y.

There are few more pleasant agricultural operations to watch and to
follow than a lusty team, a skilful ploughman, and a whistling boy at
work, on a glowing autumn day, when the stubble is covered with
gossamers gleaming with iridescent colours in the sunshine. The
upturned earth is fragrant, the fresh soil looks rich and full of
promise, there is the feeling that old mistakes and disappointments
are being buried out of sight, and the hope and anticipation of the
future.

On a Lincolnshire farm where I was a pupil, an incident occurred
illustrating the anxiety of a carter for the welfare of his horses, in
combination with no small cunning. The owner, in the stable one Sunday
morning, noticed an open Bible in the manger; having doubts as to the
reliability of the carter, he regarded the Bible, so prominently
displayed, with some suspicion. Looking carefully all round he could
see nothing to find fault with, until he glanced upward at the floor
over the manger, where he discovered a protruding cork. He remembered
that a heap of oats was stored in the loft, from which the bailiff
gave out the rations for their teams to each man weekly. Getting the
key of the loft, he found that the cork was nicely adjusted to a hole
beneath the oats, so that the carter in question could exceed the
recognized ration whenever inclined. The fault was, of course, more
one of disobedience than of robbery, as the corn was consumed by his
master's horses, and the prominence of the Bible was perhaps the worst
feature, evidently a deceptive device to arrest suspicion, though it
proved to have exactly the opposite effect.

Very few of my men suffered from rheumatism, but Jim was an exception.
I think he applied horse embrocation to himself; he would extol its
efficacy, and would tell how, when the pain attacked his shoulder, the
remedy "druv it" to his back; applied to the latter, "it druv it" to
his legs; and so on indefinitely.

I kept about a dozen working horses besides colts; the latter are
broken at two years old, but only very lightly worked, and, when quiet
and handy, they are turned out again till a year older. Our method of
maintaining the full capacity of horse-power on the farm was to breed,
or buy at six months old, two colts, and sell off two of the oldest
horses every year. As two colts could be bought for forty or fifty
pounds at that age, and the two old horses sold for a hundred and
twenty pounds or thereabouts, a good bal