A GARDEN DIARY 169 
APRIL 17, 1900 
hea west wind this morning had a rolling 
sonorousness which sent my thoughts flying, 
swift as light, across all the little intervening 
ridges, over the plains, over the villages, across 
endless housetops, through multitudinous suburbs, 
over the big, ugly, stately town; out again, 
over fresh sweeps of more or less encumbered 
green fields, hedgerows, lanes, roads; past 
meadows and orchards, redolent of centuries 
of care; past brickfields and coalfields, redolent 
only of defiling greed; over a fretful space of 
sea; across more fields, less enclosed, less 
cultivated, but certainly not less green. On 
and on breathlessly, until I stood—free of all 
encumbrances, free of any thought of luggage, 
conveyance, or the need of a roof to shelter 
under—upon a very familiar spot, close to the 
tumbling breast of the Atlantic. 
The clearness, or lack of clearness, with which 
certain familiar spots rise before the eye is one 
of the minor mysteries of life; mysteries which 
