Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 2.djvu/222

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204
SHAWL-STRAPS.

mentioned pass many hours after the day's hard labor was happily over, and when any one pitied him for leading the life of a galley-slave, he hid his anguish and answered with a smile,—

"My brother told me to do it, and I never disobey Tom. In fact, I find I rather like it."

That last fib was truly sublime, and the name of Casabianca pales before that of one who obeyed fraternal commands to the letter, and tried to love his duty, heavy as it was. If, as has been sometimes predicted, England had gone under just then, it might truly have been said,—

Though prince and peer and poet rare
Were sunk among the piles,
The noblest man who perished there
Was faithful W. N———s.

The sight-seeing fever raged fiercely at first, and the flock of Americans went from Windsor Castle to the Tower of London, from Westminster Abbey to Madame Taussaud's Waxwork Show with a vigor that appalled the natives. They would visit two or three galleries in the morning, lunch at Dolly's (the dark, little chop-house, which Johnson, Goldsmith, and the other worthies used to frequent in the good old