[G] This was one of the best illustrations of the old phrase, "a good pennyworth," that I ever knew for certain. I add the two last words because of a mysterious incident of my youth. I and one of my sisters were sitting at a window in a certain seaside place when we heard, both of us distinctly and repeatedly, this mystic street cry: "A bible and a pillow-case for a penny!" I rushed downstairs to secure this bargain, but the crier was now far off, and it was too late. [H] By the way, are they still as good for flip at New College, Oxford, as they were in the days when it numbered hardly any undergraduates except scholars, and one scholar of my acquaintance had to himself a set of three rooms and a garden? And is "The Island" at Kennington still famous for the same excellent compound? [I] It came from Alford, the chef-lieu, if it cannot be called the capital, of the Tennyson country. I have pleasant associations with the place, quite independent of the beery ones. And it made me, partially at least, alter one of the ideas of my early criticism--that time spent on a poet's local habitations was rather wasted. I have always thought "The Dying Swan" one of its author's greatest things, and one of the champion examples of pure poetry in English literature. But I never fully heard the "eddying song" that "flooded" the creeping mosses and clambering weeds, And the willow branches hoar and dank, And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds. And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank, And the silvery marish-flowers that throng The desolate creeks and pools among-- till I saw them. [J] Herefordshire and Worcestershire cider can be very strong and the perry, they say, still stronger.