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Penelope's Postscripts

by Kate Douglas Wiggin

August, 1999 [Etext #1868]

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

from the 1915 Hodder and Stoughton edition.

Penelope's Postscripts

by Kate Douglas Wiggin

Contents:

Penelope in Switzerland

Penelope in Venice

Penelope's Prints of Wales

Penelope in Devon

Penelope at Home

PENELOPE IN SWITZERLAND

A DAY IN PESTALOZZI-TOWN

Salemina and I were in Geneva. If you had ever travelled through

Europe with a charming spinster who never sat down at a Continental

table d'hote without being asked by an American vis-a-vis whether

she were one of the P.'s of Salem, Massachusetts, you would

understand why I call my friend Salemina. She doesn't mind it.

She knows that I am simply jealous because I came from a vulgarly

large tribe that never had any coat-of-arms, and whose ancestors

always sealed their letters with their thumb nails.

Whenever Francesca and I call her "Salemina," she knows, and we

know that she knows, that we are seeing a group of noble ancestors

in a sort of halo over her serene and dignified head, so she

remains unruffled under her petit nom, inasmuch as the casual

public comprehends nothing of its spurious origin and thinks it was

given her by her sponsors in baptism.

Francesca, Salemina, and I have very different backgrounds. The

first-named is an extremely pretty person of large income who is

travelling with us simply because her relatives think that she will

"see Europe" more advantageously under our chaperonage than if she

were accompanied by persons of her own age or "set."

Salemina is a philanthropist and educator of the first rank, and is

collecting all sorts of valuable material to put at the service of

her own country when she returns to it, which will not be a moment

before her letter of credit is exhausted.

I, too, am quasi-educational, for I had a few years of experience

in mothering and teaching little waifs and strays of the streets

before I began to paint pictures. Never shall I regret those

nerve-racking, back-breaking, heart-warming, weary, and beautiful

years, when, all unconsciously, I was learning to paint children by

living with them. Even now the spell still works and it is the

curly head, the "shining morning face," the ready tear, the

glancing smile of childhood that enchains me and gives my brush

whatever skill it possesses.

We had not been especially high-minded or educational in

Switzerland, Salemina and I. The worm will turn; and there is a

point where the improvement of one's mind seems a farce, and the

service of humanity, for the moment, a duty only born of a diseased

imagination.

How can one sit on a vine-embowered balcony facing lovely Lake

Geneva and think about modern problems,--Improved Tenements, Child

Labour, Single Tax, Sweat Shops, and the Right Training of the

Rising Civilization? Blue Lake Geneva!--blue as a woman's eye,

blue as the vault of heaven, dropped into the lap of the green

earth like a great sparkling sapphire! Mont Blanc you know to be

just behind the clouds on the other side, and that presently, after

hours or days of patient waiting, he may condescend to unveil

himself to your worshipful gaze.

"He is wise in his dignity and reserve," mused Salemina as we sat

on the veranda. "He is all the more sublime because he withdraws

himself from time to time. In fact, if he didn't see fit to cover

himself occasionally, one could neither eat nor sleep, nor do

anything but adore and magnify."

The day before this interview we had sailed to the end of the

sapphire lake and visited the "snow-white battlements" of the

Castle of Chillon; seen its "seven pillars of Gothic mould," and

its dungeons deep and old, where poor Bonnivard, Byron's famous

"Prisoner of Chillon," lay captive for so many years, and where

Rousseau fixes the catastrophe of his Heloise.

We had just been to Coppet too; Coppet where the Neckers lived and

Madame de Stael was born and lived during many years of her life.

We had wandered through the shaded walks of the magnificent chateau

garden, and strolled along the terrace where the eloquent Corinne

had walked with the Schlegels and other famous habitues of her

salon. We had visited Calvin's house at 11 Rue des Chanoines,

Rousseau's at No. 40 on the Grande Rue, and Voltaire's at Ferney.

And so we had been living the past, Salemina and I. But

"Early one morning,

Just as the day was dawning."

my slumbering conscience rose in Puritan strength and asserted its

rights to a hearing.

"Salemina," said I, as I walked into her room, "this life that we

are leading will not do for me any longer. I have been too much

immersed in ruins. Last night in writing to a friend in New York I

uttered the most disloyal and incendiary statements. I said that I

would rather die than live without ruins of some kind; that America

was so new, and crude, and spick and span, that it was obnoxious to

any aesthetic soul; that our tendency to erect hideous public

buildings and then keep them in repair afterwards would make us the

butt of ridicule among future generations. I even proposed the

founding of an American Ruin Company, Limited,--in which the

stockholders should purchase favourably situated bits of land and

erect picturesque ruins thereon. To be sure, I said, these ruins

wouldn't have any associations at first, but what of that? We have

plenty of poets and romancers; we could manufacture suitable

associations and fit them to the premises. At first, it is true,

they might not fire the imagination; but after a few hundred years,

in being crooned by mother to infant and handed down by father to

son, they would mellow with age, as all legends do, and they would

end by being hallowed by rising generations. I do not say they

would be absolutely satisfactory from every standpoint, but I do

say that they would be better than nothing.

"However," I continued, "all this was last night, and I have had a

change of heart this morning. Just on the borderland between

sleeping and waking, I had a vision. I remembered that to-day

would be Monday the 1st of September; that all over our beloved

land schools would be opening and that your sister pedagogues would

be doing your work for you in your absence. Also I remembered that

I am the dishonourable but Honorary President of a Froebel Society

of four hundred members, that it meets to-morrow, and that I can't

afford to send them a cable."

"It is all true," said Salemina. "It might have been said more

briefly, but it is quite true."

"Now, my dear, I am only a painter with an occasional excursion

into educational fields, but you ought to be gathering stories of

knowledge to lay at the feet of the masculine members of your

School Board."

"I ought, indeed!" sighed Salemina.

"Then let us begin!" I urged. "I want to be good to-day and you

must be good with me. I never can be good alone and neither can

you, and you know it. We will give up the lovely drive in the

diligence; the luncheon at the French restaurant and those heavenly

little Swiss cakes" (here Salemina was almost unmanned); "the

concert on the great organ and all the other frivolous things we

had intended; and we will make an educational pilgrimage to

Yverdon. You may not remember, my dear,"--this was said severely

because I saw that she meditated rebellion and was going to refuse

any programme which didn't include the Swiss cakes,--"you may not

remember that Jean Henri Pestalozzi lived and taught in Yverdon.

Your soul is so steeped in illusions; so submerged in the Lethean

waters of the past; so emasculated by thrilling legends, paltry

titles, and ruined castles, that you forget that Pestalozzi was the

father of popular education and the sometime teacher of Froebel,

our patron saint. When you return to your adored Boston, your

faithful constituents in that and other suburbs of Salem,

Massachusetts, will not ask you if you have seen the Castle of

Chillon and the terrace of Corinne, but whether you went to

Yverdon."

Salemina gave one last fond look at the lake and picked up her

Baedeker. She searched languidly in the Y's and presently read in

a monotonous, guide-book voice. "Um--um--um--yes, here it is,

'Yverdon is sixty-one miles from Geneva, three hours forty minutes,

on the way to Neuchatel and Bale.' (Neuchatel is the cheese place;

I'd rather go there and we could take a bag of those Swiss cakes.)

'It is on the southern bank of Lake Neuchatel at the influx of the

Orbe or Thiele. It occupies the site of the Roman town of

Ebrodunum. The castle dates from the twelfth century and was

occupied by Pestalozzi as a college.'"

This was at eight, and at nine, leaving Francesca in bed, we were

in the station at Geneva. Finding that we had time to spare, we

went across the street and bargained for an in-transit luncheon

with one of those dull native shopkeepers who has no idea of

American-French.

Your American-French, by the way, succeeds well enough so long as

you practise, in the seclusion of your apartment, certain assorted

sentences which the phrase-book tells you are likely to be needed.

But so far as my experience goes, it is always the unexpected that

happens, and one is eternally falling into difficulties never

encountered by any previous traveller.

For instance, after purchasing a cold chicken, some French bread,

and a bit of cheese, we added two bottles of lemonade. We managed

to ask for a glass, from which to drink it, but the man named two

francs as the price. This was more than Salemina could bear. Her

spirit was never dismayed at any extravagance, but it reared its

crested head in the presence of extortion. She waxed wroth. The

man stood his ground. After much crimination and recrimination I

threw myself into the breach.

"Salemina," said I, "I wish to remark, first: That we have three

minutes to catch the train. Second: That, occupying the position

we do in America,--you the member of a School Board and I the

Honorary President of a Froebel Society,--we cannot be seen

drinking lemonade from a bottle, in a public railway carriage; it

would be too convivial. Third: You do not understand this

gentleman. You have studied the language longer than I, but I have

studied it more lately than you, and I am fresher, much fresher

than you." (Here Salemina bridled obviously.) "The man is not

saying that two francs is the price of the glass. He says that we

can pay him two francs now, and if we will return the glass to-

night when we come home he will give us back one franc fifty

centimes. That is fifty centimes for the rent of the glass, as I

understand it."

Salemina's right hand, with the glass in it, dropped nervelessly at

her side. "If he uttered one single syllable of all that

rigmarole, then Ollendorf is a myth, that's all I have to say."

"The gift of tongues is not vouchsafed to all," I responded with

dignity. "I happen to possess a talent for languages, and I

apprehend when I do not comprehend."

Salemina was crushed by the weight of my self-respect, and we took

the tumbler, and the train.

It was a cloudless day and a beautiful journey, along the side of

the sapphire lake for miles, and always in full view of the

glorious mountains. We arrived at Yverdon about noon, and had

eaten our luncheon on the train, so that we should have a long,

unbroken afternoon. We left our books and heavy wraps in the

station with the porter, with whom we had another slight

misunderstanding as to general intentions and terms; then we

started, Salemina carrying the lemonade glass in her hand, with her

guide-book, her red parasol, and her Astrakhan cape. The tumbler

was a good deal of trouble, but her heart was set on returning it

safely to the Geneva pirate; not so much to reclaim the one franc

fifty centimes as to decide conclusively whether he had ever

proposed such restitution. I knew her mental processes, so I

refused to carry any of her properties; besides, the pirate had

used a good many irregular verbs in his conversation, and upon due

reflection I was a trifle nervous about the true nature of the

bargain.

The Yverdon station fronted on a great open common dotted with a

few trees. There were a good many mothers and children sitting on

the benches, and a number of young lads playing ball. The town

itself is one of the quaintest, quietest, and sleepiest in

Switzerland. From 1803 to 1810 it was a place of pilgrimage for

philanthropists from all parts of Europe; for at that time

Pestalozzi was at the zenith of his fame, having under him one

hundred and sixty-five pupils from Europe and America, and thirty-

two adult teachers, who were learning his method.

But Yverdon has lost its former greatness now! Scarcely any

English travellers go there and still fewer Americans. We fancied

that there was nothing extraordinary in our appearance;

nevertheless a small crowd of children followed at our heels, and

the shopkeepers stood at their open doors and regarded us with

intense interest.

"No English spoken here, that is evident," said Salemina ruefully;

"but you have such a gift for languages you can take the command

to-day and make the blunders and bear the jeers of the public. You

must find out where the new Pestalozzi Monument is,--where the

Chateau is,--where the schools are, and whether visitors are

admitted,--whether there is a respectable hotel where we can get

dinner,--whether we can get back to Geneva to-night, whether it's a

fast or a slow train, and what time it gets there,--whether the

methods of Pestalozzi are still maintained,--whether they know

anything about Froebel,--whether they know what a kindergarten is,

and whether they have one in the village. Some of these questions

will be quite difficult even for you."

Well, the monument was not difficult to find, at all events. We

accosted two or three small boys and demanded boldly of one of

them, "Ou est le monument de Pestalozzi, s'il vous plait?"

He shrugged his shoulders like an American small boy and said

vacantly, "Je ne sais pas."

"Of course he does know," said Salemina; "he means to be

disagreeable; or else 'monument' isn't monument."

"Well," I answered, "there is a monument in the distance, and there

cannot be two in this village."

Sure enough it was the very one we sought. It stands in a little

open place quite "in the business heart of the city,"--as we should

say in America, and is an exceedingly fine and impressive bit of

sculpture. The group of three figures is in bronze and was done by

M. Gruet of Paris.

The modelling is strong, the expression of Pestalozzi benign and

sweet, and the trusting upturned faces of the children equally

genuine and attractive.

One side of the pedestal bears the inscription:-

Pestalozzi

1746-1827

Monument erige

par souscription populaire

MDCCCXC

On a second side these words are carved in the stone:-

Sauveur des Pauvres a Neuhof

Pere des Orphelins a Stanz

Fondateur de l'ecole

populaire a Burgdorf

Educateur de l'humanite

a Yverdon

Tout pour les autres, pour lui,--rien!

An older monument erected in 1846 by the Canton of Argovia bears

this same inscription, save that it adds, "Preacher to the people

in 'Leonard and Gertrude.' Man. Christian. Citizen. Blessed be

his name!"

On the third side of the Yverdon Monument is Pestalozzi's noble

speech, fine enough indeed, to be cut in stone:-

"J'ai vecu moi-meme

comme un mendiant,

pour apprendre a des

mendiants a vivre comme

des hommes."

We sat a long time on the great marble pedestal, gazing into the

benevolent face, and reviewing the simple, self-sacrificing life of

the great educator, and then started on a tour of inspection.

After wandering through most of the shops, buying photographs and

mementoes, Salemina discovered that she had left the expensive

tumbler in one of them. After a long discussion as to whether

tumbler was masculine or feminine, and as to whether "Ai-je laisse

un verre ici?" or "Est-ce que j'ai laisse un verre ici?" was the

proper query, we retraced our steps, Salemina asking in one shop,

"Excusez-moi, je vous prie, mais ai-je laisse un verre ici?",--and

I in the next, "Je demands pardon, Madame, est-ce que j'ai laisse

un verre dans ce magasin-ci?--J'en ai perdu un, somewhere."

Finally we found it, and in response not to mine but to Salemina's

question, so that she was superior and obnoxious for several

minutes.

Our next point of interest was the old castle, which is still a

public school. Finding the caretaker, we visited first the museum

and library--a small collection of curiosities, books, and

mementoes, various portraits of Pestalozzi and his wife,

manuscripts and so forth. The simple-hearted woman who did the

honours was quite overcome by our knowledge of and interest in her

pedagogical hero, but she did not return the compliment. I asked

her if the townspeople knew about Friedrich Froebel, but she looked

blank.

"Froebel? Froebel?" she asked; "qui est-ce?"

"Mais, Madame," I said eloquently, "c'etait un grand homme! Un

heros! Le plus grand eleve de Pestalozzi! Aussi grand que

Pestalozzi soi-meme!"

("PLUS grand! Why don't you say plus grand?" murmured Salemina

loyally.)

"Je ne sais!" she returned, with an indifferent shrug of the

shoulders. "Je ne sais! Il y a des autres, je crois; mais moi, je

connais Pestalozzi, c'est assez!"

All the younger children had gone home, but she took us through the

empty schoolrooms, which were anything but attractive. We found an

unhappy small boy locked in one of them. I slipped behind the

concierge to chat with him, for he was so exactly like all other

small boys in disgrace that he made me homesick.

"Tu etais mechant, n'est ce-pas?" I whispered consolingly; "mais tu

seras sage demain, j'en suis sure!"

I thought this very pretty, but he wriggled from under my

benevolent hand, saying "Va!" (which I took to be, "Go 'long,

you!") "je n'etais mechant aujourd'hui et je ne serai pas sage

demain!"

I asked the concierge if the general methods of Pestalozzi were

still used in the schools of Yverdon, "Mais certainement!" she

replied as we went into a room where twenty to thirty girls of ten

years were studying. There were three pleasant windows looking out

into the street; the ordinary platform and ordinary teacher's

table, with the ordinary teacher (in an extraordinary state of

coma) behind it; and rather rude desks and seats for the children,

but not a single ornament, picture, map, or case of objects and

specimens around the room. The children were nice, clean,

pleasant, stolid little things with braided hair and pinafores.

The sole decoration of the apartment was a highly-coloured chart

that we had noticed on the walls of all the other schoolrooms.

Feeling that this must be a sacred relic, and that it probably

illustrated some of the Pestalozzian foundation principles, I

walked up to it reverently,

"Qu'est-ce-que c'est cela, Madame?" I inquired, rather puzzled by

its appearance.

"C'est la methode de Pestalozzi," the teacher replied absently.

I wished that we kindergarten people could get Froebel's

educational idea in such a snug, portable shape, and drew nearer to

gaze at it. I can give you a very complete description of the

pictures from memory, as I copied the titles verbatim et literatim.

The whole chart was a powerful moral object-lesson on the dangers

of incendiarism and the evils of reckless disobedience. It was

printed appropriately in the most lurid colours, and divided into

nine tableaux.

These were named as follows:-

I--LA VRAIE GAITE

Twelve or fifteen boys and girls are playing together so happily

and innocently that their good angels sing for joy.

II--UNE PROPOSITION FATALE!

Suddenly "LE PETIT Charles" says to his comrades, "Come! let us

build a fire!" LE PETIT Charles is a typical infant villain and is

surrounded at once by other incendiary spirits all in accord with

his insidious plans.

III--LA PROTESTATION

The Good Little Marie, a Sunday-school heroine of the true type,

approaches the group and, gazing heavenward, remarks that it is

wicked to play with matches. The G. L. M. is of saintly presence,-

-so clean and well groomed that you feel inclined to push her into

a puddle. Her hands are not full of vulgar toys and sweetmeats,

like those of the other children, but are extended graciously as if

she were in the habit of pronouncing benedictions.

IV--INSOUCIANCE!

LE PETIT Charles puts his evil little paw in his dangerous pockets

and draws out a wicked lucifer match, saying with abominable

indifference, "Bah! what do we care? We're going to build a fire,

whatever you say. Come on, boys!"

V--UN PLAISIR DANGEREUX!

The boys "come on." Led by "LE PETIT VILAIN Charles" they light a

dangerous little fire in a dangerous little spot. Their faces

shine with unbridled glee. The G. L. M. retires to a distance with

a few saintly followers, meditating whether she shall run and tell

her mother. "LE PETIT Paul," an infant of three summers, draws

near the fire, attracted by the cheerful blaze.

VI--MALHEUR ET INEXPERIENCE

LE PETIT Paul somehow or other tumbles into the fire. Nothing but

a desire to influence posterity as an awful example could have

induced him to take this unnecessary step, but having walked in he

stays in, like an infant John Rogers. The bad boys are so horror-

stricken it does not occur to them to pull him out, and the G. L.

M. is weeping over the sin of the world.

VII--TROP TARD!!

The male parent of LE PETIT Paul is seen rushing down an adjacent

Alp. He leads a flock of frightened villagers who have seen the

smoke and heard the wails of their offspring. As the last shred of

LE PETIT Paul has vanished in said smoke, the observer notes that

the poor father is indeed "too late."

VIII--DESESPOIR!!

The despair of all concerned would draw tears from the dryest eye.

Only one person wears a serene expression, and that is the G. L.

M., who is evidently thinking: "Perhaps they will listen to me the

next time."

IX--LA FIN!

The charred remains of LE PETIT Paul are being carried to the

cemetery. The G. L. M. heads the procession in a white veil. In a

prominent place among the mourners is "LE PAUVRE PETIT Charles," so

bowed with grief and remorse that he can scarcely be recognized.

It was a telling sermon! If I had been a child I should never have

looked at a match again; and old as I was, I could not, for days

afterwards, regard a box of them without a shudder. I thought that

probably Yverdon had been visited in the olden time by a series of

disastrous holocausts, all set by small boys, and that this was the

powerful antidote presented; so I asked the teacher whether

incendiarism was a popular failing in that vicinity and whether the

chart was one of a series inculcating various moral lessons. I

don't know whether she understood me or not, but she said no, it

was "la methode de Pestalozzi."

Just at this juncture she left the room, apparently to give the

pupils a brief study-period, and simultaneously the concierge was

called downstairs by a crying baby. A bright idea occurred to me

and I went hurriedly into the corridor where my friend was taking

notes.

"Salemina," said I, "here is an opportunity of a lifetime! We

ought to address these children in their native tongue. It will be

something to talk about in educational pow-wows. They do not know

that we are distinguished visitors, but we know it. A female

member of a School Board and the Honorary President of a Froebel

Society owe a duty to their constituents. You go in and tell them

who and what I am and make a speech in French. Then I'll tell them

who and what you are and make another speech."

Salemina assumed a modest violet attitude, declined the honour

absolutely, and intimated that there were persons who would prefer

talking in a language they didn't know rather than to remain

sensibly silent.

However the plan struck me as being so fascinating that I went back

alone, looked all ways to see if any one were coming, mounted the

platform, cleared my throat, and addressed the awe-struck

youngsters in the following words. I will spare you the French,

but you will perceive by the construction of the sentences, that I

uttered only those sentiments possible in an early stage of

language-study.

"My dear children," I began, "I live many thousand miles across the

ocean in America. You do not know me and I do not know you, but I

do know all about your good Pestalozzi and I love him"

"Il est mort!" interpolated one offensive little girl in the front

row.

Salemina tittered audibly in the corridor, and I crossed the room

and closed the door. I think the children expected me to put the

key in my pocket and then murder them and stuff them into the

stove.

"I know perfectly well that he is dead, my child," I replied

winningly,--"it is his life, his memory that I love.--And once upon

a time, long ago, a great man named Friedrich Froebel came here to

Yverdon and studied with your great Pestalozzi. It was he who made

kindergartens for little children, jardins des enfants, you know.

Some of your grand-mothers remember Froebel, I think?"

Hereupon two of the smaller chits shouted some sort of a negation

which I did not in the least comprehend, but which from large

American experience I took to be, "My grandmother doesn't!" "My

grandmother doesn't!"

Seeing that the others regarded me favourably, I continued, "It is

because I love Pestalozzi and Froebel, that I came here to day to

see your beautiful new monument. I have just bought a photograph

taken on that day last year when it was first uncovered. It shows

the flags and the decorations, the flowers and garlands, and ever

so many children standing in the sunshine, dressed in white and

singing hymns of praise. You are all in the picture, I am sure!"

This was a happy stroke. The children crowded about me and showed

me where they were standing in the photograph, what they wore on

the august occasion, how the bright sun made them squint, how a

certain malheureuse Henriette couldn't go to the festival because

she was ill.

I could understand very little of their magpie chatter, but it was

a proud moment. Alone, unaided, a stranger in a strange land, I

had gained the attention of children while speaking in a foreign

tongue. Oh, if I had only left the door open that Salemina might

have witnessed this triumph! But hearing steps in the distance, I

said hastily, "Asseyez-vous, mes enfants, tout-de-suite!" My tone

was so authoritative that they obeyed instantly, and when the

teacher entered it was as calm as the millennium.

We rambled through the village for another hour, dined at a quaint

little inn, gave a last look at the monument, and left for Geneva

at seven o'clock in the pleasant September twilight. Arriving a

trifle after ten, somewhat weary in body and slightly anxious in

mind, I followed Salemina into the tiny cake-shop across the street

from the station. She returned the tumbler, and the man, who

seemed to consider it an unexpected courtesy, thanked us volubly.

I held out my hand and reminded him timidly of the one franc fifty

centimes.

He inquired what I meant. I explained. He laughed scornfully. I

remonstrated. He asked me if I thought him an imbecile. I

answered no, and wished that I knew the French for several other

terms nearer the truth, but equally offensive. Then we retired,

having done our part, as good Americans, to swell the French

revenues, and that was the end of our day in Pestalozzi-town; not

the end, however, of the lemonade glass episode, which was always a

favourite story in Salemina's repertory

PENELOPE IN VENICE

This noble citie doth in a manner chalenge this at my hands, that I

should describe her also as well as the other cities I saw in my

journey, partly because she gave me most louing and kinde

entertainment for the sweetest time (I must needes confesse) that

euer I spent in my life; and partly for that she ministered vnto me

more variety of remarkable and delicious objects than mine eyes

euer suruayed in any citie before, or euer shall . . . the fairest

Lady, yet the richest Paragon and Queene of Christendome.

Coryat's Crudities: 1611

VENICE, May 12--HOTEL PAOLO ANAFESTO

I have always wished that I might have discovered Venice for

myself. In the midst of our mad acquisition and frenzied

dissemination of knowledge, these latter days, we miss how many

fresh and exquisite sensations! Had I a daughter, I should like to

inform her mind on every other possible point and keep her in

absolute ignorance of Venice. Well do I realize that it would be

impracticable, although no more so, after all, than Rousseau's plan

of educating Emile, which certainly obtained a wide hearing and

considerable support in its time. No, tempting as it would be, it

would be difficult to carry out such a theory in these days of

logic and common sense, and in some moment of weakness I might

possibly succumb and tell her all about it, for fear that some

stranger, whom she might meet at a ball, would have the pleasure of

doing it first.

The next best woman-person in the world with whom to see Venice,

barring the lovely non-existent daughter, is Salemina.

It is our first visit, but, alas! we are, nevertheless, much better

informed than I could wish. Salemina's mind is particularly well

furnished, but, luckily she cannot always remember the point wished

for at the precise moment of need; so that, taking her all in all,

she is nearly as agreeable as if she were ignorant. Her knowledge

never bulks heavily and insistently in the foreground or middle-

distance, like that of Miss Celia Van Tyck, but remains as it

should, in the haze of a melting and delicious perspective. She

has plenty of enthusiasms, too, and Miss Van Tyck has none.

Imagine our plight at being accidentally linked to that

encyclopaedic lady in Italy! She is an old acquaintance of

Salemina's and joined us in Florence, where she had been staying

for a month, waiting for her niece Kitty Schuyler,--Kitty Copley

now,--who is in Spain with her husband.

Miss Van Tyck would be endurable in Sheffield, Glasgow, Lyons,

Genoa, Kansas City, Pompeii, or Pittsburg, but she should never

have blighted Venice with her presence. She insisted, however, on

accompanying us, and I can only hope that the climate and

associations will have a relaxing effect on her habits of thought

and speech. When she was in Florence, she was so busy in "reading

up" Verona and Padua that she had no time for the Uffizi Gallery.

In Verona and Padua she was absorbed in Hare's "Venice,"

vaccinating herself, so to speak, with information, that it might

not steal upon, and infect her, unawares. If there is anything

that Miss Van abhors, it is knowing a thing without knowing that

she knows it; while for me, the most charming knowledge is the sort

that comes by unconscious absorption, like the free grace of God.

We intended to enter Venice in orthodox fashion, by moonlight, and

began to consult about trains when we were in Milan. The porter

said that there was only one train between the eight and the

twelve, and gave me a pamphlet on the subject, but Salemina objects

to an early start, and Miss Van refuses to arrive anywhere after

dusk, so it is fortunate that the distances are not great.

They have a curious way of reckoning time in Italy, for I found

that the train leaving Milan at eight-thirty was scheduled to

arrive at ten minutes past eighteen.

"You could never sit up until then, Miss Van," I said; "but, on the

other hand, if we leave later, to please Salemina, say at ten in

the morning, we do not arrive until eight minutes before twenty-

one! I haven't the faintest idea what time that will really be,

but it sounds too late for three defenceless women--all of them

unmarried--to be prowling about in a strange city."

It proved on investigation, however, that twenty-one o'clock is

only nine in Christian language (that is, one's mother tongue), so

we united in choosing that hour as being the most romantic

possible, and there was a full yellow moon as we arrived in the

railway station. My heart beat high with joy and excitement, for I

succeeded in establishing Miss Van with Salemina in one gondola,

while I took all the luggage in another, ridding myself thus

cleverly of the disenchanting influence of Miss Van's company.

"Do come with us, Penelope," she said, as we issued from the

portico of the station and heard, instead of the usual cab-drivers'

pandemonium, only the soft lapping of waves against the marble

steps--"Do come with us, Penelope, and let us enter 'dangerous and

sweet-charmed Venice' together. It does, indeed, look a 'veritable

sea-bird's nest.'"

She had informed me before, in Milan, that Cassiodorus, Theodoric's

secretary, had thus styled Venice, but somehow her slightest remark

is out of key. I can always see it printed in small type in a

footnote at the bottom of the page, and I always wish to skip it,

as I do other footnotes, and annotations, and marginal notes and

addenda. If Miss Van's mother had only thought of it, Addenda

would have been a delightful Christian name for her, and much more

appropriate than Celia.

If I should be asked on bended knees, if I should be reminded that

every intelligent and sympathetic creature brings a pair of fresh

eyes to the study of the beautiful, if it should be affirmed that

the new note is as likely to be struck by the 'prentice as by the

master hand, if I should be assured that my diary would never be

read, I should still refuse to write my first impressions of

Venice. My best successes in life have been achieved by knowing

what not to do, and I consider it the finest common sense to step

modestly along in beaten paths, not stirring up, even there, any

more dust than is necessary. If my friends and acquaintances ever

go to Venice, let them read their Ruskin, their Goethe, their

Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, their Rogers, Gautier, Michelet,

their Symonds and Howells, not forgetting old "Coryat's Crudities,"

and be thankful I spared them mine.

It was the eve of Ascension Day, and a yellow May moon was hanging

in the blue. I wished with all my heart that it were a little

matter of seven or eight hundred years earlier in the world's

history, for then the people would have been keeping vigil and

making ready for that nuptial ceremony of Ascension-tide when the

Doge married Venice to the sea. Why can we not make pictures

nowadays, as well as paint them? We are banishing colour as fast

as we can, clothing our buildings, our ships, ourselves, in black

and white and sober hues, and if it were not for dear, gaudy Mother

Nature, who never puts her palette away, but goes on painting her

reds and greens and blues and yellows with the same lavish hand, we

should have a sad and discreet universe indeed.

But so long as we have more or less stopped making pictures, is it

not fortunate that the great ones of the olden time have been

eternally fixed on the pages of the world's history, there to glow

and charm and burn for ever and a day? To be able to recall those

scenes of marvellous beauty so vividly that one lives through them

again in fancy, and reflect, that since we have stopped being

picturesque and fascinating, we have learned, on the whole, to

behave much better, is as delightful a trend of thought as I can

imagine, and it was mine as I floated toward the Piazza of San

Marco in my gondola.

I could see the Doge descend the Giant's Stairs, and issue from the

gate of the Ducal Palace. I could picture the great Bucentaur as

it reached the open beyond the line of the tide. I could see the

white-mitred Patriarch walking from his convent on the now deserted

isle of Sant' Elena to the shore where his barge lay waiting to

join the glittering procession.

And then there floated before my entranced vision the princely

figure of the Doge taking the Pope-blessed ring, and, advancing to

the little gallery behind his throne on the Bucentaur, raising it

high, and dropping it into the sea. I could almost hear the faint

splash as it sank in the golden waves, and hear, too, the sonorous

words of the old wedding ceremony: "Desponsamus te, Mare, in

signum veri perpetuique dominii!"

Then when the shouts of mirth and music had died away and the

Bucentaur and its train had drifted back into the lagoon, the blue

sea, new-wedded, slept through the night with the May moon on her

breast and the silent stars for sentinels.

LA GIUDECCA, May 15,

CASA ROSA.

Not for a moment have we regretted leaving our crowded,

conventional hotel in Venice proper, for these rooms in a house on

the Giudecca. The very vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck sitting on a

balcony surrounded by a group of friends from the various Boston

suburbs, the vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck melting into delicious

distance with every movement of our gondola, even this was

sufficient for Salemina's happiness and mine, had it been

accompanied by no more tangible joys.

This island, hardly ten minutes by gondola from the Piazza of San

Marco, was the summer resort of the Doges, you will remember, and

there they built their pleasure-houses, with charming gardens at

the back--gardens the confines of which stretched to the Laguna

Viva. Our Casa Rosa is one of the few old palazzi left, for many

of them have been turned into granaries.

We should never have found this romantic dwelling by ourselves; the

Little Genius brought us here. The Little Genius is Miss Ecks, who

draws, and paints, and carves, and models in clay, preaching and

practising the brotherhood of man and the sisterhood of woman in

the intervals; Miss Ecks, who is the custodian of all the talents

and most of the virtues, and the invincible foe of sordid common

sense and financial prosperity. Miss Ecks met us by chance in the

Piazza and breathlessly explained that she was searching for paying

guests to be domiciled under the roof of Numero Sessanta, Giudecca.

She thought we should enjoy living there, or at least she did very

much, and she had tried it for two years; but our enjoyment was not

the special point in question. The real reason and desire for our

immediate removal was that the padrona might pay off a vexatious

and encumbering mortgage which gave great anxiety to everybody

concerned, besides interfering seriously with her own creative

work.

"You must come this very day," exclaimed Miss Ecks. "The Madonna

knows that we do not desire boarders, but you are amiable and

considerate, as well as financially sound and kind, and will do

admirably. Padrona Angela is very unhappy, and I cannot model

satisfactorily until the house is on a good paying basis and she is

putting money in the bank toward the payment of the mortgage. You

can order your own meals, entertain as you like, and live precisely

as if you were in your own home."

The Little Genius is small, but powerful, with a style of oratory

somewhat illogical, but always convincing at the moment. There

were a good many trifling objections to our leaving Miss Van Tyck

and the hotel, but we scarcely remembered them until we and our

luggage were skimming across the space of water that divides Venice

from our own island.

We explored the cool, wide, fragrant spaces of the old casa, with

its outer walls of faded, broken stucco, all harmonized to a

pinkish yellow by the suns and winds of the bygone centuries. We

admired its lofty ceilings, its lovely carvings and frescoes, its

decrepit but beautiful furniture, and then we mounted to the top,

where the Little Genius has a sort of eagle's eyrie, a floor to

herself under the eaves, from the windows of which she sees the

sunlight glimmering on the blue water by day, and the lights of her

adored Venice glittering by night. The walls are hung with

fragments of marble and wax and stucco and clay; here a beautiful

foot, or hand, or dimple-cleft chin; there an exquisitely ornate

facade, a miniature campanile, or a model of some ancient palazzo

or chiesa.

The little bedroom off at one side is draped in coarse white

cotton, and is simple enough for a nun. Not a suggestion there of

the fripperies of a fine lady's toilet, but, in their stead, heads

of cherubs, wings of angels, slender bell-towers, friezes of

acanthus leaves,--beauty of line and form everywhere, and not a

hint of colour save in the riotous bunches of poppies and oleanders

that lie on the broad window-seats or stand upright in great blue

jars.

Here the Little Genius lives, like the hermit crab that she calls

herself; here she dwells apart from kith and kin, her mind and

heart and miracle-working hands taken captive by the charms of the

siren city of the world.

When we had explored Casa Rosa from turret to foundation stone we

went into the garden at the rear of the house--a garden of flowers

and grape-vines, of vegetables and fruit-trees, of birds and bee-

hives, a full acre of sweet summer sounds and odours, stretching to

the lagoon, which sparkled and shimmered under the blue Italian

skies. The garden completed our subjugation, and here we stay

until we are removed by force, or until the padrona's mortgage is

paid unto the last penny, when I feel that the Little Genius will

hang a banner on the outer ramparts, a banner bearing the

relentless inscription: "No paying guests allowed on these

premises until further notice."

Our domestics are unique and interesting. Rosalia, the cook, is a

graceful person with brown eyes, wavy hair, and long lashes, and

when she is coaxing her charcoal fire with a primitive fan of

cock's feathers, her cheeks as pink as oleanders, the Little Genius

leads us to the kitchen door and bids us gaze at her beauty. We

are suitably enthralled at the moment, but we suffer an inevitable

reaction when the meal is served, and sometimes long for a plain

cook.

Peppina is the second maid, and as arrant a coquette as lives in

all Italy. Her picture has been painted on more than one

fisherman's sail, for it is rumoured that she has been six times

betrothed and she is still under twenty. The unscrupulous little

flirt rids herself of her suitors, after they become a weariness to

her, by any means, fair or foul, and her capricious affections are

seldom good for more than three months. Her own loves have no deep

roots, but she seems to have the power of arousing in others

furious jealousy and rage and a very delirium of pleasure. She

remains light, gay, joyous, unconcerned, but she shakes her lovers

as the Venetian thunderstorms shake the lagoons. Not long ago she

tired of her chosen swain, Beppo the gardener, and one morning the

padrona's ducks were found dead. Peppina, her eyes dewy with

crocodile tears, told the padrona that although the suspicion

almost rent her faithful heart in twain, she must needs think Beppo

the culprit. The local detective, or police officer, came and

searched the unfortunate Beppo's humble room, and found no

incriminating poison, but did discover a pound or two of contraband

tobacco, whereupon he was marched off to court, fined eighty

francs, and jilted by his perfidious lady-love, who speedily

transferred her affections. If she had been born in the right

class and the right century, Peppina would have made an admirable

and brilliant Borgia.

Beppo sent a stinging reproof in verse to Peppina by the new

gardener, and the Little Genius read it to us, to show the poetic

instinct of the discarded lover, and how well he had selected his

rebuke from the store of popular verses known to gondoliers and

fishermen of Venice:-

"No te fidar de l' albaro che piega,

Ne de la dona quando la te giura.

La te impromete, e po la te denega;

No te fidar de l' albaro che piega."

("Trust not the mast that bends.

Trust not a woman's oath;

She'll swear to you, and there it ends,

Trust not the mast that bends.")

Beppo, Salemina, and I were talking together one morning,--just a

casual meeting in the street,--when Peppina passed us. She had a

market-basket in each hand, and was in her gayest attire, a fresh

crimson rose between her teeth being the last and most fetching

touch to her toilet. She gave a dainty shrug of her shoulders as

she glanced at Beppo's hanging head and hungry eye, and then with a

light laugh hummed, "Trust not the mast that bends," the first line

of the poem that Beppo had sent her.

"It is better to let her go," I said to him consolingly.

"Si, madama; but"--with a profound sigh--"she is very pretty."

So she is, and although my idea of the fitness of things is

somewhat unsettled when Peppina serves our dinner wearing a yoke

and sleeves of coarse lace with her blue cotton gown, and a bunch

of scarlet poppies in her hair, I can do nothing in the way of

discipline because Salemina approves of her as part of the picture.

Instead of trying to develop some moral sense in the little

creature, Salemina asked her to alternate roses and oleanders with

poppies in her hair, and gave her a coral comb and ear-rings on her

birthday. Thus does a warm climate undermine the strict virtue

engendered by Boston east winds.

Francesco--Cecco for short--is general assistant in the kitchen,

and a good gondolier to boot. When our little family is increased

by more than three guests at dinner, Cecco is pressed into dining-

room service, and becomes under-butler to Peppina. Here he is not

at ease. He scrubs his tanned face until it shines like San

Domingo mahogany, brushes his black hair until the gloss resembles

a varnish, and dons coarse white cotton gloves to conceal his work-

stained hands and give an air of fashion and elegance to the

banquet. His embarrassment is equalled only by his earnestness and

devotion to the dreaded task. Our American guests do not care what

we have upon our bill of fare when they can steal a glance at the

intensely dramatic and impassioned Cecco taking Pina into a corner

of the dining-room and, seizing her hand, despairingly endeavour to

find out his next duty. Then, with incredibly stiff back, he

extends his right hand to the guest, as if the proffered plate held

a scorpion instead of a tidbit. There is an extra butler to be

obtained when the function is a sufficiently grand one to warrant

the expense, but as he wears carpet slippers and Pina flirts with

him from soup to fruit, we find ourselves no better served on the

whole, and prefer Cecco, since he transforms an ordinary meal into

a beguiling comedy.

"What does it matter, after all?" asks Salemina. "It is not life

we are living, for the moment, but an act of light opera, with the

scenes all beautifully painted, the music charming and melodious,

the costumes gay and picturesque. We are occupying exceptionally

good seats, and we have no responsibility whatever: we left it in

Boston, where it is probably rolling itself larger and larger, like

a snowball; but who cares?"

"Who cares, indeed?" I echo. We are here not to form our

characters or to improve our minds, but to let them relax; and when

we see anything which opposses the Byronic ideal of Venice (the use

of the concertina as the national instrument having this tendency),

we deliberately close our eyes to it. I have a proper regard for

truth in matters of fact like statistics. I want to know the exact

population of a town, the precise total of children of school age,

the number of acres in the Yellowstone Park, and the amount of

wheat exported in 1862; but when it comes to things touching my

imagination I resent the intrusion of some laboriously excavated

truth, after my point of view is all nicely settled, and my saints,

heroes, and martyrs are all comfortably and picturesquely arranged

in their respective niches or on their proper pedestals.

When the Man of Fact demolishes some pretty fallacy like William

Tell and the apple, he should be required to substitute something

equally delightful and more authentic. But he never does. He is a

useful but uninteresting creature, the Man of Fact, and for a

travelling companion or a neighbour at dinner give me the Man of

Fancy, even if he has not a grain of exact knowledge concealed

about his person. It seems to me highly important that the

foundations of Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, or Spokane Falls

should be rooted in certainty; but Verona, Padua, and Venice--well,

in my opinion, they should be rooted in Byron and Ruskin and

Shakespeare.

III

CASA ROSA, May 18.

Such a fanfare of bells as greeted our ears on the morning of our

first awakening in Casa Rosa!

"Rise at once and dress quickly, Salemina!" I said. "Either an

heir has been born to the throne, or a foreign Crown Prince has

come to visit Venice, or perhaps a Papal Bull is loose in the

Piazza San Marco. Whatever it is, we must not miss it, as I am

keeping a diary."

But Peppina entered with a jug of hot water, and assured us that

there were no more bells than usual; so we lay drowsily in our

comfortable little beds, gazing at the frescoes on the ceiling.

One difficulty about the faithful study of Italian frescoes is that

they can never be properly viewed unless one is extended at full-

length on the flat of one's honourable back (as they might say in

Japan), a position not suitable in a public building.

The fresco on my bedroom ceiling is made mysteriously attractive by

a wilderness of mythologic animals and a crowd of cherubic heads,

wings and legs, on a background of clouds; the mystery being that

the number of cherubic heads does not correspond with the number of

extremities, one or two cherubs being a wing or a leg short.

Whatever may be their limitations in this respect, the old painters

never denied their cherubs cheek, the amount of adipose tissue

uniformly provided in that quarter being calculated to awake envy

and jealousy on the part of the predigested-food-babies pictured in

the American magazine advertisements.

Padrona Angela furnishes no official key to the ceiling-paintings

of Casa Rosa; and yesterday, during the afternoon call of four

pretty American girls, they asked and obtained our permission to

lie upon the marble floor and compete for a prize to be given to

the person who should offer the cleverest interpretation of the

symbolisms in the frescoes. It may be stated that the entire

difference of opinion proved that mythologic art is apt to be

misunderstood. After deciding in the early morning what our

bedroom ceiling is intended to represent (a decision made and

unmade every day since our arrival), Salemina and I make a

leisurely toilet and then seat ourselves at one of the open windows

for breakfast.

The window itself looks on the Doge's Palace and the Campanile, St.

Theodore and the Lion of St. Mark's being visible through a maze of

fishing-boats and sails, some of these artistically patched in

white and yellow blocks, or orange and white stripes, while others

of grey have smoke-coloured figures in the tops and corners.

Sometimes the broad stone-flagging pavement bordering the canal is

busy with people: gondoliers, boys with nets for crab-catching,

'longshoremen, and facchini. This is when ships are loading or

unloading, but at other times we look upon a tranquil scene.

Peppina brings in dell' acqua bollente, and I make the coffee in

the little copper coffee-pot we bought in Paris, while Salemina

heats the milk over the alcohol-lamp, which is the most precious

treasure in her possession.

The butter and eggs are brought every morning before breakfast, and

nothing is more delicious than our freshly churned pat of

solidified cream, without salt, which is sweeter than honey in the

comb. The cows are milked at dawn on the campagna, and the milk is

brought into Venice in large cans. In the early morning, when the

light is beginning to steal through the shutters, one hears the

tinkling of a mule's bell and the rattling of the milk-cans, and,

if one runs to the window, may see the contadini, looking, in their

sheepskin trousers, like brethren of John the Baptist, driving

through the streets and delivering the milk at the vaccari. It is

then heated, the cream raised and churned, and the pats of butter,

daintily set on green leaves, delivered for a seven-o'clock

breakfast.

Finally la colazione is spread on our table by the window. A neat

white cloth covers it, and we have gold-rimmed plates and cups of

delicate china. There is a pot of honey, an egg a la coque for

each, a plate of brown and white bread, on some days a dish of

scarlet cherries on a bed of green, on others a mound of luscious

berries in their frills; sometimes, too, we have a bowl of tiny

wild strawberries that seem to have grown with their faces close

pressed to the flowers, so sweet and fragrant are they.

This al fresco morning meal makes a delicious prelude to our

comfortable dejeuner a la fourchette at one o'clock, when the

Little Genius, if not absorbed in some unusually exacting piece of

work, joins us and gives zest to the repast. Her own breakfast,

she explains, is a dejeuner a la thumb, the sort enjoyed by the

peasant who carves a bit of bread and cheese in his hand, and she

promises us a sight, some leisure day, of a certain dejeuner a la

toothpick celebrated for the moment among the artists. A

mysterious painter, shabby, but of a certain elegance and

distinction even in his poverty, comes daily at noon into a well-

known restaurant. He buys for five sous a glass of chianti, a roll

for one sou, and with stately grace bestows another sou upon the

waiter who serves him. These preparations made, he breaks the roll

in small bits, and poising them delicately on the point of a wooden

toothpick, he dips them in wine before eating them.

"This may be a frugal repast," he has an air of saying, "but it is

at least refined, and no man would dare insult me by asking me

whether or not I leave the table satisfied."

CASA ROSA, May 20.

One of the pleasantest sights to be noted from our windows at

breakfast time is Angelo making ready our private gondola for the

day. Angelo himself is not attractive to the eye by reason of the

silliest possible hat for a man of forty-five whose hair is

slightly grey. It is a white straw sailor, with a turned-up brim,

a blue ribbon encircling the crown, and a white elastic under the

chin; such a hat as you would expect to see crowning the flaxen

curls of mother's darling boy of four.

I love to look at the gondola, with its solemn caracoling like that

of a possible water-horse, of which the arched neck is the graceful

ferro. This is a strange, weird, beautiful thing when the black

gondola sways a little from side to side in the moonlight. Angelo

keeps ours polished so that it shines like silver in the morning

sun, and he has an exquisite conscientiousness in rubbing every

trace of brass about his precious craft. He has a little box under

the prow full of bottles and brushes and rags. The cushions are

laid on the bank of the canal; the pieces of carpet are taken out,

shaken, and brushed, and the narrow strips are laid over the curved

wood ends of the gondola to keep the sun from cracking them. The

felze, or cabin, is freed of all dust, the tiny four-legged stools

and the carved chair are wiped off, and occasionally a thin coat of

black paint is needed here and there, and a touching-up of the gold

lines which relieve the sombreness. The last thing to be done is

to polish the vases and run back into the garden for nosegays, and

when these are disposed in their niches on each side of the felze,

Angelo waves his infantile hat gaily to us at the window, and

smiles his readiness to be off.

On other mornings we watch the loading and unloading of grain.

There are many small boats always in view, their orange sails

patched with all sorts of emblems and designs in a still deeper

colour, and day before yesterday a large ship appeared at our

windows and attached itself to our very doorsteps, much to the

wrath of Salemina, who finds the poetry of existence much disturbed

under the new conditions. All is life and motion now. The men are

stripped naked to the waist, with bright handkerchiefs on their

heads, and, in many cases, others tied over their mouths. Each has

a thick wisp of short twine strings tucked into his waistband. The

bags are weighed by one, who takes out or puts in a shovelful of

grain, as the case may be. Then the carrier ties up his bag with

one of the twine strings, two other men lift it to his shoulder,

while a boy removes a pierced piece of copper from a long wire and

gives it to him, this copper being handed in turn to still another

man, who apparently keeps the account. This not uninteresting,

indeed, but sordid and monotonous operation began before eight

yesterday morning and even earlier to-day, obliging Salemina to

decline strawberries and eat her breakfast with her back to the

window.

This afternoon at four the injured lady departed on a tour in Miss

Palett's gondola. Miss Palett is a water-colourist who has lived

in Venice for five years and speaks the language "like a native."

(You are familiar with the phrase, and perhaps familiar, too, with

the native like whom they speak.)

Returning after tea, Salemina was observed to radiate a kind of

subdued triumph, which proved on investigation to be due to the

fact that she had met the comandante of the offending ship and that

he had gallantly promised to remove it without delay. I cannot

help feeling that the proper time for departure had come; but this

destroys the story and robs the comandante of his reputation for

chivalry.

As Miss Palett's gondola neared the grain-ship, Salemina, it seems,

spied the commanding officer pacing the deck.

"See," she said to her companion, "there is a gang-plank from the

side of the ship to that small flat-boat. We could perfectly well

step from our gondola to the flat-boat and then go up and ask

politely if we may be allowed to examine the interesting grain-

ship. While you are interviewing the first officer about the

foreign countries he has seen, I will ask the comandante if he will

kindly tie his boat a little farther down on the island. No, that

won't do, for he may not speak English; we should have an awkward

scene, and I should defeat my own purposes. You are so fluent in

Italian, suppose you call upon him with my card and let me stay in

the gondola."

"What shall I say to the man?" objected Miss Palett.

"Oh, there's plenty to say," returned Salemina. "Tell him that

Penelope and I came over from the hotel on the Grand Canal only

that we might have perfect quiet. Tell him that if I had not

unpacked my largest trunk, I should not stay an instant longer.

Tell him that his great, bulky ship ruins the view; that it hides

the most beautiful church and part of the Doge's Palace. Tell him

that I might as well have stayed at home and built a cottage on the

dock in Boston Harbour. Tell him that his steam-whistles, his

anchor-droppings, and his constant loadings or unloadings give us

headache. Tell him that seven or eight of his sailormen brought

clean garments and scrubbing brushes and took their bath at our

front entrance. Tell him that one of them, almost absolutely nude,

instead of running away to put on more clothing, offered me his arm

to assist me into the gondola."

Miss Palett demurred at the subject-matter of some of these

remarks, and affirmed that she could not translate others into

proper Italian. She therefore proposed that Salemina should write

a few dignified protests on her visiting-card, and her own part

would be to instruct the man in the flat-boat to deliver it at once

to his superior officer. The comandante spoke no English,--of that

fact the sailorman in the flat-boat was certain,--but as the

gondola moved away, the ladies could see the great man pondering

over the little piece of pasteboard, and it was plain that he was

impressed. Herein lies perhaps a seed of truth. The really great

thing triumphs over all obstacles, and reaches the common mind and

heart in some way, delivering its message we know not how.

Salemina's card teemed with interesting information, at least to

the initiated. Her surname was in itself a passport into the best

society. To be an X- was enough of itself, but her Christian name

was one peculiar to the most aristocratic and influential branch of

the X-s. Her mother's maiden name, engraved at full length in the

middle, established the fact that Mr. X- had not married beneath

him, but that she was the child of unblemished lineage on both

sides. Her place of residence was the only one possible to the

possessor of three such names, and as if these advantages were not

enough, the street and number proved that Salemina's family

undoubtedly possessed wealth; for the small numbers, and especially

the odd numbers, on that particular street, could be flaunted only

by people of fortune.

You have now all the facts in your possession, and I can only add

that the ship weighed anchor at twilight, so Salemina again gazed

upon the Doge's Palace and slept tranquilly.

CASA ROSA, May 22

I am like the schoolgirl who wrote home from Venice: "I am sitting

on the edge of the Grand Canal drinking it all in, and life never

seemed half so full before." Was ever the city so beautiful as

last night on the arrival of foreign royalty? It was a memorable

display and unique in its peculiar beauty. The palaces that line

the canal were bright with flags; windows and water-steps were

thronged, the broad centre of the stream was left empty.

Presently, round the bend below the Rialto, swept into view a

double line of gondolas--long, low, gleaming with every hue of

brilliant colour, most of them with ten, some with twelve,

gondoliers in resplendent liveries, red, blue, green, white,

orange, all bending over their oars with the precision of machinery

and the grace of absolute mastery of their craft. In the middle,

between two lines, came one small and beautifully modelled gondola,

rowed by four men in red and black, while on the white silk

cushions in the stern sat the Prince and Princess. There was no

splash of oar or rattle of rowlock; swiftly, silently, with an air

of stately power and pride, the lovely pageant came, passed, and

disappeared under the shining evening sky and the gathering shadows

of "the dim, rich city." I never saw, or expect to see, anything

of its kind so beautiful.

I stay for hours in the gondola, writing my letters or watching the

thousand and one sights of the streets, for I often allow Salemina

and the Little Genius to tread their way through the highways and

byways of Venice while I stay behind and observe life from beneath

the grateful shade of the black felze.

The women crossing the many little bridges look like the characters

in light opera; the young girls, with their hair bobbed in a round

coil, are sometimes bareheaded and sometimes have a lace scarf over

their dark, curly locks. A little fan is often in their hands, and

one remarks the graceful way in which the crepe shawl rests upon

the women's shoulders, remembering that it is supposed to take

generations to learn to wear a shawl or wield a fan.

My favourite waiting-place is near the Via del Paradiso, just where

some scarlet pomegranate blossoms hang out over the old brick walls

by the canal-side, and where one splendid acanthus reminds me that

its leaves inspired some of the most beautiful architecture in the

world; where, too, the ceaseless chatter of the small boys cleaning

crabs with scrubbing-brushes gives my ear a much-needed familiarity

with the language.

Now a girl with a red parasol crosses the Ponte del Paradiso,

making a brilliant silhouette against the blue sky. She stops to

prattle with the man at the bell-shop just at the corner of the

little calle. There are beautiful bells standing in rows in the

window, one having a border of finely traced crabs and sea-horses

at the base; another has a top like a Doge's cap, while the body of

another has a delicately wrought tracery, as if a fish-net had been

thrown over it.

Sometimes the children crowd about me as the pigeons in the Piazza

San Marco struggle for the corn flung to them by the tourists. If

there are only three or four, I sometimes compromise with my

conscience and give them something. If one gets a lira put into

small coppers, one can give them a couple of centesimi apiece

without feeling that one is pauperizing them, but that one is

fostering the begging habit in young Italy is a more difficult sin

to face.

To-day when the boys took off the tattered hats from their bonny

little heads, all black waves and riotous curls, and with disarming

dimples and sparkling eyes presented them to me for alms, I looked

at them with smiling admiration, thinking how like Raphael's

cherubs they were, and then said in my best Italian: "Oh, yes, I

see them; they are indeed most beautiful hats. I thank you for

showing them to me, and I am pleased to see you courteously take

them off to a lady."

This American pleasantry was passed from mouth to mouth gleefully,

and so truly enjoyed that they seemed to forget they had been

denied. They ran, still laughing and chattering, to the wood-

carver's shop near-by and told him the story, or so I judged, for

he came to his window and smiled benignly upon me as I sat in the

gondola with my writing-pad on my knees. I was pleased at the

friendly glance, for he is the hero of a pretty little romance, and

I long to make his acquaintance.

It seems that, some years ago, the Queen, with one lady-in-waiting

in attendance, came to his shop quite early in the morning. Both

were plainly dressed in cotton gowns, and neither made any

pretensions. He was carving something that could not be dropped, a

cherub's face that had to be finished while his thought of it was

fresh. Hurriedly asking pardon, he continued his work, and at end

of an hour raised his eyes, breathless and apologetic, to look at

his visitors. The taller lady had a familiar appearance. He gazed

steadily, and then, to his surprise and embarrassment, recognized

the Queen. Far from being offended, she respected his devotion to

his art, and before she left the shop she gave him a commission for

a royal staircase. I am going to ask the Little Genius to take me

to see his work, but, alas! there will be an unsurmountable barrier

between us, for I cannot utter in my new Italian anything but the

most commonplace and conventional statements.

CASA ROSA, May 28.

Oh, this misery of being dumb, incoherent, unintelligible, foolish,

inarticulate in a foreign land, for lack of words! It is unwise, I

fear, to have at the outset too high an ideal either in grammar or

accent. As our gondola passed one of the hotels this afternoon, we

paused long enough to hear an intrepid lady converse with an

Italian who carried a mandolin and had apparently come to give a

music lesson to her husband. She seemed to be from the Middle West

of America, but I am not disposed to insist upon this point, nor to

make any particular State in the Union blush for her crudities of

speech. She translated immediately everything that she said into

her own tongue, as if the hearer might, between French and English,

possibly understand something.

"Elle nay pars easy--he ain't here," she remarked, oblivious of

gender. "Elle retoorneray ah seas oors et dammi--he'll be back

sure by half-past six. Bone swar, I should say Bony naughty--Good-

night to you, and I won't let him forget to show up to-morrer."

This was neither so ingenious nor so felicitous as the language-

expedient of the man who wished to leave some luggage at a railway

station in Rome, and knowing nothing of any foreign tongue but a

few Latin phrases, mostly of an obituary character, pointed several

times to his effects, saying, "Requiescat in pace," and then,

pointing again to himself, uttered the one pregnant word

"Resurgam." This at any rate had the merit of tickling his own

sense of humour, if it availed nothing with the railway porters,

and if any one remarks that he has read the tale in some ancient

"Farmers' Almanack," I shall only retort that it is still worth

repeating.

My little red book on the "Study of Italian Made Easy for the

Traveller" is always in my pocket, but it is extraordinary how

little use it is to me. The critics need not assert that

individuality is dying out in the human race and that we are all

more or less alike. If we were, we should find our daily practical

wants met by such little books. Mine gives me a sentence

requesting the laundress to return the clothes three days hence, at

midnight, at cock-crow, or at the full of the moon, but nowhere can

the new arrival find the phrase for the next night or the day after

to-morrow. The book implores the washerwoman to use plenty of

starch, but the new arrival wishes scarcely any, or only the frills

dipped.

Before going to the dressmaker's yesterday, I spent five minutes

learning the Italian for the expression "This blouse bags; it sits

in wrinkles between the shoulders." As this was the only criticism

given in the little book, I imagined that Italian dressmakers erred

in this special direction. What was my discomfiture to find that

my blouse was much too small and refused to meet. I could only use

gestures for the dressmaker's enlightenment, but in order not to

waste my recently gained knowledge, I tried to tell a melodramatic

tale of a friend of mine whose blouse bagged and sat in wrinkles

between the shoulders. It was not successful, because I was

obliged to substitute the past for the present tense of the verb.

Somebody says that if we learn the irregular verbs of a language

first, all will be well. I think by the use of considerable mental

agility one can generally avoid them altogether, although it

materially reduces one's vocabulary; but at all events there is no

way of learning them thoroughly save by marrying a native. A

native, particularly after marriage, uses the irregular verbs with

great freedom, and one acquires a familiarity with them never

gained in the formal instruction of a teacher. This method of

education may be considered radical, and in cases where one is

already married, illegal and bigamous, but on the whole it is not

attended with any more difficulty than the immersing of one's self

in a study day after day and month after month learning the

irregular verbs from a grammar.

My rule in studying a language is to seize upon some salient point,

or one generally overlooked by foreigners, or some very subtle one

known only to the scholar, and devote myself to its mastery. A

little knowledge here blinds the hearer to much ignorance

elsewhere. In Italian, for example, the polite way of addressing

one's equal is to speak in the third person singular, using Ella

(she) as the pronoun. "Come sta Ella?" (How are you? but

literally "How is she?")

I pay great attention to this detail, and make opportunities to

meet our padrona on the staircase and say "How is she?" to her. I

can never escape the feeling that I am inquiring for the health of

an absent person; moreover, I could not understand her symptoms if

she should recount them, and I have no language in which to

describe my own symptoms, which, so far as I have observed, is the

only reason we ever ask anybody else how he feels.

To remember on the instant whether one is addressing equals,

superiors, or inferiors, and to marshal hastily the proper pronoun,

adds a new terror to conversation, so that I find myself constantly

searching my memory to decide whether it shall be:

Scusate or Scusi, Avanti or Passi, A rivederci or Addio, Che cosa

dite? or Che coma dice? Quanto domandate? or Quanto domanda? Dove

andate? or Dove va? Come vi chiamate? or Come si chiama? and so

forth and so forth until one's mind seems to be arranged in

tabulated columns, with special N.B.'s to use the infinitive in

talking to the gondolier.

Finding the hours of time rather puzzling as recorded in the "Study

of Italian Made Easy," I devoted twenty-four hours to learning how

to say the time from one o'clock at noon to midnight, or thirteen

to twenty-three o'clock. My soul revolted at the task, for a

foreign tongue abounds in these malicious little refinements of

speech, invented, I suppose, to prevent strangers from making too

free with it on short acquaintance. I found later on that my

labour had been useless, and that evidently the Italians themselves

have no longer the leisure for these little eccentricities of

language and suffer them to pass from common use. If the Latin

races would only meet in convention and agree to bestow the

comfortable neuter gender on inanimate objects and commodities, how

popular they might make themselves with the English-speaking

nations; but having begun to "enrich" their language, and make it

more "subtle" by these perplexities, centuries ago, they will no

doubt continue them until the end of time.

If one has been a devoted patron of the opera or student of music,

one has an Italian vocabulary to begin with. This, if accompanied

by the proper gestures (for it is vain to speak without liberal

movements, of the hands, shoulders, and eyebrows), this, I

maintain, will deceive all the English-speaking persons who may be

seated near your table in a foreign cafe.

The very first evening after our arrival, Jack Copley asked

Salemina and me to dine with him at the best restaurant in Venice.

Jack Copley is a well of nonsense undefiled, and he, like

ourselves, had been in Italy only a few hours. He called for us in

his gondola, and in the row across from the Giudecca we amused

ourselves by calling to mind the various Italian words or phrases

with which we were familiar. They were mostly titles of arias or

songs, but Jack insisted, notwithstanding Salemina's protestations,

that, properly interlarded with names of famous Italians, he could

maintain a brilliant conversation with me at table, to the envy and

amazement of our neighbours. The following paragraph, then, was

our stock in trade, and Jack's volubility and ingenuity in its use

kept Salemina quite helpless with laughter:-

Guarda che bianca luna--Il tempo passato--Lascia ch' io pianga--

Dolce far niente--Batti batti nel Masetto--Da capo--Ritardando--

Andante--Piano--Adagio--Spaghetti--Macaroni--Polenta--Non e ver--

Ah, non giunge--Si la stanchezza--Bravo--Lento--Presto--Scherzo--

Dormi pura--La ci darem la mano--Celeste Aida--Spirito gentil--Voi

che sapete--Crispino e la Comare--Pieta, Signore--Tintoretto--

Boccaccio--Garibaldi--Mazzini--Beatrice Cenci--Gordigiani--Santa

Lucia--Il mio tesoro--Margherita--Umberto--Vittoria Colonna -Tutti

frutti--Botticelli--Una furtiva lagrima.

No one who has not the privilege of Jack Copley's acquaintance

could believe with what effect he used these unrelated words and

sentences. I could only assist, and lead him to ever higher

flights of fancy.

We perceive with pleasure that our mother tongue presents equal

difficulties to Italian manufacturers and men of affairs. The so-

called mineral water we use at table is specially still and dead,

and we think it may have been compared to its disadvantage with

other more sparkling beverages, since every bottle bears a printed

label announcing, "To Distrust of the mineral waters too foaming,

since that they do invariable spread the Stomach."

We learn also by studying another bottle that "The Wermouth is a

white wine slightly bitter, and parfumed with who leso me aromatic

herbs." Who leso me we printed in italics in our own minds, giving

the phrase a pure Italian accent until we discovered that it was

the somewhat familiar adjective "wholesome."

In one of the smaller galleries we were given the usual pasteboard

fans bearing explanations of the frescoes:-

Room I. In the middle. The sin of our fathers.

On every side. The ovens of Babylony. Moise saved from the water.

Room II. In the middle. Moise who sprung the water.

On every side. The luminous column in the dessert and the ardent

wood.

Room III. In the middle. Elia transported in the heaven.

On every side. Eliseus dispansing brods.

Room IV. The wood carvings are by Anonymous. The tapestry shows

the multiplications of brods and fishs.

VII

CASA ROSA, May 30.

We have had a battle royal in Casa Rosa--a battle over the breaking

of a huge blue pitcher valued at eight francs, a pitcher belonging

to the Little Genius.

The room that leads from the dining-room to the kitchen is reached

by the descent of two or three stone steps. It is always full, and

is like the orthodox hell in one respect, that though myriads of

people are seen to go into it, none ever seem to come out. It is

not more than twelve feet square, and the persons most continuously

in it, not counting those who are in transit, are the Padrona

Angela; the Padrona Angela's daughter, Signorina Rita; the

Signorina Rita's temporary suitor; the suitor's mother and cousin;

the padrona's great-aunt; a few casual acquaintances of the two

families, and somebody's baby: not always the same baby; any baby

answers the purpose and adds to the confusion and chatter of

tongues.

This morning, the door from the dining-room being ajar, I heard a

subdued sort of Bedlam in the distance, and finally went nearer to

the scene of action, finding the cause in a heap of broken china in

the centre of the floor. I glanced at the excited company, but

there was nothing to show me who was the criminal. There was a

spry girl washing dishes; the fritter-woman (at least we call her

so, because she brings certain goodies called, if I mistake not,

frittoli); the gardener's wife; Angelo, the gondolier; Peppina, the

waiting-maid; and the men that had just brought the sausages and

sweetmeats for the gondolier's ball, which we were giving in the

evening. There was also the contralto, with a large soup-ladle in

her hand. (We now call Rosalia, the cook, "the contralto," because

she sings so much better than she cooks that it seems only proper

to distinguish her in the line of her special talent.)

The assembled company were all talking and gesticulating at once.

There was a most delicate point of justice involved, for, as far as

I could gather, the sweetmeat-man had come in unexpectedly and

collided with the sausage-man, thereby startling the fritter-woman,

who turned suddenly and jostled the spry girl: hence the pile of

broken china.

The spry girl was all for justice. If she had carelessly or

wilfully dropped the pitcher, she would have been willing to suffer

the extreme penalty,--the number of saints she called upon to

witness this statement was sufficient to prove her honesty,--but

under the circumstances she would be blessed if she suffered

anything, even the abuse that filled the air. The fritter-woman

upbraided the sweetmeat-man, who in return reviled the sausage-

vender, who remarked that if Angelo or Peppina had received the

sausages at the door, as they should, he would never have been in

the house at all; adding a few picturesque generalizations

concerning the moral turpitude of Angelo's parents and the vicious

nature of their offspring.

The contralto, who was divided in her soul, being betrothed to the

sausage-vender, but aunt to the spry girl, sprang into the arena,

armed with the soup-ladle, and dispensed injustice on all sides.

The feud now reached its height. There is nothing that the chief

participants did not call one another, and no intimation or

aspersion concerning the reputation of ancestors to the remotest

generation that was not cast in the others' teeth. The spry girl

referred to the sausage-vender as a generalissimo of all the

fiends, and the compliments concerning the gentle art of cookery

which flew between the fritter-woman and the contralto will not

bear repetition. I listened breathlessly, hoping to hear one of

the party refer to somebody as the figure of a pig (strangely

enough the most unforgettable of insults), for each of the

combatants held, suspended in air, the weapon of his choice--broken

crockery, soup-ladle, rolling-pin, or sausage. Each, I say,

flourished the emblem of his craft wildly in the air--and then,

with a change of front like that of the celebrated King of France

in the Mother Goose rhyme, dropped it swiftly and silently; for at

this juncture the Little Genius flew down the broad staircase from

her eagle's nest. Her sculptor's smock surmounted her blue cotton

gown, and her blond hair was flying in the breeze created by her

rapid descent. I wish I could affirm that by her gentle dignity

and serene self-control she awed the company into silence, or that

there was a holy dignity about her that held them spellbound; but

such, unhappily, is not the case. It was her pet blue pitcher that

had been broken--the pitcher that was to serve as just the right

bit of colour at the evening's feast. She took command of the

situation in a masterly manner--a manner that had American energy

and decision as its foundation and Italian fluency as its

superstructure. She questioned the virtue of no one's ancestors,

cast no shadow of doubt on the legitimacy of any one's posterity,

called no one by the name of any four-footed beast or crawling,

venomous thing, yet she somehow brought order out of chaos. Her

language (for which she would have been fined thirty days in her

native land) charmed and enthralled the Venetians by its delicacy,

reserve, and restraint, and they dispersed pleasantly. The

sausage-vender wished good appetite to the cook,--she had need of

it, Heaven knows, and we had more,--while the spry girl embraced

the fritter-woman ardently, begging her to come in again soon and

make a longer visit.

VIII

CASA ROSA, June 10

I am saying all my good-byes--to Angelo and the gondola; to the

greedy pigeons of San Marco, so heavy in the crop that they can

scarcely waddle on their little red feet; to the bees and birds and

flowers and trees of the beautiful garden behind the casa; to the

Little Genius and her eagle's nest on the house-top; to "the city

that is always just putting out to sea." It has been a month of

enchantment, and although rather expensive, it is pleasant to think

that the padrona's mortgage is nearly paid.

It is a saint's day, and to-night there will be a fiesta. Coming

home to our island, we shall hear the laughter and the song

floating out from the wine shops and the caffes; we shall see the

lighted barges with their musicians; we shall thrill with the cries

of "Viva Italia! viva el Re!" The moon will rise above the white

palaces; their innumerable lights will be reflected in the glassy

surface of the Grand Canal. We shall feel for the last time "the

quick silent passing" of the only Venetian cab.

"How light we move, how softly! Ah,

Were life but as the gondola!"

To-morrow we shall be rowed against the current to Padua. We shall

see Malcontenta and its ruined villa: Oriago and Mira and the

campanile of Dolo. Venice will lie behind us, but she will never

be forgotten. Many a time on such a night as this we shall say

with other wandering Venetians:-

"O Venezia benedetta!

Non ti voglio piu lasciar!"

PENELOPE'S PRINTS OF WALES

And at length it chanced that I came to the fairest Valley in the

World, wherein were trees of equal growth; and a river ran through

the Valley, and a path was by the side of the river. And I

followed the path until midday, and I continued my journey along

the remainder of the Valley until the evening: and at the

extremity of a plain I came to a lone and lustrous Castle, at the

foot of which was a torrent.

We are coaching in Wales, having journeyed by easy stages from

Liverpool through Llanberis, Penygwryd, Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert

and Dolgelly on our way to Bristol, where we shall make up our

minds as to the next step; deciding in solemn conclave, with floods

of argument and temperamental differences of opinion, what is best

worth seeing where all is beautiful and inspiring. If I had

possessed a little foresight I should have avoided Wales, for,

having proved apt at itinerary doggerel, I was solemnly created,

immediately on arrival, Mistress of Rhymes and Travelling Laureate

to the party--an office, however honourable, that is no sinecure

since it obliges me to write rhymed eulogies or diatribes on

Dolgelly, Tan-y-Bulch, Gyn-y-Coed, Llanrychwyn, and other Welsh

hamlets whose names offer breakneck fences to the Muse.

I have not wanted for training in this direction, having made a

journey (heavenly in reminiscence) along the Thames, stopping at

all the villages along its green banks. It was Kitty Schuyler and

Jack Copley who insisted that I should rhyme Henley and Streatley

and Wargrave before I should be suffered to eat luncheon, and they

who made me a crown of laurel and hung a pasteboard medal about my

blushing neck when I succeeded better than usual with Datchett!--I

well remember Datchett, where the water-rats crept out of the reeds

in the shallows to watch our repast; and better still do I recall

Medmenham Abbey, which defied all my efforts till I found that it

was pronounced Meddenam with the accent on the first syllable. The

results of my enforced tussles with the Muse stare at me now from

my Commonplace Book.

"Said a rat to a hen once, at Datchett,

'Throw an egg to me, dear, and I'll catch it!'

'I thank you, good sir,

But I greatly prefer

To sit on mine HERE till I hatch it.'"

"Few hairs had the Vicar of Medmenham,

Few hairs, and he still was a-sheddin' 'em,

But had none remained,

He would not have complained,

Because there was FAR too much red in 'em!"

It was Jack Copley, too, who incited me to play with rhymes for

Venice until I produced the following tour de force:

"A giddy young hostess in Venice

Gave her guests hard-boiled eggs to play tennis.

She said 'If they SHOULD break,

What odds would it make?

You can't THINK how prolific my hen is."

Reminiscences of former difficulties bravely surmounted faded into

insignificance before our first day in Wales was over.

Jack Copley is very autocratic, almost brutal in discipline. It is

he who leads me up to the Visitors' Books at the wayside inns, and

putting the quill in my reluctant fingers bids me write in cheerful

hexameters my impressions of the unpronounceable spot. My

martyrdom began at Penygwryd (Penny-goo-rid'). We might have

stopped at Conway or some other town of simple name, or we might

have allowed the roof of the Cambrian Arms or the Royal Goat or the

Saracen's Read to shelter us comfortably, and provide me a

comparatively easy task; but no; Penygwryd it was, and the

outskirts at that, because of two inns that bore on their swinging

signs the names: Ty Ucha and Ty Isaf, both of which would make any

minor poet shudder. When I saw the sign over the door of our

chosen hostelry I was moved to disappear and avert my fate. Hunger

at length brought me out of my lair, and promising to do my duty, I

was allowed to join the irresponsible ones at luncheon.

Such a toothsome feast it was! A delicious ham where roses and

lilies melted sweetly into one another; some crisp lettuces, ale in

pewter mugs, a good old cheese, and that stodgy cannon-ball the

"household loaf," dear for old association's sake. We were served

at table by the granddaughter of the house, a little damsel of

fifteen summers with sleek brown hair and the eyes of a doe. The

pretty creature was all blushes and dimples and pinafores and

curtsies and eloquent goodwill. With what a sweet politeness do

they invest their service, some of these soft-voiced British maids!

Their kindness almost moves one to tears when one is fresh from the

resentful civility fostered by Democracy.

As we strolled out on the greensward by the hawthorn hedge we were

followed by the little waitress, whose name, however pronounced,

was written Nelw Evans. She asked us if we would write in the

"Locked Book," whereupon she presented us with the key. It seems

that there is an ordinary Visitors' Book, where the common herd is

invited to scrawl its unknown name; but when persons of evident

distinction and genius patronize the inn, this "Locked Book" is put

into their hands.

I found that many a lord and lady had written on its pages, and men

mighty in Church and State had left their mark, with much bad

poetry commendatory of the beds, the food, the scenery, and the

fishing. Nobody, however, had given a line to pretty Nelw Evans;

so I pencilled her a rhyme, for which I was well paid in dimples:-

"At the Inn called the Penygwryd

A sweet little maiden is hid.

She's so rosy and pretty

I write her this ditty

And leave it at Penygwryd."

Our next halt was at Bettws-y-Coed, where we passed the week-end.

It was a memorable spot, as I failed at first to rhyme the name,

and only succeeded under threats of a fate like unto that of the

immortal babes in the wood. I left the verse to be carved on a

bronze tablet in the village church, should any one be found fitted

to bear the weight of its eulogy:-

"Here lies an old woman of Bettws-y-CoED;

Wherever she went, it was there that she goED.

She frequently said: 'My own row have I hoED,

And likewise the church water-mark have I toED.

I'm therefore expecting to reap what I've sowED,

And go straight to heaven from Bettws-y-CoED.'"

At another stage of our journey, when the coaching tour was nearly

ended, we were stopping at the Royal Goat at Beddgelert. We were

seated about the cheerful blaze (one and sixpence extra), portfolio

in lap, making ready our letters for the post. I announced my

intention of writing to Salemina, left behind in London with a

sprained ankle, and determined that the missive should be saturated

with local colour. None of us were able to spell the few Welsh

words we had picked up in our journeyings, but I evaded the

difficulties by writing an exciting little episode in which all the

principal substantives were names of Welsh towns, dragged in

bodily, and so used as to deceive the casual untravelled reader.

I read it aloud. Jack Copley declared that it made capital sense,

and sounded as if it had happened exactly as stated. Perhaps you

will agree with him:-

DDOLGHYHGGLLWN, WALES

. . . We left Bettws-y-Coed yesterday morning, and coached thirty-

three miles to this point. (How do you like this point when you

see it spelled?) We lunched at a wayside inn, and as we journeyed

on we began to see pposters on the ffences announcing the ffact

that there was to be a Festiniog that day in the village of

Portmadoc, through which we were to pass.

I always enoyw a Festiniog yn any country, and my hheart beat hhigh

with anticipation. Yt was ffive o'clock yn the cool of the dday,

and ppresently the roadw became ggay with the returning

festinioggers. Here was a fine Llanberis, its neck encircled with

shining meddals wonw in previous festiniogs; there, just behind, a

wee shaggy Rhyl led along proudly by its owner. Evydently the

gayety was over for the day, for the ppeople now came yn crowds,

the women with gay plaid Rhuddlans over their shoulders and straw

Beddgelerts on their hheads.

The guardd ttooted his hhorn continuously, for we now approached

the principalw street of the village, where hhundreds of ppeople

were conggreggated. Of course there were allw manner of Dolgelleys

yn the crowd, and allw that had taken pprizes were gayly decked

with ribbons. Just at this moment the hhorn of our gguard

ffrightened a superb Llanrwst, a spirited black creature of

enormous size. It made a ddash through the lines of tterrified

mothers, who caught their innocent Pwllhelis closer to their

bbosoms. In its madd course it bruised the side of a huge

Llandudno hitched to a stout Tyn-y-Coed by the way-side. It bbroke

its Bettws and leaped ynto the air. Ddeath stared us yn the face.

David the whip grew ppale, and signalled to Absalom the gguard to

save as many lives as he could and leave the rrest to Pprovidence.

Absalom spprang from his seat, and taking a sharp Capel Curig from

his ppocket (Hheaven knows how he chanced to have it about his

pperson), he aimed straight between the Llangollens of the

infuriated Llandudno. With a moan of baffled rrage, he sank to

earth with a hheavy thuddw. Absalom withdrew the bbloody Capel

Curig from the dying Llandudno, and wiping yt on his Penygwryd,

replaced yt yn his pocket for future possible use.

The local Dolwyddelan approached, and ordered a detachment of Tan-

y-Bulchs to remove the corpse of the Llandudno. With a shudder we

saw him borne to his last rrest, for we realized that had yt not

bbeen for Absalom's Capel Curig we had bbeen bburied yn an

unpronounceable Welsh ggrave.

PENELOPE IN DEVON

We are in Bristol after a week's coaching in Wales; the Jack

Copleys, Tommy Schuyler, Mrs. Jack's younger brother, and Miss Van

Tyck, Mrs. Jack's "Aunt Celia," who played a grim third in that

tour of the English Cathedrals during which Jack Copley was

ostensibly studying architecture but in reality courting Kitty

Schuyler. Also there is Bertram Ferguson, whom we call "Atlas"

because he carries the world on his shoulders, gazing more or less

vaguely and absent-mindedly at all the persons and things in the

universe not in need of immediate reformation.

We had journeyed by easy stages from Liverpool through Carnarvon,

Llanberis, Penygwyrd, Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert, and Tan-y-Bulch.

Arriving finally at Dolgelly, we sent the coach back to Carnarvon

and took the train to Ross,--the gate of the Wye,--from whence we

were to go down the river in boats. As to that, everybody knows

Symond's Yat, Monmouth, Raglan Castle, Tintern Abbey, Chepstow; but

at Bristol a brilliant idea took possession of Jack Copley's mind.

Long after we were in bed o' nights the blessed man interviewed

landlords and studied guidebooks that he might show us something

beautiful next day, and above all, something out of the common

route. Mrs. Jack didn't like common routes; she wanted her

appetite titillated with new scenes.

At breakfast we saw the red-covered Baedeker beside our host's

plate. This was his way of announcing that we were to "move on,"

like poor Jo in "Bleak House." He had already reached the

marmalade stage, and while we discussed our bacon and eggs and

reviled our coffee, he read us the following:-

"Clovelly lies in a narrow and richly-wooded combe descending

abruptly to the sea." -

"Any place that descends to the sea abruptly or otherwise has my

approval in advance," said Tommy.

"Be quiet, my boy."--"It consists of one main street, or rather a

main staircase, with a few houses climbing on each side of the

combe so far as the narrow space allows. The houses, each standing

on a higher or lower level than its neighbour, are all whitewashed,

with gay green doors and lattices." -

"Heavenly!" cried Mrs. Jack. "It sounds like an English Amalfi;

let us take the first train."

"And the general effect is curiously foreign; the views from the

quaint little pier and, better still, from the sea, with the pier

in the foreground, are also very striking. The foundations of the

cottages at the lower end of the village are hewn out of the living

rock."

"How does a living rock differ from other rocks--dead rocks?" Tommy

asked facetiously. "I have always wanted to know; however, it

sounds delightful, though I can't remember anything about

Clovelly."

"Did you never read Dickens's 'Message from the Sea,' Thomas?"

asked Miss Van Tyck. Aunt Celia always knows the number of the

unemployed in New York and Chicago, the date when North Carolina

was admitted to the Union, why black sheep eat less than white

ones, the height of the highest mountain and the length of the

longest river in the world, when the first potato was dug from

American soil, when the battle of Bull Run was fought, who invented

the first fire-escape, how woman suffrage has worked in Colorado

and California, the number of trees felled by Mr. Gladstone, the

principle of the Westinghouse brake and the Jacquard loom, the

difference between peritonitis and appendicitis, the date of the

introduction of postal-cards and oleomargarine, the price of

mileage on African railways, the influence of Christianity in the

Windward Islands, who wrote "There's Another, not a Sister," "At

Midnight in his Guarded Tent," "A Thing of Beauty is a Joy

Forever," and has taken in through the pores much other information

likely to be of service on journeys where an encyclopaedia is not

available.

If she could deliver this information without gibes at other

people's ignorance she would, of course, be more agreeable; but it

is only justice to say that a person is rarely instructive and

agreeable at the same moment.

"It is settled, then, that we go to Clovelly," said Jack. "Bring

me the ABC Guide, please" (this to the waiter who had just brought

in the post).

"Quite settled, and we go at once," said Mrs. Jack, whose joy at

arriving at a place is only equalled by her joy in leaving it.

"Penelope, hand me my letters, please; if you were not my guest I

should say I had never witnessed such an appetite. Tommy, what

news from father? Atlas, how can you drink three cups of British

coffee? Oh-h-h, how more than lucky, how heavenly, how

providential! Egeria is coming!"

"Egeria?" we cried with one rapturous voice.

"Read your letter carefully, Kitty," said Jack; "you will probably

find that she wishes she might come, but finds it impossible."

"Or that she certainly would come if she had anything to wear,"

drawled Tommy.

"Or that she could come perfectly well if it were a few days

later," quoth I.

Mrs. Jack stared at us superciliously, and lifting an absurd watch

from her antique chatelaine, observed calmly, "Egeria will be at

this hotel in one hour and fifteen minutes; I telegraphed her the

night before last, and this letter is her reply."

"Who is Egeria?" asked Atlas, looking up from his own letters.

"She sounds like a character in a book."

Mrs. Jack: "You begin, Penelope."

Penelope: "No, I'd rather finish; then I can put in everything

that you omit."

Atlas: "Is there so much to tell?"

Tommy: "Rather. Begin with her hair, Penelope."

Mrs. Jack: "No; I'll do that! Don't rattle your knives and forks,

shut up your Baedeker, Jackie, and listen while I quote what a

certain poet wrote of Egeria when she last visited us:-

"'She has a knot of russet hair:

It seems a simple thing to wear

Through years, despite of fashion's check,

The same deep coil about the neck,

But there it twined

When first I knew her,

And learned with passion to pursue her,

And if she changed it, to my mind

She were a creature of new kind.

"'O first of women who has laid

Magnetic glory on a braid!

In others' tresses we may mark

If they be silken, blonde, or dark,

But thine we praise and dare not feel them,

Not Hermes, god of theft, dare steal them;

It is enough for eye to gaze

Upon their vivifying maze.'"

Jack: "She has beautiful hair, but as an architect I shouldn't

think of mentioning it first. Details should follow, not precede,

general characteristics. Her hair is an exquisite detail; so, you

might say, is her nose, her foot, her voice; but viewed as a

captivating whole, Egeria might be described epigrammatically as an

animated lodestone. When a man approaches her he feels his iron-

work gently and gradually drawn out of him."

Atlas looked distinctly incredulous at this statement, which was

reinforced by the affirmative nods of the whole party.

Penelope: "A man cannot talk to Egeria an hour without wishing the

assistance of the Society for First Aid to the Injured. She is a

kind of feminine fly-paper; the men are attracted by the sweetness,

and in trying to absorb a little of it, they stick fast."

Tommy: "Egeria is worth from two to two and a half times more than

any girl alive; I would as lief talk to her as listen to myself."

Atlas: "Great Jove, what a concession! I wish I could find a

woman--an unmarried woman (with a low bow to Mrs. Jack)--that would

produce that effect upon me. So you all like her?"

Aunt Celia: "She is not what I consider a well-informed girl."

Penelope: "Now don't carp, Miss Van Tyck. You love her as much as

we all do. 'Like her,' indeed! I detest the phrase. Werther said

when asked how he liked Charlotte, 'What sort of creature must he

be who merely liked her; whose whole heart and senses were not

entirely absorbed by her! Some one asked me lately how I 'liked'

Ossian."

Atlas: "Don't introduce Ossian, Werther and Charlotte into this

delightful breakfast chat, I beseech you; the most tiresome trio

that ever lived. If they were travelling with us, how they would

jar! Ossian would tear the scenery in tatters with his

apostrophes, Werther would make love to Mrs. Jack, and Charlotte

couldn't cut an English household loaf with a hatchet. Keep to

Egeria,--though if one cannot stop at liking her, she is a

dangerous subject."

Jack: "Don't imagine from these panegyrics that, to the casual

observer, Egeria is anything more than a nice girl. The deadly

qualities that were mentioned only appeal to the sympathetic eye

(which you have not), and the susceptible heart (which is not

yours), and after long acquaintance (which you can't have, for she

stays only a week). Tommy, you can meet the charmer at the

station; your sister will pack up, and I'll pay the bills and make

arrangements for the journey."

Jack Copley (when left alone with his spouse): "Kitty, I wonder,

why you invited Egeria to travel in the same party with Atlas."

Mrs. Jack (fencing): "Pooh! Atlas is safe anywhere."

Jack: "He is a man."

Mrs. Jack: "No; he is a reformer."

Jack: "Even reformers fall in love."

Mrs. Jack: "Not unless they can find a woman to reform. Egeria is

too nearly perfect to attract Atlas; besides, what does it matter,

anyway?"

Jack: "It matters a good deal if it makes him unhappy; he is too

good a fellow."

Mrs. Jack: "I've lived twenty-five years and I have never seen a

man's unhappiness last more than six months, and I have never seen

a woman make a wound in a man's heart that another woman couldn't

heal. The modern young man is as tough as--well, I can't think of

anything tough enough to compare him to. I've always thought it a

pity that the material of which men's hearts is made couldn't be

utilized for manufacturing purposes; think of its value for hinges,

or for the toes of little boys' boots, or the heels of their

stockings!"

Jack: "I should think you had just been jilted, my dear; how has

Atlas offended you?"

Mrs. Jack: "He hasn't offended me; I love him, but I think he is

too absent-minded lately."

Jack: "And is Egeria invited to join us in order that she may

bring his mind forcibly back to the present?"

Mrs. Jack: "Not at all; I consider Atlas as safe as a--as a

church, or a dictionary, or a guide-post, or anything; he is too

much interested in tenement-house reform to fall in love with a

woman."

Jack: "I think a sensible woman wouldn't be out of place in Atlas'

schemes for the regeneration of humanity."

Mrs. Jack: "No; but Egeria isn't a--yes, she is, too; I can't deny

it, but I don't believe she knows anything about the sweating

system, and she adores Ossian and Fiona Macleod, so she probably

won't appeal to Atlas in his present state, which, to my mind, is

unnecessarily intense. The service of humanity renders a young man

perfectly callous to feminine charms. It's the proverbial safety

of numbers, I suppose, for it's always the individual that leads a

man into temptation, if you notice, never the universal;--Woman,

not women. I have studied Atlas profoundly, and he is nearly as

blind as a bat. He paid no attention to my new travelling-dress

last week, and yesterday I wore four rings on my middle finger and

two on each thumb all day long, just to see if I could catch his

eye and hold his attention. I couldn't."

Jack: "That may all be; a man may be blind to the charms of all

women but one (and precious lucky if he is), but he is particularly

keen where the one is concerned."

Mrs. Jack: "Atlas isn't keen about anything but the sweating

system. You needn't worry about him; your favourite Stevenson says

that a wet rag goes safely by the fire, and if a man is blind, he

cannot expect to be much impressed by romantic scenery. Atlas

momentarily a wet rag and temporarily blind. He told me on

Wednesday that he intended to leave all his money to one of those

long-named regenerating societies--I can't remember which."

Jack: "And it was on Wednesday you sent for Egeria. I see."

Mrs. Jack (haughtily): "Then you see a figment of your own

imagination; there is nothing else to see. There! I've packed

everything that belongs to me, while you've been smoking and gazing

at that railway guide. When do we start?"

Jack: "11.59. We arrive in Bideford at 4.40, and have a twelve-

mile drive to Clovelly. I will telegraph for a conveyance to the

inn and for five bedrooms and a sitting-room."

Mrs. Jack: "I hope that Egeria's train will be on time, and I hope

that it will rain so that I can wear my five-guinea mackintosh. It

poured every day when I was economizing and doing without it."

Jack: "I never cou