158 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



those fields, that bird darting along the hedge-rows, 

 those men and boys picking blackberries in October, 

 those English flowers by the road-side (stop the car- 

 riage while I leap out and pluck them), the homely, 

 domestic looks of things, those houses, those queer 

 vehicles, those thick-coated horses, those big-footed, 

 coarsely-clad, clear-skinned men and women, this 

 massive, homely, compact architecture let me have 

 a good look, for this is my first hour in England, and 

 I am drunk with the joy of seeing ! This house-fly 

 even, let me inspect it, 1 and that swallow skimming 

 along so familiarly ; is he the same I saw trying to 

 cling to the sails of the vessel the third day out ? or 

 is the swallow the swallow the world over? This 

 grass I certainly have seen before, and this red and 

 white clover, but this daisy and dandelion are not the 

 same, and I have come three thousand miles to see 

 the mullein cultivated in a garden, and christened the 

 velvet plant. 



As we sped through the land, the heart of England, 

 toward London, I thought my eyes would never get 

 their fill of the landscape, and that I would lose them 

 out of my head by their eagerness to catch every ob- 

 ject as we rushed along ! How they reveled, how 

 they followed the birds and the game, how they 

 glanced ahead on the track that marvelous track ! 

 or shot off over the fields and downs, finding their 

 delight in the streams, the roads, the bridges, the 



1 The English house-fly actually seemed coarser and more hairy 

 than ours. 



