coffee-rooms of hotels—an old man, who, professedly a jobbing gardener, looked like a broken-down something else. Frequently they did not even take the trouble to crystallise their doubt into a question, a sure and certain measure towards its solution.

But there were those who saw beneath the surface, who were moreover privileged to have speech of him—and he was always very ready to converse, leaning on his spade the while, but with the air of one who only just tolerated such interruption.—these would find that here was one whose ideas were the result of reflection and observation, not mere echoes of the local press; or, as is sometimes the case in other and higher walks of life, those of the reviews or quarterlies.

To tell the truth, my philosopher could read but indifferently well, and when he indulged in such exercises, as "of a Sunday," liked the print to be large and black. As the halfpenny papers in no way pander to such luxurious tastes in their readers, he was fain to take his news second-hand, by word of mouth, thereby materially increasing its romance and variety.

One day, à propos of some flowers he was to take to the church for Easter decorations, I asked him whether he was a churchman himself. "No," he said slowly, stopping short and watching me somewhat anxiously to seethe effect of this pronouncement, "I goes to chapel, they 'ollers more, and 'tis more loively loike—I bin to church, I 'ave, don't you think as 'ow I 'aven't sampled 'em both careful—but Oi be gettin' a holdish man, an' them curicks is that weakly an' finnicken in their ways, it don't seem to do me no sort o' good nohow. Not as I've nothin' to say agen 'em, pore young gen'lemen; they means well, but they be that afraid of the sound of their own voices, and they looks that thin and mournful—I can't away with 'em." Here he shook his head sadly, as though overcome with melancholy at the mere recollection.

"You are quite right to go where you feel you will get most good," I said meekly. "Is Mr. Blank a very powerful preacher?"

Williams (that was his name) smiled a slow, crafty smile, shutting one eye with something the expression of a gourmand who holds a glass of good port between himself and the light. "Well, I don't know as I should go so fur as to say as 'e's powervul, but 'e do 'oller an' thump the cushion as do do yer 'art good to see, an' 'e do tell us plainish where them'll go as bain't ther to yer 'im, but I bain't sure as 'e's powervul. The powervullest preacher I ever 'ear was Fairford way at a hopen-air meetin'—an' 'e was took up next day for stealin' bacon!" Here he returned to his digging with the air of one who had said the last word and could brook no further interruptions.

Regarding politics, Williams was even more guarded in his statements: I could never discover to which side he belonged, even at a time when party feeling ran particularly high, as our town had been in the throes of two Parliamentary elections within the year. He seemed to regard the whole of the proceedings with a tolerant sort of amusement—tolerance was ever a feature of his mental attitude towards life generally. But as to stepping down, into the arena and taking sides!—such a course was far from one of his philosophical and analytic temperament. He listened to both sides with a gracious impartiality that I have no doubt sent each canvasser away equally certain that his was the side which would receive the listener's "vote and interest."

"The yallers, they comes," he would say, wagging his large head to and fro, and smiling his slow, broad smile, "an' they says, 'If our candidate do get in, you'll see what us'll do for 'ee. 'E'll do sech and sech, an' you'll 'ave this 'ere an' that.' But the blues, they went and sent my missus a good blanket on the chanst."

"And for whom did you vote after all?" I asked with considerable curiosity.

"Well, I bain't so to speak exactly sure," he said, scratching his head. "I bain't much of a schollard, so I ups an' puts two crasses, one for each on 'em, an' I goes an' marches along of two percessions that same day, so I done my duty."

But his universal tolerance stopped short of his legitimate profession. In matters horticultural he was a veritable despot, sternly discouraging private enterprise of any sort. Above all did he object to what he was pleased to call "new fanglements" in the way of plants, and in the autumn had a perfect passion for grubbing up one's most cherished possessions and trundling them off in the wheelbarrow to the rubbish heap. One autumn a friend presented me with some rare iris bulbs, which, knowing the philosopher's objection to "fancy bulbs," I secreted in a distant greenhouse which he as a rule scornfully ignored. On a day when some one else was benefitting by his ministrations I hastened to fetch them, intent on planting them "unbeknownst," as he would have said.

Not a trace of them remained, and I had to wait until his next visit, when I timidly asked if he happened to have moved them. "Lor' bless my 'eart! was them things bulbses? I thought as 'ow they was hold onions and I eat 'em along of a bit of bread for my lunch. I remember thinkin' as they didn't semm very tasty loike!"

On the subject of the then war there was no uncertain sound about his views, and had he been a younger man his waiter-like walk would doubtless have changed to the martial strut induced among the rural population by perpetual practice of the goose-step. As it was, he thirsted for news with the utmost eagerness, and hurried up one Sunday morning to inform us that Lord Roberts had taken "Blue Fountain" about two days after that officer had arrived in South Africa.

It was rumoured that a gentleman of pro-Boer proclivities proposed to address like-minded citizens in the "Corn Hall." I fear he must have had but a small following if, as I believe, the majority of the natives were of like mind with my usually philosophic gardener. "I'd warm 'im," Williams exclaimed, digging his spade into the ground as though the offending propagandist were underneath—"I'd warm 'im. I'd knock 'is ugly 'ead off before 'e'd come 'is nasty Boerses over me. Let 'im go to St. 'Elena and mind 'em; then 'e'd know. 'Tain't no use for 'im to come and gibber to the loikes of us 'as 'ave 'eard their goin's-on from them as 'ave fought agen 'em, and minded 'em day by day and hour by hour, till they was that sick and weary! ... Boers! I'd Boers 'im," and with grunts and snorts expressive of intense indignation the philosopher rested on his spade, glaring at me as though I were a champion of the King's enemies—which Heaven forbid.

"It's like this 'ere," he said, after a moment's pause: "there's toimes w'en the meek-'eartidest ain't safe if you worrits 'em, and these 'ere be them sart of toimes."