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morning when what you want is
really a hot one at night. And it stirs a little of the faith of
your fathers that is deep down within you to have to have it taken
for granted that you are an Episcopalian when really you are an
old-fashioned Philadelphia Quaker.
    But these things have to be done; it is the cock that the whole
of this society owes to Æsculapius.
    And the odd, queer thing is that the whole collection of rules
applies to anybody—to the anybodies that you meet in hotels, in
railway trains, to a less degree, perhaps, in steamers, but even,
in the end, upon steamers. You meet a man or a woman and, from tiny
and intimate sounds, from the slightest of movements, you know at
once whether you are concerned with good people or with those who
won't do. You know, this is to say, whether they will go rigidly
through with the whole programme from the underdone beef to the
Anglicanism. It won't matter whether they be short or tall; whether
the voice squeak like a marionette or rumble like a town bull's; it
won't matter whether they are Germans, Austrians, French, Spanish,
or even Brazilians—they will be the Germans or Brazilians who take
a cold bath every morning and who move, roughly speaking, in
diplomatic circles.
    But the inconvenient—well, hang it all, I will say it—the
damnable nuisance of the whole thing is, that with all the taking
for granted, you never really get an inch deeper than the things I
have catalogued.
    I can give you a rather extraordinary instance of this. I can't
remember whether it was in our first year—the first year of us four
at Nauheim, because, of course, it would have been the fourth year
of Florence and myself—but it must have been in the first or second
year. And that gives the measure at once of the extraordinariness
of our discussion and of the swiftness with which intimacy had
grown up between us. On the one hand we seemed to start out on the
expedition so naturally and with so little preparation, that it was
as if we must have made many such excursions before; and our
intimacy seemed so deep....
    Yet the place to which we went was obviously one to which
Florence at least would have wanted to take us quite early, so that
you would almost think we should have gone there together at the
beginning of our intimacy. Florence was singularly expert as a
guide to archaeological expeditions and there was nothing she liked
so much as taking people round ruins and showing you the window
from which some one looked down upon the murder of some one else.
She only did it once; but she did it quite magnificently. She could
find her way, with the sole help of Baedeker, as easily about any
old monument as she could about any American city where the blocks
are all square and the streets all numbered, so that you can go
perfectly easily from Twenty-fourth to Thirtieth.
    Now it happens that fifty minutes away from Nauheim, by a good
train, is the ancient city of M——, upon a great pinnacle of basalt,
girt with a triple road running sideways up its shoulder like a
scarf. And at the top there is a castle—not a square castle like
Windsor, but a castle all slate gables and high peaks with gilt
weathercocks flashing bravely—the castle of St Elizabeth of
Hungary. It has the disadvantage of being in Prussia; and it is
always disagreeable to go into that country; but it is very old and
there are many double-spired churches and it stands up like a
pyramid out of the green valley of the Lahn. I don't suppose the
Ashburnhams wanted especially to go there and I didn't especially
want to go there myself. But, you understand, there was no
objection. It was part of the cure to make an excursion three or
four times a week. So that we were all quite unanimous in being
grateful to Florence for providing the motive power. Florence, of
course, had a motive of her own. She was at that time engaged in
educating Captain Ashburnham—oh, of course, quite pour le bon
motif! She used to say to Leonora: "I simply can't