reading is better than no reading, and, as someone has said, "a phrase
may fructify if it falls on receptive soil."

I never in my boyhood or youth, except on short visits to relatives,
enjoyed the advantage, by living in the country, of becoming intimate
with rural life. We resided at Derby in a terrace on the outskirt of the
town, much to my dislike, for monotonous rows of houses I have ever
hated. One's home should be one's friend and possess some special
feature of its own, even in its outward aspect, to love and remember. As
George Eliot says: "We get the fonder of our houses if they have a
physiognomy of their own, as our friends have."

In my schooldays, country walks, pursued as far as health and strength
allowed, were my greatest pleasure, sometimes taken alone, sometimes with
a companion. The quiet valley of the Trent at Repton, Anchor Church,
Knoll Hills, the long bridge at Swarkestone, the charming little country
town of Melbourne, the wooded beauties of Duffield and Belper, the ozier
beds of Spondon; how often have I trod their fields, their woods, their
lanes, their paths; and how pleasantly the memory of it all comes back to
me now!

In those days fashions and manners differed greatly from those of to-day.
Ladies wore the crinoline (successor to the hoop of earlier times),
chignons and other absurdities, but had not ventured upon short skirts or
cigarettes. They were much given to blushing, now a lost art; and to
swooning, a thing of the past; the "vapours" of the eighteenth century
had, happily, vanished for ever; but athletic exercises, such as girls
enjoy to-day, were then undreamed of. Why has the pretty art of blushing
gone? One now never sees a blush to mantle on the cheek of beauty. Does
the blood of feminine youth flow steadier than it did, or has the more