nurse. She can see that his orders are carried out, that he is sent for when it is really necessary, but not before, can aid and abet him in many ways, saving his time and his strength. But I sometimes think that in certain cases a struggling young practitioner may look upon a successful Nursing Association with mixed feelings. The people learn to trust the nurse'; do undoubtedly sometimes go to her when of old they would have gone to the doctor; and may occasionally keep some small fee from his pocket. It's a good wind indeed that blows harm to nobody.

Our Association costs about £60 a-year to run; fees and subscriptions account for about half this sum, leaving the brutal and grasping landlord to pay the rest.

The late owner of this our estate had spent little money on it of recent years, and I do not know when we shall get out of the builders' hands. My agent insists on the farmbuildings being put in order first, farm cottages last. You can let a farm if there is a good sound cow-house, stable, calveshouse, and cart-house to it; if these buildings are bad, the farm will not let, no matter how well housed the labourers

are.

Now, there is nothing more satisfactory to my mind than pulling down an insanitary hovel to make way for a decent cottage, and when we first came I had promised myself that not a hovel should remain on the place by the time I had

But We

been here for five years. now I am not so sure. have a Budget, and it makes one anxious. If these things be done in the green tree . . .? I have three small sons to provide for, and much as I like to see decent cottages, I propose to consider my own flesh and blood first. These Death Duties . . . will they increase for

evermore? Increment Taxes . . . will not hit Agricultural land? At first I thought not, but reluctantly have I altered my opinion. The so-called safeguards are not sufficient. The Government valuers and surveyors will be held to be good servants according to results-i.e., according to the amount of land which can be brought under the new taxation. This principle is already well recognised in the case of Income Tax and Land Tax collectors. A few rich men, who can afford to go to law, will fight battles-royal in the courts, but most of us will pay whatever we are bidden to pay-with a deep and growing sense of injustice. Income Tax . House Duty

Land Tax Super Tax. Increment Tax-an endless vista of menacing taxes, all falling with especial severity on the land. Yes, of a certainty, there will be fewer cottages built in rural England. I must put by something, form some nestegg, if I can, abroad-contrive some sheet-anchor to hold to if the rising gale bursts in hail and thunder. It is no time for living up to one's income, in the comfortable knowledge that

so long as you do not dip into your capital your sons will some day enjoy it. Thoughts such as these are in the minds of all owners of land at the present time.

This Socialistic taxation, this "Peoples' Budget" (save the mark!), is in many ways so stupid. Who suffers most if you put crushing burdens on the land? The dwellers nearest to the soil. Down go wages; up goes unemployment; the hovels remain standing; the big house stands empty, everything is run at half-speed, and who benefits?

The landlord can occasionally shift the burden. I met a friend of mine at the club the other day, who thus addressed me: "I've given up trying to live on my ancestral acres; I've raised all my rents, and put in as hard-fisted a nut of an agent as I could find. I've sacked half the gardeners and all the grooms, and got rid of the estate masons, bricklayers, and carpenters. No more subscriptions, village nurses, flowershows, cricket clubs, and extravagance of that kind for me. The house is empty, and don't pay tax. The furniture is in the Pantechnicon, and I'm not the popular hero I was. I tried to sell the place, but could not get a bid—no buyers in the market nowadays." "And what do you do with your miserable self?" I asked tenderly. "Oh, the wife and I spend Christmas to Easter abroad, hire a little flat in town for the season, and live with other people the rest of the year. But that's not so easy

as it used to be; every one is cutting something down, and they usually begin on their house-parties." I expressed my sympathy and left him.

Many a squire nowadays vows at times that he will do as this man has done. But for most of them such an existence would be intolerable. The country and the surroundings in which they were born and bred are the very life to them, and there is, moreover, a feeling of defiance: they will stay and fight it out, though they die at their posts. It is not generally realised as yet, but there is a very bellicose spirit abroad; the Cavaliers of today have still some of the hardihood of their forebears, and the people around them are perfectly ready to back them up. Our legislators are laying up a store of trouble for their poor country; and if you ask me for a sign, I would point to the wonderful turnover of votes in country constituencies at the last election. The squires of England are moving-slowly, but they are moving, and they have great forces behind them. Before the last of their acres and their sovereigns is taken from them there will be more than a spilling of ink over the fields of Merry England. If it is asked, with what weapons will the countryside rebel against the town, I would say, the English yeomanry regiments are about the best irregular cavalry in the world; and if I were a Social Democrat I would use my best endeavours to abolish them, and to bring about uni

versal service, that the swarming towns may be drilled and armed against the Cavaliers of England.

Our

But, to be sure, the water is getting too deep. "Minora canamus." We pride ourselves on the wildness and natural character of our hunting in the West. Here are no imported litters of Scotch foxes, no swarms of hard-riding sportsmen and troops of second horsemen. Some fifty or sixty men and women assemble at a good meet of the foxhounds, of whom at least twenty are farmers-a better proportion than you will find almost any where else in England. beloved old Master arrives with seventeen or eighteen couple of as good hounds as you can wish to look at; and if you try to follow him across the appalling bogs and banks of this rough country, you will not greatly dwell upon his age, for spare he is, and hard as nails, and fitter for his work than most of the amateur huntsmen I can think of. We are not very smart to look at, for we do not wear our pink coats more than we think proper, as the mud of the moorlands leaves a stain that nothing will remove. I believe it has a touch of yellow ochre in it; and if you take an involuntary roll therein, back must go your coat to the dyers, and "things are never the same again.

It is a difficult country to kill a fox in. Often the boldest rider cannot get to hounds; the big overgrown banks are not seldom entirely impracticable,

and off the moors the hills are heart-breaking. When scent

is good it is the easiest thing in the world to lose hounds altogether, thrust you never so valiantly. Most strangers get bogged once or twice, then learn to ride cunning over doubtful places in the wake of a farmer who knows the way. The foxes are wild animals, and staunch as can be; but, alas! of late too many have been slain after a brief dash, maimed by traps or the equally deadly wire snare, which, when it is once tight fixed round a limb will eat it right away. The advent of the professional rabbit-trapper has proved an evil day for fox-hunting. Such a man hates foxes, for they destroy his goods; and when he catches one, short is the poor brute's shrift. The farmers do not always know of the misdoings of the trappers. They pocket the £10, or whatever it is, that the trapper pays them, and shut their eyes to the rest. As far as I can see, the only certain remedy is for the hunt to buy up the trapping, and employ some one to carry it out whom they can trust. The farmers, to do them justice, do not like the idea of fox - slaying by trap; but they are either too busy or too lazy, and prefer the sum down which the trapper offers them to the trouble of killing and marketing the rabbits for themselves. Palliative measures are patent wires, which drop off the captured animal if the peg to which they are fastened is pulled from the ground,-a fox will, of course,

pull out a peg that no rabbit can move, and relentless prosecution of the trapper if he is found using steel gins in improper places. But the first remedy is considerably discounted by the increased cost of the patent wire, and the trapper is too wily to bring himself within the operation of the second.

But the hunting of the wild red deer is the cherished and distinctive sport of the West country. A noble sport it is, and few things in this troublous little life are better than a fast gallop over the best parts of Exmoor. Let me tell you of the best day I had last August with the Devon and Somerset.

It is a bright sunny morning, and down in the low country it will be very hot long ere noon. But up here on the moor, a thousand feet above the sea, there is always a cool air, and it is never too hot for galloping, if your horse is fit. The Meet is at Larkbarrow Farm, and by eleven o'clock a field of between two and three hundred horsemen and horsewomen, dressed in every variety of rat-catching costume, -for only the hunt officials wear pink,-have assembled at the little isolated moorland homestead, which is set in the midst of a rolling wilderness of heather and peat, of reed and grass, the scanty sweet-grass which feeds the famous moorland breed of little sheep. We inspect the pack, and agree that the hounds look fit for anything. Great big brutes they are, many of them full of the

best blood in England. They are here "for no fault,' " but have been drafted from all over England on the score of size. A staghound must be big, or he is not likely to stand the terrific pace through the tall heather; and a good foxhound, who has no fault except that he is too big and is always a field in front of the pack, is just the hound for the West. There is no definite breed of staghound, as some folk seem to imagine. All hounds love to hunt deer.

Presently the pack is kennelled in a shed, and one by one the "tufters" are called forth. Old, sagacious hounds these, easy to stop and to handle. Five couple are chosen, and Tucker the huntsman trots off over the heather, the little cluster of hounds at his horse's heels.

If you want to see the "tufting" (and you miss much of the prettiest part of the sport if you do not see it), you should have two horses out, as after galloping for perhaps an hour after the tufters no horse is in the best fettle for beginning a long run with the pack. This time I am lucky enough to have two, so with fifty or sixty other sportsmen I follow Tucker. The rest of the field get off their horses, smoke, chatter, or make for points of vantage where they may be able to see something of the tufters without too much galloping about. There is little fear of heading ("blanching" it is called) a big August stag, who usually seems to take no notice of horses or men. The note of a