So, having succeeded in contradicting myself in my first chapter (which gives me great hopes that you will all go on, and think me a good fellow notwithstanding my crotchets), I shall here shut up for the present, and consider my ways; having resolved to "sar' it out," as we say in the
Vale, "holus bolus" just as it comes, and then you'll probably get the truth out of me.
It is a
vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the summits of the hills that surround it--except perhaps during the droughts of summer.
We had heard no step on that grass-grown track; the water running in the
vale was the one lulling sound of the hour and scene; we might well then start when a gay voice, sweet as a silver bell, exclaimed -
Then was it that the innocent and fair young shepherdess roamed from
vale to
vale and hill to hill, with flowing locks, and no more garments than were needful modestly to cover what modesty seeks and ever sought to hide.
Florid, with white hair, the face of an old Jupiter, and the figure of an old fox-hunter, he enlivened the
vale of Thyme from end to end on his big, cantering chestnut.
She's always saying that she'll be glad when her time comes, and she doesn't want to sojourn any longer in this
vale of tears.
Now works its iron will, the startled sand Blinding the combatants together locked In the death-grip; while hill and
vale and stream Glow with the flash and crash of arms.
I several times met with very aged men, who from this cause had never passed the confines of their native
vale, some of them having never even ascended midway up the mountains in the whole course of their lives, and who, accordingly had little idea of the appearance of any other part of the island, the whole of which is not perhaps more than sixty miles in circuit.
