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AN OCTOBER ABROAD, 



picking blackberries in October, those English flowers 

 by the road-side (stop the carriage 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 archi- 

 tecture — let me have a good look, for this is my first 

 hour in England, and I am drunk with the joy of see- 

 ing ! This house-fly even, let me inspect it, 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 splendid breeds 

 of cattle and sheep in the fields, the superb husbandry, 

 the rich mellow soil, the drainage, the hedges — in the 

 inconspicuousness of any given feature and the mellow 



