great or greater enjoyment than the elaborate luxury of
the millionaire, with his innumerable distractions and
responsibilities?

The labourer has, as I have said, little appreciation of the invisible
or what does not appeal strongly to his senses; he cannot understand,
for instance, that a small bag of chemical fertilizer, in the form of
a grey, inoffensive powder, can contain as great a potentiality for
the nutrition of crops as a cartload of evil-smelling material from
the farmyard; nor is he aware that, in the case of the latter, he has
to load and unload 90 pounds or thereabouts of worthless water in
every 100 pounds with which he deals. Possibly, however, his
preference for the natural fertilizer is not wholly misplaced, for
there is, no doubt, much still to be learned concerning the relative
values of natural and artificial compounds with special reference to
the bacterial inoculation of the soil and its influence on vegetable
life.

He is not without some aesthetic feeling for the glories of Nature
daily before him, and though like Peter Bell, of whom we are told that

"A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more,"

and putting aside the metaphysical analogy and the moral teaching
which are presented by every tree and plant, he enjoys, I know, the
simple beauty of the flower itself, the exhilarating freshness of the
bright spring morning, the prodigality of the summer foliage, the ripe
autumnal glow of the harvest-field, and the sparkling frost of a
winter's day. But he very rarely expresses his enthusiasm in
superlatives: "a usefulish lot," and "a smartish few," meaning in
Worcestershire "a very good lot," and "a great many," is about the
limit to which he will commit himself. His natural reticence in
serious situations and calamity, and his reserve in the outlet of
feeling by vocal expression, give a wrong impression of its real
depth, and may even convey the impression of callousness to anyone not
conversant with the working of his mind.

To a nephew of mine who was surprised to see his gardener's little son
leaving the garden, the man explained: "That little fellow be come to
tell I a middlinish bit of news; 'e come to say as his little sister
be dead." Notice the "middlinish bit of news," where a much stronger
expression would have been justified, and note the restraint as to his
loss, suggesting an unfeeling mind, though in reality very far from