THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 

 
 WORKS OF MRS, A, D. T, WHITNEY. 
 
 A SUMMER IN LESLIE GOLDTH WAITERS 
 LIFE. Illustrated. i2mo $i-5 
 
 REAL FOLKS. Illustrated. i2mo 1.50 
 
 WE GIRLS: A HOME STORY. Illustrated. 
 
 I2tno 1.5 
 
 THE OTHER GIRLS. Illustrated. i2mo. 
 
 500 pages 2.00 
 
 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 2 vols. i2mo 3.00 
 
 PANSIES: A Volume of Poems. Beautifully 
 
 bound in Purple and Gold. i6mo 1.50 
 
 " Such books as hers should be in every household, to be read, 
 loaned, re-read and re-loaned, so long as the leaves and cover will 
 hold together, not holiday volumes for elegant quiet, but stirring 
 and aggressive works, with a ' mission, 1 which is, to make the world 
 better than they find it." Boston Commonwealth. 
 
 * For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by mail, post-paid, by 
 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 
 
 PUBLISHERS, BOSTON.
 
 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS: 
 
 PATIENCE STRONG'S STORY OP OVER THE WAY. 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE OTHER GIRLS," " WE GIRLS," " REAL FOLKS," 
 "LESLIE GOLDTHWAITE," ETC. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 JAMES E. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 
 
 (LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, ASP FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co.) 
 
 1876.
 
 Copyright, 1876, by 
 JAMES E. OSGOOD AND COMPANT. 
 
 RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
 
 H. 0. HOUQHTON AND COMPANT.
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 lAj i> 
 
 TO BE PUT AT THE BEGINNING. , 
 
 ' 
 
 1st Gravedigger. It may be all well enough for a story ; 
 but nevertheless it has no business to be. And you see she 
 knows it all the time, with her reasonings and her apologies. 
 What right had she to scribble it all off, in short hand, to Rose 
 Halliday whoever that is ? 
 
 2d Gravedigger. Why, Rose Halliday is an alter ego. Can't 
 a woman talk to herself, if she has no privilege elsewhere ? 
 
 1st Gravedigger. But here it is in a book. And the world 
 has got it ; at least, as much of the world as will pay any atten 
 tion. And it has all just happened ; a couple of years ago. 
 
 2d Gravedigger, solemnly. My dear, do you properly appre 
 hend what a book is ? It is an utterly impersonal, abstract irre 
 sponsibility. It is a mere medium ; a battery of type plates, 
 which you hold by its two covers, to receive a magnetic current. 
 And the little black characters upon which you fix your eyes are 
 hypnotizers. The book tells you nothing. You simply perceive. 
 The places, persons, occurrences, are or have been, and you come 
 into intuitive relations with them. 
 
 1st Gravedigger. I can't see it in quite such a boneless light. 
 It is a thing deliberately done ; written, printed, published. 
 
 2d Gravedigger. Well ; even so, the book and the story had 
 to be. 
 
 1st Gravedigger. " I do not of that see the necessity." 
 
 2d Gravedigger. And possibly as might have been retorted 
 to the original sarcasm, there may not be a like vital necessity 
 that you should. We 've had it, anyway ; and we 've done 
 with it. Put it up on the shelf; we will begin the new one ; it 
 has been out three days already.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 40 iPTIB 
 
 I. ABOUT THE BEGINNING 
 
 II. CORNER BISCUITS 
 
 III. STEP-EVERYTHING 
 
 IV. PACKING AND POCKETS 
 
 V. SHIP-RIGGING 
 
 VI. THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS 
 
 VII. GATE-WAYS 
 
 VIII. UP BY EXPRESS 
 
 IX. SHOPS, OR SHRINES 
 
 X. IN LADY CHRISTIAN'S GARDEN 
 
 XI. A STRAW 
 
 XII. THE DISCIPLES TO THE MULTITUDE .... 
 
 XIII. FANCY-MAIL : AND HALDON HOUSE .... 
 
 XIV. THE LORD WARDEN AT DOVER 
 
 XV. REALLY ABROAD 
 
 XVI. A TALK ; AND A TRUSTING 
 
 XVII. PLEASURES AND PALACES 176 
 
 XVIII. THE EVERLASTING GATES 187 
 
 XIX. ON THE HOUSETOP . . . . . . . .190 
 
 XX. STEPPING IN 197 
 
 XXI. YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 204 
 
 XXII. BEFORE MONT BLANC 214 
 
 XXIII. THE SEA OF ICE .... ... 220 
 
 XXIV. DAILY BREAD; AND DOUBLES ..... 230 
 XXV. FROM ARVE TO RHONE ....... 244 
 
 XXVI. INCIDENT 261
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 XXVTI. MISTS ; AND SIGNS ....... 267 
 
 XX YIIL THE SCHRECKHOEN 280 
 
 XXIX. EDELWEISS 285 
 
 XXX. RIVER-PLUNGE ; AND CLOUD-SEA .... 290 
 
 XXXI. OVER THE BRUNIG : THE LAKE : RHIGI . . . 299 
 
 XXXII. NOONTIDE AND MORNING UPON RHIGI . . . 303 
 
 XXXIII. A FERN LEAF ?H 
 
 XXXIV. THE HEM OF A STORM 317 
 
 XXXV. DOWN INTO THE SUMMER 331 
 
 XXXVI. SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGIOLI . . . 338
 
 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 ABOUT THE BEGINNING. 
 
 PATIENCE STRONG TO KOSE HALLIDAY. 
 
 OLD FARM, 12/A June, 187-. 
 
 .... MY first introduction to her, I do not mean the 
 naming of our names by a third person ; that never happened at 
 all, and it was more than nine months afterward that we found 
 each other out by name ; but my first introduction to her 
 and it takes a good many, first and last, before you come to 
 knowledge was in the little east parlor of the Giant's Cairn 
 House at Outledge, where I had been staying five weeks, and 
 where she had just arrived. 
 
 It was early in the morning. I was going to take the 6.30 
 train down to Boston. There are cars between Boston and 
 Outledge, now, all the way, and we all inveigh against them and 
 take them, just as we do other new things that supersede the 
 old, though we may all say the old is better. 
 
 Mrs. Regis had come by the evening express the night before, 
 and had had tea in her room at ten o'clock. I had heard an 
 arrival, and a great dragging of big trunks past my door in the 
 long wing ; but I had never thought of it again until I came 
 into the little parlor, ten minutes before the whistle, to pick up 
 my bag and shawl, that I had laid there when I went to break 
 fast, and saw this picture before the lire. I took a negative of 
 it, half unconsciously, which I found developing after I got 
 through my little hurries, and was safely off in a big arm-chair
 
 2 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 in the Pullman car, with my parcels all put up, and my novel 
 in my lap waiting till I was tired of other things, and wanted 
 it ; which case I have never yet come to in a railway journey, 
 though the novel is always there. 
 
 A railway ride is such a good chance to read things that are 
 not printed. 
 
 That little picture of Mrs. Regis, which I took off without 
 her knowledge or my own, at the moment, came out so very 
 clear before me ; it seemed to tell me a whole story. After 
 ward, I came to know something of how much my first impres 
 sion might be worth ; I have yet a great deal, I dare say, if we 
 go on to get acquainted, both to verify and to rectify. It is 
 funny what a mixture of surprising facts and mistaken conclu 
 sions these first impressions often turn out to be. But I always 
 take care of that first negative. It is a key ; if you don't turn 
 the lock the wrong way with it. 
 
 She was so very handsome, to begin with ; sitting there alone 
 in the one large, deep-cushioned rocking-chair before the fire, 
 that crackled with its first clean morning brightness ; her feet, 
 pretty and trim, though not so very small, set comfortably, in a 
 ladylike way, on the low fender. And she was so fresh and 
 comfortable. I described her just now, as we often describe, 
 and credit to minor details, that which gives the mood and color 
 to our general apprehension, when I spoke about the fire. 
 Crackling with the first clean morning brightness. That was 
 what she was, and what I have noticed her always since to be. 
 There came an electric perception of freshness all over, with 
 just looking at her. She gave a sensation of how nice it was to 
 be just up, and bathed, and dressed. As Mrs. Gradgrind, or a 
 more cheerful person, might have said, there was a face in the 
 room pink and smooth with good rest, and cold water, and the 
 pleasantness of a morning blaze, and you didn't know whether 
 it was somebody's else or yours. Really, looking at her, it 
 did n't seem to make much difference, the sense of it was so 
 keen. 
 
 It was in face, and hair, and dress, and all ; in such perfect 
 unruffled adjustment ; out to the tips of her fingers, that with 
 two or three splendid rings upon them, touched each other in a
 
 ABOUT THE BEGINNING. 3 
 
 sort of delight of delicate quiet, as she leaned them together, 
 her elbows resting upon the chair-arms ; and down to the slip 
 per-rim that framed the plump instep in its fine white stocking. 
 
 I am not beginning a novel, Rose ; at least, I don't believe I 
 am ; though I have fallen into such a story-like kind of descrip 
 tion. You asked me about her, and how it came to pass, so I 
 want you to begin where I did, and see her as I saw her at the 
 first. She and I are going to be a good deal to each other, in 
 one way or another, for a little time to come ; and it does seem, 
 just to look at her and me, rather queer that it has happened. 
 
 She had a widow's cap on, which was so absolutely un 
 touched in its freshness that it was a wonder how it had ever 
 got made up, or set upon her head. I almost 'spected, as I re 
 viewed it deliberately in my mental negative, that'it must have 
 growed. Three little cloudy puffs framed exactly the clear fore 
 head, and cheeks, and the hair so glossy, and so carefully ar 
 ranged, though so perfectly simple. There was a little glitter, 
 just at the edges, where it was brushed back ; but it was more 
 like a fine illuminated line than like gray hairs ; and she had 
 not a wrinkle in her face, though I knew somehow, without 
 the outward betrayal, that she had doubtless lived years enough 
 for gray hairs and wrinkles to be quite possible. Something in 
 the way the lips, quite faultless in their shape, lay together, so 
 easy, satisfied, undisturbed, and in the full, calm eyelids, cor 
 responding, made me think that she would never let her mouth 
 sadden heavily into lines, or her eyes cry themselves dim, or 
 into shrunken settings. Perhaps she never forgot herself long 
 enough. She finished herself up too scrupulously every day, to 
 drop into any decay that must partly come from not caring. 
 
 Death had come close to her ; her cap said that. Death, or 
 the separations of life, almost as terrible, must have come, I 
 imagined, more than once ; for she had the air of one with little 
 present responsibility, and few, if any, close ties. The very way 
 in which she sat there, expressed the freedom, the independence, 
 and inoccupation of a woman whose duties, and whose deep in 
 terests, had ceased to press upon her. 
 
 I only tell you just what I fancied then, mind ; but it seemed 
 to me as if she had comfortably got through her tribulations, and
 
 4 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 laid them away in graves, or seen her burdens happily shunted 
 off on side tracks of circumstance ; and that since nothing great 
 could very well happen to her any more, she could set herself 
 placidly to receive that which remained to her, and which ap 
 parently was plentiful and agreeable enough, in nice and leis 
 urely detail. I thought she was content to put on that widow's 
 cap, of unhandled creation, in the calm certainty that she need 
 encounter nothing now, in daily wear, to rumple it. It is a sort 
 of thing to be adopted only when the day's work of life is done ; 
 and it seems, sometimes, to say so. 
 
 I don't half like the look of it, now I have written it down ; 
 it is n't the way I mean to judge people, or in which I thought 
 I did. I don't think I should let myself be governed by such 
 judgment, and I don't believe it would exactly come to me in 
 the ordinary course of things ; but I seemed just passively to 
 read it out that morning from the picture, as I should have read 
 a railway advertisement in which I had really no practical inter 
 est, only that it was placed before my eyes when I had nothing 
 else to do. I wonder if some things not evil judgments, Rose, 
 but some things, of after use may n't be set before us iu 
 these passive times, mentally and spiritually, by the children of 
 light, as these same cunning printed suggestions are put for us by 
 the children of this world, so wise in their generation ? There 
 is a parallel, as there is in every mortal way and device ; and 
 wisdom is justified of all her children. 
 
 To confess it all in a few direct words. I thought that woman 
 sitting in the one comfortable chair, in the middle of the room, 
 taking up all the pleasantness of it, was 'a very selfish woman, 
 who had slipped with smooth self-caring through all the disci 
 pline of living, so that it had left no mark ; who had never 
 questioned with herself, at any crisis, whether she had done all 
 her duty, or possibly failed fatally of something ; who, with her 
 durable beauty, had played the successive parts of life serenely 
 and becomingly, in the superficial sense ; not really becoming 
 anything ; who had " appeared well " in all relations ; took up 
 each as quite timely and suitable in its order ; found it as natural 
 and graceful to be a widow, as to have* been a wife ; and was 
 settled down, now, to an undisturbed solitary enjoying of what 
 to a more real person might be desolation.
 
 ABOUT THE BEGINNING. 5 
 
 I looked at her, in that inward photograph, until I caught 
 myself almost hating her clear, rosy face, her straight, impas 
 sible, handsome nose, her young, unworn expression, her dainty 
 dress, her white cap. And then the train stopped at a way- 
 station; a party of three or four persons got in and wanted 
 chairs, which were not all to be had, and were finally settled by 
 the bland, gentlemanly-voiced, gold-banded conductor, in a com 
 partment ; a boy came in with magnificent Bartlett pears, and I 
 bought some ; we whistled and steamed away again, and came 
 down into a lovely piece of country, where the maples were 
 shining in the morning sun with their early gold and vermilion, 
 and I forgot all about the calm and comely widow, and never 
 thought any more of her until, nine months and more later, 
 in June, I met her again at Outledge, and had my second in 
 troduction. 
 
 And now we sail, together, the week after next, in the Nova 
 Zembla, for Liverpool. 
 
 But that does not come next. And what does come next 
 must go into another letter. I shall write more than one, I dare 
 say, before I go. My packing is nearly done, house-packing, 
 I mean ; making room for " Eliphalet's folks " to come to the 
 old farm for the summer. I always say that because mother 
 did. The dear old mother-ways, that some people hurry to get 
 rid of, never will be helped die out by me. There was heart in 
 them ; and how shall our " hearts live forever," if we cut away 
 all the little live cords of habit and memory that they pulsate 
 by?
 
 6 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CORNER BISCUITS. 
 
 .... IT was the spring after Emery Ann's mother died, 
 and little Rhodory was seventeen, and had got well on with her 
 schooling, and, in fact, had studied too hard, and Matilda, Pen- 
 uel's wife, wrote to ask if she could n't have her for a while ; 
 for her health was poor, and the children " needed a sight of 
 looking after, and he was n't to say nigh as smart as he had 
 been ; " so we went down a journey among the Maine hills and 
 lakes, and left Rhodory at Shenean, and came back, Emery 
 Ann and I, by Gorham, and Mount Washington, and Out- 
 ledge. 
 
 It was early in the season when we got to the Giant's Cairn 
 House, and the crowd had not come up. But there were 
 twenty or thirty people in the hotel, and the early families, for 
 the long season, had begun to settle in the little boarding- 
 houses. 
 
 I did not know a soul among the hotel visitors, and of course 
 Emery Ann did n't ; but they seemed nearly all to know each 
 other ; so it was two or three days before we really made any 
 talk with any of them. But the very first person I saw the 
 first morning we got there, was the handsome widow lady whom 
 I had not thought of for nearly ten months, and who flashed 
 right back into her place and history in my imagination, when I 
 found her in exactly the same spot again, before the fire, for 
 the early June mornings were chilly, in the same little east 
 parlor, on to which all the fine new suite of drawing-rooms was 
 tacked, in the great enlarging of Giant's Cairn House, after the 
 railroad came.
 
 CORNER BISCUITS. 7 
 
 She knew the cosiest place, just like a cat; and she sat there, 
 with just the same rosy morning face, and unfingered cap, and 
 fine white stockings, and trim slippers, with her feet on the 
 fender. Mrs. Henson's great gray cat was there too ; which 
 made me think of the likeness ; and Mrs. Regis had made room 
 for her at the edge of her skirts, and looked down at her now 
 and then with an amiable and sympathetic expression. I was 
 going to say a-feelin one, but I don't make puns except by ac 
 cident. 
 
 " The lady does not ' belong to the kick-the-cat-and-poke-the- 
 fire society,' as I heard a man say once that some crusty person 
 did," I said to myself, touching up the little character sketch 
 begun the year before. "The cat must be comfortable, too. It 
 is a part of her comfort." 
 
 She made room for me also ; just room ; she evidently 
 could n't have peace in her mind by actually crowding anybody 
 out ; but I did not care to sit on the edge of her skirts like old 
 Benjamin, so I only bowed, and moved away to a window where 
 I found a sunny seat, and waited there for Emery Ann. 
 
 We had just done breakfast. We were always pretty punct 
 ual ; so, as there were plenty of late comers, the little morning 
 parlor had not begun to fill, as it would presently, with people 
 waiting about in that brief, delicious procrastination which pre 
 cedes the " beginning upon the day." 
 
 When it did, and a little circle gathered around the fire and 
 Mrs. Regis, she found places very politely till there was no 
 more room to make, but did not give up, out and out, her place 
 to anybody. A pleasant little talk began, which she joined in, 
 and indeed led, for a few minutes ; then she said, rather sud 
 denly, that she could n't be comfortable any longer, for she had 
 a trunk to unpack, and clothes to give out for the wash, and the 
 woman would be waiting. 
 
 " Oh, let her wait a little while!" cried a young girl, who 
 leaned on her chair behind, and who seemed to have as girls 
 will have an extreme admiration for the fascinating elder 
 woman. 
 
 " There would n't be any satisfaction in that, Katie ! " and 
 Mrs. Regis rose, left the fire, and the rocking-cliair, and her
 
 8 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 knot of satellites, and went up, with that same smooth content 
 upon her face, into the cold. 
 
 Later in the day, the ladies were gathered in the end piazza, 
 while some of the younger ones played croquet upon the green. 
 Emery Ann and I had work and a book, and had settled our 
 selves, since dinner, on a small settee nearer the front corner of 
 the house. But we were still quite near enough to the others 
 to see and hear all that went on, in both little plays that were 
 proceeding. For it does n't need a plot and set scenes, or even 
 an interest that is ever to be completed, to make a play. Every 
 chance group and conversation is a scene, and everybody but 
 Shakspeare said that, as he said most things, long ago. 
 
 There were settees, and regular piazza chairs, stiff enough, 
 of plain deal, with no cushions, and there were one or two 
 comfortable low Shaker chairs, and a couple of stuffed rockers. 
 Mrs. Regis, of course, was established in one of the last, and all 
 the rest were occupied. A lady much older than herself, with 
 white hair and slow step, came out to join the party. Mrs. 
 Regis rose instantly. But, then, so did Katie, and Katie's 
 mother, and two or three other persons. The white-haired lady 
 accepted a young girl's seat with very gentle thanks, and Mrs. 
 Regis settled again into her own. 
 
 " I wonder why they make uncomfortable chairs, at all ! " 
 said Mrs. Regis. " If I had the ordering, there should n't be 
 anything manufactured that was n't low and broad and easy. 
 Such things as those, standing round, are only just so many 
 compulsions to the continual giving up of the few one could 
 really rest in. Nobody can take entire comfort." 
 
 " Except those that 'd rather not rob themselves of the givin' 
 up," said Emery Ann ; to me, I suppose, for she certainly had 
 no business to speak to Mrs. Regis. But she looked at nobody 
 at all ; her eyes were straight before her, over the tops of her 
 knitting-needles, and her voice was clear and loud. 
 
 There was that instant's silence which occurs in a well-bred 
 company when somebody jumps over a social fence into the 
 midst of things, the same pause of surprise that might come 
 in talk if a cat bounced in at a window ; then everybody recog 
 nizes that it is only a cat, and the talk goes on.
 
 CORNER BISCUITS. 9 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Regis, as if without interruption, " I would 
 never have anything but easy-chairs." 
 
 "And corner biscuits," said a tall, beautiful young woman, 
 whom I had noticed from the beginning, but whose name 
 except " Margaret " and whose exact connection in the party 
 I had not yet found out. She had been among them all day, 
 but without directly attaching herself to any one. " She had 
 some little pans made," she went on, " to hold four breakfast 
 biscuits, because she thinks a biscuit is good for nothing with 
 out a corner." 
 
 Mrs. Regis smiled, as quite willing that her providing for 
 everybody to have the best should be made known. 
 
 The girl's speech, and the personal pronoun in it, puzzled 
 me. Did she belong to Mrs. Regis ? Then why did n't she 
 say "Aunt," or, if it were possible to be so, "Mamma"? If 
 she were a friend, and had been entertained at Mrs. Regis's table, 
 why would it not have been more elegant and so, for that 
 girl, more natural to speak of her by her name ? 
 
 But I laid that aside in my mind, and went on thinking. 
 Somehow this handsome, comfortable woman would keep ex 
 plaining herself to me. 
 
 I said to myself, " There are people who may be prompt 
 and energetic just because they are naturally lazy, and want 
 to make room for laziness, not leaving any little pricks of an 
 noyance from things undone ; and persons who may be, in all 
 foresights and decisions, generous, perhaps at great, single 
 points, magnanimous, because they are at once proud and 
 self-respecting, and at the same time conscious that their little 
 practical tendencies are selfish. It is n't a hopeless thing with 
 such a person, after all. The working, in a long time, might 
 be to redeem one's self without knowing it." 
 
 Two days after, I had been writing a letter to Gertrude, 
 Eliphalet's wife. She thought some of coming up here with 
 Edith, and I had been finding out about rooms for her. 
 
 I had written my letter in the east parlor ; and after I had 
 shut up my little lap blotting-book, and stuck my pen in the 
 inkstand, and snapped the inkstand cover, I sat looking dream 
 ily out of the window, over toward Giant's Cairn, sharp and 
 beautiful against the morning blue.
 
 10 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Mrs. Regis sat a little way off at the next window. She had 
 her hat on, waiting for some girls who were going with her to 
 the Cathedral Woods. 
 
 I bethought myself suddenly of a pattern I had said I would 
 look for in my trunk for Emery Ann, and that she might be 
 wanting it; and I gathered up pen, cup, stand, book, and moved 
 quickly across the room to the door. 
 
 " Your letter, madam," said Mrs. Regis's voice behind me ; 
 and I turned, and saw my letter, which had lain in my lap, in 
 her hand. As I looked up at her face, and held out my hand, 
 thanking her, I caught the surprise in her expression, as she 
 saw, naturally and unavoidably enough, the address. 
 
 " I beg your pardon ! ' Mrs. Eliphalet Strong ? ' Is she a 
 friend of yours ? " And then " I beg your pardon ! " for the 
 second involuntary liberty of the question, was repeated. Mrs. 
 Regis had certainly the instincts of a lady. 
 
 " She is my sister-in-law," I answered. 
 
 " She is also my cousin ; that is, my step-cousin. I believe 
 I 'm a step-everything to somebody or another. My step-mother 
 was her aunt. May I ask if you expect her here ? " 
 
 " I think so," I replied. " I am writing to her about rooms." 
 
 " I shall be glad to see her. I have not met Gertrude for 
 many years. I was at Fort Snelling with Colonel Regis a long 
 time before the war ; and then when he went South with the 
 army, I came to Louisville. I have never been quite East 
 until last summer." 
 
 We exchanged a few more words, and then Katie and Marga 
 ret and the others came in. But my acquaintance as people 
 call acquaintance with Mrs. Regis was begun. The real 
 little introductions though, that I had got beforehand, and the 
 things that gradually, in like manner, added themselves after 
 ward were quite ahead, for a long time, of our actual intercourse. 
 Perhaps they are likely to be so still. 
 
 Now that I was " Miss Strong," Mrs. Regis was very cordial 
 indeed. She even extended a suavity that ignored all peculiarity 
 to " Miss Tudor." That is not a common name, you know, and 
 she was evidently rather impressed by it. But have you any 
 idea or remembrance of who " Miss Tudor " is ?
 
 CORNER BISCUITS. 11 
 
 Why, it is Emery Ann ! 
 
 Her mother was- married twice ; little Rhodory is Rhodory 
 Breckenshaw ; but Emery Ann is Tudor, when you go off and 
 back to that, which we hardly ever think of at home hi any way. 
 
 It is very well, I think, that I began with my voluminous 
 "letters of introduction" three weeks beforehand. I had no 
 notion I should be so gossippy. But you asked me for my 
 " sights and insights," and I find they began away back, two 
 summers ago. You are to start with me, Rose, and go all the 
 way ; and you know what my " outings " are ; " into the mid 
 dles," and " into other people's business ; " an old maid's mission, 
 as I always claim ; only some old maids are so apt to half com 
 prehend and half do their errands, and pick at the edges of 
 everything instead of getting into the heart of any the 
 nearest. There is no middle, but mere meddle, in that ; and 
 they degrade, when they might magnify, their office.
 
 12 SIGHTS AXD INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 STEP-EVERYTHIXG. 
 
 .... IF it were not for these long pen and ink talks with 
 you, Rose, I really should not quite know what to do with the 
 last days. Everything is getting so terribly ready ; and the 
 house is so cleared up, and packed up, and Emery Ann and I 
 have so much ado not to do anything ; not to live the sort of 
 living that gets things about again, and not to wear, toward the 
 end, what by any means will want washing and ironing again 
 for us. We are to roll up the very last in a bundle on the 
 Monday evening, and little Tim Callahan is to come and carry 
 it away, as he has all the other odds and ends, for his 
 mother. 
 
 But to return to Outledge, and finish up if I can my 
 Preface. 
 
 Gertrude and Edith came up the next week. Gertrude told 
 me a good deal about her " step-cousin." They had exchanged 
 long visits when they were girls, though Gertrude was con 
 siderably the younger, and they had gone to parties, for a 
 whole winter together, in Washington. Then Virginia married 
 Colonel Regis, and went to Florida, and afterward up to Fort 
 Snelling, and they had lost sight and thread of each other. 
 
 Virginia was Colonel Regis's second wife ; his " step-wife," as 
 bright, saucy, willful little Margaret had actually called her, 
 once. 
 
 Mrs. Regis had told me, herself, that she had had a step 
 mother. Had there been no real, close, first-hand relationship 
 for her anywhere ? Was she, as she said, " step-everything ? "
 
 STEP-EVERYTHING. 13 
 
 I thought of my own dear little mother ; I turned to her in 
 that little sanctuary of my thought where a light of presence is 
 always hovering, and I could hardly, any more, judge or blame 
 the woman who had had nothing like that. 
 
 Her father had died, Gertrude told me, when she was only 
 five years old, two years after his second marriage ; and when 
 she was ten her step-mother had married again. Five years 
 later, she went away with her husband to China, leaving Vir 
 ginia at Philadelphia with her sister, also, of course, Gertrude's 
 aunt. The husband of this lady was a member of Congress, 
 and for a time in the Cabinet. Thus the girls' companionship 
 at Washington. 
 
 But what fearful fourth-dilutions of heart's love and belonging ! 
 
 Colonel Regis had been killed at Fort Donelson ; they had 
 never had a child. 
 
 No*; she never had stood at any dear death-bed. That 
 supreme, holy experience had not been given her. Perhaps 
 she had never been ready for it, with the love that would make 
 it supreme and holy. It might be that only her own would 
 touch her to the real deep. There seemed little else of that 
 kind to happen to her now. I do not think I wonder much 
 that she wore her delicate caps, with their white rolls, only as a 
 careful framing to her handsome face, and that she moved with 
 a mere elegant satisfaction in the role that was assigned to her 
 at the last. Step-e very thing ! A walking lady for the person 
 ation of tremendous actualities. 
 
 Margaret was the younger, by many years, of Colonel Regis's 
 two daughters. Helen had been at boarding-school when her 
 father died, and had been married, during the last winter but 
 one, at twenty-five ; just before Margaret, in her turn, finally 
 came home and out into society. 
 
 There was a curious, and I think very blameworthy arrange 
 ment about property, as concerned these two young women. 
 Mrs. Regis received absolutely, some say, and some say upon 
 condition of making no second marriage, the bulk of her hus 
 band's wealth, the income of which was to be taxed with an 
 annual personal allowance for each of the two daughters, to be 
 replaced at their several marriages, with a portion outright.
 
 14 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 A certain additional part of the large remainder was to re 
 vert, at the widow's death, to either or to both of the children, 
 according to her direction and in such shares as she should 
 please ; but that amount could not be devised entirely away 
 from both. The still considerable residue unless it were for 
 the disputed condition mentioned was wholly in her own 
 power and disposing. If either sister married without her step 
 mother's consent before the age of twenty-five, she should for 
 feit her portion and all future inheritance. Gertrude had heard 
 of all this at the time ; it had made a good deal of talk nat 
 urally. 
 
 It came hard upon this proud, handsome Margaret. She had 
 all her youth and its contingencies to live through, under the 
 very watch and ward that might be so tyrannous, so selfish. 
 Helen had escaped easily. There could have been no reasonable 
 exception taken to her alliance with Maurice Vanderhuysen, a 
 man at thirty-three in high public station and esteem, of un 
 blemished record, of old New York family, and substantial 
 wealth. Even if she had not been in her twenty-fifth summer 
 when she met him, and chosen, naturally enough, the coming 
 birthday in December, for her marriage. 
 
 Margaret was just eighteen at this time, a year ago, you 
 know, when I met her and her step-mother at Outledge. 
 
 It was really very odd, if anything ever is, which you know 
 I don't believe, that we all came together there and then, and 
 that all this, and the dear Lord knoweth how much more, began 
 to grow out of it. 
 
 Gertrude thinks very well very much, indeed of Mrs. 
 Regis. One never imagines easily that a girl one has chatted 
 and dressed and slept and gone to merry-makings with, in the 
 old times, can have turned out hard, or grasping, or managing, 
 in the after-moulding of the world. Gertrude says that Virginia 
 had been quite a devoted wife to Colonel Regis, who would have 
 her with him everywhere, and who was very exacting in daily 
 life. 
 
 Undoubtedly, she thinks, she will do all that is right by 
 Margaret, as she has done by Helen. Colonel Regis would not 
 have left it so, if he had not known that he could fully trust her
 
 STEP-EVERYTHING. 15 
 
 with his children. She is the sort of woman who will feel she 
 owes it to her own self-respect to fulfill her duties. 
 
 Yes, I could see that even then. She must have a comforta 
 ble opinion of herself. She would pay certain taxes, unhesitat 
 ingly, out of pleasures and preferences, perhaps even in 
 terests, to gather all back again in that form. That sort of 
 8elf-sacrifice carried a neutralizing quality against real wear and 
 tear ; it had kept her calm and plump. I do not think, any the 
 more, however, that she is a woman yet to give herself all 
 away. And the will, I think, was even wickedly unwise. I had no 
 patience with it, as I heard about it. I would not put between 
 real, dear, own motherhood and daughterhood such an ungra 
 cious, mistrustful power and dependence as that. Besides, it 
 seems to me that such a will, in its presumption of the need for 
 so much watch and ward and authority, reflects upon a man's 
 own estimate of himself, and of his first dead wife ; since 
 character and trustworthiness must surely descend by a law 
 far more innate and unerring than any statute which can be 
 made for the control of money -inheritance. 
 
 We liked Margaret Regis, ever so m#ch, Emery Ann and I. 
 
 You know how, especially since we have been quite left to 
 each other, the good house friend and I have grown more and 
 more to be thorough companions ; and that everywhere, though 
 she is my great help and reliance, I refuse to let that make her, 
 in any painful, obvious way, my inferior, any more than she is 
 made at home ; any more than my little mother made her. It 
 was the old-fashioned New England relation between us, always. 
 It was, of course, convenient, and in the right order, when we 
 were all together, a family, for Emery Ann to serve and to come 
 last ; but with mother and me, and then with me alone, it set 
 tled down, more and more, to make no difference. I surely could 
 not take her traveling with me, now, as my. "maid," and send 
 her into hotel kitchens ! No ; though she spoke tenfold vernac 
 ular, and wore five brown satin braids on the top of her head, 
 instead of one, which I can't yet gently persuade her out of 1 
 
 So she is my friend and companion, and people find : t out and 
 admit it. I find it is only the unusual things of this sort that 
 you propose to do, or half- do, that you are eyebrowed out of;
 
 16 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 
 
 nobody stares or expostulates when you have once and for all 
 quietly established your little exception. 
 
 Margaret Regis used to come into our rooms a good deal. 
 Emery Ann sat mostly in her own little bedchamber that led 
 out from mine, with the door open between us. And that just 
 expresses how we live together. 
 
 Margaret was too proud and dignified to tell any one, least of 
 all a recent acquaintance, the things that vexed or made her 
 cold and jealous and uncomfortable in her relations with her 
 step-mother ; but she was the most undisguised reserved person 
 I ever saw. She never said, It is so and so, between mamma 
 and me ; but she uttered her energetic, uncompromising opinions 
 of life, of books, of histories, of whatever you spoke about, show 
 ing the color of her own experience, and betraying most simply 
 how she had come at her feeling through circumstance, until 
 you felt almost as if you had listened in a corner or peeped into 
 a folded writing, so thoroughly you understood that which was 
 unsaid. 
 
 She was an odd little thing, and she made you think of her 
 so, for all her tall superbness of beauty, and her proud individ 
 uality. She had as many freaks as a kitten, but they were 
 springs and bounds of a strength and quickness that were akin 
 to the leonine the grand. 
 
 She would almost always make an errand from my room into 
 Emery Ann's, and linger there, getting into talk with the quaint, 
 honest soul, whose quaintness and honesty were he'r wonderful 
 charm to the high-bred girl whose own originalities and sinceri 
 ties often tempted her to cast aside the little conventionalities of 
 her class polish and training, in outright and graphic speech. 
 
 " I always did hate to be moralized to," she said one day. 
 " If I see a thing, I don't want it poked at me as if I could n't ; 
 and if I don't what 's the use until I do ? Do you know, Miss 
 Tudor, what I said the first time they took me to church, when 
 I was four years old ? It was up in the country, in Connecticut, 
 and some old lady aunts I was staying with dressed me up and 
 let me go to meeting. When I got home, they asked me ques 
 tions to find out what my small impressions had been. I 
 would n't admit a sensation, because I saw that it was expected.
 
 STEP-EVERYTHING. 17 
 
 ' Oh, I saw the people,' I answered, carelessly. ' Well, where 
 were they ? ' ' Oh, in little pens ! ' 'In pens ? ' ' Yes, with 
 little doors ; shut in like pigs.' ' What a child ! But what else 
 did you see ? ' ' Oh, I saw a man, looking over the fence, mak 
 ing up faces at ' em, and hollering ! ' That was what I used to 
 amuse myself with doing, in the farmyard ; and it was what the 
 preaching really seemed like to me. It seems like that, some 
 times, to this day, especially amateur preaching." 
 
 Who could not guess that Mrs. Regis had been giving long, 
 excellent, world-wise, and heavenly-moral advice, and, perhaps, 
 expostulation, that morning ? 
 
 She was fond of giving us sensations by these queer little 
 anecdotes of her childhood, though she scarcely ever spoke of 
 herself as she was now. 
 
 "Do let me be obliging!" she cried one day, when she 
 had brought a footstool to Emery Ann, who had a cutting- 
 board with cloth and patterns on her lap, and was keeping 
 it level by balancing on her tiptoes. " I like it better now, than 
 when it used to be required of me. People expect such per 
 fect crucifixion of self from little children, and the total-de 
 pravity people require the most. I remember when some one 
 gave me a reason, once, for being perfectly willing always to 
 leave my dolls and run up-stairs for her eye-glasses, which 
 were always somewhere else. ' Little girls should be obliging. 
 They are obliged for everything, you know. They couldn't 
 get, or make, the least thing they need for themselves. The 
 least they can do is to run little errands cheerfully.' It was 
 perfectly true ; that was the very reason that it stayed in my 
 mind all day, and that I rushed up to Cousin Arthur when he 
 came in at night, and asked him with absolute fierceness ' what 
 I could do to earn five dollars.' ' What do you want with five 
 dollars ? ' he asked, with exasperating grown-upness. ' I want 
 to earn five dollars, tomekow,' I said, in furious earnest, ' and 
 live a disobliging life. ' Once in a while, I think I should like 
 to do it now." 
 
 Her voice dropped into a kind of pathetic quietness. 
 
 " That girl is harrered out of her life," said Emery Ann to 
 me when she had gone. 
 2
 
 18 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 "No, I don't think that," said I. "Because, in the first place, 
 nobody ever is harrowed out of their life ; it 's for the life's sake 
 the ground is harrowed ; and then I don't think Mrs. Regis will 
 ever really treat her badly." 
 
 " It 's wuss sometimes when people don't," said Emery Ann, 
 sententiously. 
 
 One morning, when Mrs. Regis, Gertrude, Margaret, Edith, 
 and I were all together, a talk came up about going to Europe. 
 And that was the beginning though we did not think much of 
 it then of all the talks that have come since, and of the way 
 that it has happened round. 
 
 A family parents and young people had arrived at the 
 hotel, who had just returned from a year's travel. The girls, of 
 course, were all alight about it ; except that I could see that 
 Margaret caught herself up in the midst of some enthusiasm, 
 every now and then, and calmed suddenly down. 
 
 We went over ways and means, and comparative expenses, as 
 people do ; at least Gertrude and Mrs. Regis talked it all over, 
 and Edith chimed in eagerly whenever some special delightful 
 thing was mentioned that one could do so easily on the other 
 side the water. 
 
 " I wish it were possible for me to go again now, for Edith's 
 sake," said Gertrude. " She was such a baby when we went 
 before." 
 
 "Oh, mamma, I was seven, you know, just old enough for 
 me to remember why I long to go again. I think it is nice to 
 have been when you were a child ; you have that dear feeling of 
 old places, besides the beauty of what you did n't see. I want 
 so to get back into those lovely old Boboli gardens ! " 
 
 Mrs. Regis turned to her step-daughter with an air as if some 
 mental suggestion had put weight and purpose into the acci 
 dental talk. 
 
 " Would you like to go to Europe, Margaret ? " 
 
 The girl's face kindled. She could not help that, at the first 
 idea. But she looked up at Mrs. Regis, with that grave, proud 
 expression coming into her eyes, and said, 
 
 " Of course, mamma, I should like it. But it would not be 
 of any use."
 
 STEP-EVERYTHING. 19 
 
 The last words were very deliberate and firm. It was quite 
 uncomfortable ; it was so evident that they meant something 
 beyond the saying. 
 
 Mrs. Regis looked slightly impatient. She turned away 
 again, to Gertrude. 
 
 " Did you tell me it was in Dresden, or in Munich you 
 bought that beautiful copy of Holbein's Infant Christ and the 
 Sick Child ? " she said. And then led the talk round to the last 
 collection exhibited at the Athenaeum, and from that to some 
 body she met there; and then to an approaching wedding in 
 town, and so back, by way of people who were going home to 
 it, to Outledge and the present moment. 
 
 Mrs. Regis not only knew how to change a conversation, but 
 to keep it changed. Not even Edith's second girlish return to 
 the charge, could bring up the subject of foreign affairs again. 
 
 Of course Gertrude knew better than not politely to follow 
 the other lady's evident lead. And there was nothing more said 
 of Europe, and very little happened to introduce me any more 
 to the Regises, for the four days longer that I stayed at Out- 
 ledge. But I thought there would be a continuing sometime. 
 Story writers never invented the trick in the sense of its not 
 having been in the world before of hints and scraps in first 
 chapters that are to " evolve " into middles and ends. It is a 
 higher ahd a deeper thing than that ; and story writers, who 
 put any sane, harmonious sense into their work, know very well 
 that they cannot originate anything. It is just sights and in 
 sights ; combining, and " putting a name to it." 
 
 There may not be any more story, as far as these people are 
 concerned, in all my over-the-water outing with them. We 
 are not bound to remain together ; I would not be bound like 
 that with anybody, in such mere experimental arrangement. 
 We go to England in the same ship ; we are all to spend 
 the summer in Switzerland; our plans may fall in, and out, 
 and in again, " sitting by the spring ; " they say you can't 
 lose anybody in Europe. Or they may fall out altogether. 
 Any way, you have got now, all that I have. Anybody might 
 have it, who was of the party ; it is nothing contraband. And 
 you, Rose, are of the party.
 
 20 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PACKING AND POCKETS. 
 
 .... IT seems just as queer to me now, that I should really 
 be going abroad, as it did years ago, when Eliphalet gave me 
 that sudden invitation, and I anticipated it for a fortnight and 
 then broke my leg and stayed at home. 
 
 What a blessed break and pain that was! If I had gone 
 then, I should never have seen my dear little mother again, on 
 this side of the great deep ! 
 
 Now, everybody was surprised that I, so suddenly, took it 
 into my own head to go. Nobody knew that Doctor Deane 
 had told Emery Ann that she ought to leave off housework for 
 a while, and have a change. 
 
 " If she were a rich woman," he said to me, " and educated 
 to enjoy it, I should order her off to Europe.' It is hard to 
 prescribe idleness and change of scene to these quiet, limited 
 people whose little daily industries are all their life." 
 
 Much he knew about it ! Though he is a good doctor, and a 
 good soul, too. There is life of all sorts, everywhere ; and any 
 body can go about the world and pick up what belongs to them. 
 Perhaps the quiet, limited people are most sure what does be 
 long when they come to it. 
 
 Emery Ann likes to sit, with her knitting, in the front 
 windows, of an afternoon, and " see the passing." That is ex 
 actly what I mean she shall do now. It is to be a long after 
 noon, and the "passing" is to be great waves and grand hori 
 zons, strange people, mountain-peaks, queer little foreign towns 
 and villages, splendid cities, beautiful pictures ; a whole hemi 
 sphere of panorama, out of which she shall take what is her 
 own. And the comfort is, that I don't believe either of us will
 
 PACKING AND POCKETS. 21 
 
 make pretense of appropriating what is not ours. That is the 
 pettiest kind of petty larceny. 
 
 Gertrude begged me, at once, to go with the Regises, and 
 take Edith in my own charge. She had never been more thau 
 half content with the plan of letting her go with her " step- 
 cousin ; " and yet she had not said a final " No " to it. My un 
 expected determination was a " perfect providence." 
 
 Edith is just a little delicate in health, since she left school, 
 which she has done early. The doctor has forbidden her par 
 ties and gay watering places, but advises change and amuse 
 ment. Here is a need, again, that going to Europe exactly 
 meets. What a wonderful thing it is that the descendants of 
 the people who came across the water two hundred and fifty 
 years ago, for a refuge from the oppressions and tyrannous 
 customs of life, should be drifting back again now, as the only 
 escape, in one way or another, from the penalties and weari 
 nesses of our own civilization ! 
 
 Yet, I don't quite believe and I say it beforehand in the 
 " rest " of Europe that everybody promises you. I think I 
 know how it will be ; with the cares of travel, and the different 
 management, and the unintelligible speech, and the strange 
 money, and the continual reckoning up of things to be done and 
 weeks to do them in, probable expenses, and balance of credits, 
 I fancy it will still be a " rest that remaineth ; " and that we 
 shall begin to get it just about as we come to the end of all the 
 fine sights according to Baedeker, and the pounds sterling in 
 our banking account. Well, it will be something to look for 
 ward to, the looking back upon it as accomplished. It is the 
 " toeing off" that is the satisfaction, after all, even whilst you 
 knit the stocking. 
 
 Gertrude thought I might do as well without Emery Ann. 
 
 " A foreign maid," she said, " who knew the language, or a 
 courier, would not cost so much, and would be far more ser 
 viceable. Still, no doubt it would be a great comfort to feel 
 that she was with me, especially if I should be sick or any 
 thing." 
 
 I told her that but for Emery Ann, I certainly should not
 
 22 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 undertake to go at all. And she did not know the reason ; and 
 nobody does, but you and Doctor Deane. Not even Emery Ann 
 herself. She thinks, what is also very true, that I will not let 
 her work any more, and that I cannot keep house without her, 
 and that neither she nor I could bear to let an Irish girl loose in 
 that bright little home-kitchen, to have her way among the 
 tins and coppers. So that it only remains for us, like other 
 people, to betake ourselves across the water for a while, to 
 the Great Foreign Refuge for discouraged and disgusted Amer 
 icans. 
 
 As to the kitchen, Gertrude is to bring her own furnish 
 ings. She prefers it ; and the stove is to be put in the great 
 " shed-room " for the summer. Her kitchen must be kept off a 
 little; ours will be an ante -room between it and the parlors, 
 and her servants will have it for a sitting-room when their work 
 is done. They are nice sort of women, too, considering ; else I 
 don't think I could have planned it so. 
 
 Doctor Deane tried to compliment me one day, and I rather 
 snubbed him. " I think I could not order many mistresses to 
 Europe," he said, " for the health of their maids." 
 
 " Doctor Deane ! " said I, " if you ordered me a sea- voyage 
 to save me the use of my right hand, don't you think I should 
 take it ? " 
 
 And I think he saw that that was simply the common sense 
 of it. 
 
 There has been much continual question, all along, of what 
 to pack to go, and what to pack to leave ; what to get new now, 
 and what to buy abroad ; what to wear at sea, and what to 
 throw overboard before we land. 
 
 " It will do to put through the port-holes," says Emery Ann 
 to half the old things in wardrobe and bureau. She has got the 
 word, and the idea, all but what the port-holes actually are. 
 Very likely she thinks they are in the bottom of the ship. 
 
 " I don't think we can change our clothing more than ten 
 
 o o 
 
 times in as many days," I said to her at last ; and after that she 
 laid aside less for the port-holes. 
 
 Another perplexity has been the sea-pockets.
 
 PACKING AND POCKETS. 23 
 
 Mrs. Shreve had made me one, and Seelie Rubb had made 
 another, and just at last there have come two more, from the 
 doctor's daughter and the minister's wife. One has a place for 
 slippers, and another two nice little square places for bottles 
 fitted in ; and one has an oiled silk sponge-bag, and one a beauti 
 ful deep catch-all at the bottom. We don't know which we had 
 better have handiest, and we never shall keep the run of things 
 if we try to use them all. I have packed them over and over 
 again, to see ; and I can't remember a minute where I put the 
 hair-pins, and where the pin-cushion ; in which was the little 
 spring flask for cologne, and the salts-bottle, and the fan; or 
 whether the aconite and nux vomica vials were in the one that 
 was to go over the washstand or in the. berth. I didn't know 
 where things had better go. I was sure we should want them 
 all everywhere ; and that there would be vast and impassable 
 spaces in those little eight feet square state-rooms, as soon as we 
 began to be miserable. I was seasick once, going down to Port 
 land ; and I could n't get a clean pocket-handkerchief out of my 
 hand-bag, that was hung up in the farther corner, just beyond 
 arm's-length, all night long. 
 
 As to my keys, and my eye-glasses, and my little sea-purse 
 with shillings and half-crowns in it, I mislaid them altogether, 
 half a dozen times, and grew quite hopeless about them, putting 
 them into safe and convenient places. In the end, I think 
 everything will settle into the big catch-all, as the sea itself 
 finds its level ; and I have made up my mind that that (you 
 won't think I mean the sea) shall at any rate be tacked up 
 in my berth. 
 
 Eliphalet has ordered a box of Weld Farm cider for us, and 
 Mrs. Deane has brought me pretty nearly a peck of popped 
 corn in a pillow-case ! The Doctor laughed at her, she said ; 
 but she did n't care ; " somebody who had been " had told her it 
 was the best thing in the world to eat at sea. It makes a huge 
 brown paper parcel in its final wrapping ; but what will any 
 body think it is who seizes hold of it, as they all will, the first 
 thing, to relieve me ; while I shall lug unnoticed, the little 
 casket, heavy with books and bottles ? Is n't it much the
 
 24 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 sort of helping we are apt to get with our life-hurdens ? So 
 that people whose few grains of trouble are all popped, make 
 pathetic show with them, and get them taken off their hands 
 directly, while some of us struggle on as we may with little 
 visible lead weights that strain hard and sore upon the heart- 
 strength ?
 
 SHIP-RIGGING. 25 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SHIP-RIGGING. 
 
 .... I DARE say you are quite right in prophesying that 
 1 cannot be so minute in everything for a whole year of going 
 and doing, as I am now in these little breathing spaces of rest 
 and looking forward, with all that relates to the year's plan and 
 expectation, so fresh and minute in its interest for myself. But 
 you need not bid me " drop the letter-writing just whenever 
 and wherever it grows to be a tax." All my hiving-up of what 
 I am to gather is to be with you, Rose. It is good to have a 
 savings-bank to put your pennies in. " When a-twister a-twisting 
 would twist him a twist," some one at the home end must hold 
 to the twist ! It was to have been the dear little mother ; but 
 she holds the other home-end for me now ! It is the self-same 
 thread that reaches on toward her, and as it twists it shortens, 
 and I feel her fingers drawing at the line ! 
 
 There is something in this going over to the " other side," 
 which I look to for a great comfort. 
 
 I shall know that there is another side. 
 
 The ocean and the Alps are really there. I shall find it out 
 as all the maps and the descriptions have never shown it to me. 
 
 We think about the things in this world that we have never 
 seen, much as we believe in the things of the other world. We 
 do not doubt ; they have a place in, and qualify, all our thoughts 
 and notions ; we know they work into our life ; but they are 
 not great, present facts to us. They do not palpably seem. 
 
 I am going, now, into those actual presences. I shall learn 
 how real they are. I shall know, I think, better than I have 
 ever known, how real the things may be that lie upon that 
 other side, to which men cross but once, and come not back, nor
 
 26 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 send to us, with stories of their travel. I shall be able to think 
 that life and love, like the planet, are round ; and that though 
 we lose out of our little horizon, nothing that holds to them by 
 the eternal gravitation ever falls away. 
 
 It is good for me to write to you, my Rose-Noble. There is 
 twice doing in it. The thought and the telling that go west, go 
 east also, toward that " heavenly quarter " where some have 
 said God's presence shines like a sun above the angelic faces ! 
 And, oh, it is manifold with meaning ! I shall feel, too, how 
 certain it must be, after all, that from out that heavenly morn 
 ing, sweet words and breaths are sent back into our waiting 
 twilights, writings are made in our hearts of the blessed 
 things that they walk in the midst of, in that near, fair, Other 
 Side! 
 
 I shall be getting messages ; it is greatly what I have in my 
 thought and hope in going. When I stand in wonderful places, 
 where the rocky spires shoot up into the blue, and the white gla 
 ciers come down in awful splendor, I shall reach farther, I think, 
 and touch nearer, to the glories and marvels among which she is 
 moving, and which she longs and tries to share with me, 
 through these, that are of the same. 
 
 There is no gift or greatness of experience that ever descends 
 upon me, that does not seem to come by her. Not the less, or 
 even the less directly from the Father of lights ; because I think, 
 gladly, how "He maketh his angels, spirits; his ministers, a 
 flame of fire." What can that mean, said of Him whose is the 
 Holy Spirit, and whose thoughts toward us are angels, who 
 is himself the central sun of being, except that the very heart- 
 pulses out of the fire of his love are living flames, hearts also, 
 and that loving hands are bearers of the bread with which He 
 feeds us out of heaven ? 
 
 The breaking of the bread, Rose! The sharing! It was in 
 this that the Lord was made known to them. The morsels 
 blessed and given to her above that she reaches down to me, 
 I will break again with you ; and so, across deeps and deeps, we 
 will all take together of the communion. 
 
 The two young girls have been so glad and busy together. 
 For Mrs. Regis and Margaret are staying at Eliphalet's, now.
 
 SHIP-RIGGING. 27 
 
 It has been so important what they should have for their ship- 
 dresses, and then to travel in afterward. I was there one day, 
 when Edith came up from Winter Street with patterns. There 
 was no camel's hair to be got in the right shade, the one she 
 had set her heart upon. But this, in the newer stuff " West- 
 End frieze " was almost exactly like, and the shopman said 
 " camel's hair was rather going by, there were so many imita 
 tions ; it was better style to wear the frieze." 
 
 " West-End freeze, now, is it ? " said Eliphalet, who pretends 
 to laugh, but whom nothing escapes in his girl's equipment and 
 appearance. " Have it, by all means ; only next week it will 
 probably be South-End thaw, and then what will you do ? 
 That 's the Boston climate, Pashie ! " 
 
 But the child has got a pretty suit, and if anybody is pretty 
 on a sea voyage, she will be. The rough, russet-colored stuff, 
 with its big polished-wood buttons, looks so comfortable and 
 jaunty and ship-shape, and the loose, large hood with its silk 
 lining of the same color, makes her look like a brown gypsy or a 
 brown nun, I don't know which. She has a brown leather belt 
 and reticule, and a brown veil and a sealskin -jacket, and a beau 
 tiful brown-shaded lap-rug. 
 
 Margaret's dress is black, with a scarlet hood-lining, and her 
 rug is in scarlet and black stripes ; and Mrs. Regis has given 
 her a tiny scarlet belt-bag, with black clasps. 
 
 " Don't be too kind to me, mamma," she said, when she 
 took it. 
 
 She never says " mamma " unless, for the moment, she feels 
 it. I have found that out. And I never saw a creature who 
 felt a kindness quicker. 
 
 What will they all say when they see Emery Ann's " pump 
 kin hood ? " 
 
 "I know what you want, out in a high wind," she says to 
 me ; " and there 's nothing like a punkin." 
 
 It has five double runnings, and five fat rolls between, and 
 five bows, one behind another, and a half-ellipse crown-piece flat 
 against the back of her head, and it is made of green-figured 
 brocade, fifty years old. And she has got a yard and a quarter 
 of green barege for a veil or a necktie, as may happen. It had
 
 28 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 not occurred to me, until she produced it, that you never do see 
 green barege veils nowadays. I think she could not have 
 bought it new ; it must have been laid away among her stores, 
 with the brocade. But I did not ask her. If ever I make a 
 suggestion to Emery Ann about her dress, it must be before 
 hand of her preparations. And, indeed, it is the nicest way 
 with everybody. 
 
 I have a deck-dress, too, a warm, fur-lined silk sacque, and a 
 velvet hood with a violet lining. But I have a berth-day dress, 
 and I am afraid most of my days on board will be berth- 
 days, a long gray flannel wrapper, and the little purple and 
 white knit head-gear you sent me, and it is of them I think with 
 the firmest satisfaction and reliance. 
 
 I believe the ship-rigging is complete. I think, as far as we 
 are concerned, the Nova Zembla is ready for sea. 
 
 A note came two days ago from Mrs. Regis, with " V. R." in 
 the corner, like a royal missive, telling me to be sure and have 
 a sea-chair, and an India-rubber hot-water bag ; by which I 
 knew that she would have her own, and that nobody near her 
 must look uncomfortable. So I ordered the sea-chair, with 
 " P. S." painted on the back, as was suitable for the last thing 
 thought of. But I have motherdie's dear little tin foot-warmer, 
 which is better than any bag, and warms heart and feet both, 
 being a little piece of the very home-corner of home that I can 
 take all over the world with me. 
 
 How can people help loving things, when they are all full of 
 life magnetism, that even a finger-touch gets the thrill of? 
 Eliphalet says, " Don't cumber yourself with holding on to all 
 the traps you Ve ever ' got attached to.' The longer you keep 
 them, the harder it will be to let them go, and they keep accu 
 mulating all the time. You can't carry anything out of the 
 world, and you can't carry round much in it. I always get rid 
 of old relics." 
 
 " You '11 be an old relic yourself, pretty soon, papa," said 
 queer little Jeannie, who stood behind him, smoothing and play 
 ing with the hair that begins to shine with white.
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 29 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 
 
 .... WE were notified to be at East Boston Wharf at nine 
 o'clock on Tuesday. So we were up at five, and ate our break 
 fast together, Emery Ann and I, without saying much. Our 
 silence said, " It is the last time." 
 
 I drank my coffee out of mother's brown-sprigged china cup, 
 and then washed it, and put it away in cotton-wool wrappings, 
 in the little old cabinet where I keep " relics," and of which the 
 key goes with me on the ribbon round my neck, with mother's 
 ring and picture. Mrs. Shreve is to take the cabinet to her 
 house, when Eliphalet's folks leave for the city in the fall. 
 
 I wonder if I shall ever take out the sprigged tea-cup again, 
 and drink from it ? If I do not, it will be that I drink, instead, 
 from the cup filled with the wine that shall be new in the King 
 dom. So I trust, and so I have said to myself, when I have 
 waked in the night, with that strange, startled feeling of what is 
 before me, and the wonder that I never knew all my life before 
 what the blessing was of sleeping quietly in the bed where I 
 have slept since I was a child, beside which prayers seem to 
 have less far to go to God, in the safety of the old home, 
 where rain or sun might wake me to equally sure comfort 
 in the morning, with immovable timbers and solid earth, like 
 Almighty strength, beneath me, and so, not a fear in my heart. 
 
 So ? It ought not to be so ; though we must thank God for 
 the peaceful environment. For the unresting floods move by 
 Him, also ; the sea is his, and He made it. 
 
 It is like the moon-picture ; the fluid weight, the floating 
 rest. I will think of that. I will seem to myself more in his 
 hand than ever, when I drift in that immensity where power is
 
 30 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 almost tangible, and I can feel the liftings and fallings with 
 which, as if I were a child in arms, He tends me. If I go down 
 to the depths, He will go with me, and instantly I shall be at 
 the Land whither I went, with the face I waited for shining 
 suddenly upon me. 
 
 What if He say to me, " Thou shalt not cross this Jordan ? " 
 It will be that He shall bear me over into the other Canaan, 
 and unto the better promise. 
 
 We got into a hurry, in that last hour, notwithstanding all 
 the thoroughness of our preparation. Emery Ann's leather 
 trunk would n't shut down and hasp, and I had to go half way 
 to the bottom of the one I had marked for -the hold, to get 
 out some writing-paper to use on shipboard. Then, at the last 
 minute, the front-door key, that had never been on the outside 
 of the lock for years before, would not turn ; and everything 
 else was bolted and barred, and I was to take this key in to 
 Eliphalet. 
 
 " Things make me madder than people, I do testify," said 
 Emery Ann, as she struggled with it. " Things do act like 
 creation, sometimes." 
 
 " They act as if they knew" I said, thinking of the cor 
 respondence, and that to lock ourselves out of the old home 
 could n't and should n't be done in the turn of a finger. The 
 little practical hindrance and bother saved us, after all, from 
 some of the hardness and suddenness of the turning away. 
 
 We had to drive round by Mrs. Shreve's, and give her the 
 key, and tell her that we had left the door unfastened, and that 
 she must see to it and have it fixed, and keep the key for Eliph 
 alet. 
 
 " And don't let me forget to tell him, Emery Ann," I said. 
 
 " Don't put it on to me," said that good soul, imperatively. 
 "There aint no 'M' to the beginning of my name, and never 
 was. And what I used to remember at all by, I 'm all unhitched 
 from now ! " 
 
 One way and another, we had lost a full half hour. Elipha 
 let and Edith and Gertrude had crossed the ferry two trips 
 before us, and had begun to watch anxiously, when we drove in 
 at last under the long, open shed, full of groups of passengers
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 31 
 
 and their friends, and piles of luggage, with a line of carriages 
 moving in and out through the midst. 
 
 It had seemed so queer, riding through Boston, seeing the 
 stores just open, as usual, where we had done busy shopping 
 within the last few weeks, and at whose counters we should not 
 stand again for such a strange, long time, yet where the buy 
 ing and selling and crowding and parceling and callings of 
 " Cash ! " and weary waitings for change would be going on 
 daily just the same ; the horse-cars that we had dodged and 
 signaled around that frantic Boylston Street corner, where they 
 come from every way and go so many that you are half sure 
 to take the wrong one and get whisked back through Temple 
 Place again ; the boys selling morning papers ; Park Street 
 Church, and dear King's Chapel, and the Museum, where we had 
 been with Gertrude and the children to see Warren in the 
 " Overland Route ; " all moving swiftly back and vanishing be 
 hind us, as pretty soon the continent the holding of all our 
 life would do. 
 
 " It seems as if everybody was done with it, and it was going 
 to be sunk, don't it?" said Emery Ann. She always hits the 
 nail of my thoughts on the head with her short-handled little 
 hammer. 
 
 And here I must assure you, Rose, that when downright 
 earnest does not demand it, and when outside surrounding puts 
 her at a longer range of ceremony, she has a longer handle for 
 the conversation, and can give gentler taps ; even, if she chose, 
 the little, delicate, polite ones, like other people's, that don't 
 drive anything ; though unless speech be directly required of 
 her, I think she chooses rather the simple sublimity of silence. 
 So that I have no uneasiness as to her being misunderstood, 
 I certainly do not care for her committal of myself, among 
 any persons, of reasonable apprehension, with whom we may 
 be thrown. She can restrain her negatives, and forego con 
 tractions, and even take the trouble of final g's. But what if 
 she does n*t ? When she lightens herself of impedimenta, it is 
 apt to be that she may march down upon something; and her 
 batteries of common sense are shotted with forceful dialect, as 
 cannon are made emphatic with canister.
 
 32 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 We found our party sitting about on their boxes, near one of 
 the great doors which opened out on to the wharf. A man was 
 going round with a paste-pot and labels, putting printed papers 
 on all the pieces of luggage, " HOLD," or " STATE-ROOM," 
 in big letters. When we got all our things together, the names 
 and letters made curiously funny contrasts and unexpectedly 
 imposing conjunctions. 
 
 There was " Stuart Regis, U. S. Army," on one piece ; 
 " V. R." on another, to which the paste-pot man was just affix 
 ing the appropriate ticket, "STATE-ROOM"; "Strong," on a 
 zinc-covered box that looked ominous of treasure ; and here 
 came " Tudor," on Emery Ann's new square trunk, to antag 
 onize the " Stuart " and complete the royal group. " E. A. T." 
 in close-printed brass letters was on the end of the little, old- 
 fashioned, knapsack-shaped leather one ; and " P. S." was con 
 spicuous on the box that tumbled up last, in such a hurry. 
 
 The girls read them off, and laughed about them. I told of 
 a lady, whom I recollected, who used to travel with a great 
 black " Saratoga" marked in white letters, " C. A. T.," and the 
 porters used to call it the " black cat," with a perfect participle 
 before the adjective of color. 
 
 With these trifles we passed away the minutes that, however 
 precious, one never knows what to do with, the last before 
 the actual and long " good-by." 
 
 Gertrude sat beside Edith, on the " Strong " box, the girl's 
 hand held fast in her own ; Eliphalet moved about, here and 
 there, never far off, and pausing close, first to one, then the other, 
 of us two, who were the whole ship's company to him ; several 
 of Mrs. Regis's friends had come over to " see her off," and she 
 stood, with her hands full of flowers, chatting pleasantly with 
 them. A young man in the nicest of gray morning suits, with 
 a white carnation in his button-hole, had found his way to Mar 
 garet Regis, and she, too, held a fresh bouquet, shyly, as if it 
 had a meaning in it. A stylishly dressed girl was talking and 
 laughing with them both, and called the young man " Harry." 
 I noticed that Mrs. Regis occupied herself with her own group 
 in rather a marked way, and that she and her step- daughter 
 seemed to have quite separate leave-takings.
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 33 
 
 Is this breach of tacit confidence, I wonder, Rose-Noble? 
 I don't think I can help it, if you are, as we agreed, to go with 
 me, and have all my insights. What are statues, and pictures, 
 and steeples, or even mountains and ice-torrents and cascades 
 of cloud, compared to the human life beside us, to which the 
 keys of our own heart-hidings let us in ? 
 
 There was talk about the " tug," and "going down." There 
 was a new rule about it, it seemed ; the company had found 
 that every passenger had a party, and that it would soon require 
 a squadron to escort Her Majesty's mail packet down Boston 
 harbor ; so, ostensibly, there were to be no permissions, yet it 
 was very well known that the tug would bring back as many as 
 she could well accommodate. 
 
 " Of cou-rse, one could ma-nage it," said " Harry," with the 
 indescribable English repose of lengthened syllables by way of 
 emphasis, and the rising inflection at the end of his sentence, 
 which have got to be " the thing." " But it 's hardly worth 
 whi-le. They '11 want a little time to themse-lves, I fancy, be 
 fore the pitching begi-ns ; and you 'd be dead su-re to be si-ck, 
 Flora ! " 
 
 Margaret had turned a little aside while he was speaking, to 
 answer an official who asked some question about valises for 
 the state-rooms, and then she walked a step farther toward the 
 doorway, and looked out I thought, to see if there was any 
 movement toward getting on board. It was only a step, not 
 out of hearing or conversation, and Harry, without a notice 
 able pause, referred to her in the same quiet and very gentle 
 manly tone, " Don't you think so, Margaret?" 
 
 He called her " Margaret," then. 
 
 " I ? " said Margaret, as if first noticing. " About going 
 down, oh, yes, I always think that is nonsense. People must 
 turn back, sometime." 
 
 But there was a faint quality in her tone, that to me who had 
 caught the meanings in tones for forty-eight years, sounded as if 
 people might wish to go as far as they could, whether they did 
 it or not. I do not think Harry observed it at all, and possibly 
 she did not herself analyze it. And then it occurred to me that 
 here were two young persons, between whose thoughts, perhaps, 
 a
 
 34 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 there ought to be some delicate echo that was not ; and that 
 one of the two just faintly missed it. 
 
 Maybe you will tell me that I was in a great hurry with my 
 insights, but I could not help them. They will come. I will 
 try and not let them do any mischief. As Emery Ann said 
 once, about thoughts : " You can't hinder 'em, any more than 
 you can the birds that fly in the air ; but you need n't let 'em 
 light and make a nest in your hair." 
 
 The great bustle, that we had waited for as if it were not com 
 ing, began all at once. There had been some change of pro 
 gramme. The steamer had been hauled round to another wharf, 
 and it seemed a few persons had had the sagacity to discover it in 
 time, and to drive around and go on board there. We had seen a 
 carriage, in which was a well-known prima-donna, drive up near 
 us and go away again after the lady had exchanged a sentence or 
 two with a friend, and we thought she had only come to take leave 
 of some one. But we saw her name, now, on two large boxes, 
 and were told that she was to be of our ship's company. There 
 were two tugs puffing off steam at the pier side, and one was 
 being heaped rapidly with luggage. Toward the other, across 
 an intervening vessel, a stream of passengers was moving, and 
 the word was passed suddenly along. Our moment had really 
 come. 
 
 Gertrude held Edith in one hard, close grasp in her arms, and 
 let her go. Eliphalet kissed her, and shook my hands strenu 
 ously. He does not kiss much ; and perhaps I did not look as 
 if I expected it ; we have been grown up and quiet so long ; 
 but I know, at any rate, that we kissed one another in our 
 hearts, if we did not in the sight of the crowd. 
 
 " Good-bye, Pashie ; take care of yourself! " 
 
 And we were on the plank, and then in the crowded little 
 boat, whose hot deck gave hardly standing room ; and they were 
 on the wharf, with their carriage waiting behind them. 
 
 A little wave of hand and handkerchief, a few more move 
 ments in the crowd around us and around them, and that was 
 the last. I knew Eliphalet would hurry Gertrude home, and I 
 turned round and talked fast to Edith, who was pushed up 
 against a capstan, or something, and made her sit upon it, and
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 35 
 
 put her feet on my traveling basket, while I settled down on a 
 coil of rope. " Take care of yourself ! " I was sure of all that 
 Eliphalet felt and meant ; but I thought over that queer mod 
 ern phrase of farewell, which takes the place of the solemn old 
 prayerful blessing. It is like all the other outsides we stop in, 
 nowadays ; shrinking from sounding deep. Nothing goes into 
 word, that is not tangible and practicable. Common speech is 
 full of straws that tell the way of the world in the world's think 
 ings. I wonder if we shall ever come to " Bye, bye ! Look 
 out for your atoms ! " 
 
 Was n't it queer that I caught myself fancying that, in the 
 midst of my real heart-parting ? If I had been writing a com 
 mon, conventional letter, I should not have put it in. Per 
 haps I should not have remembered it. I should only have 
 recalled the general mood, natural and of course, and have 
 credited myself with nothing but the inevitable sentiment of 
 the occasion. 
 
 Are they deep down and significant, or do they only float over 
 depths with which they have nothing to do, these odd per 
 ceptions and suggestions that come to us at the flood-tides of 
 experience ? 
 
 I did not see how Margaret and the Mackenzies I heard 
 some one speak of that young girl as " Flora Mackenzie " 
 parted. I was not looking. I am not always looking out or 
 in. 
 
 I thought something, of constraint, weariness, pain, whatever 
 it might be, had lifted from Margaret's face, as the boat moved 
 off. The prolonging of feeling that belongs to an unavoidable 
 moment is a weariness. She sat down low upon her shawl-bag, 
 and the people about her closed her in. She got up, once, as we 
 rounded the pier end, when somebody said, " There they are." 
 She waved her handkerchief, as if in case it might be seen, and 
 then her eyes seemed to search the crowd uncertainly. I do not 
 know whether she discovered her friends' faces or not. 
 
 " What is the use ? " she said, as she met my look and sat 
 down again. " We may as well begin our year's parenthesis." 
 
 It was a curious expression, was it not, for a young girl, out 
 of whose life a whole year roust seem so much?
 
 36 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 I saw that Mrs. Regis heard it, and took some meaning from 
 it. But a life parenthesis may include more than it interrupts. 
 
 Nova Zembla ! 
 
 We felt it more like Tartarus, as we climbed on board. 
 The July heat that had steamed us, like potted pigeons, on the 
 deck of the crowded tug, was blazing in the air, and reflected 
 from the white-scoured planks, and the flashing brass of capstan, 
 and compass, and belaying-pins. We cast a longing glance at 
 the seats under the protecting awning ; but we had to dive 
 down the companion-way, as soon as we could find it, and rush 
 about like lost rabbits in a burrow, among the narrow, bewilder 
 ing passages, and from side to side of the vessel, in search of our 
 state-rooms, which we knew so well on the ship's plan, but 
 which seemed all turned round and mixed up now we had got 
 among them. 
 
 Fore was aft, and aft fore ; port and starboard were unknown 
 terms ; and right and left were nowhere. It was all wrong, and 
 nothing left ; there was " a hen in every nest," Emery Ann 
 said ; and every hen had brought a brood with her. But at last 
 we found out where to look for the numbers, and remembered 
 that Emery Ann's and mine were 121-2-3-4 ; the big corner 
 state-room, amidships ; and we flew to the four corners, and dis 
 covered it at the fourth. There had been a crowd there before, 
 or we should have seen our bags and boxes piled up within the 
 doorway. 
 
 The little passage next, from which opened the room that 
 Edith was to share with some other lady, Mrs. Regis and 
 Margaret were quite on the opposite side, with a double row of 
 inside state-rooms between, was filled up by three or four per 
 sons, gentlemen and a lady, who chattered volubly to some one 
 farther in and out of sight. 
 
 Well ! Was this the " big state-room " that we had chosen, 
 and that Mrs. Regis was so glad we had, because she had the 
 mate to it ? It was exactly large enough, in the space between 
 sofa, and washstand, and berths, and the box that must remain 
 just inside the door, for two persons to stand, close together ; I 
 may say, if they affectionately embraced. But there was a
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 37 
 
 sofa ; and in the corner, at its foot, under the port-hole, a square 
 projection that afforded a top like a table. On this we piled 
 bags and baskets, and ranged a few essentials in some order. 
 
 " If they '11 only stay put," said Emery Ann. " But I sup 
 pose they '11 be all upside down, and we too, as soon as we start. 
 
 " Then it won't make much difference as to our mutual rela 
 tions," said Edith, laughing. 
 
 " I presume it won't," said Emery Ann, solemnly. 
 
 We tacked up the " catch-all," and hung two other sea-pock 
 ets on hooks, near the looking-glasses. We lifted one box down 
 from the other, and pushed it close to the foot of the sofa, in 
 front. Now, one person could stand, and one could sit. 
 
 We unrolled our shawl bundles, and took out our hoods. 
 Emery Ann looked with a sudden mistrust at her " punkin." 
 
 " Do you s'pose I shall wear that, Fourth o' July ? I 'm in 
 clined to think I was partially distracted when I made it. 
 
 " The Fourth will find us somewhere off Newfoundland, I 
 imagine," said I ; " with the winds, maybe, coming down from 
 Labrador." 
 
 " Does n't appear likely now, does it ? " And she laid the 
 green pumpkin, which it certainly seemed might ripen in many 
 days of weather like this, up into her berth. 
 
 She had insisted on taking the upper berth. " I was always 
 famous for climbin'," she remarked ; " and you know you 're 
 sure to tumble if you get a chance." 
 
 Meanwhile, poor Edith, who had made another essay toward 
 her own beleaguered quarters, came back, still crowded out. 
 
 I hastened to present myself with her at the entrance to the 
 passage. " This is Number 108, I believe," I remarked, inquir 
 ingly, to a stout personage who stood between the doors. 
 
 " Ah! Is it this lady who has Number 108 ?" the large gen 
 tleman returned, blandly, with a foreign accent. " Allow me to 
 introduce to you, Madame, my wife." 
 
 " Madame, my wife," partly emerged at the word, and Mon 
 sieur, the husband, stood back as flat against the partition as his 
 dimensions would allow, that Edith and she might peep at each 
 other across him. " Madame, my wife," was also very stout. 
 And Madame's boxes and rugs were everywhere. The small
 
 38 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS, 
 
 sofa was occupied with a large, flat piece of luggage, which had 
 refused to go under the berth ; and upon this were a portman 
 teau, shawls, and several bulky parcels. 
 
 " You had better come back with me, Edith," I said, with per 
 haps a slightly severe quietness, " until Madame has had time to 
 arrange her packages." 
 
 " Ah, yes, certainly," said Madame. " They will all go quite 
 well, presently." 
 
 But I had a persuasion in my mind that they would " go quite 
 Well " all across the Atlantic, pretty much as they were, with 
 certain not comforting allowance for the plunging of the ship. 
 It needed only a glance at the expression of things, to see that. 
 Edith brought her little valise into our room, and hung up her 
 hat and put on her Capuchin hood, and said it did not matter ; 
 we would go on deck. She supposed Monsieur at least, would 
 be gone by and by. 
 
 " At all events, we can take you in, or whatever you want to 
 keep here. That was what we took the corner state-room for. 
 you know." And the corner state-room suddenly looked palatial 
 in size, and homely in comfort, after the heaping and confusion 
 in the little den next door. 
 
 " I 'm afraid I shall never get on with Madame, my wife," 
 said Edith, meekly. 
 
 " You shan't, if you don't want to," said Emery Ann, briskly. 
 " I '11 see first how my Yankee will fit on to her French, or 
 whatever it is." 
 
 Mrs. Regis came round now, to see that we had every com 
 fort, to remind us of the things that we should want close at 
 hand, if we were sick, and so forth. 
 
 " You have brandy, of course ? And lemons ? Yes ; and a 
 salt's-bottle ? And there 's your foot-warmer. Quite nice, es 
 pecially for deck. I saw your chair, as we came down, and had 
 it put in a good place, with ours. I 've spoken to the deck- 
 steward, and we shall be all right, I 've no doubt. Will you go 
 up now? Miss Tudor, you will need your hood. You have 
 one ? We shall be in quite another climate within an hour." 
 
 As we went up the stairs she said, " We shall have seats 
 at the first table, at the Captain's end. I have arranged all
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 39 
 
 that. It makes a great difference in the pleasantness of the 
 voyage." 
 
 We were steaming smoothly down the harbor. Somehow, 
 Deer Island and Fort Independence, and Blue Hills and Fort 
 Warren, all looked very different to me from what they ever 
 had done in day's trips down to Hingham in the Rose Stand- 
 ish. They were small landmarks ; they had to do with but 
 one little indentation of a great shore we were leaving for an 
 other ; though the little indentation was the harbor of the Hub, 
 and all the world we had ever known much of lay right around 
 it. Will home, and place, and possession, and history, look 
 that way to us in the hour of setting sail across the Deep whose 
 ships steer only eastward? 
 
 We sat comfortably in our chairs under the awning, Emery 
 Ann had a smaller folding seat, which was all she would have, 
 and made our first observations of our fellow passengers, in 
 general. We could not be quite sure who were to be with us 
 all the way, for the tug was still alongside ; but the ladies who 
 had put by, as we had, high hats and lace veils, and who in 
 hoods and wraps occupied the initialed reclining chairs, were 
 certainly for Liverpool ; and here and there a gentleman not 
 specially attached with the " seeing off" air, to any party, and 
 wearing a felt wideawake, or a sea-cap, might be noted as 
 on the steamer's list. The officers, with their gold bands on 
 sleeves and caps, passed to and fro. I wondered which, of two 
 stout men with fine faces, and exactly similar dress, might be 
 Captain K. 
 
 What a curious life it must be, sailing back and forth, carry 
 ing your little world of human beings with you always, and 
 changing it every time ! Pretty soon, perhaps, these gentle 
 men would begin to get acquainted and make themselves agree 
 able among us all ; and it would always seem to us as if they 
 had been especially and separately our friends, because they had 
 taken us over ; yet in a fortnight they would be turned about 
 again with a fresh fourscore, and we should have been tipped 
 out like any other lading, to find our way whithersoever we 
 had been sent.
 
 40 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Mrs. Regis was just what I might have expected her to be, 
 the most fittingly and harmoniously arranged woman on board. 
 It had occurred to me to wonder what would become of the 
 invariable, immaculate cap that seemed almost like a part of her 
 face ; and what would replace it. 
 
 She was dressed now in a suit of fine English waterproof, of 
 deep, black-purple ; a hood of the same, with black silk lining 
 and tassels hung back upon her shoulders ; and upon her head 
 was a fleecy, knit thing, with one soft, white roll, which gave 
 the customary, and the best possible, framing to her features. 
 I thought, looking at her, of the piquant speech of a whimsical 
 friend of ours, that " a woman ought to be born a widow ; " 
 " perhaps, and fatherless," I had answered at the moment ; and 
 the absurd mot and repartee came back to me more than once 
 afterwards. People are born, in a sense, what they become ; 
 fate is folded up in us ; but nobody can skip over the history 
 into the pose and role it puts them in. 
 
 Am I minute enough ? You charged me to " tell every 
 thing, especially about the voyage," which travel-stories al 
 ways begin with pretty graphically and never keep straight 
 on with. 
 
 I would not write a book of travels for all the world. I do 
 not mean to write travels, even to you. I put down my "out 
 ings " when I stayed at home ; now that I go abroad and about, 
 I shall very likely fall back mostly into my abidings. It is with 
 larger living as with longer living ; it only sets old things at a 
 farther focus, and looks keener into the far off and the gone-by. 
 
 Besides, what after all would my little foot-tracks, or my pen- 
 tracks about them amount to, except that they were mine. You 
 have got it all in books, over and over again ; and it is in pict 
 ures, now, better than in books. I will bring you back photo 
 graphs, Rose, and we will talk over them together ; meanwhile 
 you shall have just the little happenings and thinkings that 
 make the journey mine. If people only told just what was 
 theirs and did not fall into the technical, inventorial gabble 
 which makes you tired and want to shut up the covers ! 
 
 I have sometimes wondered why I can never go all the way 
 with them. It is nice at the first, fresh start; but afterward
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 41 
 
 the spring all fails out of it. The first pages are real, are 
 charming ; then comes the smatter ; strings of names and places 
 hashed up together, with epithets peppered over, a mere 
 warming up of what you have had served so many times be 
 fore, without an additional flavor. A few pages of encyclopae 
 dia and thesaurus are a refreshment after it. 
 
 I think it is because they put down the things they have 
 run about among, instead of those " a part of which they were." 
 It ought to be a record lilfe the holy Acts Luke wrote, of 
 " that which their eyes have seen and their hands have handled, 
 of the word of life." For the word of life is abroad in the 
 world to-day, for them who "go abroad" to find it. 
 
 The best motto for a volume of travels would be, like that of 
 any enterprise based only on real, tangible, safe capital, " Lim 
 ited." But " Limited " to the things of day to day, if there 
 is much life in them, spreads out so ! I must beware of that, 
 and write the word on both sides, if I can. 
 
 The weather was changing before we noticed it. We met an 
 east wind before we got down to the Light, and fog came roll 
 ing up from the Bay. It began to be rough, and the little tug 
 pitched up and down. 
 
 " They '11 have a genuine touch of the sea before they get 
 back," said a passenger. One of the gold-strapped gentlemen 
 was passing by. 
 
 " You do keep some of it on board, after all ; don't you, 
 Captain K. ? " continued the speaker, addressing him, debon 
 airly, and buttoning a large rough coat closer about his throat. 
 
 " Yes ! Which ? " Answered out of the hard, authoritative 
 face a quick voice, that sounded as if it could have fun in it 
 when there was time. 
 
 " Nova Zembla weather." 
 
 " Never sail without it. Keep it for the passengers, though. 
 Don't take the corks out till we get rid of the landsmen. 
 Have that hawser ready for the tug ! " he shouted over the rail, 
 in a quite changed tone, to the men below. And he was off, 
 forward, on his rapid business march. 
 
 The tug came, with dizzy heaving and dipping motion,
 
 42 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 alongside. People crowded over the plankway in the fast de 
 termining rain, happy if they had umbrellas. We had not be 
 gun to feel very much the movement of the large steamer ; but 
 to look at that of the little vessel swaying up and down, and to 
 watch the swelling of the waves, was growing sensibly perilous. 
 We were glad when the tug was loose, and bounded away from 
 the ship's side ; and we were glad, with a little brief and futile 
 gladness, that we were not on board of her. 
 
 When the first dinner-bell soundeTl, just after she had got be 
 yond farewell signals, looks and questions were exchanged with 
 a sudden irresolute timidity. A great many people were not 
 hungry. A good many preferred the evils they had, in the 
 drift of the rain under the dripping awning, to those they knew 
 not of below. 
 
 Those who were going down announced it with a marked 
 jollity of manner, as who should say, " Certainly ; begin as you 
 mean to go on ; we dine regularly, of course." And they 
 walked off with a very great superiority, italicized by the air of 
 making nothing of it. Not yet, at any rate ; that would be too 
 absurd ; we were scarcely well out into the Bay. 
 
 Edith had looked a little pale, a few minutes before, and had 
 risen from her seat and moved quickly and quietly toward the 
 companion-way. I followed her, of course. 
 
 " Are you wanting anything, dear ? " I would not say the 
 word that verifies itself so easily on shipboard. 
 
 " No. Don't say anything. Don't come ! " And she was 
 so peremptory, dear little soul, that I went back, feeling dis 
 tantly conscious, also, that I had n't quite the strength of mind 
 just then to " set an example " judiciously. 
 
 " You will be sure to be ill if you don't eat," said Mrs. Regis 
 to me. " A little bit of beef is the best thing, and they have 
 real English roasts here. You had better come with me." 
 
 "Emery Ann?" I began cautiously. But Emery Ann's 
 face was turned aside, and the " pumpkin " vibrated faintly, but 
 decidedly. The deck steward rushed up. " Will you have 
 anything brought, ma'am miss ? " he asked, glancing with a 
 wise generality from one to another. I suppose he could read 
 faces and the backs of heads, for he rushed away again without 
 an answer.
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 43 
 
 After my piece of beef, nothing happened, that I know of, for 
 half an hour. I am not sure, exactly, where anybody else was 
 during that time, and I found out, or I do on reflection, 
 the depravity of my nature ; for I am tolerably certain I did n't 
 care. I know I had a book in my hand, and a lemon on the 
 table beside me ; and that I was in the little lower ladies' cabin, 
 not far from our state-room ; and that I did not allow myself to 
 suppose it was time to " imagine anything ; " and that I occu 
 pied myself with a diligent and forcible determination that I 
 would n't. This resolution seemed to encounter something be 
 tween my heart and my throat, which it had been summoned 
 like a policeman to take hold of, and it held on, for its own life. 
 
 All at once an evil suggestion came to me that in my state 
 room was the brandy-bottle ; that I had very absurdly forgotten 
 all about it ; and that a teaspoonful after dinner (which I began 
 to remember like a guilty deed) would probably act as a " pre- 
 ventative." I recollect a few steps beyond the cabin door ; a 
 blind stagger along the narrow passage as the ship rolled ; a 
 plunge into the little encumbered square of territory that we 
 called our own ; and a vision of Edith's pale face, with a queer, 
 suffering smile upon it, as she lifted it toward me from over the 
 wash-basin, and sank back upon the sofa. 
 
 Emery Ann was up in her -berth, with her hood on. When 
 I asked her, in a pause of personal relief, if anything was the 
 matter, she replied, very much in her throat and with a sepul 
 chral significance, "I should like to go into a dor mant 
 state ! " 
 
 The stewardess came in, and offered services ; she said it was 
 " reely very rough, and most of the ladies was sick ; " we heard 
 Madame, my wife, in awful spasms on the other side the thin par 
 tition ; the steward came round and lit the candles in the three- 
 cornered glass boxes between the rooms ; the rain, and the 
 tramp, and the voices sounded on into the night, above ; we 
 asked each other no more questions, but suffered manifest des 
 tiny together without words. But I parodied Sir John Moore's 
 burial over and over in my mind as I lay there, and tenderly 
 gazed at poor Edith's head, and bitterly thought of the morrow. 
 How long could we endure it ? And there were to be ten mor 
 rows.
 
 44 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 I thought as I rolled on my narrow bed and crushed down 
 my pitiless pillow, how the rattle and swash would keep on 
 overhead, and we far away on the billow. I fell into a feverish 
 nap at last and began again where I had left off, when I heard 
 the early stir on board, the stewards running up and down 
 the staircase, a clatter of dishes, and voices with a cheerful 
 swagger in them asking about wind and weather and the way 
 we had made in the night. " Lightly they '11 laugh that our 
 spirits are gone, and for our small spunk may upbraid us," I 
 rehearsed, in a helpless, imbecile way ; but little we '11 reck " if 
 they '11 leave us alone, in the beds where our folly has laid us." 
 
 I had just weakly finished that in my mind, when that mar 
 velous woman, Mrs. Pride, whom nature, constitution, and 
 choice had qualified for what one would call the last profession 
 on earth, if it be on earth, came in upon her morning 
 round. 
 
 I looked up at her in awe and wonder, as if she had come on 
 wings. There she stood, serenely poised, with her comfortable 
 bulk, trig in buttoned corsage, linen collar and frilled cap, while 
 I lay collapsed in the wreck of my neat yesterday's toilet, feel 
 ing that as to ever building myself up again into a visible and 
 conventional woman, I might as well try to build a' solar sys 
 tem. 
 
 " A little better, ladies ? Will you have breakfast ? " 
 
 Edith groaned. 
 
 " A few biscuits ? A little beef tea ? An orange ? " 
 
 " Oh, I would like an orange," said the dear child, faintly, as 
 if making the first blind grasp at life again. 
 
 The bedroom steward was passing. 
 
 " Alick ! " called Mrs. Pride, " some oranges here, No. 121, 
 immediate." 
 
 And she had the excellent sense to say no more about it, but 
 to depart herself, and presently fetch back a plate of little 
 " Peek and Freans." If she had said " biscuit " again, I could 
 not have forgiven her ; but when she handed me the crisp little 
 morsels, I looked up with an infantile gratitude and took one. 
 It was a reassurance to find I could nibble, and swallow ; and 
 that nature, after her fierce reversal, seemed timidly inclined to
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 45 
 
 return to first methods, and try whether a soul might not eat, 
 and yet not surely die. 
 
 Then we hailed each other across the gulfs of misery that 
 had separated us. 
 
 " Edie ! are you really a little better ? " I enunciated slowly. 
 
 " Yes, auntie. I think so. But how shall we ever 
 get out of this ? " 
 
 " Emery Ann ! " 
 
 " Present ! " answered a voice from the upper berth, feebly. 
 " But I can't put up my hand." 
 
 I wondered whether she were dreaming herself back thirty 
 years, into the district school at Shetffean. In last extremities 
 we do go back to such far first things. 
 
 " Are you awake ? " 
 
 " I presume so." 
 
 u Have you got some " 
 
 " Don't say it. Yes, I have. It can't -be talked about." And 
 she crunched, gently, but I am sure that it was with all her 
 force, to let me know. 
 
 We smoothed ourselves a little, as we were ; and there we 
 remained. 
 
 All day long we listened to the footfalls and the voices ; the 
 hauling of ropes ; the great pulse of the screw ; the calls of the 
 officers, the whistle of the boatswain, the yo-hoi's of the crew ; 
 to sound of inquiry, or petition, or faint misery, from the open 
 state-rooms ; to the frequent and resonant anguish of Madame, 
 my wife. Night crept on again, and the little glass boxes were 
 illuminated ; the bedroom steward came in and put a front-piece 
 to the sofa, and brought extra pillows ; and Mrs. Pride tucked 
 Edith up more comfortably. And that second night there was 
 leso rolling, and we really slept. 
 
 Shall we ever forget the waking, that third bright morning, 
 when the little round port-hole window was all blue with a 
 clear day, and the vessel lay almost quietly on a calm sea, and 
 sailors' voices were singing with a strange, wild thrill of melody, 
 a kind of song-jargon to which at every other line the burden 
 ^as, " Yea-hey ! Roll the man down ! " ?
 
 46 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 I saw a pair of boots descending in air before me, from above. 
 " I wonder if they 'd roll a woman up ?" said Emery Ann, with 
 resurrection in her tone. " For I 'm going on deck ! " 
 
 " Emery Ann ! " said Edith, with a little gurgle of a laugh, 
 as if she had almost forgotten how, "you would put courage 
 into a caterpillar ! " 
 
 " I did n't mean to say anything till I could," answered the 
 woman whose name is Tudor, and who has a far-away blood- 
 royal in her, I doubt not. 
 
 We had all lain listening, and looking, in the still rapture of 
 a painless waking, and the sweeping in upon us of a new breath 
 of hope, until we brimmed" over in cheerful speech. 
 
 "It must be a glorious morning! If there could be, how long 
 have we been here ? eight days more of woather like this ! " 
 
 I forgot, all at once, how bitterly I had thought of the ten 
 morrows. 
 
 Mrs. Pride appeared as I spoke ; rubbing her hands compla 
 cently, as if she had made the morning ; at least, as if it had 
 been made on board. I noticed afterward the same sort of in 
 nocent assumption in the other ship's people, and in the passen 
 gers, exchanging congratulations. 
 
 My dear Rose ! it was all ours ! 
 
 I have talked before about " being in the middles;" but 
 in the middle of this great, round, blue, heaving, sparkling sea 
 of this over-spanning hemisphere of azure light ! With the 
 wind all in our sails, the fragrance in our nostrils, the greatness 
 and freedom in our pulses as we bounded up and down, the 
 whole space, the whole watery planet for where were the 
 continents ? our own ! 
 
 After Jhe sea-wretchedness, the sea-ecstacy ! Truly, the latter 
 end of Job was blessed beyond his beginning ! 
 
 Mrs. Pride helped us up. We shook and we smoothed ; we 
 bathed, and brushed, and pinned, ourselves and each other, the 
 little that we could ; during the process, we overflowed no more 
 in glee ; it was a struggle. 
 
 But we left that state-room. With the assistance of Alick 
 and Mrs. Pride, and a strange gentleman with the officer's 
 band, into whose arms I fell as I reached the staircase, and who
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 47 
 
 lifted me kindly along in my faint bewilderment to the deck, 
 and put me into a chair, I discovered afterwards that he was 
 the doctor, we were translated from grief to glory ; and that 
 which I have just spoken of was what we found ourselves in 
 the midst of, when our senses gathered themselves again, and 
 we lay among our wraps with our faces heavenward, for 
 heaven was everywhere, as we could have lain forever. 
 
 After the first transport of our own coming up out of the 
 catacombs began to subside into quieted content, we looked 
 round to see who else had risen among the blessed. 
 
 Mrs. Regis was there, had she ever been entombed ? walk 
 ing the deck with Captain K , who came over with her to 
 
 us, presently. 
 
 " Do you know what she says?" he demanded, after the intro 
 duction, with his off-duty, holiday air. " She wishes there were 
 teu-theousand miles between Boston Light and Fastnet Rock." 
 
 " I dare say there are," I replied placidly ; " for I have n't 
 the least idea where Fastnet Rock is." 
 
 " Not know that ! What in the world are you going out for 
 to see ? It 's on the top of the Tower of London, to be sure ; 
 the greatest -eeure-iosity in Europe ! " And he wheeled Mrs. 
 Regis round, laughing, and they walked forward again. 
 
 Some people think Captain K is too ready with his non 
 sense ; but I never saw a man more judicious in applying it, or 
 more kindly quick in perceiving where a little would do good. 
 The same quickness of sight and action goes into his work as a 
 commander. I have known him stop in the middle of a joke, 
 to walk suddenly away with that other face of authority shut 
 ting instantly over his fun, give a rapid order, and come back, 
 relaxing his features as with a sweep of sunshine, and finish the 
 absurdity from where he left it off. He noticed the little chil 
 dren ; he never let an invalid be neglected ; he gave up his own 
 room to a very sick lady, who had an undesirable state-room ; and 
 I think he keeps his nonsense as they do champagne cider, for 
 remedy and resource ; he establishes a way with it that I be 
 lieve he knows would stand him in stead in a time of real, anxious 
 necessity. That is my insight of Captain K ; but many
 
 48 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 people measure him only a half line deep, and find fault that 
 there is nothing profound in him. 
 
 We hardly remembered whether we had eaten or not, we 
 were taking in such direct vitality from sky and sea ; but they 
 brought us some beef-tea, and it tasted delicious. They make 
 wonderful beef-tea on board the Nova Zembla. 
 
 Then we saw ladies sipping lemonade, and we called for 
 some. Food and drink began upon primal conditions, and had 
 the very joy of life in them. We remembered that we could 
 have dinner on deck ; that we need not go down out of that 
 upper radiance all the day long, until the day went ; that we 
 should see the whole, round, vast circle of the sunset glory, and 
 the perfect hemisphere of stars. We did not care how many 
 thousand miles we had to go like that. 
 
 Why, I think the Sea is the greatest and the best of it ! 
 
 Margaret Regis was wrapped up a little way off; we nodded 
 and smiled at each other, but did not dream, yet, of getting 
 nearer. Mrs. Regis's promenade did not continue long ; she 
 understood the brief leisure of the Captain, and she paused and 
 resumed her own seat by her step-daughter's side, after a few 
 more turns, in time not to be deposited. 
 
 A lady sat near them whom I chose at once, from among all 
 those strangers about me, as one whom I should like to come 
 to know better. 
 
 She was of my own age, or more ; she wore a little black silk 
 hood, under which hair of a singular silvered gold came out in 
 gentle waves, fretted into curliness by the sea wind. She had a 
 face of beautiful peace ; one of those faces whose look is like a 
 listening to pleasant whispers. I wondered if it were always 
 so, or whether it was the just coming up, as it was with me. I 
 do not mean that my own face shone ; I don't suppose it could, 
 like that, but it was the self-same shining that I felt upon my 
 heart. 
 
 She seemed to have a party with her, or to have helped make 
 one up. A young lady, with lovely dark eyes, who held a little 
 girl upon her lap ; a tall, noble-looking man, of ripe middle 
 age, accompanied by a bright, handsome boy, who paused now
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTEE: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 49 
 
 and then in his walk to lean over them and speak a few pleasant 
 words (I heard him call the young lady " Faith," and the boy 
 said " Mamma ") ; another gentleman who drew a camp-stool 
 near while I was looking, and whom I had heard addressed as 
 " General." One of the young generals, doubtless, made by the 
 war, it occurred to me to think ; for he could not be many 
 years beyond thirty. Very handsome ; I have hardly ever seen 
 a finer face, or one with more strength in it. 
 
 A few sentences that I caught showed me that they had 
 known each other before, but had found each other out as fel 
 low passengers since they came on board. 
 
 " The drift of life is a wonderful thing, stranger even than 
 ocean currents," said the lady with the silver shine in the golden 
 hair. " I never came on board a steamship, and I have 
 crossed several times, that it was not more or less singularly 
 exemplified. You and I, Mrs. Armstrong, have not met before 
 since we worked together and grew to be friends, in the Sani 
 tary Commission ; and General Rushleigh but then he has 
 been nearly everywhere ! " 
 
 " So it is not strange, perhaps, that I should be here. Cer 
 tainly it is one of the very pleasant things ! " 
 
 " Very certainly," rejoined the lady, with a smile that turned 
 the application back ; but I could see by a kind of rare simple- 
 ness in General Rushleigh's face, that he had only spoken pre 
 cisely as he felt ; and that there was no mere compliment in his 
 word to make him take heed, even now, of its doubleness. 
 
 I noticed Mrs. Regis turn her head slightly, as the name of 
 General Rushleigh had been mentioned. But he sat with his 
 back toward her at the moment. She knew him, very likely, as 
 she seemed to know half the world. I had seen her talking 
 with the Lady of Peace as I christened my elderly friend 
 till I should know her worldly appellation just before he had 
 come up ; and then she had withdrawn into her rugs and had 
 taken up her book. There was no immediate and graceful way 
 of coming out again at once, and Mrs. Regis never did anything 
 that had not graceful relation. But I knew from that one little 
 half turn of her head that she would " take up her connection," 
 first or last, among these others, and that through her, perhaps, 
 4
 
 50 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 during the voyage, our two parties might moie or less approach. 
 I might come to know my Lady of Peace, whose face had so 
 much in it for me. I never thought why was I of so little 
 faith as not to think ? how sure, and near, and even very soon, 
 our knowledge was to be, and what messages and gifts she had 
 for me ! 
 
 I fell a-questioning, faithlessly. I was certain of these faces, 
 these tones ; of the spirit that I felt by intuition, yes, by 
 kinship (for it is not praise of one's self to say that one knows 
 her own needs, and what natures hold the answers and the 
 helps), to be in, and moving between these people. The Spirit 
 that we pray daily to be kept in, all the day long ; near to each 
 other in the Blessed Light, near to the Light itself, that we 
 know by the soul's gladness. " To walk before Thee in the 
 land of the living." I think that asking asks all heaven, and its 
 instant beginning. 
 
 I knew it by the unspoken signs, and by little words I heard 
 that I have not written down. 
 
 Why was I going to Europe with Mrs. Regis ? Why were 
 we to stand together before the high presence of white Alps, 
 and in the awfulness of mountain gorges ? Would there be, 
 anywhere, a common language for us, syllabled or "nnsyllabled, in 
 which we could truly speak to one another ? What identical 
 word was coming to us, at this moment, from this great sur 
 rounding of the sea and air, this clear antiphony of the two 
 blue deeps ? 
 
 And we should step on shore from the same deck with such 
 as these, to go our several ways. It almost seemed to me, in my 
 sudden bitterness, as if it would be the parting to the right and 
 to the left. 
 
 I felt as if a whole, large life were spoiled, perhaps, by a mis 
 take that I had made ; a shadow fell upon me of what married 
 pairs may feel sometimes, when the most terrible of all human 
 misgivings rushes down upon their hearts with a darkness. 
 
 I tell you I was faithless, and unjust ; was not the Light 
 shining on us all ? We are only to get close enough, close 
 to where the Light gets, to each other. But it is so much 
 readier, so much more blessedly inevitable, with some !
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 51 
 
 Had I turned away from any leading, or taken any willful way 
 of my own, that I found myself here ? I had not started for 
 'Europe without much weighing and thinking. It had not been 
 easy to leave the dear old grooves of wont and duty, the little 
 plain signals for every-day work that I was happy in ; the places 
 full of sweet sacredness that held me in their own inner atmos 
 phere ; to come out fi*om all into a strange holiday which I 
 almost began to fear and shrink from already, as if I should get 
 adrift in it from my dear, best anchorage, and never find and 
 hold it again as I had held it. Were there things in me 
 foolishnesses, worldlinesses that had even already made their 
 ill response to something like themselves outside of me, and be 
 wildered me out of my simple, safe identity ? In the midst of 
 the real joy of the morning, there were unrealities that I had 
 caught myself troubling about. Perhaps I don't know I 
 may confess them presently. 
 
 I took hold of the only line that ever leads me back from the 
 labyrinths of distrust and self-blame. 
 
 I said, Surely it was right that I should do this very best 
 thing for my dear and faithful Emery Ann ; the thing that she 
 could only get through me. I did not think, now, that it had 
 been too much, uncalled for ; that a summer down in Maine 
 would have done as well. I knew what that would have been. 
 The same old toils, for some one else ; she would " help," 
 wherever she was. I knew I did it to give her a great, free 
 piece of the great, free world, that she had as good a right to as 
 anybody, and that would fit on to her beginnings which had all 
 been so real, better, perhaps, than if they had been the unlived 
 beginnings of books and technical culture. 
 
 I said, that it had been surely right, again, for me to take 
 Edith, and mother her for Gertrude. And these things, follow 
 ing each other, had put me with Mrs. Regis, of all the other 
 possible companions in the world. 
 
 Then it was right. I would wait and see. I got back to 
 my faith by following back my leading. I may have as much 
 errand with these people, with Margaret and her step-mother, 
 who at first would not seem to need me at all, or I them, as 
 ever I had with Seelie Rubb, or the Sunday strays, or the
 
 52 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Shreves. It was a new leaf. I must turn it over, and spell as 
 the letters come. 
 
 But the silliness, Rose, that had come over me in little whiffs, 
 even at my eight-and-forty years! The little, petty, self-silli 
 ness ! Shall I pretend to sound and interpret others, and not 
 sound and confess myself? * 
 
 It had always been so easy, hitherto, to be plain Patience 
 Strong. Growing old, never having been much to anybody, 
 except to the little mother who had been growing old who 
 was now heavenly young before me. Never having been 
 beautiful, or gay, or charming; only a little kind and useful 
 here and there ; never left alone, or dreary, because put in such 
 safe, simple relations, where small kindnesses and uses made 
 friends. Was this just why I was put out here suddenly, to find 
 that even at forty-eight years old I could wish that there were 
 something portable about me, some brightness, some attrac 
 tion, something left of youth, even, that would express me as I 
 felt myself inside, and draw to me a little of that which so many 
 others seemed to have as of course, a mere part of natural 
 living ? 
 
 I had not known, before, my solitariness in the world. I had 
 not understood, years ago, the sudden, little tender pity that 
 came, sometimes, in mother's look at me. I knew what she 
 thought of now ; it came into my own look at myself. Or was 
 it her gentle, wistful watching of me still ? 
 
 Sometimes, Rose, I get tired of wearing this homely old self. 
 I would like to carry some sign of the world-wide beauty that I 
 never did carry. I would like to be in pure, fresh, outward har 
 mony with the lovely morning; a human piece of it; as these 
 girls, whom I love so in their freshness, seem to be. 
 
 I said to Emery Ann, once, that day: u How nice it is to 
 belong to it. To have it in your face, and your hair, and your 
 eyes, and your smile ! " 
 
 She knew what I meant. Some bright young things had 
 just gone by, the wind blowing color upon their cheeks, and the 
 light playing with their loosened locks ; and somebody near had 
 said : " It can't toss them amiss ; it is we old ones must keep 
 tidy!"
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 53 
 
 " Good looks are a snare," said Emery Ann ; " especially to 
 them that have n't got 'em." 
 
 I laughed with amused apprehension ; Emery Ann thought it 
 was at her contradiction. So she went on, as her way is, into 
 more contradiction, and involution of phrase and grammar, say 
 ing the same thing. 
 
 " 'T is so. It don't make any difference what kind you 've 
 got, or whether you have n't got any ; they take your mind up 
 exactly the same ; more, finally. It 's the tidiness that 's the 
 bother ; you can't, half the time ; it 's the tidiness that gets 
 away from you, because there is n't enough to keep tidy with. 
 I 'd just as lief be old, as not ; I 'd as soon be sixty as forty ; but 
 I do grudge coming to pieces in spots ! " 
 
 Even Emery Ann ! Well, I did not laugh this time. It is 
 in us all, the beauty of being, and living, and having, the 
 striving after " tidiness " that is perfect fitness, which we 
 never attain to, or which is just shaped out to be taken away. 
 
 Did I say that to myself? Or did something put the thought 
 so to remind me ? 
 
 " Shaped out to be taken away." 
 
 The words were drawn, by the truth of things, to a real, def 
 inite illustration. I remembered some sentences of Ruskin's 
 that had been curiously beautiful to me, just from the fact they 
 told ; and now the fact interpreted itself. He explains to us 
 how one of the ideas of architecture grew ; from observing the 
 outline left, when the rose or the trefoil, or whatever was first 
 traced for carving, had been cut and taken away. That which 
 was left was as beautiful as the central design ; to appropriate 
 Emery Ann's word, which holds, that way, a great gospel, 
 " more, finally ! " 
 
 So God shapes the flower of beauty in us, and seems perhaps 
 only to reveal its glory by a taking away, withdrawing his 
 thoughts out of the heart of our living. But He sees how 
 fair in the life stands the outline that is left ; how the tender 
 curves bend and cling about an emptiness, and declare in them 
 selves a wonderful, essential grace. He makes that which re 
 mains by the same stroke which separates and removes ; the 
 r ose is always in the midst, a rose of heaven seen through
 
 54 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 the arches where its place was ; and so He chisels and thins 
 and glorifies us, until in the immortal aspects in which we shall 
 stand before Him, only so much of the mere form of being shall 
 remain as shall make it possible for us to hold these thoughts of 
 his with which He has been, by depriving, filling us. 
 
 Emery Ann had not read Ruskin, and I could not tell her a 
 long story out of a book just then. I saved it up for another 
 time. 
 
 But she sat and looked at the waves, with their crisp, white, 
 flashing tops. " Even the water is touched off with bright little 
 curls," she said. 
 
 " Yes," I answered ; " and it comes, and it goes, and nothing 
 stays. But nothing is lost, and . every thing is beautiful in its 
 season." 
 
 " Well, I guess we can stand it, if He can." 
 
 She spoke softly, and I knew she meant just the same thing 
 as if she had said, " "We can wait with God." 
 
 The lady with the gray-gold hair had a book in her lap, and 
 when I looked over at her again she had taken it up, and was 
 reading bits, and then looking off from it, thinking. She said 
 something about it presently, I did not quite catch what, 
 to Mrs. Armstrong. 
 
 " I do not read these modern essays much, or the discussions 
 at all," said the clear, peculiarly feminine voice of the younger 
 woman. " They tire me so. It seems so needless, when we 
 have all the best things sure ; whatever little dusts they may 
 raise with their digging among the atoms." 
 
 "I read them," was the reply. " I am glad of them. They 
 give me keys the writers will not unlock with. How strange it 
 is that they do not know how to put God's alphabet together 
 and see it spell his word ! " 
 
 A third gentleman who had walked up at the moment with 
 Mr. Armstrong, stood by her as she spoke, and caught the 
 saying. 
 
 " They are very honest, Miss Euphrasia. Don't you think so ? 
 They would be glad to see. They stand reverently in their 
 blindness, before closed doors. Perhaps when they do find a way 
 forward, it may lead farther on than men have ever gone before."
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 55 
 
 " But if they were not blind ! The Door that is opened, 
 that they do not see ! " 
 
 " Are there not more doors than one ? Are they not all of 
 the same, Divine, every one, if any ? Why should they not 
 go their way, to open more entrances ? " 
 
 " Ho v can they go without the light ? Is it not the Mar 
 riage, of sign and life, of matter and spirit, to which the 
 five wise entered in, and the five foolish were stayed from in the 
 outer darkness ? " 
 
 " Who shall dare to sentence wise or foolish, in that which 
 none have wholly seen ? " 
 
 " I am only sure of one thing," said Faith Armstrong's gentle 
 voice. " Whether it is in myself, or whether it touches me from 
 above myself, I know what I must believe, what I cannot do 
 without." 
 
 " Pardon me ; but is that argument ? " 
 
 " Is n't it as good argument as their's ? Is n't it a true reach 
 ing, a natural selection ? Why not a law and a growth that 
 proves itself, as much as animal development ? " 
 
 " And the best belief," said General Rushleigh, " Chris 
 tianity ; the ' survival of the fittest.' Is that anything different 
 from the fulfillment of the true, the coming of the Highest ? 
 I wonder if they thought of the etymology," he continued, 
 " when they hit upon that phrase ; or whether they spoke wiser 
 than they knew? ' Fitt,' a song, a harmony; 'Fait,' a 
 a fact, a truth ? " 
 
 Mrs. Armstrong smiled so softly, so brightly, upon the 
 speaker ! And her husband, standing close by, silent, leaving 
 the talk to these women and their insights, smiled upon her. 
 
 " You lay your hand upon the keystone of the arch," said 
 Miss Euphrasia. " The angel that stood with one foot upon the 
 sea and one upon the land, was the living meaning of the Loi-d, 
 joining the tangible with the intangible. If they would only 
 mind, if they would only get at the secret, that they are 
 related ! That they cannot push a research into one without 
 an instant flowing up of the other ! That the very types they are 
 finding are the types God talks by to tell us all ! That there is a 
 natural, because there is a spiritual ; and that the sign, the out-
 
 56 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 come of the one is the truth, the inmost, of the other ! Men have 
 worked two ways, in the world of things and the world of 
 spirit, as if against each other ; but there will come a last 
 stroke, and it seems as if it were very near, when they shall find 
 themselves face to face, and see that it is all one! " 
 
 " They may ' come to know, even in this their day,' " said 
 General Rushleigh. 
 
 Mrs. Armstrong finished it. " ' The things that belong to 
 their peace.'' Is n't that just the relation, Miss Euphrasia ? " 
 
 Her name, then, was " Euphrasia ? " 
 
 Does not that mean, from the Greek syllables, something like 
 " good words ? " I don't know, except from the little prefix, as 
 in " eulogy," " euphony," and the rest ; and from the " phrasis." 
 "When I get at " Worcester " again, I will look it out. You know 
 I believe in christenings ; and, at any rate, I remember the little 
 plant, " eyebright," whose botanical name is " euphrasia." It 
 was believed to clear the sight; and from what can the good 
 words come, but from the clear seeing? From what else do 
 they come, on the lips of this sweet Lady of Peace ? 
 
 We sat late on deck. We dreaded to go down into the 
 burrow. Edith said " we should go right back into yesterday." 
 I did not want to bury Sir John Moore any more. So we saw 
 the stars come out, and the moon rise ; we saw a great ocean 
 space melt into silver under it. The captain had on his watch- 
 coat, and his Scotch cap, and walked up and down with his soul 
 in his ship, and no word any more for anybody. Only two or 
 three beside ourselves lingered ; and we at last outstayed them 
 all. 
 
 Do you know how the moon seems to move along with us 
 overhead, when we travel upon the land ? Fields, and trees, 
 and houses glide by and are gone ; they are things on the earth ; 
 the things set in the heaven are always with us. At sea, there 
 are only the things in the heaven to measure by ; you seem to 
 swing up and down in the same centre of wide waters, to 
 hang in the midst of a forever which is forever Now. 
 
 And the moon keeps with us, closer, also, night by night, be 
 cause we sail eastward, and move always to meet her rising.
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 57 
 
 She is perhaps half an hour later each evening, instead of an 
 hour, as at home. We change our time twenty-five minutes 
 daily ; we go back into time, and live that much over. Has not 
 that, also, to do with the spiritual sun-rising, and the " garden of 
 the Lord eastward in Eden ? " The more we move toward Him, 
 the more our dear past shall live to us, shall be redeemed out 
 of the abyss ? Shall live to be redeemed, some of it, that is not 
 dear, nor tolerable now ; that we wish were different ; that we 
 would deny and change, in our better growth and being, if we 
 could stand in its moments as we are. 
 
 I think if a soul that has repented and turned away, were set 
 back beside its own old wrong, it would feel blessedly its own 
 redemption and forgiven-ness, by the utter unbelonging, and 
 the gracious sorrow that would come upon it, as if it saw that 
 some one dear to it had been misled. We may stand, our own 
 pardoning or condemning angels, in that past which shall be pres 
 ent. Be that as it may, there will be one at whose shining feet 
 we can lay it all down with its tears, and who will speak the 
 " Go in peace " we wait for. 
 
 Will there not be many waiting so ? Will any stand up, 
 sure and strong at once, among the sinless ? Will any have to 
 shrink away before condemning fellow-eyes, when Christ that 
 died and is risen again, sitteth upon that throne of his glory, 
 clothed in a garment down to the foot, that the lowliest may 
 touch the hem of, girt around the breasts with his golden 
 girdle, the faithfulness and righteousness that search out all and 
 make all right, his Face like the sun, and his voice like the 
 eound of many cleansing waters ? 
 
 In His Glory ! When the spheres 
 
 Lighten with that wondrous blaze, 
 How shall all my sins and fears 
 
 Meet thy dawning, Day of Days ? 
 
 "Nothing hid ! " No thought so mean 
 
 That to darkness it may creep ; 
 Very darkness shall be seen, 
 Very death to life shall leap. 
 
 Nothing deep, or far, or old ; 
 
 Nothing left, in years behind ; 
 All the secret self unrolled : 
 
 Light of God ! I would be blind !
 
 58 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Only I shall see a Face, 
 
 In the glory lifted up ; 
 And a Hand the Hand of Grace 
 
 Whose sweet mercy held the Cup. 
 
 And a Voice, I think, -will speak, 
 
 Asking of each sin-defiled, 
 Whom his saving came to seek, 
 
 As a mother asks her child : 
 
 " Wert thou sorry ? " 
 
 " Yea, dear Christ, 
 Sick and sorry I have been ; 
 Wearily thy ways have missed : 
 Wash my feet, and lead me in ! 
 
 " Though in this clear light of thine, 
 Sin and sore must stand revealed, 
 Though no stainless health be mine, 
 Count me, Lord, among the healed ! 
 
 "Not with scribe and pharisee, 
 
 Dare I crave an upmost seat ; 
 Only, Saviour, suffer me 
 
 With the sinners, at thy feet! " 
 
 That little fact of longitude, that I always knew, now that I 
 actuatize it, opens such great gates of gladness ! A little moving 
 dayward, on the earth, and a piece of the inexorable conquered ! 
 Time, that devours, itself is eaten up. 
 
 I do not expect that " time " and " past " are any more at all 
 to them who dwell in the celestial sunrise, what they are to us ; 
 I do not suppose the years we count so sadly have anything 
 more to do with their dear relations to us. Our life is not slow 
 detail, and pain to linger in, as they see it. Neither can they 
 forget ; there are no forgetting spaces. 
 
 I think my motherdie is toward me, just where she was, 
 whatever else is added, at that last dear moment. I do not 
 suppose she says as I do, " It is eight years." She is among 
 the magnitudes and the glories ; where nothing is small or far 
 away, and nothing even the glory close and outshutting. 
 She holds far more, and she measures less. 
 
 The child, at school, lives out a whole existence of play-time 
 and lessons in a single morning. The mother, at home, in her 
 larger thought and work, feels hours as moments, and hardly a
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 59 
 
 breath of distance between the kiss she gave her darling for 
 good-by, and that with which she welcomes her home at the 
 noon-tide. 
 
 " It makes you realize your Geography, does n't it ? " said 
 Emery Ann, suddenly. " ' The earth is a globe, round like a 
 ball, flattened at the poles.' " 
 
 " Oh, Emery Ann ! Your geography did n't say that ! " 
 
 " They said it amongst 'em. I learned it here and there at 
 the beginnings. But you can come out here and see it. ' You 
 realize your geography, and more, finally.' " 
 
 I knew she would sit here, and watch the " passing." It 
 spoke great words to her also. The passing of the planet be 
 neath the stars. 
 
 It was the next day that a little incident happened. There 
 was a crowd of people under the awning, and it somehow seemed 
 to spoil the sea-feeling. 
 
 A great many people, in chairs, talking about just such things 
 as they always did on land, only varied with a little curiosity 
 when the log was being heaved, and the running calculated, or 
 the captain came out with his sextant and measured the sun's 
 altitude at twelve o'clock, hinder one in seeing that beautiful 
 " passing " which I was blessedly content to watch continually. 
 
 Edith and Margaret and I, got our chairs and wraps over at 
 the side, under one of the boats that was laid up on great 
 crotched supports above the deck, and found ourselves delight 
 fully shaded from the sun, and with our own quiet out-look upon 
 the sea. 
 
 How did we get them there, all those heavy things ? Why, 
 you dear little land-bird, or blossom ! that is the beauty of it. 
 You never have anything to lift or to carry, on ship-board ; not 
 even your shawl, if you are caught in the act of picking it up. 
 You have only to stand up, and lay your hand on the heap you 
 have emerged from, it may be with ever so honest an intention 
 of doing for yourself, and straightway everything is grasped, 
 and the folding-seat, clattering at all its joints, laid hold of, and 
 you are asked by some man-kindly voice, " where you will
 
 60 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 have it? " Men certainly fulfill their generic title with a perfect 
 splendor on board the Nova Zembla ! 
 
 It was General Rushleigh who hastened to us when we began 
 our move. It does not need introduction, as it does on shore, 
 for people to speak to each other, or offer little friendly service. 
 "We are all in one boat, and we have a human sense of it. The 
 hour may come when one life or one death may be before us all. 
 Universal relation is condensed into epitome, abstract good 
 will becomes little practical kindness. Or, the other thing 
 may declare itself, as in all days of judgment, and pass visibly 
 over to the left. But one is glad to look about and see how far, 
 after all, the sheep out-number the goats in the dividing. 
 
 General Rushleigh placed the chairs, and helped us spread 
 our shawls, and held them from blowing away while we seated 
 ourselves with our faces waterward ; and then he tucked us up, 
 and rugged us over, and bowed and went away ; leaving us, 
 three beatified mummies, to the long delicious idleness, and the 
 passive reception of the flooding, world-wide joy that surged 
 upon us from bountiful sky and exuberant sea, as we sailed, 
 as we sailed ! 
 
 Rose, if I could give you one live instant of the ineffable 
 pleasure ! 
 
 Emery Ann was packed away between the binnacle and the 
 saloon skylight. 
 
 A few moments later, two ladies came and placed themselves 
 on camp-stools in the little corner by the companion-way, just 
 outside the forward stanchion, or boat-post, behind which we 
 were ; (if I don't name things rightly, I can't be held account 
 able ; I name them for the most part, as Adam did the beasts, 
 intuitively, at sight ;) and, as they settled themselves, began, or 
 continued, a busy chat. 
 
 The wind, that blew their voices right across our hearing, 
 carried our own, or would carry them, if we spoke, pretty, 
 well away from theirs. 
 
 Margaret and I were nearest, with our backs to them ; and 
 as we sat quietly watching the blue rush so close beneath us, we 
 began to catch, presently, scraps of their talk. 
 
 At first, we hardly noticed, and neither understood nor cared ; 
 but, directly, this came :
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. Gl 
 
 " The eldest is exceedingly well married ; and beside her 
 fortune, which was hers by the will upon the wedding-day, I 'm 
 told Mrs. Regis gave her five thousand dollars as a gift outright. 
 Now I say that was pretty well for a step-mother. Indeed, 
 they say she has brought up those two girls splendidly. I 'm 
 not surprised, she was always clever. I remember her as a 
 child, though I have n't known any of them since. She used to 
 play dolls splendidly." 
 
 Margaret laughed low. 
 
 " I 'm glad we do her credit, as dolls," she said to me. 
 " Are people to help themselves, I wonder, tied up under the 
 keel of a boat ? "We can't move, can we ? Or speak, that they 
 would notice ? " 
 
 The lady went on. 
 
 " The younger one, the one who is on board, I believe 
 she 's sick, is rather more of a handful, I fancy, than Helen. 
 My sister had a poor little governess once, who came from the 
 Regises. She was a meek little thing ; she said Margaret was 
 a magnificent child, but she could n't manage her. There was 
 a funny story about her getting her, Margaret getting the 
 governess, I mean, up into the crotch of an apple-tree by 
 some device, and leaving her there, helpless, with her book, 
 while she ran off and took a whole half holiday with kittens, or 
 some such nonsense. Nobody knew what had become of them 
 till the gardener happened to find Miss Lariat up in the tree, 
 and helped her down." 
 
 Margaret had manifested an annoyed and uneasy amusement 
 during this speech. At its first pause, she turned her head 
 upon the chair-back, lifted her face as well as she could toward 
 the speaker, turned up a corner of her Shetland veil, and sent a 
 clear tone across the distracting breeze. 
 
 " I beg your pardon ! I am Margaret Regis, and the wind is 
 this way ! I think there has been a slight variation played some 
 where on that little nursery melody." 
 
 It was perfectly ladylike, and good-humored, but a finality. 
 The ladies laughed, but they must have felt uncomfortable. 
 The speaker made the best of it, and showed society breeding. 
 
 "I quite resign the story to you," she said; "you certainly
 
 62 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 must have the authentic version. Allow me to congratulate 
 you upon being on deck. How lovely it is here, after the first 
 dismality ! " 
 
 " Thank you. We are enjoying it." 
 
 It was a polite, impalpable " leave us alone." Nobody could 
 ever accuse Margaret Regis of rudeness ; yet she was never 
 hampered for a moment by a pretense ; or cornered by an un 
 welcome conventionality. 
 
 " Poor Lucy Lariat ! " she said to me, when the two ladies, 
 finding their immediate occupation gone, had betaken themselves 
 to a promenade. 
 
 " I always told her she was n't made to noose wild colts ! I '11 
 tell you about the apple-tree, Miss Patience. It was an irresisti 
 ble May morning, and it got as much into Lukie's nerves as it 
 did into mine. I could n't study ! At least, not indoors, when 
 my apple-tree for it had a crooked branch, high up, that was 
 my favorite seat was full of pink blossoms, and the birds 
 were building in the marten-boxes close by. I told Lukie that 
 I 'd do the history, at least, I 'd listen to her doing it, for she 
 used to read it to me, if she would come out and let it mix 
 with atmospheric air as stupefying things ought to do. ' I '11 not 
 miss a word,' I told her ; and she knew I always told her true. 
 You see she was only nineteen, herself, to my thirteen, and so 
 she came. She had never lived in the country, and climbed 
 trees, and I had some ado to get her up into the first crotch. 
 And there she stuck, she and Mrs. Markham. She was 
 pretty comfortable, however ; there was n't room for two ; and 
 ' sound ascends,' I told her. ' It 's a great mistake about pulpits, 
 that the preacher has to fire over people's heads ; they don't do 
 that at the opera.' So I hopped up to my perch, and began to 
 keep my promise. 
 
 " How could I help it, Dixon's coming down the plank-walk 
 from the house, with that covered basket ? I knew it was my 
 kittens as soon as I saw it. What did I care for King John and 
 the barons ? What were the liberties of London to me ? The 
 question of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was coming 
 closer, to say nothing of the rights of property. I left Magna 
 Charta where it was and instituted Habeas Corpus then and
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 63 
 
 there. I just dropped straight down through that tree, past 
 Lukie and Mrs. Markham, and the camp at Runnymede, and fell 
 upon poor Dixon like a shaft of lightning. He began to say, 
 * Mrs. Regis thought best, miss,' but I left him finishing his 
 sentence, and before he could have got to the end of it, I had 
 those little cats up-stairs in my room and on the sofa. I kept 
 them there and on the piazza roof a month ; of course they 
 wanted a good deal of petting and pacifying after their kidnap 
 ping; and I did forget Miss Lariat for half an hour; and Dixon 
 had gone off and she had to wait till John Frowe came up. 
 But I know she never told the story as that woman had it. The 
 reason she gave me up was because she sympathized too much 
 with me, and she had a conscience." 
 
 " Mrs. Regis has sent me, ladies, to bring you this basket of 
 grapes," sombody said, just as she stopped speaking. 
 
 Grapes at se'a ! Up went three thick veils, and round came 
 three ecstatic faces. General Rushleigh stood there, very much 
 as if he had been waiting several instants for a pause. Marga 
 ret's color was bright with something, whether with sea air, or 
 her own story, or the consciousness that it had been overheard. 
 General Rushleigh drew up a camp stool, and stooped to come 
 under our retreat. 
 
 " I am also commissioned to ask Miss Regis for a certain key 
 to a square black box, that I may fetch a little chessboard. In 
 half an hour, Mrs. Regis is to give me a ' tour.' Meanwhile, 
 may we not make ourselves known to each other ? I am Paul 
 Rushleigh." 
 
 " I think we do not need to be told who General Rushleigh 
 is," answered the old lady of the party. " I am Patience 
 Strong, and this is Miss Regis, and this my niece, Edith." 
 
 " Your mother has gone into the captain's deck room at pres 
 ent," he said to Margaret, as he seated himself, after bowing and 
 taking my hand at my self-introduction. " She and the Rever 
 end President are looking at some charts." 
 
 There is a Reverend President on board, and he carries both 
 things in his face. For that reason, Margaret has n't patience 
 with him, though I don't soe how he could really be expected 
 to help it. He was once, 1 believe, at the head of a college,
 
 64 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 not Harvard ; and he is the first officer of ever so many literary 
 and scientific associations ; and being ex-reverend as well as 
 ex-president, and counted on as a man of elegant leisure, is 
 called to the chair upon public occasions, until he has a way of 
 presiding everywhere, and perhaps has a trace in his general 
 manner of something, which, when it descends to the vulgar 
 extreme, or as Dickens would exaggerate it, may be called 
 self- flunkyism, a conscious waiting of the private and every 
 day personality, with a subdued and secondary importance upon 
 the personage of occasion and fame. I think I have seen a 
 faint refined touch of this here and there among our conspicuous 
 men and women, and that a certain miasmatic seed of it floats, 
 as it were, in the peculiar air of much of our American culture." 
 
 Margaret shrugged her shoulders slightly, under her wraps. I 
 saw a smile, as slight, curve the corners of General Rushleigh's 
 lips. He is a quick observer, this young military 'leader. 
 
 I think I catch a little laugh from you, Rose. Well, yes, I 
 did observe them both ; I do notice, myself. I notice you, you 
 see, all this long way off. 
 
 We ate grapes, sending some over to Emery Ann, who 
 nodded back her thanks, and relapsed into a quiet bliss ; and we 
 fell into a chat about one thing and another, and I don't know 
 that anybody but me kept the thread to which joined a word of 
 General Rushleigh's, said after a little pause, and without im 
 mediate connection. 
 
 " I wonder if it ever puzzled you to think, Miss Strong, why 
 it is that we cannot patiently allow anybody to be conscious of 
 that in themselves which everybody is conscious of in regard to 
 them ? Why vanity is the last thing, almost, that we pardon ? " 
 
 I did not answer instantly. I only smiled. It set me think 
 ing somewhat. But Margaret Regis said, 
 
 " I suppose because we know so well in ourselves the mean 
 little thing that vanity is." 
 
 Again General Rushleigh gave her a quick perceptive look. 
 
 " But there are persons," he said, " and I think these are 
 apt to be most intolerant of conceit, who, one would say, are 
 too proud and independent to be vain." 
 
 " That is just what they are vain of," said Margaret. " That 's 
 just where the creeping little thing gets under."
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 65 
 
 She spoke with a perfect, honest disregard of inference or 
 application, though she had just said, " It is because we know 
 in ourselves." 
 
 " Well," said General Rushleigh, with an emphasis, " It is the 
 truth sets free." 
 
 They were both too well bred to bring personal pronouns into 
 such discourse, indeed, it seems to me that Margaret Regis is 
 too direct and intense, too single-eyed toward the light, to 
 remember how her own face may show in it. But the little rev 
 elation and apprehension were as manifest to me, as if they had 
 been saying " I " and " you. " Certainly, according to my theory 
 of introductions, these two were getting introduced. 
 
 " I have been in a bit of a metaphysical humor this morning," 
 said General Rushleigh. " I think observations at sea are apt 
 to become analytical. And I have been talking with Miss Eu- 
 phrasia Kirkbright, who always takes directly hold of causes." 
 
 "That is the lady with the gold-gray hair?" I asked, ea 
 gerly. 
 
 " Yes. She is with the Armstrongs. That is, she has joined 
 them since she came on board. They are old friends, and have 
 not met before for a long time. They are all going to London 
 together. Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong are also very old friends of 
 my own. I have not surely outstayed my half hour ? Here 
 come Mrs. Regis and President L ." 
 
 " Do you think it fair to talk in great, smooth, round periods 
 at sea ? Where one can't hold on to anything, except by cor 
 ners?" said Margaret, whimsically. "And don't you think it 
 is uncivilized warfare to come down upon people where they 
 can't get away ? It is as cruel as pigeon-shooting," and she 
 shook herself a little in her mummy-roll. 
 
 " Did you think I tied you up to come and pelt at you ? I 
 will atone as well as I can, by defending you from a second per 
 secutor," said the General, laughing. " Mrs. Regis, I beg your 
 pardon, I will bring the chessboard in a moment. Doctor, will 
 you come and look over ? I know you are an authority. We 
 shall find seats, I think, under the awning on the other side." 
 
 And he took the key from Margaret's hand, and disappeared 
 down the companion-way. 
 
 5
 
 66 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 " I like that man ! " 
 
 " This Margaret Regis is a fine creature ! " 
 
 Do you think they came and said that to me, either of them ? 
 No, indeed, it is not likely ! It came to me and said itself. You 
 need not wait for the very words in your ear, to be confided in, 
 or to get your share. You are confided in all the time, if you 
 are alive to it. It is by a far more tender and inward way that 
 a bit of everybody's piece is given to you. This that people 
 call " living alone in the world " would be a bitter separateness 
 out of it, if it were not so. If it were not for the ," things ac 
 complished" in the neighbor-lives that "are in the world." 
 
 But dear me ! why do I begin to talk of things accom 
 plished, only that every real instant is an accomplishment of 
 itself, because these two have met in this wise with an instant's 
 understanding ? 
 
 Why was nothing accomplished in my sympathies and intui 
 tions when I saw Harry Mackenzie bid Margaret good-bye the 
 other morning on East Boston wharf? 
 
 Yet sometimes there are only instants, to show what all life 
 
 that waits, a soundless, unawakened thing, like an untouched, 
 unstrung viol, or lies heavily like dead, unvoiced air might 
 be! 
 
 An hour later, our two names were said for us to each other, 
 
 Euphrasia Kirkbright's and mine. When I heard " Miss 
 Patience Strong " repeated after hers, it was with something like 
 the thrill with which I heard in church, five-and-twenty years 
 ago, Patience Strong " propounded " for the communion. 
 
 That afternoon we went and found a beautiful new place to 
 gether, away out behind the wheel-house, where nothing but the 
 slight-seeming curve of the stern-rail was between us aud the 
 stretch of radiant water that widened out between us and> the 
 home-land. 
 
 Emery Ann was in my reclining chair under the boat, taking 
 a delicious after-dinner nap ; the very thing she needs, and that 
 is quietly filling her with a reserve of strength ; and which she 
 never would have taken at home, where there were dishes to be 
 washed. How good it is that she is out of the way of dishes !
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 67 
 
 And so out of the way, that I do not believe she ever even 
 thinks of them. 
 
 Miss Kirkbright and I sat quite still for minutes after we 
 had spread our shawls and cushions and nestled down together. 
 I do not know how she felt about it, but it did not seem to me 
 that I cared to say any common kind of words to her. I felt as 
 if something real were waiting, hovering ; and I would not 
 speak for fear of losing its alighting. 
 
 There is one thing you can never have seen, or dreamed, 
 Rose ; for you have never been in a great ship in mid-ocean. 
 You cannot guess what it is like, that radiant water that rolls 
 its heaps together after you in the cool, pure masses of clear, 
 beryl-green ! 
 
 Away down, down, you see it, and far back ; as if the urgent- 
 moving vessel, with its whirling screw, were an angel troubling 
 the deep into strange life and glory. 
 
 From the pearl-white, scattered particles just settling from 
 the first foam-flash, to the grand, rich, gathered color where they 
 bank themselves as it were on either hand in the aqua-marine 
 splendor from which the jewel borrows name, it was a moving, 
 shifting, voluminous effulgence, that told how the whole vast Sea 
 is a jewel of God which He wears upon his finger, and which, 
 from storm-darkness to the dazzle of white waves in the sun, 
 in all changes of amber and rosy and emerald and azure and 
 violet, spells out the hidden syllables of his mystical phrase 
 of color, according to its instant pulsing, and the shining or 
 shading of his Face of Light ! 
 
 " What makes it so, I wonder ? " I said at last ; for it seemed 
 as if I must ask something. 
 
 " To know that," said Miss Euphrasia, in a sweet, quiet, 
 thinking voice, " one must know what the light and the water 
 are ; one must go back of mere mechanical reasons into the rep 
 resentativeness." 
 
 " Ah, yes ! " I said, remembering " Thoughts in my Garden," 
 and the meanings of the birds, that came to me also, just the 
 same, because they were. 
 
 " I do not mean," she went on, " that we must look out an ar 
 bitrary dictionary signification. People do try to interpret so ;
 
 68 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 and perhaps they cannot go so far amiss as if they did not rec 
 ognize or use the keys of things at all. But the sign octaves 
 multiply and change their harmonies, as the octaves of music 
 do. Just running up and down the scales is not entering even 
 over the threshold, into the hidden chords and symphonies. 
 The word is written in signs, but not in a secret cipher. It is 
 put in the most direct of languages, the showing of things; 
 which men have only feebly and incompletely organized into 
 syllables. What does water give you a feeling of? That is 
 the question." 
 
 " It feels of many things, as it has many forms," I said. 
 " Of life, of truth and the eternal refreshing ; of cleansing and 
 satisfying, of surrounding, and inflowing, of answering and like 
 ness, of pureness, of gladness ; of might, that is fluid-gentle 
 and awful as great floods ; of everlastingness." 
 
 "And the light, that pours down into the water with what 
 ever moves and stirs it, that touches life and reveals it ; that 
 makes truth glorious to sight ; that manifests the cleansing and 
 the pureness ; that makes the surrounding shine, and take a 
 color ; that interfuses the might with tender presence ; that 
 saves eternalness from being a blank, and fills it with live joy 
 and glory ; what can it be or signify, but the God-showing that 
 quickens through all, and makes what we call truth the lan 
 guage and recognition between us and the Lord ; the joy of 
 his very thought, which becomes in us the joy of our under 
 standing? " 
 
 We' did not say any more for a little while ; one does not 
 speak out things like these as one recites a printed page. Miss 
 Kirkbright spoke slowly, as it came to her, by degrees, to speak ; 
 and then, though we had scarcely approached what we had set 
 in search of, we waited, and rested. And continually, before our 
 eyes, the wonderful green light, born of the sun nnd flood, was 
 rolling, playing, speaking ; yes, " chanting aloud," had we the 
 ears to hear. 
 
 " One little track, one motion breaking a line through the 
 great Deep. It is like a human living." 
 
 " And how beautiful," I said, " the things behind us grow, as 
 the water parts away and drifts backward. How lovely and 
 dear every particle, as we leave it ! "
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 69 
 
 " And how alive ! " 
 
 " But only for such a little way," I answered, sadly. "Away 
 back, it is all over ; all as if it had not been. It makes me 
 afraid, almost, of the meanings." 
 
 " Why ? Because we cannot look back all the way ? What 
 is all the way ? Back as far as we seem to have moved in this 
 infinite, as far as we can trace ourselves, it is all alight 
 with the shine and stir ; it is full of presence, of now-being ; 
 it takes in every particle the color of hope, of livingness, of 
 lasting." 
 
 " It does not stay. Thousands of ships have tracked over the 
 same spaces ; and there is not any mark. And ours is vanish 
 ing while we are talking about it." 
 
 If I had been speaking with some one else, some one less 
 than I, as Miss Kirkbright is greater, I should have insisted 
 on the hope which I believe in ; I might have said, after my 
 gift and way, just what she said ; but I wanted her, now, to say 
 it to me. I put forward my own questions, and let my own an 
 swers lie forgotten. I have felt so sharply, in these days of 
 change and leaving behind, how my dear days are gone, and 
 how the 'days that are to come, though they must live on from 
 them, must be so different ! In new, strange places, even ; the 
 breaking away from the very outward has begun ; who can tell 
 what it will go on to ? 
 
 " No," said Miss Kirkbright, in that still, sure tone of hers ; 
 " it does not stay, the sign does not. The mere sign never 
 stays ; in our lives, even. That, also, is where the likeness is, 
 the meaning, that you are afraid of. It is only in the spirit 
 ual world that we truly live, now; or are truly anything to 
 each other. The heaven and earth of the outward pass away 
 continually ; it is what they were made for; if they did not, we 
 should be in prison. We only make one little sign at a time in 
 the outward world, the sign of the present moment. That is 
 nothing, in itself, let it be what it may, or between whomsoever ; 
 a moment of greatest joy or greatest pain ; it is nothing except 
 for the past which has been, and the future which shall be, and 
 which are both forever alive, like these live waters. 
 
 " What is our love and intercourse, as we grow older and the
 
 70 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 circumstance of life changes, but a mutual reentering into what 
 has been, to join it with the word and circumstance of now ; 
 perhaps, also, to the word we wait and hope for. Our past is, 
 in the spiritual, as much as our to-come. Blessed are the 
 poor of now in the spirit which holds then and then ! 
 Why should the gone-by be tangible, when the next moment 
 cannot be ? It is a great deal more real because we cannot 
 touch nor see, but can only hold it, hallow it, as we do the 
 Name of the Invisible ! It is there, where our future is ; 
 where we are, since we cannot rest in any instant ; and once, 
 that sweet word which brings all to the blessed focus and point 
 of promise, once, we shall find them together ! " 
 
 We let the silence fall between us. I did not ask any more ; 
 I could not then have taken any more. 
 
 I sat happy in what she had given me, and thinking what I 
 say to you, Rose ; that there is a very something of the Lord 
 Himself about this Miss Euphrasia ; something that makes you 
 feel as if you could bring your empty pitcher to her feet, like 
 the Woman of Samaria, and say, Fill for me of this water ! 
 
 Yes ; He still sends them out ; there are always, at least, the 
 Seventy ! 
 
 It was, I suppose, because I felt that I had received my sac 
 rament, and could not instantly return, that I spoke of some 
 thing different, presently ; the thing that first suggested. As 
 we do, perhaps, when we turn away from the Altar. Only I 
 think there is always a wonderful new humanness of sympathy 
 in those next words, let them be what they may. 
 
 General Rushleigh walked up near, then turned and walked 
 away again, ship-fashion. I spoke of him. I asked a question 
 people are very apt to ask. 
 
 " General Rushleigh seems to me a fine kind of a man," I said, 
 as we both glanced up, and back again. " Is he married, do you 
 know ? " 
 
 " No," she answered. " He was engaged once, it is very 
 well known, to Faith Gartney; that is, Mrs. Armstrong. 
 But the mystery of perfect choice was wanting, somehow, and 
 Faith found it out in time." 
 
 " One would not think it need have been so."
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 71 
 
 " No ; to see them now. But that was years ago. Both 
 needed leading, then ; and the woman, from her woman's need, 
 discerned it first. It was the natural order ; the man learned 
 his, and found his answer, afterward. Paul Rushleigh says that 
 life, dealing so strangely and suddenly with him, first confronted 
 him with the living conviction that there was a Thought of Some 
 One in his story, above his own. Some woman, now, may be 
 waiting to be led by him. It was one of the divine hindrances ; 
 it is one of the single rectified points in the human tangle that 
 ought to be, all through, a blessed righteousness* And will be ! " 
 
 " Miss Kirkbright ! " I said, ten minutes afterward, as we 
 began to think of moving to rejoin our companions, "just one 
 thing. Don't you think it possible, among all these parables, 
 to make a wrong one ?" 
 
 " Can you make a parable at all ? Can you even be misled 
 with one, for I suppose that, rather, is what you may mean, 
 looking at it leisurely, all through ? For a parable is a 
 thing that must fit. We do not make, we find it. It is 
 there. Christ did not say, ' Listen, I make a parable ; ' 
 but 'Behold the parable of the fig-tree. Consider the lilies.' 
 You may force and distort argument; you may turn reason into 
 sophistry; but you cannot put into the creation types that 
 which is not." 
 
 When we went back to the chair under the boat, we found 
 Emery Ann waked up, and General Rushleigh sitting beside 
 her. He had found her making a little fettered struggle to 
 rearrange her shawls which the wind had blown about, and to 
 regain her book which had dropped from her lap and slidden 
 away. Then he had discovered that she would like some lemon 
 ade, and had sent for some, and remained at her side, talking 
 with her. She was asking him questions about the war, and if 
 he ever came across the Fortieth Maine, in which Penuel had 
 been a lieutenant, and was wounded, heading a company, in the 
 great fight before Petersburg, " when the mind was blowed up." 
 
 He had listened to the whole story, in which she certainly 
 lapsed, through the firing up of her old pride and patriotism, 
 into an uncorrected diction, forgetting the monitorship she could
 
 72 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 hold over the more obvious points of grammar and elocution 
 " when she tried " and " before folks ; " but omitting nothing in 
 the recital of Penuel's valor, which had been, after all, of the 
 same genuine Down-East stamp as her honest speech ; telling 
 how he had been hemmed in with a handful of men in that ter 
 rible breach, and had shouted with his sword up over his head, 
 " Now, boys ! We 've just got to cut our way out of this ! " so 
 that the nearest rebels flinched for a second at the sight of his 
 terrible pluck, and he and his handful were among the few 
 who got back that day into the lines to tell what the fight had 
 been. 
 
 I think Emery Ann interested him ; for he need not have sat 
 so long by her, even out of chivalry to a plain, middle-aged 
 woman such as some men especially have. But then, after the 
 first kindness, why should not anybody be interested in Emery 
 Ann ? General Rushleigh has doubtless learned some values 
 among plain New England soldiers in the face of deadly re 
 alities, which he might never have learned in Boston parlors, 
 or even manufacturing in Massachusetts. 
 
 Emery Ann spoke out, after he left her. She could put in 
 words, aod was pretty sure to, that which had been a silence 
 with Margaret Regis. 
 
 " General Rushleigh is a nice man," was her sententious ver 
 dict. " He isn't one of the sort that acts as if out-doors had got 
 to be made bigger for 'em." 
 
 What was that I said about " things accomplished ? " Here 
 was another ! What should I do if Emery Ann should set that 
 " punkin " at him ? 
 
 Do you think I troubled ? Some things occur to one, and 
 others not, though the happenings and the showings be the 
 same. I, too, you may perceive, think General Rushleigh is a 
 nice man. It was the first thought I had about him. It is a 
 comfortable thing that some women are forty-eight years old. 
 
 I dare say you think I shall never get you across the water, 
 at this rate. If you had been with me on board the Nova Zem- 
 bla, I do not think you would have cared much if I never did. 
 But you see, I am across at this moment's writing ; though my
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 73 
 
 story of over the way is likely to be like the light from the 
 Btars, a long time reaching you from any given point. 
 But what matter, if it keeps coming, and all comes ? " Simi 
 larly," to myself. 
 
 I shall go right straight on, as the real things carry or detain 
 me. If I am a good while getting over, it will be because, as 
 the blessed reckon, I lived long upon the sea. 1 may be a 
 good while in some places here, where I stay only hours or 
 days, but where I see and discern much ; and very briefly in 
 others, where my body may rest or be hindered for weeks or 
 months. These last will be the catching-up places. There are 
 such in the years we live. Perhaps my story will keep on tell 
 ing, after I get quite back out of it all into the home corner at 
 Old Farm; as the light streams on after the star is set or 
 burned out. Will you not like it better so ? 
 
 I think we often give our friends our mere tediousness, writ 
 ing letters where we happen to find the time, and not taking the 
 trouble to go back far enough or close enough, into the parts 
 where we found everything but time. I would rather follow my 
 own trail at a patient and careful distance. I will give you only 
 what really makes a mark ; what stays by myself, so that I keep 
 it and remember it without note. There may be something 
 like the difference between an auctioneer's inventory of a sale, 
 and the things you really bid off and take home with you. 
 
 Mrs. Regis, too, liked General Rushleigh. It seemed quite 
 fit that they should talk, and walk, and play chess together. 
 They were certainly the most elegant man and woman on board ; 
 and she seemed to claim him on that patent suitability. I no 
 tice that elegant women, no longer young, are often seemingly 
 aware that nothing outwardly becomes them better than the 
 attendance and friendship of a younger man, of clearly and ex 
 ceptionally fine tone and presence. There is a mutual gauge 
 and recognition across a technical disparity; a reciprocal dis- 
 tiuguishment. 
 
 It came to pass that the sheltered place under and about the 
 boat grew to be considered our place ; our chairs were always 
 put there. It was just aside from the promenaders, who might
 
 74 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 brush against you anywhere under the awning that stretched 
 across the middle deck. Mrs. Regis adopted it ; discerning with 
 that nice tact and felicitous foregoing of hers, that second best 
 could easily be made the best ; and liking, I think, a place of 
 her own that was always tacitly acknowledged. 
 
 The games of chess went on here, and Edith and Margaret 
 watched them. Then the two girls roused to a great desire to 
 try for themselves, and the captain lent them a chessboard, and 
 the boat-corner, with its daily group, grew to be called the 
 chess club. Miss Euphrasia, and the Armstrongs and I, drew 
 away quietly sometimes to the place behind the wheel-house, 
 where we sat upon our shawls, and watched the water, and had 
 talks together. Especially at even-fall, when the sun dropped 
 away behind us, and the sea and the sky were a floor and dome 
 of palpitating, interchanging color-splendor. 
 
 But I was speaking of the games of chess. 
 
 The young girls grew ambitious. One day Edith said to 
 Mrs. Regis, when a great match was just ended between her and 
 the General, and he had beaten the " three games* of advan 
 tage " which had been contested for through some five times 
 three of wavering majority since they began : 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Regis, could you be benevolent enough to change 
 partners, you and General Rushleigh, and take us for a game or 
 two, for our good ? It would only be sham-fight on your parts, 
 I know ; but if it would n't be too stupid ? " 
 
 " Quite otherwise, my dear," was the graciously ready reply. 
 And it naturally fell out that she took Edith for her own an 
 tagonist, and that General Rushleigh began a game with Mar 
 garet. 
 
 Perhaps it was just because his methods were scientific, and 
 Margaret's were mere original inspiration, that she took him a 
 little by surprise in the beginning of the game, and brought 
 about what he declared, bending suddenly with fresh interest 
 over the board, was a " quite novel position of things." 
 
 " Not provided for in civilized warfare, perhaps," said Marga 
 ret, laughing. " See what it is to fight with a red Indian ! " 
 
 The glow of excitement and keen health upon her cheek, and 
 the dark lustre of her brown eyes, and the vivid color of her
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 75 
 
 scarlet-lined hood that reflected itself warmly over all, made her 
 a wonderfully pretty illustration, at the moment, of her own 
 word. If I saw it, of course others did. The reverend presi 
 dent, who had drawn near and was looking on, lifted his eye 
 brows gently, and let his lips play significantly as he regarded 
 her. General Rushleigh seemed intent upon his move. When 
 he made it, it became Margaret's turn to grow grave, and give 
 her whole mind to her response. 
 
 It was not to be supposed that her little unsophisticated in 
 novations would disturb much, or hold long against the tactics of 
 her opponent. They seemed to give a dash of unexpectedness, 
 and to bring about some unusual combinations ; but there was 
 soon necessitated a brisk exchange of pieces, and the contest 
 narrowed down, if a chess-player would call it narrowing, 
 when the whole field is thrown so open that every possibility in 
 its entire range comes to be taken into the account, to four or 
 five pieces and as many pawns on either side. 
 
 But here, somehow, Margaret's native quick perception came 
 in play. She managed an excellent defense, and presently bore 
 down in her turn with a pretty strong pressure upon General 
 Rushleigh's king, advancing a pawn at the same time toward a 
 fair possibility of queening. 
 
 General Rushleigh paused. Margaret caught her breath and 
 waited eagerly for what he would do. He had his finger on a 
 castle, quite engrossed with the immediate threat and the need 
 ful parry, when she suddenly exclaimed : 
 
 " General Rushleigh ! Do you forget my other knight over 
 there ? " 
 
 There was but one effective move for the castle ; if he made 
 it, the other knight might come down with a check, and a sec 
 ond move would bring him into the very heart of the General's 
 forces, threatening all round. 
 
 " Why did you tell me? " he asked, looking up. " You might 
 have had the game." 
 
 ''I don't want it, until it belongs to me," she answered 
 quietly. " Of course if you recollected you would move dif 
 ferently." 
 
 " It was my business to recollect."
 
 76 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 But he checked with his bishop, and provided by the move 
 against the knight's advance. The next move brought down 
 his castle, and a few more plays broke up the little chance of 
 queening, and left a free opening for one of the opposite pawns 
 to push on. 
 
 The game went against her. 
 
 "You gave it back to me, Miss Margaret. I was on the 
 point of a blind mistake. I consider it a drawn game." 
 
 " I don't," she replied. " I did n't want you to make a blind 
 mistake. The game could n't belong to me by hiding any 
 thing." 
 
 " Ladies are not often so ready to give notice of their ' other 
 knights,' when they have a game to win," said the reverend 
 president, jocosely. 
 
 Margaret superbly ignored the remark, though I saw an eye 
 lid quiver, and her cheek and lip burned a shade warmer. She 
 said to General Rushleigh, with the same simple quietness as 
 before : 
 
 " The beauty of chess is, that it can't be underhand. You 
 can't do anything slily or in a corner." 
 
 " You certainly cannot," said the General, with a gentle, equal 
 emphasis upon each word. " Shall we set the pieces again ? " . 
 
 After that, I think no day passed without their playing. 
 
 We were within two days of Queenstown. 
 
 I sat with my portfolio and pencil, going on with this long 
 sea-letter, some dozen pages back. Margaret Regis was beside 
 me, writing also. Almost everybody meant to send some line 
 back from Queenstown. Edith was scratching away, girl- 
 fashion, a little duodecimo volume of note-paper to her mother. 
 
 Margaret wrote rapidly for a while ; then she leaned her cheek 
 upon her left hand, while her right turned the pencil loosely, 
 listlessly, between the fingers. She looked off upon the hori 
 zon, where a large ship to which we had dipped our flag half an 
 hour before, was lessening as it sailed westward. 
 
 Her quietness, after a few moments, interrupted me. I set 
 up an elbow, too, and rested my chin on the closed hand that 
 held my pencil. Then my quietness turned her round.
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 77 
 
 " Somebody told me once," she said, suddenly, " never to use 
 great pieces when little ones would do. Don't you think people 
 say that in a good many ways, so that the big pieces get hid 
 den away, though there are plenty of them, and you worry over 
 the insignificant ones, because you are expected to use them ? " 
 
 I knew then that she was writing a letter of little pieces, 
 while the larger ones lay all around her, that she longed, yet 
 shrunk, to touch. 
 
 " Yes," I replied. " Some people live a life of little pieces, 
 because it is all that is expected of them. I 'm afraid I am of 
 a very wasteful nature. I always cut right into the whole cloth 
 if I can get a chance." 
 
 "Older people may," said Margaret. "We younger ones 
 don't dare." " What do you suppose we are set at patchwork 
 for ? " she spoke again, without waiting for an answer. 
 
 " When we might be making wedding garments ? " said I. I 
 was sorry, in a second, that I had happened to say that. The 
 first look of positive pain that I had ever seen there, passed 
 over Margaret Regis's face. 
 
 " I don't believe I shall ever make a wedding garment," she 
 said, slowly, and almost as if she meant two things. 
 
 I told you it was n't a novel, Rose ; that is all I know, and 
 all I may ever know, about it. Of course I could n't press her 
 for any confidence, or lead her on, even, in talk. And though 
 I do feel things, and catch dim answers far off, I am not Miss 
 Euphrasia, to have the word out of heaven ready, always. I 
 may have missed something here, of help that could have been 
 given. We all do miss so many things. Emery Ann says, 
 " An opportunity is like a pin in the sweepings ; you catch 
 sight of it just as it flies away from you and gets buried again." 
 
 That night we sat up late on deck. We all gathered at the 
 stern, upon and about the wheel-house. 
 
 We had passed several vessels and steamers during the day ; 
 had signaled, dipped flags, and since dark sent up rockets. It is 
 so beautiful, finding human life and sympathies thickening about 
 us, making happy signs and greetings, as we come up out of the 
 lonely waste that we had seemed quite separate in, and approach 
 the other side. To-morrow, they tell us, we shall see land.
 
 78 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 As we sat there, close to each other, in pairs and groups, we 
 fell to singing hymns. Edith began it with a little low warbling 
 to herself, which when she let define itself into the notes of the 
 lovely " Shining Shore," Mr. Armstrong joined the words to, in 
 a rich, strong baritone. And when it came to the chorus, 
 
 " For oh ! we stand on Jordan's strand, 
 
 Our friends are passing over; 
 
 And just before, the shining shore 
 
 We may almost discover, " 
 
 not a voice was withheld, not even mine, or Emery Ann's. 
 
 Then we had, " I 'm a pilgrim," " Guide me, O thou 
 great Jehovah," " He leadeth me," and last of all, Miss Euphra- 
 sia began that dearest, deepest, tenderest, " Nearer, my God." 
 
 I noticed Margaret Regis's voice all through the singing, as 
 often as she joined, and I noticed her not joining. Sometimes 
 she sang a stanza, and her tones were thrillingly sweet and 
 powerful, then she dropped into silence just where the hymn 
 was most beautiful, and when she came to that last one, she sat 
 perfectly still. 
 
 Miss Euphrasia said softly as it ended, " You did not help us, 
 my dear." 
 
 " Do you think everybody ought to sing words like those ? " 
 was the low answer. " I have not come to them." 
 
 Miss Euphrasia did not speak again at that moment, but I 
 saw her hand steal quietly over upon Margaret's as it lay in her 
 lap. Later, as a few of us still lingered, loth to leave that 
 wonderful stillness between sea and stars, I heard her say, " I 
 suppose no one can say " Even though a cross it be," until their 
 own cross, and that which grows in the shadow of it, begin to 
 shape themselves." 
 
 " Perhaps until the shadow begins to fall behind," said 
 Margaret. "The first threatening of things before you are 
 quite sure of the shape of them " and there she stopped. 
 
 " One must not mistake the way," said Miss Euphrasia. " We 
 need not stand in our own light, with aimless arms flung out to 
 right and left, restlessly, and make our own shadow before us. 
 Against that we have the prayer, ' Make us to have a right 
 judgment in all things, and keep us evermore in thy holy com 
 fort.' "
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IX MANY PARAGRAPHS. 79 
 
 " We may have left that out or never known it till too 
 late I suppose." Margaret added those two words in a 
 changed tone, as if she passed, or chose to pass, from earnest 
 and personal to general and commonplace. 
 
 " Then there is another ; ' Forgive us our sins, negligenots, 
 and ignorances, and deliver us from those evils that we most 
 justly have deserved.' There is nothing that cannot be taken 
 out of our lives, in God's way, any more than there is 
 anything which cannot be given in. There must be pain, and 
 waiting, perhaps ; for these the hymn." 
 
 Margaret got up and gathered her shawl about her to go 
 down. " Good-night, Miss Kirkbright, and thank you," she 
 said, as she gave Miss Euphrasia her hand. " You have given 
 me something to keep. I shall keep it." 
 
 Miss Euphrasia leaned forward and kissed her. 
 
 We met General Rushleigh at the companion way. I think he 
 had been watching for us. He took all our wraps over his arms, 
 and helped us down the two little steep stairways, and went 
 with us to our state-room doors. I stood in the entry of the 
 lower ladies' cabin while he went with Margaret first, and gave 
 up her things to her, and then rejoined me with mine. We 
 crossed through the little saloon to my side of the ship. 
 
 " I leave you at Queenstown," he said. " I shall miss these 
 days and evenings. We may meet in Switzerland, perhaps. 
 May I look for you a little, if I find myself in the way ? Would 
 you trust me with your banking address ? " 
 
 " It will be ' Hoirs Sigismond Marcel, Lausanne,' for the sum 
 mer. Later, when we go into Italy, we shall change it." 
 
 " Thank you. Good-night. It will be pleasant to think I 
 have the clew." 
 
 And he left me feeling as if I had had the special part of the 
 good-night, which my old maidenhood purchased for me, and 
 which he had not felt quite free to give to Margaret Regis ; or 
 perhaps even to her elegant and still fascinating step-mother. 
 I believe, after all, it is better to be treated like a friend, than 
 to fascinate. 
 
 I was quite sure, though, it was not for me to keep ; neither 
 was it for my gay, sweet, child Edith. She is taking her youth
 
 80 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 as so few girls take it ; as if it were meant to be something in 
 itself. She has always been so ; as school-girl, and girl just out 
 from school, in that second lovely relation with her home ; with 
 father and mother, with brothers and sister, and young friends ; 
 with her old auntie, even ; with her books, her frolics, her music, 
 her journeys, her daily sunshine. There is not much to tell of 
 her ; she is not one to whom things are in a hurry to happen ; 
 she just goes along, as the springtime does, which will be sum 
 mer in good time, but you will hardly know just when ; and "t 
 is simply a blessing to watch her as she goes. 
 
 The gulls were so thick about the ship, all the next morning. 
 Another wonderful, beautiful sign of the land we come to. 
 
 The white, winged things drift out from the far horizon which 
 seems to our eyes far and wide as ever, though we know the shore 
 is there, and their rock-nests. They poise and hover, and sail 
 back and forth with us, as we press our heavier way through the 
 yet deep waters ; and they bend above the deck, with dropped 
 wings, and eyes that look with a soft eagerness into our own. 
 They are like thoughts sent forth to meet us, taking form as we 
 come nearer, even as the Spirit itself once took form as a dove. 
 
 Miss Euphrasia and I watched them as if they brought us 
 news ; not of the coast whose headlands were so near, but of a 
 farther. Not farther off, but more hidden within ; they were 
 like apparitions shining out of the unsensed, where thought 
 and waiting welcome intensified toward us until the very wings 
 of their yearning flashed into light and hung above us. 
 
 Somebody near, not going very deep, yet observing faintly a 
 typing in it, said, " how sweet it was, their coming out to us 
 so ! " And a voice replied, " They come for the scraps the 
 stewards fling overboard." 
 
 " Oh," cried the lady, " how you spoil the poetry ! " 
 
 It grated at first, that commonplace explanation which 
 grudged the sign ; but presently we did not think it spoiled the 
 poetry. We also have something for them, why not ? Some 
 thing they are eager for. They care for even the mere scraps 
 we fling them of the life we scarcely think they have a share 
 in. They want heart-crumbs from us ; they ask us to break
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER: IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 81 
 
 our bread with them. For that, as well as to telJ us that the 
 land is near, they lean above us with their tender eyes. 
 
 " Do you see the land ? " people asked each other gladly, re 
 peatedly. One pointed it to another, urging, insisting. 
 
 " Off there ; just that blue haze on the horizon. Surely you 
 see ? " 
 
 " It is like a cloud. I can hardly tell whether I see anything 
 or not." 
 
 " For all that it is the Irish headlands." 
 
 " I never thought it would come like that," I said to Miss 
 Euphrasia. " So fine, so misty, so purple. It is like a shadow, 
 or a dream." 
 
 They kept rising upon us like that, all day ; faint points and 
 shapes, looming larger, bluer, surer, but always so soft, so 
 spiritsome ! And the white birds wheeling, dipping, hovering, 
 moving to and fro, continually. 
 
 Why did nobody ever tell us what it was like ? I had sup 
 posed I should see gray rocks, and then green land ; that we 
 should come swiftly upon something defined and tangible, 
 though at first indistinct with distance ; but that this indistinct 
 ness would be so like the reaching and glimmering of an in 
 ward vision, that it would wear, even as it grew quite close, 
 such tender shapes and tints like twilight clouds, that we 
 should come to it as we come dimly to dear things of faith, 
 I had not ever set before my thought. 
 
 When it was only a blue haze, they believed ; because eyes 
 that knew had seen it ; and the whole ship-company was alive 
 and eager for the land while it was still only a shadow. 
 
 And we ate and slept, and drew nearer and nearer ; and be 
 fore night-fall of the second day, we had seen the cliffs and the 
 softer hills behind them, the trees and the moving cattle, and 
 the growing grass ! 
 
 It was all there, just as it was at home. Out of the ocean 
 where seemed to be nothing, it had arisen, as they told us it 
 would ; and up and down the lonely waves, in the middle of 
 that unchanging circle of far skies, we had been steering straight 
 toward it all the time. 
 6
 
 82 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Not only that. We did not come upon it forwardly, as just 
 to the end where something lay across ; we moved alongside 
 it, hours and hours, by night and morning, toward our harbor ; 
 right under the line of its soft, dim, outstretching strands ! 
 
 I had laid up an expectation of comfort in the finding of towns, 
 and forests, and Alps, and human living, over there, after we 
 should be there ; but the comfort of the shining shore as we 
 sailed upon it, and the way of its growing to our eyes out of 
 the invisible, was a happy, wonderful parable that I did not 
 know was, in all the parables of this beautiful earth. 
 
 It was midnight when we came into the harbor of Queens- 
 town. Such a number of passengers was to land there, that a 
 great many remained on deck to watch the departure, and to 
 say good-bye. 
 
 Mrs. Regis walked up and down with General Rushleigh 
 for quite a little while, talking. Margaret and Edith, and Mr. 
 Armstrong, and Miss Kirkbright and I sat in the little corner 
 behind the rail of the companion way, watching the tug as it 
 steamed out and made a great sweep beyond us, and then came 
 round, the last thing it had apparently aimed at doing, 
 along that side of the ship. 
 
 There was a bustle of making fast, and transferring mail-bags 
 and luggage, and it was some time yet before the real final call 
 came to the passengers for shore. 
 
 It was very dark ; only the lights at our own mast-head and 
 upon the tug, and here and there upon some harbor craft, glim 
 mered out their signals. It was not a cheery landing, I thought ; 
 I was glad we were to sail on to Liverpool. I had grown fond 
 of the Nova Zembla ; I had no wish to leave her until I had 
 seen her voyage through, and she came safe to her mooring in 
 the Mersey. I do not know whether we shall have Ireland at 
 all ; if we should, I felt I would rather take it by and by, and 
 go the whole sea-way now, up the Channel, and into the great 
 English port. I had no fancy for being dropped off by the way, 
 like this, in the night. 
 
 " Then we shall be sure to see you again in Switzerland," I 
 heard Mrs. Regis say, as she and the General finally approached
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 83 
 
 us for his leave-taking. "We shall probably be somewhere 
 about the upper end of the Geneva lake for several weeks." 
 
 Mrs. Armstrong had come up for a few minutes. She rarely 
 stopped late away from her little children. General Rushleigh 
 shook hands with her and with her husband, then with Miss 
 Kirkbright and the rest of us. 
 
 " I have to thank you all for a most pleasant voyage," he 
 said ; " and I am sorry that we are not to finish it together." 
 
 " I think we are all sorry to say good-bye," answered Miss 
 Kirkbright. 
 
 Nobody said anything more. It was very much like all the 
 other words of friendship and compliment that were passing 
 around us. Perhaps the chief difference was that there was no 
 reiteration. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong went down with him to the boat, and then 
 returned to us. Mrs. Regis stood by the rail, her white hand 
 with its shining rings showing in the dim light as she rested 
 and leaned upon it, looking down where General Rushleigh 
 came and stood on the low deck of the tender. 
 
 As the boat began to glide away, I saw a movement of her 
 hand, a half-lifting, as if she were going to wave a farewell, 
 and then a quiet relinquishment of it to its place again. Not 
 the movement, but the checking of it, struck me. Why should 
 she measure, or reconsider ? 
 
 There was a great chorus of good-byes from a merry, frolick 
 ing party near us, watching off somebody else. In the midst 
 of it, I saw General Rushleigh lift his hat, and heard him say 
 quite strongly and clearly, as he looked up, while the moving 
 of the boat brought his face directly beneath our own faces, 
 " Once more, good-bye ! " 
 
 One answer waited for a breath's space, while the others were 
 spoken together, and then it dropped slowly, like a separate, 
 final echo. It was Margaret's, who sat quietly beside me. 
 
 In the morning of that day, I thought of it again now, as 
 those good-byes were said, we had been in the small upper 
 saloon, enveloping and sealing our letters for this Queenstown 
 mail. Margaret had sat beside me, directing hers, in the large, 
 free, open hand I like so much. She laid them over, one by
 
 84 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 one, as she finished, toward my side. Placing my own before 
 me iu like manner, I could not help catching at each glance the 
 successive addresses of hers. It seemed as if she almost man 
 aged it that I should. There was one to her sister, Mrs. Van- 
 derhuysen, one to another lady in New York, one to Flora 
 Mackenzie, Boston, and, separate and last, she laid down one 
 directed in full to "Mr. Harry Bernard Mackenzie, Holworthy 
 Hall, Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass"'." She slid the lit 
 tle pile together, leaving this freshly written one on the top. 
 
 After a time, Mrs. Regis came in, to ask if we had letters 
 ready. 
 
 " I just met Captain K , and he has taken mine," she said. 
 
 " I have nearly finished," I replied. Margaret said nothing. 
 
 Mrs. Regis reached her hand toward Margaret's letters. 
 
 " Oh, you have been writing to the Mackenzies," she re 
 marked quite carelessly and pleasantly. 
 
 " Of course," said Margaret, and then laid her own fingers 
 upon her correspondence. 
 
 " Never mind now," she said ; " I will bring them all when 
 Miss Strong has finished." 
 
 I was sure she wanted me to be a little longer, and so Ger 
 trude got another little paragraph to her letter, and two or 
 three acquaintances received by name some special messages of 
 remembrance. I had already closed the thick packet for you, 
 Rose, which gave you the first half of my long sea-yarn. 
 
 General Rushleigh came in. 
 
 There had been a promise of a final game of chess with Mar 
 garet, and I suppose she knew he would soon come to claim it. 
 Mrs. Regis still stood by us, when he asked, as she had done, if 
 we had letters ready. 
 
 " Miss Strong is just finishing," said Margaret ; " and then 
 we have all these." 
 
 Her finger-tip, just touching still the heap of white inclosures, 
 must have quite led his eyes to the uppermost name. I en 
 veloped and addressed my last one, and Margaret, with a little 
 gesture of " allow me ? " gathered them all up, mine and hers, 
 and gave them to General Rushleigh with the letter to Harry 
 Mackenzie still upon the top.
 
 THE LONG SEA-LETTER : IN MANY PARAGRAPHS. 85 
 
 " I am going for my thick jacket," Margaret said, rising, as 
 he went out. " I will come up on deck presently." 
 
 Mrs. Regis and I were left alone, and she just remarked to 
 me, "Margaret is very fond of the Mackenzies. They have 
 been friends from children. But I wish she made less demon 
 stration of the intimacy as regards Harry. Conclusions may be 
 drawn which will not be justified." 
 
 I knew she wished that they might not be, and I had felt she 
 was annoyed at first seeing that letter so frankly, if not pur 
 posely, left in sight. I wondered if she would take the trouble 
 to say to General Rushleigh what she had said to me. I won 
 dered whether, with her great tact and cleverness at doing what 
 ever she much wished in small matters, she might not have 
 managed, in spite of Margaret's intention, to get between her 
 and him in that little passage of the mail from hand to hand. 
 
 Somehow all this connected itself afterward with the manner 
 of the midnight parting; with the half-lifting and dropping 
 again of Mrs. Regis's white hand, and the tone of Margaret's 
 good-bye.
 
 86 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GATE-WAYS. 
 
 .... AFTER the loneliness of the ocean, how crowded and full 
 of sign were the sparkling lights of the shipping and the city, 
 as we came slowly up the river to Liverpool, twenty-four hours 
 later. 
 
 Steaming up the Channel, we had been out of sight of land 
 again. That had seemed strange, when we had once had the 
 vision, and knew how near we were. England lying close upon 
 the right, and Ireland on the left, and yet that round expanse 
 and empty horizon, as it had been when we reckoned latitude 
 and longitude in mid- Atlantic, fifteen hundred miles away ! 
 " They 're only crumbs and crusts in the great, big porridge- 
 bowl," said Emery Ann, without antecedent or connection. 
 
 " What ? " asked Edie, wonderingly. 
 
 " Islands, and continents." Emery Ann was still realizing 
 her geography. 
 
 The tide kept us below the bar. A custom-house officer 
 came on board and took the ship in charge, but there was no 
 examination of luggage, and no landing of passengers, except 
 of a few individuals, by special management and favor. The 
 prima donna went on shore, and took the four o'clock train to 
 London ; so did two or three gentlemen who had urgent busi 
 ness. . The rest of us waited until morning, breakfasted on 
 board, and then our trunks were hoisted up from the hold, and 
 tumbled up from the state-rooms, and we stood by, keys in 
 hand, for the ceremony of having them " passed." 
 
 It was not at all terrible. Tobacco, silver, books of English 
 edition, were inquired for, our word taken, and our keys re 
 turned to our pockets ; we made our first bargain with an Eng 
 lish cabman, who at the outset named what we fancied rather
 
 GATE-WAYS. 87 
 
 too American a price, and we appealed to a policeman. It was 
 settled for us, with a warning to the cabby to " look out ! " and 
 we were then helped in with all civility, quite as if we had not 
 refracted, and driven through the long, closed, quiet streets, 
 for it was Sunday morning, with their many business signs 
 of thoroughly English names, and their old, solid, smoky, Eng 
 lish look, to the North Western Hotel. 
 
 Here we were next door to London ; at the back gate, one 
 might say ; the rail path ran right forth from our under story, 
 never swerving till it ended at Euston Square, in the very heart 
 of things. 
 
 So here we stopped to breathe, and to shake off the ship-diz 
 ziness. "We must stay over one day at least, to repack our sea- 
 boxes, and send them down to the Cunard office to wait there 
 till next year. 
 
 We chose our rooms as if we had been going to live there 
 always. The girls ran back and forth from one to the other, 
 comparing and exulting over advantages, along wide passages 
 that looked magnificent to us after our bumpings to and fro in 
 the dark little defiles between the lower cabins of the Nova 
 Zembla. 
 
 " But don't begin to malign the dear old ship ! " I said, the 
 minute they triumphed in words over the contrast. 
 
 These girls were gay ; they were full of the first delight of 
 beginning Europe. Margaret took up her brightness as if she 
 had sent it forward to await her here; there was a determination 
 to have the good time she had come for. 
 
 She was only a girl, after all ; the deeper questions might as 
 yet be put by a while. Youth asserted itself, as the present and 
 immediate assert themselves with us all, let our problems be 
 what they may. It is only in certain story-books, I think, and 
 in the morbidly-concentred imaginations which they train, that 
 life runs all on one thread, and if that breaks anywhere lets its 
 pearls all drop apart and scatter hopelessly. We are not made 
 so ; there is a divine complexity in us. 
 
 I could plainly see one thing in Margaret Regis ; she would 
 either suffer or enjoy with an almost fearful intensity when her 
 time fully came. An instinct of this had kept, and might still
 
 88 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 keep her, from accepting into her consciousness the possibility 
 and conditions of the one or the other. She would shut her 
 eyes and stay in the safety of the commonplace, even when she 
 had already caught some clear, unwilling glimpse of an experi 
 ence that should grasp her whole being if she yielded to it, and 
 involve her in its grander, supremer pain or gladness. 
 
 Something that she was half afraid of in her own nature had 
 perhaps moved her to refuse beforehand a more searching and 
 entire probation, and commit herself with a negative content. 
 She stood in her life as among splendid, terrible wheels, whose 
 force might evolve an unknown end of beauty, but whose springs 
 she would not touch, nor let her garments sweep against their 
 rims, lest they move to drag her into their relentless whirl and 
 crush her. 
 
 "We said good-bye to Miss Euphrasia and the Armstrongs on 
 Monday morning. 
 
 Miss Euphrasia was going to Manchester, on her way to 
 London. She has a niece living near the former city, married 
 to an English manufacturer, Mr. Robert Truesdaile. Mr. 
 Truesdaile belongs to a good old family of gentry, though being 
 the younger son of a younger son, who went to America before 
 Robert was born, a rich maternal uncle has brought him here 
 and adopted him into business, to make of him, like himself, a 
 representative of that fine middle class of Englishmen, whose 
 grandest types are in the grandest sense both born and made. 
 It seems that his other uncle, the present " Squire " Truesdaile, 
 married, as Miss Euphrasia told me, " a far-away Scottish 
 cousin " of her own ; so that there is a double connection. 
 
 The Robert Truesdailes and herself were to go on at once to 
 gether, for a prearranged visit. Mr. Truesdaile, the Squire, is 
 also a clergyman, and has two parishes, and two curates ; one at 
 the family place in the country, to which they are going down 
 in the autumn, and the other in London, where, I infer from 
 Miss Kirkbright, he is very busy among the poor. She gave us 
 his address, and bade us let her know of our arrival. 
 
 The Armstrongs had decided to go directly up, and we all 
 hoped to meet again at the great focus, before we centrifugated 
 off again upon our diverse tracks.
 
 GATE-WAYS. 89 
 
 On the Monday afternoon, some other people from the ship 
 who were at the hotel, were wishing to make a party to Ches 
 ter. Mrs. Regis and Margaret were going, and Edith came to 
 tell me of the plan. She was full of curiosity and pleasure, 
 longing for her first impression of an old-world city, which 
 everybody on the threshold of Europe goes to Chester for. 
 
 Somehow, for that very reason, and because I was so tired 
 with the strange fatigue, after the laziness of the voyage, which 
 comes over one upon landing, I did not incline very instantly 
 to go. 
 
 " You can do quite as you please, you know, auntie ; for I 
 can go nicely with Mrs. Regis." 
 
 " Should you care, Emery Ann ? " I asked. " "Would you 
 like to see the old walls, and the deep streets cut out of the 
 rock by the Romans ? " 
 
 " Well, I ain't very curious," said Emery Ann. " I don't 
 believe I 'm ready for Romans. I have n't got used to the Eng 
 lish, yet." 
 
 She sat by the great square window of our larger room, look 
 ing out upon the front of Prince Albert Hall with its long ter 
 races of steps and its grand facade, and the equestrian statues 
 of the Queen and the Consort in bronze, before the gates. 
 
 " I 'm watching those little ragged children chasing up and 
 down, and dodging the policemen." 
 
 " I think I 'm very much of the same mind with Emery Ann," 
 I answered Edith, laughing. " I want to see what comes along, 
 for a while, and get used to the feeling of England." 
 
 So we settled it, and she ran away to Margaret, and her first 
 sight-seeing. 
 
 Emery Ann and I looked out at the ragged children, and the 
 policemen in their stiff uniforms and stiffer importance, dispers 
 ing continually, one swarm, while another, or the same, re 
 formed, gathered at their heels. The splendid stone flights 
 and platforms were only a playground for a grand game of "Old 
 Man of the Castle," for which the cockaded and silver-badged 
 officials served involuntarily and unconsciously as so many 
 " Its" 
 
 " They might as well try to parade the flies out, " said Emery
 
 90 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Ann. " And flies do get the freedom of most everything, though 
 they war n't thought of in the making." 
 
 Then we spoke of the simple bronze statues ; the slight, girl 
 ish figure of the Queen in her youth, with the long, plain riding- 
 dress, and her husband in his uniform, looking so quiet and un- 
 imposing in the midst of the 'great space and before the lofty 
 pile of architecture, yet august to the feeling, as representa 
 tives of the personal Majesty of the Realm. 
 
 " Just that little woman at the top of it all," said Emery Ann. 
 " You can't seem to see it, can you ? But then you never can, 
 in folks. It's the things that look mighty. And the crowds 
 that stand round and call 'em mighty. If it was n't for all Eng 
 land, the Queen would n't be anything." 
 
 Which philosophy of relativity was as really Emery Ann's, 
 as if nobody had ever discovered anything like it before. 
 
 Another of the world's questions occurred to her presently, 
 under the same freshness of disguise. 
 
 " If a woman can be a Queen, why can't she be a Presi 
 dent ? " she said, problematically. 
 
 " There is a difference," I suggested. " She must be born to 
 be a Queen ; but she must scramble to be a President : at least, 
 until things are quite otherwise regulated than now." 
 
 " It would n't be a bad plan to have them born ; if you could 
 make 'em up to suit yourselves, as the bees do, "said Emery 
 Ann, solutatively. " A real Queen- Woman, with the horse 
 before the cart, you see, might be a first-rate idea over a 
 congress. A kind of a national conscience, to clarify things ; 
 that they seem to have most lost among 'em, some way, if they 
 ever had it. But then, I suppose you could n't tell. A good 
 one might run to crotchets or quavers, for that matter ; and 
 a bad one there ! they '11 have to work it out ; I can't ! "
 
 UP BY EXPRESS. 91 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 UP BY EXPRESS. 
 
 .... WE stayed in Liverpool three days longer. Mrs. Regis 
 had more to do than we, and we waited her convenience. We 
 all bought new English waterproofs, and a few other things that 
 we had left for foreign purchase. Edith and I indulged our 
 selves with some delightful traveling baskets. But we reserved 
 our more thorough shopping for London and Paris. 
 
 You know that, in a general way, I hate shops. Christmas 
 gifts, and choosing surprises for other people are the only things 
 that ever put any poetry into it ; so you will not hear very 
 much about it from me. I will tell you right here, however, 
 one conclusion I have arrived at, in case you ever come abroad 
 yourself, and need to know. Don't listen to people who tell 
 you to put off buying essentials until you get here. You will 
 wish you had paid the difference three times over, and got it off 
 your mind, to say nothing of the flies and fiacres you will pay 
 for to fly round in. 
 
 I had not very much to do myself; for someway, I can always 
 cut down my list and go without things when I get discouraged; 
 but Edie had a long memorandum to check off which her 
 mother had made for her, under this traditional impression that 
 it is a duty to start as ill, provided as you know how to be, and 
 to get quantities of all sorts over here. I am sure we have both 
 been homesick for the old " stores " right around Winter and 
 Summer streets, where we knew just what counters to go to, and 
 what salesmen to ask, and exactly what he ought to " ask " us. 
 The delusions that shillings and sixpences lead you into, as you 
 first hear the prices of things in Liverpool and London ! Not to 
 speak of the pound as a unit, instead of the blessed, little, mod 
 est, yet warily-multiplying dollar ! I can see, now, how our
 
 92 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 currency came of the careful foresight of a prudent young people 
 with its fortune to make. 
 
 You need to be in Europe a year to be able to begin to buy 
 judiciously. My advice to any one coming is, bring every 
 thing needful and comfortable : nothing superfluous, everything 
 plain. Replenish as you wear out, and when you are just going 
 home, get what you want for next year, and, best and pret 
 tiest buying of all, your little gifts for friends. 
 
 On the Thursday morning, we walked down-stairs and took 
 our seats in the express train for London. How nice we 
 thought the English first class carriage ! We do not mean to 
 travel first class when we can do otherwise ; but we had our 
 Cunard tickets through to Paris, and we could take our enforced 
 luxury with acquiescent minds. 
 
 We had a compartment to ourselves, and as we sat opposite 
 to each other in our deep-cushioned corners, the large windows 
 giving us clear, broad views on either hand, we looked at each 
 other and out at the new country, of which a whole day's pan 
 orama was to unroll itself for our enjoying, with the beatitude 
 of children in the best places at the show. 
 
 The porter told us, with a touch of his hat, which meant half 
 a crown, that our luggage was in the forward van. What se 
 cured it to us on our arrival in London, we could not conceive, 
 for they give you no checks, they only tell you it is all right, 
 and when you get there you find it is. There must be some 
 system, and some check unseen, but what and how, remains a 
 beautiful mystery, like the mystery of imponderable force. 
 
 How we gazed as we flew along ! And what a newness we 
 saw in everything ! A newness of oldness ; there was nothing 
 raw-edged ; nothing unmellowed; nothing unadjusted, unutil- 
 .zod. There did not seem to be any dust, any scraps even, any 
 where. All was finished and cleared up. England, it appeared, 
 had nothing to do, now, through the centuries, but to live along 
 in her dwelling that she has builded. The very brick walls, 
 and the backs of the old suburban houses, were in charming 
 tints of crimson and black and gray and umber and tawny, as
 
 UP BY EXPRESS. 93 
 
 time and the island atmosphere had colored them; there was 
 not a crude, new-baked red among them all. 
 
 Over these rich, mingling blending shades ran the climbing, 
 spreading, live glory of dark green ivy. 
 
 " Just think," Emery Ann said, " English ivy ; that we 
 tend in pots so ! " 
 
 " To be sure," said Edith, laughing, " for here we are ! " 
 
 " I know," said Emery Ann. "But I was kind of thinking 
 from over our way." 
 
 As the day grew on, we ran up into the lovely midland 
 counties. Away from towns, the rail stretched through quiet 
 meadows, skirted beautiful woods, touched the edges and lay 
 along under the walls of fine old manor places and parks, where 
 in some stately distance we could catch sight now and then of 
 chimneys and gables that told of the home mansions, such as we 
 have read of in bewitching English stories. Now and again, 
 the girls gave a little shout, as real old castle towers revealed 
 themselves against a wooded hillside, or upon the blue of the sky. 
 
 Still everything so perfect, so arranged ; not a rough stone, 
 or a stray sod, it seemed, anywhere ; the tiniest cottages, so 
 tidy, so " redd up," as the Irish say. Everything mellowed and 
 smoothed and toned ; no rawness, or straggledness. I knew we 
 were traversing the heart and "garden of England, the garden 
 country of Europe ; I knew that there are places where misery 
 and squalidness reveal themselves ; but I felt as Edith said, 
 " I 'd as lief be poor as rich, here ; the money is all spent for 
 you, and the perfectness put everywhere." It seemed as if the 
 haymakers in the field were like dwellers in a palace. 
 
 I thought as the swift train rushed smoothly onward, 
 This is what it has come to in a dozen centuries or so, of mere 
 human outside improvement, broken, as all human growth is 
 broken, by tumults and oppressions, resistances and crimes and 
 mistakes. What will it be in the Kingdom, when the Son shall 
 come to his own again, and we shall dwell in the house of the 
 Lord forever ? This, in the material, is what human living 
 tends to ; how surely then may we trust the Divine to complete 
 itself? " Fear not, little flock ;" it is your Father's good pleas 
 ure to give you all his glory !
 
 94 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 The great Euston Square Station seemed big enough, and 
 tumultuous enough, to be London itself. Carriages drove in 
 under its arcades ; the echoes of wheels and voices and the noise 
 of unlading rung about us in the vast roofed space like the din 
 of a battle ; to look for any one in the thronging groups, or 
 groups of throngs, might be like searching with a telescope 
 along the Milky Way. With great presence of mind we remem 
 bered what the Liverpool porter had told us about the van, and 
 we made straight for the point where we might expect to regain 
 sight of our luggage. This was what concerned us ; the rest 
 took care of itself. The clew to all snarls, and the escape from 
 all confusions, is the same ; the reminder and application come 
 with every glimpse we get of a bigger piece of the world and its 
 ways than usual. 
 
 In ten minutes we had made our bargain with a civil cabman 
 and his colleague, and in and upon the two vehicles ourselves 
 and our impedimenta were bestowed, and we were rattling away 
 from the already thinning pavements and platforms, and out of 
 the subsiding roar, down George Street and along the Eastern 
 Road. 
 
 Miss Kirkbright had given us some nice references for London 
 lodgings, and we had telegraphed from Liverpool and secured 
 rooms at Mrs. Blissett's, out tbward Kensington ; so we had 
 quite a bit of a West End drive to get there. 
 
 How pleased we were with the names of streets and squares, 
 roads and crescents, familiar to our novel-reading ! Marylebone 
 and Hampstead, and Tottenham Court Roads, Park Crescent 
 and Portland Place, Upper Baker, and Upper George, and 
 Upper York streets, Berkeley Street, and Portman Square, and 
 Oxford Street ; at last into great gates, and along green, shaded 
 avenues, across a corner of Hyde Park itself! 
 
 It was just after the fashionable hour of driving ; cabs are 
 allowed a certain license then ; and we caught sight of drifting 
 fragments of aristocratic splendor as one gets scraps of sunset in 
 .ate, marginal clouds. Or, as Edith said, as you get in among 
 the asteroids in the edge of the November drift. Equestrians, 
 especially, were returning from the Row, and gentlemen in 
 private cabriolets were driving by, with little breeched and
 
 UP BY EXPRESS. 95 
 
 beavered and cockaded tigers, their small arms folded tightly 
 across their chests to hold in their big importance. 
 
 Something began to puzzle me presently. Nobody really 
 stared ; but I was conscious that we were glanced at. Eyes 
 scanned swiftly the windows of our humble conveyances, and 
 were lifted to the laden roofs. I could not suppose that simple 
 travelers and their luggage were of noticeable interest to these 
 great world people, even when pretty American faces beamed 
 from within a railway cab, and the unmistakable " Boston, U. S. 
 A." was ticketed atop. 
 
 I wondered if we were staring conspicuously ; at last, when a 
 gentleman, whose wheels passed our own very closely, really 
 leaned involuntarily forward for an instant, and drew quickly 
 back as he met my eyes, I felt annoyed, and admonished Edith 
 to sit farther out of sight. 
 
 But we forgot it all as we caught sight of the sumptuously 
 delicate Albert Memorial, lifting its white pinnacles and sculpt 
 ures out of green shadows against blue sky ; and passed out at 
 the QueeVs Gate into Kensington Road, in face of the grander 
 structure of the new, magnificent Albert Hall. Ah, me ! A 
 queen can raise a poem of marble and gold, and build a hall 
 to fill with glorious music, in memory of her beloved; but she 
 cannot go away into the hush she craves, and sit in the sweet 
 twilight of her own remembrance, and keep the quiet widow's 
 garments on, and let the years grow holier as they run toward 
 the end of her waiting, as other widowed women may ! Yet 
 one thrills to think that though it demand impatiently its Sov 
 ereign, and her robes and pomp again, her people never can for 
 get, and these monuments stand forth to say so, how she 
 has been a very woman with a woman's heart among them, and 
 how the grief that falls on common homes has anointed her in 
 her palace also, to make her more sacredly their own than any 
 coronation oil !
 
 96 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SHOPS, OR SHRINES ? 
 
 .... WE five had two whole floors at Mrs. Blissett's. Our 
 parlor looked out with three windows upon a shaded crescent ; 
 at the back were wide gardens such as we had never dreamed to 
 find in London. 
 
 There was a table ready when we arrived, with tea and bis 
 cuit, and cold chicken ; and a dish full of such wonderful straw 
 berries as we had never seen before except in Horticultural 
 Shows, or in two round rings on the tops of fancy-price boxes. 
 We had to cut them up to eat them. Emery Ann said it was 
 the way with all the rest of it ; we should find we could n't take 
 anything at a mouthful. 
 
 We went to sleep, in broad, delightful English beds, thinking 
 of a great feast spread out all around us, and that to-morrow we 
 should begin to cut up London. 
 
 Not that we should cut it up at all small, this time, or even 
 get a really fair taste of it ; we were in a hurry for Switzerland 
 before the season should be too far gone. We only meant to 
 stop in London long enough to buy basket trunks and some 
 other indispensable things, get a little rested, and see Westmin 
 ster Abbey, for fear we should not live to come back. Since 
 we had known Miss Euphrasia Kirkbright, I had felt much the 
 same about seeing all we could of her. 
 
 Should it be the Abbey, or the Edgeware Road ? Should we 
 get our errands done, and then go with clear brains and con 
 sciences, and serene imaginations into that dim, silent Heart of 
 the old Past, which it was so strange to think we could step 
 into, right off the busy, crowding, whirling streets, right out 
 of a modern cab into doors through which kings, for long ages
 
 SHOPS, OR SHRINES? 97 
 
 witless of our age's cheap multiplied facilities, entered to be 
 crowned, and were borne to be buried ? We wondered if it 
 would seem solemnly separate to us, as it had used to seem to 
 our thought, now that we knew how easy it is for any and 
 everybody to trip across the Atlantic and run in ? 
 
 The questions came up at the breakfast-table, where we were 
 also reminded that the Exhibition of the Royal Academy was 
 open, and that one of our days must be given to that. 
 
 " Could n't we do both to-day ? " asked Mrs. Regis. 
 
 " "Westminster Abbey and anything else ! " I exclaimed, in 
 voluntarily. 
 
 Mrs. Regis smiled. 
 
 " Is that the way you expect to economize a year in Eu 
 rope ? " she asked. " I think you '11 find you '11 need the ' cycle 
 of Cathay.' " 
 
 "And I think it would be a better thing," I said; "if we must 
 make mince-meat of Europe to get it all into one little indigesti 
 ble pie. I am going to try to enjoy each separate doing, as if 
 it were the one single thing I had come for. I would rather 
 wait a week between, than put two together that don't belong, 
 or that rub each other out." 
 
 Was it very rude of me ? I don't think I made it sound so. 
 We decided upon Westminster Abbey. 
 
 The girls got out the map of London, and chose the way we 
 would take. 
 
 " You won't mind driving by Buckingham Palace the same 
 day, will you, auntie ? " said Edith, saucily. 
 
 " We can't help driving by things," I answered. 
 
 " Then we '11 go by as many as we can," she returned, and I 
 only stipulated that she should not take us round by Greenwich 
 Hospital and the Crystal Palace. 
 
 We drove over Constitution Hill, between Green Park and 
 the Palace Gardens, and down into the Mall, and around Saint 
 James's Park ; and we thought we had seen residences more de 
 lightful than the Queen's town-house looked to be, and were 
 partly disappointed, I suppose, because we could not detect the 
 subtle difference between the stone and mortar that shelters 
 royalty, and that put together for other and freer dwellers ; also, 
 7
 
 98 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 I think I was conscious of a feeling too absurd to define, that 
 she never sat with her work at the windows, or stepped care 
 lessly in and out of the doors before the breakfast-bell rang ; 
 and if not, how queer it must be, and what were windows and 
 doors in a palace made for? 
 
 The low, long ranges of the buildings at Whitehall, the 
 arched entrance of the Horse Guards, with the two immovable 
 beasts and striders, on sentinel duty ; then the showy and glit 
 tering architecture of the new Houses of Parliament ; and then 
 turning aside from these last, the dark-browed, solemn Abbey 
 this was the way we came to it. 
 
 I cannot take you in, Rose, if I try to. I could not take my 
 self in ! I was there, and I was not there ; just as we are in 
 the midst of Almightiness, and we know it, and yet know it 
 not. 
 
 Arches beyond arches, opening through and through, crossing 
 and interlacing above ; crowding chapels and shrines ; pillars 
 and galleries exquisite in far distance with groinings and fret 
 work; old, worn, massive thresholds, and door-posts, and lin 
 tels ; pavements uneven, yet smooth, with the tread of centuries; 
 hushed chambers and crypts, where still, strange effigies lay ; 
 long, aisled chapels, rich with carving, and marble, and stained 
 glass, hung with old banners, and silent like the buried years ; 
 names of kings, and queens, and heroes ; weird symbolic de 
 vices, Edith stopped aghast before one of a husband leaning 
 over his dying wife, while from the door of a sepulchre beneath, 
 the skeleton Death starts forth and aims his javelin upward, 
 inscriptions of love and honor, adornments of gold and brass, 
 engraven and sculptured escutcheons, trophies and relics of 
 arms, a world like this, lying shut away within the noise and 
 stir of the every-day world of the living, the memory of a na 
 tion hidden in a heart-stillness behind its present, as every 
 separate human memory is hidden ; it was in this we strayed 
 and lost ourselves, and wondered, and came surprised upon 
 things we had not known how to look for, and missed the things 
 we thought we did ; and it is in this gray mist of a grand, be 
 wildered vision, that I grasp at shapes and parts to try and tell 
 of them again to you.
 
 SHOPS, OR SHRINES ! 99 
 
 We climbed the narrow, twisting stairway to the Chapel of 
 Edward the Confessor ; we stood before the quaint, grim Coro 
 nation Chairs, one of which incloses the Stone of Scone ; we 
 looked up above them to the sword and shield of Edward 
 Third, the sword seven feet long; we saw the legend on the 
 screen, of Saint John, and the king, and the ring, and the pil 
 grims, and I thought of the circle that all acts run round in, and 
 so of the way a ring comes to be a faith and service token, 
 since every doing is an unconscious pledge, of which the sign 
 conies back and is redeemed at last. And we remembered that 
 the royal dust that lay hidden about us in the antique chamber, 
 was the dust of five, and six, and eight centuries ago, and 
 that we, standing there, had brought in, on feet and garments, 
 the dust of eighteen hundred and seventy-three. It gives one's 
 breath a gasp, and one's brain a whirl, to put the two together, 
 and to fetch one's self back to the consciousness of which world 
 of the two one really belongs in. 
 
 We went into the magnificent chapel of Henry Seventh, 
 through the wrought brass gates. The marvelous carvings of 
 stalls and wainscots and canopies, the overhanging banners, the 
 walls with statues of saints and martyrs, the high, intricate groin- 
 ings overhead dropping to long, slender points like stalactites, 
 the dim, rich light through painted glass, oh, Rose ! I am 
 falling into what I said I would not, a sightseer's recapitula 
 tion. Yet what can one do but capitulate, and recapitulate ? 
 
 It came over me here, on this first threshold of wonders, 
 what I have thought and known beforehand, how impossible 
 it is to really see it all, in the sense of grasping and taking in. 
 It has to be done in strata, as the geologists take the rich old 
 story of the earth ; you can no more enter into the detail, ami. 
 appropriate the separate meaning and impression, than you can 
 unravel the primeval periods, and make the swarming life that 
 was lived in them individual and distinct to your imagination. 
 And after all, that is why we are kept graciously, for the most 
 part, in our own place, and have not been given wings. And it 
 is by being kept so, for long times together, that men have made 
 a history upon the earth. Fpr if the corals had been swift- 
 moving things trying all ocean depths and places, and getting
 
 100 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 their living far and wide, it is easy to see that reefs and islands 
 would not have been built up. This is a drifting and a flitting 
 age ; but much will have to settle down again, even if it should 
 be by the dropping out of some of our knowledges. The Lord 
 will not let his work stand still or snarl up, by his separate 
 weavers leaving their little threads and spindles, or dragging 
 them heedlessly about, as they run hither and thither, just to see 
 what the whole, as far as it has gone, looks like. 
 
 I will tell you just three little things, and then leave off. 
 
 We found the North Aisle, and the tomb of Elizabeth and 
 Mary. While I stood looking at the splendid monument of the 
 queen sisters, Emery Ann went down to the far end, where is 
 the altar above the remains of the murdered princes, Edward 
 Fifth and the Duke of York. I thought it was that she was 
 gone to see ; but it seems she knew nothing about it, and I 
 found her standing over the little effigy of a baby princess, ly 
 ing in a cradle, with the record of its three days' life upon the 
 stone. 
 
 " They lost their little babies, out of their cradles, just as 
 common folks do now ! " she said, tenderly. " It seems realer 
 than all the crowns, a hundred times ! " 
 
 Afterward, we crossed to the South Aisle, and went in where 
 Mary Queen of Scots lies sculptured in white marble, turned 
 to a pale amber with age, beneath the softly stealing light of 
 two high windows. 
 
 I sat down on a bench, opposite the light, which shone faintly 
 through the chiseled features. 
 
 Two little street-children, as they seemed, had wandered in, 
 and came and stood there, close between me and the tomb, and 
 gazed up at the marble lady. 
 
 " My ! ain't she pretty ? " said one, with hands folded before 
 her, and her voice hushed down. 
 
 " Yes," said the other, shaking his head slowly and wisely. 
 " But she 's been dead a long time ! " 
 
 Last of all, we got into the Poet's Corner. 
 
 Somehow, it looked more open arid plain, less sweetly 
 secluded, less of a nook, than J had imagined it. As we all 
 stood on the broad pavement, glancing around for the names
 
 SHOPS, OR SHRINES? 101 
 
 that make it beautiful and separate, Edith said, in her quiet 
 way : 
 
 " Poet's Corner is n't just what I thought it would be, auntie. 
 Is it to you ? " 
 
 And Emery Ann, who knows so precious little about poetry, 
 as a name, that she does not recognize that which she makes in 
 her own homely speech, said briskly : 
 
 " I suppose it is n't the Corner, after all. It 's the poets." 
 
 "Was n't that nice ? 
 
 When we reached home, we found two cards and a note upon 
 our table. 
 
 The names were " Miss Kirkbright," and " Lady Christian 
 Truesdaile." The note was to me from Miss Euphrasia. 
 
 " I write," she said, " in case, as is so likely, that we should 
 not find you. We wish to see you very much ; and my 
 cousin, Lady Christian, begs you will, if possible, arrange to 
 drive out here to-morrow, for afternoon tea. The place is not 
 quite easy to find, so I shall come in for you at four o'clock, if 
 I do not hear otherwise from you in the morning. We hope 
 to see you all : Mrs. and Miss Regis, Miss Tudor, and Edith, 
 who I hope will let me call her so ; and that this will be 
 only a beginning of our being much together. You will only 
 need one fly, for coming or returning, as Mr. Robert Truesdaile 
 has a dinner engagement in town, and the carriage will be sent 
 in for him at ten o'clock. Our own dinner or rather supper, 
 for we have Scotch names and fashions for many things will 
 be quite quiet and plain ; we mean to make less guests than 
 friends of you. With love, EUPHKASIA KIRKBRIGHT." 
 
 Was n't this lovely ? And how had she known that we had 
 come? 
 
 And so, the " far-away Scottish cousin " was a ladyship ! I 
 will just mention here, for we goon ceased to think of it as of 
 consequence, when we came to know the woman, that she 
 was Lady Christian Shawe, Lord Bervie's daughter. How many 
 American women, I wonder, would have talked to us of her 
 friends as Miss Euphrasia had done, and never once let the title 
 slip into the mention ?
 
 102 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Mrs. Regis had made another engagement for herself and 
 Margaret. I think Margaret was sorry ; but I am pretty sure 
 that Mrs. Regis would have been just a little unwilling to sail 
 too readily into intimacy with a Lady Christian, under convoy 
 of me, Patience Strong. She had not drawn much to Miss 
 Euphrasia on board ship ; and perhaps it was quite becoming of 
 her not to be too eager now.
 
 IN LADY CHPISTIAN'S GARDEN. 103 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 IN LADY CHRISTIAN'S GARDEN. 
 
 .... WE used the first half of the broken day to do our 
 errands in the Pklgeware Road. We went in by the under 
 ground railway, found an omnibus at the corner where we were 
 told, and were set down at the trunk-dealer's, where Edith and 
 I bought each one of those large, light, elastic, canvas-covered 
 basket-trunks that we coveted, to replace the heavy, iron- 
 banded, zinc-bottomed, batten-roofed American boxes, whose 
 very strength is their fragility in the remorseless hands of 
 American baggage-heavers. 
 
 We walked about a little, not too long, for we were on our 
 guard not to put our whole day's strength into our forenoon, 
 before we took the return-omnibus to the station corner, and 
 were steamed through the great Metropolitan Burrow around 
 again to our Kensington lodgings. The shops and the people 
 amused and interested us. The " getting used to being in Eng 
 land " was enough in itself to fall back upon in the intervals of 
 more definite purpose. 
 
 We came upon some little street-children again, who gave us 
 the point of the morning's sensation in a specimen of English 
 street-grammar. 
 
 They were playing about, a group of them, bareheaded, un 
 tidy, and happy, when a rather fiercely busy-looking woman, 
 equally untidy, and far less happy, put her head out at a door 
 way and screamed a summons to the " young 'uns." 
 
 It was a crowded thoroughfare, and there were other young 
 ones. Those near us, whom we imagined were addressed, and 
 among whom perhaps the woman took it for granted her own 
 strays were, paid no heed. One of them, in a hunt-the-squirrel
 
 104 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 chase among the quieter pedestrians after a companion, tumbled 
 up, or all around, against poor Emery Ann, who extricated her 
 self with many collisions and dodges, and then remarked admon- 
 ishingly, " Your mother 's calling you.' 
 
 A bold, saucy, merry little face, the eyes shining out between 
 wild elf-locks, turned itself up at hers, and a voice which was 
 the translation of the look into tone, uttered triumphantly this 
 remarkable distich : 
 
 " Her ain't a call in' we ! Us don't belong to she ! " 
 
 Which has taken its place 'with us, ever since, among Fa 
 miliar Quotations, and become a typical aphorism. 
 
 We found letters from home when we came back to lunch ; 
 letters, that not giving their experience across the ocean as we 
 have done, were only the record of a few days after our depart 
 ure ; as many as we had now spent in England. How odd it 
 seemed that there was so little to tell! And how dear and 
 delightful that the little had come ! 
 
 I should have supposed that you could not have asked me a 
 question, Rose, about voyage or anything, that the many pages 
 I have dispatched would not be bearing an answer to ; and I 
 laughed so to find the two things demanded which I had not 
 thought to tell of, and which seemed so far back, now, to rec 
 ollect, " whether we did put half our wardrobe through the 
 port-holes," and " what became of the popped corn ! " 
 
 My dear, if the port-holes were what we gave the name to, 
 the little round windows in our state-rooms, they were hardly 
 ever left open, all the way ; and the popped-corn bag was 
 popped under the berth in a corner, that first miserable night, 
 and never thought of or discovered until, crushed with tumbling 
 among other movables, and shrunken with sea-damp, it puzzled 
 us to remember and identify it when we dragged it forth in the 
 general investigation the day before we landed. The steward 
 carried it off and I suppose the sea-mews and the fishes got it ; 
 but I have conscientious doubts whether it agreed with them ; 
 and I hope the bundle of cast-off garments that we left tidily 
 pinned together and begged Mrs. Pride to dispose of, may have 
 lone some brief and better service. I have lost faith in private 
 sea-stores, and in the handiness of port-holes.
 
 IN LADY CHRISTIAN'S GARDEN. 105 
 
 Edith and Emery Ann and I drove out with Miss Kirkbright 
 in the Truesdaile carriage. We passed high-walled parks and 
 gates with names of noble houses on them ; we read also 
 hundreds of little fanciful titles of suburban villas and cottages 
 and terraces ; we saw everywhere that lovely adornment of 
 flowers, in windows and balconies, that bubbling up of green 
 ery over garden walls, which redeems and transfigures smoky 
 London ; which was not half so Smoky as we had fancied it, 
 and that smiled upon us everywhere, these bright July days, 
 with a generous surprise. 
 
 We turned down by the river along a shaded mall, and 
 crossed a bridge, under whose arches boats and little steamers 
 were shooting gayly up and down, and we came out into quite 
 rural spaces. We still kept on by the river side, with gardens 
 and houses all along our left, and streets leading away into more 
 thickly-builded precincts. 
 
 At last, before an iron gate that opened upon a path between 
 sweet bits of hedge and patches of blossom, at whose end a 
 flight of broad stone steps ran up to a pleasant veranda, look 
 ing down, as you turned, upon the river, and a boat-mooring, 
 and a water-gate beneath old trees, we stopped at " The 
 Shaws," named partly for patronymic, and partly for winsome 
 meaning of the old Saxon that stands for " shade." 
 
 The doors stood open through the hall. The rooms to right 
 and left were breezy and bright with the western sunshine, 
 gently shaded by the nodding boughs ; trees and vines showed 
 soft, flickering motion and cool color across the wide garden 
 egress at the back ; and Lady Christian herself came forward 
 from the foot of the staircase to welcome us and lead us in. 
 
 She took us into a long drawing-room cosy with books, pict 
 ures, music, low sofas, and foot-rugs upon the dark, inlaid 
 ^oor, curtains pushed back to their utmost from a great bay 
 window that looked down into a garden full of vines and ever 
 greens and tenderer summer foliage whose groupings made 
 seemingly endless avenues and glades, and hid away the real 
 confines utterly ; from among which, now, came up the voices 
 of children and the laugh of young girls. 
 
 " They are all busy down there," said Lady Christian. " We
 
 106 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 are getting ready for a little fete. Perhaps you may like what 
 we will tell you of it well enough to come again and make 
 part. Meanwhile, would you keep your hats on, and come 
 out ? We will have tea there, if you fancy." 
 
 Do you want to know what she is like, to look at, this Lady 
 Christian ? 
 
 She is a little, slight lady, with soft, quick movements, and a 
 way of vanishing quietly like a spirit, and appearing noiselessly 
 somewhere else where she is just wanted ; never needing a 
 place made for her, but gently gliding into one that waits ; she 
 has bright brown hair which she pushes carelessly from a fair, 
 low, even forehead, and gathers up behind in a loose, graceful 
 knot ; and she wears upon it, almost always, not a cap, nor a 
 veil, but some white, light thing that looks just flung on, now 
 of lace, now of wool, delicate and film-like, as she flits between 
 house and garden, and needs less or more of dainty covering. It 
 is never arranged ; sometimes the ends are just caught together 
 under her chin, sometimes, with a gold or coral pin thrust 
 through at the back, it lies about her face and throat making its 
 own delicate folds and shadows, changing with each gentle stir 
 and pose. 
 
 But you do not see the whole of Lady Christian, as you may 
 of some, by just her height and face and mould and color, and 
 by the garments she puts on outside of these ; subtilely as these 
 reveal the inward creature, according to the law by which God 
 surely gives to each seed its own body. You want to see the 
 raiment of her life about her ; the way she has made the body 
 and vesture of her home ; the sweet attitude in which she stands 
 with husband, children, friends ; the moral and spiritual group 
 ing ; and all in the light from that eastward quarter in Eden, 
 which is the shining of God's face upon his heaven. The heaven 
 that has no other boundary, but lies here and there in hearts 
 and households and societies, wherever the Kingdom has begun 
 to come among the worlds. As one color shows upon the map, 
 in scattered fragments, the territory and dependence of a cen 
 tral realm. 
 
 I do not suppose I shall ever see or know her any more in 
 this world, or that she will have anything directly to do with
 
 IN LADY CHRISTIAN'S GARDEN. 107 
 
 what you have begun to be interested in with me, of life and 
 story that this year may link together ; but she is in it, there 
 fore she has to do ; and I think there will be a certain finer line 
 upon all things and places, and a certain truer perception in our 
 selves, than we should have had but for this beginning of show 
 ings. I think it may be something like the beautiful and gra 
 cious " beginning of miracles " in Cana of Galilee. 
 
 We found the young people in the middle of a rehearsal of a 
 little domestic play which Lady Christian and they had ar 
 ranged, and which was to be a chief part of the coming fete. 
 So we did not interrupt them ; only Hope, the eldest girl, came 
 down and greeted us while a scene went on in which she was 
 not needed ; and we went and established ourselves just out of 
 ear-shot, in a farther glade of the deep old garden. Here we 
 found chairs and rugs and a little rustic tea-table ; and here, 
 after a little while, Mr. Truesdaile, with Mr. and Mrs. Arm 
 strong, came and found us. 
 
 There is this certain truth in spiritism ; that a " seance " is 
 something, arranged consciously or not, into which inevitably 
 flow the life and manifestation that belong to it. There are per 
 sons whom I never saw but twice three four times, yet 
 who touched so surely every time, the self-same chords in me, 
 that no different tone of intercourse would have been possible 
 than that which came, almost like a Holy Communion ; and 
 there are others again with whom I am afraid I should be little, 
 and earthly, be kept, and help keep them so, though we 
 were thrust in each other's way I will not say we met 
 every day of our lives. 
 
 In Lady Christian's garden, that fragrant afternoon, there was 
 a circle, and the spirits came. 
 
 It had begun in Mr. Truesdaile's library, where he and the 
 Armstrongs had been sitting before we got there. 
 
 The world is all alive with it, to be sure ; it is in the air both 
 of religion and science. I do not think we can say which 
 " began it ; " if one had not, the other would. It is a new 
 grasp, a closer perception ; and the first prophecy and advent are 
 like the prophecy and advent of Bethlehem. The wise men 
 are eager ; the Herods are scared ; the hearts that are virgin to
 
 108 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 the truth, and of which it may he horn, are in travail and pon 
 dering. The shepherds, guarding their living treasures hy night, 
 waiting for the day, hear heavenly voices ; and in the desert, 
 growing and waxing strong in spirit, there is a child already, 
 the child of a stern, judging Truth that shall be the world's 
 awakening to its need, waiting for the day of its showing 
 unto Israel. 
 
 A new reach and message through the things that are the 
 types, a last word sent back from the farthest advance, and 
 farthest discovery of material exploration and analysis, this 
 was what they talked of, as people are talking everywhere. 
 
 " They have almost touched heaven, and they do not know 
 it," said Mr. Truesdaile, as they walked toward us and we caught 
 a key-note to the conversation. 
 
 " Protoplasm is very near to God ; and yet they will never 
 reach Him by that road," said Roger Armstrong. 
 
 Our shaking hands and making places did not put by, or 
 break up, except for the moment ; we were all so quick to 
 catch and to desire. Nobody even explained, " We were speak 
 ing thus and so ; " or entreated, " Pray, go on." It went on, 
 because it had to. 
 
 Miss Euphrasia said to Mr. Truesdaile, 
 
 " It may be lost again, that clew you were talking of. Is 
 the world ready to read the sign ? It is as simple as the Rosetta 
 stone ; but nobody sees how the pictures of things are the initial 
 letters of great words." 
 
 " It has been lost before. Do you suppose Babel was a round 
 tower up into the clouds ? " 
 
 " It may quite easily have been another sort of reaching." 
 
 " ' Go to,' they said ; ' let us make brick ; let us put this and 
 that together, and pile hard fact upon fact, with cunning mor 
 tar between, and we shall come to the sky.' " 
 
 " And then," said Lady Christian, " they fell to talking differ 
 ent tongues. Nobody knew the one language. They forgot it, 
 among them, in their cunning building. So Babel crumbled, 
 and men began again." 
 
 " Now, they are climbing a hill of sand," said Faith Arm 
 strong. " It is not even a brick Babel, this new way of it.
 
 IN LADY CHRISTIAN'S GARDEN. 109 
 
 They have sifted the worlds down to particles, and made a kind 
 of Sahara of the universe." 
 
 " Where the shapes and drifts are nothing but chance shift- 
 ings of wind-blown grains, and the beautiful things we hope for 
 are only a mirage of the hot air," rejoined her husband. 
 
 Said Mr. Truesdaile, " They disintegrate, to find out that 
 which is the secret of compaction. The livingness is in the 
 living rock. It goes out by their own process, which after all 
 they cannot push to literalness. Nobody ever saw an atom, any 
 more than they see the Spirit that holds the atoms together. 
 Yet they will believe in the one, and say, ' Who has ever shown 
 us the other ? ' ' 
 
 " Was not that, too, in the parable told nineteen hundred 
 years ago ? " said Miss Euphrasia. " Building on the sand, and 
 building on the rock ? The holding to mere elements, which 
 fall apart, and the holding to his saying, which is the Word 
 in the world ? " 
 
 " Still," said Lady Christian, " is it not his hand upon the 
 world, after all, to open its sight ? When He healed the blind 
 man, He took clay, the lowest thing ; and he made an oint 
 ment with spittle, the most literal proceeding from his mouth, 
 sign of his most inferior material word, and anointed the 
 shut eyes. And at first, when the sight came, it was not to see 
 men even as men ; but as trees walking. Are not the wise ones 
 looking at humanity just so now ? But the second touch 
 perhaps the crumbling away of the first anointing showed 
 all things clearly." 
 
 " You have taken the truth out of two parable-acts, Lady 
 Christian," said Mr. Armstrong ; " but you have mingled, and 
 perhaps not mismingled, the stories." 
 
 "Ah, yes," said Lady Christian, smiling. "I recollect. There 
 was the blind man of Bethsaida, and he of Jerusalem born 
 blind." 
 
 " And He led the one out of the town, away from human con 
 fusions, and there made the clay, emblem of first things ; and 
 after He had anointed, bade him go and wash in the pool called 
 Sent' It was as he went, according to the sending, that hia 
 sight came."
 
 110 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 " And the other," went on Lady Christian, " in the midst of 
 the city, close by its very temple, touched with spittle also, 
 began to see, dimly, life in its lower relations ; the men as 
 trees. After that, a higher quickening revealed the higher. 
 Surely it was not without meaning that he did it twice." 
 
 " I have never yet, said Mr. Truesdaile, " found any question 
 or solution of question, that was not prevised in the New Tes 
 tament." 
 
 " I am so glad it was called the ' Testament,' " said Miss 
 Euphrasia. " The perfect Will, the clear intent, the com 
 plete bequeathing. We are like children of a vast inheritance, 
 only coming to it as the needs come ; opening out treasure after 
 treasure in truth, as we do in the heart of the globe, as the life 
 demands it." 
 
 " He fed the multitude twice," said I. " I mean, with the 
 same repetition of circumstances, so that we easily confound the 
 two.' Certainly He healed many blind and deaf, and raised 
 many dead, no doubt ; but we have these few doubled, like a 
 saying underlined. There were Lazarus, and the boy of Nain ; 
 how those two stand together, in the hopelessness and the 
 weeping, and the ' beholding of the glory ! ' ' 
 
 " The bier and the tomb, yes ; the very last and uttermost 
 of death ; twice shown, that the people might see two differ 
 ent throngs of them, in Judea and Galilee how ' God had 
 visited his people.' And that, by the mouths of many witnesses, 
 the word of immortality might be established." 
 
 " I think," said Mr. Truesdaile, as Mr. Armstrong paused, 
 " that we have more nearly the whole of these ministries in the 
 record, than is apt to be imagined. And I would rather be 
 lieve that there were no more. For if Jesus had literally swept 
 all pain and death from before his presence, wherever He went, 
 and as long as He lived upon the earth, we should not have 
 learned the other side of his mercy that He came to show. 
 There is as true a comfort in his leaving unhealed, in his let 
 ting the dead be buried, as in his turning back of sickness 
 and mortality. ' This sickness is not unto death,' He says ; 
 ' this death is not unto the grave ; ' when He ' abides still in 
 the same place where He was,' letting our grief and pain go
 
 IN LADY CHRISTIAN'S GARDEN. Ill 
 
 on. He manifests forth the love and the might that can de 
 liver, that we may know what the love and might must be that 
 suffer things to be so now. That we may be sure of the order 
 ing and appointing. ' That no man may be moved by these 
 afflictions ; for we know that we are appointed thereto.' So He 
 gave his own body, and suffered the last ; though He might have 
 had twelve* legions of angels." 
 
 Miss Euphrasia's quiet voice repeated, " ' Ye are they 
 which have continued with me in my temptations ; and I ap 
 point unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto 
 me ; that ye may eat and drink at my table, in my kingdom.' " 
 
 Tea was brought out on trays, by two nice maids ; and the 
 young folks, with "Cousin Amy," Mrs. Robert Truesdaile 
 from Manchester, came trooping down from the little open- 
 air theatre, hungry with their long rehearsing. 
 
 Over the tea-cups, while we dropped in sugar and cream, we 
 asked Miss Euphrasia the question which had come up in our 
 minds many times, with great curiosity, but had not yet been 
 asked and answered ; " How in the world she knew so instantly 
 of our arrival in London ? " 
 
 " I might make a mystery of intuition and affinity out of it," 
 she said, laughing. " But the truth is, a friend of ours saw 
 you in the Park." 
 
 " One of the Nova Zembla friends ? And who ? " 
 
 " Not at all. Somebody you never saw. Young Mr. Eck- 
 ford, Sir Harry Eckford's son, who passed you as he was driv 
 ing home to dinner. We were there that evening, and it all 
 came out at table." 
 
 " It is a stranger mystery than intuition ! " cried Edith, mak 
 ing great eyes. " What can you mean, Miss Kirkbright ? " 
 
 " If Mrs. Regis were here, I think I would hardly venture to 
 tell you ; but you will enjoy the joke just as we did. It was 
 your luggage, yours and hers." 
 
 I thought of the big letters, " Stuart Regis, U. S. Army," 
 and the advertisement of it ; and I felt myself color a little be 
 fore the eyes of these reticent, undisplaying English. 
 
 " It was such a funny coincidence," Miss Euphrasia hastened 
 to say. She was so quick to see the little danger signal.
 
 112 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 "And Percy Eckford is always picking up funny things," 
 said Lady Christian. I '11 tell you another, presently, that this 
 reminds me of. I beg your pardon, Cousin Euphrasia." 
 
 Miss Kirkbright went on. 
 
 " He came in with such a grave face, and made no real con 
 versation for several minutes. Then he said suddenly, ' Hag 
 anybody heard that the Tower of London is on fire ? I don't 
 mean that I have,' for everybody started. In these days of 
 conflagration one is not surprised to hear that the Rock of Gib 
 raltar, or the Egyptian Pyramids, are burning. ' It was only 
 that I could n't think where all the things came from that I saw 
 being moved across Hyde Park to-day ; unless that was it, or 
 the Queen was fetching home the family plate and jewels. 
 There were two cabs, I thought cabs were odd, under any 
 supposition, unless of fire, and on the top were boxes with 
 the most portentous marks ! In the first place, there was 
 " V. R." itself. I just glanced inside, and I did n't see Her 
 Majesty ; then there was also " Stuart," and " Tudor," and the 
 Latin possessive of " the King " sticking out on a corner ; and 
 the biggest box of all, iron-banded and bottomed, had 
 " STRONG " upon it in black capitals. I assure you it 's very 
 much on my mind still ; one can't help thinking of fire, or abdi 
 cation, or revolution, you know. But the streets are quite quiet ; 
 and the only other thing that occurs to me is that the North 
 Western Express was just in, and probably an American steamer 
 had arrived at Liverpool.' " 
 
 Miss Euphrasia has a little of the English accent, or as 
 they claim it, want of accent, herself; and I could quite im 
 agine from her repetition, just how the young gentleman had 
 toned and inflected it ; and quiet fun is really a great deal fun 
 nier in the leisurely rhythm of such speech, than in our square- 
 chopped Yankee. 
 
 Edith was the first to stop laughing. 
 
 " But it is positively horrible," she said. " How are we to go 
 over Europe with such ticketing as that ? At least, the Strong 
 box is to be kept in London ; and I 've only ' E. S.' on my rail 
 way basket." 
 
 " It would n't matter much on the Continent," I suggested.
 
 IN LADY CHRISTIAN'S GARDEN. 113 
 
 " There is n't any separate Continent," she said ruefully. 
 "Americans and English are all over it" 
 
 " We can't hide ; and we can't take otherwises," said 
 Emery Ann. " But if it will do any good, I can leave off the 
 ' Tudor.' " 
 
 " And be signaled ' Emery Ann ? ' " I asked ; at which, fresh 
 amusement. 
 
 Do you see how safe Emery Ann is not to overstep her cer 
 tainties ? She was not clear about the accentuation of " alias ; " 
 but she knows the common sense of it, and she used that ; and 
 common sense, as it sometimes does, became a piquancy. 
 
 " Please tell us the other thing, Lady Christian," said Mrs. 
 Armstrong. 
 
 "That Percy Eckford saw? Oh yes, it was this. He 
 came into some town, once, upon the top of a stage-coach. 
 He had the box-seat, and had been chatting with the coach 
 man, who pointed out this and that to him as they rattled along. 
 ' That 's a hodd place for a chapel, ain't it, sir ? ' said the man 
 stretching out his whip toward a tabernacle building that fronted 
 on the main street between two shops. Over one of these was 
 the sign, ' Evans, Tailor ; ' and on the other, ' Watson, Chemist.' 
 ' Why so ? ' said Percy. ' Don't you see, sir ? ' said coachman, 
 solemnly. ' 'Evins on the one side ; but Wot 's on the 
 other ? ' " 
 
 " That reminds me," said Mr. Trues'daile. " In regard to 
 your Hastings plan " 
 
 " Don't be hasty, dear ! I 've one or two plans before that," 
 returned Lady Christian. 
 
 " I was only thinking of the fancy mail-coach. Would n't 
 that be a nice idea ? " 
 
 " As if there could be any possible nice idea that mamma 
 had n't already set by in her own head, papa ! You do so let 
 out all the delicious little pantry-secrets ! " said Hope Truesdaile, 
 who had brought a garden chair beside Edith, and was making 
 quicker acquaintance than I had expected from a home-edu 
 cated English girl, not " out in society." But then Hope 
 Truesdaile is Lady Christian's daughter. 
 
 " To-morrow," said Miss Euphrasia, turning to me, " I hope 
 8
 
 114 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 you can go with us to the Academy. Have you any other 
 plans?" 
 
 " Nothing that cannot be adjusted to it," I answered. " We 
 are not marking out a campaign this time ; we are only * en 
 route.' So that everything which befalls without planning is 
 just so much pleasure of the better sort." 
 
 "Then let it befall that we all meet at Duroy's, in Regent 
 Street, and have a little lunch," said Lady Christian, " and then 
 go to the Exhibition." 
 
 I think I gave myself up to a more resigned enjoyment of the 
 evening from that moment ; seeing that there was to be yet 
 another day. The only bit, or little taste, of anything very de 
 licious has always a certain pang in the flavor ; which is, doubt 
 less, the moral of bitter almonds in reverse suggestion. 
 
 I cannot tell you all the bright, home-y, scrappy talk that 
 followed, Rose, as we lingered in the garden into the twilight, 
 and the young Truesdailes and two or three friends who were 
 helping them " do " their little play, discussed stage situations 
 and difficulties, and begged advice, and got Lady Christian's 
 criticisms, and enjoined on Cousin Amy, who was prompter, the 
 necessity of clear cues at certain points where they were " sure 
 to forget ; " the little consultations about tables, and attendance, 
 and the places for guests, who were to be in greater number 
 than usual, because the Truesdaile garden party has grown to 
 be an annual interest with many who care for the good rector's 
 work and plans and the connection with them of this festival ; 
 Lady Christian's modest explanation of how it was, and that 
 Miss Clairmorit's London tenants were the real honorary guests, 
 but that their own intimates, and some whom they were only 
 intimate with in the cause, and she mentioned two or three 
 very high names of noble ladies, had from time to time 
 begged in ; all this, the letting of us into their home life 
 and its lovely expansions, I cannot tell you minute by minute, 
 though the skipping of anything seems like a selfish non-sharing. 
 
 You cannot imagine how nice that eight o'clock supper was ; 
 not hot and stuffy like a dinner, nor weary with course after 
 course ; but such a pleasant setting out together of savory and 
 fresh and delicate and enticing ; from the roasted chickens and
 
 IN LADY CHRISTIAN'S GARDEN. 115 
 
 the pink ham and the smoking, powdery potatoes to the fruits 
 and jellies that shone and sparkled up and down the table in 
 crystal dishes, among the vases of flowers, with such adornment 
 of light and color-grouping. 
 
 And the life of the house that gathered round it and con 
 tributed itself in wise and sweet and bright variety, from Mr. 
 Truesdaile with his grand, gentle face and ways and words, 
 down to the littlest one, for they have no nursery dinners 
 here, who ate contentedly his two kinds of the simplest, and 
 chattered over it in a happy, unobtrusive fashion that disturbed 
 and interrupted nothing, any more than a brook or a bird does, 
 was all just like the supper ; I would rather call it the repast, 
 for I like that word with the intensive particle, which makes 
 the food something more than feeding. 
 
 In all things, I think this household life realizes its types, and 
 makes them sacraments of the blessed verities. That, too, 
 without any cant ; not even the cant of an ti -cant, to which 
 some excellent people swing over in these days, making a busi 
 ness of their genuineness. 
 
 I am in danger of talking about it as much as if I gave it all, 
 word by word ; but, indeed, I doubt if I find anywhere beyond, 
 much that will be better worth while to dwell on. 
 
 I will skip abruptly to the next morning, and the Exhibition. 
 Or, I will begin there, when I next sit down to write. 
 
 But I must put in what Emery Ann said after we got home, 
 about the " Word-and-the-philosophers " talk, that she had list 
 ened to in her unpresuming, keen silence. 
 
 " It 's a good thing that the Lord has put his own corner 
 stone under creation, and we don't have to wait for their round 
 towers, that some of us mightn't ever hear tell of. I'm glad 
 I was born into a world where there was a Bible, instead of 
 a Babel, ready-made ; any way, I was, whether I 'm glad or 
 not ; and so were these wise men, that it appears to me don't 
 pick up the best of their facts, after all 's said and done. 
 There 's facts at both ends ; they won't get 'em all out of the 
 crumbles. A man 's a fact himself ; and his very inquisitive- 
 ness. If thinkin' comes of it, it stands to reason thinkin' must 
 have gone towards it. If there 's soul at the tail end, 'here 's
 
 116 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Soul at the beginning. It's the first and the Last, and the 
 Almighty has said so." 
 
 " And he took alphabet-letters to say it by. All the world- 
 word lies in that parenthesis," I answered her. 
 
 " Likely." Emery Ann's New Englandism had its own sen 
 tentious reverence. " For, come to, there is n't so much as 
 any little nut meat that has n't got a whole tree in it." 
 
 Which is also the parable of the mustard-seed and the king 
 dom.
 
 A STRAW. 117 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 A STRAW. 
 
 Mr DEAR ROSE-NOBLE, There must always be dates and 
 postmarks ; by them you know present whereabouts and safety 
 thus far ; but that is all you will know except as I come to it 
 straight along. If I wrote a letter of to-day, I should fall to 
 dropping out all the yesterdays, and presently to not writing at 
 all, as people do, because it is hopeless to write the whole ; and 
 you would get now and then some generality, not even glitter 
 ing, and a string of wretched little excuses and more good-for- 
 nothing assurances, instead of being kept beside me all through, 
 as I mean you shall be, on this unique line of letter-writing, if it 
 takes me all the summers that are left to me to do it in. I 
 never did see the sense of saying a lesson " skipping about ; " 
 except, indeed, the multiplication table. 
 
 Margaret and her mother went with us to the Exhibition. 
 
 It was my first experience of a great gallery of pictures ; and 
 as I look back upon it from even this distance of time, those bril 
 liant lines of paintings, with their manifold subjects and styles, 
 run into a magnificent confusion in my memory, and I should 
 find it hard enough to give you an idea of what I saw ; so that 
 presently I shall gladly fall back again upon that a part of 
 which I was ; the more, as it brought me, by a chance hap 
 pening, into a little nearer understanding than I had reached in 
 any way as yet, with this proud, peculiar, interesting Margaret 
 Regis. 
 
 It is such nonsense to go to a place like that, to see it as a 
 whole, and only once. It is something to come to London and 
 stay all the season for, and visit every day ; spending your hour 
 or two, or three, with the thing that stops you, and then taking 
 it quietly home with you, and putting it away.
 
 118 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 I shall get cross, continually, I feel sure, with heterogeneous 
 sight-seeing ; grabbing at things by the bushel, and feeling them 
 all slip through the mental hold, like a big handful of smooth 
 beans through the fingers ! 
 
 But bating the crossness and the crowd, and the crossness 
 came afterward, I had a pleasant time; and I have a gen 
 eral dreamy notion of lovely glimpses into deep woody nooks 
 full of flickering light, and shade, and green repose, of wild, 
 stormy, cloud-swept mountain solitudes, of shining beaches, 
 and waters rippling in the gold, and rose, and purple of dawn or 
 sunset, of rocks and foaming breakers and heeling ships, 
 of sweet home-scenes and quaint " interiors," of exquisite 
 child-groups and faces of beautiful women, of thoughts, and 
 stories, and, fancies, sad or bright, put down on canvas with the 
 play and attitude of a moment, all shifting before me and re 
 placing each other like the turning of quick leaves, as we walked 
 through the splendid ranges of rooms, taking the ten in long 
 slow order, that yet seemed foolishly brief, and coming back at 
 last into the Central Hall and Sculpture Gallery to rest and 
 gaze among the marbles. 
 
 It was when I went into the long room a second time, to look 
 for some picture there, whose title struck me as I reviewed the 
 catalogue, but whose title proved, as I thought, to be the whole 
 of it, after all, that finding Margaret Regis and her mother 
 there, I sat down by them on the divan ; and that Mrs. Regis 
 leaving us presently, Margaret and I overheard a bit of conver 
 sation that was just like a page or two of talk out of a certain 
 sort of English novel ; which yet, in the midst of its absurdity, 
 touched Margaret in some keen way that made an expression 
 flash into her face, and drew from her a sudden exclamation, 
 that told, like these picture-titles and picture-glimpses, al 
 most a history in a glance and word. 
 
 The speakers, or the speaker and listener, were two 
 elderly ladies, a stout and a thin one, of dowagerish as 
 pect, who came and sat down beyond us and at our backs, just 
 round the corner of the long oval. Middle-class dowagers, 
 at least the head-gossip must have been such ; for though she 
 talked like a woman used to something like society, and in pretty
 
 A STRAW. 119 
 
 fair English, yet in the excitement of her subject she did occa 
 sionally gently slip an " h," and then catch it up hurriedly in 
 her breath, like an " ' h ' to carry," and tack it on to another 
 word instead. It does not sound so vulgar as it looks when 
 written, unless in harsher aspiration than she made ; and you 
 must take my underscorings, not for^vehement emphasis, but for 
 an. otherwise indescribable pointing of the cadence; and you 
 must remember the little poise of inflection, it is hardly rising, 
 at the ends of the phrases ; and the rippling recitative of the 
 syllables between. That is, if you would hear it as I heard it, 
 which was the beauty of it. 
 
 " Ned is reely-but-a boy, you know ; only twenty ; and Amy 
 ts-but sixteen. It 's quite setled-they 're-to-say-nothing-about- 
 it-for-six-mon^s ; and the Westmacotts were-to-have-taken- 
 -<4ftce-abroad-to school ; but Amy 's gone-instead-for-the-suj- 
 months, mind you? Quite out of the way! But be/bre-they- 
 were-off, fancy, there came-up-the-picnic-to Netley ; and Mr. 
 Smythe got an invitation for Ned ; he came-to-me in such- 
 'igh spirits about-it ! And he gave-her-a magnificent lockei. ! 
 H'eight guineas, you-may-lnowMt-was rnagmyicent ! And he's 
 quite-sure, and-conen-for-the-'alf year. I 've no-doubt-at-a# 
 that Ned will be constant ; but I 'm no-so-certain of -4my. If 
 she sees anyone-she-likes-better on the Continent, she '11 be 
 married, at once. It's a very- very-excellent thing for Ned-to- 
 be-sure ; for her mother had ^AzVty-thousand-pounds to her for 
 tune ; and there-are-the aunts beside. And it 's all to come to 
 the children ; so its a#-right thai-way, don't-you-see ? Ned 
 was always a fellow of very-'igh h'aims ! It's no-secret ; it's 
 quite-well known in S'thampton ; but you '11 ^'ws^-if-you-please, 
 not mention it from me ? " 
 
 They got up and went away, with that ; and I turned to 
 glance at Margaret, and have the fun of it out with her, when 
 it was not fun that I saw in her face ; but that flashing, indig 
 nant expression ; and she said under her breath, and with her 
 eyes shining straight before her, 
 
 " So they take English girls abroad, too ! I wonder what the 
 girls ' abroad ' do about it, when it comes to them ? " 
 
 " Stay," said I. " And get tired of Ned, in the natural course 
 of things, perhaps ; sometimes."
 
 120 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Then her eyes turned full at me, and a little spark of the in 
 dignation leaped from them into my face. 
 
 " Tired! What is a person's word for, then ? " 
 " My dear ! Is that all, against getting tired ? " 
 " It has to be enough, I suppose, after people are married." 
 " Precisely. And just because of that, it is not half enough 
 to get married on. It is n't 'I have given my word, and so 
 I will be your wife ; ' but ' I will love you better than all the 
 world till death do part us ; ' yes ' till death join us again ! ' 
 The first is only a pledge, under human conditions, which often 
 remain to be tried, of a regard which thinks it can make the 
 promise, some time." 
 
 " And it has got to be made. A girl has no right " 
 " Put it the other way. What would you think if he any 
 body were to marry you just to keep his word ? Would that 
 do ? Would that be true enough ? Would he have a right " 
 " He might do a meaner thing," she interrupted. 
 
 " I wonder if I said too much ? " I asked Emery Ann. I 
 was so uneasy in my mind about it afterward, that I had to tell 
 Emery Ann. 
 
 Nobody knows what that woman, with her honest, simple, un- 
 bewildered common sense, is to me sometimes in what she calls 
 " hard spots," in the way of clearing my convictions. 
 
 " It is such a responsibility to take, to touch such things at 
 all," I said, faint-heartedly. 
 
 " Patience Strong," said Emery Ann, " sometimes I do be 
 lieve you 've got a crazybone in your conscience ! What else 
 could you do ? You was spoke to plain, and you answered back 
 the truth." 
 
 " As well as I knew how. But you may be mistaken in the 
 way the truth will work on feelings. What is truth for one, 
 may not be the truth for another. You don't know what you 
 may do. You may put a straw across a trickle, which will turn 
 a river another way." 
 
 " And you may leave the straw wnput. You 've got to take 
 the responsibility, either way. I hope that did n't stop you."
 
 A STRAW. 121 
 
 " No. I said all I had a chance to." 
 " Another time you '11 have to finish." 
 " If the chance comes." 
 
 " Of course. You can't make that. That is n't your busi 
 ness."
 
 122 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE DISCIPLES TO THE MULTITUDE. 
 
 .... THE day of the garden party at Lady Christian's was 
 the last day of our stay in London. It had been settled that we 
 should all go down to Hastings together, where the Truesdailes 
 have taken a house for a little while, with Mr. and Mrs. Arm 
 strong, who wished to spend some weeks at the south sea-coast 
 with the children. 
 
 Some of Lady Christian's servants were to go down by the 
 early train next morning, and we were to come after by the 
 fancy mail-coach to Tunbridge Wells, and thence by rail. 
 
 What days these were, Rose ! How came they to be made 
 in the world for me ? It makes me think of all the possible 
 combinations that may make great gifts, any moment, of our 
 daily bread. The people, and the places, and the little turns 
 of happenings, held in God's hands, like mysterious numbers, 
 that may count up and multiply so many, many different ways ! 
 Why, it is plain force of calculation, that we have neither seen, 
 nor heard, nor had it enter into our hearts to conceive, the 
 things He has laid up, and may bring to pass, even now, here, 
 to-day, to-morrow. Living on is a great wonder. The time 
 coming is fuller than the time that has been. 
 
 But the straws we lay, ourselves, across the trickles ! We 
 need have crazybones in our consciences, that we don't shatter 
 ourselves against sharp corners that He never set for us. 
 
 I think, now and then, I am having too easy, too good a time. 
 That I have laid out too long a holiday from the living in 
 earnest that I thought I had taken hold of. And I believe it 
 troubles me too, confusedly, to see as I move out into the world 
 how much doing there is in it which has not any direct ap-
 
 THE DISCIPLES TO THE MULTITUDE. 123 
 
 m 
 
 pearance of that living in earnest to accomplish some heavenly 
 work, which I, in my hushed little corner, thought ought to be 
 the mainspring of everything, the aim of every right-minded 
 Christian person every day. 
 
 Here, at Lady Christian's, is the true life, the life of faith and 
 helping, made a business of ; but such motive points, so distinct 
 and few, showing in the great working sea of human struggles 
 and purposes and pleasant pursuings, only manifest the stir of 
 the leaven in the three great measures, and you are tossed back 
 in your mind upon the question, If it were all leaven, where 
 were the mass ? and must there not needs be always a " face of 
 the waters " for the Spirit of God to move upon, separating the 
 light from the darkness, and so evolving the heavens and the 
 earth ? 
 
 I suppose the Kingdom will come, when the mass is leavened ; 
 when there needs not any longer be a special ferment anywhere. 
 The new heavens and earth shall be established, when the firma 
 ment shall be set in the midst, to divide the waters from the 
 waters, so that they which belong above shall be lifted up, and 
 they whose place and purpose are beneath shall be gathered 
 together, and the rising and falling shall be the eternal demand 
 and giving again which is the play of the Divine Will in the 
 human condition, the rendering of every tribute in its due order, 
 and He shall see that it is all good. 
 
 I suppose we need trouble less about the true life, measuring 
 and condemning by contrast, than just to live, meekly, a true 
 life. It takes a great many lives, in a great many different ways 
 and places, to make a world. It takes many phases and alterna 
 tions, of work and holiday, week-day and sabbath, sad and 
 bright, calm and intense, much mixing even of spiritual and 
 natural, to make a single living. Perhaps we must leave The 
 True Life to God, who overlooks and moves throughout the 
 whole ; and be blessedly content, ourselves, to be but particles, 
 sun-drawn into his heaven in rapturous mist, set in his cloud and 
 shining with his glory for a token, or dropping down into his 
 deep in rain. Yes, or just glad and rosy for a while with the 
 morning, or floating in calm, white rest upon a clear blue noon, 
 or waiting in a violet peace as the night comes on.
 
 124 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 I think I will not worry about the easy time that befalls me 
 in his order. 
 
 Mrs. Regis was beautifully dressed that afternoon at Lady 
 Christian's. Her thin black upper dress was of the most deli 
 cate, yet firm, silk tissue, woven in such a sheer, light web that 
 the rich, heavy robe beneath showed all its costly splendor ; the 
 camel's hair shawl which she carried into the garden upon her 
 arm was of wonderful fineness : and the very narrow border of 
 Indian needlework which relieved its plainness was such a piece 
 of handicraft and such a combination of dusky, deep, softly 
 blended color, as is rarely, I imagine, got away out of the East 
 for any European purchaser. 
 
 She knew that the Countess of L was to be there, and 
 
 the daughters of the Marquis of W ; and I think she was 
 
 conscious that if any stranger and there were a good many 
 guests invited as we were, who were new to the house and to 
 each other were to look about, fancying curiously who might 
 be of the noblesse, she was quite as likely to be taken for a 
 countess as anybody. I am sure she walked down the path and 
 took her seat with a supreme, unostentatious grace which might 
 have become a duchess. 
 
 Lady Christian begged us to make ourselves quite comforta 
 ble. A few ladies were already gathered near the front, and 
 Mrs. Regis, who led our party, moved, after the greeting of the 
 hostess, with precisely that unassumingness which is conscious 
 of nothing to assume, toward a row of chairs a little withdrawn 
 yet sufficiently forward, and placed herself at the end, against 
 the shade of a low-spreading, heavy, dark-leaved evergreen. 
 
 Margaret, looking lovely in a pale blue redingote over black 
 silk, came next ; then Edith and I, and Emery Ann, who found 
 herself quite out in the middle, and presently, when a light 
 cloud had drifted over, in the full shine of the afternoon sun. 
 
 I wonder if it is wickedness in me, which saw, or felt, so 
 plainly, this tone of Mrs. Regis's, and divined how and why she 
 took it, while it sat so native-easy upon her ; and discerned the 
 instant discrimination which led her with that quiet and indiffer 
 ent grace, to what I saw upon careful survey, was the very pref 
 erable and choice position in the whole auditorium ?
 
 THE DISCIPLES TO THE MULTITUDE. 125 
 
 There was the little apparent disadvantage of being far at 
 the side, and behind several rows of people ; and of having to 
 lean slightly around a projecting branch to get a perfectly un 
 obstructed sight of the stage, which redeemed from obvious 
 selfishness ; but as the other seats filled up, and hats and para 
 sols were bobbing to and fro in each other's way, and eyes were 
 politely blinking in the dazzle that they could not be shaded 
 from without incommoding too entirely the general view, it be 
 came quite plain that she had chosen with a most wise modesty, 
 her little sheltered nook. Her clear, pure outlines, and her 
 white, fine cap showed, too, very artistically against the deep- 
 green, glossy foliage. 
 
 She leaned past Margaret, and reached me a large, handsome 
 garden-screen, " for Miss Tudor." It opened round, with a tilt 
 ing spring, which made a perfect shield, and inconvenienced no 
 one. I had a fan which slid upon its stick and made a semi 
 circular defense for my eyes, and Edith wore a hat jvith a pretty 
 little dropping brim, so that Mrs. Regis satisfied herself that we 
 were none of us suffering, and took her own scrupulous comfort 
 accordingly. Certainly, it was better than if she had not 
 cared. 
 
 She is not a bad traveling companion. "Within a certain 
 circumference, she spreads a serenity in the world. I puzzled 
 myself with thinking what more any one could be expected to 
 do, since one can't reach everybody ; and it led me into the end 
 less problems of a politico-moral economy, the good of a 
 privileged, luxurious class, the benefit of a polite and elegant 
 civilization, the service of self-service, demand and supply, 
 spending and earning, before the pretty tapestry curtains 
 were drawn aside from the stage, and Hope Truesdaile and her 
 brother Arthur began the play we had come to see. 
 
 " Nothing is too good for a human being," somebody said to 
 me once ; and it came back to me now. Ah ! but which human 
 being ? I don't think I began freely to listen to the stage dia 
 logue until that other question, " Who is my neighbor ? " flashed 
 suddenly into syllables of light across my broken musings, and 
 the memory of the Samaritan who went out of his way, for a 
 stranger, answered over again all the confusion of reasoning. 
 What a blessed finality the New Testament words are !
 
 126 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 And did you ever think, Rose, how the very promise of that 
 Spirit which men have come to fancy is leading them beyond 
 where Christ led, was given as of that which should but " bring 
 all to remembrance " of the things that He has told us ? 
 
 Did I say we had come to see the play ? Well, I suppose we 
 had ; and it was a charming thing to see ; but these groups of 
 happy, tidy, poor people, who sat around or behind us, upon the 
 grass or garden benches, or strolled up and down the shady 
 walks, keeping the little children blessedly quiet with fresh air 
 and fragrance, and summer beauty, and hands full of ginger 
 bread ; the working women who made holiday together, not 
 caring much for the drama, but sitting in knots, farther off under 
 the trees, chatting, and drinking glasses of lemonade and ginger 
 beer ; the bringing together of high and low, and what is harder, 
 between, for one sympathetic enjoyment, this was something 
 wholly beautiful and satisfying, and which I certainly had not 
 come to England expecting to see. 
 
 At the regular tea-time, when the play was over, it was more 
 beautiful yet. 
 
 The poor were first served. There was plenty of good cold 
 beef, bread and butter, tea and fruit; and the Truesdailes and 
 their friends, and their friends' servants, all helped around the 
 tables where the humbler guests were carefully seated ; until 
 gradually, and not with any sharp distinction, it came to be 
 everybody's turn to get something ; and we sipped our tea, and 
 ate our sugared strawberries in the intervals of looking after the 
 old women's cups, and the children's buns, or even of tending a 
 baby here and there, while the young mothers got rest and re 
 freshment. 
 
 It was golden twilight when we went down to the water-gate, 
 to see the barge off in which they sailed down the river again, 
 these poor Londoners, to their every-day life and work in the 
 close streets, quite content and very rich in the sense of the 
 heavenly things that they could think of for another whole long 
 year, as waiting a little way outside for them, and in the heav 
 enly feeling of a human kindliness, through which their bit 
 of pleasure came.
 
 THE DISCIPLES TO THE MULTITUDE. 127 
 
 They went off singing hymns, after their thanks and cheers. 
 I don't think anybody grumbled that it was not more, or that 
 they could not have it every day, as rich people do. They 
 would not know what to do with it every day. 
 
 Certainly, but that the Lord Himself, in an hourly " great 
 humility," dwells with these submissive souls, making their low 
 estate imperial with grand endurance, it were hard to read his 
 mystery ! I do not think his " Ye have done it unto me," is 
 spoken of a vicarious receiving ; or that He sets men anything 
 to bear, or any life to live, apart from his. I do not believe 
 there is any vicariousness in all his universe of joy and sweet 
 ness, pain and punishment ; but that up and down through all, 
 even through sin, walks One, as the Son of Man, beside us, and 
 takes of ours upon Him; and that so these least things are the 
 really greatest, the last are first, the hardest most divine.
 
 328 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 FANCY-MAIL: AND HALDON HOUSE. 
 
 .... EDITH told me next morning while we were dress 
 ing, that Margaret had had a letter last night from " the Mac- 
 ken zies." That meant, I suppose, from Harry. 
 
 " She was in great spirits, auntie," Edith said, with a tone of 
 not quite comprehending. " She is apt to be in great spirits, or 
 not in any at all. It seems as if she were always thinking 
 whether she were content or not ; and when she fancies she is, 
 she gets into a high glee ; and again she is all down as if the 
 very world had dropped a little way, with everybody on 
 board ! " 
 
 " Simon says ' up ; ' Simon says ' down ; ' Simon says ' wig 
 wag ; ' " said Emery Ann, oracularly, as she picked up my hair 
 brushes and tucked them into the bag that was to go to Hast 
 ings. 
 
 "I think Mrs. Regis is annoyed, either way," said Edith. 
 " She says Margaret never stops where people can be comfort 
 able ; perhaps she would " and here Edie checked herself, 
 thinking, maybe, that she was talking out of school. 
 
 " If she knew exactly where people were, or where the com 
 fort was," put in Emery Ann, unscrupulously. " Or if folks 
 knew where she was. Mrs. Regis don't understand that girl. 
 I believe she means well by her, but she nettles her. I can 
 riddle it out a little ; she is in a kind of a spot, Margaret is ; 
 and I doubt if her mother ever got into a real spot in her life. 
 She 's gone right along in ready-made paths, always. She will 
 have 'em ready-made ; that 's it, finally." 
 
 " I think Mrs. Regis says things to her sometimes, that she 
 would say to herself if she were let alone," said Edith ; " but 
 she won't say them over after anybody. Margaret is she
 
 FANCY-MAIL: AND HALDON HOUSE. 129 
 
 seems contradictory about some things ; not her own, she 
 is n't that, a bit ; but about her friends. She does n't like to be 
 told things. Auntie ! " The child broke off suddenly, to put 
 her arms round my neck and kiss me on both cheeks. " I 'm so 
 glad I've got you, who always do understand ! And I 'm glad 
 I have n't got into a spot ! What are girls in such a hurry 
 to, for? It is so nice just to be a girl! '" And she ran back 
 into her own room again-; shy with the very admission that 
 there might be experiences waiting that she had not quite come 
 to yet. 
 
 I saw what she meant. Edith never comes and gossips ; but 
 she has great faith in auntie, and she thinks it safest for every 
 body that auntie should know everything. 
 
 "Contradictory." "Things that she would say to herself if 
 she were let alone." 
 
 I found these words coming back to me. Margaret is cer 
 tainly more restive with her stepmother's reasons, than she is 
 with reason when it comes some other way. I have thought 
 more than once that her interest here as the world calls it, is 
 greatly against her interest. She is so jealous of that ready- 
 made p%,th, and its conditions. And Mrs. Regis never would 
 think of that. She can measure the direct purchase which she 
 holds upon Margaret's will or action, through the power left her 
 over her circumstances ; but she would not discern the reflex 
 force which would move so proud a nature to resist. 
 
 In this, her tact, so wonderful in externals, wholly fails. She 
 has that sort of inner touch whose sense lies just deep enough to 
 make her gracious and graceful ; quick to perceive discomfort 
 and turn aside annoyance ; but she has not that profounder 
 reach, possessed only by an actual gift, or attained by a passing 
 over of one's consciousness into another's, which sounds charac 
 ter and feels experience not one's own. Margaret, of a nobler 
 make, yet has hardly either at present. She has the headlong 
 ardor and intensity of a young girl ; generous in intention, be 
 cause adoring the idea of generosity ; but realizing too keenly 
 her own first contacts with life to put herself in other possible 
 attitudes, or to face with a calm judgment, her own feelings 
 9
 
 130 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 and apprehensions, which she takes to be unchanging verities 
 and convictions. 
 
 Seeing this, and foreseeing through how many tides and alter 
 nations must come, if ever, a real adjustment and repose in Mar 
 garet's own self and destiny, or in the mutual relation of these 
 two who call each other mother and daughter, one cannot 
 fully rejoice with the girl when she does rejoice ; when these 
 moods come over her of a fancied content, a resting in the 
 present or the merely circumstantial, a "taking things as 
 they come, and the world as it goes," according to the phrase. 
 Yet it is lovely, for the moment, to see her face bright, and to 
 feel her in tune with the pleasantness of the day and time ; such 
 a day and time as they were when we set off in the fancy mail- 
 coach for Tunbridge Wells. 
 
 We drove down in flies or flys, should I make the plural 
 of it ? to White Horse Cellar, from which the coach departs. 
 On the way, somewhere, I can't in the least tell you where, 
 we went by a big building and a court-yard, and were aware of 
 a little gathering, and saw hats raised, and caught the sound of 
 a cheer ; somebody said, " The Duke of Cambridge ; " I be 
 lieve he was coming forth and mounting his horse. We* did n't 
 pee him, but I thought you might like to know that he was 
 there, and we close by. 
 
 This fancy mail-coach and I think they told us there are 
 several others on different routes is run for the pleasure and 
 at the chief expense (passengers pay a slightly fancy price for 
 seats, to keep the thing properly restricted) of two gentlemen ; 
 a lord and a colonel. I heard their names, but I can only give 
 you the handles, which perhaps are the best of them. At any 
 rate, it is the polite end to present, of things in general. 
 
 They drive - L literally, themselves, often, but when not, their 
 very fine retainers do their own splendid horses, four in 
 hand. The whole turnout is specklessly brilliant in finish, and 
 elegantly complete in appointment ; a real mail-coach, but, I 
 think, glorified. No flash ; all quiet, solid, but absolutely per 
 fect ; perfect as a parlor toy. The coachman wears plain dress, 
 a gentleman's morning suit, it might be. The guard is resplen 
 dent in scarlet, and carries a shining horn, which he winds sig-
 
 FANCY-MAIL : AND HALDON HOUSE. 131 
 
 Dais upon as we skim along. He put us up the steps to our 
 top seats, there are places for sixteen, railed and cushioned, 
 on the roof; and presently sounded the cheery blast, which gave 
 notice of departure ; and down Piccadilly over the cool, watered 
 pavement, we rolled on smoothest wheels toward Charing Cross ; 
 then over Hungerford Bridge and through, I can't tell you what 
 else of London precincts, but southeastwardly, of course, to the 
 city borders, the spaces growing larger and the air fresher, 
 all the way, we went out into the green country ; the omnibus 
 drivers all touching their whips to their caps, and everything 
 giving the road, as the guard's horn warned of our coming, to 
 the representative Royal Mail as of old time ; so that we never 
 swerved, or dropped from a clean trot, all the way through the 
 crowded thoroughfares. 
 
 I felt a child's smile of glee stereotyping itself upon my face 
 as we went ; and looking round to see if anybody noticed my 
 " silliness," I discovered everybody's else marked with the same 
 unconscious delight. 
 
 Emery Ann gave it voice. " I would n't give a cent to be 
 the Queen ! " she said to me. And I hushed her up, quick, for 
 fear the superb coachman, just down in front, should hear her. 
 
 Nine miles out, we had hardly begun to think of distance, 
 and the bright bay coats of the horses showed no turning of a 
 hair, we stopped before a hostelry ; one must return to the 
 old time phrases, in telling of a journey like this ; and then the 
 coachman flung down the reins, grooms sprang forward to un 
 loose the harness, others led out four fresh, magnificent posters, 
 their shining tackle making musical rattle as they stepped, and 
 without a second loss of time every buckle was fastened, the 
 spotless " lines " handed up again, and the same smooth, swift 
 gait taken up with the self-same rhythm of hoof-beat ; and away 
 along green English lanes, past farms and cottages, between the 
 hedgerows we read of in country stories, with an air-ocean of 
 balm bathing us in delight, and a clear, glorious sunshine en 
 rapturing the air, we sped, and sped, and wished it might last 
 forever. 
 
 Every eight or nine miles we had four fresh horses ; each 
 'clay almost more splendid and eager than the last.
 
 132 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 We went through the quaintest little villages, with their real 
 old inns, the Golden Lambs, and the Red Lions, and the 
 Angels, their narrow streets, with timbered houses and over 
 hanging upper stories ; past the manor places that each belonged 
 to, heralded by such signs now and then as " Sennockes," 
 " Sennocke Arms, " etc. ; which one can easily trace back to 
 " Sevenoaks " and the like. I felt as if I were riding down the 
 years, and through all the delicious old books of the old home 
 land. I felt sure I was getting the best of Europe (the Alps 
 aren't Europe, they are just creation), and I said so. 
 
 " It 's the stir of the old blood, I suppose," I said to Mrs. 
 Regis ; " but somehow, I can't care for Italy and art as I do for 
 these home places and real things. Italy will always, I fancy, 
 have a certain foreign distastefulness to me. I never care much 
 to read Italian stories ; I am so awfully heterodox as not to wor 
 ship their poets. The English and Scotch and German ele 
 ments touch fibres in me ; they are kindred ; I never can have 
 too much of them. And yet we are not going to Scotland or 
 Germany." 
 
 You see, that cannot be, because we have only a year ; and 
 some of us have only just so much money. We have made up 
 our minds to have Switzerland ; which, as I have said, is not 
 any man's land, but God's land ; that will take all the summer 
 we shall have left ; and in the winter, Edith must have mild 
 climate. 
 
 Besides, once down at the Italian lakes, as we shall be in 
 October, who could keep away from Milan, Florence, Rome ? 
 I did not say there was not a certain whole of me that looks 
 back reverently and wonderingly into the great Human Past, 
 though the polarized particles of me have their positives and 
 negatives, without which they could not be shaped at all into 
 this particular Me, Patience Strong. Some time or other, per 
 haps I shall go to Scotland ; meanwhile I must be content that 
 it has come to me ; that I feel it in temper and instinct ; that I 
 have inherited it. I am never tired of anything Scottish ; it 
 never discourages me to open a book and find it sprinkled with 
 the roughest Highland dialect ; its quaint words are spirit and 
 music to me ; I interpret them as if I recollected them. I feel
 
 FANCY-MAIL : AND HALDON HOUSE. 133 
 
 at home among the hills and lochs where I have never been. I 
 can smell the heather from the very map. I must be content ; 
 for things are rarely given twice, both inwardly and out 
 wardly, here. That is the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 Margaret Regis and Mr. Armstrong had the box-seats ; Faith 
 Armstrong sat behind with her children. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong chatted with the coachman, and drew forth 
 nice little bits of local information, talk about country places, 
 ownerships, histories. Margaret was amused ; she seemed buoy 
 antly happy. Once she said, leaning back to me : " How much 
 I shall have to write home about this day ! How I wish 
 Helen and everybody could be here ! Did you ever see such 
 horses ? Did you ever dream of such driving ? " 
 
 It was a help to her patchwork ; she had a brilliant lapful of 
 the " little pieces " to-day. 
 
 We dined at Tunbridge Wells. It was a gradual let-down 
 from the ecstasy of that coach-ride through the delicious Kent 
 country, to stop here, take a stroll after dinner to the famous 
 Pantiles, where Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, and Fanny Bur- 
 ney to say nothing of the heroines of old novels walked 
 and talked and had their day ; to look in at the shop^, buy pho 
 tographs and confectionery ; then, in an open carriage, to drive 
 around the town, along the pleasant open roads, among the 
 softly-swelling, moor-like hills and uplands, scattered over with 
 cheerful houses and smooth-kept places, before we at last took 
 the prosy railway train that steamed us down across a little 
 corner of Sussex to Hastings by the sea. 
 
 It was just dark when we reached there. We had "flies" 
 again to take us through the town, along the quaint old streets, 
 to the Castle End, near which is the lovely, low double-cottage 
 which the Armstrongs and the Robert Truesdailes have taken 
 together for two months. 
 
 What do you think the old Castle ruin made me think of 
 most, as we neared it in the soft evening light? 
 
 High up above the street upon the cliff, it stood against the. 
 mellowed east, itself a thing mellowed, rounded, softened by 
 decay, until it has a shadowy, dissolved outline, with no sharp 
 defiuiteness anywhere. It reminded me, absurdly, of the "tooth
 
 134 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 of Time," and made me fancy that the old Rodent must have 
 lost his last fang before he began upon this, and only gently 
 mumbled it ! 
 
 In a street of cottages and gardens stands the Halclon House, 
 as the two buildings of very cosy, moderate size, neither one 
 large enough of itself for much of a family, are called. Every 
 "local habitation " has a name, you know, in England. 
 
 The two parts are connected by a sort of covered gallery, 
 whose lattice windows look down into a deep greenery which is 
 the garden. The whole is overrun wildly by ivies, jessamine 
 vines, and climbing roses, with the blossoms of which the air 
 was richly sweet. 
 
 The front door stood open, and one of Mrs. Truesdaile's 
 maids and one of Lady Christian's waited there to receive us, 
 courtesying as we came up. 
 
 Inside, the rooms were open, the vine sprays wandering in 
 through the low, broad windows ; and in the first we entered 
 the table was already laid with tea and fruit. It was just pleas 
 antly light without candles, and would be for an hour. 
 
 This English twilight is like a gift of sweetness over and 
 above the natural, expected day. It is like a kind of Indian 
 Summer of delicious prolonging, overflowing, the sunshine into 
 the darkness, and ransoming the night. " In the evening time 
 it shall be light " were never words of such forceful beauty to 
 me, until I found up here in the north the tender abiding of this 
 soft amends. 
 
 We, also, overflowed like the twilight, through the rambling 
 passages and up and down bedrooms, till each had found her 
 place. Margaret and Edith were put together, in a little apart 
 ment opposite mine and Emery Ann's, across the garden-break 
 between the buildings. Their window sash flew back as I 
 opened mine, and the two faces, glad with exquisite surprise, 
 were put forth at once, and two voices called over to me : " Aunt 
 Pashie ! " " Miss Patience ! " " Do you think it is real ? Do you 
 begin to feel yourself wake up, or anything ? Are n't you glad 
 you came? " 
 
 This last is the stereotyped question Edie and I ask each 
 other, remembering the weighings and hesitations of three 
 months ago.
 
 FANCY-MAIL : AND HALDON HOUSE. 135 
 
 " Miss Patience," began Margaret, again, before I drew my 
 head back, " Are n't you afraid it 's like the fairy cottage Hans 
 and Grethel found ? Won't the old witch be after us before 
 morning ? " 
 
 " Hush up ! " cried Edith, in a reckless rapture. " Her ain't 
 a callin' we ! UK don't belong to she ! " 
 
 I hoped we did n't. I hoped no old haunting witch would lay 
 her skinny, disenchanting finger upon our blithesome moods; 
 for there is where the spell is put that crumbles beauty into dry 
 leaves or turns it hideous. 
 
 The girls came down to tea with clusters and trails of jessa 
 mine in their hair, and for sweet breast-knots. 
 
 I shall have to skip. I will tell you all I can, and if you 
 want any more, you may sing it yourself, as the old song says 
 at the end. I think you can. I think I could go on singing a 
 good while, from just these first lines and thrills, if no more 
 written notes or verses came. 
 
 But they did come. They keep coming. 
 
 Next day, as if the cottage were not lovely enough, we went 
 off picnicking. We went to Fairlight Glen ; a beautiful, woody, 
 brook-threaded ravine, buried low beneath the brinks of sunny 
 downs, where the air was pasture-sweet, though so near the 
 tingle of the sea. 
 
 We went in a big van ; and we walked across the crisp turf 
 from a stile that let us in from the road upon the Fairlight ground. 
 We carried our shawls and baskets, the tidy maids helping with 
 the heaviest ; and we had our lunch, and rested after it all the 
 midday through, under the great whispering beeches ; and we 
 came back by a long drive, in the van that had returned to meet 
 us ; getting sight of one or two old halls and parks, of Ore 
 Place, built first by "John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster;" 
 passing over wild, desolate-looking reaches between, where here 
 and there a windmill stretched its great arms forlornly ; and at 
 last in to bright, gay St. Leonard's, and so along the Grand 
 Parade and by the sea-margin, to Hastings town, and its castle- 
 cloud that lay soft again upon the evening blue, and beneath it 
 to pretty Haldon House, which is home.
 
 136 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 So quickly do we fit ourselves to that which fits, and feel it 
 ours. What difference is there, of years and days ? Some time, 
 it shall be all ours ; gathered up, even to the veriest glimpses ; 
 no dropped crumb lost, of the twelve baskets full ; and we shall 
 find our future, as some one who knows promised me once 
 when I was in great loss and hunger and pain, made up of the 
 best of that which has been. 
 
 Is n't there something of that in the words : " When Christ, 
 who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with 
 Him, in glory ? " It doth not appear yet, what the body of 
 that life shall be. It is hidden, as it is builded, in the heavens. 
 But it is all there. 
 
 The next day after that was Sunday. We took our books 
 and wandered out, after breakfast, upon the downs behind Hal- 
 don House, that stretched over to the sea. 
 
 We got into a soft, warm hollow, like a huge cradle, between 
 two swelling ridges, the Castle cliff rising up beyond the 
 farthermost, the trough of which ran down to the sands, and 
 through which we saw, across the green-walled vista, the shine 
 and the blue of broad, glimmering waters. And here we sat 
 ourselves down upon the grass, as the people did for whom 
 Christ broke bread. 
 
 Still ; still ! As the sweet grave, or as the ante-heaven ! 
 
 Faces take on a revealing look, I think, in such moments and 
 places, as the faces of those do who have gone past and entered 
 in. 
 
 Hugh Truesdaile, one must drop the commonplace of prefix 
 sometimes ; it is too trifling for high reverence, as it is too 
 deferential for intimate neaftiess ; Hugh Truesdaile sat with 
 his brow bare, uplifted ; a deep light in his eyes of a day that 
 poured about his spirit ; and the wind that stirred his hair 
 minded me of the whisper of a wind that bloweth where it 
 listeth, and in which I was sure that he heard voices. 
 
 Lady Christian had a waiting look, of tender content. There 
 was no instant care of ministry ; and she is so especially a min 
 istering spirit. About her there seemed to be folded wings ; 
 she was like one" who only attends for an errand, but whose 
 readiness is rest. The light seemed to fall gently down upon
 
 FANCY-MAIL : AND HALDON HOUSE. 157 
 
 her forehead and upon her half-dropped lids. I could think it 
 fell upon her face from the Face above the Throne. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong had led the children down farther 
 over the hill to " look at the water," and for little talks of their 
 own with them, on the " Children's Day." 
 
 Miss Euphrasia drew near me, for which my heart brimmed 
 silently toward her, as it did toward all the heavenly nearness 
 of the time. 
 
 Mrs. Regis chose a seat a little withdrawn, and her eyes, as 
 she rested them upon the distance, had an occupied look, which 
 did not seem gathered from anything that lay between her 
 and that horizon pale with a great light. She had upon her 
 lag a book in the chocolate-paper covers of " Harper's Select 
 Novels." 
 
 Margaret had brought no book. She had her little traveling 
 portfolio on her lap, and she had untied its strings, and held her 
 pencil in her hand. But she sat thinking, and did not begin to 
 write. In the stillness and sweetness, the reflux upon her 
 spirit of the great tide of universal influence which sweeps back 
 upon us when some little passing river-rush of our life is spent 
 and loses itself against the greater deep, the shadow and per 
 plexity were coming back. She was measuring again the little 
 against the large. 
 
 Lady Christian was the first to speak. 
 
 " I think this is a picnic again," she said, " if we only knew 
 it, and looked into our baskets. Are we to keep all the lids 
 quite close, and carry them back as they came ? " 
 
 " There are picnics and picnics," said her husband, smiling. 
 " There are those of a mutual contribution, and others where 
 ''iach brings for eachself." 
 
 " What a nice phrase ! " said Miss Euphrasia. " How com 
 fortably it gets rid of the unmanageable ' him ' and ' her ! ' You 
 \&ve contributed already, Mr. Truesdaile." 
 
 " A word is a good thing enough," said Lady Christian ; " and 
 so are knives and forks. But Hugh has got something better 
 than that for us ; though he is apt to look after the plenishing. 
 He is very particular about his spoons." 
 
 " I like best a long spoon to reach into my neighbor's dish
 
 138 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 with, I think, especially on a picnic," he persisted, with a gentle 
 playfulness that was full of earnest intent. " I 'm sure we have 
 each brought provender. Have n't we, Miss Tudor ? " he said, 
 catching Emery Ann's eye, and seeing it alight with some inward 
 response. 
 
 " I 'm sure," said Emery Ann, " I should never stop to think 
 whether I had or not, any more than a mouse in the middle 
 of a cheese." And her hands clasped themselves upon her 
 knees again, and her face turned toward the light of sky and 
 sea. Emery Ann's " anymores " are as good, often, as the sol- 
 emnest " moreovers." 
 
 " I felt pretty certain you would say it," said Mr. Truesdaile. 
 " Is n't there some proverb about keeping one's dish right side 
 up. After all, something to receive in, and held open, up 
 ward, is the providing. Even a prayer is less a speaking 
 than a looking up and listening to hear what God will say. 
 There were six water pots set, with water ; when they drew 
 out, behold there was wine ; for the Word had passed upon it." 
 He seemed to let it drop, there. We all sat still again, for 
 quite a little time ; then, quite in an every-day way, Mr. Trues 
 daile addressed himself to Mrs. Regis. 
 
 " You have some new book there ? " he asked. 
 " Only ' Heidelberg.' A very old one. I confess," she said, 
 with that charming directness which at once acknowledges and 
 absolves a shortcoming, " that my thoughts to-day are very 
 much upon my journeyings, and my great wish for a little bit 
 of Germany." 
 
 Between her word and his answer, in a flash of time, there 
 rushed through my thought in a connected unconnection, 
 " General Rushleigh, the friend he was to meet, Heidel 
 berg ; it will certainly turn out somehow that she goes there, 
 and first." 
 
 " Well, we were not bound together. I had shrunk from 
 having my first vision of the Alps with her ; and yet My 
 eye fell on Margaret, who apparently did not notice. Some 
 thing did bind me, so that I was a great deal more unwilling 
 than I had fancied, to have this happen. 
 
 " It is such a good thing," said Mr. Truesdaile, " that we can-
 
 FANCY-MAIL : AND HALDON HOUSE. 139 
 
 not bind ourselves rigidly with our plans, try as hard as we 
 may ; or settle everything beforehand. Something is sure to 
 unsettle, and to shake into a better shape than we had intended. 
 And if a thing is really good, sooner or later we get it. So 
 that we can take our Sundays, the days when we let it rest, 
 or have to wait, in great peace, Mrs. Regis. Did you ever 
 notice how apt matters are to look at you with quite fresh faces, 
 and show quite new possibilities and relations, on a Monday 
 morning ? I have wondered sometimes if that were not, in the 
 deep philosophy of things, chiefly what the pause was put for, 
 the Sabbath that was made for man. Certainly, nothing ever 
 stands still ; because the Father worketh. What looks like wait 
 ing, is leaving time for the chemistries of change. Did you 
 ever put away a letter that you found it hard to write, or a book 
 that was hard to understand, in the very middle of a sentence or 
 a page ? " 
 
 " And find it straightened out next time ? Yes, indeed," said 
 Mrs. Regis. " I don't think there is any miracle much greater 
 than that." 
 
 " I do not think so either," returned Mr. Truesdaile. 
 
 She rolled up her book in her hands, and rested them with it 
 upon her knees, looking into his face. She had said something 
 herself, she had put forth something, to which he simply 
 assented, as if it needed nothing more. The conversation 
 become conversation interested her. 
 
 " I always say to myself then," he began again, u it is Satur 
 day night, for this thing. Let the world turn round again, and 
 make a Sunday between, and I will come after it, and see." 
 
 " Did you ever hear," said Mrs. Regis, " of making butter by 
 burying the cream, using the globe itself for a great churn ? 
 For that is what the people say of it, that the earth turns it, 
 by its own turning. You make me think of that." 
 
 Emery Ann whispered to me, " He 'd make anybody think 
 of something." 
 
 I remembered the Spirit, that " quickeneth whom it will." 
 
 " I believe I had it in my own mind, dimly, and could not 
 recollect what it was. Thank you, Mrs. Regis. Does not that 
 join itself to the sign of Jonah ? A burial a disappearance
 
 140 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 a blank and a giving again ? There shall no sign be 
 given it but that sign. How the voice rings the sentence into 
 all our lives ! And yet, what a blessing upon all waiting, that 
 the Lord made this day ! " 
 
 He took off his cap again, and lifted his head up to the air 
 and shine, the great sphere of the day above and about him. 
 
 I saw Margaret drop her pencil into her lap, and put the 
 fingers of both her hands across her forehead, listening. " Why 
 does n't he come to this child ? " I thought to myself. As if the 
 Lord were sending him round with bread and wine, and he were 
 going to miss one of the little ones that needed it. 
 
 I say, sending him round, and he had not moved from his 
 place. Mrs. Regis was a little above and behind him, on the 
 outer edge of our group ; he had only turned himself upon his 
 elbow toward her and addressed his question which grew into 
 this talk that I thought she ought to put away as Mary put 
 away the gold and frankincense that the kings brought to the 
 child. He gives as the kings give ; to that which is but barely 
 born, perhaps, but which is to be the power of Life. 
 
 I wonder if it is not possible that I drew, with my own 
 thought, his to Margaret Regis? 
 
 There is a great mystery of the will, which mesmerism and 
 spiritism make no science of. When I was a little girl there 
 was a tree in the orchard, you remember it, Rose, that 
 bore beautiful, early, red-streaked, spicy summer apples. I was 
 uot allowed to beat down the fruit, but I might pick up any 
 that dropped beneath. I went down one day and searched 
 without success in the deep, warm grass, and then I looked up 
 to a bough on which, at the very end, hung a round, perfect, 
 crimson, shining apple, that almost quivered on its stalk for 
 ripeness, I thought, as the faint breath of wind stirred the twig. 
 " I wish it would tumble right down, this very minute," I said 
 aloud ; and then a great shock went suddenly through me, for 
 plumb to the ground, at my very feet, shooting a red line through 
 the air, as it came, fell the apple at my word. I never got over 
 it. I have been less daring in my wishes ever since. 
 
 I sat looking at Margaret, who looked at the sea. She was 
 down upon the lower edge of our little party, as her step-mother
 
 FANCY-MAIL : AND HALDON HOUSE. 141 
 
 
 
 was above us. I was in a line between the two, nearer to each 
 than anybody else was, and able to catch with the one ear what 
 one might speak, and with the other what the other. So I 
 stayed ; for not having put myself there on purpose, I thought 
 I was put, and might stay, since they all knew it. 
 
 Mr. Truesdaile shook himself upright with a sudden movement 
 as I said to myself, " Why does n't he come to this child ? " and 
 came down. As when the red apple fell, I was startled by the 
 instant gravitating to my will. 
 
 " Now if she will only speak ! " I thought. 
 
 I might have been the fisherman's wife in the story, sending 
 her wishes down to the sea. For the sea shone and smiled, and 
 something gave me my wishes as fast as I made them. 
 
 Mr. Truesdaile dropped himself into a little hollow just below 
 Margaret's feet, a little at one side. I do not believe he would 
 have crossed her line of forward vision, or blotted from her for 
 one instant that beauty before which we all sat, our faces all 
 one inevitable way. It would have been, in the large, what 
 crossing past the fire-shine is in the small. 
 
 But I suppose she turned her head a little at his coming, as 
 was natural, and I suppose she felt the " gift of God " when she 
 saw what might look ready in his face ; for I heard her say, 
 hardly to him, but as if his presence troubled her thought gently 
 to words, " How hard it is to write yesterday's letter to 
 day ! " 
 
 " Because there is to-day's letter to read ! " he answered. 
 
 " I am not sure that I am reading," said Margaret. 
 
 Her honesty forced her into speech, for she knew what lumi 
 nous text he saw, and what he might fancy of her eyes intent 
 upon the page. 
 
 It put me in memory of the " Give me to drink," and the 
 " Thou a Jew, of whom is the salvation, and I a Samaritan ! " 
 
 " Maybe not," said Mr. Truesdaile. " It is more like the 
 children looking at pictures. That is God's way of showing, 
 like the mother's, sometimes. Afterwards, He ' tells us the 
 reading.' " 
 
 Margaret spoke, abruptly. 
 
 " Why, when the best of one feels some chance of being
 
 142 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 happy, must the smallest of one take that very time to be 
 miserablest ? " 
 
 She spoke with the grammar of a little child, out of a child's 
 simpleness, and pain, and craving. 
 
 " It is a good thing you do not say ' worst.' People are so 
 apt to mistake the ' smallest ' for that." 
 
 " But if it grow ? " 
 
 "It isn't meant to grow, exactly, in itself. It is often some 
 thing that will soon be done with, like the temporary parts of 
 plants. It has the sentence of death in itself. That is why 
 you feel it small. It is cramping the large, real growing." 
 
 " It might not be that," said Margaret, sadly. " I have seen a 
 plant growing between stones, like Picciola." And then she 
 smiled a little. 
 
 " I do not mean," she resumed quickly, " where people them 
 selves are planted, exactly." 
 
 Here showed that finer tact, of which I believe Margaret ca 
 pable. She would not have her word attributed to any sense of 
 pressure from her ordinary, obvious relations. She was keenly 
 delicate of her step-daughtership. 
 
 " It may be the things in one," she said, " that should grow, 
 but that find themselves ' sown among the stones ' you know. I 
 suppose it is our own doing often, that the stones are there." 
 
 " I wonder how far, or to what use, we could go in metaphor," 
 said Mr. Truesdaile, smiling. " I suppose you mean, maybe, 
 that we make certain circumstances for ourselves, and then find 
 they hinder us." 
 
 Margaret flashed a look round at him of which I caught the 
 side sight. Was he a mind-reader, a second-seer ? How did 
 he know ? That was what the look seemed to say. 
 
 But perhaps it occurred to her, as it did to me, that if he had 
 known, he would scarcely have alluded so unhesitatingly. 
 
 The keen question subsided out of her eyes, I could not 
 half see them, but the rest of her face told how her eyes were 
 looking, under their dark lashes and their " level fronting lids," 
 and she said quietly, " Yes. Are n't we making circumstances 
 all the time, and mistakes in making them ? And then we have 
 to take ourselves as we are ; there is no going back. "What a
 
 FANCY-MAIL: AND HALDON HOUSE. 143 
 
 enarl it is ! I don't see, Mr. Truesdaile, why so much was left to 
 us." 
 
 She added these words in a different tone, as if scarcely ven 
 turing them. There was a certain hardness also in the voice, 
 though lo"wered, as of a constraint broken through unwillingly 
 by strong impulse, and tightened again about herself in the very 
 speaking. 
 
 "No going back into the snarl; no. That would never 
 unravel it. But forward is out of it, if we go the way we are 
 led. When once we put our hands in His, Miss Margaret ! " 
 
 " I cannot understand. Other people are being led, too. Our 
 snarls cannot concern only ourselves. We have no right to 
 break through them." 
 
 " Did I say ' break through ? ' Did you ever hold a skein of 
 silk for your mother to untangle ? " 
 
 Margaret sat silent. Her brows settled suddenly, like a 
 cloud. He felt his way quickly out of that blind turn. 
 
 ' We are falling into metaphor again," he said. " There is 
 something more direct. Let us take that. ' Shall not the Judge 
 of all the earth do right ? ' " 
 
 " Do you think He will set these things straight, when we 
 have made if we have made them crooked ? " 
 
 " It was what He came for. ' To make the crooked straight.' 
 To judge the earth in righteousness." 
 
 "But that^is the great Judgment. The Judgment when it 
 will be too late. In which we are to take what we have 
 earned." 
 
 " If it were too late, there could not be any judgment. Per 
 haps you have got the wrong word into your jnind. Are 
 you not thinking of sentence, penalty, instead of judg 
 ment ? " 
 
 Margaret raised an . earnest look at him. 
 
 " Is n't it what judgment is for, to pass sentence ? " 
 
 " I do not think it is. I think it is to justify." 
 
 " Wrong-doing ? " She spoke the word with an italicising of 
 amazement. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Margaret positively stared at him. I thought I knew what
 
 144 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 was coming, for I have had the same feeling about that word. 
 It has been one of my " dark lanterns " in the Scripture. 
 
 " Suppose we say 'adjust ' instead of 'justify ' the wrong ? 
 And suppose we need not think of a by-and-by judgment, that 
 might be too late, but of a Now, which is always the accepted 
 time, and the day of salvation ? " 
 
 Some light, like a clear dawn, softly rose up in her face. 
 
 " How easy that would make life ! " she sighed ; and her eyes 
 fell down out of their surprise into a sweet, momentary rest. 
 
 " It does. It is the Gospel of good news. The ' believe and 
 be saved, and behold the glory.' The glory begins, however 
 faintly, in the very moment with the believing ; and it shines 
 more and more, into the full, perfect day. The day when every 
 thing shall stand in its right light, 'justified.' " 
 
 " And what becomes of the by-and-by Judgment, then ? " 
 
 " I don't know that that is any matter, so long as God has 
 his way." 
 
 " Don't you believe in any retribution ? ' r 
 
 " We shall have to come to definitions again. What is ' retri 
 bution ? ' Though it is a man's word, after all. I do not know 
 of it in the Bible, where men have supposed they got it. What 
 does it stand for, however, as a dictionary word ? " 
 
 Margaret bethought herself of her Latin. " For ' paying 
 back,' does n't it ? " she said. 
 
 "And who pays back? Is it God, who tells us not to rec 
 ompense evil with evil, who means to ' pay us off,' as angry men 
 threaten ? " 
 
 " I don't know. Is n't there a good deal about it ? Render 
 ing to every one according to his deeds, and receiving the things 
 done in the body ? " 
 
 " I think we should come by those words, if we followed 
 them, as by a separate thread to the same centre. Or rather, 
 we should find we had taken up the same thread by another 
 loop. Let us trace out the ' paying back.' ' Verily, I say unto 
 thee, Thou shalt not come out thence till thou hast paid the 
 uttermost farthing.' Is n't that our paying back, which is 
 just what God wants of us, and which when He has brought us 
 to it, is our salvation ? Begun and perfected as soon and as 
 fast as we pay ? "
 
 FANCY-MAIL: AND HALDON HOUSE. 145 
 
 " But there it is, in those very words, the no escaping what 
 we have done. ' Ye shall by no means come out.' You put me 
 right back where I was r Mr. Truesdaile." 
 
 " ' Until ' " Mr. Truesdaile repeated. " And God knows 
 what the uttermost farthing is, and when we have paid it. He 
 says also, he will ' save to the uttermost.' The paying is just the 
 putting it all into his hands. That is the ' imputed righteous 
 ness.' That is the whole remission and redemption. A re 
 demption beginning now, and reaching on to the utter 
 most, from the very things we have otherwise brought upon 
 ourselves." 
 
 Margaret sighed. " After all, it was not the last Judgment 
 that was troubling me," she said. 
 
 I was glad to hear those words. They were drifting into 
 theologies, questions which to be sure include all questions, 
 but losing, I was afraid, what Margaret, in her present need, 
 was feeling after. This young girl, with her pure life behind 
 her, was not trembling at the Great Final Judgment. 
 
 " I know," said Mr. Truesdaile. " But the present justifying. 
 "What I say is that they are one and the same. And that it is 
 all a setting right. And that it only hurts so far as we set 
 ourselves against it." 
 
 " If we could only know which, what, we were to set 
 ourselves against, or for. That is the way it hurts some 
 times." 
 
 Margaret was sufficiently enigmatical. But the wonder was 
 she spoke at all. 
 
 Mr. Truesdaile was used to giving the message that came by 
 him, over the wires of the heavenly telegraph, whether he knew 
 precisely to what the words were linked or not. 
 
 " You said ' if,' a little way back in our talk. I noticed that, 
 and laid it up. ' If we have made things crooked.' When we 
 are not quite sure about that, the thing we have to do some 
 times is, to take no new act that can possibly be wrong, and to 
 wait until we see. ' Shun evil as sin, and look to the Lord,' 
 Swedenborg says. That is the beginning of the straighten 
 ing." 
 
 A few minutes after that, Margaret said to Mr. Truesdaile, 
 10
 
 146 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 " I wish I could get away home, to Haldon House, with 
 out any commotion." 
 
 Mr. Truesdaile got up, turned round to her, and gave her his 
 hand, and helped her to her feet. 
 
 " Let us walk over the down a little," he said. 
 
 And they moved away quietly together, just as the Arm 
 strongs came back toward us from their little saunter. 
 
 They passed up over the fell, and disappeared beyond the 
 farther slope. Ten minutes afterwards, Mr. Truesdaile returned 
 alone. " Miss Margaret was a little tired," he said to Mrs. 
 Regis. " She thought she would not come down again. I 
 took her across a nearer way, and left her at the foot of the 
 garden." 
 
 " Margaret is so exceedingly capricious," Mrs. Regis" said to 
 me, an hour later, as we were all walking back, the long way, 
 above the edge of the town. " She wants continual excitement. 
 She was radiant the day of the coach-ride to Tunbridge. And 
 to-day she is all down again. She cannot endure repose." 
 
 " Excuse me," I answered. " I do not think so. I think 
 repose is just what she is after. The world is beginning to 
 look serious to her. Now and then, perhaps, she rather vio 
 lently persuades .herself that all is right, and she is having a 
 perfectly good time. I have done the same thing myself, thirty 
 years ago." 
 
 Mrs. Regis looked absolutely uncomprehending. 
 
 " I cannot understand people," she said, " if I must go back 
 thirty years to do it. Thirty years rubs out a great deal." 
 
 " If that is all, I wonder what the thirty years are good for ! " 
 
 No. I did not say it. I kept it to myself.
 
 THE LORD WARDEN AT DOVER. 147 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE LORD WARDEN AT DOVER. 
 
 .... WE left for Dover the middle-of the week. After the 
 home-life with the Truesdailes, the great Lord Warden Hotel, 
 with its crowd of strangers, its ceremony of tables and long 
 orders, its regiment of solemn waiters in black dress-coats and 
 white neckcloths, gentlemen in orders one might very inno 
 cently call them, seemed cold, hard, homesick. Emery Ann 
 said that every time they brought her a bit of bread, she felt as 
 if they were going to say, " Dust to dust, ashes to ashes ! " 
 
 But the dining-room looked out upon the pier and the white 
 surf-line of the Channel ; and the long glazed corridor through 
 which we passed to our rooms was directly over the beach upon 
 which the waves broke in musical, low thunder ; and our rooms 
 themselves were on the Castle side, whose worn ramparts, time- 
 mouthed, like those of Hastings, but kept in service and repair, 
 we could see beyond the roofs of the curious old town, crowning 
 the white cliff; the very front of England, set watchful and firm, 
 toward the other nations, across the narrow strait of Saint 
 George. 
 
 I was a great deal too tired to go over it, or even to it ; but 
 the others did ; and somehow, now I was here, and could sit 
 and look at it, and hear their story about its walls and towers, 
 and galleries, and loop-holes, and armories ; its relics of lances 
 and pikes and flags, and Queen Elizabeth's Cannon, which like 
 many an old weapon, of arms or argument, tremendous in its 
 day, could not be lired off now without firing it to pieces, I 
 was very content to realize it so. 
 
 I do not mean to fret about the things I cannot do in Europe, 
 any more than I should have fretted if I never could have come. 
 I may think of them by and by, wishfully ; but so I used to
 
 148 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 think, when I was a child, of the nice things at yesterday's party 
 which I could not eat. I shall remember that, and know that 
 this is as childish. 
 
 Edith needed rest as much as I ; though her girlish enthu 
 siasm took her to the old Castle. After that, we settled down 
 very much together, to our resting and our writing. During 
 the five days that we waited here, I brought forward my story 
 to you from the middle of our London visit to our leaving Hast 
 ings ; as you will find by dates and details. 
 
 Mrs. Regis was more ready to assent to the delay than I had 
 expected when I proposed it. She said Dover was the jump- 
 in g-off place, and it was a comfortable spot to take the look 
 from before we leaped. 
 
 Many travelers were coming and going ; we had encoun 
 tered already several of our old ship-acquaintances, en route for 
 various points on the Continent. I felt as if Mrs. Regis had 
 not quite settled her mind about immediate plans, and that I 
 should not be surprised any day if she and Margaret were to 
 leave us and choose some other route into Switzerland. 
 
 For our part, we three were all very thankful for the pause. 
 One feels that little halts are needed ; little breaks in the fierce 
 impulse of this foreign travel. The wheels heat, you know, 
 with constant motion. 
 
 Do you remember the old " Boston days ? " When we went 
 into the city shopping, and rushed through four, or five, or even 
 seven hours of crowding and counter-dodging, holding on to the 
 thread of our errands with the last grasp of reason, and on to 
 our accumulated packages with our " crazy-bones ? " I am sure 
 if this procession from place to place, and this tying up of good 
 times into mental white parcels, without any chance to sort or 
 look at them, or to remember what we had got, were to go on 
 without intermission, I should feel as if Europe were one great, 
 feverish, frantic " Boston day," from which I could not get back. 
 
 I want to make a home and an end, now and then, to stagnate 
 a bit in, and start afresh from. Emery Ann says : " You can't 
 play tag continual, without a gool to run to ! " 
 
 Emery Ann was perfectly happy in an established seat at a cor 
 ner window, making burlaps covers for our new basket trunks.
 
 THE LORD WARDEN AT DOVER. 149 
 
 Also, we had set up a " cupboard," in a bureau with deep 
 drawers. We used to go down into Snargate Street, that 
 queer, narrow, ancient thoroughfare of tiny shops with low door 
 ways and overhanging second stories, and signs swinging close 
 above people's heads, and buy biscuits and buns, and baskets 
 of raspberries, and little pots of delicious Scotch marmalade, and 
 actually little bits of boxes of fresh butter, for we ordered " a 
 la carte " at the Lord Warden, and paid " carte blanche" and 
 we made our own little lunches and suppers, at the remnants 
 of which the funereal gentleman who took them away looked 
 as if he were officiating at a ceremony slightly out of his grand 
 and exclusive line of business. But if we could n't be independ 
 ent, what was the use of having come from the Land of the 
 Declaration ? 
 
 Margaret came and sat with me one afternoon, when all the 
 rest were gone out. She brought a box* full of ribbons and 
 gloves and little trinkets of apparel and ornament, to look over 
 and " pack." As she rolled and fastened and placed, she asked 
 me suddenly, 
 
 " Why should n't one have ups and downs, Miss Patience, as 
 the tide does ? Is n't it the only way to keep the sea-level,, as 
 the world goes round ? " 
 
 " I suppose we must have ups and downs, apparently," I 
 answered, " until we get where there is no more sea. Only the 
 true ups and downs, you know, are a really steady following" 
 
 " Of the light set to rule the night," Margaret said, taking my 
 thought and finishing it, as I should hardly have expected. 
 
 " I like that," she went on, " You always do put nice things 
 into one's head, Miss Patience. Mamma is right, though ; I am 
 very inconsistent. I cannot keep the same mood or mind. 
 There are so many sides to everything, People allow two ; 
 and yet they won't let you go back and forth to look at them, 
 without making an outcry at you of fickleness, and not know 
 ing what you want. They seem to think that is the most aw 
 ful charge, " the very unpardonable sin. As if anybody ever 
 did know what they wanted." 
 
 " I suppose when we have found that out, our errand is 
 done," said I.
 
 150 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 "And we can go home," Margaret rejoined, not lightly 
 The girl takes one up wonderfully. We think we have a great 
 deal to teach these young ones, out of our experience ; we for 
 get in what deep soundings of their own they may be at the very 
 time. 
 
 " I don't think it is such a very grand virtue to be ' decided,' " 
 said Margaret. " But one wants to feel sincere" 
 
 " Sincerity is not always mere consistency," I replied. u A 
 very honest, earnest looking at both sides, as you call it, may 
 show like vacillation for a good while, but the act will at last be 
 true. There is a kind of decision which comes of limitation and 
 tenacity ; seeing only one side, and hanging on to it." 
 
 " Mr. Truesdaile helped me," she said, gently, " to one 
 thing. To do nothing, ' from this out,' as the Irish say, that is 
 not just, certain true. Then he says it will all straighten itself. 
 No, be straightened. But one can't help thinking how. And 
 sometimes it looks all right, and then again all wrong. At least 
 it has. Oh, Miss Patience, if people did n't try to be Provi 
 dence for you ! I suppose papa thought he was doing the best. 
 But it is just a block between mamma and me, and always will 
 be. I won't be a good child for what I can get ! " 
 
 She took it for granted I knew what everybody had talked 
 of ; and I made no pretense of not knowing. 
 
 " Can't you set all that quite aside, and do the true thing, as 
 if there were no conditions ? " 
 
 " No. For the conditions alter everything. They make it 
 that I have no mother to go to, in the first place; only a 
 mamma, a guardian," she said, with a pathetic little humor. 
 " I might like her very well, if it was n't for my interest to. 
 And I might be surer of what other people mean, if it 
 was n't for conditions. The only thing I am sure of, is that I 
 am letting people wait, for what the waiting makes me feel 
 bound to, and yet " 
 
 She wanted some one to talk to, poor child ; and she found 
 it so hard to talk ! Many girls in her place would have made a 
 girl-friend. like my Edith, perhaps, and told all their 
 secrets to her ; but Margaret and Edith were not girls to chat 
 ter like that. She wanted a mother.
 
 THE LORD WARDEN AT DOVER. 151 
 
 I wonder if she felt something of your dear nearness, through 
 me, raotherdie, that made me seem motherly ! 
 
 " A long waiting may prove much on both parts," I ven 
 tured, just to let her see that I understood, without very many 
 explicit words, more than for any great help or wisdom I felt 
 myself in what I uttered. 
 
 " If it had only been to lose it altogether at any time ! 
 There would have been some proving by that. But seven years 
 waiting! How can you be sure which it means most of? I 
 wonder if it ever occurred to Rachel to be jealous of those flocks 
 and herds that utilized the waiting ? And it was Leah he got, 
 after all. Rachel won't always turn out Rachel, at the end of 
 seven years. And a girl can't ask a man to marry her sooner ! " 
 
 " Not if Jacob is too cheerfully resigned," I thought to my 
 self. I began to have a little insight of what was the matter. 
 
 It does not take deep reading to spell over a young fellow 
 like Harry Mackenzie. Living on the surface of life ; born to 
 soft things ; waiting in a taking-for-granted manner for more 
 soft things to be assured to him ; never "visited with a sugges 
 tion whether it would not be possible and manly to take hold of 
 hard things and build with them ; hampered, just as girls are 
 hampered, who have to take the chief blame for the modern 
 iufrequency of marriage, with all sorts of little selfish, gentle 
 manly habits, which the " governor " pays for now, but won't 
 when the term of his administration is ended ; just as much 
 tempted to think of money in marrying, for his own sake, as 
 the girl is ; not growing a single spiritual inch, for not putting 
 forth his powers as a man should ; just amiably Micawbering 
 along, and most Micawberly devoted to somebody he would 
 like welj enough to marry when the time comes and things 
 " turn up ; " meanwhile the princess-nature of some Margaret 
 growing as a girl's nature does grow ivy-fashion, with rootlets 
 that put forth along every stem of her being, whether they find 
 anything outside of them to lay hold of or not, was not here 
 a clew to just such an experience, setting aside all peculiarity of 
 circumstance, as was making between these two ? 
 
 While I thought this over, Margaret, maybe, was thinking 
 that her half incoherent allusions were either more or less than
 
 152 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 they should be, if she would withhold or give the confidence 
 that began to ache in her. 
 
 " You know," she said, breaking the pause with a quiet 
 straightforwardness, " that mamma does not want me to hold 
 myself as engaged to Harry Mackenzie." 
 
 " Do you want to ? " I asked, with as sudden a straightfor 
 wardness that came from I know not where. 
 
 It reached her unexpectedly. But after the first uplifting of 
 her eyelids in surprise, I could see that she was glad that we 
 had come to something plain and real. 
 
 " Perhaps it is just the difference between wish and want," 
 she said. " I mean it. I have let him believe I would, ever 
 since I was sixteen. And I might want it, wholly, if he were 
 just a little more what he might be. But I think this 
 waiting is keeping him a boy. I could n't care for a boy all my 
 life, Miss Patience ! " 
 
 " Why don't you tell him so ? " 
 
 Her eyes opened again. 
 
 I do not know exactly what possessed me ; but these short, 
 abrupt, outright questions were all that would come ; and they 
 were spoken almost before I knew. 
 
 For an instant, an idea seemed to lighten in her face ; the 
 perception of something real that she might be to him, instead 
 of merely the nice, pretty girl that he liked best to be with ; of 
 an intercourse, that taking hold at once of the verities between 
 them, should develop, if not what her " might be " indicated, 
 then what was meant to be ; that should prove and settle on 
 the true, living grounds. But the shade came back again as 
 she said, 
 
 "I am cornered with those seven years, and because I 
 cannot be in a hurry. Besides, I don't think I could train him 
 up, and then marry him ! I want him to be. And I'm just as 
 bad and false as I can be to say these things, for he is nice, and 
 I 've always liked him, and he cares for me ! And I won't give 
 him up because of those nasty conditions. I 've picked that 
 word up here in England," she added, with a short, excited little 
 laugh. 
 
 She would not " desert " him. It was precisely the feminine 
 correlative of the Micawber type.
 
 THE LORD WARDEN AT DOVER. 153 
 
 " But in the mean time," I said, " if you are anything to each 
 other, it is something deeper than regards just the things you 
 are to have and enjoy together by arid by ; it must relate to 
 what you are. Try him with your own best, Margaret. Don't 
 give him little pieces. Be yourself to him, at any rate. If that 
 is not Rachel, but Leah, to him, let the years show. Of the 
 truth, the truth comes." 
 
 I felt I was getting dreadfully sententious, and that there was 
 something that might lie also in the seven years that neither of 
 us touched upon. 
 
 " Be yourself to yourself," I hurried on. " Live your life, 
 and be honest with it to him. Let it tell its own story. Don't 
 base all your letters, all your words, on a foregone conclusion. 
 Don't send a letter, or say a word, that is not, as you said just 
 now, 'just certain true.' Don't hold out to him what you have 
 not for him. And if you find " I paused on these words, for 
 they felt heavily responsible upon my lips " that the under 
 standing between you is a fetter, that it troubles, hinders, 
 perplexes you, tell him that." 
 
 " It is what Mr. Truesdaile said ; only you apply it for me. 
 I told you I wanted a mother, to go to." 
 
 She kissed me, and went away. 
 
 Am I breaking sacredness to you, Rose ? I, too, must have 
 my helps to go to. I do not always need an answer back. It 
 is a help to me, just saying things over to you ; as it was, as 
 it is, to motherdie ! Only mother is at my heart, now ; and 
 I need n't go to her with slow words ; yet, while we are outside, 
 in the slowness, the words "justify." 
 
 I think breaking a confidence is flinging it where it ought 
 not to go. If any one gives it to me, it is not, I take it, just to 
 hold fast ; it is for some heart-burying which shall circulate it 
 through my life,'to get whatever breath of life upon it the rest 
 of me may get, and to come back from it sweetened, lightened, 
 sifted somehow of its doubt or trouble. I think it is like the 
 silent that the Master will come for again, asking for that 
 which has grown of it to meet a fresh, a larger demand. 
 
 I think the angels who minister into our lives, may have a
 
 154 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 confidence up there with each other about us, which is not be 
 trayal, and which we should not resent. Not that we are the 
 angels, Rose ! Only the angels' copyists. This is one of the 
 things, however, for which we must pray that we may u have a 
 right judgment in all things ; " and then be sure not to act on 
 the first little uncertain impulse instead of judgment which 
 comes. 
 
 I am pretty certain that Margaret sent back no letter to 
 America from either Hastings or Dover.
 
 REALLY ABROAD. 155 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 REALLY ABROAD. 
 
 .... THE Channel is a great gulf to cross, after all. Over 
 that, you are out of country, lineage, and language, from 
 which the ocean had not separated you. I begin to understand 
 the English word " abroad." I might have understood it before. 
 It is not the day's sailing that you are away, that divides from 
 anything. 
 
 We had a bright morning to cross in ; and not a very bad 
 sea, though it was rough enough. 
 
 We were very proud of not being seasick. Our exemptive 
 malady was too recent. We had not outgrown our protection. 
 We stood, atilt upon the rocking deck, enjoying the swaying 
 and founding as the birds enjoy the springing of the boughs. 
 
 The change and excitement, the vague, glad anticipation, 
 were good for us. I happened to know how good they were 
 for Margaret. It is such a blessed thing that living is very un 
 like romancing. There are such long, sweet, breezy chapters 
 between the feverish points ; the commonplace rests and re 
 freshes us so. The delights poured in upon us, whether we will 
 or not almost, through so many channels quite independent of 
 that which is shut or morbidly preoccupied, minister to us such 
 unexpected vitalities to contend with our disease. We are 
 forced, for the greater part, to breathe a diluted air instead of 
 the fierce, unqualified oxygen that would burn us up. How 
 tenderly denial itself wraps us round with safety, delay is 
 counted out with comforts ! I fancy the chief harm in novels is 
 the elimination of all the gentle, protective medium, and the 
 concentration of the intense. 
 
 If I were writing a story, Rose, don't laugh ; there is a 
 3tory, I know, in everything; but if I were making one, I
 
 156 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 would make places in it to catch breath. As they leave air 
 holes in long tunnels. 
 
 " ' Here is land,' " I said to Edith. " ' The ship is sailing up 
 to it. It is a country. It is France. We will go on shore.' " 
 
 Edith laughed. " ' There are trees ; and houses. There are 
 men upon the land. Are they Frenchmen ? ' ' 
 
 " What are you saying ? " exclaimed Mrs. Regis, who had 
 not been brought up, I suppose, on Barbauld. 
 
 " We are doing map questions in ' Easy Lessons,' " replied 
 Edith, who had always delighted in the old-fashioned story 
 books she could rummage out of the ancient secretary at the 
 Farm; and who knew Mrs. Barbauld by heart. Which does 
 not mean by rote, either ; for I dare say neither of us recol 
 lected the precise words. 
 
 But that sublime creature in police uniform, standing on the 
 pier above the gangway, directing the crowd and talking two 
 languages indiscriminately, beginning a sentence in French and 
 ending it in English as his audience filed along, and he descried 
 unerringly the nationality of each successive comer, was 
 never mentioned in Barbauld. I should not think he belonged 
 in easy lessons, certainly. Not any more than the steam- 
 sailing which connected our little " walk " from rim to rim of 
 England with our coming " promenade " across the champagnes 
 of France. 
 
 We were overpowered and made to feel small at the very 
 outset. We were sure we could never smatter like that. 
 
 They did not wait for our tardy French. They put us along, 
 somehow, upon the right track, and into the right train. 
 
 We found ourselves separated in two compartments of the 
 carriage ; for in the embarrassments of " P re >" " H ifem( v' " Pour 
 dames seules," " Pour fumer " and " Defense a fumer," we ran 
 up and down until every one was partly filled, and we had to 
 jump in as we could. 
 
 Edith, and Emery Ann, and I, found ourselves in company 
 with an old French gentleman and lady, a young French girl 
 traveling by herself, and a stiff, silent young Englishman, who 
 might be a " milord " for all we knew.
 
 REALLY ABROAD. 157 
 
 The foreigners I mean the natives were voluble. We 
 
 O 
 
 listened meekly, subduedly ; and made our first trial whether 
 we had ears to hear or not. 
 
 Their command of their own language was imposing. We 
 forgot that we could astonish them as much in English. We 
 neglected our own weapons. For my part I grew restlessly 
 ambitious, as I did when I stood by my grandmother while she 
 showed me how to knit. " Click ! click ! " went the needles. 
 " Let me try ! " I exclaimed, fired by their motions as if they 
 had struck sparks. " Let me try," was in my mind now, " even 
 if I drop all the stitches ! " 
 
 So, suddenly, after long, weary silence, to the amazement and 
 almost dismay of Edith, I broke forth and spoke. It was when 
 we had stopped at some still, sleepy, sunny way-station, where 
 doors had been flung open and passengers had alighted. The 
 young Englishman was out, pacing the platform. 
 
 I think I made an essay in this wise, after a little careful 
 mental preparation ; addressing myself to the elderly dame be 
 side me : 
 
 " Combien de temps, madame, s'il vous plait, est-ce qu'on 
 s'arrete ici ? " 
 
 (Tf the right mistakes, I mean the ones I made then, 
 are not there, there are others that will do as well.) 
 
 " Sept minutes, madame," was the reply. 
 
 " Merci, madame." 
 
 She had understood me, at any rate. I hope I was not un- 
 christianly puffed up, as I sat back in my corner and came 
 wisely to an end ; but I had a slight sensation such as I im 
 agine one might feel who had just opened a successful commu 
 nication with the planet Mars. 
 
 " How did you dare ? " asked Edith, who is almost as reti 
 cent of her French in public, as she would be of her prayers. 
 
 " I did n't," I answered ; " but I thought it must come some 
 time ; and I wanted to see if I could. Pray keep on talking 
 now, if you can ; I am dreadfully afraid she will say something 
 of her own accord." 
 
 But the old Frenchman and the young Englishman got in 
 again ; a new way passenger filled up the one vacant seat, and 
 the train moved on.
 
 158 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 It was a great deal worse at Paris. There I really had to 
 talk, and be talked to, which is so infinitely more tremendous. 
 
 We were claiming our luggage, and submitting to the Dou- 
 ane inspection. (What a good, old-womanish name that is for 
 the petty, tyrannical surveillance which is nevertheless, like the 
 duenna's watchfulness, always evaded !) 
 
 A certain portmanteau, belonging to our division of the 
 party, was missing. We had seen it on the Dover boat. The 
 hotel porter had brought it to us, and we had told him it was to 
 go with the luggage. Consequently, as we found afterward, it 
 had not been registered. 
 
 " II manque encore une piece," I told the officer. " Un port 
 manteau, brun, jaune, comme <ja, " pointing to a rus 
 set trunk. What he said to me in reply, I shall never know. 
 
 " Est-ce que vous pouvez bien me dire, monsieur ? Ou faut-il 
 faire enquete, s'il vous plait ? " 
 
 He signed us round the square inclosure, upon the barricade 
 of which were piled the heaps of boxes. We went round, 
 peered anxiously everywhere, and came back. 
 
 He was evidently growing impatient. He had examined and 
 passed our trunks, and two porters, frantic for the job, were 
 tugging at the handles and vociferating inquiries as to " voitures " 
 and the way we would go. 
 
 " Mais, monsieur," I began again, " c'est perdu, le portman 
 teau. Nous 1'avons vu sur le bateau a vapeur a Douvres ; 
 est-ce qu'on peut 1'avoir laisse a Calais ? " 
 
 He asked me some question about registering. I told him, 
 as well as I could, that I did n't know ; that we had sent it to be 
 put with the other luggage after we were on board. 
 
 "Alors, madame," and the word sounded like his ultima 
 tum, "il faut envoyer depeche au chef de gare a Calais. On 
 vous 1'enverra demain, sans doute." 
 
 I think I made it out like that after we got into the carriage. 
 It certainly did not come to me as he was saying it. I took it 
 away in a snarl, to pick out as I went. For we had to sub 
 mit, and follow the porters and the things that remained to us 
 which they were carrying off. I had said, helplessly, " Hotel 
 de Normandie ; " and they had waited for no more.
 
 REALLY ABROAD. 159 
 
 " That 's another thing that people kept telling us that isn't 
 BO," said Emery Ann. 
 
 Emery Ann has a way of stringing things together with 
 " thats," at regular intervals, like a kind of beadwork. 
 
 " That we should find people that could talk English every 
 where," she went on. 
 
 " Depends upon how you put in your ' everywhere,' " said 
 Edith. 
 
 I was busy arranging and interpreting my mental phonogra 
 phy, and had just made it out. 
 
 " The man was n't there, any way," said Emery Ann. 
 
 " No, only the woman," rejoined Edith, laughing. 
 
 " One woman talked," I put in solemnly ; " and she did n't 
 talk English." 
 
 " And I 'm persuaded in my own mind," continued Emery 
 Ann, from where she left off, " that he never will be, when the 
 thing has just got to be said at the minute, or else forever after 
 hold your peace." 
 
 " If we could only forever after hold our pieces ! " I ejaculated, 
 fervently. " I shall have to write a French telegram, now ; 
 and perhaps a letter." 
 
 Greatness was thrust upon me. The fool has to rush in, 
 sometimes, he is put there on purpose, where angels won't. 
 Edith was too fresh from her Fasquelle, and her much-corrected 
 exercises. She knew too well the difficulties, and the possibili 
 ties of mis-handled phrases. My old Wanostrocht had lain dor 
 mant in my system, and now cropped up as a kind of instinct, 
 which made me think of what the instincts, or innatenesses, of 
 this and farther existence, may be. Then there were the little 
 scraps of conversation lessons that you and I had, Rose, with 
 Madame Eustache ; and the bits out of books, and the French 
 in the French air about me. I began to feel that I was flung 
 into the sea, and should perhaps swim in some floundering fash 
 ion, rather than go down. At any rate, I would not go to the 
 Regises about it. I had made up my mind at the beginning 
 that in a double party like ours, the only way to avoid doubling 
 the annoyances of travel would be for each side to keep its own 
 little separate questions and hindrances as much to itself as 
 possible.
 
 160 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 It is just as it is when people go shopping together. If they 
 both try to do all each other's errands, they get all mixed up 
 and tired out, and do nobody's. 
 
 Mrs. Regis and Margaret had been busy with their own af 
 fairs at the Douane ; they came away in company with us, as 
 usual, in a second " voiture ; " and we were driven along some 
 great avenue, across a broad, magnificent boulevard, and through 
 a labyrinth of turnings in old, narrow streets, from the Embar- 
 cadere du Nord to the Rue St. Honore and the Hotel de Nor- 
 mandie. 
 
 " Do you think we have come to a nice place ? " asked Edith, 
 doubtfully, as the carriage stopped, and a bareheaded, bowing 
 concierge appeared in what looked like a dingy entrance to 
 some unknown darkness within old walls. 
 
 " Baedeker says so," I answered, picking up my little red 
 book and preparing to extricate myself as the door was opened. 
 
 Through the dark arched entrance we came into a pretty 
 court-yard, set round with plants and shrubs, orange-trees, 
 rose-trees, laurels, oleanders, and looking up between the 
 four high, many-windowed walls, to a clear, sweet patch of sum 
 mer sky. 
 
 Our first French day was softly closing into twilight. 
 
 And this was really all of it, so far, that I glance back 
 over in these few, meagre pages, half hating to send them. 
 
 The day's journey had been very different from our first day 
 across England. The flat, marshy country stretching inward 
 from the north coast had seemed in itself a dismal blank. Noth 
 ing lay behind us between Paris and Calais that stirred much 
 interest, except the old city of Amiens and its great cathedral 
 which we could not stop to see. It was a miss ; but we are 
 hastening toward the Cathedral older, grander that the 
 Lord has set in the midst of this continent of his, to shed his 
 waters down from ; as He has put the Himalayas in his east, 
 and the Rocky Peaks in his west ; whose summer gates stand 
 open now, but will shut fast by and by, bolted with ice and over 
 hung with avalanches. 
 
 I have given you just what I had to give ; I scorn to copy a 
 line of guide-book. I was chiefly taken up with the Barbauld
 
 REALLY ABROAD. 161 
 
 novelty of the stepping over as she and Charles did, the sud 
 den wonder of the language let loose out of the grammars, alive, 
 over a whole country, and the facility of these people in get 
 ting along with it. 
 
 Margaret found a letter from Flora Mackenzie waiting her, 
 next day, when we walked round to the Place Vendome and 
 inquired at the banker's. I also got yours in answer to my 
 Queenstown packet. You encourage me in detail, also in gossip ; 
 understanding with me that the Saxon of it, the God-sib, is 
 a good thing, and nothing less than the human interest and sym 
 pathy that comes honestly and heartily from the divine. 
 
 So I will tell you that is, I will tell into the other side of 
 my own thoughts about the letter that Margaret brought me 
 to read, after we got back to the hotel and had untied our little 
 parcels 'of cakes and pralines, and our baskets of fresh raspber 
 ries, and had called for " limonade gazeuse," which is lemon 
 soda-water in a siphon, and had made ourselves comfortable in 
 a broad, balconied window, with our cool lunch. 
 
 Flora wrote from Saratoga. 
 
 They had gone there for the gay race month. She was 
 brimmingly happy in a new heart-of-rose evening silk, and a 
 real, soft, gray camel's hair walking dress. Also Uncle Andrew 
 had given Harry five hundred dollars for his twenty-first birth 
 day ; and the very first thing he did with it was to buy her a 
 pair of " perfectly sweet diamond solitaires." " Not large, you 
 know : of course he could n't afford that out of it, but the purest 
 little twinkles you ever saw, in the new nail-head setting. By 
 the way, Madge, no girl ought to wear these settings who has 
 flat ears ! It takes a little curly dint for them to nestle in ; or 
 else they do look painfully nail-y ! Was n't it just like him ? A 
 perfect shame of extravagance ; but so generous ! " And then 
 again, farther on, there was a paragraph like this : "I must 
 tell you what it is, Madge ; don't run too much into moralizings 
 and fine thinkings with Harry ; have n't you got into a dread 
 fully exalted set on board the Nova Zembla? Men don't like 
 tete montee, of any sort : and the serious craze least of all ! They 
 just want a girl to be nice, and charming, and sweet-tempered, 
 11
 
 162 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 and bright, and gently jolly ; just as you always were. If you 
 go and spoil, you '11 spoil all our dreams ; and nobody ever 
 dreamt anything half so nice as we two, we three, is n't it, 
 Madge ? have laid out together. Did n't we determine, years 
 ago, that we would live it all out, and that we would n't be dif 
 ferent by and by, as people are, and let it change ? And now if 
 you go and turn out different, Madge, do hold on ! Can't a 
 girl ever stay? " 
 
 She told me not to read it at the minute, but to lay it by till 
 after lunch. So it was after she had gone back to her mother, 
 and I was waiting with my hat on to go with them presently 
 into the old church of Saint Roch close by, that I looked it 
 over. 
 
 You see ? Here is a girl not yet waked up, determined 
 not to wake, but to have her morning dream out ; and Marga 
 ret is waking. She is opening her eyes suddenly, almost into 
 the full face of the sun. She hardly knows whether it is most 
 gladness or pain. 
 
 I suppose as MacDonald says * the Lord is " making " 
 Harry Mackenzie, too ; and this Flora. But I am sure He is 
 making Margaret faster; and I cannot help wishing that He 
 may not see fit that the one making shall depend much upon 
 the other. It seems as if one could see that it would only be a 
 pain and a hindrance. And when there are such better possi 
 ble things ! I am afraid I should be very willing that those 
 two, that girl and boy, should let their directer salvation 
 go, and take their own way farther round, among their kind, 
 a while. Saratoga is full, at this minute, of charming and 
 bright and jolly girls ; I hope Harry Mackenzie may have a 
 very good time among them. I should n't care if some old 
 Laban brought along a Rachel all ready with her dowry. I 
 am glad that Margaret Regis is away out here. I think her 
 step-mother is an extremely wise woman. 
 
 "We went into the old church of Saint Roch ; just queer and 
 ancient, that is all. Behind the altar is an inner chamber, 
 which contains a representation in what shall I say ? prac 
 tical arrangement of the Crucifixion. A certain scenic dis-
 
 KEALLY ABROAD. 163 
 
 position of imitation rocks piled up against the back, for the Hill 
 of Calvary, and among them, at the summit, the three crosses 
 planted; of which the central one, with its Figure, shows 
 through an opposite arch in the reredos to the eyes of worship 
 ers in the body of the church. I suppose there are high days 
 when the whole is thrown open. 
 
 It looks strange and trivial to us ; and yet to thoughts un- 
 stored with any association of period, place, and mode, to 
 those who only know the holy Story as it is told to them in im 
 ages and pictures, through times in which old churches have 
 stood like arks, keeping the sacred signs of a reality which sub 
 mitted itself, like the Sign of Jonah, to a swallowing up in 
 darkness for a while, this system of emblems and positive 
 presentations is and has been form and showing for the childish 
 apprehension that would have let the invisible go. 
 
 At first, the etfigiation shocked me with its rude literalness ; 
 then it said to me simply what the words say, though in 
 raised letters as for the blind, " Christ was crucified." It has 
 said that to thousands of simple souls to whom words would 
 have conveyed little. 
 
 After all, what is this thrill and touch of words but a subtler 
 sign of what forever clothes itself, because unclothed it is ineffa 
 ble ? Like the sign made in that Life and Death itself?
 
 164 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVL 
 
 A TALK; AND A TRUSTING. 
 
 .... IT was a glorious morning when we set off for Ver 
 sailles. A morning to see Paris in. 
 
 In the three days since our arrival we had moved about very 
 little. The portmanteau had come ; that bothered and oc 
 cupied me the first twenty-four hours ; then there was the 
 banking business ; and there were the shops ! 
 
 You are a woman, and will understand. We did have to buy 
 things. What else are the shops, and the manufactures, and the 
 imports, and all the great system and economy of trade, which 
 men think worth their while, for ? Because it comes to an end 
 with us, because we have to deal with the grocer and the 
 milliner and the dry goods retailer, in the last little details of 
 daily result and need, they have such a big way of looking over 
 their desks and ledgers into our world, and saying as they see us 
 buzz about, doing our duty, " women shopping ! " As if 
 they were so many Aunt Betsies, with their " Janet ! donkies ! " 
 
 It was nice that we could do so much right there between 
 our hotel and Place Vendome, along the narrow, crowded old 
 Rue St. Honore. 
 
 We got on best in the shops where they did not pretend to 
 accommodate us with our own language. There were bright 
 little gilt letters stuck up against the glass in every half-dozenth 
 window, " English Spoken ; " but almost always, a letter or 
 two had dropped off. " Of course," said Emery Ann, " it 's al 
 ways broken English." 
 
 Where there was nothing but French, we used a phrase or 
 two, and fell into the natural language of signs ; and they at 
 tended and divined, not being taken up with sentences. But 
 the minute they began to speak English to us, we gave up.
 
 A TALK; AND A TRUSTING. 165 
 
 We found a delightful little body, a Madame Dashwood, 
 BO her sign said. Probably a French girl who had married an 
 English husband ; but, however, she spoke only French to us ; 
 out of delicate compliment, perhaps, to our " Eskers." 
 
 She had all tfye most fascinating little ways of her class and 
 nation ; she showed us things " charmantes," and ' ; bien bon 
 marche ; " she stood with her finger laid beside her lip and her 
 pretty head on one side, like a little bird considering, when 
 some doubt arose of color or fit ; and then her inspiration, and 
 her " Mais, madame, voila ! " as she produced something quite 
 indisputable, or gave a dexterous suggestion of arrangement to 
 the article in hand, were enough to have sold her whole stock 
 out, she was so bewitching in doing it. 
 
 The girls got lovely white jackets and shirt waists, with such 
 exquisite embroidery and needlework laid out upon them ! So 
 many little finishing bands and welts, and stitchings ! The 
 things had a look of everlasting wear just put upon their filmy 
 material by these stays and edges, so delicately firm, so re 
 folded and re-woven upon themselves. 
 
 Margaret bought also a black luce sacque, all wrought in fern 
 sprays, with borders of fine arabesque lines running through 
 them. Mrs. Regis surprised me by quietly purchasing one or 
 two caps of finest point and Malines ; just light little top pieces, 
 with simple knots of lavender-gray ribbon ; and she ordered 
 some of Valenciennes, whose simple triple quillings round the 
 Marie-Stuart point should replace the tarletane rolls of the 
 widow's cap almost imperceptibly as to general effect. 
 
 " I have thought of this for a good while," she observed to 
 me. " But it is so hard to make a change at home. And in 
 traveling, caps are such a consideration ! Tarletane crushes, 
 and is done with; these can be carried in small compass, and 
 will always come out fresh." 
 
 It gave me a queer feeling, and upset that original, deeply 
 impressed idea of her, as a woman almost born for a widow's 
 cap ; at any rate, one who once in it, had made it a part of her 
 identity, to be known by to the day of her death. 
 
 But this about the shops is only in passing. I did not always 
 go. I found a few quiet hours each day, when the others were
 
 166 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 out, in which I could " make fast," as the sailors say, something 
 of what I had been " hauling in ; " you, away there in Dear- 
 wood, serving as my belaying pin. 
 
 We drove out to. Versailles in two open carriages. We 
 changed the order of our usual arrangement ; the girls took a 
 fancy to go together. 
 
 " Why don't we, ever ? " Edith wondered suddenly. 
 
 Then it was Mrs. Regis's suggestion that Emery Ann should 
 be detailed to matronize them, and that herself and I should 
 drive together. Emery Ann looked very suitable, as a sort of 
 English " bonne " or " gouvernante ; " it would not have oc 
 curred to Mrs. Regis to let Margaret come in with us, and take 
 Miss Tudor in her daughter's place. And I think, too, that 
 her perception of fitness was a nice one, every way. I am 
 sure Emery Ann liked it better so, and the girls are never tired 
 of her. 
 
 Sunshine belongs to Paris. It is a city made for brightness ; 
 it has no natural relation to anything else. It was full of sun 
 shine to-day. Its clean, airy, open squares, its splendid arenues, 
 its tossing, shimmering fountains, its gardens and trees, its statues 
 and obelisks, were all bathed in clear, glad light, and looked 
 fresh and perfect, as if created of the very day. 
 
 We passed along by the Palace and Garden of the Tuileries, 
 across the garden front, through the Place de la Concorde, where 
 the obelisk of Luxor stands in its slender might of beauty, 
 (how difficult to remember that the guillotine stood here once, 
 when it was the Place of the Revolution, and noble and beau 
 tiful heads fell down into the horrible basket, and blood streamed 
 instead of sparkling waters !) where the shaded avenues on the 
 one hand run directly to the palace front, and on the other the 
 Champs Elysees stretch away in long green aisles exactly op 
 posite, so that Napoleon used to sit at his windows and look 
 straight out to the Arch of Triumph in the Place of the Star. 
 
 Then, along the river side, and beyond the walls, battered 
 with the shells of the last Revolution, and through outskirts yet 
 lying in blackened ruin here and there, by the villages of Issy 
 and Sevres, the narrow streets alive with a life quite strange
 
 A TALK; AND A TRUSTING. 167 
 
 to us ; men in blouses, women in white caps, houses and hotels 
 that looked to us more as if they had come out of pictures than 
 as if pictures had come to us from them, we drove, and gazed, 
 and enjoyed, reveling in the sunshine and the novelty ; the 
 girls' faces glancing out at us from their carriage, as we some 
 times drove alongside or passed each other, brimful of wonder 
 and excitement, and unspoken " Only see ! "s. Emery Ann sat 
 straight up and made a business of everything. 
 
 Mrs. Regis and I had a talk. The road was long, and there 
 was time. She began rather unexpectedly. 
 
 " I think you are in Margaret's confidence, somewhat, Miss 
 Strong ? " 
 
 " Margaret talks to me a little," I answered ; wondering how 
 far I was to be called to account, or cross-examined. I was 
 neither. 
 
 " I am glad of it," said Margaret's step-mother ; and her tone 
 was genuine and kind. 
 
 *' Thank you," said I, heartily. 
 
 It was the first hearty feeling I had had toward her. I have 
 told you truly all my pre-judgments, Rose ; it was the right way. 
 You shall have my honest after-judgments also, even if they 
 shall be judgment and sentence upon myself. 
 
 " Margaret does not quite understand me. It is hardly pos 
 sible, perhaps, that she should. Yet there is n't much to under 
 stand. I am not deep or intricate, any more than human 
 nature always is. I am not conscious of any double motives. 
 I am placed in rather a peculiar position, and I wish to act 
 for every one's real interest. I do not set up for any very 
 exalted generosities or perfect self-devotion ; but it is my nature 
 to wish that things should go well with people ; as far at least, 
 as I can see, or control. I have not thought they would go well 
 with Margaret, if she married Harry Mackenzie. I am thor 
 oughly comfortable about Helen." 
 
 I could not help it ; I could not turn it out of my head, the 
 the idea that she put right into it again. She must be thor 
 oughly comfortable. And she could not be, unless it went tol 
 erably well with people. As far, at least, as she could see. 
 
 Well, why was n't that charity ? Could she expect to love
 
 168 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 her neighbor better than that ? I boxed my own ears inwardly ; 
 outwardly, I waited calmly, listening. There was nothing for 
 me to reply to. 
 
 " Margaret's fortune would be nothing to a fellow like Harry 
 Mackenzie, though I dare say he thinks it would. Such irre 
 sponsible people always think everything is provided for, if they 
 can see a few hundred or thousand dollars ahead ; or even 
 if their bills are paid up, and they can begin on a clean score. 
 It would be sure not to last. They would be back on their 
 friends again in five years. I do not mean it shall be so. It is 
 just what Colonel Regis left me power for." 
 
 " And Margaret would rather lose her money," said I, " than 
 give him up for the sake of it. There is a temptation to her 
 sense of nobleness and fidelity in the very alternative." 
 
 " Yes. But to him ? That is what I have been waiting for. 
 If it does not happen " 
 
 " You will consent ? You will make the best of it ? If Mar 
 garet knew that" 
 
 " I never meant not to consent. I do not mean to take her 
 money away from her. But I shall never tell her I approve of 
 such a marriage. And I will not let him spend her little twenty- 
 five thousand dollars. I have the power to secure it to her, as 
 well as to refuse it ; indeed, by refusing it. I provided for that, 
 and at the same time put so much quite out of my own 
 hands, before I sailed from home. It is in a separate trust, 
 a deed of my own ; that, and five thousand more, my wedding- 
 gift, to be held for her in case she forfeits under the will by 
 marrying without my formal, written consent ; which, given, 
 however, would cancel it, and return my own to me again. I 
 made up my mind to tell you this," she added, with one of her 
 smiles that she can make gloriously sweet, ' because there is 
 no need that you should think worse of me than the truth. I 
 have come to value your good opinion. Besides, you are thrown 
 intimately with both of us, at a critical time ; and you have in 
 fluence. It is best you should understand us both ; and I feel 
 sure that I can " 
 
 I thought she was going to say, " I can trust you." Why 
 did she not finish? Or was it only my discretion that she
 
 A TALK; AND A TRUSTING. 169 
 
 trusted ? I saw that she refrained from binding me, even by 
 implication. 
 
 " If Margaret knew this," I began again, and again broke 
 off, asking a question instead. " Did it ever occur to you, Mrs. 
 Regis, that this might not be so deep a thing with her as she 
 supposes, as she chooses to believe, for truth and nobleness' 
 sake, perhaps ? " 
 
 " You think she might change ? Yes, she might have an 
 other girl's fancy," said Mrs. Regis ; and there was a tinge of 
 bitter slighting in her words. She went on with a suddenly dif 
 ferent tone. 
 
 " It is well that she does not know. Let her wait, and let 
 him prove himself. She is safe while she waits. Colonel 
 Regis distrusted early marriages. He had seen so much of 
 them in the army, where boys marry on their first commis 
 sion." 
 
 "And suppose something more real shows her to herself more 
 plainly, while yet she feels bound ? " 
 
 I could not stop to think, though her words sent glimmers 
 down hidden avenues of motive, hidden, I believe, even from 
 herself. I thought afterward ; then, I spoke ; for the oppor 
 tunity might not return. 
 
 " I hope she would not come to me about it," said Mrs. Regis, 
 hastily. " I might object again." 
 
 I remembered what Emery Ann said, about " leaving straws 
 unput." 
 
 " I think you would be bound not to shut your eyes," I said. 
 " The responsibility would be there in any case." 
 
 " I can do nothing with fine subtleties, and shades of circum 
 stance," said Mrs. Regis. " I can understand a positive duty, 
 or a positive meanness. I can do one, and put the other out of 
 my power. It is easier to do things once for all, than to be hav 
 ing little separate battles with separate little temptations to be 
 selfish. I have told you how I have settled the money-question. 
 I have trusted you." 
 
 She said it now, and held me bound. I only said, " I thank 
 you, Mrs. Regis. I think you have been generous." And we 
 both fell silent again.
 
 170 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 When a person gives you knowledge of an act, with its mo 
 tive as far as they recognize it in themselves, something in you, 
 something in me, at any rate, follows the clew deeper, and 
 asks just such questions as one asks of one's own hidden, far 
 away feeling and intent. 
 
 Mrs. Regis had done, with a determination to be just, and 
 to defend herself from possible temptation, a thing that was 
 certainly generous. It was a brave kind of cutting away her 
 own retreat. But is that the very bravest and truest? To 
 stand fast when one might go back, to know that one means so 
 to stand fast, come what will, is the grander thing ; just as it 
 is grander to bear life than to rush on death with a reckless im 
 pulse. She was a nobler woman than I had given her credit 
 for being ; her sense of " comfortableness " for those whose 
 comfort she could affect, reached farther than many people's. 
 It was very thorough. There was no danger of her grasping 
 to herself in the little, mean, surface-fashion that some do. She 
 was not the common woman to oppose her sxep-daughter, just 
 that she might profit by the forfeiture of a disobedience. But 
 she must have broad margin to be generous in. There must be 
 easy-chairs for everybody. She would carefully enlarge her 
 phylacteries against the demon Self, she would widen all bor 
 ders that could be widened with facility. She could do it here. 
 Her husband had left plenty of money for them all. 
 
 But what if she had to make room by crowding back her 
 own life? What if it should come to one thing, that one 
 might have, and not another ? What when the question should 
 concern something that might dawn to her only by a setting 
 into darkness for some one else, for some one younger, to 
 whom the night should be longer? Would a greater noble 
 ness than this caring for her neighbor with herself, and that she 
 might be free to care for self, triumph at last in Mrs. Regis's 
 nature, and lift it up once and forever to a loftier plane ? 
 
 She looked young to-day. Madame Dash wood had changed 
 her bonnet-cap to correspond with the style she had now 
 adopted for home wear. She had put in just one of those 
 little crimped hems that are beginning to be worn by every 
 body ; and to make up the fullness lost with the white rolls,
 
 A TALK; AND A TRUSTING. 171 
 
 Mrs. Regis had slightly crdpe'd her beautiful hair. The expres 
 sion of the widow's cap, becoming as it had been, had added ten 
 years to her apparent age. I could see now, what I had not 
 supposed before, that she was undoubtedly, by several years, 
 younger than myself, and at this moment she did not look more 
 than thirty-five. 
 
 There was time enough, there was reason and circumstance 
 enough, for her yet to find an experience that perhaps she 
 had hitherto missed ; a mightier sweep, and search, and test 
 through her nature, might come upon her than had come before 
 in all the smooth procession of her half-lived years. 
 
 What had been in Mrs. Regis's mind, or had come there, in 
 her talk to me ? 
 
 Had she half hoped, at first, that Margaret might learn, or 
 get an intuition, if I knew, that there was no forfeiture to 
 avoid, no condition to wait for ? Was she half willing to let it 
 lisp around to her, if it came in my way to deal with a troubled, 
 yet unrelinquished determination ? Would she leave it to me 
 at discretion, to guide and suggest accordingly, to see that 
 Margaret's misconception of herself should not go too far toward 
 utter alienation, or her stubborn, resentful waiting embitter and 
 needlessly waste the years of her youth ? Might I say to Mar 
 garet, perhaps, " Have courage. Do nothing foolishly ; but 
 tell your mother plainly, if it must be so, what you resolve. I 
 do not think she will do you any wrong. I believe you and 
 Harry Mackenzie may trust her final generosity " ? Might she 
 not, with natural feeling, be impelled to clear herself with some 
 one, recoil, after all, from playing to the end the ungracious 
 part she had attempted for Margaret's good ? Was this it ? 
 And was this all ? 
 
 But, again, if this knowledge, that there was no grand re 
 nunciation to make, no faithfulness to her word to vindicate 
 with the loss of her money, no need of being " good for what 
 she could get for it," were to react upon Margaret's self-con 
 sciousness to show her how little other vitality there had been 
 in her persistence ; were to leave her free from this reflex influ 
 ence to measure her own direct feeling and find it wanting, 
 what then? Did Mrs. Regis suddenly discern that this was 
 what she could not quite heartily desire?
 
 172 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 I do not think she did, plainly. She wanted to be comfort 
 able about Margaret ; comfortable about her life as passed out 
 from her own farther responsibility. " About," was just the 
 word. It was as standing in that which \vas left undisturbed to 
 herself, that she would not have a jar come upon her own se 
 renity from a break or a discord elsewhere that she should first 
 have filled or prevented. As Emery Ann used to say, when 
 " getting things off her mind," she must " do up her chores 
 and then take comfort." But she did not enter in with Marga 
 ret, and discern from the inner side the very truest and best 
 for her, and feel her own comfort identical with the girl's real, 
 most comprehensive need. That comes only of living in the 
 spirit. That kind of sympathy and ministry goes forth only by 
 prayer and fasting. 
 
 So when the indistinct apprehension crossed Mrs. Regis's mind 
 at my words, that a full knowledge of her intentions might set 
 Margaret free in a different and less immediate sense, there 
 came with it the indistinct impulse also, to bind me with those 
 words, " I have trusted you." 
 
 Margaret was " safe while she waited." 
 
 Let Harry Mackenzie prove himself. 
 
 I began to feel a great desire for an interior service toward 
 both of them, mother and daughter. I thought I had an in 
 sight of each that was thus far only partly open to themselves. 
 I do not think any going between with words, or information, 
 from and about each other, would do the least bit of such a ser 
 vice. I had been made to feel the springs, and I felt them 
 by the thrill of the self-same good and evil in myself, that 
 perhaps I might touch them when the times came ; the 
 " chances," that were still as Emery Ann had said, " not my 
 business." I was so glad of that ! 
 
 Sitting beside Mrs. Regis after our talk ended, words came 
 into my mind like a message of new meaning. 
 
 " He maketh his angels spirits ; his ministers a flame of fire." 
 As we live into our angelhood, Rose, and you know what I 
 mean by that ; as we live the life and do the errands of the 
 Kingdom in ever such weak or little ways, we find out more 
 and more that we are set to work in the unseen. He maketh
 
 A TALK; AND A TRUSTING. 173 
 
 us spirits. He shows us a directer and solemuer dealing than 
 by mere act, or word, or circumstance. He takes us in toward 
 where He is Himself; He gives us something of his own close 
 ness to apprehend by ; to love and serve by. And his ministers 
 He makes a flame of fire. Bearers and kindlers, by that lighted 
 upon them as a tongue from his own infinite Heart-blaze, of 
 the fire of a true life to souls ; and so helpers to the fusing of 
 the outward form of living into his own true and perfect cir 
 cumstance. In the thought of this real and only ministering, 
 how we need to fast from the small and the distracting, and pray 
 at the inner doors that they may be opened to us ! 
 
 My " chance " did not fully come then. I did not feel that it 
 was ready, though I returned in one word to the subject, just as 
 we drove into the stately approach to Versailles. 
 
 The thing I said was just what Margaret had said to me. I 
 did not say it, though ; I put it as a question. 
 
 " Don't you think, Mrs. Regis, that these ' conditions ' are a 
 block between you, altering and separating your relations ? 
 Don't they make it that Margaret has n't a mother to go to, so 
 much as a guardian, an imposer of terms? If you were to 
 tell her what you have told me, would n't you gain the real in 
 fluence which these provisions destroy by their very intention 
 to secure ? Would n't you be able to enter in, with real knowl 
 edge and sympathy, to Margaret's wants, and live her life with 
 her ? " 
 
 I spoke rapidly. I wanted to say it out. 
 
 Mrs. Regis answered from away off". 
 
 " I do not think I could. I do not understand such things. 
 It seems to me we have all enough to do to live our own lives. 
 I can advise Margaret. I can use authority as well as I know 
 how. And I can provide for her, even against her willfulness, 
 or my own change of mind. I do not think more can be ex 
 pected of me." 
 
 Here we came upon the Boulevard de la Reine. 
 
 So that ended it. 
 
 Another way in which the putting down of things in this post- 
 fact fashion does me good, Rose, is in the look I get at them 
 myself at a farther and clearer focus. Day by day journalizing
 
 174 . SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 would not help me so ; for I should never go back and read it 
 over again. Our inward sight changes, I fancy, like the out 
 ward, as we grow older, which inwardly should be wiser, 
 and we see things better holding them a little way off. I never 
 did care very much to set down the day's life while it was raw. 
 I would n't even keep my traveling memoranda so. And a 
 journal is never kept for one's self. If I were not going to send 
 it to you, I would not keep it anyway. I should hate the spir 
 itual Mrs. Grundy that I should feel looking over my shoulder, 
 if I could not think of some one real and personal as I write it. 
 
 But I am not very far behindhand, either, in time. We 
 have only been five weeks in Europe, after all. It is the things 
 that fill up, and keep me following after. I shall catch up pres 
 ently, in spite of my theory. Well, then, we will try the other 
 advantage, of some instant impressions. I am not bigoted, 
 which is, sworn (you can see the swear in the word) to one 
 idea. We shall have two kinds, and a mixture, before we 
 get through ; like Hans Andersen's milk-pitcher when it took 
 sausage. " Milk and sausage, and sausage broth," in our " Book 
 of Europe," which you say you are going to have bound (for 
 private circulation between us two), and call " Patience Strong's 
 Story of Over the Way." Very good ; but who shall be the 
 bookbinder ? I 'm afraid he '11 stop to read. Never mind ; 
 he '11 only think it is a made-up story that could n't get printed. 
 And what lots of stories are made up, that if they actually 
 grew out of facts in the form in which they come to the count 
 ers, would be base, unblushing betrayals of what no human 
 creature could possibly ever have known to betray ! 
 
 How do you know I am not making up ? Play that I am. 
 
 I could not make up Versailles, though. 
 
 How small the carriages looked, that we saw going up and 
 down this splendid avenue ! In its vast breadth, they were like 
 tiny toys. There is something in these great spaces that great 
 people have made for themselves to move and dwell in, that I 
 should think would have continually turned back upon them, 
 showing them that they were not great, but very little after all. 
 The gilt coaches that I saw afterward in the Musee de Voitures, 
 made it seem still more like petty play. A man or a woman,
 
 A TALK; AND A TRUSTING. 175 
 
 with all that either can be surrounded with, does not take up so 
 very much room in the world. Their own environments widen 
 out into a kind of satire. 
 
 But there is another way of looking at it, also. Take away 
 the coaches, and forget about the person ; and think of that 
 which reaches out and makes its sphere in a wide state and ex 
 pression, and the very diminutiveness of the visible presence 
 emphasizes the power. The heart of things has nothing to do 
 with space. The days of the giants were not the days of the 
 grandest humanity. Worlds themselves, turn upon the pivot of 
 a point. 
 
 The thought of this traces itself back to the awful, the un 
 speakable ; the hiding and the showing of the Divine. 
 
 Behind all circles of law and of creation, far within all 
 outward vastness, the central Life-Point, the I- Am. 
 
 Whose coming forth, even, is not in circumference ; for the 
 Holy Ghost descended in a form like a dove. The Lord was 
 upon the earth in the form of a man. 
 
 Under the poorest earthly semblance, lies that upon which 
 even semblance forms itself, and wherein it finds its power to 
 touch us ; we wonder at the thrill in us, till we feel back by it 
 to the everlasting truth that it was born in. 
 
 I leave you here, as the stories do, upon a threshold.
 
 176 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 PLEASURES AND PALACES. 
 
 .... THREE grand avenues run together into the great 
 Place d'Armes, from which the palace gates open, upon its front. 
 The middle approach is the Avenue de Paris. Right and left 
 are the avenues of St. Cloud and Sceaux. The Boulevard de 
 la Reiue is aside from all, skirting the park on the right or 
 north side, and passing, a little way down, into the Avenue de 
 Trianon, which starts out from the Alley of the Fountains at the 
 northeast front of the pleasure-grounds. The Trianons lie to 
 the northeast, communicating with the centre of the palace 
 grounds by the Queen's Alley. 
 
 We were driven direct along the boulevard and avenue, past 
 the palace and park quite away ou our left, to the gateway of 
 the Trianons, where we alighted, and joined a party just form 
 ing in its turn, with a fresh guide, for the seeing of the interior 
 of the larger Villa. 
 
 We were led through sumptuous rooms, suite after suite ; 
 royal bed-chambers, halls hung with pictures, which the 
 guide, in tolerably slow and very sonorous French, explained to 
 us, but which I must skip with you, as nothing really stopped 
 or held me fast, and nobody had time to stop if they would ; 
 through apartments splendidly fitted up for Queen Victoria's visit 
 to the late Emperor, but which for some reason she did not oc 
 cupy ; into the Malachite room, where stands the enormous basin 
 of that precious mineral given by the Emperor of Russia to 
 Napoleon First ; and came swiftly out again from all, with very 
 confused impressions, into the open air and around to the 
 " Musee de Voitures," which is between the Great and Little 
 Trianons.
 
 PLEASURES, AND PALACES. 177 
 
 Here are the state carriages, blazing with gilding and color, 
 gaudy with silk and velvet, and the splendid horse trappings, 
 heavy with ornament, used by different monarchs from the be 
 ginning of the First Empire. 
 
 " Puss in Boots, and the Marquis of Carabas ! " said Emery 
 Ann, to me, as we walked round the alley. 
 
 They did look like those old red and yellow pictures in the 
 fairy tales. The Old "World has n't quite got out of the ten- 
 cent story-books yet. Are we, in the New World, just getting 
 into them ? 
 
 How can I take you by the hand, Rose, and lead you right 
 into the pleasance of the Little Trianon ? 
 
 You turn off from the large Villa through an avenue called 
 the Alley of the Two Trianons, which runs across a corner to 
 ward the public avenue of Saint Antoine; from the alley you 
 go through a gateway, and are forthwith lost in a lovely wilder 
 ness, in which you can only follow what seems the broadest 
 track, or the groups of saunterers finding their way like your 
 self; unless, indeed, you trust to chance for what you may come 
 to, and choose, as we did, to lose yourself away from the crowd. 
 
 Deep glades of green, broken rocks picturesquely left or 
 planted, clear water-trickles tumbling into cascades, still 
 little hideaway nooks which you wonder if any of the other 
 people have found, or if Marie Antoinette herself ever knew of; 
 simple little bridges, and dark, overhung pools ; intricate foot 
 paths, surprises of tiny pavilions or rustic seats, wild flowers 
 spotting the soft turf and cherished in their own wildness ; 
 sweetest little harebells, and patches where you know in spring 
 the ground would be blue with violets ; birds singing softly to 
 the stir of the woods and the tinkle of the dropping waters ; 
 what sort of little buried Paradise have you come into, straight 
 away from those gorgeous palace fronts and bedizened saloons 
 and the museum of gilded equipages? You have lost sight, 
 too, of sentinels and guides ; they have turned you in and left 
 you to yourself, as far as you can perceive. You are getting 
 just what the king and queen and their fine people came away 
 for ; the best thing they had among it all. 
 12
 
 178 SIGHTS AND , INSIGHTS. 
 
 Suddenly, if there is no one to tell you, and nobody told 
 us, you happen upon a house; dark, low, rustic-built, with 
 overhanging gallery and latticed windows, still, like a tomb, 
 and you know that this is Marie Antoinette's Swiss Cottage. A 
 little way off, down in a hollow where they made a stream run 
 once that is all stagnant now a wheel hangs motionless, and 
 the tangling vines and branches grow over it, and climb into 
 the casements and time-rents of Louis's mill. Then you go on 
 and come to the dairy, through whose windows you can look at 
 the very tables where the milk-pans stood or the butter was 
 moulded ; and all the time, the hollow hush and the darkness 
 are saying to you what they said among the marbles in West 
 minster Abbey, that the " pretty lady," like Mary Stuart, 
 "has been dead a long while." 
 
 Wandering on by a long pathway under a bank of grass and 
 flowers, and shaded with old trees, we came all at once out of 
 the wildness and seclusion into open parterres blazing with 
 garden bloom ; where a fountain played, and white statues 
 stood against the dense green boundary, where the sun streamed 
 along the flower beds and drew up into the air a heavy, sweet 
 perfume ; and clouds of butterflies, those creatures made to 
 express pure ecstacy, with only just body enough to hold two 
 wings together, wavered and tossed in it deliriously ; where 
 palace-walls, dingy white, now, these walls of the old pleas 
 ure palace, rose up beyond the green ; where the past looked 
 dead again by signs that could keep no life in them like woods 
 and waters, and the growth and blossom were once more the 
 growth and blossom of to-day, splendid and luxurious, yet 
 still most exquisitely beautiful; and so we got back into the 
 world again out of the dim, sad, delicious dream ; and we passed 
 the gates as if they had been the gates of sleep, and found our 
 selves outside, awake, and our carriages waiting. 
 
 Down the long, flanking avenues again, into the public bou 
 levard; then stopping at a side entrance, we crossed a mall and 
 a kind of open park, and came to the vast paved quadrangle, 
 on three sides of which the front and wings of the Chateau 
 stretch themselves, and on the fourth the great sculptured Vic 
 tory-pillars make the main gateway opening down into the 
 Place of Arms.
 
 PLEASURES AND PALACES. 179 
 
 Inside, colossal statues guard the approach with presences of 
 the past ; knights, marshals, cardinals, constables, generals ; 
 Bayard, Richelieu, Turenne, the Great Conde; in the midst, 
 a bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV. 
 
 Am I getting guide-booky? I only tell what it needed no 
 guide-book to arrest the thought to. As we walked up the 
 great space, our steps measured to us with some fatigue its 
 wide extent, and we felt the grand proportions of figures that 
 could look grand there. 
 
 But we recollected, among these, the different presence that 
 filled this great court-yard, whea the populace streamed out from 
 Paris to mob their king and queen in their own palace ; when 
 fierce, dreadful faces were uplifted to those windows from a wild, 
 surging crowd, and horrid voices shouted hateful cries ; when 
 with furious persistence they called forth the poor, beautiful 
 queen upon that balcony only to insult her ; and then burst in, 
 murdering her guards, and forced themselves to her presence 
 and the king's in their private rooms, raging and threatening, 
 till the gentle monarch, expostulating patiently with his " chil 
 dren," promised to return to the Tuileries and take up his abode 
 among his dear Parisians. 
 
 We went in upon the south side. I climbed the wide stair 
 case with a bewildered feeling of not knowing in the least what 
 part of the palace world we should come up into ; I found out 
 afterward, by studying over the plan, where we had been, what 
 little corner we had seen, and what we had missed and left un 
 known as much as if it had all been in Nineveh, instead of 
 under one roof with the bit the immense, exhausting bit 
 we traversed. 
 
 We got up into the second floor of the south wing. I don't 
 see now, exactly, from the plan in Baedeker, how we got there 
 from the court-yard. But some of Baedeker's plans have solid 
 walls across where doorways are. I shall undertake to tell 
 nothing but what I do see, in a plain remembrance. 
 
 We came into the long gallery of sculptures and busts ; there 
 iij another beneath it which we passed by in ascending ; they 
 run down the wing, almost its entire length. Here was every 
 body that ever had been, one would think ; the marble faces
 
 180 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 looked down on either hand from bracket and pedestal, throug- 
 ing upon us without pause, so as no human interest or recogni 
 tion could take in more than one here or there, to be replaced 
 and obliterated in the mind almost instantly. 
 
 " Are you realizing your history ? " I said to Edith. It was 
 what the Atlantic Ocean had been to our geography. 
 
 There is a feeling you cannot get rid of, as you plan and 
 pursue your journeyings, that you are somehow stepping about 
 on a map all the time, instead of what the map is made from ; 
 and in these great galleries you travel down the pages of the 
 years, that you have read or -skipped; and the white appa 
 ritions look forth at you with a bewildering recognition or a 
 yet more confounding reproach. I comforted myself with 
 what Sismondi said to Catherine Sedgwick, when she set him 
 right upon a point of history. " For me, madame, the reare 
 two kinds of history ; that which I have written and forgot 
 ten, and that which I never wrote, and never knew." 
 
 What you live, or what you trace out carefully with a 
 connected interest and motive ; what you work in, that is, 
 and perhaps remains ; nothing else. For this reason, I think 
 Europe, with its repositories of all art and history, is an Ency 
 clopedia to go to for definite purposes of research ; not a picture- 
 book or a story, that one can run through from end to end at a 
 single dash. 
 
 " There 's crowds of 'em, is n't there ? " said Emery Ann. 
 " And I presume they 've all had a hand in it." 
 
 " In what ? " asked Edith ; though I suppose she understood. 
 She likes to get the whole from Emery Ann. 
 
 " In the A-apple-pie ; " returned Emery Ann. " In the mak 
 ing, and baking, and partly in the eating up. They 've 
 had their mouthful, and gone. I know that ; though I don't 
 know who half of them were, or where they took their bite." 
 
 " They keep all they can, over here," she said to me after 
 ward, " don't they ? But to think of the worldfuls that never 
 could be saved up ! " 
 
 The brimming, whirling globe ! That has been filled and 
 emptied of life and action by the worldful ! It was a keen 
 word of Emery Ann's ; it made you think of ages measured
 
 PLEASURES AND PALACES. 181 
 
 out and poured away into space. Yes ; the inapprehensible 
 mass that remains, and these wonderful kings' treasuries of 
 them, in record, sign, memorial, only hint at the infinite 
 stream of event, over which the mist of its own upworking has 
 to be let fall. 
 
 We came out at the end of the wing into a corner room ; the 
 Room of 1830 ; where the walls are covered with large pict 
 ures of scenes of the Revolution of July ; Louis Philippe, 
 Duke of Orleans, arriving at Hotel de Ville, and Lafayette 
 standing bareheaded at the entrance, his proclamation as 
 Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom ; his oath of fidelity before 
 the Chambers ; his giving of the flags to the National Guard. 
 
 Here was where we began to remember ; here was history 
 made since some of us were born ; we stayed longer in this 
 room than in almost any other, though the pictures, as works of 
 art, are not very much to stay for. 
 
 Then we left it by a door upon the same side as that by 
 which we had entered from the gallery of sculptures and busts ; 
 and found ourselves in a parallel gallery, which took us back 
 again along the immense wing to the main structure. 
 
 This is the " Gallery of Battles " ; filled with modern paintings, 
 glowing with color and action, representing great war scenes, 
 old and recent, from Ary Scheffer's " Battle of Tolbiac," what 
 ever that was, in 496, to Austerlitz, and Jena, and Friedland; 
 these last two by Vernet. Our own siege of Yorktown in 
 America, by the army under Rochambeau and Washington, 
 covers one great space ; and directly opposite is the picture of 
 Joan of Arc raising the siege of Orleans. Neither of these 
 are marked with "stars " in Baedeker, but they kept me by the 
 interest of their subjects, and I was pleased that they hung 
 over against each other. 
 
 Turning, through small chambers opening the one from the 
 other, around the angle of the wing with the main edifice toward 
 the front, we came into the room to which I shall always go 
 back to stand in recollection, as long as I remember Versailles. 
 
 It is the Room of the Coronation of Napoleon ; that is, the 
 room where David's great picture of the Coronation hangs. 
 
 The Emperor, just crowned himself, is placing the Imperial 
 diadem with his own hands on Josephine's head.
 
 182 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 The splendid groups in the dim, magnificent cathedral, the 
 trailing robes, the priestly grandeur of canonicals, the gathered 
 glory of the regalia, all these but frame in the real picture ; 
 the act, the moment, that lives there, as all acts and moments 
 live, whether there is a David to paint them on a canvas or 
 not 
 
 We all stood before it, silent. We were not looking at a 
 canvas ; we were entered in to that moment of history and 
 truth. 
 
 We say sometimes of some high crisis, some point when 
 life makes itself illustrative and dramatic, and draws to its full 
 expression all type and surrounding of beauty, or solemnity, or 
 tenderness, " How brief! how instantly ended and passed by ! 
 How quickly the marriage-ring is put on, and the bride, in her 
 white veil, gone down from the altar ! How soon the flowers 
 are put aside, and the prayer finished, and the beautiful dead 
 face shut away ! " 
 
 There are minutes so holy and so heartful, so grand or so 
 heroic, that it seems as if they ought to be arrested in their 
 dearness, or sacredness, or sublimity, until the long procession 
 of the generations should all pass by to feel and see ; and so, 
 the painter and the sculptor work to keep these scenes as if they 
 were alive ; and we look at the statue or the picture, and forget 
 that only because the moment is forever* alive, it can be so put 
 down. Not to keep it, but to show that it cannot die, that it 
 is an eternity, in a point of time, is the story put in marble 
 or in color. 
 
 " Napoleon always crowned her in his heart," said Margaret 
 to me, after our long gazing. 
 
 "And that moment never was never could be taken 
 away from her," I answered. " She stood there at the height 
 of her life ; and in the focus of its showing. She came no 
 more out of it when she came away from Napoleon's palace, 
 than she did when she walked down the aisle of Notre Dame 
 that day. Whatever really has been, always is. That is what 
 they paint it for." 
 
 On the other wall, is another of the living moments ; Napo 
 leon giving the Eagles to his Army. That is what is alive to
 
 PLEASURES AND PALACES. 183 
 
 this instant in the hearts of Frenchmen ; but the crowning of 
 Josephine is alive in the heart of the world. 
 
 I think there is some picture on the side between the doors, of 
 the second empress-ship ; something about poor Marie Louise, 
 whose part of the story was one of those riddles, real on the 
 one side, or at least standing for the reality of life to one, 
 and a mere dead appendix to the other. One hardly notices it, 
 wherever it is, after beholding the first, except to sigh over the 
 inexplicability. 
 
 Emery Ann hates all second marriages, and people who make 
 them. Of course she has no patience with Napoleon. 
 
 She said to me, " I wonder what they make of it ! I won 
 der what people expect, if they believe in the other world, and 
 finding each other again, and being just as they were ! " 
 
 " They won't be just as they were n't" said I. 
 
 " Well, that 's a comfort ! " she said, with emphasis. " They '11 
 have considerable to pick out, though, anyway, of this world's 
 stitches. And I 'd full rather not be set to rip, as soon as I get 
 there." 
 
 And with her bonnet exalted, she walked along into the 
 " Little Apartments of Marie Antoinette." 
 
 From these, through an ante-chamber, we reached the long, 
 splendid gallery of Louis the Fourteenth, stretching across the 
 whole garden front of the palace, and overlooking the wide, 
 sunny parterres, and the orangery ; the alleys, the fountains, 
 the basins, the bosquets, the statues, and all the interminable 
 loveliness of the park and pleasure-grounds, lying fair before us 
 as we stood in the deep windows, as fair as it did before the 
 Bourbons two hundred years ago. 
 
 We glanced in at the sleeping chamber of Louis Fourteenth, 
 opening from this gallery ; and saw the high, broad, square, old- 
 tapestried bed. Opposite to the gallery runs the balcony of the 
 bed-chamber, looking into the Palace Court, from which the fa 
 mous announcement, " Le roi est mort," "Vive le roi ! " 
 sounded to the people at the hour he died. Upon which, also, 
 the unhappy Marie Antoinette stood forth to be jeered at on 
 the night of horror, the night of the 5th of October, 1789.
 
 184 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 "We were tired out. We were deadened to splendor, almost 
 to pathos and association. We wished there had not been so 
 many kings ; even that there never had been so many statues 
 and pictures. We went through the apartments of Louis Six 
 teenth, down the north side of the main building ; reached the 
 grand staircase opposite to that which we had ascended in the 
 south angle, and returned to the great court ; crossed wearily to 
 the Victory gate, and walked out to wait under the trees of the 
 boulevard for our " voiture " to come and find us as we had 
 ordered. 
 
 Speechless with fatigue, I sat there on a bench, and thought 
 how sight-seeing was like living. Eager, full, beautiful, won 
 derful, for a while ; then one begins to ache, in the midst of 
 one's pursuit and desire ; suddenly there is a great deal too 
 much of it, and we can do and receive no more ; we creep 
 gladly into a shady corner, and wait for our carriage to take us 
 away. 
 
 The next day, our last in Paris, we went to the Church of 
 the Madeleine; a suitable sequence to our Versailles visits, I 
 thought ; seeing that it was interrupted in the building by the 
 great Revolution, was changed in intent by the First Na 
 poleon to a Temple of Glory, and finally continued by Louis 
 Eighteenth as a church of expiation, in memory of Louis XVI., 
 Louis XVII., Marie Antoinette, and Madame Elizabeth. Cue 
 wonders, however, whether the " expiatory " dedication was in 
 tended in penitence for the selfish intrigues of the Count de 
 Provence himself, or for the repose of the souls of his unfor 
 tunate relations. 
 
 Emery Ann would not go. " I can't take things so rapid," 
 said she. " I '11 stay at home and let my mind settle, and pack 
 the trunks. I feel now, almost, as if the top of my head 'wan ted 
 new shingling." And with that, she tossed out, vehemently, the 
 contents of a square box that we keep for " transients." It is a 
 very queer, and a very certain thing, that although one wears a 
 traveling-dress, and takes out nothing but essentials from her 
 luggage, during a few days of temporary stay in a place, the 
 whole " pack," pretty nearly, has to be gone over again in
 
 PLEASURES AND PALACES. 185 
 
 getting ready for another move and a different prospective 
 stop. We repacked in Liverpool ; we repacked in London ; we 
 repacked in Dover ; we repacked here. Everything has to be 
 on the top, and everything gets to the bottom in the process. 
 "We shall begin to be happy when we get to the mule-traveling 
 among the mountains, and take nothing but bags and shawls. 
 You never want more than a bagful anywhere ; the trouble is 
 that it has to be a different bagful. 
 
 A knock came at the door, and the white-frilled cap and good- 
 natured face of the femme de chambre looked in : 
 
 " Est-ce que madame a sonne* ? " she asked, for certainly the 
 fifteenth time that we had n't, in the four days we had been 
 there. 
 
 " No ! It est-n't que ! " said Emery Ann, shortly, with her 
 head in the trunk. 
 
 " We must rest again when we get to Switzerland," I said to 
 myself. " Edith looks pale, and Emery Ann is cross ; cross 
 enough to get it into French, which is equivalent to a certain 
 disguised style of swearing ; and I, well, I feel also mentally 
 dyspeptic, as if I had swallowed a century or two in a most un 
 wholesome hurry." 
 
 And yet see how little we had done ! 
 
 I might as well tell you that the Massachusetts State House 
 is approached by three broad and lofty flights of terraced steps, 
 and is surmounted by a great dome of beautiful proportions, as 
 to remind you of the exquisite architecture of the Madeleine, 
 standing veiled within its superb surrounding columns, a lit 
 eral " pillared shade." You know it familiarly ; and yet I know 
 it a little better now ; and the meaning of this and other like 
 things comes to me in ways I had not thought much of, until I 
 stood actually before them. 
 
 The reason why they built these churches, and called them by 
 their distinguishing names ; the idea that underlies the dedica 
 tion and harmony of adornment ; I begin to trace this, and 
 delight in looking for it ; though doubtless, like many other gen 
 uine and vital initial thoughts, I shall often find it utterly mixed 
 nd lost, as are the ideas of Art themselves, in the decadence
 
 186 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 which befell from a pure insight to mere technical rote and 
 jumble. 
 
 That Saint Roch was called the Saint of the Rock ; that his 
 church has the holy Rock of Calvary for its appropriate shrine ; 
 that the Madeleine, church of expiation, should bear upon its 
 front, beneath the high-relief of the Last Judgment, " To Al 
 mighty God, by the invocation of Saint Mary Magdalene," and 
 be filled with pictures of the Penitence, and Conversion, the 
 Washing of the sacred Feet, the Praying in the Wilderness, 
 with angels to comfort her, the Supper at Bethany, and the 
 blessed grace of the Resurrection Announcement to her who 
 had been a sinner, what are these but great ministries and 
 answers, in things that shall stand, to the need and asking of 
 the world ? 
 
 Chirst was crucified. His saints also have crucified their lives 
 after his word. " Thy sins are forgiven thee ; go in peace.'' 
 " Out of Mary Magdalene the Lord cast seven devils, and re 
 ceived her to dearest discipleship." It seemed to me that these 
 were the things they meant who builded, or else invisibly the 
 Lord Himself built the house, and put his own inscription upon 
 it, through the vain, half-conscious plan of them who labored. 
 
 It almost seemed as if the sweet withdrawal of the simple 
 Madeleine behind the greatness of its pillared surrounding, was 
 an expression in the edifice itself of Mary's tender, safe humil 
 ity, and abiding in the Strength and Refuge that are " round 
 about " the forgiven and redeemed.
 
 THE EVERLASTING GATES. 187 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE EVERLASTING GATES. 
 
 .... OUT of Paris, through what was literally * sunny 
 France," and little else, that August day. 
 
 A long rail-ride, across flat, unbroken plains, and along river 
 valleys flanked by low hills, golden russet with the sun-ripening 
 among vineyards and farms that lay open to an unrelieved 
 blaze ; a journey very different from the green delight of Eng 
 land, brought us at last to a more broken country, and through 
 cuttings and tunnels in the Cote d'Or, to Dijon ; where we got 
 an uneatable dinner (having blundered upon a wrong hotel), 
 and passed a miserable section of a night, till four in the morn 
 ing ; then we railed away again, comforted only by knowing 
 that we were heading swiftly toward the mighty mountains that 
 began to show to the eastward, and had escaped out of the 
 wearisome horizon that for so many hours of yesterday had 
 spread out flat around us like the rim of a trencher. 
 
 As we came forth among the farms that looked green and 
 pleasant in the early morning, and stopped at some little sta 
 tion in the edge of a small town, a cock stood upon a fence and 
 crowed. 
 
 " That is good American ! " exclaimed Emery Ann. 
 
 " It is ; and it 's a real comfort," she repeated, as we all 
 laughed. " Everything speaks it but the people. The dogs 
 bark, and the cocks crow, and the cats yawl, and the babies cry, 
 in real plain American as ever was. The folks make the differ 
 ence, growing up. The things are all right, just as they aro 
 at home ; the sun and the grass, and the trees, and the water ; 
 it 's all the same, only not so much variety. You could n't find 
 your map-questions, to save your life, if you did n't know. 
 There ain't any colors to tell your boundaries by."
 
 188 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Emery Ann is a shrewd woman, and a thinking one ; she has 
 her own fashion of taking up her instincts and turning them to 
 insights. The divine language is one everywhere, and she dis 
 cerned it. Green is green ; and blue is blue ; and bright is 
 bright; tones are identical; trees, fields, hills, clouds, all talk 
 the dear primeval language" that we know ; and the living Word 
 is at the root and heart of all meaning, and Home is behind 
 all lands. 
 
 Over the hot plains of France had been an approach to make 
 the mountain gateway more blessedly glorious, as it seemed 
 actually to roll open before us when we reached and passed 
 Pontarlier. 
 
 Higher and higher tossed and tumbled the hills, surging into 
 peaks ; greener grew the dark verdure of the pines ; sweeter 
 rested the pure clouds upon great, shadowy shoulders ; at last, 
 oh, at last ! the heavy barriers parted away from each other 
 across the deep, beautiful gorge of the Travers, and we looked 
 along its parallels of mysterious gloom to the far, strange, sud 
 den vision of white Alps ! 
 
 A dazzle among soft, gray, nearer shapes ; points and gleams, 
 touches and shines of snowy slopes and tops ; not yet exact, 
 not born out of the cloudy indefiniteness, quite ; a far-off appre 
 hension, like the first spirit-perception of the other shore from 
 the sea, the Other Land from this ! 
 
 Then we lost it again, for a snatch ; it came back, and then 
 was gone for longer ; we rolled on, and the hills rolled around 
 us, making the wondrous revelation of the heights, that tells us 
 what no vastness of globe-surface, unruffled and unheaved, could 
 ever tell. We could not know the earth upon a great level ; 
 but lifted up and shone upon, reared into grand shapes, changing 
 with changing lights, now a rift, now a pasture, again the 
 shelter of age - old forests unprofaned ; showing continually 
 some new relation, uttering endlessly some new syllables of 
 the world-word, we can see how it is all there, and how the 
 heaven itself rests upon it. 
 
 "And I if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." 
 
 We climbed the slow, long grades into the Juras ; we crossed 
 high viaducts ; we saw beside and below us, often far below,
 
 THE EVERLASTING GATES. 189 
 
 hung between us and the sparkle of river or lake, lovely vil 
 lages ; we wound round dizzy brinks, and hovered as if in mid 
 heaven, over vivid blue waters. Away, southward, in another 
 mid heaven, gleamed the ice summits, struck by the full noon 
 sun. . 
 
 It was a threshold of glory ; far off, a world of glory shone 
 and stretched, heaped up and up, beyond and beyond. We 
 were coming to it' presently. For thousands of ages it had 
 been there ; we had been but one, and two, score years upon the 
 earth ; yet our life-times looked long to us in which this had 
 waited and we had not seen it. 
 
 At last, we slid into a station. We were arrived at Neu- 
 chatel.
 
 190 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 ON THE HOUSETOP. 
 
 .... WE are glad to wait here, and see it far off for a little 
 longer. 'It is too great to rush upon. We would rather pause 
 before the gates. 
 
 Our rooms are lovely at the Hotel Bellevue. The windows, 
 with stone balconies on which we sit, look out upon the lake, 
 and across to that mystical line of purple and gray and the high 
 glitter of snow ; and we can see the vast up-gathering of Mont 
 Blanc. 
 
 In these nights, too, we have a glorious moon. 
 
 I have wanted nothing but to sit, and look, and think, and 
 write. I have come into the present tense again in my record 
 for you. I am glad to have caught up before I really enter 
 upon Switzerland. 
 
 It will be past, again, very shortly ; we shall move constantly, 
 when we do move ; I shall try to tell it to you in the next pause. 
 For we mean to make pauses ; we have stayed here nearly a 
 week, and we shall find some mountain nook as soon as may be 
 after we go in ; as the worshipers in a great Cathedral find 
 some little quiet side-shrine and chapel in which to kneel. 
 
 We are busy, a great deal, with Baedeker and the maps. 
 Switzerland is like the diagram puzzle we used to have when I 
 was at school, to be drawn without taking off the pencil, or 
 passing it twice over the same line. We find it hard to make 
 all the lines and points we want to, without retracing steps too 
 much. We must have Chamouny, and Lucerne, and the Rhigi ; 
 between these, up and down, back and forth, are routes we find 
 it hard to trace in economical order, and in the best time for 
 each. The Wengern Alp and the Jungfrau, the valley of the
 
 ON THE HOUSETOP. 191 
 
 Grindelwald and the Great Scheideck the Briinig Pass, the 
 Haslithal and the Fiirca and the Rhone glacier, the Gemmi, 
 if we dare it, and the beautiful journey by Kandersteg, above 
 all, Zermatt and the Matterhorn ; and then the Simplon Pass 
 into Italy ; can we bring all these in, and will the time be 
 long enough, and which are the " must-haves " and the may- 
 do-withouts ? 
 
 Then, too, our fortnight of staying somewhere and getting a 
 real feeling of belonging, and a home-thought for Switzerland to 
 last after all this touring about shall have kinked itself up again 
 in our memories, and become like the snarled skein we are un 
 raveling one end of now ? 
 
 We think we should like it best somewhere at the head of 
 Lake Leman ; and that it would be better before than after our 
 mountain wanderings. It should be, indeed, if we are to end 
 with Zermatt and the Simplon. 
 
 " ' Come up and be dead ! ' " cried Margaret and Edith to 
 gether, the evening of the third day we had been here, as with 
 a hasty knock they rushed eagerly into my room. 
 
 " We have found out the top of the house ! " 
 
 So Emery Ann and I came in from the balcony, and went out 
 into the corridor that in each of the four spacious stories of the 
 hotel runs around the great square skylighted centre, in which, 
 below, a marble-paved saloon green and cheerful with flowers 
 and shrubs in tubs and vases, and with sofas ranged around the 
 sides, forms the delightful entrance hall into which everything 
 opens. 
 
 The chambermaid had brought the key, and was waiting. 
 
 We went up two flights of stairs, and she opened a little door 
 which disclosed a ladder-like ascent to a trap in the roof. She 
 lifted it, and we passed through. 
 
 "If we could n't have any more, shouldn't we think this was 
 enough ? " exclaimed Edith, as we stepped out to the railed edge 
 of the great flat housetop and looked wonderingly forth. 
 
 The sun had just gone down. The sky was all rosy and blue, 
 with those soft, golden-tawny clouds that turn red afterward, 
 and then slowly purple and gray. Behind us rose the hill, and
 
 192 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 the town that stretches up its side ; its white buildings, its 
 old castle, its twelfth-century temple on the heights, all 
 clear against the green and the blue, and bathed in tender radi 
 ance. 
 
 Down in the lake, deep, vivid reflections, and opal tints rip 
 pling richly under the heaven so full of color. The wide-away 
 ranges of the Bernese Alps heaped in the south and east beyond 
 the water, their shadowy lines and crowns like blue and 
 violet mists ; and the white peaks palely touched with pink ; 
 Mont Blanc revealing himself in a grand, far-off purity which 
 the warm light faintly mantled and made -more living-beautiful. 
 
 " Mamma must come," said Margaret ; and went down to 
 fetch her. 
 
 We sat on .the low parapet bench, and let the glory rain 
 around us, and shift, and deepen, and pour itself away, till the 
 gray dropped, and the stillness itself fell like a curtain, and all 
 things bowed themselves and waited. Then a great globe of 
 softened fire rolled up behind the rim of eastern hills and spilled 
 its splendor into sky and lake and against mountain borders ; 
 and in the moonlight there was a new wonder and a new world. 
 
 Little boats put forth and came in upon the water far below, 
 and no sound disturbed us. The bustle of street and court-yard 
 did not reach us here ; nothing reminded us that we were on 
 the roof of a busy, crowded hotel, where people and luggage 
 were coming and going. We were out of it all. We saw no 
 house below us. We were on a great air-raft, lying afloat in the 
 midst between clouds and water. We were " dead " and blessed. 
 
 " Let him that is on the housetop not come down." 
 
 But the way farther lay down, through the house. And 
 their way must have lain so also. Only, having fetched things 
 from the hills and from the heavens, one never need come down 
 utterly to the mere fetching of the things below, and the being 
 burdened with them. Was not that the saying, said to them 
 who on the Jerusalem housetops, escaping from the under-toil to 
 the glory of the firmament and the circling crests of Judah and 
 Benjamin and of far-off Moab and the Wilderness, had been 
 learning all their lives a great meaning that was ready for the 
 word?
 
 ON THE HOUSETOP. 193 
 
 Yesterday, Mrs. Regis came to me and said, " There was 
 something in my mind that I had half an intention of mentioning 
 to you in Paris. I wonder if I might ask a real favor of you, 
 if I should decide to want it, and I think I shall." 
 
 " Of course you may, without hesitation. I only hope it may 
 be something possible to me." 
 
 " What if I were to leave Margaret with you, just making 
 the fourth, you know, the nice carriage number, for the 
 trip to Chamounix ; and I were to go to Heidelberg meantime ? 
 I have a letter from some friends who have been spending the 
 summer there thus far ; and they urge me to come. I have been 
 to Chamounix, and I have a great desire to do this, for which 
 there will be no other opportunity. I could come back and meet 
 you again anywhere between Martigny and Lausanne, if you find 
 a place to stay at ; or at Interlachen, if you keep on there. I 
 think we must decide against the Gemmi ; it is too hazardous, 
 and we never should hold out to do all those passes. In that 
 case we should come round by rail again to Interlachen, and so 
 by Grindelwald and the Briinig to Lucerne." 
 
 " And then by Altorf and Andermatt to the Fiirca and the 
 Rhone ? " 
 
 " Yes ; and to Zermatt last, if strength and weather hold. 
 What do you think? About Chamounix and Margaret, I 
 mean ? Of course we shall all be together afterward, to decide 
 the journey as it conies along." 
 
 " It would be nothing but pleasure to have Margaret with us," 
 I said ; " if you feel that this plan is best in every other way." 
 
 It was nothing that I could help, if it were not the best ; of 
 course they would decide ; but something hindered me from 
 grasping as eagerly at this possession of Margaret to ourselves 
 as I might have done if I could have seen or foreseen 
 everything that might depend. 
 
 It seems absurd to be jealous of possibilities for Margaret, be 
 cause her step-mother will very likely meet General Rushleigh 
 in Germany. Especially now that I think I know Mrs. Regis 
 better, and that I do not believe she would use any positive ma 
 noeuvre. That mean notion of not wanting her step-daughter 
 to marry where she could not decently refuse consent, for the 
 13
 
 194 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Bake of the money question involved, is utterly put aside, f, in 
 deed one could ever really have had it. The hindrance between 
 Margaret and her father's widow is far more delicate and re 
 mote. 
 
 It is the hinge of interest between them that shuts the door. 
 Mrs. Regis, within, world-wise, and comfortable, cannot under 
 stand why that which opens so readily from her, if she choose to 
 give it the touch, may not be as easily drawn back from the op 
 posite side ; not feeling how it flies in Margaret's face. Mar 
 garet, who would dash any barrier back against herself if it were 
 to admit from an outer waiting one who needed her own com 
 fort and shelter, will not do it that she may be received into 
 the like. She stands in her own hard circumstance, true as 
 light, but proud also as people say as the very son of the 
 morning. 
 
 Indeed, it is a question whether, were she of another temper 
 ament, if her simpleness were yielding and acquiescent instead 
 of high and sensitive and conscious, whether her step-mother 
 would have been able to understand it for what it was, and not 
 rather come to credit her, or suspect her, as acting from at 
 least a wise self-seeking ; a reasonable common sense, of which 
 was the " buttered side " of life for her. For Mrs. Regis's own 
 practical adroitness might easily turn upon her in the quality of 
 suspicion, if credited to another ; since one can always trust 
 one's self in the handling of a dangerous thing, sooner than see 
 with confidence another using it. 
 
 It may be that through their very oppositions and incompre 
 hensions, the two will come at last " at long and at last," may 
 be quite beyond this present phase of mutual experience, and 
 though it should go quite wrong with them to our minds 
 into that relation for which they have been set together, of a 
 purer recognition and a more blessed help than any outside 
 fitting or smoothness. 
 
 But now, one does think of the immediate possibilities. 
 For Mrs. Regis is a woman at the climax of her womanhood. 
 She is forty-three years old, and her perfect prime has not be 
 gun to wane. Between thirty and fifty, woman-life is fullest, 
 intensest, in its fulfillment and gracious radiation, or in its reali-
 
 ON THE HOUSETOP. 195 
 
 zation of a nature uncrowned, of needs unmet. If a vision 
 come at that age of something that might have been, but never 
 was, it reveals itself across all barriers and discrepancies ; and 
 the struggle, if a struggle follow, is in proportion. It is as 
 when " a giant dies ; " and the little insects cannot feel a " pang 
 as great." 
 
 With all her ripe knowledge and her full power, she discerns 
 in herself her youth again, and what it should have given against 
 this strong, unsatisfied time. She is back in the years when she 
 missed it ; she takes up an inward experience of which she has 
 forfeited the sign. The absurd marriages which women make in 
 middle or advancing years are not so absurd perhaps, after all, 
 in the essence of things ; only they would better have waited for 
 the life that shall be all built up on the inward truth and rela 
 tion, and the stones of whose houses may be the very ones that 
 were blindly rejected or falsely precluded in the old, hasty, igno 
 rant building. 
 
 I doubt if Mrs. Regis admits to herself what she most wants 
 to go to Heidelberg for. I doubt if she has been conscious that 
 she would not look with complacency, or why she would not, 
 upon a possibility between Margaret and General Rushleigh. 
 And of course there is no way or word given to me now, by 
 which I could show her what perhaps I have no right to be sure 
 I see myself. It must go on, and happen as it will. General 
 Rushleigh is nine years younger than this still splendid, fasci 
 nating woman, who may, as her sudden Indian summer shines 
 upon her, soften and sweeten into something so much more. 
 The brief youth that comes in such a manner, like the late 
 love, has a glow that the first youth never knew. 
 
 There are perhaps fifteen years the other way, between the 
 other two. But we feel it different when a man's heart grows 
 young, or has been kept young with a grand purity, for a 
 love that comes a little late ; and a girl's life blooms and ripens 
 to its offered fervor. 
 
 There is one thing : unless he should know better about that 
 entanglement of Margaret's, Paul Rushleigh would not take one 
 step toward her, or toward the breaking down of any pledge she 
 might be under.
 
 196 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 And separately, and at her best, and with that safe 
 charm of slightly elder friendship, and association with what 
 has been a mingled pleasantness of companionship, Mrs. 
 Regis has the move, and makes her play. 
 
 Well ! God knows ; and He will see to it. Meanwhile, 
 Patience Strong ! do not meddje unless you are somehow called. 
 For the very sake that if the word or sign does come, you may 
 transmit it electric with its own authority.
 
 STEPPING IN. 197 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 STEPPING IN. 
 
 .... WE came down from Neuchatel to Vevay, thinking to 
 go right on down the lake to Geneva and Chamounix. But it 
 became so apparent that not only our two confessedly delicate 
 ones, Edith and Emery Ann, but I myself, had done traveling 
 enough of late, and needed toning up by a little further passive 
 reception of the mountain catholicon, before attempting the great 
 toil and joy of our first real mountain work, that we wrote thence 
 to Mrs. Regis that we should defer our tour, and perhaps hunt 
 up our Swiss Eden first, and make trial of it for a week or so. 
 She had told us not to mind a week more or less ; she could be 
 with us at twenty-four hours' notice after she should return to 
 Basle ; and if anything happened to detain us we were not to 
 worry. So we resolved to be detained at once ; and a letter 
 from Mrs. Regis found us here a few days afterward, quite ap 
 proving our decision, and indifferent as to possibly losing the 
 stay in this region, as she should be making hers in Baden.. 
 
 We stopped one night at the " Three Crowns " in Vevay, 
 whose garden terrace lies right along the lake, upon which, 
 seated by the parapet, or wandering up and down the shaded 
 alleys, we passed a delicious evening. But we were impatient 
 of hotels, and longed for the real mountains ; so we took a car 
 riage the next morning, and were driven along the lake side, 
 through Clarens and Montreux, stopping at several " pensions," 
 and looking at rooms, but finding nothing that quite satisfied 
 our eagerness for the very most of wildness and of comfort com 
 bined, until we climbed up here, over our first mountain zigzag. 
 
 The towns upon the lake are lovely, their gardens and bal 
 conies running out and overhanging the blue water, the mar- 
 relous blue you have heard of, but cannot fancy until you look
 
 198 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 into its jewel-depth, and lying under the vast sheltering 
 heights that shut in heaven itself to another sapphire lake-cir 
 cumference above ; but the streets are close and the heights en 
 tice you ; the spell of Switzerland, which is " Excelsior ! " is 
 upon you, and you go up at least we did, restless until 
 you find an eyrie among the altitudes and of them. 
 
 You climb up between sloping vineyards, walled on eiiher 
 tide. You are disappointed a little in the vineyards them 
 selves, though you knew better than to be. Of course they are 
 for fruit, and the foliage is trimmed down. There are no green, 
 tossing sprays, no riotous, wandering branches ; no graceful, 
 arbor-like overclaspings. They look more like bean-gardens ; 
 the vines planted and trained by stiff, short poles, in stiff, regular 
 rows. I do not think they are so pretty as a bean-garden ; and 
 hops are ever so much more lovely. But with a basket of their 
 clear, rich, wine-distended amber fruit before me, filled fresh 
 every morning and eaten from at every odd minute when I have 
 nothing else to do I have not a word for their mission and 
 results, but of delight. 
 
 Back and forth, making sharp turns, the road angles itself up 
 the precipitous hillside. We turned dizzy and frightened, often, 
 as we looked down, seeing the town diminish into a group of 
 toy houses, and the lake drop itself deeper in its green setting, 
 and the little boats and steamers look like water-skippers in a 
 summer pool. 
 
 Then we passed into deep woods and wound right and left 
 among their recesses, the great pillared trunks thronging about 
 us, and a dense shade overhead ; still up and up, then out on 
 some dizzy edge or platform suddenly, that showed the vineyards 
 and streets and lake and skimming boats fallen into yet pro- 
 founder distance ; the old round towers of Chillon with their 
 coned roofs told where the fortress of the cruel Middle Age sat 
 there by the waters ; the mountains over opposite rose and rose, 
 in their might, against our petty climbing, and filled as much 
 of the sky as ever. We said to each other, " Is there any end ? 
 And shall we ever dare to come down again ? " 
 
 All at once, everything comes all at once among these 
 mountains we wound round through a bit of thick woods, and
 
 STEPPING IN. 199 
 
 out on to an open plateau, and found ourselves at the garden 
 front of a large, comfortable hotel-pension, the " Maison Vic 
 toria." And it is here halfway up the great height set 
 with our backs to the perpendicular of the wooded steep, and 
 our faces toward the blue lake far below and to the majesty of 
 the dark cliffs and peaks that shadow it from beyond, that we 
 found rooms, and took possession at once for a week at least ; 
 sending back to Vevay for our trunks and to pay the bill, and to 
 restore the big key of our room which Emery Ann had brought 
 away in her pocket ; and here we are living the life of the lifted- 
 up, in a sphere that hangs midway between earth and heaven. 
 
 The garden, laid out in parterres of bright flowers, and 
 bounded at the front by a shaded walk ; and a low wall runs 
 from the house to the brink of the precipice which falls sheer 
 from the stones you lean upon, almost as it seems looking 
 downward to the very water. 
 
 Away down to the left, you see the brown towers and black 
 cones of Chillon ; grimly tame, a place for the curious to wander 
 through, and stand safe in its swept-out dungeons and beside its 
 horrible oubliette, and in the very footpaths worn around its 
 chaining-pillavs by the feet of miserable, doomed men. But we 
 shall see it when we go down ; and then I can tell you, perhaps, 
 something of what it seems like. 
 
 From the broad esplanade-balcony which runs along before 
 the drawing-rooms, or from the windows of the rooms above, 
 two of which we are so fortunate as to occupy, we look away 
 into the hearts of the mountain shapes and shadows ; we see 
 them form and shine under the coming of the morning light, 
 and retreat and darken and cover themselves with the night. 
 We see what I never saw before, or knew what it was if I did 
 see it, the mountains go to sleep. For this is just what they 
 do, as the evening hushes down, and the stars come out in the 
 stillness. The vast forms that reared up so mightily, as with 
 a majestic visible motion, in the quickening of the morning 
 and the clear, splendid glow of noon, stretch and lower them 
 selves now to repose. The dim outline takes a new expression. 
 The fjiants are recumbent, one after another, along the great 
 Bentiael line. The stars sprinkle down their rain upon these
 
 200 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 awful foreheads and breasts as the constellations drop one by 
 one westwardly ; the golden drops lie glittering upon the crested 
 ridges before they vanish. The milky way streams over the 
 zenith, and pours itself, like a river of light, upon them. 
 
 We have sat before the shadowed glory till it seemed as if 
 we had no right to sit and watch it any longer ; for it was like 
 finding ourselves hidden behind royal curtains, shut in to the 
 privacy of kings. 
 
 Down in the southeast, up the lake and river valley, and 
 closing across its farther stretch, stands the Dent du Midi ; the 
 great northern summit, or group of summits, bright with snow, 
 that gives itself in glimpses never twice alike ; an endless reve 
 lation. And yet it is only one outstanding cluster that tells us 
 of uncounted and ineffable wonders in its world beyond ; the 
 world of peaks and snows and glaciers that lies behind this near 
 cordon of lesser citadel hills and the water-chain at their feet ; 
 the inner keeps of awfulness and might ; the great Alp-world 
 of Italy and Savoy. 
 
 We sit here, eating grapes, and re-arranging trunks, and 
 mourning over a little loss, a great loss of ever so many 
 little indispensable things, while those wonders are awaiting 
 us. Well, or ill ! that is the human way. 
 
 Emery Ann found it out ; and it was Emery Ann who did 
 it. It was she who left our " bag at Dover." For it has grown 
 already into a catchword. We shall never need or miss any 
 thing again in all the rest of our pilgrimage, that we shall not 
 say or imagine, if possible, that it was "in the bag we left at 
 Dover." 
 
 I wanted a fresh supply of pins for my traveling basket- 
 cushion ; Edith was out of hair-pins ; she is always out ; she 
 never knows the comfort of a regular old set every one of which 
 has its place and its bend ; she puts in new, shining, slippery 
 ones by the dozen, without the least regard to the laws of me 
 chanics, and drops them out of her smooth, soft, heavy braids 
 like rain, " pitchfork-rain, I suppose," she said, when I told 
 her that ; there was a place to be sewed in a trunk cover ; and 
 the pins and the hair-pins and the sail-needles and fine twine,
 
 STEPPING IN. 201 
 
 were in that biggest, most ingeniously compartmented, gray- 
 linen sea-pocket, which we had devoted to all these etcetera, that 
 we might always know where to lay hand upon them. 
 
 Emery Ann and I searched through and through our luggage ; 
 we laid out piles on piles, recklessly, around us on the floor ; we 
 reached the bottom of every trunk in turn ; the gray pocket was 
 nowhere. 
 
 "When did we go to it last, and what for?" It was when 
 we were making the burlaps covers at Dover ; Emery Ann 
 remembered it quite well. The last thing of all was the sew 
 ing down of Edith's cover with that strong twine. And then 
 we recollected the fright and bustle we had because Mrs. Regis 
 missed suddenly a diamond from one of her rings ; her engage 
 ment ring ; a splendid solitaire. And a splendid solitaire is 
 such a dreadfully wee thing, after all, to look for, when it is out 
 of its setting ! 
 
 We were to leave the next morning ; it must be found at 
 once, if findable. We were all down on hands and knees ; we 
 groped and peered under unmovables and pulled about every 
 thing that could be moved; Mrs. Regis herself unpacked the 
 trunk she had just closed, and shook every article ; we sent for 
 the chambermaid and questioned her about the toilet-bucket ; 
 at last, with a great shout of delight, Margaret espied it close 
 by the footknob of the heavy bureau. But it had upset all our 
 minds. And now Emery Ann could not recollect recollecting 
 anything again about the great gray bag. She " presumed " 
 she had forgotten it. " And there was the little double-up tack- 
 hammer in it ! " she sighed woefully. 
 
 "And the dear little Russia-leather, screw-together candle 
 sticks ! " said Edith. 
 
 " And all those pencils a whole drawing-case full of Fa- 
 ber's F's, pointed, ready to use ! " said I. 
 
 " And penknife, and box of pens, and tapes, and 
 corkscrews, and my little measuring ribbon ! and a bag of 
 sewing-silks, and the little patent clotheshooks, and extra 
 tooth-brushes, and no end of pins and hair-pins, and soap, 
 and boot-buttons, and rubber corks ! " We enumerated 
 in turn and all together as the details of our misfortune came 
 back upon our minds.
 
 202 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 " We shall never know all that there was in that bag ! " said I. 
 
 "No," said Emery Ann, solemnly. " It's as if we'd lost a 
 relation that we had n't thought half enough of. We shall keep 
 finding out the good of it now it 's gone." 
 
 And so we do. But I think the most of my little measuring 
 ribbon. You gave it to me, Rose, ever so long ago, for a birth 
 day present. 
 
 .... Margaret had letters to-day, from Saratoga. Edith, 
 too, had one from a school friend who was making her first 
 grown-up summer journey, and who had just arrived also at the 
 Springs. 
 
 Katie wrote, "I shall never forget that night when we got 
 to Congress Hall ! We were all tired out I suppose ; but we 
 had no idea of stopping to think about it, for there was a hop 
 in the great ball-room, and she and I were bound to go. We 
 had come all the way from St. John's, back from Montreal, 
 you know ; down Lake Champlain, or up, which is it ? to 
 Whitehall; and then across country in that dusty, crowded 
 train ! But we had tea, and we got out our dresses. Sue's was 
 tea-rose silk with a black lace basque, and mine was white, with 
 blue watered ribbon-stripes, and exquisite little trailing white 
 roses for my hair and corsage ! We thought each other looked 
 bewitching when we were done. 
 
 " We had our tea in our room, and then went to mamma's 
 room and waited. We thought papa never would be ready. But 
 at last we went up the grand stairs, past such walls of mirrors, 
 I never saw myself away off" before, in a blazing light, walk 
 ing up toward myself like some other girl, and then across, far 
 enough to see how she moved and how her skirts trailed, and 
 how much nicer she looked than I believed I did which is 
 what you always think, you know, when you see another girl 
 come in at a party, and where was I ? oh, up-stairs, and 
 into the great ball-room. 
 
 " And the band was bursting all through the house with beau 
 tiful music ; and inside was a wall of lookers-on, six rows deep, 
 and inside that was fairy-land and the fairies ! 
 
 " Well, we were n't anybodies, in our tea-rose and blue, after
 
 STEPPING IN. 203 
 
 all ! Such girls ! where do they come from, and where do they 
 keep, daytimes ? I can't tell you about it, Edie ; I danced, and 
 I drank in beauty and delight. 
 
 " One girl she was the belle, everybody said I could not 
 take my eyes off from. She is Nellie FitzEustace, a great 
 New Orleans man's daughter; and she has just well, just 
 long enough to be out of mourning inherited a fortune of her 
 own from her grandfather ; half a million, they say. And she's 
 just as sweet as if she were six years old ; and she is n't but 
 sixteen. Her hair dresses itself, and she 's all the time tossing 
 it out of the way and undoing it, no, making it do itself pret 
 tier and prettier. And her eyes are as blue as two stars, oh, 
 stars ain't blue ; but they shine out of it, you know ! and she 
 dances like a daisy you know what I mean and she does n't 
 care two pins, either, only for the minute. They say she flings 
 all her elegant things down anyway when she gets to her room, 
 and takes a book, and gets into bed, and has the gas turned up 
 high, and reads. She does that half the time, in her little white 
 wrappers, when her father thinks she is dressing for a ball 
 he 's awfully proud of her ! and when he comes to the door, she 
 says, ' O papa, I forgot ! Must I go ? ' She likes stories and 
 poetry so much better than the partners and the dancing. 
 
 " Colonel FitzEustace drives magnificent horses, and Nellie 
 has a pair of ponies. I saw them go off to the lake yesterday 
 with a lot of friends. I do hope I shall come to know her ! 
 
 " I'll tell you who else is here ; the Boston Mackenzies ; 
 Flora and Harry. Harry is splendid. He danced last night with 
 Nellie FitzEustace. I was just in love with both of them, 
 there ! " 
 
 It is great nonsense, certainly, for old Patience Strong to sit 
 and copy ; but it is very sweet nonsense, is n't it ? And you 
 know old Patience is always more than half-bewitched with 
 young ecstasy. 
 
 I wondered what Margaret's letters said to her ; and if there 
 was anything in them about Nellie FitzEustace. 
 
 Is n't it good that, even if you do get hold of two ends of a 
 string, by accident, you can't always pull them ? I should not 
 dare, if I could ; but I think my fingers might twitch, maybe, in 
 spite of mo.
 
 204 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY. 
 
 .... WE came down from Glion two days after I wrote 
 that last page. We found there was not any summer left 
 to be idle in. We woke up suddenly and realized that Septem 
 ber and perhaps changing weather was close upon us. 
 We must make haste, or we should lose the mountains in the 
 autumn fogs and rains. 
 
 Coming down the zigzag was beautiful. We forgot to be 
 afraid. The precipices and pitches did not seem so high and 
 dreadful as they did before we had got used to living in the 
 heights. 
 
 Down into Montreux, and out along the Lake-road a little 
 way, to Chillon. We went to the old castle the last thing, you 
 see. 
 
 Over the bridge, on each side of which, now, are little 
 stands and booths where people sell " souvenirs," I bought an 
 " etui " of carved wood for you, Rose, over the bridge, under 
 the old portcullis entrance, into the unevenly-paved court-yard, 
 sloping up to different doorways in the grim walls that shut in 
 its irregular sides, we passed into the lower parts of the build 
 ing, and were led into various guard-rooms, under offices, and 
 prisoners' rooms ; the very spaces seemed heavy with their 
 massive, clumsy inclosures of huge stones and timbers ; we felt 
 that the whole castle was above us. 
 
 We saw places and contrivances for torture ; we looked down 
 the horrible oubliette, that opened from the floor of one of the 
 rooms, like a bottomless pit. We climbed up the uncouth stair 
 way ; we came through the Duke's chamber, a dark, dread 
 ful hole enough it looks now, not much better than his pris-
 
 YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY. 205 
 
 oners' ; and saw a heavy, worm-eaten timber set up against the 
 wall, which they told us was a part of his bedstead ; the bed 
 stead of the famous Duke, Charles ; and round through a little, 
 three-cornered, lobby-like passage, we entered that of the Duch 
 ess ; far in from light and air, bare of finish, and empty of all 
 that ever made it habitable ; nothing but solid black beams and 
 stone walls ; covered, doubtless, with hangings once, and gar 
 nished with rude Middle Age splendor ; but a place that it was 
 hard to imagine any duchess ever entered. 
 
 The " Knights' Hall " was close by ; a long room, running 
 from the same passage that opened into the ducal apartments 
 and occupying the distance between two corner towers, I think. 
 Here, a presence met us, a reality. One could fancy the 
 boisterous life that had filled it. The banner-staves were there, 
 and the battle-axes, and the long pikes, marked with the cross 
 of Savoy, ranged and hung against the inner wall. In the 
 outer side, fronting the lake, were deep windows with stone 
 seats. I sat down in one, and looked out through the narrow 
 opening into the deep, vivid-blue water that washed the wall 
 below, and imagined easily the ring of armor behind me, and 
 the movement and voices of men gathered here in some hour of 
 relaxation from their warlike duty. I could even forget that I was 
 I, Patience Strong, a nineteenth century woman from Massachu 
 setts: and could think of two warrior friends, mail-clad, with 
 just their visors up to show their human faces, with human 
 kindness in them for each other, sitting here together for some 
 brief minutes in the stone embrasure, looking out on the fair 
 waters, and talking of adventure or plan in which they were 
 companions. There was just room for two. One cannot help 
 thinking of some possible two, where there is just space for 
 them and no more. 
 
 Edith called me to go down. The guide was leading our 
 party away again, to visit the dungeons. If I had seen them 
 first, I do not believe I could have had even that little vision of 
 gentle intercourse and human fellowship in the Knights' Hall. 
 
 How could the Duchess sleep in her strong, stone-walled, 
 arras-hung bower above those miseries and moans ? 
 
 Yet Chillon is only a small world.
 
 206 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 The moans and the dungeons are the lowest stratum, always. 
 And we do all eat, and drink, and sleep, and rise up to play. 
 
 Underneath everything, based on the rock, walled in with 
 heaviest, rudest stonework, is the range of dungeons. 
 
 They open one within another. A guard-room first, through 
 which alone you come to the rest. Another room, or cellar, 
 next, in which is the great, black beam for executions. 
 Another, beyond, in which a natural slope of stone has been 
 roughly shaped into a sort of bed or couch, which fills one half 
 the space. On this the condemned lay, the last night he had to 
 live. I saw Margaret stand before it a moment when the others 
 had passed on, and put her foot in one of the lowermost hollows 
 which are like steps in the rock, as if she would climb to the 
 dreadful resting-place. But she stopped and only reached her 
 hand to the side of it, and touched it with a pitiful reverence, as 
 if she touched a bier ; and turning back again, she came to me 
 with her eyes filled with tears. 
 
 Poor souls that suffered there so long ago ! I wonder if it is 
 anything to them now that a young girl from the far-side of the 
 world stood there this summer day with tears for them in her 
 pure, tender eyes ! 
 
 Perhaps : it may have been, even then, since then and now 
 are not really separate, in spirit-things. They must have felt 
 tears and pity near them ; God's pity, of which hers is part. 
 
 In the outer wall, opposite the bed, opens close to the floor 
 the spout-like passage through which the bodies were slidden 
 into the lake. 
 
 From this dungeon, reaching out a rectangular length like the 
 shape of the Knights' Hall, above, is the one in which the eight 
 pillars, supports of the upper structure, run through the midst, 
 from whose great chain-staples the fetters hung that bound the 
 prisoners each to his own pitiless post. 
 
 We saw the carven names ; we stood in the worn hollows 
 that their feet had pressed; we touched Bonnivard's pillar, 
 where his head must have leaned in his long despair. 
 
 I thought of it again ; the living Pity ; which was there 
 then as now ; which knows all the moments, while men know 
 but one ; of the Presence in which those moments joined
 
 YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY. 207 
 
 themselves, and do join ; of the Books that shall be opened, 
 when we shall wonder that any page of them has seemed to any 
 like the end, or long in turning, when the whole was there. 
 
 " Can anything ever seem to bind hopelessly, since we have 
 Been those ? " I said to Margaret, beside me. 
 
 Afterward we sailed down the beautiful, radiant Lake, in a 
 swift, gay little steamer. Another steamer, coming up, passed 
 us, with happy faces crowding along its sides. I caught the 
 name, in golden letters, on its bows. It was " Bonnivard." 
 
 We had come out from the long Yesterday, into the sure To 
 day. 
 
 We have bought little watches here, in Geneva. Margaret 
 has one for her small namesake niece, Margaret Vanderhuysen, 
 witli the monogram on the tiny back in blue enamel. I have 
 bought one for little " Mary Strong," motherdie's name-child ; 
 and the whole name is engraved upon it in a minute circle of 
 pearls. 
 
 We have had some photographs taken. I send you one of 
 myself; it is thinner, I think, than ever. But you know I am 
 always thin at the top of all those photographer's stairs. I am 
 well ; only so tired with travel ! My writing to you is a de 
 fense; I make it my plea for "swearing off" from much else 
 that I should have to do. 
 
 We were up in the photograph rooms when the Duke of 
 Brunswick's funeral passed by ; that queer old man, uncle to 
 Victoria of England, who has just died here, and left all his 
 money to the city. In consequence, the day of his burial was 
 solemn holiday. 
 
 We climbed out on the roof-front, a dizzy ledge, just wide 
 enough fora chair, and looked down, five or six stories' depth 
 into the avenue below, where the cortege, small enough for a 
 royal duke, was moving along. In America, a duke of ours, 
 who had " benefacted " a city, or the community, would have 
 been followed, unless he forbade it beforehand, by a mile 
 or two of civic officers, professions, trades, public schools, and 
 institutions, and trailed over as long a line of march as could be 
 doubled and twisted through the principal streets, or even up
 
 208 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 and down the land through principal cities. But a few couples 
 of bare-headed gentlemen following the bier, a few carriages, 
 and a short foot procession in the rear of these, with no marks 
 or signs about anybody, that we could discern, passed by here in 
 five minutes, and that was all. 
 
 We were helped in again, with cold shivers running over us, 
 as we stood and turned on our perilous perch, and wondering 
 what we had done it for. 
 
 .... We have been to the Musee Rath. We have seen 
 there, besides ever so many other paintings, modern and an 
 tique, and sculptures and fragments innumerable, which were 
 wonderful enough to look at at the time, and by the catalogue, 
 but which fix themselves to nothing in my thought or sympa 
 thy, and which I leave there, two pictures which you must 
 look at with me ; because while I stood before them, everything 
 else vanished, and when I came away they came with me, and 
 are among the things that belong to me henceforth. 
 
 They were two small pictures, painted by native Swiss artists 
 not supreme in talent, or widely famous. I found them and 
 they found me in a quiet corner of the long room ; the face 
 that looked out of the first, from among indistinct surroundings, 
 
 with its parted hair, its broad, patient forehead, its deep, suf 
 fering, loving eyes, its sad, sweet lips, was like the face of 
 our Lord, as it has been best imagined. Not in mere outline ; 
 there was no imitation ; but the story was there, out of which 
 the likeness inevitably grew. I have seen it in one or two liv 
 ing faces. It is the story of them who " die to make men free." 
 Not victims of cross or sword, necessarily ; they might be, if 
 the path led that way ; but the daily givers of their lives. Tt 
 was a continual giving, an hourly enduring. 
 
 I did not need to glance from the face to the lesser details of 
 the picture, which I really hardly dwelt upon to remember, 
 
 to know that the man was a prisoner. A " prisoner of hope " 
 to others, though it might be of his own despair. 
 
 I turned to the catalogue and read, as if my intuition 
 printed itself at the moment, " Bonnivard." 
 
 I said I did not dwell upon the details of his surrounding;
 
 YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY. 209 
 
 this was why. I had just been in the real surrounding ; I was 
 instantly again in that subterranean dungeon, standing on its in 
 dented, rocky floor; the pillar and chain before me, the one 
 gleam of light striking in through the narrow opening in the 
 thick wall, and falling upon that face ! I was with him, bodily, 
 in his prison, in whose presence, across the three hundred 
 years, I had felt myself that other morning in Chillon. I could 
 Slave stretched out my hands to him in pity, love, and rever 
 ence. 
 
 " Margaret ! " I called softly ; and as she came beside me, I 
 took her hand in mine. " There ! " 
 
 She saw, and caught her breath. " Chillon ! Bonnivard ! " 
 she said; and leaned toward the picture as she had leaned 
 toward that stony pillow where the heads of the condemned had 
 rested. 
 
 I shall never recall that moment without a feeling as if I had 
 once really visited him in his captivity. 
 
 " There is another," she said presently. " There is a ' Re 
 lease.' We found it close by." 
 
 The Genevese patriots are entering the dungeons of the 
 stormed and forced stronghold. 
 
 The face in this picture is not so striking as that in the other ; 
 or I was too possessed with the first. I carried that into the 
 second scene, as I had carried it back to the actual prison. I 
 brought but one face from the two away with me. The 
 two together made us eye-witnesses of the man and his grand 
 moments. As we had been eye-witnesses of that crowning in 
 Notre Dame. Only, how far holier a crowning was this ! 
 
 I shall never drag you through long galleries, Rose ; I do not 
 think I shall drag myself much ; but wherever in Europe, 
 and I doubt if there be many wheres, I find an instant and a 
 fact, I shall long to make you enter in to it with me. I doubt, 
 moreover, if I find these facts and instants in the technically 
 greatest works. "When men were paid for an altar-piece, or for 
 the fresco of so many square yards of wall, or for the doing of a 
 subject that had been done to literal because spiritual 
 death already, I do not think the Holy Ghost came down, al 
 ways, into their souls and fingers. And I only care for things 
 14
 
 210 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 that have been so baptized that a baptism yet flows from them. 
 I know very well that it may be there when I cannot receive it, 
 not being worthy. Then I will say nothing, there is nothing 
 for me to say, though it be the thing that all the rest of the 
 world declares divine. 
 
 Margaret and I had an odd little talk that grew from the see 
 ing of this picture. 
 
 " Why is it," she asked me, " that the parting of a man's hair 
 upon his forehead signifies such opposite things in opposite 
 people ? It gives the noblest expression, and it gives the 
 meanest. So that the very persons who find it beautiful in sa 
 cred pictures, and recognize the head of Christ by that grand, 
 meek look, laugh at a modern young man who * parts his hair in 
 the middle?'" 
 
 " You have just put it into the joining of those two words, 
 that * grand-meek look.' It is the lowliness of grandeur, 
 the royal meekness of the head that is bared and bent for anoint 
 ing and for crowning. Nothing can wear that gentleness that is 
 not great. When a silly fellow puts it on, it is a caricature. 
 Or rather it tells too small and positive a truth. Besides," I 
 said, " there is the signification of the hair itself, the thing it 
 stands for." 
 
 " What do you mean, Miss Patience ? " 
 
 " I mean the living fibres. What reaches out of our life, and 
 makes toward anything. For that is what ' af-fection ' is. I 
 thought it out, dear, over a lock of mother's hair. It is all I 
 have of her bodily now. And I used to wonder why hair 
 lasted, when everything else that belonged to the mortal per 
 ished away. I was sure there must be a meaning in it. And I 
 believe it has come to me, explaining many things. Hair is 
 ' electric ' (and that is another word, if we could stop over it, 
 full of a life that elects) ; it is a growth out of very vitality. 
 It is an outstreaming and conducting of a force of being. Fine, 
 and multitudinous, millions of little uncountable, insepa 
 rable threads ; and all together a glory, and a beauty, and an 
 expression of the person, more than almost anything. And 
 made so that it lasts always ! Was n't that a blessed revelation,
 
 YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY. 211 
 
 when God finished man with an imperishable thing ? When 
 He made something that we could hold back from decay, and 
 keep for our loving comfort when all other touch and sight has 
 to be given up ? " 
 
 There were tears in Margaret's eyes, as she looked at me 
 and listened. 
 
 " I have a lock of mother's hair, too," she said. " I thank 
 you so much for telling me. I think after this it will seem 
 like her own living touch when I take it in my hand." 
 
 " I think it was given to seem so," I said. 
 
 " But there is more," said Margaret, after a minute. " I like 
 all your meanings, Miss Patience. Please tell me the rest. 
 We did not begin with that sign." 
 
 " No ; we began with the wearing. Hair, think of it as 
 af-fections, mind, parted from the crown, and flowing softly 
 down, seems like effluence from the highest; a meek, gentle 
 giving of what is holy-royal, divine. A small, mean man, 
 or even a man whom life has in no way crowned, hardly 
 has any business to wear it so. If he does, it changes to a sign 
 of that which, descending from his highest, must descend to 
 very petty things. I think that is the feeling it gives us, 
 though perhaps it seems fanciful put into words. Strong, im 
 petuous persons have much hair. Esau was a hairy man ; the 
 politic, small, calculating Jacob was smooth. Selfish, earthly 
 affections, left loose and wandering and unchecked in their 
 growth, are like Absalom's hair ; getting entangled in mate 
 rial things and betraying to death. Samson's hair, grown 
 long, and strong, and generous, was his power ; cut short by 
 a light woman who seduced him to his own pleasures, it left 
 him helpless to be bound. Hair, tossed, confused, disheveled, 
 is a sign of recklessness, wildness, grief; all the feelings astray 
 or in commotion. A woman binds her hair about her head ; it 
 is seemly, feminine restraint. Men have cut off their hair, 
 to express austerity, moderation, control ; the Puritans were 
 Iloundheads ; the rollicking Cavaliers wore floating curls. It 
 is impossible to help expressing character in the lines and ar 
 rangements of the hair. The fashions of the hair show the 
 temper of the time. Hair grows white as we grow old ; it is
 
 212 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 purified from earthiness as we grow toward the time of being 
 like Him who was seen in the vision with ' hair like wool.' 
 Mary wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair ; she turned her 
 best love into lowliest service. We ' cannot make one hair 
 white or black ; ' it is ; God that worketh in us to will and to 
 do.' Beautiful, true affections come from Him only. And 
 what He has given, He does not destroy. ' The hairs of our 
 heads are all numbered.' So we came back to personal heart- 
 loves again, and the promise for them by the sign of the inde 
 structible. ' Your hearts shall live forever.' " 
 
 I stopped there. I had run on longer than I meant ; it was 
 quite a lecture. But Margaret cared for it. She said, 
 
 " I like it, all, Miss Patience. I should like to find all the 
 places in the Bible where hair is spoken of. Why, it is a new 
 way to find out the Bible, by such meanings, isn 't it ? " 
 
 " I think it is the way. When I hear people say, of things in 
 the Scriptures, ' Oh, that is figurative,' as if that disposed of 
 it altogether and turned it into nothing, I think, ' Oh how 
 you let the keys fall from your hands ! ' The beauty and 
 the necessity of the Bible is that it is in figures ; figures of 
 story and figures of speech ; the things that in the beginning 
 had live, direct meaning, because language was the gathering of 
 signs together that God Himself had made, in men's histories, 
 and in the world they live their histories in, and had set 
 them over against each other that they might be antiphonies 
 and interpretations to each other forever. ' Figures do not lie,' 
 is a proverb as true of things as it is of numbers." 
 
 A little while before, we had been tracing out our coming 
 journey upon a map of Savoy. The book lay in Margaret's 
 lap, as she had left it lying when our talk began, out of some 
 little thing I asked her if she remembered in those pictures at 
 the Musee. 
 
 She took it up as I stopped speaking, and her eye fell again 
 upon the delineations of the mountain ridges, the valley lines, 
 the white spaces where were the snow summits. 
 
 "What figures of things we ought to see here!" she said, 
 touching her finger to the leaf. 
 
 " Yes. Switzerland is an awful, beautiful writing. A show-
 
 YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY. 213 
 
 ing in great, tremendous forms. We ought to go in among 
 them as into presences of the inner world." 
 
 " Shall we ? " asked Margaret, slowly. 
 
 I did not dare to answer her. 
 
 There are two goings ; the going of the body with its cares, 
 and pleasures, and details ; and the going of the soul, led se 
 cretly in the hand of God. 
 
 "When I write next, I shall have seen Mont Blanc.
 
 214 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 BEFORE MONT BLANC. 
 
 .... THE finest diligence and diligence-route in Switzer 
 land, is from Geneva to Chamounix. 
 
 It was more like the ride from London to Tunbridge, as to 
 conveyance and pure traveling pleasure, than anything I ex 
 pected to have again. 
 
 We had glorious weather, and outside seats. We occupied 
 the cushioned bench next behind the driver's seat ; overhead 
 was a cover, open at the sides. 
 
 We passed through pleasant suburbs, and out into green 
 valley-lands, among farms and through country villages. Great 
 mountains rimmed the horizon, but it was a good while before 
 we came really among their scenery. Toward noon they be 
 gan to shut around us, as we penetrated the deeper valley of 
 the Arve. For a long way, then, we had only river and mount 
 ains ; the road skirting along the stream, and heading toward 
 apparently impenetrable barriers of cliff, that stretched and 
 towered in the south, while at our left rose high, precipitous 
 slopes from which shining cascades were falling like white 
 threads, disappearing to glance out again lower and lower, 
 till their pleasant runlets crossed our pathway and found the 
 river. 
 
 The beautiful fall of Arpenaz, a glory of bursting foam, held 
 our eyes in a lingering backward watch which would not be 
 satisfied, though the delightsome thing had kept in our forward 
 sight so long. 
 
 These white, scattered waters, exploded into loveliness 
 from their first leap off the sudden edge, where there is no 
 more pathway, until the myriad silver-flashing particles gather
 
 BEFORE MONT BLANC. 215 
 
 themselves from scores of wild, bewildered trickles into one 
 current and channel again, to break farther down over another 
 brink, and shiver into a new splendor ! Over and over again 
 they form and dash asunder and reform, as they hurry down 
 the jagged mountain-side, itself torn first into savage rifts that 
 rend again so savagely. 
 
 " Over and over again ! " repeated itself in my thoughts in a 
 kind of mechanical way. Over and over ; spilled and gathered 
 up ! How much is done over and over, for us and in us ! 
 
 There was a man sent, sent ignorantly, reluctantly, to 
 wash, seven times ; and he came at last, made clean in his 
 flesh, like a little child. Who knows what any repetition 
 does? For this water, even, coming down, in its whitening 
 plunges, through these reiterated shocks ? 
 
 The Patience that abides, knows what it does for us, while 
 the repeatings go on. Sinning, and sorrowing ; wandering and 
 returning ; scattering in atoms and gathering up ; washing, and 
 wayfaring, and washing again ! 
 
 Over and over again, 
 
 Seek me, lest I should lose Thee ! 
 Over and over again 
 
 Call me, make me to choose Thee ! 
 Over and over again 
 
 Wash me, from sin after sin; 
 Sevenfold baptism in Jordan 
 
 Give me, that I may be clean ! 
 
 It is the " seventy times seven " that we dare to pray for, 
 because we are commanded to render it also. 
 
 The valley widened out. We began to see, in the rolling 
 aside of the near mountains, as by a grand scene-shifting, the 
 farther, mightier domes and shafts of the masses and needles of 
 the Mont Blanc range, and at last but I will not tell you of 
 the first flashes of its glory ; we came face to face with it at 
 Sallanches. 
 
 The diligence stopped at the village inn, just before we came 
 to the bridge which spans the Arve, and so lies straight across 
 the valley line. 
 
 Down, was it down, or up, or away ? Off there, at the left, 
 down the wide, beautiful gorge, up into the whole heaven that tho
 
 216 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 valley slopes framed in, away in a distance measured by point 
 after point in the vista, but close in a wonderful nearness by its 
 mighty assumption to itself of all presence and splendor that were 
 abroad in the visible circle of the heavens and the earth, in 
 the outpouring of the day, in the spaces that the parted heights 
 made, standing right and left before majesty ; in the rush arid 
 shine of the river, speeding like a swift, brilliant messenger 
 before the king, sent forth from the awful privacies of his ice- 
 chambers, Mont Blanc showed itself in its vast white glory to 
 our sight ! 
 
 The noon sun, through the clear, deep blue, flooded down 
 light upon it. The air, pure from its snows, was like a life and 
 cleanness born and diffused from its being ; the movement of 
 trees and waterfalls, and floating clouds less white than that 
 primal whiteness, seemed to wait upon its central stillness, 
 where there was nothing that could stir except the viewless 
 avalanches, and the slow, invisible march of the ice-rivers. 
 
 It was there ; all else stood in a mere attendance. The little 
 horizons that we had known before, with no Mont Blanc iu 
 them, seemed suddenly, as we recollected them, to have no pur 
 pose or revelation in comparison. 
 
 We moved on, crossing the river. "We wound away, along 
 the heights, and through the closing forests, up the left bank of 
 the river. In an hour or so, we came into a deep, green side- 
 gorge of the hills, to which the road turned off. Its wildness 
 and seclusion, and yet this fine highway leading us far into its 
 fastness, its thronging forest, its sounding waters, at last, 
 its great, open, park-like glade, traversed by pathways which 
 wandered thence up the surrounding ascents, or away into un- 
 traceable woods, were like some palace grounds of a dream- 
 legend. We drove on and on, until we came to the low, out 
 stretching front of a pretty, rambling hotel. It was the Baths 
 of St. Gervais. 
 
 We were half-tempted to stay here, and put off even Cham- 
 ounix. If we had had a little more time, we would have done 
 so. But the lovely places, where one can see whole worlds of 
 delight opening into possibility, that one passes by in Europe on 
 the way to the few that one must choose, they are like the
 
 BEFORE MONT BLANC. 217 
 
 "children of the desolate," more in number than the realized 
 and born. They lie along every route. 
 
 Margaret and Edith were nearly distracted with the beauty 
 of this. " Oh, such days, such mornings and evenings as we 
 could have here ! " they said. 
 
 But we only had our one brief ecstasy and our dinner. 
 
 The diligence goes no farther. Carriages, shabby old 
 "voitures," but open, roomy, and comfortable, waited for us, 
 and appropriated our luggage while we dined. We found our 
 selves billeted to one over which two or three men, porters and 
 "cochers," were squabbling when we came out, in the claiming 
 and defense of our hand-baggage. 
 
 We got in as we were told, paid the nearest outstretched 
 hands, which were probably the wrong ones ; and our coach 
 man, scrambling to his seat, drove us off out of the wolf-pack, as 
 his own particular prey to be devoured at leisure. 
 
 Then began the afternoon that will forever be alive to us. 
 
 Up, up, up, over the superb road, parapeted with low, 
 solid mason-work, which the French Imperial Government built 
 along mountain ledges overhanging, at dizzier and dizzier 
 heights, the tumbling, plunging Arve. 
 
 Again we saw river and meadows and villages drop drop 
 beneath us as we climbed. Again we breasted mighty masses 
 of fir-clothed steeps. The hills rolled slowly about us again in 
 everchanging relation, closing and parting and folding against 
 each other, as we threaded the water-defile, mounting steadily to 
 a higher and yet higher line. 
 
 I cannot tell you exactly where we began to see it, or how 
 long we rode first, finding wonder and loveliness enough to make 
 us forget to expect or look for it again ; but at some turn we 
 saw suddenly hang above us in the very sky, o'er all the 
 other mountain tops, that great white Mount of God! 
 
 And after that we never lost it. 
 
 Margaret and Edith stood up on the front seat of the car 
 riage ; the driver walked beside his horses ; Emery Ann and I 
 leaned from our cushioned corners at each side, as we climbed 
 and followed in and out the road that lies like the ribbon of an 
 Order across the shoulders of the outstanding hills gathered in
 
 218 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 only a lesser lordliness about the Monarch too great and 
 greatly retinued ever to be wholly manifest. 
 
 The nearer you approach to him, the farther he enfolds him 
 self within his regal state. It is only by climbing some sub 
 ordinate peak and looking over from afar, that you can see the 
 spreading of his ermine that rolls itself away in leagues of 
 splendor, and trace the flashing lines of his belting and border 
 ing ice-jewels. But his head towers up into the heavens, wear 
 ing the sunshine for a crown ; and his mighty shoulders fill and 
 shut the arching space. There is no horizon. There is only a 
 blue zenith, and Mont Blanc ! 
 
 We came down into Chamounix in the sunset. 
 
 We descended by long windings, as we had climbed ; only 
 after penetrating those upreaching aisles among the crowding 
 pinnacles, until it seemed as if the only goal could be some 
 height that was to hold us everlastingly, we began to thread and 
 drop downward, and to find ourselves once more above a valley, 
 beyond whose opposite side the mountain ranges gathered their 
 great skirts back again, while between came down the glaciers, 
 gray-white, with beryl gleams, that had traveled through 
 the ages from the far, eternal snow. From the bosom of the 
 yet remote Mont Blanc, whose head, above and beyond all else, 
 yet still so near in its impending height, hung over the little 
 nestling village that we entered in the dusk. 
 
 We could not be taken in at once at Hotel Couttet, down in 
 the mountain-brooded angle by the river, where we had chosen 
 to make our stay. Chamounix was at its fullest. But there 
 was a "dependance" in the village, if we would lodge there 
 till to-morrow, and come here for our meals. 
 
 So we drove on, up the narrow street with its holiday air of 
 occupancy by strange, transient comers, its open doors and 
 lattice-windows, its groups of guides and porters, its carriage 
 loads and mule parties of pleasurers returning from their day's 
 excursions ; and stopped at a low, narrow entrance, like all the 
 rest, over which projected a tiny balcony filled with blossoming 
 plants. Inside, we found bare floors, scrubbed clean, large 
 rooms scantily furnished, an upper hall opening by a long win 
 dow upon the flower balcony, from which we saw the last rosy 
 shine upon the crest of the great mountain.
 
 BEFORE MONT BLANC. 219 
 
 As we stood there, a party of ladies and gentlemen passed 
 below in the street ; among them one stout dame, in a " chaise 
 a porteurs." It was the first one we had seen. 
 
 " Look here, Emery Ann ! " I called to that worthy woman, 
 who although Mont Blanc was smiling his last upon the little 
 village which lives upon his greatness, was already carefully 
 unstrapping the portmanteau in our room within. " Here is 
 the sort of thing you and I will be carried in to-morrow, 
 perhaps." 
 
 "Lugged along like that! By two men! Harnessed they 
 are ; see the straps ! And shaking like that ? The woman 
 looks as if she was made of jelly ! " 
 
 " But you are not made of jelly, Emery Ann. You wouldn't 
 shake. The men would bless their luck in getting light jobs 
 like you and me. You could n't ride a mule, you see." 
 
 " I don't see anything about it yet. I 'm sure I don't see 
 myself in a thing like that." And with a bottle in one hand, 
 and' a sponge-bag in the other, just as she had answered my 
 call, she went back to her portmanteau. 
 
 We were too tired to walk back to the hotel. So we or 
 dered our suppers on trays, and the servants from the hotel 
 brought them. Tea and rolls, butter and honey, very good 
 cold chicken, and grapes. We set it out on the deal table in 
 the middle of our front room, and managed nicely. 
 
 After tea, the woman of the house sent for the chief of the 
 guides, and we arranged with him about to-morrow's excursion. 
 He promised us good men and mules and chairs. Emery Ann 
 submitted to she knew not what. Because she did not know 
 the other thing either. 
 
 So to-morrow we were to go up the Montanvert
 
 220 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE SEA OF ICE. 
 
 .... WHAT a glorious morning lightened upon the sombro 
 forest-haired heads, and the farther snow-shine of those tower 
 ing Alps that overhung us ! And what delicious life sprang in 
 us to meet the fresh, unknown delight of the day ! 
 
 Margaret and Edith came forth like morning blooms ; every 
 thing about them, from their hair to their boots, with the morn 
 ing touch upon it, and elastic with bright, neat readiness. 
 
 Underneath our windows, while we ate our breakfasts, we 
 heard the hoofs of the mules and the voices of the men, early- 
 punctual, but quite prepared to wait our pleasure. 
 
 The two girls drank coffee and put biscuits in their pockets ; 
 they also made paper horns which they filled with large, sweet 
 grapes, and begged Emery Ann and me to carry in our laps. 
 They were too eager and excited to eat much. 
 
 Emery Ann and I behaved as wisely as we could; but the 
 " girl " asserted herself in me beyond what I had supposed 
 possible, and I think Emery Ann was half pleasurably and 
 half apprehensively " tuned up." 
 
 When our cavalcade moved down the village street, we felt 
 as if the novelty to us were as great a novelty and conspicu- 
 ousness to the lookers on, and that our advent in Chamounix 
 was as funny and fine a frolic as the same equipment and set 
 ting off would have been in Dearwood or Hilslowe. 
 
 Margaret and Edith were both at home on horseback ; but 
 the round seats of the railed saddles, and the yanking jolt of 
 the mule-gait were things to begin over again with. A few 
 rods, however, enabled them to adapt themselves to new con 
 ditions, and even to put their pretty figures into a graceful
 
 THE SEA OF ICE. 221 
 
 harmony with the otherwise ungainly motion. For there is 
 nothing ungainly, after all, but inharmoniousness. A good 
 will is becomingness ; you can grow old, you can be poor, 
 
 with a consent which is a grace ; why not ride a mule ? 
 Emery Ann and I were swinging in the square chairs with 
 
 sacking seats softened by cushions ; our shawls at our backs, 
 ani our feet on the narrow foot-boards that swung also, by short 
 cords. The men, with the poles on which the chairs were set 
 slipped through loops of leather hung from broad shoulder- 
 bands, and grasping the pole-ends in their strong fingers, had 
 fallen into a measured stride to which it was our work of grace 
 to get accustomed ; for at first it seemed to me that a fine little 
 snap happened in my ears and the back of my head at every 
 second footfall ; but it wore off as we proceeded, and I began to 
 exult in a pedestrianism I could never have accomplished for 
 myself, and to feel as if all the play of the muscles and the free, 
 unlabored swing of the walk, and the joy of assured power over 
 the splendid distance that lay forth before us to be gathered in 
 step by step, were my very own. It was like being a strong 
 man, with a full credit of strength to draw upon, instead of a 
 feeble woman who pays painfully as she goes, and realizes her 
 shortening limit with every disbursement. 
 
 The meadows, the long field-paths through the farm-places, 
 
 the far-off foot of the hills whose heads leaned over us closely 
 when we could see their heads only, the wild climb up their 
 sides by undiscerned ways to be unraveled as we followed 
 them, the distant ridges and summits, all were ours; yes, 
 and every little blade and flower and mosscup and pebble upon 
 the path, as they are only to those who walk. I was entering 
 into a pleasure the mere mechanical part of which I had not 
 known since I was a little tireless, springing child, or a girl full 
 of gay energy and delight in doing. And beside all, more 
 over, it was among the Alps, and into the very glory of them. 
 Do you catch the joy with me, Rose ? I hope so. 
 
 Two porters carried each chair, and two for each, to alter 
 nate in service, walked. We had, therefore, an imposing train. 
 
 We passed through a kind of stile, or gate, and crossed a 
 farm-yard, after we left the village ; then we traversed the re-
 
 222 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 mainder of the valley intervale ; then moved along under the 
 very base of a mighty mountain, till we struck the beginning 
 of a " zigzag," and began to ascend. As we turned the second 
 sharp corner, and the mules came just below and beside us, in 
 following, Edith called up to me, 
 
 " How do you feel, auntie ? " 
 
 " I feel," I answered, " as if I were being carried by the angels 
 into Abraham's bosom." 
 
 They laughed, merrily enough ; but I was in sober, blessed 
 earnest. 
 
 " Emery Ann ! How do you like it ? " called Edith again. 
 
 " Well it ain't so ridiculous to do, as it was to look at. 
 Most things ain't," returned the honest-minded woman, serenely. 
 
 " There is n't a bit of it to skip, is there ? " said Margaret. 
 "Just look over the valley there, against that other wall of 
 mountains. And see away up over their tops and down upon 
 them, how the clouds roll and tumble ! It is all blue over 
 us ; but they have their own separate weather. It looks black 
 enough, does n't it ? Is it that it will make bad weather here, 
 think you ? " she asked in French of her guide, one of the 
 velay-men managing the mules. 
 
 "It is very possible, later," he answered. "But perhaps, 
 no. They are thunder-storms on the other side of the mount 
 ains, there." 
 
 This was comforting, to Emery Ann and me, who are both 
 afraid in thunder-storms. But as you can tell nothing about 
 the caprices of clouds and mountain tops in these regions, where, 
 as Margaret said, every peak has its own weather, we re 
 solved to abide in our own sunshine, and watch the darkening 
 majesty over there as a part of that sublimity we had come out 
 to see. 
 
 We heard low, long, echoing growls repeating themselves 
 behind the great ramparts, and the black and gray masses of 
 vapor surged over their brims, as if overflowing a mighty basin 
 from which they might spill, but not lift themselves away. At 
 home, over our blue hills, such a cloud as one of those would 
 have climbed in an hour or two and swept across the country 
 with its shower. To see it boil up in the southwest would be
 
 THE SEA OF ICE. 223 
 
 to be sure of its coming. But here it clung to its mountain 
 cradle, whose ridge divided even the firmament upon that side 
 from the firmament upon this. 
 
 We were sometimes lost in the deep shade of fir thickets, 
 through or across which, ever from right to left and from left to 
 right, ascended the sharply angled pathway ; as if by some law of 
 harmony in things, a human foot track up a mountain side must 
 make a line like that of the lightning when it comes down over 
 its cloud-mountains upon these rocky sides and summits, seizing 
 its points where it finds them, and rushing to and fro in its keen 
 swift zigzags. 
 
 Sometimes we followed an open ledge, and then below us lay 
 the whole lovely valley with its streams and villages, from Les 
 Ouches at the southern mouth of 'it to Argentieres northward, 
 on the road to Tete Noire and Col de Balme. 
 
 Over across, the enormous elevations of the Brevent and the 
 Flegere, and the sharp Aiguilles of their range, shooting up 
 their dagger thrusts into the azure softness or piercing the clouds 
 like huge lances seizing trophies out of heaven, reared and 
 stretched along the sky ; while above our heads the awful spires 
 of the Aiguille Verte and the Aiguille du Dru measured the 
 upper depth to a profound that no mere blue void suggests the 
 mystery of. 
 
 The strange neighborhood of mighty forms set over against 
 each other, opened here yet more marvelously to us that revela 
 tion of the heights which I felt and spoke of in our first ap 
 proach to Alp-presences. 
 
 Face to face with these near, huge bulks, or more striking 
 still, looking away up, with heads bent backward, to their im 
 pending immensity, one feels as if the celestial globes, changed 
 from far fire-points to real earth-masses in their near-coming, 
 were wheeling alongside our planet ; as if great arks of heaven 
 were sailing by. 
 
 " We are ' realizing ' our Astronomy, now," I said to Edith 
 as she came close behind me, and I turned my head to see her 
 face and the wonder in it. " It is like a fleet of worlds." 
 
 " I did not know what it was making me think of, " replied 
 Edith. " You always say a thing, and then I find out that I 
 was feeling of it in the dark."
 
 224 SIGHTS AND JNSIGHTS. 
 
 The four men set down our chairs upon a level space, side by 
 side, and while the four others came forward and leisurely ad 
 justed their straps and picked us up, Emery Ann and I had a 
 word together. 
 
 " What is it like ? " I asked her. She had not heard a sylla 
 ble before. 
 
 For all reply, she began to sing lines of the thrilling old 
 Methodist hymn : 
 
 '* O what ship is this that comes sailing by ? 
 
 Glory ! Hallelujah ! 
 what ship is this that comes sailing by ? 
 
 Glory ! Hallelujah ! 
 'Tis the Great Ship of Zion, hallelujah! 
 'T is the Great Ship of Zion, hallelujah ! 
 
 She has saved as many thousands, and will save as many more, 
 For Jesus is her Captain, hallelujah ! " 
 
 " Only," she said, dropping into quiet, impressed speech, 
 " there 's a whole squadron of them. It 's as if the Lord and 
 all his prophets were sailing down to judgment and salvation." 
 
 Her weird religious imagination of the thing did not surprise 
 me. She had grown up amid the mysticism and passion of re 
 vivals and camp-meetings, and the tremendous imagery of Rev 
 elation had been the poetry of her youth. 
 
 " It is an awful and a wonderful ' passing,' Emery Ann," I 
 said. 
 
 " Like what Moses saw when the Lord put him in the cleft 
 of the rock," she answered. 
 
 Edith caught an infection from Emery Ann's hymn, and all 
 at once her sweet, clear voice sounded through the wood -stillness 
 as we entered a forest path again, 
 
 " O'er mountain-tops the Mount of God 
 
 In latter days shall rise, 
 And bring the Canaan that we love 
 To our beseeching eyes." 
 
 Margaret joined her rich contralto tones. I shall never play 
 that old psalm-tune again out of the book at home on a Sunday 
 evening, without feeling myself among these Alps, with the 
 vision as of the City, indeed, descending out of heaven. 
 
 We rounded a great sweep, and came under a precipice wall
 
 THE SEA OF ICE. 225 
 
 " Behold ! the Sea of Ice ! " said my porter, behind me. 
 
 Over a wide brink we saw the frozen restlessness ; the up 
 heaved, broken waves, and surges ; the swift lines of a moveless 
 current ; the green gleams ; the vast downpour of the solid cat 
 aract from far secret heights, sloping and urging with a mighty 
 leisure toward the waiting valley. From abysses above, over 
 which the Domes and Needles leaned and towered, to abysses 
 below, it swept past us in a dread stillness. 
 
 We had turned at right angles to the valley of Chamounix. 
 Over opposite, now, was the grim bulwark of the Chapeau, to 
 which should cross upon this glacial sea. The tumultuous heaps 
 and pillars of the Mont Blanc range on the right, above us, 
 and the barbicans of the Brevent and the Flegere, and the Red 
 Needles behind them, beyond Chamounix upon the left, closed 
 in, seemingly, around the icy expanse, and shut it to its own 
 solitude. Whether in this world or out of it, we could scarcely 
 realize ; so separate and awful was the place. 
 
 Our chairs were set down beside a little chalet-inn ; the girls 
 were lifted from their mules ; there was nothing to do but to go 
 in for our noon rest. And inside there were toys and orna 
 ments of Mont Blanc agates, and wood-carvings, and dinner. 
 Other parties of people were here also. We had been meeting 
 excursionists on mules and on foot, now and then, as we had as 
 cended ; trickles of the world-stream that is spreading itself 
 everywhere among these solemn wastes. And here at the 
 culm and climax, was the world's traffic also. There are money 
 changers i every temple. 
 
 Excellent omelettes and coffee we had, though, and found 
 needful. We bought sleeve-buttons, too, and little cups, and 
 vases, exquisitely wrought and polished ; also such bits of 
 carved work as we could easily carry away. We found, beside, 
 some striking stereoscopic views of mountain and glacial scen 
 ery. We knew we should like them after we got home, though 
 in the face of the original realities, the bits of pasteboard wero 
 as merest rubbish. 
 
 Chairs and mules were to be given up here ; the latter to be 
 sent round by some other way, to meet us on the Chapeau ; 
 the former to be borne empty across the perilous ice-path. 
 15
 
 226 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 They carried Emery Ann and me as far down as they dared, 
 and a fearful clinging it was to rail and foot-board, as the chairs 
 swung and slanted in the steep, slippery descent. Reaching 
 nearly a level, we were glad to give them up ; and with a guide 
 grasping each of us by the wrist, we began our walk across the 
 glacier. 
 
 Sometimes we climbed huge blocks thrown confusedly to 
 gether ; sometimes we stepped across narrow rifts down which 
 we could look and see them widen into caverns, or cut straight 
 down to interminable depths. We walked around little lakes 
 and pools upon the melting surface ; we struggled across wild 
 debris ; we paused and looked up and down the vast opening 
 that the torrent made, and in which it lay with its petrified cas 
 cades, and long, sweeping slants, hemmed in on every side, ap 
 parently, by the gigantic and eternal heights. Everywhere a 
 great seethe of elemental force ; a press of power ; the work 
 ing of an age-long change, so mighty that it was still ; so tre 
 mendous that it seemed arrested, paralyzed. We were in the 
 secret places, the store-house and laboratory of matter and of 
 time. These earth-masses were the heart of a continent ; its 
 vital point when it began to form. These ice-veins are its out- 
 beats. 
 
 We were lifted and helped over the wide moraine ; we came 
 to permanent cliffs again ; we struck the path along the Chap- 
 eau, and came presently to the Mauvais Pas. A narrow, over 
 hanging footway, on a mere ledge-line along the face of a 
 precipice. Iron rails stapled to the rock gave us a hold to hang 
 by if foot or footway failed. Otherwise, a crumbling fragment, 
 a misstep, would plunge one down, down, a distance that 
 one dare not look, among boulders and ice-masses, and opening 
 mouths of soundless, deep-blue gulfs. 
 
 The clouds that had rolled and muttered and flashed, on the 
 other line of peaks across the valley all day long, had at last 
 hovered over their edges, dropped upon the valley in quick 
 showers, and were climbing and thronging now among the sum 
 mits around us. 
 
 It grew dark, and there came drops of rain, and lightning 
 played across the shrouded Needles, and about the heads of the
 
 THE SEA OF ICE. 227 
 
 distant Domes. The Montanvert which we had quitted was 
 wrapped already in a heavy darkness, and the great Ice-Sea lay 
 in a cold shadow of yet profounder desolation. 
 
 Beyond the Mauvais Pas we found our mules and chairs, and 
 were glad to be seated and hurried on. 
 
 I looked at Emery Ann to see how she bore it. If we had 
 been at home, we should have been timidly shutting windows 
 and doors, drawing chairs into the safe middle of the room, 
 and saying to each other as reassuringly as we could, that it 
 " might not be a very heavy shower ; we should not get the 
 worst of it here, perhaps ; the blackest cloud was going round." 
 
 She looked a little pale, but not agitated. 
 
 " Do you mind it ? " I asked. 
 
 " I don't feel," she said calmly, " as if we were any sort of ac 
 count." 
 
 That was it. Among these tremendous pinnacles, what were 
 we, for a mark or a minding ? The storm had its own great 
 business to do. 
 
 We came down, upon the trot and the run, to a table-shelf 
 on which stood a chalet. We were hurried off saddles and 
 seats, the mules led under a shed, the chairs turned up against 
 the rock, and we were put into a door just as the drive of the 
 wind and the rush of the rain swept down upon the face of the 
 mountain, and smote it with an instant deluge. 
 
 There were two other parties shut up with us. The room 
 was smoky, and dark with the storm, except when the broad, 
 red flashes lit it up and showed the streaming landscape, if 
 fir-tops, and crag-outlines, and dropping, ragged hems of break 
 ing clouds, all mingled as in one level, make a landscape, 
 through the little windows. 
 
 The guides stood out under the shed with the mules ; we 
 dried and warmed our feet, and then turned over more stereo 
 scopic pictures, and chose as well as we could in the partial 
 light, and bought a dozen or two ; and at last one of our men 
 came in and said the rain was over, and we must hasten our 
 selves to reach the valley before dark. 
 
 It was just glorious ! 
 
 Coming out into the very trail of the tempest, the mount-
 
 228 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 am all one rush of hurrying water, rocks and leaves drip 
 ping, glittering ; torn vapors, caught in their flight against the 
 gnarl of forests and the spikes of cliffs, struggling like scatter 
 ing phantoms to escape, their riot over ; a sweet, full thuiuk ; 
 of pouring, falling streams everywhere, and a shine of foam 
 glancing out from a hundred little rifts and plunges all ahout 
 us ; presently, as we descended, coming upon the line of 
 mountain torrents that laced, and crossed, and twined and sepa 
 rated as they went, companied on either hand with beautiful 
 singing rapids and white cataracts, never can one imagine, 
 except by just such doing and seeing, what an afternoon that 
 was, as we ourselves, with an exulting swiftness, were borne 
 along down the falling zigzag that threaded the wild, lovely for 
 est of the Chapeau ! 
 
 Back and forth, into green depths and then out to points 
 whence we looked behind and up against the vast slope and tum 
 ble of the glacier, white and green, and even opalesque now, 
 in the shine of water and the level, golden light that shot upon 
 it from under western cloud-fringes ; seeing away in upmost dis 
 tance the awful grandeur out of which it is born continually, 
 the frown of those unspeakable shafts, the tumult of clouds 
 and mountain shapes struggling against each other ; and all this 
 seeming mightier, more wonderful, as it receded, and we neared 
 the valley lying in its sweet, mellow color and twilight rest ; it 
 was a gift of glory, a showing of the great and secret works 
 the Father doeth ! 
 
 That was what I thought of all the while ; what a day of tell 
 ing and of giving it had been ; of taking up into the mysteries ; 
 and how this day had come of years that had led to it ; that we 
 had been brought here by ways we hardly knew, for this to be 
 bestowed upon us. 
 
 One remembrance quickened another. I thought how the 
 Word was in all the world, and that the Word is the Lord 
 bending Himself down to men ; that the Father loveth the Son 
 of his humanity, and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth ; 
 how the Spirit takes of them continually and shows them unto 
 us ; and how greater things than any yet He will show us, be 
 cause it pleaseth Him to give us all the Kingdom !
 
 THE SEA OF ICE. 229 
 
 How that in this word, this Christ-presence of God's mean 
 ing, all our life is hid ; that all is ours, and we are his, and He 
 is God's ; that we are sons and daughters, and know not what we 
 shall be, heirs of the unknown ; but that as He shall appear 
 we shall become like Him, seeing Him as He is ; and seeing in 
 Him our own life, which is of his, manifested in his glory. 
 
 I was never so deeply joyful. Great things and little, the 
 gleam of the glacier, and the rush of water, and the twitter of 
 birds, and the forest odors, as we came down into these small 
 blessednesses out of silences and majesties, the pleasant 
 motion, carried by that kindly, careful strength, all made me 
 so happy with a feeling of how endless the hope and possibility 
 are of the things that we shall surely come to ; since they are 
 made, and made for the children ! 
 
 One can wait again, for a life-time, after one such day.
 
 230 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 DAILY BREAD: AND DOUBLES. 
 
 .... THE next morning threatened rain ; but we were 
 longing for the mountains again ; we were rested by a deep, 
 long sleep ; we sent for our head guide and asked him what 
 could be done. 
 
 " It may make good weather by and by," he said. " Madame 
 would like, perhaps, to mount the Fle"gere ? " 
 
 We would all like that ; indeed, nothing short of a settled 
 pour would dissuade us. We were quite resolved it should be 
 clear ; or if not quite clear, that it should be still more beauti 
 ful to see the fogs and clouds as they rolled away. We would 
 rather watch it coming clear, than have it so at the outset. 
 
 Also, it was Saturday ; and by Tuesday, at farthest, we 
 meant to make our journey over the Tete Noire to Martigny. 
 We must allow for rest, and for possible worse weather. 
 
 A lovely sky of shifting white and breaking blue, at half- 
 past nine, decided us. Chairs and mules were brought to the 
 door again ; Emery Ann's face was quietly ecstatic as she settled 
 herself in the thing that night before last she could not imagine 
 herself being " lugged along in." 
 
 " You like it pretty well, after all, don't you, Emery Ann ? " 
 said I. 
 
 " I 'm reconciled" she answered ; " it appears to correspond ; 
 and corresponding is the main thing." 
 
 A child's blissfulness spread over her face as the porters 
 lifted her up. I really think her smile had a gentle lip-smack 
 with it. 
 
 The level road through the meadowed valley, the river 
 stealing quietly alongside, the lines of mountain-wall stretch-
 
 DAILY BREAD : AND DOUBLES. 231 
 
 ing on either hand, their tops lost in the tumbling foam of clouds, 
 
 all gave us a pure, simple delight of just being and moving 
 in it, whether we should see Mont Blanc from the Flegere or 
 not. 
 
 We turned off the road at the spreading base of the mountain. 
 The path began among loose boulders and sloping ledges that 
 stretched back a good way in a rugged bareness that was neither 
 cliff nor pasture, only a great beginning ; a heaped-up ped 
 estal from which the real height sprang, sweeping it with its 
 forest-skirts. 
 
 We plunged suddenly into the woods, and the path which 
 had wandered irregularly upward among the curves and breaks 
 of the foundation-hill, took its sharp zigzags which " meant 
 business." 
 
 It was the delight of the day before upon the Montanvert, 
 repeated. Repeated in words, it could not be what it was to 
 live it over again. 
 
 The sweet, wet, stillness, the wildness, the trickle of 
 water-threads, the shine and flash of little falls, the lovely 
 ferns and mosses, and the Alpine blossoms smiling out, the 
 smell of the mountain, rich with strength of herb and mineral, 
 
 the sense of attaining at every step as we climbed, the out 
 looks and uplooks, as the white drifts rolled and lifted along 
 the opposite chain, or the towering Aiguilles of our own side 
 bent their awful faces suddenly over us between torn vapors ; 
 
 it was the same wonderful, ever fresh rapture, which cannot 
 be put into freshness of speech and writing, because you have 
 only the same words over again, and there is no dictionary for 
 the added meanings of recurrence. It was only another of the 
 days of Switzerland ; which are like no other days that you can 
 spend on earth. 
 
 We left off saying anything about it to each other. Edith 
 and Margaret jogged along upon their mules, and Emery Ann 
 and I swung blessedly in our chairs, and there was no sound 
 among us for ever so long but the hard, full breath of the por- 
 iers, as regular and strong as their stride, and the fall of their 
 feet in its sure rhythm which took from us all misgiving for 
 them, and the crunch of the gravelly soil or the rattle and roll 
 of dislodged pebbles under hoof and heel.
 
 232 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Half way up, we stopped as usual at a little chalet, where 
 the men had beer, and we ate fresh raspberries and drank new 
 milk. A woman, with a little boy, keeps this lonely hut through 
 the summer time, taking daily custom of travelers. The boy 
 had hurt himself by a fall among the rocks, and lay upon a bed 
 in a little inner room. I think his leg had been broken. Of 
 course we gave him a special douceur. I hope it was not what 
 he was there for. 
 
 An hour or more of further climbing, every second of which 
 was a live pleasure as we went, but which cannot be put down 
 in three hundred and sixtieths, alas! for you, brought us up 
 and out upon an open crown on which stands the miserable 
 little barn-like inn, and over which sweep the unchecked winds. 
 
 It was fearfully cold up here. The mists were rushing about 
 like things that had pre-emptive right there, and upon whose 
 business we had come untimely, before they had got cleared up 
 for. the day ; so that we could expect neither way nor favor. 
 We were in the weather-office, where the kind of day it was to 
 be was made ; and it was not settled yet. So we must submit 
 to be hustled and chilled, and have the ends of clouds slapped 
 against us, and take shelter in the " Cross of the Flegere," and 
 be glad of a little warming at its kitchen fire, between our eager 
 sallies to see how it was going to turn out. 
 
 The noon came clear. That is, as one calls clear, when not 
 watching for mountain outlines and snow-peaks fifteen thousand 
 feet high. We stood in the sunshine and saw over against us 
 the gray-white ice-rivers pouring down the sides of the mighty 
 range whose crests were hidden, but above whose veil of shift 
 ing, tantalizing clouds that showed now here, now there, a dazzle 
 of huge proportions, shot the rending Needles, to me a continual 
 startle of sublimity, and more grand than any other Alpine 
 form. 
 
 We tracked the way we had gone yesterday over opposite 
 upon the Montanvert, and across the Sea of Ice, and down the 
 dark Chapeau : we turned and found ourselves beneath the 
 Aiguilles Rogues. 
 
 The broken heaps and drifts and whirls of vapor, mingling 
 with outbursting visions of snow-masses and splintering rocks
 
 DAILY BREAD: AND DOUBLES. 233 
 
 and sky-piercing shafts, were possibly more superb to see, in the 
 tumult of indefinite revelation, than any widest outline sharp-set 
 against blue space. We could conceive such outline from our 
 maps and panoramas ; there was a limit to it, however glorious; 
 there was no limit to this splendid chaos of snow and crag and 
 cloud and struggling sun-shafts under the narrowed heaven. 
 
 We remained nearly two hours at the top ; then consoled 
 ourselves with thinking that if we had had the other view we 
 could not have had this ; and taking it thankfully as our por 
 tion, we assented to the guide's proposal to go down. 
 
 Edith and Margaret got into great glee as their mules' paces 
 quickened in the descent ; then they dismounted and took a real 
 run, springing lightly along the rough pathway, over stock 
 and stone, and turning the sharp angles as swallows wheel upon 
 their wings. 
 
 They laughed, and called merrily to each other ; the guides 
 grew merry too, and, holding the bridles of the discarded beasts, 
 trotted first, and then fairly scampered, down the zigzags ; our 
 porters caught the feeling of the fun, and trotted too. 
 
 " It 's ' this way the water comes down,' is n't it, auntie ? " 
 shouted Edith, up across the parallels between us. " Don't you 
 feel just like a little brook, Emery Ann ? " 
 
 Emery Ann clung spasmodically to the arms of her chair and 
 braced her feet against the swaying foot-board. She looked in 
 a rigidity of half-remonstrative delight. Her eyes were set in a 
 twinkle, and her mouth had stiffened in a smile. She tried to 
 answer, and the words did come brook-fashion, as if tumbled 
 along over the stones. 
 
 " I don't know but what I do ! But I don't believe 
 I 've any business to ! " 
 
 " ' We chatter, chatter, as we go, ' " sang Edith, poising her 
 self at a new turn of the path. " That 's very good chatter, 
 Emery Aim ! Clattering, chattering, shattering, pattering, 
 men, women, and mules, and the girls on before and this way 
 the water comes down at Lodore ! " 
 
 She sprang on again, dancing down the rapid decline. Mar 
 garet was before her ; their veils and garments fluttered as they 
 went, crossing each other to and fro along the successive bends ;
 
 234 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 they looked so gay and tiny, like mere butterflies, under the 
 great frown, or tender might, which was it? of the mountain ; 
 under the far-up, dreadful outburst from the deep heaven of the 
 horned heads of the pinnacles of Charlanoz ! 
 
 We sobered down, as the brooks do, coming upon the rough 
 extense of the slower slope ; and wound about the broken face 
 of it between its mounds and boulders. 
 
 As we struck the valley level, we looked up and saw the sky 
 almost cloudless ; when we reached our hotel, Mont Blanc 
 shone pure and solemn, with mistless snows, right overhead. 
 
 We had gone far away to see his face ; we came back, and 
 found it leaning over us. 
 
 They had made room for us at the hotel, as they had prom 
 ised, while we were gone ; and the porters had brought down 
 our light luggage from the " de'pendance." We had left our 
 big trunks joyously at Geneva, with the bankers ; when we 
 reached Vernayaz, but that is farther on. I won't even an 
 ticipate by the mention of a shawl-strap. 
 
 They gave us rooms on the Mont Blanc side, with a little 
 balustrade along the windows. All three opened one from 
 another. We got out brushes and sponges, and made ourselves 
 comfortable, and waited eagerly for six o'clock. 
 
 The Julienne soup, with Parmesan cheese, the mutton, 
 the Brussels sprouts, the vol-au-vent, the "epinards," or 
 tine-chopped spinach made delicate with butter, cream, and 
 beaten egg, the wine of Asti, were delicious to our hunger, 
 but an incongruity of luxury, a shock of translation back to 
 the flesh-pots of Egypt, after the glory of the desert. The chat 
 ter of tourists, in French, German, and English, up and down 
 the crowded table d'hote, was strange after the silences and 
 whispers of the mountain sides, the fir woods, the falling 
 streams, and the sweeping winds. 
 
 But no stranger, I remembered, no more incongruous, 
 than the chatter we come back into, the common words and 
 common thoughts again, out of silences and whispers and vis- 
 sions that lie and breathe and open around us in the places where 
 we get away, "led of the spirit into the wilderness;" returning 
 into our bodily recognitions, and thinking perhaps it is we only 
 who have been out and up, because others have come back also.
 
 DAILY BREAD : AND DOUBLES. 235 
 
 Every one of these people, most likely, had been forth as we 
 had, among the glories ; and every one, as we, had come back 
 to eat their dinner. 
 
 We rested the seventh day, and found it holy. 
 
 Emery Ann and Edith turned their beds around so that they 
 could lie against the pillows and look out over the court-yard 
 and low garden of the hotel, to the deep-forested hills that rose 
 behind and over them to the great White Presence that filled 
 absolutely all higher space they might have seen. The very 
 radiance of the day seemed not reflected, but flowing forth from 
 itself. Mont Blanc is not splendid ; it is absolute splendor. 
 
 My room was the last of the suite, and the door opening to 
 Edith's was in the window angle. The fire-place was next, the 
 chimney serving both rooms. I could not well arrange a posi 
 tion like theirs ; but I was very tired, and lay quietly upon my 
 bed in the dark corner, thinking toward Mont Blanc. . 
 
 Margaret came in and found me. 
 
 " We must have a better place for you, ma mere." 
 
 She has taken a fancy to call me as the nuns call their 
 mother superior. " There are spiritual motherhoods," she said 
 to me, when she so christ-ened me ; " and in that, as in ever so 
 many other things, the Catholics have put a practice upon a fact. 
 And the spiritual mothers are quite as apt, in the world as in 
 convents, to be set apart for their vocation, not mothers after 
 the flesh. There, too, the Romans have a reality in their sys 
 tem. I think if we could dig out the truth under all their over- 
 layings, we would find, maybe, the foundations that the angel 
 measured with the golden reed." 
 
 The child has insight. There is spiritual motherhood. And 
 the mysteries of the Church were first the mysteries of the King 
 dom. So, though the motherness comes down through mo 
 rather than of me, it makes me happy that she should call me 
 " ma mere." And because we two are put together, and both 
 our mothers are within there, in the Golden City, I can believe 
 that behind her impulse is an instinct that reaches farther than 
 she sees, and that through my daughterhood she finds an open 
 channel to and from the love she wants, and that seeks toward
 
 236 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 her. I take the word then, but I do not stop it; and I told 
 her so. 
 
 " I must fix you up as we used to do at school." 
 
 She drew a chair to the window, tipped it with its back to the 
 floor and its legs in the air, making a long incline ; upon this 
 she placed a pillow, lengthwise, and below spread folded shawls. 
 Then she took my little air-cushion, half filled it, and laid it at 
 the upper end of the improvised lounge. 
 
 " We did n't have these things," she said as she did so ; 
 " that would have been too complete. Now, let me put you 
 down here, and you '11 say it 's next best to the chaise a por- 
 teurs." 
 
 Indeed it was ; and if ever you are thoroughly tired out 
 and common chairs don't comfort you, I advise you to try this. 
 
 Only you cannot try it as I did, down under that low window 
 through which I looked up into the heart and face of that high 
 Purity, that awful, blessed, spotless shining ! 
 
 Hotel Couttet is snuggled down in a little nook, something 
 like that river-hollow at Hilslowe Mills, where the railway runs 
 in, and we go down under the bridge to take the cars. Only 
 you must fancy, rising up above Keber's Woods, a great wall of 
 higher forest that stands straight against the east and north, and 
 keeps the sunrise behind it until seven o'clock of the longest 
 summer morning ; and above that again not rising, as that 
 does, but heaven-hung and reaching down, the snow-blaze of 
 the White Mountain. 
 
 I turned my face upward toward it, with I could not tell what 
 feeling at my heart; whether of worship lifted, or the gracious 
 down-flowing upon me of that from which worship is born. In 
 the real mystery between God and his souls, must not the two 
 meet and be the same ? 
 
 Margaret drew my knit shawl round me, and disposed my 
 skirts in lines of order without which I cannot ever wholly rest, 
 and brought over a portmanteau for a seat for herself, and put 
 herself beside me. 
 
 " You look very nice, ma mere," she said, softly, and smoothed 
 her fingers across my hair with a light, tender touch. She 
 knew I did not keep that, either, all to myself.
 
 DAILY BREAD: AND DOUBLES. 237 
 
 " You have made me blessedly comfortable," I answered, turn 
 ing my face and my thought toward her. And presently I said, 
 " I do not think you are ' cold,' Margaret." 
 
 She understood. 
 
 " Not where I am warm," she said, smiling. 
 
 " I find you not brusque, but very gentle. Why does not 
 every one ?" 
 
 " One can be gentle where one is ' easily entreated ;'" she 
 said, with another of those allusions that often betray how fa 
 miliarly she knows the Scripture phrases. " I don't like to be 
 smooth" 
 
 " Would it be bad to be ? Just not what is it ? I can't 
 say rough, but wn-smooth. Toward your mamma, for in 
 stance ? Just not recusant of affectionateness, such as you 
 show me already." 
 
 " People have told me to be smooth with her," said Margaret. 
 " They put it into my head when I was a little child. And that 
 was how I learned not to be. I am not rude, or unkind, 
 though ; that would not be any truer than the other." 
 
 " No, indeed. It is not less of anything, but more, that you 
 might be." 
 
 " I could n't. I can't bear things on purpose. Mamma was 
 always smooth with my father ; and it was not always easy to 
 be. She said things turned out more comfortably for a little 
 patience ; and so they do," she added, applying her accidental 
 word with a smile ; " but I can't be smooth to be comfortable." 
 
 " You can better be rough to be comfortable ? " 
 
 A flash of some unlooked-for understanding came into her 
 face. It grew very earnest, very honest : I could see that 
 she impaneled a jury of her own clear, strong perceptivities, 
 and swore them in instantly, to render verdict. 
 
 " Do you think that is it ? " said she. " I never suspected 
 myself of being that." 
 
 " There are different kinds of comfortableness," I said. 
 " Certainly, some are more, and some less, worthy. But that 
 one may be comfortable in one's self-respect" 
 
 " Say ' pride,' " Margaret put in, with the tone of one simply 
 suggesting an exacter term of language.
 
 238 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 " Ought one," I continued, smiling, while her face was quite 
 unmoved, and her eyes rested on the far mountain whiteness, 
 " ought one to infringe or refuse the comfortableness of an 
 other ? Or to be quite true," I put it differently, " should 
 one hold back the truth of kindness for fear of seeming 
 seeming ? " 
 
 " You cut straight down, with a sharp edge," said Margaret. 
 
 " Yes. There is a word which is quick, to the dividing be 
 tween joint and marrow," I answered. " But not my word.** 
 
 " I see. The truth may lie even finer than that. People 
 laugh at splitting hairs, but absolute honesty may be between 
 the outside and the in of a thing all but invisible. Yet I don't 
 think we can analyze like that as we go along." 
 
 " We could n't lay out the path by arbitrary measurement. 
 But there are movements whose impulse is such absolute truth, 
 that men can only follow them by an exactness which considers 
 the thousandth of a hair's breadth. And it must be that we 
 are meant to be led and moved as surely. But for that we must 
 forget all about seemings." 
 
 " Only you want people to see the truth in you. And if you 
 only give them the truth of the kindness, they won't see the 
 truth of the truth." 
 
 " I think we have to leave it so. We are not to disfigure our 
 faces, our outward expression of ourselves, that men may 
 know what we fast from ; it is enough that the Father is in the 
 secret with us, and will take care of what comes into open 
 ness." 
 
 " And that," said Margaret, keenly, " may be the disfigure 
 ment. We must let it, if it must. We are to put on neither 
 smoothness nor roughness ; but of the two, I like Esau better 
 than Jacob, if he did lose his birthright. It comes back to what 
 Mr. Truesdaile said, to be ' certain true, all through,' (do you 
 know I have just boiled it down to those four words for a prov 
 erb ?) and let the sum prove itself. Now, I want to tell you 
 what I 've been making you ' blessedly comfortable ' for." 
 
 She took from her pocket two letters. The mail from Geneva 
 last evening, had brought us American letters from our bankers 
 there, which we had expected before we left.
 
 DAILY BREAD: AND DOUBLES. 239 
 
 " There is a little piece in this," showing me one directed 
 to herself, and covered with the postmarks of its long transit, 
 
 "and another in this," holding up an envelope freshly 
 written with her own hand, " that I want you to look at." 
 
 " Stop a minute," said I, as she began unfolding. " To be 
 ' certain true, all through,' I must tell you something first. I 've 
 a double, Margaret." 
 
 " I suppose so," she said, quietly. " And your double has a 
 double. And away back, nobody knows where, they double 
 into what everything comes from. It depends upon where you 
 begin. I don't think I'm afraid of your doubles. At any rate, 
 I 'm glad enough of what gets down to me by their road." 
 
 u What a child you are ! That is trusting ! " 
 
 " Well, I don't expect anything actually to stop, you know. 
 Money in a bank does n't do that. If it did, you might as well 
 keep it in your own napkin. What you want is your interest. 
 And that comes by their getting theirs. I 'm not afraid of being 
 squandered" 
 
 Did you ever know such a creature, of nineteen years old, 
 
 Rose ? " 
 
 " And so see what Harry writes. I want you to know him 
 a little better. I have told him ever so much of you. This is 
 in answer to a long letter I sent from Paris. It was mostly 
 written, though, at Hastings and Dover. That and that." 
 
 She gave me two pages out of the middle, and I read some 
 thing like this : 
 
 " That was a ride from London to Tunbridge ! You made me 
 feel as if I had had it with you. I've nothing half so good to 
 share with you from this side. I 'm afraid you '11 always have 
 to give more than you get, Madge, with me. And that brings 
 me to the ' daily bread ' business. I 'm glad you find it, if I am 
 only a dog under the table. You need n't think I despise it, 
 though I can't break it for myself. I'm quite contented to take 
 the crumbs from you, if you '11 be at the trouble of ' crumbing 
 up' for me. Is n't that what Solomon says a woman is for, 
 ,n the Birthday Chapter, you know ? ' She giveth bread to her 
 household ? ' Or meat, which is it ? It is all the same. 
 
 " You see I shall have to look to you, if you '11 let me. If
 
 240 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 you would only say whether you will or not, or whether you 
 will ever say you will ! For I believe it 's a promise 'of a 
 promise I have got to get first. 
 
 " Flo' fell in love at Saratoga. But it was with a girl. 
 Everybody else did ; she was a little stunner ! I don't think 
 I fell far ; one can't, when all the world tumbles in one heap. 
 It is n't my style, exactly, to ' tumble after.' That is what the 
 Gills do. If I can't be Jack, even with a broken head, I 
 don't care to be anybody. I believe it is n't much use with me, 
 either, unless I can grow up with a girl, and take it quietly all 
 along. It is like the crumbs. I have to be provided for. And 
 I can't expect to grow up with many more ! 
 
 " You must take it in nonsense, Madge ; I shall never put it 
 into sermons. If I do any growing, it will have to be along 
 with you, as it began. 
 
 " I 'm glad, though, you enjoy the coach-riding, and the four- 
 in-hand, and all the pleasant, every-day part, too. For if ever 
 we are engaged, and the rest of it, I shan't want you to 
 have got beyond all that. Six days and a Sunday, you know, 
 was the proportion it was put up in." 
 
 There was more of the same sort ; bright, affectionate non 
 sense, in which appeared a quickness of apprehension that 
 might take hold of whatsoever it would, and climb ; but that 
 was best content on an easy, happy level. I discerned in it 
 what I think Margaret did not, though he told it out, as the 
 riddle does, in so many words. That things must be made 
 ready for him. Even love. He could not trouble himself with 
 a con tested desire, with trying for a difficult happiness; he did 
 not find it " his style " to fall in love with a crowd. And the 
 very bread of life, she must "crumb it up " for him ! 
 
 I find Margaret herself so high, so rare, that I have not tol 
 erance for this nice, jolly every-dayness in one who pretends to 
 do his growing " along with her ! " 
 
 If that " little stunner " should anyhow drop into a quieter 
 track, out of a crowd, beside his own, I wonder what might come 
 of it. I think he has plenty of time and space, yet, to grow up 
 with another ; or indeed, with several more ! 
 
 I passed directly to her own letter which she laid open at 
 these paragraphs :
 
 DAILY BREAD : AND DOUBLES. 241 
 
 " I am very glad to give you the best of what I come to, 
 Harry. Those lovely days in England were too much to keep 
 to one's self, and I am glad I gave you the very best of them. 
 I know it is ' six days and a Sunday ' in this living of ours ; but 
 I think the Sunday spreads ! I am sure there are more things 
 even in the six days, than we made of them in our childhood, 
 when they were only play-days. I suppose we shall both feel 
 that the more as we go on. And if either of us finds friends 
 or help higher than ourselves, to understand them by, we 
 being friends shall share them with each other, shall we 
 not? 
 
 " Please don't talk about a ' promise of a promise.' I do not 
 think there can be such a thing, exactly. It must be a proving 
 and a waiting. We must see how we are growing, before we 
 know how far we can grow together. And there must be a 
 united growth that is a sum of something, mustn't there, before 
 you can call it a new planting in the world ? Growing is n't 
 waiting for the sunshine, Harry. It is a real reaching after it. 
 
 " I want you to take your man's place in life, just as I want to 
 feel myself ready for a woman's. Then we shall find out if they 
 depend upon each other. But we cannot promise now to prom 
 ise then. 
 
 " I write plainly, exactly as far as I do see ; that is right, I 
 think, because we are friends. It does not need a promise to 
 be that ; we always have been. Perhaps we are ' best friends,' 
 now ; the best we know how to be ; but how much more we 
 might know how to be ! 
 
 " I don't think, Harry, that my ' crumbing ' would or should 
 be enough for you. I should like, so dearly, to receive at 
 your hands. 
 
 " And yet, it begins to seem to me, it may not be so much 
 what people are to each other, I mean in this looking to each 
 other for the sharing, as what they look to together. I could 
 not give you anything of what this great white mountain gives 
 to me, unless, either actually or by some picture I could make, 
 you stood before its presence beside me. To look up to great 
 things, and to feel a friend you care for looking with you, that 
 is the real sympathy. It is what we have at the Communion, 
 16
 
 242 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 when we say, ' Therefore with angels and archangels ; ' though 
 we ourselves are so far below." 
 
 She will either bring him, or leave him. But that she does 
 not know, and nobody can say it to her. For her there is only 
 the single, " certain true " step at a time. And this letter was 
 one such. I told her so as I gave it back. 
 
 " Then it is right I should go on ? For even this waiting is 
 going on, you see. I have taken, somehow, his chances into my 
 hands. I cannot fling them down, and not care. I must do 
 the next right thing by him as it comes. I 'just must follow 
 my signboard.' " 
 
 That is a saying of Emery Ann's. 
 
 " Follow, Margaret," I answered ; " but do not run beyond. 
 One passes the right turn, sometimes, that way." 
 
 I think, Rose, that there is now and then a romance of boy 
 and girl love which runs on into manhood and womanhood, and 
 fulfills itself. But I do not believe in these romances, as a gen 
 eral thing. There comes a time when the girl is suddenly so 
 much more than the boy, when she has got so much farther. 
 And once waiting for him to catch up, ah ! that may be an 
 angel's ministry, but it is not a woman's blessedness ! The 
 world has got woefully twisted on its moral axis, and things may 
 have come to be right and needful that were not before the 
 flood ; the sin-flood, I mean, not the water-flood ; it is of such 
 little consequence that that had to follow, and so did. Adam 
 was first formed, then Eve ; that was the holy order. Now a 
 woman, Mother Goose has it, as she has most things, goes 
 and takes " a little husband no bigger than her thumb." She 
 finds him a pint pot, and she bids him drum. She ties his hose, 
 and well ! do you think that woman is content ? Do you 
 think her " soul goes marching on " to that drumming ? 
 
 Yet I did not dare tell Margaret that this was not her work, 
 just because I might imagine for her a happiness to take in 
 stead. The invincible truth itself must show her the whether or 
 no. 
 
 There are natures made to tread the winepress alone ; to take 
 no blessed cup from other human hand.
 
 DAILY BREAD : AND DOUBLES. 24& 
 
 She herself may have to grow by giving ; and only in that 
 unseen communion of the saints find her full fellowship. 
 
 She says truly that she has put him to a kind of probation ; 
 and now she must wait ; at least long enough to see how he 
 will receive it. That, of itself, is a binding, a promise. 
 Every act of living is. It is a pledge to the next ; we cannot 
 help it. 
 
 And meanwhile, for herself? .... 
 
 I feel as if the waking to her full womanly instinct were to 
 come. The motherly springs first in us, strange as that may 
 be ; the child has it with her dolls. Margaret Regis has a 
 mother-love for this boy Harry. It has turned into that ; she 
 does not know it ; she cannot give him up ; she is keeping 
 faith bravely, waiting for the other. She is looking back, 
 listening for the morning breeze that blew out of the east ; but 
 what of the rushing, mighty wind that may sweep up out of the 
 south upon her ? . . . . 
 
 Rose ! I am getting to be a part of this, myself. If in any 
 thing you see it clearer than I do, tell me. 
 
 There was more, afterward, which happened to keep these 
 thoughts tossing restlessly in my mind. 
 
 But I will write further a few days hence.
 
 244 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 FROM ARVE TO RHONE. 
 
 .... THERE was nothing but the mountains between earth 
 level and farthest heaven the morning we left Chamounix. 
 
 Not the least fleck or tatter of mist was afloat about snow 
 peak or gray, shivered spine, or in all the brilliant depth of air. 
 
 Compassed about with their great cloud of witness, we passed 
 up the valley. We looked back continually to where the vast- 
 ness of Mont Blanc enthroned itself, in body of solid light. It 
 lay behind us southwardly, stretching its tremendous shape be 
 tween range and range. 
 
 At the top of this river-aisle, we came into the little village of 
 Argentieres. 
 
 Here pours down the third great river of ice, counting from 
 the south ; the glacier of Argentieres ; heaving and sweeping 
 downward from those far, infinite snows, between the Aiguilles 
 Verte and Chardonnet. 
 
 From the village we turned away toward the left, opposite 
 the glacier, and began the long forenoon climb up the difficult, 
 steep zigzags of the Montets. There used only to be a bridle 
 path at this part of the way ; but they promise you carriage 
 now ; and then make you get out and walk as often as they 
 can. 
 
 "We were glad enough to trust to oui own feet at some of the 
 precipitous scrambles, and we overtook an English family party 
 with their private equipage, who were forced, poor things, 
 mother and several daughters, to toil painfully up miles of 
 the ascent over which their slight, handsome little horses proved 
 utterly incapable of dragging the loaded carriage. The father, 
 leading the tired beasts, behind which the dainty open vehicle,
 
 FROM ARVE TO RHONE. 245 
 
 filled with their bags and wraps, jolted perilously, looked 
 anxious enough. 
 
 " It was a great mistake," the elder lady said to me, as I 
 paused and spoke commiseratingly. That was in the afternoon 
 climbing the Forclaz, beyond Tete Noire ; we felt like priests 
 and Levites, passing by and leaving them there ; we never knew 
 what became of them, or where they could possibly have got 
 to for the night ; but we were powerless to assist them. 
 
 Along the high ridge of Tete Noire, under it rather, for 
 the mountain road clings to the steep side along a narrow ledge 
 and passes, by a hewn gallery, through the huge black profile of 
 the cliff, we looked down as we went, into the deep, wild 
 lovely valley with its river and village, a mile below us, plum 
 met-fall. 
 
 The black cliff-head itself was not so curiously wonderful to 
 me as this beautiful little secluded world beneath. 
 
 The forest and valley worlds are as infinite in their revelations 
 as the upper realms of peaks and snows. You look in, and 
 down, and up, to places of which you have this one momentary 
 glimpse as you go by, and shall never see again ; the instant 
 has for you just what you can grasp and take away. The hid 
 den marvels draw you into dreams of things that the very next 
 day have half withdrawn themselves as dreams do, and half re 
 main, an intangible, eternal delight. 
 
 I could not tell you, even now, just where it was upon our 
 way, that I saw this : a fir-grove, reaching up a long, steep 
 slope on our right hand ; the slender stems, like pillars, shooting 
 straight from among low rocks, cushioned every one with ex 
 quisite mosses, and lying piled upon one another up the acclivity 
 as no hand could pile upholsteries of velvet ; these plumy in 
 every crevice with nodding ferns of cunningest sweet tracery, 
 and with springing, swinging vines, that, tossed by the wind, 
 caught at the tree-boles and held fast, still rushing upward in 
 swift growth, and flung themselves into wild, delicate interchange 
 and interlacing, back and forth, above ; over all and beyond, a 
 gleam of bluest heaven smiling in across the hill-top ; a retreat 
 of elf-land, where your own fancies rush in and wing themselves 
 and take fairy-possession, and enact you a hundred tales and
 
 246 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 poems as you pass that once of all your life ; can you see this, 
 Rose, by my faint seeing and yet fainter telling ? 
 
 Or can you see what we came to in the twilight, after we 
 had crossed the crest, or col, and came down in swift swirls 
 or lashes, to and fro, into the other valley of Martigny ? 
 
 Can you see that road along which we swung, doubling itself 
 sharply against the steep, with strips of rocky, woody mount 
 ain pasture belted between its lines, and here and there, in 
 lower and lower distances, flocks of cattle spotting the inclines, 
 their far-off bells tinkling one to another a multitudinous sweet 
 harmony ? 
 
 Can you see the Rhone lying there beneath, stretching itself 
 between the quiet towns and along the still, green spaces, after 
 its foaming rush from its glacial cradle down through remote 
 Alpine gorges and cavern clefts ? Can you fancy yourself drop 
 ping, dropping, with each roadsweep, down through all, toward 
 it, from terrace to terrace, pasture to pasture, and then into 
 shade of vineyard and orchard, till the way is walled in on 
 either hand, and all at once you are in the narrow streets of a 
 Swiss town again ? 
 
 But not to stop. We had talked it over on the way, and 
 determined to sleep at Vernayaz ; or rather, at the Gorge du 
 Trient, half a mile or more this side ; to see the wonderful rift 
 through which the river plunges and has torn its way or 
 found it torn, nine miles through the mountain heart, and 
 hundreds of feet below the daylight, from the beautiful gloom 
 of the forest of Trient, wherein we had threaded our way among 
 such pictures as I have made faint pen-touches of. 
 
 We passed the cavern-like entrance as we crossed the little 
 bridge, and drove up to the front of the gay, new hotel. 
 
 The sky was yet bright with saffron and pink, and they told 
 us there would be time lo go up the river gallery before dusk. 
 So we quickly paid our voiturier, entered our names, and had 
 our rooms assigned without seeing them ; left our small lug 
 gage to be carried up while we were absent, and hurried away 
 again, four girls if there were two of us, into we knew 
 not what. 
 
 The mountain gateway opened black and arched above our 
 heads, and at our feet leaped forth the river.
 
 FROM ARVE TO RHONE. 247 
 
 Just inside began the railed, narrow plankway, set against the 
 rock with beams, and clamps of iron, and overhanging the deep 
 stream, ink-dark already in the shadow. 
 
 The walls of rock towered up five hundred feet, and seemed 
 to meet above and close before us. Into the darkness wound 
 the slight gallery, whose floor trembled with our own footfall, 
 and thrilled continually with the thunderous rush of the pent 
 waters. When we dared to look down, we saw white flashes of 
 foam upon the moving blackness. 
 
 We had refused a, guide, they told us there was no need, 
 and we hated guides so, when they could only show what more 
 sublimely showed itself, and we four women found ourselves 
 penetrating an under world, utterly alone. It was late to go in, 
 and few would choose the time. We met one party of three 
 persons coming out as we entered ; and after that, we were in 
 this beating heart of mountain organism, shut with its live 
 awfulness, its initial secret forces, with no other human heart 
 beat near ! 
 
 Round the projecting cragpoints where the deep rock-vein 
 bent its course, across the leaping torrent that hurled itself, 
 madly urgent, along its buried channel, the little footbridge 
 hung and swayed, and we passed on, the echoes crashing round 
 us and the wild whirl beneath our feet. 
 
 Edith was first, like a pure, fearless Una; Emery Ann was 
 next, then I, then Margaret. 
 
 Suddenly, Emery Ann sat down, and turned her face and 
 hands against the black, wet rock, and clung there, like a fright 
 ened swallow to a wall. 
 
 " It 's perfectly ridiculous," she sobbed and laughed ; " but I 
 can't go a mite farther. It 's aw ful ! " 
 
 " We won't go, then," said I, stooping to her, and fearing a 
 real hysteric. " We will go back, and come again by daylight. 
 Edith, dear!" 
 
 Edith turned. 
 
 But then cried Emery Ann, "I can't go back, neither ! 
 I 've got to see it eout ! " In her intense feeling, she relapsed 
 into her intensest New England provincialism. 
 
 I stood, and quietly waited ; only saying after a minute'a 
 pause, " We must n't be too long, you know ! "
 
 248 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 " Sure enough," said Emery Ann, rising with calm resolve 
 "As goods now as any time. But I feel as if I'd got half 
 through dyin'." 
 
 She spoke the words quite quietly, and in simple, solemn 
 earnest. 
 
 Before us, now, rounded out the " Chapel." An enlarged 
 chamber, almost domed in by the deep-scooped, overleaning 
 wall. 
 
 I wondered if it were only a name, or if ever a service had 
 been held here. What a place for a prayer to go up out of, 
 from spirits in prison of sense and sin ! How one's very soul 
 would call toward the light ! 
 
 And to say here, standing under the mountain, caught 
 as in its awful, mysterious grasp, " In His hand are all the 
 corners of the earth ; and the strength of the hills is His also ! " 
 
 " Whither shall I go from thy Spirit ? Whither shall I flee 
 from thy Presence? If I ascend up into heaven, if I descend 
 into the abyss, Thou art there ; Thou art there ! " 
 
 I had not turned until I reached midway. As these thoughts 
 pressed upon me, hiding me away as in the closet of the world, 
 there to hear speaking itself to me the Name of Him who seeth 
 in secret, and who makes all hush and depth and solitude to fill 
 them with Himself, for a moment I did not recollect my com 
 panions. 
 
 Edith and Emery Ann were walking slowly round, to where 
 the passage plunged again into an unknown, chasmy shaft. 
 
 I discovered that Margaret had not entered the Chapel. 
 
 Could anything have happened ? Could she possibly have 
 fallen ? 
 
 I called to the others to wait a moment, and rushed back. 
 
 I found her trembling in the darkness, holding by the rail, 
 looking over into the roaring press of the horrible river. I put 
 my arm round her and called her by name. She sunk down, 
 then, as Emery Ann had done, and clung to me. 
 
 " I cannot bear it," she whispered. " The weight of every 
 thing is upon us, and that is hurrying, tearing on, underneath. 
 It is ploughing down the mountain ! I think it is like all the 
 wrong of the world, and the trouble, and the judgment ! "
 
 FROM ARVE TO RHONE. 249 
 
 Some people would have told her she was nervous, and have 
 hurried her back to the daylight, and tried to make her forget 
 the mountain and the river. I could not. Like Emery Ann, 
 I felt that every syllable she said was true, but that we must 
 see the rest of it. It was too real a word to run cowardly 
 away from, to leave unfinished. 
 
 " There must be more," I said. " It is a great parable, and 
 because I feel a part of it, I am sure of the other part too. I 
 want to find it. There is not any scripture of the world that 
 ends without a gospel." 
 
 She grew a little calmer at that. If she had been made to 
 think of her own nerves only, she would not have grown calm. 
 But she still knelt and held fast by my hand. 
 
 Suddenly, I heard steps approaching. I looked back, and 
 saw dimly a man's figure moving along the gallery toward the 
 crossing where we were. 
 
 " Margaret ! get up ! there are people coming ! I don't 
 know, indeed, if we ought to stay here now." I turned and 
 beckoned to Emery Ann and Edith, who stood now just within 
 the reach of vision in the gloom. 
 
 It was a frightful place for frightful, human possibilities. I 
 was not afraid of the Lord's Word ; but why had we come in 
 without a guide ? The darkness ; the solitude ; robbery ; the 
 swift river ! I forgot, in my momentary panic, that the river ran 
 out presently into the daylight. 
 
 One can dream a long dream in an instant. 
 
 The figure came nearer. Margaret had sprung hastily to 
 her feet. My fear touched her ; the others had come up. We 
 all stood huddled together in the narrow pass. 
 
 " Is there any trouble ?" said the voice of a gentleman. 
 
 The tone was to my trepidation like the touch of a finger 
 upon a vibrating, ringing glass ; hushing it down, instantly. 
 
 A dozen steps brought him beside us. 
 
 " Thank you, no," I answered, briefly. There was no expla 
 nation that we could make to a stranger. " I think we must go 
 back, now. It was only " 
 
 " My dear Miss Strong ! Miss Margaret ! " 
 
 It was not a stranger. It was General Rushleigh.
 
 250 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 " Oh, I am so glad ! " cried I, feeling a hysterical catch in my 
 own voice at the happy revulsion. 
 
 " I guess likely we were all getting into a kind of a scare to 
 gether," said Emery Ann, with a long breath. " It 's a terrible 
 pokerish place ! " 
 
 " Now we can go," said Margaret, quietly. 
 
 " On, or out ? " asked General Eushleigh. 
 
 " Oh, on ! One must see the rest of it. It is too awful a 
 beginning to stop in. One's thought of it would never stop." 
 
 We turned in our order, as we stood, Emery Ann, Edith, 
 I ; Margaret and General Rushleigh. 
 
 I heard Margaret speak, in a low voice, as we went forward 
 through the Chapel. 
 
 " It was unendurable, just for a moment. It seemed as if I 
 felt the weight of the world, and the terribleness of some 
 thing black, and live, and awful, that rushed under it, and tore 
 it, and would never end. The whole mountain is between us 
 and the light of the sky ; even between us and the little grow 
 ing roots of grass ! " Her voice trembled again. 
 
 ' Let me pass, please," I heard General Rushleigh say. " Let 
 me go first, Miss Margaret. Now ! " 
 
 As he came next me, I turned a little, and saw him take her 
 hand, and lead her gently, like a little child. 
 
 "Yes. There is the whole mountain. But the growing 
 grass is there, above ; and the pleasant air and light. It is good 
 we can think through the mountain when we cannot see. But 
 wait ! " 
 
 We pressed into a yet intenser gloom. 
 
 We threaded a depth in which the cleft edges far above 
 seemed to meet and shut us down, as if stern lips had closed, 
 and we were swallowed. 
 
 Still, under our feet, the unseen river rended on. 
 
 Yet we did see, faintly. A light stole in, somewhere. 
 
 And presently the sound of the deep rushing changed, or 
 blent with a different voice of waters. Of waters leaping in a 
 freer air, and scattering, flashing ; the soft, foamy crush of a 
 cascade. 
 
 We Avere coming to another open, rounded space. But we 
 did not see, we could not guess, till we came into it !
 
 FROM ARVE TO RHONE. 251 
 
 The Heart of the Mountain breathed right up to Heart of 
 Heaven ! 
 
 A fair, lofty chamber, a beautiful Well; walled, indeed, 
 with jagged stone, and its confines reaching up those unscalable 
 five hundred feet. But we never thought how deep down we 
 were, for what there was above us ! Yes, and beside. 
 
 At our feet, the rocks lay broken, piled and grouped, as 
 they lie above ground, a lovely picturesqueness, a repose, 
 instead of a sheer, hopeless depth ; instead of a chasm, 
 pitilessly cleft beneath, but sealed over our heads, a chasm 
 cut upward, into heaven. Instead of the horrible Styx torrent, 
 a broadened stream, and praiseful cataracts ; white with parted 
 drops and light let in ; powdery with beautiful mist, that rose 
 and fell like dew ; singing, instead of howling. 
 
 A peace ; a gladness ; a smile, a promise, broken down and 
 in. A sweet smell of growing things ; tender little vines and 
 ferns making a green drapery from crevice to crevice, falling, 
 as the waters fell, lightly over the great rocks; swinging in the 
 pleasant sky-shine, all the way up those craggy sides. 
 
 Arching across, a lessened firmament, the bended blue. 
 In it, little clouds floating, pink and golden. As if the tiniest, 
 tenderest flecks hung over here, to be in harmony. 
 
 We had lived almost into a midnight in our thoughts, and 
 yet the sunset was not over ! 
 
 " There is a way up, from anywhere ! " said Emery Ann. 
 " Unless," she added, orthodoxly, " from the bottomless pit." 
 
 " The way from that may be even through ; and the mercy of 
 it, that it is bottomless," said General Rushleigh. " Down has 
 to be up, beyond a certain middle." 
 
 " Unless you have to hang there, and look both ways," said 
 Emery Ann. 
 
 " Until the Sabbath," said General Rushleigh. 
 
 I think no one caught the words but me. He spoke them as 
 if to himself. I wondered what he meant. 
 
 "We stood under that fair light until the flecks of cloud had 
 drunk up the sweet color, and changed slowly into gray ; and 
 the dusk fell in upon the green, growing beauty and the white 
 water-foam.
 
 252 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 " Now we must go," I said ; and once more General Rush- 
 Jeigh passed Margaret, and went first, leading us all. I think 
 he turned and took her baud again, as we reentered the now 
 thickening shadow. Margaret reached her left hand back for 
 mine, and that made me guess it. Where the path was narrow 
 est, and the roar deepest, I also felt backward for Edith, and she 
 for Emery Ann. 
 
 At last we were forth again, into free space and the quiet, 
 dropping nightfall. 
 
 How dear and safe is the roominess over the world ! 
 
 .... General Rushleigh had come down with his friend 
 toward Martigny, and they had stopped here at the Gorge. 
 He had met Mrs. Regis at Basle, and had escorted her as far 
 as Lausanne, where she now waited us. We had missed a letter 
 somehow ; probably it would follow us from Chamounix. 
 
 " I should have looked for you at Martigny," he said. " My 
 friend goes on to Chamounix, thence up the valley of the Rhone 
 and down the Vorder Rheinthal to Chur and Ragatz, where I 
 have promised to find him again. After that, we retrace each 
 other's way ; he returns northward into Germany, and I go by 
 the Rheinthal and the St. Gotthard Pass into Italy. I have 
 been before to Chamounix, and over the Simplon, but I have 
 never seen the Oberland and the Rhigi. Mine have been very 
 scrappy snatches at Europe. I came over when I was a college 
 boy ; that was in winter. Then we came again to bring my 
 sister Margaret;" he dwelt very gently upon the name, and 
 I wondered if wholly for the sister's sake ; " and my father 
 .and I were recalled by the breaking out of the war. Once 
 more I came, and spent two months in France and Northern 
 Italy, when my father's death summoned me back again." 
 
 At that mention, he paused. 
 
 I remarked, " Our own plan takes us to Interlachen, and 
 over the Wengern Alp to Lucerne and the Rhigi." 
 
 " Yes, Mrs. Regis has made me welcome to join you, if you 
 also will allow ? " 
 
 I could not tell if it were good or ill, but I could not help
 
 FROM ARVE TO RHONE. 253 
 
 being glad of it, or saying so, friendlily. Indeed, how could I 
 have helped the thing itself? 
 
 Emery Ann's mind had been upon the successive contin 
 gencies that he had spoken of. 
 
 " There seems to be a lot, almost, on your coming to Europe," 
 she said to him. " I should think you would be half expecting 
 something to happen." 
 
 " " I am learning to leave all that," he answered. " Some 
 times the thing to happen is, that nothing does." 
 
 Had he thought of anything, then, that might happen ? Had 
 he given anything up ? 
 
 " I hope it may be great pleasantness and good, this time," 
 said Margaret, in her clear tone, cordially. 
 
 Anybody might have said it ; it was a natural courtesy and 
 kindliness. She looked up at him very frankly, and there was a 
 shine of warm good-will in her beautiful womanly eyes. 
 
 His " Thank you ! " sounded like heart-thanks. 
 
 We were walking over at this time the next morning after 
 our meeting from the hotel toward the zigzag footpath that 
 had allured us from our windows, when we discovered it wind 
 ing up the steep farther half of the cloven mountain, on the side 
 beyond the Gorge. 
 
 General Rushleigh's friend had left early, for the Tete Noire 
 and Chamounix. 
 
 We had spoken of the Gorge again, of visiting it by day 
 light. General Rushleigh had seen it both by noon and dusk. 
 It had been his sudden impulse to sound it in the shadowy 
 evening time, unprofaned by the curious crowd, that had led 
 him to our meeting there. 
 
 But we felt as if that great experience, as it has come to us, 
 could never be repeated. We preferred to keep it sole, and 
 beautiful, and solemn, as it had been. 
 
 The September day, upon the valley and the heights, was 
 glorious. This cliff that we were going to climb was golden- 
 edged upon its summit with dead-ripe grass, but broken upon the 
 hither projecting face of it with clumps of shrub and jagged, 
 stony angles, among which the path crept up. Its opposite, as 
 we passed the foot below, was black with perpendicular rock,
 
 25-1 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 and heavy above with evergreens. The morning lay full upon 
 the one ; the other waited for the evening. 
 
 The two girls sprang up like kids. We elder ones saved our 
 breath, and helped ourselves along slowly with stout alpenstocks. 
 
 We met peasant women and boys, laden with brushwood, 
 coming down from turn to turn, as we mounted. The cheerful 
 " Bon jour, madame," passed from lip to lip between women 
 who had come a quarter of the way around the mid-north paral 
 lels to see these hills, and daughters of toil and narrow life who 
 of all the forms and places of the earth would never behold else, 
 touched me as it was said ; one word between human souls 
 meeting for a single instant out of an unknown, unlike past, 
 and parting into an unknown who can tell how far unlike ? 
 future. 
 
 The path led out upon the hither side the crown, which 
 seemed a sharp, sudden ridge. We rested among the low furze 
 and pine, in pleasant recessed nooks, where the dry turf made 
 cushions, or the lichened rocks cropped out and sloped away 
 beneath the soil again, offering at once bench and footstool. 
 
 Facing us as we sat, was the dark-crested other half beyond 
 the Gorge, whose rift lay invisible to us among the broken and 
 wooded outlines. 
 
 Off at the left, this summit-country which we had climbed to 
 dropped away more gently ; and among wild pastures and 
 groups of forest growth, we could see the cottages of herdsmen 
 and mountain folk. There seemed no end of beguiling winding 
 ways among the dips and swells of lofty upland, around juts of 
 gray, picturesque rock, and down evergreen glades opening 
 each from each in delicious labyrinths. In the turf beside us 
 grew tiny Alpine blossoms of gold and crimson and purple 
 color ; curious, delicate, small ferns ; the air was sweet with 
 what the sunshine drew from trees and herbage. 
 
 Edith went up toward the outer ridge. A strange, quick ex 
 clamation from her, half horror, half some beautiful amaze, inter 
 rupted our separate, silent pleasure, and impelled us to our feet 
 and toward her, with we knew not what apprehension or expec 
 tancy. 
 
 She stood upon the very verge, over which another step
 
 FROM ARVE TO RHONE. 255 
 
 would have sent her down, sheer to the mountain foot. She had 
 not imagined that it ended so ; the whole slope was so piled and 
 grouped, with ridgy rock behind rock, leaving little drops and 
 hollows between. But here was the last. Clean depth alone 
 was beyond. - Down into the valley, the way we had come in 
 last night. The road wound white, like a thread, upon the green, 
 and the Rhone lay still, like a dull moat, beyond. Behind 
 Martigny rose a great, gray pyramid, I think the Pierre a 
 voir. Northward, the peaks of the Bernese Alps. The whole 
 outspread of the intervale was directly under us, and we looked 
 across through blue air upon the giants' faces. 
 
 We exclaimed with wonder ; we pressed as close as we 
 dared ; we shrieked to each other not to go nearer. I held 
 Edith convulsively by her skirts. 
 
 " There may be safer places," said General Rushleigh. " The 
 cliff rounds out, there, at the front, a little lower." 
 
 We followed him back to where we had first gained the 
 height. 
 
 Over the swell, beside which the path had turned to run par 
 allel with this edge that we had just found out, we discovered a 
 kind of shoulder which thrust forth from the black precipice a 
 turfy slope, ending again a little down, in the plunge of rocky 
 breaks and pitches making the front projection that buttresses 
 the mountain, and walls on that' side the dark entrance, or 
 more strictly, exit, of the river gorge. 
 
 It spread out far enough ; if it had been among other gentle 
 slopes and levels, we should have thought it quite a field-space ; 
 but knowing what a little run, an unchecked impluse, a 
 slip, even, on the dry sward, upon the windswept height, 
 might bring us to, we came down over the crest upon it cau 
 tiously, and with a quiver in our limbs. 
 
 Under this edge, the keen wind was partly broken. We were 
 sheltered, where we seated ourselves, at the top of the little plat 
 eau, our backs against the rock. The air siffled gently through 
 the low grass ; the sun lay warm upon it. Away up there, in 
 the stillness, in the mid-air, it was a real eyrie of peace. 
 
 The girls got out their little pressing-books, and sketching- 
 tablets ; they laid away bits of fern and blossom to keep to re-
 
 256 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 member the day by ; they tried to pencil some outlines of what 
 they saw in that grand sky-grouping of hill-tops in their level 
 line of vision, and in the far-down picture of fields and farms 
 and rivers. 
 
 " Something to remember by ; " scraps of sketch that would 
 be- to the real whole of it what the few pressed fronds and 
 blooms were to the whole gay, sweet mountain-side on which 
 they grew. 
 
 We talk of " things to remember days by ; " it is the days, 
 after all, that we remember the poor things by. 
 
 It was such a Sabbath feeling, up there ! 
 
 It brought back to me General Rushleigh's word of the night 
 before, that I had pondered over and not understood. 
 
 As he sat there by me, the others just below our feet upon 
 the grass-slope, I could not help asking him. 
 
 " Will you tell me what you meant last night, when Emery 
 Ann spoke about the ' pit,' down there ? You said, ' until the 
 Sabbath.' " 
 
 He smiled. " I should have to make quite a little preach of 
 it," he said. 
 
 " I wish you would." 
 
 " It is not what I am much given to. Things have preached 
 to me, now and then, within these dozen years ; I hardly know 
 if I could deliver again what they have told me." 
 
 I just waited and listened. Emery Ann sat on my other side, 
 and I felt her listening too. Edith and Margaret had their 
 heads bent over their tablets, and drew faint graceful curves 
 and breaks and points, just reverently venturing, as it were, 
 to hint at the surpassing lines they saw swept and shot around 
 them into and athwart the blue. 
 
 " Some things in my own life, things in me and that hap 
 pened to me, as well as what I learned in such a rush in 
 those tremendous war-years, brought me to the question 
 that I suppose everybody has to meet ; the evil-question. The 
 pit of wrong the world falls into. And I believe the first com 
 fort I got out of it was a strange meaning I seemed to see sud 
 denly in words that have been taken to mean hopelessness. 
 All at once I said to myself, or somebody said in my in-
 
 FROM ARVE TO RHONE. 257 
 
 ward hearing, 'I am glad the pit is bottomless ! It can't 
 hold : men can't stay fallen ! ' ' 
 
 I felt the gladness come into my face at that grand thought. 
 I lifted it quickly to his, and perhaps that prompted him to go 
 on. He seemed not anxious to discuss at large what was so 
 real to him ; it came slowly. I was so afraid he would stop. 
 He did pause for a moment, though he saw me waiting eagerly. 
 
 " Did it ever come to your mind," he began again, and 
 while he spoke he stirred and traced the earth in a little rock- 
 hollow beside him with the point of his stick, in a way of me 
 chanical motion people have when what they say is not cut and 
 dried before, but comes to them as they speak, " did it ever 
 occur to you that Jesus Christ only speaks that word ' pit,' 
 which stands for a continual image of destruction in the old 
 Scripture, once in the course of what makes the New ? And 
 that once to say, ' If a man have a sheep, and it fall into a 
 pit, will he not lay hold of it and pull it out on the Sabbath- 
 day ? ' I quote it not exactly, but with the drift of the two 
 records of it." 
 
 He stopped again. He might converse ; he evidently would 
 not preach. 
 
 I said, "I never thought particularly about the ' pit ; ' it 
 was the healing on the Sabbath." 
 
 " Exactly. The healing of the Sabbath, the Sabbath made 
 for man. It set me to thinking that out. And I found a pur 
 pose, I thought, in the Sabbath-cures. They were signs of the 
 covenant, of which the Sabbath itself was a sign. He put 
 the two together. He never did anything insignificantly." 
 
 He left me to perceive for myself; to speak my perception, 
 if I would. 
 
 Letting my eyes fall on something, in that mechanical watch 
 ing with which he had followed his stick, I found the something 
 was Margaret's pencil ; and that she had turned it point up 
 ward, and was pressing it with little gyrations, back and forth 
 idly upon the paper. 
 
 " ' A sign between me and you, in all your generations,' " I 
 repeated. " Is not that it ? I wish I had a Bible here." 
 
 "That is it," said General Rushleigh. "And this more: 
 17
 
 258 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 1 that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you.' 
 And ' sanctify,' I take it, is ' sanify.' They stand related like 
 ' whole ' and ' holy.' It is the Redemption Promise. ' Shall 
 not a man be made every whit whole on the Sabbath-day ? ' ' 
 
 " That is beautiful etymology ! " 
 
 " It is in the words, I think, literally and simply. ' San-cire,' 
 to name, to declare, to establish sound, sane, inviolable ; 
 hence, sacred." 
 
 " But the keeping of the Sabbath ? The rest ? ' 
 
 "Is not rest, restoring? 'In returning and rest, ye shall be 
 saved.' " 
 
 " Oh, I see ! " I cried, gladly. " The two parts of the sign ; 
 the Divine, the human. ' He that hath entered into his rest, 
 hath ceased from his own works, as the Lord did from his ! ' ' 
 
 " Every seventh day : every seventh year : every seventh time 
 seven, the jubilee of restoration. Thejobel; the horn of proc 
 lamation ; ' He hath raised up a horn of salvation for us.' It 
 is wonderful how they crowd together, Miss Patience ! " 
 
 " The repeated days," I said, softly ; " the recurring years ! 
 It is like the seventy times seven of forgiveness." The crown 
 ing Scriptures of it hurried through my thought to my lips. 
 " ' The times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord ; ' ' for 
 He cometh, He cometh, to judge the earth.' He never leaves 
 off coming ; his days return, and return." 
 
 " We believe it," said General Rushleigh, " or else we could 
 not live in this land of pitfalls. We are sure that there is no 
 depth over which, some time, the Sabbath shall not shine ; as 
 that beautiful little heaven shone down into the mountain." 
 
 " His hand is not shortened, that He should not make it 
 come. ' The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.' It 
 does not matter with which word we start; we come round 
 always to the same gospel." 
 
 I was filled full of joy ; I did not want to hear, or say, more ; 
 I rested in the gladness silently, as we sat resting in the blessed 
 Bunshine. 
 
 General Rushleigh rose, and moved a few paces forward. 
 
 Margaret turned her face back toward me. The color of it 
 was beautiful. The suffused intenseness of her eyes and the
 
 FROM ARVE TO RHONE. 259 
 
 passion-curve of her lip were a visible overflow of springs 
 touched inwardly. She resumed her first posture quickly, 
 sensitive even of sympathy. At the same moment General 
 Rushleigh turned also, and I saw his seeing of her look. I do 
 not know if their eyes met. I think not, by the brief, but cer 
 tain lingering of his. 
 
 " It is like the sea-shore ! " said Edith, putting by her sketch 
 book and pencils. " Only the ocean is air, and we look down 
 into the bed of it. I must try what caves there are under that 
 edge ! " 
 
 I entreated her not to move rashly. But General Rushleigh, 
 who had been standing, and had seen farther, assured me that 
 one might safely descend over this first brink. 
 
 He took Edith by the hand, and planted his alpenstock firmly 
 in the turf. They went down to what seemed to me the very 
 rim of the precipice. Then I saw him step over, and descend 
 until only his head and shoulders were visible. Edith stooped, 
 sat down upon the sward, gave her hands to him, and disap 
 peared. In a moment he came back to us. 
 
 " She has sent for you, Miss Margaret. She has found a 
 wonderful nest." 
 
 " I don't know why I let them go," I said to Emery Ann, 
 astonished at myself, as he and Margaret, in turn, dropped down 
 out of our sight. 
 
 " I do," said Emery Ann. " I 'd let 'em go with that man 
 into perdition forzino ! I 'd go myself ! Because I should 
 know it would n't be there, if he was ! " 
 
 When they did not come back for ten minutes, Emery Ann 
 and I also picked up our sticks, joined hands, and walked cau 
 tiously down to the edge. 
 
 It was, as Edith had said, just like a cranny of a shore. It 
 had been a shore, once, perhaps. Some time or other, great 
 floods, great ice-streams, may be, had hollowed and ground 
 *.he cliff into clefts and caves. One descended into another, by 
 huge, overlapping fragments and projections like irregular steps 
 and terraces. In beneath, were sheltered nooks, where one 
 could sit, like a sea-bird, and look straight forth into blue air.
 
 260 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 They were not far down. General Rushleigh was standing, 
 and his head rose above the next step of the rock. He heard 
 our voices, and turned, saying, u Do not come farther, until I 
 help you ! " And he was about to climb up again. But we 
 begged him not. We said we would stay where we were, and 
 seated ourselves on a nice triangular shelf protected at each side 
 by rising cliff. 
 
 Well there is n't a word more to tell you of it ! If you 
 can feel yourself there with us, nested in the mountain-face, 
 you know all that I could go on to say of the hour or there 
 abouts, that we spent there. 
 
 So still it was ! 
 
 I do not think the others, below, were talking much ; though 
 a pleasant tone now and then floated up to our hearing. I just 
 said to Emery Ann, as we settled ourselves snugly, " Now 
 we won't interrupt each other ! " 
 
 " No," replied that straightforward person ;' " let us hold our 
 tongues ! " 
 
 I wanted to tell her how that sounded to me ; but I would 
 not say another syllable. It made me think, for the common, 
 rough word was spoken more with the subduedness of " let us 
 hush ourselves," of the minister in the pulpit saying " Let us 
 pray ! " 
 
 By and by it was one o'clock. There were letters to write, 
 and we must get something to eat. So we came down the 
 mountain. 
 
 " I have had such a happy day ! " Margaret said to me that 
 night, as she kissed me at the door of my room. " I think 
 friends are the very riches of life ! We can only have just so 
 many blood-relations, that we are born to, you know ; and we 
 can only choose one person to relate ourselves to. But 
 we can be finding friends always. I am so glad I have known 
 you, Miss Patience ! " 
 
 We had telegraphed early in the morning to Mrs. Regis, at 
 Lausanne, that we would come round by next day's train. She 
 telegraphed back at evening that she would meet us at the sta 
 tion there, and go on to Interlacheu. 
 
 We were glad not to lose a day.
 
 INCIDENT. 261 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 INCIDENT. 
 
 .... WE drove to St. Maurice early, in an open carriage, 
 General Rushleigh sitting on the box with the driver. On the 
 same side with the Gorge, we passed at our left the waterfall of 
 the Sallenche, with its lovely white rush out of the heart of the 
 rock, streaming down till its particles thin almost into invisibil 
 ity before it touches the valley below ; a spring of two hundred 
 feet, of the torrent that comes down from the glaciers of the 
 Dent du Midi. You remember the Dent du Midi, that I told 
 you of as we saw it, the first ice-mountain at all near, from 
 the terraces at Glion ? Now we were winding back around its 
 base toward the point we started from. 
 
 The railway, which we took at St. Maurice, crosses the gray 
 Rhone, runs down the valley between its mountain lines, 
 threads deep, beautiful forest glens and gorges, and at . last 
 curves around the end of the Lake, bringing us to Chillon, 
 Montreux, Vevay, again. 
 
 "We looked up at our old home at Glion, for it really 
 seemed like that, and we like wanderers of years in a mysteri 
 ous enchanted land, as we found ourselves gliding under the 
 shadow of its mountain, and recognized our own windows in 
 the front of its " pension ; " high up on the midway plateau. 
 
 In the two or three hours of our journey, I was beside tak 
 ing in the pleasure of the way reading to myself a sort of in 
 ward chapter of the little history in which I found myself living. 
 
 Not very much happens outside, after all, from point to point 
 of real stories. Book narratives are full of accident. Life is 
 fuller of incident. I do not think we ought to hold the words 
 synonymous. If we do, we want another word, to express the
 
 262 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 happenings in. That which comes in or upon us, our 
 very selves, is more, and more continual, than the things 
 which arrive to us, from without. 
 
 We were having no adventures, beyond the beautiful advent 
 ure we came for, and dimly anticipated. Nobody had been in 
 peril, or awkwardness, or anyway strangely or excitingly placed, 
 in regard to any other. But within this regularity of circum 
 stance in the midst of all wild possibilities which a professional 
 perception of tale-writer or tale-reader would seize upon 
 with an instinct of inevitable " sensations," there was steadily 
 finding its hidden way a life-evolvement more subtle, more truly 
 absorbing in its interest, to the perception that could trace it 
 from its here and there discovery, than any tangle of rapid fic 
 tion-movement made by shaking at will the fairy-purse of oc 
 currence. 
 
 I put this and that talk together that I had had with Mar 
 garet. 
 
 I remembered her brief sentence that day at the Royal Acad 
 emy Exhibition in London, when I had asked her if it would be 
 true enough for a man to marry a girl only to keep his promise. 
 And she had answered, with words like shot, '' He might do 
 a meaner thing ! " 
 
 Those words had haunted my memory, with their impulse of 
 bitterness. 
 
 Then had followed her beginning of confidence with me at 
 Dover ; when she had said those odd things about Jacob and 
 Rachel ; and burst out upon herself suddenly for talking " hate 
 fully ; " then her rest in the resolve to do nothing except as she 
 was certain sure of truth ; and last, so lately, the showing of her 
 letters to me, and her almost happy hopefulness at Harry's ac 
 quiescence, even, that she should " break the crumbs " for him ! 
 Her sudden faith in the secret of life and sympathy that she had 
 discovered ; that it was not so much people's finding wholly in 
 each other, as finding joyfully together. They would come to 
 things, and to help in understanding them, and they would bring 
 all to one another. 
 
 And now, last evening, " friends were the best things ; 
 the very riches of life ! "
 
 INCIDENT. 263 
 
 What could I have said, when she only followed that with, 
 " I am so glad I have known you, Miss Patience ! " 
 
 Truly a friend is the best thing ; should it not therefore be 
 the nearest ? Ought I not to have said that to her ? 
 
 No ; for it only came to me afterward. I will not take 
 thought for what I should have spoken. 
 
 If Harry Mackenzie were waiting for her with a deliberate 
 calculating selfishness, that would be the " meaner thing " that 
 would have made it to be all over with her regard. That was 
 the half glimpse that thrust itself, shadowly, upon her, and made 
 her recoil like some high-spirited, shying creature. Then she 
 looked deeper, she thought, and found his fault to be but the 
 other, boyish careless one, that he did not calculate at all ; that 
 he just drifted on, letting life shape itself for him. And she 
 " could not love a boy, always." 
 
 Saying the true thing to him, giving him her own best 
 large piece of living as it came to her, she had touched, it 
 seemed to her, though ever so lightly, the spring of a true living 
 in him ; and " Barkis was willin' ! " 
 
 Ah, dear, unfellowed soothsayer, whose sooth sharpens its 
 finest point with fun, how far did you see after your own 
 cunning probing, or how far did you reach into life only by that 
 instinct of things which discerning, keenly, one quick thread and 
 following it, cannot run amiss of all it parallels ? 
 
 So she was letting herself be happy, fancying herself quite 
 'x>ntent ; perhaps truly growing so, who knows ? Holding her 
 self steadfast, and making herself rich, gladly, that she might 
 turn and bestow her riches again. Would there be seven years 
 of this rare compound interest, also, laying up for him ? How 
 could his two hands his boy's hands hold it, when it should 
 be all poured in ? 
 
 Can people put heart and soul at interest so, and not have 
 the bank break, sometimes, as money banks do ? 
 
 There are women, I know, in whom ordinary, narrowing pas 
 sion is the last thing that wakes ; to whom the first interest in 
 life comes in the vision of its true interest ; who are happy 
 ind happy only if they can grasp its best theory, and assure 
 'hemselves that Jhey are following its right meanings.
 
 264 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Does passion, therefore, wake in them the more fiercely and 
 fatally if it come late after obstacle or mistake ? 
 
 I do not believe it, necessarily ; for such an organization will 
 only be satisfied then, with high denial. 
 
 It is they who make selfish obstacle, in vain hurry, who wake 
 afterward as they fancy, to their "deeper nature," which is 
 truly but their deeper selfishness. 
 
 Margaret sat quite happy, radiantly content, this morning, 
 between her " friends " ; side by side with Edith and General 
 Rushleigh ; face to face with me, whom I am sure she loves. 
 Yes, and Emery Ann, also ; the plain, good woman commends 
 herself to Margaret's own strong, original, honest nature ; her 
 Yankee-brightness, too, matches pleasantly the young girl's more 
 cultured quaintness. 
 
 Mrs. Regis was on the platform at Lausanne. There was a 
 general, warm greeting. Companion's faces are good in these 
 lands where human creatures are only " foreigners." 
 
 I had been tracing the hidden thread of one experience ; of 
 this other, in the same meanwhile, what was I to know ? 
 
 The road turned away, upward, from the Lake ; climbing the 
 hills, and traversing high table-lands among them toward Bern. 
 "We dined there, and waited for the train to Thun. 
 
 We were sorry not to stay ; it seems dreadful to say that we 
 saw, at least Emery Ann and I, really nothing of this 
 lovely old town and the scenery it commands ; but we were 
 very tired, and somebody must stay by " the things." 
 
 The others walked out with General Rushleigh, and came 
 back in an aggravation of delight. The old buildings, the 
 arcades, the bears, the Alp-tips that blaze up in the twilight 
 with the wonderful " Alp-gliinen," " Why, one could stay here 
 weeks ! " cried Edith, telling them over. 
 
 " Yes," said Emery Ann placidly, strapping her shawl, " and 
 then again, one could n't ! " 
 
 " We'll go into the Alp-glow," I said, consolingly. 
 
 At Thun, we stepped on board the little steamer that runs 
 down to Spiez, and connects ;with the train to Interlachen. It 
 rained hard ; we had met the fogs on the way^ we sat on the
 
 INCIDENT. 265 
 
 deck in waterproofs, under a dripping awning, and saw the mists 
 surge about us where we knew were the great, invisible " Horns " 
 of many prefixes ; where, again, were the peaks of the Eiger 
 and the Monch, and the solemn whiteness of the Jungfrau. 
 Nothing of all could we discern, though they were all about us ; 
 nothing but the darkening water and the rushing vapor and the 
 blind wall of the rain. But we could wait; we were going 
 among them. 
 
 We had to descend into the close little cabin, as the evening 
 came on ; it was wholly dark when we arrived at Spiez ; we 
 followed the line of wet and weary passengers that trailed on 
 shore and into the railway carriages ; we found ourselves in a 
 beautiful new car, brilliantly adorned, and with a second story, 
 reached by a spiral stair, where in pleasant weather people may 
 ride in the open air, and look up among the mountains whose 
 dark sides and overhanging forests, deeper-outlined in the murky 
 shadows, we were just conscious of as we rushed along. 
 
 General Rushleigh took the nicest, kindest care of us. Hav 
 ing him, we found that we could not have got on without him ; 
 one discovers that, by having, in many things. And it is true ; 
 it is not the velvet sense that comes of super-comfort ; the 
 providing and the necessity arise together. We women had 
 managed splendidly alone ; we should have managed, somehow, 
 here ; but the managing is, after all, very much the finding 
 things managed. Jack Horner was a great boy ; mankind does 
 wonders with terrestrial material ; but the plum was in the pud 
 ding all the same, or it would n't have come to anybody's thumb. 
 I think I grow more and more meekly conscious, as I live on, 
 that the right thing waits at nearly every turn, and that " get 
 ting through the world," which people are apt to speak of as if 
 they had pioneered it, is simply finding the world, even each 
 one's particular sphere of circumstance, abundantly well laid 
 out and engineered already. There is no wilderness without its 
 blaze and trail. 
 
 " What should we have done, if it had not been for this or 
 that ? " we say. I cannot parse that sentence to save my life ; 
 but I suppose it means, " if this or that had not been for it" 
 And they always are.
 
 266 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 We went to the Hotel Jungfrau. 
 
 Crowds of people again, a great, magnificent caravanserai ; 
 brilliant table d'hote ; long bills of fare, and delicate courses. 
 A whole street of the like public houses ; shops ; gay prome 
 nades ; a green valley-basin made into a gay square with park 
 walks, on which face villas and pensions ; dress, show, watering- 
 place gossip, idleness, and the rest, just as at Saratoga or any 
 where else where people have spoiled things ; the pure, distant 
 Jungfrau looking in with a pale scorn, beckoning motionlessly. 
 This was Interlachen. 
 
 We had to spend the Sunday there. And we were glad to get 
 away on. Monday morning.
 
 MISTS; AND SIGNS. 267 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 MISTS; AND SIGNS. 
 
 .... Two carriages again. Mrs. Regis, Margaret, General 
 Rushleigh, in one ; Emery Ann, Edith, and I, in the other. 
 
 An uncertain morning, lovely in uncertainty, like that in 
 which we went up the Flegere from Chamounix. 
 
 The velvet green of near hills, the sombre richness of ever 
 green heights, the smile and shine of brook and meadow, the 
 flush of orchards, all brilliant with the wet of undried rains and 
 the flashing struggle of coming sunlight, these made up the 
 picture-scene into which we went forth rejoicing toward the val 
 ley of " nothing but springs." 
 
 A great cliff, just like a giant tower, stands at its opening. 
 Battlements, turrets, broken masonry, are all outlined as if 
 shaped by human hands and then softened by ages of beautiful 
 decay. Tender vines sway from its crevices, and creep about 
 its summits. It glooms with a great shadow over the far-down 
 roadway. You wind under its foot, and pass in, as by some un 
 spoken countersign, to the sweet depths beyond. 
 
 There, green Alps rise up, whose mighty slopes stretch high 
 on either hand as you go, with shelf after shelf of soft, bright 
 pasture, swell beyond swell of tenderest, most glowing verdancy, 
 until crowns of forest meet the clouds. Hamlets sprinkled over 
 their terraces herds feeding on their vast bosoms innumer 
 able water-courses springing out of their clefts and falling down 
 down, down, meeting and mingling, dripping, glittering, 
 shattering in mist ; here an outbreak of rock, there a piece of 
 felled woodland, with huge trunks lying like Titan jackstraws, 
 among which stand the woodmen's cottages ; a whole world of 
 wild, delicious life and surrounding, leaned up on edge, as it 
 were for you to see the whole of!
 
 268 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Again, you find yourself between unbroken splendors of green 
 and silver, where the whole mountains are brilliant with vivid, 
 soft color, like velvet heaped sumptuously in its own heavy 
 folds, between which drop the water-loops and fringes, as if the 
 great Queen Nature sat somewhere upon her throne, below 
 which you could only look up at the robe of her, gathered royal- 
 rich about her, and ribboned with white-streaming cataracts. 
 
 " I wish it would n't come into my head," said Emery Ann, 
 just as I was not quite thinking, but feeling out, this likeness. 
 
 I put the indispensable monosyllable of question : " What ? " 
 
 " The thing it looks like. A woman's gown, hunched up 
 fashionable, and trimmed and sashed. It 's ridiculous ! " 
 
 " Why not think the other looks like this ? As even foolish 
 ness has to look like something real, and nothing with a grace 
 in it is ever done first in millinery ? " 
 
 " They never came here to get it, though," said Emery Ann, 
 morosely. 
 
 " They did n't know where they got it. But it was some 
 where, or the fancy of it never would have come into their de 
 signs. Can't you feel more patience with the fashions, finding 
 there 's a real idea behind them ? " 
 
 " No, they 've no business to spoil with a nonsense, they don't 
 know what. It 's graven images." And Emery Ann sat back 
 into her corner and shut her eyes. 
 
 Not for long, though. Having entered her protest, and ab 
 stracted herself from the displeasing suggestion of that which had 
 profaned it beforehand, she came back into the irresistible beauty, 
 and gazed up into the heart of it, with a half rapt, half deter 
 mined look upon her face, as if she had cast Satan behind her, 
 and would keep him there, by sheer straining into the angelic 
 vision. 
 
 I would not interrupt her then ; but I told her of it afterward. 
 
 " I presume likely I did," she answered. " You can choke 
 down the hiccups, and get your regular breath again ; and you 
 can stop thinking, and go off into a heavenly sleep. You can 
 put anything out of your mind, that you have a mind to, and 
 let the other thing come in ! " 
 
 " Oh, look there ! " cried Edith. " There is the. Dust-Brook, 
 that comes down a thousand feet!
 
 MISTS; AND SIGNS. 269 
 
 It was away forward, at the right. We were just turning 
 from the road. It was a flash from the mountain face, a 
 down-pour of white-light, a shimmer into fine sparkles, a 
 melting into nothing, hundreds of feet before it reached the 
 ground. It never did reach it, altogether. It floated away, 
 everywhere, upon the air. The invisible drops of it were upon 
 our own faces. It was the Staubbach. 
 
 At the same moment, we had all turned in at the little inn 
 yard of the hostelry that takes its name. 
 
 Here was where we should get horses and guides to go over 
 the Wengern Alp. 
 
 We sat in the baptism of the far, unpalpable spray, and looked 
 at the lovely torrent, while the men got the beasts and saddles 
 ready. 
 
 I don't know, now, why we all took to the saddle without a 
 question ; perhaps because we perceived no hint or indication of 
 other mode ; perhaps we took for granted that the Wengern 
 Alp could only be done on horseback ; or Emery Ann and I 
 were fired by some inexplicable youthful ardor, which impelled 
 us this day to do as others did. I do not know, even, if we 
 could have had chairs if we had wished for them. All I do 
 know is that we found ourselves lifted up into the roomy railed 
 seats which we fancied would be like chairs on horseback ; never 
 calculating that the very -roominess, as roominess is sometimes, 
 when one cannot keep an exact point of balance in the midst of 
 whatever margin, might be rather a snare and a distress than 
 a well-being ; and that while our chief guide and General Rush- 
 leigh carefully looked to girths and stirrups, we settled our skirts 
 and picked up our bridles without a word, and were presently 
 moving after the others with that strange feeling which the un 
 accustomed rider has, of being mounted on an earthquake, that 
 might topple one off with the next heave, or part its wave in the 
 middle and swallow one down. 
 
 We descended behind the village, into the low ravine among 
 the little watermills and the barns, and emerged upon the ragged 
 hillside where begins the path across the vast mountain. 
 
 Mrs. Regis looked almost like a girl this morning, in her
 
 270 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 purple-dark dress, neat-fitting her perfect figure, her little trav 
 eling hat with its line of white crimped border under the brim, 
 and its plain folded bands of heavy silk knotted at the back and 
 falling into one broad loop and end, her color fresh with 
 pleasure and the mountain air, and a kind of smile-break light 
 ening her face, such as ordinarily lights a woman's face but one 
 short, early time of her life, before it fulfills its half foretelling in 
 a declared sunshine, or fades beneath the dropping over of the 
 grayness that is to be her sober day. 
 
 She rode first along the narrow way, which could only be 
 traversed singly, the chief guide leading her horse; then 
 came General Rushleigh, then Margaret, Emery Ann, Edith 
 and I. Three men walked beside us, one of whom held my 
 bridle, as being last, and the other two were near the other 
 horses' heads, ready with a hand as it might be wanted. 
 
 We came to the ascent that realizes the first great height 
 above the valley. 
 
 I do not know how Emery Ann felt in this beginning of our 
 progress ; but I know the awful misgivings that thrilled my 
 own mind, and by them I could understand what happened 
 shortly afterward to her. 
 
 I should never keep on the saddle, I was drifting helplessly 
 about in it, and was as likely to drift off as any way ; the saddle 
 would never keep on the horse, I thought I felt it twisting 
 and slipping as the creature strained and scrambled up the 
 broken track ; the horse himself would never keep on the path 
 along those dizzy verges ! 
 
 A terrible riot got possession of my nerves ; could I endure 
 this all day ? Could I endure it another minute ? What was 
 that corner out there the end of? 
 
 We found ourselves creeping along a brink toward a sharp 
 turn whose angle seemed to project sheer into space. Mrs. 
 Regis's horse passed it, and went I could not see, nor argue 
 where. 
 
 Would there be more of this ? Would there be worse ? 
 
 I was ready to shriek out ; to say it was too frightful, too 
 impossible for me ; but how could I turn back the whole party ? 
 And if I did, what then ?
 
 MISTS; AND SIGNS. 271 
 
 While I struggled and suffered, Emery Ann did it. 
 
 " I don't care ! I can't ! It don't signify ! " she cried, sud 
 denly, and dropped her bridle, clinging to the saddle-rail in pure 
 panic. 
 
 Her horse stopped. One of the men took the bridle, but 
 the others before her stopped also, to see what was the matter, 
 and to soothe her. Edith's horse, checked so suddenly in his 
 trained following, backed a step. My man sprang forward and 
 seized him. 
 
 There was space enough for me, for I was some paces be 
 hind, and I suppose I was safe ; but if our little party had been 
 Pharaoh's host, floundering suddenly in the Red Sea, I should 
 not have felt that doom any nearer than my excited fancy felt 
 this. If a horse jogging innocently out of an inn-yard, is a live 
 earthquake, what do four horses seem like, haunch above head, 
 on a steep mountain path, all halted and huddled, and stepping 
 bewilderedly together in narrow perilous space ? 
 
 And there was peril, though I was, for the moment, just out 
 side of it. 
 
 The guides shouted in French, to hold the path ; to let the 
 horses follow ; they had not the custom to be turned ! For, 
 actually, Margaret and General Rushleigh were trying to come 
 back to us ! 
 
 " We will give it up," I heard Margaret say, gently, " if you 
 are frightened." 
 
 And at that instant something crumbled, rolled ; there was a 
 Swiss execration ; a man and horse scrambling together ; a 
 second of time in which I hardly knew what happened. 
 
 I saw the hind hoofs of her horse just grasping the very edge ; 
 I heard one word from General Rushleigh, " Margaret ! " 
 And then the guide had dragged the animal forward, angrily 
 ordering General Rushleigh to proceed ; and, silenced by the 
 real horror, helpless in the environment of danger, we gave our 
 selves up to what must be, and were led around the cragged 
 
 L OO 
 
 point, the Rubicon of our undertaking. 
 
 Up above, we found ourselves within ramparts, as it were ; 
 the path receding from the edge, and bolstered on either hand 
 by irregular knaps and bosses of the mountain, among which 
 we felt sheltered and comforted.
 
 272 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Mrs. Regis was waiting, wondering. Her guide had turned 
 to come to us ; but our whole panic and its hazard had been 
 the thing of scarcely more than a moment, and he did not reach 
 the turn before we appeared. 
 
 Emery Ann said not a word. She was horribly pained and 
 ashamed at what she had done ; and until we came out upon 
 something like an open moorland space, nobody ventured to 
 infringe upon the order of pur marshaling, or to check the 
 movement of our little file. 
 
 But, as we wound away, over what seemed a great globe-sur 
 face of the upheaved mass, almost level in its largeness, and 
 there was room for breasting or grouping, General Rushleigh 
 dropped back beside Emery Ann. 
 
 " Don't speak to me, General," I heard her say. " I can't 
 make up my mind yet, to speak to myself." 
 
 " My dear Miss Tudor ! Do you think a soldier does n't know 
 what a scare is ? " 
 
 Emery Ann looked up at him. " I thought it was just ex 
 actly his business not to know," she said. 
 
 " On the contrary, it is his very first business to get a scare, 
 and bis second to stand it. You have done both ; you have 
 fairly entered on your campaign." 
 
 " And a pretty one it might have been ! " was all she vouch 
 safed of relenting to herself. 
 
 " That was our business. We were the leaders. We ought 
 to have known better." 
 
 " Um ! " said Emery Ann. 
 
 " Is that saddle comfortable ? " inquired he. " Is the horse 
 tolerably easy ? " 
 
 " I suppose so," said Emery Ann. " But then I 'm like the 
 old woman in the railroad collision who thought that was the 
 way the cars always stopped. I presume there are saddles and 
 horses in the world that are easier. But this is the one I 've 
 got to go on. I can put up with that." 
 
 He looked doubtful. But he saw that she had regained an 
 equilibrium of confidence, and he knew that all other depended 
 upon that. He would not disturb it. He began talking with 
 her of the wonder and beauty of the view, which I just recol 
 lect, Rose, I am not giving you at all.
 
 MISTS; AND SIGNS. 273 
 
 We were climbing up into what we had seen from below. 
 We were among those grand folds and convolutions of the 
 mountain shape, and leaving beneath us, lovely in the far 
 depth and the wide, including vision, the valley and the little 
 river, the village, the upper hamlets, the rich green pastures, the 
 waterfalls, the clearings and the lumber heaps ; and above us, in 
 broken glimpses, "for the mists were still hanging more or less 
 heavily among them, we were coming upon the bare, uplifted 
 majesties of the changeless peaks. 
 
 Away, away down, across the Lauterbrunnen, hung the little 
 silver thread of the Staubbach against the cliff. 
 
 Just above us was the spread of the Alp-mass we traversed, 
 broken in great waves of turfy ground or lichened rock ; hav 
 ing, when the dropping vapors shut away the encircling sum 
 mits, its own hemisphere and horizon like a separate world. I 
 keep repeating this. I shall say it again presently. Nothing 
 else gives any word or image of meaning for these Alpine 
 heights and breadths and solitudes. 
 
 We rode through a pleasant fir-wood. General Rushleigh 
 was by Mrs. Regis, now. He had not spoken to Margaret 
 more than half a dozen words, of kind, courteous inquiry, 
 since he uttered that one irrepressible exclamation of her un 
 prefaced name. He did not apologize for that, or allude to itnn 
 any way. It was perfect gentlemanly breeding in him; the 
 excuse was patent of itself; to offer another would be the lib 
 erty. But I wondered if that were all. 
 
 I don't suppose I know much about a man's nature ; but per 
 haps what a woman would feel in a man's a gentle man's 
 place, is not far from it. 
 
 I think, if I had been General Rushleigh, and had said the 
 name of a girl that way, and the girl was Margaret Regis, I 
 should have found out something of myself in the saying it, or 
 directly after, when I came to think. I should have found my 
 self face to face with a thought of her in my secret mind, which 
 took no preface or ceremony ; and if my unconventionalism dis 
 turbed me for a moment as a thing to be accounted for or par 
 doned, it would only be to reveal to me by the unwarrant, how 
 strangely sweet the warrant might be. And the fine tact of my 
 18
 
 274 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 silence would have been the fine counterpart of my uttered im 
 pulse. 
 
 But, then, I was not General Rushleigh ; and he may have 
 been thinking of no such thing. 
 
 I fancied in all his intercourse now, with Margaret, he re 
 membered to his restraint or his protection the half show 
 ing he had had of her position ; he did not let himself regard 
 her as quite free to his approach. This threw him, now that 
 our party was reunited, a good deal with her mother. 
 
 Or, did I take cause for consequence ? Was it the friendship 
 and attraction of Mrs. Regis, after all, into whose circle, merely, 
 Margaret came, and as her child, had come to be "Margaret" in 
 his thought ? 
 
 Things have to be very plain to me, before I can cease to see 
 two possible aspects of them ; and the more one look is the look 
 I might rejoice in, the more the other thrusts itself, like some 
 distorted vraisemblance, upon my recognition. 
 
 Margaret had the demeanor, to-day, of what I can only call a 
 beautiful virgin content. 
 
 There was a soft glow that had come in eyes and face, after 
 that dangerous moment, and the involuntary expression of Gen 
 eral Rushleigh's solicitude that it called forth ; there was a 
 gentle silence mating his, and asking no word of him to take 
 back or explain a word that wanted, neither, anything different 
 or more to follow. Not even that itself should ever be re 
 peated. 
 
 A girl lingers so much longer than a man in the lovely gates 
 of friendship, before she finds to what wonderful temple they 
 open. And if Margaret thought this was friendship, and that 
 other love, no wonder at the pure exultation with which she had 
 said, that "friends were best of all." No wonder she counted 
 them for the joint riches of Harry's life and hers that was to bo 
 lived together. 
 
 Only, she did not know, and who could tell her ? that that 
 life once begun, it would bind her to its own track, from which 
 all other certain companionship must fall loose, or drift and 
 speed away on its different line and groove ; that a woman who 
 has a husband will find, if she is a nobly honest wife, that she
 
 MISTS; AND SIGNS. 275 
 
 cannot have any other man-friend of year out and year in ; there 
 can be for her, thenceforth, only one having and holding. The 
 rest, though they be companionships of the kingdom of heaven, 
 must stand apart, must pass and not linger, till the king 
 dom of heaven shall come. 
 
 We followed the bridle-path, which seemed also a kind of 
 pasture track, up and along the immense upreaching bluffs and 
 downs ; the fine vapor lay around us, a little way off always, 
 except at our right, where rose the Jungfrau, to us invisible. 
 Here it seemed gathered in the great abyss between us and the 
 mountain, and to creep close against our path, rolled over upon 
 the lesser Alp as the tide surges upon a rock. Behind the mys 
 tery of it, we heard the voice of the avalanches, a dull, thun 
 derous roar, uttering its arcana in the unseen. 
 
 I shall never know now how the Jungfrau would have looked, 
 face to face, in her unclouded queenliness. But I shall always 
 know what I felt near me. nearer, doubtless, than my eyes 
 would have made it, behind that throbbing, swaying curtain 
 of gray mist. 
 
 People have said to me since, when I have told them that we 
 crossed the Wengern Alp and never saw the Jungfrau : " Oh, 
 what a horrible disappointment ! What an irreparable loss ! " I 
 did not feel it quite like a disappointment. It seemed to me 
 that I was profoundly conscious of that tremendous vicinity, 
 and should have been so if I had not been told of it ; as one is 
 conscious, in tho dark, of a human presence, or knows by some 
 fine, unlistened sound, some untraced difference of air-pulsations, 
 the nearness ot a large body to the touch. 
 
 It was the feeling of the worlds again. As if one could stand 
 on the palpable convex of the globe, and see another huge convex 
 float over against it with a mere blue crevasse of space between. 
 This was what I half imagined I should behold if that veil had 
 lifted ; but the white apparition might have drawn itself back 
 into a different, remoter attitude, and defined itself clearly into 
 just a very grand and lofty ice mountain, with glittering peaks 
 and spreading base, planted upon the same earth I stood on, and 
 rising up into the one small sky. 
 
 " I would not give up what I can think about it," I said to
 
 276 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 General Rushleigh, when he spoke his regret to me, for our sakea 
 who had endured so much to get here, "I would not give the 
 feeling of it up, just over there, hark!" A great ava 
 lanche boomed into the silence. " For any seeing that would 
 place and limit it." 
 
 " And yet if that fog would only break a little for one 
 moment ! " said Margaret. 
 
 " Yes. That ;s what we all say," I answered her. 
 
 Only those gentle, shifting vapors, that might breal? any 
 moment ! Only that little space, across which we could feel the 
 Something, real vast, close ! And from behind the cloud that 
 brooded between us, touching both, those deep thrills of sound, 
 felt more than heard, as when an organ trembles in a church. 
 
 I never thought of being disappointed. I only waited, for 
 what I knew was there. 
 
 We turned at right angles upon the culminating ridge of the 
 Little, or Wengern-Scheideck, as we rode up to the small build 
 ing called the Hotel Bellevue. 
 
 Still we had the gulf and the Presence on our right. We 
 seemed to go out upon a spur, or around a bend, and to face 
 from it along the length of the ravine. I can only say " seemed," 
 it was all a gazing against mist, and a placing in one's fancy. 
 But as we left the little platform and went in to dinner, the 
 mists were turning golden ; brightening and thinning into some 
 thing that just made light tangible. 
 
 We were upon a sharp crest, whose line commanded the two 
 descents. The little windows of the inn dining-room opened on 
 the one side over the valley of the Grindelwald, on the other 
 against the Jungfrau, with her two peaks in the heavens and the 
 glaciers in her lap. 
 
 We found an English gentleman here, who had been staying, 
 he told General Rushleigh, nearly three weeks. 
 
 " You can see nothing," he said, " in nine times out of ten, by 
 just coming up and over. Perhaps at the sunset to-night, every 
 peak will be lighted up in it. And the breaking away in a fine 
 morning is something to wait a month for. I come here and 
 wait ; the Jungfrau is not to be compelled." 
 
 Another confirmation of what I am hourly more convinced
 
 MISTS; AND SIGNS. 277 
 
 of; that a summer tour of Europe, or even of any little bit 
 of it, is just like reading a grand book by chapter headings. 
 
 Mrs. Regis and General Rushleigk walked out together from 
 the dinner-table, to reconnoitre. We did give a thought to the 
 possibility of staying till the morning ; but even the English 
 man could promise us nothing in any one twelve or twenty-four 
 hours ; his creed was a long, reverent patience, and a sure, though 
 slow rewarding. 
 
 We had not weeks to give to take the boon of rather ; we 
 could ill afford any fruitless delay and exposure ; it might be 
 wet for days, the very hotel-keeper allowed. So, though we 
 recognized admiringly the loyalty of our chance friend's faith 
 and purpose, and contrasted his wise abiding, " still, in one 
 place," with our own uncertain flitting after the fashion of the 
 crowd, and though the girls were restlessly eager at the no 
 tion of the adventure of the night here, we felt our final de 
 cision all the while in the background of our thoughts, and that 
 it must be here as it had been at the Flegere ; we must take 
 such gift as came to us in the apportioning of days, even as we 
 do in our days upon the earth. 
 
 Emery Ann put that into the shape of words. 
 
 " It may be very fair weather in the world by Nineteen Hun 
 dred ; but it won't be our time. We 're here-to-day-and-gone- 
 to-morrow folks. It 's a comfort, though, that to-morrow we 
 can't help being somewhere, too ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Margaret ; " we shall have other mountains to 
 morrow. We shall have the Great Scheideck ; but it was 
 just this once in all our lives for the Jungfrau ! " 
 
 A shout came to our ears from the outside. 
 
 " The Silberhorn ! The Silberhorn ! " 
 
 General Rushleigh looked in at the door, and summoned us 
 hastily. 
 
 We were out on the little plateau in an instant ; to see that 
 golden mist shimmering, floating, stretching, all but rending ; 
 and between two clouds or folds of it, something white in clear 
 sunlightjfar, far up in the sky ; an putline, as the new moon 
 outlines herself ; only this was of a point, a luminous apex, 
 from which dropped, to lose themselves in vapor, the side-slopes 
 of its silver-shadowy cone.
 
 278 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 It was a mere tip, a pinnacle ; but by the glory on it we 
 could guess, could measure so much ! 
 
 " I am satisfied," said Emery Ann, slowly. " I know it 's all 
 there, now." 
 
 General Rushleigh and Mrs. Regis were side by side in front 
 of me, upon the rocky ledge. Something is surely making in 
 Mrs. Regis's nature which had waited long. As she lifted rer 
 face to .that vision in the heavens, there was a beauty of awe in 
 it, a speech of soul-delight, the characters of which I had 
 never seen it wear before ; it grew quite radiantly young in the 
 new expression. 
 
 " It is like a white flame," I heard her say. " Like the 
 tongues of light on the foreheads of Fra Angelico's angels." 
 
 " It shines out like a miracle-sign," said General Rushleigh ; 
 " as the Cross shone out to Constantino." 
 
 She did not answer ; neither did she move, visibly ; and yet 
 ghe stood, or leaned, just a shade closer beside him. It was as 
 if her spirit moved to his. Her face, still uplifted, held its quiet 
 rapture ; her highest self shining in it as that highest peak of 
 the Jungfrau gleamed, pure-radiant, overhead ; glorious with be 
 ing shone upon. 
 
 Her spirit, all unconscious, made its miracle-sign that per 
 haps all souls make some time to me. After this, I could not 
 slight her, ever so little, any more, in my mind. After this, 
 whatever, in the little story that is living beside me I might wish 
 made utterly beautiful, as I could think it possible to be, for 
 others, I could never help remembering also the beauty that 
 might be for her. If not the thing that draws her, may she yet 
 be drawn to possess that which is behind the drawing, whose 
 unknown fulfilling is the divine gravitation to which she really 
 
 moves 
 
 General Rushleigh's eyes dropped for an instant toward her 
 from their upward looking. It was to say something, I thought ; 
 but the sign in her face stopped him. It held his eyes in a 
 glance that magnetized her own to meet it. 
 
 They may never look Jike that, again, to each other, in all 
 their lives ; they may never come so near each other. But will 
 Mrs. Regis think of that ?
 
 MISTS; AND SIGNS. 279 
 
 She was back in herself again ; I could see the earth-con 
 sciousness shut swiftly over the spirit's self-forgetting. 
 
 At the same moment, the faint, white mist fell like an eye 
 lid over the glory that had looked upon us from above. The 
 Silberhorn had vanished.
 
 280 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIIL 
 
 THE SCHKECKHORN. 
 
 .... WE mounted our horses, and began to come down over 
 the steep crest. 
 
 Mrs. Regis's face was now the face of a beautiful woman, 
 with a flash of glad triumph in it. She looked royally happy, 
 as she sat easily erect upon her saddle, her horse following the 
 steep bends with dropped head and careful, tentative steps, his 
 shoulders rising and his crupper crouching, as he held back in 
 the pitchy, broken way, and reached his forefeet down alter 
 nately as if he were descending stairs. She had not a thought 
 of fear. Had anything supreme cast it out ? 
 
 She led us all, and gave us all confidence. Emery Ann had 
 vibrated almost to the extreme of daring, from the opposite 
 point of panic-fright ; she had got started next, by some chance, 
 and General Rushleigh came behind her. I was last, and could 
 see each one of the party as they successively turned the irreg 
 ular angles, except as they dropped for a moment from sight in 
 the abrupt declivities. 
 
 It was a great, rocky waste ; torn into gullies by rushing 
 rains, by streams from the tempest-torrents that broke upon 
 the cloudy ridge, and parted there to find their separate ways to 
 the green valleys of Lauterbrunnen and the Grindelwald. The 
 sun was already lowering behind the mists, and our daylight 
 would be short enough. 
 
 Suddenly a cry from a guide, repeated by the others, 
 
 The Eiger ! The Eiger ! " 
 
 The vapor had grown so thin that it hardly seemed to veil 
 anything ; it cheated us into absolute unconsciousness of the 
 great shapes about us. Unlike the rolling surges behind which
 
 THE SCHRECKHORN. 281 
 
 we had felt the awfulness of the Jungfrau, it had resolved itself 
 to a mere apparent dimness of far atmosphere. We might 
 fancy that we looked distantly enough, but that there was 
 nothing in the distance ; when all ak once, out from the pale 
 gray blank, a grand, mighty shoulder, white-robed and shining, 
 leaned right over us ! 
 
 Its sweep was as if it ran into the outlines of an invisible 
 outstretched arm ; it was defined above an infinite pure breast 
 that melted softly away into the unseen. Like the illumined 
 tip of the Silberhorn, it projected itself forth as from a spirit- 
 realm into the sphere of a material vision ; a part-showing of 
 that which might never all be shown. 
 
 It was a prayer-glimpse : it was what shines and leans above 
 the soul in the great Secret Place, when she dares not look up, 
 but feels herself creep close under the Arm and to the Heart 
 of the Allfather ! 
 
 That was the first. Other great lines lit up with shimmering 
 flashes, as lightning shows the edges of mountainous cloud. 
 Other white brows parted the dimness. We saw the clear, 
 rounded summit of the Monch, intensely brilliant with its sun- 
 drawn edge. To all these wonders we gazed up, quite away 
 from earth, toward which their phantoms faded. 
 
 They were gone again, and we could not say that any curtain 
 had closed between ; there was only the soft impalpable gray 
 that hindered a blank sky from being blue. Out of space, and 
 into space again, they shone forth and receded. 
 
 Would the positive, outright whole have been better to 
 us than these transfigured glimpses ? I felt blissfully content 
 with the thing given. By the lesser that is manifest, the eter 
 nal and invisible is understood ; even so in the creation is made 
 clear the very power and Godhead. 
 
 We had to dismount after a time. It is the custom always in 
 the most precipitous part. They had not told us of it, and we 
 were ill able, some of us, for the additional fatigue. 
 
 We had to walk or plunge down gully after gully, over brink 
 after brink ; the mud, too, was nearly ankle-deep in places ; and 
 the leaps we were forced to make from point to point over the 
 miry ground, the long drops that could not be restrained to
 
 282 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 steps, and that jarred us painfully, were a penance of pil 
 grimage that Emery Ann and I would hardly have dared if we 
 had counted on. But we had each a careful guide to help us 
 along ; two men led the horses ; General Rushleigh, as was 
 quite natural and proper, assisted Mrs. Regis ; and Edith and 
 Margaret took merry care of themselves and each other. 
 
 We came down into the pasture edges, among herds of cattle 
 that we had some fear of at first in passing, as they looked at 
 us with intent, strange eyes ; we struck at last a firmer, evener 
 slope, and found the way narrowing to a fenced path, where only 
 one could pass at a time. A little farther down, in this, the 
 horses waited. 
 
 And it was here that the crown of the day's joy and wonder 
 came to me. 
 
 Our guides hastened on before us now, to be ready for our 
 mounting ; the two girls were far ahead ; Emery Ann trudged 
 stolidly forward, never once turning her head, which I doubt, 
 now, if she had power to waste in doing ; she was like a soldier 
 worn out and sleeping on his march. 
 
 I fell behind, and quite out of sight, as the descent and breaks 
 grew steeper. I was very tired ; I felt, at last, that I must stop 
 and sit still, for at least a single moment. A flat stone beside 
 the path, and a tree-trunk to lean against, invited me; and once 
 down, it seemed as if I could never resolve to rise again. 
 
 I was all alone. No one else visible ; for the path itself was 
 a deep gully, and the turns and falls in it shut us quickly away 
 from each other. 
 
 Over head was the rosiness and the deep blue of a fair sun 
 set; lower in my limited horizon were the illumined, gauzy 
 mists ; the tinkle of herd-bells came down from the heights ; 
 the singing voices of children, stationed by the path to win 
 centimes from travelers, floated up from below and indicated 
 the advance of our little party. In the pleasure of the moment 
 ary solitude and rest, I thought of nothing else. 
 
 And then it came, in its divine, unutterable splendor. In the 
 western sky, only you must not think of " western " as we at 
 home look away toward low sunsets, in that misty west 
 quarter underneath the central blue, stood up a great cone.
 
 THE SCHRECKHORN. 283 
 
 A mere crag of rock, you think ; or even of snow, flushed 
 rosy, as the Alps do flush, in wonderful twilights ? 
 
 A mountain, Rose, a perfect, towering pyramid, of liv 
 ing, flaming, palpitating coals ! 
 
 Every outline sharp in light, a light within itself; trans 
 parent with clear burning. 
 
 A mountain whose base was in the clouds, whose head reared 
 up almost to midmost sky. The one thing revealed, out of the 
 beautiful chaos of struggling light and vapor. 
 
 The great outlines of the Mattenberg sloped away beside it 
 in blazing curves, as those of the Eiger had done in pure silver 
 brightness. But this one solid peak, if it were solid, being 
 like a translucent crystal of unmingled fire, made itself real, 
 complete, in every literal line, and yet transfigured with that 
 supernal glory. 
 
 I forgot everything else. I sat and gazed, not knowing 
 whether I breathed. Did Moses see more than that, in Horeb 
 or on Sinai ? 
 
 My guide came back to me. They were frightened for me, 
 and had sent him to see what had become of me. I believe it 
 was what he said. " They know not what it is that has arrived 
 to you, madame." 
 
 " That ! " I answered, pointing up. 
 
 " Ah, yes ! " he said. " The Schreckhorn." 
 
 I suppose to him the Schreckhorn was always there. 
 
 We could hardly sit up on our saddles, Emery Ann and I, 
 when they lifted us to our horses again. I saw her lie forward 
 against the saddle rail and almost upon the animal's neck, as we 
 paced cautiously down to the bridge and across the stream, 
 among the old mills and into the long street of the village, in 
 the deep, still shadows that settled swiftly upon the valley. 
 Nobody spoke a word, even to ask, " Did you see ? " We were 
 thoroughly exhausted. 
 
 We came into a dark nook, beneath the mountain ; we passed 
 under the trees of a shady garden entrance, and rode up to the 
 door of a hotel. 
 
 Somehow, we got inside, and found ourselves ushered into a 
 big salon, with bedrooms opening from it at either hand.
 
 284 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 We said, " "Water. Beds. Four teas simple, here. As 
 soon as possible." 
 
 And until all was done and brought, we fell into speechless 
 heaps upon sofas. 
 
 That night, I think we slept like death. 
 
 Twelve hours were a mortal blank.
 
 EDELWEISS. 285 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 EDELWEISS. 
 
 . . . . WE came to life out of deep trance. 
 
 " Emery Ann ! " I called, across the room. 
 
 And Emery Ann, from the other little bed, held up her right 
 forefinger, and said, " Present ! " 
 
 " We will go back into our beloved chaises a porteurs, to 
 day." 
 
 " Will we ? Then I believe I '11 conclude to be alive. I 
 had n't but about half made up my mind." 
 
 " But the men and the horses ? " she said, as we were dress 
 ing. " They were hired to go through to what 's its name 
 was n't they ? " 
 
 " To Meyringen ; yes. But we '11 send back two men and 
 two horses, and pay their return, if we must. We might as well 
 do that, as wait here." 
 
 General Rushleigh settled it ; and I do not think we were 
 much cheated, as to money, at least. That is the good of a 
 man ; what he can't help, a woman is reconciled to ; but she 
 never knows exactly when to be reconciled to herself. 
 
 Edith and Margaret were fresh again. They were both used 
 to horseback, and had n't the fearful stiffness that we suffered. 
 What kept Mrs. Regis fresh I don't know; but she, and her 
 clean-brushed traveling dress, and her white collar and cuffs, 
 and her little cap-rim around her glossy hair, came forth alto 
 gether new and bright as the day. Her days seem to be over 
 and over again, as the sun's are ; not one after the other, adding 
 up anything, or taking anything away. Morning is morning ; 
 spring is spring ; nobody knows how old the earth is. Here 
 and there is a woman just like that.
 
 286 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 After we got started, we found it out. That poor Emery 
 Ann had had a yanking old horse, and a wretchedly uncomfort 
 able saddle, all day yesterday; and the wonder was that she had 
 stayed on at all, or had come off with undislocated vertebrae. 
 She had borne it all those hours, as some poor souls bear life, 
 witless that there is anything better in the world, or that they 
 might have had it, if there were. 
 
 " Well ; as long as I 've got through, it 's all the same to-day," 
 she said, after she had entered paradise, in the shape of her 
 mountain-chair, and was settling herself serenely in it. " Better, 
 finally. If there 's anything to my credit, let it go to balance 
 the muss I made, starting. It did seem as if things would n't 
 keep together." 
 
 The men had taken back the two best horses ; Margaret had 
 now the one that Emery Ann had ridden, and Edith mine. 
 There was no help for it. General Rushleigh blamed himself 
 that it had happened. 
 
 " I don't mind it in the least," said Margaret. " I can always 
 manage. But it 's no wonder poor Miss Tudor got dismayed." 
 
 She put a folded shawl between herself and the saddle-rail, 
 and declared that it was quite comfortable. " And one can al 
 ways get off and walk, you know." 
 
 " Or change saddles," said General Rushleigh, passing to her 
 side. " I think my horse is easier." 
 
 But that Margaret would not allow. She thanked him, 
 shook her head, and moved forward, as if for fear he should per 
 sist. 
 
 The riders went on over the side hill, while our porters took 
 us round by the low path at the river-margin, and among the 
 mills. It was fifteen or twenty minutes before we all met again, 
 at a little cottage where they had milk and beer to sell, and 
 whence the path, turning an abrupt corner, wound away into 
 the mountain. 
 
 The Great Scheideck is another huge ridge, lying between 
 the two valleys, of the Grindelwald and Meyringen, as the Wen- 
 gern Alp stretches between Lanterbrunnen and the Grindel 
 wald. All the morning we should climb the one side, at noon 
 dine upon the summit, and all the afternoon descend upon the 
 other.
 
 EDELWEISS. 287 
 
 The great glacier, that comes down from between the Well- 
 horn and the Wetterhorn, reaches the valley, over against the 
 base of the Great Scheideck. We came opposite to it in about 
 an hour, before our path began to make more directly for the 
 summit ; and our porters took us down into the ravine to see 
 the wonderful clear ice-mass, and the blue cavern that has been 
 cut deep into it. 
 
 The riders alighted at the motfntain-chalet station, and ac 
 companied us on foot. We all crossed the little plankway, and 
 climbed along the slippery glacier edge, and entered the crys 
 tal tunnel, which runs far in, a winding gallery, under the huge 
 superincumbence of solid water or air, one hardly knows 
 which to fancy it, so azure, so translucent it looks, as far as 
 vision can pierce it, and then so shuts against the sight with the 
 very blank of its clearness. 
 
 Emery Ann and I would not go far ; we paused a little way 
 within the entrance, took in the thought of it, and felt it, like 
 the gallery of the Trient, too dreadful-beautiful to follow into 
 its heart. We went back and sat in the sun, that shining full 
 down upon the frozen torrent, neither melts nor changes it ; 
 only keeps a gentle rain falling from its face, where it stops, 
 almost like a Red-Sea wall, against the warmth of the valley. 
 
 I wish, Rose, I could write like Charles Reade, and put in 
 sentences of three lines each the visions and sensations of our 
 day. For I feel that I cannot give you every day and all day 
 long. 
 
 We climbed up over huge fells, and moors, and crags, into 
 higher, stiller atmospheres, till at the sharp ridge we stood again 
 upon the crest-line of two mighty slopes. 
 
 Around us were the solemn tops of the Wetterhorn, the 
 Schreckhorn, the Eiger, parting the clouds and looking down 
 at us. 
 
 We saw people eating dinners at the summit station where 
 we rested ; but we changed our minds about our own, and waited 
 to get them at Rosenlaui, about three hours farther below upon 
 the other side. 
 
 Our little cortege trailed picturesquely down among the rocks 
 and pastures, now over the bare bleakness, and again along
 
 288 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 moss-turf and ferny patch, winding in and out as the path 
 threaded the rugged breaks and pitches toward a pine forest 
 that closed in around the mountain foot, and wrapped the valley 
 in green pleasantness. From the bareness and the cloudy soli 
 tude, we came upon wood-sweetness, the works and tracks of 
 men, the bright rush of a clear river, little rustic bridges by 
 which we crossed and recrossed the rambling stream, some falls 
 and sawmills, and then to the hotel and baths of Rosenlaui. 
 
 Before we got there, rain was falling. The clouds had 
 dropped after us, first upon the mountain ridge, and then, softly 
 breaking their edges into gradual rain, came pattering into the 
 leaves and moss about us, and plashing into the river. It was 
 so pretty to be out in the rain, when the rain itself was out in 
 the lovely wildness ! We did n't mind it in our waterproofs ; 
 we were only a little chilly, and glad to get to the blaze of a 
 good fire which they gave us at the inn while the dinner was 
 made ready. 
 
 But what the rain was making ready, for us, we did not 
 dream as we ate our dinner ! 
 
 There was here a room full of exquisite and elaborate wood 
 carvings ; rich brackets, and mantel fittings, clocks, mirror 
 frames, chairs, easels, vases ; baskets and stands for vines and 
 ferneries ; everything conceivable in loveliest forms and group 
 ings of flowers, foliage, animals. Mrs. Regis was enchanted, 
 and spent some hundreds of dollars for things to be packed and 
 Bent direct to New York. I bought a tiny fernery, and a little 
 easel wreathed with Madonna lilies, for motherdie's picture. 
 These I carried in my lap, all the way after, to Lucerne. 
 
 Then we went forth again, into the dropping and lifting 
 mists, that still swept up and down the deep valley, as if they had 
 tumbled in and would fain get out if they only knew the way. 
 
 " It would clear off if it could," said Emery Ann ; " but how 
 does it ever clear off out of here, without being turned upside 
 down ? " 
 
 " That is why it will have to wait till to-morrow," said Edith, 
 laughing. " Till the world is the other side up." 
 
 Two peasant boys came springing down the mountain-side 
 upon the path, as we crossed the bridge again to the right bank 
 of the Reichenbach.
 
 EDELWEISS. 289 
 
 " Edelweiss ! Edelweiss ! " they shouted, holding up the 
 blossoms in their hands. 
 
 " Edelweiss ! " called the guides to the porters, and the por 
 ters to us. It was a thing to stop for; a thing that nobody 
 would dream of passing by. The men set down our chairs, as 
 a matter of course. 
 
 The boys made straight for the one gentleman of the party. 
 General Rushleigh bought the Edelweiss. 
 
 I thought he would give it to Mrs. Regis ; I thought he 
 would have to ; she was near him, and had been near him all 
 the morning. But General Rushleigh is not a man who has to 
 do anything, I find. 
 
 There were two flowers ; he held them an instant, while 
 something like a wish and a question seemed, to my sight, to 
 pass through the expression of his face. Mrs. Regis had moved 
 a little onward, just her horse's length, perhaps. Edith and 
 Margaret were behind him. He reined his horse across the 
 path, turned slightly in his saddle, and reached his right hand 
 back. 
 
 " Will you have the ' Noble- White,' Miss Margaret ? " he 
 said, with the slightest perceptible emphasis linking the pronoun 
 and the blossom name. 
 
 He had not spoken her name before, since he called her 
 " Margaret," upon the precipice of the Wengern Alp. 
 
 Then he gave the second flower to Edith. 
 
 They belonged, naturally enough, to the two young maidens. 
 But I am sure he translated the word for Margaret. 
 
 He rode forward, and kept next to Mrs. Regis. 
 
 Sometimes a man shows much by that which he does not do. 
 
 Afterward, one day, it happened when we were together that 
 I saw Margaret's Edelweiss between the leaves of her Prayer 
 Book; just beneath the Epistle for that next September Sun 
 day. 
 
 " Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good. And the 
 very God of peace sanctify you wholly." 
 
 A delicate pencil-line was drawn under two words : " peace," 
 and " wholly." 
 
 19
 
 290 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 RIVER-PLUNGE ; AND CLOUD-SEA. 
 
 .... Do you remember how we used to describe rivers, ia 
 our geography lessons, at school ? " Rises in the Carpathian 
 Mountains, flows southeast and east, and empties into the Black 
 Sea ? " -As if a river ever did empty. 
 
 It is the best way I can think of to describe to you the 
 Reichenbach Valley, that beautiful, deep, but high-lying 
 groove among these Alpine tops, through which we made pil 
 grimage in the golden rain. 
 
 It begins against the breast of the Great Scheideck that 
 slopes toward the north and east ; it runs thitherward, and 
 empties, over a mighty brink, it is the valley which does 
 empty, and it is the Reichenbach which is poured out, in a 
 glory we are coming to, into the lovely lower vale of Mey- 
 ringen that stretches across right-angularly. 
 
 We saw it empty. The river, whose pathway it is, and 
 more. That which also it held and was brimful of, up to the 
 tips of the great mountain-horns, that wet, sweet afternoon. 
 
 Crossing the stream upon a level, its shining ripples close 
 beneath and beside our feet, we found ourselves presently 
 following the face of a high cliff again, midway to its crest ; the 
 swift water tumbling far below us, the way we went ; and over 
 opposite the other wall of its wild channel-aisle, a thousand feet 
 high. Touching the sky, if the sky were blue ; losing itself in 
 gray vapors, now. 
 
 A straight escarpment, glowing with green ; vines and ferns 
 spilling themselves luxuriant all adown it ; over tapestries of 
 moss nourished in the river-moistures. Above and below, rich 
 forests.
 
 RIVER-PLUNGE; AND CLOUD-SEA. 291 
 
 Along the gradual incline of the long path our porters swung 
 us easily, with rhythmical motion ; the fine-distilling rain stirred 
 all the fragrances of the wilderness ; that tapestried wall, among 
 whose draperies and fringes countless little water-threads and 
 white, tiny, foam-bursts, tossed forth and trickled down, rested 
 our eyes half-tired with limitless wonders, in its near, delicate 
 beauty ; and behind us a southwest wind was driving the mists, 
 all unrealized by us, from off the mountain faces. 
 
 The rain and the mist grew golden ; the sunlight was making 
 a hand-to-hand contest with it ; so that particle to particle, the 
 two mingled in glistening confusion, and under it the woods and 
 herbage were a citrine-green. 
 
 All at once, pure light flashed ; blue broke ; we turned our 
 heads, and saw that up from the south the pinnacles were reared 
 again into upper radiance ; the Wellborn and the Wetterhorn 
 leaned out of the zenith, and the great range from which they 
 spring closed up the sky behind us. Before us poured and 
 rolled the scattered clouds, driven the valley length, to be tum 
 bled over the lower mountains. We, in clear weather, followed 
 the misty stream and cataract. 
 
 It shone at first with simple, warm effulgence, from the pur 
 suing sunshine ; then, as it fell into the farther east, and a yet 
 more blazing triumph chased it, sending quick shafts of life-fire 
 after the beautiful rout, it broke into rainbow blooms. Down 
 there, perhaps, in the level, people saw the perfect arch against 
 the hanging drops; we saw the tossing fragments, here green, 
 there gold ; now violet, now crimson ; melting, blending, shift 
 ing, changing ; a great basin full of splendon, the making of 
 a thousand rainbows. Between the grand, still, overhanging 
 ramp.arts out from whose fastnesses we and the showers had come 
 together, and that lovely rolling and heaping beyond and below, 
 we moved in a beauteous mystery ; we felt ourselves taken into 
 a rapturous secret, behind the unlifted curtains of cause. 
 
 By the time we reached the brink, the under valley was clear. 
 It lay stretched in the evening glow, exquisitely beautiful with 
 its green fields, its villages, its farther wooded hills and over- 
 crowning amphitheatre of snows. 
 
 We had come down, at the last, a most precipitous incline ;
 
 292 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 a smooth-paved causeway over which the horses could be only 
 led, and we had also alighted for a little distance from our chairs. 
 Then we had turned to the left upon a level brow, beyond 
 whose edge, at our very feet, lay the distant, exquisite panorama. 
 And here we first comers awaited the rest. For when the 
 descent began, and the riders dismounted, our sturdy porters had 
 borne us ahead. 
 
 We went round, all together, into the little hut, so built upon 
 the hanging point of crag as to monopolize the sight of that other 
 wondrous " emptying," the plunge into the profound ravine 
 of the rushing Reichenbach. 
 
 From the little platform and back window of the hut, you 
 look over a narrow gulf that separates the spur of rock it stands 
 on from the mountain. Out from that mountain hurls itself, 
 no, leaps upward, an impetuous mass of thundering waters. 
 
 It has come all the way down, with gathering impetus, from 
 those enormous far-off heights ; it has buried itself at last in the 
 very rock ; you look in through the winding chambers that it 
 has ploughed, and see it fling itself hither, thither, down their 
 successive hollow descents, searching for final outlet, churning 
 itself to foam, and making at each bound a fresh roar of ever 
 lasting reverberation. 
 
 It seizes its ultimate freedom with a madly jubilant spring ; 
 shot upward with a vast recoil, it vaults into the air, bends it 
 self with a grand poise into its parabola of conscious doom, and 
 delivers itself to its splendid destruction in swift, white helpless 
 ness, scattered as it goes, into myriad and myriad sparkles of 
 ever sundering ato'ms. 
 
 And " that way "the Reichenbach comes down into the Hasli- 
 thal, and finds the Aare. 
 
 We took our way, down the steep, rapid zigzags, into the 
 valley full of rosy light. We looked back, ever, as we went, 
 upon that white river-leap among the darkening pines. 
 
 In the broad road beneath, I made my porters stop for Mrs. 
 Regis to ride alongside my chair. 
 
 " We are deadly weary," I told her, " Emery Ann and I. 
 I am sure you riders will be. Must we stay days here at 
 Meyringen, or will you push on to the Lake ? At Brienz,
 
 RIVER-PLUNGE; AND CLOUD-SEA. 293 
 
 there will be easy excursions up and down the water, to 
 Giessbach, to Interlachen if you like. You strong ones will 
 want something to do. I feel as if we might need almost a 
 week of rest; and that where we stop to-night, there we shall 
 stay." 
 
 Mrs. Regis assented. She certainly did not want a week at 
 Meyringen ; and the possibilities of Brienz and the Lake which 
 I suggested struck her pleasantly. She rode on, to communi 
 cate our ideas to General Rushleigh, and Emery Ann's chair 
 came alongside mine. I told her what I had proposed, and the 
 arguments. She summed them up ; much, I thought, as if she 
 had taken in the words at tired ears, and had to gather up the 
 sounds again with a determined effort to make sense. 
 
 " The Lake and the steamer and the falls, is it ? 
 That other bach ? And something for the rest to be doing, 
 and we shall be at the beginning of the next bout, shan't 
 we ? " she concluded, more alertly. 
 
 "The Briinig, yes." 
 
 " Well, it 's all right, I presume." And she drooped again. 
 
 We sat still on our chairs, therefore, and Mrs. Regis and 
 Margaret enthroned themselves upon the luggage, when we 
 brought up at the inn door in the little street of Meyringen ; and 
 we would not budge, nor understand a word, though all the 
 hotel people poured out around us to seize us and our belong 
 ings in. 
 
 General Rushleigh paid off the guides and porters, and 
 opened the negotiation for further conveyance. 
 
 Of course it was " impossible, all to fact, until the morn 
 ing." There were no voitures for Brienz to-night. 
 
 " Very well," the General remarked to us, in French, " Rest 
 you, here. I go to seek elsewhere." 
 
 " But no, sir ! Wait a moment, sir ! If it is that Monsieur 
 has the inevitable necessity, it must be that one should do his 
 possible to serve him. Wait, wait, if you please ! But will not 
 the ladies mount ? " 
 
 No : we would not mount. We would sit just where we 
 were. We were altogether too tired to go up-stairs. And the 
 result was, in less than fifteen minutes, two closed voitures,
 
 294 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 violent hands laid on bags and wraps, corners and boxes 
 piled with shawls, baskets, valises, four porters standing at 
 the two doors for their fees, and we put in promiscuously in 
 the darkness. 
 
 It happened for the first time that the families were broken, 
 and that there was no order in our march. 
 
 Edith and Margaret had gone to the rescue of the impedi 
 menta, to see at least that the right things went in, and left 
 some space for us to come. Then, somehow, Edith got Emery 
 Ann in upon a forward seat, while Mrs. Regis was waiting for 
 a glass of water, and to find the centimes to pay the waiter-tax 
 upon it. General Rushleigh put me into one carriage and her 
 into the other, last of all ; and then it turned out that it was 
 Margaret and I who were together, and had the remaining seat 
 for him with us. 
 
 Of course, Mrs. Regis was not so rude or silly as to object or 
 change. The doors were slammed upon us, the whips cracked, 
 and we were off upon the nine-mile river road, under the black 
 shadows of the moonless night and the mountain-mass of the 
 Brienzer-Grat lifting its ridges along upon our right. I should 
 have skipped this drive but for the circumstance. 
 
 Margaret had made me take the back seat of which one end 
 was occupied with shawls^ against which she insisted I should 
 lean. In fact, I fell back among them almost helpless to do 
 otherwise. 
 
 General Rushleigh placed himself beside her, forward. It 
 was no manoeuvre of mine, nor hers ; but I took the satisfaction 
 of it as one can only take a satisfaction when things happen to 
 one's mind without plan or accountableness. 
 
 " I do hope mamma is comfortable ! " said Margaret. " We 
 were all rushed off so ! " 
 
 " Edith is doubtless hoping the same thing for me," I an 
 swered, " having just done your work as you have hers." 
 
 I suppose I ought to have kept resolutely awake, for the 
 matronizing : but I found myself deliciously dozing, and deli- 
 ciously rousing to doze again, half a dozen times in the next half 
 hour. I think I came to semi-consciousness whenever they began 
 to talk a little ; but there were long silent pauses, unless my 
 sleep was completer than I supposed.
 
 RIVER-PLUNGE; AND CLOUD-SEA. 295 
 
 " Are you very tired, Miss Margaret ? " I heard General 
 Rushleigh say, after one of these intervals. 
 
 " No, indeed. I fancy the ' tired ' does n't come till the 
 wonder and the beauty have faded down a little. I have been 
 looking at it all. It is all there, like the spectrum of some daz 
 zling thing. Why does n't anybody ever tell you about Swit 
 zerland ? " 
 
 " Perhaps for a little of the same reason that those raised 
 from the dead did not tell what they had seen." 
 
 " But they speak of it. They will say, ' Oh, you must be 
 sure and go over the Wengern Alp. You must see the Reichen- 
 bach.' I do not know that I could begin at all ; but it does not 
 seem to me that I could stop with that if I did begin.' And 
 yet who will ever believe me if I tell them that I came down 
 into a sea of rainbows, and that there was a glory of a waterfall 
 that fell up ? Or that the mountains looked over at me from 
 the middle of the sky ? " 
 
 " They might not all see it just the same, if they were here. 
 Beauty like Wisdom " 
 
 " Is only justified of her own children," I said ; for he hesi 
 tated to finish it. He was so very scrupulous of what he said to 
 Margaret. 
 
 " There were two women grinding at the same mill, you 
 know," he said, availing himself of me ; and I knew by his tone 
 that he was smiling. " Think of some of those we saw at 
 Interlachen. They have been grinding here and there, all 
 summer at it. I suppose they will go home and say that 
 Switzerland is ' fascinating.' " 
 
 He said the word with the very accent of a woman who emp 
 ties her imagination, and ends the subject, with it. 
 
 We both laughed. 
 
 " But I wish I knew what I did see," said Margaret, simply. 
 " And why it made me feel so. You know, Miss Patience ; you 
 always do. What were those clouds, all poured down there 
 under our feet ? " 
 
 " I shall find out, perhaps," said I. " This and that come to 
 gether, sooner, or later, if we keep ' looking,' as you say. But 
 I am sure General Rushleigh knows. Ask him."
 
 296 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 " Do you ? " and Margaret's sweet voice turned itself in the 
 darkness, so that I knew her face turned. 
 
 " I think it was a ' sea of troubles,' " said Paul Rushleigh. 
 
 I hate to be forever calling him " General," but I suppose I 
 must generally. 
 
 " Dropped away and turned beautiful. The bright side, 
 the upper side. You did know. I could only guess, you 
 see," Margaret added, quietly. 
 
 " I have lived long enough for some things to have drifted 
 down," he answered. 
 
 " Yes ; some things," Margaret repeated. " And when they 
 have all drifted down " 
 
 " It may be like that. Only it is hard to imagine, when 
 there is a new fog around one." 
 
 " I wonder," I said, " if that sea of human troubles swept 
 away may not have been the very rainbow John saw, round 
 the throne ? " 
 
 " The tears that were wiped from all eyes," said Margaret, 
 quickly, before she remembered herself in speaking. After she 
 had said it, she sat very quiet. 
 
 I wondered at General Rushleigh, then. He also was quiet 
 for a moment, but directly he said, quite in his ordinary way : 
 
 " I suppose they will make two hours of this carriage drive. 
 It is very dark." And he. leaned toward the window, trying to 
 discover some outline of things in the gloom. 
 
 That shut down something between our thoughts, that had 
 begun to quicken mutually, as the darkness shut our faces from 
 each other's sight. We each turned in upon ourselves, and sat 
 there, close together, but in a sudden separateness. There was 
 no more talk for a good while. 
 
 I could not bear it very well. I felt as if Margaret had been 
 almost pushed aside. Left, at least, alone and chilled, by his 
 withdrawal. For it was plain to instinctive perception, so 
 keen, I knew, in her, that he held back from the nearness to 
 which such conversing such real turning together tended. 
 I wondered, was he afraid ? It was like his calling her " Mar 
 garet," and then not speaking to her, hardly any more that day. 
 
 I asked her some slight question a few minutes afterward, and
 
 RIVER-PLUNGE; AND CLOUD-SEA. 297 
 
 she answered me with the " tire " in her voice that had not 
 come before. The joy and beauty were " fading down a little." 
 
 General Rushleigh noticed that. " You are exhausted," he 
 said. " Have you anything to lean your head upon ? Are your 
 feet comfortable? Let me put this rug in your corner." 
 
 And he had to reach his arms around her, to place the soft 
 wrap, loosely folded and strapped, so that she could make a pil 
 low of it. 
 
 " Now, could n't you both sleep a little ? " 
 
 Margaret said only " Thank you," but there was almost a 
 quiver in the syllables. He leaned back in his own corner, and 
 we fell utterly silent. 
 
 " It would have rested me so much more, if he would only 
 have gone on talking," Margaret said to me afterward, with her 
 simple, touching frankness. " He is very kind, but I can see he 
 does not want much of me. He is very different with mamma. 
 I thought he was going to be my friend," she ended, sadly. 
 
 We stayed five days at Brienz, which time Emery Ann and I 
 passed almost wholly in our own rooms. Indeed, I was fairly 
 ill with weariness ; and the poor fare they gave us made an end 
 of my appetite. If it had not been for the grapes the others 
 brought us when they came in from their daily excursions, I 
 think we should both have broken down with a settled sickness. 
 
 It was one afternoon when they had all come back from a sail, 
 that Margaret and I were alone a while, and she said to me what 
 I have just put down. 
 
 " He always does something to make me comfortable, and 
 then goes away, or hushes me up, as he did that night, coming 
 from Meyringen." 
 
 That was the way she had come round to it ; having told me 
 some little thing that had occurred that afternoon ; his changing 
 his seat in the boat, and putting Edith next her, so that they 
 both might have the shade of Edith's parsol. 
 
 " I always forget mine, you know ; and I did n't mind the 
 sun a bit. How can I help thinking he wants to get away from 
 me?" 
 
 " He is a very unselfish person, I think," was my reply to
 
 298 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 the innocent complaint that told me so much in which a woman 
 understands a girl beyond her own perception of herself. " He 
 saw how very tired you were that night, how tired we both 
 were." 
 
 And then she answered me as I have told you. " I thought 
 he was going to be my friend." 
 
 " I am very sure he is your friend," I said. 
 
 " Is this all it is, then, to be a friend ? " she asked. " I 
 thought it would be more. It is more with me and you, Miss 
 Patience. It is more with him and mamma. No ; I begin to 
 be sure he will not have me for a friend." 
 
 " He cannot help it. What you, what people, are to 
 each other, they will be, whatever interrupts." 
 
 "It maybe something to come," said Margaret. " But it is 
 not come yet. I suppose it is I who have not come to it. I 
 fancy, sometimes, that perhaps he may think I am not amiable 
 with mamma. But I can't affect, or even make a point of 
 things, to get friendship, any more than to get money. I 
 want to belong to such people, Miss Patience," she said ear 
 nestly ; " even if I have to live all my life away from them." 
 
 " That was all that even the Lord promised to John and 
 James ; to drink of his cup, and be baptized with the same 
 baptism," I said to her. To be set beside Him, on his right 
 hand and his left, was something to be given as it pleased 
 the Father. We shall all come to what is really for us ; we 
 shall find the fellowship ; we shall be satisfied ; when we awake, 
 and see the whole ; as it is, and as it has been making." 
 
 What else could I tell her, though I believed it might be, 
 even ought to be, very near her, that avowed, beautiful 
 belonging ? It was not come yet, as she had said. She only 
 knew she had no wine. What if it were commanded first that 
 the jars should be filled with water ? It was as if the voice 
 said to me, longing for her : " Woman, what have I to do with 
 thee ? " I could only tell her, as Mary told the servants : 
 " Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it."
 
 OVER THE BRUNIG: THE LAKE: RHIGI. 299 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 OVER THE BRUNIG : THE LAKE : RHIGI. 
 
 .... WE went over the lovely Briinig Pass, up from the 
 valley of Meyringen ; looking back upon it once more at our 
 feet, and looking over from the new heights we gained to those 
 we had traversed to come into it ; catching a last glimpse of the 
 last down-dropping of the Reichenbach ; then, through sweet 
 woods upon the northern slope, we descended to the other lake 
 side ; the fairest lake, I think, in all Switzerland, Lucerne. 
 
 It was one more day of sunlight and deliciousness ; a day of 
 heaven upon the heavenly hills. 
 
 At Alpnach we took the boat, and steamed down through 
 chamber after chamber of enchantment, whose floors were the 
 still, clear water depths, whose winding walls were the encir 
 cling mountains, whose divisions the green promontories seeming 
 almost to shut themselves across before us, and then, through 
 beautiful doorways gradually revealed, widening out to new, 
 magnificent curves and spaces, where Pilatus and the Rhigi and 
 the perpendicular forests of the Bergenstock hemmed us grandly 
 in. Overhead, that firmament of one's special own, which is 
 had only in this close surrounding of great heights. 
 
 But we had not got away from those other skies, even into 
 the separate shelter of this sweet, still water-world. There yet 
 looked into it from over the rough shoulders of Pilatus, the far, 
 white peaks of the Eiger, the Monch, the Schreckhorn, the 
 Jungfrau, out of their supreme heaven. 
 
 Margaret kept closely with me. She was proud and sensitive 
 about putting herself in General Rushleigh's way, since she had 
 taken that notion that he did not want much of her. She could 
 not be with her mother without being with him ; General Rush-
 
 300 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 leigh certainly quite devoted himself to Mrs. Regis; and it had 
 gradually come about that Mrs. Regis and I had almost changed 
 girls, as children change dolls for a while, Edith was such 
 a pet with her, and Margaret turned so much to me. 
 
 We had exchanged them as traveling companions, coming 
 over the Briinig. Edith had gone in the carriage with Mrs. 
 Regis and the General, and Margaret had been with us. It was 
 Margaret's doing, I think. Edith suits Mrs. Regis, too, artist 
 ically. There is a childish grace about her that complements 
 itself to a lighter, younger matronage than Margaret's grave, 
 independent ways and noble, womanly air can do. Also, there 
 is not the inevitable reminder of " mamma." All these little 
 things fit in, like cogs, and move the wheels ; the way some 
 deeper power, I suppose, is set to make them go. 
 
 We had to proceed to Lucerne, although we had resolved not 
 to stop there now. General Rushleigh was obliged to be at 
 Ragatz by the middle of the coming week, and we wanted him. 
 to go up the Rhigi with us. Besides, as Mrs. Regis said, after 
 the Rhigi must come another rest, and Lucerne would just do 
 for us then. 
 
 I, too, had my own dear little " beside," which I did not tell 
 to anybody. It was Saturday ; and Sunday would be mother- 
 die's day, the fifteenth of September. 
 
 On the first, my day and hers, we had had that gift of 
 glory on the Montanvert. Between, you know how we used 
 to make holiday of the between, that is since such holy day, 
 has been all this joy and uplifting of the mountains ; now if I 
 could climb up to the top of Rhigi for the dear fifteenth, would 
 it not be like a Mount Pisgah to me ? Should I not be very 
 near, almost to reach up and in ? 
 
 When I am with other people, who have not known, I keep 
 it all in my heart. I could not tell them ; not even Margaret ; 
 unless when it is over. I do not suppose Edith remembers it at 
 all. At home, I have your mother and Mrs. Shreve, who under 
 stand. They just come quietly in in the morning, and bring 
 me flowers ; Mrs. Shreve always has the pure, sweet tuberoses 
 for me then ; and then they leave me, because they know I am 
 not alone.
 
 OVER THE BRUN1G: THE LAKE: RHIGI. 301 
 
 But here, I could not have explained, to make anything 
 happen ! And yet, see how it all did happen. These thinga 
 are how I know it is not all left to myself. 
 
 We were too late for the boat that goes up from Lucerne to 
 Vitznau at the Rhigi-foot ha time for the train up the 
 mountain. We had to wait an hour or two, and take the last 
 boat, and so sleep at Vitznau. Early in the Sunday morning 
 there would be a car for that dizzy railway climb. 
 
 You must look on your map, as I hope you have been do 
 ing all along, to remind yourself clearly just what a lovely, 
 winding, inlet-y lake this is, that creeps away north, east, west, 
 south, into depths and hearts of Alpine wildness and beauty, 
 sheltering and hiding itself away in the shadowy embraces of 
 enormous mountains that stand in its very waters and shape it 
 in on every side. 
 
 You look up and down alternate dreamlike vistas, on your 
 left and on your right; you sweep out into a broad, central sea; 
 you sail again into a narrowing glade at whose farther end the 
 cliffs seem rounded to an absolute closing curve ; and when at 
 last, in the falling gloom, in which the twinkling shore lights 
 glimmer out from village clusters beneath the impending forest 
 masses, like swarms of fireflies alighted in the dense black leaf 
 age, you come quite up against the boundary, lo ! a little magic 
 looplet opens in the very hills, and through it the boat shoots 
 into another still, shadowy, mountain-girdled sea ! 
 
 Only we stopped just short of doing that. Vitznau lies just 
 in the hither bend. 
 
 We had seen the white puff of the locomotive from far down 
 the lake, as it floated slowly up the long incline, and hung 
 among the fir-trees away above the little town, on the huge 
 flank of Rhigi. We had only to eat some broiled chickens, 
 drink our tea or new milk, and go thankfully to bed in the 
 clean pretty chambers they gave us at Hotel Pfyffer, looking 
 down through a garden of trees to the other lighted houses 
 of the shore, and upon the moveless shadow of the sleeping 
 'ake.
 
 302 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Should you like to get into a car that sits tilted up on the 
 track at an angle of twenty-five or thirty degrees, in which 
 the passengers are all seated backward, the lines of faces 
 making a pleasant human slope as you look up ; whose loco 
 motive, placed behind, has its boiler, shaft, and chimney pitched 
 at a sharp forward incline, so that it may be relatively upright as 
 it ascends, its fifth wheel, contrary to all proverbial sarcasm, 
 being the soul and safety of the whole concern, clutching with 
 resolute little cogs at a middle ratched rail, and clawing its way 
 slowly, by main force, up the long, frightful steep, with its tun 
 nel cut for eighty yards through the perpendicular rock, and its 
 viaduct crossing high in air from crest to crest above the deep, 
 wild gorge beyond ? 
 
 Should you like to ride in that car an hour and a quarter, 
 feeling the tug and strain with which those little iron teeth are 
 holding on for your and everybody's dear life beneath, while 
 you look forth and over to see the lake and valley drop, drop, 
 as they drop beneath the eagle's flight, and the great snow circle 
 of the Alps, the dazzling crown of the continent, rise slowly in 
 the horizon, point after point ? 
 
 Yes, you would like it, after the first thrill. You would for 
 get that you were anything ; that it would be of any conse 
 quence whether you should drop or not. Not that there would 
 be no care ; quite otherwise. In the great Might around you 
 everywhere, it is so plain you could not fall out of care. I 
 think that is the hidden secret of the excited impulse people say 
 they have, to fling themselves forth into great space and depth. 
 That was one very way the tempter came to the Son of Man. 
 And by so much deeper were all his temptations than our own, 
 that He always faced the subtle heart of them. It is a mere 
 insanity that most times seizes us. The inmost mystery of a 
 truth but a truth unlawful to lay hold of lifted itself to 
 beckon Him. The nearer we seem to get to that shape of an 
 angel of light that appears to stand in the centre of the circle 
 whose circumference of interdiction is drawn for our first pro 
 tection, the more deadly and interior we may know our sin.
 
 NOONTIDE AND MORNING UPON RHIGI. 303 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 NOONTIDE AND MORNING UPON RHIGI. 
 
 . ... IT was up on Rhigi that a thing happened to mo that 
 very often- happens to people in story-books ; and that gave me 
 occasion to put in practice a ready-made theory which never seems 
 to have occurred to any of the inventive persons who deal in 
 high-minded fiction, and who make their best characters alto 
 gether helplessly mean in consequence. 
 
 It is not often that ready-made emergency-theories come to 
 practice. The emergency is so apt to vary from the programme, 
 or even never to come at all. I have had my plans all laid for 
 fire and burglars, all my life long, and have never got a chance 
 to test my patents. 
 
 But my patent against involuntary eavesdropping came to 
 triumphant proof on Rhigi. 
 
 We escaped eagerly from the train when it landed us below 
 the Kulm, under the deep embankment behind the hotel. 
 
 The Rhigi mounts up, in the midst of the sea of wavelike 
 peaks it looks abroad on, like a huge curling crest, ready to 
 break on the western side, where it overhangs the lake-valley. 
 The long sweep upward is its eastern back, over which the bold 
 little wheel and ratchet ply their perilous way. Eastward from 
 the slope, below the crown, you gaze off upon billows of Alps ; 
 around thence toward the north, they stretch also ; westward and 
 northwestwardly, when you have gained the dizzy apex, you 
 look into a gulf, how beautiful the gulf is cannot be said in 
 the same word, into a gulf over which this foremost breaker 
 of a solid flood seems to have reared itself and hung arrested. 
 
 You stand as on the lip of the vast tide, and look down and 
 away through the far, low stretch ; you see Pilatus ending the
 
 804 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Alp-line on your left, you see Lucerne lying at the distant tip 
 of the last, bright, narrow bay of the green water underneath 
 you, ever so far underneath ; for if Leman is as a great liquid 
 sapphire for pure color, Lucerne is like a chrysoprase, answer 
 ing the forest shadows with a tenderer, goldener gleam, as Leman 
 echoes the upper depths of blue. 
 
 Into the wonderful color, looking over into it through more 
 than four and a half thousand feet of air, you are never satis 
 fied with sending your thirsty vision. You drink its soft glory, 
 as your mouth might drink of the clear element that makes it. 
 You trace its labyrinths running irregularly hither and thither, 
 into the wooded solitudes ; you see the tiny hamlets and sepa 
 rate houses standing among the trees ; Tell's chapel is there, 
 and an old Abbey ; the Lake of Zug runs down from the north, 
 and almost touches the Kiissnacht arm of Lucerne ; the villages 
 of Kiissnacht on this point and Immensee on that are at the two 
 extremes of the water reaches, and the Chapel of the Hero is 
 midway on the strip of land between. 
 
 The Jura mountains, through whose gate coming with us 
 you came into Switzerland, are a dim line beyond which the sun 
 goes down. 
 
 Can you see ever so little a bit of it, through my seeing ? 
 
 Along this giddy brink that leans over from mid air, there 
 is a heavy rail to hold by as you gaze. But just below there is 
 a large, rounding shelf, easily reached by a side path, covered 
 with crisp, dry turf, and quite sheltered from the keen wind as 
 it blew out of the east that day. 
 
 We all crept down upon it, and spread our shawls, and sat 
 there in the bright forenoon sunshine, and found our way through 
 the wide bewilderment of the scene below by the help of our 
 " Baedekers." 
 
 After a while, I stole away from the rest of the party ; not 
 abruptly leaving them, to call forth question, but straying slowly 
 back toward the summit, and there lingering a little ; then, 
 turning, I followed the pathway along the northern brow till a 
 descent showed itself here also, to a protected ledge beneath. 
 In fact, a regular, somewhat hazardous zigzag ran down sev 
 eral turns, perhaps more, but I could not see, along the
 
 NOONTIDE AND MORNING UPON RHIGI. 305 
 
 nearly precipitous face this way, till the actual precipice seemed 
 to end it. 
 
 I only ventured to the second parallel, and there found a 
 rocky niche against the cliff, where I could be quite safe and 
 alone, as I longed to be, to keep my own thought and my own 
 day a while. 
 
 Over opposite, against the Rossberg, the neighbor wave of 
 this vast mountain tide, is a great grave. It is the grave of 
 a village, buried more than sixty years ago, on which the earth 
 yet lies fresh. So different from the old, old mountain shows 
 the upturned stratum which slid down from it and covered 
 Goldau with its five hundred dwellers. 
 
 Over the village and the villagers, this wide, black death. 
 Over the death and the silence, the blue air and the sweet, sun- 
 full heaven ; the larger, truer sign ; the infinite room and res 
 urrection. 
 
 I had been here half an hour, perhaps. I knew they would 
 not worry about me, for Edith and Emery Ann knew my 
 ways, and they saw me go ; and people singly and in groups 
 were straying all about the great mountain crown, from one to 
 another of its many outlooks. 
 
 I had been in perfect stillness for half an hour, when I heard 
 voices of persons just above me on the upper ridge. It was so 
 quiet, it seemed as if I might have heard voices across that wide 
 air-space from Rossberg. 
 
 As the speakers came toward the edge, and paused, I recog 
 nized that they were Mrs. Regis and General Rushleigh, and I 
 began to hear the words they said. 
 
 There was no harm in hearing the first words. They were 
 of the wonder of the day and place, the pleasure of all these last 
 days together ; and then General Rushleigh spoke of his leav 
 ing. 
 
 " It must be to-morrow, I think," he said. "I shall accompany 
 you back to Lucerne, and take the evening train to Zurich." 
 
 " We shall miss you grievously," said Mrs. Regis ; and 
 she spoke slowly, as she would not have spoken words of course. 
 
 " What the missing will be on my side, I hardly dare to tell 
 you now," said General Rushleigh. " I cannot tell you all 
 20
 
 306 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 this journey has been to me, what your friendship has been. 
 Some time, when some things that I ought to be sure of have 
 grown clearer to me, I may try may venture " 
 - " I am your friend. You may tell me anything," said Mrs. 
 Regis, when he paused so absolutely. 
 
 It had not taken long for these sentences to be spoken. They 
 just gave me time to think ; they mixed themselves up with my 
 thought ; " This will not do. Must I stand up, where they 
 can see me ? Should I go up, and meet them ? " Yes, and 
 stop all this that they were saying, and that then might never 
 be said. 
 
 Besides, I wanted my beautiful solitude a little while longer, 
 and presently they would go away and leave it to me. 
 
 Then my brilliant idea came back to me. 
 
 I just did the thing that all the people who ever got caught 
 behind curtains in deep windows, or on balconies within from 
 which were rooms with speakers in them who did not guess 
 they were overheard, or any where else where they listened 
 perforce to what they had no business to hear, might have done 
 as well and simply as not if my patent had only been out. 
 
 And now, it is out. 
 
 I just sat still, and put the ends of my two little fingers tight 
 into my ears. 
 
 It answered admirably. I don't know, and I never shall 
 know, what those two people went on to say, or whether they 
 went any farther at all. I knew it was not meant for me, 
 not even by the ordering of things, which I believe in. Because 
 of those two little fingers, which were ordered also. Ordered 
 to fit exactly into the little galleries of sound, that have no gates 
 across them. 
 
 I speculated about that, while I sat so, with my elbows on my 
 knees. It would not do that we should be able to make our 
 own quiet too easily ; we should shut out disturbance, and de 
 spoil ourselves of safeguard. But for conscientious emergencies, 
 how exquisitely those finger-tips are measured ! 
 
 The inward hearing was not let nor hindered, though. I be 
 lieve, I know, now, that I perceived more of General 
 Rushleigh's meaning than his companion did, whatever more
 
 NOONTIDE AND MORNING UPON RHIGI. 307 
 
 he spoke to her. I knew if this man did not mean to speak, 
 if he did not think it right to tell out fully what he hinted at, 
 no sweet friendliness would beguile him into it. I did not 
 think he told her any further ; but there might have been more 
 words of personal confidence and regard, more half expres 
 sions that she linked entirely with these, and so took wholly to 
 herself, where I by no means believed they all belonged. He 
 liked her so very much, and so safely ; and she, well, a 
 woman cannot always be made friendship to. 
 
 She had shown herself very lovely to him. Yes, and she is 
 very lovely. Only, somehow, it is the concentred loveliness 
 you look at, the loveliness that all circumstance ministers to 
 and that ends in itself, rather than the forth-going beauty 
 that so enwraps you with its gracious giving that you half forget 
 to ad-mire at all. It was something planetary that beamed about 
 her; she was an evening star in the western glow. There are 
 those who shine as suns in the kingdom of all radiances ; who 
 seem to cover their personality all up in the blessed blinding of 
 an effluent light. 
 
 But to him, she may have been forthgoing. If Margaret had 
 not been by, I should not have wondered if those eight years or 
 more between them had all melted away out of both their mem 
 ories and beliefs. 
 
 I dare say Mrs. Regis would have thought me as mistaken as 
 I thought she was. She would have said, or felt, " What can 
 you know ? You, merely looking on ? " If she had come to me 
 with every syllable that General Rushleigh said to her that 
 morning, with all that he had ever said, or looked, or seemed, 
 I could not have interpreted it to her. 
 
 I looking on had observed many times that hovering 
 expression in Paul Rushleigh's face, and manner, and voice, 
 when he was beside Mrs. Regis ; as if something came to the 
 very edge of utterance and lingered there ; as if something that 
 was the very spring and spell of his friendship waited, almost 
 transparently, for a fit time and way to come fully forth. And 
 then that new youth and blossoming of her nature lightened in 
 her face to answer it. 
 
 It was going to be hard for her, whatever way it ended. Un-
 
 308 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 less but I would not think that could come, now that he had 
 even dreamed a dream that he must crush of this. 
 
 They were gone away when I took my fingers from my ears 
 again ; and other persons had come into their place upon the 
 cliff. 
 
 There were voices, a man's and a young woman's, talk 
 ing rapidly in French. Perhaps by their approach they had 
 checked and interrupted the other conversation. 
 
 When I had climbed up again, which I began to do instantly, 
 hearing the new steps and tones drawing nearer down the zig 
 zag, (I passed at the turn an elderly man with a bright-faced 
 companion who waited for my slow steps with a slight triumph 
 in her younger politeness, and who said something in her own 
 language like " It is not yet arrived to me as that, my 
 friend ! ") When I had climbed up again, I was going to say, 
 I saw General Rushleigh and Mrs. Regis quite over at the 
 southern brow, where the little observatory platform is. Edith 
 and Margaret and Emery Ann were coming up from the front, 
 and moving toward them. When Margaret saw me, she left 
 the others quickly, and joined me. 
 
 There was room for everybody. We stood at separate points, 
 and watched what was coming. 
 
 A white sea of curling mist, drifting slowly between the 
 southward mountains and our own, leaving here and there an 
 island summit afar off, as it settled below us to the valley, but 
 slowly whirling, gathering, climbing, toward this side, and up 
 ward again, to our feet. 
 
 Clear blue was above us still, the sun was shining gor 
 geously, and the vapory mass was splendid-pure with upper 
 glory ; a vast, soft, level-tossing, downy-white cloud-bed, that 
 fitted and filled, with its swelling, all that great basin as it swept 
 across. 
 
 Huge, rounded billows of it began to roll against our height ; 
 they came toward us as the surf comes ; there was only a little 
 point of Rhigi left above the beautiful flood. 
 
 And then it surged wet against our faces ; it poured above us 
 and thickened into gray : we were drowned in it, and the sun- 
 Jight was put out. Its fine moisture changed to drops that fell
 
 NOONTIDE AND MORNING UPON RHIGI. 309 
 
 upon us ; there was nothing about us but a little circle of rough 
 rock and pasture grass, mere yard-room round the dreary 
 hotel building. We were out in a pouring rain, and must go 
 in. 
 
 A table d'hote dinner with a crowd of people ; a driving 
 storm outside ; a scudding transit after eating and drinking were 
 over, to our lodgings in the de*pendance ; an early going to bed, 
 in the faint hope that it would be clear by day-break ; the wind 
 hurling itself madly against the building, of which we occupied 
 the southeast windy corner ; the sleet beginning to hiss and spit 
 against the windows. This was our sunset upon Rhigi. 
 
 Well, we had had the beautiful noontime ; and we had 
 seen how the storm comes, as Emery Ann remarked, " when it 
 comes upside down." 
 
 We were to be called at four, if there were a sunrise. 
 Emery Ann said she was " reconciled either way." We got out 
 extra candles, and set them up on their ends without candle 
 sticks ; we made ourselves cheerful for a while with their light, 
 and with thinking, by their suggestion, what if the hotel should 
 take fire and burn us out into the tempest ? We hoped every 
 body would be careful, and we pinched out our wicks conscien 
 tiously, tucked ourselves up under all our blankets and water 
 proofs, and forgot that we were trembling in a great wind on a 
 stormy peak five thousand feet above the sea. 
 
 There were no horns blown, or bells rung, at sunrise ; the 
 sleet still fumed and spattered at the panes ; we became semi 
 conscious, and resigned ourselves again to oblivion. It was 
 seven when we arose, and found that the storm had ceased, and 
 a bright sun, that had risen behind it, was shining. 
 
 " Well," said Emery Ann ; " there 's no hurry now ; it 's all 
 over." 
 
 But General Rushleigh knocked at our door. 
 
 " There is something better than the sunrise," said he ; and 
 we made haste to go and see it. 
 
 Mrs. Regis had a headache. I dare say she had not slept 
 much. She said she would be out soon, however. Margaret 
 was dressed, and joined us as we came from our rooms. 
 
 When we walked round the end of the house toward the
 
 310 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 morning quarter, and General Rushleigh who was standing 
 there heard our voices and turned to come and meet us, I hardly 
 noticed even him at the first moment, in the heaven-wide marvel 
 I found myself surrounded with. Much less did I observe how 
 it was that Margaret had left my side and gone to stand by her 
 self on the high bluff northward. 
 
 General Rushleigh did not undertake to show, or to tell us ; ho 
 did not speak at all of it. as a common person would have done. 
 He gave me his arm, I suppose, for I found myself standing 
 at the edge and holding by it, and walked forward with me, 
 face to face with that from which the dun curtain of the tempest 
 had rolled clear away. 
 
 Yesterday we had seen the great distant summits, here and 
 there, that wear perpetual royalty of snow ; between, and hith- 
 erward, had been the wide, tumultuous heaving of lesser hills, 
 covered with rich forest glooms, or bare with storm-worn, sun- 
 bleached faces of bleak gray ; now, wide around us, the mount 
 ains, like Atlantic waves when the gale has blown, all had their 
 gleaming crests on. The great circuit of fifty miles radius 
 was a pure, dazzling chain of sharply charactered white cones, 
 on which the new day poured illimitable glory. 
 
 " It was not for nothing ! " ejaculated Emery Ann, after the 
 first few moments' silence. 
 
 " We have got better than we came for," I said to General 
 Rushleigh. 
 
 As I turned my face toward him, I saw that his was turned 
 aside. I followed his look, and it led me to Margaret. She 
 was beyond us, at the left, standing upon a point whence she 
 could see both ways, across the Goldau Valley, and forth 
 over this white environment of the Alp-Ocean. 
 
 The wind swept freshly past her ; her dress blew back from 
 her figure ; she had dropped her clasped hands before her, and 
 her eyes looked off steadfastly into the sublime distance, their 
 moveless lids beautiful with seeing ; from beneath their awed 
 level, her glance streamed straight eastward ; the bright light 
 was full upon her forehead. 
 
 She had hastily twisted her hair in one great loose knot, and 
 caught it with a single pin ; this had slidden from its hold, and
 
 NOONTIDE AND MORNING UPON RHIGI. 311 
 
 the wind had uncoiled the long, rich veil of it, and floated it 
 back upon her shoulders. Her little hat, with its single curling 
 feather, rested upon it and held it from further disorder, while 
 it crowned, as it were, her attitude, superb in grace, and sweet 
 with reverence. 
 
 General Rushleigh became conscious that I watched her too. 
 
 " She is a picture in herself," he said to me. " The reflex of 
 it all is in her face, her aspect." 
 
 " Yes. But she would come straight out of it if she im 
 agined we were looking." 
 
 " I know she would," he returned. " I never met a person 
 who more thoroughly shunned all mere effect." 
 
 " I am so glad you see that," I answered. " She even does 
 herself injustice by it, oftentimes." 
 
 " I have seen that, too," he replied. 
 
 "I was sure that you could look beyond. But I think she 
 has somehow got a fancy that you are turned aside from her 
 in your liking your friendliness," I blurted forth, half invol 
 untarily. 
 
 " Miss Patience ! " he exclaimed, and he moved suddenly 
 away with me upon his arm, cannot you see beyond ? Can 
 not you understand, with your wisdom your conscientious 
 ness ? I am thrown very intimately with her. A man a 
 young girl in the midst of whatever pleasantness, one can 
 not be too careful to be true ! " 
 
 With all his truth, he certainly did manage to be enigmatical. 
 
 What was he so conscientious about? Was it Margaret's 
 ties, or Margaret's self? 
 
 I could not ask him that. But I felt myself blush, as Mar 
 garet might have done ; for the instant, womanly fear lest he 
 might have seen a possibility that I knew Margaret had no 
 wakened consciousness of. Could it be that he scrupled with 
 her,,for her sake, or the sake of the world's too ready obser 
 vation, while he had passed the question of scruple with himself 
 as regarded her mother ? 
 
 I was as quickly ingenious in apprehension as if it were I 
 with whom there was need of care. I was dumb with it for a 
 moment ; I could not answer a word.
 
 312 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 While I stood, hot and inwardly confused, wondering, with 
 al, if my own meddling words were not rebuked by his, he 
 began to speak again. 
 
 " I might talk with you, perhaps, if you would let me ; and 
 yet perhaps it is better not," he said; and we walked on 
 slowly, not much heeding whither we went. 
 
 For my part, Rose, I never was quite so nearly in it, before. 
 I think I was a fool. I think I might have said something, 
 have given him some leave. I might have said, I wonder I 
 did not blunder upon it, as Mrs. Regis did, "I am your 
 friend ; you may tell me anything." But I had not got over 
 the first surprise and scare. 
 
 " Perhaps you see that it is better not," he resumed, quietly, 
 misinterpreting my silence. " You are sure to see rightly." 
 
 " No, indeed," I said then, impetuously. " I do not see. I do 
 not understand, at all. And I cannot ask you questions. 
 But I thank you for believing in me ; and I am sure you 
 may." It did not occur to me till afterward, that, connected 
 with what he had just said, my speech might sound very like an 
 assertion of infallibility. But he was too intent upon his own 
 real meaning, as I was upon mine, for any quibbling. 
 
 " Even selfishly," he said, " I should wait. One cannot afford 
 to lose all. Beside the wrong that it might be, there is all 
 else ; the difference, the strangeness that it might seem to 
 her, no ; time and right may come together, but any way, 
 Mrs. Regis and her daughter must remain my friends. I 
 am afraid I have told you too much, Miss Patience ; but your 
 own words led me, and I think everybody turns to you." 
 
 I wonder what he thought he had told me ! Is that the way 
 they do ? How does anybody ever understand ? 
 
 We had wandered down very near the house again. Mrs. 
 Regis came out, around the corner, against the wind. I 
 dropped my hand from General Rushleigh's arm, and he went 
 to meet her. 
 
 After I had just said " good morning," I took myself away to 
 Emery Ann. Edith and Margaret had got together. 
 
 The other two walked out along the brow of the mountain. 
 
 The cold, clear dazzle of the sun struck into my eyes. Emery
 
 NOONTIDE AND MORNING UPON RHIGI. 313 
 
 Ann had an open sunshade. I suppose I put my hand out and 
 deliberately took it from hers, as I might have picked it up if it 
 had been lying upon the ground. I had n't the least idea of 
 what I did or saw for the next three minutes. 
 
 When I began to come to, I found myself staring at the scal 
 loped edges of the silk, as I held the parasol exactly between 
 my face and all creation beside. Emery Ann stood by me, 
 blinking. 
 
 " Did I take this away from you ? " I asked her somnam- 
 bulistically. 
 
 " Yes, you did," returned my friend and handmaid. " 'T ain't 
 any matter ; only I desire to hope you ain't getting betwattled 
 too ! Or three, finally." 
 
 Emery Ann is not a bit nearsighted.
 
 314 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 A FERN LEAF. 
 
 . . . .WE had five minutes to spare, in the pleasant wood' 
 shade at the Rhigi foot. 
 
 Margaret, who always finds fourleaved clovers, and rare 
 blossoms, and curious pebbles, and the oddest, tiniest, filmiest, 
 ferns had a handful when we walked down to the boat, that 
 came steaming through the lovely strait between the " Nasen," 
 and puffed up to the little Vitznau landing. 
 
 General Rushleigh had walked on to the hotel, and the por 
 ters met us at the pier with our light luggage. 
 
 Down under the great ribs and folds and craggy upshoots of 
 Pilatus, past the aisles of Stanstad and Kiissnacht, we floated 
 on the gold-green water that, out from the mountain shadows, 
 grew verd-azure in the sun. Margaret sat by me, and laid her 
 ferns and flowers between the leaves of her Baedeker. 
 
 General Rushleigh left Edith and Emery Ann and Mrs. 
 Regis all together at the stern, just after we rounded the Meg- 
 genhorn, and came and fetched a camp-stool to the quarter 
 guards where we were. 
 
 I retreated a little behind my sunshade, my own parasol, 
 " finally," this time, as he placed himself on Margaret's other 
 side, and began to look quietly over while she arranged the del 
 icate fronds. She had nearly finished. 
 
 He waited till the very last was going in ; then he said, quite 
 straightforwardly and simply : 
 
 " Miss Margaret, will you give me that little Rhigi fern ? " 
 
 " Surely I will," and she withdrew it from the book, and laid 
 it into his hand. 
 
 He opened his own guide-book to the panorama of the Rhigi- 
 Kulm, placed the fern within its middle folding and then 
 eaid :
 
 A FERN LEAF. 315 
 
 " I must beg for one thing more ; a little pin, to make it fast." 
 
 Margaret took from her pocket a small pincushion, and held it 
 for him. He found the cluster of least size among its neat as- 
 sortings, and took one which he put through the doubled leaf so 
 as to catch and hold firmly the stem within it. 
 
 " That is the keepsake of a wonderful place, and of all these 
 pleasant, friendly days," he said. " It is better than to have 
 gathered it myself." 
 
 Margaret spoke out with a wonderful sweet honesty, in 
 answer. 
 
 " I am very glad you asked me for it," she said, " Because I 
 think, now, I have not offended you in anything." 
 
 " Offended me ! You, Miss Margaret ! " said Paul Rushleigh, 
 taken almost off his guard, though I feel sure he had allowed 
 himself this little favor-asking just because of what I myself 
 had put in his mind, and because he felt he had at least a right 
 to do away that thought with her, if it existed. " You cannot 
 possibly have thought so ? " 
 
 " No. Not in the ordinary way, maybe. I did not think ex 
 actly that. I did not see how I could have. But I am glad 
 you can say ' friendly ' to me. That you have n't disliked me." 
 
 " Disliked you ! I beg your pardon for repeating your words. 
 But they surprise me so. Did ever anybody dislike you, Miss 
 Margaret ? " 
 
 " I would rather you said just ' No,' " she persisted, with her 
 pure, earnest frankness. And then she added, simply, " for I had 
 counted you for a friend." 
 
 " No ! Indeed, no ! If you thought that for a moment, I 
 thank you very much for asking me. Count me for your friend. 
 I shall remember that you said it. Such words keep. Per 
 haps when life has settled some things for us both, for all, 
 I may be able to remind you of them. Or when it has 
 settled all things ; when the fogs have all drifted down." 
 
 What did he say " for all," for ? And who were " all ? " 
 
 I felt a great impulse to have a sudden indispensable errand 
 ^0 Emery Ann, or somebody in that group on and in the stern. 
 But I sat still, for fear he should not, if I moved. For fear, 
 also, otherwise, of making a tete-a-tete apparent to eyes that 
 might not be quite gratified.
 
 316 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 Margaret made no further answer. What her face said, so 
 luminous-clear always, I could guess. There was no danger 
 that it should say, or he interpret, anything that her most 
 modest dignity could be sorry for. There was nothing below 
 that dignity that could rise through it to betray itself. 
 
 There began to be a bustle of gathering up wraps and traps. 
 Somebody's satchel was between our chairs ; we rose to let the 
 owner take it. Passengers moved about, and took their stands 
 for disembarking ; our own party drew together ; in ten minutes 
 more we were at the pretty Hotel Rhigi, where we had chosen 
 to seek rooms rather than at the great, elegant, showy Schweit- 
 zerhof, where we had sat for an hour on the Saturday afternoon, 
 and seen the pomp of the table d'hote, and the dresses that 
 trailed out to it through the spacious anteroom where we had 
 waited. 
 
 I think General Rushleigh had business at his banker's and 
 letters to write. We saw little of him, any more, until he came 
 to say the mere good-bye. 
 
 " I do not say it for very long," said Mrs. Regis, with her 
 hand in his. " I feel sure you will find us again in Italy." 
 
 There was a renewed pressure of her hand, for reply, before 
 he let it go. But he made no other answer.
 
 THE HEM OF A STORM. 317 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE HEM OF A STORM. 
 
 .... I RESOLVED that I would say something to Mrs. Regis 
 of what I thought I discerned in the matter of General Rush- 
 leigh's friendship. I would do it if the evident opportunity 
 came, but I would not make an opportunity, or force it in any 
 way. I would take no thought about it beforehand, beyond this, 
 that I quite made up my mind it would be right to speak, 
 upon occasion. 
 
 The occasion did not come while we remained in Lucerne. 
 The most that I was able to do during the four days that we 
 waited, partly to receive our letters, for which we had tele 
 graphed to Geneva, where was now our banking address, and 
 partly for absolutely necessary repose, was to walk out tho 
 little distance to the Lake shore with Emery Ann, and sit upon 
 the pier, watching the tints and shadows upon huge, manifold 
 Pilatus, and the light upon the distant, snowy Engelbergs. 
 
 Mrs. Regis and Margaret drove and walked about continually, 
 taking Edith usually with them. They were very busy about 
 carvings, having large boxes of new purchases packed here, as 
 they had done at Rosenlaui, to be shipped home to New York. 
 
 Once more we sailed up the lovely green water, deeper into 
 its enchanted recesses ; tracing, now, every bend and inlet to its 
 farthest point, passing down the narrow southern stretch called 
 the Lake of Uri, which opens beyond Rhigi, through the close 
 little aperture of the Nasen, into the very heart of the cliffs, like 
 a beautiful water-cavern. 
 
 Enormous precipices wall it in ; the clear, blue ceils it over ; 
 the dark-forested promontories reach their feet into it, and stand 
 there, hiding its one part from another. 
 
 You go winding through its still and shadowy vaults, from
 
 318 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 which, through the long gorges that open away from them, you 
 sometimes see the white, distant heights ; these far glimpses only 
 emphasizing the wonderful, vague impression of threading an 
 illimitable mystery, a wild, dreamlike, world-separate gran 
 deur. 
 
 You pass another Chapel of Tell ; a little frescoed building 
 standing among the thick trees at a huge mountain-foot ; put 
 there, they say, in memory of the patriot, on the very spot where 
 he sprang out of Gessler's boat, in the storm, and made his es 
 cape into the wild passes of the hills to watch for his revenge. 
 
 At the very end, under the last, really closing cliffs, lies 
 Fliielen. 
 
 We had telegraphed for carriages here, to take us through to 
 Lugano. We found them ready, and immediately upon landing 
 we set off up the long defiles of the valley of the Reuss toward 
 Andermatt and Hospenthal and the Pass of the St. Gotthard. 
 
 We had given up Zermatt. The changeable weather, the 
 sudden falls of rain, showed that the season was breaking. 
 It was too exhausting and hazardous a journey for a party of 
 ladies to undertake in the face of so much uncertainty as to its 
 satisfying result ; Emery Ann declared to me, privately, after I 
 had said in general council that I felt it impossible, that she was 
 " really wappered out with mountains ; but she presumed she 
 should have kept on and said nothing if I liad ; only if she did 
 come to a sudden conclusion in spite of herself, up on some 
 Horn, or Gorn, or Grat, she should not mind so much for her 
 own part, but she was concerned to know what we would do 
 with her then ! " 
 
 We telegraphed to Brieg, to which point our small boxes left 
 at St. Maurice were to have been forwarded, and ordered them 
 sent on to us at Lugano ; also we wrote in like manner for our 
 big trunks, to the Geneva bankers. 
 
 Two more days, and the Alps would be behind us forever. 
 
 We had lovely morning weather, and a delightful drive as far 
 as Amsteg, where we cracked through the narrow street to the 
 small inn-entrance in the usual noisy voiture fashion, dined 
 drearily, and saw an enormous quartz crystal, as big as a four- 
 quart bucket.
 
 THE HEM OF A STORM. 319 
 
 Mrs. Regis asked me to ride with her in the afternoon, from 
 Amsteg to Hospenthal ; sending Margaret to sit with Edith. 
 
 And this was my opportunity, and a clear bidding. 
 
 She wanted to talk with me about our plans in Italy ; our 
 stay at Lugano, especially, which she was inclined to make a set 
 tling down of several weeks. 
 
 I was only too anxious for pause and quiet, after all that I 
 had been doing and receiving. We were going over this Alp- 
 boundary into another and altogether different world of 
 wonders. I could not rush straight from mountains and glaciers 
 to cathedrals and picture-galleries. Between Switzerland and 
 Italy, as some think between this life and our next to come, 
 there needs, and is, an intermediate state, in this very reposeful 
 Elysium of the Swiss-Italian lakes. 
 
 I was quite ready to acquiesce in Mrs. Regis's suggestions, 
 though I felt pretty sure that with her there was also an inner 
 argument, which when it occurred to me, I could not disavow 
 even in my own mind. 
 
 General Rushleigh would undoubtedly come down into Italy 
 by the St. Gotthard Pass. Of course there were Como and 
 Maggiore, as well as Lugano ; but, if we still remained at the 
 latter, my thought sprang hither and thither, seized this and 
 that together, and made divine possibilities out of them. 
 
 The lovely, still October, in that delicious land of summer fra 
 grance ; of flower-flush and fruit-ripening, of the fig and the 
 grape and the nectarine, the oleander and the orange bloom, 
 and the laurel, of cloudless skies, and tender shades, and 
 dreamy waters, of day-long idleness, and nights of music, I 
 grew silly and romantic, Rose, thinking of what it might be to 
 these younger lives; of what it might be laid out to be. 
 
 For, another thing among all the letters that had come 
 to our whole party at Lucerne, there had not been any from 
 either Harry or Flora Mackenzie to Margaret Regis. Something 
 might be coming of it which should free her. Free her to the 
 knowledge of that to which she would not open her eyes. Or, 
 for I, looking down upon this thing in the light in which it 
 lay to me, could not feel, even as I ought, perhaps, that there 
 was anything in that false half-bond to stand for a moment
 
 320 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 against the rush of a living truth when it should come, the 
 truth itself demanding search and trial and acknowledgment of all 
 things, should descend into her life and set her free, by very 
 faith, deeper than mere wordkeeping. 
 
 Yet I trembled to touch with a finger of influence the straws 
 of circumstance. Jackstraws of human fate one cannot play 
 with. I was sure all this occurred to me beside and after the 
 other plentiful and almost imperative reasons. 
 
 When, after a good deal of previous talk, General Rushleigh's 
 name was spoken by Mrs. Regis with a quiet friendly frankness, 
 and she remarked that she should be glad if it happened that he 
 joined our party again, it was so much nicer, altogether, to 
 say nothing of cordial liking, to have a gentleman to refer to, 
 I did suggest that it was " different, however, his attaching him 
 self to us here, at hotels and in cities, from joining escort among 
 the Alps ; that people would imagine, perhaps, and observe ; 
 there were always conclusions drawn ; did she think he would 
 be likely unless, as indeed she had perhaps also noticed " 
 
 It was easy enough to interrupt me. I stumbled a good deal. 
 But her "Noticed what, Miss Strong?" was quick and sharp 
 for the elegant Mrs. Regis. It brought me to the bravery of 
 plain truth, which I had resolved to speak. 
 
 Let her take it as she might, let it affect her action as it 
 might, I was sure it was in the clear and honest order. For 
 the two opposing interpretations of things which had come to 
 me, were making me, to myself, in the daily confidence and pre 
 sumed understanding with all, as if I were double-minded. 
 
 " I have noticed," I said with quiet directness, " his manner 
 with Margaret. I think, if there were nothing in the way, he 
 would not leave it to be merely noticed." 
 
 " Margaret ! That child ! Miss Strong, you are utterly mis 
 taken. I have had them with me continually. I assure you, 
 you are altogether in the wrong." 
 
 " I thought you ought to know it, Mrs. Regis," I went on, 
 just as if she had not spoken her emphatic contradiction. " I 
 mean, I thought I ought to tell you how I saw it. For it might 
 rest, very much, even unconsciously, with you. You have been 
 anxious about Margaret, /think she is under a mistake, which
 
 THE HEM OF A STORM. 321 
 
 she will live beyond. I am not afraid for her, for she is wait 
 ing ; she is taking one true step at a time. It will be put right 
 for her. But my true step was to tell it to you. There will be 
 some right thing for you to be careful for. You yourself will 
 be able to see what it. is. I believe no one ever misses a real 
 good who does not personally or for whom some other does 
 not fall into a wrong, or fail of a right, for which, and its 
 consequences, they are responsible. That is why this living of 
 ours is such an accountable and yet such a child-dependent 
 thing. It seems to me and I feel as if I could trust the in 
 sight, even if there were nothing else that a great good and 
 happiness waits now between Margaret and General Rushleigh. 
 And I think I am sure that he is, at this moment, under 
 some partial mistake." 
 
 " General Rushleigh is in intimate friendship with myself, 
 Miss Strong." She repeated my name as people do, when their 
 attitude is over against, not with you ; so that your objective 
 personality is prominent to them, and they feel it well to make 
 it obvious to yourself. " I think I have opportunities for under 
 standing him very thoroughly, however it may be as to Mar 
 garet. And it would, at any rate, be such a preposterous thing ! 
 A man of his age, and gravity, and a girl like her. She is uu- 
 fit for him. She could give him nothing but a girl's fancy." 
 
 Mrs. Regis did not know, I think, the faint breath of empha 
 sis she gave the pronoun. " How could she value him, even ? 
 Three months ago, she was mad for Harry Mackenzie ! " 
 
 I answered the first part of her objection. 
 
 " What can the spring give but its blossoms ? " said I. 
 " Sweetness, and freshness, and a blossoming wisdom, are what 
 a man looks for, if he is ever so wise ; the wiser, the more, 
 maybe. A woman of his own age would be old as he is not. 
 You would not have him marry a woman of forty ? " 
 
 If I had not believed in Mrs. Regis, more than she yet knew 
 how to believe in herself, I should not have spoken so, or have 
 entered into this conversation at all. If I had been a woman in 
 a story-book, having to do with the stereotyped selfish ma- 
 nceuvrer of it, I should never have put the whole thing in her 
 hands in such way. But I do not think we are set in this world 
 21
 
 322 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 to live such story books as wrong and unwise people are forever 
 making. I do not think our human business is to outwit and 
 circumvent each other. I believe in introverting ; in making 
 straight for the truest, livingest part of people ; the part that 
 God lays hold of. 
 
 We are to overcome evil with good. Our good ? No, phari- 
 see ! The good that lies there under the evil ; ready to be 
 touched and worked upon. Yet our evil cannot reach it, 'cer 
 tainly. 
 
 Mrs. Regis might contradict me now ; I expected it ; but she 
 could not contradict that which would continue to say itself. 
 
 I did not say boldly what I did about a woman of forty, for 
 the sake of any sharp home-thrust. I did not mean insolence. 
 I did not pre-suppose anything to be insolent about. I put 
 myself right beside her, in her own attitude of friendship for 
 General Rushleigh, and spoke what she might see. I spoke it 
 fearlessly without hint ; for I hate hinting. I set in a clear 
 light, as well as I could, what it was a great deal best should be 
 apparent to her, and that she should be reminded was apparent 
 to the world. 
 
 This was what she answered me. 
 
 " A woman of forty, or of fifty," she left her own age in 
 the chasm she leaped defiantly, " can have sweetness and 
 freshness, if life gives her a chance." 
 
 She almost pleaded. She forgot altogether, the confession 
 that might be in her words. She was making her stand for 
 heart-youth and hope that will not perish, against the inexorable 
 years. Do you suppose I could not feel with her ? Do you 
 suppose the great possible fulfillment is so buried under my own 
 almost half century of denial, that I could not ? But I said to 
 her what I would say to my own self. 
 
 "Not those chances. Her sweetness is for the second summer 
 time. Let her lay it up before the Lord. It would not be 
 seemly, I think, to give it to a young man. It would turn to 
 something different. And she would rob some Margaret, with 
 all her years before her. That is what I believe about it." 
 
 A look, different from what I had ever seen before in Mrs. 
 Regis's face, came over it as I spoke. I think she felt a sudden
 
 THE HEM OF A STORM. 323 
 
 clear recognition, inward and outward, of obstacle and incon- 
 
 O 
 
 gruity. There was a stab in her heart, and a wall against her 
 way. And one plain stone in that wall had just been laid there. 
 There was one woman in the world beside herself, there was 
 I, Patience Strong, who would see all the wrong and the un- 
 fitness if she ever crossed that barrier now. 
 
 With that sudden expression, there passed also the first look 
 of age that I had ever detected in her, across her features. 
 
 She leaned back in the carriage, a motion that was as if 
 ending the conversation, and sat perfectly silent, with her 
 face turned away toward the mountains. The mist was falling 
 down upon them. The hem of a storm swept their tops. 
 
 I could not tell whether she was offended with me and meant 
 to show it, or whether the strong grasp of her own thoughts 
 drew her away into a solitude in which she utterly forgot me. 
 Whatever it might be, I could but sit silent also. 
 
 Much must have possessed her during those many moments 
 in which neither of us moved. The key to her conclusion, 
 whatever the train or conflict that led to it, appeared in her 
 first following words. 
 
 " I return, Miss Strong, to my first convictions. I think still 
 that you are utterly mistaken. I have reason to think so which 
 I do not feel called upon to explain to you now. But I agree 
 with you in one thing. I think General Rushleigh left us under 
 a slight mistake. That has occurred to me before. It will be 
 my business to see that it is rectified. I shall write to him from 
 Lugano. If he comes back to us, things shall be made plain." 
 
 She spoke from a vantage. She uttered a measured oracle, 
 of which in her own reserved consciousness she seemed to hold 
 the clew. I should see by and by. She did not feel called upon 
 to speak fully to me now. I was put back into my outside 
 place. She just gave me something to remember when things 
 should have turned out. I could see that she resumed or 
 resolved to resume her own position; and that some solution 
 which gave a test into her hands had presented or renewed it 
 self to her mind in regard to that which had already perplexed 
 her. This occurred to me from what she said next. 
 
 " General Rushleigh is not a very rich man, perhaps you
 
 324 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 know? His father's estate cannot be wholly settled in tho life 
 time of his mother, and the share he is to receive meanwhile 
 depends upon the uncertain and gradual sale of some extensive, 
 but complicated, real property." 
 
 She told me that too, as if she gave me something to think 
 of, another half to which might be somewhere, and might yet 
 come round to me. 
 
 I took -it as 'she gave it to me, and put it by. I have, as 
 Emery Ann expressed it of somebody we both know who has 
 not, a belaying pin in my head. 
 
 I had no idea it meant that he could not afford to marry ; 
 that even supposing he could take Margaret with her step 
 mother's consent, and her marriage portion, he would not be 
 able, yet, to place and take care of her as she had been placed 
 and cared for hitherto ; that, in short according to the vulgar 
 phrase and vulgar reasons, he was " not a marrying man." 
 Still less, at any rate quite as little, did I do Mrs. Regis 
 the coarse injustice of understanding her words as a threat of 
 again withholding arbitrarily her approval, and cutting Margaret 
 off with at best only her " little twenty -five thousand dollars." 
 
 No. There was some other inference from the fact she men 
 tioned ; something which might touch far differently General 
 Rushleigh's motive, such motive as a man like him could 
 have, and withhold him from action that he otherwise might 
 take. It substituted another explanation for his silence and 
 departure, than his knowledge, or half knowledge, of Mar 
 garet's previous obligations. It might not have to do with Mar 
 garet at all ; it did not point her way. 
 
 Did it point toward Mrs. Regis herself? 
 
 Perhaps it would be just as well to add, right here, instead 
 of my own conjectures at the moment, that which did come 
 round afterward, and fit on. 
 
 A few days later, Mrs. Regis began, quite on the other side 
 of the subject, to talk to me one morning about Margaret. Just 
 as if no newer suggestion had arisen between us concerning her, 
 she returned of her own accord to the Harry Mackenzie affair. 
 She spoke of there having been no letters recently received ; of 
 the ofF-and-on character of the intimacy, held from the beginning
 
 THE HEM OF A STORM. 325 
 
 in a sort of tether that might be drawn or let slip, at conven 
 ience. 
 
 " I should think far better of him if he were more self-com 
 promising and bold. If he insisted on a declared engagement. 
 I know it would have been Margaret's natural course, if it 
 had been asked of her. But there was too much dependent on 
 my pleasure beyond the five years, even. Besides," and 
 she laughed slightly, " there was another contingency, though 
 not precisely as I fancy they reckon it " 
 
 " I am sure Margaret does not reckon ! " I broke in. 
 
 " I do not mean Margaret. I mean those Mackenzies. There 
 was another contingency," she resumed, administering to me a 
 slight, courteous rebuke for my interruption by returning to the 
 precise phraseology of her sentence that had been broken off, 
 " which would have made Margaret at once and altogether 
 independent of me. If I had married." 
 
 I did not interrupt again, although she stopped. I did not 
 even challenge, by word or smile, her past tense. I went on 
 listening. When a person to whom you speak does that, you 
 can hardly escape awkwardness but by continuing. 
 
 " Colonel Regis was far more generous than many men. He 
 did not take everything back from me if I should not remain a 
 widow. The life interest of all continues to me, though I should 
 marry. But it becomes only a life-interest, and it negatives my 
 control." 
 
 She had got round, through her conditional phrases, into a 
 very indicative present. 
 
 " I know very well what many people have supposed and 
 said about it. There were sure to be plenty of versions, in New 
 York gossip, of a complicated will whose record was in Kentucky. 
 But I have been very indifferent to their surmises ; in fact, they 
 have simply protected me. I had no thought of marrying 
 again." 
 
 She went on with more about the Mackenzies watching for 
 this among other contingencies of the suspended approval ; of 
 their excessively civil and deferent way toward herself in it all ; 
 of their tacit allowance that her judgment was right, that an 
 engagement should not be talked of until Harry himself was in
 
 326 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 a position, and so forth ; but I could not help thinking, 
 Did all this matter at the present moment, or was it mere cover 
 and introduction ; a little game, like " Burying Cities ? " 
 Had she just put in now, some second syllable, of which the 
 preceding had been hidden in that rather detached sentence the 
 other day about General Rushleigh ? 
 
 Did she give me the two links, at separate times, on purpose ? 
 Did she leave me to put together what she would not argue, 
 outright, to me? 
 
 Was this the mistaken supposition under which General 
 Rushleigh had been acting? Did he believe that marrying 
 would make her a poor woman, he being a " not very rich 
 man ? " 
 
 I did not feel a particle of disdain or censure in my weighing 
 of Mrs. Regis's words. I was not lying in wait to cavil in 
 wardly at her. Because I thought I could see farther than to 
 do that. I could see that she had drawn, in good faith, however 
 anxiously, this possible conclusion. I could see that she gave 
 me her own premises by which I in turn might arrive at it, and 
 that she trusted to my candor to allow her title to fair play. 
 
 I could not wonder that she would fain prove this first. If it 
 was in her afterward to stand aside, to clear other mistakes, to 
 give over to Margaret that which indeed never was hers to give, 
 but might be to hinder, I could hardly expect more. I could 
 hardly expect that for the scruple of " robbing some other with 
 all her years before her," she should refuse the springtime which 
 came blossoming back with a wonderful richness to her own 
 mid-life. I did not expect it of her. Perhaps I had been 
 severe in what I had said to her about it. And yet, I think 
 it would have been so much higher and purer, I would have 
 struggled hard in her place to expect it of myself. 
 
 I was very far, too, from rigorous judgment of one who so 
 evidently, across all her pride and my plain dealing, desired to 
 put herself in some right light with me. Not because of the 
 me ; I did not lay it to that separate account. I laid it to the 
 account of her own higher apprehension, to which I had dared 
 to speak, and before which she was restless ; not before me, who 
 only stood for it and with it, making it objective to her.
 
 THE HEM OF A STORM. 327 
 
 That is the secret of much confidence. We are but laj 
 figures, very often, when we fancy we are of high individual im 
 portance. What one human being takes pains to explain, or 
 argue, or confess to another, is often only what he wants to make 
 his own more inward self discern, acknowledge, or forgive. That 
 is why the dusk, or the darkness, falling between two faces, 
 makes heart-speech the easier. 
 
 And that reminds me that I have skipped to some days later. 
 It reminds me, also, that I may have to oblige you to skip some 
 things, Rose, in my story ; or, if I send some pages of it which 
 I write out now, in their due order, for my own deep interest in 
 it as it grows, I must send them to you with some precaution 
 against their getting astray ; with certain blanks and changes, 
 and perhaps piecemeal, even ; a leaf here and there, among 
 mere travel sketches, which will make a pretty little puzzle arid 
 excitement for you to put together. For books do get misbound 
 sometimes, and there is a certain pleasure in coming to a " fault," 
 when one knows how to look for the " lead " again. After it all 
 does get to you, it is far safer than between any journal or port 
 folio covers, with any Bramah or combination lock. 
 
 The dusk of the shortening day and the down-rolling storm 
 fell between our faces that afternoon upon the mountain passes. 
 
 We had crossed and recrossed the foaming Reuss. We were 
 following the great ravine, now on this side, now on that, the 
 cliffs along whose fronts our roadway crept ascending toward 
 the savage defiles of the Schollenau, the Devil's Bridge, and 
 the Oberalp. 
 
 Night and fog came down upon us. We had to make up our 
 minds to miss the wonder and the awe of the imposing scenery ; 
 to feel it only in the blindness of tempest and the near solid 
 gloom of vast, uprearing rocks ; in the mingled roar of winds 
 above and waters plunging deep below ; in the imagination 
 that at any time, or all the time, " this might be the Devil's 
 Bridge." 
 
 Our voituriers closed, as well as they could, the flapping can 
 vases, and the ill-latching doors. I had to put a shawl-strap 
 through the handle on my side, and buckling it into a loop, sit 
 with my arm through it for three mortal hours, to keep the door
 
 328 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 from flying back. The lanterns were lighted, and in their 
 small radius of illumination we could see the dripping faces of 
 the precipices, or trace the brinks that fell away, we dared not 
 fancy whither. 
 
 It was easy enough, in our present practical interests and 
 anxieties, to leave behind the dropped subject of our difference. 
 I fancy Mrs. Regis never quarrels ; and I quite believe, more 
 over, that she does not wish to quarrel with me. As the dusk 
 and the rain dropped around us, and we were shut in close 
 together, the silence that had been between us for a while was 
 broken, first by fragmentary remark, and afterward by con 
 nected talk again. 
 
 Mrs. Eegis herself led it in a direction of thought and feel 
 ing to which she has not ordinarily seemed given, and that of 
 itself showed me very plainly how some new awakening touch 
 had made her own life newly living to her, bringing things from 
 backward and forward to the sharp focus of present revelation. 
 We had left personalities ; but our words drifted close about 
 them in the impersonal and abstract. 
 
 " We are going through all this," she said, " that we shall 
 never go through but this once ; and we are not seeing it. It 
 is a blank in our journey, that we can ill afford any blank in. 
 It is like those years, Miss Patience, that you are so stern about 
 people never living again." 
 
 Her calling me " Miss Patience " was a marked relenting from 
 the stiff " Miss Strong." It was always her friendliest little 
 way with me, when her mood was intimate. Before I answered 
 the rest of what she said, I answered that, with the real, cordial 
 responsiveness that I felt. 
 
 " Thank you for the Christian name of me," I said, laugh 
 ing. " It makes me feel in a more Christian light with you. I 
 am afraid you find me a fierce old thing, sometimes." 
 
 " You are both ends of your name," she said. " I find you 
 ' Patience,' and I find you ' Strong.' That is why I cannot help 
 liking you, and also being half afraid of you. You are awfully 
 uncompromising." 
 
 " About the years ? I don't say we should never live them 
 again. I only say that the things which are dead, are dead to
 
 THE HEM OF A STORM. 329 
 
 ourselves. But in everything, as in finally laying off the body, I 
 believe we only die that we may live again. In other lives ; 
 and in our own lives farther on." 
 
 " Why should we not wish to, why should we not do it if 
 we could, come back and go this way again, that we are miss 
 ing now ? Farther on, if it means quite other things, that 
 we might have had also, is a hard promise." 
 
 " ' A thousand years shall pass, and then 
 I mean to go that way again.' " 
 
 1 quoted it to myself rather than to her. I do not think she 
 knew what I quoted from. 
 
 " Farther on grows out of now ; even out of the missing. If 
 we miss that, I think we shall be sorrier," I said to her. " The 
 foolish virgins went back after their oil. There is something in 
 that part of the parable that gets overlooked. Maybe if they 
 had gone straight to the Bridegroom, with their empty vessels, 
 he would have had pity on them. Maybe He Himself would 
 have found them oil." 
 
 " There is something else in that parable, if you are going to 
 look at it freely. The Bridegroom himself tarried. And the 
 women slept, and the lamps went out. Life is only just so long ; 
 you forget you are waiting it out sometimes. 
 
 " I don't think He forgets," I said, gently. " He only tarries 
 when we need the time." 
 
 " Yet you think He may hold out something you are not to 
 take, for your real own. / never gave keep-money to chil 
 dren ! " 
 
 " Give-money is better," I answered ; hardly sure that she 
 would apply the word as I could not help applying it. " Or He 
 may show us something that He is keeping for us ; something 
 He is going to turn into what we could never turn it to our 
 selves." 
 
 " We are getting very deep into metaphor," said Mrs. Regis. 
 " I am not sure I don't like plain speaking quite as well in its 
 season." 
 
 And there we dropped the talk again. I have not told you 
 all of it ; only the points that held. I am not one of those won 
 derful scribes who can reproduce yards of colloquy, with all the 
 tones and gestures, stops and quotation-marks.
 
 330 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 We had not only not quarreled ; we had come nearer to each 
 other than we ever did before. But for that, I suppose she 
 would scarcely have given me the other syllable I told you of. 
 
 It was nine o'clock when we saw the lights of Andermatt 
 twinkling, close-clustered below us. 
 
 We came rattling down into the village streets, and rattled 
 through. We plunged again into the gloom and storm beyond, 
 leaving its pleasant glimmer dropping out in distance and 
 shadow, for our rest was farther on. 
 
 Nearly two miles more, a weary lengthening, and we 
 came to Hospenthal, at the foot of the St. Gotthard. 
 
 We slept there, in a string of rooms that opened to each 
 other from end to end. Around the walls of mine were all 
 Napoleon's battles, in cheap pictures. 
 
 The next morning flashed gloriously upon the world ; at 
 least, our piece of it. 
 
 We looked in our maps and guide-books, and made out just 
 where and when we had passed the Devil's Bridge. 
 
 It would have been a great thing to have seen it. But, as 
 Emery Ann said, " There 's no knowing how many devil's 
 bridges you get over in the dark. And not a bad way either, 
 when you come to think of it."
 
 DOWN INTO THE SUMMER. 331 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 DOWN INTO THE SUMMER. 
 
 .... THE zigzag carriage road doubles up the northern side 
 of the mountain, gradually leaving the village below, and giving 
 pretty, shifting, receding views of it and its valley, and of the 
 picturesque old castle-ruin on its separate height which the Lom 
 bards built to overlook the pass. 
 
 Around the end of the long-lying ridge, the way takes a last 
 turn that puts the whole body of the range between us and the 
 Urserenthal, or valley of the Uri and Andermatt, that we and 
 the tempest were driving blindly through last night ; and out 
 on the southeastern slope we begin to follow a longitudinal 
 stretch which lifts us continually higher and higher toward the 
 central culmination of the extended chain of the St. Gotthard, 
 and above the lonely, lovely valley of the upper Reuss. 
 
 Down at our left, a desolate basin, yet green with soft 
 pasture and shut warmly in by its great defenses of bleak, bare 
 rock, it spreads its breadth beneath us, and in its midst the 
 slender river runs to meet its mate. At our right is the im 
 penetrable mass along whose shelvy side we creep. Forward, 
 above the rocky heaps, a southward sky glows cloudlessly; a 
 bare, bright heaven above a bare and solitary earth. 
 
 " It will make beautiful weather now," said Margaret to the 
 " cocher," as he walked with his long whip and reins in hand by 
 the side of the carriage. 
 
 "It makes always beautiful weather in Italy," replied the 
 man. 
 
 Yes ; over there was Italy ! 
 
 Behind, the uncertain days and the breaking weather in 
 storm-breeding Switzerland ; before, weeks of summer splendor
 
 332 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 yet, in the delicious Ticino. Between the two, the unmelted 
 snows around the level little lakes on the topmost table of the 
 mountain. In a few hours, we should have passed over ; a day's 
 drive only between two zones, across an arctic culm. 
 
 So far below us was the river-valley, that we did not even 
 notice for a long while, that any living creature moved in it. 
 
 The still, feeding sheep might have been small gray-white 
 stones lying scattered about in it. 
 
 But we were suddenly aware of a tiny scud and hurry among 
 the little gray-white things. 
 
 They were turned, by some magic, into a moving multitude 
 that ran like mice or insects, gathering in converging lines to 
 ward a thickening centre swarm ; those in the far outskirts 
 catching the impulse gradually, and raying in. 
 
 It was an immense flock in an immense pasture ; it took a 
 long time for the last ones to find out that there was anything 
 going on. It took us a good while to detect where were the 
 last, and what was drawing them all. . 
 
 It was the shepherd, standing on a rock, calling them to be 
 fed with salt. 
 
 We could not hear him call. "We could just see him there, 
 and the eager huddling round him ; and we could see how not 
 his voice or presence was made to be directly perceived by all, 
 but one caught from another the sign and knowledge, and so at 
 last all were gathered. 
 
 All but a very distant, stolid few. 
 
 And then we discerned another thing. A little black speck 
 flew wildly about the far places, the distant margins. Hither 
 and thither, round and about, scaring the stragglers ; driving 
 them up till they got where they could be drawn ; hunting them 
 out, and bringing them in. We supposed it barked fiercely ; we 
 could see when it must be barking ; but we could not hear it. 
 
 There were to be none left out, away off, without their share, 
 deaf, witless, or obstinate. The fullness of the little gentiles 
 was to be gathered in. 
 
 " Behold My Parable ! " A voice and a beckoning were in 
 all the grand, wide scene, and said it to me. 
 
 And in the parable I saw two things, newly.
 
 DOWN INTO THE SUMMER. 333 
 
 That the sheep-nature is a part of the shepherding. That 
 they are made like that, one to follow another, so that the near 
 est, hearing and seeing and following, bring also those who 
 cannot yet hear and see. 
 
 And that for the scattered in the wilderness, the dog shall be 
 sent out. 
 
 Now the dog of the shepherd never harms the sheep ; bu4 
 only compels them to the fold or to the feeding. 
 
 "We came up under the full noon sunshine, to the high soli 
 tude of the uppermost crowns ; to the little lakes that lay close 
 under the sky ; to the snowheaps beneath the northerly ridges. 
 
 We got out and walked, and took snow in our hands, and 
 made snowballs ; and said, " To-morrow, down there, we 
 shall eat fresh figs, and find the flowers in bloom." And then, 
 as the road trended to its first decline over the mighty brow, we 
 got into the carriages again, to be driven down into the sum 
 mer. 
 
 Be patient with my last grand zigzag ! For I wish you 
 could see, or imagine by means of me, this wonderful road ! 
 
 Other mountain ways climb sharply, with quick angles ; this 
 lies in grand sweeps, looping and curving like a ribbon unrolled 
 and cast with great flings, this way and that, down the vast de 
 scent. You come upon skein after skein of it. You thread the 
 beautiful ins and outs that lie beneath you for one little way ; 
 and then, below some precipice-front that hid it and which now 
 you pass, you see new coils of it tossed to and fro, and almost 
 interlacing. Everywhere it is broad and smooth like the finest 
 city avenue. Not a rolling stone, not a roughened rut, through 
 out. 
 
 The horses, we had three to each carriage, took a regu 
 lar, steady trot, and kept it without break or acceleration. Just 
 the same rounding sweep at every turn the leader made, his 
 hoofs striking a sure rhythm, the loosened traces swaying at his 
 sides, as we measured down the many thousand feet of distance. 
 Almost seven thousand it is in actual fall to the sea-level ; and 
 who knows how it doubles or quadruples in the reflex wind 
 ings?
 
 334 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 
 
 Past old snow masses, in deep clefts where the warm sun 
 never reaches ; beside streams tumbling through ice-arches ; 
 through a profound ravine, the dark Val Tremola, down 
 whose awful sides, they say, fall frequent avalanches, you 
 keep on, and come out again upon the broad, sunny mountain- 
 bosom, to more dropped skeins of white, smooth roadway ; more 
 delicious swings as in mid-air, to and fro, down the declivity, 
 with sweet fields of Swiss-Italy sending up summer breaths to 
 meet you; you swoop, as the bird swoops, with a last, glad 
 slant and rush to the valley ; and then you drive sud 
 denly, as into a close house-passage, where you could touch the 
 walls on either side, through the narrow, little chief-and-only 
 street of Airolo, and find yourself before a funny Italian posta, 
 where you climb with cramped limbs the outside stairway that 
 completes the confusion of indoors and open air, make your 
 way into a crowded little travelers' -room, and, with such faith as 
 you may, order dinner. 
 
 "We were on the south side of the Alps. 
 
 The great north wall of Italy, under which she lies most 
 lovely, was behind our backs and above our heads, with its mas 
 sive shelter. 
 
 Ticino, full of sunshine, fragrant with vintage, the quiet 
 lakes, the lesser hills swelling in soft beauty, long, linger 
 ing bloom and warmth, rest, were around us and close by. 
 Down on the Lombardy plains, through the valley of the 
 Arno, the mountain winds might sweep, and make a winter 
 chill in every shadow ; from the crests of these huge ramparts, 
 they rush at a larger angle, to smite below ; but they would 
 leave us in the garnered warmth from noon to noon, with the 
 tender little southerly breezes stealing back in a sweet under 
 current upon us. 
 
 We threw off cloaks and shawls. We sat already in our 
 open carriages in summer dress. We left Airolo, and followed 
 the river down, by the beautiful cliff-road ; now skirting it for a 
 long way on one side, then crossing by some bridge, from 
 which we could see up and down the wild, rocky path of it into 
 still turns and shadows where the crags projected and forced it
 
 DOWN INTO THE SUMMER. 335 
 
 into bays, or where it made white leaps and plunges over its 
 descending bed ; we passed through tunneled galleries cut 
 through straight profiles of rock, whose entrances were hung 
 with swinging vines, and whose exits were blue beyond with a 
 clear arch of sky ; we were among innumerable little waterfalls 
 again ; they shone out with tiny gleams, or made here and there 
 a far, foaming spring from their green hiding places, hurrying 
 down to find the river. 
 
 We came in a little while, unexpectedly, for we had 
 begun to feel as if we must have left all such grand surprise 
 behind us, into a gorge of magnificent gloom. The road 
 descended into a low ravine, and ran off upon bare, shelving 
 rock at the base of a black, beetling wall on one hand, and on 
 the other along the very water-margin that washed the naked 
 slope with its thin, swift edge. 
 
 Close beyond the brown transparency was the deep central 
 chasm, river-filled ; and above came down the plunging cata 
 racts, where the flood was hemmed and tossed among the ribs 
 and gullies. It was a steep, sudden, cliff-locked incline that the 
 water followed ; and we for there was no other pathway 
 must come close and follow with it. It was as if the river took 
 us by the hand and led us through by its own secret passage. 
 We did not see how it was till we had descended the sharp 
 pitch beneath the overhanging brows, and our wheels had left 
 the gravel for the smooth-worn bed of stone, and we found our 
 selves in the cool and the dimness beside the black-deep, roar 
 ing-white, tumultuous water. 
 
 We counted seven or nine separate cataracts, flood above 
 flood, in the upper throat of the gap, when we looked back from 
 the first little bridge, flung across the stream where it begins to 
 twist itself through the crooked breaks and crannies of the long 
 mountain fissure. We crossed three times, and at last rounded 
 away into the more open valley under an impending mass of 
 rock which reaches its threat out over the road for a distance of 
 some fifty yards. 
 
 Before we got to Faido, where we passed the night at the 
 Prince of Wales Hotel, in which the British heir-apparent and 
 his party stopped when he was traveling here, and where Edith
 
 336 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 and I slept in a room resplendent with yellow cushions and 
 hangings, which was a part, maybe, of the royal suite, we saw 
 the fall of the Piumegna, where the little tributary flings itself 
 in one shining leap into the Ticino ; and when we threw open 
 a back window of our room to look out into the woody pleasant 
 ness behind the inn, which has the whole village huddled around 
 the little square at its front, we saw the soft radiance of the sun 
 set falling upon its forest background and upon its shimmering 
 waters. 
 
 Next day we dined at Bellinzona. 
 
 Our morning ride was still along the lovely glens, between 
 mountain slopes that were bright with waterfalls, over valley- 
 spaces rich and sweet with vines and chestnut-trees, and where 
 the figs were ripening : through tiny villages, which we entered 
 and left as by a back door and a front at either end of the 
 funny little corridor-streets that begin all of a sudden with their 
 close-packed lines of houses, and end just as suddenly without 
 the least gradual straggle ; and we entered with great delight 
 the first real Italian court-yard, around which Hotel Angelo is 
 built, with galleried stories, labyrinthine passages, out-of-door 
 crossings, ups and downs from room to room ; dined in a cool, 
 shady saloon, and set off, refreshed, for our last half day's travel 
 for many weeks. 
 
 From the town we went up a mountain again. A beautiful 
 height, groved with chestnut, from whose ascending bends we 
 caught the first charming vision of the lake country. 
 
 Maggiore glittered in the distance, the pretty Ticino ended 
 its long run in its bosom, Bellinzona itself, with its fortifica 
 tions, its three castles, its picturesque roofing and coloring, lay 
 at our feet ; and oh, how delicious was the summer air over the 
 wood-herbage and among the nut-trees ! 
 
 We got away among billowy, foresty hills, and wound among 
 them all the afternoon. The country reminds me strongly of 
 the woods and heights of Hilslowe, when we drive around Blue 
 Peak in the twilight. 
 
 We stopped at a secluded Osteria, to give the horses water, 
 and we saw there the first " sandal-shoon " on the bare feet of
 
 DOWN INTO THE SUMMER. 337 
 
 peasant girls. Stiff, wooden soles, high-heeled, with only a 
 strap across the toe to hold them on ; and they go clip, clip, in 
 a most uncomfortable manner, as the foot bends the little it can 
 upon them, its only chance for play being the slip&hod let-go 
 behind. 
 
 And at last we descended the long gradual height we had 
 gained, to the dear little middle lake of Italy's border three, 
 Lugano. 
 
 We came down under a miracle of soft splendor, a sunset 
 that was all over the sky, in this fashion ; deep saffron and 
 blazing crimson, in the west ; eastward, over the tops of the dark 
 hills, pure rose, through which the blue showed ; above, curling 
 clouds that shaped themselves into a marvelous shell, inverted 
 over the whole landscape ; its edges richly brown with shadow as 
 they curved away from the horizon light, its inward coloring 
 melting through all delicious shades of citron and amber and 
 buff to a pale, clear gold in the mid-heaven. It held itself above 
 us, and made the foliage about us tender in its own mellow light. 
 It hung, and hung, and glowed intenser, and behind its border 
 the flame-tint and red burned on, ever more fervently. It broke, 
 at last, and wandered and dropped away toward the hills on 
 every side, in flecks of gold and tawny upon the rose and blue. 
 
 Was this the way the suns of common days went down in 
 Italy ? 
 
 But we have been in Italy many weeks ; and we have seen 
 many sunsets ; yet never again have we been beneath a twi 
 light sky like that. 
 
 22
 
 338 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGIOLI. 
 
 .... THE road ran in between high villa walls as we drove 
 rapidly down into Lugano. 
 
 Gardens and frescoed houses gave a quaintly pleasant aspect 
 to the lofty outskirts of the town, overlooking the smooth lake. 
 
 This fresco painting of outer walls seems odd enough at first ; 
 but after a while, like other human fancies and inventions, it 
 turns its thought-side toward you, and you come to it, in a way, 
 and partly. 
 
 Balconies, verandas, porches, pillars, are represented on the 
 flat surfaces in which the real buildings end. You say, " What 
 a senseless sham ! " And then you turn it over in your mind, 
 and you see that it is like ever so many things that can't be 
 quite all they would, in this world, and so have to make it up 
 with imagination. And imagination, presented to other people 
 so as to solicit theirs, is effect, make-believe, sham, or what 
 you please. Perhaps there may be a kind of honest sham that 
 is n't a very bad thing. 
 
 For instance ; a man builds a house, not only to live in, but 
 to express himself. And not that altogether to other people, for 
 what they may think of it, but to realize it to himself. To put 
 into positive form his notion of pleasantness, beauty, use, in 
 living and surrounding. To behold it with his eyes, and see the 
 good of it. Now he can get just so much stone and timber to do 
 it with, and just so many days' work from other men to put them 
 together ; and there his house must end. His idea does n't. 
 He can think ever so much more. If he were in heaven, 
 perhaps he could just think it all out into form. In the mean 
 time herein Italy, he puts it on in color; which says,
 
 SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGIOLI. 339 
 
 " This is the rest of it. This is what I would have made it if I 
 could." 
 
 I wonder if the inward building that we are each at work on, 
 and that we never in this beginning of things do finish to our 
 minds, could be shown out as it stands in us, there would not be 
 seen to be a great deal of beautiful fresco about it, upon very 
 blunt endings ? And if the manners, and the decencies, and the 
 lovely courtesies of life do not outstrip with their graciousness 
 the heavenly charities that are actually edified into permanent 
 spiritual substance in our natures ? And yet, if these color- 
 touches may not stand for honest, beautiful desire, that would be 
 all that, and that will be as fast as it can ? Won't it do to look 
 pleasauter than we feel, to welcome a bit more cordially, 
 when the inmost feeling of all is something so much pleasanter 
 and more cordial than we can make the minute's mood ? Won't 
 it do to wear such refinement and culture as we can, until we 
 have got more ? To put it on the top, while we are studying 
 and practicing as we can, to deepen it all the way down? I 
 don't know but I could have a certain patience with shoddy, 
 even, if I thought it was shoddy that really wanted and meant 
 to be. 
 
 Shakespeare says, " Assume a virtue if you have it not ; " you 
 may be more likely to get it than if you altogether gave it up 
 and let it go. And I have read a sermon upon " putting on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ." The putting on is from something certainly 
 that must have been put in, and that lies there truer than all 
 hindrance, though it may not yet have got put through. And 
 the sweet dream-frescoes, that finish out our short-stopped, disap 
 pointed living ? Don't they shine upon the blank with bright, 
 clear color to the angels who go by ? So that they say, as I said 
 when I passed a flat-walled cottage with a little painted porch, 
 " It is a sign ; some time it should be builded ? " 
 
 Still, I felt a kind of hitch, or slip, somewhere, in the practi 
 cal part, as if the theory would n't quite do to hang life on to. 
 I put it to Emery Ann. 
 
 " Forzino,*' she said at first, slowly. " But then again, I don't 
 know. Appears to me as if that was the wind-up.- I don't be 
 lieve they '11 ever put the real thing on, top of all that paint
 
 340 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 I 'd as lief see a timber left somewhere, with a mortice or 
 something. ' T ain't the way we do down East." 
 
 " Down where, Emery Ann ? " 
 
 " Well where are we ? Out West, then. In Poggawan- 
 timoc. We get up a frame, and board in ; then we finish off as 
 fast as we can, specially inside. And if a man has a notion of 
 a new part added on any time, he '11 leave a rough end, or a 
 chimney built out, or put up a lean-to, and it'll look like it, and 
 be real as far as it goes. No ; I don't like too much polishiu' 
 off till you 're pretty near through." 
 
 And I guess the truth about it is partly with me, but a good 
 deal with Emery Ann. 
 
 " I '11 tell you what," she said again in a minute or two. " It 's 
 the difference between a paper pattern and a paper trirnmin'. 
 It 's a good thing to have your idea laid out, complete, to go by, 
 in your own measurin' and makin' ; but you 've got to have it 
 in the stuff, before it '11 do to put it right on an' wear it. And 
 another thing, Patience ; we may as well thank the goodness and 
 the grace that that dodge has n't got to our folks yet. They 'd 
 run all to fresker. They alwers do. Folks would be settin' up 
 housekeepin' on nothin' but fresker. Fact, they do now, 
 finally." 
 
 We clattered into the town, that looked so pretty, so warm- 
 colored and picturesque, from above ; its roofs fretted to richness 
 with old, dark-red, roughened tiles ; its steep streets running up 
 to the Cathedral height behind ; its curious quays and water- 
 stairs, and little boats, and slopes of stone terrace for the wash 
 erwomen, marking the Lake-edge. 
 
 We crossed the public square, and plunged through the dim 
 ness and unsavoriness of a narrow, arcaded street where the 
 people sat, and stood, and chatted, and bargained, in the very 
 drive-way ; paved with two stripes of flag it was for wheels 
 to run on ; and it seemed as if we were driving right through 
 a long bazaar, between its counters, and scattering all its trade. 
 I felt a good deal like a " bull in a chiua-shop." 
 
 We turned in at a dark archway, to a solemn, cloistered court 
 yard, under the shadow of an old church tower. It was the an-
 
 SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGIOLI. 341 
 
 cient monastery of Santa Maria degli Angioli ; disestablished, 
 and become the modern Hotel du Pare. 
 
 The first thing Edith did was to get lost. 
 
 They had carried her traveling bag off with Margaret's, and 
 she left me at our room door to follow hastily. The Regis's 
 rooms were up another flight. 
 
 I waited two or three minutes, and then went in and partly 
 closed my door. I thought she had got talking with Margaret, 
 and would come back presently. 
 
 But presently, she did not come. And Margaret herself 
 came down, she has a wonderful organ of locality, and places 
 herself at once in whatever rambling complication of interior, 
 which is a fine thing in European traveling ; and also, which is 
 another fine thing, she also notes the numbers, and so checks 
 herself and the whole party at the very outset ; and then we 
 both got uneasy ; for Edith had left her, she said, as soon as she 
 had found her satchel. 
 
 " If she has taken a wrong turn ! There are no end of pas 
 sages and staircases," said Margaret. " She might walk about 
 an hour. It is a bewitchingly mysterious old place." 
 
 " But this is n't bewitching," I said, uncomfortably ; peering 
 up and down from our corner door along the immense corridor 
 in one direction, and a perfect labyrinth of narrow, odd-shaped 
 galleries in the other, where iron railings ran round a sort of 
 sarcophagus-shaped opening in floor above floor, and door-ways 
 beyond revealed fresh intricacies, and a farther sarcophagus in 
 the dimness. " It is among some of these doubles that she has 
 got puzzled. We came up along there ; I am sure I cannot tell 
 how." 
 
 " We must go and look for her," said Margaret. 
 
 " And get lost ourselves ? " 
 
 " No, I shall remember, and any servant could tell us the 
 way to our number. But we must call Emery Ann. Edith 
 might come back herself and get frightened for you. We can't 
 spare time for very much hide and seek. I was to go down with 
 you and send up tea to mamma." 
 
 So, leaving Emery Ann watching in the door-way, we set off 
 upon our voyage of discovery.
 
 342 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 If she had not stood there, as Emery Ann always does 
 stand at her post, whatever it is, I doubt, with all Margaret's 
 topographical instinct, if we should have got back without a 
 servant. Whatever the old monks did with this end of their 
 great convent, and whatever these sarcophagus-shaped galleries 
 were built so for, with all the little by-ways and corner-ways 
 leading off from them, they make, with their solid stone floors 
 and gloomy iron railings, that fend them from a sepulchral abyss 
 between foundation and skylight, the very queerest kind of trap 
 for newly-lodged travelers. 
 
 We traversed at least three different stories, blundering upon 
 the staircases, and blundering back into the mazes as they 
 seemed to us, in which no staircases appeared, and from which 
 we wondered how we had happened upon any before. Each 
 story was like every other, and the numbers, connected with 
 the rest of the large building in a way we could not " articulate," 
 
 did not give us much certainty. We saw no servant, even ; 
 for it was the hour of table d'hote, and they were all off at the 
 other side of the quadrangle, in the big dining-room, or in their 
 little pantries, which we discovered afterward, from which they 
 served the diners in their own rooms. I think the service was 
 just about over and we were in the long lull of the dessert. 
 
 But at the third time of our coming upon the beacon vision 
 of Emery Ann at the far end under the lamp, she beckoned to 
 us furiously, and we hastened back. 
 
 She said she had beckoned before and we had not minded. 
 Edith had been back some minutes. 
 
 As we found our way, by her help, now, severely experi 
 enced as she was, poor child, to the salle a manger, she told 
 us about it. 
 
 " I got upon the wrong floor, somehow," she said. " I believe 
 I went up instead of down ; and then I went down and up, and 
 then I got among those dreadful little passages and could n't 
 find the staircase at all. I believe I wandered off into some un 
 heard of quarter ; and once I opened a door that I thought I had 
 just come through, and went straight into somebody's bedroom, 
 
 only somebody was n't there, for all the world is gone to 
 dinner. Once or twice I saw a servant, and he would look at
 
 SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGIOLI. 343 
 
 me curiously, and I felt so ashamed of belonging nowhere, that 
 I walked as fast as possible to make believe I did. After that, 
 nobody seemed stirring. So I got desperate, and stood by the 
 railing, for I remembered that one of them was in sight from 
 our door, though which, or which way, I had lost all idea, 
 and made up my mind to ask the first person who did come 
 along the way to the bureau." 
 
 " That was bright," said Margaret. 
 
 " You see, I got really frightened enough to stand still and 
 collect myself. Well, there I waited ; till by and by I dare 
 say it was n't many minutes, but they seemed half hours, 
 somebody came in from a turn the inside corridor, you see, 
 where the staircases run, and walked my way. I looked 
 round, and spoke all in an instant, for fear he should be gone. 
 ' Will you have the goodness to direct me to the bureau ? ' I 
 said ; and then I saw that it was n't a servant. He was very 
 polite, and he answered me in English ; and he went back with 
 me to show me." 
 
 " Edie ! A strange gentleman ! " 
 
 " Oh, he was n't exactly a gentleman. I mean he was n't 
 old, you know. I mean," and she laughed, and set us all 
 laughing, " he was what Norah would call ' jist afther bein' 
 a boy.' And he was American too. He said so." 
 
 " Was ! " said Emery Ann. " He is if anything. And 
 he '11 continyer to be ! " 
 
 Emery Ann is very skittish for Edith. She sets her dear old 
 heart upon her very much. 
 
 " Well? " I asked inquiringly ; for it was n't worth while to 
 lay great emphasis on that, after all. 
 
 By this time we had reached the salle a manger, and went 
 in. Edith answered me after we had seated ourselves, and given 
 our brief orders. 
 
 <: That was almost all ; only when we got to the bureau, and 
 1 gave your name to the clerk, and asked him to look for the 
 number, and send somebody to show me the way, he had n't the 
 name at all ! He had just sent around to several rooms for 
 names of new arrivals ; there had been a good many this even 
 ing, and things were n't settled. ' We '11 take all the new num 
 bers, and go round to them all,' said Mr. ."
 
 344 SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 
 
 "My gracious!" said Emery Ann. Edith stopped, astonished. 
 
 " Well, we did n't," she said simply. " Because the man came 
 back ; and you had signed, Emery Ann ; and it was Number 
 90. And the clerk himself went up to show me, and Mr. Hola- 
 bird went as far as he was going before " 
 
 " And told you his name ? " Emery Ann took the anxiety 
 all off my hands. 
 
 " The clerk called him so. At least," she said, imitating the 
 
 9 ' O 
 
 broken English funnily, " he called him Meester Holy-beard. 
 And he explained to me. You know he would n't like to be 
 remembered by such a name as that. And I am sure I should 
 never have forgotten it." 
 
 I saw unutterable things in Emery Ann's face, and I pulled 
 her gown under the table. What was the use in uttering ? That 
 is exactly what makes the awkwardness. 
 
 The next morning, out in the garden, the youth lifted his hat 
 to Edith, walking with me. At night again, he was opposite to 
 us at dinner, and we fell into some little conversation over table 
 civilities, as American travelers do. In the drawing-room, af 
 terward, he begged leave to make himself properly known to 
 me. He knew we were Strongs, of Boston. He is of Massa 
 chusetts, also ; a son of one of the Holabirds of Z ; Mr. 
 
 Stephen Holabird ; and that is his name too. I had heard of 
 the Holabirds ; they are old manufacturers there ; a nice family. 
 And this young Stephen is a nice fellow, too. I won't be sure 
 of men most men after thirty. But I can tell a fresh, 
 good, bright fellow of eighteen.
 
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