urneyed to South Wales and brought the widow and her two little boys
up north to Llanystumdwy, where he lived. He installed them in his
cottage, a little two-story residence with a tiny workshop abutting
from it at the side where he carried on his shoe-mending. In front the
main road ran by, twisting its way through the village, and thence
through woods and meadows, and giving access within a mile on either
side to park-lands attached to the big country houses of wealthy people
to whom the village cobbler was a nonentity and a person of a different
order of beings from themselves. They were not to know, these rich
neighbors, that the cobbler was bringing for protection to his humble
home a child destined to be a Prime Minister of the country. Prime
Minister in a crisis of its history.

Of the little family's years of struggle there are a few glimpses.
Cheerfully Richard Lloyd bent himself to his self-imposed task of
lightening his sister's lot, and Mrs. George worked hard that her
children should not suffer from want. There was no money to spare in
the household. Mrs. George baked bread so as not to take anything from
their small resources for the baker. Twice a week there was a little
meat for the family. Subsequently, as the children grew bigger, a tiny
luxury was here and there found for them. At Sunday morning breakfast,
for example, they received as a treat half an egg each to eat with
their bread-and-butter. In the garden behind the cottage vegetables
were grown to eke out supplies, and it was one of the tasks of young
Lloyd George to dig up the potatoes for the household.

Llanystumdwy, the boyhood home of Lloyd George, is a picturesque
village, a mile or so from the sea, nestling at the foot of the Snowdon
range. Meadows and woods embower Llanystumdwy. Rushing through the
village a rock-strewn stream pours down from the mountains to the sea,
with the trees on its banks locking their branches overhead in an
irregular green archway. Look westward to the coast from Llanystumdwy
and you have in Carnavon Bay one of the finest seascapes in Britain.
Turn to the east, and the rising mountains culminate in the white
summit of Snowdon and other giant peaks stretching upward through the
clouds. Could Providence have selected a more fitting spot for the
upgrowth of a romantic boy? Lloyd George's Celtic heart had an
environment made for it in this nook between the Welsh mountains and
the sea. Little wonder t