The Chevalier says truly--I am the captive of his bow and spear. His true devotion has won me from the world and from myself. The past is already fading from my sight; already I begin to live with him in the future, which shall be as calmly bright as true love can make it. I am perfectly satisfied to sacrifice to one so noble and earnest the day-dreams of my youth. Dr. Howe and his bride went to Europe on their wedding-trip--on the same steamer with Horace Mann and his newly made wife, Mary Peabody, the sister of Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne. The teacher of Laura Bridgman was well known in England through Dickens's "American Notes," and people were anxious to do him honor. Dickens not only invited the interesting Americans to dinner, but he offered to pilot Dr. Howe and his brother reformer, Horace Mann, about darkest London and show them the haunts of misery and crime which no one knew better than the author of "Oliver Twist," "Little Dorrit," and "Bleak House." The following note, written in Dickens's characteristic hand, shows the zest with which the great novelist undertook these expeditions and his boyish love of fun: My dear Howe,--Drive to-night to St. Giles's Church. Be there at half past 11--and wait. Somebody will put his head into the coach after a Venetian and mysterious fashion, and breathe your name. Follow that man. Trust him to the death. So no more at present from Ninth June, 1843. THE MASK. It had been the plan to go from England to Berlin; but Dr. Howe, who had once incurred the displeasure of the king of Prussia by giving aid to certain Polish refugees, and had, indeed, been held for five weeks in a German prison, was now excluded from the country as a "dangerous person." This greatly amused Horace Mann, who remarked, "When we consider that His Majesty has 200,000 men constantly under arms, and can in need increase the number to two million, we begin to appreciate the estimation in which he holds your single self." When, some years later, the king sent Dr. Howe a medal in recognition of his work for the blind, the Chevalier declared laughingly: "It is worth just what I was obliged to pay for board and lodging while in the Berlin prison. His Majesty is magnanimous!" After traveling through Switzerland, Italy, and France, the Howes stopped for a second visit to England, where they were entertained for a time by the parents of Florence Nightingale. A warm attachment sprang up between them and the earnest young woman of twenty-four. "I want to ask your advice, Dr. Howe," said Miss Nightingale, one day. "Would it be unsuitable for a young Englishwoman to devote herself to works of charity in hospitals and wherever needed, just as the Catholic sisters do?"