or looking after the house. This same household work seems to be the
thing that ages the American woman. She is infamously "helped" by the
Irish trollop and the negress alike. It is not fair upon her, because
she has to do three parts of the housework herself, and in dry,
nerve-straining air the "chores" are a burden. Be thankful, O my people,
for Mauz Baksh, Kadir Baksh, and the _ayah_ while they are with you.
They are twice as handy as the unkempt slatterns of the furnished
apartments to which you will return, Commissioners though you be; and
five times as clever as the Amelia Araminta Rebellia Secessia Jackson
(coloured) under whose ineptitude and insolence the young American
housewife groans. But all this is far enough from peaceful, placid
Musquash and its boundless cordiality, its simple, genuine hospitality,
and its--what's the French word that just covers
all?--_gra_--_gracieuseness_, isn't it? Oh, be good to an American
wherever you meet him. Put him up for the club, and he will hold you
listening till three in the morning; give him the best tent, and the
gram-fed mutton. I have incurred a debt of salt that I can never repay,
but do you return it piecemeal to any of that Nation, and the account
will be on my head till our paths in the world cross again. He drinks
iced water just as we do; but he doesn't quite like our cigars.

And how shall I finish the tale? Would it interest you to learn of the
picnics in the hot, still woods that overhang the Monongahela, when
those idiotic American buggies that can't turn round got stuck among the
brambles and all but capsized; of boating in the blazing sun on the
river that but a little time before had cast at the feet of the
horrified village the corpses of the Johnstown tragedy? I saw one, only
one, remnant of that terrible wreck. He had been a minister. House,
church, congregation, wife, and children had been swept away from him
in one night of terror. He had no employment; he could have employed
himself at nothing; but God had been very good to him. He sat in the sun
and smiled a little weakly. It was in his poor blurred mind that
something had happened--he was not sure what it was, but undoubtedly
something had occurred. One could only pray that the light would never
return.

But there be many pictures on my mind. Of a huge manufacturing city of
three hundred thousand souls lighted and warmed by natural gas, so that
the great valley full of flaming furnaces sent up n