Now My Hill-Top Fancy Tells Me That Once Upon A Time A Better
Being, A Wandering Angel, Flew Over
The country, and looking down and
seeing it so dark-hued and desolate, a compassionate impulse took him,
and unclasping
His light mantle he threw it down, so that the human
inhabitants should not be without that sacred green colour that
elsewhere beautifies the earth. There to this day it lies where it
fell - a mantle of moist vivid green, powdered with silver and gold,
embroidered with all floral hues; all reds from the faint blush on the
petals of the briar-rose to the deep crimson of the red trifolium; and
all yellows, and blues, and purples.
It was pleasant to return from a ramble over the rough heather to the
shade of the green village lanes, to stand aside in some deep narrow
road to make room for a farmer's waggon to pass, drawn by five or six
ponderous horses; to meet the cows too, smelling of milk and new-mown
hay, attended by the small cow-boy. One notices in most rural districts
how stunted in growth many of the boys of the labourers are; here I was
particularly struck by it on account of the fine physique of many of
the young men. It is possible that the growing time may be later and
more rapid here than in most places. Some of the young men are
exceptionally tall, and there was a larger percentage of tall handsome
women than I have seen in any village in Surrey and Hampshire. But the
children were almost invariably too small for their years. The most
stunted specimen was a little boy I met near Hindhead. He was thin,
with a dry wizened face, and looked at the most about eight years old;
he assured me that he was twelve. I engaged this gnome-like creature to
carry something for me, and we had three or four miles ramble together.
A curious couple we must have seemed - a giant and a pigmy, the pigmy
looking considerably older than the giant. He was a heath-cutter's
child, the eldest of seven children! They were very poor, but he could
earn nothing himself, except by gathering whortleberries in their
season; then he said, all seven of them turned out with their parents,
the youngest in its mother's arms. I questioned him about the birds of
the district; he stoutly maintained that he recognised only four, and
proceeded to name them.
"Here is another," said I, "a fifth you didn't name, singing in the
bushes half a dozen yards from where we stand - the best singer of all."
"I did name it," he returned, "that's a thrush."
It was a nightingale, a bird he did not know. But he knew a thrush - it
was one of the four birds he knew, and he stuck to it that it was a
thrush singing. Afterwards he pointed out the squalid-looking cottage
he lived in.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 36 of 127
Words from 18201 to 18701
of 66164
