A SLEEPY TOWN hopes raised in a similar manner proved illusive. Then we remembered Wordsworth's lines:
Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown!
It must, or we shall rue it!
We have a vision of our own;
Ah! why should we undo it!
Well, we had "a vision of our own" of what the Ouse would be like—"should we undo it?" We had asked ourselves almost a similar question before of one picturesque spot by the same river's side near Tempsford, as may be remembered, but that was only of one special nook, not of a five miles' stretch of country!
We found St. Ives to be a drowsy, old-fashioned town, delightfully unprogressive, and little given to so-called modern improvements—a place where the feverish rush of life seemed stayed. It struck us as being quaint rather than picturesque, though its curious old bridge, hoary with antiquity, certainly deserved both these epithets, and bits of its buildings, here and there, proved eminently sketchable. Whilst we were drawing an odd gable which took our fancy, an elderly stranger approached and began to converse with us—a frequent incident under such circumstances, so much so that we had become quite accustomed to it. The stranger in this case turned out trumps, in that he was somewhat of a character, possessing a fund of entertaining information about local subjects that interested us. He was a quiet-spoken and pleasant-mannered man, rather shabbily dressed, as though he paid
