45 



JANUARY 



January i, 1898. Never within my recollection have we ex- 

 perienced so mild and open a winter as that of the year which died 

 yesterday. There has been no rain, and until the 24th of last 

 month, when it froze for a few hours, practically no frost, nor in my 

 recollection has the land for a single day been too hard or too 

 wet to plough. Christmas Day, with one exception, was the most 

 beautiful that I can remember in this country. That exception 

 was a certain Christmas five or six and twenty years gone, which 

 I spent at my father's house in another part of Norfolk. There 

 had been a heavy snowfall during the preceding night, followed 

 by frost, so that in the morning the snow lay inches thick upon 

 the fir-boughs, bending them down in deep arches till they almost 

 touched the earth, while the sun shone upon the glittering surface 

 of the white world till the eyes ached to look at it. One often 

 hears of a mad hare, but this long dead Christmas Day was the 

 only occasion upon which I ever saw one, for 1 recollect that as we 

 were walking to church we perceived a hare tearing round and 

 round in a circle through the snow in a neighbouring field. 

 Being young in those days, of course I went to catch it, and 

 succeeded. On examination the creature showed no sign of 

 having been shot or otherwise injured, so I can only suppose that 

 it was suffering from some sort of a fit. 



This last Christmas Day differed from that which I have de- 

 scribed, since there was no snow and only a few degrees of frost. 

 But after its own fashion it was as beautiful, for in the morning 

 every branchlet of the trees showed thick with a wonderful white 



