When "lessons" were over, we often rode out together.

As we rode through the lanes, he taught me to distinguish the notes of the birds, to observe what crops grow on certain soils, and at what seasons the different plants flower and bear fruit.

He made me see with my own eyes, and hear with my own ears, for which I shall ever be grateful to him.

I fancy I can hear his voice now, saying in his curt cutting fashion-- "How silly it sounds to hear anybody with a head on his shoulders say, 'I never noticed it!' What are eyes for ?" If I admired some creeper-covered cottage, picturesquely old and tumble-down, he would ask me how many rooms I thought it contained--if I fancied the roof would keep out rain or snow, and how far I supposed it was convenient and comfortable for a man and his wife and six children to live in.

In some very practical problems which he once set me, I had to suppose myself a labourer, with nine shillings a week, and having found out what sum that would come to in half a year, to write on my slate how I would spend the money, to the best advantage, in clothing and feeding two grown-up people and seven children of various ages.