on the cottage walls, hung round
the pulpit. Then what could look prettier against the white carved stone
than the russet and gold leaves of the Virginia creeper? and these they
freely use in the decorations. If one wants to see good taste displayed
in these days, one must go to simple country places to find it. At
Christmas the old Gothic fane is hung with festoons of ivy and of yew in
the old fashion of our forefathers.

I paid a visit to my old friend John Brown the other day, as I thought
he would be able to tell me something about the harvest feasts of bygone
days. He is a dear old man of some seventy-eight summers, though
somewhat of the _laudator temporis acti_ school; but what good-nature
and sense of humour there is in the good, honest face!

"Fifty year ago 'twere all mirth and jollity," he replied to our enquiry
as to the old times. "There was four feasts in the year for us folk.
First of all there was the sower's feast,--that would be about the end
of April; then came the sheep-shearer's feast,--there'd be about fifteen
of us as would sit down after sheep-shearing, and we'd be singing best
part of the night, and plenty to eat and drink; next came the feast for
the reapers, when the corn was cut about August; and, last of all, the
harvest home in September. Ah! those were good times fifty years ago. My
father and I have rented this cottage eighty-six years come Michaelmas;
and my father's grandfather lived in that 'ere housen, up that 'tuer'
there, nigh on a hundred years afore that. I planted them ash trees in
the grove, and I mind when those firs was put in, near seventy years
ago. Ah! there _was_ some foxes about in those days; trout, too, in the
'bruk'--it were full of them. You'll have very few 'lets' for hunting
this season; 'twill be a mild time again. Last night were Hollandtide
eve, and where the wind is at Hollandtide there it will stick best part
of the winter. I've minded it every year, and never was wrong yet The
wind is south-west to-day, and you'll have no 'lets' for hunting
this time."

"Lets" appear to be hindrances to hunting in the shape of frosts. It is
an Anglo-Saxon word, seldom used nowadays, though it is found in the
dictionary; and our English Prayer Book has the words "we are sore let
and hindered in running the race," etc. Shakespeare too employs it to
signify a "check" with the hounds.

As I left, and thanked John Brown for his information, he handed me a
little bit of paper,