he last named. A proneness to overindulgence in the
agreeably soothing decoction produced by an infusion of tea leaves is, I
confess, my chief besetting vice.

As I look back on it all with the eye of fond retrospection, and
contrast it with the horrifying situation into which we, all unwittingly
and all unsuspectingly, were so shortly to be plunged, our sojourn in
England is to me as a fleeting, happy dream.

Within the vast recesses of Westminster Abbey I lost myself. This
statement is literal as well as figurative; for, having become separated
from the others, I did indeed remain adrift in a maze of galleries for
upward of an hour. At the Tower of London I gave way for a space of
hours to audible musings on the historic scenes enacted on that
most-storied spot. In contemplation of the architectural glories of St.
Paul's, I became so engrossed that naught, I am convinced, save the
timely intervention of a uniformed constable, who put forth his hand and
plucked me out of the path of danger in the middle of the road where I
had involuntarily halted, saved me from being precipitated beneath the
wheels of a passing omnibus. As for my emotions when I paused at the
graveside of William Shakspere--ah, sir, a more gifted pen than mine
were required to describe my sensations at this hallowed moment.

Constantly I strove to impress on our eight young-lady seniors the
tremendous value, for future conversational purposes, of the sights,
the associations and the memories with which we were now thrown in such
intimate contact. At every opportunity I directed their attention to
this or that object of interest, pointing out to them that since their
indulgent parents or guardians, as the case might be, had seen fit to
afford them this opportunity for enriching their minds and increasing
their funds of information, it should be alike their duty and their
privilege to study, to speculate, to ponder, to reflect, to contemplate,
to amass knowledge, to look, to see, to think. Yet, inconceivable though
it may appear, I discerned in the majority of them, after the first few
days, a growing inclination to shirk the intellectual obligations of the
hour for things of infinitely lesser moment.

Despite my frequent admonitions and my gentle chidings, shops and
theatres engrossed them substantially to the exclusion of all else. My
suggestion that our first evening in London should be spent in suitable
readings of English history in order to pre