142 MY LIFE 



is not quite so pleasant on a cold winter's day to find yourself 

 on the top of a bare hill, not a house within a mile, and 

 the wind and sleet chilling you to the bone. But it is all 

 made up for in the evening; and those who are in the house 

 all day can have no idea of the pleasure there is in sitting 

 down to a good dinner and feeling hungry enough to eat plates, 

 dishes, and all." 



Although he was at least ten years older than myself, 

 Stephen Pugh was my most congenial friend in the office. 

 When I was away surveying, and for a year or two after we 

 had left Kington altogether, he and I used to correspond, and 

 often wrote rhymed letters, which were, of course, very poor 

 doggerel. I have, however, always kept in my memory a 

 portion of one of Pugh's letters, partly perhaps on account of 

 its extravagant flattery of my attempts at verse, though I 

 always knew that I had no poetic faculty whatever. The 

 letter began by describing what each one in the office was 

 doing just as work was over one evening, with characteristic 

 remarks on the idiosyncrasy of each ; it then went on : 



" The board was covered o'er with canvas white, 

 And looked Llyn Glwdy on a moonlight night, 



When to my hand there came what could be better 

 Than your poetic, wise, and humorous letter. 

 Like that good angel mentioned by Saint John 

 Who ope'd seven seals, I quickly opened one, 

 And glancing o'er the page found to my joy 

 Spontaneous poetry without alloy. 

 The youth, cried I, who built this lofty rhyme 

 Will be remembered to the end of time, 

 And countless generations yet unborn 

 Will read his verse upon a summer's morn, 

 And think of him in that peculiar way 

 We think of Byron in the present day," etc. 



Some time during the winter I went alone to correct an 

 old map of the parish of New Radnor. This required no 

 regular surveying, but only the insertion of any new roads, 

 buildings, or divisions of fields, and taking out any that had 

 been cleared away. As these changes are not numerous and 



