PLOUGHMAN AND HEDGER 257 



bend to an angle of 45 degrees, and, in spite of the wound, 

 keep alive and put out greenery in spring, until such time 

 as the old pruned stools send up a sheaf of new shoots 

 hedge-high. You could see the deep disappointment on 

 the face of the oldest and perhaps the best of the hedgers 

 when a very old thorn trunk broke off through the 

 brittleness of age when bent over. Every man in the 

 competition had made his own wooden mallet for ham 

 mering in the stakes ; and every one, known in the 

 district as a hedge Molly, was made of wych elm, cut in 

 one solid piece with knots on either side the central 

 point of impact. Some were ingeniously grooved to 

 catch and hold the top of the hammered stake. The 

 finished hedge was trimmed, not with a sickle, for the 

 word is scarcely known, but a bagging or danging hook. 

 The whole scene was racy of the country, in aspect as in 

 speech ; and the new ambition of the small London boys 

 is perhaps sufficient assurance that it was successful in 

 imparting the rural bias that is the despair of our educa 

 tional authorities. 



2. 



Were there voting for the best county in England, 

 many would* plump for Berkshire, rather than any of the 

 established leaders, on account of its variety. You have 

 the Thames, a river, glorious, if small, even when com 

 pared with the Danube or the Mississippi; and its 

 richest reach is in Berkshire. You have at Aldermaston 

 the edge of Old Windsor Forest, where the girth of 

 ancestral oaks proclaims an antiquity comparable with 

 the propped giants of Hatfield Park. And it may be 

 claimed for this village that it has as great a variety of 

 attraction as is found in any county ; many beautiful 



R T.V.E. 



