Idlethorp - pocketboek

A nation which fails to keep in touch with its past, as has been very truly said, is as near to drying up as a tree with severed roots. The same might be just as truly said of any of the communities, large or small-cities, towns, parishes, villages, hamlets-of which a nation is composed, for their past is the nation's past; its roots are their roots and even the least of them has made some contribution to the life of the nation. Hence no lover of his native place, and the community to which he belongs, can wish its story to pass, unrecorded in the flight of time. It was for love of my own native place that I undertook, at the suggestion of one who loved it no less, to write the account of it that appears in these pages. Wright Watson Idle 1950