Tom had a wonderful
memory. He would recite page after page from _Pickwick, David
Copperfield, Barnaby Rudge_ or _Great Expectations_, as well as from
_Shakespeare_ and our favourite poets. He was fond of the pathetic, but
the humorous moved him most, and his lively gifts were welcome wherever
we went.
Our favourite walk on Saturday afternoons was to the pleasant village of
Kedleston, some five miles from Derby, and to its fine old inn, which to
us was not simply the _Kedleston Inn_ and nothing more but Dickens'
_Maypole_ and nothing less. We revelled in its resemblance, or its
fancied resemblance to the famous old hostelry kept by old John Willet.
Something in the building itself, though I cannot say that, like the
_Maypole_, it had "more gable ends than a lazy man would like to count on
a sunny day," and something in its situation, and something in the
cronies who gathered in its comfortable bar, and something in the bar
itself combined to form the pleasant illusion in which we indulged. The
bar, like the _Maypole_ bar, was snug and cosy and complete. Its rustic
visitors were not so solemn and slow of speech as old John Willet and Mr.
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