Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1903-06-22
now THE WIIL0UGHBY GRANGE
SPENT ITS VACATION.

that we wish to see something of our
own country before we go abroad; so
am especially glad we have had an
opportunity this evening to visit come
of the places of interest in the United
States before we start on our voyage
across the sea-. hope you have your
trunks all packed and your pocket
books we'll filed so that we can take
the next train for New York and have
time to secure our state-rooms on the
steamer Campania of the Cunard line,
leaving New York tomorrow after
noon outward bound for Liverpool.
OF course some of us are seasick, but
the winds and waves are quiet, and
after an eight days. voyage we find
ourselvesin Liverpool Saturday, June
goth. Only a short stay here, just
time enough to get the t a n and we
are off-reaching London late in the
evening and going at once to our
hotel.
Sunday morning we wake up in the
greatest city in the world, a city
of dirt and smoke and SCOT and
fog, with buildings gray and dull,
with people of all nationalities like
our own New York, but a city which
in spite of its fog ard it's strangeness
has great charm for us.
Let us go to Westminster Abbey
this morning, the most famous church
in all England, famed because of its
honored dead, numbering kings and
queens, statesmen and men of letters,
and famed because of the long line of
rulers who have been crowned here.
We are apt to speak lightly of the
ceremonious life of English royalty,
and we very much prefer the demo-
cratic customs of our country and the
simple life of our president in his di
rect contact with the people. Yet as
we stand in this church built eight
hundred years before the Pilgrim
Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock and
in this room where an almost endless
line of kings and queens have been
crowned, we are glad to call England
our mother country and to feel all
due respect for her usages and Gus
toms which we have outgrown. And
we Americans surely want to visit
the Poets Corner in the Abbey,
where we shall find many of our
friends are buried or have monuments
to their memory. For Milton,
Thackeray, Macaulay, Dickens and
many other English writer's seem to
belong to us almost as much as to
England; and again we are proud of
our relationship to the mother coun
try. s.t .ksas ak
Monday morning we make plans
for seeing more of London. Perhaps
all of US when we 60 into strange
city like to become we'll acquainted
with it, come to know the principal
streets we'll, the location of all the
places of interest, in short, to be
familiar with it so that we shall not
get lost the second time we 60 there.
But we learn that the streets of Lon
don taken all together measure
nearly 5000 miles, as far as it is from
New York to San Francisco; that it
covers more than three times as much
ground as the whole township of Bar
ton; and we begin to see the i'm
possibility of learning very much
about il in the short time we have to
stay.
But we want at least to see the
Houses of Parliament and take walk
across London Bridge before we
leave. These Houses of Parliament
cover eight acres of ground and con-
tain eleven hundred rooms; and
someway we cannot help feeling that
our little State House over at Mont
pelier isn't much after all. We can
not more than look hastily into the
great chamber of the House of Lords,
magnificently decorated, with three
thrones at one end, and into the
House of Commons, a much smaller
room, not large enough for all it's
members to be seated on the main
floor, though here is the real govern
ing power of England.
The great clock on the tower is
striking as we come out, and we are
told that the minute hand is twelve
feet long, and that it takes five hours
to wind it up. Some one in the party
irreverently compares it to Water
bury watch, but we have no doubt
that it keeps better time.
And now as we stand for a few
minutes on London Bridge, perhaps
we get little idea of the immensely
of the city that has not come to us
before. If we could count the people
MASKING across this bridge in an hour