winter months they spent in warmer climates, only residing in Eastwich
from May to November. During the summer Anthony occupied himself on
matters connected with the estate and principally with the cultivation
of the home farm. Indeed, as time went on and increasing weakness forced
him to withdraw himself more and more from the world and its affairs,
the interests of this farm loomed ever larger in his eyes, as largely
indeed as though he depended upon it alone for his daily bread.
Moreover, it brought him into touch with Nature, and now that they were
so near to parting, his friendship with her grew very close.

This was one of his troubles, that when he died, and he knew that before
very long he must die, even if he continued to live in some other form,
he must bid farewell to the Nature that he knew.

Of course, there was much of her, her cruel side, that he would rejoice
to lose. He could scarcely conceive a future existence framed upon those
lines of struggle, which in its working involves pain and cruelty and
death. Putting aside sport and its pleasures, which he had abandoned
because of the suffering and extinction entailed upon the shot or hunted
creatures, to him it seemed inexpressibly sad that even his honest
farming operations, at least where the beasts were concerned, should
always culminate in death. Why should the faithful horse be knocked on
the head when it grew old, or the poor cow go to the butcher as a reward
for its long career of usefulness and profit?

What relentless power had thus decreed? In any higher life surely this
decree would be rescinded, and of that side of Nature he had seen more
than enough upon the earth. It was her gentler and harmless aspects from
which he did not wish to part--from the flower and the fruit, from the
springing blade and the ripened corn; from the beauty that brooded