at the top of his voice; and then, when the notes prove too
high for him, continuing the air in a whistle, until he has turned the
impassable corner; then taking up again the song and the words, 'Home!
sweet Home!' and looking as if he felt their full import, ploughboy
though he be. And so he does; for he is one of a large, an honest, a
kind, and an industrious family, where all goes well, and where the poor
ploughboy is sure of finding cheerful faces and coarse comforts--all
that he has learned to desire. Oh, to be as cheaply and as thoroughly
contented as George Coper! All his luxuries a cricket-match!--all his
wants satisfied in 'home! sweet home!'

Nothing but noises to-day! They are clearing Farmer Brooke's great
bean-field, and crying the 'Harvest Home!' in a chorus, before which all
other sounds--the song, the scolding, the gunnery--fade away, and become
faint echoes. A pleasant noise is that! though, for one's ears' sake,
one makes some haste to get away from it. And here, in happy time, is
that pretty wood, the Shaw, with its broad pathway, its tangled dingles,
its nuts and its honeysuckles;--and, carrying away a faggot of those
sweetest flowers, we reach Hannah Bint's: of whom, and of whose doings,
we shall say more another time.

NOTE.--Poor Dash is also dead. We did not keep him long, indeed I
believe that he died of the transition from starvation to good feed,
as dangerous to a dog's stomach, and to most stomachs, as the less
agreeable change from good feed to starvation. He has been succeeded in
place and favour by another Dash, not less amiable in demeanour and far
more creditable in appearance, bearing no small resemblance to the
pet spaniel of my friend Master Dinely, he who stole the bone from the
magpies, and who figures as the first Dash of this volume. Let not the
unwary reader opine, that in assigning the same name to three several
individuals, I am acting as an humble imitator of the inimitable writer
who has given immortality to the Peppers and the Mustards, on the one
hand; or showing a poverty of invention or a want of acquaintance with
the bead-roll of canine appellations on the other. I merely, with my
usual scrupulous fidelity, take the names as I find them. The fact is
that half the handsome spaniels in England are called Dash, just as half
the tall footmen are called Thomas. The name belongs to the species.
Sitting in an open carriage one day last summer at the door of a
farmhouse where