WILLIAM DUNBAR
A LARK'S FLIGHT
CHRISTMAS
MEN OF LETTERS
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF A MAN TO HIMSELF
A SHELF IN MY BOOKCASE
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
BOOKS AND GARDENS
ON VAGABONDS




DREAMTHORP

It matters not to relate how or when I became a denizen of Dreamthorp;
it will be sufficient to say that I am not a born native, but that I
came to reside in it a good while ago now. The several towns and
villages in which, in my time, I have pitched a tent did not please,
for one obscure reason or another; this one was too large, t'other too
small; but when, on a summer evening about the hour of eight, I first
beheld Dreamthorp, with its westward-looking windows painted by sunset,
its children playing in the single straggling street, the mothers
knitting at the open doors, the fathers standing about in long white
blouses, chatting or smoking; the great tower of the ruined castle
rising high into the rosy air, with a whole troop of swallows--by
distance made as small as gnats--skimming about its rents and
fissures;--when I first beheld all this, I felt instinctively that my
knapsack might be taken off my shoulders, that my tired feet might
wander no more, that at last, on the planet, I had found a home. From