l simplicity. I am told
it is possible to love him. I know a kindly Frenchwoman who takes her
pig for an airing on the sands of St. Michel-en-Greve every summer
afternoon. Knitting, she walks along, and calls gaily and endearingly
to the delighted creature; he follows at a word, gambolling with
flapping ears over the ribs of sand, pasturing on shrimps and seaweed
while he enjoys the salt air.

Clearly, then, the pig is our good little brother, and we have no
right to be disgusted at him. Clearly our own feet are planted in the
clay. Clearly the same Voice once called to our ears while yet
unformed. Clearly we, too, have arisen from that fearful bed, and the
slime of it clings to us still. Cleanse ourselves as we may, and
repenting, renew the whiteness of our garments, we and the nations are
for ever slipping back into the native element. What a fearful command
the "Be ye perfect" to earth-born creatures, but half-emerged, the
star upon their foreheads bespattered and dimmed! But let us (even
those of us who have courage to know the worst of man) take heart. In
the terror of our origin, in the struggle to stand upon our feet, to
cleanse ourselves, and cast an eye heavenward, our glory is come by.
The darker our naissance, the greater the terrors that have brooded
round that strife, the more august and puissant shines the angel in
man.

_Grace Rhys._

THE PILGRIMS' WAY

In the morning a storm comes up on bellying blue clouds above the pale
levels of young corn and round-topped trees black as night but gold at
their crests. The solid rain does away with all the hills, and shows
only the solitary thorns at the edge of an oak wood, or a row of
beeches above a hazel hedgerow and, beneath that, stars of stitchwort
in the drenched grass. But a little while and the sky is emptied and
in its infant blue there are white clouds with silver gloom in their
folds; and the light falls upon round hills, yew and beech thick upon
their humps, the coombes scalloped in their sides tenanted by oaks
beneath. By a grassy chalk pit and clustering black yew, white beam
and rampant clematis, is the Pilgrims' Way. Once more the sky empties
heavy and dark rain upon the bright trees so that they pant and quiver
while they take it joyfully into their deep hearts. Before the eye has
done with watching the dance and glitter of rain and the sway of
branches, the blue is again clear and like a meadow sprinkled over
with blossoming cherr