The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13,
No. 80,
by Various

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864
Author: Various
Release Date: November 16, 2006 [EBook #19827]
Language: English
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THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
VOL. XIII.--JUNE, 1864.--NO. LXXX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR
AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District
of Massachusetts.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected. Footnotes have
been moved to the end of the article.

A TALK ABOUT GUIDES.
Talk about guides! Let Independence, Self-Conceit, and Go-ahead
undervalue them, if they will; but I, Sola Foemina, (for that is the name
I go by,) of Ignorance, (the place I hail from,) casting up my
unbalanced accounts, (with a view to settling,) find a large credit due to
this class of individuals, which (though I have not the means to meet) I
have no intention to repudiate.
Now and then, to be sure, I, S. F., have been reminded in my
journeyings of poor dear E., whose lively spirit was so chafed by the
exactions made upon his purse and his temper at the hands of this
imperturbable race, that at last he turned, like a stag at bay, and vented
all his wrath in the face of a startled old woman by the abrupt and
emphatic query, "What'll you take to clear out?"
Still, dogmatic and prosing as they sometimes proved, my experience
on the whole was favorable; and from the motherly old portress of the
English church at Honeybourne, who fed me with bread and butter
under her cottage-roof, and sent me away laden with garden-flowers

and a blessing, to faithful Michel, who held me over the blue fissures of
the glaciers that I might get a glimpse of their secret waterfalls, who
gathered violets for me on the margin of the icy sea, and, when I had
carelessly dropped them by the way, treasured up the faded things to
restore them to me at nightfall,--from the aged woman, with her "Good
bye till we meet in heaven," to the rough mountaineer, with his hearty
hand-pressure and God-speed at parting, I would not willingly lose one
link out of the chain of such fast friends which stretched along my way.
There is Warwick Castle,--a written history, no doubt, to scholars, a
mine of wealth to antiquaries and architects; but how incomplete would
my associations be with the spot, were you banished from the picture,
my sturdy friend, fit type of the female retainers of the household of the
King-Maker, who, stationed within the ivied approach to the castle,
presided at the brazen porridge-pot, once holding food enough to
satisfy ten score of men, now empty, save for the volume of sound
which stuns the ear when you strike it with your ponderous iron bar!
Can I ever forget the scene of laughter and riot, when you installed me
within the capacious vessel, dubbed me "Countess Guy, of the
Porridge-Pot," and, the rest of my party having been induced to accept
the hospitalities of the place, and mount my triumphal car, declared
your intention to light a fire beneath and have the finest stew in all
England? The castle is a stern place, perhaps; but how can I ever think
it grim, with such a jolly old flatterer as you stationed at its portal?
And here, in my blundering way, I have stumbled on the secret spring
of my whole subject; so I may as well make a merit of confession, and
acknowledge frankly that the trap in which these wary guides entangled
my affections was generally neither more nor less than a net of silken
flattery. Your good guide, your dear guide, your pet guide, whom
Neighbor So-and-so, going abroad, must look up immediately on his
arrival, this invaluable creature, depend upon it, is an arrant flatterer.
He does not go out of his way for you; he does not tell it you to your
face; but, somehow or other, (if he knows his vocation,) he makes you
believe, that, of all the travellers he ever escorted, (and he has been a