So,
after waiting long after we had given up all hope, we went to the office
of the ship-yard, and there took a lunch; and still the rain was pouring,
pouring, pouring, and I never experienced a blacker affair in all my
days. Then we had to wait a great while for a train to take us back, so
that it was almost five o'clock before we arrived at Chester, where I
spent an hour in rambling about the old town, under the Rows; and on the
walls, looking down on the treetops, directly under my feet, and through
their thick branches at the canal, which creeps at the base, and at the
cathedral; walking under the dark intertwining arches of the cloisters,
and looking up at the great cathedral tower, so wasted away externally by
time and weather that it looks, save for the difference of color between
white snow and red freestone, like a structure of snow, half dissolved by
several warm days.
At the lunch I met with a graduate of Cambridge (England), tutor of a
grandson of Percival, with his pupil (Percival, the assassinated
minister, I mean). I should not like this position of tutor to a young
Englishman; it certainly has an ugly twang of upper servitude. I
observed that the tutor gave his pupil the best seat in the railway
carriage, and in all respects provided for his comfort before thinking of
his own; and this, not as a father does for his child, out of love, but
from a sense of place and duty, which I did not quite see how a gentleman
could consent to feel.
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