But I’ll be hanged if I didn’t have to change my mind a little afterwards, of which more anon.
You see I had heard Thomas J. read a sight about the old Saxon earls of Warwick, and specially Guy Warwick in the time of Alfred the Great (you know the man that fried them pancakes and burnt ’em, and had other great reverses, but come out right in the end, as men always do who are willin’ to help wimmen in their housework).
I always bore strong on this great moral when Thomas J. would be a-readin’ these deeds to me (I thought he might jest as well wipe a few dishes for me once in a while as well as not). And he’d read “how Guy killed a Saxon giant nine feet tall, and a wild boar, and a green dragon, and killed an enormous cow.”
At the porter’s lodge we see the rib of that cow, and Josiah said, “You sed that they didn’t date back any of their greatness to beef; what do you call this? Why,” sez he, “Ury and I kill a cow almost every fall; nothin’ is said in history of it; you don’t set any more store by me.”
I see that I had done the man onjestice, and I sez tenderly, “You are a good provider of beef, Josiah, and always have been; but,” sez I, “this cow wuz probble twice the size of one of your Jerseys. You couldn’t wear that breastplate, or swing that great tiltin’-pole, or the enormous sword that hangs up there,” sez I, “you couldn’t move ’em hardly with both hands, and,” sez I, “look at that immense porridge-pot of hisen; you couldn’t eat that full of porridge, as he probble did.”
“You couldn’t eat that full of porridge.”
“Try me!” sez he, earnestly—“jest try me, that’s all.” Sez he, “I could eat every spunful and ask for more.”
And there it wuzn’t much after noon. That man’s appetite is a wonder to me and has been ever sence I took it in charge. And foreign travel, which I thought mebby would kind o’ quell it down, only seems to whet it up to a sharper edge.
The way to the castle is through a large gateway, and then we go through a roadway which is cut through solid rock for more’n a hundred feet, and then when you come out, you suddenly git a full view of the grand old castle, with its strong walls and noble old Round towers.