CHAPTER XV 



SELBORNE 

 (1896) 



FIRST impressions of faces are very much to us : 

 vivid and persistent, even long after they have been 

 judged false they will from time to time return to 

 console or mock us. It is much the same with 

 places, for these, too, an ineradicable instinct will 

 have it, are persons. Few in number are the towns 

 and villages which are dear to us, whose memory 

 is always sweet, like that of one we love. Those 

 that wake no emotion, that are remembered much 

 as we remember the faces of a crowd of shop assis- 

 tants in some emporium we are accustomed to 

 visit, are many. Still more numerous, perhaps, 

 are the places that actually leave a disagreeable 

 impression on the mind. Probably the reason 

 of this is because most places are approached by 

 railroad. The station, which is seen first, and cannot 

 thereafter be dissociated from the town, is invariably 

 the centre of a chaotic collection of ugly objects and 



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