Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. My Mother's Cottage At Henley.—My Father's Journey To Oxford With Washington Irving. — Wargrave. — An Accomplished Amateur.— F. Walker In Algiers.—Winter Scenes.—A Summer Flood.—Visit To Monkey Island With Mr. J. E. Hodgson, R.a.—Poultry.—My New Punt. — Marlow.—Mrs. Copeland's Death.—Visit To Dorchester.— Streatley.—Summoned For Evading The Bridge Toll.—G. Mason, A.r.a., At Thames Ditton.—The "george And Dragon" Signboard.—Journey To St. John's Wood In My Punt.—The Lower River.—Yewden.— Remenham Hill.—Journey To Abingdon.—Floods In 1879. AT THE summer of the year 1869 my mother came to live at Henley, having taken a small cottage on Remenham Hill on the Berkshire side of the river—more than forty years before which time, on the evening of her wedding day, she and my father arrived by coach at Henley, where they stopped at the " Lion" for a few days on their way to Oxford and Blenheim. In those days, as many as forty coaches sometimes passed along the road in front of her present house, the sound of their horns enlivening the neighbourhood as they reached the top of the hill overlooking Henley; and it was onthe same road that some years before, my father travelled in company with Washington Irving, on which journey the story of " The Stout Gentleman " was suggested by a fellow traveller of corpulent dimensions, who was in the coach with them. My father once or twice described this journey to me. It took place in the latter part of the month of August, the moon shining so brightly that the labourers were at work in the fields all night getting in the fat harvest. A sailor travelled with them who had been in the actions of Trafalgar and the Nile, and who had many exploits to relate; he put on nothing extra in the way of clothing as night approached, and on my fathe...