226 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



and, what is worse than all, a ' Farm to let ' without 

 a Tenant ! Such is the discursive and informal shape 

 taken, as of its own accord, by a series of extracts 

 from a journal extending over many years, and of 

 which it will be enough if he w r ho reads shall haply 

 say, he ' could have better spared a better ' tale. 



But though it break and baffle every rule of literary 

 composition ; though it leave every interest unsatisfied, 

 every curiosity unquenched, let it not be deficient in 

 the one intransgressible rule of Harmony to end in 

 the Key-note : and so doing, let it speak at least with 

 one consistency, and leave upon the 'ear one simple 

 and abiding chord that may link it with pleasant 

 memories, and, if more and better yet than this may 

 be hoped, may lighten and sustain the solitary hour 

 of some future toiler, striving all alone and far away 

 from suitable converse and encouragement, to solve 

 the tedious problem presented by a difficult soil, and 

 what is more difficult than that to cure or cope with, 

 intractable opinions, and minds that no argument can 

 reach, no evidence assure. 



Bowed by an affliction, for which life contains no 

 cure, and calendaring his remaining years of earthly 

 solitude as a schoolboy marks off one by one the 

 weary list of weeks that must intervene before the 



