ollects the
tenant well, and with that friendly feeling that grows up towards what we
see year after year. In a day or two the clergyman drives by with his low
four-wheel and fat pony, notes the poster as the pony slackens at the
descent to the water, and tells himself to remember and get the tithe.
Some few Sundays, and Farmer Smith will appear in church no more.

Farmer Smith this beautiful morning is looking at the wheat, which is, and
is not, his. It would have been cut in an ordinary season, but the rains
have delayed the ripening. He wonders how the crop ever came up at all
through the mass of weeds that choked it, the spurrey that filled the
spaces between the stalks below, the bindweed that climbed up them, the
wild camomile flowering and flourishing at the edge, the tall thistles
lifting their heads above it in bunches, and the great docks whose red
seeds showed at a distance. He sent in some men, as much to give them
something to do as for any real good, one day, who in a few hours pulled
up enough docks to fill a cart. They came across a number of snakes, and
decapitated the reptiles with their hoes, and afterwards hung them all
up--tied together by the tail--to a bough. The bunch of headless snakes
hangs there still, swinging to and fro as the wind plays through the oak.
Vermin, too, revel in weeds, which encourage the mice and rats, and are,
perhaps, quite as much a cause of their increase as any acts of the
gamekeeper.

Farmer Smith a few years since was very anxious for the renewal of his
lease, just as those about to enter on tenancies desired leases above
everything. All the agricultural world agreed that a lease was the best
thing possible--the clubs discussed it, the papers preached it. It was a
safeguard; it allowed the tenant to develop his energies, and to put his
capital into the soil without fear. He had no dread of being turned out
before he could get it back. Nothing like a lease--the certain
preventative of all agricultural ills. There was, to appearance, a great
deal of truth in these arguments, which in their day made much impression,
and caused a movement in that direction. Who could foresee that in a few
short years men would be eager to get rid of their leases on any terms?
Yet such was the fact. The very men who had longed so eagerly for the
blessing of security of tenure found it the worst thing possible for their
interest.

Mr. Smith got his lease, and paid for it tolerably stiffly,