morning to meet my friend, whose quarters were in a distant part of the
city, about three miles away. I found him without difficulty. He was
accompanied by two gentlemen from London that had come with him to see
Paris and its environs. It is both novel and pleasant for two such lonely
pilgrims as my New York friend and I were when we left home, to meet each
other again in a foreign city, and introduce to each other the friends
which one picked up by the way. We soon agreed to go all together to
Versailles, the French Capital, that day. This was Tuesday, July 27th. At
10:40 a.m., we crossed the fortifications of Paris, and soon came into
view of Bois de Boulogne, the great park of Paris. Five minutes later we
crossed the Seine at St. Cloud, a small town, where we stopped to see the
ruins occasioned by the siege of Paris in 1870. We had considerable
trouble, however, in identifying the strongholds and redoubts held by the
Prussians in that memorable siege, as nobody seemed to understand any of
our French! On one occasion, Rev. O., while asking a lady for a certain
place, called on Mr. K----, one of the Londoners, to come and see whether
he could make this woman understand any of _his_ French! It was altogether
a day of odd adventures and fun. After enjoying the lovely prospects an
hour, we walked another hour in great perplexity as to what directions we
should take to find a railway station where we might take a train for
Versailles, but finally succeeded. We did not understand more from those
who directed us, than the direction we should take, never knowing the
distance. It is more than a joke, for a party to be obliged to walk
several miles for a station, when they had expected to reach it in a
quarter or half a mile at most! When we arrived at the station at Sevres,
our difficulties only commenced. "When will the next train leave for
Versailles, and where can we procure our tickets?" were questions which
engaged our best energies and all our ingenuity for half an hour, besides
a rash adventure on my part, before they were solved. (It seems to me now,
that throughout my tour, I always got into more trouble when I had company