r careers by building. It was not merely my uncle. Sooner
or later they all seem to bring their luck to the test of realisation,
try to make their fluid opulence coagulate out as bricks and mortar,
bring moonshine into relations with a weekly wages-sheet. Then the whole
fabric of confidence and imagination totters--and down they come....

When I think of that despoiled hillside, that colossal litter of bricks
and mortar, and crude roads and paths, the scaffolding and sheds, the
general quality of unforeseeing outrage upon the peace of nature, I
am reminded of a chat I had with the vicar one bleak day after he had
witnessed a glide. He talked to me of aeronautics as I stood in jersey
and shorts beside my machine, fresh from alighting, and his cadaverous
face failed to conceal a peculiar desolation that possessed him.

"Almost you convince me," he said, coming up to me, "against my will....
A marvellous invention! But it will take you a long time, sir, before
you can emulate that perfect mechanism--the wing of a bird."

He looked at my sheds.

"You've changed the look of this valley, too," he said.

"Temporary defilements," I remarked, guessing what was in his mind.

"Of course. Things come and go. Things come and go. But--H'm. I've
just been up over the hill to look at Mr. Edward Ponderevo's new house.
That--that is something more permanent. A magnificent place!--in many
ways. Imposing. I've never somehow brought myself to go that way before.
Things are greatly advanced.... We find--the great number of strangers
introduced into the villages about here by these operations, working-men
chiefly, a little embarrassing. It put us out. They bring a new
spirit into the place; betting--ideas--all sorts of queer notions.
Our publicans like it, of course. And they come and sleep in one's
outhouses--and make the place a little unsafe at nights. The other
morning I couldn't sleep--a slight dyspepsia--and I looked out of
the window. I was amazed to see people going by on bicycles. A silent
procession. I counted ninety-seven--in the dawn. All going up to the new
road for Crest Hill. Remarkable I thought it. And so I've been up to see
what they were doing."

"They would have been more than remarkable thirty years ago," I said.

"Yes, indeed. Things change. We think nothing of it now at
all--comparatively. And that big house--"

He raised his eyebrows. "Really stupendous! Stupendous.

"All the hillside--the old turf--cut to ri