Toward the end of the day, and when we had rowed nearly twenty miles, we saw in the distance the town of Monmouth, where we was going to stop for the night.

[Illustration:  “In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can’t get over”]

Old Samivel asked us what hotel we was going to stop at, and when we told him the one we had picked out he said he could tell us a better one.

“If I was you,” he said, “I’d go to the Eyengel.”  We didn’t know what this name meant, but as the old man said he would take us there we agreed to go.

“I should think you would have a lonely time rowing back by yourself,” I said.

“Rowing back?” said he.  “Why, bless your soul, lady, there isn’t nobody who could row this boat back agen that current and up them rapids.  We take the boats back with the pony.  We put the boat on a wagon and the pony pulls it back to Ross; and as for me, I generally go back by the train.  It isn’t so far from Monmouth to Ross by the road, for the road is straight and the river winds and bends.”

The old man took us to the inn which he recommended, and we found it was the Angel.  It was a nice, old-fashioned, queer English house.  As far as I could see, they was all women that managed it, and it couldn’t have been managed better; and as far as I could see, we was the only guests, unless there was “commercial gents,” who took themselves away without our seeing them.

We was sorry to have old Samivel leave us, and we bid him a most friendly good-by, and promised if we ever knew of anybody who wanted to go down the River Wye we would recommend them to ask at Ross for Samivel Jones to row them.

We found the landlady of the Angel just as good to us as if we had been her favorite niece and nephew.  She hired us a carriage the next day, and we was driven out to Raglan Castle, through miles and miles of green and sloping ruralness.  When we got there and rambled through those grand old ruins, with the drawbridge and the tower and the courtyard, my soul went straight back to the days of knights and ladies, and prancing steeds, and horns and hawks, and pages and tournaments, and wild revels and vaulted halls.

The young man who had charge of the place seemed glad to see how much we liked it, as is natural enough, for everybody likes to see us pleased with the particular things they have on hand.

“You haven’t anything like this in your country,” said he.  But to this I said nothing, for I was tired of always hearing people speak of my national denomination as if I was something in tin cans, with a label pasted on outside; but Jone said it was true enough that we didn’t have anything like it, for if we had such a noble edifice we would have taken care of it, and not let it go to rack and ruin in this way.

Jone has an idea that it don’t show good sense to knock a bit of furniture about from garret to cellar until most of its legs are broken, and its back cracked, and its varnish all peeled off, and then tie ribbons around it, and hang it up in the parlor, and kneel down to it as a relic of the past.  He says that people who have got old ruins ought to be very thankful that there is any of them left, but it’s no use in them trying to fill up the missing parts with brag.