 Letter XXII of Pomona's 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. 22 Pomona and Her Ghillie Kinla Crannock It happened the day we went north was a very fine one, and as soon as we got into the real Highland country there was nothing to hinder me from feeling that my feet was on my native heath, except that I was in a railway carriage, and that I had no scotch blood in me, but the joy of my soul was all the same. There was an old gentleman got into our carriage at Perth, and when he saw how he was taking in everything our eyes could reach, for Joan is a good deal more fired up by travel than he used to be—I expect it must have been the Buxton waters that made the change—he began to tell us about all the places we were passing through. There didn't seem to be a rock or a stream that hadn't a bit of history to it for that old gentleman to tell us about. We got out at a little town called Strong, and then we took a carriage and drove across the wild moors and hills for thirteen miles until we came to this village at the end of La Crannock. The wind blew sharp and strong, but we knew what we had to expect, and had warm clothes on, and with the cool breeze, and remembering Scott's wahawi while as bled, it made my blood tingle all the way. We are going to stay here at least a week. We shall not try to do everything that can be done on Scottish soil, for we shall not stop staggs or shoot grouse, and I have told Joan that he may put on as many scotch bonnets and plaids as he likes, but there is one thing he is not going to do, and that is to go bare-kneed, to which he answered he would never do that unless he could dip his knees into weak coffee so that they would be the same color as his face. There is a nice inn here with beautiful scenery all around, and the lovely La Crannock stretches away for eleven miles. Everything is just as scotch as it can be. Even the English people who have come here put on knickerbockers and bonnets. I have never been anywhere else where it is considered the correct thing to dress like the natives, and I will say here that it is very few of the natives that wear kills. That sort of thing seems to be given up to the fancy Highlanders. Nearly all the talk at the inn is about shooting and fishing. Stag hunting here is very different from what it is in England in more ways than one. In the first place stags are not hunted with horses and hounds. In the second place the sport is not free. A gentleman here told Joan that if a man wanted to shoot a stag on these moors it would cost him one rifle cartridge and six five-pound notes, and when Joan did not understand what that meant the man went on and told him about how the deer stocking was carried on here. He said that some of the big proprietors up here owned as much as ninety thousand acres of Moorland, and they let it out mostly to English people for hunting and fishing. And if it is stag hunting the tenant wants, the price he pays is regulated by the number of stags he has the privilege of shooting. Each stag he is allowed to kill costs him thirty pounds, so if he wants the pleasure of shooting thirty stags in the season his rent will be nine hundred pounds. This he pays for the stag shooting, but some kind of a house and about ten thousand acres are thrown in, which he has a perfect right to sit down on and rest himself on, but he can't shoot a grouse on it unless he pays extra for that. And what is more, if he happens to be a bad shot, or breaks his leg and has to stay in the house, and doesn't shoot his thirty stags, he has got to pay for them all the same. When Joan told me all this I said I thought a hundred and fifty dollars a pretty high price to pay for the right to shoot one deer. But Joan and I didn't consider all the rest the man got. In the first place he had the right to get up very early in the morning in the gloom and drizzle, and to trudge through the slop and the heather until he got far away from the neighborhood of any human being, and then he could go up on some high piece of ground and take a spy-glass and search the whole country round for a stag. When he saw one off in the distance snuffling the morning air or hunting for his breakfast among the heather he had the privilege of walking two or three miles over the moor so as to get that stag between the wind and himself so that it could not scent or hear him. Then he had the glorious right to get his rifle already and steal and creep toward that stag to cut short his existence. He has got to be as careful and as sneaky as if he was a snake in the grass, going behind little hills and down into gullies and sometimes almost crawling on his stomach where he goes over an open place and doing everything he can to keep that stag from knowing his end is near. Sometimes he follows his victim all day and the sun goes down before he has the glorious right of standing up and lodging a bullet in its unsuspecting heart. So you see, said Joan, he gets a lot for his hundred and fifty dollars. They do get a good deal more for their money than I thought they did, said I, but I wonder if those rich sportsmen ever think that if they would take the money that they pay for shooting thirty or forty stags in one season they might buy a rhinoceros, which they could set up on a hill and shoot at every morning if they liked. A game animal like that would last them for years, and if they ever felt like it they could ask their friends to help them shoot without costing them anything. Joan is pretty hard on sport with killing in it. He does not mind eating meat, but he likes to have the butcher do the killing. But I reckon he is a little too tender-hearted. But as for me I like sport of some kinds, especially when you don't have your pity or your sympathies awakened by seeing your prey enjoying life when you are seeking to encompass his end. Of course by that I mean fishing. There are good many trout in the lake and people can hire the privilege of fishing for them, and I begged Joan to let me go out in a boat and fish. He was rather in favor of staying ashore and fishing in the little river, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go out and have some regular lake fishing. At last Joan agreed, provided I would not expect him to have anything to do with the fishing. Of course I don't expect anything like that, said I, and it would be a good deal better for you to stay on shore. The landlord says a ghillie will go along to row the boat and attend to the lines and rods and all that, so there won't be any need for you at all, and you can stay on shore with your book and watch if you like. And suppose you tumble overboard, said Joan. Then you can swim out, I said, and perhaps wait a good deal of the way. I don't suppose we need go far from the bank. Joan laughed and said he was going, too. Very well said I, but you have got to stay in the bow with your back to me, and take an interesting book with you, for it is a long time since I have done any fishing, and I am not going to do it with two men watching me and telling me how I ought to do it and how I ought to, one will be enough. And that one won't be me, said Joan, for fishing is not one of the branches I teach in my school. I would have liked it better if Joan and me had gone alone, he doing nothing but row, but the landlord wouldn't let his boat that way, and said we must take a ghillie, which as far as I can make out is a sort of sporting farm hand. That is the way to do fishing in these parts. Well we started, and Joan sat in the front, with his back to me, and the long-legged ghillie rode like a good fellow. When we got to a good place to fish he stopped, and took a fishing rod that was in pieces and screwed them together, and fixed the line all right so that it would run along the rod to a little wheel near the handle, and then he put on a couple of hooks with artificial flies on them, which was so small I couldn't imagine how the fish could see them. While he was doing all this I got a little fidgety, because I had never fished except with a straight pole and line with a cork to it, which would bob when the fish bit, but this was altogether a different sort of thing. When it was all ready he handed me the pole, and then sat down very polite to look at me. Now if he had handed me the rod and then taken another boat and gone home, perhaps I might have known what to do with the thing after a while, but I must say that at that minute I didn't. I held the rod out over the water and let the flies dangle down into it, but do what I would, they wouldn't sink. There wasn't weight enough on them. You must throw your fly, madam, said the ghillie, always very polite. Let me give it a throw for you. And then he took the rod in his hand and gave it a whorl and a switch, which sent the flies out ever so far from the boat. Then he drew it along a little so that the flies skipped over the top of the water. I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a wild whorl over my head. And then it flew out as if I was trying to whip one of the leaders in a four-horse team. As I did this, Joan gave a jump that took him pretty near out of the boat, for two flies switched just over the bridge of his nose and so close to his eyes as he was reading an interesting dialogue, and not thinking of fish or even of me, that he gave a jump sideways, which if it hadn't been for the ghillie grabbing him, would have taken him overboard. I was frightened myself and said to him that I had told him not to come in the boat, and it would have been a great deal better for him to have stayed on shore. He didn't say anything, but I noticed he turned up his collar and pulled down his hat over his eyes and ears. The ghillie said that perhaps I had too much line out, and so he took the rod and wound up a good deal of the line. I liked this better because it was easier to whip out the line and pull it in again. Of course I would not be likely to catch fish so much nearer the boat, but then we can't have everything in this world. Once I thought I had a bite, and I gave the rod such a jerk that the line flew back against me, and when I was getting ready to throw it out again, I found that one of the little hooks had stuck fast in my thumb. I tried to take it out with the other hand, but it was awfully awkward to do, because the rod wobbled and kept jerking on it. The ghillie asked me if there was anything the matter with the flies, but I didn't want him to know what had happened, and so I said, oh no, and turning my back on him I tried my best to get the hook out without his helping me, for I didn't want him to think that the first thing I caught was myself after just missing my husband. He might be afraid it would be his turn next. You cannot imagine how bothersome it is to go fishing with a ghillie to wait on you. I would rather wash dishes with the sexton to wipe them and look for nicks on the edges. At last, and I don't know how it happened, I did hook a fish, and the minute I felt him I gave a jerk, and up he came. I heard the ghillie say something about playing, but I was in no mood for play, and if that fish had been shot up out of the water by a submarine volcano it couldn't have ascended any quicker than when I jerked it up. Then as quick as lightning it went whirling through the air, struck the pages of Jones' book, turning over two or three of them, and then wiggled itself half way down Jones' neck, between his skin and his collar, while the loose hook swung around and nipped him in his ear. Both pull, madam, shouted the ghillie, and it was well he did, for I was just on the point of giving an awful jerk to get the fish loose from Jones. Jones gave a grab at the fish, which was trying to get down his back, and pulling him out he threw him down. But by doing this he jerked the other hook into his ear, and then a yell arose such as I never before heard from Jones. I told you you ought not to come in this boat, said I, you don't like fishing and something is always happening to you. Like fishing, cried Jones, I should say not, and he made up such a comical phase that even the ghillie, who was very polite, had to laugh as he went to take the hook out of his ear. When Jones and the fish had been got off my line, Jones turned to me and said, Are you going to fish any more? Not with you in the boat, I answered, and then he said he was glad to hear that, and told the man he could row us ashore. I can assure you, madam, that fishing in a rather wobbly boat, with a husband and a ghillie in it, is not to my taste. And that was the end of our sporting experiences in Scotland, but it did not end the glorious times we had by that lake and on the moors. We hired a little pony-trap and drove up to the other end of the lake, and not far beyond that is the beginning of Veranic Moor, which the books say is one of the wildest and most desolate places in all Europe. So far as we went over the moor we found that this was truly so, and I know that I, at least, enjoyed it ever so much more because it was so wild and desolate. As far as we could see, the moors stretched away in every direction, covered in most places by heather, now out of blossom, but with great rocks standing out of the ground in some places, and here in their patches of grass. Sometimes we could see four or five locks at once, some of them two or three miles long, and down through the middle of the moor came the maddest and most harem-scarrem little river that could be imagined. It actually seemed to go out of its way to find rocks to jump over, just as if it was a young calf, and some of the waterfalls were beautiful. All around us was melancholy mountains, all of them with ben for their first names, except Shalhalyan, which was the best shape of any of them, coming up to a point standing by itself, which was what I used to think mountains always did, but now I know they run into each other so that you can hardly tell where one ends and the other begins. For three or four days we went out on these moors, sometimes when the sun was shining, and sometimes when there was a heavy rain and the wind blew gales, and I think I liked this last kind of weather the best, for it gave me an idea of lonely desolation which I never had in any part of the world I have ever been in before. There is often not a house to be seen, not even a crafter's hut, and we seldom met anybody. Sometimes I wandered off by myself behind a hillock or rocks where I could not even see Joan, and then I used to try to imagine how Eve would have felt if she had early become a widow and to put myself in her place. There was always clouds in the sky, sometimes dark and heavy ones coming down to the very peaks of the mountains, and not a tree was to be seen except a few rowan trees or bushes close to the river. But by the side of Loch Rannock, on our way back to the village, we passed along the edge of a fine old forest called the Blackwoods of Rannock. There are only three of these ancient forests left in Scotland, and some of the trees in this one are said to be 800 years old. The last time we was out on the Rannock moor there was such a savage and driving wind, and the rain came down in such torrents that my Macintosh was blown nearly off of me, and I was wet from my head to my heels. But I would have stayed out hours longer if Joan had been willing, and I never felt so sorry to leave these grampian hills where I would have been glad to have my father feed his flocks, and where I might have wandered away my childhood, barefooted over the heather, singing scotch songs and drinking in deep drafts of the pure mountain air, instead of—but no matter. Tomorrow we leave the Highlands, but as we go to follow the shallop of the Lady of the Lake I should not repine. Letter No. 23 They follow the Lady of the Lake—Obin, Scotland It would seem to be the easiest thing in the world, when looking on the map, to go across the country from Loch Rannock over to Catrine and all those celebrated parts, but we found we could not go that way, and so we went back to Edinburgh and made a fresh start. We stopped one night at the Royal Hotel, and there we found a letter from Mr. Poplington. We had left him at Buxton, and he said he was not going to Scotland this season, but would try to see us in London before we sailed. He is a good man, and he wrote this letter on purpose to tell me that he had a letter from his friend, the clergyman in Somersetshire, who had forbidden the young woman whose wash my tricycle had run into to marry her lover because he was a radical. This letter was an answer to one Mr. Poplington wrote to him, in which he gave the minister my reasons for thinking that the best way to convert the young man from radicalism was to let him marry the young woman, who would be sure to bring him around to her way of thinking, whatever that might be. I didn't care about the radicalism. All I wanted was to get the two married, and then it would not make the least difference to me what their politics might be. If they lived properly and were sober and industrious and kept on loving each other, I didn't believe it would make much difference to them. It was a long letter that the clergyman wrote, but the point of it was that he had concluded to tell the young woman that she might marry the fellow if she liked, and that she must do her best to make him a good conservative, which, of course, she promised to do. When I read this I clapped my hands, for who could have suspected that I should have the good luck to come to this country to spend the summer and make two matches before I left it? When we left Edinburgh to gradually wend our way to this place, which is on the west coast of Scotland, the first town we stopped at was Stirling, where the Scotch King used to live. Of course we went to the castle, which stands on the rocks high above the town, but before we started to go there Joan inquired if the place was a ruin or not, and when he was told it was not and that soldiers lived there he said it was all right and we went. He now says he must positively decline to visit any more houses out of repair. He is tired of them, and since he has got over his rheumatism he feels less like visiting ruins than he ever did. I tell him the ruins are not any more likely to be damp than a good many of the houses that people live in, but this didn't shake him, and I suppose if we come to any more vine-covered and shattered remnants of antiquity I shall be obliged to go over them by myself. The castle is a great place which I wouldn't have missed for the world, but the spot that stirred my soul the most was in a little garden as high in the air as the top of a steeple where we could look out over the battlefield of Bannock Byrne. Besides this we could see the mountains of Ben Lomond, Ben Venue, Ben Naan, Ben Letty, and ever so much Scottish landscape spreading out for miles upon miles. There is a little hole in the wall here called the ladies' lookout where the ladies of the court could sit and see what was going on in the country below without being seen themselves, but I stood up and took in everything over the top of the wall. I don't know whether I told you that the mountains of Scotland are bends and the mouths of rivers are abbers and islands are inches. Walking about the streets of Stirling and I didn't have time to see half as much as I wanted to, I came to the shop of a Flesher. I didn't know what it was until I looked into the window and saw that it was a butcher's shop. I like a language just about as foreign as the Scotch is. There are good many words in it that people not Scotch don't understand, but that gives a person the feeling that she is travelling abroad, which I want to have when I am abroad. Then on the other hand there are not enough of them to hinder a traveller for making herself understood. So it is natural for me to like it ever so much better than French, in which, when I am in it, I simply sink to the bottom if no helping hand is held out to me. I had some trouble with Joan that night at the hotel because he had a novel which he had been reading for I don't know how long, and which he said he wanted to get through with before he began anything else. But now I told him he was going to enter on the wonderful country of the Lady of the Lake, and he ought to give up everything else and read that book, because if he didn't go there with his mind properly prepared the scenery would not sink into his soul as it ought to. He was of the opinion that when my romantic feeling got on top of the scenery it would be likely to sink into his soul as deep as he cared to have it, without any preparation, but that sort of talk wouldn't do for me. I didn't want to be gliding over the smooth waters of Locke Catrine and have him asking me who the girl was who rode her shallot to the silver strand, and at the end of it was that I made him sit up until a quarter of two o'clock in the morning while I read the Lady of the Lake to him. I had read it before and he had not, but I hadn't got a quarter through before he was just as willing to listen as I was to read. And when I got through I was in such a glow that Joan said he believed that all the blood in my veins had turned to hot scotch. I didn't pay any attention to this, and after going to the window and looking out at the Gaelic moon, which was about half full and rolling along among the clouds, I turned to Joan and said, Joan, let's sing scots waha before we go to bed. If we do roar out that thing, said Joan, they will put us out on the curb-stone to spend the rest of the night. Let's whisper it then, said I. The spirit of it is all I want. I don't care for the loudness. I'd be willing to do that, said Joan, if I knew the tune and a few of the words. Oh, bother, said I, and when I got into bed I drew the clothes over my head and sang that brave song all to myself. Doing it that way the words and tune didn't matter at all, but I felt the spirit of it, and that was all I wanted, and then I went to sleep. The next morning we went to Calender by train, and there we took a coach for trossics. It is hardly worthwhile to say we went on top, because the coaches here haven't any inside to them except a hole where they put the baggage. We drove along a beautiful road with mountains and veils and streams, and the driver told us the name of everything that had a name, which he couldn't help very well, being asked so constantly by me. But I didn't feel altogether satisfied, for we hadn't come to anything quotable, and I didn't like to have Joan sit too long without something happening to stir up some of the lady of the lake, which I had pumped into his mind the day before, and so keep it fresh. Before long, however, the driver pointed out the ford of Collin Togo. The instant he said this I half jumped up, and, seizing Joan by the arm, I cried, Don't you remember? This is the place where the night of Snowden, James Fitz James, fought Roderick Dew. And then without caring who else heard me, I burst out with his back against a rock he bore, and firmly placed his foot before, Come one, come all, this rock shall fly from its base as soon as I. No, madam, said the driver, politely touching his hat. That was a mile farther on. This place is, and here his course the chieftain stayed, through down his target and his plaid. You are right, said I, and then I began again. Then each at once his falchion drew, each on the ground his scabbard threw, each look to the sun and stream and plain, as what they never might see again. Then foot and point and eye opposed, in dubious strife they darkly closed. I didn't repeat any more of the poem, though everybody was listening quite respectful without thinking of laughing. And as for Joan I could see by the way he sat and looked about him that his tender had caught my spark. But I knew that the thing for me to do here was not to give out but to take in. And so, to speak in figures, I drank in the whole veil of Lake Fanakar, as we drove along its lovely marge until we came to the other end, and the driver said we would now go over the brig of Turk. At this I jumped up and said, and when the brig of Turk was one, the headmost horseman rode alone. I had sense enough not to quote the next two lines, because when I had read them to Joan he said that was a shame to use a horse that way. We now came to Lakakre at the other end of which is the Trossix, where we stopped for the night, and when the driver told me the mountain we saw before us was Benvenu, I repeated the lines, the hunter marked that mountain high, the lone lake's western boundary, and deemed the stag must turn to bay, where that huge rampart barred the way. At last we reached the Trossix Hotel, which stands near the wild ravines filled with bustling woods where the stag was lost, with the lovely lake in front and Benvenu towering up on the other side. I was so excited I could scarcely eat, and no wonder, because for the greater part of the day I had breathed nothing but the spirit of Scott's poetry. I forgot to say that from the time we left Calender until we got to the hotel the rain poured down steadily, but that didn't make any difference to me. A human being soaked with the lady of the lake is rain-proof. End of letter twenty-three, read by Cibela Denton. All Libravox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit Libravox.org. Letter twenty-four of Pomona's travels, a series of letters to the mistress of Rudder Grange from her former handmaiden, by Frank R. Stockton. Read for Libravox.org into the public domain. Letter number twenty-four, comparisons become odious to Pomona. Edinburgh. I was sorry to stop my last letter right in the middle of the lady of the lake country, but I couldn't get it all in, and the fact is, I can't get all I want to say in any kind of a letter. The things I have seen and want to write about are crowded together like the Scottish mountains. On the day after we got to Trossick's Hotel, and I don't know any place I would rather spend weeks at than there, Joan and I walked through the dark-some glen where the stag, soon lost to hound and hunter's kin, in the deep Trossick's wildest nook his solitary refuge took. And then we came out on the far-famed Loch Catrine. There was a little steamboat there to take passengers to the other end, where a coach was waiting, but it wasn't time for that to start, and we wandered on the banks of that song-guilded piece of water. It didn't lie before us like one burnished sheet of living gold as it appeared to James Fitch James, but my soul could supply the sunset if I chose. There, too, was the island of the Fair Ellen, and beneath our very feet was the silver strand to which she rode her shalap. I am sorry to say that there isn't so much of the silver strand as there used to be, because in this world, as I have read and as I have seen, the spirit of Realistics is always crowding and trampling on the toes of the Romantics, and the people of Glasgow have actually laid water-pipes from their town to this lovely lake, and now they turn the faucets in their back kitchens and outspouts the tide which kissed with whispering sound and slow the beach of pebbles bright as snow. This wouldn't have been so bad, because the lake has enough and to spare of its limpid water, but in order to make their waterworks the Glasgow people built a dam, and that has raised the lake a good deal higher, so that it overflows ever so much of the silver strand. But I can pick out the Real from a scene like that as I can pick out and throw away the seeds of an orange, and gazing over that enchanted scene I felt like the night of Snowden himself, when he first beheld the lake and said, How blithely might the bugle-horn chide on the lake the lingering mourn, and then I went on with the lines until I came to, Blithe were it then to wander here, but now Bishrew yawn nimble dear, You'd better Bishrew that steamboat bell, said Joan, and away we went and just caught the boat. Boats come in very well sometimes when they take the form of legs. The steamboat took us over nearly the whole of Lake Catrine, and I must say that I was so busy fitting verses to scenery that I don't remember whether it rained or the sun shone. When we left the boat we took a coach to Invernaise on Loc Lomond, and as we rode along it made my heart almost sink to feel that I had to leave my poetry behind me, for I didn't know any that suited this region. But when we got inside of Loc Lomond a Scotch girl who was on the seat behind me and had several friends with her, began to sing a song about Lomond, of which I only remember, You take the high road and I'll take the low road and I'll get to Scotland for you. I am sure I must have Scotch blood in me, for when I heard that song it wound up my feelings to such a pitch that I believe if that girl had been near enough I should have given her a hug and a kiss. As for Joan he seemed to be nearly as much touched as I was, though not in the same way, of course. We took a boat on Loc Lomond to Ard Louis, another little town, and then we drove nine miles to the railroad. This was through a wild and solemn valley and by the side of a rushing river full of waterfalls and deep and dire some pools. When we reached the railroad we found a train waiting and we took it and went to Oban, which we reached about six o'clock. Even this railroad trip was delightful, for we went by the Great Lake Ah, with another rushing river and mountains and black precipices. We had a carriage all to ourselves until an old lady got in at a station, and she hadn't been sitting in her corner more than ten minutes before she turned to me and said, You haven't any lakes like this in your country, I suppose. Now I must say that, in the heated condition I had been in ever since I came to Scotland, a speech like that was like a squirt of cold water into a thing full of steam. For a couple of seconds my boiling stopped, but my fires was just as blazing as ever, and I felt as if I could turn them on that old woman and scribble her up for plastering her comparisons on me at such a time. Of course we haven't anything just like this, I said, but it takes all sorts of scenery to make up a world. That's very true, isn't it? said she. But really one couldn't expect, in America, such a lake as that, such mountains, such grandeur. Now I made up my mind, if she was going to keep up this sort of thing, Joan and me would change carriages when we stopped at the next station, for comparisons are very different from poetry, and if you try to mix them with scenery you will make a mess that does not fit for a Christian. But I thought first I would give her a word back. I have seen today, I said, the loveliest scenery I ever met with, but we've got grand canyons in America where you could put the whole of that scenery in without crowding, and where it wouldn't be much noticed by spectators, so busy would they be gazing at the surrounding wonders. Fancy, said she. I don't want to say anything, said I, against what I have seen today, and I don't want to think of anything else while I am looking at it, but this I will say that landscape with God is very different from landscape without him. That's very true, isn't it? said she, and then she stopped making comparisons, and I looked out of the window. Oben is a very pretty place on the coast, but we never should have gone there if it had not been the place to start from, for Stafa and Iona. When I was only a girl I saw pictures of Fingol's Cave, and I have read a good deal about it since, and it is one of the spots in the world that I have been longing to see, but I feel like crying when I tell you, madam, that the next morning there was such a storm that the boat for Stafa didn't even start, and as the people told us that the storm would most likely last two or three days, and that the sea for a few days more would be so rough that Stafa would be out of the question, we had to give it up, and I was obliged to fall back from the reality to my imagination. Joan tried to comfort me by telling me that he would be willing to bet ten to one that my fancy would soar a mile above the real thing, and that perhaps it was very well I didn't see old Fingol's Cave and be so disappointed. Perhaps it is a good thing, said I, that you didn't go, and that you didn't get so seasick you would be ready to renounce your country's flag and embrace Mormonism if such things would make you feel better. But that is the only thing that is good about it, and I have a cloud on my recollection which shall never be lifted until Corinne is old enough to travel, and we come here with her. But although the storm was so bad, it was not bad enough to keep us from making our water trip to Glasgow, for the boat we took did not have to go out to sea. It was a wonderfully beautiful passage we made among the islands and along the coast, with the great mountains on the mainland standing up above everything else. After a while we got to the Crennan Canal, which is, in reality, a shortcut across the field. It is nine miles long and not much wider than a good-sized ditch, but it saves more than a hundred miles of travel around an island. We was on a sort of toy steamboat which went its way through the fields and bushes and grass so close we could touch them, and as there was eleven locks where the boat had to stop, we got out two or three times and walked along the banks to the next lock. That being the kind of a ride Joan likes, he blessed Buxton. At the other end of the canal we took a bigger steamboat which carried us to Glasgow. In the morning it hailed, which afterward turned to rain, but in the afternoon there was only showers now and then, so that we spent most of the time on deck. On this boat we met a very nice Englishman and his wife, and when they heard us speak to each other they asked us if we had ever been in this part of the world before, and when we said we hadn't they told us about the places we passed. If we had been an English couple who had never been there they wouldn't have said a word to us. As we got near the Clyde the gentleman began to talk about shipbuilding, and pretty soon I saw in his face plain symptoms that he was going to have an attack of comparison making. I have seen so much of this disorder that I can nearly always tell when it is coming on in a person. In about a minute the disease broke out on him and he began to talk about the differences between American and English ships. He told Joan and me about a steam ship that was built out in San Francisco which shook three thousand bolts out of herself on her first voyage. It seemed to me that that was a good deal like codfish shaking his bones out through swimming too fast. I couldn't help thinking that that steam ship must have had a lot of bolts so as to have enough left over to keep her from scattering herself over the bottom of the ocean. I expected Joan to say something in behalf of his country's ships, but he didn't seem to pay much attention to the boat story, so I took up the cudgels myself, and I said to the gentleman that all nations, no matter how good they might be at shipbuilding, sometimes made mistakes, and then to make a good impression on him I wanged him over the head with the Great Eastern, and asked him if there was ever a vessel that was a greater failure than that. He said, yes, yes, the Great Eastern was not a success, and then he stopped talking about ships. When we got fairly into the Clyde and near Glasgow the scene was wonderful. It was nearly night, and the great fires of the factories lit up the sky, and we saw on the stocks a great ship being built. We stayed in Glasgow one day, and Joan was delighted with it because he said it was like an American city. Now on principle I like American cities, but I didn't come to Scotland to see them, and the greatest pleasure I had in Glasgow was standing with a tumbler of water in my hand, repeating to myself as much of the Lady of the Lake as I could remember. End of Letter XXIV. Letter No. 25. The Family Treeman. London. Here we are in this wonderful town, where if you can't see everything you want to see, you can generally see a sample of it, even if your fad happens to be the ancientness of Egypt. We are at the Babylon Hotel, where we shall stay until it is time to start for Southampton, where we shall take the steamer for home. What we are going to do between here and Southampton I don't know yet, but I do know that Joan is all on fire with joy because he thinks his journeys are nearly over, and I am chilled with grief when I think that my journeys are nearly over. She left Edinburgh on the train, called the Flying Scotsman, and it deserved its name. I suppose that in the days of Wallace and Bruce and Rob Roy the Scots most often have skipped along in a lively way, but I am sure that if any of them had ever invaded England at the rate we went into it, the British Lion would soon have been living on thistles instead of roses. The speed of this train was sometimes a mile a minute, I think, and I am sure I was never on any railroad in America where I was given a shorter time to get out for something to eat than we had at York. Joan and I are generally pretty quick about such things, but we had barely time to get back to our carriage before that flying Scotsman went off like a streak of lightning. On the way we saw part of Yorkminster and had a splendid view of Durham Cathedral, standing high in the unreachable, that is, as far as I was concerned. Peterborough Cathedral we also saw the outside of, and I felt like a boy looking in at a confectioner's window with no money to buy anything. It wasn't money that I wanted, it was time, and we had very little of that left. The next day, after we reached London, I set out to attend to a piece of business that I didn't want Joan to know anything about. My business was to look up my family pedigree. It seemed to me that it would be a shame if I went away from the home of my ancestors without knowing something about those ancestors and about the links that connected me with them. So I determined to see what I could do in the way of making up a family tree. By good luck Joan had some business to attend to about money and rooms on the steamer and so forth, and so I could start out by myself without his ebony asking me where I was going. Now of course it would be a natural thing for a person to go and seek out his ancestors in the ancient village from which they sprang and to read their names on the tombstones in the venerable little church. But as I didn't know where the village was, of course I couldn't go to it. But in London is the place where you can find out how to find out such things. As far back as when we was in Chedcomb I had a good deal of talk with Miss Ponder about ancestors and families. I told her that my forefathers came from this country, which I was very sure of, judging from my feelings, but as I couldn't tell her any particulars I didn't go into the matter very deep. But I did say there was a good many points that I would like to set straight and ask her if she knew where I could find out something about English family trees. She said she had heard there was a big heraldry office in London, but if I didn't want to go there she knew of a person who was a family tree man. He had an office in London and his business was to go around and tend to trees of that kind which had been neglected, and to get them into shape and good condition. She gave me his address and I had kept the thing quiet in my mind until now. I found the family tree man, whose name was Brandish, in a small room not too clean, over a shop not far from St. Paul's churchyard. He had another business which related to patent poison for flies, and at first he thought I'd come to see him about that, but when he found out I wanted to ask him about my family tree his face brightened up. When I told Mr. Brandish my business the first thing he asked me was my family name, and I had thought a great deal about the answer I ought to give. In the first place I didn't want to have anything to do with my father's name. I never had anything much to do with him because he died when I was a little baby, and his name had nothing high toned about it, and it seemed to me to belong to that kind of a family that you would be better satisfied with the less you looked up its beginnings. But my mother's family was a different thing. Nobody could know her without feeling that she had sprung from good roots. It might have been from the stump of a tree that had been cut down, but the roots must have been of no common kind to send up such a shoot as she was. It was from her that I got my longings for the romantic. She used to tell me a good deal about her father, who must have been a wonderful man in many ways. What she told me was not like a sketch of his life, which I wish it had been, but mostly anecdotes of what he had said and did. So it was my mother's ancestral tree I determined to find, and without saying whether it was on my mother's or father's side I was searching for ancestors, I told Mr. Brandish that Dork was the family name. Dork, said he, a rather uncommon name, isn't it? Was your father the eldest son of a family of that name? Now I was hoping you wouldn't say anything about my father. No, sir, said I. It isn't that line that I am looking up. It is my mother's. Her name was Dork before she was married. Really? Now I see, said he, you have the paternal line all correct, and you want to look up the line on the other side. That is very common. It is so seldom that one knows the line of ancestors on one's maternal side. Dork then was the name of your maternal grandfather. It struck me that a maternal grandfather must be a grandmother, but I didn't say so. Can you tell me, said he, whether it was he who immigrated from this country to America, or whether it was his father or his grandfather? Now I hadn't said anything about the United States, for I had learned there was no use in wasting breath telling English people I'd come from America, so I wasn't surprised at his question, but I couldn't answer it. I can't say much about that, I said, until I have found out something about the English branches of the family. Very good, said he, we will look over the records. And he took down a big book and turned to the letter D. He ran his finger down two or three pages and then he began to shake his head. Dork, said he, there doesn't seem to be any Dork, but here is Dork Minster. Now if that was your family name we'd have it all here. No doubt you know all about that family. It's a grand old family, isn't it? Isn't it possible that your grandfather or one of his ancestors may have dropped part of the name when he changed his residence to America? Now I began to think hard. There was some reason in what the family tree-man said. I knew very well that the same family name was often different in different countries, changes being made to suit climates and people. Minster has a religious meaning, hasn't it? Said I. Yes, madam, he said, it relates to cathedrals and that sort of thing. Now so far as I could remember, none of the things my mother had ever told me about her father was in any ways related to religion. They was mostly about horses, and although there is really no reason for the disconnection between horses and religion, especially when you consider the hymns with heavenly chariots in them must have had horses, it didn't seem to me that my grandfather could have made it a point of being religious, and perhaps he mightn't have cared for the cathedral part of his name, and so might have dropped it for convenience in signing, probably being generally in a hurry, judging from what my mother had told me. I said as much to Mr. Brandish, and he answered that he thought it was likely enough, and that that sort of thing was often done. Now, then, said he, let us look into the Dortmister line and trace out your connection with that. From what place did your ancestors come? It seemed to me that he was asking me a good deal more than he was telling me, and I said to him, that is what I want to find out. What is the family home of the Dortmisters? Oh, they were a great Hampshire family, said he, for five hundred years they lived on their estates in Hampshire. The first of the family was Sir William Dortmister, who came over with the conqueror, and most likely was given those estates for his services. Then we go on until we come to the Duke of Dortmister, who built a castle, and whose brother Henry was made a bishop and founded an abbey, which I am sorry to say now doesn't exist being totally destroyed by Oliver Cromwell. You cannot imagine how my blood leaped and surged within me as I listened to those words, William the Conqueror and ancestral abbey, a Duke. Is the family castle still standing, said I? It fell into ruin, said he, during the reign of Charles I, and even its site is now uncertain, the park having been devoted to agricultural purposes. The fourth Duke of Dortmister was to have commanded one of the ships which destroyed the Spanish Armada, but was prevented by a mortal fever which cut him off in his prime. It was without issue, and the estates passed to the culverhums of Wittes. Did that cut off the line, said I, very quick? Oh, no, said the family tree man, the line went on. One of the Duke's younger sisters must have married a man on condition that he took the old family name, which is often done, and her descendants must have emigrated somewhere, for the name no longer appears in Hampshire, but probably not to America, for that was rather early for English immigration. Do you suppose, said I, that they went to Scotland? They likely, said he, after thinking a minute, that would be probable enough. Have you reasoned to suppose that there was a Scotch branch in your family? Yes, said I, for it would have been positively wrong in me to say that the feelings I had for the Scotch hadn't any meaning at all. Now, then, said Mr. Brandish, there you are, madam. There is a line all the way down from the conqueror to the end of the sixteenth century, scarily one man's lifetime before the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. I now began to calculate in my mind. I was thirty years old. My mother, most likely, was about as old as I was when I was born, that made sixty years. Then my grandfather might have been around forty when my mother was born, and there was a century. As for my great-grandfather and his parents, I didn't know anything about them. Of course there must have been such persons, but I didn't know where they came from or where they went to. I can go back a century, said I, but that doesn't begin to meet the end of the line you have marked out. There's a gap of about two hundred years. Oh, I don't think I would mind that, said Mr. Brandish. Gaps of that kind are constantly occurring in family trees. In fact, if we was to allow gaps of a century or so to interfere with the working out of family lines, it would cut off a great many noble ancestries from families of high positions, especially in the colonies and abroad. I beg you not to pay any attention to that, madam. My nerves was tingling with the thought of the Spanish Armada and perhaps Bannock-Bern, which then made me wish I had known all this before I went to Sterling, but which battle, now as I write, I know must have been fought a long time before any of the dorks went to Scotland. And I expect my eyes flashed with family pride, for due what I could I couldn't sit calm and listen to what I was hearing. But after all that two hundred years did weigh upon my mind. If you make out a family tree for me, said I, you will have to cut off the trunk and begin again somewhere up in the air. Oh, no, said he, we don't do that. We arranged the branches so that they overlap each other, and the dotted lines which indicate the missing portions are not noticed. Then after further investigation and more information, the dots can be run together and the tree made complete and perfect. Of course I had nothing more to say, and he promised to send me the tree the next morning, though, of course, requesting me to pay him in advance, which was the rule of the office. And you would be amazed, madam, if you knew how much that tree cost. I got it the next morning, but I haven't shown it to Joan yet. I am proud that I own it, and I have thrills through me whenever my mind goes back to its Norman roots. But I am bound to say that family trees sometimes throw a good deal of shade over their owners, especially when they have gaps in them, which seems contrary to nature, but is true to fact. End of Letter XXV Searching for Dortmundsters Southwestern Hotel, Southampton Tomorrow our steamer sails, and this is the last letter I write on English soil, and although I haven't done half that I wanted to, there are ever so many things I have done that I can't write you about. I had seen so few cathedrals that on the way down here I was bound to see at least one good one, and so we stopped at Winchester. It was while walking under the arches of that venerable pile that the thought suddenly came to me that we were now in Hampshire, and that perhaps in this cathedral might be some of the tombs of my ancestors. Not saying what I was after I began at one of the doors and I went clean around that enormous church and read every tablet in the walls and on the floor. Once I had a shock. There was a good many small tombs with roofs over them and statues of people buried within, lying on top of the tombs, and some of them had their faces and clothes colored so as to make them look almost as natural as life. They was mostly bishops and had been lying there for centuries. While looking at these I came to a tomb with an opening low down on the side of it, and behind some iron bars there lay a stone figure that made me fairly jump. He was on his back with hardly any clothes on and was actually nothing but skin and bones. His mouth was open as if he was gasping for his last breath. I never saw such an awful sight, and as I looked at the thing my blood began to run cold and then it froze. The freezing was because I suddenly thought to myself that this might be a Dortminster, and that horrible object was my ancestor. I was actually afraid to look at the inscription on the tombstone for fear that this was so, for if it was I knew that whenever I should think of my family tree this bag of bones would be climbing up the trunk or sitting on one of the branches. But I must know the truth, and trembling so that I could scarcely read I stoop down to look at the inscription and find out who that dreadful figure had been. It was not a Dortminster, and my spirits rose. We got here three days ago, and we have made a visit to the Isle of Wight. We went straight down to the southern coast and stopped all night at the little town of Bonchurch. It was very lovely down there with roses and other flowers blooming out of doors as if it was summer, although it is now getting so cold everywhere else. But what pleased me most was to stand at the top of a little hill and look out over the waters of the English Channel, and feel that not far out of eyeshot was the beautiful land of France with its lower part actually touching Italy. You know, madam, that when we was here before we was in France, and a happy woman was I to be there, although so much younger now that I couldn't properly enjoy it. But even then France was only part of the road to Italy, which alas we never got to. Someday, however, I shall float in a gondola and walk amid the ruins of ancient Rome, and if Joan is too sick of travel to go with me it may be necessary for Corin to see the world, and I shall take her. Now I must finish this letter and bid good-bye to beautiful Britain, which has made us happy and treated us well in spite of some comparisons in which we was expected to be on the wrong side, but which hurt nobody, and which I don't want to even think of at a moment such as this. End of Letter XXVI. Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter XXVII. Of Pomona's 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 XXVII. Their Country and Their Custom-House, New York. I send you this, madam, to let you know that we arrived here safely yesterday afternoon, and that we are going today to Jones Mother's Farm, where Corinne is. I liked sailing from Southampton, because when I start to go to a place I like to go, and when we went home before we had to begin by going all the way up to Liverpool by land, and then coming all the way back again by water, and after a couple of days of this to stop at Queenstown and begin the real voyage from there. I did not like it, although it was a good deal of fun seeing the bumboat woman come aboard at Queenstown and telescope themselves into each other as they hurried up the latter to get on deck and sell us things. We had a very good voyage, with about enough rolling to make the dining saloon look like some of the churches we've seen abroad on weekdays, where there were services regular, but mighty small congregations. When we got inside of my native shore, England, Scotland, and even the long tour of Italy, with her palaces and gondolas faded from my mind, and my every fiber tingled with pride and patriotism. We reached our dock about six o'clock in the afternoon, and I could scarcely stand still, so anxious was I to get ashore. There was a train at eight which reached Rockbridge at half-past nine, and there we could take a carriage and drive to the farm in less than an hour, and then Corinne would be in my arms, so you may imagine my state of mind, Corinne before bedtime. But a cloud, blacker than the heaviest fog, came down upon me, for while we was standing on the deck, expecting every minute to land, a man came along and shouted at the top of his voice that no baggage could be examined by the custom house officers after six o'clock, and the passengers could take nothing ashore with them but their handbags, and must come back in the morning and have their baggage examined. When I heard this, my soul simply boiled within me. I looked at Joan, and I could see he was boiling just as bad. Joan, said I, don't say a word to me. I am not going to say a word, said he, and he didn't. All our belongings was in our trunks. Joan didn't carry any handbag, and I had only a little one which had in it three newspapers, which we bought from the pilot, a toothbrush, a spool of thread and some needles, and a pair of scissors was one point broken off. With these things we had to go to a hotel and spend the night, and in the morning we had to go back to have our trunks examined, which as there was nothing in them to pay duty on, was a waste of time for all parties, no matter when it was done. That night, when I was lying awake thinking about this welcome to our native land, I don't say that I hauled down the stars and stripes, but I did put them at half-mast. When we arrived in England we got ashore about twelve o'clock at night, but there was a custom-house officers as civil and obliging as any people could be, ready to tend us and pass us on. And when I thought of them, and afterward of the lordly hirelings who met us here, I couldn't help feeling what a glorious thing it would be to travel if you could get home without coming back. Joan tried to comfort me by telling me that we ought to be very glad we don't like this sort of thing. In many foreign countries, said he, people are a good deal nagged by their governments and they like it. We don't like it, so haul up your flag. I hauled it up, and it's flying now from the tip-toe of my tallest mast. In an hour our train starts, and I shall see Corinne before the sun goes down. End of LETTER XXVII End of Pomona's Travels, a series of letters to the mistress of Rudder Grange from her former handmaiden by Frank R. Stockton. Read by Cibella Denton in Carrollton, Georgia, in January 2008. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org.