rhot>\i;rapli by Pictorial Agency. 



"A LITTLE WOOD WITH A WINDING PATH RUNNING THROUGH." 



Battersea Park. 



NATURE "IN TOWN" 



IDYLLIC BATTERSEA 



By ARTHUR SCAMMELL 



A FREQUENTLY recurring dream It may be a length of low blackthorn 



visits the sleeping — not to say the hedge with a few blossoms on the bare 



more or less waking — hours of pro- twigs, and a field of springing wheat 



bably many Londoners, especially of those beyond ; a corner of a rickyard with dusty 



who are country bred. They dream that, straw littered about, a fragmentary hay- 



walking the familiar streets, they turn a 

 hitherto unknown corner, or find a gap 

 where no gap should be, in a line of build- 

 ings, and there, in the heart of the City, 

 they see a bit of real country — not a 

 spacious, ornamental scene, but just a 

 corner of still life, a homely matter such 

 as would be passed by a hundred times in 

 the country without admiration or regard. 



stack — the hay-knife left in a half-cut 

 section — and a barn door standing ajar ; 

 or a neglected orchard with crooked and 

 leaning trees, tall cow parsley minghng 

 with tlie drooping branches — a place 

 possessed by shadows. 



Through the following day the Londoner 

 will be haimted by a sense of his dream, 

 and will cast half -expectant glances down 



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