CLEAR WATERS 



brutal way they would have it. There are lots of 

 people who are always shouting for sunshine, every 

 day and all the time, and wishing they were in Italy, 

 or California, or Mexico, or some other parched-up 

 country with a * superb climate.' I worshipped at 

 the shrine of the sun-god, not over willingly on his 

 account, for a good many years, and when we did get 

 a dull day, how glorious and stimulating it was ! 

 Even the sun-worshippers gave thanks. Even 191 1 

 in Old England, a mere trifle of course in the matter 

 of heat, gave pause to the devotion of some. 



Dysynni memories are much associated with such 

 grey days, for the good reason that we had a great 

 many of them, and I recall them with infinite tender- 

 ness. If the lower river and its fringe of swaying reeds 

 was a bit sombre, rolling through level meadows to 

 the wide open level mouth of the valley against which 

 the grey seas tumbled, what glories of hill, mountain, 

 and woodland lay aU about it ! The wild, lofty ridge 

 that shut us out from the Dovey valley, furrowed 

 with pellucid streams which spouted down from their 

 high bogs through bosky glens of oak and fern ; the 

 Craig-a-deryn too (' Bird, rock'), which shot up for 

 six hundred feet sheer in the midst of the narrowing 

 valley, while to its rocky crown the sea-fowl travelled 

 over our heads in great companies every evening from 

 the coast. And ever in front of us, at the far head of 

 the vale, beyond the folding foot-hiUs, the great pile 

 of Cader lifted itself against the sky. All these things 

 were assuredly no less effective and inspiring when 

 storms brooded over them and they opened and shut in 

 whirling clouds ; and when, peradventure, the morn- 

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