A tale of old lawlessness may yet be read
in these uncouth timidities.
The winter in these uplands is a dangerous and melancholy time.
Houses are snowed up, and way-farers lost in a flurry within hail
of their own fireside. No man ventures abroad without meat and a
bottle of wine, which he replenishes at every wine-shop; and even
thus equipped he takes the road with terror. All day the family
sits about the fire in a foul and airless hovel, and equally
without work or diversion. The father may carve a rude piece of
furniture, but that is all that will be done until the spring sets
in again, and along with it the labours of the field. It is not
for nothing that you find a clock in the meanest of these mountain
habitations. A clock and an almanac, you would fancy, were
indispensable in such a life . . .
CHAPTER VII--RANDOM MEMORIES: ROSA QUO LOCORUM
Through what little channels, by what hints and premonitions, the
consciousness of the man's art dawns first upon the child, it
should be not only interesting but instructive to inquire. A
matter of curiosity to-day, it will become the ground of science
to-morrow. From the mind of childhood there is more history and
more philosophy to be fished up than from all the printed volumes
in a library. The child is conscious of an interest, not in
literature but in life.
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