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Field and Hedgerow - Being the Last Essays of Richard Jefferies by Richard Jefferies
page 81 of 295 (27%)
Down in one of the hamlets there was a forge to which all the workpeople
who wanted any tools sharpened carried their instruments, the smith being
able to put a better edge on. Other blacksmiths or carpenters, if they
required a particularly good edge for some purpose, came to him. This art
he had acquired from his grandfather as a sort of heirloom or secret. The
grandfather while at work used to trouble and puzzle himself how to get a
very sharp edge, and at length one night he dreamed how to do it. From
that time he became prosperous. If a celebrated sonata was revealed in a
dream, why not the way to sharpen a chisel?

When he was tired the drier said he was 'dreggy.' They were talking of
the lambs, and how that dry season they had scarcely any sweetbreads. The
sweetbreads were so scanty, the butchers did not even offer them for
sale; the lambs had fed on dry food. In seasons when there was plenty of
grass and green food they had good large sweetbreads, white as milk. The
character of the food does thus under some circumstances really alter the
condition of an organ. The sweetbread is the pancreas; now a deficient
pancreatic action is supposed to play a great part in consumption and
other wasting diseases. Have we here, then, an indication that when the
pancreas may be suspected plenty of succulent food and plenty of liquid
are nature's remedies? We looked over at the pigs in the sty. They were
rooting about in a mess of garbage. 'Oh, what dirty things pigs are!'
said a lady. 'Yes, ma'am; they're rightly named,' said he. Some
scientific gentleman in the district had a large telescope with which he
made frequent observations, and at times would let a labouring man look
at the moon. 'Ah,' said our friend, shaking his head in a solemn,
impressive way, 'my brother, he see through it; he see great rocks and
seas up there. He say he never want to see through it no more. He wish he
never looked through him at all.' The poor man was dreadfully frightened
at what he had seen in the moon. At first I laughed at the story and the
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