Rockingham post-dispatch. [volume] (Rockingham, N.C.) 1917-1965, 1919-09-18
I N THIS morning of spring.


~ many weeks of retirement,
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 green's 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
terlacing twigs, through which the
cathedral town Is seen. Thus, among
ever-changing charms, you twist and
turn, now round corner, beneath the
shadow of an arch, ROW 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 a little humble,
buff-colored building, with an oriel
window, and legend reminding us
that here Jane Austen lived her later
days Her house, among so many sur
rounding grandeurs, wears-as I sup
IDse the writer herself wore-an air
Of shy timidity, not without grace in
these, sometimes, too blatant days.
Here are Wykehamists, fresh-faced,
in straw hats, symbolizing a coming
summer, and here, past the gray ruins
of Wolsey castle-where Mary Of
England, before her marriage, feted
her Spanish husband-to-be-are the
fresh green water-meadows of the
Itchen, and beyond, clear-cut against
the skyline, the tree-crested ridge Of
lSt. GATHERINGS hill, with memories of
King Charles II and Of the colleges
"Dulce Domum."
The Waters Splash and Bubble.
On either side the meadow path the
waters splash and bubble, swish and
eddy with music most melodi0us
and meaningful, even to those I'M
learned in fish lore. Gray gulls hover,
mirrored in the shining surface, and
linger over 1t, so as to set one won
dering what lure 1t was that led them
from their open sea into this inland
Hampshire valley. Down below,
above sandy bed. the forest Of fern
like water weeds bends to the current,
and the minnows-or the minnow-kind
dart and play about its glades.
Right ahead there is age-long majesty
again-the gabled roofs and lowered
church Of the Hospital of st. Cross,
empowered in ancestral elms. Here I
sit, upon white stile, to enjoy a feet
ing glimpse Of matched roof. and
watch, across the sliding water-mir-
ror, the fringe of pink feathery
grasses nodding and Quiyering to the
breeze.
/ am tempted almost to go into the
hospital, and demand the 'sWayfarer's
Dole''-not that / want the dole
which, moreover, Is meager during
these days--but that 1t is pleasant to
partake Of a charity practiced for SO
many centuries by the brethren In red
and black. Some say--I hardly know
with what truth-that st. Cross Is the
hospital in which Anthony Trollope
placed The Warden" Of the novel SO
named, and Of Manchester Towers"
Trollope, In his autobiography names
Salisbury, not Winton, as the city in
which le first conceived the story of
that gentle priest; but, Barsetshire
being county of his own imagining,
he may well have conjured a little
with English topography. And, think
ing Of Troilope--while my eyes linger
upon the crocus-gemmed lawns Of st.
Cross, and the orange-budded chestnut
twigs shiny with flowing sap-how
many others, famous In literature.
have trod these velvet paths, and those
Of the hills on either hand
A Goodly Five. 4
cold John Of Gaunt, time-honored
Lancaster" perhaps, from his place at