Struves, General and Mrs. Sabine, Professor and Mrs. Powell, Mr. Main,
and ourselves; more guests coming to tea.

"Mrs. Airy told me that she should arrange the order of the guests at
table to please herself; that properly all of the married ladies should
precede me, but that I was really to go first, with Mr. Airy. To effect
this, however, she must explain it to Mrs. Sabine, the lady of highest
rank.

"So we went out, Professor Airy and myself, Professor Powell and Mrs.
Sabine, General Sabine and Mrs. Powell, Mr. Charles Struve and Miss S.,
Mr. Main, Mrs. Airy, and Professor Struve.

"General Sabine is a small man, gray haired and sharp featured, about
seventy years old. He smiles very readily, and is chatty and sociable at
once. He speaks with more quickness and ease than most of the Englishmen
I have met. Mrs. Sabine is very agreeable and not a bit of a
blue-stocking.

"The chat at table was general and very interesting. Mr. Airy says, 'The
best of a good dinner is the amount of talk.' He talked of the great
'Leviathan' which he and Struve had just visited, then anecdotes were
told by others, then they went on to comic poetry. Mr. Airy repeated
'The Lost Heir,' by Hood. General Sabine told droll anecdotes, and the
point was often lost upon me, because of the local allusions. One of his
anecdotes was this: 'Archbishop Whately did not like a professor named
Robert Daly; he said the Irish were a very contented people, they were
satisfied with one _bob daily_.' I found that a 'bob' is a shilling.

"When the dinner was over, the ladies left the room, and the gentlemen
remained over their wine; but not for long, for Mr. Airy does not like
it, and Struve hates it.

"Then, before tea, others dropped in from the neighborhood, and the tea
was served in the drawing-room, handed round informally.

"August 15. Westminster Abbey interested me more than I had expected. We
went into the chapels and admired the sculpture when the guide told us
we ought, and stopped with interest sometimes over some tomb which he
did not point out.

"I stepped aside reverently when I found I was standing on the stone
which covers the remains of Dr. Johnson. It is cracked across the
middle. Garrick lies by the side of Johnson, and I thought at first that
Goldsmith lay near; but it is only a monument--the body is interred in
Temple churchyard.

"You are continually misled in this way unless you refer at every minute
to your guide-book, and to