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float on its waters all day and hear only the whispering of the reeds, the crowing of the pheasants in the woods, and the chuckling of the reed birds. In the Old Hall garden which slopes down to the lake you inhale the fragrance of oldfashioned flowers. Winding paths through the woodlands lead you into bosky dells bright with pink-blossomed willow-herbs, and sunlit glades where the scattered bushes are garlanded Iwith wild roses. Here, if anywhere, a man cannot say that the world is too much with him. Bright green of larch and dusky foliage of fir, scent of eglantine and blossom of wild strawberry, mavis in the brake and wood-dove on the tree-top-these are the delights of Fritton-these and the gleaming of sunlit waters between the boles of rugged oaks and smooth green beeches, and the flickering fretwork of light and shade beneath the trees.

It is not enough to spend only the sunlit hours of a summer day on Fritton Lake; you must linger on its waters or its shores until the daylight fades and the moon is mirrored where the sunbeams lately played. Draw your boat up close beneath the boughs of some waterside tree, or seat yourself on some rugged limb which commands a view of the lake, and then be content just to look at and listen to what you see and hear around you. Mark the moonglade on the water, stretching like a silvern pathway to the distant woods; the swans stealing silently out of the shadow into the silver light. Listen to the rustling of the night-prowling woodland creatures and the complaining of startled woodland birds. There is no need to listen for the songs of the nightingales; you cannot help hearing them. All the other night sounds of wood and water are simply interludes of their outbursts of enchanting melody. All day long they have been singing, but their songs were mingled in the general chorus of feathered minstrels; now the thrushes, blackbirds, and linnets are silent, and the nightingales hold the night spellbound while they answer each other from shore to shore.

"There can be no very black melancholy

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in him who lives in the midst of Nature, and has his senses still,” wrote Thoreau while musing by the side of Walden; and I am disposed to defy any man who spends a day and night, or a succession of days and nights, by the side of Fritton Lake to experience a very black melancholy. Melancholy he may feel; but it will be that pleasing melancholy which is half the delight derived from looking upon loveliness and listening to the singing of birds and the whispering of the wind among the trees. Such melancholy may even move to tears; but the "divine despair" which sets the eyes brimming is no heart-searching sorrow to leave its mark on a man and embitter the cup of life from which he drinks. Rather, it

sends him back to the busy ways of man conscious of having learnt a lesson which will lighten his load of care and help him to estimate most things at their proper value. Amid the distraction of business and wearying worries he will not fail to remember that there are still "haunts of ancient peace," even within the narrow limits of his native land, where, if he chooses to live like Thoreau and let the world go its own way, he may find quietude and rest. And even if this knowledge does not tempt him to follow the example of the Walden philosopher, he may, by pondering over it in the night watches and Sabbath evenings of his weeks and days, experience a good deal of contemplative and retrospective enjoyment, which will, in a measure, compensate for inability to participate in the real thing.

I fancy that Thoreau, had he been an East Anglian, would have chosen a site on the shores of Fritton Lake for the building of his log hut. His Week on the Concord would then have been a Week on the Waveney; he would have found defiance in the crow of a cock pheasant or the call of a heron instead of in the laugh of the loon. In the Fritton woods he would have enjoyed that solitude which he considered essential to the making of a man; here, too, he would have watched the little wild creatures—the squirrels, mice, and rabbits—

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come quite close to the door of his hut, and listened to the loud honking of the wild geese and the mournful hootings and mewings of the woodland owls. His Fritton would have been full of notes on the natural history of his woodland retreat; he would have told us how it came about that the herons ceased to nest in the Fritton trees, and when the bustard was last seen on the neighbouring heathlands. He would have known whenever a golden oriel was haunting the woods, or a flock of crossbills had settled there; he would have had strange stories to tell about the huge pike and ancient bream which lurked in the deep dark waters of the lake. Careless of tearing his clothes or lacerating his face and hands, he would have plunged through the thorniest of thickets if by so doing he might learn something of the craft of a Fritton poacher; regardless of chills, he would have crouched for hours behind the screens of a wild fowl decoy to watch the luring of the duck and teal. The tapping of the Fritton woodpeckers, the chuckling of the Fritton reed birds, and the singing of the Fritton nightingales would have inspired all that was best in him and confirmed him in the opinion that "Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her." "She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside," he tells us. She flourishes at Fritton; and even if we cannot fully appreciate her, a Thoreau would have made us understand something of the charm of her wild beauty and the fascination of her many moods. He would have given us the fruits of his musings as he sat by the door of his hut, gazing upon the red sunsets behind the dusky firs, and the mystic beauty of the moonlit lake. I fancy I see him, clad in garments of the russet hue of the autumn woods, " a-gipsying among the pines"; acquainted with every bird-cry from the thickets and wild flower of the woods and waterside; day after day treading the same winding footpaths strewn with fallen beechmast and fir cones; brushing his way through shady copses, ankle deep in a rustling carpet of withered leaves. Fritton Lake is his

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forest mirror; in it he sees reflected all the pageantry of beauty the fringing woodlands assume and his vivid pen describes. The rising of the moon above the sombre woods and its mystic light in their shadowy aisles sets him pondering over the curious turning of the tide of thought which is brought about by lunar influence; the setting sun paints for him the glory of vanished nations on the western sky. Nothing is too mean or too grand for his range of thought; the lakeside myosotis and humble bank vole appeal to him as well as the flush of dawn and the splendour of the dying day.

Only in summer and autumn are the waters of Fritton Lake accessible to the world in general; in winter seldom does a boat glide over its steely surface or a footfall break the silence of its woods. For it is in winter the decoyman crouches behind his reed screens and lures the wild fowl into his tunnellike decoys; and to make the capture of the fowl possible they must not be alarmed by any disturbing sound. But decoying is little practised nowadays, and, like the broadsman, the decoyman will soon find his occupation gone. The wholesale slaughter of wild fowl-thousands of duck, teal, and widgeon were sometimes taken weekly in the old decoys-is now condemned as unsportsmanlike, and it is only where, as at Fritton, decoys are worked for the amusement of their owners rather than for profit that this old-time method of wild-fowlcapture is still pursued. Still, if it is a doubtful "sport" there is excitement enough attached to the working of a decoy. Cramped limbs and frost-nipped fingers are forgotten when the decoyman's dog begins its antics at the mouth of the pipe and the inquisitive fowl come swimming towards the shore. A good decoyman will allow himself to be suffocated by the smoke of the smouldering peat he carries rather than cough and alarm the fowl, and he will risk the salvation of his soul in muttering imprecations on the head of the gunner who shoots within a mile of the lake or the trespasser who forces a way noisily through the undergrowth of the woods.