Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/133

130 set off this morning for the field of Waterloo, a distance of twelve miles from Brussels. I sat on the box beside our coachman, a civilized young man. Travelling is a corrector of one's vanities. I heard myself designated in the court to-day as "la dame qui s'assit a côté du cocherthe lady who sat beside the coachman [sic]"—my only distinction here. I liked my position. My friend was intelligent and talkative, and not only gave me such wayside information as I asked, but the history of his father's courtship and a little love story of his own, which is just at the most critical point of dramatic progress, and of which, alas! I shall never know the denœuement.

It is the anniversary of the Belgian revolution, and, of course, a fête-day. The streets were thronged. I should imagine the whole number of inhabitants, 100,000, were out of doors; and as the streets are narrow and have no side-walks, we made slow progress through the crowd—but so much the better. It was pleasant looking in their good, cheerful faces, the children in their holyday suits, and the women in their clean caps and freshest ribands. Green boughs hung over the windows, and the fruit-stalls were decked with flowers. I looked up the lanes on the right and left; they were a dense mass of human beings, looking well fed and comfortably clad. "Where are your poor people?" I asked my friend. "They are put a oneside," he replied. Alas! so are they everywhere if in the minority. There was wretchedness enough in those lanes that now