I Also Asked If
He Had Never Tried To Establish, Or Advocated, Or Suggested To
Them Any Kind Of Reunions
To take place from time to time, or
an entertainment or festival to get them to come pleasantly
together, making
A brightness in their lives - something which
would not be cricket or football, nor any form of sport for a
few of the men, all the others being mere lookers-on and the
women and children left out altogether; something which would
be for and include everyone, from the oldest grey labourer no
longer able to work to the toddling little ones; something of
their own invention, peculiar to Norton, which would be their
pride and make their village dearer to them? And the answer
was still no, and no, and no. He had never attempted, never
suggested, anything of the sort. How could he - the squire!
Yet he wrote those wise words: -
No nation can be truly great
That hath not something childlike in its life
Of every day.
Why are we lacking in that which others undoubtedly have, a
something to complete the round of homely happiness in our
little rural centres; how is it that we do not properly
encourage the things which, albeit childlike, are essential,
which sweetly recreate? It is not merely the selfishness of
those who are well placed and prefer to live for themselves,
or who have light but care not to shed it on those who are not
of their class. Selfishness is common enough everywhere, in
men of all races. It is not selfishness, nor the growth of
towns or decay of agriculture, which as a fact does not decay,
nor education, nor any of the other causes usually given for
the dullness, the greyness of village life. The chief cause,
I take it, is that gulf, or barrier, which exists between men
and men in different classes in our country, or a considerable
portion of it - the caste feeling which is becoming increasingly
rigid in the rural world, if my own observation, extending over
a period of twenty-five years, is not all wrong.
Chapter Eleven: Salisbury and Its Doves
Never in my experience has there been a worse spring season
than that of 1903 for the birds, more especially for the
short-winged migrants. In April I looked for the woodland
warblers and found them not, or saw but a few of the commonest
kinds. It was only too easy to account for this rarity. The
bitter north-east wind had blown every day and all day long
during those weeks when birds are coming, and when nearing the
end of their journey, at its most perilous stage, the wind had
been dead against them; its coldness and force was too much
for these delicate travellers, and doubtless they were beaten
down in thousands into the grey waters of a bitter sea. The
stronger-winged wheatear was more fortunate, since he comes in
March, and before that spell of deadly weather he was already
back in his breeding haunts on Salisbury Plain, and, in fact,
everywhere on that open down country.
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