Naturally, being of this temperament, she wanted to know what I was
doing and all about what I had seen, even to the minutest detail--the
smallest insect--and in telling her of my days I spoke casually of the
cross placed at a spot called Dead Man's Plack. This at once reminded
her of something she had heard about it before, but long ago, in the
seventies of last century; then presently it all came back to her, and
it proved to me an interesting story.
It chanced that in that far back time she was in correspondence on
certain scientific and literary subjects with a gentleman who was a
native of this part of Hampshire in which we were staying, and that they
got into a discussion about Freeman, the historian, during which he told
her of an incident of his undergraduate days when Freeman was professor
at Oxford. He attended a lecture by that man on the Mythical and
Romantic Elements in Early English History, in which he stated for the
guidance of all who study the past, that they must always bear in mind
the inevitable passion for romance in men, especially the uneducated,
and that when the student comes upon a romantic incident in early
history, even when it accords with the known character of the person it
relates to, he must reject it as false.
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