'TALPA' LOQUITUR. 157 



reiterated monument of human folly, dotting the 

 road, like milestones. 



It is very fine, no doubt, to connect one's own 

 small-scale improvements, after this fashion, with the 

 history of the Great aud Dead, to whom life was 

 one conflict with ridicule and contempt a history 

 the most affectingly interesting perhaps the most 

 important that is left to us; but after all, the 

 grandeur or pettiness of the scale does not alter the 

 argument. And when I had listened for half an 

 hour to Mr. Greening discoursing of Guano and 

 Superphosphate, in as easy and as matter-of-fact a 

 style as if he had regularly carted them out of his 

 farm-yard on to the turnips any time this fifty years 

 (though he still called it Gu-anner and would not 

 have it at any price as a word of two syllables), I 

 could not help mentally amusing myself with thinking 

 of the time when he used to poke every imaginable 

 jocularity at me for ' sowing the sawdust,' ' wheel- 

 barrow farming,' ' pocket-dungcarts,' and a whole 

 heap of good sayings which, duly noted down on my 

 part, made my chronicle of that ^date a complete 

 glossary of farm-witticisms : and curious it was to 

 see how the memory of former incredulities had 

 passed away/rom him. My deepest drains were no 



