the scene.

Having obtained a long lease of the place, I grubbed up the hedges,
turned three small fields into one, and made a cricket ground in the
midst. My object was to imitate as far as possible the "Upper Club" of
the Eton playing-fields.

I had barely accomplished the work, the cricket ground had just been
levelled, when the landlord's agent--or more probably his
"mortgagee"--arrived on the scene, accompanied by a hard-headed,
blustering timber merchant from Cheltenham. To my horror and dismay I
was informed that, money being very scarce, they contemplated making a
clean sweep of these grand old elms. On my expostulating, they merely
suggested that cutting down the trees would be a great improvement, as
the place would be opened up thereby and made healthier.

In the hope of warding off the evil day we offered to pay the price of
some of the finest trees, although they could only legally be bought for
the present proprietor's lifetime.

The contractor, however, rather than leave his work of destruction
incomplete, put a ridiculous price on them. He refused to accept a
larger sum than he could ever have cleared by cutting them down. This is
what Cowper would have stigmatised as

"disclaiming all regard
For mercy and the common rights of man,"

and "conducting trade at the sword's point."

We then resolved to buy the farm. But the stars in their courses fought
against us; we were unsuccessful in our attempt to purchase
the freehold.

And so the contractor's men came with axes and saws and horses and
carts. For days and weeks I was haunted by that hideous nightmare, the
crash of groaning trees as they fell all around, soon to be stripped of
all their glorious beauty. The cruel, blasphemous shouts of the men, as
they made their long-suffering horses drag the huge, dismembered trunks
across the beautifully levelled greensward of the cricket ground, were
positively heart-rending. Ninety great elms did they strike down. A few
were left, but of these the two finest came down in the great gale of
March 1896.

"Sic transit gloria mundi."

Trees are like old familiar friends, we cannot bear to lose them; every
one that falls reminds us of "the days that are no more." Struck down in
all the pride and beauty of their days, they remind us that

"Those who once gave promise
Of fruit for manhood's prime
Have passed from us for ever,
Gone home before their ti