, The Orphanage, Litt

ley Str

31,

ear

e lines allotted to each day are merely sufficient to contain the baldest records of two or three dry facts. But while it is less than a diary, for the keeping of which, if it weren't for you, I'm afraid that I should never have had even the desire, it is entirely valuable as a me

inger even now, "one letter a month you must faithfully prom

be an affront. For the very existence of such visions is the most eloquent testimony to the state of his brotherly affections; and to prevent your instantly taking the next train to town, I can assure you positively that the wing of a merciful providence (the liver wing) took him under its protection at the psychological moment. Thanks to t

ry of his retirement from the judicial bench in contravening all the known rules of health-or, at any rate, the mod

re Esther and Molly met me in the pony-trap. We were to spend the day upon some private links upon the downs above Streatley, a beautiful, invigorating piece of country, and an offshoot, I think, of the Berkshire Ridgeway. From a strictly golfing point of view the course is, I suppose, an easy one. To players like myself, of the occasional order, too delighted at

to (or at any rate unremembered by) your poor plus 1 players at Richmond or St. Andrews. For golf, like her fairer sister cricket, reveals her wild and fickle heart in a truer lovableness at such places as this. Kneeling on immaculate turf, you may salute her queenly finger-tips at

d the view from almost any of these particular eighteen holes is of the most comforting type that I know-a wide, pastoral expanse, silvered here and there with water, and apparently melting upon its horizons into a veiled and de

ege, and to meet them again would be an equal joy. But for the long, all-weathers' tramp, for the comfortable silences of true comr

udies and narrower outlooks there is space enough and to spare, and grandeur too, if they are content to accept it from above rather than below, and to feast upon those heavenly Himalayas and ethereal Pacifics that Nature and a south-west wind will

en the moun

his so st

eing great

free-concea

ir will might

the mount

lerk in Be

e mountains y

o them I co

t they might

said, "can m

hould they c

day I watch

range, ab

as of gol

ite Andes,

yas, crowne

head in B

eassuring. Cottages, manor-houses, Oxford with her dreaming spires, they are all contained within its broad and kindly grasp. Life, human life, trivial, cheery, part and parcel of the ages, has not here been sacrificed to any merely scenic splendour; w

han retire to Streatley. At any rate that is Unc

he finest view in England. Let me see, where are they? Aha, just there. No, t

that as St. Paul's to Ludgate Hill or the cross to Banbury, so are the Wittenham

r, I should think, for the last thirty years consumed less than five glasses of port a night, accompanied, upon normal occasions, by two cigars, and followed, a little later, by a couple of large

s tell me that he eats too much, and drinks too much. And I know that, until his retirement, his life, as a county-court judge, was almost wholly sedentary. And yet here he is at seventy-six, cheerful, vigorous, and very pleasantly self-satisfied-so apparently sound himself, in fact, as to be perhaps just a little bit intolerant of the frailties of others. Personally I am always tempted-a little unfairly, since he is really a trifle exceptional-to wield him as a bludgeon over the misguided pates of fanatical vegetarians. But, on the other h

bridge, where he will now, I think, stay an extra year. Next month Esther and I are snatching a week with old Bob Lynn at Applebrook, when young Calverley will look after my patients, and I shall, I hope, land trout for a little while instead of fees. Molly is well and very s

on it"; and then after contemplating her toes for a moment, "It's no

believed to be incompatible with the confirmed conscience. Next year it would be different. Well, I suppose next year it will; and having preached her a little sermon, which she accep

there is anything in all literature to compare with "Under the Red R

s I told you last month, we are

aits and their shiny cheeks. And that they may cont

ctionate

te