And Mr.
Belloc has given us a very jolly picture of the way in which he is going to
spend his evening:
If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.
I will hold my house in the high woods
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.
There is Mr. Birrell, too, who, as I have remarked elsewhere, once said
that when he retired he would take his modest savings into the country "and
really read Boswell."
These are typical, I suppose, of the dreams that most of us cultivate about
old age. I, too, look forward to a cottage under the high beech woods, to a
well-thumbed Boswell, and to a garden where I shall mulch my rose-trees and
watch the buds coming with as rich a satisfaction as any that the hot
battle of the day has given me. But there is another thing I shall ask for.
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