Holiday Tasks Author:James Payn Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SANDIFORD. As there are some men to whom, as they grow old, the gracious inheritance of age, "reverence and the silver hair," never seems to fall, but who rem... more »ain stolid, stiff, and iron grey, in a sort of petrified middle age to their lives' end, so there are certain towns which, though tolerably ancient, never become venerable or have anything of picturesqueness about them even in decay. Picturesqueness, indeed, in a town, like beauty in a woman, is comparative, and to those who have known nothing fairer, downright homeliness may have its attractions. This very summer certain young persons of my acquaintance who have been, it must be confessed, a little "spoilt" by the choicer scenery of their native isle—such as that of Cornwall, Devonshire, Wales, and the Isle of Wight—made a protracted tour through various marine localities described in our autumn advertisements as "enchanting," "exquisite," "magnificent," and "unrivalled," and returned in a state of great discouragement and disappointment, having found all barren from Dan to Beersheba. What struck them most was the way inwhich the inhabitants—not merely the hotelkeepers, but the residents and constant visitors—"cracked up" these places, and really seemed to imagine that they were without peer. Far be it from me to confuse with shadowed hint a life that leads melodious days at dreary Blank or noisy Asterisk, and disbelieves in Lynton or Clovelly, and, indeed, I am well aware that when the face of nature is not absolutely repulsive, habitude itself may beget in it a certain charm. For what reason some people of experience and good judgment select their friends is often inexplicable to us; the lines about Dr. Fell are quite as appropriate in a reverse sense as in that in which they are quoted, and the same thing is true of...« less