village schools the girls used to swallow pins; first one would do it,
then another, presently half the school were taking pins. Ignorant of
physiology! Yet they did not seem to suffer; the pins did not penetrate
the pleura or lodge in the processes. Now Anatomy climbs into the pulpit
and shakes a bony fist at the congregation. That is the humerus of it, as
Corporal Nym might say. At the late election--the cow election--the
candidates were Brown, Conservative, and Stiggins, Liberal. The day after
the polling a farm labourer was asked how he filled up his voting paper.
'Oh,' said he full of the promised cow, 'I doan't care for that there
Brown chap, he bean't no good; zo I jest put a cross agen he, and voted
for Stiggins.' The dream of life was accomplished, the labourer had a
vote, and--irony--he voted exactly opposite to his intent.

Too-whoo! ooo!--the sound of a horn,--the hunt was up; but this was not
the hunting season. Looking out of the kiln door I saw a boy running at
full speed down the lane with a small drain-pipe tucked under his arm. He
stopped, put the pipe to his mouth, and blew a blast on this 'dread
horn,' then jumped through a gap in the hedge and disappeared. They were
playing fox and hounds; who but a boy would have thought of using a
drain-pipe for a horn? It gave a good note, too. In and about the kiln I
learned that if you smash a frog with a stone, no matter how hard you hit
him, he cannot die till sunset. You must be careful not to put on any new
article of clothing for the first time on a Saturday, or some severe
punishment will ensue. One person put on his new boots on a Saturday, and
on Monday broke his arm. Some still believe in herbs, and gather
wood-betony for herb tea, or eat dandelion leaves between slices of dry
toast. There is an old man living in one of the villages who has reached
the age of a hundred and sixty years, and still goes hop-picking. Ever so
many people had seen him, and knew all about him; an undoubted fact, a
public fact; but I could not trace him to his lair. His exact whereabouts