Close by there was a small round
hillock, an old forsaken nest of the little brown ants, green
and soft with moss and small creeping herbs--a suitable grave
for a wheatear. Cutting out a round piece of turf from the
side, I made a hole with my stick and put the dead bird in and
replacing the turf left it neatly buried.
It was not that I had or have any quarrel with the creatures
I have named, or would have them other than they are
--carrion-eaters and scavengers, Nature's balance-keepers and
purifiers. The only creatures on earth I loathe and hate are
the gourmets, the carrion-crows and foxes of the human kind
who devour wheatears and skylarks at their tables.
Chapter Thirteen: Bath and Wells Revisited
'Tis so easy to get from London to Bath, by merely stepping
into a railway carriage which takes you smoothly without a
stop in two short hours from Paddington, that I was amazed at
myself in having allowed five full years to pass since my
previous visit. The question was much in my mind as I
strolled about noting the old-remembered names of streets and
squares and crescents. Quiet Street was the name inscribed on
one; it was, to me, the secret name of them all. The old
impressions were renewed, an old feeling partially recovered.
The wide, clean ways; the solid, stone-built houses with their
dignified aspect; the large distances, terrace beyond terrace;
mansions and vast green lawns and parks and gardens; avenues
and groups of stately trees, especially that unmatched clump
of old planes in the Circus; the whole town, the design in the
classic style of one master mind, set by the Avon, amid green
hills, produced a sense of harmony and repose which cannot be
equalled by any other town in the kingdom.
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