Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/107

 you admire Wall Street more than French châteaux, and that when you want a grand view you can go and look at Brooklyn Bridge or the statue of Liberty by night; but you don't know what you're missing. And if travelling would really bore you, why do you like me to describe things, so that I can "give you a picture though my eyes"?

I wonder if girls who have lived all their lives in old, old countries can have the same sort of awed, surprised, almost dream-like feeling that comes to me when I see these great feudal castles that are like history in stone? Yes, in stone, and yet the stone seems alive too as if it were the flesh of history; and as I think of all the things that have happened behind the splendid walls, I can hear history's heart beating as if it and the world were young with me.

This château country of the Loire must be one of the most interesting spots on earth, centring as it did the old Court life of France, and Brown says it really is so. He has travelled tremendously and remembers everything, though he is nothing but a chauffeur.

Each place we have come to I have thought must be the best; but I know that no other castle will make me take Amboise down off the pedestal I've set it on. in my mind.

As I glanced up at it in the sunshine the great white carved façade dazzled me. It looked as if it had been cut out of ivory. The bridge rests on an island in the middle of the wide, yellow, slow-moving stream of the Loire, which has a curiously still surface like ice. Brown drove slowly without my having to