Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-01-25

come by the old coach road IRON LONDON TO
Edinburgh and Glasgow. On leaving the
ancient city Of York you would have struck
highway 1000 years old. Masses of Ro-
man leGions have swept, tide on tide, back
and forth over the same stone road.
Away in the north of Yorkshire
one stem of this highway goes on through
Durham to Edinburgh. The other swings
around to the westward. On this western
stem, between the rivers Tees and Greta, at
the eastern edge Of Stanemoor. nearly sur
rounded by desolate moors, and in the north
west corner Of Yorkshire, lies what is lett OF
Bowes.
Thanks to the Romans who had built that
road, it was broad, sure and as eternal as
Stanemoor itself. Whipped, pounded and
beaten along by tine stormy winds for what
seemed hours, my feet suddenly struck cob
blestones. Bowes at lasti No human being
ever loved so much to be id Bowes before.
But where was the place. after all?
A Bulldog as q Guide.
Not candle or lamplight cleaned from
window within it. Here and there along
the zig-zag street faint glimmer flushed
against some tiny panes. Peering within,
old and palsied crones, bent and trembling,
were here and there seen crouching over
Pickering embers of meager fires. Drenched
from rotten thatches, startled by the Storm
lashed trees, and now thoroughly frightened
with the prospect of no resting-place for the
night, felt my way along what seemed to
be the street facade of some large structure,
and, coming to its corner. shrunk along
this, where halted for a little, we'll out of
the full power of the tempest.
Scarcely had sufficient time elapsed to
permit my getting my back against the
building before there was a startling, splat-
tering rush. The calves of my legs escaped
the fury of the object making it, but with a
return rush the ample tails of my storm
coat were gathered in a sort of voiceless
wise which only death or a masters conf
mand can loosen. Few were the snuf1es
and snortings caused by the working oil the
four-legged mechanism. Its forces were
exclusively devoted to effort. That effort
was certainly one of bringing prize into
port. Yielding without protest to the spirit
Of the occasion, 1 moved with its move
ments, tackled with its tackings. In. a zig
gag attitude of gentle though inexpensive
inquiry, was brought into q little room
not ten feet square, where, beneath rows of
copper measures, and behind a black old
mahogany bar nearly as high as his head,
a grinning, frowsy, puf-faced publican was
looking benignlv down upon a half dozen
gigantic Yorkshire ploughboys. These,
already we'll beluddled with liquor, and
pounding the deal table with their mugs,
were roaring out song about
York York for my monte;
OF all the places ever did see.
This is the best for good companie,
Except the city of Lunnunl
Room Dickens Occupied.
They roared louder still when stood be-
fore them in charge of a magnificent bull
dog. The frowsy Boniface quietly reached
ior a huge club. This he brought down
with a crash upon the table, enforcing
silence in that quarter; and then, thanking
his dog for his oddly-secured guest with a
cruel thump, which released me, he led the
way through labyrinths of cobwebbed
arched Railways and huge deserted rooms to
a wretched apartment, and. pointing to a
bed scarcely better than pile of rags, took
his departure.
This was the once famous George, now the
Unicorn, Inn. Eight coaches bound to Lon
don or Glasgow daily changed horses here
in the good old coaching times. Dickens
and Browne had occupied this very room,
once cheerful parlor chamber. The night,
with untold luries of an awful storm shriek-
ing about the grewsome old place, with win
dows rattling like crazy castanets. doors OF
Railways and cupboaros opening as if flung
into the room by unseen hands, and the very
floor boards restless and disquiet, as though
struggling with ugly gnomes below, seemed
to unite all the hateful and evil spirits OF
the dead past in protest at disturbance by
lie and health and inquiry.
Nature Trying to Bury It
When 1 awoke the sun was shining upon
dead old Bowes. There is a silent bell
tower on the roof of the Unicorn. 1 climbed
to this. There lay the sinuous shell of the
ancient village winding, cobbled, grass
grown street of half mile in length, finnked
by ruined houses, half of whose thatched
roofs had fallen in. From their dank and
rot, grass. weeds and even flowers were
luxuriantly springing; as though nature
seeking to hide the spot, had bidden the
winds and birds seed it for fitting disguise.
That huge. lone, stone structure, the first
at Bowes from the Greta Bridge way, weird
and ghostly under huge sycamores, was once
another Dotheboys. Richard Golden once
owned it and made it his home. Then the
Unicorn, with acres of outbuildings, empty
and moss-grown. Opposite, another silent
inn, the Rose and Crown. Then, facing
westward, a little Norman church. Near
il, the ruins oi Norman castle. Behind
these ruins, the ancient Roman station of
Savatrae, where are remains of baths and an
aqueduct Then, rooted and unroofed hoyel
on either side 10 the westward, where you
will still see, just as Dickens aud his Mich
olas Nickleby saw, ga long, cold-looking
house, one story high, with a few struggling
outbuildings behind, and a barn and stable
adjoining"
Who the Squeers Were.
That structure just as it stands to-day, was
the abode Of a real Squeers in the flesh, of a
Mrs. Squeers, of Fanny Squeers and OF a
Master Wackford Squeers. All the differ
ence was in the name. This was Shaw.
They possessed the same ignorance, avarlce,
venality, brutality. The old wretch of a
master was ruined by the exposure. Inves-
tigation and damage suits stripped him of
all, or rather made him to the end Of his
days an imbecile servitor to the man, Bous-
field, who married his daughter, Mary Ann
Shaw (Fanny Squeers), and who, now over
80 years of age, savagely prevents your en-
trance to the place with club aud dog. If you
come 10 Dotheboys Hall, you will have to
content yourself with an exterior view of
the ramshackle old structure, and a peep
from over the hedge, behind the barn,
at the indentical pump, around which the
half-frozen boys gathered for the ablutions
on winter mornings. Bousfeld's wife, the
last of the Squeers family, died six years
since. The graves of all may be seen in the
| little church yard.
Near all dread and noxious things the
divine compensation leaves something ten
der, sweet and good. Close beside the ex-
ecrated graves is tablet erected to the
memory of the two who died for loyal love.
Roger Wrightston and Martha Bailton, they
were in Lille. In immortality they are the
Edwin and Emma of Mallet's pathetic bal
lad; and rustic Yorkshire lovers still find iu-
spiration to endless fidelity beside these
graves in the little church yard of dead old