Memories 185 



teristic, leaving the remainder all blurred and defaced. 

 She paints the cast in a man's eye, or a limp in his 

 gait, his favourite dress or his spectacles ; and the re- 

 mainder is vague or non-existent. Her atelier is hung 

 round with hundreds of unfinished drawings, although 

 one or two are complete to the last detail ; could we 

 learn of any man precisely how much of the humanity 

 about him has been gathered and remembered, the 

 knowledge would be worth many chapters of bio- 

 graphy. 



Of one's lifetime there are slices that might as well 

 never have been lived. ' Idle time ran gadding by,' 

 and the Hours, each with a smile or a sigh, tripped 

 past and were gone irrecoverably ; they flitted over 

 from the dark army of them before to the equally dark 

 army behind, and left no sign to distinguish them from 

 the host wherewith they mingled. But others almost 

 yield us a taste of eternity ; for having come they 

 abide with us for ever. Memory of the many April 

 days I have known has taken one and preserved every 

 detail of its sunny scene big white-edged clouds you 

 would almost think at anchor, the fleecy columns of 

 smoke curling slowly up from red-tiled farmhouses, 

 the barn fowls' distant peaceful crowing, bare land 

 where the horses were at plough and came tramping, 

 champing up to the half-sprouted hedge, along the roots 

 of which tender young grass mingled with the withered 

 stalks of last year, and the lark sang high above the 

 ploughshare, while his fieldmates were calling and 



