Herrings are regularly carried round in hop-time to all the gardens, and
there is a great sale for them among the pickers. By degrees the 'drier'
rises higher in the pocket, coming up, as it were, through the floor
first his shoulders, then his body, and now his knees are visible. This
is the ancient way of filling a hop pocket; a machine is used now in
large kilns, but here, where there is only one cone, indicative of a
small garden, the old method is followed.

The steps on which I sit lead up to the door of the cone. Inside, the
green hops lie on the horsehair carpet, and the fumes of the sulphur
burning underneath come up through them. A vapour hangs about the surface
of the hops; looking upwards, the diminishing cone rises hollow to the
cowl, where a piece of blue sky can be seen. Round the cone a strip of
thin lathing is coiled on a spiral; could any one stand on these steps
and draw the inside of the cone? Could perspective be so managed as to
give the idea of the diminishing hollow and spiral? the side opposite
would not be so difficult, but the bit this side, overhead and almost
perpendicular, and so greatly foreshortened, how with that? It would be
necessary to make the spectator of the drawing feel as if this side of
the cone rose up from behind his head; as if his head were just inside
the cone. Would not this be as curious a bit of study as any that could
be found in the interior of old Continental churches, which people go so
many miles to see? Our own land is so full of interest. There are
pictures by the oldest Master everywhere in our own country, by the very
Master of the masters, by Time, whose crooked signature lies in the
corner of the shadowy farmhouse hearth.

Beneath the loft, on the ground-floor, I found the giant's couch. The bed
of a cart had been taken off its wheels, forming a very good bedstead,
dry and sheltered on three sides. On the fourth the sleeper's feet were