Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/12

 so that the meadows, once so green and fresh, are bare and barren now for evermore. I speak in parables of course; and the value of "this here obserwation," like those of Captain Bunsby, "lies in the application of it." I need not observe, the street in which I hide myself is a cul de sac. A man who sells chickweed, perhaps I should say, who would sell chickweed if he could, is the only passenger. Of the houses on each side of me, one is unfinished, the other untenanted. Over the way, I confront the dead wall at the back of an hospital. Towards dusk in the late autumn, when the weather is breaking, I must admit the situation is little calculated to generate over-exuberance of animal spirits. Sequestered, no doubt, shady too, particularly in the short days, and as remote from the noise or traffic of the town as John o' Groat's house, but enlivening—No.