Explore "Escape and other essays" by A.C. Benson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There are days -- perhaps it is well that they are not more common -- when by some singular harmony of body and spirit, every little sound and sight strikes on the senses with a peculiar sharpness and distinctness of quality, has a keen and racy savour, and comes as delightfully home to the mind as cool well-water to thirsty lips. Everything seems in place, in some well-designed combination or symphony of the senses; and more than that -- the sound, the sight, whatever it be, sets free a whole train of far-reaching and mysterious thoughts, that seem to flash the secret of life on the spirit -- or rather hint it in a tender, smiling way, as a mother nods a delighted acquiescence to the eager questions of a child face to face with some happy surprise.
That day of January was just such a day to me, as we drove along the dreary road from Marazion to Helston, by ruined mine-towers with their heaps of scoriae, looking out to the sea on the one hand, and on the other to the low, monotonous slopes of tilth and pasture, rising and falling like broad-backed waves, with here and there a wild and broken wood of firs, like the forest of Broceliande, or a holt of wind-brushed, fawn-coloured ash-trees, half empurpled by the coming of spring, in some rushy dingle by the stream side.