174 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



Morning Walk through a Coal District Ruabon An Optimist with a 

 Welsh Wife Graveyard Notes A Stage-wagon Taxes Wynstay 

 Park Thorough Draining A Glimpse of Cottage Life " Sir WatMns 

 Williams Wyn." 



June 4A. 



rFHE most agreeable chimes from the church tower we had 

 * ever heard, awoke us this morning at three o'clock. It is 

 light enough here at that time to read or write, and the twilight 

 at evening does not seem to be over at half-past ten. I felt stiff 

 and sore, but arose and wrote till half-past six, when we got the 

 bar-maid up, paid our bill (we were charged only sixpence a 

 piece for our lodging), and were let out into the street ; no signs 

 that any one else in the town was yet stirring. 



Our road ran through a coal district, tall chimneys throwing 

 out long black clouds of smoke, and pump-levers working along 

 the hill-tops ; the road darkened with cinders ; sooty men corning 

 home from the night-work to low, dirty, thatched cottages the 

 least interesting and poorest farmed country we had yet traveled 

 over. After walking six miles, we stopped at the Talbot Inn, 

 Ruabon, to breakfast. 



In the tap-room, over his beer, was a middle-aged man, a cur- 

 rier by trade, who told us he had come hither nine years ago from 



