ttle walk to hear the
songs of English birds suggested some two years previously would be
forgotten and crowded out by greater matters. But it was not so. Without
any reminder on my part I got an intimation from the English friend who
was to be Colonel Roosevelt's host in London that Colonel Roosevelt had
written to him to say that this promise had been made and that he wished
time to be found for the fulfilment of it. I saw Colonel Roosevelt once
soon after he came to London. The day was arranged and at the appointed
time we met at Waterloo Station. We had to ask the newspaper reporters
not to go with us, not because it made any difference to Colonel
Roosevelt, but because birds are not so tame, or perhaps I should say
are more self-conscious than public men and do not like to be
photographed or even interviewed at close quarters, and it was
necessary, not only that Colonel Roosevelt and I should be alone, but
that we should make ourselves as inconspicuous and unobtrusive as
possible.

So we went alone, and for some twenty hours we were lost to the world.
We went by train to a country station where a motor was awaiting us.
Thence we drove to the little village of Titchborne in Hampshire, and
got there soon after midday. In the village of Titchborne there lives
also the family of Titchborne, and in the old village church there is a
tomb with recumbent figures of one of the Titchbornes and his wife who
lived in the time of James the First; on it is inscribed the statement
that he chose to be buried with his wife in this chapel, which was built
by his ancestor in the time of Henry the First. That shows a continuous
record of one family in one place for some eight hundred years. I forget
whether we had time to go into the church and look at it, but the songs
of the birds which we had come to hear are far more ancient. They must
be the same songs that were heard by the inhabitants of England before
the Romans came, for the songs of birds come down unchanged through
great antiquity, and we are listening to-day, in whatever part of the
world we may be, to songs which must have been familiar to races of men
of which history has no knowledge and no record.

I was a little apprehensive about this walk. I had had no personal
acquaintance with Colonel Roosevelt before he came to England in 1910,
and I thought to myself, "Perhaps, after all, he will not care so very
much about birds, and possibly after an hour or so he will have h