there! I don't see why it isn't right to
believe the nicest things in the past of a country instead of the worst,
as you must do with a woman, if you're not a cat!

Pat and I are going to read Fenimore Cooper's "Red Rover" because the
scenes are laid in this neighbourhood; at least I am going to read it,
and Pat will if Caspian gives her a chance to do anything intelligent in
future. He won't if he can help it, I'm sure! You ought to have seen the
boiled codfish look in his eyes when Pat, arriving at Moon Pond after an
excursion with us, tried to entertain him by talking of Matthew Perry
building the first steam vessel in the American Navy and arranging a
treaty that opened the door of Japan to the west! There's a monument to
him in the park, and we'd been looking at it.

Well, in spite of Fate, I think the child enjoyed her Newport days, if
not her Newport evenings, and indeed, she seemed to have the feeling
that they were snatched from the jaws of the said ruthless lady. We
mooned about among the entirely charming and more or less famous houses,
in what ought to be called Oldport, a very, very important place for
more than a hundred years before a tidal wave of fashion swept over it
about the middle of the eighteenth century: great families coming in
their own schooners, with their servants and horses, from Charleston and
Savannah. You can't think of the exciting, historic things we found out
in our "moonings": history on the sea, even before Captain Kidd's
privateers were being chased along the shore, for Rhode Island always
"loved to fight if she could fight on the sea"; history on land, from
the time that the inhabitants were abandoning their houses in fear of
Sir Henry Clinton and the British fleet, up to these brilliant days of
Astors and Belmonts and Vanderbilts. Jack and I got so resigned to
visiting Larry's pleasant friends that we should have been sorry to
leave if it hadn't been for our curiosity to see "what would happen
next" in the Peter affair.

The last thing we did was to get up with the sun and start out for an
excursion to the Forty Steps. But, after all, Jack was too lame to
manage them. He was very cut up, but his sense of humour came to the
rescue as usual, and he was showing a brave face again when we started
off in the motor once more, for Fall River--and beyond. Then, if not
before, we should have realized what a marvellous frame Newport has. I
suppose in some ways no other spot is equal to