We returned later to breakfast, and astonished the good folk of the Chideock Castle, who had not heard our early morning exit, and thought us still asleep. It was, by reason of this early rising, yet cool and pleasant when we had left Chideock, and come by way of Morecombelake into Charmouth. Charmouth, on this summer’s day, was wonderfully pleasant—everything, sea and shore and sky, pervaded by a golden haze. But what this settlement-like A rainy day at the seaside, unless, indeed, it be at some huge wen like Brighton or Scarborough, is enough to give even a Mark Tapley thoughts of committing hari kari. The only local optimists then are the boatmen, and they beat every possible Tapley into fits; with them it is always a fine day—for a sail. Nothing is to do on a seaside wet day. Nothing to read at the circulating library: the old maids have borrowed all the spicy novels, and left nothing on the shelves but such enthralling devotional works as “Skates and Shin-plasters for Backsliders” for the appeasement of your literary hunger. The local news-room on such depressing occasions contains a parish magazine, the last number of Blowhard’s “Sermons,” Sharpshin’s “Local Gazetteer and Directory,” last week’s London papers, and half-a-hundredweight of “Bits” prints. With even all this wealth of literature you are not happy, but long, like Wellington at Waterloo, for night and—oblivion. Charmouth was the scene of a thrilling incident in the hunted wanderings of Charles II., for it was here that he sought to have his horse’s cast shoe replaced, and was imperilled by the blacksmith’s discovery that the shoes were of a make unknown in that part of the country. We had of late experienced a sufficiency of rough walking, and so struck inland to avoid Lyme Regis and the seaward cliffs. In another three miles we had reached the Devon border, where the highway, “HUMOROUS WHEELMAN, GARBED FEARFULLY.” Two miles and a half further on, and we came to the dull little market-town of Axminster, beside the clear-running Axe. |