trudging the whole distance on foot, with the canoes upon our

shoulders, an object of astonishment to the trees on the canal

side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking children.

To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for

the Arethusa. He is somehow or other a marked man for the official

eye. Wherever he journeys, there are the officers gathered

together. Treaties are solemnly signed, foreign ministers,

ambassadors, and consuls sit throned in state from China to Peru,

and the Union Jack flutters on all the winds of heaven. Under

these safeguards, portly clergymen, school-mistresses, gentlemen in

grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and rabble of British touristry

pour unhindered, Murray in hand, over the railways of the

Continent, and yet the slim person of the Arethusa is taken in the

meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing. If he

travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about

the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are in order, he

is suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been

humiliated by a general incredulity. He is a born British subject,

yet he has never succeeded in persuading a single official of his

nationality. He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he

is rarely taken for anything better than a spy, and there is no

absurd and disreputable means of livelihood but has been attributed

to him in some heat of official or popular distrust. . . .

For the life of me I cannot understand it. I too have been knolled

to church, and sat at good men's feasts; but I bear no mark of it.

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