Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil
days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have
no pleasure in them.
He began by informing us that we had nearly arrived at the end of the
religious year, and that the season of Advent, when the Church's new
year would begin, was close at hand. He then passed on to his text and
began to describe the days of our youth. We listened intently as he took
us by degrees from our youth up to old age and to the years when we
might have to say we had no pleasure in them. He was a powerful
preacher, and we almost felt ourselves growing older as we followed his
references to each verse in the short chapter he had taken for his text.
Then he described the failure of the different organs of the human mind
and body: the keepers of the house trembling; the strong men bowing
their heads towards the earth to which they were hastening; the
grinders, or teeth, ceasing because they were few; the eyes as if they
were looking out of darkened windows; the ears stopped, as if they were
listening to sounds outside doors that were shut; followed by the fears
of that which was high "because man goeth to his long home"; and finally
when the silver cord was loosed or the golden bowl broken, the dust
returning to the earth as it was, and the spirit unto God Who made it!
We waited for the peroration of his fine sermon, which came with
startling suddenness, like our accident yesterday, for he concluded
abruptly with the following words:
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring
every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be
good, or whether it be evil.
My brother took shorthand notes of portions of the sermon for future
reference, for we were both greatly impressed by what we had heard, and
conversed about some of the points raised as we returned to the hotel.
Later in the day we attended the Wesleyan chapel, where we formed two
units in a large congregation, as we had done in the far-off Wesleyan
chapel of the Shetland Islands. Here again we appreciated the good
service, including the fine congregational singing.
Early on Monday morning we started by train for home; but travelling by
rail was much slower in those days, and although we journeyed the whole
of the day and late into the night which followed, we did not reach our
home at Thelwall until Tuesday, November 21st, at two o'clock in the
morning, where we awoke the sleepers by singing "Home, Sweet Home"
beneath a bedroom window on the east side of Cuerden Hall, where we knew
our father and mother would be waiting for us--as they are now, but in
no earthly home.
[Illustration: THE ROCKERIES AT THELWALL.]
The news of our arrival soon spread through the surrounding country,
where we were well known, and for a time we were lionised and visited by
a host of friends, and our well-worn sticks, which at one time we
thought of leaving in the sea at Land's End, were begged from us by
intimate friends and treasured for many years by their new owners in the
parish of Grappenhall.
Considerable interest had naturally been taken locally in our long walk,
for we had been absent from our customary haunts for seventy-five days,
having travelled by land and sea--apart from the actual walk from John
o' Groat's to Land's End--a distance nearly a thousand miles. Everybody
wanted to be told all about it, so I was compelled to give the
information in the form of lectures, which were repeated in the course
of many years in different parts of the country where aid for
philanthropic purposes was required. The title of the lecture I gave in
the Cobden Hall at Hull on January 25th, 1883, was "My journey from John
o' Groat's to Land's End, or 1,372 miles on foot," and the syllabus on
that occasion was a curiosity, as it was worded as follows:
John O' Groat's House and how we got there--Flying visit to Orkney
and Shetland--Crossing Pentland Firth in a sloop--Who was John o'
Groat?--What kind of a house did he live in?--A long sermon--The
great castles--Up a lighthouse--The Maiden's Paps--Lost on the
moors--Pictish towers--Eating Highland porridge--The Scotch lassie
and the English--A Sunday at Inverness--Loch Ness--The tale of the
heads--Taken for shepherds--Fort William--Up Ben Nevis--The Devil's
Staircase--Glencoe--A night in Glen-Orchy--Sunday at
Dalmally--Military road--The Cobbler and his Wife--Inverary and the
Duke of Argyle--Loch Lomond--Stirling Castle--Wallace's Monument--A
bodyless church--Battle of Bannockburn-Linlithgow Palace--A Sunday in
Edinburgh, and what I saw there--Roslyn Castle--Muckle-mouthed
Meg--Abbotsford, the residence of Sir Walter Scott--Melrose Abbey--A
would-not-be fellow-traveller--All night under the
stairs--Lilliesleaf--Hawick--A stocking-maker's
revenge--Langholm--Taken for beggars--In a distillery--A midnight
adventure in the Border Land--A night at a coal-pit--Crossing the
boundary--A cheer for old England--Longtown and its parish
clerk--Hearing the bishop--Will you be married?--Our visit to
Gretna-Green--Ramble through the Lake District--Sunday at
Keswick--Furness Abbey--A week in the Big County--Stump Cross
Cavern--Brimham rocks--Malham Cove--Fountains Abbey--The Devil's
Arrows--Taken for highwaymen--Tessellated pavements--York
Minster--Robin Hood and Little John--A Sunday at Castleton--Peveril
of the Peak--The cave illuminated--My sore foot and the present of
stones--March through Derbyshire--Lichfield Cathedral--John
Wiclif--High Cross--A peep at Peeping Tom at
Coventry--Leamington--Warwick Castle--Beauchamp chapel--In
Shakespeare's House at Stratford-on-Avon--Inhospitable Kineton--All
night in the cold--Banbury Cross--A Sunday at Oxford--March across
Salisbury Plain--Stonehenge--Salisbury Cathedral--Where they make
carpets--Exeter Cathedral--Bridport--Honiton--Dawlish--A Sunday at
Torquay--Devonshire lanes--Totnes--Dartmouth--Plymouth and the Big
Bridge--Our adventure with the 42nd Highlanders--Tramp across
Dartmoor--Lost in the dark--Liskeard--Truro--Tramp through the land
of the saints--St. Blazey--St. Michael's Mount--A Sunday at
Penzance--Catching pilchards--The Logan Rock--Druidical remains--The
last church--Wesley's Rock--Land's End--narrow escape--Home, sweet
home--God save the Queen.
To this lengthy programme the secretary added the following footnote:
Mr. Naylor is probably one of the few men living, if not the only
one, who has accomplished the feat of walking from one end of the
kingdom to the other, without calling in the aid of any conveyance,
or without crossing a single ferry, as his object was simply
pleasure. His tour was not confined to the task of accomplishing the
journey in the shortest possible time or distance, but as it
embraced, to use his own words, "going where there was anything to be
seen," his ramble led him to view some of the most picturesque spots
in the kingdom.
After this lecture I wired my brother, "I only got as far as York." As
he knew I had gone to Hull by train, he read the telegram to mean I had
only been able to reach York that day, and he imagined how disappointed
my friends in Hull would be when I did not arrive there in time to give
the lecture. But he was relieved when he afterwards discovered that my
wire referred to the lecture itself. He thought I had done well to get
as far as York, for "John o' Groat's to Land's End" was much too large a
subject to be dealt with in the course of a single lecture.
[Illustration: LAND'S END.]
[Illustration: [signature of] John Naylor]