ey found me on the Essex flats.
There was a bright sky and a brisk wind, but nothing could disguise the
featureless monotony of the far-stretched landscape. The train put me
down at a roadside station where a dogcart waited my arrival. I drove
through a small village of mean, red-brick houses, and soon found
myself in the open country. My driver made but one remark during the
four-mile journey.

'You be come to see Dawes' farm?' he said.

I admitted the fact.

'There's a-many has come,' he replied. 'You be the twenty-first I have
drove. An' they all be uncommon glad to get away agen.'

'Why?' I asked.

'You'll soon find out.'

With that he lit his pipe and smoked stolidly. I was not long in
comprehending the reason of his reticence. Dawes' farm may once have
been a comfortable residence, but when I saw it it was a mildewed,
rat-haunted ruin. It stood upon a piece of redeemed marsh-land, and
the salt damp of the marsh had eaten into its very vitals. The
wainscots were discoloured, the walls oozed, and part of the roof was
broken. There had once been a garden; that, like the rest, was a ruin.
The land was there no doubt, fifty acres said the advertisement, but it
was treeless, bleak, flat, covered with coarse grass, and cut up by
muddy watercourses. To have lived in the house at all it must have
been rebuilt, and even then nothing could have made it a cheerful place
of residence. There was no water-supply that I could discover, unless
half a dozen butts that took the drippings of the roof represented it.
The orchard had long ago gone back to barbarism. It appeared that the
place had been deserted for half a dozen years. I did not wonder. The
only wonder was that it had ever been inhabited.

'Ah,' repeated my driver, 'there's a-many as comes an' looks, an' they
all be uncommon glad to get away agen.'

I subscribed to the common sentiment. Never did that infinite diapason
which we call the roar of London sound so sweet, never did those long,
lighted, busy streets seem so habitable, as on that night when I
returned from my casual inspection of Dawes' farm.

The memory of Dawes' farm taught me that if I was to live in the
country some charm of outlook was indispensable to my content.
Mountains, a lake, a wood, a running river--some delicate effect of
scenery, some concourse of elements, either in themselves or in their
combination beautiful--these I must have if I would be happy. They
were as nece