Country Life
SomE days ago I had a letter from a friend who spoke of the compensations of living in a remote place—a verdant part of County Clare. I spent my impressionable years on a comparatively remote farm. I was never lonely, never short of entertainment of a homely sort, and I was never distracted by external things. When the post came late in the day, bringing newspapers of the day before, no one was ever, conscious of living behind the times for, after all, Monday's news was always Tuesday's news to us and we read Sunday's paper on Monday. The great com- pensation of living out there, folded by the hills, sheltered by a fir planting and towered over by three giant trees, was the wonderful peacefulness of our days. Time had no special significance except that someone rose to kindle a fire with sticks in the early hours and someone had to lock the fowlhouses at nightfall. We had time to listen to our own thoughts, time to turn the handle of the churn and do the things that had to be done before we went thankfully to bed. I was often a great deal less happy later on when I could buy the current evening paper a little after mid-day and stood crammed with my neighbour in the underground.
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