usual hour, for our especial delectation-a proceeding which naturally
causes the barometer of our respective self-esteems to rise several
notches higher than usual, and doubtless gives equal satisfaction to the
seals and diving-birds. We linger at the aquarium until near sun-down,
and it is fifteen miles by what is considered the smoothest road to
Newhaven. Mr. C---- declares his intention of donning his riding-suit
and, by taking a shorter, though supposably rougher, road, reach Newhaven
as soon as we. As we halt at Lewes for tea, and ride leisurely, likewise
submitting to being photographed en route, he actually arrives there
ahead of us. It is Sunday evening, May 10th, and my ride through "Merrie
England " is at an end. Among other agreeable things to be ever remembered
in connection with it is the fact that it is the first three hundred
miles of road I ever remember riding over without scoring a header - a
circumstance that impresses itself none the less favorably perhaps when
viewed in connection with the solidity of the average English road. It
is not a very serious misadventure to take a flying header into a bed
of loose sand on an American country road; but the prospect of rooting
up a flint-stone with one's nose, or knocking a curb-stone loose with
one's bump of cautiousness, is an entirely different affair; consequently,
the universal smoothness of the surface of the English highways is
appreciated at its full value by at least one wheelman whose experience
of roads is nothing if not varied. Comfortable quarters are assigned me
on board the Channel steamer, and a few minutes after bidding friends
and England farewell, at Newhaven, at 11.30 P.M., I am gently rocked
into unconsciousness by the motion of the vessel, and remain happily and
restfully oblivious to my surroundings until awakened next morning at
Dieppe, where I find myself, in a few minutes, on a foreign shore. All
the way from San Francisco to Newhaven. there is a consciousness of being
practically in one country and among one people-people who, though
acknowledging separate governments, are bound so firmly together by the