Chapter II: Part 2

Reference has been made to the fact that this particular locality is especially interesting from a geographical standpoint. Including the Jackson Lake country it is in this respect one of the most important and interesting regions on the continent. It lies on both sides of the great Continental Divide, which twists and turns in all directions in its course northward and southward.

Outside of the limits of Yellowstone Park itself, the mountain structure found here is, perhaps, not greatly different from that of other parts of the Rockies. The Teton range lies south of the park, and is one of the most prominent and commanding in the entire Rocky Mountain chain. The park region itself seems to be a vent for the pent-up heat of the earth. It is not improbable that these boiling springs and geysers may serve as escape-valves, and be the means of preventing very serious volcanic disturbances, such as occurred here in past ages.

As a watershed the region is equally remarkable. It has been noted that here four of the largest rivers of our country have their sources, interlacing with one another. It is, indeed, a network of thousands of mountain streams forming, ultimately, four great rivers, each flowing to a different point of the compass. The headwaters of the Snake River, joining with the Columbia, find their way into the North Pacific Ocean. The waters of the Green, after a journey through the great cañons of the Southwest, flow into the Pacific through the Gulf of California. To the east flows the Yellowstone, which merges its waters with those of the Missouri, and, after a journey of three thousand miles, flows into the Atlantic through the Gulf of Mexico.

This unique region is no longer difficult of access. Railways reach it from three sides, the north, west, and east, and the Government has spent between one million and two million dollars in establishing excellent roads to enable travelers to view the beauties of the Yellowstone. Here is to be found the finest automobile trip of its length in the country, supplemented by telephone-lines and large and costly hotels. The construction of these buildings must be carried on in winter, and the nails used have to be heated in order to handle them.

With the year 1917 will disappear the last remnant of the old stage-coaching days, a mode of travel which for years was the only method of land travel in the West, and which until now has been the method of transportation in the park. Beginning with this season, automobiles will displace the horses and coaches and numerous other changes in the way of increased comfort, convenience, and pleasure have been planned. The old six-day now becomes one of five days, with several advantageous changes in route and in the time to be spent at different points.

The policy of our Government in establishing these national parks has since been followed by other nations, and it has been praised by such thoughtful observers as, for example, Lord Bryce, ex-ambassador to this country from England. That it has accomplished the object of its originators and is a blessing to mankind is now beyond question.

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FIRECRACKERS

BY ERICK POMEROY

TEMPLE OF THE EMPRESS OF HEAVEN, CHINA

This is the thirteenth day of the fifth moon of the thirty-third year of Kwang-su, very early in the morning--that is, "very early" for me, because I ordered my "boy" last evening to call me at eight o'clock this morning and not a minute before. Here, in the rambling old temple where we live, we have learned to go to bed with the sun on the fourteenth and on the last day of each Chinese moon, because we know that the wailing pipes of the early morning celebrations before the gods on the first and fifteenth of the moon will be certain to wake us at a truly heathenish hour. But when an extra, unannounced, unexpected festival day is ushered in with cymbals, pipes, and firecrackers, then we just have to lose our morning sleep and try not to lose our tempers. This morning is one of those dawns of misery. Even as I write the temple bells, the drums, and those peculiar jig-time horns are setting up a discordant hubbub in the courtyards, while at intervals a big cracker sends me springing into the air with a start that fearfully tries my nerves. At first this morning I endeavored to sleep, but I soon gave that up to don my kimono and sally forth to find out the cause of this gratuitous Fourth of July. Out on the terrace in front of the inner gates of the temple, to which the rays of the rising sun had not yet bent down, there was gathered a small group of men and boys watching such a display of firecrackers as would have attracted a whole City Hall Park full of people at home. Yet their interest was apparently much like their numbers--very small. They just gazed at the exploding end of the red string of noise without any comments and without any more evident interest than they took in seeing that the small boys picked up all of the unexploded crackers that were blown out of the danger circle by their more powerful brothers. My appearance in a kimono and straw sandals seemed to furnish them with more excitement than the rope of crackers which hung from the firecrackers pole hard by. Such a din! Can you imagine a string of firecrackers, large and small woven together, of over one hundred thousand?

But I am getting ahead of my story. By way of introduction I meant only to tell you that I have for some time been planning to write a letter to your good editor in the hope that he might be willing to pass on to you of the fast-disappearing American "firecracker age" my story of how this country, the native land of the "whip-guns," manufactures and uses these crackers which we think of as belonging only to our Fourth of July.

The desire and determination to write this letter had their birth one day in a city of North China when I was walking along the street where many of the firecracker-makers live--since dubbed "Firecracker Row" on my private chart of the city--and when I suddenly realized how much I should have liked as a boy, when I was "shooting off crackers," to see these places and to know their ways of manufacture. It is difficult not to be interrupted nor to interrupt these lines. Now there are two little pigtailed heads stretched up just over my window-sill, peeping in and asking if I do not wish to buy the tiger-lilies they have gathered on the hillside. So first I will try to tell you how the crackers are made and then how they are used out here, in the hope that you may find as much interest in reading the story as I have found in gathering the information and pictures for it.

Several times I went into the city to visit Firecracker Row, and on one occasion took a series of photographs to show more clearly than words will do the important steps in the process of manufacture. The first step consists in cutting the rough brown paper into pieces long enough to make a hollow tube of several layers in thickness, and wide enough to give the tube a length just twice that of the finished cracker. From the top of his pile the workman takes a pack of these slips, lays them out with one end arranged just like steps, and then slides down the stairs, as it were, with a brush of paste, so as to make the outer ends of the slips stick fast when rolled against the tube. Then he bends the other--the dry--end around an iron nail, and places the nail under a board, which rolls it along the slip until all the paper has curled around it. Once the cracker skeleton is thus formed, he gives it an extra roll or two down the bench for good measure, slides it off the nail into a basket, and has another started before you realize what he is about. Then one of the small apprentices in the shop arranges the skeletons together in a six-sided bundle, like those on the drying board in Cut II, in each of which he puts just five hundred and seven. Why that particular number, I could not find out.

Once dry, the skeletons receive their covering garment of red paper, which makes them so truly "little redskins"--this from the hands of one of the workers without the aid of any machine whatever. He just rolls one of the narrow slips around the tube with his fingers and hurries the growing agitator into another basket to await the time for stuffing in the material that will make him such a lively fellow. Once more, however, they all have to be packed up into the six-sided bundles, this time with two stout strings tied around them a third of the way from the top and bottom, leaving the middle free. The worker takes his big knife and chops right down through the whole bundle to make the clean ends for the tops of the shorter tubes.

These shorter tubes next have a thin paper covering pasted over both tops and bottoms before the bottoms are closed by tapping them with a nail that is just a little larger than the hole in the tube, so that it crowds down some of the paper from the sides. With the bundles right side up, the workman then makes holes in the paper cover over the top, scatters on this the powder dust, and distributes it fairly evenly among the five hundred and seven hungry ones by means of a light brush. When the dust has been tamped a little, the powder finds its way to the middle of the tube in the same manner, the fuse is inserted by another workman, the top layer of dust added, and the whole supply of bottled fun packed in by another tamping with a nail and mallet. Completed and still crowded together in the bundles, the little redskins, with the fuses sticking out of their caps, seem to wear a festive, promising look that clearly says: "You give us a light, and we'll do the rest. And what a high old time it will be!"

When asked how many of these bundles one man could make in a day, the good-natured master of the shop said that one man is counted on to make twenty bundles up to the point where the powder is put in, when the crackers are passed along to others to finish and weave into strings. What a "string" means here in this land, where the diminutive "packs" we used to buy for a nickel would be scored, may be gathered from a glance at those which the maker is holding up in Cut I and at those on the drying-boards in the view shown in Cut II.

Once the crackers have been fully prepared for stringing, either they are put together in such strings as you see in the pictures or they have bigger fellows--four or five times the size of the little ones--plaited in at regular intervals. Then they are wrapped neatly with red or white paper in long packages bearing on the face a red slip with the shop's name printed on it in gilt characters. Some of these packets would have seemed monstrous--needlessly extravagant--in those days when I used to make one or two nickel packs last the better part of a Fourth of July morning by firing them one by one in a hole in the tie-post or under a tin can. To give these longer strings sufficient strength to hang from a pole, as is the usual way of firing them, the workmen weave in with the fuses a light piece of hemp twine. But even this is not an adequate protection against a break in those monster strings that come out on special occasions. The one that started this letter to you was fifteen feet long when I arrived on the scene to investigate the disturbance and had already lost one-half its numbers (I have seen strings from thirty to fifty feet long). To keep such a string from breaking, the Chinese fasten it at intervals to a rope which runs through the pulley at the top of the pole, and then draw the line up until the bottom clears the ground. As the explosions tear away the lowest crackers, the rope is let down and, at the same time, held out away from the bottom of the pole to make a graceful curve of the last few feet of the string. When such long strings have eaten themselves up, you can imagine the amount of fragments around the base of the pole. There are literally basketfuls of them to be first wetted down to guard against fire and then swept up or allowed to blow away when the winds so will.

Thus far you have heard only of little and big crackers. However, there are many distinguishing names among the Chinese for the several varieties and sizes, which I am going to give you before passing on to the story of the special uses of crackers in the Chinese life. First come the ordinary _pien p'ao_, or "whip-guns," the small ones which derive their name from the similarity which their explosion bears to the snapping of a whip. Sometimes they are called simply "whips," in the same way that the Chinese speak of many things by shortened or changed names. To make these names seem more real to you I have had my Chinese teacher write out for me on separate slips the characters which represent them. More diminutive than the ordinary crackers are the "small whips," about an inch long, that are made especially for the small children to use without danger. For one American cent you could buy about one hundred of these. Then above the whip-guns the next class is the "bursting bamboos," which are said to have taken their name from the fact that in early times bamboo was used as the tubes for these crackers. If such were the case, a line of them must have "made the splinters fly." Even still more powerful are the "hemp thunderers," or, to take a little liberty with the translation, the "hemp sons of thunder," whose name also indicates their construction and their magnitude. Bearing a close similarity in power to our cannon crackers, these have been known at times to break the second-story paper windows in a small compound. They play an important part in the worshiping, or propitiating of the gods in our courtyard, inasmuch as it is considered good form to set them off at intervals while the whip-guns--which my teacher assures me "do not require any watching"--are keeping up their unbroken stream of praise and prayer. They may be considered as good lusty "Amens" throughout the service.

Slightly different in form are the "double noises," which are nothing more or less than our "boosters" that go off first on the ground and again up in the air. To intersperse these throughout the explosions of the whips during any special demonstration is also considered good form. Then allied to these we find another booster, which when it explodes on the ground drives ten others up into the air to become the "flying in heaven ten sounds" with the Chinese. These are only "for play," and that chiefly in the homes from the thirteenth to the seventeenth days of the first moon of the year. With the "lamp flower exploders," that is, our flower-pot, the list of the most common forms of crackers and fire-works becomes exhausted, although the Chinese have several other less usual species, together with many alternative names for both these and the ones I have mentioned.

The time when the Chinese receive most crackers is at the New Year season, when, among the well-to-do families of Tientsin and Peking, it is customary to give a boy the equivalent of our fifty cents for his purchases. In Peking the shops issue special red notes, like our old "shinplasters" in value, for this one use at the New Year. In giving the cracker money to the boys, the parents often make smaller presents to the girls, who are wont to buy paper flowers with their pennies, in proof of which the Chinese have a proverb which runs, "Girls like flowers; boys like crackers."

But this juvenile use of the whip-guns consumes only an infinitesimal part of the whole supply of the year. At many festivals and on many occasions the head of the house, the manager of the shop, or the officers of the gild require great quantities of these propitious harbingers. Greatest of all occasions is the passing of the year, when the people keep up the successor to the ancient custom of setting off the "bamboo guns" in order to drive away the evil spirits of the past twelvemonth and to usher in all that is good for the coming one. All night long the crackers have been popping in the town below, and an early gathering in the temple is held to add the final touch before the new day shall break.

When morning came, I wandered leisurely to my office through the business section of the town to watch the fun at the big shops. Never shall I forget the picture of that street with its dozen or more great red strings of crackers hanging in front of the bigger hongs and seemingly waiting for some word to start the fusillade. Fortunately this came and the storm broke as I waited. For sheer noise, vivacity, and demonstrative liveliness I never have seen the equal of those snarling, bursting lines that poured out their wrath with incessant fervor upon the evil spirits below and shot up their welcome to the good ones above. Then, although this display on New Year's Day seemed grand enough to last a long time, there came more explosions as the shops took down their doors and began their routine business on the fifth or sixth of the moon. Furthermore, custom demands in certain parts that throughout the first ten days of the year there shall be occasional snappings of the whips, to be followed on the fifteenth, at the Feast of Lanterns, by a still greater demonstration.

When a new shop is opened, it is customary for all the front boards to be left up until just before the opening ceremony takes place; then one or two boards are taken down, the manager and his assistants come out to light a string of crackers, and, as the whips are snapping, the remaining boards come down to the sound of this propitious music of the land. Very often there are several strings hung from poles or tripods, and one is lighted after the other in such a way as to maintain a long, unbroken stream of noise.

In most parts of the empire it is also customary for an official, when he receives the seals of office from his predecessor, to have a string of crackers let off at the proper moment. And I must confess to having yielded myself to the pressure of my Chinese assistants in having purchased a few for use at the time we opened our new office at this place. Likewise, when a military official is leaving a post, he is usually accorded a send-off with crackers which have been subscribed for by his men.

And thus, from what has gone before, you may catch some idea of the persistency with which the little redskins have poked their noses into almost all the important celebrations of the Chinese life.

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CURIOUS CLOCKS

BY CHARLES A. BRASSLER

Many of the German cities of the Middle Ages enjoyed great prosperity, which they liked to exhibit in the form of splendid churches and other public buildings; and each one tried to excel the others. When, therefore, in the year 1352, Strassburg was the first to erect a great cathedral clock, which not only showed the hour to hundreds of observers, but whose strokes proclaimed it far and near, there was a rivalry among the rich cities as to which should set up within its walls the most beautiful specimen of this kind.

The citizens of Nuremberg, who were renowned all over the European world for their skill, were particularly jealous of Strassburg's precedence over them.

In 1356, when the Imperial Council, or Reichstag, held in Nuremberg, issued the Golden Bull, an edict or so-called "imperial constitution" which promised to be of greatest importance to the welfare of the kingdom, a locksmith, whose name is unfortunately not recorded, took this as his idea for the decoration of a clock which was set up in the Frauenkirche in the year 1361. The emperor, Charles IV, was represented, seated upon a throne; at the stroke of twelve, the seven Electors, large moving figures, passed and bowed before him to the sound of trumpets.

This work of art made a great sensation.

Other European cities, naturally, desired to have similar sights, and large public clocks were therefore erected in Breslau in 1368, in Rouen in 1389, in Metz in 1391, in Speyer in 1395, in Augsburg in 1398, in Lübeck in 1405, in Magdeburg in 1425, in Padua in 1430, in Dantzic in 1470, in Prague in 1490, in Venice in 1495, and in Lyons in 1598.

Not all, of course, were as artistic as that of Nuremberg; but no town now contented itself with a simple clockwork to tell the hours. Some had a stroke for the hours, and some had chimes; the one showed single characteristic moving figures, while others were provided with great astronomical works, showing the day of the week, month, and year, the phases of the moon, the course of the planets, and the signs of the zodiac.

On the town clock of Compiègne, which was built in 1405, three figures of soldiers, or "jaquemarts," so-called (in England they are called "Jacks"), struck the hour upon three bells under their feet; and they are doing it still. The great clock of Dijon has a man and a woman sitting upon an iron framework which supports the bell upon which they strike the hours. In 1714 the figure of a child was added, to strike the quarters. The most popular of the mechanical figures was the cock, flapping his wings and crowing.

The clock on the Aschersleben Rathaus shows, besides the phases of the moon, two pugnacious goats, which butt each other at each stroke of the hour; also the wretched Tantalus, who at each stroke opens his mouth and tries to seize a golden apple which floats down; but in the same moment it is carried away again. On the Rathaus clock in Jena is also a representation of Tantalus, opening his mouth as in Aschersleben; but here the apple is not present, and the convulsive efforts of the figure to open the jaws wide become ludicrous.

One of the first clocks with which important astronomical works were connected is that of the Marienkirche in Lübeck, now restored. Below, at the height of a man's head, is the plate which shows the day of the week, month, etc.; these calculations are so reliable that the extra day of leap-year is pushed in automatically every four years. The plate is more than three meters in diameter. Above it is the dial, almost as large. The numbers from 1 to 12 are repeated, so that the hour-hand goes around the dial only once in twenty-four hours. In the wide space between the axis which carries the hand and the band where the hours are marked, the fixed stars and the course of the planets are represented. The heavens are here shown as they appear to an observer in Lübeck. In the old works the movement of the planets was given incorrectly, for they all were shown as completing a revolution around the sun in 360 days. Of course this is absurd. Mercury, for example, revolves once around the sun in eighty-eight days, while Saturn requires twenty-nine years and 166 days for one revolution. When this astronomical clock was repaired, some years ago, a very complicated system of wheels had to be devised to reproduce accurately the great difference in the movement of the planets. The work consumed two years. There are a great number of moving figures on the Lübeck clock, but they are not of the most conspicuous interest. In spite of this, however, they excite more wonder among the crowds of tourists who are always present when the clock strikes twelve than the really remarkable and admirable astronomical and calendar works.

The Strassburg clock has, more than all others, an actually world-wide fame; and no traveler who visits the beautiful old city fails to see the curious and interesting spectacle which it offers daily at noontime. To quote from one such visitor: "Long before the clock strikes twelve, a crowd has assembled in the high-arched portico of the stately cathedral, to be sure of not missing the right moment. Men and women of both high and low degree, strangers and townspeople alike, await in suspense the arrival of the twelfth hour. The moment approaches, and there is breathless silence. An angel lifts a scepter and strikes four times upon a bell; another turns over an hour-glass which he holds in the hand. A story higher, an old man is seen to issue from a space decorated in Gothic style; he strikes four times with his crutch upon a bell, and disappears at the other side, while the figure of Death lets the bone in its hand fall slowly and solemnly, twelve times, upon the hour-bell. In still another story of the clock, the Saviour sits enthroned, bearing in the left hand a banner of victory, the right hand raised in benediction. As soon as the last stroke of the hour has died away, the apostles appear from an opening at the right hand of the Master. One by one they turn and bow before Him, departing at the other side. Christ lifts His hand in blessing to each apostle in turn, and when the last has disappeared, He blesses the assembled multitude. A cock on a side tower flaps his wings and crows three times. A murmur passes through the crowd, and it disperses, filled with wonder and admiration at the spectacle it has witnessed."

In 1574, the Strassburg astronomical clock replaced the older one. It was mainly the work of Dasypodius, a famous mathematician, and it ran until 1789. Later, the celebrated clock-maker, Johann Baptist Schwilgué (born December 18, 1772), determined to repair it. After endless negotiations with the church authorities, he obtained the contract, and on October 2, 1842, the clock, as made over, was solemnly reconsecrated.

In very recent days, the clock of the City Hall in Olmütz, also renovated, has become a rival to that of the Strassburg Cathedral. In the year 1560, it was described by a traveler as a true marvel, together with the Strassburg clock and that of the Marienkirche in Dantzic. But as the years passed, it was most inconceivably neglected, and everything movable and portable about it was carried off. Now, after repairs which have been almost the same as constructing it anew, it works almost faultlessly. In the lower part of the clock is the calendar, with the day of the year, month, and week, and the phases of the moon, together with the astronomical plate; a story higher, a large number of figures move around a group of angels, and here is also a good portrait of the Empress Maria Theresa. Still higher is an arrangement of symbolical figures and decorations, which worthily crowns the whole. A youth and a man, above at the left, announce the hours and quarters by blows of a hammer. The other figures go through their motions at noonday. Scarcely have the blows of the man's hammer ceased to sound, when a shepherd boy, in another wing of the clock, begins to play a tune; he has six different pieces, which can be alternated. As soon as he has finished, the chimes, sixteen bells, begin, and the figures of St. George, of Rudolph of Hapsburg, with a priest, and of Adam and Eve, appear in the left center. When they have disappeared, the chimes ring their second melody, and the figures of the right center appear,--the three Kings of the East, before the enthroned Virgin, and the Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt. When the bells ring for the third time, all the figures show themselves once more.

Clocks operated by electricity are, of course, the product of recent times.

England's largest electric clock was, as our illustration shows, recently christened in a novel manner. The makers, Messrs. Gent & Co., of Leicester, entertained about seventy persons at luncheon on this occasion, using one of the four mammoth dials as a dining-table, a "time table," as the guests facetiously styled it.

The clock was installed, 220 feet above the ground, in the tower of the Royal Liverpool Society's new building, in Liverpool. Each of the four dials, which weigh fifteen tons together, measure twenty-five feet in diameter, with a minute-hand fourteen feet long. The hands are actuated electrically by a master clock connected with the Greenwich Observatory. After dark, they are illuminated by electricity, and are visible at a great distance.

Still larger are the dials of the great electric clock, situated 346 feet high, in the tower of the Metropolitan Life Building, on Madison Square, New York City. They measure twenty-six and one half feet in diameter. The minute-hand is seventeen feet from end to end, and twelve feet from center to point, while the hour-hand measures thirteen feet four inches in all, and eight feet four inches from the center of the dial outward. These immense hands are of iron framework, sheathed in copper, and weigh 1000 and 700 pounds respectively.

The big clock and the ninety-nine other clocks in the building are regulated from a master clock in the Directors' Room, on the second floor, which sends out minute impulses, and is adjusted to run within five seconds per month.

At night, the dial, hands, and numerals are beautifully illuminated, of which we present a picture, the enlarged minute-hand showing the length of exposure. The time is also flashed all night in a novel manner from the great gilded "lantern" at the apex of the tower, 696 feet above the pavement. The quarter-hours are announced from each of the four faces of the lantern by a single red light, the halves by two red flashes, the three quarters by three flashes. On the hour, the white arc-lights are extinguished temporarily, and white flashes show the number of the hour.

This takes the place of the bells operated in the daytime. They are in four tones, G (1500 pounds), F (2000 pounds), E flat (3000 pounds), and B flat (7000 pounds), and each quarter-hour ring out the "Westminster Chimes," in successive bars. These are the highest chimes in the world, being situated on the forty-second floor, 615 feet above the street level; and they attract much attention from visitors.

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MOTORING THROUGH THE GOLDEN AGE--PART I

BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

It was some time in June when we found ourselves drifting about Normandy in our motor-car, and one peaceful evening we came to Bayeux and stopped there for the night. Bayeux, which is about sixty miles from Cherbourg, was intimately associated with the life of William the Conqueror, and is to-day the home of the famous Bayeux tapestry, a piece of linen two hundred and thirty feet long and eighteen inches wide, on which is embroidered in colored wool the story of William's conquest of England.

William's queen, Matilda, is supposed to have designed this marvelous pictorial document, and even executed it, though probably with the assistance of her ladies. Completed in the eleventh century, it would seem to have been stored in the Bayeux cathedral, where it lay, scarcely remembered, for a period of more than six hundred years. Then attention was called to its artistic and historic value, and it became still more widely known when Napoleon brought it to Paris and exhibited it at the Louvre. Now it is back in Bayeux, and has a special room in the museum there and a special glass case so arranged that you can walk around it and see each of its fifty-eight tableaux.

Matilda was ahead of her time in art. She was a futurist--anybody could see that who had been to one of the recent exhibitions. But she was exactly abreast in the matter of history. It is likely that she embroidered the events as they were reported to her, and her records are beyond price to-day. I suppose she sat in a beautiful room with her maids about her, all engaged at the great work, and I hope she looked as handsome as she looks in the fine painting that hangs above the case containing her masterpiece.

It was the closing hour when we got to the Bayeux museum, but the guardian generously gave us plenty of time to walk around and look at all the marvelous procession of horses and men, whose outlines have remained firm and whose colors have stayed fresh for more than eight hundred years. There is something fine and stirring about Matilda's tapestry. No matter if Harold does seem to be having an attack of pleurisy, when he is only putting on his armor, or if the horses appear to have detachable legs. I could see that the Joy, who is a judge of horses, did not think much of Queen Matilda's drawing, and their riders were not much better. Still, it was wonderful how they did seem to "go" in some of the battles, and they made that old story seem very real to us. Tradition has it that the untimely death of Matilda left the tapestry unfinished, for which reason William's coronation does not appear.

Next day, at Caen, we visited Matilda's tomb, in a church which she herself founded. Her remains have never been disturbed. We also visited the tomb of the Conqueror, on the other side of the city at the church of St. Etienne. But the Conqueror's bones are not there now; they were scattered by the Huguenots in 1562.

We enjoyed Caen. We wandered about among its ancient churches and still more ancient streets. At one church a wedding was going on, and Narcissa and I lingered a little, to assist. One does not get invited to a Normandy wedding every day, especially in the old town where William I organized his followers to invade England. No doubt this bride and groom were descendants of some of William's wild Normans, but they looked very mild and handsome and modern, to us.

Caen became an important city under William the Conqueror. Edward III of England captured and pillaged it about the middle of the fourteenth century, at which time it was larger than any city in England, except London. To-day, Caen has less than fifty thousand inhabitants, and is mainly interesting for its art treasures and its memories.

Our travel program included Rouen, Amiens, and Beauvais, cathedral cities lying more to the northward. It was at Rouen that we started to trace backward the sacred footsteps of Joan of Arc, saint and savior of France. For it is at Rouen that the pathway ends. When we had visited the great cathedral, whose fairylike façade is one of the most beautiful in the world, we drove to a corner of the old market-place and stopped before a bronze tablet which tells that on this spot on a certain day in May, 1431 (it was the 29th), a young girl who had saved her country from an invading and conquering enemy was burned at the stake. That was five hundred years ago, but time has not dulled the tragedy of the event, its memory of suffering, its humiliation. All those centuries since, the nation that Joan saved has been trying to atone for her death. Streets have been named for her and statues have been set up for her in public squares all over France.

There is little in Rouen to-day that Joan saw. The cathedral was there in her time, but she was never permitted to enter it. There is a wall which was a part of the chapel where she had her final hearing before her judges; there are some houses which she must have passed, and there is a tower which belonged to the castle in which she was imprisoned, though it is not certain that it is Joan's tower. There is a small museum in it, and among its treasures we saw the manuscript article "St. Joan of Arc," by Mark Twain, who, in the "Personal Recollections," has left to the world the loveliest picture of that lovely life.

It was our purpose to leave Rouen by the Amiens road, but when we got to it and looked up a hill that, about half-way to the zenith, arrived at the sky, we decided to take a road that led off toward Beauvais. We could have climbed that hill well enough, and I wished later we had done so. As it was, we ran along pleasantly during the afternoon, and attended evening services in an old church at Grandvilliers, a place that we had never heard of before, but where we found an inn as good as any in Normandy.

It is curious with what exactness fate times its conclusions. If we had left Grandvilliers a few seconds earlier or later, it would have made all the difference, or if I had not pulled up a moment to look at a lovely bit of brookside planted with poplars, or if I had driven the least bit slower or the least bit faster during the first five miles; or--

Oh, never mind--what happened was this: we had just mounted a long steep hill on high speed and I had been bragging of the car,--always a dangerous thing to do,--when I saw ahead of us a big two-wheeled cart going in the same direction as ourselves, and, beyond it, a large car approaching. I could have speeded up and cut in ahead of the cart, but I was feeling well, and I thought I should do the courteous thing, the safe thing. So I fell in behind it. Not far enough behind, however, for as the big car came opposite, the sleepy driver of the cart awoke, pulled up his horse short, and we were not far enough behind for me to get the brakes down hard and suddenly enough to stop before we touched him. It was not a smash--it was just a push. But it pushed a big hole in our radiator, smashed up one of our lamps, and crinkled up our left mud-guard. The radiator was the worst. The water poured out. Our car looked as if it had burst into tears.

We were really stupefied at the extent of our disaster.

The big car at once pulled up to investigate and console us. The occupants were Americans, too, from Washington--kindly people who wanted to shoulder some of the blame. Their chauffeur, a Frenchman, bargained with the cart driver who had wrecked us to tow us to the next town, where there were garages. Certainly, pride goes before a fall. Five minutes earlier we were sailing along in glory, exulting over the prowess of our vehicle. Now, all in the wink of an eye, our precious conveyance, stricken and helpless, was being towed to the hospital, its owners trudging mournfully behind.

The village was Poix; and if one had to be wrecked anywhere, I cannot think of a lovelier spot for disaster than Poix de la Somme. It is just across in Picardy, and the river Somme is a little brook that ripples and winds through poplar-shaded pastures, sweet meadows, and deep groves. In every direction are the loveliest walks, with landscape pictures at every turn. The village itself is drowsy, kindly, simple-hearted. The landlady at our inn was a large, motherly soul that, during the week of our stay, the Joy learned to love, and I to be grateful to.

For the others did not linger. Paris was not far away, and had a good deal to recommend it. The new radiator ordered from London might be delayed. So, early next morning they were off for Paris by way of Amiens and Beauvais, and the Joy and I settled down to such employments and amusements as we could find while waiting for repairs. We got acquainted with the garage man's family, for one thing. They lived in the same little court with the shop, and we exchanged Swiss French for their Picardese and were bosom friends in no time. We spruced up the car, too, and every day took long walks, and every afternoon took some luncheon and our spirit-stove and followed down the Somme to a little bridge and there made our tea. Then, sometimes, we read; and once, when I was reading aloud from "Joan of Arc" and had finished the great battle of Patay, we suddenly remembered that it had happened on the very day on which we were reading, the eighteenth of June.

How little we guessed that in such a short time our peaceful little river would give its name to a battle a thousand times greater than any that Joan ever fought!

One day I hired a bicycle for the Joy, and entertained the village by pushing her around the public square until she learned to ride alone. Then I hired one for myself, and we went out on the road together.

About the end of the third day we began to look for our radiator, and visited the express-office with considerable regularity. Presently the village knew us, why we were there, and what we were expecting. They became as anxious about it as ourselves.

One morning, as we started toward the express-office, a man in a wagon passed and called out something. We did not catch it; but presently another met us, and, with a glad look, told us that our goods had arrived and were now in the delivery wagon on the way to the garage. We did not recognize either of those good souls, but they were interested in our welfare. Our box was at the garage when we arrived there. It was soon opened and the new radiator in place. The other repairs had been made, and once more we were complete. We decided to start next morning to join the others in Paris.

Morning comes early on the longest days of the year, and we had eaten our breakfast, had our belongings put into the car, and were ready to be off by seven o'clock. What a delicious morning it was! Calm, glistening, the dew on everything. As long as I live I shall remember that golden morning when the Joy, age eleven, and I went gipsying together, following the winding roads and byways that led us through pleasant woods, under sparkling banks, and along the poplar-planted streams of Picardy. We did not keep to highways at all. We were in no hurry, and we took any lane that seemed to lead in the right direction, so that much of the time we appeared to be crossing fields--fields of flowers, many of them, scarlet poppies, often mingled with blue corn-flowers and yellow mustard--fancy the vividness of that color!

Traveling in that wandering fashion, it was noon before we got down to Beauvais, where we stopped for luncheon supplies and to see what is perhaps the most remarkable cathedral in the world. It is one of the most beautiful, and, though it consists only of choir and transepts, it is one of the largest. Its inner height, from floor to vaulting, is 158 feet. The average ten-story skyscraper could be set inside of it. There was once a steeple that towered to the giddy height of five hundred feet, but in 1573, when it had been standing three hundred years, it fell down from having insufficient support. The inner work is of white stone,--marble,--and the whole place seems filled with light.

Beauvais has many interesting things, but the day had become very warm, and we did not linger. We found some of the most satisfactory pastries I have ever seen in France, fresh, and dripping with richness; also a few other delicacies, and by and by, under a cool apple-tree on the road to Compiègne, the Joy and I spread out our feast and ate it and listened to some little French birds singing, "_Vite! Vite! Vite!_" meaning that we must be "Quick! Quick! Quick!" so they could have the crumbs.

It was at Compiègne that Joan of Arc was captured by her enemies, just a year before that last fearful day at Rouen. She had relieved Orleans, she had fought Patay, she had crowned the king at Rheims; she would have had her army safely in Paris if she had not been withheld by a weak king, influenced by his shuffling, time-serving counselors. She had delivered Compiègne the year before, but now again it was in trouble, besieged by the Duke of Burgundy.

"I will go to my good friends of Compiègne," she said, when the news came; and taking such force as she could muster, in number about six hundred cavalry, she went to their relief.

From a green hill commanding the valley of the Oise the Joy and I looked down upon the bright river and pretty city which Joan had seen on that long ago afternoon of her last battle for France. Somewhere on that plain the battle had taken place, and Joan's little force for the first time had failed. There had been a panic; Joan, still fighting and trying to rally her men, had been surrounded, dragged from her horse, and made a prisoner. She had led her last charge.

We crossed a bridge and entered the city, and stopped in the big public square facing Laroux's beautiful statue of Joan which the later "friends of Compiègne" have raised to her memory. It is Joan in semi-armor, holding aloft her banner; and on the base in old French is inscribed, "_Je yray voir mes bons amys de Compiègne_"--"I will go to see my good friends of Compiègne."

Many things in Compiègne are beautiful, but not many of them are very old. Joan's statue looks toward the handsome and richly ornamented hôtel de ville, but Joan could not have seen this building, for it dates a hundred years after her death. There are the handsome churches, in one or both of which she doubtless worshiped, when she had first delivered the city, and possibly a few houses of that ancient time still survive.

Next morning we visited the palace. It has been much occupied by royalty, for Compiègne was always a favorite residence of the rulers of France. Napoleon came there with the Empress Marie Louise, and Louis Philippe and Napoleon III both found retirement there.

I think it could not have been a very inviting or restful home. There are long halls and picture-galleries, all with shiny floors and stiffly placed properties, and the royal suites are just a series of square, fancily decorated and upholstered boxes strung together, with doors between. But then palaces were not meant to be cozy. Pretty soon we went back to the car and drove into a big forest for ten miles or more to an old feudal castle,--such a magnificent old castle, all towers and turrets and battlements,--the château of Pierrefonds, one of the finest in France. It stands upon a rocky height overlooking a lake, and it does not seem so old, though it had been there forty years when Joan of Arc came, and it looks as if it might remain there about as long as the hill it stands on. It was built by Louis of Orleans, brother of Charles VI, and the storm of battle has often raged about its base. Here and there it still shows the mark of bombardment, and two cannon-balls stick fast in the wall of one of its solid towers. Pierrefonds was in bad repair, had become well nigh a ruin, in fact, when Napoleon III at his own expense engaged Viollet-le-Duc to restore it, in order that France might have a perfect type of the feudal castle in its original form. It stands to-day as complete in its structure and decoration as it was when Louis of Orleans moved in, more than five hundred years ago, and it conveys exactly the solid, home surroundings of the mediæval lord. It is just a show place now, and its vast court and its chapel and halls of state are all splendid enough, though nothing inside can be quite as magnificent as its mighty assemblage of towers and turrets rising above the trees and reflecting in the blue waters of a placid lake.

It began raining before we got to Paris, so we did not stop at Crepy-en-Valois or Senlis, or Chantilly, or St. Denis. In fact, neither the Joy nor I hungered even for Paris, which we had once visited. The others had already seen their fill, so, with only a day's delay, we all took the road to Versailles.

It was at Rambouillet that we lodged, an ancient place with a château and a vast park; also, an excellent inn--the Croix Blanche--one of those that you enter by driving through to an inner court. Before dinner we took a walk into the park, along the lakeside and past the château, where Frances I died, in 1547.

We were off next morning, following the rich and lovely valley of the Eure, to Chartres. We had already seen the towers from a long distance, when we turned at last into the cathedral square, and remembered the saying that "The choir of Beauvais and the nave of Amiens, the portal of Rheims and the towers of Chartres would together make the finest church in the world." To confess the truth, I did not think the towers of Chartres as handsome as those of Rouen, but then I am not a purist in cathedral architecture. Certainly, the cathedral itself is glorious. I shall not attempt to describe it. Any number of men have written books trying to do that, and most of them have failed. I only know that the wonder of its architecture, the marvel of its relief carving, "lace in stone," and the sublime glory of its windows somehow possessed us, and we did not know when to go. I met a woman once who said she had spent a month at Chartres and put in most of it sitting in the cathedral, looking at those windows. When she told me of it I had been inclined to be scornful. I was not so any more. Those windows, made by some unknown artist, dead five hundred years, invite a lifetime of contemplation.

We left Chartres by one of the old city gates, and through a heavenly June afternoon followed the straight, level way to Châteaudun, an ancient town perched upon the high cliff above the valley of the Loir, which is a different river from the Loire--much smaller and more picturesque.

The château itself hangs on the very verge of the cliffs, with starling effect, and looks out over a picture valley as beautiful as any in France. This was the home of Dunois, who left it to fight under Joan of Arc. He was a great soldier, one of her most loved and trusted generals. We spent an hour or more wandering through Dunois's ancient seat, with an old guardian who clearly was in love with every stone of it and who time and again reminded us that it was more interesting than any of the great châteaux of the Loire, Blois especially, in that it had been scarcely restored at all. About the latest addition to Châteaudun was a beautiful open stairway of the sixteenth century, in perfect condition to-day. On the other side is another fine façade and stairway, which Dunois himself added. In a niche there stands a statue of the famous old soldier, probably made from life. If only some sculptor or painter might have preserved for us the features of Joan!

Through that golden land which lies between the Loir and the Loire we drifted through a long summer afternoon, and came at evening to a noble bridge that crossed a wide, tranquil river, beyond which rose the towers of ancient Tours, capital of Touraine.

The Touraine was a favorite place for kings, who built their magnificent country palaces in all directions. There are more than fifty châteaux within easy driving distance of Tours.

We did not, by any means, intend to visit all of the châteaux, for château visiting from a diversion may easily degenerate into labor. We had planned especially, however, to see Chinon, where Joan of Arc went to meet the king to ask for soldiers.