Blind Love

While the line to be taken by the new railway between Culm and Everill

was still under discussion, the engineer caused some difference of

opinion among the moneyed men who were the first Directors of the

Company, by asking if they proposed to include among their Stations the

little old town of Honeybuzzard.

For years past, commerce had declined, and population had decreased in

this ancient and curious place. Painters knew it well, and prized its

mediaeval houses as a mine of valuable material for their art. Persons

of cultivated tastes, who were interested in church architecture of the

fourteenth century, sometimes pleased and flattered the Rector by

subscribing to his fund for the restoration of the tower, and the

removal of the accumulated rubbish of hundreds of years from the crypt.

Small speculators, not otherwise in a state of insanity, settled

themselves in the town, and tried the desperate experiment of opening a

shop; spent their little capital, put up the shutters, and disappeared.

The old market-place still showed its list of market-law's, issued by

the Mayor and Corporation in the prosperous bygone times; and every

week there were fewer and fewer people to obey the laws. The great

empty enclosure looked more cheerful, when there was no market held,

and when the boys of the town played in the deserted place. In the last

warehouse left in a state of repair, the crane was generally idle; the

windows were mostly shut up; and a solitary man represented languishing

trade, idling at a half-opened door. The muddy river rose and fell with

the distant tide. At rare intervals a collier discharged its cargo on

the mouldering quay, or an empty barge took in a load of hay. One bold

house advertised, in a dirty window, apartments to let. There was a

lawyer in the town, who had no occasion to keep a clerk; and there was

a doctor who hoped to sell his practice for anything that it would

fetch. The directors of the new railway, after a stormy meeting,

decided on offering (by means of a Station) a last chance of revival to

the dying town. The town had not vitality enough left to be grateful;

the railway stimulant produced no effect. Of all his colleagues in

Great Britain and Ireland, the station-master at Honeybuzzard was the

idlest man--and this, as he said to the unemployed porter, through no

want of energy on his own part.

Late on a rainy autumn afternoon, the slow train left one traveller at

the Station. He got out of a first-class carriage; he carried an

umbrella and a travelling-bag; and he asked his way to the best inn.

The station-master and the porter compared notes. One of them said:

"Evidently a gentleman." The other added: "What can he possibly want

here?"