Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1872-09-01
correspondence from England.

| The following is from Miss Fannie
Hodgson, the gifted Knoxville authoress
who has been in England for some time :
.;'t.Iq CHESTER, August, 1872.
We had a perfectly exquisite day at
CHESTER.
To me, fresh from a land where cities
spring up like mushrooms and even the
people don't live long enough, to grow old,
(you should see the records in the English
graveyards), it was like slipping back a
century or so, doing that little seven sleep
er business backwards and awakening to
find oneself enjoying life in those good old
times when one could dash ones self into
minute fragments in endeavoring to find
ones way down ones own nice corkscrew
stair case and where every genteel family
residence had it's own private dungeon,
and its own select assortment of racks and
thumbscrews. There's something like COM
fort in such stateio affairs as that, you
know. . No strainfng atagnats IN those
days, though what uncharitable and preju-
diced persons might say about swallowing
camels, I.don t feel at liberty ito refer to.
It's worse than useless to combat against
prejudice; particularly, yagainst modern
prejudice. the prejudice of q degenerate
age, whose determination in the matter of
chivalrous feeling is so fearfulvthat Mr..
Smith and Mr.. Jones settle their feuds at the
Recorders Court instead of valiantly defy
ing each other to mortal combat as their
illustrious ancestors Baron de, Smythe
and the doughty Sir Guillame de Johai
nes would have done in their day.
Life - this life of ours in A. d.
1872, must have had aspice in time when
a gentleman could retire to his bed of rush
es in blissfnl uncertainty as to whether he
might or might not awaken early the next
morning to find himself studying human
nature, as it appeared from an extremely.
exalted point of Old London Bridge.
namely, from one of those highly ornamen-.
tai spikes, erected by an Obliging govern
ment for the accommodation of such par
ties as had accidentally lost themselves for
private or State reasons. -as % l-es +.
OF course we were prowling, you know.
If you don't know what prowling means,
L will explain. 1t tmeans going to place
as tourists always do go to places, wander
ing from one end of it to the other, appear
ing in groups i'm all sorts of impossible cor.
ners that are remarkably hard to get at,
and not much to look at when they are
reached. 1t means snatching ghost of a
dinner at fashionable restaurant, and
then rushing off again and goading ones
unfortunate guide to madness, by insisting
on being led into mOuldy places in damp
ROSN
nothing in particular. And so on to the
end of the chapter.
Well, we were prowling here in Chester,
and in the course of our prowlings our
guide turned us all at once up in an uncer-
tain sort of passage, into an indefinite sort
of court, and we found ourselves gazing
blankly, and might say with some slight
embarrassment at the domestic arrange
ments of some respectable family whose
lzifof,ex, daor sto0d oman and l1nSn d0nnpS-
tic utensils revealed themselves with pain-
full frankness to our startled vision. The
house itself, may add, was of an elabor-
ate style of architecture, being built of
highly ornamental species Of wooden waf-
fie or muffin, and finished upon plan |
had never seen before-a plan | should
judge to be extinct perhaps happily so.
"7This," said our guide, s'is the house
Lord Derby was taken out of to be be-
headed" ~ q n ~.
And here I suppose you will expect that
/ am going to tell you who Lord Derby is,
but the fact is I can not, because 1 don't
know, and have not the slightest doubt
that may conscientiOusly assert that no
one else i'm the,party knew exactly, though
we all tried to look as if we did. Check
ing an indiscreet disposition to say Poor
man how unpleasant he must have found
it," L summoned up an air of having
huOWIl IT'LL DCISOudlIJ lIOul LILO Cc1AAAOoO
infancy. "Ah, indeed !" L remarked,
chow very Interestingly ut is always
safe to say things are interesting, and 1t
sounds rather well, upon the whole, If you
don't say it too often.) Just at this criti-
cal moment diversion in our favor was
created. 81 Out rushed a small boy in cor
duroy trowsers, and state of excitement
followed by small girl, overcome by the
strength of her feelings, and they both
darted at us at once, both shrieking out
the same words in precisely the same tones.
"Want to see
THE OLD DINING-ROOM,
mum" they said. "Want to see the old
dining-roOm?" 2"
turned to them at once. ''What old
dining-room? Howsold is itW (That's
always the first question. Anything less
than three hundred years old is regarded
as unworthy of investigation, though on
rare occasions we have bestowed some
slight attention OH places not quite up to
the figure) So behold your amiable tour
ist enquiring show old it ISL ikf |
"Don't know mum, but it is the old
dining-rOom, mum, as Lord Derby was
taken out of, mum, to be beheaded,
num-"
Ofcourse an old dining-room, anybody
had been taken out of to be beheaded, was
a blessing to prowlers, and consequently
we hailed the prospect with public mani
festations of delight. We would see that
old dining-room orperish in the attempt.
So we went, proceeded by the small boy
and sister, and it was an experience not
easily forgotten. The small boy having
learned his lesson, was filled with plaus-
ible desire to earn the customary "back-
sheeshn lalways say 'back-sheesh,' 1t
sounds traveled) without assistance from
and consequent division of results with
| the feminine portion of the firm, but the
young party in question qOould chime in
and refusing to be suppressed on any
distinctness of the explanation by making
| it sort of chant like excessively High
Church. I think that was the best part of
the fun altogether. Itwasn't so much the
old dining-room which was an excessive
ly dingy, dilapidated and disreputable old