only been hidden away in
London, amid its ceaseless noise, its strange faces, its monotonous
recurrence of duties. Let us say, in any case, that you are returning
home for a space to the quiet of Northern Cornwall.

You look out of the high window of a Plymouth hotel early in the
morning. There is a promise of a beautiful autumn day--a ring of pink
mist lies around the horizon; overhead the sky is clear and blue; the
white sickle of the moon still lingers visible. The new warmth of the
day begins to melt the hoarfrost in the meadows, and you know that out
beyond the town the sun is shining brilliantly on the wet grass, with
the brown cattle gleaming red in the light.

You leave the great world behind, with all its bustle, crowds and
express engines, when you get into the quiet little train that takes you
leisurely up to Launceston, through woods, by the sides of rivers, over
great valleys. There is a sense of repose about this railway journey.
The train stops at any number of small stations--apparently to let the
guard have a chat with the station-master--and then jogs on in a quiet,
contented fashion. And on such an autumn day as this, that is a
beautiful, still, rich-colored and English-looking country through which
it passes. Here is a deep valley, all glittering with the dew and the
sunlight. Down in the hollow a farmyard is half hidden behind the
yellowing elms; a boy is driving a flock of white geese along the
twisting road; the hedges are red with the withering briers. Up here,
along the hillsides, the woods of scrub-oak are glowing with every
imaginable hue of gold, crimson and bronze, except where a few dark firs
appear, or where a tuft of broom, pure and bright in its green, stands
out among the faded brackens. The gorse is profusely in bloom: it always
is in Cornwall. Still farther over there are sheep visible on the
uplands; beyond these, again, the bleak brown moors rise into peaks of
hills; overhead the silent blue, and all around the sweet, fresh country
air.

With a sharp whistle the small train darts into an opening in the hills:
here we are in the twilight of a great wood. The tall trees are becoming
bare; the ground is red with the fallen leaves; through the branches the
blue-winged jay flies, screaming harshly; you can smell the damp and
resinous odors of the ferns. Out again we get into the sunlight! and lo!
a rushing, brawling, narrow stream, its clear flood swaying this way and
that by the big