258 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUK FARM. 



instead of finding its locality, as I anticipate now, a 

 pleasant haunt upon a dirty day. 



After all there's something very human about its 

 arrangements. Why, there's the governor — that's 

 myself — what a regular, wide-awake, steady old per- 

 former. Then there's the boiler — that's the school 

 bills and butchers'. Then there's the waste-pipe — that's 

 cook. Then there's the alarm whistle — that's the 

 housemaid. Then there's the throttle- valve — that's the 

 Monday morning inspection of the books. Then there's 

 the elegant, sweet, smoothly moving fly wheel — that's 

 mamma, who so quietly gives a gentle impulse to 

 the straitened action of the too cranky governor s 

 performance ! 



*' Quantity of muck you make, sir," just now observed 

 to me a neighbouring farmer, who turned in to have a 

 look at my Christmas beef. " Of course, sir, and so 

 you'd better do, instead of keeping some half-dozen 

 cows for the dairy in a district where it don't suit — 

 hard-hided enough and of only blue-milk reputation." 

 I watched a field of my neighbour's this year, which has 

 more than ever confirmed me in the impression that 

 " artificials " are only a gin-and-water dose ; that they 

 rapidly go through the soil, after extravagantly stimu- 

 lating it, and leave it very depressed. Next to my plot 

 of mangold wurzel there was carefully prepared a small 

 ploughing for the same crop. They gave it only a 

 heavy dressing of a recently-invented "artificial," which 

 was well harrowed in, and the surface brought to an 

 exquisitely fine tilth. They lost their mangold season, 

 however, and had to put in swedes. What a luxuriant 

 crop of dark leaves covered that field in September, 

 with a fair promise of bulk too ! whereas a neighbouring 



