'On a Sunshine Holyday' Author:Edward Marston Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. SALISBURY PLAIN AND THE VALLEY OF THE AVON. May, 1896. " Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds, looking on their silly sh... more »eep, Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy To kings that fear their subjects' treachery." King Henry V. 7]F in my childhood I ever read that wonderful story by Hannah More, "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," I am ashamed to say that I have forgotten all about it ; but I have lately been across a large part of Salisbury Plain, and have seen many a shepherd and many thousands of sheep ; and a pretty sight it is, to see a thousand sheep just released from their pen on the top of the Downs on a hot afternoon rushing helter-skelter down the steep hillsides to the water ; a scene which occurs daily, but which, seen for the firsttime, seems quite an exciting and picturesque feature in the landscape. The shepherds are a stalwart race of men, as good, I'll warrant, all of'em, as the particularly good man immortalized by Hannah More. To pleasure seekers, and all such as care for nothing but their own special amusement, this present month of May must have been wonderfully attractive; it derived from April a fair amount of moisture, for " April showers prepare the way for May flowers," and up to the middle of the month the meadows have preserved a pleasant degree of lush verdure, and plenty of buttercups and daisies ; but now are the croakers beginning to croak, and predict a droughty summer, and lament over it before it comes. I must own myself to be among the pleasure seekers. A cordial, genial invitation to run down and fish the Wiltshire Avon fetched me at once right off my office stool, and sent me one day last week away by rail and road to attractive, pretty Amesbury. Thereby flows the pleasant Avon. That pleasa...« less