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48 BBADSHAW THE BETBAYER.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
.+. " Oh Doricles ! Your Praises Are Too...
one who lias driven hard all the "way , and exhausted himself in the service of an ungrateful government .
Thus , at an intermittent pace which is alternately furious or funereal according as we approach a village or traverse a lonely
country road , we journey on our way . By and bye the landscape grows more and more desolate ; the heat more and more oppressive .
Dreary sandhills and undulating sweeps of furzy common succeed to the fields and farms about Abbeville . Habitations become fewer
and farther between . Vegetation almost ceases . The horse ' s feet sink deep at every step , and the drifting sand-dust swirls up in our
faces with every hot gust of the north-east ¦ wind . We have been four hours and a half upon the road already ; it is
close " From upon the three top o ' yonder clock ; , and " says a long the hill gamin glares composedl before y us in <( we the shall sun .
, come in sight of the sea . " ** The sea ! Is St . Valery near the sea ?"
" Mais certainement . Did not Monsieur know that ?" I did not know it , and I am not pleased to know it . I am not
fond of the sea-side . I hate bathing . I am not clever at coast scenery , and I never could draw a boat in my life . Altogether I
begin to have misgivings on the subject of what I have come to see ; and when we do reach the top of the hill and I catch a glimpse of
that glittering line that bounds the horizon like a silver scimitar , I turn away mine eyes in disgust , and feign a sulky sleep .
The feigned sleep merges insensibly into a real one , from which I am by and bye awakened by more yelling and whooping on ihe
part of the driver , by the headlong jolting of the cabriolet , and by the transition from a soft dusty road to the rough pavement of a
town . It is a street bordered by houses on one side and a quay on the
other . The houses are of the poorest , and the population of the shabbiest description . The town consists of a single irregular
street about a mile in length , and the prevailing trade appears to be in cockles and cordage . At the farther extremityon a little sandy
, eminence , stands a small grey-steepled church surmounted by a forlorn wooden telegraph that has long fallen into disuseand still
points upwards with one lank arm , like a skeleton of ill , omen . The river at this point almost ceases to be a river , and widens out
between low sandy banks to its junction with the sea . The opposite shore is so far distant that only the ghostly outline of a lighthouse
and some trees is visible ; and between that shore and St . Valery stretches such a dreary waste of mud , and slime , and sand as I have
never seen in my life before or since . Imagine the mouth of the ! Nore with the tide out and all the water gone , save a narrow
current which ripples along a groove in the midst of the river-bedand you will at least have formed some vague notion of the aspect of , St .
Valery at low water .
48 Bbadshaw The Betbayer.
48 BBADSHAW THE BETBAYER .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 1, 1858, page 48, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01031858/page/48/
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