l62 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



grown-up sons, who helped in the shoemaking, spoke but 

 little. The wife, however, a delicate woman and a great 

 invalid, though having to do all the work of the household, 

 spoke English very well, and told us that she preferred it to 

 Welsh, because it was less tiring, the Welsh having so many- 

 gutturals and sounds which require an effort to pronounce 

 correctly. There were also two little girls who went to the 

 village school, and who spoke English beautifully as com- 

 pared with our village children, because they had learnt it 

 from the schoolmaster and their mother. Of course, the 

 whole conversation in the house was in Welsh, and I picked 

 up a few common words and phrases, and could understand 

 others, though, owing to my deficiency in linguistic faculty, I 

 never learnt to speak the language. 



The schoolmaster was an intelligent and well-educated 

 man, and he often called in the evening to have a little con- 

 versation with my brother. But almost the only special fact 

 I remember about him was his passion for cold water. Every 

 morning of his life he walked to the river half a mile off to 

 take a dip before breakfast, and in some frosty days in winter 

 I often saw him returning when he had had to break the 

 ice at the river's edge, 



I looked daily at the Beacons with longing eyes, and on a 

 fine autumn day one of the shoemaker's sons with a friend or 

 two and myself started off to make the ascent. Though less 

 than six miles from us in a straight line, we had to take a 

 rather circuitous course over a range of hills, and then up to 

 the head of a broad valley, which took us within a mile of the 

 summit, making the distance about ten miles. But the day 

 was gloriously fine, the country beautiful, and the view from 

 the top very grand ; while the summit itself was so curious as 

 greatly to surprise me, though I did not fully appreciate 

 its very instructive teaching till some years later, after I 

 had ascended many other mountains, had studied Lyell's 

 " Principles of Geology," and had fully grasped the modern 

 views on sub-aerial denudation. As Brecknockshire is com- 

 paratively little known, and few English tourists make the 



