CLEAR WATERS 



its limited accommodation as to a hill-station for the 

 moorland air. For among the indigenous folk of 

 South Devon, Brent, it should be said, ranks as a highly- 

 bracing sanatorium. I would not give a fig myself 

 for the air of southern Dartmoor. The memory of 

 four summer months spent there in the late nineties 

 is always, despite climatic drawbacks, a dehghtful one. 

 But time has more than half obscured the awful and 

 persistent sense of lethargy, to use a quite inadequate 

 term, that possessed me all day long and in all weathers 

 in that, to me, debilitating atmosphere. I had 

 scarcely known till then what it meant to be tired in 

 any unpleasant sense from mere physical effort, and to 

 fish the Avon thoroughly every scrap of vitality you 

 possess is required, particularly if the stream is fairly 

 full. Nothing but the sternest sense of duty, or rather 

 an absolute refusal to confess myself a weakling, sup- 

 ported me through the long days of labouring up that 

 rugged river bed beneath the trees. The nights up at 

 Brent brought no relief, and I used to get up in the 

 morning feeling as if I had never been to bed. I got 

 quite alarmed after a time and felt convinced that old 

 age, like a thief in the night, had struck me prematurely, 

 or that I was on the verge of some mysterious nervous 

 collapse, so unnatural did all this seem to an open-air 

 life on the slopes of Dartmoor ! A necessary run up 

 to London provided the opportunity, and I surrep- 

 titiously sought the opinion of Sir Omicron Pie on 

 my sad case. I have often laughed over that inter- 

 view, and it is worth recalling : — 



* Well, I can't find anything the matter with you,' 

 said the great man, * but where have you been staying ? ' 

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