Some day I am to go back and stay with him. He appears to spend his holidays boating, motoring, riding, playing billiards, going to theatres, reading and writing. I never met people who put one so quickly at one's ease. Although they are rich they don't seem to worry about Society: they do none of the _right_ things, for which Heaven be praised. They just enjoy life to the full and take each blessing as it comes. They have less of the snob in them than any people I have ever met. They appear to be unduly grateful to me for what I have done for Tony. My hat! The boot's on the other foot: what has Tony not done for me? _August 23, 1911_ After a glorious week with my uncle in Dawlish, during which time I bathed and walked a good deal, I am back in town again. I love Devon: the coast scenery fills me with ecstatic delight and I thank God every minute that I am alive and strong to enjoy the good things of life. I got into conversation with heaps of strangers of both sexes, and heard views of life that I am sure never enter the heads of my colleagues: when I am asked, as I frequently am, what I do in life, they always think I am lying when I say I am a schoolmaster, and laugh good-humouredly as if I had said something supremely funny when I mention that Oxford was once my University: apparently all young men claim to be "college boys": it's part of the game. Their whole conversation is one vast lie. But it does no one any harm and gives them a sense of romance: they get right away from the humdrum existence of the shop-counter and the office, and for a fortnight imagine themselves to be dukes and duchesses. But they miss half the joy that Devon provides by not scouring the country. Their programme is to rise late, dress with lavish care in the most glaring and tasteless colours, and slowly promenade up and down the Front. It is all very pretty and harmless and would delight the heart of O. Henry. They miss entirely the thousands of joyous little creeks with which the coast is studded: they never try to discover the secret charm of the moor. They prefer listening to the comic songs of the coons to the birds on the hillside, and the band on the Promenade to the rush of wind in the ears as one stands on the cliffs.