74 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



those public propositions that people had run away 

 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 real- 

 ized Locke's theory of the rasa tabula. Bare fallows 

 had reached a respectable old age, if not & 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 comparison, so I made it. A dull, lum- 

 bering piece of work it is, too, to spend the ' long, 

 long summer hours ' in lazily turning the ' greate 

 clottes? as old Fitzherbert 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 



