1 84 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



right, that Yeovil's one nightingale was a rather poor 

 performer. 



From Yeovil to Glastonbury is but a few miles, 

 some fifteen as the crow flies — no distance at all to the 

 person of importance in a motor-car and nothing to 

 detain him by the way. To me — to all whose desire 

 in travelling is not to arrive at their destination — it 

 was as far as I liked to make it. It was in fact a 

 vast green country where I discovered several small 

 ancient towns and more villages than I can remember ; 

 churches in the shadow of whose grey old towers one 

 would like to spend the slow last years of life ; inns too 

 where bread and cheese and beer, if nothing else, can 

 be obtained for refreshment, and the cottage homes of 

 the people one loves best. They are never wildly 

 enthusiastic like the Lancastrians about anything, 

 but they are sweeter, more engaging in temper and 

 manner, whether on account of their softer climate or 

 the larger infusion of Celtic blood in their Anglo- 

 Saxon veins I know not. They are perhaps a perfect 

 amalgam, like their Welsh neighbours on the other 

 side of the Severn with the harsh lines of the Welsh 

 features subdued, and like their Saxon neighbours 

 on the east side without their stolidity. Moreover, 

 they are not without a spark of that spirit which is in 

 the northerner — the romance, the inner bright life 

 which is not wholly concerned with material things. 



