From a Lecture on Ilkley by the Reverand Doctor Robert Collyer, Boston, USA
There was an old well at which I used to drink when I was a boy. I thought there was no well like it in the World - clear brown water distilled from the moors. I longed to drink of that well all the years I dwelt in the New World, as David longed to drink the well at Bethlehem. I went back at last and drank deep of it: but the water did not taste quite as sweet as I expected. I went again and just put my lips to the water for love of old memories. I went again last summer but one. An old peasant woman was filling her pitcher there. I began to ask her about the life which was one with mine once and has passed away. She was a living chronicle - told me a wealth of things I longed to know - of life and death - of sorrow and joy - of shadow and sunshine, touching and pathetic, some of them beyond imagination - and took up her pitcher and went home. I went my way with wet tears and was ever so far from the old well before I bethought myself that I had not even wet my lips this time.