CHAPTER VII. 



IN FULL CAREER. 



NEVER, certainly, did any man have a better 

 chance of success in literature than Jefferies 

 about the year 1876. He had made himself, 

 to begin with, an authority on the most in- 

 teresting of all subjects ; he knew more about 

 farming that is to say, farming in his own 

 part of the country than any other man who 

 could wield a pen ; he had written papers full of 

 the most brilliant suggestions, as well as know- 

 ledge, as to the future of agriculture and its 

 possible developments; he had written things 

 which made people ask if there had truly arisen 

 an agricultural prophet in the land. And he 

 was as yet only twenty-eight. Of all young 

 authors, he seems to have been the man most 

 to be envied. Everything that he had so long 



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