All beauteous things for which we live
By laws of time and space decay.
But oh, the very reason why
I clasp them is because they die.
From this sadness in Bath I went to a greater in Wells, where
I had not been for ten years, and timing my visit so as to
have a Sunday service at the cathedral of beautiful memories,
I went on a Saturday to Shepton Mallet. A small, squalid
town, a "manufacturing town" the guide-book calls it. Well,
yes; it manufactures Anglo-Bavarian beer in a gigantic
brewery which looks bigger than all the other buildings
together, the church and a dozen or twenty public-houses
included. To get some food I went to the only eating-house
in the place, and saw a pleasant-looking woman, plump and
high-coloured, with black hair, with an expression of good
humour and goodness of every description in her comely
countenance. She promised to have a chop ready by the time I
had finished looking at the church, and I said I would have it
with a small Guinness. She could not provide that, the house,
she said, was strictly temperance. "My doctor has ordered me
to take it," said I, "and if you are religious, remember that
St. Paul tells us to take a little stout when we find it
beneficial."
"Yes, I know that's what St. Paul says," she returned, with a
heightened colour and a vicious emphasis on the saint's name,
"but we go on a different principle."
So I had to go for my lunch to one of the big public-houses,
called hotels; but whether it called itself a cow, or horse,
or stag, or angel, or a blue or green something, I cannot
remember.
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