FIFTEEN years are a very long time to wait for a certain holiday, but when it does come, depend upon it, you will have more capacity to enjoy it than though you had only waited fifteen days.

Well, up to last Christmas, I had waited fifteen years nearly to go into Devonshire. To that county of counties had I been once-when I could scarcely survey a table without the help of a stool, and through those aforesaid fifteen years had I hoped to go to it again, and ever had I been disappointed. Indeed I had given the visit up, and was supposing I shouldnever leave Kent any more, when at the expiration of twelve short hours' notice I found myself on the Great Western line, tearing away from London.

My business here is to talk of farmhouses, or I would discourse on the road to acquaintanceship which the railroad is. I had half-a-dozen farmhouses to visit in a fortnight, and I pictured those farmhouses to my mind's eye. They were all to be white-overhung with ivy-and little birds were to be perpetually chirruping, and looking in through the dairy windows at the clotted cream.

-'s'

Coomb, 'which it's my Uncle B-being nearest Exeter, to Coomb I determined to go first. I had dim recollections of my Uncle B- as a man with fair hair, perpetually smiling, and stirring up sheep. That was my entire picture of my Uncle B, and I framed him in the white farmhouse too. As to my Aunt B, I remembered her as a woman who loved me, and made my London stomach sad with goodies.

So no sooner had I got to Exeter than I made for Coomb-and what I am going to tell is as honest a picture of many a well-to-do farmer's house and household in Devonshire, as you can wish to have. I believe such a social state amongst farmers can only be found in Devonshire-unless, indeed, it may be found in Cornwall; and I believe it is the remains of the dark ages, when farmers didn't and couldn't live comfortably. And I may as well at once say, and say in order

to bring out the colours of my Uncle B's week-day performances and surroundings, that my Uncle Bgoes every Sunday to church in his carriage-upon my word.

When I began to ask for my Uncle B- -'s-being then about two miles from it-everybody knew it and him, and several called him Squire B—. At last, turning up a lane, I came on a boy banging and riding a pony. 'Squire B- 's,' said I, guessing the boy would call that farmer uncle of mine by that title.

'I be the squoir's lad,' said the boy. Indeed,' said I. 'I want to go to his house.'

'Wull ye mount?' said this young rustic, bundling off his animal.

I did not mount, but walked along by the side of the boy.

Mr B been hunting?' said I, to break the youth's steady stare.

'Measter bin a huntin? sur? Lord no-sur measter never hunts-the young missis did-didn't she?'

The young missis was my cousin Julia, who had just got married off to another farmer, holding another farm, and which was one of my half-dozen.

Hearing the boy guffawing to himself, I asked him what was the matter. 'Lord, sur,' said he, 'ye dew make I laugh, that ye dew-measter agoin' a-huntin'-oh, juddikins, I sees he at 'ut.'

Here we came to a branch lane, into which the boy turned, after saluting me humbly enough, poor fellow.

'Youckers,' I heard him say to himself as he disappeared, 'measter agoin' a-huntin'-jio.'

At last I came to Uncle B-'s; a detestable grey house, built the day before yesterday in the stone known, I believe, to the geologic world as the plumpudding. And before this mansion was a garden consisting of imprimis, 1 flint path; imprimis, 1 beehive; imprimis, 1 grass-plat (rank); imprimis, 1 rose-tree. And nothing else especially.

'Go away, my good fellow,' said I to a tattered man who came towards me from an outhouse, and I spoke testily, vexed that the white farm and ivy were a myth. 'Go away; I

haven't got a good gracious, it's Uncle B-' for my memory went back fifteen years, and picked out of that weatherbeaten face the old features.

And this was the costume of a Devonshire farmer of this present nineteenth century of a farmer who pays £2000 a-year rent, and who goes to church in his own carriage. And first of the tawny hat-it was so concave at the top that later in the day my Uncle B- went through the pretty practical joke of pouring a pint of cold water into that concavity, and then it would have held more; as for brim, all that kind of luxury must have been gone for years; as for the coat - it was a dress one-green as to colour, in the last stage of dilapidation as to state. Some unskilful workman had endeavoured to give a tone to it with a patch all down the back and over the central seam, but it was going fast. The cuffs had gone possibly at an early period of the century-'twas a swallow-tail coat. Uncle B-'s boots were a good deal worse than any of his men's for next day I placidly compared the articles. And Uncle B- -'s linen! Uncle Bcarried in his hand, to help him over hills, a hookey stick, which he had cut from his own hedge, with his own knife-he told me so.

Then we went into Uncle B's house.

Said my uncle, Missus be gorne to market, but ye'll have what I've had -won't ye?'

I was furiously hungry, and I said, 'Yes.'

There came from the kitchen, and in my uncle's own hands-seeing the maids were not to be found-five dull white potatoes in a cheese plate, three breast-bones of yellowish-black mutton, and home-made bread, so sad and bitter that it might have been a loaf of repentance. The tablecloth, my uncle told me, had been 'locked up' by the 'missus' before she started. So I sat down to this meal.

I believe only in the western counties of this England of ours do they black-salt mutton. Oh, the roastbeef of old England! For I know that ancient salted meat must have approximated to my uncle's saliferous mutton the curing recipe is vene

At last my aunt arrived at home, and for her dead brother's sake she fell upon my neck and wept. Said she, when much recovered, 'We'll have a nice tea, and a game o' cards afterwards.' After the tea we had the game o' cards. Such a game! It was whist; it was a penny the rubber; and we had one rush-light by which to perform the solemn rite. For it was solemn. The enormous room was hung in grey and black paper; we sat near the old, howling chimney, with our one rush-light; and all the dreary expanse of the room loomed in the distance at us, while in the gloom the furniture took upon it strange shapes.

As for the tallow illuminator, I declare positively, that later in the evening I took down an ornamental French

centimètre measure from the mantelpiece, and which had got there I don't know how, and measuring the diameter of that tallow, I found it exactly one centimètre, and that was not half-aninch. Think of playing whist under such surroundings! But we did. Meanwhile bats dashed up against the curtainless windows-willing, I supposed, to coquet with our chandelier.

My aunt made the most awful mistakes! She trumped when she ought to have followed suit, and then distracted us all by bringing out the ace of that suit directly afterwards. She laid it all on the candle; and indeed, before that penny rubber was over, made up my mind the tallow was as convenient as economic.

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Another new feature at this astounding card-table was this: my uncle gave his mind to business between the intervals of his play; and as he was afflicted with that terrible complaint, not down in Dr Buchan's 'Domestic Medicinal Guide'-I mean thinking aloud- I was startled by the dreamy information that Bess was agoin' blind,' and that 'that vattest vat pig was vat, tew

be zure. Neither my aunt nor her companion-our fourth-was startled by these voluntaries. 'Yes, yes, Bsaid the former, directly after each; yes, yes, Mr B; play.'

Even that precious night came to an end, and at last I got to bed. 'I think I'd better go,' said I in confidence to myself, and I wondered whether all my hopes of fifteen long years were to be dashed to the ground with a series of such farmhouses; and I wondered how people really well off could live in such a hugger-mugger style; and I wondered more how the old Earl of D-, their landlord, could come down often to such a domestic hole. Yes,' said I to myself, 'I think I'd better go.' But I was quite sure I had, next day at dinner; for my uncle, in great wrath at my aunt's nagging at the servants, took up the fowl he was carving in his right hand, and dashed it down into the dish, which was full of cream sauce. Ás I tried to look grave, my Uncle B strode from the room, and my aunt said to Miss Smith, the companion, 'Now, did you ever see Mr B- in such a tantrum as that before?'

Oh no, ma'm,' Miss Smith dutifully said.

After dinner, I said I must go. 'Very well,' said my aunt; if you must go, my dear, you must. Ike, fetch you out the trap.'

'Yew doant, yew Ike,' said my Uncle B. Yew git'e back tew the baarn, and I'll put in the beasty myself.'

And he did; and so I was driven from that queer combination of comfort and misery, my Uncle B-'s, I sitting inside, and looking on in wonder at my driver banging the animal with an ashen cudgel.

When the horse had been banged all the way to the railway station, I took my seat behind the lucky iron horse which can feel no cudgel, and was wafted away to Julia, the married huntress. Said I, as I came in front of Julia's, 'This is the second Devonshire farm; how shall I like this?'

My cousin Julia's house took me aback. The manners of the household were near those of the high Elizabethan, when people coarsely said

hard things of one another, and called it fun. I had always heard Devonshire was two hundred years behindhand, and had pleased myself with hoping to mark manners; but here we were three hundred years in arrear.

'Then why,' said my cousin Julia to me, upon my refusing to take any of that detested food-pork which had been cooked for supper, just before which meal I arrived- then why didn't you say so before it was frizzled?' (Frizzle!-real old Saxon verb, which we mere Cockneys have reduced to fry.)

To that candid inquiry I replied, 'Dear cousin, how was I to know it was being "frizzled" for me?' 'Why-why, we were going to bed when you came in!' Elizabethan laugh.

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'And you might a smelt it was for you,' from Julia's new husband. Yoicks!' and another Elizabethan laugh round the table. As for me, was shut up.' Though, if I was disconcerted, I was not unamused, for I give the archæological reader my word of honour, that at that farmhouse table in Devonshire every now and then crept out one of those quaint sayings put into his jesters' mouths by King Shakspere: I don't say the actual words, but the actual meaning indeed. As for the sayings of that English jester Touchstone, the plagiarisms from his pastoral wit were utterly astounding.

But when I got to bed--an old Norman church-tower looking down upon me through the window, as I lay in the moonlight-I wearily told myself that my Devonshire holiday, which was to be so pleasant and happy, was a failure, and I asked myself whether I should visit the other farms, or fly back to London, and be peppered by its smoke. Wearily and sorrowfully I fell asleep, still in the moonlight, and still with the church-tower looking down upon me, and clashing out its criticisms every quarter-of-an-hour.

I fled that house next day, in Julia's trap, and again getting to the railway station, debated whether I should take the mail to London, or a plain train to Uncle Somebody-else's. The hopes of fifteen years prevailed, and took me to my Uncle Gilbert's, being the homestead whence the sons and daughters