CHAPTER X 



KINGTON AND RADNORSHIRE 



In the autumn of 1839 my brother came to Leighton to take 

 me away, and in a day or two we started for Herefordshire, 

 going by the recently opened railroad to Birmingham, where 

 we visited an old friend of my brother's, a schoolmaster, whose 

 name I forget, and who I remember showed us with some 

 pride how his school was warmed by hot-water pipes, then 

 somewhat unusual. We then went on by coach through Wor- 

 cester to Kington, a small town of about two thousand in- 

 habitants, only two miles from the boundary of Radnor- 

 shire. It is pleasantly situated in a hilly country, and has a 

 small stream flowing through it. Just beyond the county 

 boundary, on the road to Old and New Radnor, there is an 

 isolated craggy hill called the Stanner Rocks, which, being 

 a very hard kind of basalt very good for road-metal, was 

 being continually cut away for that purpose. It was covered 

 with scrubby wood, and was the most picturesque object in 

 the immediately surrounding country. 



We obtained board and lodging at the house of a gun- 

 maker, Mr. Samuel Wright, a jolly little man, who reminded 

 me of the portrait of the immortal Mr. Pickwick, and who, on 

 account of his rotundity, was commonly known in the town as 

 Alderman Wright. Mrs. Wright was, on the contrary, very 

 thin and angular. They were equally different in their char- 

 acters; he was very slow of speech, but very fond of telling 

 stories of his early life, usually very commonplace, and told in 

 such a way as to be dreadfully wearisome. After every few 

 words he would stop, to let them sink in, then utter a few more 

 with another stop, and all mixed up with so many " says I's " 

 and " says he's," and " that's to say's," and little digressions 

 about other people, that it was usually impossible to make out 



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