That laugh of the woodpecker was an assurance that Nature had suffered no change, and the town too, like the hills and rocks and running waters, seemed unchanged; but how different and how sad when I looked for those I once knew, whose hands I had hoped to grasp again! Yes, some were living still; and a dog too, one I used to take out for long walks and many a mad rabbit-hunt--a very handsome white-and-liver coloured spaniel.

I found him lying on a sofa, and down he got and wagged his tail vigorously, pretending, with a pretty human hypocrisy in his gentle yellow eyes, that he knew me perfectly well, that I was not a bit changed, and that he was delighted to see me.
On my way back to Bath I had a day at Bristol.

It was cattle-market day, and what with the bellowings, barkings, and shoutings, added to the buzz and clang of innumerable electric tramcars and the usual din of street traffic, one got the idea that the Bristolians had adopted a sort of Salvation Army theory, and were endeavouring to conquer earth (it is not heaven in this case) by making a tremendous noise.

I amused myself strolling about and watching the people, and as train after train came in late in the day discharging loads of humanity, mostly young men and women from the surrounding country coming in for an evening's amusement, I noticed again the peculiarly Welsh character of the Somerset peasant--the shape of the face, the colour of the skin, and, above all, the expression.
Freeman, when here below, proclaimed it his mission to prove that "Englishmen were Englishmen, and not somebody else." It appeared to me that any person, unbiassed by theories on such a subject, looking at that crowd, would have come to the conclusion, sadly or gladly, according to his nature, that we are, in fact, "somebody else.".