26 MY LIFE 



Deficiency in the first two caused me to take little notice 

 of the characteristic form and features of the separate in- 

 dividualities which were most familiar to me, and from that 

 very cause attracted less close attention; while the greater 

 activity of the latter group gave interest and attractiveness to 

 the ever-changing combinations in outdoor scenery, while the 

 varied opportunities for the exercise of the physical activities, 

 and the delight in the endless variety of nature, which are so 

 strong in early childhood, impressed these outdoor scenes and 

 interests upon my memory. And throughout life the same 

 limitations of observation and memory have been manifest. 

 In a new locality it takes me a considerable time before I learn 

 to recognize my various new acquaintances, individually; and, 

 looking back on the varied scenes amid which I have lived at 

 home and abroad, while numerous objects, localities, and events 

 are recalled with some distinctness, the people I met, or, with 

 few exceptions, those with whom I became fairly well ac- 

 quainted, seem but blurred and indistinct images. 



In the year 1883, when, for the first time since my childhood, 

 I revisited, with my wife and two children, the scenes of my 

 infancy, I obtained a striking proof of the accuracy of my 

 memory of those scenes and objects. Although the town of 

 Usk had grown considerably on the north side, towards the 

 railway, yet, to my surprise and delight, I found that no 

 change whatever had occurred on our side of the river, where, 

 between the bridge and Llanbadock, not a new house had been 

 built, and our cottage and garden, the path up to the front 

 door, and the steep, woody bank behind it, remained exactly 

 as pictured in my memory. Even the quarry appeared to have 

 been very little enlarged, and the great flat stones were still in 

 the river, exactly as when I stood upon them, with my brother 

 and sisters, sixty years before. The one change I noted here 

 was that the well-remembered stone stile into the village 

 churchyard had been replaced by a wooden one. We also 

 visited the ruined castle, ascended the winding stair, and 

 walked around the top wall, and everything seemed to me 

 exactly as I knew it of old, and neither smaller nor larger than 

 my memory had so long pictured it. The view of the Aber- 



