k than of the
money he earned by it. At all events he charged me astonishingly
little. He refused a contract, evidently regarding it as implying
suspicions of his honesty. 'I'll charge ye what's fair,' he said, 'and
you and me'll not quarrel as to the price.' If my bill for labour was
so moderate that it seems absurd to a townsman, it was because I had to
deal with honest craftsmen, who brought not only efficiency and
handiness to their work, but a high sense of honour, and a real
intelligence and interest.

It was in the end of August when I took my house; by the beginning of
December I had completed my work upon it. The gardens in front of the
house had been levelled, and covered with the finest mountain turf.
The walls had been colour-washed a warm yellow, and all the
window-frames painted white. For three months every hour had been
busy, and not the least blessing of my toil was that it had brought me
a degree of physical vigour such as I had never yet enjoyed. How
different were my sensations when I woke in the morning now from those
which I had known in London! In London the hour of rising had
invariably found me languid and reluctant. I woke with the sense of a
load upon me, and I dreaded the long grey day. I see now that these
sensations were not so much mental as physical. I had not mental
buoyancy simply because I was deficient in physical vitality. But at
Thornthwaite I woke eager for the day. The first sounds that greeted
me through the open window were the songs of the birds, the sea-like
diapason of the wind in the elm-trees on the lawn, and the animating
song of the river in the glen. The weather during the whole of that
autumn was extraordinarily fine. After a week of equinoctial storm in
the end of September, the weather settled into exquisite repose. Day
succeeded day, calm, bright, sunny. It was as warm as August, but with
all the tonic freshness of autumn. November, usually a month of misery
in London, was here delightful. The year died slowly, amid the pomp of
crimson leaves and bronzed bracken. For the first time I understood
that it is bliss to be alive. Like the child whom Wordsworth
celebrates, I felt my life in every limb. There was no goading of dull
powers to unwelcome tasks; energy ran free, like the mountain-stream at
my door, and the zest of life was strong in me.

I never came downstairs into my living-room without a sense of new
delight. How beautiful, how sweetl