It surprised me greatly how much I missed my brother’s company.  We had never been separated for so long a period during the whole of our journey, and at every turn I found myself instinctively turning round to see if he were following.  It was a lovely walk, but when we reached the house on our return, neither my brother nor the young ladies were to be found, and it was nearly time for the five-o’clock tea before they returned.  They all looked very pleasant, and assured us they had followed us as promised, and the young ladies seemed able to convince their father that they had done so; but to my mind the matter was never satisfactorily cleared up, and I often reminded my brother in after years about those two young ladies at Torquay, who, by the way, were very good-looking.  Many years afterwards some poetry was written by a lady who must have been an authority on the “Little Maids of Devon,” for she wrote: 

  Oh! the little maids of Devon,
    They’ve a rose in either cheek,
  And their eyes like bits of heaven
    Meet your own with glances meek;
  But within them there are tiny imps
    That play at hide and seek!

  Oh! the little maids of Devon,
    They have skins of milk and cream,
  Just as pure and clear and even
    As a pool in Dartmoor stream;
  But who looks at them is holden
    With the magic of a dream.

  Oh! the little maids of Devon,
    They have honey-coloured hair. 
  Where the sun has worked like leaven. 
    Turning russet tones to fair,
  And they hold you by the strands of it,
    And drive you to despair.

  Oh! the little maids of Devon,
  They have voices like a dove,
  And Jacob’s years of seven
  One would serve to have their love;
  But their hearts are things of mystery
  A man may never prove!

We all attended church again for evening service, and after supper passed the evening singing hymns, in which I was able to join, some of them very beautiful and selected because they had been composed by people connected with the County of Devon.  One of them was written by Charlotte Elliott, who died at Torquay in 1871, the year we were there, and still a favourite even in these later years, the first verse being: 

Just as I am, without one plea
But that Thy Blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee,

              O Lamb of God, I come.

The first vicar of Lower Brixham was the Rev. Henry Francis Lyte, who at fifty-four years of age began to suffer from consumption, and who, when he knew he had not long to live, prayed that he might be enabled to write something that would live to the glory of God after he was dead.  As a last resource he had been ordered by the doctors to go to the Riviera, where he died at Nice a month later.  The night before he started he preached his farewell sermon, and, returning to his house as the sun was setting over the ships in the harbour, many of which belonged to the fishermen he had laboured amongst for so many years, he sat down and wrote that beautiful hymn: