ey could have
got in no other way. They excited not a little wonder, and the common
opinion was that they were doing the journey for a wager; there seemed
to be no other reason why two respectable gentlemen, not poor, should
work so hard and get so wet.

This was conceived in a more adventurous vein than appears at first
sight. In an unsubdued country one contends with beasts and men who
are openly hostile. But when one is a stranger in the midst of
civilization and meets civilization at its back door, he is astonished
to find how little removed civilization is from downright savagery.
Stevenson and his companion learned as they could not have learned
otherwise how great deference the world pays to clothes. Whether your
heart is all right turns out a matter of minor importance; but--_are
your clothes all right_? If so, smiles, and good beds at respectable
inns; if not, a lodging in a cow-shed or beneath any poor roof which
suffices to keep off the rain. The voyagers had constantly to meet the
accusation of being peddlers. They denied it and were suspected afresh
while the denial was on their lips. The public mind was singularly
alert and critical on the subject of peddlers.

At La Fere, 'of Cursed Memory,' they had a rebuff which nearly spoiled
their tempers. They arrived in a rain. It was the finest kind of a
night to be indoors 'and hear the rain upon the windows.' They were
told of a famous inn. When they reached the carriage entry 'the rattle
of many dishes fell upon their ears.' They sighted a great field of
snowy table-cloth, the kitchen glowed like a forge. They made their
triumphal entry, 'a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp
India-rubber bag upon his arm.' Stevenson declares that he never had a
sound view of that kitchen. It seemed to him a culinary paradise
'crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned round from
their sauce-pans and looked at us with surprise.' But the landlady--a
flushed, angry woman full of affairs--there was no mistaking her. They
asked for beds and were told to find beds in the suburbs: 'We are too
busy for the like of you!' They said they would dine then, and were
for putting down their luggage. The landlady made a run at them and
stamped her foot: 'Out with you--out of the door,' she screeched.

I once heard a young Englishman who had been drawn into some
altercation at a continental hotel explain a discreet movement on his
own part by saying: 'Now a French coo