WHITE DUCK 109 



If I am asked how I escaped from these inconvenient, 

 not to say degrading, associations, the only answer 

 would be that associations of another kind were prob- 

 ably formed at some early period. Perhaps when 

 my infant eyes began to look at the world, when I 

 had no stock of ideas, no prepossessions at all, except 

 with regard to milk, I saw a white duck and was de- 

 lighted at it. In any case the feeling for its beauty goes 

 far back. I remember some years ago when strolling 

 by the Itchen I stood to admire a white duck floating 

 on the clear current where it is broad and shallow 

 and where the flowering wild musk was abundant. 

 The rich moist green of the plant made the white 

 plumage seem whiter, and the flowers and the duck's 

 beak were both a very beautiful yellow. " If," thought 

 I, " the white duck were as rare in England as the 

 white swallow, or even the white blackbird, half the 

 inhabitants of Winchester would turn out and walk 

 to this spot to see and admire so lovely a thing." 



Many and many a time have I stopped in my walk 

 or ride to admire such a sight, but the white ducks 

 seen to-day, floating, sun-flushed, on a blue pool in 

 a green field, had a higher loveliness, a touch of the 

 extra-natural, and served to recall an old tradition 

 of a primitive people concerning the country of the 

 sky, where the dead inhabit, and all trees and flowers 

 abound as on earth, and all animals and birds, including 

 ducks, but more beautiful than here below. Every 

 one may know that the country is there because of the 

 blueness ; for the air, the void, has no colour, but all 



