The Rice belt journal., 1919-09-20

has shown his golden face
above the eastward downs, any city
even so fair a city as Winchester
seems for the moment, undesirable.
One seeks instinctively wider sky
space, hills and meadows. and the flow
of the new-fallen waters for company.
These are in the valley of the Itchen,
writes a correspondent Of the Christian
Science Monitor.
Through the cathedral close the
way lies, down the avenue, past the
western door and out before the
spaces of emerald lawn, above which
towers this majestic pile, within whose
walls, and around them, are memoried
so much of England's history, from
great Alfred and Chanute, past William
of Wykeham and Wolsey, TO the mod
ern men of learning and lawn sleeves.
Beautifully harmonious are the sur
roundings, both in line and color-soft
grays OF full round Norman arches,
! vivid greens of clOister-garth, blending
/ with the darker tintS of immemOrial
yews, and the golden sheen of lichens
upon gnarled tree-trunks. Here are
rich reds and browns, upon the tiled
copings of messy walls, on barge
boards of ancient gabled roofs and In
the delicate rose-pink network of In
terIacing twigs, through which the
cathedral town is seen. Thus, among
ever-changing charms, you twist and
turn, now round a corner, beneath the
shadow of an arch. now out again into
the full sunlight, before another bend
leads you once more through the pleas
ant gloom Of the eastern gate.
Beside Wykeham's college, modestly
fronting the road, is little humble
buff-colored building, with an oriel
window, and a legend reminding us
that here Jane Austen lived her later
days. Her house, among so many sur
rounding grandeurs, wears-as l sup
pose the writer herself wore-an all
of shy timidity, not without grace In
these, sometimes, too blatant days
Here are Wykehamists, fresh-faced
in straw hats, symbolizlng coming
summer, and here, past the gray ruin:
of Wolsey castle-where Mary o1
England. before her marriage, fetet
her Spanish husband-to-be-are tht
fresh green meadows Of tht
Itchen, and beyond, clear-cut agains
the skyline, the tree-crested ridge o.
st. GATHERINGS hill, with memories o.
King Charles II and of the colleges
: "Dulce Domum."
The Waters Splash and Bubble.
Or either side the meadow path tht
waters splash and bubble, swish ant
eddy with q music most melodiou
and meaningful, even to those un
learned In fish lore. Gray gulls hover
mirrored In the shining surface, AM
Iinger over it, so as to set one won
dering what lure 1t was that led then
from their open sea into this inlan,
Hampshire valley. Down below
: above sandy bed, the forest of fern
like water weeds bends to the current
and the minnows-or the minnow-kin
dart and play about its glades
Right ahead there is age-long majest
again-the gabled roofs and towere
church of the Hospital of st. Gross
embowered in ancestral elms. Here
sit, upon a white stile, to enjoy fee
ing glimpse of thatched roof, an
watch, across the sliding water-mi
ror, the fringe of pink feather
+ grasses nodding and quivering to th
s breeze.
S am tempted almost to go into th
d hospital, and demand the "Wayfarer
q Dole"-not that want the dole
! which, moreover, is meager durtn
d these days-but that 1t is pleasant
= partake of charity practiced for s
e many centuries by the brethren In re
l. and black. Some say--I hardly kno
y with what truth-that ST. Cross is tt
j. hospital in which Anthony TrolloE
e placed "The Warden" of the novel s
e named, and of "Barchester Towers
Y Trollope, in his autobiography name
n Salisbury, not Winton, as the city