I remember a tale of an old Scots minister called
upon suddenly to preach, who had hastily snatched an old sermon out
of his study and found himself in the pulpit before he noticed that
the rats had been making free with his manuscript and eaten the first
two or three pages away; he gravely explained to the congregation how
he found himself situated: 'And now,' said he, 'let us just begin
where the rats have left off.' I must follow the divine's example,
and take up the thread of my discourse where it first distinctly
issues from the limbo of forgetfulness.
COCKERMOUTH
I was lighting my pipe as I stepped out of the inn at Cockermouth,
and did not raise my head until I was fairly in the street. When I
did so, it flashed upon me that I was in England; the evening
sunlight lit up English houses, English faces, an English
conformation of street, - as it were, an English atmosphere blew
against my face. There is nothing perhaps more puzzling (if one
thing in sociology can ever really be more unaccountable than
another) than the great gulf that is set between England and Scotland
- a gulf so easy in appearance, in reality so difficult to traverse.
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