recollections of “eiteen-eiteen” (1818), which seems to have been a very remarkable year for maxima and minima of meteorology.  He could remember the high price of wheat during the war which ended at Waterloo, and how his old master, the grandfather of the tenant of the farm in my time, would stand by the men in the barn as they measured up the wheat, bushel by bushel, to fill the sacks, and exclaim as each bushel was poured in, “There goes another guinea, boys!” This would make the price 168s. a quarter; I find the average recorded for 1812 was 126s. 6d., so that it is quite possible that for a time in that year in places 168s. was realized; which leaves us little to grumble at in the price of 80s. during the greatest war in history.

His horizon must have been considerably widened by his brief visit to London; previous to that event it might have been nearly as extensive as that of the hero of a recent story of Pwllheli.  Meeting a crony in the town, he remarked that the streets of London would be pretty crowded that day.  “How’s that?” said his friend.  “Why, there’s a trip train gone up to-day with fourteen people from Pwllheli!”

Bredon Hill, in the Vale of Evesham, is the direction in which many people look for hints of coming changes of weather.

     “When Bredon Hill puts on his cap
     Ye men of the vale beware of that”

is a well-known proverb referring to the dark curtain of rain clouds obscuring the top, which is generally followed by heavy rain and floods in the Avon meadows and those of all the little streams which join that river.  The same purple curtain can be seen on the Cotswolds above Broadway, and is likewise the forerunner of floods in the Vale: 

     “When you see the rain on the hills
     You’ll shortly find it down by the mills.”

There is, too, the beautiful blue hazy distance one sees in very fine weather, which gives a feeling of mystery and remoteness and unexplored possibilities.  I lately read somewhere of a man who had passed his life without leaving his native village, though he had often looked far away into the blue distance, and longed to start upon a journey of discovery; for its invitation seemed an assurance that in such beauty there must be something better than he had ever experienced in his own home.  There came a day when the appeal was so insistent that he braced himself to the effort, and after many weary miles reached the place of his dreams, only to find that the blue distance had disappeared.  Meeting a passer-by he told him of his journey and its object, and of his disappointment, “Look behind you,” was the reply.  He looked, and behold! over the very spot he had left in the morning—­over his own home—­the blue haze hung, as a veil of beauty, with its exquisite promise.  There is a moral and there is comfort in this tale for him who fancies that he is the victim of circumstances and surroundings.  That is the man who, as my bailiff used to say in harvest, has always got a heavier cut of wheat than his neighbour in the same field, and is always finding himself “at the wrong job.”