Buckingham Palace wuz a sight to see, beautiful and grand, and not fur off is St. James’s Park, one of the most attractive in the city though it wuz once only a marshy field. As I looked on its charming and diversified beauty I thought how little there is in heredity compared to gumption and draining.

Josiah, as I said, wanted to see the Tower of London. It is the most celebrated fortress in England. It is awful old, and good land! if I wuz shet up there I shouldn’t never expect to break out. Some of the walls are fifteen feet thick. The White Tower, they say, wuz begun by William the Conqueror, a man that I told the guide politely, “wuz quite widely known, and I had hearn a sight of him though I had never had the pleasure of his acquaintance.” It wuz completed in one thousand ninety-eight.

Josiah and I wandered round there for hours, and should most probable got lost and mebby been gropin’ round there to-day if it hadn’t been for the guide.

I wuz dretful interested in London Bridge. The present structure cost seven million, so they say, and I wouldn’t have built it for a cent less. I thought as I stood there of what had took place on that spot since Sir William Wallace’s day and how his benign head (most every bump on it good ones) wuz put up there a mark for the insultin’ jeers of the populace, and it made me feel bad and sorry for Helen, his last wife, she that wuz Helen Mar. But Sir Thomas More’s head wuz nailed up in the same place, and the Bishop of Rochester’s and lots of others.

It wuzn’t right.

And then I thought of the gay seens that had took place there, the tournaments and triumphal marches and grand processions and sad ones, and the great multitude who have passed over it, prince and beggar, velvet and rags, a countless throng constantly passing, constantly changing, no more to be counted than the drops of water in the silent stream below, all the time, all the time sweepin’ on to the sea. I had sights of emotions.

And all the while I wuz in London, in the gay streets and quiet ones, in palace or park, the shade of Dickens walked by my side or a little in advance, seemin’ to pint out to me the places where he had walked when he see visions and dreamed dreams. And I almost expected to meet Little Nell leading her grandpa, or David Copperfield, or Peggoty searching for Em’ly, or some of our Mutual Friends.

And so with Thackeray. As I looked up at the gloomy houses on some quiet street I almost expected to see the funeral hatchment of old Sir Pitt Crawley’s wife and Becky Sharp’s little pale face peering out, or sweet Ethel Newcomb and her cousin Clive, and the dear old General and Henry Esmond, and etc., etc. And so with Alfred Tennyson. In some beautiful place of drooping foliage and placid water I almost felt that I should see the mystic barge drawin’ nigh and I too should float off into some Lotus land. And so with all the other beloved poets and authors who seem nigher to us than our next door neighbors in the flesh.

Dorothy havin’ never been there, felt that she must see Shakespeare’s home, which is a journey of only three hours by rail, so we made a visit there one day, passing through some of England’s most beautiful seenery on our way, grand old parks with stately houses rising up in their midst, gray stun churches in charming little villages, thatched-roof cottages, picturesque water-mills; it wuz all a lovely picture of rural England.

It being a little too long a journey for one day, we stayed all night at Shakespeare’s Inn, where the great poet went 442 daily for his glass of stimulant––so they say. But I am glad I don’t believe everything that I hear.

Arvilly mourned to think that she couldn’t have sold him America’s twin crimes: “Intemperance and Greed”; but I kinder changed the subject. As much store as I set by Arvilly’s cast-iron principles, somehow I couldn’t bear the thought of having Shakespeare canvassed.

All the rooms are named after Shakespeare’s plays, painted over the doors in black letters. We slept in “All’s Well That Ends Well”––a good name––and we slept peaceful, thinkin’ likely that it would turn out so. Miss Meechim had the “Merry Wives of Windsor.” She wanted to change with Arvilly, who had “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” but Arvilly wouldn’t budge.

Miss Meechim told me in confidence that if Shakespeare could have had the benefit of her advice he would probable have called it “The Unfortunate Wives of Windsor.” “And then,” sez she, “I could have occupied it with more pleasure.” But I didn’t much think that he would have changed his plans or poetry if she had been on the spot.

The next morning early we set out for Shakespeare’s cottage, described so often, saw the room in which the great poet was born, and wuz told that nothing had been changed there since he lay in his cradle, which we could believe as we looked about us on the low walls, the diamond panes of the windows and the quaint old furniture. The cottage is now used for Shakespeare’s relics, some of which looked as if they might be real, and some as if they wuz made day before yesterday. We visited the church where he wuz baptized and saw on one of the pews the metal plate on which is engraved the name of the poet’s father.

And, thinkin’ that a visit to Shakespeare’s home wouldn’t be complete without seeing the place where his heart journeyed whilst his life wuz young and full of hope and joy, we drove out to Shottery, to the little farmhouse where his sweetheart, Ann Hathaway, lived.

It is a quaint little cottage, and after going through it we drank a glass of water drawn up by a well sweep from the very same old well from which Shakespeare drank so many times. As I stood there I saw in fancy the rosy, dimpled Ann handing the crystal water to the boy, Will, who mebby whispered to her as he took the glass sweet words, all rhyming with youth and joy and love.

And the same blue sky bent above us; birds wheeled and sung over our heads, descendants, mebby, of the birds that sung to them that day. I had sights of emotions––sights of ’em––and so I did in the cottage as I sot on the old, old settle in the corner of the fireplace, whose age nobdy could dispute, as its stiff old joints are strengthened with bands of iron, where young Will Shakespeare and his sweetheart often sat, and where he might have read to her the new poem in honor of her charms:

He or she didn’t dream of his future greatness, and I dare say that old Pa Hathaway, who mebby slept nigh by, might have complained to her ma, “Wonderin’ what that fool meant by talkin’ in poetry at that time of night.” And, mebby, if he soared too high and loud in verse, old Pa Hathaway might have called out:

“Ann! cover up the fire and go to bed! Billy wants to go home!”

I don’t say this wuz so, but mebby. So holden are our eyes and so difficult it is for the human vision to discern between an eagle and a commoner bird, when the wings are featherin’ out, before they are full plumed for a flight amongst the stars.

Well, we went back to London, tired, but riz up in our minds, and renewed our sightseeing there.

Miss Meechim and Dorothy bought lots of things that they said they could git cheaper in England, and Arvilly wuz in great sperits; she sold three books, sold herself out and went home with an empty box but a full purse. Robert wuz busy up to the last minute, but managed to spend time to take Tommy to see some famous waxworks he had promised.

About the middle of the forenoon Robert Strong proposed that we should all go and take a last drive in the park, and we set off, all but Arvilly. She thought of some one in another part of the city that she wanted to canvass, and she started off alone in a handsome. Miss Meechim and Dorothy wuz feelin’ well. Tommy, who wuz in fine sperits, wuz perched as usual on Robert Strong’s knee.

The sheltered drives and smooth windin’ roads wuz gay with passers-by, and the seen wuz beautiful, but I wuz sad and deprested about one thing. King Edward is a real good natered man, and a good pervider, and seems to set store by America. And Queen Alexandra is a sweet, good woman.

But still in these last hours I kep’ thinkin’ of Edwardses’ Ma, who was rainin’ here durin’ my last visit. I wuz kep’ from visitin’ her at that time by P. Martyn Smythe and onfortunate domestic circumstances.

And I have always worried for fear she hearn I wuz in London that time and never went nigh her; she not knowin’ what hendered me.

I writ her a letter to make her mind easy, but must know she never got it, for she never writ a word in reply. I posted the letter I spoke on with my own hands. I directed it

Widder Albert,

London, England.

It runs as follers:

“Dear and revered Queen and Widder:

“I tried my best to git to see you whilst in London, but Josiah’s clothes wuzn’t fit; he had frayed ’em out on a tower, 445 and his shirts wuz yeller as saffern, half washed by underlins. I wouldn’t demean him in your sight by bringin’ him with me and he wuz worrisome and I couldn’t leave him. You’ve been married and you know how it is.

“So I have to return home sad-hearted without settin’ my eyes on the face of a woman I honor and set store by, a good wife, a good mother, a good ruler. The world hangs your example up and is workin’ up to the pattern and will in future generations. No doubt there is a few stitches that might be sot evener in the sampler, but the hull thing is a honor to our humanity and the world at large. I bow to your memory as I would to you in deep honor and esteem. And if we do not meet here below may we meet in them heavenly fields you and your Albert, Josiah and I, young and happy, all earthly distinctions washed off in the swellin’s of Jordan.

“And so God bless you clear down to the river banks whose waves are a swashin’ up so clost to our feet, and adoo.

“Josiah Allen’s Wife.”

I never hearn a word from her, and I am afraid she died thinkin’ I had slighted her.

The next morning bright and early we went aboard the ship that wuz to take us home. It wuz a fair day; the fog dispersed and the sun shone out with promise and the waves talked to me of Home, Sweet Home.

It wuz a cold lowerin’ day when the good ship bore us into New York harbor. The gray clouds hung low some as if they wuz a sombry canopy ready to cover up sunthin’, a crime or a grief, or a tomb, or mebby all on ’em, and a few cold drops fell down from the sky ever and anon, some like tears, only chill and icy as death.

These thoughts come into my mind onbid as I looked on the heavy pall of dark clouds that hung low over our heads some like the dark drapery hangin’ over a bier.

But anon and bime bye these dark meditations died 446 away, for what wuz cloud or cold, or white icy shores? It wuz home that waited for us; Jonesville and my dear ones dwelt on that shore approachin’ us so fast. Bitter, icy winds would make the warm glowin’ hearth fire of home seem brighter. Love would make its own sunshine. Happiness would warm the chill of the cold November day.

Thomas J. and Maggie stood on the pier, both well and strong; Tommy sprung into their arms. They looked onto his round rosy face through tears of gratitude and thankfulness and embraced me with the same. And wuzn’t Thomas J. happy? Yes, indeed he wuz, when he held his boy in his arms and had holt of his ma’s hands, and his pa’s too. And Maggie, too, how warmly she embraced us with tears and smiles chasing each other over her pretty face. Tirzah Ann and Whitfield wuz in the city, but didn’t come to the minute, bein’ belated, as we learnt afterwards, by Tirzah Ann a waverin’ in a big department store between a pink and a blue shiffon front for a new dress.

But they appeared in a few minutes, Tirzah Ann with her arms full of bundles which dribbled onnoticed on the pier as she advanced and throwed her arms round her pa’s and ma’s neck. Love is home, and with our dear children’s arms about us and their warm smiles of delight and welcome and their loving words in our ear, we had got home.

The children wuz stayin’ at a fashionable boardin’ house, kept by Miss Eliphalet Snow, a distant relation of Maggie’s, who had lost her pardner and her property, but kep’ her pride and took boarders for company, so she said. And we wuz all goin’ to start for Jonesville together the next day. But as the baggage of our party wuz kinder mixed up, Josiah and I thought we would go with Miss Meechim’s party to the tarven and stay.

Robert Strong and our son, Thomas J., met like two ships of one line with one flag wavin’ over ’em, and bearing the same sealed orders from their Captain above. How congenial they wuz, they had been friends always, made so onbeknown 447 to them, they only had to discover each other, and then they wuz intimate to once, and dear.

Dorothy and Miss Meechim and the children greeted each other with smiles and glad, gay words. Yes, all wuz a happy confusion of light words, gay laughter, Saratoga trunks, smiles, joy, satchel bags––we had got home.

As I stood there surrounded by all that I prized most on earth I had a glimpse of a haggard lookin’ form arrayed in tattered finery, a bent figure, a young old face, old with drink and dissipation, that looked some way familiar though I couldn’t place her. She looked at our party with a strange interest and seemed to say some murmured words of prayer or blessing or appeal, and disappeared––soon forgot in our boundless joy and the cares tendin’ to our baggage.

Arvilly wuz glad to set her feet on shore, for she too loved her native land with the love that a good principled, but stern stepmother has for a interestin’ but worrisome child that she’s bringin’ up by hand. She thought she would go with the children to their boarding-place, havin’ knowed Miss Eliphalet Snow in their young days, when Miss Snow wuz high-headed and looked down on her, and wantin’ to dant her, I spoze, with accounts of her foreign travel. And we parted to meet agin in the mornin’ to resoom our voyage to Jonesville––blessed harbor where we could moor our two barks, Josiah’s and mine, and be at rest.

Miss Meechim and Dorothy and Robert laid out to start for California the next day, as business wuz callin’ Robert there loud and he had to respond.

And I may as well tell it now as any time, for it has got to be told. I knowed it wuz told to me in confidence, and it must be kep’ for a spell anyway, Robert and Dorothy wuz engaged, and they wuz goin’ to be married in a short time in her own beautiful home in San Francisco. Now you needn’t try to git me to tell who told me, for I am not as sot as cast iron on that, I shall mention no names, only simply remarkin’ that Dorothy and Robert set store by me and I by 448 them. Them that told me said that they felt like death to not tell Miss Meechim of the engagement, but knowin’ her onconquerable repugnance to matrimony and to Dorothy’s marriage in particular, and not knowin’ but what the news would kill her stun dead, them that told me said they felt that they had better git her back to her own native shores before bein’ told, which I felt wuz reasonable.

How I did hate to part with sweet Dorothy, I loved her and she me visey versey. And Robert Strong, he sot up in my heart next to Thomas J., and crowdin’ up pretty clost to him too. Miss Meechim also had her properties, and we had gone through wearisome travel, dangers and fatigues, pleasant rest, delightful sight-seeing, poor vittles, joy and grief together, and it wuz hard to break up old ties. But it had to be. Our life here on this planet is made up of meetin’s and partin’s. It is hail and farewell with us from the cradle to the grave.

We all retired early, bein’ tired out, and we slept well, little thinkin’ of the ghastly shape that would meet us on the thresholt of the new day. But, oh, my erring but beloved country! why ortn’t we to expect it as long as you keep the mills a-goin’ that turns out such black, ghastly shadders by the thousands and thousands all the time, all the time, to enwrap your children.

Dorothy never knowed it––what wuz the use of cloudin’ her bright young life with the awful shadder? But then, as I told Robert, that black, dretful pall hangs over every home and every heart in our country and is liable to fall anywhere and at any time, no palace ruff is too high and no hovel ruff is too low to be agonized and darkened by its sombry folds.

But he said it would make Dorothy too wretched, and he could not have her told, and I agreed to it, but of course I told my pardner and his heart wuz wrung and his bandanna wet as sop in consequence on’t. And he told Miss Meechim, too, that mornin’, and her complaisant belief in genteel drinkin’ and her conservative belief in the Poor Man’s Club, wuz 449 shook hard––how hard I didn’t know until afterwards. Oh, how she, too, loved Aronette! The children when they wuz told on’t mourned because we did, and on their own account too, for they sot store by her what little they had seen of her––for nobody could see her without loving her.

As for Arvilly, her ideas on intemperance couldn’t be added to or diminished by anything, but she wep’ and cried for days.

Well, I spoze you all want to know the peticulars. Robert Strong wuz the first one that left the tarven in the mornin’. He had to see a man very early on business. He went out by the ladies’ entrance. And there crouched on the cold stun steps, waitin’ we spozed to ketch another glimpse of Dorothy, and mebby to ask for help, for she wuz almost naked, and her plump little limbs almost skin and bone, dead and cold, frozen and starved, so we spozed, lay Aronette. Pretty, happy little girl, dearly beloved, thrown by Christian America to the wild beasts just as sure as Nero ever did, only while he threw his human victims to be torn and killed for fun, America throws her human victims, her choicest, brightest youth, down to ruin and death, for greed. Which looks the Worst in God’s sight? I d’no nor Josiah don’t.

Well, Robert called a ambulance, had the poor boney, ragged victim took to a hospital, but all efforts wuz vain to resuscitate her. She had gone to give in her evidence against America’s license laws, aginst Army Canteen, Church and State, aginst Licensed Saloon Keeper, aginst highest official and lowest voter, aginst sinner and saint, who by their encouragement or indifference make such crimes possible.

The evidence wuz carried in, the criminals must meet it, it is waitin’ for ’em, waitin’. Of course the New York parties who helped Robert, policemen, doctors, and nurses, thought very little of it, it wuz so common, all over the land, they said, such things was happening all the time from the same cause. And we knew it well, we knew of the wide open pit, 450 veiled with tempting covering, wove by Selfishness and Greed, scattered over with flimsy flowers of excuse, palliation, expediency that tempts and engulfs our brightest youth, the noblest manhood, old and young, rich and poor––it is very common.

But to us who loved the pretty, merry little maid, rememberin’ her so happy and so good, and saw her ruined and killed before our eyes by the country that should have protected her, we kept it in our hearts, we could not forgit it.

Robert Strong had her buried in a quiet corner of a cemetery and left orders for a stun cross to be put up to mark her grave. He asked me to write the epitaph which he had carved in the marble, and I did:

Aronette
Young, Happy, Beloved––Murdered!
Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.

Robert had it put on just as I writ it. He didn’t tell Dorothy anything about her death till they got home. She never see the epitaph; it wuz true as truth itself, but it wuz hash, and might have made her bed-sick, lovin’ Aronette as she did. But after Dorothy Strong wuz livin’ with him, blessed and happy in their pretty, simple home in his City of Justice, then he told her that Aronette wuz dead, died in a hospital and wuz buried in a pleasant graveyard. And Dorothy mourned for her as she would for a beloved sister.

Yes, Dorothy will mourn for her all her days. The young man who wuz to marry her will live under the shadow of this sorrow all his life, for he is one of the constant ones who cannot forgit. The old grandmother in Normandie waited for letters from her darling which never came, and will die waiting for her.

The young man who enticed the pretty little maid into the canteen, licensed by America, and gave her stupefying drink, licensed by our laws, took her, staggering and stupid, 451 to another dretful house, made as respectable as they can make it by our Christian civilization. He lived long enough, I spoze, to add several more victims to the countless list of such murders that lays on our country’s doorsteps, and then he too died, a bloated, loathsome wreck, makin’ another victim for the recordin’ angel to mark down, if there is room in her enormous books of debt and credit with this traffic for another name. And I spoze there is, for them books tower up mountain high, and new ones have to be opened anon or oftener, and will I spoze till God’s time of reckonin’ comes and the books are opened and the debts paid.

It wuz a lovely day when we see the towers of Jonesville loom up above the billows of environin’ green.

(I mean the M. E. steeple showin’ up beyend Grout Nickleson’s pine woods.)

As the cars drew into the station they tooted their delight agin and agin at our safe return as the train stopped.

As we walked up the platform I see Josiah furtively on-button his stiff linen cuffs as if preparin’ to throw ’em off for life. His face radiant, and hummin’ sotey vosey his favorite ballad:

“Hum agin, hum agin, from a furren shore.”