seed-plots it is impossible that one's thoughts should not take colour
as they rise. Whithersoever I look I see as much permanency as is good
for any sojourner upon earth; I see embodied tradition, respect for
Nature's laws, attention to beauty, subservience to use; all this
within doors. Outside, the trees, the flowers are my calendar;
the birds chime the hours; periodically the church-bell calls the
travellers home. Between all these friendly monitors it is hard if
one cannot keep the mean. If the passing-bell tempts me to moralise
overmuch I may turn to the creatures, and learn to live for the
moment. I should be slow to confess how much worldly wisdom I have
won from what we choose to call the lower orders of creation, because
nobody willingly betrays the whereabouts of his buried treasure, or
the amount of it. Mr. Pepys, I remember, forgot both on a certain
occasion, and had a devil of a time until he recovered his hoard. But
my wealth was not made with hands, or not with my hands.

My house is fortunately placed, too, in the village street, so that I
am in touch with my neighbours and their daily concerns, which I make
mine so far as they are pleased to allow it. I am aware of them all
day long by half a hundred signs; I know the trot of their horses, the
horns of their motor-cars--that shows that there are not too many of
them--the voices of their children, the death-shrieks of their pigs,
the barking of their dogs. Not a day passes but one or other is in,
to have some paper signed, to air a grievance, or to ask advice. The
vicar and the minister are my good friends, and, I am glad to say,
each other's. The farmers understand my ways (it is as much as I can
expect of them), and the labourers like them. All this keeps the
pores of the mind open; you cannot stagnate if you are useful to
other people. Nor--unless you are a fool--can you be strict with your
categories. The more you know of men and systems the more overlapping