The _ogre_ proved to be a most good-natured _concierge_, who had been instructed to keep the door open in anticipation of our arrival. So our fears had been but feathers, after all, blown away by a breath; our troubles only a dream, to be laughed over in the awakening. * * * * * Here the story of our journeying may end. The remaining distance, through the kindness of friends, new and old, was accomplished without difficulty or annoyance. We reached our own homes in due time, and like the princess in the fairy tales, "lived happily forever afterwards." A few practical words suggest themselves here which would pass unnoticed in a preface--where, perhaps, they belong. First, in regard to the question often asked, "Can women travel alone through Europe?" Recalling our own experience,--too brief to serve as a criterion,--I should still say, "_Yes_." We met, frequently, parties of ladies who had made the whole grand tour alone. In Switzerland we found English women, constantly, without escort. The care of choosing routes, of looking after baggage and buying tickets, of managing the sometimes complicated affairs attendant upon sight-seeing, with the vexations and impositions met with and suffered on every hand, no woman would voluntarily accept without great compensation, I am sure. But if she prefers even these cares to seeing nothing of the world, they can be borne, and the annoyances, to a great extent overcome, through patience and growing experience. Then, if you start alone, or without being consigned to friends upon the other side,--which no _young_ woman would think of doing,--you are almost sure to join, at different times, other parties, whose way is your own; and far preferable this is to making up a large company before leaving home--the members of which usually disagree before reaching the continent, and often part in mutual disgust. "There is nothing like travelling to bring out a person's real nature," say some. But this is untrue. Travelling develops, rather than reveals, I think, and under conditions favorable only to the worse side of one's nature. You are bewildered by the multitude of strange sights and ways; the very foundation of usages is broken up; you are putting forth physical exertions that would seem superhuman at home, and are mentally racked until utterly exhausted,--for there is nothing so exhausting as continued sight-seeing,--and at this point people say they begin "to find each other out." An occasional period of rest--not staying within doors to study up the guide-books, but entire cessation from seeing, hearing, or doing--and a scrap from the mantle of charity, will save many a threatened friendship at these times. We learned to know our strength--how weak it was; and to await in some delightful spot, chosen for the purpose, returning energy, courage, and _interest_; for even that would be banished at times by utter weariness and exhaustion.