AN INTIMATE OF THE SOIL 



they loved and knew so well. This man was an 

 intimate of the soil. He was admitted by all 

 labourers shrewd judges often farmers, and 

 gentry to be a first-class farmer. His horses 

 would not have taken prizes at a show ; one never 

 heard it said, or personally noticed, that he fed the 

 land with special generosity, though he certainly 

 did not starve it. But he made a livelihood by 

 farming, put by without boasting a tidy sum against 

 old age, and saw his sons well placed in the world. 

 These men are the workaday patriots. They, 

 without knowing it, make and keep a nation 

 great. 



He was just one of his own farm hands. It 

 would have been hard for a stranger to tell master 

 from man in the harvest field. A man of all work, 

 he would plough, sow, mow. He has lived a rare 

 life of toil ; was of the kind who will sometimes 

 begin with a lantern in the winter morning, and 

 end with one at night. His wife minded the 

 poultry and made the butter and the butter did 

 not vary much in quality. Theirs has been a long 

 and trusty working partnership. 



I never could get much natural history out of 

 this man, though I find from notes in an old diary 

 that he knew where the stone curlews laid their 

 eggs, and the time to expect the return of the birds. 

 His only relaxation was "a bit of shooting," and 

 once a week in the season he would somehow, 

 perhaps by working earlier in the morning or later 

 in the evening or making somebody else work 

 H 97 



