Sabine Baring-Gould

“ The river Colne, once upon a time, was seized with the desire of being a second Nile. We are speaking of course of that præhistoric age in which imagination runs riot, and sets down all its fancies as facts. The Nile brings down mud which it deposits over the surface of Egypt, and fertilizes it. Mud! thought the Colne, I can do a neat thing in mud. I can beat the Nile in the amount of slimy material I can bring on my waters and cast down where my waters reach. But it was not in mud that the Nile was to be equalled and excelled. ”

“ I will put the bread in my lips, and you shall peck and try to take it—without flying, and I without striking. I will hold my other hand behind my back. No! Tired of playing? Very well. I bear no malice; let us kiss and be chums.’ She had put her right hand behind her, and had raised the left, on the wrist of which sat the gull, expanding and closing its wings, balancing itself as she changed her position. All at once Jael’s right hand was caught, a hand was thrust under her chin, her face was turned up, and a kiss pressed on her lips. ”

“ An idle girl was Jael, brought up to no particular work. She did, indeed, in a fashion, manage her father’s house, but that house was very small, and his demands not great. The major portion of her day was spent racing over the marshes, playing with the gull, sometimes bathing in the ‘fleet,’ where there was a ‘hard’ or gravelly bed, sometimes rowing, and when at home sometimes quarrelling with her father.
He was a headstrong man, and she was a headstrong girl. He a man full of passion and will ”

“ But the attempt proved a failure, and in the end the Colne was forced to find her way to the sea through a single channel out of the many abortive ones she had run, leaving these latter some longer, some shorter, all smothering themselves in mud, and annually contracting. The Colne in the world of rivers is an instance of the great pretence and poor execution, and has its counterpart in the world of men. ”

“ When a railway was run by a private company up the river, it was carried across the mouth of this creek three miles down over a timber bridge, but as boats were accustomed to enter the channel and run up to the quay by the mill, the bridge was fashioned so as to open and allow a small craft to pass through. ”