e done you may as well do it first as last."
--WILLIAM BELL.

The labourers born and bred in the Vale of Evesham are mostly tall and
powerful men, and mine were no exception; where the land is good the
men compare favourably in size and strength with those in less
favoured localities, and the same applies to the horses, cattle, and
sheep; but the Vale, with its moist climate, does not produce such
ruddy complexions as the clear air of the Hills, and even the apples
tell the same story in their less brilliant colouring, except after an
unusually sunny summer. In the days of the Whitsuntide gatherings for
games of various kinds, sports, and contests of strength, the Vale men
excelled, and certain parishes, famous for the growth of the best
wheat, are still remembered as conspicuously successful.

My men, though grown up before education became compulsory, could all
read and write, and they were in no way inferior to the young men of
the present day. They were highly skilled in all the more difficult
agricultural operations, and it was easy to find among them good
thatchers, drainers, hedgers, ploughmen, and stockmen; they were,
mostly, married, with families of young children, and they lived close
to their work in the cottages that went with the farm. They exhibited
the variations, usual in all communities, of character and
disposition, and though somewhat prejudiced and wedded to old methods
and customs they were open to reason, loyal, and anxious to see the
land better farmed and restored to the condition in which the late
tenant found it, when entering upon his occupation seven years
previously.

The late tenant, my predecessor, though a gentleman and a pleasant man
to deal with, was no farmer for such strong and heavy land as the farm
presented; it was no fault of his, for the farmer, like the poet, is
born, not made, and, as I was often told, he was "nobody's enemy but
his own." His wife came of a good old stock of shorthorn breeders
whose name is known and honoured, not only at home, but throughout the
United States of America, our Dominions, and wherever the shorthorn
has established a reputation; and my men were satisfied that she was
the better farmer of the two.

I had scarcely bargained for the foul condition of the stubbles,
disclosed when the corn was harvested shortly before I took possession
at Michaelmas; they were overrun with couch grass--locally ca