it. Even Jack says that,
and there are few of the great show places of the world he hasn't seen.
As a send-off, we gave ourselves a detour and said good-bye to the Ocean
Drive. The fleet, which had been visiting for several days, was steaming
off to sea. We looked across walls of blue hydrangeas and "rosa rugosa"
hung with berries like lumps of coral, out to the gray ships speeding
fast through cataracts of sapphire spray. It was a wonderful sight and a
wonderful day! The morning sun seemed to paint the rocks purple and turn
the high spurting surf to fountains of diamonds. It lit the young gold
of maple trees, and the delicate crysophrase green of weeping beeches
that sweep the lawns along the twelve-mile drive (consoled Niobes
weeping only happy tears!) and threw ladders of light down to the
marshes. You will think I am always writing you about marshes. But these
are super-marshes. If there are marshes by the Sea of Glass they must be
like these. They are so full of faded rainbows that their colour seems
to drain into the crystal veins of water which wind into them from
inlets of the sea, and turn the crystal into deep-dyed amethysts.

As we went on along the shore, the tiny waves ruffled under our eyes
like frills of lace on a baby's baptismal dress. The sea became a wide
river with dreamland visioned on the other side. Oh, what a contrast to
all the beauty of the "Peaceful Isle" and its surroundings to dash into
Fall River! Here and there is a house, or a charming name of a street,
to tell that it was once a pleasant old village like other New England
villages, but Commerce has sacked it of all that is beautiful--or, if it
has left anything by mistake, we didn't see it. The ugly, work-marred
town smote us like a blow in the face, and yet we saw that it has its
own fierce, flaunting interest. I shall never again think of a Fall
River boat as a restful thing. A Fall River boat was all I knew of Fall
River before, except that a big Revolutionary battle was fought there.
Now a battle between Labour and Capital is ceaselessly going on. It was
a joy--a selfish joy, perhaps--to spin out of the town limits and come
into Devonshire. Really, it _was_ Devonshire--Devonshire in look and in
the names of places. What of Taunton, for instance? So we flew on to
Boston, through a series of exquisite parks such as surely no other city
in the world can have for a frame.

[Illustration: map]*

There was just one attractive feature abo