d her bed filled with
fresh springy chaff, on which she would sleep as sound as her rheumatism
would let her, and as warm and dry and comfortable as any duchess in the
land that happened to have the rheumatism too. For comfort is inside
more than outside; and eider down, delicious as it is, has less to do
with it than some people fancy. How I wish all the poor people in the
great cities could have good chaff beds to lie upon! Let me see: what
more machines are there now? More than I can tell. I saw one going in
the fields the other day, at the use of which I could only guess.
Strange, wild-looking, mad-like machines, as the Scotch would call them,
are growling and snapping, and clinking and clattering over our fields,
so that it seems to an old boy as if all the sweet poetic twilight of
things were vanishing from the country; but he reminds himself that God
is not going to sleep, for, as one of the greatest poets that ever lived
says, _he slumbereth not nor sleepeth_; and the children of the earth
are his, and he will see that their imaginations and feelings have food
enough and to spare. It is his business this--not ours. So the work must
be done as well as it can. Then, indeed, there will be no fear of the
poetry.

I have just alluded to the pleasure of riding the horses, that is, the
work-horses: upon them Allister and I began to ride, as far as I can
remember, this same summer--not from the plough, for the ploughing was
in the end of the year and the spring. First of all we were allowed to
take them at watering-time, watched by one of the men, from the stable
to the long trough that stood under the pump. There, going hurriedly
and stopping suddenly, they would drop head and neck and shoulders
like a certain toy-bird, causing the young riders a vague fear of
falling over the height no longer defended by the uplifted crest; and
then drink and drink till the riders' legs felt the horses' bodies
swelling under them; then up and away with quick refreshed stride or
trot towards the paradise of their stalls. But for us came first the
somewhat fearful pass of the stable door, for they never stopped, like
better educated horses, to let their riders dismount, but walked right
in, and there was just room, by stooping low, to clear the top of the
door. As we improved in equitation, we would go afield, to ride them
home from the pasture, where they were fastened by chains to short
stakes of iron driven into the earth. There was