Dreary! dreary! dreary! Ghastly! In Italy, later, and southern France, I saw public washing under the sky, beside a stream or near a fountain--a broken, picturesque, deliciously archaic fountain in one instance. Here under gray skies, in a gray neighborhood, and in this prison-like washroom was one of the most doleful pictures of life the mind of man could imagine. Always when I think of the English, I want to go off into some long analysis of their character. We have so much to learn of life, it seems to me, and among the first things is the chemistry of the human body. I always marvel at the nature of the fluids which make up some people. Different climates must produce different kinds, just as they produce strange kinds of trees and animals. Here in England this damp, gray climate produces a muggy sort of soul which you find _au naturel_ only when you walk among the very poor in such a neighborhood as this. Here in this wash-house I saw the low English _au naturel_, but no passing commentary such as this could do them justice. One would have to write a book in order to present the fine differences. Weakness, lowness of spirit, a vague comprehension of only the simplest things, combined with a certain meaty solidarity, gave me the creeps. Here they were, scrubbing or ironing; strings tied around their protuberant stomachs to keep their skirts up; clothes the color of lead or darker, and about as cheerful; hair gray or brownish-black, thin, unkempt; all of them flabby and weary-looking--about the atmosphere one would find in an American poorhouse.