le lamb, and how the
worthy keeper, James Grubb, did not quite catch the wicked William
Saltmarsh in the act of setting a beautiful new brass wire snare at a
particular spot in the quickset hedge between the park and the
twelve-acre field, but was confident he would catch him the next time he
tried it, how Moses Skingle, the sexton, fell out with Mr. Speller, the
superannuated village schoolmaster, because the juvenile Spellers would
not refrain from the preparation of luscious mud pies upon the newly
made grave of the late Peter Sullins, farmer, whose promising heir had
not yet recovered sufficiently from the dissipation attending the
funeral to erect a monument to his uncle; and so on and so forth,
cackling through a volume or two of village chronicle, "and so home to
bed."

I do not care a straw for the ducks in the horse-pond, nor for the
naughty boy who throws stones at them, robs bird's-nests, and sets
snares for hares under the wire fence of Carvel Park. I blush to say I
have done most things of that kind myself, in one part of the world or
in another, and they no longer have any sort of interest for me. No, my
dear friend, the world is not yet turned into a farm-yard; there are
other things to tell of besides the mud pies of the Speller children and
the marks of little Billy Saltmarsh's hob-nailed shoes in the grass
where he set the snare. The Turks say that a fool has three points in
common with an ass,--he eats, he drinks, and he brays at other asses. I
must fain eat and drink; let me at least refrain from braying.

It is not every one who cares for the beauty of nature as reflected in a
horse-pond, or for the conversations of a class of people who have not
more than seven or eight hundred words in their language, and with whom
every word does not by any means correspond with an idea; we cannot all
be farmer's lads, nor, if we were, could each of us find a Wordsworth to
describe feelings we should certainly not possess.

I had been nearly a month at Carvel Place, and Christmas was
approaching. We sat one afternoon in the drawing-room, drinking tea.
John Carvel was turning over the leaves of a rare book he had just
received, before transferring it to its place in the library. His heavy
brows were contracted, and his large, clean hands touched the pages
lovingly. Mrs. Carvel was installed in her favorite upright chair near
an enormous student-lamp that had a pink shade, and her fingers were
busy with some sor