CHAPTER I.


Three hundred yards of smooth, broad, white road leading from Henfield,
a small town in Sussex. The grasses are lush, and the hedges are tall
and luxuriant. Restless boys scramble to and fro, quiet nursemaids
loiter, and a vagrant has sat down to rest though the bank is dripping
with autumn rain. How fair a prospect of southern England! Land of
exquisite homeliness and order; land of town that is country, of country
that is town; land of a hundred classes all deftly interwoven and all
waxing to one class--England. Land encrowned with the gifts of peaceful
days--days that live in thy face and the faces of thy children.

See it. The outlying villas with their porches and laurels, the red
tiled farm houses, and the brown barns, clustering beneath the wings of
beautiful trees--elm trees; see the flat plots of ground of the market
gardens, with figures bending over baskets of roots; see the factory
chimney; there are trees and gables everywhere; see the end of the
terrace, the gleam of glass, the flower vase, the flitting white of the
tennis players; see the long fields with the long team ploughing, see
the parish church, see the embowering woods, see the squire's house, see
everything and love it, for everything here is England.

* * * * *

Three hundred yards of smooth, broad, white road, leading from Henfield,
a small town in Sussex. It disappears in the woods which lean across the
fields towards the downs. The great bluff heights can be seen, and at