FIFTY YEARS OF A SHOWMAN'S LIFE 



old age in the midst of the beautiful farms he had 

 created out of a vast rabbit-warren. I used to 

 hear of the rides he took every morning before 

 breakfast, now looking in upon one tenant and 

 now upon another, each one prosperous in conse- 

 quence of his own generous spirit and noble 

 example. No theme was then more common than 

 his annual sheep-shearings, at which Holkham 

 was crowded by the elite of the agricultural world 

 and by intelligent tenant-farmers, who, year by 

 year, carried back to their homes incentives of the 

 greatest practical value to ' work and learn.' : 



Coke was born a year before Rack, and he 

 died within the lifetime of Sir Jerom. So here 

 we have a very interesting and long-drawn-out 

 link with the past, for both Rack and Sir Jerom 

 were Norfolk men who settled and died in Bath ; 

 both were closely identified with the Society and 

 were contributors to its Journal ; and, while one 

 founded the Society, the other presided over it 

 when the centenary of its birth was celebrated. 

 The intervening space between two notable lives 

 was bridged over by Coke, who joined the Society 

 in Rack's time, and thus forged a chain connecting 

 a distant past with a present, in which develop- 

 ments count far more than years. 



A few years back I contributed a memoir of 

 Rack, who was a very remarkable man, to the 

 Society's Annual Journal (vol. viii., fifth series), 

 and those interested in the subject of agricultural 

 development at a time when many new principles 

 and methods were in process of evolution will find 

 many references to these in the memoir, as I had 

 the Society's archives from its birth to fall back 



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