Father has always wished me to be in a position--a position of knowledge and experience--to manage Normanstand if I should ever succeed him.

From the earliest time I can remember he has always kept this before me, and though of course I did not at first understand what it meant, I have seemed in the last few years to know better.

Accordingly I learned all sorts of things under his care, and sometimes even without his help.

I have studied the estate map, and I have been over the estate books and read some of the leases and all such matters which they deal with in the estate office.

This only told me the bones of the thing.