Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/387

Rh was engaged, a gipsy, to start the affair, as there was no local tradition as to the manufacture of crocks upon which to go.

The classes were from the outset for boys and girls together, and though recently there has been a change in this arrangement, the young women coming in the afternoon, and the young men in the evening, this alteration has been made owing to increase of numbers, not in consequence of any rudeness or impropriety, for such there had not been in the ten years of the career of the school. In this case the experience has been precisely the same as that of the mixed schools and colleges of the United States.

There is one thing that a visitor to Torquay is certain to carry away with him if he has made excursions on foot about it—some of its red soil. The roads, in spite of the County Council, are bad, for the material of which they are made is soft. But what a soil it is for flowers and for fruit! Anything and everything will grow there and run wild. Stick a twig into the earth, and it is bound to grow. As for roses and violets, they run riot there. And, taken on the whole, the visitor who has been to Torquay is almost sure to carry away with him something beside the red mud, something quite as adhesive—pleasant memories of the place and its balmy air.