ly about some childish business in the shrubberies. I
find that my memory is curiously accurate in some respects, and
curiously at fault in others. The scale is all wrong. What appears to
me in memory to be an immense distance, from Woodcote to Dewhurst, for
instance, is now reduced to almost nothing; and places which I can see
quite accurately in my mind's eye are now so different that I can
hardly believe that they were ever like what I recollect of them. Of
course the trees have grown immensely; young plantations have become
woods, and woods have disappeared. I spent my time in wandering about,
retracing the childish walks we used to take, looking at the church,
the old houses, the village green, and the mill-pool. One thing came
home to me very much. When I was born my father had only been settled
at Woodcote for two years; but, as I grew up, it seemed to me we must
have lived there for all eternity; now I see that he was only one in a
long procession of human visitants who have inhabited and loved the
place. Another thing that has gone is the mystery of it all. Then,
every road was a little ribbon of familiar ground stretching out to the
unknown; all the fields and woods which lay between the roads and paths
were wonderful secret places, not to be visited. I find I had no idea
of the lie of the ground, and, what is more remarkable, I don't seem
ever to have seen the views of the distance with which the place now
abounds. I suppose that when one is a small creature, palings and
hedges are lofty obstacles; and I suppose also that the little busy
eyes are always searching the nearer scene for things to FIND, and do
not concern themselves with what is far. The sight of the Lodge itself,
with its long white front among the shrubberies and across the pastures
was almost too much for me; the years seemed all obliterated in a
flash, and I felt as if it was all there unchanged.

I suppose I had a very happy childhood; but I certainly was not in the
least conscious of it at the time. I was a very quiet, busy child, with
all sorts of small secret pursuits of my own to attend to, to which
lessons and social engagements were sad interruptions; but now it seems
to me like a golden, unruffled time full of nothing but pleasure.
Curiously enough, I can't remember anything but the summer days there;
I have no remembrance of rain or cold or winter or leafless
trees--except days of snow when the ponds were frozen and there was the
wil