“In May a spell of fine weather drove me to give notice again, and I walked as far as Maidstone the first day. My second summer was like my first. I was already known at half-a-dozen farms. When they could not give me work at once they gave me leave to fish in the three or four ponds to be found on all the farms in the Weald of Kent, and I had many a large, if not always savoury, meal of tench and eels. At the end of the summer I had three pounds in my pocket, and little less by the end of October. “The winter I passed as before. For five years I lived in this way. Then, for the sake of going abroad on my savings, I worked for a whole year at a desk, and spent four months along the Loire and down to Bordeaux; from there I worked my passage to Newport. Since then I have gone back to my old plan.” Here he paused and mused. I asked him if he still found it easy to get work in London. “No, that’s it,” he replied; “my handwriting is worse and it is slow. The first weeks in London seem to undo all the good of my summer outing, especially as my salary is less than it used to be. They begin to ask me if I am a married man when I apply for work. The November rains remind me that I have rheumatism. It is my great fear that I may need a doctor, and so spend my savings, and be unable to leave London until field work is plentiful in June. But I have my freedom; I could, if necessary, take an under-cowman’s place and live entirely on the land. They begin to look at my hands when I apply for clerical work, and I can’t wear gloves.” “And ten years hence?” “That is ten years too far ahead for me to look, though I am less cheerful than I used to be. I realize that I belong to the suburbs still. I belong to no class or race, and have no traditions. We of the suburbs are a muddy, confused, hesitating mass, of small courage though much endurance. As for myself, I am world-conscious, and hence suffer unutterable loneliness. I know what bitterness it is to be lacking in those strong tastes and impulses which, blinding men to what does not concern them, enables them to live with a high heart. For example, I have a sensitive palate and am glad of my food, yet whenever I taste lamb--which I do when I can--my pleasure is spoilt by the sight of the butcher carrying a lamb under his arm. There it is. I am sensitive on all sides. Your true man would either forget the sight or he would be moved to a crusade. I can do neither. “I am weary of seeing things, the outsides of things, for I see nothing else. It makes me wretched to think what swallows are to many children and poets and other men, while to me they are nothing but inimitable, compact dark weights tumbling I do not know how through the translucent air--nothing more, and yet I know they are something more. I apprehend their weight, buoyancy and velocity as they really are, but I have no vision. Then it is that I remember those words of Sir Thomas Browne’s--