Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/297

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RIVERSIDE BOSTON wooden steps, and in which you are paddled over in that primitive but picturesque old-fashioned manner at the cost of a penny. Here also, by some timber landing-stages, were anchored sundry sea-beaten fishing smacks that, with their red-tanned sails and sun-browned sailors on board mending their nets, made a very effective picture, so effective that we needs must spend a good hour sketching and photographing them (an engraving of one of our sketches will be found herewith). Along the banks of this river the artist may find ample material—"good stuff," in painter's slang—for brush or pencil, and the amateur photographer a most profitable hunting-ground. Even the old warehouses on the opposite side of the river are paintable, being pleasing in outline and good in colour—a fact proving that commercial structures need not of necessity be ugly, though alas! they mostly are. Then rambling on in a delightfully aimless fashion, at the same time keeping our eyes well open for the picturesque, we chanced, in a field a little beyond the outskirts of the town, upon an old ruined red-brick tower, standing there alone in crumbling and pathetic solitude. We learnt that this was called Hussey Tower, and that it was erected by Lord Hussey about 1500, who was beheaded in the reign of Henry VIII. for being concerned in the Lincolnshire rebellion. So one drives about country and learns or re-learns history as the case may be.

We bade a reluctant good-bye to old-world and storied Boston one bright, breezy morning, and soon found ourselves once again in the open country, with