"You are right there," said Mr. Poplington, who was doing his best to
carve a duck, and was a little cross about it.
When I sat before the fire that evening, and Jone was asleep on a
settee of the days of yore, and Mr. Poplington had gone to bed, being
tired, my soul went back to the olden time, and, looking out through
the little window in the fireplace, I fancied I could see William the
Conqueror and the King of the Danes sneaking along the little street
under the eaves of the thatched roofs, until I was so worked up that I
was on the point of shouting, "Fly! oh, Saxon!" when the door opened
and the maid who waited on us at the table put her head in. I took this
for a sign that the curfew bell was going to ring, and so I woke up
Jone and we went to bed.
But all night long the heroes of the past flocked about me. I had been
reading a lot of history, and I knew them all the minute my eyes fell
upon them. Charlemagne and Canute sat on the end of the bed, while
Alfred the Great climbed up one of the posts until he was stopped by
Hannibal's legs, who had them twisted about the post to keep himself
steady. When I got up in the morning I went down-stairs into the little
parlor, and there was the maid down on her knees cleaning the hearth.
"What is your name?" I said to her.
"Jane, please," said she.
"Jane what?" said I.
"Jane Puddle, please," said she.
I took a carving-knife from off the table, and standing over her I
brought it down gently on top of her head. "Rise, Sir Jane Puddle,"
said I, to which the maid gave a smothered gasp, and - would you believe
it, madam? - she crept out of the room on her hands and knees. The cook
waited on us at breakfast, and I truly believe that the landlord and
his wife breathed a sigh of relief when we left the Ship Inn, for their
sordid souls had never heard of knighthood, but knew all about
assassination.
[Illustration: "Rise, Sir Jane Puddle"]
That morning we left Porlock by a hill which compared with the one we
came into it by, was like the biggest Pyramid of Egypt by the side of a
haycock. I don't suppose in the whole civilized world there is a worse
hill with a road on it than the one we went up by. I was glad we had to
go up it instead of down it, though it was very hard to walk, pushing
the tricycle, even when helped. I believe it would have taken away my
breath and turned me dizzy even to take one step face forward down such
a hill, and gaze into the dreadful depths below me; and yet they drive
coaches and fours down that hill. At the top of the hill is this
notice: "To cyclers - this hill is dangerous." If I had thought of it I
should have looked for the cyclers' graves at the bottom of it.
The reason I thought about this was that I had been reading about one
of the mountains in Switzerland, which is one of the highest and most
dangerous, and with the poorest view, where so many Alpine climbers
have been killed that there is a little graveyard nearly full of their
graves at the foot of the mountain. How they could walk through that
graveyard and read the inscriptions on the tombstones and then go and
climb that mountain is more than I can imagine.
In walking up this hill, and thinking that it might have been in front
of me when my tricycle ran away, I could not keep my mind away from the
little graveyard at the foot of the Swiss mountain.
Letter Number Eleven
CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
On the third day of our cycle trip we journeyed along a lofty road,
with the wild moor on one side and the tossing sea on the other, and at
night reached Lynton. It is a little town on a jutting crag, and far
down below it on the edge of the sea was another town named Lynmouth,
and there is a car with a wire rope to it, like an elevator, which they
call The Lift, which takes people up and down from one town to another.
Here we stopped at a house very different from the Ship Inn, for it
looked as if it had been built the day before yesterday. Everything was
new and shiny, and we had our supper at a long table with about twenty
other people, just like a boardinghouse. Some of their ways reminded
me of the backwoods, and I suppose there is nothing more modern than
backwoodsism, which naturally hasn't the least alloy of the past. When
the people got through with their cups of coffee or tea, mostly the
last, two women went around the table, one with a big bowl for us to
lean back and empty our slops into, and the other with the tea or
coffee to fill up the cups. A gentleman with a baldish head, who was
sitting opposite us, began to be sociable as soon as he heard us speak
to the waiters, and asked questions about America. After he got through
with about a dozen of them he said:
"Is it true, as I have heard, that what you call native-born Americans
deteriorate in the third generation?"
I had been answering most of the questions, but now Jone spoke up
quick. "That depends," says he, "on their original blood. When
Americans are descended from Englishmen they steadily improve,
generation after generation." The baldish man smiled at this, and said
there was nothing like having good blood for a foundation.
