The South-Eastern Company have brought Pavilionstone into such vogue,
with their tidal trains and splendid steam-packets, that a new
Pavilionstone is rising up. I am, myself, of New Pavilionstone. We are
a little mortary and limey at present, but we are getting on capitally.
Indeed, we were getting on so fast, at one time, that we rather overdid
it, and built a street of shops, the business of which may be expected to
arrive in about ten years. We are sensibly laid out in general; and with
a little care and pains (by no means wanting, so far), shall become a
very pretty place. We ought to be, for our situation is delightful, our
air is delicious, and our breezy hills and downs, carpeted with wild
thyme, and decorated with millions of wild flowers, are, on the faith of
a pedestrian, perfect. In New Pavilionstone we are a little too much
addicted to small windows with more bricks in them than glass, and we are
not over-fanciful in the way of decorative architecture, and we get
unexpected sea-views through cracks in the street doors; on the whole,
however, we are very snug and comfortable, and well accommodated. But
the Home Secretary (if there be such an officer) cannot too soon shut up
the burial-ground of the old parish church. It is in the midst of us,
and Pavilionstone will get no good of it, if it be too long left alone.
The lion of Pavilionstone is its Great Hotel. A dozen years ago, going
over to Paris by South-Eastern Tidal Steamer, you used to be dropped upon
the platform of the main line Pavilionstone Station (not a junction
then), at eleven o’clock on a dark winter’s night, in a roaring wind; and
in the howling wilderness outside the station, was a short omnibus which
brought you up by the forehead the instant you got in at the door; and
nobody cared about you, and you were alone in the world. You bumped over
infinite chalk, until you were turned out at a strange building which had
just left off being a barn without having quite begun to be a house,
where nobody expected your coming, or knew what to do with you when you
were come, and where you were usually blown about, until you happened to
be blown against the cold beef, and finally into bed. At five in the
morning you were blown out of bed, and after a dreary breakfast, with
crumpled company, in the midst of confusion, were hustled on board a
steamboat and lay wretched on deck until you saw France lunging and
surging at you with great vehemence over the bowsprit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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