6 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



returned to England poor wretch, in worse condi- 

 tion than I went in fact given up by the 'Faculty' 

 as a confirmed Book-farmer. 



With this morbid predisposition upon me imagine 

 me exposed unexpectedly to the fatal atmosphere of a 

 sick-room in which lay a dying man, as he devoutly 

 believed, a Land-steward stricken with influenza, 

 caught upon my marsh : imagine the reports, the 

 lectures, the death-bed warnings I had to sit and 

 listen to, about this blessed farm ! He described it 

 as you would a pestilence ; a terror to all around it ; 

 it must be cured (or killed ?) not for its own sake, but 

 as you would treat a rotten sheep, or a truss of mouldy 

 hay. It was painful, yet ludicrous, to hear him, for 

 he talked like a dying man of a bad child that would 

 " be sure to come to harm some day or other." What 

 on earth was to be done ? Agriculture was not royal 

 then there was no ' Society's Journal/ no motto- 

 laden buttons publishing the banns (for the first time) 

 of " PRACTICE with Science," no dear little weekly 

 bonne bouche of a Gazette, no July gathering of fat 

 cattle and great men to look backward and forward 

 to, during the other months. All was dull, blank, and 

 cheerless, not to say " flat and unprofitable." 



What was to be done? apostatize from all the pro- 



