discreet age, strong and deft enough to render me all the service I
require, and not afraid of solitude. She rises very early. By my

breakfast-time there remains little to be done under the roof save
dressing of meals. Very rarely do I hear even a clink of crockery;

never the closing of a door or window. Oh, blessed silence!
There is not the remotest possibility of any one's calling upon me,

and that I should call upon any one else is a thing undreamt of. I
owe a letter to a friend; perhaps I shall write it before bedtime;

perhaps I shall leave it till to-morrow morning. A letter of
friendship should never be written save when the spirit prompts. I

have not yet looked at the newspaper. Generally I leave it till I
come back tired from my walk; it amuses me then to see what the

noisy world is doing, what new self-torments men have discovered,
what new forms of vain toil, what new occasions of peril and of

strife. I grudge to give the first freshness of the morning mind to
things so sad and foolish.

My house is perfect. Just large enough to allow the grace of order
in domestic circumstance; just that superfluity of intramural space,

to lack which is to be less than at one's ease. The fabric is
sound; the work in wood and plaster tells of a more leisurely and a

more honest age than ours. The stairs do not creak under my step; I
am waylaid by no unkindly draught; I can open or close a window

without muscle-ache. As to such trifles as the tint and device of
wall-paper, I confess my indifference; be the walls only

unobtrusive, and I am satisfied. The first thing in one's home is
comfort; let beauty of detail be added if one has the means, the

patience, the eye.
To me, this little book-room is beautiful, and chiefly because it is

home. Through the greater part of life I was homeless. Many places
have I inhabited, some which my soul loathed, and some which pleased

me well; but never till now with that sense of security which makes
a home. At any moment I might have been driven forth by evil hap,

by nagging necessity. For all that time did I say within myself:
Some day, perchance, I shall have a home; yet the "perchance" had

more and more of emphasis as life went on, and at the moment when
fate was secretly smiling on me, I had all but abandoned hope. I

have my home at last. When I place a new volume on my shelves, I
say: Stand there whilst I have eyes to see you; and a joyous tremor

thrills me. This house is mine on a lease of a score of years. So
long I certainly shall not live; but, if I did, even so long should

I have the wherewithal to pay my rent and buy my food.
I think with compassion of the unhappy mortals for whom no such sun

will ever rise. I should like to add to the Litany a new petition:
"For all inhabitants of great towns, and especially for all such as

dwell in lodgings, boarding-houses, flats, or any other sordid
substitute for Home which need or foolishness may have contrived."

In vain I have pondered the Stoic virtues. I know that it is folly
to fret about the spot of one's abode on this little earth.

All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to the wise man ports and happy havens.

But I have always worshipped wisdom afar off. In the sonorous
period of the philosopher, in the golden measure of the poet, I find

it of all things lovely. To its possession I shall never attain.
What will it serve me to pretend a virtue of which I am incapable?

To me the place and manner of my abode is of supremeimport; let it
be confessed, and there an end of it. I am no cosmopolite. Were I

to think that I should die away from England, the thought would be
dreadful to me. And in England, this is the dwelling of my choice;

this is my home.
III

I am no botanist, but I have long found pleasure in herb-gathering.
I love to come upon a plant which is unknown to me, to identify it

with the help of my book, to greet it by name when next it shines
beside my path. If the plant be rare, its discovery gives me joy.

Nature, the great Artist, makes her common flowers in the common
view; no word in human language can express the marvel and the

loveliness even of what we call the vulgarest weed, but these are
fashioned under the gaze of every passer-by. The rare flower is

shaped apart, in places secret, in the Artist's subtler mood; to
find it is to enjoy the sense of admission to a holier precinct.

Even in my gladness I am awed.
To-day I have walked far, and at the end of my walk I found the

little white-flowered wood-ruff. It grew in a copse of young ash.
When I had looked long at the flower, I delighted myself with the

grace of the slim trees about it--their shining smoothness, their
olive hue. Hard by stood a bush of wych elm; its tettered bark,

overlined as if with the character of some unknown tongue, made the
young ashes yet more beautiful.

It matters not how long I wander. There is no task to bring me
back; no one will be vexed or uneasy, linger I ever so late. Spring

is shining upon these lanes and meadows; I feel as if I must follow
every winding track that opens by my way. Spring has restored to me

something of the long-forgotten vigour of youth; I walk without
weariness; I sing to myself like a boy, and the song is one I knew

in boyhood.
That reminds me of an incident. Near a hamlet, in a lonely spot by

a woodside, I came upon a little lad of perhaps ten years old, who,
his head hidden in his arms against a tree trunk, was crying

bitterly. I asked him what was the matter, and, after a little
trouble--he was better than a mere bumpkin--I learnt that, having

been sent with sixpence to pay a debt, he had lost the money. The
poor little fellow was in a state of mind which in a grave man would

be called the anguish of despair; he must have been crying for a
long time; every muscle in his face quivered as if under torture,

his limbs shook; his eyes, his voice, uttered such misery as only
the vilest criminal should be made to suffer. And it was because he

had lost sixpence!
I could have shed tears with him--tears of pity and of rage at all

this spectacle implied. On a day of indescribable glory, when earth
and heaven shed benedictions upon the soul of man, a child, whose

nature would have bidden him rejoice as only childhood may, wept his
heart out because his hand had dropped a sixpenny piece! The loss

was a very serious one, and he knew it; he was less afraid to face
his parents, than overcome by misery at the thought of the harm he

had done them. Sixpence dropped by the wayside, and a whole family
made wretched! What are the due descriptive terms for a state of

"civilization" in which such a thing as this is possible?
I put my hand into my pocket, and wrought sixpennyworth of miracle.

It took me half an hour to recover my quiet mind. After all, it is
as idle to rage against man's fatuity as to hope that he will ever

be less a fool. For me, the great thing was my sixpenny miracle.
Why, I have known the day when it would have been beyond my power

altogether, or else would have cost me a meal. Wherefore, let me
again be glad and thankful.

IV
There was a time in my life when, if I had suddenly been set in the

position I now enjoy, conscience would have lain in ambush for me.
What! An income sufficient to support three or four working-class

families--a house all to myself--things beautiful wherever I turn--
and absolutely nothing to do for it all! I should have been hard

put to it to defend myself. In those days I was feelingly reminded,
hour by hour, with what a struggle the obscure multitudes manage to

keep alive. Nobody knows better than I do quam parvo liceat
producere vitam. I have hungered in the streets; I have laid my

head in the poorest shelter; I know what it is to feel the heart
burn with wrath and envy of "the privileged classes." Yes, but all

that time I was one of "the privileged" myself, and now I can accept
a recognized standing among them without shadow of self-reproach.

It does not mean that my larger sympathies are blunted. By going to
certain places, looking upon certain scenes, I could most

effectually destroy all the calm that life has brought me. If I
hold apart and purposely refuse to look that way, it is because I

believe that the world is better, not worse, for having one more
inhabitant who lives as becomes a civilized being. Let him whose

soul prompts him to assail the iniquity of things, cry and spare
not; let him who has the vocation go forth and combat. In me it

would be to err from Nature's guidance. I know, if I know anything,
that I am made for the life of tranquillity and meditation. I know

that only thus can such virtue as I possess find scope. More than