After a few sentences exchanged at long intervals in the manner of rustic
courtesy, I inquired casually what was the name of the town. The old lady
answered that its name was Stilton, and composedly continued her
needlework. But I had paused with my mug in air, and was gazing at her
with a suddenly arrested concern. "I suppose," I said, "that it has
nothing to do with the cheese of that name." "Oh, yes," she answered,
with a staggering indifference, "they used to make it here."

I put down my mug with a gravity far greater than her own. "But this
place is a Shrine!" I said. "Pilgrims should be pouring into it from
wherever the English legend has endured alive. There ought to be a
colossal statue in the market-place of the man who invented Stilton cheese.
There ought to be another colossal statue of the first cow who provided
the foundations of it. There should be a burnished tablet let into the
ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and
survived. On the top of a neighbouring hill (if there are any
neighbouring hills) there should be a huge model of a Stilton cheese, made
of some rich green marble and engraven with some haughty motto: I suggest
something like 'Ver non semper viret; sed Stiltonia semper virescit.'"
The old lady said, "Yes, sir," and continued her domestic occupations.

After a strained and emotional silence, I said, "If I take a meal here
tonight can you give me any Stilton?"

"No, sir; I'm afraid we haven't got any Stilton," said the immovable one,
speaking as if it were something thousands of miles away.

"This is awful," I said: for it seemed to me a strange allegory of England
as she is now; this little town that had lost its glory; and forgotten, so