BACK TO THE WEST COUNTRY 179 



he has never wlioUy forgotten or ceased to love them, 

 and now how dehghtfiil to find and drop in by surprise 

 on them, to take pot kick as in the old days, to talk of 

 those same dear old days and the old home, of every 

 person in it from the sciuire to the village idiot. 



It is hardly necessary to add that these lost friends 

 one goes about to recover are not persons of importance 

 who keep a motor-car, but simple people who live and 

 for long generations have lived the simple life, who are 

 on the soil with some of tlie soil on tiicni, who sec few 

 visitors from a distance — from the great world, and 

 whose glad welcome is one of the sweetest things in life. 



This then was motive the first, and when I discovered 

 my lost friends not far from the town I found them 

 unchanged, still in the old mind, the feeling that I was 

 one of them, of their very kin, and though rarely seen 

 and perhaps regarded as the vagabond of the family, 

 not less well loved on that account. 



My second object was to look at Montacute House 

 and park which had been missed on previous visits. 

 The park held me for several hours, for it is like a 

 wilderness or a place in a dispeopled land that was once 

 a park, but I found no feathered rarity there or any- 

 where in the country round. 



As to the famous Montacute house, it is built of Ham 

 Hill stone — the one building stone I cannot abide. By 

 others it is greatly admired, and it is perhaps worth 

 explaining why I, loving colour as I do, yellows as 

 much as any, have this feeling about our famous yellow 

 stone. It is, I take it. an associate feeling due to the 



