The Open Air

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The Open Air

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Title: The Open Air
Author: Richard Jefferies
Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6981] [This file was first posted on February 19, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE OPEN AIR ***

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THE OPEN AIR

RICHARD JEFFERIES

NOTE
For permission to collect these papers my thanks are due to the Editors of the following publications: The Standard, English Illustrated Magazine, _Longman's Magazine_, _St. James's Gazette_, _Chambers's Journal_, Manchester Guardian, Good Words, and Pall Mall Gazette. R.J.

CONTENTS
SAINT GUIDO
GOLDEN-BROWN
WILD FLOWERS
SUNNY BRIGHTON
THE PINE WOOD
NATURE ON THE ROOF
ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS
THE MODERN THAMES
THE SINGLE-BARREL GUN
THE HAUNT OF THE HARE
THE BATHING SEASON
UNDER THE ACORNS
DOWNS
FOREST
BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY
OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY
HAUNTS OF THE LAPWING
OUTSIDE LONDON
ON THE LONDON ROAD
RED ROOFS OF LONDON
A WET NIGHT IN LONDON

SAINT GUIDO
St. Guido ran out at the garden gate into a sandy lane, and down the lane till he came to a grassy bank. He caught hold of the bunches of grass and so pulled himself up. There was a footpath on the top which went straight in between fir-trees, and as he ran along they stood on each side of him like green walls. They were very near together, and even at the top the space between them was so narrow that the sky seemed to come down, and the clouds to be sailing but just over them, as if they would catch and tear in the fir-trees. The path was so little used that it had grown green, and as he ran he knocked dead branches out of his way. Just as he was getting tired of running he reached the end of the path, and came out into a wheat-field. The wheat did not grow very closely, and the spaces were filled with azure corn-flowers. St. Guido thought he was safe away now, so he stopped to look.
Those thoughts and feelings which are not sharply defined but have a haze of distance and beauty about them are always the dearest. His name was not really Guido, but those who loved him had called him so in order to try and express their hearts about him. For they thought if a great painter could be a little boy, then he would be something like this one. They were not very learned in the history of painters: they had heard of Raphael, but Raphael was too elevated, too much of the sky, and of Titian, but Titian was fond of feminine loveliness, and in the end somebody said Guido was a dreamy name, as if it belonged to one who was full of faith. Those golden curls shaking about his head as he ran and filling the air with radiance round his brow, looked like a Nimbus or circlet of glory. So they called him St. Guido, and a very, very wild saint he was.
St. Guido stopped in the cornfield, and looked all round. There were the fir-trees behind him--a thick wall of green--hedges on the right and the left, and the wheat sloped down towards an ash-copse in the hollow. No one was in the field, only the fir-trees, the green hedges, the yellow wheat, and the sun overhead, Guido kept quite still, because he expected that in a minute the magic would begin, and something would speak to him. His cheeks which had been flushed with running grew less hot, but I cannot tell you the exact colour they were, for his skin was so white and clear, it would not tan under the sun, yet being always out of doors it had taken the faintest tint of golden brown mixed with rosiness. His blue eyes which had been wide open, as they always were when full of mischief, became softer, and his long eyelashes drooped over them. But as the magic did not begin, Guido walked on slowly into the wheat, which rose nearly