pare our minds for the
impressions of the morrow was voted down, practically unanimously.

One entire afternoon, which I had intended should be devoted to the
National Art Gallery, was wasted--I use the word _wasted_
deliberately--in idle and purposeless contemplation of the show windows
in a retail merchandising resort known as the Burlington Arcade. Toward
the close of our ever memorable day at Stratford-upon-Avon, as I was
discoursing at length on the life and works of the Immortal Bard, I was
shocked to hear Miss Henrietta Marble, of Rising Sun, Indiana, remark,
_sotto voce_, that she, for one, had had about enough of Bardie--I quote
her exact language--and wished to enquire if the rest did not think it
was nearly time to go somewhere and buy a few souvenirs.

So the days flitted by one by one, as is their wont; and all too soon,
for me, the date appointed for our departure to the Continent drew nigh.
It came; we journeyed to Paris, the chief city of the French.

Upon the eve of our departure Miss Primleigh fell ill, so since the tour
was circumscribed as to time, our four weeks' itinerary upon the
Continent including France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Austria and
Italy, it became necessary to leave her behind us temporarily while we
continued our travels. Impressed with an added sense of responsibility,
since I now had eight young ladies under my sole tutelage, I crossed the
Channel with them on the following day and at eventide we found
ourselves in no less a place than the French capital.

In Paris, as in London, my heart, my hands and my brain were most
constantly occupied by my obligations to my charges, who, despite all
admonitions to the contrary, continued, one regrets to say, to exhibit
an indifference toward those inspiring and uplifting pursuits to which a
tour of this sort should be entirely devoted. For example, I recall that
on a certain day--the third day, I think, of our sojourn in Paris, or
possibly it might have been the fourth--I was escorting them through the
art galleries of that famous structure, the Louvre.

At the outset we had had with us a courier specially engaged for the
occasion; but, detecting in him an inclination to slur important
details in relation to the lives and works of the Old Masters whose
handicraft greeted us murally on every side, I soon dispensed with his
services and took over his task. Whereas he had been content to dismiss
this or that artist with but a perfunctory