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70 KIPLING'S SUSSEX
least of them. For you'll open a road from the East unto the West, and back again, and you'll bury your heart with your best friend by that road-side, and the road you open none shall shut so long as you're let lie quiet in your grave."
When this story was published in July, 1910, Kipling added the following foot-note :
" The old lady's prophecy seems in a fair way of coming true, for when the Panama Canal is opened one end of it will close to the waters where Sir Francis Drake was buried, the road round Cape Horn will be abandoned and ships will cross the Isthmus of Panama on dry land."
Rye more than any town in England preserves the atmosphere and flavour of some stranded town in Flanders or on the Zuyder Zee, and the stranger will find the ideal approach is across the marshes from the south, where one has the aspect of its singularly striking situation as its red roofs cluster steeply on all sides around the cathedral-like church which crowns the very summit of the pyramidal Rye rock.
The prevailing note of Rye is a warm gaiety and cheerfulness, in spite of the grim old Ypres Tower, the grass - grown, break - neck, cobbled streets, and all its vanished glory. And the people are as bright and blithe as their town, and there
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