REDISCOVERED DELIGHTS 



And we are not to wonder that the echo from a world irre- 

 mediably lost should have affected the morose, self-centred 

 reprobate in an uncontrollable manner. I venture to think 

 that, with the least sentimental of us, the sudden 

 rediscovery, of some long forgotten youthful impression 

 can hardly fail to evoke, however transiently, a certain 

 dreamy emotion : half pleasure, half melancholy. 

 Now, in the case of the Master of the Houseand he 

 is thankful to realize itearly memories of delight in 

 flowers and such things are associated, not with the 

 troublous times of young manhood's protean heart affairs, 

 not with the Sturm und Drang days of the dawning 

 moustache, but rather with the quaintly fanciful inner life 

 of boyhood. They come back borne upon the colours 

 and odours of such early friends as Lilac and Acacia/ 

 common Wallflower Giroflee, our Gillyflower/ 

 wild Violet and Primrose^a//rce "Coucou" ; 

 Hollyhock or rather Rose-tremiere ; Lilyof-the-^ 

 Valley/ Muguet. ... It is the old French ^ 

 name that most readily slips from my pen. 

 Owing perhaps to a childhood spent almost 

 wholly in France, and to the completeness of the 

 break that necessarily ensued when the English 

 born but French nurtured boy was at last allowed 

 back to his own and proper land, all these memories 

 seem to belong to a world utterly apart to some- 

 thing rather fantastic, unconnected with later life 

 and interests. Moreover, being of childhood and 

 of a time when the world seemed uniformly kind, \,. 

 they retain an allurement all their own. One \ I 

 pleasant recollection of those far-off days does not * % 



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