OUTSIDE LONDON, 245 



hedge in its fulness o^' beauty, just simply as it 

 stands in the mellow autumn light, it would win 

 approval of the best people, and that ultimately, a 

 succession of such work would pay. 



The clover was dying down, and the plough would 

 soon be among it — the earth was visible in patches. 

 Out in one of these bare patches there was a young 

 mouse, so chilled by the past night that his dull 

 senses did not appear conscious of my presence. He 

 had crept out on the bare earth evidently to feel the 

 warmth of the sun, almost the last hour he would 

 enjoy. He looked about for food, but found none; 

 his short span of life was drawing to a close ; even 

 when at last he saw me, he could only run a few 

 inches under cover of a dead clover-plant. Thousands 

 upon thousands of mice perish like this as the winter 

 draws on, born too late in the year to grow strong 

 enough or clever enough to*prepare a store. Other 

 kinds of mice perish like leaves at the first blast 

 of cold air. Though but a mouse, to me it was very 

 wretched to see the chilled creature, so benumbed 

 as to have almost lost its sense of danger. There is 

 something so ghastly in birth that immediately leads 

 to death; a sentient creature born only to wither. 

 The earth offered it no help, nor the declining sun ; 

 all things organized seem to depend so much on cir- 

 cumstances. Nothing but pity can be felt for thou- 

 sands upon thousands of such organisms. But thus, 

 too, many a miserable human being has perished in 

 the great Metropolis, dying, chilled and benumbed, of 

 starvation, and finding the hearts of fellow-creatures 

 as bare and cold as the earth of the clover-field. 



