creeping round dim and chilly
churches behind wheezy old men, and reading epitaphs. Not even the sight
of a bit of cracked brass let into a stone affords me what I call real
happiness.

I shock respectable sextons by the imperturbability I am able to assume
before exciting inscriptions, and by my lack of enthusiasm for the local
family history, while my ill-concealed anxiety to get outside wounds
their feelings.

One golden morning of a sunny day, I leant against the low stone wall
that guarded a little village church, and I smoked, and drank in deep,
calm gladness from the sweet, restful scene--the grey old church with its
clustering ivy and its quaint carved wooden porch, the white lane winding
down the hill between tall rows of elms, the thatched-roof cottages
peeping above their trim-kept hedges, the silver river in the hollow, the
wooded hills beyond!

It was a lovely landscape. It was idyllic, poetical, and it inspired me.
I felt good and noble. I felt I didn't want to be sinful and wicked any
more. I would come and live here, and never do any more wrong, and lead
a blameless, beautiful life, and have silver hair when I got old, and all
that sort of thing.

In that moment I forgave all my friends and relations for their
wickedness and cussedness, and I blessed them. They did not know that I
blessed them. They went their abandoned way all unconscious of what I,
far away in that peaceful village, was doing for them; but I did it, and
I wished that I could let them know that I had done it, because I wanted
to make them happy. I was going on thinking away all these grand, tender
thoughts, when my reverie was broken in upon by a shrill piping voice
crying out:

"All right, sur, I'm a-coming, I'm a-coming. It's all right, sur; don't
you be in a hurry."

I looked up, and saw an old bald-headed man hobbling across the
churchyard towards me, carrying a huge bunch of keys in his hand that
shook and jingled at every step.

I motioned him away with silent dignity, but he still advanced,
screeching out the while:

"I'm a-coming, sur, I'm a-coming. I'm a little lame. I ain't as spry as
I used to be. This way, sur."

"Go away, you miserable old man," I said.

"I've come as soon as I could, sur," he replied. "My missis never see
you till just this minute. You follow me, sur."

"Go away," I repeated; "leave me before I get over the wall, and slay
you."

He seemed surprised.

"Don't you want to see