THE WASTE. 23 



imagine me exposed unexpectedly to the fatal 

 atmosphere of a sick room in which lay a dying 

 man, as he devoutly believed, a Land-steward 

 stricken with influenza, caught upon my marsh: 

 imagine the reports, the lectures, the death-bed 

 warnings I had to sit and listen to, about this 

 blessed farm? He described it as you would a 

 pestilence ; a terror to all around it ; it must be 

 cured (or killed?) not for its own sake, but as 

 you would treat a diseased ewe, or a truss of 

 mouldy hay. It was painful, yet ludicrous, to hear 

 him, for he talked like a dying man of a bad 

 child that would "be sure to come to harm 

 some day or other." What on earth was to be 

 done ? Agriculture was not royal then there 

 was no " Society's Journal," no motto-laden buttons 

 publishing the bans (for the first time) of "PRAC- 

 TICE WITH SCIENCE," no dear little weekly bonne 

 louche of a Gazette, no July gathering of fat cattle 

 and great men to look backward and forward to, 

 all the other twelve months. All was dull, blank, 

 and cheerless, not to say " flat and unprofitable." 



What was to be done? Apostatize from all the prom- 

 ises and vows made from my youth up, and take it 

 in hand that is, in a bailiff's hand, which certain 

 foregone experiences had led me to conceive was of 



