e's name,
address, and crest on a hop-pocket is more alarming still, when we
remember that twenty or more of these pockets, all marked alike, will
form each of several loads to be carted from a London railway station
to the Borough, the seat of the hop-trade, on the way to the factor's
warehouses, for all beholders to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly
digest."

In the delightful and now somewhat rare book _Talpa; or, The
Chronicles of a Clay Farm_, by Chandos Wren Hoskins, one of the few
agricultural works ever written by a scholar, he refers to his first
experience of this sort, when speaking of his difficulty in making up
his mind as to whether he should let the property into which he had
just come by inheritance, or occupy it himself, as follows:

"What was to be done? Apostatize from all the promises and
vows made from my youth up, and take it _in hand_--that is,
in a bailiff's hand, which certain foregone experiences had
led me to conceive was of all things the most _out of hand_
(if that may be called so, which empties the hand and the
pocket too). Such seemed the only alternative! At first it
was an impossibility--then an improbability--and then, as
the ear of bearded corn wins its forbidden way up the
schoolboy's sleeve, and gains a point in advance by every
effort to stop or expel it, so did every determination,
every reflection counteract the very purpose it was summoned
to oppose, and, in short, one fine morning I almost jumped a
yard backward at seeing--my own name on a waggon!"

The reference to a bailiff reminds me of my father's illustration, one
evening at dessert, of the difference between a farmer selling his
produce personally, or doing so through the medium of a bailiff.
Taking three wine-glasses--No. 1 representing the farmer, No. 2 the
bailiff, and No. 3 the purchaser--he filled No. 1 with port and poured
the contents into No. 3; what few drops were left in No. 1 remained
the property of the farmer. But if the wine were poured into No. 2,
and from thence into No. 3, however much the complete transference was
attempted, some small portion always remained for the benefit of the
intermediary.

I always conducted my sales personally, except in small matters, and
my experience in the latter proved an exception to the above rule, as
I have previously related (pp. 17 and 20).

I commend _Talpa_, with George Cruikshank's clever illustra