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 illustrations, to the attention of all readers of the curiosities of agriculture, as well as to practical men; it is one of those uncommon books which enters into the humorous side of farming under disadvantages—­as, for instance, prejudiced labourers who have long been employed upon such work as draining.  The author found one of the men, after instructions to lay the pipes at a depth of three feet, cutting a drain about eighteen inches deep, laying in the tiles, one by one, and filling the earth in over them as he went.  “I’ve been a-draining this forty year and more—­I ought to know summat about it.”  The author adds, “Need I tell you who said this? or give you the whole of the colloquy to which it furnished the epilogue?” Talpa was published sixty-seven years ago, but it contains much that might well be taken to heart by our post-war amateur agricultural reconstructionists.