altogether out of our ways of thought, in fact as far from us--as
incredible or unimaginable, we may say--as the neolithic men or the
inhabitants of another planet. They are of the order of mythical heroes
and the giants of antiquity. To read about them is an ancient custom,
but we do not listen.

Even to myself the memories of my young days came to be regarded as very
little more than mere imaginations, and I almost ceased to believe in
them until, after years of mixing with modern men, mostly in towns, I
fell in with the downland shepherds, and discovered that even here, in
densely populated and ultra-civilized England, something of the ancient
spirit had survived. In Caleb, and a dozen old men more or less like
him, I seemed to find myself among the people of the past, and sometimes
they were so much like some of the remembered, old, sober, and
slow-minded herders of the plains that I could not help saying to
myself, Why, how this man reminds me of Tio Isidoro, or of Don Pascual
of the "Three Poplar Trees," or of Marcos who would always have three
black sheep in a flock. And just as they reminded me of these men I had
actually known, so did they bring back the older men of the Bible
history--Abraham and Jacob and the rest.

The point here is that these old Bible stories have a reality and
significance for the shepherd of the down country which they have lost
for modern minds; that they recognize their own spiritual lineaments in
these antique portraits, and that all these strange events might have
happened a few years ago and not far away.

One day I said to Caleb Bawcombe that his knowledge of the Bible,
especially of the old part, was greater than that of the other shepherds
I knew on the downs, and I would like to hear why it was so. This led to