a header direct, in the early morning, before the sumptuary edicts
of his worship the Mayor compel them to resort to the use of
bathing-machines and the decent covering of an approved costume,
between the hours of eight and eight. A board beside the mouth of
the harbour, signed by a Secretary of State to his late Majesty
King William the Fourth, still announces to a heedless world the
tolls to be paid for entry by the ships that never arrive; and a
superannuated official in a wooden leg and a gold cap-band retains
the honourable sinecure of a harbour-mastership, with a hypothetical
salary nominally payable from the non-existent fees and port dues.
The little river Cale, at the bottom of whose combe the wee town
nestles snugly, has cut itself a deep valley in the soft sandstone
hills; and the gap in the cliffs formed by its mouth gives room
for the few hundred yards of level on which the antiquated little
parade is warmly ensconced. On either hand tall bluffs of brilliant
red marl raise their honeycombed faces fronting the sea; and in the
distance the sheeny grey rocks of the harder Devonian promontories
gleam like watered satin in the slant rays of the afternoon sun.
Altogether a very sleepy little old-world place is Calcombe Pomeroy,
specially reserved by the overruling chance of the universe to be
a summer retreat for quiet, peace-loving, old-world people.

The Londoner who escapes for a while from the great teeming human
ant-hill, with its dark foggy lanes and solid firmament of hanging
smoke, to draw in a little unadulterated atmosphere at Calcombe
Pomeroy, finds himself landed by the Plymouth slow train at Calcombe
Road Station, twelve miles by cross-country highway from his final
destination. The little grey box, described in the time-tables
as a commodious omnibus, which takes him on for the rest of his
journey, crawls slowly up the first six miles to the summit of