SOMETHING PRETTY IN A GLASS CASE 271 



glass eyes, is the cause of my hatred of the feathered 

 ornament in a glass case. At all events I have had 

 one experience, to be related here, which has almost 

 made me believe that the idea of a sort of post- 

 mortem life in the stuffed bird is not wholly fanciful. 

 I will call it : 



A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD (AND STUFFED) 



Ever since I came the wind has been blowing a 

 gale on this furthermost, lonely, melancholy coast, 

 as if I had got not only to the Land's End, but to 

 the end of the world itself, to the confines of Old 

 Chaos his kingdom, a region where the elements are in 

 everlasting conflict. Two or three times during the 

 afternoon I have resolutely put on my cap and water- 

 proof and gone out to face it, only to be quickly 

 driven in again by the bitter furious blast. Yet it 

 was almost as bad indoors to have to sit and listen 

 by the hour to its ravings. From time to time I 

 get up and look through the window-pane at the few 

 cold grey naked cottages and empty bleak fields, 

 divided by naked grey stone fences, and, beyond the 

 fields, the foam-flecked, colder, greyer, more desolate 

 ocean. Would it be better, I wonder, to fight my 

 way down to those wave-loosened masses of granite 



