116 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



fast as I could, so destroying the repose that 

 marks the house or town of Rye. Also I did 

 Camber's ruined castle, built by Henry VIII., 

 whose brickmaker must, I think, have rung in and 

 used up a stock of old Roman tiles, a mediaeval 

 watch-house of circular scheme, ancestor in some 

 back-handed way to the litter of martello towers 

 dotted along the shores which round our coast 

 from Deal to Margate span also on to Pevensey 

 and Eastbourne. Quite in American fashion I 

 ticked off at a canter Winchelsea's gates and 

 New Inn and church and crypts and workhouse- 

 gaol, which must have been a monastic house 

 some time or other, the almost tropical luxury of 

 plant and bloom, and John Wesley's ash-tree. I 

 was going to skirmish over to Fairlight on the 

 way, and look up the chalk cliff next to 

 Winchelsea ; but, you see, the railway company 

 hadn't taken into consideration the possibilities 

 of racing folks' rapid touring with a notion of 

 settling down another time to take the sauce on 

 the strength of a sweetener on the pickles. I felt 

 it hard, deuced hard, to be unable to help myself 

 to these other good things offering all round. 

 (Did you ever come across the longshoremen's 

 sweetly poetical realisation of the situation ? 

 *' Sentenced to live in a cookshop with your 

 mouth sewed up," they put it.) 



Perhaps after reading my very sketchy Notions 

 on Rye and Ryeabouts, folk doing Folkestone 

 may fancy to circulate to the little town. They 

 can manage all that by persuading the railway 

 company to help itself to trade easy to be 

 cultivated. I fared well on small limits, but 

 then I made up for being obliged to quit early 

 by doing Ashford, and the clean road, through 



