*My editor begs to remind me that both “patten” and “post” can be found in any good dictionary. However, I assert that the modern novel reader, even reading those words and their definitions, cannot construct an adequate context, imagining a world, in the first example, without sidewalks, pavement (another instance of a changed meaning), or kerbs/rain-gutters to divert the rain off the road, and the economic and psychological benefit pattens conferred against the interminable seas of mud, ordure, and other unpleasantness on the roads, of which there was usually no regular repair. Does the phrase, “ceaseless clink of pattens” convey any meaning today? The dictionary provides no indication that pattens were an indication of lower status, as people of means in Bath would have hired a sedan-chair. What made them clink? Why were they ceaseless? What did this “ceaseless clink” say about Bath?