There are many others I remember. Those I have written about elsewhere I
am ashamed to recall, as the man at Jedburgh, who first expounded to me
how one knew all about the fate of the individual soul, and then
objected to personal questions about his own; the German officer man at
Aix-la-Chapelle, who had hair the colour of tow, and gave me minute
details of the method by which England was to be destroyed; a man I met
upon the Appian Way, who told the most abominable lies; and another man
who met me outside Oxford station during the Vac. and offered to show me
the sights of the town for a consideration, which he did, but I would
not pay him because he was inaccurate, as I easily proved by a few
searching questions upon the exact site of Bocardo (of which he had
never heard), and the negative evidence against a Roman origin for the
site of the city. Moreover, he said that Trinity was St. John's, which
was rubbish.
Then there was another man who travelled with me from Birmingham,
pressed certain tracts upon me, and wanted to charge me sixpence each at
Paddington. But if I were to speak of even these few I should exceed.
On the Sources of Rivers
There are certain customs in man the permanence of which gives infinite
pleasure. When the mood of the schools is against them these customs lie
in wait beneath the floors of society, but they never die, and when a
decay in pedantry or in despotism or in any other evil and inhuman
influence permits them to reappear they reappear.
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