think of some improvement, and that there was no necessity to
adhere to the original specifications, he announced that "we bean't
Mades, nor we bean't Piersians" (we're not Medes, nor are we
Persians).

No necessary measurement was ever guessed at, his "rule" was always
handy in a special pocket, but in cases where a rough guess was
sufficient he would hazard it by what he called "scowl of brow"
(intently regarding it). The agricultural labourer is inclined, both
with weights and measures, to be inaccurate, "reckoning it's near
enough." I found soon after I came to Aldington that the weighing
machine which had been in use throughout the whole of my predecessor's
time, and had weighed up hundreds of pounds of wool at 2s. and 2s. 6d.
a pound, cheese at 8d., and thousands of sacks of wheat, barley, and
beans, was about a pound in each hundredweight _against the seller_,
so that he must have lost a considerable sum in giving overweight.

Tom G. was scornful about weather signs, and summed up his doubts in
such matters with sarcasm: "I reckon that the indications for rain are
very similar to the indications for fine weather!" But the best
epigram I ever heard from him was, "There's a right way and a wrong
way to do everything, and folks most in general chooses the wrong un!"
I should like to see those words of wisdom on the title-page of every
school book, and blazoned up in letters of gold on the wall of every
classroom in every school in the kingdom.

I have referred to the hop-kilns I built. Throughout the work of
erecting them, and it was no small one, Tom G. was the leading spirit;
it gave scope for his abilities, I think, on a larger scale than any
building he had previously undertaken. We began with a kiln sufficient
for the first 6 acres planted; it was necessary, with the gradual
extinction of British corn-growing, to find something to supersede it,
and to compensate for the falling off in farm receipts. I had seen
something of hops as a pupil on a large farm near Alton, Hampshire,
where they occupied an area of over a hundred acres, but at that time
I had no intention of growing them myself, and had not been infected
with the glamour, formerly attaching to hops beyond any other crop,
that came to me later.

I visited the old Alton farm, and obtained all particulars of the
latest kind of hop-kiln in the neighbourhood from the inventor, and
instructed him to prepare plans and specifications for the conversion
o