Space forbids my more than just calling attention to the nondescript
gilt monster, with its riveted wings and forked tongue and tail, which
glares down on us from its perch above the Town Hall, in the High
Street; or to a "cigar" vane (over 2 ft. long and as thick as a
bludgeon), large enough to give Verdant Green's famous "smoke" many
points, hoisted over an enterprising tobacconist's a little lower down;
or to the skewered and unhappy-looking weathercock on the Parish Church;
or the blackened griffin in Earl Street, all head and tail, which does
duty on an old dismantled Gothic building, once called "The Brotherhood
Hall" (it belonged to the fraternity of Corpus Christi, about 1422, and
was suppressed in 1547), then afterwards used as a grammar school, and
now--tell it not in Gath!--a hop store; or, lastly, the
ponderous-looking elephant, painted a sickly blue, if I remember
rightly, on a great building on the banks of the Medway.
[Illustration: In Museum. Maidstone