' I could, no doubt,
with the smallest trouble discover a description of the real cross it
supplanted, but if it were anything half as fine as the one at
Richmond, I should merely be moved to say harsh things of John
Aislabie, who was Mayor in 1702, when the obelisk was erected, and
therefore I will leave the matter to others. It is, perhaps, an
un-Christian occupation to go about the country quarrelling with the
deeds of recent generations, though I am always grateful for any traces
of the centuries that have gone which have been allowed to survive.
With this thought still before me, I am startled by a long-drawn-out
blast on a horn, and, looking out of my window, which commands the
whole of the market-place, I can see beneath the light of a lamp an
old-fashioned figure wearing a three-cornered hat. When the last
quavering note has come from the great circular horn, the man walks
slowly across the wet cobble-stones to the obelisk, where I watch him
wind another blast just like the first, and then another, and then a
third, immediately after which he walks briskly away and disappears
down a turning.
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