Americans -- England -- Fiction; Courtship -- Fiction; Women travelers -- England -- Fiction
Salisbury, _June 1_,
The White Hart Inn.
We left Winchester on the 1.16 train yesterday, and here we are within
sight of another superb and ancient pile of stone. I wanted so much to
stop at the Highflyer Inn in Lark Lane, but Aunt Celia said that if we
were destitute of personal dignity, we at least owed something to our
ancestors. Aunt Celia has a temperamental distrust of joy as something
dangerous and ensnaring. She doesn't realize what fun it would be to
date one's letters from the Highflyer Inn, Lark Lane, even if one were
obliged to consort with poachers and trippers in order to do it.
Better times are coming, however, for she was in a melting mood last
evening, and promised me that wherever I can find an inn with a
picturesque and unusual name, she will stop there, provided it is clean
and respectable, if I on my part will agree to make regular notes of
travel in my Russia-leather book. She says that ever since she was my
age she has asked herself nightly the questions Pythagoras was in the
habit of using as a nightcap:
'What have I learned that's worth the knowing?
What have I done that's worth the doing?
What have I sought I should have shunned,
And into what new follies run?'
I asked her why Pythagoras didn't say 'runned' and make a consistent
rhyme, and she evaded the point by answering that Pythagoras didn't
write it in English.
We attended service at three. The music was lovely, and there were
beautiful stained-glass windows by Burne-Jones and Morris. The verger
(when wound up with a shilling) talked like an electric doll. If that
nice young man is making a cathedral tour like ourselves, he isn't
taking our route, for he isn't here. If he has come over for the purpose
of sketching, he wouldn't stop with one cathedral, unless he is very
indolent and unambitious, and he doesn't look either of these.
Perhaps he began at the other end, and worked down to Winchester. Yes,
that must be it, for the _Ems_ sailed yesterday from Southampton. Too
bad, for he was a distinct addition to the landscape. Why didn't I say,
when he was picking up the collection of curios in Aunt Celia's bag,
'You needn't bother about the novel, thank you; it is not mine, and
anyway it would be of no use to anybody.'
_June 2._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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