308 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



called Thames Valley down at the back of 

 Kempton Park, and pretty nearly on to Staines. 

 It would have seemed as strange to him, ac- 

 customed to small enclosures with plenty of 

 hedge to them, to come on widely spreading, 

 rolling prairie laid out in parcels (but not divided 

 by boundaries) I am afraid to say how large — 

 very nearly a square mile sometimes. There is 

 an expression which fits for describing the feelings 

 of one taken from wide open plains or downs to 

 land cut up into small holdings, and I recollect 

 its being used by a traveller on the Midland 

 Railway route from Liverpool to London. He 

 had just come across the American Continent, 

 and you couldn't wonder at his calling ours '*a 

 pocket-handkerchief country." 



Of course it was hot getting about even early 

 a-mornings ; but then I have a theory that if 

 only you are hot enough no amount of sun will 

 hurt you. That may be wrong or right, as may 

 another of mine, acting up to which I drink just 

 as much as ever I feel inclined to while in a 

 profuse perspiration. As soon as you are old 

 enough to be told anything, you are instructed 

 that you must on no account drink when you are 

 hot. So do they warn you not to go into cold 

 water while you are perspiring. I don't say that 

 you are to get red-hot, then drink what you will 

 and stand about to grow cool, and maybe take a 

 chill. But I do say that if you want to do 

 yourself real good by sweating through physical 

 exercise, a nice pull at something wet is calculated 

 to forward your purpose all round. Being of that 

 way of thinking, and, I may add, modelled by 

 Nature from a sort of clay which readily absorbs 

 moisture, I do find the Wiltshire downs somewhat 



