Father: What brought thee back, lad? Son: Father! the same feet As took me brought me back, I warrant ye. Father: Couldst thou not find the rail? Son: The deuce himself Who can find most things, could not find the rail. Father: Plain as a pike-staff miles and miles it lies. Son: So they all told me. Pike-staffs in your day Must have been hugely plainer than just now. Father: What didst thou ask for? Son: Ask for? Tewkesbury, Thro Defford opposite to Breedon-hill. Father: Right: and they set ye wrong? Son: Me wrong? not they; The best among 'em should not set me wrong, Nor right, nor anything; I'd tell 'em that. Father: Herefordshire's short horns and shorter wits Are known in every quarter of the land, Those blunt, these blunter. Well! no help for it! Each might do harm if each had more of each . . Yet even in Herefordshire there are some Not downright dolts . . before the cider's broacht, When all are much alike . . yet most could tell A railroad from a parish or a pike. How thou couldst miss that railroad puzzles me, Seeing there lies none other round about. Son: I found the rails along the whole brook-side Left of that old stone bridge across yon Avon. Father: That is the place. Son: There was a house hard-by, And past it ran a furnace upon wheels, Like a mad bull, tail up in air, and horns So low ye might not see 'em. On it bumpt, Roaring, as strait as any arrow flits, As strait, as fast too, ay, and faster went it, Arid, could it keep its wind up and not crack, Then woe betide the eggs at Tewkesbury This market-day, and lambs, and sheep! a score Of pigs might be made flitches in a trice, Before they well could knuckle. Father! Father! If they were ourn, thou wouldst not chuckle so, And shake thy sides, and wipe thy eyes, and rub Thy breeches-knees, like Sunday shoes, at that rate. Hows'ever. . . . Father: 'Twas the train, lad, 'twas the train. Son: May-be: I had no business with a train. 'Go thee by rail,' you told me; 'by the rail At Defford' . . and didst make a fool of me. Father: Ay, lad, I did indeed: it was methinks Some twenty years agone last Martinmas.