e reminiscent than sights; they bring back the
sensations of childhood, and indeed all memories of my past life, in a
way more touching and clear than what is seen. Wendell Holmes claims the
sense of smell as most closely associated with memory; for me, as I say,
it is that of hearing.

In this paper I shall wander in imagination through the different seasons
in the home of my youth, and let the recalled rustic sounds lead where
they will.

To children there is something impressive and almost sacred in the
changes of the seasons, in the onset of winter, or the clear approach of
spring. The first of these changes was heralded for me by the appearance
of puddles frozen to a shining white; mysterious because the frost had
drunk them dry in roofing them with ice, and especially delightful in the
sharp crackling sound they gave when trodden on. This was the noise of
the beginning of winter. Another winter memory is the humming whistle of
the boys' feet as they slid on the village pond, a remembrance that
recalls my envious admiration of their heavily nailed boots, giving them
an advantage in pace and a more noble style of sliding.

Another familiar sound was the wicked groaning crack that ran round the
solitary pond on which we skated, as it unwillingly settled down to bear
us on its surface. It had a threat in it, and reminded us how helpless
we were, that the pond-spirit was our master and had our lives in its
grip.

Another winter note was the hooting of invisible owls, boldly calling to
each other from one moonlit tree to another. In the spring there was the
querulous sound of the lambs, staggering half fledged in the cold fields
among the half-eaten turnips beside their dirty yellow mothers. Not the
sheep of the Dresden shepherdess, but rather of the old man in _As You
Like It_, who warns Rosalind that shepherding has its ugly side. Yet it
had something prophetic of more genial days.

[Picture: Whistle: Fig. 1] As the sap began to rise in the trees my
thoughts lightly turned to the making of whistles. I was taught the
mystery by a labourer in my father's employ and never departed from his
method. The first thing was to cut a branch of some likely tree, a
horse-chestnut for choice, severing it by an oblique cut, removing a ring
of bark R and notching it at N. The bark had then to be removed in one
piece so as to make the tube of the whistle. The first thing was to suck
the bark and thoroughly wet it--a p