of the beauty of the woods
and the stream; we can but dimly feel it when we see it with our eyes.

Below the "pill"--for we have been gazing up stream--some sheep are
lying under a gnarled willow on the left bank; some are nibbling at the
lichen and moss on the trunk, others are standing about in pretty groups
of three and four. One of them has just had a ducking. Trying to get a
drink of water, he overbalanced himself and fell in. He walks about
shaking himself, and doubtless feels very uncomfortable. Sheep do not
care much for bathing in cold water. You have only to see the
sheep-washing in the spring to realise how they dislike it. There is a
place higher up the stream called the Washpool, where every day in May
you can watch the men bundling the poor old sheep into the water, one
after the other, and dipping them well, to free the wool from insects of
all kinds. And how the trout enjoy the ticks that come from their
thickly matted coats! One poor sheep is hopping about on the cricket
field dead lame. Perhaps that leg he drags behind is broken! Why does
not the farmer kill the poor brute? There is much misery of this kind
caused in country places by the thoughtlessness of farmers. How much has
yet to be learnt by the very men who love to describe the labourers as
"them 'ere ignorant lower classes"! Alas! that these things can happen
among the green fields and spreading elms and the heavenly sunshine of
summer days! We should have more moral courage, and do as Carlyle bids
us in his old solemn way: "But above all, where thou findest Ignorance,
Stupidity, Brute-mindedness, attack it, I say; smite it, wisely,
unwearily, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite
in the name of God. The Highest God, as I understand it, does audibly so
command thee, still audibly if thou hast ears to hear."

On the cricket pitch, a bare hundred yards away from the river bank, is
a plentiful crop of dandelions, crow's-foot, clover, and, worst of all,
enormous plantains. A gravel soil is very favourable to plantains, for
stones work up and the grass dies. The dreadful plantain seems to thrive
anywhere and everywhere, and on bare spots where grass cannot live he
immediately appears. Rabbits have been making holes all over the pitch,
and red spikes of sorrel, wonderfully rich and varied in colour, rise
everywhere at the lower end of the field towards the river. The cricket
ground has been somewhat neglected of late.

The