But if our exit was triumphant, what was our entry to the square, when
weary, faint with seeing, hearing, and trying in vain to fix everything
seen and heard in our minds, we returned in a hansom! English ladies do
not much affect this mode of conveyance, but American women abroad
have, or take, a wide margin in matters of mere conventionality,--and so
ride in hansom cabs at will. They are grown-up baby perambulators upon
two wheels; the driver sitting up behind, where the handle would be, and
drawing the reins of interminable length over the top of the vehicle.
Picture it in your mind, and then wonder, as I did, what power of
attraction keeps the horse upon the ground; what prevents his flying
into the air when the driver settles down into his seat. A pair of low,
folding doors take the place of a lap robe; you dash through the street
at an alarming rate without any visible guide, experiencing all the
delights of a runaway without any of its dangers.
FLOWER SHOW AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE.
A ride by rail of half an hour takes one to Sydenham. It is a charming
walk from the station through the tastefully arranged grounds, with
their shrubberies, roseries, and fountains, along the pebble-strewn
paths, crowded this day with visitors. The palace itself is so like its
familiar pictures as to need no description. Much of the grandeur of its
vast proportions within is lost by its divisions and subdivisions. There
are courts representing the various nations of the earth,--America, as
usual, felicitously and truthfully shown up by a pair of scantily
attired savages under a palm tree; there are the courts of the Alhambra,
of Nineveh, and of Pompeii; there are fountains, and statues, and
bazaars innumerable, where one may purchase almost anything as a
souvenir; there are cafés where one may refresh the body, and an immense
concert hall where one may delight the soul,--and how much more I
cannot tell, for the crowd was almost beyond belief, and a much more
interesting study than Egyptian remains, or even the exquisite mass of
perfumed bloom, that made the air like summer, and the whole place a
garden. They were of the English middle class, the upper middle class,
bordering upon the nobility,--these rotund, fine-looking gentlemen in
white vests and irreproachable broadcloth, these stout, red-faced,
richly-attired ladies, with their soft-eyed, angular daughters following
in their train, or clinging to their arms. We listened for an hour to
the queen's own band in scarlet and gold, and then came back to town,
meeting train after train filled to overflowing with expensively arrayed
humanity in white kids, going out for the evening.
A DAY AT HAMPTON COURT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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