226 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



that her family had lived there for generations. Her 

 mother had reached the age of eighty-six years ; she 

 had married her third husband when over seventy. By 

 her first she had had two and by her second thirteen 

 children, and my informant, who is now aged seventy- 

 six, was the last born. This wonderful mother of hers, 

 who had survived three husbands, and whose memory 

 went back several years into the eighteenth century, 

 had remembered the Rev. Gilbert White very well: 

 she was aged about twelve when he died. It was 

 wonderful, she said, how many interesting things she 

 used to tell about him ; for Gilbert White, whose name 

 was known to the great world outside of his parish, 

 was often in her mind when she recalled her early 

 years. Unfortunately, these interesting things had 

 now all slipped out of my landlady's memory. When- 

 ever I brought her to the point she would stand with 

 eyes cast down, the fingers of her right hand on her 

 forehead, trying trying to recall something to tell 

 me: a simple creature, who was without imagination, 

 and could invent nothing. Then little by little she 

 would drift off into something else to recollections 

 of people and events not so remote in time, scenes 

 she had witnessed herself, and which had made a 

 deeper impression on her mind. One was how her 

 father, her mother's second husband, had acted as 

 horn-blower to the "Selborne inob," when the poor 

 villagers were starving ; and how, blowing on his 

 horn, he had assembled his fellow-revolutionists, and 



