Chelsea 1 1 



window of the haunted attic from which Jim Burton, 

 the blacksmith's son, could look down into the Rectory 

 garden, and see the long walk of pollard limes, the 

 giant acacias, and a little glimpse of lawn between 

 the boughs.' He has told us also in that book of the 

 misery, the squalor, and the vice v/hich existed in the 

 many dirty lanes and poverty-stricken courts and 

 alleys by which that peaceful old walled garden was 

 encompassed. The rector and his wife laboured 

 most steadfastly to bring light into these dark places, 

 giving away considerable sums of money in charity, 

 establishing clubs and ragged schools, and going 

 among the most abominable scenes of filth, wretched- 

 ness, and indecency, to visit the poor and read the 

 Bible to them. They were busy from morning till 

 night, the house full of district visitors and parish 

 councillors. But the rector's sons ? There they 

 were — ' dreamers dreaming greatly in the man-stifled 

 town' ; and in the Rectory library they found good 

 food for dreamers — books which roused within them 

 the spirit of adventure, and held their minds in thrall 

 with the glamour of strange lands. There, at their 

 leisure, they could pore over venerable treatises on 

 natural history, embellished with fantastical illustra- 

 tions dating from that happy age when the artistic 

 imagination wandered free in a paradise that was 

 untainted by the presence of that serpent Scientific 

 accuracy : records relating to the West Indian 

 islands and the golden Spanish Main ; books that 

 had been collected by their mother's ancestors, who 



