“Purty place, ain’t it?” said he.
“It is indeed,” said I.
“Ah!” he resumed, “boy and man, I’ve lived here forty year. I remember the time when the people as lived here was people. Now there’s nobody here worth a damn.”
The Duke of Buccleuch lived near by in those halcyon times.
Pleasant hearing, this, for a new-comer who had just taken over a long lease in this region of souls so worthless. This shocking old cynic was—— But no matter; suffice it that he was one who ought to have put it differently.
Yet there are some of the elect, the salt of the earth, who pleasantly savour the lump. Indeed, I live at Petersham myself.
But even here there are woeful changes. Instead of the three inns that formerly graced the village, there are now but two: the Petersham Arms went about fifteen years ago, and now there are but the Dysart Arms and the Fox and Duck. If you want further variety, you must resort to the Fox and Goose, at Ham, or the New Inn, Ham Common. Besides this grievous thing, the landscape is seared by an undesirable novelty, in the shape of a new, very red, red-brick church, which partakes in equal parts of the likeness of a pumping-station and a crematorium. Woodman, spare those trees that grow around it, and Nature, kindly mother, do thou add yet more to their height and size, that we may not, in our going forth and our return, have it, and all it means, constantly before eyes and mind. It has, in addition, lately been furnished with bells, of sorts, that commence early in the morning and wake one untimeously from sleep, often with an air associated with the words of that pagan hymn, “A few more years shall roll.” Pagan, I say, because it tells us that when those few years shall have rolled
… we shall be with those that rest
Asleep within the tomb.