The Quiet Life
"To live here and run out of tea !" I thought aloud. We were passing along a valley where the road wound past a single grey- stone Cottage. Brown and white hens fed on the garden, a bit of washing fluttered in the breeze and two round-faced, black-ha:red boys stared at us as we passed. I looked back along the road marked by whitened stones for safety at night, and wondered about life so far from the comforts and safety of town existence. All kinds of things contribute to environment. The man from the city might casually think that the person who lives in a remote place does so for peace and seclusion, but in my experience, apart from a few intellectual hermits, this is hardly ever true. The man in the remote cottage works on the road, or just over the hill at the farm out of sight, or he was born there and has made his own .little world independent of such things as cinemas and artificial entertainment. When he uproots himself the cottage often falls into ruin simply because another of his kind fails to come along, for the changing of one's way of life can be as painful as wearing shoes half a size too small.
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