My bright anticipations—Melancholy forebodings—Bound for the Rockies—Frank's start for the Far West—Farming in Minnesota—A new scheme—Starting a creamery—Glowing hopes—Failure and disappointment.
London, July, 1885.
Last year I spent a pleasant time in Dovedale, and "The Amateur Angler" told you all about it. This autumn I had looked forward to a holiday in some retired nook in leafy Herefordshire or Shropshire. I had my eye on an old farmhouse at which to make my headquarters for fishing in The Teme, or The Lugg, or The Arrow.
As a boy, I knew that old house well; every corner of it, all the buildings, orchards, and lovely green meadows surrounding it; the woods, the ravines, the far-off mountains, and, above all, the pleasant river which ran through and around the farm, wherein I used to swim and fish for trout and grayling, are vividly before me now.
"I knew each lane and every alley green,
Dingle and bushy dell....
And every bosky bourn from side to side,
My daily walk and ancient neighbourhood."
But hard and inexorable fate has ordered me off in quite a different direction. All being well, my autumnal holiday will be spent in the Rocky Mountains! If I have called such a fate as that hard, it is only because of the uncertainty of it. A young man, I fancy, would see nothing but delight in it; but for an old man in his seventh decade, and one not accustomed to travel, it is like tearing up his roots and plunging down stream into the unknown.