he Guardian_, April 11, 1900: "Truth to tell, when I appreciated,
with much amusement, the light in which one was expected to regard Mr.
Gresley, I came to the conclusion that the authoress was paying out some
particular High Church parson, who had perhaps snubbed her or got the
better of her, by 'putting him into a book.' The poor, feeble creature
is described with appetite, so to speak, and when this is the case (with
a lady writer) one is pretty safe in being sure one has come across the
personal. Mr. Gresleys certainly exist, but only a woman in a (perhaps
wholly justified) tantrum would speak of them as a type of the clergy in
general."--THOS. J. BALL.

THE LOWEST RUNG

We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung.
RUDYARD KIPLING.

The sudden splendour of the afternoon made me lay down my pen, and
tempted me afield. It had been a day of storm and great racing
cloud-wracks, after a night of hurricane and lashing rain. But in the
afternoon the sun had broken through, and I struggled across the
water-meadows, the hurrying, turbid water nearly up to the single planks
across the ditches, and climbed to the heathery uplands, battling my way
inch by inch against a tearing wind.

My art had driven me forth from my warm fireside, as it is her wont to
drive her votaries, and the call of my art I have never disobeyed.

For no artist must look at one side of life only. We must study it as a
whole, gleaning rich and varied sheaves as we go. My forthcoming book
of deep religious experiences, intertwined with descriptions of scenery,
needed a little contrast. I had had abundance of summer mornings and
dewy evenings, almost too many dewy evenings. And I thought a
description of a storm would be in keeping with the chapter on which I
was at that moment engaged, in which I dealt with the stress of my own
illness of the previous spring, and the mystery of pain, which had
necessitated a significant change in my life--a visit to Cromer. The
chapter dealing with Cromer, and the insurgent doubts of convalescence,
wandering on its poppy-strewn cliffs, as to the beneficence of the
Deity, was already done, and one of the finest I had ever written.

But I was dissatisfied with the preceding chapter, and, as usual, went
for inspiration to Nature.

It was late by the time I reached the upland, but I was rewarded for my
climb.

Far away under the flaring sunset the long lines of tidal river and sea
stretched tawny and