The Little Old Man
IT was in the year 1888 ("O noctes coenasque deum!"—a tag) that, upon one of the southern hills of England, I came quite unexpectedly across little old man who sat upon a bench that was there and looked out to sea.
Now you will ask me why a bench was there, since benches are not commonly found upon the high slopes of our southern hills, of which the poet has well said, the writer has well written, and the singer has well sung:—
The Southern Hills and the South Sea
They blow such gladness into me
That when I get to Burton Sands
And smell the smell of the home lands,
My heart is all renewed, and fills
With the Southern Sea and the South Hills.
True, benches are not common there. I know of but one, all the way from the meeting place of England, which is upon Salisbury Plain, to that detestable suburb of Eastbourne by Beachy Head. Nay, even that one of which I speak has disappeared. For an honest man being weary of labour and yet desiring firewood one day took it away, and the stumps only now remain at the edge of a wood, a little to the south of No Man's Land.
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