The Caucasian. (Clinton, N.C.) 188?-1913, 1912-08-01

faint-hearted diver who had paused
on the brink and would never go in
| at ALL"
The Ship and Lobster in Kent.
which Dickens loved 80 well, Is the
inn which appears as The Ship In
Great Expectations" In a short pa
per, The Holly Tree Inn" Dickens
represents himself as snow-bound at
a country tavern for a week and
passes the time by writing OF all the
inns he has ever heard of or visited.
Among the first are those about
which his nurse had told him ghostly
legends, in childhood-lonely travel
especially the doings OF a terrible
villain at the Roadside Inn Then
he remembered one tavern in a re-
mote part of Cornwall where the
travellers had to wait while the
| coach was being mended, 1t having
| broken down at nightfall on lonely
heath. He thought of the taverns Of
other lands; the pretty, French SER
vant-maids, so brisk and clever; the
! German landlords and their pipe
smoking guests, all trolling songs
about their Fatherland and the
rhine; the Venetian Gondoliers,
skimming along the narrow, dim
canals and depositing you at the
damp doorway of some ghostly pal
! ace.
| All lovers of "Pickwick" will re-
member the Marquis of CRANKY inn
at Dorking, where the Deputy Shep-
| herd Stiggins. sat with Sam Weller's
mother-in-law, consuming number
less slices of toast and unnumbered
, cups of tea.
I'm the year 1878 there stood upon
the borders of Epping Forest at a
distance of about twelve miles from
London, a house of public entertain
ment called the Maypole." The May
pole was an old building with gable
ends, said to have been built in the
days of Henry Eighth, of matrimon-
ial memory; the windows were old,
diamond PANIED lattices, the floors
we're sunken and uneven, ceilings
were blackened by time. The open
ing chapter of "Barnaby Ridge" in
PRODUCES the 'Maypole' Inn, together
with one or two important characters
and the mystery. Here Dickens
causes the atmospheric conditions to
harmonic with and enhance the
hint of crime. The night was wild
and stormy. cit was such a night as
this" ETC., remarks one Of the char
acters. But John Willett, the pro-
prietor, makes the prediction that
the night will clear at certain hour,
which, by some strange coincidence,
is exactly the hour at which he closes
the inn. Willett's son, poor hectored
Joe, Solomon Daisy and the little
beauty, Dolly Warden, are all well-be-
loved and remembered in Dickens
galaxy of famous characters.
When Mr.. Pecksniff and his daugh-
tiers, Merry and Cherry, went to Lon
don, they stopped at the boarding
house of Mrs. Todgers, "a bony and
hard-featured lady, with a row Of
curls in front of her head, shaped
| clearinghouse itself, is described as
every dingy edifice, even among
| the choice collection of dingy edifices
| at hand" the most noticeable char
acteristic about it seemed to be the
strong smell of cabbage, which con-
stantly perambulated up and down
the corridors.
In "Pickwick Papers"-that book
of many delightful inns-we find a
eulogy of the old city of Rochester,
comforts 1t was here that David
Copperfeld slept on his way to Dover.
In one of his short papers, can Old
Stage Coaching House," Dickens
writes of a visit to decayed inn
where he found only a few melon
choly reminders of it's departed
glory:
mo horses or Post-boys in the big
dismantled stables, no travellers
waiting for the coach to start, no
chimneys, no tables loaded with beef
and ale. The only post chaise to be
seen was very old one turned over
on it's side away out in field, with
scarlet beans trained up over it. In
stead of sheltering grumbling hu-
mainly, as of yore, it served as a re-
ceptacle for some wood-mender's
] tools!"
And now the inns are bleak II
you should whisper in the ear of the
traveller in London, the words, "Soho,
London" perhaps one Of the first
things he would think of would be
Sydney Cartons lodgings. So the
tourist, standing today in the court
yard of the old, deserted inns or even
those of a much later date, will in
variably think of the old-time inns of
Dickens, the good cheer, the story
telling groups that gathered round
the great hearth, and in fancy he can
hear the crack of the postillien' s