314 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



upon their like with quite the same feeling as of yore. 

 We have learnt that the over- vaunted town is only 

 the country at second hand, a detritus for every speck 

 of gold in which there is a vein somewhere in the 

 upland of its origin. We want life at first hand, 

 not merely the life of a cottage among green fields, 

 but of a tent pitched far from human habitations. 



In the last aspiration the country youth joins his 

 town brother. Every country boy, worth his salt, 

 has at some time or other, with greater or less deter- 

 mination and success, run away from home and 

 attempted a habitation in the wilderness. In America 

 it is more done, because the contrast between wild 

 and tame is sharper. There are such vast areas of 

 no-man's land, where we can play quite effectively at 

 savage life streams as unfished as Robinson Crusoe's 

 lagoon, eggs that really fill an egg-cup, wild fruits 

 that will make a sustaining meal. Yet, with all these 

 advantages, the American writer has not produced a 

 boy's book so fascinating as Richard Jefferies's 

 " Bevis." Bevis and Mark had only a Wiltshire pond, 

 which may have been a brick-pit, and can scarcely 

 have been a lake, with an island in the middle on 

 which to camp, but the author, drawing, doubtless, on 

 his own memory, filled the book with a series of 

 adventures and enterprises that thrill each juvenile 

 reader, and stir in him a determination to go and do 

 likewise at the earliest opportunity. 



His enthusiasm stimulated by the new school cult 

 of nature study, his activities corked down by the 

 paucity of the field in which he can ordinarily exercise 

 it, the town lad expands with energy and keenness 

 when at last he gets to the country. We knew a 



