264 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FAEM. 



and they are then hung up in paper bags, in the store- 

 room, to be decocted, when wanted, after the various 

 modes of fruit preparation that sweet ladies are profi- 

 cient in. Such dried parcels are a great help to the 

 larder of the French peasant in winter time. Quite a 

 Robinson Crusoe idea, is it not ? You remember how 

 he stored his grapes. By the way, I have just had a 

 youngster translating a passage for me out of a Latin 

 Robinson Crusoe, some interesting old Friar having 

 converted our old friend into that guise, a volume of 

 which was picked up for me in Paris. It is surprising 

 how rapidly boys progress con atnore in the unravelling 

 of a strange language when the subject interests, being 

 already familiar to them. How they roared with 

 delight as, dictionary in hand, and gi'ammar beside 

 them, they made out that old " Robinson did not fall 

 out of his tree that night, but slept calmly until morn- 

 ing ! " the point of the passage being improved by the 

 sight of old Melon before our window, limping and 

 groaning whenever obliged to stoop, owing to his late 

 mishap as related above. 



There are symptoms of a hard winter, in the fact 

 that yesterday some twenty missel thrushes were hover- 

 ing over and dipping into the Irish yews upon the 

 lawn, taking a feast of such delicious berries therefrom ! 

 A whole wedge of wild geese passed overhead yester- 

 day : but the most beautiful sight of any is to watch 

 five lovely swans that have found their way up to the 

 pool in the river beneath our house. How they revel 

 amidst the American weed, a great plantation of which 

 has sprung up quite lately therein ! And there they 

 sail so smoothly, and yet in a spirit of such suggestive 

 wildness, up stream to a gravel-bed beneath the bridge, 



