The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1893-07-29


Habitations and their Charming In.
teriors.
KEswIcK, England, July 15.-Tht
first time / ever saw peasant of the
English Lake district-tha splendid
portion Of England strewn with
mountains, scaws, fells and hills and
gemmed with countless lakes, com.
prising the shires of Cumberland
Westmoreland and the northern part
OF Lancashire-was in company with
a personal friend of John Ruskin. Mr.
A. NJ. Fraser, of Scott street, AMMAN,
Scotland, who lives among his friends
and books not stones throw from
where Jane Welsh Carlyle's youthful
ideal lover, the gentlest soul that
Scotland ever knew, noble, sanity
Edward Irving, was born.
1t was gray, grisly, grewsome
day, when the mountain mists like
gigantic bellying sails were pound
ing back and forth between the
mountains of Scotland and Cum Der
land, now and then in their tapping
conclusions finging sheets of slant
ing rain from their heavy folds,
which the wind instantly caught up
and swept stingingly against the
bare-headed, bare breasted, and bare
legged fishers of the leaden colored
Firth.
My friend had to do with the rail
way service; took me to the Amman
station yard; secured huge shunt-
ing engine with stoker and driver
for our use; we were soon reeling and
crashing across the great AMMAN
bridge connecting Scotland with
England; and our strange conveyance
for sight seeing among peasantry at
last halted with hoarse challenges
beneath the gray and echoing crags
where, on the English side of the
Solway, tiny, stone built Bowness
looks out upon Scotland and the
Firth, just where, nearly 1000 years
ago, the great wall of Roman Servius
came to an end because of the un-
conquerable Gaelic hordes of the
wild, barbaric North.
Everything in and about this gray
little nest upon the heights above
the Solway seemed of everlasting
stone The rough half stairs, half
street leading up to and through the
hamlet, was of stone. The few hud-
died structures were of stone; rude
stone window lodges, caves, gargoyle
gutter spouts and ALL The little
chapel was like huge, unshapen
messy mass of stone protruding from
shapeless mass of stones. The
choked yard surrounding it was en-
closed by a stone wall. huge enough
to have been left by Hadrian himself,
and the huddled grave stones seemed
like jagged, half decayed teeth of
stone which for centuries had gnash-
ed at and been CRASHED by elements
as hard as stone. The sparse soil,
showing between the stone roadway
and the stone houses, and here and
there cropping up between house and
byre or paddock and wall, was thick
and finty with stone And even the
hard faces of the few old, old danes
now and then seen peering at US from
the tiny ingleneuk windows of stone
were as set and fixed and vacuous as
uncarved stone.
AT one window we saw the face of
a hardy man past middle age, and
we straightway knocked at his wide.
low door and were hidden to enter
Among these humble folk the coming
of strangers at any time or hour is
not reckoned an intrusion, but rath-
er pleasure; and there are no bolts
or locks upon the doors of any peas
ants habitation in all this English
Alpine country. They are trustful
and simple and good in the face of
all friendly approaches, but hard and
dreadful as their own mountain scaws
and fells where wrong is found be-
meath friendly addresses.
We had come simply to see and
talk; but it mattered not what our
coming was for; and the old man
gave welcome as statelily as lord.
AS my friend engaged him in con-
versation in dialect and topic COM
mon to the region, l sat and studied
this old man and his picturesque en-
vlronment, eager to more fully know,
as time and many wanderings among
the lake district peasantry have since
given ample opportunity, OF the stuff
and stock of which such imposing
human frames are made, and the in
tluences of the centuries that have
given to ignorant men and women,
most remote from the activities of
other men and things, such a won
drous, lofty and almost undefnable
calm.
This man was a universal type of
the lake district peasantry. He was
much more than six feet in height,
and as he moved about the large, low
room, his head just escaped the huge
oaken Jeans of the ceiling. His hair
was soft. silken and beautiful; flaxen
where the silver had not yet come;
and with his full, fine beard sugges-
ted strain of the old Morse blood.
His forehead was high, wide, white.
His eyebrows were bushy, but fine
and fossy, above large eyes Of lus-
trous light, blue, deep set, steady
and almost mournful in their gaze.
The nose was strongly cut, truly
classic; and the mouth was large,
but characterize and firm. This sort
of head set upon a huge and per-
feet frame, stout as the timbers of
his centuries old habitation, gave a
man who looked straight at you and
made you, despite yourself, look
straight at him in return.
| have found other such frames
and faces among the fishers OF the
English west coast, at Coldingham,
below the Firth of Forth, among the
Highland crofters, among the petty
"lairds" of the Shetland Islands, and
not few among the mountain peas;
antry Of Inishowen, round about