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In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary by Maurice Hewlett
page 17 of 174 (09%)
long way from my valley in the Downs.

I shall first of all sink a well, for one must have water, even if one
is going to die. Then I shall make a mist-pool--that art is not lost
yet--because as well as water to drink I like water to look upon.
Lastly, I will build a hermitage of puddled chalk and straw, and
thatch it with reeds, if I can get them. It will consist of a single
room thirty feet long. It will have a gallery at each end, attained
by a ladder. In each gallery shall be a bed, and the appurtenance
thereof, one for use and one for a co-hermit or hermitess, if such
there be. I leave that open. There must be a stoop, of course. Nothing
enclosed. No flowers, by request. The sheep shall nibble to the very
threshold. I don't forget that there is a fox-earth in the spinney
attached. I saw a vixen and her cubs there one morning as clearly as
I see this paper. She barked at me once or twice, sitting high on her
haunches, but the children played on without a glance at me. They were
playing at catch-as-catch-can--with a full-grown hare. Sheer fun. No
after-thoughts. I watched them for twenty minutes.

If I grow anything there at all I shall confine my part of the
business to planting, and let Nature do the rest. It may be
absolutely necessary to keep the sheep off for a year or two, and the
rabbits--but that is all. And what I do plant shall be deciduous, so
that I may have the yearly miracle to expect. It is a mighty eater of
time--and there won't be much of that left probably; yet a joy which
no man who has ever begotten anything, baby or poem, can deny himself.

If anybody wants to see what Nature can do in the way of a season's
growth, I can tell him how to go to work. Let him plant on the bank
of a running water a root of _Gunnera manicata_. Let him then wait ten
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