OGBUEY BARROWS 287 



OGBURY BARROWS 



WE went to Ogbury Barrows on an archaeological expedi- 

 tion. And as the very name of archaeology, owing to a 

 serious misconception incidental to human nature, is 

 enough to deter most people from taking any further 

 interest in our proceedings when once we got there, I may 

 as well begin by explaining, for the benefit of those who 

 have never been to one, the method and manner of an 

 archaeological outing. 



The first thing you have to do is to catch your secre- 

 tary. The genuine secretary is born, not made ; and 

 therefore you have got to catch him, not to appoint 

 him. Appointing a secretary is pure vanity and vexation 

 of spirit ; you must find the right man made ready to your 

 hand ; and when you have found him you will soon see 

 that he slips into the onerous duties of the secretariat as if 

 to the manner born, by pure instinct. The perfect secre- 

 tary is an urbane old gentleman of mature years and portly 

 bearing, a dignified representative of British archaeology, 

 with plenty of money and plenty of leisure, possessing a 

 heaven-born genius for organisation, and utterly unham- 

 pered by any foolish views of his own about archaeological 

 research or any other kindred subject. The secretary who 

 archaeologises is lost. His business is not to discourse 

 of early English windows or of palaeolithic hatchets, of 

 buried villas or of Plantagenet pedigrees, of Roman tile- 



