12 Fouy-i7i-Hand in Britain. 



to adopt, but the Charioteers improved on that. The 

 first resolution thcypassed was, " Whatever is, is love- 

 ly ; all that does happen and all that doesn't shall be 

 altogether lovely." We shall quarrel with nothing, 

 admire everything and everybody. A surly beggar 

 shall afford us sport, if any one can be surly under our 

 smiles ; and stale bread and poor fare shall only serve 

 to remind us that we have banqueted at the Windsor. 

 Even no dinner at all shall pass for a good joke. Rain 

 shall be hailed as good for the growing corn ; a cold 

 day pass as invigorating, a warm one welcomed as sug- 

 gestive of summer at home, and even a Scotch mist 

 serve to remind us of the mysterious ways of Provi- 

 dence. In this mood the start was made. Could any 

 one suggest a better for our purpose ? 



Now comes a splendid place to skip — the ocean 

 voyage. Everybody writes that up upon the first trip, 

 and every family knows all about it from the long de- 

 scriptive letters of the absent one doing Europe. 



When one has crossed the Atlantic twenty odd 

 times there seems just about as much sense in boring 

 one's readers with an account of the trip as if the 

 journey were by rail from New York to Chicago. We 

 had a fine, smooth run, and though some of us were a 

 trifle distrait, most of us were supremely happy. A 

 sea voyage compared with land travel is a good deal 

 like matrimony compared with single blessedness, I 

 take it : either decidedly better or decidedly worse. 



