the master of the hounds, and almost every single one had gone off over Dunkery Hill, and he didn't know whether they was after two stags or one, he and his mate, who was both whippers in, had gone to turn back part of the pack that had broken away, and had found that these dogs was after another stag. So before they knew it, they was in a hunt of their own, and they would have killed that stag if it had not been for me, and he said it was hard on his mate, for he knew he had it in mind that he was going to kill the only stag of the day. He went on to say, that as for himself he wasn't so sorry, for this was their skittery hench-ball's land, and when a stag was killed it belonged to the man on whose land it died on. He told me that the master of the hunt gets the head and the antlers, and the huntsmen some other part, which I forget, but the owner of the land, no matter whether he's in the hunt or not, gets the body of the stag. There's a cottage not a mile down this lane, said he, with its thatch torn off, and my sister and her children live there, and sir skittery turned them out on account of the rent, and so I'm glad the old skin-flint didn't get the venison. And he went off, being called by the other man. I didn't know what time it was, but it seemed as if it must be getting on into the afternoon, and feeling that my dear hunt was over, I thought I had better lose no time in hunting up Joan, so I followed on after the men and the dogs, who was going to the main road, but keeping a little back of them, though, for I didn't know what the older one might do if he happened to turn and see me. I was sure that Joan had passed the little lane without seeing it, so I kept on the way we had been going, and got up all the speed I could, though I must say I was dreadfully tired, and even trembling a little, for while I had been stag-hunting I was so excited I didn't know how much work I was doing. There was signposts enough to tell me the way to Chedcom, and so I kept straight on, uphill and downhill, until at last I saw a man head on a bicycle. Which I soon knew to be Mr. Poplington. He was surprised enough at seeing me, and told me my husband had gone ahead. I didn't explain anything, and it wasn't until we got nearly to Chedcom that we met Joan. He had been to Chedcom and was coming back. Joan is a good fellow, but he's got a will of his own, and he said this would be the end of my tricycle-riding, and that the next time we went out together on wheels he'd drive. I didn't tell him anything about the stag-hunt then, for he seemed to be in favor of doing all the talking himself. But after dinner, when we was all settled down quiet and comfortable, I told him and Mr. Poplington the story of the chase, and they both laughed—Mr. Poplington the most. End of Letter No. 12, Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 13 of Pomonas Travels, A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rutter Grange from her former handmaiden, by Frank R. Stockton. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter No. 13, The Green Placord, Chedcom, Somersetshire. It is now about a week since my stag-hunt, and Joan and I have kept pretty quiet, taking short walks and doing a good deal of reading in our garden whenever the sun shines into the little arbor there, and Mr. Poplington spends most of his time fishing. He works very hard at this, partly for the sake of his conscience, I think, for his bicycle trip made him lose three or four days he had taken a license for. It was day before yesterday that rheumatism showed itself plain and certain in Joan. I had been thinking that perhaps I might have at first, but it wasn't so, and it began in Joan, which, though I don't want you to think me hard-hearted, madam, was perhaps better. For if it had not been for it, it might have been hard to get him out of this comfortable little cottage, where he'd be perfectly content to stay until it was time for us to sail for America. The beautiful greenness which spreads over the fields and hills, and not only the leaves of trees and vines, but down and around trunks and branches, is charming to look at and never to be forgotten. But when this moist greenness spreads itself to one's bones, especially when it creeps up to the parts that work together, then the soul of man longs for less picturesqueness and more easy-going joints. Joan says that English take their climate as they do their whisky, and he calls it climate and water, with a very little of the first in a good deal of the other. Of course we must now leave Ched come, and when we talk to Mr. Poplington about it, he said there was two places the English went to for their rheumatism. One was Bath, not far from here, and the other was Butston, up in the north. As soon as I heard of Bath I was on pins and needles to go there, for in all the novel reading I've done, which has been getting better and better in quality since the days when I used to read dime novels on the canal-boat, up to now when I like the best there is, I could not help knowing lots about Evelina and Bo Brummel, and the Pump Room, and the Fine Ladies and Young Bucks, and it would have joyed my soul to live and move where all these people had been, and where all these things had happened, even if fictitiously. But Mr. Poplington came down like a shower on my notions, and said that Bath was very warm, and was the place where everybody went for their rheumatism in winter, but that Butston was the place for the summer because it was on high land and cool. This cast me down a good deal, for if we could have gone where I could have steeped my soul in romanticness, and at the same time Joan could have steeped himself in warm mineral water, there would not have been any time lost, and both of us would have been happier. But Mr. Poplington stuck to it that it would ruin anybody's constitution to go to such a hot place in August, and so I had to give it up. So tomorrow we start for Butston, which, from what I can make out, must be a sort of infallid picnic ground. I always did hate diseases and ailments, even of the mildest, when they go in caravan. I like to take people's sicknesses separate, because then I feel I might do something to help, but when they are bunched I feel as if it was sort of mean for me to go about cheerful and singing when other people was all grunting. But we are not going straight to Butston, as I have often said Joan is a good fellow, and he told me last night if there was any bit of fancy scenery I'd like to stop on the way to the unromantic refuge he'd be glad to give me the chance, because he didn't suppose it would matter much if he put off his hot soaks for a few days. It didn't take me long to name a place I'd like to stop at. For most of my reading lately has been in the guide-books, and I had crammed myself with the descriptions of places worth seeing. That would take us at least two years to look at, so I said I would like to go to the River Y, which is said to be the most romantic stream in England. And when that is said, enough is said for me. So Joan agreed, and we are going to do the Y on our way north. There is going to be an election here in a few days, and this morning Joan and me hobbled into the village. That is, he hobbled in body, and I did in mind to think of his going along like a creaky wheel-barrow. Everybody was a-gog about the election, and we was looking at some placards posted against a wall. When Mr. Lockey, the innkeeper, came along, and after bidding us good morning he asked Joan what party he belonged to. I'm a home ruler, said Joan, especially in the matter of tricycles. Mr. Lockey didn't understand the last part of this speech, but I did, and he said, I am glad you are not a Tory, sir. If you will read that you will see what the Tory party has done for us. And he pointed out some lines at the bottom of a green placard, and these was the words. Remember it was the Tory party that lost us the United States of America. Well, said Joan, that seems like going a long way off to get some stones to throw at the Tories, but I feel inclined to have a rock at them myself for the injury that party has done to America. To America, said Mr. Lockey, did the Tories ever harm America? Of course they did, said Joan. They lost us England, a very valuable country, indeed, and a great loss to any nation. If it had not been for the Tory party, Mr. Gladstone might now be in Washington as a senator from Middlesex. Mr. Lockey didn't understand one word of this, and so he asked Joan which leg his rheumatism was in. And when Joan told him it was a left leg, he said it was a very curious thing. But if he would take a hundred men in Chedcombe, there would be at least sixty with rheumatism in the left leg, and perhaps not more than twenty with it in the right, which was something the doctors never had explained yet. It is awfully hard to go away and leave this lovely little cottage with all its roses and vines, and Miss Ponder and all its sweet-smelling comforts, and not only the cottage but the village and Mrs. Lockey and her husband at the boardly arms, who couldn't have been kinder to us and more anxious to know what we wanted and what they could do. The fact is that when English people do like Americans, they go at it with just as much vim and earnestness as if they was helping Britannia to rule more waves. While I was feeling badly at leaving Miss Ponder, your letter came, dear madam, and I must say it gave hearty hearts to Joan and me, to me especially as you can well understand. I went off into the summer-house, and as I sat there thinking and reading the letter over again, I do believe some tears came into my eyes, and Miss Ponder, who was working in the garden only a little way off, for if there is anything she likes to do, it is to weed and fuss among the rose-bushes and other flowers, which she does whenever her other work gives her a chance. She happened to look up, and seeing that I was in trouble, she came right to me, like the good woman she is, and asked me if I had heard bad news, and if I would like a little gin and water. I said that I had had bad news, but that I did not want any spirits, and she said she hoped nothing had happened to any of my family, and I told her not exactly, but in looking back it seemed as if it was almost that way. I thought I ought to tell her what had happened, for I could see that she was really feeling for me, and so I said, poor Lord Edward is dead. To be sure he was very old, and I suppose we had not any right to think he'd live as long as he did, and as he was nearly blind, and had very poor use of his legs, it was, perhaps, better than he should go. But when I think of what friends we used to be before I was married, I can't help feeling badly to think that he is gone, that when I go back to America he will not show he is glad to see me home again, which he would be if there wasn't another soul on the whole continent who felt that way. Miss Ponder was now standing up with her hands folded in front of her, and her head bowed down as if she was walking behind a hearse with eight ostrich plumes on it. Lord Edward, she said, in a melancholy, respectful voice, and will his remains be brought to England for interment? Oh, no, said I, not understanding what she was talking about. I am sure he will be buried somewhere near his home, and when I go back his grave will be one of the first places I will visit. A streak of bewilderment began to show itself in Miss Ponder's melancholy respectfulness, and she said, Of course, when one lives in foreign parts one may die there, but I always thought in cases like that they were brought home to their family vaults. It may seem strange for me to think of anything funny at a time like this, but when Miss Ponder mentioned family vaults when talking of Lord Edward, there came into my mind the jumps he used to make whenever he saw one of us coming home, but I saw what she was driving at and the mistake she had made. Oh, I said, he was not a member of the British nobility. He was a dog. Lord Edward was his name. I never loved any animal as I loved him. I suppose, madam, that you must sometimes have noticed one of the top candles of a chandelier when the room gets hot, suddenly bending over and drooping and shedding tears of hot paraffin on the candles below, and perhaps on the table. And if you can remember what that overcome candle looked like, you will have an idea of what Miss Ponder looked like when she found out Lord Edward was a dog. I think that for one brief moment she hugged to her bosom the fond belief that I was intimate with the aristocracy and that a noble lord, had he not departed this life, would have been the first to welcome me home, and that she, she herself, was in my service. But the drop was an awful one. I could see the throes of mortified disappointment in her back as she leaned over a bed of pinks, pulling out young plants, I am afraid, as well as weeds. When I looked at her I was sorry I let her know it was a dog, I mourned. She has tried hard to make everything all right while we have been here, that she might just as well have gone on thinking it was the noble earl who died. Tomorrow we shall have our last Devonshire-clotted cream, for they tell me this is to be had only in the west of England, and when I think of the beautiful hills and veils of this country, I shall not forget that. Of course we would not have time to stay here longer, even if Joan hadn't got the rheumatism, but if he had to have it, for which I am as sorry as anybody can be, it is a lucky thing that he did have it just about the time that we ought to be going away anyhow. And although I did not think, when we came to England, that we should ever go to Buxton, we are thankful that there is such a place to go to, although for my part I can't help feeling disappointed that the season isn't such that we could go to Bath and Evelina and Bo Brummel. End of Letter No. 13. Read by Isabella Denton. All Libravox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit Libravox.org. Letter No. 14. Letter No. 14. Pomona and Her David Llewellyn. Bell Hotel, Gloucester. We came to this queer old English town, not because it is any better than so many other towns, but because Mr. Poplington told us it was a good place for our headquarters while we was seeing the River Y and the other things in the neighborhood. This hotel is the best in the town and very well kept, so that Joan made his usual remark about its being a good place to stay in. We are near the point where the four principal streets of the town, called Northgate, Eastgate, Southgate, and Westgate meet, and if there was nothing else to see it would be worth while to stand there and look at so much Englishism coming and going from four different quarters. There is another hotel here, called the New Inn, that was recommended to us, but I thought we would not want to go there, for we came to see Old England, and I don't want to see its new and shiny things, so we came to the bell as being more antique. But I have since found out that the New Inn was built in 1450 to accommodate the pilgrims who came to pay their respects to the tomb of Edward II in the fine old Cathedral here. But though I should like to live in a 440-year-old house, we are very well satisfied where we are. Two very good things come from Gloucester, for it is the wellspring of Sunday schools and vaccination. They keep here the horns of the cow that Dr. Jenner first vaccinated from, and not far from our hotel is the house of Robert Rakes. This is an old-fashioned timber house and looks like a man wearing his skeleton outside of his skin. We are sorry Mr. Poplington couldn't come here with us, or he could have shown us a great many things, but he stayed at Chedcombe to finish his fishing, and he said he might meet us at Buxton, where he goes every year for his arm. To see the river why you must go down it, so with just one handbag we took the train for the little town of Ross, which is near the beginning of the navigable part of the river, I might almost say the waitable part, for I imagine the deepish soundings about Ross are not more than half a yard. We stayed all night at a hotel overlooking the valley of the little river, and the best way to see this wonderful stream is to go down it in a rowboat. As soon as we reached Ross we engaged a boat and a man for the next morning to take us to Monmouth, which would be about a day's row and give us the best part of the river. But I must say that when we looked out over the valley the prospect was not very encouraging, for it seemed to me that if the sun came out hot it would dry up that river, and Joan might not be willing to wait until the next heavy rain. While we was at Chedcomb I read the maid of Skur, because its scenes are laid in the Bristol Channel, about the coast near where we was, and over in Wales. And when the next morning we went down to the boat, which we was going to take our day's trip in, and I saw the man who was to row us, David Llewellyn, popped straight into my mind. The man was elderly, with gray hair and a beard under his chin, with a general air of water and fish. He was good-natured and sociable from the very beginning. It seemed a shame that an old man should row two people so much younger than he was, but after I had looked at him pulling at his oars for a little while I saw that there was no need of pitying him. It was a good day, with only one or two drizzles in the morning, and we had not gone far before I found that the Y was more of a river than I thought it was, though never any bigger than a creek. It was just about warm enough for a boat trip, though the old man told us there had been a rhyme that morning, which made me think of the ancient mariner. The more the boatman talked and made queer jokes, the more I wanted to ask him his name, and I hoped he would say David Llewellyn, or at least David, and as a sort of feeler I asked him if he had ever seen a corkel. A corkel, said he, oh yes, ma'am, I've seen a many a one and rode in them. I couldn't wait any longer, and so I asked him his name. He stopped rowing and leaned on his oars and let the boat drift. Now, said he, if you've got a piece of paper and a pencil, I wish you would listen carefully and put down my name. And if you ever know of any other people in your country coming to the river Y, I wish you would tell them my name and say I am a boatman and can take them down the river better than anybody else that's on it. My name is Samoville Jones. Be sure you've got that right, please, Samoville Jones. I was born on this river, and I rode on it with my father when I was a boy, and I have rode on it ever since, and now I am sixty-five years old. Do you want to know why this river is called the Y? I will tell you. Y means crooked, so this river is called the Y because it is crooked. Why the crooked river? There was no doubt about the old man's being right about the crookedness of the stream. If you have ever noticed an ant running over the floor, you will have an idea how the Y runs through this beautiful country. If it comes to a hill it doesn't just pass it and let you see one side of it, but it goes as far around it as it can and then goes back again and goes around some other hill or great rocky point or a clump of trees or anything else that travelers might like to see. At one place called Simon's Yacht it makes a curve so great that if we was to get out of our boat and walk across the land we would have to walk less than half a mile before we came to the river again, but to row around the curve as we did we had to go five miles. Every now and then we came to rapids. I didn't count them, but I think there must have been about one to every mile where the riverbed was full of rocks and where the water rushed furiously around and over them. If we had been rowing ourselves we would have gone on shore and camped when we came to the first of these rapids, for we wouldn't have supposed our little boat could go through those tumbling, rushing waters. But old Samaville knew exactly how the narrow channel, just deep enough sometimes for our boat to float without bumping the bottom, runs and twists itself among the hidden rocks, and he'd stand up in the bow and push the boat this way and that until it slid into the quiet water again, and he sat down to his oars. After we had been through four or five of these we didn't feel any more afraid than if we had been sitting together on our own little back porch. As for the banks of this river they got more and more beautiful as we went on. There was high hills with some castles, woods and crags and grassy slopes, and now and then a lordly mansion or two, and great massive rocky walls, bedecked with vines and moss rising high up above our heads and shutting us out from the world. Joan and I was filled as full as our mounds could hold with the romantic loveliness of the river and its banks, and old Samaville was so pleased to see how we liked it, for I believe he looked upon that river as his private property, that he told us about everything we saw and pointed out a lot of things we wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for him, as if he had been a man explaining a panorama and pointing out with a stick the notable spots as the canvas unrolled. The only thing in his show which didn't satisfy him was two very fine houses which had both of them belonged to noble personages in days gone by, but which had been sold, one to a man who had made his money in tea, and the other to a man who had made money in cotton. Think of that, said he, cotton and tea, and living in such mansions as them are once owned by Lawrence. They are both good men and gives a great deal to the poor and does all they can for the country, but only to think of it, madam, cotton and tea. But all that happened a good while ago, and the world is getting too enlightened now for such a state as them are to come to cotton and tea. Sometimes we passed houses and little settlements, but for the most part the country was as wild as undiscovered lands, which, being that to me, I felt happier, I am sure, than Columbus did when he first sighted the floating weeds. Joan was a good deal wound up, too, for he had never seen anything so beautiful as all this. We had our luncheon at a little inn, where the bread was so good that for a time I forgot the scenery, and then we went on, passing through the forest of Dean, lonely and solemn, with great oak and beech trees, and Robin Hood and his merry men watching us from behind the bushes for all we knew. Whenever the river twist itself around, as if to show us a new view, old Samuel would say, Now, isn't that the prettiest thing you've seen yet? And he got prouder and prouder of his river every mile he rode. At one place he stopped and rested on his oars. Now then, said he, twinkling up his face as if he really was, David the Wellan, showing us a fish with its eyes bulged out, with sticks to make it look fresh. As we are out on a kind of lark, suppose we try a bit of a hecho. And then he turned to a rocky valley on his left, and in a voice like the man at the station, calling out the trains, he yelled, Hello there, sir. What are you doing there, sir? Come out of that. And when the words came back as if they had been balls batted against a wall, he turned and looked at us as proud and gritty as if the walks had been his own baby saying Papa and Mama for visitors. Not long after this we came to a place where there was a wide field on one side, and a little way off we could see the top of a house among the trees. A hedge came across the field to the river, and near the bank was a big gate, and on this gate sat two young women, and down on the ground on the one side of the hedge nearest to us was another young woman, and not far from her was three black hogs, two of them pointing their noses at her and grunting, and the other was grunting around a place where those young women had been making sketches and drawings, and punching his nose into the easels and portfolios on the ground. The young woman on the grass was striking at the hogs with the stick and trying to make them go away, which they wouldn't do, and just as we came near she dropped the stick and ran, and climbed up on the gate beside the others, after which all the hogs went to rooting among the drawing things. As soon as Sam of El saw what was going on he stopped his boat, and shouted to the hogs a great deal louder than he had shouted to the echo, but they didn't mind any more than they had minded the girl with the stick. Can't we stop the boat, I said, and get out and drive off those hogs? They will eat up all the papers in the sketches. Just put me ashore, said Joan, and I'll clear them out in no time. An old Sam of El rode the boat close up to the bank. But when Joan got suddenly up on his feet there was such a twitch across his face that I said to him, Now, just you sit down. If you go ashore to drive off those hogs you'll jump about so that you'll bring on such a rheumatism you can't sleep. I'll get out myself, said Sam of El, if I can find a place to fasten the boat to, I can't run on ashore here and the current is strong. Don't you leave the boat, said I, for the thought of Joan and me drifting off and coming without him to one of those rapids sent a shutter through me, and as the stern of the boat where I sat was close to the shore I jumped with Joan's stick in my hand before either of them could hinder me. I was so afraid that Joan would do it that I was very quick about it. The minute I left the boat Joan got ready to come after me, for he had no notion of letting me be on shore by myself. But the boat had drifted off a little, and old Sam of El said, That is a pretty steep bank to get up with the rheumatism on you, where I can ground the boat and you can get off more steadier. But this letter is getting as long as the river Y itself and I must stop it. End of Letter Number 14, read by Subella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Letter Number 15 of Pomona's Travels, a series of letters to the mistress of Rudder Grange from her former handmaiden, by Frank R. Stockton. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter Number 15, Hogs and the Fine Arts, Bell Hotel, Gloucester. As soon as I jumped on shore, as I told you in my last, and had taken a good grip on Joan's heavy stick, I went for those hogs, for I wanted to drive them off before Joan came ashore, or I didn't want him to think he must come. I have driven hogs and cows out of lots and yards often enough, as you know yourself, madam, so I just stepped up to the biggest of them and hid him a whack across the head as he was rubbing his nose in among some papers with bits of landscapes on them, as was enough to make him give up studying art for the rest of his life. But would you believe it, madam, instead of running away he just made a bolt at me, and gave me such a push with his head and shoulders he nearly knocked me over? I never was so astonished, for they looked like hogs that you might think could be chased out of a yard by a boy. But I gave the fellow another crack on the back, which he didn't seem to notice, but just turned around again to give me another push, and at the same minute the two others stopped rooting among the paint boxes and came grunting at me. For the first time in my life I was frightened by hogs. I struck at them as hard as I could, and before I knew what I was about I flung down the stick, made a rush for that gate and was on top of it in no time, in company with the other three young women that was sitting there already. Really, said the one next to me, I fancied you was going to be gourd to Adams before our eyes. Whatever made you go to those nasty beasts? I looked at her quite severely, getting my feet well up out of reach of the hogs if they should come near us. I saw you was in trouble, Miss, and I came to help you. My husband wanted to come, but he has the rheumatism and I wouldn't let him. The other two young women looked at me as well as they could around the one that was near me, and the one that was far the staff said, if the creatures could have been driven off by a woman, we could have done it ourselves. I don't know why you should think you could do it any better than we could. I must say, madam, that at that minute I was a little humble-minded, for I don't mind confessing to you that the idea of one American woman plunging into a conflict that had frightened off three English women and coming out victorious had a good deal to do with my trying to drive away those hogs, and now that I had come out of the little end of the horn, just as the young women had, I felt pretty small, but I wasn't going to let them see that. I think that English hogs, said I, must be savageryer than American ones, where I live there is not any kind of a hog that would not run away if I shook a stick at him. The young woman at the other end of the gate now spoke again. Everything British is braver than anything American, said she, and all you have done has been to vex those hogs, and now they are chewing up our drawing things worse than they did before. Of course I fired up at this and said, you are very much mistaken about Americans, but before I could say anything more, she went on to tell me that she knew all about Americans, she had been in America, and such a place she could never have fancied. Over there you let everybody trample over you as much as they please. You have no conveniences. One cannot even get a cab. A fancy, not a cab to be had unless one pays enough for a drive in Hyde Park. I must say that the hogs charging down on me didn't astonish me any more than to find myself on top of a gate with a young woman charging on my country in this fashion, and it was pretty hard on me to have her pitch into the cab question, because Joan and me had quite a good deal to say about cabs ourselves, comparing New York and London without any great fluttering of the stars and stripes. But I wasn't going to stand any such talk as that, and so I said, I know very well that our cab charges are high, and it is not likely that poor people coming from other countries are able to pay them. But as soon as our big cities get filled up with wretched, half-starved people, with the children crying for bread at home and the father glad enough that he's able to get people to pay him a shilling for a drive, and that he's not among the hundreds of thousands of miserable men who have not any work at all, and go howling to hide-park to hold meetings for blood or bread, then we will be likely to have cheap cabs as you have. How perfectly awful, said the young woman nearest me, but the one at the other end of the gate didn't seem to mind what I said, but shifted off on another track. And then there's your horse's tails, said she, anything nastier couldn't be fancied, hundreds of them everywhere with long tails down to their heels, as if they belonged to heathens who had never been civilized. Heathens, said I, if you call the Arabians heathens, who have the finest horses in the world, and wouldn't think any more of cutting off their tails than they would think of cutting their legs off, and if you call the cruel scoundrels who torture their poor horses by sawing their bones apart so as to get a little stuck-up bob on behind, like a moth-eaten paintbrush, if you call them Christians then I suppose you're right. There is a law in some parts of our country against the wickedness of chopping off the tails of live horses, and if you had such a law here you'd be a good deal more Christian-like than you are, to say nothing of getting credit for decent taste. By this time I had forgotten all about what Joan and I had agreed upon as to arguing over the differences between countries, and I was just as peppery as a wasp. The young woman at the other end of the gate was rather waspy, too, for she seemed to want to sting me wherever she could find a spot uncovered, and now she dropped off her horse's tails and began to laugh until her face got purple. You Americans are so awfully odd, she said. You say you raise your corn in your plants instead of growing them. It nearly makes me die laughing when I hear one of you Americans say raise when you mean grow. Now Joan and me had some talk about growing and raising, and the reasons for and against our way of using the words. But I was ready to throw all this to the winds, and was just about to tell the impudent young woman that we raised our plants, just the same as we raised our children, leaving them to do their own growing. When the young woman in the middle of the three, who up to this time hadn't said a word, screamed out, Oh dear, oh dear, he's pulled out my drawing of Wilton Bridge. He'll eat it up. Oh dear, oh dear, whatever shall I do? Instead of speaking I turned quick and looked at the hogs, and sure enough one of them had rooted open a portfolio and had hold of the corners of a colored picture, which from where I sat I could see was perfectly beautiful. The sky and the trees and the water was just like what we ourselves had seen a little while ago, and in about half a minute the hog would chew it up and swallow it. The young woman next to me had an umbrella in her hand. I made a snatch at this and dropped off the gate like a shot. I didn't stop to think about anything except that beautiful picture was on the point of being swallowed up, and with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam engine. When they saw me coming with my screech in the umbrella they didn't stop a second, but with three great wiggles and three scared grunts they bolted as fast as they could go. I picked up the picture of the bridge, together with the portfolio, and took them to the young woman who owned them. As the hogs had gone all three of the women was now getting down from the gate. Thank you very much, she said, for saving my drawings. It was awfully good of you, especially—oh, you are welcome, I said, cutting her off short, and handing the other young woman her umbrella. I passed by the impudent one without so much as looking at her, and on the other side of the hedge I saw Joan coming across the grass. I jerked open the gate, not caring who it might swing against, and I walked to meet Joan. When I was near enough I called out to know what on earth had become of him that he had left me there so long by myself, forgetting that I hadn't wanted him to come at all, and he told me that he had had a hard time getting on shore because they found the banks very low and muddy, and when he had landed he was on the wrong side of a hedge, and had to walk a good way around it. I was troubled, said he, because I thought you might come to grief with the hogs. Hogs, said I, so sarcastic that Joan looked hard at me, but I didn't tell him anything more till we was in the boat, and then I just said right out what had happened. Joan couldn't help laughing. If I had known, said he, that she was on top of a gate discussing horses' tails and cabs, I wouldn't have felt in such a hurry to get to you. I think you would have made a mistake if you hadn't, I said, for hogs are nothing to such a person as was on that gate. Old Sammelville was rowing slow and looking troubled, and I believe at that minute he forgot the river why was crooked. That was really hard, madam, he said, really hard on you, but it was a woman and you have to excuse women. Now if they had been three Englishmen sitting on that gate they would have never said such things to you, knowing that you was a stranger in these parts and had come on shore to do them a service. Now, madam, I'm glad to see you are beginning to take notice of the landscapes again. Just ahead of us is another bend, and when we get around that you'll see the prettiest picture you've seen yet. This is a crooked river, madam, and that's how it got its name. Why means crooked? After a while we came to a little church near the river bank, and here Sammelville stopped rowing, and putting his hands on his knees he laughed gaily. It always makes me laugh, he said, whenever I pass this spot. It seems to me like such an awful good joke. Here's that church on this side of the river, and a way over there on the other side of the river is the rector and the congregation. And how did they get to church, said I. In the summer time, said he, they come over with a ferryboat and a rope, but in the winter when the water is frozen they can't get over at all. Many's the time I've lain in bed and laughed and laughed when I thought of this church on one side of the river and the whole congregation and the rector on the other side and not able to get over. Toward the end of the day and when we had rowed nearly twenty miles we saw in the distance the town of Monmouth, where we was going to stop for the night. Old Sammelville asked us what hotel we was going to stop at, and when he told him the one we had picked out he said he could tell us a better one. If I was you, he said, I'd go to the Eyingel. We didn't know what this name meant, but as the old man said he would take us there we agreed to go. I should think you would have a lonely time rowing back by yourself, I said. Rowing back, said he, why, bless your soul, lady, there isn't nobody who could row this boat back again that current and up them rapids. We take the boats back with the pony. We put the boat on a wagon and the pony pulls it back to Ross, and as for me I generally go back by the train. It isn't so far from Monmouth to Ross by the road, for the road is straight and the river winds and bends. The old man took us to the inn, which he recommended, and we found it was the Angel. It was a nice, old-fashioned, queer English house. As far as I could see there was all women that managed it, and it couldn't have been better managed, and as far as I could see we was the only guests, unless there was commercial gents who took themselves away without our seeing them. We was sorry to have old Samaville leave us, and we bid him a most friendly goodbye, and promised if we ever knew of anybody who wanted to go down the river why we would recommend them to ask at Ross for Samaville Jones to roll them. We found the landlady of the Angel just as good to us as if we had been her favorite niece and nephew. She hired us a carriage the next day, and we was driven out to Raglan Castle, through miles and miles of green and sloping ruralness. When we got there and rambled through those grand old ruins with the drawbridge and the tower and the courtyard, my soul went straight back to the days of knights and ladies, and prancing steeds and horns and hawks, and pages and tournaments, and wild revels and vaulted halls. The young man who had charred to the place seemed glad to see how much we liked it, as is natural enough, for everybody likes to see us pleased with the particular things they have on hand. "'You haven't anything like this in your country,' said he. "'But to this I said nothing, for I was tired of always hearing people speak of my national denomination as if I was something in tin cans, with a label pasted on outside. But Joan said it was true enough that we didn't have anything like it, for if we had such a noble edifice we would have taken care of it, and not let it go to rack and ruin in this way.' Joan has an idea that it don't show good sense to knock a bit of furniture about from Garrett to Seller until most of its legs are broken, and its back cracked and its varnish all peeled off, and then tie ribbons around it and hang it up in the parlor, and kneel down to it as a relic of the past. He says that people who have got old ruins ought to be very thankful that there is any left of them, but it's no use in them trying to fill up the missing parts with brag. We took the train and went to Chepstow, which is near the mouth of the Y, and as the railroad ran near the river nearly all the way we had lots of beautiful views, though of course it wasn't anything like as good as rowing along the stream in a boat. The next day we drove to the celebrated Tintern Abbey, and on the way the road passed two miles and a half of high stone wall, which shut in a gentleman's place. What he wanted to keep in or keep out by means of a wall like that we couldn't imagine, but the place made me think of a lunatic asylum. The road soon became shady and beautiful, running through woods along the river bank in under some great crags called the wind-cliff, and then we came to the abbey and got out. Of all the beautiful, high-pointed archery of ancient times, this ruined abbey takes the lead. I expect you've seen it, madam, or read about it, and I am not going to describe it, but I will just say that Joan, who had rather objected to coming out to see any more old ruins, which he never did fancy, and only came because he wouldn't have me come by myself, was so touched up in his soul by what he saw there, and by wandering through this solemn and beautiful romance of bygone days, he said he wouldn't have missed it for fifty dollars. We came back to Gloucester to-day, and to-morrow we are off for Buxton. As we are so near Stratford and Warwick and all that, Joan said we better go there on our way, but I wouldn't agree to it. I am too anxious to get him skipping around like a colt, as he used to, to stop anywhere now, and when we come back I can look at Shakespeare's tomb with a clearer conscience. London After all, the weather isn't the only tangible thing in this world, and this letter, which I thought I was going to send to you from Gloucester, is now being finished in London. We was expecting to start for Buxton, but some money that Joan had ordered to be sent from London two or three days before didn't come, and he thought it would be wise for him to go and look after it. So yesterday, which was Saturday, we started off for London and came straight to the Babylon Hotel where we had been before. Of course we couldn't do anything until Monday, and this morning when we got up we didn't feel in very good spirits, for of all the doleful things I know of, a Sunday in London is the dolefulest. The whole town looks as though it were the back door of what it was the day before, and if you want to get any good out of it you feel as if you had to sneak by it in an alley instead of walking boldly up the front steps. Joan said we'd better go to Westminster Abbey to church, because he believed in getting the best there was when it didn't cost too much, but I wouldn't do it. No, said I, when I walk in that religious nave and into the hallowed precepts of the talented departed, the stone passages are full of cloudy forms of chossers, addisons, militants, dickensons, and all the great ones of the past, and I would hate to see the place filled up with a crowd of weak day-lay people in their Sunday clothes, which would be enough to wipe away every feeling of romantic piety which might rise within my breast. As we didn't go to the Abbey, and was so long making up our minds where we should go, it got too late to go anywhere, and so we stayed in the hotel and looked out into a lonely and deserted street, with the wind blowing the little leaves and straws against the tight shut doors of the forsaken houses. As I stood by that window I got homesick, and at last I could stand it no longer, and I said to Joan, who was smoking and reading a paper, let's put on our hats and go for a walk, for I can't stand to mope here another minute. So down we went, and coming up the front steps of the front entrance, who do you suppose we meet? Mr. Poplington. He was stopping at that hotel, and was just coming home from church, with his face shining like a sunset on account of the comfortableness of his conscience after doing his duty. End of LETTER XV. Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter No. 16 of Pomonas Travels. A series of letters to the mistress of Rudder Grange from her former handmaiden, by Frank R Stockton. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter No. 16 with Dickens in London. Buxton. When I mentioned Mr. Poplington in my last letter in connection with the setting sun, I was wrong. He was like a rising orb of day, and he filled London with effulgent life. No sooner had we had a talk, and we had told him all that had happened, and finished up by saying what a dullful morning we had had. Then he clapped his hand on his knee and said, I'll tell you what we will do. We will spend the afternoon among the landmarks. And what we did was to take a four-wheeler and go around the old parts of London, where Mr. Poplington showed us a lot of soul-awakening spots, which no common stranger would be likely to find for himself. If you are ever steeped in the solemnness of a London Sunday, and you could get a jolly, red-faced, middle-aged English gentleman who has made himself happy by going to church in the morning, and is ready to make anybody else happy in the afternoon, just stir him up in the mixture, and then you will know the difference between cod liver oil and champagne, even if you have never tasted either of them. The afternoon was piled up and pressed down joyfulness for me, and I seemed to be walking in a dream among the beings and the things that we only see in books. Mr. Poplington first took us to the old Watergate, which was the river entrance to York House, where Lord Bacon lived, and close to the gate was the small house where Peter the Great and David Copperfield lived, though not at the same time, and then we went to Will's old coffee-house, where Addison, Steele, and a lot of other people of that sort used to go and drink and smoke before they was buried in Westminster Abbey, and where Tarles and Mary Lamb lived afterward, and where Mary used to look out of the window to see the constables take the thieves to the old Bailey nearby. Then we went to Tom Alalones and saw the very grating at the head of the steps which led to the old graveyard, where poor Joe used to sweep the steps when Lady Deadlock came there, and I held on to the very bars that that poor lady must have gripped when she knelt on the steps to die. Not far away was the Blackjack Tavern, where Jack Shepard and all the great thieves of the day used to meet. And bless me, I have read so much about Jack Shepard that I could fairly see him jumping out of the window he always dropped from when the police came. To that we saw the house where Mr. Telkinghorn, Lady Deadlock's lawyer, used to live, and also the house where Old Crook was burned up by spontaneous combustion. Then we went to Bolt Court, where Old Samuel Johnson lived, walked about and talked, and then to another court where he lived when he wrote the Dictionary, and after that the Cheshire Cheese Inn, where he and Oliver Goldsmith often used to take their meals together. Then we saw St. John's Gate, where the Knights Templars met, and the Yard of the Court of Chancery, where Little Miss Flight used to wait for the Day of Judgment. And as we was coming home he showed us the Church of St. Martin's in the Fields, where every other Friday the bells are rung at five o'clock in the afternoon. Most people not knowing what it is for, but really because the famous Nell Gwen, who was far from being a church woman, left a sum of money for having a merry peal of bells rung every Friday until the end of the world. I got so wound up by all this that I quite forgot Joan, and hardly thought of Mr. Poplington, except that he was telling me all these things, and bringing back to my mind so much that I had read about, though sometimes very little. When we got back to the hotel and had gone up to our room, Joan told me, that was all very fine and interesting from top to toe, but it does seem to me as if things were dreadfully mixed. Dr. Johnson and Jack Shepard, I suppose, was all real and could live in houses, but when it comes to David Copperfield's and Lady Deadlock's and Little Miss Flight's, that wasn't real and never lived at all. They was all talked about in just the same way, and their favorite tramping grounds pointed out, and I can't separate the real people from the fancy folk, if we've got to have the same bosom heaving for the whole of them. Joan, said I, they are all real, every one of them. If Mr. Dickens had written history, I expect he'd put Lady Deadlock and Miss Flight and David Copperfield into it, and if the history writers had written stories they would have been sure to get Dr. Johnson and Lord Bacon and Peter the Great into them, and the people in the one kind of writing would have been just as real as the people in the other. At any rate, that's the way they are to me. On the Monday after our landmark expedition with Mr. Poplington, which I shall never forget, Joan settled up his business matters, and the next day we started for Buxton and the rheumatism baths. To our great delight Mr. Poplington said he would go with us, not all the way, for he wanted to stop at a little place called Rowsley, where he would stay for a few days and then go on to Buxton. But we was very glad to have him with us during the greater part of the way, and we all left the hotel in the same four-wheeler. When we got to the station Joan got first-class tickets, for we have found out that if you want to travel comfortable in England and have porters attend to your baggage and find an empty carriage for you, and have the guard come along and smile in the window and say he'll try to let you have that carriage all to yourselves if he's able, the ableness depending a good deal on what you give him, and for everybody to do their best to make your journey pleasant you must travel first-class. Mr. Poplington also bought a first-class ticket, for there was no seconds on this line. As we was walking along by the platform Joan and I gave a sort of jump, for there was a regular Pullman car, which made us think we might be at home. We stopped and looked at it, and then the guard, who was standing by, stepped up to us and touching his hat and asked us if we would like to take the Pullman, and when Joan asked what the extra charge was he said nothing at all for first-class passengers. We didn't have to stop to think a minute, but said right off that we would go in it, but Mr. Poplington would not come with us. He said that English people wasn't accustomed to that, they wanted to be more private, and although he'd like to be with us he could not travel in a caravan like that, and so he went off by himself and we got into the Pullman. The guard said we could take any seats we pleased, and when we got in we found there was only two or three people in it, and we chose two nice armchairs, hung up our wraps, and made ourselves comfortable and cozy. We expected that the people who engaged seats would soon come crowding in, but when the train started there was only four people besides ourselves in that beautiful car, which was a first-class one, built in the United States, with all sorts of comforts and conveniences. There was a porter who laid himself out to make us happy, and about one o'clock we had a nice lunch on a little table which was set up between us, with two waiters to attend to us, and then Joan went and had a smoke in a small room at one end of the car. We thought it was strange that there should be so few people traveling on this train, but when we came to a town where we made a long stop Joan got out to talk to Mr. Poplington, supposing it likely that he'd have a carriage to himself, but he was amazed to see that the train was jammed and crowded, and he found Mr. Poplington squeezed up in a carriage with seven other people, four of them on one side and four on the other, each row staring into the faces of the other. Some of them was eating bread and cheese out of paper parcels, and a big fat man was reading a newspaper, which he spread out so as to partly cover the two people sitting next to him, and all of them seemed anxious to find some way of stretching their legs, so as not to struck against the legs of somebody else. Mr. Poplington was sitting by the window, and Joan couldn't help laughing when he said, "'Is this what you call being private, sir? I think you would find a caravan more pleasant. Don't you want to come to the pulmon with us? There are plenty of seats there, nice big arm-chairs that you can turn around and sit any way you like, and look at people or not look at them just as you please, and there's plenty of room to walk about and stretch yourself a little if you want to. There's a smoking room, too, that you can go to and leave whenever you like. Come and try it.' "'Thank you very much,' said Mr. Poplington, but I really couldn't do that. I am not prejudiced at all, and I have a good many democratic ideas, but that is too much for me. An Englishman's house is his castle, and when he's traveling his railway carriage is his house. He likes privacy and dislikes publicity. "'This is a funny kind of privacy you have here,' said Joan, "'and how about your big clubs? Would you like to have them all divided up into little compartments with half a dozen men in each one? Generally, strangers to each other?' "'Oh, a club is a very different thing,' said Mr. Poplington. Joan was going to talk more about the comforts of the Pullman cars, but they began to shut the carriage doors, and he had to come back to me. We like English railway carriages very well when we can have one to ourselves, but even if one stranger gets in and has to sit looking at us for all the rest of the trip, you don't feel anything like us private as if he was walking along a sidewalk in London. But Joan and I both agreed we wouldn't find any fault with English people, for they're not liking Pullman cars, so long as they put them on their trains for Americans who do like them. And one thing is certain, that if our railroad conductors and brakesmen and porters was as polite and kind as they are in England, tips or no tips, we'd be a great deal better off than we are. Whenever we stopped at a station the people would come and look through the windows at us, as if we were some sort of a traveling show. I don't believe most of them had ever seen a comfortable room on wheels before. The other people in our car was all men, and looked as if they hadn't their families with them, and was glad to get a little comfort on the sly. When we got to Rousley we saw Mr. Poplington on the platform, running about, collecting all his different bits of luggage, and counting them to see that they was all there. And then, as we had a window open and was looking out, he came and bit us good-bye, and when I asked him to, he looked into our car. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! he said. What a public apartment! I could not travel like that, you know. Good-bye! I will see you at Buxton in a few days. We had talked a good deal with Mr. Poplington about the hotels of Buxton, and we had agreed to go to one called the Old Hall, where we are now. There was a good many reasons why we chose this house, one being that it was not as expensive as some of the others, though very nice, and another which had a good deal of force with me, was that Mary Queen of Scots came here for her rheumatism, and the room she used to have is still kept, with some words she scratched with her diamond ring on the window-pane. Some people coming to this hotel can get this room, and I was mighty sorry we couldn't do it, but it was taken. If I could have actually lived and slept in a room which had belonged to the beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, I would have been willing to have just as much rheumatism as she had when she was here. Of course, modern rheumatisms are not as interesting as the rheumatisms people of the past ages had, but from what I have seen of this town I think I am going to like it very much. LETTER NUMBER 17 BUCKSTON AND THE BATH CHAIRS BUCKSTON When we were comfortably settled here, Joan went to see a doctor, who was a nice kind old gentleman, who looks as if he almost might have told Mary Queen of Scots how hot she ought to have the water in her baths. He charges four times as much as the others, and has about a quarter as many patients, which makes it all the same to him, and a good deal better for the rheumatic ones who come to him, for they have more time to go into particulars. And if anything does good to a person who has something to matter with him, it's being able to go into particulars about it. It's often as good as medicine, and always more comforting. We unpacked our trunks and settled ourselves down for a three-week stay here, for no matter how much rheumatism you have or how little, you've got to take Buckston and its baths in three-weeks doses. Besides taking the baths, Joan has to drink the waters, and as I cannot do much else to help him, I am encouraging him by drinking them too. There are two places where you can get the lukewarm water that people come here to drink. One is the public well, where there is a pump free to anybody, and the other is in the pump room just across the street from the well, where you pay a penny of glass for the same water, which three doleful old women spend all their time pumping for visitors. People are ordered to drink this water very carefully. It must be done at regular times, beginning with a little, and taking more and more each day until you get to a full tumbler, and then if it seems too strong for you, you must take less. So far as I can find out there is nothing particular about it, except that it is lukewarm water, neither hot enough nor cold enough to make it a pleasant drink. It didn't seem to agree with Joan at first, but after he kept at it three or four days it began to suit him better, so that he could take nearly a tumbler without feeling badly. Two or three times I felt it might be better for my health if I didn't drink it, but I wanted to stand by Joan as much as I could, and so I kept on. We have been here a week now, and this morning I found out that all the water we drink at this hotel is brought from the well of St. Anne, where the public pump is, and everybody drinks just as much of it as they want whenever they want to, and they never think of any such thing as feeling badly or better than if it was common water. The only difference is that it isn't quite as lukewarm when we get it here as at the well. When I was told this I was real mad after all the measuring and fussing we had when taking the water as a medicine, and then drinking it just as we pleased at the table. But the people here tell me that it is the gas in it which makes it medicinal, and when that floats out it is just like common water. That may be, but if there's a penny's worth of gas in every tumbler of water sold in the pump room there ought to be some sort of a canopy put over the town to catch what must escape in the pourings and pumpings, for it's too valuable to be allowed to get away. If it's the gas that does it, a rheumatic man anchored in a balloon over Buxton, and having the gas coming up unmixed to him ought to be well in about two days. When Joan told me his first bath was to be heated up to 94 degrees I said to him that he'd be boiled alive, but he wasn't, and when he came home he said he liked it. Everything is very systematic in the great bathing houses. The man who tends to Joan hangs up his watch on the little stand in the edge of the bathtub, and he stays in just so many minutes, and when he's ready to come out he rings a bell, and then he's wrapped up in about fourteen hot towels, and sits in an armchair until he's dry. Joan likes all this, and says so much about it that it makes me want to try it too, though as there isn't any reason for it I haven't tried them yet. This is an awfully queer old-fashioned town, and must have been a good deal-like bath in the days of Evelina. There is a long line of high buildings curved like a half-moon, which is called the Crescent, and at one end of this is a pump room, and at the other are the natural baths, where the water is just as warm as when it comes out of the ground, which is 82 degrees. This is said to chill people, but from what I remember about summertime I don't see how 82 degrees can be cold. Opposite the Crescent is a public park called the Slopes, and farther on there are great gardens with pavilions, and a band of music every day, and a theater, and a little river, and tennis courts, and all sorts of things for people who haven't anything to do with their time, which is generally the case with folks at rheumatic watering-places. Opposite to our hotel is a bowling court, which they say has been there for hundreds of years, and is just as hard and smooth as a boy's slate. The men who play bowls here are generally those who have got over the rheumatism of their youth, and whose joints have not been very much stiffened up yet by old age. The people who are yet too young for rheumatism and have come here with their families play tennis. The baths take such a little time, not over six or seven minutes for them each day, and every third day skipped, that there is a good deal of time left on the hands of the people here, and those who can't play tennis or bowl and don't want to spend the whole time in the pavilion listening to the music go about in bath-chairs, which, so far as I can see, are just as important as the baths. I don't know whether you ever saw a bath-chair, madam, but it's a comfortable little cab on three wheels pulled by a man. They take people everywhere, and all the streets are full of them. As soon as I saw these nice little traps, I said to Joan, Now, this is the very thing for you. It hurts you to walk far, and you want to see all over this town, and one of these bath-chairs will take you into lots of places where you couldn't go in a carriage. Take me, said Joan. I should say not. You don't catch me being hauled about in one of those things as if I was a sort of wheel-barrow ambulance being taken to the hospital, with you walking along by my side like a trained nurse. No, indeed. I have not gone so far as that yet. I told him this was all stuff in nonsense, and if he wanted to get the good out of Buxton he'd better go and see it, and he couldn't go about if he didn't take a bath-chair. But all that he said to that was, that he could see it without going about, and he was satisfied. But that didn't count anything with me, for the trouble with Joan is, that he's too easily satisfied. It's true that there is a lot to be seen in Buxton without going about. The slopes are just across the street from the hotel, and when it doesn't happen to be raining we can go and sit there on a bench and see lively times enough. People are being trundled about in their bath-chairs in every direction. There is always a crowd at St. Anne's Well, where the pump is. All sorts of cabs and carts are being driven up and down just as fast as they can go, for the streets are as smooth as floors, and in the morning and evening there are about half a dozen coaches with four horses and drivers and hornblowers and red coats. The horses prancing and the whips cracking as they start out for country trips or come back again. And as for the people on foot they just swarm like bees, and rain makes no difference, except that then they wear macintoshes, and when it's fine they don't. Some of these people step along as brisk as if they hadn't anything to matter with them, but a good many of them help their legs with canes and crutches. I begin to think I can tell how long a man has been at Buxton by the number of sticks he uses. One day we was sitting on a bench in the slopes, enjoying a bit of sunshine that had just come along, when a middle-aged man with a very high collar and a silk hat came and sat down by Joan. He spoke civilly to us, and then went on to say that if we ever happened to take a house near Liverpool he'd be glad to supply us with coals, because he was a coal merchant. Joan told him that if he ever did take a house near Liverpool he certainly would give him his custom. Then the man gave us his card. I come here every year, he said, for the rheumatism in my shoulder, and if I meet anybody that lives near Liverpool or is likely to, I try to get his custom. I like it here. There's a good many hotels in this town. You can see a lot of them from here. There's St. Anne's. That's a good house, but they charge you a pound a day. And then there's the old hall. That's good enough, too, but nobody ever goes there except shopkeepers and clergymen. Of course I don't mean bishops. They go to St. Anne's. I wondered which the man would think Joan was, if he knew we was stopping at the old hall. But I didn't ask him, and only said that other people beside shopkeepers and clergymen went to the old hall, for Mary Queen of Scots used to stop at that house when she came to take the waters, and her room was still there, just as it used to be. Mary Queen of Scots, said he, at the old hall? Yes, said I. That's where she used to go. That was her hotel. Queen Mary, Queen of the Scots, he said again. Well, well, I wouldn't have believed it. But them Scotch people always was close-fisted. Now, if it had been Queen Elizabeth, she wouldn't have minded a pound a day. And then, after asking Joan to excuse him for forgetting his manners and not asking where his rheumatism was, and having got his answer, he went away, wondering, I expect, how Mary Queen of Scots could have been so stingy. But although we could see so much sitting on benches, I didn't give up Joan in the bath-chairs, and day before yesterday I got the better of him. Now, said I, it is stupid for you to be sitting around in this way as if you was a statue of a public benefactor carved by subscription and set up in a park. The only sensible thing for you to do is to take a bath-chair and go around seeing things. And if you are afraid, people will think you are being taken to a hospital. You can put down the top of the thing and sit straight and smoke your pipe. Patience and ambulances never smoke pipes. And if you don't want me walking by your side like a trained nurse, I'll take another chair and be pulled along with you. The idea of a pipe and me being in another chair rather struck as fancy. And he said he would consider it. And so that afternoon we went to the hotel door and looked at the long line of bath-chairs standing at the curb-stone on the other side of the street, with the men waiting for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses. Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn out, as if they had belonged to sporting men and had been driven half to death. And then again there was some that looked fat and lazy, like the old horses on a farm, that the women drive to town. Joan picked out a good man who looked as if he was well broken and not afraid of locomotives and being able to do good work and single harness. When I got Joan in the bath-chair, with the buggy top down and his pipe lighted and his hat cocked on one side a little, so as to look as if he was doing the whole thing for a lark, I called another chair, not carrying what sort of one it was, and then we told the men to pull us around for a couple of hours, leaving it to them to take us to agreeable spots, which they said they would do. After we got started Joan seemed to like it very well, and we went pretty much all over the town, sometimes stopping to look in the shop windows, for the sidewalks are so narrow that it is no trouble to see things from the street. Then the men took us a little way out of the town to a place where there was a good view for us, and a bench where they could go and sit down and rest. I expect all the chairmen that worked by the hour managed to get to this place with a view as soon as they can. After they had had a good rest we started off to go home by a different route. Joan's man was a good strong fellow and always took the lead, but my puller was a different kind of steed, and sometimes I was left pretty far behind. I had not paid much attention to the man at first, only noticing that he was mighty slow, but going back a good deal of the way was uphill, and then all his imperfections came out plain, and I couldn't help studying him. If he had been a horse I should have said he was spavoned and foundered with split frogs and tonsillitis, but as he was a man it struck me that he must have had several different kinds of rheumatism and been sent to Buxton to have them cured, but not taking the baths properly or drinking the water at times when he ought not to have done it, his rheumatisms had all run together and had become immovable and fixed. How such a creaky person came to be a bath chairman I could not think, but it may be that he wanted to stay in Buxton for the sake of the loose gas which could be had for nothing, and that bath chairing was all he could get to do. I pity the poor old fellow who, if he had been a horse, would have been no more than fourteen hands high, and as he went puffing along, tugging and grunting as if I was a load of coal, I felt I couldn't stand at another minute, and I called out to him to stop. It did seem as if he would drop before he got me back to the hotel, and I bounced out in no time, and then I walked in front of him and turned around and looked at him. If it is possible for a human-hat horse to have spavons and two joints in each leg, that man had them, and he looked as if he couldn't remember what it was to have a good feed. He seemed glad to rest, but didn't say anything, standing and looking straight ahead of him like an old horse that had been stopped to let him blow. He did look so dreadful feeble that I thought it would be a mercy to take him to some member of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals and have him chloroformed. Look here, said I. You are not fit to walk. Get into that bath chair and I'll pull you back to your stand. Lady, said he, I couldn't do that. If you'd in a mine walking home and will pay me for the two hours all the same, I will be right thankful for that. I'm poorly today. Get into the chair, said I, and I'll pull you back. I'd like to do it, for I want some exercise. Oh, no, no, said he. That would be a sin, and besides I was engaged to pull you two hours and I must be paid for that. Get into that chair, I said, and I'll pay you for your two hours and give you a shilling, besides. He looked at me for a minute and then he got into the chair and I shut him up. Now, lady, said he, you can pull me a little way if you want exercise, and as soon as you are tired you can stop, and I'll get out, but you must pay me the extra shilling all the same. All right, said I, and taking hold of the handle I started off. It was real fun. The bath chair rolled along beautifully, and I don't believe the old man weighed more than my Corinne when I used to push her about in her baby carriage. We were in a back street, where there was hardly anybody, and as for Joan and his bath chair I could just see them ever so far ahead, so I started to catch up, and as the street was pretty level now I soon got going at a fine rate. I hadn't had a bit of good exercise for a long time, and this warmed me up and made me feel gay. We was not very far behind Joan when the man began to call to me in a sort of frightened fashion, as if he thought I was running away. Stop, lady, he said. We are getting near the gardens, and the people will laugh at me. Stop, lady, and I'll get out. But I didn't feel a bit like stopping. The idea had come into my head that it would be jolly to beat Joan. If I could pass him and sail on ahead for a little while, then I'd stop and let my old man get out and take his bath chair home. I didn't want it any more. Just as I got up close behind Joan and was about to make a rush past him, his man turned into a side street. Of course I turned too, and then I put on steam, and giving a laugh as I turned around to look at Joan I charged on, intending to stop in a minute and have some fun in hearing what Joan had to say about it. But you may believe, ma'am, that I was amazed when I saw, only a little way in front of me, the bath chair stand where we had hired our machines. And all the bath chairmen were standing there with their mouths wide open, staring at a woman running along the street, pulling an old bath chairman in a bath chair. For a second I felt like dropping the handle I held and making a rush for the front door of the hotel, which was right ahead of me, and then I thought, as now I was in for it, it would be a lot better to put a good face on the matter and not look as if I had done anything I was ashamed of, and so I just slackened speed and came up in fine style at the door of the old hall. Four or five of the bath chairmen came running across the street to know if anything had happened to the old party I was pulling, and he got out looking as ashamed as if he had been whipped by his wife. It's a lark, mate, said he, the ladies to pay me two shillings extra for letting her pull me. Two shillings, said I, I only promised you one. That would be for pulling me a little way, he said, but you pulled me all the way back, and I couldn't do it for less than two shillings. Joan now came up and got out quick. What's the meaning of all this, Pomona, said he? Meaning, said I, look at that dilapidated old bag of bones. He wasn't fit to pull me, and so I thought it would be fun to pull him. But, of course, I didn't know when I turned the corner I would be here at the stand. Joan paid the man, including the two extra shillings, and when we went up to our room he said, the next time we go out in two bath chairs, I am going to have a chain fastened to yours, and I'll have hold of the other end of it. End of Letter 17, read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 18 of Pomona's Travels, a series of letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her former handmaiden, by Frank R. Stockton. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter number 18, Mr. Poplington, as guide, Buxton. I have begun to take the baths. There is really so little to do in this place that I couldn't help it. And so, while Joan was off tending to his hot soaks, I thought I might as well try the thing myself. At any rate it would fill up the time when I was alone. I find I like this sort of bathing very much, and I wish I had begun it before. It reminds me of a kind of medicine for coals that he used to make for me, madam, when I first came to the canal boat. It had lemons and sugar in it, and it was so good I remember I used to think that I would like to go into a lingering consumption so that I could have it three times a day until I finally passed away like a lily on a snowbank. Joan's been going about a good deal in a bath-chair, and doesn't mind my walking alongside of him. He says it makes him feel easier in his mind on the whole. Mr. Poplington came two or three days ago, and he is stopping at our hotel. We three have hired a carriage together two or three times, and have taken drives into the country. Once we went to an inn, the cat and fiddle, about five miles away, on a bit of high ground called Axe Edge. It is said to be the highest tavern in England, and it's lucky that it is, for that's the only recommendation it's got. The sign in front of the house has on it a cat on its hind legs playing a fiddle, with a look on its face as if it was saying, It's pretty poor, but it's the best I can do for you. Inside is another painting of a cat playing a fiddle, and truly that one might be saying, Ha Ha! You thought that the picture on the sign was the worst picture you ever saw in your life, but now you see you are mistaken. Upon that high place you get the rain fresher than you do in Buxton, because it hasn't gone so far through the air, and it's mixed with more chilly winds than anywhere else in England, I should say. But everybody is bound to go to the cat and fiddle at least once, and we are glad we have been there and that it is over. I like the places near the town a great deal better, and some of them are very pretty. One day we too and Mr. Poplington took a ride on top of a stage to see Haddon Hall and Chatsworth. Haddon Hall is, to me, like a dream of the past come true. Lots of other old places have seemed like dreams, but this one was right before my eyes, just as it always was. Of course you must have read all about it, madam, and I am not going to tell it over again. But think of it, a grand old baronial mansion, part of it built as far back as the eleven hundreds, and yet in good condition and fit to live in. That is what I thought as I walked through its banqueting hall and courts and noble chambers. Why, said I to Joan, in that kitchen our meals could be cooked, and at that table we could eat them. In these rooms we could sleep. In these gardens and courts we could roam. We could actually live here. We haven't seen any other romance of the past that we could say that about, and to this minute it puzzles me how any duke in this world can be content to own a house like this and not live in it. But I suppose he thinks more of water pipes and electric lights than he does of the memories of the past and time hallowed traditions. As for me, if I had been Dorothy Vernon there is no man on earth, not even Joan, that could make me run away from such a place as Haddon Hall. They show the stairs down which she tripped with her lover when they eloped. But if it had been me it would have been up those stairs I would have gone. Mr. Poplington didn't agree a bit with me about the joy of living in this enchanting old house, and neither did Joan, I am sure, although he didn't say so much. But then they are both men, and when it comes to soaring in the regions of romanticism you must not expect too much of men. After leaving Haddon Hall, which I did backwards, the coach took us to Chatsworth, which is a different sort of a place altogether. It is a grand palace, at least it was built for one, but now it is an enormous show-place, bright and clean and sleek, and when we got there we saw hundreds of visitors waiting to go in. They was taken through in squads of about fifty, with a man to lead them, which he did very much like as if they was a drove of cattle. The man who led our squad made us step along lively, and I must say that never having been in a drove before, Joan and I began to get restive long before we got through. As for show, I like the British Museum a great deal better. There is ever so much more to see there, and you have time to stop and look at things. At Chatsworth they charge you more, give you less, and treat you worse. When it came to taking us through the grounds, Joan and I struck. We left the gang we was with, and being shown where to find a gate out of the place, we made for that gate, and waited until our coach was ready to take us back to Buxton. It is a lot of fun going to the theatre here. It doesn't cost much, and the plays are good and generally funny, and a rheumatic audience is a very jolly one. The people seem glad to forget their backs, their shoulders, and their legs, and they are ready to laugh at things that are only half comic, and keep up a lively chattering between the acts. It's fun to see them when the play is over. Their bath-chairs that have come after some of them are brought right into the building, and are drawn up just like carriages after the theatre. The first time we went, I wanted Joan to stop a while and see if we didn't hear somebody call out, Mrs. Barchester's bath-chair stops the way, but he said I expected too much, and would not wait. We sit about so much in the gardens, which are lively when it is clear, and not bad even in a little drizzle, that we've got to know a good many of the people, and although Joan's a good deal given to reading, I like to sit and watch them and see what they're doing. When we first came here I noticed a good-looking young woman who was hauled about in a bath-chair, generally with an open book in her lap, which she never seemed to read much, because she was always gazing around as if she was looking for something. Before long I found out what she was looking for, for every day, sooner or later, generally sooner, there came along a bath-chair with a good-looking young man in it. He had a book in his lap, too, but he was never reading it when I saw him, because he was looking for the young woman, and as soon as they saw each other they began to smile, and as they passed they always said something but didn't stop. I wondered why they didn't give their pullers a rest and have a good talk if they knew each other, but before long I noticed not very far behind the young lady's bath-chair was always another bath-chair with an old gentleman in it with a bottle nose. After a while I found out that this was the young lady's father, because sometimes he would call to her and have her stop, and then she generally seemed to get some sort of a scolding. Of course when I see anything of this kind going on I can't help taking one side or the other, and as you may well believe, madam, I wouldn't likely to take that of the old bottle-nose man side. I had not been noticing these people for more than two or three days when one morning, when Joan and me was sitting under an umbrella, for there was a little more rain than common, I saw these two young people in their bath-chairs coming along side by side and talking just as hard as they could. At first I was surprised, but I soon saw how things was. The old gentleman couldn't come out in the rain. It was plain enough from the way these two young people looked at each other that they was in love, and although it most likely hurt them just as much to come out into the rain as it would the old man, love is all-powerful even over rheumatism. Pretty soon the clouds cleared away without notice, as they do in this country, and it wasn't long before I saw, away off, the old man's bath-chair coming along lively. His bottle-nose was sticking up in the air, and he was looking from one side to the other as hard as he could. The two lovers had turned off to the right and gone over a little bridge, and I couldn't see them, but by the way that that old nose shook as it got nearer and nearer to me, I saw that they had reason to tremble, though they didn't know it. When the old father reached the narrow path he did not turn down it, but kept straight on, and I breathed the sigh of deep relief. But the next instant I remembered that the broad path turned not far beyond, and that the little one soon ran into it, and so it could not be long before the father and the two lovers would meet. I like to tell Joan everything I am going to do when I am sure that he'll agree with me that it is right, but this time I could not bother with explanations, and so I just told him to sit still for a minute, for I wanted to see something, and I walked after the young couple as fast as I could. When I got to them, for they hadn't gone very far, I passed the young woman's bath-chair, and then I looked around and I said to her, I beg your pardon, miss, but there is an old gentleman looking for you, but as I think he is coming around this way you'll meet him if you keep on this path. Oh, my! said she unintentionally, and then she thanked me very much, and I went on and turned a corner and went back to Joan, and pretty soon the young man's bath-chair passed us going toward the gate, he looking three quarters happy and the other quarter disappointed, as lovers are if they don't get the whole loaf. From that day until yesterday, which was a full week, I come into the gardens every morning, sometimes even when Joan didn't want to come, because I wanted to see as much of this love business as I could. For my own use in thinking of them I named the young man Pomeroy and the young woman Angelica, and as for the father I called him Snortfrizzle, being the worst name I could think of at the time. But I must wait until my next letter to tell you the rest of the story of the lovers, and I am sure you will be as much interested in them as I was. End of Letter Number Eighteen, read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Letter Nineteen of Pomonas Travels, a series of letters to the mistress of Redder Grange from her former handmaiden, by Frank R Stockton. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter Number Nineteen, Angelica and Pomeroy, Buxton. I have a good many things to tell you, for we leave Buxton to-morrow, but I will first finish the story of Angelica and Pomeroy. I think the men who pulled the bath-chairs of the lovers knew pretty much how things was going, for whenever they got a chance they brought their chairs together, and I often noticed them looking out for the old father, and if they saw him coming they would move away from each other if they happened to be together. If Snort Frizzle's puller had been one of the regular bath-chair men they might have made an agreement with him so that he would have kept away from them. But he was a man in livery, with a high hat, who walked very regular, like a high stepping horse, and who it was plain enough to see, never had anything to do with common bath-chair men. Old Snort Frizzle seemed to be smelling a rat more and more, that is, if it is proper to liken Cupid to such an animal, and his nose seemed to get purpler and purpler. I think he would have always kept close to Angelica's chair if it hadn't been that he had a way of falling asleep, and whenever he did this his man always walked very slowly, being naturally lazy. Two or three times I have seen Snort Frizzle wake up, shout to his man, and make him trot around a clump of trees and into some narrow path where he thought his daughter might have gone. Things began to look pretty bad, for the old man had very strong suspicions about Pomeroy, and was so very wide awake when he was awake that I knew it couldn't be long before he caught the two together, and then I didn't believe that Angelica would ever come into these gardens again. It was yesterday morning that I saw Old Snort Frizzle with his chin down in his shirt-bism, snoring so steady that his hat heaved, being very slowly pulled along a shady walk, and then I saw his daughter, who was not far ahead of him, turn into another walk, which led down by the river. I knew very well that she ought not turn into that walk, because it didn't in any way lead to the place where Pomeroy was sitting in his bath-chair behind a great clump of bushes and flowers, with his face filled with the most lively emotions, but overspread ever and on by a cloudlet of despair on account of the approach of the noontide hour, when Angelica and Snort Frizzle generally went home. The time was short, and I believed that Love's young dream must be put off until the next day if Angelica could not be made aware where Pomeroy was sitting, or Pomeroy where Angelica was going, so I got right up and made a short cut down a steep little path, and sure enough I met her when I got to the bottom. I beg your pardon very much, Miss, said I, but your brother is over there in the entrance to the cave, and I think he has been looking for you. My brother, said she, turning as red as her ribbons was blue. Oh, thank you very much. Robertson, you may take me that way. It wasn't long before I saw those two bath-chairs alongside of each other, and covered from general observation by masses of blooming shrubbery. As I had been the cause of bringing them together, I thought I had to write to look at them a little while, as that would be the only reward I'd be likely to get, and so I did it. It was, as I thought, things was coming to a climax, the bath-chairmen standing with much consideration with their backs to their vehicles, and united for the time being by their clasped hands, the lovers grew tender to a degree which I would have faint-checked had I been nearer for fear of notice of passers-by. But now my blood froze within my veins. I would never have believed that a man in a high hat in livery a size too small for him could run, but Snortfrizzle's man did, and at a pace which ought to have been prohibited by law. I saw him coming from an unsuspected quarter and swoop around that clump of flowers and foliage. Regardless of consequences I approached nearer. There was loud voices, there was exclamations, there was a rattling of wheels, there was the sundering of tender ties. In a moment Pomeroy, who had backed off but a little way, began to speak, but his voice was drowned in the thunder of Snortfrizzle's denunciations. Angelica wept, and her head fell upon her lovely bosom, and I am sure I heard her implore her man to remove her from the scene. Pomeroy remained, his face firm, his eyes undaunted, but Snortfrizzle shook his fist in unison with his nose, and hurling an anethym at him followed his daughter, probably to incarcerate her in her apartments. All was over, and I returned to Joan with a heavy heart and faltering step. I could not but feel that I had brought about the sad end of this tender chapter in the lives of Pomeroy and Angelica. If I had let them alone they would not have met, and they would not have been discovered together. I didn't tell Joan what had happened, because he does not always sympathize with me and my interest in others, and for many hours my heart was heavy. It was about half an hour before dinner that day when I thought a little walk might raise my spirits, and I wandered into the gardens, for which we each have a weekly ticket, and there, to my amazement, not far from the gate I saw Angelica in tears and her bath-chair. Her man was not with her, and she was alone. When she saw me she looked at me for a minute, and then she beckoned me to come to her. I flew. There were but a few people in the gardens, and we was alone. Madam, said she, I think you must be very kind. I believe you knew that gentleman was not my brother. He is not. My dear miss, said I, and I was almost on the point of calling her Angelica. I knew that. I know that he is something nearer and dearer than even a brother. She blushed. Yes, said she, you are right, and we are in great trouble. Oh, what is it? Tell me quick. What can I do to help you? My father is very angry, said she, and has forbidden me ever to see him again, and he is going to take me home to-morrow. But we have agreed to fly together to-day. It is our only chance, but he is not here. Oh, dear, I do not know what I shall do. Where are you going to fly to, said I? We want to take the Edinburgh train this evening if there is one, she said, and if we get off at Carlyle, and from there it is only a little way to Gretna Green. Gretna Green, I cried, oh, I will help you, I will help you. Why isn't the gentleman here, and where is he gone? He is gone to see about the train, she said, almost crying, and I don't see what keeps him. I could not get away until Father went into his dressing-room to dress for dinner, and as soon as he is ready he will call for me. Where can he be? I have sent my man to look for him. Oh, I'll go look for him. You wait here, I cried, forgetting that she would have to, and away I went. As I was hurrying out of the gates of the gardens, I looked in the direction of the railroad station, and there I saw Pomroy pulled by one bath-chair man, and the other one talking to him. In twenty bounds I reached him. Go back for your young lady, I cried to Robertson, Angelica's man, and bring her here on the run. She sent me for you. Away went Robertson, and then I said to the astonished Pomroy, Sir, there is no time for explanations. Your lady-love will be with you in a minute. My husband and I are going to Edinburgh to-morrow, and I have looked up all the trains. There is one which leaves here at twenty minutes past six. If she comes soon you will have time to catch it. Have you your baggage ready? He looked at me as if he wondered who on earth I was, but I am sure he saw my soul in my face and trusted me. Yes, he said, she has a little bag in her bath-chair, and mine is here. Here she comes, I said, and you must fly to the station. In a moment Angelica was with us, her face beaming with delight. Oh, thank you, thank you, she cried, but I would not listen to her gratitude. Hurry, I said, or you will be too late. Joy go with you. They hastened off, and I walked back to the gardens. I looked at my watch, and to my horror I saw that it was five minutes past six. Fifteen minutes left yet, fifteen minutes in which they might be overtaken. I stopped for a moment irresolutely. What should I do? I thought of running after them to the station. I thought in some way I might help them, buy their tickets or do something. But while I was thinking I heard a rattle, and down the street came the man in livery, and snort-frizzles bottled nose like a volcano behind him. The minute they reached me, and there was nobody else in the street, the old man shouted, Hi! Have you seen two bath-chairs with a young man and a young woman in them? I was on the point of saying no, but changed my mind like a flash. Did the young lady wear a hat with blue ribbons? I asked. Yes, he roared. Which way did they go? And did the young man with her wear eyeglasses and a brown moustache? With her was he, screamed snort-frizzle. That's the rascal. Which way did they go? Tell me instantly. When I was a very little girl I knew an old woman who told me that if a person was really good at heart, the holy angels would allow that person, in the course of her life, twelve fibs without charge, provided they was told for the good of somebody and not to do harm. Now, at such a moment as this I could not remember how many fibs of that kind I had left over to my credit, but I knew there must be at least one, and so I didn't hesitate a second. They have gone to the cat and fiddle, said I. I heard them tell their bath-chairman so, as they urged them forward at the top of their speed. They stopped for a second here, sir, and I heard the gentleman send a cabman for a clergyman, post-haste, to meet them at the cat and fiddle. If the sky had been lighted up by the eruption of snort-frizzles nose I should not have been surprised. The fools, they can't, cat and fiddle, but they can't be half-way there, martin, to the cat and fiddle. The man touched his hat. But I couldn't do that, sir. I couldn't run to the cat and fiddle. It's long miles, sir. Shall I get a carriage? Carriage, cried the old man, and then he began to look about him. Horrors struck me. Perhaps they would go to the station for one. Just then a boy, driving a pony, in a grocery cart came up. There you are, sir, I cried. Hire that boy to tow you. Your butler can sit in the back of the cart and hold the handle of your bath-chair. It may take long to get a carriage, and the cart will go much faster. You may overtake them in a little. Old snort-frizzle never so much as thanked me or looked at me. He yelled to the boy in the cart, offered him ten shillings and sixpence to give him a tow, and in less time than I could take to ride it, that flunky with a high hat was sitting in the tail of the cart, the pony was going at full gallop, and the old man's bath-chair was spinning on behind it at a great rate. I did not leave that spot, standing statue-like and looking along both roads, until I heard the rumble of the departing train, and then I repaired to the old hall, my soul uplifted. I found Joan in an awful fluster about my being out so late, but I do stay pretty late sometimes when I walk by myself, and so he hadn't anything new to say. CHAPTER XII. THE COUNTESS OF MESSELBY, EDENBURAH. We have been here five or six days now, but the first thing I must write is the rest of the story of the lovers. We left Buxton the next day after their flight, and I begged Joan to stop at Carlisle and let us make a little trip to Gretten and Green. I wanted to see the place that has been such a wellspring of matrimonial joys, and besides I thought we might find Pomeroy and Angelica still there. I had not seen Old Snortfrizzle again, but late that night I had heard a row in the hotel, and I expect it was him back from the cat and fiddle. Whether he was inquiring for me or not I don't know, or what he was doing, or what he did. Joan thought I had done a good deal of meddling in other people's business, but he agreed to go to Gretten and Green, and we got there in the afternoon. I left Joan to take a smoke at the station, because I thought this was a business it would be better for me to attend to myself, and I started off to look up the village blacksmith and ask him if he had lately wedded a pair. But will you believe it, madam? I had not gone far on the main road of the village when, a little ahead of me, I saw two bath-chairs coming toward me, one of them pulled by Robertson and the other by Pomeroy's man, and in these two chairs was the happy lovers, evidently Mr. and Mrs. Their faces was filled with light enough to take a photograph, and I could almost see their hearts swelling with transcendent joy. I hastened toward them, and in an instant our hands was clasped as if we had been old friends. They told me their tale. They had reached the station in plenty of time, and Robertson had got a carriage for them, and he and the other man had gone with them third class, with the bath-chairs in the goods carriages. They had reached Gretna Green that morning, and had been married two hours. Then I told my tale. The eyes of both of them was dimmed with tears, her the most, and again they clasped my hands. "'Poor father,' said Angelica. I hope he didn't go all the way to the cat and fiddle, and that the night air didn't strike into his joints, but he cannot separate us now. And she looked confiding at the other bath-chair. "'What are you going to do?' said I, and they said they had just been making plans. I saw, though, that their minds was in too exalted estate to do this properly for themselves, and so I reflected him in it. How long have you been in Buxton?' "'I have been there two weeks and two days,' said she, and my husband, O the effulgence that filled her countness as she said this, has been there only one day longer. "'Then,' said I, my advice to you, is to go back to Buxton and say there five days, until you have both taken the waters and the baths for the three full weeks. It won't be much to bear the old gentleman's up-braiding for five days, and then, blessed with health and love, you can depart. No matter what you do afterward, I'd stick it out at Buxton for five days. "'We'll do it,' said they, and then, after more gratitude and congratulations, we parted. And now I must tell you about ourselves. When Joan had been three weeks at Buxton, and done all the things he ought to do, and hadn't done anything he oughten to do, he hadn't had any more rheumatism in him than a squirrel that jumps from bow to bow. But will you believe it, madam? I had such a rheumatism in one side and on one arm that it made me give little squeaks when I did up my back-care, and it all came from my taking the baths when there wasn't anything to matter with me. For I found out, but all too late, that while the waters of Buxton will cure rheumatism in people that's got it, they will bring it out in people who never had it at all. We was told that we ought not to do anything in the bathing line without the advice of a doctor, but those little tanks in the floors of the bathrooms, all lined with tiles and filled with warm, transparent water that you went down into by marble steps, did seem so innocent that I didn't believe there was no need in asking questions about them. Joan wanted me to stay three weeks longer until I was cured, but I wouldn't listen to that. I was wild to get to Scotland, and as my rheumatism did not hinder me from walking, I didn't mind what else it did. And there is another thing I must tell you. One day when I was sitting by myself on the slopes waiting for Joan, about lunchtime, and with a reminiscence floating through my mind of the deboncher-clotted cream of the past, never perhaps to return, I saw an elderly woman coming along, and when she got near she stopped and spoke. I knew her in an instant. She was the old body we had met at the Babylon Hotel, who had told us about the cottage at Chedcombe. I asked her to sit down beside me and talk, because I wanted to tell her what good times we had had and how we liked the place, but she said she couldn't, as she was obliged to go on. And did you like Chedcombe? she said. I hope you and your husband kept well. I said yes, except Joan's rheumatism. We felt splendid, for my aches hadn't come on then, and I was going to gush about the lovely country she had sent us to, but she didn't seem to want to listen. Really, she said, and your husband had the rheumatism. It was a wise thing for you to come here. We English people have reason to be proud of our country. If we have our veins, we also have our antidotes, and it isn't every country that can say that, is it? I wanted to speak up for America and try to think of some good antidote with the proper veins attached. But before I could do it she gave her head a little wag and said, Good morning, nice weather, isn't it, and wobbled away. It struck me that the old body was a little lofty, and just then Mr. Poplington, who I hadn't noticed, came up. Really, said he, I didn't know you was acquainted with the Countess. The witch, said I. The Countess of Muscleby, said he, that she was just talking to. Countess, I cried, why, that's the old person who recommended us to go to Chedcombe. Very natural, said he, for her to do that, for her estates lie south of Chedcombe, and she takes a great interest in the villages around about, and knows all the houses to let. I parted from him and wandered away, a sadness stealing over my soul. Gone with the recollections of the clotted cream was my vision of diamond tiaras, tossing plumes, and long folds of brocades and laces sweeping the marble floors of palaces. If I ever again read a novel with a Countess in it, I shall see the edge of a yellow flannel petticoat and a pair of shoes like two horsehair bags, which was the last thing that I saw of this thunderbolt into the middle of my visions of aristocracy. Joan and me got to like Butston very much. We met many pleasant people, and as most of them had a cord in common, we was friendly enough. Joan said it made him feel sad in the smoking-room to see the men he'd got acquainted with get well and go home, but that's a kind of sadness that all parties can bear up under pretty well. I haven't said a word yet about Scotland, though we have been here a week, but I really must get something about it into this letter. I was saying to Joan the other day that if I was to meet a king with a crown on his head, I am not sure that I should know that king if I saw him again. So taken up would I be with looking at his crown, especially if it had jewels in it such as I saw in the regalia at the Tower of London. Now Edinburgh seems to strike me very much in the same way. Prince Street is its crown, and whenever I think of this city it will be of this magnificent street and all the things that can be seen from it. It is a great thing for a street to have one side of it taken away and sunk out of sight, so that there is a clear view far and wide, and visitors can stand and look at nearly everything that is worth seeing in the whole town as if they was in the front seats of the balcony in a theatre and looking on the stage. You know I am very fond of the theatre, madam, but I never saw anything in the way of what they call spectacular representation that came near Edinburgh as seen from Prince Street. But as I said in one of my first letters, I am not going to write about things and places that you can get much better descriptions of in books, and so I won't take up any time in telling how we stand at the window of our room at the Royal Hotel and look out at the old town standing like a forest of tall houses on the other side of the valley, with the great castle perched up high above them, and all the hills and towers and the streets all spread out below us, with Scott's Monument right in front, with everybody he ever wrote about, standing on brackets, which stick out everywhere from the bottom up to the very top of the Monument, which is higher than the tallest house, and looks like a steeple without a church to it. It is the most beautiful thing of the kind I ever saw, and I have made out, or I think I have, nearly every one of the figures that's carved on it. I think I shall like Scotch people very much, but just now there is one thing about them that stands up as high above their other good points as the castle does above the rest of the city, and that is the feeling they have for anybody who has done anything to make his fellow countrymen proud of him. A famous Scotchman cannot die without being pretty promptly born again in stone or bronze, and put in some open place with seats convenient for people to sit and look at him. I like this. Glory ought to begin at home. Joan, being just as lively on his legs as he ever was in his life, thanks to the waters of Buxton, and I having the rheumatism now only in my arm, which I don't need to walk with, we have gone pretty much all over Edinburgh, and a great place it is to walk in, so far as variety goes. Some of the streets are so steep you have to go up steps if you are walking, and about a mile around if you are driving. I never get tired of wandering about the old town with its narrow streets and awfully tall houses, with family washes hanging out from every story. The closes are queer places. They are very like little villages set into the town as if they were raisins in a pudding. You get to them by alleys or tunnels, and when you are inside you find a little neighbourhood that has in anything more to do with the next close, a block away, than one country village has with another. We went to see John Knox's house, and although Mr. Knox was pretty hard on vanities and frivolities, he didn't mind having a good house over his head, with woodwork on the walls and ceilings that wasn't any more necessary than the back buttons on his coat. We have been reading hard since we have been in Edinburgh, and whenever Mr. Knox and Mary, Queen of Scots, come together, I take Mary's side without asking questions. I have no doubt Mr. Knox was a good man, but if meddling in other people's business gave a person the right to have a monument, the top of his would be the first thing travellers would see when they come near Edinburgh. When we went to Holy Road Palace it struck me that Mary, Queen of Scots, deserved a better house. Of course it wasn't built for her, but I don't care very much for the other people who lived in it. The rooms are good enough for an ordinary household's use, although the little room that she had her supper-party in when Rizio was killed wouldn't be considered by Joan and me as anything like big enough for our family to eat in. But there is a general air about the place as if it belonged to a royal family that was not very well off, and had to abstain from a good deal of grandeur. If Mary, Queen of Scots, could come to life again, I expect the scotch people would give her the best palace that money could buy, for they have grown to think the world of her and her pictures blossom out all over Edinburgh like daisies in a pasture field. The first morning after we got here I was as much surprised as if I had met Mary, Queen of Scots, walking along Prince Street with her parasol over her head. We were sitting in the reading-room of the hotel, and on the other side of the room was a long desk at which people were sitting, writing letters, all with their backs to us. One of these was a young man wearing a nice light-colored sack-coat, with a shiny white collar sticking above it, and his black, derby hat on the desk beside him. When he had finished his letter he put a stamp on it and got up to mail it. I happened to be looking at him, and I believe I stopped breathing as I sat and stared. Under his coat he had on a little skirt of green plaid about big enough for my Corinne when she was about five years old, and then he didn't wear anything whatever until you got down to his long stockings and low shoes. I was so struck with the feeling that he was an absent minded person that I punched Joan and whispered to him to go quick and tell him. Joan looked at him and laughed, and said that was the Highland costume. Now if that man had had his marshal plaid wrapped around him, and had worn a Scottish cap with a feather in it and a long ribbon hanging down his back, with his claymore girded to his side, I wouldn't have been surprised. For this is Scotland, and that would have been like the pictures I have seen of the Highlanders. But to see a man with the upper half of him dressed like a clerk in a dry-good store, and the lower half of him like a Highland chief, was enough to make a stranger gasp. But since then I have seen a good many young men dressed that way. I believe it is considered the tip of the fashion. I haven't seen any of the bare-legged dandies yet with a high silk hat and an umbrella, but I expect it won't be long before I meet one. We often see the Highland soldiers that belong to the garrison at the castle, and they look mighty fine with their plaid shawls and their scarfs and their feathers. But to see a man who looks as if one half of him belonged to London Bridge and the other half of the Highland moors does look to me like a pretty bad mixture. I am not so sure, either, that the whole Highland dress isn't better suited to Egypt, where it doesn't often rain than to Scotland. Last Saturday we was at St. Giles's church, and the man who took us around told us we ought to come early next morning and see the military service, which was something very fine, and as Joan gave him a shilling he said he would be on hand and watch for us, and give us a good place where we could see the soldiers come in. On Sunday morning it rained hard, but we was both at the church before eight o'clock, and so was a good many other people, but the doors was shut and they wouldn't let us in. They told us it was such a bad morning that the soldiers could not come out, and so there would be no military service that day. I don't know whether those fine fellows thought that the colors would run out of their beautiful plaids, or whether they would get rheumatism in their knees, but it did seem to me pretty hard that soldiers could not come out in the weather that lots of common citizens didn't seem to mind at all. I was a good deal put out, for I hate to get up early for nothing, but there was no use saying anything, and all we could do was go home, as all the other people with full suits of clothes did. Joan and I have got so much more to see before we go home that it is very well we are both able to skip around lively. Of course there are ever and ever so many places that we want to go to, but can't do it, but I am bound to see the highlands and the country of the Lady of the Lake. We have been reading up on Walter Scott, and I think more than I ever did that he is perfectly splendid. While we was in Edinburgh we felt bound to go and see Mel Rose Abbey in Abbotsford. I shall not say much about these two places, but I will say that to go into Sir Walter Scott's library and sit in the old arm-chair he used to sit in, at the desk he used to write on, and see his books and things around me, gave me more of a feeling of reverentialism than I have had in any cathedral yet. As for Mel Rose Abbey, I could have walked about under those towering walls and lovely arches, until the stars peeped out from the lofty vaults above, but Joan and the man who drove the carriage were of a different way of thinking and we left all too soon. But one thing I did do, I went to the grave of Michael Scott, the wizard, where once was shut up the book of awful mysteries, with the lamp always burning by it, though the flagstone was shut down tight on top of it, and I got a piece of moss and a weed. We don't do much in the way of carrying off such things, but I want Corinne to read the Lady of the Lake, and then I shall give her that moss and that weed, and tell her where I got them. I believe that in the way of Romantics Corinne is going to be more like me than like Joan. Tomorrow we go to the Highlands, and we shall leave our two big trunks in the care of the man in the red coat, who is commander-in-chief at the Royal Hotel, and who said he would take as much care of them as if there was two glass jars filled with rubies, and we believed him, for he has done nothing but take care of us since we came to Edinburgh, and good care too. End of letter twenty-one, read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. 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