The Toy River 



house was transferred mentally to the corner of the 

 peat-garden opposite the bridge. . . . There was 

 the needed attraction, there was the corner-stone 

 of the scheme, the crown of the achievement. 

 Everything was to hand : logs, wood, wistaria, 

 laburnum, labour. . . . 



It all sounds delightfully easy and magical, and 

 as though it was done with sleeves turned back, so 

 that there could be absolutely no deception. The 

 idea came, as ideas do— in spite of the Positivists 

 and Materialists and Comtists— rather like a con- 

 juring trick, in which the Great Conjurer, who 

 juggles with our brains and his old, old stock of 

 ideas, while he baffles us with his ironic patter, 

 really does demonstrate that the quickness of the 

 hand deceives the eye. But when the trick was 

 done, and I was left with a potential bridge, a 

 potential house, and a potential river, there 

 remained the conflict that follows on the advent 

 of an idea— the conflict with Things as they Were. 

 In this instance the arch-fiend was not deep-rooted 

 prejudice, but trailing or rather tuberous grass, 

 which is known as couch, quoitch, or witch-grass. 

 . . . It is of all weeds the wickedest. Leave but 

 a shred of it in the ground, and it will twist, and 

 wriggle, and thrust its way with the most vulgar 

 pertinacity into the choicest beds. It disguises 



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