It had poured with rain about the time of their arrival, notwithstanding
which they did not seem disheartened; for, of course, in this climate, it
enters into all their calculations to be drenched through and through.
By and by the sun shone out, and it has continued to shine and shade
every ten minutes ever since. All these people were decently dressed;
the men generally in dark clothes, not so smartly as Americans on a
festal day, but so as not to be greatly different as regards dress. They
were paler, smaller, less wholesome-looking and less intelligent, and, I
think, less noisy, than so many Yankees would have been. The women and
girls differed much more from what American girls and women would be on a
pleasure-excursion, being so shabbily dressed, with no kind of smartness,
no silks, nothing but cotton gowns, I believe, and ill-looking bonnets,--
which, however, was the only part of their attire that they seemed to
care about guarding from the rain. As to their persons, they generally
looked better developed and healthier than the men; but there was a woful
lack of beauty and grace, not a pretty girl among them, all coarse and
vulgar. Their bodies, it seems to me, are apt to be very long in
proportion to their limbs,--in truth, this kind of make is rather
characteristic of both sexes in England. The speech of these folks, in
some instances, was so broad Lancashire that I could not well understand
it.
A WALK TO BEBBINGTON.
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