with the pigs and the donkeys and the squires? Chaucer and Spenser
and Milton and Dryden lived in London; Shakespeare and Dr. Johnson
came to London because they had had quite enough of the country.
And as for trumpery topical journalists like you, why, they would
cut their throats in the country. You have confessed it yourself
in your own last words. You hunger and thirst after the streets;
you think London the finest place on the planet. And if by some
miracle a Bayswater omnibus could come down this green country lane
you would utter a yell of joy."

Then a light burst upon my brain, and I turned upon him
with terrible sternness.

"Why, miserable aesthete," I said in a voice of thunder, "that is
the true country spirit! That is how the real rustic feels. The real
rustic does utter a yell of joy at the sight of a Bayswater omnibus.
The real rustic does think London the finest place on the planet.
In the few moments that I have stood by this stile, I have grown
rooted here like an ancient tree; I have been here for ages.
Petulant Suburban, I am the real rustic. I believe that the streets
of London are paved with gold; and I mean to see it before I die."

The evening breeze freshened among the little tossing trees of that lane,
and the purple evening clouds piled up and darkened behind my
Country Seat, the house that belonged to me, making, by contrast,
its yellow bricks gleam like gold. At last my friend said:
"To cut it short, then, you mean that you will live in the country
because you won't like it. What on earth will you do here;
dig up the garden?"