re is a great elm tree down close to the ground--the only tree that
the winter gales had left to shade us on hot summer days. It came down
suddenly, without the slightest warning; and underneath it that most
careless of all keepers, Tom Peregrine, had left the large
mowing-machine and the roller. So careless are some of these
Gloucestershire folk that sooner than do as I had ordered and put the
mowing-machine in the barn hard by, they must leave it in the open air
and under this ill-fated tree. Down came my last beloved elm, smashing
the mowing-machine and putting an end to all thoughts of cricket here
this summer. It will be ages before the village carpenter will come with
his timber cart and draw the tree away. A Gloucestershire man cannot do
a job like this in under two years; they are always so busy, you see, in
Gloucestershire--never a moment to spare to get anything done!

There was a time when the chief delight of summer lay in playing
cricket. What ecstasy it was to be well set and scoring fast on the
hard-baked ground (the harder the better), cutting to the boundary when
the ball pitched short on the off, and driving her hard along the ground
when they pitched one up! What could surpass the joy of scoring a
century in those long summer days? Now we would as soon spend the
holidays in the woods and by the busy trout stream, reading and taking
note of the trees and the birds and the rippling of the waters as they
flow onwards, ever onwards, towards the sea. There comes a time to all
men, sooner or later, when we say to ourselves, _Cui bono?_ In a few
short years I shall no longer be able to hit the ball so hard, and in
the "field" I am already becoming a trifle slow. Then do we take to
ourselves pursuits that we can follow until the limbs are stiffened with
age and the hair is white as snow.

Having spent the best years of life in the pursuit of pleasures that,
however engrossing, nevertheless bore no real and lasting fruit, we
finally fall back on interests that will last a lifetime, perhaps an
eternity--for who knows how much of knowledge we shall take with us to
another world? Aristotle was not far wrong when he described earthly
happiness as a life of contemplation, with a moderate equipment of
external good fortune and prosperity. There is no book so well worthy to
be studied as the book of nature, no melodies like those of the field
and fallow, wood and wold, and the still small voice of the busy streams
l