When the stuccoed front of our house was demolished, to show the oaken pattern (but it had to be re-roughcast to keep out the weather), there were pailsful of honey carried off by the labourers, of course not without wounds and strife: but in ordinary times it is a strange fact that our bees never sting their hosts; be careful only to remain quiet, and there is no war between man and bee.

Two years ago a great comb was built outside an eaveboard, probably because there was no room for more comb inside.

It is curious that it should have survived two hard winters.

Is not all this apposite, as suited (let Pindar and Tennyson bear witness) to a poet's home?
In this zoological connection (for bees are zoa) let me record that there is a legend of a fox having been killed in our drawing-room (on the ground-floor with French windows) during some tenancy in my absence,--only fancy the havoc of such a strife! but all had been cleared up before our return.

Also, it is memorable (and I saw it myself) that a hard-pressed stag from Sir Gilbert Heathcote's hunt took refuge in our harness-room,--to the extreme horror of a gardener's boy, who thought it was a mad donkey,--and no wonder, for as those brave barbarian sportsmen get the antlers sawn off for fear of wounds to themselves or their nobler dogs, the poor scared creature with its uncrowned head and loppity ears is very donkey-like.
Let me give another like homely anecdote of past days.
We are all now so wrapt in security as country dwellers, guarded by the rural police everywhere, that the following ludicrous incident may seem hardly worth a word; but in the good old days, when poor Jack was such a highway brigand that my nurses feared to take the children off the premises, and when burglars were not infrequent callers at remote residences, what happened long ago, on a certain dark winter's night, at Albury, may amuse.