MY HOUSE ON THE HILL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13745, 9 May 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

MY HOUSE ON THE HILL.

BY A. A. It is five years since I came to my house on the hill. The.years before that are gloomy as the middle ages —they are B.C. to me. Since I came here, it has been A.D., modern, cheerful, inspiring. In front of me lies a fertile undulating plain, thick with farming population. A few small watercourses, fringed with willows, run, like larger creases, through it. Some three miles away; a few houses cluster together, there is a creamery, a school, a blacksmith's forge, while a church spire reaches up from the shelter of some pines. The criss-cross of roadways, the varied green and brown of fields, and innumerable small plantations, clustering like old friends about the farmhouses, fill the scene. Behind me lie rich valleys and lower ridges, and over them J. look o\it on the sea. I am on the highest and last ridge. I I could never willingly go back to live on j the lower level. Yet I once lived 011 the I plain, and once in town, where the only long view was upwards. There is nothing to see on a plain. Hedges and plantations stand up round you like prison walls, and refuse you permission to see more than the field you stand in. Certainly you get a sight of trees at a, distance, and possibly also the upper storey of a house. There is a manifest unfairness in this. They .can see all the activity and interest of your field, but your gaze they meet with an im-. movable stolidity that excites anger. There is 110 life or change in-the walls of a house or in a plantation. But- on my hill a whole panorama lies extended. Ridge and bush, homesteads, and fields, sea and islands "come within my vision. Everything seems toibe instinct with life and interest,. The fields three miles away are laid open to me. Through my glass I can count the cattle feeding, watch the farmer pumping water for them in the dry weather, or follow him as he trudges behind his plough, up and down and back again all day long over his fields. I have escaped from my prison of gorse. As I look down over the plain I see the characters of men and women laid bare, in their fields and houses. Over there is a house snuggling under the hill, protected in front by a double row of pines. A fine well-kept hedge surrounds both the house and the. garden at the side. Doubtless the thrifty farmer grows vegetables there, but 'not altogether, for in their seasons I can catch tlio glint of dahlias, the scarlet of geraniums, and the lighter glory of chrysanthemums. As is the house, such also are likely to be the people who live there. The privacy of home life, well tended and brightened is there. It spells diligence, self-respect, love of home, and love of beauty. Certainly love must live over, there. But yonder, stark in the centre of a paddock, is a house without even the protection of a verandah. No garden is there, no flowers, no shrubs, not even the poor shelter of a gorse hedge. Wire fences encircle it, laying 'everything open. Such it has been for years. Here is 110 real home surely, probably no pride, diligence, trust, or love, It is only a lodging and eating-house for the man, and when day comes he escapes from its bare unloveliness. I wonder, pitying, what kind of woman inhabits it, whether she ever had a heart, whether .he has starved it by want of privacy and beauty about the dwelling. ; I scan the plain with ever new delight, trace, the watercourses■ by the - willows, that* love to bury their roots in the stream, fol- j low the lines of living yellow hedges that cut it up into fields, where the cattle seem to feed on green velvet pile. As the summer heat grows a light haze covers the landscape, and in the afternoons the solid earth, hedges, houses, and roads quiver and vibrate with heat. While in winter time I see the dark brown of ploughed lands, and the stacks scattered in threes and fours, like beehives on the plain. Then a gust of rain sweeps over it, darkening the plain, blotting out- all details, till they stand out crisp and clear again in the purified atmosphere. , It is so high, up here, that one breathes the* purest of pure air, drinking it into the lungs like clear cold water. When colder weather comes, the white mist creeps along the watercourses and sometimes covers the plain. But that impalpable white tide only washes the foot of my hill. In early morning I seem stranded on. an island summit, for this misty sea is breaking with silent waves all around me, and the_ whole plain is blotted out. Sometimes it seems like a • heavy, grey, sodden mass, till the winter sun bursts out. turns it into the whitest fleece of cloud, and with laughing beams compels the mist to break up its ill-humour and dissolve in kindred smiles. In the evening, however, I can watch it stealing up again, like the dismal exhalation of the dying day, heavy with influenzas and chills, till it sweeps over my lower neighbours. But 1. live in perpetual clearness, free from all such noxious vapours. I do not know whether ' it is more of a gain or a loss to bo isolated as I am. Certainly to be two miles away from a neighbour' must be an unmitigated evil. ' It violates the social instinct of man to be scattered thus far apart. One is so completely away from help, when help is most urgently needed. 1 can understand the feelings of the woman who with husband and children lived in a solitary valley not 50 miles from Auckland." She had not been over the ridge for two years or more. And when a chance lady canvasser came slowly riding along those awful tracks and grades misnamed roads, she dropped knife and potato dish, and with beaming face came running to the gate of their section, ovcijoved at the chance of conversation with a woman of anv kind whatever. I can understand why men and women thus isolated would do' anything to get to a summer's picnic, or an evening meeting or social. Some years ago, as I as riding carefully along the treacherous quagmire that served for a road in one of these districts, in the late afternoon 1 drew near a school picnic just beginning to brenk up. It was a small affair, hardly a dozen children constituted the school, and their homes were scattered over the hills and scrub of a wide and rough district. I met the first contingent—it couple of girls, scarcely grown up, driving home to milk. I heir carriage (think 1 of it ye city dwellers, who picnic in summer [ finery, driving by twos in spruce painted . S '!)—their carriage was a rough sled . made of slabs. It scarcely lifted them a foot above the viscous apology for a road. [ They sat side by side on sacks on the floor j of the sled.' their backs propped by a rail i and a couple of posts, their feet and skirts [ carefully stowed under a huge sack apron, > nailed to the front of the sled, and along the i sides. They were.thus only half-protected I from' the plentiful mud splashings of the 1 two light draughts that made the team, for r the horses were sometimes nearly up to the - births in the mud. Anything with wheels > would likely have been bogged, or broken. I And in that crude and ridiculous vehicle : these merry girls drove back, recounting - the" fun and the flirting, happy that such a ' day had come along when isolated people 5 could get together. I do not often see a neighbour in my i house. They do not care for the climb, and : I do not breathe freely on their lower levels. 1 I am by no means sure that this is all loss. ? I have been in houses where neighbours i were plentiful and kindly. Every night some visitor would drop ill, or one had to [ go out, and there was no leisure and 110 I solitude. And I read only to-day that soli- • tude is the mother country of the soul. I can believe it. f When the night comes and the work is all r done, and the wood tire roars up the spaciI, otis, chimney, and throws out its ruddy s light to mingle with the milder rays of my r lamp, 1 am quite content. I -look up at my bookshelf and my heart warms as I sit

down to an evening, not too I° n ?> Charles Lamb or some other fascinating classic. It would take a strong magnet to pull mv feet out of doors with these enchanters waiting me. Or when arrested l mv reading by some new thought-, strikingly" put, -1 lay the book down, absently tilt [3 pipe, and traverse that thought, testing l > looking at it on all sides to see if _ifc be t . genuine and well founded, and then follow , my thoughts in the endeavour to assimilate { that idea and weave it into the permanent fabric of my mind—it is then that isola i t seems'all gain to me. , . For I have come to my house on the hiu mentally as well as bodily. Whether it e J the solitude, or the wider, clearer view, or the purer bracing air that is responsible tor this mental clarity and uplifting,. I not. Physical nearness, on the plain, am not make better neighbours. But here i l am neighbour to hundreds of people. Some- 1 times from my vantage I see the convex - , ances, and the cab with grey horses con- , verging upon a house. A marquee is erect- • ed, and the visitors overflowing from trie rooms throng the garden walks in couples as God intended. And my heart says. God J bless them, while I follow my plough along i the hill. Or again my throat chokes up as , I s:t'e the slow moving hearse with the hate- , ful black plumes leaving a house of sorrow. ' I look out on all the changing show of the ■ plain beneath, and laugh and pity and rejoice. I pity the narrowness of outlook i that can recognise no rights Save one's own. • I pity the greed that heeds not the wants -j of others. I rejoice at the helpfulness that shines out even from narrow minds, and I remember that there is the germ of better things. . 1 But I wish that they all could live on 1 such a hill as mine. I