There Was No Village, No Deep Green Lanes And Pink And White Clouds Of Apple Blossoms, And It Was Not May, It Was Late October And I Was Lying In Bed In Exeter Seeing Through The Window The Red And Grey Roofs And Chimneys And Pale Misty White Sky.

XV THE VANISHING CURTSEY

'Tis impossible not to regret the dying out of the ancient, quaintly- pretty custom of curtseying in rural England; yet we cannot but see the inevitableness of it, when we consider the earthward drop of the body - the bird-like gesture pretty to see in the cottage child, not so spontaneous nor pretty in the grown girl, and not pretty nor quaint, but rather grotesque (as we think now) in the middle-aged or elderly person - and that there is no longer a corresponding self-abasement and worshipping attitude in the village mind. It is a sign or symbol that has lost, or is losing, its significance.

I have been rambling among a group of pretty villages on and near the Somerset Avon, some in that county, others in Wiltshire; and though these small rustic centres, hidden among the wooded hills, had an appearance of antiquity and of having continued unchanged for very many years, the little ones were as modern in their speech and behaviour as town children. Of all those I met and, in many instances, spoke to, in the village street and in the neighbouring woods and lanes, not one little girl curtseyed to me.

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