From Lanteglos good but steep roads lead down to Polruan, a manner of over-the-water suburb of Fowey, set picturesquely on the west shore of Fowey River. As we went down the steep street, children were singing the ribald song which pervaded London, and the country generally, all last year. I am not going to name it here; let it die, and be deservedly forgotten. But, _par parenthèse_, I will put a question here to philosophers. We know at what rate light travels, and sound too, but at what rate of speed does the comic song fare on its baleful course? Who, again, shall estimate how rapidly the contagion spreads of those now happily defunct songs of an appalling sentimentality--“See-Saw,” “The Maid of the Mill,” or, to sound deeper depths, “Annie Rooney,” and “White Wings”? A ferry runs between Polruan and Fowey, the latter a town that has grown from its former estate of slumberous seaport into a “resort” of quite a fashionable and exclusive flavour. It is “still growing”--worse luck. The visitor may easily recognise Fowey as the original of “Troy Town,” by “Q.,” whose initial, being interpreted, stands for Mr. A. T. Quiller-Couch, himself a Cornishman. The salient features of Fowey to the eye, the nose, the ear, and the mind are sea- and land-scapes of wondrous beauty, fish odours, the clangour of a disreputable brass band, and historical legends of a peculiarly romantic character. A wonderful old church of a peculiar dedication--Saint Finbarrus--stands in midst of Fowey town. We explored its interior on the evening of our stay at Fowey, attracted by its lighted windows and the weekly practising of the choir then going forward. The chancel was lit up, and the church itself lay either in deep shadow or in mysterious half-lighting. The choir and the choirmaster, standing in the gas-lit circle, with the broad pointed arches of the nave arcade yawning around them, and the queer memorials of centuries ago, with their figures of dames and knights, touched to uncanny resemblances by the incidence of the shadows, made an extremely delightful picture, and one eminently paintable. There are many Treffrys and Rashleighs buried within Saint Finbar’s--two families with which the history of Fowey is interwoven. One John Treffry, buried here, seems to have been something of an eccentric, for he had his grave dug during his lifetime, and lay down and swore in it, “to shew the sexton a novelty.” His epitaph is a curious jingle--the work of the man himself, one would say. Here it is-- “Here in this Chancell do I ly Known by the name of John Treffry Being made & born for to dye So must thou friend as well as I Therefore Good works be Sure to try But chiefly love and charity And still on them with faith rely So be happy eternally.” This epitaph to Mary Courtney is not without a certain sweetness of conceit:--