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 AN 
 
 INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CEVENNBS," 
 "new ARABIAN NIGHTS," ETC. 
 
 ' TAus san£- they in the English boat." — Marvell. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1890. 
 
 «>^.
 
 " Robert Louis Stevenson is, in his own wayi one of the most perfect 
 writers living." — Philip Gilbert Hamerton. 
 
 " ' Travels with a Donkey ' is charming, full of grace, and humor, and 
 freshness. Such refined humor it is, too, and so evidently the work of a 
 gentleman. I am half in love with him, and much inclined to think that 
 a ramble anywhere with such a companion must De worth taking. What 
 a happy knack he has of giving the taste ot a landscape or any out-doot 
 Impression in ten words 1 "
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 To equip so small a book with a preface is, 
 I am half afraid, to sin against proportion. 
 But a preface is more than an author can re- 
 sist, for it is the reward of his labors. When 
 the foundation stone is laid, the architect 
 appears with his plans, and struts for an hour 
 before the public eye. So with the writer in 
 his preface : he may have never a word to 
 say, but he must show himself for a moment 
 in the portico, hat in hand, and with an ur- 
 bane demeanor. 
 
 It is best, in such circumstance, to repre- 
 sent a delicate shade of manner between hu- 
 mility and superiority : as if the book had 
 been written by some one else, and you had
 
 vi Preface, 
 
 merely run over it and inserted what was 
 good. But for my part I have not yet 
 learned the trick to that perfection ; I am 
 not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my 
 sentiments towards a reader ; and if I meet 
 him on the threshold, it is to invite him in 
 with country cordiality. 
 
 To say truth, I had no sooner finished 
 reading this little book in proof than I was 
 seized upon by a distressing apprehension. 
 
 It occurred to me that I might not only be 
 the first to read these pages, but the last as 
 well ; that I might have pioneered this very 
 smiling tract of country all in vain, and find 
 not a soul to follow in my steps. The more 
 I thought, the more I disliked the notion ; 
 until the distaste grew into a sort of panic 
 terror, and I rushed into this Preface, which 
 is no more than an advertisement for readers. 
 
 What am I to say for my book } Caleb
 
 Preface. vii 
 
 and yosJiua brought back from Palestine a. 
 formidable bunch of grapes ; alas ! my book 
 produces naught so nourishing ; and for the 
 matter of that, we live in an age when peo- 
 ple prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit. 
 
 I wonder, would a negative be found enti- 
 cing ? for, from the negative point of view, I 
 flatter myself this volume has a certain 
 stamp. Although it runs to considerably 
 upwards of two hundred pages, it contains 
 not a single reference to the imbecility of 
 God's universe, nor so much as a single hint 
 that I could have made a better one myself, 
 — I really do not know where my head can 
 have been. I seemed to have forgotten all 
 that makes it glorious to be man. 'T is an 
 omission that renders the book philosophi- 
 cally unimportant ; but I am in hopes the 
 eccentricity may please in frivolous circles. 
 
 To the friend who accompanied me I owe
 
 viii Preface. 
 
 many thanks already, indeed I wish I owed 
 him nothing else ; but at this moment I feel 
 towards him an almost exaggerated tender- 
 ness. He, at least, will become my reader 
 — if it were only to follow his own travels 
 alongside of mine. 
 
 R. L. S.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGI 
 
 ANTWERP TO BOOM H 
 
 ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL .... 20 
 
 THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 3I 
 
 AT MAUBEUGE 43 
 
 ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED : TO QUARTES . . 53 
 
 PONT-SUR-SAMBRE : — 
 
 WE ARE PEDLARS 65 
 
 THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT . . . . ^^ 
 
 ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED : TO LANDRECIES . 87 
 
 AT LANDRECIES 98 
 
 SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL : CANAL BOATS . • I08 
 
 THE OISE IN FLOOD I18 
 
 ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOtTE : — 
 
 A BY-DAY 134 
 
 THE COMPANY AT TABLE .... I47 
 
 DOWN THE OISE: TO MOY 160
 
 X Contents. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 LA FfeRE OF CURSED MEMORY 171 
 
 DOWN THE OISE : THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY 183 
 
 NOVON CATHEDRAL 1S7 
 
 DOWN THE OISE : TO COMPI^GNE .... 197 
 
 AT COMPlteNE 202 
 
 CHANGED TIMES 2X2 
 
 DOWN THE OISE : CHURCH INTERIORS . . . 224 
 
 PR^CY AND THE MARIONETTES .... 238 
 
 BACK TO THE WORLD ...... 258
 
 AN INLAND VOYAGE. 
 
 ANTWERP TO BOOM. 
 
 We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. 
 A stevedore and a lot of dock porters took 
 up the two canoes, and ran with them for 
 the slip. A crowd of children followed cheer- 
 ing. The Cigarette went off in a splash and 
 a bubble of small breaking water. Next 
 moment the Arethusa was after her. A 
 steamer was coming down, men on the pad- 
 dle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the steve- 
 dore and his porters were bawling from the 
 quay. But in a stroke or two the canoes 
 were away out in the middle of the Scheldt,
 
 12 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 and all steamers, and stevedores, and other 
 'long-shore vanities were left behind. 
 
 The sun shone brightly ; the tide was 
 making — four jolly miles an hour; the wind 
 blew steadily, with occasional squalls. For 
 my part, I had never been in a canoe under 
 sail in my life ; and my first experiment out 
 in the middle of this big river was not made 
 without some trepidation. What would hap- 
 pen when the wind first caught my little can- 
 vas .'' I suppose it was almost as trying a 
 venture into the regions of the unknown as 
 to publish a first book, or to marry. But my 
 doubts were not of long duration ; and in 
 five minutes you will not be surprised to 
 learn that I had tied my sheet. 
 
 I own I was a little struck by this circum- 
 stance myself; of course, in company with 
 the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied 
 the sheet in a sailing-boat ; but in so little
 
 Antwerp to Boom. 13 
 
 and crank a concern as a canoe, and with 
 these charging squalls, I was not prepared to 
 find myself follow the same principle ; and it 
 inspired me with some contemptuous views 
 of our regard for life. It is certainly easier 
 to smoke with the sheet fastened ; but I had 
 never before weighed a comfortable pipe of 
 tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely 
 elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a 
 commonplace, that we cannot answer for 
 ourselves before we have been tried. But it 
 is not so common a reflection, and surely 
 more consoling, that we usually find our- 
 selves a great deal braver and better than we 
 thought. I believe this is every one's expe- 
 rience: but an apprehension that they may 
 belie themselves in the future prevents man- 
 kind from trumpeting this cheerful senti- 
 ment abroad. I wish sincerely, for it would 
 have saved me much trouble, there had been
 
 14 Au Inland Voyage. 
 
 some one to put me in a good heart about 
 life when I was younger ; to tell me how 
 dangers are most portentous on a distant 
 sight ; and how the good in a man's spirit 
 will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and 
 rarely or never deserts him in the hour of 
 need. But we are all for tootling on the 
 sentimental flute in literature ; and not a 
 man among us will go to the head of the 
 march to sound the heady drums. 
 
 It was agreeable upon the river. A barge 
 or two went past laden with hay. Reeds 
 and willows bordered the stream ; and cattle 
 and gray, venerable horses came and hung 
 their mild heads over the embankment. 
 Here and there was a pleasant village among 
 trees, with a noisy shipping yard ; here and 
 there a villa in a lawn. The wind served us 
 well up the Scheldt and thereafter up the 
 Rupel ; and we were running pretty free
 
 Antwerp to Boom. 15 
 
 when we began to sight the brickyards of 
 Boom, lying for a long way on the right 
 bank of the river. The left bank was still 
 green and pastoral, with alleys of trees 
 along the embankment, and here and there 
 a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where per- 
 haps there sat a woman with her elbows on 
 her knees, or an old gentleman with a staff 
 and silver spectacles. But Boom and its 
 brickyards grew smokier and shabbier with 
 every minute ; until a great church with a 
 clock, and a wooden bridge over the river, 
 indicated the central quarters of the town. 
 
 Boom is not a nice place, and is only re- 
 markable for one thing : that the majority 
 of the inhabitants have a private opinion 
 that they can speak English, which is not 
 justified by fact. This gave a kind of hazi- 
 ness to our intercourse. As for the Hdtel 
 de la Navigatio7i, I think it is the worst fea-
 
 1 6 An Inland Voyage, 
 
 ture of the place. It boasts of a sanded 
 parlor, with a bar at one end, looking on 
 the street ; and another sanded parlor, 
 darker and colder, with an empty bird-cage 
 and a tricolor subscription box by way of 
 sole adornment, where we made shift to 
 dine in the company of three uncommuni- 
 cative engineer apprentices and a silent bag- 
 man. The food, as usual in Belgium, was 
 of a nondescript occasional character ; in- 
 deed I have never been able to detect any- 
 thing in the nature of a meal among this 
 pleasing people ; they seem to peck and 
 trifle with viands all day long in an amateur 
 spirit : tentatively French, truly German, 
 and somehow falling between the two. 
 
 The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, 
 and with no trace of the old piping favor- 
 ite, save where two wires had been pushed 
 apart to hold its lump of sugar, carried with
 
 Antwerp to Boom. ly 
 
 it a sort of graveyard cheer. The engineer 
 apprentices would have nothing to say to. 
 us, nor indeed to the bagman ; but talked 
 low and sparingly to one another, or raked 
 us in the gaslight with a gleam of specta- 
 cles. For though handsome lads, they were 
 all (in the Scotch phrase) barnacled. 
 
 There was an English maid in the hotel, 
 who had been long enough out of England 
 to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, 
 and all sorts of curious foreign ways, which 
 need not here be specified. She spoke to us 
 very fluently in her jargon, asked us infor- 
 mation as to the manners of the present 
 day in England, and obligingly corrected us 
 when we attempted to answer. But as we 
 were dealing with a woman, perhaps our 
 information was not so much thrown away 
 as it appeared. The sex likes to pick up 
 knowledge and yet preserve its superiority.
 
 1 8 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 It is good policy, and almost necessary in 
 the circumstances. If a man finds a woman 
 admires him, were it only for his acquaint- 
 ance with geography, he will begin at once 
 to build upon the admiration. It is only by 
 unintermittent snubbing that the pretty 
 ones can keep us in our place. Men, as 
 Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have 
 said, "are such encroachcrs" For my part, 
 I am body and soul with the women ; and 
 after a well-married couple, there is nothing 
 so beautiful in the world as the myth of 
 the divine huntress. It is no use for a man 
 to take to the woods ; we know him ; An- 
 thony tried the same thing long ago, and 
 had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. 
 But there is this about some women, which 
 overtops the best gymnosophist among 
 men, that they suffice to themselves, and 
 can walk in a high and cold zone without 
 the countenance of any trousered being,
 
 Antwerp to Boom. 19 
 
 I declare, although the reverse of a pro- 
 fessed ascetic, I am more obliged to women 
 for this ideal than I should be to the ma- 
 jority of them, or indeed to any but one, 
 for a spontaneous kiss. There is nothing 
 so encouraging as the spectacle of self- 
 sufficiency. And when I think of the slim 
 and lovely maidens, running the woods all 
 night to the note of Dianas horn ; moving 
 among the old oaks, as fancy-free as they ; 
 things of the forest and the starlight, not 
 touched by the commotion of man's hot 
 and turbid life — although there are plenty 
 other ideals that I should prefer — I find 
 my heart beat at the thought of this one. 
 'T is to fail in life, but to fail with what a 
 grace ! That is not lost which is not re- 
 gretted. And where — here slips out the 
 male — where would be much of the glory 
 of inspiring love, if there were no contempt 
 to overcome ?
 
 ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL. 
 
 Next morning, when we set forth on the 
 Willebroek Canal, the rain began heavy and 
 chill. The water of the canal stood at about 
 the drinking temperature of tea ; and under 
 this cold aspersion, the surface was covered 
 with steam. The exhilaration of departure, 
 and the easy motion of the boats under each 
 stroke of the paddles, supported us through 
 this misfortune while it lasted; and when 
 the cloud passed and the sun came out 
 again, our spirits went up above the range 
 of stay-at-home humors. A good breeze 
 rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that 
 bordered the canal. The leaves flickered in 
 and out of the light in tumultuous masses.
 
 On the Willebroek Canal. 21 
 
 It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear; 
 but down between the banks, the wind 
 reached us only in faint and desultory puffs. 
 There was hardly enough to steer by. Pro- 
 gress was intermittent and unsatisfactory. 
 A jocular person, of marine antecedents, 
 hailed us from the tow-path with a " Cest 
 vite, mats c est long." 
 
 The canal was busy enough. Every now 
 and then we met or overtook a long string of 
 boats, with great green tillers ; high sterns 
 with a window on either side of the rudder, 
 and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot in one of 
 the windows ; a dingy following behind ; a 
 woman busied about the day's dinner, and a 
 handful of children. These barges were all 
 tied one behind the other with tow ropes, to 
 the number of twenty-five or thirty ; and the 
 line was headed and kept in motion by a 
 steamer of strange construction. It had
 
 22 Aji Inland Voyage. 
 
 neither paddle-wheel nor screw ; but by 
 some gear not rightly comprehensible to the 
 unmechanical mind, it fetched up over its 
 bow a small bright chain which lay along the 
 bottom of the canal, and paying it out again 
 over the stern, dragged itself forward, link 
 by link, with its whole retinue of loaded 
 scows. Until one had found out the key to 
 the enigma, there was something solemn and 
 uncomfortable in the progress of one of 
 these trains, as it moved gently along the 
 water with nothing to mark its advance but 
 an eddy alongside dying away into the wake. 
 Of all the creatures of commercial enter- 
 prise, a canal barge is by far the most de- 
 lightful to consider. It may spread its sails, 
 and then you see it sailing high above the 
 tree-tops and the wind-mill, sailing on the 
 aqueduct, sailing through the green corn- 
 lands : the most picturesque of things am-
 
 On the Willehrock Canal. 23 
 
 phibioi's. Or the horse plods along at a 
 foot-pace as if there were no such thing as 
 business in the world ; and the man dream- 
 ing at the tiller sees the same spire on the 
 horizon all day long. It is a mystery how 
 things ever get to their destination at this 
 rate ; and to see the barges waiting their 
 turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how 
 easily the world may be taken. There 
 should be many contented spirits on board, 
 for such a life is both to travel and to stay 
 at home. 
 
 The chimney smokes for dinner as you go 
 along ; the banks of the canal slowly unroll 
 their scenery to contemplative eyes ; the 
 barge floats by great forests and through 
 great cities with their public buildings and 
 their lamps at night ; and for the bargee, in 
 his floating home, " travelling abed," it is 
 merely as if he were listening to another
 
 24 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 man's story or turning the leaves of a pic- 
 ture book in which he had no concern. He 
 may take his afternoon walk in some foreign 
 country on the banks of the canal, and then 
 come home to dinner at his own fireside. 
 
 There is not enough exercise in such a 
 life for any high measure of health ; but a 
 high measure of health is only necessary for 
 unhealthy people. The slug of a fellow, who 
 is never ill nor well, has a quiet time of it in 
 life, and dies all the easier. 
 
 I am sure I would rather be a bargee than 
 occupy any position under Heaven that re- 
 quired attendance at an ofBce. There are 
 few callings, I should say, where a man gives 
 up less of his liberty in return for regular 
 meals. The bargee is on shipboard ; he is 
 master in his own ship ; he can land when- 
 ever he will ; he can never be kept beating 
 off a lee-shore a whole frosty night when the
 
 On the Willebroek Canal. 25 
 
 sheets are as hard as iron ; and so far as I 
 can make out, time stands as nearly still 
 with him as is compatible with the return of 
 bedtime or the dinner-hour. It is not easy 
 to see why a bargee should ever die. 
 
 Half-way between Willebroek and Ville- 
 vorde, in a beautiful reach of canal like a 
 squire's avenue, we went ashore to lunch. 
 There were two eggs, a junk of bread, and a 
 bottle of wine on board the Arethusa; and 
 two eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus on 
 board the Cigarette. The master of the 
 latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the 
 course of disembarkation ; but observing 
 pleasantly that it might still be cooked d. la 
 papier, he dropped it into the Etna, in its 
 covering of Flemish newspaper. We landed 
 in a blink of fine weather ; but we had not 
 been two minutes ashore before the wind 
 freshened into half a gale, and the rain be-
 
 26 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 gan to patter on our shoulders. We sat as 
 close about the Etna as we could. The 
 spirits burned with great ostentation ; the 
 grass caught flame every minute or two, and 
 had to be trodden out ; and before long there 
 were several burnt fingers of the party. But 
 the solid quantity of cookery accomplished 
 was out of proportion with so much display ; 
 and when we desisted, after two applications 
 of the fire, the sound egg was a little more 
 than loo-warm ; and as for a la papier, it was 
 a cold and ^Qxdxdi fricassh of printer's ink and 
 broken egg-shell. We made shift to roast 
 the other two by putting them close to the 
 burning spirits, and that with better success. 
 And then we uncorked the bottle of wine, 
 and sat down in a ditch with our canoe 
 aprons over our knees. It rained smartly. 
 Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfort- 
 able and makes no nauseous pretensions to
 
 On the Willebroek Canal. 2J 
 
 the contrary, is a vastly humorous business ; 
 and people well steeped and stupefied in the 
 open air are in a good vein for laughter. 
 From this point of view, even ^^^^ a la papier 
 offered by way of food may pass muster as a 
 sort of accessory to the fun. But this man- 
 ner of jest, although it may be taken in good 
 part, does not invite repetition ; and from 
 that time forward the Etna voyaged like a 
 gentleman in the locker of the Cigarette. 
 
 It is almost unnecessary to mention that 
 when lunch was over and we got aboard 
 again and made sail, the wind promptly died 
 away. The rest of the journey to Villevorde 
 we still spread our canvas to the unfavoring 
 air, and with now and then a puff, and now 
 and then a spell of paddling, drifted along 
 from lock to lock between the orderly trees. 
 
 It was a fine, green, fat landscape, or 
 rather a mere green water-lane going on
 
 28 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 from village to village. Things had a set- 
 tled look, as in places long lived in. Crop- 
 headed children spat upon us from the 
 bridges as we went below, with a true con- 
 servative feeling. But even more conserva- 
 tive were the fishermen, intent upon their 
 floats, who let us go by without one glance. 
 They perched upon sterlings and buttresses 
 and along the slope of the embankment, 
 gently occupied. They were indifferent like 
 pieces of dead nature. They did not move 
 any more than if they had been fishing in an 
 old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered, the 
 water lapped, but they continued in one stay, 
 nke so many churches established by law. 
 You might have trepanned every one of their 
 innocent heads and found no more than so 
 much coiled fishing line below their skulls. 
 I do not care for your stalwart fellows in 
 India-rubber stockings breasting up moun
 
 On the Willebroek Canal. 29 
 
 tain torrents with a salmon rod ; but I do 
 dearly love the class of man who plies his 
 unfruitful art forever and a day by still and 
 depopulated waters. 
 
 At the lock just beyond Villevorde there 
 was a lock mistress who spoke French com- 
 prehensibly, and told us we were still a 
 couple of leagues from Bmssels. At the 
 same place the rain began again. It fell in 
 straight, parallel lines, and the surface of 
 the canal was thrown up into an infinity of 
 little crystal fountains. There were no beds 
 to be had in the neighborhood. Nothing for 
 it but to lay the sails aside and address our- 
 selves to steady paddling in the rain. 
 
 Beautiful country houses, with clocks and 
 long lines of shuttered windows, and fine old 
 trees standing in groves and avenues, gave 
 a rich and sombre aspect in the rain and the 
 deepening dusk to the shores of the canal.
 
 30 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 I seem to have seen something of the same 
 effect in engravings : opulent landscapes, de- 
 serted and overhung with the passage of 
 storm. And throughout we had the escort 
 of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily 
 along the tow-path, and kept at an almost 
 uniform distance in our wake.
 
 THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE. 
 
 The rain took off near Laeken. But the 
 sun was already down ; the air was chill ; 
 and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the 
 pair of us. Nay, now we found ourselves near 
 the end of the AlMe Verte, and on the very 
 threshold of Brussels we were confronted by 
 a serious difficulty. The shores were closely 
 lined by canal boats waiting their turn at the 
 lock. Nowhere was there any convenient 
 landing place ; nowhere so much as a stable- 
 yard to leave the canoes in for the night. 
 We scrambled ashore and entered an estami- 
 net where some sorry fellows were drinking 
 with the landlord. The landlord was pretty 
 round with us; he knew of no coach-house or
 
 32 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 stable-yard, nothing of the sort ; and seeing 
 we had come with no mind to drink, he did 
 not conceal hi° impatience to be rid of us. 
 One of the sorry fellows came to the rescue. 
 Somewhere in the corner of the basin there 
 was a slip, he informed us, and something 
 else besides, not very clearly defined by him, 
 but hopefully construed by his hearers. 
 
 Sure enough there was the slip in the cor- 
 ner of the basin ; and at the top of it twr 
 nice-looking lads in boating clothes. The 
 Arethusa addressed himself to these. One 
 of them said there would be no difficulty 
 about a night's lodging for our boats ; and 
 the other, taking a cigarette from his lips, 
 inquired if they were made by Searle & Son. 
 The name was quite an introduction. Half 
 a dozen other young men came out of a boat 
 house bearing the superscription Royal 
 Sport Nautique, and joined in the talk.
 
 The Royal Sport Nautique. 33 
 
 They were all very polite, voluble, and en- 
 thusiastic ; and their discourse was inter- 
 larded with English boating terms, and the 
 names of English boat-builders and English 
 clubs. I do not know, to my shame, any 
 spot in my native land where I should have 
 been so warmly received by the same num- 
 ber of people. We were English boating- 
 men, and the Belgian boating-men fell upon 
 our necks. I wonder if French Huguenots 
 were as cordially greeted by English Protest- 
 ants when they came across the Channel 
 out of great tribulation. But, after all, what 
 religion knits people so closely as common 
 sport ? 
 
 The canoes were carried into the boat- 
 house ; they were washed down for us by the 
 club servants, the sails were hung out to dry, 
 and everything made as snug and tidy as a 
 picture. And in the mean while we were led 
 1
 
 34 -An Inland Voyage. 
 
 up-stairs by our new-found brethren, for so 
 more than one of them stated the relation- 
 ship, and made free of their lavatory. This 
 one lent us soap, that one a towel, a third 
 and fourth helped us to undo our bags. And 
 all the time such questions, such assurances 
 of respect and sympathy ! I declare I never 
 knew what glory was before. 
 
 " Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Nautiqtie is the 
 oldest club in Belgium." 
 
 " We number two hundred." 
 
 "We " — this is not a substantive speech, 
 but an abstract of many speeches, the im- 
 pression left upon my mind after a great 
 deal of talk ; and very youthful, pleasant, nat- 
 ural, and patriotic it seems to me to be — 
 "We have gained all races, except those 
 where we were cheated by the French!' 
 
 " You must leave all your wet things to be 
 dried."
 
 The Royal Sport Nautique. 35 
 
 "O! entre freres ! In any boat-house in 
 England we should find the same." (I cor- 
 dially hope they might.) 
 
 ^^ En Angleterre, voiis employ ez des sliding' 
 seats, n^ est-ce pas ? " 
 
 "We are all employed in commerce during 
 the day ; but in the evening, voyes-vous, nous 
 soinmes serieux." 
 
 These were the words. They were all 
 employed over the frivolous mercantile con- 
 cerns of Belgium during the day ; but in the 
 evening they found some hours for the seri- 
 ous concerns of life. I may have a wrong 
 idea of wisdom, but I think that was a very 
 wise remark. People connected with litera- 
 ture and philosophy are busy all their days 
 m getting rid of second-hand notions and 
 false standards. It is their profession, in the 
 sweat of their brows, by dogged thinking, to 
 recover their old fresh view of life, and dis-
 
 $6 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 tinguish what they really and originally like 
 from what they have only learned to tolerate 
 perforce. And these Royal Nautical Sports- 
 men had the distinction still quite legible in 
 their hearts. They had still those clean per- 
 ceptions of what is nice and nasty, what is 
 interesting and what is dull, which envious 
 old gentlemen refer to as illusions. The 
 nightmare illusion of middle age, the bear's 
 hug of custom gradually squeezing the life 
 out of a man's soul, had not yet begun for 
 these happy-star'd young Belgians. They 
 still knew that the interest they took in 
 their business was a trifling affair compared 
 to their spontaneous, long-suffering affection 
 for nautical sports. To know what you pre- 
 fer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what 
 the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to 
 have kept your soul alive. Such a man may 
 be generous; he may be honest in something
 
 The Royal Sport Nautique. 37 
 
 more than the commercial sense ; he may 
 love his friends with an elective, personal 
 sympathy, and not accept them as an adjunct 
 of the station to which he has been called. 
 He may be a man, in short, acting on his 
 own instincts, keeping in his own shape 
 that God made him in ; and not a mere 
 crank in the social engine house, welded 
 on principles that he does not understand, 
 and for purposes that he does not care 
 for. 
 
 For will any one dare to tell me that busi- 
 ness is more entertaining than fooling among 
 boats ? He must have never seen a boat, or 
 never seen an office, who says so. And for 
 certain the one is a great deal better for the 
 health. There should be nothing so much a 
 man's business as his amusements. Noth- 
 ing but money-grubbing can be put forward 
 to the contrary ; no one but
 
 38 An Inlmid Voyage. 
 
 Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
 From Heaven, 
 
 durst risk a word in answer. It is but a 
 lying cant that would represent the mer- 
 chant and the banker as people disinter- 
 estedly toiling for mankind, and then most 
 useful when they are most absorbed in their 
 transactions ; for the man is more important 
 than his services. And when my Royal 
 Nautical Sportsman shall have so far fallen 
 from his hopeful youth that he cannot pluck 
 up an enthusiasm over anything but his 
 ledger, I venture to doubt whether he will be 
 near so nice a fellow, and whether he would 
 welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of 
 drenched Englishmen paddling into Brussels 
 in the dusk. 
 
 When we had changed our wet clothes and 
 drunk a glass of pale ale to the club's pros- 
 perity, one of their number escorted us to a
 
 TJie Royal Sport Nautiqiie. 39 
 
 •*otel. He would not join us at our dinner, 
 bat he had no objection to a glass of wine 
 Enthusiasm is very wearing ; and I begin to 
 understand why prophets were unpopular in 
 yudcBtty where they were best known. For 
 three stricken hours did this excellent young 
 man sit beside us to dilate on boats and 
 boat-races ; and before he left, he was kind 
 enough to order our bedroom candles. 
 
 We endeavored now and again to change 
 the subject ; but the diversion did not last 
 a moment : the Royal Nautical Sportsman 
 bridled, shied, answered the question, and 
 then breasted once more into the swelling 
 tide of his subject. I call it his subject ; but 
 I think it was he who was subjected. The 
 Arethusa, who holds all racing as a creature 
 of the devil, found himself in a pitiful 
 dilemma. He durst not own his ignorance 
 for the honor of old England, and spoke
 
 40 An Inlajtd Voyage. 
 
 away about English clubs and English oars« 
 men whose fame had never before come to 
 his ears. Several times, and, once above all, 
 on the question of sliding-seats, he was 
 within an ace of exposure. As for the Ciga' 
 rette^ who has rowed races in the heat of his 
 blood, but now disowns these slips of his 
 wanton youth, his case was still more des- 
 perate ; for the Royal Nautical Y>^o^os,tdi that 
 he should take an oar in one of their eights 
 on the morrow, to compare the English with 
 the Belgian stroke. I could see my friend 
 perspiring in his chair whenever that partic- 
 ular topic, came up. And there was yet 
 another proposal which had the same effect 
 on both of us. It appeared that the cham- 
 pion canoeist of Europe (as well as most 
 other champions) was a Royal NaiUical 
 Sportsman. And if we would only wait 
 until the Sunday y this infernal paddler would
 
 The Royal Sport Nautique. 4 1 
 
 be so condescending as to accompany us on 
 our next stage. Neither of us had the least 
 desire to drive the coursers of the sun 
 against Apollo. 
 
 When the young man was gone, we coun- 
 termanded our candles, and ordered some 
 brandy and water. The great billows had 
 gone over our head. The Royal Nautical 
 Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a 
 man would wish to see, but they were a 
 trifle too young and a thought too nautical 
 for us. We began to see that we were old 
 and cynical ; we liked ease and the agree- 
 able rambling of the human mind about 
 this and the other subject ; we did not 
 want to disgrace our native land by mess- 
 ing at eight, or toiling pitifully in the 
 wake of the champion canoeist. In short, 
 we had recourse to flight. It seemed un- 
 grateful, but we tried to make that good
 
 42 A /I Inland Voyage. 
 
 on a card loaded with sincere compliments. 
 And indeed it was no time for scruples ; 
 we seemed to feel the hot breath of the 
 champion on our necks.
 
 AT MAUBEUGE. 
 
 Partly from the terror we had of our 
 good friends the Royal Naiiticals, partly from 
 the fact that there were no fewer than fifty- 
 five locks between Brussels and Charleroi, we 
 concluded that we should travel by train 
 across the frontier, boats and all. Fifty-five 
 locks in a day's journey was pretty well tan- 
 tamount to trudging the whole distance on 
 foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an 
 object of astonishment to the trees on the 
 canal side, and of honest derision to all right- 
 thinking children. 
 
 To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a 
 difficult matter for the Aretlmsa. He is, 
 somehow or other, a marked man for the offi-
 
 44 ^^^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 cial eye. Wherever he journeys, there are 
 the officers gathered together. Treaties are 
 solemnly signed, foreign ministers, ambassa- 
 dors, and consuls sit throned in state from 
 China to Peru, and the Union Jack flutters 
 on all the winds of heaven. Under these 
 safeguards, portly clergymen, school-mis- 
 tresses, gentlemen in gray tweed suits, and 
 all the ruck and rabble of British touristry 
 pour unhindered, Murray in hand, over the 
 railways of the Continent, and yet the slim 
 person of the Arethusa is taken in the 
 meshes, while these great fish go on their 
 way rejoicing. If he travels without a pass- 
 port, he is a cast, without any figure about 
 the matter, into noisome dungeons : if his 
 papers are in order, he is suffered to go his 
 way indeed, but not until he has been humil- 
 iated by a general incredulity. He is a born 
 British subject, yet he has never succeeded
 
 At Maubeuge. 45 
 
 in persuading a single official of his nation- 
 ality. He flatters himself he is indifferent 
 honest ; yet he is rarely known for anything 
 better than a spy, and there is no absurd and 
 disreputable means of livelihood but has been 
 attributed to him in some heat of official or 
 popular distrust. . . . 
 
 For the life of me I cannot understand it 
 I, too, have been knolled to church and sat 
 at good men's feasts, but I bear no mark of 
 it. I am as strange as a Jack Indian to their 
 official spectacles. I might come from any 
 part of the globe, it seems, except from 
 where I do. My ancestors have labored in 
 vain, and the glorious Constitution cannot 
 protect me in my walks abroad. It is a 
 great thing, believe me, to present a good 
 normal type of the nation you belong to. 
 
 Nobody else was asked for his papers 
 on the way to Maubeuge, but I was; and
 
 46 An Inlajid Voyage. 
 
 although I clung to my rights, I had to choose 
 at last between accepting the humiliation 
 and being left behind by the train. I was 
 sorry to give way, but I wanted to get to 
 Maubeiige. 
 
 Maubeuge is a fortified town with a very 
 good inn, the Grand Cerf. It seemed to be 
 inhabited principally by soldiers and bagmen ; 
 at least, these were all that we saw except 
 the hotel servants. We had to stay there 
 some time, for the canoes were in no hurry 
 to follow us, and at last stuck hopelessly in 
 the custom-house until we went back to 
 liberate them. There was nothing to do, 
 nothing to see. We had good meals, which 
 was a great matter, but that was all. 
 
 The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon a 
 charge of drawing the fortifications : a feat 
 of which he was hopelessly iiicapable. And 
 besides, as I suppose each belligerent nation
 
 At Maubeuge. 47 
 
 has a plan of the other's fortified places al- 
 ready, these precautions are of the nature 
 of shutting the stable door after the steed is 
 away. But I have no doubt they help to 
 keep up a good spirit at home. It is a great 
 thing if you can persuade people that they 
 are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. 
 It makes them feel bigger. Even the Free- 
 masons, who have been shown up to satiety, 
 preserve a kind of pride ; and not a grocer 
 among them, however honest, harmless, and 
 empty-headed he may feel himself to be at 
 bottom, but comes home from one of their 
 coenacula with a portentous significance for 
 himself. 
 
 It is an odd thing how happily two people, 
 if there are two, can live in a place where 
 they have no acquaintance. I think the 
 spectacle of a whole life in which you have 
 no part paralyzes personal desire. You are
 
 48 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 content to become a mere spectator. The 
 baker stands in his door ; the colonel with 
 his three medals goes by to the caf^ at 
 night ; the troops drum and trumpet and 
 man the ramparts as bold as so many lions. 
 It would task language to say how placidly 
 you behold all this. In a place where you 
 have taken some root you are provoked out 
 of your indifference ; you have a hand in the 
 game, — your friends are fighting with the 
 army. But in a strange town, not small 
 enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so 
 large as to have laid itself out for travellers, 
 you stand so far apart from the business 
 that you positively forget it would be pos- 
 sible to go nearer ; you have so little human 
 interest around you that you do not remem- 
 ber yourself to be a man. Perhaps in a very 
 short time you would be one no longer. 
 Gymnosophists go into a wood with all na-
 
 At Maubeuge. 49 
 
 ture seething around them, with romance on 
 every side ; it would be much more to the 
 purpose if they took up their abode in a dull 
 country town where they should see just so 
 much of humanity as to keep them from 
 desiring more, and only the stale externals 
 of man's life. These externals are as dead 
 to us as so many formalities, and speak a 
 dead language in our eyes and ears. They 
 have no more meaning than an oath or a sal- 
 utation. We are so much accustomed to see 
 married couples going to church of a Sunday 
 that we have clean forgotten what they 
 represent ; and novelists are driven to reha- 
 bilitate adultery, no less, when they wish to 
 show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man 
 and a woman to live for each other. 
 
 One person in Maubeuge, however, showed 
 me something more than his outside. That 
 was the driver of the hotel omnibus : a mean- 
 4
 
 50 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 enough looking little man, as well as I can 
 remember, but with a spark of something 
 human in his soul. He had heard of our 
 little journey, and came to me at once in en- 
 vious sympathy. How he longed to travel ! 
 he told me. How he longed to be some- 
 where else, and see the round world before 
 he went into the grave ! " Here I am," said 
 he. " I drive to the station. Well. And 
 then I drive back again to the hotel. And 
 so on every day and all the week round. My 
 God, is that life.'*" I could not say I 
 thought it was — for him. He pressed me to 
 tell him where I had been, and where I 
 hoped to go ; and as he listened, I declare 
 the fellow sighed. Might not this have been 
 a brave African traveller, or gone to the 7/^- 
 dies 3.iX.Qr Drake ? Eut it is an evil age for 
 the gypsily inclined among men. He who 
 can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he 
 it is who has the wealth and glory.
 
 At Maiibeiige. 51 
 
 I wonder if my friend is still driving the 
 omnibus for the Grand Cerf! Not very 
 likely, I believe ; for I think he was on the 
 eve of mutiny when we passed through, and 
 perhaps our passage determined him for 
 good. Better a thousand times that he 
 should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans 
 by the wayside, and sleep under trees, and 
 see the dawn and the sunset every day above 
 a new horizon, I think I hear you say that 
 it is a respectable position to drive an omni- 
 bus ? Very well. What right has he who 
 likes it not to keep those who would like 
 it dearly out of this respectable position } 
 Suppose a dish were not to my taste, and 
 you told me that it was a favorite among the 
 rest of the company, what should I conclude 
 from that } Not to finish the dish against 
 my stomach, I suppose. 
 
 Respectability is a very good thing in
 
 52 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 its way, but it does not rise superior to all 
 considerations. I would not for a moment 
 venture to hint that it was a matter of 
 taste ; but I think I will go as far as this : 
 that if a position is admittedly unkind, un- 
 comfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously 
 useless, although it were as respectable as 
 the Church of England, the sooner a man 
 is out of it, the better for himself, and all 
 concerned.
 
 ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED. 
 
 TO QUARTES. 
 
 About three in the afternoon the whole 
 establishment of the Grand Cerf accompa- 
 nied us to the water's edge. The man of 
 the omnibus was there with haggard eyes. 
 Poor cage-bird ! Do I not remember the 
 time when I myself haunted the station, to 
 watch train after train carry its comple- 
 ment of freemen into the night, and read 
 the names of distant places on the time- 
 bills with indescribable longings .'' 
 
 We were not clear of the fortifications 
 before the rain began. The wind was con- 
 trary, and blew in furious gusts ; nor were 
 the aspects of nature any more clement
 
 54 -^'^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 than the doings of the sky. For we passed 
 through a blighted country, sparsely cov- 
 ered with brush, but handsomely enough 
 diversified with factory chimneys. We 
 landed in a soiled meadow among some 
 pollards, and there smoked a pipe in a flaw 
 of fair weather. But the wind blew so 
 hard we could get little else to smoke. 
 There were no natural objects in the 
 neighborhood, but some sordid workshops. 
 A group of children, headed by a tall girl, 
 stood and watched us from a little distance 
 all the time we stayed. I heartily wonder 
 what they thought of us. 
 
 At HaiUmont, the lock was almost im- 
 passable ; the landing place being steep and 
 high, and the launch at a long distance. 
 Near a dozen grimy workmen lent us a 
 hand. They refused any reward ; and, what 
 is much better, refused it handsomely, with-
 
 On the Sambrc Canalized. 55 
 
 out conveying any sense of insult. " It is 
 a way we have in our country-side," said 
 they. And a very becoming way it is. In 
 Scotland, where also you will get services 
 for nothing, the good people reject your 
 money as if you had been trying to corrupt 
 a voter. When people take the trouble to 
 do dignified acts, it is worth while to take 
 a little more, and allow the dignity to be 
 common to all concerned. But in our brave 
 Saxon countries, where we plod threescore 
 years and ten in the mud, and the wind 
 keeps singing in our ears from birth to bur- 
 ial, we do our good and bad with a high 
 hand and almost offensively ; and make 
 even our alms a witness-bearing and an act 
 of war against the wrong. 
 
 After Hautinont, the sun came forth 
 again and the wind went down ; and a lit- 
 tle paddling took us beyond the iron works
 
 $6 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 and through a delectable land. The river 
 wound among low hills, so that sometimes 
 the sun was at our backs and sometimes 
 it stood right ahead, and the river before 
 us was one sheet of intolerable glory. On 
 either hand meadows and orchards bor- 
 dered, with a margin of sedge and water 
 flowers, upon the river. The hedges were 
 of great height, woven about the trunks of 
 hedgerow elms ; and the fields, as they were 
 often very small, looked like a series of bow- 
 ers along the stream. There was never any 
 prospect ; sometimes a hill-top with its trees 
 would look over the nearest hedgerow, just 
 to make a middle distance for the sky ; but 
 that was all. The heaven was bare of 
 clouds. The atmosphere, after the rain, was 
 of enchanting purity. The river doubled 
 among the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror 
 glass ; and the dip of the paddles set the 
 flowers shaking along the brink.
 
 On the Sambre Canalized. 57 
 
 In the meadows wandered black and white 
 cattle fantastically marked. One beast, with 
 a white head and the rest of the body glossy 
 black, came to the edge to drink, and stood 
 gravely twitching his ears at me as I went 
 by, like some sort of preposterous clergyman 
 in a play. A moment after I heard a loud 
 plunge, and, turning my head, saw the 
 clergyman struggling to shore. The bank 
 had given way under his feet. 
 
 Besides the cattle, we saw no living things 
 except a few birds and a great many fisher- 
 men. These sat along the edges of the 
 meadows, sometimes with one rod, some- 
 times with as many as half a score. They 
 seemed stupefied with contentment; and, 
 when we induced them to exchange a few 
 words with us about the weather, their 
 voices sounded quiet and far away. There 
 was a strange diversity of opinion among
 
 58 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 them as to the kind of fish for which they 
 set their lures ; although they were all 
 agreed in this, that the river was abun- 
 dantly supplied. Where it was plain that 
 no two of them had ever caught the same 
 kind of fish, we could not help suspecting 
 that perhaps not any one of them had ever 
 caught a fish at all. I hope, since the after- 
 noon was so lovely, that they were one and 
 all rewarded ; and that a silver booty w en 
 home in every basket for the pot. Some 
 of my friends would cry shame on me for 
 this ; but I prefer a man, were he only an 
 angler, to the bravest pair of gills in all 
 God's waters. I do not affect fishes unless 
 when cooked in sauce ; whereas an angler is 
 an important piece of river scenery, and 
 hence deserves some recognition among 
 canoeists. He can always tell you where 
 you are, after a mild fashion ; and his quiet
 
 On the Sambre Canalized. 59 
 
 presence serves to accentuate the solitude 
 and stillness, and remind you of the glitter- 
 ing citizens below your boat. 
 
 The Sambre turned so industriously to 
 and fro among his little hills that it was 
 past six before we drew near the lock at 
 Qiiartes. There were some children on the 
 tow-path, with whom the Cigarette fell into 
 a chaffing talk as they ran along beside us. 
 It was in vain that I warned him. In vain 
 I told him in English that boys were the 
 most dangerous creatures ; and if once you 
 began with them, it was safe to end in a 
 shower of stones. For my own part, when- 
 ever anything was addressed to me, I smiled 
 gently and shook my head, as though I 
 were an inoffensive person inadequately ac- 
 quainted with French. For, indeed, I have 
 had such an experience at home that I 
 would sooner meet many wild animals than 
 a troop of healthy urchins.
 
 6o An Inland Voyage. 
 
 But I was doing injustice to these peace- 
 able young Hainaulters. When the Cigar- 
 ette went off to make inquiries, I got out 
 upon the bank to smoke a pipe and superin- 
 tend the boats, and became at once the cen- 
 tre of much amiable curiosity. The children 
 had been joined by this time by a young 
 woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm ; 
 and this gave me more security. When I 
 let slip my first word or so in French, a little 
 girl nodded her head with a comical grown- 
 up air. "Ah, you see," she said, "he under- 
 stands well enough now ; he was just mak- 
 ing believe." And the little group laughed 
 together very good-naturedly. 
 
 They were much impressed when they 
 heard we came from England; and the 
 little girl proffered the information that 
 England was an island " and a far way from 
 here — Hen loin d'ici."
 
 On the Sainbre Canalized, 6l 
 
 " Ay, you may say that, a far way from 
 here," said the lad with one arm. 
 
 I was nearly as homesick as ever I was 
 in my Hfe ; they seemed to make it such an 
 incalculable distance to the place where I 
 first saw the day. 
 
 They admired the canoes very much. 
 And I observed one piece of delicacy in 
 these children which is worthy of record. 
 They had been deafening us for the last 
 hundred yards with petitions for a sail ; ay, 
 and they deafened us to the same tune next 
 morning when we came to start ; but then, 
 when the canoes were lying empty, there 
 was no word of any such petition. Deli- 
 cacy .'' or perhaps a bit of fear for the water 
 in so crank a vessel } I hate cynicism a 
 great deal worse than I do the devil ; unless 
 perhaps, the two were the same thing? And 
 yet 't is a good tonic ; the cold tub and bath-
 
 62 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 towel of the sentiments; and positively ne- 
 cessary to life in cases of advanced sensi- 
 bility. 
 
 From the boats they turned to my cos- 
 tume. They could not make enough of my 
 red sash ; and my knife filled them with 
 awe. 
 
 "They make them like that in England^* 
 said the boy with one arm. I was glad he 
 did not know how badly we make them in 
 England nowadays. "They are for people 
 who go away to sea," he added, "and to 
 defend one's life against great fish." 
 
 I felt I was becoming a more and more 
 romantic figure to the little group at every 
 word. And so I suppose I was. Even my 
 pipe, although it was an ordinary French 
 clay, pretty well, "trousered," as they call 
 it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as a 
 thing coming from so far away. And if my
 
 On the Sambre Canalized. 63 
 
 feathers were not very fine in themselves, 
 they were all from over seas. One thing in 
 my outfit, however, tickled them out of all 
 politeness ; and that was the bemired con- 
 dition of my canvas shoes. I suppose they 
 were sure the mud at any rate was a home 
 product. The little girl (who was the 
 genius of the party) displayed her own 
 sabots in competition ; and I wish you could 
 have seen how gracefully and merrily she 
 did it. 
 
 The young woman's milk-can, a great am- 
 phora of hammered brass, stood some way 
 off upon the sward. I was glad of an oppor • 
 tunity to divert public attention from myself 
 and return some of the compliments I had 
 received. So I admired it cordially both for 
 form and color, telling them, and very truly, 
 that it was as beautiful a6 gold. They were 
 not surprised. The things were plainly the
 
 64 ■'^^^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 boast of the country-side. And the chil 
 dren expatiated on the costliness of these 
 amphorce, which sell sometimes as high as 
 thirty francs apiece ; told me how they were 
 carried on donkeys, one on either side of the 
 saddle, a brave aparison in themselves ; and 
 how they were to be seen all over the dis- 
 trict, and at the larger farms in great num- 
 ber and of great size.
 
 PONT-SUR-SAMBRE. 
 
 WE ARE PEDLARS. 
 
 The Cigarette returned with good news. 
 There were beds to be had some ten min- 
 utes' walk from where we were, at a place 
 called Pont. We stowed the canoes in a 
 granary, and asked among the children for 
 a guide. The circle at once widened round 
 us, and our offers of reward were received 
 in dispiriting silence. We were plainly a 
 pair of Bluebeards to the children ; they 
 might speak to us in public places, and 
 where they had the advantage of numbers ; 
 but it was another thing to venture off alone 
 with two uncouth and legendary characters, 
 who had dropped from the clouds upon their
 
 66 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 hamlet this quiet afternoon, sashed and be* 
 knived, and with a flavor of great voyages. 
 The owner of the granary came to our as- 
 sistance, singled out one little fellow, and 
 threatened him with corporalities ; or I sus- 
 pect we should have had to find the way for 
 ourselves. As it was, he was more fright- 
 ened at the granary man than the strangers, 
 having perhaps had some experience of the 
 former. But I fancy his little heart must 
 have been going at a fine rate, for he kept 
 trotting at a respectful distance in front, and 
 looking back at us with scared eyes. Not 
 otherwise may the children of the young 
 world have guided yove or one of his Olym- 
 pian compeers on an adventure. 
 
 A miry lane led us up from Quartes, with 
 its church and bickering windmill. The 
 hinds were trudging homewards from the 
 fields. A brisk little old woman passed us
 
 Pont-siir-Sambre. 6y 
 
 by. She was seated across a donkey be- 
 tween a pair of glittering milk-cans, and, as 
 she went, she kicked jauntily with her heels 
 upon the donkey's side, and scattered shrill 
 remarks among the wayfarers. It was nota- 
 ble that none of the tired men took the 
 trouble to reply. Our conductor soon led 
 us out of the lane and across country. 
 The sun had gone down, but the west in 
 front of us was one lake of level gold. The 
 path wandered a while in the open, and then 
 passed under a trellis like a bower indefi- 
 nitely prolonged. On either hand were shad- 
 owy orchards ; cottages lay low among the 
 leaves and sent their smoke to heaven ; 
 every here and there, in an opening, ap- 
 peared the great gold face of the west. 
 
 I never saw the Cigarette in such an idyllic 
 frame of mind. He waxed positively lyrical 
 in praise of country scenes. I was little
 
 6S An Inland Voyage, 
 
 less exhilarated myself ; the mild air of the 
 evening, the shadows, the rich lights, and 
 the silence made a symphonious accompani- 
 ment about our walk ; and we both deter- 
 mined to avoid towns for the future and 
 sleep in hamlets. 
 
 At last the path went between two houses, 
 and turned the party out into a wide, muddy 
 high-road, bordered, as far as the eye could 
 reach on either hand by an unsightly vil- 
 lage. The houses stood well back, leaving 
 a ribbon of waste land on either side of the 
 road, where there were stacks of firewood, 
 carts, barrows, rubbish heaps, and a little 
 doubtful grass. Away on the left, a gaunt 
 tower stood in the middle of the street. 
 What it had been in past ages I know not : 
 probably a hold in time of war ; but nowa- 
 days it bore an illegible dial-plate in its 
 upper parts, and near the bottom an iron 
 letter-box.
 
 Pont-sur-Sambre. 69 
 
 The inn to which we had been recom- 
 mended at Qitartes was full, or else the land- 
 lady did not like our looks. I ought to say, 
 that with our long, damp india-rubber bags, 
 we presented rather a doubtful type of civili- 
 zation : like rag-and-bone men, the Cigarette 
 imagined. " These gentlemen are pedlars } " 
 — Ces messieurs sont des marchands? — asked 
 the landlady. And then, without waiting 
 for an answer, which I suppose she thought 
 superfluous in so plain a case, recommended 
 us to a butcher who lived hard by the tower 
 and took in travellers to lodge. 
 
 Thither went we. But the butcher was 
 flitting, and all his beds were taken down. 
 Or else he did n't like our look. As a part- 
 ing shot, we had, " These gentlemen are 
 pedlars ? " 
 
 It began to grow dark in earnest. We 
 could no longer distinguish the faces of
 
 70 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 the people who passed us by with an in- 
 articulate good evening. And the house- 
 holders of Pont seemed very economical 
 with their oil, for we saw not a single win- 
 dow lighted in all that long village. I be- 
 lieve it is the longest village in the world ; 
 but I daresay in our predicament every pace 
 counted three times over. We were much 
 cast down when we came to the last anberge, 
 and, looking in at the dark door, asked tim- 
 idly if we could sleep there for the night. 
 A female voice assented, in no very friendly 
 tones. We clapped the bags down and 
 found our way to chairs. 
 
 The place was in total darkness, save a 
 red glow in the chinks and ventilators of the 
 stova But now the landlady lit a lamp to 
 see her new guests ; I suppose the darkness 
 was what saved us another expulsion, for I 
 cannot say she looked gratified at our ap-
 
 Pont-siir-Savibre. 71 
 
 pearance. We were in a large, bare apart- 
 ment, adorned with two allegorical prints of 
 Music and Painting, and a copy of the Law 
 against Public Drunkenness. On one side 
 there was a bit of a bar, with some half a 
 dozen bottles. Two laborers sat waiting 
 supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness ; a 
 plain-looking lass bustled about with a sleepy 
 child of two, and the landlady began to de- 
 range the pots upon the stove and set some 
 beef-steak to grill. 
 
 " These gentlemen are pedlars ? " she asked 
 sharply ; and that was all the conversation 
 forthcoming. We began to think we might 
 be pedlars, after all. I never knew a popu- 
 lation with so- narrow a range of conjecture 
 as the innkeepers of Pofii-snr'-Sainbre. But 
 manners and bearing have not a wider cur- 
 rency than bank-notes. You have only to 
 get far enough out of your beat, and all
 
 72 An Inlmid Voyage. 
 
 your accomplished airs will go for nothing. 
 These Hainaulters could see no difference 
 between us and the average pedlar. Indeed, 
 we had some grounds for reflection while the 
 steak was getting ready, to see how per- 
 fectly they accepted us at their own valua- 
 tion, and how our best politeness and best 
 efforts at entertainment seemed to fit quite 
 suitably with the character of packmen. At 
 least it seemed a good account of the pro- 
 fession in France, that even before such 
 judges we could not beat them at our own 
 weapons. 
 
 At last we were called to table. The two 
 hinds (and one of them looked sadly worn 
 and white in the face, as though sick with 
 over-work and under-feeding) supped off 
 a single plate of some sort of bread-berry, 
 some potatoes in their jackets, a small cup 
 of coffee sweetened with sugar candy, and
 
 Pont-sur-Sambre. 73 
 
 one tumbler of swipes. The landlady, her 
 son, and the lass aforesaid took the same. 
 Our meal was quite a banquet by compari- 
 son. We had some beef-steak, not so ten- 
 der as it might have been, some of the pota- 
 toes, some cheese, an extra glass of the 
 swipes, and white sugar in our coffee. 
 
 You see what it is to be a gentleman, — 
 I beg your pardon, what it is to be a pedlar. 
 It had not before occurred to me that a 
 pedlar was a great man in a laborer's ale- 
 house ; but now that I had to enact the part 
 for the evening, I found that so it was. He 
 has in his hedge quarters somewhat the 
 same pre-eminency as the man who takes a 
 private parlor in a hotel. The more you 
 look into it the more infinite are the class 
 distinctions among men ; and possibly, by a 
 happy dispensation, there is no one at all at 
 the bottom of the scale ; no one but can
 
 74 A/i Inland Voyage. ^ 
 
 find some superiority over somebody else, 
 to keep up his pride withal. 
 
 We were displeased enough with our fare. 
 Particularly the Cigarette; for I tried to 
 make believe that I was amused with the 
 adventure, tough beef-steak and all. Accord- 
 ing to the Liicretian maxim, our steak should 
 have been flavored by the look of the other 
 people's bread-berry ; but we did not find 
 it so in practice. You may have a head 
 knowledge that other people live more 
 poorly than yourself, but it is not agreeable 
 — I was going to say, it is against the eti- 
 quette of the universe — to sit at the same 
 'able and pick your own superior diet from 
 imong their crusts. I had not seen such a 
 thing done since the greedy boy at school 
 fvith his birthday cake. It was odious 
 enough to witness, I could remember ; and I 
 had never thought to play the part myself.
 
 Poiit-siir-Sambri;. 75 
 
 But there, again, you see what it is to be a 
 pedlar. 
 
 There is no doubt that the poorer classes 
 in our country are much more charitably 
 disposed than their superiors in wealth. 
 And I fancy it must arise a great deal from 
 the comparative indistinction of the easy 
 and the not so easy in these ranks. A work- 
 man or a pedlar cannot shutter himself off 
 from his less comfortable neighbors. If he 
 treats himself to a luxury, he must do it in 
 the face of a dozen who cannot. And what 
 should more directly lead to charitable 
 thoughts .''... Thus the poor man, camping 
 out in life, sees it as it is, and knows that 
 every mouthful he puts in his belly has been 
 wrenched out of the fingers of the hungry. 
 
 But at a certain stage of prosperity, as 
 m a balloon ascent, the fortunate person 
 passes through a zone of clouds, and sub-
 
 ^6 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 lunary matters are thenceforward hidden 
 from his view. He sees nothing but the 
 heavenly bodies, all in admirable order and 
 positively as good as new. He finds himself 
 surrounded in the most touching manner by 
 the attentions of Providejice, and compares 
 himself involuntarily with the lilies and the 
 skylarks. He does not precisely sing, of 
 course ; but then he looks so unassuming in 
 his open Landau ! If all the world dined at 
 one table, this philosophy would meet with 
 some rude knocks.
 
 PONT-SUR-SAMBRE. 
 
 THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT. 
 
 Like the lackeys in Molieres farce, when 
 the true noblemen broke in on their high life 
 below stairs, we were destined to be con- 
 fronted with a real pedlar. To make the 
 lesson still more poignant for fallen gentle- 
 men like us, he was a pedlar of infinitely 
 more consideration than the sort of scurvy 
 fellows we were taken for ; like a lion among 
 mice, or a ship of war bearing down upon 
 two cock-boats. Indeed, he did not deserve 
 the name of pedlar at all ; he was a travel- 
 ling merchant. 
 
 I suppose it was about half past eight 
 when this worthy. Monsieur Hector Gilliard,
 
 78 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 of Manbeuge, turned up at the alehouse door 
 in a tilt cart drawn by a donkey, and cried 
 cheerily on the inhabitants. He was a lean, 
 nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with some- 
 thing tne look of an actor and something 
 the look of a horse jockey. He had evi- 
 dently prospered without any of the favors 
 of education, for he adhered with stern sim- 
 plicity to the masculine gender, and in the 
 course of the evening passed off some fancy 
 futures in a very florid style of architecture. 
 With him came his wife, a comely young 
 woman, with her hair tied in a yellow ker- 
 chief, and their son, a little fellow of four, 
 in a blouse and military ypi. It was nota- 
 ble that the child was many degrees better 
 dressed than either of the parents. We 
 were informed he was already at a boarding 
 school ; but the holidays having just com- 
 menced, he was off to spend them with his
 
 Pont-siir-Sambre. 79 
 
 parents on a cruise. An enchanting holi- 
 day occupation, was it not ? to travel all 
 day with father and mother in the tilt cart 
 full of countless treasures ; the green coun- 
 try rattling by on either side, and the chil- 
 dren in all the villages contemplating him 
 with envy and wonder. It is better fun, 
 during the holidays, to be the son of a trav- 
 elling merchant, than son and heir to the 
 greatest cotton spinner in creation. And 
 as for being a reigning prince, — indeed, I 
 never saw one if it was not Master Gilliard ! 
 While M, Hector and the son of the 
 house were putting up the donkey and get- 
 ting all the valuables under lock and key, 
 the landlady warmed up the remains of our 
 beef-steak and fried the cold potatoes in 
 slices, and Madame Gilliard set herself to 
 waken the boy, who had come far that day, 
 and was peevish and dazzled by the light.
 
 8o An Inland Voyage. 
 
 He was no sooner awake than he began to 
 prepare himself for supper by eating galette, 
 unripe pears, and cold potatoes, with, so 
 far as I could judge, positive benefit to his 
 appetite. 
 
 The landlady, fired with motherly emula- 
 tion, awoke her own little girl, and the two 
 children were confronted Master Gilliard 
 looked at her for a moment, very much as a 
 dog looks at his own reflection in a mirror 
 before he turns away. He was at that time 
 absorbed in the galette. His mother seemed 
 crestfallen that he should display so little 
 inclination towards the other sex, and ex- 
 pressed her disappointment with some can- 
 dor and a very proper reference to the influ- 
 ence of years. 
 
 Sure enough a time will come when he 
 will pay more attention to the girls, and 
 think a great deal less of his mother ; let us
 
 Pont-sur-Sambre. 8l 
 
 hope she will like it as well as she seemed 
 to fancy. But it is odd enough ; the very 
 women who profess most contempt for man- 
 kind as a sex seem to find even its ugliest 
 particulars rather lively and high-minded in 
 their own sons. 
 
 The little girl looked longer and with 
 more interest, probably because she was in 
 her own house, while he was a traveller and 
 accustomed to strange sights. And, besides, 
 there was no galette in the case with her. 
 
 All the time of supper there was nothing 
 spoken of but my young lord. The two 
 parents were both absurdly fond of their 
 child. Monsieur kept insisting on his sa- 
 gacity ; how he knew all the children at 
 school by name, and when this utterly failed 
 on trial, how he was cautious and exact to 
 a strange degree, and if asked anything, he 
 would sit and think — and think, and if he
 
 82 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 did not know it, " my faith, he would n't tell 
 you at all — ma foi, il ne voiis le dira pas^ 
 Which is certainly a very high degree of 
 caution. At intervals, M. Hector would ap- 
 peal to his wife, with his mouth full of beef- 
 steak, as to the little fellow's age at such or 
 such a time when he had said or done some- 
 thing memorable ; and I noticed that Ma- 
 dame usually poohpoohed these inquiries. 
 She herself was not boastful in her vein ; 
 but she never had her fill of caressing the 
 child ; and she seemed to take a gentle 
 pleasure in recalling all that was fortunate 
 in his little existence. No school-boy could 
 have talked more of the holidays which were 
 just beginning and less of the black school- 
 time which must inevitably follow after. 
 She showed, with a pride perhaps partly 
 mercantile in origin, his pockets preposter- 
 ously swollen with tops, and whistles, and
 
 Pont-sur-Sambre. 83 
 
 string. When she called at a house in the 
 way of business, it appeared he kept her 
 company ; and, whenever a sale was made, 
 received a sou out of the profit. Indeed, 
 they spoiled him vastly, these two good 
 people. But they had an eye to his man- 
 ners, for all that, and reproved him for some 
 little faults in breeding which occurred from 
 time to time during supper. 
 
 On the whole, I was not much hurt at 
 being taken for a pedlar. I might think 
 that I ate with greater delicacy, or that my 
 mistakes in French belonged to a different 
 order ; but it was plain that these distinc- 
 tions would be thrown away upon the land- 
 lady and the two laborers. In all essential 
 things we and the Gilliards cut very much 
 the same figure in the alehouse kitchen. 
 M. Hector was more at home, indeed, and 
 took a higher tone with the world ; but that
 
 84 -^^i Inland Voyage. 
 
 was explicable on the ground of his driving 
 a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramped 
 afoot. I dare say the rest of the company 
 thought us dying with envy, though in no 
 ill sense, to be as far up in the profession as 
 the new arrival. 
 
 And of one thing I am sure ; that every- 
 one thawed and became more humanized 
 and conversible as soon as these innocent 
 people appeared upon the scene. I would 
 not very readily trust the travelling mer- 
 chant with any extravagant sum of money, 
 but I am sure his heart was in the right 
 place. In this mixed world, if you can find 
 one or two sensible places in a man ; above 
 all, if you should find a whole family living 
 together on such pleasant terms, you may 
 surely be satisfied, and take the rest for 
 granted ; or, what is a great deal better, 
 boldly make up your mind that you can do
 
 Pont-siir-Sambre. 85 
 
 perfectly wen without the rest, and that ten 
 thousand bad traits cannot make a single 
 good one any the less good. 
 
 It was getting late. M. Hector lit a stable 
 lantern and went off to his cart for some 
 arrangements, and my young gentleman pro- 
 ceeded to divest himself of the better part 
 of his raiment and play gymnastics on his 
 mother's lap, and thence on to the floor, 
 with accompaniment of laughter. 
 
 " Are you going to sleep alone .'' " asked 
 the servant lass 
 
 "There's little fear of that," says Master 
 Gilliard. 
 
 "You sleep alone at school," objected his 
 mother. "Come, come, you must be a man." 
 
 But he protested that school was a differ- 
 ent matter from the holidays ; that there 
 were dormitories at school, and silenced the 
 discussion with kisses, his mother smiling, 
 no one better pleased than she.
 
 86 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 There certainly was, as he phrased it, 
 very little fear that he should sleep alone, 
 for there was but one bed for the trio. We, 
 on our part, had firmly protested against one 
 man's accommodation fcr two ; and we had 
 a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house, 
 furnished, beside the beds, with exactly 
 three hat pegs and one table. There was 
 not so much as a glass of water. But the 
 window would open, by good fortune. 
 
 Some time before I fell asleep the loft was 
 full of the sound of mighty snoring ; the 
 Gilliards, and the laborers, and the people 
 of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with one con- 
 sent. The young moon outside shone very 
 clearly over Pont-sur-Sainbre, and down upon 
 the alehouse where all we pedlars were abed.
 
 ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED. 
 
 TO LANDRECIES. 
 
 In the morning, when we came down- 
 stairs the landlady pointed out to us two 
 pails of water behind the street door. " Vbt/d 
 de V eau pour voiis debarbouiller" says she. 
 And so there we made a shift to wash our- 
 selves, while Madame Gilliard brushed the 
 family boots on the outer doorstep, and M. 
 Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged some 
 small goods for the day's campaign in a 
 portable chest of drawers, which formed a 
 part of his baggage. Meanwhile the child 
 was letting off Waterloo crackers all over the 
 floor. 
 
 I wonder, by the by, what they call Water-
 
 88 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 loo crackers in France ; perhaps Austerlits 
 crackers. There is a great deal in the point 
 of view. Do you remember the Frenchman 
 who, travelling by way of Southampton, was 
 put down in Waterloo Station, and had to 
 drive across Waterloo Bridge } He had a 
 mind to go home again, it seems. 
 
 Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it 
 is ten minutes' walk from Quartes by dry 
 land, it is six weary kilometres by water. 
 We left our bags at the inn and walked to 
 our canoes through the wet orchards unen- 
 cumbered. Some of the children were there 
 to see us off, but we were no longer the 
 mysterious beings of the night before. A 
 departure is much less romantic than an un- 
 explained arrival in the golden evening. 
 Although we might be greatly taken at a 
 ghost's first appearance, we should behold 
 him vanish with comparative equanimity.
 
 On the Sambre Canalized. 89 
 
 The good folks of the inn at Pont, when 
 we called there for the bags, were overcome 
 with marvelling. At the sight of these two 
 dainty little boats, with a fluttering Union 
 Jack on each, and all the varnish shining 
 from the sponge, they began to perceive that 
 they had entertained angels unawares. The 
 landlady stood upon the bridge, probably 
 lamenting she had charged so little ; the son 
 ran to and fro, and called out the neighbors 
 to enjoy the sight ; and we paddled away 
 from quite a crowd of rapt observers. 
 These gentlemen pedlars, indeed ! Now you 
 see their quality too late. 
 
 The whole day was showery, with occa- 
 sional drenching plumps. We were soaked 
 to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, 
 then soaked once more. But there were 
 some calm intervals, and one notably, when 
 we were skirting the forest of Mormal, a
 
 90 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 sinister name to the ear, but a place most 
 gratifying to sight and smell. It looked 
 solemn along the river-side, drooping its 
 boughs into the water, and piling them up 
 aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a forest 
 but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and 
 innocuous living things, where there is noth- 
 ing dead and nothing made with the hands, 
 but the citizens themselves are the houses 
 and public monuments ? There is nothing so 
 much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland ; 
 and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, 
 feel very small and bustling by comparison. 
 
 And, surely, of all smells in the world the 
 smell of many trees is the sweetest and 
 most fortifying. The sea has a rude pis- 
 tolling sort of odor, that takes you in the 
 nostrils like snuff, and carries with it a fine 
 sentiment of open water and tall ships ; but 
 the smell of a forest, which comes nearest
 
 On the Sambre Caftalised. 91 
 
 to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by many 
 degrees in the quahty of softness. Again, 
 the smell of the sea has little variety, buL 
 the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful ; 
 it varies with the hour of the day, not in 
 strength merely, but in character ; and the 
 different sorts of trees, as you go from one 
 zone of the wood to another, seem to live 
 among different kinds of atmosphere. Usu- 
 ally the rosin of the fir predominates. But 
 some woods are more coquettish in their 
 habits ; and the breath of the forest Mormal, 
 as it came aboard upon us that showery 
 afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less 
 delicate than sweetbrier. 
 
 I wish our way had always lain among 
 woods. Trees are the most civil society. 
 An old oak that has been growing where 
 he stands since before the Reformation, 
 taller than many spires, more stately than the
 
 92 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 greater part of mountains, and yet a living 
 thing, liable to sicknesses and death, like you 
 and me : is not that in itself a speaking lesson 
 in history ? But acres on acres full of such 
 patriarchs contiguously rooted, their green 
 tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart 
 younglings pushing up about their knees ; 
 a whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving 
 color to the light, giving perfume to the air ; 
 what is this but the most imposing piece 
 in nature's repertory ? Heine wished to lie 
 like Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande. 
 I should not be satisfied with one tree ; but 
 if the wood grew together like a banyan 
 grove, I would be buried under the tap-root 
 of the whole ; my parts should circulate from 
 oak to oak ; and my consciousness should be 
 diffused abroad in all the forest, and give a 
 common heart to that assembly of green 
 spires, so that it, also, might rejoice in its
 
 On the Sambre Canalized. 93 
 
 own loveliness and dignity. I think I feel a 
 thousand squirrels leaping from bough to 
 bough in my vast mausoleum ; and the birds 
 and the winds merrily coursing over its 
 uneven, leafy surface. 
 
 Alas ! the forest of Mormal is only a little 
 bit of a wood, and it was but for a little way 
 that we skirted by its boundaries. And the 
 rest of the time the rain kept coming in 
 squirts and the wind in squalls, until one's 
 heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding 
 weather. It was odd how the showers be- 
 gan when we had to carry the boats over 
 a lock and must expose our legs. They 
 always did. This is a sort of thing that 
 readily begets a personal feeling against 
 nature. There seems no reason why the 
 shower should not come five minutes be- 
 fore or five minutes after, unless you 
 suppose an intention to affront yon. The
 
 94 -^^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 Cigarette had a mackintosh which put him 
 more or less above these contrarieties. 
 But I had to bear the brunt uncovered. 
 I began to remember that nature was a 
 woman. My companion, in a rosier temper, 
 listened with great satisfaction to my jere- 
 miades, and ironically concurred. He in- 
 stanced, as a cognate matter, the action of 
 the tides, "which," said he "was altogether 
 designed for the confusion of canoeists, ex- 
 cept in so far as it was calculated to min- 
 ister to a barren vanity on the part of the 
 moon." 
 
 At the last lock, some little way out of 
 Landrecies, I refused to go any farther ; and 
 sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank, 
 to have a reviving pipe. A vivacious old 
 man, whom I took to have been the devil, 
 drew near, and questioned me about our jour- 
 ney. In the fulness of my heart I laid bare
 
 On the Sambre Canalized. 95 
 
 our plans before him. He said it was the 
 silliest enterprise that ever he heard of. 
 Why, did I not know, he asked me, that it 
 was nothing but locks, locks, locks, the whole 
 way.-* not to mention that, at this season of 
 the year, we whould find the Oise quite dry } 
 "Get into a train, my little young man," 
 said he, "and go you away home to your 
 parents." I was so astounded at the man's 
 malice that I could only stare at him in 
 silence. A tree would never have spoken to 
 me like this. At last I got out with some 
 words. We had come from Antwerp already, 
 I told him, which was a good long way ; and 
 we should do the rest in spite of him. Yes, 
 I said, if there were no other reason, I would 
 do it now, just because he had dared to say 
 we could not. The pleasant old gentleman 
 looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to 
 my canoe, and marched off, wagging his , 
 head.
 
 96 Aji Inland Voyage. 
 
 I was still inwardly fuming when up came 
 a pair of young fellows, who imagined I was 
 the Cigarette s servant, on a comparison, I 
 suppose, of my bare jersey with the other's 
 mackintosh, and asked me many questions 
 about my place and my master's character 
 I said he was a good enough fellow, but had 
 this aburd voyage on the head. " Oh, no, no," 
 said one, " you must not say that ; it is not 
 absurd ; it is very courageous of him." I 
 believe these were a couple of angels sent to 
 give me heart again. It was truly fortifying 
 to reproduce all the old man's insinuations, 
 as if they were original to me in my charac- 
 ter of a malcontent footman, and have them 
 brushed away like so many flies by these 
 admirable young men. 
 
 When I recounted this affair to the Ciga- 
 rette^ '• They must have a curious idea of how 
 English servants behave," says he, dryly,
 
 On the Sambre Canalized. 97 
 
 "for you treated me like a brute beast at the 
 lock." 
 
 I was a good deal mortified ; but my 
 temper had suffered, it is a fact.
 
 AT LANDRECIES. 
 
 At Landrecies the rain still fell and the 
 wind still blew ; but we found a double- 
 bedded room with plenty of. furniture, real 
 water-jugs with real water in them, and din- 
 ner, a real dinner, not innocent of real wine. 
 After having been a pedlar for one night, 
 and a butt for the elements during the whole 
 of the next day, these comfortable circum- 
 stances fell on my heart like sunshine. 
 There was an English fruiterer at dinner, 
 travelling with a Belgian fruiterer ; in the 
 evening at the caf^ we watched our com- 
 patriot drop a good deal of money at corks, 
 and I don't know why, but this pleased us. 
 
 It turned out that we were to see more
 
 At Landrecies. 99 
 
 of Landrecies than we expected ; for the 
 weather next day was simply bedlamite. It 
 is not the place one would have chosen for 
 a day's rest, for it consists almost entirely 
 of fortifications. Within the ramparts, a 
 few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks, 
 and a church figure, with what countenance 
 they may, as the town. There seems to be 
 no trade, and a shop-keeper from whom I 
 bought a sixpenny flint and steel was so 
 much affected that he filled my pockets 
 with spare flints into the bargain. The 
 only public buildings that had any interest 
 for us were the hotel and the caf^. But we 
 visited the church. There lies Marshal 
 Clarke. But as neither of us had ever 
 heard of that military hero, we bore the 
 associations of the spot with fortitude. 
 
 In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and re- 
 veilles, and such like, make a fine, romantic
 
 loo An Inland Voyage, 
 
 interlude in civic business. Bugles, and 
 drums, and fifes are of themselves most ex- 
 cellent things in nature, and vi^hen they 
 carry the mind to marching armies and the 
 picturesque vicissitudes of war they stir up 
 something proud in the heart. But in a 
 shadow of a town like Landrecies, with little 
 else moving, these points of war made a pro- 
 portionate commotion. Indeed, they were 
 the only things to remember. It was just 
 the place to hear the round going by at 
 night in the darkness, with the solid tramp 
 of men marching, and the startling rever- 
 berations of the drum. It reminded you 
 that even this place was a point in the great 
 warfaring system of Europe, and might on 
 some future day be ringed about with can- 
 non smoke and thunder, and make itself a 
 name among strong towns. 
 
 The drum, at any rate, from its martial
 
 At Landrecies. loi 
 
 voice and notable physiological effect, nay, 
 even from its cumbrous and comical shape, 
 stands alone among the instruments of noise. 
 And if it be true, as I have heard it said, 
 that drums are covered with asses' skin, what 
 a picturesque irony is there in that ! As if 
 this long-suffering animal's hide had not 
 been sufficiently belabored during life, now 
 by Lyonnese costermongers, now by pre- 
 sumptuous Hebrew prophets, it must be 
 stripped from his poor hinder quarters after 
 death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night 
 after night round the streets of every garri- 
 son town in Europe. And up the heights of 
 Alma and Spicheren, and wherever death has 
 his red flag a flying, and sounds his own 
 potent tuck upon the cannons, there also 
 must the drummer boy, hurrying with white 
 face over fallen comrades, batter and bemau) 
 this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable 
 donkeys.
 
 102 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 Generally a man is never more uselessly 
 employed than when he is at this trick of 
 bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what 
 effect it has in life, and how your dull ass 
 will not mend his pace with beating. But 
 in this state of mummy and melancholy 
 survival of itself, when the hollow skin re- 
 verberates to the drummer's wrist, and each 
 dub-a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, and 
 puts madness there, and that disposition of 
 the pulses which we, in our big way of talk- 
 ing, nickname Heroism, — is there not some- 
 thing in the nature of a revenge upon the 
 donkey's persecutors } Of old, he might 
 say, you drubbed me up hill and down dale 
 and I must endure ; but now that I am 
 dead those dull thwacks that were scarcely 
 audible in country lanes have become 
 stirring music in front of the brigade, 
 and for every blow that you lay on my old
 
 At Landrecies. 103 
 
 great-coat, you will see a comrade stumble 
 and fall. 
 
 Not long after the drums had passed the 
 caf^t the Cigarette and the Areihiisa began 
 to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel, 
 which was only a door or two away. But 
 although we had been somewhat indifferent 
 to Landrecies, Landrecies had not been indif- 
 ferent to us. All day, we learned, people 
 had been running out between the squalls to 
 visit our two boats. Hundreds of persons, 
 so said report, although it fitted ill with our 
 idea of the town, — hundreds of persons had 
 inspected them where they lay in a coal- 
 shed. We were becoming lions in Latidre- 
 cies, who had been only pedlars the night 
 before in Pont. 
 
 And now, when we left the caf^, we were 
 pursued and overtaken at the hotel door by 
 no less a person than the yuge de Paix ; a
 
 104 -^'^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 functionary, as far as I can make out, of the 
 character of a Scotch Sheriff Substitute. 
 He gave us his card and invited us to sup 
 with him on the spot, very neatly, very 
 gracefully, as Frenchmen can do these things. 
 It was for the credit of Landrecies, said he ; 
 and although we knew very well how little 
 credit we could do the place, we must have 
 been churlish fellows to refuse an invitation 
 so politely introduced. 
 
 The house of the judge was close by ; it 
 was a well-appointed bachelor's establish- 
 ment, with a curious collection of old brass 
 warming-pans upon the walls. Some of 
 these were most elaborately carved. It 
 seemed a picturesque idea for a collector. 
 You could not help thinking how many 
 nightcaps had wagged over these warming- 
 pans in past generations ; what jests may 
 have been made and kisses taken while they
 
 At Landrecies. 105 
 
 were in service ; and how often they had 
 been uselessly paraded in the bed of death. 
 If they could only speak, at what absurd, 
 indecorous, and tragical scenes had they not 
 been present ? 
 
 The wine was excellent. When we made 
 the judge our compliments upon a bottle, 
 "I do not give it you as my worst," said 
 he. I wonder when Englishmen will learn 
 these hospitable graces. They are worth 
 learning ; they set off life and make ordi- 
 nary moments ornamental. 
 
 There were two other Landrecienses pres- 
 ent. One was the collector of something or 
 other, I forget what ; the other, we were 
 told, was the principal notary of the place. 
 So it happened that we all five more or less 
 followed the law. At this rate, the talk was 
 pretty certain to become technical. The 
 Cigarette expounded the poor laws very
 
 io6 Aji Inland Voyage. 
 
 magisterially. And a little later I found 
 myself laying down the Scotch law of 
 illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say I 
 know nothing. The collector and the no- 
 tary, who were both married men, accused 
 the judge, who was a bachelor, of having 
 started the subject. He deprecated the 
 charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just 
 like all the men I have ever seen, be they 
 French or English. How strange that we 
 should all, in our unguarded moments, rather 
 like to be thought a bit of a rogue with the 
 women ! 
 
 As the evening went on the wine grew 
 more to my taste ; the spirits proved better 
 than the wine ; the company was genial. 
 This was the highest water mark of popular 
 favor on the whole cruise. After all, being 
 in a judge's house, was there not something 
 semi-official in the tribute .-' And so, remem-
 
 At Landrecies. 107 
 
 bering what a great country France is, we 
 did full justice to our entertainment. Laji- 
 drecies had been a long while asleep before 
 we returned to the hotel ; and the sentries 
 on the ramparts were already looking for 
 daybreak.
 
 SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL. 
 
 CANAL BOATS. 
 
 Next day we made a late start in the rain. 
 The judge politely escorted us to the end of 
 the lock under an umbrella. We had now- 
 brought ourselves to a pitch of humility, in 
 the matter of weather, not often attained 
 except in the Scotch Highlands. A rag of 
 blue sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our 
 hearts singing ; and when the rain was not 
 heavy we counted the day almost fair. 
 
 Long lines of barges lay one after another 
 along the canal, many of them looking 
 mighty spruce and ship-shape in their jer. 
 kin of Archangel tar picked out with white 
 and green. Some carried gay iron railings
 
 Sambre and Oise Canal. 109 
 
 and quite a parterre of flower-pots. Children 
 played on the decks, as heedless of the rain 
 as if they had been brought up on LocJl 
 Caron side ; men fished over the gunwale, 
 some of them under umbrellas ; women did 
 their washing ; and every barge boasted its 
 mongrel cur by way of watch-dog. Each 
 one barked furiously at the canoes, running 
 alongside until he had got to the end of his 
 own ship, and so passing on the word to the 
 dog aboard the next. We must have seen 
 something like a hundred of these embarka- 
 tions in the course of that day's paddle, 
 ranged one after another like the houses in 
 a street ; and from not one of them were we 
 disappointed of this accompaniment. It was 
 like visiting a menagerie, the Cigarette re- 
 marked. 
 
 These little cities by the canal side had 
 a very odd effect upon the mind. They
 
 no Afi Inland Voyage. 
 
 seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking 
 chimneys, their washings and dinners, a 
 rooted piece of nature in the scene; and 
 yet if only the canal below were to open, 
 one junk after another would hoist sail or 
 harness horses and swim away into all parts 
 of France ; and the impromptu hamlet would 
 separate, house by house, to the four winds. 
 The children who played together to-day by 
 the Sambre and Oise Canal, each at his own 
 father's threshold, when and where might 
 they next meet ? 
 
 For some time past the subject of barges 
 had occupied a great deal of our talk, and 
 we had projected an old age on the canals 
 of Europe. It was to be the most leisurely 
 of progresses, now on a swift river at the 
 tail of a steamboat, now waiting horses for 
 days together on some inconsiderable junc- 
 tion. We should be seen pottering on deck
 
 Sambre and Oise Canal. in 
 
 in all the dignity of years, our white beards 
 falling into our laps. We were ever to be 
 busied among paint-pots, so that there should 
 be no white fresher and no green more em- 
 erald than ours, in all the navy of the canals. 
 There should be books in the cabin, and 
 tobacco jars, and some old Burgundy as red 
 as a November sunset and as odorous as a 
 violet in April. There should be a flageolet 
 whence the Cigarette, with cunning touch, 
 should draw melting music under the stars ; 
 or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his 
 voice — somewhat thinner than of yore, and 
 with here and there a quaver, or call it a 
 natural grace note — in rich and solemn 
 psalmody. 
 
 All this simmering in my mind set me 
 wishing to go aboard one of these ideal 
 houses of lounging. I had plenty to choose 
 from, as I coasted one after another and the
 
 112 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 dogs bayed at me for a vagrant. At last I 
 saw a nice old man and his wife looking at 
 me with some interest, so I gave them good 
 day and pulled up alongside. I began with 
 a remark upon their dog, which had some- 
 what the look of a pointer ; thence I slid 
 into a compliment on Madame's flowers, and 
 thence into a word in praise of their way of 
 life. 
 
 If you ventured on such an experiment in 
 Engla7id you would get a slap in the face at 
 once. The life would be shown to be a vile 
 one, not without a side shot at your better 
 fortune. Now, what I like so much in France 
 is the clear, unflinching recognition by every- 
 body of his own luck. They all know on 
 which side their bread is buttered, and take 
 a pleasure in showing it to others, which is 
 surely the better part of religion. And they 
 sconi to make a poor mouth over their pov-
 
 Sambre and Oise Canal. 113 
 
 erty, which I take to be the better part of 
 manliness. I have heard a woman in quite 
 a better position at home, with a good bit 
 of money in hand, refer to her own child 
 with a horrid whine as "a poor man's child," 
 I would not say such a thing to the Duke of 
 Westminster. And the French are full of 
 this spirit of independence. Perhaps it is 
 the result of republican institutions, as they 
 call them. Much more likely it is because 
 there are so few people really poor that the 
 whiners are not enough to keep each other 
 in countenance. 
 
 The people on the barge were delighted 
 to hear that I admired their state. They 
 understood perfectly well, they told me, how 
 Monsieur envied them. Without doubt 
 Monsieur was rich, and in that case he 
 might make a canal-boat as pretty as a villa 
 — joli cornme un chAteau. And with that
 
 114 ^^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 they invited me on board their own water 
 villa. They apologized for their cabin ; they 
 had not been rich enough to make it as it 
 ought to be. 
 
 "The fire should have been here, at this 
 side," explained the husband. " Then one 
 might have a writing-table in the middle — 
 books — and" (comprehensively) "all. It 
 would be quite coquettish — qa serait tout- 
 ct,-fait coquet.'' And he looked about him 
 as though the improvements were already 
 made. It was plainly not the first time that 
 he had thus beautified his cabin in imagina- 
 tion ; and when next he makes a hit, I 
 should expect to see the writing-table in the 
 middle. 
 
 Madame had three birds in a cage. They 
 were no great thing, she explained. Fine 
 birds were so dear. They had sought to 
 get a Hollandais last winter in Rouen
 
 Sambre and Oise Canal. 115 
 
 {Rouen, thought I ; and is this whole man- 
 sion, with its dogs, and birds, and smoking 
 chimneys, so far a traveller as that, and as 
 homely an object among the cliffs and or- 
 chards of the Seine as on the green plains 
 of Sambre ?) — they had sought to get a 
 Hollandais last winter in Rouen ; but these 
 cost fifteen francs apiece — picture it — fif- 
 teen francs ! 
 
 " Pour tin tout petit oiseau — For quite a 
 little bird," added the husband. 
 
 As I continued to admire, the apologetics 
 died away, and the good people began to 
 brag of their barge and their happy condi- 
 tion in life, as if they had been Emperor and 
 Empress of the Indies. It was, in the 
 Scotch phrase, a good hearing, and put me 
 in good-humor with the world. If people 
 knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear 
 a man boasting, so long as he boasts of what
 
 Il6 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 he really has, I believe they would do it 
 more freely and with a better grace. 
 
 They began to ask about our voyage. 
 You should have seen how they sympa- 
 thized. They seemed half ready to give up 
 their barge and follow us. But these cana- 
 letti are only gypsies semi-domesticated. 
 The semi-domestication came out in rather 
 a pretty form. Suddenly Madame's brow 
 darkened. " Cependant," she began, and 
 then stopped ; and then began again by 
 asking me if I were single. 
 
 " Yes," said I. 
 
 " And your friend who went by just now .-*" 
 
 He also was unmarried. 
 
 Oh, then, all was well. She could not 
 have wives left alone at home ; but since 
 there were no wives in the question, we were 
 doing the best we could. 
 
 " To see about one in the world," said the
 
 Sambre a?id Oise Canal. 117 
 
 husband, " il ny a que qa — there is nothing 
 else worth while. A man, look you, who 
 sticks in his own village like a bear," he 
 went on, " very well, he sees nothing. And 
 then death is the end of all. And he has 
 seen nothing." 
 
 Madame reminded her husband of an Eng- 
 lishman who had come up this canal in a 
 steamer. 
 
 "Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytene^' I sug- 
 gested. 
 
 "That's it," assented the husband. "He 
 had his wife and family with him, and ser- 
 vants. He came ashore at all the locks and 
 asked the name of the villages, whether from 
 boatmen or lock-keepers ; and then he wrote, 
 wrote them down. Oh, he wrote enormously ! 
 I suppose it was a wager." 
 
 A wager was a common enough explana- 
 tion for our own exploits, but it seemed an 
 original reason for taking notes.
 
 THE OISE IN FLOOD. 
 
 Before nine next morning the two canoes 
 were installed on a light country cart at 
 Etreiix ; and we were soon following them 
 along the side of a pleasant valley full of 
 hop-gardens and poplars. Agreeable vil- 
 lages lay here and there on the slope of 
 the hill : notably, Tupigny, with the hop- 
 poles hanging their garlands in the very 
 street, and the houses clustered with grapes. 
 There was a faint enthusiasm on our pas- 
 sage ; weavers put their heads to the win- 
 dows ; children cried out in ecstasy at 
 sight of the two " boaties " — barquettes; and 
 bloused pedestrians, who were acquainted 
 with our charioteer, jested with him on the 
 nature of his freight.
 
 The Oise in Flood. 119 
 
 We had a shower or two, but light and 
 flying. The air was clean and sweet among 
 all these green fields and green things grow- 
 ing. There was not a touch of autumn in 
 the weather. And when, at Vadcncourt, we 
 launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, 
 the sun broke forth and set all the leaves 
 shining in the valley of the Oise. 
 
 The river was swollen with the long rains. 
 From Vadeiicourt all the way to Origny it 
 ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh 
 heart at each mile, and racing as though it 
 already smelt the sea. The water was yel- 
 low and turbulent, swung with an angry 
 eddy among half-submerged willows, and 
 made an angry clatter along stony shores. 
 The course kept turning and turning in a 
 narrow and well-timbered valley. Now the 
 river would approach the side, and run glid- 
 ing along the chalky base of the hill, and
 
 120 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 show us a few open colza fields among the 
 trees. Now it would skirt the garden-walls 
 of houses, where we might catch a glimpse 
 through a doorway, and see a priest pacing 
 in the checkered sunlight. Again, the fo- 
 liage closed so thickly in front that there 
 seemed to be no issue ; only a thicket of 
 willows overtopped by elms and poplars, 
 under which the river ran flush and fleet, 
 and where a kingfisher flew past like a piece 
 of the blue sky. On these different manifes- 
 tations the sun poured its clear and catholic 
 looks. The shadows lay as solid on the 
 swift surface of the stream as on the stable 
 meadows. The light sparkled golden in the 
 dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills 
 into communion with our eyes. And all the 
 while the river never stopped running or 
 took breath ; and the reeds along the whole 
 valley stood shivering from top to toe.
 
 The Oise in Flood. I2i 
 
 There should be some myth (but if there 
 is, I know it not) founded on the shivering 
 of the reeds. There are not many things in 
 nature more striking to man's eye. It is 
 such an eloquent pantomime of terror ; and 
 to see such a number of terrified creatures 
 taking sanctuary in every nook along the 
 shore is enough to infect a silly human with 
 alarm. Perhaps they are only acold, and no 
 wonder, standing waist deep in the stream. 
 Or, perhaps, they have never got accustomed 
 to the speed and fury of the river's flux, or 
 the miracle of its continuous body. Pan 
 once played upon their forefathers ; and so, 
 by the hands of his river, he still plays upon 
 these later generations down all the val- 
 ley of the Oise ; and plays the same air, both 
 sweet and shrill, to tell us of the beauty and 
 the terror of the world. 
 
 The canoe was like a leaf in the current.
 
 122 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 It took it up and shook it, and carried it 
 masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying off 
 a nymph To keep some command on our 
 direction required hard and diligent plying 
 of the paddle. The river was in such -a 
 hurry for the sea ! Every drop of water ran 
 in a panic, like so many people in a fright- 
 ened crowd. But what crowd was ever so 
 numerous or so single-minded .'* All the 
 objects of sight went by at a dance measure ; 
 the eyesight raced with the racing river; 
 the exigencies of every moment kept the 
 pegs screwed so tight that our being quiv- 
 ered like a well-tuned instrument, and the 
 blood shook off its lethargy, and trotted 
 through all the highways and byways of 
 the veins and arteries, and in and out of the 
 heart, as if circulation were but a holiday 
 journey and not the daily moil of threescore 
 years and ten. The reeds might nod their
 
 The Oise in Flood. 123 
 
 heads in warning, and with tremulous ges- 
 tures tell how the river was as cruel as it 
 was strong and cold, and how death lurked 
 in the eddy underneath the willows. But 
 the reeds had to stand where they were ; 
 and those who stand still are always timid 
 advisers. As for us, we could have shouted 
 aloud. If this lively and beautiful river 
 were, indeed, a thing of death's contrivance, 
 the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted 
 himself with us. I was living three to the 
 minute. I was scoring points against him 
 every stroke of my paddle, every turn of 
 the stream. I have rarely had better profit 
 of my life. 
 
 For I think we may look upon our little 
 private war with death somewhat in this 
 light. If a man knows he will sooner or 
 later be robbed upon a journey, he will have 
 a bottle of the best in every inn, and look
 
 124 -^^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 upon all his extravagances as so much gained 
 upon the thieves. And above all, where, in- 
 stead of simply spending, he makes a profit- 
 able investment for some of his money, 
 when it will be out of risk of loss. So every 
 bit of brisk living, and above all when it is 
 healthful, is just so much gained upon the 
 wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the 
 less in our pockets, the more in our stom- 
 achs, when he cries, Stand and deliver. A 
 swift stream is a favorite artifice of his, 
 and one that brings him in a comfortable 
 thing per annum ; but when he and I come 
 to settle our accounts I shall whistle in his 
 face for these hours upon the upper Oise. 
 
 Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken 
 with the sunshine and the exhilaration of 
 the pace. We could no longer contain our- 
 selves and our content. The canoes were 
 too small for us ; we must be out and stretch
 
 The Oise in Flood. 125 
 
 ourselves on shore. And so in a green 
 meadow we bestowed our limbs on the grass, 
 and smoked deifying tobacco, and proclaimed 
 the world excellent. It was the last good 
 hour of the day, and I dwell upon it with 
 extreme complacency. 
 
 On one side of the valley, high upon the 
 chalky summit of the hill, a ploughman with 
 his team appeared and disappeared at regular 
 intervals. At each revelation he stood still 
 for a few seconds against the sky, for all the 
 world (as the Cigarette declared) like a toy 
 Burns who had just ploughed up the Moun- 
 taift Daisy. He was the only living thing 
 within view, unless we are to count the river. 
 
 On the other side of the valley a group of 
 red roofs and a belfry showed among the 
 foliage. Thence some inspired bell-ringer 
 made the afternoon musical on a chime of 
 bells. There was something very sweet and
 
 126 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 taking in the air he played, and we thought 
 we had never heard bells speak so intelligi- 
 bly or sing so melodiously as these. It 
 must have been to some such measure that 
 the spinners and the young maids sang, 
 "Come away. Death," in the Shakespearian 
 Illyvia. There is so often a threatening 
 note, something blatant and metallic, in the 
 voice of bells, that I believe we have fully 
 more pain than pleasure from hearing them ; 
 but these, as they sounded abroad, now high, 
 now low, now with a plaintive cadence that 
 caught the ear like the burden of a popular 
 song, were always moderate and tunable, 
 and seemed to fall in with the spirit of still, 
 rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or 
 the babble of a rookery in spring. I could 
 have asked the bell-ringer for his blessing, 
 good, sedate old man, who swung the rope 
 so gently to the time of his meditations. I
 
 The Oise in Flood, 127 
 
 could have blessed the priest or the heritors, 
 or whoever may be concerned with such 
 affairs in France, who had left these sweet 
 old bells to gladden the afternoon, and not 
 held meetings, and made collections, and 
 had their names repeatedly printed in the 
 local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, 
 brazen, BirmingJiam-\\^zxX.Q.^ substitutes, who 
 should bombard their sides to the provoca- 
 tion of a brand-new bell-ringer, and fill the 
 echoes of the valley with terror and riot. 
 
 At last the bells ceased, and with their 
 note the sun withdrew. The piece was at 
 an end ; shadow and silence possessed the 
 valley of the Oise. We took to the paddle 
 with glad hearts, like people who have sat 
 out a noble performance and return to work. 
 The river was more dangerous here ; it ran 
 swifter, the eddies were more sudden and 
 violent. All the way down we had had our
 
 128 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 fill of difficulties. Sometimes it was a weir 
 which could be shot, sometimes one so shal- 
 low and full of stakes that we must withdraw 
 the boats from the water and carry them 
 round. But the chief sort of obstacle was a 
 consequence of the late high winds. Every 
 two or three hundred yards a tree had fallen 
 across the river, and usually involved more 
 than another in its fall. Often there was 
 free water at the end, and we could steer 
 round the leafy promontory and hear the 
 water sucking and bubbling among the 
 twigs. Often, again, when the tree reached 
 from bank to bank, there was room, by lying 
 close, to shoot through underneath, canoe 
 and all. Sometimes it was necessary to get 
 out upon the trunk itself and pull the boats 
 across ; and sometimes, where the stream 
 was too impetuous for this, there was noth- 
 ing for it but to land and " carry over."
 
 The Oise in Flood. 129 
 
 This made a fine series of accidents in the 
 day's career, and kept us aware of ourselves. 
 Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I 
 was leading by a long way, and still full of 
 a noble, exulting spirit in honor of the sun, 
 the swift pace, and the church bells, the 
 river made one of its leonine pounces round 
 a corner, and I was aware of another fallen 
 tree within a stone-cast, I had my back- 
 board down in a trice, and aimed for a place 
 where the trunk seemed high enough above 
 the water, and the branches not too thick to 
 let me slip below. When a man has just 
 vowed eternal brotherhood with the universe 
 he is not in a temper to take great determi- 
 nations coolly, and this, which might have 
 been a very important determination for me, 
 had not been taken under a happy star. 
 The tree caught me about the chest, and 
 while I was yet struggling to make less of
 
 130 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 myself and get through, the river took the 
 matter out of my hands and bereaved me of 
 my boat. The AretJmsa swung round broad- 
 side on, leaned over, ejected so much of me 
 as still remained on board, and, thus disen- 
 cumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, 
 and went merrily away down stream. 
 
 I do not know how long it was before I 
 scrambled on to the tree to which I was left 
 clinging, but it was longer than I cared 
 about. My thoughts were of a grave and 
 almost sombre character, but I still clung to 
 my paddle. The stream ran away with my 
 heels as fast as I could pull up my shoulders, 
 and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the 
 water of the Oise in my trousers pockets. 
 You can never know, till you try it, what a 
 dead pull a river makes against a man. 
 Death himself had me by the heels, for this 
 was his last ambuscade, and he must now
 
 The Oise in Flood. 131 
 
 join personally in the fray. And still I held 
 to my paddle. At last I dragged myself on 
 to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there a 
 breathless sop, with a mingled sense of 
 humor and injustice. A poor figure I must 
 have presented to Burns upon the hill-top 
 with his team. But there was the paddle in 
 my hand. On my tomb, if ever I have one, 
 I mean to get these words inscribed : " He 
 clung to his paddle." 
 
 The Cigarette had gone past awhile be- 
 fore; for, as I might have observed, if I 
 had been a little less pleased with the uni- 
 verse at the moment, there was a clear way 
 round the tree-top at the farther side. He 
 had offered his services to haul me out, but, 
 as I was then already on my elbows, I had 
 declined, and sent him down stream after the 
 truant Arethnsa. The stream was too rapid 
 for a man to mount with one canoe, let alone
 
 132 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 two, upon his hands. So I crawled along 
 the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the 
 meadows by the river-side. I was so cold 
 that my heart was sore. I had now an idea 
 of my own why the reeds so bitterly shiv- 
 ered. I could have given any of them a 
 lesson. The Cigarette remarked, facetiously, 
 that he thought I was " taking exercise " as 
 I drew near, until he made out for certain 
 that I was only twittering with cold. I had 
 a rub-down with a towel, and donned a dry 
 suit from the india-rubber bag. But I was 
 not my own man again for the rest of the 
 voyage. I had a queasy sense that I wore 
 my last dry clothes upon my body. The 
 struggle had tired me ; and, perhaps, whether 
 I knew it or not, I was a little dashed in 
 spirit. The devouring element in the uni- 
 verse had leaped out against me, in this 
 green valley quickened by a running stream.
 
 The Oisein Flood. 133 
 
 The bells were all very pretty in their way, 
 but I had heard some of the hollow notes of 
 Pans music. Would the wicked river drag 
 me down by the heels, indeed ? and look so 
 beautiful all the time ? Nature's good-humor 
 was only skin deep, after all. 
 
 There was still a long way to go by the 
 winding course of the stream, and darkness 
 had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in 
 Origny Sainte-BenoUe when we arrived.
 
 ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE. 
 
 A BY-DAY. 
 
 The next day was Sunday, and the church 
 bells had little rest ; indeed, I do not think 
 I remember anywhere else so great a choice 
 of services as were here offered to the de- 
 vout. And while the bells made merry in 
 the sunshine, all the world with his dog 
 was out shooting among the beets and colza. 
 
 In the morning a hawker and his wife 
 went down the street at a foot-pace, singing 
 to a very slow, lamentable music, " O France, 
 mes amours!' It brought everybody to the 
 door; and when our landlady called in the 
 man to buy the words, he had not a copy of 
 them left. She was not the first nor the
 
 Origny Saintc-Benotte. 135 
 
 second who had been taken with the song. 
 There is something very pathetic in the love 
 of the French people, since the war, for 
 dismal patriotic music-making. I have 
 watched a forester from Alsace while some 
 one was singing " Les malheurs de la France" 
 at a baptismal party in the neighborhood of 
 Fontainebleau. He arose from the table and 
 took his son aside, close by where I was 
 standing. " Listen, listen," he said, bear- 
 ing on the boy's shoulder, " and remember 
 this, my son." A little after he went out 
 into the garden suddenly, and I could hear 
 him sobbing in the darkness. 
 
 The humiliation of their arms and the loss 
 of Alsace and Lorraine made a sore pull 
 on the endurance of this sensitive people ; 
 and their hearts are still hot, not so much 
 against Germany as against the Empire. In 
 what other country will you find a patriotic
 
 136 An Inla7id Voyage. 
 
 ditty bring all the world into the street ? 
 But affliction heightens love ; and we shall 
 never know we are Englishmejt until we have 
 lost India. Independent America is still the 
 cross of my existence ; I cannot think of 
 Farmer George without abhorrence ; and I 
 never feel more warmly to my own land than 
 when I see the stars and stripes, and remem- 
 ber what our empire might have been. 
 
 The hawker's little book, which I pur- 
 chased, was a curious mixture. Side by 
 side with the flippant, rowdy nonsense of the 
 Paris music-halls there were many pastoral 
 pieces, not without a touch of poetry, I 
 thought, and instinct with the brave indepen- 
 dence of the poorer class in Fratice. There 
 you might read how the wood-cutter gloried 
 in his axe, and the gardener scorned to be 
 ashamed of his spade. It was not very well 
 written, this poetry of labor, but the pluck
 
 Origny Sainte-Benotte. 137 
 
 of the sentiment redeemed what was weak 
 or wordy in the expression. The martial 
 and the patriotic pieces, on the other hand, 
 were tearful, womanish productions one and 
 all. The poet had passed under the Caudine 
 Forks ; he sang for an army visiting the 
 tomb of its old renown, with arms reversed ; 
 and sang not of victory, but of death. There 
 was a number in the hawker's collection 
 called Consents Fmn^ais, which may rank 
 among the most dissuasive war-lyrics on 
 record. It would not be possible to fight at 
 all in such a spirit. The bravest conscript 
 would turn pale if such a ditty were struck 
 up beside him on the morning of battle ; and 
 whole regiments would pile their arms to its 
 tune. 
 
 If Fletcher of Saltotin is in the right about 
 the influence of national songs, you would 
 say France was come to a poor pass. But
 
 138 A// hiland Voyage. 
 
 the thing will work its own cure, and a 
 sound-hearted and courageous people weary 
 at length of snivelling over their disasters. 
 Already Paul Deroulcde has written some 
 manly military verses. There is not much 
 of the trumpet note in them, perhaps, to stir 
 a man's heart in his bosom ; they lack the 
 l)'rical elation, and move slowly ; but they 
 are written in a grave, honorable, stoical 
 spirit, which should carry soldiers far in a 
 good cause. One feels as if one would like 
 to trust Detoulede with something. It will 
 be happy if he can so far inoculate his fellow- 
 countrymen that they may be trusted with 
 'heir own future. And, in the mean time, 
 here is an antedote to "French Conscripts" 
 and much other doleful versification. 
 
 We had left the boats over night in the 
 custody of one whom we shall call Cai'nival 
 I did not properly catch his name, and per-
 
 Origny Saint e-Benotte. 139 
 
 haps that was not unfortunate for him, as I 
 am not in a position to hand him down with 
 honor to posterity. To this person's prem- 
 ises we strolled in the course of the day, and 
 found quite a little deputation inspecting the 
 canoes. There was a stout gentleman with 
 a knowledge of the river, which he seemed 
 eager to impart. There was a very elegant 
 young gentleman in a black coat, with a 
 smattering of English, who led the talk at 
 once to the Oxford and Cambridge boat 
 race. And then there were three hand- 
 some girls from fifteen to twenty ; and an 
 old gentleman in a blouse, with no teeth to 
 speak of, and a strong country accent. 
 Quite the pick of Origny, I should suppose. 
 
 The Cigarette had some mysteries to per- 
 form with his rigging in the coach-house ; so 
 I was left to do the parade single-handed. 
 I found myself very much of a hero whether
 
 140 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 I would or not. The girls were full of little 
 shudderings over the dangers of our journey. 
 And I thought it would be ungallant not to 
 take my cue from the ladies. My mishap of 
 yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced 
 a deep sensation. It was Othello over again, 
 with no less than three Desdemonas and a 
 sprinkling of sympathetic senators in the 
 background. Never were the canoes more 
 flattered, or flattered more adroitly. 
 
 " It is like a violin," cried one of the girls 
 in an ecstasy. 
 
 " I thank you for the word, mademoiselle," 
 said I. " All the more since there are peo- 
 ple who call out to me that it is like a 
 coffin." 
 
 " Oh ! but it is really like a violin. It is 
 finished like a violin," she went on. 
 
 "And polished like a violin," added a 
 senator.
 
 Origny Sainte-Benotte. 141 
 
 " One has only to stretch the cords," con- 
 cluded another, " and then tum-tumty-tum " ; 
 he imitated the result with spirit. 
 
 Was not this a graceful little ovation ? 
 Where this people finds the secret of its 
 pretty speeches I cannot imagine, unless 
 the secret should be no other than a sincere 
 desire to please. But then no disgrace is 
 attached in France to saying a thing neatly ; 
 whereas in England, to talk like a book is to 
 give in one's resignation to society. 
 
 The old gentleman in the blouse stole 
 into the coach-house, and somewhat irrele- 
 vantly informed the Cigarette that he was 
 the father of the three girls and four more ; 
 quite an exploit for a Frenchman. 
 
 " You are very fortunate," answered the 
 Cigarette politely. 
 
 And the old gentleman, having apparently 
 gained his point, stole away again.
 
 142 Ah Inland Voyage. 
 
 We all got very friendly together. The 
 girls proposed to start with us on the mor- 
 row, if you please. And, jesting apart, every 
 one was anxious to know the hour of our 
 departure. Now, when you are going to 
 crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, a 
 crowd, however friendly, is undesirable, and 
 so we told them not before twelve, and 
 mentally determined to be off by ten at 
 latest. 
 
 Towards evening we went abroad again to 
 post some letters. It was cool and pleasant ; 
 the long village was quite empty, except for 
 one or two urchins who followed us as they 
 might have followed a menagerie; the hills 
 and the tree-tops looked in from all sides 
 through the clear air, and the bells were 
 chiming for yet another service. 
 
 Suddenly we sighted the three girls, stand- 
 ing, with a fourth sister, in front of a shop
 
 Origny Sainte-Betiotte. 143 
 
 on the wide selvage of the roadway. We 
 had been very merry with them a little 
 while ago, to be sure. But what was the 
 etiquette of Origny ? Had it been a country 
 road, of course we should have spoken to 
 them ; but here, under the eyes of all the 
 gossips, ought we to do even as much as 
 bow ? I consulted the Cigarette. 
 
 " Look," said he. 
 
 I looked. There were the four girls on 
 the same spot; but now four backs were 
 turned to us, very upright and conscious. 
 Corporal Modesty had given the word of 
 command, and the well-disciplined picket 
 had gone right-about-face like a single per- 
 son. They maintained this formation all the 
 while we were in sight ; but we heard them 
 tittering among themselves, and the girl 
 whom we had not met laughed with open 
 mouth, and even looked over her shoulder at
 
 144 -^'^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 the enemy. I wonder was it altogether 
 modesty after all, or in part a sort of country 
 provocation ? 
 
 As we were returning to the inn we 
 beheld something floating in the ample field 
 of golden evening sky, above the chalk cliffs 
 and the trees that grow along their summit. 
 It was too high up, too large, and too steady 
 for a kite ; and, as it was dark, it could not 
 be a star. For, although a star were as 
 black as ink and as rugged as a walnut, so 
 amply does the sun bathe heaven with radi- 
 ance that it would sparkle like a point of 
 light for us. The village was dotted with 
 people with their heads in air ; and the chil- 
 dren were in a bustle all along the street 
 and far up the straight road that climbs the 
 hill, where we could still see them running 
 in loose knots. It was a balloon, we learned, 
 which had left Saint Quenthi at half past five
 
 Origny Sainte-Bciioite. 145 
 
 that evening. Mighty composedly the ma- 
 jority of the grown people took it. But we 
 were English, and were soon running up the 
 hill with the best. Being travellers our- 
 selves in a small way, we would fain have 
 seen these other travellers alight. 
 
 The spectacle was over by the time we 
 gained the top of the hill. All the gold had 
 withered out of the sky, and the balloon had 
 disappeared. Whither t I ask myself ; caught 
 up into the seventh heaven .-' or come safely 
 to land somewhere in that blue, uneven dis- 
 tance, into which the roadway dipped and 
 melted before our eyes .'' Probably the aero- 
 nauts were already warming themselves at a 
 farm chimney, for they say it is cold in these 
 unhomely regions of the air. The night fell 
 swiftly. Roadside trees and disappointed 
 sightseers, returning through the meadows, 
 stood out in black against a margin of low, 
 10
 
 146 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 red sunset. It was cheerfuller to face the 
 other way, and so down the hill we went, 
 with a full moon, the color of a melon, swing- 
 ing high above the wooded valley, and the 
 white cliffs behind us faintly reddened by 
 the fire of the chalk-kilns. 
 
 The lamps were lighted, and the salads 
 were being made in Origny Sainte-Benotte by 
 the river.
 
 ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE. 
 
 THE COMPANY AT TABLE. 
 
 Although we came late for dinner, the 
 company at table treated us to sparkling 
 wine. "That is how we are in Frmtce" said 
 one. " Those who sit down with us are out- 
 friends." And the rest applauded. 
 
 They were three altogether, and an odd 
 trio to pass the Sunday with. 
 
 Two of them were guests like ourselves, 
 both men of the north. One ruddy, and of a 
 full habit of body, with copious black hair 
 and beard, the intrepid hunter of France, 
 who thought nothing so small, not even a 
 lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate his 
 prowess by its capture. For such a great,
 
 148 An Inlmtd Voyage. 
 
 healthy man, his hair flourishing like Sam- 
 sons, his arteries running buckets of red 
 blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, 
 produced a feeling of disproportion in the 
 world, as when a steam-hammer is set to 
 cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, sub- 
 dued person, blond, and lymphatic, and sad, 
 with something the look of a Dane : " Tristes 
 tetes de Danois ! " as Gaston Lafenestre used 
 to say. 
 
 I must not let that name go by without a 
 word for the best of all good fellows, now 
 gone down into the dust. We shall never 
 again see Gaston in his forest costume, — he 
 was Gaston with all the world, in affec- 
 tion, not in disrespect, — nor hear him wake 
 the echoes of Fontainebleaii with the woodland 
 horn. Never again shall his kind smile put 
 peace among all races of artistic men, and 
 make the EnHishman at home in France,
 
 Origny Sainte-Benoite. 149 
 
 Never more shall the sheep, who were not 
 more innocent at heart than he, sit all un- 
 consciously for his industrious pencil. He 
 died too early, at the very moment when he 
 was beginning to put forth fresh sprouts and 
 blossom into something worthy of himself ; 
 and yet none who knew him will think he 
 lived in vain. I never knew a man so little, 
 for whom yet I had so much affection ; and 
 I find it a good test of others, how much 
 they had learned to understand and value 
 him. His was, indeed, a good influence in 
 life while he was still among us ; he had a 
 fresh laugh ; it did you good to see him ; and, 
 however sad he may have been at heart, he 
 always bore a bold and cheerful countenance 
 and took fortune's worst as it were the 
 showers of spring. But now his mother sits 
 alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, 
 where he gathered mushrooms in his hardy 
 and penurious youth.
 
 150 A/i Inland Voyage. 
 
 Many of his pictures found their way 
 across the channel ; besides those which 
 were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left 
 him alone in London with two English 
 pence, and, perhaps, twice as many words of 
 English. If any one who reads these lines 
 should have a scene of sheep, in the manner 
 of yacqti.es, with this fine creature's signature, 
 let him tell himself that one of the kindest 
 and bravest of men has lent a hand to deco- 
 rate his lodging. There may be better pic 
 tures in the National Gallery ; but not a 
 painter among the generations had a better 
 heart. Precious in the sight of the Lord of 
 humanity, the Psalms tell us, is the death of 
 his saints. It had need to be precious ; for 
 it is very costly, when, by a stroke, a mother 
 is left desolate, and the peace-maker and 
 peace-looker of a whole society is laid in the 
 ground with Cccsar and the Twelve Apostles.
 
 Origiiy Sainte-Benotte. 151 
 
 There is something lacking among the 
 oaks of Fontainebleau ; and when the dessert 
 comes in at Barbizon, people look to the 
 door for a figure that is gone. 
 
 The third of our companions at Origny was 
 no less a person than the landlady's husband ; 
 not properly the landlord, since he worked 
 himself in a factory during the day, and 
 came to his own house at evening as a guest ; 
 a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual 
 excitement, with baldish head, sharp features, 
 and swift, shining eyes. On SaUirday, de- 
 scribing some paltry adventure at a duck- 
 hunt, he broke a plate into a score of frag- 
 ments. Whenever he made a remark he 
 would look all round the table with his chin 
 raised and a spark of green light in either 
 eye, seeking approval. His wife appeared 
 now and again in the doorway of the room, 
 where she was superintending dinner, with a
 
 152 An Inland Voyage, 
 
 " Henri, you forget yourself," or a " Henri^ 
 you can surely talk without making such a 
 noise." Indeed, that was what the honest 
 fellow could not do. On the most trifling 
 matter his eyes kindled, his fist visited the 
 table, and his voice rolled abroad in changeful 
 thunder. I never saw such a petard of a man ; 
 I think the devil was in him. He had two 
 favorite expressions, " It is logical," or illogi- 
 cal, as the case might be ; and this other 
 thrown out with a certain bravado, as a man 
 might unfurl a banner, at the beginning of 
 many a long and sonorous story : " I am a 
 proletarian, you see." Indeed, we saw it very 
 well." God forbid that ever I should find 
 him handling a gun in Paris streets. That 
 will not be a good moment for the general 
 public. 
 
 I thought his two phrases very much rep- 
 resented the good and evil of his class, and,
 
 Origny Sainte-Bcnotte. 153 
 
 to some extent, of his country. It is a 
 strong thing to say what one is, and not be 
 ashamed of it ; even although it be in doubt- 
 ful taste to repeat the statement too often in 
 one evening. I should not admire it in a 
 duke, of course ; but as times go the trait is 
 honorable in a workman. On the other 
 hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put 
 one's reliance upon logic ; and our own logic 
 particularly, for it is generally wrong. We 
 never know where we are to end if once we 
 begin following words or doctors. There is 
 an upright stock in a man's own heart that 
 is trustier than any syllogism ; and the 
 eyes, and the sympathies, and appetites 
 know a thing or two that have never yet 
 been stated in controversy. Reasons are as 
 plentiful as blackberries ; and, like fisticuffs, 
 they serve impartially with all sides. Doc- 
 trines do not stand or fall by their proofs,
 
 154 -^^^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 and are only logical in so far as they are 
 cleverly put. An able controversialist no 
 more than an able general demonstrates the 
 justice of his cause. But France is all gone 
 wandering after one or two big words ; it 
 will take some time before they can be satis- 
 fied that they are no more than words, how- 
 ever big ; and, when once that is done, they 
 will perhaps find logic less diverting. 
 
 The conversation opened with details of 
 the day's shooting. When all the sportsmen 
 of a village shoot over the village territory 
 pro indiviso, it is plain that many questions 
 of etiquette and priority must arise. 
 
 " Here now," cried the landlord, brandish- 
 ing a plate, "here is a field of beet-root. 
 Well. Here am I, then. I advance, do I 
 not ? Eh Men ! sacristi" ; and the statement, 
 waxing louder, rolls off into a reverberation 
 of oaths, the speaker glaring about for sym-
 
 Origny Sainte-Benoite. 155 
 
 pathy, and everybody nodding his head to 
 him in the name of peace. 
 
 The ruddy Northman told some tales of his 
 own prowess in keeping order : notably one 
 of a Marquis. 
 
 " Marquis," I said, " if you take another 
 step I fire upon you. You have committed 
 a dirtiness. Marquis." 
 
 Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis 
 touched his cap and withdrew. 
 
 The landlord applauded noisily. " It was 
 well done," he said. " He did all that he 
 could. He admitted he was wrong." And 
 then oath upon oath. He was no marquis- 
 lover, either, but he had a sense of justice in 
 him, this proletarian host of ours. 
 
 From the matter of hunting, the talk 
 veered into a general comparison of Paris 
 and the country. The proletarian beat the 
 table like a drum in j)raise of Paris. " What
 
 156 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 is Paris ? Paris is the cream of France. 
 There are no Parisians ; it is you, and I, and 
 everybody who are Parisians. A man has 
 eighty chances per cent to get on in the 
 world in Paris." And he drew a vivid 
 sketch of the workman in a den no bigger 
 than a dog-hutch, making articles that were 
 to go all over the world. " Ek bien, quoi, 
 cest niagnifiqiie, qa! " cried he. 
 
 The sad Nort/iman interfered in praise of 
 a peasant's life ; he thought Paris bad for 
 men and women. "Centralization," said he — 
 
 But the landlord was at his throat in a 
 moment. It was all logical, he showed him, 
 and all magnificent. "What a spectacle! 
 What a glance for an eye ! " And the dishes 
 reeled upon the table under a cannonade of 
 blows. 
 
 Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word 
 in praise of the liberty of opinion in France.
 
 Origny Sainte-Benoite. 157 
 
 I could hardly have shot more amiss. There 
 was an instant silence and a great wagging 
 of significant heads. They did not fancy 
 the subject, it was plain, but they gave me 
 to understand that the sad Northman was a 
 martyr on account of his views. "Ask him 
 a bit," said they. "Just ask him." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said he in his quiet way, an- 
 swering me, although I had not spoken, " I 
 am afraid there is less liberty of opinion in 
 France than you may imagine." And with 
 that he dropped his eyes and seemed to 
 consider the subject at an end. 
 
 Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. 
 How, or why, or when was this lymphatic 
 bagman martyred .-* We concluded at once 
 it was on some religious question, and 
 brushed up our memories of the Inquisition, 
 which were principally drawn from Poes 
 horrid story, and the sermon in Tristram 
 SJiandy, I believe.
 
 158 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 On the morrow we had an opportunity of 
 going further into the question ; for when 
 we rose very early to avoid a sympathizing 
 deputation at our departure, we found the 
 hero up before us. He was breaking his 
 fast on white wine and raw onions, in order 
 to keep up the character of martyr, I con- 
 clude. We had a long conversation, and 
 made out what we wanted in spite of his 
 reserve. But here was a truly curious cir- 
 cumstance. It seems possible for two 
 Scotchmen and a Frenchman to discuss dur- 
 ing a long half-hour, and each nationality 
 have a different idea in view throughout. 
 It was not till the very end that we dis- 
 covered his heresy had been political, or 
 that he suspected our mistake. The terms 
 and spirit in which he spoke of his political 
 beliefs were, in our eyes, suited to religious 
 beliefs. And vice vers A.
 
 Origny Sainte-Benotte. 159 
 
 Nothing could be more characteristic of 
 the two countries. Politics are the religion 
 of France ; as Nanty Ewart would have said, 
 " A d — d bad religion," while we, at home, 
 keep most of our bitterness for all differ- 
 ences about a hymn-book or a Hebrew word 
 which, perhaps, neither of the parties can 
 translate. And perhaps the misconception 
 is typical of many others that may never be 
 cleared up ; not only between people of dif- 
 ferent race, but between those of different sex. 
 
 As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a 
 Communist, or perhaps only a Communard, 
 which is a very different thing, and had lost 
 one or more situations in consequence. I 
 think he had also been rejected in marriage ; 
 but perhaps he had a sentimental way of 
 considering business which deceived me. 
 He was a mild, gentle creature, any way, 
 and I hope he has got a better situation and 
 married a more suitable wife since then.
 
 DOWN THE OISE. 
 
 TO MOY. 
 
 Carnival notoriously cheated us at first. 
 Finding us easy in our ways, he regretted 
 having let us off so cheaply, and, taking me 
 aside, told me a cock-and-bull story, with the 
 moral of another five francs for the narrator. 
 The thing was palpably absurd ; but I paid 
 up, and at once dropped all friendliness of 
 manner and kept him in his place as an in- 
 ferior, with freezing British dignity. He 
 saw in a moment that he had gone too far 
 and killed a willing horse ; his face fell ; I 
 am sure he would have refunded if he could 
 only have thought of a decent pretext. He 
 wished me to drink with him, but I would
 
 Down the Oise. i6i 
 
 none of his drinks. He grew pathetically 
 tender in his professions, but I walked be- 
 side him in silence or answered him in 
 stately courtesies, and, when we got to the 
 landing-place, passed the word in English 
 slang to the Cigarette, 
 
 In spite of the false scent we had thrown 
 out the day before, there must have been 
 fifty people about the bridge. We were as 
 pleasant as we could be with all but Carni- 
 val. We said good by, shaking hands with 
 the old gentleman who knew the river and 
 the young gentleman who had a smattering 
 of English, but never a word for Carnival. 
 Poor Carnival, here was a humiliation. He 
 who had been so much identified with the 
 canoes, who had given orders in our name, 
 who had shown off the boats and even the 
 boatmen like a private exhibition of his own, 
 to be now so publicly shamed by the lions
 
 1 62 Ajt Inland Voyage. 
 
 of his caravan ! I never saw anybody look 
 more crestfallen than he. He hung in the 
 background, coming timidly forward ever 
 and again as he thought he saw some symp- 
 tom of a relenting humor, and falling hur- 
 riedly back when he encountered a cold 
 stare. Let us hope it will be a lesson to 
 him. 
 
 I would not have mentioned CarnivaVs 
 peccadillo had not the thing been so uncom- 
 mon in France. This, for instance, was the 
 only case of dishonesty or even sharp prac- 
 tice in our whole voyage. We talk very 
 much about our honesty in Ejtgland. It is 
 a good rule to be on your guard wherever 
 you hear great professions about a very little 
 piece of virtue. If the English could only 
 hear how they are spoken of abroad, they 
 might confine themselves for a while to 
 remedying the fact, and perhaps even when 
 that was done, give us fewer of their airs
 
 Down the Oise. 1 63 
 
 The young ladies, the graces of Origny, 
 were not present at our start, but when we 
 got round to the second bridge, behold, it 
 was black with sight-seers ! We were loudly 
 cheered, and for a good way below young 
 lads and lasses ran along the bank, still 
 cheering. What with current and paddling, 
 we were flashing along like swallows. It 
 was no joke to keep up with us upon the 
 woody shore. But the girls picked up their 
 skirts, as if they were sure they had good 
 ankles, and followed until their breath was 
 out. The last to weary were the three 
 graces and a couple of companions ; and 
 just as they, too, had had enough, the fore- 
 most of the three leaped upon a tree-stump 
 and kissed her hand to the canoeists. Not 
 Diana herself, although this was more of 
 a Venus, after all, could have done a graceful 
 thing more gracefully. " Come back again ! "
 
 164 A71 Inland Voyage. 
 
 she cried ; and all the others echoed her ; 
 and the hills about Origny repeated the 
 words, "Come back." But the river had us 
 round an angle in a twinkling, and we were 
 alone with the green trees and running 
 water. 
 
 Come back ? There is no coming back, 
 young ladies, on the impetuous stream of 
 life. 
 
 The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, 
 The ploughman from the sun his season takes. 
 
 And we must all set our pocket watches by 
 the clock of fate. There is a headlong, 
 forthright tide, that bears away man with 
 his fancies like straw, and runs fast in time 
 and space. It is full of curves like this, 
 your winding river of the Oise ; and lingers 
 and returns in pleasant pastorals ; arid yet, 
 rightly thought upon, never returns at all. 
 For though it should revisit the same acre of
 
 Dozvn the Oise. 165 
 
 meadow in the same hour, it will have made 
 an ample sweep between whiles ; many little 
 streams will have fallen in ; many exhala- 
 tions risen towards the sun ; and even al- 
 though it were the same acre, it will not 
 be the same river Oise. And thus, O graces 
 of Origny, athough the wandering fortune 
 of my life should carry me back again to 
 where you await death's whistle by the river, 
 that will not be the old I who walks the 
 street ; and those wives and mothers, say, 
 will those be you ? 
 
 There was never any mistake about the 
 Oise, as a matter of fact. In these upper 
 reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for 
 the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, through 
 all the windings of its channel, that I strained 
 my thumb fighting with the rapids, and had 
 to paddle all the rest of the way with one 
 hand turned up. Sometimes it had to serve
 
 1 66 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 mills ; and being still a little river, ran very 
 dry and shallow in the mean while. We had 
 to put our legs out of the boat, and shove 
 ourselves off the sand of the bottom with 
 our feet. And still it went on its way sing- 
 ing among the poplars, and making a green 
 valley in the world. After a good woman, 
 and a good book, and tobacco, there is noth- 
 ing so agreeable on earth as a river. I for- 
 gave it its attempt on my life ; which was, 
 after all, one part owing to the unruly winds 
 of heaven that had blown down the tree, one 
 part to my own mismanagement, and only a 
 third part to the river itself, and that not 
 out of malice, but from its great preoccupa- 
 tion over its own business of getting to the 
 sea. A difficult business, too ; for the de- 
 tours it had to make are not to be counted. 
 The geographers seem to have given up the 
 attempt ; for I found no map represent the
 
 Down the Oise. 167 
 
 infinite contortion of its course. A fact will 
 say more than any of them. After we had 
 been some hours, three, if I mistake not, 
 flitting by the trees at this smooth, break- 
 neck gallop, when we came upon a hamlet 
 and asked where we were, we had got no 
 further than four kilometres (say two miles 
 and a half) from Origny. If it were not for 
 the honor of the thing (in the Scotch say- 
 ing), we might almost as well have been 
 standing still. 
 
 We lunched on a meadow inside a parallel- 
 ogram of poplars. The leaves danced and 
 prattled in the wind all round about us. The 
 river hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to 
 chide at our delay. Little we cared. The 
 river knew where it was going ; not so we ; 
 the less our hurry, where we found good quar- 
 ters, and a pleasant theatre for a pipe. At 
 that hour stock-brokers were shouting in
 
 1 68 Aft Inland Voyage. 
 
 Paris Bourse for two or three per cent ; but we 
 minded them as little as the sliding stream, 
 and sacrificed a hecatomb of minutes to the 
 gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurry is 
 the resource of the faithless. Where a man 
 can trust his own heart, and those of his 
 friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day. And 
 if he die in the mean while, why, then, there 
 he dies, and the question is solved. 
 
 We had to take to the canal in the course of 
 the afternoon ; because where it crossed the 
 river there was, not a bridge, but a siphon. 
 If it had not been for an excited fellow on 
 the bank we should have paddled right into 
 the siphon, and thenceforward not paddled 
 any more. We met a man, a gentleman, on 
 the tow-path, who was much interested in 
 our cruise. And I was witness to a strange 
 seizure of lying suffered by the Cigarette; who, 
 because his knife came from Norway, nar-
 
 Down the Oise. 169 
 
 rated all sorts of adventures in that country, 
 where he has never been. He was quite 
 feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal 
 possession. 
 
 Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant little 
 village, gathered round a chdteau in a moat. 
 The air was perfumed with hemp from 
 neighboring fields. At the Golden Sheep 
 we found excellent entertainment. German 
 shells from the siege of La Fere, Nurnberg 
 figures, gold-fish in a bowl, and all manner of 
 knick-knacks, embellished the public room. 
 The landlady was a stout, plain, short- 
 sighted, motherly body, with something not 
 far short of a genius for cookery. She had a 
 guess of her excellence herself. After every 
 dish was sent in, she would come and look 
 on at the dinner for a while, with puckered, 
 blinking eyes. " Cest bon, nest-ce pas?" she 
 would say ; and, when she had received a
 
 170 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 proper answer, she disappeared into the 
 kitchen. That common French dish, par- 
 tridge and cabbages, became a new thing in 
 my eyes at the Golden Sheep ; and many sub- 
 sequent dinners have bitterly disappointed 
 me in consequence. Sweet was our rest in 
 the Golden Sheep at Moy.
 
 LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY. 
 
 We lingered in Moy a good part of the 
 day, for we were fond of being philosophical, 
 and scorned long journeys and early starts 
 on principle. The place, moreover, invited 
 to repose. People in elaborate shooting cos- 
 tumes sallied from the chdteau with guns and 
 game-bags ; and this was a pleasure in itself, 
 to remain behind while these elegant pleas- 
 ure-seekers took the first of the morning. 
 In this way all the world may be an aristo- 
 crat, and play the duke among marquises, 
 and the reigning monarch among dukes, if 
 he will only outvie them in tranquillity. An 
 imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect 
 patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed
 
 172 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 or frightened, but go on in fortune or mis- 
 fortune at their own private pace, like a 
 clock during a thunder-storm. 
 
 We made a very short day of it to La 
 Fere ; but the dusk was falling and a small 
 rain had begun before we stowed the boats. 
 La Fire is a fortified town in a plain, and has 
 two belts of rampart. Between the first and 
 the second extends a region of waste land 
 and cultivated patches. Here and there 
 along the wayside were posters forbidding 
 trespass in the name of military engineer- 
 ing. At last a second gateway admitted 
 us to the town itself. Lighted windows 
 looked gladsome, whiffs of comfortable cook- 
 ery came abroad upon the air. The town 
 was full of the military reserve, out for the 
 French Autumn manoeuvres, and the reserv- 
 ists walked speedily and wore their formi- 
 dable great-coats. It was a fine night to be
 
 La Fere of Cursed Memory. 173 
 
 within doors over dinner, and hear the rain 
 upon the windows. 
 
 The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently 
 congratulate each other on the prospect, for 
 we had been told there was a capital inn at 
 La Fere. Such a dinner as we were going 
 to eat ! such beds as we were to sleep in ! 
 and all the while the rain raining on house- 
 less folk over all the poplared country-side. 
 It made our mouths water. The inn bore 
 the name of some woodland animal, stag, 
 or hart, or hind, I forget which. But I shall 
 never forget how spacious and how emi- 
 nently habitable it looked as we drew near. 
 The carriage entry was lighted up, not by 
 intention, but from the mere superfluity of 
 fire and candle in the house. A rattle of 
 many dishes came to our ears ; we sighted 
 a great field of tablecloth ; the kitchen 
 glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden 
 of things to eat.
 
 174 ■^''^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 Into this, the inmost shrine and physiologi- 
 cal heart of a hostelry, with all its furnaces 
 in action and all its dressers charged with 
 viands, you are now to suppose us making 
 our triumphal entry, a pair of damp rag-and- 
 bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag 
 upon his arm. I do not believe I have a 
 sound view of that kitchen ; I saw it through 
 a sort of glory, but it seemed to me crowded 
 with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all 
 turned round from their saucepans and 
 looked at us with surprise. There was no 
 doubt about the landlady, however ; there 
 she was, heading her army, a flushed, angry 
 woman, full of affairs. Her I asked politely 
 — too politely, thinks the Cigarette — if we 
 could have beds, she surveying us coldly 
 from head to foot. 
 
 " You will find beds in the suburb," she 
 remarked. "We are too busy for the like 
 of you."
 
 La Fire of Cursed Memory. 175 
 
 If we could make an entrance, change 
 our clothes, and order a bottle of wine, I felt 
 sure we could put things right ; so said I, 
 " If we cannot sleep, we may at least dine," 
 — and was for depositing my bag. 
 
 What a terrible convulsion of nature was 
 that which followed in the landlady's face ! 
 She made a run at us and stamped her foot. 
 
 "Out with you, — out of the door!" she 
 screeched. " Sortez ! sortez ! sortez par la 
 porte ! " 
 
 I do not know how it happened, but next 
 moment we were out in the rain and dark- 
 ness, and I was cursing before the carriage 
 entry like a disappointed mendicant. Where 
 were the boating men of Belgium ? where 
 the judge and his good wines .-' and where 
 the graces of Orignyf Black, black was the 
 night after the firelit kitchen, but what was 
 that to the blackness in our heart } This
 
 176 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 was not the first time that I have been re- 
 fused a lodging. Often and often have I 
 planned what I should do if such a misad- 
 venture happened to me again. And noth- 
 ing is easier to plan. But to put in execu- 
 tion, with the heart boiling at the indignity .? 
 Try it ; try it only once, and tell me what 
 you did. 
 
 It is all very fine to talk about tramps 
 and morality. Six hours of police surveil- 
 lance (such as I have had) or one brutal 
 rejection from an inn door change your 
 views upon the subject like a course of lec- 
 tures. As long as you keep in the upper 
 regions, with all the world bowing to you as 
 you go, social arrangements have a very 
 handsome air ; but once get under the 
 wheels and you wish society were at the 
 devil I will give most respectable men a 
 fortnight of such a life, and then I will offer
 
 La Fere of Cursed Memory. i yj 
 
 them twopence for what remains of their 
 morality. 
 
 For my part, when I was turned out of 
 the Stag, or the Hind, or whatever it was, 
 I would have set the temple of Diana on 
 fire if it had been handy. There was no 
 crime complete enough to express my disap- 
 proval of human institutions. As for the 
 Cigarette, I never knew a man so altered. 
 "We have been taken for pedlars again," 
 said he. " Good God, what it must be to be 
 a pedlar in reality ! " He particularized a 
 complaint for every joint in the landlady's 
 body. Timon was a philanthropist alongside 
 of him. And then, when he was at the top 
 of his maledictory bent, he would suddenly 
 break away and begin whimperingly to com- 
 miserate the poor. "I hope to God," he 
 said, — and I trust the prayer was answered, 
 — " that I shall never be uncivil to a pedlar." 
 
 12
 
 lyS An Inland Voyage. 
 
 Was this the imperturbable Cigarette ? This, 
 this was he. Oh, change beyond report, 
 thought, or belief ! 
 
 Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads ; 
 and the windows grew brighter as the night 
 increased in darkness. We trudged in and 
 out of La Fere streets ; we saw shops, and 
 private houses where people were copiously 
 dining ; we saw stables where carters' nags 
 had plenty of fodder and clean straw ; we 
 saw no end of reservists, who were very 
 sorry for themselves this wet night, I doubt 
 not, and yearned for their country homes ; 
 but had they not each man his place in La 
 Fere barracks ? And we, what had we .'' 
 
 There seemed to be no other inn in the 
 whole town. People gave us directions, 
 which we followed as best we could, gener- 
 ally with the effect of bringing us out agam 
 upon the scene of our disgrace. We were
 
 La Fere of Cursed Memory. 179 
 
 very sad people indeed, by the time we had 
 gone all over La Fere ; and the Cigarett& 
 had already made up his mind to lie under 
 a poplar and sup off a loaf of bread. But 
 right at the other end, the house next the 
 town-gate was full of light and bustle. 
 "Bazin, aubergiste, loge d, pied" was the sign. 
 " A la Croix de Malter There were we re- 
 ceived. 
 
 The room was full of noisy reservists 
 drinking and smoking ; and were very glad 
 indeed when the drums and bugles began to 
 go about the streets, and one and all had to 
 snatch shakoes and be off for the barracks. 
 
 Basin was a tall man, running to fat ; soft- 
 spoken, with a delicate, gentle face. We 
 asked him to share our wine ; but he excused 
 himself, having pledged reservists all day 
 long. This was a very different type of the 
 workman-innkeeper from the bawling, dispu-
 
 l8o An Inlajid Voyage. 
 
 tatious fellow at Origny. He also loved 
 Paris, where he had worked as a decorative 
 painter in his youth. There were such op- 
 portunities for self-instruction there, he said. 
 And if any one has read Zolds description 
 of the workman's marriage party visiting the 
 Louvre they would do well to have heard 
 Basin by way of antidote. He had delighted 
 in the museums in his youth. "One sees there 
 little miracles of work," he said ; " that is 
 what makes a good workman ; it kindles a 
 spark." We asked him how he managed in 
 La Fere. "I am married," he said, "and I 
 have my pretty children. But frankly, it is 
 no life at all. From morning to night I 
 pledge a pack of good-enough fellows who 
 know nothing." 
 
 It faired as the night went on, and the 
 moon came out of the clouds. We sat in 
 front of the door, talking softly with Bazin.
 
 La Fere of Cursed Memory. 1 8 1 
 
 At the guard-house opposite the guard was 
 being forever turned out, as trains of field 
 artillery kept clanking in out of the night 
 or patrols of horsemen trotted by in their 
 cloaks. Madame Bazin came out after a 
 while ; she was tired with her day's work, 
 I suppose ; and she nestled up to her hus- 
 band and laid her head upon his breast. He 
 had his arm about her and kept gently pat- 
 ting her on the shoulder. I think Bazin 
 was right, and he was really married. Of 
 how few people can the same be said ! 
 
 Little did the Bazins know how much 
 they served us. We were charged for can- 
 dles, for food and drink, and for the beds we 
 slept in. But there was nothing in the bill 
 for the husband's pleasant talk ; nor for the 
 pretty spectacle of their married life. And 
 there was yet another item uncharged. For 
 these people's politeness really set us up
 
 1 82 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 again in our own esteem. We had a thirst 
 for consideration ; the sense of insult was 
 still hot in our spirits ; and civil usage 
 seemed to restore us to our position in the 
 world. 
 
 How little we pay our way in life ! Al- 
 though we have our purses continually in 
 our hand, the better part of service goes 
 still unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a 
 grateful spirit gives as good as it gets. Per- 
 haps the Bazins knew how much I liked 
 them ? perhaps they, also, were healed of 
 some slights by the thanks that I gave them 
 in my manner?
 
 DOWN THE OISE. 
 
 THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY. 
 
 Below La Fere the river runs through a 
 piece of open pastoral country ; green, opu- 
 lent, loved by breeders ; called the Golden 
 Valley. In wide sweeps, and with a swift 
 and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of 
 water visits and makes green the fields. 
 Kine, and horses, and little humorous don- 
 keys browse together in the meadows, and 
 come down in troops to the river-side to 
 drink. They make a strange feature in the 
 landscape ; above all when startled, and you 
 see them galloping to and fro, with their 
 incongruous forms and faces. It gives a 
 feeling as of great, unfenced pampas, and 
 the herds of wandering nations. There were
 
 184 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 hills in the distance upon either hand ; and 
 on one side, the river sometimes bordered 
 on the wooded spurs of Coucy and St. Gobain. 
 The artillery were practising at La Fire ; 
 and soon the cannon of heaven joined in that 
 loud play. Two continents of cloud met 
 and exchanged salvos overhead ; while all 
 round the horizon we could see sunshine and 
 clear air upon the hills. What with the 
 guns and the thunder, the herds were all 
 frighted in the Goide?t Valley. We could 
 see them tossing their heads, and running 
 to and fro in timorous indecision ; and 
 when they had made up their minds, and 
 the donkey followed the horse, and the cow 
 was after the donkey, we could hear their 
 hoofs thundering abroad over the meadows. 
 It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. 
 And altogether, as far as the ears are con- 
 cerned, we had a very rousing battle piece 
 performed for our amusement.
 
 Down the Oise. 185 
 
 At last, the guns and the thunder dropped 
 off ; the sun shone on the wet meadows ; 
 the air was scented with the breath of re- 
 joicing trees and grass ; and the river kept 
 unweariedly carrying us on at its best pace. 
 There was a manufacturing district about 
 Chauiiy ; and after that the banks grew so 
 high that they hid the adjacent country, and 
 we could see nothing but clay sides, and one 
 willow after another. Only here and there 
 we passed by a village or a ferry, and some 
 wondering child upon the bank would stare 
 after us until we turned the corner. I dare- 
 say we continued to paddle in that child's 
 dreams for many a night after. 
 
 Sun and shower alternated like day and 
 night, making the hours longer by their vari- 
 ety. When the showers were heavy I could 
 feel each drop striking through my jersey to 
 my warm skin ; and the accumulation of
 
 1 86 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 small shocks put me nearly beside myself. 
 I decided I should buy a mackintosh at 
 Noyon. It is nothing to get wet ; but the 
 misery of these individual pricks of cold all 
 over my body at the same instant of time 
 made me flail the water with my paddle 
 like a madman. The Cigarette was greatly 
 amused by these ebullitions. It gave him 
 something else to look at besides clay banks 
 and willows. 
 
 All the time the river stole away like a 
 thief in straight places, or swung round cor- 
 ners with an eddy ; the willows nodded and 
 were undermined all day long ; the clay 
 banks tumbled in ; the Oise, which had been 
 so many centuries making the Golden Valley, 
 seemed to have changed its fancy and be 
 bent upon undoing its performance. What 
 a number of things a river does by simply 
 following Gravity in the innocence of its 
 heart !
 
 NOYON CATHEDRAL. 
 
 Noyoii stands about a mile from the 
 river, in a little plain surrounded by wooded 
 hills, and entirely covers an eminence with 
 its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, straight- 
 backed cathedral with two stiff towers. As 
 we got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to 
 tumble up-hill one upon another, in the 
 oddest disorder ; but for all their scrambling 
 they did not attain above the knees of the 
 cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, 
 over all. As the streets drew near to this 
 presiding genius, through the market-place 
 under the Hotel de Ville, they grew emptier 
 and more composed. Blank walls and shut- 
 tered windows were turned to the great edi- 
 fice, and grass grew on the white causeway.
 
 1 88 A /I Inland Voyage. 
 
 " Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the 
 place whereon thou standest is holy ground." 
 The Hotel du Nord, nevertheless, lights its 
 secular tapers within a stone-cast of the 
 church ; and we had the superb east end 
 before our eyes all morning from the window 
 of our bedroom. I have seldom looked on 
 the east end of a church with more complete 
 sympathy. As it flanges out in three wide 
 terraces, and settles down broadly on the 
 earth, it looks like the poop of some great 
 old battle-ship. Hollow-backed buttresses 
 carry vases, which figure for the stern lan- 
 terns. There is a roll in the ground, and the 
 towers just appear above the pitch of the 
 roof, as though the good ship were bowing 
 lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any mo- 
 ment it might be a hundred feet away from 
 you, climbing the next billow. At any mo- 
 ment a window might open, and some old
 
 Noyon Cathedral. 189 
 
 admiral thrust forth a cocked hat and pro- 
 ceed to take an observation. The old admirals 
 sail the sea no longer ; the old ships of 
 battle are all broken up, and live only in 
 pictures ; but this, that was a church before 
 ever they were thought upon, is still a 
 church, and makes as brave an appearance by 
 the Oise. The cathedral and the river are 
 probably the two oldest things for miles 
 around ; and certainly they have both a grand 
 old age. 
 
 The Sacristan took us to the top of one of 
 the towers, and showed us the five bells 
 hanging in their loft. From above the town 
 was a tessellated pavement of roofs and gar- 
 dens ; the old line of rampart was plainly 
 traceable ; and the Sacristan pointed out to 
 us, far across the plain, in a bit of gleaming 
 sky between two clouds, the towers of Chd- 
 teau Coucy.
 
 IQO A71 Inland Voyage. 
 
 I find I nev^er weary of great churches. 
 It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. 
 Mankind was never so happily inspired as 
 when it made a cathedral : a thing as single 
 and specious as a statue to the first glance, 
 and yet, on examination, as lively and inter- 
 esting as a forest in detail. The height ot 
 spires cannot be taken by trigonometry , 
 they measure absurdly short, but how tall 
 they are to the admiring eye ! And where 
 we have so many elegant proportions, grow- 
 ing one out of the other, and all together 
 into one, it seems as if proportion tran- 
 scended itself and became something differ- 
 ent and more imposing. I could never 
 fathom how a man dares to lift up his voice 
 to preach in a cathedral. What is he to say 
 that will not be an anti-climax .'' For though 
 I have heard a considerable variety of ser 
 mons, I never yet heard one that was so
 
 Noyon Cathedral. 191 
 
 expressive as a cathedral. 'T is the best 
 preacher itself, and preaches day and night ; 
 not only telling you of man's art and aspira- 
 tions in the past, but convicting your own 
 soul of ardent sympathies ; or rather, like all 
 good preachers, it sets you preaching to 
 yourself, — and every man is his own doctor 
 of divinity in the last resort. 
 
 As I sat outside of the hotel in the course 
 of the afternoon, the sweet, groaning thunder 
 of the organ floated out of the church like a 
 summons. I was not averse, liking the the- 
 atre so well, to sit out an act or two of the 
 play, but I could never rightly make out the 
 nature of the service I beheld. Four or five 
 priests and as many choristers were singing 
 Miserere before the high altar when I went 
 in. There was no congregation but a few 
 old women on chairs and old men kneeling 
 on the pavement. After a while a long train
 
 192 Aji Inland Voyage, 
 
 of young girls, walking two and two, each 
 with a lighted taper in her hand, and all 
 dressed in black with a white veil, came from 
 behind the altar and began to descend the 
 nave ; the four first carrying a Virgin and 
 child upon a table. The priests and choris- 
 ters arose from their knees and followed 
 after, singing " Ave Mary " as they went. 
 In this order they made the circuit of the 
 cathedral, passing twice before me where I 
 leaned against a pillar. The priest who 
 seemed of most consequence was a strange, 
 down-looking old man. He kept mumbling 
 prayers with his lips ; but, as he looked upon 
 me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer 
 were uppermost in his heart. Two others, 
 who bore the burden of the chant, were 
 stout, brutal, military-looking men of forty, 
 with bold, over-fed eyes ; they sang with 
 some lustiness, and trolled forth '* Ave
 
 Noyon Cathedfal. 193 
 
 Maty" like a garrison catch. The little girls 
 were timid and grave. As they footed 
 slowly up the aisle, each one took a mo- 
 ment's glance at the Englishman ; and the 
 big HLts who played marshal fairly stared 
 him ou\ of countenance. As for the choris- 
 ters, fro.\j. first to last they misbehaved as 
 only boys can misbehave, and cruelly marred 
 the perfotu-aance with their antics. 
 
 I understood a great deal of the spirit of 
 what went on. Indeed, it would be difBcult 
 not to understand the Miserere, which I take 
 to be the composition of an atheist. If it 
 ever be a good thing to take such despond- 
 ency to heart, the Miserere is the right music 
 and a cathedral a fit scene. So far I am at 
 one with the Catholics, — an odd name for 
 them, after all } But why, in God's name, 
 these holiday choristers .'' why these priests 
 who steal wandering looks about the congre- 
 
 13
 
 194 -^^^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 gation while they feign to be at prayer ? why 
 this fat nun, who rudely arranges her pro- 
 cession and shakes delinquent virgins by the 
 elbow ? why this spitting, and snuffing, and 
 forgetting of keys, and the thousand and one 
 little misadventures that disturb a frame of 
 mind, laboriously edified with chants and 
 organings ? In any play-house reverend 
 fathers may see what can be done with a 
 little art, and how, to move high sentiments, 
 it is necessary to drill the. supernumeraries 
 and have every stool in its proper place. 
 
 One other circumstance distressed me. I 
 could bear a Miserere myself, having had a 
 good deal of open-air exercise of late ; but I 
 wished the old people somewhere else. It 
 was neither the right sort of music nor the 
 right sort of divinity for men and women 
 who have come through most accidents by 
 this time, and probably have an opinion of
 
 Noyon Cathedral. 195 
 
 their own upon the tragic element in life. 
 A person up in years can generally do his 
 own Miserere for himself ; although I notice 
 that such an one often prefers yubilate Deo 
 for his ordinary singing. On the whole, the 
 most religious exercise for the aged is prob- 
 ably to recall their own experience ; so many 
 friends dead, so many hopes disappointed, so 
 many slips and stumbles, and withal so many 
 bright days and smiling providences ; there 
 is surely the matter of a very eloquent ser- 
 mon in all this. 
 
 On the whole, I was greatly solemnized. 
 In the little pictorial map of our whole In- 
 land Voyage, which my fancy still preserves, 
 and sometimes unrolls for the amusement of 
 odd moments, Noyon cathedral figures on a 
 most preposterous scale, and must be nearly 
 as large as a department. I can still see the 
 faces of the priests as if they were at my
 
 196 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 elbow, and hear Ave Maria, ora pro nobis 
 sounding through the church. AH Noyon is 
 blotted out for me by these superior memo- 
 ries ; and I do not care to say more about 
 the place. It was but a stack of brown roofs 
 at the best, where I believe people live very 
 reputably in a quiet way ; but the shadow of 
 the church falls upon it when the sun is low, 
 and the five bells are heard in all quarters, 
 telling that the organ has begun. If ever I 
 join the church of Rome I shall stipulate to 
 be Bishop of Noyon on the Oise,
 
 DOWN THE OISE. 
 
 TO COMPIEGNE. 
 
 The most patient people grow weary at 
 last with being continually wetted with rain ; 
 except, of course, in the Scotch HigJilands, 
 where there are not enough fine intervals to 
 point the difference. That was like to be 
 our case the day we left Noyon. I remem- 
 ber nothing of the voyage ; it was nothing 
 but clay banks, and willows, and rain ; in- 
 cessant, pitiless, beating rain ; until we 
 stopped to lunch at a little inn at Pimprez, 
 where the canal ran very near the river. 
 We were so sadly drenched that the land- 
 lady lit a few sticks in the chimney for 
 our comfort ; there we sat in a steam of 
 vapor lamenting our concerns. The hus-
 
 198 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 band donned a game-bag and strode out to 
 shoot ; the wife sat in a far corner watching 
 us, I think we were worth looking at. We 
 grumbled over the misfortune of La Fere ; 
 we forecast other La Feres in the future, 
 — although things went better with the 
 Cigarette for spokesman ; he had more 
 aplomb altogether than I ; and a dull, positive 
 way of approaching a landlady that carried 
 off the india-rubber bags. Talking of La 
 Fere put us talking of the reservists. 
 
 " Reservery," said he, "seems a pretty 
 mean way to spend one's autumn holiday." 
 
 " About as mean," returned I, dejectedly, 
 "as canoeing." 
 
 "These gentlemen travel for their pleas- 
 ure .'' " asked the landlady, with unconscious 
 irony 
 
 It was too much. The scales fell from our 
 eyes. Another wet day, it was determined, 
 and we put the boats into the train.
 
 Doivn the Oise. 199 
 
 The weather took the hint. That was our 
 last wetting. The afternoon faired up ; 
 grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but 
 now singly, and with a depth of blue around 
 their path ; and a sunset, in the daintiest rose 
 and gold, inaugurated a thick night of stars 
 and a month of unbroken weather. At the 
 same time, the river began to give us a bet- 
 ter outlook into the country. The banks 
 were not so high, the willows disappeared 
 from along the margin, and pleasant hills 
 stood all along its course and marked their 
 profile on the sky. 
 
 In a little while, the canal coming to its 
 last lock, began to discharge its water-houses 
 on the Oise ; so that we had no lack of com- 
 pany to fear. Here were all our own friends ; 
 the Deo Gratias Cond/ 3X\di the Foicr Sons of 
 Aymon journeyed cheerily down the stream 
 along with us ; we exchanged waterside
 
 200 Alt Inland Voyage. 
 
 pleasantries with the steersman perched 
 among the lumber, or the driver hoarse with 
 bawling to his horses ; and the children 
 came and looked over the side as we paddled 
 by. We had never known all this while how 
 much we missed them ; but it gave us a fillip 
 to see the smoke from their chimneys. 
 
 A little below this junction we made 
 another meeting of yet more account. For 
 there we were joined by the Aisne, already 
 a far-travelled river and fresh out of Cham' 
 pagne. Here ended the adolescence of the 
 Oise ; this was his marriage day ; thence- 
 forward he had a stately, brimming march, 
 conscious of his own dignity and sundry 
 dams. He became a tranquil feature in the 
 scene. The trees and towns saw themselves 
 in him, as in a mirror. He carried the 
 canoes lightly on his broad breast ; there 
 was no need to work hard against an eddy,
 
 Down the Oise, 201 
 
 but idleness became the order of the day, 
 and mere straightforward dipping of the 
 paddle, now on this side, now on that, with- 
 out intelligence or effort. Truly we were 
 coming into halcyon weather upon all ac- 
 counts, and were floated towards the sea like 
 gentlemen. 
 
 We made Compiegne as the sun was going 
 down : a fine profile of a town above the 
 river. Over the bridge a regiment was 
 parading to the drum. People loitered on 
 the quay, some fishing, some looking idly 
 at the stream. And as the two boats shot 
 in along the water, we could see them point- 
 ing them out and speaking one to another. 
 We landed at a floating lavatory, where the 
 washerwomen were still beating the clothes.
 
 AT COMPlfeGNE. 
 
 We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Com- 
 piegne, where nobody observed our presence. 
 
 Reservery and general militarismus (as the 
 Germans call it) was rampant. A camp of 
 conical white tents without the town looked 
 like a leaf out of a picture Bible ; sword-belts 
 decorated the walls of the cafe's, and the 
 streets kept sounding all day long with mili- 
 tary music. It was not possible to be an 
 Engliskmati and avoid a feeling of elation ; 
 for the men who followed the drums were 
 small and walked shabbily. Each man in- 
 clined at his own angle, and jolted to his 
 own convenience as he went. There was 
 nothing of the superb gait with which a 
 regiment of tall Highlanders moves behind
 
 At Co7npiegne. 203 
 
 its music, solemn and inevitable, like a 
 natural phenomenon. Who, that has seen 
 it, can forget the drum-major pacing in front, 
 the drummers' tiger-skins, the pipers' swing- 
 ing plaids, the strange, elastic rhythm of the 
 whole regiment footing it in time, and the 
 bang of the drum when the brasses cease, 
 and the shrill pipes take up the martial story 
 in their place ? 
 
 A girl at school in France began to de- 
 scribe one of our regiments on parade to 
 her French schoolmates, and as she went 
 on, she told me the recollection grew so 
 vivid, she became so proud to be the country- 
 woman of such soldiers, and so sorry to be 
 in another country, that her voice failed her 
 and she burst into tears. I have never for- 
 gotten that girl, and I think she very nearly 
 deserves a statue. To call her a young lady, 
 with all its niminy associations, would be to
 
 204 -^^^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 offer her an insult. She may rest assured 
 of one thing, although she never should 
 marry a heroic general, never see any great 
 or immediate result of her life, she will not 
 have lived in vain for her native land. 
 
 But though French soldiers show to ill- 
 advantage on parade, on the march they 
 are gay, alert, and willing, like a troop of 
 fox-hunters. I remember once seeing a 
 company pass through the forest of Fon- 
 tainebleau, on the Chailly road, between the 
 Bas Br^au and the Reine BlancJie. One 
 fellow walked a little before the rest, and 
 sang a loud, audacious marching song. The 
 rest bestirred their feet, and even swung 
 their muskets in time. A young officer on 
 horseback had hard ado to keep his counte- 
 nance at the words. You never saw anything 
 so cheerful and spontaneous as their gait ; 
 school-boys do not look more eagerly at hare
 
 At Compikgne. 205 
 
 and hounds ; and you would have thought 
 it impossible to tire such willing marchers. 
 My great delight in Cotnpiegne was the 
 town hall. I doted upon the town hall. It is a 
 monument of Gothic insecurity, all turreted, 
 and gargoyled, and slashed, and bedizened 
 with half a score of architectural fancies. 
 Some of the niches are gilt and painted ; 
 and in a great square panel in the centre, 
 in black relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII. 
 rides upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip, 
 and head thrown back. There is royal arro- 
 gance in every line of him ; the stirrupped 
 foot projects insolently from the frame ; the 
 eye is hard and proud ; the very horse seems 
 to be treading with gratification over pros- 
 trate serfs, and to have the breath of the 
 trumpet in his nostrils. So rides forever, 
 on the front of the town hall, the good king 
 Louis XII., the father of his people.
 
 2o6 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 Over the king's head, in the tall centre 
 turret, appears the dial of a clock ; and high 
 above that, three little mechanical figures, 
 each one with a hammer in his hand, whose 
 business it is to chime out the hours, and 
 halves, and quarters for the burgesses of Com- 
 piegne. The centre figure has a gilt breast- 
 plate ; the two others wear gilt trunk-hose ; 
 and they all three have elegant, flapping hats 
 like cavaliers. As the quarter approaches 
 they turn their heads and look knowingly 
 one to the other ; and then, kling go the 
 three hammers on three little bells below. 
 The hour follows, deep and sonorous, from 
 the interior of the tower; and the gilded 
 gentlemen rest from their labors with con- 
 tentment. 
 
 I had a great deal of healthy pleasure 
 from their manoeuvres, and took good care 
 to miss as few performances as possible ;
 
 At Compiegne. 207 
 
 and I found that even the Cigarette, while 
 he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, 
 was more or less a devotee himself. There 
 is something highly absurd in the exposition 
 of such toys to the outrages of winter on a 
 housetop. They would be more in keeping 
 in a glass case before a Niirnberg clock. 
 Above all, at night, when the children are 
 abed, and even grown people are snoring 
 under quilts, does it not seem impertinent 
 to leave these gingerbread figures winking 
 and tinkling to the stars and the rolling 
 moon } The gargoyles may fitly enough 
 twist their ape-like heads ; fitly enough 
 may the potentate bestride his charger, 
 like a centurion in an old German print of 
 the Via Dolorosa; but the toys should be 
 put away in a box among some cotton, until 
 the sun rises, and the children are abroad 
 again to be amused.
 
 2o8 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 In Compiegne post-office a great packet of 
 letters awaited us ; and the authorities were, 
 for this occasion only, so polite as to hand 
 them over upon application. 
 
 In some way, our journey may be said to 
 end with this letter-bag at Compiegne. The 
 spell was broken. We had partly come home 
 from that moment. 
 
 No one should have any correspondence 
 on a journey; it is bad enough to have to 
 write ; but the receipt of letters is the 
 death of all holiday feeling. 
 
 "Out of my country and myself I go." I 
 wish to take a dive among new conditions 
 for a while, as into another element. I have 
 nothing to do with my friends or my affec- 
 tions for the time ; when I came away, I 
 left my heart at home in a desk, or sent it 
 forward with portmanteau to await me at my 
 destination. After my journey is over, I
 
 At Compicgne. 209 
 
 shall not fail to read your admirable letters 
 with the attention they deserve. But I have 
 paid all this money, look you, and paddled 
 all these strokes, for no other purpose than 
 to be abroad ; and yet you keep me at home 
 with your perpetual communications. You 
 tug the string, and I feel that I am a teth- 
 ered bird. You pursue me all over Europe 
 with the little vexations that I came away to 
 avoid. There is no discharge in the war of 
 life, I am well aware ; but shall there not be 
 so much as a week's furlough ? 
 
 We were up by six, the day we were to 
 leave. They had taken so little note of us 
 that I hardly thought they would have con- 
 descended on a bill. But they did, with some 
 smart particulars, too ; and we paid in a civ- 
 ilized manner to an uninterested clerk, and 
 went out of that hotel, with the india-rubber 
 bags, unremarked. No one cared to know 
 14
 
 2IO An Inland Voyage. 
 
 about us. It is not possible to rise before 
 a village ; but Covipicgne was so grown a 
 town that it took its ease in the morning ; 
 and we were up and away while it was still 
 in dressing-gown and slippers. The streets 
 were left to people washing door-steps ; no- 
 body was in full dress but the cavaliers upon 
 the town hall ; they were all washed with 
 dew, spruce in their gilding, and full of in- 
 telligence and a sense of professional re- 
 sponsibility. Kling went they on the bells 
 for the half past six, as we went by. I took 
 it kind of them to make me this parting 
 compliment ; they never were in better form, 
 not even at noon upon a Sunday. 
 
 There was no one to see us off but the 
 early washerwomen, — early and late, — who 
 were already bearing the linen in their float- 
 ing lavatory on the river. They were very 
 merry and matutinal in their ways ; plunged
 
 At Compicgne. 21 1 
 
 their arms boldly in, and seemed not to feel 
 the shock. It would be dispiriting to me, 
 this early beginning and first cold dabble, ot 
 a most dispiriting day's work. But I believe 
 they would have been as unwilling to change 
 days with us as we could be to change with 
 them. They crowded to the door to watch 
 us paddle away into the thin sunny mists 
 upon the river ; and shouted heartily after us 
 till we were through the bridge.
 
 CHANGED TIMES. 
 
 There is a sense in which those mists 
 never rose from off our journey ; and from 
 that time forth they lie very densely in my 
 note-book. As long as the Oise was a small, 
 rural river it took us near by people's doors, 
 and we could hold a conversation with natives 
 in the riparian fields. But now that it had 
 grown so wide, the life along shore passed us 
 by at a distance. It was the same difference 
 as between a great public highway and a coun- 
 try bypath that wanders in and out of cottage 
 gardens. We now lay in towns, where no- 
 body troubled us with questions ; we had 
 floated into civilized life, where people pass 
 without salutaion. In sparsely inhabited pla-
 
 Changed Times. 213 
 
 ces we make all we can of each encounter ; 
 but when it comes to a city, we keep to our- 
 selves, and never speak unless we have trodden 
 on a man's toes. In these waters we were no 
 longer strange birds, and nobody supposed 
 we had travelled farther than from the last 
 town. I remember, when we came into 
 V Isle Adam, for instance, how we met dozens 
 of pleasure-boats outing it for the afternoon, 
 and there was nothing to distinguish the true 
 voyager from the amateur, except, perhaps, 
 the filthy condition of my sail. The com- 
 pany in one boat actually thought they recog- 
 nized me for a neighbor. Was there ever 
 anything more wounding } All the romance 
 had come down to that. Now, on the upper 
 Oise, where nothing sailed, as a general thing, 
 but fish, a pair of canoeists could not be thus 
 vulgarly explained away ; we were strange 
 and picturesque intruders ; and out of peo-
 
 214 -^^^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 pie's wonder sprang a sort of light and pass- 
 ing intimacy all along our route. There is 
 nothing but tit for tat in this world, though 
 sometimes it be a little difficult to trace : for 
 the scores are older than we ourselves, and 
 there has never yet been a settling-day since 
 things were. You get entertainment pretty 
 much in proportion as you give. As long as 
 we were a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared 
 at and followed like a quack doctor or a cara- 
 van, we had no want of amusement in return ; 
 but as soon as we sank into commonplace 
 ourselves, all whom we met were similarly 
 disenchanted. And here is one reason of a 
 dozen why the world is dull to dwll persons. 
 
 In our earlier adventures there was gener- 
 ally something to do, and that quickened us. 
 Even the showers of rain had a revivifying 
 effect, and shook up the brain from torpor. 
 But now, when the river no longer ran in a
 
 Changed Times. 215 
 
 proper sense, only glided seaward with an 
 even, outright, but imperceptible speed, and 
 when the sky smiled upon us day after day 
 without variety, we began to slip into that 
 golden doze of the mind which follows upon 
 much exercise in the open air. I have stupe- 
 fied myself in this way more than once : in- 
 deed, I dearly love the feeling; but I never 
 had it to the same degree as when paddling 
 down the Oise. It was the apotheosis of 
 stupidity. 
 
 We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes, 
 when I found a new paper, I took a particu- 
 lar pleasure in reading a single number of 
 the current novel ; but I never could bear 
 more than three instalments ; and even the 
 second was a disappointment. As soon as 
 the tale became in any way perspicuous, it 
 lost all merit in my eyes ; only a single 
 scene, or, as is the way with these feuilletotis,
 
 2i6 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 half a scene, without antecedent or conse- 
 quence, like a piece of a dream, had the 
 knack of fixing my interest. The less I saw 
 of the novel the better I liked it : a preg- 
 nant reflection. But for the most part, as I 
 said, we neither of us read anything in the 
 world, and employed the very little while we 
 were awake between bed and dinner in por- 
 ing upon maps. I have always been fond 
 of maps, and can voyage in an atlas with the 
 greatest enjoyment. The names of places 
 are singularly inviting ; the contour of coasts 
 and rivers is enthralling to the eye ; and to 
 hit in a map upon some place you have heard 
 of before makes history a new possession. 
 But we thumbed our charts, on those even- 
 ings, with the blankest unconcern. We 
 cared not a fraction for this place or that. 
 We stared at the sheet as children listen to 
 their rattle, and read the names of towns or
 
 Changed Times. 217 
 
 villages to forget them again at once. We 
 had no romance in the matter ; there was 
 nobody so fancy-free. If you had taken the 
 maps away while we were studying them 
 most intently, it is a fair bet whether we 
 might not have continued to study the table 
 with the same delight. 
 
 About one thing we were mightily taken 
 up, and that was eating. I think I made a 
 god of my belly. I remember dwelling in 
 imagination upon this or that dish till my 
 mouth watered ; and long before we got in 
 for the night my appetite was a clamant, 
 instant annoyance. Sometimes we paddled 
 alongside for a while and whetted each other 
 with gastronomical fancies as we went. 
 Cake and sherry, a homely refection, but 
 not within reach upon the Oise, trotted 
 through my head for many a mile ; and once, 
 as we were approaching Verberiey the Ciga-
 
 2l8 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 rette brought my heart into my rnouth by the 
 suggestion of oyster patties and Sauterne. 
 
 I suppose none of us recognize the great 
 part that is played in life by eating and 
 drinking. The appetite is so imperious that 
 we can stomach the least interesting viands, 
 and pass off a dinner hour thankfully enough 
 on bread and water ; just as there are men 
 who must read something, if it were only 
 Bradshaw s Guide. But there is a romance 
 about the matter, after all. Probably the 
 table has more devotees than love ; and I 
 am sure that food is much more generally 
 entertaining than scenery. Do you give in, 
 as Walt Whitman would say, that you are 
 any the less immortal for that .-* The true 
 materialism is to be ashamed of what we are. 
 To detect the flavor of an olive is no less a 
 piece of human perfection than to find 
 beauty in the colors of the sunset.
 
 Changed Times. 219 
 
 Canoeing was easy work. To dip the 
 paddle at the proper inclination, now right, 
 now left ; to keep the head down stream ; 
 to empty the little pool that gathered in the 
 lap of the apron; to screw up the eyes 
 against the glittering sparkles of sun upon 
 the water ; or now and again to pass below 
 the whistling tow-rope of the Deo Gratias of 
 Cond^y or Four Sojis of Aymon, — there was 
 not much art in that ; certainly silly muscles 
 managed it between sleep and waking ; and 
 meanwhile the brain had a whole holiday, 
 and went to sleep. We took in at a glance 
 the larger features of the scene, and beheld, 
 with half an eye, bloused fishers and dab- 
 bling washerwomen on the bank. Now and 
 again we might be half wakened by some 
 church spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail 
 of river grass that clung about the paddle 
 and had to be plucked off and thrown away.
 
 220 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 But these luminous intervals were only par- 
 tially luminous. A little more of us was 
 called into action, but never the whole. 
 The central bureau of nerves, what in some 
 moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday 
 without disturbance, like a Government 
 Office. The great wheels of intelligence 
 turned idly in the head, like fly-wheels, 
 grinding no grist. I have gone on for half 
 an hour at a time, counting my strokes and 
 forgetting the hundreds, I flatter myself 
 the beasts that perish could not underbid 
 that, as a low form of consciousness. And 
 what a pleasure it was ! What a hearty, 
 tolerant temper did it bring about ! There 
 is nothing captious about a man who has 
 attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in 
 life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity ; and he begins 
 to feel dignified and longevous like a tree. 
 There was one odd piece of practical meta-
 
 Changed Times. 221 
 
 physics which accompanied what I may call 
 the depth, if I must not call it the intensity, 
 of my abstraction. What philosophers call 
 me and not me, ego and 7io7t ego, preoccupied 
 me whether I would or no. There was less 
 VIC and more not me than I was accustomed 
 to expect. I looked on upon somebody else, 
 who managed the paddling ; I was aware of 
 somebody else's feet against the stretcher ; 
 my own body seemed to have no more inti- 
 mate relation to me than the canoe, or the 
 river, or the river banks. Nor this alone : 
 something inside my mind, a part of my 
 brain, a province of my proper being, had 
 thrown off allegiance and set up for itself, or 
 perhaps for the somebody else who did the 
 paddling. I had dwindled into quite a little 
 thing in a corner of myself. I was isolated 
 in my own skull. Thoughts presented 
 themselves unbidden ; they were not my
 
 222 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 thoughts, they were plainly some one else's ; 
 and I considered them like a part of the 
 landscape. I take it, in short, that I was 
 about as near Nirvana as would be conve- 
 nient in practical life ; and, if this be so, 
 I make the Buddhists my sincere compli- 
 ments ; 't is an agreeable state, not very con- 
 sistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly 
 profitable in a money point of view, but very 
 calm, golden, and incurious, and one that 
 sets a man superior to alarms. It may be 
 best figured by supposing yourself to get 
 dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy it, 
 I have a notion that open-air laborers must 
 spend a large portion of their days in this 
 ecstatic stupor, which explains their high 
 composure and endurance. A pity to go to 
 the expense of laudanum when here is a 
 better paradise for nothing ! 
 
 This frame of mind was the great exploit
 
 Changed Times. 223 
 
 of our voyage, take it all in all. It was the 
 farthest piece of travel accomplished. In' 
 deed, it lies so far from beaten paths of 
 language that I despair of getting the reader 
 into sympathy with the smiling, compla- 
 cent idiocy of my condition ; when ideas 
 came and went like motes in a sunbeam ; 
 when trees and church spires along the bank 
 surged up from time to time into my notice, 
 like solid objects through a rolling cloud- 
 land ; when the rhythmical swish of boat 
 and paddle in the water became a cradle- 
 song to lull my thoughts asleep ; when a 
 piece of mud on the deck was sometimes an 
 intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a 
 companion for me, and the object of pleased 
 consideration ; and all the time, with the 
 river running and the shores changing upon 
 either hand, I kept counting my strokes and 
 forgetting the hundreds, the happiest animal 
 in Fra7ice.
 
 DOWN THE OISE. 
 
 CHURCH INTERIORS. 
 
 We made our first stage below Compiegne 
 to Pont Sainte Maxence. I was abroad a 
 little after six the next morning. The air was 
 biting and smelt of frost. In an open place 
 a score of women wrangled together over the 
 day's market ; and the noise of their negotia- 
 tion sounded thin and querulous, like that 
 of sparrows on a winter's morning. The 
 rare passengers blew into their hands, and 
 shuffled in their wooden shoes to set the 
 blood agog. The streets were full of icy 
 shadow, although the chimneys were smok- 
 ing overhead in golden sunshine. If you 
 wake early enough at this season of the year,
 
 Down the Oise. 225 
 
 you may get up in December to break your 
 fast in ll^une. 
 
 I found my way to the church, for there is 
 always something to see about a church, 
 whether living worshippers or dead men's 
 tombs ; you find there the deadliest earnest, 
 and the hollowest deceit ; and even where it 
 is not a piece of history, it will be certain 
 to leak out some contemporary gossip. It 
 was scarcely so cold in the church as it was 
 without, but it looked colder. The white 
 nave was positively arctic to the eye ; and 
 the tawdriness of a continental altar looked 
 more forlorn than usual in the solitude and 
 the bleak air. Two priests sat in the chancel 
 reading and waiting penitents ; and out in 
 the nave one very old woman was engaged 
 in her devotions. It was a wonder how she 
 was able to pass her beads when healthy 
 young people were breathing in their palms 
 IS
 
 226 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 and slapping their chest ; but though this 
 concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by 
 the nature of her exercises. She went from 
 chair to chair, from altar to altar, circum- 
 navigating the church. To each shrine she 
 dedicated an equal number of beads and an 
 equal length of time. Like a prudent capi- 
 talist with a somewhat cynical view of the 
 commercial prospect, she desired to place her 
 supplications in a great variety of heavenly 
 securities. She would risk nothing on the 
 credit of any single intercessor. Out of the 
 whole company of saints and angels, not one 
 but was to suppose himself her champion 
 elect against the Great Assizes ! I could only 
 think of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, 
 based upon unconscious unbelief. 
 
 She was as dead an old woman as ever I 
 saw ; no more than bone and parchment, cu- 
 riously put together. Her eyes, with which
 
 Down the Oise, 227 
 
 she interrogated mine, were vacant of sense. 
 It depends on what you call seeing, whether 
 you might not call her blind. Perhaps she 
 had known love : perhaps borne children, 
 suckled them, and given them pet names. 
 But now that was all gone by, and had left 
 her neither happier nor wiser ; and the best 
 she could do with her mornings was to come 
 up here into the cold church and juggle for a 
 slice of heaven. It was not without a gulp 
 that I escaped into the streets and the keen 
 morning air. Morning .<* why, how tired of it 
 she would be before night ! and if she did not 
 sleep, how then ? It is fortunate that not 
 many of us are brought up publicly to justify 
 our lives at the bar of threescore years and 
 ten ; fortunate that such a number are 
 knocked opportunely on the head in what 
 they call the flower of their years, and go 
 away to suffer for their follies in private
 
 22 8 An Inland Voyage, 
 
 somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick 
 children and discontented old folk, we might 
 be put out of all conceit of life, 
 
 I had need of all my cerebral hygiene dur- 
 ing that day's paddle : the old devotee stuck 
 in my throat sorely. But I was soon in the 
 seventh heaven of stupidity ; and knew noth- 
 ing but that somebody was paddling a canoe, 
 while I was counting his strokes and forgetting 
 the hundreds. I used sometimes to be afraid 
 I should remember the hundreds ; which 
 would have made a toil of a pleasure ; but 
 the terror was chimerical, they went out of 
 my mind by enchantment, and I knew no 
 more than the man in the moon about my 
 only occupation. 
 
 At Crcil, where we stopped to lunch, we 
 left the canoes in another floating lavatory, 
 which, as it was high noon, was packed with 
 washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced;
 
 Down the Oisc. 229 
 
 and they and their broad jokes are about all 1 
 remember of the place. I could look up my 
 history books, if you were very anxious, and 
 tell you a date or two ; for it figured rather 
 largely in the English wars. But I prefer to 
 mention a girls' boarding-school, which had 
 an interest for us because it was a girls* 
 boarding-school, and because we imagined we 
 had rather an interest for it. At least, 
 there were the girls about the garden ; and 
 here were we on the river ; and there was more 
 than one handkerchief waved as we went 
 by. It caused quite a stir in my heart ; and 
 yet how we should have wearied and de- 
 spised each other, these girls and I, if we had 
 been introduced at a croquet party ! But 
 this is a fashion I love : to kiss the hand or 
 wave a handkerchief to people I shall never 
 see again, to play with possibility, and knock 
 in a peg for fancy to hang upon. It gives the
 
 230 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 traveller a jog, reminds him that he is not a 
 traveller everywhere, and that his journey is 
 no more than a siesta by the way on the real 
 march of life. 
 
 The church at Creil was a nondescript 
 place in the inside, splashed with gaudy 
 lights from the windows, and picked out with 
 medallions of the Dolorous Way. But there 
 was one oddity, in the way of an ex voto, 
 which pleased me hugely : a faithful model of 
 a canal boat, swung from the vault, with a 
 written aspiration that God should conduct 
 the Saint Nicholas of Creil to a good haven. 
 The thing was neatly executed, and would 
 have made the delight of a party of boys on 
 the water-side. But what tickled me was the 
 gravity of the peril to be conjured. You 
 might hang up the model of a sea-going ship, 
 and welcome : one that is to plough a furrow 
 round the woild, and visit the tropic or the
 
 Down the O is e. 231 
 
 frosty poles, runs dangers that are well worth 
 a candle and a mass. But the Saint NicJio- 
 las of Creil, which was to be tugged for some 
 ten years by patient draught horses, in a 
 weedy canal, with the poplars chattering over- 
 head, and the skipper whistling at the tiller ; 
 which was to do all its errands in green, 
 inland places, and never got out of sight of a 
 village belfry in all its cruising ; why, you 
 would have thought if anything could be done 
 without the intervention of Providence, it 
 would be that ! But perhaps the skipper was 
 a humorist : or perhaps a prophet, reminding 
 people of the seriousness of life by this pre- 
 posterous token. 
 
 At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed 
 a favorite saint on the score of punctuality. 
 Day and hour can be specified ; and grateful 
 people do not fail to specify them on a votive 
 tablet, when prayers have been punctually and
 
 232 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 neatly answered. Whenever time is a consid- 
 eration, Saint yoseph is the proper interme- 
 diary. I took a sort of pleasure in observing 
 the vogue he had in France, for the good man 
 plays a very small part in my religion at 
 home. Yet I could not help fearing that, 
 where the saint is so much commended for 
 exactitude, he will be expected to be very 
 grateful for his tablet. 
 
 This is foolishness to us Protestants ; and 
 not of great importance any way. Whether 
 people's gratitude for the good gifts that 
 come to them be wisely conceived or duti- 
 fully expressed is a secondary matter, after 
 all, so long as they feel gratitude. The true 
 ignorance is when a man does not know that 
 he has received a good gift, or begins to 
 imagine that he has got it for himself. The 
 self-made man is the funniest windbag after 
 all ! There is a marked difference between
 
 Down the Oise, 233 
 
 decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the 
 gas in a metropolitan back-parlor with a box 
 of patent matches; and, do what we will, 
 there is always something made to our hand, 
 if it were only our fingers. 
 
 But there was something worse than fool- 
 ishness placarded in Creil Church, The As- 
 sociatiojt of the Living Rosary (of which I had 
 never previously heard) is responsible foi 
 that. This association was founded, accord- 
 ing to the printed advertisement, by a brief of 
 Pope Gregory Sixteenth, on the 17th of Jan- 
 uary ^ 1832 : according to a colored bas-relief, 
 it seems to have been founded, some time or 
 other, by the Virgin giving one rosary to 
 Saint Dominic, and the Infant Saviour giving 
 another to Saint Catherine of Sienna. Pope 
 Gregory is not so imposing, but he is nearer 
 hand. I could not distinctly make out 
 whether the association was entirely devo
 
 2 34 ^^-'^ In''i7id Voyage. 
 
 tional, or had an eye to good works ; at least 
 it is highly organized : the names of fourteen 
 matrons and misses were filled in for each 
 week of the month as associates, with one 
 other, generally a married woman, at the top 
 for Zdatrice, the choragus of the band. In- 
 dulgences, plenary and partial, follow on the 
 performance of the duties of the association, 
 " The partial indulgences are attached to the 
 recitation of the rosary." On " the recitation 
 of the required dizaine,'' a partial indulgence 
 promptly follows. When people serve the 
 kingdom of Heaven with a pass-book in their 
 hands, I should always be afraid lest they 
 should carry the same commercial spirit into 
 their dealings with their fellow-men, which- 
 would make a sad and sordid business of this 
 life. 
 
 There is one more article, however, of hap- 
 pier import. " All these indulgences," it ap-
 
 Down the Oise. 235 
 
 peared, "are applicable to souls in purgatory," 
 For God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them 
 all to the souls in purgatory without delay ! 
 Burns would take no hire for his last songs, 
 preferring to serve his country out of unmixed 
 love. Suppose you were to imitate the ex- 
 ciseman, mesdames, and even if the souls in 
 purgatory were not greatly bettered, some 
 souls in Creil upon the Oise would find them- 
 selves none the worse either here or here- 
 after. 
 
 I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe 
 these notes, whether a Protestant born and 
 bred is in a fit state to understand these 
 signs, and do them what justice they de- 
 serve ; and I cannot help answering that he 
 is not. They cannot look so merely ugly and 
 mean to the faithful as they do to me. I see 
 that as clearly as a proposition in Euclid. 
 For these believers are neither weak nor
 
 236 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 wicked. They can put up their tablet com- 
 mending Saint yoseph for his despatch as if 
 he were still a village carpenter ; they can 
 "recite the required dizaine" 2Si^ metaphori- 
 cally pocket the indulgences as if they had 
 done a job for heaven ; and then they can go 
 out and look down unabashed upon this won- 
 derful river flowing by, and up without con- 
 fusion at the pin-point stars, which are 
 themselves great worlds full of flowing rivers 
 greater than the Oise. I see it as plainly, I say, 
 as a proposition in Eticlid, that my Protestant 
 mind has missed the point, and that there 
 goes with these deformities some higher and 
 more religious spirit than I dream. 
 
 I wonder if other people would make the 
 same allowances for me ? Like the ladies of 
 Creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, 
 I look for my indulgence on the spot.
 
 PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES. 
 
 We made Precy about sundown. The 
 plain is rich with tufts of poplar. In a wide, 
 luminous curve the Oise lay under the 
 hillside. A faint mist began to rise and 
 confound the different distances together. 
 There was not a sound audible but that of 
 the sheep-bells in some meadows by the 
 river, and the creaking of a cart down the 
 long road that descends the hill. The villas 
 in their gardens, the shops along the street, 
 all seemed to have been deserted the day 
 before ; and I felt inclined to walk discreetly 
 as one feels in a silent forest. All of a sud- 
 den we came round a corner, and there, in a 
 little green round the church, was a bevy of 
 girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet.
 
 238 A}i Inland Voyage. 
 
 Their laughter and the hollow sound of ball 
 and mallet made a cheery stir in the neigh- 
 borhood ; and the look of these slim figures, 
 all corseted and ribboned, produced an an- 
 swerable disturbance in our hearts. We 
 were within sniff of Paris, it seemed. And 
 here were females of our own species playing 
 croquet, just as if Pricy had been a place in 
 real life instead of a stage in the fairy-land 
 of travel. For, to be frank, the peasant- 
 woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman 
 at all, and after having passed by such a 
 succession of people in petticoats digging, 
 and hoeing, and making dinner, this com- 
 pany of coquettes under arms made quite a 
 surprising feature in the landscape, and con- 
 vinced us at once of being fallible males.* 
 
 The inn at Prky is the worst inn in 
 France. Not even in Scotland have I found 
 worse fare. It was kept by a brother and
 
 Pricy and the Marionettes. 239 
 
 sister, neither of whom was out of their 
 teens. The sister, so to speak, prepared a 
 meal for us ; and the brother, who had been 
 tippling, came in and brought with him a 
 tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we ate. 
 We found pieces of loo-warm pork among 
 the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding 
 substance in the ragout. The butcher enter- 
 tained us with pictures of Parisian life, with 
 which he professed himself well acquainted ; 
 the brother sitting the while on the edge of 
 the billiard table, toppling precariously, and 
 sucking the stump of a cigar. In the midst 
 of these diversions bang went a drum past 
 the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing 
 a proclamation. It was a man with mario- 
 nettes announcing a performance for that 
 evening. 
 
 He had set up his caravan and lighted his 
 candles on another part of the girls' croquet
 
 240 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 green, under one of those open sheds which 
 are so common in France\.o shelter markets ; 
 and he and his wife, by the time we strolled 
 up there, were trying to keep order with the 
 audience. 
 
 It was the most absurd contention. The 
 show-people had set out a certain number of 
 benches ; and all who sat upon them were to 
 pay a couple of sons for the accommodation. 
 They were always quite full — a bumper 
 house — as long as nothing was going for- 
 ward ; but let the show-woman appear with 
 an eye to a collection, and at the first rat- 
 tle of the tambourine the audience slipped 
 off the seats and stood round on the out- 
 side, with their hands in their pockets. It 
 certainly would have tried an angel's temper. 
 The showman roared from the proscenium ; 
 he had been all over France, and nowhere, 
 nowhere, "not even on the borders of Ger-
 
 Pricy and the Marionettes. 24 1 
 
 many" had he met with such misconduct. 
 Such thieves, and rogues, and rascals as he 
 called them ! And now and again the wife 
 issued on another round, and added her shrill 
 quota to the tirade. I remarked here, as 
 elsewhere, how far more copious is the 
 female mind in the material of insult. The 
 audience laughed in high good-humor over 
 the man's declamations ; but they bridled and 
 cried aloud under the woman's pungent sal- 
 lies. She picked out the sore points. She 
 had the honor of the village at her mercy. 
 Voices answered her angrily out of the crowd, 
 and received a smarting retort for their 
 trouble. A couple of old ladies beside me, 
 who had duly paid for their seats, waxed very 
 red and indignant, and discoursed to each 
 other audibly about the impudence of these 
 mountebanks ; but as soon as the show- 
 woman caught a whisper of this she was 
 16
 
 242 An In/and Voyage. 
 
 down upon them with a swoop ; if mesdames 
 could persuade their neighbors to act with 
 common honesty, the mountebanks, she as- 
 sured them, would be polite enough ; mes- 
 dames had probably had their bowl of soup, 
 and, perhaps, a glass of wine that evening; 
 the mountebanks, also, had a taste for soup, 
 and did not choose to have their little earn- 
 ings stolen from them before their eyes. 
 Once, things came as far as a brief personal 
 encounter between the showman and some 
 lads, in which the former went down as read- 
 ily as one of his own marionettes to a peal of 
 jeering laughter. 
 
 I was a good deal astonished at this scene, 
 because I am pretty well acquainted with the 
 ways of French strollers, more or less artis- 
 tic ; and have always found them singularly 
 pleasing. Any stroller must be dear to the 
 right-thinking heart ; if it were only as a living
 
 Pricy and the Marionettes. 243 
 
 protest against offices and the mercantile 
 spirit, and as something to remind us that 
 life is not by necessity the kind of thing we 
 generally make it. Even a German band, 
 if you see it leaving town in the early morn- 
 ing for a campaign in country places, among 
 trees and meadows, has a romantic flavor 
 for the imagination. There is nobody under 
 thirty so dead but his heart will stir a 
 little at sight of a gypsies' camp. " We 
 are not cotton-spinners all " ; or, at least, not 
 all through. There is some life in humanity 
 yet; and youth will now and again find a 
 brave word to say in dispraise of riches, and 
 throw up a situation to go strolling with a 
 knapsack. 
 
 An Englishman has always special facili- 
 ties for intercourse with French gymnasts ; 
 for England is the natural home of gymnasts. 
 This or that fellow, in his tights and span-
 
 244 -^^^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 gles, is sure to know a word or two of Eng- 
 lish, to have drunk English ajf-n-aff, and, per- 
 haps, performed in an English music hall. 
 He is a countryman of mine by profession. 
 He leaps like the Belgian boating-men to 
 the notion that I must be an athlete myself. 
 
 But the gymnast is not my favorite ; he 
 has little or no tincture of the artist in his 
 composition ; his soul is small and pedes- 
 trian, for the most part, since his profession 
 makes no call upon it, and does not accustom 
 him to high ideas. But if a man is only so 
 much of an actor that he can stumble through 
 a farce, he is made free of a new order of 
 thoughts. He has something else to think 
 about beside the money-box. He has a pride 
 of his own, and, what is of far more impor- 
 tance, he has an aim before him that he can 
 never quite attain. He has gone upon a 
 pilgrimage that will last him his life-long,
 
 Pricy and the Marionettes. 245 
 
 because there is no end to it short of per« 
 fection. He will better himself a little day 
 by day ; or, even if he has given up the at- 
 tempt, he will always remember that once 
 upon a time he had conceived this high ideal, 
 that once upon a time he fell in love with a 
 star. " 'T is better to have loved and lost." 
 Although the moon should have nothing to 
 say to Endymion, although he should settle 
 down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not 
 think he would move v^ith a better grace and 
 cherish higher thoughts to the end .-* The 
 louts he meets at church never had a fancy 
 above Audrey s snood; but there is a reminis- 
 cence in Endymion s heart that, like a spice, 
 keeps it fresh and haughty. 
 
 To be even one of the outskirters of art 
 leaves a fine stamp on a man's countenance. 
 I remember once dining with a party in the 
 inn at Chdieau Landon. Most of them
 
 246 Aji Inland Voyage. 
 
 were unmistakable bagmen ; others well-to- 
 do peasantry; but there was one young 
 fellow in a blouse, whose face stood out from 
 among the rest surprisingly. It looked more 
 finished ; more of the spirit looked out 
 through it ; it had a living, expressive air, 
 and you could see that his eyes took things 
 in. My companion and I wondered greatly 
 who and what he could be. It was fair time 
 in CJidteau Landon, and when we went along 
 to the booths we had our question answered; 
 for there was our friend busily fiddling for 
 the peasants to caper to. He was a wander- 
 ing violinist. 
 
 A troop of strollers once came to the inn 
 where I was staying, in the department of 
 Seine et Marne. There were a father and 
 mother; two daughters, brazen, blowsy hus- 
 sies, who sang and acted, without an idea of 
 how to set about either ; and a dark young
 
 Pr/cy and the Mariottettes. 247 
 
 man, like a tutor, a recalcitrant house- 
 painter, who sang and acted not amiss. The 
 mother was the genius of the party, so far as 
 genius can be spoken of with regard to such 
 a pack of incompetent humbugs ; and her 
 husband could not find words to express 
 his admiration for her comic countryman. 
 " You should see my old woman," said he, 
 and nodded his beery countenance. One 
 night they performed in the stable-yard with 
 flaring lamps : a wretched exhibition, coldly 
 looked upon by a village audience. Next 
 night, as soon as the lamps were lighted, 
 there came a plump of rain, and they had to 
 sweep away their baggage as fast as possible, 
 and make off to the barn, where they har- 
 bored, cold, wet, and supperless. In the 
 morning a dear friend of mine, who has as 
 warm a heart for strollers as I have myself, 
 made a little collection, and sent it by my
 
 248 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 hands to comfort them for their disappoint- 
 ment. I gave it to the father ; he thanked 
 me cordially, and we drank a cup together in 
 the kitchen, talking of roads, and audiences, 
 and hard times. 
 
 When I was going, up got my old stroller, 
 and off with his hat. " I am afraid," said he, 
 " that Monsieur will think me altogether a 
 beggar ; but I have another demand to make 
 upon him." I began to hate him on the spot. 
 " We play again to-night," he went on. " Of 
 course I shall refuse to accept any more 
 money from Monsieur and his friends, who 
 have been already so liberal. But our pro- 
 gramme of to-night is something truly credit- 
 able ; and I cling to the idea that Monsieur 
 will honor us with his presence." And then, 
 with a shrug and a smile : " Monsieur under- 
 stands, — the vanity of an artist ! " Save the 
 mark ! The vanity of an artist ! That is the
 
 Pr^cy and'the Marionettes. 249 
 
 kind of thing that reconciles me to life : a 
 ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with 
 the manners of a gentleman and the vanity 
 of an artist, to keep up his self-respect ! 
 
 But the man after my own heart is M. de 
 Vauversin. It is nearly two years since I 
 saw him first, and indeed I hope I may see 
 him often again. Here is his first programme 
 as I found it on the breakfast-table, and have 
 kept it ever since as a relic of bright days: — 
 *' Mesdames et Messieurs, 
 
 " Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin 
 auront VhonneMr de chanter ce soir les morceaux 
 suivants. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Ferrario chantera— Mignon 
 — Oiseaux Lagers — France — Des Franqais 
 dorment la — Le chateau bleu — Ou voulez' 
 vous aller ? 
 
 " M. de Vauversin — Madame Fontaine et 
 M. Robinet — Les plongeurs d - cheval — Le
 
 250 A;/ Inland Voyage. 
 
 Mart mdcontejit — Tais-toi, gamin — Mon voi- 
 siji l^ original — Heureiix comme qa — Comine 
 on est trompi." 
 
 They made a stage at one end of the salle- 
 d-manger. And what a sight it was to see M. 
 de Vaiiversin, with a cigarette in his mouth, 
 twanging a guitar, and following Mademoi- 
 selle Ferrarios eyes with the obedient, kindly 
 look of a dog ! The entertainment wound 
 up with a tombola, or auction of lottery 
 tickets : an admirable amusement, with all 
 the excitement of gambling, and no hope of 
 gain to make you ashamed of your eagerness ; 
 for there, all is loss ; you make haste to be 
 out of pocket ; it is a competition who shall 
 lose most money for the benefit of M. de 
 Vauversin and Mademoiselle Ferrario. 
 
 M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a 
 great head of black hair, a vivacious and en- 
 gaging air, and a smile that would be delight-
 
 Pricy and the Marionettes. 251 
 
 ful if he had better teeth. He was once an 
 actor in the ChAtelet ; but he contracted a 
 nervous affection from the heat and glare of 
 the foot-lights, which unfitted him for the 
 stage. At this crisis Mademoiselle Ferrario, 
 otherwise Mademoiselle Rita of the Alcazar, 
 agreed to share his wandering" fortun&s. " I 
 could never forget the generosity of that 
 lady," said he. He wears trousers so tight 
 that it has long been a problem to all who 
 knew him how he manages to get in and out 
 of them. He sketches a little in water-colors, 
 he writes verses ; he is the most patient of 
 fishermen, and spent long days at the bottopi 
 of the inn-garden fruitlessly dabbling a line 
 in the clear river. 
 
 You should hear him recounting his ex- 
 periences over a bottle of wine ; such a 
 pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready 
 smile at his own mishaps, and every now and
 
 252 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 then a sudden gravity, like a man who 
 should hear the surf roar while he was telling 
 the perils of the deep. For it was no longe 
 ago than last night, perhaps, that the re 
 ceipts only amounted to a franc and a half 
 to cover three francs of railway fare and two 
 of board and lodging. The Maire, a man 
 worth a million of money, sat in the front 
 seat, repeatedly applauding Mile. Ferrario, 
 and yet gave no more than three sons the 
 whole evening. Local authorities look with 
 such an evil eye upon the strolling artist, 
 Alas ! I know it well, who have been myself 
 taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on 
 the strength of the misapprehension. Once, 
 M. de Vauversin visited a commissary of 
 police for permission to sing. The commis- 
 sary, who was smoking at his ease, politely 
 doffed his hat upon the singer's entrance. 
 " Mr. Commissary," he began, " I am an
 
 Pricy and the Marionettes. 253 
 
 artist." xAind on went the commissary's hat 
 again. No courtesy for the companions of 
 Apollo ! " They are as degraded as that," 
 said M, de Vauversin, with a sweep of his 
 cigarette. 
 
 But what pleased me most was one out- 
 break of his, when we had been talking all 
 the evening of the rubs, indignities, and 
 pinchings of his wandering life. Some one 
 said it would be better to have a million of 
 money down, and Mile. Ferrario admitted 
 th?i: she would prefer that mightily. ^' Eh 
 biei^moi non ; — not I," cried De Vauversin^ 
 St' king the table with his hand. " If any 
 one is a failure in the world, is it not I .'' I 
 had an art, in which I have done things well, 
 — as well as some, better, perhaps, than 
 others ; and now it is closed against me. I 
 m», ;t go about the country gathering coppers 
 ar. singing nonsense. Do you think I
 
 254 -^^^ Inland Voyage. 
 
 regret my life ? Do you think I would 
 rather be a fat burgess, like a calf ? Not I ! 
 I have had moments when I have been 
 applauded on the boards : I think nothing of 
 that ; but I have known in my own mind 
 sometimes, when I had not a clap from the 
 whole house, that I had found a true intona- 
 tion, or an exact and speaking gesture ; and 
 then, messieurs, I have known what pleasure 
 was, what it was to do a thing well, what it 
 was to be an artist. And to know what art 
 is, is to have an interest forever, such as no 
 burgess can find in his petty concerns. 
 TeneZy messieurs, je vais vous le dire, — it is 
 like a religion." 
 
 Such, making some allowance for the 
 tricks of memory and the inaccuracies of 
 translation, was the profession of faith of M. 
 de Vauversin. I have given him his own 
 name, lest any other wanderer should come
 
 PHcy and the Marionettes. 255 
 
 across him, with his guitar and cigarette, and 
 Mademoiselle Ferrario ; for should not all 
 the world delight to honor this unfortunate 
 and loyal follower of the Muses ? May 
 Apollo send him rhymes hitherto undreamed 
 of ; may the river be no longer scanty of her 
 silver fishes to his lure ; may the cold not 
 pinch him on long winter rides, nor the 
 village jack-in-office affront him with un- 
 seemly manners ; and may he never miss 
 Mademoiselle Ferrario from his side, to fol- 
 low with his dutiful eyes and accompany on 
 the guitar ! 
 
 The marionettes made a very dismal enter- 
 tainment. They performed a piece called 
 Pyramus and Thisbe, in five mortal acts, and 
 all written in Alexandrines fully as long as 
 the performers. One marionette was the 
 king ; another the wicked counsellor ; a third, 
 credited with exceptional beauty, representf>d
 
 256 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 Thisbe ; and then there were guards, and 
 obdurate fathers, and walking gentlemen. 
 Nothing particular took place during the two 
 or three acts that I sat out ; but you will 
 be pleased to learn that the unities were 
 properly respected, and the whole piece, 
 with one exception, moved in harmony with 
 classical rules. That exception was the 
 comic countryman, a lean marionette in 
 wooden shoes, who spoke in prose and in a 
 broad patois much appreciated by the audi- 
 ence. He took unconstitutional liberties 
 with the person of his sovereign ; kicked his 
 fellow-marionettes in the mouth with his 
 wooden shoes, and whenever none of the 
 versifying suitors were about, made love to 
 Thisbe on his own account in comic prose. 
 
 This fellow's evolutions, and the little pro- 
 logue, in which the showman nade a humor- 
 ous eulogium of his troop, praising their in-
 
 Precy and the Marionettes. 257 
 
 difference to applause and hisses, and their 
 single devotion to their art, were the only cir- 
 cumstances in the whole affair that you 
 could fancy would so much as raise a smile. 
 But the villagers of Precy seemed delighted. 
 Indeed, so long as a thing is an exhibition, 
 and you pay to see it, it is nearly certain to 
 amuse. If we were charged so much a head 
 for sunsets, or if God sent round a drum be- 
 fore the hawthorns came in flower, what a 
 work should we not make about their beauty ! 
 But these things, like good companions, 
 stupid people early cease to observe ; and the 
 Abstract Bagman tittups past in his spring 
 gig, and is positively not aware of the flowers 
 along the lane, or the scenery of the weather 
 overhead. 
 
 J7
 
 BACK TO THE WORLD. 
 
 Of the next two days' sail little remains 
 in my mind, and nothing whatever in my 
 note-book. The river streamed on stead- 
 ily through pleasant river-side landscapes. 
 Washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers in 
 blue blouses, diversified the green banks ; 
 and the relation of the two colors was like 
 that of the flower and the leaf in the forget- 
 me-not. A symphony in forget-me-not ; I 
 think TJieophile Gautier might thus have 
 characterized that two days' panorama. The 
 sky was blue and cloudless ; and the sliding 
 surface of the river held up, in smooth places, 
 a mirror to the heaven and the shores. 
 The washerwomen hailed us laughingly ; and 
 the noise of trees and water made an accom-
 
 Back to the World. 259 
 
 paniment to our dozing thoughts, as we 
 fleeted down the stream. 
 
 The great volume, the indefatigable pur- 
 pose of the river, held the mind in chain, 
 It seemed now so sure of its end, so strong 
 and easy in its gait, like a grown man full of 
 determination. The surf was roaring for it 
 on the sands of Havre. For my own part 
 slipping along this moving thoroughfare in 
 my fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was begin- 
 ning to grow aweary for my ocean. To the 
 civilized man there must come, sooner or 
 later, a desire for civilization. I was weary 
 of dipping the paddle ; I was weary of liv- 
 ing on the skirts of life ; I wished to be in 
 the thick of it once more ; I wished to get to 
 work ; I wished to meet people who under- 
 stood my own speech, and could meet with 
 me on equal terms, as a man, and no longef 
 as a curiosity.
 
 26o An Inland Voyage. 
 
 And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and 
 we drew up our keels for the last time out of 
 that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted 
 them, through rain and sunshine, for so long. 
 For so many miles had this fleet and foot- 
 less beast of burden charioted our fortunes 
 that we turned our back upon it with a sense 
 of separation. We had a long detour out of 
 the world, but now we were back in the 
 familiar places, where life itself makes all 
 the running, and we are carried to meet ad- 
 venture without a stroke of the paddle. Now 
 we were to return, like the voyager in the 
 play, and see what rearrangements fortune 
 had perfected the while in our surroundings ; 
 what surprises stood ready made for us at 
 home; and whither and how far the world had 
 voyaged in our absence. You may paddle 
 all day long ; but it is when you come back 
 at nightfall, and look in at the familiar
 
 Back to the World. 261 
 
 room, that you find Love or Death awaiting 
 you beside the stove ; and the most beau- 
 tiful adventures are not those we go to 
 seek.
 
 SvLppl&merut to Catalogjxe. 
 
 NEW BOOKS PUBLISHED IN 1888 AND 1889. 
 
 Author's Edition of 
 
 GEOKGE MEREDITH'S NOVELS. 
 
 A new popular edition of George Meredith's Novels. Uniformly bound 
 in Library Style, complete in lo vols. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50 per 
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 FEVEREL. BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 EVAN HARRINGTON. THE EGOIST. 
 
 HARRY RICHMOND. DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS. 
 
 SANDRA BELLONI. THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT, 
 VITTORIA. AND FARINA. 
 
 A READING OF EARTH. 
 
 Poems. By George Meredith, author of " Ballads and Poems of 
 Tragic Life," " Richard Feverel," &c. i6mo. Cloth. Price, i?i.5o. 
 
 THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP ; OR, WIT AND WISDOM OF GEORGE 
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 With Selections from his Poetry, a Critical and Biographical Introduc- 
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 BALZAC'S NOVELS IN ENGLISH. 
 
 Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, Already pub- 
 lished : — 
 
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 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE TWO BROTHERS. 
 
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 BUREAUCRACY. 
 
 Handsome i2mo volumes. Uniform in size and style. Half Russia. 
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 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
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 Addresses to Harvard Students, by the Preachers to the University. 
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 To vvrite such a biography required exceptional powers, and too much can hardly 
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 TWENTY LESSONS IN COOKERY. 
 
 Compiled from the Boston School Kitchen Text-Book, by Mrs. D. A. 
 Lincoln, author of " The Boston Cook Book." Cards in envelope. 
 Price, 40 cents per set. 
 
 "The receipts in these lessons are the same as those in the ' Text-Book,' and 
 have been prepared in answer to a special demand for those who wish the sub- 
 stance of the book in a cheaper form, and to save the time formerly taken in 
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 " These cards furnish an attractive, convenient, and durable form of preserv- 
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 the twenty being on double cards. One four-page card contains directions for all 
 kinds of kitchen work, — the care of a fire, cleaning dishes, sweeping and 
 dusting, and rules for the table. 
 
 " The twenty cooking-lessons include plain directions for about one hundred 
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 edge of which will enable any school-girl to do all the cooking for her own 
 family."
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 LONDON OF TO-DAY, 1889. 
 
 By Charles E. Pascoe. Numerous illustrations. Fourth year of 
 publication. i2mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. 
 
 MAETIN LUTHER, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 By Frederic Henry Hedge, author of " The Primeval World," 
 " Reason in Religion," " Atheism in Philosophy," etc. i2mo. Cloth. 
 Price, $2.00. 
 
 THE UNITED STATES OF YESTERDAY AND OF TO-MORROW. 
 
 By William Barrows, D.D., author of " Oregon ; the Struggle for 
 Possession," "The Indian Side of the Indian Question," etc. i vol. 
 i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.25. 
 
 "This book has been written to answer questions. As the author in earlier 
 days had spent several years beyond the Mississippi, and much time and travel 
 there since in official work, during which he made ten tours over the border, and 
 in the East had devoted much labor to public addresses and lectures on our new 
 country, it was quite natural that a miscellaneous information should be solicited 
 from him concerning the territory between the Alleghanies and the Pacific. 
 
 " For various reasons it has seemed best to let this information group itself 
 into topics, and so it stands classified under headings and in chapters." — Front 
 the Introduction. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL, 
 
 Till the Time of King David. By Ernest Renan, author of "Life 
 of Jesus." Demy 8vo. Cloth. Price, ^2.50. 
 
 "To all who know anything of M. Kenan's ' Life of Jesus' it will be no 
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 For but once in centuries does a Renan arise, and to any other hand this work 
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 the wildest romance ; more heterodox than heterodoxy, it is yet full of large and 
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 HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL. 
 
 Second Division. From the Reign of David up to the Capture of 
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 den's volumes, were Edward Everett, Daniel Webster, William H. Prescott, 
 George Ticknor, Washington Irving, Mrs. Sigourney, and Charles Sumner. 
 
 " Mr. Clayden, whose long training as a writer of leading articles for a great 
 London newspaper admirably qualified him for what lias evidently been a labor of 
 love, has connected his selections from Rogers's correspondence by a sufficiently 
 full narrative and by all needful elucidations. His style is clear, compact, and 
 straightforward, and his volumes furnish abundant materials for forming a just 
 estimate of Rogers's place in English literature aud English social life." — 
 Boston Post.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publicatiojis. 
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 
 
 Author of "The Pleasures of Memory." By P. W. Clayden. i2mo. 
 Cloth. Price, ?i. 75. 
 
 "'The Early Life of Samuel Rogers,' which has been anticipated with an 
 interest beyond that given to the annoinicement of any late book, is now ready, 
 and will fully reach the importance that it promised. It covers a period of forty 
 years, or to the opening of hia house in St. James' Place, and his appearance as 
 one of the chief figures in English society, leaving to a promised volume the 
 account of his subsequent life and his brilliant devotion to the distinguished men 
 and women about him. 
 
 "The volume at hand is particularly illustrative of the author's fidelity to a 
 determination to an intimate and full understanding, and presents the most satis- 
 factory portraiture of Mr. Rogers, under influence of his motives and efforts, 
 during his earlier years." — Boston Globe. 
 
 THE STUDY OF POLITICS. 
 
 By Prof. W. P. Atkinson. Uniform with "On History and the 
 Study of History," and " On the Right Use of Books." i6mo. Cloth. 
 Price, 50 cents. 
 
 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 
 
 By Edward Everett Hale. Holiday Edition, with Illustrations 
 by F. T. Merrill. 4to. Cloth, gilt. Price, ;?2.5o. 
 
 " Roberts Brothers have selected for illustration a story that in its time had 
 probably more readers than any short story ever published. ' The Man without 
 a Country,' written by Edward Everett Hale at least twenty-five years ago, called 
 up a wave of sympathy and wonder that passed over the whole country, intensify- 
 ing and increasing the patriotism and enthusiasm of the period. It was written 
 as a contribution toward the formation of a just and true national sentiment, or 
 a sentiment of love to the nation. The present generation will find the story 
 comparatively a new one, and will enjoy, as other readers have, its realism and 
 pathos, and ask again and again, as has been asked many times before. Is it true ? 
 This holiday edition is illustrated by F. T. Merrill with many designs in sympathy 
 ■with the story. No more delightful book is offered for the hohday trade than 
 this popular story." — Book Buyer. 
 
 FRANKLIN IN FRANCE. 
 
 Part II. The Treaty of Peace and Franklin's Life till his Return. 
 From original documents. By Edward Everett Hale and Edward 
 E. Hale, Jr. i vol. 8vo. Cloth, gilt top, uniform with the first vol- 
 ume. Price, ^3.00. 
 
 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 
 
 A Novel. By Rev. E. E. Hale, author of "In His Name," "Man 
 without a Country," etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, #1.25. Paper, 50 cents. 
 
 IN HIS NAME. 
 
 Illustrated. By Rev. E. E. Hale. A new and cheaper edition of 
 this beautiful story, including all of the illustrations contained in the larger 
 edition. One volume. i6mo. Cloth. Uniform with " Ten Times One," 
 "The Man without a Country," etc. Price, $1.25. 
 
 6
 
 Messrs, Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 THE PENTAMERON, CITATION FROM WILLIAM SHAK- 
 SPEARE, AND MINOR PROSE PIECES AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 By Walter Savage Landor. i2mo. Cloth. Price, ;?2.oo. 
 
 This volume, "Imaginary Conversations" (5 vols.), and "Pericles and 
 Aspasia " (i vol.), comprise Lander's entire prose writings. 
 
 SUNDAY-SCHOOL STORIES 
 
 On the Golden Texts of The International Lessons of 1889. First 
 Half, January-June. By Rev. Edward E. Hale. i6mo. Cloth. 
 Price, ?i.oo. 
 
 SUNDAY-SCHOOL STORIES 
 
 On the Golden Texts of the International Lessons of 1889. Second 
 Half, July-December. By Rev. Edward E. Hale. i6mo. Cloth. 
 Price, ^fi.oo. 
 
 SUNDAY-SCHOOL STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN 
 
 On the Golden Texts of the International Lessons of 1889. July- 
 December. By Miss Lucretia P. Hale and Mrs. Bernard Whit- 
 man. One volume. Square i6mo. Cloth. Price, $t. 00. 
 
 "The publishers of this volume issued in January a collection of twenty-six 
 stories founded upon tlie texts of the International Course for the first six months of 
 this year. They will issue this month a series of twenty-six stories corresponding; 
 to the lessons of the last six months of the year. These stories are written by what 
 in the Wadsworth Clubs we call a 'Ten,' — several of them by myself, and the 
 others by my sisters, my children, and by Mrs. Bernard Whitman, the Secretary 
 of the Ten Times One orders. It is pleasant to acknowledge the interest and 
 favor with wliich the collection already published has been received by teachers 
 of Sunday-schools. But it had scarcely appeared before we received an earnest 
 appeal from all quarters that we would attempt the preparation of another series, 
 intended for the younger children ; they make so large a part of every Sunday- 
 school that whatever helps them or their teachers helps forward the whole. I 
 felt at once some surprise that the general wish for such a collection had not been 
 sooner acknowledged and provided for. I therefore urged Mrs. Whitman and 
 my sister Lucretia to undertake at once the compilation of a volume which should 
 meet the purposes of the younger classes in all our Sunday-schools, as they 
 engaged in the study of the International texts for this year. They have under- 
 taken this very pleasant office, and the reader has in hand the stories which they 
 have provided for the little people. 
 
 " It is published at the same time with the collection for older boys and girls, 
 which, as before, was written by wh.it I am tempted to call my own ' Ten.' Both 
 of them are published with our best hopes and prayers for the welfare of the 
 young people for whom they are written." — Edward E. Hale. 
 
 ROGER BERKELEY'S PROBATION. 
 
 A Story. By Helen Campbell, author of " Prisoners of Poverty," 
 " Miss Melinda's Opportunity," "Mrs. Herndon's Income," "The What- 
 to-do Club." i2mo. Cloth. Price, jfi. 00 ; paper covers, 50 cents. 
 
 "It is one of tliose stories that always appeal to the sympathies, and will find 
 a large circle of readers among those who still believe in the courage, gratitude, 
 and fidelity of man. The tale is well conceived and prettily set in an old- 
 fashioned country house, the characters are in the main well drawn, and the 
 climax very effective. The author's style is bright and lively, and though the 
 materials she has used are not new, they are most pleasantly modelled to suit 
 her ends." — Commonwealth.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers^ Publications. 
 
 PKISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD, 
 
 By Helen Campbell, author of "Prisoners of Poverty," "The 
 What-to-do Club," etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, Jfi.oo ; paper covers, 50 
 cents. 
 
 " It is a noble work that Helen Campbell is doing in exposing the social 
 conditions against which working-women are striving in order to live respectably 
 and happily, as they have the natural right to live. Imagination has no part in 
 her description of their lot ; but experience in acquaintance with them in their 
 labor cumulates fact upon fact to make description vivid and forceful to social 
 conscience. And whether women are laborers of the United States, England, 
 France, or Germany, as pictured in her new book(' Prisoners of Poverty Abroad '), 
 they are largely indebted to her for their advance to recognition with workmen 
 as contestants for readjustment of the relations of capital and labor. The new 
 book is quite as serious and appealing as the other, and shows about the same 
 privation in conditions and inequalities in wages." — Boston Globe. 
 
 A RAMBLING STORY. 
 
 By Mary Cowden Clarke. A new edition. i6mo. Cloth'. Price, 
 Jfi.oo; paper covers, 50 cents. 
 
 " In ' A Rambling Story ' Mary Cowden Clarke, whose more serious Shake- 
 spearian studies have made her name pleasantly and honorably known to students, 
 tells a romantic tale of art, love, adventure, and travel. . . . The story has for 
 its heroes and heroines, principal and subordinate, true, high-hearted, romantic 
 characters, and is simply, pleasantly, and at times delightfully told, and abounds 
 in word-picturing and phrasing and romantic incidents." — Chicago Tribune. 
 
 A WOODLAND WOOING. 
 
 A Story. By Eleanor Putnam. i6mo. Cloth. Price, Ji.oo. 
 
 " The reader must be dull indeed who could not be won from his summer 
 drowsiness by enjoyment of the breeziness and cheeriness, the unforced brightness 
 and charming originality of this, the most amusing ' summer novel ' which has up 
 to date found its, way to our table. Its pages breathe of youth and summer 
 weather, of clover-fields and mountain brooks. One is quickened with a sense of 
 something near and sweet and wholesome in its pleasant company. It is the 
 story of a summer's 'camping-out,' told in alternate chapters by a brother and 
 sister, of the frank, jolly, rather 'picklesome ' sort." — Excha7ige. 
 
 COUNTER-CURRENTS. 
 
 A Story. By the author of "Justina." i6mo. Cloth. Price, 75 
 cents. 
 
 '" Counter-Currents,' by the anonymous author of ' Justina ' is well worth 
 being read, and attentively. It is a sweet, uplifting story, with vigorously drawn 
 characters and scenes, — indeed it is occasionally truly dramatic, — and with many 
 blendings of tender feeling and delicate analysis. Moreover, without seeming to 
 aim to do so unduly, it teaches several most important practical lessons in an 
 unmistakable manner." — Congregationalist. 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S COMPLETE WORKS. 
 
 From the text of the Rev. Alexander Dvce's second edition. With 
 Portrait, Memoir, and Glossary. A cheap edition. 7 vols. i6mo. Cloth. 
 Price, $5.25. 
 
 The " Alexander Dyce " edition of Shakespeare's plays and poems is pre- 
 sumedly one of the most accurate among the many editions which have been 
 published. The interpretation of the text has the indorsement of our best 
 scholars, both in England and America. The edition is issued in small, linndy 
 volumes, compact and durably bound, and contains a glossary. 
 
 8
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT CLEMENT KER. 
 
 A Novel. By George Fleming, author of " Kismet," " Mirage," 
 "Head of Medusa," etc. i6mo. Price, 75 cents. 
 
 " Under the name of ' George Fleming,' Miss Julia Fletcher has for more 
 than a decade been ministering to the pleasure of readers of the better sort of 
 fiction ; but we do not remember that in all that period she has produced a more 
 thoroughly original and artistic novel than 'The Truth about Clement Ker.' 
 From the literarj- point of view Miss Fletcher's work has always been of a rare 
 and charming quality. Her style is nervous, graceful, impressive, strong. . . . 
 The plot is admirably managed. Nothing could surpass the skill with which the 
 interest is slowly brought tocentre upon the hidden chamber in the ruins, and 
 the haunting terror of the closing chapters is something to be remembered. 
 Here again the author enforces the artistic creed of nothing too much. The 
 mystery remains a mystery to the last, or at any rate is only to be solved by the 
 reader's ingenuity." — Boston Beacon. 
 
 ROMANCES OF REAL LIFE. 
 
 First and Second Series (sold separately). Selected and annotated by 
 Leigh Hunt, author of "The Book of the Sonnet," "The Seer," "A 
 Day by the Fire," etc. 2 vols. i6mo. Price, 75 cents each. 
 
 Crimes, virtues, humors, plots, agonies, heroical sacrifices, mysteries of the 
 most extraordinary description, though taking place in the most ordinary walks 
 of life are the staple commodity of this book ; all true, and over the greater 
 portion of them hangs the greatest of all interests — domestic interest. 
 
 FRENCH AND ENGLISH. 
 
 A Comparison, By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. One volume. 
 i2ino. Cloth. Price, ^2.00. 
 
 " Mr. Hamerton's comparison of the two nations follows a very methodical 
 order. He compares them, step by step, in reference to education, patriotism, 
 politics, religion, virtues, customs, and society. The chapters on the virtues^ 
 which are philosophically classified under the heads of truth, justice, purity, tem- 
 perance, thrift, cleanliness, and courage — abound in suggestive observations." 
 — Academy. 
 
 INSIDE OUR GATE. 
 
 A Story, By Mrs. Christine C. Brush. Author of " The Colo- 
 nel's Opera Cloak," in the " No Name Series." i6mo. Cloth. Price, 
 
 )?i.oo, 
 
 " One of the most amusing stories of the season is ' Inside our Gate,' by 
 Christine Chaplin Brush, the author of the ' Colonel's Opera Cloak,' a book 
 which achieved a great popular success several years ago. In her new book the 
 writer has sustained her reputation, and gives us reproductions of quaint charac- 
 ters met with in household experiences that are full of an entertaining truthfulness 
 to life. Swedish, Scotch, Irish, and rustic American peculiarities are brought 
 forward in this volume with a realism that shows the author has carefully studied 
 the subjects chosen for illustration- The young or old matron who has been 
 oblii;ed to haunt intelligence-offices in search of servants will find in these pages 
 matter highly suggestive of her own trials and tribulations, set forth in a bright 
 and piquant manner that will make very spicy reading in the hours that can be 
 spared from domestic duties." — Saturday Evening Gazette. 
 
 THE STORY OF REALMAH. 
 
 By Sir Arthur Helps, author of "Friends in Council," "Casimir 
 Maremma," etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, 75 cents. 
 
 9
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 CASIMIB MABEMMA. 
 
 A Story. By Sir Arthur Helps, author of "Friends in Council," 
 "The Story of Reahnah," etc. First American edition. i6mo. Cloth. 
 Price, 75 cents. 
 
 BY LEAFY WAYS. 
 
 Brief Studies in the Book of Nature. By F. A. Knight. With nu- 
 merous beautiful illustrations by E. T- Compton. izmo. Cloth. Price, 
 
 ^2.00. 
 
 "The author leads us through all the varying year in a series of delightful 
 chapters. It is hard to single out one as superior to another. His diction has a 
 character of its own. So ingeniously does he blend what he has seen with what 
 he has read, and all in such an original manner, that one feels one's self in 
 the presence of a new master. He transmutes the spirit of the country into the 
 language of the town in a way which appeals alike to the naturalist and to the 
 man of letters. His very table of contents is enough to make a Londoner long 
 for another holiday." — London Academy. 
 
 THE LITTLE PILGBIM : Further Experiences. 
 
 On the Dark Mountains. The Land of Darkness. i6mo. Cloth, limp. 
 Price, 60 cents. 
 
 This volume is uniform with our edition of " A Little Pilgrim," and is a 
 continuation of that book. 
 
 STOBIES OF THE SEEN AND THE TJNSEEN. 
 
 By Mrs. Margaret O. W. Oliphant. Including the four books 
 hitherto published anonymously, viz : " A Little Pilgrim : In the Unseen ; " 
 "The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences, etc. ; " "Old Lady Mary, a 
 Story of the Seen and the Unseen ; " " The Open Door. — The Portrait : 
 Two Stories of the Seen and the Unseen." In one volume. i6mo. 
 Cloth. Price, ^1.25. 
 
 WITH SA'DI IN THE GABDEN ; 
 
 Or, The Book of Love. Being the " Ishk " or third chapter of the 
 " Bostan " of the Persian poet Sa'di, embodied in a dialogue held in the 
 garden of the Taj Mahal, at Agra. By Sir Edwin Arnold, M.A.,' 
 K.C.I.E., C.S.I. One volume. i6mo. Cloth. Uniform with "The 
 Light of Asia," "Pearls of the Faith," etc. Price, ;?i.oo. 
 
 "'With Sa'di in the Garden,' by Sir Edwin Arnold, continues the service of 
 making English readers acquainted with the classical poetry of the East, in which 
 the author has been so long and so successfully engaged. This is in most respects 
 the most interesting contribution Sir Edwin has given. It is a more connected 
 story, and its motive is clearer than in his other translations and paraphrases. 
 Tlie poems from Sa'di abound in rare beauty of thought and fancy, and are 
 delightful independently of the text in which they are embedded. 1 he wonder- 
 fully flexible, idiomatic, and strong and chaste English of Sir Edwin Arnold has 
 a special charm of its own ; and his command over English diction has been 
 nowhere shown by him with greater fulness, brilliancy, and force than in this 
 volume, which appeals strongly to every finely cultivated taste and every lover of 
 ooetry in its finest and truest essence." — Saturday Evening Gazette.
 
 b 
 
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