114 



THE BOOK OF THE ROSE chap. 



When I was ill one winter, I was pleased to hear that a 

 parishioner had brought me a nice lot of stocks at a 

 reasonable price. One of the first acts of my convales- 

 cence was to inspect their quality. And alas ! not only 

 were the majority practically useless from chops and 

 other injuries, but a third of the whole were not Rose 

 stocks but blackberries ! 



This reminds me of another amusing incident, which 

 I will relate exactly as it occurred. It refers to the 

 spelling of the word briar, but throws no light upon the 

 debated point whether an ' e ' should take the place of 

 the ' a.' The occasion was the examination of a night 

 school for the Government grant, and the teachers were 

 allowed to conduct it subject to the rules sent to them. 

 A young East Anglian labourer was going through the 

 reading ordeal, and his teachers, of whom I was one, 

 were anxiously watching his struggles. He had sunk 

 twice — I mean he had made two mistakes in his allotted 

 piece — and three would mean failure. He came to the 

 word in question, stopped dead, and spelt it slowly. We 

 encouraged him, and patted him on the back, for he had 

 all the appearance of having a word in him but of being 

 afraid to part with it. At last, after much exhortation to 

 play the man and " out with it," he spelt it again very 

 carefully, " b-r-i-a-r," and then the word burst forth quite 

 suddenly like an explosion, " brumble-bush ! " " Well 

 well ! yes, oh yes ! " said my dear old colleague (long 

 since deceased) : " eh ? pass that — oh yes ! he knows what 

 it means." I said nothing, and I am afraid the Educa- 

 tion Department was slightly defrauded; but my Rosarian 

 conscience was against it, for I knew that to the Suffolk 

 rustic both briars and blackberries were " brumble- 

 bushes." 



An amateur will want even more briar cuttings than 



