enjoyment and wonder:
at the country people, wooden shod, the women's caps and long cloaks; at
the quiet fair roads which multiplied themselves until we often paused
enchanted in a fairy world of sameness; at market-towns, where fountains
in the squares were often older than America, the country out of which
we arrived.

Skenedonk heard without shifting a muscle all Doctor Chantry's
grievances; and I told him we ought to cherish them, for they were views
of life we could not take ourselves. Few people are made so delicately
that they lose color and rail at the sight of raw tripe brought in by a
proud hostess to show her resources for dinner; or at a chicken coming
upon the table with its head tucked beneath its wing.

"We are fed with poulet, poulet, nothing but poulet," said Doctor
Chantry, "until the poulets themselves are ashamed to look us in the
face!"

We fared well, indeed, and the wine was good, and my master said he must
sustain himself on it though it proved his death. He could not march as
Skenedonk and I regularly marched. We hired a cart to lift him and our
knapsacks from village to village, with a driver who knew the road to
Paris. When the distances were long we sometimes mounted beside him. I
noticed that the soil of this country had not the chalk look of other
lands which I afterwards saw to the east and north; but Napoleon was
already making good the ancient thoroughfares.

When my master was on shipboard he enjoyed the sea even less than the
free air of these broad stretches; for while he could cast an eye about
and approve of something under the sky--perhaps a church steeple, or the
color of a thatch which filled me with joy--he could not approve of
anything aboard a ship. Indeed, it was pity to have no delight in
cleaving the water, and in the far-off spouting of whales, to say
nothing of a living world that rides in undulations. For my part, I
loved even the creaking of a ship, and the uncertainty of ever coming to
port, and the anxiety lest a black flag should show above every sail we
passed. The slow progress of man from point to point in his experience,
while it sometimes enrages, on the whole interests me; and the monotony
of a voyage has a sweetness like the monotony of daily bread. I looked
out of the grenier window upon the high road, and upon the June sun in
the act of setting; for we had supped and gone early to rest after a
hard day. Post horses were stamping underneath, all ready for