There should certainly be hills and dales, – on a small scale and above all, there should be running water. There should, if possible, be rocks, old timber, moss, and brambles. There should be trees, broken ground, small paths, thickets, and hidden recesses. A picnic should be held among green things. “YARMOUTH is not a happy place for a picnic. I have no doubt that there are men and women who look back with a fond regret to the palmy days of Shap.” It had been a stage on the high road from Lancaster to Carlisle, and though it lay high and bleak among the fells, and was a cold, windy, thinly-populated place, – filling all travellers with thankfulness that they had not been made Shappites, nevertheless, it had had its glory in its coaching and posting. Shap had been a place owing all such life as it had possessed to coaching and posting. The landlord at the inn, for one, is not thankful. There is a station at Shap, by which the railway company no doubt conceives that it has conferred on that somewhat rough and remote locality all the advantages of a refined civilization but I doubt whether the Shappites have been thankful for the favour. He himself reached the place late in the evening by train from London. He gave his sister notice that he would be there, and begged her to come over to him as early as she might find it possible on the’ morning after his arrival. “He made up his mind to see Kate, and with this view he went down to Westmoreland and took himself to a small wayside inn at Shap among the fells, which had been known to him of old.
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