- "And the general effect is curiously foreign; the views from the
quaint little pier and, better still, from the sea, with the pier
in the foreground, are also very striking. The foundations of the
cottages at the lower end of the village are hewn out of the living
rock."

"How does a living rock differ from other rocks--dead rocks?" Tommy
asked facetiously. "I have always wanted to know; however, it
sounds delightful, though I can't remember anything about
Clovelly."

"Did you never read Dickens's 'Message from the Sea,' Thomas?"
asked Miss Van Tyck. Aunt Celia always knows the number of the
unemployed in New York and Chicago, the date when North Carolina
was admitted to the Union, why black sheep eat less than white
ones, the height of the highest mountain and the length of the
longest river in the world, when the first potato was dug from
American soil, when the battle of Bull Run was fought, who invented
the first fire-escape, how woman suffrage has worked in Colorado
and California, the number of trees felled by Mr. Gladstone, the
principle of the Westinghouse brake and the Jacquard loom, the
difference between peritonitis and appendicitis, the date of the
introduction of postal-cards and oleomargarine, the price of
mileage on African railways, the influence of Christianity in the
Windward Islands, who wrote "There's Another, not a Sister," "At
Midnight in his Guarded Tent," "A Thing of Beauty is a Joy
Forever," and has taken in through the pores much other information
likely to be of service on journeys where an encyclopaedia is not
available.