Certain Delightful English Towns by William Dean Howells

Even the local guide-book, which is necessarily optimistic, owns that / the railroad service between Bath and Wells leaves something to be / desired. The distance is twenty miles, and you can make it by the Great / Western in something over two hours, but if you are pressed for time, / the Somerset and Dorset line will carry you in two. As we were / nationally in a hurry, though personally we had time to spare, we went / and came by this line, mostly in a sort of vague rain, which favored the / blossoming of the primroses along the railroad bank. Not that any part / of the way needed rain; great stretches of the country lay soaking in / the rainfall of the year before, which had not had sun enough to / diminish its depth or breadth. In fact, on the eve of the sunniest and / loveliest summer which perhaps England ever saw, the whole West looked / in March as if wringing it out and hanging it up to dry in a / steam-laundry could alone get the wet out of it. The water lay in wide / expanses in the meadows, the plethoric streams swam chokeful; in the / ditches men were at work with short scythes cutting the rank weeds out / to give the flood a little course, but where it was to run was a / question which did not answer itself.

We were in a third-class compartment, and we had the advantage of the / simple life getting in and out of a train that seemed to stop oftener / than it started. Our ever-changing fellow-passengers were mostly mothers / of large little families: babies in arms, and babies slightly bigger, / sisters and brothers pendent at arm's-length from the mother-hands, all / with flaring blue eyes and flaming red cheeks, and flaxen hair and mild, / sweet faces. Everybody was good, and helped these helpless families to / mount and dismount; the kindly porters came and went with their / impracticable bundles, and the passengers handed the brothers and / sisters after the baby-burdened mother, or took them from her so that / she might stumble into the carriage without falling upon her detached / offspring. They were beautifully polite in word and deed, so that it was / a consolation to hear and see them.

Shortly after our journey began, our tram was apparently run down by an / old man and his granddaughter who got in blown and panting from their / chase of half a mile before overtaking us. They were of the thin blond / type of some English country folks, with a milder color in their cheeks / than usual, and between his age and her youth they had about a third of / the natural allowance of teeth. Agriculture is apparently nowhere / favorable to the preservation of teeth; the rustic theory is that when a / tooth offends one should pluck it out; but in England they never expect / to replace it, while with us they pluck out all the others and replace / them with new ones from the dentist's, so that when you see good teeth / in a country mouth you know where they come from. Their want of teeth / did not prevent the old man and the little girl from beginning to eat as / soon as they could get their breath. They were going on a visit to her / aunt, it seemed, and she was provisioned against the chances of famine / in the hour's journey by a plentiful supply of oranges and apples and / cakes in a net bag. "Us 'ad a 'ard chase, didn't us? " the old man asked / her, with a sociable glance round the place. The little girl nodded with / her mouth full, while her fingers explored the bag for more cakes to / fill it when it should be empty, and the old man leaned tenderly towards / her and suggested, "Couldn't your little 'and find something for me, / too? " She drew forth an orange and a cake and gave them to him. Then / they munched on, he garrulously, she silently; with what teeth they had / between them they must have managed to masticate their food, and there / is every probability that they reached their journey's end without / famishing.

We had only two changes to make in our twenty miles, and as we were on / the swift train that made the distance in two hours, we did not mind / some delay at each change. It was just lunch-time when we reached Wells, / and had ourselves driven in the hotel omnibus, a tremendously rackety / vehicle, to The Swan. This bird's plumage was much disarranged by some / sort of Easter preparations, and there were workmen taking down and / hanging up decorations. But there was quiet in the coffee-room, where / over a cold, cold, luncheon we shivered in sympathy with the icy gloom / of the basement entrance of the inn, where an office-lady darkled behind / her office-window, apparently in winter-long question whether she would / be warmer with it shut or open. It was an inn of the old type, now / happily obsolescent, which if it cannot smell directly of a stable-yard, / does what it can by smelling of the stable-boy in its doorway. We had / not, however, come to Wells for the Swan, but for the cathedral, and as / we could look out at its loveliness from the window where we ate lunch, / we had really nothing to complain of. We had indeed something specially / to be glad of, for we could there get our first glimpse of the cathedral / through the Dean's Eye, or if this is not quite honest, from over the / Dean's Eyebrow, so to call the top of the fifteenth-century gate, which / commands the finest approach to the cathedral. When you have passed / through the Dean's Eye it may not be quite as if you had passed through / the Needle's Eye; but if I were an American millionaire who had my / doubts of the way I was going I might have fancied myself achieving a / feat even more difficult than the camel's, and to be entering the / Kingdom as I crossed the lawn inside the gate, and moved in my rapture / towards the divine edifice.