me of all my ideas, and gave me none in exchange. Anything so

unspeakably heavy I never encountered. It is very difficult for a
woman who doesn't know a nigh horse from an off one, nor the

wheelers from the headers (or is it the fronters?), to find subjects
of conversation with a gentleman who spends three-fourths of his

existence on a coach. It was the more difficult for me because I
could not decide whether Willie Beresford was cross because I was

devoting myself to the whip, or because Francesca had remained at
home with a headache. This state of affairs continued for about

fifteen miles, when it suddenly dawned upon the Honourable Arthur
that, however mistaken my speech and manner, I was trying to be

agreeable. This conception acted on the honest and amiable soul
like magic. I gradually became comprehensible, and finally he gave

himself up to the theory that, though eccentric, I was harmless and
amusing, so we got on famously,--so famously that Willie Beresford

grew ridiculously gloomy, and I decided that it could not be
Francesca's headache.

The names of these English streets are a never-failing source of
delight to me. In that one morning we drove past Pie, Pudding, and

Petticoat Lanes, and later on we found ourselves in a 'Prudent
Passage,' which opened, very inappropriately, into 'Huggin Lane.'

Willie Beresford said it was the first time he had ever heard of
anything so disagreeable as prudence terminating in anything so

agreeable as huggin'. When he had been severely reprimanded by his
mother for this shocking speech, I said to the Honourable Arthur:-

"I don't understand your business signs in England,--this 'Company,
Limited,' and that 'Company, Limited.' That one, of course, is

quite plain" (pointing to the front of a building on the village
street), "'Goat's Milk Company, Limited'; I suppose they have but

one or two goats, and necessarily the milk must be Limited."
Salemina says that this was not in the least funny, that it was

absolutely flat; but it had quite the opposite effect upon the
Honourable Arthur. He had no command over himself or his horses for

some minutes; and at intervals during the afternoon the full
felicity of the idea would steal upon him, and the smile of

reminiscence would flit across his ruddy face.
The next day, at the Eton and Harrow games at Lord's cricket-ground,

he presented three flowers of British aristocracy to our party, and
asked me each time to tell the goat-story, which he had previously

told himself, and probably murdered in the telling. Not content
with this arrantflattery, he begged to be allowed to recount some

of my international episodes to a literary friend who writes for
Punch. I demurred decidedly, but Salemina said that perhaps I ought

to be willing to lower myself a trifle for the sake of elevating
Punch! This home-thrust so delighted the Honourable Arthur that it

remained his favourite joke for days, and the overworked goat was
permitted to enjoy that oblivion from which Salemina insists it

should never have emerged.
Chapter V. A Hyde Park Sunday.

The Honourable Arthur, Salemina, and I took a stroll in Hyde Park
one Sunday afternoon, not for the purpose of joining the fashionable

throng of 'pretty people' at Stanhope Gate, but to mingle with the
common herd in its special precincts,--precincts not set apart,

indeed, by any legal formula, but by a natural law of classification
which seems to be inherent in the universe. It was a curious and

motley crowd--a little dull, perhaps, but orderly, well-behaved, and
self-respecting, with here and there part of the flotsam and jetsam

of a great city, a ragged, sodden, hopelesswretch wending his way
about with the rest, thankful for any diversion.

Under the trees, each in the centre of his group, large or small
according to his magnetism and eloquence, stood the park 'shouter,'

airing his special grievance, playing his special part, preaching
his special creed, pleading his special cause,--anything, probably,

for the sake of shouting. We were plainly dressed, and did not
attract observation as we joined the outside circle of one of these

groups after another. It was as interesting to watch the listeners
as the speakers. I wished I might paint the sea of faces, eager,

anxious, stolid, attentive, happy, and unhappy: histories written
on many of them; others blank, unmarked by any thought or

aspiration. I stole a sidelong look at the Honourable Arthur. He
is an Englishman first, and a man afterwards (I prefer it the other

way), but he does not realise it; he thinks he is just like all
other good fellows, although he is mistaken. He and Willie

Beresford speak the same language, but they are as different as
Malay and Eskimo. He is an extreme type, but he is very likeable

and very well worth looking at, with his long coat, his silk hat,
and the white Malmaison in his buttonhole. He is always so

radiantly, fascinatingly clean, the Honourable Arthur, simple,
frank, direct, sensible, and he bores me almost to tears.

The first orator was edifying his hearers with an explanation of the
drama of The Corsican Brothers, and his eloquence, unlike that of

the other speakers, was largely inspired by the hope of pennies. It
was a novel idea, and his interpretation was rendered very amusing

to us by the wholly original Yorkshire accent which he gave to the
French personages and places in the play.

An Irishman in black clerical garb held the next group together. He
was in some trouble, owing to a pig-headed and quarrelsome Scotchman

in the front rank, who objected to each statement that fell from his
lips, thus interfering seriously with the effect of his peroration.

If the Irishman had been more convincing, I suppose the crowd would
have silenced the scoffer, for these little matters of discipline

are always attended to by the audience; but the Scotchman's points
were too well taken; he was so trenchant, in fact, at times, that a

voice would cry, 'Coom up, Sandy, an' 'ave it all your own w'y,
boy!' The discussion continued as long as we were within hearing

distance, for the Irishman, though amiable and ignorant, was firm,
the 'unconquered Scot' was on his native heath of argument, and the

listeners were willing to give them both a hearing.
Under the next tree a fluent Cockney lad of sixteen or eighteen

years was declaiming his bitter experiences with the Salvation Army.
He had been sheltered in one of its beds which was not to his taste,

and it had found employment for him which he had to walk twenty-two
miles to get, and which was not to his liking when he did get it. A

meeting of the Salvation Army at a little distance rendered his
speech more interesting, as its points were repeated and denied as

fast as made.
Of course there were religious groups and temperance groups, and

groups devoted to the tearing down or raising up of most things
except the Government; for on that day there were no Anarchist or

Socialist shouters, as is ordinarily the case.
As we strolled down one of the broad roads under the shade of the

noble trees, we saw the sun setting in a red-gold haze; a glory of
vivid colour made indescribably tender and opalescent by the kind of

luminous mist that veils it; a wholly English sunset, and an
altogether lovely one. And quite away from the other knots of

people, there leaned against a bit of wire fence a poor old man
surrounded by half a dozen children and one tired woman with a

nursing baby. He had a tattered book, which seemed to be the story
of the Gospels, and his little flock sat on the greensward at his

feet as he read. It may be that he, too, had been a shouter in his
lustier manhood, and had held a larger audience together by the

power of his belief; but now he was helpless to attract any but the
children. Whether it was the pathos of his white hairs, his garb of

shreds and patches, or the mild benignity of his eye that moved me,
I know not, but among all the Sunday shouters in Hyde Park it seemed

to me that that quavering voice of the past spoke with the truest
note.

Chapter VI. The English Park Lover.
The English Park Lover, loving his love on a green bench in

Kensington Gardens or Regent's Park, or indeed in any spot where
there is a green bench, so long as it is within full view of the

passer-by,--this English public lover, male or female, is a most
interesting study, for we have not his exact counterpart in America.

He is thoroughlyrespectable, I should think, my urban Colin. He
does not have the air of a gay deceiver roving from flower to

flower, stealing honey as he goes; he looks, on the contrary, as if
it were his intention to lead Phoebe to the altar on the next bank

holiday; there is a dead calm in his actions which bespeaks no other
course. If Colin were a Don Juan, surely he would be a trifle more

ardent, for there is no tropical fervour in his matter-of-fact
caresses. He does not embrace Phoebe in the park, apparently,

because he adores her to madness; because her smile is like fire in
his veins, melting down all his defences; because the intoxication