"If you and Theodore will come over in the Spring with Livy and me,
and spend the summer you will see a country that is so beautiful
that you will be obliged to believe in Fairyland..... and Theodore
can browse with me among dusty old dens that look now as they looked
five hundred years ago; and puzzle over books in the British Museum
that were made before Christ was born; and in the customs of their
public dinners, and the ceremonies of every official act, and the
dresses of a thousand dignitaries, trace the speech and manners of
all the centuries that have dragged their lagging decades over
England since the Heptarchy fell asunder. I would a good deal
rather live here if I could get the rest of you over."

In a letter home, to his mother and sister, we get a further picture
of his enjoyment.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett:

LONDON, Nov. 6, 1872.
MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have been so everlasting busy that I
couldn't write--and moreover I have been so unceasingly lazy that I
couldn't have written anyhow. I came here to take notes for a book, but
I haven't done much but attend dinners and make speeches. But have had a
jolly good time and I do hate to go away from these English folks; they
make a stranger feel entirely at home--and they laugh so easily that it
is a comfort to make after-dinner speeches here. I have made hundreds of
friends; and last night in the crush of the opening of the New Guild-hall
Library and Museum, I was surprised to meet a familiar face every few
steps. Nearly 4,000 people, of both sexes, came and went during the