The sharp chirping
of the birds in the shrubbery seemed a concert arranged for my ear.
We were soon astir. Like Wordsworth we said that this one day we
would give to idleness, though the profane might ask to what that
leisurely poet consecrated the rest of his days.
We found ourselves deposited, by a brisk train--the very stoker
seemed to be engaged in the joyful conspiracy--at the little town
of St. Ives. I should like to expatiate upon the charms of St.
Ives, its clear, broad, rush-fringed river, its quaint brick
houses, with their little wharf-gardens, where the trailing
nasturtium mirrors itself in the slow flood, its embayed bridge,
with the ancient chapel buttressed over the stream--but I must hold
my hand; I must not linger over the beauties of the City of
Destruction, which I have every reason to believe was a very
picturesque place, when our hearts were set on pilgrimage. Suffice
it to say that we walked along a pretty riverside causeway, under
enlacing limes, past the fine church, under the hanging woods of
Houghton Hill--and here we found a mill, a big, timbered place,
with a tiled roof, odd galleries and projecting pent-houses, all
pleasantly dusted with flour, where a great wheel turned dripping
in a fern-clad cavern of its own, with the scent of the weedy
river-water blown back from the plunging leat.
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