about him enjoy themselves too.
I told him the old schoolboy muddle about Sir Walter Raleigh introducing
tobacco and saying: "We shall this day light up such a fire in England as
I trust shall never be put out." He had not heard it before and, though
amused, appeared preoccupied, and perhaps a little jealous, during the
rest of the evening. Next morning, while he was pouring out his coffee,
his eyes twinkled and he said, with assumed carelessness:

"By the by, do you remember?--wasn't it Columbus who bashed the egg down
on the table and said 'Eppur non si muove'?"

He was welcome wherever he went, full of fun and ready to play while
doing the honours of the country. Many of the peasants were old friends,
and every day we were sure to meet someone who remembered him. Perhaps
it would be an old woman labouring along under a burden; she would smile
and stop, take his hand and tell him how happy she was to meet him again
and repeat her thanks for the empty wine bottle he had given her after an
out-of-door luncheon in her neighbourhood four or five years before.
There was another who had rowed him many times across the Lago di Orta
and had never been in a train but once in her life, when she went to
Novara to her son's wedding. He always remembered all about these people
and asked how the potatoes were doing this year and whether the
grandchildren were growing up into fine boys and girls, and he never
forgot to inquire after the son who had gone to be a waiter in New York.
At Civiasco there is a restaurant which used to be kept by a jolly old
lady, known for miles round as La Martina; we always lunched with her on
our way over the Colma to and from Varallo-Sesia. On one occasion we
were accompanied by two English ladies and, one being a teetotaller,
Butler maliciously instructed La Martina to make the _sabbaglione_ so
that it should be _forte_ and _abbondante_, and to say that the Marsala,
with which it was more than flavoured, was nothing but vinegar. La
Martina never forgot that when she looked in to see how things were
going, he was pretending to lick the dish clean. These journeys provided
the material for a book which he thought of calling "Verdi Prati," after
one of Handel's most beautiful songs; but he changed his mind, and it
appeared at the end of 1881 as _Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the
Canton Ticino_ with more than eighty illustrations, nearly all by Butler.
Charles Gogin made an etching for the