Thornycroft Farm.
The pleasure of your company is requested
at a
Thé Chantant
Under the Apple Tree.
Music at five.
It is a charming game, as I say, but I’d far rather play it with the Man of the North; he is so much younger than the Square Baby, and so much more responsive, too.
Thornycroft Farm is a sweet place, too, of odours as well as sounds. The scent of the hay is for ever in the nostrils, the hedges are thick with wild honeysuckle, so deliciously fragrant, the last of the June roses are lingering to do their share, and blackberry blossoms and ripening fruit as well.
I have never known a place in which it is so easy to be good. I have not said a word, nor scarcely harboured a thought, that was not lovely and virtuous since I entered these gates, and yet there are those who think me fantastic, difficult, hard to please, unreasonable!
I believe the saints must have lived in the country mostly (I am certain they never tried Hydropathic hotels), and why anybody with a black heart and natural love of wickedness should not simply buy a poultry farm and become an angel, I cannot understand.
Living with animals is really a very improving and wholesome kind of life, to the person who will allow himself to be influenced by their sensible and high-minded ideals. When you come to think about it, man is really the only animal that ever makes a fool of himself; the others are highly civilised, and never make mistakes. I am going to mention this when I write to somebody, sometime; I mean if I ever do. To be sure, our human life is much more complicated than theirs, and I believe when the other animals notice our errors of judgment they make allowances. The bee is as busy as a bee, and the beaver works like a beaver, but there their responsibility ends. The bee doesn’t have to go about seeing that other bees are not crowded into unsanitary tenements or victimised by the sweating system. When the beaver’s day of toil is over he doesn’t have to discuss the sphere, the rights, or the voting privileges of beaveresses; all he has to do is to work like a beaver, and that is comparatively simple.