RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
band and I were not ashamed, nor were we so particular about our comforts that we did not thoroughly enjoy ourselves. Besides, we had the gratifying consciousness of the money which the low rates had left in our pockets to be spent much more profitably abroad.
The trip was full of interest to us both. We spent the greater part of the summer in England and saw the sights of London and the cathedral towns in great detail. Our only trip on the Continent was through Holland to Paris. I remember that in Amsterdam I bought some old and rather large Delft plates. They wouldn’t go into any trunk we had, so I had them carefully packed in a wicker hamper and this article became thereafter a part of our hand luggage, and was the occasion for a decided disagreement between my husband and me as to what the true object of travel was. He used to say that he “toted that blamed thing all around Europe and after all it arrived in Cincinnati with its contents in small pieces.” Which was true. He had “toted” it all around Europe, but when we arrived in New York I entrusted it to an express company with the result that when we opened it we found its contents in such a condition that only an accomplished porcelain mender could put a sufficient number of pieces together to make what my husband always afterward referred to as “the memento of our first unpleasantness.”
Our trip from Cincinnati to Cincinnati took just one hundred days and cost us just one thousand dollars, or five dollars a day each. I venture to say that could not be done nowadays, even by as prudent a pair as we were.
During a subsequent trip abroad, two years later, I was able to indulge my desire to hear music. We went to Beyreuth, to the Wagner festival, and heard Parsifal and The Meistersingers gloriously rendered; after which we went to Munich and attended operas and concerts until Mr. Taft rebelled. He said that he enjoyed a certain amount of
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