But even the level capes of Lancashire were alluring to eyes that saw
England, our venerable mother, loom behind them, with her thousand
years' pageantry of warfare and civilization. The egregious little
island is a thirsty place; the land drinks rain as assiduously as do
its inhabitants beer and other liquors. Heavy mists and clouds
enveloped it as we drew near, and ushered us up the Mersey into a
brown omnipresence of rain. The broad, clear sunshine of the Atlantic
was left behind, and we stood on wet decks and were transported to
sloppy wharfs by means of a rain-sodden and abominably smoking little
tug-boat--as the way was fifty years ago. Liverpool was a gray-stone
labyrinth open to the deluge, and its inhabitants went to and fro with
umbrellas over their heads and black respirators over their mouths,
looking as if such were their normal plight--as, indeed, it was. Much
of this was not needed to quench the enthusiasm of the children. The
Waterloo Hotel, to which, by advice of friends, we were driven, seemed
by its very name to carry out the idea of saturation, which the
activities of nature so insistently conveyed. It was intensely
discomfortable, and though the inside of the hotel was well supplied
with gloomy English comforts, and the solemn meals were administered
with a ceremonious gravity that suggested their being preliminaries to
funerals, yet it was hard to be light-hearted. The open-grate coal
fires were the most welcome feature of this summer season, and no
doubt the wine list offered the best available substitute for
sunlight; but we had not been trained to avail ourselves of it. We
drank water, which certainly appeared an idle proceeding in such a
climate. In Liverpool, however, or in its suburbs, we were to live
for the better part of four years, and we must make the best of it.
And there is in English people, when rightly approached, a steady and
systematic geniality that not only makes handsome amends for their
weather, but also accounts for the otherwise singular fact that the