gone when he reached Lowestoft, poor man, so all his trouble was
wasted. War wastes more energy, I suppose, than any other form of
folly. I know that on the East Coast, during all the years of my
childhood, this Dutch war wasted the energies of thousands. The
villages had to drill men, each village according to its size, to
make an army in case the Dutch should land. Long after the war
was over, they drilled thus. I remember them on the field outside
the church, drilling after Sunday service, firing at a stump of a
tree. Once some wag rang the alarm-bell at night, to fetch them
out of their beds. Then there were the smugglers; they, too, were
caused by the war. After the fighting there was a bitter feeling
against the Dutch. Dutch goods were taxed heavily (spice, I
remember, was made very dear thus) to pay for the war. The
smugglers began then to land their goods secretly, all along the
coast, so that they might avoid the payment of the duty. The
farmers were their friends; for they liked to have their gin
cheap. Indeed, they used to say that in an agueish place like the
fens, gin was a necessity, if one would avoid fever. Often, at
night, in the winter, when I was walking home from Lowestoft
school, I would see the farmers riding to the rendezvous in the
dark, with their horses' hoofs all wrapped up in sacks, to make
no noise.

I lived for twelve years at Oulton. I learned how to handle a
boat there, how to swim, how to skate, how to find the eggs of
the many wild fowl in the reeds. In those days the Broad country
was a very wild land, half of it swamp. My father gave me a
coracle on my tenth birthday. In this little boat I used to
explore the country for many miles, pushing up creeks among the
reeds, then watching, in the pools (far out of the world it