368 A FARMER'S YEAR 



as very sad, although of a sufficiently common order. It is 

 wonderful how my friend manages to remain of so cheerful a 

 disposition under the weight of such a disappointment in life, but 

 I suppose that the back is fitted to the burden. Such 

 toilers ought to have an old age pension to look forward to, 

 collected from their earnings by insurance in the good time of 

 strength, ' or ever the evil days come and the grasshopper shall be 

 a burden.' As it is, unless they have been able to save, we 

 know what they must expect. 



October 12. Some rain at last ! It fell last night, and thank- 

 ful we were to see it. To-day I went to lunch at Earlham Hall, 

 near Norwich. Although it is by no means large, to my mind 

 this is in its way one of the most beautiful houses that I have 

 seen in Norfolk. Its aspect from the road is disappointing, for 

 one of the Quaker Gurneys whitewashed it, but on the garden 

 side the mellow brick is left. The house is Jacobean, and still 

 belongs to the Bacon family, but, oddly enough, it has been rented 

 by successive generations of the Gurneys for about a hundred and 

 ten years. One of the charms of this place is the river that runs 

 below the lawns, with a heronry upon its bank. But the house 

 itself, as readers of ' The Gurneys of Earlham ' will know, is stored 

 with memories. Here the sainted Elizabeth Fry, whose portrait 

 hangs upon the walls, spent her youth. She died in 1845, but 

 her memory will live on for many a generation as one of the half- 

 angelic beings who, in pursuit of their mission of charity and love, 

 did not shrink even from plunging into such an inferno as Newgate 

 offered at the beginning of this century. 



It is impossible to look at that old hall and the broad stairway 

 of Earlham without imagining them peopled by Elizabeth and all 

 her kin, whose young voices used to echo there. There is some- 

 thing terribly pathetic about these ancient houses. 1 



1 Owing to recent deaths Earlham Hall, after its long lease of one 

 hundred and ten years, is to let again at last. So I am told, at least, in June 

 1899. 



