Suppose there to be a reasonable chance that he will come home alive, what is the use of one’s going to Europe after his senses have lost their acuteness, and his mind no longer retains its full measure of sensibilities and vigor?  I should say that the visit to Europe under those circumstances was much the same thing as the petit verre,—­the little glass of Chartreuse, or Maraschino, or Curacoa, or, if you will, of plain Cognac, at the end of a long banquet.  One has gone through many courses, which repose in the safe recesses of his economy.  He has swallowed his coffee, and still there is a little corner left with its craving unappeased.  Then comes the drop of liqueur, chasse-cafe, which is the last thing the stomach has a right to expect.  It warms, it comforts, it exhales its benediction on all that has gone before.  So the trip to Europe may not do much in the way of instructing the wearied and overloaded intelligence, but it gives it a fillip which makes it feel young again for a little while.

Let not the too mature traveller think it will change any of his habits.  It will interrupt his routine for a while, and then he will settle down into his former self, and be just what he was before.  I brought home a pair of shoes I had made in London; they do not fit like those I had before I left, and I rarely wear them.  It is just so with the new habits I formed and the old ones I left behind me.

But am I not glad, for my own sake, that I went?  Certainly I have every reason to be, and I feel that the visit is likely to be a great source of happiness for my remaining days.  But there is a higher source of satisfaction.  If the kindness shown me strengthens the slenderest link that binds us in affection to that ancestral country which is, and I trust will always be to her descendants, “dear Mother England,” that alone justifies my record of it, and to think it is so is more than reward enough.  If, in addition, this account of our summer experiences is a source of pleasure to many friends, and of pain to no one, as I trust will prove to be the fact, I hope I need never regret giving to the public the pages which are meant more especially for readers who have a personal interest in the writer.