mean the summer when I had seven--we had the most
charming home imaginable. It was in a wood, and on that side of the wood
which is farthest from houses and highroads. Here it was bounded by a
brook, and beyond this lay a fine pasture field.

There are fields and fields. I never wish to know a better field than
this one. I seldom go out much till the evening, but if business should
take one along the hedge in the heat of the sun, there are as juicy and
refreshing crabs to be picked up under a tree about half-way down the
south side, as the thirstiest creature could desire.

And when the glare and drought of midday have given place to the mild
twilight of evening, and the grass is refreshingly damped with dew, and
scents are strong, and the earth yields kindly to the nose, what beetles
and lob-worms reward one's routing!

I am convinced that the fattest and stupidest slugs that live, live near
the brook. I never knew one who found out I was eating him, till he was
half-way down my throat. And just opposite to the place where I
furnished your dear mother's nest, is a small plantation of burdocks, on
the underside of which stick the best flavoured snails I am acquainted
with, in such inexhaustible quantities, that a hedgehog might have
fourteen children in a season, and not fear their coming short of
provisions.

And in the early summer, in the long grass on the edge of the wood--but
no! I will not speak of it.

My dear children, my seven dear children, may you never know what it is
to taste a pheasant's egg--to taste several pheasant's eggs, and to eat
them, shells and all.

There are certain pleasures of which a parent may himself have partaken,
but which, if he cannot reconcile them with his ideas of safety and
propriety, he will do well not to allow his children even to hear of. I
do not say that I wish I had never tasted a pheasant's egg myself, but,
when I think of traps baited with valerian, of my great-uncle's
great-coat nailed to the keeper's door, of the keeper's heavy-heeled
boots, and of the impropriety of poaching, I feel, as a father, that it
is desirable that you should never know that there are such things as
eggs, and then you will be quite happy without them.

But it was not the abundant and varied supply of food which had
determined my choice of our home: it was not even because no woodland
bower could be more beautiful,--because the coppice foliage was fresh
and tender overhead, and the old lea