The Argosy — page 331: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

310 Far Normandy. and fragile, he will not allow to be packed, but, done up in brown paper and tied with a string, looking neither safe nor elegant, he burdens himself with the precious articles and goes on his way re- joicing. In this manner, and with this collection, he passes from town to town; very much after the fashion of the itinerant china- mender, who frequents country roads, stops at a wayside door, puts his rivets into your broken crockery, and—occasionally—your silver spoons into his pocket. Not that H. C. is addicted to—“Dup=iaE assertion is unnecessary. So it comes to pass that I have occasion- ally known him return to his native shores carrying sufficient plates and dishes, separately done up in brown paper, to form a harlequin dinner-set. And it invariably happened that in arriving at a destina- tion, or in changing trains, the difficulty of making four hands do the work of forty; the everlasting wonder as to whether something had not been left behind, or some particular string was not loosening and jeopardising a costly Sevres dish or an ancient (I dare not add ~ hideous) Majolica plate, has frequently reduced the writer to the verge of brain fever. At Evreux, for instance, we had received a severe shock. It has been recorded that the hotel had turned out in a body to bid us farewell and speed us on our way: amiable landlord and electrified waiters. It is an attention that we like, and when it is wanting, we feel that, in some way or other, our visit has missed its mark. Of © course we speak of France, not of England, where too often these little courtesies of life, which mean so much, are conspicuous by their absence. In France it is very rarely so, and travelling is thereby made much more agreeable. We had rattled off from the hotel in Evreux in the unsteady omni- bus, and had gone quite two hundred yards on our way, when we espied a waiter tearing frantically after us, with shouts sufficient to wake the Seven Sleepers. I turned pale, and anxiously looked at H.C. ; but he assured me that he had not, in a fit of poetical abstrac- tion, packed up the hotel plate. The matter indeed proved quite the other way. He had bought some rare old silver in Rouen, elegant and chaste designs of the First Empire period, which, carefully packed in a box (silver would not break), he treasured as the apple of his eye. This he had stowed away in safety at the inn, and had forgotten and left behind in his usual fit of abstraction. It was this that the waiter had discovered, and with this he was now struggling after us. How H. C. became excited, stopped the omnibus, received the messenger as one to whom he owed an eternal debt of gratitude, bestowed largesse upon him, and dismissed him with his blessing, may be recorded but can never be realised. It will thus be seen that the charge undertaken by the porter at Dreux was a heavy responsibility. We went out into the night. It was very dark. A long, wide road GEomichbooks.co