e, every stick and stone of it is dear to
me as my heart's blood; I find myself laying an affectionate hand on the
door-post, giving a pat, as I go by, to the garden gate. Every tree and
shrub in the garden is my beloved friend; I touch them, when need is,
very tenderly, as though carelessness might pain, or roughness injure
them. If I pull up a weed in the walk, I look at it with a certain
sadness before throwing it away; it belongs to my home.

And all the country round about. These villages, how delightful are
their names to my ear! I find myself reading with interest all the local
news in the Exeter paper. Not that I care about the people; with barely
one or two exceptions, the people are nothing to me, and the less I see
of them the better I am pleased. But the _places_ grow ever more dear to
me. I like to know of anything that has happened at Heavitree, or
Brampford Speke, or Newton St. Cyres. I begin to pride myself on knowing
every road and lane, every bridle path and foot-way for miles about. I
like to learn the names of farms and of fields. And all this because
here is my abiding place, because I am home for ever.

It seems to me that the very clouds that pass above my house are more
interesting and beautiful than clouds elsewhere.

And to think that at one time I called myself a socialist, communist,
anything you like of the revolutionary kind! Not for long, to be sure,
and I suspect that there was always something in me that scoffed when my
lips uttered such things. Why, no man living has a more profound sense
of property than I; no man ever lived, who was, in every fibre, more
vehemently an individualist.

XIII.

In this high summertide, I remember with a strange feeling that there are
people who, of their free choice, spend day and night in cities, who
throng to the gabble of drawing-rooms, make festival in public eating-
houses, sweat in the glare of the theatre. They call it life; they call
it enjoyment. Why, so it is, for them; they are so made. The folly is
mine, to wonder that they fulfil their destiny.

But with what deep and quiet thanksgiving do I remind myself that never
shall I mingle with that well-millinered and tailored herd! Happily, I
never saw much of them. Certain occasions I recall when a supposed
necessity took me into their dismal precincts; a sick buzzing in the
brain, a languor as of exhausted limbs, comes upon me with the memory.
The relief with which I s