in my life. The exception was at
Calais when the Brussels express did, in defiance of the time-table, really
give me and others the slip, carrying with it my bag containing my clothes
and the notes of a most illuminating lecture. I chased that bag all through
Northern France and Belgium, inquiring at wayside stations, wiring to
junctions, hunting among the mountains of luggage at Lille.

It was at Lille that---But the train is slowing down. There is the slope of
the hillside, black against the night sky, and among the trees I see the
glimmer of a light beckoning me as the lonely lamp in Greenhead Ghyll used
to beckon Wordsworth's Michael. The night is full of stars, the landscape
glistens with a late frost: it will be a jolly two miles' tramp to that
beacon on the hill.

IN PRAISE OF CHESS

I sometimes think that growing old must be like the end of a tiring day.
You have worked hard, or played hard, toiled over the mountain under the
burning sun, and now the evening has come and you sit at ease at the inn
and ask for nothing but a pipe, a quiet talk, and so to bed. "And the
morrow's uprising to deeds shall be sweet." You have had your fill of
adventure for the day. The morning's passion for experience and possession
is satisfied, and your ambitions have shrunk to the dimensions of an easy
chair.

And so I think it is with that other evening when the late blackbird is
fluting its last vesper song and the toys of the long day are put aside,
and the plans of new conquests are waste-paper. I remember hearing Sir
Edward Grey saying once how he looked forward to the time when he would
burn all his Blue-books and mulch his rose-trees with the ashes. And Mr.
Belloc has given us a very jolly picture of the way in which he is going to
spend his evening:

If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.
I will hold my house in the high woods
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.

There is Mr. Birrell, too, who, as I have remarked elsewhere, once said
that when he retired he would take his modest savings into the country "and
really read Boswell."

These are typical, I suppose, of the dreams that most of us cultivate about
old age. I, too, look forward to a