CHISWIGK HOUSE 



afternoons, in summer-time, regularly at five o'clock, there was a 

 service of some sort or other in the grounds. We always supposed 

 that there was a graveyard there ; and, during many years, we 

 children never failed to rush upstairs the instant we caught the 

 strain of a certain processional hymn, to watch from our top windows 

 the glint of lighted candles among the trees, and catch glimpses 

 of veiled figures, white and black, and slowly-moving banners. 

 I do not know the music to which the nuns walked, but I remember 

 it well, and if I could hear that same tuneful hymn again, in any 

 place, and in any circumstances, it would bring the whole scene 

 back to me. So strong are the impressions of childhood, and so 

 powerful the association of ideas and memory with music ! 



The nuns were good neighbours : One day one of my brothers, 

 to our great consternation, fell over the wall on to a bed of soft 

 cabbages. They picked him up, treated him kindly, and sent 

 him home by the road ; and the next morning they came to the 

 base of the wall and handed up, on a long stick, a beautiful moth 

 for " the little boy who had fallen over." 



Our garden was much more ancient than the house, having 

 once formed part of the demesne of a large mansion, said to have 

 been long ago destroyed by fire. It abounded in fruit ; old goose- 

 berry bushes, raspberries, and currants, black, white, and red. 

 There was one spot near the strawberry-beds where the rosy stalks 

 of the rhubarb held up their giant leaves like plates, in order, as 

 it were, to catch, or break the fall of, the yellow apricots that 

 dropped from a tree above them, quite beyond our reach. Such 

 windfalls were windfalls indeed ! 



The garden was rich in fruit-trees of various kinds, particularly 

 in apple-trees, all twisted and knotted, and gnarled with age ; 

 but still yielding fruit plentifully. The flavour of some of these 

 apples, no Newtown Pippin, or Blenheim Orange of the present 

 day, can approach. 



April, in our garden, was a reminder of a snowy January ; only 

 the snow did not completely cover the grass, and on the trees it 

 was dashed here and there with rose and pink. The old Ribstone 

 Pippin that faced the drawing-room windows was covered with 

 bloom, and was in itself the very incarnation of the spirit of Spring. 



On the right-hand corner of the lawn a Russet stood sentinel 

 over the flower-beds. Near it a plum tree, past bearing fruit, wept 



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