158 Autumn 



is often able to beat his lusty grandson. The secret 

 consists in looking where you strike. A vast amount 

 of force is wasted, when all that is needed is a clever 

 tap. Road metal is easily broken up if you study 

 grain and edges and seams. 



Some country tasks, as driving horses or machinery, 

 are light enough ; but the most are difficult and hard. 

 No enthusiast, however fired with the love of rural life 

 and rural labour, ever persists for any length of time. 

 Digging, ploughing, draining, hedging and ditching, 

 reaping, and sowing all these are interesting to 

 watch, all these are very wearisome to do. And the 

 bucolic mind has somehow found this out. 



CARTING THE BEES 



WHAT the death of his first trout, his first appearance 

 in a cricket match, or his first ride to hounds on his 

 own Shetland pony, is to the Squire's son, that his 

 first journey with the bees is to the village lad in re- 

 mote north Northumberland. If you pass by a cartshed 

 on a wet day, you will sometimes hear the urchins 

 under its shelter bragging to one another like the rival 

 chiefs in a council of redskins. ' I've been in a railway 

 train,' says one. ' But you never saw the sea ! ' re- 

 torts a second. ' And you've never been with the 

 bees ! ' triumphantly crows the third. And that 



