I had barely accomplished the work, the cricket ground had just been levelled, when the landlord’s agent—­or more probably his “mortgagee”—­arrived on the scene, accompanied by a hard-headed, blustering timber merchant from Cheltenham.  To my horror and dismay I was informed that, money being very scarce, they contemplated making a clean sweep of these grand old elms.  On my expostulating, they merely suggested that cutting down the trees would be a great improvement, as the place would be opened up thereby and made healthier.

In the hope of warding off the evil day we offered to pay the price of some of the finest trees, although they could only legally be bought for the present proprietor’s lifetime.

The contractor, however, rather than leave his work of destruction incomplete, put a ridiculous price on them.  He refused to accept a larger sum than he could ever have cleared by cutting them down.  This is what Cowper would have stigmatised as

                      “disclaiming all regard
     For mercy and the common rights of man,”

and “conducting trade at the sword’s point.”

We then resolved to buy the farm.  But the stars in their courses fought against us; we were unsuccessful in our attempt to purchase the freehold.

And so the contractor’s men came with axes and saws and horses and carts.  For days and weeks I was haunted by that hideous nightmare, the crash of groaning trees as they fell all around, soon to be stripped of all their glorious beauty.  The cruel, blasphemous shouts of the men, as they made their long-suffering horses drag the huge, dismembered trunks across the beautifully levelled greensward of the cricket ground, were positively heart-rending.  Ninety great elms did they strike down.  A few were left, but of these the two finest came down in the great gale of March 1896.

     “Sic transit gloria mundi.”

Trees are like old familiar friends, we cannot bear to lose them; every one that falls reminds us of “the days that are no more.”  Struck down in all the pride and beauty of their days, they remind us that

     “Those who once gave promise
      Of fruit for manhood’s prime
      Have passed from us for ever,
      Gone home before their time.”

They remind me that four of my greatest friends at school, ten short years ago, are long since dead.  Like the trees felled by the woodman’s axe, they were struck down by the sickle of the silent Reaper, even as the golden sheaves that are gathered into the beautiful barns.  Other trees will spring up and shade the naked earth in the woods with their mantle of green:  so, also,

     “Others will fill our places
      Dressed in the old light blue.”

And just as in the woods fresh young saplings are daily springing up, so also the merry voices of happy, generous boys are ringing, as I write, in the old, old courts and cloisters by the silvery Thames; their merry laughter is echoed by the bare grey walls, whereon the names of those who have long been dust are chiselled in rude handwriting on the mouldering stone.