74 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



with in a hurry, and got their fingers burnt and had 

 to ' drop it ' like a hot Potato, before they had had 

 time to stop and look it in the face. 



Fortunately I was a beginner in the full sense of 

 the word. Fashionable opinion was no more a ' child 

 of mine ' than antiquated Prejudice. I had the same 

 profound respect for each and both ; that sort of pro- 

 found respect which makes you take your hat off very 

 low and keep a certain distance off. Not that I was 

 in love with my own opinion, for I had none to be in 

 love with. My agricultural intellect realized Locke's 

 theory of the rasa tabula. Bare fallows had reached 

 a respectable old age, if not a green one, in the world's 

 history ; I had no personal quarrel of my own against 

 them ; the half of the field set apart for the trial was 

 hideously foul, and stiffer land than the part under 

 turnips ; manure was deficient, and spring-time busy ; 

 everything seemed to favour and suggest the compa- 

 rison, so I made it. A dull, lumbering piece of work 

 it is, too, to spend the " long, long summer hours " 

 in lazily turning the " greate clottes," as old Fitz- 

 herbert calls them, in that quaint passage where he 

 cautions his brother farmers not to be in too great a 

 hurry to break them, a piece of advice which every 

 farmer has told as a new discovery of his own touch- 



