Lippincotts Magazine, August, 1885 | Page 8

period, and of Ethel not at all.
Miss Noel heard very regularly from Mrs. Sykes all this while; and that
energetic traveller had not been idle. She had made her new friends
"take her about tremendously," she said. She had seen all the large
towns in that part of the country, and thought them "very ugly and
monotonously commonplace, but prosperous-looking,--like the
inhabitants." The scenery she had found "far too uninteresting to repay
the bother of sketching it." But she had made a few pictures of "the
views most cracked up in the White Mountains,"--where she had
been,--"a sort of second-hand Switzerland of a place; really nothing
after the Himalayas, but made a great fuss over by the Americans." She
described with withering scorn a drive she took there.
"We came suddenly one day upon a party in a kind of Cheap-Jack van,"
she wrote,--"gayly-dressed people, tricked off in smart finery, and
larking like a lot of Ramsgate tradesmen on the public road. One of the
impudent creatures made a trumpet of his great ugly fist and spelt out
the name of the hotel at which they were stopping, and then put his
hand to his ear, as if to listen for the response. Expecting me to tell
them anything about myself! But I flatter myself that I was a match for
them. I just got out my umbrella and shot it up in their very faces as we
passed, in a way not to be mistaken. And--would you believe it?--the
rude wretches called out, 'The shower is over now! and 'What's the
price of starch?' and roared with laughing." A highly-colored
description of "a visit to a great Dissenting stronghold, Marbury Park,"
followed: "I was immensely curious to see one of these characteristic
national exhibitions of hysteria, ignorance, superstition, and immorality,
called a 'camp-meeting.' to which the Americans of all classes flock
annually by the thousands, so I quite insisted upon being taken to one,
though my friends would have got out of it if they could. I fancy they
were very ashamed of it; and they had need to be. I will not attempt to
describe it in detail here,--you will hear what I have said of it in my
diary,--but a more glaringly vulgar, intensely American performance
you can't fancy. I have made a number of sketches of the grounds, the
tents and tent-life, with the people bathing and dressing and all that in

the most exposed manner; of the pavilion, where the roaring and
ranting is done; and of the great revivalist who was holding forth when
I got there, and who had got such a red face and seemed so excited that
it is my belief he was _regularly screwed_, though my friends denied it,
of course. With such a preacher, you can 'realize,' as they say, what the
people were like. A regular Derby-day crowd having a religious
saturnalia,--that is what it is. It would not be allowed at home, I am
sure. Disgusting! One can't wonder at the state of society in America
when one sees what their religion is. An unpleasant incident occurred
to me while sketching in the pavilion, that shows what I have often
pointed out to you,--the radicalism and odious impertinence of this
people. I was just putting the finishing-touches to my picture of the Rev.
(?) 'Galusha Wickers' (the revivalist: such names as these Americans
have!), when I heard a voice behind me saying, 'Lor! Why, that's
splendid! perfectly splendid! Well, I declare, you've got him to a t.
Lemmy see.' And, if you please, a hand was thrust over my shoulder
and the sketch seized, without so much as a 'By your leave.' Can you
fancy a more unwarrantable, insufferable liberty? But they are all alike
over here. I turned about, and saw a woman who was examining the
reverend revivalist with much satisfaction. 'Well, you have got him, to
be sure,' she said, returning my angry glance with one of admiration,
and quite unabashed. 'What'll you take for it? I've sat under him for five
years; and for taking texteses from one end of the Bible to the other,
and leading in prayer, and filling the mourners' bench in five minutes, I
will say he hasn't got his equal in the universe. He's got a towering
intellect, I tell you. I'll give you fifty cents for this, if you'll color it up
nice for me and throw in a frame.' Of course I took the picture away
from the brazen creature and told her what I thought of her conduct.
'Well, you air techy,' she said, and walked off leisurely." Before closing
her letter, Mrs. Sykes remarked of her hostess, "Quite good for nothing
physically, and absurdly romantic. She has been abroad a good deal,
and bores