RYE AND EASTBOURNE 113 



sun-dial facing the wonderful old clock in Rye's 

 church tower. A busy man couldn't absorb this 

 text and sermon in one, taking it well into his 

 system, nor an easy-going one either, unless in 

 such environment as the setting, where it came to 

 me at the back of the market hall. (Under the 

 hall is stored a century-and-a-half-old fire engine 

 bearing the name of Brahma, relation of the 

 lock-maker, I suppose.) An inoffensive, appro- 

 priate method of mensuration, too, is the dial's ; 

 no noise, no wheels to go round and click, no 

 whirrings at recurrent crises, marking more or 

 less important sub-divisions of time which means 

 life, no strikings and chimings, no windings up, 

 no labour, manual or mechanical — simply auto- 

 matic record of slipping, solving lapse with the 

 total loss or gain — who shall say which ? — wiped 

 out at sundown and no score carried forward. 



Worth a bit to a hard-driven worker, you 

 know, is a spell of sitting under the sun on a day 

 in late August while he preaches to you from a 

 text like that. I wonder whether good old 

 Ingoldsby used to come over from Barham way 

 — (Tapperton Grange, was ii, he called Barham ? 

 I think I saw the pretty old house advertised in 

 Rye for sale by auction) — and had been resting 

 under the dial opposite the great church clock 

 when he wrote " As I lay a-thynkynge." Perhaps 

 he had, for he must have been fond of Rye and 

 Winchelsea, and his fifth quarter of the world, 

 Romney Marsh, that in his days had not so 

 grown out of the sea, not by many a hundred 

 acres, now making good feed for the white-faced, 

 symmetrically-built sheep, who are treated so 

 much better than humans in these parts. Their 

 lambs, flourishing exceedingly in the summer, 



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