It was a treat to watch Tom's magnificent physique when felling a big
tree, stripped to his shirt, with sleeves rolled up, and his gleaming
axe slowly raised and poised for a second above him before it fell
with the gathered impetus of its own weight and his powerful stress.
Biting time after time into the exact place aimed at, and at the most
effective angle possible, the clean chips would fly in all directions
until the necessary notch was cut and the basal outgrowths, close to
the ground around the sturdy column, were reduced, so that the
cross-cut saw could complete its downfall with a mighty crash. There
is always something sad about the felling of an ancient tree; one
feels it is a venerable creature that has passed long years of
unchallenged dominion on the spot occupied, and one can scarcely avoid
an idea of its intelligence and its silent record of passing
generations, who have welcomed its shade at blazing summer noontides,
or crept close to its warm touch for shelter from the winter's
chilling blast and the hissing hail.

Tom was always the leader of my team of mowers when the grass was cut,
for, with the large staff I employed on purpose for the all-important
hop-gardens, I never wanted, till towards the end of my time, to make
use of a machine. The steady swing of his scythe, with scarcely an
apparent effort, the swish, as the swathe fell beneath its keen edge,
and the final lift of the severed grasses at the end of the stroke,
all in regular rhythmic action, were very fascinating to watch. At
intervals came a halt for "whetting" the blade, and the musical sound
of rubber (sharpening stone) against steel, equally adroitly
accomplished, proved the artist at his work, with a delicacy of touch
which, perhaps in different circumstances, might have produced the
thrills with which Pachmann's velvet caress or Paderewski's refined
expression enchant a vast and rapturous audience.