ontinued
on lines which carried him away from practical contact with that world
which he believed he held in the hollow of his hand. My father suspected
his soundness; but in 1856 there seemed to be no height to which he
might not rise. The spiritual steam-engine in him, however, somehow got
uncoupled from the mass of the machinery of human affairs, and has
been plying in vacua, so to say, ever since. On the 9th of June came
a telegram from Southampton; my mother and sisters had arrived from
Madeira. My father and I left Liverpool the next day, feeling that our
troubles were over. In the afternoon we alighted at the little seaport
and took a cab to the Castle Hotel, close to the water. My father, with
a face full of light, sprang up-stairs to the room in which my mother
awaited him; I found myself with my sisters and Fannie Wrigley, the
faithful nurse and companion who had accompanied them on their travels.
How tall and mature Una was! What a big girl baby Rose had become! There
was a little strangeness between us, but great good-will; we felt that
there were a great many explanations to be made. In a few minutes I was
called up-stairs to my mother. At the first glance she seemed smaller
than formerly; her face appeared a little different from my memory of
it; I was overcome by an odd shyness. She smiled and held out her arms;
then I saw my beloved mother, and a great passion of affection poured
through me and swept me to her. I was whole again, and indescribably
happy.

There was never such another heavenly room as that parlor in the Castle
Hotel; never another hotel so delightful, or another town to be compared
with Southampton. I was united to all I loved there, and in my thoughts
sunshine will always rest on it.

XII

Talked familiarly with kings and queens--Half-witted girl
who giggled all the time--It gnawed me terribly--A Scotch
terrier named Towsey--A sentiment of diplomatic etiquette--
London as a physical entity--Ladies in low-necked dresses--
An elderly man like a garden-spider--Into the bowels of the
earth--The inner luminousness of genius--Isolated and tragic
situation--"Ate ever man such a morsel before!"--The great,
wild, mysterious Borrow--Her skeleton, huddled, dry, and
awful--"Ma'am, you expose yourself!"--Plane, spokeshave,
gouge, and chisel--"I-passed-the-Lightning"--Parallel-O-
grams-A graduate of Antioch--"Continual cursing"--A