20 IDLEHURST : 



by gentlemen in London offices, who know of the 

 necessities of the countryside as much as old Tomsett 

 or my gardener Bish does of regulating the traffic in 

 Piccadilly. We, who live the year round in Arcadia, 

 under the snow and through the rain, who have no 

 town houses and London seasons, are almost aliens 

 to the cultured race ; these, when they visit our 

 haunts, treat us as merely the setting of their holiday ; 

 they never seem to apprehend that there may be 

 souls whose whole life is fixed in these picturesque 

 but dull environs. Therefore they eat buns, sitting 

 on our front doorsteps, and saunter or recline in our 

 standing hay-grass, and pitch their cameras and 

 easels in our little thoroughfares ; and perchance, 

 grumble at our unpicturesqueness in the composition. 

 They seem to consider the country as merely a useful 

 adjunct to town life the air a good tonic, the quiet 

 as making for sleep when sleep has become necessary. 

 More and more Arcady becomes a ventilating- 

 system for the West End, a bath to remove the 

 season's grubbiness, a rubbing-post for metropolitan 

 cacoethes. This view is systematised in the plan of 

 sending children from unhealthier quarters of London 

 into our sanatory Weald. Some of the immigrants, 

 chiefly workhouse orphans, are permanently lodged 

 with us ; others, arrive in the summer for a fortnight's 



