death of our friends, and I fear that for some time we took an interest
in the health of everyone in the village whose position rendered a
repetition of the dole in the least likely.

Those were the days in which all great things seemed far off, and we were
astonished to find that Napoleon Buonaparte was an actually living
person. We had thought such a great man could only have lived a very
long time ago, and here he was after all almost as it were at our own
doors. This lent colour to the view that the Day of Judgement might
indeed be nearer than we had thought, but nurse said that was all right
now, and she knew. In those days the snow lay longer and drifted deeper
in the lanes than it does now, and the milk was sometimes brought in
frozen in winter, and we were taken down into the back kitchen to see it.
I suppose there are rectories up and down the country now where the milk
comes in frozen sometimes in winter, and the children go down to wonder
at it, but I never see any frozen milk in London, so I suppose the
winters are warmer than they used to be.

About one year after his wife's death Mr Pontifex also was gathered to
his fathers. My father saw him the day before he died. The old man had
a theory about sunsets, and had had two steps built up against a wall in
the kitchen garden on which he used to stand and watch the sun go down
whenever it was clear. My father came on him in the afternoon, just as
the sun was setting, and saw him with his arms resting on the top of the
wall looking towards the sun over a field through which there was a path
on which my father was. My father heard him say "Good-bye, sun; good-
bye, sun," as the sun sank, and saw by his tone and manner that he was
feeling very feeble. Before the next sunset he was gone.

There was no dole. Some of his grandchildren were brought to the funeral