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 called
"squitch"--and the following summer I had 40 acres of bare-fallow,
repeatedly ploughed, harrowed, and cultivated throughout the whole
season, which, of course, produced nothing by way of return. My
predecessor had found that his arable land was approaching a condition
in which it was difficult to continue the usual course of cropping,
and had expressed his wish to one of the men that all the arable was
grass. He was answered, I was told:

"If you goes on as you be a-going it very soon will be!" I
heard, moreover, that a farming relative of his, on
inspecting the farm, shortly before he gave it up, had
pronounced his opinion that it was "all going to the devil
in a gale of wind!"

I soon recognized that I had a splendid staff of workers, and, under