4i8 A FARMER'S YEAR 



causes to which her present distress are attributed, as they appear 

 upon the pa[)er, are ' loss of capital, bad seasons, etc' As in all 

 such cases, and their name is legion in the Eastern Counties, that 

 'etc' covers a great deal. It includes, for instance, the practical 

 ruin of the agricultural interest. Is it a permanent ruin, I 

 wonder, or will it pass like other sorrows ? 



To-day, too, I visited a man who has now been bedridden for 

 about fi\e years. He was a soldier who served in Egypt and took 

 part in some of the desert battles — a broken Arab spearhead is one 

 of the ornaments of the tidy room where he lies from year to year 

 with no sight but the topmost boughs of an apple tree to cheer him. 

 In spring he sees that tree grow green with leaf and pink with 

 blossom, in summer and autumn the fruits swell and ripen before 

 his eyes, then comes winter and the boughs are bare again. This 

 is all he finds to look at, all that remains to tell him of the passing 

 of the seasons. 



This man was born at Bedingham and knows the Moat Farm 

 well. Oddly enough, I found his wife and himself reading this 

 diary in the magazine in which it is being published, and he 

 talked to me with interest of the condition of the Moat Farm as 

 he remembered it, he who, as I suppose, will never see the face 

 of earth again, although his life may be prolonged for years. He 

 suffered from fever in Egypt, and a while after he left the Service 

 paralysis seized his legs, affecting all one side of him including 

 his left eyelid. At first it was thought that he would die, but he 

 did not die, on the contrary he has grown somewhat stronger. 

 What strikes me most about him is the gentle patience with 

 which he endures his terrible affliction. I congratulated him upon 

 the improvement in his health since my last visit, to which he 

 replied that this did not lessen the burden ' of those who had to 

 bear with him.' Many of us who worry and repine at our ail- 

 ments and troubles might surely learn a lesson from this quiet 

 sufferer. But I think that patience and a kind of divine courage 

 often characterise those who are thus smitten. A while ago I 

 was interested in a paralytic of the name of Flintoff, a native of 



