" The rapid nightfall of mid-December had quite beset the little villages they approached on soft feet over a first thin fall of powdery snow.
Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange-red on either side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage overflowed through the casements into the dark world without.
Most of the low latticed windows were innocent of blinds, and moving from one to another, the lookers-in, so far from home themselves, watched a cat being stroked, a sleepy child picked up and huddled off to bed, or a tired man stretch and knock out his pipe on the end of a smouldering log."
Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange-red on either side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage overflowed through the casements into the dark world without.
Most of the low latticed windows were innocent of blinds, and moving from one to another, the lookers-in, so far from home themselves, watched a cat being stroked, a sleepy child picked up and huddled off to bed, or a tired man stretch and knock out his pipe on the end of a smouldering log."
Ratty and Mole, In The Village. ~ Wind in the Willows
9 comments:
Love it!
Charming ! I wish English villages were still like that, straight out of a Charles Dickens novel. There's a few here and there, particularly down in Cornwall, but are surrounded by the trappings of the modern world, i.e. Mc Donalds, Tesco etc., oh well, we all have to bow to progress
Oh, I want to go there! Your posts always touch my heart. Now I don't want to get back to work. :)
Lovely image. I agree with Wean when I returned to Cornwall a few years ago I was disappointed with how Truro had grown and the small villages I had lived in where no longer.
Ann
What I love most is the simple quiet of a life where you can go at your own pace and truly be happy. I have been to Tennessee, I know it is one of the most beautiful states in the union, my husband use to want to go thereto live when he retired, but looking at the pics of the English villages and countryside make me wonder at how much you must miss being there. The thatched roof cottages with their charming gardens, the laid back life where everyone knows each other. Some people just don't get it do they, with their quest for progress and to modernize every inch of God's earth.
Susanne :)
Sigh.
So cute.
Thank you for a beautiful post. Charming illustration from a charming book.
There are still one or two olde worlde English villages around, few and far between, alas, long may they survive.
Tasha T in Warwickshire
I really like the book and the illustrations are wonderful.
Post a Comment