xperiences.

After burning our tobacco, in Indian fashion, to better acquaintance (I
forgot to say that the poet had two dozen clay pipes ranged in a small
wooden rack), we went forth for a seven miles' walk on the Downs. And at
last, from the summit of one, I pointed down to a small field below, and
said--

But first I must specify that the day before I had gone with a young lady
of fourteen summers named Bee or Beatrice Fredericson, both of us bearing
baskets, to pick blackberries for tea, and coming to a small field which
was completely surrounded by a hedge, we saw therein illimitable
blackberries glittering in the setting sunlight, and longed to enter.
Finding a gap which had been filled by a dead thorn-bush, I removed the
latter, and, going in, we soon picked a quart of the fruit. But on
leaving we were met by the farmer, who made a to-do, charging us with
trespassing. To which I replied, "Well, what is to pay?" He asked for
two shillings, but was pacified with one; and so we departed.

Therefore I said to Tennyson, "I went into that field yesterday to pick
your blackberries, and your farmer caught us and made me pay a shilling
for trespassing."

And he gravely replied, though evidently delighted--"Served you right!
What business had you to come over my hedge into my field to steal my
blackberries?"

"_Mea culpa_," I answered, "_mea maxima culpa_."

"Mr. Leland," pursued Tennyson, as gravely as ever, grasping all the
absurdity of the thing with evident enjoyment, "you have no idea how
tourists trespass here to get at me. They climb over my gate and look in
at my windows. It is a fact--one did so only last week. But I declare
that you are the very first poet and man of letters who ever came here--to
steal blackberries!" Here he paused, and then added forcibly--

"I _do_ believe you are a gypsy, after all."

Then we talked of the old manor-houses in the neighbourhood, and of the
famous Mortstone, a supposed Saxon rude monolith near by. I thought it
prehistoric, because I had dug out from the pile of earth supporting and
coeval with it (and indeed only with a lead-pencil) a flint flake chipped
by hand and a bit of cannel coal, which indicate dedication. My host
listened with great interest, and then told me a sad tale: how certain
workmen employed by him to dig on his land had found a great number of
old Roman bronze coins, but, instead of taking them to him, had kept
them, though they cared so lit