he was; quiet, thoughtful men, residing in villages, who developed their artistic sense in solitude.  I am quite sure that this man thought a great deal more of his work than of the money he earned by it.  At all events he charged me astonishingly little.  He refused a contract, evidently regarding it as implying suspicions of his honesty.  ‘I’ll charge ye what’s fair,’ he said, ’and you and me’ll not quarrel as to the price.’  If my bill for labour was so moderate that it seems absurd to a townsman, it was because I had to deal with honest craftsmen, who brought not only efficiency and handiness to their work, but a high sense of honour, and a real intelligence and interest.

It was in the end of August when I took my house; by the beginning of December I had completed my work upon it.  The gardens in front of the house had been levelled, and covered with the finest mountain turf.  The walls had been colour-washed a warm yellow, and all the window-frames painted white.  For three months every hour had been busy, and not the least blessing of my toil was that it had brought me a degree of physical vigour such as I had never yet enjoyed.  How different were my sensations when I woke in the morning now from those which I had known in London!  In London the hour of rising had invariably found me languid and reluctant.  I woke with the sense of a load upon me, and I dreaded the long grey day.  I see now that these sensations were not so much mental as physical.  I had not mental buoyancy simply because I was deficient in physical vitality.  But at Thornthwaite I woke eager for the day.  The first sounds that greeted me through the open window were the songs of the birds, the sea-like diapason of the wind in the elm-trees on the lawn, and the animating song of the river in the glen.  The weather during the whole of that autumn was extraordinarily fine.  After a week of equinoctial storm in the end of September, the weather settled into exquisite repose.  Day succeeded day, calm, bright, sunny.  It was as warm as August, but with all the tonic freshness of autumn.  November, usually a month of misery in London, was here delightful.  The year died slowly, amid the pomp of crimson leaves and bronzed bracken.  For the first time I understood that it is bliss to be alive.  Like the child whom Wordsworth celebrates, I felt my life in every limb.  There was no goading of dull powers to unwelcome tasks; energy ran free, like the mountain-stream at my door, and the zest of life was strong in me.

I never came downstairs into my living-room without a sense of new delight.  How beautiful, how sweetly habitable it looked in the morning sunshine!  Any one living in a city, who immediately on rising enters the room which he has used overnight, has noticed the peculiar staleness of the atmosphere.  It is not exactly a noxious atmosphere; there is no palpable unpleasant odour in it, but it is used up, it is stale.  He will also notice the dust which rests on everything.