“The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold.”

[Illustration:  Robert Browning.]

The most curious personages were some East Indians, a chocolate-colored lady, her husband, and children.  The mother had a diamond on the side of her nose, its setting riveted on the inside, one might suppose; the effect was peculiar, far from captivating.  A——­ said that she should prefer the good old-fashioned nose-ring, as we find it described and pictured by travellers.  She saw a great deal more than I did, of course.  I quote from her diary:  “The little Eastern children made their native salaam to the Princess by prostrating themselves flat on their little stomachs in front of her, putting their hands between her feet, pushing them aside, and kissing the print of her feet!”

I really believe one or both of us would have run serious risks of catching our “death o’ cold,” if we had waited for our own carriage, which seemed forever in coming forward.  The good Lady Holland, who was more than once our guardian angel, brought us home in hers.  So we got warmed up at our own hearth, and were ready in due season for the large and fine dinner-party at Archdeacon Farrar’s, where, among other guests, were Mrs. Phelps, our Minister’s wife, who is a great favorite alike with Americans and English, Sir John Millais, Mr. Tyndall, and other interesting people.

I am sorry that we could not have visited Newstead Abbey.  I had a letter from Mr. Thornton Lothrop to Colonel Webb, the present proprietor, with whom we lunched.  I have spoken of the pleasure I had when I came accidentally upon persons with whose name and fame I had long been acquainted.  A similar impression was that which I received when I found myself in the company of the bearer of an old historic name.  When my host at the lunch introduced a stately-looking gentleman as Sir Kenelm Digby, it gave me a start, as if a ghost had stood before me.  I recovered myself immediately, however, for there was nothing of the impalpable or immaterial about the stalwart personage who bore the name.  I wanted to ask him if he carried any of his ancestor’s “powder of sympathy” about with him.  Many, but not all, of my readers remember that famous man’s famous preparation.  When used to cure a wound, it was applied to the weapon that made it; the part was bound up so as to bring the edges of the wound together, and by the wondrous influence of the sympathetic powder the healing process took place in the kindest possible manner.  Sir Kenelm, the ancestor, was a gallant soldier, a grand gentleman, and the husband of a wonderfully beautiful wife, whose charms he tried to preserve from the ravages of time by various experiments.  He was also the homoeopathist of his day, the Elisha Perkins (metallic tractors) of his generation.  The “mind cure” people might adopt him as one of their precursors.

I heard a curious statement which was illustrated in the person of one of the gentlemen we met at this table.  It is that English sporting men are often deaf on one side, in consequence of the noise of the frequent discharge of their guns affecting the right ear.  This is a very convenient infirmity for gentlemen who indulge in slightly aggressive remarks, but when they are hit back never seem to be conscious at all of the riposte,—­the return thrust of the fencer.