In the country a man is more of an
individual; in a city he is only one of a multitude. The country
boy has to rely upon himself, and has to work in comparative
solitude, while the city boy is distracted by excitements. Life
in the country is full of practical teachings; whereas life in
the city may be degraded by frivolities and pleasures, which are
too often the foes of work. Hence we have usually to go to
out-of-the-way corners of the country for our hardest
brain-workers. Contact with the earth is a great restorer of
power; and it is to the country folks that we must ever look for
the recuperative power of the nation as regards health, vigour,
and manliness.
Bainbridge is a remote country village, situated among the high
lands or Fells on the north-western border of Yorkshire. The
mountains there send out great projecting buttresses into the
dales; and the waters rush down from the hills, and form
waterfalls or Forces, which Turner has done so much to
illustrate. The river Bain runs into the Yore at Bainbridge,
which is supposed to be the site of an old Roman station. Over
the door of the Grammar School is a mermaid, said to have been
found in a camp on the top of Addleborough, a remarkable
limestone hill which rises to the south-east of Bainbridge. It
is in this grammar-school that we find the subject of this little
autobiography.
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