



Produced by David Widger





STUDIES AND ESSAYS

By John Galsworthy


          "Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
                                        --ANATOLE FRANCE





                         CONCERNING LIFE



TABLE OF CONTENTS:
          INN OF TRANQUILITY
          MAGPIE OVER THE HILL
          SHEEP-SHEARING
          EVOLUTION
          RIDING IN THE MIST
          THE PROCESSION
          A CHRISTIAN
          WIND IN THE ROCKS
          MY DISTANT RELATIVE
          THE BLACK GODMOTHER





THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY

Under a burning blue sky, among the pine-trees and junipers, the
cypresses and olives of that Odyssean coast, we came one afternoon on a
pink house bearing the legend: "Osteria di Tranquillita,"; and, partly
because of the name, and partly because we did not expect to find a house
at all in those goat-haunted groves above the waves, we tarried for
contemplation.  To the familiar simplicity of that Italian building there
were not lacking signs of a certain spiritual change, for out of the
olive-grove which grew to its very doors a skittle-alley had been formed,
and two baby cypress-trees were cut into the effigies of a cock and hen.
The song of a gramophone, too, was breaking forth into the air, as it
were the presiding voice of a high and cosmopolitan mind.  And, lost in
admiration, we became conscious of the odour of a full-flavoured cigar.
Yes--in the skittle-alley a gentleman was standing who wore a bowler hat,
a bright brown suit, pink tie, and very yellow boots.  His head was
round, his cheeks fat and well-, his lips red and full under a
black moustache, and he was regarding us through very thick and
half-closed eyelids.

Perceiving him to be the proprietor of the high and cosmopolitan mind, we
accosted him.

"Good-day!" he replied: "I spik English.  Been in Amurrica yes."

"You have a lovely place here."

Sweeping a glance over the skittle-alley, he sent forth a long puff of
smoke; then, turning to my companion (of the politer sex) with the air of
one who has made himself perfect master of a foreign tongue, he smiled,
and spoke.

"Too-quiet!"

"Precisely; the name of your inn, perhaps, suggests----"

"I change all that--soon I call it Anglo-American hotel."

"Ah! yes; you are very up-to-date already."

He closed one eye and smiled.

Having passed a few more compliments, we saluted and walked on; and,
coming presently to the edge of the cliff, lay down on the thyme and the
crumbled leaf-dust.  All the small singing birds had long been shot and
eaten; there came to us no sound but that of the waves swimming in on a
gentle south wind.  The wanton creatures seemed stretching out white arms
to the land, flying desperately from a sea of such stupendous serenity;
and over their bare shoulders their hair floated back, pale in the
sunshine.  If the air was void of sound, it was full of scent--that
delicious and enlivening perfume of mingled gum, and herbs, and sweet
wood being burned somewhere a long way off; and a silky, golden warmth
slanted on to us through the olives and umbrella pines.  Large wine-red
violets were growing near.  On such a cliff might Theocritus have lain,
spinning his songs; on that divine sea Odysseus should have passed.  And
we felt that presently the goat-god must put his head forth from behind a
rock.

It seemed a little queer that our friend in the bowler hat should move
and breathe within one short flight of a cuckoo from this home of Pan.
One could not but at first feelingly remember the old Boer saying: "O
God, what things man sees when he goes out without a gun!" But soon the
infinite incongruity of this juxtaposition began to produce within one a
curious eagerness, a sort of half-philosophical delight. It began to seem
too good, almost too romantic, to be true. To think of the gramophone
wedded to the thin sweet singing of the olive leaves in the evening wind;
to remember the scent of his rank cigar marrying with this wild incense;
to read that enchanted name, "Inn of Tranquillity," and hear the bland
and affable