The Holly-Tree was getting rather dismal.I made an overland expedition beyond the screen, and penetrated as far as the fourth window.Here I was driven back by stress of weather.Arrived at my winter- quarters once more, I made up the fire, and took another Inn.
It was in the remotest part of Cornwall.A great annual Miners' Feast was being holden at the Inn, when I and my travelling companions presented ourselves at night among the wild crowd that were dancing before it by torchlight.We had had a break-down in the dark, on a stony morass some miles away; and I had the honour of leading one of the unharnessed post-horses.If any lady or gentleman, on perusal of the present lines, will take any very tall post-horse with his traces hanging about his legs, and will conduct him by the bearing-rein into the heart of a country dance of a hundred and fifty couples, that lady or gentleman will then, and only then, form an adequate idea of the extent to which that post-horse will tread on his conductor's toes.Over and above which, the post- horse, finding three hundred people whirling about him, will probably rear, and also lash out with his hind legs, in a manner incompatible with dignity or self-respect on his conductor's part.With such little drawbacks on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared at this Cornish Inn, to the unutterable wonder of the Cornish Miners.It was full, and twenty times full, and nobody could be received but the post-horse,--though to get rid of that noble animal was something.While my fellow-travellers and I were discussing how to pass the night and so much of the next day as must intervene before the jovial blacksmith and the jovial wheelwright would be in a condition to go out on the morass and mend the coach, an honest man stepped forth from the crowd and proposed his unlet floor of two rooms, with supper of eggs and bacon, ale and punch.We joyfully accompanied him home to the strangest of clean houses, where we were well entertained to the satisfaction of all parties.But the novel feature of the entertainment was, that our host was a chair-maker, and that the chairs assigned to us were mere frames, altogether without bottoms of any sort; so that we passed the evening on perches.Nor was this the absurdest consequence; for when we unbent at supper, and any one of us gave way to laughter, he forgot the peculiarity of his position, and instantly disappeared.I myself, doubled up into an attitude from which self- extrication was impossible, was taken out of my frame, like a clown in a comic pantomime who has tumbled into a tub, five times by the taper's light during the eggs and bacon.
The Holly-Tree was fast reviving within me a sense of loneliness.I began to feel conscious that my subject would never carry on until I was dug out.I might be a week here,--weeks!
There was a story with a singular idea in it, connected with an Inn I once passed a night at in a picturesque old town on the Welsh border.In a large double-bedded room of this Inn there had been a suicide committed by poison, in one bed, while a tired traveller slept unconscious in the other.After that time, the suicide bed was never used, but the other constantly was; the disused bedstead remaining in the room empty, though as to allother respects in its old state.The story ran, that whosoever slept in this room, though never so entire a stranger, from never so far off, was invariably observed to come down in the morning with an impression that he smelt Laudanum, and that his mind always turned upon the subject of suicide; to which, whatever kind of man he might be, he was certain to make some reference if he conversed with any one.This went on for years, until it at length induced the landlord to take the disused bedstead down, and bodily burn it,--bed, hangings, and all.The strange influence (this was the story) now changed to a fainter one, but never changed afterwards.The occupant of that room, with occasional but very rare exceptions, would come down in the morning, trying to recall a forgotten dream he had had in the night.The landlord, on his mentioning his perplexity, would suggest various commonplace subjects, not one of which, as he very well knew, was the true subject.But the moment the landlord suggested "Poison," the traveller started, and cried, "Yes!" He never failed to accept that suggestion, and he never recalled any more of the dream.
