ladies' saloon night and day, sleeping on a sofa. After a passage of
eleven days we landed at Southampton, March 2, 1890. It was a beautiful
moonlight night and we had a pleasant ride on the little tug to the
wharf. We reached Basingstoke at eleven o'clock, found the family well
and all things in order.

CHAPTER XXVI.

MY LAST VISIT TO ENGLAND.

As soon as we got our carriage put together Hattie and I drove out every
day, as the roads in England are in fine condition all the year round.
We had lovely weather during the spring, but the summer was wet and
cold. With reading, writing, going up to London, and receiving visitors,
the months flew by without our accomplishing half the work we proposed.

As my daughter was a member of the Albemarle Club, we invited several
friends to dine with us there at different times. There we had a long
talk with Mr. Stead, the editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, on his
position in regard to Russian affairs, "The Deceased Wife's Sister
Bill," and the divorce laws of England. Mr. Stead is a fluent talker as
well as a good writer. He is the leader of the social purity movement in
England. The wisdom of his course toward Sir Charles Dilke and Mr.
Parnell was questioned by many; but there is a touch of the religious
fanatic in Mr. Stead, as in many of his followers.

There were several problems in social ethics that deeply stirred the
English people in the year of our Lord 1890. One was Charles Stewart
Parnell's platonic friendship with Mrs. O'Shea, and the other was the
Lord Chancellor's decision in the case of Mrs. Jackson. The pulpit, the
press, and the people vied with each other in trying to dethrone Mr.
Parnell as the great Irish leader, but the united forces did not succeed
in destroying his self-respect, nor in hounding him out of the British
Parliament, though, after a brave and protracted resistance on his part,
they did succeed in hounding him into the grave.

It was pitiful to see the Irish themselves, misled by a hypocritical
popular sentiment in England, turn against their great leader, the only
one they had had for half a century who was able to keep the Irish
question uppermost in the House of Commons year after year. The course
of events since his death has proved the truth of what he told them, to
wit: that there was no sincerity in the interest English politicians
manifested in the question of Home Rule, and that the debates on that
point would cease as soon as