FIRST COUNTRY HOOKS 125 



wind and rain and open country that count, long after 

 the facts are forgotten. Things occur in his pages as 

 they do on walks, haphazard and often unconnected. 

 Descriptions, portraits, narratives, arguments, odds and 

 ends of superstitions, customs, curiosities, come together 

 in Nature's own abundance. The writing is effortless, 

 and in places slipshod ; it hardly matters : the breath of 

 elaboration might have made it less rustic. As it stands 

 it is perhaps the first thoroughly rustic book in English, 

 by a countryman and about the country, with no alien 

 savours whatever. Even White's utmost simplicity is 

 that of a scholar, and smells of Oriel as much as of Sel- 

 borne. But it is significant that almost the subtlest part 

 of ' The Gamekeeper,' the essence and gospel, is put with 

 hardly a shade of incongruity into the keeper's mouth : 



' It's indoors, sir, as kills half the people ; being indoors 

 three parts of the day, and next to that taking too much 

 drink and vittals. Eating's as bad as drinking ; and 

 there ain't nothing like fresh air and the smell of the 

 woods. You should come out here in the spring, when 

 the oak timber is throwed (because, you see, the sap 

 be rising, and the bark strips then), and just sit down 

 on a stick fresh peeled — I means a trunk, you know — 

 and sniff up the scent of that there oak-bark. It goes 

 right down your throat, and preserves your lungs as the 

 tan do leather. And I've heard say as folk who work 

 in the tan-yards never have no illness. There's always a 

 smell from the trees, dead or living. I could tell what 

 wood a log was in the dark by my nose ; and the air is 

 better where the woods be. The ladies up in the great 

 house sometimes goes out into the fir plantations — the 

 turpentine scents strong, you see — and they say it's good 

 for the chest ; but, bless you, you must live in it. People 

 go abroad, I'm told, to live in the pine forests to cure 'em : 

 I say these here oaks have got every bit as much good in 

 that way. I never eat but two meals a day — breakfast 

 and supper ; what you would call dinner — and maybe in 

 the middle of the day a hunch of dry bread and an apple. 



