The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy, May, 1877, by Various

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Title: The Galaxy, May, 1877
Vol. XXIII.--May, 1877.--No. 5.

Author: Various

Release Date: May 31, 2010 [EBook #32617]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE GALAXY.

VOL. XXIII.--MAY, 1877.--No. 5.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by SHELDON &
CO., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

A PROGRESSIVE BABY.

OBER LAHNSTEIN, Jan. 16, 1875.

So much, Susie dear, for our small miseries between Blackwall and
Rotterdam. Nurse's sickness and the crowd of Cook's tourists (Cook-oos!)
aggravated matters; but it is always a tedious bit of way, though I
never minded it in my solitary artist days, when either Dresden and
happy work or home and happy rest were at end of the hard journey. What
it is to be young, gay, and heart-free! For then I went always second
class--when I didn't go third!--(except of course on the steamers, where
the cheaper accommodation is too rude, and rough companionship too
intimate)--and once managed the entire distance from Dresden to London
for fifty thalers!--taking it leisurely too; stopping en route to "do"
Frankfort, Weimar, Heidelberg, Lourain, Bruges, and Antwerp, and to pay
two or three visits at grand houses, where they didn't dream I was fresh
from the peasants' compartments!

And I'd no shillings and sixpences then to fee guards and porters, so
had to dodge them, look at them as if I didn't see them, lug about my
own parcels, and freeze without a foot-warmer!

Now the way is all padded. I always go first-class if Ronayne's along,
haven't to lift so much as a hand satchel, am fairly smothered in
comforts, as beseems the true English Philistine I'm become. I've the
delightfullest husband and baby the round world can show; a nurse fit to
command the channel fleet (if that meant wisdom in babies, and she
weren't such an outrageously bad sailor!); and I've about as much vim as
a syllabub; am so nervo