I often see a vision here in the ancient Forest tracks of a gang of wild and armed smugglers, and among them still more savage-looking foreign sailors.  They have two or three Forest trucks, made especially to fit the ruts in the little-used tracks, laden with casks of spirits and drawn by rough Forest ponies.  I can hear the shouts of the drivers as they urge them forward, and I can see the steaming sides of the ponies in the misty moonlight of a winter night.  The spirits were landed at Poole or Christchurch, and they are on their way to Burley where, under the old house I bought with my land, there is still the cellar, then cleverly concealed, where the casks were stored in safety from the watchful eyes of the Excise; a quaint old place built of the local rock.

There is one vision of the roads in the Forest which nobody who saw it can ever forget:  the companies of infantry, the serious officers, the ruddy-faced men, and the then untried guns of the glorious Seventh Division, on their route marches, with fife and drum to cheer the way with the now classic strains of “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary.”  There are spots where I met them in the autumn of 1914 that I never pass without feeling that for all time these places are sacred to the memory of heroes.

Besides the fancied pageantry of the roads there are the natural objects of the woods, the lanes, and the fields; the blossoming hawthorn and the wild roses trailing from the hedges, the hares and rabbits, the birds, the butterflies, and the flowers; sturdy teams with the time-honoured ploughs and harrows, the sowing of the seed, the young gleaming corn, the scented hayfields or the golden harvest; every man at his honourable labour, happy children dashing out of school; noble timber, hazel coppices, grey old villages; cattle in the pastures, or enjoying the cool waters of shallow pools or brooks; sheep in the field or the fold, the shepherd and his dog; apple blossom, or the ripe and ruddy fruit, bowery hop-gardens, mellow old cottages, country-folk going to market, fat beasts, cows and calves, carriers’ carts full of gossips.

Pictures, real pictures, everywhere, endless in variety.  Steady! go steady past these woods; see the blue haze of wild hyacinths, the cool carpet of primroses.  Look at the cowslips yellowing that meadow; do you see the heron standing patiently in the marsh?  Look overhead, watch the hovering hawk; hark! there is the nightingale.  Stop a moment at the bridge; can you see the speckled beauties with their heads upstream?  Thank God for the blue, blue sky! thank God for the glory of the sun, for the lights and shadows beneath the trees!  Thank God for the live air, the growth, the life of plant and tree, the fragrance and the beauty!  Thank God for rural England!