The Press. (Stafford Springs, Conn.) 1883-1935, 1901-05-16
BY THE LYCH GATE

S'~SS W " wv - " " - ~
There is a valley amid the York
shire hills known as Coverdale, from
whose slopes, long years ago, came
pious Miles, who translated the Bible,
and who was called by the simple folk
Miles of Coverdale, after the place of
his birth.
Very calm and peaceful the little dale
lies under the shadow of the great
hills, whose submits are purple in the
sweet summertide with their royal
mantle of fragrant heather, and where
the curlew and the golden plover's
cry alone break the gentle stiffness
that rests over the little world beyond
the haunts of restless activity and hur-
rying life.
There is no railway in quiet Cover
dale. no town to which the country
folk may wend their way, no shops save
the wonderful village emporium, where
everything in a very small way may be
obtained, but where few fashions come
to startle the gayer minded of the
maidens, or strange new devices in
neckties to dazzle the vision of the
country lads.
To peep into the world necessitates a
journey under the shelter of the lone
hillsides, along bonny lanes. intwined
with pink and creamy tinted honey
suckle, and green with waving ferns;
past the quaint inn, whose sign is a
famous but long ago race horse, called
in the canny Yorkshire tongue the
Lady Bah, and, finally, across the moor
into horse loving Middleham, where
are people and shops, and many inns
with curiously painted signposts-the
Black Swan and it's brother, the White
Swan, and many others too.
But down in Coverdale there is
beautiful old church, set like a jewel
in its surrounding Of stately trees and
blossOming hedges, with the quiet
greenness Of Gods acre lying stretched
| about it, and the singing of natures
choristers in the sweet air around-a
place of peacefulness and repOse, where
| earth's burdens may fall from one for
a little space and heavens benson light
softly on such of it's children as stay to
pray and think awhile.
There Is quaint lych gate at the en-
trance to the holy spot. carved halt
/
good man of the dalespeople-a squire
of the olden days, who loved his home
and his neighbors and his God full
well, think, and sought to beautify
the church in which he and bis had
worshiped so long.
| And down the fair avenue Of trees
within the precincts and past the quiet
church lie the remains Of what was
| once the proud abbey Of Coverdale,
where the monks said masses and cul-
| tivated their garden and tended the
souls and bodies of the poor and needy
in the dale.
| 1t is beautiful spot in beautiful
countryside, and so thought a man
who viewed it lovingly and pointed out
all it's changeful lights and shadows
and all its pretty peeps of field and
| river to his wife.
| They had only been married little
while, few short weeks, and had
elected to spend their honeymoon in
some of the quaint corners of England;
hence their journeying thither to this
sequestered nook among the hills and
the far stretched moorlands in their
yelling of regal purple. The man loved
it already with the artist love which
sees the beautiful so quickly and feels
it so strongly, and the woman-well,
she saw the beauties. too. but she was
growing little weary of pretty sights,
and she was very pretty and spoiled her
self and perhaps little jealous of ad-
miration wasted which might have
been diverted homeward
So she stood by the quaint relics of
| the abbots and mailed knights at Gov
erdale, where two quaint forms guard
a doorway as perchance their originals
guarded some stronghold in the old
fighting days long gone. and her white
gown fell over the gray stones and
cleaned against the red and orange
nasturtiums in the garden which sur
rounds the old walls and arches, and
she wondered If her husband had near
~ finished his sketch and whether they
should stay at Middleham for day or
two or go on farther~to Wensleydale.
"Iam rather tired of admiring placer"