Taking tea on my twenty-first birthday, Part 2

The sun illumined the snow globe effect so that all the white fleecy flakes dazzled my eyes, unaccustomed as they were to snow of any kind. Having grown up as I had in the Deep Southern United States, snow was indeed a novelty and seemed as magical to me as fairy dust. I put my tongue out just a bit to taste the delicious whiteness which was as refreshing as peppermint.

There I stood on the grounds of Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill's birthplace and ancestral home, absorbing with every pore of my being the beauty and history which surrounded me. I was tempted to pinch myself, but decided against it: if this were a dream, I reasoned, then it was a good one, and one from which I would awaken with sorrow at seeing it end; and if it were real, so much the better! So I dreamily floated around the place, through the endless rooms with their decidedly English-style furnishings and onto the numerous paths which led to the ordered English-style gardens. The vistas were magnificent. Everywhere I turned the view was more breathtaking and beckoning. "Oh to be in England!.." wrote the poet. And there I stood--in England in April, more of Heaven than Earth; so it seemed to me.

Nota bene: Part 1 was posted on January 18, 2009.

Safe haven

"The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship."

--William Blake

Brave and true

"Electronic communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with his soul encourages another person to be brave and true."

--Charles Dickens

So rare

"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."

--Mark Twain