Yes; my mind jest dwelt on Mr. Coleridge all the time while I wuz in the Lake Deestrict. But we see while we wuz there lots of other places of great interest to me. Though, as I sed, the Falls of Lodore didn’t fall quite so much as he had depictered ’em, yet Rydal Falls wuz a seen of beauty and enchantment, with the water flowin’ down through the rocks and overhangin’ trees. It wuz a picter to always remember, to frame round with admiration and hang up in your memory.
And then there wuz a promontory called Storr’s Point, which had a observatory built on it. Here wuz where Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and Conway met in 1825 to see a regatta gin in Scott’s honor.
It must have been a pretty sight, the scenery around it wuz so beautiful.
And then we see Miss Martineau’s handsome residence, called the Knolls. I spoze on account of its being built on quite a rise of ground.
I spoze she wuz quite a likely poetess, and wrote most probble twenty books on every subject, from religion and politics to mesmerism and handicraft. But Thomas Jefferson couldn’t never git over sunthin’ she said to Charlotte Brontë in a kind of a fault-findin’ way; it jest gaulded Charlotte dretfully. Poor little creeter! with the mind of a giant and the body of a child—a glowin’ soul of fire and the shrinkin’ weakness and tenderness of heart of a young child.
Harriet hadn’t ort to said it—she ort to known that God don’t send a genius any too often onto this dull earth, and folks ort to prize ’em and guard ’em when He duz; but folks don’t; they pick at ’em, and they have to stan’ it, and build up a stun wall of endurance and constant anguish of patience between these tormentors and their own souls and sensitive feelin’s. And then set behind that barricade and try to write. And folks only see the stun work, and don’t see what it wuz raised for, and they call ’em cold, and cross, and unfeelin’, and etc., etc., etc.
But they hain’t cold, nor etc., etc., etc.—no sech thing.
But I am a-eppisodin’, and to resoom.
I presoom that one thing that made Harriet sour and kinder hard sometimes wuz she wuz so deef; not a-knowin’ any of the time what other wimmen wuz a-sayin’ about her—behind her back, or to her face either; it’s enough to sour any disposition, only the very sweetest ones.
Wall, we went to Hawkeshead, where Wordsworth went to school, Martin sayin’ he should probble be asked if he had seen the old school-house.