iTTlilW 
 
 3 1822017144387 
 
 WMERSON
 
 Central University Library 
 
 University of California, San Diego 
 Please Note: This item is subject to recall. 
 
 Date Due 
 
 MAR 2 7 1994 
 
 MAP n k 1QQ4 
 
 
 Cl 39 (7/93) 
 
 UCSD Li).
 
 MARSH LEAVES
 
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 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 BY 
 
 EMERSON 
 
 WITH 
 
 SIXTEEN PHOTO-ETCHINGS 
 
 FROM PLATES TAKEN BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR 
 
 : She shall wreathe them in shackles, 
 Shall weave them in fetters.' 
 
 LONDON 
 
 Published by DAVID NUTT 
 IX THE S T HAND 
 
 1895
 
 TO 
 MY FRIEND AND 
 
 PUBLISHER 
 ALFRED NUTT
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. OLD WROTE, . . . . . .1 
 
 ii. THE PENMAN'S CLOCK, . . . . . .5 
 
 III. A DIKE FIRE, ....... 8 
 
 IV. A MOONLIT MIDNIGHT, . . . . . .11 
 
 V. MARSH CATS, . . . . . . .13 
 
 VI. LILAC AND GREEN, . . . . . . .20 
 
 VII. THE TOWN MOUSE AND THE COUNTRY MOUSE, . . .22 
 
 VIII. ON THE SANDHILLS, . . . . . .26 
 
 IX. A BRAVE MARE, ....... 29 
 
 X. BLACK AND GOLD, . . . . . . .32 
 
 xi. BROADSMEN'S FROLICS, . . . . . .34 
 
 XII. FIRST VOICE OF SPRING, . . . . . .42 
 
 XHI. A HORSE-DEALER'S DEATH LAST WISH, . . . .44 
 
 XIV. A STUDY IN GOLD AND BLUE, . . . . .46 
 
 XV. COUNTRY COCKNEYS, . . . . . .48 
 
 xvi. BIRD'S SLEEP, . . . . . . .50 
 
 xvii. VISIONS, ........ 52 
 
 XVIII. CUCKOO-TIME, . . . . . . .56 
 
 XIX. FINE LADIES, . . . . . . .58 
 
 XX. GROWING WEATHER, . . . . . .62 
 
 XXI. DROPPED EGGS, . . . . . . .64 
 
 XXII. GOLD AND BRONZE, . . . . . .65 
 
 XXIII. CONSCIENCE MUCK-RAKE, . . . . . .66 
 
 XXIV. A NIGHT-WALK IN EARLY SPRING, . . . . .6? 
 
 XXV. A SAD DOCUMENT . . . . . . . 6'9 
 
 XXVI. A LANDSCAPE, . . . . . . .71 
 
 XXVII. THE TWO WAYS, . . . . . . .73 
 
 XXVIII. RETURN OF SPRING, . . . . . .75 
 
 XXIX. A SON OF THE VIKINGS, ... .78
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XXX. THE STRAY TURTLE-DOVE, . . . . . -79 
 
 XXXI. THE MAY MOON, . . . . . . .81 
 
 XXXII. THE WAYS OF WOMAN, ... 84 
 
 XXXIII. YOUNG LIFE, . . . . . . .87 
 
 XXXIV. BLACKTHORN WINTER, . . . . . -90 
 XXXV. A LITTLE LEARNING IS A DANGEROUS THING, . . -92 
 
 XXXVI. THE COCK AND HEN, . . . . . -95 
 
 XXXVII. VOICES OF THE NIGHT, . . . . . -97 
 
 XXXVIII. A GOOD DINNER, . . . . . . -99 
 
 XXXIX. THE FIRST MARTIN, . . . . . .102 
 
 XL. A WHERRYMAN HIS WATCH, . . . . .103 
 
 XLI. A QUIET AFTERNOON, . . . . . .104 
 
 XLII. AT A MARSH INN, . . . . . . .106' 
 
 XLIII. ON THE STUBBLE, . . . . . . -109 
 
 XLIV. A NOCTURNE, . . . . . . .111 
 
 XLV. A NORTHERLY BREEZE, . . . . . .114 
 
 XLVI. THE NEW WHERRYMAN, . . . . . 11 6 
 
 XLVII. THE TIDE-PULSE, . . . . . . .120 
 
 XLVIII. RURAL FELICITY, . . . . . . .125 
 
 XLIX. THE VILLAGE BIRD-STUFFER, . . . . .127 
 
 L. SUNDAY AFTERNOON, . . . . . .129 
 
 LI. THE BEWITCHED PIG, . . . . . .131 
 
 LII. THE WIND AGAINST THE LAW, . . . . .132 
 
 LIII. A COUNTRY CHILD, . . . . . .134 
 
 LIV. A DAY WITH THE RATS, . . . . . .137 
 
 LV. COTTAGE PROPERTY, . . . . . .141 
 
 LVI. LOVE-TIME, . . . . . . .143 
 
 LVII. THREE WRECKERS, ...... 144 
 
 LVIII. BLUE, AMBER, AND GREEN, . . . . .145 
 
 LIX. THE IRISH STEER,. ...... 147 
 
 LX. THE SPIDER AND THE FLIES, . . . . .150 
 
 LXI. RAIN AND MELANCHOLY, . . . . . .152 
 
 LXII. OLD BEWTIES, . . . . . . .154 
 
 LXIII. THE VOICES OF THE REED, . . . . .157 
 
 LXIV. A MAY MORNING, . . . . . . . l60 
 
 LXV. POLLY'S VALENTINE, . 163
 
 LIST OF PLATES 
 
 I. A WINTER S SUNRISE, 
 
 II. THE LONE LAGOON, 
 
 III. THE FETTERS OF WINTER, 
 
 IV. A WATERSIDE INN, 
 
 V. A WINTER PASTORAL, . 
 
 VI. MARSH WEEDS, . 
 
 VII. GNARLED THORN-TREES, 
 
 VIII. THE MISTY RIVER, 
 
 IX. BLEAK WINTER, 
 
 X. THE WAKING RIVER, 
 
 XI. THE BRIDGE, 
 
 XII. THE SNOW GARDEN, 
 
 XIII. A CORNER OF THE FARM-YARD, 
 
 XIV. RIME CRYSTALS, 
 
 XV. THE LONELY FISHER, 
 
 XVI. THE LAST GATE, . ! . 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
 To face page 11 
 
 20 
 
 34 
 
 46 
 
 56 
 
 62 
 
 75 
 
 90 
 
 102 
 
 111 
 
 125 
 
 131 
 
 143 
 
 152 
 
 160
 
 ' We slip the world's grey husk, 
 Emerge and spread new plumes 
 In sunbeam-fretted dusk. 
 Through pop'lous golden glooms.' 
 
 C. F. D. ROBERTS, On the Creek.
 
 OLD WROTE 
 
 E is always wroting about no matter whether 
 there be ice or sun he 's always wroting 
 about nothing riffles him,' the amphibian 
 said, when the stoutly-built, bent old hulk 
 of a man now in his eighty-fourth year 
 walked slowly past supporting his huge torso on a stout 
 ash stick. 
 
 Forty years ago Old Wrote was a six-foot man with 
 ginger hair and blue eyes, and then he was the champion 
 wrestler of the fen-lands ; but even he did not escape the 
 fierce shin-kicking matches, for his legs were notched and 
 ridged like a rope-worn timber-head. 
 
 I saw this old man cutting stuff, wading clumsily about 
 through the thin ice on the marsh, one cold winter day when 
 the nor'-easter blew keenly from the sea. His big boots 
 crashed through the ice and splashed up the mud as he waded 
 from hillock to hillock cutting a forkful of stuff here and a 
 forkful there. 
 
 I saw him again the following spring on the yellow reed- 
 rond, with one of his giant sons, poling out a few fathoms
 
 2 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 of dry reed to his marsh-boat and talking aloud for none 
 spoke to him, he was as deaf as a post on the marshes. But 
 he was always talking about ' wroting ' and ' sixty years ago.' 
 
 As he helped load the boat he said, in his slow bass 
 voice, 'Ha dar bor ! I come at the wrong time,' and he 
 snuffled thrice ; ' work was scarce forty year ago, and flour 
 four shillun a stone. Ha dar bor ! used to get one and nine- 
 pence for mowing an acre of grain in those days, and now 
 you get three shillun. Ha, dar! used to eat turnips and 
 sharps then.' 
 
 He saw his son's lips move but heard nothing, and again 
 he snuffled ; then he continued : 
 
 ' Ha dar bor ! bad times then ; used to get eighteenpence 
 for boating stuff, and now you, boy, get three shillun good 
 times now,' emphasising his speech with three defiant snuffles. 
 
 The giant ginger-headed son made a grimace. 
 
 ' Ha dar bor ! yes, good times now,' repeated Old Wrote ; 
 ' plenty of beer now. I could drink a pailful then, but 
 that 's too much now. Haugh ! ' and he snuffled a long, deep 
 snuff of air. 
 
 The son smiled. 
 
 ' Haugh ! I could ; and I never let the sun get the master 
 of me neither. But men were men then : we used to bend 
 our backs like a rainbow at work, but now lots of 'em can't 
 neither eat, drink, nor yet wrote.' 
 
 When the flat, black-pitched boat was loaded with reed- 
 shooves, Old Wrote sat down under the lee in the bright 
 sunshine and fell on his meat and bread his fifth meal that
 
 OLD WROTE 3 
 
 day, for he ate his eight meals a day even now, and drank 
 his beer with many of the younger generation. As he ate 
 and drank he snuffled fiercely, and watched his son cutting a 
 splinter from his hand. 
 
 ' Dar bor ! a shiver in the hand ; mean, you don't wrote ' ; 
 for this hardy but deaf old Hercules despised the young men 
 of the day, saying they were more like * mawthers ' with their 
 prayer-meetings, smooth tongues, and lazy ways. 
 
 ... I heard afterwards Old Wrote had, by dint of hard 
 work, kept a little farm going until he was sixty-eight, when 
 the times mastered him and he had to give up, after which 
 he hired the finest slips of ragged land-ronds, hanging to the 
 river walls, farming the rough crops of rush and reed growing 
 thereon to provide for his simple wants. 
 
 Whilst at this work he did not deign even to answer 
 the young men, but when he saw a good workman he 
 would always stop and speak to him. 
 
 One starry February morning he came steering along the 
 river through the thick mists soon after daybreak, when 
 most of the young men lay abed afraid of getting influenza, 
 which was raging in the village ; but presently he came upon 
 a young marshman who feared nothing, and was at work in 
 the fog cutting rushes. 
 
 Old Wrote stopped his marsh-boat. 
 
 ' Rather thick morning,' shouted the marshman, straighten- 
 ing himself. 
 
 'Ay, bor, that it is,' said the old man in his deep bass 
 voice.
 
 4 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 'It's rather unhealthy morning.' 
 
 ' Ay, damn you, them reeks won't hurt you you keep on 
 wroting, put that old scythe into it, you '11 be allright ' ; and 
 he shoved off to his own wroting cutting reed. 
 
 But at times, much as he loved wroting, he felt that his 
 path was not the most profitable, and one day when three 
 of the villagers lay dead of influenza his sons told him they 
 were tolling the little church bell. 
 
 ' Haugh, damn bor ! they 're cleverer in the skull than we 
 are; they don't like to get hold of much hard work, they 
 know too much to ring the big bell.' 
 
 On this particular morning, as the old man and his giant 
 son navigated a light load down the blue winding river, I 
 could not but feel the men of those days were giants ; and 
 as I saw the bent figure of the old man handling his pole 
 surely and effectively at eighty-four, and when I thought 
 of the pailfuls of beer, and how he had sown his fields of 
 corn and herded his herds of pigs, and fought and lived 
 and worked so that he had become known only by the 
 name of * Old Wrote,' or ' Old Worker,' I marvelled. 
 
 The only regret it was no whine that ever escaped 
 those manly lips was that he was born at the wrong time. 
 'Work was better paid now,' he said, and he continued 
 making plans for work ten and twenty years ahead.
 
 II 
 
 THE FENMAN'S CLOCK 
 
 E was a tall, raw-boned man with the curious 
 jumping walk of the true-bred fenman a 
 gait acquired in walking hastily over quak- 
 ing bogs and floating hovers, and the fen- 
 man's lithe swinging arms, a motion acquired 
 by swinging the scythe over miles of rushy marshland and 
 shoving his flat marsh-boat along in the face of stiff gales 
 as deftly as when nothing but a breeze ruffles the surface of 
 the water. He 'd the keen fenman's eye for wild-birds' eggs 
 a black fine eye that roamed to the blue misty horizon of 
 his wide breezy domain. His ear was quick as a wild animal's, 
 too, and he could tell the name of any bird after nightfall, 
 and much of the gossip that the old women talked when 
 they weeded in the springtime within the brightly -flowering 
 hawthorn hedges, where the green linnets nested and 
 whistled softly. 
 
 But with all his accomplishments his fingers were ' numb ' 
 when it came to delicate work. Still that did not deter him 
 from taking his clock to pieces one day when she was out 
 of order. There he was in his cottage, his table covered with
 
 6 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 wheels and screws. As I asked him how he got on with his 
 self-imposed task, he exclaimed, ' Ay, bor, I onscrewed her 
 and took her works out, and then I got the brush what 
 Jenny sweep up the house with and brushed the wheels, but 
 I didn't take stock where I got the wheels from, for I laid 
 'em all among the other.' 
 
 And he began clumsily putting them in anywhere he 
 could: some he fixed in holes where they touched empty 
 spaces, but they were all finally packed in somehow, and 
 after the face and back were applied he hung the clock up, 
 and behold ! it moved. 
 
 But in the fulness of time he found that his old clock 
 went two hours to one of any other clock. However, she 
 lasted till his wife broke the spring one night when she 
 viciously wound up the irregular machine ; for the old clock 
 with the painted ship on red waves resented her force, there 
 was a whirr, and the broken spring uncurled and lay limp in 
 the case. Yet the fenman was in no way disheartened. 
 
 He took the works out as before, and taking the main- 
 spring and a bolt he heated the spring to a red glow, and 
 bending it to the bolt, as he would a willow wand for trap- 
 ping moles, he secured it with a crooked piece of wire 
 gathered from a 'pop bottle.' Or, as he said himself 
 
 ' I stopped the end back so that didn't ondo. When I got 
 the gripe onto her, then I shipped her and screwed her in, an' 
 away she go ; but she wanted a lot o' winding up arter that, 
 so I took her to the clockmakers' and they set her right, and 
 she runned all right for two year, when she got grimy and
 
 THE PENMAN'S CLOCK 7 
 
 wouldn't keep time ; but I soon found the best way to clean 
 her, and I allus do that every year now. 
 
 ' When she 's dirty I takes her works out and biles 'em 
 in the saucepan for an hour; then I stands 'em on the hob 
 to dry, and arter that I grease with paraffin, and she do go 
 right beautiful. Look at her.' 
 
 And the clock struck all it could in vindication of the 
 cleaner.
 
 Ill 
 
 A DIKE FIRE 
 
 COOL southerly wind breathed over the frost- 
 sered marsh grasses, tossing the yellowing 
 reed-stalks against the azure, and creaking 
 the dried stalks of the water-plants, or caress- 
 ing the feathery blooms of the colt's-foot 
 and the yellow enamelled patches of kingcups blazing by 
 the dike-side in the white sunlight, when with roar and 
 crackle the fat, powdery, gladen stalks growing in tangled 
 masses in a neglected dike burst into a sheet of flame, one 
 long, lambent tongue of flickering fire rising from a blue, 
 vapoury mist, and filling the ambient air with a delicate 
 fragrance of charred flowers, as with fiery tongues of passion 
 the fire leaped into the sombre smoke-clouds and palpitating, 
 glassy heat-waves floating over it like a nimbus. Fading, 
 dying down, and leaping up into a roar in the waywardness 
 of passion at red heat, the long dike burned, but even in its 
 strongest gusts dark lines streaked the pure flame when the 
 charred stems of the water-plants had burnt themselves out : 
 the fingers of Death were already upon the merry fire. 
 
 And the quiet marshland life looked on with desire, for
 
 A DIKE FIRE 9 
 
 the quickly leaping flames and drifting smoke fascinated 
 from afar the herds, and men shouted with quick, eager 
 voices, for the spirit of contention floated into their bosoms, 
 and all the madness of a fierce passion spending itself was 
 in the air. 
 
 As the fire burned out, leaving heated embers and hot 
 ashes, the sun burnt more fiercely, and the frost-burnt grasses 
 looked greener by the hot breath of the glowing fire ; even 
 the dark-skinned frogs had crept from their slimy beds and 
 crooned their noontide lullaby, reposing in the hot air upon 
 soft beds of dead and sodden water-plants, while some, more 
 amorous, embraced in the warm waters of the dike, and 
 rolled clumsily about as they were pushed aside by some 
 frolicsome pike that sported with warmth and love over 
 some water-weeds. 
 
 Even the breath of the landscape was delicately scented 
 with a watery perfume, instilling soft desire into the heart 
 of man, and even into the watery tribe of birds, for all around 
 through the warm air resounded the voices of burning love. 
 Snipe drummed overhead, redshanks whistled plaintively to 
 their mates, larks rose on fluttering wings, singing before the 
 hens lapwings sported and played in the air crying their 
 passionate notes, and a sweet-voiced woman sang a love-song 
 softly, as she hung her lover's shirts to dry in the bright sun- 
 light, the ringdove in the wood took up her soft crooning, and 
 the passionate turkey-cock crowed to his harem. All life was 
 throbbing with life and love, for the subtle influence of the 
 springtide thrilled the blood and brightened the eye. Little
 
 10 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 they recked that love and life, like the red-flamed tongues, 
 must fade. They were wiser than man cursed with the gift of 
 pale thought ; they loved fiercely and lived hotly while the 
 springtide was fair. They no more than the ruddy flames 
 whined and paled because their passion must die ; their 
 energy was spent in living and doing, and the ashes of such 
 living furnaces shall be as the ashes of the water-plants, a 
 rich and rare remains of the sane and brave in heart, for 
 the breath of passion lasteth for ever, and the fires spent to- 
 day breathe into lives unborn a virtue more precious than 
 all the thought of ages, in sooth, the principal blessing, that 
 man should go down and love and live, and wrestle and die.
 
 IV 
 A MOONLIT MIDNIGHT 
 
 T seemed as though night had fallen and a 
 sober day was born, as the bright moon 
 lit up the grey-green landscape and awoke 
 the birds, for the air was alive with their 
 cries. 
 
 From afar sounded the laughing of snipe, the chatter of 
 reed- and sedge-warblers, the ticking of the shy grasshopper- 
 warbler, and the short, sweet note of reed-bunting and yellow 
 wagtail, whilst away down the ronds of the dusky river a 
 water-rail was twanging the monotonous ting-ting-ting, in- 
 creasing from a slow voice to a crescendo, followed by a pause 
 she probably had her young brood about her. All through 
 the desultory clamourings of the marsh birds she twanged 
 without ever a pause, perfectly undisturbed by even the shrill 
 whistling of redshanks. 
 
 But all these voices seemed to come from afar, and to 
 be an undertone to the hilarious cries of the wheeling cock- 
 lapwings that were at times answered by the sad voices of the 
 hen. All about in the moonlight their white glancing wings 
 gleamed as they shrieked more softly than is their wont by
 
 12 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 day their curious cry, ' T'ree bullocks a week, week arter 
 week, week arter week.' All the air was vibrant with their 
 voices, and they grew so eager and excited in their cries that 
 they seemed to speak their voices took a human interest, so 
 earnest was their tone, Indeed, I think they were directing 
 the hen-birds with the young from their cradles in the rushy 
 marsh to the water, and upon such journeyings it is usual for 
 the males to fly overhead, wheeling and crying, guiding their 
 little families over to the grey waters, where they shall learn to 
 feed and bathe ; for the lapwing is a cleanly bird, and poetic, 
 loving to bathe his green crest when the bright moon silvers 
 the mist hanging over river and marsh. 
 
 And as the stars brightened, towards the dawn, and the 
 mere began to pale, I left the misty, moonlit scene, with the 
 memory of glancing white wings and the earnest voice of the 
 bird of the moonlight the crested lapwing.
 
 MARSH CATS 
 
 UCH has been written in praise of the cat. 
 The bright side of that soft, effeminate animal, 
 filled with deceit, has been given. It may be 
 because I detest the soft, purring, cunning 
 character of the cat that I determined to 
 watch it when not pampered on rugs or upon the soft materials 
 of ladies' dresses, for the wild state shows your beast's true 
 nature. 
 
 I wandered, then, down by a little farm on the marsh- 
 lands, just within the jagged fortalice of the marram-bound 
 dunes, and there the dreadful little beast's ways were un- 
 masked. I had previously observed his unmannish love of 
 warmth, good food, and * cultured ' society. I had noticed 
 pussy's admirers were women, or barren males. I had felt 
 my terrier's innate dislike of the respectable creature was well 
 founded ; for he is a good fellow, my terrier no deceit, no 
 duplicity, and he loves a brawl and a flirtation with any 
 terrier but he is not ' respectable.' But to return to my 
 studies.
 
 14 MARSH LEA YES 
 
 The feminine portion of the little farmer's family kept 
 five cats : think of it. They pleaded, in a cattish way, ' mice ' 
 as an excuse for their pets, and their pets pleaded ' affection ' 
 as an excuse for their poaching. ' You could see their souls 
 in their eyes,' the girls said ; and, of course, they knew. And 
 have not some writers written eloquently (and foolishly) of 
 their souls ? 
 
 Well, well, I watched first at dawn, before the sun rose 
 over the budding osier cars, and I watched after the light 
 of day had faded from the landscape, and left the marshland 
 to the cats and to me. 
 
 At such half-lit seasons the ladies and the cats drew 
 forth quietly along the hedgerows. Eva and Florrie and 
 Gertie to meet their lovers, and the sandy and the tortoise- 
 shell and the light Cyprus and the dark Cyprus to poach 
 they met their lovers later on. The white cat alone, I 
 deemed, was no poacher. I found afterwards that white 
 cats are too intellectual to poach, but not a whit more honest 
 than these born poachers the sandy, tortoiseshell, and Cyprus 
 cats. 1 picked upon the sandy cat and followed her as she 
 crept along the hedgerows, now green with young hawthorn 
 leaves. I watched her stop at times and sit down to listen 
 her head raised, ears erect, and tail curled round her, its 
 end flicking nervously. Anon away she crept along and 
 through hedgerows, going on a poaching cat-line for half a 
 mile to the ' strong eyes ' at the foot of the sandhills, as 
 the rabbits' ' burghs ' or burrows are picturesquely called in 
 the marshland. The roar of the sea in the still gloaming
 
 MARSH CATS 15 
 
 drowned the noise of my clumsy steps. I lay down behind 
 the green marram-crested tussock, where the leaves of the 
 silver- weed mixed with the sandy crop, and I watched my 
 sandy lady. As she neared the burgh the sentinel rabbit 
 tapped the hollow, dry ground quickly with his hind feet 
 their usual danger-signal and every bunny sat up on end, 
 threw back his long ears, and looked for his particular * eye ' ; 
 indeed, all the bank seemed to be suddenly turned into eyes, 
 dotted with white tails. But pussy was too quick for a 
 young but well-grown rabbit She sprang upon it, seized it 
 by the side of the neck, and these two furry creatures lay 
 on their sides struggling to the music of the sea. Pussy the 
 quiet, cultured creature with a soul was busily hammer- 
 ing the defenceless and inexperienced rabbit to death in a 
 truly feline and feminine manner with her hind feet, their 
 usual method, I soon found, of killing rabbits and young 
 hares. 
 
 Presently young bunny expired, her eyes looking into 
 the sentinel stars that began to shine more brightly in the 
 violet sky, and pussy began quietly to eat her prey, be- 
 ginning at the head and working towards the shoulders. 
 
 After a time I learned that pussy could turn a bunny out 
 of its skin as cleverly as a taxidermist. 
 
 When pussy had eaten her fill, she dragged the carcass 
 to an islet of bramble and jogged off home, looking as 
 innocent as any other soulful criminal, and as determined as 
 any 'reformed' cut-throat to return to her mangled carcass 
 the next evening, after the larks had dropped to their warm
 
 16 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 beds in the dry tufts of grass, and so on until not a vestige 
 remained. 
 
 As I soon found, many of the amphibians had a just 
 appreciation of pussy, and rated her as the biggest poacher 
 about the marshland, and many had known her to bring 
 home full-grown rabbits, and even half-grown hares, to her 
 kittens. 
 
 It was well known, too, that if pussy discovered a nest 
 of young rabbits she could never rest until she had killed 
 and eaten every suckling. Nor is pussy always so careful 
 of appearances as Eva and Florrie and Gertie. She at 
 times commits her excesses in the full glare of the sun, as 
 indeed, after all, do some Evas; but that is a gentleman's 
 story, and when the good old Greek dinner customs return 
 I will tell it you. 
 
 But we must not forget the white cat, the intellectual 
 animal who would not poach, but would follow her master 
 about like a dog, and turn her yearning eyes up to her 
 master's when he aimed at a speckled mavish or a noisy black- 
 bird. Ere the smoke had cleared away white puss was off 
 after the fallen bird in her ladylike way, and having captured 
 it, unlike a dog, she would gallop off home with it, to mangle 
 and eat in her own particular way. 
 
 Puss has not sufficient gratitude to retrieve, though the 
 girls think that she might be taught; but, like women, the 
 poor cats are so down-trodden by the superior race dog. 
 
 In sooth, any cat, except a gelding, will, on occasion, 
 poach, especially if not too highly fed ; and once they begin to
 
 MARSH CATS 17 
 
 poach, Florrie can no longer plead ' mice,' for from that day 
 they will never disturb a mouse in the house. Moreover, 
 they will often go off and breed in rabbit-holes, in thorn- 
 stacks, or in plantings, with their prey within easy reach, 
 and such cats are the rabbits' most deadly enemies, for they 
 so much resemble a rabbit especially in the half lights 
 that they have but little difficulty in catching their prey. 
 
 I know a marshman who once saw a hare crossing a field 
 at night, and the following night he determined to lay wait for 
 ' Sarah '; so he hid himself in a ditch by the roadway, where he 
 knew the old hare would be sure to come after traversing the 
 field. As he anticipated, his prey came across the field, but 
 stopped : ' It smelt a rat ! ' Instantly he fired, and on running 
 forward to pick up his booty he found a ' big, old, sondy cat.' 
 
 A friendly poacher will often tell you he has been dis- 
 appointed by finding cats in his snares, and he will dwell 
 with the gusto of a Chinese gourmet on the size and 
 plumpness of the wild ' escapes ' he has at times taken when 
 brushing a snared planting for hares. Sometimes he finds 
 the whelps, and he will tell you the young will spit and 
 raise their hair on end at you. 
 
 I remember an old fenman who once nearly got into 
 trouble for shooting a cat-poacher. 
 
 A large tortoiseshell cat frequented Farmer Howard's 
 ' strong eyes,' and played havoc amongst the rabbits, for all 
 hands were too busy to do anything but harvest the golden 
 corn. However, when harvest was over, and the largars 
 feast had been held, old Bob was told off to kill the poacher. 
 
 c
 
 18 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 Practised as he was in the art of trapping, he set the steel- 
 fall baited with bloater, and next morning the tortoiseshell 
 cat was caught by one leg, and as Bob with his gun came 
 stealing towards her, puss threw herself about and pulled 
 her foot off, then went limping off towards her hole ; but the 
 report of Bob's gun sounded across the silent marshes and 
 poor pussy's thieving-days were over, and her body thrown 
 into a ditch to wither like the corpses of criminals in olden 
 days. The owner heard of the matter, and ' pulled ' Bob for 
 maliciously killing his cat. Bob, a truthful man, owned he 
 had killed the cat, but denied malice. The vicious owner 
 could find no witnesses of the murder, the case was adjourned 
 for a fortnight, and finally the owner of the dear pet ate 
 humble-pie, made friends with Bob, and paid all expenses 
 incidental to the business. 
 
 Old Bob, like myself, is no lover of cats ; he will allow 
 them no virtues, and maintains strongly that even their 
 reputation for having nine lives is a great exaggeration, 
 averring that, in this respect, the ferret tribe must take 
 precedence of the cat. 
 
 ' Well, bor,' said Bob, smoking at his short, black pipe, 
 * last winter-time I 'd a ferret what was no good, and I wanted 
 to kill that. The broad was laid, people was skating over 
 it, and the ground was froze hard as a rock. So I got this 
 here ferret on to the hard ground in my garden by the broad, 
 and I hit him with the flat of the spade all my might, and 
 his feet spread out, and he gaped, and I thowt him dead, so 
 I hulled him onter the ice and went indoors. Two days
 
 MARSH CATS 19 
 
 arterwards I went to feed my ferrets, I 'd shot some sparrows 
 for 'em, and blow me if that there warmin what I 'd killed 
 didn't pop out under the tub and commence to eat away 
 with the rest. Thinks I, I '11 kill you agin, so I got the 
 spade and flattened him out till his eyes started from his 
 head and his chops frothed and runned blood, then I hulled 
 him onter the ice agin. Now, blow me, as I start watching 
 on him, if he didn't get up and begin running on the ice. 
 That was no use hitting on him, I couldn't kill him, so I 
 drowned him. Now, bor, no cat alive would have stood 
 that ! '
 
 VI 
 LILAC AND GREEN 
 
 OR five days and five nights boisterous nor'- 
 easters or nor'- westers had blown over the 
 face of the marshland, blowing the clear 
 waters into many-coloured ripples on the 
 shallows; for the fierce breath of the wind 
 discovered the many-coloured floors of the shallow red clay, 
 bice green, and the darker hue of the hair-weed. But at last 
 the gale was over and the wind shifted to the sou'-west, and 
 a pale lilac haze veiled the distant landscape and tinted the 
 sky, on whose wester ward horizon a light yellowish sun sank 
 imperceptibly to rest, leaving the green marshlands with the 
 lilac zone of trees and a low dome of a paler lilac, broken 
 only in one patch the pale yellow glory of the departed 
 sun. 
 
 And in that peaceful eventide swallows played and twit- 
 tered over the red chimney-tops, cuckoos called sleepily, and 
 redshanks, pink of ear, for their young, piped mournfully as 
 the cattle-man followed the homing cows, crying, 'Come 
 along, co co co c o'; again, 'Come along, co co co 
 co.'

 
 LILAC AND GREEN 21 
 
 The light sou'-westerly breeze died away with the sun ; 
 the mill-sails slept in the lilac sky, and all Nature seemed 
 in a trance right up to the green -chequered sandhills, 
 beyond which the sea fretted with hoarse voice along the 
 shifting sea-beach, crooning lullabies to the sitting ring- 
 dotterel and pied oyster-catchers. 
 
 As the blue deepened in tint a silvery pike jumped in 
 the river, and the dark-furred water-vole came forth to feed 
 on the newly-grown shoots of the sedge. 
 
 The last voice to be heard was that of the lilac bird 
 the cuckoo on the green banks.
 
 VII 
 
 THE TOWN MOUSE AND THE COUNTRY 
 MOUSE 
 
 E was a stout, alert, quick, business man, who 
 had hired the gunner from his marshes to 
 help him move into his newly acquired cot- 
 tage on the borders of a sluggish river water- 
 ing the marshland. 
 Those twain were occupied a fortnight filling the cot- 
 tage with furniture, and each day the stout, city-bred man 
 chaffed the gunner with fine city words. 
 
 'You always see something to shoot when you han't a 
 gun,' said he, pointing jeeringly at the village cat's-meat 
 man, as he passed down the road. 
 
 ' What, do he sell meat cheap like that ? ' asked the 
 gunner. 
 
 ' Yes, oh yes ! ' said the alert citizen, smiling ; ' have a 
 piece ? ' 
 
 The sordid vendor of dry meats was called, and the 
 gunner bought and ate a couple of slices, and found it 
 good, until he had swallowed the last mouthful, when the 
 hearty citizen said
 
 THE TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE 23 
 
 ' Ay, bor, it 's cat's meat you 're eating,' and he explained 
 matters. The gunner said nothing. 
 
 The following autumn the jovial citizen asked the gunner 
 to show him some fowl. 
 
 ' Yes, bor,' said the gunner. 
 
 And they went on the marshes, for the citizen was a 
 quick shot ; he had learned snipe-shooting round the much- 
 frequented drainage farms outside of London. But the 
 acute marshman remembered the cat's-meat, and walked the 
 jovial citizen into a bog up to his neck, and he laughed 
 heartily, calling, ' Cat's meat,' as the citizen tried to extricate 
 himself. 
 
 'Well, now,' said the citizen, 'we are quits,' and he 
 stooped to pick a mushroom. 'What a number of mush- 
 rooms !' he cried with delight. 
 
 ' Ay, bor, they '11 stop ; but do you get home and change, 
 or you '11 get the screwmatics.' 
 
 Next morning at daybreak the citizen crept from his bed 
 and, hastily dressing, walked down to the marsh in the mists 
 to gather a basketful of the succulent fungi ; but look as he 
 would, and walk as he would, never a mushroom could he 
 see, nor yet could he find the broken stalks whence they 
 had been picked sharp-eyed though he was. 
 
 ' Very strange, very strange,' he muttered, and he shivered 
 with cold as the red disc of the sun rose in the grey sky 
 above a bed of reeds growing round a windmill. He was 
 contemplating the magic beauty of the great spaces of
 
 24 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 marsh, decorated in one corner with a pretty, natural com- 
 position of reed-bed, windmill, and red ball of fire, when a 
 figure appeared, coming mysteriously through the mists, 
 looking grey, and without substance, as ghostlike as wreaths 
 of cloud trailing in the misty sky across the silent stars, 
 shimmering palely in the eternal blue. As the figure grew 
 darker and more solid the bewildered citizen recognised 
 the gunner Joe, who carried on his arm a basket half filled 
 with dewy, rough-skinned mushrooms. Joe stopped as he 
 saw the citizen, and exclaimed 
 
 ( Ay, master, you got here first this morning, but you 
 didn't pick 'em all, did you ? ' 
 
 'No, no, Joe; it's very strange, the marsh was full of 
 them yesterday.' 
 
 ' Yes, when my nabs fell inter bog. ' 
 
 'Ay, Joe, but that's quits. Here's a piece of silver; tell 
 us how you got those mushrooms.' 
 
 'We know something, then, though we don't come 
 from London,' said Joe, quizzically. 
 
 ' Yes, Joe ; it 's the old story of the town mouse and 
 the country mouse.' 
 
 ' Well, master, I '11 show yow,' said Joe, as he held his 
 basket in one hand and went along, stooping about his 
 mysterious work as he ran, a shadowy thing under the lift- 
 ing mists, and kept plucking the white buttons from the 
 marsh. Yet never a plant could the amazed citizen see. 
 
 When the last shreds of mist had melted away before 
 the sun, as they walked home together, Joe explained
 
 THE TOWN MOUSE AND COUNTRY MOUSE 25 
 
 'Ay, bor, when we find musheroons on the mash we 
 cover them up with grass or cow-dung; they grow better 
 like that, and nobody else don't find 'em.' 
 
 And the quick-witted citizen gazed thoughtfully before 
 him.
 
 VIII 
 
 ON THE SANDHILLS 
 
 HAD often wondered why that long chain of 
 hills held such a charm. 
 
 I saw them one May day with a loom 
 upon them, surrounded by the green marsh- 
 land a quaint gem set in a reposeful back- 
 ground a natural vignette of bewitching and delicate 
 beauty. 
 
 But that was not their only charm, for I felt if one but 
 knew that beyond those sea-breeze sculptured hollows there 
 stretched fields of marsh and cornland their never-ceasing 
 charm would be departed, and one would come to look upon 
 them as cumbersome as harbours for conies, and a trysting- 
 place for peasant lads and lasses. 
 
 But as I stood looking upon them from a field whence a 
 hare had started and a man was harrowing the poor land, I 
 could hear the cry of the sea and smell its salt breath, and 
 then I knew the dunes were full of the everlasting ring of 
 the sea, a monument of her changeful ness, instability, and 
 wanton form and conduct. That was their other charm. 
 As the seas break upon the coast and eat the land, so
 
 ON THE SANDHILLS 27 
 
 the crumbling dune, the sand-developed flora of silver- weed and 
 thistles acting as postillions, moves in stealthily and eats the 
 flat land. As the sea is now smooth, now in curved hollows, 
 now full of gloomy caverns and bright crests, so are the 
 sandhills, as the nesting dotterels know full well. And like 
 the sea, the sandy waves burst into powdery drops for they 
 twain are twins eternal encroachers on the land. 
 
 I walked through the warrens tunnelled by rabbits and 
 littered with wreckage left from some ill-fated vessel, and 
 mounted the slippery ascent to the gap where the fishermen 
 passed to their boats lying without the sandy fortalice, when I 
 came full face with the sea and saw through the sand-coloured 
 gap, as through a frame, the matchless green and pearly ocean 
 wrapped in a grey mist the waters edged with white ribbons 
 of foam that faded away down the wet sea-beaches. And 
 again I felt the character of this marshland scenery a speck 
 of interest floating in a field of sameness, a form of composi- 
 tion beloved by the artists of the Land of the Rising Sun. 
 
 And I sat upon a piece of wreckage streaked with cracks 
 and tunnelled with gloomy bolt-holes, all studded with bent 
 and flake-rusty bolts, the windward hollows filled with blown 
 sand, and listened to the two-voiced sea, the near irregular, 
 splashing clamours of the foaming waves as they broke upon 
 the shifting shore, and the distant deep-toned, regular hum of 
 the working sea-bottom, a music steady and sure, sounding as 
 if the pivot upon which the world spun round was grinding 
 in its bearings out there beneath those green and pearly 
 fields.
 
 28 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 And the determined music lulled me to sleep in my bed 
 in the warm marram, till the white flakes of the breaking 
 waves flickered through the mist like the wings of sea-birds, 
 and the sandhills seemed to rise and fall; and once again 
 I felt that the sea and the dunes were one, indissolubly, 
 eternally united, until the mighty roar of the spinning 
 world shall cease for ever and ever.
 
 IX 
 
 A BRAVE MARE 
 
 T is all in the breed,' said Lady Gussy, re- 
 ferring to a nouveau riche who had been 
 guilty of a petty meanness, for such are 
 the most self-seeking in the world. * He 's 
 cracked in the heels,' continued her lady- 
 ship, with one of her archest looks and piquant expres- 
 sions. 
 
 * And so it is all in the breed, for your well-bred un never 
 gets the grease,' agreed an old warrior. 
 
 'It's all in the breed,' said the marsh farmer who owned 
 the Irish steer, and so said the marsh farmer who owned the 
 sturdy English mare. 
 
 There had been a thaw that February, but the wind had 
 suddenly shifted to the nor'east, and a wind-frost had laid 
 the mere and dikes with ice as thick as the farmer's middle 
 finger was long, and had made the roads slippery as glass. 
 
 The marshman, however, went round with his coil of 
 rope and dog in the cold February twilight to see if his six 
 horses, feeding, tails to the wind, on the frozen marsh, were 
 safe, and returned to his lone cottage shivering, for the nor'-
 
 30 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 caster had freshened and brought snow-powder and hail- 
 shot in the snow-squalls. 
 
 At daybreak the old man started again, under the light 
 of the wintry stars, on his rounds over the marshes. As he 
 walked by a trickling spring, a snipe flew up, scaping, and 
 as his big boots crushed over the frozen marsh he started a 
 lark from her warm form in the lee of a knob of rush. He 
 recognised his horses by their steaming breath ; they were all 
 huddled together by the gateway, rubbing their shaggy coats 
 against each other for warmth. But there were only five : 
 Jinny, the big nine-year-old dark-bay brood mare she was 
 in foal, too was missing. The old man looked over the dark 
 levels, and began to follow the silvery line of the dike, walk- 
 ing along towards the river-wall, when suddenly the icy ice- 
 way was broken by a dense, ill-shapen object. Approaching, 
 he found Jinny in the dike, only her head, withers, and 
 rump showing above the broken glaze and water. As he came 
 up to her she placed her fore-feet on the ice, made a lunge 
 forward, and began calmly to feed on the poor crop of grass 
 growing on the bank. The old marshman saw she had 
 broken her way some fifty yards through the thin ice, and 
 already her jagged path through the glaze had frozen with a 
 darker, thinner, more streaked ice ; the shore too was 
 closely cropped all along her track. As the old man called 
 her affectionately, Jinny looked up in the dark, and then 
 resumed her feed. The old man looked at his rope, but he 
 knew his feeble strength could never drag that powerful mare 
 from the icy slime, so he hurried home to the farm for help.
 
 A BRAVE MAKE 31 
 
 Through numerous delays, the marshman, the farmer, and 
 his man, with two powerful horses, did not reach Jinny before 
 three o'clock in the afternoon, and though the biting nor'- 
 easter was blowing and icy snow-squalls were passing over 
 the face of the land, still Jinny only trembled and shivered. 
 She had broken, however, through more than a hundred 
 yards of ice, and had cropped all along the bank on her way. 
 
 The men dug an incline in the bank, and, putting the 
 cart-rope round Jinny's neck, they twisted it up and tied a 
 bow-line which they hooked to the horse-trace. Then the 
 powerful horses were urged forward over the frozen marsh ; 
 stooping, straining, and slipping they plodded forward and 
 drew the shivering Jinny from the mud and icy water. 
 
 Immediately the rope was removed from her neck Jinny 
 stumbled to her feet, shook herself, stood trembling for a 
 minute, and began feeding, 'unconsarned as a passenger,' as 
 the marshman remarked. 
 
 I saw her the day after, with her foal, both happy and 
 healthy as the larks soaring above them.
 
 X 
 
 BLACK AND GOLD 
 
 OWARDS the evening of an April day the 
 blue, hard sky, dried and polished by the 
 easterly wind, grew pied around the horizon 
 with dark, low-lying clouds, fantastic in shape, 
 floating slowly and tranquilly across the arid 
 sky, for the wind had gone to the north-east, whence come 
 snow-squalls and icy hail. 
 
 As the sun sank below the dull green marshland, the 
 clouds gathered all round the horizon, and all round the 
 pale blue dome there seemed to rise from the marshes 
 numberless tiny clouds, ill-shapen in form and frowning in 
 mien, black, sluggish vapour- forms that later became 
 edged with silver as the pale golden disc of the moon came 
 from behind and peeped forth from between their ragged 
 hollows. 
 
 Shortly they floated past the waning bright disc, flattened 
 in its left cheek, oscillating as does the mimic landscape at 
 the play. 
 
 When the clouds had passed, the moon floated clear in 
 its pale blue ground, and took on a pure silvery colour ; and
 
 BLACK AND GOLD 33 
 
 all at once, in the silent night, the deep call of the water- 
 hen resounded through the still, clear night air that voice 
 from the black bird with the wax-like crest a sound as of 
 the heart-beat of the silvery waters flowing sluggishly through 
 the low marshlands.
 
 XI 
 
 BROADSMEN'S FROLICS 
 
 VERY one of the amphibians is a small-boat 
 sailor. You may see the boys at seven and 
 eight sailing over the lagoon in an old coble 
 with a bit of torn sail, navigating the 
 rickety, leaky old craft with the science of 
 
 a voyageur. 
 
 In this way they all get to love their boats, and the 
 greatest blow the foreigner (from the adjoining villages) can 
 strike at the waterside dwellers is to come with a boat and 
 take all the prizes from the natives living on the reedy 
 ronds and the water ; nor must a foreigner have greater 
 skill in sailing on the lagoon than a native. If he have, the 
 amphibians will blush to the roots of their hair and avoid 
 the subject as taboo, for their pride on such occasions is 
 deeply hurt. 
 
 One fine morning in May a gentleman in his yacht 
 sailed on to the lagoon, towing his little jolly behind him. 
 The little craft was called The Little Maid. The owner was 
 sportively inclined, so he arranged to sail a match against 
 his sailing-master, a native of the lagoon. A newly-built
 
 BROADSMEN'S FROLICS 35 
 
 boat, much thought of by the amphibian, was selected to 
 race The Little Maid. 
 
 The little racer was taken from the reed-thatched boat- 
 house, where a tomtit had already built its nest, drawn up 
 to the staith, where the iron ballast was shipped, the yew- 
 fir mast stepped, the sail bent to the big yards, and the boat 
 made fit for the match. The Young Rover looked, and was, 
 a bigger boat, longer by nearly two feet, but both carried 
 about the same spread of canvas well-set balance lug-sails. 
 
 After tossing for 'lays' the course, about three miles 
 in length, having been settled on the broadsman, who had 
 lost the toss, got into The Little Maid, and the amateur, 
 whose watermanship was yet untried, took The Young Rover 
 in hand. A fine nor'-westeiiy breeze was blowing an ex- 
 hilarating air, that made the cuckoos call loudly from the 
 coppices as the old watermen assembled beneath the budding 
 willows to watch the contest. There were some grumbling 
 that the untried amateur should have to show The Young 
 Rovers prowess against the experienced amphibian, who was 
 accounted the cleverest small-boat sailor on the lagoon ; 
 still the amateur was cool, and as the referee gave the word, 
 ' Two rounds, and luff round all stakes except the first,' the 
 competitors sailed up to the winning-post, and getting in 
 line, the word was given, 'Off!' 
 
 Sheets well pulled in, and away they went down to the 
 first stake with a three-quarters' wind, sitting their boats 
 as steadily as a swan swims. Gradually The Young Rover 
 drew ahead, and then the clever old sailor in The Little
 
 36 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 Maid, ashamed to get alee the amateur, held his course, 
 went round the first stake, pulling in his sheet and going 
 away leading down to the second stake, three-quarters of a 
 mile distant. Directly The Little Maid turned the stake 
 she shot up into the wind and away she darted, sailing 
 closer than The Rover, whose straight, low lines and small 
 tiller rendered her awkward to handle, for her sail could 
 not be pulled in for fear of her filling indeed, she had been 
 turned over many a time. However, the amateur held the 
 lead to the second stake, and luffing round that, started 
 away back, close-hauled, for the stake three-quarters of a 
 mile off. But here The Little Maid proved her superiority : 
 she kept luffing up to the wind, and shot ahead and 
 reached the stake first, starting off to tack across to the 
 starting-stake. 
 
 As the two boats came tacking up to windward the 
 amphibians swore terrible oaths. They accused the amateur 
 of knowing nothing about sailing, saying he didn't know 
 one end of a boat from the other, he didn't let her go, he 
 didn't know how to put a boat about, and so on. 
 
 The amateur, however, held on, for he had long ago 
 discovered his tiller was too small and his boat wouldn't 
 handle ; moreover, she was leaking, and would soon become 
 water-logged. 
 
 However, away they started on the second round; and 
 finally The Little Maid won by a hundred yards, the amateur 
 bringing his boat up half full of water to the shore, where 
 the amphibians stood with long faces.
 
 BROADSMEN'S FROLICS 37 
 
 * She 's water-logged, she 's half full ; no boat can sail 
 like that,' said the amateur, getting out ; and the seared old 
 faces brightened, for here was a real excuse. So they all 
 agreed in chorus : ' Nothing could be done with a water-logged 
 boat,' and the oldest amphibian, who had been the loudest 
 in his abuse and criticism, said condescendingly 
 
 ' I think you Ve done remarkably well.' 
 
 The amateur held his peace. 
 
 The Young Rover was sunk beneath the blue waves of 
 the lagoon in order that she might stanch, and the race 
 postponed for two days. 
 
 The night before the second trial the amateur sat with 
 a group of gunners, marshmen, and wherrymen listening to 
 an animated conversation, from which the words 'rocking 
 keels,' 'straight bows,' 'lug-sails' and 'cutter-sails,' 'litha 
 masts,' and so on, flashed forth. It was wonderful the 
 excitement and interest shown about boats. Then they 
 turned to the amateur and began to praise his work, but 
 he was unmoved. 
 
 Next morning the vanes showed the wind blew from 
 the nor'-east, a nice, fresh breeze, as The Young Rover was 
 hoisted from the hard bottom of the lagoon and dressed 
 with her sail. At half-past eleven the amateur took his 
 seat in The Young Rover and the old broadsman took his 
 seat at the tiller of The Little Maid, and away they went 
 to the starting-stake, sailing up dead-level, and at the word 
 slacking out the sheets and going off before the wind like 
 two greyhounds.
 
 38 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 The amateur soon shot ahead and raced past The Little 
 Maid, luffing round the stake first, but immediately he got 
 on the wind The Little Maid began to pick-up, and before 
 the second stake was reached the old broadsman had shot 
 past The Young Rover. 
 
 Then the amphibians on the bank began to swear and 
 criticise and mob the amateur, for The Young Rover could 
 neither turn nor handle, and this was all attributed to the 
 amateur's bad watermanship. 
 
 As they tacked up to the starting-stake and luffed round 
 it the umpire registered the times 
 
 (1) The Little Maid', time, 37 minutes. 
 
 (2) The Young Rover : time, 39 minutes. 
 
 And away they went for the second round of three miles, 
 running down to the first stake, leading to the second stake, 
 and leading back to the first stake and round it, tacking 
 to the starting-place, and so finishing the second round 
 thus : 
 
 (1) The Little Maid: time, 39 minutes. 
 
 (2) The Young Rover : time, 43| minutes. 
 
 The broadsman sailed in to the starter smiling with 
 triumph ; the amateur sailed in looking grim but collected. 
 
 After throwing two bags of ballast out of The Little 
 Maid, and moving the two remaining sand-bags, the amateur 
 took his seat in his own boat and the broadsman took The 
 Young Rover. 
 
 ' Now you '11 see The Young- Rover trosh to windward 
 like a racehorse. Now we shall see what she '11 do, when
 
 BROADSMEN'S FROLICS 39 
 
 she's properly handled/ said the irate natives. Away the 
 boats started amid much excitement, The Young Rover 
 leading to the first stake ; but directly the first stake was 
 passed the amateur in The Little Maid shot up to windward 
 and went sailing past The Young Rover, and as the natives 
 watched The Little Maid showing a clean pair of heels, 
 they marvelled open-mouthed. 
 
 Away went The Little Maid's skipper down and up the 
 lagoon, luffing round the stake and handling his little boat like 
 a thing of life ; and the umpire recorded the first round 
 
 (1) The Little Maid: time, 40 minutes. 
 
 (2) The Young Rover : time, 42 minutes. 
 
 ' Our boat will pick him up the second round,' they said, 
 as the boats ran down before the wind ; but the amateur 
 only increased his lead, and came in a winner by five minutes, 
 the times of the second round being 
 
 (1) The Little Maid : 36 minutes. 
 
 (2) The Young Rover : 41 minutes. 
 
 And as the boats sailed up to the staith the old 
 broadsman in The Young Rover looked crestfallen, and re- 
 marked he was never so sucked in in all his life. The owner 
 of The Young Rover blushed purple; and several of the 
 critics who had been abusing the amateur came up and told 
 him they had mobbed him, that they couldn't believe their 
 eyes when he won, and that he had sailed as well as the 
 old broadsman. And the old broadsman turned and said 
 ' Yes, he is nigh as good as me. I told you so.' 
 ' Well, well,' said an old amphibian, who had been loudest
 
 40 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 in his abuse of the amateur, * I '11 never speak about a man 
 sailing a boat no more, unless I see whether his boat be 
 right first There was I laying it on to the awkwardness 
 of the gentleman, and arter all he hev done the quickest 
 round in both boats.' 
 
 But one old fellow in the comer stood muttering that 
 he didn't believe the little warmin of a jolly could beat their 
 boat, and he 'd sail the old broadsman. 
 
 The amateur offered a money prize, and away they started, 
 the unconvinced broadsman in The Young Rover, and the 
 amateur's rival in The Little Maid. The Little Maid passed 
 The Young Rover before the first stake in running before 
 the wind, and the old amphibian was so surely beaten at 
 the end of the first round that he gave in with curses. The 
 times were 
 
 The Little Maid : 37 minutes. 
 The+Young Rover : 44 minutes. 
 
 And after all, the much-abused amateur had sailed the 
 quickest rounds of any 
 
 In The Little Maid in 36 minutes. 
 In The Young Rover in 39 minutes. 
 
 But the amateur's reputation, as well as that of his boat, 
 was securely established from that day on the broad, and 
 the amphibians discovered that, after all, he had learnt from 
 a * native,' and ' as he often lay on the lagoon, he was just 
 like one of themselves.' 
 
 And the amateur, as he sat in his saloon at dinner, felt 
 the seat rising and falling, and the sides of the cabin seemed
 
 BROADSMEN'S FROLICS 41 
 
 to be slipping and sliding and all the world to be falling, 
 as one sees it after coming off a very stormy passage at 
 sea ; and one can only wonder whether birds see our world 
 with a rolling vision when they alight, so greatly are our 
 senses affected by a fifteen-mile sail.
 
 XII 
 FIRST VOICE OF SPRING 
 
 HE wild wastes of yellow reed and blue water 
 that gleamed from afar beneath yesterday's 
 garish sunshine and cold easterly breath, that 
 spun the mill-sails round like children's pin- 
 wheels, and filled the big black sails of the 
 wherries, were now more sober in colour, the yellow had 
 turned to a delicate amber, the waters were silvery grey, a 
 soft curtain of mist hung over the distant moorlands, whence 
 the voice of a mavish floated dreamily in the heavy air. 
 
 Yesterday the sky was azure, not a cloud as large as an 
 iris-bloom was to be seen ; but to-day the sky was full of 
 light and graceful forms, shallop-like clouds that floated 
 with fantastic sails lazily through the silvery dome. 
 
 It was the first day of spring; and as I looked over the 
 calm, soft grey wastes, I heard in the still, moist air a faint 
 croak, like the creaking of a leathery hinge. With lips 
 apart I listened again to catch the welcome sound, and ere 
 long from a shiny dike- way I heard a short sleepy croak. 
 The frogs hopped from the warm holes underneath the 
 clumps of old rush and reed, and slid lazily into the warming
 
 FIRST VOICE OF SPRING 43 
 
 waters, for the sun rose higher each day in his course, and 
 spread a subtle influence over amphibians, and birds, and 
 beasts. 
 
 Towards the afternoon a soft sunshine lit up the moist 
 landscape, and made the wondrous harmonies of amber and 
 silver glow and swell. The distant windmills rose from the 
 misty marshland like tall sea-lanterns guarding the sluggish 
 land from the yellow sandhills, that rolled on to the marsh 
 like breakers of the roaring sea, whose plaintive voice sang 
 its soft crooning dirge upon the wet sea-beaches beyond. 
 
 Under the warming influence of the white light the voice 
 of the slimy, black-stained frogs became more frequent and 
 bolder, and ere nightfall the dikes resounded with their 
 strange song, sung down in the bowels of the earth. 
 
 As the spring sun settled red behind the reed-tossed fretted 
 sky, and left the marshland to darkness and to me, there 
 flashed before my mind the delicate glowing landscape of 
 amber and silver-grey, through which the soft croaking voice 
 of spring resounded, filling the senses with a lasting music, 
 as the music of the sea lurks ever in the beautiful spotted 
 shells gathered from dead coral beaches.
 
 XIII 
 
 A HORSE-DEALER'S DEATH LAST WISH 
 
 HE old horse-dealer lay dying in his little 
 marsh farm, where he still kept some good- 
 looking screws and fattened some measly 
 Irish cattle. The solicitor had been called in 
 hastily to make his will, and when he offered 
 the old man a stylographic pen wherewith to sign his name, 
 the invalid looked up with a humorous smile, and said 
 ' Do that write cedar or ink, bor ? ' 
 ' Ink,' replied the commonplace young lawyer. 
 'Ay,' said the old dealer, tracing his name in shaky 
 characters over the blue paper; then dropping the black pen 
 with its bright brass band, he said calmly 
 
 * Death- watches I hear 'em ticking ! ' 
 
 And the solicitor and witness the old man's steward 
 withdrew, his only son entering. 
 
 'Boy, I'm going soon; one big jump over the brook 
 and I shall be gone. Look here, lad, when we Ve jumped, lay 
 me under the straw and muck in the bullock-yard ; that will 
 do me fine. I don't want no parsons nor funerals about here,
 
 A HORSE DEALER'S DEATH -LAST WISH 45 
 
 and all that long-faced, solemn-looking lot, black as a wet 
 Friday. Promise, lad ! ' 
 
 ' I promise, father.' 
 
 And the old horse-dealer settled down in his bed, and 
 died with a humorous smile on his brave and wasted 
 features.
 
 XIV 
 
 A STUDY IN GOLD AND BLUE 
 
 HEY stirred the inmost pulses of my being, 
 those vast watery wastes of yellow reed-beds 
 and azure waters, dividing and spreading, in 
 broad channels and narrow dike- ways, through 
 the yellow-branched screen of trees edging this 
 strange, wild land, and beating, in each drop of their blue 
 circulations, with the great tidal pulse of life the never-ceasing 
 ebb and flow a subtle influence that swells the water under 
 the bridges by the mills, where the swallows fashion their 
 warmly lined nests from the ooze that caresses the distant 
 stalks of the farthest reed-beds, that glow in the bright sun 
 and are waved by the cold wind that steals over the crests of 
 the marram-knit dunes. 
 
 Outside these shifting sand-dunes, where the gay swallows 
 hunt for flies in the summer afternoons, the same influence 
 is working, rolling in the great breakers that beat upon the 
 shifting beaches, battling into thin spray, and rushing up the 
 smooth sands with a sharp, sweeping hiss ; then they yellow 
 the atmosphere as the broken, frothy water rushes back to the 
 sea, dragging the smooth pebbles in its mighty grip, singing

 
 A STUDY IN GOLD AND BLUE 47 
 
 a wild music a manly, musical song of war and wrestling, 
 whether in the embrace of a mistress or the grip of the 
 foe. 
 
 And only the desolate, wind-sculptured hollows of the 
 dunes keep the blue waters from mixing, and gaining the 
 mastery of the sopping land, where the flocks feed, and 
 the watery tribe of birds cradle their young. 
 
 But as we gaze over the golden and azure land, and watch 
 the quickly circling mill-sails and gliding ships, and then stand 
 and listen to the roar of the sea beyond the sandhills, and as 
 we watch the stealthy blue tide creep softly, like a serpent, 
 up the rushy ooze of the shores, one cannot but rejoice in 
 one's manhood, and in the brave hearts gone to rest before 
 us. Big and loyal hearts gone down with the mighty Vi- 
 kings who quailed not before man or beast, nor before the 
 titanic forces of nature, but fought and conquered from the 
 roaring sea a beautiful land all gold and blue, where they 
 might fight and work, eat and drink and love, and live a 
 brave life that should not make the spirits of their forefathers 
 weep when they turned their sad eyes from the limitless night 
 upon their sons the men of the land of Gold and Blue.
 
 XV 
 COUNTRY COCKNEYS 
 
 NE grey November day a little marsh farmer, 
 his friend, and two hobble-de-hoys natives of 
 the neighbouring parish, where they had lived 
 all their days scaring birds, and tending bul- 
 locks, and leading the drill-horse started off 
 to do a little pheasant shooting in a can* which the two friends 
 had stocked with birds, drawn from the squire's neighbouring 
 coverts, by using currants, raisins, and maize sown broadcast 
 as lures ; for pheasants are w r ayward, and given to wandering 
 afar, whereas the homely partridge will never go far from 
 the place wherein he was bred. 
 
 The farmer, who was a deadly shot, posted himself where 
 he could stop the birds, whilst his friend followed the two 
 lads who acted as beaters. 
 
 The two guns were on the tiptoe of expectation, every 
 nerve on the strain, as they stood with lips open, the better 
 to hear the first rustle caused by their quarry. 
 
 The country lads liked the new work, and beat vigorously 
 at first; but suddenly they seemed to be occupied in studying a
 
 COUNTRY COCKNEYS 49 
 
 clump of bramble bearing unripe fruit, for the season had 
 been cold and wet. 
 
 The guns stood silent as statues, when through the clear, 
 chill air they heard the elder lad say 
 
 ' What be these ? ' 
 
 To which the younger beater replied 
 
 ' You fule, don't you know ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' They be blackberries, then,' retorted the junior. 
 
 * I never knew berries were red when they 're black.' 
 
 * Consarned you for a fule ! they 're allust red when they 're 
 green,' said the younger boy. 
 
 And there were two explosions of laughter from the 
 sportsmen.
 
 XVI 
 BIRD'S SLEEP 
 
 F you have listened to the voices of the night 
 season after season, and you do not look 
 about you keenly, you may infer birds never 
 sleep, and go away like many a philosopher, 
 having seen but one side of the twy-faced 
 shield. For birds do sleep. Need I tell you that the lark 
 sleeps in a grassy form on the marsh bottom, as you shall 
 know by her dung. The wagtails and peewits, too, sleep 
 on the marshes, whilst the little ' blackcaps ' roost where the 
 rats forage in the sedge and rush, dreaming perhaps of the 
 harriers that roost on the wall, or heaps of poled litter 
 that dot the marshland, or on the dry ' hills,' as the slightest 
 elevations in the marshland are called, for all things go by 
 comparison. 
 
 Every hedgerow, too, is filled with sleeping finches ; most 
 empty holes in trees have their living tenants, either wren or 
 tit, and the lower branches of trees afford minstrel thrushes 
 a cosy bed, whilst the reed-beds are warm dormitories for 
 reed-warbler and reed-pheasant, for rail, coot, and water-hen,
 
 BIRD'S SLEEP 51 
 
 and on the open water is a soft bed for fowl and swans, that 
 you may see with their heads curled over their soft backs, 
 floating like ships anchored upon an idle mere. All things 
 must sleep, as all things must die, and these are the two 
 sureties of life.
 
 XVII 
 
 VISIONS 
 
 LAY sleeping in my yacht, and as I slept I 
 dreamt this dream : 
 
 The world was a series of rivers, inter- 
 secting low hills spread out on a flat earth 
 far as eye could reach. I dreamt I was 
 living in a phantom ship, and was not of the world. My ship 
 seemed for ever to be sailing on the grey waterways, and 
 the sun shone and the red-brick houses were reddened across 
 the grey marshes, and my ship was everlastingly wafted over 
 the great waters. 
 
 My ears were filled with delight as I looked upon the 
 birds and flocks and yellow water-plants, and I was filled 
 with peace ; yet whenever my phantom ship drew near those 
 fairy towns on the low hills, my heart quickened, and I would 
 steer the ship to go up amongst the red houses, and land and 
 look about dark corners and into dark doorways and up 
 desolate streets, for I was seeking the faces of women, for 
 they all seemed more beautiful in those red houses than 
 when I saw them working upon the marshland ; that seemed 
 to make them hard and angular. But the soft light under
 
 VISIONS 53 
 
 the roofs seemed to round off their figures and fill their faces 
 with understanding, and in those visits I would meet strange, 
 and often stranger-spoken, men and women and children, 
 dressed in fantastic and grotesque colours that offended me, 
 for I had only known the delicate silver-grey of the heron's 
 back, and the delicate orpiment of the iris, and the pale blue 
 of the skies, and these coarse colours hurt me, as a rough 
 surface passed over the face hurts it But these people 
 brought forth strange fluids in bottles, and some were sweet 
 and good, and they had dainty ways of preparing food that 
 I knew not of; but they were so sluggish and lazy that I 
 noticed they did not enjoy these things as they might have 
 done, and their fat and shapeless bodies told me they ate 
 too much. 
 
 When my senses were lulled by the sweet and pleasant 
 drinks and foods, I to some extent forgot the terrible 
 oppression and blows their crude-coloured and shapeless 
 clothes had given me. I thought in my surfeit that to lead 
 sucli a life might be pleasant ; but I was soon undeceived, for 
 as soon as they had shut their mouths from eating they 
 opened them to bite their neighbours, and all manner of lies 
 and calumnies crawled out, as out of a foul pit ; and they 
 instructed me, and I learned how they were always fighting in 
 a stealthy, womanish way with their tongues, and the black 
 arts of vanity and calumny, for I too liked fighting, but as 
 a man. 
 
 But I saw when I revisited some of the largest of that 
 cluster of houses that the men concealed themselves in the
 
 54 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 same kind of dresses so that they might the better fight their 
 stealthy fight, and they came not armed as a knight, with a 
 blazoned shield, but like a gliding snake, all of one colour. 
 And I watched and saw how men rotted in their cities, as 
 they called these houses, and how they were soft-hearted, and 
 could not bear pain nor fatigue, but ran about like roaring 
 wolves, greedily devouring in the moment women as they 
 did pears for all things to them were labelled to be eaten 
 or not, and most cared only for things to be eaten. And 
 they spent their days in backbiting, and robbing, and 
 struggling to gather up heaps of gold to buy more luscious 
 things, for they dwelt not on the virtue of the thing, but, 
 like ravening animals, tore greedily their food, and adjudged 
 it rich and rare by the number of gold pieces it cost. 
 
 Then I found there were some wiser, who sought none of 
 these things, but they were thin and hungry-looking, like a 
 starved snipe when the wind and frost bind the water-brooks ; 
 but I heard they were accursed with the gift of pale thought, 
 that sicklied o'er their lives, and they told me that these pur- 
 sued a painted moth called Vanity ; for in that strange world 
 some were proud that they should know more than their fellows. 
 
 And I would have learned other things, how the people 
 of these houses thought themselves so superior to the people 
 of the marshes, but they were not; and it is said that one 
 day the men of the marshes intended to arise and burn all 
 the red houses, and take the beautiful women therein and 
 breed up a new race, beautiful and strong, brave and hard, 
 growing like the oaks.
 
 VISIONS 55 
 
 But the men of the houses brag, for they are like unto 
 women in all things, that they have made a thing they call 
 civilisation, and they set great store thereby ; but I found 
 that the more the people lived in the house-clusters the 
 more monstrous and feeble were they, and as I sailed on, 
 in my dream, I found that those were happiest and best 
 who chose to live in the fields, for such became men even 
 though they had been as women in the houses. 
 
 But I too was becoming womanish in the town, and 
 very quickly, for I had begun to talk of dress, and to love 
 to see what every dirty worm who wriggled more than his 
 neighbour did, and I loved strong drink, and could not eat 
 like a man ; and just as my disease broke out, I was snatched 
 back to my ship, and became whole. 
 
 And I suddenly awoke, to find myself rolling backwards and 
 forwards in my boat, for my yacht was beating to windward 
 across a tidal water ; and as I looked round, my lips involun- 
 tarily shaped themselves, and I heard myself mutter 
 
 'Our civilisation is a grotesque failure'; and sweet lips 
 in the saloon said gently 
 
 ' Not whilst there is some one to love ! ' 
 
 And I replied, 'No,' and 'Yes,' 'Yes,' and 'No.' 
 For such is the only answer to any problem, but this 
 waspish, womanish age requires a positive 'Yea' or 'Nay.'
 
 XVITI 
 CUCKOO-TIME 
 
 HE soft breezes, moist and warm, blew from 
 the south-west, filling the air with midges and 
 the marshlands with small brown caterpillars ; 
 the swallows had come for the flickering bands 
 of midges, and the cuckoo's breakfast was 
 awaiting him all unconsciously, for his early food is the 
 brown caterpillar, occasionally varied by a dish of fine, fresh 
 mavis's eggs. 
 
 The sun shone brightly, and the fenland, now growing 
 tinged with green, stretched far away to a distant coppice, 
 all blue in the morning sunshine, when suddenly the first 
 welcome sound echoed through the still, soft landscape, 
 the six clear notes of the blue cuckoo breathed from the 
 sleeping, blue distance, immediately calling to mind 
 the Welsh and English saying, that the cuckoo's voice is 
 not clear until he shall have sucked a number of blue mavis's 
 eggs. The Saxon peasant believes too that his years are 
 numbered even as the number of the cuckoo's notes first 
 heard by him in the springtide.

 
 CUCKOO-TIME 57 
 
 As I listened, again the vibrating echo of his voice sounded 
 in the blue misty trees ; and when the last notes had melted 
 away in the soft music of the breezes, one realised how this 
 strange bird-voice spake the sentiment of the mysterious blue 
 mists.
 
 XIX 
 FINE LADIES 
 
 HEY were fine, well-formed, fresh, good-looking 
 village maidens, and they were being educated 
 to be ladies. Their hard-working father had 
 risen in the world, for his heart, like that of 
 all true men, was in his work. Indeed, his 
 work was his second self, and in this case his dearest self, 
 for his aspirations were neither self-seeking nor spiritual. 
 
 Next to his work he loved his wife, as all good men do. 
 He would have reversed the order in which I placed the 
 objects of his affections, so would most true men, but a 
 man's heart is hidden to himself. 
 
 His wife was a joyous, sensuous woman, all pulse and 
 dash. She loved soft and gay raiment, was naturally refined 
 and possessed of good taste, for to drop an aspirate, or eat 
 peas with her knife, was impossible to this splendidly moulded 
 woman, with hair like bulrush down, and an eye the colour 
 of speedwell. Moreover, she was faithful, and his daughters 
 were his own his very own. This splendid woman was 
 faithful, because she realised for she had brains how her 
 tame and rather methodical husband spent never a farthing
 
 FINE LADIES 59 
 
 on himself, and gave her all his increasing income to lavish 
 on herself and daughters, whilst he went about his tasks 
 in old clothes, like unto those worn in the days of his early 
 struggles ; for habit is the strongest of masters. 
 
 Moreover, this joyous queen was grateful to him in her 
 way ; she never murmured at the dull life led by her in 
 the commonplace little town, but ate, and drank, and 
 dressed richly, and tossed the money about freely, even 
 unto waste. And yet the poor round about prospered : this 
 prodigality blew cold joints and stale bread in plenty to the 
 neighbouring cottages. 
 
 As her children grew up, this darling of the sun, whose 
 fine, smooth features began to mark with crows' feet, spent 
 her time in educating them, for she was determined they 
 should be ladies, though, good soul, she had no more idea 
 what the word meant than the raw Scotsman knows the 
 meaning of wit wut, he would say. 
 
 They were taught to play the piano, and they confused 
 coarse emotions with music, and preferred Offenbach to 
 Beethoven, and ' The Song of the Hall,' to ' The Twa Corbies.' 
 They, too, dressed brightly, neither crudely, primitively, nor 
 in sham aesthetic gowns ; but they could not attain the per- 
 fect tonist in dress, for such an one requires to be born an 
 artist. One would wear a light blue ribbon with brown 
 tailor-made coat, and say it was refined ; but a different shade 
 of brown upon brown was a mystery as hidden to them as 
 the cipher on the stone of Rosetta. Their jewellery was 
 commonplace in manufacture, but not vulgar either in carat
 
 60 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 or quantity. The big mother had too good taste to lend 
 herself unto such trinkets, for instinctively she felt that a 
 gleaming jewel to complete the ensemble of the costume 
 must be used as carefully as a note of colour in a decorative 
 scheme. Indeed, your most artistic people never wear 
 jewellery for its own sake, save when dressed for the 
 evening. Your greatest artist wears no blazing diamonds 
 upon his fingers, but leaves that to coarse beer-sellers and 
 prosperous traders. Suffice it to say, none of them possessed 
 a string of pearls, those perfect jewels when encircling a 
 lovely woman's throat. 
 
 When the large-hearted mother had taught them what 
 she knew that was 'genteel,' they were forbidden to sew or 
 to go into the kitchen under any pretext ; they were sent 
 to school to learn a string of doubtful stories called history ; 
 they were taught geography four pages a day, grammar 
 (Lindley Murray), and other vain matters, and in the fulness 
 of time the proud mother looked upon five jolly, fresh, 
 brightly dressed 'ladies,' who were so educated that they 
 could not sew a button to their gloves, and knew not how 
 to make a cup of tea or boil an egg. But most of all they did 
 not know the value of money ; the father always gave them 
 plenty. 
 
 But alas for the methods of the middle-class! no gentle- 
 man mistook them for ladies ; they could not understand those 
 men who were very jolly, and kind, and humorous, but never 
 offered marriage. 
 
 One day, one the eldest who was really very friendly
 
 FINE LADIES 61 
 
 with an accomplished gentleman, artfully turned the conver- 
 sation on education, and in a subtle way asked how girls 
 should best be trained to become ladies, for she affected an 
 interest in educational matters. 
 
 ' There is but one way,' he said, ' and that 's quite simple, 
 but it's the only way. The pupil must be born and bred 
 amongst ladies and gentlemen.' 
 
 * But that 's impossible for so many,' said the girl calmly. 
 ' What is the best training for them ? ' 
 
 'To be able to sew, cook, and keep house,' he answered ; 
 and turning to her sister he asked, ' Don't you think so, 
 Annie?' 
 
 * Ye-e-s,' she faltered. 
 
 ' Can you sew and cook, Annie ? ' he asked tenderly, 
 taking her lovely hand ; for her fingers tapered, though she 
 was of the plebs. 
 
 ' No-o-o,' she faltered, ashamed for once of her accomplish- 
 ments. 
 
 ' Well, Annie, I love you, darling, and if you will have 
 me 1 11 marry you, but you must learn to sew and cook 
 first.' 
 
 For he too had theories in this experimental age ; he 
 wanted a strong, fresh wife, for, as he said 
 
 'To renovate the stock you must go to the soil.'
 
 XX 
 
 GROWING WEATHER 
 
 HE innkeeper had just muzzled the closely 
 reefed sails of his little mill, that had been 
 crying Tilk-Talk all day, as her rusty and 
 simple machinery threw the water off the 
 slad into the lagoon. The postillions of 
 the storm some big, gleaming drops of water sent him 
 hurriedly to his home amongst the elms, as they galloped 
 past him and brought up with patterings upon my window- 
 pane. 
 
 Closely fastening the transparent glass so that I could, 
 with difficulty, see the tethered mill-sails tugging doggedly 
 at the mooring-rope, which was, however, a stout bit of 
 hemp, I sat in a delightfully artificial, exotic atmosphere, 
 for the little tortoise-stove, with her red mouth open two 
 inches wide, burned with a smothered rage on my right, 
 whilst the storm shrieked and blew in through the inch of 
 window left open to windward. The atmosphere within the 
 boat being a delightfully impartial and tranquil one, the 
 curtain blew idly about the saloon ; the rings rattled, and 
 blocks and ropes on the mast played drum-taps to the merry 
 piping of the wind.

 
 GROWING WEATHER 63 
 
 The marshman had said in the morning that this was 
 'growing weather,' the constituents of which are a warm 
 temperature, rain, and blowy weather, so an oracular old 
 person, wearing a moleskin cap, and complaining of lum- 
 bago, informed me. Yes, he persisted that he had seen 
 turnips and mangolds grow as much (he did not say 
 whether in girth or height) in one day in such weather 
 as they did in a week of mild, ungrowing weather. 
 
 ' The wind work 'em about, that make 'em grow,' he said, 
 with a knowing wink. 
 
 And it is true. I have seen vegetation move, as you 
 may see the short hand of a clock move, after the southerly 
 or south-westerly gale in early spring. But the old man did 
 not know that was a fecundating wind, as the pale flowers 
 of grasses, trees, and other wind-fertilised plants know. 
 
 Moreover, the wind had blown the water across the 
 lagoon, and the water in my narrow mooring bay struck 
 there wider and higher than it did at sunrise. The fury of 
 the squalls at times shook my table, and brought curious and 
 adventurous drops of rain to my paper, but still a fulfar on a 
 marsh holl began to sing its love-song ; the unceasing fury of 
 the storm, however, stopped the beatings of its speckled throat, 
 for the wind is like his brother musicians, filled with jealousy. 
 He was determined no music but his own pipings and drum- 
 mings, his own wave-lappings and wind-cracklings, should be 
 heard ; and yet once or twice the gay storm-cock again and 
 again essayed to add his wild notes to the storm, for a brave 
 heart, though enslaved, is never killed.
 
 XXI 
 
 DROPPED EGGS 
 
 S you wander over the green marshland in 
 early spring, when the dikes are sprinkled 
 with the water- crowsfoot, and the beautiful 
 yellow wagtails cleave the air like living 
 flames, you may find dropped eggs eggs 
 unnested, unattended, uncared for little pledges of love, 
 dropped secretly, or in haste, in some lonely corner. You 
 may find the eggs of nearly every ordinary bird dropped in 
 this mysterious manner, an you make these foundlings the 
 subject of statistical inquiries, as do curious men. You will 
 find the most immoral of birds are the mavises, blackbirds, 
 storm-cocks, robins, hedge-sparrows, house-sparrows (I can 
 believe anything of them), reed buntings, yellow wagtails, 
 sedge-warblers, reed-warblers, starlings and larks, and you will, 
 by the same standard of life, find the snipe and cuckoo the most 
 moral of birds, they never drop any eggs carelessly in sly 
 corners.
 
 XXII 
 GOLD AND BRONZE 
 
 LL day we had sailed through a bright, cold 
 landscape, for the wind had blown across the 
 eastern sandhills from rosy morn, almost with- 
 out change ; though there were stray puffs 
 from other points of the horizon, puffs that 
 made our scarlet vane hesitate and turn from the orient, and 
 at the same time made the great white sail flop. These 
 wandering breaths were inconstant and short-blown, and soon 
 the tin lady with the great bunch of flowers was indicating 
 the east, and the sail was full and drawing on our sheet, 
 making the boat heel over and bubble over the tideway. 
 
 And when the yellow sun began to bulge behind the trees, 
 a flood of yellow light bathed the marshland, streaming on 
 the bronze-gold crops of the flat-land. Then was the world 
 transfigured. The blue rims of fairy-like trees yellowed, the 
 mills gilded with refined gold, the golden mill-sails, tinged 
 with silvery grey, fluttered like the wings of some fantastic 
 bird. Even the bronze marsh-gates were bathed in an 
 ethereal golden vapour, and the land was a harmony in gold 
 and bronze, a metallic chef-d'oeuvre of the east wind. 
 
 i
 
 XXIII 
 CONSCIENCE MUCK-RAKE 
 
 ANY years ago Farmer Mason was a pro- 
 sperous flockmaster, and Jesse Jakes was a 
 shrewd amateur horse-dealer and poacher. 
 But a broken river-wall, floods and fluke, 
 ruined the flockmaster, and he left Hasemere. 
 On the other hand, Jakes saved money enough to take a 
 little farm, and he became a respectable church-goer, voting 
 always for the Tories. 
 
 One little matter weighed on his conscience: he had 
 stolen a muck-rake from Farmer Mason in the old days. 
 Years after, Farmer Mason, after a hard battle, returned to 
 Hasemere and took a small farm next to Jakes's land, the 
 two farmers' houses facing each other. Upon old Michael- 
 mas Day the farmer moved in, and Jakes was very neigh- 
 bourly, lending a hand in unpacking the van, and helping all 
 he could. And every day he asked Farmer Mason if he 
 didn't want a muck-rake. 
 
 At last the farmer had need of the tool, and Jakes hur- 
 ried off with a delighted face and brought back Farmer 
 Mason's old muck-rake, telling him he was welcome to it 
 And Jakes was a happier man ever afterwards,
 
 XXIV 
 A NIGHT WALK IN EARLY SPRING 
 
 PRIL 4th. Spring had come in dry and bright, 
 and the sere marshes and green reeds looked 
 thirsty in the setting sun, as they stood like 
 sentinels along the river-banks, looking out 
 for the first swallows, which had that evening 
 
 flown in from the sea, and hawked low for the midges circling 
 
 about the reed-stalks. 
 
 It was midnight as I passed through the wood, already 
 turning green under the hot, bright day, but never a sound 
 could I hear. No animal called ; not a cock-pheasant moved 
 restlessly ; no sitting wild-duck left the carr ; the very silence 
 of the moonlit night filled one's senses with a primeval thrill 
 of alertness, such as must have filled the hearts of our 
 ancestors when some savage beast rushed from its lair in 
 the peaceful wood; but nothing could I hear till I left the 
 wood, and walked along the marsh-wall towards the mist- 
 masked river. As I walked along beneath the dim light the 
 dikes gleamed and resounded with frogs disturbed in their 
 nocturnal love embraces. So quick were they that the silent,
 
 68 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 dusky waters were dimpled in countless places, and lo ! the 
 slimy creatures were gone to the weedy depths. As I walked 
 on, the bare willows seemed to sleep peacefully and brightly, 
 and one walked by softly, as if afraid to waken them. They 
 took on human attributes in the misty moonlight, their 
 hard contours and feathery crowns softened into an ethereal 
 effeminacy that charmed. Away across the marsh a white 
 cloud of mist lay heavy, and reached up half-mast on the 
 wherries, gliding noiselessly along the silent waterway. 
 
 . . . As T stepped from the quaking bog to my boat, a 
 speckled owl flew heavily so fairy-like and stilly was the 
 misty night, shrieking over the reed-tops.
 
 XXV 
 
 A SAD DOCUMENT 
 
 HE was a fair rose, as fair, refined, and dis- 
 tinguished as the gay pink anemone blooms, 
 frilled with white petals, that stood on a 
 table beside her. 
 
 We were sitting on a sofa talking when 
 she arose and, going to a drawer, took thence a coarsely printed 
 red-bound pamphlet, upon which a rudely engraved bee-hive 
 stood surrounded by crudely cut flowers. 
 
 * Why,' she asked, ' does this pamphlet always make me 
 sad when I look upon it ? ' 
 
 I took it, turned the thing about and about, and dis- 
 covered that it was the prize-list of the St. Joseph Cottage 
 Garden Society for the previous year. As I looked into it, 
 I too -felt the sordidness of the thing : the lists of patrons, 
 committees, judges, and prize-winners obscure persons of 
 undoubted respectability speaking the vanitas vanitatum. As 
 I pondered on these names I could imagine the heart-burnings 
 many must have had when a second-rate country surgeon's 
 wife was made Lady President, or when an upstart landlord 
 was made Vice-President, or when the Rev. Archer Burne-
 
 70 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 Smith's wife was put upon the Ladies' Committee. Then 
 when I came upon the name of an impudent busybody who, 
 though a surgeon, called himself Dr. Jones, sprinkled over 
 half a dozen pages of print, I knew why the organ of this 
 inoffensive and well-intentioned Cottage Gardener's Society 
 was so offensive : it was the petty Debrett of a petty parish 
 the parish book of snobs. And since my high-born lady 
 friend despised the legends of the real Debrett, it was no 
 matter for wonder that the petty wrigglings of the village 
 worms should sadden her noble soul. 
 
 This much I told her, and her smiles returned as she said 
 simply 
 
 ' Beautiful souls have no Debrett ; everybody is equal 
 before the Goddess of Love.'
 
 XXVI 
 A LANDSCAPE 
 
 WAS lying in some warm bents on a salting, 
 and breathing the warm air of the spring- 
 tide, looking up into the boundless fading 
 azure, my burning cheeks fanned by the 
 tonic dry and cool east wind that blew up 
 the tideway, raising the greenish waters into frothy waves, 
 and ruffling the feathers of the flocks of widgeon that flashed 
 in waves upon the shallows, the watchman whistling his soft 
 ' All 's well ' as they fed upon the marine grasses, or preened 
 their feathers, or watched the great gulls feeding on the 
 mud-worms. For the tide was ebbing, leaving great tracts 
 of wrack-strown slub, stretching on either side of the bleached 
 and green posts, beacons of the channel to the fairy, red-tiled 
 old fishing-town, lifted in the heated air high out of the 
 green, and flashing above the tide like a misty, red-petalled 
 flower, and all the air was filled with the savour and odours 
 of salt wrack. And the landscape seemed to be a dream, for 
 the white-hot sun made all the scene burn, and palpitate, 
 and flash, and whirl round and round, as do the dust particles 
 in a shimmering beam of light, and the wild cries of the
 
 72 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 gulls transported one to a fairy world where all was topsy- 
 turvy, for a mirage was on the flats, and one was whirled 
 away into a palpitating world, where all things were lovely 
 and impalpable, yet full of delicious colour, and life, and 
 motion a magic world where dwelt the joyous spirits of 
 all earthly things spiritual worlds, flats, cities, and lands 
 the pale and sweet-coloured souls of things that had been. 
 . And such are sweet memories.
 
 XXVII 
 THE TWO WAYS 
 
 |E were sailing before a stiff breeze when I grew 
 drowsy and lay down on the berth. The soft 
 rocking of the ship as I rolled gently from 
 one side to the other, the pleasant creaking 
 of the bulkhead, and the wash of the waves 
 outside, all lulled me into a delightful sleep that I shall 
 never forget, for the last thing remembered by me was that 
 I was being borne through space on the wings of the wind. 
 And then I dreamt I saw a lovely woman clad in delicate 
 orpiment, with a purple crown of flowers round her dark 
 locks ; in her right hand she carried a scarlet poppy, and 
 in her left was a spray reft from a birch-tree. She seemed 
 to float before my eyes, her yellow garb burning with a 
 deeper, redder glow, and she held her hands towards me 
 and said 
 
 * My son, choose.' 
 And I dreamt she added 
 
 'The poppy is the emblem of success, and the possessor 
 shall be bright and distinguished before the eyes of men ; but 
 he who chooses the poppy must first press the juice from 
 
 K
 
 74 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 the stem and drink, for his soul must be fettered in sleep 
 or ever the charm worketh. But to him that holdeth the 
 birchen emblem there is no fame, and his path shall be hard, 
 even unto death, for he must live ever for his ideal, and not 
 in glorious riches, as the possessors of the poppy, and he has 
 no reward; and if he be not reviled of men, yet shall he 
 get no fame, nor shall his name be in men's mouths, but he 
 shall have ever a green strength, for the virtue will never 
 depart from the birchen twig, and that shall be his only 
 reward, that he may live for his ideal. 
 
 'Now choose, my son,' said the beautiful lady with the 
 shining face, and she held both hands towards me ; and I 
 heard myself make answer in a far-off voice 
 
 ' Sweet lady, when I was yet a child, a fair lady wove 
 a birchen wreath for me, and she placed it with her own 
 dainty hands upon my head, so I had no choice.' 
 
 And the lady smiled a sweet smile. 
 
 * But your choice, what is your choice, my son ? ' 
 And I felt troubled in my sleep, and said 
 
 * Sweet lady, the white milk of the poppy is sweet, but 
 the green sap of the birch is sweeter.' 
 
 And I felt the white arms of the fair woman around me, 
 and she pressed me to her glowing bosom, where I forgot all 
 things until I was awakened by a crashing noise. The sail 
 had jibed.
 
 XXVIII 
 
 RETURN OF SPRING 
 
 ARCH, the month of cold winds and hail- 
 storms and wind -frosts, was half spent. 
 April, the moon of cold, hard, easterly 
 winds, alternating with south-westerly skies, 
 of rime-frosts and sparkling sheet-ice, was 
 Hearing. 
 
 For many a day the hard blue sky, covering the colour- 
 less reedy landscape and pale sere marshes, had glared over- 
 head, making the waters look hard and blue and clear, and 
 silencing the love-songs of the birds, making them shrink and 
 huddle together in the withered tatters of last summer's lush 
 crops. 
 
 But last night the yellow moon made the rime-powder 
 sparkle on the dried plant-skeletons of the flats, and this 
 morning flakes of fairy ice, in fairy pictures, grew from my 
 window-panes. I could feel before I arose that a south- 
 westerly wind was blowing. My skin was no longer dry and 
 smooth like the reed-stalks, but swollen out and modelled ; 
 the light and shade played in and out of the little hollows 
 and hillocks on my arm, and all the fluids of my body seemed
 
 76 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 to flow wildly and healthily through my body, just as the sap 
 was rising in the young plants on the marshland. 
 
 As I dressed, I could hear from my window the voices of 
 the birds over the marshland ; larks were carolling, and over 
 there by the grey-green willow-carrs snipe laughed, and away 
 by that tossing reedy bed, crooning plaintively, were the frogs 
 in the dikes, who croaked and crooned their soft love-songs, 
 so long silent But when I peeped forth into the fairy scene 
 my heart leapt within me. In the river before me the water 
 was richer and softer in colour ; it looked like a living fluid 
 now, where fish might spawn, and not like unto the icy cold 
 mixture of gases, seen in the frail alembics of the laboratory. 
 
 But all round my horizon the landscape gleamed with 
 living colour ; the poor shrunken landscape of yesterday, with 
 its hard details, was now a fairy scene under the magic 
 touches of the dew and mist, and caressing south-westerly 
 wind. 
 
 Far away over the water, reeds that now appeared to 
 grow in picturesque clumps peeped with dark tassels over 
 the delicately blue trees in the uplands, forming a harmony 
 indescribable, a delicacy of colour inimitable. 
 
 And now the greenish -blue clumps of marshland had 
 grown more impressive and beautiful ; the hard little coppice 
 of yesterday was now a gorgeous fairy wood rising into 
 the ambient air, and soft fleecy clouds floated across the 
 pale, vapouring, grey-blue sky. 
 
 And as one looked over the noble harmonious scene 
 spreading beyond, to the foot of the land, the eye would settle
 
 RETURN OF SPRING 77 
 
 for a moment, here and there, on an exquisite little picture, 
 some marsh farm, seen behind a decorative fringe of reed 
 tassel, palpitating in its blue envelope of transfiguring mist. 
 
 Then, turning away towards the softly sounding sea, the 
 sandhills showed a wan white above the green fields of the 
 marshland, and through all and over all the sweet- voiced 
 birds sang. Even the sluggish rivers and waterways meandered 
 with the mysterious pulse of life, and at our feet the pulse beat 
 of life through the world, for warm and living spring had 
 escaped from the chill grip of the wintry east wind. And one 
 could not forget that it was on this day many years ago 
 that a brave man died that the world might be filled with 
 love ; nor did he perish in vain, as the peaceful landscape 
 with its magic beauty and safe retreats has proved, for 
 by love, fellowship, and bravery alone were these waters 
 reclaimed from the sea and the wild lands tilled.
 
 XXIX 
 
 A SON OF THE VIKINGS 
 
 E was a bright, blue-eyed, red-bearded young 
 marshman, athletic and strong of limb, and 
 long of wind. 
 
 A tallow-faced youth from the city 
 stopped, and asked him in soft voice the 
 way to the village. 
 
 He replied quickly, and, going on his way, remarked 
 'I don't like them white-faced Londoners. I like to see a 
 man with a brown skin, one who looks as though he could 
 eat a jackass and a skepful of greens.' 
 
 ' Would you have him eat the jackass raw ? ' I asked. 
 1 Raw ? yes ; I Ve eaten raw beef and pork long ago a good 
 many times, when I Ve been to sea. When we had our fresh 
 stock come aboard, you see the chaps out knives, and cut off 
 a slice of the boilings and put into their mouth, and off they 
 go about their work. And that go high too . . . but that 
 make men short in the temper.'
 
 XXX 
 
 THE STRAY TURTLE-DOVE 
 
 HEY had bought him a new cage, and he 
 seemed proud of it, for he cried, * Cook is a 
 rogue,' with a louder voice, and ate more 
 maize. 
 
 He was a handsome bird, with his ashen 
 upper parts and twy-patched neck and cinnamon mantel 
 stretching down to his white under-parts, that led away down 
 his tail-feather shafts, and on to their broad white tips. 
 
 Near by was the old box, latticed with rough pieces of 
 lath, wherein he had spent the bitter winter. His cage faced 
 the cold south-east face of the sky, where, in the winter 
 nights, blazed the frosty constellations. 
 
 His only covering had been a coarse-webbed sack thrown 
 over his rude cage, yet leaving two lath spaces open to the 
 cold, keen breath of the winter ; but the yellow maize, ripened 
 beneath the tropical sun, seemed to give him all the fire 
 he required to battle with the frigid season, and the laths kept 
 the hungry rats and stoats from his warm body. 
 
 Already the bird had taken the daughter's place, for she 
 had left her native home with her young husband but three
 
 80 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 months, when the strange turtle-dove flew down to the clump 
 of cottages by the mill, and sat upon a post turning his re- 
 gards to the poultry feeding on corn before the door. The 
 miller passed and the bird heeded not, so the old man turned 
 and looked upon him, for it was November, and most turtle- 
 doves had left the fen-land. Still the bird did not move, so 
 he approached it and tried to take the warm feathers and 
 elegant creature into his brawny fist ; but the bird, like a coy 
 maiden, eluded his grasp and dropped lazily to the ground. 
 
 Mindful of the ways of maidens he ran in for his lures, 
 the maize and an eel-net, and scattering the grain before the 
 bird, he saw it eat. Then to capture it was an easy task, 
 and to imprison it in the hastily made cage the natural 
 consequence. . . . And now it is as one of the family, and 
 no price is fixed upon its head, nor ever will be by the old 
 miller.
 
 XXXI 
 
 THE MAY MOON 
 
 |HE burning sun had worked all through the 
 mild and lovely day, swelling the buds of the 
 elms, unfolding the curved haw thorn -leaves, 
 brightening the pink clusters on the show 
 currants, springing the daisies, paling the 
 cuckoo-flowers, and adding a brighter lustre to the flaming 
 yellows of the marsh-marigolds. 
 
 At sunset the orb went down a golden ball bulged at the 
 sides, the yellow turning to a blood-red in the greying sky, 
 and for a moment the tossing reed-tassels and the glowing 
 red ball formed an enchanting natural decoration. But, lo! 
 as one watched, the soft greys began to steal over the distant 
 trees, the moon arose, facing the sinking sun, and the two 
 bright spots in the heavens were throwing their magic lights 
 upon the scene at the same moment. But as the sun sank 
 below the sloping reeds the landscape all around was seen 
 hung with cobweb grey, a curtain so light and airy that the 
 smoke rising from the near vessels passing without the sand- 
 hills seemed coarse and dark in comparison. 
 
 Then all the landscape was filled with a sweet and restful 
 
 L
 
 82 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 peace, and softly wreaths of grey vapour arose from the 
 heated waters and ronds, and formed floating vignettes of the 
 most delicate, flawless, gossamer-like materials, and the silence 
 was so profound that for a moment the world seemed to 
 doze ; but this still scene, with its delicate mist, only seemed 
 the clearer to accentuate the sounds coming over the distant 
 plains, the hoarse barkings of a watch-dog at a marsh farm, 
 the voices of children playing in a distant village. 
 
 Then these sounds died away, and the birds' evensongs 
 filled the air ; cuckoos called from the mists, all making that 
 peculiar rolling heard in the courting season ; reed-buntings 
 sang low, short, sweet notes, nor was their music drowned 
 by the plaintive calls of a male lapwing or the laughing of a 
 snipe, as it circled round and round over its nursery. There, 
 in the solemn silence, one could hear the curious distant 
 'aho ho ho,' as the lowing herd walked slowly across the 
 marsh-wall homewards. Again there was a solemn silence, 
 broken presently by a whistling redleg, the short notes of the 
 elegant yellow wagtail, and cheerful twitterings of the sedge- 
 warblers. 
 
 Softly the whitening mists entirely veiled the fading 
 distance mills, villages, farms, trees were gone, and though 
 the ships on the sea were just ringing their evening bells, still 
 the birds sang on ; and as I listened I heard for the first time 
 that year the ticking song of the grasshopper-warbler sung 
 beneath the waxing moon that was silvering the gossamer 
 wrapped round the horizon. 
 
 But gradually the birds settled to sleep in their misty
 
 THE MAY MOON 83 
 
 beds, though many were restless, and awoke at intervals to 
 twitter or sing a sleepy note ; but as their little throats were 
 hushed in slumber the frogs took up the chorus, and they 
 crooned sleepy lullabies to the birds far into the night, till 
 the sleepless cocks called from farm to farm whilst the May 
 moon reached her plenitude, and was in a second of time 
 already on the wane so peaceful are the workings of 
 Nature.
 
 XXXII 
 
 THE WAYS OF WOMAN 
 
 IM, the big blue-eyed, sandy-haired marsh- 
 man, had been paring the banks of the 
 parallel dikes, and cleaning out the green, 
 slimy, cloth-like masses of lamb's-tail all the 
 March morning, working hard in mud and 
 slimy gutters, so that the stupid Irish cattle should see 
 the dike-edge, and not tumble in when they went to feed 
 along the rushy shores. 
 
 As the yellow evening sun turned the landscape to gold, 
 Jim shouldered his scythe and crome for his work in the 
 dike was done, rubbed down his great wrinkled tall boots 
 with a wisp of dry rushes, and went walking home in the 
 golden light to his cottage among the bare apple-trees, 
 stopping on the way by an old dike wall to unearth a buried 
 hare caught in one of his looking-glasses the night before. 
 
 When he reached home, tired out and later than usual, 
 his hard-working wife, neatly clad in black, with a clean, 
 white apron, had put the children to bed, and was busy 
 cooking some herring and making some cocoa for his 
 supper.
 
 THE WAYS OF WOMAN 85 
 
 As the big man entered, the woman looked up and said, 
 ' Where have you been all this time, you great piece of a 
 man ?' 
 
 'Been? To work. Where do you think I should have 
 been ? ' answered the marshman shortly. 
 
 ' Have you cleaned your boots ? ' 
 
 'Yes; rubbed them on the mat,' Jim answered as he 
 walked across the clean-scrubbed brick floor to the airy back- 
 house, where he began to wash. 
 
 The quick-eyed wife watched the great fellow walk 
 through the room, and seeing some bits of mud left by his 
 boots, she shouted out 
 
 ' I thought you had cleaned your boots, bor ! ' 
 
 ' So I did,' mumbled the man through his towel. 
 
 'Yes that looks something like it on the floor; come 
 you in and look at the bricks.' 
 
 ' Ay ; I shall have to pull my boots off in the shed, and 
 shift them altogether before I come in, I expect,' grumbled 
 Jim. 
 
 ' Yes ; and that's the proper place to do it' 
 
 ' Oh, all right,' said Jim, coming in and sitting down to 
 the table on which the savoury bloaters gleamed. 
 
 As they were eating their simple meal, some one knocked 
 at the door. 
 
 'Come in,' cried the wife, and a stout, black-faced man 
 opened the door and stood hesitating in the doorway. 
 
 He was Jim's brother-in-law. As he would not enter, 
 his sister cried
 
 86 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 * Well come in, don't stand there ; it is cold.' 
 
 ' But my feet are dirty,' said he, looking down at his boots. 
 
 ' Oh, you 7/ never hurt my house come in,' and the fat 
 man stepped in and dropped awkwardly into the nearest 
 chair, while a grim smile passed over Jim's weather-beaten 
 features. 
 
 'I come to ask you to lend me your brewing- tub,' said 
 the man. 
 
 ' You 're welcome,' said his sister. 
 
 ' Well, I '11 take it now, if I may ; I 'm in a hurry.' 
 
 'Yes, it's in the back-house, go you and get it.' 
 
 The stout man tramped heavily across the room, leaving 
 heavy mud-flakes all along his track, and they heard him 
 take the tub and disappear through the back-door. 
 
 When the door was shut Jim looked over to his wife, 
 his eyes twinkling, and said 
 
 ' Yes, that 's how you do. You are always down on 
 pillgarlic ; but if there be a stranger come to the door, it is, 
 " Oh ! you 7/ never hurt my house." ' 
 
 ' Of course, a stranger isn't one's husband.' 
 
 And big Jim smiled somewhat bitterly.
 
 XXXIII 
 
 YOUNG LIFE 
 
 HEN Man disturbs natural laws he gains in 
 one way and loses in another. 
 
 I watched a goose, with her brood of fluffy 
 yellow goslings three days from the shell, 
 eating grass and following the gander across 
 the rough dry ground. They were quite healthy, for the 
 farmer had never fed them from the first; but there were 
 only three goslings, because the careful housewife had taken 
 each egg as it was laid, to keep it safely from the hands of 
 the farm-boys, and the shells had become dry and hard by 
 the time they were returned to the nest of down and straw 
 when the full complement was laid, so that the native warmth 
 and moisture from the sitting goose brought off only the 
 last laid eggs. But even the three children were far too 
 large a family for the hissing gander, for he would stop at 
 times in the bright sunlight, and give the little yellow head 
 nearest him a terrible peck with his hard and spatulous bill. 
 I remember seeing a proud old gander kill his only son in 
 this way some years ago upon a rushy common, and the 
 mother in nowise resented the crime.
 
 88 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 As I walked into the lamb-pens, where the woolly orphans 
 of the flock were fed from a large baby's bottle, the little 
 flock of lambs ran to me ; but when the shepherd's boy 
 appeared with the glistening bottle, they left me and ran 
 to him, following him round the yard as they would have 
 done their dam such is the love they bear their feeders, a 
 fact worthy the regard of streaming-eyed sentimentalists. 
 
 I saw the shepherd whetting his knife, and then suspected 
 the glass bottle was used upon this occasion merely as a 
 decoy, for soon the shepherd had seized a strong young tup, 
 some three weeks old, and holding it in his arms with its 
 back towards him, I saw the old shepherd with a deft cut 
 amputate the sac, and pressing the glistening root-like testes 
 from their beds, he seized each one between his teeth and 
 drew it forth by the root, as one draws a young radish from 
 the ground, and the lamb wriggled once or twice, and was 
 placed upon the ground a eunuch. Then with a quick 
 stroke of the knife the creature was deprived of its tail, when 
 it walked out of the shed and stood in a dazed fashion in 
 the sun, looking back, as if expecting some further surgery. 
 The little animal shivered once or twice, and its hind-quarters 
 seemed to contract and draw up, its ears falling backwards 
 on its stretched-out head. Then it moved a few steps 
 forward ; its hind-legs were partly paralysed, and seemed to 
 drag after like the legs of the wounded lion in Assyrian 
 bas-reliefs. A few drops of blood fell on to its fleece (senti- 
 mentalists should weep here) ; but alas ! as the boy appeared 
 with the feeding-bottle the lamb forgot its little woes,
 
 YOUNG LIFE 89 
 
 and ran after him with ears shot forward and loosely closed 
 mo uths, as happy as the proud Bantam cockerel that flew with 
 a rakish air upon the quickly greening hedge surrounding the 
 sheep-pen. 
 
 In a paddock, two of the ewes I had seen the previous 
 night lying, great with young, in the moonlit straw, were 
 now suckling their new-born lambs, one of them rearing 
 the little offspring of a fever-stricken ewe as 'lovingly' as 
 her own children; and such is the 'filial' love of animals 
 a mere instinct that compels them to love, and cherish, 
 and follow a glass bottle as they would their own dam ; 
 and such the parental love of the gander, that is ever ready 
 to peck his intrusive offspring to death ; and such is the 
 maternal love of the brute, a mere instinct, that compels 
 the female to protect the young creatures in her sight, 
 and to offer them the breast for her own relief. But in the 
 fulfilment of such instincts the*' bird and brute may feel, 
 proportionately to their instincts, as deep-seated a satisfaction 
 as when the young mother suckles her babe; the young woman, 
 however, is richer than they in experience and emotion, 
 and she is sicklied o'er with foresight and retrospection, 
 attributes the sentimentalists would ascribe to the lower 
 brutes. But such are justified of their aesthetic emotions, 
 and Landseer is their god, while some not sentimentalists 
 prefer to worship the lions of an unknown Egyptian.
 
 XXXIV 
 BLACKTHORN WINTER 
 
 PRIL 15th. The first trembling little martin, 
 the early purple-breasted swallow, and the 
 white-banded cliff-martin had all arrived, and 
 hawked for the early flies over the warming 
 waters. 
 
 In the budding coppice the speckled mavis and hen 
 blackbird sat on their precious eggs in their warm nests, 
 and even the tomtit was weaving his green bower in a 
 hollow tree, and in the high leafless elms overhead the 
 rooks were sitting on their blue eggs. Down by the water- 
 side the pike and perch had deposited their eggs, and left 
 them to the sun to hatch, near the shallows where the water- 
 rails and moor-hens were already hatching their rusty-spotted 
 eggs in warm nests made of gladen and sedge, as they sat 
 still contemplating the wavelets lapping up to the low shore. 
 
 The peewit could hear the snipe bleating over the hole in 
 the ground where his mate's dark blotched eggs lay ; yet winter 
 was to come, though the blackthorn in warm, cosy corners 
 amongst the grass was powdered with the first white petals, 
 and the sun had blazed down from the blue sky, sending
 
 BLACKTHORN WINTER 91 
 
 the bright mercury thread in the glass thermometer to blood- 
 heat. Yet the nor'-easters came with force, snow-squalls 
 racing in speckled clouds athwart the brindled marshland, 
 contending with the storm and dancing before the reeds 
 driven before the wind ; for as you looked at the storm, with 
 your back to it, the colour of the marshland was deeper and 
 richer, and your heart danced with delight as your ears 
 were filled with the roar of the approaching squalls, and the 
 quiet crackling, like the beaded skirt of a dancing-girl, as 
 the snow-wreaths fell into the muffled river and melted. 
 
 The racing squalls grew faster and more furious, dancing 
 over the reddish rushes until they faded away into a bright 
 luminous haze, where the marsh and sky met in a light halo 
 shining before the reed-tassels potently swayed to and fro 
 by the storm. And throughout the wild scene piped the 
 restless redshank, for his is the voice of the snow-spirit on 
 the marshland ; and as you turned your face sideways, with 
 your right cheek to the storm, following him as he darted 
 through the strong lines of white, you saw there was a deli- 
 cate grey and luminous distance in that direction, and clouds 
 of snow swept like smoke across the distance, and the mills 
 and cottages loomed and rose into the grey, formless void, 
 looking like fairy palaces and spires floating on a luminous 
 mist, for the snow-squalls transfigured the distance, and you 
 saw a novel and lovely mirage across the brindled marshland. 
 
 And so passed the brief blackthorn winter, leaving behind 
 frosted figures on the dead grasses, and white streaks upon 
 the rushes.
 
 XXXV 
 
 A LITTLE LEARNING IS A 
 DANGEROUS THING 
 
 HE town of Reedmere was blessed with a 
 vestry, and according to Norfolk custom the 
 date for an Easter vestry-meeting was duly 
 fixed. When the day arrived the ground 
 was white with snow, and a fierce nor'-easter 
 was blowing, bringing snow-squalls in from the North Sea. 
 
 The newly elected vestryman walked through the storm 
 to the church. When he stepped inside the cold, gloomy 
 vestry he found the place deserted ; indeed, the white, smooth 
 snow in the churchyard bore no footprints. 
 
 As the new vestryman knocked the snow from his boots 
 the surveyor arrived, then the timid squire, who was so 
 reserved that busybodies did not know he kept a heronry ; 
 indeed, his breeding-place for these splendid silver-grey birds 
 was not given in the usual catalogues. After him the over- 
 seer arrived and began to talk of the coal strike. Four out 
 of five vestrymen were now present, all sitting with long 
 pinched faces in the cold cellar-like room, waiting for the 
 parson. But he did not come, and the snow crackled against
 
 A LITTLE LEARNING IS DANGEROUS 93 
 
 the primitive saints blazoned in crude colours in the windows. 
 The timid squire could stand the discomfort no longer, so he 
 deputed the overseer to go and call the parson. 
 
 After some delay the overseer returned with the parson, 
 who wore his buskins and hat, attired as if bound for a journey. 
 As he walked in and shook hands with the squire, nodding 
 to the other potentates, he said breezily 
 
 ' Oh, I really forgot there was a meeting ; I was just going 
 to start for the station, but the snow is rather deep.' 
 
 The squire coughed in a nervous manner, and rubbed his 
 tingling hands as the parson sat down before the simple table, 
 apologising, before beginning business, that the stove had not 
 been lit that should be done without fail the following year. 
 Then looking over to the new vestryman, he said unctuously, 
 ' Mr. James, we have held these meetings amicably for twenty 
 years, and I trust nothing will mar our pleasant relations. 
 We generally decide quickly on our new men, and we will 
 proceed to elect our overseer, surveyor, and parish constable.' 
 The new member said nothing, as the old gang were returned, 
 and the dear old times were kept up. 
 
 But the new vestryman had been elected on to the school 
 board as well, and when he found the parson, as he expressed 
 it, * bossing ' the school board as well, his conscience pricked 
 him, as we shall see. 
 
 For a time came when the town of Reedmere had to 
 decide upon technical education, since they were offered it, 
 and the parson, as chairman of the school board, called a
 
 94 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 meeting. His daughters highly ' cultured ' young ladies, as 
 they thought, fresh from South Kensington were pre- 
 sent. 
 
 And when the question arose as to what should be taught 
 the peasantry, the eldest girl said precisely 
 
 ' We should elevate the populace by teaching them wood- 
 carving.' 
 
 'Yes,' seconded Lucinda, an amateur water-colourist, 
 ' and painting.' 
 
 The new vestryman fidgeted in his chair, for he was 
 one of the people, and knew their mind. 
 
 ' I think, sir, the populace would prefer rough car- 
 pentering.' 
 
 * Yes, yes,' stammered the squire, * I was thinking so 
 myself. It is, I th in k k, a work of time to teach 
 poor people an art even in amateur fashion. I beg to 
 propose a meeting be called and the people be allowed to 
 choose their subject.' 
 
 The simple and inexperienced, artless young ladies pro- 
 tested. However, the squire's motion was carried, and the 
 wise people chose for themselves, and the subject was gar- 
 dening, or ' horticulture,' as the new vestryman called it with 
 a touch of pompousness.
 
 XXXVI 
 
 THE COCK AND HEN 
 
 T was cool there beneath the rustling willow- 
 leaves, from whose green faces the sunshine 
 poured and fell on the dry, sandy soil, where 
 the hens were basking. There were spotless 
 white Dorkings and silver-laced Wyandottes, 
 black Minorcas and the blue ladies of Andalusia, prolific 
 in eggs. 
 
 But most of all my attention was attracted to a proud 
 young Dorking cock, who had just espied a magnificent 
 Langshan hen, that morning arrived at the farm. She was 
 feeding beneath a willow when he saw her for the first time, 
 and he was transfixed. Then he looked about him doubt- 
 fully, then sidled up to her and began to pick on the ground, 
 casting cock's-eyes at her, but she would none of him, and 
 kept her back to him. Seeing she was cold, he at length 
 dashed forward and began to pick by her side ; but she raised 
 her crest, loosened her wings, and lowered her head in a 
 threatening manner, quite throwing him off his guard, for 
 he began to pick nervously at the ground, still keeping one 
 eye on her. But she walked contemptuously away, when he
 
 96 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 stood for a moment, looking after her, with one leg raised in 
 air and his claw half-closed, finishing up with a loud crow 
 of disappointment or derision. 
 
 I have seen the same spectacle enacted between man 
 and woman.
 
 XXXVII 
 
 VOICES OF THE NIGHT 
 
 N you wander on the lush marshland on a still 
 summer night beneath the starlit sky you 
 will hear all round you the voices of the 
 night singing-birds. The canary-like sedge- 
 warbler babbles in joyous song from yon 
 sallow islet in antiphone to the sweeter-voiced and more 
 precise reed-warbler, who makes the reed-bed ring with his 
 song ; suddenly, close by you, sounds the mysterious clicking 
 of the grasshopper-warbler, and whilst you are listening, 
 wondering at the strange song, a nighthawk flutters by over 
 the reed-bed shrieking, and startling a water-rail, that begins 
 to whistle softly, 'whio, whio.' Then follows a lull, and you 
 hear mice working in the stuff by your side; and as you 
 listen a corncrake begins his cheap-jack-like vesper on yonder 
 green marsh ; but his distant voice is chorused by the harsh 
 ' frank-frank ' of a heron, and the plaintive plovers calling 
 ' three hillocks a week, week arter week,' as they gleam 
 to and fro in the rising moonlight, awaking the red-legs that 
 fly round and round their nests whistling 'a-love, a-love,' 
 and as you stop bewitched with the wild marsh notes a
 
 98 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 droning snipe wheels round in the starsome sky, laughing 
 wildly as he drops down the air over his sitting mate. Then 
 there comes a lull, mayhap, and suddenly a cuckoo begins to 
 call from yonder planting reflected in the still mere, remind- 
 ing you that you have only ten years to live an you believe 
 the old woman's rockstaff; and the cuckoo seems to waken the 
 ringdove that begins to croon to the moon gliding through 
 the trees of the water-side carr, where you may hear the 
 watery tribe of teal and duck whistling and cackling to the 
 moon. And a marsh-owl screams, and the frogs begin their 
 intermittent chorus, hushing, mayhap, just as a water-hen 
 calls a loud cr r ook, or a coot flies with cries from his 
 nest, driven forth by a hungry stoat. A horse snuffles near 
 you, and again peace descends on the marshland, and only 
 the cry of the sea is heard away over the sand-dunes. But 
 a scarce-moving cygnet passing slowly up the river like 
 a ghost recalls you to the fulness of the tide of life by 
 night, and a bird's cry in a stoat's grip recalls the tragedies 
 of the night. Even when the marshes are frozen the voices 
 of the night are not hushed. * Frank' still calls, peewits 
 wail, and flighting fowl fill the cold night with their voices. 
 And you go home assured that nothing is constant but 
 change, nothing certain but death.
 
 XXXVIII 
 A GOOD DINNER 
 
 DINED en friand to-day on one course, and 
 that a great, green, black-backed bream, 
 weighing in puiis naturalibus nearly two 
 pounds ; he was as full as a Lynn mussel in 
 season. But I will tell you all about it 
 The day was miserably cold and cloudy, freshly arrived 
 flycatchers and reed-buntings were trying to sing, but their 
 song was ineffectual, and they soon joined the other birds, 
 and hid in the warm, dry marsh stuff and water-plants. I 
 was staring at a primitive and very rickety pumping-engine, 
 the torn sails of which were pumping off a feeble stream 
 of water into a slimy trough, and fast getting in the doleful 
 dumps, when an old man appeared my old friend of the 
 moleskin cap, old velveteen jacket an heirloom of his 
 keeper days, and an old pair of trousers with a leathern 
 knee-cap on his left knee, for he often knelt on that knee 
 to dig out the young moles. 
 
 Coming up, he took his coarse-webbed sack from his 
 back, and, opening it with grunts, he shot forth on the sod 
 several great green black-backed bream and two small
 
 100 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 tench, for the large tench were not yet out of the mud, 
 the weather was too cold and the skies too clear. He was 
 proud of his catch, for they were all full fish, weighing 
 from one to two and a half pounds each. 
 
 It had been his birthday the day before. I had made 
 him happy. He had been sorrowful for a moment when I 
 smiled as he told me it was his birthday, though at the 
 time he said nothing, but in the evening he handed me, 
 with a reproachful air, an old parchment with lavender 
 letters, his mariner's certificate, made out on April 8th, 1828. 
 As I read the crumpled 'Mariner's Register Ticket,' No. 
 212,676, and looked into the weather-beaten, honest old face, 
 that day sixty-four years old, I felt reproved and sorry for 
 my light banter. 
 
 However, the bag of fish, netted in a private water for 
 me that day, showed there was no smouldering ill-will ; and 
 after a glass of ale at the wayside inn, where we talked fish, 
 I returned with my booty to the boat, and Jim took the 
 bream aside, and beneath a budding willow, where sat a white 
 wagtail among the ivy leaves. As he was scraping off the 
 scales and skinning the big bream for you must flay your 
 bream, a merry-faced girl came up, turning her bright door- 
 key upon her shapely forefinger. 
 
 'What have you got there?' she asked, unabashed, and 
 as I looked into her face I found one eye was a beautiful 
 brown and the other as black as a sloe ; and as she returned 
 my look she seemed to laugh a double laugh with her different - 
 coloured eyes. She was lively, and would help to clean
 
 A GOOD DINNER 101 
 
 the fish, so we all skinned them and scraped the backbones 
 white as a hound's tooth, and then, placing them in salt 
 and water for some minutes, we paused and chatted with 
 the variegated-eyed maid. But she was equal to us; and 
 when the fish was rinsed, and drying in the cool breeze, she 
 ran off, avoiding the awkwardness of a farewell. 
 
 . . . The fire was roaring, and a hard juicy fish, with the 
 roes of five others, were soon sputtering and sprinkling the 
 boiling oil on to our hands, stinging them like pricks of 
 needles. 
 
 . . . And then to the feast ; the rich brown outside, the 
 tender steaks, and the delicate brown flakes with their 
 crackling were before us ; that is the titbit of the bream. 
 'Twas a delicious meal ; and after every vestige of the flesh 
 was gone I fell upon the red-brown roes, and when I had 
 finished this delicious dish I reflected on the insolence of 
 the salmon-killer, who smiles when you talk of eating bream, 
 and on the all-knowing cockney who prefers to eat bream 
 in summer. 
 
 Your bream is at its best when the kingcups blaze on 
 the river-side and the first sand-martins are fluttering over 
 the bistre water for the early sluggish flies that is the bream 
 season. And if you cook him as I have told you, this is a 
 dish for honest men, such as shall turn you fishermen the 
 very next year as soon as the speckled thrush begins to sing 
 among the ivy leaves, for at that season the black-backed 
 bream are savoury with the perfume of river water.
 
 XXXIX 
 
 THE FIRST MARTIN 
 
 CALM rested upon reed-bed and stream; 
 the glowing heat-waves seemed to linger 
 over the moist soil, whence they floated 
 reluctantly into the unknown. 
 
 Suddenly a small bird flew with wary 
 flight athwart the burning azure ; it was the first sand- 
 martin that had burst into the sleeping scene from the 
 sounding sea. 
 
 The little traveller skimmed down to the peaceful river, 
 and began to hawk eagerly for the indolent flies, as it had 
 done a week before on some African stream, beneath a 
 blazing sun. And yet but four days of moist-eyed April had 
 gone. 
 
 The news soon spread from mouth to mouth through 
 the village that the first 'swoller' had come. His arrival 
 would be registered in the weekly paper on the coming 
 Saturday, and many a heart beat more quickly as the news 
 went round, for every one was as eager as this most eager 
 of martins to pluck of the fruits that the season would bring, 
 for in the spring-time life lusteth after all the goodly lusts 
 of the flesh ; all the world migrates, in heart if not in deed, 
 to more joyous life.
 
 XL 
 
 A WHERRYMAN HIS WATCH 
 
 WAS leaning over the starn after some 
 water and my watch-glass broke, but that 
 went all right for some time. A little time 
 after, when I was winding on it up, the 
 cog flew out of the wheel, so I took her to 
 pieces and onscrewed the big winch, like the winch what 
 you wind the sail up with, and took my shutting-knife and 
 cut some more cogs in that was soft that hadn't nothing 
 to do with the wheels what keep the time. 
 
 ' Arter I 'd so done, I took and broke a pin and put it 
 through the cog-wheel, for I 'd lost the totty little screw 
 what held it in, and that used to go too ; that went several 
 days, and one day the pin flew out so the cog-wheel get 
 out of the gim-cracks ; so I took her home and gave her 
 up for a bad job she want frying. She 'd no face on her, 
 and her inside was out of order ; she want to have a box 
 o' liver pills.'
 
 XLI 
 A QUIET AFTERNOON 
 
 PRIL 22nd. The wind had died away so that 
 each reed slept and all the lagoon was silent 
 as death ; the very houses seemed to sleep, 
 and only the voice of the frogs croaking in 
 the warm, still air could be heard, when a 
 young woman in a scarlet jacket came and sat by the 
 water-side with her two daughters, and the flute-like tones 
 of their laughter floated over the mere. 
 
 When sitting on the bank the young mother began to 
 play her sweet, drowsy music, filling the afternoon with her 
 silver voice, as she played her concertina under the thin, 
 grey sky. 
 
 Her husband, who was hoeing the foul grasses between 
 the ridges of young blades of wheat, stopped in his work, and, 
 resting on his polished hoe-handle, looked across the water 
 towards his young wife, and as he watched his eyes softened, 
 and a look of love, sweet as the music, spread over his 
 sunburnt features. And as the young woman played and 
 sang, her children gambolling round her, a sigh escaped 
 the labourer, and turning from the poetic magic of the
 
 A QUIET AFTERNOON 105 
 
 scene and the rude music, he walked across to the other 
 side of the field and determinedly resumed hoeing up the 
 foul grasses. 
 
 As I listened, the water-birds seemed to feel the influence 
 of the music, for the water-hens began to call idly from 
 the reed, and the snipe laughed and circled lazily above us ; 
 all the watery tribe seemed filled with the influence of that 
 soft-aired afternoon, for it was an afternoon meet for love 
 and poetry languid and intoxicating. The little white wag- 
 tail hopping by to the water's edge looked on curiously 
 and sleepily, waiting probably for an opportunity to return 
 to her grey-spotted eggs, nestling up there on the top of 
 an old willow crowned with ivy. When the music stopped 
 the lazy smoke-clouds curled away above my boat-head, seem- 
 ing to move more quickly, for they had hitherto seemed to 
 circle in mazy figures to the tune of the simple music.
 
 XLII 
 
 AT A MARSH INN 
 
 IS dusty coat was resting on the cart-shafts 
 slanting to a bit of warm, sunshiny green 
 land, where a pair of geese fed their yellow 
 goslings ; his pony was in the cool, dark 
 stable munching a ninepenny feed, and he 
 was in the ale-house reading the daily paper and sipping his 
 jug of six-ale : for since he was a rider 1 his time was his own. 
 After a time he finished his paper, and, pushing it aside, 
 looked curiously at the first drowsy flies sunning themselves 
 in the dusty window, and the voice of the great black- 
 backed bees buzzing from the petals of the saffron-hearted 
 crocuses blazing in the garden beneath gave a pleasant 
 music to the scene. 
 
 The shrewd and jocose rider felt the quiet calm of the 
 country spreading over his inmost being, so that his face 
 wore a more kindly, humorous expression when three great 
 marshmen entered for their mid-day pints it was hot work 
 cutting litter on the dry marshlands that day. 
 
 After passing the sele of the day and calling for beer, 
 
 1 Bagman.
 
 AT A MARSH INN 107 
 
 the sunburnt men, with their long boots and stone rubs 
 thrust into their bright shining leather belts, seated them- 
 selves at a polished deal table and began tapping with their 
 big round finger-nails on the board too shy to open the 
 conversation. 
 
 Suddenly the bluff-faced rider roused himself, shaking 
 off his drowsy reverie, and turning to the nearest man he 
 asked cordially what was the latest news of the village. 
 
 ' I dunno,' said the man. * Passon Johns hev to pay two 
 hundred poun' to Maria Asseton for breach o' promise o' 
 marriage.' 
 
 ' He 's a nice bewty,' added the dark marshman ; ' they 'd 
 far better have let the old curate keep the living when old 
 Passon Gilbert died.' 
 
 * But won't they take his gown away from him for this ? ' 
 asked the rider. 
 
 *O noa, they won't never interfere with a passon with- 
 out he commit murder, and they see him do it,' said the 
 dark marshman bitterly. 
 
 'They're a pretty bad lot, then, about this part of the 
 world,' suggested the rider. 
 
 ' Bad, yes as the old 'un. There 's that Seaward passon, 
 he wor in the bankruptcy court. He used to preach tem- 
 perance at the Seaward and come here and booze up reg'lar. 
 When he was bankrupt his bill for spirit was over 30 ; and 
 then thar 's old Passon Mason of Seaton he died o' drink ; 
 so did Passon Gilbert; lor', they're pretty near all alike.' 
 
 ' Why, bor,' said the dark man, ' when I used to live at
 
 108 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 Acla our passon used to go every Sunday to preach in 
 another village near by, and he allus allowed himself a quart 
 o' beer before preaching. 
 
 ' One Sunday he was drinking his quart at the " Horse 
 and Groom," and he got tossing for another, so he had to 
 pay for two quarts instead of one. He come late to church 
 and drove right slap into the porch. 
 
 * So the clerk he told him the people had near all gone. 
 
 ' " Call 'em back, call 'em back," he say, " I '11 soon put 
 it into 'em." 
 
 'Time he was getting ready and getting his gown on, 
 a few drawed in. He began drawling, and muddled through 
 the prayers and began to preach ; and he fell off to sleep. 
 Time he was preaching the people all went out of the church, 
 except the clerk, and he shook him and say 
 
 '" They 're all out, sir." 
 
 '"Fill 'em up again," says he, kind o' drunk, thinking 
 they was talking of pint-pots.' 
 
 And the men's laughter drowned the humming of the 
 bees in the crocuses.
 
 XLIII 
 
 ON THE STUBBLE 
 
 E walked over the stubble, passing some men in 
 tanned slops loading freshly felled tree-trunks 
 upon a waggon, to a sunny corner of the 
 field near a coppice, where a man was gather- 
 ing the sweet white chips into a roughly 
 corded sack, whilst a bright sulphur butterfly fluttered 
 through the naked stoles, and a mavis sang its love-song in 
 the budding branches above. 
 
 Around the bright part of the field lay some ewes with 
 their woolly lambs, whilst others fed upon the scarlet beet. 
 As the farmer looked round upon his flock, he remarked that 
 some of his lambs were too fat; the ground yellow maize 
 had fattened them too quickly for the butcher's fancy. An 
 old ewe with dishevelled wool hobbled by, scarce touching 
 the ground with one foot. 
 
 * Ah ! ' muttered the farmer, raising his slender, crooked 
 ash stick, and running forward he hooked the halting ewe 
 by its hind-leg, she running on terrified for a few steps ; 
 but he was upon her, and had her on her back against his 
 stout legs, and was examining the proud- flesh budding
 
 110 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 under her hoof, whilst a curious speckled houdan cock and 
 his harem strutted by, glancing curiously at the surgeon and 
 his patient as they passed. The ewe's head seemed squarer 
 and more full of character as I viewed it in its new posi- 
 tion, its moist nostrils dilated, its great bluish eyes rolling 
 anxiously, as the surgeon pared away the hoof and exposed 
 the raw disease. Once or twice the animal winced and 
 struggled, but the insensible creature seemed to suffer little 
 pain, and to be resigned ; indeed, there was an expression of 
 resigned patience upon its characterless features. 
 
 And when the sore was dressed tbe brute struggled 
 hastily to its feet and hobbled off to a tooth-sculptured 
 beet and began to eat its only joy.
 
 XLIV 
 A NOCTURNE 
 
 FTER a burning day and lemon sunset, grey 
 wreaths of mist began to rise and float over 
 the dusky river, where the still reflections 
 of the fairy-like trees slept under the bright 
 moonlight 
 
 As the afterglow paled in the western sky, the pale 
 round silver disk of the moon, quaintly marked, shone 
 brighter in the pale blue sky, and burnished the clouds of 
 white mists now floating over the brimming water-ways and 
 gliding softly over the marshes, muffling the rough gorse- 
 plants and spiked rush sentinels in a diaphanous cloak fine 
 as cobweb. And now the quaint, reed-thatched cottages 
 peeped above the silvery sheet of mist, and all the landscape 
 was a fairy scene, the feathery tracery of trees peeping 
 forth and silently contemplating the caps of the walls and 
 the picturesque little garret windows of the cottages, all 
 watching silently across the marshland, their bodies veiled in 
 vapour. 
 
 And as I gazed upon the mysterious night, I heard the 
 villagers leave the gossiping corner on the green, and the
 
 112 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 urchins their play, and then followed sounds of muffled 
 mirth as lovers parted at their lonely doors, and all was 
 still in the village ; only the cry of a restless child reached 
 my ear from the sleeping hamlet. 
 
 Still the mist wreathed and swept above the river, blown 
 by the softest of night-breezes, and a dog bayed at the moon, 
 in a lonely farmhouse across the whitening marshland, for 
 a rime frost with delicate ringers was painting the mysterious, 
 reposeful landscape. All the tribe of birds seemed to feel 
 the chilling influence of the frost- crystals which now sparkled 
 in the bright night light, and the nocturnal and mysterious 
 silence was broken by the low, far-off whistles of the red- 
 shank, the wild spirit of the marshland, the contented and 
 comfortable call of the night-feeding water-hen, as she ate 
 amongst the gloomy and broken old gladen stalks, and the 
 plaintive cries of the green plover, to which the sportive 
 cock replied by whistling and circling through the misty 
 moonlight, calling to his hen, ' Three lovelocks I seek week 
 after week,' and bustling about her as a young and ardent lover 
 about his fair mistress. When he settled upon the marsh 
 and folded his bronze-green wings, there was a lull in the 
 voices of the April night, and all nature seemed to sleep pro- 
 foundly, except the mist, which glided mysteriously down the 
 bosom of the river. But this slumbrous peace was disturbed 
 by the childlike cry of a young lamb that the frost- 
 whitened ground sent shivering to his dam, and the invisible 
 snipe began to drone through the pale grey-blue dome 
 the drumming sounding in the still night more like the quick
 
 A NOCTURNE 113 
 
 beating of hard-pinioned wings than it ever does in the day- 
 light ; flying up in silent curves and dropping sideways, 
 laughing like summer lambs, the anxious cock-bird circled 
 round and round the patient hen-bird, who was perhaps 
 nestling closely over her four large speckled eggs in a grassy 
 tuft below him, her warm body keeping out the dark mists 
 and frost-scales. Mayhap she slept on the white marsh, and he, 
 like some lover, gazed upon his lovely bride, who dreamt all 
 unconsciously of his worship at the shrine of love, and youth, 
 and beauty. ... In the next lull of the night-watch I too 
 fell asleep, and all was still.
 
 XLV 
 A NORTHERLY BREEZE 
 
 HE lagoon was girt on the leeward side with 
 a wreath of foam whiter than the swans who 
 were lost in the driving, scudding mist-clouds 
 flying over the ruffled water before the cold 
 northerly wind. 
 As my boat beat up to windward, close hauled, her white 
 sail pushed aside by the cold breath of the May breeze, a 
 large craft loomed through the mists, and a stack of hay 
 flashed past quanted by a man with a long fir pole. The 
 strange craft disappeared as it had come, through the 
 grey mist. Never a boat did I see ; it was as in flood-time, 
 when houses and haystacks seem to float on the face of the 
 waters. 
 
 The white mists thickened quickly, and silently began 
 to hide the miserable stone cottages, as my boat beat up 
 past the mist-shrouded beacons in the channel. 
 
 As I put my boat about, the mist that had swept in 
 from the sea hid the shores, and I was in a formless waste 
 where 'twas idle to make for port; so, shooting up head 
 to wind, I let my sails flap idly, as I drifted back to a reedy
 
 A NORTHERLY BREEZE 115 
 
 strip of an island set in a necklet of foam far whiter than a 
 swan that fed beside it, and there I rested; for this reed- 
 crested haven was to me like unto a palm-fringed islet to 
 the castaway mariner. 
 
 Nothing could exceed the delicate grace and beauty of 
 this strip of landscape, set like a gem in a misty pool. 
 
 In less time than it takes a swan to swim ten boat's- 
 lengths the mists cleared, my sail filled, and I once again 
 realised that the expression of a landscape is as mutable and 
 fleeting as the flash in a woman's eye.
 
 XLVI 
 THE NEW WHERRYMAN 
 
 HAT d'you say, bor?' asked bluff Bob, a 
 forty-year-old wherryman, of his new hand, 
 a dreamy lad brought up on a lone marsh- 
 farm, as they lay at Catfield Staith waiting 
 for the corn. 
 
 ' I was saying, old Bob, as how I thought I 'd be lucka, 
 for the fairies hev been to ours onest; they come and cut 
 some wood, and 'nother time they come and mended the 
 old man's boots ; he see'd 'em : for he had the power. One 
 of 'em had a bit of leather, and t' other a lapstone and all.' 
 
 'That's a rare cuffa, 1 bor; I suppose their feetings lay 
 fleet, eh ? ' said old Bob, with a sneer. 
 
 ' Well, bor, I dunno ; all I know is, the ole chap he 's 
 got a fairy stone what he picked up on the ma'sh a round 
 white stone that is.' 
 
 ' Ay, I expect your folk are dranting 2 folk, aren't they ? 
 quiet as the ground ? ' said Bob sarcastically. 
 
 'Well, they keep a slow fire and burn a rushlight, as 
 folks should do,' answered the lad with spirit. 
 
 1 Yarn. 2 Reserved, slow, uncommunicative.
 
 THE NEW WHERRYMAN 117 
 
 ' Yes, lively as a lingthorn, 1 no doubt,' jeered Bob. But 
 drop them old rockstaffs and give us a song.' 
 
 ' Not I, I 'ont drop 'em, I believe in 'em. Why, only 
 last year-day old Sal Hariner and mother was sitting talking 
 over their teas at ours, and the teapot was 'twixt them both, 
 and both on 'em made ter take it at the same time, and blow 
 me if mother ain't in the family way again ! so that rockstaff 
 be trew.' 
 
 ' All right, bor, do you believe in 'em ; be all of a dudder 2 
 when you hear the ghostesses. / ain't I never see nothing 
 worse than myself; but give us a song.' 
 
 ' Wai, bor, what shall us sing ? Shall it be " Gathering 
 the blossom on the old thorn-tree," or " Ella Barnes " ? ' 
 
 * I don't know ; how do they go ? ' 
 ' Wai, the fust go 
 
 ' Gathering the blossoms from the old thorn-tree, 
 Sweet-scented blossoms from the old thorn-tree, 
 The hours I have passed away, 
 In the merry month of May, 
 A-gatherin' the blossoms from the old thorn-tree. 1 
 
 * Wai, bor, I don't think a sight o'that; how do "Ella 
 Barnes " go ? ' 
 
 * That go 
 
 ' I knew a dead dairymaid 
 Named Ella Barnes. 
 
 She fell in a fit as she stood by the churn, 
 There came in a shower of spiders and fleas, 
 And she swore the old churn had the cattle disease.' 
 
 1 Star-fish. 2 Tremble.
 
 118 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 Old Bob roared with laughter, and said 
 
 'Give us that, bor; that be proper, that be.' 
 
 *I like t'other best; that's only nonsense,' pleaded 
 the lad. 
 
 'Damn you, sing that "Ella Barnes." I don't want 
 no poetary ; I want summat comical.' 
 
 So the lad sang 'Ella Barnes,' old Bob roaring and 
 joining in here and there. 
 
 At last the tumbrils came up with the corn, and the 
 wherry was filled, the hatches put on, the sail hoisted, and 
 all ready to start down the river. 
 
 A few moments afterwards Bob came aboard, rubbing 
 the beer-froth from his lips, and, letting off the sheet, the 
 great sail filled, and the wherry glided down the river. As 
 they sailed down the stream the lad got the mop and began 
 to mop across the hatchings. 
 
 ' What are you arter there ? ' 
 
 ' What 's up there, old Bob ? ' 
 
 'Why, sweeping them hatches crossways; don't you 
 know that 's onlucky ? ' 
 
 ' Is it, then ? So you believe in rockstaffs arter all.' 
 
 'On a wherry that's different,' said Bob dreamily, and 
 the lad smiled. 
 
 At length the wind dropped, and the lad was told to 
 quant. He managed it fairly for him, and when they got 
 into a fair reach the lad laid the quant down and proceeded 
 to wipe all the mud off with a piece of sacking. 
 
 ' Blow me ! what are you arter now ? ' called Bob.
 
 THE NEW WHERRYMAN 119 
 
 * Cleanin' the quant, o' course,' said the young chap. 
 
 Bob looked dumfounded. At length, when he recovered 
 his speech, he said solemnly 
 
 * Boy, you are too much of a gentleman I mane it for 
 this here trade. I shall ax the master to put you inter the 
 office when I get back.' 
 
 And he did ; for Bob was a good sort at the bottom, 
 though extremely 'shucka.' 1 He didn't like being imposed 
 on, and had an idea most people were impostors ; but when 
 Bob found they were genuine he worshipped them. 
 
 1 Shaggy.
 
 XLVII 
 THE TIDE-PULSE 
 
 T was my fortune once to have to watch the 
 ebb and flow of a tide on a wide lagoon, and 
 delicate work it was, for a sixteenth of an 
 inch rise or fall was invaluable; indeed, it 
 was tide-recording on the most delicate 
 principles. 
 
 All who have never observed Nature's mysterious work- 
 ings take it for granted that a tide ebbs and flows at regular 
 intervals with invariable and mechanical regularity, and after 
 reading such superficial statements as are to be gleaned from 
 Physical Geographies, the naif student might learn much 
 from feeling the pulse of Nature's arteries as they softly ebb 
 and flow up and down the face of a deal stick. 
 
 The lagoon was a wide, shallow expanse of water some 
 eight hundred acres in extent, connected with the sea by a 
 river some twenty miles long. 
 
 When I first undertook the task of carefully noting the 
 rise of the brine-water, I discovered that it took considerable 
 time for the great heart-beat of the ocean to drive its life- 
 blood into the little capillary and across the lagoon where I lay
 
 THE TIDE-PULSE 121 
 
 anchored. As I notched my stake and got it level with the 
 slack, some time behind the almanac time at the harbour 
 bar at the other end of the river, I lit my pipe in the warm 
 April south-easterly breeze, which rose, hastily blowing the 
 idle lagoon into ripples, and raising the water in my little 
 drain a quarter of an inch. One squall heavier than the other 
 actually blew the water from the other end of the lagoon, 
 quickly raising the water over half an inch ; but as the wind 
 dropped the water fell back, but not so far as it had risen, 
 for the great body of the lagoon was rising the legitimate 
 rising of the tide. 
 
 With the top of the tide the wind shifted from the westerly 
 to the north, and away the tide began to run in the cool 
 glittering evening, and an inch was gone in a moment, and 
 I feared me my little drain would empty. But with the 
 setting sun the wind dropped, and by the bright starlight I 
 saw the local disturbance had re-balanced itself, for the water 
 was rising as it returned from the far end of the broad ; but 
 still it never returned to high-water mark, and kept on slowly 
 but surely falling, imperceptibly if looked at steadily for a 
 few moments at a time, for the subtle forces of Nature often 
 work so slowly that the eye cannot follow the changes, 
 except at intervals: it is like watching the small hand of 
 a watch. 
 
 It was nearly midnight when I returned to the tell-tale 
 stake with a lantern, the water-hens calling and moving 
 warily on the rond, looking for the eggs I saw them robbed 
 of that afternoon. And there was the water ; it had fallen 
 
 Q
 
 122 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 over an inch ; for upon a wasting moon more water runs 
 away than rises, and vice versa. 
 
 The next morning, in the crisp frosty air, we had a good 
 tide up, a surprisingly good tide up, for we were beginning 
 to feel the full effect of the nor'-westerly winds that had 
 blown three or four days previously on the North Sea ; that 
 wind always raises the water of our lagoon, much to the 
 delight of the spawning pike that I saw 7 sluggishly basking 
 on the hair-weed. Up it came, a full, bounding, healthy 
 tide, creeping up the white face of the stake, and rising an 
 inch and a half, for there was a good head of water on the 
 lagoon at the time; for, mark you, if the sou'-easterly winds 
 had blown for long down on the North Sea our lagoon would 
 have gone very low ; indeed, once it went so low 7 in these 
 winds that a hunted deer and some adventurous horses 
 walked across the wide but shallow sheet of water, and 
 obviously, when such was the case, it required a greater head 
 of water to raise the spent waters of the broad. 
 
 So day after day I took the tides, the flycatchers singing 
 at my tide halts, eulogising Venus, and the wild note of 
 coot and water-hen accompanying my registrations. Some- 
 times my lantern revealed mists like wreaths floating over 
 the water, at others sparkling frost- crystals ; and on these 
 night-watches I heard the rats feeding on the banks, small 
 fish jumping in the warm waters of the dike, wild-fowl 
 feeding in the reed-beds, and restless dogs and fowls barking 
 and crowing in the farms around. 
 
 And throughout that tide-taking I noticed some cottages
 
 THE TIDE-PULSE 123 
 
 by the water that burned a light in the windows all night 
 long, and I marvelled, for the poor seldom waste. In one 
 cottage, I heard, was a sick baby, in another lived a curious 
 old man, whose ways were wanton, and in the third lived a 
 newly-married couple, and from my inquiries I discovered 
 that many a cottager is timid at night, and burns a candle to 
 keep off ghosts. 
 
 With the tide, the mysterious actions of that young 
 couple worked all night long in the watch-lamp. 
 
 By day many quaint old water-side folk drew down, and 
 told me what they had seen in their days. 
 
 One wherryman told me he had drunk fresh water out 
 of the river at the distant sea-port, and salt water as high 
 up as Heigham Bridge. Another told me he had seen the 
 tide run down for three days and three nights through 
 Yarmouth Harbour, though the water had risen a little at 
 flow indeed I had seen as much myself. 
 
 An old fisherman told me how they often caught sea- 
 shrimps in the lagoon, and one old man said he had caught 
 a sea lampern, 'all gay as a Poll parrot,' about four pounds 
 in weight, and another had seen a sprat, a veritable sprat, 
 caught on the 'fresh-water' lagoon, and many old bearded 
 men with gaunt eyes spoke of the number of dead fish 
 they had seen when, after long spells of dry easterly and 
 south-easterly winds, the wind had suddenly shifted to the 
 nor'- west on the German Ocean, and sent the hot spring- 
 tides right up on to the lagoon in such an unadulterated form 
 that the fish were killed; for your bream and perch thrive
 
 124 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 better, if anything, in a brackish water, and pike can live 
 in such water comfortably, but the ' salts,' none too sewage 
 pure, kill them. 
 
 And when my task was finished I learnt, after all, that 
 the Geographies were correct : the tide ebbed and flowed in 
 even my far-away capillary, but by my watches by day and 
 night I learnt the life of waters, their passions and caprices, 
 their variability and uncertainty, and the dull truth that the 
 water's ebb and flow became a living reality. What the school- 
 books tell us is no more than if a physiologist were to tell us 
 that the heart beats and drives blood through our circulation, 
 and that so we live. These twain facts are fundamental and 
 n ever- changing truths, but upon the everlasting tide-pulse in 
 man and ocean depends the constant change and uncertainty 
 that give life its zest. The twinkle in the lovely maiden's 
 eye is but like the local blowing back of the waters, but 
 of what profound interest it is to men with sane hearts and 
 sound heads !
 
 XLVIII 
 RURAL FELICITY 
 
 HEY were cousins ; one a carpet officer who 
 kept all his old dinner-invitation cards stuck 
 with studied carelessness round a huge mirror 
 need I say more ? the other a red-faced 
 farmer who had come down in the world and 
 
 intended going up again. 
 
 Formerly they had been thick, but now things had 
 
 altered, and as they talked of the worst side, each standing 
 
 on his own land, the one the squire, the other a small farmer, 
 
 his tenant 
 
 * I wish you 'd leave that long stuff on the marsh adjoining 
 the coverts; it hasn't been cut for twenty years, and my 
 game like it.' 
 
 * I '11 leave it for ten pounds a year,' says the other. 
 
 * You speak very cavalierly ; you must forget who I 
 am.' 
 
 ' No, not in the least ; you are my cousin, and you forgot 
 to send your carriage down for my wife when she arrived, 
 and I had to borrow a farmer's cart to bring her up to the 
 farm.'
 
 126 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 * Yes, yes ; circumstances are altered, you see. . . . Well, 
 will you let that stuff remain ? ' 
 
 ' No, not under ten pounds ; are you going to pay it ? ' 
 
 * No, certainly not.' 
 
 ' Here goes then,' said the tenant, taking a box of matches 
 from his pocket, and, stooping, he lit the long dry stuff to 
 windward, and in a few moments the marsh was a field of 
 flame, and the squire had fled in the smoke and flying cinders. 
 
 Nine months afterwards the squire's tenants had all given 
 notice to quit ; he would not lower his rents, as he was living 
 far beyond his means. When this happened he had to come 
 down in the world and let his hall with its shooting. Then he 
 went round to his cousin, shook hands heartily, said they had 
 always been friends, and that he looked forward to coming 
 down and visiting them each year, for he was going to live in 
 the City. 
 
 The good-hearted cousin said nothing, but thought the 
 more.
 
 XLIX 
 THE VILLAGE BIRD-STUFFER 
 
 IS ideal was naturalism, since he was a good 
 observer and sportsman ; his works at times 
 came up to his ideal, as his magnificent old 
 black epauletted cock heron with sable plumes 
 and white cuirass proved, as he stood with 
 his spear-like bill drawn back and one foot raised ready 
 to strike an eel. His water-hen, too, ran, and his snipe 
 lay sunning themselves, one stretching his wing like a 
 turtle-dove. On a dark velvet ground his corncrake crept. 
 
 As he stood and prepared a frame in his little room, 
 decorated with roach and bream skins, birds bound up with 
 white threads, and the tools of his craft, his wife brought a 
 small parcel covered with postmarks and placed it upon the 
 table, withdrawing silently. 
 
 Stopping and putting his work aside he took up the box, 
 and, opening it, he drew forth a ruffled and bloody little 
 fire-crested Regulus. A sigh escaped the man as he smoothed 
 the tiny body, for he knew the rarity of the bird; but sigh 
 after sigh escaped him as he saw the yawning shot-holes,
 
 128 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 so, placing the little body weighing some seventy grains 
 beside him, he wrote to his fowler : 
 
 DEAR JIM, The bird a fire-crested wren all blood and postmarks, 
 arrived safely. Do you mind not using a ten-bore gun and duck-shot 
 when you shoot these small birds ? Yours, ROBERT OWEN. 
 
 And he smiled placidly as he sealed the envelope.
 
 SUNDAY AFTERNOON 
 
 HE church bells rang from the grey steeple, 
 resounding far over the marshes, through the 
 rolling, palpitating heat-waves, their soft, sweet 
 voices adding to the subtle influence of peace 
 that seemed to spread over the hot afternoon. 
 Not a figure was to be seen, though the flash of a red skirt 
 passed like a meteor through the dry branches of the leafless 
 hedgerow. 
 
 When the church bells ceased a starling sitting on the 
 highest point of a mill-sail took up the music and sang softly, 
 more quietly than a mavis, though some of its sweet notes 
 at times recalled his neighbour ; but often the note was 
 that of a sparrow, or at times the teams' trappings set to 
 music. Presently the starling too ceased his love-song and 
 flew off into the blue ; and in the sleeping white afternoon 
 quietness two lads came from a cottage with long ash-poles, 
 fitted with snares, for they were in search of small pike 
 basking in the dikes, or, mayhap, a larger speckled fish in 
 the delirium of spawning. They went along the dike-side, 
 bright with kingcups and bordered by yellow reed, till one
 
 130 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 saw a fish, when, stopping, he noiselessly dropped the slim 
 wire into the water, and standing back passed the noose 
 gently over the drowsy, unsuspecting fish, jerking it suddenly 
 o n to the hot marsh grasses, where it beat out its life, silenced 
 for ever.
 
 LI 
 THE BEWITCHED PIG 
 
 OR ! that pig is witched,' said Jimmy to his 
 mother at the mill one morning in July. 
 
 * Witched, eh ? wring her wallers the 
 old warmin.' 
 
 * Yes, she 's witched,' reiterated Jim. 
 'Well, now, boy, do you cut off her tail and cold the 
 
 blood in a gotch and bring that ter me.' 
 
 Boy Jim did as he was bidden; and that night Mrs. 
 Evans stopped the keyhole with bread-crumbs, pulled down 
 the blind, put the pig's blood to stew on the fire in a 
 pannikin, and sat with her son silently looking at the fire, 
 she with her finger on her lips. 
 
 Presently there was a noise at the door, and the old 
 woman looked eagerly round, and then, signalling to her 
 boy, she pressed her lips with her fingers almost till they bled. 
 
 But the scared boy said 
 
 ' What 's up, Mor ? ' 
 
 * Dang you, it 's all done 1 ' said the old woman in a rage. 
 ' If you hadn't spoken they 'd a bursted, or else they 'd been 
 standing by the door in the morning dead, but now it 's no 
 good ; do you go to bed, you fule, and get up early and kill 
 the pig 'tain 't the first you Ve killed.'
 
 LII 
 THE WIND AGAINST THE LAW 
 
 HE fishing-boat Viking was drifting over the 
 sullen North Sea with a westerly wind at 
 three o'clock one autumn afternoon. Three 
 hands stood on deck two Barton men and 
 one ' Paddy from Cork.' 
 ' The wind is eastering,' said the sandy-headed Norfolker. 
 'Ay, bor, it coming against the law.' 
 < What ever will that be ? ' asked Paddy. 
 ' You '11 see, sure enough,' replied the first speaker. 
 ' Busky, oh ! ' called the watch, and at once all hands 
 came tumbling up on deck. 
 
 ' What 's up ? ' asked the skipper. 
 
 ' Wind against the law ; it 's blowing from the east 
 now.' 
 
 ' Ay, so it is ; we '11 blow back over the nets if we don't 
 do something. That ain't blowing tew hard ; no, 1 11 try 
 it,' said the skipper to himself ; and aloud, ' We 11 out the 
 little boat, Joe Lame, and, Teddy, you go along in her.' 
 
 It was now dark, and the tide had begun to turn, and 
 Joe and Teddy took the mast-head light and rowed back
 
 THE WIND AGAINST THE LAW 133 
 
 along the long line of nets, stopping at the last and shining 
 their flare. At the signal, the captain cut the warp that 
 tied the fleet of nets, and the vessel began to blow back 
 across the nets towards the little boat, the boat's crew 
 throwing their trat or tow-line to the skipper in the fishing- 
 boat. The fishing-boat was then brought up head to wind, 
 and the warp re-bent to the pole-end, and the vessel allowed 
 to ' tid ' on till morning. 
 
 And Paddy now knows the meaning of ' the wind against 
 the law.'
 
 LIII 
 A COUNTRY CHILD 
 
 QUAINT, dreamy child was blue-eyed Gladys. 
 She was never like other children, for she was 
 always reading some fairy-tale and talking to 
 herself in the old garden, where the peaches 
 ripened and the corn-flowers bloomed. One 
 day she would be a fairy prince, peering through the gnarled 
 and bunioned branches of the old espalier-trained codlin 
 apple-tree ; another day she would be a dainty princess, as 
 she walked beneath the beautiful Kentish morella trees, 
 pranked with blossom ; or perhaps she would be a bear 
 roaming through the evergreens, seeking for a child to 
 devour. 
 
 Every one loved Gladys, she was so kind and nestling ; 
 and you may imagine the commotion in the little household 
 that lived in the rose-embowered dwelling beneath the elm- 
 and lime-trees, when Gladys was found weeping bitterly on 
 the schoolroom floor one fine August day, just as her peach- 
 tree had ripened its first luscious fruit None could pacify 
 her, not even her father, who generally soothed all her cares. 
 He stood helplessly over her as she sat on the floor, her
 
 A COUNTRY CHILD 135 
 
 golden head in her two little hands, her whole being shaken 
 with passionate grief. Beside her lay a book. At length 
 the tears were dried ; and that night, as the tender child lay 
 in bed, her mother pressed her gently to tell her trouble. 
 
 The little girl looked serious again, and said softly 
 
 ' Mamsie, I read in a book to-day that as I had given my 
 love to another I am ruined. O Mamsie dear! I must be 
 so wicked, for I have given my love to ever so many people ; 
 you, and papa, and Jane . . .' 
 
 ' O my poor child ! don't think any more of those silly 
 books ; they are only fairy stories.' 
 
 But it was long before Gladys could be soothed, and 
 longer still before she was fully persuaded that she was not 
 a wicked, ruined girl. 
 
 As Gladys grew older she got more curious, wishing to 
 know the reason of everything; indeed, her early romantic 
 state of mind had developed into a more scientific state ; 
 mayhap the deceit of the book that told her she was ruined 
 for giving her love to another had disgusted her buoyant 
 and emotional nature. 
 
 At any rate, when Gladys's youngest sister was born 
 Gladys was anxious to know whence the baby came, and 
 none would she listen to save the professional nurse ; she felt 
 instinctively that nurse was the authority. 
 
 Day after day she set about cultivating the nurse's friend- 
 ship, bringing her chrysanthemums from the garden and 
 maiden-hair fern from the greenhouse, for little Gladys was 
 great friends with the young gardener.
 
 136 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 At length one day, when she went for a walk with nurse, 
 she asked her 
 
 ' Nurse, where do babies come from ? where did Zoe come 
 from ? ' 
 
 * Why, from under the cabbages, of course,' said nurse 
 sharply, immediately changing the conversation. 
 
 That night after dinner Gladys's father called her into 
 his study and scolded her more than he had ever scolded her 
 before. He was really enraged with her, for she had (so her 
 friend the gardener, who was equally enraged, told him) 
 pulled up every cabbage in the garden, young and old, Savoy 
 or Red Dutch ; every cabbage had been ruthlessly pulled up 
 and cast upon the ground. 
 
 The more the father scolded the more silent was she, and 
 her father, in a rage, at last sent her off to bed, himself breath- 
 ing forth threats of all kinds, for he was genuinely angry. 
 
 But nurse went and soothed her, and asked her why she 
 had been so naughty. 
 
 With brimming eyes she kissed the kind woman and 
 said 
 
 * Why, nurse, I was looking to find a baby under one of 
 the cabbages : you said that was where they came from.' 
 
 And the nurse hid her smiles by hugging the child to 
 her ample bosom.
 
 LIV 
 A DAY AVITH THE RATS 
 
 E met at the marsh mill, old Bob the rat- 
 catcher and alert Potter the marshman, 
 Peter, a water-spaniel, and his brother Toby, 
 together with a long-legged puppy in statu 
 pupillaris, who smelt wildly at every hole 
 and blustered with bark. Old Bob had his ferrets in a sack 
 over his shoulder and a mole-spade in his right hand, 
 Potter had a long-barrelled gun, his * old Bessy,' and I took 
 my eyes along with me. 
 
 It was a lovely spring day; the snipe were clamouring 
 and the sandpipers calling in the shallows, whilst over the 
 dead and gleaming dunes the wash of the sea could be 
 heard. As we walked across the rush-marshes the pup would 
 sniff at every inconsequent mole-hole, at every little pile of 
 fur where kestrel or stoat had feasted. On our way we 
 startled several hares, Peter or his brother darting after them, 
 barking loudly ; but the hares soon left Peter and his brother 
 behind them, and Potter itching to loose his gun, but 'twas 
 forbidden. On a marsh by the sea we saw the brindled 
 cattle gathered round some object, the bull groaning and the 
 
 s
 
 138 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 herd moving slowly round and round, pushing each other 
 clumsily, and I looked at Potter. A wicked gleam was in 
 his eye, for he knew well what it portended, a hare in a 
 snare, probably set by Potter himself; but I was not too 
 curious. 
 
 When we left the marsh (Potter had slipped behind) we 
 came upon a thorn-hedge leading to the sea a dry 'deek,' 
 where all the undergrowth had been cleared so that no rats 
 might cover there, for the farmers know well clean hedgerows 
 mean 'no rats.' As we skirted the marshes lying inside the 
 wind-sculptured sand-dunes we came upon a bright stonechat 
 on a rail watching a flock of voracious starlings feeding on 
 the newly turned land. Old Bob, who had taken Potter's 
 gun, fired into the black flock, which arose with a whirr, 
 cripples dropping till all were lost in the blue. Old Bob 
 wanted food for his ferrets, so he bagged some half a dozen 
 of the slain, putting the last in his bag as Potter came up, 
 and said, ' One old Sally.' I turned and noticed the cattle 
 had dispersed, and Potter smiled blandly. 
 
 At length we came to a pig-sty standing by a pile of 
 faggots, where we were to rat Behind the pig-sty was a 
 patch of garden newly dug, terminating at the hedgerow 
 that separated the marsh garden from the marshland. There 
 were four pigs in the sty, and they grunted and stared at 
 us curiously. 
 
 Old Bob took off his bags and began pulling out some 
 of the faggots, pointing to the places where the bark had 
 been eaten off. Then he went into a shed behind the sty
 
 A DAY WITH THE RATS 139 
 
 and found a pile of roots, many of them eaten hollow by 
 the vermin, but never a rat was to be seen. 
 
 Old Bob then went to his ferret-bag and brought out a 
 fine buck polecat ferret, and a white ferret, and put them 
 into holes beneath the sty, whilst Potter stood on the 
 marsh with his gun fixed on a spot between the large holes 
 and the hedgerow, and the dogs stood at attention between 
 the sty and the hedgerow ; they knew where the rats would 
 bolt. Soon there was the squealing of a rat in the ferret's 
 grip, and several rats' heads appeared at the different holes, 
 and many bolted for the hedge, and then Peter and Ned 
 were busy barking and seizing them by the middle of the 
 body, shaking the life out of them, and there was an 
 uproar in that quiet garden, the rats squealing, the dogs 
 barking, and Potter's gun going off every now and then as 
 a rat crossed his mark. 
 
 The polecat ferret had meanwhile got his rat by the 
 throat, and old Bob drew the pair forth, taking the still 
 living rat from the ferret and throwing it on to the open 
 ground. The ferret darted after it and seized it; the rat 
 began to squeal, but the ferret kept turning him over and 
 over, regardless of the squeals, until at last the rat gave up 
 the ghost, its sharp chin and cruel eyes turned up to the 
 blue sky. 
 
 In a short time not a rat was left by the pig-sty or 
 faggot-heap, for the ferrets went into the holes and came 
 forth empty-mouthed. But nine large rats lay dead, and the 
 escaped were in the hedgerow. The ferrets were then put on
 
 140 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 to the hedgerow, and as I watched the big buck polecat it 
 began to snuff the ground like a hound and run along the 
 hedge, soon entering a large hole. Presently I could hear a 
 rat squealing in the hole near by, and, sure enough, his tail 
 was just visible hanging out of the dark gallery. He had 
 evidently tried to back out and was caught. 
 
 * Pull him out if you can,' said Bob, ' and see the sport.' 
 
 So I seized the great tail and pulled with all my strength, 
 but never an inch would the ferret yield ; so I renewed my 
 efforts, and suddenly away came the skin of the rat's tail in 
 my hand. I had cleanly peeled its tail, yet the ferret had 
 not given an inch. It was useless to pull then, so we waited, 
 and presently the great ferret came forth with his prey. In 
 a short time there was not a rat to be seen or turned forth, 
 and fifteen lay dead. 
 
 We returned along the bare hedgerow into the marsh- 
 land, and jumped the dikes on our way home, scattering the 
 flocks of chaffinches, bramblings, and greenfinches and land 
 buntings feeding on the cultivated marshes, and finding the 
 wings and feathers of two mocking rooks ' ; relics left by the 
 rats that had cleaned them up.' 
 
 On our return to Bob's cottage he opened a rat, discovering 
 the steaming entrails, which brought forth a family of ferrets 
 to feed. They closed round the corpse with blazing eyes, 
 arched backs, and ears laid back, and began to feed, and the 
 old doe crunched the head and shoulders with fierce appetite, 
 whilst old Bob smiled satisfied, and Peter and Ned lay on 
 the wall looking at him.
 
 LV 
 
 COTTAGE PROPERTY 
 
 E was a retired successful man of business, and 
 lived comfortably upon his income. But his 
 old habits would assert themselves, and he 
 was steadily becoming a small landlord, 
 buying up dilapidated cottage freeholds ex- 
 tensively for the purpose of increasing his own garden, for 
 he gardened so carefully that lemons ripened within twenty 
 yards of the river. 
 
 He always opened a credit and debit account when he 
 made a new speculation, and balanced his books as methodi- 
 cally as a cashier. He had theories on pumps, and his books 
 taught one lesson, ' Never buy a cottage unless the pump be 
 in working order.' 
 Voilal
 
 142 
 
 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 Cr. 
 To rent of cottage, one 
 
 year . . . .^380 
 
 8 
 
 Dr. 
 
 To repairing well ; scrap- 
 ing down same ; bot- 
 
 tomfying do. . . ^0 14 
 One new wooden vat and 
 
 ironing up . .150 
 New suction - pipe to 
 
 pump, and fitting . 13 
 One new leather flange ; 
 
 new cleek ; one new 
 
 bucket ; one new box ; 
 
 stuffing, packing, fixing 
 
 box ; 3 Ibs. weight iron, 
 
 screws, and 3 bolts, .083 
 Repairing all iron-work 059 
 Repairing wood-work and 
 
 painting same . .020 
 
 3 8
 
 LVI 
 LOVE-TIME 
 
 HE robin dreamt in the drowsy walnut-tree, 
 whose soughing foliage was just dozing to 
 sleep in the cool night-breezes, for the sickle- 
 moon had taken the duties of a watchman, 
 and all vegetation seemed to lounge about 
 the garden in unbuttoned garments; the leaves rustled 
 like a loose tag against a pretty instep, the white flowering 
 anemones wore their nightcaps, the vinery had been shut for 
 the night, and already the moisture of the budding grapes 
 was gathering in dew upon the large window-panes. 
 
 Puffs of fragrance from the sleeping flowers were carried 
 through the dark and silent alleys amongst the evergreens, 
 straggly elms, and shady sycamores. 
 
 The hens were roosting in their painted coops ; even the 
 bats had gone to their beds, filled with flies gathered beneath 
 the dozing trees ; but a white muslin dress floated like a moth 
 adown the trees, and all the music of the night breathed from 
 her stately form, as, gliding along the mossy tree-trunks, she 
 sped through the garden, filled with vague longings and 
 romantic thoughts for the warmth of the evening had 
 breathed into her heart the desire for love. 
 But never a lover was there to see.
 
 LVII 
 THREE WRECKERS 
 
 T was a sun-white July day on Winterton 
 beach. The sandhills shone like burning 
 volcanoes, and the heat-rays floated like 
 smoke as they rose behind the marram-fringed 
 dunes. A soft breeze was blowing, and scarce 
 rippling the clear blue sea, which looked like a mill-pond. 
 
 The white slops of a group of sailors sitting by the edge 
 of the sea gleamed like snow, and their purple shadows were 
 sharply outlined on the sand. There were three of them 
 old men, one, wearing an old sou'- wester, had a white 
 beard and white curly locks that made him look like a sea- 
 rover. The biggest man of the three was a burly old 
 fellow with a red face and a yellow sou'-wester. On his 
 left sat a dark man with black eyes and a felt hat. They 
 looked at the sea and at the clear, still sky, and the burly one 
 raised his telescope and fixed it on a passing brig. 
 
 * A Norraway wessel,' he said sadly. 
 The dark sailor-man sighed. 
 
 ' I wish a b y big steamboat would come ashore now/ 
 
 said the burly one, fixing his eye greedily upon a passing collier. 
 The old white-haired one laughed, and looked at the 
 silent sea.
 
 LVIII 
 BLUE, AMBER, AND GREEN 
 
 HE May-day showed a fresh and radiant land- 
 scape fanned by a cool yet mild south-westerly 
 breeze, tempered by the warm sun that poured 
 down on the labourers dike-drawing, bronz- 
 ing them, whilst it deepened the green on the 
 set blades of young corn that greened the furrows, growth 
 scarce hiding a hare on her form. 
 
 All around the birds sang; the sweet- voiced yellow 
 buntings in the blackthorns with their prickly sprays and 
 wreaths of flowers ; the pied reed-buntings on the greening 
 sedge answered the sweet-voiced reed-warblers and shriller, 
 flickering, butterfly-like sedge-birds; and the sentinel corn- 
 buntings sang regularly their short, sweet songs on the top- 
 most budding sprays of the hawthorn-trees ; every bird was 
 vivacious in the ambient air. 
 
 But the verdure down by the lagoon wore a primeval 
 freshness ; and as I sat rocked on the blue water, with a row 
 of dried amber reeds between me and an osier carr now in 
 its young prime for the catkins were burst, ripe for insemina- 
 tion, by the genial influence of the sun, and watched those
 
 146 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 lovely and delicate stretches of blue, and amber, and fresh 
 green, my whole being was filled with satisfaction : the 
 scheme of colour was so perfect, so delicate, so beautiful for 
 in such arrangements Nature surpasses the most cunning 
 painter. She is inimitable and unpaintable in her choicest, 
 most delicate moods, and this the best artists have recognised, 
 for, as Mr. Whistler has said, 'The artist is her master in 
 that he knows her.' 
 
 But turn where I would, there was the colour-scheme 
 of early May blue, amber, and pale green. I could see it 
 in the sedge-leaves growing from the pulk, in the glad en 
 shooting from the dead stuff on the mere, and in the young 
 spear-like shoots springing from the rond, bristling with cut 
 amber stalks. There was this colour-scheme all around me, 
 even in the blue sky, sandhills sleeping by the crooning of 
 the sea, and far-stretching cornfields, now green with young 
 blades. 
 
 But sweetest of all was the blue-eyed girl's face, with 
 amber hair, that peeped archly from a green wreath of reed.
 
 LIX 
 THE IRISH STEER 
 
 T was a poor thingthe Irish steer with long 
 hairy brown coat spotted with white, and 
 scarred with scaly patches of ringworm ; and 
 the poor spiritless animal was feeding upon 
 a lean rush marsh covered with a scant crop 
 of darnel and water-grasses. 
 
 In one corner of the marsh an Irish youth was harrow- 
 ing up some old stubble, for a reckless farmer had tried to 
 get a crop of oats from the poor soil, and the new tenant 
 intended sowing cole-seed and rye-grass for his sheep. 
 The boy harrowed and sang * 
 
 ' The priest of the parish and his gallant men 
 Came over the mountain to marry Rose Ann ; 
 There was Larrie, and Sheila, and twelve more besides, 
 With their long pitchforks to welcome the bride. 
 And we had annocks, and bannocks, and butter-milk galore, 
 And fine oaten bannocks we had forty-four ; 
 And as for onions and leeks, we Ve enough of our own, 
 And a lot of salt herring came down from Tyrone ! ' 
 
 Turning his harrow about and about, glancing now and 
 then at the steers as they fed on the poor crops in the closing
 
 148 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 eventide, for already the burning sun had gone down behind 
 broad spaces of rosy, grey, and yellow clouds, all reflected 
 in the burning river-spaces separated only by a grey-blue 
 forest of feathery, fairy-like trees, that stretched away round 
 the course of the skyline from a rosy windmill whose sails 
 sleepily turned in the drowsy evening, he finished his task. 
 
 As the narrower reached the end of his course he stopped, 
 and looked along the rosy dike, uttered a hasty exclamation, 
 and ran down the wall, his brightly polished boot-plates shining 
 like silver against the grey. Running on, he stopped before 
 the sad Irish steer, that lay helplessly in the black slime of 
 the dike, on its left side, its head turned sentimentally up- 
 wards, with spiritless, pleading eyes and dilating nostrils, for the 
 poor heedless animal had fallen into the water whilst drinking. 
 
 * Agra,' muttered the boy, as he ran away up to the farm 
 and called the farmer, a big red-faced man, crying excitedly 
 
 ' Shure ! a steer is in the dike, and it's dying ! ' 
 Farmer Elliot seized a single halter from the stable and 
 ran down the reed-marked road to the marsh with two men. 
 
 * Ay, it 's the Irish steer ; the warmin 's got no pluck he 
 just like the men, they give up at once ! ' he cried, as he placed 
 the halter round the spiritless animal's head ; and the three 
 stout Englishmen hauled the creature by main force from its 
 slimy bed on to the grassy shore. 
 
 When the feeble animal had recovered its breath one man 
 took it by the two ears, another by the tail, and the third by 
 its hind-quarters, and all pulled and shouted in unison. Thus 
 urged, the Irish steer rose trembling and shivering to its
 
 THE IRISH STEER 149 
 
 legs, having a shrunk and humped-up appearance as the slimy 
 and muddy water dripped from its mottled coat, and affecting 
 to be lame in one leg. 
 
 Shortly afterwards it began to chew the cud as if nothing 
 had happened, for he saw he could no longer humbug any 
 one. 
 
 * Trust an Irish steer to eat ; that 's all he can think about,' 
 roared the farmer, as he rubbed the trembling beast down 
 with hay. 
 
 * Now he shall drink,' he continued, as he forced a quart 
 of warm beer with some nitre in it down the throat of the 
 beast that shook itself feebly after the draught. 
 
 'Irish courage,' muttered the farmer contemptuously, as 
 the animal's nose grew moister, its coat dry, and its legs 
 firmer ; and then giving the animal a final cut with the halter, 
 he said 
 
 * It's just like their breed; an English steer would have 
 got out of that ditch by itself; but those Irish cattle give in 
 at once when they get into trouble, and lie as if they had 
 neither life nor might.' 
 
 'But, yes, you must keep masters of the Paddies or 
 they '11 bully you awful,' echoed the teamster. 
 The boy at the harrow was singing again 
 
 * Now the bride she was dressed in a short body-gown ; 
 It was made of the fashion the tail hanging down. 
 Her stockings were wool, their colour was blue, 
 Her petticoat frills and her brogues they were new. 
 Now the bride she was tall, and comely, and fair, 
 As small in the waist as a two-year-old mare." -~
 
 LX 
 THE SPIDER AND THE FLIES 
 
 NE hot autumn morning I heard the flies 
 droning and buzzing sluggishly against a 
 dusty window-pane, which the autumn sun 
 made look still more dusty as I watched. I 
 remembered those sluggish flies were holding 
 their love-carnival, their last orgies before the winter cold 
 should kill them or render them too sluggish for love. 
 
 Like drunken rioters they chased each other across the 
 dusty glass, embracing sleepily, and as sleepily falling from 
 the backs of their drowsy lemans. As I watched I saw a 
 little spider begin to spin his web in a corner of the window- 
 frame. He was quick and active, and the trap was soon 
 ready, but as he span his silken meshes he seemed to detect 
 the drowsy and stupid state of mind the flies were in, the 
 observant little rascal. Leaving the web, he ran lightly to 
 that part of the pane where the flies were thickest, drew in 
 his legs, and lay silent as death. He mimicked the flies so 
 closely that from my chair I could not tell which was spider 
 and which was fly. His deceit was soon rewarded. An 
 amorous and besotted fly crawled sluggishly towards him,
 
 THE SPIDER AND THE FLIES 151 
 
 mounted on his back, and began to embrace him. In a 
 moment the poor fool's lover turned and nipped the drowsy 
 fly and carried him off to the web dead. The little spider 
 returned and renewed his arts, capturing many stupid flies 
 in this way; others, however, were too much awake, and 
 avoided this false leman. 
 
 And there are philosophers who say that to know the 
 world one must have lived in cities ; but seers may learn 
 the ways of the city-bred in the wilds.
 
 LXI 
 RAIN AND MELANCHOLY 
 
 WAS awakened in the night by the sad sound 
 of the rain that dripped from my cabin-roof, 
 and as I listened to the sighing of the cold 
 easterly winds through the reed-beds, 1 
 seemed to feel why these night rain-storms 
 and night-sighing winds make one melancholy it is the 
 extreme loneliness of the weeping storm. 
 
 Away, far away, on the wide, dark tracts of fen-land, the 
 rain-spirit was suffering, weeping, and sobbing, and filling 
 sleepless souls with strange musings, ' that melancholy is a 
 deadly poison, more subtle than aconitia, more sapping than 
 intoxicants.' 
 
 This disease of the mind, born in the morbid, soon becomes 
 an epidemic, spreading over the emotional degenerates of a 
 race, and sapping the nation's manhood, and woe to the 
 land where * sweet melancholy ' has found worshippers. 
 
 Brave men may have such fits, the gusts and tears of a 
 rain-storm may relieve their manhood bursting with woe, and 
 their tears may, like lonely night-rain, become twice blessed, 
 but such fits are in the sane but morbid moments to be 
 wrestled with in silence, and conquered.
 
 RAIN AND MELANCHOLY 153 
 
 I drew my wraps around me and slept, and when next I 
 awoke, poor, effeminate, weak melancholy had fled. -I heard 
 a crisp brushing and soft crackling at my window-pane ; the 
 savage, black, easterly wind had frozen the tears of weeping 
 melancholy and sent them flying in white feathers to brighten 
 the tearful face of the land, and as I looked forth on the 
 whitened marshland, with its clumps of flickering reed-tassels, 
 my heart was glad within me, for the white snow that had 
 killed weak melancholy had smothered restless thought, for 
 with her icy fingers she had simplified the vista before me, 
 and so taken a great burden from the mind : such to me 
 is the effect of snow. 
 
 The broad white snow-patches, with their beautiful clumps 
 of reed in one corner, seemed to satisfy the aesthetic sense 
 in its highest form, and lift from the mind the troublesome 
 possibilities and thoughts aroused by the myriad details 
 and life of the everyday scene. 
 
 Sweet, too, was the cold sheltered breath of the white 
 storm, a peaceful antidote to the soft poison of the rain- 
 melancholy.
 
 LX1I 
 OLD BEWTIES 
 
 HE wind blew a gale from the south, rippling 
 the waters of the blue lagoon, raising long 
 scarves of foam that blew into a dirty scum as 
 they drove on to the oozy shores. 
 
 Across the stormy water an old man 
 came, rowing with a feeble stroke in a stiff-boat steered by 
 a black-eyed buxom lass his young wife. 
 
 After they moored, they drained the stone flagon and 
 went inland to visit their friends, she treading the green- 
 covered staith like a queen, proud and conscious of her 
 commanding presence. 
 
 The storm increased as a rough old amphibian, who, 
 yellower than the lilies, had * spat up the greater part of his 
 liver' the previous summer, came down and reefed and 
 hoisted their sail ; he had been engaged to sail them back 
 across the rough water on the lagoon. 
 
 They returned, the queen flushed with drink, and with 
 them an old labourer and his wife, their friends. After getting 
 into the boat the old visitor kissed the old woman.
 
 OLD BEWTIES 155 
 
 Whereupon the lively young wife said to the old 
 labourer 
 
 * You haven't kissed me, Sam ' ; to which he replied 
 
 'No, but I ain't lost the job.' 
 
 ' Well, come on, bor,' she said, in her imperious way, and 
 she raised her glowing face towards the toothless old man, 
 who kissed her full lips right smartly. 
 
 The sail filled, the boat heaved on her side and bubbled 
 through the rough water, the buxom girl waving her hand- 
 kerchief, the old labourer with the protruding chin returning 
 her signals. 
 
 Old Noll made three good boards, and their sail dis- 
 appeared behind the budding willows and wavy reed-beds, 
 but her splendid figure still remained graven in my 
 memory. 
 
 Next morning at breakfast old Noll was rolling to the 
 staith drunk, his face covered with scratches, for he had 
 rolled into several bushes on his way home from the village, 
 whither he had piloted the queen. 
 
 All day he drank, when he was not abusing some stupid 
 young men who were trying to row their boat with their 
 sail up crashing into the alder branches and exhibiting 
 their folly. 
 
 By evening he was quite drunk and his pilotage-money 
 gone, and as I looked out I saw him leaving in the cold night- 
 rain in his marsh-boat, the innkeeper and a crowd of water- 
 side wastrels hailing him as he knelt insecurely in his rocking
 
 156 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 boat and poled her down the dike grunting and swearing and 
 shouting 
 
 4 April showers spring the May flowers/ 
 
 Still, habit was so powerful that we watched him essay the 
 passage across the storm-tossed lagoon without forebodings, 
 for he was too wise to stand up in his boat. 
 
 Away he went into the broken water, followed by a male 
 swan whose roosting-ground he had passed. The bird was 
 propelling himself along with nobly curved bill and flashing, 
 angry eye ; the drunken amphibian paying no heed to the 
 bird till it began flying on the water, essaying to close with 
 him. Then old Noll stopped in the beating rain, raised his 
 hand to strike, and struck the bird with his paddle. 
 
 Noll reached the little post before his cottage door in 
 safety, the swan returned to his beat, and the innkeeper to 
 his customers. 
 . . . ' Noll will get the water springe,' muttered a fenman. 
 
 * He '11 spin up a rare cuffa along with old Jenks,' sug- 
 gested a reed-cutter. 
 
 'He'll be dead afore long,' muttered a sober-looking 
 person in rusty black. 
 
 But that was prophesied of him some years ago, and he 
 still lives.
 
 LXIII 
 THE VOICES OF THE REED 
 
 PRIL 21st, 3 A.M. Above, a grey formless 
 waste of vapour ; below, the silent lagoon 
 stretching far away into grey pillars of mist ; 
 and through the moist morning air a clammy 
 smell like fish. The night landscape had the 
 appearance of the primeval world for through the broad 
 lagoon the dull masses of the reed-beds rose from the misty 
 grey face of the waters, and the stillness of the sleeping waters 
 was accentuated by the splashing of a fish in a reed-bush 
 close at hand. As I stood with a son of the fens beneath an 
 old dripping willow, there came a period of restlessness such 
 as birds show through the night-watches ; a water-hen that 
 embodiment of the voices of the waters called 'cro ook' 
 through the heavy damp air, and then another called far away, 
 and in a moment, from all sides, the water-hens took up the 
 voice, and the quick shrill call of a coot finished the chimes, 
 and all was silent for a moment save for the soft metallic 
 croaking of a toad near by, and a deep mysterious noise like 
 the breathing of some monster of the deep at one moment, 
 and like the distant rolling of a drum to the beaded dresses
 
 158 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 of a dancing-girl's at another. Then suddenly above this 
 deep regular undertone the cockerels began to crow all round 
 the lagoon, a dog barked, and the soft note of a swan feeding 
 close by could be heard ; then there was another bark, and 
 the regular beat of the mysterious voice could be heard on 
 our right, the puzzled fenman listening, for the sound was 
 new to him ; and as we looked on in the silence, through 
 the grey mists came a beautiful whistling chorus of red-legs, 
 their music softened by the mists ; another lull, and the soft 
 and distant rustling of the dancers in the reed-beds took up the 
 soft lullaby, and no other sound could be heard save the call 
 of an owl, or splashing of some fish, or the twittering note 
 of an early sedge-warbler that sang its matins from a reed- 
 bed across the lagoon. 
 
 Again there was a lull in the voices of the night, but the 
 eternal and regular beat of the mysterious voice was there, 
 and all of a sudden the fenman's face brightened in the grey 
 soft dawn, and he said 
 
 'It's the wash of the ripple in the mud,' for a soft 
 genial air was blowing from the west, the life-giving breath 
 of spring. 
 
 As we stood gazing at the formless grey landscape, and 
 listening to the mysterious voice of the reed-birds, a lark 
 fluttered from her grassy bed on the marsh, and lo ! the mist 
 began to lift, a pale blue colour crept into the sky, the reed- 
 tassels were defined and the distant trees and shores of the 
 lagoons showed grey, sharp, and clear, and in a few minutes 
 the soft, mysterious music in the reed-beds was drowned by
 
 THE VOICES OF THE REED 159 
 
 the larks and mavises who awoke a few minutes later, and 
 martins began filling the dawn with their chattering voices, 
 answering some snipe and lapwings, who laughed and called 
 each other. 
 
 And in less than a quarter of an hour the poetry of 
 the night was gone, the daylight had arrived, and a cool 
 breeze blew over the face of the waters, a sweet humming 
 sound being the last word spoken by the voices of that 
 mysterious night.
 
 LX1V 
 A MAY MORNING 
 
 HE morning broke fine, with the softest, sweet- 
 est breath blowing on my right cheek, the 
 sailor's wind-gauge, and the wind was westerly. 
 About nine o'clock the delicate lilac and 
 green marshland, set in a frame of lush 
 enamelled kingcups, blazing above their green heart- 
 shaped leaves ; in brief, the poetical landscape recalling a 
 Matthys Maris gave place to a Corot, with its bright 
 distance, for the low formless sky had softly parted, and 
 the May sun streamed on to the distant cattle and 
 mills. 
 
 As I sailed slowly down the river a man was sowing 
 broadcast, walking steadily up and down the ridges, casting 
 the grain with his right hand, and carrying in his left a peck 
 measure, from which he replenished his stock. He walked 
 along to the music of the land-buntings, perched on the 
 budding willows, throwing the seed with a sweep that 
 brought his tanned hand before his peck, where it hung for 
 a moment ere it swung back like a pendulum till it reached 
 the plane of his body. He was a good sower, and I was
 
 A MAY MORNING 161 
 
 able to see that Millet had exaggerated the action in his 
 famous picture; sowing is a quieter operation altogether, 
 more deliberate, and in no way fussy. A roller was following 
 the sower, pressing the seed into the soil not a plough, as 
 Millet has drawn it. 
 
 For the wheat-sowing they carry a measure hooked on 
 to a girdle before them, and sow with each hand alternately. 
 
 As we sailed along, startling the ewes from the green 
 marshes, and passing dead lambs drowned in the dikes, we 
 came to a dike on the banks of which grew the pale cuckoo- 
 flowers, and then we saw several ewes on one side of the 
 dike and their anxious offsprings on the other, bent on 
 attempting the watery passage ; and thus it is the young and 
 over-anxious lambs are drowned, for by a bad arrangement 
 on some of the marshes the flocks can get on to the walls to 
 feed, as well as upon the levels. 
 
 As our white sail glided past the frightened flocks they 
 ran away startled, but every time a ewe stopped many of 
 them having a proud mien the young lambs ran to their 
 teats and tugged vigorously for a time ; then the milk flowed 
 and their little tails wriggled with comfort as they drank their 
 warm sweet breakfast. And I saw one lamb run to the wrong 
 teat, and, hastily giving it up, run round and seize the other, 
 for young lambs and pigs know their own sides, and even 
 their own teats. 
 
 Sailing past the smouldering piles of burning twitch-grass, 
 we anchored by a four-year crop of sedge and reed, and went 
 ashore to watch the birds. 
 
 x
 
 162 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 As we waded through the high sedge growth and sloppy 
 water, wetting the backs of our legs just below the knees 
 for in wading over these quaking bogs the back of the knee- 
 joint is the part that bears the brunt, we came across one or 
 two rail-runs, but no more, for the water-rail is becoming 
 very scarce. 
 
 After we had waded through the marshy crop, we entered 
 the tall reed-beds, where the air was hot and moist, and the 
 reed-tassels cut one's face, and shivered and waved in the 
 rising breeze all the reeds melting in a formless, shimmering, 
 amber waste, that glimmered and glowed against the pale 
 ground. Only the open sky over our heads was quiet ; after 
 a time this reed intoxication passed off, and one could watch 
 the sedge- and reed-warblers courting. 
 
 And we broke like wild animals from the hot reed brake, 
 the perspiration pouring from our faces, and the midges, that 
 fortunately were scarce, biting us, glad to feel en plein air 
 again.
 
 LXV 
 
 POLLY'S VALENTINE 
 
 ACK WELTON'S day had come, and little 
 Polly Rose sat eagerly, in the little brick- 
 floored room, looking at the great china dogs 
 on the mantelpiece as if they were household 
 gods. 
 
 Rap, rap! knocked Jack Welton, and Polly ran to 
 the door, and her little heart gave a bound as she picked 
 up a bright piece of red ribbon. It was just such a piece 
 as she had longed for to bind across the black coils of hair 
 that waved on her olive temples ; for Polly was dark-skinned, 
 like the children of the South. 
 
 Knock, knock! again rapped the nimble Jack Welton, 
 and Polly dropped her ribbon and ran to the door. When she 
 lifted the latch her bright black eyes danced with pleasure, 
 for a nice pinafore, gay with blue ribbons, lay on the clean, 
 freshly-sanded, red bricks. Polly had just put on the dainty 
 pinafore and bound her temples with the silken fillet when 
 rap, rap ! again knocked Jack Welton at the door . 
 
 With the impulsive eagerness of happy childhood she ran
 
 164 MARSH LEAVES 
 
 to the door and opened it. Something flashed across the 
 sunlight, and little Polly forgot her ruddy fillet and her 
 pretty pinafore ; her whole being seemed to have received 
 a shock ; the world had vanished from her, and seemed to 
 be slipping away, away into the darkness down a deep 
 abyss. 
 
 . . . Then she seemed to awake and to hear distant voices, 
 and suddenly she knew she had received a terrible blow in 
 one of her black eyes ; and little by little, as the bright 
 world came back to her, she recalled how she had opened 
 the door and saw little John Read throw a stone at her. She 
 remembered, too, the flash of the smooth pebble athwart the 
 sunlight ; and now she realised it all, and, putting her hand 
 up to her face she felt a bandage over her right eye, and she 
 felt that she would never see the bright world again through 
 that eye. Big tears started into her eyes, and she looked 
 down and saw a few spots of blood upon the pinafore given her 
 on that bright day, and her little heart was wellnigh broken. 
 . . . The villagers had collected money, and four months 
 afterwards little Polly was playing Scotch-hop one June by 
 the dusty hedge, white with honeysuckle, when Annie Wynne 
 asked her to show her her glass eye. 
 
 Polly stopped, and the children gathered round eagerly 
 as she deftly took out the coloured glass globe, placing it 
 in little Annie's brown hand. Annie gazed upon the china, 
 black and white, until a shout from a drover startled her, 
 as some wild Irish cattle dashed up the road, raising dust- 
 particles that gleamed in the fierce sunlight.
 
 POLLY'S VALENTINE 165 
 
 The children screamed and ran up into the hedge, and 
 Annie dropped and lost the glass eye ; and Polly now goes to 
 school with a green shade over her sightless globe, hoping 
 that Jack Welton will bring her a new eye next Valentine's 
 Day, when she will be again known amongst the school- 
 children as 'one eye and a peppermint.' 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
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