It was Coombe that did it--its peaceful life,
isolated from a distracting world in that hollow hill, and the
marvellous purity of its air. "Sitting there on my lawn," he
said, "you are six hundred feet above the sea, although in a
hollow four hundred feet deep." It was an ideal open-air
room, round and green, with the sky for a roof. In winter it
was sometimes very cold, and after a heavy fall of snow the
scene was strange and impressive from the tiny village set in
its stupendous dazzling white bowl. Not only on those rare
arctic days, but at all times it was wonderfully quiet. The
shout of a child or the peaceful crow of a cock was the
loudest sound you heard. Once a gentleman from London town
came down to spend a week at the parsonage. Towards evening
on the very first day he grew restless and complained of the
abnormal stillness. "I like a quiet place well enough," he
exclaimed, "but this tingling silence I can't stand!" And
stand it he wouldn't and didn't, for on the very next morning
he took himself off. Many years had gone by, but the vicar
could not forget the Londoner who had come down to invent a
new way of describing the Coombe silence. His tingling phrase
was a joy for ever.
He took me to the church--one of the tiniest churches in the
country, just the right size for a church in a tiny village
and assured me that he had never once locked the door in his
fifty years--day and night it was open to any one to enter.
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