Excerpt from Through Needle's Eye

Erford was one of the little seaboard par H ishes which encircle England; each one con taining its small, gray, storm-beaten church, perched on a crag overgrown with ivy and moss, or built low down on the shore, with the moan of the sea sounding incessantly round the graves of the dead. The village of Herford consisted of a straggling street of fishermen's houses, stretching in a single line from the shore inland, with scattered cottages and humble farmsteads dotted about the slopes on each side of the deep valley running down to the sea. There was no pier, and there were no lodging-houses. The nearest post town was five miles of? By the nearest road - a rough and wind-swept path over the clifl's and seven full miles if you traversed the whole length of the valley in order to reach the highway.

In every season of the year hedgerow flowers were to be found in bloom in Herford, for the valley lay open to the south, and the soft mist-laden south wind alone could breathe freely along it. There was nei ther biting cold in winter, nor scorching heat in sum mer and the noisy, narrow rivulet, which sang and played all down its winding curves, was never parch ed up by drought, and but seldom overflowed its deep banks. The bay where it emptied itself had a small ridge of pebbly beach, beyond which lay a tract of firm, bright sand, stretching in a narrow belt for miles under the cliffs when the tide was out. Al most every man in the village owned some small boat of his own, for the railway was as far off as Low borough, and the inhabitants of Herford preferred launching their rude, safe fishing craft, and running round with the tide, to traveling along the dusty, hot highway, whenever they had any of the produce of their fields or their nets to dispose of.

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