GOOD-BYE for the present to London. Good-bye to its smoke, its fogs, its predatory hackmen, its bad water, its worse beer, its still worse gin. Good-bye to its eternal rains, its never-ending badly dressed men and worse dressed women. Good-bye to very bad bread. Good-bye to the greatest collection of shams and realities, goodness and cruelty in the world. Seven weeks in London and its environs is all that an American can endure, who ever expects to get back to his own country. Were fate to have a spite at him, and condemn him to make his residence there forever, he would settle down as a man does in a penitentiary and do the best he could, but for one who has a hope of returning to a country that was made after the Maker had had some experience in making countries, a longer stay in London than seven weeks would be too much. Seven weeks of biliousness and depression—seven weeks of exasperation and discomfort, seven weeks of extortion and tipping, seven weeks in an English suit of clothes, is all that an average American can endure.

And so good-bye to London till we renew our strength and can tackle it again. It is not exhausted, nor could it be in a year. It is a brute among cities, but it is a mastodon. It is a very large and variegated animal.

To the south lies France—La Belle France—and thither we go. Our landlady would hold us if she could, and gives expression to many reasons why we should stay in London: It is very warm in Paris; it is very disagreeable crossing the channel; Paris is unhealthy. At this time of the year Paris is crowded, and it is probable that we will not be able to get apartments such as would be suitable. It is not the season in Paris, and we had better go there later, and so on and so forth. You see the season in London is waning, and the good lady will have difficulty in filling her rooms. It is delicately hinted that if a slight deduction in rent (we have been paying three prices) would be an object, etc. But it all avails nothing. We should go to Paris if we should be compelled to sleep under a bridge and eat in a market. It is not so much to get to Paris as it is to get out of London, and raise our spirits to something like their normal condition. And so, when the good woman finds there is no holding us, she makes out our bill vindictively, racking her imagination to find items to insert, and weeping, no doubt, after our departure, over items that she might have inserted, but, in the hurry, forgot. The cabman, knowing by the station he was driving us to that we were going, managed to charge an extra shilling, and at the lunch counter at the station we paid an extra penny for the everlasting ham sandwich, which was to be the last. And when the last tip was paid, and the last extortion submitted to, we were finally locked in our villainous compartment, and were off. London, or the fog that covered it, faded from our sight, we saw the sun, and were scurrying through the green fields and the real delights of rural England.

From Victoria Station to New Haven is not the most interesting trip that can be imagined, although there are picturesque towns, waving fields of grass, with an occasional bit of woods, that relieve the journey of some of its unpleasant features, and make it rather enjoyable. But by the time one has gone through miles and miles of such scenery, the towns become monotonous, each succeeding field of grain waves just as the one before it did, the woods, miniature forests, are just alike, and, leaning back in the corner of the compartment, the time is spent in dozing until eleven o’clock, when the train rushes into the station at New Haven, and we struggle through the dimly lighted passages to the dock, where lies the steamer that is to take us across that bugbear of all tourists, the English Channel.

And then we have the satisfaction of learning that the tide is not in, and the steamer will not leave for two hours and a half. It is a dark, windy night, and there is no way to spend the time save by pacing up and down the narrow confines of the deck, watching the enormous cranes loading huge packages of merchandize into the vessel’s hold; or taking a stroll along the dock, regardless of the momentary danger of stumbling over an unseen cable and pitching headlong into the water.

There is one other way of passing the time. Whenever a tourist can find nothing else to do, he eats. There is in the station at New Haven the inevitable lunch counter, with the orthodox ham sandwich and bitter beer. To this everybody was attracted as by a magnet. There is no escaping it. No body was hungry; but it seems to be a law of Nature that you must eat ham sandwiches while you wait at railroad stations. And in obedience to this law, a cart-load of the sandwiches were devoured and paid for.

The New Haven sandwich is very like its London brother, only it is a trifle thicker. The cutter is not as expert as the London professional, but he makes it just as indigestible. It is a trifle worse, because it is a trifle larger.

But time goes on, no matter how slowly it seems to move, and the tide comes in, although its rise cannot be seen, and so, just before one o’clock the warning whistle was given, the passengers took their places, the great wheels began to revolve, and we slowly steamed out past the breakwater into the channel.

The necessity for making the boat’s landing so far away from the deep water cannot be understood. But so it is. Instead of running the track down to the dock and establishing the station there, where there would be no occasion to wait for the tide, the steamer goes up an arm of the sea about an eighth of a mile, and has to stay there until the water is deep enough to allow the passage to be made.

Once out upon the channel, the fresh breeze blows away all the wicked thoughts the two hours’ detention had engendered, and as the moon breaks through the clouds, dimming the fast disappearing lights on shore, we give ourselves up to pleasant reverie. There is the memory of all that has occurred during an exceedingly busy seven weeks in London, and the anticipation of experiences new and strange that are to fill in the next two or three months. And as we sit on deck smoking and dreaming, until, our last cigar having gone out, and the chill air made us shiver, we go below only to find fresh cause for growling at the English, and things English.

Instead of commodious, airy staterooms in which we can go regularly to bed and enjoy a good night’s rest, there is nothing but a series of bunks, upholstered in a cheap red plush, on which the weary traveler may stretch himself, and, putting a blanket over him, get such rest as he can from such scanty accommodations. And this, too, for the first-class passenger.

At four o’clock every one was turned out, for Dieppe was in sight. Such a sorry looking lot of passengers I never saw. Most of them had caught a severe cold, and all of them looked uncomfortable and cross, as though they really had not enjoyed the luxurious quarters furnished by the enterprising manager of that line.

The view from the steamer’s deck was beautiful. The sun, about half an hour high, made the water sparkle as the light off-shore breeze rippled its surface. The channel, which had behaved wonderfully well, was dotted with fishing smacks from Dieppe, while here and there a steamer, trailing a long cloud of smoke behind, sailed along utterly indifferent to the smaller craft that had to tack with each phase of the ever-varying wind. Just ahead of us, half hidden by chalky cliffs, could be seen a part of the town, while to the right, huge white cliffs arose and stretched away almost as far as the eye could reach, the straight white sides rising abruptly from the water, reflecting the rays of the sun, and shining with dazzling whiteness. On the left, high up on the hills, were stately mansions, pretty villas, cool looking parks and pleasant drives. It was indeed a beautiful sight, and we were gazing on it with rapture when a bell sounded, the paddle wheel stopped revolving, and we drifted slowly on.

“The tide does not serve, and we will have to cruise about here for two or three hours.”

So said one of the seamen when asked why the steamer had been stopped.

It was pleasant. We enjoyed it. We fairly reveled in it.

We were hungry, it’s true, but what was hunger to the delight of waiting three hours in an abominable steamer? We were cold and tired. But what of that? We could gaze on white cliffs and talk pleasant things to each other for three hours!

When the tide did serve, and we were landed, which happened about six o’clock Sunday morning, we went through the Custom House, our countenances expressing such Christian resignation as must have indicated our character to the officials, for they never opened our baggage at all. They simply said: “Avez vous tabac ou liquers?” (observe how well we are getting on in French), and as we murmured “No,” aloud, and to ourselves, “but we wish we had,” they waved us on, and we were all right.

Adjoining the Custom House is a coffee room, and we entered. The repast spread out for us was just a trifle the worst that was ever seen. It was worse than anything in London, and more than that cannot be said.

I suppose it is all right, and for the best. I suppose that taking us out of London at six o’clock P.M., and waiting two and a half hours in New Haven for the tide, and two hours in Dieppe harbor also, for the tide, is unavoidable. But if I ever get a chance I shall ask the manager of the line these questions:

1. Do you know the hour at which the tide comes in at New Haven?

2. Do you know the hour the tide serves to enter Dieppe?

3. If so, why not give us the five and a half hours that were consumed in useless waiting at New Haven and Dieppe, in London?

4. Has your company any interest in the ham sandwich and beer counter in New Haven? and is this delay in that most uninteresting place for the purpose of compelling the waiting passengers to leave a few more shillings in England?

And I shall demand specific answers to these queries. The taste of the New Haven sandwiches is yet in my mouth.

Dieppe is a pleasant little city of perhaps twenty thousand population, devoted to the carving of ivory, fishing, and swindling tourists, the latter pursuit being evidently the most prosperous. The fisher people are a picturesque lot as to costume, and are hardy withal, men, women and children. They are bold sailors, and what they do not know about water and its contents is not worth knowing.

Bad as the English trains are, in France, where there is the same system, it was even worse, for we were a little shaky in our French. However, we put on a cheerful countenance, and said “Oui” to everything, and made believe we knew all about it, and let the guard put us where he pleased, and were soon humming along through the outskirts of Dieppe. We were just beginning to enjoy the prospect of rural scenery, when, without a note of warning, we plunged into a tunnel, which seemed to last forever, though it was only a mile long.

Emerging from this, it was seen that an immense mountain had been pierced, and we were at once in the fertile valleys of picturesque Normandy. As the train hurried along there was a constant succession of pictures that would drive a poet or painter into raptures.

The broad valleys, the hills and dales, were intersected by smooth white roads that wound around side hills, through forests and then far away over a long, level stretch, through queer little towns, the existence of which was never dreamed of by the outside world. All along these well-kept wagonways were lined on either side by closely trimmed hedges, shaded by tall and stately Lombardy poplars, that stood grim and erect as though they were the guardians of the country.

Here and there between the quaint little villages, with their one main street running their entire length, were the high, narrow houses of the peasants, with thatched roofs and queer little windows. Around them, neatly piled, were bundles of fagots, carefully done up and stored away for winter use. They are a frugal people, these Normans, and waste absolutely nothing.

Although it is Sunday morning, and we are sad because circumstances will not allow us to attend divine worship, it seems to make no difference with the people here, for in every field are seen women, with their high peaked bonnets, busily engaged in raking fragrant hay into huge piles, which the men, arrayed in the traditional blue blouse and overalls, are loading upon wagons for carriage to the barns.

These men and women are well built, sturdy people, who have thrived well upon the pure air that comes down from the mountains above. In the olden time the men were noted for their stature and strength, and furnished the French army with its best troops; and they are to-day fine specimens of physical manhood.

I don’t know why it is, but there is something irresistibly fascinating in an old castle, or the ruins of what once was a great stronghold. After passing Malaunay and getting well out into the country, we came to a series of hills stretching way back from the railroad. There was a dense forest near the summit of the highest part, upon the top of which, half hidden by the trees, was part of a castle, a bit of wall and a huge round tower, all that remained of what was, in the early history of the country, a castle that was utterly impregnable. As the train wound round the base of the hill, a better view of it was obtained, and then came the longing to plunge through the forest, clamber up the steep hillside and wander through the old ruins, hunting for trap-doors and deep, dark dungeons, where noble knights had been confined for years and years, while fair ladies pined away and died because they came not back to them. This pleasant reverie might have gone on indefinitely, even after the romantic spot had been left far behind, had not the other passengers in the compartment begun preparing to alight at the next station, Rouen.

We determined to stop over one train at Rouen, to see not only a French city, but the old statue of the French heroine, Joan of Arc, who was there burned at the stake, and the famous cathedral therein. Tibbitts, Lemuel, was of the party, and a Professor in a western college likewise.

The Professor was calmly enthusiastic, and Tibbitts was unutterably miserable. He could not speak a word of French, and it puzzled him to even order a drink. And then the wine! He did not like wine, and French brandy was not to his taste. He managed to make them understand, however, what he wanted, and managed to get it a minute after he landed from the cars.

It was Sunday, but the shops were all open, and newsboys were crying their papers upon the streets. Their announcements were very long, and Tibbitts stood and heard one of them clear through.

“Listen to the little villain,” he exclaimed. “I don’t believe a d—d word of it.” And Mr. Tibbitts preached a short sermon anent the exaggerations common to newsboys, recounting the number of times he had been induced by their false representation to purchase papers in America. He considered himself too old to be taken in by a French newsboy. “Newsboys are the same in Rouen as in Oshkosh,” he said.

After a light lunch in an arbor in a delicious garden back of a cafÉ, we started to see Rouen, its cathedral and the statue of Joan, and what else was to be seen. We urged Tibbitts to accompany us. He concluded to do it, though he protested it was far more pleasant to sit in that arbor, even though it was beastly wine he was drinking instead of the delicious whisky of Oshkosh, than it was tramping around in search of antiquities.

We came to a narrow street, one of the kind only to be seen in French cities. The entire space from wall to wall could not have been twelve feet, and on either hand were curious houses, seven stories high, entered by dark, narrow tunnels rather than passages, but with flowers at every window, clear to the queer, quaint top, which was continued after it had reached what should have been its summit. The professor stopped before one of these dark passages, and observed a parcel of illy dressed but marvelously clean children—there are no dirty children in France—playing some game.

“It is wonderful!” said the Professor, in an ecstacy; “here are we, of the new West, standing on ground in a street through which, may be, the soldiers of old France marched. Here are we within sight of the place where Joan of Arc was burned, on ground pressed by the feet of Charlemagne. In this house, perchance, were born heroes; within these walls for hundreds of years have been born children who have grown to manhood, and died. These children, playing in this gutter, were born in this historic city, and——”

“And they all speak French,” interrupted Tibbitts, “which I can’t, but, thank Heaven, I can lay all over ’em in English. Look here, Professor, don’t give us any more rot about this being old. We are just as old in Oshkosh as they are in Rouen. When the old Norman warriors were cruising about

loaded down with pot-metal, killing each other, the Indians of America were doing the same thing among themselves, only they were clothed more sensibly. A breech clout was a thundering sight more comfortable in the summer than steel armor, and I don’t know that killing a man with a lance was any more deserving of adoration than killing one with a bow and arrow. The point to it all is killing the man. Antiquity!

“What do you know about it? Here is a lot of stone that has been piled up a thousand years or more. How do you know but what the Indians are older than the Gauls? I hold that they are. The Gauls built a cathedral that is standing yet. I defy you to go anywhere in Wisconsin and find such a cathedral standing. What does that prove? Why! that the ancient Indians built their cathedrals so much farther back than the Gauls that they have all disappeared. Nothing can resist the iron tooth of time. Now I think that this cathedral is rather modern than otherwise. [By this time we were in front of the cathedral.] It is tolerably ancient, but if you want to visit a really old country, go to Wisconsin. That is so old that everything of this kind has disappeared entirely.”

We left the cathedral, and after infinite trouble, owing to the fact that the average citizen of Rouen is sadly deficient in English, found the statue of Joan of Arc. The Professor stood before it in an ecstatic mood; Tibbitts, profoundly disgusted.

“Who was Joan of Arc, anyway?” said he. “A dreamy sort of a girl who thought she had a mission. There were no lecture courses in France in that day, and no lecture bureaus. Had there been such a vent for her inspiration she would have been an Anna Dickinson No. 1. She would have gone about France lecturing for anywhere from one hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty dollars a night, and would have made a pile of money, and bought a place in fee simple for her father, and got a lot of money in bonds; that’s what she would have done. But there were no such facilities for genius at that time, and so she put on armor, and led soldiers, and won victories, and finally was burned at the stake for a witch. I don’t see anything special to craze over in Joan. I’m going back to the cafÉ and put in the time before the train leaves in literary pursuits. I’ll write a letter to my mother. It’s a thousand pities that we didn’t go straight on to Paris, instead of stopping in this infernal old hole. We might have got there in time to go to the Mabille to-night. But it will be too late by the time we get there.”

And Tibbitts left us and returned to the cafÉ and we went on. There is nothing in Rouen that is not interesting. Sunday as it was, the sidewalks in front of the numberless cafÉs were occupied with chairs, the white-aproned waiters flitting hither and thither, serving their customers with the light wines of the country; the market was in full blast, and business was going on the same as any other day. There is no Sunday in France, that is as Americans understand the day.

Due honor having been done to Joan of Arc, we entered a narrow, crooked thoroughfare, spanned by an old arch, built hundreds of years ago to mark the spot where a peasant named Rouen built the first house, erected on the site that was destined to play such an important part in the subsequent history of the country.

The one great sight of Rouen, however, is the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which is one of the grandest Gothic edifices in Normandy. It dates back to 1207, and is a magnificent building. It is impossible to describe the grandeur of the structure, with its finely carved figures, its symmetrical proportions, its graceful spires and lofty towers. The interior is very fine, the high columns of white marble supporting the roof, which is formed of a succession of arches. Adjoining the high altar is the Chapelle du Christ, containing an ancient, mutilated figure in limestone of Richard Coeur de Leon, discovered in 1838. His heart, which was interred in the choir, was found at the same time, and is now preserved in the museum.

St. Maclou and St. Ouen are two fine churches of the florid Gothic style, the latter said to be one of the most beautiful in existence. It was founded in 1318, and completed toward the close of the fifteenth century.

Throughout the entire city the prevailing style of architecture is Gothic—the Palais de Justice being in late Gothic, and is a very handsome building. The residences, for the most part, are large and beautiful, surrounded by well-kept lawns and adorned with flower beds and fountains.

Rouen is a very important cotton manufacturing place, and is one of the principal depots for the wines of Bordeaux. It is a commercial center, too, the Seine affording a good harbor for large ocean steamers, most of which are in the Mediterranean trade.

When we returned we found Tibbitts sitting in the arbor, with a pile of manuscript before him, and we asked what he had been doing.

“I promised the old gentleman,” he said, “to learn the languages of the countries I passed through, and I shall do it. I shall learn French, some afternoon when I get time. And he requested me to practice writing things for general improvement. As I am in France I have written mother a letter, and I have enclosed in it a part of a chapter of a story, into which I have jerked a lot of French to show her that I have not wasted my time. Here it is, and I think it’s devilish good!”

This was Tibbitts’ part of a chapter of a story:—

“Precisely at the stroke of seven the Count was upon the ground, and the clock had not ceased to sound the hour before the Marquis appeared. Both threw off their outer clothing, and stood in their shirts, sword in hand.”

“It’s an account of a French Duel,” explained Tibbitts.

“Fromage!” hissed the Count, between his clenched teeth.

“Fromage Gratin!” echoed the Marquis.

The swords crossed with an angry clang.

It was a supreme moment. The two men glared at each other, each fearing to hazard a movement. Finally, tired of inaction, the Count took the offensive. His rapier flashed like lightning. With an adroit mouton, he well nigh succeeded in breaking his enemy’s guard, indeed he would have done it but for the skill with which a marrons glacÊ was interposed.

Both pause a moment for breath. Breath is necessary to a duelist. The Marquis was the first assailant. He delivered a fierce cotellette de veau, which had stretched many a tall fellow on the sod, followed by a mayonnaise, of which few are the master, but gnashed his teeth to find himself stopped by a poulet a la Paris. They paused again.

“I see you have advantaged by practice with Vol au Vent,” said the Marquis. (Vol au Vent was the most celebrated swordsman of Paris.) “He taught you the lunge—I invented the parry. We will resume.”

They eyed each other closely.

“This time I will finish him,” said the Count to himself.

Using the pomme de terre as a feint, he threw himself with all his force into a patÈ, and would have ended the contest then and there, but that the Marquis avoided the thrust by a poisson.

ST. OUEN—ROUEN.