The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient TurnpikeHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
Dover Road (England); England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs
Directly one comes to the crest of the hill there opens a wide view over
the Kentish Weald. Reaches of the Thames are seen, peeping through
foliage; distant houses and whitewashed cottages shine clearly miles
away, and the spire of Bexley Church closes the view in front, where the
road ends dustily. Along this road comes daily and all day a varied
procession of tramps. The traveller looks down upon them from this eyrie
with wonderment and dismay; the cottagers, the householders and gardeners
hereabouts, see them pass with less surprise and additional misgivings,
for their gardens, their hen-roosts, clothes-lines and orchards pay
tribute to these Ishmaelites to whom the rights of property are but
imperfectly known. This is why the gates and doors along the Dover Road
are so uniformly and resolutely barred, bolted, chained, and padlocked;
for these reasons ferocious dogs roam amid the suburban pleasances, and
turn red eyes and foaming mouths toward one who leans across garden-gates
to admire the flowers with which the fertile soil of Kent has so liberally
spangled every cultivated spot; and to them is due the murderous-looking
garnishment of jagged and broken glass with which every wall-top is armed.
"Peace must lie down armed" on the Dover Road; the citizen must lock,
bolt, and bar his house o' nights, and does well to exhibit warning
placards, "Beware of the Dog!" He does better to tip the policeman
occasionally to keep an especially vigilant look-out, and it is not an
excess of precaution that so frequently covers the flower-beds with
wire-netting.
X
[Sidenote: TRAMPS]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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