He Only Says That It Is A Very Early Church
- How Early He Does Not Know - And Adds That It
Was built "for
the convenience of the inhabitants of the place." An odd
statement, seeing that the place has every
Appearance of
having always been what it is, a forest, and that the
inhabitants thereof are weasels, foxes, jays and such-like,
and doubtless in former days included wolves, boars, roe-deer
and stags, beings which, as Walt Whitman truly remarks, do not
worry themselves about their souls.
With this question, however, we need not concern ourselves.
To me, after stumbling by chance on the little church in that
solitary woodland place, the story of its origin was accepted
as true; no doubt it had come down unaltered from generation
to generation through all those centuries, and it moved my
pity yet was a delight to hear, as great perhaps as it had
been to listen to the beautiful chimes many times multiplied
from the wooded hill. And if I have a purpose in this book,
which is without a purpose, a message to deliver and a lesson
to teach, it is only this - the charm of the unknown, and the
infinitely greater pleasure in discovering the interesting
things for ourselves than in informing ourselves of them by
reading. It is like the difference in flavour in wild fruits
and all wild meats found and gathered by our own hands in wild
places and that of the same prepared and put on the table for
us.
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