When He Discovered That These Hills And
Streams And Rustic Villages Had As Great A Charm For Me As For
Himself, That I Knew And Loved The Two Or Three Places He
Named In A Questioning Way, He Opened His Heart And The Secret
Of His Present Happiness.
He was a native of the district, born at a farmhouse of which
his father in succession to his grandfather had been the
tenant.
It was a small farm of only eighty-five acres, and as
his father could make no more than a bare livelihood out of
it, he eventually gave it up when my informant was but three
years old, and selling all he had, emigrated to Australia.
Nine years later he died, leaving a numerous family poorly
provided for; the home was broken up and boys and girls had to
go out and face the world. They had somehow all got on very
well, and his brothers and sisters were happy enough out
there, Australians in mind, thoroughly persuaded that theirs
was the better land, the best country in the world, and with
no desire to visit England. He had never felt like that;
somehow his father's feeling about the old country had taken
such a hold of him that he never outlived it - never felt at
home in Australia, however successful he was in his affairs.
The home feeling had been very strong in his father; his
greatest delight was to sit of an evening with his children
round him and tell them of the farm and the old farm-house
where he was born and had lived so many years, and where some
of them too had been born. He was never tired of talking of
it, of taking them by the hand, as it were, and leading them
from place to place, to the stream, the village, the old stone
church, the meadows and fields and hedges, the deep shady
lanes, and, above all, to the dear old ivied house with its
gables and tall chimneys. So many times had his father
described it that the old place was printed like a map on his
mind, and was like a picture which kept its brightness even
after the image of his boyhood's home in Australia had become
faded and pale. With that mental picture to guide him he
believed that he could go to that angle by the porch where the
flycatchers bred every year and find their nest; where in the
hedge the blackberries were most abundant; where the elders
grew by the stream from which he could watch the moorhens and
watervoles; that he knew every fence, gate, and outhouse,
every room and passage in the old house. Through all his busy
years that picture never grew less beautiful, never ceased its
call, and at last, possessed of sufficient capital to yield
him a modest income for the rest of his life, he came home.
What he was going to do in England he did not consider.
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