LAST ESSAYS 309 



He caught rats and rabbits and moles ; he sold ' such 

 immense dark-brown jumbles, such cheek-distenders . . . 

 I really think I could eat one now.' But Job is long 

 dead. Next came the water-bailiff's cottage, with the 

 oars leaning against it, and the punt with a list, the big 

 gun, the shrewish wife — dead now. Then the thatched 

 village, hiding irregularly up lanes and among elms. But 

 not one of the farmers is left, not even the strong young 

 man, ' the hardy, dark young man, built of iron, broad, 

 thick, and short, who looked as if frost, snow, and heat 

 were all the same to him.' In his prime a sunstroke sent 

 him to bed, and in twelve months he was buried. ' Of 

 them all,' of all the people Jefferies knew or used to see, 

 ' I verily believe there was but one soul living in the same 

 old house.' The trees, too — 



' I think I have heard that the oaks are down. They 

 may be standing or down ; it matters nothing to me. 

 The leaves I last saw upon them are gone for evermore, 

 nor shall I ever see them come there again ruddy in 

 spring. I would not see them again even if I could ; 

 they could never look again as they used to do. There 

 are too many memories there. The happiest days become 

 the saddest afterwards. Let us never go back, lest we, 

 too, die. There are no such oaks anywhere else — none 

 so tall and straight, and with such massive heads, on 

 which the sun used to shine as if on the globe of the 

 earth, one side in shadow, the other in bright light. 

 How often I have looked at oaks since, and yet have 

 never been able to get the same effect from them ! Like 

 an old author printed in another type, the words are the 

 same, but the sentiment is different. The brooks have 

 ceased to run. There is no music now at the old hatch 

 where we used to sit in danger of our lives, happy as 

 kings, on the narrow bar over the deep water. The 

 barred pike that used to come up in sucli numbers are 

 no more among the flags. The perch used to drift down 

 the stream, and then bring up again. The sun shone 

 there for a very long time, and the water rippled and 



