year and hour
In reverence and charity."

LAURA BEATRICE GIBBS.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

To those of my readers who have ever lived beside a stream, or in an
ancient house or time-honoured college, there will always be a peculiar
charm in silvery waters sparkling beneath the summer sun. To you the
Gothic building, with its carved pinnacles, its warped gables, its
mullioned casements and dormer windows, the old oak within, the very
inglenook by the great fireplace where the old folks used to sit at
home, the ivy trailing round the grey walls, the jessamine, roses, and
clematis that in their proper seasons clustered round the porch,--to you
all these things will have their charm as long as you live. Therefore,
if these pages appeal not to some such, it will not be the subject that
is wanting, but the ability of the writer.

It is not claimed for my Cotswold village that it is one whit prettier
or pleasanter or better in any way than hundreds of other villages in
England; I seek only to record the simple annals of a quiet,
old-fashioned Gloucestershire hamlet and the country within walking
distance of it. Nor do I doubt that there are manor houses far more
beautiful and far richer in history even within a twenty-mile radius of
my own home. For instance, the ancient house of Chavenage by Tetbury, or
in the opposite direction, where the northern escarpments of the
Cotswolds rise out of the beautiful Evesham Vale, those historic
mediaeval houses of Southam and Postlip.

It is often said that in books like these we paint arcadias that never
did and never could exist on earth. To this I would answer that there
are many such abodes in country places, if only our minds are such as to
realise them. And, above all, let us be optimists in literature even
though we may be pessimists in life. Let us have all that is joyous and
bright in our books, and leave the trials and failures for the realities
of life. Let us in our literature avoid as much as possible the painful
side of human nature and the pains and penalties of human weakness; let
us endeavour to depict a state of existence as far as possible
approaching the Utopian ideal, though not necessarily the Nirvana of the
Buddhists nor the paradise of fools; let us look not downwards into the
depths of black despair, but upwards into the starry heavens; let us
gaze at the golden evening brightening in the west. Richard Jefferies
has taught us that such a