been a dreadful calumny about Henrietta and me--that we had the hall
door open for the purpose of going out into the street with our
hair on end, if Bro had not _encouraged_ us by shutting the door and
locking it. I confess to opening the door, but deny the purpose of
it--at least, maintain that I only meant to keep in reserve a way of
escape, _in case_, as seemed probable, the whole house was on its
way to the ground. Indeed, we should think much of the _mercy_ of the
escape. Bro had been on the staircase only five minutes before. Sarah
the housemaid was actually there. She looked up accidentally and saw
the nodding chimneys, and ran down into the drawing-room to papa,
shrieking, but escaping with one graze of the hand from one brick. How
did _you_ fare in the wind? I never much imagined before that anything
so true to nature as a real live storm could make itself heard in our
streets. But it has come too surely, and carried away with it, besides
our chimney, all that was left to us of the country, in the shape of
the Kensington Garden trees. Now do write to me, dearest Mrs. Martin,
and soon, and tell me all you can of your chances and mischances, and
how Mr. Martin is getting on with the parish, and yourself with the
parishioners. But you have more the name of living at Colwall than the
thing. You seem to me to lead a far more wandering life than we,
for all our homelessness and 'pilgrim shoon.' Why, you have been in
Ireland since I last said a word to you, even upon paper....

I sometimes think that a pilgrim's life is the wisest--at least, the
most congenial to the 'uses of this world.' We give our sympathies and
associations to our hills and fields, and then the providence of God
gives _them_ to another, It is better, perhaps, to keep a stricter
_identity_, by calling only our thoughts our own.

Was there anybody in the world who ever loved London for itself? Did