she made the trick-mule suddenly become as gentle as a lamb, and rode him around the ring, she sitting as placidly upon him as Queen Elizabeth upon a palfrey, and the trick-mule carrying her with a proudly angelic smile, and when she claimed the large reward the ring-master had offered—it was really too much.
With tears in his eyes the ring-master said it would ruin the circus to pay her, and so she let the reward go unpaid, on condition that they left at once. I concluded that she had lost interest in the hippodrome.
I tell this only as an instance of my unremitting efforts to supply her with pastimes of a really elevating character, and to show that it was not lack of diversion, but a restless disposition, which caused her to say she would go to seek her fortune.
I had no wish to leave home. My cook was an artist, and my house had a southern exposure and an astrological cupola of the most modern construction. So I told her flatly that I would not go under any consideration whatever.
We started the next morning. I suggested a sea route, as I was very susceptible to seasickness and desired above all things to go by land. She acquiesced at once, and we set sail early in a lug-rigged barker, or a bark-riggged lugger, one or the other, and as I went below I heard the captain order the crew to luff.
I cannot say what luffing is, because, when I came on deck again, we had been out for three days. It seemed longer, and I do not at all care for marine life—it interferes sadly with accuracy in astrological observations and with regularity of meals, both of which are hobbies of mine.
On the morning of the fifth day, one of the sailors said out loud, "Land hoe!" and I concluded he was an agriculturist, but had n't time to verify this conclusion because my niece insisted upon being rowed ashore at once. I was not ready to go ashore, but she preferred not to go alone, and so we went together.
