The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (1.1894)

A Lost Masterpiece
A City Mood, Aug. '93

By George Egerton

Iregret it, but what am I to do ? It was not my fault—I can
only regret it. It was thus it happened to me.
I had come to town straight from a hillside cottage in a lonely
ploughland, with the smell of the turf in my nostrils, and the
swish of the scythes in my ears; the scythes that flashed in the
meadows where theupland hay, drought-parched, stretched thirstily
up to the clouds that mustered upon the mountain-tops, and
marched mockingly away, and held no rain.

The desire to mix with the crowd, to lay my ear once more to
the heart of the world and listen to its life-throbs, had grown too
strong for me ; and so I had come back—but the sights and sounds
of my late life clung to me—it is singular how the most opposite
things often fill one with associative memory.

That gamin of the bird-tribe, the Cockney sparrow, recalled
the swallows that built in the tumble-down shed ; and I could
almost see the gleam of their white bellies, as they circled
in ever narrowing sweeps and clove the air with forked wings,
uttering a shrill note, with a querulous grace-note in front
of it.

The