As we passed
through the little town in the morning, it was all alive with the bustle
and throng of the weekly market; and though this had ceased on our
return, the streets still looked animated, because the heat of the day
drew most of the population, I should imagine, out of doors. Old men
look very antiquated here in their old-fashioned coats and breeches,
sunning themselves by the wayside.
We reached home somewhere about eight o'clock,--home I see I have called
it; and it seems as homelike a spot as any we have found in England,--the
old inn, close by the bridge, beside the clear river, pleasantly
overshadowed by trees. It is entirely English, and like nothing that one
sees in America; and yet. I feel as if I might have lived here a long
while ago, and had now come back because I retained pleasant
recollections of it. The children, too, make themselves at home. J-----
spends his time from morning to night fishing for minnows or trout, and
catching nothing at all, and U---- and R----- have been riding between
fields and barn in a hay-cart. The roads give us beautiful walks along
the river-side, or wind away among the gentle hills; and if we had
nothing else to look at in these walks, the hedges and stone fences would
afford interest enough, so many and pretty are the flowers, roses,
honeysuckles, and other sweet things, and so abundantly does the moss and
ivy grow among the old stones of the fences, which would never have a
single shoot of vegetation on them in America till the very end of time.
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