Explore "The Canvasser" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In that part of the Garden of Eden which lies somewhat to the south-west of the centre thereof the weather, during the recent election which was held there, was bad. It blew, it rained, it hailed, it snowed, and all this was on account of the great comet, of which the people of that region said proudly to strangers, "Have you seen our comet? " Imagining, with I know not how much justice, that this celestial phenomenon was local rather than national or imperial.
The Garden of Eden being mainly of a clay soil, large parts of it were flooded, and a Canvasser (a draper by profession and a Gentleman from London by birth), unacquainted as he was with the Garden of Eden, thought it a foul place, and picked his way without pleasure. He went down a lane the like of which he did not even know to exist in England (for it was what we call in the Garden of Eden a "green lane," and only those learned in the place could get along it at all during the floods).