ay down on the seat of stone nevir hewin with
mennes hand, and declared he had a nap,--just enough to make him a poet.
To prove which he wrote a long poem on the finding of Taliesin in the
nets, and sent it to the Aberystwith newspaper; while I, not to be
behindhand, wrote another, in imitation of the triplets of Llydwarch Hen,
which were so greatly admired as tributes to Welsh poetry that they were
forthwith translated faithfully into lines of consonants, touched up with
so many _w_'s that they looked like saws; and they circulated even unto
Llandudno, and, for aught I know, may be sung at Eistedfodds, now and
ever, to the twanging of small harps,--_in soecula saeculorum_. Truly,
the day which had begun with a witch ended fitly enough at the tomb of a
prophet poet.

III. THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH.

Aberystwith is a little fishing-village, which has of late years first
bloomed as a railway-station, and then fruited into prosperity as a
bathing-place. Like many _parvenus_, it makes a great display of its
Norman ancestor, the old castle, saying little about the long centuries
of plebeian obscurity in which it was once buried. This castle, after
being woefully neglected during the days when nobody cared for its early
respectability, has been suddenly remembered, now that better times have
come, and, though not restored, has been made comely with grass banks,
benches, and gravel walks, reminding one of an Irish grandfather in
America, taken out on a Sunday with "the childher," and looking "gintale"
in the clean shirt and whole coat unknown to him for many a decade in
Tipperary. Of course the castle and the wealth, or the hotels and
parade, are well to the fore, or boldly displayed, as Englishly as
possible, while the little Welsh town shrinks quietly into the hollow
behind. And being new to prosperity, Aberystwith is also a little
muddled as to propriety. It would regard with horror the idea of
allowing ladies and gentlemen to bathe together, even though completely
clad; but it sees nothing out of the way when gentlemen in pre-fig-leaf
costume disport themselves, bathing just before the young ladies'
boarding-school and the chief hotel, or running joyous races on the
beach. I shall never forget the amazement and horror with which an
Aberystwithienne learned that in distant lands ladies and gentlemen went
into the water arm in arm, although dressed. But when it was urged that
the Aberystwith system was somew