E-text prepared by Lionel Sear
I hardly can bring myself to part with this story, it has beensuch a private joy to me. Moreover, that I have lain awake in thenight to laugh over it is no guarantee of your being passablyamused. Yourselves, I dare say, have known what it is to awake inirrepressible mirth from a dream which next morning proved to be flatand unconvincing. Well, this my pet story has some of the qualitiesof a dream; being absurd, for instance, and almost incredible, andeven a trifle inhuman. After all, I had better change my mind, andtell you another—
But no; I will risk it, and you shall have it, just as it befel.
I had taken an afternoon's holiday to make a pilgrimage: my goalbeing a small parish church that lies remote from the railway, fivegood miles from the tiniest of country stations; my purpose toinspect—or say, rather, to contemplate—a Norman porch, for which itought to be widely famous. (Here let me say that I have an unlearnedpassion for Norman architecture—to enjoy it merely, not to writeabout it.)
To carry me on my first stage I had taken a crawling local trainthat dodged its way