From the sphere of our sorrow.




CHAPTER 3 - Contrasted Travelling


WHEN our parents went to Europe fifty years ago, it was the event
of a lifetime - a tour lovingly mapped out in advance with advice
from travelled friends. Passports were procured, books read, wills
made, and finally, prayers were offered up in church and solemn
leave-taking performed. Once on the other side, descriptive
letters were conscientiously written, and eagerly read by friends
at home, - in spite of these epistles being on the thinnest of
paper and with crossing carried to a fine art, for postage was high
in the forties. Above all, a journal was kept.

Such a journal lies before me as I write. Four little volumes in
worn morocco covers and faded "Italian" writing, more precious than
all my other books combined, their sight recalls that lost time -
my youth - when, as a reward, they were unlocked that I might look
at the drawings, and the sweetest voice in the world would read to
me from them! Happy, vanished days, that are so far away they seem
to have been in another existence!

The first volume opens with the voyage across the Atlantic, made in
an American clipper (a model unsurpassed the world over), which was
accomplished in thirteen days, a feat rarely equalled now, by sail.
Genial Captain Nye was in command. The same who later, when a