292 A FARMER'S YEAR 



AUGUST 



August i. To-day the weather has been lovely, which is 

 fortunate, as the annual Primrose League fete of the Ditchingham 

 Habitation was held in Ellingham Park. I think that there must 

 have been quite two thousand people present, all of whom seemed 

 to enjoy themselves very much wandering about on the green 

 grass and under the beautiful trees. For amusements there were 

 open-air theatricals, swing boats, cocoanut shies, and that most 

 fascinating of sports, a shooting gallery, where the skilful may 

 break glass balls and knock over tin animals, supplemented of 

 course by a liberal tea and dancing in the evening. Then there 

 were the speeches, which, in my opinion, are the least popular 

 part of the entertainment, although, together with a fair proportion 

 of the male sex, a large number of ladies and their offspring 

 listened to them with rapt attention, and were, I trust, duly in- 

 structed upon Imperial matters. I forget who invented the 

 Primrose League, but he was certainly a political genius, who had 

 mastered the great fact that the majority of people detest unmiti- 

 gated politics and love entertainments and threepenny teas, and 

 that, of those who enjoy the entertainments and absorb the tea, a 

 proportion, at any rate, will reward the party which provides them 

 with their support. The affair was very well managed and a great 

 success, but shouting patriotic sentiments from a waggon is tiring 

 to the throat. At last year's festivity, however, I was much more 

 arduously employed, for the advertised speaker having telegraphed 

 suddenly to say that ' a toothache ' prevented him from attending, 

 I was called upon to fill his place. For me that meant three- 

 quarters of an hour of unpremeditated and al-fresco oratory. 



