Pomonas Travels | Page 2

her husband in independent circumstances. The
ideas and ambitions of this eccentric but sensible young woman
enlarged with her fortune. As her daughter was now going to school,
Pomona was seized with the spirit of emulation, and determined as far
as was possible to make the child's education an advantage to herself.
Some of the books used by the little girl at school were carefully and
earnestly studied by her mother, and as Jonas joined with hearty
good-will in the labors and pleasures of this system of domestic study,
the family standard of education was considerably raised. In the
quick-witted and observant Pomona the improvement showed itself
principally in her methods of expression, and although she could not be
called at the time of these travels an educated woman, she was by no
means an ignorant one.
When the daughter was old enough she was allowed to accept an
invitation from her grandmother to spend the summer in the country,
and Pomona determined that it was the duty of herself and husband to
avail themselves of this opportunity for foreign travel.
Accordingly, one fine spring morning, Pomona, still a young woman,
and Jonas, not many years older, but imbued with a semi-pathetic
complaisance beyond his years, embarked for England and Scotland, to
which countries it was determined to limit their travels. The letters
which follow were written in consequence of the earnest desire of
Euphemia to have a full account of the travels and foreign impressions
of her former handmaiden. Pruned of dates, addresses, signatures, and
of many personal and friendly allusions, these letters are here presented
as Pomona wrote them to Euphemia.

Letter Number One

[Illustration]
LONDON
The first thing Jone said to me when I told him I was going to write
about what I saw and heard was that I must be careful of two things. In
the first place, I must not write a lot of stuff that everybody ought to be
expected to know, especially people who have travelled themselves;
and in the second place, I must not send you my green opinions, but
must wait until they were seasoned, so that I can see what they are good
for before I send them.
"But if I do that," said I, "I will get tired of them long before they are
seasoned, and they will be like a bundle of old sticks that I wouldn't
offer to anybody." Jone laughed at that, and said I might as well send
them along green, for, after all, I wasn't the kind of a person to keep
things until they were seasoned, to see if I liked them. "That's true,"
said I, "there's a great many things, such as husbands and apples, that I
like a good deal better fresh than dry. Is that all the advice you've got to
give?"
"For the present," said he; "but I dare say I shall have a good deal more
as we go along."
"All right," said I, "but be careful you don't give me any of it green.
Advice is like gooseberries, that's got to be soft and ripe, or else well
cooked and sugared, before they're fit to take into anybody's stomach."
Jone was standing at the window of our sitting-room when I said this,
looking out into the street. As soon as we got to London we took
lodgings in a little street running out of the Strand, for we both want to
be in the middle of things as long as we are in this conglomerate town,
as Jone calls it. He says, and I think he is about right, that it is made up
of half a dozen large cities, ten or twelve towns, at least fifty villages,
more than a hundred little settlements, or hamlets, as they call them
here, and about a thousand country houses scattered along around the
edges; and over and above all these are the inhabitants of a large
province, which, there being no province to put them into, are crammed

into all the cracks and crevices so as to fill up the town and pack it
solid.
When we was in London before, with you and your husband, madam,
and we lost my baby in Kensington Gardens, we lived, you know, in a
peaceful, quiet street by a square or crescent, where about half the
inhabitants were pervaded with the solemnities of the past and the other
half bowed down by the dolefulness of the present, and no way of
getting anywhere except by descending into a movable tomb, which is
what I always think of when we go anywhere in the underground
railway. But here we can walk to lots of things we want to see, and if
there was nothing else to keep us lively the fear of being