Chapter I: Preface

What this little book contains the reader must discover for himself. I shall not save him trouble by telling in the Preface anything about it. Nor shall I tell more than the letters themselves show as to the identity of John and Ruth.

It is a book with a Purpose. The purpose being to give the reader the same pleasure that I had in compiling it when debarred for a time from more serious work.

I am, however, not without hope that this humorous record of the impressions of two young and unconventional Americans of the England before the dreadful war may do a little to lessen the tension which the nervous strain of the last few years has unhappily produced, and so help to that mutual understanding and sympathy upon which the welfare of the world depends. _The test of friendship is sympathetic banter_, and is, moreover, a firmer cement than solemn speech.

My thanks are due to the _Atlantic Monthly_ for permitting the use in book form of some passages in this chronicle which appeared as articles in that magazine.

L. P.

Point-au-Pic, Quebec,
August, 1920.

CONTENTS

I. The Legacy
II. The School of Instruction
III. "Fool Proof"
IV. "Der Kaiser Wilhelm der Zweite"
V. The Car Arrives
VI. The Great North Road
VII. The England of Fielding
VIII. The End of the North Road
IX. An English Interior
X. Husband and Wife
XI. The Fourth Speed
XII. "Jael the Wife of Heber the Kenite"
XIII. "As It Was in the Beginning"
XIV. Rural England
XV. Education
XVI. A By-Election
XVII. Sheep-Dogs
XVIII. Brigands and Bootblacks
XIX. The Piston-Rod
XX. Falstaff
XXI. The Black Country
XXII. An "Average" Sunday
XXIII. Dowager And Cowboy
XXIV. "By Pureness, by Kindness, by Love Unfeigned"
XXV. The County Families
XXVI. The Boat-Race
XXVII. The Custom-House
XXVIII. The "Rob" Room
XXIX. Vested Interests
XXX. "The Auld Un'"
XXXI. Church and State
XXXII. The Chaplain to the Queen
XXXIII. The Retired Colonel
XXXIV. A Problem in Casuistry
XXXV. A Day of Trouble and Distress
XXXVI. "One Every Minute"
XXXVII. Anglia or Frontenac?

ENGLISH WAYS AND BY-WAYS