After lunch we went again strolling about and left ourselves just time for a turn in Hyde Park before dinner. I begged for a four-wheeler instead of taking a hansom to drive there, dreading that sort of conveyance. We were desperately hungry by this time and certainly we earned our dinner that day, which we took at “Monico’s,” a famous restaurant not only for the quality of the menu, but also for that of the guests. We ended our evening in a music-hall, and came back to the hotel after midnight to enjoy a well earned rest. The following morning we ran down by train to the Crystal Palace where a great festival was given by the Temperance Society. This palace is used now for popular meetings, concerts, theatres, flower-shows, bazaars, etc. We entered a hall of enormous proportions where we found a monster musical gathering of some five thousand singers. A room was shown to us especially assigned for strayed children who had lost themselves in the crowd. In our presence a policeman brought there a small boy who was shouting desperately, “I want mother!” There was great animation in the extensive grounds all round. A dinner _gratis_ was offered to the visitors, who belonged for the most part to the middle classes. They ate their meal under the trees, and the grass was all strewn with egg-shells and scraps of paper. As drink only beer was allowed. Two military schools, with their bands at the head, defiled before us. The pleasure-train which brought us back to London was taken by assault. We ran from end to end of the long train in search of seats nowhere to be found, until at last we were literally hurled into a crowded compartment in which I squeezed myself between two fat ladies, taking up as little room as I could. Though we were returning from a temperance festival, there was a tipsy woman drunk with beer in the next car, who was leaning out of the window shouting bacchanal songs in a voice thick with drink. We left London on the following morning. Our old Pole exhorted us to prolong our stay for another day, but we had no more time, and he saw us off at Victoria station. The mail train that was taking us back to France conveyed us swiftly to Newhaven from where we crossed by the ordinary steamer to Dieppe. The train stopped close to the landing-place. The sea looked horrible from the pier, the wind was blowing strongly and black clouds hung over the sea. The prospect of crossing the channel in such weather was not enticing, and we were inclined to turn back to London, but it would be a shame to be so chicken-hearted, and braving sea-sickness we decided to go on.