PRACTICAL inconvenience attends living at the junction of the Is-not and the Is. To make myself better understood, I must explain.
On October 11th, 1809, Colonel Mudge published the Ordnance Survey of the county which I grace with my presence. In that map he entered a Proposed Road, running about four miles from N. to S. through my property, and in front of my house. I was not alive at the time, so the expression "my house" is inexact, it was the house of my grandfather. This proposed road was to be a main artery of traffic, and a county road,—but it was never carried out. To carry it out would have been inconvenient, as the walled garden of the house, with very good jargonelle and Bon-chrétien pears lies athwart the proposed course, and an ancient black fig-tree that produces abundantly every year grows precisely on the site of the proposed road. I presume that my grandfather raised objections. Anyhow the road was never made. However, since the survey of 1809, map-makers—convinced that what was then proposed has been in effect carried out—have systematically entered this road as an accomplished fact.
Now perhaps the reader can understand what it is to live on the point of junction of the Is and Is-not. The road indicated on the maps is not in existence, and yet the public consider, on the authority of the maps, that it is.
Then, again, I live in another way on the Is and Is-not. In 1836 a new and excellent road—now a county road—was carried at right angles to the proposed road, leading into the old high-road about a mile and a half from my house, and connecting that old high-road with the principal market town of the district, about nine miles off. Before this was constructed, the old way ran up hill and down dale in a series of scrambles, straight as an arrow; and one stretch of this road is now utterly impassable, it is simply a water-course, and a torrent rushes down it in a series of cascades over steps of slate-rock in winter, and after rain. Now—will it be believed?—just as the maps have accepted the proposed road as if it had really been made, because it was marked by Col. Mudge, so they have all ignored this main county road, because it did not exist in the days of Col. Mudge, and they persist in giving the old road, and ignoring the new one, that makes a great sweep through valleys, and indeed describes two sides of an obtuse-angled triangle, of which the old road forms the hypothenuse.
Now the reader will understand even more clearly how it is that I live on the what is, yet is not. The road is there—rates are paid to keep it up, and yet—it is not in any map, though it has been in existence for more than half a century.
Now for the practical inconvenience. One day I saw a party of men with guns walking across my grounds, in front of my house. I knew they had been poaching, and so I rushed out after them.
"What are you about? Why are you trespassing?" I roared. One of them pulled out a map and pointed. "We are going along the Queen's highway. Double black edges mark a main road. We cannot be trespassing." I was silenced.
One day I found school-boys in my walled garden eating my Bon-chrétien pears. I ordered them off, threatening them with vengeance.