Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
Saint Margaret's only memory lingers in the Saint Margaret's Hostel for Women at the top of Bodger's Street, and even that has now a worn and desolate air as though it also were on the edge of departure. In truth, this part of Polchester is neglected and forgotten; it has not sunk like Seatown into dirt and degradation, it has still an air of romance and colour, but the life is gone from it.
But I fancy that any fellow-citizen of mine, if he thinks for a moment, will agree with me that that Jubilee Summer of 1897 was the last manifestation in our town of the separate individual Polchester spirit, of the old spirit that had dwelt in its streets and informed its walls and roofs for hundreds of years past, something as separate and distinct as the smells of Seatown, the chime of the Cathedral bells, the cawing of the Cathedral rooks in the Precinct Elms.
Up from the dark mysteries of Seatown, down from the chaste proprieties of the villas above Orange Street, from the purlieus of the market, from the shops of the High Street, sailors and merchantmen, traders and sea-captains and, from the wild fastness of the Fair, gipsies with silver rings in their ears and, perhaps, who can tell? bells on their dusky toes.
Many visitors have been known to declare that Seatown was "too sweet for anything," and that "it would be really wicked to knock down the ducks of cottages," but "the ducks of cottages" were the foulest and most insanitary dwelling-places in the south of England, and it has always been to me amazing that the Polchester Town Council allowed them to stand so long as they did.
He was not a man who liked to be jostled, and he was the more uncomfortable in that he discovered that his immediate neighbour was Samuel Hogg, the stout and rubicund landlord of the "Dog and Pilchard" of Seatown. With him was his pretty daughter Annie. Near to them were Mr. John Curtis and Mr. Samuel Croppet, two of the Town Councillors.
From what was called the Seaton, or seatown, of Portlossie, a crowd of cottages occupied entirely by fisherfolk, a solitary figure was walking westward along this grass at the back of the dune, singing.
On the best of days Seatown was not beautiful. I have read in books romantic descriptions of Glebeshire coves, Glebeshire towns with the romantic Inn, the sanded floor, fishermen with gold rings in their ears and strange oaths upon their lips.
She did much good to the poor in Seatown, and it must be agony to her, poor thing, to go down there, because she was so terribly shy. Her next dance was with Johnny. She called him Johnny. And why should she not, secretly to herself? Ah, there was mother, all alone. And there was Mr. Morris coming up to speak to her. Kind of him. But he was a kind man. She liked him. Very shy, though.
Towards evening little Heywood Dare, the Taunton goldsmith, who had landed at Seatown and gone out with the news of the Duke's arrival, rode into Lyme with forty horse, mounted, himself, upon a beautiful charger which was destined to be the undoing of him.
One afternoon he was about to go to Seatown when, in the passage outside his bedroom, he met his mother. They both stopped as though they had something to say to one another. He did not look at all like her son, so fair, tall and aloof, as though even in his own house he must be on his guard, prepared to challenge any one who threatened his private plans.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking