“Yes,” the traveller replied.
“Then, sir,” rejoined the clerk, refusing the money, “Mr.——”—mentioning the name of the hotel-keeper—“will feel it a pleasure if you will accept a seat, and order anything you please, at his expense.”
My friend declared that was the most gentlemanly-dying mail he ever knew.
The “Bush” has since been rebuilt, but at Corby Castle, some two miles away, in what was once the “Haunted Room,” there hangs in a frame an interesting pane of glass from one of its windows, inscribed by no less notable a traveller than Hume, the historian, with the satirical verse, reflecting upon the “Bush,” the Cathedral, and Carlisle in general:
Here chicks in eggs for breakfast sprawl;
Here godless boys God’s glories squall;
Here heads of Scotchmen guard the wall,
But Corby’s walks atone for all.
Sir Walter Scott saw this in 1825, and humorously remarked in a letter to his friend Morritt upon “Hume’s poetical works.”
A RAILWAY CENTRE