but an ingle-nook at least ten feet wide--and many are more--with a big oak beam above, and deep enough to hold settles to seat comfortably four about the wide hearth, with its fire-back and fire-dogs intended for the burning of wood, such as they built in the Jacobean age when men knew how to build homes to live in and joy in, not merely houses for shelter--homes that were pictures without and within. [Illustration: A JACOBEAN DOORWAY.] But I have strayed from the road. It was a quiet land we were in, one out of the way of much traffic, for the lanes seemed to lead nowhere in particular, and only to exist for local convenience, but they take you into the heart of the real country: a land as hushed as ever it was in the distant days of "Queen Bess," for there has nothing arisen since to disturb its foretime tranquillity--unless, perhaps, the rare and temporary intrusion of a motor-car whose driver has lost his way. It is for such unpretentious, peaceful scenery that the Englishman yearns at times when in foreign lands far away. Just a yearning for the sight of England's green fields, green hedges, leafy elms, and old homes, nothing more. Even Byron, that wanderer, sings: A green field is a sight which makes us pardon The absence of that more sublime construction Which mixes up vines, olives, precipices, Glaciers, volcanoes, oranges, and ices. Also did not Keats, when in Italy, once tell Severn that he lay awake one night just thinking all the while of England's green fields and her flowers? I have often wondered how so simple a thing as a purely English pastoral landscape can so greatly please; wherein exactly lies its strong power to charm? I once took an American friend for a long drive through a beautiful corner of England. I selected it specially, wishing to give my visitor a pleasant impression of the old country. There were hills and fair woods on the way, winding streams with ancient stone bridges across them, a lovely ruined priory in a lonely glen, old homes, many gabled and ivy-clad, picturesque cottages, and a quaint, old-world village or two. These were some of the good things we saw. When the journey was ended--we took it by motor-car, so we went far--I asked my friend what pleased him the most. "Well, I think," said he, "it's the mellow, domesticated look of the country, as though man and nature had long been on familiar terms there; but what really appeals to me most are just your green meadows studded with daisies, and your beautiful hedges." It was actually the simple sight of the daisied meadows and the green hedges that pleased him more than all the other good things, and the other things were very good indeed. It is sometimes enlightening to see our land as others see it. Listen to what Mark Twain says in his _More Tramps Abroad_:--