Other
books of the kind there was none. I wonder how many dozen times I
read those two first volumes.
It was the horror of those dreadful walks backwards and forwards
which made my life so bad. What so pleasant, what so sweet, as a
walk along an English lane, when the air is sweet and the weather
fine, and when there is a charm in walking? But here were the same
lanes four times a day, in wet and dry, in heat and summer, with
all the accompanying mud and dust, and with disordered clothes. I
might have been known among all the boys at a hundred yards' distance
by my boots and trousers,--and was conscious at all times that I
was so known. I remembered constantly that address from Dr. Butler
when I was a little boy. Dr. Longley might with equal justice have
said the same thing any day,--only that Dr. Longley never in his
life was able to say an ill-natured word. Dr. Butler only became
Dean of Peterborough, but his successor lived to be Archbishop of
Canterbury.
I think it was in the autumn of 1831 that my mother, with the rest
of the family, returned from America. She lived at first at the
farmhouse, but it was only for a short time. She came back with a
book written about the United States, and the immediate pecuniary
success which that work obtained enabled her to take us all back to
the house at Harrow,--not to the first house, which would still have
been beyond her means, but to that which has since been called
Orley Farm, and which was an Eden as compared to our abode at
Harrow Weald.
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