d manners does England borrow from us.
Yet there are exceptions.

It is a beautiful highway that skirts Lake Windermere and follows up
through Ambleside. We get a glimpse of the old home of Harriet Martineau,
and "Fox Howe," the home of Matthew Arnold. Just before Rydal Water is
reached comes Rydal Road, running straight up the hillside, off from the
turnpike. Rydal Mount is the third house up on the left-hand side, I knew
the location, for I had read of it many times, and in my pocketbook I
carried a picture taken from an old "Frank Leslie's," showing the house.

My heart beat fast as I climbed the hill. To visit the old home of one
who was Poet Laureate of England is no small event in the life of a
book-lover. I was full of poetry and murmured lines from "The Excursion"
as I walked. Soon rare old Rydal Mount came in sight among the wealth of
green. I stopped and sighed. Yes, yes, Wordsworth lived here for
thirty-three years, and here he died; the spot whereon I then stood had
been pressed many times by his feet. I walked slowly, with uncovered
head, and approached the gate. It was locked. I fumbled at the latch; and
just as there came a prospect of its opening, a loud, deep, guttural
voice dashed over me like a wave:

"There--you! now, wot you want?"

The owner of this voice was not ten feet away, but he was standing up
close to the wall and I had not seen him. I was somewhat startled at
first. The man did not move. I stepped to one side to get a better view
of my interlocutor, and saw him to be a large, red man of perhaps fifty.
A handkerchief was knotted around his thick neck, and he held a heavy hoe
in his hand. A genuine beefeater he was, only he ate too much beef and
the ale he drank was evidently Extra XXX.

His scowl was so needlessly severe and his manner so belligerent that
I--thrice armed, knowing my cause was just--could not restrain a smile. I
touched my hat and said, "Ah, excuse me, Mr. Falstaff, you are the
bouncer?"

"Never mind wot I am, sir--'oo are you?"

"I am a great admirer of Wordsworth----"

"That's the way they all begins. Cawn't ye hadmire 'im on that side of
the wall as well as this?"

There is no use of wasting argument with a man of this stamp; besides
that, his question was to the point. But there are several ways of
overcoming one's adversary: I began feeling in my pocket for pence. My
enemy ceased glaring, stepped up to the locked gate as though he
half-wished to be friendly,