Page:The Englishwoman in America (IA englishwomaninam00birdrich).pdf/50



showing a collection of autographs to a gentleman at a party in a well-known Canadian city, when the volume opened upon the majestic signature of Cromwell. I paused as I pointed to it, expecting a burst of enthusiasm. "Who is Cromwell?" he asked; an ignorance which I should have believed counterfeit had it not been too painfully and obviously genuine.

A yeoman friend in England, on being told that I had arrived safely at Boston, after encountering great danger in a gale, "rechoned that it was somewhere down in Lincolnshire."

With these instances of ignorance, and many more which I could name, fresh in my recollection, I am not at all surprised that few persons should be acquainted with the locality of a spot of earth so comparatively obscure as Prince Edward Island. When I named my destination to my friends prior to my departure from England, it was