HARVEST HOMES. 253 



so popular, besides which, there is tiie expense to be 

 considered. 



I generally managed to have my harvest home the 

 day after the Town Horticultural Show and banquet, 

 for which London professional singers were engaged, 

 and I usually succeeded in persuading some of them 

 to stay and enjoy " a day in the country," and improve, 

 besides, the harmony of our evening ; they would enjoy 

 the quaint rustic songs of the labourers, and themselves 

 would sing such fine old glees as "The Chough and 

 Crow," " Life's a Bumper," " Glorious Apollo." In my 

 employment was a deaf man, much appreciated as a 

 singer ; on one of these occasions, one of my men having 

 sung a dreary composition of inordinate length, which 

 thoroughly bored his audience, his deaf neighbour was 

 called upon to follow him, when, to the horror and 

 dismay of every one, he struck up the very same ditty 

 which had so tired the company just before; shouting 

 and demonstration alike failed to make the deaf man 

 understand the predicament, and he droned out the 

 whole of the dreary song to the bitter end. 



I persuaded Douglas Jerrold to attend one of these 

 annual festivals, to whom a joke had introduced me. I 

 h.^.d been in the habit of jotting down in a diary any 

 racy or interesting scraps which I had chanced upon in 

 a newspaper, and Douglas Jerrold was looking through 

 this book, and seemed much amused at one extract in 

 particular ; handing it to his friend, at whose house 

 he was staying, and with whom he had come to my 

 father's, then laughing heartily, he told me that he was 

 the author of it : " Women, when maids, are mid as 



