. . . as they do for the wayfarer (do you remember?), in Bewick, who, desiring to rest by the roadside, finds the dingle all alive with ambushed fiends, horned and heavy-limbed, swollen with the oppressive clumsiness of nightmare. But you are not inexperienced or weak. You have enough philosophy to wait until the frozen mood thaws, and the old thrill comes back. That is one of the real compensations of middle age. When one is young, one imagines that any depression will be continuous; and one sees the dreary, uncomforted road winding ahead over bare hills, till it falls to the dark valley. But later on one can believe that "the roadside dells of rest" are there, even if one cannot see them; and, after all, you have a home which goes with you; and it would seem to be fortunate, or to speak more truly, tenderly prepared, that you have only daughters -- a son, who would have to go back to England to be educated, would be a source of anxiety. . . .
Author Biography
Arthur Christopher Benson (1862 - 1925) was an English essayist, poet, author and academic and the 28th Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is noted for writing the words of the song "Land of Hope and Glory." From 1885 to 1903 he taught at Eton, returning to Cambridge in 1904 as a Fellow of Magdalene College to lecture in English Literature. He became president of the college in 1912 and Master of Magdalene in December 1915, a post he held until his death in 1925. From 1906, he was a governor of Gresham's School. The modern development of Magdalene was shaped by Benson. He was a generous benefactor to the college with a significant impact on the modern appearance of the college grounds; at least twenty inscriptions around the college refer to him. In 1930, Benson Court was constructed and named after him. Like his brothers Edward Frederic (E. F.) and Robert Hugh (R. H.), A. C. Benson was noted as an author of ghost stories. The bulk of his published ghost stories in the two volumes The Hill of Trouble and Other Stories (1903) and The Isles of Sunset (1904) were written as moral allegories for his pupils.
