His appearance when I approached him interested me too. His
skin was the color of old brown leather and he had a big
arched nose, clear light blue very shrewd eyes, and a big
fringe or hedge of ragged white beard under his chin; and he
was dressed in a new suit of rough dark brown tweeds,
evidently home-made. When I spoke to him, saying something
about the cathedral, he joyfully responded in broadest Scotch.
It was, he said, the first English cathedral he had ever seen
and he had never seen anything made by man to equal it in
beauty. He had come, he told me, straight from his home and
birthplace, a small village in the north of Scotland, shut
out from the world by great hills where the heather grew
knee-deep. He had never been in England before, and had come
directly to Salisbury on a visit to a relation.
"Well," I said, "now you have looked at it outside come in
with me and see the interior."
But he refused: it was enough for one day to see the outside
of such a building: he wanted no more just then. To-morrow
would be soon enough to see it inside; it would be the Sabbath
and he would go and worship there.
"Are you an Anglican?" I asked.
He replied that there were no Anglicans in his village. They
had two Churches - the Church of Scotland and the Free Church.
"And what," said I, "will your minister say to your going to
worship in a cathedral? We have all denominations here in
Salisbury, and you will perhaps find a Presbyterian place to
worship in."
"Now it's strange your saying that!" he returned, with a dry
little laugh. "I've just had a letter from him the morning
and he writes on this varra subject. 'Let me advise you,' he
tells me in the letter, 'to attend the service in Salisbury
Cathedral. Nae doot,' he says, 'there are many things in it
you'll disapprove of, but not everything perhaps, and I'd like
ye to go.'"
I was a little sorry for him next day when we had an
ordination service, very long, complicated, and, I should
imagine, exceedingly difficult to follow by a wild
Presbyterian from the hills. He probably disapproved of most
of it, but I greatly admired him for refusing to see anything
more of the cathedral than the outside on the first day. His
method was better than that of an American (from Indiana, he
told me) I met the following day at the hotel. He gave two
hours and a half, including attendance at the morning service,
to the cathedral, inside and out, then rushed off for an hour
at Stonehenge, fourteen miles away, on a hired bicycle. I
advised him to take another day - I did not want to frighten
him by saying a week - and he replied that that would make him
miss Winchester. After cycling back from Stonehenge he would
catch a train to Winchester and get there in time to have some
minutes in the cathedral before the doors closed. He was due
in London next morning. He had already missed Durham
Cathedral in the north through getting interested in and
wasting too much time over some place when he was going there.
Again, he had missed Exeter Cathedral in the south, and it
would be a little too bad to miss Winchester too!
Chapter Twenty-One: Stonehenge
That American from Indiana! As it was market day at Salisbury
I asked him before we parted if he had seen the market, also
if they had market days in the country towns in his State? He
said he had looked in at the market on his way back from the
cathedral. No, they had nothing of the kind in his State.
Indiana was covered with a network of railroads and electric
tram lines, and all country produce, down to the last new-laid
egg, was collected and sent off and conveyed each morning to
the towns, where it was always market day.
How sad! thought I. Poor Indiana, that once had wildness and
romance and memories of a vanished race, and has now only its
pretty meaningless name!
"I suppose," he said, before getting on his bicycle, "there's
nothing beside the cathedral and Stonehenge to see in
Wiltshire?"
"No, nothing," I returned, "and you'll think the time wasted
in seeing Stonehenge."
"Why?"
"Only a few old stones to see."
But he went, and I have no doubt did think the time wasted,
but it would be some consolation to him, on the other side, to
be able to say that he had seen it with his own eyes.
How did these same "few old stones" strike me on a first
visit? It was one of the greatest disillusionments I ever
experienced. Stonehenge looked small - pitiably small! For it
is a fact that mere size is very much to us, in spite of all
the teachings of science. We have heard of Stonehenge in our
childhood or boyhood - that great building of unknown origin
and antiquity, its circles of stones, some still standing,
others lying prostrate, like the stupendous half-shattered
skeleton of a giant or monster whose stature reached to the
clouds. It stands, we read or were told, on Salisbury Plain.
To my uninformed, childish mind a plain anywhere was like the
plain on which I was born - an absolutely level area stretching
away on all sides into infinitude; and although the effect is
of a great extent of earth, we know that we actually see very
little of it, that standing on a level plain we have a very
near horizon.
