could all read and write, and they were in no way inferior to the young men of the present day. They were highly skilled in all the more difficult agricultural operations, and it was easy to find among them good thatchers, drainers, hedgers, ploughmen, and stockmen; they were, mostly, married, with families of young children, and they lived close to their work in the cottages that went with the farm. They exhibited the variations, usual in all communities, of character and disposition, and though somewhat prejudiced and wedded to old methods and customs they were open to reason, loyal, and anxious to see the land better farmed and restored to the condition in which the late tenant found it, when entering upon his occupation seven years previously.

The late tenant, my predecessor, though a gentleman and a pleasant man to deal with, was no farmer for such strong and heavy land as the farm presented; it was no fault of his, for the farmer, like the poet, is born, not made, and, as I was often told, he was "nobody's enemy but his own." His wife came of a good old stock of shorthorn breeders whose name is known and honoured, not only at home, but throughout the United States of America, our Dominions, and wherever the shorthorn has established a reputation; and my men were satisfied that she was the better farmer of the two.

I had scarcely bargained for the foul condition of the stubbles, disclosed when the corn was harvested shortly before I took possession at Michaelmas; they were overrun with couch grass—locally called "squitch"—and the following summer I had 40 acres of bare-fallow, repeatedly ploughed, harrowed, and cultivated throughout the whole season, which, of course, produced nothing by way of return. My predecessor had found that his arable land was approaching a condition in which it was difficult to continue the usual course of cropping, and had expressed his wish to one of the men that all the arable was grass. He was answered, I was told:

"If you goes on as you be a-going it very soon will be!" I heard, moreover, that a farming relative of his, on inspecting the farm, shortly before he gave it up, had pronounced his opinion that it was "all going to the devil in a gale of wind!"

I soon recognized that I had a splendid staff of workers, and, under advice from the late tenant, I selected one to be foreman or bailiff. Blue-eyed, dark-haired, tall, lean, and muscular, he was the picture of energy, in the prime of life. Straightforward, unselfish, a natural leader of men, courageous and untiring, he immediately became devoted to me, and remained my right hand, my dear friend, and adviser in the practical working of the farm, throughout the twenty years that followed. Like many of the agricultural labourers, his remote ancestors belonged to a class higher in the social scale, and there were traditions of a property in the county and a family vault in Pershore Abbey Church. However this might be, William Bell was one of Nature's gentlemen, and it was apparent in a variety of ways in his daily life.

Shortly before my coming to Aldington he had received a legacy of £150, which, without any legal necessity or outside suggestion, he had in fairness, as he considered it, divided equally between his brother, his sister and himself—each—and his share was on deposit at a bank. Seeing that I was young—I was then twenty-two—and imagining that some additional capital would be useful after all my outlay in stocking the farm and furnishing the house, he, greatly to my surprise and delight, offered in a little speech of much delicacy to lend me his £50. I was immensely touched at such a practical mark of sympathy and confidence, but was able to assure him gratefully that, for the present at any rate, I could manage without it. On another occasion, after a bad season, he voluntarily asked me to reduce his wages, to which of course I did not see my way to agree.

Bell was always ready with a smart reply to anyone inclined to rally him, or whom he thought inclined to do so; but his method was inoffensive, though from most men it would have appeared impertinent. In the very earliest days of my occupation the weather was so dry for the time of year—October and November—that fallowing operations, generally only possible in summer, could be successfully carried on, a very unusual circumstance on such wet and heavy land. Meeting the Vicar, a genial soul with a pleasant word for everyone, the latter remarked that it was "rare weather for the new farmers." Bell, highly sensitive, fancied he scented a quizzing reference to himself and to me, and knowing that the Vicar's own land—he was then farming the glebe with a somewhat unskilful bailiff—was getting out of hand, replied: "Yes, sir; and not so bad for some of the old uns." Bell happened to pass one day when I was talking to the Vicar at my gate. "Hullo! Bell," said he, "hard at work as usual; nothing like hard work, is there?" "No, sir," said Bell; "I suppose that's why you chose the one-day-a-week job!"

Labourers have great contempt for the work of parsons, lawyers, and indoor workers generally; a farmer who spends much time indoors over correspondence and comes round his land late in the day is regarded as an "afternoon" or "armchair" farmer, and a tradesman who runs a small farm in addition to his other business is an "apron-string" farmer. With some hours daily employed on letter-writing, accounts and labour records, which a farm and the employment of many hands entails, and with frequent calls from buyers and sellers, I was sometimes unable to visit men working on distant fields until twelve o'clock or after, and I was told that it had been said of me by some new hands, "why don't 'e come out and do some on it?"

It was remarked of the late tenant, "I reckon there was a good parson spoiled when 'e was made a farmer." And of a lawyer, who combined legal practice with the hobby of a small farm, that there was no doubt that "Lawyer G——s kept farmer G——s."

Bell's favourite saying was, "If a job has to be done you may as well do it first as last," and it was so strongly impressed upon me by his example that I think I have been under its influence, more or less, all my life. He was certain to be to the fore in any emergency when promptitude, courage, and resource were called for; he it was who dashed into the pool below the mill and rescued a child, and when I asked if he had no sense of the danger simply said that he never thought about it. It was Bell who tackled a savage bull which, by a mistaken order, was loose in the yard, and which, in the exuberance of unwonted liberty, had smashed up two cow-cribs, and was beginning the destruction of a pair of new barn doors, left open, and offering temptation for further activity. The bull, secured under Bell's leadership and manacled with a cart-rope, was induced to return to its home in peace. When felling a tall poplar overhanging the mill-pond, it was necessary to secure the tree with a rope fixed high up the trunk and with a stout stake driven into the meadow, to prevent the tree falling into the pond. Bell was the volunteer who climbed the tree with one end of the rope tied round his body and fixed it in position. He was always ready to undertake any specially difficult, dirty, or hazardous duty, and in giving orders it was never "Go and do it," but "Come on, let's do it." An example of this sort was not lost upon the men; they could never say they were set to work that nobody else would do, and their willing service acknowledged his tact.

One day a widow tenant asked me to read the will at the funeral of an old woman lying dead at the cottage next her own. I consented, and reached the cottage at the appointed time. It was the custom among the villagers, when there was a will, to read it before, not after, the ceremony, as, I believe, is the usual