Thence retracing my steps, I stopped at
a poor hotel, and took lunch, and, finding that I was in time to take the
steamer back, I hurried on board, and we set sail (or steam) before
three. I have heard of an old castle at Runcorn, but could discover
nothing of it. It was well that I returned so promptly, for we had
hardly left the pier before it began to rain, and there was a heavy
downfall throughout the voyage homeward. Runcorn is fourteen miles from
Liverpool, and is the farthest point to which a steamer runs. I had
intended to come home by rail,--a circuitous route,--but the advice of
the landlady of the hotel, and the aspect of the weather, and a feeling
of general discouragement prevented me.
An incident in S. C. Hall's Ireland, of a stone cross, buried in
Cromwell's time, to prevent its destruction by his soldiers. It was
forgotten, and became a mere doubtful tradition, but one old man had been
told by his father, and he by his father, etc., that it was buried near a
certain spot; and at last, two hundred years after the cross was buried,
the vicar of the parish dug in that spot and found it. In my (English)
romance, an American might bring the tradition from over the sea, and so
discover the cross, which had been altogether forgotten.
August 24th.--Day before yesterday I took the rail for Southport,--a
cool, generally overcast day, with glimmers of faint sunshine. The ride
is through a most uninteresting tract of country, at first, glimpses of
the river, with the thousands of masts in the docks; the dismal outskirts
of a great town, still spreading onward, with beginnings of streets, and
insulated brick buildings and blocks; farther on, a wide monotony of
level plain, and here and there a village and a church; almost always a
windmill in sight, there being plenty of breeze to turn its vans on this
windy coast.
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