But it was not only the passengers on the "king's highway" who kept us entertained--not to say entranced--but houses and gardens on either side made it hard to keep the tenth commandment! When I said this to Ruth, she replied that it could hardly be my neighbor's wife whom I coveted, which was true, if cattish, for the ones we saw were more worthy than alluring! The ox and the ass were not in evidence, but I suspect Ruth coveted the man servant, and specially the maid servant, of whom we caught glimpses from time to time, flitting across the well-trimmed lawns or standing at the servants' entrance, gossiping with the butcher or the baker or the candlestick-maker--what difference can it make to a young woman who is forbidden to have "followers"? It was the houses which tempted me. There was an infinite variety to choose from--Elizabethan, Tudor, Jacobean (I am not sure I am always right about the period)--but I recognized the real Queen Anne. Here was a "gentleman's residence" and there a tiny cottage covered with climbing roses. I noted scores of Elizabethan houses with chimneys as graceful as the smoke which curled from them. Why cannot a modern architect design a chimney which will draw the eye as well as the smoke? And the gardens! Those of the poor as well as of the rich were a riot of color. There were dogs and ponies and "governess-carts," and all the things we are familiar with in the illustrated papers. As I looked at all these delectable things, it seemed to me that England was an earthly paradise; as old Gaunt says, "A second Eden." I grew melancholy as I remembered the "L" and the crowded subway, and the noise and the dirt of our chief city, the struggle for existence and the prevailing discontent--every man striving to surpass his neighbor--no one content with that station in life to which "it had pleased God to call him." How many Americans, I said to myself, believe God has called them to anything? Here, I continued, is peace and contentment. Would God that I were there! Now Ruth has an uncanny way of knowing of what one is thinking, so I was not startled when she broke into my revery by saying: