s--real or assumed--thinks not of his whining trade, but stands
erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we pass him. The victory has healed
him, and says--Be thou whole! Women and children, from garrets alike and
cellars, look down or look up with loving eyes upon our gay ribbons and our
martial laurels--sometimes kiss their hands, sometimes hang out, as signals
of affection, pocket handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that lies
ready to their hands. On the London side of Barnet, to which we draw near
within a few minutes after nine, observe that private carriage which is
approaching us. The weather being so warm, the glasses are all down; and
one may read, as on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within
the carriage. It contains three ladies, one likely to be "mama," and two
of seventeen or eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely
animation, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, explaining to us every
syllable that passes, in these ingenuous girls! By the sudden start and
raising of the hands, on first discovering our laurelled equipage--by the
sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady from both of them--and by the
heightened color on their animated countenances, we can almost hear them
saying--"See, see! Look at their laurels. Oh, mama! there has been a great
battle in Spain; and it has been a great victory." In a moment we are on
the point of passing them. We passengers--I on the box, and the two on the
roof behind me--raise our hats, the coachman makes his professional salute
with the whip; the guard even, though punctilious on the matter of his
dignity as an officer under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies move to
us, in return, with a winning graciousness of gesture: all smile on each
side in a way that nobody could misunderstand, and that nothing short of a
grand national sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. Will these ladies
say that we are nothing to _them_? Oh, no; they will not say _that_. They
cannot deny--they do not deny--that for this night they are our sisters:
gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant, for twelve hours to
come--we on the outside have the honor to be their brothers. Those poor
women again, who stop to gaze upon us with delight at the entrance of
Barnet, and seem, by their air of weariness, to be returning from labor--do
you mean to say that they are washerwomen and char-women? Oh, my poor
friend, you are quite mistaken; they are nothing of the