PLUMPTON AND ITS COUNTRY 71 



Let me tell you, my brothers who like 

 Plumpton's pickles, you have no conception of 

 what relishing sauce is to be had free, gratis, and 

 for nothing right on the premises, or next door to 

 them. Only half a mile from the cottage garden 

 at the corner of the course, into which, as I 

 wrote a few weeks ago, poor Sensier jumped and 

 upset a hive or two of bees, is a marvellous bit of 

 romantic river country in miniature. Our up-to- 

 date photographers could take bits of this and 

 develop 'em in such style that you would believe 

 you were looking on a mighty river hemmed in 

 by gigantic rocks and rushing over stupendous 

 falls. That is the way they bring out authors' 

 houses in celebrities at home, lending to a mere 

 dustbin an importance which almost makes you 

 cease to wonder how the great Mr Backscratcher 

 can get a study as big as the Royal Exchange 

 into a forty-pound-a-year villarette. The thing 

 is done, you know, because you see it in print as 

 per photograph ; and we all know that one must 

 believe all said in newspapers, also that the 

 (photographic) instrument cannot lie. For 

 myself, I do not want any enlargements of 

 Plumpton's purling brook, which even a Mr 

 Cheviot Hill might pronounce beautiful without 

 an artful, artless Scotch lassie to give him a lead. 



The soft-voiced chatterer's flow is good 

 enough for me as it is, with its steep walls and 

 pools worn out of the red sandstone, its ferns and 

 flowers, overhanging bushes, and trees that quite 

 hide the best part of its beauties from strangers. 

 You miorht drive down the lane a score times in 

 summer, with the water not half a dozen yards 

 away, and not know that the brook was busily 

 going on, unless you had to look for it. And the 



