Brilliant Morning—Travelling with Edification—A Good Clergyman—Gybi.
I awoke about six o’clock in the morning, having passed the night much
better than I anticipated. The sun was shining bright and gloriously
into the apartment. On looking into the other bed I found that my chums,
the young farm-labourers, had deserted it. They were probably already in
the field busy at labour. After lying a little time longer I arose,
dressed myself and went down. I found my friend honest Pritchard smoking
his morning pipe at the front door, and after giving him the sele of the
day, I inquired of him the cause of the disturbance beneath my window the
night before, and learned that the man of the horse had been thrown by
the animal off its back, that the horse almost immediately after had
slipped down, and both had been led home very much hurt. We then talked
about farming and the crops, and at length got into a discourse about
Liverpool. I asked him how he liked that mighty seaport; he said very
well, but that he did not know much about it—for though he had a house
there where his family had resided, he had not lived much at Liverpool
himself his absences from that place having been many and long.
“Have you travelled then much about England?” said I.
“No,” he replied. “When I have travelled it has chiefly been across the
sea to foreign places.”
“But what foreign places have you visited?” said I.
“I have visited,” said Pritchard, “Constantinople, Alexandria, and some
other cities in the south latitudes.”
“Dear me,” said I, “you have seen some of the most celebrated places in
the world—and yet you were silent, and said nothing about your travels
whilst that fellow Bos was pluming himself at having been at such places
as Northampton and Worcester, the haunts of shoemakers and pig-jobbers.”
“Ah,” said Pritchard, “but Mr. Bos has travelled with edification; it is
a fine thing to have travelled when one has done so with edification, but
I have not. There is a vast deal of difference between me and him—he is
considered the ’cutest man in these parts, and is much looked up to.”
“You are really,” said I, “the most modest person I have ever known and
the least addicted to envy. Let me see whether you have travelled
without edification.”
I then questioned him about the places which he had mentioned, and found
he knew a great deal about them, amongst other things he described
Cleopatra’s needle, and the At Maidan at Constantinople with surprising
exactness.
“You put me out,” said I; “you consider yourself inferior to that droving
fellow Bos and to have travelled without edification, whereas you know a
thousand times more than he, and indeed much more than many a person who
makes his five hundred a year by going about lecturing on foreign places,
but as I am no flatterer I will tell you that you have a fault which will
always prevent your rising in this world, you have modesty; those who
have modesty shall have no advancement, whilst those who can blow their
own horn lustily shall be made governors. But allow me to ask you in
what capacity you went abroad?”
“As engineer to various steamships,” said Pritchard.
“A director of the power of steam,” said I, “and an explorer of the
wonders of Iscander’s city willing to hold the candle to Mr. Bos. I will
tell you what, you are too good for this world, let us hope you will have
your reward in the next.”
I breakfasted and asked for my bill; the bill amounted to little or
nothing—half-a-crown I think for tea-dinner, sundry jugs of ale, bed and
breakfast. I defrayed it, and then inquired whether it would be possible
for me to see the inside of the church.
“O yes,” said Pritchard. “I can let you in, for I am churchwarden and
have the key.”
The church was a little edifice of some antiquity, with a little wing and
without a spire; it was situated amidst a grove of trees. As we stood
with our hats off in the sacred edifice, I asked Pritchard if there were
many Methodists in those parts.
“Not so many as there were,” said Pritchard, “they are rapidly
decreasing, and indeed Dissenters in general. The cause of their
decrease is that a good clergyman has lately come here, who visits the
sick and preaches Christ, and in fact does his duty. If all our
clergymen were like him there would not be many Dissenters in Ynis Fon.”
Outside the church, in the wall, I observed a tablet with the following
inscription in English:
Here lieth interred the body of Ann, wife of Robert Paston, who
deceased the sixth day of October, Anno Domini
1671.
R. P. A.
“You seem struck with that writing?” said Pritchard, observing that I
stood motionless, staring at the tablet.
“The name of Paston,” said I, “struck me; it is the name of a village in
my own native district, from which an old family, now almost extinct,
derived its name. How came a Paston into Ynis Fon? Are there any people
bearing that name at present in these parts?”
“Not that I am aware,” said Pritchard.
“I wonder who his wife Ann was?” said I, “from the style of that tablet
she must have been a considerable person.”
“Perhaps she was the daughter of the Lewis family of Llan Dyfnant,” said
Pritchard; “that’s an old family and a rich one. Perhaps he came from a
distance and saw and married a daughter of the Lewis of Dyfnant—more than
one stranger has done so. Lord Vivian came from a distance and saw and
married a daughter of the rich Lewis of Dyfnant.”
I shook honest Pritchard by the hand, thanked him for his kindness and
wished him farewell, whereupon he gave mine a hearty squeeze, thanking me
for my custom.
“Which is my way,” said I, “to Pen Caer Gybi?”
“You must go about a mile on the Bangor road, and then turning to the
right pass through Penmynnydd, but what takes you to Holyhead?”
“I wish to see,” said I, “the place where Cybi the tawny saint preached
and worshipped. He was called tawny because from his frequent walks in
the blaze of the sun his face had become much sun-burnt. This is a
furiously hot day, and perhaps by the time I get to Holyhead, I may be so
sun-burnt as to be able to pass for Cybi himself.”