This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. When the Trappist sickens, he quits not his habit; he lies in the bed of death as he has prayed and laboured in his frugal and silent existence; and when the Liberator comes, at the very moment, even before they have carried him in his robe to lie his little last in the chapel among continual chantings, joy-bells break forth, as if for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and proclaim throughout the neighbourhood that another soul has gone to God. At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my place in the gallery to hear compline and _Salve Regina_, with which the Cistercians bring every day to a conclusion. There were none of those circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall the whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded and revealed, the strong manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and then the clear trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last office was over and the hour of sleep had come; and when I remember, I am not surprised that I made my escape into the court with somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man bewildered in the windy starry night. But I was weary; and when I had quieted my spirits with Elizabeth Seton’s memoirs--a dull work--the cold and the raving of the wind among the pines--for my room was on that side of the monastery which adjoins the woods--disposed me readily to slumber. I was wakened at black midnight, as it seemed, though it was really two in the morning, by the first stroke upon the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying to the chapel; the dead in life, at this untimely hour, were already beginning the uncomforted labours of their day. The dead of life--there was a chill reflection. And the words of a French song came back into my memory, telling of the best of our mixed existence: “Que t’as de belles filles, Giroflé! Girofla! Que t’as de belles filles, _L’Amour les comptera_:” And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free to love. Robert Louis Stevenson, _Travels with a Donkey_. By permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons, the authorized publishers. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NARRATIVES OF TRAVEL The editors have found these additional selections very useful in teaching the writing of travel narratives and sketches: Brooks, Charles S. _I Ungum the Scholar’s Whiskers_, from _A Thread of English Road_. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Gerould, Katharine Fullerton. _Our Northwestern States_, in _Harper’s Magazine_, March 1925; _Reno_, in _Harper’s Magazine_, June 1925.