288 AN ECHO OF THE CALL 



made it and store up memories for old age than to 

 sit stodgily in an office all day, lurk about the Law 

 Courts in attendance on aitchless and petti-fogging 

 solicitors, be beggared of all natural emotions, and 

 end with a superfluity of adipose tissue and a bank 

 balance which may or may not be satisfactory to 

 one's heirs. 



And yet to the civilised man there must come 

 sooner or later a desire for civilisation ! It is 

 enough that he has known the sensations of his 

 primitive ancestors, the warm sun and winds 

 " austere and cold " ; rain, cooling as the finger-tips 

 of the beloved, dew and frost. To have seen the 

 blue cloud-navigated sky by day, and the twinkling 

 stars set in the open vault of heaven by night, this 

 is to know life and to come at the real heart of 

 things. Though he be of them and their roots 

 strike deep in his heart, there comes a time when he 

 realises that the long, long ages of progressive 

 civilisation have modified his original nature. 

 He begins to long for the faces of his own kind, to 

 walk again on smooth lawns, to hear the rooks 

 calling above the lilacs and laburnums and the 

 sound of bells amid a Sabbath calm. So he 

 returns. 



Opposite the window at which I write the blue 

 waters of a loch ripple in the evening breeze. 

 Beyond them a grey old birch wood stretches. On 

 the skyline I can see a herd of deer, and just below 

 their graceful forms the knoll from which I shot 

 my first stag. It is a scene of which I never 

 weary, for it is typical of the land I love. 



One journey is over and yet I have but started 



