A HUNT FOR THE NIGHTINGALE. 89 



DOW about to be sold and to pass into other hands, 

 and my host said he was glad of it. There was no 

 money in farming any more ; no money in anything. 

 I asked him what were the main sources of profit on 

 such a farm. 



" Well," he said, " sometimes the wheat pops up, 

 and the barley drops in, and the pigs come on, and we 

 picks up a little money, sir, but not much, sir. Pigs 

 is doing well naow. But they brings so much wheat 

 from Ameriky, and our weather is so bad that we 

 can't get a good sample, sir, one year in three, that 

 there is no money made in growing wheat, sir." 

 And the " wuts " (oats) were not much better. 

 " Theys as would buy haint got no money, sir." " Up 

 to the top of the nip," for top of the hill, was one of 

 his expressions. Tennyson had a summer residence 

 at Blackdown, not far off. " One of the Queen's poets, 

 I believe, sir." " Yes, I often see him riding about, 

 sir." 



After an hour or two with the farmer, I walked 

 out to take a survey of the surrounding country. It 

 was quite wild and irregular, full of bushy fields and 

 overgrown hedge-rows, and looked to me very uight- 

 ingaly. I followed for a mile or two a road that led 

 by tangled groves and woods and copses, with a still 

 meadow trout-stream in the gentle valley below. I 

 inquired for nightingales of every boy and laboring 

 man I met or saw. I got but little encouragement ; 

 it was too late. " She be about done singing now, 

 sir." A boy whom I met in a foot-path that ran 



