O that we could have
ivy in America! What is there to beautify us when our time of ruin
comes?
Before departing, we made the entire circuit of the castle on its walls,
and O'Sullivan and I climbed by a ladder to the top of one of the towers.
While there, we looked down into the street beneath, and saw a
photographist preparing to take a view of the castle, and calling out to
some little girl in some niche or on some pinnacle of the walls to stand
still that he might catch her figure and face. I think it added to the
impressiveness of the old castle, to see the streets and the
kitchen-gardens and the homely dwellings that had grown up within the
precincts of this feudal fortress, and the people of to-day following
their little businesses about it. This does not destroy the charm; but
tourists and idle visitors do impair it. The earnest life of to-day,
however, petty and homely as it may be, has a right to its place
alongside of what is left of the life of other days; and if it be vulgar
itself, it does not vulgarize the scene. But tourists do vulgarize it;
and I suppose we did so, just like others.
We took the train back to Rhyl, where we arrived at about four o'clock,
and, having dined, we again took the rail for Chester, and thence to Rock
Park (that is, O'Sullivan and I), and reached home at about eleven
o'clock.
Yesterday, September 13th, I began to wear a watch from Bennet's, 65
Cheapside, London. W. C.
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