News from the Duchy

I hardly can bring myself to part with this story, it has been such a private joy to me. Moreover, that I have lain awake in the night to laugh over it is no guarantee of your being passably amused. Yourselves, I dare say, have known what it is to awake in irrepressible mirth from a dream which next morning proved to be flat and unconvincing. Well, this my pet story has some of the qualities of a dream; being absurd, for instance, and almost incredible, and even a trifle inhuman. After all, I had better change my mind, and tell you another- But no; I will risk it, and you shall have it, just as it befel. I had taken an afternoon's holiday to make a pilgrimage: my goal being a small parish church that lies remote from the railway, five good miles from the tiniest of country stations; my purpose to inspect-or say, rather, to contemplate-a Norman porch, for which it ought to be widely famous. (Here let me say that I have an unlearned passion for Norman architecture-to enjoy it merely, not to write about it.)