to that of the misguided being of whom it may be said:

"Through life's dark road his sordid way he wends--
An incarnation of fat dividends "!

C. SPRAGUE.

It is probable that the bicycle will cause a larger demand for remote
country houses. To the writer, who, previous to this summer, had never
experienced the poetry of motion which a bicycle coasting downhill, with
a smooth road and a favourable wind, undoubtedly constitutes, the
invention seems of the greatest utility. It brings places sixty miles
apart within our immediate neighbourhood. Let the south wind blow, and
we can be at quaint old Tewkesbury, thirty miles away, in less than
three hours. A northerly gale will land us at the "Blowing-stone" and
the old White House of Berkshire with less labour than it takes to walk
a mile. Yet in the old days these twenty miles were a great gulf fixed
between the Gloucestershire natives and the "chaw-bacons" over the
boundary. Their very language is as different as possible. To this day
the villagers who went to the last "scouring of the horse" and saw the
old-fashioned backsword play, talk of the expedition with as much pride
as if they had made a pilgrimage to the Antipodes.

As September draws nigh and the days rapidly shorten, the merry hum of
the thrashing machine is heard all day long. The sound comes from the
homestead across the road, and buzzes in my ears as I sit and write by
the open window. How wonderful the evolution of the thrashing machine!
How rough-and-ready the primitive methods of our forefathers! First of
all there was the Eastern method of spreading the sheaves on a floor of
clay, and allowing horses and oxen to trample on the wheat and tread out
the corn. Not less ancient was the use of the old-fashioned flail--an
instrument only discarded within the memory of living man. Yet what a
wonderful difference there is between the work accomplished in a day
with the flails and the daily output of the modern thrashing machine!

In the porch of the manor house, amid an accumulation of old traps and
other curious odds and ends there hangs an ancient and much-worn flail.
Two stout sticks, the handstaff and the swingle, attached to each other
by a strong band of gut, constitute its simple mechanism. The wheat
having been strewn on the barn floor, the labourer held the handstaff in
both hands, swung it over his head, and brought the swingle down
horizontally on to the heads of ripe corn. Contra