wn and his friends' experiences, could write a
charmingly sad and pretty book on the subject.

The really happy returns of this kind must be exceedingly rare. I am
almost surprised to think that I am able to recall as many as two, but
they hardly count, as in both instances the departure or exile from home
happens at so early a time of life that no recollections of the people
survived--nothing, in fact, but a vague mental picture of the place.
One was of a business man I knew in London, who lost his early home in a
village in the Midlands, as a boy of eight or nine years of age, through
the sale of the place by his father, who had become impoverished. The
boy was trained to business in London, and when a middle-aged man,
wishing to retire and spend the rest of his life in the country, he
revisited his native village for the first time, and discovered to his
joy that he could buy back the old home. He was, when I last saw him,
very happy in its possession.

The other case I will relate more fully, as it is a very curious one,
and came to my knowledge in a singular way.

At a small station near Eastleigh a man wearing a highly pleased
expression on his face entered the smoking-carriage in which I was
travelling to London. Putting his bag on the rack, he pulled out his
pipe and threw himself back in his seat with a satisfied air; then,
looking at me and catching my eye, he at once started talking. I had my
newspaper, but seeing him in that overflowing mood I responded readily
enough, for I was curious to know why he appeared so happy and who and
what he was. Not a tradesman nor a bagman, and not a farmer, though he
looked like an open-air man; nor could I form a guess from his speech
and manner as to his native place. A robust man of thirty-eight or
forty, with blue eyes and a Saxon face, he looked a thorough Englishman,
and yet he struck me as most un-English in his lively, almost eager
manner, his freedom with a stranger, and something, too, in his speech.
From time to time his face lighted up, when, looking to the window, his
eyes rested on some pretty scene--a glimpse of stately old elm trees in
a field where cattle were grazing, of the vivid green valley of a chalk
stream, the paler hills beyond, the grey church tower or spire of some
tree-hidden village. When he discovered that these hills and streams and
rustic villages had as great a charm for me as for himself, that I knew
and loved the two or three places he na