VI 



THE BLUEBELL WOOD AND THE CALM 

 STONE DOG 



MAN is an autobiographical animal, he speaks only 

 from his thimbleful of human experience, and the I, I, I, 

 of his talk drops out like an insistent drip of water. 

 Even the knowledge we gain from books has to be 

 grafted on to the knowledge we have of life before it 

 bears fruit in our minds. Like patient clerks we are 

 always adding up the columns of facts, fancies, and 

 ideas, and arriving at the very tiny total at the end 

 of the day. 



In order to give themselves scope when they wish 

 to soliloquise, many authors address their conversa- 

 tion to a cat, a grandfather clock, a dog, a picture on 

 the wall, or what-not. Cats, I think, have the pre- 

 ference. I have often wondered what Crome, the 

 painter, said to his cat when he pulled hairs out of her 

 to make paint-brushes ; or what Doctor Johnson said 

 to his cat Hodge, about Boswell. Having explained 

 this much, I may easily be forgiven for repeating the 

 conversation I had with a Stone Dog who sat on his 

 haunches outside the door of a woodman's cottage. 



The cottage stood on the edge of a wood, and was, 

 as I shall point out, a remnant of departed glory, of 

 which the dog was the most pertinent reminder. 



A cottage on the borders of a wood is in itself one of 

 the most valuable pictures for a romance. A wood- 



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