u are a
person; and is not the river, too, a person--a live thing? It has
an individual countenance which you love, which you would recognise
again, meet it where you will; it marks the whole landscape; it
determines probably the geography and the society of a whole district.
It draws you, too, to itself by an indefinable mesmeric attraction. If
you stop in a strange place, the first instinct of your idle
half-hour is, to lounge by the river. It is a person to you; you call
it--Scotchmen do, at least--she, and not it. How do you know that you
are not philosophically correct, and that the river has a spirit as
well as you?"

"Humph!" said Claude, who talks mysticism himself by the hour, but
snubs it in every one else. "It has trout, at least; and they stand,
I suppose, for its soul, as the raisins did for those of Jean Paul's
gingerbread bride and bridegroom and peradventure baby."

"Oh you materialist English! sporting-mad all of you, from the duke
who shooteth stags to the clod who poacheth rabbits!"

"And who therefore can fight Russians at Inkermann, duke and clod
alike, and side by side; never better (says the chronicler of old)
than in their first battle. I can neither fight nor fish, and on the
whole agree with you: but I think it proper to be as English as I can
in the presence of an American."

A whistle--a creak--a jar; and they stop at the little Whitford
station, where a cicerone for the vale, far better than Claude was,
made his appearance, in the person of Mark Armsworth, banker, railway
director, and _de facto_ king of Whitbury town, long since elected by
universal suffrage (his own vote included) as permanent _locum tenens_
of her gracious Majesty.

He hails Claude cheerfully from the platform, as he waddles about,
with a face as of the rising sun, radiant with good fun, good humour,
good deeds, good news, and good living. His coat was scarlet once; but
purple now. His leathers and boots were doubtless clean this morning;
but are now afflicted with elephantiasis, being three inches deep in
solid mud, which his old groom is scraping off as fast as he can. His
cap is duntled in; his back bears fresh stains of peat; a gentle rain
distils from the few angles of his person, and bedews the platform;
for Mark Armsworth has "been in Whit" to-day.

All porters and guards touch their hats to him; the station-master
rushes up and down frantically, shouting, "Where are those
horse-boxes? Now then, look alive!