sent
themselves to a sharp-eyed observer; and Mr. Boyd Dawkins to pilot me
among the caves and cairns. Then I should want a better pair of eyes and
a better pair of ears, and, while I was reorganizing, perhaps a quicker
apprehension and a more retentive memory; in short, a new outfit, bodily
and mental. But Nature does not care to mend old shoes; she prefers a
new pair, and a young person to stand in them.

What a great book one could make, with such aids, and how many would
fling it down, and take up anything in preference, provided only that it
were short enough; even this slight record, for want of something
shorter!

Not only did I feel sure that many friends would like to read our
itinerary, but another motive prompted me to tell the simple story of
our travels. I could not receive such kindness, so great evidences of
friendly regard, without a strong desire, amounting to a positive
necessity, for the expression of my grateful sense of all that had been
done for us. Individually, I felt it, of course, as a most pleasing
experience. But I believed it to have a more important significance as
an illustration of the cordial feeling existing between England and
America. I know that many of my countrymen felt the attentions paid to
me as if they themselves shared them with me. I have lived through many
strata of feeling in America towards England. My parents, full-blooded
Americans, were both born subjects of King George III. Both learned in
their early years to look upon Britons as the enemies of their country.
A good deal of the old hostility lingered through my boyhood, and this
was largely intensified by the war of 1812. After nearly half a century
this feeling had in great measure subsided, when the War of Secession
called forth expressions of sympathy with the slaveholding States which
surprised, shocked, and deeply wounded the lovers of liberty and of
England in the Northern States. A new generation is outgrowing that
alienation. More and more the older and younger nations are getting to
be proud and really fond of each other. There is no shorter road to a
mother's heart than to speak pleasantly to her child, and caress it, and
call it pretty names. No matter whether the child is something
remarkable or not, it is _her_ child, and that is enough. It may be
made too much of, but that is not its mother's fault. If I could believe
that every attention paid me was due simply to my being an American, I
should feel ho