6 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



condition than I went, in fact, given up by the 

 * Faculty ' as a confirmed Book-former. 



With this morbid predisposition upon me 

 imagine me exposed unexpectedly to the fatal at- 

 mosphere 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 deathbed 

 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, 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 bonnebouche of a Gazette, no July 

 gathering of fat cattle and great men to look back- 

 ward and forward to, during the other months. All 

 was dull, blank, and cheerless, not to say * flat and 

 unprofitable.' 



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



