THE HAPPY VILLAGE 



SOST countrymen who have watched, however 

 |carelessly, the changing seasons and delicate 

 igradations that belong to our northern island are 

 conscious throughout their life and wherever in the world 

 they may be, that the village has remained the background 

 of their memories the fount and stimulus of all the class 

 of thoughts that spring from the senses. Everything 

 about their village home consents to a mutual relation. 

 In the village that I know and remember best: the hedge 

 rows and spinneys and rookery trees, the brook and fields, 

 the haystacks and beehives, are as much an integral part 

 of the village as Mrs. Jarvis s cottage &quot; up-the-garden,&quot; 

 and the blacksmith s shop, the church, school and rec 

 tory. The physical extremes of this village are to the 

 east a low whitewashed farmhouse, with a low white 

 railing and little wicket, and to the west another farm 

 house, which was once an Elizabethan manor, as the 

 round red-brick chimneys or chimbleys and the deep 

 ingle-nook announce. A fox s earth remained year after 

 year close up against the whitewashed house you had 

 only to cross the narrow planked bridge over the brook 

 to see its broad mouth. The churchyard, a hundred 

 yards farther on, was a great haunt of birds, from the 

 gold-crest that nested in the yew trees to the jackdaws 

 that colonised the tower and indeed the chancel roof. 

 Wild honey bees a large and continuous colony hived 

 in the hollow elm just half-way between the Rectory 

 orchard and the village shop. You became a freeman of 



A X T.V.E. 



