We saw Melrose by moonlight, spent several hours at Abbotsford, and lingered in the little sanctum sanctorum where Scott wrote his immortal works. It was so small that he could reach the bookshelves on every side. We went through the prisons, castles, and narrow streets of Edinburgh, where the houses are seven and eight stories high, each story projecting a few feet until, at the uppermost, opposite neighbors could easily shake hands and chat together. All the intervals from active sight-seeing we spent in reading the lives of historical personages in poetry and prose, until our sympathies flowed out to the real and ideal characters. Lady Jane Grey, Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots, Ellen Douglas, Jeanie and Effie Deans, Highland Mary, Rebecca the Jewess, Di Vernon, and Rob Roy all alike seemed real men and women, whose shades or descendants we hoped to meet on their native heath.
Here among the Scotch lakes and mountains Mr. Stanton and I were traveling alone for the first time since our marriage, and as we both enjoyed walking, we made many excursions on foot to points that could not be reached in any other way. We spent some time among the Grampian Hills, so familiar to every schoolboy, walking, and riding about on donkeys. We sailed up and down Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond. My husband was writing letters for some New York newspapers on the entire trip, and aimed to get exact knowledge of all we saw; thus I had the advantage of the information he gathered. On these long tramps I wore a short dress, reaching just below the knee, of dark-blue cloth, a military cap of the same material that shaded my eyes, and a pair of long boots, made on the masculine pattern then generally worn—the most easy style for walking, as the pressure is equal on the whole foot and the ankle has free play. Thus equipped, and early trained by my good brother-in-law to long walks, I found no difficulty in keeping pace with my husband.
Being self-reliant and venturesome in our explorations, we occasionally found ourselves involved in grave difficulties by refusing to take a guide. For instance, we decided to go to the top of Ben Nevis alone. It looked to us a straightforward piece of business to walk up a mountain side on a bee line, and so, in the face of repeated warnings by our host, we started. We knew nothing of zigzag paths to avoid the rocks, the springs, and swamps; in fact we supposed all mountains smooth and dry, like our native hills that we were accustomed to climb. The landlord shook his head and smiled when we told him we should return at noon to dinner, and we smiled, too, thinking he placed a low estimate on our capacity for walking. But we had not gone far when we discovered the difficulties ahead. Some places were so steep that I had to hold on to my companion's coat tails, while he held on to rocks and twigs, or braced himself with a heavy cane. By the time we were halfway up we were in a dripping perspiration, our feet were soaking wet, and we were really too tired to proceed. But, after starting with such supreme confidence in ourselves, we were ashamed to confess our fatigue to each other, and much more to return and verify all the prognostications of the host and his guides. So we determined to push on and do what we had proposed. With the prospect of a magnificent view and an hour's delicious rest on the top, we started with renewed courage. A steady climb of six hours brought us to the goal of promise; our ascent was accomplished. But alas! it was impossible to stop there—the cold wind chilled us to the bone in a minute. So we took one glance at the world below and hurried down the south side to get the mountain between us and the cold northeaster.
When your teeth are chattering with the cold, and the wind threatening to make havoc with your raiment, you are not in a favorable condition to appreciate grand scenery. Like the king of France with twice ten thousand men, we marched up the hill and then, marched down again. We found descending still more difficult, as we were in constant fear of slipping, losing our hold, and rolling to the bottom. We were tired, hungry, and disappointed, and the fear of not reaching the valley before nightfall pressed heavily upon us. Neither confessed to the other the fatigue and apprehension each felt, but, with fresh endeavor and words of encouragement, we cautiously went on. We accidentally struck a trail that led us winding down comfortably some distance, but we lost it, and went clambering down as well as we could in our usual way. To add to our misery, a dense Scotch mist soon enveloped us, so that we could see but a short distance ahead, and not knowing the point from which we started, we feared we might be going far out of our way. The coming twilight, too, made the prospect still darker. Fortunately our host, having less faith in us than we had in ourselves, sent a guide to reconnoiter, and, just at the moment when we began to realize our danger of spending the night on the mountain, and to admit it to each other, the welcome guide hailed us in his broad accent. His shepherd dog led the way into the beaten path. As I could hardly stand I took the guide's arm, and when we reached the bottom two donkeys were in readiness to take us to the hotel.
We did not recover from the fatigue of that expedition in several days, and we made no more experiments of exploring strange places without guides. We learned, too, that mountains are not so hospitable as they seem nor so gently undulating as they appear in the distance, and that guides serve other purposes besides extorting money from travelers. If, under their guidance, we had gone up and down easily, we should always have thought we might as well have gone alone. So our experience gave us a good lesson in humility. We had been twelve hours on foot with nothing to eat, when at last we reached the hotel. We were in no mood for boasting of the success of our excursion, and our answers were short to inquiries as to how we had passed the day.
Being tired of traveling and contending about woman's sphere with the Rev. John Scoble, an Englishman, who escorted Mr. Birney and Mr. Stanton on their tour through the country, I decided to spend a month in Dublin; while the gentlemen held meetings in Cork, Belfast, Waterford, Limerick, and other chief towns, finishing the series with a large, enthusiastic gathering in Dublin, at which O'Connell made one of his most withering speeches on American slavery; the inconsistency of such an "institution" with the principles of a republican government giving full play to his powers of sarcasm. On one occasion, when introduced to a slaveholder, he put his hands behind his back, refusing to recognize a man who bought and sold his fellow-beings. The Rev. John Scoble was one of the most conceited men I ever met. His narrow ideas in regard to woman, and the superiority of the royal and noble classes in his own country, were to me so exasperating that I grew more and more bellicose every day we traveled in company. He was terribly seasick crossing the Channel, to my intense satisfaction. As he always boasted of his distinguished countrymen, I suggested, in the midst of one of his most agonizing spasms, that he ought to find consolation in the fact that Lord Nelson was always seasick on the slightest provocation.
The poverty in Ireland was a continual trial to our sensibilities; beggars haunted our footsteps everywhere, in the street and on the highways, crouching on the steps of the front door and on the curbstones, and surrounding our carriage wherever and whenever we stopped to shop or make a visit. The bony hands and sunken eyes and sincere gratitude expressed for every penny proved their suffering real. As my means were limited and I could not pass one by, I got a pound changed into pennies, and put them in a green bag, which I took in the carriage wherever I went. It was but a drop in the ocean, but it was all I could do to relieve that unfathomed misery. The poverty I saw everywhere in the Old World, and especially in Ireland, was a puzzling problem to my mind, but I rejected the idea that it was a necessary link in human experience—that it always had been and always must be.
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