was often to repeat
in his maturity and in his best work, when he says of the
church-bell that 'In the day when this bell was made, men put their
souls into their works. Their one great object was not to turn out
100,000 all alike.'

It was in the next year, 1876, that he began to think of using his
observation and feeling in a 'chatty style,' of setting down 'some
of the glamour--the magic of sunshine, and green things, and clear
waters.' But it was not until 1878 that he succeeded in doing so.
In 'The Amateur Poacher' and its companions, there was not between
Jefferies and Nature the colourless, clear light of the factory or
the journalist's workshop, but the tender English atmosphere or, if
you like, that of the happy and thoughtful mind which had grown up
in that atmosphere.

'Choosing a Gun' and 'Skating' belong to the period, if not the
year, of 'The Amateur Poacher.' In fact, the passage about the
pleasure of having the freedom of the woods with a wheel-lock, is
either a first draft of one of the best in that book, or it is an
unconscious repetition. Here again is a characteristic complaint
that 'the leading idea of the gunmaker nowadays is to turn out a
hundred thousand guns of one particular pattern.' The suggestion
that some clever workman should go and set himself up in some
village is one that has been followed in other trades, and is not
yet exhausted. The writing is now excellent of its kind, but for the
word 'Metropolis' and the phrase 'no great distance from' Pall Mall.
The negligent--but slowly acquired--conversational simplicity
captures the open air as calmly and pleasantly as the humour of the
city dialogue.

'Skating' is slight enough, but ends with grace and an unsought
solemnity which comes more and more into his later writing, so that
in 'The Spring of the Year' (_Longman's_, June, 1894), after many
notes about wood-pigeons, there comes such a genuine landscape as
this:

'The bare, slender tips of the birches on which they perched
exposed them against the sky. Once six alighted on a long
birch-branch, bending it down with their weight, not unlike a
heavy load of fruit. As the stormy sunset flamed up, tinting the
fields with momentary red, their hollow voices sounded among the
trees.'

These notes for April and May, 1881, were continued in 'The Coming
of Summer,' which forms part of 'Toilers of the Field.' This
informal chitchat, addressed chiefly to the amateur naturalist,