JANUARY 



A Midland Belfry Three Birds Favourite Foods The 

 Making of Rime The Persuasion of Frost To Eat or to 

 Sleep Winter Larders The New Farm Ice 



I. 



2 HE most English scene I know lies round about 

 *a high, square tower, built on a clay hill in the 

 ^Midlands. The peal of bells has just been re 

 stored, and when at Christmas they ring out above the 

 encircling trees they carry an inordinate distance. You 

 may hear the after- vibration of the greatest of the four 

 bells up in the fox covert, while school-children gather 

 Christmas decorations ; and more than ever the rides 

 across it become in our eyes the aisles or cloisters of a 

 sanctuary, as if the wood, too, were a church, for the 

 hunt is clean forgotten. The tree mosses grow in quan 

 tity at the foot of the trees, and make a beautiful lining 

 for the windows of the church. If decoration is toward, 

 especially at Easter, when bunches of primroses divide 

 the moss edging along the window-sills, the green and 

 yellow freshness preaches the resurgent year. In many 

 years primroses could be picked for Christmas, but few 

 and pale and short in the stalk. 



It is a liberal education in England to climb the narrow, 

 spiral staircase up to the rooms above, first a square space 

 empty but for the ropes of the bells, and then up among 

 the immense oak beams from which the bells hang, and 

 at last up a rather precarious ladder to the very top of the 

 tower. What a gracious and a spacious view, though 



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