A Traveller in Little Things

The Old Man's Delusion

He then went on to talk of the changes that had been going on in the

world since that happy time; but the greatest change of all was in the

appearance of things. He had had a hard life, and the hardest time was

when he was a ploughboy and had to work so hard that he was tired to

death at the end of every day; yet at four o'clock in the morning he

was ready and glad to get up and go out to work all day again because

everything looked so bright, and it made him happy just to look up at

the sky and listen to the birds. In those days there were larks. The

number of larks was wonderful; the sound of their singing filled the

whole air. He didn't want any greater happiness than to hear them

singing over his head. A few days ago, not more than half a mile from

where we were standing, he was crossing a field when a lark got up

singing near him and went singing over his head. He stopped to listen

and said to himself, "Well now, that do remind me of old times!"

"For you know," he went on, "it is a rare thing to hear a lark now.

What's become of all the birds I used to see I don't know. I remember

there was a very pretty bird at that time called the yellow-hammer--a

bird all a shining yellow, the prettiest of all the birds." He never

saw nor heard that bird now, he assured me.

That was how the old man talked, and I never told him that yellow

hammers could be seen and heard all day long anywhere on the common

beyond the green wall of the elms, and that a lark was singing loudly

high up over our heads while he was talking of the larks he had

listened to sixty-five years ago in the Vale of Aylesbury, and saying

that it was a rare thing to hear that bird now.