244 THE LAND'S END 



open a new prospect to his mind, and to give him a 

 new and absorbing interest in life. His work is the 

 most important thing in the world : he ponders on it, 

 and on the money it brings him ; on the tremendous 

 question of food and clothing and shelter ; and by 

 and by on love and marriage and children to follow ; 

 on the struggle to live and the great difference that 

 a shilling or two more or less per week will be to 

 him. One effect of all this is to make the interests 

 and occupations of his early years appear trivial ; 

 his days with wild nature were all idle and useless 

 and the knowledge of animal life he acquired of as 

 little consequence as that of the old boyish games. 

 The country youth would perhaps be astonished if 

 he could be conscious of the change going on in him, 

 or if some one were to tell him that the mental 

 images of things seen and heard in nature will soon 

 grow dim and eventually fade out of his mind. It 

 is really surprising to find how far this dimming and 

 obliterating process will go ; for here (let us say) is a 

 man whose whole life is passed amidst the same rural 

 scenes, who has seen and heard the same bird forms 

 and sounds from infancy, who knew them all as inti- 

 mately as he knew his mother's face and voice in his 

 early years, and yet he has ceased to know them ! 

 All because he has not renewed or refreshed the early 

 images ; because his mind has been occupied with 

 other things exclusively, and his faculty of observation, 

 with regard to nature at all events, has practically 

 ceased to exist. 



An amusing instance of this state of mind occurs 



