CHAPTER XIL 



BAR HARBOR AND BOSTON. 



Well, we have really celebrated our twentieth anniver- 

 sary! Twenty consecutive phaeton trips! Nearly eight 

 thousand miles driving through the New England States, 

 New York and Canada ! Our phaeton looks a little past 

 its prime, and yet does not seem to feel its age. If, in 

 these days of mysterious communication, it could have a 

 tete-a-tete with the "one-hoss shay," and compare notes, 

 what a garrulous old couple they would be ! Some people 

 thought we ought to have a guardian on our first journey, 

 and had we anticipated a twentieth, we ourselves should 

 have felt as if by that time we should need a corps. If 

 all our wanderings had been revealed to us as we drove 

 along the Connecticut, on that first trip, they would have 

 seemed more improbable than Camille Flammarion's 

 excursions among the solar systems ; but we live now in 

 an age which has ceased to wonder beyond — what next? 

 and time and space are both out of fashion in the realms 

 we are exploring, when not limited to the range of a 

 phaeton ; so a twenty years' look ahead now seems but a 

 passing moment of time. 



"Well, well," do I hear you say, "tell us where you 

 went." Do not be impatient; if you travel with us, you 

 must be content to go as we go, and we never know 

 where we are going until we have been. It would spoil 

 the whole story if we should tell you now, for it would 

 seem as if we knew all about it when we started oflf that 



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