Calidore by Thomas Love Peacock

NOTWITHSTANDING the great improvements of machinery in this rapidly improving age, which is so much wiser, better, and happier than all that went before it, every gentleman is not yet accommodated with the convenience of a pocket boat. * We may therefore readily imagine that Miss Ap-Nanny and her sister Ellen, the daughters of the Vicar of Llanglasrhyd, were not a little astonished in a Sunday evening walk on the sea shore, when a little skiff, which, by the rapidity of its motion had attracted their attention while but a speck upon the waves, ran upon the beach, from which emerged a very handsome young gentleman, dressed not exactly in the newest fashion, who, after taking down the sail and hauling up the boat upon the beach, carefully folded it up in the size of a prayer-book and transferred it to his pocket: after which he turned himself to the sea, and, scooping up some water in the hollow of his hand, poured it down again in the manner of a libation, calling on the names of Neptune and Bromian* Jupiter and Proteus and Triton and the Nereids. Then turning towards the rocks he spread open his arms and invoked the Nymphs, the mountains, the rivers, the lakes, the fields, the springs, the woods, and the sea-shore, by the several appellations of Oreads, and Naiads, and Limniads, and Limoniads, and Ephydriads, and Dryads and Hamadryads. He did not notice the young ladies till he had completed this operation, and when he looked round and discovered them he seemed a little confused, but made them a very courteous bow in a fine but rather singular style of ancient politeness. From the moment of his first landing, and the commencement of the curious process of folding up his boat, Miss Ap-Nanny had been dying with curiosity, and had consulted her sister Ellen as to the propriety of addressing the stranger, having, however, fully made up her mind beforehand as usual with young ladies when they ask advice.

The stranger spared Ellen the trouble of giving her opinion by advancing and politely enquiring if there were any such thing as a town or inn in the neighbourhood? those being things, he said, for which he was instructed to enquire. Miss Ap-Nanny informed him, in fifty times as amny words as were necessary, that there was no town within many miles, but a very good inn for the accommodation of picturesque tourists, kept by a very polite well-behaved accommodating old woman, named Gwyneth Owen, whose poor dear husband was gone to Abraham's bosom. "I hope he will not stay there long," said the stranger, touched apparently with sympathy by the rueful aspect with which Miss Ap-Nanny deemed it expedient to pronounce these latter words. The hawk's-eyes of Miss Ap-Nanny distended with amazement: but she proceeded to point out the way to the inn, observing at the same time: "You seem to be a stranger here, sir"--"Perfectly, sweet lady, " was the reply, which left Miss Ap-Nanny's curiosity as unsatisfied as before, though her wide mouth was pursed up into a smile by the courteous appellative, for she was not esteemed a beauty in this sinful generation, though she had eyes like the fish-pools by the gate of Bath-rabbim, and a nose like the tower of Lebanon which looks towards Damascus. * These prepossessing features, with the subaddition of two thin colourless lips, like faded threads of pink silk, set altogether in a complexion of smoky yellow like the wood of the Barberry-tree, over-shaded with inflexible masses of coarse copper- coloured hair, and mounted on a neck not perhaps very unlike the tower which David built for an armoury, formed altogether a combination of feminine charms that might have warmed the heart of a Jew, though it was doomed to "waste its sweetness on the desert air" among the tasteless squires of Cambria.