There would need five days
from Vera Cruz to reach them. And so this summer was to
be spent in the North with them, before October should
bring all the children and the parents to the land of the
open sky. Three busy weeks between the 1st and the 22d,
in which all the pictures must be finished, Ingham's
novel must be revised, Haliburton's articles completed,
the new invention for measuring power must be gauged and
tested, the dried flowers must be mounted and packed, the
preserved fruits must be divided for the Northern
friends. Three happy weeks of life eventful, but life
without crowding, and, above all, without interruption.
"Think of it," cried Felix, as they took their last walk
among the lava crags, the door-bell has not rung all this
last winter.'"
"`This happy old king
On his gate he did swing,
Because there was never a door-bell to ring.'"
This was Julia's impromptu reply.
CHAPTER IV
HOME AGAIN
So came one more journey. Why can we not go and come
without this musty steamer, these odious smells, this
food for dogs, and this surge--ah, how remorseless!--of
the cruel sea?
But even this will end. Once more the Stars and
Stripes! A land of furnaces and of waterpipes, a land of
beggars and of caucuses, a land of gas-meters and of
liars, a land of pasteboard and of cards, a land of
etiquettes and of bad spelling, but still their country!
A land of telegraphs, which told in an instant, as they
landed on the levee, that all the twenty-nine were well,
and begged them to be at the college on Tuesday evening,
so as to see "Much Ado about Nothing.
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