initial commit of ebook 20528HEADmain

1 files changed, 3819 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/20528.txt b/20528.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0183a92
--- /dev/null
+++ b/20528.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3819 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Round About a Great Estate, by Richard Jefferies
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Round About a Great Estate
+
+Author: Richard Jefferies
+
+Release Date: February 6, 2007 [EBook #20528]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUND ABOUT A GREAT ESTATE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Malcolm Farmer and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ROUND ABOUT A GREAT ESTATE
+
+
+
+BY
+
+RICHARD JEFFERIES
+
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+'THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME'
+'WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY'
+'THE AMATEUR POACHER'
+'GREEN FERNE FARM'
+'HODGE AND HIS MASTERS'
+
+
+
+LONDON
+SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
+1880
+
+[_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+There is an old story which in respect of a modern application may
+bear re-telling. Once upon a time in a lonely 'coombe-bottom' of the
+Downs, where there was neither church, chapel, nor public building of
+any kind, there lived a cottage-girl who had never seen anything of
+civilisation. A friend, however, having gone out to service in a
+market-town some few miles distant, she one day walked in to see her,
+and was shown the wonders of the place, the railway, the post-office,
+the hotels, and so forth. In the evening the friend accompanied her a
+short way on the return journey, and as they went out of the town,
+they passed the church. Looking suddenly up at the tower, the visitor
+exclaimed, 'Lard-a-mussy! you've got another moon here. Yourn have got
+figures all round un!' In her excitement, and prepared to see marvels,
+she had mistaken the large dial of the church clock for a moon of a
+different kind to the one which shone upon her native home. This old
+tale, familiar to country folk as an illustration of simplicity, has
+to-day a wider meaning. Until recent years the population dwelling in
+villages and hamlets, and even in little rural towns, saw indeed the
+sun by day and the moon by night, and learned the traditions and
+customs of their forefathers, such as had been handed down for
+generations. But now a new illumination has fallen upon these far-away
+places. The cottager is no longer ignorant, and his child is well
+grounded in rudimentary education, reads and writes with facility, and
+is not without knowledge of the higher sort. Thus there is now another
+moon with the figures of education all round it. In this book some
+notes have been made of the former state of things before it passes
+away entirely. But I would not have it therefore thought that I wish
+it to continue or return. My sympathies and hopes are with the light
+of the future, only I should like it to come from nature. The clock
+should be read by the sunshine, not the sun timed by the clock. The
+latter is indeed impossible, for though all the clocks in the world
+should declare the hour of dawn to be midnight, the sun will presently
+rise just the same.
+
+RICHARD JEFFERIES.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                PAGE
+
+   I. OKEBOURNE CHACE.  FELLING TREES.                    1
+
+  II. CICELY.  THE BROOK.                                20
+
+ III. A PACK OF STOATS.  BIRDS.                          42
+
+  IV. HAMLET FOLK.                                       61
+
+   V. WIND-ANEMONES.  THE FISHPOND.                      82
+
+  VI. A FARMER OF THE OLDEN TIMES.                      103
+
+ VII. THE CUCKOO-FIELDS.                                125
+
+VIII. CICELY'S DAIRY.  HILARY'S TALK.                   144
+
+  IX. THE WATER-MILL.  FIELD NAMES.                     163
+
+   X. THE COOMBE-BOTTOM.  CONCLUSION.                   183
+
+
+
+
+ROUND ABOUT A GREAT ESTATE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+OKEBOURNE CHACE.    FELLING TREES.
+
+
+The great house at Okebourne Chace stands in the midst of the park,
+and from the southern windows no dwellings are visible. Near at hand
+the trees appear isolated, but further away insensibly gather
+together, and above them rises the distant Down crowned with four
+tumuli. Among several private paths which traverse the park there is
+one that, passing through a belt of ash wood, enters the meadows.
+Sometimes following the hedges and sometimes crossing the angles, this
+path finally ends, after about a mile, in the garden surrounding a
+large thatched farmhouse. In the maps of the parish it has probably
+another name, but from being so long inhabited by the Lucketts it is
+always spoken of as Lucketts' Place.
+
+The house itself and ninety acres of grass land have been their
+freehold for many generations; in fact, although there is no actual
+deed of entail, the property is as strictly preserved in the family
+and descends from heir to heir as regularly as the great estate and
+mansion adjacent. Old Hilary Luckett--though familiarly called 'old,'
+he is physically in the prime of life--is probably about the most
+independent man in the county. Yet he is on terms of more than
+goodwill with the great house, and rents one of the largest farms on
+the estate, somewhere between six and seven hundred acres. He has the
+right of shooting, and in the course of years privilege after
+privilege has been granted, till Hilary is now as free of the warren
+as the owner of the charter himself. If you should be visiting
+Okebourne Chace, and any question should arise whether of horses, dog,
+or gun, you are sure to be referred to Hilary. Hilary knows all about
+it: he is the authority thereabout on all matters concerning game. Is
+it proposed to plant fresh covers? Hilary's opinion is asked. Is it
+proposed to thin out some of the older trees; what does Hilary say?
+
+It is a fact that people really believe no part of a partridge is ever
+taken away after being set before him. Neither bones nor sinews
+remain: so fond is he of the brown bird. Having eaten the breast, and
+the juicy leg and the delicate wing, he next proceeds to suck the
+bones; for game to be thoroughly enjoyed should be eaten like a
+mince-pie, in the fingers. There is always one bone with a sweeter
+flavour than the rest, just at the joint or fracture: it varies in
+every bird according to the chance of the cooking, but, having
+discovered it, put it aside for further and more strict attention.
+Presently he begins to grind up the bones in his strong teeth,
+commencing with the smallest. His teeth are not now so powerful as
+when in younger days he used to lift a sack of wheat with them, or the
+full milking-bucket up to the level of the copper in the dairy. Still
+they gradually reduce the slender skeleton. The feat is not so
+difficult if the bird has been well hung.
+
+He has the right to shoot, and need take no precautions. But, in fact,
+a farmer, whether he has liberty or not, can usually amuse himself
+occasionally in that way. If his labourer sees him quietly slipping up
+beside the hedge with his double-barrel towards the copse in the
+corner where a pheasant has been heard several times lately, the
+labourer watches him with delight, and says nothing. Should anyone in
+authority ask where that gun went off, the labourer 'thenks it wur th'
+birdkippur up in th' Dree Vurlong, you.' Presently the pheasant hangs
+in the farmer's cellar, his long tail sweeping the top of the XXX
+cask; and the 'servant-wench,' who is in and out all day, also says
+nothing. Nor can anything exceed the care with which she disposes of
+the feathers when she picks the bird. There is a thorough sympathy
+between master and man so far. Hilary himself, with all that great
+estate to sport over, cannot at times refrain from stepping across the
+boundary. His landlord once, it is whispered, was out with Hilary
+shooting, and they became so absent-minded while discussing some
+interesting subject as to wander several fields beyond the property
+before they discovered their mistake.
+
+At Lucketts' Place the favourite partridge always comes up for supper:
+a pleasant meal that nowadays can rarely be had out of a farmhouse.
+Then the bright light from the burning log outshines the lamp, and
+glances rosy on the silver tankard standing under a glass shade on a
+bracket against the wall. Hilary's father won it near half a century
+since in some heats that were run on the Downs on the old racecourse,
+before it was ploughed up. For the wicked turnip is responsible for
+the destruction of old England; far more so than the steam-engine.
+
+Waste lands all glorious with golden blossoming furze, with purple
+foxglove, or curious orchis hiding in stray corners; wild moor-like
+lands, beautiful with heaths and honey-bottle; grand stretches of
+sloping downs where the hares hid in the grass, and where all the
+horses in the kingdom might gallop at their will; these have been
+overthrown with the plough because of the turnip. As the root crops
+came in, the rage began for thinning the hedges and grubbing the
+double mounds and killing the young timber, besides putting in the
+drains and driving away the wild-ducks. The wicked turnip put diamonds
+on the fingers of the farmer's wife, and presently raised his rent.
+But now some of the land is getting 'turnip-sick,' the roots come
+stringy and small and useless, so that many let it 'vall down.'
+
+After the last crop it is left alone, the couch grows, the docks
+spread out from the hedges, every species of weed starts up, till
+by-and-by the ploughed land becomes green and is called pasture. This
+is a process going on at the present moment, and to which owners of
+land should see without delay. Hilary has been looked on somewhat
+coldly by other tenants for openly calling the lord of the manor's
+attention to it. He sturdily maintains that arable land if laid down
+for pasture should be laid down properly--a thing that requires labour
+and expenditure just the same as other farming operations. So the
+silver tankard, won when 'cups' were not so common as now, is a
+memorial of the old times before the plough turned up the sweet turf
+of the racecourse.
+
+Hilary does not bet beyond the modest 'fiver' which a man would be
+thought unsociable if he did not risk on the horse that carries the
+country's colours. But he is very 'thick' with the racing-people on
+the Downs, and supplies the stable with oats, which is, I believe, not
+an unprofitable commission. The historical anecdote of the Roman
+emperor who fed his horse on gilded oats reads a little strange when
+we first come across it in youth. But many a race-horse owner has
+found reason since to doubt if it be so wonderful, as his own stud--to
+judge by the cost--must live on golden fodder. Now, before I found
+this out about the stable, it happened one spring day that I met
+Hilary in the fields, and listened to a long tirade which he delivered
+against 'wuts.'
+
+The wheat was then showing a beautiful flag, the despised oats were
+coming out in jag, and the black knots on the delicate barley straw
+were beginning to be topped with the hail. The flag is the long narrow
+green leaf of the wheat; in jag means the spray-like drooping awn of
+the oat; and the hail is the beard of the barley, which when it is
+white and brittle in harvest-time gets down the back of the neck,
+irritating the skin of those who work among it. According to Hilary,
+oats do not flourish on rich land; and when he was young (and
+everything was then done right) a farmer who grew oats was looked upon
+with contempt, as they were thought only fit for the poorest soil, and
+a crop that therefore denoted poverty. But nowadays, thundered Hilary
+in scorn, all farmers grow oats, and, indeed, anything in preference
+to wheat.
+
+Afterwards, at the Derby that year, methought I saw Hilary as I passed
+the sign of the 'Carrion Crow:' the dead bird dangles from the top of
+a tall pole stuck in the sward beside a booth. I lost him in the crowd
+then. But later on in autumn, while rambling round the Chace, there
+came on a 'skit' of rain, and I made for one of his barns for shelter.
+There was Hilary in the barn with his men, as busy as they could well
+be, winnowing oats. It seemed to me that especial care was being
+taken, and on asking questions, to which the men silently replied with
+a grin, Hilary presently blurted out that the dust had to be carefully
+removed, because the grain was for the racing-stable. The dainty
+creatures up there must have food free from dust, which makes them too
+thirsty. The hay supplied, for the same reason, had to be shaken
+before being used. No oats would do under 40 lb. the bushel, and the
+heavier the better.
+
+Luckett was a man whom every one knew to be 'square;' but, if the talk
+of the country-side is to be believed, the farmers who have much to do
+with the stables do not always come off successful. They sometimes
+become too sharp, and fancy themselves cleverer than a class of men
+who, if their stature be not great, are probably the keenest of wit.
+The farmer who obliges them is invariably repaid with lucrative
+'tips;' but if he betrays those 'tips' may possibly find his
+information in turn untrustworthy, and have to sell by auction, and
+depart to Texas. Luckett avoids such pitfalls by the simple policy of
+'squareness,' which is, perhaps, the wisest of all. When the 'skit'
+blew past he took his gun from the corner and stepped over the hatch,
+and came down the path with me, grumbling that all the grain, even
+where the crop looked well, had threshed out so light.
+
+Farming had gone utterly to the dogs of late seasons; he thought he
+should give up the land he rented, and live on the ninety acres
+freehold. In short, to hear him talk, you would think that he was
+conferring a very great favour upon his landlord in consenting to hold
+that six or seven hundred acres at a rent which has not been altered
+these fifty years at least. But the owner was a very good fellow, and
+as Hilary said, 'There it is, you see.' My private opinion is that,
+despite the late bad seasons, Hilary has long been doing remarkably
+well; and as for his landlord, that he would stand by him shoulder to
+shoulder if defence were needed.
+
+Much as I admired the timber about the Chace, I could not help
+sometimes wishing to have a chop at it. The pleasure of felling trees
+is never lost. In youth, in manhood--so long as the arm can wield the
+axe--the enjoyment is equally keen. As the heavy tool passes over the
+shoulder the impetus of the swinging motion lightens the weight, and
+something like a thrill passes through the sinews. Why is it so
+pleasant to strike? What secret instinct is it that makes the delivery
+of a blow with axe or hammer so exhilarating? The wilder frenzy of the
+sword--the fury of striking with the keen blade, which overtakes men
+even now when they come hand to hand, and which was once the life of
+battle--seems to arise from the same feeling. Then, as the sharp edge
+of the axe cuts deep through the bark into the wood, there is a second
+moment of gratification. The next blow sends a chip spinning aside;
+and by-the-bye never stand at the side of a woodman, for a chip may
+score your cheek like a slash with a knife. But the shortness of man's
+days will not allow him to cut down many trees. In imagination I
+sometimes seem to hear the sounds of the axes that have been ringing
+in the forests of America for a hundred years, and envy the joy of the
+lumbermen as the tall pines toppled to the fall. Of our English trees
+there is none so pleasant to chop as the lime; the steel enters into
+it so easily.
+
+In the enclosed portion of the park at Okebourne the boughs of the
+trees descended and swept the sward. Nothing but sheep being permitted
+to graze there, the trees grew in their natural form, the lower limbs
+drooping downwards to the ground. Hedgerow timber is usually
+'stripped' up at intervals, and the bushes, too, interfere with the
+expansion of the branches; while the boughs of trees standing in the
+open fields are nibbled off by cattle. But in that part of the park no
+cattle had fed in the memory of man; so that the lower limbs, drooping
+by their own weight, came arching to the turf. Each tree thus made a
+perfect bower.
+
+The old woodmen who worked in the Chace told me it used to be said
+that elm ought only to be thrown on two days of the year--_i.e._ the
+31st of December and the 1st of January. The meaning was that it
+should be cut in the very 'dead of the year,' when the sap had
+retired, so that the timber might last longer. The old folk took the
+greatest trouble to get their timber well seasoned, which is the
+reason why the woodwork in old houses has endured so well. Passing
+under some elms one June evening, I heard a humming overhead, and
+found it was caused by a number of bees and humble-bees busy in the
+upper branches at a great height from the ground. They were probably
+after the honey-dew. Buttercups do not flourish under trees; in early
+summer, where elms or oaks stand in the mowing-grass, there is often a
+circle around almost bare of them and merely green, while the rest of
+the meadow glistens with the burnished gold of that beautiful flower.
+
+The oak is properly regarded as a slow-growing tree, but under certain
+circumstances a sapling will shoot up quickly to a wonderful height.
+When the woodmen cut down a fir plantation in the Chace there was a
+young oak among it that overtopped the firs, and yet its diameter was
+so small that it looked no larger than a pole; and the supporting
+boughs of the firs being now removed it could not uphold itself, but
+bent so much from the perpendicular as to appear incapable of
+withstanding a gale. The bark of the oak, when stripped and stacked,
+requires fine weather to dry it, much the same as hay, so that a wet
+season like 1879 is very unfavourable.
+
+In the open glades of the Chace there were noble clumps of beeches,
+and if you walked quietly under them in the still October days you
+might hear a slight but clear and distinct sound above you. This was
+caused by the teeth of a squirrel nibbling the beech-nuts, and every
+now and then down came pieces of husk rustling through the coloured
+leaves. Sometimes a nut would fall which he had dropped; and yet, with
+the nibbling sound to guide the eye, it was not always easy to
+distinguish the little creature. But his tail presently betrayed him
+among the foliage, far out on a bough where the nuts grew. The husks,
+if undisturbed, remain on all the winter and till the tree is in full
+green leaf again; the young nuts are formed about midsummer.
+
+The black poplars are so much like the aspen as to be easily mistaken,
+especially as their leaves rustle in the same way. But the true aspen
+has a smooth bark, while that of the black poplar is scored or rough.
+Woodmen always call the aspen the 'asp,' dropping the termination. In
+the spring the young foliage of the black poplar has a yellow tint.
+When they cut down the alder poles by the water and peeled them, the
+sap under the bark as it dried turned as red as if stained. The paths
+in spring were strewn with the sheaths of the young leaves and buds
+pushing forth; showers of such brown sheaths came off the hawthorn
+with every breeze. These, with the catkins, form the first fall from
+tree and bush. The second is the flower, as the May, and the
+horse-chestnut bloom, whose petals cover the ground. The third fall is
+that of the leaf, and the fourth the fruit.
+
+On the Scotch fir the young green cones are formed about the beginning
+of June, and then the catkin adjacent to the cone is completely
+covered with quantities of pale yellow farina. If handled, it covers
+the fingers as though they had been dipped in sulphur-flour; shake the
+branch and it flies off, a little cloud of powdery particles. The
+scaly bark takes a ruddy tinge, when the sunshine falls upon it, and
+would then, I think, be worthy the attention of an artist as much as
+the birch bark, whose peculiar mingling of silvery white, orange, and
+brown, painters so often endeavour to represent on canvas. There is
+something in the Scotch fir, crowned at the top like a palm with its
+dark foliage, which, in a way I cannot express or indeed analyse,
+suggests to my mind the far-away old world of the geologists.
+
+In the boughs of the birch a mass of twigs sometimes grows so close
+and entangled together as to appear like a large nest from a distance
+when the leaves are off. Even as early as December the tomtits attack
+the buds, then in their sheaths, of the birch, clinging to the very
+extremities of the slender boughs. I once found a young birch growing
+on the ledge of a brick bridge, outside the parapet, and some forty or
+fifty feet from the ground. It was about four feet high, quite a
+sapling, and apparently flourishing, though where the roots could find
+soil it was difficult to discover.
+
+The ash tree is slowly disappearing from many places, and owners of
+hedgerow and copse would do well to plant ash, which affords a most
+useful wood. Ash poles are plentiful, but ash timber gets scarcer year
+by year; for as the present trees are felled there are no young ones
+rising up to take their place. Consequently ash is becoming dearer, as
+the fishermen find; for many of the pleasure yachts which they let out
+in summer are planked with ash, which answers well for boats which are
+often high and dry on the beach, though it would not do if always in
+the water. These beach-boats have an oak frame, oak stem and
+stern-post, beech keel, and are planked with ash. When they require
+repairing, the owners find ash planking scarce and dear.
+
+Trees may be said to change their garments thrice in the season. In
+the spring the woods at Okebourne were of the tenderest green, which,
+as the summer drew on, lost its delicacy of hue. Then came the second
+or 'midsummer shoot,' brightening them with fresh leaves and fresh
+green. The second shoot of the oak is reddish: there was one oak in
+the Chace which after midsummer thus became ruddy from the highest to
+the lowest branch; others did not show the change nearly so much.
+Lastly came the brown and yellow autumn tints.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CICELY.    THE BROOK.
+
+
+In the kitchen at Lucketts' Place there was a stool made by sawing off
+about six inches of the butt of a small ash tree. The bark remained
+on, and it was not smoothed or trimmed in any way. This mere log was
+Cicely Luckett's favourite seat as a girl; she was Hilary's only
+daughter. The kitchen had perhaps originally been the house, the rest
+having been added to it in the course of years as the mode of life
+changed and increasing civilisation demanded more convenience and
+comfort. The walls were quite four feet thick, and the one small
+lattice-window in its deep recess scarcely let in sufficient light,
+even on a summer's day, to dispel the gloom, except at one particular
+time.
+
+The little panes, yellow and green, were but just above the ground,
+looking out upon the road into the rickyard, so that the birds which
+came searching along among the grasses and pieces of wood thrown
+carelessly aside against the wall could see into the room. Robins, of
+course, came every morning, perching on the sill and peering in with
+the head held on one side. Blackbird and thrush came, but always
+passed the window itself quickly, though they stayed without fear
+within a few inches of it on either hand.
+
+There was an old oak table in the centre of the room--a table so solid
+that young Aaron, the strong labourer, could only move it with
+difficulty. There was no ceiling properly speaking, the boards of the
+floor above and a thick beam which upheld it being only whitewashed;
+and much of that had scaled off. An oaken door led down a few steps
+into the cellar, and over both cellar and kitchen there sloped a long
+roof, thatched, whose eaves were but just above the ground.
+
+Now, when there was no one in the kitchen, as in the afternoon, when
+even the indoor servants had gone out to help in the hayfield, little
+Cicely used to come in here and sit dreaming on the ash log by the
+hearth. The rude stool was always placed inside the fireplace, which
+was very broad for burning wood, faggots and split pieces of timber.
+Bending over the grey ashes, she could see right up the great broad
+tunnel of the chimney to the blue sky above, which seemed the more
+deeply azure, as it does from the bottom of a well. In the evenings
+when she looked up she sometimes saw a star shining above. In the
+early mornings of the spring, as she came rushing down to breakfast,
+the tiny yellow panes of the window which faced the east were all lit
+up and rosy with the rays of the rising sun.
+
+The beautiful light came through the elms of the rickyard, away from
+the ridge of the distant Down, and then for the first hour of the day
+the room was aglow. For quite two hundred years every visible sunrise
+had shone in at that window more or less, as the season changed and
+the sun rose to the north of east. Perhaps it was that sense of
+ancient homeliness that caused Cicely, without knowing why, to steal
+in there alone to dream, for nowhere else indoors could she have been
+so far away from the world of to-day.
+
+Left much to herself, she roamed along the hedgerow as now and then a
+mild day came, soon after the birds had paired, and saw the
+arrow-shaped, pointed leaves with black spots rising and unrolling at
+the sides of the ditches. Many of these seemed to die away presently
+without producing anything, but from some there pushed up a sharply
+conical sheath, from which emerged the spadix of the arum with its
+frill. Thrusting a stick into the loose earth of the bank, she found
+the root, covered with a thick wrinkled skin which peeled easily and
+left a white substance like a small potato. Some of the old women who
+came into the kitchen used to talk about 'yarbs,' and she was told
+that this was poisonous and ought not to be touched--the very reason
+why she slipped into the dry ditch and dug it up. But she started with
+a sense of guilt as she heard the slow rustle of a snake gliding along
+the mound over the dead, dry leaves of last year.
+
+In August, when the reapers began to call and ask for work, she found
+the arum stalks, left alone without leaves, surrounded with berries,
+some green, some ripening red. As the berries ripen, the stalk grows
+weak and frequently falls prone of its own weight among the grasses.
+This noisome fruit of clustering berries, like an ear of maize stained
+red, they told her was 'snake's victuals,' and to be avoided; for,
+bright as was its colour, it was only fit for a reptile's food.
+
+She knew, too, where to find the first 'crazy Betties,' whose large
+yellow flowers do not wait for the sun, but shine when the March wind
+scatters king's ransoms over the fields. These are the marsh
+marigolds: there were two places where she gathered them, one beside
+the streamlet flowing through the 'Mash,' a meadow which was almost a
+water-meadow; and the other inside a withy-bed. She pulled the
+'cat's-tails,' as she learned to call the horse-tails, to see the stem
+part at the joints; and when the mowing-grass began to grow long,
+picked the cuckoo-flowers and nibbled the stalk and leaflets to essay
+the cress-like taste. In the garden, which was full of old-fashioned
+shrubs and herbs, she watched the bees busy at the sweet-scented
+'honey-plant,' and sometimes peered under the sage-bush to look at the
+'effets' that hid there.
+
+By the footpath through the meadows there were now small places where
+the mowers had tried their new scythes as they came home, a little
+warm with ale perhaps, from the market town. They cut a yard or two of
+grass as they went through the fields, just to get the swing of the
+scythe and as a hint to the farmer that it was time to begin. With the
+first June rose in the hedge the haymaking commenced--the two usually
+coincide--and then Cicely fluctuated between the haymakers and the
+mowers, now watching one and now the other. One of the haymaking girls
+was very proud because she had not lost a single wooden tooth out of
+her rake, for it is easy to break or pull them out. In the next field
+the mowers, one behind the other in echelon, left each his swathe as
+he went. The tall bennets with their purplish anthers, the sorrel, and
+the great white 'moon-daisies' fell before them. Cicely would watch
+till perhaps the sharp scythe cut a frog, and the poor creature
+squealed with the pain.
+
+Then away along the hedge to the pond in the corner, all green with
+'creed,' or duckweed, when one of the boys about the place would come
+timidly up to offer a nest of eggs just taken, and if she would speak
+to him would tell her about his exploits 'a-nisting,' about the
+bombarrel tit--a corruption apparently of nonpareil--and how he had
+put the yellow juice of the celandine on his 'wurrut' to cure it. Then
+they pulled the plantain leaves, those that grew by the path, to see
+which could draw out the longest 'cat-gut;' the sinews, as it were, of
+the plant stretching out like the strings of a fiddle.
+
+In the next meadow the cows had just been turned into fresh grass, and
+were lazily rioting in it. They fed in the sunshine with the golden
+buttercups up above their knees, literally wading in gold, their horns
+as they held their heads low just visible among the flowers. Some that
+were standing in the furrows were hidden up to their middles by the
+buttercups. Their sleek roan and white hides contrasted with the green
+grass and the sheen of the flowers: one stood still, chewing the cud,
+her square face expressive of intense content, her beautiful
+eye--there is no animal with a more beautiful eye than the
+cow--following Cicely's motions. At this time of the year, as they
+grazed far from the pens, the herd were milked in the corner of the
+field, instead of driving them to the yard.
+
+One afternoon Cicely came quietly through a gap in the hedge by this
+particular corner, thinking to laugh at Aaron's voice, for he milked
+there and sang to the cows, when she saw him sitting on the
+three-legged milking-stool, stooping in the attitude of milking, with
+the bucket between his knees, but firm asleep, and quite alone in his
+glory. He had had too much ale, and dropped asleep while milking the
+last cow, and the herd had left him and marched away in stately single
+file down to the pond, as they always drink after the milking. Cicely
+stole away and said nothing; but presently Aaron was missed and a
+search made, and he was discovered by the other men still sleeping.
+Poor 'young Aaron' got into nearly as much disgrace through the brown
+jug as a poaching uncle of his through his ferrets and wires.
+
+When the moon rose full and lit up the Overboro'-road as bright as
+day, and the children came out from the cottages to their play,
+Cicely, though she did not join, used to watch their romping dances
+and picked up the old rhymes they chanted. When the full moon shone in
+at her bedroom window, Cicely was very careful to turn away or cover
+her face; for she had heard one of the mowers declare that after
+sleeping on the hay in the moonlight one night he woke up in the
+morning almost blind. Besides the meadows around Lucketts' Place, she
+sometimes wandered further to the edge of Hilary's great open arable
+fields, where the green corn, before it came out in ear, seemed to
+flutter, flutter like innumerable tiny flags, as the wind rushed over
+it.
+
+She learned to rub the ripe ears in her hands to work the grain out of
+the husk, and then to winnow away the chaff by letting the corn slowly
+drop in a stream from one palm to the other, blowing gently with her
+mouth the while. The grain remained on account of its weight, the
+chaff floating away, and the wheat, still soft though fully formed,
+could thus be pleasantly tasted. The plaintive notes of the
+yellowhammer fell from the scanty trees of the wheat-field hedge,
+and the ploughboy who was put there to frighten away the rooks told
+her the bird said, repeating the song over and over again, 'A little
+bit of bread and _no_ cheese.' And indeed these syllables, with a
+lengthening emphasis on the 'no,' come ludicrously near to represent
+the notes. The ploughboy understood them very well, for to have only a
+hunch of bread and little or no cheese was often his own case.
+
+Two meadows distant from the lower woods of the Chace there is what
+seems from afar a remarkably wide hedge irregularly bordered with
+furze. But on entering a gateway in it you find a bridge over a brook,
+which for some distance flows with a hedge on either side. The low
+parapet of the bridge affords a seat--one of Cicely's favourite
+haunts--whence in spring it is pleasant to look up the brook; for the
+banks sloping down from the bushes to the water are yellow with
+primroses, and hung over with willow boughs. As the brook is straight,
+the eye can see under these a long way up; and presently a kingfisher,
+bright with azure and ruddy hues, comes down the brook, flying but
+just above the surface on which his reflection travels too. He perches
+for a moment on a branch close to the bridge, but the next sees that
+he is not alone, and instantly retreats with a shrill cry.
+
+A moorhen ventures forth from under the arches, her favourite
+hiding-place, and feeds among the weeds by the shore, but at the least
+movement rushes back to shelter. A wood-pigeon comes over, flying
+slowly; he was going to alight on the ash tree yonder, but suddenly
+espying some one under the cover of the boughs increases his pace and
+rises higher. Two bright bold bullfinches pass; they have a nest
+somewhere in the thick hawthorn. A jay, crossing from the fir
+plantations, stays awhile in the hedge, and utters his loud harsh
+scream like the tearing of linen. For a few hours the winds are still
+and the sunshine broods warm over the mead. It is a delicious snatch
+of spring.
+
+Every now and then a rabbit emerges from the burrows which are
+scattered thickly along the banks, and, passing among the primroses,
+goes through the hedge into the border of furze, and thence into the
+meadow-grass. Some way down the brook they are so numerous as to have
+destroyed the vegetation on the banks, excepting a few ferns, by their
+constant movements and scratching of the sand; so that there is a
+small warren on either side of the water. It is said that they
+occasionally swim across the broad brook, which is much too wide to
+jump; but I have never seen such a thing but once. A rabbit already
+stung with shot and with a spaniel at his heels did once leap at the
+brook here, and, falling short, swam the remainder without apparent
+trouble, and escaped into a hole on the opposite shore with his wet
+fur laid close to the body. But they usually cross at the bridge,
+where the ground bears the marks of their incessant nightly travels to
+and fro.
+
+Passing now in the other direction, up the stream from the bridge, the
+hedges after a while cease, and the brook winds through the open
+fields. Here there is a pond, to which at night the heron resorts; for
+he does not care to trust himself between the high hedgerows. In the
+still shallow, but beyond reach, there floats on the surface a small
+patch of green vegetation formed of the treble leaves of the water
+crow-foot. Towards June it will be a brilliant white spot. The slender
+stems uphold the cup-like flowers two or three inches above the
+surface, the petals of the purest white with a golden centre. They are
+the silver buttercups of the brook. Where the current flows slowly the
+long and somewhat spear-shaped leaves of the water-plantain stand up,
+and in the summer will be surmounted by a tall stalk with three small
+pale pink petals on its branches. The leaf can be written on with a
+pencil, the point tracing letters by removing the green colouring
+where it passes.
+
+Far larger are the leaves of the water-docks; they sometimes attain to
+immense size. By the bank the 'wild willow,' or water-betony, with its
+woody stem, willow-shaped leaves, and pale red flowers, grows thickly.
+Across where there is a mud-bank the stout stems of the willow herb
+are already tall. They quite cover the shoal, and line the brook like
+shrubs. They are the strongest and the most prominent of all the brook
+plants. At the end of March or beginning of April the stalks appear a
+few inches high, and they gradually increase in size, until in July
+they reach above the waist, and form a thicket by the shore. Not till
+July does the flower open, so that, though they make so much show of
+foliage, it is months before any colour brightens it. The red flower
+comes at the end of a pod, and has a tiny white cross within it; it is
+welcome, because by August so many of the earlier flowers are fading.
+The country folk call it the sod-apple, and say the leaves crushed in
+the fingers have something of the scent of apple-pie.
+
+Farther up the stream, where a hawthorn bush shelters it, stands a
+knotted fig-wort with a square stem and many branches, each with small
+velvety flowers. If handled, the leaves emit a strong odour, like the
+leaves of the elder-bush; it is a coarse-growing plant, and
+occasionally reaches to a height of between four and five feet, with a
+stem more than half an inch square. Some ditches are full of it. By
+the rushes the long purple spike of the loose-strife rises, and on the
+mud-banks among the willows there grows a tall plant with bunches of
+flower, the petals a bright yellow: this is the yellow loose-strife.
+Near it is a herb with a much-divided leaf, and curious flowers like
+small yellow buttons. Rub one of these gently, and it will give forth
+a most peculiar perfume--aromatic, and not to be compared with
+anything else; the tansy once scented will always be recognised.
+
+The large rough leaves of the wild comfrey grow in bunches here and
+there; the leaves are attached to the stem for part of their length,
+and the stem is curiously flanged. The bells are often greenish,
+sometimes white, occasionally faintly lilac; they are partly hidden
+under the dark-green leaves. Where undisturbed the comfrey grows to a
+great size, the stems becoming very thick. Green flags hide and almost
+choke the shallow mouth of a streamlet that joins the brook coming
+from the woods. Though green above, the flag where it enters its
+sheath is white.
+
+Tracing it upwards, the brook becomes narrower and the stream less,
+though running more swiftly; and here there is a marshy spot with
+willows, and between them some bulrushes and great bunches of
+bullpolls. This coarse grass forms tufts or cushions, on which snakes
+often coil in the sunshine. Yet though so rough, in June the bullpoll
+sends up tall slender stalks with graceful feathery heads, reed-like,
+surrounded with long ribbons of grass. In the ditches hereabout, and
+beside the brook itself, the meadow-sweet scents the air; the
+country-folk call it 'meadow-soot.' And in those ditches are numerous
+coarse stems and leaves which, if crushed in the fingers, yield a
+strong parsnip-like smell. The water-parsnip, which is poisonous, is
+said to be sometimes gathered for watercress; but the palate must be
+dull, one would think, to eat it, and the smell is a sure test. The
+blue flower of the brooklime is not seen here; you must look for it
+where the springs break forth, where its foliage sometimes quite
+conceals the tiny rill.
+
+These flowers do not, of course, all appear together; but they may be
+all found in the summer season along the brook, and you should begin
+to look for them when the brown scum, that sign of coming warmth,
+rises from the bottom of the waters. Returning to the pond, it may be
+noticed that the cart-horses when they walk in of a summer's day paw
+the stream, as if they enjoyed the cool sound of the splash; but the
+cows stand quite still with the water up to their knees.
+
+There is a spot by a yet more quiet bridge, where the little
+water-shrews play to and fro where the bank overhangs. As they dive
+and move under water the reddish-brown back looks of a lighter colour;
+when they touch the ground they thrust their tiny nostrils up just
+above the surface. There are many holes of water-rats, but no one
+would imagine how numerous these latter creatures are. One of Hilary's
+sons, Hugh, kept some ferrets, and in the summer was put to it to find
+them enough food. The bird-keepers brought in a bird occasionally, and
+there were cruel rumours of a cat having disappeared. Still there was
+not sufficient till he hit on the idea of trapping the water-rats; and
+this is how he did it.
+
+He took three small twigs and ran them into the bank of the brook at
+the mouth of the water-rat's hole and just beneath the surface of the
+stream. These made a platform upon which the gin was placed--the pan,
+and indeed all the trap, just under the water, which prevented any
+scent. Whether the rat came out of his hole and plunged to dive or
+started to swim, or whether he came swimming noiselessly round the
+bend and was about to enter the burrow, it made no difference; he was
+certain to pass over and throw the gin. The instant the teeth struck
+him he gave a jump which lifted the trap off the twig platform, and it
+immediately sank in the deep water and soon drowned him; for the
+water-rat, though continually diving, can only stay a short time under
+water. It proved a fatal contrivance, chiefly, as was supposed,
+because the gin, being just under the water, could not be smelt. No
+fewer than eleven rats were thus captured in succession at the mouth
+of one hole. Altogether 150 were taken in the course of that summer.
+
+Hugh kept a record of them by drawing a stroke with chalk for every
+rat on the red brick wall of the stable, near his ferret-hutch. He
+only used a few traps--one was set not at a hole, but at a sharp curve
+of the brook--and the whole of these rats were taken in a part of the
+brook about 250 or 300 yards in length, just where it ran through a
+single field. The great majority were water-rats, but there were
+fifteen or twenty house-rats among them: these were very thin though
+large, and seemed to be caught as they were migrating; for sometimes
+several were trapped the same day, and then none (of this kind) for a
+week or more. Three moorhens were also caught; a fourth was only held
+by its claw in the gin; this one, not being in the least injured, he
+let go again.
+
+It had been observed previously that the water-rats, either in making
+their burrows or for food, gnawed off the young withy-stoles
+underneath the ground in the withy-beds, and thus killed a
+considerable amount of withy; but after all this slaughter the
+withy-beds recovered and bore the finest crop they ever grew. But who
+could have imagined in walking by the brook that only in its course
+through a single meadow it harboured 150 rats? Probably, though, some
+of them came up or down the stream. The ferrets fared sumptuously all
+the summer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A PACK OF STOATS.    BIRDS.
+
+
+The sweet scent from a beanfield beside the road caused me to linger
+one summer morning in a gateway under the elms. A gentle south wind
+came over the beans, bearing with it the odour of their black-and-white
+bloom. The Overboro' road ran through part of the Okebourne property
+(which was far too extensive to be enclosed in a ring fence), and the
+timber had therefore been allowed to grow so that there was an
+irregular avenue of trees for some distance. I faced the beanfield,
+which was on the opposite side, leaning back against the gate which
+led into some of Hilary's wheat. The silence of the highway, the soft
+wind, the alternate sunshine and shade as the light clouds passed
+over, induced a dreamy feeling; and I cannot say how long I had been
+there when something seemed as it were to cross the corners of my
+half-closed eyes.
+
+Looking up I saw three stoats gallop across the road, not more than
+ten yards away. They issued from under the footpath, which was raised
+and had a drain through it to relieve the road of flood-water in
+storm. The drain was faced with a flat stone, with a small round hole
+cut in it. Coming from the wheat at my back, the stoats went down into
+the ditch; thence entered the short tunnel under the footpath, and out
+at its stone portal, over the road to the broad sward on the opposite
+side; then along a furrow in the turf to the other hedge, and so into
+the beanfield. They galloped like racehorses straining for the
+victory; the first leading, the second but a neck behind, and the
+third not half a length. The smooth road rising slightly in the centre
+showed them well; and thus, with the neck stretched out in front and
+the tail extended in the rear, the stoat appears much longer than on a
+mound or in the grass.
+
+A second or so afterwards two more started from the same spot; but I
+was perhaps in the act to move, for before they had gone three yards
+they saw me and rushed back to the drain. After a few minutes the
+larger of these two, probably the male, ventured forth again and
+reached the middle of the road, when he discovered that his more
+timorous companion had not followed but was only just peeping out. He
+stopped and elevated his neck some five or six inches, planting the
+fore-feet so as to lift him up high to see round, while his
+hindquarters were flush with the road, quite flat in the dust in which
+his tail was trailing. His reddish body and white neck, the clear-cut
+head, the sharp ears, and dark eye were perfectly displayed in that
+erect attitude. As his companion still hesitated he cried twice, as if
+impatiently, 'check, check'--a sound like placing the tongue against
+the teeth and drawing it away. But she feared to follow, and he
+returned to her. Thinking they would attempt to cross again presently,
+I waited quietly.
+
+A lark came over from the wheat, and, alighting, dusted herself in the
+road, hardly five yards from the mouth of the drain, and was there
+some minutes. A robin went still closer--almost opposite the hole;
+both birds apparently quite unconscious of the bloodthirsty creatures
+concealed within it. Some time passed, but the two stoats did not come
+out, and I saw no more of them: they probably retreated to the wheat
+as I left the gateway, and would remain there till the noise and jar
+of my footsteps had ceased in the distance. Examining the road, there
+was a trail where the first three had crossed in quick succession. In
+the thick white dust their swift feet had left a line drawn roughly
+yet lightly, the paws leaving not an exact but an elongated,
+ill-defined impression. But where the fourth stopped, elevated his
+neck, and cried to his mate, there was a perfect print of the
+fore-feet side by side. So slight a track would be obliterated by the
+first cart that came by.
+
+Till that day I had never seen so many as five stoats together hunting
+in a pack. It would seem as if stoats and weasels had regular routes;
+for I now recollected that in the previous winter, when the snow was
+on the ground, I surprised two weasels almost exactly in the same
+spot. At other times, too, I have seen solitary stoats and weasels
+(which may have had companions in the hedge) hunting along that mound,
+both before and since. I was at first going to tell Hilary about the
+pack, but afterwards refrained, as he would at once proceed to set up
+gins in the run, while I thought I should like to see the animals
+again. But I got him to talk about stoats and weasels, and found that
+he had not himself seen so many together. There was, however, a man
+about the place who told a tale of some weasels he had seen. It was
+'that rascal old Aaron;' but he could not listen to such a fellow.
+Hilary would tell me nothing further, having evidently a strong
+dislike to the man.
+
+It seems there were two Aarons--uncle and nephew: old Aaron was the
+arch-poacher of the parish, young Aaron worked regularly at Lucketts'
+Place. This young labourer (the man who fell asleep on the
+milking-stool) was one of the best of his class--a great, powerful
+fellow, but good-natured, willing, and pleasant to speak to. He was a
+favourite with many, and with reason, for he had a gentleness of
+manner beyond his station; and, till you knew his weakness, you could
+not but take an interest in him. His vice was drink. He was always
+down at Lucketts' Place; and through him I made acquaintance with his
+disreputable uncle, who was at first rather shy of me, for he had seen
+me about with Hilary, and between the two there was a mortal feud. Old
+Aaron could not keep out of Okebourne Chace, and Hilary was 'down'
+upon him. Hilary was, indeed, keener than the keepers.
+
+The old poacher saw the weasels in the 'Pitching.' This was a private
+lane, which ran through the recesses of the Chace where the wood was
+thickest and most secluded. It had been made for the convenience of
+communication between the upper and lower farms, and for hauling
+timber; the gates at each end being kept locked. In one place the lane
+descended the steepest part of the wooded hill, and in frosty weather
+it was not easy even to walk down it there. Sarsen stones, gathered
+out of the way of the plough in the arable fields, had been thrown
+down in it at various times with the object of making a firm bottom.
+Rounded and smooth and very hard, these stones, irregularly placed,
+with gaps and intervals, when slippery with hoar frost were most
+difficult to walk on. Once or twice men out hunting had been known to
+gallop down this hill: the extreme of headlong bravado; for if there
+was any frost it was sure to linger in that shady lane, and a slip of
+the iron-shod hoof could scarcely fail to result in a broken neck. It
+was like riding down a long steep flight of steps.
+
+Aaron one day was engaged with his ferret and nets in the Pitching,
+just at the bottom of the hill, where there grew a quantity of
+brake-fern as tall as the shoulder. It was shrivelled and yellow, but
+thick enough to give him very good cover. Every now and then he looked
+out into the lane to see if any one was about, and on one of these
+occasions saw what he imagined at first to be a colony of rats
+migrating; but when they came near, racing down the lane, he found
+they were weasels. He counted fourteen, and thought there were one or
+two more.
+
+Aaron also told me a curious incident that happened to him very early
+one morning towards the beginning of spring. The snow was on the
+ground and the moon was shining brightly as he got on the railway (a
+few miles from Okebourne) and walked some distance up it: he did not
+say what for, but probably as the nearest way to a cover. As he
+entered a deep cutting where the line came round a sharp curve he
+noticed strange spots upon the snow, and upon examination found it was
+blood. For the moment he thought there had been an accident; but
+shortly afterwards he picked up a hare's pad severed from the leg, and
+next a hare's head, and presently came on a quantity of similar
+fragments, all fresh. He collected them, and found they had belonged
+to six hares which had been cut to pieces by a passing train. The
+animals were so mutilated as not to be of the least use.
+
+When I told Hilary of this, he at once pronounced it impossible, and
+nothing but one of Aaron's lies. On reflection, however, I am not so
+sure that it is impossible, nor can I see any reason why the old
+poacher should invent a falsehood of the kind. It was just a time of
+the year when hares are beginning to go 'mad,' and, as they were not
+feeding but playing together, they might have strayed up the line just
+as they do along roads. Most persons must have observed how quietly a
+train sometimes steals up--so quietly as to be inaudible: a fact that
+has undoubtedly been the death of many unfortunates. Now, just at this
+spot there was a sharp curve, and if the driver shut off steam as he
+ran round it the train very likely came up without a sound. The sides
+of the cutting being very steep, the hares, when at last they
+perceived their danger, would naturally rush straight away along the
+metals. Coming at great speed, the engine would overtake and destroy
+them: a miserable end for the poor creatures in the midst of their
+moonlight frolic. But what Aaron laid stress on was the fact that he
+could not even sell the skins, they were so cut to pieces.
+
+The rooks' nests in the Chace were very numerous, and were chiefly
+built in elm trees, but some in tall spruce firs. It was easy to know
+when the birds had paired, as a couple of rooks could then be often
+seen perched gravely side by side upon an old nest in the midst of
+leafless boughs, deliberating about its repair. There were some
+poplars near a part of the rookery, and when the nests were fully
+occupied with young the old birds frequently alighted on the very top
+of an adjacent poplar. The slender brush-like tip of the tree bent
+with their weight, curving over like a whip, to spring up when they
+left.
+
+The rooks were fond of maize, boldly descending among the poultry kept
+in a rickyard within a short distance of their trees. If any one has a
+clump of trees in which rooks seem inclined to build and it is desired
+to encourage them, it would appear a good plan to establish a
+poultry-yard in the same field. They are certain to visit the spot.
+
+One day I watched a rook pursuing a swift and making every effort to
+overtake and strike it. The rook displayed great power of wing,
+twisting and turning, now descending or turning on one side to glide
+more rapidly, and uttering short 'caws' of eagerness or anger; but,
+just eluding the heavy rush of its pursuer, the swift doubled and
+darted away before it, as if tempting the enemy to charge, and then
+enjoying his disappointment. Several other swifts wheeled above at a
+distance, apparently watching. These evolutions lasted some minutes,
+rook and swift rising higher and higher into the air until, tired of
+being chased, the swift went straight away at full speed, easily
+outstripping the rook, which soon desisted from the attempt to follow.
+
+When birds are thus combating, the chief aim of each is to get above
+the other, as any elevation gives an advantage. This may be
+continually noticed in spring, when fighting is always going on, and
+is as characteristic of the small birds as the larger. At first I
+thought it was a crow after the swift, but came to the conclusion that
+it must be a rook because the battle began over the rookery and
+afterwards the aggressor sailed away to where some rooks were feeding.
+Nor would a crow have exhibited such agility of wing. Swallows often
+buffet a crow; but this was a clear case of a rook attacking.
+
+In the country rooks never perch on houses, and but seldom on sheds,
+unless fresh thatched, when they come to examine the straw, as also on
+the ricks. But in Brighton, which is a treeless locality, a rook may
+sometimes be seen on a chimney-pot in the midst of the town, and the
+pinnacles of the Pavilion are a favourite resort; a whole flock of
+rooks and jackdaws often wheel about the domes of that building. At
+the Chace a rook occasionally mounted on a molehill recently thrown up
+and scattered the earth right and left with his bill--striking now to
+one side and now to the other. Hilary admitted that rooks destroyed
+vast quantities of grubs and creeping things, but was equally positive
+that they feasted on grain; and indeed it could not be denied that a
+crop of wheat almost ripe is a very favourite resort of a flock. He
+had seen rooks carry away ears of wheat detached from the stalk to an
+open spot for better convenience. They would follow the dibbling
+machine, taking each grain of seed-wheat in succession, guided to the
+exact spot by the slight depression made by the dibble.
+
+Every evening all the rooks of the neighbourhood gathered into vast
+flocks and returned to roost in the woods of the Chace. But one winter
+afternoon there came on the most dense fog that had been known for a
+length of time, and a flock of rooks on their way as usual to the
+Chace stopped all night in a clump of trees on the farm a mile from
+the roosting-place. This the oldest labourer had never known them do
+before. In the winter just past (1879-80) there were several very
+thick fogs during sharp frost. One afternoon I noticed a small flock
+of starlings which seemed unable to find their way home to the copse
+where I knew vast numbers of them roosted. This flock as it grew dusk
+settled in an elm by the roadside, then removed to another, shaking
+down the rime from the branches, and a third time wheeled round and
+perched in an oak. At that hour on ordinary days the starlings would
+all have been flying fast in a straight line for the copse, but these
+were evidently in doubt and did not know which direction to take.
+
+Hilary disliked to see the wood-pigeons in his wheat-fields: the
+wood-pigeon beats the grains out of a wheat-ear with the bill,
+striking it while on the ground. The sparrows, again, clear the
+standing wheat-ears, which at a little distance look thin and
+disarranged, and when handled are empty.
+
+There were many missel-thrushes about the Chace; they are fond of a
+wooded district. They pack together in summer and part in winter--just
+opposite in that respect to so many other birds, which separate in
+warm weather and congregate as it grows cold, so that the lower the
+temperature the larger the flock. In winter and spring the
+missel-thrushes fly alone or not more than two together. After their
+young have left the nest they go in small packs. I saw ten or twelve
+rise from an arable field on the 18th of June last year; there do not
+often seem to be more than a dozen together. I have counted ten in a
+pack on the 16th of September, and seven together as late as the 2nd
+of October. Soon after that they appear to separate and act on their
+individual wishes. Starlings in like manner pack after their young can
+fly, but then they do not separate in autumn.
+
+It may be remarked that by autumn the young missel-thrushes would not
+only fly well, but would have been educated by the old birds, and
+would have come to maturity. Their natural independence might then
+come into play. But these are effects rather than causes, besides
+which I think birds and animals often act from custom rather than for
+advantage. Among men customs survive for centuries after the original
+meaning has been lost. I had always been told by country people that
+the missel-thrush was a solitary bird, and when I first observed a
+pack and mentioned it some incredulity was expressed. Very naturally
+in summer people do not see much but hay and wheat. It was noticed on
+the farms about the Chace in the springs of 1878 and 1879 that the
+corncrakes, which had formerly been so numerous and proclaimed their
+presence so loudly, were scarcely heard at all.
+
+It is a little outside my subject, since it did not occur in the
+Chace, but the other day a friend was telling me how he had been
+hunted by bucks while riding a bicycle. He was passing through a
+forest in the summer, when he suddenly became aware of six or seven
+bucks coming down a glade after him. The track being rough he could
+not ride at full speed--probably they would have outstripped him even
+if he had been able to do so--and they were overtaking him rapidly. As
+they came up he saw that they meant mischief, and fearing a bad fall
+he alighted by a tree, behind which he thought to dodge them. But no
+sooner did he touch the ground than the bucks so furiously rushing
+after him stopped dead in their career; he stepped towards them, and
+directly they saw him walking they retreated hastily to a distance.
+
+The first berries to go as the autumn approaches are those of the
+mountain-ash. Both blackbirds and thrushes began to devour the
+pale-red bunches hanging on the mountain-ashes as early as the 4th of
+September last year. Starlings are fond of elder-berries: a flock
+alighting on a bush black with ripe berries will clear the bunches in
+a very short time. Haws, or peggles, which often quite cover the
+hawthorn bushes, are not so general a food as the fruit of the briar.
+Hips are preferred; at least, the fruit of the briar is the first of
+the two to disappear. The hip is pecked open (by thrushes, redwings,
+and blackbirds) at the tip, the seeds extracted, and the part where it
+is attached to the stalk left, just as if the contents had been sucked
+out. Greenfinches, too, will eat hips.
+
+Haws are often left even after severe frosts; sometimes they seem to
+shrivel or blacken, and may not perhaps be palatable then.
+Missel-thrushes and wood-pigeons eat them. Last winter in the stress
+of the sharp and continued frosts the greenfinches were driven in
+December to swallow the shrivelled blackberries still on the brambles.
+The fruity part of the berries was of course gone, and nothing
+remained but the seeds or pips, dry and hard as wood; they were
+reduced to feeding on this wretched food. Perhaps the last of the
+seeds available are those of the docks.
+
+This is well known to bird-fowlers, and on a dry day in January they
+take two large bunches of docks--'red docks' they call them--tied
+round the centre like faggots and well smeared at the top with
+birdlime. These are placed on the ground, by a hedge, and near them a
+decoy goldfinch in a cage. Goldfinches eat dock-seed, and if any
+approach the decoy-bird calls. The wild bird descends from the hedge
+to feed on the dock-seed and is caught. Goldfinches go in pairs all
+the winter and work along the hedges together. In spring the young
+green buds upon the hawthorn are called 'cuckoo's bread and cheese' by
+the ploughboys.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+HAMLET FOLK.
+
+
+It happened one Sunday morning in June that a swarm of bees issued
+from a hive in a cottage garden near Okebourne church. The queen at
+first took up her position in an elm tree just outside the churchyard,
+where a large cluster of bees quickly depended from a bough. Being at
+a great height the cottager could not take them, and, anxious not to
+lose the swarm, he resorted to the ancient expedient of rattling
+fire-tongs and shovel together in order to attract them by the
+clatter. The discordant banging of the fire-irons resounded in the
+church, the doors being open to admit the summer air; and the noise
+became so uproarious that the clerk presently, at a sign from the
+rector, went out to stop it, for the congregation were in a grin. He
+did stop it, the cottager desisting with much reluctance; but, as if
+to revenge the bee-master's wrongs, in the course of the day the
+swarm, quitting the elm, entered the church and occupied a post in the
+roof.
+
+After a while it was found that the swarm had finally settled there,
+and were proceeding to build combs and lay in a store of honey. The
+bees, indeed, became such a terror to nervous people, buzzing without
+ceremony over their heads as they stood up to sing, and caused such a
+commotion and buffeting with Prayer-books and fans and handkerchiefs,
+that ultimately the congregation were compelled to abandon their pews.
+All efforts to dislodge the bees proving for the time ineffectual, the
+rector had a temporary reading-desk erected in the porch, and there
+held the service, the congregation sitting on chairs and forms in the
+yard, and some on the stone tombs, and even on the sward under the
+shade of the yew tree.
+
+In the warm dry hay-making weather this open-air worship was very
+pleasant, the flowers in the grass and the roses in the little plots
+about the tombs giving colour and sweet odours, while the swallows
+glided gracefully overhead and sometimes a blackbird whistled. The
+bees, moreover, interfered with the baptisms, and even caused several
+marriages to be postponed. Inside the porch was a recess where the
+women left their pattens in winter, instead of clattering iron-shod
+down the aisle.
+
+Okebourne village was built in an irregular way on both sides of a
+steep coombe, just at the verge of the hills, and about a mile from
+the Chace; indeed, the outlying cottages bordered the park wall. The
+most melancholy object in the place was the ruins of a windmill; the
+sails and arms had long disappeared, but the wooden walls, black and
+rotting, remained. The windmill had its genius, its human
+representative--a mere wreck, like itself, of olden times. There never
+was a face so battered by wind and weather as that of old Peter, the
+owner of the ruin. His eyes were so light a grey as to appear all but
+colourless. He wore a smock-frock the hue of dirt itself, and his
+hands were ever in his pockets as he walked through rain and snow
+beside his cart, hauling flints from the pits upon the Downs.
+
+If the history of the cottage-folk is inquired into it will often be
+found that they have descended from well-to-do positions in life--not
+from extravagance or crime, or any remarkable piece of folly, but
+simply from a long-continued process of muddling away money. When the
+windmill was new, Peter's forefathers had been, for village people
+well off. The family had never done anything to bring themselves into
+disgrace; they had never speculated; but their money had been
+gradually muddled away, leaving the last little better than a
+labourer. To see him crawling along the road by his load of flints,
+stooping forward, hands in pocket, and then to glance at the distant
+windmill, likewise broken down, the roof open, and the rain and winds
+rushing through it, was a pitiful spectacle. For that old building
+represented the loss of hope and contentment in life as much as any
+once lordly castle whose battlements are now visited only by the
+jackdaw. The family had, as it were, foundered and gone down.
+
+How they got the stray cattle into the pound it is difficult to
+imagine; for the gate was very narrow, and neither bullocks nor horses
+like being driven into a box. The copings of the wall on one side had
+been pushed over, and lay in a thick growth of nettles: this, almost
+the last of old village institutions, was, too, going by degrees to
+destruction.
+
+Every hamlet used to have its representative fighting-man--often more
+than one--who visited the neighbouring villages on the feast days,
+when there was a good deal of liquor flowing, to vaunt of their
+prowess before the local champions. These quickly gathered, and after
+due interchange of speeches not unlike the heroes of Homer, who
+harangue each other ere they hurl the spear, engaged in conflict dire.
+There was a regular feud for many years between the Okebourne men and
+the Clipstone 'chaps;' and never did the stalwart labourers of those
+two villages meet without falling to fisticuffs with right goodwill.
+Nor did they like each other at all the worse, and after the battle
+drank deeply from the same quart cups. Had these encounters found an
+historian to put them upon record, they would have read something like
+the wars (without the bloodshed) between the little Greek cities,
+whose population scarcely exceeded that of a village, and between
+which and our old villages there exists a certain similarity. A
+simplicity of sentiment, an unconsciousness as it were of themselves,
+strong local attachments and hatreds, these they had in common, and
+the Okebourne and Clipstone men thwacked and banged each other's broad
+chests in true antique style.
+
+Hilary said that when he was a boy almost all the cottages in the
+place had a man or woman living in them who had attained to extreme
+old age. He reckoned up cottage after cottage to me in which he had
+known old folk up to and over eighty years of age. Of late the old
+people seemed to have somehow died out: there were not nearly so many
+now.
+
+Okebourne Wick, a little hamlet of fifteen or twenty scattered houses,
+was not more than half a mile from Lucketts' Place; on the Overboro'
+road, which passed it, was a pleasant roadside inn, where, under the
+sign of The Sun, very good ale was sold. Most of the farmers dropped
+in there now and then, not so much for a glass as a gossip, and no one
+from the neighbouring villages or from Overboro' town ever drove past
+without stopping. In the 'tap' of an evening you might see the
+labourers playing at 'chuck-board,' which consists in casting a small
+square piece of lead on to certain marked divisions of a shallow
+tray-like box placed on the trestle-table. The lead, being heavy,
+would stay where it fell; the rules I do not know, but the scene
+reminded me of the tric-trac contests depicted by the old Dutch
+painters.
+
+Young Aaron was very clever at it. He pottered round the inn of an
+evening and Saturday afternoons, doing odd jobs in the cellar with the
+barrels; for your true toping spirit loves to knock the hoops and to
+work about the cask, and carry the jugs in answer to the cry for some
+more 'tangle-legs'--for thus they called the strong beer. Sometimes a
+labourer would toast his cheese on a fork in the flame of the candle.
+In the old days, before folk got so choice of food and delicate of
+palate, there really seemed no limit to the strange things they ate.
+Before the railways were made, herds of cattle had of course to travel
+the roads, and often came great distances. The drovers were at the
+same time the hardiest and the roughest of men in that rough and hardy
+time. As night came on, after seeing their herd safe in a field, they
+naturally ate their supper at the adjacent inn. Then sometimes, as a
+dainty treat with which to finish his meal, a drover would call for a
+biscuit, large and hard, as broad as his hand, and, taking the tallow
+candle, proceed to drip the grease on it till it was well larded and
+soaked with the melted fat.
+
+At that date, before the Government stamp had been removed from
+newspapers, the roadside inn was the centre and focus of all
+intelligence. When the first railway was constructed up in the North
+the Okebourne folk, like the rest of the world, were with good reason
+extremely curious about this wonderful invention, and questioned every
+passer-by eagerly for information. But no one could describe it, till
+at last a man, born in the village, but who had been away for some
+years soldiering, returned to his native place. He had been serving in
+Canada and came through Liverpool, and thus saw the marvel of the age.
+At the Sun the folk in the evening crowded round him, and insisted
+upon knowing what a steam-engine was like. He did his best to describe
+it, but in vain; they wanted a familiar illustration, and could not be
+satisfied till the soldier, by a happy inspiration, said the only
+thing to which he could compare a locomotive was a great cannon on a
+timber-carriage. To us who are so accustomed to railways it seems a
+singular idea; but, upon reflection, it was not so inapt, considering
+that the audience had seen or heard something of cannons, and were
+well acquainted with timber-carriages. The soldier wished to convey
+the notion of a barrel or boiler mounted on wheels.
+
+They kept up the institution of the parish constable, as separate and
+distinct from the policeman, till very recently at Okebourne, though
+it seems to have lapsed long since in many country places. One year
+Hilary, with much shrugging of shoulders, was forced into the office;
+and during his term there was a terrible set-to between two tribes of
+gipsies in the Overboro' road. They fought like tigers, making the
+lovely summer day hideous with their cries and shrieks--the women, the
+fiercer by far, tearing each other's hair. One fiendish creature drew
+her scissors, and, using them like a stiletto, drove the sharp point
+into a sister 'gip's' head.
+
+'Where's the constable?' was the cry. Messengers rushed to Lucketts'
+Place; the barn, the sheds, the hayfield, all were searched in
+vain--Hilary had quite disappeared. At the very first sound he had
+slipped away to look at some cattle in Chequer's Piece, the very last
+and outlying field of the farms, full a mile away, and when the
+messengers got to Chequer's Piece of course he was up on the Down. So
+much for the parish constable's office--an office the farmers shirked
+whenever they could, and would not put in force when compelled to
+accept it.
+
+How could a resident willingly go into a neighbour's cottage and
+arrest him without malice and scandal being engendered? If he did his
+duty he was abused; if he did not do it, it was hinted that he
+favoured the offender. As for the 'gip' who was stabbed, nothing more
+was heard of it; she 'traipsed' off with the rest.
+
+Sometimes when the 'tangle-legs' got up into their heads the labourers
+felt an inclination to resume the ancient practices of their
+fore-fathers. Then you might see a couple facing each other in the
+doorway, each with his mug in one hand, and the other clenched,
+flourishing their knuckles. 'Thee hit I.' 'Thee come out in th' road
+and I'll let thee knaw.' The one knew very well that the other dared
+not strike him in the house, and the other felt certain that, however
+entreated, nothing would induce his opponent to accept the invitation
+and 'come out into th' road.'
+
+The shadows of the elm have so far to fall that they become enlarged
+and lose the edge upon reaching the ground. I noticed this one
+moonlight night in early June while sitting on a stile where the
+footpath opened on the Overboro' road. Presently I heard voices, and
+immediately afterwards a group came round the curve of the highway.
+There were three cottage women, each with a basket and several
+packages; having doubtless been into Overboro' town shopping, for it
+was Saturday. They walked together in a row; and in front of them,
+about five yards ahead, came a burly labourer of the same party,
+carrying in his arms a large clock.
+
+He had taken too much ale, and staggered as he walked, two steps aside
+to one forward, and indeed could hardly keep upright. His efforts to
+save himself and the clock from destruction led to some singular
+flexures of the body, and his feet traced a maze as he advanced,
+hugging the clock to his chest. The task was too much for his
+over-taxed patience: just opposite the stile he stood still, held his
+load high over his head, and shouting, 'Dang th' clock!' hurled it
+with all his force thirty feet against the mound, at the same time
+dropping a-sprawl. The women, without the least excitement or
+surprise, quietly endeavoured to assist him up; and, as he resisted,
+one of them remarked in the driest matter-of-fact tone, 'Ourn be just
+like un--as contrary as the wind.' She alluded to her own husband.
+
+When I mentioned this incident afterwards to Mrs. Luckett, she said
+the troubles the cottage women underwent on account of the 'beer' were
+past belief. One woman who did some work at the farmhouse kept her
+cottage entirely by her own exertions; her husband doing nothing but
+drink. He took her money from her by force, nor could she hide it
+anywhere but what he would hunt it out. At last in despair she dropped
+the silver in the jug on the wash-hand basin, and had the satisfaction
+of seeing him turn everything topsy-turvy in a vain attempt to find
+it. As he never washed, it never occurred to him to look in the
+water-jug.
+
+The cottage women when they went into Overboro' shopping, she said,
+were the despair of the drapers. A woman, with two or three more to
+chorus her sentiments, would go into a shop and examine half-a-dozen
+dress fabrics, rubbing each between her work-hardened fingers and
+thumb till the shopkeeper winced, expecting to see it torn. After
+trying several and getting the counter covered she would push them
+aside, contemptuously remarking, 'I don't like this yer shallygallee
+(flimsy) stuff. Haven't'ee got any gingham tackle?' Whereat the poor
+draper would cast down a fresh roll of stoutest material with the
+reply: 'Here, ma'am. Here's something that will wear like pin-wire.'
+This did better, but was declared to be 'gallus dear.'
+
+Even within recent years, now and then a servant-girl upon entering
+service at the farmhouse would refuse to touch butcher's meat. She had
+never tasted anything but bacon at home, and could only be persuaded
+to eat fresh meat with difficulty, being afraid she should not like
+it. One girl who came from a lonely cottage in a distant
+'coombe-bottom' of the Downs was observed never to write home or
+attempt to communicate with her parents. She said it was of no use; no
+postman came near, and the letters they wrote or the letters written
+to them never reached their destination. 'Coombe-bottom' is a curious
+duplication--either word being used to indicate a narrow valley or
+hollow. An unfortunate child who lived there had never been so well
+since the stone roller went over his head. She had a lover, but he was
+'a gurt hummocksing noon-naw,' so she was not sorry to leave him. The
+phrase might be translated, 'great loose-jointed idiot.'
+
+They sometimes had lettuce-pudding for dinner, and thought nothing of
+eating raw bacon. In the snow the men wound hay-bands round their legs
+to serve as gaiters, and found it answered admirably. One poor girl
+had been subject to fits ever since a stupid fellow, during the
+haymaking, jokingly picked up a snake and threw it round her neck. Yet
+even in that far-away coombe-bottom they knew enough to put an
+oyster-shell in the kettle to prevent incrustation.
+
+The rules of pronunciation understood about Okebourne seemed to
+consist in lengthening the syllables that are usually spoken quick,
+and shortening those that are usually long. Hilary said that years ago
+it really appeared as if there was something deficient in the organs
+of the throat among the labourers, for there were words they
+positively could not pronounce. The word 'reservoir,' for instance,
+was always 'tezzievoy;' they could not speak the word correctly. He
+could not explain to me a very common expression among the men when
+they wished to describe anything unusual or strange for which they had
+no exact equivalent. It was always 'a sort of a meejick.' By degrees,
+however, we traced it back to 'menagerie.' The travelling shows of
+wild beasts at first so much astonished the villagers that everything
+odd and curious became a menagerie, afterwards corrupted to 'meejick.'
+
+'Caddle no man's cattle' was a favourite proverb with a population who
+were never in a hurry. 'Like shot out of a show'l,' to express extreme
+nimbleness, was another. A comfortless, bare apartment was 'gabern;'
+anything stirred with a pointed instrument was 'ucked'--whether a cow
+'ucked' the fogger with her horn or the stable was cleaned out with
+the fork. The verb 'to uck' was capable indeed of infinite
+conjugation, and young Aaron, breaking off a bennet, once asked me to
+kindly 'uck' a grain of hay-dust out of his eye with it. When a heron
+rose out of the brook 'a moll ern flod away.'
+
+With all their apparent simplicity some of the cottage folk were quite
+up to the value of appearances. Old Aaron had a little shop; he and
+his wife sold small packets of tea, tobacco, whipcord, and so forth.
+Sometimes while his wife was weighing out the sugar, old
+Aaron--wretched old deceiver--would come in rustling a crumpled piece
+of paper as if it were a banknote, and handing it to her with much
+impressiveness of manner whisper loudly, 'Now you take un and put un
+away; and mind you don't mix um. You put he along with the fives and
+not with the tens.'
+
+Hilary once showed me the heel of a boot which had just been mended by
+the hedge carpenter and cobbler who worked for him; and offered to bet
+that not all the scientific people in Europe, with microscope,
+spectrum analysis, all their appliances, could tell what leather the
+new heel-piece was made of. Unable to guess, I gave it up; it was of
+bacon. A pig that was never a 'good doer' was found in a ditch dead.
+There is always a competition among the labourers for a dead pig or
+sheep; it was the cobbler's turn, and he had it, cut it up, and salted
+it down. But when in course of time he came to partake of his side of
+bacon, behold it was so tough and dried up that even he could not gnaw
+it. The side hung in the cottage for months, for he did not like to
+throw it away, and could not think what to do with it, for the dogs
+could not eat it. At last the old fellow hit upon the notion of using
+it as leather to mend shoes; so half his customers walked about the
+world on bacon heels.
+
+So far as I could discover, the cottage folk did not now use many
+herbs. They made tea sometimes of the tormentil, whose little yellow
+flowers appear along the furrows. The leaves of the square-stemmed
+figwort, which they called 'cresset' or 'cressil,' were occasionally
+placed on a sore; and the yarrow--locally 'yarra'--was yet held in
+estimation as a salve or ointment.
+
+It would be possible for any one to dwell a long time in the midst of
+a village, and yet never hear anything of this kind and obtain no idea
+whatever of the curious mixture of the grotesque, the ignorance and
+yet cleverness, which go to make up hamlet life. But so many labourers
+and labouring women were continually in and out of the kitchen at
+Lucketts' Place that I had an opportunity of gathering these items
+from Mrs. Luckett and Cicely. Years since they had employed even more
+labour, before machinery came into use so much: then as many as
+twenty-four women might have been counted in one hayfield, all in
+regular rank like soldiers, turning the hay 'wallows' with their
+rakes. 'There's one thing now you have forgotten,' said Cicely. 'They
+pick the canker-roses off the briars and carry them in the pocket as a
+certain preventive of rheumatism.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+WIND-ANEMONES.    THE FISHPOND.
+
+
+The only spot about the Chace where the wind-anemones grew was in a
+small detached copse of ash-poles nearly a mile from the great woods.
+Between the stoles, which were rather far apart, the ground was quite
+covered in spring with dark-green vegetation, so that it was
+impossible to walk there without treading down the leaves of
+bluebells, anemones, and similar woodland plants. But if you wished to
+see the anemones in their full beauty it was necessary to visit the
+copse frequently; for if you forgot it, or delayed a fortnight, very
+likely upon returning you would find that their fleeting loveliness
+was over. Their slender red stems rise but a few inches, and are
+surrounded with three leaves; the six white petals of the cup-shaped
+flower droop a little and have a golden centre. Under the petal is a
+tinge of purple, which is sometimes faintly visible through it. The
+leaves are not only three in number, but are each cut deeply thrice;
+they are hardy, but the flower extremely delicate.
+
+On the banks dividing the copse from the meadows around it the blue
+dog-violets, which have no perfume, often opened so large and wide as
+to resemble pansies. They do not appear like this till just as their
+flowering time is almost over. The meadows by the copse were small,
+not more than two or three acres each. One which was marshy was white
+for weeks together with the lady's-smock or cuckoo-flower. The petals
+of these flowers are silvery white in some places, in others tinted
+with lilac. The hues of wild flowers vary with their situation: in
+shady woodlands the toadflax or butter-and-eggs is often pale--a
+sulphur colour; upon the Downs it is a deep and beautiful yellow. In a
+ditch, of this marshy meadow was a great bunch of woodruff, above
+whose green whorls the white flowers were lifted. Over them the
+brambles arched, their leaves growing in fives, and each leaf prickly.
+The bramble-shoots, as they touch the ground, take root and rise
+again, and thus would soon cross a field were they not cut down.
+
+Pheasants were fond of visiting this copse, following the hedgerows to
+it from the Chace, and they always had one or more nests in it. A
+green woodpecker took it in his route, though he did not stay long,
+there not being many trees. These birds seem to have their regular
+rounds; there are some copses where they are scarcely ever heard. They
+prefer old trees; where there is much large and decaying timber, there
+the woodpeckers come. Such little meadows as these about the copse are
+the favourite resort of birds and the very home of flowers--more so
+than extensive woods like the Chace, or the open pastures and arable
+fields. Thick hedgerows attract birds, and behind such cover their
+motions may be watched. There is, too, more variety of bush and tree.
+
+In one such hedgerow leading from the copse the maple-bushes in spring
+were hung with the green flowers which, though they depend in their
+season from so many trees, as the oak, are perhaps rarely observed.
+The elder-bushes in full white bloom scented the air for yards around
+both by night and day; the white bloom shows on the darkest evening.
+Besides several crab-stoles--the buds of the crab might be mistaken
+for thorns growing pointed at the extreme end of the twigs--there was
+a large crab tree, which bore a plentiful crop. The lads sharpen their
+knives by drawing the blade slowly to and fro through a crab-apple;
+the acid of the fruit eats the steel like aquafortis. They hide stores
+of these crabs in holes in the hayricks, supposing them to improve by
+keeping. There, too, they conceal quantities of the apples from the
+old orchards, for the fruit in them is often almost as hard and not
+much superior in flavour to the crab. These apples certainly become
+more mellow after several months in the warm hay.
+
+A wild 'plum,' or bullace, grew in one place; the plum about twice the
+size of a sloe, with a bloom upon the skin like the cultivated fruit,
+but lacking its sweetness. Yet there was a distinct difference of
+taste: the 'plum' had not got the extreme harshness of the sloe. A
+quantity of dogwood occupied a corner; in summer it bore a pleasing
+flower; in the autumn, after the black berries appeared upon it, the
+leaves became a rich bronze colour, and some when the first frosts
+touched them curled up at the edge and turned crimson. There were two
+or three guelder-rose bushes--the wild shrub--which were covered in
+June with white bloom; not in snowy balls like the garden variety, but
+flat and circular, the florets at the edge of the circle often
+whitest, and those in the centre greenish. In autumn the slender
+boughs were weighed down with heavy bunches of large purplish berries,
+so full of red juice as to appear on the point of bursting. As these
+soon disappeared they were doubtless eaten by birds.
+
+Besides the hawthorn and briar there were several species of
+willow--the snake-skin willow, so called because it sheds its bark;
+the 'snap-willow,' which is so brittle that every gale breaks off its
+feeble twigs, and pollards. One of these, hollow and old, had upon its
+top a crowd of parasites. A bramble had taken root there, and hung
+over the side; a small currant-bush grew freely--both, no doubt,
+unwittingly planted by birds--and finally the bines of the noxious
+bitter-sweet or nightshade, starting from the decayed wood, supported
+themselves among the willow-branches, and in autumn were bright with
+red berries. Ash-stoles, the buds on whose boughs in spring are hidden
+under black sheaths; nut-tree stoles, with ever-welcome nuts--always
+stolen here, but on the Downs, where they are plentiful, staying till
+they fall; young oak growing up from the butt of a felled tree. On
+these oak-twigs sometimes, besides the ordinary round galls, there may
+be found another gall, larger, and formed, as it were, of green scales
+one above the other.
+
+Where shall we find in the artificial and, to my thinking, tasteless
+pleasure-grounds of modern houses so beautiful a shrubbery as this old
+hedgerow? Nor were evergreens wanting, for the ivy grew thickly, and
+there was one holly-bush--not more, for the soil was not affected by
+holly. The tall cow-parsnip or 'gicks' rose up through the bushes; the
+great hollow stem of the angelica grew at the edge of the field, on
+the verge of the grass, but still sheltered by the brambles. Some
+reeds early in spring thrust up their slender green tubes, tipped with
+two spear-like leaves. The reed varies in height according to the
+position in which it grows. If the hedge has been cut it does not
+reach higher than four or five feet; when it springs from a deep,
+hollow corner, or with bushes to draw it up, you can hardly touch its
+tip with your walking-stick. The leaders of the black bryony, lifting
+themselves above the bushes, and having just there nothing to cling
+to, twist around each other, and two bines thus find mutual support
+where one alone would fall of its own weight.
+
+In the watery places the sedges send up their dark flowers, dusted
+with light yellow pollen, rising above the triangular stem with its
+narrow, ribbed leaf. The reed-sparrow or bunting sits upon the spray
+over the ditch with its carex grass and rushes; he is a graceful bird,
+with a crown of glossy black. Hops climb the ash and hang their
+clusters, which impart an aromatic scent to the hand that plucks them;
+broad burdock leaves, which the mouchers put on the top of their
+baskets to shield their freshly gathered watercresses from the
+sunshine; creeping avens, with buttercup-like flowers and long stems
+that straggle across the ditch, and in autumn are tipped with a small
+ball of soft spines; mints, strong-scented and unmistakable; yarrow,
+white and sometimes a little lilac, whose flower is perhaps almost the
+last that the bee visits. In the middle of October I have seen a wild
+bee on a last stray yarrow.
+
+On the higher and drier bank some few slender square stems of betony,
+with leaves in pairs like wings, stand up tall and stiff as the summer
+advances. The labiate purplish flowers are all at the top; each flower
+is set in the cup by a curve at the lesser end, like a crook; the
+leaves and stalk are slightly rough, and have an aromatic bitter
+perfume when crushed. On the flower of a great thistle a moth has
+alighted, and hidden under its broad wing is a humble-bee, the two
+happy together and neither interfering with the other. Sometimes a bee
+will visit the white rose on the briar.
+
+Near the gateway, on the edge of the trodden ground, grows a tall,
+stout, bushy plant, like a shrub, with pale greyish-green leaves, much
+lobed and divided: the top of each branch in August is thick with
+small whitish-green flowers tipped with brown. These, if rubbed in the
+hand, emit a strong and peculiar scent, with a faint flavour of
+lavender, and yet quite different. This is the mugwort. Still later
+on, under the shade of the trees on the mound, there appear bunches of
+a pale herb, with greenish labiate flowers, and a scent like hops: it
+is the woodsage, and if tasted the leaf will be found extremely
+bitter.
+
+In the mornings of autumn the webs of the spiders hang along the hedge
+bowed a little with dew, like hammocks of gossamer slung from thorn to
+thorn. Then the hedge-sparrows, perching on the topmost boughs of the
+hawthorn, cry 'peep-peep' mournfully; the heavy dew on the grass
+beneath arranges itself in two rows of drops along the edges of the
+blades. From the day when the first leaf appears upon the hardy
+woodbine, in the early year, to the time when the partridge finds the
+eggs in the ant-hill, and on again till the last harebell dies, there
+is always something beautiful or interesting in these great hedgerows.
+Indeed, it is impossible to exhaust them. I have omitted the wild
+geranium with its tiny red petals scarce seen in the mass of green,
+the mosses, the ferns, and have scarcely said a word about the living
+creatures that haunt it. But then one might begin to write a book
+about a hedgerow when a boy and find it incomplete in old age.
+
+A much-neglected path led from the park through some fir plantations
+down to the fishpond. After the first turn of the narrow track the
+close foliage of the firs, through which nothing could be seen, shut
+out the world with green walls. The strip of blue sky visible above
+was wider than the path, because the trees sloped away somewhat, their
+branches shortening towards the top; still it was so contracted that a
+passing woodpigeon was seen but for a second as he went over. Every
+step carried me into deeper silence--the sudden call of a jay was
+startling in its harsh contrast. Presently the path widened where the
+thickly planted firs were succeeded by sycamores, horse-chestnuts,
+alders, and aspen--trees which stand farther apart, and beneath which
+some underwood grew. Here there were thickets of hawthorn and bramble
+and elder bushes which can find no place among firs.
+
+The ground now sloped rapidly down into a hollow, and upon this
+descent numbers of skeleton leaves were scattered. There was no other
+spot all over the Chace where they could be seen like this; you might
+walk for hours and not find one, yet here there were hundreds.
+Sometimes they covered the ground in layers, several leaves one on the
+other. In spring violets pushed up through them and blue-bells--sweet
+hope rising over grey decay.
+
+Lower down a large pond almost filled the hollow. It was surrounded on
+three sides by trees and thickets; on the fourth an irregular margin
+of marshy grass extended. Floating leaves of weeds covered the surface
+of the water; these weeds had not been disturbed for years, and there
+was no check to their growth except their own profusion, for they
+choked each other. The pond had long ceased to supply fish for the
+table. Before railways brought the sea so near, such ponds were very
+useful. At that time almost everything consumed came from the estate
+itself: the bread, the beef, the mutton, the venison, game, fish, all
+was supplied by the adjacent woods, the fields, or the water. The lord
+in old days hunted the deer on his own domain, brought down game with
+a crossbow or captured it with nets, and fished or netted his own
+streams and ponds. These great parks and chaces enclosed everything,
+so that it was within easy reach of his own door. Sometimes the lord
+and his visitors strolled out to see the fishponds netted.
+
+This pond had originally been one of a series, but the others had been
+drained and added to the meadows. It was said to be staked at the
+bottom to prevent illicit netting; but if so, the stakes by this time
+were probably rotten or buried in mud formed from the decaying weeds,
+the fallen leaves, and branches which were gradually closing it up. A
+few yards from the edge there was a mass of ivy through which a little
+brown thatch could be distinguished, and on approaching nearer this
+low roof was found to cover the entrance to a cave. It was an ice-house
+excavated in the sloping ground or bank, in which, 'when George the
+Third was King,' the ice of the ponds had been preserved to cool the
+owner's wine in summer. Ice was then a luxury for the rich only; but
+when so large a supply arrived from America, a supply increased by
+freezing machines, the ice-house lost its importance. The door, once
+so jealously closed, was gone, and the dead leaves of last year had
+gathered in corners where the winds had whirled them.
+
+The heat of a warm June day seemed still more powerful in this hollow.
+The sedges, into which two or three moorhens had retired at my
+approach, were still, and the leaves on the boughs overhanging the
+water were motionless. Where there was a space free from weeds--a
+deeper hole near the bank--a jack basked at the surface in the
+sunshine. High above on the hill stood a tall dead fir, from whose
+trunk the bark was falling; it had but one branch, which stood out
+bare and stark across the sky. There came a sound like distant
+thunder, but there were no clouds overhead, and it was not possible to
+see far round. Pushing gently through the hawthorn bushes and
+ash-stoles at the farther end of the pond, I found a pleasant little
+stream rushing swiftly over a clear chalky bottom, hastening away down
+to the larger brook.
+
+Beyond it rose a mound and hedgerow, up to which came the meadows,
+where, from the noise, the cattle seemed racing to and fro, teased by
+insects. Tiny black flies alighting on my hands and face, irritated
+the skin; the haymakers call them 'thunder-flies;' but the murmur of
+the running water was so delicious that I sat down on a bulging
+tree-root, almost over the stream, and listened to the thrushes
+singing. Had it been merely warm they would have been silent. They do
+not sing in dry sunshine, but they knew what was coming; so that there
+is no note so hated by the haymaker as that of the thrush. The birds
+were not in the firs, but in the ash-trees along the course of the
+rill.
+
+The voice of the thrush is the most 'cultivated,' so to speak, of all
+our birds: the trills, the runs, the variations, are so numerous and
+contrasted. Not even the nightingale can equal it: the nightingale has
+not nearly such command: the thrush seems to know no limit. I own I
+love the blackbird best, but in excellence of varied music the thrush
+surpasses all. Few birds, except those that are formed for swimming,
+come to a still pond. They like a clear running stream; they visit the
+sweet running water for drinking and bathing. Dreaming away the time,
+listening to the rush of the water bubbling about the stones, I did
+not notice that the sky had become overcast, till suddenly a clap of
+thunder near at hand awakened me. Some heavy drops of rain fell; I
+looked up and saw the dead branch of the fir on the hill stretched out
+like a withered arm across a black cloud.
+
+Hastening back to the ice-house, I had barely entered the doorway when
+the lightning, visible at noonday, flashed red and threatening, the
+thunder crackled and snapped overhead, and the rain fell in a white
+sheet of water. There were but two of these overpowering discharges
+with their peculiar crack and snap; the electricity passed on quickly,
+and the next clap roared over the woods. But the rain was heavier than
+before, the fall increased after every flash, however distant, and the
+surface of the pond was threshed by the drops which bore down with
+them many leaves weakened by blight.
+
+Doubtless the mowers in the meadows had hidden the blades of their
+scythes under the swathe, and the haymakers had placed their prongs in
+the ditches: nothing is so likely to attract a shock of lightning as a
+prong carried on the shoulder with the bright steel points upwards. In
+the farmhouses the old folk would cover up the looking-glasses lest
+the quicksilver should draw the electric fluid. The haymakers will
+tell you that sometimes when they have been standing under a hedge out
+of a storm a flash of lightning has gone by with a distinct sound like
+'swish,' and immediately afterwards the wet ground has sent forth a
+vapour, or, as they say, smoked.
+
+Woodpigeons and many other birds seem to come home to woods and copses
+before and during a storm. The woodpigeon is one of the freest of
+birds to all appearance: he passes over the highest trees and goes
+straight away for miles. Yet, though it is usual to speak of wild
+birds and of their freedom, the more you watch their ways the more you
+feel that the wildest have their routes and customs: that they do not
+act entirely from the impulse of the moment, but have their unwritten
+laws. How do the gnats there playing under the horse-chestnut boughs
+escape being struck down by the heavy raindrops, each one of which
+looks as if it would drown so small a creature? The numbers of insects
+far exceed all that words can express: consider the clouds of midges
+that often dance over a stream. One day, chancing to glance at a
+steeple, I saw what looked like thin smoke issuing from the top of it.
+Now it shot out in a straight line from the gilded beak of the
+weathercock, now veered about, or declined from the vane. It was an
+innumerable swarm of insects, whose numbers made them visible at that
+height.
+
+Some insects are much more powerful than would be supposed. A garden
+was enclosed with fresh palings formed of split oak so well seasoned
+(split oak is the hardest of wood) that it was difficult to train any
+creepers against them, for a nail could not be driven in without the
+help of a bradawl. Passing along the path one afternoon I heard a
+peculiar rasping sound like a very small saw at work, and found it
+proceeded from four wasps biting the oak for the materials of their
+nest. The noise they made was audible four or five yards away, and
+upon looking closer I found the palings all scored and marked in short
+shallow grooves. The scores and marks extended along that part of the
+palings where the sunshine usually fell; there were none on the shady
+side, the wasps preferring to work in the sunlight.
+
+Soon the clouds began to break, and then the sun shone on innumerable
+rain-drops. I at once started forth, knowing that such a storm is
+often followed by several lesser showers with brief intervals between.
+The deserted ice-house was rarely visited--only, perhaps, when some
+borage was wanted to put in summer drinks. For a thick growth of
+borage had sprung up by it, where perhaps a small garden patch had
+once been cultivated, for there was a pear-tree near. The plant, with
+its scent of cucumber, grew very strong; the blue flowers when fallen,
+if they had not been observed when growing, might be supposed to have
+been inserted exactly upside down to their real manner of attachment.
+In autumn the leaves of the pear-tree reddened, and afterwards the ivy
+over the entrance to the ice-house flowered; then in the cold months of
+early spring the birds came for the ivy-berries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A FARMER OF THE OLDEN TIMES.
+
+
+The winding paths traced by a hare in spring as he roams over an
+arable field show that he must cover a mile within a furlong. From a
+gateway one morning I watched a hare busy in this way, restlessly
+passing to and fro over the 'lands.' Every motion was visible,
+because, although the green wheat was rising in an adjacent field, no
+crop had yet appeared here. Now the hare came direct towards me,
+running down a furrow; then he turned short and followed a course like
+the letter V; next he crossed the angle of the field and came back
+along the shore of the ditch, under the hedge. Then away to the centre
+of the field, where he stayed some time exploring up one furrow and
+down another, his ears and the hump of his back only seen above the
+clods.
+
+But suddenly he caught a scent of something that alarmed him, and away
+he went full speed: when on the open ground the peculiar way in which
+the hind limbs are thrown forward right under the body, thus giving an
+immense 'stride,' was clearly displayed. I had been so interested in
+the hare that I had not observed Hilary coming along on the other side
+of the low fence, looking at his wheat. The hare, busy as he was and
+seeming to see nothing, had crossed his 'wind.' Hilary came to me, and
+we walked together along the waggon-track, repassing the wheat. He was
+full about it: he was always grieving over the decadence of the wheat
+crop.
+
+There was nothing, he went on, so pleasant to watch as it came up,
+nothing that required so much care and skill, nothing so thoroughly
+associated with the traditions of English farming as wheat, and yet
+nothing so disappointing. Foreign importations had destroyed this the
+very mainstay. Now, that crop which he had just left had 'tillered
+out' well; but what profit should he get from the many stalks that had
+tillered or sprung from each single grain, thus promising a fiftyfold
+return? It had been well got in, and, as the old saw had it, 'Well
+sown, half grown;' it had been in the ground the proper time ('Long in
+the bed, big in the head'); but likely enough the price next autumn
+would not much more than pay the expenses of preparation.
+
+The thunderstorm before Christmas was not perhaps a favourable omen,
+since
+
+    Winter's thunder and summer's flood
+    Bode old England no good.
+
+Last year showed that 'summer's flood' was as destructive as in the
+olden time. But then there would have been a rise of prices, according
+to the saying,--
+
+    When the vale shall feed the hill,
+    Every man shall eat his fill.
+    But when the hill shall feed the vale,
+    The penny loaf shall be but small.
+
+Now, last season, so far as our home harvests were concerned, the
+'hill' did feed the 'vale,' but the penny loaves were as large and as
+plentiful as usual, owing to foreign grain. In those old days, seventy
+or eighty years since, the whole population of the kingdom watched the
+weather with anxiety; and it was then that the signs and tokens of
+birds and plants and the set of the wind at particular times were
+regarded as veritable oracles to be inquired into not without fear and
+trembling.
+
+Hilary heard all about it when he was a lad from old Jonathan, who had
+a corn-farm up on the hills, and where he used to go to plough. Hilary
+never stated the exact degree, but there was some relationship between
+them--two branches, I fancy, of the same family. He seemed to have a
+very bitter memory of the old man (now dead), who had been a hard
+master to him in his youth; besides which, some family jar had arisen
+over money matters; still, he was fond of quoting Jonathan in reference
+to wheat and the heyday of corn-farming. Jonathan remembered when a
+load of wheat fetched 55_l._--a load being five quarters or ten
+sacks--or 11_l._ a quarter. The present average of wheat was about
+2_l._ 6_s._ per quarter. At the same time bread was at 3_s._ a gallon;
+it is now about 1_s._ 6_d._ The wages of an agricultural labourer were
+6_s._ a week. It was gambling, positive gambling, in the staff of
+life.
+
+No farmer was held in any esteem if he did not keep his wheat ricks
+till harvest came again before threshing them out: men grew rich
+suddenly and knew not what to do with their money. Farmers who had
+been brought up 'hard,' living like labourers, working like labourers,
+and with little more amusement than labourers, all at once found their
+pockets full of coin. The wheat they had been selling at 5_l._ a load
+ran up to 50_l._ With their purses thus crammed full, what were they
+to do? There was nothing but drink, and they did drink.
+
+In those days the farmer in his isolated homestead was more cut off
+from the world than the settler at the present time in the backwoods
+or on the prairies. The telegraph wires span the continent of America,
+and are carried across the dry deserts of Australia. Wherever the
+settler may be, he is never very far from the wires or the railway;
+the railway meets the ocean steamer; and we can form no conception of
+the utter lack of communication in the old world of our immediate
+forefathers. The farmer, being away from the main road and the track
+of the mail coaches, knew no one but his neighbours, saw no one, and
+heard but little. Amusements there were none, other than could be had
+at the alehouse or by riding into the market town to the inn there. So
+that when this great flush of prosperity came upon them, old Jonathan
+and his friends had nothing to do but drink.
+
+Up at The Idovers, as his place was called, a lonely homestead on a
+plain between the Downs, they used to assemble, and at once put up the
+shutters, whether it was dark or not, not wishing to know whether it
+was day or night. Sometimes the head carter would venture in for
+instructions, and be gruffly told to take his team and do so and so.
+'Eez, zur,' he would reply, 'uz did thuck job isterday.' His master
+had ordered him to do it the day before, but was oblivious that
+twenty-four hours had passed. The middle-aged men stood this
+continuous drinking without much harm, their constitutions having
+become hardened and 'set,' but it killed off numbers of the younger
+men.
+
+They drank ale principally--strong ale, for at that time in lonely
+farmhouses they were guiltless of wines and spirits. But the enormous
+price of 50_l._ per load suggested luxuries, and it was old Jonathan
+at The Idovers who introduced gin. Till then no gin even--nothing but
+ale--had been consumed in that far-away spot; but Jonathan brought in
+the gin, which speedily became popular. He called it 'spoon-drink' (a
+spoon being used with the sugar) as a distinguishing name, and as
+spoon-drink accordingly it was known. When any one desired to reduce
+the strength of his glass, they did indeed pour him out some more
+water from the kettle; but having previously filled the kettle with
+the spirit, his last state became worse than the first.
+
+While thus they revelled, the labourers worked with the flails in the
+barn threshing out the truly golden grain. The farmers used to take
+pains to slip round upon them unexpectedly, or meet them as they were
+going home from work, in order to check the pilfering of the wheat.
+The labourer was not paid wholly in cash; he had a bushel of the
+'tail,' or second flour, from the mill in lieu of money, settling once
+a month. Their life was hard indeed. But the great prosperity which
+had come upon the farmers did them no good. In too many cases it
+melted away in drink. The habit of drinking became settled in a
+family. Bad habits endured after the prosperity had departed; and in
+some cases those who had once owned their farms as well as occupied
+them had to quit the homes of their forefathers. Here and there one,
+however, laid the foundation of a fortune, as fortunes are understood
+in the country; and shrewd old Jonathan was one of these.
+
+Even down to very recent days a spell of drinking--simple drinking--was
+the staple amusement of many an otherwise respectable farmer. Not many
+years since it was not unusual for some well-to-do farmer of the old
+school to ride off on his nag, and not be heard of for a week, till he
+was discovered at a distant roadside inn, where he had spent the
+interval in straightforward drinking. These habits are now happily
+extinct. It was in those old times that wheat was bought and hoarded
+with the express object of raising the price to famine pitch: a thing
+then sometimes practicable, though not always successful. Thus in 1801
+the price of wheat in March was 55_l._ per load, while in October it
+had fallen to 15_l._ Men forgot the misery of the poor in their
+eagerness for guineas.
+
+Hilary, with all his old prejudices, was not so foolish as to desire a
+return of times like that. He had undergone privation himself in
+youth, for farmers' sons were but a little better off than plough-lads
+even in his early days; and he did not wish to make money by another
+man's suffering. Still he was always grieving about the wheat crop,
+and how it had fallen in estimation. It was a sight to see the gusto
+with which he would run his hand into a sack of wheat to sample it.
+'Here, feel this,' he would say to me, 'you can slip your hand in up
+to your elbow; and now hold up your palm--see, the grains are as plump
+as cherry-stones.'
+
+After hearing Hilary talk so much of old Jonathan I thought I should
+like to see the place where he had lived, and later in the season
+walked up on the hills for that purpose. The stunted fir-trees on the
+Down gave so little shadow that I was glad to find a hawthorn under
+whose branches I could rest on the sward. The prevalent winds of
+winter sweeping without check along the open slope had bent the
+hawthorn before them, and the heat of the sultry summer day appeared
+the greater on that exposed height. On either hand hills succeeded to
+hills, and behind I knew they extended farther than the eye could
+reach. Immediately beneath in front there was a plain, at its extreme
+boundary a wood, and beyond that the horizon was lost in the summer
+haze. Wheat, barley, and oats--barley and wheat and beans, completely
+occupied the plain. It was one vast expanse of cereals, without a sign
+of human life; for the reaper had not yet commenced, and the bailiffs'
+cottages were hidden among the ricks. There was an utter silence at
+noonday; nothing but yellowing wheat beneath, the ramparts of the
+hills around, and the sun above.
+
+But, though out of sight, there was a farmhouse behind a small copse
+and clump of elms full of rooks' nests, a short way from the foot of
+the Down. This was The Idovers, once the residence of old Jonathan; it
+was the last farm before reaching the hill district proper, and from
+the slope here all the fields of which it consisted were visible. The
+house was small, for in those days farmers did not look to live in
+villas, and till within the last few years even the parlour floor was
+of stone flags. Rushes used to be strewn in the halls of palaces in
+ancient times, and seventy years ago old Jonathan grew his own
+carpets.
+
+The softest and best of the bean straw grown on the farm was selected
+and scattered on the floor of the sitting-rooms as warm and dry to the
+feet, and that was all the carpet in the house. Just before
+sheep-shearing time, too, Jonathan used to have the nettles cut that
+flourished round the back of the sheds, and strewn on the floor of the
+barn. The nettles shrivelled up dry, and the wool did not stick to
+them, but could be gathered easily.
+
+With his own hands he would carry out a quart of beans to the
+pigs---just a quart at a time and no more, that they might eat every
+one and that none might be wasted. So, too, he would carry them a few
+acorns in his coat-pocket, and watch the relish with which the swine
+devoured their favourite food. He saved every bit of crooked wood that
+was found about the place; for at that date iron was expensive, and
+wood that had grown crooked and was therefore strong as well as curved
+was useful for a hundred purposes. Fastened to a wall, for instance,
+it did for a hook upon which to hang things. If an apple-tree died in
+the orchard it was cut out to form part of a plough and saved till
+wanted.
+
+Jonathan's hard head withstood even the whirl of the days when corn
+was at famine prices. But these careful economies, this continual
+saving, put more money in his purse than all that sudden flush of
+prosperity. Every groat thus saved was as a nail driven into an oak,
+fixed and stable, becoming firmer as time went on. How strangely
+different the farmers of to-day, with a score of machines and
+appliances, with expensive feeding-stuffs, with well-furnished villas!
+Each one of Jonathan's beans in his quart mug, each one of the acorns
+in his pocket became a guinea.
+
+Jonathan's hat was made to measure on his own special block by the
+hatter in Overboro' town, and it was so hard and stout that he could
+sit upon it without injury. His top-boots always hung near the
+fireplace, that they might not get mouldy; and he rode into market
+upon his 'short-tail horse,' as he called his crop-tail nag. A farmer
+was nothing thought of unless he wore top-boots, which seemed a
+distinguishing mark, as it were, of the equestrian order of
+agriculture.
+
+But his shoes were made straight; not as now one to each foot--a right
+and left--but each exactly alike; and he changed his shoes every
+morning, wearing one on one foot one day and on the other the next,
+that they might not get worn to either foot in particular. Shoes
+lasted a great length of time in those days, the leather being all
+tanned with oak bark only, and thoroughly seasoned before it was cut
+up. There is even a story of a farmer who wore his best shoes every
+Sunday for seven years in Sundays--fifty years--and when he died had
+them buried with him, still far from worn out.
+
+A traveller once returned from America--in those days a very far-off
+land--and was recounting the wonders he had seen, and among them how
+the folk there used sleighs, not only for driving in but for the
+removal of heavy goods. But Jonathan did not think it strange, since
+when he was young wheeled vehicles were not so common. He had himself
+seen loads of hay drawn home on 'sleds' from English meadows, and
+could tell where a 'sled' had last been used. There were aged men
+living about the hamlet in his day--if that could be called a hamlet
+in which there were barely a score of people, all told--who could
+recollect when the first waggon came to The Idovers. At all events,
+they pointed out a large field, called the Conigers, where it was
+taken to turn it round; for it was constructed in so primitive a style
+that the forewheels would not pass under the body, and thus required a
+whole field to turn in.
+
+At that date folk had no banking accounts, but kept their coin in a
+strong chest under the bed, sometimes hiding it in strange places.
+Jonathan was once visiting a friend, and after they had hobnobbed a
+while the old fellow took him, with many precautions that they should
+not be observed, into the pig-sty and showed him fifty guineas hid in
+the thatch. That was by no means all his property, but the old fellow
+said, with a wink, that he liked to have a little hoard of his own
+that his wife knew nothing about.
+
+Some land being put up for sale, after biddings by the well-to-do
+residents, an old dealer in a very small way, as was supposed, bid
+above them all. The company looked upon him with contempt, and his
+offer was regarded as mere folly; but he produced a nail-bag from
+under his coat and counted out the money. A nail-bag is made of the
+coarsest of all kinds of sacking. In this manner the former
+generation, eschewing outward show, collected their money coin by
+coin, till at last they became substantial men and owners of real
+estate. So few were the conveniences of life that men had often to
+leave the road and cross several fields out of their way to light
+their pipes at a burning couch-heap or lime-kiln.
+
+They prided themselves then in that hill district that they had
+neither a cow nor a poor married man in the parish. There was no cow,
+because it was entirely a corn-growing place. The whole resident
+population was not much over a score, and of the labourers they
+boasted not one was married. For in those old times each parish kept
+its own poor, and consequently disliked an increase of the population.
+The farmers met in vestry from time to time to arrange for the support
+of the surplus labour; the appearance of a fresh family would have
+meant a fresh tax upon them. They regarded additional human beings as
+an incumbrance.
+
+The millers sent their flour round the country then on packhorses;
+waggons and carts were not so common as now, while the ways, when you
+once quitted the main road, were scarcely passable. Even the main
+roads were often in such a state that foot-passengers could not get
+along, but left the road and followed a footpath just inside the
+hedge. Such footpaths ran beside the roads for miles; here and there
+in country places a short section of such tracks may still be found.
+'Pack-roads,' too, may be occasionally met with, retaining their
+designation to this day. It was the time of the great wars with the
+First Napoleon; and the poor people, as the wheat went up to famine
+prices, were often in a strait for bread. When the miller's packhorse
+appeared the cottagers crowded round and demanded the price: if it had
+risen a penny, the infuriated mob of women would sometimes pull the
+miller's boy off the horse and duck him in the village pond.
+
+The memory of those old times is still vivid in farmhouses, and at
+Hilary's I have myself handled old Jonathan's walking-staff, which he
+and his father before him used in traversing on foot those perilous
+roads. It was about five feet long, perhaps more, an inch and a half
+in diameter, and shod with an iron ferrule and stout spike. With this
+he could prod the sloughs and ascertain their depth, or use it as a
+leaping-pole; and if threatened by sturdy rogues whirl it about their
+heads as a quarter-staff.
+
+Wars and famines were then terrible realities--men's minds were full
+of them, and superstition flourished. The foggers and shepherds saw
+signs in the sky and read the stars. Down at Lucketts' Place one
+winter's night, when folk almost fancied they could hear the roar of
+Napoleon's cannon, the old fogger came rushing in with the news that
+the armies could be seen fighting in the heavens. It was an aurora,
+the streamers shooting up towards the zenith, and great red spots
+among the stars, the ghastly stains of the wounded. The old fogger
+declared that as he went out with his lantern to attend to the cows
+calving he could see the blood dripping on the back of his hand as it
+fell down from the battling hosts above.
+
+To us the ignorance even of such comparatively recent times is almost
+incredible. As Hilary was telling me of such things as we sat in his
+house one evening, there grew upon our ears a peculiar sound, a
+humming deep bass, somewhat resembling the low notes of a piano with a
+pressure on the pedal. It increased and became louder, coming from the
+road which passed the house; it was caused by a very large flock of
+sheep driven slowly. The individual 'baa' of each lamb was so mixed,
+as it were, with the bleat of its fellow that the swelling sound took
+a strange, mysterious tone; a voice that seemed to speak of trouble,
+and perplexity, and anxiety for rest. Hilary, as a farmer, must of
+course go out to see whose they were, and I went with him; but before
+he reached the garden gate he turned back, remarking, 'It's Johnson's
+flock; I know the tang of his tankards.' The flat-shaped bells hung on
+a sheep's neck are called tankards; and Hilary could distinguish one
+flock from another by the varying notes of their bells.
+
+Reclining on the sweet short sward under the hawthorn on the Down I
+looked over the Idover plain, and thought of the olden times. As I
+gazed I presently observed, far away beside some ricks, the short
+black funnel of an engine, and made it out to be a steam-plough
+waiting till the corn should be garnered to tear up the stubble. How
+much meaning there lay in the presence of that black funnel! There
+were the same broad open fields, the same beautiful crops of golden
+wheat, the same green hills, and the same sun ripening the grain. But
+how strangely changed all human affairs since old Jonathan, in his
+straight-made shoes, with his pike-staff, and the acorns in his
+pocket, trudged along the footpaths!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE CUCKOO-FIELDS.
+
+
+The cuckoos came so frequently to some grass-land just outside the
+Chace and sloping down to the brook that I gave the spot the name of
+the Cuckoo-fields. There were two detached copses in them of no great
+extent, and numerous oaks and hawthorns, while the brook below was
+bordered with willow-stoles. This stretch of grass was divided into
+two large fields by a line of decaying posts and rails, and it became
+a favourite resort of mine in the warm days of spring, because I could
+almost always see and hear the cuckoos there.
+
+Why they should love it so much is not easy to tell, unless on account
+of the comparatively barren character of the soil. The earth seemed to
+be of a very different kind to that in the rich and fertile meadows
+and fields close by; for the grass was rough, short, and thin, and
+soon became greyish or brown as the summer advanced, burning or drying
+up under the sun. It may often be observed that a piece of waste, like
+furze, when in the midst of good land, is much frequented by all birds
+and animals, though where there is nothing else but waste they are
+often almost entirely absent.
+
+As the oaks come out into full leaf, the time when the meadows become
+beautiful, the notes of the cuckoo sound like a voice crying 'Come
+hither' from the trees. Then, sitting on the grey and lichen-covered
+rail under the cover of a hawthorn, I saw sometimes two and sometimes
+three cuckoos following each other courting, now round the copse, now
+by the hedge or the brook, and presently along the rails where they
+constantly perched. Occasionally one would alight on the sward among
+the purple flowers of the meadow orchis. From the marshy meadow across
+the brook apeew it rose from time to time, uttering his plaintive call
+and wheeling to and fro on the wing. At the sound a second and a third
+appeared in succession, and after beating up and down for a few
+minutes settled again in the grass. The meadow might have been called
+a plovery--as we say rookery and heronry--for the green plovers or
+peewits always had several nests in it.
+
+The course of the humble bees that went by could be watched for some
+way--their large size and darker colour made them visible--as they now
+went down into the grass, and now started forward again. The honey
+bees, small and somewhat lighter in colour, could not be seen so far.
+They were busy in the sunshine, for the hive bee must gather most of
+its honey before the end of July, before the scythe has laid the grass
+in the last meadow low. Few if any flowers come up after the scythe
+has gone over, except the white clover, which almost alone shows in
+the aftermath, or, as country people call it, the 'lattermath.' Near
+me a titlark every few minutes rose from the sward, and spreading his
+wings came down aslant, singing with all his might.
+
+Some sarsen stones just showed above the grass: the old folk say that
+these boulders grow in size and increase in number. The fact is that
+in some soils the boulder protrudes more and more above the surface in
+the course of time, and others come into view that were once hidden;
+while in another place the turf rises, and they seem to slowly sink
+into the earth. The monotonous and yet pleasing cry of the peewits,
+the sweet titlark singing overhead, and the cuckoos flying round,
+filled the place with the magic charm of spring.
+
+Coming to these Cuckoo-fields day after day, there was always
+something to interest me, either in the meadows themselves or on the
+way thither. The very dust of the road had something to show. For
+under the shadowy elms a little seed or grain had jolted down through
+the chinks in the bed of a passing waggon, and there the chaffinches
+and sparrows had congregated. As they moved to and fro they had left
+the marks of their feet in the thick white dust, so crossed and
+intertangled in a maze of tracks that no one could have designed so
+delicate and intricate a pattern. If it was cloudy, still, glancing
+over the cornfields, just as you turned partly round to look, there
+seemed a brilliant streak of sunshine across them. This was a broad
+band of charlock: its light yellow is so gaudy and glaring in the mass
+that as it first catches the eye it seems as if the land were lit up
+by the sun. After it the buttercups appear of a quiet colour, like
+dead gold in contrast.
+
+Under-foot, almost in the very dust of the road, the silverweed opened
+its yellow petals, and where there was a dry bank, or by the gateways
+leading into the corn, the pink pimpernel grew. For some time I
+suspected the pimpernel of not invariably closing its petals before
+rain, and at last by precise observation found that it did not. Twice
+in a comparatively short period I noted the petals wide open within a
+few minutes of a shower. It appears rather to close during the
+atmospheric change which occurs previous to rain than to rain itself.
+Once now and then a shower seems to come up in the driest weather
+without warning or change in the atmosphere: the cloud is over and
+gone almost before it seems worth while to take shelter. To the
+approach of such shower-clouds the pimpernel does not invariably
+respond, but it is perfectly accurate if anything serious be brewing.
+By a furrow in the sward by the roadside there grew a little piece of
+some species of gorse--so small and delicate, with the tiniest yellow
+flowers, that it was well worthy of a place where it would be admired;
+for few could have seen it hidden there.
+
+Birds'-foot lotus covered the sward of one part of the Cuckoo-fields,
+on the higher ground near the woods, where the soil was dry; and by
+the hedge there were some bushy plants of the rest-harrow, whose
+prickly branches repel cattle and whose appearance reproaches the
+farmer for neglect. Yet though an outcast with animals and men, it
+bears a beautiful flower, butterfly-shaped and delicately tinted with
+pink. Now, as the days roll on, the blue succory and the scarlet
+poppies stand side by side in the yellow wheat but just outside my
+Cuckoo-fields, and one or two stray corncockles bloom; they are not
+common here and are perhaps brought from a distance. Here you may walk
+many miles and even wait several harvests to see a corncockle.
+
+The thistledown floats; and see, yonder the white balls are rolling
+before the gentle air along the very tips of the bronzing wheat-ears.
+By the hedge the straggling stalks of St. John's wort lift the yellow
+petals dotted with black specks above the bunches of grass. The
+leaves, held up to the light, seem to have numerous eyelets, as if
+pricked but not quite through--windows in the leaf. In the grass the
+short selfheal shows; and, leaning over the gate, on the edge of the
+wheat you may see the curious prickly seed-vessels of the corn
+buttercup--the 'hedgehog'--whose spines, however, will not scratch the
+softest skin.
+
+Resting on the rail under the hawthorn for a minute or two in early
+spring, when it was too chilly to stay long, I watched a flock of
+rooks and jackdaws soaring in the sky. Round and round and ever
+upwards they circled, the jackdaws of course betraying their presence
+by their call; up towards the blue, as if in the joy of their hearts,
+they held a festival, happy in the genial weather and the approach of
+the nesting-time. This soaring and wheeling is evidently done for
+recreation, like a dance. Presently the flock seems to tumble and
+fall, and there comes the rushing sound of the air swiftly parted by
+their out-spread wings as they dive a hundred feet in a second. The
+noise is audible a quarter of a mile off. This, too, is play; for,
+catching themselves and regaining their balance just above the elms,
+they resume their steady flight onwards to distant feeding-grounds.
+Later in the season, sitting there in the warm evenings, I could hear
+the pheasants utter their peculiar roost-cry, and the noise of their
+wings as they flew up in the wood: the vibration is so loud that it
+might almost be described as thumping.
+
+By-and-by the cuckoo began to lose his voice; he gurgled and gasped,
+and cried 'cuck--kuk--kwai--kash,' and could not utter the soft,
+melodious 'oo.' The latest date on which I ever heard the cuckoo here,
+to be certain, was the day before St. Swithin, July 14, 1879. The
+nightingales, too, lose their sweet notes, but not their voices; they
+remain in the hedges long after their song has ceased. Passing by the
+hawthorn bushes up to the end of July, you may hear a bird within that
+seems to threaten you with a loud 'sweet-kurr,' and, looking in, you
+will find it to be a nightingale. The spelling exactly represents the
+sound, 'r' being twirled. 'Sweet-kurr-kurr' comes from the interior of
+the bushes with an angry emphasis.
+
+Along the lower part of these meadows there was a brook, and the
+brook-sparrows were chattering ceaselessly as I walked among the
+willow-stoles by it one morning towards the end of June. On the left
+hand the deep stream flowed silently round its gentle curves, and on
+the other through the willows and alders the grassy slope of the
+Cuckoo-fields was visible. Broad leaves of the marsh marigold, the
+flower long since gone, covered the ground; light-green horsetails
+were dotted thickly about; and tall grasses flourished, rising to the
+knee. Dark shallow pools were so hidden under these grasses and plants
+that the presence of the black and yet clear water could not be
+perceived until the foot sank into it.
+
+The sedge-birds kept just in front of me, now busy on a willow-stole,
+and concealed in the grasses and moss which grew out of the decaying
+wood; now among the sedges covering the mudbanks where the brook had
+silted up; now in the hedge which divided the willows from the meadow.
+Still the peculiar sparrow-like note, the ringing chirp, came
+continually from their throats; the warm sultry day delighted them.
+One clung to the side of a slender flag, which scarcely seemed strong
+enough to support it, yet did not even bend under its weight; then on
+again as I came nearer--but only two or three yards--to recommence
+singing immediately.
+
+Pushing through the brushwood and past the reddish willow-poles, I
+entered a very thicket of flags, rising to the shoulder. These were
+not ribbed or bayonet-shaped, but flat, like a long sword. Three or
+four sprang from a single root, broad and tall, and beside them a
+stalk, and on it the yellow iris in fall flower. The marsh seemed lit
+up with these bright lamps of colour under the shadowy willows and the
+dark alders. There were a dozen at least within a few yards close
+around, and others dimly visible through the branches--three large
+yellow petals drooping, and on the curve of each brownish mottled
+markings or lines delicately stippled, beside them a rolled spike-like
+bloom not yet unfolded: a flower of the waters, crowned with gold,
+above the green dwellers by the shore.
+
+Here the sedge-birds left me, doubling back to their favourite
+willow-stoles and sedges. Further on, the ground rose, and on the
+drier bank the 'gicks' grew shoulder high, towering over the brambles.
+It was difficult to move through the tangled underwood, so I went out
+into the Cuckoo-fields. Hilary had drained away much of the water that
+used to form a far larger marsh about here, and calculated his
+levellings in a most ingenious manner with a hollow 'gicks.' He took a
+wooden bowl, and filled it to the brim with water. Then cutting a dry
+'gicks' so that it should be open at either end, like a tube, he
+floated it--the stalk is very light--on the bowl. Looking through this
+tube he could get his level almost as accurately as with an engineer's
+instrument, though of course it was more cumbrous to use.
+
+There was a corner here that had not been mown for a long time, and in
+the autumn the wild carrots took possession of it, almost to the
+exclusion of grass and other plants. The flower of the wild carrot
+gathers together as the seeds mature, and forms a framework cup at the
+top of the stalk, like a bird's-nest. These 'bird's-nests,' brown and
+weather-beaten, endured far into the winter. The brook-sparrows still
+sang as I passed by again in the evening; they seem the most unwearied
+of birds, for you may hear them all day, all the evening, and at one
+o'clock next morning; indeed, at intervals, all night. By night the
+note is, or appears to be, less sparrow-like, or perhaps the silence
+of night improves it to the ear. I stayed that evening in a corner of
+a wheatfield not yet yellow, and watched the shadows of the trees grow
+longer and broader as the sun declined.
+
+As the breeze rushed over the corn there was a play of various shades
+of green, the stalks as they bent this and that way taking different
+hues. But under the hedge it was still; the wind could not come
+through, though it moved the boughs above. A mass of cloud like flocks
+of wool, mottled and with small spaces of blue between, drifted slowly
+eastwards, and its last edge formed an arch over the western horizon,
+under which the sun shone. The yellow vetchling had climbed up from
+the ditch and opened its flower, and there were young nuts on the
+hazel bough. Far away in a copse a wood-pigeon called; nearer the
+blackbirds were whistling; a willow wren uttered his note high in the
+elm, and a distant yellowhammer sang to the sinking sun.
+
+The brook had once been much wider, and in flood times rendered the
+Overboro' road almost impassable; for before a bridge was built it
+spread widely and crossed the highway--a rushing, though shallow,
+torrent fifty yards broad. The stumps of the willows that had grown by
+it could still be found in places, and now and then an ancient
+'bullpoll' was washed up. This grass is so tough that the tufts or
+cushions it forms will last in water for fifty years, even when rooted
+up--decayed of course and black, but still distinguishable. In those
+times just previous to the construction of railways, when the lord of
+the manor came down after Parliament rose, there used to be a
+competition to get hold of his coachman. So few agricultural people
+travelled, and news came so slowly and in such distorted fashion, that
+the coachman became a great authority. Such a brook as this was then
+often a serious obstacle.
+
+There was still an old punt, seldom used, to be found in a rickyard of
+Hilary's, close by which was an extensive pond. The punt was thatched
+over with flags from the stream. The moorhens were fond of this pond
+because it was surrounded with a great quantity of rushes; they were
+numerous all up the brook. These birds, being tame and common, are not
+much regarded either for sport or the table, yet a moorhen shot at the
+right time of the year--not till the frosts have begun--is delicious
+eating. If the bird were rare it would be thought to rival the
+woodcock; as it is, probably few people ever taste it. The path to
+Lucketts' Place from this rickyard passed a stone-quarry, where the
+excavated stone was built up in square heaps. In these heaps, in which
+there were many interstices and hollows, rabbits often sat out; and by
+stopping the entrance and carefully removing the stones they might
+occasionally be taken by hand. Next by the barn where in spring the
+sparrows made a continuous noise, chirping and quarrelling as they
+carried on their nesting operations: they sometimes flew up with long
+green bennets and grass fibres as well as with dry straws.
+
+Then across the road, where the flint-heaps always put me in mind of
+young Aaron; for he once gravely assured me that they were the very
+best places in the world on which to rest or sleep. The flints were
+dry, and preserved the slumbering wayfarer from damp. He had no doubt
+proved this when the ale was too strong. At the house, as I passed
+through the courtyard, I found him just on the point of starting for
+Overboro' with a wallet, to bring back some goods from the shops. The
+wallet is almost unknown even in farmsteads now: it is a kind of long
+bag closed at each end, but with a slit in the centre for the
+insertion of the things to be conveyed. When filled it is slung over
+the shoulder, one end in front and the other behind, so as to balance.
+Without knowing the shape of a wallet the story of Jack the
+Giant-Killer stowing away such enormous quantities of pudding is
+scarcely to be understood: children nowadays never see such a thing.
+Many nursery tales contain allusions of this kind, the meaning of
+which must be obscure to the rising generation.
+
+Within doors I found a great discussion going forward between Hilary
+and a farmer who had called, as to the exact relationship of a man who
+had just quitted his tenancy and another who died nearly forty years
+before. They could not agree either as to the kinship or the date;
+though the visitor was the more certain because he so well remembered
+that there was an extraordinary cut of 'turvin' that year. The
+'turvin' is the hay made on the leaze, not the meadows, out of the
+rough grass and bennets left by the cows. To listen to the zest with
+which they entered into the minutest details of the family affairs of
+so long ago, concerning people with whom neither had any
+connection--how they recollected the smallest particulars--was
+astonishing. This marvellous capacity for gossip seemed like a
+revelation of a totally different state of society. The memory of
+country people for such details is beyond belief.
+
+When the visitor left with his wife we walked to the gate and saw them
+down the road; and it was curious to note that they did not walk side
+by side. If you meet a farmer of the old style and his wife walking
+together, never do you see them arm-in-arm. The husband walks a yard
+or two in front, or else on the other side of the road; and this even
+when they are going to church.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+CICELY'S DAIRY.    HILARY'S TALK.
+
+
+Just outside the palings of the courtyard at Lucketts' Place, in front
+of the dairy, was a line of damson and plum trees standing in a narrow
+patch bordered by a miniature box-hedge. The thrushes were always
+searching about in this box, which was hardly high enough to hide
+them, for the snails which they found there. They broke the shells on
+the stone flags of the garden path adjacent, and were often so
+intently occupied in the box as to seem to fly up from under the very
+feet of any one who passed.
+
+Under the damson tree the first white snowdrops came, and the
+crocuses, whose yellow petals often appeared over the snow, and
+presently the daffodils and the beautiful narcissus. There were
+cowslips and primroses, too, which the boys last year had planted
+upside down that they might come variegated. The earliest violet was
+gathered there, for the corner was enclosed on three sides, and
+somehow the sunshine fell more genially in that untrimmed spot than in
+formal gardens where it is courted. Against the house a pear was
+trained, and opened its white bloom the first of all: in its shelter
+the birds built their nests. The chaffinches called cheerfully on the
+plum-trees and sang in the early morning. When the apples bloomed, the
+goldfinches visited the same trees at least once a day.
+
+A damask rose opened its single petals, the sweetest-scented of all
+the roses; there were a few strawberries under the wall of the house;
+by-and-by the pears above enlarged, and the damsons were coated with
+the bloom. On the tall plum-trees hung the large purplish-red plums:
+upon shaking the tree, one or two came down with a thud. The branches
+of the damsons depended so low, looking, as it were, right into the
+court and pressing the fruit against your very face as you entered,
+that you could not choose but take some when it was ripe. A
+blue-painted barrel-churn stood by the door; young Aaron turned it in
+the morning, while the finches called in the plum-trees, but now and
+then not all the strength of his sturdy shoulders nor patient hours of
+turning could 'fetch' the butter, for a witch had been busy.
+
+Sometimes on entering the dairy in the familiar country way, you might
+find Cicely, now almost come to womanhood, at the cheese-tub. As she
+bent over it her rounded arms, bare nearly to the shoulder, were laved
+in the white milk. It must have been from the dairy that Poppaea
+learned to bathe in milk, for Cicely's arms shone white and smooth,
+with the gleam of a perfect skin. But Mrs. Luckett would never let her
+touch the salt, which will ruin the hands. Cicely, however, who would
+do something, turned the cheeses in the cheese-room alone. Taking one
+corner of the clean cloth in her teeth, in a second, by some dexterous
+sleight-of-hand, the heavy cheese was over, though ponderous enough to
+puzzle many a man, especially as it had to come over gently that the
+shape might not be injured.
+
+She did it without the least perceptible exertion. At the moment of
+the turn, when the weight must have been felt, there was no knot of
+muscle visible on her arm. That is the difference; for
+
+    When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw
+
+the muscles of the man's limb knot themselves and stand out in bold
+relief. The smooth contour of Cicely's arm never varied. Mrs. Luckett,
+talking about cheese as we watched Cicely one morning, said people's
+taste have much altered; for she understood they were now fond of a
+foreign sort that was full of holes. The old saying was that bread
+should be full of holes, cheese should have none. Just then Hilary
+entered and completed the triad by adding that ale should make you see
+double.
+
+So he called for the brown jug, and he and I had a glass. On my side
+of the jug stood a sportsman in breeches and gaiters, his gun
+presented, and ever in the act to fire: his dog pointed, and the birds
+were flying towards Hilary. Though rude in design the scene was true
+to nature and the times: from the buttons on the coat to the long
+barrel of the gun, the details were accurate and nothing improved to
+suit the artist's fancy. To me these old jugs and mugs and bowls have
+a deep and human interest, for you can seem to see and know the men
+who drank from them in the olden days.
+
+Now a tall Worcester vase, with all its elegance and gilding, though
+it may be valued at 5,000_l._, lacks that sympathy, and may please the
+eye but does not touch the heart. For it has never shared in the
+jovial feast nor comforted the weary; the soul of man has never
+communicated to it some of its own subtle essence. But this hollow
+bowl whispers back the genial songs that were shouted over it a
+hundred years ago. On the ancient Grecian pottery, too, the hunter
+with his spear chases the boar or urges his hounds after the flying
+deer; the women are dancing, and you can almost hear the notes of the
+flute. These things were part of their daily life; these are no
+imaginary pictures of imaginary and impossible scenes: they are simply
+scenes in which every one then took part. So I think that the old
+English jugs and mugs and bowls are true art, with something of the
+antique classical spirit in them, for truly you can read the hearts of
+the folk for whom they were made. They have rendered the interpretation
+easy by writing their minds upon them: the motto, 'Prosperity to the
+Flock,' for instance, is a good one still; and 'Drink fair; don't
+swear,' is yet a very pleasant and suitable admonition.
+
+As I looked at the jug, the cat coughed under the table. 'Ah,' said
+Mrs. Luckett, 'when the cat coughs, the cold goes through the house.'
+Hilary, returning to the subject of the cheese, said that the best was
+made when the herd grazed on old pastures: there was a pasture field
+of his which it was believed had been grazed for fully two hundred
+years. When he was a boy, the cheese folk made to keep at home for
+eating often became so hard that, unable to cut it, they were obliged
+to use a saw. Still longer ago, they used to despatch a special cheese
+to London in the road-waggon; it was made in thin vats (pronounced in
+the dairy 'vates'), was soft, and eaten with radishes. Another hard
+kind was oval-shaped, or like a pear; it was hung up in nets to
+mature, and traded to the West Indies.
+
+He looked to see when the moon changed in 'Moore's Almanac,' which was
+kept for ready reference on the mantelpiece. Next to Bible and
+Prayer-book comes old Moore's rubric in the farmhouse--that rubric
+which declares the 'vox stellarum.' There are old folk who still
+regret the amendments in the modern issue, and would have back again
+the table which laid down when the influence of the constellations was
+concentrated in each particular limb and portion of the body. In his
+oaken cabinet Hilary had 'Moore' from the beginning of the century, or
+farther back, for his fathers had saved them before him. On the narrow
+margins during his own time he had jotted down notes of remarkable
+weather and the events of the farm, and could tell you the very day
+cow 'Beauty' calved twenty years ago.
+
+I thought the ale good, but Hilary was certain it was not equal to
+what he used to brew himself before he had so large an acreage to look
+after, and indeed before the old style of farm-life went out of
+fashion. Then he used to sit up all night watching--for brewing is a
+critical operation--and looking out of doors now and then to pass the
+long hours saw the changes of the sky, the constellations rising in
+succession one after the other, and felt the slight variations of the
+wind and of moisture or dryness in the air which predict the sunshine
+or the shower of the coming day. He seemed to have thought a good deal
+in those lonely watches; but he passed it off by referring to the
+malting. Barn barley was best for malting--_i.e._ that which had been
+stored in a barn and therefore kept perfectly dry, for ricks sometimes
+get wet before they can be thatched. But barn barley was not often
+come by nowadays, as one by one the old barns disappeared: burned
+perhaps, and not rebuilt. He had ceased to brew for some time; Cicely
+could, however, remember sipping the sweet wort, which is almost too
+sweet for the palate after childhood.
+
+They still baked a batch of bread occasionally, but not all that
+was required. Cicely superintended the baking, passing the barm
+through a sieve with a wisp of clean hay in it. The hay takes off
+any sourness, and ensures it being perfectly sweet. She knew when
+the oven was hot enough by the gauge-brick: this particular brick
+as the heat increased became spotted with white, and when it had
+turned quite white the oven was ready. The wood embers were raked
+out with the scraper, and the malkin, being wetted, cleaned out the
+ashes. 'Thee looks like a gurt malkin' is a common term of reproach
+among the poor folk--meaning a bunch of rags on the end of a stick.
+We went out to look at the oven; and then Mrs. Luckett made me taste
+her black-currant gin, which was very good. Presently we went into
+the orchard to look at the first apple-tree out in bloom. While
+there a magpie flew across the meadow, and as I watched it Mrs.
+Luckett advised me to turn my back and not to look too long in that
+direction. 'For,' said she, 'one magpie is good luck, but two mean
+sorrow; and if you should see three--goodness!--something awful
+might happen.'[1]
+
+      [1] See Notes.
+
+One lovely June afternoon as Hilary and I strolled about the fields,
+we passed some lambs at play. 'Lamb is never good eating without
+sunshine,' said Hilary. Not only wheat and plants generally but
+animals also are affected by the absence of sun, so that the epicure
+should hope as devoutly as the farmer that the dull and overcast
+season of 1879 will not be repeated. Hilary's remark was founded upon
+the experience of long years--such experience as is only to be found
+in farmhouses where kindred succeed each other, and hand down
+practical observations from father to son.
+
+The thistles were showing rather strongly in the barley--the result of
+last year's rain and the consequent impossibility of proper clearing.
+These thistles he thought came from portions of the root and not from
+seed. Last year all the farmers had been Latter Lammas men. The 1st of
+August is Lammas Day; and in the old time if a farmer had neglected
+his work and his haymaking was still unfinished on August 13 (_i.e._
+old style), he was called in reproach a Latter Lammas man. But last
+year (1879) they were all alike, and the hay was about till September;
+yet Hilary could recollect it being all done by St. Swithin's, July
+15.
+
+Sometimes, however, the skilled and careful agriculturist did not
+succeed so well as the lazy one. Once in seven years there came a
+sloven's year, according to the old folk, when the sloven had a
+splendid crop of wheat and hardly knew where to put it. Such a harvest
+was as if a man had gone round his farm with the sun in one hand and
+the watering-pot in the other! Last year there had been nearly as much
+mathern (wild camomile) and willow-wind (convolvulus and buckwheat) as
+crop, and he did not want to see the colt's tail in the sky so often
+again. The colt's tail is a cloud with a bushy appearance like a
+ragged fringe, and portends rain.
+
+I remarked that it was curious how thunderstorms sometimes returned on
+the same day of the week and at the same hour for a month running.
+Hilary said they had been known to return every day at the same hour.
+The most regular operation on a farm is the milking: one summer his
+fogger declared it came on to thunder day after day in the afternoon
+just as he took his yoke off his shoulders. Such heavy and continuous
+downpour not only laid the crops, but might spoil them altogether; for
+laid barley had been known to sprout there and then, and was of course
+totally spoiled. It was a mistake to associate thunder solely with hot
+weather; the old folk used to say that it was never too cold to
+thunder and never too warm to snow.
+
+A sweet yet faintly pungent odour came on the light breeze over the
+next field--a scent like clover, but with a slight reminiscence of the
+bean-flower. It arose from the yellow flower of the hop-trefoil: honey
+sometimes has a flavour which resembles it. The hop-trefoil is a
+favourite crop for sheep, but Hilary said it was too soft for horses.
+The poppies were not yet out in the wheat. When in full bloom some of
+the cottagers gather the scarlet flowers in great quantities and from
+them make poppy wine. This liquor has a fine colour and is very heady,
+and those who make it seem to think much of it. Upon the hills where
+furze grows plentifully the flowers are also collected, and a dye
+extracted from them. Ribbons can thus be dyed a bright yellow, but it
+requires a large quantity of the flowers.
+
+A little farther a sheep-dog looked at us from a gateway; and on
+coming nearer we found the shepherd busily engaged cutting the feet of
+his sheep one by one with a keen knife. They had got the foot-rot down
+in a meadow--they do not suffer from it on the arable uplands where
+folded--and the shepherd was now applying a caustic solution. Every
+shepherd has his own peculiar specific, which he believes to be the
+only certain remedy.
+
+Tar is used in the sheepfold, just as it used to be when sweet
+Dowsabell went forth to gather honeysuckle and lady's-smock nearly
+three centuries since. For the shepherd with whom she fell in love
+carried
+
+    His tar-boxe on his broad belt hong.
+
+So, too,
+
+    He leared his sheepe as he him list
+    When he would whistle in his fist;
+
+and the shepherd still guides and encourages his sheep by whistling.
+
+Hilary said that years ago the dogs kept at farmhouses in that
+district did not seem of such good breeds, nor were there so many
+varieties as at present. They were mostly sheep-dogs, or mongrels of
+the sheep-dog cast; for little attention was paid to breed. Dogs of
+this kind, with shaggy black coats and stump tails, could be found at
+most farms, and were often of a savage disposition; so much so that it
+was occasionally necessary to break their teeth that they might not
+injure the sheep. From his description the dogs at the present day
+must be far superior; indeed, there seems to have been no variety of
+dog and no purity of breed at that time (in that neighbourhood);
+meaning, of course, outside the gamekeeper's kennels, or the hounds
+used for hunting. Shepherds like to keep their flock in hurdles,
+folded as much as possible, that they may not rub their wool off and
+so get a ragged appearance. Once now and then in wet weather the
+ground becomes so soft that a flock will not move, their narrow feet
+sinking so deeply in the mud. It is then necessary to 'dog them
+out'--to set the dog at them--and the excitement, fright, and exertion
+have been known to kill one or more of the flock.
+
+Passing on to the lower grounds, we entered the meadows, where the men
+were at haycart. The cart-horses wore glittering brazen ornaments,
+crescent-shaped, in front of the neck, and one upon the forehead. Have
+these ornaments a history?[2] The carters and ploughmen have an
+old-world vocabulary of their own, saying 'toward' for anything near
+or leaning towards you, and 'vrammards' for the reverse. 'Heeld' or
+'yeeld,' again, is ploughman's language; when the newly sown corn does
+not 'heeld' or 'yeeld' it requires the harrow. In the next field,
+which the mowers had but just cut, the men were 'tedding'--_i.e._
+spreading the swathe with their prongs. Hilary said that hay was a
+safe speculation if a man could afford to wait; for every few years it
+was sure to be extremely dear, so that the old people said, 'Old hay,
+old gold.'
+
+      [2] See Notes.
+
+As we returned towards Lucketts' Place, he pointed out to me a distant
+house upon which he said slates had been first used in that
+neighbourhood. Fifty or sixty years since no slates were to be seen
+there, and when they began to be introduced the old folk manifested
+great opposition. They said slate would never last--the moss would eat
+through it, and so cause holes; and, in fact, some of the slate that
+was brought up did decay and become useless. But that was, of course,
+an inferior kind, quite different to what is now employed. In so
+comparatively short a period has everything--even the mode of
+roofing--changed that the introduction of slates is still in many
+places within the memory of man. Hilary had still a lingering
+preference for thatch; and though he could not deny the utility of
+slate, his inclination was obviously in favour of straw. He assured me
+that good straw from a good harvest (for there was much difference in
+it), well laid on by a good thatcher, had been known to keep out the
+weather for forty-five years.
+
+We looked into the garden at the Place, where Hilary particularly
+called my attention to the kidney-beans; for, said he, if the
+kidney-beans run up the sticks well, with a strong vine, then it would
+be a capital hop-year. On the contrary, if they were weak and poor,
+the hops would prove a failure. Thus the one plant was an index to the
+other, though they might be growing a hundred miles apart, both being
+particularly sensitive to the same atmospheric influences.
+
+In a distant tree beyond the rickyard there was something hanging in
+the branches that I could not quite make out: it was a limb of a dead
+horse. A cart-horse belonging to a neighbouring farmer had met with an
+accident and had to be killed, when, according to old custom, portions
+were sent round to each adjacent farmstead for the dogs, which then
+had a feast. Thus, said Hilary, according to the old saw, the death of
+a horse is the life of a dog.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE WATER-MILL.    FIELD NAMES.
+
+
+'Our time be a-most gone by,' said the miller looking up from his work
+and laying aside the millpeck for a moment as he rubbed his eyes with
+his white and greasy sleeve. From a window of the old mill by
+Okebourne I was gazing over the plain green with rising wheat, where
+the titlarks were singing joyously in the sunshine. A millstone had
+been 'thrown off' on some full sacks--like cushions--and Tibbald, the
+miller, was dexterously pecking the grooves afresh.
+
+The millpeck is a little tool like a double adze, or perhaps rather
+like two chisels set in the head of a mallet. Though age was stealing
+upon him, Tibbald's eye and hand were still true, and his rude
+sculpture was executed with curious precision. The grooves, which are
+the teeth of the millstone, radiate from the centre, but do not
+proceed direct to the edge: they slant slightly.
+
+'There bean't many as can do this job,' he said, 'I can put in sixteen
+or twenty to the inch. These old French burrs be the best stone; they
+be hard, but they be mild and takes the peck well.' Ponderous as the
+millstones appear, they are capable of being set so that their
+surfaces shall grind with extreme accuracy. The nether, called the
+'bed stone,' is stationary; the upper millstone, or 'runner,'
+revolves, and the grain crushed between the two works out along the
+furrows to the edge.
+
+Now and then the miller feels the grain as it emerges with his pudgy
+thumb and finger, and knows by touch how the stones are grinding. It
+is perceptibly warm at the moment it issues forth, from the friction:
+yet the stones must not grind too close, or they 'kill' the wheat,
+which should be only just cracked, so as to skin well. To attain this
+end, first, the surfaces of the stones must be level, and the grooves
+must be exactly right; and, secondly, the upper stone must be hung at
+the exact distance above the other to the smallest fraction of an
+inch. The upper millstone is now sometimes balanced with lead, which
+Tibbald said was not the case of old.
+
+'We used to have a good trade at this mill,' he continued, as he
+resumed his pecking; 'but our time be a-most gone by. We be too fur
+away up in these here Downs. There! Listen to he!' A faint hollow
+whistle came up over the plain, and I saw a long white cloud of steam
+miles away, swiftly gliding above the trees beneath which in the
+cutting the train was running.
+
+'That be th' express. It be that there steam as have done for us.
+Everything got to go according to that there whistle: they sets the
+church clock by he. The big London mills as be driven by steam does
+the most of the work; and this here foreign wheat, as comes over in
+the steamers, puts the market down, so as we yent got a chance to buy
+up a lot and keep it till the price gets better. I seed in the paper
+as the rate is gone down a penny: the steamers be going to ship the
+American wheat a penny a bushel cheaper. So it bean't much good for
+Hilary to talk about his wheat. I thenks that'll about do.'
+
+He laid down the millpeck, and took his millstaff to prove the work he
+had done. This was made of well-seasoned oak, two pieces put together
+so that they should not warp. He rubbed the edge with ruddle, and,
+placing the millstaff on the stone, turned it about on its shorter
+axis: where the ruddle left its red mark more pecking would be
+required. There was but one small spot, and this he quickly put right.
+Even the seasoned oak, however, is not always true, and to be certain
+on the point Tibbald had a millstaff prover. This is of rigid steel,
+and the staff is put on it; if any daylight is visible between the two
+the staff is not accurate--so delicately must these great stones be
+adjusted for successful grinding.
+
+The largest of them are four feet two inches diameter; and dangerous
+things they are to move, for if the men do not all heave or 'give' at
+the same moment the stone may slip, and the edge will take off a row
+of fingers as clean as the guillotine. Tibbald, of course, had his
+joke about that part of the machinery which is called the 'damsel.' He
+was a righteous man enough as millers go, but your miller was always a
+bit of a knave; nor could he forbear from boasting to me how he had
+been half an hour too soon for Hilary last Overboro' market.
+
+He said the vast water-wheel was of elm, but it would not last so long
+up so near the springs. Upon a river or brook the wheel might endure
+for thirty years, and grind corn for a generation. His millpond was
+close to the spring-head, and the spring-water ate into the wood and
+caused it to decay much quicker. The spokes used to be mortised in,
+now they used flanges, ironwork having almost destroyed the business
+of the ancient millwright. Of all manual workers, probably the old
+style of millwright employed the greatest variety of tools, and was
+the cleverest in handling them. There seemed no end to the number of
+his chisels and augers; some of the augers of immense size. In winter
+time the millwright made the millstones, for the best stones are not
+in one piece but composed of forty or fifty. The French burrs which
+Tibbald preferred come over in fragments, and these are carefully
+fitted together and stuck with plaster of Paris. Such work required
+great nicety: the old millwright was, in fact, a kind of artist in his
+handicraft.
+
+I could not help regretting, as Tibbald dilated on these things, that
+the village millwright no longer existed; the care, the skill, the
+forethought, the sense of just proportion he exhibited quite took him
+out of the ranks of the mere workman. He was a master of his craft,
+and the mind he put into it made him an artist. Tibbald went on that
+he did not care for the Derby or Welsh millstones. These were in one
+piece, but they were too hard for the delicate grinding necessary to
+make the fine flour needed for good bread. They answered best for
+barley meal. Now, the French burr was not only hard but mild, and
+seemed to feel the corn as it crushed it. A sack of wheat lost 4 lb.
+in grinding. I asked about the toll: he showed me the old measure,
+reckoned at the tenth of a sack; it was a square box. When the lord's
+tenants in the olden times were forced to have their corn ground at
+the lord's mill, the toll was liable to be abused in a cruel manner;
+hence the universal opinion that a miller must be a knave. Even in
+much more recent times, when the labourers took part of their wages in
+flour, there is said to have been a great deal of sleight-of-hand in
+using the toll-box, and the miller's thumb grew fat by continually
+dipping into other folk's sacks.
+
+But Tibbald had an argument even here, for he said that men nowadays
+never grew so strong as they used to do when they brought their own
+wheat to be ground at the mill, and when they made their bread and
+baked it at home. His own father once carried the fattest man in the
+parish on his back half a mile; I forget how much he weighed exactly,
+but it was something enormous, and the fat man, moreover, held a 56
+lb. weight in each hand. He himself remembered when Hilary used to be
+the strongest man in the place; when the young men met together they
+contended who should lift the heaviest weight, and he had seen Hilary
+raise 5 cwt., fair lifting, with the hands only, and without any
+mechanical appliance. Hilary, too, used to write his name with a
+carpenter's flat cedar pencil on the whitewashed ceiling of the
+brewhouse, holding the while a 1/2 cwt. of iron hung on his little
+finger. The difficulty was to get the weight up, lifting it fairly
+from the ground; you could lift it very well half-way, but it was just
+when the arm was bent that the tug came to get it past the hip, after
+which it would go up comparatively easily.
+
+Now this great strength was not the result of long and special
+training, or, indeed, of any training at all; it came naturally from
+outdoor life, outdoor work, plain living (chiefly bacon), and good
+bread baked at home. At the present time men ate the finest and
+whitest of bread, but there was no good in it. Folk grew tall and
+big--taller than they used to be, he thought--and they could run
+quick, and so forth; but there was no stamina, no power of endurance,
+of withstanding exposure like there was formerly. The mere measure of
+a man, he was certain, had nothing to do with his strength; and he
+could never understand how it was that the army folk would have men
+precisely so high and so many inches round. Just then he was called
+away to a carter who had brought up his team and waggon at the door,
+and as he was gone some time I went up under the roof, whence there
+was a beautiful view down over the plain.
+
+The swifts, which had but just arrived, were rushing through the sky
+in their headlong way; they would build presently in the roof. The
+mill was built at the mouth of a coombe on the verge of the Downs; the
+coombe was narrow and steep, as if nature had begun a cutting with the
+view of tunnelling through the mass of the hills. At the upper end of
+the coombe the spring issued, and at the lower was the millpond. There
+is something peculiarly human in a mill--something that carries the
+mind backwards into the past, the days of crossbow and lance and
+armour. Possibly there was truth in Tibbald's idea that men grow
+larger in the present time without corresponding strength, for is it
+not on record that some at least of the armour preserved in
+collections will not fit those who have tried it on in recent times?
+Yet the knight for whom it was originally made, though less in stature
+and size, may have had much more vigour and power of endurance.
+
+The ceaseless rains last year sent the farmers in some places to the
+local millers once more somewhat in the old style. Part of their wheat
+proved so poor that they could not sell it at market; and, rather than
+waste it, they had it ground at the village mills with the idea of
+consuming as much of the flour as possible at home. But the flour was
+so bad as to be uneatable. As I parted with Tibbald that morning he
+whispered to me, as he leaned over the hatch, to say a good word for
+him with Hilary about the throw of oak that was going on in one part
+of the Chace. 'If you was to speak to he, he could speak to the
+steward, and may be I could get a stick or two at a bargain'--with a
+wink. Tibbald did a little in buying and selling timber, and, indeed,
+in many other things. Pleased as he was to show me the mill, and to
+talk about it by the hour together, the shrewd old fellow still had an
+eye to business.
+
+After a while, in walking along the footpaths of the meadows and by
+the woods, a feeling grew upon me that it would be pleasant to know
+something of their history. It was through inquiring about the age of
+the rookery that this thought took shape. No one could tell me how
+long the rooks had built there, nor were there any passing allusions
+in old papers to fix the date. There was no tradition of it among the
+oldest people; all they knew was that the rooks had always been there,
+and they seemed to indicate a belief that there the rooks would always
+remain. It seemed to me, however, that the site of their city was
+slowly travelling, and in a few generations might be found on the
+other side of the Chace. Some of the trees where the nests were most
+numerous were decaying, and several were already deserted. As the
+trees died, the rooks moved to the next clump, and thus gradually
+shifted their city.
+
+This inquiry led to further reflections about the past of the woods
+and meadows. Besides the birds, the flowers, and animals that had been
+there for so many, many centuries, there were the folk in the
+scattered homesteads, whose ancestors might have left some record. In
+these times history is concerned only with great cities or strategical
+positions of world-wide renown; interest is concentrated on a siege of
+Paris or a march towards Constantinople. In days of yore battles were
+often fought in or near what seem to us mere villages; little places
+whose very names are uncertain and exact site unascertainable were the
+centres of strife. Some of these places are buried under the sward as
+completely as Herculaneum under the lava. The green turf covers them,
+the mower passes over with his scythe and knows not of them.
+
+Hilary had observed in one of his meadows that the turf turned brown
+or burnt up in squares during hot summer weather. This he conjectured
+to be caused by the shallowness of the soil over some ancient
+foundations; and some years before he had had the curiosity to open a
+hole, and soon came upon a hidden wall. He did not excavate farther,
+but the old folk, when they heard of it, remembered a tradition of a
+village having once existed there. At present there were no houses
+near; the place, whatever it was, had disappeared. The mention of this
+meadow led to some conversation about the names of the fields, which
+are often very curious.
+
+Such names as Lea, Leaze, Croft, and so on, are readily explained; but
+what was the original meaning of The Cossicles? Then there were
+Zacker's Hook, the Conigers,[3] Cheesecake, Hawkes, Rials, Purley,
+Strongbowls, Thrupp, Laines, Sannetts, Gaston, Wexils, Wernils,
+Glacemere, several Hams, Haddons, and Weddingtons, Slades, and so on,
+and a Truelocks. These were quickly put down; scores of still more
+singular names might be collected in every parish. It is the meadows
+and pastures which usually bear these designations; the ploughed
+fields are often only known by their acreage, as the Ten Acre Piece,
+or the Twelve Acres. Some of them are undoubtedly the personal names
+of former owners. But in others ancient customs, allusions to
+traditions, fragments of history, or of languages now extinct, may
+survive.
+
+      [3] See Notes.
+
+There was a meadow where deep trenches could be traced, green now, but
+clearly once a moat, but there was not even a tradition about it. On
+the Downs overlooking the Idovers was an earthwork or entrenchment, of
+which no one knew anything. Hilary believed there was an old book--a
+history of Overboro' town--which might perhaps contain some
+information, but where it could be found he did not know. After some
+consideration, however, he thought there might be a copy at the Crown,
+once an old posting-inn, at Overboro': that was about the only place
+where I should be likely to find it. So one warm summer day I walked
+into Overboro', following a path over the Downs, whose short sward
+affords the best walking in the world.
+
+At the Crown, now no more an inn but an hotel, the archway was blocked
+up with two hand-trucks piled with trunks and portmanteaus, the
+property of commercial gentlemen and just about to be conveyed to the
+station. What with the ostler and the 'boots' and the errand-boys, all
+hanging about for their fees, it was a push to enter; and the waiters
+within seemed to equally occupy the passage, fetching the dust-coats
+and walking-sticks and flourishing coat-brushes. Seeing a door marked
+'Coffee-room,' I took refuge, and having ordered luncheon began to
+consider how I should open my subject with the landlord, who was
+clearly as much up to the requirements of modern life as if his house
+had been by a London terminus. Time-tables in gilt-stamped covers
+strewed the tables; wine lists stood on edge; a card of the local
+omnibus to the station was stuck up where all could see it; the daily
+papers hung over the arm of a cosy chair; the furniture was new; the
+whole place, it must be owned, extremely comfortable and the service
+good.
+
+But it was town and not country--to-day and not the olden time; and I
+did not feel courage enough to ask for the book. I believe I should
+have left the place without mentioning it, but, fortunately looking
+round the room while the lunch was prepared, I found it in the
+bookcase, where there was a strange mixture of the modern and antique.
+I took down the history from between Rich's thin grey 'Ruins of
+Babylon' and a yellow-bound railway novel.
+
+Towards the close of the eighteenth century a learned gentleman had
+taken much pains to gather together this account of the town. He began
+with the story of Brutus, and showed that one of the monarchs
+descended from the illustrious Trojan founded a city here. Some fossil
+shells, indeed, that had been dug up furnished him with conclusive
+proof that the Deluge had not left the site uncovered, since no how
+else could they have got there: an argument commonly accepted in his
+day. Thus he commenced, like the monks themselves, with the beginning
+of the world; but then came a wide gap down to Domesday Book. The
+hides and yardlands held by the conquerors--how much was in demesne,
+how many acres were wood and how many meadow--the number of servi, and
+what the mill paid were duly translated and recorded.
+
+The descent of the manors through the monasteries and the persons who
+purchased them at the Dissolution filled several pages, and was
+supplemented with a charter recognising rights of infang and outfang,
+assize of bread and ale, and so forth. Finally, there was a list of
+the mayors, which some one had carried on in manuscript on a fly-leaf
+to within ten years of date. There was an air of precision in the
+exact sentences, and the writer garnished his tale with frequent
+quotations from Latin writers. In the midst was a wood-cut of a plant
+having no sort of relevancy to the subject-matter, but for which he
+returned thanks for the loan of the block.
+
+But he had totally omitted his own times. These quotations, these
+lists and charters, the extracts from Domesday, read dry and
+formal--curious, and yet not interesting. Had he described the squires
+and yeomen, the townspeople of his own day, their lives and manner of
+thinking, how invaluable and pleasing his work would have been!
+
+Hilary said that in these little country towns years ago people had to
+be very careful how they acted, lest they should offend some local
+magnate. He remembered a tradesman telling him how once he had got
+into great disgrace for putting a new knocker on his private side
+door, without first asking permission and sending round to obtain the
+opinion of an old gentleman. This person had nothing whatever to do
+with the property, but lived retired and ruled his neighbours with a
+rod of iron. The old knocker was quite worn out, but the new one had
+scarcely been fastened on when the unfortunate owner was summoned to
+the presence of the irate old gentleman, who demanded with great wrath
+what on earth he meant by setting himself up above his station in this
+way. It was only by a humble answer, and by begging the old gentleman
+to walk down and look at the discarded knocker, promising that it
+should be replaced if he thought proper, that he could be appeased. A
+man then hardly dared appear in a new hat without first suggesting the
+idea to his social superior.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE COOMBE-BOTTOM.    CONCLUSION.
+
+
+'There is "two-o'clock bush,"' said Cicely, pointing to a large
+hawthorn; 'the shepherds look from the corner of the entrenchment, and
+if the sun is over that bush they know it is two o'clock.' She was
+driving me in the pony-trap over the Downs, and we were going to call
+on Mrs. Luckett's brother, who had a farm among the hills. He had not
+been down to Lucketts' Place for more than twelve months, and Cicely
+was resolved to make him promise to come. Though they may be in
+reality much attached and affectionate, country folk are apt to
+neglect even their nearest and dearest. The visit is put off from
+month to month; then comes the harvest, and nothing else can be
+thought of; and the longer the lapse the more difficult is the remedy.
+The footpath of friendship, says the ancient British triad, if not
+frequently travelled becomes overgrown with briars.
+
+Those who live by the land forget the passage of the years. A year is
+but a harvest. After the ploughing and sowing and cleaning, the
+reaping and thatching and threshing, what is there left of the
+twelvemonth? It has gone like a day. Thus it is that a farmer talks of
+twenty years since as if it was only last week, and seems unable to
+grasp the flight of time till it is marked and emphasised by some
+exceptional occurrence. Cicely meant to wake her uncle from this
+slumber.
+
+We started early on a beautiful July morning--partly to avoid the
+heat, and partly because Cicely wished to be away when young Aaron
+shortened the tails of the puppies in the rickyard. (This he did in
+the old-fashioned way, with his teeth.) Besides we thought that, if we
+waited till later, Uncle Bennet might be gone to market at Overboro'.
+We passed several farmers leaning or sitting on the stiles by the
+road, watching for a friend to come along and give them a lift into
+town. Some of them had waited like this every market morning for
+years. There were fewer on the road than usual, it being near harvest,
+when many do not so much care to leave home.
+
+Upon reaching the foot of the Downs, Cicely left the highway and
+entered a narrow lane without hedges, but worn low between banks of
+chalk or white rubble. The track was cut up with ruts so deep that the
+bed of the pony-trap seemed almost to touch the ground. As we went
+rather slowly along this awkward place we could see the wild thyme
+growing on the bank at the side. Presently we got on the slope of the
+hill, and at the summit passed the entrenchment and the shepherds'
+timepiece. Thence our track ran along the ridge, on the short sweet
+turf, where there were few or no ruts, and these easily avoided on
+that broad open ground. The quick pony now put out his speed, and we
+raced along as smoothly as if the wheels were running on a carpet. Far
+below, to the right, stretched wheatfield after wheatfield in a plain
+between two ranges of the hills. Over the opposite slope, a mile away,
+came the shadows of the clouds--then down along the corn towards us.
+Stonechats started from the flints and low bushes as we went by; an
+old crow--it is always an old crow--rose hastily from behind a fence
+of withered thorn; and a magpie fluttered down the hill to the fields
+beneath, where was a flock of sheep. The breeze at this height made
+the sunshine pleasant.
+
+Cicely said that once some snow lingered in the fosse of the
+entrenchment we had left behind till the haymaking. There was a
+snowstorm late in the spring, and a drift was formed in a hollow at
+the bottom of the fosse. The weather continued chilly (sometimes even
+in June it is chilly, and the flowers seem out of harmony with the
+temperature), and this drift, though of course it was reduced, did not
+melt but became consolidated like ice: a part still remained when the
+haymaking commenced. The pony now slackened his pace at a sharp
+ascent, and as he walked up we could hear the short song of the
+grasshoppers. There was a fir copse at the summit through which the
+track went; by the gateway as we entered there was a convolvulus out.
+Cicely regretted to see this sign that the sun had reached his
+greatest height: the tide of summer was full. Beyond the copse we
+descended by a deep-worn track into a 'coombe-bottom,' or valley,
+where were some cottages.
+
+Cicely, who knew some of the old people, thought she would call,
+though most probably they would be away. We stopped at a garden-gate:
+it was open, but there was no one about. Cicely lifted the latch of
+the door to step in, country fashion, but it was locked; and, hearing
+the noise, a cat came mewing round the corner. As if they had started
+out of the ground, a brown-faced boy and a thin girl suddenly
+appeared, having come through the hedge.
+
+'Thaay be up to barken' (rickyard), said the boy: so we went on to the
+next door. It was locked too, but the key was in the lock outside.
+Cicely said that was a signal to callers that the wife had only gone
+out for a few minutes and would return soon. The children had followed
+us.
+
+'Where is she?' asked Cicely.
+
+'Hur be gone to dipping-place,' replied the boy. We went to a third
+door, and immediately he cried out, 'Thuck's our feyther's: the kay's
+in the thatch.' We looked and could see the handle of the key sticking
+out of the eave over the door.
+
+'Where are they all?' I said.
+
+'Aw, Bill's in the clauver; and Joe--he's in th' turmuts; and Jack be
+at public, a' spose; and Bob's wi' the osses; and----'
+
+'They will be home to luncheon?' said Cicely.
+
+'Aw, no um wunt; they wunt be whoam afore night; thaay got thur
+nuncheon wi' um.'
+
+'Is there no one at home in all the place?' I inquired.
+
+'Mebbe Farmer Bennet. Thur beant nobody in these yer housen.'
+
+So we went on to Uncle Bennet's, whose house was hidden by a clump of
+elms farther down the coombe. There were cottagers in this lonely hill
+hamlet, not only old folk but young persons, who had never seen a
+train. They had not had the enterprise or curiosity to walk into
+Overboro' for the purpose. Some of the folk ate snails, the common
+brown shell-snail found in the hedges. It has been observed that
+children who eat snails are often remarkably plump. The method of
+cooking is to place the snail in its shell on the bar of a grate, like
+a chestnut. And well-educated people have been known, even in these
+days, to use the snail as an external medicine for weakly children:
+rubbed into the back or limb, the substance of the snail is believed
+to possess strengthening virtues.[4]
+
+      [4] See Notes.
+
+We found Uncle Bennet just taking his lunch in the stone-flagged
+sitting-room, which, however, had a square of cocoa-nut matting. He
+was getting on in years, but very active. He welcomed us warmly: still
+I thought I detected some uneasiness in his manner. His conscience
+warned him that Cicely was going to attack him for his remissness; and
+how was he to defend himself?
+
+Without any preliminary, she at once demanded why he had not come down
+to see them.
+
+'Mary,' said he, calling the servant, as if he did not hear her, 'Some
+ale, and the ginger wine, and the grey-beard--mebbe you'd like a drop
+a' shart'--to me; but I declined. She repeated her question, but Uncle
+Bennet was looking towards me.
+
+'The wuts be very forrard,' said he, 'I got some a-most ready to cut.'
+
+'Do you hear?' cried Cicely, angrily.
+
+'Niece,' replied the farmer, turning to her, 'there's them summer
+apples as you used to like, there be some ready; will 'ee have one?'
+
+'I don't want your apples; why didn't you come down?'
+
+'Aw; that's what you be a-talking about.'
+
+'Yes, that's it.'
+
+'The turmots wants some rain terrable bad' (to me)--'you med see the
+fly a-hopping about 'em.'
+
+'I hope they will spoil your turnips,' said Cicely; 'you are a very
+rude man not to answer a lady when she speaks to you.'
+
+'You be a-coming on nicely, Cissy,' said he. 'Have 'ee got are a
+gage-ring yet?'
+
+'How dare you!' (blushing). 'Tell me instantly why have you not been
+to see us? You know how angry it makes me.'
+
+'Well, I was a-coming,' deliberately.
+
+'When were you coming?'
+
+'Well, I got to see a man down your way, Cissy; a' owes me for a load
+a' straw.'
+
+'Then why don't you come down and get the money?'
+
+'I telled 'ee I was a-coming. He wants some of our sheep to feed off a
+meadow; s'pose I must see about it'--with a sigh, as if the idea of a
+decision was insupportable.
+
+'Why didn't you come before?'
+
+'Aw, I don't seem to have no time'--farmers having more time than
+anybody else.
+
+'You could have come in June.'
+
+'Bless 'ee, your feyther's got the hay about; a' don't want no
+strangers bothering.'
+
+'As if you were a stranger! Well, why didn't you come in May?'
+
+'Lor bless 'ee, my dear.'
+
+'In April?'
+
+'Us was main busy a-hoeing.'
+
+'In March?'
+
+'I had the rheumatism bad in March.'
+
+'Well, then,' concluded Cicely, 'now just change your coat and come
+to-day. Jump up in the pony-trap--we will make room.'
+
+'To-day!' in hopeless bewilderment, his breath quite taken away at the
+idea of such sudden action. 'Couldn't do't--couldn't do't. Got to go
+down to Thirty Acre Corner: got to get out the reaping machine--a'
+wants oiling, a' reckon; got some new hurdles coming; 'spects a chap
+to call about them lambs;' a farmer can always find a score of reasons
+for doing nothing.
+
+'All rubbish!' cried Cicely, smiling.
+
+'Nieces be main peart now-a-days,' said he, shutting one eye and
+keeping it closed, as much as to say--I won't be driven. Then to me,
+'There won't be many at market to-day.'
+
+'I am hungry,' said Cicely softly; 'I should like some bread and
+honey.'
+
+'Aw; should 'ee?' in gentler tones; 'I'll get 'ee some: will'ee have
+it in th' comb? I got a bit left.'
+
+She knew his pride in his bees and his honey; hill farmers still keep
+large stocks. He brought her a slice of home-baked bread and a piece
+of comb. She took the comb in her white fingers, and pressed the
+liquid gold from the cells; the luscious sweetness gathered from a
+thousand flowers making her lips still sweeter. Uncle Bennet offered
+me a jar full to the brim: 'Dip your vinger in,' said he.
+
+'Why is the honey of the hills so much nicer?' asked Cicely, well
+knowing, but drawing him on.
+
+'It be th' clover and th' thyme, and summat in the air. There bean't
+no hedges for um to fly up against, and so um carries home a bigger
+load.'
+
+'How many hives have you?' I inquired.
+
+'Let's see'--he counted them up, touching a finger for each
+twenty--'There be three score and sixteen; I have a' had six score
+years ago, but folk don't care for honey now sugar be so cheap.'
+
+'Let us go and see them,' said Cicely. We went out and looked at the
+hives; they were all in a row, each protected by large 'pan-sherds'
+from heavy rain, and placed along beneath the wall of the garden,
+which sheltered them on one side. Uncle Bennet chatted pleasantly
+about his bees for an hour, and would, I believe, have gossiped all
+day, notwithstanding that he had so little time for anything. Nothing
+more was said about the delayed visit, but just as we were on the
+point of departure, and Cicely had already taken the reins, he said to
+her, as if it were an afterthought, 'Tell your mother, I s'pose I must
+look down that way next week.'
+
+We passed swiftly through the little hamlet; the children had gathered
+by a gateway to watch us. Though so far from the world, they were not
+altogether without a spice of the impudence of the city arab. A tall
+and portly gentleman from town once chanced to visit this 'coombe-bottom'
+on business, and strolled down the 'street' in all the glory of
+shining boots, large gold watch-chain, black coat and high hat, all
+the pomp of Regent-street; doubtless imagining that his grandeur
+astonished the rustics. A brown young rascal, however, looking him
+up--he was a tall man--with an air of intelligent criticism, audibly
+remarked, 'Hum! He be very well up to his ankles--and then a' falls
+off!'
+
+That evening was one of the most beautiful I remember. We all sat in
+the garden at Lucketts' Place till ten o'clock; it was still light and
+it seemed impossible to go indoors. There was a seat under a sycamore
+tree with honeysuckle climbing over the bars of the back; the spot was
+near the orchard, but on slightly higher ground. From our feet the
+meadow sloped down to the distant brook, the murmur of whose stream as
+it fell over a bay could be just heard. Northwards the stars were
+pale, the sun seems so little below the horizon there that the glow of
+the sunset and the glow of the dawn nearly meet. But southwards shone
+the dull red star of summer--Antares, seen while the wheat ripens and
+the ruddy and golden tints come upon the fruits. Then nightly
+describing a low curve he looks down upon the white shimmering corn,
+and carries the mind away to the burning sands and palms of the far
+south. In the light and colour and brilliance of an English summer we
+sometimes seem very near those tropical lands.
+
+So still was it that we heard an apple fall in the orchard, thud on
+the sward, blighted perhaps and ripe before its time. Under the trees
+as the months went on there would rise heaps of the windfalls
+collected there to wait for the cider-mill. The mill was the property
+of two or three of the village folk, a small band of adventurers now
+grown old, who every autumn went round from farm to farm grinding the
+produce of the various orchards. They sometimes poured a quantity of
+the acid juice into the mill to sharpen it, as cutting a lemon will
+sharpen a knife. The great press, with its unwieldy screw and levers,
+squeezed the liquor from the cut-up apples in the horse-hair bags: a
+cumbersome apparatus, but not without interest; for surely so rude an
+engine must date back far in the past. The old fellows who brought it
+and put it up with slow deliberative motions were far, far past the
+joy with which all the children about the farm hailed its arrival.
+With grave faces and indifferent manner they ground the apples, and
+departed as slowly and deliberately as they came; verily men of the
+autumn, harbingers of the fall of the year.
+
+As I dreamed with the honeysuckle over my shoulder, and Antares
+southwards, Hilary talked at intervals about his wheat as usual and
+the weather, but I only caught fragments of it. All the signs were
+propitious, and as it had been a fine harvest under similar conditions
+before, people said it would be fine this time. But, unlike the law,
+the weather acknowledged no precedent, and nobody could tell, though
+folk now thought they knew everything. How all things had changed
+since the Queen ascended the throne! Not long since Hilary was talking
+with a labourer, an elderly man, who went to the feast in Overboro'
+town on the day of the coronation. The feast was held in the
+market-place, and the puddings, said the old fellow regretfully, were
+so big they were brought in on hand-barrows.
+
+It was difficult since he himself remembered even to learn the state
+of the markets. So few newspapers came into country places that before
+service on Sundays the farmers gathered round anybody in the
+churchyard who was known to take in a paper, to get particulars from
+this fortunate individual. Letters rarely came to the farmhouse door
+then. The old postman made a very good thing of his office--people
+were so eager for news, and it was easy to take a magpie glance at a
+newspaper. So he called at the butcher's before he started out, and in
+exchange for a peep at the paper got a little bit of griskin, or a
+chop, and at the farmhouses as he passed they gave him a few eggs, and
+at the inns a drop of gin. Thus a dozen at least read scraps before it
+reached the rightful owner.
+
+If anything very extraordinary had happened he would shout it out as
+he went through the hamlet. Hilary said he well remembered being up on
+the roof of the house one morning, mending the thatch, when suddenly a
+voice--it was the postman's--cried from the road, 'Royal Exchange
+burned down!' In this way news got about before the present facilities
+were afforded. But some of the old folk still regretted the change and
+believed that we should some day be punished for our worship of steam.
+Steam had brought us to rely on foreign countries for our corn, and a
+day would come when through a war, or a failure of the crops there,
+the vast population of this country would be in danger of famine. But
+'old folk' are prone to prophesy disaster and failure of all kinds.
+
+Mrs. Luckett chimed in here, and said that modern ways were not all
+improvements, the girls now were so fond of gadding about. This was a
+hint for Cicely, who loved a change, and yet was deeply attached to
+the old home. She rose at this, doubtless pouting, but it was too
+dusky to see, and went indoors, and presently from the open window
+came the notes of her piano. As she played I dreamed again, till
+presently Mrs. Luckett began to argue with Hilary that the shrubs
+about the garden ought to be cut and trimmed. Hilary said he liked to
+see the shrubs and the trees growing freely; he objected to cut and
+trim them. 'For,' said he, 'God made nothing tidy.' Just then Cicely
+called us to supper.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+The following interesting correspondence has been received.
+
+MAGPIE OMENS. _Page 153._--In reference to the superstition that one
+magpie is good luck, but two sorrow, 'R. F.' writes from Wiesbaden:--'In
+the north of England the contrary belief holds good, witness the
+following saw which I heard many years ago in the county of Durham:--
+
+    "One for sorrow, two for mirth;
+    Three a marriage, four a birth;
+    Five for heaven, six for hell,
+    Seven--the devil's own sel!"
+
+As to seventeen, which number I once saw together, Mrs. Luckett's
+exclamation "Goodness! something awful might happen" might have been
+appropriate; only nothing dreadful did occur.'
+
+CART-HORSE ORNAMENTS. _Page 159._--As to the history of the
+crescent-shaped ornaments on carthorses, 'J. D.' writes from Dover:
+'Anyone who has lived in Spanish countries must be struck on going to
+East Kent by the gay trappings of the farmers' horses on gala days, in
+which the national colours of Spain, scarlet and orange yellow, and
+the "glittering brazen" ornament of the crescent and the cross, so
+generally prevail. Their history must date from the introduction of
+the Flemish breed of horses to this country, showing that as the Moors
+carried the crescent to Spain, so the Spaniards took it to Flanders,
+and the Flemings here, whence it has been adopted pretty generally by
+the farmers of England.'
+
+NAMES OF FIELDS. _Page 176._--'The Conigers is evidently the same as
+Coningar, a word sometimes occurring in Scottish local nomenclature,
+and which meant a rabbit-warren--Coniger, Coney-garth. I know two
+Coningars in Aberdeenshire, but the meaning of the word is as much
+forgotten there also.--H. W. L.'
+
+MEDICINAL USE OF SNAILS. _Page 189._--In Dorset, writes 'S. C. S. S.,'
+an extract of snails for external use is still sometimes prepared,
+and, mixed with rum, is rubbed into weak backs, or legs, especially of
+children.
+
+
+LONDON: PRINTED BY
+SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW STREET SQUARE
+AND PARLIAMENT STREET
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Round About a Great Estate, by Richard Jefferies
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUND ABOUT A GREAT ESTATE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 20528.txt or 20528.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/5/2/20528/
+
+Produced by Malcolm Farmer and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.