Bethinking myself that I had never yet gone down the Rhine by water, I boarded a steamer at Biebrich, {192} and steamed down the yellow turbid river for eight hours in mist and rain, wishing all the time that I was in the train. A female fellow-passenger introduced herself to me as a former governess of the Glasgow children in the Antipodes, said she had lost her party _and_ her purse, and requested a small loan! I spent two pleasant days at Cologne (Sunday and the _festa_ of August 15 next day), was edified by the immense and devout congregations and the beautiful music in the vast cathedral, and pleased to see the simple holiday-making of the good Rhinelanders in their pretty river-side gardens. Brussels, my next halting-place, was crammed with visitors to the Exhibition, or rather to the smoking ruins of what had been the exhibition, the greater part of which had been burned down the night before my arrival. I walked through the cheerful city, of which the only new feature (to me) was the colossal Palace of Justice, which seemed to dominate Brussels as the heaven-piercing spires of the Dom dominate Cologne; but the gigantic mass of the Brussels building seemed rather to be heaven-defying, and too suggestive of the Tower of Babel to please me. Letters at Brussels told me of the long-hoped-for arrival of Kelburn's son and heir, godson to Queen Mary (her first since the King's accession). He was named Maurice at the special wish of Her Majesty, who (so I understood) was possessed with the odd idea that "Maurice" was the masculine equivalent for "Mary!" Crossing from Ostend to Dover, I encountered a well-known Scottish peer of whose demise I had read in an English paper two days before. He was on his way home from visiting the Passion-play at Ober Ammergau, had seen no papers, {193} and had been surprised, and rather annoyed, at receiving letters and telegrams at Brussels congratulating him on being still alive. I cheered him up with a story of another man who saw his death announced in the morning papers, and calling up an intimate friend on the telephone, said, "Did you see in this morning's paper that I was dead?" "Yes," replied his friend, "I did. Where are you speaking from?" When I got to London, the same kind brother who had escorted me to Wiesbaden took me (by way of consolation for my wasted month[4]) to lunch--on turtle soup and punch--at the "Ship and Turtle" in the City. After a flying visit to my kind friends at Arundel and to my sister in Surrey, I came back to stay with him at his elm-shaded Thames-side home. We made some pleasant expeditions thence by land and water, motoring one day to quaint old Guildford, where we explored Archbishop Abbott's delightfully picturesque old Jacobean almshouses, and drank tea in an almost equally picturesque tea-shop, kept, I was carefully informed, by _real_ ladies!