It was nearly night, and the great fires of the factories
lit up the sky, and we saw on the stocks a great ship being built.
We stayed in Glasgow one day, and Jone was delighted with it, because
he said it was like an American city. Now, on principle, I like
American cities, but I didn't come to Scotland to see them; and the
greatest pleasure I had in Glasgow was standing with a tumbler of water
in my hand, repeating to myself as much of the "Lady of the Lake" as I
could remember.
Letter Number Twenty-five
LONDON
Here we are in this wonderful town, where, if you can't see everything
you want to see, you can generally see a sample of it, even if your fad
happens to be the ancientnesses of Egypt. We are at the Babylon Hotel,
where we shall stay until it is time to start for Southampton, where we
shall take the steamer for home. What we are going to do between here
and Southampton I don't know yet; but I do know that Jone is all on
fire with joy because he thinks his journeys are nearly over, and I am
chilled with grief when I think that my journeys are nearly over.
We left Edinburgh on the train called the "Flying Scotsman," and it
deserved its name. I suppose that in the days of Wallace and Bruce and
Rob Roy the Scots must often have skipped along in a lively way; but I
am sure if any of them had ever invaded England at the rate we went
into it, the British lion would soon have been living on thistles
instead of roses.
The speed of this train was sometimes a mile a minute, I think; and I
am sure I was never on any railroad in America where I was given a
shorter time to get out for something to eat than we had at York. Jone
and I are generally pretty quick about such things, but we had barely
time to get back to our carriage before that "Flying Scotsman" went off
like a streak of lightning.
On the way we saw a part of York Minster, and had a splendid, view of
Durham Cathedral, standing high in the unreachable - that is, as far as
I was concerned. Peterborough Cathedral we also saw the outside of, and
I felt like a boy looking in at a confectioner's window with no money
to buy anything. It wasn't money that I wanted; it was time, and we had
very little of that left.
The next day, after we reached London, I set out to attend to a piece
of business that I didn't want Jone to know anything about. My business
was to look up my family pedigree. It seemed to me that it would be a
shame if I went away from the home of my ancestors without knowing
something about those ancestors and about the links that connected me
with them. So I determined to see what I could do in the way of making
up a family tree.
By good luck, Jone had some business to attend to about money and rooms
on the steamer, and so forth, and so I could start out by myself
without his even asking me where I was going. Now, of course, it would
be a natural thing for a person to go and seek out his ancestors in the
ancient village from which they sprang, and to read their names on
the tombstones in the venerable little church, but as I didn't know
where this village was, of course I couldn't go to it. But in London is
the place where you can find out how to find out such things.
[Illustration: "A PERSON WHO WAS A FAMILY-TREE-MAN"]
As far back as when we was in Chedcombe I had had a good deal of talk
with Miss Pondar about ancestors and families. I told her that my
forefathers came from this country, which I was very sure of, judging
from my feelings; but as I couldn't tell her any particulars, I didn't
go into the matter very deep. But I did say there was a good many
points that I would like to set straight, and asked her if she knew
where I could find out something about English family trees. She said
she had heard there was a big heraldry office in London, but if I
didn't want to go there, she knew of a person who was a
family-tree-man. He had an office in London, and his business was to go
around and tend to trees of that kind which had been neglected, and to
get them into shape and good condition. She gave me his address, and I
had kept the thing quiet in my mind until now.
I found the family-tree-man, whose name was Brandish, in a small room
not too clean, over a shop not far from St. Paul's Churchyard. He had
another business, which related to patent poison for flies, and at
first he thought I had come to see him about that, but when he found
out I wanted to ask him about my family tree his face brightened up.
When I told Mr. Brandish my business the first thing he asked me was my
family name. Of course I had expected this, and I had thought a great
deal about the answer I ought to give. In the first place, I didn't
want to have anything to do with my father's name. I never had anything
much to do with him, because he died when I was a little baby, and his
name had nothing high-toned about it, and it seemed to me to belong to
that kind of a family that you would be better satisfied with the less
you looked up its beginnings; but my mother's family was a different
thing.
