He Noticed That The
World Was Not What It Had Been To Him, As It Had Appeared, For Example,
When
He was a plough-boy, the time of his life he remembered most
vividly, but it was not the fault
Of his senses; the mirror was all
right, it was the world that had grown dim. I found him at the gate
where I was accustomed to go of an evening to watch the sun set over
the sea of yellow corn and the high green elms beyond, which divide the
cornfields from the Maidenhead Thicket. An old agricultural labourer,
he had a grey face and grey hair and throat-beard; he stooped a good
deal, and struck me as being very feeble and long past work. But he
told me that he still did some work in the fields. The older farmers
who had employed him for many years past gave him a little to do; he
also had his old-age pension, and his children helped to keep him in
comfort. He was quite well off, he said, compared to many. There was a
subdued and sombre cheerfulness in him, and when I questioned him about
his early life, he talked very freely in his slow old peasant way. He
was born in a village in the Vale of Aylesbury, and began work as a
ploughboy on a very big farm. He had a good master and was well fed,
the food being bacon, vegetables, and homemade bread, also suet pudding
three times a week.
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