darling
Harriot Stanton, now with Blatch suffixed. Her husband is a fine
specimen of a young Englishman of thirty. Sunday morning he took me
in a dog-cart through two gentlemen's parks, a pleasant drive
through pasture and woodland, thousands of acres enclosed by a
stone wall. When I said, "What a shame that all these acres should
thus lie waste, while myriads of poor people are without an inch of
ground whereon to set foot," he replied: "They would be no better
off if all should be cut up into forty-acre farms and divided among
the poor, for no man could possibly support a family upon one. The
owners of these parks are actually reduced to poverty trying to
keep them up." So you see it is of no use to talk of giving every
Englishman a farm, when the land is so poor no one can make a
living off of it. Of course this is not true of all England, but
evidently its inhabitants must be fed from other countries. On our
return I was conducted through the garden and green-house of Mr.
Blatch's father, where I saw peach trees in blossom and grape vines
budding. The tree-trunks were not larger than my arm and I
exclaimed, "How many peaches can you get off these little trees?"
"Why, last year, we had 250," said he. How is that by the side of
our old farm harvest of 1,000 trees? And yet these English people
talk as if they raised fruit!...

The next day I returned to London and Mrs. Stanton and I called on
Rev. William Henry Channing at the West End, and had a two hours'
chat with him.... He was very cordial and on our leaving said, "I
can't tell you how grateful I am for this interview. You have my
blessing and benediction;" so we were glad at heart. Mr. Channing
loves America above all other countries and feels it was a mistake
for him to have left it. His elder daughter is the wife of Edwin
Arnold. March 12 we dined with the son-in-law of William Ashurst,
the friend of Wm. Lloyd Garrison--Mr. Biggs, and his four
daughters. Caroline Ashurst Biggs, the second, is the editor of the
Englishwoman's Review and one of the leading suffrage women of
England.

[Illustration: Autograph: "Very sincerely yours, Caroline A. Biggs."]

After dinner some twenty ladies and gentlemen came in and we had a
delightful evening, but such a continual serving of refreshments!

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